Maoism and Anarchism? [Archive]

btpound

20th January 2010, 06:20

I think there is a lot of similarities between anarchism and Maoism. And although Lenin fell out of his more libertarian tendency, Mao's stuck with him. As is evident from his policy. While Stalin worked to institutionalize a rigid hierarchy, Mao worked aggressively to break this down in China. China already had an strict hierarchy embedded in their culture, this is what the cultural revolution was all about (among other things). Mao encouraged criticism of the party and the established authority which is was sparked the GPCR and the thousand blossom campaign. During the Great Leap Forward Mao worked to reduce the division between city and country to promote equality. Weary of complete party control of the country, Mao set forth collectivization measures in a completely different way than Russia. He provided incentives for peasants to collectivize, and creates APCs (Agricultural Production Collectives) where the peasants themselves together with party officials democratically ran the APCs. Many components of Maoism, such as the People's Army and the Mass Line, are geared toward giving the people more control over their government. The idea of a people's army means that the state should not be separate but of and among the people so that it cannot become an arm of the government, but of the will of the people. The Mass Line is a administrative policy with a focus on making people more use to self governance. Mao was no lover of bureaucracy either. During the GPCR, the bureaucracy was cut down to a sixth. Mao himself lead in a much different way than Stalin. Stalin was very much one man rule, while Mao was very much by consensus (among the party) and had a vice prez with a lot of individual power. Maoism is specifically directed toward giving people total control over society, and making sure the state and administration do not become something separate and above the people. This is very similar to the society anarchists envision, although admittedly different in a profound way. I use to be an anarchist actually. For five years. And I was still up in the air about communism until I read about Maoism. Maoism has a much broader scope on how you progress from socialism to communism, and dividing society into autonomous cells will ultimately lead back to capitalism. And on this point Maoism and Anarchism are distinct.

Most people consider Maoism a rigid and narrow philosophy that is useless outside of countries that aren't exactly like China was in 1949. But this interpretation is itself a narrow view of Maoism. Maoism really refers to more of an administrative policy that Mao put forward as leader of china, although maoism contains important lessons on revolution. Some Maoist groups do use the guise of Maoism to say "Fuck the workers!", but this is not maoism. Maoism in America would have very little to do with the peasantry since we have practically none that would qualify as such. We do not throw out the whole book and accept only the things Mao did and said as spiritual doctrine, although I would be lying if i said no Maoists anywhere have ever done this. Maoism is an extension of Marxist-Leninism, and cannot be considered a complete philosophy without these two integral parts.

Cooler Reds Will Prevail

20th January 2010, 07:07

Hey cmoney, good question. I may not be the best person to answer this, but I'll give it a shot... Though I can only speak for myself.

Around Kasama, there are definitely quite a few folks that seem to follow a more libertarian strain of Maoism, including myself. I don't think the tendency is entirely faithful to the Maoist tradition in a strict sense, but that's not something I'm interested in anyway. For me, I see the flaws of applied Maoism as largely inheritances from the Stalin era, and I see Mao's innovations and developments as the genuinely liberating ones. The party-state apparatus, as existed in China, was very possibly necessary for that time period. The huge rate of illiteracy, the overall very undereducated population, the size of the country and the lack of a national communications and transportation infrastructure, etc. were HUGE obstacles in China to developing socialist power, and I think during the 49-76 period Mao and others around him represented, for the most part, a concentration of the most feasibly revolutionary line. There were a lot of flaws in this, which is obvious considering that Chinese socialism effectively was over by '78, at the latest.

Whether it was possible to transition away from the party-state structure in China is a question I don't have an answer for, but I would argue that Mao's insistence on such a structure was problematic. The Shanghai Commune may not have been sustainable nationwide (I have much to read about this, so take this with a grain of salt), but I don't believe Mao's suggestion of the 3-in-1 committees was the solution, as it effectively maintained party hegemony over politics and economics. Still, I think some great advances were made during the GPCR and do consider it to be the farthest march toward communism that's been made, albeit with its own problems and contradictions. This section is worth digging into deeper, and I wish I had the time to do so.

That being said, we don't have the conditions of mid-century China here, and I think we've learned a lot since then. In a country like the United States, I don't see the population accepting, nor would I accept, a system in which ultimate power rested in an unelected body of self-proclaimed representatives of the people. I don't care how much "elasticity", to use the RCP's formulation, there exists around the "solid core" in a socialist state; if the core is not directly accountable to the people then we are negating the idea of genuine people's democracy. The equation of the party-state with the dictatorship of the proletariat is only reasonable when we make the massive leap of faith that the party, at all times and places, represents the interests and desires of the people. Even in China, an experience that I largely uphold, this was quite often not the case. That's not to say that I don't see a "leading role" for a communist organization (or multiple), but I see that role being more in advising and struggling with the people for the most revolutionary line, not in actually running the state in any way. The ideas of multi-party socialism being discussed in Nepal are also quite intriguing and worthy of further development and analysis.

A lot of the thinking that surrounds the awesomeness of the GPCR is that the people rose up against the capitalist roaders and reactionaries and developed their own forms of education, propaganda, leadership, etc. This I agree with entirely. What is missing, however, is the fact that despite all this upsurge, the people were fundamentally unable to prevent the rise of capitalist roaders to power. What good was mass mobilization and all the fervor that surrounded the GPCR if it was unable to make any structural changes to the state?

So basically, I think we need to approach the question with an analysis of the material conditions that exist in that particular country. Even the Nepali Maoists seem to have largely rejected the party-state idea in favor of a more democratic socialist republicanism, as I mentioned before, a theoretical process I am watching with enthusiasm. There is a lot to learn from Maoism, and a lot of room for its development, but we should not inherit the assumptions that plagued his own thinking. I'm posting links to some of the pieces on Kasama about these questions. The essays themselves are very interesting (though I don't agree with all of it), but I think the greatest value here is in the discussions that follow in the comments. There is a LOT more to say about everything I wrote, and I know it is very underdeveloped so hopefully you can get a better sense here.

http://kasamaproject.org/2009/07/02/bhattarais-new-type-of-state-and-the-maoist-re-envisioning-of-communism/

http://kasamaproject.org/2009/07/07/on-socialist-democratic-forms-snowflakes-the-restoration-of-capitalism/

http://kasamaproject.org/2009/07/15/mao-and-the-dunce-caps-the-contradictions-of-real-socialism/

http://kasamaproject.org/2009/07/13/a-revolutionary-people-and-the-problems-at-its-periphery/

"Marxism contains a thousand truths, but they all boil down to one. It is right to rebel against reactionaries." -Mao Tse-tung

black magick hustla

20th January 2010, 07:48

the reason why some folks here find that there is a sort of "semblance" between maoism and anarchism is because both maoism and anarchism have a lot of "democratic" baggage. maoism always speaks about "democratic" revolutions and "power to the people", and anarchists tend to center to much their discourse on democracy as a principle, "anti-hierarchical" modes of organization" - a lot of anarchists see the fundamental contradiction between "order givers, and order followers", rather than between different classes.

however, what has given anarchists their content, at least those who are worth their salt, is not the "libertarianr" rhetoric, rather, that some anarchists sometimes have the correct intuition politically. a lot of anarchists are internonalists, oppose participation in the state etc.

also "maoism" was made hip by the new left, and a lot of the anarchist aesthetics were appropiated by it. for example, the idea of "rebellion" and the visceral anti-clericalism.

again anarchism is very broad and there are some segments of it that are counterrevolutionary, and others that have proletarian principles.

syndicat

20th January 2010, 08:01

Cooler Reds Will Prevail

20th January 2010, 08:09

also "maoism" was made hip by the new left, and a lot of the anarchist aesthetics were appropiated by it. for example, the idea of "rebellion" and the visceral anti-clericalism.

