On Maoism

[SocSyc]

I am trying to understand some of the concepts of Maoism. Can someone help me out in understanding some of its fundamental beliefs?

[Nanatsu Yoru]

Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, as based mainly on the teachings of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Iosef Stalin and Mao Zedong, is the highest qualitative stage of Marxism so far and is the guiding ideology of revolutionaries the world over who carry forward the fight for a world free of all class distinctions, all exploitative production relations, all oppressive social relations, and all corresponding, reactionary ideas - the communist world of the future. Basic Marxist-Leninist principles were implemented successfully, though with shortcomings, in the Soviet Union during the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, but it was the experience of socialist construction and the 'Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution' in the People's Republic of China under Mao however that heralded 'Mao Tse-Tung Thought' and later 'Maoism' as a new qualitative advancement of Marxism-Leninism. Key principles of Maoism include:

1. The people's war strategy, i.e. a strategy of mass-based guerilla war principally relying on the exploited social base leading to the encirclement of the more developed areas that profit from the exploitation of that social base.

2. The mass line, which encompasses four main points: a) learn from the people while leading them, b) serve the people while leading them, c) rely on the people while leading them, and d) practice leadership mainly in the form of guidance rather than commands.

3. The philosophical, strategic, and tactical approach of identifying the contextual principal contradiction and attacking the contextual main enemy. (Divide and conquer, in other words.)

4. New democratic revolution and the corresponding strategic block of four classes as the path to sustainable socialism for countries with pre-capitalist modes of production.

5. Political and cultural revolutions within the proletarian revolution as occasionally necessary.

Unfortunately, following the lead of the Khrushchovite revisionists who destroyed socialism in the USSR after Stalin's death, after Mao's death the PRC was also taken over by revisionists who revise and betray fundamental principles of Marxism in the interests of capitalism and, like the USSR before it, a once great proletarian state was taken down the path of capitalist restoration and social-imperialism. Because of this, we put particular emphasis on the dangers of revisionism. Despite the defeats of the 20th century, the flame of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is still being kept alive and advanced by the experiences of the countless CPs in the third world waging or preparing for people's war. Long live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!

Mercilessly stolen from the Maoist group here on RevLeft ;)

[hatzel]

I'm sure there will be plenty of Marxists who don't necessarily believe that Maoism is actually the "highest qualitative stage of Marxism so far and is the guiding ideology of revolutionaries the world over who carry forward the fight for [...] the communist world of the future," but as I've had just about enough of the Maoists vs. seemingly anybody else since the last wah wah wah thread, I don't think it matters. Just that it might be best to concentrate more on actual hard-and-fast facts, like the five points further down the page, rather than all that 'Maoism is the bestest, that's one of our fundamental beliefs, and we believe it because it's true' :) The plentiful Maoists on here could easily expand on the quick little bullet points there, though...

[RED DAVE]

What is ignored about Maoism are the contradictions lying within it.


4. New democratic revolution and the corresponding strategic block of four classes as the path to sustainable socialism for countries with pre-capitalist modes of production.Let's analyze this carefully.

(a) There is no precedent for the "new democratic revolution" in Marxism. The Bolsheviks, dealing with an undeveloped country, unequivocally stated that the working class must take the leading role in the revolution and establish a workers state. There was some lack of clarity on this, but the leading role of the working class was clear in their practice. Likewise, the anarchists in Spain also called for the workers to take the leading role.

(b) The "strategic block of four classes" is class collaboration, pure and simple. It calls for an alliance between the working class and the "national bourgeoisie" as if the national bourgeoisie does not have its own agenda: capitalism. We know how this played out in practice in China: the bourgeoisie won control and now China is, numerically, the largest capitalist country in the world.

(c) "[T]he path to sustainable socialism" after the triumph of the block of four classes is obviously fraught with problems as it did not happen. China reverted to full-fledged capitalism without a significant struggle to prevent this (unlike in Russia, where there was significant opposition to Stalinism). Now it is all very nice to say, "the PRC was also taken over by revisionists who revise and betray fundamental principles of Marxism in the interests of capitalism." But where did these revisionists come from? The came from within the party, fostered by the pro-capitalist tendencies that had been permitted to flourish by Maoism itself. It is instructive that no faction of the PRC ever called on the workers to rise up and fight for socialism in the name of the working class (unlike in Russia).

(d) "[C]ountries with pre-capitalist modes of production" is a pile of Maoist bullshit. China had a large and conscious working class. In 1929, that working class was betrayed by the Stalinists, who forced it into a disastrous alliance with the national bourgeoisie. The Chinese working class numbered in the millions in the late 1940s and was fully capable of taking over and running China, which the Maoists prevented. The Chinese working class rose in rebellion as the Kuomintang armies were defeated by the Maoist-led forces. That was the time to set up a workers state. Thanks to the Maoists, who told the workers to go back to work, that never happened.

RED DAVE

[RedSunRising]

http://www.mediafire.com/?xu6e7qk9t5m2x91

This is a very good basic course in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

[Nanatsu Yoru]

Red Dave, he was asking what Maoism is, not whether it's good or not. I'm no fan of Mao, but can we try and keep the sectarianism off Learning?

[Red_Struggle]

Maoism is essentially the belief that revolution should be based almost solely off of the peasantry in under-developed countries (the peasantry surrounds the cities), as well as utilizing the concept of New Democracy and a bloc of four classes. Maoism has had mixed success, depending on where and when it has been put into practice.

I could say more, but I will not.

[hatzel]

I could say more, but I will not.This is learning. If you can say more, say more. If I came in here asking what something was, and somebody said 'well this is one thing about it, and I could tell you the other things about it, but actually I won't', I'd be pretty peeved. I'm sure you would be, too...

[Marxach-Léinínach]

Maoism is essentially the belief that revolution should be based almost solely off of the peasantry in under-developed countries (the peasantry surrounds the cities)

Enver Hoxha himself unwittingly answered that criticism of his in 'Imperialism and the Revolution' -

The Albanian peasantry was the main force of our revolution, however it was the working class, despite its very small numbers, which led the peasantry, because the Marxist-Leninist ideology, the ideology of the proletariat, embodied in the Communist Party, today the Party of Labour, the vanguard of the working class, was the leadership of the revolution.

[caramelpence]

Maoism is essentially the belief that revolution should be based almost solely off of the peasantry in under-developed countries (the peasantry surrounds the cities)

From a textual standpoint, this is false. From texts such as his Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society (1926) to On New Democracy (1940), Mao placed a consistent rhetorical emphasis on the leading role of the working class. How this rhetorical emphasis reflected the actual course of the Chinese Revolution or the social composition of the CPC is another issue but it's a myth to say that Mao himself ever thought that the revolution would be led by any class other than the working class. Mao didn't speak in terms of the peasantry surrounding the cities, but of the countryside surrounding the cities.

