Are Trotskyism and Maoism Compatible?

[ZrianKobani]

I'm really attracted to Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution and Mao's emphasis on third world revolution and I think if synthesized, they'd make an amazing internationalist platform. Aside from Mao's loyalty to Stalin, are the two ideologies compatible and if so then how, if not then how?

[Jose Gracchus]

No. Have you heard of "RED DAVE" or "carmelpence"?

[06hurdwp]

I'm really attracted to Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution and Mao's emphasis on third world revolution and I think if synthesized, they'd make an amazing internationalist platform. Aside from Mao's loyalty to Stalin, are the two ideologies compatible and if so then how, if not then how?

Interesting theory, I would also like to know about this.

[ZrianKobani]

No. Have you heard of "RED DAVE" or "carmelpence"?

No, should I have?

[Hebrew Hammer]

Best thread on revleft.

Answer: No.

[ZrianKobani]

Best thread on revleft.

Answer: No.

Ok, why?

[Тачанка]

Unlike maoists, trotskyists are communists.
They support the emancipation of the working class by the working class, instead of forming "alliances" with the "national bourgeoise" and the "urban petit-bourgeoise"(Bloc of four classes)

They support the self-governance of the workers, instead of a top-down dictatorship "listening" to what the workers "think" and then doing whatever's on the party's mind (Mass Line)

On top of all this, maoist movements sell out to the bourgeoise on all corners. They are baby Stalins.

http://cedarlounge.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/nixon_mao.jpg

[ZrianKobani]

Unlike maoists, trotskyists are communists.
They support the emancipation of the working class by the working class, instead of forming "alliances" with the "national bourgeoise" and the "urban petit-bourgeoise"(Bloc of four classes)

They support the self-governance of the workers, instead of a top-down dictatorship "listening" to what the workers "think" and then doing whatever's on the party's mind (Mass Line)

On top of all this, maoist movements sell out to the bourgeoise on all corners. They are baby Stalins.

http://cedarlounge.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/nixon_mao.jpg

I'm not interested in Mao or Trotsky as people and whether or not Mao was corrupt is beside the point right now, I'm only interested in the theories and at what points they agree and disagree.

[Тачанка]

Someone already tried combining the two (if I'm allowed to make a really broad generalization)

What came out is "Maoist Third-Worldism".

Where the revolution starts in the third world and then the workers of the 3. world deport the 1. world workers and let them work in slave labour camps.


It failed. People of that ideology are restricted on here, and mostly live in their mommy's basement in a first world country...

[caramelpence]

In theoretical terms, no, Maoism and Trotskyism are not compatible. However, it's also quite interesting that at the height of the Cultural Revolution and when many activists in the West were looking towards China and taking on Maoism as a form of radical chic, there were some important Trotskyist organizations who took on some of the aesthetics of Maoist China or who used Maoist idioms to characterize some of their own tactics - most notably, the International Marxist Group, which was one of the most important Trotskyist organizations in Britain during that period and was home to militants like Tariq Ali, argued in favor of "red bases" in universities, as part of their concept of the "student vanguard", drawing on the mythology surrounding the Yenan Way in China during the War of Resistance, despite theoretically being opposed to Mao's China. Maybe there is a research project here - looking at how Trotskyist organizations in the West were drawn towards China without ever actually becoming Maoist organizations? I always find myself saying this in every thread on Maoism, but it is an important point - part of the problem of talking about Maoism in general and particularly comparing Maoism to other segments of the revolutionary left is that when we talk about the Trotskyist tradition or Trotskyism it is at least possible to identify a set of theories and premises that can be said to form the core of that tradition, regardless of the intensity of the disagreements between particular Trotskyist organizations, whereas, with Maoism, Mao's own texts and arguments never approached the level of coherence or complexity as Trotsky's, and the PRC never developed a body like the Comintern to coordinate the formation and development of Maoist parties, and so it is less easy to talk about a stable ideology or political tradition called Maoism. There are, therefore, some organizations that called themselves Maoist and advanced interesting analyses that Trotskyists might be able to accept, such as the radically egalitarian Maoism that emerged in France, which embodied analyses of sexuality and gender, but as far as the actual practice of the PRC and CPC are concerned, it seems unlikely that Trotskyists would be able to identify with those.

If you want to get an idea of just how radical the break between Trotskyism and Maoism is, you might be interested in reading the writings of some of the Chinese Trotskyists who were driven out of the PRC as soon as the CPC came to power and often took up refuge in Hong Kong (which is where Chinese Trotskyism is located to this day) and participated in the debates within the international Trotskyist movement, especially Chen Bilan (http://www.marxists.org/archive/chen/index.htm) and Peng Shuzi (http://www.marxists.org/archive/peng/index.htm). You might also consider the book The Mandate of Heaven by Nigel Harris, available online here (http://www.marxists.de/china/harris/index.htm), which is a lengthy Trotskyist analysis of Maoism and Maoist China, whose author was a member of the International Socialist tradition (i.e. the modern-day SWP) in Britain when he wrote the book.

[bezdomni]

Unlike maoists, trotskyists are communists.

Unlike Tachanka, I'm not a dogmatic Trotskyite troll and can actually answer your question. ;)

Sam Marcy (http://www.workers.org/marcy/cd/) was an American communist who was sympathetic both to Trotsky's critique of the USSR and the Cultural Revolution in China.

There is a joke that Marcyites are "Trotskyists for Mao" (like Jews for Jesus).

[Geiseric]

Bloc of 4 classes and most of mao's other revolutionary strategies are pretty different than trot strategy. im no expert but the people were also very different, mao lived as a rich beurecrat and trotsky turned that life away and went around the world trying to build the 4th international.

[Savage]

I remember someone on revleft talking about a Danish 'Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist-Maoist' group that used to exist, comprised of 14 year olds who attempted to gain weapons off North Korea to take down the Danish govt or some shit like that.

[bezdomni]

Ugh this thread sucks.

The question is totally legitimate...do you all really think there is zero overlap between Trotskyism and Maoism?

Can the two tendencies find nothing to agree on? Seriously?! This is what the majority of people posting in this thread think?

[Savage]

Ugh this thread sucks.

The question is totally legitimate...do you all really think there is zero overlap between Trotskyism and Maoism?

Can the two tendencies find nothing to agree on? Seriously?! This is what the majority of people posting in this thread think?

Well Trotskyists and Maoists probably both agree that the sun is hot and that capitalism is not good but that doesn't mean that anyone should go on some 'anti-sectarian' crusade to unite the long lost cousins descendant from the thought of Mao and Trotsky, because as caramelpence elaborated, there's no point to this.


This is what the majority of people posting in this thread think?This is what the majority of people that know anything about Trotsky or Mao think.

[Rowan Duffy]

They support the self-governance of the workers, instead of a top-down dictatorship "listening" to what the workers "think" and then doing whatever's on the party's mind (Mass Line)

That's not what the mass-line is. The mass-line is "from the people - to the people". That is, communists are supposed to get a handle on where the public is at, try to synthesise that and pull out the aspects that can be used to promote communism, and then utilise that to mobilise public support. That makes it both popular but not populist.

The idea is sometimes used to support either straight up populism, or to justify rigid adherence to some organisational political line, but that wasn't the intent behind it as you can see from Mao's writings.

I'm not a Maoist by any stretch of the imagination, but in looking over Maoism, the mass-line strikes me as one of the most useful concepts, and one not well duplicated by the rest of the revolutionary left.

http://kasamaproject.org/2010/03/25/mao-zedong-on-the-mass-line/
http://kasamaproject.org/2010/03/25/two-different-mass-lines-two-different-roads/
http://kasamaproject.org/2010/05/27/putting-the-mass-line-into-practice/

[bezdomni]

Well Trotskyists and Maoists probably both agree that the sun is hot and that capitalism is not good but that doesn't mean that anyone should go on some 'anti-sectarian' crusade to unite the long lost cousins descendant from the thought of Mao and Trotsky, because as caramelpence elaborated, there's no point to this.

Is that what I suggested?

I am a Maoist and I think that Trotsky's critique of the USSR suggests a misunderstanding of historical materialism and that Trotsky never actually stopped being a Menshevik.

That said, he did write some insightful things about the Soviet Union and should be studied by anyone who wants to understand the Bolshevik Revolution as fully as possible. Trotsky's writing is valuable, even if a lot of it is mistaken. It's important, if nothing else, to understand how he made those mistakes to avoid them.


This is what the majority of people that know anything about Trotsky or Mao think.

Your dogmatism is showing.

[RedSunRising]

No they are not.

Maoism focuses on the military conquest of state power, Trotskyism focuses on the other hand towards "mass Labour parties" (i.e. "social democracy", though that is getting more difficult every year as the nature of these parties shed all disguise so in some places they have being trying to recreate them or create them when they dont exist, just look at the ULA in Ireland or their campaign's for a Labour party in the USA) as well as Trade Unions (yellow Trade Unions now function at least in the western world as tools of Capital).

[Thirsty Crow]

Ugh this thread sucks.

The question is totally legitimate...do you all really think there is zero overlap between Trotskyism and Maoism?

Can the two tendencies find nothing to agree on? Seriously?! This is what the majority of people posting in this thread think?
I don't think that it's important to tear apart the two theories in search of a connecting point.
The "bloc of four classes", if we regard it as one of the essential programmatic points of Maoism, is class collaboration, pure and simple, and any communist group, be it Trotskyist or not, should know better.

[Savage]

That said, he did write some insightful things about the Soviet Union and should be studied by anyone who wants to understand the Bolshevik Revolution as fully as possible. Trotsky's writing is valuable, even if a lot of it is mistaken. It's important, if nothing else, to understand how he made those mistakes to avoid them.

But this isn't embracing Trotskyism. This thread is about whether the specific positions of Trotsky that define 'Trotskyism' can be combined with those that define 'Maoism', and since the 'unique' positions of the predominating Trotskyist and Maoist tendencies are considered by each party to be mutually anti-thetical, the answer to the question asked is an unquestionable NO. This thread is not about whether reading Trotsky's works are valuable, most organizations promote reading theory from outside of their own school of thought, ML organisations like the PSL apparently tell most new recruits to read certain Trotskyist texts, but ask any PSL member what they think of Trotskyist-Maoism.




Your dogmatism is showing.

I don't give a shit.

[caramelpence]

Trotskyism focuses on the other hand towards "mass Labour parties"

No, this is not a core part of the Trotskyist tradition. Trotsky supported temporary entry into the French Section of the Workers' International in the 1930s but this was only a tactical move, and was designed to allow French Trotskyists to engage with broader forces. It was not based on the assumption that it would be possible to transform the Section into a revolutionary party, and only rarely have subsequent Trotskyist organizations turned this particular tactic into a starting-point for all strategy - in fact, the IMT is the only Trotskyist international that does this, and its insistence on working through and within social democracy is a major point of critique for other Trotskyists like the IST and the ICL-FI. It's worth pointing out that when it comes to China and the Third World more generally it is normally Stalinists who have been most aggressive in calling for cooperation with vacillating forces like petty-bourgeois nationalist parties, such that Trotsky and the individuals in China who would later become Trotskyists were the ones who were most opposed to the first united front with the KMT in the 1920s, whereas Stalin and the main part of the Comintern forced the CPC to follow through on this policy.

[Zanthorus]

Can the two tendencies find nothing to agree on? Seriously?! This is what the majority of people posting in this thread think?

Well, why don't we push the question to an even further extreme. Let's ask ourselves what theoretical commonalities their might be between the Italian Communist Left in any phase of it's existence, but particularly in the stage of it's development when the Left constituted itself as an organised fraction outside the PCd'I and published Bilan, as well as the post-war phase in which the fraction formed the Internationalist Communist Party, and Maoism. Can't think of one? Can the two tendencies find nothing to agree on? Seriously?! Well that would be because it's a ridiculous endeavour. There's no 'dogmatism' here unless by 'dogmatism' you mean facing reality as opposed to living in some fantasy land where the differences between tendencies are superficial and really we can all focus on our points of commonality and get along and hold hands across the rivers of blood which quite literally seperate a number of communist groups.

[Old Mole]

If the two leninist tendencies could coexist they wouldnt exist. They are defined when they are put in opposition with each other. A major point of being a trot for example is to be opposed to stalinism.

[DiaMat86]

First, separate the individual from the politics.

Discard the revisionist ideas that led to the restoration of capitalism.

The dichotomy on the left according to trots is "Trotskyism vs. Stalinism". This is invalid because not all ML parties who criticize Trotsky are Maoists or Stalinists.

This political line is part of the "cult of the individual" that trots perpetuate.

The real dichotomy is "Socialists vs. Communists" or "Revisionist vs. Anti-revisionist". The old movement contained elements of both. Since it was insufficiently anti-revisionist capitalism has been restored.

Read up on Progressive Labor Party. PLP broke with the CPUSA, the SU and China in the 1960's for their revisionist politics that opened the door for counter-revolution.
We need to criticize everything and eliminate revisionist ideas from our current theory.
Look around today, PLP projected this reversal of socialism over 40 years ago.

[agnixie]

No they are not.

Maoism focuses on the military conquest of state power, Trotskyism focuses on the other hand towards "mass Labour parties" (i.e. "social democracy", though that is getting more difficult every year as the nature of these parties shed all disguise so in some places they have being trying to recreate them or create them when they dont exist, just look at the ULA in Ireland or their campaign's for a Labour party in the USA) as well as Trade Unions (yellow Trade Unions now function at least in the western world as tools of Capital).

You have a knack to make maoism sound less attractive than it already is. It seems terribly militarist, hierarchical, and not particularly communist (at best left-nationalist) put that way.

[Marxach-Léinínach]

You have a knack to make maoism sound less attractive than it already is. It seems terribly militarist, hierarchical, and not particularly communist (at best left-nationalist) put that way.

Yeah let's make the revolution by all sitting in a circle, holding hands and singing kumbaya :rolleyes:

[hatzel]

Yeah let's make the revolution by all sitting in a circle, holding hands and singing kumbaya :rolleyes:

...though I feel many would actually consider this a more legitimate revolutionary tendency than Maoism :lol:

/trollin'

I know the OP isn't in this conversation any more for being a big ol' Confederacy-lover, but if he happens to come back and reads this, I'd suggest he stop thinking about synthesising Maoism and Trotskyism, and instead just thinks about what features of this or that tendency he considers viable. That isn't synthesising disparate ideas, though, it's about actually having independent opinions, rather than relying in some dogmatic tendency to tell you what you're supposed to think about absolutely everything...

[S.Artesian]

There is a joke that Marcyites are "Trotskyists for Mao" (like Jews for Jesus).


Yeah and with exactly the same amount of Marxism in their views.

[S.Artesian]

This political line is part of the "cult of the individual" that trots perpetuate.




This is a hoot, a regular knee-slapper; former and current Stalin and Mao worshipers talking about Trotskyists' cult of personality.

In fact the "theories" are not compatible, because 1) Trotsky's analysis is based on the fact that the uneven and combined development of capitalism in both its local, and international, manifestation makes the proletariat necessarily the leading class of social revolution, even in, especially in conditions of weakly developed capitalism. In turn, the proletariat in those less capitalistically developed areas will only be able to maintain power to the degree that their revolution is reciprocated by proletarian revolution in the advanced countries.

Maois shares none of that fundamental, and I would add, Marxist material analysis of capitalism in its international development.

I'm not a Trotskyist, but you have to recognize and appreciate the tremendous advance Trotsky made, not in creating a theory of uneven and combined development, but in seeing uneven and combined development in the specific conditions in Russia.

[agnixie]

Yeah let's make the revolution by all sitting in a circle, holding hands and singing kumbaya :rolleyes:

Yes, let's forget that Trotsky was the one who commanded the red army to victory and that the bulk of the left's fighters in Spain were not the woefully inefficient Stalinoids despite actually getting foreign funding and traditional military hierarchies.

[Red_Struggle]

I've actually seen some Trots defending Mao to an extent and vice versa. Caramelpence, for example.

[caramelpence]

I've actually seen some Trots defending Mao to an extent and vice versa. Caramelpence, for example.

...where have I defended Mao?

[Reznov]

Ugh this thread sucks.

The question is totally legitimate...do you all really think there is zero overlap between Trotskyism and Maoism?

Can the two tendencies find nothing to agree on? Seriously?! This is what the majority of people posting in this thread think?

Most are concerned in getting a few catchy one liners.

Dammit, the irony is unbearable.

[Red_Struggle]

...where have I defended Mao?

You've defended Mao and the CCP when it comes to Comintern policies (which were flawed, no argument there) concerning the Chinese revolution.

And the negrep was unnecessary. :thumbdown:

[caramelpence]

You've defended Mao and the CCP when it comes to Comintern policies (which were flawed, no argument there) concerning the Chinese revolution.

And the negrep was unnecessary. :thumbdown:

Evidence? If by "when it comes to Comintern policies" you mean that I've criticized the Comintern imposing an opportunist line on the infant CPC, then that hardly amounts to defending Mao and the CPC, given that the Comintern's role in China is a major object of critique for the whole of the Trotskyist tradition and was the experience that led Trotsky to generalize his theory of permanent revolution. Moreover, it's also stupid to characterize me as a defender of Mao on that issue because Mao and Zhou Enlai went out of their way to slander Chen Duxiu, who became a Trotskyist after being purged from the CPC leadership, by making it seem as if he had supported the line and was therefore guilty of "right opportunism", rather than recognizing Stalin's responsibility and abandonment of world revolution.

If you don't want neg rep, then don't make stupid slanders about me or other users.

[Agent Ducky]

All I know is that Mao reportedly kicked Trotskyists and people who showed Trotskyist-like tendencies out of the Party.

[RED DAVE]

Well Trotskyists and Maoists probably both agree that the sun is hot and that capitalism is not good[.]Uhh, not even all of that. The Nepalese Maoists are currently engaged in a crusade to bring capitalism to Nepal. Maoists here have, by and large, defended this.

RED DAVE

[Savage]

Uhh, not even all of that. The Nepalese Maoists are currently engaged in a crusade to bring capitalism to Nepal. Maoists here have, by and large, defended this.

RED DAVE

Well I probably should have said that they share a theoretical rejection of the word 'capitalism' since the maoists seem to ahere to the neo-liberal rather than marxian understanding of capitalism, which tends to reflect on the type of society that they advocate.

[Red_Struggle]

Just look at a few of your posts in the "Stalin abandoned world revolution" thread, among others.


If by "when it comes to Comintern policies" you mean that I've criticized the Comintern imposing an opportunist line on the infant CPC, then that hardly amounts to defending Mao and the CPC, given that the Comintern's role in China is a major object of critique for the whole of the Trotskyist tradition

Yeah, I know the Trotskyist line on the Comintern, but it is not the fault of a so called "Stalinist bureaucracy" why the CCP faced blunders during the revolution, especially during the 30s, where Stalin was actually in oppposition to the Comintern's line that social democrats are equal to social fascists. He rather argued that the two are "twins" and that social democracy was the moderate wing of fascism, instead of simply saying that social democrats = nazis.

"Fscism is the bourgeoisie's fighting organisation that relies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism. There is no ground for assuming that the fighting organisation of the bourgeoisie can achieve decisive successes in battles, or in governing the country, without the active support of Social-Democracy. . . . These organisations do not negate, but supplement each other. They are not antipodes, they are twins. Fascism . . . is intended for combating the proletarian revolution." Josef V. Stalin, Concerning the International Situation (20-9-24), in Works, vol.6, Moscow, 1947, pp. 294-5

Still in regards to China, the proletariat quickly rose to a position from which it could challenge the bourgeoisie, particularly in May 1925, in the Hongkong-Canton strike of 1925-26, in the Shangai uprising of 1927. But these events were also accompanied by missed opportunities on the part of the Chinese Communist Party, which failed to successfully infiltrate the army during its alliance period with the Kuomintang. The revolution was still supported, although Stalin characterized the CCP as "not a thorough Communist Party" in one of his letters to Molotov.

At the sixth Congress of the Comintern, the question of national liberation in colonial and feudal/semi-feudal countries were discussed. In regards to China, it was necessary to: consolidate the revolutionary Marxist-Leninist forces within the communist ranks; secure the working class' alliance with the peasantry; bring the Communist Party into the national revolutionary movement, which was represented by the Kuomintang, thus striving to attain the hegemonic role of the proletariat in the revolution.

