Mao Zedong

[sovietpower01]

Hey comrades! I was reading a lot about chairman Mao and found a lot of good things under his rule. However I also read that Mao Zedong killed 50 million of his own people.

Is this true?
Was Mao a true communist?

also would like to know pros of his regime

[red cat]

Hey comrades! I was reading a lot about chairman Mao and found a lot of good things under his rule. However I also read that Mao Zedong killed 50 million of his own people.

You will get much higher numbers from other sources.



Is this true?
Was Mao a true communist?

also would like to know pros of his regime

Your assessment of Mao and Maoism in general will depend on your sources. If you choose to believe the bourgeois or most other so called leftist sources, you will acquire an extremely negative understanding of it all. However, the parties which are actually making revolutions at the present will provide you with completely different information and analysis.

[Muzk]

NEXT EVIL DICTATOR THREAD OMG ZOMG


Mao rocks, he did a great leap forward, some people died starving, but that happens when you industrialize a country in some years

yet he made the population rise by 80(?)%, minimum life time thingy went up to 70 from 25 or something, and he made china an industrial super power...

he got assassinated in the end, sadly

heard there were floodings of farms and thats why the people died... dunno, the truth is burried somewhere...

[hugsandmarxism]

http://www.revleft.com/vb/picture.php?albumid=212&pictureid=4116

A good book to read is Mobo Gao's "The Battle for History: Mao and the Cultural Revolution" (PM me for a link)

Here's a good multi-part doccumentary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRkKKRdiTBc) on the 49 revolution, and here's the kasama project's study group (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/mlmrsg-evaluating-chinas-cultural-revolution-and-its-legacy-for-the-future/) on the GPCR.

[mosfeld]

Mao Tse-Tung was probably the most important Marxist theoretician of his time.

Part 7-15 are rough, pro-Mao and short sketches which cover the period from 1949-1975.
http://www.thisiscommunism.org/speech.htm

This site has two GREAT in-depth analysis of China under Mao's leadership (''Evaluating the Cultural Revolution in China and its Legacy for the Future'' and ''Chinese Foreign Policy during the Maoist Era and its Lessons for Today'').
http://www.mlmrsg.com/

Raising the question ''Did Mao really kill millions in the Great Leap Forward?''
http://monthlyreview.org/0906ball.htm

[chegitz guevara]

It is not knowable how many people died because of Mao's decisions. China under Mao wasn't about to discuss it, and since Mao's fall, his successors have attempted to discredit him.

The Great Leap Forward was an unmitigated disaster. Although many Maoists claim that it set the stage for the industrialization of China, it's immediate impact was to cause a massive drop in agricultural productivity that was masked by two years of incredible weather. Two great harvests led the Chinese to think they were doing something right, then came two years of bad weather. Bureaucrats were so afraid of reporting to their superiors that they weren't meeting their quotas that China continued exporting food instead of feeding the starving.

While bureaucratic cravenness itself was a result of the Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, campaign, where afterward, those who criticized the government were sacked, imprisoned, etc. So of course, when things started going wrong with the GLF, they weren't about to say anything.

In many ways, Mao was a great leader and theoretician. But the GLF, though an unintended disaster, has to be laid entirely at his feet.

In some ways, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a response to this, as Mao was being side-lined after the failure of the GLF. Whatever one wants to say about the Cultural Revolution, it allowed Mao to reassert himself and defeat his political rivals.

[LOLseph Stalin]

I think one thing that alot of people tend to forget about is that China is massive. At first glance the numbers for the amount of people killed may look large, but China has about a billion people so they're really not any larger when comparing the numbers to, say the amount of people Stalin killed.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Other than qualifying as a mass murderer, Mao was about as confused a 'marxist' theorist as it is possible to find; proof here:

http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=460

[red cat]

Other than qualifying as a mass murderer, Mao was about as confused a 'marxist' theorist as it is possible to find; proof here:

http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=460

Please mind your words. They are useful for nothing except for exposing your counter-revolutionary line.

[spiltteeth]

It is not knowable how many people died because of Mao's decisions. China under Mao wasn't about to discuss it, and since Mao's fall, his successors have attempted to discredit him.

The Great Leap Forward was an unmitigated disaster. Although many Maoists claim that it set the stage for the industrialization of China, it's immediate impact was to cause a massive drop in agricultural productivity that was masked by two years of incredible weather. Two great harvests led the Chinese to think they were doing something right, then came two years of bad weather. Bureaucrats were so afraid of reporting to their superiors that they weren't meeting their quotas that China continued exporting food instead of feeding the starving.

While bureaucratic cravenness itself was a result of the Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, campaign, where afterward, those who criticized the government were sacked, imprisoned, etc. So of course, when things started going wrong with the GLF, they weren't about to say anything.

In many ways, Mao was a great leader and theoretician. But the GLF, though an unintended disaster, has to be laid entirely at his feet.

In some ways, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was a response to this, as Mao was being side-lined after the failure of the GLF. Whatever one wants to say about the Cultural Revolution, it allowed Mao to reassert himself and defeat his political rivals.

I've heard the 'Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom' campaign was sacked because of other's in the party when things started getting out of hand with the criticism, and was against Mao's wishes.
Does anyone know the truth?

[CELMX]

However I also read that Mao Zedong killed 50 million of his own people.


again, the bourgeois analysts that make these conclusions include natural deaths, and anyone who died in china.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Please mind your words. They are useful for nothing except for exposing your counter-revolutionary line.

In fact, they are 'useful' for exposing Mao's anti-Marxist confusions.

Unless, of course, you can show where my argument (at the link I posted above) goes wrong...

[red cat]

Red Cat:



In fact, they are 'useful' for exposing Mao's anti-Marxist confusions.

Unless, of course, you can show where my argument (at the link I posted above) goes wrong...

I am not a polymath. Nor am I interested in reading your arguments and finding out where you have made mistakes. If you want to have a debate, point out exactly where Mao's theories go wrong so far as they are concerned with the liberation of the proletariat, with reference to the ongoing protracted peoples' wars.

[scarletghoul]

Rosa: please stop posting.

Anyway there seems to be a lot of threads recently about Mao and Maoism, which is cool.

To answer the OP - There is a huge amount of capitalist propaganda against Mao, to try and discredit him and communism in general. If these capitalists applied the same standards to capitalist regimes as they do to communist ones, Queen Victoria and Nehru and many other capitalist leaders would be among the worst mass murderers in history. Any huge death tolls you hear about Communist leaders usually fall down the moment any research is done. If you'll allow me to quote myself (Im tired of writing the same argument again and again lol):

First, these death tolls are always exxagerated, for obvious propaganda reasons. Second, attributing them all to Mao is stupid and shows a lack of understanding of what happened. Certainly his mistakes played some part in the deaths of the Great Leap Forward, but you have to take into account there was a series of severe natural disasters as well as the sino-soviet split, which devastated China's economy. As for the other political deaths, most of those were carried out at the grassroots level by the angry peasantry who wanted to kill the big landlords who had exploited them for generations (Mao spoke out against these excesses, in fact), and some were killed by overzealous Red Gaurds and other activists, who while inspired by Mao, were not directly carrying out his orders. It was a revolution, there were many tragic deaths, but to attribute them personally to Mao as a "mass murderer" is just idiocy. In the words of Mao-
“A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

It's also worth noting the lives saved by Mao and the Communists' policies. This is shown by the fact that under Mao life expectancy more than doubled. He also repelled the Japanese invasion and defeated the Koumintang, both of which were forces of intense murder and suffering upon the people.

Any more questions just ask :)


I've heard the 'Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom' campaign was sacked because of other's in the party when things started getting out of hand with the criticism, and was against Mao's wishes.
Does anyone know the truth?
Yeah it was called off due to the more dictatorial elements in the party who didn't like so much free speech. The allegation that "it was just a way of mao to trick people into criticising things so he could kill them later" is stupid and makes no sense. Mao and Zhou Enlai were both very active in this campaign. Mao has consistently advocated free debate, if you look at his speeches and writing, throughout his career.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


I am not a polymath. Nor am I interested in reading your arguments and finding out where you have made mistakes. If you want to have a debate, point out exactly where Mao's theories go wrong so far as they are concerned with the liberation of the proletariat, with reference to the ongoing protracted peoples' wars.

The OP wanted opinions about Mao; if you don't like mine, too bad.

Now, unless you can show where I go wrong, then keep your opinions about my work to yourself -- otherwise, you can always expect a reply from me.

---------------------

Scarletghoul:


Rosa: please stop posting.

Once more, the OP wanted opinions about Mao; if any Mao-worshippers here take exception to what I have to say, then they shouldn't post at an open forum.

This is not Maoist China, you know -- we are allowed to express our opinions without any threat of imprisonment or execution.

After all, you have your own safe little Maoist heaven in the Groups section, which infidels like me are not allowed even to see.

[scarletghoul]

I wouldn't object to your posting if you actually made logical and clear points that didn't entirely revolve around dialectics and other confusing philosophical debates that mean nothing to most people.

What exactly are your criticisms of Mao? Apart from the fact that he liked dialectics.

Btw, this is Rosa's golden moment on Kasama forum : http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=901&view=findpost&p=2610736

[red cat]

Red Cat:



The OP wanted opinions about Mao; if you don't like mine, too bad.

Now, unless you can show where I go wrong, then keep your opinions about my work to yourself -- otherwise, you can always expect a reply from me.




It is not Maoists' duty to examine and pin-point the fallacies of every counter-revolutionary theory that avoids the present Maoist revolutionary practice. If you want to prove your theories right, talk with reference to revolutionary practice and not some subject that you won't expect most people here to know.

[GatesofLenin]

The West loves to spew the "50 million deaths by Mao" lie because they're afraid of losing their heads. If you think closely, how many people die each year in the USA under the current system? How many young people need to die in the damn Iraq and Afghan wars that fuel a few rich bastards like Haliburton? The west and it's media controls will never mention that though. :cursing:

[scarletghoul]

Indeed, capitalism is constantly killing people. Every day, over 25,000 people die of hunger. The 50 million deaths (wrongly) attributed to Mao are surpassed by capitalism in just a few years, and without the capitalist leaders making any real effort to stop it.

[Shin Honyong]

Mao was a fine military leader and had some interesting ideas but had some major problems as a leader of a country (He's human and had some problems!? OMGWTF!). Much of the deaths during his time didn't stem from systematic violence of the state but from natural catastrophe, poor economic policies and just sheer anger and radical areas of the population. People seem to forget that much of the violence during cultural revolution did not stem from Mao's government but from independent groups with different backgrounds. Mao actually had to end up cracking down on some of the youth groups to try to bring stability to the country.


Overall, Mao was a human being who did some great things (He did greatly improve the lives of the Chinese population in the end) and had some major problems. I always thought the "80/20" policy that the CCP has about Mao's legacy is actually a pretty decent summary of his legacy.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Scarlet:


I wouldn't object to your posting if you actually made logical and clear points that didn't entirely revolve around dialectics and other confusing philosophical debates that mean nothing to most people.

What exactly are your criticisms of Mao? Apart from the fact that he liked dialectics.

We'll worry about my other objections to this mass murderer when a single one of you can respond to my demolition of his core theory.

You might not think that dialectics is important, but Mao certainly did.

-------------------

Red Cat:


It is not Maoists' duty to examine and pin-point the fallacies of every counter-revolutionary theory that avoids the present Maoist revolutionary practice. If you want to prove your theories right, talk with reference to revolutionary practice and not some subject that you won't expect most people here to know.

Hardly 'counter-revolutionary' when I have succeeded in exposing the Idealist and ruling-class ideology that permeates Mao's thought.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Here's an article from this month's Socialist Review which will be appreciated by anyone who, alongside Marx, puts the self-emancipation of the working class at the centre of their politics, which, clearly rules out the Mao worshippers here:


60th anniversary of the Chinese revolution: A great leap forward?

Feature by Simon Gilbert, November 2009

Post-revolutionary China needed rapid industrialisation to meet the demands of the middle class and compete with other capitalist states, but it was the workers and peasants who paid the price. Simon Gilbert continues our series on the revolution's sixtieth anniversary

By the time of the 1949 revolution China had been dominated for over a hundred years by foreign powers. Its economic development had been held back and its corrupt political systems propped up. Not surprisingly, then, the twin objectives of national independence and modernisation (meaning industrialisation) were central to the ideas of the layer of frustrated middle class intellectuals who monopolised political thinking from the end of the 19th century.

Mao Zedong, the leader of the Communist Party, was no exception. Writing in 1940, he made it clear that socialism was not on the immediate agenda of the forthcoming revolution. The "objective mission" of the revolution was "to clear the path for the development of capitalism". Though wrapped in Marxist rhetoric, the project was essentially nationalist: "In applying Marxism to China" it "must be combined with specific national characteristics and acquire a definite national form."

The revolution did bring some important reforms, but they can be understood within the context of modernisation. The methods used were initially copied straight from Stalin's Russia, top-down centralised planning implemented through a series of five-year plans. Industrial development was prioritised over agricultural development, heavy industry over light industry, and national development over individual consumption.

High levels of reinvestment were achieved by squeezing worker and peasant producers. Workers' pay was very low, although skilled workers in the state sector were partially compensated by subsidies for some of the necessities of life.

However, there was a problem. The concentration of investment in heavy industry could produce impressive growth in industrial output. Agriculture, however, was starved of funds and grew only slightly faster than the population. Yet agriculture not only had to feed the growing urban population, but was also China's only source of exchange for the imported machinery that was essential to industrialisation. This contradiction lay at the heart of the periodic political convulsions.

Worse than Hitler?

In 1958 Mao launched the Great Leap Forward in an attempt to overcome these problems. The aim was to tap into the one resource that China had in abundance, labour power, to compensate for the lack of investment capital. In a policy known as "walking on two legs", the focus on heavy industry was maintained, while it was hoped that locally funded, labour-intensive industries could cater to the needs of agriculture. Meanwhile peasants were corralled into unwieldy communes and set unachievable targets for grain production. The working day was extended beyond endurance.

The Great Leap has been called a "vision, rather than a plan" and it soon collapsed, descending from farce into tragedy. At least 15 million people, and perhaps twice as many, died in the resulting famine. The horror was exacerbated by the unwillingness of fearful officials to report the true scale of the problems to those above them.

In their 2005 biography Jung Chang and Jon Halliday claimed that this made Mao worse than Hitler. But there is a clear difference between the deliberate genocide of the Nazis and the dismal failure of the Great Leap, however ill-judged it was. Mao must take the blame for prolonging the suffering though. When confronted with the failure by defence minister Peng Dehuai at the Lushan plenum in 1959, he preferred to continue his disastrous policies rather than concede.

Subsequently, other leading Communists were more circumspect, effectively pushing Mao upstairs, so that he retained his prestige as leader of the revolution while being removed from control over economic decision making. In 1966 he started a comeback, using his popularity to appeal for student support over the heads of the majority of the party leaders, and launched the Cultural Revolution. Culture was just a pretext; what was really taking place was a power struggle at the top of society. But Mao could use the frustrations of young people with the regime to create a force outside formal party control, the Red Guards, to attack those in power. But Mao's opponents weren't going to give up without a fight and soon the movement degenerated into chaotic virtual civil war with competing Red Guard units all claiming to be the true representatives of "Mao Zedong thought". Eventually the army was called in to suppress the movement by force.

Although the negative impact of the Cultural Revolution on the economy was far less than the Great Leap, it was a political watershed. The popular enthusiasm for the revolution that Mao had been able to tap into in the 1960s was frittered away in endless political campaigns. One reason for the introduction of reforms at the end of the 1970s was that, as the then reformer Chen Yun put it, the Chinese people "were not willing to swallow the same old line". They wanted change.

The conventional wisdom today is that the command economy of Mao's time was a complete failure and growth only really started with the market reforms. But it is a myth. For all the problems and human suffering, industrial growth in the Mao years averaged around 10 percent a year, a figure that contemporary British chancellors could only dream of.

A substantial industrial base was built. It had spread from isolated pockets in Shanghai and Manchuria to cover large parts of the country, and great strides had been made in infrastructure too. In 1975 electricity output was 17 times what it had been in 1952 and rail traffic had grown sevenfold. The reforms introduced from 1978 could not have succeeded without this phase of state-led growth.

But it wasn't socialism. Workers, the agents of change in Marx's thinking, played no role in the revolution, had no say in how the post-revolutionary society was run and didn't benefit from their labours in building up industry. When the Communists came to power, workers were declared "masters of the enterprise", but they soon became frustrated by the toothlessness of the organisations through which they supposedly exercised this power.

The nationalisation of industry did not improve workers' living standards - quite the opposite. As the process was being completed in 1957, some workers struck to resist attacks on their conditions. This was at a point when, following the post-revolution recovery, exploitation was being intensified. Wage differentials between skilled and unskilled were deliberately widened, and real wages would not rise again until the 1980s.

This enabled an ever larger share of output to be reinvested in further production. However, this did not produce the expected increases in productivity. As the 1970s progressed, the rate of productivity growth was decreasing year on year. The attitude of Chinese workers was reminiscent of their Polish counterparts who joked, "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work." This was another reason for the turn to reform: the old methods were becoming less and less effective.

In other respects too the hopes of 1949 were frustrated. Women were promised liberation by the revolution and some progress was certainly made. The 1950 marriage law abolished arranged marriage and granted the right to divorce. Its implementation was patchy though; economic concerns were the real priority. When labour was required, women were encouraged to join the workforce, but when unemployment rose, their role as "housewives" was emphasised. And while women received equal pay for equal work, they tended to remain in lower paid, less skilled work than men.

Women's role

Despite Mao's assertion that "women hold up half the sky" they didn't often hold party membership cards, being very much underrepresented at all levels of the bureaucracy. The only women to play a role at the very top owed their positions to their husbands. Song Qingling, a vice-chair of the People's Republic, was the widow of the republican icon Sun Yatsen. Mao's third wife, Jiang Qing, was one of the infamous Gang of Four that led the Cultural Revolution, and so on.

For China's national minorities the promise was "self-determination", but they were to be sorely disappointed. The Communists adopted from the defeated nationalists the idea that the Chinese nation comprised five major ethnic groups, which under both regimes became an excuse for Han Chinese domination over the others.

Tibet was reincorporated by force in 1950. A deal done with the ruling class of aristocratic landowners and Buddhist hierarchy allowed their continued control in central Tibet (later renamed the Tibetan Autonomous Region). But land collectivisation and the settlement of nomads in outlying regions provoked a rebellion in 1959 which spilled over into central Tibet. The rebellion was ruthlessly put down by the army, the Dalai Lama fled to India and direct rule was imposed.

Xinjiang, a vast area to the north of Tibet whose indigenous population are mostly Turkic Muslims, was also reincorporated into China after the revolution. As in Tibet, forced immigration of Han Chinese dramatically changed the population balance. In 1949 Han made up only 6 percent of the population, but by 1980 they numbered more than 40 percent. The local Communist parties were both dominated by Han Chinese, especially at the higher levels. In both cases, the Chinese concept of a multi-ethnic China was imposed on the non-Han populations without any room for debate.

The China that the Communists inherited in 1949 was incredibly underdeveloped. It had also suffered decades of war, civil war and intermittent famine. But the objective of the new regime was a limited one - modernisation, or the building of a modern industrial economy capable of competing with the world's major powers. Socialism was indefinitely deferred. The social reforms, such as land reform or improvements to women's rights, were significant, but they were essential to the modernising agenda and didn't go beyond it. Strengthening of Chinese rule over Tibet and Xinjiang, areas which had only been ruled indirectly by China in the past, was also part of creating a modern nation state.

Real democratic socialism can only come from within the emerging labour movement, in opposition to Communist rule.

http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=11022

[scarletghoul]

We'll worry about my other objections to this mass murderer when a single one of you can respond to my demolition of his core theory.

You might not think that dialectics is important, but Mao certainly did.Why do you think dialectics is the most important thing, when you consider him to be a "mass murderer"? Surely you should be explaining the reasons for your use of the term "mass murderer", rather than linking to crazy philosophical rants that no one cares about. Unless of course you think that mass murder was a side-effect of his dialectical analysis...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

And, here is what really happened in 1949:


When China threw off imperialism

Feature by Charlie Hore, October 2009

The 60th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution will be marked by the customary orchestrated celebrations in Tiananmen Square. In the first of a short series on China, Charlie Hore looks at how the revolution came about and its impact on the world.

The years after the Second World War saw national liberation struggles spread rapidly across Asia and Africa, ousting the old colonial empires and weakening the power of imperialism. The 1949 revolution in China was the first, and biggest, of these struggles, and it was to provide an inspiration for many other battles against imperialism.

In 1949 a millions-strong peasant army, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), overthrew China's old ruling classes, who were supported and armed by the US. The Red Army's victory ended the longest, bloodiest war of the 20th century. "Liberation", as China's new rulers called it, came at the end of a three-year civil war which had immediately followed 15 years of war against Japan's invasion of China. But the origins of the revolution lay in the devastating impact of imperialism on China from the 1840s onwards. As every major imperial power strengthened its hold on China, banditry and famine spread across large parts of the countryside, and millions of peasants fled to the cities.

In the 1920s a powerful nationalist movement spread across southern China, powered in large part by the rise of a very militant working class movement. This was largely led by the CCP which, on Stalin's orders, had entered into an alliance with the nationalist Guomindang movement - an alliance that was to prove fatal. The Guomindang represented capitalists and warlords, and the stronger the working class movement became the more it threatened their real interests. In 1927 the Guomindang turned its armies against workers, peasants and the CCP, and the first possibility of a real revolution against imperialism was drowned in blood. The Guomindang used its victory to install itself in government.

Mao Zedong, who was to become the undisputed leader of the CCP by 1949, led a small army into the hills following their defeat, and by the early 1930s the CCP had established Red Army base areas in remote parts of southern China. As the bases got bigger, the Guomindang came after them. By 1934 the Red Armies had to undertake a massive military retreat that came to be known as the Long March. Fewer than one in ten who started on the Long March survived, but those who did went on to be the core of one of the most successful guerrilla armies ever.

War against Japan

In 1931 Japan had invaded north eastern China in force and set up a puppet regime. From there Japanese forces advanced steadily into the rest of China, meeting no resistance from the Guomindang, who saw wiping out the CCP as the priority.

During the Long March the CCP redefined its aims as national resistance against Japan. It dropped its socialist language, called for "the unity of all patriotic classes" and for an alliance with the government. A revolt by some army leaders forced the Guomindang to agree, but the alliance was always more nominal than real. Open warfare with Japan broke out in 1937, but after brief resistance the government fled to the south west of China.

The CCP, in contrast, stood and fought, and grew hugely in the process. By 1940 the CCP had some 800,000 members, and there were 500,000 full-time Red Army soldiers, with many more local guerrillas. The deeper the Japanese army advanced into northern China, the more difficult they found it to hold the territory they had captured.

The Long March had been a harsh school in guerrilla warfare, and the CCP now applied brilliantly the lessons it had learnt. Two things combined to enable the growth of the CCP's power and influence. The first was the brutality of the Japanese army, which treated the entire population as actual or potential enemies, and reacted to any resistance by burning villages and crops and killing anyone captured. As most of the rural elites had fled to the cities, the CCP was left as the only force capable of defending the villages.

More importantly, this gave nationalism a real meaning for the peasantry. In most villages landlords and moneylenders were the law. The CCP stood above all social classes, enforcing both rent payment and maximum rents, and did so without the customary brutality of the landlords' thugs. To the desperately poor population of rural China, this was something completely unheard of.

In the process it won over an audience far beyond the "liberated areas" it ruled directly. The Guomindang, corrupt to the core and riddled with divisions, was incapable of defending China's "national interests" against Japan - the CCP had proved itself to be better at nationalism than the nationalist party.

Civil war and liberation

When Japan surrendered in 1945, the CCP occupied over 10 percent of China, and CCP-backed guerrillas were active over much larger areas. Although there was a brief lull, civil war between the Guomindang and the CCP was inevitable. The Guomindang was much better armed - with the US supplying weapons and ammunition - and on paper had much larger forces. But all it could offer was greater economic misery and the return of the old exploiting classes.

Jung Chang summed up its problems in her excellent book Wild Swans: "Corruption wreaked havoc. Inflation had risen to the unimaginable figure of just over 100,000 percent by the end of 1947 - and it was to go to 2,870,000 percent by the end of by the end of 1948 in the Guomindang areas... For the civilian population the situation was becoming more desperate every day, as increasingly more food went to the army..."

The CCP, by contrast, promised a better life, and an end to warfare and landlord rule. That vision enabled it to win battle after battle in 1947 and 1948, with hundreds of thousands of Guomindang soldiers, and even some generals, defecting to its side. By 1949 the Red Armies were larger than the enemy, and once the Guomindang leadership fled to Taiwan the revolution's victory was assured.

The new government moved swiftly to end inflation, improve living standards and curb unemployment in the cities. In the countryside the landlords were dispossessed and their land was shared among the peasantry. The years that followed saw impressive gains in healthcare, education, literacy and women's rights. For China's workers and peasants, this was liberation indeed.

Mao's victory in 1949 also had an enormous impact internationally. Although no US troops had fought against the Red Army, it was seen as a huge defeat for US imperialism, and it was to be both an inspiration and a reference point for national liberation struggles in Asia and Africa from the 1950s until the 1970s.

At the height of the Cold War, Mao's victory was seen as a victory for the Soviet Union. But the reality was that Mao had come to power without Stalin's help, and against his advice. In the early 1960s China broke openly with Stalin's successors. Although China offered no real alternative to Washington and Moscow, the simple fact that it had defied both of the superpowers weakened their grip on the world.

Socialist revolution?

1949 was a genuine revolution, which broke forever the power of the old ruling classes and ended China's domination by imperialist powers. But it was not a socialist revolution.

The civil war was fought by conventional armies, with the great mass of the population mere spectators. There were no strikes or risings by workers to welcome the Red Armies. The CCP explicitly argued against any such demonstrations, calling for workers to stay at work in cities they were about to capture.

At the time Mao didn't refer to the revolution as socialist, but rather as the victory of "new democracy" - symbolising the unity of all patriotic classes, including capitalists. More fundamentally, socialism is about transferring power from an old ruling class to the majority of workers and peasants. The reality was that the revolution of 1949 gave workers and peasants no greater power over their everyday lives than before.

Real power was concentrated in the hands of the inner circles of the CCP, who became a new ruling class of top bureaucrats, factory managers, politicians and military leaders. That class had a nationalist mission - to make China a strong industrial power capable of competing with other major world powers. This meant that improving workers' and peasants' living standards had to be subordinated to the accumulation of capital from China's meagre resources in order to begin constructing a modern industrial base. The improvements in living standards and welfare of the early 1950s didn't last. Mao launched many campaigns to speed up economic development which led to mass famine, social and political chaos and the destruction of economic capacity.

Was it worth it?

Earlier this year China overtook Germany to become the world's biggest exporter. Mao's successors have achieved what he could only dream of, though only by abandoning Mao's economic strategy. China has become a major industrial and financial power, and the past 30 years have seen the fastest economic growth ever in China's history.

The legacy of 1949 has come under sustained attack in the West, with influential biographies of both Mao and Guomindang leader Chiang Kai-shek suggesting that China would have been better off if the Guomindang had won the civil war. Mao's rule, it is argued, led to tens of millions of deaths, and China could have developed economically without the chaos of the 1950s and 1960s. But the reality is that the Guomindang represented the rule of the landlords and moneylenders, classes who held back any possibility of real economic development. Its victory would have meant the bloody reimposition of its rule, and would have most likely led to decades of guerrilla warfare.

China in the 1940s had suffered over 40 million deaths through warfare, famine and floods. In the absence of any real working class alternative, the CCP offered the only hope of breaking this seemingly endless cycle of warfare and destruction - as almost every contemporary account acknowledged.

That's why socialists should defend and celebrate 1949 - not because we want to defend the new ruling class who came to dominate China, but because the revolution was a crushing defeat for the old, vicious, corrupt ruling classes and their imperialist backers.

http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=10980

More details here:

http://www.marxists.de/china/hore/index.htm

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Scarlet:


Why do you think dialectics is the most important thing, when you consider him to be a "mass murderer"? Surely you should be explaining the reasons for your use of the term "mass murderer", rather than linking to crazy philosophical rants that no one cares about. Unless of course you think that mass murder was a side-effect of his dialectical analysis...

I don't, Mao did.


crazy philosophical rants

Abuse is no argument, and suggests you are out of your depth.


Unless of course you think that mass murder was a side-effect of his dialectical analysis

In fact, it is the direct result of the viscious policies of the new ruling class in China, justified by, among other things, dialectics

[CELMX]

oh, come on guys, stop fighting
and if you wish to, at least be more nice!

[spiltteeth]

Here's Zizek on where Mao gets it right and wrong concerning theory and dialectic.
Personally I find it enlightening.
The entire essay can be found here: http://www.lacan.com/zizmaozedong.htm

But these are the germane points :


This is how one should approach what is arguably Mao's central contribution to Marxist philosophy, his elaborations on the notion of contradiction: one should not dismiss them as a worthless philosophical regression (which, as one can easily demonstrate, relies on a vague notion of "contradiction" which simply means "struggle of opposite tendencies"). The main thesis of his great text ÇOn ContradictionÈ on the two facets of contradictions, "the principal and the non-principal contradictions in a process, and the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction," deserves a close reading. Mao's reproach to the "dogmatic Marxists" is that they "do not understand that it is precisely in the particularity of contradiction that the universality of contradiction resides":

For instance, in capitalist society the two forces in contradiction, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, form the principal contradiction. The other contradictions, such as those between the remnant feudal class and the bourgeoisie, between the peasant petty bourgeoisie ant the bourgeoisie, between the proletariat and the peasant petty bourgeoisie, between the non-monopoly capitalists and the monopoly capitalists, between bourgeois democracy and bourgeois fascism, among the capitalist countries and between imperialism and the colonies, are all determined or influenced by this principal contradiction.
When imperialism launches a war of aggression against such a country, all its various classes, except for some traitors, can temporarily unite in a national war against imperialism. At such a time, the contradiction between imperialism and the country concerned becomes the principal contradiction, while all the contradictions among the various classes within the country (including what was the principal contradiction, between the feudal system and the great masses of the people) are temporarily relegated to a secondary and subordinate position.

This is Mao's key point: the principal (universal) contradiction does not overlap with the contradiction which should be treated as dominant in a particular situation - the universal dimension literally resides in this particular contradiction. In each concrete situation, a different "particular" contradiction is the predominant one, in the precise sense that, in order to win the fight for the resolution of the principal contradiction, one should treat a particular contradiction as the predominant one, to which all other struggles should be subordinated. In China under the Japanese occupation, the patriotic unity against the Japanese was the predominant thing if Communists wanted to win the class struggle - any direct focusing on class struggle in THESE conditions went against class struggle itself. (Therein, perhaps, resides the main feature of "dogmatic opportunism": to insist on the centrality of the principal contradiction at a wrong moment.) - The further key point concerns the principal ASPECT of a contradiction; for example, with regard to the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production,

the productive forces, practice and the economic base generally play the principal and decisive role; whoever denies this is not a materialist. But it must also be admitted that in certain conditions, such aspects as the relations of production, theory and the superstructure in turn manifest themselves in the principal and decisive role. When it is impossible for the productive forces to develop without a change in the relations of production, then the change in the relations of production plays the principal and decisive role.

The political stakes of this debate are decisive: Mao's aim is to assert the key role, in the political struggle, of what the Marxist tradition usually refers to as the "subjective factor" - theory, superstructure. This is what, according to Mao, Stalin neglected: "Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR from first to last says nothing about the superstructure. It is not concerned with people; it considers things, not people. /.../ /It speaks/ only of the production relations, not of the superstructure nor politics, nor the role of the people. Communism cannot be reached unless there is a communist movement."
Mao's further elaboration on the notion of contradiction in his "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People"(1957) also cannot be reduced to its best-known feature, the rather common sense point of distinguishing between the antagonistic and the non-antagonistic contradictions:

The contradictions between ourselves and the enemy are antagonistic contradictions. Within the ranks of the people, the contradictions among the working people are non-antagonistic, while those between the exploited and the exploiting classes have a non-antagonistic as well as an antagonistic aspect. /.../ under the people's democratic dictatorship two different methods, one dictatorial and the other democratic, should be used to resolve the two types of contradictions which differ in nature - those between ourselves and the enemy and those among the people.

One should always read this distinction together with its more "ominous" supplement, a warning that the two aspects may overlap: "In ordinary circumstances, contradictions among the people are not antagonistic. But if they are not handled properly, or if we relax our vigilance and lower our guard, antagonism may arise." The democratic dialogue, the peaceful co-existence of different orientations among the working class, is not something simply given, a natural state of things, it is something gained and sustained by vigilance and struggle. Here, also, struggle has priority over unity: the very space of unity has to be won through struggle.

So what are we to do with these elaborations? One should be very precise in diagnosing, at the very abstract level of theory, where Mao was right and where he was wrong. Mao was right in rejecting the standard notion of "dialectical synthesis" as the "reconciliation" of the opposites, as a higher unity which encompasses their struggle; he was wrong in formulating this rejection, this insistence on the priority of struggle, division, over every synthesis or unity, in the terms of a general cosmology-ontology of the "eternal struggle of opposites" - this is why he got caught in the simplistic, properly non-dialectical, notion of the "bad infinity" of struggle. Mo clearly regresses here to primitive pagan "wisdoms" on how every creature, every determinate form of life, sooner or later meets its end: "One thing destroys another, things emerge, develop, and are destroyed, everywhere is like this. If things are not destroyed by others, then they destroy themselves."

The conceptual consequence of this "bad infinity" that pertains to vulgar evolutionism is Mao's consistent rejection of the "negation of negation" as a universal dialectical law. In explicit polemics against Engels (and, incidentally, following Stalin who, in his "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism," also doesn't mention "negation of negation" among the "four main features of Marxist dialectics"):

Engels talked about the three categories, but as for me I don't believe in two of those categories. (The unity of opposites is the most basic law, the transformation of quality and quantity into one another is the unity of the opposites quality and quantity, and the negation of the negation does not exist at all.) /.../ There is no such thing as the negation of the negation. Affirmation, negation, affirmation, negation in the development of things, every link in the chain of events is both affirmation and negation. Slave-holding society negated primitive society, but with reference to feudal society it constituted, in turn, the affirmation. Feudal society constituted the negation in relation to slave-holding society but it was in turn the affirmation with reference to capitalist society. Capitalist society was the negation in relation to feudal society, but it is, in turn, the affirmation in relation to socialist society.

Along these lines, Mao scathingly dismisses the category of "dialectical synthesis" of the opposites, promoting his own version of "negative dialectics" - every synthesis is for him ultimately what Adorno in his critique of Lukacs called erpresste Versoehnung - enforced reconciliation - at best a momentary pause in the ongoing struggle, which occurs not when the opposites are united, but when one side simply wins over the other:

What is synthesis? You have all witnessed how the two opposites, the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, were synthesized on the mainland. The synthesis took place like this: their armies came, and we devoured them, we ate them bite by bite. /.../ One thing eating another, big fish eating little fish, this is synthesis. It has never been put like this in books. I have never put it this way in my books either. For his part, Yang Hsien-chen believes that two combine into one, and that synthesis is the indissoluble tie between two opposites. What indissoluble ties are there in this world? Things may be tied, but in the end they must be severed. There is nothing which cannot be severed.

(Note, again, the tone of sharing a secret not to be rendered public, the cruel-realistic lesson that undermines the happy public optimism...) This was at the core of the famous debate, in the late 1950s, about the One and the Two (are the Two united into One, or is the One divided into Two?): "In any given thing, the unity of opposites is conditional, temporary and transitory, and hence relative, whereas the struggle of opposites is absolute." This brings us to what one is tempted to call Mao's ethico-political injunction - to paraphrase the last words of Beckett's L'innomable: "in the silence you don't know, you must go on severing, I can't go on, I'll go on severing." [13] This injunction should be located into its proper philosophical lineage. There are, roughly speaking, two philosophical approaches to an antagonistic constellation of either/or: either one opts for one pole against the other (Good against Evil, freedom against oppression, morality against hedonism, etc.), or one adopts a "deeper" attitude of emphasizing the complicity of the opposites, and of advocating a proper measure or the unity. Although Hegel's dialectic seems a version of the second approach (the "synthesis" of opposites), he opts for an unheard-of THIRD version: the way to resolve the deadlock is neither to engage oneself in fighting for the "good" side against the "bad" one, nor in trying to bring them together in a balanced "synthesis," but in opting for the BAD side of the initial either/or. Of course, this "choice of the worst" fails, but in this failure, it undermines the entire field of the alternative and thus enables us to overcome its terms.

The first one to propose such a matrix of divisions was Gorgias. His On Nature, or the Non-existent (the text survived only in summary form in Sextus Empiricus, and Aristotle's On Melissus, Xeonphanes, and Gorgias) can be summed up in three propositions: (a) Nothing exists; (b) If anything existed, it could not be known; (c) If anything did exit, and could be known, it could not be communicated to others. If there ever was a clear case of the Freudian logic of the borrowed kettle (providing mutually exclusive reasons), this is it: (1) Nothing exists. (2) What exists, cannot be known. (3) What we know, cannot be communicated to others... But more interesting is the repeated "diagonal" mode of division of genre into species: Things exist or not. If they exist, they can be known or not. If they can be known, they can be communicated to others or not. Surprisingly, we find the same progressive differentiation at the opposite end of the history of Western philosophy, in the XXth century sophists called "dialectical materialism." In Stalin's "On Dialectical and Historical Materialism," when the four features of dialectics are enumerated:

The principal features of the Marxist dialectical method are as follows:
Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard nature as an accidental agglomeration of things, of phenomena, unconnected with, isolated from, and independent of, each other, but as a connected and integral whole /.../.
Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that nature is not a state of rest and immobility, stagnation and immutability, but a state of continuous movement and change, of continuous renewal and development /.../.
Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics does not regard the process of development as a simple process of growth, where quantitative changes do not lead to qualitative changes, but as a development which passes from insignificant and imperceptible quantitative changes to open' fundamental changes' to qualitative changes; a development in which the qualitative changes occur not gradually, but rapidly and abruptly, taking the form of a leap from one state to another /.../.
Contrary to metaphysics, dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in all things and phenomena of nature, for they all have their negative and positive sides, a past and a future, something dying away and something developing; and that the struggle between these opposites /.../ constitutes the internal content of the process of development.

First, nature is not a conglomerate of dispersed phenomena, but a connected whole. Then, this Whole is not immobile, but in constant movement and change. Then, this change is not only a gradual quantitative drifting, but involves qualitative jumps and ruptures. Finally, this qualitative development is not a matter of harmonious deployment, but is propelled by the struggle of the opposites... The trick here is that we are effectively NOT dealing merely with the Platonic dieresis, gradual subdivision of a genus into species and then species into subspecies: the underlying premise is that this "diagonal" process of division is really vertical, i.e., that we are dealing with the different aspects of the SAME division. To put it in Stalinist jargon: an immobile Whole is not really a Whole, but just a conglomerate of elements; development which does not involve qualitative jumps is not really a development, but just an immobile stepping at the same place; a qualitative change which does not involve struggle of the opposites is not really a change, but just a quantitative monotonous movement... Or, to put it in more ominous terms: those who advocate qualitative change without struggle of the opposites REALLY oppose change and advocate the continuation of the same; those who advocate change without qualitative jumps REALLY oppose change and advocate immobility... the political aspect of this logic is clearly discernible: "those who advocate the transformation of capitalism into socialism without class struggle REALLY reject socialism and want capitalism to continue," etc.

There are two famous quips of Stalin which are both grounded in this logic. When Stalin answered the question "Which deviation is worse, the Rightist or the Leftist one?" by "They are both worse!", the underlying premise is that the Leftist deviation is REALLY ("objectively," as Stalinists liked to put it) not leftist at all, but a concealed Rightist one! When Stalin wrote, in a report on a party congress, that the delegates, with the majority of votes, unanimously approved the CC resolution, the underlying premise is, again, that there was really no minority within the party: those who voted against thereby excluded themselves from the party... In all these cases, the genus repeatedly overlaps (fully coincides) with one of its species. This is also what allows Stalin to read history retroactively, so that things "become clear" retroactively: it was not that Trotsky was first fighting for the revolution with Lenin and Stalin and then, at a certain stage, opted for a different strategy than the one advocated by Stalin; this last opposition (Trotsky/Stalin) "makes it clear" how, "objectively," Trotsky was against revolution all the time back.

We find the same procedure in the classificatory impasse the Stalinist ideologists and political activists faced in their struggle for collectivization in the years 1928-1933. In their attempt to account for their effort to crush the peasants' resistance in "scientific" Marxist terms, they divided peasants into three categories (classes): the poor peasants (no land or minimal land, working for others), natural allies of the workers; the autonomous middle peasants, oscillating between the exploited and exploiters; the rich peasants, "kulaks" (employing other workers, lending them money or seeds, etc.), the exploiting "class enemy" which, as such, has to be "liquidated." However, in practice, this classification became more and more blurred and inoperative: in the generalized poverty, clear criteria no longer applied, and other two categories often joined kulaks in their resistance to forced collectivization. An additional category was thus introduced, that of a subkulak, a peasant who, although, with regard to his economic situation, was to poor to be considered a kulak proper, nonetheless shared the kulak "counter-revolutionary" attitude. Subkulak was thus

a term without any real social content even by Stalinist standards, but merely rather unconvincingly masquerading as such. As was officially stated, 'by kulak we mean the carrier of certain political tendencies which are most frequently discernible in the subkulak, male and female.' By this means, any peasant whatever was liable to dekulakisation; and the subkulak notion was widely employed, enlarging the category of victims greatly beyond the official estimate of kulaks proper even at its most strained. [14]

No wonder that the official ideologists and economists finally renounced the very effort to provide an "objective" definition of kulak: "The grounds given in one Soviet comment are that 'the old attitudes of a kulak have almost disappeared, and the new ones do not lend themselves to recognition.'" [15] The art of identifying a kulak was thus no longer a matter of objective social analysis; it became the matter of a complex "hermeneutics of suspicion," of identifying one's "true political attitudes" hidden beneath deceiving public proclamations, so that Pravda had to concede that "even the best activists often cannot spot the kulak." [16]

What all this points towards is the dialectical mediation of the "subjective" and "objective" dimension: subkulak no longer designates an "objective" social category; it designates the point at which objective social analysis breaks down and subjective political attitude directly inscribes itself into the "objective" order - in Lacanese, subkulak is the point of subjectivization of the "objective" chain poor peasant - middle peasant - kulak. It is not an "objective" sub-category (or sub-division) of the class of kulaks, but simply the name for the kulak subjective political attitude - this accounts for the paradox that, although it appears as a subdivision of the class of kulaks, subkulaks is a species that overflows its own genus (that of kulaks), since subkulaks are also to be found among middle and even poor farmers. In short, subkulak names political division as such, the Enemy whose presence traverses the ENTIRE social body of peasants, which is why he can be found everywhere, in all three peasant classes. This brings us back to the procedure of Stalinist dieresis: subkulak names the excessive element that traverses all classes, the outgrowth which has to be eliminated.
So where does Mao fall short here? In the way he opposes this injunction to severe, to divide, to dialectical synthesis. When Mao mockingly refers to "synthesizing" as the destruction of the enemy or his subordination, his mistake resides in this very mocking attitude - he doesn't see that this IS the true Hegelian synthesis... that is to say, what is the Hegelian "negation of negation"? First, the old order is negated within its own ideologico-political form; then, this form itself has to be negated. Those who oscillate, those who afraid to make the second step of overcoming this form itself, are those who (to repeat Robespierre) want a "revolution without revolution" - and Lenin displays all the strength of his "hermeneutics of suspicion" in discerning the different forms of this retreat. The true victory (the true "negation of negation") occurs when the enemy talks your language. In this sense, a true victory is a victory in defeat: it occurs when one's specific message is accepted as a universal ground, even by the enemy. (Say, in the case of rational science versus belief, the true victory of science takes place when the church starts to defend itself in the language of science.) Or, in contemporary politics of the United Kingdom, as many a perspicuous commentator observed, the Thatcher revolution was in itself chaotic, impulsive, marked by unpredictable contingencies, and it was only the "Third Way" Blairite government who was able to institutionalize it, to stabilize it into new institutional forms, or, to put it in Hegelese, to raise (what first appeared as) a contingency, a historical accident, into necessity. In this sense, Blair repeated Thatcherism, elevating it into a concept, in the same way that, for Hegel, Augustus repeated Caesar, transforming-sublating a (contingent) personal name into a concept, a title. Thatcher was not a Thatcherite, she was just herself - it was only Blair (more than John Major) who truly formed Thatcherism as a notion. The dialectical irony of history is that only a (nominal) ideologico-political enemy can do this to you, can elevate you into a concept - the empirical instigator has to be knocked off (Julius Caesar had to be murdered, Thatcher had to be ignominously deposed).

