What is Maoism? Ask a Maoist

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Recently there has been alot of threads about Maoism but they engage it from the perspective of historical defensism. Now while I appreciate these threads I feel that they represent a faulty way of engaging other communists because not only the conditions of China were vastly different than the conditions of the modern world, but more importantly they fail to answer the question why we defend Mao. Anyone can be "defended". Why, I am sure you can defend Khrushchev or Bernstein but the more important question is why Mao should be defended and I feel that these threads are flawed because they fall into the Maoism=Mao fallacy that unfortunately corrupts the thought of both Maoists and Anti-Maoists alike. So I feel that before we go into the historical threads that have spouted up I feel like we ought to take the time to explain what this "Maoism" is.

And as a note, the purpose of this thread isn't for the sake of tendency wars. While I obviously won' shun debate, I'd prefer to discourage it only because I intend this to be more of a Q&A or a FAQ than a debate between tendencies. So please keep that in mind.

I am going to visit a friends house for a couple of hours so that should give you some time to ask me some questions. I'll try to get back your questions as soon as possible. Hopefully I can turn my answers to your questions into an outline of MLM.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

Parti Communiste Revolutionaire/Revolutionary Communist Party (http://www.pcr-rcp.ca/) or Revolutionary Initiative (http://ri-ir.org/) . . . who is correct?!

[Fourth Internationalist]

Can a someone believe in the ideas of Maoism but dislike how Mao implemented them, if they think he did at all? Like believing in his words and ideas, but not his actions (believing Mao's actions to be contrary to Maoist ideas)? Or like believing he didn't live up to his own ideas?

[Captain Ahab]

Can someone be anti-Stalin but still be a Maoist?

[p0is0n]

What is the Maoist position on China today?

[DasFapital]

How do Maoist think their ideas apply in developed capitalist countries?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Parti Communiste Revolutionaire/Revolutionary Communist Party (http://www.pcr-rcp.ca/) or Revolutionary Initiative (http://ri-ir.org/) . . . who is correct?!

This is part of the current two-line struggle where the debate rages around the implementation of whether the theory of Protracted Peoples' War (PPW) is universal or not. I wouldn't say either is correct or wrong. The Revolutionary Initiative has yet to take a position on the PPW question (though I believe they will take up Kasama's line on its rejection) so it is hard to say. The Initiative clicks itself as a regroupment Party so this is to say they strike a different line than from the PCR-RCP in regards to how they see revolution breaking out; they are still very small and have much to elaborate one.


Can a someone believe in the ideas of Maoism but dislike how Mao implemented them, if they think he did at all? Like believing in his words and ideas, but not his actions (believing Mao's actions to be contrary to Maoist ideas)? Or like believing he didn't live up to his own ideas?

Of course a Maoist can disagree with Mao's actions-he is not an idol to worship. To answer this question more directly, however, I think to a certain degree the person in question would have to have some affinity for Mao but it is important to remember that many Maoists say that Maoism did not start with Mao but rather started with the PCP in Peru during the PPW there. In this manner Mao (the man) laid the groundwork for "Modern (Peruvian defined) Maoism" which in turn was the foundation for the current regroupment project as represented by The Revolutionary Initiative and the Kasama Project.


Can someone be anti-Stalin but still be a Maoist?

Yes, one can. Mike Ely, founder of the Kasama Project, is an ardent Maoist but rejects the "Stalinist" label. To be clear he is not anti-Stalin but he is highly critical of Stalin; Maoist scrutinize all historical figures: uphold the good, decry the bad and attempt to paint a relatively objective picture. Dogmatist still exist, of course, but in general I would say Maoists tend to be more level-headed on this matter than some other comrades.


What is the Maoist position on China today?

China is a capitalist nation which lost any socialist connotations after Mao's death where "capitalist roaders" such as Deng Xiaoping gained power and slowly restored capitalist social relations. China today is Market Socialist (IE capitalist) and is a bastardization of anything which could resemble Maoism.


How do Maoist think their ideas apply in developed capitalist countries?

Depends on who you ask, to be honest. Some believe, such in the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR-RCP) that the application is relatively unchanged: meaning, that Maoist theory best expresses itself through that of Protracted Peoples' Wars. Other groups, such as the Kasama Project, believes that it is the job of communists, including Maoists, to regroup and re-conceive revolutionary theory for the modern century; they do this by advocating for a "communist pole" which consists of a "revolutionary ecosystem" of tendencies (with a loose base in Maoism).

[Kalinin's Facial Hair]

Not sure if it is the right thread but I'll ask anyway.

