He permitted no figure of remote- circles seemed not to be that Mao foreign policy and manipulated top- against the common imperialist The death of Mao Tsetung, though not unexpected, has stirred consternation in high places across the globe. In Peking, of course, he was the symbolic of his party's monolithic power.
stature to his apparatus. This can only have bequeathed to his bureaucratic 'successors' who will now have to fill his oversized shoes.
Beyond China's borders, was the architect of China's role in the major re - alignments in world politics over the last half goes in the name of This shift from verbal denunciation of Western Imper -ialism to alliance with it against the Soviet Union earned Mao the unfeigned gratitude of Imperial -ist 'foreign offices! and 'state!
departments from Tokyo to Washington and from Bonn to London.
At the same time, it shocked and disoriented thousands or millions in the capitalist world who had looked to Peking for aid in their struggles for national liberation and socialism.
Mao liked to see himself portrayed as an intransigent communist revolutionary and champion of the toilers....In the 'cold war! propaganda of the 150s and early 160s, Washington seemed to share this opinion. But by the time of his death, of Imperialism eulogised Mao Tse tung almost as one of their own.
Gerald Ford called Mao a "remarkable and very great man.." adding that the chairman "had the vision and imagination to open up the doors to the United States". It was indeed Maols 'Open Door! policy that won the hearts & the minds of his former foes.
Henry Kissinger praised him for creating a "durable relationship" between Peking and Washington "based on mutual confidence and perception of common interests". United States Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, in his tribute Mao, declared that he had led "an search for the achievement of international understanding and world peace".
Prime Minister Takeo Miki of Japan sent a message of condolence avowing himself "shocked and grief-stricken!!.' An article by LES EVANS taken from INTERCONTINENTAL PRESS Collaboration The principal fear in imperialist Tsetung's policies would be continued after his death but that they might be abandoned by his successors. James Reston, writing in the September New York Times the day after Mao's death, asked: "Will Peking follow the line of the Shanghai communique cooperating with Washington? Or - and this is the anxiety here - will new Chinese leaders try to put together the " Sino-Soviet" alliance and confront the free world with a solid continent from Vladivostok to Berlin?"
Spokesmen for the capitalist free world, despite undying emnity for the social gains of the Chinese revolution, were quite willing to over - look Mao's autocratic rule over the Chinese masses & paint him up as a democrat of some kind. Daniel Sutherland, writing in the September 10th Christian Science Monitor under the headline "Mao gave China self-respect" had this "Much more than Lenin had been, Mao was prepared to involve the ordinary people in the political process and bring them into action against the administrators & anisation men in order to check abuses of authority".
It should not really be surprising that the pundits of the bourgeoisie should see something familiar and comfortable in The Case of the Chinese Trotskyists Documents of the Socialist Workers party.
Education for Socialists publication, *Wornen in China By Katie Curtin.
down "democracy". Nor that they instinctively feel that Lenin's proletarian democracy & revolution -ary internationalism are something quite different, something they can never make peace with.
Mao's collaboration with the capitalist powers of the world serves to define his place in history to dispel his claims to represent a revolutionary or proletarian current. It was not an accidental turn but flowed from the petty bourgeois social character of the bureaucratic caste in China that Mao represented, goal. of Chinese CP foreign policy from the day Mao Tsetung became chairman in 1935.
Flexible The 'opening to the West! that so upset many of Mao's supporters arose from part but from the adoption of a more flexible tactical stance by American Imperialism. Joseph Hansen, editor of Intercontinental pointed this out at the time of the first open step toward a new alignment in 1968. Peking, at the height of the murderous American aggression in Vietnam, had sent a message to Nixon on November 26th offering "peaceful co-existence", the class - collaborationist policy perfected by J. Stalin. Hansen commented, in the December IP: "It would seem that it would be of considerable mutual advantage to Peking & Moscow to close breach & establish a common front
have been favourably disposed to - there were mounting indications CULT OF PERSONALITY. April 5 showed growing inability of Maoist propaganda to intimidate opposition to bureaucratic rule.
foe. Neither of the bureaucracies sees it that way, however, & each blames the other for the situation. Worst of all, in their rivalry, each seeks an understanding with imperialism at the expense of the other... It the demarche meets with a favourable response, there can be no doubt that the Mao regime would move further along this line with a readiness that might astound not a few observers..".
