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Maoism: A Global History. By Julia Lovell. London: Bodley Head, 2019. 606 pp. ISBN: 9781847922502 (paper).
Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovell is a timely work given the current resurgence of Maoism in China today and the revival of socialism in the West.1 As the title suggests, Lovell explores the global history of Maoism. Her narrative moves chronologically over the last eighty years, following Maoism through its political (e.g., anti-colonial struggles), diplomatic (e.g., Mao's China hosting rebels in the 1960s and 1970s), and cultural (e.g., Maoist-inspired anti-establishment activism) history.
Although Maoism, as Lovell understands it, is “an umbrella word for the wide range of theory and practice attributed to Mao and his influence over the past eighty years …” (p. 9), Lovell still offers a recapitulation of Maoism in a chapter titled “What is Maoism?” This definition includes the emphasis on violence and armed struggle, the prominence given to peasants and countryside, Mao's rhetorical feminism, the mass mobilization of rectification, personality-cult building, the detestation of imperialism and feudalism, and rebellions against the existing social and political order. However, Lovell's analysis does not present clearly to what degree these tenets departed from Leninism, Stalinism, or Third Worldism.
Chapter 2 looks at the birth of Edgar Snow's Red Star over China in Yan'an during the 1930s. The global influence of Snow's portrayal of Maoism echoes throughout the remainder of the book. More specifically, we see Maoism in the Americans’ alarm concerning Chinese communism in the early Cold War; the Sino-Soviet split; the PRC's quest for world revolution in the 1960s; the mass killings in Indonesia; anti-colonial, anti-Western rebellions in Africa...