Stalin viewed the continuation of the CCP-Guomindang alliance as an objective necessity precisely because he feared the Guomindang right-wing would triumph over the left-wing and leave the CCP exposed. Stalin's analysis was not the best, but letters and such opened up after 1991 show that he didn't regard Chiang's coup lightly. The equivalent under Lenin would be when Lenin sent Ottoman leader Ismail Enver to suppress an anti-Bolshevik uprising in Central Asia (many leftists from the Ottoman Empire hated him and refused to be at the same place as he when he visited Moscow) and instead Ismail Enver proceeded to assist the uprising. Bottom line, world revolution is not clear cut. It will face victories and defeats in the long run.


If you don't want neg rep, then don't make stupid slanders about me or other users.

Bringing up someone's past posts is not slander. And I didn't call out any users.

[28350]

marxism isn't based on principles it's based on the study of history

[caramelpence]

Just look at a few of your posts in the "Stalin abandoned world revolution" thread, among others.

Uh, I'm not going to go looking through my posts to try and find something I don't believe and have never argued, that would be inane. If you can't point to posts where I've defended Mao, you shouldn't have made the accusation.


Yeah, I know the Trotskyist line on the Comintern, but it is not the fault of a so called "Stalinist bureaucracy" why the CCP faced blunders during the revolution

This is a confusing and ignorant post. I don't know why you begin by talking about Stalin's views on fascism and social democracy when those views are of little relevance to China. The Third Period did manifest itself in some ways in Chinese politics during the late 1920s and early 1930s in that Li Lisan called for the formation of red unions rather than seeking to work through the traditional organizations of the working class or through the yellow unions that were formed by the KMT, and when Wang Ming and his associates arrived in the Jiangxi Soviet they also supported radical policies of equalization in the countryside that had a detrimental impact on the alliance between the middle and poor peasants, but in general, it's fair to say that the Comintern became less relevant in Chinese politics and in the policy-making of the CPC during this period, mainly because the CPC found it extremely difficult to remain in contact with the Soviets especially during the Long March, and so the CPC had more opportunities for autonomy, whereas this was not true of Communist Parties in Europe and elsewhere. As for Comintern strategy during the 1920s, which is what the Trotskyist critique is primarily concerned with, at no point do you explain why it was necessary for the CPC to subordinate itself to the KMT and why it was forced to continue the first united front even when its leaders were calling for a break, especially after the March 1926 coup. The very fact that the CPC was in such a subordinate position relative to the KMT was what prevented the party from pursuing a revolutionary policy in the countryside and taking advantage of its popular support amongst the peasantry in that the KMT limited its policies to rent and interest rate reduction and the CPC's rural activists were forced to agree that they would not encourage struggle against landlords who were officers or the relatives of officers in the National Revolutionary Army. It is not surprising that this severely limited the scope of the CPC's activism given that by the 1920s there had emerged a convergence of different forms of property in the hands of a single landlord-bourgeois class, rather than there being a meaningful distinction between landlords and bourgeoisie or between different sections of the bourgeoisie - this being something that Trotsky argued, against Stalin and Bukharin's nonsense about China being a semi-feudal society and the KMT being a bloc of four classes, which no-one with any knowledge of social relations in China under the late Qing or the Republic can take seriously.

The fact that, in defense of Stalin, you can only cite a single letter that he sent to Molotov says a great deal about both you and Stalin. People should be judged on their public arguments and decisions. Stalin was absolutely instrumental to the initiation and continuation of the first united front. He was the one who supported the KMT being accepted as an associate party in the Comintern and he was also one of the members of the ECCI who supported Chiang himself being accepted to that body. He and Bukharin were the leaders who, after the initial suppression of the CPC in April of 1927, called for the party to join with the allegedly left-KMT government in Wuhan under Wang Jingwei, until that government also carried out a campaign of violent suppression against the CPC and the peasant movement that it had been seeking to develop - which makes a mockery of your and Stalin's claim that the first united front was necessary to strengthen the left wing of the KMT, as if there were meaningful differences of class interests between the factions. At no point during the first united front did Stalin explicitly and clearly warn that the CPC needed to prepare itself for a coming clash with the KMT. He is largely to blame for the multiple and repeated debacles of the late 1920s.


The equivalent under Lenin would be when Lenin sent Ottoman leader Ismail Enver to suppress an anti-Bolshevik uprising in Central Asia

This is not equivalent at all, and in any case there are many instances of Lenin making poor decisions in relation to other class forces and political actors.

[Kadir Ateş]

I find that both of the texts referred to amount to nothing more than strategy and tactics for a revolution that has successfully given birth to hundreds of state capitalist regimes in the global South. Usually at the expense of the workers themselves.

[DiaMat86]

This is a hoot, a regular knee-slapper; former and current Stalin and Mao worshipers talking about Trotskyists' cult of personality.

In fact the "theories" are not compatible, because 1) Trotsky's analysis is based on the fact that the uneven and combined development of capitalism in both its local, and international, manifestation makes the proletariat necessarily the leading class of social revolution, even in, especially in conditions of weakly developed capitalism. In turn, the proletariat in those less capitalistically developed areas will only be able to maintain power to the degree that their revolution is reciprocated by proletarian revolution in the advanced countries.

Maois shares none of that fundamental, and I would add, Marxist material analysis of capitalism in its international development.

I'm not a Trotskyist, but you have to recognize and appreciate the tremendous advance Trotsky made, not in creating a theory of uneven and combined development, but in seeing uneven and combined development in the specific conditions in Russia.

What did Trotsky achieve in practice? He led a bloc that attempted to thwart the development of the soviet soviet using terrorism and sabotage. What a contribution!

Luckily these fools were caught, tried and executed before the Nazis over-ran the country.

Trotsky fled the SU and spilled his guts to every enemy the soviet union had.
Thanks Trotsky!

[S.Artesian]

What did Trotsky achieve in practice? He led a bloc that attempted to thwart the development of the soviet soviet using terrorism and sabotage. What a contribution!

Hmmh........how about this "Organizer of Victory" or so proclaimed the Bolshevik Party and leadership, and their various news organs. Sounds much better to me than "Gravedigger of the Revolution" the label so appropriately tied to Stalin and the policies of the Comintern.


Luckily these fools were caught, tried and executed before the Nazis over-ran the country.

Luckily, and expelling, exiling, killing all those officers, like Tukhachevsky. Yeah, hell, if that hadn't been done, why the Nazis might have made all the way to Moscow, encircled Leningrad, killed millions and millions of soviet workers.

Luckily, otherwise there might have been some agreement between the USSR and Germany which essentially made Russia a supplier of material to the German army and German industry.

Luckily, otherwise Soviet and Nazi military and intelligence units might have collaborated in Poland.

Luckily.


Trotsky fled the SU and spilled his guts to every enemy the soviet union had.

No, he didn't flee. He was exiled and then expelled. And he didn't spill his guts to class enemies; he criticized the disastrous policies of the ruling clique in Moscow and the 3rd International, the cliques that couldn't resist turning over militants to class enemies, or skipping the middle man, simply executing the militants themselves.

You're just another foamer with hoof in mouth disease.

[Red_Struggle]

Uh, I'm not going to go looking through my posts to try and find something I don't believe and have never argued, that would be inane. If you can't point to posts where I've defended Mao, you shouldn't have made the accusation.

I did say Mao or the CCP. Nearly every one of your posts relating to Stalin or whatever involves you defending the CCP.



I don't know why you begin by talking about Stalin's views on fascism and social democracy when those views are of little relevance to China.

I wanted to post some info on the Comintern and Stalin's disagreement with some of their policies, but to no avail. It's still the fault of one person.


As for Comintern strategy during the 1920s, which is what the Trotskyist critique is primarily concerned with, at no point do you explain why it was necessary for the CPC to subordinate itself to the KMT and why it was forced to continue the first united front even when its leaders were calling for a break, especially after the March 1926 coup.



The very fact that the CPC was in such a subordinate position relative to the KMT was what prevented the party from pursuing a revolutionary policy in the countryside and taking advantage of its popular support amongst the peasantry in that the KMT limited its policies to rent and interest rate reduction and the CPC's rural activists were forced to agree that they would not encourage struggle against landlords who were officers or the relatives of officers in the National Revolutionary Army.

The first stage was the all-national united front, striking at imperialism and the national bourgeoise supported this revolution, as the first stage of the Chinese revolution. The second goal was the bourgeois democratic revolution, which the bourgeoisie would abandon if the CCP was in a comfortable spot to exercise power in conjunction with the KMT, which would infact abandon the CCP. Stalin (although he was losing control of the comintern at this time) argued that the CCP ought to move into agrarian reform. However, this advice was not taken, leaving the CCP exposed. Despite all the Trotskyist rambling, the abandonment of the right-wing of the KMT was anticipated back in 1926:

"It is necessary to adopt the course of arming the workers and peasants and converting the peasant committees in the localities into actual organs of governmental authority equipped with armed self-defence, etc.. The CP must not come forward as a brake on the mass movement; the CP should not cover up the treacherous and reactionary policy of the Kuomintang Rights, and should mobilise the masses around the Kuomintang and the CCP on the basis of exposing the Rights... The Chinese revolution is passing through a critical period, and.. it can achieve further victories only by resolutely adopting the course of developing the mass movement. Otherwise a tremendous danger threatens the revolution. The fulfilment of directives is therefore more necessary than ever before." ECCI Directive to the CCP; February 1926

And despite your claims, Stalin urged the CCP to abandon this bloc with the KMT:

"The victory of the revolution cannot be achieved unless this bloc is smashed, but in order to smash this bloc, fire must be concentrated on the compromising national bourgeoisie, its treachery exposed, the toiling masses freed from its influence, and the conditions necessary of the hegemony of the proletariat systematically prepared. In other words, in colonies like India it is a matter of preparing the proletariat for the role of leader of the liberation movement, step by step dislodging the bourgeoisie and its mouthpieces from this honourable post. The task is to create an anti-imperialist bloc and to ensure the hegemony of the proletariat in this bloc. This bloc can assume although it need not always necessarily do so, the form of a single Workers and Peasants Party, formally bound by a single platform. In such centuries the independence of the Communist Party must be, the chief slogan of the advanced communist elements, of the hegemony of the proletariat can be prepared and brought about by the Communist party. But the communist party can and must enter into an open bloc with the revolutionary part of the bourgeoisie in order, after isolating the compromising national bourgeoisie, to lead the vast masses of the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie in the struggle against imperialism." J.V.Stalin "Stalin's Letters to Molotov

There was a definate left-wing of the KMT and the object was to unite and attempt to possibly convert some of their members all the while combating and criticizing the right-wing faction.

To help implement the ECCI 7th Plenum Theses by the CCP, in January 1927, M.N.Roy was sent as a special ECCI representative. But the CCP did not heed the warning signs and advice, to escape the struggle from the CI and Stalin. The Chinese national bourgeois led by Chiang Kai-Shek; launched its coup on April 12th, 192, viciously butchering the Shanghai workers, and the militants of the CCP.

Roy managed to pressure the CCP to hold the 5TH CCP Congress in Wuhan on April 27th to May 9th 1927. Chen argued to delay the agrarian revolution. But Roy’s pressure forced the CCP, to verbally accept the ECCI line; however this was short lived. The CCP leadership refused to follow even their own 5th Congress directives. On May 21st, 1927 Colonel Hsu Ke-hsiang seized control of Changsha, and launched a White terror. 20,000 workers and peasants were killed. The CCP sabotaged the peasant army in its attempt to fight back, and forced a retreat. They were then of course easy fodder, and were slaughtered. Still, the CCP and Borodin refused to go to the masses.

"The basic point in all Chen Tu-hsiu's speeches has been the demand that the general leadership in the movement be handed over to the KMT". Tsia Ho-sen: "Istoriia opportunizma v Kommunisticheskoi Partii Kitaia" (An account of Opportunism In the Chinese Communist Party) In :"Problemy Kitaia" (Chinese Problems); No. 1, 1929; p.35

So yes, it is historical simplicity to resort to blaming one man for every failure and setback during the Chinese revolution.

[S.Artesian]

The first stage was the all-national united front, striking at imperialism and the national bourgeoise supported this revolution, as the first stage of the Chinese revolution. The second goal was the bourgeois democratic revolution, which the bourgeoisie would abandon if the CCP was in a comfortable spot to exercise power in conjunction with the KMT, which would infact abandon the CCP


Quite literally, stageist bullshit, never recognizing how the "first stage" can only survive by destroying the "second stage" and that the "anti-imperialist front" is nothing but the original version of the popular front, where the class interests of the workers is subordinated.



But the communist party can and must enter into an open bloc with the revolutionary part of the bourgeoisie in order, after isolating the compromising national bourgeoisie, to lead the vast masses of the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie in the struggle against imperialism." J.V.Stalin "Stalin's Letters to Molotov

There was a definate left-wing of the KMT and the object was to unite and attempt to possibly convert some of their members all the while combating and criticizing the right-wing faction.

Sure there was, sure... and Chiang was its leader which is why the 3rd International awarded the KMT full member status. And exactly how did that work out?

No, the proletariat cannot enter into an "open bloc with the revolutionary [sic] bourgeoisie" because there is no such thing as a revolutionary bourgeoisie; hadn't been one for 60 years when this little piece of ideological obfuscation was being promoted.

That's the point.

[Red_Struggle]

Quite literally, stageist bullshit, never recognizing how the "first stage" can only survive by destroying the "second stage" and that the "anti-imperialist front" is nothing but the original version of the popular front, where the class interests of the workers is subordinated.

Quite literally Trotskyite bullshit. History and social systems move in stages. That's how it goes. Anti-imperialist fronts can actually be quite effective in terms of achieving short term goals, but that does not mean that the Communists and the nationalists would enjoy a long term mutual relationship. Use the naitonalists for what their worth and get rid of them when their service had ended.



No, the proletariat cannot enter into an "open bloc with the revolutionary [sic] bourgeoisie" because there is no such thing as a revolutionary bourgeoisie

Like I said above, use the bourgeoisie for what they're worth and then get rid of them. Of course, you have the comprador bourgeoisie (who would rather ally with imperialism in order to advance their class position) and the anti-imperialist bourgeoisie ala India who would rather control the means of production on their own, without the intervention of a foreign military power. When it comes to fighting either feudalism or imperialism, some sections of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie can be temporarily revolution, but not thoroughly revolutionary when it comes to establishing actual socialism.

[caramelpence]

Quite literally Trotskyite bullshit. History and social systems move in stages. That's how it goes

According to what, some metaphysical law? Because God has decreed it to be so? The idea that revolution can and should proceed neatly by stages is totally alien to the classical Marxist tradition. Marx himself, writing back in the mid-nineteenth century when it was still possible to have confidence in the power of the bourgeoisie and capitalism to overturn existing social and political institutions, was conscious that the bourgeoisie carrying out a bourgeois-democratic revolution might not be applicable to countries other than France, in that he pointed to the possibility of the working class having to take the leading role in a democratic revolution in Germany, and he also suggested towards the end of his life and in relation to Russia, through his correspondence with Vera Zasulich, that socialist revolution might grow out of the agrarian communes, that is, the traditional basis of Russian agriculture and rural life, rather than those communes having to be destroyed and their inhabitants dispersed through capitalist development. So even Marx was hesitant to accept a rigid conception of stages, even though his broader intellectual environment was quite supportive of that kind of thinking.

You simply have not offered any account of why it was so necessary for the revolution to take place in China by means of stages and how the bourgeoisie or any section thereof could ever have played a progressive role. What you ignore in particular is that when the working class in China moved into action during periods of nationalist agitation and in spite of the constraints that were set down under the first united front, its organizations and methods of struggle transgressed the boundaries of the bourgeois-democratic revolution and entered onto the terrain of socialism. Specifically, when the working class moved to impose a blockade on Canton and Hong Kong in 1925-6 as part of the May 30th Movement, which you actually referred to in one of your previous posts, it did not look to the government in Beijing or the KMT, but created embryonic Soviets in order to police the boycott, which included a militia force and democratic modes of election and decision-making amongst the workers who were involved, such as delegates being subject to recall, and the workers also conducted agitation amongst the peasants in order to maintain the boycott along the coast. This dynamic - of events having their own logic, and workers being pushed by the logic of events to enter the terrain of socialism in order to maintain advances that are in and of themselves only part of the bourgeois-democratic revolution - is one of the major insights of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, and what it shows is that you cannot draw rigid boundaries between stages, and that the revolutionary process cannot be reduced to such a simple and abstract schema. This development occurred in spite of the fact that Stalin and Bukharin resisted Trotsky's calls for Soviets throughout the 1920s and decreed that Soviets would be impossible in a period where the bourgeois-democratic revolution had not yet been completed. What is also significant about the outcome of the May 30th Movement and the formation of the Hong Kong-Canton Soviet is that it was directly followed by the first coup of Chiang in March 1926, which resulted in the CPC having to hand over their membership lists and Comintern advisers being placed under house arrest, with it being precisely at that point that the CPC leaders were calling for a break with the KMT, so it is absurd to argue that the events of April 1927 came as a complete shock or that there was nothing during the preceding period that indicated that the united front was inherently unstable. The reaction of the KMT in southern China at that point and subsequently in April 1927 combined with its complete failure to carry out the tasks of land reform, national unification, and democratic government throughout the whole of the Nanjing decade is just one form of evidence that shows that there was no progressive section of the bourgeoisie in China and that the united front was fatally flawed for that reason. The underlying weakness of the bourgeoisie was a product of longer-term social processes such as the concentration of land and industrial property in the hands of a single ruling class and the forging of close links between capitalist enterprise in China and Western financial institutions, which is precisely what Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution leads us to respect, based on Trotsky's characterization of the weakness of the bourgeoisie in Russia and his analysis of the political consequences of the bourgeoisie being a vacillating class.

Rather than relying on crappy slogans and assertions, you need to provide evidence and analysis for the existence of a progressive bourgeoisie in China during the 1920s, and you need to provide an empirically supported account of exactly why it was necessary for the revolution to proceed in accordance with some a priori stageist schema, given that this had not been true in Russia, and given that the Chinese working class itself showed the possibility of a seamless transition between democratic and socialist tasks, through its experiences and innovations during the May 30th Movement.

[S.Artesian]

^^^^^Word.

[Red_Struggle]

Actually, it was not Stalin that formulated the idea of stagism, or a short period of bourgeois democracy following revolution in certain countries where it is applicable. Lenin himself argued that the national bourgeoisie of colonial and more backwards countries could play a useful role.

"All the Communist parties must assist the bourgeois democratic liberation movement in these (ie colonial type countries-ed).. The Communist International (CI) must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in colonial and backward countries." V.I.Lenin : Preliminary Draft of Theses on National and Colonial Questions, 2nd Congress; CI in "Selected Works", Volume10, London, 1946; p. 236-7.

Lenin's view was endorsed by the Comintern with only one change made to the original draft (the term "bourgeois democractic" was replaced by "nationalist revolutionry). The idea was that the working class should support a bourgeois revolution so long as the movement remained genuinely revolutionary. Of course, capitalists will never support a socialist revolutionary, and that is why it is necessary for workers to expell capitalists after their revolutionary potential has dried up.

"The meaning of this change is that we communists should, and will, support bourgeois liberation movements only when these movement do not hinder us in training and organising the peasants and the broad masses of the exploited in a revolutionary spirit.. The above mentioned distinction has now been drawn in all the theses, and I think that, thanks to this, our point of view has been formulated much more precisely." Lenin. Report Of Commission on the National and Colonial Questions, Ibid, p 241

After the first coup took place and the CCP and the workers took a massive hit, Roy stressed that another coup was imminent if the CCP did not carry out agrarian reform in the areas that they controled. The ECCI was contacted and asked for advice. Meanwhile, the Wuhan Left KMT met Chiang Kai-Shek, and Feng Yu-hsiang and combined against the CCP. Roy again warned the CCP leadership that a coup was imminent, and once more, this warning was ignored. The CCP refused to launch agrarian struggle. Instead, Chen Tu-Hsiu messaged the ECCI:

"90% of the National Army are.. opposed to excesses in the peasants' movement. In such a situation, not only the KMT but also the CCP is obliged to adopt a policy of concessions, It is necessary to correct excesses and to moderate the activities of the confiscation of land." Chen Tu-hsiu: Telegram to ECCI; June 15th 1927; In M.N.Roy :"Revolution and Counter revolution in China"; Calcutta; 1946; p.482.

So instead of abandoning the bloc with the temporary bloc with the KMT, the CCP leadership denied this more than once, against the advice of the Comintern.

