Is Maoism contradictory?

[Brutus]

Maoism claims to be ant-revisionist, yet places peasants, not the proletariat as the main revolutionary class in Marxism. I find this to be hypocritical, as Mao slandered his enemies as revisionists.
Could a Maoist please explain this to me.
Thanks

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Maoism does not advocate for the replacement of the proletariat with the peasantry but rather says that in countries where there is a peasant majority the peasantry can be led by proletarian ideas and establish socialist practices. This amounts to the peasantry being led by the proletariat, advancing along hand-in-hand. For more see here: http://kasamaproject.org/2009/02/03/wheres-the-proletariat-in-maos-long-march-or-nepals-revolution/

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Maoism claims to be ant-revisionist, yet places peasants, not the proletariat as the main revolutionary class in Marxism. I find this to be hypocritical, as Mao slandered his enemies as revisionists.
Could a Maoist please explain this to me.
Thanks

Not a problem at all. Basically, we believe in the world system theory of imperialism as theorized by Lenin and then later developed by other theorists such as Sam Amin. According to this theory, capitalism isn't a system of "combined and uneven development" but rather that capitalism simply expresses an underlying economic relationship that manifests it's self in various modes of production in different countries. For example, in India, instead of developing capitalism, British imperialism banned local industry to force it to buy western products and encouraged the caste system, thus stalling the development of capitalism in favor of creating a parasitic relationship between British capitalism and Indian Feudalism. In countries that are "semi feudal/semi colonies", or where capitalism is held back by the imperialism, the contradiction between the bourgeois and the proletariat doesn't develop because these classes do not exist in the form they take in western countries The local Bourgeois is generally incapable of carrying out a revolution due to the fact that it has virtually no political power, hence the failure of the Chinese republican revolution to establish a firm hold over the country, and the proletariat is incapable of carrying out a revolution because:

A) it is a insignificant minority, in pre revolutionary China it only consisted of 3 million people

B)Class struggle against the local bourgeois is largely fruitless, since the main enemy is overseas and hence the proletariat is incapable of carrying out it's historical task because not only will the local bourgeois be backed by the international bourgeois but even if there was an insurrection that over threw the local bourgeois, the proletariat would be unable to exert any real political power over the country due to the fact that even in the cities most of the local production is done in the pre-industrial manner and they would be crushed by the petit bourgeois, the feudal warlords, or most likely foreign imperialism/

C) Imperialism is a world system where the oppressor nation exploits the imperialized nation. But as I've said, under this system China could not be considered properly "capitalist" and therefore the primary contradiction isn't between the local bourgeois and the local proletariat, but rather the oppressed nation and international capitalism.

The reason why Maoism rejects Marx's oponion on the peasantry in these situations is because Marx's commits an act of class existentialism when he says that the peasents are reactionary because they behaved reactionary in the revolution in France. Sure, a Maoist such as myself will concede, they did behave reactionary in the various European revolutions, but will anyone argue that the hardhats beating up anti-war protesters was actually a progressive phenomena? What about the shooting of Trayor Martin? I don't think anyone can argue that a bourgeois killed him. The point is that by dogmatically applying Marx's observations is to neglect the dialetical materialist method that he promoted for a sort of mechanical materialism where analysis is just boiled down to categorizing things based on quotations and concepts developed by Marx rather than trying to understand the world in a truly dialectical way

[subcp]