There is a surprising lesson of the last decades, the lesson of the West European Third Way social democracy, but also the lesson of the Chinese Communists presiding over what is arguably the most explosive development of capitalism in the entire history: we can do it better. Recall the classical Marxist account of the overcoming of capitalism: capitalism unleashed the breath-taking dynamics of self-enhancing productivity - in capitalism, "all things solid melt into thin air," capitalism is the greatest revolutionizer in the entire history of humanity; on the other hand, this capitalist dynamics is propelled by its own inner obstacle or antagonism - the ultimate limit of capitalism (of the capitalist self-propelling productivity) is the Capital itself, i.e. the capitalist incessant development and revolutionizing of its own material conditions, the mad dance of its unconditional spiral of productivity, is ultimately nothing but a desperate flight forward to escape its own debilitating inherent contradiction... Marx's fundamental mistake was here to conclude, from these insights, that a new, higher social order (Communism) is possible, an order that would not only maintain, but even raise to a higher degree and effectively fully release the potential of the self-increasing spiral of productivity which, in capitalism, on account of its inherent obstacle/contradiction, is again and again thwarted by socially destructive economic crises. In short, what Marx overlooked is that, to put it in the standard Derridean terms, this inherent obstacle/antagonism as the "condition of impossibility" of the full deployment of the productive forces is simultaneously its "condition of possibility": if we abolish the obstacle, the inherent contradiction of capitalism, we do not get the fully unleashed drive to productivity finally delivered of its impediment, but we lose precisely this productivity that seemed to be generated and simultaneously thwarted by capitalism - if we take away the obstacle, the very potential thwarted by this obstacle dissipates... And it is as if this logic of "obstacle as a positive condition" which underlied the failure of the socialist attempts to overcome capitalism, is now returning with a vengeance in capitalism itself: capitalism can fully thrive not in the unencumbered reign of the market, but only when an obstacle (the minimal Welfare State interventions, up to the direct political rule of the Communist Party, as is the case in China) constraints its unimpeded reign.

So, ironically, THIS is the "synthesis" of capitalism and Communism in Mao's sense: in a unique kind of the poetic justice of history, it was capitalism which "synthetized" the Maoist Communism. The key news from China in the last years is the emergence of large-scale workers movement, protesting the work conditions which are the price for China rapidly becoming the world's foremost manufacturing place, and the brutal way the authorities cracked down on it - a new proof, if one is still needed, that China is today the ideal capitalist state: freedom for the capital, with the state doing the "dirty job" of controlling the workers. China as the emerging superpower of the XXIth century thus seems to embody a new kind of capitalism: disregard for ecological consequences, disregard for workers' rights, everything subordinated to the ruthless drive to develop and become the new superpower. The big qustion is: what will the Chinese do with regard to the biogenetic revolution? Is it not a safe wager that they will throw themselves into unconstrained genetic manipulations of plants, animals and humans, bypassing all our ÈWesternÇ moral prejudices and limitations?

This is the ultimate price for Mao's theoretical mistake of rejection "negation of negation," of his failure to grasp how "negation of negation" is not a compromise between a position and its too radical negation, but, on the contrary, the only true negation. [17] And it is because Mao is unable to theoretically formulate this self-relating negation of form itself that he gets caught in the "bad infinity" of endless negating, scissions into two, subdivision... In Hegelese, Mao's dialectic remains at the level of Understanding, of fixed notional oppositions; it is unable to formulate the properly dialectical self-relating of notional determinations. It is this "serious mistake" (to use a Stalinist term) which led Mao, when he was courageous enough to draw all the consequences from his stances, to reach a properly nonsensical conclusion that, in order to invigorate class struggle, one should directly open up the field to the enemy:

Let them go in for capitalism. Society is very complex. If one only goes in for socialism and not for capitalism, isn't that too simple? Wouldn't we then lack the unity of opposites, and be merely one-sided? Let them do it. Let them attack us madly, demonstrate in the streets, take up arms to rebel - I approve all of these things. Society is very complex, there is not a single commune, a single hsien, a single department of the Central Committee, in which one cannot divide into two.

This notion of dialectics provides the basic matrix of Mao's politics, its repeated oscillation between "liberal" openness and then the "hard line" purge: first, allow the proverbial "hundred flowers to blossom," so that the enemies will actualize and fully express their reactionary hidden tendencies; then, once everyone's true positions are clearly articulated, engage in a ruthless struggle. Again, what Mao fails to do here is to proceed to the properly Hegelian "identity of the opposites," and to recognize in the force the Revolution is fighting and trying to annihilate its own essence, as is the case in G.K.Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, in which the secret police chief organizing the search for the anarchist leader and this mysterious leader at the end appear to be one and the same person (God himself, incidentally).


In full :
http://www.lacan.com/zizmaozedong.htm

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Unfortunately, Zizek uncritically evaluates Mao's 'theory' of contradiction (a theory largely invented to excuse the class colaboration with the Guomindang), which, as I have shown, does not work anyway:

http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=460

Two long posts half-way down the page.

[Leo]

http://en.internationalism.org/ir/094_china_part3.html


Mao Zedong’s political current within the Communist Party of China (CPC) only appeared in the 1930s, in the midst of the counter-revolution when the CPC had been first defeated and physically decimated, then had become an organ of capital. Mao formed one of the numerous coteries which fought for control of the party, and so revealed its degeneration. Maoism, right from the start, had nothing to do with the proletarian revolution, except that it emerged from the counter-revolution that crushed the working class.

In fact, Mao Zedong only took control of the CPC in 1945, when “Maoism” became the official doctrine of the party, after the liquidation of the previously dominant coterie of Wang Ming, and while the CPC was fully involved in the sinister game of world imperialist war. In this sense, the rise of Mao Zedong’s gang is the direct product of his complicity with the great imperialist gangsters.

All this might astonish anyone who only knows the history of 20th century China through Mao’s writing, or bourgeois historiography. It has to be said that Mao took the art of falsifying the history of China and the CPC (he benefited from the experience of Stalinism and the gangs that preceded him in power from 1928 onwards) to such a level, that simply to recount events as they happened takes on the air of a fairy-tale.

This immense falsification is founded on the bourgeois and profoundly reactionary nature of Mao Zedong’s ideology. In rewriting history, in order to appear to the world as the eternal and infallible leader of the CPC, Mao was of course motivated by the ambition to strengthen his own political power. Nonetheless, he also served the fundamental interests of the bourgeoisie: in the long term, it was vital to wipe out the historic lessons that the working class could learn from its experience during the 1920s; in the short term, the working and peasant masses had to be brought to take part in the imperialist slaughter. Maoism perfectly satisfied these two objectives (...)

[GatesofLenin]

Indeed, capitalism is constantly killing people. Every day, over 25,000 people die of hunger. The 50 million deaths (wrongly) attributed to Mao are surpassed by capitalism in just a few years, and without the capitalist leaders making any real effort to stop it.
I know for a fact that there's over 1 million children each day that go hungry here in Canada. FOR SHAME CAPITALIST BASTARDS! Time for a revolution! :cursing:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for that Leo; it more-or-less says what the articles I posted say.

[red cat]

Still you are purposefully avoiding our present revolutionary practice and sticking to falsification of history or abstraction to subjects that very few people understand.

[Luisrah]

I know for a fact that there's over 1 million children each day that go hungry here in Canada. FOR SHAME CAPITALIST BASTARDS! Time for a revolution! :cursing:

Every year:
10 million of hunger
2 million of malaria (could be avoided by buying a mosquito-net)
2 million of diarrheya (could be avoided by buying an oral serum that costs 25 cents)

Assuming that Communism killed 100 million people (heh) , Capitalism kills that same amount in around 7 years.
And this is not mentioning the 8 million stillbirths and newborn deaths every year. (the result of the same factors that cause the death and disability of mothers - poor maternal health, inadequate care, poor hygiene and inappropriate management of delivery, as well as lack of newborn care.)

Plus, ''communism has already stopped killing'', Capitalism is still around.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Still you are purposefully avoiding our present revolutionary practice and sticking to falsification of history or abstraction to subjects that very few people understand.

This thread is about Mao, and thus includes his radically flawed 'theory', which he used to excuse practically everything he did. So, if that 'theory' is no good -- well, you work the rest out.

So, my posts are relevant.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Luisrah, although the figures you quote are shocking, those that the 'communists' killed should in fact be added to the crimes of the capitalist class, since the regimes in the former USSR (after Lenin died) and in Maost China were both state capitalist.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



This thread is about Mao, and thus includes his radically flawed 'theory', which he used to excuse practically everything he did. So, if that 'theory' is no good -- well, you work the rest out.

So, my posts are relevant.

The applications of Mao's theories are not confined to the practice in revolutionary China until Mao's death. The present Maoist movements base their practice on them too. Since the history of both revolutionary USSR and CPC have been distorted by proportions that would shame Goebbels, by counter-revolutionaries, who have produced mountainous amounts of "facts" and "analyses"(and yet, heavens know why even after being such superb experts, have been completely unable to challenge the oppressive state-machineries of today anywhere :) ), it is very easy to transform any kind of debate concerning history to an "is to - is not" type.

The present is far more difficult to distort. So let's talk about the present Maoist movements.

[scarletghoul]

Luisrah, although the figures you quote are shocking, those that the 'communists' killed should in fact be added to the crimes of the capitalist class, since the regimes in the former USSR (after Lenin died) and in Maost China were both state capitalist.
Lol :lol: So the USSR suddenly turned state-capitalist when Lenin died?? You're clearly just picking the historical figures you like and trying to define what is capitalist and socialist by the dates of their existence, rather than by looking at the real economics. How was the USSR state capitalist after Lenin but not while he was still alive? A consistent (though incorrect) argument could be made from the anti-Leninist view that the USSR was always state-capitalist, since Lenin got rid of the soviets and done the New Economic Policy and all that. But to say that it was socialist under Lenin and turned state-capitalist when he died doesnt seem to make any sense, and just shows an illogical urge to criticise all 'stalinist' regimes while upholding the great Lenin figure.

[BobKKKindle$]

Lol :lol: So the USSR suddenly turned state-capitalist when Lenin died??

No, Rosa didn't say that at all. It is the argument of the SWP that the Soviet Union became state-capitalist in 1928 because it was at this point that the bourgeoisie, in the form of the bureaucracy, which had hitherto not raised itself to the position of the ruling class, began its project of developing the productive forces through the intense exploitation of the working class and peasantry, this process corresponding to the primitive accumulation of capital that took place in other capitalist societies such as Britain, with a similar human cost.

[Leo]

The present is far more difficult to distort. So let's talk about the present Maoist movements. You mean about the Shining Path massacring peasants indiscriminately, not even sparing children? The Naxalites taking lives of workers with their bombings in public places?

How about the Nepali Maoists proclaiming proudly that they are going to build capitalism, inviting foreign investors to Nepal, talking about banning strikes almost as soon as they got to power?

Indeed the present is far more difficult to distort, contrary to the history of China in the first half of the last century on which the Maoist distortions have became myths commonly accepted by most history-writers of the whole world capitalist order.

[red cat]

The Naxalites taking lives of workers with their bombings in public places?


When and where?

EDIT: Some more questions, please answer these after you deal with the first one.

If the naxalites deliberately bomb public places, how come their movement is becoming so huge that at places where the government forces conduct operations, they find that the whole adult male population of those areas has moved out, and a militia composed of the same attacks them at night?

If naxalites are conducting an armed-struggle, then an armed opposition to the oppressive Indian state is indeed possible. In this situation, why have the Indian left communists not taken up the revolutionary task of arming the proletariat?

[spiltteeth]

You mean about the Shining Path massacring peasants indiscriminately, not even sparing children? The Naxalites taking lives of workers with their bombings in public places?

How about the Nepali Maoists proclaiming proudly that they are going to build capitalism, inviting foreign investors to Nepal, talking about banning strikes almost as soon as they got to power?

Indeed the present is far more difficult to distort, contrary to the history of China in the first half of the last century on which the Maoist distortions have became myths commonly accepted by most history-writers of the whole world capitalist order.

I think I understand your argument about China, and the Shining Path was indeed steeped in excessive violence, but what you say about the Nepal Maoists really is an unfair characterization.

There's a few threads in the politics section, but its undeniable that Nepal indeed must accumulate capital, and ideal situations hardly exist there; they are in a far harder spot then the Bolsheviks ever were; so instead of inviting
business to come in and build a dam etc, what would you suggest?
Nepal is in an extremely precarious situation, if India feels like it they can simply close their borders and starve them to death.
Its a global world, and they've made great strides.
I understand you uphold the 1917 revolution, but one could easily dismiss it the same way by saying things like "Oh, those Bolsheviks come into power, proudly shutting down papers and killing anarchists etc etc"

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Scarlet:


So the USSR suddenly turned state-capitalist when Lenin died?? You're clearly just picking the historical figures you like and trying to define what is capitalist and socialist by the dates of their existence, rather than by looking at the real economics. How was the USSR state capitalist after Lenin but not while he was still alive? A consistent (though incorrect) argument could be made from the anti-Leninist view that the USSR was always state-capitalist, since Lenin got rid of the soviets and done the New Economic Policy and all that. But to say that it was socialist under Lenin and turned state-capitalist when he died doesnt seem to make any sense, and just shows an illogical urge to criticise all 'stalinist' regimes while upholding the great Lenin figure.

You obviously think that the word 'after' always means 'one second later'. So, if I were to say, that the second world war was after the first, you'd jump in with an inane:


So, the second world war 'suddenly' happened after the first, eh?

Keep taking the tablets...

[Leo]

When and where?

There are numerous examples, bombings of schools, railway stations, public buildings, murder of villagers, drivers etc. You can do your own research for the details if you wish.


If the naxalites deliberately bomb public places, how come their movement is becoming so huge that at places where the government forces conduct operations

Being brutal has got nothing to do with having mass support. The CPI (M), for instance, also has mass support despite its horrible anti-working class practices. Obama has mass support in the US. Hitler had mass support in Germany.

This question gives away the democratic-liberal mindset of western Maoism.


If naxalites are conducting an armed-struggle, then an armed opposition to the oppressive Indian state is indeed possible.

Pakistan, for example, can start a war with India tomorrow also, putting forward, again, an armed opposition to the oppressive Indian state. This would of course not make the Pakistani government any less oppressive.

Of course it is possible for a pseudo-radical armed bourgeois group to murder a few cops and people, bomb a few buildings and put forward "armed opposition". This does not make their individualist-terrorist armed actions positive for the proletariat in any way nor do they advance the struggle of the proletariat at all.


In this situation, why have the Indian left communists not taken up the revolutionary task of arming the proletariat?

Arming the proletariat can not be the task of a minority of the class, even if the minority we are talking about commands the influence and strength enabling it to be called the class party, the vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat. The class as a whole and the class itself arms itself, and the communist minority can only be an organic part of this struggle of the class, along with other struggles of it.


but what you say about the Nepal Maoists really is an unfair characterization.

It is not a characterization, it is a statement of facts.


but its undeniable that Nepal indeed must accumulate capital

I am interested in the interests of the Nepali working class, not in "what Nepal must do".


so instead of inviting business to come in and build a dam etc, what would you suggest?

I don't see my task as a revolutionary as suggesting alternative policies for capitalist governments.


I understand you uphold the 1917 revolution, but one could easily dismiss it the same way by saying things like "Oh, those Bolsheviks come into power, proudly shutting down papers and killing anarchists etc etc"

Except one can't really do that, because those things did not happen immediately, they happened over the years increasingly, as an expression of the degeneration of the revolution. (I am saying this excluding the shutting down of counter-revolutionary or reactionary papers, which indeed would be something to be proud of.)

[red cat]

There are numerous examples, bombings of schools, railway stations, public buildings, murder of villagers, drivers etc. You can do your own research for the details if you wish.

Please be specific about your claims that naxals' action harm the masses. Railway stations have been attacked due to military reasons. Whenever these are blown up, they are evacuated first. Oppressive policemen, parliamentary party goons and their informers are also villagers. They have to be dealt as armed counter-revolutionaries are dealt with during a revolution. The majority of schools in rural India are being converted into camps for government forces. These are the ones that Maoists attack. You'd better do some research on this yourself.




Being brutal has got nothing to do with having mass support. The CPI (M), for instance, also has mass support despite its horrible anti-working class practices. Obama has mass support in the US. Hitler had mass support in Germany.

This question gives away the democratic-liberal mindset of western Maoism.
Do not compare the CPI(M) with Obama and Hitler. The CPI(M)'s domain of oppression lies in the third-world where the imperialist plunder is most prominent. The CPI(M) has absolutely no mass-support. It operates with the help of state-machinery and armed goons. A read-up on the anti-SEZ struggle in rural India is a good source for knowing about all this.




Pakistan, for example, can start a war with India tomorrow also, putting forward, again, an armed opposition to the oppressive Indian state. This would of course not make the Pakistani government any less oppressive.Pakistan started as a different nation with war-supplies. Naxalites had to start from nothing, swell their ranks to hundreds of thousands, snatch weapons from strong government forces. They are reported to "melt within the villagers" after raids. Your knowledge of military science is so poor that you don't know that a prolonged guerrilla struggle of this type can be waged only with huge mass support, and you are comparing that with an outer invasion.




Of course it is possible for a pseudo-radical armed bourgeois group to murder a few cops and people, bomb a few buildings and put forward "armed opposition". This does not make their individualist-terrorist armed actions positive for the proletariat in any way nor do they advance the struggle of the proletariat at all.Are you refering to the naxals here? Prbably you haven't read anything about them since the early 70s then? Even then you require to explain why they are a "pseudo-radical armed bourgeois group" and you are a communist.

Present day naxal activities include building schools, dams, hospitals,(these the government forces destroy when they operate in those areas) digging canals, taking over small cities temporarily, conducting jailbreaks, challenging companies of government forces, organizing the urban proletariat, building peoples' militia etc. to name a few.




Arming the proletariat can not be the task of a minority of the class, even if the minority we are talking about commands the influence and strength enabling it to be called the class party, the vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat. The class as a whole and the class itself arms itself, and the communist minority can only be an organic part of this struggle of the class, along with other struggles of it.If a communist party itself does not take initiative to boost subjective conditions in order to bring about qualitative social change, then what is the point of its pathetic existence?


EDIT: some links to support my claims.

Notice the part that refers to the "practice" of government forces occupying schools.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090812/jsp/bengal/story_11351417.jsp

The Jehanabad jail-break.

http://www.hindu.com/2005/12/06/stories/2005120614750500.htm

The armed conflict in Lalgarh. See how many companies fight them at a single place.

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncategorized/crpf-troopers-choppers-hunt-for-maoists-in-maharashtra_100258906.html

Participation of the masses as militias.

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/national/lalgarh-revolt-grows-ap-maoist-plotter-708

A military action in Chattisgarh

http://www.merinews.com/article/maoists-attack-in-chattisgarh-kills-30-policemen/15775787.shtml

[scarletghoul]

What the fuck is wrong with you Leo? The Naxalites have no support from the bourgeoisie, any state, or any power other than the raw discontent of the Indian people. Obama, Hitler, etc, all had support from sectors of the ruling class and that is why they had power. The Naxalites have none of that, and the only thing keeping them afloat is the mass support of the people, which they have no choice but to earn through good policies. You clearly know nothing of the situation in India. Why would a "psuedo-radical force" be arming the peasants, fighting the bourgeois state and organising the urban proletariat? It really makes no sense man. It's a revolution goin down right now, and this ultra-leftist bullshit makes me sick.


Keep taking the tablets...
Don't say such stuff about mental illness; it is deeply offensive.

[Leo]

The Naxalites have no support from the bourgeoisieSo would you consider the tribal leaders supporting the Naxalites not to be bourgeois? It is well known that an overwhelming majority of the Naxalite cadres themselves come from the bourgeois intelligentsia.


any state, or any power Where do you think all the weapons and the bombs came from genius?


Why would a "psuedo-radical force" be arming the peasantsReminds me of the Green Army in Russia, the anti-Bolshevik peasant army that is. Wonder why a rural bourgeois organization would mobilize and make an army out of the peasantry.


fighting the bourgeois state Shooting a few people and planting a few bombs, that is.


and organising the urban proletariatAre you referring to minor unions like the All India Central Council of Trade Unions here?


It's a revolution goin down right nowReality, as ever, tends to be very different from the romanticized images in the minds of liberal Stalinists.


Please be specific about your claims that naxals' action harm the masses. Railway stations have been attacked due to military reasons. Whenever these are blown up, they are evacuated first. Oppressive policemen, parliamentary party goons and their informers are also villagers. They have to be dealt as armed counter-revolutionaries are dealt with during a revolution. The majority of schools in rural India are being converted into camps for government forces. These are the ones that Maoists attack. You'd better do some research on this yourself.From denying brutal attacks, bombings and murders, you have went on to justifying them. I have little to add to that.


Do not compare the CPI(M) with Obama and Hitler. The CPI(M)'s domain of oppression lies in the third-world where the imperialist plunder is most prominent.You give me the impression of someone who basically knows nothing of the "third-world".


The CPI(M) has absolutely no mass-support. It operates with the help of state-machinery and armed goons. It is not that rare that overly-enthustiastic distant supporters of something present what they want to see rather than what there actually is as reality.

All bourgeois organizations rule with the help of state-machinery and armed goons, I would say that in areas they are in control Naxalites also rule with the help of a mini state-like structure they have and their own armed goons. And still, there is no bourgeois organization anywhere that is capable of ruling without having mass support.


Are you refering to the naxals here? Prbably you haven't read anything about them since the early 70s then? Even then you require to explain why they are a "pseudo-radical armed bourgeois group" and you are a communist.They murder students, workers, villagers, proletarian civillians and so forth. Their practice is a substitutionist, anti-working class political practice where the relationship the leadership has with the base is indistinguishable from that of any other bourgeois organization. Their ideology is, based on maoism, an ideology of a block of different classes, tying the proletariat to the progressive, national bourgeoisie openly.


If a communist party itself does not take initiative to boost subjective conditions in order to bring about qualitative social change, then what is the point of its pathetic existence?

You can read John Reed's Ten Days Which Shook the World or Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution or Richard Müller's History of the German Revolution to get an idea of what the point and function of an actual communist party in a proletarian revolution is.

[Leo]

The revolution in Russia was as different from the revolution in China and other places.

Which revolution in China? The proletarian revolution of 1927, or the bourgeois coup d'etat of 1949?

A proletarian revolution is a proletarian revolution.


Noone but utter idealist fools can expect all revolutions to look and feel the same as Russia 1917.

So calling for proletarian revolution in all countries, and having an understanding of what a proletarian revolution is idealism? Funny, from Marx to Lenin, from Engels to Luxemburg, you have branded the whole marxist movement idealist.


Also, I'm sure the communist left idealists used bourgeois propaganda to slander the Bolsheviks in a similar way

This is a lie.


in a similar way as they use similar bourgeois propaganda to slander the Maoists of today. This just proves that ultraleft tendencies are born out of militant dogmatism and anti-materialism as Lenin described in Left-wing Communism.

Not understanding something is better than wrongly understanding it. People fickle enough to change the flags they claim they are carrying will not be considered sincere by anyone even if they have good intentions. You deserve nothing other than being mocked, being mistrusted even by those who you have now decided to regard as your comrades.

[Comrade B]

Mao's ideology is based around the idea of constant struggle. The people must constantly have an enemy to fight against and to bring to justice for their crimes. The beginning of the struggle sessions were attacking only land lords, "evil gentry" and corrupt capitalists, however as they ran out of real enemies, the struggle sessions began to target go after people for less important "crimes" such as feudal tails (being related to rich people) or even having relatives who fought for the GMD/KMT as ordinary soldiers.

There are also a large number of deaths pinned on Mao which were not intentional from the Great Leap Forward, which was a failed attempt to industrialize the country. During the Great Leap Forward there was a famine caused by a mix of several elements
Bad weather
The 3 Pest Campaign (which called for people to kill all sparrows, resulting in massive uncontrolled numbers of locusts)
The 5 Year Plan's attempt to create a peasant based steel industry during which, in an act of misguided revolutionary fervor, peasants melted down all metal they owned and could find to turn it into steel. This included farming instruments.

After the famine, which caused a lot of deaths was the Cultural Revolution, which was the result of the Party splitting way from Mao. In response, Mao called for students to fight for him against the party. Naturally, without any true leadership, the Red Guards (students and often workers who were fighting for Mao) often engaged in very violent fights against party members, the wealthy, moderates, and non-Maoists. By the end of this period, armies of different Red Guard groups were engaging in violent battles with each other which began with people simply fighting each other with fists, rocks and sticks, and gradually escalated from there to knives, spears, and bows and molotov cocktails, to explosives and guns. During one fight, one red guard army (I believe it was called the Regiment), during a cross campus war, forced the other Red Guard army into a building on campus, locked them into the building after several clashes with bows and spears (as well as an armored tractor which was later blown up by a molotov cocktail), and lit the building on fire, refusing to allow fire fighters access to the building. Fortunately the locals saw this and demanded the Regiment allow the other red guards to surrender before any more people died.


To give Mao some credit, though he fucked up severely in the years after revolution, the system which he destroyed was one of the most disgusting classist garbage governments ever. Leadership was hereditary and led by idiots who took part in such moronic actions as taxing people to build a navy to defend the country, and then wasting all the cash on building a stone party boat instead and building man made lakes identical to other lakes in other parts of the country. Women were considered dirt who could be bought and sold.
Landlords could get away with whatever the fuck they wanted
and the GMD murdered people for uttering the slightest word against them (a funny dark story of this is of a man who was attending the funeral of a friends who was assasinated by the Guomindang. He gave a speech about how no matter how many great men the GMD killed, they would eventually be destroyed. The man left the funeral, walked a few blocks, and was gunned down on the street by the GMD)

[BobKKKindle$]

For the record, I don't think that groups like the Naxalites are representatives of a section of the bourgeoisie, however much support they may elicit from tribal leaders, because, as a Trotskyist, I believe that the bourgeoisies of all underdeveloped countries are fundamentally impotent and unable to carry out their tasks to any degree whatsoever during the age of imperialism, due to being dependent on one or more of the imperialist powers and the authoritarian state, and as such I reject the Maoist distinction between the national and comprador bourgeoisie. The Maoist belief that any section of the bourgeoisie can be progressive during the age of imperialism and that the property of the so-called national bourgeoisie needs to be protected once the working class has taken power in order to allow for the development of the productive forces is evidence of Maoism being a fundamentally class-collaborationist policy, the origin of this ideology being the defeat of the Chinese working class in 1927. Rather than being a section of the bourgeoisie, the leadership of Maoist movements has historically come from the middle class, and in this sense they are no different from the other nationalist movements that seized power in the decades following WW2, such as the free officers in Egypt, and the only way we can explain this is with reference to the theory of permanent revolution, and in particular Tony Cliff's modifications to that theory. We in the SWP have always argued that when the proletariat is being prevented from carrying out a socialist revolution which both embodies and transcends the historic tasks of the bourgeoisie, otherwise known as the permanent revolution, then, given the impotence of the bourgeoisie, it is sometimes possible for a section of the middle class, often in the form of the army of the intelligentsia, to assume this role and carry out a partial version of the democratic revolution, the gains of which have always been limited and highly vulnerable. The democratic revolutions that have followed this pattern have been centered not around the attainment of bourgeois democracy but the completion of economic development, so as to provide a basis for national independence, and for this reason these movements have often used the language of socialism as a means of convincing the working population to accept high rates of exploitation, whilst ultimately having nationalism as their first priority.

Comrades may find this interesting:Tony Cliff, Deflected Permanent Revolution, 1963 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1963/xx/permrev.htm)


Which revolution in China? The proletarian revolution of 1927What do you mean? I agree that there was a possibility of revolution in China during this period, particularly during the later stages of the May 30th Movement in 1925, but I'm sure you agree with me that the events of April 1927 marked a tragic defeat for the Chinese working class.


You know, the one that established the People's Republic of China.You mean the one in which the working class has almost no role whatsoever, the one which involved the CPC ordering workers not to take control of their factories or disrupt production as the PLA took control of the cities, the one in which Liu Shaoqi punished cadres for encouraging workers to seize control of their workplaces?

[red cat]

So would you consider the tribal leaders supporting the Naxalites not to be bourgeois? It is well known that an overwhelming majority of the Naxalite cadres themselves come from the bourgeois intelligentsia.

Where do you think all the weapons and the bombs came from genius?

Reminds me of the Green Army in Russia, the anti-Bolshevik peasant army that is. Wonder why a rural bourgeois organization would mobilize and make an army out of the peasantry.

Shooting a few people and planting a few bombs, that is.

Are you referring to minor unions like the All India Central Council of Trade Unions here?

Reality, as ever, tends to be very different from the romanticized images in the minds of liberal Stalinists.

From denying brutal attacks, bombings and murders, you have went on to justifying them. I have little to add to that.

You give me the impression of someone who basically knows nothing of the "third-world".

It is not that rare that overly-enthustiastic distant supporters of something present what they want to see rather than what there actually is as reality.

All bourgeois organizations rule with the help of state-machinery and armed goons, I would say that in areas they are in control Naxalites also rule with the help of a mini state-like structure they have and their own armed goons. And still, there is no bourgeois organization anywhere that is capable of ruling without having mass support.

They murder students, workers, villagers, proletarian civillians and so forth. Their practice is a substitutionist, anti-working class political practice where the relationship the leadership has with the base is indistinguishable from that of any other bourgeois organization. Their ideology is, based on maoism, an ideology of a block of different classes, tying the proletariat to the progressive, national bourgeoisie openly.



You can read John Reed's Ten Days Which Shook the World or Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution or Richard Müller's History of the German Revolution to get an idea of what the point and function of an actual communist party in a proletarian revolution is.

You have not countered my arguments anywhere. You keep on repeating your assertions like a parrot. You have not even mentioned a single specific event or a source supporting your claim. Clearly you are not accustomed to questioning what you believe, and you would continue defending it like a religious fundamentalist rather than enriching your knowledge.

[red cat]

For the record, I don't think that groups like the Naxalites are representatives of a section of the bourgeoisie, however much support they may elicit from tribal leaders, because, as a Trotskyist, I believe that the bourgeoisies of all underdeveloped countries are fundamentally impotent and unable to carry out their tasks to any degree whatsoever during the age of imperialism, due to being dependent on one or more of the imperialist powers and the authoritarian state, and as such I reject the Maoist distinction between the national and comprador bourgeoisie. The Maoist belief that any section of the bourgeoisie can be progressive during the age of imperialism and that the property of the so-called national bourgeoisie needs to be protected once the working class has taken power in order to allow for the development of the productive forces is evidence of Maoism being a fundamentally class-collaborationist policy, the origin of this ideology being the defeat of the Chinese working class in 1927. Rather than being a section of the bourgeoisie, the leadership of Maoist movements has historically come from the middle class, and in this sense they are no different from the other nationalist movements that seized power in the decades following WW2, such as the free officers in Egypt, and the only way we can explain this is with reference to the theory of permanent revolution, and in particular Tony Cliff's modifications to that theory. We in the SWP have always argued that when the proletariat is being prevented from carrying out a socialist revolution which both embodies and transcends the historic tasks of the bourgeoisie, otherwise known as the permanent revolution, then, given the impotence of the bourgeoisie, it is sometimes possible for a section of the middle class, often in the form of the army of the intelligentsia, to assume this role and carry out a partial version of the democratic revolution, the gains of which have always been limited and highly vulnerable. The democratic revolutions that have followed this pattern have been centered not around the attainment of bourgeois democracy but the completion of economic development, so as to provide a basis for national independence, and for this reason these movements have often used the language of socialism as a means of convincing the working population to accept high rates of exploitation, whilst ultimately having nationalism as their first priority.

Comrades may find this interesting:Tony Cliff, Deflected Permanent Revolution, 1963 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1963/xx/permrev.htm)



Maoists consider the national bourgeoisie as a vacillating ally, and launch class-struggle against them as soon as the NDR is complete(because then all contradictions transform into the one between the bourgeoisie and proletariat). It is a fact that a portion of the national bourgeoisie fights dedicatedly in the NDR.

If you look at the present Maoist movements and especially at the Indian one, you will see that a majority of the young members come from peasant or proletarian back-ground.

[Искра]

If you look at the present Maoist movements and especially at the Indian one, you will see that a majority of the young members come from peasant or proletarian back-ground.
And how do you know or how can you prove that?
You have been in India? I really doubt.

[BobKKKindle$]

Maoists consider the national bourgeoisie as a vacillating allyMaoist practice indicates that they considered the national bourgeoisie to be much more than just a vacillating ally, whatever this is supposed to mean - evidently Mao believed that they were important enough to advocate remaining in an alliance with the KMT for almost the whole of the 1920s against the calls of people like Chen Duxiu, despite the fact that this alliance involved the working class subordinating its interests to its exploiters, and eventually led to thousands of CPC members and trade unionists being massacred when Chiang Kai-shek decided that they were becoming too powerful and that he didn't need them any more in 1927. This trend continued whilst the CPC was in power as well and involved not only the so-called national bourgeoisie but also the rich peasants in the countryside. Let's look at the latter first. After poor peasants seized control of landlord and rich peasant estates themselves and chased after the members of those classes into the cities so that they would be able to confiscate their urban property and deliver class justice, Mao and his allies protested, and changed the CPC's policy on land reform so that reform was implemented by administrative methods only, over a period of time, and alongside the creation of local governmental organs, in contrast to the previous strategy of encouraging peasants to struggle openly against their oppressors and divide the struggle fruits amongst themselves. Also, the Agrarian Law of 1950 allowed rich peasants to own not only land they and their families worked but also land that was worked by hired laborers and rented out to other peasants, on the condition that no more than half of their total land belonged to these latter categories. These are not signs of a party dedicated to class struggle or land reform.

In the urban areas, as I've already said, the party called on workers not to occupy their factories or challenge the bourgeoisie, with party leaders also arguing against the Labour Maintenance Law of October 1945 on the grounds that it had set wages too high, and introduced "excessive" welfare measures, and within the first few years of the CPC having taken power, profit rates had increased, compared to the rates before 1931, alongside an increase in the number of private business owners. Even after the property of so-called national capitalists was confiscated during the three- and five- anti campaigns of the early 1950s, former capitalists were still given a 5% interest payment each year on their property, up until the Cultural Revolution. The property of both the comprador and national capitalists was administered through a structure that had nothing to do with workers control - when the former had their property nationalized, for example, it was initially placed under the control of KMT officials and CPC officials, who took an inventory, before being passed to a triple alliance, consisting of party-military personnel, representatives of mass organizations such as the worker pickets, and retained personnel from the old regime, especially in the south, where these officials had been concentrated before the advance of the PLA and were not removed by the government when it fled to Taiwan. This structure involved the manager of the factory frequently acting as president of this alliance, and workers being given a consultative role only, as well as being forced to enter into arbitration when industrial disputes presented themselves, and it was extended in its entirety to the whole of the economy in the 1950s, including the former owners being part of the alliance, as government employees. These are not the signs of a party dedicated to working-class power, and their contempt for the struggles of working people is evident from the whole dismal history of the PRC, including the Cultural Revolution.

I don't expect you to reply to any of this, because you're ignorant.

[red cat]

Maoist practice indicates that they considered the national bourgeoisie to be much more than just a vacillating ally, whatever this is supposed to mean - evidently Mao believed that they were important enough to advocate remaining in an alliance with the KMT for almost the whole of the 1920s against the calls of people like Chen Duxiu, despite the fact that this alliance involved the working class subordinating its interests to its exploiters, and eventually led to thousands of CPC members and trade unionists being massacred when Chiang Kai-shek decided that they were becoming too powerful and that he didn't need them any more in 1927. This trend continued whilst the CPC was in power as well and involved not only the so-called national bourgeoisie but also the rich peasants in the countryside. Let's look at the latter first. After poor peasants seized control of landlord and rich peasant estates themselves and chased after the members of those classes into the cities so that they would be able to confiscate their urban property and deliver class justice, Mao and his allies protested, and changed the CPC's policy on land reform so that reform was implemented by administrative methods only, over a period of time, and alongside the creation of local governmental organs, in contrast to the previous strategy of encouraging peasants to struggle openly against their oppressors and divide the struggle fruits amongst themselves. Also, the Agrarian Law of 1950 allowed rich peasants to own not only land they and their families worked but also land that was worked by hired laborers and rented out to other peasants, on the condition that no more than half of their total land belonged to these latter categories. These are not signs of a party dedicated to class struggle or land reform.

In the urban areas, as I've already said, the party called on workers not to occupy their factories or challenge the bourgeoisie, with party leaders also arguing against the Labour Maintenance Law of October 1945 on the grounds that it had set wages too high, and introduced "excessive" welfare measures, and within the first few years of the CPC having taken power, profit rates had increased, compared to the rates before 1931, alongside an increase in the number of private business owners. Even after the property of so-called national capitalists was confiscated during the three- and five- anti campaigns of the early 1950s, former capitalists were still given a 5% interest payment each year on their property. The property of both the comprador and national capitalists was administered through a structure that had nothing to do with workers control - when the former had their property nationalized, for example, it was initially placed under the control of KMT officials and CPC officials, who took an inventory, before being passed to a triple alliance, consisting of party-military personnel, representatives of mass organizations such as the worker pickets, and retained personnel from the old regime, especially in the south, where these officials had been concentrated before the advance of the PLA and were not removed by the government when it fled to Taiwan. This structure involved the manager of the factory frequently acting as president of this alliance, and workers being given a consultative role only, as well as being forced to enter into arbitration when industrial disputes presented themselves, and it was extended in its entirety to the whole of the economy in the 1950s. These are not the signs of a party dedicated to working-class power, and their contempt for the struggles of working people is evident from the whole dismal history of the PRC, including the Cultural Revolution.

I don't expect you to reply to any of this, because you're ignorant. Let's use the present movements as examples, please.

[Искра]

Please do not make chauvinist posts like this assuming everyone using this board is a European/American. People in other countries have internet access too, you know. Also one doesn't need to visit the sites to know the events going on there. We don't live in the stone age these days.
Chauvinist post?! WTF?!
I asked him/her how can he/she prove that Naxlaites are from that background. And I said that I doubt that red_cat was in India. If that's chauvinism then you are bigger hippie than Green Apostle.

[Comrade B]

Let's use the present movements as examples, please.
The thread is about Mao, not modern China. Please though, you really are invited to talk about the topic.

[BobKKKindle$]

Let's use the present movements as examples, please.

What a joke, I can imagine your thought process right now: "oh wait, this guy isn't going to buy my bullshit assertions about Maoism having anything to do with socialism, I'd better try to divert the discussion instead so people don't realize that I don't know anything about China". As for current movements it doesn't matter whether most of their membership is made up of workers and peasants, the same thing can be said about the British Labour Party, at least when it comes to workers, the important thing is the social composition and political orientation of the leadership, and that's thoroughly nationalist and class-collaborationist. Your personal disdan for the importance of self-emancipation, which is the core of Marxism and something that has been ignored by all Maoists, as I've shown above, is evident from your crass assumption that it's possible for a "revolutionary" party to summon a revolution out of thin air just by bombing a few railway stations and shooting a government official every now and again, whereas every decent Marxist recognizes that revolutions are a product of objective and subjective conditions, with revolutionary situations arising from capitalist crises that are international in scope, and that the role of a revolutionary party is not to make the revolution, as if that were possible, but to intervene in the struggles of the class whilst not being separate from it or seeking to substitute itself for the class, so that the working class can be the agent of its own emancipation, this being the essence of what a revolution is.

Or, as Marx said, "the emancipation of the working class can only be the act of the working class itself", not the act of a bunch of forest guerrillas or a peasant army.

[red cat]

And how do you know or how can you prove that?
You have been in India? I really doubt.

How we know that is a secondary question. The real question is that how do I convince you?:)

I cannot find the link to the daily which posted similar information. So.. alas, a Maoist source::lol:

http://indianvanguard.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/the-new-face-of-naxalism/

[red cat]

What a joke, I can imagine your thought process right now: "oh wait, this guy isn't going to buy my bullshit assertions about Maoism having anything to do with socialism, I'd better try to divert the discussion instead so people don't realize that I don't know anything about China". As for current movements it doesn't matter whether most of their membership is made up of workers and peasants, the same thing can be said about the British Labour Party, at least when it comes to workers, the important thing is the social composition and political orientation of the leadership, and that's thoroughly nationalist and class-collaborationist. Your personal disdan for the importance of self-emancipation, which is the core of Marxism and something that has been ignored by all Maoists, as I've shown above, is evident from your crass assumption that it's possible for a "revolutionary" party to summon a revolution out of thin air just by bombing a few railway stations and shooting a government official every now and again, whereas every decent Marxist recognizes that revolutions are a product of objective and subjective conditions, with revolutionary situations arising from capitalist crises that are international in scope, and that the role of a revolutionary party is not to make the revolution, as if that were possible, but to intervene in the struggles of the class whilst not being separate from it or seeking to substitute itself for the class, so that the working class can be the agent of its own emancipation, this being the essence of what a revolution is.

Or, as Marx said, "the emancipation of the working class can only be the act of the working class itself", not the act of a bunch of forest guerrillas or a peasant army.


I have addressed this issue a number of times. When you start off with your version of history, which I happen to encounter on your posts the first time in my life, I really feel bad to tell you that these are the results of decades of falsification. So I want to refer to the present revolutions.

And for the 347th I am informing you guys here that the Maoist movements are a little more than "bombing a few railway stations and shooting a government official every now and again". Please take care to actually click on some of the links I post.

[Comrade B]

When you start off with your version of history, which I happen to encounter on your posts the first time in my life, I really feel bad to tell you that these are the results of decades of falsification. So I want to refer to the present revolutions.Oh please do... I am dying to hear about YOUR version of the 3 anti campaign, the 5 anti campaign, the 3 pest campaign, the great leap forward, and the cultural revolution....
I really am just waiting to be enlightened.
Did the steel manufacturing work?
Was the famine real? Do sparrows being gone not have an effect on the economy?
Were the people not completely capable of conducting the "struggle sessions" on their own?
Do you know what the fuck these things are?

I like the idea that the Naxalite (I am entirely sure I misspelled this) people are resisting... but have they taken part in any real social change? Has there been any redistribution of property?

[BobKKKindle$]

hen you start off with your version of history, which I happen to encounter on your posts the first time in my life, I really feel bad to tell you that these are the results of decades of falsification.Point to a single false assertion in my post about the history of the PRC.


Please take care to actually click on some of the links I post. Funnily enough, I did, and your link told me that the Naxalite movement began with students who wanted to go to the countryside in order to stir revolution whilst also planning to go and take nice jobs once they had got bored of life there, which is yet another example of how Maoists believe that it is possible for a revolution can be carried out by a social force, in this case students, that is separate from the class whose liberation they seek to advance, thus occupying a substitutionist position in relation to that class, this conception of revolution being directly oppossed to Marx's conception, which is centered around the principle that the oppressed need to be the agents of their own emancipation, hence the term self-emancipation. The article then goes on to argue that the party now draws its leadership from the peasantry and can therefore be considered revolutionary even if had a substitutionist orientation at some point in the past, whilst forgetting to inform the reader that its general secretary, Muppala Laxman Rao, is himself a beneficiary of higher education, and followed basically the same route as the students whose lack of revolutionary zeal is covered in the first part of the article. What the article and you really miss however is the fact that even if its leadership were comprised of peasants, and an embodiment of what poor peasants want, this would not make the CPI(Maoist) a party of the working class, because the interests of workers are entirely distinct from those of any section of the peasantry, given that the working class has a direct interest in the social ownership of the means of production and an economy based on democratic planning, whereas peasant movements, which are in any case always highly unstable due to the deep internal differentiation of the peasantry, have always sought to make each of their participants a petty-bourgeois producer by dividing the land, which has nothing to do with socialism.

[red cat]

To BobKKindles: See, I don't mind the negative reputations ; Q and you have already cost me around 150 points.

I don't care about reputations, but please write your comments of what you think about my posts and myself, here, and not where no one else can see it. If you had any knowledge of the third-world, you would know that in many places we find one of the words that you have used while commenting, extremely offensive. You surely expect that the people of every other country will adjust to your culture or choice, don't you? Typical of many of you guys sitting in the first or second worlds. Perhaps you also expect that third-world communists will abandon their decades long struggle to operate according to what you suggest sitting on comfortably on an armchair?

[Comrade B]

he Naxalites have been around for around 4 decades and recently, the Indian Prime Minister declared them to be the greatest threat to the Indian bourgeois state.
I am not an anarchist. The destruction of the state doesn't mean the creation of communism.
Let us pretend that the Naxalites take power over the 2nd largest country in the world. How are they going to fix it? What is their plan for economic reform?

