Comparing Mao to Hitler

[Charles Brown]

I'm not sure how many volumes Mao's collected works are or how much was written by the individual Brad and Max were mocking. But it is certainly no winning argument here to quote a tiny passage that is not an example of critical thinking, when there are many , many other passages in Mao that have critical thinking. I already illustrated this point earlier, by pointing to one of Max's posts that is not particularly smart. So, can we conclude that Max's thinking is generally not that smart because of the mindless posts he writes from time to time ? This is the trick Max and Brad are trying to pull.

For all we know, the passage they mocked was an introduction to a speech or some other ceremonial context which doesn't call for critical thinking. We could find a speech by Albert Einstein or any renowned "critical" thinker in which they are in a ceremonial mode of praising someone in physics.

As I said before, Max and Brad are engaged in the typical slander of eastern and communist thought by western and anti-communist propagandists. 

Charles Brown


>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 06/08/99 04:06PM >>>
Max Sawicky wrote:


>That's a little short of a ringing endorsement:
>"Read Mao!  He's no stupider than Bill Clinton!"
>
>I would urge higher standards for texts which
>purport to liberate the world's people.
>
>Can you seriously deny that, under a Maoist
>regime, you, me and Louis would be working
>shoulder to shoulder in one of Liu's
>"reeducation" camps?

Look Max, I'm no Maoist. The Chinese CP has done a lot of brutal things in
its reign. But this harping on the alleged childishness or whatever of
their prose style is pretty childish in itself. It's not easy to run a poor
country of 1 billion people surrounded by hostile foreign powers. We can
sit here all we like and pontificate about their crimes and blunders, but
that's really easy for us to do here in Imperialism Central. For all the
crimes and blunders, I think the Chinese revolution was a good thing, and I
think the same aboout the Russian revolution. India may be more pleasing to
those of us spoiled by bourgeois democracy, but China's social achievements
are pretty extraordinary. They reduce Nicholas Eberstat to tortured
explanations of the relation between health & GDP.

Doug