conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled The Mandate of Heaven about ["I, Ching"], Everyone with the genre: Literature & Fiction, History & Criticism?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author's intriguing work will be read with great interest by ["I Ching"] aficionados, and it will also attract the attention of contemporary scholars. The former will be immensely grateful for the clarity that the author brings to such an enigmatic text.... Everyone who reads "The Mandate of Heaven" will return to the "Book of Changes" with a renewed historical perspective.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author's intriguing work will be read with great interest by ["I Ching"] aficionados, and it will also attract the attention of contemporary scholars. The former will be immensely grateful for the clarity that the author brings to such an enigmatic text....
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first four paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Mandate of Heaven
  The subject of "democracy" is more confused than any so far discussed. There are few régimes in the world which do not call themselves "democratic", regardless of local institutions. As a result, it is tempting to make a clean sweep and argue that "democratic" means nothing of any importance. Yet to do that is to abandon what Marx saw as the essence of the struggle for socialism: freedom, the self-emancipation of the majority.
  The Marxists indicted the form of "democracy" practised in the representative institutions of capitalism as parliamentarianism. Parliament was a "talking shop", a decorative façade for the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie". Real power was exercised behind the scenes in the offices of the State and the boardrooms of great companies. Here, the decisions were made which determined the material conditions of the majority; they were not exposed to public debate, which was restricted to the superficial questions of what bourgeois democracy called "politics".
  The critique of parliament, however, was not a rejection of democracy itself Lenin wrote: "The way out of parliamentarianism is not, of course, the abolition of representative institutions and the electoral principle, but the conversion of the representative institutions from mere 'talking shops' into working bodies." For, Lenin continues: "We cannot imagine democracy, not even proletarian democracy, without representative institutions, but we can and must think of democracy without parliamentarianism." The task was two-fold: to fuse real power with the assembly so that it became an executive, so that the execution of policy was directly related to those who elected the members of the assembly; and to establish open elections to the assembly on a free debate of the real issues. Such a procedure would indeed be rejected both by the bourgeoisie and by those on the Left who believed socialism was incapable of winning majority support in an open contest and must therefore be imposed by a minority.
  The State is the instrument of power of a ruling class. Its existence, according to Engels, "is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it is cleft into irreconcilable antagonism which it is powerless to dispel".
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Mandate of Heaven
  The subject of "democracy" is more confused than any so far discussed. There are few régimes in the world which do not call themselves "democratic", regardless of local institutions. As a result, it is tempting to make a clean sweep and argue that "democratic" means nothing of any importance. Yet to do that is to abandon what Marx saw as the essence of the struggle for socialism: freedom, the self-emancipation of the majority.
  The Marxists indicted the form of "democracy" practised in the representative institutions of capitalism as parliamentarianism. Parliament was a "talking shop", a decorative façade for the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie". Real power was exercised behind the scenes in the offices of the State and the boardrooms of great companies. Here, the decisions were made which determined the material conditions of the majority; they were not exposed to public debate, which was restricted to the superficial questions of what bourgeois democracy called "politics".
  The critique of parliament, however, was not a rejection of democracy itself Lenin wrote: "The way out of parliamentarianism is not, of course, the abolition of representative institutions and the electoral principle, but the conversion of the representative institutions from mere 'talking shops' into working bodies." For, Lenin continues: "We cannot imagine democracy, not even proletarian democracy, without representative institutions, but we can and must think of democracy without parliamentarianism." The task was two-fold: to fuse real power with the assembly so that it became an executive, so that the execution of policy was directly related to those who elected the members of the assembly; and to establish open elections to the assembly on a free debate of the real issues. Such a procedure would indeed be rejected both by the bourgeoisie and by those on the Left who believed socialism was incapable of winning majority support in an open contest and must therefore be imposed by a minority.
  The State is the instrument of power of a ruling class.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know five more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Shah had joined the "progressive forces". The clandestine Iranian Left might denounce the corruption and repressive character of his régime, but this was an entirely marginal matter so far as China was concerned. The Left might deplore the continued arms drive of Iran and the use of Iran's oil revenue to finance Western arms manufacturers, but the People's Republic decreed otherwise: "As an independent sovereign State, Iran has the right and every reason to ensure her self-defence by strengthening national defence. As to the kinds and number of weapons it intends to buy and from where it buys them, it is the internal affair of Iran and other countries have no right to intervene." Whence came this "right"? From Iran's 1,562 mile border with the Soviet Union.
