50 Years Since the Death of Mao Zedong and the Defeat of Socialism in China

Presentation and Discussion

50 Years Since the Death of Mao Zedong and the Defeat of Socialism in China
Learning From and Going Beyond Mao's Great Breakthroughs to the New Communism of Bob Avakian

Fifty years ago, on September 9, 1976, Mao Zedong died.
Mao led the monumental and tremendously liberating Chinese Revolution of 1949-1976. Mao's greatest contribution was the theory and practice of continuing the revolution under socialism and preventing the restoration of capitalism. But shortly after Mao's death, new bourgeois forces in China carried out a violent coup—and began the process of restoring capitalism.

Following the defeat of socialism in China, the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian set out to sum up the first socialist revolutions in Russia and China: their tremendous achievements, but also their problems, some quite serious.

Through decades of theoretical work and struggle, Bob Avakian has synthesized the new communism. He has drawn from diverse spheres of human understanding and experience. The new communism builds on the achievements of the first stage of communist revolution but is a qualitative leap beyond and also, in important ways, a break with communist theory as it has been previously developed.

At the heart of the new communism is a thoroughly and consistently scientific approach to reality.

Humanity now has a radically different and far better framework to make the emancipating revolution necessary to end all exploitation and oppression. To create a world in which human beings can truly flourish. That is why being a communist today means being a follower of Bob Avakian.