conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about ["I, Ching"], Everyone with the genre: Literature & Fiction, History & Criticism?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Mandate of Heaven'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first two 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".
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me three more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: 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: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: 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: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The change was not a mistake. It was the result of events, the changes in Russia and China. Mao awaited no theory: he made a revolution, knocking together a rationale as he proceeded, borrowing on the cultural flotsam of the Chinese and Western intelligentsia. He did not fight within the Communist International for an alternative strategy, for he had none. His path to power required the ideological symbols of the October revolution, so he employed the phrases—for example, "the working class"—but emptied of all content. As he bent China's social reality to his task, so also he bent the "ideology" into a shape appropriate. Men, not ideas, made his world.
  The change would "ordinarily" be of no more than pedantic interest. But as the world enters a new period of history, the old issues surface once more. Capitalism can no longer guarantee to meet the modest ambitions of the majority. Indeed, it can no longer keep alive a section of its slaves: famine will become an increasing threat. Workers in many countries have reacted on a scale not seen for decades. The central issue—of universal freedom, of using the massive productivity of the world system to meet the needs of all—again appears.
  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.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It was the result of events, the changes in Russia and China. Mao awaited no theory: he made a revolution, knocking together a rationale as he proceeded, borrowing on the cultural flotsam of the Chinese and Western intelligentsia. He did not fight within the Communist International for an alternative strategy, for he had none. His path to power required the ideological symbols of the October revolution, so he employed the phrases—for example, "the working class"—but emptied of all content. As he bent China's social reality to his task, so also he bent the "ideology" into a shape appropriate. Men, not ideas, made his world.
  The change would "ordinarily" be of no more than pedantic interest. But as the world enters a new period of history, the old issues surface once more. Capitalism can no longer guarantee to meet the modest ambitions of the majority. Indeed, it can no longer keep alive a section of its slaves: famine will become an increasing threat. Workers in many countries have reacted on a scale not seen for decades. The central issue—of universal freedom, of using the massive productivity of the world system to meet the needs of all—again appears.
  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.