[RED DAVE]

Like I said above, use the bourgeoisie for what they're worth and then get rid of them.This is political megalomania.

The bourgoisie has snatched China, the USSR, all of Eastern Europe, Vietnam and will soon have N. Korea and Nepal, and you still think they're a paper tiger.

Your Little Red Book needs some new chapters, like on how to work with the working class, the bourgeoisie, the peasantry, the petit-bourgeoisie and global capitalism. Otherwise, you're cool.

RED DAVE

[RED DAVE]

"The meaning of this change is that we communists should, and will, support bourgeois liberation movements only when these movement do not hinder us in training and organising the peasants and the broad masses of the exploited in a revolutionary spirit.. The above mentioned distinction has now been drawn in all the theses, and I think that, thanks to this, our point of view has been formulated much more precisely." Lenin. Report Of Commission on the National and Colonial Questions, Ibid, p 241If this was ever right, by 1945 it was dead wrong. And Maoists have been climbing up this asshole for 60 years and more and have learned nothing.

Take a look at Nepal and see the fruit of this. As we speak, the various factions of the Nepalese Maoists are falling all over each other to bring the joys of capitalism to Nepal.

RED DAVE

[Red_Struggle]

Your Little Red Book needs some new chapters

Too bad I'm not a Maoist



jackass >_>

[RED DAVE]

Too bad I'm not a MaoistAs far as much of the Left is concerned, Stalinisim, Maoism, Hoxhaism and Juche are kissing cousins: one rationalization or another for state capitalism masquerading as socialism.

ETA: Plz note that every society established by Maoists, Hoxhaists, Stalinists or other M-Ls has either become virulent capitalism without any significant resistance on the part of the working class. Juche is about to present China with a wonderful new source of labor to exploit. Maoists in Nepal are in a capitalist government and opening their country to enterprise zones

Not one of these tendencies supports democratic workers control.

RED DAVE

[Crux]

I remember someone on revleft talking about a Danish 'Marxist-Leninist-Trotskyist-Maoist' group that used to exist, comprised of 14 year olds who attempted to gain weapons off North Korea to take down the Danish govt or some shit like that.
There was a swedish group that split from the official (eurocommunist-ish) CP with the rest of the maoists, but then proceeded to make some quite radical critique of stalinism (calling it such) in a way similar to the trotskyist critique, I think they had an orientation towards guerillaist movements as well. The similar Danish group, called Venstre Socialistena exists to this day, although these days pretty much wholly absorbed in Enhedslisten. I am not as well read on them though.

[Who?]

Why don't we just supply OP with a link of some of Sam Marcy's works and not turn this thread into another anti-Maoist shitfest?

http://www.workers.org/marcy/

[Tim Finnegan]

SHITSTAIN DAVE
Are all Marxist-Leninists unable to advance beyond this sort of pissweak wannabe-macho schoolboy non-humour, or is it just the ones that seem to insist on posting here?

[S.Artesian]

Actually, it was not Stalin that formulated the idea of stagism, or a short period of bourgeois democracy following revolution in certain countries where it is applicable. Lenin himself argued that the national bourgeoisie of colonial and more backwards countries could play a useful role.

"All the Communist parties must assist the bourgeois democratic liberation movement in these (ie colonial type countries-ed).. The Communist International (CI) must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in colonial and backward countries." V.I.Lenin : Preliminary Draft of Theses on National and Colonial Questions, 2nd Congress; CI in "Selected Works", Volume10, London, 1946; p. 236-7.

Lenin's view was endorsed by the Comintern with only one change made to the original draft (the term "bourgeois democractic" was replaced by "nationalist revolutionry). The idea was that the working class should support a bourgeois revolution so long as the movement remained genuinely revolutionary. Of course, capitalists will never support a socialist revolutionary, and that is why it is necessary for workers to expell capitalists after their revolutionary potential has dried up.

Lenin and the Comintern were wrong. Tthe workers organizations, once subordinated to the terms of a "bourgeois democratic" or "national" revolution will be immobilized and incapable of expelling the capitalist.

What happens is that the organizations that the workers thought would become the vehicles of emancipation become the vehicles of their suppression. This is exactly how it played out in Chile, with Allende's Unidad Popular committed to "winning over" "using" "combining" with the "national bourgeoisie" against the "oligarchs" the "foreign capitalists" the "monopolists."

As it turned out, the national, democratic bourgeoisie new that class is thicker than blood, and the UP under the influence of yet another C Communist Party busied itself breaking the workers seizures of factories.



After the first coup took place and the CCP and the workers took a massive hit, Roy stressed that another coup was imminent if the CCP did not carry out agrarian reform in the areas that they controled. The ECCI was contacted and asked for advice. Meanwhile, the Wuhan Left KMT met Chiang Kai-Shek, and Feng Yu-hsiang and combined against the CCP.

Exactly. Proves the point that there is no such thing as a "revolutionary bourgeoisie."

[Geiseric]

Lenin's theorys which were proven wrong should be revised, not all of his original thoughts should be taken as gospel. He admitted later on that he made mistakes. P.S. red dave, do you want a hug?

[Red_Struggle]

Are all Marxist-Leninists unable to advance beyond this sort of pissweak wannabe-macho schoolboy non-humour, or is it just the ones that seem to insist on posting here?

Tell that to Dave, not me. He's the one that spams every fucking thread about Leninism or Maoism with "omg prachanda is ruining Nepal," or "look at those evil Stalinists/Maoists and their socialism in one country!" Yeah, I'm not a fan of Prachanda or the UCPN(M) but I don't jump from thread to thread whining about it in an attempt to make myself look like a hardass.

I mean honestly, just look at his past posts. All he does is complain.

[S.Artesian]

. All he does is complain.

And all you do is ignore your own contradictions in the attempt to burnish, and preserve failed policies. To be specific you say this:



There was a definate left-wing of the KMT and the object was to unite and attempt to possibly convert some of their members all the while combating and criticizing the right-wing faction.

And then you produce this:



Meanwhile, the Wuhan Left KMT met Chiang Kai-Shek, and Feng Yu-hsiang and combined against the CCP.


without so much as blinking an eye, pausing, and realizing that the practical contradiction of the "left-wing bourgeoisie" theory by the actual historical practice of a class uniting as a class to oppose the proletariat identifies your justifications of the theory as simply ideological propaganda, serving the interests of the very class you think you are opposing.

[Tim Finnegan]

Tell that to Dave, not me. He's the one that spams every fucking thread about Leninism or Maoism with "omg prachanda is ruining Nepal," or "look at those evil Stalinists/Maoists and their socialism in one country!" Yeah, I'm not a fan of Prachanda or the UCPN(M) but I don't jump from thread to thread whining about it in an attempt to make myself look like a hardass.

I mean honestly, just look at his past posts. All he does is complain.
And yet he does so without feeling obliged to call you "Shitstain Struggle" in the process. That indicates a certain distinction between the two of you.

[RED DAVE]

Tell that to Dave, not me. He's the one that spams every fucking thread about Leninism or Maoism with "omg prachanda is ruining Nepal,"He and his party are selling out faster than you can say "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.


or "look at those evil Stalinists/Maoists and their socialism in one country!"Considering that too many people around here have significant illusions about the USSR, etc., the point has to be made over and over again.


Yeah, I'm not a fan of Prachanda or the UCPN(M)It would be nice if you indicated your difficulties with them i one of the threads about them.


but I don't jump from thread to thread whining about it in an attempt to make myself look like a hardass.Don't worry. No one thinks you're a hardass.


I mean honestly, just look at his past posts. All he does is complain.Yeah, it must be really rough for you when someone presents you with a political reality you can't deal with.

RED DAVE

[Red_Struggle]

I already posted evidence showing that the CCP was encouraged to break the bloc with the KMT. And the two quotes you brought up were made during different periods during the war. The first was made before Chiang's coup. The second was following the coup, urging the CCP to initiate agrarian reform before the left KMT betrayed the CCP.

But you know what? I'm done with this thread. It's obvious that I'm outnumbered by a bunch of Trots, and therefor I will always be wrong, not matter what. It doesn't matter if you actually provide evidence backing up your claim if you're a "Stalinist". You get more rep for just writing "Word" as in the case of Artesian. But I can only expect so much out of revleft. I should have known this thread would lead nowhere and would degenerate as soon as I walked in.

[S.Artesian]

Exactly, two different periods of the war, joined by the SAME class. Get it? There's no radical rupture, here, it's the bourgeoisie centering themselves around the need to protect their own property which leads the inevitably to attack the proletariat.

Your "program," and your parties make the independence of the working class impossible; thus disarming the class in the face of such attacks.

But I wouldn't expect you to understand that, as it requires a concrete analysis of organization of capitalism in it local, and international, development.

We knew the thread would degenerate as soon as you walked in, also. That's what happens to every manifestation of materialist analysis and class struggle when the so-called Marxists-Leninists walk in.

And like I'm said, I'm not a Trotskyist, nor a Leninist; but I do have a certain respect for the actual content of history.

[RED DAVE]

Would any Maoist care to expound on the Maoist labor program for the USA now?

RED DAVE

[DiaMat86]

No, Trotskyism is not compatible with Trotskyism. Look at all the innumerable factions! Hell if you don't agree run off and start your own tendency.

The bosses will smile when you attack your former comrades.

[S.Artesian]

And Maoists? Are they compatible with Maoism? And Marxists-Leninists? Are they compatible with Marxism-Leninism?

[Coach Trotsky]

No, Trotskyism is not compatible with Trotskyism. Look at all the innumerable factions! Hell if you don't agree run off and start your own tendency.

The bosses will smile when you attack your former comrades.
I actually agree with this criticism.

Break with betrayers and counterrevolution, not just because you have some petty disagreements, or just because personalities in the leadership can't work together since all of them want to be the grand poo-bah.

Some splits are necessary. But most of the Left splits are expressions of capitulation, degeneracy and petty bourgeois individualism making itself as socialist.

[DiaMat86]

Coach, you might not agree with this one:

There is the struggle for communism on the left and the errors of the past on the right.

The leaders of the old movement (M.E.L.S.M.) had communist ideas and revisionist ideas. They were unable or unwilling to transfer power from the party to the workers. Except for Marx and Engels who never had state power. So communism never developed.

In practice, Trotsky was an anti-soviet terrorist with left sounding rhetoric. He was very capable and intelligent so he was definitely a useful tool for the Bosses. He and his bloc kept the politburo pre-occupied as to thwart the development of the USSR.

[S.Artesian]

^^^^^^^Complete, utter, irredeemable, horseshit.

[Coggeh]

In practice, Trotsky was an anti-soviet terrorist with left sounding rhetoric. He was very capable and intelligent so he was definitely a useful tool for the Bosses. He and his bloc kept the politburo pre-occupied as to thwart the development of the USSR.

Oh you bloody sensationalist.

Tool for the bosses? are you joking me? I'm sorry but do M-L's still buy that Stalinist propaganda about trotskyists? if so and that the point of trotskyists was to undermine the development of the USSR under stalin. Why do we still exist? Job done isn't it?:rolleyes:

[Rooster]

Coach, you might not agree with this one:

There is the struggle for communism on the left and the errors of the past on the right.

The leaders of the old movement (M.E.L.S.M.) had communist ideas and revisionist ideas. They were unable or unwilling to transfer power from the party to the workers. Except for Marx and Engels who never had state power. So communism never developed.

In practice, Trotsky was an anti-soviet terrorist with left sounding rhetoric. He was very capable and intelligent so he was definitely a useful tool for the Bosses. He and his bloc kept the politburo pre-occupied as to thwart the development of the USSR.

When you see something you disagree with, do you stick your fingers in your ears, close your eyes and go "LALALALALALALALALALALA!" until the offending article is removed from you?

[DiaMat86]

Oh you bloody sensationalist.

Tool for the bosses? are you joking me? I'm sorry but do M-L's still buy that Stalinist propaganda about trotskyists? if so and that the point of trotskyists was to undermine the development of the USSR under stalin. Why do we still exist? Job done isn't it?:rolleyes:


Trotsky was willing to sacrifice the lives of millions of soviet workers to settle a personal grudge against one man. So that he, the mighty Trotsky, could seize power. After of of course the Nazis did all the heavy lifting.

[S.Artesian]

Trotsky was willing to sacrifice the lives of millions of soviet workers to settle a personal grudge against one man. So that he, the mighty Trotsky, could seize power. After of of course the Nazis did all the heavy lifting.


What fucking planet do you live on? Trotsky sacrifice millions of lives to settle a personal grudge? That's what all the debates were about? That's what the opposition to the Comintern policy in China, the UK, Germany, Spain, Vietnam, France was all about?

That's some fine materialist analysis you're providing there-- it's all about personal grudges, and using Nazis to do the heavy lifting.

Another ignoramus pretending to know something about history.

[DiaMat86]

Overthrowing the Soviet Union was Trotsky's stated goal. Are you saying he was incompetent? I would disagree.

[S.Artesian]

No, a political revolution, replacing the bureaucracy, through organization of the working class was Trotsky's desire, and even that came late, too late, actually. For 12 years from about 1924-1936, I believe, Trotsky thought the Bolshevik party could be reformed from within, without even direct involvement by workers outside the party.

That is quite a different from "overthrowing the Soviet Union."

This may be too subtle a distinction for some to grasp, but the party, the party hierarchy was not the Soviet Union.

Your argument requires that Trotsky be advocating, agitating for the restoration of capitalism in the fSU; for the triumph of the bourgeoisie over the working class in France, Germany, Spain, China, Vietnam. Yet in every written and spoken word, Trotsky opposes the restoration of capitalism in the USSR; warns of the dangers of possible restoration; opposes the bourgeoisie and supports the proletarian revolution in struggles around the world.

Look there's this thing called history. It has a real material content. It can be studied. It can also be ignored, suppressed, distorted, and falsified-- you have swallowed that falsification completely based on your own ignorance.

Either you have a bit of respect for the real content of history, or.... or you are no better than a Goebbels, a Vyshinsky, or a Kissinger.

[Thirsty Crow]

Overthrowing the Soviet Union was Trotsky's stated goal. Are you saying he was incompetent? I would disagree.
Yes, and Marx never used the term "socialism".
Seriously, don't they teach "socialism fo dummies" as a prerequisite course for entry into PLP?

[Tim Finnegan]

Overthrowing the Soviet Union was Trotsky's stated goal. Are you saying he was incompetent? I would disagree.
Do you have a source for that? If it was a "stated goal", after all, then he presumably, y'know, stated it at some point.

[DiaMat86]

Tim Finnegan:

"Do you have a source for that? If it was a "stated goal", after all, then he presumably, y'know, stated it at some point. "



TROTSKY: Social Relations
in the Soviet Union CHAPTER 9


Trotsky advocates betrayal and overthrow of the Soviet Union:

"This saving fear is nourished and supported by the illegal party of Bolshevik-Leninists, which is the most conscious expression of the socialist tendencies opposing that bourgeois reaction with which the Thermidorian bureaucracy is completely saturated. As a conscious political force the bureaucracy has betrayed the revolution. But a victorious revolution is fortunately not only a program and a banner, not only political institutions, but also a system of
social relations. To betray it is not enough. You have to overthrow it. The October revolution has been betrayed by the ruling stratum, but not yet overthrown. It has a great power of resistance, coinciding with the established property relations, with the living force of the proletariat, the consciousness of its best elements, the impasse of world capitalism, and the inevitability of world revolution."

[S.Artesian]

Tim Finnegan:

"Do you have a source for that? If it was a "stated goal", after all, then he presumably, y'know, stated it at some point. "



TROTSKY: Social Relations
in the Soviet Union CHAPTER 9


Trotsky advocates betrayal and overthrow of the Soviet Union:

"This saving fear is nourished and supported by the illegal party of Bolshevik-Leninists, which is the most conscious expression of the socialist tendencies opposing that bourgeois reaction with which the Thermidorian bureaucracy is completely saturated. As a conscious political force the bureaucracy has betrayed the revolution. But a victorious revolution is fortunately not only a program and a banner, not only political institutions, but also a system of
social relations. To betray it is not enough. You have to overthrow it. The October revolution has been betrayed by the ruling stratum, but not yet overthrown. It has a great power of resistance, coinciding with the established property relations, with the living force of the proletariat, the consciousness of its best elements, the impasse of world capitalism, and the inevitability of world revolution."


Not to put too fine a point on it, the quote doesn't say what you want it to say. It says that the Stalinist bureaucracy has not, yet, completely destroyed the social basis introduced by the revolution.

Work on your reading comprehension please. You're just wasting everybody's time, demonstrating your stupidity.

[Geiseric]

XD wow he totally skipped the long sentences and went to the short part. Either he was skimming or he totally missed the entire point of the quote.

[DiaMat86]

Overthrow of the USSR was Trotsky's intent. He worded it carefully to give himself maneuverability.

In his papers he acknowledged the bloc then denied it to the Dewey Commission. In his archive are the registered mail receipts to co-conspirators. The letters themselves have been purged.


Hear is a great book that summarizes the case against Trotsky:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/45715308/Bittelman-Trotsky-the-Traitor

The letter to Radek cannot be denied based on the postal receipts in Trotsky's archive. Unless you contend they were discussing the weather.

[S.Artesian]

You were asked to provide evidence of your claim- that Trotsky's stated intent was the overthrow of the Soviet Union. The words you have reproduced prove no such thing. They refer to the bureaucracy's conflict with the social base of the proletarian revolution.

You're an idiot, plain and simple.

[Kléber]

The letters themselves have been purged.
More likely they were stolen; Trotsky's archive was compromised on numerous occasions.


The letter to Radek cannot be denied based on the postal receipts in Trotsky's archive.The letter could not have contained "terrorist instructions" precisely because the receipts prove it was sent openly through the Soviet postal service.


Unless you contend they were discussing the weatherTrotsky may have attempted to recruit Radek back to the opposition. Radek did not respond. There was no terrorist plot to murder other Bolsheviks, no plan to ally with Nazi Germany - Stalin's clique was guilty of those crimes.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Yeah let's make the revolution by all sitting in a circle, holding hands and singing kumbaya :rolleyes:

There's a real difference between recognizing violence as an unfortunate but inevitable (and possibly beneficial) part of revolution, and raising violence/bloodshed to the level of religious sacrament, which is what many Maoists advocate. From the Naxalbari and their policy of "annihilation" to the Shining Path, who were probably the worst culprits in this, with their description of class enemies (who were anyone the SL didn't like) as "reptilian" and "diseased", and spoke of revolution in millenarian terms of "cleansing". It's as if they view revolution as simply a matter of arming enough peasants and sending them on a rampage, rather than exploding the commodity form through a working class revolt. Scary stuff.

[Zombie Jesus]

While I find the idea of People's War a useful and attractive concept, it doesn't appear that it ends being anything like what Mao intended and did in China. Most Maoist parties seems to be incapable of gaining popular support and end up turning on the very people they are ostensibly fighting for, to cow them into compliance. And then there are things like the apparently pointless mass-line and the miss-named new democracy, and the utterly baffling bloc of four classes...

I don't think that Maoism and Trotskyism are at all compatible. While I don't find a lot of Trotskyist propositions entirely realistic, at least they aren't contradictory and self-defeating.

[Yazman]

S. Artesian:


Me.


You were asked to provide evidence of your claim- that Trotsky's stated intent was the overthrow of the Soviet Union. The words you have reproduced prove no such thing. They refer to the bureaucracy's conflict with the social base of the proletarian revolution.

You're an idiot, plain and simple.



Work on your reading comprehension please. You're just wasting everybody's time, demonstrating your stupidity.

Not only have you posted a completely worthless one-word spam post, but you've also flamed another user twice. This sort of behaviour is not even remotely acceptable, especially in the Learning forum which is supposed to be a welcoming place for beginners to get started. You're infracted for spam and flaming.

The Inform Candidate, DiaMat86, and Syd Barrett:


Who thinks diamat is Grover Furr while drunk on RevLeft?


^^^^^^Me^^^^^^^


Three reputation points is three too many.


XD wow he totally skipped the long sentences and went to the short part. Either he was skimming or he totally missed the entire point of the quote.

Neither the Learning forum nor this thread is here for any of you to make fun of other users, or to make blatantly off-topic posts that contribute nothing to the otherwise worthwhile discussion that is ongoing. If I see any of you three make one more post like this, you're all going to get infracted too.