What are some of the must read maoist texts? I've read On Contradiction, On Practice (both some years ago) and Analysis of the classes in Chinese Society. Liked it a lot, thus my question.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in this thread so far for these questions and I'd like to thank Godless Utopian for begining to answer them. I'll start to answer them now.



Can a someone believe in the ideas of Maoism but dislike how Mao implemented them, if they think he did at all? Like believing in his words and ideas, but not his actions (believing Mao's actions to be contrary to Maoist ideas)? Or like believing he didn't live up to his own ideas?

To a certain extent yes. Mao's opinions and theory did evolve. For example, prior to the Soviet-Sino Split Mao didn't really have anything interesting to say in terms of theory but once capitalism was restored in it's full form in the USSR we can see Mao Zedong thought emerge as an independent school of thought. The failure of the Great Leap Forward drove him away from the theory of productive forces and other productivist tendencies within Marxist-Leninist theory that made Mao a more "hetrodox" of the Marxist of his time. By the Cultural Revolution, Mao could be described as a Gramscian-Trotskyist if you want to invent new words for it :P. So in a way, you can apply the sort of "Young Marx/Old Marx" analysis to Mao.

But to get to the meat of your question, Marxist-Leninist-Maoism is a realitivly new school of thought coined in 1993 that is an attempt to update Marxism to the modern context. MLM is by no means, a fidelity to Mao. Mostly it focuses on the struggles of the working class during the periods of Marx, Lenin, and Mao, rather than these figures themselves. In fact, the term Marxist-Leninist-Maoism was coined by Guzman who lead the Shining Path during the Peruvian Revolution. After he was captured, Shining Path split and the Anti-ceasefire faction refers to him as a "Drug-peddling Revisionist and a terrorist". The point of this Anecdote is to demonstrate that we Maoists view Marxist-Leninist-Maoism as a theoretical framework rather than a collection of opinions from a single source. We Maoists don't have a quotable founding father to instantly "win" arguments with, and that's a good thing. So generally speaking, yes you can criticize Mao though Maoism. My comrade Josh Mozaud Paul wrote an article on this that I recommend that you read:
http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2011/09/marxism-beyond-marx-leninism-beyond.html



Marxism Beyond Marx, Leninism Beyond Lenin, Maoism Beyond Mao

As a communist who endorses the revolutionary theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism it is very important to insist that, whenever I refer to myself as a "maoist" (as often happens when I find myself enmeshed in theoretical arguments), that what I mean by "maoism" is something that goes beyond Mao Zedong the person. Similarly, I believe in a leninism that stands over V.I. Lenin and a marxism that stands over Karl Marx. Simply put, I treat marxism as a living science and not a set of religious texts codified by genius prophets whose words and actions are sacrosanct representations of a divine law of history. Although years back, during the first few posts of the interblog dialogue I shared with BF of Workers Dreadnought, there was a discussion of the concept of a living marxism and a maoism beyond Mao, I want to reemphasize this position.

Just as there are many Trotskyists who treat Trotsky as a prophet––who see themselves as guardians of a pure theory that emerged after the October Revolution––there are also a lot of self-proclaimed maoists who imagine Mao Zedong as some sort of super-human genius who was incapable of error. Rather than treat the name as a cipher of the theory, there is a tendency to make the person the theory and the theory the person. Thus, whenever the actions of the person whose name the theory bears are critiqued, there is the knee-jerk reaction to explain away these actions: once the person and theory are made identical, upholding the latter requires the defense of the former.

A critical communist, however, needs to understand the names are nothing more than indicators of important theoretical ruptures, only named so to indicate those theorists who produced universal concrete analyses of concrete situations that further developed revolutionary science. Similarly, when we speak of Einsteinian physics today we are not speaking of Einstein the person, nor are we even speaking of a science limited only to Einstein's theories and research; there is an Einsteinianism beyond Einstein since physicists who work within this paradigm have developed the science further within the the theoretical boundaries he conceptualized, some even correcting mathematical errors.

Critical communists, therefore, do not doubt that Marx was wrong about certain things within the boundaries he conceptualized; it's the theoretical landscape he opened (along with Engels) that is important. And Marxist-Leninist-Maoists hold that the structure of these boundaries was further conceptualized by Lenin and, after Lenin, Mao––the theoretical insights of each world historical revolution re-universalizing the territory in a dialectic of continuity-rupture. Continuity because the initial universalization is accepted as possessing the germ of further historical insights; rupture because these insights break with certain ways of practice, challenge dogmatic mummery, and produce new questions. A science is open to the future and the chain of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism argues that we have to imagine that new world historical revolutions, beginning from the standpoint of the previous position on the scientific chain, will produce a further moment of continuity-rupture, re-universalizing revolutionary communist theory. As Marx was never tired of reminding us (and a point echoed often by radical theorists like Samir Amin), we can only answer those questions presented by history.

