Onwards Maoist Century!

[ind_com]

Onwards Maoist Century!

When it comes to "maoism" I think a lot of people are unaware that those of us identify as marxist-leninist-maoist are only speaking of a theoretical tradition that crystallized around 1990. To be sure, the term goes back to the 1960s and the Chinese communists' split from Soviet hegemony, but then it was simply short-hand for a dominant current of anti-revisionist communism.

Before 1990, and especially in the 1960s and 1970s, "maoism" simply meant a type of marxism-leninism that identified with the ongoing Chinese Revolution rather than Soviet revisionism. Beyond this, it had no coherent and/or consistent theoretical content. The maoists pre-1990 were generally anti-revisionists, concerned with upholding the revolutionary line of marxism-leninism. The maoist, in this context, was only a maoist insofar as s/he argued that the Chinese Revolution (specifically the Cultural Revolution) was carrying forward world revolution and that Mao Zedong was just the most advanced revolutionary leader. Hence "Mao Zedong Thought".

This understanding of maoism, which never really conceived of itself as maoism (as a moment of continuity-rupture with the chain of marxism-leninism that produced new universalizable theory), could only find itself in crisis when China also chose the path of revisionism. Like those who were certain that the Soviet Union, regardless of Khrushchev, was still the command centre of world revolution, the maoists of yesteryear were shattered by the crisis of China's collapse into state capitalism. Tied to a place, to a particular rather than universal moment, the marxist-leninists labelled "maoist" were, by the mid-1980s, incapable of explaining why their "maoism" was any different from the Soviet revisionism that happened earlier.

The claim that the theoretical developments produced by the Chinese Revolution under Mao Zedong represented a development in universal revolutionary theory, a new stage in revolutionary communism, was only articulated by the Peruvian Communist Party [PCP, known as the Sendero Luminoso] at the end of the 1980s. And, following the early assertions of the PCP, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement [RIM] would finally declare "Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!" in 1993. This is the moment, moving into the 1990s, that maoism crystallized as an actual theoretical current.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WKirOSGNAAw/T7xtcr7qhsI/AAAAAAAAAq0/cTmKb0e63HU/s320/url.jpeg


Now what is most interesting about the fact that a "new stage" of revolutionary communist theory was declared around 1990 is that it was declared in the very moment we were told that capitalism was victorious and the end of history. The Berlin wall had fallen; the former Soviet Union was being avidly free-marketized; China was descending further into state capitalism; Cuba had retreated into siege stagnation. But here, in the midst of this historic defeat, a new revolutionary stage is proclaimed! This was not supposed to happen: capitalism was triumphant, the imperialists had won the cold war, and communism was passé––"good in theory but bad in practice" was the banal refrain of the liberals, "terrible totalitarianism" was the chorus of the reactionaries.

We must remember, however, that what would eventually be called leninism was also wrested from the jaws of historic defeat. The SPD in Germany––the supposed leader of the international proletariat at that time––had capitulated to imperialism; the Second International imploded; World War One was unleashed amidst the ruin of communist failure. But then, against all odds (and in Russia of all places!) there was the Bolshevik Revolution. Decades later there was the Chinese Revolution. Smaller revolutions and global anti-imperialism were rampant.

None of this is to say that the historic defeat now isn't much greater than the defeat from which the Bolshevik Revolution emerged; indeed, it is much greater––actually existing socialisms failed, giving capitalism the supposed right to declare itself superior. What I find interesting, though, is that these moments of communism have always emerged when they were not supposed to emerge, when communism was supposedly crushed and capitalism was triumphant.

Go back before the Bolshevik Revolution to the Paris Commune: what would eventually be known as marxism was fully theorized, and emerged as the prime ideology of the international proletariat, only after this historic and tragic defeat. Nearly seventy years later, a longer period of time between now and the last gasp of the Chinese Revolution, the Soviet Union emerges. So is it really that strange that a new stage of revolutionary communist theory crystallizes in 1993 of all times? Only the cynics at the centres of capitalism, or the anti-communist anarchists, would call this emergence anachronistic.

But those who refuse to view history in this manner are often those who will declare, when it comes to maoism, that "the maoist project died in the 1980s." The thing is, the maoist project didn't really exist until 1993 and has been slowly developing, sometimes in great upheavals, since that time. Marxism, after all, did not fail because it did not come to fruition in the time of Marx: it was proved through the Bolshevik Revolution through the operationalization of Lenin––this opened the door to theorization of something that would be called leninism, something that emerged through that world historical moment but was not fully theorized, with ups and downs, until later. And so later, in the early days of the Chinese Revolution, marxism-leninism was operationalized by Mao––another door was opened, another theoretical terrain breached. The Chinese Revolution wasn't maoist anymore than the Russian Revolution was leninist: these were the theoretical crystallizations resulting from judging and assessing what operationalizations succeeded after the fact.

Maoism, then, is just over two decades old, far younger than Marxism was at the time of the Russian Revolution, and already there have been significant attempts to pursue its operationalization: Peru, Nepal, India… There will be more attempts, and the RIM will rear its head again, and the 21st century will not only be a century of great rebellious upheaval––as is every period of crisis––but it will be for anti-capitalists, in many ways and despite banal movementist claims, the maoist century, just as the 20th century, regardless of the tiny counter-currents of anarchism and reformism, the leninist century.

http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.in/2012/05/onwards-maoist-century.html

[Grenzer]

You need to stop spamming this Maoist crap on the board. It's 2012, not 1966.

[Jimmie Higgins]

You need to stop spamming this Maoist crap on the board. It's 2012, not 1966.Didn't you read the article, Maoism didn't exist in 1966. For some reason it began in the early 1990s... I guess because the author says-so.

[Take The Long Way Home]

We know that this is true,because the author is telling us that its true.

Why do you focus so much on the past revolutionaries? They lived they rebel they made horrible mistakes and they died the end,there is no need to be looking back on those people who gave communism/socialism an bad name. Now i will get flamed here that im an liberal or something,but we should focus on Marx ideology,everything that comes after Marx is unnecessary.

In the end im not saying that all past revolutionaries had only bad ideas there were also good ones,but their mistakes destroy this "good" ideas.

[ind_com]

Both of you, please don't troll.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Yet another thread about maoism.
Oh joy. :rolleyes:

[ind_com]

Hoxha never said anything against starting threads about Maoism. Please keep to the holy teachings of your prophet.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Hoxha never said anything against starting threads about Maoism. Please keep to the holy teachings of your prophet.

Maybe because he died before RevLeft got created, or any other internet-forum.
You are the one that brings up Hoxha everytime, I say nothing about Hoxha and you say something about him being my prophet.
Seems like you're not only obsessed over maoism but also over Hoxha.

[ind_com]

Maybe because he died before RevLeft got created, or any other internet-forum.

But he was an omniscient divine being, as we all know.


You are the one that brings up Hoxha everytime, I say nothing about Hoxha and you say something about him being my prophet.

That happens because you troll discussions on Maoism with your one-liners.


Seems like you're not only obsessed over maoism but also over Hoxha.

As I mentioned earlier, we usually leave other tendencies alone as long as they don't make the first move against us. I don't care about Hoxha or Trotsky till you start trolling Maoist threads.

Edit: It will be nice if some mod or admin removes the one-liner troll-posts and my replies to them.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

So how's that revolution coming along in Nepal? Some new trade agreements with China, maybe? Special Economic Zones, why not? Why, why not some inane power struggles in the parties, delicious, is it not? Even if we, for the sake of argument, accept Maoism as something other than the populist petite-bourgeois ideology it is, it doesn't seem to be going very much according to any revolutionary path whatsoever in Nepal. And the ones in India...

[ind_com]

So how's that revolution coming along in Nepal? Some new trade agreements with China, maybe? Special Economic Zones, why not? Why, why not some inane power struggles in the parties, delicious, is it not?

In Nepal Prachanda was waiting for one of your true communist tendencies to lead the revolution, but unfortunately Kiran started building a reactionary communist party and a reactionary people's militia.


Even if we, for the sake of argument, accept Maoism as something other than the populist petite-bourgeois ideology it is, it doesn't seem to be going very much according to any revolutionary path whatsoever in Nepal. And the ones in India...

In India also we are waiting for a true communist tendency to prepare the working class. Otherwise, we idiot Indians will continue to fall by the millions for these Maoist gang-activities against the peaceful ruling classes.

[Ismail]

"Mao Zedong Thought" was spoken of as early as the 50's with admiration by Ho Chi Minh and others, albeit mainly as a military doctrine. After 1960 to adhere to "Mao Zedong Thought" increasingly meant siding with the Chinese view of the USSR and various theoretical issues. By the 70's Maoism became a pretty well-defined ideology which exalted Mao as a man who brought forth a "new stage" in Marxism-Leninism, something Chinese propaganda actively promoted.

Just because the Shining Path decided that they were basically the only group genuinely upholding "Mao Zedong Thought" and thus deciding to formally "found" Maoism doesn't make them right.

[ind_com]

"Mao Zedong Thought" was spoken of as early as the 50's with admiration by Ho Chi Minh and others, albeit mainly as a military doctrine. After 1960 to adhere to "Mao Zedong Thought" increasingly meant siding with the Chinese view of the USSR and various theoretical issues. By the 70's Maoism became a pretty well-defined ideology which exalted Mao as a man who brought forth a "new stage" in Marxism-Leninism.

Just because the Shining Path decided that they were basically the only group genuinely upholding "Mao Zedong Thought" and thus deciding to formally "found" Maoism doesn't make them right.

The Shining Path didn't decide that they were the only group genuinely upholding Mao Tse Tung Thought. They acknowledged the fact that the Chinese path of people's war was applicable to all neo-colonial countries. This generalization led to the term Maoism, as we use it now. It is different from the earlier Lin Biaoist notion of Maoism. There are other features of Maoism too, including siding for the GPCR against Dengist revisionism, which took over only in the late 70s. The author refers to the further consolidation of Maoism in the 90s, which happened due to its global acceptance by communist movements, through the RIM.

[La Comédie Noire]

A set of Doctrines is what happens when social movements stop growing and die. They're an embalmed corpse. So in a way you are right.

[The Douche]

I like MLM Mayhem, and I read it somewhat frequently, but its content is usually not particularly interesting for discussion on here. And if you did want to discuss something from it, why not pick something with more substance than one of his posts about how cool maoism is.

Why not one of the recent ones on movementism or something? Just saying, you're not gonna be very well received when you post an article that says "Maoism rulez!", because people are just gonna respond "nuh-uh", and how can we blame them when there is no substance to the original post?

[Igor]

have you noticed that topic names that end in exclamation marks are never for good topics?

[ind_com]

I like MLM Mayhem, and I read it somewhat frequently, but its content is usually not particularly interesting for discussion on here. And if you did want to discuss something from it, why not pick something with more substance than one of his posts about how cool maoism is.

Why not one of the recent ones on movementism or something? Just saying, you're not gonna be very well received when you post an article that says "Maoism rulez!", because people are just gonna respond "nuh-uh", and how can we blame them when there is no substance to the original post?

You have a point there. I will post some of his more technical works next.

[l'Enfermé]

Oh god why...we've got enough Stalinist revisionists already, must we be condemned to suffer so many Maoist revisionists also?

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Oh god why...we've got enough Stalinist revisionists already, must we be condemned to suffer so many Maoist revisionists also?

Yes you must suffer.
Mao died for your sins.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

A set of Doctrines is what happens when social movements stop growing and die. They're an embalmed corpse. So in a way you are right.

The revolutions in Nepal, Peru, the Philippines, and India beg to differ about the "dying" aspect. Assuming you mean Maoism when you say doctrines.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

As for the topics on Maoism,if I subscribed to any single one, I would only defend such a tendency in already existing threads; creating topics about tendencies when you subscribe to that tendency is simply asking for a headache.

[Igor]

The revolutions in Nepal, Peru, the Philippines, and India beg to differ about the "dying" aspect. Assuming you mean Maoism when you say doctrines.

indian naxalites are doing ok and am unfortunately educated on philippine revolution but the nepalese revolution is becoming part of the establishment as fast as it cans and peruvian revolution has gone from actually controlling large parts of the country to occasionally killing a cop in rural peru. i really don't see how that's not "dying", you're a decade late with this argument.

[ind_com]

creating topics about tendencies when you subscribe to that tendency is simply asking for a headache.

Sadly. I have learned that particularly from this thread.

[ind_com]

indian naxalites are doing ok and am unfortunately educated on philippine revolution but the nepalese revolution is becoming part of the establishment as fast as it cans and peruvian revolution has gone from actually controlling large parts of the country to occasionally killing a cop in rural peru. i really don't see how that's not "dying", you're a decade late with this argument.

In Nepal they seem to be rebuilding the people's government and the military force. In Peru, a group of Maoists have re-established themselves as the VRAE faction. They have identified the errors of the Gonzalo line and their movement is growing.

[xvzc]

Good article, but I feel that this does not really belong on the main board due to the almost universal hostility which RevLeft participants, regardless of ideology, show towards Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and People's War. RevLeft members seem to think that they know more than JMP, whose dedication is almost insurmountable, and refuse to engage with Maoism on its own terms.


Didn't you read the article, Maoism didn't exist in 1966. For some reason it began in the early 1990s... I guess because the author says-so.

