Could you be a Maoist without being a Stalinist?

[Gears]

Is it possible?

[Robespierre Richard]

No. Next question.

[HalPhilipWalker]

I'm wondering if anyone could provide resources on Stalin's accomplishments. I know in general that he presided over a massive industrialization through his Five Year Plans but does anyone have some more information?

[Robespierre Richard]

Ideological contributions or political tasks? Because I don't think he was really actually accomplishing most of those things, the Soviet people were.

[Dimentio]

There was a "Maoist-Trotskyist" organisation a few years ago called "The Fifth Sword" (think they were active 2003-2005). They tried to send a diplomatic mission to North Korea to get weapons to overthrow the Swedish government.

Most of them were around 14 years old.

Their leader whispered on the phone.

[Kuppo Shakur]

What's the point?:confused:

[Princess Luna]

the fact Anarcho-Fascists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National-Anarchism) exist goes to prove anything is possible in politics, and i don't see any reason why a Maoist has to "like" Stalin , Mao himself had a pretty rocky relationship with the man.

[Ocean Seal]

Is it possible?
Effectively at that point its truly semantic. I guess you might not want to call yourself a Stalinist but Maoism and Stalinism aren't truly very different. This is why I object to this little sectarian titles that everyone applies to themselves. I don't believe that there is anyone who is 100% in line with their sect be it Bordigist, Trotskyist, or Maoist. I don't believe that there is anyone who solely accepts every facet of their ideology or who doesn't see the merit in the other leftist ideologies. Just call yourself you.

Take what you like about Mao and ingrain that as part of your philosophy without subscribing yourself to dogma.

[Sixiang]

I suppose it's possible. Most Maoists uphold Stalin to an extent. They are critically supportive of him, in a sense.

[Marxach-Léinínach]

Well with "Stalinism" just being a bourgeois/revisionist term for "Leninism", the question should really be "Can you be a Maoist without being a Leninist?" This is my problem with a lot of western Maoism. Such emphasis always gets placed on Mao's criticisms of Stalin and the Soviet model (some of which was indeed correct but most of it was overblown IMO) that Stalin, and by extension Lenin, ends up getting negated from the left, just like how Khrushchov negated them from the right. You even have RCPites and Kasamites openly denouncing Stalin and "Stalinism" and bigging up Trotsky etc. Fortunately, the Maoist revolutionaries fighting the Protracted People's Wars throughout the third world all still retain the good Marxist-Leninist-Maoist lines of back in the day. :)

[RATM-Eubie]

Yes i think it is possible.

[Kléber]

Could you be Shi'a without being Muslim?

[Jose Gracchus]

Well let's ask, in what sense are "Maoists" in general, "Stalinists"? I would say in the sense they believe in having autocratic political parties based on fictional leaderships of workers, involving worship of the leader-figure, and enthusiasm for purges and revolutionary terror, they are. Mostly though, Maoists just "inherit" the historical apologia and rhetoric of Stalin's regime while sharing none of its political heritage and original political base, and failing to accomplish the politico-economic objectives of Stalin's rule.

As for how one could avoid much of this heritage and perhaps be a "Maoist" in some sense, I guess if one threw out all of Maoism aside from the more spontaneist and participatory aspects of the rural agrarian People's Communes among the peasantry and wanted an urban society based on a radicalized vision of the would-be "Shanghai People's Commune" that threatened to overthrow party/cadre/Red Guard/PLA top-down rule and supplant it with some form of Paris-Commune-ism, maybe. I think there was a "left-Maoist" on this site who upheld that kind of politics and even dismissed the concept of a proper democratic centralist vanguard party, so that's about as close as you'll get. Not that I think those politics are workable or very coherent. I suppose its less repulsively incompetent and authoritarian than classic Maoism, though (which despite is endless faked mobilizational politics masquerading as the participation of the "masses" and endless purges and public denunciations, failed to ever achieve the Stalin-Khrushchev-early-Brezhnev economic growth and development of the USSR).