****

As for the OP's question, part of the problem is what we mean when we speak in terms of "Maoism" - the CPC never used the term Maoism (rather, they spoke in terms of Mao Zedong Thought, the Chinese word for Thought in this context being different from the word used to refer to "isms" or ideologies) and, in countries outside of the PRC, Maoism was initially used as a derogatory way of referring to China or pro-Chinese forces. A further issue is that Mao's own views never attained the level of coherence or consistency achieved by Trotsky (for example) and it was partly (though by no means solely) for this reason that when pro-Chinese forces emerged in other countries, such as the Maoist parties that emerged in Europe and North America during the 1960s, their ideological perspectives and points of emphasis differed radically from one another. For example, French Maoism (or at least sections of it, most famously the fascinating organization Gauche Proletarienne) was characterized by an anarchistic thrust that rejected stable or hierarchical organization and sought to expand the concept of the political to include institutions like prisons and issues like sexuality and gender, whereas German Maoism, by contrast, was concerned much more with geopolitics, and involved activists taking on some of the international rhetoric of the CPC in order to argue that Germany's condition could be likened to the Third World and that both German states were threatened by Soviet social-imperialism.

Basically, there was no single Maoist paradigm, which is why I'm hesitant to talk about Maoism as a stable ideological force, at least if we see Maoism as something other (and wider than) than Mao's own writings and decisions.

[mosfeld]

Basically, there was no single Maoist paradigm, which is why I'm hesitant to talk about Maoism as a stable ideological force, at least if we see Maoism as something other (and wider than) than Mao's own writings and decisions. You have to look at the ideological developments of the PCP, who first coined the term "MLM", and its RIM allies. Today, Maoism is more ideologically unified and stable than ever before -- because MLM has been defined more concretely than back in the '60s or something. Otherwise, I agree with your points.

EDIT: I'd actually say that Maoism was more ideologically unified before 2006 than it is now, but you get what I'm saying.

[RED DAVE]

From a textual standpoint, this is false. From texts such as his Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society (1926) to On New Democracy (1940), Mao placed a consistent rhetorical emphasis on the leading role of the working class. How this rhetorical emphasis reflected the actual course of the Chinese Revolution or the social composition of the CPC is another issue but it's a myth to say that Mao himself ever thought that the revolution would be led by any class other than the working class. Mao didn't speak in terms of the peasantry surrounding the cities, but of the countryside surrounding the cities.I'm glad you're talking about Maoist rhetoric as opposed to Maoist practice. Rhetorically, Maoists always claim that the working class will be the leading class of the revolution, which would mean, logically, that after the revolution they will, essentially, run society. In practice, the working class never ran the economy in China; the economy was run by the bureaucracy. Elements of this class, which controlled the Communist Party, combined with elements of the old bourgeoisie became the new capitalist class.


As for the OP's question, part of the problem is what we mean when we speak in terms of "Maoism" - the CPC never used the term Maoism (rather, they spoke in terms of Mao Zedong Thought, the Chinese word for Thought in this context being different from the word used to refer to "isms" or ideologies) and, in countries outside of the PRC, Maoism was initially used as a derogatory way of referring to China or pro-Chinese forces. A further issue is that Mao's own views never attained the level of coherence or consistency achieved by Trotsky (for example) and it was partly (though by no means solely) for this reason that when pro-Chinese forces emerged in other countries, such as the Maoist parties that emerged in Europe and North America during the 1960s, their ideological perspectives and points of emphasis differed radically from one another. For example, French Maoism (or at least sections of it, most famously the fascinating organization Gauche Proletarienne) was characterized by an anarchistic thrust that rejected stable or hierarchical organization and sought to expand the concept of the political to include institutions like prisons and issues like sexuality and gender, whereas German Maoism, by contrast, was concerned much more with geopolitics, and involved activists taking on some of the international rhetoric of the CPC in order to argue that Germany's condition could be likened to the Third World and that both German states were threatened by Soviet social-imperialism.This is not surprising as Maoism, representing essentially a petit-bourgeois stance, could not put forth a program for world revolution, unlike the early Comintern. Early Maoists in the US, PL for example, were "workerist": they adopted a pseudo-militant approach, but, in fact, their main political thrust was in the petit-bourgeois radical student movement.


Basically, there was no single Maoist paradigm, which is why I'm hesitant to talk about Maoism as a stable ideological force, at least if we see Maoism as something other (and wider than) than Mao's own writings and decisions.I think that it's legit to use Mao's own writings and practice as exemplifying Maoism.

RED DAVE

[Red_Struggle]

This is learning. If you can say more, say more. If I came in here asking what something was, and somebody said 'well this is one thing about it, and I could tell you the other things about it, but actually I won't', I'd be pretty peeved. I'm sure you would be, too...

I decided not to continue precisely because this is in the learning section and I'm not going to post my personal views of Maoism. I posted a general overview instead.


Enver Hoxha himself unwittingly answered that criticism of his in 'Imperialism and the Revolution' -

Yes, and he stated that although the peasantry outnumbered the proletariat, as in the USSR as well, the working class was still the leading class in the revolution, headed by the Albanian Communist Party. Unlike in China, insurrections were carried out in the urban sectors as well as in the countryside.


From a textual standpoint, this is false. From texts such as his Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society (1926) to On New Democracy (1940), Mao placed a consistent rhetorical emphasis on the leading role of the working class. How this rhetorical emphasis reflected the actual course of the Chinese Revolution or the social composition of the CPC is another issue but it's a myth to say that Mao himself ever thought that the revolution would be led by any class other than the working class. Mao didn't speak in terms of the peasantry surrounding the cities, but of the countryside surrounding the cities.

What people say and what people put into practice is not always one in the same. I could argue that Khruschev, Brezhnev, or even Ceausescu put a large emphasis on the working class simply by reading what they wrote, but that doesn't mean their writings aren't divorced from reality.

And by "the countryside surrounding the cities," it still comes down to the peasantry encircling the cities as that's where they reside. I haven't heard of any urban insurrections lead by the Chinese proletariat or the CPC itself. That's not to say things didn't improve for the working class in some ways, but its clear that the majority of time and work spent by the CPC was spent on organizing the peasantry to take over the urban areas, instead of the urban areas working in conjunction with the rural peasantry.

[Leftsolidarity]

I view Maoism as an abstract ideology. I've read Mao's little red book 6 times and carry it in my backpack everyday. (I'm sort of a loser haha) I feel Maoism is the idea that we cannot push the masses into something too fast and they need to be ready for it but we must also not hold them back. I think Maoism is completely dynamic to the situation it is put in and focuses on the physically needs of the people.

