Mao Tse-Tung never read Capital?

[CesareBorgia]

I was just at the library and I read that Mao admitted to Molotov that he had never read Capital. This was during his 2 month visit to the USSR and Molotov was given the task of quizzing Mao about his Marxism.

I also read that in an interview in the late 60's Fidel Castro said he had only read 324 pages of Capital before 1961. But this is less surprising.

How do you explain this? I always thought Mao was a voracious reader.

Also, I read Nelson Mandela's memoirs and he says he was inspired by the manifesto but when he opened Capital he just couldn't understand anything and gave up. Although he never claimed to be a communist, I just find it amusing.

[Broletariat]

I'm not certain if Capital was in a language Mao would be very familiar with at the time. I could be wrong of course, this is my speculation.

Though it comes as no surprise that Mao had not read Capital.

[Return to the Source]

How many people have actually read Capital? I'd go to Vegas with the estimation that more than 90% of the people professing to be socialists or communists have never read Capital.

[Broletariat]

How many people have actually read Capital?

Not enough obviously ;)

But seriously, we'd probably be better off if more commies read it.

[Commissar Rykov]

I highly doubt Capital was translated to any language Mao would have felt comfortable reading. So what is the point of this thread?

[Broletariat]

So what is the point of this thread?

To learn, or do you have an issue with that because the question or topic offends you in some way?

[Commissar Rykov]

To learn, or do you have an issue with that because the question or topic offends you in some way?

What is there to learn? That China wouldn't have access to certain texts? I didn't know that was something people were unaware of. I fail to see how the topic would offend me I just find it silly.

[Savage]

This isn't just as if Mao were some random peasant who couldn't get a hold of any literature, Mao is meant to be the most intellectually developed Marxist after Marx, Engels and Lenin, simply saying 'oh he couldn't get his hands on it' isn't good enough when you proclaim him to have successfully advanced, improved and adapted Marxism, it's pretty hard to do that if you haven't read such a central text.

[Tommy4ever]

I'm not sure if Mao had even read the Manifesto before he became a revolutionary. Most of his ideas came independent from Marxism entirely. He was more someone who was inspired by Marxism and the achievements of the Bolsheviks than a Marxist himself.

[Broletariat]

What is there to learn? That China wouldn't have access to certain texts? I didn't know that was something people were unaware of. I fail to see how the topic would offend me I just find it silly.


The guy has 48 posts cut him some slack, is this how you're going to react to average workers when you're trying to recruit them? If so you're not going to get very far. "What's exchange-value?" "YOU DOLT THAT'S SUCH A DUMB QUESTION ARHGARGARG *foam pours from mouth*"

The topic could offend you if you were a sensitive Maoist perhaps.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I just led a successful war against the Japanese and Chiang Kai-Shek! :cool:

:) But have you read Kapital?

Kapital? :confused:

:mellow:

:crying:

[Red Commissar]

I'm not sure if Mao had even read the Manifesto before he became a revolutionary. Most of his ideas came independent from Marxism entirely. He was more someone who was inspired by Marxism and the achievements of the Bolsheviks than a Marxist himself.

According to his account to Edgar Snow in Red Star Rising, these were the books that made him a Marxist:

http://kasamaproject.org/2011/05/08/from-patriarchy-to-peoples-war-maos-rebellious-childhood/



“In the winter of 1920 I organized workers politically for the first time, and began to be guided in this by the influence of Marxist theory and the history of the Russian Revolution. During my second visit to Peking I had read much about the events in Russia, and had eagerly sought out what little Communist literature was then available in Chinese. Three books especially deeply carved my mind, and built up in me a faith in Marxism, from which, once I had accepted it as the correct interpretation of history, I did not afterwards waver. These books were the Communist Manifesto, translated by Ch’en Wang-tao and the first Marxist book ever published in Chinese; Class Struggle, by Kautsky; and a History of Socialism, by Kirkup. By the summer of 1920 I had become, in theory and to some extent in action, a Marxist, and from this time on I considered myself a Marxist.

He goes on to further explain his time at the "Society for the Study of Marxist Theory" led by Li Dazhao (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Dazhao), who would go on to be one of the founding members of the Chiense Communist Party. Mao says to Snow that his participation in the Society and contact with its members moved him firmly within the orbit of Marxism.

