On the Rehabilitation of Chairman Mao

I am ill-equipped to comment on the legacy of Chairman Mao Zedong, so for those who are really interested in a well-written, well-researched biographical review of his life and legacy, check out this writeup based on a speech by Carlos Martinez: Monster or Liberator? On the Legacy of Mao Zedong. I will, however, address a phenomenon that has led me to some interesting thoughts that may or  may not be correct, but are nonetheless prescient for us as Marxists of the modern age.

Communism is a dirty word in the American political lingo. Just Google it. Or, let me do it for you: Obama is a Communist googlesearch. Also, I won't bother looking them up, but anyone who pays any attention to reddit, Facebook, any news aggregator, or Fox News directly knows that the Republican establishment routinely calls Obama a Communist. It matters little that he isn't a Communist, the term is pejorative enough for them to believe it to hold the same weight as calling someone a witch in 17th Century Puritan New England. There should be a trial. A conviction. An execution.

But at the same time, the New York Times, South China Morning Post, Deutsche Welles, and CNN are all reporting on the celebrations of Chairman Mao's 120th birthday (Happy Birthday, Chairman Mao!). And, strangely, while they cite the same tired statistics concerning his "mistakes...[including] the persecution and deaths of millions of people in political campaigns" (New York Times) and acknowledge that President Xi Jinping "conceded the founding father of the People's Republic of China made 'mistakes'" (Deutsche Welles), the attitudes in the pieces are all generally neutral. They certainly don't go on and on about all the good he did, but the vitriol that has historically been reserved for Communists and Communist leaders has evaporated from the press concerning Chairman Mao. The South China Morning Post posits two "different" positions that aren't really all that different.

Their "pro" Mao states the obvious, and something that has already been said by Carlos Martinez and President Xi, that the current economic growth would not have been possible without the Communist revolution and 1949 establishment of the People's Republic. Their "anti" Mao states another obvious truth: his praise should be weighted with an honest critique of his mistakes. But this draws me back to Martinez. Mao was unapologetic in his own admission of his mistakes. What I mean by that is that he did not try and cover up the fact that mistakes happened or were happening. He did not try to dampen the fallout. He freely and openly admitted that things had gone wrong, but balanced the facts with the truth: things for the greatest amount of people possible were getting better (Seek truth from facts!).

This is where it gets weird. I understand the historically hypocritical relationship the United States has had with Communism. We fought Chinese troops in the Korean and Vietnam wars. We politically isolated the regimes of Kim Il Sung and Ho Chi Minh. Yet we openly engaged China politically, economically, socially, etc. We aided in the Sino-Soviet Split. Tito's Yugoslavia was a willing recipient of Western loans, including American aid, because he defied our eternal foe: the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. And we openly supported Nelson Mandela even as he spoke ardently about the destruction of Capitalism in South Africa. Of all of these figures, only two enjoy American praise today. Nelson Mandela (divorced of his association with the Left, of course) and Mao Zedong. Now, you are asking, why Mao Zedong?

China is one of our "friends". She represents a regional power that opposes our interests in East Asia, but at the same time, we enjoy a friendly political and economic relationship with the PRC. Americans have been allowed to create an anti-Communist narrative concerning China because we appreciate the "New" China that came about because of Deng Xiaoping. But now, as our relationship with "New" China sours, we have opened the door to discuss the rehabilitation of Mao Zedong. While no overt praise has come forth from Americans in general, CNN's and the Times' neutral assessment of his legacy is something to pay attention to. It legitimizes a revolution that we have had a strange and difficult history with. While "opening" China, Nixon was able to praise contemporary Chinese policy without praising what had come before it. As a politically strategic move against the Soviet Union, China was alright. Without the Soviet Union, a friendly relationship has remained, but the official narrative has continued to be that pre-Deng China was bad bad awful. And now it's not so bad.

Again, I can't really explain this. Foreign Policy Magazine has become critical of China because of their "air security zone" that extends over Japanese sovereign territory (claimed by China). Much of the US foreign apparatus seems to be raising some highly critical accusations concerning China's behavior. A lot of the American public is critical of the amount of American debt China currently holds. The majority of America's qualms with China are precisely the result of Post-Mao China. So as this attitude starts to creep through, what are the odds that America's hypocritical relationship with Communism will do an about face in regards to China? Is Mao, who urged his country to industrialize and become self-sufficient as a guard against Western Imperialism, is to be rehabilitated as the "friendly" China we once knew?

All I know is that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both admitted to having read Maoist theory in college. The degree to which they were influenced by it is up for debate, because they've never been forthcoming with how much they read, what they read specifically, or whether any of it really affected them. But I have to wonder if our country's current leadership isn't in some way sympathetic to Mao, and somehow giving the nod to China that they would rather deal with a Mao than a Xi?