Old School Maoism: Fierce Work of Peking Review (1966-1976)
Posted by Mike E on December 1, 2008
weekly front page of revolutionary beacon
If you are interesting in understanding and evaluating Maoist communism — check this out:
Kasama received a note from Scott informing us that there is now a growing online collection of articles from Peking Review. Peking Review was the official international publication of the Maoists of China during its most heady socialist days. PR was published in many language — and read closely by many of the most serious revolutionaries of the 1960s — it was a school of Maoism, helping a whole generation undertand socialism (and capitalist restoration) in a groundbreaking way .
PR gathered key theoretical and political articles from the Chinese revolutionary press — and provided week-by-week coverage of the thinking leading the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
these articles are still fascinating forty years later — and reading them with a critical spirit and a sense of historical context can be extremely valuable training in communist theory. and it is also a useful place to start to discuss the leaps we need to make beyond any “orthodox” approach Maoism (and the communist language) of that time.
Here are a few of the available articles (feel free to mention your own favorite and comments):
The December 6, 1968 volume contains articles about how workers at the grassroots were grappling withthe struggle for power (and with communist ideology). These articles were a major feature of PR (because that massive revolutionary empowerment was such a major component of the cultural revolution).
Some individual articles:
- The Leaders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union are Betrayers
- Strongly Denounces Wanton U.S. Bombing of Laos
- A Discussion on Party Democratic Centralism (1971)
- Strenghtening Party Leadership (Discussing the Rebuilding of the Party after Lin Biao Affair) (1971)
- The Theory of Two Points (an important popularization of maoist dialectics, Jan. 1972)
- Turning the Harmful Into the Beneficial (discussion of ecological sustainability Jan. 1972)
- Women’s Liberation in China (Jan 1972)
- Restudying “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire” (Critiquing pessimism, Feb. 1972)
- How Engels Criticized Duhring’s Apriorism (dissecting dogmatism, March 1972)
- The Masses Are the Makers of History (opposing the great man theory, July 1972)
- Essential Difference Between Two Distribution Systems (workers group write on the difference between socialism and capitalism Aug 1972)
- The Laws of Class Struggle in the Socialist Period (aug 1972)
- On Studying Some History of Philosophy (on the importance of critiquing idealism among communist, Aug 1972)
- Where Do Man’s Knowledge and Talent Come From? (theory by revolutionaries of a sugar refinery, Sept. 1972)
- Theory Is the Guide to Practice (what is the relationship of reconceiving and retaking the revolutionary road? Oct 72)
- Overcoming Empiricism (how to synthesize experience into correct understandings, Oct 1972)
- Always Be One of the Working People (written by leading revolutionary factory worker, Dec. 1972)
- Seeing the Essence of Problems (essay on pessimism)
- On Consolidating the Dictatorship of the Proletariat (on the key question of power Jan 1974)
- Soviet Revisionists’ Fascist Dictatorship (revisionism in power is capitalism, Jan 1974)
