Books in Brief: Mao and the Perpetual Revolution

Mao and the Perpetual Revolution, by Franz Michael (Barron’s/ Woodbury, 326 pp., $9.95). Professor Michael was lucky enough to be just finishing this biography of Mao Tse-tung and history of Chinese Communism when Mao died, so his book is one of the first to tell us how things came out. It’s fairly short, 230 pages of text plus four of Mao’s major statements. Unlike most lives of Mao, it emphasizes his decades of power, especially the last. Although Michael tries, until the end, to be objective—and succeeds almost too well—his Mao is no thinker but a sloganeer and a murderous fanatic—a skillful politician and military strategist in coming to power, but after that a wild man who hurled his country into several periods of chaos and horror. Michael thinks Mao was never so defiant of Stalin as is usually asserted, and that Moscow, whether model or enemy, was always a prime factor in Mao’s policy. He judges Mao not to have been a true Marxist, but rather a visionary who insisted that his own mind was the source of guidance for the world. Mao always thought the army was the true path to power and means to progress; he kept his China in constant turmoil, subject to unrelenting drives toward the far shores of perfection: the original Maoification of the 1950s, the Great Leap Forward, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution —perpetual revolution! These aren’t new views of Mao but they are strongly and effectively supported here. Michael isn’t interested in numbering the millions of the dead or in the Chinese standard of living, but he makes it very clear why Maoism, after Mao’s death, is again being replaced by the more nearly moderate policies the Chairman hated.

FR

About the Author

Francis B. Randall

Featured Tags

Mao and the Perpetual Revolution, by Franz Michael (Barron’s/ Woodbury, 326 pp., $9.95). Professor Michael was lucky enough to be just finishing this biography of Mao Tse-tung and history of Chinese Communism when Mao died, so his book is one of the first to tell us how things came out. It’s fairly short, 230 pages of text plus four of Mao’s major statements. Unlike most lives of Mao, it emphasizes his decades of power, especially the last. Although Michael tries, until the end, to be objective—and succeeds almost too well—his Mao is no thinker but a sloganeer and a murderous fanatic—a skillful politician and military strategist in coming to power, but after that a wild man who hurled his country into several periods of chaos and horror. Michael thinks Mao was never so defiant of Stalin as is usually asserted, and that Moscow, whether model or enemy, was always a prime factor in Mao’s policy. He judges Mao not to have been a true Marxist, but rather a visionary who insisted that his own mind was the source of guidance for the world. Mao always thought the army was the true path to power and means to progress; he kept his China in constant turmoil, subject to unrelenting drives toward the far shores of perfection: the original Maoification of the 1950s, the Great Leap Forward, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution —perpetual revolution! These aren’t new views of Mao but they are strongly and effectively supported here. Michael isn’t interested in numbering the millions of the dead or in the Chinese standard of living, but he makes it very clear why Maoism, after Mao’s death, is again being replaced by the more nearly moderate policies the Chairman hated.