Rakhmetov
12th November 2010, 22:06
While describing himself as a Leftist and anti-capitalist, Kolko is withering in his criticism of the undemocratic, authoritarian strands of Socialism espoused by Stalin and Mao. Kolko writes, in his Politics of War, a memorable passage criticizing the shallow, power-hungry duo of Stalin and Mao:
What Mao called theory, with the intense vanity which made him manipulate the [Chinese Communist] party into passing encomiums to him, was nothing more than tactics, tactics designed to lead a national revolution of a reformist character. What is less important than the superficiality of the thought is its intent - designed to make a coalition and victory politically possible. Mao was a great strategist and tactician in the acquisition of power, but in fact below even Stalin as a thinker. His ideology was derived, intellectually crude, and strictly relegated to this desire and passion to use the dynamics of China in chaos to attain power. He never rose to even Stalin's sterile level of generality and abstraction, or above homilies that took more from Sun Yat-sen than Lenin. He always knew what was right for the moment, and in this regard he was a genius... [Mao]'s obsession with being confirmed as the Great Sage made him dogmatic about a theoretical line so nebulous and pragmatic that it was always successful as a tactical armory.
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/gabrielkolko
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Kolko#Bibliography
What Mao called theory, with the intense vanity which made him manipulate the [Chinese Communist] party into passing encomiums to him, was nothing more than tactics, tactics designed to lead a national revolution of a reformist character. What is less important than the superficiality of the thought is its intent - designed to make a coalition and victory politically possible. Mao was a great strategist and tactician in the acquisition of power, but in fact below even Stalin as a thinker. His ideology was derived, intellectually crude, and strictly relegated to this desire and passion to use the dynamics of China in chaos to attain power. He never rose to even Stalin's sterile level of generality and abstraction, or above homilies that took more from Sun Yat-sen than Lenin. He always knew what was right for the moment, and in this regard he was a genius... [Mao]'s obsession with being confirmed as the Great Sage made him dogmatic about a theoretical line so nebulous and pragmatic that it was always successful as a tactical armory.
http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/gabrielkolko
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Kolko#Bibliography