Sure, a Maoist such as myself will concede, they did behave reactionary in the various European revolutions, but will anyone argue that the hardhats beating up anti-war protesters was actually a progressive phenomena? What about the shooting of Trayor Martin? I don't think anyone can argue that a bourgeois killed him.I think the attitude towards the peasantry by Marx and Engels was that their relation to the means of production had an inherently reactionary characteristic: during 1917, the 'agrarian question' was tackled as 'Bread & Land', allowing the peasants (by not opposing what they were already doing) to continue in expropriating the landed estates, but after that point, the material interest of the peasantry became within the limits of the bourgeois agrarian reform. They interacted with the market forces, sold their grain at high prices, and when prices dropped in relation to industrial products (the famous Scissor's Crisis) they withheld their harvest from the market and stopped buying industrial goods- each family unit functioning as a small business, interested only in itself and its own good, with a small minority of these new found small businesses becoming large businesses, properly bourgeois,agribusiness (the kulaks; who had to be dealt with later on). The Smychka didn't work out until the peasants were forcibly suppressed by the state (and brought into the almost entirely nationalized industries, like the existing minority of collective farms qua agribusiness until Stalin). In that sense they were reactionary, not their subjective beliefs about socialism (same with those Steelworkers and tradesmen in the 60's).

What about the peasants actual relations in the early years (and later years) under the CPC after 1949? I don't know much about it, but have a hard time thinking that the peasantry in China acted differently from peasants in many prior revolutions (bourgeois and attempts at socialist revolutions) based on that record.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

First of all, I don't think it's appropriate to fram the failure of the peasantry to sell food to the cities as "witholding". There was no profit to be made in doing so, due to the economic crisis, so they didn't. It's not a conscious counter revolutionary act, it is simply the operation of market forces that were autonomous to human will. If a boss stopped paying his workers, then are they lazy for not working? Of course not! They are acting in their rational self interest. Likewise I feel that the same logical can apply to the Russian peasant question.

And to answer you question about China in brief, peasants were the primary sources of volunteers for the CPC during the revolution. The reason being that during the war the Chinese Communist party had carried out a serious of land reforms that had made them extremely popular. Even during the great leap foward, the peasantry were the first ones to launch the first stages of collectivization though a grassroots movement, even before the state started the policy of collectivization. Initially Mao decided against Stalin's method of forced collectivization and instead insisted that the mass organizations should help the peasants seize the land from landlords and begin collectivization themselves. However Mao became impatient with the pass of collectization and began to imitate the Stalinist method, which is partially responsible for the calamities during the great leap .

My point being that while I acknowledge that they can be objectively counter revolutionary (the case of the Kulaks), they are also an oppressed class that can be revolutionary. They aren't a progressive class like the proletariat are due to their relationship with the means of production, but that doesn't disqualify them from being able to play an important role nor does it mean that we should pretend that the well being of the peasants doesn't matter because "Well they're all a bunch of Kulaks"

[jookyle]

In my opinion, maoism is a socialist tendency but not one of the marxist variety. From what I've read, maoism makes some fundamental breaks with marxism. Including things like "new democracy" and the view of the peasantry.

[subcp]

I don't think they're all kulaks, but this is the part that is difficult to get around:



First of all, I don't think it's appropriate to fram the failure of the peasantry to sell food to the cities as "witholding". There was no profit to be made in doing so, due to the economic crisis, so they didn't. It's not a conscious counter revolutionary act, it is simply the operation of market forces that were autonomous to human will. If a boss stopped paying his workers, then are they lazy for not working? Of course not! They are acting in their rational self interest. Likewise I feel that the same logical can apply to the Russian peasant question.

Those years were still the infancy of the Soviet Republic; the world revolution was still ongoing (even though looking back now we can see when the prospects had turned against the tide), in that 1919-1921 period. If during the attempt at a socialist revolution, the peasants reacted in such a way compared to the factory workers who did work without being paid for stretches of time or took over workplaces for community interest (like those spontaneous consumers co-ops between city and countryside), it seems to confirm Marx's views on the peasantry in general in a revolutionary situation.

From your description it sounds like the CPC did what the Bolsheviks had done in the previous world war; promote the expropriation of the landowners as the new property of the peasants at a time when the population was armed en masse due to a massive civil war and imperialist war. Is there anything you'd recommend for further reading from a Maoist perspective on the actions of peasants in revolutions that had a Maoist influence or party? I know that probably sounds like a ridiculously specific request, I'd just like to get a better handle on post-1917 peasant actions during revolutionary ferment from a Maoist perspective.

