A critique of Western Maoism. Written collectively by Stuart Wise, Phil Meyler, David Wise: 1978-9. Originally published on Revolt Against Plenty website.
What we have here in Chinese Takeaway is another 'lost' text from 1978 that was never published though enquiries recently have been made as to its whereabouts. In retrospect it was crazy none of this stuff ever saw the light of day in any durable form. We should have pushed that little important bit harder with our collective efforts seeing we'd done so much in getting these texts to some sort of fruition only to fall at the last hurdle. As it is these texts remain unaltered and there is a considerable overlap between them all involving Portugal, Spain, the UK and Italy although Chinese Takeaway has been slightly re-ordered in terms of chapters, sub-divisions etc. it has not been re-written.
It wasn't that we were simply discouraged from publishing though that also happened (e.g. a feminist partner of one of us had said that Chinese Takeaway was "no more than worthless drivel") which by then meant little seeing our hides had already been toughened from relentless brick bats from every conceivable direction. The real issue though was money and none of us had a bean having spent what was in the coffers on funding through UK Solidarity the publishing of Phil Meyler's book, Portugal: The Impossible Revolution and Wildcat Spain Encounters Democracy by BM Bis. More importantly a scam involving relieving Barclays Bank of a fair amount of dosh had been discovered and although we were able to successfully cover our tracks, it proved to be a blow too much...
To write something on the influence of China today would obviously be entirely different. That much is obvious. Suffice to say what happened since to some of the figures discussed here? Well not much and most is really downhill. Le Dantec became a big wheel in some architectural institution having written in the meantime a slew of utterly trivial books on landscape design, and quirky 'art & poetry' gardens some around Paris. Even worse Le Bris has become a travelogue writer and publisher developing an obsession with R.L. Stevenson and praised for bringing crap like Michael Moorcock and Colin Thubron to media attention. Inevitably all this in the name of further promotion of the massive tourist calamity that like an unnamed but deadly scorched earth policy, plagues what's left of planet earth.
Libcom note: All photos and images added by Libcom.
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