Which is accurate, since prior to the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) theorizing Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in 1982 and the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) adopting it in 1993, "Mao Tse-tung Thought" -- a term which, according to adherents of Maoism, does not give full justice to the contributions of Chairman Mao or the developments of the Cultural Revolution -- predominated amongst the pro-Mao left. This is a common consensus in the Maoist movement, and not something that the author conjured.


You need to stop spamming this Maoist crap on the board. It's 2012, not 1966.

Marxist-Leninist-Maoist forces have led the two most advanced attempts at seizure of power since the triumph of revisionism in China, i.e., in Peru and Nepal -- two People's Wars which respectively reached strategic equilibrium and strategic offensive. Regardless of what you feel about the politics of these organizations, they nevertheless came closest to overthrowing the state than any other communist force in recent memory.

Today, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) has been branded by the state as the gravest internal security threat that the country has faced since independence and has sent its goons on a genocidal campaign called "Operation Green Hunt". Despite this, Naxalites have been expanding and becoming stronger in the Northeast of the country in Manipur and Assam.

In the Philippines, Maoist forces are advancing from strategic defensive to strategic equilibrium. Despite clear setbacks, there are Maoist guerrillas in Turkey (mainly in the Black Sea Region and Kurdistan.)

Around the globe, Communist Parties who adhere to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism are preparing to launch People's War in service of world proletarian revolution. I feel that it's incorrect of you to simply discard these forces as if they are irrelevant and a thing of the past when they so clearly are not.


So how's that revolution coming along in Nepal? Some new trade agreements with China, maybe? Special Economic Zones, why not? Why, why not some inane power struggles in the parties, delicious, is it not? Even if we, for the sake of argument, accept Maoism as something other than the populist petite-bourgeois ideology it is, it doesn't seem to be going very much according to any revolutionary path whatsoever in Nepal. And the ones in India...

I don't feel that the leadership of the UCPN(Maoist) are representatives of Maoism today, as they have been universally condemned by Maoist CPs. We are definitely in agreement on the issue of UCPN(Maoist), but I feel that you should've elaborated a bit on India which has clear political differences with the UCPN(Maoist), and has condemned it as revisionist first privately and later publicly in 2008.


"Mao Zedong Thought" was spoken of as early as the 50's with admiration by Ho Chi Minh and others, albeit mainly as a military doctrine. After 1960 to adhere to "Mao Zedong Thought" increasingly meant siding with the Chinese view of the USSR and various theoretical issues. By the 70's Maoism became a pretty well-defined ideology which exalted Mao as a man who brought forth a "new stage" in Marxism-Leninism, something Chinese propaganda actively promoted.

The exaltation of Chairman Mao was most prominent at the 9th National Party Congress in 1969, where forces who would later be condemned as ultra-leftist (such as Chen Pota and Lin Piao) were very prominent. Following their downfall and around the 10th National Party Congress in 1973, more emphasis was put on Marxism-Leninism and the exaltation of Chairman Mao radically decreased. I feel that you are muddling the Cultural Revolution for political purposes, as can be seen in you making up dates.

The theoretical justifications which Lin Piao made for claiming "Mao Tse-tung Thought" as a new stage of Marxism radically differed from that of the PCP and RIM. Whereas Lin Piao claimed that a "new era" had come about, where imperialism was headed for its downfall and socialism was triumphing worldwide -- as opposed to the traditional notion of the era being that of proletarian revolution and imperialism, i.e., "era of Leninism" -- the PCP and RIM emphasized Chairman Mao's developments in the fields of (1) political economy, (2) philosophy, and (3) scientific socialism for justifying Maoism as the third cornerstone of Marxism. For more information about this, please refer to the 1993 statement Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism! which is available on Banned Thought (I can't post links.)


Just because the Shining Path decided that they were basically the only group genuinely upholding "Mao Zedong Thought" and thus deciding to formally "found" Maoism doesn't make them right.

The PCP -- which you refer to by its media name "Shining Path" -- did not believe that they were the only group "genuinely upholding" Mao Tse-tung Thought, as can be seen in them signing the Declaration of the RIM in 1984 and sending messages of solidarity to its participating members despite the organization not upholding Maoism at that point.

You may think that they are incorrect for theorizing Maoism, but I think that history has proven the PCP correct since Mao Tse-tung Thought is not a prominent ideology anymore, and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism has been adopted by all the major CPs engaged in or preparing to initiate People's War.

[Let's Get Free]

I'm not a Maoist and have never supported the Chinese government or revered the rather repulsive figure of Mao himself. But I do like Maoist slogans.

DIG TUNNELS, STORE GRAIN
LONG LIVE CHAIRMAN MAO AND HIS ALL-POWERFUL THOUGHT!
LONG LIVE THE XIX ANNIVERSARY OF CHAIRMAN MAO'S MASTERFUL SPEECH, THAT SHINES VICTORIOUSLY AND POWERFULLY BEFORE THE WORLD AS A COMBAT WEAPON!
UPHOLD, DEFEND AND APPLY MAO ZEDONG THOUGHT!
COMBAT AND CRUSH THE NEW “LEFT” OPPORTUNIST LINE!
Etc…

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Great troll, this OP.

Also a great revision of history.

Of course Maoism was some great revolutionary triumph of the early 1990s. In fact, I hear the Russians who lost everything when Yeltsin and his crew came to town actually plastered the face of the good Chairman himself on their living room walls, just thankful that, after Yeltsin, there would surely be Maoism. :rolleyes:

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

The Maoists in Nepal were real hip 'til they "won", eh?
While I mean no disrespect to the serious revolutionary commitment of the various Maoists and Maoist parties attempting to wage people's war against various states, I think Nepal speaks volumes about a certain strategic limit; a certain gap to the effect of:

1. Win people's war.
2. ???
3. Communism.

[ind_com]

The Maoists in Nepal were real hip 'til they "won", eh?
While I mean no disrespect to the serious revolutionary commitment of the various Maoists and Maoist parties attempting to wage people's war against various states, I think Nepal speaks volumes about a certain strategic limit; a certain gap to the effect of:

1. Win people's war.
2. ???
3. Communism.

They didn't win the people's war. They reached the strategic equilibrium. But independent of that, point 2 will be a series of revolutions.


Maoism has great tactics, just not for the thing communists try to achieve.

This is the trolling typical to Trotskyites here. Not surprising.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

They didn't win the people's war. They reached the strategic equilibrium. But independent of that, point 2 will be a series of revolutions.

See, "a series of revolutions" isn't really an answer, since it doesn't actually deal with the content of said revolutions. If it just means Maoist parties seizing state power, it's just a rephrasing of point 1, and if it means "actualizing communism" there's not really a clear sense, IMHO, among Maoists of how that's going to come out of point 1.
I'm not trolling - I'd sincerely be interested in hearing an account of the relationship between "the party", people's war, and the abolition of capital/the commodity form.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Didn't "point two" have some relation to the theory of New Democracy as a building block towards socialism?

[Tim Cornelis]

Marxist-Leninist-Maoist forces have led the two most advanced attempts at seizure of power since the triumph of revisionism in China, i.e., in Peru and Nepal -- two People's Wars which respectively reached strategic equilibrium and strategic offensive. Regardless of what you feel about the politics of these organizations, they nevertheless came closest to overthrowing the state than any other communist force in recent memory.

You seem to favour quantity over quality. Who cares that they seized power when it in no way lead the proletariat closer to its emancipation?

[l'Enfermé]

The Maoists in Nepal were real hip 'til they "won", eh?
While I mean no disrespect to the serious revolutionary commitment of the various Maoists and Maoist parties attempting to wage people's war against various states, I think Nepal speaks volumes about a certain strategic limit; a certain gap to the effect of:

1. Win people's war.
2. ???
3. Communism.
Correction:

1. Win People's War
2. ???
3. Profit!

[Let's Get Free]

Correction:

1. Win People's War
2. ???
3. Profit!

Maoism is a historically proven way for a new ruling class to emerge and kick start capital accumulation.

[ind_com]

See, "a series of revolutions" isn't really an answer, since it doesn't actually deal with the content of said revolutions. If it just means Maoist parties seizing state power, it's just a rephrasing of point 1, and if it means "actualizing communism" there's not really a clear sense, IMHO, among Maoists of how that's going to come out of point 1.
I'm not trolling - I'd sincerely be interested in hearing an account of the relationship between "the party", people's war, and the abolition of capital/the commodity form.

By a series of revolutions, I referred to a series of revolutions inside the country where the people's war has been won. This is an additional necessity besides the victory of revolutions in all countries.

Since socialism begins with state monopoly capitalism, and it inherits many oppressive features of the capitalist society, there is always the danger of capitalist restoration. Potential capitalist roaders are present right inside the communist party and socialist state apparatus. Due to uneven development caused by modes of production preceding the revolution, some individuals have more control over the means of production than others. But to reach communism, the working class must take power as a class, without the mediation of the vanguard party. So, wherever it is possible, party committees must be dissolved and workers' councils must be formed. Wherever it is possible, state capitalism must be replaced by local communes. Capitalist commodity production should be done away with in regions that are ready. Even contradictions between various forms of labour must be solved, for example, by preparing all workers for managerial duties as well.

In the political field, workers must be encouraged to join the party en-masse, to criticize party leaders and policies. The army must be democratized. In general, the decision making process must flow from bottom to top, so that the need of a vanguard gradually disappears. These changes will be opposed by reactionaries in every step, and hence they will require violent conflicts in all fronts; even in the military fronts. This whole process is a series of revolutions,

[xvzc]

The Maoists in Nepal were real hip 'til they "won", eh?
While I mean no disrespect to the serious revolutionary commitment of the various Maoists and Maoist parties attempting to wage people's war against various states, I think Nepal speaks volumes about a certain strategic limit; a certain gap to the effect of:

1. Win people's war.
2. ???
3. Communism.

Marxist-Leninist-Maoist theory upholds People's War as a method for smashing the bourgeois state, seizing state power and establishing proletarian dictatorship. Varying from country to country and depending on the concrete conditions, specific revolutions are undertaken so as to strengthen the aforementioned dictatorship. Two examples:

(1) New Democratic Revolution as a method of solving the problem of semi-feudalism and semi-colonialism,

(2) Cultural Revolution as a method for solving the problem of capitalist restoration and the creation of a new elite within the party itself.


You seem to favour quantity over quality. Who cares that they seized power when it in no way lead the proletariat closer to its emancipation?

Who cares about the German Revolution of 1918-1919? Who cares about the Spanish Revolution? Who cares about the National Liberation Movements which swept the oppressed countries of the world? Who cares about the "Arab Spring"? Who cares about mass revolts in general? All of this is in vain and pointless since it did not succeed as planned!

The fact of the matter is that there is no guarantee ever that a revolution will succeed at all. Should we wait forever for the perfect conditions or should we do something to accelerate the situation?

In Nepal there occurred a very obvious betrayal by the top leadership of the party which opted for parliamentarism instead of proletarian dictatorship, who liquidated the People's Army and abandoned the base areas, etc.

Marxists in general should learn to appreciate the significance ten years of revolutionary warfare which led to 80% of the country being liberated and learn from its example. The final result -- that of betrayal and not seizing power (as you claim they did) -- does not at all delegitimize Marxism-Leninism-Maoism but absolutely confirms its correctness. The problems the Maoists in Nepal faced arose due to a retreat from Maoism and it's anti-parliamentarist tradition, not because of it.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

Bob Avakian beat you to it.

[Ismail]

The exaltation of Chairman Mao was most prominent at the 9th National Party Congress in 1969, where forces who would later be condemned as ultra-leftist (such as Chen Pota and Lin Piao) were very prominent. Following their downfall and around the 10th National Party Congress in 1973, more emphasis was put on Marxism-Leninism and the exaltation of Chairman Mao radically decreased. I feel that you are muddling the Cultural Revolution for political purposes, as can be seen in you making up dates.The "ultra-leftists" (I don't see how when Lin was accused of trying to coup Mao on behalf of the Soviet revisionists) were replaced by rightists like Deng Xiaoping, who were rehabilitated under Mao's watch. And the fact is that until Deng's ascent to power the Mao cult continued to be gigantic and Maoism praised (as it is praised by Maoists today) as a "new" and "higher stage" of Marxism-Leninism which every party opposed to revisionism was expected to follow.

Mao's personality cult was like Kim's, based on the idea that he was some sort of genius Marxist theoretician (even though he admitted to Stalin and Co. that he never read Das Kapital) who rescued Marxism-Leninism from "dogmatism" and made it palatable to "national" conditions.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

Correction:

1. Win People's War
2. ???
3. Profit!

I just laughed. Sounds a lot like Lenin to me. All of it goes back to the simple fact neither Russia or China were ready for socialism. All of it goes back to Lenin. Kinda my point in the other thread.

[Nihilist Scud Missile]

Maoism is a historically proven way for a new ruling class to emerge and kick start capital accumulation.

With Russia as it's model.

[ind_com]

I just laughed. Sounds a lot like Lenin to me. All of it goes back to the simple fact niether Russia or China was ready for socialism. All of it goes back to Lenin. Kinda my point in the other thread.

So what should the Russians or Chinese have done? Let capitalism and imperialism continue?