Before any of you make any future posts, I suggest you familiarise yourselves with the forum rules:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/faq.php?faq=general#faq_faqforumrules

As well, you may want to learn any that apply to individual forums. While you may be able to get away with some fuckery in the social forums, a place like Learning is NOT the place to attempt this.

You're not here to make fun of or discuss other users. Go to the social forums (or a social group) if you intend to do that, and keep it civil when you do.

This post constitutes a warning to DiaMat86 for spam, and a warning to The Inform Candidate and Syd Barrett for off-topic posting/flamebaiting. S. Artesian was given one (1) infraction for the quoted posts.

[RED DAVE]

Would any Maoist care to expound on the Maoist labor program for the USA now?

[B]RED DAVE

[turquino]

Would any Maoist care to expound on the Maoist labor program for the USA now?

[B]RED DAVE
The form of the Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of Oppressed Nations

[These are slightly edited excerpts of IRTR posts made by comrades in April and September of 2006. MSH is republishing this to encourage readers to think about the kinds of measures that are needed to impose socialism on imperialist nations where the vast majority of the populations are hardcore class enemies. MSH agrees with Lenin's discussion of proletarian "Jacobinism":

The Jacobins of contemporary Social-Democracy -- the Bolsheviks, the Vperyodovtsi, Syezdovtsi, Proletartsi, or whatever we may call them -- wish by their slogans to raise the revolutionary and republican petty bourgeoisie, and especially the peasantry, to the level of the consistent democratic centralism of the proletariat, which fully retains its individuality as a class. They want the people, i.e. the proletariat and the peasantry, to settle accounts with the monarchy and the aristocracy in the "plebeian way," ruthlessly destroying the enemies of liberty , crushing their resistance by force, making no concessions whatever... (From Two Tactics of Social Democracy, written in the period of the 1905 revolution in Russia. Quoted in Chen Boda's Notes on Mao Tse-tung's "Report of an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan", Foreign Language Press. 1954. pp 34)

First Nations activist Russell Means addressed the white so-called "socialists," the "Girondists" of so-called "social democracy," the phony allies of the oppressed nations and international proletariat:

You can’t judge the real nature of a European revolutionary doctrine on the basis on the changes it proposes to make within the European power structure and society. You can only judge it by the effects it will have on non-Europeans. (RC Polemic II First Nations and the Environment, MIM Theory 12. 1997. pp 29)

MSH advocates a proletarian "Jacobin" settling of accounts with the imperialist nations. Maoism seeks to smash the entire First World, especially White, power structure to dust and place power in the hands of the oppressed nations.]

Serve The People wrote on IRTR on April 22 of 2006:

I have proposed, in the past, that the JDPON should disperse the Amerikkkans throughout the Third World instead of allowing them to remain in occupied North America. Here are some of my reasons:

1) A geographic concentration of Amerikkkans would facilitate counterrevolution. It would also be difficult to exercise proletarian dictatorship over hundreds of millions of enemies: we would need to import a huge unproductive sector of police and such from the Third World. As a practical matter, it would be better to thin the Amerikkkans out, making them minorities in the Third World, where they could easily be controlled and supervised by the international proletariat.

2) Amerikkkans will need to undergo re-education. It would be very difficult to re-educate them in their own kkkountry. They need to be in a proletarian environment where they can learn from the masses.

3) There are land claims to settle, mainly for the First Nations, but also for Aztlán [occupied Mexico -- MSH) and perhaps the Black nation. Conceivably some other nations could be moved to North America if they wished to be, such as Nauru or the small nations in Ghana whose land has been ruined by imperialist corporations. Amerikkkans are going to have to move out of much of North America and make room for other nations.

4) Amerikkkan kkkulture is almost totally reactionary. There is little worth saving in Amerikkkan kkkulture. It would be better to force Amerikkkans to assimilate to the more culturally and politically advanced peoples of the Third World. There is also historic justice in forcing Amerikkkans to assimilate, just as they destroyed so many other nations and cultures.

5) In the early stages of socialism, the Third World will require skilled workers and technicians of various kinds, including medical personnel. These persyns are disproportionately concentrated in the First World. Moving them to the Third World will be a practical way to address an urgent need.

6) The Third World is also owed big reparations. An excellent way to make those reparations is to put Amerikkkans to work building infrastructure in the Third World: roads, housing, water supplies, sewage, electricity, telecommunications, schools. Amerikkkans can also work in Third World factories and fields to expand production for the benefit of the Third World.

7) Part of the process of civilizing and proletarianizing Amerikkkans will be putting them to productive work--for a change. Amerikkka has so little productive capacity that there may not be many ways to put all those people to work in occupied North America. They may have to go to the factories and fields of the Third World.

8 ) Amerikkkans will need to be reduced to a Third World standard of living. If they stay in occupied North Amerikkka, they will benefit from the vastly better infrastructure and all the stolen wealth that they currently hold. It would be better to move them to the Third World as a way of accelerating the process of re-education.

9) There are historical precedents for relocating large numbers of enemies. Millions of Germans were forced to move after the Soviet victory over fascism in World War II. Even enemies like the united $nakes and the "united" KKKingdom agreed that it was necessary to move Germans off land that was needed for Poles, Czechs, and others. Again, this is related to the national question of the First Nations, Aztlán [occupied Mexico -- MSH], and the Black nation.

Is this a good idea? What are its advantages and disadvantages? How can we improve upon it?

Prairie Fire wrote on IRTR on September 13, 2006:

Marx wrote in the Manifesto how the bourgeoisie was horrified when confronted by communism. It’s no surprise that the labor aristocracy finds socialism “over the top.” The labor aristocracy of the first world thinks the same thing of Stalin and Mao, not to mention Lenin. Is that not the kind of language we hear from crypto-Trotskyists in their attacks on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution? That it was too extreme and “one sided” and so on. There is nothing as radical as reality itself as Lenin said; class war has always been radical, extreme.

The dispersion plan is extreme, but revolution itself is extreme. Once you get a sense about the degree of parasitism, you’ll see that any solution to parasitism will be extreme. And, it will be nightmarish in the eyes of the exploiters. As Mao said, “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” For those who oppose the dispersion plan, the question is: how do we overthrow the reactionary classes for a prolonged period of time in the First World where the vast majority of the population are hardcore class enemies?

[http:// monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/the-form-of-the-joint-dictatorship-of-the-proletariat-of-oppressed- nations/]

[Os Cangaceiros]

Death to the United $nake$ of AmeriKKKa! :cursing:

Also, did someone seriously just approvingly quote Russell hardcore libertarian Means?

[Os Cangaceiros]

OK, wow, I actually just read all that and I'm convinced that I'm being trolled. No way those proposals are for real.

No way.

[DiaMat86]

All the "kkk" words look ridiculous. So does "persyn".

Is the suffix "son" not politically correct?

The politics are horrible too. Oh the numerous pitfalls of nationalism.

[Kléber]

BX-0750E0Co
I heard JDPON is revisionist.
ad1jkc9FraM

[S.Artesian]

The form of the Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of Oppressed Nations

[These are slightly edited excerpts of IRTR posts made by comrades in April and September of 2006. MSH is republishing this to encourage readers to think about the kinds of measures that are needed to impose socialism on imperialist nations where the vast majority of the populations are hardcore class enemies. MSH agrees with Lenin's discussion of proletarian "Jacobinism":

The Jacobins of contemporary Social-Democracy -- the Bolsheviks, the Vperyodovtsi, Syezdovtsi, Proletartsi, or whatever we may call them -- wish by their slogans to raise the revolutionary and republican petty bourgeoisie, and especially the peasantry, to the level of the consistent democratic centralism of the proletariat, which fully retains its individuality as a class. They want the people, i.e. the proletariat and the peasantry, to settle accounts with the monarchy and the aristocracy in the "plebeian way," ruthlessly destroying the enemies of liberty , crushing their resistance by force, making no concessions whatever... (From Two Tactics of Social Democracy, written in the period of the 1905 revolution in Russia. Quoted in Chen Boda's Notes on Mao Tse-tung's "Report of an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan", Foreign Language Press. 1954. pp 34)

First Nations activist Russell Means addressed the white so-called "socialists," the "Girondists" of so-called "social democracy," the phony allies of the oppressed nations and international proletariat:

You can’t judge the real nature of a European revolutionary doctrine on the basis on the changes it proposes to make within the European power structure and society. You can only judge it by the effects it will have on non-Europeans. (RC Polemic II First Nations and the Environment, MIM Theory 12. 1997. pp 29)

MSH advocates a proletarian "Jacobin" settling of accounts with the imperialist nations. Maoism seeks to smash the entire First World, especially White, power structure to dust and place power in the hands of the oppressed nations.]

Serve The People wrote on IRTR on April 22 of 2006:

I have proposed, in the past, that the JDPON should disperse the Amerikkkans throughout the Third World instead of allowing them to remain in occupied North America. Here are some of my reasons:

1) A geographic concentration of Amerikkkans would facilitate counterrevolution. It would also be difficult to exercise proletarian dictatorship over hundreds of millions of enemies: we would need to import a huge unproductive sector of police and such from the Third World. As a practical matter, it would be better to thin the Amerikkkans out, making them minorities in the Third World, where they could easily be controlled and supervised by the international proletariat.

2) Amerikkkans will need to undergo re-education. It would be very difficult to re-educate them in their own kkkountry. They need to be in a proletarian environment where they can learn from the masses.

3) There are land claims to settle, mainly for the First Nations, but also for Aztlán [occupied Mexico -- MSH) and perhaps the Black nation. Conceivably some other nations could be moved to North America if they wished to be, such as Nauru or the small nations in Ghana whose land has been ruined by imperialist corporations. Amerikkkans are going to have to move out of much of North America and make room for other nations.

4) Amerikkkan kkkulture is almost totally reactionary. There is little worth saving in Amerikkkan kkkulture. It would be better to force Amerikkkans to assimilate to the more culturally and politically advanced peoples of the Third World. There is also historic justice in forcing Amerikkkans to assimilate, just as they destroyed so many other nations and cultures.

5) In the early stages of socialism, the Third World will require skilled workers and technicians of various kinds, including medical personnel. These persyns are disproportionately concentrated in the First World. Moving them to the Third World will be a practical way to address an urgent need.

6) The Third World is also owed big reparations. An excellent way to make those reparations is to put Amerikkkans to work building infrastructure in the Third World: roads, housing, water supplies, sewage, electricity, telecommunications, schools. Amerikkkans can also work in Third World factories and fields to expand production for the benefit of the Third World.

7) Part of the process of civilizing and proletarianizing Amerikkkans will be putting them to productive work--for a change. Amerikkka has so little productive capacity that there may not be many ways to put all those people to work in occupied North America. They may have to go to the factories and fields of the Third World.

8 ) Amerikkkans will need to be reduced to a Third World standard of living. If they stay in occupied North Amerikkka, they will benefit from the vastly better infrastructure and all the stolen wealth that they currently hold. It would be better to move them to the Third World as a way of accelerating the process of re-education.

9) There are historical precedents for relocating large numbers of enemies. Millions of Germans were forced to move after the Soviet victory over fascism in World War II. Even enemies like the united $nakes and the "united" KKKingdom agreed that it was necessary to move Germans off land that was needed for Poles, Czechs, and others. Again, this is related to the national question of the First Nations, Aztlán [occupied Mexico -- MSH], and the Black nation.

Is this a good idea? What are its advantages and disadvantages? How can we improve upon it?

Prairie Fire wrote on IRTR on September 13, 2006:

Marx wrote in the Manifesto how the bourgeoisie was horrified when confronted by communism. It’s no surprise that the labor aristocracy finds socialism “over the top.” The labor aristocracy of the first world thinks the same thing of Stalin and Mao, not to mention Lenin. Is that not the kind of language we hear from crypto-Trotskyists in their attacks on the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution? That it was too extreme and “one sided” and so on. There is nothing as radical as reality itself as Lenin said; class war has always been radical, extreme.

The dispersion plan is extreme, but revolution itself is extreme. Once you get a sense about the degree of parasitism, you’ll see that any solution to parasitism will be extreme. And, it will be nightmarish in the eyes of the exploiters. As Mao said, “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” For those who oppose the dispersion plan, the question is: how do we overthrow the reactionary classes for a prolonged period of time in the First World where the vast majority of the population are hardcore class enemies?

[http:// monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/the-form-of-the-joint-dictatorship-of-the-proletariat-of-oppressed- nations/]


Fucking Pol Pot-ism to the max. This is nothing but a formula for slave-labor and extermination camps. I'm sure we'll have DNZ chiming in with his support soon enough.

But this crap, CRAP, should be banned.

[S.Artesian]

Not to mention the big hole in the world economy where agriculture in the US, industrial production used to be [US accounts for app 20% of world industrial output].

Sure, wholesale depopulation and movement of 260 million people of all ages. Hey, genius, you don't have enough ships and planes to do this. You don't have enough people to do this. You can't spend this much time doing this without reducing the world wide levels of living for everyone back to the 17th century standards.

You a big supporter of the plague? Cholera epidemics? Slavery? Because this sure is the program for it.

You are not just a class enemy, but an enemy of all humanity.

[RED DAVE]

Would any Maoist care to expound on the Maoist labor program for the USA now?
The form of the Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of Oppressed Nations

...

1) A geographic concentration of Amerikkkans would facilitate counterrevolution. It would also be difficult to exercise proletarian dictatorship over hundreds of millions of enemies: we would need to import a huge unproductive sector of police and such from the Third World. As a practical matter, it would be better to thin the Amerikkkans out, making them minorities in the Third World, where they could easily be controlled and supervised by the international proletariat.

2) Amerikkkans will need to undergo re-education. It would be very difficult to re-educate them in their own kkkountry. They need to be in a proletarian environment where they can learn from the masses.

3) There are land claims to settle, mainly for the First Nations, but also for Aztlán [occupied Mexico -- MSH) and perhaps the Black nation. Conceivably some other nations could be moved to North America if they wished to be, such as Nauru or the small nations in Ghana whose land has been ruined by imperialist corporations. Amerikkkans are going to have to move out of much of North America and make room for other nations.

4) Amerikkkan kkkulture is almost totally reactionary. There is little worth saving in Amerikkkan kkkulture. It would be better to force Amerikkkans to assimilate to the more culturally and politically advanced peoples of the Third World. There is also historic justice in forcing Amerikkkans to assimilate, just as they destroyed so many other nations and cultures.

5) In the early stages of socialism, the Third World will require skilled workers and technicians of various kinds, including medical personnel. These persyns are disproportionately concentrated in the First World. Moving them to the Third World will be a practical way to address an urgent need.

6) The Third World is also owed big reparations. An excellent way to make those reparations is to put Amerikkkans to work building infrastructure in the Third World: roads, housing, water supplies, sewage, electricity, telecommunications, schools. Amerikkkans can also work in Third World factories and fields to expand production for the benefit of the Third World.

7) Part of the process of civilizing and proletarianizing Amerikkkans will be putting them to productive work--for a change. Amerikkka has so little productive capacity that there may not be many ways to put all those people to work in occupied North America. They may have to go to the factories and fields of the Third World.

8 ) Amerikkkans will need to be reduced to a Third World standard of living. If they stay in occupied North Amerikkka, they will benefit from the vastly better infrastructure and all the stolen wealth that they currently hold. It would be better to move them to the Third World as a way of accelerating the process of re-education.

9) There are historical precedents for relocating large numbers of enemies. Millions of Germans were forced to move after the Soviet victory over fascism in World War II. Even enemies like the united $nakes and the "united" KKKingdom agreed that it was necessary to move Germans off land that was needed for Poles, Czechs, and others. Again, this is related to the national question of the First Nations, Aztlán [occupied Mexico -- MSH], and the Black nation.Uhh, is this what you call the Maoist program, per chance? Is this the basis for your next leaflet when you run for shop steward? Or will you just distribute this at the next labor demon in Madison?

I thought that Maoism-Third Worldism is banned?

RED DAVE

[PhoenixAsh]

The form of the Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of Oppressed Nations


fascist rant

[http:// monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/the-form-of-the-joint-dictatorship-of-the-proletariat-of-oppressed- nations/]

If you truely believe this then you have no place in the revolutionary left.

If you would try to implement this I would consider you a fascist enemy of the revolution and the working class and would do everything in my power to stop you and fight you tooth and nail.

Not only is this completely repulsive and racist but it crosses the border of nazism and fascism and directly advocates genocide.

Its a divisive ideology you espouse here and I am repulsed by it.

[Who?]

That's not the MLM labor program for the USA.

It's a nutty pseudo-Lin Baoist position currently trending among petit-bourgeois university students.

Pay it no real attention, please.

[turquino]

It’s undoubtedly a more realistic picture of a revolution in north america than what most of you have in mind. The workers of today’s north america and western europe are not Marx’s proletariat. They are not a social base for revolution. Rather, they are a materially privileged minority in the world, vastly outnumbered by a proletariat of the exploited nations. The class interests of the former are in conflict with those of the latter. At present, even if the entire global social product was shared out equally (with nothing saved for raising future production), almost every single person in north america would end up materially worse off - and by a wide margin too.

Hoping for some kind of repeat of the October Revolution, at least without radical changes in the class structure of the imperialist countries, is like wishing upon a star. It rises no higher above the level of magical thinking. But let’s imagine, for the sake of argument, that it did happen against all the odds. There was a socialist revolution in one of the major imperialist countries, the capitalists have been dispossessed, and the nation’s workers now exercise collective control over the state and means of production. Although the means of production are the property of the nation’s workers de jure, they are the result of an accumulation that extracted surplus value from the workers of the exploited nations and transfered in the global supply chain to the imperialist centres. The immense concentration of advanced production and service industries may have fallen into the hands of the workers of these countries post-revolution, but it should not be thought their labour alone made this level of productive forces possible, and by that right they are its true owners. The flow of copper, oil, bauxite etc. from the exploited into the imperialist centres that contribute to their overdevelopment relative to the rest of the world are not the inherent right of that imperialist nation’s working class.

Dmitry Manuilsky rebuked this kind of narrow thinking at the Fifth Congress of the Communist International in 1924: “According to the theory of bourgeois state law, all wealth and natural resources are the property of that nation which lives where they are found. The formation of the Soviet Union has brought forward a new theory, in which the question of borders is of secondary importance. In our state, a man from Murmansk has the same right to the Black Sea ports and the Donets coalfield as a peasant from Poltava or a Donets miner (no p. - see the Stenograph report of the Fifth Congress of the Comintern).”

Those who find it horrifying we would demand the forcible re-distribution of industry and expertise to serve the international proletariat - those 80% who live in the exploited nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, at the expense of the top 20% who live reside in the imperialist nations - side with national chauvinism over genuine internationalism. They have no right to call themselves communists, they are true social fascists because their complaint is that their country's workers aren't rich fast enough off the backs of others.

The JDPON is one conceptual framework for how revolution might come about the first world. The dominoes may not fall that way. Another possible break away from the imperialist-dominated international division of labour is Samir Amin’s theory of de-linking. One by one, through new democratic revolution, exploited countries will break away from the imperialist ones and re-orient towards one another. In turn, it’s hoped that by denying the imperialist nations their access to the cheap superexploited labour of the third world, that this will ‘proletarianize’ their labouring classes and bring them into solidarity with the wider international proletariat. However, this strategy may also spark a vicious international war, and might not lead to a better outcome than the extreme JDPON.

[S.Artesian]

The "JDPON" is the psychotic wet dream of a collection of mini- Pol Potists.

Marxists don't "hope" for anything. The revolutionary position of the proletariat is based on the organization of capital, the necessity of accumulation, not on our hopes and wishes.

Your entire hypothetical "socialism" in an advanced country presupposes that revolution only occurs in isolation from the international economic interactions of capital. Didn't happen that way.

You are a primitivist who believes "scorched earth" retribution and punishment is a substitute for the emancipation of labor.

Here's the problem with your JDPON- it has no possibilty of materializing, because there is no economic, class basis for its realization.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I am not big on banning or restricting people but aren't MTWists restricted on this forum?
Turqino, ever been to Wisconsin? Better yet, have you ever actually had a job in the US, you know one of those deals where you come in everyday, do essentially meaningless, mind numbing work (and desperately hope for OT) so people you despise can become rich off the surplus value produced by your labor, just so you can pay rent, buy groceries and all those other things that we must do to avoid homelessness and to ensure physical survival?

You have contempt for the US working class? You have contempt for African-Americans, Native Peoples, people who have jobs or desperately wish they had a job? You have contempt for the 10 million undocumented workers forced to come to the United $nakes to survive and support their families?