[Art Vandelay]

It's class collaborationist to say the least.

[Let's Get Free]

Maoism can basically be described as agrarian populism combined with radical nationalism.

[Art Vandelay]

Maoism can basically be described as agrarian populism combined with radical nationalism.

This. But I'd watch out 'coup d'etat,' I described Maoism as agrarian populism recently in a thread and (I believe it was) ind_(whatever his name is) called me something along the lines of a 'male sexist bourgeois student who holds contempt for the agrarian proletariat' or something like that.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

The problem with Maoism isn't its view of the peasantry but its view of the "national bourgeois" and its cult of party authority.

[Let's Get Free]

The problem with Maoism isn't its view of the peasantry but its view of the "national bourgeois" and its cult of party authority.

I agree with this

[TheGodlessUtopian]

It's class collaborationist to say the least.

How so?


Maoism can basically be described as agrarian populism combined with radical nationalism.

How so?


The problem with Maoism isn't its view of the peasantry but its view of the "national bourgeois" and its cult of party authority.

Of course, any groups which advocates the utilization of a vanguard party is a cult, how silly of me. :rolleyes: More to the point, however, why is the Maoist view of the national bourgeoisie incorrect?

[Art Vandelay]

How so?

Block of 4 classes.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Block of 4 classes.

Care to explain more? In what way are you using a "block of four classes"? Care to define it? Where does this interrelate with other Maoist theory? You are being vague.

[Art Vandelay]

Care to explain more? In what way are you using a "block of four classes"? Care to define it? Where does this interrelate with other Maoist theory? You are being vague.

I'm being vague because there are certain segments of the 'left,' which I don't consider to be proletarian in nature, ie: Marxism-Leninism; Marxism-Leninism-Maoism; given that, I don't enjoy spending too much of my time debunking them or engaging in polemics with them. The proof is in the pudding. Maoists are basically agrarian populists, who lead peasant based movements. While in Russia, the Bolsheviks temporarily bought off the peasants, with Maoist lead movements, they seem to capitulate completely to the peasantry. They've continually sold out the proletariat whenever their PPW's have successfully seized state power. The bloc of four classes (which is a fairly prominent Maoist doctrine, although I realize in some situations it may not be applicable) is literally advocating class collaboration.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I'm being vague because there are certain segments of the 'left,' which I don't consider to be proletarian in nature, ie: Marxism-Leninism; Marxism-Leninism-Maoism; given that, I don't enjoy spending too much of my time debunking them or engaging in polemics with them. The proof is in the pudding. Maoists are basically agrarian populists, who lead peasant based movements. While in Russia, the Bolsheviks temporarily bought off the peasants, with Maoist lead movements, they seem to capitulate completely to the peasantry. They've continually sold out the proletariat whenever their PPW's have successfully seized state power. The bloc of four classes (which is a fairly prominent Maoist doctrine, although I realize in some situations it may not be applicable) is literally advocating class collaboration.

Unfortunately you still are not saying a whole lot of substance. That being said you are reading too much into the theory of New Democracy and conflating it with ideas which it isn't.

I would normally give a more detailed response but have other things on my mind at the moment. When I formulate a proper rebuttal I will post it here (or alternatively, if by than the thread is too old, the next time this topic comes up in conversation).

[Homo Songun]

It is not difficult to understand Mao's stance towards the "national bourgeoisie" and the strategy of the "bloc of four classes" is also quite simple. It is simply that it is easier to annihilate class enemies as a class one by one rather than all at once and everywhere.

Granted, this is not as sexy as the puritanical approach others take, but then again as 9mm says, "the proof is in the pudding", where the pudding is the concrete experience of 20th century China. Take from it what you will.