[spiltteeth]

There are numerous examples, bombings of schools, railway stations, public buildings, murder of villagers, drivers etc. You can do your own research for the details if you wish.



Being brutal has got nothing to do with having mass support. The CPI (M), for instance, also has mass support despite its horrible anti-working class practices. Obama has mass support in the US. Hitler had mass support in Germany.

This question gives away the democratic-liberal mindset of western Maoism.



Pakistan, for example, can start a war with India tomorrow also, putting forward, again, an armed opposition to the oppressive Indian state. This would of course not make the Pakistani government any less oppressive.

Of course it is possible for a pseudo-radical armed bourgeois group to murder a few cops and people, bomb a few buildings and put forward "armed opposition". This does not make their individualist-terrorist armed actions positive for the proletariat in any way nor do they advance the struggle of the proletariat at all.



Arming the proletariat can not be the task of a minority of the class, even if the minority we are talking about commands the influence and strength enabling it to be called the class party, the vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat. The class as a whole and the class itself arms itself, and the communist minority can only be an organic part of this struggle of the class, along with other struggles of it.



It is not a characterization, it is a statement of facts.



I am interested in the interests of the Nepali working class, not in "what Nepal must do".



I don't see my task as a revolutionary as suggesting alternative policies for capitalist governments.



Except one can't really do that, because those things did not happen immediately, they happened over the years increasingly, as an expression of the degeneration of the revolution. (I am saying this excluding the shutting down of counter-revolutionary or reactionary papers, which indeed would be something to be proud of.)

I hear what yr saying about the Naxalites, I personally support them, but the violence you talk about does exist and so I understand your position, and I do condemn much of the violence you've alluded too and then some but hope these measures will be modified.

But I still don't understand yr idea on Nepal. Napals Maoists have been fighting a peoples war for years.
Within 4 yrs of Bolsheviks taking power they killed many Anarchists, whole towns, shut down presses, etc It is quite easy to paint them as murderous thugs with selective statements. These are all facts too.

Another fact : Lenin sought to entice big businesses into Russia with cheap labor, but it proved unworkable .

Another fact : The Bolsheviks also shut down unions and anarchist rebellion.

I could go on and on, but without analysis these facts are nothing more than characterizations completely out of context.

Nepal - including its workers - need capital. They are not a self-sufficient utopia with bountiful plenty.

You can criticize all you want, but these people live in grinding poverty and they NEED to find a way to amass capital, or else starve to death in a lovely socialist utopia.

I guess your saying unless one can go strait to communism it is not communism, which is the anarchist line; I'm just surprised to see you saying this since everything you said about the revolutionaries in Nepal can be said about the Bolsheviks in there first 2-4 yrs in power.

It seems very idealistic, in the non-marxist sense of the term.

[BobKKKindle$]

Who said it was? As a Leninist, I think the workers should take over the state and use it for a dictatorship of the proletariatExcept, Lenin didn't believe that it was possible for the working class to "take over" the state, the entire point of his analysis of the state is that all states are instruments of class rule, and that when the working class takes power it will find it necessary to smash the bourgeois state, which is based on armed force being concentrated in the hands of armed bodies of men who place themselves in a position of domination over the rest of society, the separation of executive and legislative functions, an illusory separation of political and economic spheres, and representatives not being under the control of those who elect them - in essence, it is a state that is structurally geared towards the rule of a privileged minority, different in every way from the state that the working class uses to exercise its dictatorship, this state being rooted in institutions of workplace democracy, i.e. the Soviets, and designed to both allow the working class to defend itself, and manage the economy in a rational and democratic fashion. The fact that the events in Nepal did not involve the overthrow of the state and the willingness of the Maoists to become the government of the bourgeois state apparatus is evidence both of there not being a revolutionary situation in Nepal and the Maoists not being a revolutionary party.

Don't claim to be a "Leninist", whatever that means, without having any knowledge of his or Marx's ideas.


Most of the Maoists believe that New Democracy where the proletariat and the national (as opposed to comprodor) bourgeoisie can form a united revolutionary blocThis is based on the assumption that it is possible to divide the bourgeoisie into distinct sections, and that one of these sections is progressive - the second of these assumptions flows from the first, and the first is wrong, because the bourgeoisie, whilst it may exhibit internal tensions during periods of capitalist stability, always finds it desirable to ignore these tensions and confront the working class when a revolutionary situation presents itself, as you can see from the role of the KMT - i.e. the party that Mao regarded as the representative of the so-called national bourgeoisie - in smashing the CPC and the working class in 1927. It doesn't matter how much you appeal to "material conditions" and accuse other people of being dogmatic, the fact is that you advocate class collaboration, which has nothing to do with the self-emancipation of the working class, and everything to do with bourgeois nationalism of the worst kind. It's ironic that having pursued a class-collaborationist policy for most of the 1920s, the CPC under Stalinist leadership swung the other way after 1927 and adopted an ultra-left policy for a short period of time, of the kind of which you regard as being exclusive to Trotskyists, which involved the party seeking to provoke rural uprisings (see the Autumn Harvest Rising and the Nanchang Insurrection) and even creating a bureaucratic kind of Soviet in Canton, this policy resulting in further loss of life for the party, and reflecting the eclectic character of all Stalinist organizations, these organizations lacking an organic relationship with the working class.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Scarlet:


Don't say such stuff about mental illness; it is deeply offensive.

I was referring to Vitamin tablets, so you need to stop jumping to conclusions.

[BobKKKindle$]

Someone seems to be stuck again in 1917. "Soviets"?It's not the name that matters, I only mentioned Soviets because that's the most common term for a universal feature of all advanced working-class struggles - democratic institutions that workers create in their workplaces during periods of intense class struggle and confrontation between the working class and the capitalist state, in order to take over the functions of capitalist management, and provide the basis both for discussion amongst workers and, when coordination between these bodies takes place, the state that the workers will use to administer society once the bourgeois state has been abolished, this state incorporating the ability to recall and give instructions to delegates, these delegates being paid no more than the wage of a skilled worker. These institutions, whatever you want to call them, have emerged in every major class struggle, such as the biennio rosso in Italy, intermittently during the period 1918-1923 in Germany, in Canton during the May 30th Movement in China, during the Civil War in Spain, during the events of 1968 in France, and so on. The prevalence of these institutions is not because all of the workers involved had read Marx or Lenin but because institutions of this kind offered and will continue to offer the most democratic and radical answer to the problems faced by workers who find themselves in situations like those I listed above, and institutions of this kind also offer a glimpse of how we might organize society.


Again, people like you have no right to slander other revolutionaries who have been on the ground fighting for the sake of the toiling masses

Real revolutionaries don't see themselves as fighting for the sake or on behalf of "the toiling masses", because they recognize that revolutionaries should not position themselves in a hierarchical relationship, as such a relationship is incompatible with the principle that the working class must be the agent of its own emancipation.

[BobKKKindle$]

All kidding aside, so, the Indian/Nepalese etc people shouldn't revolt unless they form particular forms of organization that formed in older situations?No, it's not that the struggles of the Nepalese or Indian "people" (by the way, I'm not interested in something as vague as "the people", I'm interested in the working class, which is defined as the class that has no ownership of the means of production is forced to sell its labour power as a commodity in order to survive, because only the working class is capable of introducing socialism, even if it finds it necessary to enter into an alliance with other class forces such as the peasantry in order to stop that class being used by the bourgeoisie as a counter-revolutionary instrument) aren't legitimate if they don't follow a certain course, it's that the Nepalese and Indian workers are currently not on the verge of overthrowing capitalism, i.e. there is not a revolutionary situation in either country, or any country for that matter. What we have instead are nationalist forces in the form of the Maoists in both countries leaning on the peasantry with the intention of taking control of the bourgeois state and carrying out the historic tasks that the bourgeoisie has proven itself unable to fulfill, namely industrial development through the intense exploitation of the working population, and if the experience of workers in China in Nepal is anything to go by, not only are these forces not capable of bringing liberation to the working class - again, the working class must be the agent of its own emancipation, it cannot be liberated by a force that claims to act on its behalf - workers can also expect to find themselves facing governments that want to take away their right to strike.


The Paris Commune offered a glimpse of what working class revolution would look like and Marx learnt from it and all revolutionaries have benefited from itActually, one of the many admirable things about Marx's work is that he did not formulate concepts in advance, in the realm of abstract theory, and then look for them in empirical reality, but, on the contrary, developed his concepts on the basis of the historic experience of the working class, especially the experience of the Paris Commune, and this is what the approach of the revolutionary party today should be - to concentrate the historic experience of the class in the form of strategic lessons that are geared towards the goal of working-class emancipation. This is what I am doing because I am looking at the history of the working-class throughout the world and acknowledging that there are certain things that are common to all of the most intense struggles of the class, and representative of the interests of working people - namely the fact that democratic institutions located in workplaces have always been developed by workers once their struggles reach a certain point, these institutions variously being called Soviets, or workers councils. The absence of these institutions in Nepal and the other countries that you regard as socialist, including Maoist China, is, amongst other things, such as the workers of these countries still tolerating the dictatorship of managers in their workplaces, and the Indian government having retained the basic features of bourgeois democracy, evidence that neither of these countries are in the middle of a revolutionary situation, and as such the working class is not in a position to take power at the current time, no matter how many railway stations are blown up.


"..." Lenin Lenin's origins as a revolutionary lay in his refutation of the strategy of the Narodniks, who thought that the peasantry could function as the main agent of revolutionary change, and sought to inspire the peasantry to take action against Tsarism by carrying out isolated terrorist attacks against government officials and members of the royal family. This sounds a lot like the kind of approach that Maoists follow today, and no matter how much you distort Lenin's theories, by repeatedly citing quotes that were actually directed against Left Communists and not people like yourself who advocate class collaboration, as if Lenin would ever have advocated the latter, you'll never manage to convince anyone with a basic knowledge of Marxism or the Russian Revolution that socialism can ever be anything but the self-emancipation of the working class, which you reject in favour of peasant rebellions led by substitutionist middle-class leaders who posture as revolutionaries.

[BobKKKindle$]

why are you along with the Indian/Nepalese bourgeosie so worked up over it?

They're "worked up over it" because the Maoists are contesting the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force, as part of an attempt to raise themselves to the position of the ruling class. This doesn't say anything about whether the Maoists are revolutionaries, because the Egyptian state is also very worried about the rise of Islamism, and the Turkish state is worried about Kurdish separatism, despite neither of those forces having anything to do with socialist revolution.

[BobKKKindle$]

They do constitute an anti-imperialist force though.The fact that those movements are being used by the populations of the countries in which they are located to fight back against a vicious assault from one of the region's key imperialist powers does not make them anti-capitalist and nor does it mean that the SWP does not believe that there is a need for a revolutionary party in those countries, but I don't see how this is relevant to the Maoists in India, because India is not a country that has fallen under imperialist occupation, or is faced with the immediate threat of being attacked by one of the main imperialist powers - in fact, it could be argued that India is itself an imperialist power. I don't see how you can argue that the Maoists have any anti-imperialist role whatsoever. For the record, when the SWP says it supports Hamas it does not mean that we agree with everything that these groups do or that we do not criticize them when they do things that conflict with our principles, such as attacking strikes, as the Maoists have done in Nepal, or preventing women from attending university - rather the point is that we do criticize, whilst also recognizing that Palestinian and Lebanese workers have a right to defend themselves against Zionism by any means they deem necessary, and that as long as their countries are under occupation, workers are unlikely to be in a position to challenge their own ruling classes, and carry out a socialist revolution, due to the occupation being the most immediate form of oppression, and the main object of their political struggles. Indeed, the SWP has a proud tradition of following Lenin's advice not to give national liberation movements a "communist coloration", as we, or rather, the late Chris Harman famously (infamously, some would say) challenged those Trotskyists who mindlessly praised the NLF without considering the fate of Trotskyists in Vietnam.


Yet the same party joins the ranks of the local and broad imperialist bourgeoisie in attacking communist revolutionariesIt should be clear by now that I don't regard the Maoists as "communist revolutionaries", and neither do I regard you and your ilk as such. Also, I hardly think I'm "attacking" anyone, at least not in the same way as the Indian bourgeoisie. Even if I did think that the Maoists were revolutionaries I would still criticize them because that's what revolutionaries do. Rosa Luxemburg extensively criticized the Russian Revolution despite being a strong supporter, and she was right to do so, and some of her criticisms have merit. It is precisely by showing that we are willing to criticize our comrades in other countries (a category into which the Maoists do not fall for me, naturally) that we show international solidarity, whilst also defending them against slander and mischaracterization.

If you want to point out cases where I've lied about the historic legacy of Maoism in this thread or any other then be my guest.


Still doesn't explain why people like you are worked up about it.I'm not at all. I don't take people like you (tell me when you become an Anarchist, by the way) seriously.

[red cat]

The thread is about Mao, not modern China. Please though, you really are invited to talk about the topic.

We consider modern China as revisionist. I was refering to the ongoing revolutions.

[red cat]

Oh please do... I am dying to hear about YOUR version of the 3 anti campaign, the 5 anti campaign, the 3 pest campaign, the great leap forward, and the cultural revolution....
I really am just waiting to be enlightened.
Did the steel manufacturing work?
Was the famine real? Do sparrows being gone not have an effect on the economy?
Were the people not completely capable of conducting the "struggle sessions" on their own?
Do you know what the fuck these things are?

I like the idea that the Naxalite (I am entirely sure I misspelled this) people are resisting... but have they taken part in any real social change? Has there been any redistribution of property?


Oh please do... I am dying to hear about YOUR version of the 3 anti campaign, the 5 anti campaign, the 3 pest campaign, the great leap forward, and the cultural revolution....
I really am just waiting to be enlightened.
Did the steel manufacturing work?
Was the famine real? Do sparrows being gone not have an effect on the economy?
Were the people not completely capable of conducting the "struggle sessions" on their own?
Do you know what the fuck these things are?



A good source:

www.mlmrsg.com




I like the idea that the Naxalite (I am entirely sure I misspelled this) people are resisting... but have they taken part in any real social change? Has there been any redistribution of property?

Breaking down the Caste System

The Indian society is home to a rigid caste system. It is not confined to any religion. Lower caste people who convert to other religions are still treated as lower castes. This is due to the necessity of the ruling classes to preserve feudal and imperialisst oppression. The lowest cast comprises of dalits(=the trampled) and untouchables. They are not allowed to enter upper caste villages(these are the ones that have facilities like drinking water etc.). They serve as bonded labourers to the feudal lords. The feudal lords are entitled to confiscate any property a dalit owns, and the feudal lord has right to any dalit woman. The naxals violently break down this social structure and ends bonded labour system.

Liberation of Women

Feudal patriarchal oppression is very common in India. It is prevalent even in the most oppressed classes. Naxals preach equality of the sexes. From any given village, women are the first ones to join them and they make up almost half of their ranks. Important in this context is teh liberation of the women of the "Maria" tribe. Among other oppressive norms, they were not allowed to cover their breasts. These practices have been abolished. Also another practice prevalent among peasants and workers is spending their money on wine and severe wife-beating at an intoxicated stage. Naxals discourage the consumption of wine, except when taken in traditional festivals, and destroy the wine-brewing centers which are run by agents of the feudal lords.

In all over India, several cases of rape have taken place due to government forces and goons. The naxals advocate extreme punishment for this. At Lalgarh, one of the main causes of the revolt was cops forcing school-girls to strip before them in order to prove that they were actually girls and not some disguised Naxal activist boys.

Land distribution and abolition of capitalist exploitation

In the course of seizure of power, the feudal lords are either annihilated or they escape. Their lands, farm animals and money is distributed among the peasants.The loans which help to keep the peasants bound to the land are also abolished.

The popular slogan associated is:

Jo bhee boye, kate dhan,
Khet ka malik wahi kisaan.
(The peasant sows and reaps the crops is the real owner of the land)

Developmental work

The naxals mobilize the masses and utilize the PLGA to do developmental work like building dams(small ones, of course), schools, hospitals etc. In a recent challenge to the government, a Naxal leader has said that they will complete one-third of the huge developmental plans that the government had announced but never implemented, within the next few months.

Mass participation in class-struggle

In several places, one member of each family joins the struggle directly. The government forces entering Lalgarh noticed that one or more members from each family was missing in several villages. The local peoples' militia is composed of these people.

Revival of marginalized cultures

In India, due to Hindu fundamentalism, many cultures, mostly tribal ones, are becoming marginalized and near extinct. These the naxals try to revive. After the establishment of peoples' power in Bastar, the Gondi language has been revived and the Gondi people now learn about themselves in their own schools rather than those run by fundamentalists.

Right to the forests

The Indian government has laws which forbid forest- dwelling tribals to use any forest products. Instead the timber is sold to big businessman and imperialist companies are given extensive mining rights. This has been stopped wherever peoples' power has been established. Tribal committees have formed alternative governments which protect the forests.

Movements for rise in wages

These are very common where naxals are present. Under the assistance of the naxals the workers might use violent methods to force their wages up.

[red cat]

Point to a single false assertion in my post about the history of the PRC.

Funnily enough, I did, and your link told me that the Naxalite movement began with students who wanted to go to the countryside in order to stir revolution whilst also planning to go and take nice jobs once they had got bored of life there, which is yet another example of how Maoists believe that it is possible for a revolution can be carried out by a social force, in this case students, that is separate from the class whose liberation they seek to advance, thus occupying a substitutionist position in relation to that class, this conception of revolution being directly oppossed to Marx's conception, which is centered around the principle that the oppressed need to be the agents of their own emancipation, hence the term self-emancipation. The article then goes on to argue that the party now draws its leadership from the peasantry and can therefore be considered revolutionary even if had a substitutionist orientation at some point in the past, whilst forgetting to inform the reader that its general secretary, Muppala Laxman Rao, is himself a beneficiary of higher education, and followed basically the same route as the students whose lack of revolutionary zeal is covered in the first part of the article. What the article and you really miss however is the fact that even if its leadership were comprised of peasants, and an embodiment of what poor peasants want, this would not make the CPI(Maoist) a party of the working class, because the interests of workers are entirely distinct from those of any section of the peasantry, given that the working class has a direct interest in the social ownership of the means of production and an economy based on democratic planning, whereas peasant movements, which are in any case always highly unstable due to the deep internal differentiation of the peasantry, have always sought to make each of their participants a petty-bourgeois producer by dividing the land, which has nothing to do with socialism.

When the naxal movement began the plan was to seize power in the cities too.(sounds familiar? :)) Due to absence of bourgeois democracy the first rebal voices were silenced using bullets, workers' rallies were fired upon etc. In the city of Calcutta the water of the river passing through it had become red with the blood of the proletariat.

After that they decided to shift base to rural areas. Most of the petit-bourgeois elements left because prolonged revolutionary life did not suit them. In the meantime after the initial defeat their were many sectarian splits in the communist party(sounds familiar again? :)).

In the begining of the 80s the strategy of PPW was concretely formulated and we can see its results now.

However, even though a portion of the CC comes from the petite-bourgeoisie(was Lenin from the proletariat?), most of the current members are from a tribal background, which means they are from the peasantry and rural proletariat.

[Comrade B]

We consider modern China as revisionist. I was refering to the ongoing revolutions.
Wow. So what. The topic is about Mao.


A good source:

www.mlmrsg.com (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.mlmrsg.com)
Do you honestly expect me to read your entire website?
How about this, you read
Red Star Over China (it gives a positive view about Mao)
Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung: The First and Second Revolutionary War Period (all by Mao, published by the party)
R. Keith Schoppa's Twentieth Century China
as well as some excerpts from
Rise of the Chinese People's Republic by Immanuel Hsu (the chapter The Sino-Soviet Split gives a good view of your Stalinist buddies love for each other and value of the worker's life)
Fanshen by William Hinton (also in favor of Mao)
and
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang (the chapter "Capable Women Can Make a Meal without Food" - Famine. It will give you a nice view of life in rural China doing the horribly planned great leap forward)

You will almost be caught up.



Of course, I am sure this is a biased western curriculum I have been studying. Or is it treasonous Trotskyist propaganda? Honestly, I only wish the world had as many Trotskyists as you Stalinists think there are.
When the Maoists took leadership in China, they had no plan for the future. The peasants of China had lead all reform in the country side by themselves, and now that the Maoists controlled the country, what were they to do to change a damn thing? Well... they decided to launch internal investigations, punishing many of their own followers and tell people to turn tin into steel using furnaces meant to heat water, and they tell people to kill all the sparrows.

[red cat]

Wow. So what. The topic is about Mao.


Do you honestly expect me to read your entire website?
How about this, you read
Red Star Over China (it gives a positive view about Mao)
Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung: The First and Second Revolutionary War Period (all by Mao, published by the party)
R. Keith Schoppa's Twentieth Century China
as well as some excerpts from
Rise of the Chinese People's Republic by Immanuel Hsu (the chapter The Sino-Soviet Split gives a good view of your Stalinist buddies love for each other and value of the worker's life)
Fanshen by William Hinton (also in favor of Mao)
and
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang (the chapter "Capable Women Can Make a Meal without Food" - Famine. It will give you a nice view of life in rural China doing the horribly planned great leap forward)

You will almost be caught up.



Of course, I am sure this is a biased western curriculum I have been studying. Or is it treasonous Trotskyist propaganda? Honestly, I only wish the world had as many Trotskyists as you Stalinists think there are.
When the Maoists took leadership in China, they had no plan for the future. The peasants of China had lead all reform in the country side by themselves, and now that the Maoists controlled the country, what were they to do to change a damn thing? Well... they decided to launch internal investigations, punishing many of their own followers and tell people to turn tin into steel using furnaces meant to heat water, and they tell people to kill all the sparrows.

Maoists do not consider everything that was done in revolutionary PRC as the best option. If you read the evaluation by present day Maoists, you will get an idea of this.

Thank you for the sources. But we love to replace the reactionary ones with our own propaganda. :)

EDIT: We don't think that Trotskyists number much. The colossal amount of their propaganda is due to their total energy devoted to it.

[Comrade B]

Maoists do not consider everything that was done in revolutionary PRC as the best option. If you read the evaluation by present day Maoists, you will get an idea of this.
Then, by Mao's theory of contradictions, would that not mean that Maoism, having died off in its country of origin, is a useless ideology?


Thank you for the sources. But we love to replace the reactionary ones with our own propaganda.
One of those sources is simply Mao quotes, released by the Chinese government.
Two of them are Westerners who wish nothing more than to kiss Mao's ass.
One is a collection of random articles and writings of people on all sides.
At least one of the others is written by someone who survived the foolish blunders of the Great Leap Forward. The other I am not sure of the author's history... but unless it is entirely fictional... I am quite sure that it is easy to prove all facts in it true. You cannot honestly think that Stalin and Mao actually liked each other.


We don't think that Trotskyists number much. The colossal amount of their propaganda is due to their total energy devoted to it.
Well, Stalin and Mao seemed to find a shit load of us out of thin air to purge... Are you saying that the infallible Stalin may have wrongly killed people in the purges? Blasphemy. You must now do ten Hail Stalins with holy water and donate $10 to the Kremlin to save yourself from 1000000 years of purgatory.

[red cat]

Then, by Mao's theory of contradictions, would that not mean that Maoism, having died off in its country of origin, is a useless ideology?

Please explain how you deduce this from Maoist dialctics.



One of those sources is simply Mao quotes, released by the Chinese government.
Two of them are Westerners who wish nothing more than to kiss Mao's ass.
One is a collection of random articles and writings of people on all sides.
At least one of the others is written by someone who survived the foolish blunders of the Great Leap Forward. The other I am not sure of the author's history... but unless it is entirely fictional... I am quite sure that it is easy to prove all facts in it true. You cannot honestly think that Stalin and Mao actually liked each other.

I would like to replace the last two by RCP's analysis of the GLF and the last author.



Well, Stalin and Mao seemed to find a shit load of us out of thin air to purge... Are you saying that the infallible Stalin may have wrongly killed people in the purges? Blasphemy. You must now do ten Hail Stalins with holy water and donate $10 to the Kremlin to save yourself from 1000000 years of purgatory.

It is very strange that communists get to purge you every time... at least improve your military tactics.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Please explain how you deduce this from Maoist dialctics.

Already done:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=986357&postcount=2

[Comrade B]

It is very strange that communists get to purge you every time... at least improve your military tactics.
Don't you find it the least bit odd that there do not seem to be that many Trotskyists... until you want someone to blame?

Also... can you tell me what was logical in the great leap forward about the steel manufacturing idea... I cannot seem to find it...
Or the 3 Pests campaign.


Please explain how you deduce this from Maoist dialctics.
Link on Rosa's post is the one I was referring to.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

In fact, to save those too lazy to look it up, here is a revised version of the proof that Mao's theory cannot work:

Just like other dialecticians, Mao is thoroughly confused:


"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

"In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao (1961b), pp.340-42. Quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted in my Essays. Bold emphasis added.]

Here are a few more confused DM-worthies:


"The law of the interpenetration of opposites.... [M]utual penetration of polar opposites and transformation into each other when carried to extremes...." [Engels (1954), pp.17, 62.]

"[Among the elements of dialectics are the following:] internally contradictory tendencies…in [a thing]…as the sum and unity of opposites…. [This involves] not only the unity of opposites, but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its opposite?]….

"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….

"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute…." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22, 357-58. Bold emphases added.]

"And so every phenomenon, by the action of those same forces which condition its existence, sooner or later, but inevitably, is transformed into its own opposite…." [Plekhanov (1956), p.77.][/b]

There are many more such quotations here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1401000&postcount=76

All this seems to suggest that objects and processes not only change because of their internal opposites, but that they change into them (and, according to Lenin, they change into all of them!), and that they also produce these opposites while they change --, or they do so as a result of that change. As we shall see, all this presents DM-theorists with some rather nasty dialectical headaches.

To see this, let us suppose that object/process A is comprised of two "internal opposites" O* and O**, and thus changes as a result.

[The same problems occur even if these are 'external opposites'.]

But, O* cannot itself change into O** since O** already exists! If O** didn't already exist, according to this theory, O* could not change, for there would be no opposite to bring that about.

And it is no good propelling O** into the future so that it now becomes what O* will change into, since O* will do no such thing unless O** is already there in the present to make that happen!

But, if object/process A is already composed of a dialectical union of O* and not-O* (i.e., O**) and O* 'changes' into not-O*, how can it do this if not-O* already exists? All that seems to happen is that O* disappears. Thus, O* does not change into not-O*, it is just replaced by it.

At the very least, this account of change leaves it entirely mysterious how not-O* itself came about. It seems to have popped into existence from nowhere.

It cannot have come from O*, since O* can only change because of the operation of not-O*, which does not yet exist! And pushing the process into the past (via a 'reversed' version of the negation of the negation) will merely reduplicate the above problems. [More on this below.]

[DM = Dialectical Materialism; FL = Formal Logic.]

Now, it could be objected that all this seems to place objects and/or processes into fixed categories, which is one of the main criticisms dialecticians make of FL. Hence, the above argument is entirely misguided -- or so it could be claimed.

In that case, let us suppose that object/process A is comprised of two changing "internal opposites" O* and O**, and thus develops as a result.

The rest still follows. Hence, if object/process A is already composed of a changing dialectical union of O* and not-O* (i.e., O**) and O* 'develops' into not-O* as a result, where then is the change? All that seems to happen is that O* disappears.

Thus, on this view, O* does not change into not-O* it is just replaced by it, since not-O* already exists!

The only way to read this to avoid the above difficulty is to argue that despite this, O* still 'develops' into not-O*. But that cannot work, for not-O* must already exist for this to happen, and that would mean that there would now be two not-O*s where once there was only one!

This would also imply, incidentally, that not-O* must remain unchanged (which would violate the DM-thesis that all things are always changing, and changing into one another!).

Of course, it could be argued that not-O* 'develops' into O* while not-O* 'develops' into O*. But if that were so, while it was happening, these two would no longer be 'opposites' of one another --, not unless we widen the term "opposite" to mean "anything that an object/process turns into, and/or any intermediate object/process" while that is taking place". Naturally, that would make this 'Law' work by definitional fiat, rendering it eminently 'subjective' once more.

But even this will not work. Let us once again suppose that object/process A is comprised of two changing "internal opposites" O* and O**, and thus develops as a result. On this scenario, O* would change into an intermediary, but not into not-O* (which is, as we saw above, O**), contradicting the DM-worthies quoted earlier.

Alas, O* would have to change into an intermediary -- say O*1 --, and it would remain in that state, unchanged, for there is as yet no not-O*1 in existence to make it change any further.

Anyway, even if O*1 were to change into not-O*1 itself (as we suppose it must, given the doctrine laid down by the DM-prophets), then all the earlier problems would reappear, for this could only take place if not-O*1 already exists to make it happen. But not-O*1 cannot already exist, for O*1 has not changed into it yet!

It could be objected that the above abstract argument misses the point; in the real world things manifestly change. For example, it might be the case that John is a boy, but in a few years time it will be the case that John is a man. Now, the fact that other individuals are already men, does not stop John changing into a man (his opposite), as the above argues. So, John can change into his opposite even though that opposite already exists.

Or so it could be claimed.

But, this theory tells us that things/processes change because of a struggle with their opposites, and with what they become. Are we now to assume that John has to struggle with all the individuals that are already men if he is to become a man himself (if we now treat all these other men as John's opposites)? And are we to suppose that John struggles with what he is to become, even before it exists? If not, then the above response is beside the point. And, in view of the fact that John must turn into his opposite, does that mean he has to turn into these other men, or even into one of them? But he must do so if the Dialectical Holy Books are to be believed.

Anyway, according to the DM-worthies quoted above, John can only change because of a struggle between opposites taking place in the here-and-now. Are we now really supposed to believe that "John as a man" is struggling with "John as a boy" -- or that manhood is struggling with boyhood?

Some might be tempted to reply that this is precisely what adolescence is, and yet, in that case, John-as-boy and John-as-a-man would have to be locked in struggle in the present. [Of course, adolescence cannot struggle with anything, since it is an abstraction.] But, John-as-a-man does not yet exist, and so 'he' cannot struggle with John-as-boy. On the other hand, if John-as-a-man does exist, so that 'he' can struggle with his youthful self, then John-as-boy cannot change into 'him', for John-as-a-man already exists!

To be sure, John's 'opposite' is whatever he will become (if he is allowed to develop naturally), but, as noted above, that opposite cannot now exist otherwise John would not need to become him!

So, in ten or fifteen years, John will not just become any man, he will become a particular man. Let us call the man that he becomes Man(j). In that case, this opposite must exist now or John will not change into him (if the DM-worthies above are to be believed). But, if that is so, John cannot become Man(j) since he already exists!

[This is, of course, just a concrete example of the argument above.]

Consider another concrete example: wood being fashioned into a table. Once more, according to the dialectical classicists, all objects and processes change because of a 'struggle' of opposites, and they all also change into those opposites.

So, the wood that is used to make a table, according to this 'theory', has to 'struggle' with what it turns into, that is, this wood has to 'struggle' with the table it turns into!

In that case, the table must already exist, or it could not 'struggle' with the wood from which it is to be made.

But, if the table already exists, then the wood cannot be changed into it.

On the other hand, if the table does not already exist, then the wood cannot 'struggle' with its own opposite, that is, it cannot 'struggle' with the table it has yet to become.

Either way, change could not happen, according to this 'theory'.

And it is little use introducing human agency here, for if a carpenter is required to make a table, then he/she has to 'struggle' with the wood to make it into that table (since we are told that every object and process in nature is governed by this 'Law'). But, according to the Dialectical Holy Books, objects and processes 'struggle' with their dialectical 'opposites', and they turn into those opposites. If so, wood must turn into the carpenter, not the table!

With a crazy theory like this at its core, is it any wonder Dialectical Marxism is a by-word for failure?

Consider another hackneyed example: water turning into steam at 100 degrees C (under normal conditions). Are we really supposed to believe that the opposite that water becomes (i.e., steam) makes water turn into steam? It must do so if the above DM-worthies are to be believed. So, while you might think it is the heat/energy you are putting into the water that turns it into steam, what really happens according to these wise old dialecticians is that steam makes water turn into steam!

In that case, save energy, and turn the gas off!

Let us track a water molecule to see what happens to it. To identify it we shall call it W1, and the steam molecule it turns into S1. But, if the DM-worthies above are correct, S1 must already exist, otherwise W1 could not change into it. But if that is so, where does S1 disappear to? In fact, according to the above worthies, since opposites turn into one another, S1 must change into W1! So while you are boiling a kettle, according to this Superscientific theory, steam is turning back into the water you have just boiled, and at the same rate!

[One wonders therefore how kettles manage to boil dry!]

This must be so, otherwise, when W1 turns into S1 -- which already exists or W1 could not change -- there would have to be two S1s where there used to be one! Matter created from nowhere!

Of course, the same argument applies to water freezing (and to any and all other examples of change).

None of this, of course, is to deny that change occurs, only that DM cannot account for it.

Whichever way we try to re-package this 'Law' we end up with insuperable problems.

However, Mao attempted to revise Hegel, Engels and Lenin by the invention of principle and secondary contradictions (arguably to allow him to indulge in class-collaboration with the Guomindang):


'For instance, consider the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Take one aspect, the Kuomintang. In the period of the first united front, the Kuomintang carried out Sun Yat-sen's Three Great Policies of alliance with Russia, co-operation with the Communist Party, and assistance to the peasants and workers; hence it was revolutionary and vigorous, it was an alliance of various classes for the democratic revolution. After 1927, however, the Kuomintang changed into its opposite and became a reactionary bloc of the landlords and big bourgeoisie. After the Sian Incident in December 1936, it began another change in the direction of ending the civil war and co-operating with the Communist Party for joint opposition to Japanese imperialism.'

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/...-1/mswv1_17.htm (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm)

[Incidentally, this makes Mao (shock! horror!) a 'Revisionist'!]

But how can these contradictions themselves change? Presumably, if they do, then each must be a UO.

[UO = Unity of Opposites.]

Let us assume then that the 'Primary' contradiction P1 changes into 'Secondary' contradiction S1.

But what brings about this change?

Given the DM-theory of change, P1 must itself be composed of at least two further opposites, say: P* and P**, one of which P1 must turn into (since, as we saw, it is part of this DM-theory that all things change into their opposites).

Hence, P1 turns into, say, P**.

[But don't try asking what happened to P*! As we will see, things aren't that simple.]

But, once more: why did P1 change into P**?

Well, this must be because there is a 'contradiction' between P* and P** (or, perhaps, even between P1 and P**).

But, in that case, if all things turn into their opposites, P* must change into P**, too! [But, P** already exists, so how can anything turn into it?]

There must therefore be two P**'s -- say P**a and P**b, for both of these to turn into, collectively or severally.

So, P1 and P* turn into one or other of P**a or P**b, while P** remains the same (or, it becomes one of these two, too).

But, that means that P** is either changeless, or it too changes into one of the options that have already been selected for P* or P1 to become.

But, once more, P**a and P**b already exist, so P** cannot change into either of them!

Putting that 'difficulty' to one side for now, this can only mean that P1, which used to be made up of at least P* and P**, turns into P**, while P* turns into P**, too --, or it turns into something else (but into what, and how?), or it disappears, or it does not change.

So, either P1 and P* merge into one entity (as they both become P**) or they turn into one or other of P**a or P**b -- or, third P** possibility (say, P**c) pops into existence as they (both?) change into it!

But if this is so, it is not easy to see how P1 could be part of the action. It must contain all these things (as 'internal opposites') if it is to turn into them, and yet that can only mean that it turns into one of its own parts! Once more, how can it do that if they too already exist?

Putting this to one side, too: the changes wrought in P1 and P* could not have been the result of a 'struggle of opposites', since this new opposite (i.e., P**c) does not yet exist!

On the other hand, if that opposite does exist (so that it can 'struggle' with one or both of the other two, and thereby cause the given change), neither P1 nor P* could change into it, since it already exists, too! So, these two cannot change, either.

Either that, or there must be something else for one or both to change into -- but even then the same problems would simply apply to them.

In that case, this 'theory' seems to imply that things either merge, disappear, or are created ex nihilo [out of nothing] -- or they do not change!

Anyway, why should anything change from a P-type contradiction into an S-type, to begin with?

On this theory, this would only happen if, say, P1 already contained an S-type contradiction for it to change into. [Recall that on this 'theory', 'internal opposites' cause change and things change into their opposites!] But where on earth did that S-type contradiction come from?

Given the above reasoning, for this to happen, P** (from earlier) must be an S-type contradiction, otherwise P1 (or P*) could not change into it. But, as we saw, P** already exists, so nothing can change into it!

[MIST = Maoist Dialectician.]

Once more, these seem to be the only options available to MIST's: either P1 (or P*) merges with P**, or it (they) disappear into thin air -- or there are at least 3 versions of P** (P**a, P**b and P**c) for one or other to change into.

But these three (P**a, P**b and P**c) cannot exist, since if they did, P* and P1 could not change into them. But if they don't exist, they cannot struggle with anything in order to bring about the required change!

So, yet again, nothing actually changes (or nothing causes it!).

In that case, not only can this scenario not work, we still do not know why anything should alter from the one into the other sort of contradiction, or into anything whatsoever.

And these difficulties do not go away if concrete examples are substituted for the schematic letters used above. So, for example, why did the "primary contradiction" between China and Japan (referred to by Mao) change? On sound DM-lines, it could only do so as a result of its own 'internal contradictions'. In that case, this "primary contradiction", C/J, must possess its own 'internal opposites', C/J* and C/J**; the rest follows as before.

Of course, it could be argued once more that not-O* from earlier 'develops' into O* while not-O* 'develops' into O*.

[This objection might even incorporate that eminently obscure Hegelian term-of-art: "sublation". More on that presently.]

But, even supposing it were the case that not-O* 'developed' into O* while not-O* 'developed' into O*, and such process were governed by the obscure term "sublation", this alternative will still not work (as we are about to see).

Indeed, developing this option further before it is demolished, it could be argued that Engels had himself anticipated the above objections when he said:


"[RL: Negation of the negation is] a very simple process which is taking place everywhere and every day, which any child can understand as soon as it is stripped of the veil of mystery in which it was enveloped by the old idealist philosophy and in which it is to the advantage of helpless metaphysicians of Herr Dühring's calibre to keep it enveloped. Let us take a grain of barley. Billions of such grains of barley are milled, boiled and brewed and then consumed. But if such a grain of barley meets with conditions which are normal for it, if it falls on suitable soil, then under the influence of heat and moisture it undergoes a specific change, it germinates; the grain as such ceases to exist, it is negated, and in its place appears the plant which has arisen from it, the negation of the grain. But what is the normal life-process of this plant? It grows, flowers, is fertilised and finally once more produces grains of barley, and as soon as these have ripened the stalk dies, is in its turn negated. As a result of this negation of the negation we have once again the original grain of barley, but not as a single unit, but ten-, twenty- or thirtyfold. Species of grain change extremely slowly, and so the barley of today is almost the same as it-was a century ago. But if we take a plastic ornamental plant, for example a dahlia or an orchid, and treat the seed and the plant which grows from it according to the gardener's art, we get as a result of this negation of the negation not only more seeds, but also qualitatively improved seeds, which produce more beautiful flowers, and each repetition of this process, each fresh negation of the negation, enhances this process of perfection. [Engels (1976), pp.172-73.]

"But someone may object: the negation that has taken place in this case is not a real negation: I negate a grain of barley also when I grind it, an insect when I crush it underfoot, or the positive quantity a when I cancel it, and so on. Or I negate the sentence: the rose is a rose, when I say: the rose is not a rose; and what do I get if I then negate this negation and say: but after all the rose is a rose? -- These objections are in fact the chief arguments put forward by the metaphysicians against dialectics, and they are wholly worthy of the narrow-mindedness of this mode of thought. Negation in dialectics does not mean simply saying no, or declaring that something does not exist, or destroying it in any way one likes. Long ago Spinoza said: Omnis determinatio est negatio -- every limitation or determination is at the same time a negation. And further: the kind of negation is here determined, firstly, by the general and, secondly, by the particular nature of the process. I must not only negate, but also sublate the negation. I must therefore so arrange the first negation that the second remains or becomes possible. How? This depends on the particular nature of each individual case. If I grind a grain of barley, or crush an insect, I have carried out the first part of the action, but have made the second part impossible. Every kind of thing therefore has a peculiar way of being negated in such manner that it gives rise to a development, and it is just the same with every kind of conception or idea....

"But it is clear that from a negation of the negation which consists in the childish pastime of alternately writing and cancelling a, or in alternately declaring that a rose is a rose and that it is not a rose, nothing eventuates but the silliness of the person who adopts such a tedious procedure. And yet the metaphysicians try to make us believe that this is the right way to carry out a negation of the negation, if we ever should want to do such a thing. [Ibid., pp.180-81.]

Engels's argument seems to be that "dialectical negation" is not the same as ordinary negation in that it is not simple destruction. Dialectical negation "sublates"; that is, it both destroys and preserves, so that something new or 'higher' emerges as a result. Nevertheless, we have already seen here, that Hegel's use of this word (i.e., "sublate") is highly suspect, and we will also see below that this 'Law' (i.e., the NON) is even more dubious still (partly because Hegel confused ordinary negation with 'cancelling out', or with destruction, as did Engels).

Well, despite all this, is it the case that the above comments neutralise the argument presented in this part of this post? Is the argument here guilty of the following:


"These objections are in fact the chief arguments put forward by the metaphysicians against dialectics, and they are wholly worthy of the narrow-mindedness of this mode of thought." [Ibid.]

To answer this, let us once again suppose that object/process A is comprised of two changing "internal opposites" O* and not-O*, and thus develops as a result. On this scenario, O* would change/develop into a "sublated" intermediary, but not into not-O* -- incidentally, contradicting the DM-worthies quoted earlier. According to them, O* should, of course, change into not-O*, not into some intermediary.

Putting this minor quibble to one side, on this 'revised' view, let us suppose that O* does indeed change into that intermediary. To that end, let us call the latter, "O*(1)" (which can be interpreted as a combination of the old and the new; a 'negation' which also 'preserves'/'sublates').

If so, then O*(1) must remain forever in that state, unchanged, for there is as yet no not-O*(1) in existence to make it develop any further.

[Recall that on this 'theory', everything (and that must include O*(1)) changes because of a 'struggle' with its opposite.]

So, there must be a not-O*(1) to make O*(1) change further. To be sure, we could try to exempt O*(1) from this essential requirement on an ad hoc basis (arguing, perhaps, that O*(1) changes spontaneously with nothing actually causing it), and yet if we do that, there would seem to be no reason to accept the version of events contained in the DM-classics, which tells us that every thing/process changes because of the operation of opposites (and O*(1) is certainly a thing/process). Furthermore, if we make an exemption here, then the whole point of the exercise would be lost, for if some things do and some things do not change according this dialectical 'Law', we would be left with no way of telling which changes were and which were not subject to it.

This is, of course, quite apart from the fact that such a subjectively applied exemption certificate (issued to O*(1)) would mean that nothing at all could change, for everything in the universe is in the process of change, and is thus already a 'sublated' version of whatever it used to be.

Ignoring this, too, even if O*(1) were to change into not-O*(1) (as we suppose it must, given the doctrine laid down by the DM-prophets), then all the earlier problems simply reappear, for this could only take place if not-O*(1) already existed to make it happen! But not-O*(1) cannot already exist, for O*(1) has not changed into it yet!

More details and references can be found here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2007.htm

Use the 'Quick Links' at the top of the page to go to Section (B) (1): 'Dialectics Cannot Explain Change'.

[red cat]

When we observe a system, we recognize opposites according to the parameters and properties we define or give priority to. For example, if, on the real line, we use addition as the parameter, then the opposite of 5 is -5, while if we use multiplication, it is 0.2 ! Here, in both the cases, the criterion for being "opposite" to a given element is to result in the identity element of the group under the given operation, when the operation is performed on both the elements. In the cases mentioned above, we have 5 + (-5) = 0 , 5 * 0.2 = 1 .

When we observe a particular process in a system, we try to observe various properties of the process, and depending on the ones we want to observe, and the one among them which is most likely to affect the others greatly by its outcome, we identify a possibility and its negation as the primary contradiction. For example, the well known contradictions defined by Maoism are dependent on our decision to observe class-dynamics. Had we decided to observe, say, dynamics of food habits instead, the contradictions would have been entirely different.


As a system transforms, the contradictions might not(and generally do not) remain static. For example, when a colony is fighting its freedom struggle led by a united front, the major contradiction is between the revolutionary masses and imperialism-feudalism-comprador capitalism. But as soon as the revolution is accomplished, the revolutionary masses themselves divide into two antagonistic camps; the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The country's future; its return to a colonial state, or its development into a socialist state or a capitalist state now depends upon the outcome of this contradiction.