I'm not sure I understand your point here, comrade. One of the most critical slogans of Mao-era China was "It's right to rebel against reactionaries"; are you saying that this was appropriated by the anarchist-influenced Maoist movement in the West to mean "It's right to rebel against reactionaries"? Rebellion against oppressive forces is a key element of Maoism, developed long before the Western new left could have appropriated anarchist aesthetics. Clarify your point perhaps?

black magick hustla

20th January 2010, 08:17

Well. I think it is not very outrageous to hypothesize that groups like the weathermen where influenced by all sorts of "anarchist" aesthetics, or atleast influenced by "libertarian" marxists like herbert marcuse.

Cooler Reds Will Prevail

20th January 2010, 08:22

You'll find no argument from me on that point. The Weather Underground's military strategy amounted to a very futile and desperate attempt at "propaganda of the deed," among other 'aesthetics'. I just wanted to clarify that you were referring to some tendencies of Western Maoism, as opposed to the ideas and practice of Mao himself.

MarxSchmarx

20th January 2010, 08:57

I don't think they have anything in common. Social anarchism historically was based on the principle, "the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the workers themselves." This means that it is thru democratically controlled mass movements of workers, of the oppressed, that they bring about their liberation, not thru a hierarchical Leninist party taking state power. Revolutionary political organizations are not to subordinate the masses to them, but merely be an influence within democratic mass movements.

In China the unions have been mere adjuncts of management. This derives from the subordination of unions to the party in Leninist ideology. The local union delegates often are managers. Even during the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution, the Maoists never allowed workers to have more than one of the 3 representatives on the workplace committes, with the other two being management and the party. But the party itself has interests directly linked to management.

The role of the peasantry as part of the working masses isn't the crucial thing. it's what actual control they have, what role they have played in bringing out change and in controlling the society. In reality the party-state very definitely presides over the society.

Building a hierarchical party-army, not accountable to any mass movement, to take state power is itself substitutionist and so it is no surprise that it's built an accountable authoritarian state.

What is interesting, however, is that during the cultural revolution, many radical workers took some of the Maoist messages to their logical conclusion and called out the proto-Bourgeois party bosses on the sort of stuff you mention. The party hierarchy was able to crush a lot of these radicalists, but there was a rebirth of rank and file syndicalism during the cultural revolution, perhaps the most famous being in Shanghai. This movement could not sustain itself in an authoritarian society, but it went much, much further than the Prague spring or even the Hungarian uprising in denouncing the failures of Leninism from the left.

Indeed, many of the "self-criticism" sessions, lambasted in the west, began as a way to shame the opportunists wh would quote Mao and Lenin but just wanted to advance their own career within the party. However, Mao himself was quite sympathetic to the radical, ground-up and self-organized "spontaneous" elements of the cultural revolution, and this was part of why he encouraged the anti-authoritarianism among the youth. Ultimately, one has to understand that Mao could not wave magic wands to get his desires across, and his initatives had to be implemented by bureaucrats and go through layers upon layers of Soviet pencil pushers before they reached fruition.

Mao himself is to blame for a lot of this, but it is worth understanding that many of the idealistic factions of the cultural revolution considered themselves both Maoist and deeply anti-authoritarian, and this conviction has a kernel of truth.

And Mao the man just confirms the addage about absolute power and corruption. But many of his ideas and vision, however hypocritical, were not about genocide or famine. It's really not very different from Engels being a factory owner or the slave owner Jefferson writing that "All men are created equal". We on the left need to be mindful of both the shortcomings of the individuals as flawed human beings, as well as the deep liberatory resonance of their ideas. Only by understanding both and coming to terms with their seeming contradictions, can a truly historically informed movement develop its full potential.

The Douche

20th January 2010, 19:00

What are the potential paralells between the GPCR and "social war" as advocated by insurrectionary anarchists, and "social revolution" advocated by social anarchists?

I'm currently reading the text "Evaluating the Cultural Revolution in China and its Legacy for the Future (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/mlmrsg-evaluating-chinas-cultural-revolution-and-its-legacy-for-the-future/)" on Kasama. (written by the MLM revolutionary study group) It paints the GPCR as essentially the process of what I view social war as being, to declare war on the old society (to include the organs of what we usually consider the left) in the creation of the new one.

bricolage

21st January 2010, 00:15

Sendo

21st January 2010, 05:57

The Cultural Revolution is the greatest indication of his libertarian and participatory democracy attitudes. Others have said most everything I would have said to defend him, but I want to plug Dongping Han and Mobo Gao and just about anyone else who wrote for or published through Monthly Review. I can't stand the myth (and an idealist, bourgeois myth) that Chinese politics were played out by super personalities in heaven a la a Chinese Mt Olympus. It's wrong, and it's fucking annoying.

Maoism has also shown in its relevancy and appeal. It is the most popular and successful revolutionary ideology. Even if there are Marxist-Leninists, many of them, wittingly or unwittingly follow Mao-like policies. You have Nepal, for starters. But it has appeal in America, too. Look at the Black Panthers, who had a lot of appeal in their communities and are looked up to today. These violent alternatives acted to make non-violent civil rights people look more attractive. It's too easy to say they simply failed. They were a threat and were dealt with harshly. It was socialists early in the 1900s, then it was the Marxist-Leninists, and then in the 60s and 70s it was Maoists and splinter movements who got the most flak from police. I think in recent years, though, the police have widened their scope to anyone left of the democratic party. or rather left of Pelosi, the war bugler.

Anyhow, to call him an irrelevant and idealist leader of peasants is too dismissive (his leadership of the crippled CPC to final victory is astonishing and the PRC made many successes) and too brand him as another tyrant in the tradition of Chinese emperors is silly bourgeois history and borderline racist ("that" culture only knows authoritarianism)

Sendo

21st January 2010, 06:06

The only singularity I could think of would be that anarchism has historically been less exclusionary than marxism about who constitutes the 'revolutionary class'. While marxism has traditionally only viewed the urban proletariat as revolutionary I've always seen there as being a more inclusive approach within anarchism taking account of the peasantry, the rural, the unemployed, the lumpen etc etc, what might be better termed 'the excluded', or as I saw it in an article once 'the rabble'. Maosim with its emphasis on peasantry could resonate with this somehow

I see what you're saying, but I think it's a mistake that Maoism emphasizes the peasantry. I think it's just being practical. Mao realized that a city party like in the Russian industrial metropolises wouldnt work and rallied the common people. Peasants are workers, in a way, they are on scattered plots, but the Maoists learned to classify villagers by whether they earned their income by toil or by employment. The lines blurred with farmers who labored on other farms as hired hands, and even though some had been "financially independent" on the surface, they were still victim to the sway of the market and what people were willing to pay and what costs were.

