breakfast with Alan Winnington, but in reading Winnington's book, Breaktast With Mao, Memories of a Foreign Correspondent, I was reminded of the momentous influence of Maoism in making the greatest single breach in capitalısm since the Russian revolution of 1917. The revolution, led by Mao Zedong and the People' Liberation Army, ended a century of imperialist intervention into China that had begun with the Opium War of 1840, and liberated a quarter of the world's population from capitalism.
The Chinese Communist Party was formed at a time when the whole Third International was already in the grip of Stalinism. Unlike the Russian revolution which was born in isolation, the Chinese revolution became a member of the 'Socialist Camp', with the USSR as its ally. Whilst the Soviet Union had to contend with the invasion of 14 capitalist powers, the Chinese, with the benefit of Soviet military aid, did not. China could also look to the Soviet Union for lessons in socialising the means of production, whilst the Bolsheviks took this course with no other revolution to turn to.
In China, the civil war with the bourgeoisie was waged before the revolution, whilst in Russia, it was carried out post 1917. The Chinese masses could therefore blame the Kou Min Dang for their misery, and saw the revolution as the conclusion to hostilities. The Bolsheviks had to fight the civil war as a ruling party and bear the brunt of the people's horror at the destruction caused by the war.
Despite the difference in revolutionary development, and especially the Maoist strategy of 'country to town', Maoism was always, and remains, thoroughly Stalinist. This aspect of Maoism is, unfortunately, avoided in Alan Winnington's book
Breakfast with Mao is Winnington's autobiography, a life-long Communist
this idea to twentieth century Japan is correspondent tor ihe CP's Daily Worker in Bejing. He witnessed the closing stages of the Chinese revolution, entering Bejing with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) in 1949. He assisted Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlar and other leaders with press and information work, helping to set up the Yinhua News Agency. Gradually, however, he became openly critical of Mao's positions and disillusioned with the Chinese revolution.
Breakfast with Mao traces Winnington's early, working class life and rise through the ranks of the CP bureaucracy, lo become a full-time press officer for the Party, prior to World War Two When asked by Harry Pollitt, the then CP General Secretary to go to China as an advisor to the Chinese Communist Party's information services, he ecstatically agreed.
Smuggled into China via the Soviet Union on the trans-Siberian express, he describes on entering the country the state of the CP's forces after the defeat of Japan, and the precarious balance of power held by the nationalist Kou Min Dang troops and the People's Liberation Army led by the CPC.
He watched the CPC consolidate its power in the early 1950s. In Korea he exposed the British Government's support for UN action there - a mere cover-up for American atrocities. For this he lost his British passport, was dubbed a 'traitor' and subsequently remained stateless until he died.
After the Korean War he was posted back to Bejing, where he worked in the Chinese News Agency. He mentions Khruschev's denounciations of Stalin at the Soviet Congress of 1956 but states: 'despite his errors which were terrible, and the cult of his person which he encouraged, Stalin had creatively applied and developed Marxism'
Interspersed with clear statements of his thoroughly Stalinist world view, Winnington attempts to describe the vividness of Bejing before its cultural destruction
tradictions currently facing Japanese capitalism.
It is the mark of a major film such as Ran undoubtedly is, that it should raise fundamental questions about the conditions of humanity and the great political and noral dilemmas that face us. Ran is a film everyone should take the opportunity to see by Mao. He also begins to analyse the reasons for his growing disenchantment with the CPC which began after Stalin's death.
After publically attacking Mao's open war on the Chinese intelligentsia the One Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1956, Winnington found his lectures on journalism at Bejing University 'cancelled'.
The rest of the book remains a personal tracing of Mao's near downfall. Winnington describes, but does not analyse, the challenge for leadership, launched by the defence minister Peng Dehuai in 1958 Dehaui favoured a modern army, sophisticated weaponry and close technical and military alliance with the Soviet Union.
After openly criticising Mao's positions, Winnington could no longer accept Maoism and was rejected as foreign spokesperson for China by the CP leadership. He ends inconclusively, with his exile from China to East Germany arranged by the British CP. This event, he states, coinciding with the death of Pollitt, was he end of an era. Which era, the Stalinist era or the Maoist version of it, remains unclear.
I cannot recommend this book for theoretical analysis of the birth of the Chinese Revolution. But if you want a gripping, lively and descriptive account of Bejingin the 1950s, Tibetan feudalism before Chinese intervention and a Stalinist's disillusionment with Maoism, then this is a book worth reading. Alan Winnington, Breakfast With Mao, Memories of a Foreign Correspondent, Lawrence and Wishart.
INTERNATIONAl No 4, May/lune 1986
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Word Rhythms PETE ROBERTS AT A lime of great debate and argument over education, ciass and language, the publication of two collections of poetry, Because The Dawn Breaks by Morie Collins, and Word