Tao Te Ching – Gia-Fu Feng, Jane English Translation (1989)

The one you link to, published by Penguin - Random House in 2011, says "Jane English and her long-time editor, Toinette Lippe, have refreshed and revised the translation" and that it "features over a hundred new photographs by Jane English", so seems like it might be a 2.0 version. I'm sure it's beautiful and inspiring as well, but I've only personally read the original version.

You're confusing communism with dictatorship. Communism is about communal ownership, and likely some version of worker-ownership ("own the means of production"). If the system, or its leaders, are starving the farmers, and the farmers and their customers can't actively negotiate against that practice, you don't have communism at all.

My understanding (and some points in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chan_Buddhism echo it) is that Chan/Zen Buddhism is a descendant of Mahāyāna Buddhism and Taoism. In that way, it is itself a Taoist religion.

> Most of his other "translations" from ancient languages were made the same way as with the Tao te ching

This is incorrect for any Ancient Hebrew or Greek works. Genesis is listed as "translated". On the Psalms he says:

  I have translated fairly closely where that has been possible; but I have also paraphrased, expanded, contracted, deleted, shuffled the order of verses, and freely improvised on the themes of the originals.

From Googling "does stephen mitchell know ancient greek"

  Some of his translations aren't, strictly speaking, translations, but adaptations. He knows Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, German, Italian and Danish, but he's also rewritten works in languages he doesn't know—Chinese, Sanskrit and Babylonian.

Any aphoristic philosophical text has a certain "Worldview" which it tries to convey via many means viz. Directly/Symbolically/Analogically/Metaphorically/Allegorically. This "Worldview" is the background canvas on which a philosophical text paints a specific picture.

In the case of "Tao Te Ching/Dao De Jing" a good starting point can be found in wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao#Buddhist_interpretations

The Tao is the natural way of the universe, whose character one's intuition must discern to realize the potential for individual wisdom...This seeing of life cannot be grasped as a concept. Rather, it is seen through actual living experience of one's everyday being...Its name, "Tao", or "Dao"...signifies the way, path, route, road, or sometimes more loosely doctrine, principle, or holistic belief.

Laozi in the Tao Te Ching explains that the Tao is not a name for a thing, but the underlying natural order of the universe whose ultimate essence is difficult to circumscribe because it is non-conceptual yet evident in one's being of aliveness. The Tao is "eternally nameless" and should be distinguished from the countless named things that are considered to be its manifestations, ...

The Tao can be roughly thought of as the "flow of the universe", or as some essence or pattern behind the natural world that keeps the Universe balanced and ordered... The Tao is a non-dualistic principle—it is the greater whole from which all the individual elements of the Universe derive.

The Tao is usually described in terms of elements of nature, and in particular, as similar to water. Like water it is undifferentiated, endlessly self-replenishing, soft and quiet but immensely powerful, and impassively generous

Much of Taoist philosophy centers on the cyclical continuity of the natural world and its contrast to the linear, goal-oriented actions of human beings, as well as the perception that the Tao is "the source of all being, in which life and death are the same.

So in simple terms "Living holistically everyday according to Natural order" (analogous to "Systems Thinking"). The idea of "Natural Order" is somewhat similar to "Divine Providence" of western theology but more abstract since there is no "God" here. You have a primordial "Tao" from which everything comes into being and which has inlaid the rules of creation, preservation and destruction and the cycle keeps going indefinitely. If one then adapts one's everyday behaviours, attitudes and actions to harmonize with the above "Worldview" in mind (i.e. holistic viewpoint) one can bear all trials and tribulations with equanimity and grace.

The above background should be enough to start reading the text itself. I recommend reading Red Pine's translation along with any others you might like.

PS: I also recommend reading a simpler text (but with similar ideas) named Caigentan (Vegetable Root Discourses) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caigentan) which you might find helpful in grasping certain concepts.