[xvzc]

The "ultra-leftists" (I don't see how when Lin was accused of trying to coup Mao on behalf of the Soviet revisionists) were replaced by rightists like Deng Xiaoping, who were rehabilitated under Mao's watch. And the fact is that until Deng's ascent to power the Mao cult continued to be gigantic and Maoism praised (as it is praised by Maoists today) as a "new" and "higher stage" of Marxism-Leninism which every party opposed to revisionism was expected to follow.

Mao's personality cult was like Kim's, based on the idea that he was some sort of genius Marxist theoretician (even though he admitted to Stalin and Co. that he never read Das Kapital) who rescued Marxism-Leninism from "dogmatism" and made it palatable to "national" conditions.

The Chinese themselves considered the "ultra-leftists" to be rightist in essence, so there you have it.

The rehabilitation of explicit rightists such as Deng happened in the wake of Zhou Enlai -- the person who pretty much ran day-to-day affairs in the PRC -- getting cancer in 1972 and the necessity of experienced statesmen to take his place in case of his death, and also due to the void created following the Peking branch of the Cultural Revolution Group, Chen Boda and Lin Biao all falling from grace. After what could bluntly be called intense humiliation -- as is to be expected from being denounced as the biggest capitalist roader after Liu Shaoqi -- Deng swore that he would not try and negate the Cultural Revolution, let alone "settle old scores", and was as such let back into the party. You do realize, however, that he was later again removed of all his party functionaries in 1974?

These theories of Mao's genius -- in the party at least -- went down the drain with Lin Biao himself who, like Khruschev with Stalin, was the one who most intensely promoted it. You may have some idealistic conception that thousands of years of emperor worshiping and Confucianism in China could have simply vanished after a few years of socialism but please think again.


I spoke to Comrade Lin Piao and some of the things he said were not very accurate. For example he said that a genius only appears in the world once in a few centuries and in China once in a few millennia. This just doesn’t fit the facts. Marx and Engels were contemporaries, and not one century had elapsed before we had Lenin and Stalin, so how could you say that a genius only appears once in a few centuries?

(Mao, Talks With Responsible Comrades At Various Places During Provincial Tour)


In November 1973, the Red Flag had linked the campaign against Lin as a rightist to that against Confucius as a residual pre-Maoist (that is, non-Marxist) influence in Chinese thought. The joint New Year editorial further developed this theme, and at the beginning of 1974 the new "Pi Lin, Pi Kung" campaign gradually took off. Sub-campaigns developed in the fields of culture (with the attacks on certain Chinese operas and on Western symphonic music) and of education (with attacks on certain recruiting practices). Some foreign observers noted that Mao's oft-quoted 1966 statement had referred to a Cultural Revolution every seven or eight years, and thus predicted another one for 1974. Others felt that the description given of Confucius and his pupils fitted people like Chou and Teng remarkably well. Simultaneously, Peking wall-posters attacked municipal authorities for reinstating and promoting officials disgraced during the Cultural Revolution "who still had to recant their errors". However, in the late spring and early summer of 1974, the campaign moved away from practical targets and focused on theoretical goals. If "sham Marxists" like Chen and Lin had been able to fool the masses, it was said, then the quantitative spread of Mao Tse-tung Thought through the Little Red Book of Quotations had severly hampered the qualitative understanding. Therefore, "backbone contingents" of "worker-peasant-soldier theorists" embarked on studying the classics of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. (emphasis mine)

(Jaap van Ginneken, The Rise and Fall of Lin Piao p. 303)

On the issue of Mao not reading Capital, Paul Cockshott here on RevLeft put it rather nicely: "When was this? Back in the 40s. It is a historical fact that in 1969 I had not read Capital, but that was before I read it. Do you have any evidence that he had not read it by the 1960s when he was critiquing the Soviet textbook of political economy?"

Once again, you continue approaching everything from a one-sided point of view -- which you probably learned only from Hoxha judging from your posts in the MLM Group -- where Mao suddenly goes on a honeymoon with rightists for no particular reason, and trying to get some political point across but the fact of the matter is that you simply fail to grasp the complexities, contradictions and let alone the stages which the Cultural Revolution went through.

I was going to scan through my China books but I realized how much nicer it would be if you could engage with Maoism on its own terms and not as if it is a mirror copy of Hoxhaite revisionism -- an irrelevant ideology with nothing to show off, which amounts to nothing more than an Albanian history club. Maoism is an ideology which goes beyond Mao and China, and is, as demonstrated by the on-going People's Wars, a guide to action.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

So what should the Russians or Chinese have done? Let capitalism and imperialism continue?

Very clever ind_com, but revleft is too crafty for these kinds of trick questions.

[Let's Get Free]

Since socialism begins with state monopoly capitalism, and it inherits many oppressive features of the capitalist society, there is always the danger of capitalist restoration.

Using state monopoly capitalism as a means to achieving socialism is a proven dead-end. This was all part of a sustained (and actually rather sophisticated) ideological attempt to cultivate the impression that the Soviet and Chinese systems was still somehow "on course" to achieving socialism while conveniently allowing the question of when socialism might be introduced to be indefinitely postponed.

[Questionable]

I just laughed. Sounds a lot like Lenin to me. All of it goes back to the simple fact neither Russia or China were ready for socialism. All of it goes back to Lenin. Kinda my point in the other thread.

You've said this so many times but never explained what you mean, and when I ask you how a societal change can be forced by one man or a group of men, you either say "Prove that it can't" or you give some BS about how you're too busy to explain.

[Ocean Seal]

Maoism in Nepal must be admitted to be a disaster. But there is much to be learned from the Maoist experience and there is a lot of potential in Maoism to bring down capitalism. That much should be admitted by both sides.

[Ostrinski]

Do Maoists think they're gonna get big again

[thälmann]

instead of discussing things, some "comrades" decided to troll around here. but the most strange thing is here, why are followers of total irrelevant tendecies so confident to talk in such a way about the maoists. its like some people believe that the internet is what is important.

if they are gonna be big again? they are already bigger than the trots and others ever were and will be

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

instead of discussing things, some "comrades" decided to troll around here. but the most strange thing is here, why are followers of total irrelevant tendecies so confident to talk in such a way about the maoists. its like some people believe that the internet is what is important.

if they are gonna be big again? they are already bigger than the trots and others ever were and will be

My tendency is bigger than yours, isn't that classy

Despite of its ability to appeal to reactionary peasants and some destitute peoples in scattered parts of the world, Maoism has just as little to show for all that "success" as any of the tendencies you dismiss on account of their lack of popularity with the international working class.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

instead of discussing things, some "comrades" decided to troll around here. but the most strange thing is here, why are followers of total irrelevant tendecies so confident to talk in such a way about the maoists. its like some people believe that the internet is what is important.

if they are gonna be big again? they are already bigger than the trots and others ever were and will be

Whole world is capitalist, compared to that the whole left-wing is irrelevant.
Guess we might as well just shut up all together.:rolleyes:

[Ostrinski]

instead of discussing things, some "comrades" decided to troll around here. but the most strange thing is here, why are followers of total irrelevant tendecies so confident to talk in such a way about the maoists. its like some people believe that the internet is what is important.

if they are gonna be big again? they are already bigger than the trots and others ever were and will beAny tendency that is trying to become a liberating force of the proletariat is a joke. And no that isn't limited to the Maoists but it does include them.

[Grenzer]

Didn't you read the article, Maoism didn't exist in 1966. For some reason it began in the early 1990s... I guess because the author says-so.

Jesus Christ.

So Maoism died before it was even born. I guess it's kind of like that woman who gave birth to a calcified fetus that had been in her belly for decades. (http://bodyodd.nbcnews.com/_news/2009/03/04/4380061-the-curious-case-of-the-stone-baby?lite) If Mao was still alive, he could probably make some kind of killer metaphor out of this.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

For a condensed history of Maoism...


Maoism was part of a broader movement in the twentieth century of what might be called “bourgeois revolutions with red flags,” as in Vietnam or North Korea.

To understand this, it is important to see that Maoism was one important result of the defeat of the world revolutionary wave in 30 countries (including China itself) which occurred in the years after World War I. The major defeat was in Germany (1918–1921), followed by the defeat of the Russian Revolution (1921 and thereafter), culminating in Stalinism.

Maoism is a variant of Stalinism.

The first phase of this defeat, where Mao and China are concerned, took place in the years 1925–1927, during which the small but very strategically located Chinese working class was increasingly radicalized in a wave of strikes. This defeat closed the 1917–1927 cycle of post–World War I worker struggles, which included (in addition to Germany and Russia) mass strikes in Britain, workers councils in northern Italy, vast ferment and strikes in Spain, the “rice riots” in Japan, a general strike in Seattle, and many other confrontations.


http://insurgentnotes.com/2012/10/notes-towards-a-critique-of-maoism/

[Ismail]

The rehabilitation of explicit rightists such as Deng happened in the wake of Zhou Enlai -- the person who pretty much ran day-to-day affairs in the PRC -- getting cancer in 1972 and the necessity of experienced statesmen to take his place in case of his death, and also due to the void created following the Peking branch of the Cultural Revolution Group, Chen Boda and Lin Biao all falling from grace.So the solution is to let one of the most prominent rightists take Zhou's place? Not to mention that Mao had Deng announce the "Three Worlds Theory" to the world through a United Nations speech.


You do realize, however, that he was later again removed of all his party functionaries in 1974?Really? In January 1975 he was appointed Chief of Staff of the army and in February he became Vice-Chairman of the Party's Military Affairs Commission, a move which heralded the return of various disgraced 60's members of the army who had been denounced on charges of rightist deviation.


These theories of Mao's genius -- in the party at least -- went down the drain with Lin Biao himself who, like Khruschev with Stalin, was the one who most intensely promoted it.First, Soviet propaganda at no point considered Stalin as having elevated Marxism-Leninism to a "higher" level. Second, the "genius" of Mao as I said continued with little modification. As Hoxha wrote in his diary on the occasion of the 11th Congress of the CCP in 1977: "The histories we have read about ancient Rome and Byzantium say that the emperor Constantine, while going to war against Maxentius, saw in the sky a cross on which these words were written: 'In hoc signo vinces' ('Under this sign you will triumph') and he emblazoned this sign on his banner, or as the historians call it, labarum. At this congress, Hua Kuo-feng had arranged his hair like that of Mao Tsetung; he had allowed that thick black hair of his, as straight as a porcupine's quills, to grow, had cut it and combed it cunningly and given his head the form of Mao Tsetung's with his forehead uncovered like Mao's. Hence, for this, too, we could say: 'In hoc signo vinces'. With his haircut, Hua Kuo-feng assumed the appearance of Mao Tsetung, and with this sign 'he will triumph'." (Reflections on China Vol. II, pp. 586-587.)


On the issue of Mao not reading Capital, Paul Cockshott here on RevLeft put it rather nicely: "When was this? Back in the 40s. It is a historical fact that in 1969 I had not read Capital, but that was before I read it. Do you have any evidence that he had not read it by the 1960s when he was critiquing the Soviet textbook of political economy?"Considering that most of Mao's texts which demonstrated his "genius" were from the 30's and 40's, it's pretty obvious that his "Marxism" was eclectic. The fact that he never read Das Kapital is an example of that. Molotov recalled in general that Mao was not very good with Marxism.


Once again, you continue approaching everything from a one-sided point of view -- which you probably learned only from Hoxha judging from your posts in the MLM Group -- where Mao suddenly goes on a honeymoon with rightists for no particular reason, and trying to get some political point across but the fact of the matter is that you simply fail to grasp the complexities, contradictions and let alone the stages which the Cultural Revolution went through.Well if one stage involves smashing the rightists politically and one not too far off involves bringing them back up again then it's probably an indication that something's wrong.


Maoism is an ideology which goes beyond Mao and China, and is, as demonstrated by the on-going People's Wars, a guide to action."People's wars" which have led to Nepal, where prominent Maoists praise Trotsky and denounce "Stalinism," and Peru where the Shining Path has a cult of its own around Chairman Gonzalo. In the West, Maoism reveals itself as a variant of Trotskyism in practice, whining about "dogmatism," "Stalinism," adopting reformist policies in the end, etc.

[ind_com]

My tendency is bigger than yours, isn't that classy

Despite of its ability to appeal to reactionary peasants and some destitute peoples in scattered parts of the world, Maoism has just as little to show for all that "success" as any of the tendencies you dismiss on account of their lack of popularity with the international working class.

Even the average liberal does not go so far as to call the poor peasants of the third world as reactionary. It requires only common sense to see that those peasants, those destitute people's in the third world, are the most oppressed by imperialism and hence objectively far more revolutionary than anyone else in other parts of the world.


Whole world is capitalist, compared to that the whole left-wing is irrelevant.
Guess we might as well just shut up all together.:rolleyes:

You should, if your tendency has not been involved in revolutionary activities in any part of the world for years.

[Questionable]

Even the average liberal does not go so far as to call the poor peasants of the third world as reactionary. It requires only common sense to see that those peasants, those destitute people's in the third world, are the most oppressed by imperialism and hence objectively far more revolutionary than anyone else in other parts of the world.I didn't know something could be "objectively" revolutionary. Besides, mere oppression isn't enough to constitute a revolutionary situation. Revolutionary situations are created by the intensification of contradictions and class antagonisms, not ill-defined "oppression." Extreme oppression is even capable of hindering a revolutionary movement, just look at the rise of fascism in Europe.

