Can you be a Maoist, but not a Stalinist?

[Uppercut]

Is there anyway you can acknowledge Mao's ideas, but dislike Stalinism? I just got finished reading the Little Red Book and I'm in nearly perfect agreement with his ideas. However, I'm not a fan of Lysenkoism, which apparently, was all over the USSR and China, and led to millions of people being brainwashed into believing the guy was some kind of genius.

But if I switch over to Trotskyism or any other ideology, then I'll have to stop my support for all ongoing revolutions in India, Nepal, Peru, etc., along with denouncing Huey P. Newton and the original Black Panthers, whom I admire very much.

I don't know what to think anymore, and I'm too weak-minded to think for myself. So please tell me what I should believe in (no sarcasm intended). So was everyone an opportunist dictator except for Trotsky? Or did Mao actually care about the people? I keep getting different info from different sources, and seeing as how I've never lived there, I can't have a personal opinion.

[zimmerwald1915]

I'm too weak-minded to think for myself.
No you're not.


Or did Mao actually care about the people?
Perhaps he did. Didn't mean his politics weren't shit though.

[Uppercut]

Perhaps he did. Didn't mean his politics weren't shit though.

But I like the idea of establishing communes and letting the workers democratically run them, along with the party and state helping them out. That's pretty much what Mao did, as I can see.

Plus, the barefoot doctors idea was a huge accomplishment, IMO.

[mykittyhasaboner]

So was everyone an opportunist dictator except for Trotsky?Don't ever believe this. You can insert any name in place of Trotsky and the same thing goes.

People can be opportunists, people can even in fact act like "dictators"--but there is no revolutionary who is better than all the rest, who stands alone in the light while others are all [insert pejorative here].

To edit this, I would also add that just because you prefer one tendencies positions over another, doesn't mean you can't support the actions or ideas of people from opposing tendencies.

For example I dislike 'Trotskyism' but I support Trotsky as an overall positive figure in history for doing things like being one of the leaders of the Red Army and such.

[zimmerwald1915]

But I like the idea of establishing communes and letting the workers democratically run them, along with the party and state helping them out. That's pretty much what Mao did, as I can see.
And I don't like your use of the passive voice in the first sentence. Who was establishing communes? Certainly not the workers themselves, because the workers wouldn't have to "let" themselves democratically run them: they would have seized that right. So it must have been someone else...perhaps, going by the last sentence I quoted, Mao. And that schema is totally opposed to the Marxist schema where it is the workers themselves that make revolution, not the state that creates "democratic" structures which it then hands off to the workers in a paternalistic fashion.

[red cat]

Is there anyway you can acknowledge Mao's ideas, but dislike Stalinism? I just got finished reading the Little Red Book and I'm in nearly perfect agreement with his ideas. However, I'm not a fan of Lysenkoism, which apparently, was all over the USSR and China, and led to millions of people being brainwashed into believing the guy was some kind of genius.

But if I switch over to Trotskyism or any other ideology, then I'll have to stop my support for all ongoing revolutions in India, Nepal, Peru, etc., along with denouncing Huey P. Newton and the original Black Panthers, whom I admire very much.

I don't know what to think anymore, and I'm too weak-minded to think for myself. So please tell me what I should believe in (no sarcasm intended). So was everyone an opportunist dictator except for Trotsky? Or did Mao actually care about the people? I keep getting different info from different sources, and seeing as how I've never lived there, I can't have a personal opinion.

As opposed to the various brands of revisionists, true communist organizations effectively exchange knowledge through actually examining each others' field-work. The correct history of the Chinese revolution can be told only by the CPs whose members had actually gone to China to observe, learn and practice.

Some of the parties that are fighting protracted peoples' wars today can boast of such comrades who were members. That they are not distorting history is indicated by their success in confronting imperialism, feudalism and comprador capitalism in their own countries; because in general a wrong historical line always leads to a wrong political line.

There is nothing called Stalinism. Stalin only applied Marxism-Leninism to the USSR and enriched it quantitatively. Maoists hold that Stalin made many mistakes. However his contribution to the construction of socialism far exceeded his shortcomings. So all Maoists uphold Stalin as a communist.

[bricolage]

Some people seem to act as if politics is like picking a football team.

You don't have to 'support' anyone or anything and you don't have to subordinate your views to an ideology. You are a human being and you have a mind of your own.

[zimmerwald1915]

There is nothing called Stalinism. Stalin only applied Marxism-Leninism to the USSR and enriched it quantitatively. Maoists hold that Stalin made many mistakes. However his contribution to the construction of socialism far exceeded his shortcomings. So all Maoists uphold Stalin as a communist.
That's a misreading of history: what is today called "Stalinism" was the name applied to the centrist current of the Communist International by its political opponents within that International, in the same way that the Left Fraction of the PCI were labeled Bordigists, in the same way that the Left Opposition were labeled Trotskyists, and the same way that the Right Opposition were labeled Bukharinists. Saying that Stalinism was not a real political current is simply not factual.

[red cat]

That's a misreading of history: what is today called "Stalinism" was the name applied to the centrist current of the Communist International by its political opponents within that International, in the same way that the Left Fraction of the PCI were labeled Bordigists, in the same way that the Left Opposition were labeled Trotskyists, and the same way that the Right Opposition were labeled Bukharinists. Saying that Stalinism was not a real political current is simply not factual.

Anyone can give names to anything. Maoists don't recognize such arbitrary naming. We view every kind of politics as either communist or anti-communist. The former we name after its successive qualitative developments. Hence we call it Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

[danyboy27]

Is there anyway you can acknowledge Mao's ideas, but dislike Stalinism? I just got finished reading the Little Red Book and I'm in nearly perfect agreement with his ideas. However, I'm not a fan of Lysenkoism, which apparently, was all over the USSR and China, and led to millions of people being brainwashed into believing the guy was some kind of genius.

But if I switch over to Trotskyism or any other ideology, then I'll have to stop my support for all ongoing revolutions in India, Nepal, Peru, etc., along with denouncing Huey P. Newton and the original Black Panthers, whom I admire very much.

I don't know what to think anymore, and I'm too weak-minded to think for myself. So please tell me what I should believe in (no sarcasm intended). So was everyone an opportunist dictator except for Trotsky? Or did Mao actually care about the people? I keep getting different info from different sources, and seeing as how I've never lived there, I can't have a personal opinion.
fuck tendencies, if you think an idea is good, who fucking care about the guy who put it foward?

you cant be 100% in full support and agreement with a person and his idea, it would mean you would have no spine.

there is no need to be a fanatical narrow minded individual, be alive and be free.

if you think some idea of mao make sense, well fine, but there is no need to start considering yourself a maoist for that.

dont limit yourself.

[Outinleftfield]

Personally I don't trust in any kind of [name]ism. People can have some good ideas, but saying "that person was the right one" and revering them dogmatically like a god is not the answer.

[Kléber]

Well, Mao wasn't exactly a fan of Stalin either, he had some voluntarist economic policies and theory of a "bureaucratic capitalist class" that led him to be denounced by Moscow as a "Trotskyite." Trotskyists aren't against the revolution anywhere they just want it to have a proletarian character. You should check out Trotsky's writings on imperialism and China. Also, disowning Stalin doesn't mean historically dissociating yourself from anti colonial struggles. The Panthers were homophobic and sexist too, but you can still appreciate what they represented while criticizing the negative aspects.

[bailey_187]

Maoists have many criticisms of Stalin. Some much more than others.

I think the least "pro-stalin" Maoists would be the Kasama people. Read some of their articles on the history of the USSR/Stalin on their site and see if you agree.

You could also try reading the RCP's/Bob Avakians writings on the USSR/Stalin

[Little Bobby Hutton]

Well, Mao wasn't exactly a fan of Stalin either, he had some voluntarist economic policies and theory of a "bureaucratic capitalist class" that led him to be denounced by Moscow as a "Trotskyite." Trotskyists aren't against the revolution anywhere they just want it to have a proletarian character. You should check out Trotsky's writings on imperialism and China. Also, disowning Stalin doesn't mean historically dissociating yourself from anti colonial struggles. The Panthers were homophobic and sexist too, but you can still appreciate what they represented while criticizing the negative aspects.

They were so sexist they supported millitant feminism and had hundreds if not thousands of sisters involved in the struggle

They were so homophobic they united with the gay liberation movement

You are either A) stupid B) In the dark C) A liar

Good day

Little Bobby

[khad]

Stalinism.
Don't spam the learning forum. This is a verbal warning.

[bailey_187]

They were so sexist they supported millitant feminism and had hundreds if not thousands of sisters involved in the struggle

They were so homophobic they united with the gay liberation movement

You are either A) stupid B) In the dark C) A liar

Good day

Little Bobby

I think the leadership obviously held many progressive views, however i'm guessing Kleber is saying about how many rank and file Panthers probably still held reactionary views.

[red cat]

I think the leadership obviously held many progressive views, however i'm guessing Kleber is saying about how many rank and file Panthers probably still held reactionary views.

But this is common to all revolutionary movements. Revolutionaries embrace class politics gradually through struggle; and this is a long process.

[danyboy27]

But this is common to all revolutionary movements. Revolutionaries embrace class politics gradually through struggle; and this is a long process.

there is nothing wrong in cticizing those aspect inside a movement.

[red cat]

there is nothing wrong in cticizing those aspect inside a movement.

When the positive aspects of a revolutionary movement far exceed its negative aspects, every revolutionary should primarily uphold the movement and then criticize it.

[danyboy27]

When the positive aspects of a revolutionary movement far exceed its negative aspects, every revolutionary should primarily uphold the movement and then criticize it.

i will never censor myself for the sake of any movements.

[Nolan]

Assuming "stalinism" means Marxism-Leninism, then no.

[red cat]

i will never censor myself for the sake of any movements.

Good. Some people happen to censor themselves only when the positive aspects of a revolutionary movement are concerned though.

[danyboy27]

Good. Some people happen to censor themselves only when the positive aspects of a revolutionary movement are concerned though.
what do you mean?

[red cat]

what do you mean?

I mean that I appreciate your decision of not censoring yourself. Just take care that you do not get selective about it. ;)

[Paul Cockshott]

And I don't like your use of the passive voice in the first sentence. Who was establishing communes? Certainly not the workers themselves, because the workers wouldn't have to "let" themselves democratically run them: they would have seized that right. So it must have been someone else...perhaps, going by the last sentence I quoted, Mao. And that schema is totally opposed to the Marxist schema where it is the workers themselves that make revolution, not the state that creates "democratic" structures which it then hands off to the workers in a paternalistic fashion.
The communes were set up by the peasants, read some of Hintons accounts.

[danyboy27]

I mean that I appreciate your decision of not censoring yourself. Just take care that you do not get selective about it. ;)

dont worry, i really dont care about the ideology when its time to citicize an action.

[Cooler Reds Will Prevail]

I'm a Maoist, not a Stalinist. I don't view Stalin as a primarily positive figure in the history of the ICM and most of what I take from Mao is in his ruptures with Stalin.

But yeah, check out stuff at Kasama about Stalin and read the comments after the articles. Here's one you may find interesting (http://kasamaproject.org/2009/07/13/on-socialist-methods-and-the-stalin-era-purges/).

[Jacobinist]

"Stalin only applied Marxism-Leninism to the USSR and enriched it quantitatively" - Red

What a fallacy. Marxist, Im pretty sure we know what it means. Leninism is the belief in the revolutionary vanguard. And Stalinism is the creation of a command/top-down bureaucracy.

[chegitz guevara]

They were so sexist they supported millitant feminism and had hundreds if not thousands of sisters involved in the struggle

They were so homophobic they united with the gay liberation movement

You are either A) stupid B) In the dark C) A liar

Good day

Little Bobby

"The proper position for women in the movement is prone." That was the statement of a Black Panther leader at an SDS meeting. The Panthers may have had thousands of women working in the Party, but that doesn't mean the organization wasn't horrendously sexist. They may have united with the gay liberation movement, but that doesn't mean they allowed homosexuals in their organization.

[red cat]

"Stalin only applied Marxism-Leninism to the USSR and enriched it quantitatively" - Red

What a fallacy. Marxist, Im pretty sure we know what it means. Leninism is the belief in the revolutionary vanguard. And Stalinism is the creation of a command/top-down bureaucracy.

Writing in bold letters does not make the content true.

[Cooler Reds Will Prevail]

"The proper position for women in the movement is prone." That was the statement of a Black Panther leader at an SDS meeting. The Panthers may have had thousands of women working in the Party, but that doesn't mean the organization wasn't horrendously sexist. They may have united with the gay liberation movement, but that doesn't mean they allowed homosexuals in their organization.

That was stated by Stokely Carmichael, who at that time was only a member of SNCC if I recall.

However, overall you are correct. I uphold most of the legacy of the Panthers but the rank-and-file of the organization often was not at the level of consciousness of the leadership. Huey spoke out against anti-gay bigotry, but that doesn't mean that the rest of the organization felt the same way, and largely it didn't. Eldridge Cleaver was very homophobic from what I recall.

[Jacobinist]

"Writing in bold letters does not make the content true." - Red

COP-OUT.

[Saorsa]

Eldridge Cleaver was a homophobe, read Soul on Ice and it's very clear. He was also a convicted serial rapist... while people should be allowed to move on from their past, that's one thing that I find very hard to forgive.

We can uphold the Panthers for the inspiring revolutionary work they did as well as their personal bravery, but we have to recognise their flaws. Women in the party could only date men that were in the party - this rule did not apply to men who could date whoever they wanted. Every movement is coloured by the context in which it emerges, and the ICM has had to deal with a lot of ingrained sexism, racism and homophobia.

[red cat]

dont worry, i really dont care about the ideology when its time to citicize an action.

We will see. A thumb up in advance anyway :thumbup1:

[Saorsa]

And on topic, I uphold the Soviet Union's achievements under Stalin's leadership, and there were many. There was no previous experience of building a socialist state other than the brief experience in Paris, so it is understandable that plenty of mistakes were made and ultimately it failed. I do not think Stalin's contributions to our movement were espescially positive, and I think he played a leading role in creating the conditions for the destruction of socialism in Russia. But we should not dismiss the achievements.

Learn from the mistakes, build on the successes. That's always been my approach to the past.

[scarletghoul]

Yeah Maoists generally have a mixed attitude to Stalin, not being afraid to uphold his great achievements or to criticise his great faults.

Eldridge Cleaver was very homophobic from what I recall.
Eldridge Cleaver was always a bit of a nutter, even if he done a few good things in his long and strange career (from serial rapist to born-again mormon). Huey Newton eventually wrote an essay accusing Cleaver of being a repressed homosexual. Certainly Cleaver is a very interesting person, I'd love to read an analytical biography of him.

[RED DAVE]

But if I switch over to Trotskyism or any other ideology, then I'll have to stop my support for all ongoing revolutions in India, Nepal, Peru, etc., along with denouncing Huey P. Newton and the original Black Panthers, whom I admire very much.Where did you get these strange ideas?

(1) Trotskyists give critical support to all ongoing revolutions.

(2) US Trotskyist groups, including the IS, of which I was a member, worked actively with the Panthers while being critical of them.

RED DAVE

[Chambered Word]

But if I switch over to Trotskyism or any other ideology, then I'll have to stop my support for all ongoing revolutions in India, Nepal, Peru, etc., along with denouncing Huey P. Newton and the original Black Panthers, whom I admire very much.

Been listening to red cat again? :rolleyes:

But seriously, don't think that because you like x ideas of y leader you also have to like z ideas of y leader, or revere the leader as some kind of saviour of humanity. You are a human being with free will and a mind of your own, keep it that way.

[Glenn Beck]

i will never censor myself for the sake of any movements.

Your narcissism is more important than the success of a mass movement?

[Ismail]

Maoists who are "anti-Stalinist" are lameasses who shout about the dreaded evils of "dogmatism" and practice sloganeering and general phraseology in their attempts to sound more revolutionary than Marx himself. This fits both Kasama and the RCPUSA, and since the former came out of the latter it's not surprising. Not one "Stalinist" claims that Stalin was a flawless human being who was expected to take hold of every situation and come out sweating pure proletarian gold. The practice of "not doing what Stalin did" helped foster the Mao cult ("Do what Mao's doing instead) which became significantly more ridiculous (and actively encouraged by Mao himself) than Stalin's ever could be.

It's easy to say "Oh, well, Stalin made serious mistakes" when up against every capitalist ideologue ever. It's not quite so easy to do basic reading and/or research. Instead everything gets pinned on Stalin and the material conditions at the time were ignored. I wish people were more critical of the 1917-1924 period in regards to socialist construction, not because "Oh, well, Lenin made serious mistakes" or whatever but because the situation inherited by Stalin wasn't a particularly awesome one of socialism and butterflies, and a significant undermining of workers control was already in place by then and never really substantially changed throughout the Stalin period. Otherwise you just get a Khrushchev moment where it's "X person made serious mistakes so let's never mention him again"* and everyone nods in agreement without any actual study or research done, just inane emotionalism which so skillfully played into the hands of the Soviet revisionists who ended any sort of socialist construction and went en route towards state-capitalism (which both Mao and Enver Hoxha noted).

* After 1956 Stalin was pretty much never mentioned in Soviet texts. Even a 1972 Soviet critique of Trotskyism I have doesn't mention his name once, and it goes through the whole "Great Terror" period. Any time Stalin was mentioned in a book it was usually along the lines of "Stalin was still a Marxist and socialism was still built, but it was in spite of him and his anti-Leninist policies."

[red cat]

What makes you think that


1) The RCP USA and Kassama are "anti-Stalinist" ?

2) The Mao cult was actively encouraged by Mao ?

[Ismail]

1. The RCPUSA and Kasama actively disdain Stalin and condemn him as "dogmatic." Does the RCPUSA logo of "Marx-Lenin-Mao" ring a bell?

2. I fail to see how an entire movement based on his personality cult (the GPCR) could form and be led by him and yet at this same time not be personally promoted by him. Stalin's cult was promoted by others, as anti-Stalin Marxists noted (e.g. Milovan Djilas), and Stalin himself didn't care for the cult and at times openly disdained it (as noted by his daughter and Molotov in his memoirs). At this same time "Stalinism" never became an ideology of the state; there was no "Joseph Stalin Thought" or whatever. Mao led the GPCR, the promotion of "Mao is so awesome, is revolutionizing Marxism, and is the best thing since Adam" would probably not pass if he was genuinely interested in stopping it.

[red cat]

2. I fail to see how an entire movement based on his personality cult (the GPCR) could form and be led by him and yet at this same time not be personally promoted by him.
Why do you fail to see this in case of specifically Mao but not Stalin ?



Stalin's cult was promoted by others, as anti-Stalin Marxists noted (e.g. Milovan Djilas), and Stalin himself didn't care for the cult and at times openly disdained it (as noted by his daughter and Molotov in his memoirs).Unfortunately, anti-Maoist Marxists (!!!) do not favour Mao that much. So the best I can provide is this:


I spoke to Comrade Lin Piao and some of the things he said were not very accurate. For example he said that a genius only appears in the world once in a few centuries and in China once in a few millennia. This just doesn’t fit the facts. Marx and Engels were contemporaries, and not one century had elapsed before we had Lenin and Stalin, so how could you say that a genius only appears once in a few centuries? In China there were Ch’en Sheng and Wu Kuang, Hung Hsiu-ch’üan and Sun Yat-sen, so how could you say that a genius only appears once in a few millennia? And then there is all this business about pinnacles and ‘one sentence being worth ten thousand’. Don’t you think this is going too far? One sentence is, after all, just one sentence, how can it be worth ten thousand sentences? We should not appoint a state chairman. I don’t want to be state chairman. I have said this six times already. If each time I said it I used one sentence, that is now the equivalent of sixty thousand sentences.


But they never listen, so each of my sentences is not even worth half a sentence. In fact its value is nil. It’s only Ch’en Po-ta’s sentences that are worth ten thousand apiece to them. He talked about ‘establishing in a big way’, by which he gave the appearance of meaning to establish my prestige. But when you get to the bottom of it, he really meant himself. They also said that the People’s Liberation Army was built and led by me, and commanded personally by Lin. It seems that the person who founded it cannot command it! And I did not build it all by myself either.

-Mao


At this same time "Stalinism" never became an ideology of the state; there was no "Joseph Stalin Thought" or whatever. Mao led the GPCR, the promotion of "Mao is so awesome, is revolutionizing Marxism, and is the best thing since Adam" would probably not pass if he was genuinely interested in stopping it.Stalin's contribution to Marxism-Leninism was not a qualitative development, but Mao's was. Hence the name "Mao Tse Tung thought" and later "Maoism".

[Ismail]

Why do you fail to see this in case of specifically Mao but not Stalin?Because there was never a campaign organized by Stalin and based around his ego. There was no "Stalinism" as a state ideology and Stalin never claimed to represent a "qualitative development" from Marx and Lenin.

As Hoxha noted (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/1978/07/30.htm) in 1979:

The slogans originate from one source and every man and woman in China, be they small or big, has to repeat them, without deviating only for one millimetre from them. This was a struggle to lull creative thinking, this oppressed every form of democracy, this was nothing else but the cult of the "Steersman" and the reign of bureaucracy. Such an aberrant ideology has to suffer defeats in certain moments and it did suffer them. Mao Zedong preached about this, calling it "revolutions and counter-revolutions" periodically returning every seven years....

This anarchist revolution saved the Maoist absolute rule but contained the risk of undermining it, too. The "prestige" of the "Steersman" had to be saved, the anarchy was not allowed to topple the myths, therefore military measures were taken. The character of bureaucracy with the courtier Zhou Enlai-Confucius was saved and supposedly "younger" "revolutionary" elements were integrated into the scene of agitation and propaganda, for whom the "Steersman" had intended the role of painting out the anarchy as a "revolution within the revolution" by which the alleged bourgeoisie, which had infiltrated the party, was supposed to be eliminated. But in fact there was no party but only the bourgeoisie, there were clans and fractions which were fighting for power.

