The Revolution in China

Avakian, Bob. Phony Communism Is Dead...Long Live Real Communism. Chicago: RCP Publications, 2004.

Avakian, Bob. The Loss in China and the Revolutionary Legacy of Mao Tsetung. Chicago: RCP Publications, 1978.

Chen, Jack. Inside the Cultural Revolution. London: Sheldon Press, 1976.

Chen, Jack. A Year in Upper Felicity: Life in a Chinese Village During the Cultural Revolution. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1973.

Clark, Paul. The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Daubier, Jean. A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. New York: Random House, 1974.

Endicott, Stephen. Red Earth: Revolution in a Sichuan Village. New York: New Amsterdam, 1991.

Gamberg, Ruth. Education in the People’s Republic of China. New York: Schocken Books, 1977.

Gao, Mobo C.F. The Battle for China’s Past: Mao & The Cultural Revolution. London: Pluto Press, 2008.

Gao, Mobo C.F. Gao Village: Rural Life in Modern China. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2007.

Han, Donping. The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008.

Hinton, William. Through a Glass Darkly: American Views of the Chinese Revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006.

Hinton, William. Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

Hinton, William. Hundred Day War: The Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972.

Horn, Joshua S. Away with All Pests: An English Surgeon in People’s China, 1954-1969. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971.

Li, Minqi. The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World Economy. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008.

Lotta, Raymond, ed., And Mao Makes 5. Chicago: Banner Press, 1978. 

Macciocchi, Maria Antonietta. Daily Life in Revolutionary China. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972.

Myrdal, Jan. Report from a Chinese Village. New York: Signet, 1966.

Sidel, Victor W. and Ruth. Serve the People: Observations on Medicine in the People’s Republic of China. Boston: Beacon Press, 1973.

Snow, Edgar. The Long Revolution. New York: Random House, 1972.

Snow, Edgar. Red Star over China. New York: Grove Press, 1961.

Suyin, Han. Wind in the Tower: Mao Tsetung and the Chinese Revolution 1949-1975. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976.

Witke, Roxanne. Comrade Chiang Ching. Boston: Little Brown, 1977.

Xueping, Zhong, Zheng, Wang, and Bai, Di, eds. Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001.

Socialism and the Political Economy of Socialism

Avakian, Bob. THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation. Chicago: Insight Press, 2016.
This book consists of the major opening day presentation given by Bob Avakian to a conference held in the summer of 2015 which was attended by members and supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Available at revcom.us.

Avakian, Bob. Mao Tsetung’s Immortal Contributions. Chicago: RCP Publications, 1979.
A lucid synthesis of Mao’s contributions to various fields of Marxism, including the political economy of socialism, that is also a stimulating survey of the development of Marxist theory. The work provides ground as well for understanding key historical and developmental issues of the Chinese revolution.

Chun-chiao, Chang. “On Exercising All-Round Dictatorship Over the Bourgeoisie,” in Lotta, Raymond, ed., And Mao Makes Five. Chicago: Banner Press, 1978; also in Peking Review (14), 4 April 1975.
Chang was a key leader of the Cultural Revolution and part of the radical leadership core on whom Mao relied during his last great battle. This essay was written in 1975, as the struggle within the Chinese Communist Party over whether China would remain on the socialist road was coming to a fateful head. It is a highly important analysis of the relations of production under socialism, the contradictions within its ownership system, and the material and ideological conditions giving rise to new privileged and exploiting forces.

Marx, Karl. Critique of the Gotha Programme. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1972.
Marx did not set down a systematic account of how a socialist economy would function. But in this brief work, written towards the end of his life, he does offer more extensive comments on the conditions of emergence and the economic and social organization of socialist and communist society.

Lenin, V.I. The State and Revolution. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1973.
Taking Marx’s ideas further, and defending them against revisionist assault, Lenin discusses the nature of the proletarian state and the economic and political factors involved in the transition from socialism to communism.

Lotta, Raymond, ed. Maoist Economics and the Revolutionary Road to Communism: The Shanghai Textbook. New York: Banner Press, 1994.
Originally published in China during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, this is an English-language edition of a textbook explaining the goals, principles, and operational features of China’s economy during the time it was socialist (1949-1976). The book was suppressed by the post-Mao leadership. With an Introduction and Afterword by Raymond Lotta on Mao’s breakthroughs in understanding of the nature of the socialist period of transition and the theory and practice of Maoist planning.

Mao, Tsetung. A Critique of Soviet Economics. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977.
Pathbreaking writings dating from the late 1950s and early 1960s, Mao critically examines the Soviet model of socialist construction and its associated principles of socialist political economy. Set against the canvas of the Great Leap Forward, Mao probes the process of continuing revolution and the nature of the transition from socialism to communism—and in so doing stakes out new conceptual territory for Marxism.

Stalin, Joseph. Economic Problems of Socialism in the U.S.S.R. Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1972.
In this essay, written in 1952, Stalin attempts to identify and address key problems arising from the remnants of capitalism still surviving under socialism. The discussion ranges over such issues as the law of value, commodity production, and their effects on the regulation of socialist production, and the continuing contradiction between the forces and relations of production. A serious work of socialist political economy, although also seriously flawed.