Interplanetary Revolutions

Abstract

The paper introduces the transhumanism and cosmic communism of Mao Zedong and discusses its relation to a Marxian conception of human nature and analogous Soviet visions. Having shown that the two-sided understanding of human nature in Marx opened doors for its transhumanist interpretations, the article identifies instances of the latter in the ideal of the New Soviet Man, the views of Trotsky, and the communist (or at least Sovietized) cosmism of Tsiolkovsky and Bogdanov. In parallel to and prior to his contact with Marxism, Mao became occupied with the problems of immortality, alternative spaces, the destruction of the Earth, and the power of human will, and his early transhumanism only revived after 1949. It is shown that based on his revision of historical materialism and belief in the limitless potential of human powers, Mao envisaged that technological and cultural revolutions would still and endlessly occur under communism(s), including their cosmic phases, and even after a global nuclear catastrophe. This would be, however, a future of “something more advanced” than humans, free from their current physical limitations.