Now observe, that feudalism-colonialism, national capitalism, and socialism cannot exist simultaneously in a given society for a long time(while the society changes they can co-exist for a very very short time). So when we fix a suitable time-bound from below when we observe a society, any two of these systems can be considered as the negation of the remaining one. Thus, a contradiction's nature might be such that it cannot be resolved until it itself transforms radically. In the case above, if we judge by the initial contradictions during the revolution, the prevalent system, if the revolution suceeds, transforms only to a part of what constituted its opposite.

Now let us look at your examples.





All this seems to suggest that objects and processes not only change because of their internal opposites, but that they change into them (and, according to Lenin, they change into all of them!), and that they also produce these opposites while they change --, or they do so as a result of that change. As we shall see, all this presents DM-theorists with some rather nasty dialectical headaches.

While transforming, the system in question might change the nature of its opposite and the contradiction itself.




To see this, let us suppose that object/process A is comprised of two "internal opposites" O* and O**, and thus changes as a result.

[The same problems occur even if these are 'external opposites'.]

But, O* cannot itself change into O** since O** already exists! If O** didn't already exist, according to this theory, O* could not change, for there would be no opposite to bring that about.

And it is no good propelling O** into the future so that it now becomes what O* will change into, since O* will do no such thing unless O** is already there in the present to make that happen!

But, if object/process A is already composed of a dialectical union of O* and not-O* (i.e., O**) and O* 'changes' into not-O*, how can it do this if not-O* already exists? All that seems to happen is that O* disappears. Thus, O* does not change into not-O*, it is just replaced by it.

At the very least, this account of change leaves it entirely mysterious how not-O* itself came about. It seems to have popped into existence from nowhere.

It cannot have come from O*, since O* can only change because of the operation of not-O*, which does not yet exist! And pushing the process into the past (via a 'reversed' version of the negation of the negation) will merely reduplicate the above problems. [More on this below.]

[DM = Dialectical Materialism; FL = Formal Logic.]

Now, it could be objected that all this seems to place objects and/or processes into fixed categories, which is one of the main criticisms dialecticians make of FL. Hence, the above argument is entirely misguided -- or so it could be claimed.

In that case, let us suppose that object/process A is comprised of two changing "internal opposites" O* and O**, and thus develops as a result.

The rest still follows. Hence, if object/process A is already composed of a changing dialectical union of O* and not-O* (i.e., O**) and O* 'develops' into not-O* as a result, where then is the change? All that seems to happen is that O* disappears.


Thus, on this view, O* does not change into not-O* it is just replaced by it, since not-O* already exists!

The only way to read this to avoid the above difficulty is to argue that despite this, O* still 'develops' into not-O*. But that cannot work, for not-O* must already exist for this to happen, and that would mean that there would now be two not-O*s where once there was only one!

This would also imply, incidentally, that not-O* must remain unchanged (which would violate the DM-thesis that all things are always changing, and changing into one another!).

Of course, it could be argued that not-O* 'develops' into O* while not-O* 'develops' into O*. But if that were so, while it was happening, these two would no longer be 'opposites' of one another --, not unless we widen the term "opposite" to mean "anything that an object/process turns into, and/or any intermediate object/process" while that is taking place". Naturally, that would make this 'Law' work by definitional fiat, rendering it eminently 'subjective' once more.

But even this will not work. Let us once again suppose that object/process A is comprised of two changing "internal opposites" O* and O**, and thus develops as a result. On this scenario, O* would change into an intermediary, but not into not-O* (which is, as we saw above, O**), contradicting the DM-worthies quoted earlier.

Alas, O* would have to change into an intermediary -- say O*1 --, and it would remain in that state, unchanged, for there is as yet no not-O*1 in existence to make it change any further.

Anyway, even if O*1 were to change into not-O*1 itself (as we suppose it must, given the doctrine laid down by the DM-prophets), then all the earlier problems would reappear, for this could only take place if not-O*1 already exists to make it happen. But not-O*1 cannot already exist, for O*1 has not changed into it yet!

This example is not sufficient for characterizing all contradictions, as it assumes them to be static.






It could be objected that the above abstract argument misses the point; in the real world things manifestly change. For example, it might be the case that John is a boy, but in a few years time it will be the case that John is a man. Now, the fact that other individuals are already men, does not stop John changing into a man (his opposite), as the above argues. So, John can change into his opposite even though that opposite already exists.

Or so it could be claimed.

But, this theory tells us that things/processes change because of a struggle with their opposites, and with what they become. Are we now to assume that John has to struggle with all the individuals that are already men if he is to become a man himself (if we now treat all these other men as John's opposites)? And are we to suppose that John struggles with what he is to become, even before it exists? If not, then the above response is beside the point. And, in view of the fact that John must turn into his opposite, does that mean he has to turn into these other men, or even into one of them? But he must do so if the Dialectical Holy Books are to be believed.

Anyway, according to the DM-worthies quoted above, John can only change because of a struggle between opposites taking place in the here-and-now. Are we now really supposed to believe that "John as a man" is struggling with "John as a boy" -- or that manhood is struggling with boyhood?

Some might be tempted to reply that this is precisely what adolescence is, and yet, in that case, John-as-boy and John-as-a-man would have to be locked in struggle in the present. [Of course, adolescence cannot struggle with anything, since it is an abstraction.] But, John-as-a-man does not yet exist, and so 'he' cannot struggle with John-as-boy. On the other hand, if John-as-a-man does exist, so that 'he' can struggle with his youthful self, then John-as-boy cannot change into 'him', for John-as-a-man already exists!

To be sure, John's 'opposite' is whatever he will become (if he is allowed to develop naturally), but, as noted above, that opposite cannot now exist otherwise John would not need to become him!

So, in ten or fifteen years, John will not just become any man, he will become a particular man. Let us call the man that he becomes Man(j). In that case, this opposite must exist now or John will not change into him (if the DM-worthies above are to be believed). But, if that is so, John cannot become Man(j) since he already exists!

[This is, of course, just a concrete example of the argument above.]

Again, the contradiction is not necessarily with what they become. You are defining a man to be a boy's opposite, and the process that you are studying is John's growth into a man. In this case John's contradictions will not necessarily be with other men. His primary contradiction will be with the opposing class, as a member of his whole class, because that is the chief factor which will radically shape John's future.





Consider another concrete example: wood being fashioned into a table. Once more, according to the dialectical classicists, all objects and processes change because of a 'struggle' of opposites, and they all also change into those opposites.

So, the wood that is used to make a table, according to this 'theory', has to 'struggle' with what it turns into, that is, this wood has to 'struggle' with the table it turns into!

In that case, the table must already exist, or it could not 'struggle' with the wood from which it is to be made.

But, if the table already exists, then the wood cannot be changed into it.

On the other hand, if the table does not already exist, then the wood cannot 'struggle' with its own opposite, that is, it cannot 'struggle' with the table it has yet to become.

Either way, change could not happen, according to this 'theory'.

And it is little use introducing human agency here, for if a carpenter is required to make a table, then he/she has to 'struggle' with the wood to make it into that table (since we are told that every object and process in nature is governed by this 'Law'). But, according to the Dialectical Holy Books, objects and processes 'struggle' with their dialectical 'opposites', and they turn into those opposites. If so, wood must turn into the carpenter, not the table!

With a crazy theory like this at its core, is it any wonder Dialectical Marxism is a by-word for failure?
We shall see whose theory is a failure.

While the carpenter makes the table, he saws the wood, hammers nails into it. All this while the wood has been exerting an equal and opposite force on him. If you observe the process of manufacturing a table, then this indeed is the "struggle" mentioned.

And you cannot consider the wood solely as a system if you want to study its modification (and conclude that the wood struggles with the table, thereby trying to prove by giving naive examples of how useless DM is ? What a pathetic attempt!), as the agent that introduces the modifying force, the carpenter that is, remains outside the system.


Consider another hackneyed example: water turning into steam at 100 degrees C (under normal conditions). Are we really supposed to believe that the opposite that water becomes (i.e., steam) makes water turn into steam? It must do so if the above DM-worthies are to be believed. So, while you might think it is the heat/energy you are putting into the water that turns it into steam, what really happens according to these wise old dialecticians is that steam makes water turn into steam!

In that case, save energy, and turn the gas off!

Let us track a water molecule to see what happens to it. To identify it we shall call it W1, and the steam molecule it turns into S1. But, if the DM-worthies above are correct, S1 must already exist, otherwise W1 could not change into it. But if that is so, where does S1 disappear to? In fact, according to the above worthies, since opposites turn into one another, S1 must change into W1! So while you are boiling a kettle, according to this Superscientific theory, steam is turning back into the water you have just boiled, and at the same rate!

[One wonders therefore how kettles manage to boil dry!]

This must be so, otherwise, when W1 turns into S1 -- which already exists or W1 could not change -- there would have to be two S1s where there used to be one! Matter created from nowhere!

Of course, the same argument applies to water freezing (and to any and all other examples of change).

None of this, of course, is to deny that change occurs, only that DM cannot account for it.

Whichever way we try to re-package this 'Law' we end up with insuperable problems.Again the same fallacy of assuming the contradictions,opposites to be static and defining the contradictions wrongly as a whole when compared to the system observed. And by the way, steam does turn into water during boiling process.



However, Mao attempted to revise Hegel, Engels and Lenin by the invention of principle and secondary contradictions (arguably to allow him to indulge in class-collaboration with the Guomindang):



http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/...-1/mswv1_17.htm

[Incidentally, this makes Mao (shock! horror!) a 'Revisionist'!]

But how can these contradictions themselves change? Presumably, if they do, then each must be a UO.

[UO = Unity of Opposites.]

Let us assume then that the 'Primary' contradiction P1 changes into 'Secondary' contradiction S1.

But what brings about this change?

Given the DM-theory of change, P1 must itself be composed of at least two further opposites, say: P* and P**, one of which P1 must turn into (since, as we saw, it is part of this DM-theory that all things change into their opposites).

Hence, P1 turns into, say, P**.

[But don't try asking what happened to P*! As we will see, things aren't that simple.]

But, once more: why did P1 change into P**?

Well, this must be because there is a 'contradiction' between P* and P** (or, perhaps, even between P1 and P**).

But, in that case, if all things turn into their opposites, P* must change into P**, too! [But, P** already exists, so how can anything turn into it?]

There must therefore be two P**'s -- say P**a and P**b, for both of these to turn into, collectively or severally.

So, P1 and P* turn into one or other of P**a or P**b, while P** remains the same (or, it becomes one of these two, too).

But, that means that P** is either changeless, or it too changes into one of the options that have already been selected for P* or P1 to become.

But, once more, P**a and P**b already exist, so P** cannot change into either of them!

Putting that 'difficulty' to one side for now, this can only mean that P1, which used to be made up of at least P* and P**, turns into P**, while P* turns into P**, too --, or it turns into something else (but into what, and how?), or it disappears, or it does not change.

So, either P1 and P* merge into one entity (as they both become P**) or they turn into one or other of P**a or P**b -- or, third P** possibility (say, P**c) pops into existence as they (both?) change into it!

But if this is so, it is not easy to see how P1 could be part of the action. It must contain all these things (as 'internal opposites') if it is to turn into them, and yet that can only mean that it turns into one of its own parts! Once more, how can it do that if they too already exist?

Putting this to one side, too: the changes wrought in P1 and P* could not have been the result of a 'struggle of opposites', since this new opposite (i.e., P**c) does not yet exist!

On the other hand, if that opposite does exist (so that it can 'struggle' with one or both of the other two, and thereby cause the given change), neither P1 nor P* could change into it, since it already exists, too! So, these two cannot change, either.

Either that, or there must be something else for one or both to change into -- but even then the same problems would simply apply to them.

In that case, this 'theory' seems to imply that things either merge, disappear, or are created ex nihilo [out of nothing] -- or they do not change!

Anyway, why should anything change from a P-type contradiction into an S-type, to begin with?

On this theory, this would only happen if, say, P1 already contained an S-type contradiction for it to change into. [Recall that on this 'theory', 'internal opposites' cause change and things change into their opposites!] But where on earth did that S-type contradiction come from?

Given the above reasoning, for this to happen, P** (from earlier) must be an S-type contradiction, otherwise P1 (or P*) could not change into it. But, as we saw, P** already exists, so nothing can change into it!

[MIST = Maoist Dialectician.]

Once more, these seem to be the only options available to MIST's: either P1 (or P*) merges with P**, or it (they) disappear into thin air -- or there are at least 3 versions of P** (P**a, P**b and P**c) for one or other to change into.

But these three (P**a, P**b and P**c) cannot exist, since if they did, P* and P1 could not change into them. But if they don't exist, they cannot struggle with anything in order to bring about the required change!

So, yet again, nothing actually changes (or nothing causes it!).

In that case, not only can this scenario not work, we still do not know why anything should alter from the one into the other sort of contradiction, or into anything whatsoever.

And these difficulties do not go away if concrete examples are substituted for the schematic letters used above. So, for example, why did the "primary contradiction" between China and Japan (referred to by Mao) change? On sound DM-lines, it could only do so as a result of its own 'internal contradictions'. In that case, this "primary contradiction", C/J, must possess its own 'internal opposites', C/J* and C/J**; the rest follows as before.

Of course, it could be argued once more that not-O* from earlier 'develops' into O* while not-O* 'develops' into O*.

[This objection might even incorporate that eminently obscure Hegelian term-of-art: "sublation". More on that presently.]

But, even supposing it were the case that not-O* 'developed' into O* while not-O* 'developed' into O*, and such process were governed by the obscure term "sublation", this alternative will still not work (as we are about to see).

Indeed, developing this option further before it is demolished, it could be argued that Engels had himself anticipated the above objections when he said:



Engels's argument seems to be that "dialectical negation" is not the same as ordinary negation in that it is not simple destruction. Dialectical negation "sublates"; that is, it both destroys and preserves, so that something new or 'higher' emerges as a result. Nevertheless, we have already seen here, that Hegel's use of this word (i.e., "sublate") is highly suspect, and we will also see below that this 'Law' (i.e., the NON) is even more dubious still (partly because Hegel confused ordinary negation with 'cancelling out', or with destruction, as did Engels).

Well, despite all this, is it the case that the above comments neutralise the argument presented in this part of this post? Is the argument here guilty of the following:



To answer this, let us once again suppose that object/process A is comprised of two changing "internal opposites" O* and not-O*, and thus develops as a result. On this scenario, O* would change/develop into a "sublated" intermediary, but not into not-O* -- incidentally, contradicting the DM-worthies quoted earlier. According to them, O* should, of course, change into not-O*, not into some intermediary.

Putting this minor quibble to one side, on this 'revised' view, let us suppose that O* does indeed change into that intermediary. To that end, let us call the latter, "O*(1)" (which can be interpreted as a combination of the old and the new; a 'negation' which also 'preserves'/'sublates').

If so, then O*(1) must remain forever in that state, unchanged, for there is as yet no not-O*(1) in existence to make it develop any further.

[Recall that on this 'theory', everything (and that must include O*(1)) changes because of a 'struggle' with its opposite.]

So, there must be a not-O*(1) to make O*(1) change further. To be sure, we could try to exempt O*(1) from this essential requirement on an ad hoc basis (arguing, perhaps, that O*(1) changes spontaneously with nothing actually causing it), and yet if we do that, there would seem to be no reason to accept the version of events contained in the DM-classics, which tells us that every thing/process changes because of the operation of opposites (and O*(1) is certainly a thing/process). Furthermore, if we make an exemption here, then the whole point of the exercise would be lost, for if some things do and some things do not change according this dialectical 'Law', we would be left with no way of telling which changes were and which were not subject to it.

This is, of course, quite apart from the fact that such a subjectively applied exemption certificate (issued to O*(1)) would mean that nothing at all could change, for everything in the universe is in the process of change, and is thus already a 'sublated' version of whatever it used to be.

Ignoring this, too, even if O*(1) were to change into not-O*(1) (as we suppose it must, given the doctrine laid down by the DM-prophets), then all the earlier problems simply reappear, for this could only take place if not-O*(1) already existed to make it happen! But not-O*(1) cannot already exist, for O*(1) has not changed into it yet!

More details and references can be found here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2007.htm

Use the 'Quick Links' at the top of the page to go to Section (B) (1): 'Dialectics Cannot Explain Change'.Based on what I wrote earlier, it must be clear why I am not countering this text-barricade separately. I can only suggest a re-reading of Mao's works.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


When we observe a system, we recognize opposites according to the parameters and properties we define or give priority to. For example, if, on the real line, we use addition as the parameter, then the opposite of 5 is -5, while if we use multiplication, it is 0.2 ! Here, in both the cases, the criterion for being "opposite" to a given element is to result in the identity element of the group under the given operation, when the operation is performed on both the elements. In the cases mentioned above, we have 5 + (-5) = 0 , 5 * 0.2 = 1 .

But do these turn into one another, and do they 'struggle' with one another? According to the dialectical Bible, they should.


When we observe a particular process in a system, we try to observe various properties of the process, and depending on the ones we want to observe, and the one among them which is most likely to affect the others greatly by its outcome, we identify a possibility and its negation as the primary contradiction. For example, the well known contradictions defined by Maoism are dependent on our decision to observe class-dynamics. Had we decided to observe, say, dynamics of food habits instead, the contradictions would have been entirely different.

As a system transforms, the contradictions might not (and generally do not) remain static. For example, when a colony is fighting its freedom struggle led by a united front, the major contradiction is between the revolutionary masses and imperialism-feudalism-comprador capitalism. But as soon as the revolution is accomplished, the revolutionary masses themselves divide into two antagonistic camps; the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The country's future; its return to a colonial state, or its development into a socialist state or a capitalist state now depends upon the outcome of this contradiction.

1) How is this a 'contradiction'? The only reason for saying so is the fact that Hegel used this word, and he did so as a result of his confusing a 'negative' form of the 'law of identity' with the 'law of non-contradiction'. But, the former concerns the alleged identity between an object/process and itself, whereas the second concerns the truth-functional link between a proposition and its negation; it is not about the relation between objects/processes.

2) This just repeats a tired piece of Revisionism, invented to excuse class collaboration with the Guomindang.


Now observe, that feudalism-colonialism, national capitalism, and socialism cannot exist simultaneously in a given society for a long time (while the society changes they can co-exist for a very very short time). So when we fix a suitable time-bound from below when we observe a society, any two of these systems can be considered as the negation of the remaining one. Thus, a contradiction's nature might be such that it cannot be resolved until it itself transforms radically. In the case above, if we judge by the initial contradictions during the revolution, the prevalent system, if the revolution succeeds, transforms only to a part of what constituted its opposite.

But, according to Engels, Lenin and Mao, such 'opposites' turn into one another. In that case, feudalism-colonialism and/or national capitalism should turn into capitalism, and capitalism should turn into feudalism-colonialism and/or national capitalism.


While transforming, the system in question might change the nature of its opposite and the contradiction itself.

Well, I covered that in this comment:


To answer this, let us once again suppose that object/process A is comprised of two changing "internal opposites" O* and not-O*, and thus develops as a result. On this scenario, O* would change/develop into a "sublated" intermediary, but not into not-O* -- incidentally, contradicting the DM-worthies quoted earlier. According to them, O* should, of course, change into not-O*, not into some intermediary.

Putting this minor quibble to one side, on this 'revised' view, let us suppose that O* does indeed change into that intermediary. To that end, let us call the latter, "O*(1)" (which can be interpreted as a combination of the old and the new; a 'negation' which also 'preserves'/'sublates').

If so, then O*(1) must remain forever in that state, unchanged, for there is as yet no not-O*(1) in existence to make it develop any further.

[Recall that on this 'theory', everything (and that must include O*(1)) changes because of a 'struggle' with its opposite.]

So, there must be a not-O*(1) to make O*(1) change further. To be sure, we could try to exempt O*(1) from this essential requirement on an ad hoc basis (arguing, perhaps, that O*(1) changes spontaneously with nothing actually causing it), and yet if we do that, there would seem to be no reason to accept the version of events contained in the DM-classics, which tells us that every thing/process changes because of the operation of opposites (and O*(1) is certainly a thing/process). Furthermore, if we make an exemption here, then the whole point of the exercise would be lost, for if some things do and some things do not change according this dialectical 'Law', we would be left with no way of telling which changes were and which were not subject to it.

This is, of course, quite apart from the fact that such a subjectively applied exemption certificate (issued to O*(1)) would mean that nothing at all could change, for everything in the universe is in the process of change, and is thus already a 'sublated' version of whatever it used to be.

Ignoring this, too, even if O*(1) were to change into not-O*(1) (as we suppose it must, given the doctrine laid down by the DM-prophets), then all the earlier problems simply reappear, for this could only take place if not-O*(1) already existed to make it happen! But not-O*(1) cannot already exist, for O*(1) has not changed into it yet!

You:


This example is not sufficient for characterizing all contradictions, as it assumes them to be static.

Not so; I added in the proviso that these could be changing all the time. Hence, a changing O* and O** would still be subject to the above absurd consequences.


Again, the contradiction is not necessarily with what they become. You are defining a man to be a boy's opposite, and the process that you are studying is John's growth into a man. In this case John's contradictions will not necessarily be with other men. His primary contradiction will be with the opposing class, as a member of his whole class, because that is the chief factor which will radically shape John's future.

Unfortunately, your revised theory contradicts (somewhat fittingly, one feels) what the dialectical gospels tell us. Here is Mao, for example:


"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

"In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao (1961b), pp.340-42.]

"The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics....

"As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....

"The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.... [Ibid., pp.311-18.]

Bold added.


We shall see whose theory is a failure.

I don't have a philosophical theory, nor do I want one.



While the carpenter makes the table, he saws the wood, hammers nails into it. All this while the wood has been exerting an equal and opposite force on him. If you observe the process of manufacturing a table, then this indeed is the "struggle" mentioned.

I agree, but then this description in ordinary terms cannot be reconciled with the dialectical holy books. There, we are told that things turn into whatever it is they are struggling with. In that case, the carpenter must turn into the table, and the table into the carpenter!


And you cannot consider the wood solely as a system if you want to study its modification (and conclude that the wood struggles with the table, thereby trying to prove by giving naive examples of how useless DM is ? What a pathetic attempt!), as the agent that introduces the modifying force, the carpenter that is, remains outside the system.

Well, this shows how dialectics cannot even cope with a simple table, that's how pathetic a 'theory' it is.

Don't pick a fight with me; I didn't dream it up. Pick a fight with Hegel, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Mao. It's their screwy 'theory', and it can't cope with change.

All I have done is highlight its major flaws; but I didn't create these flaws. You seem to think I did.


Again the same fallacy of assuming the contradictions, opposites to be static and defining the contradictions wrongly as a whole when compared to the system observed. And by the way, steam does turn into water during boiling process.

Not so, once more. I specifically said these were changing objects/processes:


Now, it could be objected that all this seems to place objects and/or processes into fixed categories, which is one of the main criticisms dialecticians make of FL. Hence, the above argument is entirely misguided -- or so it could be claimed.

In that case, let us suppose that object/process A is comprised of two changing "internal opposites" O* and O**, and thus develops as a result.

The rest still follows. Hence, if object/process A is already composed of a changing dialectical union of O* and not-O* (i.e., O**) and O* 'develops' into not-O* as a result, where then is the change? All that seems to happen is that O* disappears.

Bold added.

And I made this point several times. This suggests that in your haste, you merely skim-read my post.


Based on what I wrote earlier, it must be clear why I am not countering this text-barricade separately. I can only suggest a re-reading of Mao's works.

Been reading and studying them for well over 25 years; still can't make head-or-tail of his version of dialectics.

And your response suggests you can't, either!

[red cat]

But do these turn into one another, and do they 'struggle' with one another? According to the dialectical Bible, they should.

Here the system is an abstraction. Since it is has been defined us, and is at a very simple level, the question of an operation resulting in possibilities of different answers does not arise. About "turning" into some other element, that is what mathematical operands undergo during the operation.




1) How is this a 'contradiction'? The only reason for saying so is the fact that Hegel used this word, and he did so as a result of his confusing a 'negative' form of the 'law of identity' with the 'law of non-contradiction'. But, the former concerns the alleged identity between an object/process and itself, whereas the second concerns the truth-functional link between a proposition and its negation; it is not about the relation between objects/processes.


We use the term "contradiction" because wee are mainly refering to mutually exclusive elements; the existance of one element contradicts the existance of the other.



2) This just repeats a tired piece of Revisionism, invented to excuse class collaboration with the Guomindang.

And this just repeats a tired piece of counter-revolutionary slandering, invented to excuse the slanderers' own perpetual state of inaction.




But, according to Engels, Lenin and Mao, such 'opposites' turn into one another. In that case, feudalism-colonialism and/or national capitalism should turn into capitalism, and capitalism should turn into feudalism-colonialism and/or national capitalism.


I used the term national capitalism just to distinguish it from imperialist capitalism acting on a colony.

The point that I wanted to make that not necessarily will the elements turn into ALL of their opposites, or wholly to their opposites.




Well, I covered that in this comment:



You:



Not so; I added in the proviso that these could be changing all the time. Hence, a changing O* and O** would still be subject to the above absurd consequences.


But the dynamic nature of the contradictions themselves would require the notion of the negation of an element to change.



Unfortunately, your revised theory contradicts (somewhat fittingly, one feels) what the dialectical gospels tell us. Here is Mao, for example:
Quote:

"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

"In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao (1961b), pp.340-42.]

"The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics....

"As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....

"The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.... [Ibid., pp.311-18.]


Bold added.


I don't realize where I contradicted this. And we don't have any "gospels". We update and challenge our ideology every moment to consolidate it.



I don't have a philosophical theory, nor do I want one.

Good.




I agree, but then this description in ordinary terms cannot be reconciled with the dialectical holy books. There, we are told that things turn into whatever it is they are struggling with. In that case, the carpenter must turn into the table, and the table into the carpenter!



Well, this shows how dialectics cannot even cope with a simple table, that's how pathetic a 'theory' it is.

Don't pick a fight with me; I didn't dream it up. Pick a fight with Hegel, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Mao. It's their screwy 'theory', and it can't cope with change.

All I have done is highlight its major flaws; but I didn't create these flaws. You seem to think I did.



But you are arbitrarily defining your systems and contradictions. Well, in the cases as simple as you have mentioned, contradictions also tend to be as simple. If you consider the table as a more or less closed system, then its internal contradictions will cause it to break and rot into worthless pieces over time.



Not so, once more. I specifically said these were changing objects/processes:



Bold added.


Again, you have overlooked that when contradictions change, O* and O** do not remain each others' opposites anymore.


And I made this point several times. This suggests that in your haste, you merely skim-read my post.


Absolutely not!! :ohmy:


Been reading and studying them for well over 25 years; still can't make head-or-tail of his version of dialectics.

Give it another try then !



And your response suggests you can't, either!
:rolleyes:

[red cat]

Don't you find it the least bit odd that there do not seem to be that many Trotskyists... until you want someone to blame?
In class-struggle violent contradictions are inevitable, though the number of casualties is generally grossly over-estimated. And we don't blame anyone. Rather you imagine mass-murders in history and blame us because you don't have any movement that has got something to show.

Also... can you tell me what was logical in the great leap forward about the steel manufacturing idea... I cannot seem to find it...
Or the 3 Pests campaign.


Link on Rosa's post is the one I was referring to.

We don't deny that there had been some wrong policies. But these have a large chance of happening during socialist construction.

Some good sources:

http://revcom.us/a/033/socialism-communism-better-capitalism-pt9.htm

http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/socialism-and-reversal-in-china%e2%80%99s-countryside-from-great-leap-to-flying-leap-part-2-of-5/

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Here the system is an abstraction. Since it is has been defined us, and is at a very simple level, the question of an operation resulting in possibilities of different answers does not arise. About "turning" into some other element, that is what mathematical operands undergo during the operation.

But, even in mathematics, such 'abstractions' do not turn into one another; what happens is that one set of elements is mapped onto another.

So, in your original example, the 5 you used did not change. Had it done so, you would not be able to use it again. Look, there it is on the page, unchanged. All that has happened is that it has been mapped onto the output element by whatever operation you chose.


We use the term "contradiction" because we are mainly referring to mutually exclusive elements; the existence of one element contradicts the existence of the other.

If they are mutually exclusive, then they cannot exist together. And if that is so, they cannot interact -- since one of them does not exist. On the other hand, if they do exist together (even if only momentarily), then they cannot be mutually exclusive.

Unless, if course, you are using the phrase 'mutually exclusive' in a new and unexplained sense.

But, even if you were right, why call this a 'contradiction'? It bears no relation to its use in ordinary language, nor in formal logic. Why not a 'tautology' or a 'disjunction' (there is just as much reason to call it this).

But we already know the answer to that one: dialecticians use this word since it is traditional to do so. They just copied it off Hegel, who screwed up in the way I outlined in my last post.


And this just repeats a tired piece of counter-revolutionary slandering, invented to excuse the slanderers' own perpetual state of inaction.

Not so, if it is correct, which it is. And, inaction is better than class collaboration (especially if those one is trying to collaborate with are the mass murderers of workers and communists, such as the Guomindang).


I used the term national capitalism just to distinguish it from imperialist capitalism acting on a colony.

The point that I wanted to make that not necessarily will the elements turn into ALL of their opposites, or wholly to their opposites.

It matters not, since Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Mao (among many others) tell us that whatever these opposite are, they turn into one another.

So, if the opposite is 'national capitalism' then it must turn into socialism, and socialism must turn into 'national capitalism'.

Did this happen?


But the dynamic nature of the contradictions themselves would require the notion of the negation of an element to change.

And that is what I have catered for; here it is again:


Now, it could be objected that all this seems to place objects and/or processes into fixed categories, which is one of the main criticisms dialecticians make of FL. Hence, the above argument is entirely misguided -- or so it could be claimed.

In that case, let us suppose that object/process A is comprised of two changing "internal opposites" O* and O**, and thus develops as a result.

The rest still follows. Hence, if object/process A is already composed of a changing dialectical union of O* and not-O* (i.e., O**) and O* 'develops' into not-O* as a result, where then is the change? All that seems to happen is that O* disappears.

Now if you want to move this discussion onto a consideration of the 'notions' involved, then they can only change, according to the dialectical prophets, if they struggle with their opposites, and if they do, they also change into those opposites. So, the very same problems will simply reappear at the level of the 'notions' involved.

Anyway, the actual 'contradictions' on the ground, as it were, would still grind to a halt, and for the reasons I gave. They are not affected by what we think of them: so if they struggle with their opposites, and then turn into them, the problems I outlined in my earlier post will still apply.


I don't realize where I contradicted this. And we don't have any "gospels". We update and challenge our ideology every moment to consolidate it.

1) You said this (in you last but one post):


Again, the contradiction is not necessarily with what they become. You are defining a man to be a boy's opposite, and the process that you are studying is John's growth into a man. In this case John's contradictions will not necessarily be with other men. His primary contradiction will be with the opposing class, as a member of his whole class, because that is the chief factor which will radically shape John's future.

And yet Mao explicitly says:


"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

"In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao (1961b), pp.340-42.]

"The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics....

"As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....

"The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.... [Ibid., pp.311-18.]

Which is the opposite (again, this is rather fitting) of what you said. The words highlighted tell us that everything in the entire universe changes into its opposite and that this is because of a struggle of opposites, and these opposites are the contradictory elements involved.

2) You are defending the sacred words (the gospel) of Mao here.


But you are arbitrarily defining your systems and contradictions. Well, in the cases as simple as you have mentioned, contradictions also tend to be as simple. If you consider the table as a more or less closed system, then its internal contradictions will cause it to break and rot into worthless pieces over time.

Ok, let's work this out: a table T, if left alone, will slowly decay into dust D over time. If this theory of Mao's is correct, this must be because of T's internal contradictions, which make it turn into its opposite, D. But, in order to do this, according to Mao, it must struggle with this opposite D. In that case, the table T must struggle with the dust D that it is to become! So the dust must exist before it exists!

Moreover, we are told these opposites turn onto one another.

So T must struggle with D in order to turn into D, and D must struggle with T in order to turn into T.

Hence, in the dialectical universe, tables struggle with dust, and turn into dust, and dust struggles with tables and turns into tables --, if left to themselves

If this is not so, either Mao is wrong, or tables cannot change, or both.


Again, you have overlooked that when contradictions change, O* and O** do not remain each others' opposites anymore.

I also covered this!

If this is so, then these changed opposites cannot change any further since they no longer have an opposite to bring this about.

The system grinds to a halt, as I indicated.


Absolutely not!!

Plainly so, since you keep skipping past points I have already made as if I haven't made them.


Give it another try then !

I never stop, and the more I study Mao, the more confused I see he is.

[Искра]

Just one quick question to Rosa:
Do you think that Mao made all those mistakes, which cost a lot peoples lives, just because his theory was bad? Doesn't that have to do with more things than just dialectics or theory?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

No, I suspect he'd have made them anyway; he just used dialectics to sell his ideas to the party cadres, and to help rationalise his overnight about-turns. Without dialectics he might have found it hard to justify the many about-turns the CCP made.

This is because dialectics can be used to 'justify' anything you like, and its opposite, sometimes in the same breath. This is because it glories in contradiction.

Here's one example of many:


"The contradictory aspects in every process exclude each other, struggle with each other and are in opposition to each other. Without exception, they are contained in the process of development of all things and in all human thought. A simple process contains only a single pair of opposites, while a complex process contains more. And in turn, the pairs of opposites are in contradiction to one another.)

"That is how all things in the objective world and all human thought are constituted and how they are set in motion.

"This being so, there is an utter lack of identity or unity. How then can one speak of identity or unity?

"The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without 'above', there would be no 'below').... Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

"But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

"Why is there identity here, too? You see, by means of revolution the proletariat, at one time the ruled, is transformed into the ruler, while the bourgeoisie, the erstwhile ruler, is transformed into the ruled and changes its position to that originally occupied by its opposite. This has already taken place in the Soviet Union, as it will take place throughout the world. If there were no interconnection and identity of opposites in given conditions, how could such a change take place?

"The Kuomintang, which played a certain positive role at a certain stage in modern Chinese history, became a counter-revolutionary party after 1927 because of its inherent class nature and because of imperialist blandishments (these being the conditions); but it has been compelled to agree to resist Japan because of the sharpening of the contradiction between China and Japan and because of the Communist Party's policy of the united front (these being the conditions). Things in contradiction change into one another, and herein lies a definite identity....

"To consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of the people is in fact to prepare the conditions for abolishing this dictatorship and advancing to the higher stage when all state systems are eliminated. To establish and build the Communist Party is in fact to prepare the conditions for the elimination of the Communist Party and all political parties. To build a revolutionary army under the leadership of the Communist Party and to carry on revolutionary war is in fact to prepare the conditions for the permanent elimination of war. These opposites are at the same time complementary....

"All contradictory things are interconnected; not only do they coexist in a single entity in given conditions, but in other given conditions, they also transform themselves into each other. This is the full meaning of the identity of opposites. This is what Lenin meant when he discussed 'how they happen to be (how they become) identical--under what conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another'." [Mao (1961), pp.337-40. Bold emphases added.]

So, Mao used this 'theory' to rationalise class collaboration and the denial of democracy, just as Stalin had done earlier:


"It may be said that such a presentation of the question is 'contradictory.' But is there not the same 'contradictoriness' in our presentation of the question of the state? We stand for the withering away of the state. At the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the mightiest and strongest state power that has ever existed. The highest development of state power with the object of preparing the conditions for the withering away of state power -- such is the Marxist formula. Is this 'contradictory'? Yes, it is 'contradictory.' But this contradiction us bound up with life, and it fully reflects Marx's dialectics." [Political Report of the Central Committee to the Sixteenth Congress of the CPSU(B), June 27,1930. Bold emphasis added; quotation marks altered to conform to the conventions adopted at my site.]

[Just watch how Red Cat still uses it to 'justify' class collaboration.]

[Искра]

Thank you Rosa.
I should learn more about dialectics and stuff, since I don't know a lot about it.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Take my advice: steer well clear of it. You do not need to know anything about dialectics, unless, like me, you want to demolish it.

[red cat]

But, even in mathematics, such 'abstractions' do not turn into one another; what happens is that one set of elements is mapped onto another.

So, in your original example, the 5 you used did not change. Had it done so, you would not be able to use it again. Look, there it is on the page, unchanged. All that has happened is that it has been mapped onto the output element by whatever operation you chose.


If you start with two sets, and map one to another, of course the sets change when concerned with the process of mapping. Is the formation of a map between them not a change?
When you use the sets afresh again, you are separating them from the process they underwent. Thus it is a new system altogether.

When we talk of mathematical structures alone, systems are not that easy to identify, because they are abstractions that exist in our thoughts.



If they are mutually exclusive, then they cannot exist together. And if that is so, they cannot interact -- since one of them does not exist. On the other hand, if they do exist together (even if only momentarily), then they cannot be mutually exclusive.

Unless, if course, you are using the phrase 'mutually exclusive' in a new and unexplained sense.Let us consider an example. In capitalism, the main social contradiction boils down to private ownership of means of production versus social mode of production. Why are these in contradiction? Because they are ultimately not compatible to each other and tend to give rise to socialism. Capitalism and socialism are the mutually exclusive elements that are associated with the contradiction.



But, even if you were right, why call this a 'contradiction'? It bears no relation to its use in ordinary language, nor in formal logic. Why not a 'tautology' or a 'disjunction' (there is just as much reason to call it this).

But we already know the answer to that one: dialecticians use this word since it is traditional to do so. They just copied it off Hegel, who screwed up in the way I outlined in my last post.

Spare them at this point at least.



Not so, if it is correct, which it is. And, inaction is better than class collaboration (especially if those one is trying to collaborate with are the mass murderers of workers and communists, such as the Guomindang).
What is more efficient a method of collaborating with the bourgeoisie than to call oneself a communist and yet remain inactive and useless for the proletariat while trying to deviate them with concocting inapplicable theories?

And as for class collaborasionism, what the class collaborationists have achieved in India is enough to make the Indian proletariat laugh at you if you attempt to explain your "communist" theories to them.



It matters not, since Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Mao (among many others) tell us that whatever these opposite are, they turn into one another.Not necessarily into all of them in the same system.


So, if the opposite is 'national capitalism' then it must turn into socialism, and socialism must turn into 'national capitalism'.

Did this happen? Seriously, aren't you aware of any counter-revolution?




And that is what I have catered for; here it is again:



Now if you want to move this discussion onto a consideration of the 'notions' involved, then they can only change, according to the dialectical prophets, if they struggle with their opposites, and if they do, they also change into those opposites. So, the very same problems will simply reappear at the level of the 'notions' involved.

Anyway, the actual 'contradictions' on the ground, as it were, would still grind to a halt, and for the reasons I gave. They are not affected by what we think of them: so if they struggle with their opposites, and then turn into them, the problems I outlined in my earlier post will still apply.




1) You said this (in you last but one post):


Again, the contradiction is not necessarily with what they become. You are defining a man to be a boy's opposite, and the process that you are studying is John's growth into a man. In this case John's contradictions will not necessarily be with other men. His primary contradiction will be with the opposing class, as a member of his whole class, because that is the chief factor which will radically shape John's future.And yet Mao explicitly says:



"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

"In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao (1961b), pp.340-42.]

"The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics....

"As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....

"The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.... [Ibid., pp.311-18.]



Which is the opposite (again, this is rather fitting) of what you said. The words highlighted tell us that everything in the entire universe changes into its opposite and that this is because of a struggle of opposites, and these opposites are the contradictory elements involved.Why what I say is consistent with this must be clear by now due to the example of capitalism and socialism I gave.

Also, note that Mao merely states that all processes and objects must transform. Not that they will transform into every opposite definable.




2) You are defending the sacred words (the gospel) of Mao here.


Ok, let's work this out: a table T, if left alone, will slowly decay into dust D over time. If this theory of Mao's is correct, this must be because of T's internal contradictions, which make it turn into its opposite, D. But, in order to do this, according to Mao, it must struggle with this opposite D. In that case, the table T must struggle with the dust D that it is to become! So the dust must exist before it exists!

Moreover, we are told these opposites turn onto one another.

So T must struggle with D in order to turn into D, and D must struggle with T in order to turn into T.

Hence, in the dialectical universe, tables struggle with dust, and turn into dust, and dust struggles with tables and turns into tables --, if left to themselves

If this is not so, either Mao is wrong, or tables cannot change, or both.

I have mentioned earlier that the nature of the outcome depends on type of contradiction you choose. Since your system is so simple, let me tell you, yes, there is an infinitesimal probability that the dust will change back into the table. Happy now? In general we don't consider such systems because the magnitude of the outcome is extremely irrelevant.


I also covered this!

If this is so, then these changed opposites cannot change any further since they no longer have an opposite to bring this about.

The system grinds to a halt, as I indicated.Not so. New processes come up within the system.




Plainly so, since you keep skipping past points I have already made as if I haven't made them.Believe me, I just hate answering long posts point by point. That is why I make mistakes.




I never stop, and the more I study Mao, the more confused I see he is.The problem is that you seek to represent things with extremely simple models and then generalize the properties you obtain from them . This might not work all the time.

[red cat]

Take my advice: steer well clear of it. You do not need to know anything about it, unless, like me, you want to demolish it.
I really wish such zeal was expressed in demolishing capitalism.

[red cat]

No, I suspect he'd have made them anyway; he just used dialectics to sell his ideas to the party cadres, and to help rationalise his overnight about-turns. Without dialectics he might have found it hard to justify the many about-turns the CCP made.

This is because dialectics can be used to 'justify' anything you like, and its opposite, sometimes in the same breath. This is because it glories in contradiction.

Here's one example of many:



So, Mao used this 'theory' to rationalise class collaboration and the denial of democracy, just as Stalin had done earlier:



[Just watch how Red Cat still uses it to 'justify' class collaboration.]The pictures posted in the shining path thread do speak more than a thousand words on who is collaborating with whom.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


If you start with two sets, and map one to another, of course the sets change when concerned with the process of mapping. Is the formation of a map between them not a change?

Who said anything about sets changing, or otherwise? The point was that the number 5 does not change, which is what you suggested. Look, it is still there on the page.


When you use the sets afresh again, you are separating them from the process they underwent. Thus it is a new system altogether.

When we talk of mathematical structures alone, systems are not that easy to identify, because they are abstractions that exist in our thoughts.

I'm not sure what this has got to do with anything.


Let us consider an example. In capitalism, the main social contradiction boils down to private ownership of means of production versus social mode of production. Why are these in contradiction? Because they are ultimately not compatible to each other and tend to give rise to socialism. Capitalism and socialism are the mutually exclusive elements that are associated with the contradiction.

Well, I am sure they are not compatible, but you used the phrase 'mutually exclude', and if that is so they cannot co-exist, and so cannot 'contradict' one another. On the other hand, if they do co-exist, they cannot 'mutually exclude' one another.

You keep ignoring this fatal defect.


Spare them at this point at least.

I'm sorry, what does this mean?


What is more efficient a method of collaborating with the bourgeoisie than to call oneself a communist and yet remain inactive and useless for the proletariat while trying to deviate them with concocting inapplicable theories?

Not so, if it means you have to abandon Marxism. As Bobkindles pointed out, this cavalier attitude helped turn the CCP into a petty-bourgeois, substitutionist/nationalist movement -- and all rationalised by this contradictory 'theory' of yours.


And as for class collaborasionism, what the class collaborationists have achieved in India is enough to make the Indian proletariat laugh at you if you attempt to explain your "communist" theories to them.

You seem to know what hundreds of millions of workers in India think.

Minor point: can you post the data upon which this hyper-bold claim of yours is based?


Not necessarily into all of them in the same system.

This is not what Lenin and Mao seem to say, but even if you are right, it still leaves this 'theory' of yours in a hole.


Seriously, aren't you aware of any counter-revolution?

What has that got to do with anything?

Are you seriously suggesting that socialism must always turn into capitalism. But this is exactly what Mao's words imply.


Why what I say is consistent with this must be clear by now due to the example of capitalism and socialism I gave.

Not so, as my comments above show.


Also, note that Mao merely states that all processes and objects must transform. Not that they will transform into every opposite definable.

Well no, he actually says this:


"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

"In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao (1961b), pp.340-42.]

"The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without 'above', there would be no 'below').... Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

"But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

"The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics....

"As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....

"The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.... [Ibid., pp.311-18.]

So, he explicitly says:


It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

"But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

This is the opposite of what you intimated.


I have mentioned earlier that the nature of the outcome depends on type of contradiction you choose. Since your system is so simple, let me tell you, yes, there is an infinitesimal probability that the dust will change back into the table. Happy now? In general we don't consider such systems because the magnitude of the outcome is extremely irrelevant.