[red cat]

I view Maoism as an abstract ideology. I've read Mao's little red book 6 times and carry it in my backpack everyday. (I'm sort of a loser haha) I feel Maoism is the idea that we cannot push the masses into something too fast and they need to be ready for it but we must also not hold them back. I think Maoism is completely dynamic to the situation it is put in and focuses on the physically needs of the people.

Then how is it abstract ?

[red cat]

And by "the countryside surrounding the cities," it still comes down to the peasantry encircling the cities as that's where they reside. I haven't heard of any urban insurrections lead by the Chinese proletariat or the CPC itself. That's not to say things didn't improve for the working class in some ways, but its clear that the majority of time and work spent by the CPC was spent on organizing the peasantry to take over the urban areas, instead of the urban areas working in conjunction with the rural peasantry.
Wasn't there a Comintern backed line in the CPC earlier that tried to conduct urban insurrections and failed ?

[caramelpence]

What people say and what people put into practice is not always one in the same

...which was precisely why I emphasized that the leading role of the working class was central for Maoism "in textual terms" and then pointed out that whether this was true in practice is another issue. It is important to emphasize that Mao still placed rhetorical or textual emphasis on the leading role of the working class simply because it has often been wrongly claimed that he had a peasant-centric conception of revolution strategy in which the peasantry was elevated to the role of being the leading class, in the sense of being able to function as an autonomous social force without working-class leadership, and taking note of Mao's rhetorical emphasis on the working class is also relevant for the question (which has been the subject of some scholarly debate) of how distinct Mao was from the classical Marxist tradition, including the ideas of other leaders in the CPC, especially those supported by the USSR. I think that the OP would be interested in Mao's understanding of the role of different classes in the Chinese Revolution regardless of the extent to which that understanding actually reflected the concrete activity of social forces.


I haven't heard of any urban insurrections lead by the Chinese proletariat or the CPC itself

Then you're even less qualified to make assertions about Mao, Maoism, and Mao's role in the Chinese Revolution, because of course China has witnessed its share of urban insurrections under working-class and party leadership - the end of the first united front in 1927 and the subsequent expulsion of the CPC from the cities occurred in the aftermath of an urban insurrection in Shanghai that was designed to coincide with the city's capture by the advancing forces of the Northern Exhibition. The uprising was defeated because the CPC was not able to break with the KMT, despite the fact that tensions between the two organizations had been evident well before the actual break, whereas Chiang had arranged in advance for the uprising to be crushed in order to block the growing strength of the CPC and trade union movement, having secured the support of the Shanghai bourgeoisie and leading members of the Green Gang, i.e. the main criminal organization in Shanghai. The initial period after the defeat of the uprising when the party was led by Li Lisan also involved a continued urban focus in that the nascent Red Army sought to recapture cities through military conquest (most importantly Nanchang, as the battle around that city is widely considered the foundation of the Red Army in CPC and PLA history) and the urban underground, to the extent that it remained in existence as a meaningful political force, was ordered to pursue the construction of red unions as an alternative to the KMT-sponsored trade-union bodies, in accordance with the tactics that were being applied elsewhere as part of Third Period Stalinism.

It is true that these urban-based activities came to an end following Li Lisan's fall from the party leadership and that Mao did focus more on the countryside in rhetorical as well as in practical terms, but this did not stop Mao from emphasizing the role of the working class, and nor is it reason to assume that the CPC's rural orientation was a given, right from the party's foundation. The party's turn to rural base-building and Mao's justification of that turn through conceptions such as people's war needs to be seen as a set of strategic and ideological responses to the material and historical conditions in which the CPC found itself - i.e. the situation of being expelled from China's cities and faced with military threats from the newly-established Nationalist regime.


but its clear that the majority of time and work spent by the CPC was spent on organizing the peasantry to take over the urban areas,

This is entirely inaccurate as a characterization of the conduct of the War of Liberation. The CPC did not organize the peasants to seize urban areas, in fact it did the exact opposite of this - there were some peasants in provinces such as Hunan who, having taken part in the land revolution, wanted to pursue landlords into the cities and expropriate their industrial and residential property there as well, especially when the conduct of the land revolution was not in and of itself enough to give peasants all the resources they wanted or expected, and when faced with these instances the response of the CPC was specifically to prevent peasants from pursuing landlords, by emphasizing that the revolution had a New Democratic character, and was therefore not concerned with the abolition of private property in industrial property, only drastically unequal land ownership and cases of comprador or bureaucratic capital. The actual conquest of the cities did not occur through the spontaneous activity of the peasants, it occurred through a coordinated military strategy by the CPC leadership, along with negotiations with individual KMT leaders, as in the case of Beijing, or Beiping as it was then, which was handed over to the CPC without a fight.


This is not surprising as Maoism, representing essentially a petit-bourgeois stance, could not put forth a program for world revolution, unlike the early Comintern.

I think there's a need to be careful here. We can both agree that the Stalinist-era Comintern did not have a program for world revolution either but this did not stop it from imposing considerable ideological homogeneity on most of its constituent parties - particularly during the first years of WW2 when parties across the world, from the CPGB to the ICP, were forced to make a number of humiliating flip-flops, first opposing the war as a conflict between imperialist powers, then supporting it as a legitimate struggle against Fascism. The existence of such considerable ideological heterogeneity in international Maoism as it existed in the 60s and 70s was not (or not solely) the result of Maoism not having an orientation towards world revolution, it was more importantly due to the fact that the PRC did not have the equivalent of a Comintern-body and was generally less interested in guiding the development of pro-China parties in other parts of the world, especially in the First World, and especially in the conditions of the Cultural Revolution. The role of the PRC seems to have been limited to making the works of Mao and other publications like Peking Review available at low prices through sponsored bookshops and inviting leading pro-China figures on trips to the PRC - in many cases, Germany, for example, the CPC did not even recognize any party as fraternal.

I also think it's important for me to point out as a historian that whilst you and me can agree that Maoism is not orientated towards world revolution, it would be unfair to say that people at the time did not look enthusiastically towards events in other countries or view themselves as genuine internationalists. If you look over Maoist publications, there was extensive coverage of political struggles around the world, and when Maoists were faced with what they saw as major gains for the international movement, they celebrated those gains in enthusiastic terms, and could see them as indicative of a growing revolutionary wave. Particularly interesting - for multiple reasons - is the issue of the newspaper of the KPD/ML, the main Maoist organization in Germany, greeting the capture of Phnom Penh - link (http://www.mao-projekt.de/BRD/VLB/Roter_Morgen/RM_1975_16.shtml). I don't know how good your German is, but the first page alone shows that Maoists were not blind to events elsewhere. My point is not that German Maoists were right to celebrate the victory of the Khmer Rouge or that China was actually a revolutionary force, I simply want to make clear that we should not see Maoist activists as deliberate opponents of an emancipatory and international socialism - it strikes me as more valuable and important to seek to understand why so many activists on the left were drawn to Mao and China in the first place and why Maoism was seen as such a promising and dynamic force.


