Yesterday I discovered the unsurprising fact that Mao's Little Red Book is a copy of a Stalinist Red Book. Mao got all his ideas and even the format of his bestseller from the Russians. The 1954 edition of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia's article on Karl Marx had been published in the small pocketbook format in Russian and then in many other languages.
I was travelling on the 149 bus line to the Port of Tel Aviv for a consulting job, and the old Russian Jew next to me was reading the Red Book of Marx. Since I talk to strangers all the time (and accept candy too) we commented on the divine authority the Encyclopedia used to have and how forgotten it is today. The book quotes young Marx: "Everything existing has to be mercilessly criticised". And he started by attacking the most respected German philosopher of his time, Hegel.
It appears that Marx was unaware of his self - a hyper-aggressive atheist Jew in a Prussia trying desperately to emerge from weakness and poverty, and the impression his vitriolic criticism was creating among his professors, because after his Ph.D. he applied for a teaching position.
Marx was begging to be rejected. He was.
1 comments:
The Red Book took the place of the Bible, Stalin and Mao took the place of God - man has a need to worship something. Today we worship Gaia and political correctness. Those who refuse to worship at their society's appointed altars are cast out.
K
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