Content area
Full Text
By Lee Feigon. Chicago (Illinois): Ivan R. Dee, Publisher. 2002. 229 pp. US$24.95, cloth. ISBN 1-56663-458-X.
Lee Feigon promises a 'reinterpretation' of Mao, but actually revives an interpretation that was common in the 1970s. At that time, some of those who wished to defend socialism thought that their most important problem was to criticize Stalin and promoted Mao as an alternate socialism. Feigon claims that this analysis reverses the popular understanding that Mao was good before liberation but went wrong with the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. In Feigon's estimation, Mao was a Stalinist before liberation, but became a 'socialist hero' in the late 1950s.
Feigon finds the earlier Mao like Stalin in various ways, but qualifies his criticism. Feigon accepts that Mao, like Stalin, was capable of ruthless political tactics, but considers this more or less acceptable. He recognizes that Mao's famous statement declaring that 'Revolution is not a dinner party' endorses terror, but states that in the context of fighting a war, "killing reactionaries was not particularly extreme" (p. 41). Others may find war an insufficient justification for targeting civilians.
Feigon finds that in contrast to...