I think that it's legit to use Mao's own writings and practice as exemplifying Maoism.

Well, it depends on whether, by "Maoism", we mean a broader political and ideological phenomenon that existed and continues to exist in many countries, in which case it would be wrong solely to look at Mao's writings and practice alone, or whether we just mean a historic and Chinese phenomenon - although even in that cases there are important issues connected with how Mao's texts were made available and the differences between so-called "collective" and "genius" editions. One important reason that we can't just look at Mao's writings if we are looking at Maoism as an international phenomenon is that, historically speaking, activists who became members of Maoist organizations were frequently inspired and guided less by official texts such as Mao's writings and propaganda organs (with the exception of Mao's poetry and the Little Red Book, both of which were very popular) and more by secondary texts, in the form of books and articles that were produced by Western political writers, especially those such as Snow who had the opportunity to visit China. The dominant role of these secondary accounts speaks to the key dynamic underlying the whole phenomenon of Maoism as it existed in Western countries during the 60s and 70s - which is that it actually had little to do with real events in China and was fundamentally concerned with appropriating symbols and discourses in order to engage with political concerns that were specific to individual Western societies.

[caramelpence]

Just for self-indulgence, I'm going to post this, because I like sharing primary sources, and because it says a lot - many different things - about Maoism and German Maoism in particular:

http://www.mao-projekt.de/Bilder/BRD/VLB/RM/1975/RM_1975_16_01.jpg

[Red_Struggle]

Wasn't there a Comintern backed line in the CPC earlier that tried to conduct urban insurrections and failed ?

The Comintern sent in Otto Braun to conduct modern warfare techniques against the KMT. This is what failed, not urban guerilla tactics.

[red cat]

The Comintern sent in Otto Braun to conduct modern warfare techniques against the KMT. This is what failed, not urban guerilla tactics.

I had the pre 1928 counter-revolution and the pre long march ultra-left lines in mind.

EDIT : See caramelpence's post.

[Red_Struggle]

...which was precisely why I emphasized that the leading role of the working class was central for Maoism "in textual terms" and then pointed out that whether this was true in practice is another issue.

No, it's not. You don't have to keep apologizing or covering up for Mao's absolutizing the peasantry.


I think that the OP would be interested in Mao's understanding of the role of different classes in the Chinese Revolution regardless of the extent to which that understanding actually reflected the concrete activity of social forces.

In other words, you're saying we should study what Mao's idea of a "bloc of four classes" meant and how it actually played out? Alright then.

The concept of New Democracy is basically taking the democratic stage of the revolution, the one before the socialist stage, and stretching it out much further in semi-feudal countries. Unfortunately, this lead to fatal consequences for the CCP, since the bourgeois class that rose from this extended democratic stage was even larger, wealthier and more powerful than the kulak class that was aggravated by the NEP. Some claim the "objective conditions of China," and this holds some water, but ultimately socialism is socialism. Mao letting bourgeoisie into the CCP was one of the things that made him launch the GPCR and ultimately caused his line's downfall. Even before his death, Rightists were chiefly in power. Up until Mao’s death it was a policy to let the monied classes control the Peoples’ Communes as managers, and also during the entire period of the CCP it was a policy that factory owners and bourgeoisie could receive up to 1/4th the profits from their old factories.

The existence of bourgeois LINES in the Party is indeed inevitable. But actual monied BOURGEOISIE in the Party is not. The rationalization of there always being a bourgeois line within the Party does not mean we should be conciliatory to the bourgeoisie as a class or welcome it with open arms. The Hundred Flowers approach was not the best way to solve antagonisms.




Then you're even less qualified to make assertions about Mao, Maoism, and Mao's role in the Chinese Revolution, because of course China has witnessed its share of urban insurrections under working-class and party leadership - the end of the first united front in 1927 and the subsequent expulsion of the CPC from the cities occurred in the aftermath of an urban insurrection in Shanghai that was designed to coincide with the city's capture by the advancing forces of the Northern Exhibition.

And the urban insurrection failed.


Chiang had arranged in advance for the uprising to be crushed in order to block the growing strength of the CPC and trade union movement, having secured the support of the Shanghai bourgeoisie and leading members of the Green Gang, i.e. the main criminal organization in Shanghai.

Considering the CPC recruited among the bourgeoisie themselves, as compared to the KMT, the initial contradictions among the two parties weren't all that severe:

"Some capitalists keep themselves at a great distance from the state and have not changed their profits-before-everything mentality. Some workers are advancing too fast and won't allow the capitalists to make any profit at all. We should try to educate these workers and capitalists and help them gradually (but the sooner the better) adapt themselves to our state policy, namely, to make China's private industry and commerce mainly serve the nation's economy and the people's livelihood and partly earn profits for the capitalists and in this way embark on the path of state capitalism." - "The Only Road For The Transformation of Capitalist Industry and Commerce"

Here he's calling for the workers to "hold back" on seizing industry.

"It is necessary to go on educating the capitalists in patriotism, and to this end we should systematically cultivate a number of them who have a broader vision and are ready to lean towards the Communist Party and the People's Government, so that most of the other capitalists may be convinced through them." - "The Only Road For The Transformation of Capitalist Industry and Commerce"

"One is the leader while the other is the led; one seeks no private profit while the other still seeks a certain amount of private profit, and so on and so forth; that's where the differences lie. But under our present conditions, private industry and commerce in the main serve the nation's economy and the people's livelihood (which as far as the distribution of profits is concerned, take roughly three-fourths of the total). Therefore we can and should persuade the workers in private enterprises to act in the same way as those in state enterprises, namely, to increase production and practice economy emulate one another in labour, raise labour productivity, reduce costs of production and raise both quantity and quality, thus serving the interest of both the state sector and the private sector and that of labour and capital" - "The Only Road For The Transformation of Capitalist Industry and Commerce"


The initial period after the defeat of the uprising when the party was led by Li Lisan also involved a continued urban focus in that the nascent Red Army sought to recapture cities through military conquest (most importantly Nanchang, as the battle around that city is widely considered the foundation of the Red Army in CPC and PLA history) and the urban underground, to the extent that it remained in existence as a meaningful political force, was ordered to pursue the construction of red unions as an alternative to the KMT-sponsored trade-union bodies, in accordance with the tactics that were being applied elsewhere as part of Third Period Stalinism.

First off, I'm not talking about military conquest led by some guy who was friends with Liu Shaioqi. I'm asking for urban based guerilla warfare. They help set up trade unions? Great. But what does this mean in the period following revolution, concerning that Mao encouraged capitalist production relationtions to continue under "socialism".