[Lenin II]

The RCP USA and Kassama are "anti-Stalinist" ?The RCP calls Stalin a butcher and so does Kasama. In fact, Kasama calls everyone authoritarian and dogmatic. Mike Ely once compared East Germany to Indonesia under Suharto.

Here are some other good quotes from them:


I will put it simply — Eastern Europe were awful societies, and they were generally hated as such bythe people there. Often the reasons and worldviews people of Eastern Europe applied in their hatred of their governments were not particular progressive — but absense of developed progressive thought actually that had to do with the fact that those societies had never gone through a revolutionary process — and all the main opposing poles of thought were generally reactionary.

I am quite pleased to see Bhattarai quoting Trotsky, if only to shake up the dogmatists…I’d love to see a similar openness to the full range of heretics from Gramsci through Fanon and beyond. Being “on guard” against heretical ideas is deadly to revolutionary theory… A genuinely scientific outlook is unafraid of heresy and knows that seemingly disproven ideas come back to life all the time in the light of new experiences or theoretical advances in other areas. The Trotskyist critique of building socialism in one country was problematic more because it was politically paralyzing than because it was analytically wrong about the limits of what could be achieved and its revival in a much smaller country in a more globally integrated world economy makes complete sense to me.

And in the history of the Comintern, treating Trotskyism (and other currents) as heresy went hand in hand with (a) insistently treating leftist opponents as spies, cops and proven counterrevolutionaries, and (b) with a policy of highly sectarian shunning that is typical of some small Anabaptist christian cults.

In the struggle over “socialism in one country” I have always thought that it was pretty clear that the Soviets needed to try to press along the socialist road in the 1920s (alone if necessary). What was the alternative? But I have never thought that this settled the question and problems — of seeking building socialism isolated from the world market in a world dominated by capitalism. And there remains issues about whether you can build socialism in very small and poor countries alone, whether you need regional revolutions in many cases to even start on that road, and also what the highly integrated world market now means for socialist economics in even large revolutionary countries. And how long you can “build socialism in one country” if the world revolution doesn’t rescue you with new socialist revolutions…

I have always been against the demonization of trotsky (as an agent, anti-christ whatever). He was a revolutionary leader in the Soviet Union who make significant contributions (from the 1905 Soviet to the creation of the red army). And I have (all my life) carefully read his main works, theories and biographies.



Why do you fail to see this in case of specifically Mao but not Stalin ? So Stalin led and called for an internal revolution against his own party and the proletariat led by millions of students who carried pictures of him and chanted his name? The Cultural Revolution was organized around “Mao-Tsetung-Thought" and the Red Guards were the personal army of Mao. How is that not basing an entire ten-year movement on his cult of personality?



Unfortunately, anti-Maoist Marxists (!!!) do not favour Mao that much.
No, actually Marxist-Leninists do not favor Mao that much, because they consider him to be a revisionist. This is outlined in Enver Hoxha’s book “Imperialism & the Revolution.”


Stalin's contribution to Marxism-Leninism was not a qualitative development, but Mao's was. Hence the name "Mao Tse Tung thought" and later "Maoism"
.
Maoists always throw around the word “qualitative” like it means anything. Promoters of the cult did much the same, such as Lin Biao. Exactly HOW was Mao in any way superior to Stalin? What developments did Mao make that were not already made by others? This is even putting aside the question of whether or not China even had the production relations to be considered socialist under his rule in the first place.

[Kléber]

the Red Guards were the personal army of Mao
Not quite, the original "guardists" were a spontaneous response to the Socialist Education Movement that was initially endorsed but ended up being suppressed by Mao and the army, and the radical period of 1966-68 was disowned and blamed on a nebulous "Lin Biao clique." Rival "guardist" factions represented a wide range of personalities, not just bureaucratic factions like those loyal to Mao or Liu, but even independent local worker-peasant interests. Ultimately the Red Guards had to be suppressed and their role supplanted by uniformed PLA committees, because they had gotten out of control and gone too far in inciting popular unrest in places like Hunan and Shanghai.

This is the classic example of Mao's cult eluding the grasp of Mao himself:
http://www.marxists.de/china/sheng/index.htm

[red cat]

Because there was never a campaign organized by Stalin and based around his ego. There was no "Stalinism" as a state ideology and Stalin never claimed to represent a "qualitative development" from Marx and Lenin.

"Stalinism" could not be a state ideology because it not a qualitative development of Marxism-Leninism. Stalin was honest in not claiming that it was.




As Hoxha noted (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/1978/07/30.htm) in 1979:


The slogans originate from one source and every man and woman in China, be they small or big, has to repeat them, without deviating only for one millimetre from them. This was a struggle to lull creative thinking, this oppressed every form of democracy, this was nothing else but the cult of the "Steersman" and the reign of bureaucracy. Such an aberrant ideology has to suffer defeats in certain moments and it did suffer them. Mao Zedong preached about this, calling it "revolutions and counter-revolutions" periodically returning every seven years....

This anarchist revolution saved the Maoist absolute rule but contained the risk of undermining it, too. The "prestige" of the "Steersman" had to be saved, the anarchy was not allowed to topple the myths, therefore military measures were taken. The character of bureaucracy with the courtier Zhou Enlai-Confucius was saved and supposedly "younger" "revolutionary" elements were integrated into the scene of agitation and propaganda, for whom the "Steersman" had intended the role of painting out the anarchy as a "revolution within the revolution" by which the alleged bourgeoisie, which had infiltrated the party, was supposed to be eliminated. But in fact there was no party but only the bourgeoisie, there were clans and fractions which were fighting for power.

Such works are quite expected from Hoxha. Given his all-out attack beginning from the Three Worlds Theory and extending to virtually every achievement of Maoist China, I am not surprised.

I would like to point out here that by calling the cultural revolution anarchy, Hoxha is actually covering up the fact that revisionists can take over large portions of the CP itself, and to prevent that, class struggle by the proletariat, even if it consists of attacking the CP, is necessary. It is very clear now who was supporting the bureaucracy and ensuring that it remained safe.


So Stalin led and called for an internal revolution against his own party and the proletariat led by millions of students who carried pictures of him and chanted his name? The Cultural Revolution was organized around “Mao-Tsetung-Thought" and the Red Guards were the personal army of Mao. How is that not basing an entire ten-year movement on his cult of personality?

As I showed before, Mao opposed this. Calling the Red guards a personal army of Mao is just a blatant distortion of history.

The GPCR was organized around Mao Tse Tung thought because that was the one line that showed why revolutions within revolutions were necessary.



No, actually Marxist-Leninists do not favor Mao that much, because they consider him to be a revisionist. This is outlined in Enver Hoxha’s book “Imperialism & the Revolution.”Maoists consider themselves to be the only true followers of Marxism-Leninism, in addition to a few Guevarist, Hoxhaist or other parties and individuals here and there that are rethinking their ideologies or supporting or conducting armed struggle.



.
Maoists always throw around the word “qualitative” like it means anything. Promoters of the cult did much the same, such as Lin Biao. Exactly HOW was Mao in any way superior to Stalin? What developments did Mao make that were not already made by others? This is even putting aside the question of whether or not China even had the production relations to be considered socialist under his rule in the first place.1) Protracted peoples' war

2) New democracy

3) Mass line

4) Cultural Revolution

The above are the four additions to Marxism-Leninism that make Maoism a qualitative development. See other threads on Mao for details.

[Kléber]

The GPCR was organized around Mao Tse Tung thought because that was the one line that showed why revolutions within revolutions were necessary.
Not quite, Mao bit heavily off Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution and bureaucratic revisionism. Chinese Trotskyists were suppressed, imprisoned and sometimes executed after they joined Maoist mass organizations in the early 1950's, and workers who organized independently against the entire bureaucratic caste were similarly dealt with in 1957 and 1967-8. Thus, the authentic anti-bureaucratic line was forcibly silenced so that Mao could safely attack his personal rivals with left-wing rhetoric, while the stifling power of the "leftist" army clique prevented the independent mobilization of the working class and thus enabled its own dissolution once Mao was dead.

[red cat]

Not quite, Mao bit heavily off Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution and bureaucratic revisionism.



If that is the case, then I think you should appeal to all big Maoist CPs to rename their guiding ideology. :)



Chinese Trotskyists were suppressed, imprisoned and sometimes executed after they joined Maoist mass organizations in the early 1950's, and workers who organized independently against the entire bureaucratic caste were similarly dealt with in 1957 and 1967-8. Thus, the authentic anti-bureaucratic line was forcibly silenced so that Mao could safely attack his personal rivals with left-wing rhetoric, while the stifling power of the "leftist" army clique prevented the independent mobilization of the working class and thus enabled its own dissolution once Mao was dead.

The classical Trot allegation again. I will say that the Trots did very bad job there in China, first trusting the Maoists and then failing to guide the mobilization of the working class. :lol:

[Lenin II]

Such works are quite expected from Hoxha. Given his all-out attack beginning from the Three Worlds Theory and extending to virtually every achievement of Maoist China, I am not surprised. Name where Hoxha attacked “every achievement” of Maoist China. In fact he called it revisionist because it was not socialist. Are you saying attacking the “Three Worlds Theory” was wrong?


I would like to point out here that by calling the cultural revolution anarchy, Hoxha is actually covering up the fact that revisionists can take over large portions of the CP itself, and to prevent that, class struggle by the proletariat, even if it consists of attacking the CP, is necessary. It is very clear now who was supporting the bureaucracy and ensuring that it remained safe. Let me get this straight—Hoxha is supporting Deng and Hua by criticizing the man who let the former back into the party 3 times, and designated the latter as his successor? Hoxha is also supporting the bourgeoisie in the party by criticizing the country and the movement who openly let bourgeoisie into the party? I suppose next you’ll be saying that Hoxha supported giving the old bourgeoisie of China 25% of their former profits because he criticized Mao for doing so?


As I showed before, Mao opposed this. Calling the Red guards a personal army of Mao is just a blatant distortion of history. Then exactly who did control the Red Guards?


The GPCR was organized around Mao Tse Tung thought because that was the one line that showed why revolutions within revolutions were necessary. Apparently, Mao did.


1) Protracted peoples' war
How is this a development? Lenin and Stalin wrote many times on the revolution in semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries. The two-stage revolution was originally formed by Lenin at the Comintern. Anyway, this is a military strategy. How is this a development of Marxism?


2) New democracy
A “development” is an anti-Marxist theory saying that there is a state that is neither socialist nor capitalist? This is on par with Trotsky and his “degenerated workers states.” It is anti-Leninist and anti-Marxist to say that there is something “in between” a capitalist and a socialist state. Mao aimed to establish a “new-democratic” state where ALL classes, including the the proletariat, the peasantry, the petty-bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie, would have POLITICAL POWER. Every Marxist knows this is impossible. A state can only be either one or the other, there is no “hybrid” state, and Mao would do well to learn that from the Jucheists and Brezhnevites.


3) Mass line
What exactly is this “mass line?” The idea of communicating with the masses? That has been a trait of Communist Parties since Marx and Lenin. How is this a development? That’s like saying Mao invented talking because he gave it a shiny new name.


4) Cultural Revolution
I dispute whether this is a development at all. Exactly what GOOD EVENT came from the Cultural Revolution? I’ve yet to hear how it was progressive for China. After ten years of uninterrupted “revolution” China was on the brink of collapse and Mao called in the army to take over. It failed utterly to stop Deng and Hua from taking over, in fact it liquidated the CCP, revisionist or not, and allowed the state-capitalists right back in under the promise of “bringing order.”

As well, the GPCR paved the way for the Chinese to offer Peaceful Coexistence with the US imperialists, supporting Pinochet, Suharto and many others in the process, and also coming up with the anti-Marxist “Three Worlds Theory.” After the Cultural Revolution supposedly “fought against the bourgeoisie in the party,” the PRC had close connections with the US and its puppets, such as Pakistan, fascist Spain in 1973, General Ne Win of Burma (visited in 1971), Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia (visited in October 1971); General Sese Mobutu of Zaire ( visited in January 1973); and Tun Abdul Razak of Malaysia (visited in 1974). The PRC supported the regime of Yahya Khan who attempted to ethnically cleanse the legitimate national liberation struggle taking place in Bangla Desh. Literally, your big “hero” Mao basically laid down to the US. He literally said, “I like rightists” to Nixon and Kissinger. Say what you will about Enver Hoxha, but at least he and Albania had the balls to stand up to the entire world to defend Marxism-Leninism. China didn’t even try.

[Kléber]

If that is the case, then I think you should appeal to all big Maoist CPs to rename their guiding ideology. :)

The classical Trot allegation again. I will say that the Trots did very bad job there in China, first trusting the Maoists and then failing to guide the mobilization of the working class. :lol:
One minute you say we are traitors for not fully supporting you. The next sentence, you laugh at the murder of Trotskyists who tried to support Maoist organizations. This is why I progressed from Maoism years ago, I used to repeat your stupid slogans, but then I realized it's a bunch of sectarian crap that transitioned smoothly into an outright capitalist dictatorship over the Chinese workers.

[red cat]

One minute you say we are traitors for not fully supporting you. The next sentence, you laugh at the murder of Trotskyists who tried to support Maoist organizations. This is why I progressed from Maoism years ago, I used to repeat your stupid slogans, but then I realized it's a bunch of sectarian crap that transitioned smoothly into an outright capitalist dictatorship over the Chinese workers.

The other possibility is that the Chinese Trots ( if there were any) were executed for sabotaging class struggle.

[Kléber]

The other possibility is that the Chinese Trots ( if there were any) were executed for sabotaging class struggle.
Actually it was because they exposed the revisionists who were struggling against the proletariat.

EDIT: Missed your "if there were any" comment.

Marxists.org Chinese Trotskyists Archive (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/china.htm)

Peng Shuzi on Trotskyism in China (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/china/china06.htm)

[RATM-Eubie]

Mao and Stalin are the same to me. Evil. Red fascist.

[bailey_187]

Mao and Stalin are the same to me. Evil. Red fascist.

Please explain how Mao was a fascist and "evil".

[red cat]

Name where Hoxha attacked “every achievement” of Maoist China. In fact he called it revisionist because it was not socialist.

China was socialist. Denying Chinese socialism is attacking all the achievements of China since the 50s.



Are you saying attacking the “Three Worlds Theory” was wrong?Quote some work of Mao which refers to this three worlds theory.


Let me get this straight—Hoxha is supporting Deng and Hua by criticizing the man who let the former back into the party 3 times, and designated the latter as his successor? Hoxha is also supporting the bourgeoisie in the party by criticizing the country and the movement who openly let bourgeoisie into the party? I suppose next you’ll be saying that Hoxha supported giving the old bourgeoisie of China 25% of their former profits because he criticized Mao for doing so?I think Hoxha criticized the very notion of "revolutions within revolutions".


Then exactly who did control the Red Guards?

Apparently, Mao did.No individual can "control" class struggle.



How is this a development? Lenin and Stalin wrote many times on the revolution in semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries. The two-stage revolution was originally formed by Lenin at the Comintern. Anyway, this is a military strategy. How is this a development of Marxism?Lenin never elaborated the strategy and tactics of the protracted peoples' wars. This is a development in Marxism because without this the revolutions in the third world are impossible.



A “development” is an anti-Marxist theory saying that there is a state that is neither socialist nor capitalist? This is on par with Trotsky and his “degenerated workers states.” It is anti-Leninist and anti-Marxist to say that there is something “in between” a capitalist and a socialist state. Mao aimed to establish a “new-democratic” state where ALL classes, including the the proletariat, the peasantry, the petty-bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie, would have POLITICAL POWER. Every Marxist knows this is impossible. A state can only be either one or the other, there is no “hybrid” state, and Mao would do well to learn that from the Jucheists and Brezhnevites.Rather your criticism of new democracy is similar to that of the Trots. Please explain why a state should be either capitalist or socialist.



What exactly is this “mass line?” The idea of communicating with the masses? That has been a trait of Communist Parties since Marx and Lenin. How is this a development? That’s like saying Mao invented talking because he gave it a shiny new name.
This (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch11.htm) summarizes the Maoist mass line. The absence of a proper mass line in the USSR led to the ignoring class struggle from below and concentrating on exposing and executing reactionaries from above.



I dispute whether this is a development at all. Exactly what GOOD EVENT came from the Cultural Revolution? I’ve yet to hear how it was progressive for China. After ten years of uninterrupted “revolution” China was on the brink of collapse and Mao called in the army to take over. It failed utterly to stop Deng and Hua from taking over, in fact it liquidated the CCP, revisionist or not, and allowed the state-capitalists right back in under the promise of “bringing order.”There had been many mistakes in the cultural revolution, but China would have turned capitalist in the late 60s had it not been launched. Also, the cultural revolution led to Maoists breaking with revisionists internationally. All the present Maoist movements are a result of this.


As well, the GPCR paved the way for the Chinese to offer Peaceful Coexistence with the US imperialists, supporting Pinochet, Suharto and many others in the process, and also coming up with the anti-Marxist “Three Worlds Theory.” After the Cultural Revolution supposedly “fought against the bourgeoisie in the party,” the PRC had close connections with the US and its puppets, such as Pakistan, fascist Spain in 1973, General Ne Win of Burma (visited in 1971), Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia (visited in October 1971); General Sese Mobutu of Zaire ( visited in January 1973); and Tun Abdul Razak of Malaysia (visited in 1974). The PRC supported the regime of Yahya Khan who attempted to ethnically cleanse the legitimate national liberation struggle taking place in Bangla Desh. Literally, your big “hero” Mao basically laid down to the US. He literally said, “I like rightists” to Nixon and Kissinger. Say what you will about Enver Hoxha, but at least he and Albania had the balls to stand up to the entire world to defend Marxism-Leninism. China didn’t even try.Forming a tactical alliance with the US was most practical for China due to the possibility of aggression by the Soviet revisionists. For similar reasons, if South Asia witnesses Maoist revolutions in near future, the newly liberated countries will form tactical alliance with the US or West Europe.

Strangely, despite China allegedly supporting the governments in Indonesia, Malaysia and East Pakistan, all of these countries witnesses Maoist peoples' wars that upheld the CPC. Either Maoists in those countries were blind, or the story is probably a bit different....

Yes, Mao certainly liked rightists, for the same reason I like people who oppose Mao so much. :wub:

About Hoxha and Albania standing up to the whole world in defense of Marxism-Leninism, I really wonder why the USSR or USA did not attack Albania. It is very unusual for a socialist country that small to stand liberated alone, if it is really socialist, of course. I must admit that I know almost nothing about the history of Albania or Hoxhaism in general except that Hoxhaist parties are non existent in the countries where Maoists are conducting peoples' wars.

[Robocommie]

I am so fucking sick of dogmatic, sectarian cults. And I'm not going to single out Stalinists, Maoists or Trotskyists, or even Anarchists, because every side does it.

Constant bickering and arguing over which revolution was legitimate and which was not, and whether or not one set of theories is legitimately in line with what Marx said or not, people constantly being dicks to one another even though we're ALL here for the same reason; to end poverty and starvation and injustice.

Instead, we're constantly staring down our noses at each other and talking shit on one other and our tendencies like it's the fucking Bloods and the Crips. At this point, it makes far less sense to me to bicker and argue about political factions that have come and gone than to address the material conditions which present themselves to us in the here and now.

[Kléber]

What exactly is this “mass line?”
A revision of democratic centralism that emerged after the Chinese Communists were forced out into the countryside and revised their politics to cater to rural local elites. Officially, the "mass line" is a bunch of mystical nonsense about learning from the masses. In reality, it may be summarized as "no more discussions or voting, all decisions will come from the central clique now." If the mass line had been abolished after 1949 it could have been explained as a necessary adaptation to the military situation of guerrilla warfare. Instead, it was preserved (until 1976?) by the militarized CPC to justify the repression of the working class and indefinite restrictions on Party democracy.


The absence of a proper mass line in the USSR led to the ignoring class struggle from below and concentrating on exposing and executing reactionaries from above.
The problem wasn't a subjective one that only concerned the correctness or incorrectness of the Great Men and their line. The working class was politically gagged and not allowed to challenge the bureaucracy. In Russia and in China the "general line" was used to bludgeon and silence the workers, and pave the way for the restoration of outright capitalism.

Mao initially approved of the Red Guards, but this was only to attack his factional rivals within the bureaucracy, who also set up their own Red Guard organizations; there were "Red Guard civil wars" within schools and factories; when too many radical guardists got out of control and started to represent independent working-class interests, the bureaucrats abolished them and sent in the army.

A nucleus of actual working-class representation existed in groups like the Hunan Revolutionary Alliance (Shengwulian) and the Shanghai Commune, who took advantage of internecine bureaucratic feuds to formulate their own "line," but like I've said, those revolutionary elements had to be violently suppressed by Mao and the army..

[Ismail]

Mao and Stalin are the same to me. Evil. Red fascist."Evil" is not a materialist analysis. To call them "red fascists" is ridiculous. What part of their economy made them fascist? (Since fascism is, primarily, an economic system) I don't recall any corporations existing in the USSR or China, for one. I obviously don't like Mao, but I'm not going to make shit up. As Hoxha said, Mao was a progressive bourgeois-democrat.

[RedStarOverChina]

I find it interesting that you admit to be "too weak to think for yourself", and thus need a label in order to attain a sense of certainty. (That's my understanding, anyway)

I think a lot of us are like that but don't always admit it. I know I was.


However, I hope you will eventually forgo the use of labels (Maoist, Stalinist, Trotskyist, etc.) and come to the conclusion that all the previous revolutionaries tendencies have their merits as well as follies (even crimes).

And that'll be a good indication that you've started thinking on your own.