I'd imagine in the course of this development he had exposure to Capital or at least discussions over its major ideas. He doesn't indicate reading it by himself though.

[caramelpence]

In fairness to Mao, prior to and during the May 4th Movement, when most Chinese intellectuals came into contact with Marxist ideas for the first time, the availability of primary texts was highly limited. The texts that were available were basically Wage Labor and Capital and parts of the Communist Manifesto along with brief translations of passages from Poverty of Philosophy and the preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, these latter two texts being included in secondary discussions. The most systematic work of European Marxism that was available was Kautsky's Okonomische Lehren, which is an elucidation of Capital volume one, and a deficient one at that. The translator of these texts was Kawakami Hajime, and other than these primary texts and new translations that became available with time there were a number of secondary accounts by Chinese and foreign authors which tended to be circulated and re-circulated - Kawakami Hajime's 'Marx's Materialist Conception of History' was the major source of Marxist theory and, until the appearance of Liebknecht's biography of Marx in January 1920, Yuan Quan's brief biography represented the extent of Chinese knowledge concerning Marx the man. I don't know how or whether the availability of Marx texts and Marxist theory changed within China during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, but there were sizable numbers of Chinese students who received political training in the USSR and who later returned to China, and it seems reasonable to assume that they might have brought textual resources with them or otherwise circulated new ideas.

At the end of the day, there are better reasons to critique Mao than the possibility or likelihood that he might not have read Capital. In any case, his chief merits did not lie in the area of political economy or philosophy but in social science (his empirical studies of rural society) and political and military strategy.

[Tablo]

I haven't read all of Capital. I don't think it is really that necessary unless you are into some high level debate or scholarly discussion. I'm not an economist or anything. :P

I do plan to finish it in the future though.

[Savage]

I haven't read all of Capital. I don't think it is really that necessary unless you are into some high level debate or scholarly discussion. I'm not an economist or anything. :P

I do plan to finish it in the future though.

But you are are not upheld by thousands as someone who adapted and improved the theories of Marx and Lenin, something that I would expect would require a bit of background knowledge...

[Broletariat]

I just led a successful war against the Japanese and Chiang Kai-Shek! :cool:

:) But have you read Kapital?

Kapital? :confused:

:mellow:

:crying:

One of these is far more relevant to proletariat interests than the other.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Lemme guess...reading Kapital?

[Commissar Rykov]

Lemme guess...reading Kapital?

Exactly, helping the Proletariat is worthless unless you are completely versed in Marxist Theory!:laugh:

[Broletariat]

Exactly, helping the Proletariat is worthless unless you are completely versed in Marxist Theory!:laugh:
You don't have to be completely versed in it. Just enough to know that our revolution is primarily social and less of a violent one. What this basically means is that war with other nations isn't really revolutionary, class war however is.

[Zanthorus]

Exactly, helping the Proletariat is worthless unless you are completely versed in Marxist Theory!

I don't think this suggestion is as humorous as you make it out to be, and I would also reject the similar suggestion by Tsukae that reading all of Capital is only necessary if you are into high level academic debates. Different understandings of how capitalism functions will lead to vastly different politics. Look at Kautsky's rejection of the idea of a fatal crisis of capitalist production and his educationalist politics and compare with Mattick's revival of Grossman's breakdown theory and his 'spontaneist' politics. How we interpret Marx's theories will fairly obviously lead us to, in some places, vastly differing political standpoints. Not only that, rejecting attempts to understand how the capitalist economy actually works can fairly easily lead to utopian socialist type politics (In fact in most cases it does).

[Broletariat]

I don't think this suggestion is as humorous as you make it out to be, and I would also reject the similar suggestion by Tsukae that reading all of Capital is only necessary if you are into high level academic debates. Different understandings of how capitalism functions will lead to vastly different politics. Look at Kautsky's rejection of the idea of a fatal crisis of capitalist production and his educationalist politics and compare with Mattick's revival of Grossman's breakdown theory and his 'spontaneist' politics. How we interpret Marx's theories will fairly obviously lead us to, in some places, vastly differing political standpoints. Not only that, rejecting attempts to understand how the capitalist economy actually works can fairly easily lead to utopian socialist type politics (In fact in most cases it does).


