What is Maoism? How do we learn about it?

[promethean]

I read this article and found that it was interesting: Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward? (http://monthlyreview.org/0906ball.htm)

What is Maoism? How do we learn about it? Also how is Maoism different from other Marxist tendencies?

[Marxach-Léinínach]

The Little Red Book is a good introduction.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

The gist of Maoism is a reliance on the peasantry as the engine (or a very important component of the engine) of social change. Most other Marxist tendencies explicitly state that the working class is what gives force to the revolution.

[Palingenisis]

The gist of Maoism is a reliance on the peasantry as the engine (or a very important component of the engine) of social change. Most other Marxist tendencies explicitly state that the working class is what gives force to the revolution.

Are you trying to do a parody of an ignorant Trotskyite waffling about things me has no clue on?

That is not the gist of a Maoism at all....No mention Mao's deepening of the Marxist understanding of the nature of contradiction, the Mass line, the understanding of need to overcome economistic determinism and reductionism, understanding the importance of the cultural superstructure and the need for cultural struggle within every flied of society....I could go on and on.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Are you trying to do a parody of an ignorant Trotskyite waffling about things me has no clue on?

That is not the gist of a Maoism at all....No mention Mao's deepening of the Marxist understanding of the nature of contradiction, the Mass line, the understanding of need to overcome economistic determinism and reductionism, understanding the importance of the cultural superstructure and the need for cultural struggle within every flied of society....I could go on and on.

In relation to other Marxist tendencies is the peasantry issue not one of the most prominent?? The things you are talking about are not exclusive to Maoism, but can fall under the umbrella of wider leftist ideas. You could go on and on... but I was just trying to give my own concise perspective on Maoism and what makes it unique.

Fuck your condescending pseudo erudite shit.

[Palingenisis]

In relation to other Marxist tendencies is the peasantry issue not one of the most prominent?? The things you are talking about are not exclusive to Maoism, but can fall under the umbrella of wider leftist ideas. You could go on and on... but I was just trying to give my own concise perspective on Maoism.

Are you deliberately being stupid? Is it really that hard to believe the people in the CWI lied to you?

The things I mentioned are what define Maoism and make it distinctive from other Marxist and pseudo-Marxist movements. (If you actually had read anything of value on the revolution in China and the other Maoist movements from France to Peru you would understand this).

Mao's "reliance" on the peasantry wasnt much different from Trotsky's "reliance" on the peasantry (who made up the vast bulk of the Red Army during the civil war in Russia!)....You really are being a moron.

What do think Mao and the CCP should have done at the beginning over the Long March? Just hand the country over to the feudal landlords and the Imperialists?

[chegitz guevara]

More importantly, how do we fight it?

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Are you deliberately being stupid? Is it really that hard to believe the people in the CWI lied to you?

Yes, I strive to be stupid. Now please stop responding with strings of abusive rhetorical questions and obvious strawman fallacies or I will ban you. :crying:

[Obs]

More importantly, how do we fight it?
Didn't we do this already?

[Black Sheep]

How do we learn about it?
By the magic of reading!
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/1/916152_29606e3371.jpg?v=0

[Vampire Lobster]

The Little Red Book is a good introduction.

To be honest, the Little Red Book isn't a great book. It's about rhetorical appeal for the most parts and doesn't really give you that great of an understanding of the Mao Zedong Thought, in my opinion. I guess it's worth reading, anyways, though.

[RED DAVE]

Mao's "reliance" on the peasantry wasnt much different from Trotsky's "reliance" on the peasantry (who made up the vast bulk of the Red Army during the civil war in Russia!)....You really are being a moron.Mao's "reliance" on the peasantry was qualitatively different from the approach of Trotsky and Lenin. In the Russian Revolution, the leading class was the working class, of which the Bolsheviks were the leading party, based in that class. It is true that "the peasantry ... made up the vast bulk of the Red Army during the civil war in Russia!" But the peasantry were led by the working class!

In the Chinese Revolution, the leading class was the bureacracy of the Communist Party itself, not the working class. The party never re-established links with the working class, and when the working class rose up towards the end of the revolution, the Communists told them not to seize the workplaces and set up a workers and peasants government but to go back to work. (Do I have to document this?)


What do think Mao and the CCP should have done at the beginning over the Long March? Just hand the country over to the feudal landlords and the Imperialists?It's not what they did at the beginning of he Long March, but at the end of the revolution. At no time, rhetoric aside, did the Maoists advocate, or practice, turning control of society over to the workers.