Mao's theoretical work on dialectics and the rebirth of the bourgeoisie within the party is much more interesting IMO.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I prefer to respond to your question with childish semantic games. (http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm)

[Art Vandelay]

Granted, this is not as sexy as the puritanical approach others take, but then again as 9mm says, "the proof is in the pudding", where the pudding is the concrete experience of 20th century China. Take from it what you will.

While others will have varying opinions, I'm fairly certain that even Mao had no illusions about China being anything other than state-capitalist.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

For the confusion on New Democracy, I recommend Josh Mozaud Paul's explanation of the concept.


Leaving aside the fact that an orthodox Marxism is a holy grail because marxologists are still arguing over a pure marxism as Marx understood it––let alone the fact that going back to a Marx pre-Lenin is a type of religious revisionist ("dogmato-revisionism") because it turns Marx into a dead dogma when the method is supposed to be scientific, that is open to the future...
I think what you're arguing for, here, is a productive forces analysis of modes of production. Marx emphasized this side of things in works like Poverty of Philosophy, but as both he and Engels maintained in letters to various people, sometimes they over-emphasized productive forces, whereas other times they over-emphasized productive relations, depending on who they were arguing with. In any case, there is a long history of the productive forces versus productive relations debate and it's Mao's theory of New Democracy has been accused of being one or the other.
For example, your argument about the theory of New Democracy by-passing the forces of production that accrue under the capitalist mode of production comes from a position of "productive forces" that accuses Mao's theory, here, of voluntarism. That is: just work on the subjective factor of relations of production and kebam, socialism. But this is not the theory of New Democracy.
So combine your critique with the Trotskyist critique (although the PR and ND are wildly different, Trotsky was trying to solve the same problem but, unlike Mao, was not trying to solve it in concrete circumstances in the midst of a revolution that was already learning from the mistakes of Russia only to go on and make its own), because Trotskyists, who also don't have a clear understanding of ND, accuse the maoists of being "stage-ist" and "too productivist" because they claim the ND argues that peripheral countries have to go through capitalism to achieve socialism, and so China and its class alliances during the ND period prove that it was really just a national capitalist revolution, a kind of messy bourgeois revolution, and not a socialist revolution.
What the theory of the ND does argue, if we boil it down to its essentials is a combination of the productive relations and productive forces approach, and it is important to note that Marx and Engels did believe these were always interacting and, though they over-emphasized one over the other at different points, as noted they did so based on the point they were trying to make.
First of all, we have to begin by recognizing that capitalism has two aspects––both of which were recognized by Marx, but only one that he was able to fully interrogate in a scientific sense: capitalism as a mode of production, and capitalism as a world system. The former is described in Capital, the latter is discussed here and there (in parts of Capital, in the CM, etc.) but not fully worked out by Marx or Engels. It does begin to be worked out by Lenin in his theory of imperialism, and from there you have attempts (and debates) on the part of multiple political economists to explain how the world market functions, what its precise connection is with capitalist modes of production who are clearly the captains of such a mode of production, and on and on.
(I'm going over a lot here, but I'm trying to give this the answer it deserves. Sorry if I'm being onerous.)
Point being, you have a world where there are capitalist nations and nations where there is no capitalism, but everywhere the capitalist market reigns supreme and the capitalist nations make sure it reigns supreme. So here is where maoist theories originally part ways from the Permanent Revolution. Trotsky thought the entire world system was the mode of production, one of "combined and uneven development", and this is essential to his theory of Permanent Revolution and his solution for those areas of this global mode of production (i.e. peripheral nations, third world, global south) that were lagging behind. (Won't get into too much detail on how this determines the theory of PR since I want to concentrate on the ND.) The argument that those come out of the maoist tradition make, here, is that only the centres of world imperialism are capitalist modes of production the peripheries during the imperialist stage of capitalism, however, are capitalist formations in that they are incorporated in the capitalist system through imperialism, some disarticulated form of capitalism has already been fostered in these spaces, so while previous modes of production remain, by virtue of being incorporated in the world system, they are still capitalist formations... Comprador classes, however, prevent the development of national capitalism, the countryside remains underdeveloped... hence "semi-colonial and semi-feudal."
(Should note that Amin's theory of transition is important here because he theorizes that european feudalism was similar in that it was a peripheral and disarticulated version of the tributary mode of production without the completed class opposition in other tributary modes of production, with places lagging severely behind, but with the seeds of a new class consciousness because the contradictions, due to disarticulation and peripheralization, were clear.)
Anyhow, in this context Mao argued (following Lenin, it should be noted, in articles like "Advanced Asia and Backwards Europe") that the class consciousness for socialism is alive and vital in semi-feudal and semi-colonial countries, so the RELATIONS were in place, but the forces of production, due to disarticulation and compradorization, were not in place to build socialism. Because here you are precisely right: part of moving beyond capitalism requires the productive forces necessary to build socialism and eventually communism. Industrialization hadn't penetrated the countryside in China, for example, and was only in the cities... Feudal productive relations reigned supreme amongst the peasantry.
So this is the essence of the theory of New Democracy: due to the fact that a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country is already in a global sense in the capitalist stage, anti-capitalist and revolutionary relations of production can be in command; but due to the fact that a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country is not a proper capitalist mode of production, the forces of production that accrued under capitalism need to be built in these places but commanded by a socialist politics. That is, built for socialism rather than capitalism.
Of course, once you embark on this, you also end up fostering a fuller capitalist ideology and the socialist politics in command are threatened. But we maoists would argue that in socialist stages that would follow revolutions at the centres of capitalism, this would also be a problem because bourgeois ideology would linger there as well because we're all socialized with it to begin with.
In any case, the theory of ND is meant to be connected with the theories of line struggle and cultural revolution: putting politics in command is always a class struggle, even under socialism, and it is important to note that Liu and Deng always wanted to go back to the New Democratic period when that period had passed, and eventually succeeded in moving China back to that period when the capitalist roaders won at the end of the GPCR. Because now it is clear that the forces of production necessary for a capitalist mode of production had been built in China, because now we have state capitalism there, but the struggle during the revolutionary period was over what class was in command and so, as should be clear, the relations of production are just as necessary as the forces of production.