[AK]

I don't recall any corporations existing in the USSR or China, for one.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3602/3404919678_d5fde699d2_o.jpg

[Monkey Riding Dragon]

Ismail:

Some general comments on your earlier lies:


Maoists who are "anti-Stalinist" are lameasses who shout about the dreaded evils of "dogmatism" and practice sloganeering and general phraseology in their attempts to sound more revolutionary than Marx himself. This fits both Kasama and the RCPUSA, and since the former came out of the latter it's not surprising.I won't speak for the opportunist organization Kasama, but as for the RCP, they describe Stalin's legacy as "overwhelmingly positive", albeit with criticisms. Here Raymond Lotta briefly sums up the history of socialist experience. (http://www.revcom.us/strs/set-the-record-straight.html) Parts 5 and 6 address the Stalin era. Read it for yourself. Bob Avakian also has discussed Stalin specifically in a couple of talks that can be found here (http://www.bobavakian.net/audio4.html): On Leadership and Elections, Democracy and Dictatorship, Resistance and Revolution. (Regarding the latter, see part one of the Q&A.) Yes the RCP does actually *gasp* promote critical thinking. But it's not to the neglect of the historical contributions and achievements earlier communist leaders have made.


The practice of "not doing what Stalin did" helped foster the Mao cult ("Do what Mao's doing instead) which became significantly more ridiculous (and actively encouraged by Mao himself) than Stalin's ever could be.Mao's outstanding leadership did come to play a heightened role during the Cultural Revolution. Much of the leadership of the society was taking the capitalist road and, as such, the masses needed to be guided by the specific orientation that was being advanced by Mao in that context. Mao's leadership played an outstanding role because it represented the socialist road. A neglect of the importance thereof would have only meant to strengthen the forces of the alternative road. Bob Avakian has discussed this as well in his recent talk Unresolved Contradictions, Driving Forces for Revolution beginning under the heading "Vanguards and individual leaders: real contradictions, and the decisive importance of the line" and continuing through "Ideology and Organization, Centralization and Decentralization" (http://www.revcom.us/avakian/driving/index.html#toc19). Mao's outstanding leadership in that context served to give an overall revolutionary direction to the mass outpouring. Yes, you did have to break with Stalin's mechanical methodology in terms of how you keep and continue the revolution under socialism because this mechanical approach had a lot to do with the rising of Soviet revisionism, and Mao led forward that effort as well. That was a good thing, not a bad thing.

Hoxha's proposals regarding how to continue the revolution under socialism proceeded from Stalin's mechanistic formulations: If bourgeois forces exist in the party and the government, it must be because you've chosen to allow them there when you shouldn't have, not because of the objective contradictions left over from the old society under socialism. The solution therefore lies in perhaps chopping off more heads. This type of mentality. But chopping off more heads doesn't deal with the underlying issues having to do with for example the thinking of the people. The masses need to be led in actually struggling over these issues, not just 'dragged along for the ride'.

[Ismail]

(picture of McDonalds TAKEN IN 1990)Even if I was a Brezhnevite I'd say that you'd be ridiculous.* I was clearly talking about the Soviet Union from 1917-1953 when the dictatorship of the proletariat existed in an imperfect form. I wasn't talking about the post-Stalin, revisionist, and state-capitalist Soviet Union, and I certainly wasn't talking about the Soviet Union under Perestroika (aka the Soviet Union under market-capitalism) in the last two years of its existence when the Cold War came to an end and where Gorbachev talked about international cooperation between the USA and USSR to "secure world peace."

* They consider Gorby to be the man who restored capitalism. The McDonalds opened up in 1990 at the apex of Perestroika.

[chegitz guevara]

The RCP calls Stalin a butcher and so does Kasama. In fact, Kasama calls everyone authoritarian and dogmatic. Mike Ely once compared East Germany to Indonesia under Suharto.

Kasama does not call everyone authoritarian and dogmatic. Most of my comrades do not refer to Mao that way. Nor do any of us refer to Lenin that way.

In any event, it's quite obvious that something went terribly wrong with 20th Century socialism. Kasama is an experiment, to see what we can rescue from the wreckage of those failures and successes.

[Lenin II]

Kasama does not call everyone authoritarian and dogmatic.

Actually, they quite do. It's entirely necessary to maintain their mushy honey-sweet liberal post-Maoist petty-bourgeois trash.

Let's have a look:

http://kasamaproject.org/2009/10/26/needed-fusion-profoundly-non-dogmatic-and-starkly-revolutionary/

http://kasamaproject.org/2009/10/24/on-demarcations-and-new-coherent-theory/

http://kasamaproject.org/2010/02/19/living-revolution-or-sterile-orthodoxy-questions-around-nepal/

http://kasamaproject.org/2009/10/22/on-rumors-of-nepali-maoists-trotskyism-and-socialism-in-one-country/

http://kasamaproject.org/2009/10/29/the-socialism-in-eastern-europe-the-socialism-of-obama/


Most of my comrades do not refer to Mao that way.

Wow, a group of Maoists who do not see Mao as anything less than a god. My mind is blown.


Nor do any of us refer to Lenin that way.

Probably because every revisionist, from Trotsky to Mao to Tito, claimed to support Lenin in words while throwing his works in the dustbin in deeds.


In any event, it's quite obvious that something went terribly wrong with 20th Century socialism.

Is it now? Last time I checked unparalleled successes were known to the USSR and Albania. I would counter that NOTHING went wrong with 20th century socialism except 20th century revisionism. The only factor you could accuse the socialist governments of failing in would be preventing revisionism from getting in. Regardless, the only terrible problems I see happened once the countries stepped OFF the socialist path, not on it.


Kasama is an experiment, to see what we can rescue from the wreckage of those failures and successes.

In other words, its a post-modernist excersize that claims immunity to theory, because theory is dogmatic.

[Lenin II]

China was socialist. Denying Chinese socialism is attacking all the achievements of China since the 50s. Boo-hoo, emotional arguments. Maybe next time they won’t allow the bourgeoisie to exist for 30-40 years after revolution.


Quote some work of Mao which refers to this three worlds theory. http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv10n1/mao.htm

Chairman Mao Zedong (hereinafter referred to as Mao): We hope the Third World will unite. The Third World has a large population!
President Kenneth David Kaunda (hereinafter referred to as Kaunda): That’s right.
Mao: Who belongs to the First World?
Kaunda: I think it ought to be world of exploiters and imperialists.
Mao: And the Second World?
Kaunda: Those who have become revisionists.
Mao: I hold that the U.S. and the Soviet Union belong to the First World. The middle elements, such as Japan, Europe, Australia and Canada, belong to the Second World. We are the Third World.
Kaunda: I agree with your analysis, Mr. Chairman.
Mao: The U.S. and the Soviet Union have a lot of atomic bombs, and they are richer. Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada, of the Second World, do not possess so many atomic bombs and are not so rich as the First World, but richer than the Third World. What do you think of this explanation?
Kaunda: Mr. Chairman, you analysis is very pertinent and correct.
Mao: We can discuss it.
Kaunda: I think we can reach agreement without discussion, because I believe this analysis is already very pertinent.
Mao: The Third World is very populous.
Kaunda: Precisely so.
Mao: All Asian countries, except Japan, belong to the Third World. All of Africa and also Latin America belong to the Third World.
(From the verbatim record)
Mao Zedong on Diplomacy, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1998, page 454.

Then there’s this:

http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/ziliao/3602/3604/t18008.htm

And this (famous speech made at the UN by Deng when Mao was still alive):

http://marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/1974/04/10.htm


I think Hoxha criticized the very notion of "revolutions within revolutions". No, in fact Hoxha said the GPCR was not a revolution at all. Try reading "Imperialism & the Revolution."



No individual can "control" class struggle. Non-sequitur much? How was it class struggle to burn 7,000 temples and attack foreigners in China?


Lenin never elaborated the strategy and tactics of the protracted peoples' wars. This is a development in Marxism because without this the revolutions in the third world are impossible. "Firstly countries like Morocco who have little or no proletariat, and are industrially quite undeveloped. Secondly countries like China and Egypt which are under-developed industries and have a relatively small proletariat. Thirdly countries like India.. capitalistically more or less developed and have a more or less numerous national proletariat. Clearly all these countries cannot possibly be put on a par with one another."
JV Stalin W : Vol 7 : "Political Tasks of the University of the People's of the East. Speech Delivered at a meeting of Students of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East", May 18th, 1925. pp. 135-146.

"If the revolutionary victorious proletariat carries on systematic propaganda among them, and if the Soviet governments render them all the assistance they possibly can.. the backward countries may pass to the Soviet system, and after passing through a definite stage of development to Communism without passing though the capitalists stage of development."
(Lenin. Report on the Commission. Ibid, p.243)

"In countries like Egypt and China, where the national bourgeoisie has already split up into a revolutionary party and a compromising party, but where the compromising section of the bourgeoisies is not yet able to join up with imperialism, the Communists can no longer set themselves the aim of forming a united national front against imperialism. In such countries the Communists must pass from the policy of a united national front to the policy of a revolutionary bloc of the workers and the petty bourgeoisie. In such countries that bloc can assume the form of a single party, a workers and peasants= party, provided, however, that this distinctive party actually represents a bloc of two forces - the Communist Party and the party of the revolutionary petty bourgeois. The tasks of this bloc are to expose the half-heartedness and inconsistency of the national bourgeoisie and to wage a determined struggle against imperialism. Such a dual party is necessary and expedient provided it does not bind the Communist Party hand and foot, provided it does not restrict the freedom of the Communist Party to conduct agitation and propaganda work, provided it does not hinder the rallying of the proletarians around and provided it facilitates the actual leadership of the revolutionary movement by the Communist party. Such a dual party is unnecessary and inexpedient if to does not conform to all these conditions for it can only lead to the Communist elements becoming dissolved in the ranks of the bourgeoisie to the Communist Party losing the proletarian army.
The situation is somewhat different in countries like India. The fundamental and new feature of the conditions of life in countries like India is not only that the national bourgeoisie has split up into a revolutionary part and a compromising part, but primarily that the compromising section of the bourgeoisie has already managed, in the main, to strike a deal with imperialism, Fearing revolution more than it fears imperialism, and concerned with more about its money bags than about the interests of its own country, this section of the bourgeoisie is going over entirely to the camp of the irreconcilable enemies of the revolution, it is forming a bloc with imperialism against the workers and peasants of its own country.”
(JVS W; "Tasks of University of People's of East"; Ibid; May 18th, 1925. pp. 135-146).

“What are the stages in the Chinese Revolution? In my opinion there should be three:
The first stage is the revolution of an all-national united front, the Canton period, when the revolution was striking chiefly at foreign imperialism, and the national bourgeoisie supported the revolutionary movement;
The second stage is the bourgeois democratic revolution, after the national troops reached the Yangtze River, when the national bourgeoisie deserted the revolution and the agrarian movement grew into a mighty revolution of tens of millions of the peasantry. The Chinese revolution is now at the second stage of its development;
The third stage is the Soviet revolution which has not yet come, but will come.”


(J.V.Stalin; "On the International Situation and the Defence of the USSR"; Joint Plenum of CC and the CPSU Control Commission; August 1 1927. Vol 10; p.16-17).

“The characteristic feature .. of the Turkish revolution (The Kemalists).. is that it got stuck at the “first step,” at the first stage of its development, at the stage of the bourgeois liberation movement, without even attempting to pass to the second stage of its development, the stage of the agrarian revolution.”
(Stalin; Ibid; p.346).


Rather your criticism of new democracy is similar to that of the Trots. No, the non-belief in state-capitalism is a belief of the Trots. Or are you denying the existence of the theory of a “degenerated workers’ state?”

"Only utter imbeciles would be capable of thinking that capitalist relations, that is to say, the private ownership of the means of production, including the land, can be reestablished in the USSR by peaceful methods and lead to the régime of bourgeois democracy. As a matter of fact, even if it were possible in general, capitalism could not be regenerated in Russia except as the result of a savage counter-revolutionary coup d’état which would cost ten times as many victims as the October Revolution and the civil war."

(L. Trotsky, On the Kirov Assassination, December 1934)


Please explain why a state should be either capitalist or socialist. It’s called Marxism.

“The forms of bourgeois state are extremely varied, but their essence is the same: all these states whatever their form, in the final analysis are inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The transition from capitalism to communism certainly cannot but yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Lenin, State and Revolution.

Explain how there can be a state where more than one class is in power. A state is either run by the bourgeoisie or the proletariat.


The absence of a proper mass line in the USSR led to the ignoring class struggle from below and concentrating on exposing and executing reactionaries from above. Blah, blah, blah. “Above” and “below.” Next you’ll start blabbering anarchscum phrases about “bottom-up” versus “top-down.” And you do know the “Great Purges” were not planned by Stalin, right? Not that Maoists give a damn about the USSR.


There had been many mistakes in the cultural revolution, but China would have turned capitalist in the late 60s had it not been launched. China was and always has been capitalist. It only became capitalist to a much greater degree after Mao’s death.


Also, the cultural revolution led to Maoists breaking with revisionists internationally. All the present Maoist movements are a result of this. As for breaking with revisionism, as a note, after the GPCR Mao quite liked Ceausescu from Romania, and China also tried to run into the open arms of the USSR many times. Why do you think Lin Biao was killed? Breaking with revisionists in this case means the Soviet Union alone. It also lad to marrying US imperialism, as I have shown.


Forming a tactical alliance with the US was most practical for China due to the possibility of aggression by the Soviet revisionists. For similar reasons, if South Asia witnesses Maoist revolutions in near future, the newly liberated countries will form tactical alliance with the US or West Europe.Are you openly admitting that Maoism by its nature will be pro-US comprador? Let me get this straight. Allying with the US = justified because of Soviet imperialism. But now that there ARE no Soviets, allying with the US = still justified. What is wrong with this picture?


Strangely, despite China allegedly supporting the governments in Indonesia, Malaysia and East Pakistan, all of these countries witnesses Maoist peoples' wars that upheld the CPC. Either Maoists in those countries were blind, or the story is probably a bit different.... I like how you don’t address the issue of “the greatest Marxist of the 20th Century” leading the government that was the first in the world to recognize Augusto Pinochet.


Yes, Mao certainly liked rightists, for the same reason I like people who oppose Mao so much. file:///C:/Users/sams/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image001.gif http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB19/05-01.htm (http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB19/05-01.htm)

Page 4: Chairman Mao: “I like rightists. People say you are rightists, that the Republican Party is to the right, that Prime Minister Heath is also to the right […] I am comparatively happy when these people come to power.”


About Hoxha and Albania standing up to the whole world in defense of Marxism-Leninism, I really wonder why the USSR or USA did not attack Albania. It is very unusual for a socialist country that small to stand liberated alone, if it is really socialist, of course. If you say it was not, you are literally to the right of both Mao and the RCP.

Oh, but of course little bitty Albania wasn’t socialist! Surely NO ONE could be socialist is they smear the name of our “Great Helmsman!”


I must admit that I know almost nothing about the history of Albania or Hoxhaism in general Whatever happened to no investigation, no right to speak these days, eh?


except that Hoxhaist parties are non existent in the countries where Maoists are conducting peoples' wars. Incorrect.


Benin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin), Parti communiste du Bénin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Benin)
Brazil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil), Partido Comunista Revolucionário (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party_%28Brazil%29)
Burkina Faso (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkina_Faso), Parti communiste révolutionnaire voltaïque (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaic_Revolutionary_Communist_Party)
Chile (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile), Partido Comunista Chileno (Acción Proletaria) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_Communist_Party_%28Proletarian_Action%29)
Colombia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia), Partido Comunista de Colombia (Marxista-Leninista) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Colombia_%28marxist-leninist%29)
Côte d'Ivoire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%B4te_d%27Ivoire), Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire de Côte d'Ivoire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party_of_C%C3%B4te_d%27Ivo ire)
Denmark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark), Arbejderpartiet Kommunisterne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_Communist_Party_%28Denmark%29)
Dominican Republic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic), Partido Comunista del Trabajo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Labour)
Ecuador (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuador), Partido Comunista Marxista-Leninista de Ecuador (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist-Leninist_Communist_Party_of_Ecuador)
France (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France), Parti communiste des ouvriers de France (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers_Communist_Party_of_France)
Germany (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany), Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Roter Morgen) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Germany_%28Red_Dawn%29)
Greece (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece), Κίνηση για Ανασύνταξη του ΚΚΕ 1918-55 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_the_Reorganization_of_the_Communist_P arty_of_Greece_1918-55)
Iran (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran), Hezb-e Kar-e Iran (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_of_Iran)
Italy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy), Circolo Lenin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circolo_Lenin)
Mexico (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico), Partido Comunista de México (Marxista-Leninista) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Mexico_%28Marxist-Leninist%29)
Norway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway), ML-gruppa Revolusjon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist-Leninist_Group_Revolusjon)
Spain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain), Partido Comunista de España (marxista-leninista) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Spain_%28Marxist-Leninist%29)
Tunisia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisia), Parti communiste des ouvriers tunisiens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisian_Workers%27_Communist_Party)
Turkey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey), Türkiye Devrimci Komünist Partisi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party_of_Turkey)
Venezuela (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuela), Partido Comunista Marxista-Leninista de Venezuela (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist-Leninist_Communist_Party_of_Venezuela)

[Monkey Riding Dragon]

Without lapsing into an embrace of yes dogmatist Hoxhaism, I would like to offer that Lenin II has indeed captured some of the essence of Kasama in the following statement:


In other words, its a post-modernist excersize that claims immunity to theory, because theory is dogmatic.That's a correct description. The position Lenin II describes Kasama as embracing is that of eclecticism, which is indeed their basis of 'unity'.

[red cat]

Boo-hoo, emotional arguments. Maybe next time they won’t allow the bourgeoisie to exist for 30-40 years after revolution.



The bourgeoisie also existed in the USSR in the form of party bureaucrats. Does this imply that the USSR was not socialist ?




http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv10n1/mao.htm

Chairman Mao Zedong (hereinafter referred to as Mao): We hope the Third World will unite. The Third World has a large population!
President Kenneth David Kaunda (hereinafter referred to as Kaunda): That’s right.
Mao: Who belongs to the First World?
Kaunda: I think it ought to be world of exploiters and imperialists.
Mao: And the Second World?
Kaunda: Those who have become revisionists.
Mao: I hold that the U.S. and the Soviet Union belong to the First World. The middle elements, such as Japan, Europe, Australia and Canada, belong to the Second World. We are the Third World.
Kaunda: I agree with your analysis, Mr. Chairman.
Mao: The U.S. and the Soviet Union have a lot of atomic bombs, and they are richer. Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada, of the Second World, do not possess so many atomic bombs and are not so rich as the First World, but richer than the Third World. What do you think of this explanation?
Kaunda: Mr. Chairman, you analysis is very pertinent and correct.
Mao: We can discuss it.
Kaunda: I think we can reach agreement without discussion, because I believe this analysis is already very pertinent.
Mao: The Third World is very populous.
Kaunda: Precisely so.
Mao: All Asian countries, except Japan, belong to the Third World. All of Africa and also Latin America belong to the Third World.
(From the verbatim record)
Mao Zedong on Diplomacy, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1998, page 454.

That says nothing on the basis of unity of third world countries.


Then there’s this:

http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/ziliao/3602/3604/t18008.htm

And this (famous speech made at the UN by Deng when Mao was still alive):

http://marxists.org/reference/archive/deng-xiaoping/1974/04/10.htm


This (http://www.blythe.org/peru-pcp/docs_en/internat.htm) is what we think about that:


We consider Chairman Mao Tse-tung's thesis that three worlds are delineated just and correct and that it is connected with Lenin's thesis on the distribution of forces in the world based on the analysis of classes and contradictions. We reject the opportunist and revisionist misrepresentation by Teng Hsiao-ping of the three worlds that follows at the tail of the U.S. or USSR in order to betray the revolution. Starting from this, President Gonzalo analyzes the current situation in which the three worlds are delineated and further demonstrated that they are a reality.



The first world is the two superpowers, the U.S. and the USSR which contend for world hegemony and which can unleash an imperialist war. They are superpowers because they are economically, politically, and militarily more powerful compared to the other powers. The U.S. has an economy centered on non-state monopoly of property; politically, it develops a bourgeois democracy with a growing restriction of rights. It is a reactionary liberalism; militarily, it is the most powerful in the west and has a longer process of development. The USSR is economically based on a state monopoly, with a politically fascist dictatorship of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie and is a top-level military power although its process of development is shorter. The U.S. seeks to maintain its dominance and also to expand it. The USSR aims more towards expansion because it is a new superpower and economically it is in her interests to dominate Europe to improve its conditions. In synthesis, they are two superpowers which do not constitute a block but have contradictions, clear mutual differences, and they move within the law of collusion and contention for the redivision of the world.


The second world are the imperialist powers which are not superpowers, but have smaller economic, political, and military power such as Japan, Germany, France, Italy, etc. which have contradictions with the superpowers because they sustain, for example, the devaluation of the dollar, military restrictions, and political impositions; these imperialist powers want to take advantage of the contention between the superpowers in order for them to emerge as new superpowers, and they also unleash wars of aggression against the oppressed nations and furthermore, acute contradictions exist among them.



The third world is composed of the oppressed nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. They are colonies or semi-colonies where feudalism has not been destroyed, and on that basis a bureaucratic capitalism unfolds, they are tied to a superpower or imperialist power. They have contradictions with imperialism, furthermore they fight against their own big bourgeoisie and landlords, both of which are at the service of and in collusion with imperialism, especially with the superpowers.


All this gives us the basis on which the Communists can establish the strategy and tactics of the world revolution. Chairman Mao Tse-tung had come to establish the strategy and tactics of the world revolution but the Chinese revisionists concealed it. Therefore, it remains for us to extract from his own ideas, especially if there are new situations in sight.






No, in fact Hoxha said the GPCR was not a revolution at all. Try reading "Imperialism & the Revolution."

So instead of attacking the theory of continuous class struggle, he attacked continuous class struggle itself at its epoch. :lol:





Non-sequitur much? How was it class struggle to burn 7,000 temples and attack foreigners in China?


I don't know about the attacking foreigners part, but surely class struggle gets directed partially towards old reactionary classes using religion to rebuild the basis of class oppression.



