From now on, when anyone in our ranks who has done some useful work dies, be he soldier or cook, we should have a funeral ceremony and a memorial meeting in his honor. This should become the rule. And it should be introduced among the people as well. When someone dies in a village, let a memorial meeting be held. In this way we express our mourning for the dead and unite all the people.
— Mao Tse-Tung, “Serve the People” (speech of September 8, 1944)*
Whether I ever in any way make it with anyone after saying so, honesty compels me to admit that I used to carry a picture of Chairman Mao in my pocket. It was in the watch-pocket of my jeans or other pants with such a pocket because the picture of Mao was on the face of a pocket-watch I bought in China when I was invited to Renmin (“Peoples”) University in Beijing to give two-weeks of lectures on postmodern philosophy back in the fall of 1998.
I still have that pocket-watch with Mao’s picture, but I no longer use a pocket-watch, so I don’t carry it around with me any longer. So far as I can tell, however, I’ve not made it with any more people anyway.
Thus do I stick it to The Beatles!
* * *
In his lecture on December 14, 2006, midway through the third year of a three-year seminar he gave on “orienting oneself in thinking, orienting oneself in existence” (Le Séminaire: S’orienter dans la pensé, s’orienter dans l’existence 2004-2007),** contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou cites the lines from Mao that I, in turn, have placed at the top of my post for today. Badiou cites Mao’s lines in the context of contrasting the modern orienting figure of the anonymous soldier with the dominant pre-modern one of the hero, who is never anonymous but always goes by name.
One important point Badiou makes in his discussion is that both figures, despite the obvious difference between the two, occur under the sign of war. He is right, of course.
However, that does not apply to what Mao himself says in the last two lines of the four lines at issue. Mao does not, in those final two lines, suggest that villages should hold memorial services only for villagers who live and die under the sign of war. Rather, what he suggests is that the death of any villager whatever should be marked by a village-wide memorial service. “In this way,” he says, “we express our mourning for the dead and unite all the people” (I have added the emphasis to the two key words ‘we’ and ‘all’ in that sentence, to bring out that what is at issue is truly always a matter of concern to all people everywhere, not just those who are unfortunate enough to have to live in some society that is trapped under the sign of war).
Now that would be a revolution indeed! One we should all want!
* * *
What Mao proposes in the lines at issue would be a revolution that liberated all of us everywhere and everywhen even from war itself. It would be a revolution that freed each of us and every one of us just to be one among all, nobody special, neither a hero nor even an anonymous soldier. Only such a revolution would free us from the chains that keep us tied to some government or other — as opposed to following any genuine leadership, which never seeks to govern — that sends its citizens into war, whether they go as “heroes” or as “anonymous soldiers.” Only such a truly radical revolution, that is, a revolution that truly went to the very roots of the State and its warfare, would at last bring us, each of us and every one of us, out from under the sign of war.
That, at any rate, is the only sort of revolution that I am willing to say I want. Every other kind of revolution is not revolutionary enough to satisfy me, or any person anywhere who has any sort of genuine taste for humanity.
If you want to carry a picture of Chairman Mao in honor of just such real, universal revolution, please do so. You will thereby make it with me, or anyone else like me.
NOTE TO MY READERS: This is my last post before taking my usual holiday break till after the turn of the year.
* This very brief speech is readily available online. It is well worth reading seriously, with an open mind.
** Paris: Fayard, 2022.