[Old Bolshie]

Maoism is a deviation in crucial aspects as some users already pointed out. I would just point out that Russia in 1917 had also a peasant majority and the proletarian still assumed its leading role in revolution.

[Brutus]

So Maoism is Mao's expansion on Lenin 'strike where capitalism is weakest', as well as other things. Maoism is also one of the only tendancies that actually has revolutionaries engaging in revolutions.

[subcp]

Point being, you have a world where there are capitalist nations and nations where there is no capitalism, but everywhere the capitalist market reigns supreme and the capitalist nations make sure it reigns supreme. So here is where maoist theories originally part ways from the Permanent Revolution. Trotsky thought the entire world system was the mode of production, one of "combined and uneven development", and this is essential to his theory of Permanent Revolution and his solution for those areas of this global mode of productionThat doesn't sound right; especially if you map the tendency toward centralization of capital since the early 20th century; now, in what were once areas of the Earth that were tasked with being markets for industrial goods and sources of raw materials, capital has turned into the manufacturing zone for world production- starting with the archetypal 'workshop nations' noted by Riff-Raff as being Hong Kong and Taiwan in the 70's, and now the rest of China, South Korea, etc due to a need to counter-act the fall in the rate of profit by exploiting cheaper labor. That all reads like a world system acting as a world system. Aspects of Imperialism noted by Lenin and Bukharin appear to be offshoots of this, the expression of capital's needs by the original capitalist nations extending 'influence' by force, then maintaining that influence with force (I don't mean the 'labor aristocracy' etc. but the economic and military aspects noted by Bukharin in his 1915 and 1917 works on Imperialism).