[Marxach-Léinínach]

The concept of New Democracy is basically taking the democratic stage of the revolution, the one before the socialist stage, and stretching it out much further in semi-feudal countries. Unfortunately, this lead to fatal consequences for the CCP, since the bourgeois class that rose from this extended democratic stage was even larger, wealthier and more powerful than the kulak class that was aggravated by the NEP. Some claim the "objective conditions of China," and this holds some water, but ultimately socialism is socialism. Mao letting bourgeoisie into the CCP was one of the things that made him launch the GPCR and ultimately caused his line's downfall. Even before his death, Rightists were chiefly in power. Up until Mao’s death it was a policy to let the monied classes control the Peoples’ Communes as managers, and also during the entire period of the CCP it was a policy that factory owners and bourgeoisie could receive up to 1/4th the profits from their old factories.

The existence of bourgeois LINES in the Party is indeed inevitable. But actual monied BOURGEOISIE in the Party is not. The rationalization of there always being a bourgeois line within the Party does not mean we should be conciliatory to the bourgeoisie as a class or welcome it with open arms. The Hundred Flowers approach was not the best way to solve antagonisms.

Managers initially received 25% of the profits yeah, by 1956 though generally they were just receiving bonds that paid a tiny bit of interest and their managerial role was basically just symbolic. This got protracted and aggravated due to the rightists defeating the Maoists and bringing the Great Leap Forward policies to an end (and yes, Mao did indeed help bring that about by letting Liu and Deng purge their rivals like Gao Gang and Rao Shushi back in 1953) but that was all ended by the GPCR. There was never a specific policy to let the old bourgeoisie into the party, that said I agree with you on the whole "Hundred Flowers" thing and think there was too much liberalism in the CCP, but again that was the point of the GPCR. To combat stuff like that.

[Red_Struggle]

Managers initially received 25% of the profits yeah, by 1956 though generally they were just receiving bonds that paid a tiny bit of interest and their managerial role was basically just symbolic.

Source? Last time I checked, they were enjoying managerial positions in the people's communes. And if having the bourgeoisie play a managerial role is symbolic of anything, it is in showing the "class peace" that was promoted by Mao Zedong.


This got protracted and aggravated due to the rightists defeating the Maoists and bringing the Great Leap Forward policies to an end (and yes, Mao did indeed help bring that about by letting Liu and Deng purge their rivals like Gao Gang and Rao Shushi back in 1953) but that was all ended by the GPCR.

Gao Gang was one of the few in the CCP leadership that promoted a Marxist-Leninist line. While in Manchuria, we noted the success of the Soviet Union's industrialization plans and wanted a centrally planned economic adopted to China's material conditions. However, he was purged after criticizing Liu's revisionism and Zhou's uneasiness when it came to socializing China's economy.
It's also important to note that Deng was purged and then rehabilitated by Mao himself, despite his self-criticism and him admitting to being "a real monarchist."


There was never a specific policy to let the old bourgeoisie into the party

In semi-colonial countries, the national bourgeoisie is objectively in favor of a national-democratic revolution, while being objectively opposed to the socialist revolution. The national democratic revolution was completed with Chiang Kai-Shek's coup in 1927. However, Mao consistently put an emphasis on recruiting the sections of the bourgeoisie that "support the construction of socialism." Of course, you could argue that with the invasion of Manuchuria by the Japanese, the national bourgeoisie could be rewon, but this was exploited by Mao in his allowance of the bourgeoisie to remain in the party post-revolution.

The anit-Japanese sections of the landlored and comprador bourgeois classes were referred to as the "enlightened gentry," despite a section of them being pro-America or pro-British.


"China is a semi-colonial country for which many imperialist powers are
contending. When the struggle is directed against Japanese imperialism, then the running dogs of the United States or Britain, obeying the varying tones of their masters' commands, may engage in veiled or even open strife with the Japanese imperialists and their running dogs. . . . We must turn to good account all such fights, rifts and contradictions in the enemy camp and turn them against our present main enemy."
(Mao Tse-tung: 'On Tactics against Japanese Imperialism' (December 1935)


,that said I agree with you on the whole "Hundred Flowers" thing and think there was too much liberalism in the CCP, but again that was the point of the GPCR. To combat stuff like that.

But why was the Hundred Flowers campaign launched in the first place? Wasn't the whole point to get rid of bourgeois elements within the party? And why was the GPCR not headed by the party or the working class, and instead dominated by students and children? If China remained socialist after over 10 years of Maoist struggle, then you might have a case. But seeing as China capitulated quicker than any other socialist or state-capitalist country out there, the argument doesn't really hold.

[Gorilla]

In semi-colonial countries, the national bourgeoisie is objectively in favor of a national-democratic revolution, while being objectively opposed to the socialist revolution. The national democratic revolution was completed with Chiang Kai-Shek's coup in 1927.

The Guomindang regime on the mainland is a textbook example of how semi-colonial bourgeois cannot complete the task of national-democratic revolution. Chiang established a non-functioning gangster state that was unable to fend off the Japanese.

[caramelpence]

No, it's not. You don't have to keep apologizing or covering up for Mao's absolutizing the peasantry

I'm not even a Maoist, so how I could be "apologizing" for Mao, I have no idea. If you think that Mao thought, in rhetorical and ideological terms, that the peasantry would and should have the leading role in the Chinese Revolution in the sense of being the class that would determine the role of other allied classes, then you should point to texts where Mao says this - and keep in mind that what we're concerned with here is not the actual historical conduct of the Chinese Revolution, we're concerned with Mao's understanding of that revolution, which may or may not be the same thing. As for Mao's understanding there is a remarkable degree of continuity across texts that were written in different sets of circumstances. In his Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society (1926), Mao asserts that the proletariat is "is the most progressive class in modern China and has become the leading force in the revolutionary movement", then summing up at the end of the same document by acknowledging that the "leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat" and that "our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie". It's worth pointing out that in this instance Mao does not even refer to the peasantry explicitly, but subsumes it within the broader category of the petty bourgeoisie - hardly something he would have done if he had wanted to "absolutize" the role of the peasantry. Lest you think that this was a transient idea that Mao had only during the first stages of the Chinese Revolution and before he had risen to leadership of the party, then New Democracy (1940) makes clear how Mao continued to emphasize the role of the working class, as he notes that "the revolution cannot succeed without the modern industrial working class, because it is the leader of the Chinese revolution and is the most revolutionary class." Two texts, written at very points in Mao's political development as an individual leader, and in different stages in the development of the Chinese Revolution, but in both cases Mao certainly does not "absolutize" the peasantry.


