Wengewang's Cultural Revolution archive

Wengewang.org is one of the few Chinese language radical Maoist websites on the web. However the majority of the historical articles are in English. One of the best collections other than MIA and M2M. Rare Peking Review, Indian and Chinese theoretical articles.

http://www.wengewang.org/thread.php?fid=61
http://www.wengewang.org/thread.php?fid=62

Also a PDF english language books from the Mao era
http://wg1976.com/bbs/ziliao/

Some textbooks from the old MIM archive

http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archiv ... eundermao/

Life under Mao 1949 to 1976

Here we provide concrete information on life under the rule of Mao Zedong 1949 to 1976.See also our page of "we told you so" quotes.

China Generally

* This booklet gives some answers about life in China under Mao. Some Basic Facts About China: Ten Questions and Answers (1974, .html version) ** PDF version, 22 megabytes
* New China's First Quarter-Century (1975) (350k)

The Disabled

* Exploring the Secrets of Treating Deaf-Mutes

The Economy

* Cheng Shih, "A Glance at China's Economy," (1974)

The Environment

* Peking Review on forestry, 1961
* Chinese communists fought pollution as soon as they came to power in 1949
* People's Daily links afforestation to agricultural success, 1963

Nations, Nationalism, and National Liberation

* Tibetan womyn slave becomes a ruler in China (Long, 1 MB)
* Tibetan womyn serf grateful to Mao (Long, 400KB)

Surplus-value

* "Only When One Understands Exploitation Can One Understand Revolution," China Reconstructs, January, 1969 (Long, 1.3 MB)

Wimmin

* "New Women in New China" (1972)

Large collection of photos and posters http://www.wengewang.org/thread.php?fid=9

A truly incredible collection that really gives you the feel of daily life and the mood of the GPCR

Don't worry about language, almost all the links are picture gallerys

I'm enjoying the links; I'll try to read them all.

Because of the censorship, the website can not be visited in P.R.China. I can't even see what's on it.
Now the Chinese government is more hostile to the left wing activities than those of the right. Actually most of the Maoist websites and even some of the Marxist ones had been banned. We live under more pressure than you guys......

That's terrible, dude. What websites can you reach?

I've been getting the impression that Maoist sites are intended to be blocked much more than Marxist ones and what CCCP dreamer said seems to back this up. Roy would probably know more about this.

The MIA was going to take down their Chinese section to stop the hacking from PRC

CCCP dreamer wrote:

Because of the censorship, the website can not be visited in P.R.China. I can't even see what's on it.
Now the Chinese government is more hostile to the left wing activities than those of the right. Actually most of the Maoist websites and even some of the Marxist ones had been banned. We live under more pressure than you guys......

Do they teach Marxist theory at all in the PRC education system?

Quote:

I've been getting the impression that Maoist sites are intended to be blocked much more than Marxist ones and what CCCP dreamer said seems to back this up. Roy would probably know more about this.

I get the impression that the CCP nowadays simply views Mao's positive contributions as (pretty much) re-unifying China and getting the CCP into power while pissing on the imperialists at the same time. While they officially say they consider Mao Zedong Thought as one of their guiding ideologies in practice this really isn't the case. Can't say I blame them though.

Quote:

The MIA was going to take down their Chinese section to stop the hacking from PRC

Do you have more info (and a source)?

Wengewang has recently added a plethora of ebooks to their archive. If you have any suggestions on important books on the GPCR to scan next please suggest it to them.

http://www.wengewang.org/read.php?tid=1 ... =2&fpage=1
http://www.wengewang.org/read.php?tid=19586

On MIA attacks from PRC http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/05/techn ... ref=slogin

Thanks for the article, but please keep in mind:

Quote:

“We are not 100 percent sure this is the Chinese government; there are a lot of possibilities,” said Brian Basgen, who has worked on the archive since 1990. But he noted that the archive has been temporarily banned by the Chinese government before, about two years ago. “There is a motive,” he said. “They have done it to us in the past. What they are doing is targeting just the Chinese files.”

