Foreword: The Maoism of PRC History

Abstract

Good PRC history is left history. But hear me out. I do not mean that all good PRC historians are leftist in their thinking, their politics, or their methods; they are not. Nor do I mean that all good PRC history advocates for left positions; it does not. But rather, good PRC history is left history because it takes seriously and elucidates the leftist logics that framed discourses and experiences in socialist China. It grants that Maoist (Maovian?) projects had logics and evaluates them on their own terms, rather than dismissing them as obviously illogical. As Kristin Stapleton and Michael Schoenhals have pointed out, Mao Zedong Thought is perhaps the most important of the theories that inform the study of PRC history (HPRC 2016). Knowing what Mao and Maoists actually thought, as well as what they tried to do, is all the more important when today’s dominant political and economic systems rely, for their very existence, on the falsification of