"Firstly countries like Morocco who have little or no proletariat, and are industrially quite undeveloped. Secondly countries like China and Egypt which are under-developed industries and have a relatively small proletariat. Thirdly countries like India.. capitalistically more or less developed and have a more or less numerous national proletariat. Clearly all these countries cannot possibly be put on a par with one another."
JV Stalin W : Vol 7 : "Political Tasks of the University of the People's of the East. Speech Delivered at a meeting of Students of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East", May 18th, 1925. pp. 135-146.

"If the revolutionary victorious proletariat carries on systematic propaganda among them, and if the Soviet governments render them all the assistance they possibly can.. the backward countries may pass to the Soviet system, and after passing through a definite stage of development to Communism without passing though the capitalists stage of development."
(Lenin. Report on the Commission. Ibid, p.243)

"In countries like Egypt and China, where the national bourgeoisie has already split up into a revolutionary party and a compromising party, but where the compromising section of the bourgeoisies is not yet able to join up with imperialism, the Communists can no longer set themselves the aim of forming a united national front against imperialism. In such countries the Communists must pass from the policy of a united national front to the policy of a revolutionary bloc of the workers and the petty bourgeoisie. In such countries that bloc can assume the form of a single party, a workers and peasants= party, provided, however, that this distinctive party actually represents a bloc of two forces - the Communist Party and the party of the revolutionary petty bourgeois. The tasks of this bloc are to expose the half-heartedness and inconsistency of the national bourgeoisie and to wage a determined struggle against imperialism. Such a dual party is necessary and expedient provided it does not bind the Communist Party hand and foot, provided it does not restrict the freedom of the Communist Party to conduct agitation and propaganda work, provided it does not hinder the rallying of the proletarians around and provided it facilitates the actual leadership of the revolutionary movement by the Communist party. Such a dual party is unnecessary and inexpedient if to does not conform to all these conditions for it can only lead to the Communist elements becoming dissolved in the ranks of the bourgeoisie to the Communist Party losing the proletarian army.
The situation is somewhat different in countries like India. The fundamental and new feature of the conditions of life in countries like India is not only that the national bourgeoisie has split up into a revolutionary part and a compromising part, but primarily that the compromising section of the bourgeoisie has already managed, in the main, to strike a deal with imperialism, Fearing revolution more than it fears imperialism, and concerned with more about its money bags than about the interests of its own country, this section of the bourgeoisie is going over entirely to the camp of the irreconcilable enemies of the revolution, it is forming a bloc with imperialism against the workers and peasants of its own country.”
(JVS W; "Tasks of University of People's of East"; Ibid; May 18th, 1925. pp. 135-146).

“What are the stages in the Chinese Revolution? In my opinion there should be three:
The first stage is the revolution of an all-national united front, the Canton period, when the revolution was striking chiefly at foreign imperialism, and the national bourgeoisie supported the revolutionary movement;
The second stage is the bourgeois democratic revolution, after the national troops reached the Yangtze River, when the national bourgeoisie deserted the revolution and the agrarian movement grew into a mighty revolution of tens of millions of the peasantry. The Chinese revolution is now at the second stage of its development;
The third stage is the Soviet revolution which has not yet come, but will come.”


(J.V.Stalin; "On the International Situation and the Defence of the USSR"; Joint Plenum of CC and the CPSU Control Commission; August 1 1927. Vol 10; p.16-17).

“The characteristic feature .. of the Turkish revolution (The Kemalists).. is that it got stuck at the “first step,” at the first stage of its development, at the stage of the bourgeois liberation movement, without even attempting to pass to the second stage of its development, the stage of the agrarian revolution.”
(Stalin; Ibid; p.346).

That analysis has to be expanded to a great extent, with complete military strategy and tactics, before a revolution can be made in any third world country. Mao did that and came up with an elaborate and general theory of protracted peoples' war.


No, the non-belief in state-capitalism is a belief of the Trots. Or are you denying the existence of the theory of a “degenerated workers’ state?”

"Only utter imbeciles would be capable of thinking that capitalist relations, that is to say, the private ownership of the means of production, including the land, can be reestablished in the USSR by peaceful methods and lead to the régime of bourgeois democracy. As a matter of fact, even if it were possible in general, capitalism could not be regenerated in Russia except as the result of a savage counter-revolutionary coup d’état which would cost ten times as many victims as the October Revolution and the civil war."

(L. Trotsky, On the Kirov Assassination, December 1934)

I was referring to your assertion that every state has to be capitalist or socialist.


It’s called Marxism.

“The forms of bourgeois state are extremely varied, but their essence is the same: all these states whatever their form, in the final analysis are inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The transition from capitalism to communism certainly cannot but yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Lenin, State and Revolution.

Explain how there can be a state where more than one class is in power. A state is either run by the bourgeoisie or the proletariat.


The type of contradictions in a semi colonial semi feudal country forges a temporary alliance of the three revolutionary classes with the national bourgeoisie. After overthrowing feudalism, imperialism and comprador capitalism, the proletariat leads the struggle against the national bourgeoisie. The outcome of this struggle determines whether the country will move on to socialism or suffer a capitalist restoration.


Blah, blah, blah. “Above” and “below.” Next you’ll start blabbering anarchscum phrases about “bottom-up” versus “top-down.” And you do know the “Great Purges” were not planned by Stalin, right? Not that Maoists give a damn about the USSR.


Any example of massive class struggle from below in the 1930s or after WW2 in the USSR are missing.



China was and always has been capitalist. It only became capitalist to a much greater degree after Mao’s death.

Funny that Hoxha did not realize it for decades. :lol:


As for breaking with revisionism, as a note, after the GPCR Mao quite liked Ceausescu from Romania, and China also tried to run into the open arms of the USSR many times. Why do you think Lin Biao was killed? Breaking with revisionists in this case means the Soviet Union alone. It also lad to marrying US imperialism, as I have shown.

Mao's foreign policy was not without flaws. But there was need of tactical alliance with a super-power. Furthermore the flaws of the Chinese foreign policies then are very little compared to its positive achievements.


Are you openly admitting that Maoism by its nature will be pro-US comprador? Let me get this straight. Allying with the US = justified because of Soviet imperialism. But now that there ARE no Soviets, allying with the US = still justified. What is wrong with this picture?

There are other blocs of imperialism like China for example. After revolution the number 1 enemy of South Asian countries will probably be China due to its geographical location.



I like how you don’t address the issue of “the greatest Marxist of the 20th Century” leading the government that was the first in the world to recognize Augusto Pinochet.

There were faults in Mao's line. We admit it.



http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB19/05-01.htm (http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB19/05-01.htm)

Page 4: Chairman Mao: “I like rightists. People say you are rightists, that the Republican Party is to the right, that Prime Minister Heath is also to the right […] I am comparatively happy when these people come to power.”



Yes, I know about that document. There has also been this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/maoists-reali-t125228/index.html?highlight=i+like+rightists) thread on it that reflects our thoughts on it.



If you say it was not, you are literally to the right of both Mao and the RCP.

Oh, but of course little bitty Albania wasn’t socialist! Surely NO ONE could be socialist is they smear the name of our “Great Helmsman!”

Attacking Mao is a common property of all revisionists.


Whatever happened to no investigation, no right to speak these days, eh?


Sometimes we need to be more flexible to combat the wide array of revisionist tendencies that are devoted to attacking Maoism.


Incorrect.


Benin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin), Parti communiste du Bénin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Benin)
Brazil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil), Partido Comunista Revolucionário (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party_%28Brazil%29)
Burkina Faso (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkina_Faso), Parti communiste révolutionnaire voltaïque (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaic_Revolutionary_Communist_Party)
Chile (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chile), Partido Comunista Chileno (Acción Proletaria) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_Communist_Party_%28Proletarian_Action%29)
Colombia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia), Partido Comunista de Colombia (Marxista-Leninista) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Colombia_%28marxist-leninist%29)
Côte d'Ivoire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%B4te_d%27Ivoire), Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire de Côte d'Ivoire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party_of_C%C3%B4te_d%27Ivo ire)
Denmark (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denmark), Arbejderpartiet Kommunisterne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_Communist_Party_%28Denmark%29)
Dominican Republic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic), Partido Comunista del Trabajo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Labour)
Ecuador (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecuador), Partido Comunista Marxista-Leninista de Ecuador (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist-Leninist_Communist_Party_of_Ecuador)
France (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France), Parti communiste des ouvriers de France (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers_Communist_Party_of_France)
Germany (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany), Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Roter Morgen) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Germany_%28Red_Dawn%29)
Greece (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece), Κίνηση για Ανασύνταξη του ΚΚΕ 1918-55 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movement_for_the_Reorganization_of_the_Communist_P arty_of_Greece_1918-55)
Iran (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran), Hezb-e Kar-e Iran (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_of_Iran)
Italy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italy), Circolo Lenin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circolo_Lenin)
Mexico (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico), Partido Comunista de México (Marxista-Leninista) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Mexico_%28Marxist-Leninist%29)
Norway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway), ML-gruppa Revolusjon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist-Leninist_Group_Revolusjon)
Spain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain), Partido Comunista de España (marxista-leninista) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_Spain_%28Marxist-Leninist%29)
Tunisia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisia), Parti communiste des ouvriers tunisiens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisian_Workers%27_Communist_Party)
Turkey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey), Türkiye Devrimci Komünist Partisi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party_of_Turkey)
Venezuela (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuela), Partido Comunista Marxista-Leninista de Venezuela (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist-Leninist_Communist_Party_of_Venezuela)



None of those countries other than Turkey have a well developed Maoist peoples' war. But what about your parties in Nepal, India or the Philippines? Why are Hoxhaists either non-existent or have no achievements in places where Maoists armed struggles are in full swing ?

[The Ben G]

I guess you could, or you could revise Marxism like Mao did. Or make your own ideaology.

[Monkey Riding Dragon]

Lenin II wrote:
If you say it [Hoxhaist Albania] was not [socialist], you are literally to the right of both Mao and the RCP.Well it seems all Hoxhaists are keen on misrepresenting the RCP's position, not just Ismail. The RCP's view on Albania is summed up here (http://revcom.us/a/firstvol/900-905/902/alback.htm). As you can see, they don't view Hoxha's position post-1976 as having been correct, but revisionist. So you needn't continue claiming the RCP as a historical ally of Hoxhaism.

Yeesh, I get so fucking tired of the arrogance of everyone not aligned with the RCP claiming they're such experts on the RCP's line when they haven't an Earthly clue!


red cat wrote:
None of those countries other than Turkey have a well developed Maoist peoples' war. But what about your parties in Nepal, India or the Philippines? Why are Hoxhaists either non-existent or have no achievements in places where Maoists armed struggles are in full swing ? Not that I don't agree with the essence of the position you're describing, but let's be intellectually honest: where in the world today can revolutionary warfare led by communists actually be said to be "in full swing"? Basically, we (real communists) have a strip in India and that's just about it right now. We're seriously at a crossroads here in terms of either becoming a vanguard of the future or residue of the past.

[red cat]

Not that I don't agree with the essence of the position you're describing, but let's be intellectually honest: where in the world today can revolutionary warfare led by communists actually be said to be "in full swing"? Basically, we (real communists) have a strip in India and that's just about it right now. We're seriously at a crossroads here in terms of either becoming a vanguard of the future or residue of the past.

Depends on what you call a strip. :lol:

Had there been an existing socialist bloc, the CPI(Maoist) could have seized power within the next five years.

[Kléber]

Had there been an existing socialist bloc, the CPI(Maoist) could have seized power within the next five years.
There was such a bloc during the original flareup of Indian Maoism in 1971: the People's Republic of China, but instead of arming those Maoist rebels, Mao's government joined with US imperialism to support the Pakistani bourgeoisie with arms and planes during its genocidal conflict against the Bangladeshi people. Like Stalin, who had favored the GMD over the CPC, Mao similarly had no faith in his fraternal comrades to the south, and saw bourgeois forces and shifting alliances with imperialism as a more reliable way to strengthen the power of his national elite.

[chegitz guevara]

Actually, they quite do. It's entirely necessary to maintain their mushy honey-sweet liberal post-Maoist petty-bourgeois trash.

Your quote was that we call everyone dogmatic and dictatorial, not that we claim that some were dogmatic and dictatorial. You initial claim, despite your attempt to move the goal posts, is little more than a lie.


Wow, a group of Maoists who do not see Mao as anything less than a god. My mind is blown.

What was that again about everyone? Mao, being a subset of the set [i]everyone, would also have to be considered dogmatic and dictatorial for everyone to be considered dogmatic and dictatorial. Thus, by accepting Kasama does not consider Mao to be dogmatic and dictatorial, you are admitting you lied in your initial accusation.


Probably because every revisionist, from Trotsky to Mao to Tito, claimed to support Lenin in words while throwing his works in the dustbin in deeds.

You like to through that word, "every," around a lot. I imagine that there are quite a few communists who do not claim to support Lenin, for example, left communists.


Is it now? Last time I checked unparalleled successes were known to the USSR and Albania.

Albania! :laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

The USSR was not an unparalleled success. If it had been an unparalleled success, it would still exist. Unparalleled successes cannot be overturned because of a change in leadership at the top.


In other words, its a post-modernist excersize that claims immunity to theory, because theory is dogmatic.

Hardly post-modernist. Nor do we claim that theory is inherently dogmatic. What has been dogmatic, however, is the application of Marxism-Leninism, to the point that we have Marxist-Leninists blaming the failure to build a subway system in Prague on counter-revolutionary subsoil, or groups which remain wedded to forms of organizing that worked in one country one hundred years ago under completely different circumstances. The inability to understand that different circumstances requires different methods of organization is the hallmark of dogmatism.

[red cat]

There was such a bloc during the original flareup of Indian Maoism in 1971: the People's Republic of China, but instead of arming those Maoist rebels, Mao's government joined with US imperialism to support the Pakistani bourgeoisie with arms and planes during its genocidal conflict against the Bangladeshi people. Like Stalin, who had favored the GMD over the CPC, Mao similarly had no faith in his fraternal comrades to the south, and saw bourgeois forces and shifting alliances with imperialism as a more reliable way to strengthen the power of his national elite.

Why do you specifically refer to the year 1971 for China not arming the Indian Maoists ?

By the way, arming Indian Maoists at that stage wouldn't have helped them. China helped the Indian Maoists a lot in other ways.

[Lenin II]

The bourgeoisie also existed in the USSR in the form of party bureaucrats. Does this imply that the USSR was not socialist ? Unreal. No wonder China was the most reactionary “socialist” state next to Yugoslavia. Maoists are completely unable to tell a bourgeois element from a revisionist element.
“Mao let classed capitalists into the party.”
“But there were bourgeoisie in the CPSU, too! In the form of revisionists!”

So in other words, revisionists = owners of the means of production.

Of course, this is because this is based on the Maoist dogma of labeling revisionists in the Party “the new bourgeoisie.” To some extent this is true, since they pursue a bourgeois line. HOWEVER, having bourgeois ideas or pursuing a bourgeois line is NOT the same as being bourgeoisie, or else 89% of the working class under capitalism would be “the bourgeoisie” since they have a bourgeois political line!

They use this dogma to excuse letting real, actual parasitic classes into the Communist Party and to continue to exist, because they argue “there will always be a bourgeoisie [read: bourgeois line] so let’s be conciliatory towards the actual bourgeoisie!”


That says nothing on the basis of unity of third world countries. From the CCP document:

“Chairman Mao Zedong pointed out during his meeting with Henry Kissinger in 1973 that as long as we share the same goal, we will not do harm to you nor will you do harm to us and we should work together to counter Soviet hegemonism. We hope the United States would strengthen its cooperation with Europe and Japan and draw a parallel line linking the United States, Japan China, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Europe. This is unity against the Soviet hegemonism or the "Strategy of forming an alliance against an opponent".”

The proof is in the actions. Reactionary and pro-US regimes from the “Third World” were allied with, like Zaire and Chile, while “First World” progressive movements were ignored. That said, the Three Worlds wasn’t exactly consistent, since Albania could be considered “Third World” having been the poorest nation in Europe, but during the entire GPCR and afterwards audiences and relations were cut off, despite Hoxha intially supporting the GPCR.


This (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.blythe.org/peru-pcp/docs_en/internat.htm) is what we think about that: First off, who the fuck is “we?”

The quote says nothing about how Mao himself never contradicted what you call “Deng’s” Three Worlds Theory while he was still alive. May I remind you he died in September, 1976 and the UN Speech was given in April, 1974? Mao had plenty of energy to invite Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon over for tea and biscuits while the Vietnamese were being napalmed, but oh, to write A SINGLE WORK THAT YOU CAN QUOTE going against the reactionary use of the Three Worlds, oh, that simply doesn’t exist.

Let me get this straight – you want me to buy this agnosticism? You want me to stare all this evidence in the face and say, “No! Mao would never do that!”

You honestly expect me to believe he never went against this theory, but was still against it?


So instead of attacking the theory of continuous class struggle, he attacked continuous class struggle itself at its epoch. file:///C:/Users/sams/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image001.gif Notice here that red_cat cannot learn. He has found a sound bite that does not address the issue at hand. Like a holy scripture, he repeats it over and over in order to distract from the point. As well, he exposes that he has NOT read the book he claims to judge, and most certainly knows nothing about the country he seeks to attack. Otherwise he would know Hoxha does no such thing.



I don't know about the attacking foreigners part, but surely class struggle gets directed partially towards old reactionary classes using religion to rebuild the basis of class oppression. Whatever happened to the good ole’ Maoist liberalism? Whatever happened to thinking Stalin was a butcher who, as Mao put it, “confused contradictions” and “cut off too many head which do not grow back like chives?”

A temple is just a building. To destroy a building is not class struggle. The fact that the GPCR was so out of control of the Communist Party and the vanguard, and was led by students and not the working class to boot, says a lot.

Unless we are to say that class origin means nothing, you must admit that the vast majority of students, particularly in a poor country like China, will be petty-bourgeois or outright bourgeois. From history we also know that students are vacillitating as hell. They will gather in their millions to shout against WHOEVER is in power, Marxist or revisionist, fascist or capitalist, liberal or conservative, it doesn't matter. You do not give youth control of WORKERS' vanguard or you can expect complete chaos to happen.




That analysis has to be expanded to a great extent, with complete military strategy and tactics, before a revolution can be made in any third world country. Mao did that and came up with an elaborate and general theory of protracted peoples' war.

In other words, because Lenin and Stalin merely said it in words and didn’t do it in deeds, that means they get no credit and Mao gets all of it. As well, military strategy is now somehow a “development of Marxism.”

Lenin and Stalin clearly map out here how to use class struggle in Third World and semi-colonial countries with little proletariat. Need I remind you that Stalin and Mao communicated frequently by telegraph, by messenger and by phone during the Chinese Civil War and Mao frequently took his advice on how to utilize class struggle?


I was referring to your assertion that every state has to be capitalist or socialist. What else is there? What is a state if not capitalist or socialist?


The type of contradictions in a semi colonial semi feudal country forges a temporary alliance of the three revolutionary classes with the national bourgeoisie. After overthrowing feudalism, imperialism and comprador capitalism, the proletariat leads the struggle against the national bourgeoisie. The outcome of this struggle determines whether the country will move on to socialism or suffer a capitalist restoration. Exactly. And China never led a class struggle against their own domestic capitalists, or for that matter, much of the revisionists in the party. Even in Shanghai in 1970, during the peak of the Cultural Revolution, in books such as “Daily Life in Revolutionary China” they openly admit that the same old capitalists from pre-revolution were still running the factories in exactly the same way. They were still run for profit and not for the needs of society.


Any example of massive class struggle from below in the 1930s or after WW2 in the USSR are missing. If “from below,” you mean, “not led by a vanguard” then no, because the USSR was never that stupid.

Secondly, are you kidding me? Ever hear of what the Trots call “Stalinist collectivization?” There was a massive movement of the peasantry against the kulaks during the 1930s. This is incredibly common knowledge. And what exactly does class struggle have to do to qualify as “from below?” Not involve the Communist Party? Involve spontaneity? This is a vague and amorphous formulation using anarchist phrasing to make Lenin and Stalin look like totalitarian commandists.


Funny that Hoxha did not realize it for decades. file:///C:/Users/sams/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image001.gif Oh, but of course every single revisionist has a huge “I’m a revisionist douche bag” sign plastered on his back.

As we all know, class struggle is perfectly transparent and everyone knows who the “good guys” and the “bad guys” are right from the beginning or else they are simply a renegade. :rolleyes:



Mao's foreign policy was not without flaws.


There were faults in Mao's line. We admit it.
At what point do you stop talking of “mistakes” and “flaws” and start talking open revisionism and anti-Marxism?

I’m dead serious. Exactly what WOULD Mao have to do for you to claim he wasn’t a communist?

Maoists are so incredibly dogmatic it drives me crazy, especially since they throw around that word for Marxist-Leninists [Hoxhaists]. You can excuse literally any action by saying, “Oh, well they made mistakes.”

You could say Khrushchev “made mistakes” in attacking Stalin and collaborating with Tito and the US imperialists (both of which Mao did).

You could say that Tito “made mistakes” by using the workers’ self-management capitalist mode of production and stopping class struggle.

You could say that Kautsky “made mistakes” by supporting his own country during World War I.

You could say that Trotsky “made mistakes” by advocating the destruction of the USSR.

You could say that Kim Jong-Il "made mistakes" by saying the military of the DPRK is the vanguard.



Do we say any of this? No, we do not, because these are not “mistakes.” They are out-and-out revisionism and betrayal of Marxism. After revolution, if we still have to ally with one imperialism against another, promising 100 million dollars in aid to rulers like Mobutu, just what is this “revolution” anyway?


But there was need of tactical alliance with a super-power. I didn’t see Albania doing that.


Furthermore the flaws of the Chinese foreign policies then are very little compared to its positive achievements. Pinochet and the CIA = positive.