The capitalist system had its roots in Europe with villagers and the putting out system where merchants would bring supplies to a household, tell the household to build something with it, then return and pay whatever they felt like for the final product. The exploitation of labor here is not that far off from wage labor.

Peasants, like many petty-bourgeois, yes, can go reactionary or revolutionary given their isolation from others (as opposed to hired hands all in one work building) bu I don't think they should be treated so much as the "other". Just adapt the message of communism and turn them into collective workers to nurture better consciousness.

Anarchists do support a wide range of people, but I think it's more out of not thinking about class (more a focus on autonomy, than class dictatorship obviously), and less about having a highly complex view of class. (I don't mean that as an insult. Just different approaches. I'll admit that anarchists seem to give more attention to discrimination than communists do. Of course As learn class, and commies have furiously fought racism in the 30s of the USA, but I just think the focus is different. But even then, it's inconsistent, Emma Goldman made many idealist pleas for sexual equality but didn't care about universal suffrage)

syndicat

21st January 2010, 08:48

MarxS:
This movement could not sustain itself in an authoritarian society, but it went much, much further than the Prague spring or even the Hungarian uprising in denouncing the failures of Leninism from the left.

I think not. In the Hungarian revolution workers took over factories and built workers councils and a workers militia. Nothing like that occurred during the cultural revolution.

revolution inaction

21st January 2010, 11:53

But even then, it's inconsistent, Emma Goldman made many idealist pleas for sexual equality but didn't care about universal suffrage)

its not inconstant, she recognised the voting doesn't change anything.

The Douche

21st January 2010, 21:06

MarxS:

I think not. In the Hungarian revolution workers took over factories and built workers councils and a workers militia. Nothing like that occurred during the cultural revolution.

Yes it did, the cultural revolution led to a total restructuring of the way factories were run (it established a council system with descisions ratified by the workers), and a total restructuring of the education system in China. Also, the cultural revolution led to the formation of people's militias in China.

syndicat

21st January 2010, 22:16

Yes it did, the cultural revolution led to a total restructuring of the way factories were run (it established a council system with descisions ratified by the workers), and a total restructuring of the education system in China. Also, the cultural revolution led to the formation of people's militias in China.

Nope. What happened in workplaces is that a three person committee was created for purposes of control. This consisted of one representative of management, one of the party, and one of the workers. The workers did not manage the workplaces. Management was tied in with the party, so the party's representative simply functioned as another representative of management. This is not the same thing as an authentic workers council. In an authentic workers councils the workers collectively have the power to run the place. If there are any managers, they are elected. The Communist party/state was never challenged, unlike in the Hungarian revolution.

The Douche

22nd January 2010, 01:25

Nope. What happened in workplaces is that a three person committee was created for purposes of control. This consisted of one representative of management, one of the party, and one of the workers. The workers did not manage the workplaces. Management was tied in with the party, so the party's representative simply functioned as another representative of management. This is not the same thing as an authentic workers council. In an authentic workers councils the workers collectively have the power to run the place. If there are any managers, they are elected. The Communist party/state was never challenged, unlike in the Hungarian revolution.

Its not the way you say it was...

As the Cultural Revolution progressed, managers and full-time cadre in all industrial enterprises were required to work on the shop floors on a regular or rotating basis. Those with intellectual backgrounds were given training in a particular skill. Members of in-plant revolutionary committees, as well as their administrative staff, participated in labor and made regular visits to the shop floor to assess conditions and make decisions. “Triple combinations” of workers, technicians and administrators were organized to solve technical problems and make innovations at the point of production.

Also, you work on the assumption that the party cadre did not serve the workers. Which is inevitable in some places, but it surely wasnt true in every factory, nor in most.

MarxSchmarx

22nd January 2010, 06:01

Syndicat:

MarxS:

MarxS:

I think not. In the Hungarian revolution workers took over factories and built workers councils and a workers militia. Nothing like that occurred during the cultural revolution.
I think not. In the Hungarian revolution workers took over factories and built workers councils and a workers militia. Nothing like that occurred during the cultural revolution.

This is not true. The radicals took over Shanghai during the cultural revolution, and proceeded to make their demands very clear to Beijing. The party appartchniks were forced to agree to a detente on the very real threat that a new uprising would arise out of Shanghai. The Hungarian workers may have taken over their factories, and appealed to the west for salvation, but they never seriously threatened their masters in Moscow to the negotiating table. It was out of the threat of a "Shanghai commune" that the workers movement at the height of the cultural revolution was coopted by the party bureaucracy. But the only reason the workers movement was entertained at all was because it had proven, to the CCP, a threat that could not be contained by force alone. This is in stark contrast to the situation in eastern Europe.

Further,

What happened in workplaces is that a three person committee was created for purposes of control. This consisted of one representative of management, one of the party, and one of the workers. The workers did not manage the workplaces. Management was tied in with the party, so the party's representative simply functioned as another representative of management. This is not the same thing as an authentic workers council. In an authentic workers councils the workers collectively have the power to run the place. If there are any managers, they are elected. The Communist party/state was never challenged, unlike in the Hungarian revolution.

The difference, of course, is that after the cultural revolution, in many workplaces the workers still had a seat at the table. This cannot be said for Hungary.

But this just inflames sectarian tension. Let me suggest how we move beyond this.

Ultimately, I agree with you that the worker's movements were brutally suppressed in both China and the Eastern bloc by bureaucratic apparatchniks. And we are in agreement that in both cases, "Leninism" was used as an excuse to to advance an essentially rightist agenda. What I suggest, however, is that the workers in China managed to get more out of these basically autonomous struggles than their comrades in eastern Europe. Whatever the cause of this curious result, the point is that working people realize bullshit in sheep's clothing when they see it. And we should never lose sight of that fact.

syndicat

22nd January 2010, 07:31

But the only reason the workers movement was entertained at all was because it had proven, to the CCP, a threat that could not be contained by force alone.

This is still roughly the situation today. Now the CCP has allowed capitalism to flourish within China and also makes its deals to deliver a repressed working class as sweatshop labor to foreign capitalists.

In recent years the workers have fought valiantly to break out of this box. There have been between 30,000 and 50,000 strikes and protests annually. What this massive upsurge in work action has forced the CCP to do is not directly use police power to break strikes, as it had been previously doing. So, now the police simply move in and cordon off the town or the area around a factory...to prevent the strikers linking up with, and communicating with, workers elsewhere.

It's a delicate business, but the upshot of the discussion is this: At no time during the cultural revolution, or prior or since, has the bureaucratic dominating class not held state power, and prior to the capitalist turn, also economic power, which it now shares with the capitalists, domestic and foreighn. The Chinese working class was always under the thumb of the bureaucratic class throughout the period of the cultural revolution, even tho it may be true that upheavals and protests forced the bureaucracy to make various concessions...as it still does from time to time.

But Maoism still defends this state power, and economic power, of the bureaucratic class, with various forms of rhetorical formulations.

This is fundamentally at odds with libertarian socialism, which holds that the working class can only emancipate itself through its own efforts, which translates into its own worker-controlled mass movement...and we can include peasantry as "workers" for purposes of this statement.