The results, we know: the numerically largest and most dynamic capitalist society in the world, exploiting its workers like every other capitalist society.

RED DAVE

[RED DAVE]

The Little Red Book is a good introduction.it's a terrific introduction to prefabricated sellout!

Read the following:


In our country, the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie belongs to the category of contradictions among the people. Largely, the class struggle between the two is a class struggle within the ranks of the people, because the Chinese national bourgeoisie has a dual character. In the period of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, it had both a revolutionary and a conciliationist side to its character. In the period of the socialist revolution, exploitation of the working class for profit constitutes one side of the character of the national bourgeoisie, while its support of the Constitution and its willingness to accept socialist transformation constitute the other. The national bourgeoisie differs from the imperialists, the landlords and the bureaucrat-capitalists. The contradiction between the national bourgeoisie and the working class is one between the exploiter and the exploited, and is by nature antagonistic. Nevertheless, in the concrete conditions of China, this antagonistic class contradiction can, if properly handled, be transformed into a non-antagonistic one and be resolved by peaceful methods. However, it will change into a contradiction between ourselves and the enemy if we do not handle it properly and do not follow the policy of uniting with, criticizing and educating the national bourgeoisie, or if the national bourgeoisie does not accept this policy of ours.http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/

The Maoists, then and now, have a completely fucked up view of the national bourgeoisie, which leads them into collaboration with them (stage of state capitalism) and then to embrace them (stage of private capitalism).

If you don't think this is correct, take a look at what the Maoists and the national bourgeoisie did in China and Vietnam. Where are the Maoists now? And watch how the Nepali Maoists are doing the same thing: engaging in dialog with the national bourgeoisie instead of preparing the working class for assuming state power.

RED DAVE

[Zanthorus]

Actually, it would be proper to say that Trotskyist tendencies are opposed to involving the peasantry and Trotsky was very anti-peasant.

I don't think this is true. Trotsky was not 'anti-peasant', or opposed to involving the peasantry as such. His position was that the peasantry, despite constituting a class-in-itself, did not constitute a class-for-itself, and therefore could fluctuate between supporting other classes, but could not enforce any interests of its own. Trotsky thought that during the (Then upcoming) Russian revolution, the proletariat would take the lead and the peasantry would fall in behind (Provided the proletariat took several measures to win a degree of support from the peasants away from the bourgeoisie). Marx himself made a similar point about the peasantry in France not being a class-in-itself, not defending any historic interests, and therefore not really constituting a class as such.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Meh. My personal opinion is that the petit-bourgeois peasants can be politically revolutionary (which is very much "class for itself") but not socially revolutionary (the line of Kautsky and Lenin). Carry out enough "land reforms" for them, and they'll return to rural idiocy but not withdraw from "democratic politics" altogether. [Obviously I exclude the likes of farm workers proper.]

Give Mao credit where credit's due, even on his innovative People's War, only slam him for his "New Democracy" shit of including an illusory "national bourgeoisie" when the "national"/patriotic propertied element was and is to be found amongst the petit-bourgeoisie.

[Zanthorus]

Meh. My personal opinion is that the petit-bourgeois peasants can be politically revolutionary (which is very much "class for itself") but not socially revolutionary (the line of Kautsky and Lenin).

How would this square with the phenomenon, noted by Orlando Figes in A People's Tragedy, for the peasantry to buy into the myth of the paternalistic Tsar who knows all the peasants by name and would grant them land reform in a golden manifesto were it nor for the evil boyars who surrounded him? (Hence the peasant tradition of sending direct appeals to the Tsar which continued under Lenin and Stalin, and the legitimisation of peasant rebellions on the basis of instating the 'true Tsar', for example, in the 1861 rebellions resulting from the failure of the serf emancipation to satisfy the peasants grievances)


Was Trotsky open to including the peasantry in the workers state or is that class-collaboration?

From what I recall, Trotsky did not think that the peasantry was capable of having a political group represent it's interests in government in the first place.

[Die Neue Zeit]

How would this square with the phenomenon, noted by Orlando Figes in A People's Tragedy, for the peasantry to buy into the myth of the paternalistic Tsar who knows all the peasants by name and would grant them land reform in a golden manifesto were it nor for the evil boyars who surrounded him?

Did that hack pay much attention to how the Socialist-Revolutionaries, first as a united party then as two separate parties, garnered political support from the peasantry during the czarist regime?


