Maoism: A Global History Hardcover – Deckle Edge, September 3, 2019

When Mao made the deal with Nixon, the early Seventies to turn off the "spigot" of Revolution, Maoism really ended. China then was allowed to freely develop markets and its exporting capacity, recall that Japan was ready to sell its commodities, automobiles to national communist sovereigns, as in South East Asia, and those supported by Mao. This is why the USA allowed Detroit to meltdown, so to accommodate the Japan car makers.This is a great survey of Maoism; Let's be real..... Maoism was a product, a commodity and was we now see only product China had to export, and this gave it some bargaining chip at the table of globalized capitalism.What you come away with from this book is to decipher how Maoism functioned within capitalism.It was only internalized, the predators there could only support the domesticate populace as we learn from the various histories of Stalin. Certainly the Trilateral powers knew full well, where Mao was lending rendering military support, surveillance and"guerilla" education to the nations that surrounded China. Nixon clearly saw the impasse,(with Vietnam) that American power did have its limitations(as it abandoned the gold standard Bretton Woods) as Maoism learned that the Cultural Revolution was a dead-end;that it would only impoverish China further had it continued, China would have been isolated by global export capital, and ripe for picking by international predator investors .Lovell I think misses this grand overview the "realpolitik", and comes to focus on where "orthodox" Maoism thrives. We learned that Maoism has its only body politic,its own '' plasticity'' that it has its extreme forms, as Pol Pot, the horrific experiences of Cambodia and the Gang of Four debacle on the mainland and more passive forms, as those Chou en lai wanted to develop.. But still the forms can be adapted to wherever you are within the globe. This is something the Soviets missed altogether during the Cold War. They thought they could export Stalinism say to the Muslim sovereigns in the Middle East or corrupt dictators in Latin America. It doesn't work. It doesn't work because Maoism or the Soviet readings was always is in direct contact in direct confrontation with international global capital.Both were always ready to make a deal with the West, with the USA and its Allies, Stalin was so accommodating during the Spanish Civil War and World War Two.......... So the "winnings" will always be compromised, rendered with many contingencies and reservations. I guess my view is to see Maoism more as "neuro-plasticity", to how well it can or cannot adapt itself. There is a theory that the magnificent success of current capital China was only made possible by the intense discipline, the structuring of the populace of the Mao Years, The Cultural Revolution. This is always the problem for sovereigns how to control your own masses. In the USA we've learned through drug non-enforcement, prisons,rampant racism and pop, rock culture to control the minds and hearts masses.

"Mao's great talent lay in turning the Chinese people into slaves, while making them feel like they were the masters of the country ... All the world's dictators have studied Mao."Julia Lovell's Maoism: A Global History provides a comprehensive history of the origins and influence of Maoism. It has crossed cultural and language boundaries to be a worldwide phenomenon. Its guiding principle has been a utopian message of the liberation of the oppressed while ruthlessly silencing any dissent.Mao's path to power began in earnest in 1934 with his assumption of the military leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). From this position, Mao was able to wrest political control of the CCP from his rivals. While Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists were fighting the Japanese, membership in the CCP increased "from 40,000 in 1937 to around 800,000 in 1940."In 1938, Edgar Snow published Red Star Over China. Snow was an American living and writing in China. Mao granted Snow a series of interviews, and the CCP carefully vetted Snow's manuscript. The resulting book was a glowing portrait of Chinese communism and Mao's leadership. The book was an international bestseller. Outside of Mao's writings, the book was the most influential source of global Maoism.Guerilla warfare was a crucial part of Mao's military strategy in China and a part of global Maoism. In China, Mao used the approach to avoid direct engagement with Chiang Kai-shek. The strategy was exported to Vietnam and used there to defeat the French and later the Americans.The CCP also benefited from the obfuscation of Mao's true intentions. In 1945, CCP representative Zhou Enlai convinced visiting Americans that "Mao wanted an American style democracy."Once in power in China, Maoism took on a quasi-religious dimension. A visit to China became a spiritual pilgrimage for Maoists. The Little Red Book of quotations by Mao was described by the Chinese Minister of Defense Lin Biao as a "spiritual atom bomb of infinite power." Between 1966 and 1971, "more than a billion" Little Red Books were printed "in dozens of languages."With the onset of the Cultural Revolution in China, Maoism emerged as the radical ideology of choice. Mao condemned Khrushchev's repudiation of Stalinism as "revisionism." In contrast to Soviet dilution, Maoism championed the oppressed and opposed all injustice. Mao's platitudes, such as "serve the people," "power flows from the barrel of a gun," and "revolution is not a dinner party" became popular in the radical West and elsewhere.With the death of Mao in 1976, the Cultural Revolution came to a close. Deng Xiaoping, who took power in 1978, emphasized Chinese economic development. However, Deng did not repudiate Maoism as a whole. Unlike the Soviets, who could denounce Stalin and fallback on an allegedly enlightened Lenin, China had no fallback. For better or worse, Mao was the face of the Chinese revolution.Deng's leadership stance fostered evermore violent forms of neo-Maoism. In 1980, on Mao's birthday, Peru's Shining Path hung dead dogs from lampposts in Lima in protest of Deng's perceived betrayal of global Maoism.Neo-Maoism remains a force in Chinese academia and government. From this perspective, Chinese internationalists are right-wing, and Maoists are the nationalist left. To some degree, the CCP tolerates neo-Maoism while suppressing democratic forms of dissent.