Yes, I know about that document. There has also been this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/maoists-reali-t125228/index.html?highlight=i+like+rightists) thread on it that reflects our thoughts on it. Again, who the fuck is “we” and “our?”

Also, that thread is monsterously stupid. Alastair uses agnosticism by saying “Hurr this document must be faked like half a century after the fact, cause, State Department” and the other replies are nothing more than simpering apologism. The usual dogmatic agnosticism is upheld by everyone insisting “he didn’t really mean what he said.”


Attacking Mao is a common property of all revisionists. Attacking a revisionist is not a common property of all revisionists.


None of those countries other than Turkey have a well developed Maoist peoples' war. But what about your parties in Nepal, India or the Philippines? Why are Hoxhaists either non-existent or have no achievements in places where Maoists armed struggles are in full swing ? Where exactly are your parties that have over 200,000 members (more than the Communist Party of Cuba), such as the PCMLE in Ecuador?

Furthermore, where has your ideology EVER established socialism? At best its managed pro-US state-capitalism both in China and in Nepal.

Actually, I’d say the Communist Party of the Phillipines is progressive not because of its Maoism, but in spite of it. They are one of the few Maoist parties that actually retains the old Marxist-Leninist teaching while picking up some of Mao’s better ideas. Sadly, there are precious few of them in the world right now. Most Maoists have taken up the liberal/Trotskyite Kasama and RCP line.

As for Nepal, that has been thoroughly covered in other threads. I'm not interested at all in getting into a debate about Nepal, since right now I wish to have a debate about China and Mao.



Suffice it to say I view most of the party as taking the revisionist yet still progressive line, while Prachanda and his clique are liberal scumbags. They collaborate with US imperialism much like their ideological forefather and at this present time when Kasama is praising a "new socialist state" we cannot afford to support such scum. The DPRK is anti-imperialist. So is Cuba, though rather liberal. We do not support Vietnam or China. Our support of revisionist powers are solely depedant on anti-imperialism and nothing else. The Nepali Party has shown itself to be comprador and pro-imperialist. It has even welcomed American capital, as Prachanda himself admitted it.

That's my position as of right now. So you see, bragging about Nepal is lost on me, in fact if anything I think Nepal highlights the revisionist, reactionary and anti-working-class nature of Maoism in general.




Your quote was that we call everyone dogmatic and dictatorial, not that we claim that some were dogmatic and dictatorial. You initial claim, despite your attempt to move the goal posts, is little more than a lie.
What was that again about everyone? Mao, being a subset of the set [i]everyone, would also have to be considered dogmatic and dictatorial for everyone to be considered dogmatic and dictatorial. Thus, by accepting Kasama does not consider Mao to be dogmatic and dictatorial, you are admitting you lied in your initial accusation. It’s called a “generalization.” Ever heard of it? Your response is to take me 100% literally?


“Oh, we never called your Aunt Edna dogmatic and dictatorial, so it’s not EVERYONE!”

OK, seriously. Is this your best comeback?


You like to through that word, "every," around a lot. I imagine that there are quite a few communists who do not claim to support Lenin, for example, left communists. No, there are revisionists, not communists, who do not support Lenin. A revisionist is by nature not a communist. I consider left-communists bourgeois liberals.


Albania! file:///C:/Users/sams/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image002.giffile:///C:/Users/sams/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image002.giffile:///C:/Users/sams/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image002.giffile:///C:/Users/sams/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image002.giffile:///C:/Users/sams/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image002.giffile:///C:/Users/sams/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image002.gif Yay for Albania kicking out the fascist agents of Hitler and Mussolini without foreign assistance, doubling life expectancy, electrifying the entire country, establishing socialist relations of productions, abolishing taxes, providing free health care and education up to the highest level, industrializing despite the fact it was a tribal society until 1950s, abolishing honor killings (which now account for over 25% of ALL Albanian deaths), abolishing sex slavery of women, standing up to both American and Soviet imperialism equally, leading the longest-lasting socialist state in human history, establishing working class control and elections over production centers, bringing illiteracy down from 90-95% to on the level of the United States, and so on and so forth forever.

No, none of that matters. All it gets is a roll on the ground smiley face because Albanians are poor and Albania is small. Truly charming and wonderful.

http://coffeemarxist.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/why-enver-hoxha-why-hoxhaism/

[Saorsa]

Firstly, I find it hugely ironic that a Hoxhaist is critiquing Maoists for not being critical enough of our leaders. Secondly, we should make it perfectly clear that you don't have a clue what you're talking about when it comes to Nepal. I don't care whether you want to debate it or not, you're throwing around wild assertions without any basis in fact. This has to be pointed out.

I should also note that it's quite hard to respond to these attacks when they don't deal with specifics, but are instead mostly just unsubstantiated slander.


Suffice it to say I view most of the party as taking the revisionist yet still progressive line, while Prachanda and his clique are liberal scumbags.

Who is in Prachanda's 'clique' and how are they liberal scumbags?


They collaborate with US imperialism much like their ideological forefather

:confused:

They're on the US terrorist list. What on earth are you on about?


Our support of revisionist powers are solely depedant on anti-imperialism and nothing else. The Nepali Party has shown itself to be comprador and pro-imperialist.

Um... how? Their current party line is that the principal struggle in Nepal is one for national liberation, specifically the struggle against Indian expansionism. They've spent months now organising a movement against the Indian domination of Nepal. Rather than spouting ignorant bs, why not actually put up some facts?

As for them being 'comprador', that's too ridiculous to even address. Provide some evidence and we can have a debate.


It has even welcomed American capital, as Prachanda himself admitted it.

You mean like how Lenin did during the NEP? Was Lenin a revisionist comprador stooge of imperialism then? Different times and different situations require different tactics. The Nepalis do not have a socialist bloc to back them up. They urgently need to find ways to tap into Nepal's only real resource, hydropower. Nepal has better potential for hydropower than just about anywhere in the world, yet it has massive electricity shortages. Their analysis is that they require foreign investment to help make this happen. I fail to see what's so counter-revolutionary about this.


That's my position as of right now. So you see, bragging about Nepal is lost on me, in fact if anything I think Nepal highlights the revisionist, reactionary and anti-working-class nature of Maoism in general.

Your position is one of ignorance. Simple as that. I'd recommend you adopt a slightly more humble approach and show some willingness to learn, rather than just attacking people. Still, such an approach isn't exactly typical of Hoxhaism...

[Ismail]

They're on the US terrorist list. What on earth are you on about?So is the Venezuelan Red Flag Party, even though the ICMLPO expelled it for alleged CIA links. (It allies with the right-wing in Venezuela against Chávez and supported the 2002 coup with bullets). 10 years ago, however, it was engaged in guerrilla warfare against the government, hence why it's on the list.

[Kléber]

Of course, this is because this is based on the Maoist dogma of labeling revisionists in the Party “the new bourgeoisie.” To some extent this is true, since they pursue a bourgeois line. HOWEVER, having bourgeois ideas or pursuing a bourgeois line is NOT the same as being bourgeoisie, or else 89% of the working class under capitalism would be “the bourgeoisie” since they have a bourgeois political line!
And China never led a class struggle against their own domestic capitalists, or for that matter, much of the revisionists in the party. Even in Shanghai in 1970, during the peak of the Cultural Revolution, in books such as “Daily Life in Revolutionary China” they openly admit that the same old capitalists from pre-revolution were still running the factories in exactly the same way. They were still run for profit and not for the needs of society. When they said stuff like that in the Cultural Revolution it wasn't an "open admission" it was more of "let's beat the crap out of those people to show our hatred for capitalist-roaders and love of Chairman Mao." But the Cultural Revolution had been officially ended in 1969 and the Red Guards were phased out by outright military dictatorship.

Private capitalists had been expropriated by the state by the end of the 1950's, sometimes being coopted as state managers keeping high salaries (as had happened in the USSR where Lenin referred to the salary differentials as "state capitalism" and a temporary retreat from communist principles). The Maoist theory of state capitalism also dates back to the Sino-Soviet split. The only "capitalists" after industry had been taken over were people who had the "capitalist" class label on their documents, or who had inherited the label from their male parents, but they didn't actually own the means of production, those belonged to the state. Some former capitalists had been allowed to change their class label, and officially become "proletarians" even though they lived wealthy lifestyles at the expense of the proletariat, but this was also true in the USSR, since the CPSU had abolished partmaximum (max salary for Party members to keep bourgeois specialists out of the party) in 1931, and maintained "state capitalist" salary differentials after the official proclamation of socialism in 1936, also, Stalin had gotten on well with people who initially were on the side of counter-revolution like Vyshinsky and Menzhinsky, meanwhile those labeled "capitalists" in China were harshly suppressed, so how was the PRC less "socialist" than the USSR?

[Lenin II]

Perhaps I should’ve known tackling a Maoist sacred cow would’ve provoked the snakes to emerge from their holes. I forgot for a moment that anyone who calls themselves Maoists (actually your buddies in Nepal tried not to) is a Maoist forever in the Maoists’s eyes.

They could fly the Swastika and Maoists would point out that there is red on the flag, and this it is still communist and the swastika is simply to fool others, and then claim it was all in the name of anti-dogmatism and that the revolution was merely adapting itself to new conditions, or else so they would not be outwardly destroyed by reactionaries.


Who is in Prachanda's 'clique' and how are they liberal scumbags? Prachanda, like Mao, has been forced to resign due to uprisings within his own party. Unlike Mao however, who was unseated by the even more right-wing (Dengist before Deng) Liu Shao-Chi, Prachanda has come under fire by the revolutionary wing. I won’t touch on the decommissioning of thousands of fighters of the PLA of Nepal, not the ending of the Peoples’ War, nor the thousands of PLA fighters locked in India, which Prachanda oversaw, despite your talk of opposing India. That has all been covered before, as has Matrika Yadav’s righteous attacks on Prachanda’s clique.

What I will focus on is the revisionism, reformism and liberalism of this clique.

Prachanda wishes to build a modern Chinese-style state-capitalist government in Nepal.

Prachanda went on further to chide Western-style capitalism and praised China’s model of economic development as one that Nepal will emulate.

“We will build special economic zones like China,” Prachanda said. “The special economic zones stimulated China’s economic development, and we want to learn from China. China’s experience is really helpful for us.” In the interview, Prachanda emphasized the geographic proximity between China and Nepal, and the high respect that Nepalese people have for China and Chinese people. “For Nepal’s national independence, it is critically important for Nepal to maintain intimate relations with China” (Nanfang Daily, June 30).

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=5029 (http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5btt_news%5d=5029)

Prachanda is not an atheist, a thing that Lenin himself said that “every socialist must be, as a rule.”

“I am not an atheist.” Prachanda added, “do not take the Maoist Party as an atheist party.”
http://www.telegraphnepal.com/news_det.php?news_id=6180

The Prachanda leadership proposed dropping Mao.

“Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), and Nepal’s first revolutionary prime minister, capped the growing debate about the party at home and abroad Friday by telling journalists at the Nepalgunj airport, prior to kicking off a festival, that two months ago, he had proposed to the central committee of his party that the Maoist tag be jettisoned.”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Nepal_Maoists_ready_to_abandon_Mao/articleshow/3609164.cms

The Prachanda leadership shits on Stalin. Maoists adjust their views on Stalin to suit their own ends. The Kasama/RCP liberals in particular have been working overtime to apologize to reactionaries and bourgeois propagandists for Stalin, or just not to mention him at all in comparison to the Great Helmsman, or perhaps Bob Avakian.

“We are fully confident that we are developing the ideology from Lenin, not from Stalin."


http://kasamaproject.org/2008/09/27/prachanda-nyc-speech-a-maoist-vision-for-a-new-nepal/

"Because Stalin had made a serious mistake of ideology, in philosophy, in science- and all of the workers movement has taken so much loss from this deviation from dialectical materialism."


http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg08547.html


The Prachanda leadership makes Lenin into a Common Liberal.

“At that time we have a serious discussion and what we devised is that if Lenin had lived another 5 or 10 years he would also introduce multiparty competition, this is my understanding.”

Prachanda supports private property instead of state property.

"We do not believe that private property should be abolished."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7596523.stm

Prachands supports not smashing the capitalist state and PLA integration with the reactionary Nepali army.

“That will not happen. As long as everyone including the army, the police and the other officials remain committed to the people's mandate on democracy, peace and change, no one needs to feel insecure. There will be no prejudice against any.”

“I never showed such distrust. I never wanted to show any bit of distrust towards NA (Gyanendras former troops) or police or PLA or armed police.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7596523.stm

The Prachanda leadership is reformist and supports a peaceful transition to socialism as opposed to smashing the capitalist state.

“We will definitely attempt to establish a People's Republic by institutionalizing democratic republic and through the legitimate means like elections.”


“We have concluded that socialism without multiparty competition and political freedoms cannot survive.”

“I believe our party will win majority, even two-thirds majority in the next election. Then, our government will continue for another five years.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7596523.stm

“We will go for the goal of the people's democracy through peaceful means. Today, we are talking of a democratic republic and our understanding with the parties is that the way to realise this is the constituent assembly.”

“Three years ago we took a decision in which we said how are we going to develop democracy is the key question in the 21st century. This meant the negative and positive lessons of the 20th century have to be synthesised in order for us to move ahead. And three years ago we decided we must go in for political competition. Without political competition, a mechanical or metaphysical attitude will be there. So this time, what we decided is not so new. In August, we took serious decisions on how practically to build unity with the parliamentary political parties. We don't believe that the people's war we initiated was against, or mainly against, multiparty democracy. It was mainly against feudal autocracy, against the feudal structure.”

"Our minimum, bottom line is the election of a constituent assembly, that too under international supervision, either by the United Nations or some other international mediation acceptable to all."


“Varadarajan: Nowadays, we hear the phrase 'The Maoists will sit on the shoulders and hit on the head.' Does this mean your alliance with the parties is tactical rather than strategic, that when the head - the monarchy - is weakened or defeated, you might then start hitting the shoulder?

Prachanda: It is not like this. Our decision on multiparty democracy is a strategically, theoretically developed position, that in a communist state, democracy is a necessity. This is one part. Second, our decision within the situation today is not tactical. It is a serious policy. We are telling the parties that we should end not only the autocratic monarchy but monarchy itself. This is not even a monarchy in the traditional way it was in Birendra's time, so we have to finish it. After that, in the multiparty democracy which comes - interim government, constitutional assembly and democratic republic - we are ready to have peaceful competition with you all. Of course, people still have a doubt about us because we have an army. And they ask whether after the constitutional assembly we will abandon our arms. This is a question. We have said we are ready to reorganise our army and we are ready to make a new Nepal army also. So this is not a tactical question.”

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/nic/maoist.htm

The Prachanda leadership supports disarming the Indian revolutionaries in favor of peaceful transition. If you remember, the Indian state is gearing up for a fascist war against the Naxalite/Maoist insurgents

"We believe (bourgeois democracy) applies to them (the Indians) too. We want to debate this. They have to understand this and go down this route. Both on the questions of leadership and on multiparty democracy, or rather multiparty competition, those who call themselves revolutionaries in India need to think about these issues. And there is a need to go in the direction of that practice.”

http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/nic/maoist.htm


As for them being 'comprador', that's too ridiculous to even address. Provide some evidence and we can have a debate. The Nepali revisionists have yet to withdraw the Nepali troops from Afghanistan. As of now they have troops helping the American imperialists to occupy the Middle East for oil interests. Here is a letter from the Communist Party (Maoist) of Afghanistan to the Maoists in Nepal protesting the remaining troops they have there, which work with U.S. security forces.

“Currently, the Chairman of the CPN (M) is the Prime Minister of Nepal. The Ministry of Defense belongs to a leader of the CPN (M). The Ministry of Finance and other critical positions in the cabinet belong to the CPN (M). In short, the coalition government is under the leadership of the CPN (M). However, the citizens of this government is a part and parcel of occupying forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq – a party that led Peoples War for ten years in Nepal - now shamefully agrees with the occupation forces and implements their plans!”

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.com/2009/04/open-protest-letter-from-communist.html

It should be noted also, that, since you bring up the Indian state, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) has also exposed Prachanda’s revisionism and liberalism in several letters and polemics issued to them.

http://kasamaproject.org/2009/06/28/indian-maoists-on-world-controversies-among-communists/

So has the Revolutionary Communist Party USA and other RIM parties.

My friends, this is Nepal. A vile comprador state-capitalist regime that halts class struggle in its tracks, disarms revolution, runs into the arms of the United Nations, throws Mao into the garbage pin, shits all over Stalin, advocates open peaceful transition to socialism, kisses imperialist capital and becomes the adoring poem-reciting lover of the World Bank and the IMF.

If this is Marxism, count me out.


You mean like how Lenin did during the NEP? This is the very first time I have ever heard someone claim that American capital was allowed to prosper in Russia during the NEP.


They urgently need to find ways to tap into Nepal's only real resource, hydropower. Nepal has better potential for hydropower than just about anywhere in the world, yet it has massive electricity shortages. Their analysis is that they require foreign investment to help make this happen. I fail to see what's so counter-revolutionary about this. Aren’t Maoists the one who called Liu Shao-Chi a counterrevolutionary traitor and scab for advocating this? The idea that socialism has to beat capitalism and imperialism in terms of delivering commodities is a manifestation of the Theory of Productive Forces, a theory which history has proven wrong by the industrialization of small, isolated socialist nations in quick order. In fact, Mao’s book on criticizing the USSR spoke at length about utilizing the “mass line” and not machines, to build socialism. Nonwithstanding for a moment critiques of China, he does have a good point. This is how industrialization is done. What matters are the proletariat, not machines.

There are plenty of examples of small, poor and backward countries that have had to defend themselves under very difficult conditions: Albania, Korea, Cuba, etc. In fact, it could be argued that these nations were in a much worse situation and much poorer and underdeveloped than Nepal. There is historical precedent to consider. Judging from this, at this point in the struggle it is not clear why carrying the class struggle through to the end without pause is impossible in Nepal.

[Saorsa]

Jesus Christ. Well, if you're happy to spend your time hunting down all those links, it would be rude of me not to respond. I'll reply tomorrow when I'm not busy... thankfully I'm unemployed atm and have plenty of time on my hands!

Before I go though, I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine. I don't believe you've previously met. My friend's name is Context... I'm sure you two will get along fine.

[red cat]

Many of the Hoxhaists' questions have been answered. I will make a few more points and ask some questions.

1) China couldn't have been capitalist all along. Leninism shows that every successful national liberation movement since around the time of the Bolshevik revolution has to be led by the proletariat. The fact that China is capitalist now proves that imperialism had been completely ousted and hence the national liberation movement was successful. So at some point the proletariat must have been overthrown. This means that China was not always capitalist.

2) Cuba's national liberation movement was not led by any proletarian party. Hence they succumbed to Soviet revisionism and never completed their revolution. Thus Cuba is not anti-imperialist. Nevertheless it opposes the only super power now which is positive for the world revolution.

3) Nepal at present has nothing to do with capitalism. It is still a semi-feudal semi-colonial country where the communist party has reached a strategic equilibrium. From here it can transform into a capitalist nation only if the proletariat seizes power but is overthrown by the bourgeoisie later. Without the revolution, Nepal will become a full-fledged semi-colony again.

4) When I say "we", sometimes I refer to most communists who support some of the peoples' wars in the third world now, and more or less uphold Maoism. On some occasions, by "we", I refer to all those who uphold the political line of the PCP(Shining Path).

5) China's contribution to the world revolution included supplying arms to the PKP, correcting the political line of the CPI(ML), and helping the Vietnamese struggle in many ways. Other than this, many of our comrades like Gonzalo etc. trained themselves in China.

6) Don't try to compare your numbers with that of Maoists. The CPI(Maoist) alone has over 115,000 cadres in Bastar alone, a single area under their influence.

7) Hoxha:


1960

We pose the question, why should Communist China not have the atomic bomb?

Of course, the Central Committee of our Party refused such a thing and, in its official reply, described this as an entirely non-Marxist deed, a factional act directed against a fraternal third party, against the Communist Party of China.

For the Party of Labor of Albania this was monstrous and unacceptable, not only because it was not convinced of the truth of these allegations, but also because it rightly suspected that a non-Marxist action was being organised against a great and glorious fraternal party like the Chinese Communist Party, that under the guise of an accusation of dogmatism against China, an attack was being launched against Marxism-Leninism and the Moscow Manifesto of Peace.


1961

The people's revolution triumphed in China; this is the greatest historic event after the October Socialist Revolution. Socialism came out of the borders of a single country and became a world system stretching from the Adriatic coasts to the coasts of the Pacific Ocean; this is the greatest historic victory of the international working class.


1969

Dear Comrades:


Allow me, on behalf of the Central Committee of the Albanian Party of Labour, of the Albanian Communists and the whole Albanian people, who followed with indescribable enthusiasm and great attention the proceedings of the Ninth National Congress of the fraternal Communist Party of China, to express to you the most cordial revolutionary congratulations on the full success of the Ninth National Congress of your glorious Party and on the historic decisions it adopted.


The Ninth Congress marks a brilliant page in the long history of the great Communist Party of China, which is full of heroic and legendary struggles. It affirmed the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist line of Chairman Mao and the decisive victory of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. It firmly held and raised higher the red banner of revolution and socialism. It further strengthened and tempered the Party, its unity of thought and action on the basis of the invincible thought of the great Marxist0Leninist Comrade Mao Tse-Tung.


The programmatic documents, Chairman Mao's speeches, the political report by Vice-Chairman Lin Piao, and the new Party Constitution, which were unanimously approved at the congress, have opened brilliant prospects for the Chinese Communist Party and the 700 million Chinese people to achieve greater new victories throughout the country, to carry the revolution through to the end, to advance at a faster speed in the building of socialism and communism in China


We are exceptionally glad that the historic Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China unanimously elected, in an ardent revolutionary atmosphere, the Party leadership with Comrade Mao Tse-Tung, the founder and great leader of the Communist Party of China, the outstanding Marxist-Leninist and the strategist of genius of revolution, as its leader, and with his close comrade-in-arms Comrade Lin Piao as its deputy leader. We heartily greet the new Central Committee elected by the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China. This Central Committee is made up of revolutionaries tested in fierce class battles and in the flames of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and boundlessly faithful to Chairman Mao Tse-Tung and to his invincible thought.