Have you even actually been to the "Third World"? Ever been to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Brasilia, Rio,Mumbai?

Your buddy Samir Amin (who sounds like a baked over World Social Forum liberal these days), was an apologist for Pol Pot.

Poor Henry Park can enjoy his psychotic paranoia but what's your excuse? At least MIM had good film reviews, you only have the psychosis.

Good luck with LLCO anyway and its "outreach" to the US working class.

BTW, I've done more work w/Filipino migrant workers than you've done in a lifetime.

[RED DAVE]

Okay, we've flushed out one crazy. Let's try this again.


Would any Maoist care to expound on the Maoist labor program for the USA now?RED DAVE

[turquino]

Marxists don't "hope" for anything. The revolutionary position of the proletariat is based on the organization of capital, the necessity of accumulation, not on our hopes and wishes.
Yes ‘Artesian’, that’s right - the revolutionary position of the proletariat is not based on our hopes and wishes. That is exactly why we answer Mao’s question “who are our enemies, who are our friends?” with global class analysis. Which groups have a material stake in the maintenance of imperialism, and which have a stake in overturning this power? From there we can start to understand how the global class struggle unfolds, and how communists will make revolution. If we were in the wishful thinking camp, we’d be the ones saying “american workers are exploited and have great potential for revolution!” But it’s not true. If we were in the wishful thinking camp, we’d wish for the end of capitalist social relations with 1) no violence, 2) no physical destruction, and 3) no ill-feeling. But we work with the world we have, and that’s a world where the workers of the imperialist countries are not an exploited proletariat, and have no desire to see their present conditions abolished. If overturning this requires externally imposing a dictatorship of the proletariat through invasion, then that’s what has to happen.

None of this is ‘primitivism’. Primitivism idealizes and seeks to return to a past that never existed. It incorrectly blames science and technology for problems created by the oppressive social relations of capitalism. Maoists, Leading Light Communists want the opposite of the disappearance of scientific knowledge, they want to end its monopoly by the privileged few replaced by its benefit for all.

I’m not going to rise to ‘Rosenweg’s’ provocations. I don’t want to know you, nor do I want to hear about how you think your work is meaningless.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

My "work" and jobs I've had are entirely different.I have never thought my real work, my vocation, was meaningless, its that I've had more than enough jobs which sure as hell were were and so has almost everyone I know.

So you deny the revolutionary potential of Greek, French, Irish, or Spanish workers? Or are these people all spoiled First Worldists who should stop whining and get back to enriching the ravenous wolfs of finance capital?

I ask you again, ever had to feed a family on a teacher's salary? Do you know what's happening to public service workers in the US? Do you even care?

and yeah, do you guys still actually advocate "JDPON" and the "revolutionary Plan de San Diego"?All Maoists I know are appalled by this.

Didn't your mate Lin Biao try to overthrow Mao? Beware those who wave the red flag...you should know the drill.

[Queercommie Girl]

Incidentally personally I don't agree with restricting MTWists, even though I don't agree with MTW and I think it's a bad distortion of genuine Maoism. The reason I don't agree with restricting MTW is because frankly I don't think it's fair to just pick on MTW while ignoring other problematic tendencies like those who are fond of Islamism and other right-wing religions which are sexist and queerphobic for instance. Either ban all of these completely or don't ban any.

But I've got to say, turquino, for fuck's sake, stopping giving all Maoists a bad name. Your program has nothing to do with genuine Maoism, but your propaganda here would only make it more difficult for genuine and serious Maoists to properly engage the Western working class.

Turquino, just shut the fuck up, you are a dangerous anti-Maoist revisionist element.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Okay, we've flushed out one crazy. Let's try this again.

RED DAVE

For better or worse Red Dave I do not think you'll get much of a reply. There is no US Maoist movement today. The New Communist movement became liberal Democrats and were absorbed into the Jesse Jackson campaign. FRSO is a socdem group tailing the Dems like the CPUS. Its hard to classify the PLP. The RCP is now a personality cult around Chairman Bob.

The once large US Maoist movement seems to have largely evaporated. There is Kasama and there are some intelligemt people there. Mike Ely occaisionally posts here, perhaps he could answer.Kasama is a regroupment project and it looks like they are trying to figure out a strategy for the US working class.Perhaps they are moving in a direction similar to that of CLR James, Facing Reality group, I don't know.

[PhoenixAsh]

Those who find it horrifying we would demand the forcible re-distribution of industry and expertise to serve the international proletariat - those 80% who live in the exploited nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, at the expense of the top 20% who live reside in the imperialist nations - side with national chauvinism over genuine internationalism. They have no right to call themselves communists, they are true social fascists because their complaint is that their country's workers aren't rich fast enough off the backs of others.


You have no right to call yourself a communist you f-ing poser. YOu have no idea what we want...you deny international worker solidarity in favor of mass genocide and nazist racism in favor of a portion of the proletariat. Instead of bringing everybody to the same level of wealth you want to bring part of the working class downwards to a level of abject poverty.

You have no understanding of what true communism really is. Instead you live in some white guilty fantasy of non-white superiority and supremacy. You are better of at SF instead of amongst the revolutionary left. If I get infracted over this post for flaming I consider it a badge of honour.

You are an insult. Your ideas are an insult. And you and your ideoloy have no place within the revolutionary left,. I don't care what the admins say about this. You are no more than a closet fascist who wraps him or herself in a red banner.

[PhoenixAsh]

3) no ill-feeling. But we work with the world we have, and that’s a world where the workers of the imperialist countries are not an exploited proletariat, and have no desire to see their present conditions abolished. If overturning this requires externally imposing a dictatorship of the proletariat through invasion, then that’s what has to happen.


This means you are not a communist. Again...you have no idea what communism is. You are a reactionary. And combined with your other statements you are a fascist to boot.

[RED DAVE]

If we were in the wishful thinking camp, we’d be the ones saying “american workers are exploited and have great potential for revolution!” But it’s not true.Yeah, you Maoists are so right. You were right on China – until it became capitalist; right on Vietnam – until it became capitalist; and you're having fun establishing capitalism in Nepal as we speak.

No wonder you have no labor program for the USA (or anywhere else). Mao apparently couldn't figure it out either. He thought that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were friends.

RED DAVE

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I am not a Maoist, I strongly disagree with any offshoot of Stalinism, but in all fairness the Kasama group, whatever their shortcomings, are honest revolutionaries. MTWists are something else entirely.

[S.Artesian]

Yes ‘Artesian’, that’s right - the revolutionary position of the proletariat is not based on our hopes and wishes. That is exactly why we answer Mao’s question “who are our enemies, who are our friends?” with global class analysis. Which groups have a material stake in the maintenance of imperialism, and which have a stake in overturning this power? From there we can start to understand how the global class struggle unfolds, and how communists will make revolution. If we were in the wishful thinking camp, we’d be the ones saying “american workers are exploited and have great potential for revolution!” But it’s not true. If we were in the wishful thinking camp, we’d wish for the end of capitalist social relations with 1) no violence, 2) no physical destruction, and 3) no ill-feeling. But we work with the world we have, and that’s a world where the workers of the imperialist countries are not an exploited proletariat, and have no desire to see their present conditions abolished. If overturning this requires externally imposing a dictatorship of the proletariat through invasion, then that’s what has to happen.

None of this is ‘primitivism’. Primitivism idealizes and seeks to return to a past that never existed. It incorrectly blames science and technology for problems created by the oppressive social relations of capitalism. Maoists, Leading Light Communists want the opposite of the disappearance of scientific knowledge, they want to end its monopoly by the privileged few replaced by its benefit for all.

I’m not going to rise to ‘Rosenweg’s’ provocations. I don’t want to know you, nor do I want to hear about how you think your work is meaningless.


Right, right, US workers have a stake in maintaining US capital, so their wages can be driven down, so they can lose 8 million jobs, so more can be evicted, so less health care is available, so education is priced out of their reach, and so their kids can find their way into the military to kill people even worse off than they are.

Yeah every fucking material interest in preserving that system.

You simply don't know a fucking thing.

Your work isn't meaningless. It's counterrevolutionary. You should be banned.

[Per Levy]

It’s undoubtedly a more realistic picture of a revolution in north america than what most of you have in mind. The workers of today’s north america and western europe are not Marx’s proletariat. They are not a social base for revolution. Rather, they are a materially privileged minority in the world, vastly outnumbered by a proletariat of the exploited nations. The class interests of the former are in conflict with those of the latter. At present, even if the entire global social product was shared out equally (with nothing saved for raising future production), almost every single person in north america would end up materially worse off - and by a wide margin too.

yes of course im a "priviliged minority", i mean im working poor, ruining my body in the hard work that i do and with the little money i get i support my american girlfriend so she doesnt end up on the streets. and you have the balls to call yourself communist? go fuck yourself.

[Queercommie Girl]

Yeah, you Maoists are so right. You were right on China – until it became capitalist; right on Vietnam – until it became capitalist; and you're having fun establishing capitalism in Nepal as we speak.

No wonder you have no labor program for the USA (or anywhere else). Mao apparently couldn't figure it out either. He thought that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were friends.

RED DAVE

He isn't a Maoist. Don't be sectarian and start to pick on Maoists as a whole.

[Queercommie Girl]

You have no understanding of what true communism really is. Instead you live in some white guilty fantasy of non-white superiority and supremacy. You are better of at SF instead of amongst the revolutionary left.


The only thing I'd say here though is that you really shouldn't associate sci-fi with the likes of him. I happen to be a sci-fi fan, and frankly so are lots of other socialists and leftists.

Don't taint sci-fi's good name with the likes of him.

[Queercommie Girl]

For better or worse Red Dave I do not think you'll get much of a reply. There is no US Maoist movement today. The New Communist movement became liberal Democrats and were absorbed into the Jesse Jackson campaign. FRSO is a socdem group tailing the Dems like the CPUS. Its hard to classify the PLP. The RCP is now a personality cult around Chairman Bob.

The once large US Maoist movement seems to have largely evaporated. There is Kasama and there are some intelligemt people there. Mike Ely occaisionally posts here, perhaps he could answer.Kasama is a regroupment project and it looks like they are trying to figure out a strategy for the US working class.Perhaps they are moving in a direction similar to that of CLR James, Facing Reality group, I don't know.

Actually there are a huge number of Maoists in many parts of the neo-colonial world, like India and Nepal. Even in the West, there are many Maoists in countries like Ireland. It's only in Anglo-Saxon countries that you have significantly less Maoists.

I'm not saying Maoism doesn't have a lot of problems, I'm only a semi-Maoist after all. But Maoism also has its strengths too. Maoism does tend to focus on anti-racism and anti-sexism more seriously, even though old-style Maoists don't tend to support LGBT rights.

To be frank, you should realise that those narrow economic class reductionists who ignore the issues regarding race, gender and sexuality altogether do tend to push some people to the other extreme sometimes, like MTW. (Ok maybe not so much sexuality but race and gender definitely) If you don't want to have a breeding ground for MTW ideas in the objective sense, then you should strive to remove the other extreme, namely narrow class reductionism, as well. If the issues of every minority and women are sufficiently considered within the mainstream socialist movement, then nobody would develop any kind of interest in fringe extreme ideas like MTW.

I'd say narrow class reductionism that completely ignores the genocide conducted upon LGBT people by reactionary right-wing fundamentalist religions can be just as bad as MTW.

[Kiev Communard]

Actually there are a huge number of Maoists in many parts of the neo-colonial world, like India and Nepal. Even in the West, there are many Maoists in countries like Ireland. It's only in Anglo-Saxon countries that you have significantly less Maoists.

Well, there are no significant Maoist groupings in post-Soviet/East European countries either, even if some of them (i.e. Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan) are totally dominated by Russian and other foreign capital, have the substantial numbers of rural peasant population and are generally characterized by the "Third World" conditions, so that I believe there is something more about the factors influencing the spread/lack of Maoist ideologies than neo-colonial conditions per se.


I'm not saying Maoism doesn't have a lot of problems, I'm only a semi-Maoist after all. But Maoism also has its strengths too. Maoism does tend to focus on anti-racism and anti-sexism more seriously, even though old-style Maoists don't tend to support LGBT rights.

To be frank, you should realise that those narrow economic class reductionists who ignore the issues regarding race, gender and sexuality altogether do tend to push some people to the other extreme sometimes, like MTW. (Ok maybe not so much sexuality but race and gender definitely) If you don't want to have a breeding ground for MTW ideas in the objective sense, then you should strive to remove the other extreme, namely narrow class reductionism, as well. If the issues of every minority and women are sufficiently considered within the mainstream socialist movement, then nobody would develop any kind of interest in fringe extreme ideas like MTW.

I'd say narrow class reductionism that completely ignores the genocide conducted upon LGBT people by reactionary right-wing fundamentalist religions can be just as bad as MTW.

You might be interested in Black Flame:The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism (http://ifile.it/jy1fxl/ebooksclub.org__Black_Flame__The_Revolutionary_Cla ss_Politics_of_Anarchism_and_Syndicalism__Counter_ Power_vol_1_.l_o1x371063x6zxz8.pdf) by Lucien van der Walten and Michael Schmidt (themselves members of a South African communist-anarchist organization), wherein there are separate chapters dedicated to anti-racist/anti-patriarchy struggles of historical communist-anarchist movement in the Third World countries. On a side note, I think the information about the history of Far Eastern communist-anarchist movement and their anti-imperialist struggle against Japanese and other imperial capitalist powers may also be useful:

http://libcom.org/history/articles/anarchism-in-korea

http://libcom.org/library/anarchists-may-4-movement-china

http://libcom.org/library/dimensions-chinese-anarchism-interview-arif-dirlik

http://libcom.org/history/articles/anarchism-in-japan

[Per Levy]

The only thing I'd say here though is that you really shouldn't associate sci-fi with the likes of him. I happen to be a sci-fi fan, and frankly so are lots of other socialists and leftists.

Don't taint sci-fi's good name with the likes of him.

i dont think he meant sci-fi, i guess with "SF" hindsight20/20 meant stormfront.

[Queercommie Girl]

i dont think he meant sci-fi, i guess with "SF" hindsight20/20 meant stormfront.

Gotta ya. ;)

[RED DAVE]

Actually there are a huge number of Maoists in many parts of the neo-colonial world, like India and Nepal. Even in the West, there are many Maoists in countries like Ireland. It's only in Anglo-Saxon countries that you have significantly less Maoists.And we see how well they're doing in Nepal. A year ago, we were assured that they were on the verge of some kind of victory. Now the party is split into at least three factions, is in the process of liquidating its armed force and is engaged up to its eyebrows in parliamentary maneuvering. And this party was the poster child for Maoism.


I'm not saying Maoism doesn't have a lot of problems, I'm only a semi-Maoist after all.That's like being semi-pregnant.


But Maoism also has its strengths too. Maoism does tend to focus on anti-racism and anti-sexism more seriously, even though old-style Maoists don't tend to support LGBT rights.One of the reasons why Maoists in the US focus on these things is that they don't have a clue as to how to work inside the working class. What they are engaged in is petit-bourgeois radicalism, not Marxism.


To be frank, you should realise that those narrow economic class reductionists who ignore the issues regarding race, gender and sexuality altogether do tend to push some people to the other extreme sometimes, like MTW.Are you trying to blame clowns like turquino on the rest of the Left?


(Ok maybe not so much sexuality but race and gender definitely)Are you saying that other Left groups ignore issues of race and gender?


If you don't want to have a breeding ground for MTW ideas in the objective sense, then you should strive to remove the other extreme, namely narrow class reductionism, as well.What groups are you concerned about, specifically? Otherwise, you're just grousing.


If the issues of every minority and women are sufficiently considered within the mainstream socialist movement, then nobody would develop any kind of interest in fringe extreme ideas like MTW.What is your evidence that these issues are not considered. The only concrete mention you've given is from inside Maoism itself.


I'd say narrow class reductionism that completely ignores the genocide conducted upon LGBT people by reactionary right-wing fundamentalist religions can be just as bad as MTW.Show us some evidence that such reductionism exists.

RED DAVE

[Queercommie Girl]

That's like being semi-pregnant.


Only for dogmatists. I take a more electic approach to politics.



One of the reasons why Maoists in the US focus on these things is that they don't have a clue as to how to work inside the working class. What they are engaged in is petit-bourgeois radicalism, not Marxism.
So I guess the issues of female, ethnic minority and queer workers are somehow "petit-bourgeois"? :rolleyes: Just because one is a worker doesn't mean one has to be the typical stereotypical image of a blue collar white heterosexual male industrial worker.



Are you trying to blame clowns like turquino on the rest of the Left?

Are you saying that other Left groups ignore issues of race and gender?
I didn't say that. Firstly I was not assigning "moral blame". Secondly I was referring to the opposite extreme of MTW - those who think any issue that is not directly class-related should just be completely ignored altogether, or otherwise they are somehow "anti-working class", and certainly not the left in general.



What groups are you concerned about, specifically? Otherwise, you're just grousing.

What is your evidence that these issues are not considered. The only concrete mention you've given is from inside Maoism itself.

Show us some evidence that such reductionism exists.
To be frank, that was a personal response to Lenina. We were talking about this very issue on Yahoo earlier, in which I mentioned the need to focus more on minority rights within the socialist movement.

[Queercommie Girl]

Well, there are no significant Maoist groupings in post-Soviet/East European countries either


I think in East Europe and the former Soviet Union, there is more of a nostalgia for orthodox Stalinism than for Maoism.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The socialists I have worked with are very much involved in LGBT rights, women;s issues, the African-American and Hispanic struggles.

In the West Maoism is as dead as a doorknob. Maoism does have "traction" in under developed countries but it has not had a stellar reputation in places like Peru or Nepal.It is unclear what is happening in India but the Naxalites do not appear to be able to lead a successful revolution there.

.Peasantry can and must be an important part of a revolution but there is no substitute for a socialism based and solidly rooted in worker's democracy.History has many examples showing how "the bloc of four classes strategy" , compromise with "progressive bourgeois" cannot work.There is no "progressive bougoise", thats an illusion.

[Kiev Communard]

I think in East Europe and the former Soviet Union, there is more of a nostalgia for orthodox Stalinism than for Maoism.

Actually the nostalgia you are speaking about is generally aimed not at "orthodox Stalinism" (save for Hoxhaist Albania, no East European country ever existed under "orthodox Stalinist" regime after 1956, when the more successful period of state capitalist modernization took place), but at (relative) social security, welfare benefits and secure employment attained under Brehznevite regimes after the 1960s. To a certain extent, this may resemble a nostalgia in West European countries concerning the demise of the welfare state after the 1970s crises, and this nostalgia is incredibly passive, limiting itself to the fatalistic belief in some "saviour politicians" or the miraculous return of the Brezhnevite USSR, rather than any actual political involvement.

In the political sphere such "right-wing Stalinists" are generally enthusiastic about the current Chinese regime, believing it to be a model worth emulating in their own countries, are intensely xenophobic (including, of course, homo- and transphobia), believe in various right-wing conspiracy theories and are intensely religious. The Zyuganovite KPRF is the most vivid example of such "Red (actually Brown-Red, with Brown clearly dominating) Conservatism", and the majority of actual "orthodox Stalinists" in post-Soviet countries are in fact a tiny minority, as even the supporters of insurrectionist forms of anarchism sometimes outnumber them.

a dominarian mode of production, as such personal domination took diverse forms, sometimes very different from the classical slavery).

It was followed by the period of land monopoly as a basis for exploitative relationship between the landlord class and their tributary, yet personally free (for the most part) tenants (what is often called "a feudal mode of production", yet in order to avoid some Eurocentric assumptions I decided to follow Samir Amin, Eric Wolf and Edward Said in designating this mode of production a tributary one), which was in turn succeeded by various forms of capitalism. Currently I am preoccupied with writing an article on Chinese capital expansion into Africa, but after I am done with this, I will post a more expanded commentary on different modes of production.]

[Queercommie Girl]

The socialists I have worked with are very much involved in LGBT rights, women;s issues, the African-American and Hispanic struggles.


That's good, but don't forget Asian issues too!

BTW, I was only referring to the opposite extreme of MTW, and not the Western left in general.

Maoism doesn't have a very good track record on LGBT rights anyway.



In the West Maoism is as dead as a doorknob. Maoism does have "traction" in under developed countries but it has not had a stellar reputation in places like Peru or Nepal.It is unclear what is happening in India but the Naxalites do not appear to be able to lead a successful revolution there.
Um. There are lots of Maoists in India. Numerically speaking certainly more than Trotskyists.