(Hence the peasant tradition of sending direct appeals to the Tsar which continued under Lenin and Stalin, and the legitimisation of peasant rebellions on the basis of instating the 'true Tsar', for example, in the 1861 rebellions resulting from the failure of the serf emancipation to satisfy the peasants grievances)

The Bolsheviks were too busy with literacy campaigns among the peasantry to repress these direct appeals to the person of Lenin. Refining these appeals was probably one way of increasing literacy.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Are you deliberately being stupid? Is it really that hard to believe the people in the CWI lied to you?



Socialist Party of England and Wales
Maoism - Stalinism with Chinese characteristics

'MAOISM' DESCRIBES the one-party dictatorship of Mao Zedong who came to power in China after 1949 revolution, the result of a long peasant-based guerrilla war led by the Communist Party. The Chinese revolution subsequently inspired a series of guerrilla wars as part of national liberation struggles in many colonial countries.

The revolution defeated the capitalists and feudal landlords, and with the Soviet Union as a backcloth, a Chinese version of Stalinism came to power i.e. a planned, nationalised economy but without workers' democracy.

But Chinese Stalinism, even with all the advantages of enormous natural resources and USSR support, was incapable of achieving socialism. By the 1980s, without workers' democracy, the planned economies of the eastern bloc countries stagnated and collapsed, reverting to capitalism.

The Chinese Stalinists sought a way out of this impasse by managing capitalist restoration which they termed "socialism with Chinese characteristics".

http://chinaworker.info/en/content/news/326/

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Are you deliberately being stupid? Is it really that hard to believe the people in the CWI lied to you?


http://chinaworker.info/en/content/news/269/


Chinaworker.org
Adaptation to Maoism?

An example of this is the current discussion among Chinese Marxists and Trotskyists about how to relate to Maoism, which we believe raises possibilities but also dangers, and where international experience can also prove to be invaluable. It is not hard to understand why a layer of youth, without a fully rounded-out understanding of Mao’s ideas and historical role, look towards these ideas as a possible way to fight back against the current regime. It is also true the CCP has been ’de-Maoised’ and does not use Mao’s slogans, speeches etc., regarding all talk of ’mass struggle’ as a threat to its position. The regime keeps Mao only as a nationalist icon – to whip up support for the ”Great Chinese Nation”.

But this does not mean that Trotskyists and genuine Marxists should now use Maoist slogans or ideas, which are the ideas of a Stalinist bureaucracy that rested mainly on the support of the peasantry and middle layers. Unfortunately the USFI and its main theoretician, the late Ernest Mandel, has a record of making such mistakes – opportunistically adapting to the latest political ’fashion’: Mao in the 1960s-70s, and Tito in Yugoslavia (they supported Tito as if he was an ’unconscious’ Trotskyist, when in fact he represented a national Yugoslav variant of Stalinism). In 1968 the USFI carried Ho Chi Minh portraits on demos against the Vietnam war. Our (CWI) slogans were ”USA out of Vietnam” and ”Support the struggle of the Vietnamese people against imperialism”, but we did not opportunistically adapt ourselves to the ruling Stalinist regime in Hanoi. The USFI did the same in Ireland, supporting the nationalist IRA, and more recently in Brazil – serving as ministers in Lula’s neo-liberal government. This should be a warning to the left in China against such an approach, which has nothing to do with the real tradition of Lenin and Trotsky.

Any adaptation to the muddled and contradictory ideology of Maoism will only create .... Maoism! In Italy and other countries in the late 1960s, the USFI produced pamphlets containing speeches of Mao, radical phrases from the Cultural Revolution on the ’uninterrupted revolution’ and other themes. They did this without the slightest criticism, creating the impression that Mao’s ideas were consistent with revolutionary Marxism and Trotskyism. Instead of attracting workers and youth to Trotskyism, of course, this ’tactic’ provided a theoretical justification for a layer of workers to embrace Maoism!

The CWI agrees there is a strong case for united front type work between genuine left groups, including those layers with illusions in Mao: common campaigns around agreed questions such as strikes, solidarity with workers’ struggles, defence of arrested activists, etc. But as Lenin always said about the united front: ”strike together, march separately” – there must be no mixing of political banners! After all, that is the mistake the CCP and Stalin made in 1924-27 – they used the slogans and name of GMD, of Sun Yatsen, and the broad masses believed the CCP and GMD were the same thing, with catastrophic results.

