by the Editorial Board
December 26th marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of the great revolutionary leader Chairman Mao Zedong. To commemorate this occasion The Worker has compiled the following list of texts written by the Chairman. We include brief commentary on why these texts are important for all class conscious workers and proletarian revolutionaries to study, grasp, and apply. We encourage collective study where possible, and invite our readers to send their thoughts, questions, and understandings of these articles to improve mutual study.
1. On Contradiction: This is in our view Chairman Mao’s most important contribution to Marxist philosophy—dialectal materialism—in which the Chairman establishes the law of contradiction as the sole fundamental law in the incessant transformation of all eternal matter. It was by studying how contradiction operates in a given phenomena that the Chairman developed his most revolutionary theories.
2 On Practice: Chairman Mao takes on the Marxist theory of knowledge; it is a powerful materialist understanding of the process of learning and understanding.
3. On New Democracy: Chairman Mao provides a great contribution to the world proletarian revolution by expressing how revolution is carried out in the semi-feudal semi-colonial countries and how the old-state works, how it has different systems of government which do not alter its class character.
4. Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership: in this text the Chairman expresses the method of communist leadership and the qualities expected of a communist militant and most importantly the role of the masses.
5. Combat Liberalism: Chairman Mao identifies the most common problems posed by liberalism manifesting in the Communist Party and its mass work; this text is applicable to all forms of organizing and is meant to foster the collective Marxist spirit, increase organizational unity, and forge better links with the masses.
6. Report on anInvestigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan: This is a masterclass example of a social investigation and analysis of classes in the class struggle, in which the Chairman identifies the revolutionary role of the peasantry and makes it clear that revolutionary violence is a good thing.
7. A New Storm Against Imperialism: In this short text, Chairman Mao expresses that racial discrimination in the US is a product of colonialism and imperialism, and that it is fundamentally a class question. He links the struggle of the Black masses in the US with the anti-imperialist struggles of the world. This short and powerful text holds just as true today.
8. On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party: In this classic, Chairman Mao examines the specific problems facing the Communist Party of China, and in the process identifies major political mistakes which must be corrected, giving the text a universal aspect. This text expresses the principles that the Party is a contradiction.
9. A Dialectical Approach to Inner Party Unity: Chairman Mao takes up the problem of unity and expresses the principles of two-line struggle as the force which develops on organization.
10. Twenty Manifestations of Bureaucracy: Chairman Mao gives examples of bad methods of work and backward traits which serve as things proletarian revolutionaries must be on the look out for, criticize, and struggle to overcome.
The Worker provides this list, which is too brief, not to appease idle curiosity, but to assist the class conscious worker in the development of revolutionary practice. The texts have been selected with consideration for the main problems facing the movement to unite under Maoism in the US. It is in support of the call issued by the International Communist League which states:
“As good students of the theoretical and practical work of Chairman Mao we must redouble our efforts to boldly spread his teachings, our Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology, all over the world. Our ideological counter-offensive must be unleashed with ever more force to defeat the ideological offensive of the imperialists, the revisionists and all their reactionary lackeys. The proletarian revolutionary truth of Maoism must burn away the decadent, parasitic and metaphysical imperialist ideology that infects the minds of the Peoples and sows pessimism, despair and class and national capitulation.”