Maoism is also one of the only tendancies that actually has revolutionaries engaging in revolutions. That brings up a lot of existential questions about the nature of being a communist as an individual (the 'armchair revolutionary' thread is about that, but goes in that direction, in that regard- taking it to be a moral superiority, the exemplary individual, who makes world systemic changes, and not classes).

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

So Maoism is Mao's expansion on Lenin 'strike where capitalism is weakest', as well as other things. Maoism is also one of the only tendancies that actually has revolutionaries engaging in revolutions.

I feel like that is a bit of an over simplification but yes, a large component of our tendency is devoted to theorizing about imperialism. Generally there are three schools of thought, there are Maoist-Third Worldists who haven't done anything of note and argue that only the working class in the under developed world are truly proletarian, there are the Marxist-Leninist-Maoists who believe that the first world proletariat are revolutionary, and there are the Marxist-Leninist Mao Zedong thought folks who just go around being annoying revisionists.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Of course, any groups which advocates the utilization of a vanguard party is a cult, how silly of me. :rolleyes: More to the point, however, why is the Maoist view of the national bourgeoisie incorrect?

Not all vanguard parties are cults, only ones which deify certain theorists (I have a separate critique of vanguard parties).

http://www.historynyc.com/prodimages/5180-Chairman-Mao-l.jpg

The problem with the "national bourgeois" is evidenced by what happened to China, Zimbabwe and every other country on the planet which made that a part of their ideological program. Perhaps it was the only reasonable solution to a number of problems facing the early PRC but it had disastrous consequences.

9mm - I'm curious, what concessions did the Chinese state and party make to peasants which was so counterproductive to the revolution?

[subcp]

Before the Japanese invasion (in that period after the massacre of the Shanghai Commune 1927, when the Soviet Republic was proclaimed etc. before being smashed again), here's what Mao wrote about areas of China that had come under the rule of the Red Army:


Agriculture in the Red areas is obviously making progress. As compared with 1932, the 1933 agricultural output was 15 per cent higher in southern Kiangsi and western Fukien and 20 per cent higher in the Fukien-Chekiang-Kiangsi border area. The Szechuan-Shensi border area has had a good harvest. After a Red area is established, farm output often declines in the first year or two.[1 (http://marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_9.htm#BM1)] But it picks up again as the peasant masses work with greater enthusiasm after the land is redistributed and ownership is settled, and after we have given encouragement to production. Today in some places farm output has reached and even exceeded the pre-revolution level.


Within the framework of small-scale peasant economy it is permissible and indeed necessary to draw up suitable plans for the output of certain important agricultural products and to mobilize the peasants to strive for their fulfilment. We should pay closer attention and devote greater efforts to this.

-Mao, 'Our Economic Policy', 1934

http://marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_9.htm

That's the same problem the Russians ran into- the peasants are enthusiastic about joining the revolution because they are given the opportunity to take land from the estates and landowning strata; but after that point, the population of landless poor peasants drops, and the number of small private producers rises dramatically. Mao seems pretty clear on this- that it was a necessary thing to do to garner peasant support.

[Ocean Seal]

Maoism claims to be ant-revisionist, yet places peasants, not the proletariat as the main revolutionary class in Marxism. I find this to be hypocritical, as Mao slandered his enemies as revisionists.
Could a Maoist please explain this to me.
Thanks
Socialist ideology is by its nature revisionist. Mao greatly revised Marx and Lenin, and slandered his enemies as revisionists to him and Stalin basically even though Stalinist-Hoxhaists label him as a revisionist. Make of that what you will.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Not all vanguard parties are cults, only ones which deify certain theorists (I have a separate critique of vanguard parties).

Erm, do you even have a clear understanding of what Marxist-Leninist-Maoism is? Unlike Marxist Leninists and Bordigists we believe that class struggle under socialism can only be led by the working class themselves and therefore the proletariat must overthrow the party and exert it's own power. That's what the cultural revolution was about. But of course if you ask a Hoxhaist they'll say this is tantamount to liquidating the party, as if socialism can be created by merely purging revisionists until you magically arrive at communism. It is our belief in the Independence of the working class in their class struggle under socialism that explains MLM's popularity amougnst the various anarchist sections of the Canadian left. It's what allowed the Revolutionary Communist Party to merge with the formerly anarchist Social Revolution Party.