Devrim

22nd January 2010, 07:54

In the Hungarian revolution workers took over factories and built workers councils and a workers militia. Nothing like that occurred during the cultural revolution.

I totally agree with Syndicat here. In Hungry there was a workers' revolution in China there wasn't. This is the key point.

Yes it did, the cultural revolution led to a total restructuring of the way factories were run (it established a council system with descisions ratified by the workers), and a total restructuring of the education system in China. Also, the cultural revolution led to the formation of people's militias in China.

It sounds pretty much like the way factories are run in Germany today with a 'works council' with trade union participation. I am very wary of anything labbeled 'people's anyway. Look at the 'People's Liberation Army' for example. There is a world of difference between these people's militias and the workers militias set up in the Hungarian evolution, starting with the main point that the people's militias were an organ of the capitalist state.

Nope. What happened in workplaces is that a three person committee was created for purposes of control. This consisted of one representative of management, one of the party, and one of the workers. The workers did not manage the workplaces. Management was tied in with the party, so the party's representative simply functioned as another representative of management. This is not the same thing as an authentic workers council. In an authentic workers councils the workers collectively have the power to run the place. If there are any managers, they are elected. The Communist party/state was never challenged, unlike in the Hungarian revolution.Its not the way you say it was...

I think it was exactly the way he says it was. You have three representatives, one of the party (which is the state), one of the management (appointed by the state), and one of the trade unions/workers (appointed by the state). It sounds pretty much like state control to me.

Also, you work on the assumption that the party cadre did not serve the workers. Which is inevitable in some places, but it surely wasnt true in every factory, nor in most.

You, on the other hand, work on the assumption that there was something pro-working class about the Chinese Communist Party, which in my opinion is a much bigger mistake. Of course the party didn't serve the workers.

The 'Cultural Revolution' was a faction fight within the ruling elite that got a bit out of control. Mao was being pushed out of power, and attempted to mobilise 'the masses' behind a his faction within the state.

Devrim

Monkey Riding Dragon

22nd January 2010, 12:34

My thinking on this subject is that anarchists find in the Cultural Revolution a period in which, however temporarily, the Communist Party was suspended and in which, of necessity, people were unleashed in much less party-directed ways. One result is that this was a much more wild period than others. I think it's this form of revolution above all else (perhaps even more than what was actually accomplished by it) that anarchists find they can relate to. It shouldn't surprise us that anarchists would be more sympathetic to the idea of a socialist revolution lacking a coherent, functioning vanguard party at the helm, however temporarily that was the state of things. I think that's part of the beauty of the Cultural Revolution personally: it won over the sympathies of many people who otherwise wouldn't have been sympathetic to Marxism, especially in the context of the "dry" Khrushchev/Brezhnev era in the Soviet Union. Even to the casual observer who didn't grasp concepts like social-imperialism, with the Cultural Revolution China distinctly seemed to be getting somewhere while other "socialist" countries seemed to be remaining stagnant or backsliding. It brought forward the more "wild and wooly" aspects of Marxism that I think had been long neglected since the era of Lenin in a whole new way that inspired a lot of people with its revolutionary spirit. Before the Cultural Revolution, Mao's supporters typically referred to "Mao Tsetung Though" and to themselves as "Stalinists". After the Cultural Revolution, nearly all of them had adopted the term "Maoism" and called themselves "Maoists". Suddenly Mao's thinking was no longer a mere appendage of Stalin's.

But anarchists' sympathies for the Cultural Revolution stop short of truly grasping it in many respects, I think. That is, in terms of fully grasping the stakes. They simply look at this as a more spontaneous period and find in that the full concentration of their sympathies. To the anarchist, the Cultural Revolution didn't so much represent the question of the socialist road or the capitalist road, but "vanguard party or no vanguard party". More authority or less authority. In that way, I think they would tend to identify more with Lin Biao's thinking than with Mao's. (Lin Biao opposed reconstituting the party.)

LuÃs Henrique

22nd January 2010, 13:36

Maybe this?

http://antipopper.com/blog/whedon-spandex-mao-spontex/

(Just please don't get infatuated with this shit.)

Luís Henrique

syndicat

22nd January 2010, 18:38

But anarchists' sympathies for the Cultural Revolution stop short of truly grasping it in many respects, I think.

I don't know who these "anarchists" are who sympathize with the cultural revolution. This poster's conception of anarchism seems limited to some notion of "spontaneism"...a Leninist stereotype of anarchism.

The Douche

23rd January 2010, 02:54

I don't know who these "anarchists" are who sympathize with the cultural revolution. This poster's conception of anarchism seems limited to some notion of "spontaneism"...a Leninist stereotype of anarchism.

You have absolutely no clue what my conception of anarchism is.

All I am doing is trying to have a conversation about maoism as an anarchist but do it in a non-secterian way. You are here to argue against maoism as an anarchist and I am here to try and understand if there is anything positive about maoism as an anarchist.

Devrim

23rd January 2010, 09:40

All I am doing is trying to have a conversation about maoism as an anarchist but do it in a non-secterian way. You are here to argue against maoism as an anarchist and I am here to try and understand if there is anything positive about maoism as an anarchist.

I don't think it is a question of doing it in a 'non-sectarian' way. It is about understanding the, in my opinion pretty openly, anti-working class nature of Maoism.

Devrim

The Douche

24th January 2010, 01:28

I don't think it is a question of doing it in a 'non-sectarian' way. It is about understanding the, in my opinion pretty openly, anti-working class nature of Maoism.

Devrim

What exactly is it that left-communists don't find "anti-working class"?

bcbm

24th January 2010, 02:07

proletarian revolution?

24th January 2010, 02:22

You will find that Chinese anarchists had quite a lot of power before the CPC was formed, even Mao himself was quite sympathetic to anarchist ideals. In China it was very Nationalist, the strand of anarchism and I probably wouldn't count them as anarchists today. But the point is that ultimately, nationalist or not, whether they were initially part of the may 4th movement or not, they were suppressed when their actual demands came up, ie if they participated in the Shanghai commune as you would expect anarchists would, they would have been suppressed just as anyone else.

So ultimately, I really do not think that anarchism is "compatible" with maoism.

Tiktaalik

24th January 2010, 03:20

No no no no no no no no no no! Anarchism and Maoism are not the same thing at all nor are they compatible.

Fuck Mao and fuck any person that never lived under Mao but loves him oh so much. An enemy of any free-loving working person anywhere. Same shit, different boss.

Devrim

24th January 2010, 11:37

What exactly is it that left-communists don't find "anti-working class"?

Workers struggle in defence of their own interests.

Wgat exactly is it that 'anarchists' don't find "anti-working class" about the ideology of a capitalist state?

Devrim

The Douche

24th January 2010, 13:31

proletarian revolution?

I don't think I agree with that. Left communists are probably the most annoyingly secterian group on the left. How can you support the russian revolution but not the chinese revolution?

So ultimately, I really do not think that anarchism is "compatible" with maoism.

Again, this is not really what I was suggesting, that there is or can be some sort of maoist anarchism.

No no no no no no no no no no! Anarchism and Maoism are not the same thing at all nor are they compatible.

Fuck Mao and fuck any person that never lived under Mao but loves him oh so much. An enemy of any free-loving working person anywhere. Same shit, different boss.

