An Analysis of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung

Abstract

On Friday, August 15, 1968, Peking workers, representatives of the worker-peasant Mao Tse-tung's thought-propaganda teams, members of the Peking Garrison Command of the People's Liberation Army, and "revolutionary fighters" gathered in the Great Hall of the People to be received by Mao Tse-tung. “While waiting for the most glorious of moments [the arrival of Mao] they sang 'Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman' and 'Chairman Mao, We are Always Faithful to You.' Later, "moved to tears when they saw Chairman Mao, they waved their red-covered copies of the revolutionary treasured books, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung." This may be another manifestation of what A. Doak Barnett has called sermons "aimed at creating dedicated revolutionaries". If "sermons” is a correct term, then is the Quotations, as Barnett says, to be "brandished by millions as a talisman against the 'monsters' of imperialism and modern revisionism"? A book which is a "national revolutionary litany", containing the concrete plan for the coming triumph of the 'East Wind': In the sky the red clouds crowd out the black, On earth the east wind beats back the west; For capitalism cold winter has come. For socialism the lamps are ablaze. In the Quotations, this is stated as '… the East wind is prevailing over the West wind. That is to say, the forces of socialism have become overwhelmingly superior to the forces of imperialism.