Isn't it a bit sectarian to write-off an entire tendency, as opposed to like a section of it?

I mean, it's not like any branch of the revolutionary left really has a large following in any country at the moment...

It's a case of the pot calling the kettle black, or as we Chinese say it, the mudpig calling the crow black...



.Peasantry can and must be an important part of a revolution but there is no substitute for a socialism based and solidly rooted in worker's democracy.History has many examples showing how "the bloc of four classes strategy" , compromise with "progressive bourgeois" cannot work.There is no "progressive bougoise", thats an illusion.Lenin worked with certain bourgeois elements during the NEP era too. The bloc of four classes is never meant to be anything other than short-term.

And in principle Maoism doesn't put peasants before workers either. Workers are considered to be the leading class, while peasants are considered to be the semi-leading class. Whatever flaws Maoism had historically in the empirical sense was due to the incorrect application of these principles, partly due to the limitations of the socio-economic environment in certain countries, rather than these principles themselves in the intrinsic sense.

If you write-off Maoism completely just because of mistakes made in history, well then you might as well write-off all of Marxism since so far every existing "socialist state" has ended up as a failure...

[S.Artesian]

Lenin worked with certain bourgeois elements during the NEP era too. The bloc of four classes is never meant to be anything other than short-term.

Not hardly the same thing.

The block of four classes is supposedly meant to be a revolutionary alliance for overthrowing imperialism.

The NEP was undertaken after the bourgeoisie, national and international, had been expropriated.

This is more than a technical difference, or simply an historical coincidence.

Whether you're a Maoist, ML-Maoist, Third-World Maoist, Hoxhaist, semi-Maoist [whatever that is], demi-Maoist, ML-anti-Maoist, the fundamental question to be answered is the same:

how did such a system, having accomplished its "revolutionary program," including expelling the foreign capitalists and expropriating the national bourgeoisie, actually stimulate the impulse to capitalist restoration, and participate in that restoration itself?

[Queercommie Girl]

Not hardly the same thing.

The block of four classes is supposedly meant to be a revolutionary alliance for overthrowing imperialism.

The NEP was undertaken after the bourgeoisie, national and international, had been expropriated.

This is more than a technical difference, or simply an historical coincidence.


The difference lies in the fact that China was a semi-feudal semi-colonial country which has been trampled under the iron hoofs of Western and Japanese imperialism for 100 years, while Lenin's Russia, despite being significantly less developed than the West, was not.

At any rate, it was a short-term policy, the national bourgeois was completely expropriated by the late 1950s.



how did such a system, having accomplished its "revolutionary program," including expelling the foreign capitalists and expropriating the national bourgeoisie, actually stimulate the impulse to capitalist restoration, and participate in that restoration itself?
How did Lenin's original USSR, which was a genuine democratic proletarian state, which gave equal rights to women and respected the rights of national minorities, which legalised homosexuality, end up like the ultra-corrupt male chauvinist queerphobic bourgeois shithole that is Russia today?

[S.Artesian]

How did Lenin's original USSR, which was a genuine democratic proletarian state, which gave equal rights to women and respected the rights of national minorities, which legalised homosexuality, end up like the ultra-corrupt bourgeois shithole that is Russia today?

Exactly. Absolutely correct. We need a materialist analysis, one that goes beyond the awarding of equal rights and looks into the actual reproduction of the economic relations of equality.


The difference lies in the fact that China was a semi-feudal semi-colonial country which has been trampled under the iron hoofs of Western and Japanese imperialism for 100 years, while Lenin's Russia, despite being significantly less developed than the West, was not.


That's not quite correct, as agriculture in the fSU was certainly described then, and with a bit of truth, as "semi-feudal," and advanced capital's specific weight in industrial production was certainly critical.

We might, we just might want to discard all this "semi-Marxism" that so easily explains things as "semi-feudal" "semi-colonial" and look at the social relations of production, and these countries interactions with the world market to explain things like the actual historical evolution and decomposition of revolutions.

Which I think is the point of the thread Kiev Communard initiated on the nature of the fSU.

Short version: there's no point discussing the compatibility of Maoism and Trotskyism if we are not going to look first at the actual material organization of production relations in those countries that Maoisst proclaim, or proclaimed, as socialist. And other Marxists, including some Trotskyists but certainly not limited to them, did not regard as socialist.

[Queercommie Girl]

To a certain extent, this may resemble a nostalgia in West European countries concerning the demise of the welfare state after the 1970s crises, and this nostalgia is incredibly passive, limiting itself to the fatalistic belief in some "saviour politicians" or the miraculous return of the Brezhnevite USSR, rather than any actual political involvement.


Flawed and "passive" it may be, it still reflects a genuine sentiment among the masses of ordinary workers who experience great anxiety due to the neo-liberal capitalist uncertainty and lack of social safety nets which dominates the world at the moment, and such sentiments need to be seriously considered if one's to seriously engage with the masses, rather than just brushed aside as the "need for a crutch by the weak".

After all, socialism is not underpinned by some abstract and idealistic ethics of altruism, but precisely by selfishness to some extent, in that people naturally turn away from and begin to oppose the capitalist system once they directly experience financial and social insecurity in a very personal and immediate sense within this system. This personal reason spurs people on much more than any abstract heroism or "communist morality" would ever do. What socialist activists need to do is to organise and motivate them, rather than dismiss them as "impotent" or something.



a dominarian mode of production, as such personal domination took diverse forms, sometimes very different from the classical slavery).

It was followed by the period of land monopoly as a basis for exploitative relationship between the landlord class and their tributary, yet personally free (for the most part) tenants (what is often called "a feudal mode of production", yet in order to avoid some Eurocentric assumptions I decided to follow Samir Amin, Eric Wolf and Edward Said in designating this mode of production a tributary one), which was in turn succeeded by various forms of capitalism. Currently I am preoccupied with writing an article on Chinese capital expansion into Africa, but after I am done with this, I will post a more expanded commentary on different modes of production.]

I don't see how this is relevant to the current thread, but I agree with your new understanding on this matter generally speaking, even though I might not use exactly the same terms to describe the various socio-economic modes of production.

[Queercommie Girl]

That's not quite correct, as agriculture in the fSU was certainly described then, and with a bit of truth, as "semi-feudal," and advanced capital's specific weight in industrial production was certainly critical.

We might, we just might want to discard all this "semi-Marxism" that so easily explains things as "semi-feudal" "semi-colonial" and look at the social relations of production, and these countries interactions with the world market to explain things like the actual historical evolution and decomposition of revolutions.


Semi-feudal? Yes; Semi-colonial? No.

I thought you of all people would understand the meaning of colonialism.

This is partly what I meant when I said "the opposite extreme of MTW": a complete neglect of any kind of oppression which is not economic class oppression of the most narrow and dogmatic type, such as colonialist oppression, sexism, queerphobia etc. This can be just as wrong as denying the ultimate centrality of economic class oppression. The "truth" is somewhere in-between. Proximate reasons aren't the same as ultimate reasons.

[Kiev Communard]

Flawed and "passive" it may be, it still reflects a genuine sentiment among the masses of ordinary workers who experience great anxiety due to the neo-liberal capitalist uncertainty and lack of social safety nets which dominates the world at the moment, and such sentiments need to be seriously considered if one's to seriously engage with the masses, rather than just brushed aside as the "need for a crutch by the weak".

I did not claim that it should be 'brushed aside', I was pointing out that the paternalistic leftover of Brezhnevite political ideology holds off the development of a genuine working-class dissent, and therefore it is necessary to criticize the illusions in "benefactor state" that supposedly regulates social relations for "common good", which just as pernicious as (equally paternalistic) illusions about "compassionate employers" that are just as widespread among the workers of private industrial enterprises there. Currently this constitutes one of the largest problems for the workers' movement in post-Soviet countries.


I don't see how this is relevant to the current thread, but I agree with your new understanding on this matter generally speaking, even though I might not use exactly the same terms to describe the various socio-economic modes of production.

Oh, I just wanted to re-visit an old debate and provide some framework for its further continuation.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I think in East Europe and the former Soviet Union, there is more of a nostalgia for orthodox Stalinism than for Maoism.

Or even Hoxhaism, for that matter. ;)

[Lenina Rosenweg]

My understanding is that the "agriculture problem", that is extracting wealth from a modernized agriculture sector had to be solved before modern capitalism, not to speak of socialism, could be developed.Lenin's "land to the tiller" could be seen as a nesecary step backwards.In the horrendous situation facing a vastly underdeveloped revolutionary SU socialism could not be built without massive aid from the West. There was aid of course, but to the forces of reaction.

The Bolsheviks made severe mistakes. Their goal was not so much building socialism as physical survival.

Anyway, to be blunt about it, Maoism doesn't work. In the 60s and 70s Maoism did have a certain radical chic cachet in the West.Maoism was seen as a libertarian alternative to the fossilized and deadening repression of Stalinism. People like Sartre, Lacan, Jean Luc Goddard and others waved Maoist banners. (Goddard made several cheesy Maoist inspired films which are fun to watch)Even Trotskyist groups used Maoist slogans. This is all over now, Western Maoist groups evaporated like a puddle on a hot summer's day. Maoism does not have any resonance with Western working classes.

BTW, US 70s Maoists were intensely homophobic. There is an article on Kasama which mentions this.

Maoism does have popularity in Third World countries with large traditional peasant populations today.India, Peru, Nepal, and elsewhere.The track record is not good. Despite what Mosfeld may tell you, the Sendero Luminoso has many well documented vicious human rights violations. They worked to destroy any rivals in the Peruvian left and they terrorized peasant populations. This made it all the easier for the Peruvian state to crush them.

The Naxalites have continued their struggle for the past 40 years. They seemed to have been virtually crushed in the 90s but have experienced a revival as India adopted neo-liberalism, as the voice of arividasis and their struggle against MNCs.Ultimately they will not get anywhere unless their struggle is connected to that of the urban working classes. This is extremely important.

The Nepalese Maoists also are not getting anywhere. Their only progressive move was abolishing the monarchy. this is not sectarianism but observation.

The problems of Maoist movements result from specific causes. Maoist movements are not embedded in the working classes of their countries. They are embedded in peasant based guerillismo military organizations which by necessity are non-democratic. The documented human rights violation in Peru, India and elsewhere result from this.

China restored capitalism not because the "good guys lost the GPCR". The Cultural Revolution contained anti-authoritarian and anti-bureaucratic elements. The struggle was contained how ever in rivalry between bureaucratic cliques, most between Mao and Liu. Factions were mobilized for this.

Many Chinese people I've spoken with, now in their late 50s/60s, are filled with anger and bitterness over their own lost years and that of China. The GPCR was gigantic, tragic con job.

capitalism was restored because of inherent contradictions within the Stalinist command economy.The ruling group saw that as the best alternative. They handled the transition far better than their counterparts in the fSU (so far anyway, the "sweatshop of the world may entire a crisis period soon) This isn't cynicism but a materialist analysis of why Stalinism collapsed.

Trust me on this one, Iseul, Maoism is not the way to go.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Actually the nostalgia you are speaking about is generally aimed not at "orthodox Stalinism" (save for Hoxhaist Albania, no East European country ever existed under "orthodox Stalinist" regime after 1956, when the more successful period of state capitalist modernization took place), but at (relative) social security, welfare benefits and secure employment attained under Brehznevite regimes after the 1960s.

[...]

The Zyuganovite KPRF is the most vivid example of such "Red (actually Brown-Red, with Brown clearly dominating) Conservatism", and the majority of actual "orthodox Stalinists" in post-Soviet countries are in fact a tiny minority, as even the supporters of insurrectionist forms of anarchism sometimes outnumber them.

Is the RCWP-RPC a mainly Russian phenomenon, then, with greater appeal of the "Four Classics" (no Hoxha) than Trotskyist or anarchist organizations?


Instead, I agree that all pre-capitalist class societies went through a stage of the prominence of personal domination as as a means of extracting surplus product (what is commonly known as "a slave mode of production", but I now prefer to call it a dominarian mode of production, as such personal domination took diverse forms, sometimes very different from the classical slavery).

It was followed by the period of land monopoly as a basis for exploitative relationship between the landlord class and their tributary, yet personally free (for the most part) tenants (what is often called "a feudal mode of production", yet in order to avoid some Eurocentric assumptions I decided to follow Samir Amin, Eric Wolf and Edward Said in designating this mode of production a tributary one), which was in turn succeeded by various forms of capitalism.

I just hope your planned discussion is titled to reflect general history so that my attention can be given to it (how it compares to "petty commodity mode(s)" and "generalized commodity mode(s)"). ;)

[Queercommie Girl]

My understanding is that the "agriculture problem", that is extracting wealth from a modernized agriculture sector had to be solved before modern capitalism, not to speak of socialism, could be developed.


So what's your point? Lenin never said socialism would arrive in a day.



Lenin's "land to the tiller" could be seen as a nessecary step backwards.In the horrendous situation facing a vastly underdeveloped revolutionary SU socialism could not be built without massive aid from the West. There was aid of course, but to the forces of reaction.
I disagree. Obviously the conditions were bad in Russia at the time, but "land to the tiller" is step backwards how? This is only true if you discriminate against the peasantry as a class and have a fetish for "industrial efficiency".

For me, socialism is more about equality than it is about efficiency. I'd rather live in a poor but equal society than a rich but highly unequal one.



The Bolsheviks made severe mistakes. Their goal was not so much building socialism as physical survival.
The Bolsheviks made some mistakes sure, but far less than the infantile left communists you sometimes like to flirt with had they got into power. Frankly the left coms were incapable of getting into power anyway.

I know you are a member of the CWI, but frankly you are not even a very good Trotskyist. I seem to defend Bolshevik orthodoxy more than you do sometimes.



Anyway, to be blunt about it, Maoism doesn't work.
Well, how did you arrive at this conclusion? If it's by empirical observation then I would say "to be blunt about it, Marxism doesn't work"...



In the 60s and 70s Maoism did have a certain radical chic cachet in the West. Maoism was seen as a libertarian alternative to the fossilized and deadening repression of Stalinism. People like Sartre, Lacan, Jean Luc Goddard and others waved Maoist banners. (Goddard made several cheesy Maoist inspired films which are fun to watch)Even Trotskyist groups used Maoist slogans. This is all over now, Western Maoist groups evaporated like a puddle on a hot summer's day. Maoism does not have any resonance with Western working classes.
Um. In the 60s and 70s Trotskyism was much bigger than it is now. The CWI back then even had major influences in the higher ranks of the Labour Party. Now it has been completely purged from Labour, and most British workers no longer pay any attention to Trotskyism.

So your point is...

The entire revolutionary left is at a relatively low point at the moment compared with the 60s and 70s, not just Maoism.



BTW, US 70s Maoists were intensely homophobic. There is an article on Kasama which mentions this.
Many Trots and other kinds of socialists were too back then.



Maoism does have popularity in Third World countries with large traditional peasant populations today. India, Peru, Nepal, and elsewhere. The track record is not good. Despite what Mosfeld may tell you, the Sendero Luminoso has many well documented vicious human rights violations. They worked to destroy any rivals in the Peruvian left and they terrorized peasant populations. This made it all the easier for the Peruvian state to crush them.

The Naxalites have continued their struggle for the past 40 years. They seemed to have been virtually crushed in the 90s but have experienced a revival as India adopted neo-liberalism, as the voice of arividasis and their struggle against MNCs. Ultimately they will not get anywhere unless their struggle is connected to that of the urban working classes. This is extremely important.

The Nepalese Maoists also are not getting anywhere. Their only progressive move was abolishing the monarchy. this is not sectarianism but observation.

The problems of Maoist movements result from specific causes. Maoist movements are not embedded in the working classes of their countries. They are embedded in peasant based guerillismo military organizations which by necessity are non-democratic. The documented human rights violation in Peru, India and elsewhere result from this.
You mean "human rights violations" like burning down the houses of the rich landlords? :rolleyes:

I have never denied that Maoism has some problems, even quite serious ones like insufficient links with the urban working class by practising Maoists today. But frankly at least Maoists take national liberation issues seriously. On this point alone they sure beat ultra-leftist dogmatists who can't see anything beyond the most narrow form of economic class reductionism.



China restored capitalism not because the "good guys lost the GPCR".
Who made such an evaluation? :confused:



Many Chinese people I've spoken with, now in their late 50s/60s, are filled with anger and bitterness over their own lost years and that of China. The GPCR was gigantic, tragic con job.
There are many people in the West who were once radical youths back in the 60s but have subsequently turned to the right and now regret their involvement in the radical left. Your point?



capitalism was restored because of inherent contradictions within the Stalinist command economy.The ruling group saw that as the best alternative. They handled the transition far better than their counterparts in the fSU (so far anyway, the "sweatshop of the world may entire a crisis period soon) This isn't cynicism but a materialist analysis of why Stalinism collapsed.
On this point I certainly don't disagree a lot. The lack of worker's democracy is the primary problem in all "Stalinist" systems. But the "bureaucracy" wasn't a separate class in its own right like the bourgeois is. So when one talks about "revisionists" going onto the capitalist road, it refers to bureaucrats who've transitioned into members of the new bureaucratic capitalist class. This class wasn't always present in the PRC.

[scarletghoul]

cba to read the whole thread so i'll just join in from here
Maoism does have "traction" in under developed countries but it has not had a stellar reputation in places like Peru or Nepal.
Name a single (significant) revolutionary movement that the bourgeoisie and its media has not tried to completely discredit through lies, half-truths, double standards, smears, etc.

Honestly as I said once before, I think that if RevLeft existed in the 1920s there would be a load of posts like "how can you support the bolsheviks, they cause famine and eat babies, they are worse than the old bourgeoisie".

That's not to say the Sendero Luminoso have never done anything wrong (I havent researched on them much tbh), but it is just silly when leftists completely go along with the bourgeois narrative of evil human rights violating maoists etc etc without questioning a thing..


It is unclear what is happening in India but the Naxalites do not appear to be able to lead a successful revolution there.
lol what they have 10000000s of supporters, 10000s of guerillas, and influence over a lot of the Indian territory. If they are not able to lead a successful revolution then why did Prime Minister Singh call them the countries biggest internal security threat, send 100,000s of paramilitaries into their territories, and is now starting to even send the Indian Army in ?


History has many examples showing how "the bloc of four classes strategy" , compromise with "progressive bourgeois" cannot work.There is no "progressive bougoise", thats an illusion.
To take just the most recent example, wouldn't you say that the abolition of Nepal's monarchy was progressive ?? It was carried out by the Maoists with support from the progressive bourgeoisie. Its all very well to say that no bourgeoisie can ever be progressive but Im assuming you did not grow up in a semifeudal absolute monarchy

[scarletghoul]

And regarding the title question uhm it really depends what your understanding of Trotskyism is, because there is a whole trot spectrum from the Marcyites to the Cliffites. Basically I think Trotskyism can be divided into 2 parts: the socialist part and the opportunist part. On the one hand Trotsky played a big part in the Russian Revolution and was a committed socialist who viewed the USSR as a workers' state, albeit a 'degenerated' one. In this sense his criticism of Stalin had good intentions and wanted to strengthen socialism. On the other hand his attacks on Stalin were opportunistic (ie, anything stalin does is evil because im not in power so i dont have to be responsable for everything har har) and his manner was not constructive, which was harmful to the soviet government especially on the eve of nazi invasion. Marcyites and whatnot are more on the socialistic side of Trotskyism, viewing the USSR (and the rest) as degenerated workers states, but still considering them workers states and therefore supporting them. Cliffites take just the opportunist side of Trotsky and do away with his objectively socialist side by completely opposing all socialist states as "state capitalist", letting them criticise them like trotsky criticised stalin but without having to bother supporting them.

So I think the socialist side of Trotskyism could be compatible with Maoism, if you see it as a accurate assessment of the bureaucratic degeneration, but the opportunist cliffite side of Trotskyism is not compatible, for the simple reason that Maoism is an active revolutionary movement and not a society for middle class students to sell shitty newspapers and criticise every existing socialist movement in order to maintain some ideological purity that makes them irrelevant to the world

[Queercommie Girl]

And regarding the title question uhm it really depends what your understanding of Trotskyism is, because there is a whole trot spectrum from the Marcyites to the Cliffites. Basically I think Trotskyism can be divided into 2 parts: the socialist part and the opportunist part. On the one hand Trotsky played a big part in the Russian Revolution and was a committed socialist who viewed the USSR as a workers' state, albeit a 'degenerated' one. In this sense his criticism of Stalin had good intentions and wanted to strengthen socialism. On the other hand his attacks on Stalin were opportunistic (ie, anything stalin does is evil because im not in power so i dont have to be responsable for everything har har) and his manner was not constructive, which was harmful to the soviet government especially on the eve of nazi invasion. Marcyites and whatnot are more on the socialistic side of Trotskyism, viewing the USSR (and the rest) as degenerated workers states, but still considering them workers states and therefore supporting them. Cliffites take just the opportunist side of Trotsky and do away with his objectively socialist side by completely opposing all socialist states as "state capitalist", letting them criticise them like trotsky criticised stalin but without having to bother supporting them.