While we can work together in some campaigns with Maoists, and can expose how far the current regime has shifted from Mao’s position (which did defend public property and planning, but with very bad, bureaucratic methods), we must also constantly educate about the real role of Maoism, which because of its bureaucratic and national limitations, prepared the way for the shift back towards capitalism.
There are big opportunities in China for a reawakening of the ideas of genuine socialism. But political mistakes of this type can produce a shipwreck for the, as yet, small left forces.

Genuine dialogue

There is perhaps a fear among some sections of the Trotskyist left in China that the established international groups represent ’warring elephants’ that should be kept outside. We understand this sentiment, and can say that it is partially justified based on the actions of other so-called Trotskyist groups who – to put it mildly – have not always acted in a principled fashion. As for the CWI, we are keen for a dialogue with genuine fighting layers of youth and workers in China. We are already enriching our own experience through this exchange of ideas. But we would urge the socialist youth in China to pay serious attention to the different positions of the groups claiming a Trotskyist tradition.

There are now dozens of articles in Chinese about the debates and struggles of Marxists in many countries – in Africa, the Middle East, Europe – on our website, chinaworker.info. Familiarise yourselves not just with the programme and perspectives of the CWI, but other groups too, and subject them to strict comparison. Even more important than written programmes, however, is to look at how the different shades of international Trotskyism actually apply themselves in practise – to workers’ struggles, to questions of theory, tactics and methods of work. This is the case in relation to the national question in Scotland, Ireland or Israel-Palestine, for example, which contain vital lessons for China, not just in relation to Taiwan. Unfortunately, huge mistakes have been committed in this field by groups claiming a Marxist or Trotskyist pedigree. Or the problems entailed in orientating to new workers’ parties and left-wing formations, a process in which the CWI has played a crucial role in Brazil, Britain, Germany and Nigeria. We believe that the work of the CWI’s sections around the world passes the test of any such comparison.

The coming political and economic typhoon in China will not just be of importance for Chinese workers, but for the working class around the world. The problems of the coming Chinese revolution therefore must be approached through international eyes as well as Chinese eyes, something that equally applies to the processes in America, Africa and Europe. With such an approach – of real socialist internationalism – we are confident huge advances can be made in China in coming years by the supporters of genuine Marxism.

You were saying?

[Saorsa]

But the peasantry were led by the working class!

How?

This is a nice sounding piece of rhetoric widely used by Trotskyists to imply that [insert revolution here] isn't worthy of their support because it supposedly wasn't led by the proletariat. But please explain to me, how were peasants abandoning the trenches and going home to seize land in Russia doing so 'under the leadership of the working class'? More like they were led by their own desires for land and freedom. We all know and agree on the Marxist conception of history and class struggle, but Marxist analysis should be more than cheap rhetoric and theoretical phrase mongering as a substitute for concrete analysis.

There was a political seizure of power by the Boshevik party during a time of great revolutionary upheaval and social unrest. Workers were seizing their factories, peasants were seizing the land. But the revolution did not take place when millions of workers simultaneously and spontaneously seized their workplaces, leaving the Bolshevik party to follow. The revolution took place when the *political organisation* of the working class seized state power, destroying the power of the bourgeoisie in key areas of Russia. This facilitated and allowed for radical social transformation of society, carried out by the workers and peasants themselves in the liberated zones the Bolshevik seizure of power established.


In the Chinese Revolution, the leading class was the bureacracy of the Communist Party itself, not the working class.

wut

How did the leadership of the CCP, during its decades of revolutionary struggle throughout China, constitute a class? That's a complete distortion of Marxism and Marxist terminology.

You could maybe make the argument that after 1949 the CCP leadership and cadres formed a class... maybe. It'd still be a stupid argument to make, an argument based on your desire to side with imperialist attacks on the Chinese revolution and in doing so make it easier for yourself to cosy up to bourgeois liberals in the First World. When lies are told about what happened in China, rather than challenging them you can take the easy road out and say "hey I'm a Trotskyist, I agree those guys were awful". But this political cowardice doesn't make your attacks on the Chinese revolution any more truthful.

How on earth could a bunch of communist workers, peasants and intellectuals trudging through the Tibetan highlands dodging GMD attacks possibly constitute a class?


The party never re-established links with the working class,

The decisive struggles of the last phase of the revolution leading up to 1949 were not based on the Chinese labour movement, no. The Chinese workers movement, or what was left of it, was forced to go almost entirely underground due to the GMD massacres of red workers and the decades of almost continual civil war and foreign invasion. The working class did, however, play a leading role in the social transformations that followed 1949, which are of more importance imho than the period leading up to them.

