--- Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:
> Well as a theory of how to win a guerrilla war, it's
> pretty good.
>
[WS:] I do not think there was any "theory" behind that warfare - just being lucky and crafty to capitalize on windfall created by the Japanese occupation of China and uprooting of the peasant masses it created, as Chalmers Johnson argued in "Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China".
Mao was bascially a shrewd and crafty thug who stumbled into political vacuum and exploited it to his own advantage - if it were not for the Japanese and the Russians he would be a mere footnote in China's history. The claim to "theory" is nothing more than ex post facto rationlization and creation of founding mythology.
Western left wing intellectuals like him for the same reason as Western disgruntled working class youth likes the Nazis - he has a shock value that pisses off parents, teachers and authority figures.
Wojtek