The Albanian Communists and people, who are with the Chinese Communist and people, and all other Marxist-Leninist and revolutionaries in the world, see in the decisions of the Ninth National Congress of your glorious Party the great guarantee that the Communist Party of China will always hold high the inflexible banner of Marxism-Leninism, of socialism and proletarian internationalism, will further consolidate and strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat and will make great People's China a still more powerful fortress and prop of the liberation struggle of the peoples and of the world revolution.


The Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, a congress of proletarian victory over the traitorous, revisionist and counter-revolutionary line of the renegades, traitor and scab Liu Shao-Chi, marks a new stage not only in the carrying out of socialist revolution and socialist construction in China, but also in the fight for the triumph of Marxism-Leninism over revisionism, of socialism over capitalism and of revolution over counter-revolution in the world. This is why the hearts and minds of the Marxist-Leninists and revolutionaries of the whole world were directed in these days towards your great congress, this is why their hearts are filled with joy at this great historic event. The solemn declaration of the congress that "the Communist Party of China, nurtured by the great leader Chairman Mao, always upholds proletarian internationalism and firmly supports the revolutionary struggles of the proletariat and the oppressed peoples and nations of the whole world" inspires all the Communist and revolutionary peoples and gives then strength and courage to broaden and push forward incessantly their struggle against imperialism led by US, against modern revisionism led by Soviet revisionism, and against all the reactionaries, in order to create a new world without capitalism, without imperialism, without oppressors and exploiters.


The Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China dealt a fresh crushing blow to the Soviet Khruschevite revisionists, to these renegades to the great Lenin-Stalin cause, who have transformed themselves into social-imperialists and social-fascists and who are in a close counter-revolutionary alliance with the US imperialists, the most ferocious enemies of the peoples. The imperialist-revisionist aggressive plans against great socialist China and the freedom loving peoples of the world will fail ignominiously, and the US imperialists and the Soviet revisionists will be completely and definitely smashed. There is no force on earth that can stop the victorious march of revolution. There is no force on earth that can save the imperialists and the revisionists from their thorough defeat. The revolutionary cause of the peoples will surely triumph.


The Albanian Communists and people who are bound by an unbreakable friendship with the Chinese Communists and people, immeasurably rejoice at the great victory of the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China and they regard it as their own victory. Our hearts throb as one. We are inseparable brothers and comrades-in-arms. Our unity is steel-like. . The Ninth National Congress of your heroic Party will certainly strengthen still more the great friendship and solidarity between our two Parties and countries, it will further enhance our two Parties and countries, it will further enhance our common struggle for the triumph of the great cause of Marxism-Leninism and of the liberation of the peoples.


The Albanian Party of Labour and the entire Albanian people wholeheartedly wish that the Communist Party of China and the great Chinese people, armed with all-conquering Mao Tse-Tung thought and under the wise and far-sighted Marxist-Leninist leadership of Mao Tse-Tung, will achieve new and ever greater successes and victories on the bright road of socialism established by the Ninth National Congress.


Long live the great and glorious Communist Party of China!
May Chairman Mao, great leader, great Marxist-Leninist and the closest friend of the Albanian people, live as long as the mountains!
May the unbreakable friendship and militant unity between our two Parties and peoples last forever and grow with each passing day!


Enver Hoxha

First Secretary of the Central Committee
Of the Albanian Party of Labour
April 29th, 1969, Tirana

1976

This Mao Zedong’s theory of a hundred flags, widely proclaimed in May 1956 by the alternate member of the Political Bureau of the CC of the CP of China, Lu Dingyi, constituted the Chinese variant of the bourgeois-revisionist theory and practice about the “free circulation of ideas and people”, about the coexistence of a hotch-potch of ideologies, trends, schools and coteries within socialism.


Many a time later I have turned back to this period of the history of the Communist Party of China, trying to figure out how and why the profoundly revisionist line of 1956 subsequently seemed to change direction, and for a time, became “pure”, “anti-revisionist” and “Marxist-Leninist”. It is a fact, for example, that in 1960 the Communist Party of China seemed to be strongly opposing the revisionist theses of Nikita Khrushchev and confirmed that “it was defending Marxism-Leninism” from the distortions which were being made to it, etc. It was precisely because China came out against modem revisionism in 1960 and seemed to be adhering to Marxist-Leninist positions that brought about that our Party stood shoulder to shoulder with it in the struggle which we had begun against the Khrushchevites.
However, time confirmed, and this is reflected extensively in the documents of our Party, that in no instance, either in 1956 or in the ’60s did the Communist Party of China proceed or act from the positions of Marxism-Leninism.



In 1956 it rushed to take up the banner of revisionism, in order to elbow Khrushchev out and gain the role of the leader in the communist and workers’ movement for itself. But when Mao Zedong and his associates saw that they would not easily emerge triumphant over the patriarch of modem revisionism, Khrushchev, through the revisionist contest, they changed their tactic, pretended to reject their former flag, presented themselves as “pure Marxist-Leninists”, striving in this way, to win those positions which they had been unable to win with their former tactic. When this second tactic turned out no good, either, they “discarded” their second, allegedly Marxist-Leninist, flag and came out in the arena as they had always been, opportunists, loyal champions of a line of conciliation and capitulation towards capital and reaction. We were to see all these things confirmed in practice, through a long, difficult and glorious struggle which our Party waged in defence of Marxism-Leninism.



After the proceedings of the congress were over, they took us on visits to a number of cities and people’s communes, such as to Beijing, Shanghai, Tientsin, Nanking, Port-Arthur, etc., where we saw the life and the work of the great Chinese people at first hand. They were simple and industrious people with few pretensions, humble and attentive to their guests. From what the Chinese leaders and those who accompanied us told us, and from what we were able to see for ourselves, it seemed that they had achieved a series of positive changes and developments. However, these were not of that level they were claimed to be, the more so if account is taken of the exceptional human potential of the Chinese continent, and the desire and readiness of the Chinese people to work.

1978

But the racist thesis which places the countries on three levels or in three "worlds"., is not based simply on skin colour. It makes a classification based on the level of economic development of the tountries and is intended to define the "great master race", on the one hand, and the "race of pariahs and plebs", on the other, to create an unalterable and metaphysical division in the interests of the capitalist bourgeoisie. It considers the various nations and peoples of the world as a flock of sheep, as an amorphous whole.


The Chinese revisionists accept and preach that the "master race" must be preserved and the .race of pariahs and plebs. must serve it meekly and devotedly.

Our Party had closer contacts with the Chinese only after 1956. The contacts steadily increased due to the struggle our Party was waging against Khrushchevite modern revisionism. At that time our contacts with the Communist Party of China, or more accurately, with its leading cadres, became more frequent and closer, especially when the Communist Party of China, too, entered into open conflict with the Khrushchevite revisionists. But we have to admit that in the meetings we had with the Chinese leaders, although they were good, comradely meetings, in some ways, China, Mao Tsetung and the Communist Party of China, remained a great enigma to us.


But why were China, its Communist Party and Mao Tsetung an enigma? They were an enigma because many attitudes, whether general ones or the personal attitudes of Chinese leaders, towards a series of major political, ideological, military, and organizational problems vacillated, at times to the right, at times to the left. Sometimes they were resolute and at times irresolute, there were times, too, when they maintained correct stands, but more often it was their opportunist stands that caught the eye. During the entire period that Mao was alive, the Chinese policy, in general, was a vacillating one, a policy changing with the circumstances, lacking a Marxist-Leninist spinal cord. What they would say about an important political problem today they would contradict tomorrow. In the Chinese policy, one consistent enduring red thread could not be found.


The course of events showed that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was neither a revolution, nor great, nor cultural, and in particular, not in the least proletarian. It was a palace Putsch on an all-China scale for the liquidation of a handful of reactionaries who had seized power.


Of course, this Cultural Revolution was a hoax. It liquidated both the Communist Party of China, and the mass organizations and plunged China into new chaos. This revoltion was led by non-Marxist elements, who have been liquidated through a military putsch staged by other anti-Marxist and fascist elements.

.....and much more. :) It's a pity that such a great Marxist Leninist like Hoxha took so many years to recognize revisionists. :lol:

8) With all your correct and incomparable line, Hoxhaists, how do you explain the transformation of your great socialist country to what it is now? How did it happen ? There are so many Maoists condemning the present Chinese government as revisionists, but I find no such criticism from Hoxhaists about Albania. Is it still socialist?

9) One very prominent difference between revisionist and revolutionary forces has been armed struggle. No matter how much pain the bourgeoisie may take to create pseudo communist parties mouthing most revolutionary phrases, they will not allow their agents to fire a single bullet at them. The branch of anti-revisionist bloc that embraced Hoxhaism has stopped armed struggle long back. On the other hand, the validity and revolutionary nature of Maoism is proved everyday by the martyrdom of base level cadres to politburo members of our parties.

[flobdob]

2) Cuba's national liberation movement was not led by any proletarian party. Hence they succumbed to Soviet revisionism and never completed their revolution. Thus Cuba is not anti-imperialist. Nevertheless it opposes the only super power now which is positive for the world revolution. As an adjunct from the discussion at hand (with which I gladly want to place myself down firmly on the side of Comrade Alastair and Red Cat), I want to dwell on this for a while; as a person who generally feels the line of Mao Tse Tung was correct, the anti-Cuba stance you have taken seems to portray a dogmatic conception of Marxism-Leninism, and has not considered the application of the theory to Cuban reality. The statement that Cuba is not anti-imperialist again seems deeply bizarre, so let me dwell on them for a while. Firstly, the allegation that the Cuban revolutionaries were not led by a proletarian party is both to obfuscate and simplify the situation somewhat. A similar line of attack has been lain on the revolution by the AWL in the UK (unsurprising that a group who works in the Labour party and supports the state of Israel attacks socialist Cuba so vehemently), stating that because the revolution was not through the trade unions, that the Cuban revolution would not lead to a complete anti imperialist and legitimate socialist revolution. However, what is well known is that under the Batista regime the Cuban trade union movement was deeply corrupt. The national liberation struggle came through a variety of sources; the urban workers movement in support of the 26th July movement, the students struggles, and of course the revolutionary guerillas in the Sierra Maestra. The struggle was headed by a coalition essentially; if we are to say that because the Communist Party was not at the forefront (not until the very very end did it enter into the revolution) the revolution could not succeed is insane, otherwise we could claim that because the Communist Party of China united other classes behind it in the struggle for New Democracy, it could never complete the revolution. The fact remains that the figures at the forefront of the revolution, Che, Fidel etc, were all socialists (some more influenced by Marti, some more by Marx), so there were proletarian ideas at the forefront. Needless to say, the prevalence of proletarian ideas in Cuba had a long running through the history of the island, from the more indigenous Mariategui-esque Marxism, through to Marti style anti imperialism. The argument that is appearing to be taken is a classic one; to explain away reality (ie of the Cuban socialist revolution) by way of theoretical excercise. Stalin warned us that Marxism-Leninism is not a dogma but a guide to action, so to dogmatically assert this without reference to Cuban historical reality is to vulgarise Marxism.

Next, you say Cuba never completed it's revolution. Of course; the revolution is never complete until capitalism has been defeated in a world scale - as Lenin and Mao were to point out, they could build socialism in one country, but they could never complete the revolution (no Trotskyite permanent revolution) until imperialism was smashed on a world scale. But if you mean Cuba never transitioned to socialism, I'd thoroughly disagree. After the success of the national liberation struggle, the limitations of the national liberation movement were shown by US reaction; this is why the socialist character of the revolution was declared in 1961, and the process of socialist transformation began. Of course, I do not disagree that Cuba's reliance on the revisionist USSR was a limitation (although it might be prudent to assess the fact that Che was looking to China, not the Soviet Union, to understand Marxism-Leninism), but to assert that it either "succumbed" to Soviet revisionism is absurd (as Fidel has pointed out many times, relations were very strained with the USSR, especially by the time of the Missile Crisis), and that they are not anti imperialist is ridiculous. A cursory look at the history of Cuba's internationalism demonstrates this; right now, Cuba has sent doctors into Haiti, and is doing the same as part of it's work with ALBA nations across Latin America, and has supported revolutionary struggles across the world. To say it's not anti-imperialist because some dogmatic adherence to theory tells you it isn't is utterly absurd and flies in the face of all facts. Despite it's problems, Cuba is a socialist country, and for a person who follows the (generally) correct line of Mao Tse Tung to decry the country is frankly bizarre and plays only into the hands of revisionism and dogmatism.

[RED DAVE]

Next, you say Cuba never completed it's revolution. Of course; the revolution is never complete until capitalism has been defeated in a world scale - as Lenin and Mao were to point out, they could build socialism in one country, but they could never complete the revolution (no Trotskyite permanent revolution) until imperialism was smashed on a world scale.Since you're bringing it up, and you are explicitly rejecting permanent revolution, please show us (1) where Lenin supported the building of socialism in one country AND (2) how Cuba, without any organs of workers control of industry, is socialist.

RED DAVE

[red cat]

Since you're bringing it up, and you are explicitly rejecting permanent revolution, please show us (1) where Lenin supported the building of socialism in one country AND (2) how Cuba, without any organs of workers control of industry, is socialist.

RED DAVEWhat exactly are communists supposed to do when they have managed to make the socialist revolution only in one country ?

[flobdob]

Since you're bringing it up, and you are explicitly rejecting permanent revolution, please show us (1) where Lenin supported the building of socialism in one country AND (2) how Cuba, without any organs of workers control of industry, is socialist.<br />
<br />
<font color="RED"><b>RED DAVE</b></font><br />
<br />

Alrighty then:

1)“Uneven economic and political development is an absolute law of capitalism. Hence, the victory of Socialism is possible first in a few or even in one single capitalist country taken separately. The victorious proletariat of that country, having expropriated the capitalists and organized its own Socialist production, would rise against the rest of the capitalist world, attract to itself the oppressed classes of other countries, raise revolts among them against the capitalists; and in the event of necessity come out even with armed force against the exploiting classes and their states.” For “the free federation of nations in Socialism is impossible without a more or less prolonged and stubborn struggle of the Socialist republics against the backward States.” (V. I. Lenin, Collected Works, Russian Edition, Vol. XVIII, p. 232-3.)

You've probably heard this a million times over though and I don't feel inclined today to venture into a discussion of this, another day perhaps.

2) I hear this stuff trotted around (excuse the pun) a lot by those on the trotskyist/left communist/whateverist left; nowhere has "true workers control" because you keep sliding around and redefining workers control. So I'm going to use as an off hand example the organoponico system. Urban agriculture representatives represent the producing units in each Popular Council, and discuss production plans, technologies, gather data, train people etc. There's more than just this too but right now I'm not at home so will get some info out soonish.

[chegitz guevara]

Before I go though, I'd like to introduce you to a friend of mine. I don't believe you've previously met. My friend's name is Context... I'm sure you two will get along fine.

I hate that guy.

[red cat]

As an adjunct from the discussion at hand (with which I gladly want to place myself down firmly on the side of Comrade Alastair and Red Cat), I want to dwell on this for a while; as a person who generally feels the line of Mao Tse Tung was correct, the anti-Cuba stance you have taken seems to portray a dogmatic conception of Marxism-Leninism, and has not considered the application of the theory to Cuban reality. The statement that Cuba is not anti-imperialist again seems deeply bizarre, so let me dwell on them for a while. Firstly, the allegation that the Cuban revolutionaries were not led by a proletarian party is both to obfuscate and simplify the situation somewhat. A similar line of attack has been lain on the revolution by the AWL in the UK (unsurprising that a group who works in the Labour party and supports the state of Israel attacks socialist Cuba so vehemently), stating that because the revolution was not through the trade unions, that the Cuban revolution would not lead to a complete anti imperialist and legitimate socialist revolution. However, what is well known is that under the Batista regime the Cuban trade union movement was deeply corrupt. The national liberation struggle came through a variety of sources; the urban workers movement in support of the 26th July movement, the students struggles, and of course the revolutionary guerillas in the Sierra Maestra. The struggle was headed by a coalition essentially; if we are to say that because the Communist Party was not at the forefront (not until the very very end did it enter into the revolution) the revolution could not succeed is insane, otherwise we could claim that because the Communist Party of China united other classes behind it in the struggle for New Democracy, it could never complete the revolution. The fact remains that the figures at the forefront of the revolution, Che, Fidel etc, were all socialists (some more influenced by Marti, some more by Marx), so there were proletarian ideas at the forefront. Needless to say, the prevalence of proletarian ideas in Cuba had a long running through the history of the island, from the more indigenous Mariategui-esque Marxism, through to Marti style anti imperialism. The argument that is appearing to be taken is a classic one; to explain away reality (ie of the Cuban socialist revolution) by way of theoretical excercise. Stalin warned us that Marxism-Leninism is not a dogma but a guide to action, so to dogmatically assert this without reference to Cuban historical reality is to vulgarise Marxism.

Next, you say Cuba never completed it's revolution. Of course; the revolution is never complete until capitalism has been defeated in a world scale - as Lenin and Mao were to point out, they could build socialism in one country, but they could never complete the revolution (no Trotskyite permanent revolution) until imperialism was smashed on a world scale. But if you mean Cuba never transitioned to socialism, I'd thoroughly disagree. After the success of the national liberation struggle, the limitations of the national liberation movement were shown by US reaction; this is why the socialist character of the revolution was declared in 1961, and the process of socialist transformation began. Of course, I do not disagree that Cuba's reliance on the revisionist USSR was a limitation (although it might be prudent to assess the fact that Che was looking to China, not the Soviet Union, to understand Marxism-Leninism), but to assert that it either "succumbed" to Soviet revisionism is absurd (as Fidel has pointed out many times, relations were very strained with the USSR, especially by the time of the Missile Crisis), and that they are not anti imperialist is ridiculous. A cursory look at the history of Cuba's internationalism demonstrates this; right now, Cuba has sent doctors into Haiti, and is doing the same as part of it's work with ALBA nations across Latin America, and has supported revolutionary struggles across the world. To say it's not anti-imperialist because some dogmatic adherence to theory tells you it isn't is utterly absurd and flies in the face of all facts. Despite it's problems, Cuba is a socialist country, and for a person who follows the (generally) correct line of Mao Tse Tung to decry the country is frankly bizarre and plays only into the hands of revisionism and dogmatism.

Firstly, the allegation that the Cuban revolution was not complete "because it did not take place through trade unions" has nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism. The proletariat in a country with imperialist oppression like Cuba always needed to build military organizations in the countryside rather than try out trade union movements in the city and get butchered.

As far as I know, the self declared communist bloc of Cuba had even sided with the Batista government at some time, and only joined the revolutionary forces after the 26th July movement gained considerable momentum.

Also, by completion of an anti-imperialist revolution I mean the complete overthrowal of all forms of imperialism from that country. This is very much possible even if imperialism remains in the rest of the world, and China had proved it.

The fact that I would like to point out is that no real workers' power organs ever existed in Cuba. You will notice that there is a very big economic difference between officials and common workers in Cuba. There has never been any mass movements there that attacked any official. All this indicates that there is a very strong bureaucracy there already. Also, they never ever mention even one of the highly developed Maoist struggles in their party-mouthpiece. This is very unusual for a socialist country.

[Lenin II]

.....and much more. :) It's a pity that such a great Marxist Leninist like Hoxha took so many years to recognize revisionists. :lol:From Selected Works Volumes III and IV, and Reflections on China Volume I:

“The Revolutionary Communists Expect China to Come Out Openly Against Khrushchevite Revisionism” – April 3, 1962

“The Stands of the Chinese Comrades are Improper in Several Directions” – Dec. 24, 1962.

"The Chinese Are Giving Khrushchev a Hand" - April 6, 1962.

"China is Proceeding On a Centrist Course" - June 13, 1962.

“The Struggle Against Khrushchevism Must Not Be Diverted Into Territorial Claims” – Aug. 22, 1964.

“The Chinese Idea About An Anti-Imperialist Front Including Even the Modern Revisionists is Anti-Leninist” – Oct. 15, 1964.

“In No Way Can We Reconcile Ourselves To These Views of Chou En-Lai” – Oct. 31, 1964.

"The Chinese are in National-Chuavenist Positions" - August 21, 1964.

"The Chinese have begun a campaign of approaches to the revisionists of Europe who are in power" - October 15, 1964.

“The Chinese Want To Impose Their Opinions On Us” – Nov. 3, 1964.

"The new course of the Chinese Comrades is harmful to the communist movement" - November 5, 1964.

"Brezhnev Is Trying to Fool the Chinese, First of All" - Nov. 7, 1964.

“The Defeat of Chou En-Lai In Moscow” – Nov. 21, 1964.

“Opportunist Tactic of the Chinese Comrades” – Feb. 3, 1965.

“Some Preliminary Ideas About the Chinese Proletarian Cultural Revolution” – Oct. 14, 1966

"The Cult of Mao Zedong" - Aug. 9, 1966.

"The 'Red Guard'" - Sept. 1, 1966.

"The 'Red Guards' Are Acting Without Leadership or Control" - Sept. 20, 1966.

"The Army is recommended as a Model for All, even the Party [in China]" - Setp. 26, 1966.

“Reflections On the Cultural Revolution. Anarchy Cannot Be Combated With Anarchy” – April 28, 1967.

"Notes on the Cultural Revolution in China: the Party is not Purged from Outside, but from Within." - May 22, 1967.

"Chou En-lai's Incorrect Views on Revisionism" - October 15, 1968.

"Chou En-lai's Proposal of a Yugoslav-Albanian 'Defensive Alliance'" - Oct. 24, 1968.

"The Chinese Are Silent about the events in Czechoslavakia and Europe" - April 29, 1969.

"Another Vacillitating stand of the Chinese Comrade" - September 12, 1969.