Since January there have been hundreds of “denial of service attacks,” Mr. Basgen said, 99 percent of which emanate from China. The attacks involve a computer trying to download the same document over and over again, until it prevents others from accessing the archive. He said the site has managed to stay ahead of the attackers by creating “mirror sites” around the world, but the attacks have prevented the archive from updating its collection since they began.

Of course, since the Chinese have banned the archive before, it raises the question of why it would use computer attacks. Also, security experts say that Chinese machines can be exploited by people outside the country, making the attacks appear to come from China, because they often lack sophisticated protections.

oh yuck:

Quote:

While some might find it odd that the government created by Mao’s Communist Revolution would be behind an effort to deny access to the texts so important to its founding, Mr. Basgen said he did not. “It is ironic for people who don’t know what is going on in China,” he said. “The Chinese so-called Communist government has nothing to do with Communism. It has been going toward capitalism for a long time.”

And, to be strictly accurate, the Marxist archive does not even consider Mao a true Marxist. He is considered a “reference writer,” along with Adam Smith, Josef Stalin, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, among others. Mao failed a key question, Mr. Basgen said: “Did he serve to liberate working people?” NOAM COHEN

This is why I don't like Trotskyism.

He's not considered a "reference writer".

http://www.marxists.org/archive/#maoism

I would say the most interesting parts of the archive which I most recommend are

1. the pictures of daily life,
2.Schram's Mao's Road to power which is a massive archive of every scrap of paper Mao wrote from 1911-1949, including excuses for lost library books, and
3. the Fundamentals of Political Economy textbooks which gives a Maoist perspective on capitalism, imperialism, social imperialism, and socialism as well as a short history of the world.

Of course pretty much everything on the archive is worth looking into it is quite a treasure trove.

Quote:

This is why I don't like Trotskyism.

Yup.

Chinese attempt to combine Communism and Daoism For the Chinese version of Communist Daoism, inlucding Communist Sociology, Communist Economics, Communist Politics
http://sssenglish.com/showart.asp?id=132

Wengewang has been blocked for some time. If you try to talk comunism, or revalution, your messages will get deleted from Chinese forums. Believe me, I have tried, and many of my messages get deleted, particularly when I praise comunism. China doesn't teach Marxism, they teach capitalism, and worshipping the west. They don't even call themselves a comunist country. If you pay attention, they call themselves socialist, and haven't talked about revalution, or comunism in 40 years. But what they practice isn't really socialism, because many things are privatized, even things that are public in the most radical capitalist countries (ie Switzerland). What they do teach is nationalism, and that's what they use now to keep the country together, but that really isn't enough. China is definitely more hostile to the left than the right, and it's been that way for 40yrs now. You regularly see the right wingers spew pro imperialist garbage on Chinese sites, but the minute you post some comunist stuff, they delete it. You can actually see China's attitude toward north Korea is hostile, while China continuously brown noses the south Korean regime, but that should come as no surprise given China's closeness towards the far right Singapore regime as early as 78.

Yes to be honest, I've tried to formulate a Marxist-Leninist defense of the Chinese socialist market economy, for over 10 years on this forum, and I have to admit that I have grown some what disillusioned with it. Probably the most generous thing you could say from a Communist point of view is that China has regressed back to Sun Yatsenism and is at most progressive nationalist. Perhaps if there is a new revolutionary world tide, the existence of an ostensibly Marxist Communist Party, with the theoretical legacy of Mao Zedong, could be a geopolitical ally, such as it was in Venezuela. But I don't think the current government of China will be taking the lead in this sphere. At best we can hope it would be an ally not an enemy in a new revolutionary situation. And I would also hope that socialist or not, China will take the lead in forging a world united front against the extreme dangers of Trumpism.

There are theoretical justifications within Marxism-Leninism for a market economy existing within socialism. And state owned enterprises still play a larger role in the PRC economy than most people realize. But I don't think the "Socialism in One Country" model will work for China. Xi Jinping's China is not Stalin's USSR, and its dependence on global capitalism means it will never reach developed socialism without major changes to the international correlation of forces.

Its interesting that if you read the articles from CASS The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences on Marxism, they pay lip service to orthodox Marxism-Leninism almost to the same degree as the 1970s USSR.