9mm - I'm curious, what concessions did the Chinese state and party make to peasants which was so counterproductive to the revolution?

Considering that most people on here seem to believe that the only good peasant is a dead peasant, I doubt he can cite for you an actual example. Other than the fact that during the famine Mao let the peasantry take a slightly larger percent of their agricultural output, but this was only because they were starving and because the commune system was notorious for favoring the cities, an aspect of it that Mao constantly critiqued.

Oh and the cult of personality that surround's Mao was actually Lin Biao's trying to manipulate the political scene to curtail the cultural revolution and undermine the gains of the left. Ironically he was the one that ordered the printing of the Quotations of Mao Zedong.

[keystone]

everything is contradictory. maoism means a dialectical approach to reality and understanding how class struggle continues under socialism after the seizure of state power, within the party itself.
for example: you want to abolish the state, yet you need to create a new state power to do that. you want peace, but to get to that you have to wage war.

in much of the world, if you want revolution, you have to address the reality of the situation there. if 90% of the population are poor peasants who are suffering and objectively would benefit from a revolution, and 2% are proletarians, what do you do? how would you so magnanimously go and correct the chinese revolutionaries who kicked out the japanese and american imperialists, redistributed land, and industrialized their country while drastically increasing living standards in a couple decades and liberating women from millenia of feudalistic domination...do you have a concrete proposal for what chinese communists should have been doing rather than what they actually did? if you don't think china was socialist under mao, what would have made it so in your scheme?

there was nothing nationalistic about the communist revolution in china - while it took the form of a national liberation struggle at certain points, it was always profoundly internationalist in scope, in ideological direction, in its perspective towards other revolutions, and then in the maoists' role in promoting revolution around the world in various ways.

what i find "nationalist" is euro-american pseudo-leftists dismissing the largest revolution in human history (and one that actually called itself communist) as not worthy of their study, and how a few are able to so casually label it as incorrect or bad. also, the anti-peasant sentiments are really fucking chauvinist.

[Homo Songun]

Maoism is a deviation in crucial aspects as some users already pointed out. I would just point out that Russia in 1917 had also a peasant majority and the proletarian still assumed its leading role in revolution.

The difference between the two is that Russia in 1917 was a (second-rate) imperialist power whereas China in 1949 was a semi-colonized country emerging from feudalism. Everybody from Tony Cliff to Joseph Stalin agrees on this.

If this is true, and if Marxists agree that the basis for action starts with an analysis of the prevailing material conditions, then doesn't it follow from those premises that the tasks of a revolutionist are going to be in fact different depending on the situation?

[Fourth Internationalist]

What's interesting about this is that I seem to agree with Maoism a lot but I can't get over the "Mao" part.

[Brutus]

What's interesting about this is that I seem to agree with Maoism a lot but I can't get over the "Mao" part.

Just get him on a T-shirt.
Ah, capitalism's ironic veneration of tyrants.

[Old Bolshie]

The difference between the two is that Russia in 1917 was a (second-rate) imperialist power whereas China in 1949 was a semi-colonized country emerging from feudalism. Everybody from Tony Cliff to Joseph Stalin agrees on this.

Yes and Russia was also emerging from feudalism in 1917. Moreover, this doesn't change the fact that the proletariat was a minority in both countries. This is the point.


If this is true, and if Marxists agree that the basis for action starts with an analysis of the prevailing material conditions, then doesn't it follow from those premises that the tasks of a revolutionist are going to be in fact different depending on the situation?

Not to a point of perverting the entire concept.

I assume that you already know why must be the working class leading the revolution and not the peasantry.