"The Chinese are not Talking About Soviet Revisionism" - September 30, 1969.

"For the Chinese the Czars of the Kremlin have become 'Fine Fellows!'" - October 8, 1969.

"The Chinese have become Advocates of Tito" - October 18, 1969.

"Sino-American Talks at Ambassadorial level" - January 7, 1970.

"Today the Sino-Romanian Alliance, Perhaps Later the Chinese Alliance with Tito" - July 24, 1970.

"THe Welcoming of Nixon to China is a Major Opportunist Mistake" - July 24, 1971.

"Chou En-lai's Talks with Henry Kissinger" - October 28, 1971.

“It Is Not Right to receive Nixon in Beijing. We Do Not Support It.” – Aug. 6, 1971.

"The Communist Party of China is in a Revisionist Position" - Feb. 13, 1972.

“Nixon’s Journey to China, The Sino-American Talks, the Final Communique” – March 21, 1972.

[RED DAVE]

By the way, whatever happened to "socialist" Albania?

RED DAVE

[chegitz guevara]

The unparalleled success collapsed.

[Lenin II]

The unparalleled success collapsed.

All socialist countries have collapsed.

In b4 "they lost, therefore they must be wrong."

[RED DAVE]

Re Hoxha:


[Stalin's] death was met with national mourning in Albania. Hoxha assembled the entire population in the capital's largest square, requested that they kneel, and made them take a two-thousand word oath of "eternal fidelity" and "gratitude" to their "beloved father" and "great liberator" to whom the people owed "everything."True or not true?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enver_Hoxha

RED DAVE

[chegitz guevara]

All socialist countries have collapses.

In b4 "they lost, therefore they must be wrong."

Dogmatism is always vulnerable to that argument, because you claim that only with the correct line can you succeed, and that if you have the correct line, you will succeed. Therefore, if you did not succeed, you must not have had the correct line.

[red cat]

All socialist countries have collapses.


Then socialism has no hope. :(

[P.S: If such collapses occur automatically without the vanguard making any mistakes, that is. ;)]

[Lenin II]

[P.S: If such collapses occur automatically without the vanguard making any mistakes, that is. ;)]

That was actually a typo. I meant "collapsed" past-tense.


Dogmatism is always vulnerable to that argument, because you claim that only with the correct line can you succeed, and that if you have the correct line, you will succeed. Therefore, if you did not succeed, you must not have had the correct line.

This is not a scientific position. The correct line does not garuntee that someone wins every fight 100% of the time. I think the history of ALL socialist nations, whether we're talking the USSR or otherwise, will show it is not always the most correct line that wins out in the end.

Your criteria for the correct line is not Marxist. "Winning" is not the only criteria. What the criteria is, is if the positions reflect dialectics and Marxist science, and all that jazz that has been covered elsewhere.

In other words, no, the most scientific position does NOT always win, just like the scientists of old did not "win" against the institution of the church that had them executed.

A socialist army is not invulnerable to capitalist bullets because they have the correct line, nor is someone who has an essentially correct line correct 100% of the time, and that includes Hoxha. The only thing I think is that Hoxha was the MOST correct to have existed.

[flobdob]

Firstly, the allegation that the Cuban revolution was not complete &quot;because it did not take place through trade unions&quot; has nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism. The proletariat in a country with imperialist oppression like Cuba always needed to build military organizations in the countryside rather than try out trade union movements in the city and get butchered.

As far as I know, the self declared communist bloc of Cuba had even sided with the Batista government at some time, and only joined the revolutionary forces after the 26th July movement gained considerable momentum.

This is exactly correct. Which is why the Cuban revolution consisted of a simultaneous organising of workers and students in the cities, and peasants amongst the guerillas (and where not guerillas, in support of the guerillas and organised to assist them). The PSP, the then &quot;Communist&quot; party, denounced the revolutionaries as putschist, but I'd stress the fact that it was militants from the Orthodox Party and PSP who joined with others in the attack on the Moncada barracks. My statement was never meant to attack what you had said in this respect; rather I was drawing an analogy and relating it to your argument.
Also, by completion of an anti-imperialist revolution I mean the complete overthrowal of all forms of imperialism from that country. This is very much possible even if imperialism remains in the rest of the world, and China had proved it.
And Cuba did this. By August 1960, the revolutionary government had nationalised 90% of industry, including all US owned companies. If anything is hard to argue with Cuba, it's that their revolution was not anti-imperialist. I'd be the first to admit that during the Special Period Cuba was forced to work alongside foreign owned capital to simply survive; however, these were always with the Cuban Communist Party firmly in the fore, and I'd want to talk concrete examples with you.

The fact that I would like to point out is that no real workers' power organs ever existed in Cuba. You will notice that there is a very big economic difference between officials and common workers in Cuba. There has never been any mass movements there that attacked any official. All this indicates that there is a very strong bureaucracy there already. Also, they never ever mention even one of the highly developed Maoist struggles in their party-mouthpiece. This is very unusual for a socialist country.

Unfortunately comrade the inverse is quite true. Cuba has a very active political organisation for workers power in the form of the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, assemblies of People's Power etc. Likewise within workplaces there is a solid foundation of worker's democracy, the afforementioned example of the organoponicos, and I can get you more if you'd like (though as mentioned in an earlier post, I'm not at my home right now so am severed from the books and information for a week or so).
You also make the claim that there's a massive difference between officials and common workers; there is only a modicum of truth in this claim. Representatives at the National Assembly for Peoples Power (and all below) recieve the same wage as in their previous jobs. Of course there can be signs of a more indirect prestige (from status), but the Cuban Communist Party has strove to fight this for it's entire existence; &quot;We must always fight with everything we've got against any manifestation of privilege taking&quot; was a declaration of Fidel in September 1970 to factory workers, and Cuba still upholds this.
Alongside this, to claim that there has never been a mass movement against officials (or revisionist ideas, with officials just as a bottle for these) is flat out wrong; there is an enormous ideological struggle going on right now in Cuba, just as there was during the nascence of the Special Period.
And yes there is definately something at issue with not covering some of the people's struggles in Granma (or Juventud Rebelde, or whatever). However in the past there has been coverage indeed, but I think it's difficult to fault the Cubans for this alone, as there has been a lack of information more generally on these struggles.
Regardless comrade, I'd wish to continue this discussion further, but let's do it via PM's or something, as I don't want to do a Rosa and utterly derail the thread.

[Comrade Akai]

I'm a Maoist and I think Stalin was a dick. =/

[bailey_187]

I'm a Maoist and I think Stalin was a dick. =/

maybe he was, maybe mao was too. Lenin didnt seem to easy to get along with either.

Its not about thinking Stalin was a good guy, its about if you uphold the USSR when Stalin was General Secretary as a mostly positive experience

[red cat]

I'm a Maoist and I think Stalin was a dick. =/

Then you contradict Mao's evaluation of Stalin and the USSR.

[red cat]

This is exactly correct. Which is why the Cuban revolution consisted of a simultaneous organising of workers and students in the cities, and peasants amongst the guerillas (and where not guerillas, in support of the guerillas and organised to assist them). The PSP, the then &quot;Communist&quot; party, denounced the revolutionaries as putschist, but I'd stress the fact that it was militants from the Orthodox Party and PSP who joined with others in the attack on the Moncada barracks. My statement was never meant to attack what you had said in this respect; rather I was drawing an analogy and relating it to your argument.
And Cuba did this. By August 1960, the revolutionary government had nationalised 90% of industry, including all US owned companies. If anything is hard to argue with Cuba, it's that their revolution was not anti-imperialist. I'd be the first to admit that during the Special Period Cuba was forced to work alongside foreign owned capital to simply survive; however, these were always with the Cuban Communist Party firmly in the fore, and I'd want to talk concrete examples with you.


Unfortunately comrade the inverse is quite true. Cuba has a very active political organisation for workers power in the form of the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, assemblies of People's Power etc. Likewise within workplaces there is a solid foundation of worker's democracy, the afforementioned example of the organoponicos, and I can get you more if you'd like (though as mentioned in an earlier post, I'm not at my home right now so am severed from the books and information for a week or so).
You also make the claim that there's a massive difference between officials and common workers; there is only a modicum of truth in this claim. Representatives at the National Assembly for Peoples Power (and all below) recieve the same wage as in their previous jobs. Of course there can be signs of a more indirect prestige (from status), but the Cuban Communist Party has strove to fight this for it's entire existence; &quot;We must always fight with everything we've got against any manifestation of privilege taking&quot; was a declaration of Fidel in September 1970 to factory workers, and Cuba still upholds this.
Alongside this, to claim that there has never been a mass movement against officials (or revisionist ideas, with officials just as a bottle for these) is flat out wrong; there is an enormous ideological struggle going on right now in Cuba, just as there was during the nascence of the Special Period.
And yes there is definately something at issue with not covering some of the people's struggles in Granma (or Juventud Rebelde, or whatever). However in the past there has been coverage indeed, but I think it's difficult to fault the Cubans for this alone, as there has been a lack of information more generally on these struggles.
Regardless comrade, I'd wish to continue this discussion further, but let's do it via PM's or something, as I don't want to do a Rosa and utterly derail the thread.

I think this is relevant to this thread, and none of us is spamming here. So let us continue here itself.

If your facts are true, then Cuba is most likely to be a socialist country. However, I haven't yet received any detailed news of such mass struggles. Moreover, Cuba's total silence on the ongoing Maoist revolutions is very unusual for a socialist country.

[chegitz guevara]

This is not a scientific position. The correct line does not garuntee that someone wins every fight 100% of the time. I think the history of ALL socialist nations, whether we're talking the USSR or otherwise, will show it is not always the most correct line that wins out in the end.

Your criteria for the correct line is not Marxist. "Winning" is not the only criteria. What the criteria is, is if the positions reflect dialectics and Marxist science, and all that jazz that has been covered elsewhere.

In other words, no, the most scientific position does NOT always win, just like the scientists of old did not "win" against the institution of the church that had them executed.

A socialist army is not invulnerable to capitalist bullets because they have the correct line, nor is someone who has an essentially correct line correct 100% of the time, and that includes Hoxha. The only thing I think is that Hoxha was the MOST correct to have existed.

You misunderstood me entirely.

[flobdob]

I think this is relevant to this thread, and none of us is spamming here. So let us continue here itself.

If your facts are true, then Cuba is most likely to be a socialist country. However, I haven't yet received any detailed news of such mass struggles. Moreover, Cuba's total silence on the ongoing Maoist revolutions is very unusual for a socialist country.

Well one such struggle has been going on ever since the special period, over whether or not to "take the chinese path", i.e. Dengism. The Cuban people have comprehensively been resisting this motion and other attacks by imperialism; for instance, in January this year Cubans mobilised on the streets to help fight off the "Women in White" and other paid lackeys of the USA, and in 2002 9 million Cubans took to the streets in support of a constitutional amendment declaring the socialist system irrevocable, and 8,188,198 people signed a petition arguing the same thing within 4 days of it's issuing. But yes I totally agree, there is a definate quiet on the issue of ongoing revolutions. However, I know that there is a difference between the International editions of Granma and the Cuban edition (the latter having letters sections and generally more content), and I can't speak too much on other publications like Juventud Rebelde as my Spanish is poor and thus don't read them. However, I know a lot of pro-Cuba groups, like the RCG in Britain, do devote space and time in their papers to discussions of revolutionaries across the world, such as the FARC-EP, NPA/CPP, Nepalese and Indian Maoists. Alongside this, we've got to recognise that there's a general lack of information to the outside world on these struggles, so we can't be too disparaging of them for this.

[red cat]

Well one such struggle has been going on ever since the special period, over whether or not to "take the chinese path", i.e. Dengism. The Cuban people have comprehensively been resisting this motion and other attacks by imperialism; for instance, in January this year Cubans mobilised on the streets to help fight off the "Women in White" and other paid lackeys of the USA, and in 2002 9 million Cubans took to the streets in support of a constitutional amendment declaring the socialist system irrevocable, and 8,188,198 people signed a petition arguing the same thing within 4 days of it's issuing. But yes I totally agree, there is a definate quiet on the issue of ongoing revolutions. However, I know that there is a difference between the International editions of Granma and the Cuban edition (the latter having letters sections and generally more content), and I can't speak too much on other publications like Juventud Rebelde as my Spanish is poor and thus don't read them. However, I know a lot of pro-Cuba groups, like the RCG in Britain, do devote space and time in their papers to discussions of revolutionaries across the world, such as the FARC-EP, NPA/CPP, Nepalese and Indian Maoists. Alongside this, we've got to recognise that there's a general lack of information to the outside world on these struggles, so we can't be too disparaging of them for this.

There are definitely many pro-Cuban elements who support the ongoing revolutions. There might be many comrades in the PCC itself doing the same. But until the PCC supports these revolutions in Granma, nothing clarifies the stand of the party.

We expect an organization as big as the PCC to have access to correct information concerning our revolutionary CPs.

[Comrade Akai]

maybe he was, maybe mao was too. Lenin didnt seem to easy to get along with either.

Its not about thinking Stalin was a good guy, its about if you uphold the USSR when Stalin was General Secretary as a mostly positive experience

The USSR was far too centralized, broken, and authoritarian to be a positive experience.


Then you contradict Mao's evaluation of Stalin and the USSR.

Yes, I do. My following of most of Mao's ideas doesn't mean I have to try and be him, or agree with absolutely everything he thought.

[Kléber]

Its not about thinking Stalin was a good guy, its about if you uphold the USSR when Stalin was General Secretary as a mostly positive experience Lots of people had a "positive experience" in the groovy 1960's in the imperialist countries, that does not mean that the West was socialist and we have to "uphold" banners of leaders like Lyndon B Johnson as they were great socialists. Socialism means democratic control by the workers over the means of production which never existed in the USSR. There was a bureaucratic caste exploiting the workers, its existence was openly tolerated since the abolition of partmaximum, and the killings of 1937-41 can be attributed to the social divide within the USSR, not to the contradictory theory of "aggravation of class struggle" in a society without antagonistic classes.

Unrelated point, addressed to the Hoxhaists and going off my previous post which no one responded to: how was Mao's rapprochement with the imperialist US less principled than Stalin cozying up to Nazi Germany?


The USSR was far too centralized, broken, and authoritarian to be a positive experience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Rightist_Movement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

[RED DAVE]

It's going to be interesting watch the maoist-stalinists, stalinist-maoists, maoists-without-stalin, stalinists-without-mao, etc., relate to the working class in the major industrial countries.

See you on the picketline, Comrades.

RED DAVE

[Saorsa]

Dave, you know as well as I do that in the first world there are as many Trotskyists with no ability to relate to the working class as there are Maoists. And proportionally, I suspect we're about even.

Your ability to relate to workers as a group does not depend on your historical positions. It depends on your political lines on how to make revolution in your own country, today. How to organise, who the friends and enemies are, etc

[Comrade Akai]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Rightist_Movement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution

Your point? China was never great, but Mao was trying. His mistake, I believe, was far too much centralization as well as reliance on the vanguard party rather than public support.

[chegitz guevara]

that does not mean that the West was socialist and we have to "uphold" banners of leaders like Lyndon B Johnson as they were great socialists.

We don't?

*sound of furiously tearing down posters*

[Kléber]

Your point? China was never great, but Mao was trying. His mistake, I believe, was far too much centralization as well as reliance on the vanguard party rather than public support.
Well, you could just as well give Stalin the benefit of the doubt as Mao. One man is not the proletariat, the workers weren't in charge. Independent outbursts of proletarian discontent were shut down by the army in 1957 and 1968. China was not socialist, regardless of how hard the biggest bureaucrat tried, because you can't have socialism without democracy. If proletarian opposition like the Chinese Revolutionary Communist Party (Trotskyists) had been tolerated by the CCP, then a force greater than Mao himself could have existed to challenge the "capitalist-roaders" after the great man died in 1976.

[flobdob]

It's going to be interesting watch the maoist-stalinists, stalinist-maoists, maoists-without-stalin, stalinists-without-mao, etc., relate to the working class in the major industrial countries.

See you on the picketline, Comrades.

RED DAVE

Hate to break it to you mate but I'm down on the picket lines almost all the time; believe it or not, we aren't all intellectual aloof types (No matter how much you want to strawman us into that position!) but some of us are, y'know, actually working class.

[Rjevan]

Unrelated point, addressed to the Hoxhaists and going off my previous post which no one responded to: how was Mao's rapprochement with the imperialist US less principled than Stalin cozying up to Nazi Germany?
Stalin's "cozying up with nazi Germany" was not meant as an alliance (with fascists) against imperialism while Mao's "cozying up" with Nixon was meant as an alliance (with imperialism) against Soviet social-imperialism. The Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact was the very last option the Soviets chose after long, hard and as useless as fruitless negotiations with Great Britain and France. The Soviets rightly suspected that the Western powers are not at all interested in an alliance with the USSR but just want to play a game on time and secretly support Hitler in his plans to invade the USSR. Stalin made clear that there can be no peace with the Nazis.


"England, France and the USA . . . draw back and retreat, making concession after concession to the aggressors.
...
The policy of non-intervention reveals an eagerness, a desire, not to hinder Germany, say, . . . from embroiling herself in a war with the Soviet Union. .
One might think that the districts of Czechoslovakia were yielded to Germany as the price of an undertaking to launch war on the Soviet Union".
Yeah, might be "Stalinist paranoia" but more likely is that he's right, remember imperialist statements about Hitler:

British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax is on record as telling Hitler in November 1937 that
"he and other members of the British Government were well aware that the Fuehrer had attained a great deal. . . . Having destroyed Communism in his country, he had barred the road of the latter to Western Europe and Germany was therefore entitled to be regarded as a bulwark of the West against Bolshevism. .
When the ground has been prepared for an Anglo-German rapprochement, the four great West European Powers must jointly set up the foundation of lasting peace in Europe."

The negotiations with the Allies were deliberately hindered and prolonged:

On 23 July the British and French governments finally agreed to begin military discussions before the political treaty of alliance had been finalised, and a British naval officer with the quadruple-barreled name of Admiral Reginald Plunkett-Ernie-Erle-Drax was appointed to head the British delegation. No one, apparently, had informed the British government that the aeroplane had been invented, and the delegation left Tilbury by a slow boat to Leningrad, from where they proceeded by train to Moscow. When the delegation finally arrived in Moscow on 11 August, the Soviet side discovered that it had no powers to negotiate, only to 'hold talks'. Furthermore, the British delegation was officially instructed to:

"Go very slowly with the conversations"; ('Documents on British Foreign Policy;', 3rd Series, Volume 6; London; 1953; Appendix 5; p. 763).
[...]
"Miltary negotiations with England and France were not broken off because the USSR concluded a non-aggression pact with Germany; on the contrary, the USSR concluded a non-aggression pact with Germany as a result, inter alia, of the fact that the military negotiations with France and England had reached a deadlock".

The invasion of Poland:
1.) Soviet troops only entered polish territory after the Polish state had collapsed.
2.) The territories "invaded" by the Soviets were former Ukrainian and Belorussian territories, occupied by the Polish in the Polish-Soviet War.

And the correspondents of the capitalist press agree with Soviet contemporary Soviet sources that the Red Army was welcomed as liberators by the Ukrainian and Byelorussian population concerned. Molotov reported:
"The Red Army . . . was greeted with sympathy by the Ukrainian and Byelorussian population, who welcomed our troops as liberators from the yoke of the gentry and from the yoke of the Polish landlords and capitalists."
3.) The Soviet border was thus moved further westwards, kept the Nazis back and provided a better defence in case of a German invasion.

In the House of Commons on 20 September, Conservative MP Robert Boothby declared:
"I think it is legitimate to suppose that this action on the part of the Soviet Government was taken . . . from the point of view of self-preservation and self-defence. . . . The action taken by the Russian troops . . . has pushed the German frontier considerably westward. .
I am thankful that Russian troops are now along the Polish-Romanian frontier. I would rather have Russian troops there than German troops".

Quotes taken from a Bill Bland speech here (http://marxism.halkcephesi.net/Bill%20Bland/german%20soviet%20pact.htm), this article (http://chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/research/mlg09/did_ussr_invade_poland.html) by Grover Furr is also interesting and there is of course more on this topic. Now compare this situation, the background and the outcome (of WW2) to the "Zhou-Kissinger Pact".

[red cat]

Stalin's "cozying up with nazi Germany" was not meant as an alliance (with fascists) against imperialism while Mao's "cozying up" with Nixon was meant as an alliance (with imperialism) against Soviet social-imperialism. The Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact was the very last option the Soviets chose after long, hard and as useless as fruitless negotiations with Great Britain and France. The Soviets rightly suspected that the Western powers are not at all interested in an alliance with the USSR but just want to play a game on time and secretly support Hitler in his plans to invade the USSR. Stalin made clear that there can be no peace with the Nazis.



USSR was already emerging as a super power then, yet it went into a tactical alliance (no matter how short it might be) with Nazi Germany during war. Compare this with China, that was much weaker and surrounded by powerful enemies on all sides, and already fought wars to defend itself.

[scarletghoul]

Just remembered this, seems perfect for this thread- http://web.archive.org/web/20070829202635/www.singlespark.org/?id=StalinMaoEval

[Comrade Akai]

Well, you could just as well give Stalin the benefit of the doubt as Mao. One man is not the proletariat, the workers weren't in charge. Independent outbursts of proletarian discontent were shut down by the army in 1957 and 1968. China was not socialist, regardless of how hard the biggest bureaucrat tried, because you can't have socialism without democracy. If proletarian opposition like the Chinese Revolutionary Communist Party (Trotskyists) had been tolerated by the CCP, then a force greater than Mao himself could have existed to challenge the "capitalist-roaders" after the great man died in 1976.


Can't disagree with you at all, comrade.

[red cat]

Won't Hoxhaists enlighten us regarding how the "most correct line" failed not only to prevent capitalist restoration in Albania, but also to continue the armed struggles that were affiliated to it?

Detailed analyses instead of attempts to blindly defend all of the "most correct line" will be highly appreciated.

