The History Of Mankind

Mao Tsetung and W.E.B. DuBois

Mao Tsetung argued that "The history of mankind is one of continuous development from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. This process is never-ending. In any society in which classes exist class struggle will never end. In classless society the struggle between the new and the old and between truth and falsehood will never end...Therefore, [hu]man[kind] has constantly to sum up experience and go on discovering, inventing, creating and advancing."

While I am skeptical of Mao's Marxist teleology, his notion of jihad (struggle) could not be more on point.

"Ideas of stagnation, pessimism, inertia and complacency are all wrong," he said. "They are wrong because they agree neither with the historical facts of social development over the past million years, nor with the historical facts of nature so far known to us (i.e., nature as revealed in the history of celestial bodies, the earth, life, and other natural phenomena)."