But, you keep ignoring the fact that, according to Mao, the dust has to co-exist with the table for it to 'struggle; with it. This is not possible, since the dust that the table turns into has to co-exist with the dust that the table will one day become. You surely do not believe that these can co-exist, do you? That is, that the future dust (that the table turns into) exists alongside the table it 'struggles' with. But, according to Mao, these must co-exist.

And how does dust 'struggle', exactly?

Moreover, my choice of example was deliberate, since if this 'theory' of yours cannot cope with tables, or with dust, then it will be totally useless when it comes to more complex processes.

No wonder then that dialectics has presided over almost total failure world-wide.

It can't even cope with tables! Or dust....


Not so. New processes come up within the system.

Then, either these have no opposites -- and so cannot change -- or if they have opposites, then the same problems (outlined in my long post above) apply to them.


Believe me, I just hate answering long posts point by point. That is why I make mistakes.

Odd then that every Dialectical Marxist (Stalinist, Maoist, Trotskyist, academic, libertarian, Hegelian, etc.) with whom I have debated this here (and on other boards) makes the same 'mistakes'...


The problem is that you seek to represent things with extremely simple models and then generalize the properties you obtain from them . This might not work all the time.

And yet, as I pointed out above, if this theory of yours can't cope with simple systems, it stands no chance in the real world.

Anyway, my 'systems' are neither complex nor simple, just universal.

So, my demolition is entirely general, that is why I used symbols.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


I really wish such zeal was expressed in demolishing capitalism.

Well, it's because I think this 'theory' is partially responsible for the long-term failure of Dialectical Marxism that I devote so much energy to demolishing dialectics.

----------------------

RC:


The pictures posted in the shining path thread do speak more than a thousand words on who is collaborating with whom.

No need for pictures; the historical record shows who the collaborators were: the CCP.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



Who said anything about sets changing, or otherwise? The point was that the number 5 does not change, which is what you suggested. Look, it is still there on the page.

Generally we specify the domain and range of a function when we study it. Hence the notion of a set.


I'm not sure what this has got to do with anything.You need to relate it with the physical world. That way pure mathematical calculations become related with our brains, and the corresponding changes need to be taken into account.




Well, I am sure they are not compatible, but you used the phrase 'mutually exclude', and if that is so they cannot co-exist, and so cannot 'contradict' one another. On the other hand, if they do co-exist, they cannot 'mutually exclude' one another.

You keep ignoring this fatal defect.

The reason why I gave that particular example was to point out that conrtadiction might take place within the processes that lead to the mutually exclusive processes. So, the pre conditions for the emergence of a process that cannot occur simultaneously with the present one, may lie in the present process itself.



I'm sorry, what does this mean?

Nomenclature is to trivial a topic in this case to be debated.




Not so, if it means you have to abandon Marxism. As Bobkindles pointed out, this cavalier attitude helped turn the CCP into a petty-bourgeois, substitutionist/nationalist movement -- and all rationalised by this contradictory 'theory' of yours.That is only one possibility. The other is that the history of China has been grossly falsified by counter-revolutionaries.




You seem to know what hundreds of millions of workers in India think.

Minor point: can you post the data upon which this hyper-bold claim of yours is based?

Please visit the relevant threads and see for yourself.




This is not what Lenin and Mao seem to say, but even if you are right, it still leaves this 'theory' of yours in a hole.



What has that got to do with anything?

Are you seriously suggesting that socialism must always turn into capitalism. But this is exactly what Mao's words imply.



Not so, as my comments above show.



Well no, he actually says this:




"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

"In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao (1961b), pp.340-42.]

"The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without 'above', there would be no 'below').... Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

"But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

"The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics....

"As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....

"The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.... [Ibid., pp.311-18.]

This is the opposite of what you intimated.





So, he explicitly says:




It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

"But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.
Not at all. Note that in the examples of semi-colonies and imperialism, the term "opposites" does not refer to mutually exclusive processes anymore. It refers to the contradictions within the processes in the sense that they will give rise to something which exhibits the mutual exclusiveness property along with the present process.

And it is not that just because socialism and capitalism can turn into each other that socialism will always turn into capitalism.




But, you keep ignoring the fact that, according to Mao, the dust has to co-exist with the table for it to 'struggle; with it. This is not possible, since the dust that the table turns into has to co-exist with the dust that the table will one day become. You surely do not believe that these can co-exist, do you? That is, that the future dust (that the table turns into) exists alongside the table it 'struggles' with. But, according to Mao, these must co-exist.

And how does dust 'struggle', exactly?

Moreover, my choice of example was deliberate, since if this 'theory' of yours cannot cope with tables, or with dust, then it will be totally useless when it comes to more complex processes."Struggle" does not refer to dust-guerrilleros fighting the wood-army. It merely refers to the state where dust transforms into wood(with infinitesimal probability) and vice-versa.


No wonder then that dialectics has presided over almost total failure world-wide.

It can't even cope with tables! Or dust....



Then, either these have no opposites -- and so cannot change -- or if they have opposites, then the same problems (outlined in my long post above) apply to them.
:rolleyes:

Odd then that every Dialectical Marxist (Stalinist, Maoist, Trotskyist, academic, libertarian, Hegelian, etc.) with whom I have debated this here (and on other boards) makes the same 'mistakes'...No offence meant, but I would suspect something different from what you are suspecting.




And yet, as I pointed out above, if this theory of yours can't cope with simple systems, it stands no chance in the real world.

Anyway, my 'systems' are neither complex nor simple, just universal.

So, my demolition is entirely general, that is why I used symbols. But your analyses and generalizations are wrong. That is why it is better to consider examples from the real world.

[red cat]

No need for pictures; the historical record shows who the collaborators were: the CCP.Historical record grossly falsified by counter-revolutionaries, that is.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Generally we specify the domain and range of a function when we study it. Hence the notion of a set.

Yes, I am fully aware of this; I am a mathematician, after all; what I question is what this has to do with your claim that numbers change.


You need to relate it with the physical world. That way pure mathematical calculations become related with our brains, and the corresponding changes need to be taken into account.

Maybe so, but what has this got to do with whether numbers can change?


The reason why I gave that particular example was to point out that contradiction might take place within the processes that lead to the mutually exclusive processes. So, the pre conditions for the emergence of a process that cannot occur simultaneously with the present one, may lie in the present process itself.

Again, this is no help at all, since if these 'processes' are "mutually exclusive" they cannot co-exist, and so cannot 'struggle' with one another -- and hence cannot 'contradict' one another. On the other hand, if they do co-exist, if they are locked in 'struggle', then they cannot be "mutually exclusive".

And if theses 'contradictions' "take place within the processes that lead to the mutually exclusive processes", as you claim, then these 'contradictions' themselves cannot be "mutually exclusive", as you had originally alleged.

Now, in response to this post of mine:


Red Cat:


Spare them at this point at least.

Me:


I'm sorry, what does this mean?

You reply:


Nomenclature is to trivial a topic in this case to be debated.

But, were is the "nomenclature" in what you said?

Here it is again:


Spare them at this point at least.

Again, what does this (which contains no "nomenclature) mean?


The other is that the history of China has been grossly falsified by counter-revolutionaries.

You sound like a 'true believer', with whom it is pointless to debate.

However, the substitutionism of the CCP is not open to debate; and this was 'justified' by the use of dialectics.


Please visit the relevant threads and see for yourself.

Ok, which threads here, or anywhere else for that matter, contain the results of the in-depth survey of what every worker in India thinks? All 500 or so million of them! Kindly post the links, and, if you are correct, I will withdraw what I have said, and apologise profusely.

Go on, put the link where your mouth is.

I double-dog dare you...


Not at all. Note that in the examples of semi-colonies and imperialism, the term "opposites" does not refer to mutually exclusive processes anymore. It refers to the contradictions within the processes in the sense that they will give rise to something which exhibits the mutual exclusiveness property along with the present process.

But, even if this is were so, according to Mao, these must turn into one another. So, for example, anti-imperialists must turn into imperialists, and imperialists must turn into anti-imperialists, and so on.


And it is not that just because socialism and capitalism can turn into each other that socialism will always turn into capitalism.

But, this is not what Mao says; he tells us that everything (not most things, but everything) turns into its opposite. This implies that socialism must turn into capitalism. Unless, of course, (shock" horror!") Mao was wrong. He could be; he wasn't a 'god'.


"Struggle" does not refer to dust-guerrilleros fighting the wood-army. It merely refers to the state where dust transforms into wood (with infinitesimal probability) and vice-versa.

So, Mao and Lenin were wrong when they said this 'struggle of opposites' is an 'absolute'. On your revisionist theory (you will get pilloried for this! I'd keep this quiet, or it's off to the gulag for you!), there is no 'struggle' here, just a bland 'transformation', with nothing to bring it about.

Here is Mao:


"The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without 'above', there would be no 'below').... Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

"But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

"The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao (1961b), pp.340-42.]

"As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....

"The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.... [Ibid., pp.311-18.]

Mao is just as clear as Lenin was: all development is a 'struggle of opposites':


"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….

"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute…." [Lenin (1961) Volume 38, pp.357-58.]

So, either you are right, or Lenin and Mao are wrong.

Anyway, given your revisionist theory, how do we know that there is a 'struggle' going on anywhere else? If things can just change, with no 'contradictions' bringing this about, then perhaps this can happen everywhere too? How can you rule this out except by dogmatic assertion?


No offence meant, but I would suspect something different from what you are suspecting.

Well, what in fact happens is the same as is happening here; they (and you) have given this 'theory' of yours very little thought, even though you all naively swallowed it. When confronted with its absurd consequences, as you have been here, you have to think on the hoof, and come up with the sort of revisionist, ad hoc, repairs we have seen you try to pull above, all the while ignoring what Engels, Lenin, and Mao actually said.

You skim-read their work, and you do the same to my posts -- and then decide to ignore what you do not like or cannot answer, hoping I'll go away. [My 12,000+ posts (in four years) should tell you that I won't.]

And, I predict you will continue to do this, since there is no answer to my objections. So, you just ignore stuff you can't answer.


But your analyses and generalizations are wrong. That is why it is better to consider examples from the real world.

And yet, you can't show where I go wrong.

You will find plenty of real world examples here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm

Use the 'Quick Links' at the top to go to these sections:


(7) Case Studies

(a) Dialectics Compromises Communism

(b) Dialectics Messes With Maoism

(c) Dialectics Traduces Trotskyism

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Historical record grossly falsified by counter-revolutionaries, that is.

And how do you know you can trust the tall stories you have been told?

[red cat]

Red Cat:

Quote:

Generally we specify the domain and range of a function when we study it. Hence the notion of a set. Yes, I am fully aware of this; I am a mathematician, after all; what I question is what this has to do with your claim that numbers change.First let us define a system properly. I understand exactly which point you are questioning. But if we see it that way, it is not a dynamic process. We are just discovering a relation between a number and whatever it is mapped to. This means that the relations existed irrelevant of whether we discovered it or not. Now, the whole thing so far being an abstraction, completely static systems are possible. So it is not really a dynamic process.


Quote:

You need to relate it with the physical world. That way pure mathematical calculations become related with our brains, and the corresponding changes need to be taken into account. Maybe so, but what has this got to do with whether numbers can change?

Quote:

The reason why I gave that particular example was to point out that contradiction might take place within the processes that lead to the mutually exclusive processes. So, the pre conditions for the emergence of a process that cannot occur simultaneously with the present one, may lie in the present process itself. Again, this is no help at all, since if these 'processes' are "mutually exclusive" they cannot co-exist, and so cannot 'struggle' with one another -- and hence cannot 'contradict' one another. On the other hand, if they do co-exist, if they are locked in 'struggle', then they cannot be "mutually exclusive".

And if theses 'contradictions' "take place within the processes that lead to the mutually exclusive processes", as you claim, then these 'contradictions' themselves cannot be "mutually exclusive", as you had originally alleged.

Now, in response to this post of mine:

Quote:

Red Cat:

Quote:

Spare them at this point at least. Me:

Quote:

I'm sorry, what does this mean?
You reply:

Quote:

Nomenclature is to trivial a topic in this case to be debated. But, were is the "nomenclature" in what you said?

Here it is again:

Quote:

Spare them at this point at least. Again, what does this (which contains no "nomenclature) mean? I mean that let us not debate on why contradictions are not called tautologies.

Quote:

The other is that the history of China has been grossly falsified by counter-revolutionaries. You sound like a 'true believer', with whom it is pointless to debate.

However, the substitutionism of the CCP is not open to debate; and this was 'justified' by the use of dialectics.

Quote:

Please visit the relevant threads and see for yourself. Ok, which threads here, or anywhere else for that matter, contain the results of the in-depth survey of what every worker in India thinks? All 500 or so million of them! Kindly post the links, and, if you are correct, I will withdraw what I have said, and apologise profusely.

Go on, put the link where your mouth is.

I double-dog dare you...
I was referring to the achievements of the Indian Maoists so far. But since you demand an in-depth study of the whole of the Indian proletariat, you give me the right to demand the same concerning the proletariat of revolutionary China which would prove that they held that the CPC collaborated with the GMD against their interests.


Quote:

Not at all. Note that in the examples of semi-colonies and imperialism, the term "opposites" does not refer to mutually exclusive processes anymore. It refers to the contradictions within the processes in the sense that they will give rise to something which exhibits the mutual exclusiveness property along with the present process. But, even if this is were so, according to Mao, these must turn into one another. So, for example, anti-imperialists must turn into imperialists, and imperialists must turn into anti-imperialists, and so on.

Quote:

And it is not that just because socialism and capitalism can turn into each other that socialism will always turn into capitalism. But, this is not what Mao says; he tells us that everything (not most things, but everything) turns into its opposite. This implies that socialism must turn into capitalism. Unless, of course, (shock" horror!") Mao was wrong. He could be; he wasn't a 'god'.

Quote:

"Struggle" does not refer to dust-guerrilleros fighting the wood-army. It merely refers to the state where dust transforms into wood (with infinitesimal probability) and vice-versa. So, Mao and Lenin were wrong when they said this 'struggle of opposites' is an 'absolute'. On your revisionist theory (you will get pilloried for this! I'd keep this quiet, or it's off to the gulag for you!), there is no 'struggle' here, just a bland 'transformation', with nothing to bring it about.

Here is Mao:

Quote:

"The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without 'above', there would be no 'below').... Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

"But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

"The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao (1961b), pp.340-42.]

"As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....

"The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.... [Ibid., pp.311-18.] Mao is just as clear as Lenin was: all development is a 'struggle of opposites':

"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….

"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute…." [Lenin (1961) Volume 38, pp.357-58.]

So, either you are right, or Lenin and Mao are wrong.

Anyway, given your revisionist theory, how do we know that there is a 'struggle' going on anywhere else? If things can just change, with no 'contradictions' bringing this about, then perhaps this can happen everywhere too? How can you rule this out except by dogmatic assertion?
You are just taking advantage of some linguistic ambiguities which are too easy to resolve. It is too obvious that Lenin and Mao exactly meant what I mean by "struggle" and "opposites turn into one another". These guys actually fought for communism, and if they really thought that it would reverse back into capitalism, then they wouldn't. So please stop twisting the meanings of simple things.

Quote:
No offence meant, but I would suspect something different from what you are suspecting.
Well, what in fact happens is the same as is happening here; they (and you) have given this 'theory' of yours very little thought, even though you all naively swallowed it. When confronted with its absurd consequences, as you have been here, you have to think on the hoof, and come up with the sort of revisionist, ad hoc, repairs we have seen you try to pull above, all the while ignoring what Engels, Lenin, and Mao actually said.

You skim-read their work, and you do the same to my posts -- and then decide to ignore what you do not like or cannot answer, hoping I'll go away. [My 12,000+ posts (in four years) should tell you that I won't.]
Oh yes, I know that you have made so many posts in four years and it is really a credit being that patient. But I don't want you to go away; I just want you to realize that your "demolition of dialectics" is meaningless.

And, I predict you will continue to do this, since there is no answer to my objections. So, you just ignore stuff you can't answer.

Quote:

But your analyses and generalizations are wrong. That is why it is better to consider examples from the real world. And yet, you can't show where I go wrong.That you are assuming something that dialecticians did not mean.

You will find plenty of real world examples here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm (http://www.anonym.to/?http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm)

Use the 'Quick Links' at the top to go to these sections:

Quote:

(7) Case Studies

(a) Dialectics Compromises Communism

(b) Dialectics Messes With Maoism

(c) Dialectics Traduces TrotskyismI really am not interested. A thousand more theories will, and are popping up which claim to negate MLM. What I need to see before I am interested in them is a single organization that upholds some such theory and has taken a single step towards revolution by conducting armed struggle.

[red cat]

And how do you know you can trust the tall stories you have been told?Because I subordinate other sources to revolutionary sources.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


First let us define a system properly. I understand exactly which point you are questioning. But if we see it that way, it is not a dynamic process. We are just discovering a relation between a number and whatever it is mapped to. This means that the relations existed irrelevant of whether we discovered it or not. Now, the whole thing so far being an abstraction, completely static systems are possible. So it is not really a dynamic process.

You sound like a Platonist when you say things like this:


This means that the relations existed irrelevant of whether we discovered it or not.

And where exactly do these 'relations' exist?


Now, the whole thing so far being an abstraction, completely static systems are possible.

And what are they 'abstractions' from, and who did the 'abstracting'?


So it is not really a dynamic process.

I agree, but you seemed to think that numbers can change. Are you now back-tracking from that rash claim?


I mean that let us not debate on why contradictions are not called tautologies.

But, then why call the things you do 'contradictions' to begin with? In fact, you have no more reason to call then this that you have for calling them "tautologies" or even "bananas".

But, we already know why you call them this -- you just copy the idea of one another, without giving it any thought at all, and the dialectical classicists did the same; they copied this word off Hegel (who invented this word when he confused the negative form of the 'law of identity' with the 'law of non-contradiction').

So, this is just a catalogue of errors from start to finish. No wonder this 'theory' falls at the first hurdle, and that it has presided over 100+ years of the almost total failure of Dialectical Marxism.

You just posted a smiley the last time I said this, so I can only assume you have no answer to it.


I was referring to the achievements of the Indian Maoists so far. But since you demand an in-depth study of the whole of the Indian proletariat, you give me the right to demand the same concerning the proletariat of revolutionary China which would prove that they held that the CPC collaborated with the GMD against their interests.

I know, but you made claims about what every worker in India knows.

You from earlier:


And as for class collaborasionism, what the class collaborationists have achieved in India is enough to make the Indian proletariat laugh at you if you attempt to explain your "communist" theories to them.

So, where is your evidence that the entire proletariat of India is laughing at me? [Does even a single Indian worker know about me?]

If you do not have any, perhaps you will now withdraw this slur?


You are just taking advantage of some linguistic ambiguities which are too easy to resolve. It is too obvious that Lenin and Mao exactly meant what I mean by "struggle" and "opposites turn into one another". These guys actually fought for communism, and if they really thought that it would reverse back into capitalism, then they wouldn't. So please stop twisting the meanings of simple things.

As I predicted, you are now just skim-reading whole sections of my posts and making bland comments. You are not even attempting to engage with what I say or even read Lenin and Mao carefully.

What is 'ambiguous' about this:


"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….

"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute…." [Lenin (1961) Volume 38, pp.357-58.]

Lenin here tells us that everything in the entire universe, and that includes tables and piles of dust, changes because if a "struggle" of opposites, which contradicts what you alleged (that tables do not 'struggle'', they just 'develop'), as part of your 'on the hoof' revisionist 'theory'. Lenin even says this is an "absolute" and yet you seem to think it is "ambiguous". How much more emphatic could he have been?

So, you just allege this:


It is too obvious that Lenin and Mao exactly meant what I mean by "struggle" and "opposites turn into one another".

But you do not re-interpret the word "struggle" (Lenin's non-negotiable "absolute") you eliminate it, and replace it with a bald "transform". Why do you think Lenin called this an "absolute" if he really meant it wasn't, according to you?

On your 'theory' things just develop, they do not do so as a result of their "internal contradictions", not as a result of "struggle".

It seems then that the only way you can rescue this 'theory' from absurdity is to ignore what both Lenin and Mao said!

With defenders like you, they'd be better of with no defenders.

Finally, how do you know that Lenin meant what you say he means?

Do you have a single quotation from him (or Mao) that says you can re-interpret "struggle" so that the word disappears?

If so, let's see it.

[What's the betting that Red Cat ignores this, too!]


These guys actually fought for communism, and if they really thought that it would reverse back into capitalism, then they wouldn't. So please stop twisting the meanings of simple things.

But, it is you that finds you have to ignore what these two actually said, not me. I'm sticking to the letter of what they say, and what they say has absurd consequences.

This just underlines what I said in my last post (with the relevant sections emphasised in bold):


Well, what in fact happens is the same as is happening here; they (and you) have given this 'theory' of yours very little thought, even though you all naively swallowed it. When confronted with its absurd consequences, as you have been here, you have to think on the hoof, and come up with the sort of revisionist, ad hoc, repairs we have seen you try to pull above, all the while ignoring what Engels, Lenin, and Mao actually said.

You skim-read their work, and you do the same to my posts -- and then decide to ignore what you do not like or cannot answer, hoping I'll go away. [My 12,000+ posts (in four years) should tell you that I won't.]

And you are continuing to do it, as I predicted you would. In fact, I wrote this several years ago at my site:


When confronted with such allegations, dialecticians with whom I have 'debated' this have tended to respond in one or more of the following ways:

(1) They deny these authors meant what they said (or they did not even say it!).

(2) They argue that these quotations are not representative.

(3) They claim that the author in question mis-spoke, or made an error.

I also alleged earlier that you defend the dialectical classics as if they were gospel truth, just like Christian fundamentalists defend the Bible -- except they do not also ignore what their Bible says in doing this. You do.

And as far as this is concerned:


These guys actually fought for communism, and if they really thought that it would reverse back into capitalism, then they wouldn't.

Well, they shouldn't have promoted an unworkable ruling-class theory (lifted from that ruling-class hack, Hegel) that implies that socialism must turn into its opposite, capitalism, should they?

And you shouldn't be defending it, either.

Should you?


Oh yes, I know that you have made so many posts in four years and it is really a credit being that patient. But I don't want you to go away; I just want you to realize that your "demolition of dialectics" is meaningless.

And yet you are struggling to defend the indefensible.

Your 'defence' amounts to removing (with no textual support) a key element in Lenin's and Mao's theory, which is that "struggle" does not mean "struggle", it means "no struggle at all".

This is about as lame as defending, say, Darwin by claiming he meant "no selection at all " when he referred to "natural selection", and they rounding on those who point to the many places in his work where he specifically talks about natural selection, with the response that Darwin was using "ambiguous" language!

I'd hang my head in shame if I were to come up with such a dishonourable 'defence'.

And so should you.


That you are assuming something that dialecticians did not mean.

And, we already know what you mean by this: "Ignore what Lenin and/or Mao actually say, and substitute for it the exact opposite of what they did say, without any textual support for this revision, and then accuse anyone (who rejects this) of unspecified assumptions which you refuse to detail".

So, what are these "assumptions"?

Can we see the passages from the dialectical classics that support what you have to say, or which substantiate your revisionist interpretation of some very clear words?

[What's the betting Red Cat ignores this too?]


I really am not interested. A thousand more theories will, and are popping up which claim to negate MLM. What I need to see before I am interested in them is a single organization that upholds some such theory and has taken a single step towards revolution by conducting armed struggle.

And what 'theory' is this? I have already told you I do not have one, and do not want one. Looks like it is you who is now making "assumptions"!

You asked this:


But your analyses and generalizations are wrong. That is why it is better to consider examples from the real world.

I offered you some "real world" examples, and you now feign lack of interest. So, you are not interested in:


examples from the real world.

after all!

If so, why not just admit it, and stop the pretence that you are interested in practice as opposed to abstract 'theory'?

Or, are you just scared of what you might find?

Again, as I noted above:


Well, what in fact happens is the same as is happening here; they (and you) have given this 'theory' of yours very little thought, even though you all naively swallowed it. When confronted with its absurd consequences, as you have been here, you have to think on the hoof, and come up with the sort of revisionist, ad hoc, repairs we have seen you try to pull above, all the while ignoring what Engels, Lenin, and Mao actually said.

You skim-read their work, and you do the same to my posts -- and then decide to ignore what you do not like or cannot answer, hoping I'll go away. [My 12,000+ posts (in four years) should tell you that I won't.]

The truth us that you haven't given this 'theory' of yours any thought at all, and are now panicking.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Because I subordinate other sources to revolutionary sources.

Same here. They are just different 'sources'.

Mine, however, do not depend on an unworkable 'theory' you have to alter in order to defend.

[A.R.Amistad]

Was Mao a true communist? As I understood it, Mao never even read any of Marx's works until the sixties, so most of his rule as a "communist" was spent with basically no knowledge of Marxism.

[scarletghoul]

That's idiotic and completely untrue. It's well documented that Mao had been reading Marxist literature since the beginning of the Communist movement in China. Any biography will confirm this.
I'm assuming you've never read any of Mao's work either, because it shows clearly that he's read Marx n Lenin

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Scarlet


That's idiotic and completely untrue. It's well documented that Mao had been reading Marxist literature since the beginning of the Communist movement in China. Any biography will confirm this.
I'm assuming you've never read any of Mao's work either, because it shows clearly that he's read Marx n Lenin

He plainly ignored this comment of Marx's:


The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the workers themselves

But not the red army, or third world guerillas...

[red cat]

Red Cat:

Quote:
Generally we specify the domain and range of a function when we study it. Hence the notion of a set.
Yes, I am fully aware of this; I am a mathematician, after all; what I question is what this has to do with your claim that numbers change.

Quote:
You need to relate it with the physical world. That way pure mathematical calculations become related with our brains, and the corresponding changes need to be taken into account.
Maybe so, but what has this got to do with whether numbers can change?

Quote:
The reason why I gave that particular example was to point out that contradiction might take place within the processes that lead to the mutually exclusive processes. So, the pre conditions for the emergence of a process that cannot occur simultaneously with the present one, may lie in the present process itself.
Again, this is no help at all, since if these 'processes' are "mutually exclusive" they cannot co-exist, and so cannot 'struggle' with one another -- and hence cannot 'contradict' one another. On the other hand, if they do co-exist, if they are locked in 'struggle', then they cannot be "mutually exclusive".

And if theses 'contradictions' "take place within the processes that lead to the mutually exclusive processes", as you claim, then these 'contradictions' themselves cannot be "mutually exclusive", as you had originally alleged.

Now, in response to this post of mine:

Quote:
Red Cat:

Quote:
Spare them at this point at least.
Me:

Quote:
I'm sorry, what does this mean?

You reply:

Quote:
Nomenclature is to trivial a topic in this case to be debated.
But, were is the "nomenclature" in what you said?

Here it is again:

Quote:
Spare them at this point at least.
Again, what does this (which contains no "nomenclature) mean?

Quote:
The other is that the history of China has been grossly falsified by counter-revolutionaries.
You sound like a 'true believer', with whom it is pointless to debate.

However, the substitutionism of the CCP is not open to debate; and this was 'justified' by the use of dialectics.

Quote:
Please visit the relevant threads and see for yourself.
Ok, which threads here, or anywhere else for that matter, contain the results of the in-depth survey of what every worker in India thinks? All 500 or so million of them! Kindly post the links, and, if you are correct, I will withdraw what I have said, and apologise profusely.

Go on, put the link where your mouth is.

I double-dog dare you...

Quote:
Not at all. Note that in the examples of semi-colonies and imperialism, the term "opposites" does not refer to mutually exclusive processes anymore. It refers to the contradictions within the processes in the sense that they will give rise to something which exhibits the mutual exclusiveness property along with the present process.
But, even if this is were so, according to Mao, these must turn into one another. So, for example, anti-imperialists must turn into imperialists, and imperialists must turn into anti-imperialists, and so on.

Quote:
And it is not that just because socialism and capitalism can turn into each other that socialism will always turn into capitalism.
But, this is not what Mao says; he tells us that everything (not most things, but everything) turns into its opposite. This implies that socialism must turn into capitalism. Unless, of course, (shock" horror!") Mao was wrong. He could be; he wasn't a 'god'.

Quote:
"Struggle" does not refer to dust-guerrilleros fighting the wood-army. It merely refers to the state where dust transforms into wood (with infinitesimal probability) and vice-versa.
So, Mao and Lenin were wrong when they said this 'struggle of opposites' is an 'absolute'. On your revisionist theory (you will get pilloried for this! I'd keep this quiet, or it's off to the gulag for you!), there is no 'struggle' here, just a bland 'transformation', with nothing to bring it about.

Here is Mao:

Quote:
"The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without 'above', there would be no 'below').... Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

"But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

"The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao (1961b), pp.340-42.]

"As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....

"The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end....
Mao is just as clear as Lenin was: all development is a 'struggle of opposites':

Quote:
"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….

"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute…." [Lenin (1961) Volume 38, pp.357-58.]
So, either you are right, or Lenin and Mao are wrong.

Anyway, given your [I]revisionist theory, how do we know that there is a 'struggle' going on anywhere else? If things can just change, with no 'contradictions' bringing this about, then perhaps this can happen everywhere too? How can you rule this out except by dogmatic assertion?

Quote:
No offence meant, but I would suspect something different from what you are suspecting.
Well, what in fact happens is the same as is happening here; they (and you) have given this 'theory' of yours very little thought, even though you all naively swallowed it. When confronted with its absurd consequences, as you have been here, you have to think on the hoof, and come up with the sort of revisionist, ad hoc, repairs we have seen you try to pull above, all the while ignoring what Engels, Lenin, and Mao actually said.

You skim-read their work, and you do the same to my posts -- and then decide to ignore what you do not like or cannot answer, hoping I'll go away. [My 12,000+ posts (in four years) should tell you that I won't.]

And, I predict you will continue to do this, since there is no answer to my objections. So, you just ignore stuff you can't answer.

Quote:
But your analyses and generalizations are wrong. That is why it is better to consider examples from the real world.
And yet, you can't show where I go wrong.

You will find plenty of real world examples here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm (http://www.anonym.to/?http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm)

Use the 'Quick Links' at the top to go to these sections:

Quote:
(7) Case Studies

(a) Dialectics Compromises Communism

(b) Dialectics Messes With Maoism

(c) Dialectics Traduces Trotskyism

__________________I'll answer your questions pointwise.

1)While working with number-system, I associate them with more realistic models, for example the Argand plane, rather than thinking of them as a set of static axioms and definitions. A translation of the real line, hence, I believe to be the real line moving on to a different position. This way, numbers do change. I view them as belonging to dynamic processes.

2) People working with a theory are allowed the liberty to name the things they discover at their will. However, here the terms like "contradiction" are used probably because the most important application of this theory is to defeat the bourgeoisie in class struggle, and it involves the study of social phenomena in which two classes oppose each other, visibly and often violently.

3) What are you basing your claims concerning the "class collaborationist" character of CPC on? Is it not based on what the Chinese proletariat thought? Was the Chinese working-class so naive that they couldn't comprehend through their daily-experience what your comrades seem to have deduced, perhaps sitting miles away? Until you withdraw your counter-revolutionary allegations against the CPC, don't think that I will reconsider even for a moment what I have posted.

4)You are basing your claims only on a linguistic ambiguity by dialecticians, whereas what they meant is very clear from their practice. The "demolition" of a theory cannot be based on this. Again and again you try to twist words and try to prove that you have done something great. And we don't need Mao or Lenin to define the meaning of every common word that they used. It is assumed that the reader will work them out by applying common-sense.

5) "An unworkable ruling-class theory", "socialism must turn into its opposite, capitalism"...really nice. You twist the meanings until they contradict the theory itself, then you proceed to negate them. At this point, anyone can work out this little trick of yours.

6)Please point out which real-world examples of yours I did not negate?
In John's case, you defined things inconsistently. In the wood-table and steam-water ones, you stated that rate of forward and backward changes must be equal, twisted the meaning of struggle, and you actually were mocking MLM due to this pathetic fallacy of yours!

[red cat]

Red Cat:



Same here. They are just different 'sources'.Only the "revolutionary" part is missing.


Mine, however, do not depend on an unworkable 'theory' you have to alter in order to defend. :lol:

[red cat]

Scarlet

Quote:
That's idiotic and completely untrue. It's well documented that Mao had been reading Marxist literature since the beginning of the Communist movement in China. Any biography will confirm this.
I'm assuming you've never read any of Mao's work either, because it shows clearly that he's read Marx n Lenin
He plainly ignored this comment of Marx's:

Quote:
The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the workers themselves
But not the red army, or third world guerillas...

Right! One fine morning the workers will spontaneously march on factories and government headquarters with bouquets of flowers in their hands and kiss the bourgeoisie into giving up power. Sweet.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


1)While working with number-system, I associate them with more realistic models, for example the Argand plane, rather than thinking of them as a set of static axioms and definitions. A translation of the real line, hence, I believe to be the real line moving on to a different position. This way, numbers do change. I view them as belonging to dynamic processes.

If the numbers change then no one would be able to use those numbers ever again. You do not seriously think that the number 5, the one you used in an earlier post, actually changes do you?

Once more: look there it is still on the page.

And, the real line moves nowhere either -- otherwise others would not be able to find it again.


People working with a theory are allowed the liberty to name the things they discover at their will. However, here the terms like "contradiction" are used probably because the most important application of this theory is to defeat the bourgeoisie in class struggle, and it involves the study of social phenomena in which two classes oppose each other, visibly and often violently.

Indeed, but would you be inclined to accept a supporter of capitalism re-defining it as "stable, just and fait to all"? I think not.

But, as I pointed out to you before, we already know why Dialectical Marxists use this word: they pinched it from Hegel, who screwed up the logic involved. So, this wasn't a free choice of will, as you suggest, but a nod in the direction of tradition, and this was a philosophical tradition that the working class and peasantry had no part in building. It was a ruling-class, mystical tradition of the worst possible kind. That's where this word came from. So what the hell is it doing in the workers movement?

I have outlined Hegel's crass errors here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1381066&postcount=30


What are you basing your claims concerning the "class collaborationist" character of CPC on? Is it not based on what the Chinese proletariat thought? Was the Chinese working-class so naive that they couldn't comprehend through their daily-experience what your comrades seem to have deduced, perhaps sitting miles away? Until you withdraw your counter-revolutionary allegations against the CPC, don't think that I will reconsider even for a moment what I have posted.

You can find this material at my site, here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm

Use the 'Quick Links' at the top to go to these sections:

(7) Case Studies

(a) Dialectics Compromises Communism

(b) Dialectics Messes With Maoism

(c) Dialectics Traduces Trotskyism

But, you refuse to read it. So, stay ignorant.


You are basing your claims only on a linguistic ambiguity by dialecticians, whereas what they meant is very clear from their practice. The "demolition" of a theory cannot be based on this. Again and again you try to twist words and try to prove that you have done something great. And we don't need Mao or Lenin to define the meaning of every common word that they used. It is assumed that the reader will work them out by applying common-sense.

And how do you know that the words Lenin used (about a principle he declared was an "absolute" -- odd that he'd use ambiguous words in relation to an "absolute", isn't it?) were "ambiguous".

I asked you to produce this textual evidence from Lenin or Mao (or any other dialectical classicist) that supports you claim that they are using these words "ambiguously".

So, where is it?

[As I predicted, comrades, Red Cat ignored this request. No surprise there then! And she/he'll keep ignoring it, too]

And far from "twisting" their words, all I have done is quote them and taken them at their face value. It is you who wants to convince us that these comrades meant the exact opposite of what they said.

And this is because you are panicking, and want to avoid the absurd consequences of this loopy theory of yours.

I'd do the same if I were in the hole you are in.


"An unworkable ruling-class theory", "socialism must turn into its opposite, capitalism"...really nice. You twist the meanings until they contradict the theory itself, then you proceed to negate them. At this point, anyone can work out this little trick of yours.

Once more, it was Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Mao who all told us (and many times over, calling this an "absolute") that everything turns into its opposite, not me. So, on that basis socialism must turn into capitalism.

Odd then that they all said the opposite of what you claim they 'really meant' -- which revisionist interpretation of yours you cannot support with a single passage from any of these theorists -- truly odd.

Wonder why that is...?

So, until you can come up with such a quotation from the dialectical gospels, the only conclusion possible is that it's you who refuses to face up to the absurd consequences of this unworkable ruling-class theory, not me.


Please point out which real-world examples of yours I did not negate?

Who said anything about "negating" them? You just ignored them -- link above; go ignore them some more.

[QUOTE]In John's case, you defined things inconsistently. In the wood-table and steam-water ones, you were completely ignorant of the fact that reverse processes can occur, and you actually were mocking MLM due to this pathetic ignorance of yours![?QUOTE]

Please point out exactly what these alleged "inconsistencies" are.

[The fact that you haven't done so suggests you are now clutching at straws. Prove me wrong by itemising these "inconsistencies".]

[What's the betting that Red Cat ignores this, too!]

And I specifically allowed for 'reverse processes'.

You're skim-reading again!

As I have pointed out several times: you are only doing this because you can't cope with what I actually say, so you are just making stuff up as you go along, preferring to argue with a figment of your own imagination, rather than confront my actual words.

This is not surprising, either: in relation to this theory, you do the same to Lenin and Mao!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Only the "revolutionary" part is missing.

Good of you to admit this of your own sources!

[If you can deliberately mis-read me, I can do the same, surely, to you!]


One fine morning the workers will spontaneously march on factories and government headquarters with bouquets of flowers in their hands and kiss the bourgeoisie into giving up power. Sweet.

This comment shows you have absolutely no comprehension of Marxism or Leninism.

I blame dialectics...

[red cat]

Red Cat:

Quote:
1)While working with number-system, I associate them with more realistic models, for example the Argand plane, rather than thinking of them as a set of static axioms and definitions. A translation of the real line, hence, I believe to be the real line moving on to a different position. This way, numbers do change. I view them as belonging to dynamic processes.
If the numbers change then no one would be able to use those numbers ever again. You do not seriously think that the number 5, the one you used in an earlier post, actually changes do you?

Once more: look there it is still on the page.

And, the real line moves nowhere either -- otherwise others would not be able to find it again.

Quote:
People working with a theory are allowed the liberty to name the things they discover at their will. However, here the terms like "contradiction" are used probably because the most important application of this theory is to defeat the bourgeoisie in class struggle, and it involves the study of social phenomena in which two classes oppose each other, visibly and often violently.
Indeed, but would you be inclined to accept a supporter of capitalism re-defining it as "stable, just and fait to all"? I think not.

But, as I pointed out to you before, we already know why Dialectical Marxists use this word: they pinched it from Hegel, who screwed up the logic involved. So, this wasn't a free choice of will, as you suggest, but a nod in the direction of tradition, and this was a philosophical tradition that the working class and peasantry had no part in building. It was a ruling-class, mystical tradition of the worst possible kind. That's where this word came from. So what the hell is it doing in the workers movement?

I have outlined Hegel's crass errors here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...6&postcount=30 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1381066&postcount=30)

Quote:
What are you basing your claims concerning the "class collaborationist" character of CPC on? Is it not based on what the Chinese proletariat thought? Was the Chinese working-class so naive that they couldn't comprehend through their daily-experience what your comrades seem to have deduced, perhaps sitting miles away? Until you withdraw your counter-revolutionary allegations against the CPC, don't think that I will reconsider even for a moment what I have posted.
You can find this material at my site, here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm (http://www.anonym.to/?http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2009_02.htm)

Use the 'Quick Links' at the top to go to these sections:

(7) Case Studies

(a) Dialectics Compromises Communism

(b) Dialectics Messes With Maoism

(c) Dialectics Traduces Trotskyism

But, you refuse to read it. So, stay ignorant.


You are basing your claims only on a linguistic ambiguity by dialecticians, whereas what they meant is very clear from their practice. The "demolition" of a theory cannot be based on this. Again and again you try to twist words and try to prove that you have done something great. And we don't need Mao or Lenin to define the meaning of every common word that they used. It is assumed that the reader will work them out by applying common-sense.

And how do you know that the words Lenin used (about a principle he declared was an "absolute" -- odd that he'd use ambiguous words in relation to an "absolute", isn't it?) were "ambiguous".

I asked you to produce this textual evidence from Lenin or Mao (or any other dialectical classicist) that supports you claim that they are using these words "ambiguously".

So, where is it?

[As I predicted, comrades, Red Cat ignored this request. No surprise there then! And she/he'll keep ignoring it, too]

And far from "twisting" their words, all I have done is quote them and taken them at their face value. It is you who wants to convince us that these comrades meant the exact opposite of what they said.

And this is because you are panicking, and want to avoid the absurd consequences of this loopy theory of yours.

I'd do the same if I were in the hole you are in.

Quote:
"An unworkable ruling-class theory", "socialism must turn into its opposite, capitalism"...really nice. You twist the meanings until they contradict the theory itself, then you proceed to negate them. At this point, anyone can work out this little trick of yours.
Once more, it was Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Mao who all told us (and many times over, calling this an "absolute") that everything turns into its opposite, not me. So, on that basis socialism must turn into capitalism.

Odd then that they all said the opposite of what you claim they 'really meant' -- which revisionist interpretation of yours you cannot support with a single passage from any of these theorists -- truly odd.

Wonder why that is...?

So, until you can come up with such a quotation from the dialectical gospels, the only conclusion possible is that it's you who refuses to face up to the absurd consequences of this unworkable ruling-class theory, not me.

Quote:
Please point out which real-world examples of yours I did not negate?
Who said anything about "negating" them? You just ignored them -- link above; go ignore them some more.


In John's case, you defined things inconsistently. In the wood-table and steam-water ones, you were completely ignorant of the fact that reverse processes can occur, and you actually were mocking MLM due to this pathetic ignorance of yours!Please point out exactly what these alleged "inconsistencies" are.

[The fact that you haven't done so suggests you are now clutching at straws. Prove me wrong by itemising these "inconsistencies".]

[What's the betting that Red Cat ignores this, too!]

And I specifically allowed for 'reverse processes'.

You're skim-reading again!

As I have pointed out several times: you are only doing this because you can't cope with what I actually say, so you are just making stuff up as you go along, preferring to argue with a figment of your own imagination, rather than confront my actual words.

This is not surprising, either: in relation to this theory, you do the same to Lenin and Mao!Yes I noticed that you allowed reverse processes. I edited the relevant part soon after I made the original post. You had twisted meanings again in those examples.

And which of your quick links actually link to a survey of the Chinese proletariat on the question whether the CPC was class-collaborationist or not?

Almost all of your "demolition" stands on your claim that MLM implies that every element or process must change back into each of its opposites in every system in which it is observed, and moreover, it must do so infinitely many times, for example, socialism will always change back to capitalism(according to your version of MLM). And it is not that you don't know what dialecticians meant. The fact is that you simply do not want to acknowledge it because you want to concoct a "negation" of MLM-dialectics to place yourself right beside Marx.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



Good of you to admit this of your own sources!

[If you can deliberately mis-read me, I can do the same, surely, to you!]



This comment shows you have absolutely no comprehension of Marxism or Leninism.

I blame dialectics...Some actions of the revolutionary movements, please?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Yes I noticed that you allowed reverse processes. I edited the relevant part soon after I made the original post. You had twisted meanings again in those examples.

So, your persistent habit of skim-reading my posts has caught you out once again.

And, I see you are determined to keep on making these unsubstantiated allegations about me and my ideas -- as I predicted you would (and, just like the other dialecticians I have debated this with over the years have done).

Moreover, it is quite plain that you persistently fail to post details of these "twisted meanings", since you can't.

What is your textual basis -- I'm not interested in your personal and unsupported opinions, or your desperate attempt at guesswork -- what is the textual basis for saying that I have "twisted" Mao and/or Lenin?

Your continual attempt to ignore this request suggests that you prefer to make stuff up and to accuse me of what it is plain that you do: "twist" Mao and Lenin.


And which of your quick links actually link to a survey of the Chinese proletariat on the question whether the CPC was class-collaborationist or not?]/QUOTE]

Isn't it obvious? The one that mentions Maoism.

(b) Dialectics Messes With Maoism

Is that clear enough for you?

[QUOTE]Almost all of your "demolition" stands on your claim that MLM implies that every element or process must change back into each of its opposites in every system in which it is observed, and moreover, it must do so infinitely many times, for example, socialism will always change back to capitalism (according to your version of MLM).

Well, as has been established in my previous posts, this is the implication of the very clear words Lenin and Mao used.

Once more, do you have a single quotation from either of these two that supports your revisionist reading of either of them?

Answer: no.

