Mao's Red book

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao

This site provides quotes from the Red Book that are excellent for discussion.  China adopted Lenin-Marxist communism.  It was argued this was necessary because of problems caused by foreign powers.  Is there some truth to this argument?  How about how the British and US military forces have been used to maintain their own economic interest at the expense of the oppressed populations?    What other countries in south American and the mid east have made this same complaint and what has our military response been?  Does the New World Order favor some at the expense of others?  

1. The Chinese Communist Party is the core of the Chinese revolution, and its principles are based on Marxism-Leninism. Party criticism should be carried out within the Party. 2 22 Classes and Class Struggle The revolution, and the recognition of class and class struggle, are necessary for peasants and the Chinese people to overcome both domestic and foreign enemy elements. This is not a simple, clean, or quick struggle.

I think we can agree, limiting criticism to those inside the party is problematic.   In political matters, all points of view are important, to avoid blind spots that can cause trouble.   But considering the foreign problem they were dealing with, might there be justification for not reasoning with the other party, and treating politics like it is a win/ loose game, and the winner takes all, and must defend it, from those who would do the same if they could? 


Edited by Athena - 11-Apr-2011 at 15:56

What you said is very interesting!  Can you give us a fuller explanation?  I could not get your link to come up, because I don't have the right settings on my computer.  


Edited by Athena - 11-Apr-2011 at 16:11

Shouldn't the discussion begin with the history of the Silk Road?  Not that I know enough to discuss this, but maybe we should know more.  I was surprised to learn at the following link that it was a Mongol who ruled China during the time of Marcus Polo, and that he took down toll gates and made life easy for traders.   http://www.travelchinaguide.com/silk-road/history/    Evidently the naval route was easier yet, and the Silk Road closed.  However, when it was open, Baghdad, was the doorway between east and west.   I want to stress this because of the importance of the Baghdad Railroad and the world wars. 

For reasons I do not understand yet, China became isolationist, and did not welcome trade with Britain.   Britain was limited to trading from one port, Canton. The Portuguese and Dutch had established trade with China, but it took a long time for the British, East India Company to be accepted in Canton.  Once it was, it brought opium from India, and used its ships to carry tea, silk, and china ware from Canton to India.   This trade route made the tip of Africa, Cape of Good Hope, a Dutch colony, very important, until the Suez canal was opened.  Opening the Suez canal (1869) cut the route from Britain to India in almost half.  Before opening the canal, Britain took control of Cape of Good Hope in 1795.  This is getting a bit far from the subject, but it seems obvious, the New World Order means Germany takes control, and the Old World Order was British controlled, and highly dependent on water routes.  Technology, the canal and railroad changed this, and the players in the game.    

Clearly, the British trade in China of opium, caused grief to China, the there was an effort to throw them out of Canton.  Britain took this as invitation for war, and used its naval ships to bomb forts in Canton.  In the end China had to give in to Britain.  These violent conflicts happened twice with Britain taking a bigger piece of China each time.   Clearly this is private trade companies, backed by a British tax payer paid naval force.   I have an uneasy feeling about this.   Is this really in the best interest of tax payers considering how money buys power?   It appears Mao and those who supported him didn't like the way foreigners  did business?  


Edited by Athena - 12-Apr-2011 at 11:49

"Let us dispute only market development in China,Russia,
Eastern Europe and most of known world!After the wars,WW1 and WW2,market indexes were multiplied by factor 10/100/1000!" 

Okay, here is another point made the book...

Women represent a great productive force in China, and equality among the sexes is one of the goals of communism. The multiple burdens which women must shoulder are to be eased.

I will argue here, in the USSR women were liberated long before women in the US were liberated and we made fun of these women doing men's work, but the women's liberation movement could not be stopped, and I think, today, most everyone would agree with Mao's Red book on this issue.  