So I think the socialist side of Trotskyism could be compatible with Maoism, if you see it as a accurate assessment of the bureaucratic degeneration, but the opportunist cliffite side of Trotskyism is not compatible, for the simple reason that Maoism is an active revolutionary movement and not a society for middle class students to sell shitty newspapers and criticise every existing socialist movement in order to maintain some ideological purity that makes them irrelevant to the world

I agree with a lot of this. I certainly reject the theory of state-capitalism, but there are 2 points I need to mention:

1) Marcyism certainly has a lot of good points intrinsically, but the way in which these are applied to Chinese domestic politics today by parties like the PSL is problematic;

2) I wouldn't completely dismiss the SWP. What I disagree with is obviously their theory of "state-capitalism", and occasionally they buy too much into political Islam. But they do produce some good books sometimes, and frankly the SWP actually takes national liberation movements more seriously than many other Trots out there.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Well, we could argue over this endlessly. I would not equate the tactics of the SL with that of the Bolsheviks. From Wikipedia


In response, in April the Shining Path entered the province of Huanca Sancos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huanca_Sancos_Province) and the towns of Yanaccollpa (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yanaccollpa&action=edit&redlink=1), Ataccara (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ataccara&action=edit&redlink=1), Llacchua (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Llacchua&action=edit&redlink=1), Muylacruz (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Muylacruz&action=edit&redlink=1) and Lucanamarca, where they killed 69 people, in what became known as the Lucanamarca massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucanamarca_massacre). This was the first time the Shining Path massacred peasants. Similar events followed, such as the ones in Hauyllo (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hauyllo&action=edit&redlink=1), Tambo District (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambo_District,_La_Mar). The guerrillas killed 47 peasants, including 14 children aged four to fifteen.[23] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Path#cite_note-22) Additional massacres by the Shining Path occurred, such as the one in Marcas (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marcas&action=edit&redlink=1) on August 29, 1985.[/URL] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Path#cite_note-23) In addition to occasional massacres, the Shining Path established labor camps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_camps) to punish those who betrayed the "forces of the people." Those imprisoned were forced to work the lands and the coca fields. Hunger and deprivation were commonplace, and attempting escape was punishable by immediate execution.
[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sendero_Luminoso_Peru.png"]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Path#cite_note-25) http://bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.17/common/images/magnify-clip.png (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sendero_Luminoso_Peru.png)



The Shining Path's attacks were not limited to the countryside. It mounted attacks against the infrastructure in Lima (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lima), killing civilians in the process. In 1983, it sabotaged several electrical transmission towers, causing a citywide blackout (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_outage), and set fire and destroyed the Bayer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayer) industrial plant. That same year, it set off a powerful bomb in the offices of the governing party, Popular Action (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Action_%28Peru%29). Escalating its activities in Lima, in June 1985 it blew up electricity transmission towers in Lima, producing a blackout, and detonated car bombs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_bomb) near the government palace and the justice palace. It was believed to be responsible for bombing a shopping mall.[27] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Path#cite_note-26) At the time, President Fernando Belaúnde Terry was receiving the Argentine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentina) president Raúl Alfonsín (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%BAl_Alfons%C3%ADn). In one of its last attacks in Lima, on July 16, 1992, the group detonated a powerful bomb on Tarata Street (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarata_bombing) in the Miraflores District (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miraflores_District), full of civilian people, adults and children, [28] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Path#cite_note-27) killing 25 people and injuring an additional 155.[29] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Path#cite_note-28)
During this period, the Shining Path assassinated (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassinations) specific individuals, notably leaders of other leftist groups, local political parties, labor unions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_union), and peasant organizations, some of whom were anti-Shining Path Marxists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism).[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Path#cite_note-Quien-4) On April 24, 1985, in the midst of presidential elections, it tried to assassinate Domingo García Rada, the president of the Peruvian National Electoral Council, severely injuring him and mortally wounding his driver. In 1988, Constantin Gregory, an American citizen working for the United States Agency for International Development (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_International_Development ), was assassinated. Two French aid workers were killed on December 4 that same year.[16] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Path#cite_note-Courtois677-15) In August 1991, the group killed one Italian and two Polish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland) priests in Ancash Region (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancash_Region).[30] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Path#cite_note-29) The following February, it assassinated María Elena Moyano (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar%C3%ADa_Elena_Moyano), a well-known community organizer in Villa El Salvador (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villa_El_Salvador), a vast shantytown (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shantytown) in Lima.[31] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shining_Path#cite_note-30)
Iwhatever happened in Peru, this is not the Marxist merthod, this is peasnt based guerillism. This is the tragedy of Maoism.The SL would have killed most of the people on this forum.

Abolishing the monarchy was progressive but can you name anything else Prachanda has done? He is going out of his way to placate the IMF and World Bank. At this historical stage there is no such thing as a progressive bourgeois. This is a dangerous fallacy.It ties the working class and peasantry to people who are, by definition, our enemies.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

And regarding the title question uhm it really depends what your understanding of Trotskyism is, because there is a whole trot spectrum from the Marcyites to the Cliffites. Basically I think Trotskyism can be divided into 2 parts: the socialist part and the opportunist part. On the one hand Trotsky played a big part in the Russian Revolution and was a committed socialist who viewed the USSR as a workers' state, albeit a 'degenerated' one. In this sense his criticism of Stalin had good intentions and wanted to strengthen socialism. On the other hand his attacks on Stalin were opportunistic (ie, anything stalin does is evil because im not in power so i dont have to be responsable for everything har har) and his manner was not constructive, which was harmful to the soviet government especially on the eve of nazi invasion. Marcyites and whatnot are more on the socialistic side of Trotskyism, viewing the USSR (and the rest) as degenerated workers states, but still considering them workers states and therefore supporting them. Cliffites take just the opportunist side of Trotsky and do away with his objectively socialist side by completely opposing all socialist states as "state capitalist", letting them criticise them like trotsky criticised stalin but without having to bother supporting them.

So I think the socialist side of Trotskyism could be compatible with Maoism, if you see it as a accurate assessment of the bureaucratic degeneration, but the opportunist cliffite side of Trotskyism is not compatible, for the simple reason that Maoism is an active revolutionary movement and not a society for middle class students to sell shitty newspapers and criticise every existing socialist movement in order to maintain some ideological purity that makes them irrelevant to the world

Trotsky had an amazing critique of the bureaucratic degeneration of the SU in his "Revolution Betrayed". Trotsky developed the theory of "combined and uneven development" which I think goes far to explain developments in the world today. Trotsky also (with others)developed the Theory of Permanent Revolution.

I read the "Socialist Worker" (ISO paper). I read "The Socialist" (UK CWI) I read "Socialist Alternative" (US CWI), I read "Socialist Action", I read the WSW. I am sorry you think these are shitty.I think these papers are informatife, interesting, and quite good.

Just so I can compare and contrast, could you provide links to the most popular Maoist papers in the US and the UK? Besides the RCP that is.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Sam Marcy could be seen as a "far right Pabloite". As I understand a major difference he had with the US SWP was over the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. He supported it. He was the original "tankie".The WW and PSL support any Third World dictator who they see as opposing the USW-Mugabe, Acmanidijad, Saddam, and Qaddaffi. This denies agency for the working class in those countries and ironically makes imperialist intervention much easier.

[Queercommie Girl]

Sam Marcy could be seen as a "far right Pabloite". As I understand a major difference he had with the US SWP was over the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. He supported it. He was the original "tankie".The WW and PSL support any Third World dictator who they see as opposing the USW-Mugabe, Acmanidijad, Saddam, and Qaddaffi. This denies agency for the working class in those countries and ironically makes imperialist intervention much easier.

PSL's analysis is problematic even by Marcy's own standards. They still think what is required in China today is just a "political revolution", as if China today is still a classic "Stalinist" state.

The original "tankies" only supported deformed worker's states, i.e. real Stalinist states, not Islamic fundamentalists, states run by bureaucratic capitalists and states run by military dictators.

I certainly wouldn't write-off Marcyism intrinsically though.

[S.Artesian]

Semi-feudal? Yes; Semi-colonial? No.

I thought you of all people would understand the meaning of colonialism.

This is partly what I meant when I said "the opposite extreme of MTW": a complete neglect of any kind of oppression which is not economic class oppression of the most narrow and dogmatic type, such as colonialist oppression, sexism, queerphobia etc. This can be just as wrong as denying the ultimate centrality of economic class oppression. The "truth" is somewhere in-between. Proximate reasons aren't the same as ultimate reasons.


OK, tell me what are the characteristics of agriculture in China that make it "semi-colonial" as opposed to the "semi-feudal" agriculture of Russia?

Were large agricultural estates owned by foreign capital with indigenous producers entangled in debt peonage arrangements?

Please provide references for these characteristics of semi-colonial agriculture.

I think it's important to understand this since China was so overwhelmingly rural and agricultural; if colonialism is the dominant mode, then it must be economically dominant in the main sectors of production. So where is this colonialism that so informs the social relations of classes as to somehow make those relations different than under capitalism?

[S.Artesian]

Look who's back, wearing a different mask over his junior-KGB man uniform, with a Mao button-- Scarlet Ghoul, with a name tag that says "Hello, my name is Zenga Zenga."

Last I heard of him he was selling woof tickets about icepicks and righteous proletarians hunting down me and Red Dave-- until he got called out on it and scampered away.

Just wanted to make sure everyone knows who this Zenga character is.

So... let's look at the latest misapprehension of class struggle from our mini-Mao:


To take just the most recent example, wouldn't you say that the abolition of Nepal's monarchy was progressive ?? It was carried out by the Maoists with support from the progressive bourgeoisie. Its all very well to say that no bourgeoisie can ever be progressive but Im assuming you did not grow up in a semifeudal absolute monarchy



Ummh.......no I would not. Try this one on. "Wouldn't you, Vladimir Ilych say that the abolition of the Tsarist monarchy was progressive. This was carried out by the strength the Mensheviks received from the soviets and in conjunction with the Kadets. How can you say the bourgeoisie are not progressive when in fact they are bringing democracy to our country."

Vlad said for the record: "No support to the Provisional Revolutionary Government. No support to the progressive bourgeoisie. No support for the socialist ministers. All power to the soviet." Now the fact that some want to claim is a 3rd world country changes the fundamental class relations... exactly how?

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The point I started to make when I mentioned agriculture is that the "agricultural revolution" was a necessary precondition for capitalism. Maoism flourishes in regions which has not solved the agriculture problem. Looking at it this way Mao established the preconditions of capitalism in China today, that was (however unconscious) historic role. Bordiga called Mao the last of the romantic bourgeois revolutionaries. Onbviously Mao and hgis followers wouldn't see it that way but personal perceptions are irrelevant in a materialist conception of history.

Mao had more in common with Robespierre than he did with Marx or Lenin.

Anyway I'm not a "Leninist" or even a 'Trotskyist" I'm a Marxist. Marxism is a science and shouldn't care about "orthodoxy", that's religion.

[Os Cangaceiros]

That's not to say the Sendero Luminoso have never done anything wrong (I havent researched on them much tbh), but it is just silly when leftists completely go along with the bourgeois narrative of evil human rights violating maoists etc etc without questioning a thing..


LOL Sendero Luminoso was one of the biggest disasters ever for Maoism. That group was basically everything that's wrong with the ideology.


The slaughter at Lucanamarca was followed by mass executions of villagers in Cochas, Uchuraccay, Huamanguilla, Chaca, Huayllao, and Sivia. Fifteen thousand Andean peasants had perished by 1994, as the poorest Peruvians remained the principle victims of the war that the Shining Path waged in their name...Ragged bands descended from the high moors to loot and kill in nighttime raids, in a futile bid to wipe out village defense organizations that continued to multiply in the early 1990's. "Death to wretches," shouted the leader of a machine-gun wielding band of fifty militants who torched the settlement of Paccosan in Huanta province in June 1993, before shooting the seventy-eight-year-old mother of the leader of the village defense patrols as she pleaded for her life in Quechua.


In 1993 an armed column descended upon the town of Satipo. Cadres believed that Ashaninka indians in this jungle settlement had collaborated with the army. This conviction, within the framework of party thought, made them into "miserable mercenaries" to be "annihilated by the people's justice." With knives and guns, the guerillas slaughtered sixty-five indians, even spearing four children, as they shouted vivas to President Gonzalo and "people's war".


The Savonarolan fervency of the Gang of Four reappeared in Gonzalo Thought in an all-or-nothing vision of history as a ceaseless struggle between the "glorious forces of true revolutionaries" and the "miserable revisionism" of other Peruvian socialist parties and the "social imperialism" of China and the Soviet Union. Opponents were "filthy", "parasitic", "fetid", "cancerous" and "reptilian" in this social etiology of purity and danger, providing the ideological framework for the murder of hundreds of trade unionists, peasant activists and neighborhood leaders from other political parties as well as policemen and soldiers. To kill was to cleanse evil. To die was to become a martyr.

And guess what? The millenarian cult led by Guzman weren't just accused of commiting the murderous acts they did, they openly admitted to them and celebrated them! They were some of the lowest scumsuckers on earth, just as low as the brutal military units that were sent after them. Together they created a horrid situation for Peru's most impoverished and vulnerable people. Was it any wonder that the indians mostly hated them, considering the fact that they were the over-zealous followers of a university professor, who arrogantly dictated to them that they could no longer travel to near-by markets to acquire goods, or bury the corpses of suspected collaborators?

SL just took the defects of Maoism to their farthest extreme, and personified the so-called "secular religion", with disasterous consequences.

[Geiseric]

Just thought I'd throw this in, I know a personal account from somebody isn't always a totally honest affair, but my spanish teacher (public school, not private) said that he taught at a peruvian university (which for the most part is free to go to in peru) and Shining Path blew up his car when he almost walked into it in an attempt to get their message across to people who speaked honestly about them, because they tried to make him speak well about Shining Path to his students so they would go and join them, and he refused after seeing what they've been doing in the countryside. Yep, his missing leg is proof.

[caramelpence]

And regarding the title question uhm it really depends what your understanding of Trotskyism is, because there is a whole trot spectrum from the Marcyites to the Cliffites...

Uh, you say that the theory of state capitalism as put forward by the IS tradition is an example of the opportunistic side of Trotskyism and that Marcyism (allegedly representing the socialist side of Trotskyism despite the contemporary PSL and WWP having almost nothing in common with Trotsky's analysis) has more in common with Maoism...but Mao probably outdid any historical or current Trotskyist group in the way he condemned the USSR in the 1960s and 70s. In 1964, for example, he asserted that "the Soviet Union today is the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the grand bourgeoisie, a fascist German dictatorship, and a Hitlerite dictatorship. They are a bunch of rascals." Do you know of any Trotskyists who have ever described the USSR at any point in its existence as fascist or who have otherwise resorted to the kind of grandiose and anti-theoretical rhetoric that Mao used? You seem to me like you are trying to downplay the importance of anti-Sovietism in the practice and rhetoric of the CPC (not to mention the very real geopolitical clashes between the PRC and USSR) and that you are taking Maoism to mean the kind of Brezhnevist politics that Maoists have historically rejected. If you think that both the PRC and USSR were socialist during the Cold War and that the same was true of countries like Vietnam and the DPRK, then fine, because some people on the left did argue as such, but don't pretend that you're a Maoist, because Maoists were distinguished throughout the world by their violent rejection of the Soviets and the official Communist Parties - to the extent that many Maoists in Western Europe, in West Germany for example, genuinely believed that a Soviet military invasion was imminent and that the countries of Western Europe would comprise the battleground of a future world war.

Also, China was not "semi-feudal", or "feudal", or anything other than capitalism in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, and most people (especially Maoists) who say otherwise have a totally impoverished understanding of capitalism's laws of motion, including the difference between use value production and commodity production, etc.

[S.Artesian]

Also, China was not "semi-feudal", or "feudal", or anything other than capitalism in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, and everyone (including Maoists) who says otherwise has a totally impoverished understanding of capitalism's laws of motion, including the difference between use value production and commodity production, etc.

And no understanding of uneven and combined development and no understanding of China's interconnection with world markets.

Or to some it all up: no understanding of capital, no understanding of Marx.

[Queercommie Girl]

The point I started to make when I mentioned agriculture is that the "agricultural revolution" was a necessary precondition for capitalism. Maoism flourishes in regions which has not solved the agriculture problem. Looking at it this way Mao established the preconditions of capitalism in China today, that was (however unconscious) historic role. Bordiga called Mao the last of the romantic bourgeois revolutionaries. Onbviously Mao and hgis followers wouldn't see it that way but personal perceptions are irrelevant in a materialist conception of history.

Mao had more in common with Robespierre than he did with Marx or Lenin.

Anyway I'm not a "Leninist" or even a 'Trotskyist" I'm a Marxist. Marxism is a science and shouldn't care about "orthodoxy", that's religion.

I trust Bordiga's views on Mao as much as I trust the mainstream Western bourgeois views on Mao.

[Thirsty Crow]

I trust Bordiga's views on Mao as much as I trust the mainstream Western bourgeois views on Mao.
You really do have a knack for evading problematic (for you) theoretical points in a given critique in favour of "trusted" sources, which basically means sources you can understand (and which you are familiar with) with consequent political positions you are comfortable with?

[Queercommie Girl]

You really do have a knack for evading problematic (for you) theoretical points in a given critique in favour of "trusted" sources, which basically means sources you can understand (and which you are familiar with) with consequent political positions you are comfortable with?

Ok, so how was Mao a "bourgeois revolutionary" when he liquidated the entire capitalist class in the country? :rolleyes:

Don't tell me you believe in the theory of "state-capitalism". Sure, you can talk about the lack of sufficient worker's democracy and bureaucratic deformation in Mao's China, but it was no capitalist state.

If China was a "capitalist state" then and a "capitalist state" now, then what has changed? Anyone with a working brain can see China today is fundamentally different from China under Mao.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Mao (like Robespierre) over reached himself and tried to do something which wasn't possible-create socialism in China,in one impoverished backward country, with methods alien to worker's democracy.The Chinese capitalist class was not destroyed-they continued to flourish in Hong Kong (which could easily have been taken by Mao in the 50s and 60s and where much of the Shanghai capitalist class fled to) and Taiwan. When the time was right they were poised to make a great comeback.

France had the Thermidor, China had Deng, same thing and for the same reasons, ultimately..

[Queercommie Girl]

The Chinese capitalist class was not destroyed-they continued to flourish in Hong Kong (which could easily have been taken by Mao in the 50s and 60s and where much of the Shanghai capitalist class fled to) and Taiwan. When the time was right they were poised to make a great comeback.


Hong Kong was a British colony. Taiwan was under US military protection by the 7th fleet. They were outside the bounds of the PRC.

Are you seriously saying Mao is a "bourgeois revolutionary" because he didn't hunt down every single capitalist who escaped to HK and Taiwan? :rolleyes:

[Kiev Communard]

Ok, so how was Mao a "bourgeois revolutionary" when he liquidated the entire capitalist class in the country? :rolleyes:

Do you think Ivan the Fearsome 'liquidated' feudalism in Muscowy, when he slaughtered almost all old nobility who directly owned their estates and substituted it with his servants who held their fiefs from the State and on the conditional basis? Or did the introduction of military settlements in the Kingdom of Wei during the Three Kingdoms period, with the tenants in these settlements directly subordinated to the State, meant that the private property on their lands was liquidated? Come on, you should know the difference between private property as the property of a one part of the society (whatever this part's internal organization is) and the individual form of private property, which was actually dominant only for a small time between the early 19th century and the beginning of the epoch of monopolistic capitalism in the 1890s (as corporate property is clearly no longer a property of distinct individuals).

