Learn From Chairman Mao!

 So, I'm reading Ross Terrill's biography of Mao, and the many chapters describing his career up to becoming the unquestioned leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Yan'an made me think about my own trials and tribulations. To whit; ... that in retrospect it is obvious that any revolution in the foreseeable future in early-20th century China would require the peasantry, because they made up about 90% of the population. But only Mao seemed to recognize this. The rest of the CCP was fixated on interpreting Marxist dogma, and that, through the blinkered lens of the Soviet Union, which was grandly ignorant of Chinese realities.

For years Mao was criticized, condemned, stripped of offices and even threatened, for departing from the official line. It wasn't until his superiors and rivals were severely weakened or even destroyed by their misplaced ideological loyalties, that they were forced to admit that he'd been right and this gave him the moral and intellectual clout to become the supreme leader of what was left of the CCP in Yan'an.

Now, because there are those among my [few] readers who misinterpret me (either honestly or otherwise), let me say that the title of this blog-post is meant to be tongue-in-cheek. It's a parody of the exuberant tone of so many Cultural Revolution slogans. I do not aspire to be a Mao (or a Pol-Pot as was said about me by one frenzied commentator at "Montreal Simon"), nor am I a fan of totalitarianism. (I'm also not one to dismiss the many important achievements of the CCP in light of the horrible state China was in at the beginning of the 20th Century.)

But I do want to say that it seems to me painfully, terrifyingly obvious that we are not going to petition or peacefully demonstrate and march away the violent, sickeningly evil oligarchy that presently controls the world. "Please murderous elite: We 'DEMAND' that you stop ruling over us. Or else we'll peacefully march in city centers for a day!"

It's ridiculous on the face of it. Accommodating this evil system (a-la "social democracy") is a dead-end. So is putting on a mask and throwing a rock through a window. So is the whole incoherent program of deluded anarchists such as that "slumberjack" imbecile from the departed EnMasse.ca discussion board.

We must fit a revolutionary program to the population we're given, not some abstract concepts in our heads. We must plan to take power away from elites and disperse it amongst as many human beings as possible. We must do more than endlessly critique and analyze the present. We must propose a future and a path towards it.