I found this in English translation in Turpan. The kid who sold it to me wanted 200 yuan for it! I bargained him down to 20. Now I find out that it's available online for free, but this book has the original Chinese on one page and the English translation on the next page, which is an advantage to having it in hardcopy. I'm about halfway through the book now.

I do not find Mao's writing style particularly compelling. Only two quotes stand out to me as memorably, concisely stated. First the famous one: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." And second, one I had not heard before, "Everything reactionary is the same; if you don't hit it, it won't fall . . . where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish of itself."

Some things I've learned while reading the book.

1. For Mao, the main purpose of the Communist party is to provide leadership. The Party leads the people, not the other way around. "The Chinese communist party is the core of leadership of the whole Chinese people. Without this core, the cause of socialism cannot be victorious." "A revolutionary party is the guide of the masses, and no revolution ever succeeds when the revolutionary party leads them astray."

2. Mao considered the petty bourgeoisie allies, not enemies, of the Chinese revolution, though they were allies not to be trusted too far.

3. Mao's thoughts on war are very interesting. He viewed war as a means of removing obstacles to the people's political goals. "When politics develops to a certain stage beyond which it cannot proceed by the usual means, war breaks out to sweep the obstacles from the way." Like Western philosophers, Mao believed wars can be just or unjust. A war is just or unjust depending on whether it advances progressive or imperialist interests, not on who started it or who has the better case under international law. "All wars that are progressive are just, and all wars that impede progress are unjust," so World War I was unjust because "both sides fought for imperialist interests." His comments on operational tactics in Chapter 8 are too long to list here or to do justice, but are well worth reading.

4. In his chapter 6, "Imperialism and All Reactionaries are Paper Tigers," Mao definitely appears to consider America the principal enemy of China and the world revolutionary movement. America, like other imperialist enemies, was both a paper tiger and a real tiger; i.e. dangerous in the short term, but doomed in the long run. Five of the chapter's quotations list the U.S. by name as an enemy; none list Soviet Russia. A representative sample: "It is the task of the people of the whole world to put an end to the aggression and oppression perpetrated by imperialism, and chiefly by U.S. imperialism."

5. Mao's chapter 4, on the correct handling of contradictions among the people, is one of the most mystifying. It appears to be an effort to prescribe a solution to contradictions between members of the working class, a solution which appears to boil down to doing whatever the Party says ("how should right be distinguished from wrong in one's words and actions? . . . They should help to strengthen, and not discard or weaken, the leadership of the Communist Party"). The mystifying thing is that the chapter never defines the problem that it is purporting to solve: what are the contradictions among the working class? What are they at odds with each other about? Without understanding that, it's hard to see if Mao's recommendations will help.

6. I have not previously understood what the Chinese government meant by Soviet "revisionism." According to Mao, "The revisionists deny the differences between socialism and capitalism, between the dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie."

7. Mao believed that class stands above everything, including thought itself. "[E]very kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class." Thus there is no uniting thought that members of different classes can agree on. If I criticize the thoughts of a member of a different class, he need not refute me; he need merely point out that, because I am from a different class from himself, his own thoughts are inherently different from my own. Thus you can refuse assent to a thought based not on its content, but on its origin; if a bourgeois person says it, it is bourgeois thought, and no proletarian need (or even can) think the same way.

8. Mao describes China's new system as "the people's democratic dictatorship" (a phrase that in English translation seems almost tailor-made for propagandists to parody). What he meant by this facially self-contradictory phrase was that "The people's democratic dictatorship uses two methods. Towards the enemy it uses the method of dictatorship, that is, for as long a period of time as is necessary it does not let them take part in political activities and compels them to obey the law of the People's Government and to engage in labour and, through labour, transform themselves into new men. Towards the people, on the contrary, it uses the method not of compulsion but of democracy, that is, it must necessarily let them take part in political activities and does not compel them to do this or that, but uses the method of democracy in educating or persuading them."

9. Mao had a considerably naive view of American racism. "Among the whites in the United States it is only the reactionary ruling circles who oppress the black people. They can in no way represent the workers, farmers, revolutionary intellectuals and other enlightened persons who comprise the overwhelming majority of the white people." In fact, as Rafe Ezekiel shows in The Racist Mind, the most hard-core racists in America, the ones who swell the ranks of Aryan Nation, the American Nazi Party, and the Ku Klux Klan, are almost invariably poor, ill-educated, and powerless. That is not to say that all America's ruling politicians are free of racism - far from it! - but no one who spends a year in America will imagine that only the ruling circles oppress blacks.

10. There are many interesting ambiguities in Mao's thought. This may be the inevitable result of his constructing a book from his own quotations, removed from their context.

For example, in February 1957, he said "[T]he question of which will win out, socialism or capitalism, is still not really settled." This is heresy from a Marxist standpoint, which holds that the eventual triumph of socialism over capitalism is not only a settled question, but has been predetermined from the very beginning of history. And this orthodox Marxist line is what Mao himself said in November of that same year: "The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law independent of man's will."

Mao made the apparently sensible statement that "Qualitatively different contradictions can only be resolved by qualitatively different methods. . . . the contradiction between the colonies and imperialism is resolved by the method of national revolutionary war; the contradiction between the working class and the peasant class in socialist society is resolved by the method of collectivization and mechanization in agriculture." However, in the same year (1937) he also said that "Some people ridicule us as advocates of 'the omnipotence of war.' Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist." So here he describes revolutionary war not as a specific method for a specific problem, but as having "omnipotence," the ability to solve any problem.

As previously mentioned, Mao believed a war was a just war if it advanced progressive interests, and added that "Not only do we Communists not oppose just wars, we actively participate in them." In Mao's judgment, the result of a third world war would be to advance progressive interests. "If the imperialists insist on launching a third world war, it is certain that several hundred million more will turn to socialism, and then there will not be much room left on earth for the imperialists; it is also likely that the whole structure of imperialism will utterly collapse." Therefore it would be a just war, in which Communists should actively participate. Still, Mao said that China's policy toward a third world war should be "first, we are against it, second, we are not afraid of it."

The Quotations are always very useful when writing historical pieces about Mao, as you can very quickly find a a quote to support an idea or belief or conviction of Mao. I only have two English copies released in 1966, but these are quite hard to come by in the UK unless you try buying online. I came upon both of mine entirely by chance.