Lenin and Mao are quite clear that every object and process in the entire universe turns into its opposite; and all opposites turn into one another. [I'd quote them again, but you just ignore what they have to say! ]

Now the opposite of capitalism is socialism, so this useless ruling-class theory of yours implies that socialism must turn into capitalism and capitalism must turn into socialism!


And it is not that you don't know what dialecticians meant. The fact is that you simply do not want to acknowledge it because you want to concoct a "negation" of MLM-dialectics to place yourself right beside Marx

On the contrary, it is quite clear from the way you ignore what Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Mao say that you do not understand your own theory!

This is why you find you have to make stuff up, and make baseless allegations about me, which you find you cannot substantiate.

Prove me wrong by substantiating what you allege of me and my supposed 'distortions'...

[The smart money is on you ignoring this challenge yet again.]

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Some actions of the revolutionary movements, please?

This is cute of you: you demand evidence from me, but consistently fail to produce one scrap of evidence supporting your allegations about my supposed 'distortions', or in support of your revisionist reading of Lenin and Mao -- even when I have repeatedly asked you to do so.

[red cat]

Red Cat:

Quote:
Yes I noticed that you allowed reverse processes. I edited the relevant part soon after I made the original post. You had twisted meanings again in those examples.
So, your persistent habit of skim-reading my posts has caught you out once again.

And, I see you are determined to keep on making these unsubstantiated allegations about me and my ideas -- as I predicted you would (and, just like the other dialecticians I have debated this with over the years have done).

Moreover, it is quite plain that you persistently fail to post details of these "twisted meanings", since you can't.

What is your textual basis -- I'm not interested in your personal and unsupported opinions, or your desperate attempt at guesswork -- what is the textual basis for saying that I have "twisted" Mao and/or Lenin?

Your continual attempt to ignore this request suggests that you prefer to make stuff up and to accuse me of what it is plain that you do: "twist" Mao and Lenin.


And which of your quick links actually link to a survey of the Chinese proletariat on the question whether the CPC was class-collaborationist or not?]/QUOTE]

Isn't it obvious? The one that mentions Maoism.

(b) Dialectics Messes With Maoism

Is that clear enough for you?

Quote:
Almost all of your "demolition" stands on your claim that MLM implies that every element or process must change back into each of its opposites in every system in which it is observed, and moreover, it must do so infinitely many times, for example, socialism will always change back to capitalism (according to your version of MLM).
Well, as has been established in my previous posts, this is the implication of the very clear words Lenin and Mao used.

Once more, do you have a single quotation from either of these two that supports your revisionist reading of either of them?

Answer: no.

Lenin and Mao are quite clear that every object and process in the entire universe turns into its opposite; and all opposites turn into one another. [I'd quote them again, but you just ignore what they have to say! ]

Now the opposite of capitalism is socialism, so this useless ruling-class theory of yours implies that socialism must turn into capitalism and capitalism must turn into socialism!

Quote:
And it is not that you don't know what dialecticians meant. The fact is that you simply do not want to acknowledge it because you want to concoct a "negation" of MLM-dialectics to place yourself right beside Marx
On the contrary, it is quite clear from the way you ignore what Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin and Mao say that you do not understand your own theory!

This is why you find you have to make stuff up, and make baseless allegations about me, which you find you cannot substantiate.

Prove me wrong by substantiating what you allege of me and my supposed 'distortions'...

[The smart money is on you ignoring this challenge yet again.] Once again I am asking you, where is the survey of the workers of revolutionary China?

And exactly where do Lenin or Mao claim that each element will turn into EVERY of its opposites, in EVERY system under observation, and will do so an INFINITE number of times? WHERE?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


And once again I am asking you, where is the survey of the workers of revolutionary China?

1) Where did I allege anything about workers in China?

2) Once more, I repeat this:


This is cute of you: you demand evidence from me, but consistently fail to produce one scrap of evidence supporting your allegations about my supposed 'distortions', or in support of your revisionist reading of Lenin and Mao -- even when I have repeatedly asked you to do so.

As I keep predicting, you fail to substantiate your allegations because you can't.


And exactly where do Lenin or Mao claim that each element will turn into EVERY of its opposites, and will do so an INFINITE number of times? WHERE?

I keep quoting them but you keep ignoring what they have to say!

And where have I used the word "infinite"?

Still making stuff up I see.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



1) Where did I allege anything about workers in China?

2) Once more, I repeat this:



As I keep predicting, you fail to substantiate your allegations because you can't.
But your point of view that the CPC was class-collaborationist, judging by your own standards, need to be supported by a survey of the workers of revolutionary China. In case you have forgotten, that is what the survey thing is all about.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat (still failing to substantiate a single allegation about my supposed 'distortions'):


But your point of view that the CPC was class-collaborationist, judging by your own standards, need to be supported by a survey of the workers of revolutionary China. In case you have forgotten, that is what the survey thing is all about.

I repeat:


This is cute of you: you demand evidence from me, but consistently fail to produce one scrap of evidence supporting your allegations about my supposed 'distortions', or in support of your revisionist reading of Lenin and Mao -- even when I have repeatedly asked you to do so.

[red cat]

I keep quoting them but you keep ignoring what they have to say!

And where have I used the word "infinite"?

Still making stuff up I see.
Edited and added "EVERY system" too , in case you haven't noticed. Would you mind quoting Lenin or Mao once more?

[red cat]

Another thing, examining the property that whether an element A turns into its opposite B(sorry for the abstraction) infinite number of times, is quite important. Because if, say, B turns into A only a finite number of times, then replacing A and B with capitalism and socialism(if these had been the elements we had been studying) respectively, we can deduce that at some point socialism will not reverse into capitalism.

EDIT: forget the abstractions. Read socialism and capitalism in place of B and A respectively.

[Lyev]

Well, to the OP, in my opinion, Marxism, before anything else, is a workers movement and in the case of Mao I think the link between the urban proletariat and rural peasants is quite tenuous. I'm fairly sure in 1949, the time of Mao's revolution the urban, working class population was something like 1.8%. I do believe Mao's China was quite bureaucratic too; 'The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.' I realise that obviously peasants shouldn't be exactly 'left out' of a revolution, per se, Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution accounts for this, however I don't think a revolutionary movement can consists almost wholly of the peasantry. The peasantry don't have the same class relation that the proletariat do with the bourgeoisie, peasants own their own means of production, right? The thing about the bourgeois/proletariat relationship is that the proletariat own no means of production whatsoever and they work using bourgeois owned equipment. I'm probably going to get shouted at by some Maoist now...

[red cat]

Well, to the OP, in my opinion, Marxism, before anything else, is a workers movement and in the case of Mao I think the link between the urban proletariat and rural peasants is quite tenuous. I'm fairly sure in 1949, the time of Mao's revolution the urban, working class population was something like 1.8%. I do believe Mao's China was quite bureaucratic too; 'The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.' I realise that obviously peasants shouldn't be exactly 'left out' of a revolution, per se, Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution accounts for this, however I don't think a revolutionary movement can consists almost wholly of the peasantry. The peasantry don't have the same class relation that the proletariat do with the bourgeoisie, peasants own their own means of production, right? The thing about the bourgeois/proletariat relationship is that the proletariat own no means of production whatsoever and they work using bourgeois owned equipment. I'm probably going to get shouted at by some Maoist now...Maoists view the proletariat as the only class that can provide class-leadership over a successful revolution.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Edited and added "EVERY system" too , in case you haven't noticed. Would you mind quoting Lenin or Mao once more?

Yet another example of the panicky state of mind you are in; more hasty posts from you!

And I'll quote them again the moment you reveal to us the texts (from Mao and/or Lenin) which support your revisionist interpretation.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Another thing, examining the property that whether an element A turns into its opposite B (sorry for the abstraction) infinite number of times, is quite important. Because if, say, B turns into A only a finite number of times, then replacing A and B with capitalism and socialism(if these had been the elements we had been studying) respectively, we can deduce that at some point socialism will not reverse into capitalism.

EDIT: forget the abstractions. Read socialism and capitalism in place of B and A respectively.

This could happen endlessly without it being infinite.

The death of the Sun will stop this though, if that event ever happens.

But this is no comfort to you, since if the Sun changes into its opposite (i.e., a dead Sun), it will have to 'struggle' with that opposite in the here-and-now -- if it doesn't then it cannot change. So, the Sun must already be dead, or it could not 'struggle' with itself!

That is, if we are foolish enough to believe the dialectical gospels...

[red cat]

Red Cat:



This could happen endlessly without it being infinite.

The death of the Sun will stop this though, if that event ever happens.

But this is no comfort to you, since if the Sun changes into its opposite (i.e., a dead Sun), it will have to 'struggle' with that opposite in the here-and-now -- if it doesn't then it cannot change. So, the Sun must already be dead, or it could not 'struggle' with itself!

That is, if we are foolish enough to believe the dialectical gospels...
Well, then you agree that transformation into every opposite won't happen always? And we Maoists do believe that reversal from socialism to capitalism can occur, may be more than once. But that does not mean that we will stop fighting for it.

So now you are having to refer to the sun's death to defend your "demolition"? Next you will probably start off with black holes or the big bang.

Now please provide a quote of Lenin or Mao where they mention that by struggle they mean a full-fledged war in every example, and not something as simple as a transformation or just collisions of mere particles.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Well, then you agree that transformation into every opposite won't happen always? And we Maoists do believe that reversal from socialism to capitalism can occur, may be more than once. But that does not mean that we will stop fighting for it.

I have passed no opinion on this, merely worked out the consequences of this crazy theory of yours.

If you want to wait until the Sun cools for the final victory of socialism (according to your theory), that's your, er... funeral.


So now you are having to refer to the sun's death to defend your "demolition"? Next you will probably start off with black holes or the big bang.

Not at all; you asked a question and I answered it. It's your theory that implies all this.

It also imples that the cooling of the Sun will turn into its opposite, too, and warm up again!

So the whole process will continue indefinitely.

And, we can bring in the Big Bang if you want, since your theory has some odd things to say about that, too.


Now please provide a quote of Lenin or Mao where they mention that by struggle they mean a full-fledged war in every example, and not something as simple as a transformation or just collisions of mere particles.

May I refer you to this comment of mine:


I'll quote them again the moment you reveal to us the texts (from Mao and/or Lenin) which support your revisionist interpretation.

Now, since I have already quoted these texts, which you can access by the arduous task of going back a page or two, can we have your proof that I have 'twisted' Lenin and Mao?

[Another safe prediction here, comrades: Red Cat will ignore this, too.]

[red cat]

Red Cat:



I have passed no opinion on this, merely worked out the consequences of this crazy theory of yours.

If you want to wait until the Sun cools for the final victory of socialism (according to your theory), that's your, er... funeral.



Not at all; you asked a question and I answered it. It's your theory that implies all this.

It also imples that the cooling of the Sun will turn into its opposite, too, and warm up again!

So the whole process will continue indefinitely.

And, we can bring in the Big Bang if you want, since your theory has some odd things to say about that, too.



May I refer you to this comment of mine:



Now, since I have already quoted these texts, which you can access by the arduous task of going back a page or two, can we have your proof that I have 'twisted' Lenin and Mao?

[Another safe prediction here, comrades: Red Cat will ignore this, too.]
"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

"In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao (1961b), pp.340-42.]

"The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without 'above', there would be no 'below').... Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

"But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

"The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics....

"As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....

"The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end....

It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

"But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.
I'll quote them again the moment you reveal to us the texts (from Mao and/or Lenin) which support your revisionist interpretation.So, you practically agree to the fact that nowhere do Lenin's or Mao's works imply that they meant the same as what you mean, by struggle.

But by using common sense, everyone knows that a "war" cannot go on inside a table, or boiling water. In case of ambiguities, this is how we resolve them, by using our common-sense. But you deliberately go against this obvious way of interpretation and state that dialecticians actually meant "war" by struggle.

Also, nowhere do the quotes above state that each element in a given system must turn into every of its opposites. But you keep denying this fact.

The above two examples show how you purposefully twist meanings.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat (who has still failed to produce a single quotation from Mao or Lenin in support of his/her revisionist 'interpretation' that these two did not mean "struggle" when they used the word "struggle"):


So, you practically agree to the fact that nowhere do Lenin's or Mao's works imply that they meant the same as what you mean, by struggle.

Well, I haven't said what I think this word means, all I have done is take Mao and Lenin at their word that they mean "struggle" when they use the word "struggle". It is you who wants to interpret "struggle" to mean "no struggle", and without a single passage from either of these two in support of this revisionist 'interpretation' of yours.

So, my prediction was right; you haven't produced a single quotation from these two in support of what you say, and that's because you can't -- otherwise, we can be sure you would have.


But by using common sense, everyone knows that a "war" cannot go on inside a table, or boiling water. In case of ambiguities, this is how we resolve them, by using our common-sense. But you deliberately go against this obvious way of interpretation and state that dialecticians actually meant "war" by struggle.

This flies in the face of what Lenin says:


"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….

"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute…."

Quoted from earlier.

And Mao:


If we can become clear on all these problems, we shall arrive at a fundamental understanding of materialist dialectics. The problems are: the two world outlooks, the universality of contradiction, the particularity of contradiction, the principal contradiction and the principal aspect of a contradiction, the identity and struggle of the aspects of a contradiction, and the place of antagonism in contradiction....

Engels said, "Motion itself is a contradiction." Lenin defined the law of the unity of opposites as "the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society)". Are these ideas correct? Yes, they are. The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of all things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist....

When we speak of understanding each aspect of a contradiction, we mean understanding what specific position each aspect occupies, what concrete forms it assumes in its interdependence and in its contradiction with its opposite, and what concrete methods are employed in the struggle with its opposite, when the two are both interdependent and in contradiction, and also after the interdependence breaks down. It is of great importance to study these problems. Lenin meant just this when he said that the most essential thing in Marxism, the living soul of Marxism, is the concrete analysis of concrete conditions.

In each thing there is contradiction between its new and its old aspects, and this gives rise to a series of struggles with many twists and turns. As a result of these struggles, the new aspect changes from being minor to being major and rises to predominance, while the old aspect changes from being major to being minor and gradually dies out....

Quoted from here:

http://www.marx.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

Moreover, I have never used the word "war"; that is another invention of yours.

So, it's you who is twisting their words (and mine!), not me.


Also, nowhere do the quotes above state that each element in a given system must turn into every of its opposites. But you keep denying this fact.

Not at all, since I have never made that claim -- and I defy you to find where I have.


The above two examples show how you purposefully twist meanings.

Well, you keep saying such things, but when we look more closely, we see you are still making stuff up.

And we are still waiting for a single quotation from Mao or Lenin that supports your view that when they use "struggle" they mean "no struggle"!

[Another safe bet here comrades; watch Red Cat duck that challenge for the tenth time.]

[red cat]

Red Cat (who has still failed to produce a single quotation from Mao or Lenin in support of his/her revisionist 'interpretation' that these two did not mean "struggle" when they used the word "struggle"):



Well, I haven't said what I think this word means, all I have done is take Mao and Lenin at their word that they mean "struggle" when they use the word "struggle". It is you who wants to interpret "struggle" to mean "no struggle", and without a single passage from either of these two in support of this revisionist 'interpretation' of yours.

So, my prediction was right; you haven't produced a single quotation from these two in support of what you say, and that's because you can't -- otherwise, we can be sure you would have.



This flies in the face of what Lenin says:



Quoted from earlier.

And Mao:



Quoted from here:

http://www.marx.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm

Moreover, I have never used the word "war"; that is another invention of yours.

So, it's you who is twisting their words (and mine!), not me.



Not at all, since I have never made that claim -- and I defy you to find where I have.



Well, you keep saying such things, but when we look more closely, we see you are still making stuff up.

And we are still waiting for a single quotation from Mao or Lenin that supports your view that when they use "struggle" they mean "no struggle"!

[Another safe bet here comrades; watch Red Cat duck that challenge for the tenth time.]Please describe what you mean by "struggle", if I am wrong in thinking that it is a fight or a war or something similar that you mean.

And about myself quoting Lenin or Mao, I think these suffice :


"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….
In each thing there is contradiction between its new and its old aspects, and this gives rise to a series of struggles with many twists and turns. As a result of these struggles, the new aspect changes from being minor to being major and rises to predominance, while the old aspect changes from being major to being minor and gradually dies out....After reading these two quotes, no sane person is likely to believe that they meant anything more than the interaction of elements having opposing properties as "struggle" in the general case. If you want to negate something so obvious, you are the one (and not me) who is supposed to provide a quote where Lenin or Mao unambiguously negate what I mean.


Also, nowhere do the quotes above state that each element in a given system must turn into every of its opposites. But you keep denying this fact.
Not at all, since I have never made that claim -- and I defy you to find where I have.
Not at all; you asked a question and I answered it. It's your theory that implies all this.

It also imples that the cooling of the Sun will turn into its opposite, too, and warm up again!

So the whole process will continue indefinitely.Since now you agree that an element need not change into every of its opposites, in your example concerning the sun, it is now justified to say that after a point the sun will transform into its opposite, a cool sun, which in turn might not reverse back to a hot sun but instead turn into a cooler sun which is also one of its opposites.

Similarly, the first stage of socialism can reverse back to capitalism, but from the second stage onwards, as it is conjectured, these systems can only transform into their opposites which involve more and more of communist characteristics. That is, the second stage will transform into the third stage, the third stage into communism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Please describe what you mean by "struggle", if I am wrong in thinking that it is a fight or a war or something similar that you mean.

For the purposes of this argument, I mean the same as Lenin and Mao.

You don't.

Thanks for these quotations, but how on earth do they support your view that "struggle" does not mean "struggle" but "no struggle"?


"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….

In each thing there is contradiction between its new and its old aspects, and this gives rise to a series of struggles with many twists and turns. As a result of these struggles, the new aspect changes from being minor to being major and rises to predominance, while the old aspect changes from being major to being minor and gradually dies out....

Where do either Lenin or Mao tell us that when they speak about "struggles" they mean "no struggle at all"?


After reading these two quotes, no sane person is likely to believe that they meant anything more than the interaction of elements having opposing properties as "struggle" in the general case. If you want to negate something so obvious, you are the one (and not me) who is supposed to provide a quote where Lenin or Mao unambiguously negate what I mean.

And yet every quotation I have given you has Lenin and Mao talking about the "struggle" of "opposites"; not one has them telling us what you say, that is, that when they use the word "struggle" they mean "no struggle at all".

You have yet to find a single passage where they say what you have been alleging.

And, on the contrary, no sane person will read these and say to themselves "Ah, when Lenin and Mao use 'struggle' they mean 'no struggle at all'".

Now, if you can find somewhere where either Mao or Lenin tell us something like this:


"When we use the phrase 'struggle of opposites', and say this is an 'absolute', and applies to 'everything in existence', we are only fooling around, and really mean the opposite of what we say..."

then I'll apologise profusely, and withdraw my slur against these two great revolutionaries.

The question is, can you find such a quotation?

The fact that all you can find are ones that support my contention, not yours, says it all.


Since now you agree that an element need not change into every of its opposites, in your example concerning the sun, it is now justified to say that after a point the sun will transform into its opposite, a cool sun, which in turn might not reverse back to a hot sun but instead turn into a cooler sun which is also one of its opposites.

I admitted no such thing.

You posted this:


Also, nowhere do the quotes above state that each element in a given system must turn into every of its opposites. But you keep denying this fact.

Bold added.

That is not the same as Lenin and Mao, who clearly tell us the following:


Each or every object and process changes into its opposite.

They nowhere say, and I nowhere say that they say, this:


Each object and process changes into every one of its opposites.

"Every opposite" and "every one of its opposites" are not the same as "its opposite"; the latter is what I have claimed all along (you keep missing this because, as we all know, you do not read too well), not the first two.

Here are Mao and Lenin saying what I say they say:


"'This harmony is precisely absolute Becoming change, -- not becoming other, now this and then another. The essential thing is that each different thing [tone], each particular, is different from another, not abstractly so from any other, but from its other. Each particular only is, insofar as its other is implicitly contained in its Notion...' Quite right and important: the 'other' as its other, development into its opposite." [Volume 38.p.260. Lenin is here commenting on Hegel (1995), pp.278-98.]


"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

"In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao (1961b), pp.340-42.]

So, every object/process changes into its opposite, and they do this as a result of "struggle".

Now, make a genuine effort not to skim-read/ignore the above quotations, since it is quite plain that this is what you have been doing all along so that you do not have to face the absurd consequences of your 'theory'.

Thus, according to this 'theory', when the Sun cools, it will change into its opposite, a hot Sun again!

And, it will do this by means of a "struggle" with a cool Sun.

This means that the present hot Sun and the cool Sun it turns into have to co-exist. If they don't then they cannot "struggle".

But, if the hot Sun and the cool Sun both exist at the same time, then the hot Sun cannot change into the cool Sun since it already exists!

On the other hand, if the cool Sun does not exist the hot Sun cannot change into it, since it cannot struggle with an non-existent opposite.

As I have said, many times, this does not deny change, only that dialectic cannot account for it.

Indeed, if dialectics were true, change could not happen.


Similarly, the first stage of socialism can reverse back to capitalism, but from the second stage onwards, as it is conjectured, these systems can only transform into their opposites which involve more and more of communist characteristics. That is, the second stage will transform into the third stage, the third stage into communism.

And, since capitalism is the opposite of the final stage of communism, according to Lenin and Mao, it must turn back into capitalism again.

Moreover, they must co-exist so that this can happen, and so that they can "struggle". Hence, despite appearances to the contrary, capitalism must exist alongside the final stage of communism!

In other words, according to this brilliant 'theory' of yours, capitalism will never disappear!

[red cat]

Red Cat:



For the purposes of this argument, I mean the same as Lenin and Mao.

You don't.

Thanks for tese quotations, but how on earth do they support your view that "struggle" does not mean "struggle" but "no struggle"?



Where do either Lenin or Mao tell us that when they speak about "struggles" they mean "no struggle at all"?



And yet every quotation I have given you has Lenin and Mao talking about the "struggle" of "opposites"; not one has them telling us what you say, that is, that when they use the word "struggle" they mean "no struggle at all".

You have yet to find a single passage where they say what you have been alleging.

And, on the contrary, no sane person will read these and say to themselves "Ah, when Lenin and Mao use 'struggle' they mean 'no struggle at all'".

Now, if you can find somewhere where either Mao or Lenin tell us something like this:



then I'll apologise profusely, and withdraw my slur against these two great revolutionaries.

The question is, can you find such a quotation?

The fact that all you can find are ones that support my contention, not yours, says it all.



I admitted no such thing.

You posted this:



Bold added.

That is not the same as Lenin and Mao, who clearly tell us the following:



They nowhere say, and I nowhere say that they say, this:



"Every opposite" and "every one of its opposites" are not the same as "its opposite"; the latter is what I have claimed all along (you keep missing this because, as we all know, you do not read too well), not the first two.

Here are Mao and Lenin saying what I say they say:



"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

"In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute." [Mao (1961b), pp.340-42.]

So, every object/process changes into its opposite, and they do this as a result of "struggle".

Now, make a genuine effort not to skim-read/ignore the above quotations, since it is quite plain that this is what you have been doing all along so that you do not have to face the absurd consequences of your 'theory'.

Thus, according to this 'theory', when the Sun cools, it will change into its opposite, a hot Sun again!

And, it will do this by means of a "struggle" with a cool Sun.

This means that the present hot Sun and the cool Sun it turns into have to co-exist. If they don't then they cannot "struggle".

But, if the hot Sun and the cool Sun already exist, then hot Sun cannot change into the cool Sun since it already exists!

As I have said, many times, this does not deny change, only that dialectic cannot account for it.

Indeed, if dialectics were true, change could not happen.



And, since capitalism is the opposite of the final stage of communism, according to Lenin and Mao, it must turn back into capitalism again.

Moreover, they must co-exist so that this can happen, and so that they can "struggle". Hence, despite appearances to the contrary, capitalism must exist alongside the final stage of communism!

In other words, according to this brilliant 'theory' of yours, capitalism will never disappear!A hot sun is not the only opposite of a cold sun.

Similarly, capitalism is not the only opposite of communism.

[Lyev]

Maoists view the proletariat as the only class that can provide class-leadership over a successful revolution.

Surely the proof is the pudding, Mao was from a peasant family himself, wasn't he? The proletariat may well be able 'provide class-leadership', but to what end? (if they're leading peasants) the peasantry can't expropriate the means of production from the bourgeoisie the same way the proletariat can.

[red cat]

Surely the proof is the pudding, Mao was from a peasant family himself, wasn't he? The proletariat may well be able 'provide class-leadership', but to what end? (if they're leading peasants) the peasantry can't expropriate the means of production from the bourgeoisie the same way the proletariat can.

Was Lenin from a proletarian family?

With the seizure of power locally, a portion of the peasantry is converted into the proletariat. This happens with the advancement of the new-democratic revolution, prior to which the economy at the countryside is feudal. Much of what the peasantry expropriates is actually feudal property.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


A hot sun is not the only opposite of a cold sun.

Similarly, capitalism is not the only opposite of communism.

Indeed, and when there is a cold Sun, it must change into its opposite, which, as you have just admitted, is a hot Sun.

So, the cold Sun will change into that opposite, a hot Sun again!

And it will do this as a result of a "struggle" with it,

So, and once more, both of these Suns must co-exist. In which case, the cool Sun cannot change (since what it is supposed to change into already exists!), despite the fact that Lenin and Mao tell us that everything does change into its opposite.

Once more, if dialectics were true, change would be impossible.

And sure, capitalism might have many opposites (feudalism is one).

So, let's call this opposite C*.

According to Lenin and Mao everything changes into its opposite, and it does so as a result of "struggle".

So, using "C" as shorthand for "Capitalism", C must "struggle" with C*, and in order to do that, they must co-exist.

In that case, C does not change into C* (it can't do that since C* already exists!).

What then does it change into?

Well, nothing at all, since, according to Lenin and Mao, it has to change into C*, which, as we have just seen, it can't do this, since C* already exists.

Howsoever you try to re-package this useless theory, it implies that nothing can change.

And we are still waiting for those quotations from Mao and/or Lenin that support your contention that when they use the word "struggle" they mean "no struggle at all".

[red cat]

Red Cat:



Indeed, and when there is a cold Sun, it must change into its opposite, which, as you have just admitted, is a hot Sun.

So, the cold Sun will change into that opposite, a hot Sun again!

And it will do this as a result of a "struggle" with it,

So, and once more, both of these Suns must co-exist. In which case, the cool Sun cannot change (since what it is supposed to change into already exists!), despite the fact that Lenin and Mao tell us that everything does change into its opposite.

Once more, if dialectics were true, change would be impossible.

And sure, capitalism might have many opposites (feudalism is one).

So, let's call this opposite C*.

According to Lenin and Mao everything changes into its opposite, and it does so as a result of "struggle".

So, using "C" as shorthand for "Capitalism", C must "struggle" with C*, and in order to do that, they must co-exist.

In that case, C does not change into C* (it can't do that since C* already exists!).

What then does it change into?

Well, nothing at all, since, according to Lenin and Mao, it has to change into C*, which, as we have just seen, it can't do this, since C* already exists.

Howsoever you try to re-package this useless theory, it implies that nothing can change.

And we are still waiting for those quotations from Mao and/or Lenin that support your contention that when they use the word "struggle" they mean "no struggle at all".I said that a hot sun is not the only opposite of a cold sun. A colder sun is an opposite of a cold sun too. And that is what a cold sun will transform into.

[red cat]

What Lenin or Mao meant by struggle is pretty obvious through viewing different systems in the light of their theory. Since it is you who is claiming the contrary, the responsibility to produce quotes that unambiguously support your claim by defining "struggle", is yours, not mine.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


I said that a hot sun is not the only opposite of a cold sun. A colder sun is an opposite of a cold sun too. And that is what a cold sun will transform into.

Indeed, but they are opposites of each other, so this still stands:


when there is a cold Sun, it must change into its opposite, which, as you have just admitted, is a hot Sun.

So, the cold Sun will change into that opposite, a hot Sun again!

And it will do this as a result of a "struggle" with it,

So, and once more, both of these Suns must co-exist. In which case, the cool Sun cannot change (since what it is supposed to change into already exists!), despite the fact that Lenin and Mao tell us that everything does change into its opposite.

Once more, if dialectics were true, change would be impossible.

But, let us suppose that you are right; let us suppose that the cool Sun has another opposite, and let us call that opposite "S*", and let us abbreviate the cool Sun to "CS".

Then this must be the case:

According to Lenin and Mao everything changes into its opposite, and it does so as a result of a "struggle" with that opposite.

So, CS must "struggle" with S*, and in order to do that, they must co-exist.

In that case, CS can't change into S* (it can't do that since S* already exists!).

What then does CS change into?

Well, nothing at all, since, according to Lenin and Mao, CS has to change into S*, which, as we have just seen, it can't do this, since S* already exists.

So, CS cannot change; but we are also told everything changes! And yet this 'theory' of yours implies that CS cannot ever change!

And whatever applies to CS applies to anything else in the entire universe (since Lenin and Mao tell us this is an "absolute" and applies to "everything existing").

Hence, howsoever you try to re-package this useless theory, it implies that nothing can change!

And we are still waiting for those quotations from Mao and/or Lenin that support your contention that when they use the word "struggle" they mean "no struggle at all".

[red cat]

Red Cat:



Indeed, but they are opposites of each other, so this still stands:



But, let us suppose that you are right; let us suppose that the cool Sun has another opposite, and let us call that opposite "S*", and let us abbreviate the cool Sun to "CS".

Then this must be the case:

According to Lenin and Mao everything changes into its opposite, and it does so as a result of a "struggle" with that opposite.

So, CS must "struggle" with S*, and in order to do that, they must co-exist.

In that case, CS can't change into S* (it can't do that since S* already exists!).

What then does CS change into?

Well, nothing at all, since, according to Lenin and Mao, CS has to change into S*, which, as we have just seen, it can't do this, since S* already exists.

So, CS cannot change; but we are also told everything changes! And yet this 'theory' of yours implies that CS cannot ever change!

And whatever applies to CS applies to anything else in the entire universe (since Lenin and Mao tell us this is an "absolute" and applies to "everything existing").

Hence, howsoever you try to re-package this useless theory, it implies that nothing can change!

And we are still waiting for those quotations from Mao and/or Lenin that support your contention that when they use the word "struggle" they mean "no struggle at all".

What Lenin or Mao meant by struggle is pretty obvious through viewing different systems in the light of their theory. Since it is you who is claiming the contrary, the responsibility to produce quotes that unambiguously support your claim by defining "struggle", is yours, not mine.
Does this make the last part clear?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


What Lenin or Mao meant by struggle is pretty obvious through viewing different systems in the light of their theory. Since it is you who is claiming the contrary, the responsibility to produce quotes that unambiguously support your claim by defining "struggle", is yours, not mine.

Indeed, they mean by "struggle" "struggle", not "no struggle at all", according to you.

Unless that is, you can find a single passage where they tell us that they mean by "struggle" "no struggle at all".

We are still waiting for you to find that elusive passage...

We are beginning to think it does not exist!

Every single passage I have quoted supports my use of "struggle" which is the same as that of Mao and Lenin.

Of course, if you can show otherwise, be my guest.

As I said earlier:


Now, if you can find somewhere where either Mao or Lenin tell us something like this:


"When we use the phrase 'struggle of opposites', and say this is an 'absolute', and applies to 'everything in existence', we are only fooling around, and really mean the opposite of what we say..."

then I'll apologise profusely, and withdraw my slur against these two great revolutionaries.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Does this make the last part clear?

No, since you have yet to find a single passge from Mao and/or Lenin which has them saying something like this:


"When we use the phrase 'struggle of opposites', and say this is an 'absolute', and applies to 'everything in existence', we are only fooling around, and really mean the opposite of what we say..."

Until you do, my interpretation of them still stands.

[red cat]

A hot sun and a cold sun are mutually exclusive. They cannot co-exist. What co-exist are the different processes inside the sun with opposite properties inside the sun, the outcome of whose contradictions transforms the sun.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

And it is quite clear from your last few posts you have given up arguing, and have simply out your fingers in your ears, singing 'La, La, Lah...!'

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red cat:


A hot sun and a cold sun are mutually exclusive. They cannot co-exist. What co-exist are the different processes inside the sun with opposite properties inside the sun, the outcome of whose contradictions transforms the sun.

In that case they cannot change, since Lenin and Mao tell us that everything in the entire universe changes because of a "struggle" with its opposite.

If these two cannot exist together, then they cannot "struggle" and so cannot change.

You plainly do not even know your own 'theory'!

[red cat]

Red Cat:


No, since you have yet to find a single passge from Mao and/or Lenin which has them saying something like this:

No, since you have yet to find a single passge from Mao and/or Lenin which has them saying something like this:

"When we use the phrase 'struggle of opposites', and say this is an 'absolute', and applies to 'everything in existence', we are only fooling around, and really mean the opposite of what we say..."


Until you do, my interpretation of them still stands.Considering your impractical claims about dialectics, you are the one who is supposed to quote a passage by Lenin or Mao saying something like this:

"When we use the phrase "struggle of opposites", we expect that the reader should completely ignore his/her observations of the real world, especially, what "struggle" means when our theory is applied to a general system, and wait for someone to demolish our theory by claiming that "struggle" means a "fight" in every case, be it a violent insurrection against the bourgeoisie or mere conflict within opposite forces in a molecule, without any relevance given to the system being considered."

[red cat]

Red cat:



In that case they cannot change, since Lenin and Mao tell us that everything in the entire universe changes because of a "struggle" with its opposite.

If these two cannot exist together, then they cannot "struggle" and so cannot change.

You plainly do not even know your own 'theory'!It is obvious that when different outcomes of struggle between opposing processes give rise to different systems that are mutually exclusive, the struggle between the opposing forces can be held equivalent to a struggle between the systems themselves.

Now I predict that you will ask me to quote Lenin or Mao mentioning this, since you know very well that any dialectician assumes that anyone who attempts to read his works is aware of such trivial facts, or is clever enough to deduce the same.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Considering your impractical claims about dialectics, you are the one who is supposed to quote a passage by Lenin or Mao saying something like this


"When we use the phrase "struggle of opposites", we expect that the reader should completely ignore his/her observations of the real world, especially, what "struggle" means when our theory is applied to a general system, and wait for someone to demolish our theory by claiming that "struggle" means a "fight" in every case, be it a violent insurrection against the bourgeoisie or mere conflict within opposite forces in a molecule, without any relevance given to the system being considered."

Well Lenin said that this principle covers "everything in existence", and that it is an "absolute":


"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….

"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute…." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22, 357-58.]

If this covers "everything in existence" then there is absolutely nothing it leaves out. No room, then, for your revision of what he said.

Mao said more-or-less the same:


"As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing. There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development....

"The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.... [Ibid., pp.311-18.]

And:


"The contradictory aspects in every process exclude each other, struggle with each other and are in opposition to each other. Without exception, they are contained in the process of development of all things and in all human thought. A simple process contains only a single pair of opposites, while a complex process contains more. And in turn, the pairs of opposites are in contradiction to one another.)

"The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without 'above', there would be no 'below').... Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

And, of course we shouldn't suspend our common sense, but that is precisely what tells us this 'theory' cannot work.

Now, you may want to alter what Lenin and Mao said so as to avoid the absurd consequences of this loopy theory, but then this will no longer be Lenin's or Mao's theory.

I can live with that. Anything that leaves this 'theory' dead and buried is Ok with me.

You have had these passages, and many similar ones, quoted at you now dozens of times. You are just refusing to read your own 'theory'!

And I have nowhere said that "struggle" means "fight"; that is another figment of your imagination.

I have consistently left the word "struggle" uninterpreted, and have allowed Lenin and Mao to speak for themselves.

You haven't.

And we are still waiting for those quotations from Mao and/or Lenin that support your contention that when they use the word "struggle" they mean "no struggle at all".

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


It is obvious that when different outcomes of struggle between opposing processes give rise to different systems that are mutually exclusive, the struggle between the opposing forces can be held equivalent to a struggle between the systems themselves.

In that case, if they are "mutually exclusive" they cannot exist together. On the other hand, if they do exist together, then they can't be "mutually exclusive".

Moreover, if such "systems" "struggle", then they must "struggle" with their "opposite", and then change into that "opposite", if we are to believe the dialectical prophets. But, they can't do that, since that "opposite" already exists! If it doesn't already exist, they cannot "struggle" with one another.

You keep ignoring this.


Now I predict that you will ask me to quote Lenin or Mao mentioning this, since you know very well that any dialectician assumes that anyone who attempts to read his works is aware of such trivial facts, or is clever enough to deduce the same.

And I can predict that you won't be able to find a single dialectician, never mind Mao or Lenin, who will say this -- since they, like you, have given this 'theory' no thought at all. And this is because, like those who hold the Bible in high esteem, you lot treat the dialectical classics as sacred books, which must never be questioned. So, you just swallow what they say with no thought at all.

Hence, when this 'theory' faces my demolition they/you panic, and start clutching at straws.

One straw being this:
"Ah, when they said this principle applied to 'everything in existence', and that it was an 'absolute', and that 'everything struggles with its opposite', and then 'changes into that opposite', they didn't really mean this -- even though they and many other dialecticians said the same thing many many times."

Now, the dialectical classicists did not qualify their absolutist claims, ever, not once.

And you have been unable to find anywhere where they said things like this:


"When we use the phrase 'struggle of opposites', and say this is an 'absolute', and applies to 'everything in existence', we are only fooling around, and really mean the opposite of what we say..."

And there is good reason for this. They were relying on Hegel's theory of change, which was itself a response to Hume. Hegel had to find a rational principle that applied to every instance of change in reality in order to refute Hume's empiricist attack on rationalist theories of causation. And this was it. He was an absolutist, and as we have seen, so were Mao and Lenin.

If you remove the absolute claims Lenin and Mao added to their theory, then you will have no theory of change, and Hume's attack must succeed.

To their credit, Lenin, Mao and other dialecticians saw this, and at least tried to formulate a theory that showed how the entire universe developed. It's too bad this theory has absurd consequences, but it was at least an attempt to try to understand change in general.

Your 'revisions' punch holes in this theory, which means that, when the details are worked out, nothing in the universe will develop as Lenin and Mao said they would, since my abstract and concrete arguments shows that it cannot work anywhere.

Now, you are welcome to your unworkable 'revisionist' non-theory, but I suspect that if you try to publicise it among fellow ML-ers, you will be branded a "Revisionist!" and ostracised (or shot, if you lot ever get back in power).

-----------------------

Added on edit.

Moreover, it's a bit rich a dialectician appealing to 'common sense', since the dialectical classicists spared no effort exposing its alleged limitations. Here is Engels:


At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and even necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/introduction.htm

The whole point of using 'dialectical logic' is because it is allegedly superior to 'common sense' and 'formal logic', but if we now have to appeal to 'common sense' in order to bale out 'dialectical logic', then why bother with 'dialectical logic' to begin with?

[lin biao fan club]

Mao was the greatest revolutionary of all time. He led a quarter of the world in throwing off the chains of imperialism. A quarter of the worlds population threw off the shackles of their minds and decided to try to build a better world.

Revolution is no dinner party. People die. When we talk about revolution, we are talking about totally obliterating the old world, uprooting thousands of years of exploitation and oppression. The enemy will not go down without a fight and we will not get everything right the first go around. The road to communism is a long road.

[lin biao fan club]

I agree with Rosa here. As much as we should admire Mao the revolutionary, Mao was not a great philosopher.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

lin biao, I agree he was certainly a great revolutionary, but check these out:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1592144&postcount=22

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1592148&postcount=24

[red cat]

Red Cat:



Well Lenin said that this principle covers "everything in existence", and that it is an "absolute":

Precisely why we are able to deduce that "struggle" means conflict between opposing forces in the general case.


If this covers "everything in existence" then there is absolutely nothing it leaves out. No room, then, for your revision of what he said.

Mao said more-or-less the same:



And:



And, of course we shouldn't suspend our common sense, but that is precisely what tells us this 'theory' cannot work.

Now, you may want to alter what Lenin and Mao said so as to avoid the absurd consequences of this loopy theory, but then this will no longer be Lenin's or Mao's theory. Well, at least my common-sense, or that of any other Maoist, tells us that your interpretation of this theory is wrong, considering the success of the practice of MLM as compared to other lines of thought.


I can live with that. Anything that leaves this 'theory' dead and buried is Ok with me.

You have had these passages, and many similar ones, quoted at you now dozens of times. You are just refusing to read your own 'theory'!

And I have nowhere said that "struggle" means "fight"; that is another figment of your imagination.

I have consistently left the word "struggle" uninterpreted, and have allowed Lenin and Mao to speak for themselves.

You haven't.

And we are still waiting for those quotations from Mao and/or Lenin that support your contention that when they use the word "struggle" they mean "no struggle at all". You have misinterpreted the theory yourself. Your interpretation is in contradiction with communist practice.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Precisely why we are able to deduce that "struggle" means conflict between opposing forces in the general case.

Well that just confirms my argument, since in that case these "opposing forces" must co-exist as opposites.

Hence, capitalism must turn into socialism, and socialism must turn into capitalism, if the dialectical prophets are to be believed.


Well, at least my common-sense, or that of any other Maoist, tells us that your interpretation of this theory is wrong, considering the success of the practice of MLM as compared to other lines of thought.

As I noted in my last post:


It's a bit rich a dialectician appealing to 'common sense', since the dialectical classicists spared no effort exposing its alleged limitations. Here is Engels:


At first sight this mode of thinking seems to us very luminous, because it is that of so-called sound common sense. Only sound common sense, respectable fellow that he is, in the homely realm of his own four walls, has very wonderful adventures directly he ventures out into the wide world of research. And the metaphysical mode of thought, justifiable and even necessary as it is in a number of domains whose extent varies according to the nature of the particular object of investigation, sooner or later reaches a limit, beyond which it becomes one-sided, restricted, abstract, lost in insoluble contradictions. In the contemplation of individual things it forgets the connection between them; in the contemplation of their existence, it forgets the beginning and end of that existence; of their repose, it forgets their motion. It cannot see the wood for the trees.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/introduction.htm

The whole point of using 'dialectical logic' was because it is allegedly superior to 'common sense' and 'formal logic', but if we now have to appeal to 'common sense' in order to bale out 'dialectical logic', then why bother with 'dialectical logic' to begin with?

Bold added.

But, this appeal to 'Maoist common sense' does not affect my argument, since even you will have to admit that Lenin's and Mao's theory has to apply to some opposites in conflict, and thus that they must therefore turn into one another (unless you want to reject everything these two had to say about change).

But, as I have shown, this cannot happen, not in the general case, and not even in the particular case. It cannot happen at all.

This theory will not work even once. No object/process can 'struggle' with its opposite and change into that with which it struggles, since the latter already exists. If it didn't, no "struggle" could ever take place.

If you apply your 'Maoist common sense' to every example of such "struggling" opposites, then there can't be a single case in the entire universe where Lenin and Mao's theory actually works.

So, no matter how you try to re-package this 'theory' it cannot work -- or, alternatively, if it were true, change could not happen.

Now, the only way to rescue your 'theory' is to deny that opposites ever change into each other -- that this never happens.

So, this 'theory' would no longer be absurd if this 'absolute' was turned into its own opposite: an 'absolutely never'!

But, as soon as you do that, you will have no reason to believe that capitalism, for example, will turn into socialism -- at which point the reason why you are a revolutionary will disappear.

Hence, in order to repair this theory you have to demolish your reason for being a socialist! A nice dialectical inversion, that!

But, why go down this route; why defend this useless ruling-class theory to the end, if it means the end of your socialist beliefs?

And we do not need it anyway, historical materialism (minus this Hegelian virus) provides us with enough reasons to be socialists.


You have misinterpreted the theory yourself

Well we still await the textual evidence that I have done this -- I have simply taken Lenin and Mao at their word, and accepted that when Lenin says this is an "absolute" he meant it. On the other hand, we already know you have; you want us to believe that when Lenin and Mao use the word "struggle" they 'really' mean "no struggle at all".


Your interpretation is in contradiction with communist practice.

Small wonder then that 'dialectical practice' has been so unsuccessful for so long -- just look at the mess in the former USSR, E Europe, China, N Korea, Cuba...

History has indeed refuted both your 'theory', and your practice.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



Well that just confirms my argument, since in that case these "opposing forces" must co-exist as opposites.

Hence, capitalism must turn into socialism, and socialism must turn into capitalism, if the dialectical prophets are to be believed.



As I noted in my last post:



Bold added.

But, this appeal to 'Maoist common sense' does not affect my argument, since even you will have to admit that Lenin's and Mao's theory has to apply to some opposites in conflict, and thus that they must therefore turn into one another (unless you want to reject everything these two had to say about change).

But, as I have shown, this cannot happen, not in the general case, and not even in the particular case. It cannot happen at all.