In other words, you're saying we should study what Mao's idea of a "bloc of four classes" meant and how it actually played out? Alright then

No, actually, I'm very familiar with the politics of New Democracy, to a much greater extent than you, but clearly your aim here is not to respond to the points that have been raised, but to try and make your own unconnected points whilst pretending to be responding to other people. I don't buy for a moment what you have to say about Mao launching the Cultural Revolution in response to a bourgeoisie lurking within the party because I don't see China as socialist before 1966, but for the sake of historical accuracy, the former owners of industrial enterprises received interest on their former property after their property had been expropriated in the early 1950s, not profit, and it certainly was not the case that the party-state went out of its way to privilege ex-capitalist families or accept them into the party in large numbers - from the 1960s onwards the trend in educational enrollment, for example, was for family background to be a major factor in admissions to higher education, which meant that the sons and daughters of cadre families were compensated for their academic weakness relative to the sons of ex-capitalist and professional families, who, whilst disadvantaged and deprived of their property, still managed to ensure higher levels of academic attainment amongst their children, compared to other classes in Chinese society. It was cleavages and divisions of these kinds that shaped the evolution of factional conflict during the Cultural Revolution.


And the urban insurrection failed.

Which is utterly irrelevant, because the point was that China has had its share of urban insurrections, rather than them all being successful.


Considering the CPC recruited among the bourgeoisie themselves, as compared to the KMT, the initial contradictions among the two parties weren't all that severe

In this section of your post you've referred to a text that Mao produced in the early 1950s to make a point about the CPC's attitude towards private ownership when my original point was about the first united front, which lasted from 1923-27 - instead of making unrelated arguments, why don't you respond to my points, or at least make your own points independently instead of in response to points I've made? Again, the CPC did not recruit amongst the bourgeoisie during the first united front, as it was only after the May 30th Movement in 1925 that the party experienced a surge in membership, bringing its total membership up to around 50,000 by April 1927, and it was also during that period that the party's membership was comprised mainly of the working class. The united front was a product of Comintern policy and was supported enthusiastically by Stalin, and it certainly did involve "severe contradictions" - right from the beginning the policy involved the CPC having to enter into the KMT as a "bloc within" whereby CPC members joined the KMT on an individual basis and submitted themselves to the authority of its party organizations rather than the two parties having a formal alliance between themselves as distinct organizations, and that kind of policy was a result of Sun having put pressure on Comintern representatives, whereas the Comintern and the CPC had initially supported a more equal arrangement. There was scarcely a point during the first united front where tensions were not extremely evident between the two parties.


First off, I'm not talking about military conquest led by some guy who was friends with Liu Shaioqi. I'm asking for urban based guerilla warfare. They help set up trade unions? Great. But what does this mean in the period following revolution, concerning that Mao encouraged capitalist production relationtions to continue under "socialism".

As a matter of fact Li Lisan was also head of the ACFTU after the 1949 revolution but the trade unions I referred to were "red unions" that were set up after the collapse of the united front in China's cities, in opposition to the trade unions of the KMT and the criminal organizations - the setting-up of these bodies occurred alongside not only events such as the Nanchang Insurrection, which involved the Red Army trying to capture the cities from without, but also tactics that can justifiably be termed "urban based guerilla warfare", such as attempted assassinations of KMT officials, the brief distribution of propaganda leaflets at street corners before the party members could be apprehended, and so on.

If you deem to respond to my posts again, I ask that you respond with something relevant, not any old Hoxhaist dogma.

[caramelpence]

To take up the issue of Mao's tactics during the seizure of power in the cities and the first few years of power, it's worth pointing out that one of the factors that led to the KMT losing support in the cities amongst both workers and urban intellectuals was their failure to control inflation. This was partly because of military spending during the War of Resistance and a sudden increase in spending after the War of Resistance had come to an end and when the KMT had restored its authority in major cities, and it was also partly because, in order to remove the puppet-government currencies from circulation, the KMT initiated a four-month exchange period during which there was a cap (50,000 dollars, in fact) on how much of the puppet currencies people were able to exchange, which encouraged people to spend the surplus, further fueling inflation. In these conditions, it strikes me of very wise of Mao to discourage tactics like the sudden nationalization of industry that would have maintained the problem of inflation and prevented the CPC from gaining legitimacy amongst social groups (like urban residents) that it had often not really come into contact with before. It's easy to criticize these decisions from afar, but it would have been very dangerous and foolhardy for the CPC to announce an immediate nationalization program (whilst giving support to any and all wage demands on the part of workers) at the time when its position was so vulnerable.

Part of Mao's strategic genius, in my view, was precisely that he knew how the CPC could go about building a broad coalition of different political and social forces around itself in order to isolate the forces that it wanted to see overthrown, which in this case meant the leadership core of the KMT, and it was exactly this process of building a broad united front that underpinned Mao's tactics in the cities, as well as in the countryside.

[Marxach-Léinínach]

Source? Last time I checked, they were enjoying managerial positions in the people's communes. And if having the bourgeoisie play a managerial role is symbolic of anything, it is in showing the "class peace" that was promoted by Mao Zedong.

"The era of 'national capitalism' reached its peak in 1952-1953 and declined rapidly thereafter, as private industrial and commercial firms were nationalized outright, or more typically, reorganized as 'joint private-state enterprises.' In the latter case, the state assumed a controlling, and eventually complete, interest in the firms by government capital investments, with the former private owners usually staying on in managerial roles and receiving dividends of 5 percent of what the government calculated to be their remaining share of capital. In fact, if not in name, the firms became state-owned as well as state-managed. By 1956 the private sector of the urban economy had ceased to exist, and all industrial and commercial enterprises of any significant size had been effectively nationalized. What little remained of private enterprises was confined to self-employed handicraft workers, artisans, petty shopkeepers and peddlers. 'National capitalism' survived only as a vestige—in the form of a tiny bourgeoisie receiving quarterly dividends on what the government determined to be their 'capital investments' in the factories and commercial establishments they once owned, or receiving interest on nonredeemable government bonds they had received in compensation. Although they continued to enjoy a relatively high standard of living in the cities, the national bourgeoisie was a dying class since their bonds could not be passed onto their heirs. But if national capitalism had enjoyed only a brief life in the history of the People's Republic, it had fulfilled the economic role assigned to it; by 1952 urban industry and commerce were flourishing."
(Maurice Meisner, Mao's China and After, 1999)


Gao Gang was one of the few in the CCP leadership that promoted a Marxist-Leninist line. While in Manchuria, we noted the success of the Soviet Union's industrialization plans and wanted a centrally planned economic adopted to China's material conditions. However, he was purged after criticizing Liu's revisionism and Zhou's uneasiness when it came to socializing China's economy.
It was a series of conversations that Gao had with Mao about Liu and Zhou's uneasiness, plus Mao suffering from bad illnesses and looking to be possibly facing retirement or even death, that led Gao to start seeking the removal of Liu and Zhou from the party leadership. Mao ended up getting wind of it (specifically via Deng and Chen Yun interestingly though), gave Gao a "warning" that he was threatening party unity, then naively entrusted Liu Shaoqi with organising a party plenum on party unity. Liu then swiftly purged basically the entire proletarian grouping in the party, which really came back to bite Mao on the ass when he himself came into conflict with Liu during the GLF.