The first question that pops into my head is, is that at all a practical expectation to have? Who all needs to have this sort of knowledge? If it's the entire proletariat or the majority of them, it seems like it would be a little difficult to pull this off since the majority of the proletariat are working hard enough just to survive as it is.

But if it isn't the majority of the proletariat that needs to know it, it seems like we're leading up to an elitist vanguard type situation.

[Die Neue Zeit]

It would have been much better off if Marx outlined fully his six-part project - covering capital, land ownership, wage labour, the state, international trade, and the world market - before committing to Capital.

[red cat]

You don't have to be completely versed in it. Just enough to know that our revolution is primarily social and less of a violent one. What this basically means is that war with other nations isn't really revolutionary, class war however is.

You don't need to read Capital for that.

[Reznov]

Exactly, helping the Proletariat is worthless unless you are completely versed in Marxist Theory!:laugh:

I think what people are getting is, is that Mao was a revolutionary to most of us. Minding you, you would think such a Revolutionary figure like Mao would have read almost all of Marx's theories/books. Especially one like Kapital.

[Tablo]

I'm gonna go ahead and say I strongly dislike Mao and I am not surprised that someone with such awful class-collaborationist politics wouldn't have read Capital. It actually makes a lot of sense to me. Maybe if he had spent more time working on his understanding of Marxist theory the Chinese state wouldn't be such a reactionary mess. Who knows... Then again, he may have been a reactionary all along so him reading Capital may have done nothing to help.

[Savage]

reading capital is for capitalists

[SacRedMan]

I just finished "Marx in Brussel", a biography about the life of Marx during hes time in Brussel, Belgium. I've started now with a monography of Trotski, then I will read "Russia's revolutionyear" from Roy Bainton, after that "The defend of Moscow" and last but not least "The Capital".

[nuisance]

How do you explain this?
Because it's a boring lame-ass book.

[hatzel]

Because it's a boring lame-ass book.

Which book(s) would you recommend instead, then? :)

[SacRedMan]

Because it's a boring lame-ass book.

It's hard to read a book, isn't it ;)

[ZeroNowhere]

Because it's a boring lame-ass book.Poor Ian McKay has epigones, methinks.

[nuisance]

It's hard to read a book, isn't it ;)
No, not really. It is, however, hard to find a book interesting that is written in such a dry and dull manner. I am not suggesting that Capital is a waste of time, but rather that much shorter and more interesting intrepretations are floating about. There's a strange mentality among some Marxists that finishing Capital is kind of your right of passage. That's lame and pretty off putting for peeps who don't want to sit around and read some massive text before acting or being acknowledged as understanding capitalism.

I take it that you have conquered all three volumes?

[hatzel]

I am not suggesting that Capital is a waste of time, but rather that much shorter and more interesting intrepretations are floating about.

As you may have missed my post:


Which book(s) would you recommend instead, then? :)

[SacRedMan]

I take it that you have conquered all three volumes?

I have only Part 1: The Productionprocess of the Capital

[nuisance]

As you may have missed my post:
On works about Capital/Capitalism?]
http://www.prole.info/ is really good with their cartoon-esque style pamphlets.

http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Wolfi_Landstreicher__The_Network_of_Domination.htm l#toc7


However, the David Harvey lectures, you can watch them on youtube, are decent and very informative. Though each one of them is around 1:30-2 hours long and in 13 parts, it enables you to pick a certain section to look at if you really want to go through Marx's Capital.

and this-
http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpalthusser11.htm

[Savage]

No, not really. It is, however, hard to find a book interesting that is written in such a dry and dull manner. I am not suggesting that Capital is a waste of time, but rather that much shorter and more interesting intrepretations are floating about. There's a strange mentality among some Marxists that finishing Capital is kind of your right of passage. That's lame and pretty off putting for peeps who don't want to sit around and read some massive text before acting or being acknowledged as understanding capitalism.
This (http://marxmyths.org/humphrey-mcqueen/article.htm) article may be of interest to you (although if you've already made your mind up about Marx's writing style you may not particularly care). Could you recommend some of the shorter, more interesting interpretations? I think it would be hard to do justice to a theory regarding the modern social relation of production without writing extensively, indeed, there are people that believe he should have written a lot more on the subject of capital. Finishing Capital is one achievement, actually understanding it is another (and out of the vast minority that have done the former I suspect an even smaller minority apply to the later), I don't think it's necessary for all communists to have an advanced understanding of capital, but relating back to the original point of the thread, I find it odd that people would uphold some guy that knew shit all about capitalism as theoretically equal to (or more advanced than) Marx, Engels and Lenin.