This theory will not work even once. No object/process can 'struggle' with its opposite and change into that with which it struggles, since the latter already exists. If it didn't, no "struggle" could ever take place.

If you apply your 'Maoist common sense' to every example of such "struggling" opposites, then there can't be a single case in the entire universe where Lenin and Mao's theory actually works.

So, no matter how you try to re-package this 'theory' it cannot work -- or, alternatively, if it were true, change could not happen.

Now, the only way to rescue your 'theory' is to deny that opposites ever change into each other -- that this never happens.

So, this 'theory' would no longer be absurd if this 'absolute' was turned into its own opposite: an 'absolutely never'!

But, as soon as you do that, you will have no reason to believe that capitalism, for example, will turn into socialism -- at which point the reason why you are a revolutionary will disappear.

Hence, in order to repair this theory you have to demolish your reason for being a socialist! A nice dialectical inversion, that!

But, why go down this route; why defend this useless ruling-class theory to the end, if it means the end of your socialist beliefs?

And we do not need it anyway, historical materialism (minus this Hegelian virus) provides us with enough reasons to be socialists.



Well we still await the textual evidence that I have done this -- I have simply taken Lenin and Mao at their word, and accepted that when Lenin says this is an "absolute" he meant it. On the other hand, we already know you have; you want us to believe that when Lenin and Mao use the word "struggle" they 'really' mean "no struggle at all".



Small wonder then that 'dialectical practice' has been so unsuccessful for so long -- just look at the mess in the former USSR, E Europe, China, N Korea, Cuba...

History has indeed refuted both your 'theory', and your practice.

You are confused with the fact that capitalism and socialism are not the only opposites of each other.

In a capitalist society, the two opposing forces are not mutually exclusive, rather they make the society to tend towards systems that are. Hence, the struggle between these forces can be considered to be equivalent to struggle between these systems.

Each time a system turns into its opposite, the opposing forces transform too. Hence, yes, socialism might transform into capitalism, but it might transform to communism too, which is also its opposite.

And about "interpreting" Lenin and Mao, atleast all the Maoists I know interpreted both of them the same way as I did. In fact you are the first person I have come across who interpreted MLM in such a bizarre way and then proceeded to "demolish" it.

As far as our revolutions in France, Russia, China etc. are concerned, you cannot really criticize them this way until you have made a successful revolution of your own.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


You are confused with the fact that capitalism and socialism are not the only opposites of each other.

We have already been through this, here it is again:


And sure, capitalism might have many opposites (feudalism is one).

So, let's call this opposite C*.

According to Lenin and Mao everything changes into its opposite, and it does so as a result of "struggle"

So, using "C" as shorthand for "Capitalism", C must "struggle" with C*, and in order to do that, they must co-exist.

In that case, C does not change into C* (it can't do that since C* already exists!).

What then does it change into?

Well, nothing at all, since, according to Lenin and Mao, it has to change into C*, which, as we have just seen, it can't do this, since C* already exists.

As I have also said several times: howsoever you try to re-package this useless theory, it implies that nothing can change.

The fact that you are still skim-reading my posts (or, alternatively, the possible fact that you are just playing for time, trying to distract from your plight) means we have to go over the same old ground, time and again.

Hence, in the interests of brevity, so that I not have to make the same point again, do try to concentrate (some hope!).

So, either drop this (repeated) objection, or point out were the above goes wrong.


In a capitalist society, the two opposing forces are not mutually exclusive, rather they make the society to tend towards systems that are. Hence, the struggle between these forces can be considered to be equivalent to struggle between these systems.

And we have been over this before, too!

Here is my reply the last time you tried this one out:


In that case, if they are "mutually exclusive" they cannot exist together. On the other hand, if they do exist together, then they can't be "mutually exclusive".

Moreover, if such "systems" "struggle", then they must "struggle" with their "opposite", and then change into that "opposite", if we are to believe the dialectical prophets. But, they can't do that, since that "opposite" already exists! If it doesn't already exist, they cannot "struggle" with one another.

You keep ignoring this.

And, you are still ignoring it -- indeed, if I were in the hole you are in, I'd do the same.


Each time a system turns into its opposite, the opposing forces transform too. Hence, yes, socialism might transform into capitalism, but it might transform to communism too, which is also its opposite.

Oh my non-existent deity! This is like the film Groundhog Day; I went over this in my original post!

So, let's walk you through it again, but this time adapted to your comments above:

Let us call the sort of system you refer to, "S", and the "opposite" you say it turns into "S*". Let us also call the "opposing force" you mention, "F", and the "opposite" you say it "transforms" into, "F*".

Now, in order for S to turn into S*, according to the dialectical holy books, it must "struggle" with the opposite that it turns into; that is, S must "struggle" with S*. But, S* does not yet exist, so S cannot "struggle" with it! On the other hand, if S* already exists, which it must do if S is to "struggle" with it, then S cannot change into S*, since S* already exists!

The same argument applies to F:

In order for F to turn into F*, according to the dialectical gospels, it must "struggle" with the opposite that it turns into; that is, F must "struggle" with F*. But, F* does not yet exist, so F cannot "struggle" with it! On the other hand, if F* already exists, which it must do if F is to "struggle" with it, then F cannot change into F*, since F* already exists!

As I have said several times: no matter how you try to repair this defective 'theory' of yours, it cannot work -- and if it were true, change could not happen.

That is, other than if you take the advice I gave in my last post:


Now, the only way to rescue your 'theory' is to deny that opposites ever change into each other -- that this never happens.

So, this 'theory' would no longer be absurd if this 'absolute' was turned into its own opposite: an 'absolutely never'!

But, as soon as you do that, you will have no reason to believe that capitalism, for example, will turn into socialism -- at which point the reason why you are a revolutionary will disappear.

Hence, in order to repair this theory you have to demolish your reason for being a socialist! A nice dialectical inversion, that!

But, why go down this route; why defend this useless ruling-class theory to the end, if it means the end of your socialist beliefs?

And we do not need it anyway, historical materialism (minus this Hegelian virus) provides us with enough reasons to be socialists.

You:


And about "interpreting" Lenin and Mao, at least all the Maoists I know interpreted both of them the same way as I did. In fact you are the first person I have come across who interpreted MLM in such a bizarre way and then proceeded to "demolish" it.

In that case, you will find it easy to locate and quote the passages in Lenin's and Mao's work which allow you to interpret "struggle" as "no struggle at all".

So, let's see those passages...

[Deafening silence descends on Red Cat yet again.]


As far as our revolutions in France, Russia, China etc. are concerned, you cannot really criticize them this way until you have made a successful revolution of your own.

This is like saying you can't criticise capitalism until you have made a successful capitalist system! You really are getting desperate!

But, history itself, not me, has refuted both your practice and your loopy theory.

I'm just twisting the knife...

[Lyev]

Was Lenin from a proletarian family?

With the seizure of power locally, a portion of the peasantry is converted into the proletariat. This happens with the advancement of the new-democratic revolution, prior to which the economy at the countryside is feudal. Much of what the peasantry expropriates is actually feudal property.

OK, acknowledged, in most cases peoples origins don't matter. However, I still have a question, how viable is Marxist revolution in a country that has an urban-working population of less than 2%?

[red cat]

OK, acknowledged, in most cases peoples origins don't matter. However, I still have a question, how viable is Marxist revolution in a country that has an urban-working population of less than 2%?
In that case, the peasantry will be huge, feudal relations will dominate and therefore the peoples' war will be highly protracted. In the beginning, only small number of workers are needed to constitute the communist party, since the party itself will be very small.

Now, the military characterization of the revolution will be seizure of power locally at the countryside. With this, new-democracy will be introduced in these places, and a rural proletariat will develop. This class, along with its urban counterpart, will now proceed to provide class-leadership over the revolution.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



We have already been through this, here it is again:



The fact that you are still skim-reading my posts (or, alternatively, the possible fact that you are just playing for time, trying to distract from your plight) means we have to go over the same old ground, time and again.

Hence, in the interests of brevity, so that I not have to make the same point again, do try to concentrate (some hope!).

So, either drop this (repeated) objection, or point out were the above goes wrong.



And we have been over this before, too!

Here is my reply the last time you tried this one out:



And, you are still ignoring it -- indeed, if I were in the hole you are in, I'd do the same.



Oh my non-existent deity! This is like the film Groundhog Day; I went over this in my original post!

So, let's walk you through it again, but this time adapted to your comments above:

Let us call the sort of system you refer to, "S", and the "opposite" you say it turns into "S*". Let us also call the "opposing force" you mention, "F", and the "opposite" you say it "transforms" into, "F*".

Now, in order for S to turn into S*, according to the dialectical holy books, it must "struggle" with the opposite that it turns into; that is, S must "struggle" with S*. But, S* does not yet exist, so S cannot "struggle" with it! On the other hand, if S* already exists, which it must do if S is to "struggle" with it, then S cannot change into S*, since S* already exists!

The same argument applies to F:

In order for F to turn into F*, according to the dialectical gospels, it must "struggle" with the opposite that it turns into; that is, F must "struggle" with F*. But, F* does not yet exist, so F cannot "struggle" with it! On the other hand, if F* already exists, which it must do if F is to "struggle" with it, then F cannot change into F*, since F* already exists!

As I have said several times: no matter how you try to repair this defective 'theory' of yours, it cannot work -- and if it were true, change could not happen.

That is, other than if you take the advice I gave in my last post:



You:



In that case, you will find it easy to locate and quote the passages in Lenin's and Mao's work which allow you to interpret "struggle" as "no struggle at all".

So, let's see those passages...

[Deafening silence descends on Red Cat yet again.]



This is like saying you can't criticise capitalism until you have made a successful capitalist system! You really are getting desperate!

But, history itself, not me, has refuted both your practice and your loopy theory.

I'm just twisting the knife...
You got it all wrong again. Let's take a look at your example:



Oh my non-existent deity! This is like the film Groundhog Day; I went over this in my original post!

So, let's walk you through it again, but this time adapted to your comments above:

Let us call the sort of system you refer to, "S", and the "opposite" you say it turns into "S*". Let us also call the "opposing force" you mention, "F", and the "opposite" you say it "transforms" into, "F*".For convenience, we try to compare these with a real world system.

Let,

S=capitalism
S*=socialism
F=bourgeoisie(in power) & other social-properties which tend to preserve capitalism.
F*=proletariat(not in power) & other social-properties which tend to bring about socialism.

Note that the outcome of the contradiction between F and F* can be considered to be equivalent to that between S and S*, that is, socialism can come if and only if the proletariat can seize power from the bourgeoisie.





Now, in order for S to turn into S*, according to the dialectical holy books, it must "struggle" with the opposite that it turns into; that is, S must "struggle" with S*. But, S* does not yet exist, so S cannot "struggle" with it! On the other hand, if S* already exists, which it must do if S is to "struggle" with it, then S cannot change into S*, since S* already exists!
As I told you why the struggle between F and F* can be considered as equivalent to struggle between S and S*.



The same argument applies to F:

In order for F to turn into F*, according to the dialectical gospels, it must "struggle" with the opposite that it turns into; that is, F must "struggle" with F*. But, F* does not yet exist, so F cannot "struggle" with it!F and F* co-exist. Systems each of them tend to are mutually exclusive.




On the other hand, if F* already exists, which it must do if F is to "struggle" with it, then F cannot change into F*, since F* already exists!

F does not change into F*!

When S transforms into S*, the two opposing forces are:

F**=bourgeoisie(not in power) & other modified social-properties which tend to take socialism back to capitalism.
F***=proletariat(in power) & other modified social-properties which tend to preserve and develop socialism.

Note that F** is an opposite of F, and F*** is an opposite of F*. When S transforms into S*, F and F* transform into F** and F*** respectively.


As I have said several times: no matter how you try to repair this defective 'theory' of yours, it cannot work -- and if it were true, change could not happen.
I appreciate your confidence.

[Lyev]

In that case, the peasantry will be huge, feudal relations will dominate and therefore the peoples' war will be highly protracted. In the beginning, only small number of workers are needed to constitute the communist party, since the party itself will be very small.

Now, the military characterization of the revolution will be seizure of power locally at the countryside. With this, new-democracy will be introduced in these places, and a rural proletariat will develop. This class, along with its urban counterpart, will now proceed to provide class-leadership over the revolution.

When I said 'a country that has an urban-working population of less than 2%' I was referring to China where, in 1949, I think roughly 1.8% of the population was comprised of the working-class. Please may you define for me a 'rural proletariat', by the way?

[red cat]

When I said 'a country that has an urban-working population of less than 2%' I was referring to China where, in 1949, I think roughly 1.8% of the population was comprised of the working-class. Please may you define for me a 'rural proletariat', by the way?Yes, I know that.

Rural proletariat is composed of that section of the proletariat which works in industries in rural areas. In capitalist nations the agricultural workers are present who dont own land, but this is unlikely in new-democracy, because land confiscated from the feudal lords is distributed among poor and landless peasants. So typically one or two members from some of these peasant families will start working in the newly emerging industries.

[bailey_187]

Moving on,

has anyone read "Was Mao Really a Monster" by Gregor Benton and Lin Chun (editors)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Really-Monster-Routledge-Contemporary-China/dp/0415493307/ref=wl_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I37ETOZQBCHXTB&colid=1HJQV9XV4BW1B

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


For convenience, we try to compare these with a real world system.
Let,

S=capitalism

S*=socialism

F=bourgeoisie (in power) & other social-properties which tend to preserve capitalism.

F*=proletariat (not in power) & other social-properties which tend to bring about socialism.

Note that the outcome of the contradiction between F and F* can be considered to be equivalent to that between S and S*, that is, socialism can come if and only if the proletariat can seize power from the bourgeoisie.

Indeed, I agree -- but, alas, your 'theory', if true, would make this impossible (see below).


As I told you why the struggle between F and F* can be considered as equivalent to struggle between S and S*.

I fail to see how this helps. If the dialectical prophets are to be believed, S and S* must co-exist, and turn into one another, as should F and F*. This means that capitalism must turn into socialism, and socialism into capitalism, once again.

Again, we have been here several times. I thought we agreed that you should try to concentrate harder. Or have you turned into the opposite of that: someone with the attention span of a nervous cat?


F and F* co-exist. Systems each of them tend to are mutually exclusive.

It really is a waste of time 'debating' with you -- you ignore stuff you can't answer, and simply raise the same points over and over, even when they have been answered several times already.

Here is my answer to the above, and this is the third time I have posted this:


In that case, if they are "mutually exclusive" they cannot exist together. On the other hand, if they do exist together, then they can't be "mutually exclusive".

Moreover, if such "systems" "struggle", then they must "struggle" with their "opposite", and then change into that "opposite", if we are to believe the dialectical prophets. But, they can't do that, since that "opposite" already exists! If it doesn't already exist, they cannot "struggle" with one another.

You keep ignoring this.

Now, either respond to this argument, pointing out where I go wrong, or stop confirming my allegation that you just do not read stuff you do not like and cannot answer.


F does not change into F*!

When S transforms into S*, the two opposing forces are:

F**=bourgeoisie(not in power) & other modified social-properties which tend to take socialism back to capitalism.

F***=proletariat(in power) & other modified social-properties which tend to preserve and develop socialism.

Note that F** is an opposite of F, and F*** is an opposite of F*. When S transforms into S*, F and F* transform into F** and F*** respectively.

In that case, both Lenin and Mao are wrong when they said that everything turns into its opposite!

But, let us assume your revisionist 'theory' is correct.

In that case,


F=bourgeoisie (in power) & other social-properties which tend to preserve capitalism.

F**= bourgeoisie (not in power) & other modified social-properties which tend to take socialism back to capitalism.

These are your abbreviations recall, and you now say:


Note that F** is an opposite of F

If this is so, and if we are to believe the dialectical magi, who tell is that everything "struggles" with its "opposite" and turns into that "opposite", then F must struggle" with F** -- that is the "bourgeoisie (in power) & other social-properties which tend to preserve capitalism" must "struggle with "bourgeoisie (not in power) & other modified social-properties which tend to take socialism back to capitalism".

Your brilliant 'theory' has the "the bourgeoisie etc." "struggling" with its future (transformed) self!

But it can't do that, since that future (transformed) self does not yet exist! But, if it doesn't "struggle" with its future (transformed) self, then it cannot change!

Worse still, on your brilliant 'theory' the "bourgeoisie etc." does not "struggle" with the proletariat!

As I said earlier (and it's worth repeating, since your tender eyes prefer to skip past stuff you can't handle -- as if that comment will make much of a difference!):


Now, the only way to rescue your 'theory' is to deny that opposites ever change into each other -- that this never happens.

So, this 'theory' would no longer be absurd if this 'absolute' was turned into its own opposite: an 'absolutely never'!

But, as soon as you do that, you will have no reason to believe that capitalism, for example, will turn into socialism -- at which point the reason why you are a revolutionary will disappear.

Hence, in order to repair this theory you have to demolish your reason for being a socialist! A nice dialectical inversion, that!

But, why go down this route; why defend this useless ruling-class theory to the end, if it means the end of your socialist beliefs?

And we do not need it anyway, historical materialism (minus this Hegelian virus) provides us with enough reasons to be socialists.

And, we are still waiting for the passage, or passages from Mao and/or Lenin that allow you to interpret "struggle" to mean "no struggle at all".

[red cat]

Red Cat:



Indeed, I agree -- but, alas, your 'theory', if true, would make this impossible (see below).



I fail to see how this helps. If the dialectical prophets are to be believed, S and S* must co-exist, and turn into one another, as should F and F*. This means that capitalism must turn into socialism, and socialism into capitalism, once again.

Again, we have been here several times. I thought we agreed that you should try to concentrate harder. Or have you turned into the opposite of that: someone with the attention span of a nervous cat?



It really is a waste of time 'debating' with you -- you ignore stuff you can't answer, and simply raise the same points over and over, even when they have been answered several times already.

Here is my answer to the above, and this is the third time I have posted this:



Now, either respond to this argument, pointing out where I go wrong, or stop confirming my allegation that you just do not read stuff you do not like and cannot answer.



In that case, both Lenin and Mao are wrong when they said that everything turns into its opposite!

But, let us assume your revisionist 'theory' is correct.

In that case,



These are your abbreviations recall, and you now say:



If this is so, and if we are to believe the dialectical magi, who tell is that everything "struggles" with its "opposite" and turns into that "opposite", then F must struggle" with F** -- that is the "bourgeoisie (in power) & other social-properties which tend to preserve capitalism" must "struggle with "bourgeoisie (not in power) & other modified social-properties which tend to take socialism back to capitalism".

Your brilliant 'theory' has the "the bourgeoisie etc." "struggling" with its future (transformed) self!

But it can't do that, since that future (transformed) self does not yet exist! But, if it doesn't "struggle" with its future (transformed) self, then it cannot change!

Worse still, on your brilliant 'theory' the "bourgeoisie etc." does not "struggle" with the proletariat!

As I said earlier (and it's worth repeating, since your tender eyes prefer to skip past stuff you can't handle -- as if that comment will make much of a difference!):



And, we are still waiting for the passage, or passages from Mao and/or Lenin that allow you to interpret "struggle" to mean "no struggle at all".Why are you distorting the fact that everything turns to one of its opposites?
You are fixing capitalism and socialism as each other's opposites and then concluding that socialism must turn into capitalism. This is wrong.

Also, I have shown how systems which are mutually exclusive can struggl with each other( since their struggle is equivalent to that between two co-existing opposite forces). You seem to ignore this.

[red cat]

I am summarizing the points around which you seem to revolve to protect your invalid "demolition" of dialectics. When I negate one, you bring up another that has already been negated in order to continue the debate that should have ended long ago.

1) All processes change into there opposites. However, a process can have more than one opposite. Therefore, two given processes are opposites does not necessarily mean that one will transform into the other.

2) Two mutually exclusive events cannot struggle directly. Their struggle is equivalent to that between two opposing forces(not mutually exclusive) which make the present system tend to these systems.

3) Any ambiguity in a theory can be resolved by looking at practical examples to which the theory is implemented. For a general example concerning dialectics, it is clear that "struggle" means the contradiction between two opposing forces. Anyone claiming anything else should quote relevant passages from the works by the theorists.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Why are you distorting the fact that everything turns to one of its opposites?
You are fixing capitalism and socialism as each other's opposites and then concluding that socialism must turn into capitalism. This is wrong.

Because that is what Lenin and Mao said!

Lenin:


"Dialectics is the teaching which shows how Opposites can be and how they happen to be (how they become) identical, -- under what conditions they are identical, becoming transformed into one another, -- why the human mind should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed into one another."

Mao:


"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute."


"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

[Emphases added; references given in an earlier post.]

It's you who refuses to accept that this is what the Dialectical Gospels tell us.


Also, I have shown how systems which are mutually exclusive can struggle with each other (since their struggle is equivalent to that between two co-existing opposite forces). You seem to ignore this.

Then as I have pointed out, they cannot be "mutually exclusive" -- unless you mean by "mutually exclusive", "not mutually exclusive", a bit like you tried to con us into accepting that "struggle" meant "no struggle at all."


I am summarizing the points around which you seem to revolve to protect your invalid "demolition" of dialectics. When I negate one, you bring up another that has already been negated in order to continue the debate that should have ended long ago.

1) All processes change into there opposites. However, a process can have more than one opposite. Therefore, two given processes are opposites does not necessarily mean that one will transform into the other.

And yet you can't find anywhere in Lenin or Mao's writing to support this 'revisionist' reading. Indeed, what they actually say contradicts this 'revisionist reading'. [On that, see above, and the many quotations I have added from these two in earlier posts. (I don't know why I said that. You plainly do not read what Lenin and Mao say!)]

Here they are again:


"Dialectics is the teaching which shows how Opposites can be and how they happen to be (how they become) identical, -- under what conditions they are identical, becoming transformed into one another, -- why the human mind should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed into one another."


"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute."


"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

Notice that? They "transform in one another", and they both tell us this is an "absolute"

No mention here of any other "opposite". This wouldn't help you anyway, as I have also shown in previous posts.


2) Two mutually exclusive events cannot struggle directly. Their struggle is equivalent to that between two opposing forces (not mutually exclusive) which make the present system tend to these systems.

Well, these 'non-mutually exclusive' forces cannot be 'contradictions', and so cannot bring about change. Yet another dead-end for your 'revisionist theory'!

And, can you quote anywhere in Lenin and/or Mao where they say such things? [Again, why am I asking you for this? I must be crazy!]

But, we already know the answer to that one -- you'd have done so by now if you could find anywhere.

On the other hand, they say the sorts of things I allege of them -- making dialectics, as these two see this 'theory', unworkable.

No wonder then that history has refuted it.


3) Any ambiguity in a theory can be resolved by looking at practical examples to which the theory is implemented. For a general example concerning dialectics, it is clear that "struggle" means the contradiction between two opposing forces. Anyone claiming anything else should quote relevant passages from the works by the theorists.

I agree that this is what the dialectical holy men mean by "struggle", but in that case, these two opposites "struggle" with one another, and then turn into one another, as Lenin and Mao allege. But they can't do that since each "opposite" already exists!

Moreover, this theory would have socialism changing into capitalism, and capitalism changing into socialism. It would also have had feudalism changing into capitalism, and capitalism changing into feudalism!

You still doubt me?

Here is Mao:


"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute."


"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....


Notice that? They change "into one another".

Lenin agrees:


"Dialectics is the teaching which shows how Opposites can be and how they happen to be (how they become) identical, -- under what conditions they are identical, becoming transformed into one another, -- why the human mind should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed into one another."

You will also perhaps note that Lenin and Mao continually refer to an object/process turning onto "its" (singular) opposite.

So, they do not think that an object/process has more than one opposite.

If they did, they'd say "one of their opposites".

[red cat]

Red Cat:



Because that is what Lenin and Mao said!

Lenin:



Mao:





[Emphases added; references given in an earlier post.]

It's you who refuses to accept that this is what the Dialectical Gospels tell us.



Then as I have pointed out, they cannot be "mutually exclusive" -- unless you mean by "mutually exclusive", "not mutually exclusive", a bit like you tried to con us into accepting that "struggle" meant "no struggle at all."



And yet you can't find anywhere in Lenin or Mao's writing to support this 'revisionist' reading. Indeed, what they actually say contradicts this 'revisionist reading'. [On that, see above, and the many quotations I have added from these two in earlier posts. (I don't know why I said that. You plainly do not read what Lenin and Mao say!)]

Here they are again:







Notice that? They "transform in one another", and they both tell us this is an "absolute"

No mention here of any other "opposite". This wouldn't help you anyway, as I have also shown in previous posts.



Well, these 'non-mutually exclusive' forces cannot be 'contradictions', and so cannot bring about change. Yet another dead-end for your 'revisionist theory'!

And, can you quote anywhere in Lenin and/or Mao where they say such things? [Again, why am I asking you for this? I must be crazy!]

But, we already know the answer to that one -- you'd have done so by now if you could find anywhere.

On the other hand, they say the sorts of things I allege of them -- making dialectics, as these two see this 'theory', unworkable.

No wonder then that history has refuted it.


3) Any ambiguity in a theory can be resolved by looking at practical examples to which the theory is implemented. For a general example concerning dialectics, it is clear that "struggle" means the contradiction between two opposing forces. Anyone claiming anything else should quote relevant passages from the works by the theorists.

I agree that this is what the dialectical holy men mean by "struggle", but in that case, these two opposites "struggle" with one another, and then turn into one another, as Lenin and Mao allege. But they can't do that since each "opposite" already exists!

Moreover, this theory would have socialism changing into capitalism, and capitalism changing into socialism. It would also have had feudalism changing into capitalism, and capitalism changing into feudalism!

You still doubt me?

Here is Mao:






Notice that? They change "into one another".

Lenin agrees:



You will also perhaps note that Lenin and Mao continually refer to an object/process turning onto "its" (singular) opposite.

So, they do not think that an object/process has more than one opposite.

If they did, they'd say "one of their opposites".The third point sort of answers all this.

If you ignore all practical examples and interpret MLM as something contrary, then it is your responsibility to find unambiguous passages to support your claim.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat (still ignoring stuff he/she does not like and cannot answer)


The third point sort of answers all this.

No it doesn't.

Here it is again:


3) Any ambiguity in a theory can be resolved by looking at practical examples to which the theory is implemented. For a general example concerning dialectics, it is clear that "struggle" means the contradiction between two opposing forces. Anyone claiming anything else should quote relevant passages from the works by the theorists.

As I pointed out in my reply to you, which you have simply ignored (once again):


I agree that this is what the dialectical holy men mean by "struggle", but in that case, these two opposites "struggle" with one another, and then turn into one another, as Lenin and Mao allege. But they can't do that since each "opposite" already exists!

Moreover, this theory would have socialism changing into capitalism, and capitalism changing into socialism. It would also have had feudalism changing into capitalism, and capitalism changing into feudalism!

You still doubt me?

Here is Mao:


"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute."


"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

Notice that? They change "into one another".

Lenin agrees:


"Dialectics is the teaching which shows how Opposites can be and how they happen to be (how they become) identical, -- under what conditions they are identical, becoming transformed into one another, -- why the human mind should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed into one another."

You will also perhaps note that Lenin and Mao continually refer to an object/process turning onto "its" (singular) opposite.

So, they do not think that an object/process has more than one opposite.

If they did, they'd say "one of their opposites".

I'm sure you'll ignore this some more.

And there is no 'ambiguity' in Lenin's or Mao's comments, since they call this principle an "absolute".


If you ignore all practical examples and interpret MLM as something contrary, then it is your responsibility to find unambiguous passages to support your claim.

1) Where is the "ambiguity"? Mao and Lenin (and many other dialecticians) repeatedly say the same things, and never so much as once hint at any "ambiguities". In fact they are quite clear to the contrary:


"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute."

I have enlarged things since you are clearly very short-sighted.

This is Mao; notice he says this is an "absolute".

Here is Lenin:


"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….

"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute…."

2) You have been alleging these sorts of things now for several days, and yet you have failed to produce a single quotation that supports your 'interpretation', and yet you have the cheek to demand that I produce quotations, when I have done little else.

Everything I have alleged has been backed up by numerous quotations from Lenin and Mao -- I could have produced similar ones from Engels, Stalin and Plekhanov, among others.

So, you produce a single quotation that supports your view -- but we all know you can't or you would have done so by now.

3) You are plainly trying to deflect attention from the fact that what Lenin and Mao say is unworkable, in practice and in theory.

[red cat]

Red Cat (still ignoring stuff he/she does not like and cannot answer)



No it doesn't.

Here it is again:



As I pointed out in my reply to you, which you have simply ignored (once again):



I'm sure you'll ignore this some more.

And there is no 'ambiguity' in Lenin's or Mao's comments, since they call this principle an "absolute".



1) Where is the "ambiguity"? Mao and Lenin (and many other dialecticians) repeatedly say the same things, and never so much as once hint at any "ambiguities". In fact they are quite clear to the contrary:



I have enlarged things since you are clearly very short-sighted.

This is Mao; notice he says this is an "absolute".

Here is Lenin:



2) You have been alleging these sorts of things now for several days, and yet you have failed to produce a single quotation that supports your 'interpretation', and yet you have the cheek to demand that I produce quotations, when I have done little else.

Everything I have alleged has been backed up by numerous quotations from Lenin and Mao -- I could have produced similar ones from Engels, Stalin and Plekhanov, among others.

So, you produce a single quotation that supports your view -- but we all know you can't or you would have done so by now.

3) You are plainly trying to deflect attention from the fact that what Lenin and Mao say is unworkable, in practice and in theory.
Does "one another" necessarily mean "each into every other"? I think it doesn't. And of course, the mutability manifested in a transformation is absolute. So what?

Also, the mentioning of a single opposite at places is probably because the Marxist practice of restricting the systems under consideration to what is possible largely due to the outcome of the primary contradiction. Hence, while observing a capitalist society, we only consider the two opposite mutually exclusive systems to be capitalism and socialism, because it is highly unlikely(and in fact, impossible without external intervention) that capitalism will turn into feudalism through struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat.

Your example of socialism changing to capitalism and vice versa is linked to Hegelian dialectics, from which he concluded that history repeats itself. Marx negated this.

Really, to establish your claim, you need to quote a passage by Lenin or Mao where they refer to some absurd examples(like yours, when you talk of the sun changing from hot to cold and vice versa, capitalism and socialism transforming into each other an indefinite or large number of times) to support their theory which you claim is wrong.

And will you please explain what sort of revolutionary activities can be based on your theory (since MLM is, according to you, impractical), how they differ from the MLM line, and what steps you have taken so that revolutionaries actually follow this? Seriously, I am interested in obtaining this knowledge.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Does "one another" necessarily mean "each into every other"? I think it doesn't.

And I agree, but my argument nowhere says otherwise. And yet, this is what makes this theory unworkable, and for the reasons I have given, many times.


And of course, the mutability manifested in a transformation is absolute. So what?

So this: there is no room in what Lenin and Mao said for your alleged "ambiguities".


Also, the mentioning of a single opposite at places is probably because the Marxist practice of restricting the systems under consideration to what is possible largely due to the outcome of the primary contradiction.

But, Mao's invention of "primary contradictions" is no help at all -- as my original argument showed.


Hence, while observing a capitalist society, we only consider the two opposite mutually exclusive systems to be capitalism and socialism, because it is highly unlikely (and in fact, impossible without external intervention) that capitalism will turn into feudalism through struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat.

And yet this contradicts Lenin, when he tells us:


"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites…. [This] alone furnishes the key to the self-movement of everything existing….

"In the first conception of motion, self-movement, its driving force, its source, its motive, remains in the shade (or this source is made external -- God, subject, etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to knowledge of the source of 'self-movement'.

"The unity…of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute…." [Lenin (1961), pp.221-22, 357-58.]


"Dialectical logic demands that we go further…. requires that an object should be taken in development, in 'self-movement' (as Hegel sometimes puts it)…." [Lenin (1921) 'Once Again On The Trade Unions, The Current Situation And The Mistakes Of Comrades Trotsky And Bukharin', p.90.]

Notice, all objects and process "self move" and "self-develop" -- they do not need "external factors". Indeed, Lenin contrasted this 'internalist' account with crude materialist theory, which appeals to external forces, and thus finally to 'god':


"The identity of opposites…is the recognition…of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature…. The condition for the knowledge of all processes of the world in their 'self-movement', in their spontaneous development, in their real life, is the knowledge of them as a unity of opposites. Development is the 'struggle' of opposites. The two basic (or two possible? or two historically observable?) conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase, as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites (the division of a unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation).

"In the first conception of motion, self-movement, its driving force, its source, its motive, remains in the shade (or this source is made external -- God, subject, etc.). In the second conception the chief attention is directed precisely to knowledge of the source of 'self-movement'.

"The first conception is lifeless, pale and dry. The second is living. The second alone furnishes the key to the 'self-movement' of everything existing; it alone furnishes the key to the 'leaps,' to the 'break in continuity,' to the 'transformation into the opposite,' to the destruction of the old and the emergence of the new.

"The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute." [Lenin (1961), pp.357-58.]

So, these 'external contradictions' of yours are decidedly un-Leninist.


Your example of socialism changing to capitalism and vice versa is linked to Hegelian dialectics, from which he concluded that history repeats itself. Marx negated this.

And Lenin and Mao un-'negated' this when they told us that everything turns into the opposite with which it struggles, and that opposites "turn into one another".

So, on this un-Marxist view, proposed by Lenin and Mao, capitalism must turn into socialism, and socialism must turn into capitalism. This is just part of the reason why I say that historical materialism will only work if this Hegelian gobbledygook (which Mao and Lenin swallowed) is removed.


Really, to establish your claim, you need to quote a passage by Lenin or Mao where they refer to some absurd examples (like yours, when you talk of the sun changing from hot to cold and vice versa, capitalism and socialism transforming into each other an indefinite or large number of times) to support their theory which you claim is wrong.

No I do not, since both Lenin and Mao tell us that this 'theory' applies to everything and every process in the entire universe. Plainly, this covers the examples I gave, since they take place in the universe.

And, once more, it's a bit rich of you demanding of me that I find quotes from Lenin and Mao, when you have signally failed to support any of your 'revisions' with a single passage from Lenin or Mao, [I]even though you have repeatedly been asked to do this, and have had ample opportunity to do so, too.

In contrast, I have supported everything I have said with quotations from these two.


And will you please explain what sort of revolutionary activities can be based on your theory (since MLM is, according to you, impractical), how they differ from the MLM line, and what steps you have taken so that revolutionaries actually follow this? Seriously, I am interested in obtaining this knowledge.

The sort that Marx advocated, before his theory was ruined by all this Hegelian rubbish.

In other words, Socialism from below, unlike you Maoists:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1966/twosouls/index.htm

[red cat]

Red Cat:



And I agree, but my argument nowhere says otherwise. And yet, this is what makes this theory unworkable, and for the reasons I have given, many times.



So this: there is no room in what Lenin and Mao said for your alleged "ambiguities".



But, Mao's invention of "primary contradictions" is no help at all -- as my original argument showed.



And yet this contradicts Lenin, when he tells us:





Notice, all objects and process "self move" and "self-develop" -- they do not need "external factors". Indeed, Lenin contrasted this 'internalist' account with crude materialist theory, which appeals to external forces, and thus finally to 'god':



So, these 'external contradictions' of yours are decidedly un-Leninist.



And Lenin and Mao un-'negated' this when they told us that everything turns into the opposite with which it struggles, and that opposites "turn into one another".

So, on this un-Marxist view, proposed by Lenin and Mao, capitalism must turn into socialism, and socialism must turn into capitalism. This is just part of the reason why I say that historical materialism will only work if this Hegelian gobbledygook (which Mao and Lenin swallowed) is removed.



No I do not, since both Lenin and Mao tell us that this 'theory' applies to everything and every process in the entire universe. Plainly, this covers the examples I gave, since they take place in the universe.

And, once more, it's a bit rich of you demanding of me that I find quotes from Lenin and Mao, when you have signally failed to support any of your 'revisions' with a single passage from Lenin or Mao, even though you have repeatedly been asked to do this, and have had ample opportunity to do so, too.

In contrast, I have supported everything I have said with quotations from these two.



The sort that Marx advocated, before his theory was ruined by all this Hegelian rubbish.

In other words, Socialism from below, unlike you Maoists:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1966/twosouls/index.htmI want an example where they say that socialism will inevitably change back to capitalism. And the followers of your theory are yet to conduct a single revolution and prove its validity.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


I want an example where they say that socialism will inevitably change back to capitalism. And the followers of your theory are yet to conduct a single revolution and prove its validity.

Don't need one; both Lenin and Mao said of every opposite in the entire universe that they change into one another, and that must include socialism changing into capitalism, and vice versa.

And you have had this pointed out to you many times, so you are just playing for time, hoping I'll go away, or grow tired of having to say the same thing, over and over.

Well, I won't.

And, once again, it's a bit rich of you demanding things of me, since I have supported everything I have said with quotations from Lenin and Mao; all you have done is ignore every single request I have made that you do the same with respect to what you say.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



Don't need one; both Lenin and Mao said of every opposite in the entire universe that they change into one another, and that must include socialism changing into capitalism, and vice versa.

And you have had this pointed out to you many times, so you are just playing for time, hoping I'll go away, or grow tired of having to say the same thing, over and over.

Well, I won't.

And, once again, it's a bit rich of you demanding things of me, since I have supported everything I have said with quotations from Lenin and Mao; all you have done is ignore every single request I have made that you do the same with respect to what you say.
Your interpretation of MLM seems to be absolutely alien to what of ours. So, in order to convince us that MLM means what you claim for systems as complex as qualitative social transitions, you need to quote a passage where Lenin or Mao unambiguously consider this example. I think that my demand is quite justified.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Your interpretation of MLM seems to be absolutely alien to what of ours. So, in order to convince us that MLM means what you claim for systems as complex as qualitative social transitions, you need to quote a passage where Lenin or Mao unambiguously consider this example. I think that my demand is quite justified.

I am interpeting Mao and Lenin; it's your problem if you and your fellow MLM-ers disagree with these two, not mine.

And, since you have been told over and over again that Lenin and Mao tell us that their theory covers everything in the entire universe, I can only conclude that you have given up thinking, and are merely defending a dogma unthinkingly.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



I am interpeting Mao and Lenin; it's your problem if you and your fellow MLM-ers disagree with these two, not mine.

And, since you have been told over and over again that Lenin and Mao tell us that their theory covers everything in the entire universe, I can only conclude that you have given up thinking, and are merely defending a dogma unthinkingly.You have come up with an interpretation of MLM that you fail to defend by quoting Lenin or Mao referring exactly to the systems that happen to be so important. So it is not really our problem that we disagree with you. Your claim is simply not true.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


You have come up with an interpretation of MLM that you fail to defend by quoting Lenin or Mao referring exactly to the systems that happen to be so important. So it is not really our problem that we disagree with you. Your claim is simply not true.

In fact, you disgree with Lenin and Mao -- so pick a fight with them, not me.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



In fact, you disgree with Lenin and Mao -- so pick a fight with them, not me.
First you convince me that I disagree with them. So far it seems that it is your interpretation that is wrong.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


First you convince me that I disagree with them. So far it seems that it is your interpretation that is wrong.

You have yet to show it is wrong; I have quoted passage after passage that support my interpretation. You have yet to quote a single one that supports yours -- as you have been told many times.

[Rawthentic]

ah revleft....

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

ah, confused Maoist...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Socialist:


Ah... troll who has to troll every Mao-thread

I see you can't answer my criticisms of Mao's 'theory' either.

No surprise there then...

[red cat]

Socialist:



I see you can't answer my criticisms of Mao's 'theory' either.

No surprise there then...Your criticisms are based on forceful incorrect interpretation of MLM.



"Why is it that '...the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another'? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite....

"In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another....

"All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute."


For example, you use the above quotes to "prove" that according to Lenin and Mao's dialectics, proletariat must always transform to bourgeoisie and vice-versa. Same with socialism and capitalism.

Your other claims are also based on similar "proofs". You really can't expect many people to swallow your flawed theory.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Your criticisms are based on forceful incorrect interpretation of MLM.

And you have said this several times, but when asked to substantiate this repetitive accusation, you go strangely quiet.

Odd that...


For example, you use the above quotes to "prove" that according to Lenin and Mao's dialectics, proletariat must always transform to bourgeoisie and vice-versa. Same with socialism and capitalism.

It is indeed the implication of what they said: that everything in the entire universe 'struggles' with its opposite, and then turns into that opposite, and that opposites turn into one another.

You have seen the quotations, many times.

Er..., sorry, I do not know why I said that...

You have ignored the quotations, many times.


Your other claims are also based on similar "proofs". You really can't expect many people to swallow your flawed theory

It's not my 'theory', but Lenin and Mao's. So, once more, pick a fight with them not me.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Socialist:


Seeing that you're so needy and desperate for the answer that you troll every Mao thread here, Maoists must be doing something right then.

So, I was right, you have no answer -- other than abuse.

That is also an answer...

[red cat]

Red Cat:



And you have said this several times, but when asked to substantiate this repetitive accusation, you go strangely quiet.

Odd that...



It is indeed the implication of what they said: that everything in the entire universe 'struggles' with its opposite, and then turns into that opposite, and that opposites turn into one another.

You have seen the quotations, many times.

Er..., sorry, I do not know why I said that...

You have ignored the quotations, many times.



It's not my 'theory', but Lenin and Mao's. So, once more, pick a fight with them not me.But not its only opposite. Feudalism, capitalism, socialism and communism are all opposites. So, socialism may not necessarily turn to capitalism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


But not its only opposite. Feudalism, capitalism, socialism and communism are all opposites. So, socialism may not necessarily turn to capitalism.

But that does not affect the point that if Lenin and Mao are to be believed, and everything turns into its opposite, then socialism must turn into capitalism -- as indeed, it has done in China, the former USSR and E Europe.

So, perhaps they were right...

But, let us suppose that you are right, and the opposite of socialism is communism, then socialism must turn into communism and communism must turn into socialism.

You are no further forward.

Moreover, for the one to turn into the other, they must both co-exist, if Mao is to be believed. In that case, communism must co-exist with socialism. If so, socialism can't turn into communism, since it's already there!

If communism weren't already there, these two could not "struggle" -- which they must do, so we are told -- and so could not change.

So, if this 'theory' were true, nothing would change.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



But that does not affect the point that if Lenin and Mao are to be believed, and everything turns into its opposite, then socialism must turn into capitalism -- as indeed, it has done in China, the former USSR and E Europe.

So, perhaps they were right...

But, let us suppose that you are right, and the opposite of socialism is communism, then socialism must turn into communism and communism must turn into socialism.

You are no further forward.

Moreover, for the one to turn into the other, they must both co-exist, if Mao is to be believed. In that case, communism must co-exist with socialism. If so, socialism can't turn into communism, since it's already there!

If communism weren't already there, these two could not "struggle" -- which they must do, so we are told -- and so could not change.

So, if this 'theory' were true, nothning would change.What I meant to say is that Mao and Lenin have nowhere stated that a process turns into its only opposite.

And it seems that you don't realize that there will be something else after communism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


What I meant to say is that Mao and Lenin have nowhere stated that a process turns into its only opposite.

Look, we have been over this many times.

Each time I have emphasised more and more that I agree with you!

I that clear enough?

Silly me, of course it isn't.

We both know you'll raise this again in order to deflect attention from the fact that you have run out of things to say, hence the need to repeat yourself.

The point is that these opposites must co-exist if they are to "struggle" with one another, and so cannot turn into each other -- since they both exist!


And it seems that you don't realize that there will be something else after communism.

This does not affect the argument. Let us call the "something else" "X" and communism "C".

If C is to change into X they must co-exist, if Mao is to be believed. In that case, C cannot change into X since it already exits!

If X didn't exist, it could not "struggle" with C.

Either way, change would be impossible.

[red cat]

Red Cat:


What I meant to say is that Mao and Lenin have nowhere stated that a process turns into its only opposite.

Look, we have been over this many times.

Each time I have emphasised more and more that I agree with you!

I that clear enough?

Good. Then we agree on the point that (according to Lenin and Mao)socialism need not always reverse back to capitalism. So, please don't use this example in future.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Good. Then we agree on the point that (according to Lenin and Mao) socialism need not always reverse back to capitalism. So, please don't use this example in future.

But Lenin and Mao were quite specific: they told us that two "struggling" opposites must turn into each other. So, capitalism must turn into socialism, and socialism must turn into capitalism.

And, as I noted, this does not affect the point that if capitalism is to turn into socialism, the two must co-exist, and so capitalism can't turn in socialism since it already exists!

[red cat]

Red Cat:



But Lenin and Mao were quite specific: they told us that two "struggling" opposites must turn into each other. So, capitalism must turn into socialism, and socialism must turn into capitalism.