It's also important to note that Deng was purged and then rehabilitated by Mao himself, despite his self-criticism and him admitting to being "a real monarchist."

Mao did indeed go pretty funny in his old age.


In semi-colonial countries, the national bourgeoisie is objectively in favor of a national-democratic revolution, while being objectively opposed to the socialist revolution. The national democratic revolution was completed with Chiang Kai-Shek's coup in 1927. However, Mao consistently put an emphasis on recruiting the sections of the bourgeoisie that "support the construction of socialism." Of course, you could argue that with the invasion of Manuchuria by the Japanese, the national bourgeoisie could be rewon, but this was exploited by Mao in his allowance of the bourgeoisie to remain in the party post-revolution.
Yeah, Japanese imperialism meant that the national bourgeoisie could be rewon and the CCP took advantage of it. After WW2 and Japanese imperialism's replacement by US imperialism they continued with this policy, and it played a large role in their victory, with literally tens and hundreds of thousands of people from the left-wing of the Guomindang defecting to them at a time. Anyway, do you have a source for the bourgeoisie being let into the party post-revolution in substantial numbers?

The anit-Japanese sections of the landlored and comprador bourgeois classes were referred to as the "enlightened gentry," despite a section of them being pro-America or pro-British.


"China is a semi-colonial country for which many imperialist powers are
contending. When the struggle is directed against Japanese imperialism, then the running dogs of the United States or Britain, obeying the varying tones of their masters' commands, may engage in veiled or even open strife with the Japanese imperialists and their running dogs. . . . We must turn to good account all such fights, rifts and contradictions in the enemy camp and turn them against our present main enemy."
(Mao Tse-tung: 'On Tactics against Japanese Imperialism' (December 1935)

What's wrong with exploiting inter-imperialist conflicts?


But why was the Hundred Flowers campaign launched in the first place? Wasn't the whole point to get rid of bourgeois elements within the party?
The Hundred Flowers campaign was launched as basically a Chinese version of the "Khrushchov Thaw" with Mao having an overly naive view of what liberalizing society would entail. Unsurprisingly Chinese right-wingers and reactionaries immediately took the opportunity to start attacking the Communist Party and socialism so the "Anti-Rightist Campaign" was launched.

And why was the GPCR not headed by the party or the working class, and instead dominated by students and children?
"Enver Hoxha objects to the role of the youth in the Cultural Revolution. Why the youth? Why not the proletariat? he asks forgetting that the Albanian Party, itself, called upon the youth to build their railways and to terrace their mountainsides. The youth is not a class by itself. They come from different classes. But they have the common trait of being idealistic, self-sacrificing and willing to change society. Therefore, they can play a vanguard role which means taking the lead in marching in the forefront of the ranks.

But this does not mean that the working class youth were not in the forefront of the Cultural Revolution. Youth from the working class and the peasantry formed the bulk of the Red Guards even though there were small sections of workers who were opposed to the Revolution. Let us not forget that the driving force of the January Storm in Shanghai one of the outstanding pace-setting events of the Cultural Revolution - was the organisations of revolutionary workers in Shanghai, led by Chang Chun-chiao and his comrades."
(N. Sanmugathasan, Enver Hoxha Refuted)

If China remained socialist after over 10 years of Maoist struggle, then you might have a case. But seeing as China capitulated quicker than any other socialist or state-capitalist country out there, the argument doesn't really hold.
You're making the mistake of relying on the historical narrative where the GPCR lasted from 1966-1976. It didn't. It was over by 1969 more or less, and it failed because it was prematurely ended without having achieved all its aims.

[RED DAVE]

The concept of New Democracy is basically taking the democratic stage of the revolution, the one before the socialist stage, and stretching it out much further in semi-feudal countries. Unfortunately, this lead to fatal consequences for the CCP, since the bourgeois class that rose from this extended democratic stage was even larger, wealthier and more powerful than the kulak class that was aggravated by the NEP. Some claim the "objective conditions of China," and this holds some water, but ultimately socialism is socialism. Mao letting bourgeoisie into the CCP was one of the things that made him launch the GPCR and ultimately caused his line's downfall. Even before his death, Rightists were chiefly in power. Up until Mao’s death it was a policy to let the monied classes control the Peoples’ Communes as managers, and also during the entire period of the CCP it was a policy that factory owners and bourgeoisie could receive up to 1/4th the profits from their old factories.Right on!

RED DAVE

[red cat]

Right on!

RED DAVE

^^ This post alone should confirm that Hoxhaists are going wrong somewhere. :D

[RED DAVE]

^^ This post alone should confirm that Hoxhaists are going wrong somewhere. :DWhereas you Maoists were so right in China.

Why don't you answer his points instead of bullshitting?

RED DAVE

[RED DAVE]

The concept of New Democracy is basically taking the democratic stage of the revolution, the one before the socialist stage, and stretching it out much further in semi-feudal countries. Unfortunately, this lead to fatal consequences for the CCP, since the bourgeois class that rose from this extended democratic stage was even larger, wealthier and more powerful than the kulak class that was aggravated by the NEP. Some claim the "objective conditions of China," and this holds some water, but ultimately socialism is socialism. Mao letting bourgeoisie into the CCP was one of the things that made him launch the GPCR and ultimately caused his line's downfall. Even before his death, Rightists were chiefly in power. Up until Mao’s death it was a policy to let the monied classes control the Peoples’ Communes as managers, and also during the entire period of the CCP it was a policy that factory owners and bourgeoisie could receive up to 1/4th the profits from their old factories.
Right on!
^^ This post alone should confirm that Hoxhaists are going wrong somewhere. :DWhereas you Maoists were so right on in China.

Why don't you answer his points instead of bullshitting?

RED DAVE

[Red_Struggle]

"The era of 'national capitalism' reached its peak in 1952-1953

Which is funny, considering the article I posted written by Mao himself was published September 1953.


with the former private owners usually staying on in managerial roles and receiving dividends of 5 percent of what the government calculated to be their remaining share of capital.

So you're admitting that the bourgeoisie did infact remain in managerial positions and they did receive a seperate share of the profits inherited by the state.


'National capitalism' survived only as a vestige—in the form of a tiny bourgeoisie receiving quarterly dividends on what the government determined to be their 'capital investments' in the factories and commercial establishments they once owned, or receiving interest on nonredeemable government bonds they had received in compensation.