[Lyev]

No, not really. It is, however, hard to find a book interesting that is written in such a dry and dull manner. I am not suggesting that Capital is a waste of time, but rather that much shorter and more interesting intrepretations are floating about. There's a strange mentality among some Marxists that finishing Capital is kind of your right of passage. That's lame and pretty off putting for peeps who don't want to sit around and read some massive text before acting or being acknowledged as understanding capitalism.

I take it that you have conquered all three volumes?

No, not really. It is, however, hard to find a book interesting that is written in such a dry and dull manner.I actually think it is highly readable book in places. David Harvey sings its praises in his per-chapter lectures (there are plenty more step-by-step guides, literature etc. on Capital, like Harvey's lectures). Obviously Marx was pretty well-read in classical literature, so it is rich with allusions to Shakespeare, Dante, Balzac and all sorts or whatever. The well-known bit on Robinson Crusoe (the "isolated individual" of bourgeois political economy, as I understand) comes to mind as well. The more historically-inclined parts (like on the working day etc.) are generally more readable. Here is an interesting article on reading 'the unreadable' Marx. http://marxmyths.org/humphrey-mcqueen/article.htm
I am not suggesting that Capital is a waste of time, but rather that much shorter and more interesting interpretations are floating about.The length of the text is irrelevant. Is there some arbitrary cut-off point after, say, 220 pages? And can you recommend any of the "more interesting interpretations"?
There's a strange mentality among some Marxists that finishing Capital is kind of your right of passage.It is not a "right of passage". It is pretty much Marx's magnum opus though, so is quite central to Marx's method and his thoughts about critique, commodities and bourgeois society. How can we call ourselves Marxists if we do not base our theory and praxis in Marx's central ideas?
That's lame and pretty off putting for peeps who don't want to sit around and read some massive text before acting or being acknowledged as understanding capitalism.I think I agree that the shift in mass consciousness as necessary for socialism not purely 'theoretical'; that it comes from handing a copy of Marx & Engels to each worker and then suddenly we have social revolution. I think events change people more than books a lot of the time: ideas on socialism and challenging capitalism come through class struggle and the real, daily conditions of social life. On other hand, I would say if we are to properly overthrow and supersede capitalism we need to understand its inner-workings as proficiently as possible. And Capital is not just a dry economic textbook , as is the contention of some bourgeois commentators, but is actually a revolutionary guide to action. I think to write it off as only "some massive text" is to downplay its importance.

////
Edit: Oh man, looks like I posted that way too slowly. Don't feel obliged to reply, I think most of those points have been covered.

[agnixie]

This isn't just as if Mao were some random peasant who couldn't get a hold of any literature, Mao is meant to be the most intellectually developed Marxist after Marx, Engels and Lenin, simply saying 'oh he couldn't get his hands on it' isn't good enough when you proclaim him to have successfully advanced, improved and adapted Marxism, it's pretty hard to do that if you haven't read such a central text.

This. The first complete Mandarin translation of Das Kapital was published by the CCP in 1938. He had 5 years before becoming Chairman of the CCP to give it a look, and 26 years after the end of the civil war.


I just led a successful war against the Japanese and Chiang Kai-Shek!
The imperialist powers also waged a successful war against the Japanese. It may have been relevant to the chinese proletariat, but it wasn't exactly the revolution.

[caramelpence]

I'm gonna go ahead and say I strongly dislike Mao and I am not surprised that someone with such awful class-collaborationist politics wouldn't have read Capital. It actually makes a lot of sense to me. Maybe if he had spent more time working on his understanding of Marxist theory the Chinese state wouldn't be such a reactionary mess. Who knows... Then again, he may have been a reactionary all along so him reading Capital may have done nothing to help.

