Reddit reviews Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village
We found 7 Reddit comments about Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
fanshen or red star over china
As far as China goes, Fanshen, The Unknown Cultural Revolution, and The Battle for China's Past are probably a great place to start.
> Are there books on why
what a surprise /s. there are
The Battle for china's past by Mobo Gao
Was Mao Really A Monster by Gregor Benton
The rise of the Chinese people's communes by Anna Louise Strong
The Chinese road to socialism: Economics of the cultural revolution by E. L Wheelwright
Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village by William Hinton
Turning Point in China: An Essay on the Cultural Revolution by William Hinton
Read Fanshen.
http://www.amazon.com/Fanshen-Documentary-Revolution-Chinese-Village/dp/1583671757
it's the ultimate documentive account of what life was like in the Maoist communes.
Thinking back to when I was in a situation similar to yours, I moved onto looking at history. Various slanders, allegations and statistics were thrown at me whenever I mentioned communism or Marxism to a teacher or some such and I felt that it'd be best to be able to combat these claims, but also get an idea of the context surrounding the ones that were actually true.
I recommend Ten Days That Shook The World by John Reed, Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938 by J. Arch Getty as well as Another View of Stalin by Ludo Martens. I also keep hearing good things about Class Struggles in the USSR by Charles
Bettelheim and Socialism Betrayed by... I forget who.
Once I began to move over towards MLM (which is pretty recently) I began to read up on articles about Socialist China. I recommend this and this regarding the Great Leap Forward. For the Cultural Revolution, which I have read far more on, Battle For China's Past by Mobo Gao is extraordinary, as are The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village by Dongping Han, Fanshen by William Hinton and the 'Voices' done by Bai Di and Wang Zheng. For a more strictly Maoist based analysis of the Cultural Revolution Evaluating the Cultural Revolution in China
and its Legacy for the Future by the MLM study group is also a good read. Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic by Maurice Meisner is gives a very good, more overall account of Socialist China.
However, you should remember that not everything you read about history will be historical materialist, and that even accounts that give more a nuanced view of AES can still be very liberal and bourgeois at times, everything must be read critically.
Lol, I totally understand. Still, I think there's considerable value in his works, particularly from the 80s. When he's working to synthesize the experience of socialism and advance its theory, it's pretty good stuff. When he's trying to convince people he's the only hope for the world, not so much.
Some other sources I've found useful:
A World to Win magazine had a number of important articles which are well worth digging into.
Corrigan, Philip, Harvie Ramsay, and Derek Sayer. 1979. For Mao: Essays on Historical Materialism. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press.
Starr, John Bryan. 1979. Continuing the Revolution: The Political Thought of Mao. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
(These are from academics and focus more on the theoretical aspects. They're the best academic works I know of on Mao though and are very nice overviews.)
Another academic work which has an excellent chapter on Mao (though the bulk of it deals with other aspects) is Martin, Bill. 2008. Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. Open Court.
Badiou has a nice analysis of the GPCR in Badiou, Alain. 2008. The Communist Hypothesis. Verso.
(Some journalistic/historical accounts of Maoism in practice/development in China):
Belden, Jack. 1949. China Shakes the World. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Han Suyin. 1976. Wind in the Tower: Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Revolution, 1948-1975. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Hinton, William. 1966. Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. New York:
Vintage.
Horn, Joshua S. 1969. Away with All Pests: An English Surgeon in People’s China, 1954-1969. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Hunter, Iris. 1986. They Made Revolution Within the Revolution: The Story of China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Chicago: RCP Publications.
Milton, David and Nancy Dall Milton. 1971. The Wind Will Not Subside. New York: Pantheon.
Myrdal, Jan. 1965. Report from a Chinese Village. New York: Signet.
Finally, Li Onesto has good book on the Nepalese revolution which unfortunately was betrayed by the leadership.
I suggest reading Fanshen by William Hinton
https://www.amazon.com/Fanshen-Documentary-Revolution-Chinese-Village/dp/1583671757
It describes Mao's China as experienced by a small village called Long Bow. It really gave me a good understanding of the great potential of socialism, what went wrong, and why the failure wasn't inevitable.