Stalin Two and a half years later, announcement of Nixon's visit to Peking, Mao's opportunist cour -se was unveiled for everyone to see. In assessing its meaning in the July 26 1971 Intercontinental Press, Joseph Hansen summed up Mao's career and its final chapter. His words are worth recalling today as an obituary for Mao Tsetung.
"Why the change at this particular time? The reason is quite clear. The Mao regime has indicated to Nixon that it is willing to help him in Vietnam. In short, Peking is in the business of betraying revolutions in the tradition of the master betrayer whom they hail as their guide and teacher - Stalin.
The proofs could not be more palpable. Peking came out foursquare against the people of Bangla Desh who rose almost unanimously against the dictatorship of Yahya Khan. Peking supplied arms and money to the dictator to crush the rebellion; and openly denounced the people of Bangla Desh for striking out for their freedom.
Peking followed precisely the same course in the case of the rebellion in Ceylon. Chou himself went to the most brazen lengths to associate Peking with the Bandaranaike regime and against the rebe's. He put money on the line in the form of a most generous loan. He offered arms to be used against the rebels; and he denounced the rebels.
Not even Nixon could fail to understand that language - if he had not completely grasped the meaning of Mao's consistent policy over the years of seeking alliances with 'progressivel sectors of the colonial bourgeoisie, a policy that helped pave the way for the debacle of 1965 in Indonesia and the slaughter of as many as a million Indonesian commun -Those most stunned by the current diplomacy of the Mao regime are the currents on the left that wards Maoism. The ultra- left posture of the Mao regime was mistakenly interpreted by them to be genuinely revolutionary. They were taken in by the willingness of Peking to offer training to prospective guerrillas and to supply them with small arms in certain countries. The ultra-left language of Mao Tsetung Thought bolster -ed this false interpretation.
One of the most ironic aspects of Maols decision to make a deal with US Imperialism is that this was one of the main charges leveled against his opponents of the Cultural Revolution. Mao is now doing directly what he accused Liu Shao-Shi of wanting to do. Parallel To find a parallel, it is necessary to go back to the USSR of the thirties when Stalin butchered a generation of revolutionists and potential political opponents on Iframe-up! charges of plotting to make a deal with German Imperialism, only to end up making a pact with Hitler himself.
Like Stalin, Mao represents a bureaucratic caste. This formation in China is not identical in all its features to the one in the Soviet Union but it is basically similar. Its chief characteristic is that it places its own narrow, nationalistic interests above the interests of the world revolution, including the interests of the Chinese revolution. This was not seen by many analysts primarily because of the persistence with which US Imperialism rejected dealing with this conservative caste. Washington's refusal to recognise China helped maintain the revolutionary aura of the Mao regime.
The Peking government undertook defensive measures that sometimes had revolutionary consequences, outstanding exampies being the military defence of China at the time of the Korean war and the accompanying expropriation of capitalist holdings within China.
It was notable, however, that at home Mao sedulously blocked and rooted out any tendency towards proletarian democracy; while road, he relied in the main on alliances with the treacherous national bourgeoisie.
This course was in conformity with the nature of the social formation represented by Mao. veneer of ultra- leftism was. not in contradiction to this; it constituted a necessary part under the circumstances..".
Unrest In the year before his death, that masses of the Chinese people were dissatisfied with the chairman's rule and anxious to assert their own voice in the government of China. The strikes in Hangchow in the summer of 1975, reports of resistence among the millions of city youth arbitrarily sent to the countryside & finally the massive protest demonstrations of 100, 000 in Peking's Tien An Men Square in April are the best-known examples. These are the first signs of the coming political revolution in the country, when the workers, peasants & revolutionary intellectuals will unseat Mao!s bureaucratic heirs and take the reins of power into their own hands.
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Writings on China *Revolutionaries in Mao's Prisons
*The Chinese Revolution and Its Development