There is a big difference between classical, private capitalism (which, by the way, no longer exists even in the U.S. and Great Britain), which Mao liquidated, and capitalism as such. In case of Maoist China, while capitalist property as property of individual capitalists was clearly liquidated, as class property it was retained and even reinforced, with all means of production being controlled by the centralized corporation of state managers that together constituted a capitalist ruling class (bureaucratic capitalists, ironically similar to those of Guomindang), which exploited the workers by appropriating the surplus value produced by them and redistributed this surplus within themselves according to their place in ruling hierarchy.

This was still a form of capitalism, irrespective of the relatively austere lifestyles of individual bureaucratic capitalists (but even Puritan private capitalists in the 18th century America led a rather austere personal lifestyle, which did not make them less exploitative), as the workers were personally free and for the most able to choose their occupations, yet did not truly control their means of production, and the production in general was conducted with orientation towards capital accumulation, not towards the needs of the immediate producers, all political declarations notwithstanding.

The Cultural Revolution had a potential to destroy this system and substitute it for some variant of early socialist economy (more likely collectivist than mutualist, as the generally anti-market inclinations of radical workers' groups and in particular the Commune of Shanghai showed), but Mao and his ruling circle feared the transformation of the movement they themselves initiated in order to secure their power and discredit their rivals in the ruling class and used the military force to institute the state of siege (making use of the chaotic activities of some Hong Wei Bing groups that were out of touch with workers and peasantry) and to destroy a more worker-oriented factions of Hong Wei Bing. After the initiation of a farcical “Up the Mountain and Down the countryside” campaign, the Hong Wei Bing were completely deprived of any ability to conduct an independent political activity, and the Cultural Revolution was suppressed - not by "capitalist roaders" but by Mao himself.

(In addition, it should be noted that the Great Han chauvinist and anti-intellectual sentiment of many Hong Wei Bing did not help things either, as instead of connecting with the workers and peasants and attacking the ruling bureaucratic capitalists as such, they were diverted into pointless attacks against artists and university lecturers, many of whom would have otherwise become their allies.)

For more elaboration, you may be interested in these essays by the 1970s Chinese anarchists - http://theanarchistlibrary.org/HTML/Various_Authors__Three_Essays_on_the_New_Mandarins .html

[Zanthorus]

Bordiga called Mao the last of the romantic bourgeois revolutionaries.

I believe what he actually said was something like Mao was the last of the romantic bourgeois revolutionaries in an age where bourgeois revolutions were no longer possible (I recall Devrim quoting this against someone, but I don't remember it exactly). For the record, there is a set of theses by the International Communist Party on the Chinese Question dated 1965 online here (http://www.international-communist-party.org/English/Texts/65ThChin.htm). The text isn't signed, so it's difficult to say if it's Bordiga's personal work, but during the period I would guess he had a large amount of control over what was and wasn't published in Programma. The work seems fairly clear that China's problems were the result of uneven and combined development and the solution lies in the strategy of permanent revolution. I think Goldner is wrong to draw a straightforward dividing line between Bordiga and Trotsky on this question.

[∞]

Tim Finnegan:

"Do you have a source for that? If it was a "stated goal", after all, then he presumably, y'know, stated it at some point. "



TROTSKY: Social Relations
in the Soviet Union CHAPTER 9


Trotsky advocates betrayal and overthrow of the Soviet Union:

"This saving fear is nourished and supported by the illegal party of Bolshevik-Leninists, which is the most conscious expression of the socialist tendencies opposing that bourgeois reaction with which the Thermidorian bureaucracy is completely saturated. As a conscious political force the bureaucracy has betrayed the revolution. But a victorious revolution is fortunately not only a program and a banner, not only political institutions, but also a system of
social relations. To betray it is not enough. You have to overthrow it. The October revolution has been betrayed by the ruling stratum, but not yet overthrown. It has a great power of resistance, coinciding with the established property relations, with the living force of the proletariat, the consciousness of its best elements, the impasse of world capitalism, and the inevitability of world revolution."


How about you not bold the entire fucking thing? Even though I'm an anarchist, I can never get myself to believe that a former commander of the Red Army and a key figure in the Bolshevik revolution has any ill intention for the Soviet Union.

[Kiev Communard]

Trotsky advocates betrayal and overthrow of the Soviet Union:

...As a conscious political force the bureaucracy has betrayed the revolution. But a victorious revolution is fortunately not only a program and a banner, not only political institutions, but also a system of
social relations. To betray it is not enough. You have to overthrow it. The October revolution has been betrayed by the ruling stratum, but not yet overthrown.

Funny that you have forgotten to mention that the quote refers to Stalinists' betrayal of October Revolution (although foundations of the Stalinist state capitalism were laid down by Lenin and Trotsky's policies in 1918-1923), not to Trotsky's alleged desire to "betray" the Soviet Union:laugh::laugh::laugh:.

[Geiseric]

Havent we already been over that quote, and how it doesn't represent the stalinist arguement? How about you look at the first sentence of that paragraph instead?

[Sun at Eight]

Things like DiaMat86 rolling out that quote really make me wonder how much of a cult the PLP might be. It seems like this quote might be passed around the PLP. I can understand lazy appeals to authority, like linking to a large wall of text that others have told you is counter-revolutionary, because you trust your comrades on that point, even if that's probably going to result in looking foolish. But when it's seven sentences obviously pertaining to Trotsky's "degenerated worker's state" view, it's hard to explain DiaMat86's lack of reading comprehension any other way. I'm not even talking about the larger argument here.

[Charlie Ceausescu]

Yes, they are compatible because both Trotsky and Mao made tremenduos contributions to the world communist movement and the global class struggle. Many revolutionaries have hailed them together, among those great revolutionaries are Hugo Chavez and the late George Jackson.:cool:

[∞]

Yes, they are compatible because both Trotsky and Mao made tremenduos contributions to the world communist movement and the global class struggle. Many revolutionaries have hailed them together, among those great revolutionaries are Hugo Chavez and the late George Jackson.:cool:

Where do I start?
1. You are named after the idiot Ceausescu
2. You think they are compatible because they both made "contributions" to communism.
3. You called Chavez a great revolutionary
4. That dumbass smiley you put at the end of that drivel

Excuse me while I puke.

[Yazman]

Where do I start?
1. You are named after the idiot Ceausescu
2. You think they are compatible because they both made "contributions" to communism.
3. You called Chavez a great revolutionary
4. That dumbass smiley you put at the end of that drivel

Excuse me while I puke.

Pretty borderline stuff here, BM. This could easily be construed as trolling. You might want to reconsider your course of action here, especially as you've already been warned today. Don't make any more posts like this in this thread again, please.

[S.Artesian]

Yes, they are compatible because both Trotsky and Mao made tremenduos contributions to the world communist movement and the global class struggle. Many revolutionaries have hailed them together, among those great revolutionaries are Hugo Chavez and the late George Jackson.:cool:


Please identify the compatible contributions of Trotsky and Mao.

Please clarify what makes Huge Chavez a great revolutionary. Last time I checked capitalism had not been abolished in Venezuela; a militant was being handed over to near-certain torture and death in Colombia; rural landless and workers were still subject to attack from landowner organized death-squads; Chavez was still participating in that landlord's alliance in the service of capitalism called OPEC.

Please change your screen name.

See, comrade Blackened Marxist, that's how you do it. You say please and thank you, otherwise you get scolded for violating the boy's/girl's guide to good etiquette.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Maoism does have "traction" in under developed countries but it has not had a stellar reputation in places like Peru or Nepal.It is unclear what is happening in India but the Naxalites do not appear to be able to lead a successful revolution there.

Peasantry can and must be an important part of a revolution but there is no substitute for a socialism based and solidly rooted in worker's democracy.History has many examples showing how "the bloc of four classes strategy" , compromise with "progressive bourgeois" cannot work.There is no "progressive bougoise", thats an illusion.

There's a difference between peasant-exclusive movements and broad populist movements that include them. Of course there are no "progressive bourgeoisie," but there are politically progressive, patriotic petit-bourgeois demographics in countries where the proletariat doesn't comprise most of the population.


Maoism does have popularity in Third World countries with large traditional peasant populations today.India, Peru, Nepal, and elsewhere.The track record is not good. Despite what Mosfeld may tell you, the Sendero Luminoso has many well documented vicious human rights violations. They worked to destroy any rivals in the Peruvian left and they terrorized peasant populations. This made it all the easier for the Peruvian state to crush them.

The Sendero Luminoso is an example of what I call a peasant-exclusive movement.


The Naxalites have continued their struggle for the past 40 years. They seemed to have been virtually crushed in the 90s but have experienced a revival as India adopted neo-liberalism, as the voice of arividasis and their struggle against MNCs.Ultimately they will not get anywhere unless their struggle is connected to that of the urban working classes. This is extremely important.

[...]

The problems of Maoist movements result from specific causes. Maoist movements are not embedded in the working classes of their countries.

Connected, yes, but that doesn't mean surrendering the political lead to those same "urban working classes."


They are embedded in peasant based guerillismo military organizations which by necessity are non-democratic. The documented human rights violation in Peru, India and elsewhere result from this.

I don't see concrete links between peasant patrimonialism and "documented human rights violations." Peasant patrimonalism can organize Breakthrough Military Coups besides People's War and Focoism / guerrilla warfare.

[RED DAVE]

There's a difference between peasant-exclusive movements and broad populist movements that include them.Be very careful using the word "populist." It does not have a clear class meaning, and in the USA is has a very checkered past. Right now, for example, bourgeois journalists routinely refter to Sarah Palin as a "populist."


Of course there are no "progressive bourgeoisie,"Keep telling that to the Maoists.


butUh-oh.


there are politically progressive, patriotic petit-bourgeois demographics in countries where the proletariat doesn't comprise most of the population.You are flirting with Maoism here, at best. The petit-bourgeoisie is a very volatile class. An alliance with elements of this class is extremely dangerous in a revolutionary situation. This can only be advantageous if the working class is the leading class of the revolution.


Connected, yes, but that doesn't mean surrendering the political lead to those same "urban working classes."A revolutionary movement with Marxist participation must put the working class, with is largely urban, into political lead. The current situation in Nepal is a good example of what happens when a so-called Marxist party, the UCPN(M) places other classes than the working class in the political lead.


I don't see concrete links between peasant patrimonialism and "documented human rights violations." Peasant patrimonalism can organize Breakthrough Military Coups besides People's War and Focoism / guerrilla warfare.Bullshit. Stop smoking that stuff before you post.

RED DAVE

[Rusty Shackleford]

Permanent Cultural revolution. Actually kinda sounds like it would work. You know, permanent upheaval. Probably would suck after 30 or so years though as humanity descends into pre-industrialism.

[Queercommie Girl]

Permanent Cultural revolution. Actually kinda sounds like it would work. You know, permanent upheaval. Probably would suck after 30 or so years though as humanity descends into pre-industrialism.

Not if it's done properly.

"Industrial efficiency" is never the primary goal of socialism anyway, genuine mass democracy is.

"Productivity is the central element of socialism". Who said this? Yes, Deng Xiaoping. :rolleyes:

[Kiev Communard]

"Industrial efficiency" is never the primary goal of socialism anyway, genuine mass democracy is.

Yes, it is not, but a socialism is never attainable without a certain level of industrial development having been reached. You cannot have a completely associated production in the country of predominant artisanal and petty farmer production.


"Productivity is the central element of socialism". Who said this? Yes, Deng Xiaoping. :rolleyes:

Karl Marx stressed the necessity of complex industrial development for overcoming toil and rote work. Surely you would not disown him as a revolutionary thinker for such a position, would you? The problem with Deng Xiaoping was not that he began a productivity enhancing campaign, but that such a campaign was instituted and conducted by and in the interests of the Chinese bureaucratic capitalists, not by associated workers' organizations.

[Queercommie Girl]

Yes, it is not, but a socialism is never attainable without a certain level of industrial development having been reached. You cannot have a completely associated production in the country of predominant artisanal and petty farmer production.


That's not the same as saying productive efficiency is more important than mass democracy. I never said one can have genuine communism in a pre-modern country. But on the other hand to have a completely communist society one doesn't need to have 24th century Star Trek technology either.

Present-day technological levels in the advanced capitalist countries is technologically speaking more than sufficient for complete communism.



Karl Marx stressed the necessity of complex industrial development for overcoming toil and rote work. Surely you would not disown him as a revolutionary thinker for such a position, would you? The problem with Deng Xiaoping was not that he began a productivity enhancing campaign, but that such a campaign was instituted and conducted by and in the interests of the Chinese bureaucratic capitalists, not by associated workers' organizations.
You are missing the point. In Deng's case since his idea is that productivity is so central to Marxism it tramples everything else, it is theoretically permissible to sacrifice worker's rights and welfare for the sake of economic productivity.

Karl Marx saw industrial productivity as necessary up to a point, but at no point did he ever say productivity is the central and primary criteria in socialism, and certainly he never put abstract productivity before worker's mass democracy.

Do you think I'm a "primitivist" or something? That's ridiculous, to be frank. I didn't say productivity isn't a good thing, but for me productivity will never come before worker's democracy and worker's rights.

The primary goal of Marxism and communism is a human one, not an abstract economic one. A certain level of economic development is required for worker's democracy to function, but beyond this Marx never stated that productive efficiency is the central goal of communism. If you don't get this point, then it's frankly a serious problem.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Not if it's done properly.

"Industrial efficiency" is never the primary goal of socialism anyway, genuine mass democracy is.

"Productivity is the central element of socialism". Who said this? Yes, Deng Xiaoping. :rolleyes:
where in my post did i say anything about industrial efficiency?

It was making a joke about the idea of a permanent cultural revolution and that if it were to happen improperly the whole of society could possibly implode and descend into some unknown social order. or hell, maybe transcend all of scientific socialist thought and go straight to communism.

again, a joke.


anyways.


Socialism requires industrial production, communism does too. If there was no worry about industry then why not just be a primitivist? Isnt that what really separates the two communisms? the productive capabilities of society? well that and the issue of families and sex relations.

[Queercommie Girl]

Socialism requires industrial production, communism does too. If there was no worry about industry then why not just be a primitivist? Isnt that what really separates the two communisms? the productive capabilities of society? well that and the issue of families and sex relations.


What Marx actually said is that a certain level of industrial development and technological advance is required for proper communism, which I agree.

However, once this sufficient level of development is reached, productivity in itself is no longer the central goal in communism, rather, communism is about the free development of human individuals.

So no, it's not just the simplistic binary opposition between "primitivism" on the one hand and "technocracy" on the other.

This doesn't mean the continuing development of the productive forces under communism isn't a good thing, of course it is, but it's no longer the central concern of society. At no point would worker's democracy in a communist society be sacrificed for "speedy technological progress".

[S.Artesian]

What Marx actually said is that a certain level of industrial development and technological advance is required for proper communism, which I agree.

However, once this sufficient level of development is reached, productivity in itself is no longer the central goal in communism, rather, communism is about the free development of human individuals.

So no, it's not just the simplistic binary opposition between "primitivism" on the one hand and "technocracy" on the other.

This doesn't mean the continuing development of the productive forces under communism isn't a good thing, of course it is, but it's no longer the central concern of society. At no point would worker's democracy in a communist society be sacrificed for "speedy technological progress".


Not exactly. For Marx the issue is the development and emancipation of human labor, which is a social process. The "free development of human individuals" can only take place as part of, as the extension of the emancipation of their social labor.

The emancipation of social labor requires that the means of production are continuously augmented, advanced, enhanced to both meet and create new needs in the social producers.

It's not a binary opposition of primitivism and technocracy, but the overcoming of both.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Uh-oh.

You are flirting with Maoism here, at best.

[...]

Bullshit. Stop smoking that stuff before you post.

You already forgot your baselessly calling me a "Stalinist" for advocating this Third World Caesarean Socialism before? :scared:

[RED DAVE]

You are flirting with Maoism here, at best.
You already forgot your baselessly calling me a "Stalinist" for advocating this Third World Caesarean Socialism before? :scared:As I've said in another place, for me the difference between Stalinism and Maoism is about as important as the different between chocolate chip cookies and chocolate chip mint cookies. You can have your choice.

RED DAVE

[Kiev Communard]

That's not the same as saying productive efficiency is more important than mass democracy. I never said one can have genuine communism in a pre-modern country. But on the other hand to have a completely communist society one doesn't need to have 24th century Star Trek technology either.

No one claimed one needs it. Still, one cannot consider the industrial efficiency improvement as necessarily "capitalistic", the key point there is in whose interests and by what means it is conducted.


Present-day technological levels in the advanced capitalist countries is technologically speaking more than sufficient for complete communism.

I agree, but some branches of industry would still need thorough restructuring to attune them to the needs of the communist society.


You are missing the point. In Deng's case since his idea is that productivity is so central to Marxism it tramples everything else, it is theoretically permissible to sacrifice worker's rights and welfare for the sake of economic productivity.

In that aspect, I should add, he completely follows Stalin's concept of "socialism".


Karl Marx saw industrial productivity as necessary up to a point, but at no point did he ever say productivity is the central and primary criteria in socialism, and certainly he never put abstract productivity before worker's mass democracy.

The Marxian concept of working class democracy suffered from the tendency to identify with parliamentarian politics through a centralized and officialized political party. That is why I follow Bakunin more closely than Marx on this issue.


Do you think I'm a "primitivist" or something? That's ridiculous, to be frank. I didn't say productivity isn't a good thing, but for me productivity will never come before worker's democracy and worker's rights.

Actually I did not claim you were a primitivist.


The primary goal of Marxism and communism is a human one, not an abstract economic one. A certain level of economic development is required for worker's democracy to function, but beyond this Marx never stated that productive efficiency is the central goal of communism. If you don't get this point, then it's frankly a serious problem.

I never claimed the contrary, I merely pointed out that the tendency to view all efficiency improvement as "bourgeois" is mistaken.

[Jose Gracchus]

In that aspect, I should add, he completely follows Stalin's concept of "socialism".

This. A classic Leninist apologetic of the welfarist variety consists of conflating the level and conditions of industrialization and modernization with the social benefits of the late welfare state. The fact is the infamous forced industrialization is accomplished by hyper-exploitation of the toiling masses (workers and peasantry alike).

[Queercommie Girl]

Still, one cannot consider the industrial efficiency improvement as necessarily "capitalistic", the key point there is in whose interests and by what means it is conducted.


The primary criteria for whether or not anything is conducted in the interests of the working class is whether or not it is genuinely based on mass worker's democracy.

Even today, sometimes the CCP still claims the productive advance in China today is done in the interests of the working class. Abstract slogans are totally useless. Everything needs to be examined empirically.



The Marxian concept of working class democracy suffered from the tendency to identify with parliamentarian politics through a centralized and officialized political party. That is why I follow Bakunin more closely than Marx on this issue.
I disagree with you on this, since I support parliamentarian entryism, but that's a completely different topic.

[Queercommie Girl]

Not exactly. For Marx the issue is the development and emancipation of human labor, which is a social process. The "free development of human individuals" can only take place as part of, as the extension of the emancipation of their social labor.

The emancipation of social labor requires that the means of production are continuously augmented, advanced, enhanced to both meet and create new needs in the social producers.

It's not a binary opposition of primitivism and technocracy, but the overcoming of both.


I never said it's the "binary opposition" of primitivism and technocracy, my point is simply that technological progress is not the central element in a communist society.

Of course, this doesn't mean it's not an important element, but it is not the element on which everything rests. Labour is fundamentally a social process, and this would be true even in a trans-humanist future, and not an abstract technocratic one.

In principle you can have a genuinely democratic communist society which is not efficient and progresses very slowly. It is not the ideal case but essentially it is still communist. However, if you take away worker's democracy, the "communist society" just becomes a reactionary technocratic dictatorship, like the Borg Collective in Star Trek.

[Kiev Communard]

The primary criteria for whether or not anything is conducted in the interests of the working class is whether or not it is genuinely based on mass worker's democracy.

Was I saying something to the contrary?


Even today, sometimes the CCP still claims the productive advance in China today is done in the interests of the working class. Abstract slogans are totally useless. Everything needs to be examined empirically.

Yes, including the Marxist-Leninist pretenses of "ruling in the interest of the working-class" before the introduction of private-corporate capitalism.


I disagree with you on this, since I support parliamentarian entryism, but that's a completely different topic.

Do you support it for the propaganda reasons, or out of belief in the possibility of "parliamentary way to socialism"?

[Red_Struggle]

Keep telling that to the Maoists.



Stop smoking that stuff before you post.

Why isn't this fucker restricted for flame baiting?