When the USSR liberated women, at first the increase in the work force caused the economy to increase.  Then abortion and divorce rates climbed, and increasingly women and children fell below the level of poverty.  In our own experience with women's liberation, we can add increasingly, women and children are involved with violence and crime, both as victims and perpetrators.   Our prison system is over crowded and very expensive, and we have lost the advantage of all the free labor women provided, while the increase of the work force reduced wages and doubled the cost of living.  I am not sure how cost effective it was to "liberate women".    Maybe if the banking system didn't fall, we would doing great? 

I think it is great that the government provides so much for the working poor, who could not possibly manage on their low incomes without government help.  The food stamps that supplement low wages mean malnutrition is not a major problem in the wealthy states.  However, the medical insurance and housing assistance is way inadequate for the need, and some seem to want to cut these domestic expenses completely, even though liberating women lowered wages and doubled the cost of living.

There is almost a complete failure to compensate for the loss of the mother in the home, with adequate child care. 

I don't know if the communist did any better.  I just know we are not doing well.   But it is great women get to compete with the men, and have equal opportunity to have wealth and power.   This barbarian equality does have advantages over the traditional values established over centuries of humanity working to protect women and children.  Some may call this change in values, materialistic, but we don't remember past values anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter that we eventually agreed, the communist were right about destroying traditional values and moving women into the work force.  We can just be glad that we had agreement instead of war.  

It is great we doubled the number of tax payers who can support our very expensive military forces.  Now if we can just stop all the domestic spending, on poor families and old people, things should be near perfect. 


Edited by Athena - 16-Apr-2011 at 19:53

I was being sarcastic. 

I am among the poor seniors and before I got old, I was a low income worker with children to support.  I know poverty is living from one crisis to the next, and is the result of a lack of opportunity.  Then it becomes mentally, physically and spiritually exhausting. 

I don't know of well off people, because they are not part of my reality.  What I do know is every economy in the world depends on low income workers, and I feel very strongly about these people having a decent standard of living.  At least freedom from hungry, and fear of homelessness and fear of dying or needlessly suffering because of lack of medical and dental care.   I do not think it is civilized to leave medically needy people, and children on the streets with none of the protections of our great society.  

Welfare was begun in England, because the standard of living for the working class was intolerably bad.  Industry argued they could not increase wages, and remain competitive for world markets.   So for industry to remain profitable, and competitive, government agreed to subsidize industry, by giving some assistance to the poor.   Now US workers must compete with workers in third world countries and workers in countries where socialism meets human needs and keeps wages low.   The US is supposed to be the richest nation and it wants to do the least for its low wage earners, who were the backbone of the economy, until their jobs were sent overseas.   Is this just?   Is it humane to ignore the needs of these people, while industry moves overseas, and the distribution of property, and banking policy, assures these people will be exploited by industry and landlords and bankers or pay day loan companies?   How could we not see giving a 19 year old, credit to cover living expenses while in college, is setting this young person up to be exploited by the system?   The housing crisis was terrible, but what is going to happen as these young people from poor families leave college with loans to repay and the recession prevents them from finding jobs?   Now there isn't even property to cover the loan, and the interest on these loans increases, and then bad credit becomes an employment problem, and a renting problem, and increases what they have to pay for car insurance.  Come on, socialism is worse? why?  

Around the world there are countries struggling to do better for their people, and our bankers are demanding these countries sell the food these people need, so they can pay on their debts.   We move in and privatize everything including water.  We strip the land of resources and leave behind pollution and sickness.  What are the rights of the people?   It is not a right to food or water, or shelter even though life depends on these.   And if the rest of the world is not willing to the play our money game our way, our military steps in to protect our economic interest.   This is what made Mao a popular leader.  I think terrible things were done by the communist, but terrible things are being done by capitalist as well.   When money is what drives what happens, the human cost can be high.  

Who did order about it,Queen or her secret planers!They had invented Shakespeare also before "fences" start in England,also colonization of new world.Aliens!