Great post bro.:rolleyes:

Workers struggle in defence of their own interests.

Wgat exactly is it that 'anarchists' don't find "anti-working class" about the ideology of a capitalist state?

Devrim

Well pretty much all I have been discussing is the GPCR, which was undertaken by the workers/students/peasants directly, outside the control of the party. Perhaps it was a mistake to say there is some sort of paralell to be made between maoism and anarchism, and it would've been better to say the cultural revolution specifically, ought to be analyzed from an anarchist perspective, or we should have a non-secterian discussion between anarchists and maoists on the gpcr.

At no point in this discussion did I endorse a capitalist state or a "workers state".

heiss93

24th January 2010, 18:01

You might want to read some of the Soviet critiques of Maoism at leninist.biz that accuse Mao of drawing on Kropotkin, Bakunin, and Narodniks.

See Petty-Bourgeois Revolutionism (Anarchism, Trotskyism and Maoism)

http://leninist.biz/en/1970/PBR194/index.html

http://leninist.biz/en/1972/CMTTC290/index.html

BobKKKindle$

24th January 2010, 18:27

I don't think I agree with that. Left communists are probably the most annoyingly secterian group on the left. How can you support the russian revolution but not the chinese revolution?

Because one was a revolution of the working class, the other had hardly any worker involvement whatsoever, and was led by a section of the petty-bourgeoisie, who lent on the peasantry in order to capture the state and develop China's productive forces. I do support the Chinese revolution because it signified a major defeat for imperialism and also brought some degree of material security and improvement to millions of people, as a result of land reform being implemented, and China's internal turmoil being ended, but I'm not under the illusion that it was a social revolution, or a revolution that had anything to do with socialism. It was part of a larger chain of nationalist revolutions around the world, other examples being the Iraqi revolution of 1958, Nasser's coup in Egypt, and so on.

BobKKKindle$

24th January 2010, 19:03

This consisted of one representative of management, one of the party, and one of the workers.

A slight correction - the revolutionary committees contained the representatives of mass organizations, reformed cadres, and the PLA. These committees existed at the level of the individual enterprise (as well as in schools and universities) as well as at the provincial level and in almost every case it was the representatives of the PLA who held the dominant position. The first of them was declared in Heilongjiang province and after the shutting-down the the Shanghai People's Commune it was decided that they would be the only acceptable form of power seizure.

The Douche

25th January 2010, 00:58

Because one was a revolution of the working class, the other had hardly any worker involvement whatsoever, and was led by a section of the petty-bourgeoisie, who lent on the peasantry in order to capture the state and develop China's productive forces. I do support the Chinese revolution because it signified a major defeat for imperialism and also brought some degree of material security and improvement to millions of people, as a result of land reform being implemented, and China's internal turmoil being ended, but I'm not under the illusion that it was a social revolution, or a revolution that had anything to do with socialism. It was part of a larger chain of nationalist revolutions around the world, other examples being the Iraqi revolution of 1958, Nasser's coup in Egypt, and so on.

But was the GPCR not an expression of a socialist working class? They were revolutionary peasants, students, and workers, and it was largely focused in the urban areas and the universities.

BobKKKindle$

25th January 2010, 01:25

But was the GPCR not an expression of a socialist working class? They were revolutionary peasants, students, and workers, and it was largely focused in the urban areas and the universities.The GPCR is far too complex an event to be summarized in a single sentence. For a start you have to deal with the issue of chronology - what is commonly referred to as the GPCR officially lasted for around a decade but the period that is most relevant to Marxist historians and others who specialize in the experiences of working people lasted for a considerably shorter period of time, mainly the period 1966-69, which is generally regarded as the mass mobilization phase. More importantly, categories like "students and workers" tells us nothing substantial, and just putting "revolutionary" at the beginning isn't much help either. These were categories with deep internal divisions - in fact an important strategy that the Chinese state used to divide the workforce in order to maintain a high rate of exploitation was firstly the usage of legal distinctions, whereby different sections of the working class were entitled to different privileges and rights depending on what kind of enterprise they worked at and whether they were classified as permanent or temporary workers. These legal distinctions concerned the workforce as a whole but there were also efforts to divide the workforce within individual enterprises, whereby cadres and managers sought to develop political activists who were given preferential access to career opportunities and benefits, including the promise of party membership, in exchange for their loyal support, and their willingness to work for the factory security departments, which involved observing and reporting on their fellow workers. If you want to understand the events of the Cultural Revolution as far as the working class is concerned you need to begin with an understanding of these social divisions and how they shaped conflict. You also need to understand that even though the more oppressed and marginalized workers comprised the main support base for organizations such as the Workers General Headquarters in Shanghai, which was the most famous of the so-called rebel organizations, there was also a division between the leaders and the rank-and-file of these organizations, which became particularly clear during the wind of economism towards the end of 1966 when we saw that many workers took advantage of the general atmosphere of political turmoil to pursue improvements in their material conditions and were eventually condemned by rebel leaders, including Wang Hongwen himself - what is also interesting about the wind of economism is that workers frequently justified their actions by drawing on ideas and terms that had been developed by the state, so we need to think about how ideologies and discourses were open to manipulation during this period as well, and how terms like "left" and "right" were used in very different ways by different actors.

I don't want to sound like I think I know more about this than anyone else, but your statements are just far too simplistic. I can only recommend that people who are interested in the working class during the Cultural Revolution read Elizabeth Perry's 'Proletarian Power', which is a really great book on the kind of divisions I mentioned above.

Devrim

25th January 2010, 08:50

I don't think I agree with that. Left communists are probably the most annoyingly secterian group on the left. How can you support the russian revolution but not the chinese revolution?

As Bob Kindles explains above because one was a workers' revolution and one wasn't.

Well pretty much all I have been discussing is the GPCR, which was undertaken by the workers/students/peasants directly, outside the control of the party. Perhaps it was a mistake to say there is some sort of paralell to be made between maoism and anarchism, and it would've been better to say the cultural revolution specifically, ought to be analyzed from an anarchist perspective, or we should have a non-secterian discussion between anarchists and maoists on the gpcr.

At no point in this discussion did I endorse a capitalist state or a "workers state".

I think that the problem lies here. It wasn't some sort of movement undertaken by the masses outside of the party. It was the masses mobilised as part of a faction fight inside the party.

You seem to buy into all of the Maoist phraseology too. I mean GPCR! There was nothing proletarian or revolutionary about it, and very little cultural. What you refer to as great is, I suppose, your own opinion. It is up there with other Stalinist use of language such as 'Great Patriotic War'.

Devrim

The Douche

25th January 2010, 14:56

As Bob Kindles explains above because one was a workers' revolution and one wasn't.

I think my issue is that I never had much affinity for the Russian revolution either, and I don't see much difference between the russian revolution and the gpcr period of the chinese revolution. And if you disagree with the maoists (because what I have read has been maoist literature) then you ought to send me something which you think I should look over, not make petty secterian insults.

I think that the problem lies here. It wasn't some sort of movement undertaken by the masses outside of the party. It was the masses mobilised as part of a faction fight inside the party.

