On Contradiction

Mao Zedong was a brilliant general, an excellent politician, and a horribly bad economist. A great poet, and competent theorist, Mao's tragic flaw was an incapacity to recognize Marx's and Lenin's errors, and thus to blindly reproduce much but not all of their work. Of the leading Marxist writers Mao writes best. You can understand his ideas completely and clearly after at most three readings. He thinks at a level of abstraction which is beyond most western thinkers linear style. It doesn't mean he's brilliant, just that he may be misapprehended by Western thinkers. Mao never credits Sun Tzu or Lao Tze for their influences on his thinking. Even if Mao were "only" Sun Tzu and Lao Tze filtered through Marx and Lenin I think he would still show more be worth reading. I do think he succeeds in drawing together disparate ideas of many philosopher's with the screaming exception of a gent named Adam Smith. And this is his tragic flaw, a brilliant general, competent politico, and horribly bad economist. Worth reading, but without any economic foundation you might wind up badly led, as were millions of Chinese people for several decades. show less