alright, well i made it through all three of these books a couple weeks ago. gotta say, i really enjoyed them. they are dense in the aspect that each book is about 350 pages long with about 35 pages of references, I do not believe there is a single page of text without as near a primary source to back it up as possible. While they are generally chronological, Frank Dikotter does jump around in the timelines for reference and context. i.e. something that happened in 1948 may start with an event in 1925 and give information leading up to and something that happened in 1968 may end with a reference into the 1970's to show where it lead, and then the next topic may get back to the general timeline. Writing in that way makes for a much more coherent message or storyline.
With the primary focus being "a peoples tale", there is much weight and effort given to the impact, notes and interviews of individuals as well as many party members. mao is obviously unavoidable as a central figure, but he isn't the sole focus which is refreshing. yes, the accounts are largely damning of mao and collectivization in general. There is also considerable effort to balance the sheer vastness of numbers (i.e. 45 million deaths directly related to the 1958 famine) and the dryness of validating those numbers with individual tales of people driven to suicide, cannibalism or the forced murder of ones own children. It is enough to keep the book from being overly emotionally taxing and prevent the loss of the emotional argument, keep it relatable, for most people to find some connection.
Of the three books, if i could only choose 1, the standout for me is "the tragedy of liberation". It is the first chronologically, but was the last book written published in 2013. Largely because my driving question in reading the series wasn't "was mao a bad dude" but "how do a people as numerous and storied as the Chinese accept the utter destruction of communism". the tragedy of liberation does much to focus on that.
It is interesting to note that the post WWII period to CCP "victory" in 1948/9, an estimated 5,000,000 chinese were killed and the tactics used during the great leap forward, the cultural revolution, the red terror and even the one child policy were well established early on during this time.
Mao was supported by stalin as much as stalin attempted to disregard him, but mao certainly took the following passage to heart from the communist manifesto to heart in the establishment of his regime.
http://www.slp.org/pdf/marx/comm_man.pdf
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
Chaing Kai Shek, the head of the Chinese Nationalist Party (not a nazi) made this statement in 1940/41 after the Japanese invasion. as brutal as the japanese were during the war, the phrase below should live large in everybodies memory as the japanese were never close to the destruction that the communists would bring
Chiang Kai Shek
"Communism is a disease of the heart, the Japanese are but a disease of the skin"
of course, Kai Shek went on to flee to Taiwan, upsetting the general order of things and headed the longest martial law state in the history of the notion and earned a reputation not wholly unlike that of Chilean General Pinochet. Kai Shek may well have killed thousands of people labeled as "communists", but the mao killed millions of people labeled as "rightists" and taiwan today is in significantly a better place than even Tibet, let alone beijing. At this particular moment with increased chinese aggression from Xi Xingping, they are rightly nervous as Hong Kong protests have largely been crushed, numerous anti-soverignty laws passed, increased tensions and border fighting with India, large inroads into Africa and S. America and such, so hopefully the people of Taiwan can avoid getting brutalized by the CCP for at least another 100 years.....
While Lenin and later Stalin focused much of their revolutionary efforts primarily on the cities and industry hubs, mao started his revolution in the countryside. Creating classes where there largely were not any, creating division and slaughter and brutally purging resistance. He later quipped that it would be fine if 50% of the people died because people are born and replaced pretty easily, but the reality was that he would prefer 1-10% of the people killed so as to enable control over the 90-99% that remained.
The book about the Famine and the Cultural Revolution are as factual as the first book and written in the same easy to read, story telling style, but those periods are also more commonly looked at. All together, the series is an excellent take on maoist china and i look forward to my kid being old enough that i can share them with him
edit: the following section from 1872 forward for Communist Manifesto written by Engles and Marx shows just how quickly (under 25 years) they realized, through practical demonstration, that their ideals were completely unworkable bunk. of course, they didn't live long enough, and nobody ever will, to figure out how to perfect their system.
“However much the state of things may have altered during the last 25 years, the general principles laid down in the Manifesto are, on the whole, as correct to-day as ever. Here and there some detail might be improved. The practical application of the principles will depend, as the manifesto itself states, everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage would, in many respects, be very differently worded to-day. In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organisation of the working-class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune,3 where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that “the working-class cannot simply lay hold of ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.” Further, it is self-evident, that the criticism of socialist literature is deficient in relation to the present time, because it comes down only to 1847; also, that the remarks on the relation of the Communists to the various opposition-parties (Section IV.), although in principle still correct, yet in practice are antiquated, because the political situation has been entirely changed, and the progress of history has swept from off the earth the greater portion of the political parties there enumerated. “But then, the Manifesto has become a historical document which we have no longer any right to alter.”
i.e. everything we said was bullshit, technology advanced in a different way and progress and liberty have proven their success and workers revolutions the world over have been failures. the manifesto should be considered nothing more than an oddity of history, much like an earthen pot with interesting pictures painted on it.
) has put out some really good docs on China. Let me dig them up.