The CCP was born out of working class struggles. Mao was a trade union organiser when he first became active as a communist. It never lost these links to the working class, but the CCP was kinda unwilling to get all its urban working class supporters massacred during the GMD rule and the Japanese occupation by calling on them to strike at a time when China-wide revolutionary victory wasn't on the cards.

The construction of a socialist planned economy in China and most importantly of all, the Cultural Revolution, were based heavily on the involvement, leadership and mass participation of workers in the urban areas as well as agricultural workers in the rural areas. China was a vast country - there were millions of proletarians in the rural areas selling their labour-power to landlords and other employers. This class formed a bedrock of support for the Chinese revolutionary movement.

There are no blueprints. There is no one way towards revolution. There is an endless multitude of tactics for an endless multitude of situations. 1917 will never be repeated and if you went back in time and told Lenin you were aiming to do so, he'd laugh in your face.


and when the working class rose up towards the end of the revolution, the Communists told them not to seize the workplaces and set up a workers and peasants government but to go back to work.

That is not true. And these questions have already been heavily debated in other threads. (http://www.revleft.com/vb/new-democracy-t136648/index.html)

I have already answered these criticisms.


The Chinese revolution was not a revolution of Mao plus disciples. It was a revolution of poor, struggling people who risked everything to smash the power of the landlords, the exploiters and the foreign imperialists. If you have read first hand accounts of the Chinese revolution, like the famous book Fanshen, it depicts in painstaking detail a revolution based on mobilising and empowering the masses to liberate themselves, where EVERY COMMUNIST PARTY CADRE HAD TO PASS THROUGH A 'GATE', I.E. HAVE THEIR PARTY MEMBERSHIP APPROVED BY THE ORDINARY PEOPLE THEY HAD PLEDGED TO SERVE, AT A MASS MEETING THAT ALL COULD ATTEND.

Before we start taking Trotskyist attacks on the Chinese revolution seriously, perhaps we should study the few first hand accounts from progressive authors that exist... rather than joining with the imperialists in their slander and demonisation.

As for the often 'evidenced' call by the Communist Party to the Chinese workers to stay disciplined... so what? Really, this is proof of nothing other than that the Chinese communists lived in the real world.

China had been ravaged by civil war and foreign invasion for decades. There was famine in the countryside and economic chaos throughout the country. So as the tide turned, and the communists came close to liberating the whole of China and unifying it under the people's control for the first time in decades, they had the strange idea that perhaps they wanted to take over a country where the factories which belonged to ALL THE PEOPLE were not burned down, looted or destroyed by SOME OF THE PEOPLE. The communists wanted to begin reconstructing a country with its factories, its wealth, its buildings and its cities INTACT.

What should they have done? Called on the workers to loot the rich people's mansions and take the jewels home as an act of 'expropriation'? The plan was to reconstruct China and raise the living standards of all people, in a process that took place with the participation, supervision and oversight of the masses. NOT TO DESTROY CHINA IN 1949 IN A WAVE OF RIOTS, POGROMS, LOOTING, BURNING AND PILLAGING.

Perhaps that would have satisfied you a bit more Dave, to see Beijing burn... but I see nothing wrong whatsoever with the CCP ordering the masses to keep working, keep producing, keep the wheels of production and distribution turning so that the country didn't starve and collapse any more than was absolutely necessary!

The letter did not say the workers couldn't seize power. It says they had to do it in a planned, coordinated manner across China, rather than in spontaneous and destructive acts of looting.

When the workers and soldiers stormed the Winter Palace, the Bolsheviks told them not to take anything and forced those who did to give back what they took. Are we to condemn them for siding with feudal tradition and preserving the wealth of the Tsar when starving workers were trying to expropriate it?

Revolution is not about workers acting on their own personal self-interest, seizing their own workplaces and running them for their own benefit. That's a bourgeouis way of looking at things. It's about the *entire working class and all other revolutionary classes and forces in society* uniting around a common movement, a common project and a common set of goals and going about achieving them in a successful and coordinated way.

At least that's how it happens in the real world.

[Marxach-Léinínach]

To be honest, the Little Red Book isn't a great book. It's about rhetorical appeal for the most parts and doesn't really give you that great of an understanding of the Mao Zedong Thought, in my opinion. I guess it's worth reading, anyways, though.

Yeah, no way should it be read as if it were an in-depth theoretical text. To really get an understanding his selected works should be read, but I think the Little Red Book is good as a basic introduction.