American Maoism
25th August 2021
“Never forget class struggle!” proclaimed Mao in Fall 1962 at the Chinese Communist Party’s annual retreat. This maxim quickly became the fevered chant of the day, paving the way for the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 and continued until Mao’s death in 1976. This slogan defied reality and logic: How could class struggle persist when there was no private ownership left in China? But the slogan appealed to sentiment, not logic, and thus persisted.
If modified into “Never forget race struggle,” the command has the same appeal in today’s woke America, and serves the same purposes, even though there is no evidence that race is a barrier impeding individual effort in America today, or that it is decisive in distributing outcomes.