Comments on: Bashing Mao Bashing

By: Alan Baumler

Alan Baumler — Fri, 05 May 2006 13:56:15 +0000

Johnathan,
It just occurred to me that you would be the perfect person to ask what the “revisionist” value of this book is. Although the authors do not situate their book in the historiography (which is to be expected, it’s a popular book) the reviews and blurbs keep emphasizing how it completely changes “our” view of Mao. What I wondered is what the “our” refers to.

It’s not the ordinary American on the street, or the incoming freshmen in universities. Although “Chairman Moa” is a name that rings a bell, most people seem to come to my classes knowing nothing but the name. I found your concern that they would all show up in your class having read this book touching, but not realistic. It would infuriate me to find out they had read it (What! Why not Wild Swans? I soooo wish you had read Wild Swans instead) but I’m not losing sleep over it. (Do Asian-Americans read this book? We don’t get many here. Maybe you have a different take on this.)

The book is clearly not revising academic ideas about Mao, since I would say almost all China scholars are aware that Mao personally was a vile person, but they are more concerned with the successes and failures of his political movement than his personal failings. The book is sort of (though not entirely) at cross-purposes with academic work.

What I was wondering is what the image of Mao is in the more general intellectual culture. Are the New Republic crowd still carrying pictures of Chairman Mao? Did they ever? It sort of seems that the educated-but-not-specialist crowd are the only possible ‘good’ audience for this book, and I’m not sure even there it could have any good effect. What is the “image of Mao?”

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Thu, 04 May 2006 04:51:03 +0000

Thanks: I had that linked above under "discussions." It is a great resource, which I've only slightly supplemented here.

By: CW Hayford

CW Hayford — Thu, 04 May 2006 03:23:27 +0000

Bill Joseph has a wonderfully helpful website kept at Wellesley which has all sorts of links dealing with Chinese politics —

There is a section devoted to the reviews of the Chang/ Halliday book: http://www.wellesley.edu/Polisci/wj/ChinaLinks-New/chang-halliday.html

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 23:51:48 +0000

That is interesting (what there is of it there): it’s actually one of the most positive detailed reviews I’ve read, though the positive bits mostle come from “yes, we knew that, and it was bad” and from “we don’t have any evidence of this other than this book, but it could have happened”; there’s a pretty big helping of “this didn’t happen that way” and other critical points as well.

Thanks.

By: Owen

Owen — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 13:51:10 +0000

Just noticed that the online version of this review cuts off before the end too. How infuriating!

By: Owen

Owen — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 13:40:54 +0000

There is a very worthwhile review of the book from a Marxist perspective in the latest issue of International Socialism Journal. It can be read here, although the for some reason the notes are missing and the formatting is messed - seems to work ok if you cut and paste the text into a word file.