You pretty much just confessed to being a third-worldist. Isn't that a bannable offense here?

[ind_com]

For a condensed history of Maoism...


Maoism was part of a broader movement in the twentieth century of what might be called “bourgeois revolutions with red flags,” as in Vietnam or North Korea.

To understand this, it is important to see that Maoism was one important result of the defeat of the world revolutionary wave in 30 countries (including China itself) which occurred in the years after World War I. The major defeat was in Germany (1918–1921), followed by the defeat of the Russian Revolution (1921 and thereafter), culminating in Stalinism.

Maoism is a variant of Stalinism.

The first phase of this defeat, where Mao and China are concerned, took place in the years 1925–1927, during which the small but very strategically located Chinese working class was increasingly radicalized in a wave of strikes. This defeat closed the 1917–1927 cycle of post–World War I worker struggles, which included (in addition to Germany and Russia) mass strikes in Britain, workers councils in northern Italy, vast ferment and strikes in Spain, the “rice riots” in Japan, a general strike in Seattle, and many other confrontations.

http://insurgentnotes.com/2012/10/notes-towards-a-critique-of-maoism/

I wouldn't trust that source much. It describes history inaccurately in order to fit some of its own implicit assumptions on class struggle. For example, it tries to paint the Cultural Revolution as an attempt of Mao to get back to power. About the Indian and Peruvian Maoist movements, it says, "The Indian Naxalites, who were stone Maoists in the 1970s before they were crushed by Indira Gandhi, have made something of a comeback in poor rural areas. The Shining Path group in Peru, which was similarly crushed by Fujimori, has made a steady comeback there, openly referring to such groups as the Cambodian Khmer Rouge as a model." Anyone who has even some basic knowledge about these two movements knows that the Indian Maoists are bigger than ever, and have been influential in small towns as well. Both Indian and Peruvian Maoists reject the Cambodian model to the point of calling Pol Pot a revisionist.

These were just a few examples to show how that article distorts facts. I don't know which insurgents read or write those notes, but I wouldn't recommend them for any serious revolutionary.

[ind_com]

I didn't know something could be "objectively" revolutionary. Besides, mere oppression isn't enough to constitute a revolutionary situation. Revolutionary situations are created by the intensification of contradictions and class antagonisms, not ill-defined "oppression." Extreme oppression is even capable of hindering a revolutionary movement, just look at the rise of fascism in Europe.

Those who are more exploited, are more inclined towards causing revolutionary change. This is called being objectively revolutionary. Extreme oppression usually accelerates revolutions provided the revolutionary forces follow a correct political line. Fascism rose in Europe chiefly due to the inability of vanguard parties to organize the masses for revolution.


You pretty much just confessed to being a third-worldist.

Third-worldists are those who label the whole working class of the imperialist countries as reactionary. We who call for people's wars in every country, are in direct opposition to that line.


Isn't that a bannable offense here? Is it? Then it's an injustice towards third-worldists. They are no more anti-Marxist than those who openly label the vast peasant masses of the third world as reactionary.

[svenne]

Okay, i get that Maoism/MLM/whatever-you-want-to-call-people-strongly-influenced-by-Mao has a following in poor countries with a lot of farmers, since China kinda showed the way in the late 1940's, but one thing i really can't see happening: the people's war in the rich western nations (USA, Europa, Australia, etc). We really don't have any example - at all - of this happening, ever. Whenever there's been waves of struggle here, it's been in the form of strike movements of varying forms and with different kind of tactics (wildcats etc), and that's (at least in the 1970's) followed up by failed attempts at urban guerilla warfare. I don't think Nepal can teach me, as a swede/north european/white westerner, a lot of lessons, at all.

What you are trying to do is using a strategy developed for China in the 1940's and just place it over the rest of the world without any interest in the extremely different class composition in the different countries, as well as the peculiarities each nation has. (Well, to be honest: that critique is valid against pretty much 90 % of the revolutionary left). Maoism has no place in the western world, and the few groups who do exist are ususally the smallest, with stalinists, anarcho-syndicalists, trotskyists, eurocommunists, even maybe left communists, being bigger. And no, numbers shouldn't mean shit, but it does.

[ind_com]

Okay, i get that Maoism/MLM/whatever-you-want-to-call-people-strongly-influenced-by-Mao has a following in poor countries with a lot of farmers, since China kinda showed the way in the late 1940's, but one thing i really can't see happening: the people's war in the rich western nations (USA, Europa, Australia, etc). We really don't have any example - at all - of this happening, ever. Whenever there's been waves of struggle here, it's been in the form of strike movements of varying forms and with different kind of tactics (wildcats etc), and that's (at least in the 1970's) followed up by failed attempts at urban guerilla warfare. I don't think Nepal can teach me, as a swede/north european/white westerner, a lot of lessons, at all.

What you are trying to do is using a strategy developed for China in the 1940's and just place it over the rest of the world without any interest in the extremely different class composition in the different countries, as well as the peculiarities each nation has. (Well, to be honest: that critique is valid against pretty much 90 % of the revolutionary left). Maoism has no place in the western world, and the few groups who do exist are ususally the smallest, with stalinists, anarcho-syndicalists, trotskyists, eurocommunists, even maybe left communists, being bigger. And no, numbers shouldn't mean shit, but it does.

Maoism is implemented according to the concrete conditions of each country. Implementations of Maoism even in neo-colonial countries like India are quite different from the Chinese Revolution.

As for imperialist countries, Maoist parties did not have a proper line on revolution in the last century. The Maoist line for imperialist countries is relatively new, and the Maoist party in Canada, which is developing that line, is already one of the biggest radical groups there.

[Questionable]

Those who are more exploited, are more inclined towards causing revolutionary change. This is called being objectively revolutionary. Extreme oppression usually accelerates revolutions provided the revolutionary forces follow a correct political line.

So it's not the amassing of contradictions and class antagonisms, then? It's merely being "oppressed"? I'm sure I don't need to tell you that oppression can also lead to reactionary movements such as the Taliban. Fascism is just as capable of rallying people against "oppression" as socialism.


Fascism rose in Europe chiefly due to the inability of vanguard parties to organize the masses for revolution.

And then once it seized power it went onto crush all progress the workers had made in those countries with extreme prejudice.



Third-worldists are those who label the whole working class of the imperialist countries as reactionary. We who call for people's wars in every country, are in direct opposition to that line.

But do you really believe this? I've met Maoists before who will pay lip service to revolution in Western nations, but then they'll give in and admit they don't believe the working class of those countries is capable of it. It's a thin line to tread.


Is it? Then it's an injustice towards third-worldists. They are no more anti-Marxist than those who openly label the vast peasant masses of the third world as reactionary.

Peasants can be reactionary. And it is also un-Marxist to rely on vaguely defined "oppression" as a way to measure a revolutionary situation without looking at class interests, contradictions, etc.

[ind_com]

So it's not the amassing of contradictions and class antagonisms, then? It's merely being "oppressed"? I'm sure I don't need to tell you that oppression can also lead to reactionary movements such as the Taliban. Fascism is just as capable of rallying people against "oppression" as socialism.



And then once it seized power it went onto crush all progress the workers had made in those countries with extreme prejudice.

Class contradictions are essentially the contradictions between the oppressor and the oppressed. It's a short way to sum up the broad positions of classes like the proletariat, lower peasantry or petty bourgeoisie. Again, movements like the Taliban are caused due to the defeat of communist forces and active involvement of imperialist powers in helping these fascist groups.


But do you really believe this? I've met Maoists before who will pay lip service to revolution in Western nations, but then they'll give in and admit they don't believe the working class of those countries is capable of it. It's a thin line to tread.

There are many varieties of Maoists in imperialist countries. Some advocate insurrection, some throw away Maoism out of the window in the name of doing critical evaluation and so on. But I am talking specifically about Maoists that advocate people's wars in western countries. Most of them are extremely serious about it.


Peasants can be reactionary. And it is also un-Marxist to rely on vaguely defined "oppression" as a way to measure a revolutionary situation without looking at class interests, contradictions, etc.

Even workers can be reactionary. And again, it is basic common sense that will tell you that a well-fed, well-clothed person is less likely to take up arms against the state-machinery than a starving person.

[Questionable]

Class contradictions are essentially the contradictions between the oppressor and the oppressed. It's a short way to sum up the broad positions of classes like the proletariat, lower peasantry or petty bourgeoisie. Again, movements like the Taliban are caused due to the defeat of communist forces and active involvement of imperialist powers in helping these fascist groups.

Yes, essentially they are, but this does not tell us anything about the current level of antagonism intensification in "third-world" countries, and this still does not mean that we can narrow it down to "oppression" and use that as our only measuring stick for a revolutionary situation. Oppression can devastate workers' movements just as easily as making them.



There are many varieties of Maoists in imperialist countries. Some advocate insurrection, some throw away Maoism out of the window in the name of doing critical evaluation and so on. But I am talking specifically about Maoists that advocate people's wars in western countries. Most of them are extremely serious about it.I'm not talking about what Maoist groups thinks. I'm sure there are some good ones out there. I'm talking about what you think.



Even workers can be reactionary. And again, it is basic common sense that will tell you that a well-fed, well-clothed person is less likely to take up arms against the state-machinery than a starving person.Please enlighten us some more with this "common sense." So far you've only talked about vague oppression and how "third-world" peasants MUST be more revolutionary because of a sweeping generalization that they're "more oppressed", without a real class analysis of the situation.

[svenne]

Maoism is implemented according to the concrete conditions of each country. Implementations of Maoism even in neo-colonial countries like India are quite different from the Chinese Revolution.

As for imperialist countries, Maoist parties did not have a proper line on revolution in the last century. The Maoist line for imperialist countries is relatively new, and the Maoist party in Canada, which is developing that line, is already one of the biggest radical groups there.

But maoism is born out of, and made for, a nation of peasants! Just look at the biggest maoist rebellions of today and yesterday: India, Peru, Nepal.
All it's concepts, tactics and ideas is used to analyze a situation so unlike ours today, that you could aswell start anew by reading Marx exclusively, while making new usable terms for use in the class struggle. For example, let's use the word of M-L-M Mayhem!: "When some of us speak of the importance of Mao's theory of protracted peoples war and its applicability to our social contexts" and then fills upp with line after line of "of course we know that there's no peasentry in Canada" (no, that isn't a real quote), he seems to forget that the whole of the ideas was born out of the peasant revolution. Why not instead start with ideas born in the west, if you live in the west? "This is why we maintain that the Chinese Revolution wasn't a "maoist" revolution but the revolution that produced the theoretical insights that would allow us to theorize maoism; similarly, the Bolshevik Revolution wasn't a "leninist" revolution but produced the theoretical insights that would lead to theorization of leninism.", and this quote shows just this (and is just a big blow in the face in the people who think that Lenin is the most useful revolutionary in the west today).
All that crap about ideas born out of material conditions suddenly doesn't seem to matter. Of course you can pick and use ideas out of history for use today, everything else is just stupid, but that doesn't mean you can pick whatever you want. And for God's or Lenin's sake, pick something that's not clichés like "you've got to analyse every situation in its context" or whatever: that's not maoist, that's maybe not even marxist: that's just common sense. The interesting question is how you analyze.

And you can't just place the failure of the maoist left as a problem of ideas. That's just so incredibly un-marxist that i want to cry myself to sleep while hugging Das Kapital. Placing the creation of the perfect political line as the most important thing for a revolutionary is just a good way to create a clusterfuck of sectarian crap (as here (http://www.signalfire.org/?p=17316), for example). How many members has the MLM-party of Canada, and how many are the trotskyites, autonomists etc?

[ind_com]

Yes, essentially they are, but this does not tell us anything about the current level of antagonism intensification in "third-world" countries, and this still does not mean that we can narrow it down to "oppression" and use that as our only measuring stick for a revolutionary situation. Oppression can devastate workers' movements just as easily as making them.

Oppression is definitely not the only parameter for measuring revolutionary situations, but it is definitely the greatest objective factor determining the revolutionary situation. A workers' movement with a correct political line cannot be defeated by oppression.



I'm not talking about what Maoist groups thinks. I'm sure there are some good ones out there. I'm talking about what you think.

What exactly is your question? Previously I have made it clear that I think people's wars are possible in every country.


Please enlighten us some more with this "common sense." So far you've only talked about vague oppression and how "third-world" peasants MUST be more revolutionary because of a sweeping generalization that they're "more oppressed", without a real class analysis of the situation.

In simple words, class war is necessary for revolution. Class war against the well-armed, and well-organized state-machinery involves very high risks of death. So, large numbers of people will not join the class war if even such a risk of death is better than the alternative of not joining it. This alternative has to be worse than what a person will go through when he participates in the class war. So it has to be starvation or extreme oppression or similar intolerable conditions. These conditions are largely absent in imperialist countries, as of now. If you ignore these conditions, then any class analysis you make will be far from real.

[The Douche]

Maoism, at times, has been quite popular in the west. See, France from 68-74, where people like fucking Sartre are selling Maoist papers outside of factories, or how a quarter of the youth population of West Germany supported the RAF, or the influence of both the PLP and then the weathermen on SDS in the US, and the Black Panther Party.

