Mao: Women

Mao: Women

A man in China is usually subjected to the domination of three systems of authority [political authority, family authority and religious authority]…. As for women, in addition to being dominated by these three systems of authority, they are also dominated by the men (the authority of the husband). These four authorities – political, family, religious and masculine – are the embodiment of the whole feudal-patriarchal ideology and system, and are the four thick ropes binding the Chinese people, particularly the peasants. How the peasants have overthrown the political authority of the landlords in the countryside has been described above. The political authority of the landlords is the backbone of all the other systems of authority. With that overturned the family authority, the religious authority and the authority of the husband all begin to totter…. As to the authority of the husband, this has always been weaker among the poor peasants because, out of economic necessity, their womenfolk have to do more manual labour than the women of the richer classes and therefore have more say and greater power of decision in family matters. With the increasing bankruptcy of the rural economy in recent years, the basis for men’s domination over women has already been undermined. With the rise of the peasant movement, the women in many places have now begun to organize rural women’s associations; the opportunity has come for them to lift up their heads, and the authority of the husband is getting shakier every day. In a word, the whole feudal-patriarchal ideology and system is tottering with the growth of the peasants’ power. 

“Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” (March 1927), Selected Works, Vol. I, pp. 44-46.*

Clausewitz or Engels?

Once technological advances can be used for military purposes and have been used for military purposes, they will immediately almost forcefully, and often against the commander’s will, cause changes or even revolutions in warfare.

Who said it? Carl von Clausewitz or Friedrich Engels? I saw it quoted in a paper by the China Aerospace Studies Institute (attributed to Engels). Considering that it’s the “think tank” of the Department of the Air Force, I’m not taking the contents of the paper at face value (same with the papers that I posted below). I’m more interested in who said it, anyway. FYI, I only have Volume 1 of “On War” and apparently it’s the “wrong” translation. I’m too busy reading Mao to read Clausewitz. I find it interesting what I find when researching stuff, though.

Engels’s Second Theory: Technology, Warfare and the Growth of the State

Thesis Title: “The First Red Clausewitz”: Friedrich Engels and Early Socialist Military Theory, 1848-1870 by Michael A. Boden (United States Army Command and General Staff College)

Personal post 2: 10-21-2024

Weekends annoy me. I don’t have a lot of time for myself. I have to sneak it in when I should be sleeping. Anyway, I was trying to do some research when I got sidetracked while listening to my podcasts. It turned out pretty well since it forced me to look up Mao’s “Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing”. I don’t have a lot of confidence in my ability to simplify my writing, though. I’ve attempted to use AI to summarize it, but it still disappoints me. It removes too much information. *sigh*

Mao Zedong on Writing

Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing

The first indictment against stereotyped Party writing is that it fills endless pages with empty verbiage. Some of our comrades love to write long articles with no substance, very much like the “foot-bindings of a slattern, long as well as smelly”. Why must they write such long and empty articles? There can be only one explanation; they are determined the masses shall not read them. Because the articles are long and empty, the masses shake their heads at the very sight of them. How can they be expected to read them? Such writings are good for nothing except to bluff the naive, among whom they spread bad influences and foster bad habits. … If articles are too long, who will read them? Some comrades at the front, too, like to write long reports. They take pains over writing them and send them here for us to read. But who has the hardihood to read them? If long and empty articles are no good, are short and empty ones any better? They are no good either. We should forbid all empty talk. But the first and foremost task is to throw the long, smelly foot-bindings of the slattern into the dustbin. Some may ask, “Isn’t Capital very long? What are we to do about that?” The answer is simple, just go on reading it. There is a proverb, “Sing different songs on different mountains”; another runs, “Fit the appetite to the dishes and the dress to the figure”. Whatever we do must be done according to actual circumstances, and it is the same with writing articles and making speeches. What we oppose is long-winded and empty stereotyped writing, but we do not mean that everything must necessarily be short in order to be good. True, we need short articles in war time, but above all we need articles that have substance. Articles devoid of substance are the least justifiable and the most objectionable. The same applies to speechmaking; we must put an end to all empty, long-winded speeches.

Read More »

Don’t Blame Karl Marx for ‘Cultural Marxism’

Don’t Blame Karl Marx for ‘Cultural Marxism’

You might think that a history of cultural Marxism would start with Marx, but the poorly coiffed Prussian has almost nothing to do with this tale of insidious infiltration. Instead, the theory took off in the late 1990s due to speeches, essays, and books by William Lind, then with the Free Congress Foundation, and Patrick Buchanan, the firebrand conservative columnist, TV talking head, and sometime presidential candidate. (The idea, though not the name, was hatched earlier, in a 1992 monograph called “The New Dark Age: The Frankfurt School and Political Correctness.” It was written by a disciple of the noted conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche.)

Related:

The CIA & the Frankfurt School’s Anti-Communism

Free Congress Foundation:

Read More »

Mao: Tyrant or Great Leader?

YouTube

Mao’s Legacy and Accomplishments

Mao Tse‐tung, who began as an obscure peasant, died one of history’s great revolutionary figures. In Chinese terms, he ranked with the first Emperor who unified China in 200 B.C.

A Chinese patriot, a combative revolutionary, a fervent evangelist, a Marxist theorist, a soldier, a statesman and poet, above all Mao was a moralist who deeply believed, as have Chinese since Confucius, that man’s goodness must come ahead of his mere economic progress.

China achieved enormous economic progress under Mao. He transformed China into a modern, industrialized socialist state.”

Unlike many great leaders, Mao never exercised, or sought, absolute control over day‐to‐day affairs.”

Mao: Tyrant or Great Leader?

TO BE ATTACKED BY THE ENEMY IS NOT A BAD THING BUT A GOOD THING

TO BE ATTACKED BY THE ENEMY IS NOT A BAD THING BUT A GOOD THING

“It is good if we are attacked by the enemy, since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue. It demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work.” 

Related:

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung

Why is garlic considered a threat to US national security, while the Dongfeng missile is a bridge of friendship? 🤭

Why is garlic considered a threat to US national security, while the Dongfeng missile is a bridge of friendship?

Today is the first day of the National Day holiday, and everyone is celebrating happily. However, the popularity of the Dongfeng intercontinental ballistic missile remains unabated, and today #洲际喷球# has once again topped the Weibo hot search list. 

Read More »