This book is a fascinating and historically enlightening engagement with a topic that has been virtually ignored by popular history, namely, the engagement of Maoist political thought with the non-Chinese world. The author writes with a knack for pace and clarity while providing a lively introduction to a subject the broader world, including myself, knows little about. Highly recommended for anyone who wishes a clearer understanding and background on mid-20th century geopolitics, and Maoism’s catalytic effect upon them. This work belongs on the level of Frank Dikotter’s works on Mao and Ezra Vogel’s biography of Deng Xiaoping as a key introduction to the history of Communist China.

A topic this big could easily have bogged down, but Lovell keeps things moving along in a well-organized overview that highlights particulars while keeping its eyes on the whole picture. Readers expecting to come out of this with a precise definition of what Maoism is will be disappointed, in the same way they'd be disappointed by expecting a book to tell them exactly what Christianity is. What Lovell does is describe what Maoism was/is in practice and how it continues to shape contemporary China, which is much more interesting than academic pin-dancing.

This book is one of the best history books on Maoism as it does not spare details on Mao's life or how his cult of personality influenced some of the bloodiest years in China. His philosophy managed to not just damage China, but nearly wiped out other nations in the process. I highly recommend this book if you want to understand the history of Maoism, this and the Gulag Archipelago should be mandated reading for every college student in America. Amazing book.

Do you want understand the subject, then nothing is better than this.In this world of fake news and propaganda, this book will help you the true history of Maoism.Go for it.

Brilliant

The most pressing thought which comes to mind in reflection upon this original and masterful work is why has no one previously attempted a global coverage of a powerful and influential ideology? Maoism may very well be the most enigmatic, yet dangerous ideology of the 20th Century, and probably the least understood. So, Julia Lovell is faced with two questions, firstly, what is Maoism? Secondly, what is Maoism’s global impact? The first question is a question this reader has struggled with for years, and never properly understood, perhaps because it is relatively simple, and Lovell explains it in simple terms. Maoism is much more a revolutionary ideology than a governing ideology. As a governing ideology, it appears incoherent and unattractive, as Mao himself, by his own admission, was no great Marxist theorist. However, as a Revolutionary, both in theory and practice, he was second to none. At its core is the notion that the revolution can begin in the countryside, that peasants and small townsfolk can rise up and surround the cities, and that the revolutionary army is like water, and hides among the people. Essentially, Maoism is the doctrine of people’s war. Secondly, what is the Global impact? The global impact is huge and far reaching, from Indonesia, to Cambodia, to Peru, to Nepal, to the Red Brigades of Italy and many more European revolutionaries, Maoism was the revolutionary ideology of the Avant Garde, the true spirit of rebellion. Of particular interest is the chapter concerning the Shining Path in Chile, and the Red Brigades in Italy. Interesting, but heavily overlooked episodes of world history. The book also deals with Mao’s governance in China, and his controversial legacy. Lovell, like many others, contends that Mao himself is a double-edged sword for China’s governing party, he is essential for their historical legitimacy, yet dangerous for their continued hold on power. The very spirit of rebellion that Mao embodies, and the more egalitarian form of socialism he represents, is both a source of legitimacy and a paradox for contemporary China. Mao is to be approached cautiously, as though his embalmed body itself emanates radiation. Lovell’s encyclopedia of Maoism isn’t just a study of history or ideology, it is a tour de force of world revolution, a journey into the very spirit of rebelliousness. It both informs and excites the reader and may very well inspire. The book, likes its subject matter, is hot material, and should be approached with caution.

Well researched and articulated narrative on the cultural development of Maoism as a philosophy

This is an excellent book, and tells a fascinating story - of how an ideology dismissed or even ridiculed in the West (as the author points out the Beatles's "Revolution" was a contemporary work of mockery when the Cultural Revolution was at its peak) shaped and is still shaping the world in which we live largely (though not exclusively) in negative ways.Maoism may be reduced to cult status in the west - though as the book notes it left its mark on struggles for feminism and race equality - but in what Mao called the Third World it still really matters, not least in China itself, the world's second biggest economy and currently undergoing a revival of 'soft' Maoism as the ruling party looks for ways to bolster its legitimacy in a society where both wealth and inequality are growing.Those who have walked the path of Maoism and "people's war" have generally led their societies into great agony - and the book does not shirk this: the chapter on Peru is deeply chilling - terrifying, even: I had dreams about it - and is a reminder that the distance between 'humanity' and 'barbarism' is one of millimetres. But the book avoids cold war cliches and attempts to explain why Maoism still appeals.Not everything is perfect - the Cultural Revolution is central to the Maoist experience and world view but is barely described (perhaps because ten volumes would never be enough to describe that madness) and we are told Tanzania followed a semi-Maoist path and it failed but an little bit more about how and why it failed would have been welcome.