[The Douche]

A workers' movement with a correct political line cannot be defeated by oppression.


I dunno about that. Revolutions can be drowned in blood, I think.

[ind_com]

I dunno about that. Revolutions can be drowned in blood, I think.

But then communism will be impossible. We assume that if something is possible to defeat a revolution, then the bourgeoisie will definitely do it. Your claim is based on historical observations, but then, notice that each kind of defeat is more or less unique. Communists usually find a way to prevent those in future, which i call the correct political line for that situation. For example, if there is a revolution in any country now, it won't go down like the Paris Commune. We will not count on the bourgeoisie to be merciful or mistaken; we will win because if we follow the correct political line, even the savagest of bourgeois regimes are no match for us.

[The Douche]

But then communism will be impossible. We assume that if something is possible to defeat a revolution, then the bourgeoisie will definitely do it. Your claim is based on historical observations, but then, notice that each kind of defeat is more or less unique. Communists usually find a way to prevent those in future, which i call the correct political line for that situation. For example, if there is a revolution in any country now, it won't go down like the Paris Commune. We will not count on the bourgeoisie to be merciful or mistaken; we will win because if we follow the correct political line, even the savagest of bourgeois regimes are no match for us.

I mean, if we accept Mao's statement that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, then logically, that means that communist revolution can be defeated militarily.

I think that its important to understand that the defeat of a certain revolutionary upsurge does not represent the defeat of the communist project. And the notion that something like "the correct line" garuntees communism is wrong and idealist. Some dickhead sitting around with the right ideas doesn't mean capital will be defeated, there are a thousand factors.

[Questionable]

In simple words, class war is necessary for revolution. Class war against the well-armed, and well-organized state-machinery involves very high risks of death. So, large numbers of people will not join the class war if even such a risk of death is better than the alternative of not joining it. This alternative has to be worse than what a person will go through when he participates in the class war. So it has to be starvation or extreme oppression or similar intolerable conditions. These conditions are largely absent in imperialist countries, as of now. If you ignore these conditions, then any class analysis you make will be far from real.

The Douche is addressing your claim about oppression far better than I can, so I will focus on this for now.

You're falling into the third-worldist trap of judging a country but its economic development. It is idealist and somewhat gives way to the human nature argument, in that you're saying that people will not become revolutionary as long as there's food on the table, even if the contradictions of capitalism are making their day-to-day living more and more unbearable, as is the case in many Western nations in this current economic crisis. The overall class make-up of the area is a far greater indicator of where class struggle will take it, if anywhere.

And once again, you're essentially saying that it is impossible to have a revolution in Western nations if you believe what you're saying about workers needing to be extremely oppressed before they become revolutionary.

Furthermore, them being oppressed does not mean that "third-world" peasants will take the correct path to revolution. It is still easy to think that, as The Douche is saying and as I have been saying, that extreme oppression will make revolution an impossibility.

[ind_com]

I mean, if we accept Mao's statement that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, then logically, that means that communist revolution can be defeated militarily.

Okay, I should have been more explicit. Military line is a part of the political line. So having the correct political line implies having the correct military line as well.


I think that its important to understand that the defeat of a certain revolutionary upsurge does not represent the defeat of the communist project. And the notion that something like "the correct line" garuntees communism is wrong and idealist. Some dickhead sitting around with the right ideas doesn't mean capital will be defeated, there are a thousand factors.

Let's add the extra reasonable assumption that the correct line can be deduced only through revolutionary practice and the person or the group to deduce it will be active. So naturally that group will be able to embed itself in the working classes, and eventually declare and win the class war. Of course there are many factors that affect the outcome of a revolution. But if we assume that somehow the imperialists have a political line that is able to defeat the strongest possible political line of the revolutionary proletariat, then there is no doubt that it will be implemented globally, and ensure the fall of every revolution that is ever attempted.

[The Douche]

Okay, I should have been more explicit. Military line is a part of the political line. So having the correct political line implies having the correct military line as well.



Let's add the extra reasonable assumption that the correct line can be deduced only through revolutionary practice and the person or the group to deduce it will be active. So naturally that group will be able to embed itself in the working classes, and eventually declare and win the class war. Of course there are many factors that affect the outcome of a revolution. But if we assume that somehow the imperialists have a political line that is able to defeat the strongest possible political line of the revolutionary proletariat, then there is no doubt that it will be implemented globally, and ensure the fall of every revolution that is ever attempted.

But the line that is correct is not necessarily the line that can be implemented. The assumption, that if we have the right ideas and act on them, that things will come together, this is the idealism.

Like, you and I could sit down and formulate a solid basis for the correct line, right, and we could pick up a few other militants along the way, and then involve ourselves in both the struggles and the day-to-day of the class, but even if our ideas are right, that doesn't mean the class is going to pick them up. And even if we listen to the demands of the class, and reformulate them into our correct analysis (this is mass line, right?) that still doesn't mean the class will pick up on them. See: homosexuality as bourgeois decadence or integration/civil rights struggles.

[ComradeOm]

Maoism, at times, has been quite popular in the west. See, France from 68-74, where people like fucking Sartre are selling Maoist papers outside of factories, or how a quarter of the youth population of West Germany supported the RAF, or the influence of both the PLP and then the weathermen on SDS in the US, and the Black Panther Party.This needs to be put in context. At no point, in Europe at least, has Maoism comprised a real mass movement on par with Moscow Communism or the Second International. It's influenced the off left group but has never been 'popular' on the same scale as, say, the PCF or PCI, to take two contemporary examples

[The Douche]

This needs to be put in context. At no point, in Europe at least, has Maoism comprised a real mass movement on par with Moscow Communism or the Second International. It's influenced the off left group but has never been 'popular' on the same scale as, say, the PCF or PCI, to take two contemporary examples

Yeah, but the PCF and PCI are not communist organizations (in any meaningful sense of the word, irrespective of my own politics). Some of those groups I mentioned, like GP in France (sartre was the editor of their paper) or the BPP in the states, were very large organizations, approaching the level of becoming "mass organizations" while the PCF and the CPUSA and SWP were declining.

[ComradeOm]

Yeah, but the PCF and PCI are not communist organizations (in any meaningful sense of the word, irrespective of my own politics)Well no, that is your politics. There's no question that the PCF and PCI were Communist parties (the clue being in the name) and they dominated the left in their respective countries. How radical you want to deem them is up to you but they can't simply be dismissed. And yes, both did have revolutionary periods... or at least periods in which they represented a revolutionary working class. In truth the latter is what I was more interested in above - those periods in which they could be genuinely said to be mass worker parties on a scale that dwarfs the GP or BPP; on a scale that Maoist parties witnessed in Asia

But of course if you exclude these mass parties, and base any comparison on the fragmented post-68 gauchiste groups then sure the Maoists in Europe may have been relatively popular. I'm not sure why you'd restrict yourself to that limited sample though...?


Some of those groups I mentioned, like GP in France (sartre was the editor of their paper) or the BPP in the states, were very large organizations, approaching the level of becoming "mass organizations" while the PCF and the CPUSA and SWP were decliningWhile I can't comment on the BPP, I've seen nothing to suggest that during its brief existence the GP was anything other than a relatively narrow circle of intellectuals. Certainly it never came anywhere near to the numbers of the PCF (even when compared to today's shadow of a party, never mind its high points in the 30s and 40s) and probably couldn't match its contemporary Trotskyist counterparts

So if we're going to talk about the GP as a "very large organisation" - and bearing in mind that this is France, a country not unused to such mass parties - then it requires a drastic lowering of the bar. As noted above

[l'Enfermé]

Our Maoist friend, sadly, is quite incapable of comprehending that the peasants with their own land stand in opposition to the proletariat and it's interests. The landed peasantry and the propertyless proletariat have absolutely nothing in common. The landless peasant and the worker can stand together for the duration of a temporary alliance(i.e like October), but the victory of this alliance gives land to the peasant and the alliance becomes nothing more than wishful thinking. I think it's quite unfortunate that our Maoist friends borrow from Lenin his worst idea, the myth of the peasant-worker alliance, but leave to him everything that was good.

[l'Enfermé]

"those periods in which they could be genuinely said to be mass worker parties on a scale that dwarfs the GP or BPP; on a scale that Maoist parties witnessed in Asia"
I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you saying that the the various Maoist parties in Asia, whose membership was composed almost exclusively out of peasants, were mass workers' parties? Mass parties, surely, but workers'? To be a worker's party, a party must actually be composed of workers.

[ind_com]

But the line that is correct is not necessarily the line that can be implemented. The assumption, that if we have the right ideas and act on them, that things will come together, this is the idealism.

Like, you and I could sit down and formulate a solid basis for the correct line, right, and we could pick up a few other militants along the way, and then involve ourselves in both the struggles and the day-to-day of the class, but even if our ideas are right, that doesn't mean the class is going to pick them up. And even if we listen to the demands of the class, and reformulate them into our correct analysis (this is mass line, right?) that still doesn't mean the class will pick up on them. See: homosexuality as bourgeois decadence or integration/civil rights struggles.

But methods of making the political line acceptable to the working classes are included in the political line itself. When we take our line to the proletariat, it will not be one or two of them. It will be thousands of workers. So obviously some of them will join. The correctness of our political line implies that it will show some immediate results, and will also produce practical evidence indicating its potential for winning the class war. The short term gains, and the war of positions that we wage with other groups, will have more and more workers join us.

The ability of a correct political line to attract followers and give short-term as well as long-term results is a very important point. One of the factors that led to re-evaluation of the previous Maoist lines in imperialist countries is the failure of insurrectionism to meet these conditions.


I think it's quite unfortunate that our Maoist friends borrow from Lenin his worst idea, the myth of the peasant-worker alliance, but leave to him everything that was good.

This made me facepalm so hard that my nose broke.

[The Douche]

Well no, that is your politics. There's no question that the PCF and PCI were Communist parties (the clue being in the name) and they dominated the left in their respective countries. How radical you want to deem them is up to you but they can't simply be dismissed. And yes, both did have revolutionary periods... or at least periods in which they represented a revolutionary working class. In truth the latter is what I was more interested in above - those periods in which they could be genuinely said to be mass worker parties on a scale that dwarfs the GP or BPP; on a scale that Maoist parties witnessed in Asia


First of all, one does not have to have my politics to understand that the PCF or the PCI in the 60s were in no meaningful way "communist". Which is why I said it was such "irrespective of my politics", you don't have to be ultra-left to understand the facts.

And the popularity/line of organizations in 1910 is irrelevant in 1960. I don't understand why you want to compare the PCF of the pre-WW1 era to GP in 1970 or whatever. That hardly seems fair.


But of course if you exclude these mass parties, and base any comparison on the fragmented post-68 gauchiste groups then sure the Maoists in Europe may have been relatively popular. I'm not sure why you'd restrict yourself to that limited sample though...?

Cause european maoist parties didn't exist until the late 60s?


While I can't comment on the BPP, I've seen nothing to suggest that during its brief existence the GP was anything other than a relatively narrow circle of intellectuals. Certainly it never came anywhere near to the numbers of the PCF (even when compared to today's shadow of a party, never mind its high points in the 30s and 40s) and probably couldn't match its contemporary Trotskyist counterparts


GP's influence was greater than its actual party formation, you're correct there. But they were able to mobilize tens of thousands, and had they existed for more than 4 years, and not had opportunist leadership, it is reasonable to assume that those they were mobilizing could've become a pretty dynamic force of the class.

And the BPP were declared "the biggest internal threat" to the US by the FBI, obviously the CPUSA of the same era pales in comparison. And even if you want to compare the BPP to the CP at its height, the BPP still trumps the CP.

[The Douche]

But methods of making the political line acceptable to the working classes are included in the political line itself. When we take our line to the proletariat, it will not be one or two of them. It will be thousands of workers. So obviously some of them will join. The correctness of our political line implies that it will show some immediate results, and will also produce practical evidence indicating its potential for winning the class war. The short term gains, and the war of positions that we wage with other groups, will have more and more workers join us.

The ability of a correct political line to attract followers and give short-term as well as long-term results is a very important point. One of the factors that led to re-evaluation of the previous Maoist lines in imperialist countries is the failure of insurrectionism to meet these conditions.

The correct line does not always ensure mass support, sorry, sometimes the masses are wrong, and non-receptive to the correct position, which leaves us (the militants of the class) isolated.

[doesn't even make sense]

All you revisionazis are Mao-Zewrong

Long live Mao-Zedong-Thought

[ind_com]

The correct line does not always ensure mass support, sorry, sometimes the masses are wrong, and non-receptive to the correct position, which leaves us (the militants of the class) isolated.

I think that we are to blame ourselves for not making our line palatable to the masses. No one cares if you or myself are Maoists, Trots or Leftcoms. An ordinary person will look for what he will gain from joining us. Salary hikes, stopping layoffs and similar issues are the things that we should look at first. If I ask a random worker to join us in a people's war, they will run away. Until we can join their daily struggles, our militancy is useless.

[The Douche]

I think that we are to blame ourselves for not making our line palatable to the masses. No one cares if you or myself are Maoists, Trots or Leftcoms. An ordinary person will look for what he will gain from joining us. Salary hikes, stopping layoffs and similar issues are the things that we should look at first. If I ask a random worker to join us in a people's war, they will run away. Until we can join their daily struggles, our militancy is useless.

