Review of: Mao Declassified (2006) LLCO.org This is a trashy, sensationalist documentary from the History Channel. The documentary does not even attempt to understand its subject. Instead, it relies on the orientalist and bourgeois prejudices of its audience to fill in the blanks. The film portrays Mao as a power-mad Asian despot, blindly worshiped by mindless hordes. Rather than a …
Tag: anti-communism
Review of: The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein reviewed LLCO.org The Shock Doctrine (2007) by Naomi Klein was a New York Times bestseller that appeared in 2007 at the height of the wave of public anger toward the George W. Bush administration in the United States. It was one of many books that made the rounds amongst outraged liberals in those years. …
What is revisionism?
What is revisionism? LLCO.org Some people falsely think that revisionism is to deviate from an orthodoxy, to “revise” a tradition. This is an incorrect view of what revisionism is in a Marxist context. We should not treat Marxist writers the same way that Medieval Church scholars treated Aristotle. Mao was right when he said we must oppose book worship. We …
Review of Some of Us, Part 3
Review of Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era (edited by Zueping Zhong, Wang Zheng, and Bai Di) LLCO.org 15 June 2008 Overall, the autobiographical writings in Some of Us are reactionary. Most of the perspectives in Some of Us are those of elite Chinese women, many of whom pursued academic careers in the West. Even …
Great Leap distortions uncovered
Great Leap distortions uncovered MC5 8 January 2000 (slightly edited 2002 and later again by the LLCO editors 2010) LLCO.org In the process of fact-checking anti-Mao propaganda, MIM uncovered a stunning error in bourgeois media and intelligence community analysis of the Great Leap. A Harvard professor overestimated the net loss of population in the worst year of the alleged famine …
Review of Some of Us, Part 1
Review of Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era (edited by Zueping Zhong, Wang Zheng, and Bai Di) 14 February 2008 LLCO.org “[At the fifty-first annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in 1999 panel discussion ‘Memory and the Cultural Revolution,’ during] the question-and-answer period, someone stated that she had a different kind of memory …
Review of China: A Century of Revolution Part 2
Movie Review of China: A Century of Revolution Part 2, the Mao Years 1949 to 1976 (Directed by Sue Williams, Zeitgest Films, 1994) LLCO.org China: A Century of Revolution, The Mao Years, is part two of a three part, six hour, documentary directed by Sue Williams in 1994. This documentary is in the class of Morning Sun (Carma Hinton, Richard …
Comments on Mao’s Great Famine
Comments on Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62 by Frank Dikotter Joseph Ball LLCO.org, republished from Maoists.org Mao’s Great Famine is a sensational account of China during the Great Leap Forward. It argues the death toll in the Great Leap Forward was at least 45 million. It also claims that 2.5 million of these died …
Review: Morning Sun (2003)
Review: Morning Sun (2003, Carma Hinton, Richard Gordon and Geremie R. Barmé) LLCO.rog “You young people are full of vigor and vitality. You are full of life. You are like the morning sun. You are our hope.” — Mao Zedong “When we saw the light of dawn, we felt as if this was the dawn of a new era for …
Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?
Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward? Joseph Ball 21 September 2006 LLCO.org (slightly edited); Original source: Maoists.org Over the last 25 years the reputation of Mao Zedong has been seriously undermined by ever more extreme estimates of the numbers of deaths he was supposedly responsible for. In his lifetime, Mao Zedong was hugely respected for the …