I thought you agreed with me on what Lenin and Mao said. At least it seemed so from your previous post. Did they use the word "two" anywhere?

And, as I noted, this does not affect the point that if capitalism is to turn into socialism, the two must co-exist, and so capitalism can't turn in socialism since it already exists!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


I thought you agreed with me on what Lenin and Mao said. At least it seemed so from your previous post. Did they use the word "two" anywhere?

What do you think "each other" implies then?

[red cat]

Red Cat:



What do you think "each other" implies then?When there is a set of more than two opposites, it could mean that each element transforms to some other opposite.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


When there is a set of more than two opposites, it could mean that each element transforms to some other opposite.

You are getting desperate.

Check out what Mao said:


The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without 'above', there would be no 'below').... Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

I've added colours to highlight the pairing Mao refers us to, and to assist you since you seem incapable of reading even Mao correctly.

Notice, these opposites come in pairs.

In the very next paragraph Mao goes on to say:


"But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

He then concludes a few paragraphs later:


"All contradictory things are interconnected; not only do they coexist in a single entity in given conditions, but in other given conditions, they also transform themselves into each other. This is the full meaning of the identity of opposites. This is what Lenin meant when he discussed 'how they happen to be (how they become) identical -- under what conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another'." [Mao (1961), pp.337-40. Bold emphases added.]

Not much wiggle room here. Opposites come in pairs and they change into "one another", into "each other".

This was in fact an extension of Hegel's theory of change, as Lenin pointed out:


"'This harmony is precisely absolute Becoming change, -- not becoming other, now this and then another. The essential thing is that each different thing, each particular, is different from another, not abstractly so from any other, but from its other. Each particular only is, insofar as its other is implicitly contained in its Notion...' Quite right and important: the 'other' as its other, development into its opposite."

In order to counter Hume's criticism of rationalist theories of causation, Hegel postulated that each concept was logically paired with its unique opposite -- as he put it, with its "other" (as Lenin notes). Because these were logically linked, they could not fail to turn in to one another, and not into something else.

Now, if you get rid of this "other", then Lenin and Mao's theory of change falls apart since there would then be no reason why, say, life and death are connected, or why the proletariat was linked to the bourgeoisie, and why the first turns into the second, etc.

Lenin and Mao appropriated Hegel's theory for this reason, and tried to strip it of its Idealism, in order to explain why the class war should lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat and not something else. They at least made some attempt to explain change, and develop a theory to explain why A always leads to B and not to C.

So, it's all the same to me if you revise this theory away, since, in that case you will have no theory of change.

On the other hand, if you do not revise it away, your theory simply does not work, and for the reasons I have laid out above.

Either way, your theory is fatally wounded.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



You are getting desperate.

Check out what Mao said:



I've added colours to highlight the pairing Mao refers us to, and to assist you since you seem incapable of reading even Mao correctly.

Notice, these opposites come in pairs.

In the very next paragraph Mao goes on to say:



He then concludes a few paragraphs later:



Not much wiggle room here. opposites come in pairs and they change into "one another", into "each other".

This was in fact an extension of Hegel's theory of change, as Lenin pointed out:



In order to counter Hume's criticism of rationalist theories of causation, Hegel postulated that each concept was logically paired with its unique opposite -- as he put it, with its "other" (as Lenin notes). Because these were logically linked, they could not fail to turn in to one another, and not into something else.

Now, if you get rid of this "other", then Lenin and Mao's theory of change falls apart since there would then be no reason why, say, life and death are connected, or why the proletariat was linked to the bourgeoisie, and why the first turns into the second, etc.

Lenin and Mao appropriated Hegel's theory for this reason, and tried to strip it of its Idealism, in order to explain why the class war should lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat and not something else. They at least made some attempt to explain change, and develop a theory to explain why A always leads to B and not to C.

So, it's all the same to me if you revise this theory away, since, in that case you will have no theory of change.

On the other hand, if you do not revise it away, your theory simply does not work, and for the reasons I have laid out above.

Either way, your theory is fatally wounded.
When the opposites come in pairs, in the quotes you provided, Mao is always considering the principle contradiction. This means that in any given situation, he is considering the only feasible changes. Of course, in that case, capitalism can transform into only one of its opposites, namely, socialism.

[red cat]

Here is an example Mao Dze Dong provides. Whenever works in MLM sound ambiguous at places, we look at these examples to resolve the ambiguities.


In capitalist society, capitalism has changed its position from being a subordinate force in the old feudal era to being the dominant force, and the nature of society has accordingly changed from feudal to capitalist. In the new, capitalist era, the feudal forces changed from their former dominant position to a subordinate one, gradually dying out. Such was the case, for example, in Britain and France. With the development of the productive forces, the bourgeoisie changes from being a new class playing a progressive role to being an old class playing a reactionary role, until it is finally overthrown by the proletariat and becomes a class deprived of privately owned means of production and stripped of power, when it, too, gradually dies out. The proletariat, which is much more numerous than the bourgeoisie and grows simultaneously with it but under its rule, is a new force which, initially subordinate to the bourgeoisie, gradually gains strength, becomes an independent class playing the leading role in history, and finally seizes political power and becomes the ruling class. Thereupon the nature of society changes and the old capitalist society becomes the new socialist society. This is the path already taken by the Soviet Union, a path that all other countries will inevitably take.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


When the opposites come in pairs, in the quotes you provided, Mao is always considering the principle contradiction. This means that in any given situation, he is considering the only feasible changes. Of course, in that case, capitalism can transform into only one of its opposites, namely, socialism.

In fact he says the following in that passage:


It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies 'how opposites can be ... identical'. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

So, this applies to all opposites; he nowhere mentions "feasible changes".

Then he goes on to say, in the next paragraph:


But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

So, your attempt to 'sanitise' Mao fails, yet again.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



In fact he says the following in that passage:



So, this applies to all opposites; he nowhere mentions "feasible changes".

Then he goes on to say, in the next paragraph:



So, your attempt to 'sanitise' Mao fails, yet again.Every time he says "in given conditions". This means he considers opposites according to the relevant contradictions.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Here is an example Mao Dze Dong provides. Whenever works in MLM sound ambiguous at places, we look at these examples to resolve the ambiguities.


In capitalist society, capitalism has changed its position from being a subordinate force in the old feudal era to being the dominant force, and the nature of society has accordingly changed from feudal to capitalist. In the new, capitalist era, the feudal forces changed from their former dominant position to a subordinate one, gradually dying out. Such was the case, for example, in Britain and France. With the development of the productive forces, the bourgeoisie changes from being a new class playing a progressive role to being an old class playing a reactionary role, until it is finally overthrown by the proletariat and becomes a class deprived of privately owned means of production and stripped of power, when it, too, gradually dies out. The proletariat, which is much more numerous than the bourgeoisie and grows simultaneously with it but under its rule, is a new force which, initially subordinate to the bourgeoisie, gradually gains strength, becomes an independent class playing the leading role in history, and finally seizes political power and becomes the ruling class. Thereupon the nature of society changes and the old capitalist society becomes the new socialist society. This is the path already taken by the Soviet Union, a path that all other countries will inevitably take.

I fail to see how this quotation helps 'santitise' Mao.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Every time he says "in given conditions". This means he considers opposites according to the relevant contradictions.

He says this sometimes, but then he also tells us this is an absolute, and that it operates everywhere and at all times, and that it applies to all opposites. So, at best, Mao is throroughly confused.

But, let us assume you are correct, how can one opposite change into its other if that other already exists?

You keep ignoring this fatal flaw in his theory.

And how can they change into "one another".

This implies that the proletariat must change into the bourgeoisie.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



He says this sometimes, but then he also tells us this is an absolute, and that it operates everywhere and at all times, and that it applies to all opposites. So, at best, Mao is throroughly confused.

But, let us assume you are correct, how can one opposite change into its other if that other already exists?

You keep ignoring this fatal flaw in his theory.

And how can they change into "one another".

This implies that the proletariat must change into the bourgeoisie.
The passage I quoted should make things clear.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


The passage I quoted should make things clear.

I have already told you that it doesn't.

[Die Rote Fahne]

Mao is one guy I do not know a lot about.

I hear he has killed millions in purges like Stalin, and even more have died from failed agricultural policy.

What happened and why?

[scarletghoul]

It's worth reading the first few pages of this thread (before it turned to dialectics/shit) if you haven't already. The OP was asking pretty much the same question and we answered it. Unless theres some more specific things you wanna know.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Scarlet:


before it turned to dialectics/shit

Nice juxtaposition of those two words...

[Maoist-Leninist-Guerrilla]

saint mao will forever be remembered along with stalin forever

[Cowboy Killer]

is there anywhere I can get Unbiased info about mao

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^No such thing.

[bailey_187]

Mao is one guy I do not know a lot about.

I hear he has killed millions in purges like Stalin, and even more have died from failed agricultural policy.

What happened and why?


Neither Mao nor Stalin killed millions in purges (about 700,000 were executed in the USSR when Stalin was General Secretary, by the way)

Anyway, as far as i know there was not a large purge of party members like in the USSR in Mao's China. The deaths attributed to Mao are likley to be from the landlords that peasents executed after the revolution or the starvation in the Great Leap Forward, that can be partly blamed on Mao and parlty on the wheather.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



I have already told you that it doesn't.

The bourgeoisie changing into the proletariat and vice-versa is an invalid example. The proletariat and the bourgeoisie interchange places and become the ruling and ruled classes respectively.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


The bourgeoisie changing into the proletariat and vice-versa is an invalid example. The proletariat and the bourgeoisie interchange places and become the ruling and ruled classes respectively.

Unfortunately for you, Mao did not say that things/processes swap places, but that everything in the entire universe changes into its opposite.

If so, according to Mao (and Lenin, and Engels...) the proletariat must change into the bourgeoisis, and vice versa.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



Unfortunately for you, Mao did not say that things/processes swap places, but that everything in the entire universe changes into its opposite.

If so, according to Mao (and Lenin, and Engels...) the proletariat must change into the bourgeoisis, and vice versa.That would mean a new capitalist society with the vast majority of the population as capitalists and a handful of proletarians. Interpreting Mao or Lenin's works in a wrong way can lead to such absurd conclusions. That Mao didn't mean a literal change into opposites, or the classes gaining each of the opposing qualities, is clear from this:


In capitalist society, capitalism has changed its position from being a subordinate force in the old feudal era to being the dominant force, and the nature of society has accordingly changed from feudal to capitalist. In the new, capitalist era, the feudal forces changed from their former dominant position to a subordinate one, gradually dying out. Such was the case, for example, in Britain and France. With the development of the productive forces, the bourgeoisie changes from being a new class playing a progressive role to being an old class playing a reactionary role, until it is finally overthrown by the proletariat and becomes a class deprived of privately owned means of production and stripped of power, when it, too, gradually dies out. The proletariat, which is much more numerous than the bourgeoisie and grows simultaneously with it but under its rule, is a new force which, initially subordinate to the bourgeoisie, gradually gains strength, becomes an independent class playing the leading role in history, and finally seizes political power and becomes the ruling class. Thereupon the nature of society changes and the old capitalist society becomes the new socialist society. This is the path already taken by the Soviet Union, a path that all other countries will inevitably take.

[Chambered Word]

Mao rocks, he did a great leap forward, some people died starving, but that happens when you industrialize a country in some years

Maoists and Stalinists always seem to act like people's lives aren't worth half a chunk of shit, and a dictatorship is justified if some factories get built. :rolleyes:


yet he made the population rise by 80(?)%, minimum life time thingy went up to 70 from 25 or something, and he made china an industrial super power...


I'm pretty sure even further capitalist 'reforms' initiated by Deng Xiaoping were needed as well.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


That would mean a new capitalist society with the vast majority of the population as capitalists and a handful of proletarians. Interpreting Mao or Lenin's works in a wrong way can lead to such absurd conclusions. That Mao didn't mean a literal change into opposites, or the classes gaining each of the opposing qualities, is clear from this

Indeed, and that is why Mao's 'theory' is unworkable, as I have been arguing.

But, you then quote this:


In capitalist society, capitalism has changed its position from being a subordinate force in the old feudal era to being the dominant force, and the nature of society has accordingly changed from feudal to capitalist. In the new, capitalist era, the feudal forces changed from their former dominant position to a subordinate one, gradually dying out. Such was the case, for example, in Britain and France. With the development of the productive forces, the bourgeoisie changes from being a new class playing a progressive role to being an old class playing a reactionary role, until it is finally overthrown by the proletariat and becomes a class deprived of privately owned means of production and stripped of power, when it, too, gradually dies out. The proletariat, which is much more numerous than the bourgeoisie and grows simultaneously with it but under its rule, is a new force which, initially subordinate to the bourgeoisie, gradually gains strength, becomes an independent class playing the leading role in history, and finally seizes political power and becomes the ruling class. Thereupon the nature of society changes and the old capitalist society becomes the new socialist society. This is the path already taken by the Soviet Union, a path that all other countries will inevitably take.

Well, this is far from saying that these classes merely swap positions.

But, the point is that the above is inconsistent with Mao's oft repeated claim, which I have quoted several times, that everything changes into its opposite.

So, when he says this:


the bourgeoisie changes from being a new class playing a progressive role to being an old class playing a reactionary role, until it is finally overthrown by the proletariat and becomes a class deprived of privately owned means of production and stripped of power, when it, too, gradually dies out.

He is contradicting himself, when he elsewhere tells us that things do not just "die out" but change into their opposites.

In that case, the proletariat must both struggle with and change into the bourgeoisie, and vice versa.

And this must happen too:


These dialectical 'rules' imply that cats, for example, change because of a struggle of opposites, and that they change into those opposites.

In which case, a live cat C that changes into dead cat C* must have struggled with that dead cat!

I'm sure we have all witnessed such odd scenes...

On the other hand, live cat C cannot change into dead cat C* since dead cat C* already exists! So C cannot die, for to do so it has to change into something that already exists, and this is impossible, even for a cat.

So, dialectical materialism, the 'world view of the proletariat', holds that cats cannot die!

On the other hand, it also holds that cats are continually scrapping with the dead cats that they will one day turn into.

Incidentally, the same result emerges if we consider the intermediate stages in the life and death of cat C.

Let us assume that cat C goes through successive stages C(1), C(2), C(3)..., C(n), until at stage C(n+1) it finally pops its clogs.

But, according to the dialectical classics, C(1) can only change into C(2) because of a 'struggle' of opposites. They also tell us that C(1) inevitably changes into that opposite.

So, C(1) must both struggle with C(2) and change into it.

But then the same problems emerge, for C(1) can't change into C(2) since it already exists. If it didn't, C(1) could not struggle with it!

So, by n applications of the above argument, all the stages of a cat's life must co-exist, and no cat can change, let alone die!

These 'dialectical cats' sure are odd...

But what about this?


That Mao didn't mean a literal change into opposites, or the classes gaining each of the opposing qualities, is clear from this:

But, I have already covered this last ditch, desperate response of yours.

Here it is again (for you to ignore once more) -- Ma is quite clear that what he has to say is literally true:


The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without "above", there would be no "below") without "below", there would be no "above". Without misfortune, there would be no good fortune; without good fortune, these would be no misfortune. Without facility, there would be no difficulty) without difficulty, there would be no facility. Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity. In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies "how opposites can be ... identical". How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other's existence. This is the first meaning of identity.
But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other's existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

There is no way that this can be interpreted non-literally, otherwise the contrasts Mao draws would not work. As he underlines, here:


In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another.

Notice, these are concrete and real, not non-literal.

As he goes on to say:


Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end.


The relationship between the universality and the particularity of contradiction is the relationship between the general character and the individual character of contradiction. By the former we mean that contradiction exists in and runs through all processes from beginning to end; motion, things, processes, thinking--all are contradictions. To deny contradiction is to deny everything. This is a universal truth for all times and all countries, which admits of no exception.


Things in contradiction change into one another, and herein lies a definite identity.


All contradictory things are interconnected; not only do they coexist in a single entity in given conditions, but in other given conditions, they also transform themselves into each other. This is the full meaning of the identity of opposites. This is what Lenin meant when he discussed "how they happen to be (how they become) identical--under what conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another".


All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute.


We may add that the struggle between opposites permeates a process from beginning to end and makes one process transform itself into another, that it is ubiquitous, and that struggle is therefore unconditional and absolute.


We may now say a few words to sum up. The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the fundamental law of nature and of society and therefore also the fundamental law of thought. It stands opposed to the metaphysical world outlook. It represents a great revolution in the history of human knowledge. According to dialectical materialism, contradiction is present in all processes of objectively existing things and of subjective thought and permeates all these processes from beginning to end; this is the universality and absoluteness of contradiction. Each contradiction and each of its aspects have their respective characteristics; this is the particularity and relativity of contradiction. In given conditions, opposites possess identity, and consequently can coexist in a single entity and can transform themselves into each other; this again is the particularity and relativity of contradiction. But the struggle of opposites is ceaseless, it goes on both when the opposites are coexisting and when they are transforming themselves into each other, and becomes especially conspicuous when they are transforming themselves into one another; this again is the universality and absoluteness of contradiction.

Page references can be supplied on request; bold emphases added.

Once more, not much wiggle room there. Just like Hegel, Engels, Lenin and Plekhanov, Mao meant this literally, universally and absolutely.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



Indeed, and that is why Mao's 'theory' is unworkable, as I have been arguing.

But, you then quote this:



Well, this is far from saying that these classes merely swap positions.

But, the point is that the above is inconsistent with Mao's oft repeated claim, which I have quoted several times, that everything changes into its opposite.

So, when he says this:



He is contradicting himself, when he elsewhere tells us that things do not just "die out" but change into their opposites.

In that case, the proletariat must both struggle with and change into the bourgeoisie, and vice versa.

And this must happen too:



But what about this?



But, I have already covered this last ditch, desperate response of yours.

Here it is again (for you to ignore once more) -- Ma is quite clear that what he has to say is literally true:



There is no way that this can be interpreted non-literally, otherwise the contrasts Mao draws would not work. As he underlines, here:



Notice, these are concrete and real, not non-literal.

As he goes on to say:















Page references can be supplied on request; bold emphases added.

Once more, not much wiggle room there. Just like Hegel, Engels, Lenin and Plekhanov, Mao meant this literally, universally and absolutely.

Whenever a statement seems to be ambiguous, we generally look at the examples that follow.


A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies. From the above quote, we can either conclude that Marx was a superstitious idiot who describes the whole of Europe trying to drive away an imaginary ghost, or we can choose to read the rest of the Communist Manifesto.

Similarly, after reading certain statements by Lenin and Mao, to understand what they mean, we can either interpret them in the light of the examples provided by the theorists all along, or we can proceed to declare their theories as "false", cook up some naive examples which rely on our own interpretations of our own to reinforce our assertions(which prove nothing but our interpretation of the theory is wrong) and then proceed to attack the whole history of revolutionary practice in the last century.

[Uppercut]

Look up the cultural revolution and "The 14 Articles". That should provide you with some decent insight on Mao Tse Tung's ideas and philosophy.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Whenever a statement seems to be ambiguous, we generally look at the examples that follow.

But, as the quotations I have appended show, he meant this literally, universally and absolutely.

He says this:


It is so with all opposites


what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another.


Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end.


To deny contradiction is to deny everything. This is a universal truth for all times and all countries, which admits of no exception.


but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute.


the struggle between opposites permeates a process from beginning to end and makes one process transform itself into another, that it is ubiquitous, and that struggle is therefore unconditional and absolute.


that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the fundamental law of nature and of society and therefore also the fundamental law of thought. It stands opposed to the metaphysical world outlook. It represents a great revolution in the history of human knowledge. According to dialectical materialism, contradiction is present in all processes of objectively existing things and of subjective thought and permeates all these processes from beginning to end; this is the universality and absoluteness of contradiction. Each contradiction and each of its aspects have their respective characteristics; this is the particularity and relativity of contradiction. In given conditions, opposites possess identity, and consequently can coexist in a single entity and can transform themselves into each other; this again is the particularity and relativity of contradiction. But the struggle of opposites is ceaseless, it goes on both when the opposites are coexisting and when they are transforming themselves into each other, and becomes especially conspicuous when they are transforming themselves into one another; this again is the universality and absoluteness of contradiction.

Bold added.

You have to be preverse to deny that Mao believed these were literal, universal and absolute laws. -- or to think what he had to say was "ambiguous".

In fact, you are only alleging this because this theory does not work.

On the other hand, if you try to modify it, you end up with no theory of change at all, but with a piece-meal approach which falls foul of Hume's criticisms, as I explained in an earlier post.

Either way, the whole 'theory' should be thrown out of the non-dialectical window.


From the above quote, we can either conclude that Marx was a superstitious idiot who describes the whole of Europe trying to drive away an imaginary ghost, or we can choose to read the rest of the Communist Manifesto.

Similarly, after reading certain statements by Lenin and Mao, to understand what they mean, we can either interpret them in the light of the examples provided by the theorists all along, or we can proceed to declare their theories as "false", cook up some naive examples which rely on our own interpretations of our own to reinforce our assertions(which prove nothing but our interpretation of the theory is wrong) and then proceed to attack the whole history of revolutionary practice in the last century.

Except Marx did not call this spectre "a universal truth", "absolute, "concrete", "without exception", "real" -- which is how Mao (and others) repeatedly described these 'struggling opposites' turning into one another.

So, and once more, Mao meant this literally (concretely), universally and absolutely -- it was indeed "without exception".

And it does not work...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Upper Cut;


Look up the cultural revolution and "The 14 Articles". That should provide you with some decent insight on Mao Tse Tung's ideas and philosophy.

Done it, many times, and it still does not work.

[LeninistKing]

Hey my friend, i liked your quote about the Will Power by Joseph Stalin. If people here would realize how important is for any thing in this world the will. The will to power is one of the most important elements in order to overthrow the capitalist system. Without will and a strong motivation we are doomed

.


http://www.revleft.com/vb/picture.php?albumid=212&pictureid=4116

A good book to read is Mobo Gao's "The Battle for History: Mao and the Cultural Revolution" (PM me for a link)

Here's a good multi-part doccumentary (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRkKKRdiTBc) on the 49 revolution, and here's the kasama project's study group (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/mlmrsg-evaluating-chinas-cultural-revolution-and-its-legacy-for-the-future/) on the GPCR.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



But, as the quotations I have appended show, he meant this literally, universally and absolutely.

He says this:















Bold added.

You have to be preverse to deny that Mao believed these were literal, universal and absolute laws. -- or to think what he had to say was "ambiguous".

In fact, you are only alleging this because this theory does not work.

On the other hand, if you try to modify it, you end up with no theory of change at all, but with a piece-meal approach which falls foul of Hume's criticisms, as I explained in an earlier post.

Either way, the whole 'theory' should be thrown out of the non-dialectical window.



Except Marx did not call this spectre "a universal truth", "absolute, "concrete", "without exception", "real" -- which is how Mao (and others) repeatedly described these 'struggling opposites' turning into one another.

So, and once more, Mao meant this literally (concretely), universally and absolutely -- it was indeed "without exception".

And it does not work...

And I have explained many times what they meant by "opposites".

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


And I have explained many times what they meant by "opposites".

No you haven't; you just introduced an irrelevant aside on whether Mao meant "every opposite", and whether all objects change into all these "opposites" -- something I have never claimed of Mao (even though Lenin seemed to believe this).

But, even if you did, you have failed to show that this is what Mao meant.

And I note you have abandoned your implausible claim that Mao was not speaking literally.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



No you haven't; you just introduced an irrelevant aside on whether Mao meant "every opposite", and whether all objects change into all these "opposites" -- something I have never claimed of Mao (even though Lenin seemed to believe this).

But, even if you did, you have failed to show that this is what Mao meant.

And I note you have abandoned your implausible claim that Mao was not speaking literally.

I always wanted to point out that when you consider theory without examples, you can possibly interpret in multiple ways. But when the examples provided by the theorist are in contradiction with your interpretation, it is more likely that your interpretation is wrong.

In case of MLM, this is the only theory that has been successfully applied to make revolutions in the later half of the last century, and contradictions behaved as predicted by it. So there is no doubt that the way we interpret is correct and that is what Mao and Lenin meant.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


I always wanted to point out that when you consider theory without examples, you can possibly interpret in multiple ways. But when the examples provided by the theorist are in contradiction with your interpretation, it is more likely that your interpretation is wrong.

You keep saying 'my interpretation' is wrong, but I do not in fact interpret Mao, I just quote him and draw the consequences. It's you who is doing the 'interpreting', which you fail to substantiate with any quotations from Mao -- and you just ignore the passages from Mao which refute it!


In case of MLM, this is the only theory that has been successfully applied to make revolutions in the later half of the last century, and contradictions behaved as predicted by it. So there is no doubt that the way we interpret is correct and that is what Mao and Lenin meant.

All of which have either failed or have been reversed.

Hence, if theory is tested in practice, Dialectical Marxism/Maoism stands refuted.

And, can you show me a single Maoist or Leninist who interprets Mao the way you do?

The answer is pretty clear: no you can't since you invented this 'interpretation' of yours on the hoof in order to avoid the ridiculous consequences of Mao and Lenin's theory, and one that finds no support in what they actually say.

In fact, I can quote you Maoists and Leninists who agree with my reading of Mao (I already have!).

Finally, I'd keep your 'interpretation to yourself, if I were you, or you risk being called a 'Revisionist' by your orthodox Maoist comrades.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



You keep saying 'my interpretation' is wrong, but I do not in fact interpret Mao, I just quote him and draw the consequences. It's you who is doing the 'interpreting', which you fail to substantiate with any quotations from Mao -- and you just ignore the passages from Mao which refute it!



All of which have either failed or have been reversed.

Hence, if theory is tested in practice, Dialectical Marxism/Maoism stands refuted.

And, can you show me a single Maoist or Leninist who interprets Mao the way you do?

The answer is pretty clear: no you can't since you invented this 'interpretation' of yours on the hoof in order to avoid the ridiculous consequences of Mao and Lenin's theory, and one that finds no support in what they actually say.

In fact, I can quote you Maoists and Leninists who agree with my reading of Mao (I already have!).

Finally, I'd keep your 'interpretation to yourself, if I were you, or you risk being called a 'Revisionist' by your orthodox Maoist comrades.

I think all the revolutionary Maoist parties of the third world interpret Mao in this way.

The revolutions have ultimately failed does not mean that MLM stands refuted. Each wave of revolution has taken itself to a higher level. The theory is still developing and only time can tell us whether we have found out the way to prevent capitalist restoration or not.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

red Cat:


I think all the revolutionary Maoist parties of the third world interpret Mao in this way.

Well, we know what you think -- the problem is can you show that what you think is more than wishful thinking...

If you could, you'd have done that by now.


The revolutions have ultimately failed does not mean that MLM stands refuted. Each wave of revolution has taken itself to a higher level. The theory is still developing and only time can tell us whether we have found out the way to prevent capitalist restoration or not

Well, as I have shown, this 'theory' has ridiculous implications, based on laughably poor philosophy and sub-Aristotelian logic, so you flatter it too much calling it a theory.

But, this 'theory' of your has nothing but failure to its name. And no wonder, it's a ridiculous 'theory'. You are welcome to it...

So, you can look forward to another 100 years of going nowhere.

[red cat]

red Cat:



Well, we know what you think -- the problem is can you show that what you think is more than wishful thinking...

If you could, you'd have done that by now.



Well, in the third world, Maoists are eradicating feudalism and liberating peasants. They are not transforming peasants into feudal lords and vice-versa. Isn't that proof enough?




Well, as I have shown, this 'theory' has ridiculous implications, based on laughably poor philosophy and sub-Aristotelian logic, so you flatter it too much calling it a theory.


That is due to your own interpretation of it.



But, this 'theory' of your has nothing but failure to its name. And no wonder, it's a ridiculous 'theory'. You are welcome to it...

So, you can look forward to another 100 years of going nowhere.

Says a Trot.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Well, in the third world, Maoists are eradicating feudalism and liberating peasants. They are not transforming peasants into feudal lords and vice-versa. Isn't that proof enough?

In Europe, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the bourgeoisie eradicated feudalism. Should we therefore say that capitalist theory is correct?

And, as we now know, Maoists cannot take the revolutiuon further -- they screw up every time.

Anyway, you have yet to show that they interpet Mao as you have done. You are deafeningly silent on the issue.

Wonder why?:rolleyes:


That is due to your own interpretation of it.

1) As I noted earlier, I do not interpet Mao, I just qiote him and draw the obvious conclusions -- conclusions you have yet to show are wrong.

2) Even if this were so, you have yet to show that this interpretation is in error.


Says a Trot.

Says history.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



In Europe, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the bourgeoisie eradicated feudalism. Should we therefore say that capitalist theory is correct?



No. It proves that their capability as a revolutionary force was much greater than any other. In fact they were the only force that could make revolution at that time. We can deduce something similar about Maoists today.





And, as we now know, Maoists cannot take the revolutiuon further -- they screw up every time.

Errors come with practice. No practice => no errors.




Anyway, you have yet to show that they interpet Mao as you have done. You are deafeningly silent on the issue.

Wonder why?:rolleyes:



I told you. They are not transforming classes into your version of opposites. They are doing it just like what Mao told in his examples. So obviously they interpret Maoism my way.




1) As I noted earlier, I do not interpet Mao, I just qiote him and draw the obvious conclusions -- conclusions you have yet to show are wrong.

2) Even if this were so, you have yet to show that this interpretation is in error.



Those "obvious conclusions" are due to your interpretation.




Says history.

Nope.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


No. It proves that their capability as a revolutionary force was much greater than any other. In fact they were the only force that could make revolution at that time. We can deduce something similar about Maoists today.

What it shows is they they are no more, nor no less succesful than the capitalist anti-feudalists of the 16th and 17th centuries were -- in fact, equally so since you Maoists have only succeeded in setting up states that have reverted to capitalism.


Errors come with practice. No practice => no errors

Indeed; but in your case: Maoist practice => nothing but errors.


I told you. They are not transforming classes into your version of opposites. They are doing it just like what Mao told in his examples. So obviously they interpret Maoism my way.

But, you did not provide one quotation or one link to a single Maoist or Leninist who interprets Mao your way. And we both know why...


Those "obvious conclusions" are due to your interpretation.

Once more, you have yet to show that they are incorrect.


Nope.

OK, in that case, you will find it easy to tell me where there is now one single successful Maoist socialist state.

[Notice I did not ask for an anti-imperialist struggle...]

[red cat]

Red Cat:



What it shows is they they are no more, nor no less succesful than the capitalist anti-feudalists of the 16th and 17th centuries were -- in fact, equally so since you Maoists have only succeeded in setting up states that have reverted to capitalism.

Even if we assume that, it still makes us more capable than Trotskyites.






Indeed; but in your case: Maoist practice => nothing but errors.

Maoist practice => New democratic and socialist revolutions.








But, you did not provide one quotation or one link to a single Maoist or Leninist who interprets Mao your way. And we both know why...

Surely we do. Because a practical example is always sufficient. So I don't bother to look for quotes.





Once more, you have yet to show that they are incorrect.
I have explained this many times already.





OK, in that case, you will find it easy to tell me where there is now one single successful Maoist socialist state.

[Notice I did not ask for an anti-imperialist struggle...] Currently there are none.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Even if we assume that, it still makes us more capable than Trotskyites

1) Indeed, since there are no Trotskyites.

2) And it makes you no more successful than the capitalists were -- in that all you have ended up with are capitalist states.


Maoist practice => New democratic and socialist revolutions.

You missed a bit:

Maoist practice => New democratic and socialist revolutions => capitalist states.

Rank failures, then.


Surely we do. Because a practical example is always sufficient. So I don't bother to look for quotes.

1) We have seen that all this 'wonderful' practice has failed.

2) You keep saying they interpret Mao the same way as you -- as you noted in the Cantor thread -- until you provide the evidence, we must assume they do not.

[We already know this anyway, since it took you several weeks to dream this 'interpretation' of yours up, and you only did so under constant pressure from me.]


I have explained this many times already

No you haven't; provide a link to where you have.

Honesty at last!


Currently there are none.

A 100% failure rate then...

Dialectics refuted by practice and theory...

[red cat]

Red Cat:



1) Indeed, since there are no Trotskyites.

Why? Have you lot suddenly realized that Trotskyism is completely invalid?




2) And it makes you no more successful than the capitalists were -- in that all you have ended up with are capitalist states.



You missed a bit:

Maoist practice => New democratic and socialist revolutions => capitalist states.

Rank failures, then.



1) We have seen that all this 'wonderful' practice has failed.

2) You keep saying they interpret Mao the same way as you -- as you noted in the Cantor thread -- until you provide the evidence, we must assume they do not.

[We already know this anyway, since it took you several weeks to dream this 'interpretation' of yours up, and you only did so under constant pressure from me.]



No you haven't; provide a link to where you have.

Honesty at last!



A 100% failure rate then...

Dialectics refuted by practice and theory...

I said this more than once. Even though we have failed to protect socialism from capitalist restoration, we have progressed with each wave of revolution. Presently, the vast majority of the PWs being conducted are Maoist. On the other hand, you Trotskyites, despite your revolutionary phrase-mongering, pseudo-theory concocting and slandering genuine revolutionaries, have remained utter failures when it comes to actually making revolutions. Where are your parties in India and Nepal? Where are your red-guards? Where is your revolution?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Why? Have you lot suddenly realized that Trotskyism is completely invalid?

I can't speak for these figments of you imagination, these Trotskyites, but us Troskyists haven't.


I said this more than once. Even though we have failed to protect socialism from capitalist restoration, we have progressed with each wave of revolution. Presently, the vast majority of the PWs being conducted are Maoist. On the other hand, you Trotskyites, despite your revolutionary phrase-mongering, pseudo-theory concocting and slandering genuine revolutionaries, have remained utter failures when it comes to actually making revolutions. Where are your parties in India and Nepal? Where are your red-guards? Where is your revolution?

But, and once more, there are no Trotskyites, so I do not know who you are addressing when you say this:


you Trotskyites

You:


Where is your revolution?

1917 -- perhaps you do not know about it?

[That would not surprise me, since you seem to be obsessed with figments of your imagination.]

And we are still waiting for evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao in the way you have.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



I can't speak for these figments of you imagination, these Trotskyites, but us Troskyists haven't.



But, and once more, there are no Trotskyites, so I do not know who you are addressing when you say this:



You:



1917 -- perhaps you do not know about it?

[That would not surprise me, since you seem to be obsessed with figments of your imagination.]

And we are still waiting for evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao in the way you have.

The 1917 revolution was Marxist-Leninist. Not Trotskyite.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


The 1917 revolution was Marxist-Leninist. Not Trotskyite.

Well, it certainly wasn't Trotskyite, since there are none, and never have been (except perhaps in your nightmares).

But, since Trotsky was integral to it, it certainly was Trotskyist.

And we are still waiting for evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao in the way you have.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



Well, it certainly wasn't Trotskyite, since there are none, and never have been (except perhaps in your nightmares).

But, since Trotsky was integral to it, it certainly was Trotskyist.


Trotsky was a part of the revolution. But he didn't put forward the main portion of his theory then. The guiding principles were formulated by Lenin . So the revolution was not Trotskyite.



And we are still waiting for evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao in the way you have.

Already provided enough.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Trotsky was a part of the revolution. But he didn't put forward the main portion of his theory then. The guiding principles were formulated by Lenin .

In fact the revolutiuoin began to degenerate when the ML-ers took over.


So the revolution was not Trotskyite.

Indeed, since there are none of these mythical beasts on the planet.


Already provided enough.

You provided opinion and guesswork, but not one reference to Maoist or Leninist writings that supported your hastily constructed 'interpretation'.

In that case:

We are still waiting for evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao in the way you have.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



In fact the revolutiuoin began to degenerate when the ML-ers took over.


Why? How could the great Trotsky let this happen? So this only example of a Trotskyite revolution you give( which was infact Leninist) was also a failure ( by your own notion of failure).



Indeed, since there are none of these mythical beasts on the planet.

Please don't underestimate yourselves that much. We just think that you are counter-revolutionary human beings.




You provided opinion and guesswork, but not one reference to Maoist or Leninist writings that supported your hastily constructed 'interpretation'.

In that case:

We are still waiting for evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao in the way you have.

I think that partisan Maoists have better things to do rather than "write" their so obvious interpretation so that we here can read them. Their practice speaks for them.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


How could the great Trotsky let this happen? So this only example of a Trotskyite revolution you give( which was infact Leninist) was also a failure ( by your own notion of failure).

He screwed up, as he later realised.

And who are these Trotskyites?

Moreover, I agree the revolution failed; but that is only one Trotskyist revolution that has failed; you ML-ers have at least twelve to your name.

So, we are amatuer failures compared to you experts.


Please don't underestimate yourselves that much. We just think that you are counter-revolutionary human beings.

But, they can't be since there are none. Have you been at the shandy again?


I think that partisan Maoists have better things to do rather than "write" their so obvious interpretation so that we here can read them. Their practice speaks for them.

1) Their practice does indeed "speak for them": wall-to-wall failure.:lol:

2) This means you have no evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao your way.

So, and once more:

We are still waiting for evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao in the way you have.

Looks like you too are waiting for this long lost evidence...:rolleyes:

[red cat]

Red Cat:



He screwed up, as he later realised.

And who are these Trotskyites?

Moreover, I agree the revolution failed; but that is only one Trotskyist revolution that has failed; you ML-ers have at least twelve to your name.

So, we are amatuer failures compared to you experts.



But, they can't be since there are none. Have you been at the shandy again?



1) Their practice does indeed "speak for them": wall-to-wall failure.:lol:

2) This means you have no evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao your way.

So, and once more:

We are still waiting for evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao in the way you have.

Looks like you too are waiting for this long lost evidence...:rolleyes:

But Trotskyite parties have failed to launch a revolution at the first place. So you are the real experts around here. :lol:

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


But Trotskyite parties have failed to launch a revolution at the first place.

They could hardly launch a revolution if they don't exist.


So you are the real experts around here.

In fact, we can take lessons from you on how to turn an allegedly socialist society into a capitalist state -- and, as if to rub it in, you have done this not just once, but at least twelve times. Since we have not even done it once, we bow to your expertise:

http://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gif


And:

We are still waiting for evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao in the way you have.

[red cat]

Red Cat:



They could hardly launch a revolution if they don't exist.



In fact, we can take lessons from you on how to turn an allegedly socialist society into a capitalist state -- and, as if to rub it in, you have done this not just once, but at least twelve times. Since we have not even done it once, we bow to your expertise:

http://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gifhttp://www.oes.org/forum/images/smiles/rs_NotWorthy.gif


And:

We are still waiting for evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao in the way you have.

It is really funny how you desperately play with words( like Trot, Trotskyite or Trotskyist) to simply escape the fact that your tendency is not capable of making any revolution at the first place. :lol: First agree to this fact, then I will care to search for documents by Maoist parties.

[fatboy]

Hey Rosa do me a favor and tell me the last time a Trotskyist party ever was in power or even led a revolution or in the process of carrying out a revolution.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


It is really funny how you desperately play with words( like Trot, Trotskyite or Trotskyist) to simply escape the fact that your tendency is not capable of making any revolution at the first place. First agree to this fact, then I will care to search for documents by Maoist parties.

You are the one who is playing with words; all I am doing is pointing out that there are no Trotskyites on the planet, no matter how many times you use this word.


to simply escape the fact that your tendency is not capable of making any revolution at the first place.

In fact, you are trying to distract attention from the fact that you can't respond to my refutation of Mao's 'theory' of change.

And: good luck in your search.

I'm admitting nothing.


your tendency is not capable of making any revolution

Not so; 1917 was a Trotskyist revolution just as much as it was a Leninist one -- and it was made by Russian workers, not by Leninists or Trotskyists.

But, even if you were right, and once again: you ML-ers have presided over nothing but failure.

Oh, and just in case I haven't said this before:

We are still waiting for evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao in the way you have.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

fatboy:


Hey Rosa do me a favor and tell me the last time a Trotskyist party ever was in power or even led a revolution or in the process of carrying out a revolution.

I will, just as soon you give us one example of a successful Maoist socialist state.

[Hiero]

You missed a bit:

Maoist practice => New democratic and socialist revolutions => capitalist states.

Rank failures, then.

You missed the late 100 years.

Trotyskist practice => Slander Communists => Sell a few papers => Split into more Trotskyist factions => Slander former Trotksyist groups=> Sell more papers.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Hiero (who seems to have forgotten his pathetic plea to others that I should be ignored):


You missed the late 100 years.

Trotyskist practice => Slander Communists => Sell a few papers => Split into more Trotskyist factions => Slander former Trotksyist groups=> Sell more papers.
__________________
The spiritual atom bomb which the revolutionary people possess is a far more powerful and useful weapon than the physical atom bomb. - Lin Biao

Our code of morals is our revolution. What saves our revolution, what helps our revolution, what protects our revolution is right, is very right and very honourable and very noble and very beautiful, because our revolution means justice

- Dr. George Habash, founder of the PFLP.

I'm sorry to hear the last 100 years has died, for why else would you refer to it as "the late 100 years"?

However, to deal with your slander: you may be right, you may be wrong, but two things are clear:

1) Everything you Maoists touch turns to dust -- or rather, to some form of capitalism.:(

2) You can't answer my refutation of Mao's 'theory' of change.:)

[red cat]

Red Cat:



You are the one who is playing with words; all I am doing is pointing out that there are no Trotskyites on the planet, no matter how many times you use this word.



In fact, you are trying to distract attention from the fact that you can't respond to my refutation of Mao's 'theory' of change.

And: good luck in your search.

I'm admitting nothing.



Not so; 1917 was a Trotskyist revolution just as much as it was a Leninist one -- and it was made by Russian workers, not by Leninists or Trotskyists.

But, even if you were right, and once again: you ML-ers have presided over nothing but failure.

Oh, and just in case I haven't said this before:

We are still waiting for evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao in the way you have.

Really pathetic. Trots urging Maoists to give an example of a socialist revolution that they have conducted is like a jackal asking a lion how many elephants he has killed. Of course, after we claim that China was socialist, you will bring your historical falsification in and try to divert us rather than giving any example of any current Trot revolutionary party that conducts armed struggle or has successfully overthrown imperialism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Red Cat:


Really pathetic. Trots urging Maoists to give an example of a socialist revolution that they have conducted is like a jackal asking a lion how many elephants he has killed. Of course, after we claim that China was socialist, you will bring your historical falsification in and try to divert us rather than giving any example of any current Trot revolutionary party that conducts armed struggle or has successfully overthrown imperialism.

Well, Mao did not help at all in the only genuine working class revolution the planet has so far witnessed, but Trotsky did -- so I rather think you lot are far better examples of pathetic behaviour.

And moan as much as you like, but all you lot have ever witnessed, for all your chest beating, is continual failure with everything you have been involved in.

But, even if you are right, two things are crystal clear:

1) Everything you Maoists touch turns to dust -- or rather, to some form of capitalism.

2) You can't answer my refutation of Mao's 'theory' of change.

And, in case you thought I'd forget:

We are still waiting for evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao in the way you have.

[x359594]

Here's a very interesting take on Mao: http://www.lacan.com/zizmaozedong.htm#_ftnref11 ("Mao Zedong: the Marxist Lord of Misrule.")

[red cat]

Red Cat:



Well, Mao did not help at all in the only genuine working class revolution the planet has so far witnessed, but Trotsky did -- so I rather think you lot are far better examples of pathetic behaviour.

And moan as much as you like, but all you lot have ever witnessed, for all your chest beating, is continual failure with everything you have been involved in.

But, even if you are right, two things are crystal clear:

1) Everything you Maoists touch turns to dust -- or rather, to some form of capitalism.

2) You can't answer my refutation of Mao's 'theory' of change.

And, in case you thought I'd forget:

We are still waiting for evidence that a single Maoist or Leninist has ever interpreted Mao in the way you have. You have forgotten the Paris Commune.

Anyway, Mao lived too far to help in the Bolshevik Revolution.

Before we get into the more detailed discussion of whether China became socialist at any point or not, I hate to do this, but...

GIVE US ONE EXAMPLE OF AN ONGOING ARMED STRUGGLE ORGANIZED BY TROTS OR TROTSKYITES OR TROTSKYISTS.

[bricolage]

GIVE US ONE EXAMPLE OF AN ONGOING ARMED STRUGGLE ORGANIZED BY TROTS OR TROTSKYITES OR TROTSKYISTS.


You know the Lords Resistance Army is organising an armed struggle, should we all then be Christian fundamentalists? What about this lot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda_Organization_in_the_Islamic_Maghreb) they have guns, should we start backing them?