Tell white workers in the 30s that they are equal to black workers and they should be paid the same, and see how many join you. It took a really long time for white workers to understand that black workers are ok and deserve equal wages and opportunities, and furthermore, I don't know that that concept is even really, fully understood and agreed upon, even now. Its not that uncommon to hear white workers complain about "affirmative action".

My point is that popularity of an organization does not represent the correctness of its line. The RCP (US) didn't take a clear, progressive position on homosexuality until the 90s or 2000s, for instance, even though the BPP came out against homophobia in the 60s.

[The Douche]

All you revisionazis are Mao-Zewrong

Long live Mao-Zedong-Thought

Verbal warning for trolling.

[ind_com]

Tell white workers in the 30s that they are equal to black workers and they should be paid the same, and see how many join you. It took a really long time for white workers to understand that black workers are ok and deserve equal wages and opportunities, and furthermore, I don't know that that concept is even really, fully understood and agreed upon, even now. Its not that uncommon to hear white workers complain about "affirmative action".

And when you have both black and white workers to begin with, why would you approach white workers first, when identity politics is that reactionary? Here is a similar example. In India, dalits are paid less than high caste workers. And even now dalits are discriminated against by high caste workers. There is no doubt that both should get equal pay. But how do we approach this question? If we go to high caste workers and tell them that dailts should be paid more, they will laugh at us. If we tell them that high caste workers should be paid as much at the dalits, they will chase us off. So we will concentrate on those who are having it the worst; we will organise the dalit workers. Once they launch struggle and improve their conditions, the state will try to pit high caste workers against them. If the dailts outnumber the high caste workers considerably, then this will not be a problem. If they don't then it will not be possible for the state to fulfil all needs of the high caste workers. Hence this is the moment when we will point at the example of dalits, capitalise on the grievances of high caste workers and expand our organisation among them. This model is common. First organise mostly people at the absolute bottom, then slowly move up the ladder and expand among others.


My point is that popularity of an organization does not represent the correctness of its line. The RCP (US) didn't take a clear, progressive position on homosexuality until the 90s or 2000s, for instance, even though the BPP came out against homophobia in the 60s.
But the reverse is actually true in a way. An organization with a correct political line will eventually expand.

[The Douche]

But the reverse is actually true in a way. An organization with a correct political line will eventually expand.

The why does the RCP still exist, but the panthers do not?

[ind_com]

The why does the RCP still exist, but the panthers do not?

The RCP(USA) is a joke of an organization. And as far as I know, the BPP was far from correct. Their line was great and glorious, but not correct.

[xvzc]

By correct line, I think it's important to distinguish between, on one hand, some sort of supposedly "theoretically pure" one which is dead-end and shows no results and, on the other, a living and scientific one which, when put into practice, shows results and manages to accumulate those forces with the most advanced consciousness into its ranks. "Correct line" is absolutely meaningless if it has no relation to on the ground class struggle.

[The Douche]

The RCP(USA) is a joke of an organization. And as far as I know, the BPP was far from correct. Their line was great and glorious, but not correct.

But the BPP's line and practice were a thousand times better than the RCP's, yet the RCP is still here (though, yes, on the decline) and the BPP is long gone. What I'm getting at, is, having the better line didn't save the BPP, and the only time we can say such and such is the right line, is in retrospect, and to say "this organization which succeeded had the right politics" is kind of a "yeah, no shit" statement.

[Paul Cockshott]

The landed peasantry and the propertyless proletariat have absolutely nothing in common.
This is not true, both are groups who depend on their own labour for their income, unlike employers or landlords who depend for their income on the labour of others.

[xvzc]

But the BPP's line and practice were a thousand times better than the RCP's, yet the RCP is still here (though, yes, on the decline) and the BPP is long gone. What I'm getting at, is, having the better line didn't save the BPP, and the only time we can say such and such is the right line, is in retrospect, and to say "this organization which succeeded had the right politics" is kind of a "yeah, no shit" statement.

I think that Bob Avakian's Summing Up the Black Panther Party (available on the Internet Archive) explains the decline and eventual dissolution of the BPP rather well, and I think that his emphasis on the importance and necessity of a coherent political line and not some muddy eclecticism such as the one which existed in the BPP is essentially correct. Broken clock and all that...

[Paul Cockshott]

But the BPP's line and practice were a thousand times better than the RCP's, yet the RCP is still here (though, yes, on the decline) and the BPP is long gone. What I'm getting at, is, having the better line didn't save the BPP, and the only time we can say such and such is the right line, is in retrospect, and to say "this organization which succeeded had the right politics" is kind of a "yeah, no shit" statement.

Bear in mind how many of the Black Panther leaders where shot or imprisoned.

[ind_com]

But the BPP's line and practice were a thousand times better than the RCP's, yet the RCP is still here (though, yes, on the decline) and the BPP is long gone. What I'm getting at, is, having the better line didn't save the BPP, and the only time we can say such and such is the right line, is in retrospect, and to say "this organization which succeeded had the right politics" is kind of a "yeah, no shit" statement.

A general comment on this, not necessarily referring to the organizations in question. Suppose two groups have wrong lines. Their lines are militarily wrong enough for the state to crush them permanently, if it wishes to. Now, one of the organizations has a better line and it poses a greater danger to the state, while the other does not seem nearly as dangerous. Which one will the state finish off? Survival does not depend linearly on the quality of your line; either it has to be correct, or good enough to give you the time to re-evaluate and deduce the correct line.

[ind_com]

But maoism is born out of, and made for, a nation of peasants! Just look at the biggest maoist rebellions of today and yesterday: India, Peru, Nepal.

Is this a joke?



All it's concepts, tactics and ideas is used to analyze a situation so unlike ours today, that you could aswell start anew by reading Marx exclusively, while making new usable terms for use in the class struggle. For example, let's use the word of M-L-M Mayhem!: "When some of us speak of the importance of Mao's theory of protracted peoples war and its applicability to our social contexts" and then fills upp with line after line of "of course we know that there's no peasentry in Canada" (no, that isn't a real quote), he seems to forget that the whole of the ideas was born out of the peasant revolution. Why not instead start with ideas born in the west, if you live in the west? "This is why we maintain that the Chinese Revolution wasn't a "maoist" revolution but the revolution that produced the theoretical insights that would allow us to theorize maoism; similarly, the Bolshevik Revolution wasn't a "leninist" revolution but produced the theoretical insights that would lead to theorization of leninism.", and this quote shows just this (and is just a big blow in the face in the people who think that Lenin is the most useful revolutionary in the west today).
All that crap about ideas born out of material conditions suddenly doesn't seem to matter. Of course you can pick and use ideas out of history for use today, everything else is just stupid, but that doesn't mean you can pick whatever you want. And for God's or Lenin's sake, pick something that's not clichés like "you've got to analyse every situation in its context" or whatever: that's not maoist, that's maybe not even marxist: that's just common sense. The interesting question is how you analyze.

And you can't just place the failure of the maoist left as a problem of ideas. That's just so incredibly un-marxist that i want to cry myself to sleep while hugging Das Kapital. Placing the creation of the perfect political line as the most important thing for a revolutionary is just a good way to create a clusterfuck of sectarian crap (as here (http://www.signalfire.org/?p=17316), for example).

The revolution does not happen magically. A correct subjective approach is a necessity.


How many members has the MLM-party of Canada, and how many are the trotskyites, autonomists etc?

Maoists usually don't give out numbers, so I don't know how many of them are there, but in almost every important gathering the RCP outnumbers Trotskyites or anarchists divided by their sub-tendencies by at least 3 : 1.

[The Douche]

Bear in mind how many of the Black Panther leaders where shot or imprisoned.

Right, and like I said earlier, revolution can be militarily defeated irrespective of line.

And that military defeat doesn't represent the defeat of communism, because all line really is, is communism, it seems to me, as communism is "the real movement which abolishes the present state of things".

[ind_com]

The Douche is addressing your claim about oppression far better than I can, so I will focus on this for now.

You're falling into the third-worldist trap of judging a country but its economic development. It is idealist and somewhat gives way to the human nature argument, in that you're saying that people will not become revolutionary as long as there's food on the table, even if the contradictions of capitalism are making their day-to-day living more and more unbearable, as is the case in many Western nations in this current economic crisis. The overall class make-up of the area is a far greater indicator of where class struggle will take it, if anywhere.

And once again, you're essentially saying that it is impossible to have a revolution in Western nations if you believe what you're saying about workers needing to be extremely oppressed before they become revolutionary.

You are understanding it upside-down. In imperialist countries, large number of people will not join the class war due to the conditions that exist before the class war. Therefore, in absence of high crises, revolution can only be initiated by organizing the people who form the Achilles' heel in the imperialist society. And hence only that model of revolution will work that can begin with a minority, slowly draw larger populations by creating conditions for them to join, and win a war against the state.


Furthermore, them being oppressed does not mean that "third-world" peasants will take the correct path to revolution. It is still easy to think that, as The Douche is saying and as I have been saying, that extreme oppression will make revolution an impossibility. But they will readily initiate violent class war. If they get correct political leadership, they will succeed.

[La Comédie Noire]

The revolutions in Nepal, Peru, the Philippines, and India beg to differ about the "dying" aspect. Assuming you mean Maoism when you say doctrines.

Yeah, but you get a bunch of first world Maoists complaining about how they "aren't exactly right." Insisting on 1:1 correspondence with theories developed in 1949 China.

[Ismail]

This made me facepalm so hard that my nose broke.For once I agree with you. The alliance of the working-class and peasantry (in which the former leads the latter) is one of the basic tenets of Leninism for countries with a large peasant population. In fact Lenin based his views on Marx and Engels, who likewise saw in the peasantry an ally of the proletariat in certain conditions.

I don't think l'Enfermé can show that under Lenin, Stalin or Hoxha the peasantry took precedence over the proletariat in terms of leadership and whatnot.

[Questionable]

You are understanding it upside-down. In imperialist countries, large number of people will not join the class war due to the conditions that exist before the class war.

You're confusing me. What class war? If the class is not mobilizing, then there is no class war. It's not like a literal war where you declare it and then it starts happening. If class antagonisms and contradictions are not spurring the workers to action, then there is no class war.


Therefore, in absence of high crises, revolution can only be initiated by organizing the people who form the Achilles' heel in the imperialist society.

Well I'm not sure how you define a "high crisis," one could say the situation unfolding in Europe is a pretty big crisis, but anyway, the weakest link in the chain of imperialism is not necessarily the most oppressed country. Russia and Germany were both imperialist nations, but there were still revolutionary situations there because the contradictions of capitalism-imperialism were the most aggravated there.


And hence only that model of revolution will work that can begin with a minority, slowly draw larger populations by creating conditions for them to join, and win a war against the state.

Creating conditions? I'm not sure I'm following you here.


But they will readily initiate violent class war. If they get correct political leadership, they will succeed.

Will they? I don't think we've been seeing that as of yet. As Lenin pointed out, objective conditions are just as important as subjective conditions. I don't think I agree with your philosophy of "creating" conditions for a revolution.

[ComradeOm]

First of all, one does not have to have my politics to understand that the PCF or the PCI in the 60s were in no meaningful way "communist". Which is why I said it was such "irrespective of my politics", you don't have to be ultra-left to understand the factsI'm reminded of Alan Partridge - 'Please don't write in saying that's sexist - it's not!'

Just because you preface an assertion with the disclaimer "irrespective of my politics", it doesn't actually mean that the statement is in fact devoid of your politics. The PCF considered itself to be communist, it espoused communist slogans and (sort've) policies and its supporters considered themselves to be communist. Moreover, it undeniably belonged to the same milieu as the gauchistes and considered itself to be in competition with them. Whether or not its political line meets your standards isn't that important

What this sleight of hand does allow for however, for the sake of considering "popularity" is the cutting out by far and away the largest leftist party from the comparison. It's akin to stating that AFC Wimbledon are the most popular football club in England because all the other, much larger, clubs have 'sold out'


And the popularity/line of organizations in 1910 is irrelevant in 1960. I don't understand why you want to compare the PCF of the pre-WW1 era to GP in 1970 or whatever. That hardly seems fairWhy is it unfair? Why should the popularity of the Maoists not be compared to previous genuine mass movements? Why must they be studied in isolation?

Even if we accepted that the Maoists were the largest leftist factions in the 1960s - which, to reiterate, they weren't - then it would still be worth comparing them to previous movements to understand just how piddlingly small they were. There is, after all, no point building them up to be big fish in a puddle; the context being the sharp fragmentation and decline of the workers' movement

And that's the context that I was looking to provide in my original post. Maoism will never be more than a footnote in the history of European communism because it never reached the heights of previous (and presumably future) movements. That it will even be a footnote is largely due to the influence, not popularity, of some of its more important adherents


GP's influence was greater than its actual party formation, you're correct there. But they were able to mobilize tens of thousands, and had they existed for more than 4 years, and not had opportunist leadership, it is reasonable to assume that those they were mobilizing could've become a pretty dynamic force of the classWhy? What was it about the GP that would allow them to buck the pan-European stagnation of the left and emerge as a "pretty dynamic force"? Was their political line that much more correct than everyone else's?

