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Title: Mao: A Reinterpretation by Lee Feigon ISBN: 1-56663-522-5 Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Provides a different view of the leader
Comment: Mao: A Reinterpretation is a new political biography of Mao which provides a different view of the leader as a committed revolutionary who contributed to China's history and culture. The real Mao wasn't a genius, nor the evil leader later biographies have portrayed. This reinterpretation examines both his life and the lasting effects of his ideals.
Rating: 4
Summary: Mao, China's totalitarian populist rebel
Comment: Lee Feigon's book is not an in-depth analysis of the underlying Chinese and western political philosophies that influenced Mao. (For intro into that, see the outstanding _Maoism and Chinese Culture_ by Zongli Tang and Bing Zuo for the diverse Chinese philosophic influences; Maurice Meisner's and Nick Knight's writings for two opposing takes on the nature of Mao's Marxism; Stuart Schram for a general overview; Anita Andrew and John Rapp for an argument that Mao's ruling style was native autocracy). Feigon chooses to focus on the narrower questions--Was Mao China's Stalin, and his intra-party opponents always more benevolent? Was the Cultural Revolution simply a repeat of Stalin's purges of the late 1930s, or was their some other purpose?
This book is reactive. In the 1970s, it was trendy to uncritically praise Mao's China as a new kind of society where everyone selflessly struggled for the common good and avoided the usual social blights associated with development. Even those with a more balanced view still understated the repressive side. Through the mid-1980s a more ambivalent view prevailed. Since then, a common perception is that Mao was a monster like Stalin who pushed more reasonable leaders like Liu Shaoqi out of the way in the process of destroying China. Some even say Mao was much worse than Stalin. Feigon's purpose is to argue against this new popular view. Thus, the book does not really aim to present a balanced view of Mao/Maoism itself, but sees itself as balance to the dominant discourse. It does *not* argue from a radical leftist perspective. Lee Feigon is not the first scholar to call into question the total demonization view, (e.g. Maurice Meisner, whose position was constant throughout the flip-flop, has done so), but this is the first book-length argument.
Half of this book is a biography of Mao and a history of the Chinese revolution up to 1949. It seems directed at those with only a moderate degree of knowledge about 20th century China. Yet for the well read, a few conventional wisdoms are debunked. For more detail on this period, see Philip Short's biography.
For the post-1949 period, Feigon argues that: a) Mao and the PRC were Stalinist through 1957, after which Mao tried to break with Stalinism b) The break with Stalinism left an important residual impact that indirectly contributed to the struggle for democracy and modernization.
After describing how a Soviet-style state was set up in the early to mid-1950s, Feigon reminds readers that the 1956 "Hundred Flowers" period--where people were given a degree of freedom to air their grievances with the party, and workers were allowed to strike against despotic Soviet-style factory management--was pushed by Mao (though Feigon ignores Zhou Enlai's role) over the ardent opposition of his own Communist Party, who were comfortable in their commandist positions. But this momentary detour from Stalinism didn't last long. The party pressured Mao to let them silence those daring to criticize the infallible Leninist vanguard. To his immense discredit (and to Zhou's chagrin), Mao caved and endorsed the "anti-rightist" witch hunts of 1957-58, led with great relish by Deng Xiaoping. Deng and the party leadership used the campaign to silence intellectuals and repress and even imprison workers, even though Mao had insisted that workers be free to strike (later having it written into the constitution, which Deng removed in 1982) and participate in management.
Feigon goes on to argue that the Great Leap Forward should be thought of as a break with the centralized Soviet model, letting rural townships ("communes") develop outside-the-plan small-scale industries, a move with long range benefits, whose full potential was tapped after markets and trade were loosened up. In the short term though, as is well known, the GLF led to a massive famine, because of the deadly intersection of utopian exuberance and totalitarian control of information which had been reinstated over Zhou's objection and with the approval of Mao and the Leninist-Stalinist wing of the CCP leadership after 1957.
In the Cultural Revolution chapter, Feigon describes how Mao, realizing how entrenched and elitist the party's bureaucracy had become, came to believe only a period of mass revolt could shake things up enough to prevent the permanent Sovietization of the PRC. Though in most places the CR did not leave any lasting new institutions that could serve as the basis for future democratic reforms, Feigon notes two positive political legacies of the CR: 1) a weakened bureaucracy 2) permanent infusion into the political culture the idea that the people have a right to criticize or rebel against autocratic or corrupt officials. Even the exiled dissident intellectual Fang Lizhi acknowledged the latter (though doesn't give Mao credit). The CR also wiped out a lot of rural illiteracy, bridged the rural/urban health care gap, and left a basic industrial base for the reformers to build on.
Re: violence, Feigon correctly notes that the conservative army and party were responsible for far more of the CR violence than the radical rebels, who were the primary victims (for more on this, see Anita Chan "Dispelling Misconceptions About the Red Guard Movement", Journal of Contemporary China, Fall 1992; and Peter Moody Jr.'s follow-up, Fall 1993). Yet Feigon gives insufficient attention to questions which could undermine his argument. Where was Mao when the party and army were massacring and repressing the rebels and restoring commandist control from 1968 on? Even Jiang Qing spoke up meekly (see Moody) against this. Where was he when the Canton dissidents of 1974 were calling for socialist democracy and legality? Though conflicted, in crisis times, Mao often retreated into the comfortable arms of the command state he'd help construct. Still, Mao at least planted the seeds of populist and democratic outlooks, which others can and have taken much further. Thus, Feigon's contribution is valuable.
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Title: Mao Zedong and China's Revolutions: A Brief History With Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture) by Timothy Cheek ISBN: 0312256264 Publisher: Bedford Books Pub. Date: 01 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Mao : A Life by Philip Short ISBN: 0805066381 Publisher: Owl Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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