[Kléber]

Now compare this situation, the background and the outcome (of WW2) to the "Zhou-Kissinger Pact".
I hoped you would do this comparison yourself, since I was already aware of the standard apology for Molotov-Ribbentrop.


Stalin's "cozying up with nazi Germany" was not meant as an alliance (with fascists) against imperialism while Mao's "cozying up" with Nixon was meant as an alliance (with imperialism) against Soviet social-imperialism.
Maoists definitely don't think it was a real alliance, Molotov-Ribbentrop was arguably more of a formal alliance than Sino-US friendship from 1972 until the early 1990's; besides, I could just as easily turn your defense of M-R into a defense of Mao:


The Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact was the very last option the Soviets chose after long, hard and as useless as fruitless negotiations with Great Britain and France. The Soviets rightly suspected that the Western powers are not at all interested in an alliance with the USSR but just want to play a game on time and secretly support Hitler in his plans to invade the USSR. Stalin made clear that there can be no peace with the Nazis.
The Shanghai Communiqué was the very last option the People's Republic chose after long, hard and fruitless negotiations with the Soviet revisionists. The Chinese people rightly suspected that the social-imperialists were not interested in a fraternity of socialist nations but just wanted to subjugate the PRC into comprador status and even had plans to invade China. Mao made clear his unfailing opposition to US imperialism.


The invasion of Poland:
1.) Soviet troops only entered polish territory after the Polish state had collapsed.
2.) The territories "invaded" by the Soviets were former Ukrainian and Belorussian territories, occupied by the Polish in the Polish-Soviet War.
The invasion of Vietnam:
1.) Chinese troops only invaded Vietnam after they had reason to fear a revisionist invasion from South and North.
2.) The territories "invaded" by the PLA were not taken with the objective of occupation, the point was to destroy infrastructure and then retreat, to complicate a Vietnamese invasion of Southern China.

[Comrade Akai]

Won't Hoxhaists enlighten us regarding how the "most correct line" failed not only to prevent capitalist restoration in Albania, but also to continue the armed struggles that were affiliated to it?

Detailed analyses instead of attempts to blindly defend all of the "most correct line" will be highly appreciated.

I am not, never have been, and never will be a Hoxhaist. Why? He was authoritarian enough to ban beards.

HE FREAKING BANNED BEARDS. Do you know how much that would have pissed Marx and Engels off?

[Bright Banana Beard]

HE FREAKING BANNED BEARDS. Do you know how much that would have pissed Marx and Engels off?

Actually, in Yugoslavia and Albania, beards are considered to be un-hygiene, not just Hoxha. It is because during the WWII, the fascists usually have beards and this is probably the reason why beards are banned.

[The Ben G]

Actually, in Yugoslavia and Albania, beards are considered to be un-hygiene, not just Hoxha. It is because during the WWII, the fascists usually have beards and this is probably the reason why beards are banned.

But still, banning beards is pretty foolish.

[Bright Banana Beard]

Won't Hoxhaists enlighten us regarding how the "most correct line" failed not only to prevent capitalist restoration in Albania, but also to continue the armed struggles that were affiliated to it?

Detailed analyses instead of attempts to blindly defend all of the "most correct line" will be highly appreciated.

Albania was the last socialist nation in the world. It was alone, in addition to sabotage and foreign pressure which helped to the revisionists to rise and destroy socialist Albania, there was a coup against Ramiz Alia and Hoxha's wife that had them arrested and exiled.

Certainly the condition has worsened that in 1997 the Albanians almost overthrow the government when the European troops came in to quell the rebellion. There was an article concerning what happened to Albania in 1997 and the CP that took control in the South until NATO came in. http://redrebelde.blogspot.com/2009/10/albania-1997-on-brink-of-revolution.html

[A.R.Amistad]

By Uppercut


Is there anyway you can acknowledge Mao's ideas, but dislike Stalinism? I just got finished reading the Little Red Book and I'm in nearly perfect agreement with his ideas. However, I'm not a fan of Lysenkoism, which apparently, was all over the USSR and China, and led to millions of people being brainwashed into believing the guy was some kind of genius.

But if I switch over to Trotskyism or any other ideology, then I'll have to stop my support for all ongoing revolutions in India, Nepal, Peru, etc., along with denouncing Huey P. Newton and the original Black Panthers, whom I admire very much.

I don't know what to think anymore, and I'm too weak-minded to think for myself. So please tell me what I should believe in (no sarcasm intended). So was everyone an opportunist dictator except for Trotsky? Or did Mao actually care about the people? I keep getting different info from different sources, and seeing as how I've never lived there, I can't have a personal opinion.

First, I want to start off with a disclaimer that yes, my response has a motive and a bias. Now to the point. As a Trotskyist myself, I have come to learn over the many years that being a Trotskyist means more than just refuting the bureaucratic regimes of the Stalinist type. It is a continuity of Bolshevism and a preservance of that which is truly revolutionary. Now, I know this can open the Stalin vs. Trotsky can of worms, but lets restrict that futile argument to the thread where it belongs. But to your point bout whether or not one can be, say, a Trotskyist, an anti-Stalinist and an admirer of Mao's ideas is not inherently contradictory. I myself, for example, have a great respect for Tito. Would I like to see a regime like that of Tito arise as a prime example of how a socialist republic should work? Absolutely not. Do I think that Tito's tactics and ideals are the most revolutionary or that they are the best way to apply Marxism? Far from it, but I recognize the major and heroic role that Tito played in his day and age (fighting and defeating fascism, united front, unification of Yugoslavia, standing up to USSR chauvanism, etc.) I don't believe in benevolent dictators, and I would describe Tito as a dictator, but I will admit that he is a dictator that I have some respect for. I think he had good character as an individual and he took some interesting approaches to winning the Balkan masses to socialism that I would like to see more of. I also praise a great deal of his leadership, and it was by far much more humane and dignified than what governs the region today: capitalistic chaos and nationalist hatred. But at the end of the day, I am still a Trotskyist who adheres to the transitional program, the degeneration of workers' states, permanent revolution and the united front. It all depends, I think, on how you chose to view history independent of your tendency. The diehard State Capitalists would be very dogmetic about your admiration of Mao's works and say that you are nothing but a Stalinist. Trotskyists like myself, people like the FI and those who adhere to a more orthodox Trotskyism, might respectfully label you a "Stalinist," bt we would not run from you as if you were Lucifer and spit in your face: we could explain our differences and even find some common ground. Also, I know the FI has some good documents on the Chinese revolution that I think you would enjoy. By choosing a tendency, you dont have to repudiate every hero you admire. i myself am a bit of a Nietzche, which puts off Marxists. But I do not agree with him completely (certainly not his anti-democracy or anti-Marxism). The best thing to do is to learn a good way to be able to see the good in all sorts of people and what they did, and to see the bad. Be critical.

In conclusion, from what you said, what I see is someone who would make for a great Bolshevik-Leninist. So what that you like the Red Book, or Huey P. Newton, etc. Bolshevik-Leninism only requires you too endorse the mpst consistently revolutionary way of leading a revolution and opposing all tyranny. I see no reason why you shouldn't be welcomed into the Trotskyist cadres with open arms.

[red cat]

Albania was the last socialist nation in the world. It was alone, in addition to sabotage and foreign pressure which helped to the revisionists to rise and destroy socialist Albania, there was a coup against Ramiz Alia and Hoxha's wife that had them arrested and exiled.

Certainly the condition has worsened that in 1997 the Albanians almost overthrow the government when the European troops came in to quell the rebellion. There was an article concerning what happened to Albania in 1997 and the CP that took control in the South until NATO came in. http://redrebelde.blogspot.com/2009/10/albania-1997-on-brink-of-revolution.html

Thanks for the links, but I would like to see more information and analysis regarding the revisionist takeover of Albania, and also on the party line of Hoxhaist parties that abandoned armed struggle.

[A.R.Amistad]

Just to put it out there, its actually conceivable to be a "Stalinist" and not like Stalin. I know loads of orthodox Marxist-Leninists who claim to follow only the teachings up to Lenin and see Stalin as a traitor and a revisionist, but oppose Trotskyism, Maoism, Hoxhaism, etc. There aren't too many people, even admirer's of Stalin, who would call themselves "Stalinist." (with the exception of the Romanian CP, maybe) Most Stalinists don't see Stalin as a great theoretician like Engels, Lenin or even Mao. Most of his admirers say that he was a "great leader," or "he got the job done" or that something long those lines. The pro-Stalin lyrics to the original hymn of the USSR describe the standpoint of "Through days dark and stormy where great Lenin led us, our eyes saw the bright sun of freedom above," (referencing Lenin as the equivalent of Sam Adams in the US revolution, a sort of philosopher-revolutionary) "And Stalin our leader, with faith in the people, inspired us to build up the land that we love..." (Stalin is seen as just a 'simple man,' a 'humble leader' just carrying on what his superiors left for him to do)

Also,(another thing that mght surprise you coming from a Trotskyist) one of my big heros, Sartre, claimed to be a Marxist-Leninist for half his life and then became a Maoist toward the end of his life. He also claimed to be an anti-Stalinist. He condemned the supression of the Hungarian revolt, he condemned the PCF for legitimizing it and he also was disgruntled with the non-revolutionary Moscow line the PCF and other ML partys were following. In response, he wrote a pretty good essay called "The Phantom of Stalin" and also his critique of "Dogmatic versus Materialist Dialectics," and accuses Stalin and the USSR of betraying the fundamentals of Marxism. Yet for some reason he adored Mao and Mao's approach until the day he died. Personally, given his anti-Stalinist writings, his critique of the bureacratic 'socialist' regimes and his yearning for a return to real, revolutionary Marxism, I think that if he had lived to see May of '68 in Paris he would have immediately became a Trotskyist and give his support to the LCR. So, if Sartre could do it, why cant you ;)

[Ismail]

Neither Stalin nor Hoxha claimed to be original thinkers who were bringing Marxism "onto a new level" or "qualitatively higher stage" or whatever. They saw themselves (and their supporters see them) as having defended Marxism-Leninism (that is, Marx, Engels, and Lenin) against revisionist; pseudo-Marxist currents within the international communist movement.

Also the "Stalin was a Marxist but the constructing of socialism in the USSR happened almost in spite of his policies" line was the Soviet view of Stalin from 1956-late 80's. Sartre and Althusser, among others in the pro-Soviet Western CPs, simply took it to its logical conclusion and argued about the "atrocities" of "Stalinism" and such.

From a 1970's Soviet work which briefly mentioned Stalin:

J. V. Stalin had held, since 1922, the post of General Secretary of the Communist Party Central Committee. He had made important contributions to the implementation of the Party’s policy of socialist construction in the USSR, and he had won great popularity by his relentless fight against the anti-Leninist groups of the Trotskyites and Bukharinites. Since the early 1930s, however, all the successes achieved by the Soviet people in the building of socialism began to be arbitrarily attributed to Stalin. Already in a letter written back in 1922 Lenin warned the Party Central Committee: "Comrade Stalin,” he wrote, "having become General Secretary, has concentrated boundless authority in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be able to exercise that authority with sufficient discretion." During the first few years after Lenin’s death Stalin reckoned with his critical remarks. As time passed, however, he abused his position of General Secretary of the Party Central Committee more and more frequently, violating the principle of collective leadership and making independent decisions on important Party and state issues. Those personal shortcomings of which Lenin had warned manifested themselves with greater and greater insistence: his rudeness, capriciousness, intolerance of criticism, arbitrariness, excessive suspiciousness, etc. This led to unjustified restrictions of democracy, gross violations of socialist legality and repressions against prominent Party, government and military leaders and other people.

Harmful though it was, the Stalin personality cult was unable to change either the nature of the Soviet socialist system or the activities of the Party and the people, aimed at building socialism and communism in the USSR. The Soviet people, directed by the Communist Party, achieved outstanding successes in socialist construction, in the development of socialist relations within the society, and in following a consistent policy of peace, which opened up boundless prospects for the continued advancement of the Soviet society. The personality cult was something quite alien to the Soviet system of government. Marxism-Leninism holds that the people are the true makers of history, creating all material and spiritual values and building a new world under the guidance of the Communist Party. Socialism in the USSR was built by the working class, the working peasantry, the Soviet intelligentsia, under the leadership of the Communist Party and in accordance with the blue-print prepared by Lenin.

[flobdob]

I think that if he had lived to see May of '68 in Paris he would have immediately became a Trotskyist and give his support to the LCR. So, if Sartre could do it, why cant you ;)

Hate to be pedantic but Sartre died in 1980, and was arrested in the '68 uprising but got pardoned by de Gaulle. He did see May 68, and certainly was not a trotskyist.

[A.R.Amistad]

Hate to be pedantic but Sartre died in 1980, and was arrested in the '68 uprising but got pardoned by de Gaulle. He did see May 68, and certainly was not a trotskyist.

Ooops! Epic fail on my part I thought he died in the 60's

[Rjevan]

Maoists definitely don't think it was a real alliance, Molotov-Ribbentrop was arguably more of a formal alliance than Sino-US friendship from 1972 until the early 1990's; besides, I could just as easily turn your defense of M-R into a defense of Mao:
Indeed, but only by forcing the meaning massively... ouch.


The Shanghai Communiqué was the very last option the People's Republic chose after long, hard and fruitless negotiations with the Soviet revisionists.
I think it's a bit far-fetched to compare China's situation in 1972 to the situation of the USSR in 1939. I mean, anybody knows anything about USA willingly sacrificing DPRK and Vietnam to the USSR and encouraging it by praises like "The USSR is entitled to be regarded as a bulwark of the West against Maoism"? Or about the USSR's declared aim (as everybody can read in Brezhnev's bestseller "Mein Kampf") being to invade the PRC to gain new "Lebensraum" by liquidating the inferior Chinese?


The Chinese people rightly suspected that the social-imperialists were not interested in a fraternity of socialist nations
Which fraternity of socialist nations? The USSR was not socialist but revisionist and social-imperialist, from the Hoxhaist viewpoint as well as from the Maoist. Besides, the USSR didn't want fraternity with the Western imperialist powers but a guarantee that they would not support the Nazis in attacking the Soviet Union. And second, I haven't seen Albania willingly and knowingly allying/fraternizing with either any social-imperialists nor with any imperialists or fascists although they were totally isolated, surrounded by hostile nations and were more likely to be attacked by one of those states than a Soviet invasion of China was.


Mao made clear his unfailing opposition to US imperialism.
Oh really, did he? If you refer to the text of the Shanghai Communique, I only see the Chinese stating general facts about the freedom of peoples and mutual respect in internal affairs and the USA answering in the most correlating way that they fully agree that peoples should be free and that they'll immediately withdraw from Vietnam and so on, finally agreeing that peaceful coexistence is the best for both countries. Or do you mean Mao assuring Nixon that he liked right-wingers? Or telling whoever wants to hear it that American imperialism is currently less dangerous and thus Soviet social-imperialism is the main threat to all freedom-loving peoples of the "Third World" who should thus seek support from the USA and the much praised "United Europe... in every aspect, not only in economic questions but in political and military aswell" (officiall statement by Zhou Enlai to Italian Foreign Secretary Medici in Januray 1973)? Or welcoming Rockefeller in June 1973 and giving several banquets for him? Indeed, reminds one very much of Stalin feasting with Quandt and Krupp in Moscow at the expenses of the working people... oh, wait...


The invasion of Vietnam:
Er... are we still talking about the same topic? Mao and Stalin? I mean, by 1979 Mao was dead and Deng led China, who is seen as a revisionist by Maoists just like Krushchev. But well, let's go on.

1.) Chinese troops only invaded Vietnam after they had reason to fear a revisionist invasion from South and North.
What? This hasn't anything to do with my examples. I thought this is about abusing the defense of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to justify Chinese actions, not about coming up with general excuses and justifications. And I can't really say that the Vietnamese state collapsed... similar to the situation in September 1939? Not really. Also, Poland was a pseudo-fascist state, Vietnam was revisionist. Poland had occupied USSR territory, Vietnam didn't occupy Chinese territory.


2.) The territories "invaded" by the PLA were not taken with the objective of occupation, the point was to destroy infrastructure and then retreat, to complicate a Vietnamese invasion of Southern China.
Same as above, unless you can provide examples about the Chinese population there, separated by Vietnamese imperialism from the PRC in a former war, cheering and welcoming the Chinese troops as liberators.

[red cat]

I think it's a bit far-fetched to compare China's situation in 1972 to the situation of the USSR in 1939. I mean, anybody knows anything about USA willingly sacrificing DPRK and Vietnam to the USSR and encouraging it by praises like "The USSR is entitled to be regarded as a bulwark of the West against Maoism"? Or about the USSR's declared aim (as everybody can read in Brezhnev's bestseller "Mein Kampf") being to invade the PRC to gain new "Lebensraum" by liquidating the inferior Chinese?




This might come as a surprise even to many Maoists here, but the revolutionary Maoist line does go a bit that way.:)

We maintain that Ho Chi Minh had taken a centrist stand and later US imperialism left Vietnam to Soviet imperialism, for otherwise Vietnam would truly complete the war in a few years and continue as a new democracy. Also, invading China was one of the primary aims of Soviet imperialists. The presence of a huge number of armed forces and military bases along the Sino-Soviet border indicates this.

[Ismail]

There were definitely inter-imperialist struggles between China and the USSR from the 1960's-70's. Enver Hoxha got annoyed when Mao and Co. kept on talking about the prospect of territorial changes in-re Soviet borders, for example. And the USSR took a comment by Mao to a bunch of Japanese students visiting Peking on Mongolia being de facto controlled by the USSR (as a puppet state) as "proof" that Mao was promoting an old Chinese claim to sovereignty over Mongolia.

[red cat]

There were definitely inter-imperialist struggles between China and the USSR from the 1960's-70's. Enver Hoxha got annoyed when Mao and Co. kept on talking about the prospect of territorial changes in-re Soviet borders, for example. And the USSR took a comment by Mao to a bunch of Japanese students visiting Peking on Mongolia being de facto controlled by the USSR (as a puppet state) as "proof" that Mao was promoting an old Chinese claim to sovereignty over Mongolia.

The struggles were not inter-imperialist. Hoxha's line on China tells us that he was definitely with China before 1976. However, after the capitalist restoration, he probably denounced Maoism because he wanted to avoid a Soviet invasion. This was good enough for the Soviet revisionists because Hoxha's line helped to split up the revolutionary Maoists, who had realized that capitalist restoration had taken place in China, into two camps. As we all know now, the Hoxhaist revolutionary current has almost died out, with their CPs failing to continue armed struggle.

[Ismail]

After 1968 the chance of Albania being invaded by the USSR was pretty much nonexistent. In fact, every year after 1968 the Soviets presented Albania as a country which "went astray" and kept on trying, on a yearly basis, to persuade it to rejoin the Warsaw Pact (which it had left in '68), to reenter Comecon, etc. Hoxha and Alia rejected such proposals every year they were sent.

Furthermore after 1978 Hoxha patched up relations with Greece and Yugoslavia while Albania expanded trade with Western states. The chance of being invaded from anyone was quite low at that point, and the chance of the USSR invading Albania after the Red Army entered Afghanistan was zero. Finally, there was no moderation on condemnations of Soviet revisionism, social-imperialism, etc. Your argument is not supported by the facts.

[red cat]

After 1968 the chance of Albania being invaded by the USSR was pretty much nonexistent. In fact, every year after 1968 the Soviets presented Albania as a country which "went astray" and kept on trying, on a yearly basis, to persuade it to rejoin the Warsaw Pact (which it had left in '68), to reenter Comecon, etc. Hoxha and Alia rejected such proposals every year they were sent.

True, but this relative security was because China had declared full support for Albania.


Furthermore after 1978 Hoxha patched up relations with Greece and Yugoslavia while Albania expanded trade with Western states. The chance of being invaded from anyone was quite low at that point, and the chance of the USSR invading Albania after the Red Army entered Afghanistan was zero. Finally, there was no moderation on condemnations of Soviet revisionism, social-imperialism, etc. Your argument is not supported by the facts.Our experience tells us that no matter how concrete trade relations a socialist country has with its neighbours, if it is not powerful enough militarily, it will definitely be surrounded and attacked by capitalist powers provided that it does not play them off against each other.

Moderation on condemnations of Soviet imperialism was not necessary to harm the communist revolutionary movements; Maoists would condemn the Soviet Union anyway. What was needed most by imperialists at that time was a split in the international communist movement. Hoxha's denunciation of Maoism served this purpose very efficiently, as it ultimately led to half of the anti-revisionist CPs abandoning armed struggle. Why would the Soviet Union ever invade a country that was so efficiently liquidating its main enemy ?

[Ismail]

After 1979 Deng mostly patched up ties with the Soviet Union anyway, and from 1973-1979 China was more pro-US than pro-revolution, so I don't see where there was some epic international movement for global revolution sabotaged because Enver Hoxha decided to condemn Maoism as revisionist as part of a diabolical plot hatched in secret between Hoxha and some unnamed Soviet agents or whatever.

Can you name an instance where a Maoist party split in half because of Hoxha's condemnations and thus ceased struggling for revolution in any significant way?

[red cat]

After 1979 Deng mostly patched up ties with the Soviet Union anyway, and from 1973-1979 China was more pro-US than pro-revolution, so I don't see where there was some epic international movement for global revolution sabotaged because Enver Hoxha decided to condemn Maoism as revisionist as part of a diabolical plot hatched in secret between Hoxha and some unnamed Soviet agents or whatever.

Can you name an instance where a Maoist party split in half because of Hoxha's condemnations and thus ceased struggling for revolution in any significant way?

By Maoist here I meant the branch of anti-revisionists who continued upholding MLM and identified post-Mao China as revisionist. The parties affiliated to the Dengist line degenerated within the next decade anyway.

There were many parties of the anti-revisionist line which embraced Hoxha's line. The parties among these that were conducting armed struggle gradually stopped revolutionary warfare. That is what mean by ceasing to struggle for revolution.