Compensation for the bourgeoisie...hmmm


It was a series of conversations that Gao had with Mao about Liu and Zhou's uneasiness, plus Mao suffering from bad illnesses and looking to be possibly facing retirement or even death, that led Gao to start seeking the removal of Liu and Zhou from the party leadership. Mao ended up getting wind of it (specifically via Deng and Chen Yun interestingly though), gave Gao a "warning" that he was threatening party unity, then naively entrusted Liu Shaoqi with organising a party plenum on party unity. Liu then swiftly purged basically the entire proletarian grouping in the party, which really came back to bite Mao on the ass when he himself came into conflict with Liu during the GLF.

I'd suggest you compare Gao Gang's ideas with Liu's.


"Enver Hoxha objects to the role of the youth in the Cultural Revolution. Why the youth? Why not the proletariat? he asks forgetting that the Albanian Party, itself, called upon the youth to build their railways and to terrace their mountainsides.

What's your point? Nobody is denying that the youth can partake in the building of socialism and asssist in labor, and this goes back all the way to Marx.

"...an early combination of productive labor with education is one of the most potent means for the transformation of present-day society." - Critique of the Gotha Program

The main underlying difference between China's Cultural revolution and The Cultural and Ideological revolution that took part in Albania was that the proletariat and the party were the ones taking the lead, instead of the revolution being a spontaneous outburst of youth armed with only Mao's little red book.

"A few found the extension of democratic centralism to the educational system, with students aking an active role in organizing school life, too much of a break with the old academic traditions they had hoped to see re-established. They were released to go into production work, perhaps, to return to teaching when they have learned from workers the socialist ideology of the working class." - Pickaxe and Rifle, pg. 227

“Courses in Marxism-Leninism were made a living part of the curriculum and not just a routine subject to be got through in a mechanical way. Texts and lectures on dialectical and historical materialism were related to Albania’s own revolutionary history and students and teachers learned to apply the principles of scientific socialism to their own problems and those of their society. And since practice is the essence of Marxism-Leninism, students and teachers began to participate more actively in the political and economic life of the country, leaving their books and laboratories to study the application of theory on the production and social front.” (pg. 227)

Changes were made in the educational system along with other social istitutions, but the excesses that were seen in China aat the time were avoided precisely by the fact that the way these reforms were carried out, ie. by an established line and thought out method on how to go about these reforms while utilizing democratic centralism.


The youth is not a class by itself. They come from different classes. But they have the common trait of being idealistic, self-sacrificing and willing to change society. Therefore, they can play a vanguard role which means taking the lead in marching in the forefront of the ranks.

Indeed the youth can be idealistic, self-sacrificing and willing to change society for the better. Well and Good. They the youth and students(including people like myself) are not the vanguard as they are mainly not the ones involved in large-scale, long-term production as they are not yet fully acquanited with the means of production.


But this does not mean that the working class youth were not in the forefront of the Cultural Revolution.

So they played a vanguard role and at the same time they were not at the forefront. It seems like author doesn't know what he's talking about. He's even admitting that the majoirity of red guards were made up of youth who practically ran the country in place of the working class or the vanguard party.


You're making the mistake of relying on the historical narrative where the GPCR lasted from 1966-1976. It didn't. It was over by 1969 more or less, and it failed because it was prematurely ended without having achieved all its aims.

Ok, then why exactly was it ended if you consider the GPCR to be legitimate? And why was the army needed to break up the violence and excesses caused by the red guards afterwords?

[caramelpence]

I take it from the fact that you haven't responded to me, "Red_Struggle", that you don't actually know what you're talking about - I guess your confidence in asserting that Mao "absolutized" the peasantry was just arrogant bluster without any real knowledge of Mao's texts to back it up, and that basically you can't hold your own in any discussion that's based on empirical evidence rather than simple sloganeering.


I'd suggest you compare Gao Gang's ideas with Liu's.

You make it seem as if Gao Gang was some kind of highly developed theorist with a full set of perspectives on the conduct of the Chinese Revolution. He really didn't meet that description at all. As far as substantive differences between Gao (and Rao Shushi) and leaders like Liu and Zhou were concerned, the only real difference in terms of China's internal politics was Gao's attack on the tax policies of Bo Yibo at the June/August 1953 finance and economics conference, where Gao called for an intensification of China's transition to a planned economy and compared Bo's more cautious approach to Bukharin in the Soviet Union - he did not directly attack the policy of compensating former members of the bourgeoisie or any of the other tactical concessions that the CPC had made during its seizure of power and so it would be absurd to say that he had a fundamentally different perspective on the path that China should have taken or that he was "revolutionary" in a way that other national leaders were not. In the sphere of foreign policy and inter-governmental relations, Gao did differ from other leaders insofar as he had much closer relations with the Soviet Union and with Soviet personnel operating in the Northeast of China, including Kosygin - yes, the same Kosygin that carried out economic reforms in the 1960s - to the extent that Gao characterized Liu and Zhou as anti-Soviet during private communications with Soviet officials and also arranged a trade agreement between the Northeast region (as distinct from the whole of CPC-controlled China) and the Soviet Union in cooperation with Stalin at the end of the War of Liberation. So if Gao had any distinguishing characteristic it was that he was pro-Soviet and that he acted to undermine China's sovereignty. If that's the kind of person you want to identify as a genuine revolutionary within the 1950s CPC leadership then be my guest. For me, it makes him pro-imperialist anti-Third World scum.


So they played a vanguard role and at the same time they were not at the forefront

I don't know if English isn't your first language, but "But this does not mean that the working class youth were not in the forefront of the Cultural Revolution" quite clearly indicates that the "working class youth" were in the forefront of the Cultural Revolution according to the writer. A double negative is a common construction in English, especially when used in this way.

Also, your characterization of the Cultural Revolution is absurd, go read a history book or something.

[Marxach-Léinínach]

So you're admitting that the bourgeoisie did infact remain in managerial positions and they did receive a seperate share of the profits inherited by the state.



Compensation for the bourgeoisie...hmmm

And that was swiftly ended when the GPCR began.


I'd suggest you compare Gao Gang's ideas with Liu's.

Liu basically represented the national bourgeoisie and Gao the proletariat, yeah?


So they played a vanguard role and at the same time they were not at the forefront. It seems like author doesn't know what he's talking about.
You've misread the guy. He's saying that while youth come from all classes, it was specifically the working class and peasant youth who were at the forefront.

He's even admitting that the majoirity of red guards were made up of youth who practically ran the country in place of the working class or the vanguard party.

That's basically the version of history promoted by the modern day Chinese revisionists.


Ok, then why exactly was it ended if you consider the GPCR to be legitimate? And why was the army needed to break up the violence and excesses caused by the red guards afterwords?

Basically, Mao underestimated the problems the party had and started seeking order and consolidation from 1967 onward, especially after the emergence of Soviet social-imperialism in 1968. You'd be best reading these articles here for a more in-depth analysis (yes I know it's from LLCO but 2 + 2 = 4 no matter who says it) - http://llco.org/archives/712 http://llco.org/archives/825