I've no trouble accepting the GP as an influential sect on the French left but this notion that they were about to 'go big' and constitute themselves as a real mass movement strikes me as nothing more than wishful thinking

[~Spectre]

Even the average liberal does not go so far as to call the poor peasants of the third world as reactionary. It requires only common sense to see that those peasants, those destitute people's in the third world, are the most oppressed by imperialism and hence objectively far more revolutionary than anyone else in other parts of the world.

I think this post demonstrates the moralistic, un-marxist nature of your belief set. You view "reactionary" as a slur, rather than a descriptor, and you use "oppressed" and "imperialism" as proxies for some kind of "good" versus "evil' dichotomy.

The truth is, a lot of peasants are conservative, or even reactionary, at least based on certain beliefs that they hold. Patriarchy, homophobia, superstition, bigotry, and generally hostile attitudes towards "modernity", are not uncommon in peasant life. Historically, this should be clear to radicals with the experiences of pre-bolshevik activists in Russia, or the Latin America campaigns of people like Che Guevara.

Now, this doesn't mean that these peasants are on the same moral level as reactionary leaders of states. Quite the opposite in fact. Often times these attitudes abound, because of the material circumstances of low development that peasants live in, being compounded by some other type of atrocity.

With that said, you raise two points. First, that they are "the most oppressed", and second, that because of this they are "objectively more revolutionary" than anyone else. To which I would argue that both are false.


1) As noted by others, your definition of oppression is a formless mist. Is a peasant for instance, more "oppressed" than say, a female prostitute? What about a child laborer? Is a peasant more oppressed than a beggar? Is a peasant more oppressed than a prisoner serving a life sentence in an American SuperMax jail? In many cases, I think the answer would have to be "no" to each question, and to the many more that could be raised.

You then tie it to the word "imperialism", which is a bit interesting. Peasants are oppressed by virtue of being peasants - it sucks. It's not an oppression that is unique to "their" country's position on the imperialist world system - a system which no capitalist state is excluded from.

Accordingly then, at the point at which peasants are not necessarily "the most oppressed", nor that their oppression is unique in its relationship to imperialism, your first point fails. Let's see how your second one does:

2) Regarding "most oppressed= most revolutionary", while we've already cast serious doubts on the first part, let's for the sake of argument put that aside. We should still be skeptical.

In the Marxist conception, the revolutionary nature of the proletariat is due to their position relative to the means of production. The alienation they face in producing the economic lifeblood of society, in combination with their unique ability to seize the means of production, in combination with their number and ability to organize, makes them a revolutionary force.

For the worker, since private property is against his or her ability to control the means of production, private control of production must be abolished. Thus leading to a revolutionary change in the abolition of private property.

For the peasant, it's not so clear. Oftentimes peasant concerns have to do with questions of land. And of course there is an element of truth here. If a peasant could consolidate land, and become a large landowner, said peasant would now reap benefits akin to those whose property was previously oppressing him or her. That may be logical, and understandable for the peasant, but it's not revolutionary.

Thus, even if we were to grant that a peasant in X country was more oppressed than a worker in Y country, you'd still have to overcome the nature of their relative position to prove your point.

Indeed, if we take an obvious example, I think you'd have to concede how your "more oppressed= more revolutionary!" theory falls apart.

Few people in the world were, at that moment, more oppressed than the people of Fallujah during the marine assault back in the early stages of the occupation of Iraq. Marines, white phosphorus, and depleted uranium munitions, can make for one very bad day.

Yet, it would be madness to claim that Fallujans were, at that moment, the most revolutionary force in the world.

Taking it back now to a more general level, it might be useful to note that Marx himself did not buy into the "more oppressed=more revolutionary!" formula. In fact, he seems to have argued for what approaches the opposite:


Of all countries, England is the one where the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is most highly developed. The victory of the English proletarians over the English bourgeoisie is, therefore, decisive for the victory of all the oppressed over their oppressors. Hence Poland must be liberated not in Poland but in England. So you Chartists must not simply express pious wishes for the liberation of nations. Defeat your own internal enemies and you will then be able to pride yourselves on having defeated the entire old society.

So, for all these reasons, I hope it has become a little bit more clear as to why your view is being rejected by a lot of people here.

[The Douche]

The PCF considered itself to be communist, it espoused communist slogans and (sort've) policies and its supporters considered themselves to be communist.

Sort your bullshit out before you start supporting Jim Jones and Pol Pot.

[svenne]

Is this a joke?

No.


The revolution does not happen magically. A correct subjective approach is a necessity.

You didn't answer me at all.


Maoists usually don't give out numbers, so I don't know how many of them are there, but in almost every important gathering the RCP outnumbers Trotskyites or anarchists divided by their sub-tendencies by at least 3 : 1.

Okay...

[ComradeOm]

Sort your bullshit out before you start supporting Jim Jones and Pol PotNeither my politics nor yours would that change the fact that the Maoists in France, and Europe generally, were the fringe of the fringe. They were never "popular" in any real sense (ie outside the odd circle). The difference is that your politics or worldview is apparently limited to these same circles, to the point where you feel free to dismiss everything lying outside it

Which is probably something you should look at. When you've built a small fraction up to be "quite popular", by the sleight of hand of dismissing everything to its right, then you're drastically lowering your own horizon. You're not talking of a world of mass movements but individual papers, narrow cliques and fleeting intellectual currents

Maoism did/does exist outside of these narrow confines, as a real mass movement, and deserves to be discussed as such. But not in Europe and not from the perspective of who was editing what paper

All of which is a digression from the rest of the thread but, given the 'correct line' comments above, a slightly amusing one. Isn't it nice how we all care about each other's politics though... awwww

[thälmann]

i can only speak for germany, but here the maoist k-groups were together much bigger then the trots and so on. especially when it comes to the influence in factories and so on. but who is bigger is not an argument in itself, the bolshevikes where relatively small but led a revolution..

[l'Enfermé]

This is not true, both are groups who depend on their own labour for their income, unlike employers or landlords who depend for their income on the labour of others.
I said landed peasant and the propertyless proletariat. The landed peasant owns his land, he owns his means of production. The proletarian doesn't. There can be solidarity between such classes. This has been proven when Stalin's hand was forced to attack the peasantry and initiate collectivization. The result was millions of corpses. This pretense of class solidarity, instead of class contradictions, existing between the peasant and the worker, had done quite a lot of harm in the 20th century, why must we fool ourselves in the 21st century also?


For once I agree with you. The alliance of the working-class and peasantry (in which the former leads the latter) is one of the basic tenets of Leninism for countries with a large peasant population. In fact Lenin based his views on Marx and Engels, who likewise saw in the peasantry an ally of the proletariat in certain conditions.
The proletariat can lead the poor peasantry during a revolution, but that's when the worker-peasant(really a worker and poor-peasant alliance)alliance ends. The revolutionary ambitions of the peasants begins and ends with land reform. The only wish of the emancipated peasant is to become a land-owning kulak. This, quite obviously, contradicts the class interests of the proletariat, and no one goes so far as to deny that here. The only way out is the forced proletarization of the peasantry(for example, by turning peasants into rural proletarians employed in state farms).

Pretending that a worker-peasant alliance is possible is as wrong as pretending that a worker-bourgeoisie alliance is possible because the bourgeoisie can be forcefully converted in proletarians after a proletarian revolution.


I don't think l'Enfermé can show that under Lenin, Stalin or Hoxha the peasantry took precedence over the proletariat in terms of leadership and whatnot.
I said no such thing. Though yes, the peasantry took precedence over the proletariat for the duration of Stalin's and Bukharin's capitulation to the peasantry. That all ended, as we know, and what a colourful end it was: famine, mass-executions, millions in slave labour camps, the countryside ravaged, livestock slaughtered, etc, etc.

[The Douche]

Neither my politics nor yours would that change the fact that the Maoists in France, and Europe generally, were the fringe of the fringe. They were never "popular" in any real sense (ie outside the odd circle). The difference is that your politics or worldview is apparently limited to these same circles, to the point where you feel free to dismiss everything lying outside it

Which is probably something you should look at. When you've built a small fraction up to be "quite popular", by the sleight of hand of dismissing everything to its right, then you're drastically lowering your own horizon. You're not talking of a world of mass movements but individual papers, narrow cliques and fleeting intellectual currents

Maoism did/does exist outside of these narrow confines, as a real mass movement, and deserves to be discussed as such. But not in Europe and not from the perspective of who was editing what paper

All of which is a digression from the rest of the thread but, given the 'correct line' comments above, a slightly amusing one. Isn't it nice how we all care about each other's politics though... awwww

I guess the big problem here is that I meant they were quite large/popular when compared to other communist groups, not compared to the class itself. And no, the communist in name/social democratic organizations do not warrant comparison as they are not communist. (whether we approach "communism" from the ultra-left, or stalinism, or maoism, or trotskyism or whatever)

[Paul Cockshott]

Originally Posted by Karl Marx
Of all countries, England is the one where the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is most highly developed. The victory of the English proletarians over the English bourgeoisie is, therefore, decisive for the victory of all the oppressed over their oppressors. Hence Poland must be liberated not in Poland but in England. So you Chartists must not simply express pious wishes for the liberation of nations. Defeat your own internal enemies and you will then be able to pride yourselves on having defeated the entire old society.

Marx's optimism at this point in history should not be mistaken for sober scientific assesment.

[Paul Cockshott]

I said landed peasant and the propertyless proletariat. The landed peasant owns his land, he owns his means of production. The proletarian doesn't.
That does not mean that there is an antagonism between them, both live by their own labour and both are exploited by the propertied classes. Even if a farming family owns its own farm, they are exploited by the banks. This has been the major form of the exploitation of the North American peasantry for example. (Americans do not use the term peasantry to describe their farmers, but it was comonplace for European sociologists of the early 20th century to use this term - read Weber's analysis comparing the position of the American peasantry with that of the Roman peasantry in the late republic and Empire.)


The proletariat can lead the poor peasantry during a revolution, but that's when the worker-peasant(really a worker and poor-peasant alliance)alliance ends. The revolutionary ambitions of the peasants begins and ends with land reform. The only wish of the emancipated peasant is to become a land-owning kulak.

This is not necessarily the case, the KKE has for long enjoyed support among farmers in Greece included among which are sections of landowning small farmers who fought under KKE leadership both against the Nazis and in the civil war.
Even in the Russian case the Kulaks did not necessarily stand out as the model that all of the newly liberated peasants desired. The tradition of the Mir was still alive at the time of the revolution and values of equality and solidarity stood out against the Kulaks and provided the basis for an antagonism within the countryside.

The violent class struggle in the Russian countryside in the 20s and early 30s was not repeated in this form in other countries either in China or in Easten Europe where transtions to collective forms of agriculture were much more peaceful.

[ind_com]

The truth is, a lot of peasants are conservative, or even reactionary, at least based on certain beliefs that they hold. Patriarchy, homophobia, superstition, bigotry, and generally hostile attitudes towards "modernity", are not uncommon in peasant life. Historically, this should be clear to radicals with the experiences of pre-bolshevik activists in Russia, or the Latin America campaigns of people like Che Guevara.

These reactionary positions apply to a lot of workers as well.


1) As noted by others, your definition of oppression is a formless mist. Is a peasant for instance, more "oppressed" than say, a female prostitute? What about a child laborer? Is a peasant more oppressed than a beggar? Is a peasant more oppressed than a prisoner serving a life sentence in an American SuperMax jail? In many cases, I think the answer would have to be "no" to each question, and to the many more that could be raised.

Let's consider more specific cases. The average poor-peasant in India is much more exploited than a female prostitute or prisoner in the USA.


You then tie it to the word "imperialism", which is a bit interesting. Peasants are oppressed by virtue of being peasants - it sucks. It's not an oppression that is unique to "their" country's position on the imperialist world system - a system which no capitalist state is excluded from.

Accordingly then, at the point at which peasants are not necessarily "the most oppressed", nor that their oppression is unique in its relationship to imperialism, your first point fails. Let's see how your second one does:

No country is excluded from the imperialist world system, but there are countries that export mainly capital, and those that export mainly raw materials. The former are called imperialist countries and the latter are called colonies or neo-colonies. The peasantry is virtually non-existent in the imperialist countries. So, the existence of a peasantry corresponds to the position of a country in the imperialist world system.


In the Marxist conception, the revolutionary nature of the proletariat is due to their position relative to the means of production. The alienation they face in producing the economic lifeblood of society, in combination with their unique ability to seize the means of production, in combination with their number and ability to organize, makes them a revolutionary force.

For the worker, since private property is against his or her ability to control the means of production, private control of production must be abolished. Thus leading to a revolutionary change in the abolition of private property.

For the peasant, it's not so clear. Oftentimes peasant concerns have to do with questions of land. And of course there is an element of truth here. If a peasant could consolidate land, and become a large landowner, said peasant would now reap benefits akin to those whose property was previously oppressing him or her. That may be logical, and understandable for the peasant, but it's not revolutionary.

Thus, even if we were to grant that a peasant in X country was more oppressed than a worker in Y country, you'd still have to overcome the nature of their relative position to prove your point.