Moreover, although these developments bear the name of a person since it was that person who theorized these moments of re-universalization, it must be emphasized that these names are simply ciphers for a world-historical progress. Marx and Lenin and Mao were smart people, obviously, and great revolutionaries, and yet there were other brilliant revolutionary intellectuals in their respective epochs––the entire notion that they were more "genius" than anyone else, that they possessed some supernatural insight, or that "genius" is something that is not utterly social, is idealist and anti-materialist. These figures were simply people who had the privilege to be at the right point of history at the right point of time, the privilege to have the socialization and training that allowed them not only to become revolutionary leaders but also have the intellectual/social resources to theorize the concrete circumstances of the revolutionary situations they were partially organizing. In this way they are symbols of a process, individuated personae in a collective reality where people make history as a species and, at the same time, are made by this history.

Returning to my initial point, I get somewhat annoyed when critics of maoism assume that I somehow endorse Mao's actions during the last part of his life: shaking the hand of Nixon, allowing China to support some pretty messed up regimes, etc. A very simplistic and knee-jerk reaction to these criticisms is to point out a host of concrete realities: there was real-politik involved where China needed to be recognized by the UN (did it?); there was the fact that Mao's political line was already defeated and Deng's camp was already in charge of China. But these explanations, even if they do possess some historical truth, make the mistake of celebrating Mao Zedong the person over Maoism as a theory.

Mao was a great revolutionary leader and theorist but he was also a person and people are not angels, not pure representatives of a divine order––they are messy, covered in the filth of history. If we understand that Marx's errors can be critiqued by his own theory, then we should also understand that Mao's errors can be critiqued by maoism. So as a critical maoist I do not endorse Mao's political dealings with the Nixon-led US at the end of his life and I think that is completely in line with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Similarly there is no possible way I endorse Marx's erroneous positions on colonialism, nor do I endorse Lenin's erroneous positions during the management of the Soviets… This in no way, obviously, condemns the fact that the theoretical boundaries defined by these revolutions are incorrect.

If we fail to have this understanding of a living science of revolution then we risk becoming dogmatic purists and will never be able to apply revolutionary theory to our concrete circumstances. While I agree that it is dangerous to reject the universal developments of the theory for an "anything goes" movementist approach, it equally dangerous to imagine that we can safeguard a theory's purity as if it exists outside of time and space, beyond history and society, and are thus never able to comprehend our particular concrete circumstances. The application of the universal requires and understanding of the concrete particular; the dialectic between universal and particular is vitally important––and this is what is meant by revolutionary communism as a living science.



Can someone be anti-Stalin but still be a Maoist?

It is quite possible. Mao himself had some problems with Stalin as well. For example he wrote many critiques of Soviet Economics

http://www.marx2mao.com/Mao/CSE58.html

Additionally he can be quoted in many insistence where he expressed some misgivings about Stalin:


“From the very beginning our Party has emulated the Soviet Union. The mass line, our political work, and [the theory of] the dictatorship of the proletariat have all been learned from the October Revolution. At that time, Lenin had focused on the mobilization of the masses, and on organizing the worker-peasant-soldier soviet, and so on. He did not rely on [doing things by] administrative decree. Rather, Lenin sent Party representatives to carry out political work. The problem lies with the latter phase of Stalin’s leadership [which came] after the October Revolution. Although [Stalin] was still promoting socialism and communism, he nonetheless abandoned some of Lenin’s things, deviated from the orbit of Leninism, and became alienated from the masses, and so on. Therefore, we did suffer some disadvantages when we emulated the things of the later stages of Stalin’s leadership and transplanted them for application in China in a doctrinaire way. Today, the Soviet Union still has some advanced experiences that deserve to be emulated, but there are some other [aspects] in which we simply cannot be like the Soviet Union. For example, the socialist transformation of the capitalist industries and commerce, the cooperativization of agriculture, and the Ten Major Relationships in economic construction; these are all ways of doing things in China. From now on, in our socialist economic construction, we should primarily start with China’s circumstances, and with the special characteristics of the circumstances and the times in which we are situated. Therefore, we must still propose the slogan of learning from the Soviet Union; just that we cannot forcibly and crudely transplant and employ things blindly and in a doctrinaire fashion. Similarly, we can also learn some of the things that are good in bourgeois countries; this is because every country must have its strengths and weaknesses, and we intend chiefly to learn other people’s strengths.