You seem to buy into all of the Maoist phraseology too. I mean GPCR! There was nothing proletarian or revolutionary about it, and very little cultural. What you refer to as great is, I suppose, your own opinion. It is up there with other Stalinist use of language such as 'Great Patriotic War'

Again, I am obviously open to seeing your view of the gpcr, but you need to present that view in a logical manner not just "you're wrong, moron".

Honestly, I have a lot of respect for you devrim, because you have been around the movement for quite sometime and you know your politics well, but you come off as very world weary and kind of like a bitter old man a lot of times.

KlÃ©ber

25th January 2010, 16:05

I am studying about the "GPCR" right now so I will be able to intelligently reply in about 10 weeks. In the meantime though I have some poorly thought out comments.

One thing is true about both the Russian Revolution and the Chinese Revolution, Communist Parties incubated and gave birth to capitalist, imperialist leaderships that revised Marxism and communism. The CCP was allied with the imperialist USA during the latter part of this "cultural revolution." We have to take everything CCP and CPSU say and said with a grain of salt because they betrayed the working class.

One important theoretical difference between the two revolutions, though, Lenin was clear about the distinction between state capitalism and socialism, Mao was not. Leninism had been fundamentally revised in the 1930's when Stalin declared "socialism" to exist because of the growth of an economic form that Lenin had analyzed as "state capitalism" because the managers were getting paid in excess of ten times as much as workers, not to mention the factories were still kept going by harsh labor discipline with little workplace democracy. This declaration that socialism was already there represented an abandonment of the fight against bureaucratism at home, and for world revolution abroad. I don't see how Mao could begin to correct Lenin while clinging to Stalinist revisionism and thus ignoring the existence of a nascent bourgeoisie within the party-state.

The "GPCR" did not, to my knowledge, fundamentally improve the consciousness of the working class, it did not result in any theoretical advances. The most important of which would be a realization that the PRC was not yet a socialist state. Rightists and religious leaders can do mass mobilizations around populist themes. Also, when you are reading about this period in Chinese history, beware labels, they do not necessarily correspond to the actual social position and ideology of the labeled, especially people getting suppressed/murdered while the labels were being applied. It was common practice for the CCP to label left-wing authors as "rightists" before silencing them.

Also, worst Maoist revision ever, the "class labels" that were applied after the land reforms stuck to people, even after those people changed social classes. These labels were, at one point, an accurate snapshot of social life, but they remained static, passed down to children through the male line (!) and lasted until 1976 IIRC, and they guaranteed social privileges (or discrimination). Women could effectively switch classes through "marrying up by marrying down," but men kept theirs, which reinforced the bourgeois family structure. The Maoist class label system greatly abetted the development of capitalism in China, because it allowed the top-paid party bureaucrats who lived off surplus value to officially masquerade as "workers," while the people who were officially the "bourgeoisie" were actually impoverished outcasts. I don't think the "GPCR" did anything to address this so I don't think it helped the working class gain consciousness in the fight for socialism.

BobKKKindle$

25th January 2010, 21:00

Firstly, to everyone who questions the usage of the term GPCR or puts it in quotation marks, I for one don't use the term GPCR because I agree that it was "great" or that it was a "revolution" in a strict sense of the word - I just use that expression because it's what it was called at the time, and what it's called in the academic literature, in the same way that I refer to the events of 1949 as a revolution because the term "Chinese Revolution" is a standard term for describing what happened in that year, even though I don't think there was a change in the mode of production.

it did not result in any theoretical advancesI disagree - there were lots of ways in which the GPCR increased the self-activity of the working class, as workers were able to take advantage of the political situation to seek improvements in their immediate conditions as well as to think about the nature of the society they were living in, and at each stage of its participation the working class found itself confronted by a ruling bureaucracy which had initially not wanted them participate at all, which basically tells you everything you need to know about the class structure of the PRC at this point in time or at any other point in its history. The best thing to come out of the revolution as far as theoretical development is concerned is the document 'Whither China?', which was published by an "ultra-left" organization in Hunan, Sheng-wu-lien, in 1968. The basic thesis of the organization was that China was a class society in which the cadres and government officials constituted a red capitalist class whose privileges depended on the exploitation of the proletariat and peasantry, and who had imposed revolutionary committees in order to prevent the working class from realizing the goal of the People's Commune of China, which could, according to Sheng-wu-lien, only be obtained through the destruction of the bureaucracy, and would, in the style of the Paris Commune, involve officials being democratically elected and subject to recall at all times. Sheng-wu-lien is described as a “power organ of mass dictatorship”, and the development of the revolutionary committees in place of the provincial party committee and military district command is described as a “superficial” change and a means by which the power of the bureaucracy was restored after the liberating events of 1966, due to “basic social changes” not being fulfilled. Most importantly of all, Mao is identified as responsible for the imposition of revolutionary committees, and the writers of the document announce, as if to imply a conclusion, or perhaps as an indication of the ongoing development of their theory, that his behaviour is “something which the revolutionary people find it hard to understand”, although it is not made clear whether the authors regard Mao himself as a member of the bureaucracy they seek to overthrow.

Now, this document is full of all sorts of uncertainties and inconsistencies. At the end, for example, the authors announce "Long Live Mao-Tse-tung-ism!". But that's how revolutions and the development of consciousness work, especially when workers are living under a government which tells them that it is ruling on their behalf and in their interests - things change by degrees, and working people express their grievances initially with reference to their immediate ideological and cultural context, which means they sometimes draw on some of the same language as their oppressors. What is so important about the document 'Whither China' is that we have, in embryonic form, a critique of the PRC that does not revolve around the theme an otherwise egalitarian order being infiltrated or subverted by a small number of undefinable capitalist roaders, but takes a broad definition of the ruling class and points to the Paris Commune as an example of the way forward. This development is why we cannot accept Devrim's assertion that the GPCR was just a power squabble amongst elites which workers were dragged into as if this had been the case then it would not have been necessary for the bureaucracy to resort to the PLA to crush the most radical sections of the working class and they would not have gone to such extreme lengths to suppress Sheng-wu-lien either - in the event it was publicly denounced by the leadership and its leaders executed.

I highly recommend comrades read 'Whither China?' here: http://www.marxists.de/china/sheng/index.htm

BobKKKindle$

25th January 2010, 21:07

think my issue is that I never had much affinity for the Russian revolution either, and I don't see much difference between the russian revolution and the gpcr period of the chinese revolution

Condemn both, then, instead of claiming that the GPCR was about Mao encouraging workers to take power, which it wasn't.

syndicat

25th January 2010, 23:16

the revolutionary committees contained the representatives of mass organizations, reformed cadres, and the PLA.

Maybe you're talking about different committees than I was. Anyway, what were these "mass organizations"? If the All China Federation of Trade Unions, then you're talking about a pseudo-mass organization controlled by management and party cadre. So what you have here is not really any actual workers on these committees and no actual control by the workers, through, say, democratic assemblies, election of delegates, etc.

All of this is consistent with power remaining firmly in the hands of the Chinese coordinator or bureaucratic class, which includes the party, managers, and PLA officers.