  The creation of national States on the African continent coincided with the development of an independent Chinese foreign policy. As a result, it was possible for China to be more effective in contest with other world powers which had not had time to consolidate positions. It is said that African guerillas were trained in China in the early 1950s. But by the late 1950s, it seems, diplomatic representatives of China were engaged in training militia and youth organizations in some African countries that received financial aid. Those financed included Ethiopia, the Batutsi government in the former Ruanda-Burundi, Algeria, Egypt, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Somalia and Congo. However, a contradiction soon emerged; training youth organizations could only take place if there was no hint of mobilizing an opposition to the established régime (the United States was prepared to manufacture such hints to secure influence among independent African States). Revolutionary propaganda opened the door to United States, and later Soviet, intervention. Thus the military government of Congo (B) was induced to disband the youth movement. In Mali, a military coup against President Modibo Keita ended the Chinese link. Chinese diplomats were expelled from Burundi, Dahomey and Central African Republic.
  In 1964, a new diplomatic offensive took place, culminating in an African tour by Zhou Enlai. Although a number of African States were irritated by Zhou's declaration, "Africa is ripe for revolution", the visit had solid achievements. Before his visit, seven countries recognized the People's Republic, and fifteen Taiwan; afterwards, fourteen recognized China, sixteen Taiwan and four remained neutral.
  These efforts were slightly nullified by the neglect of external relations during the Cultural Revolution. However, immediately afterwards Beijing began a new drive to win diplomatic recognition as the stepping stone to membership of the United Nations. Financial aid was expanded, but this time without any hint of organizing subversive youth groups. Aid went overwhelmingly to established governments, although some assistance is said to have been given to the liberation struggles in Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau (and possibly some, but very little, to the Zimbabwe guerillas in Rhodesia). The largest share went to Zambia for the building of the Tanzam railway. President Kaunda has divulged that, at one stage, Chinese representatives did distribute propaganda in Zambia, but withdrew it and apologized when he complained. China's aid tends to contradict its stress on "self-reliance", and possibly raises problems at home. During the negotiations for the Tanzam railway, it was rumoured that there was opposition to the project in Beijing because it would considerably delay China's own railway programme, and would do so for a country, Zambia, where the per capita income was double that of China.
  To Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, China was a generous patron from the mid-1950s, despite the presence of US military bases in the country. The Emperor made numerous State visits to Beijing. Zhou, in October 1973, toasted the aged scoundrel: "We admire the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie...I raise my glass to commemorate his struggle against colonialism, racialism, and slavery." Chinese loyalty was in no way deflected by the protracted war of national liberation forces in the province of Eritrea, a revolt the heroic Emperor endeavoured to root out. Nor was China more than embarrassed by the student movement in Addis Ababa which precipitated a general strike and the collapse of the imperial régime in 1974. The Chinese people were told nothing of these events. Beijing rapidly recognized the new military rulers, extended financial aid to the Emperor's successors and refrained from comment on the escalation of the war against the Eritreans and the savage persecution of the Ethiopian trade unions and Left.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last three paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: In such a context, the rhetoric of the Chinese Communist party becomes more than an eccentricity. It becomes a political alternative. But it is one of a peculiar kind, that simultaneously offers world revolution in words, but an accommodation to the world order in fact, achieved through local alliances with existing ruling classes against "social fascism". It sacrifices class parties to the creation of sects, armed or not. Mao Zedong thought plays an objective role, regardless of the subjective intentions of those who adhere to it: the strengthening of a world order, not the creation of an international alternative order.
  Mao Zedong thought is tested, not by its quotations, but by reality—the reality of Hangzhou in 1975 or Bangladesh in 1971. Faced with such a test, Beijing invariably defends its interests as a national ruling class. It is, in its own parlance, "reactionary", defending its place in a world order of national ruling classes, sacrificing the interest of the majority to the maintenance of its own position as a class.
  The prospects of working people once more contesting for power against the system are now greater than at any time since the 1920s. Nowhere is this more true than in the oppressed nations, the economically backward countries. But the influence of the Chinese "road to socialism" will again frustrate that revolutionary potential if it is permitted to do so. That would secure the world for imperialism once again. The freedom and, indeed, the feeding of the majority will then have been sacrificed to the safeguarding of the privileged interests of those who command the States of the world.