This argument strikes me as a pretty idealist one - what you seem to be saying is that Mao not reading Capital was influenced by the fact that he held class-collaborationist ideas to begin with, and that if he had read Capital he might have been able to develop more revolutionary politics and transform the Chinese Revolution into a genuinely socialist revolution. This account totally ignores the question of why Mao was able to come to power in the first place and why the CPC came to power in the way that it did. Mao's rise within the party organization took place in a situation where the CPC had found itself forced into the countryside after the defeats of 1927 and the failure of the party to retain an urban presence and Mao was able to gain strength in those conditions primarily because he showed himself to be an effective military and political tactician who was attuned to life in the CHinese countryside. It was the party's sustained isolation from the urban working class that both facilitated Mao's leadership and allowed the pursuit of class-collaborationist policies.


This. The first complete Mandarin translation of Das Kapital was published by the CCP in 1938

Incidentally, what's your source for this? I'm not saying you're wrong, just interested in where you got it from.

[Chimurenga.]

Ohh emm gee, guiz!!

:laugh:

[hatzel]

Ohh emm gee, guiz!!

:laugh:

Oh, I don't know why you'd say that. These periodical threads about whether or not Mao was an intellectual or knowledgeable about anything are highly relevant to our whole movement...

On the other hand, the question of whether or not a committed Marxist should read Capital is definitely worth discussing, actually, even if we totally forget all the Mao stuff :)

[Zanthorus]

But if it isn't the majority of the proletariat that needs to know it, it seems like we're leading up to an elitist vanguard type situation.

That only a minority of people will ever understand the depths of Marxist theory only leads to an 'elitist vanguard type situation' if you believe that the revolution is posed as a problem of 'consciousness', that capitalism enters a crisis situation when 50%+1 of the working-class have acquired the 'correct', 'necessary' consciousness for a revolution to occur. By contrast, and I think it is incredibly important to note, Marx not once speaks of forming a propaganda sect to spread the true gospel of Das Kapital, his book deals with the movement against capitalism entirely in terms of the spontaneous revolt of the working-class against it's own conditions of life. The people who need to read Capital desperately are those socialists who believe they can fight capitalism by forming their own pet organisational projects and campaigning to spread the 'correct' consciousness to the working-class.


However, the David Harvey lectures, you can watch them on youtube, are decent and very informative.

Except, as Paul Mattick Jr noted (http://libcom.org/files/mattick.pdf), Harvey's interpretation of Marx on some of the core aspects of the critique of political economy is questionable at best. This shows up the inevitable flaw of relying on second hand interpretations - there are many different interpretations floating around and any particular piece on Marx's work. In order to even have a hope of getting one's head round debates on the meaning of Marx's work, you need to have a solid grounding by reading Marx in his own words to begin with.

[Chimurenga.]

Oh, I don't know why you'd say that. These periodical threads about whether or not Mao was an intellectual or knowledgeable about anything are highly relevant to our whole movement...

Whether or not he read a book does not take away from the fact that he was a revolutionary. And one of the greatest in that regard. Perfect? No, absolutely not.


On the other hand, the question of whether or not a committed Marxist should read Capital is definitely worth discussing, actually, even if we totally forget all the Mao stuff :)

I mean, he could have sat in a chair for weeks (months, even!) on end, reading the gamut of Marxist texts or, you know, he could have been out building the peasant base for revolution.

Call me crazy but I think he was right with going with the latter.


So I repeat: OH EM GEE, GUIZE!! HE DIDNT REED CAPITALZZZ!!

[L.A.P.]

Threads like these make me start to think this site is starting to become the radical left-wing equivalent to a tabloid internet site.

[hatzel]

...I'll just point out that my post up there *points* was vaguely tongue in cheek. There is literally nothing in the whole wide world I could care about less than what books Mao did or didn't read...I mean seriously...hence my whole thing about forgetting all the Mao stuff...

That said, there was somebody (I've forgotten who, and I'm too lazy to go back to the last page) who pointed out that a good theoretical basis is important for actually knowing what you're supposed to be doing...