BobKKKindle$

25th January 2010, 23:36

Anyway, what were these "mass organizations"?Primarily the organizations which emerged during the first two years of the Cultural Revolution, such as the Workers General Headquarters in Shanghai, although after the attacks on the power seizures and the wind of economism the leadership sought to make sure that both "rebel" and "conservative" organizations had representation on the committees whilst also making sure that the PLA retained the leading role. In 1968, for example, the revolutionary committee of the Bureau of Light Industry in Shanghai had 109 working personnel (i.e. the people who actually ran the committees) of whom only 20 were former workers, the rest being people who had held cadre positions in various agencies of the Bureau before the Cultural Revolution (Perry, 1997). The ACFTU was actually dissolved during the mass mobilization phase Cultural Revolution, and yes, you do seem to be referring to the industrial structure that was created after the CPC came to power, before the Cultural Revolution, which did allocate a space to unions. You don't need to tell me that these organizations or the committees on which they were represented weren't democratic, I'm not a Maoist, so I broadly agree with you there. A little less arrogance might be in order.

syndicat

26th January 2010, 02:15

You don't need to tell me that these organizations or the committees on which they were represented weren't democratic, I'm not a Maoist, so I broadly agree with you there. A little less arrogance might be in order.

It's not "arrogant" to state what the facts are. I know you're not a Maoist but a critic of Maoism. I think you're being too defensive. Also, Bob, I've avoided calling you names so it would be nice if you did likewise.

Sendo

26th January 2010, 03:17

Devrim

26th January 2010, 08:41

And if you disagree with the maoists (because what I have read has been maoist literature) then you ought to send me something which you think I should look over, not make petty secterian insults.

Again, I am obviously open to seeing your view of the gpcr, but you need to present that view in a logical manner not just "you're wrong, moron".

Honestly, I have a lot of respect for you devrim, because you have been around the movement for quite sometime and you know your politics well, but you come off as very world weary and kind of like a bitter old man a lot of times.

I am sorry if I sometimes come across as a bit abrupt. I certainly don't mean to, and I don't think I go as far as calling people 'morons'. I don't want it to seem at all like that at all.

Sometimes you get deeply into a discussion, and sometimes you just make a few basic assertions. It is about the time and enrgy you have to put into something, and maybe also about your mood on the day.

Do I really sound that 'bitter'?

And if you disagree with the maoists (because what I have read has been maoist literature) then you ought to send me something which you think I should look over,

We lay out our general approach to Maoism in this series of articles:

China's "revolution" of 1948: a link in the chain of imperialist war;
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/081_china.htm
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/084_china_2.html
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/094_china_part3.html

I think my issue is that I never had much affinity for the Russian revolution either, and I don't see much difference between the russian revolution and the gpcr period of the chinese revolution.

What causes your lack of 'affinity' with the Russian revolution?

Devrim

Devrim

26th January 2010, 08:53

BobKKKindle$

26th January 2010, 19:49

The Cultural Revolution certainly has all the hallmarks of an intraparty faction fight, not least that it was stopped after Liu Shao-chi was expelled.The Cultural Revolution began as a factional conflict but you can't possibly appreciate events like the wind of economism as well as the attacks that were eventually carried out against the working class (not just in terms of workers being made to back to work and students serving as scabs when they refused to do so, the PLA was sent in to physically crush rebel organizations) if you assume that it was just a factional conflict for its entire duration and that the working class didn't take advantage of the political situation to pursue its own interests, first in the economic sphere and then by developing a revolutionary critique of the PRC in the form of 'Whither China?'. It's also important to acknowledge that factional conflict was not just about elites struggling against each other, it was also used as an ideological weapon to distract the working class and make it seem as if their oppressors were limited to a small number of individuals within the leadership, as oppossed to the whole of the party and state bureaucracy - in April of 1968 at the end of the mass mobilization phase, when workers and radical students were resisting the PLA, the campaign against Liu Shaoqi was intensified in an attempt to divert the attention of workers away from the basic structure of Chinese society (at this time, the most radical sections of the class were coming to the conclusion that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way that China's government and economy were organized and that the problem was not limited to a small group of individuals at the top being "revisionists" - Sheng-wu-lien is obviously the clearest example of this tendency) and towards a specific individual who could be cited as responsible for the injustices of the past. The narrowing of the target also took place alongside an intensification of Mao's personality cult, and Zhou Enlai also made efforts to characterize 95% of the cadres as progressive in order to prevent further challenges to political stability, with this group being described as the “backbone of the struggle to seize power”. In this way, if you want to understand factionalism you have to place it in a broader context and acknowledge that the GPCR did involve workers struggling for their interests against the wishes of the party...and as part of that, consistent with what I mentioned above, you also have to acknowledge that worker resistance was often articulated or justified in terms of the language of the state, through the discourse of "revisionism" and "capitalist roaders", even though these struggles led to the authority of the state and the ruling class being threatened.

As I said, that's how struggle and ideology work - people don't become socialist overnight, they initially express their grievances through the ideologies and discourses that are most readily available, which is why, throughout history, peasants have often express their resistance to feudal exploitation with reference to ideas like religion, for example, and other ideologies which are also used as instruments to legitimize class division and exploitation.

I've never got the impression that you and other Left Communists appreciate the complexities of ideology, from the way you talk about religion and nationalism.

How much were these struggles a product of the international wave of class struggle, and how much were they a product of the cultural revolution?The answer is that it had elements of both. In other state capitalist societies where the authority of the state had not been diminished the ruling class did not find it difficult to crush cases of workers resistance, as in Czechoslovakia in 1968, but in China, because the GPCR had created a political vacuum, the struggles of workers were able to go on longer, and in China the theoretical critique of the regime was able to advance further than elsewhere.

BobKKKindle$

26th January 2010, 19:53

There is so much to read up on the GPCR. Mobo Gao, Dongping Han, and study groups online.

They're all pro-Mao hacks, though, there is a wealth of material from social and cultural historians on the GPCR that's much more interesting and nuanced.

China's "revolution" of 1948: a link in the chain of imperialist war;Your press might want to do their research better; China's revolution was in 1949.

In fact, the first of those articles (and presumably the others as well) is full of inaccuracies.

Turinbaar

26th January 2010, 23:59

Maoism is basically peasent lead revolution aiming for stalinism mixing communist teleology with the Art of War. There is no hope for this ideology, and its comical that it should be popular among anarchists and chomskiites, as it negated every principle it once pretended to stand for, from it's alliance with the Fascist KMT before it had even taken power, to it's religious cult inspired by the state propaganda campaign, which is the key factor in understanding the Cultural Revolution.

Mao had lost most of his power within the Party, and in an attempt to regain it, claimed that the Party and the Red army had become a capitalized aristocracy (which it basically had) and needed to be purged by the youth of the nation. It was a cynical populist coup that not only wiped out all opposing politicians, but also all opposing ideologies. Countless books and religious scrolls were burned as heretical to Mao Zedong-Thought, the system of DoubleThink that had established itself as the de facto state religion. This was a repetition of the Chinese tradition of the Emperors of the Qin and Han dynasties who destroyed the works of Confucius and Lao tzu upon their rise to power, as a way of censoring heresy. Maoism is nothing more than an exploded reactionary cult that is today more resembling of fascism than socialism.

