Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

There has never been a more appropriate illustration of the old Chinese curse “may you live in interesting times” than the life and times of Mao Zedong (Mao Tsetung). Coming of age during the first part of the twentieth century, he spent the rest of the century ensuring that others would live through similarly interesting times. He was an educator, a poet, a journalist, a military strategist, a political theorist, a revolutionary, and the official and spiritual leader of the largest communist nation the world has ever seen. He helped to found the Communist Party of China (CPC) and reinterpreted Marxism-Leninism by theorizing the revolutionary potential of rural farmers. His insight made China a beacon of revolution and made “Mao Tsetung Thought” its revolutionary polestar for communist and nationalist revolutionaries in the Third World and beyond. Movements such as the Black Panther Party of the United States, the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) of Peru, and the Communist Party of Nepal, as well as communist party organizations in India, the Philippines, and around the world were Maoist in their organization, strategy, and revolutionary ideology. Mao's life could be viewed as a classic tale of a poor boy born at the right time in the right place who by his own determination and good luck rose to great heights as a great ruler of a great nation. By the time of his death in 1976, ... log in or subscribe to read full text