A correction on the PRC’s flag: the 4 smaller stars each represent one of the classes in New Democracy:
- The Proletariat
- The Peasantry
- The Petite Bourgeoisie
- The National Bourgeoisie
The fifth, largest star, is for the CPC itself, which unites and guides the 4 classes, itself dominated by the proletariat.
The old, five stripes flag is the one that represented the 5 major ethnic groups of China, which is often confused as the reasoning for China’s current 5 stars.
Perhaps the best, most succinct explanation of historical materialism.
Full Quote
Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language.