Devrim

27th January 2010, 11:55

The Cultural Revolution began as a factional conflict but you can't possibly appreciate events like the wind of economism as well as the attacks that were eventually carried out against the working class (not just in terms of workers being made to back to work and students serving as scabs when they refused to do so, the PLA was sent in to physically crush rebel organizations) if you assume that it was just a factional conflict for its entire duration and that the working class didn't take advantage of the political situation to pursue its own interests, first in the economic sphere and then by developing a revolutionary critique of the PRC in the form of 'Whither China?'.

That the working class may launch struggles at times when the bourgeoisie is divided is nothing new though. Of course, workers will 'take advantage' of situations. I suppose it depends as to how you define the cultural revolution.

It's also important to acknowledge that factional conflict was not just about elites struggling against each other, it was also used as an ideological weapon to distract the working class and make it seem as if their oppressors were limited to a small number of individuals within the leadership, as oppossed to the whole of the party and state bureaucracy

Again, this is something that we see happening all the time.

In this way, if you want to understand factionalism you have to place it in a broader context and acknowledge that the GPCR did involve workers struggling for their interests against the wishes of the party...and as part of that, consistent with what I mentioned above,...

I suppose it depends on how you situate these workers struggles, whether within a specifically Chinese context, or as part of an international wave of struggles, which erupted across the world towards the end of the sixities with the return of the economic crisis, and the end of the post-war expansion. If you put it in a specifically Chinese context then what you were saying might make a lot of sense. If you look at it an international context then the cultural revolution merely becomes the specific background against, which the struggles are played out.

you also have to acknowledge that worker resistance was often articulated or justified in terms of the language of the state, through the discourse of "revisionism" and "capitalist roaders", even though these struggles led to the authority of the state and the ruling class being threatened.

But as Marx said, the dominant ideology is that of the ruling class. Why would we be surprised if the working class expresses itself in these terms. We can trace this tendency back to the earliest communist, for example in England Gerald Whinstanley and the diggers and their use of religious language.

It is funny that you should say this though because when a strike recently used some of the language of the ruling class, the particularly horrible slogan of 'British jobs for British workers', you were one of the first to jump to condemn it instead of trying to look at the dynamic behind it. The strikes at Linsey certainly were not similar to the Powell strike.

As I said, that's how struggle and ideology work - people don't become socialist overnight, they initially express their grievances through the ideologies and discourses that are most readily available, which is why, throughout history, peasants have often express their resistance to feudal exploitation with reference to ideas like religion, for example, and other ideologies which are also used as instruments to legitimize class division and exploitation.

Yes, this is very true.

I've never got the impression that you and other Left Communists appreciate the complexities of ideology, from the way you talk about religion and nationalism.

I don't know what ideas you think that we hold about religion. The Turkish section of the ICC has never written specifically about religion in its press. The fact that we do here is more about the obsession with Islam here on Revleft, and people's defence of Islam as an 'progressive' thing. It isn't.

Nor do I have any idea about how we behave towards people who are Muslims. Obviously many of my friends are believers and I don't spend all my time denouncing religion. Of course, it is all around us, and we have to interact with it. Maybe you would be surprised to hear that members of our organisation have fasted on behalf of elderly grandparents during Ramazan, and go to family events that are 'Haremlik' and 'Salamlik'.

In fact we recognise that the working class holds all sorts of bourgeois ideas, and that they need to be challenged. I was chatting with striking fascist workers the other day on a picket line. We don't not talk to people because they are religious, nationalistic, or even fascists.

I have recently had striking Kurdish nationalist workers staying in my house, and we do discuss with people.

What we say is that these ideologies do not offer any way forward for the workers' struggle.

Devrim

Devrim

27th January 2010, 12:00

They're all pro-Mao hacks, though, there is a wealth of material from social and cultural historians on the GPCR that's much more interesting and nuanced.

Your press might want to do their research better; China's revolution was in 1949.

It is obviously a typo as we get it right later in the text, and my (hard) copy, is correct. A pretty embarrassing one though.

In fact, the first of those articles (and presumably the others as well) is full of inaccuracies.

This is a fairly easy line to come out with after we have just made a terrible mistake. Would you care to point them out.

Devrim

KlÃ©ber

27th January 2010, 20:25

Moment of silence please.

BobKKKindle$ since I may never speak to you again, I gotta say.. what a waste, man. I don't know about the dispute, I don't even know what ComradeMan's politics are. But from looking at the conversation between you and him, the only impression I get is that you fucked up. If he really is so bad, I'll never know why, at least not from your last words on RevLeft.

You were a good comrade, a good ally against revisionism. But you're like Qiu Jin, you threw yourself away, and now the fight will be harder without you. Even if I think the SWP(UK) has some problematic positions and perhaps a confusion about the difference between military and political support.. your knowledge on Chinese history was always helpful and your departure is a real loss.

Thanks for linking us to the Shengwulian stuff. Good luck and solidarity.

What do people think about the Shanghai People's Commune?

Sendo

28th January 2010, 06:01

glad to see bourgeois history is alive and well, that the GPCR was just factional fighting. For the common Chinese, who, when interviewed today, speak fondly of the 1960s and 1970s, the farming communes which finally got the funding for factories and schools, tell them it was only factionalism.

There have been factions yes, but what were they? Leftists who wanted to make college universal and include work programs for students, and the rightist who wanted to use colleges to indoctrinate people with bourgeois elitism, make them secure in the better-off cities, and have useless entrance exams. ("bricks" was a nickname for the old high schools. The skills to pass the exams were useless in real life but could get your foot in the door. Likewise a brick can break a window to break into a room, but is useless once inside.)

So what if the personality cult was used in arguments and in political posters?

The best argument I've heard against Mao was Kleber saying that the class labels were inherited for too long and I agree. Mao made several mistakes which could make people embittered and look to covertly or overtly exact revenge on his followers and on Chinese leftism.

black magick hustla

28th January 2010, 07:55

bailey_187

6th February 2010, 19:39

There is no hope for this ideology.

Nepal, India, Philippines would like a word with you...

alliance with the Fascist KMT before it had even taken power.

Unfortunatly, the real world doesnt allow everyone to be as principled as wanky Orwellite-Hitchenites like you. Japan was defeated, then the KMT was overthrown.

Mao had lost most of his power within the Party, and in an attempt to regain it, claimed that the Party and the Red army had become a capitalized aristocracy (which it basically had) and needed to be purged by the youth of the nation.
So Mao's accusation thrown at the Party were true, BUT he himself must be wrong because he was a Stalinist init

It was a cynical populist coup that not only wiped out all opposing politicians, but also all opposing ideologies. Countless books and religious scrolls were burned as heretical to Mao Zedong-Thought, the system of DoubleThink that had established itself as the de facto state religion..

According to a woman who lived in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution, her neighborhood library had a variety of literature from the West. Recent editions of books had brief introductions which provided a political context and discussion of the author’s viewpoint. Feudal literature was on the shelves in order to help readers learn about the old society.
Some of Us; Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era, eds. Xueping Zhong, Wang Zheng and Bai Di, 2001 pg.171

This was a repetition of the Chinese tradition of the Emperors of the Qin and Han dynasties who destroyed the works of Confucius and Lao tzu upon their rise to power, as a way of censoring heresy. .

Those crazy Orientals always burning books, when will they learn!