The above analysis ignores the pre-conditions of launching an armed struggle against the state. It is correct otherwise, but it only shows why a peasant struggle without proletarian leadership will fail.


Indeed, if we take an obvious example, I think you'd have to concede how your "more oppressed= more revolutionary!" theory falls apart.

Few people in the world were, at that moment, more oppressed than the people of Fallujah during the marine assault back in the early stages of the occupation of Iraq. Marines, white phosphorus, and depleted uranium munitions, can make for one very bad day.

Yet, it would be madness to claim that Fallujans were, at that moment, the most revolutionary force in the world.


Usually we determine the revolutionary nature of a class by the level of the oppression it undergoes through a longer period of time. If you are forced to starve for a day, it won't make you more revolutionary than people who have been half-fed for decades.

[Paul Cockshott]

No country is excluded from the imperialist world system, but there are countries that export mainly capital, and those that export mainly raw materials. The former are called imperialist countries and the latter are called colonies or neo-colonies.

This is too simple. The USA is an imperialist country but it does not export capital, it runs a big deficit in its capital account. Japan for the last 40 years has been a big exporter of capital but it is less imperialist than the USA. The German Empire, in the years leading up to WWI was cronically unable to export capital - it lost out on a number of important deals in Turkey for example due to its inability to provide the capital funding that the French banks could provide. For large parts of the 20th century even the UK did not export capital but ran a deficit on capital account and the current accoun made up by repatriated surplus value from India etc.

[ind_com]

This is too simple. The USA is an imperialist country but it does not export capital, it runs a big deficit in its capital account. Japan for the last 40 years has been a big exporter of capital but it is less imperialist than the USA. The German Empire, in the years leading up to WWI was cronically unable to export capital - it lost out on a number of important deals in Turkey for example due to its inability to provide the capital funding that the French banks could provide. For large parts of the 20th century even the UK did not export capital but ran a deficit on capital account and the current accoun made up by repatriated surplus value from India etc.

One very well-known case of the USA exporting capital is the IT industry in India sponsored by the USA. Many companies in India that even have Indian names are actually owned by European or American companies. When India was a direct colony of Britain, they made insane laws to protect their capital in India. At some point, Indians were prevented from manufacturing salt, so that they would have to buy the salt sold by Britain.

[ind_com]

No.

In that case, it almost seems to be a pejorative. India is a nation of workers as much as it is a nation of peasants. And the Indian working class has more militant actions to its credit than many capitalist countries where the working class is the majority of the population.


You didn't answer me at all.

Sorry, I misinterpreted your question. You asked that why not instead start with ideas born in the west, if you live in the west? The answer lies in the fact that some ideas are globally applicable. The idea of conscious workers' struggle was brought forward by Marx. But it is followed all over the world, not just in western Europe. Similarly, just because the theory of people's war originated in China, it does not mean that its generalization will not be applicable in Europe or the Americas.

[Ismail]

The only wish of the emancipated peasant is to become a land-owning kulak.That's like saying the wish of a proletarian is to become a petty-bourgeoisie by making enough money to start up his own business. The peasant identifies with his plot of land, but it does not logically follow that they automatically seek to employ the labor of others or other characteristics of the kulak.


This, quite obviously, contradicts the class interests of the proletariat, and no one goes so far as to deny that here. The only way out is the forced proletarization of the peasantry(for example, by turning peasants into rural proletarians employed in state farms).The ultimate goal is the formation of state farms (i.e. transformation of peasant land into the property of the whole people), but until that time collectives exist which are based on the voluntary union of peasant families and which do not contradict the class interests of the proletariat.

You also seem to be under the impression that Soviet state farms were places where peasants actually ceased being peasants, which isn't really true. Even state farms had areas reserved for private plots like collectives did.


Pretending that a worker-peasant alliance is possible is as wrong as pretending that a worker-bourgeoisie alliance is possible because the bourgeoisie can be forcefully converted in proletarians after a proletarian revolution.An asinine comparison since the peasant does not usually exploit the surplus-value of someone else.


and what a colourful end it was: famine, mass-executions, millions in slave labour camps, the countryside ravaged, livestock slaughtered, etc, etc.It's pretty weird how you go from talking about how peasants should be forcibly "proletarianized" and then complain about how evil Stalin and Co. were due to peasant resistance when the Soviet state tried to integrate the peasant economy into the socialist economy.

The slaughtering of livestock is precisely one of the backward traits of peasants. The "millions in slave labour camps" were the very kulaks you mentioned above.

You compare Stalin's policy to Bukharin's even though Stalin criticized Bukharin's calls for the kulaks to "enrich" themselves and obviously did not carry out Bukharin's agricultural policy in practice.

[l'Enfermé]

The peasant identifies with his plot of land, but it does not logically follow that they automatically seek to employ the labor of others or other characteristics of the kulak.
Sure it does, where do you think Bukharin's "Get Rich!" theatrics came from?



The ultimate goal is the formation of state farms (i.e. transformation of peasant land into the property of the whole people), but until that time collectives exist which are based on the voluntary union of peasant families and which do not contradict the class interests of the proletariat.

You also seem to be under the impression that Soviet state farms were places where peasants actually ceased being peasants, which isn't really true. Even state farms had areas reserved for private plots like collectives did.
I wasn't talking about the Kolkhozes and the Sovkhozes in the Soviet Union though. And yes I'm very aware of the private plots in Sovkhozes. However, a large amount of there private, garden and vegetable plots were allocated for urban workers and women and the elderly who weren't designated as "permanent sovkhoz workers". And as for "voluntary union", we have seen quite how "voluntary" the union was during the collectivization in the USSR.



An asinine comparison since the peasant does not usually exploit the surplus-value of someone else.
Why the Kremlin's characterization of Kulaks as "parasites" and "exploiters"?



It's pretty weird how you go from talking about how peasants should be forcibly "proletarianized" and then complain about how evil Stalin and Co. were due to peasant resistance when the Soviet state tried to integrate the peasant economy into the socialist economy.

I'm not complaining about Stalin and Co. merciless repression of the peasantry, that was quite necessary, I'm complaining about how Stalin's and Bukharin's insistence on maintaining the illusion of the peasant-worker alliance until it was too late, which lead to the said repression being so bloody.


The slaughtering of livestock is precisely one of the backward traits of peasants. The "millions in slave labour camps" were the very kulaks you mentioned above.

Well again, if October, by being too generous to peasants, produced all these millions of peasants whose class-interests contradicted those of the proletariat, because of which they had to be herded into labour camps, aren't you just reinforcing my point? There was really something terribly wrong about the Bolshevik's position re. the peasantry for the forced collectivization to have been necessary(and for it's outcome to be so bloody).


You compare Stalin's policy to Bukharin's even though Stalin criticized Bukharin's calls for the kulaks to "enrich" themselves and obviously did not carry out Bukharin's agricultural policy in practice.
Whatever criticisms he made were completely worthless. I don't believe Stalin meaningfully turned on Bukharin until he made a left-wing turn in 1928, because of the grain shortages, and adopted the old "yay industrialization!" and "yay speedy collectivization!" proposals of the left which he and Bukharin just finished eliminating.

[l'Enfermé]

That does not mean that there is an antagonism between them, both live by their own labour and both are exploited by the propertied classes. Even if a farming family owns its own farm, they are exploited by the banks. This has been the major form of the exploitation of the North American peasantry for example. (Americans do not use the term peasantry to describe their farmers, but it was comonplace for European sociologists of the early 20th century to use this term - read Weber's analysis comparing the position of the American peasantry with that of the Roman peasantry in the late republic and Empire.)
Peasants weren't exploited by any banks during the 1920s in the USSR though comrade. There was clearly an antagonism between peasants and proletarians, which eventually lead to de-kulakization and forced collectivization, regardless of how much Stalin and Bukharin attempted to pretend there wasn't.



This is not necessarily the case, the KKE has for long enjoyed support among farmers in Greece included among which are sections of landowning small farmers who fought under KKE leadership both against the Nazis and in the civil war.
Yeah sure but how long would that support have lasted if the KKE won and conquered power?



Even in the Russian case the Kulaks did not necessarily stand out as the model that all of the newly liberated peasants desired. The tradition of the Mir was still alive at the time of the revolution and values of equality and solidarity stood out against the Kulaks and provided the basis for an antagonism within the countryside.
Well all this Mir stuff is greatly misunderstood unfortunately. What is completely ignored is that the Russian Mir was a feudal construct, it was actually instituted by the feudal class.

Again, Bukharin's "Get Rich!" didn't pop out of nowhere.


The violent class struggle in the Russian countryside in the 20s and early 30s was not repeated in this form in other countries either in China or in Easten Europe where transtions to collective forms of agriculture were much more peaceful.

I don't know much about China, but firstly, the working class never took power there as in Russia, and really, I'm pretty sure that at least a few million peasants died violent deaths during the Great Leap Forward. Beating to death was really popular I hear. I'm from the Soviet Union myself so I've always taken more interest in Soviet affairs than Chinese.

[Ismail]

Why the Kremlin's characterization of Kulaks as "parasites" and "exploiters"?Because they were. Kulaks do not equal the entire peasantry.


I'm complaining about how Stalin's and Bukharin's insistence on maintaining the illusion of the peasant-worker alliance until it was too late, which lead to the said repression being so bloody.There was no "illusion." After collectivization the worker-peasant alliance was strengthened, as Soviet publications noted. The peasant economy became integrated into the socialist economy.

"We have achieved only the first, the lower phase, of communism. Even this first phase of communism, socialism, is far from being completed, it is built only in the rough.

In our country the parasitic classes, i.e., all and sundry capitalists and little capitalists, have been liquidated. Thanks to this, the exploitation of man by man has been abolished. This is not only a gigantic step forward in the lives of the peoples of our country, but also a gigantic step forward along the road of emancipation of the whole of mankind.

We, however, have not fully carried out the task of abolishing classes, although the working class of the U.S.S.R. which is in power is no longer a proletariat in the strict sense of the word, and the peasantry, the great bulk of which has joined the collective farms, is no longer the old peasantry.

Both the two classes which exist in the U.S.S.R. are building socialism and come within the system of socialist economy. But although both are in the same system of socialist economy, the working class in its work is bound up with state socialist property (the property of the whole people), while the collective farm peasantry is bound up with cooperative and collective farm property which belongs to individual collective farms and to collective-farm and cooperative associations. This connection with different forms of socialist property primarily determines the different position of these classes. This also determine the somewhat different paths of further development of each of them.

What is common in the development of these two classes is that both are developing in the direction of communism. As this proceeds the difference in their class positions will be gradually obliterated until here too the last remnants of class distinctions finally disappear.

We cannot but realize that this is a long road."
(V.M. Molotov. The Constitution of Socialism: Speech Delivered at the Extraordinary Eighth Congress of Soviets of the U.S.S.R., November 29, 1936. Co-operative Publishing Society of Workers in the U.S.S.R.: Moscow. 1937. pp. 28-29.)


Well again, if October, by being too generous to peasants, produced all these millions of peasants whose class-interests contradicted those of the proletariat, because of which they had to be herded into labour camps, aren't you just reinforcing my point?There was a clear policy of class war in the countryside in the early years of the Bolshevik government. The power of obvious feudal landowners and the richest kulaks was smashed and remained so afterwards. Yet the peasantry remained divided into poor and middle peasants, a number of the latter becoming kulaks during the NEP period.

[Paul Cockshott]

Peasants weren't exploited by any banks during the 1920s in the USSR though comrade.
Yes but Russia is not the whole world. Farmers in the USA and India certainly are exploited by banks and moneylenders.





Well all this Mir stuff is greatly misunderstood unfortunately. What is completely ignored is that the Russian Mir was a feudal construct, it was actually instituted by the feudal class.
But my understanding of it was that it revived after the abolition of serfdom did it not?




I don't know much about China, but firstly, the working class never took power there as in Russia, and really, I'm pretty sure that at least a few million peasants died violent deaths during the Great Leap Forward. Beating to death was really popular I hear. I'm from the Soviet Union myself so I've always taken more interest in Soviet affairs than Chinese.

Firstly I did not just mention China, also Eastern Europe, there collectivisation was not accompanied by the kind of crisis that occured in Russia.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Firstly I did not just mention China, also Eastern Europe, there collectivisation was not accompanied by the kind of crisis that occured in Russia.

Which of them were carried to a similar extent? I guess the ones in DDR were the least troubled, probably because of the relatively high level of development at the time which it was initiated.

I seem to remember that at least Poland stopped the process of agricultural reconstruction pretty quickly and reverted to partial private farming save some state farms.

[Ismail]

I seem to remember that at least Poland stopped the process of agricultural reconstruction pretty quickly and reverted to partial private farming save some state farms.In Poland after the 50's something like 80% of agriculture was in private hands. Its leadership was the most right-wing of all the Eastern Bloc states. Gomułka, like Nagy and Tito (and Togliatti) believed that Khrushchev wasn't struggling against "Stalinism" enough.

[Paul Cockshott]

In Poland after the 50's something like 80% of agriculture was in private hands. Its leadership was the most right-wing of all the Eastern Bloc states. Gomułka, like Nagy and Tito (and Togliatti) believed that Khrushchev wasn't struggling against "Stalinism" enough.

Sure but Poland was the exception. Elsewhere collectivisation occured without serious civil strife.