“Stalin had a tendency to deviate from Marxism-Leninism. A concrete expression of this is [his] negation of contradictions, and to date, [the Soviet Union] has not yet thoroughly eliminated the influence of this viewpoint of Stalin’s. Stalin spoke [the language of] materialism and the dialectical method, but in reality he was subjectivist. He placed the individual above everything else, negated the group, and negated the masses. [He engaged in] the worship of the individual; in fact, to be more precise, [in] personal dictatorships. This is antimaterialism. Stalin also spoke of the dialectical method, but in reality [he] was metaphysical. For example, in the [Short] History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik), he wrote of the dialectical method, [but] put [the theory of] contradictions [only] at the very end. We should say that the most fundamental problem of dialectics is the unity of contradictory opposites. It is [precisely] because of his metaphysical [character] that a one-sided viewpoint was produced, in which the internal connections in a thing are repudiated, and problems are looked at isolatedly and in a static way. To pay heed to dialectics would be to look at problems and treat a problem as a unity of opposites, and that is why it would be [a] comprehensive [methodology]. Life and death, war and peace, are opposites of a contradiction. In reality, they also have an internal connection between them. That is why at times these oppositions are also united. When we [seek to] understand problems we cannot see only one side. We should analyze [it] from all sides, look through its essence. In this way, with regard to a person, we would not be [taking the position] at one time that he is all good, and then at another time that he is all bad, without a single good point. Why is our Party correct? It is because we have been able to proceed from the objective conditions in understanding and resolving all problems; in this way we are more comprehensive and we can avoid being absolutists.



“Secondly, the mass line was seen as tailism by Stalin. [He] did not recognize the good points about the mass line, and he used administrative methods to resolve many problems. But we Communists are materialists; we acknowledge that it is the masses who create everything and are the masters of history. [For us] there are no individual heroes; only when the masses are united can there be strength. [U]In fact, since Lenin died, the mass line has been forgotten in the Soviet Union. [Even] at the time of opposing Stalin, [the Soviet Union’s leadership] still did not properly acknowledge or emphasize the significance of the mass line. Of course, more recently, attention has begun to be paid to this, but the understanding is still not [sufficiently] deep.



“Stalin had a lot of metaphysical [ideas], and he taught many people to engage in metaphysics. In the Short Course on the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik), he said that Marxist dialectics had four basic characteristics. The first that he talked about was the relationship between things, as if all things were related for no reason. In fact, how are things related? The relationship is actually between the two aspects of a contradiction. In everything there are two aspects in opposition to each other. The fourth [characteristic] he talked about was the internal contradiction in things. Again, he only talked about the struggle between opposites, but not about the unity of opposites. According to this unity of opposites—this basic law of dialectics—opposites struggle against each other, and at the same time they are united; they are mutually exclusive and also interrelated, and under certain conditions they transform themselves into each other.


There are more quotes but I think you get the gist. Also recently Mike Ely has written a piece on critiquing Stalin from a Maoist perspective:

http://kasamaproject.org/history/1492-24on-socialist-methods-and-the-stalin-era-purges


On the Socialist Method and the Stalin Era Purges

By Mike Ely

On one level, there is a mind-numbing contradiction at play. The communist movement (justifiably!) denounces the beating of Rodney King, the killing of Oscar Grant, the shooting of Amadou Diallo, the assassination of Malcolm or King, the jailing of Peltier and Mumia, the holding of so-called “enemy combatants” without evidence or trial… These are outrages — and often the innocence of the victim is a part of that outrage.
So what does it mean, if someone like “Reading You” can (with a wave of their hand) minimize the state execution of hundreds of thousands of people (without trial and often, it must be said, without evidence)? Is it that different because those were nominally socialistcops who pulled the triggers?
There were in the 1930s quotas for arrests (just like there were quotas for other forms of production) — i.e. the cops in a particular locality were required to produce so many spies and reactionaries. Imagine what that produced? There was permission to torture signed at the highest level. Imagine what that meant for the emergence of “confessions” and new denunciations of new suspects for the machinery.
How often we rage when cops in the U.S. presume the guilt of “perps” (”They wouldn’t have been arrested if they hadn’t done something” or “I can tell a criminal just by looking at him.”) Does it suddenly become ok, to arrest and punish without evidence or public hearings if the system is socialist?
And what kind of justice would the people get from activists with such a blindspot if theygot to be part of a new state power?
“Reading you” writes:
“Mike, can you make clear what you are saying?”
Yes, I would like to do that. I would like to thank you for posting your views sharply and challenging mine sharply.
“Are you saying that if there were in fact 680,000 executions, they were largely unjustified? Doesn’t there have to be a more particular assessment of specifics?”
First, i’m saying that there HAS already been a more particular assessment of specifics. We are now seventy years after those purges and the soviet collectivization, many decades after the whole debate over Trotsky’s theses in “Revolution Betrayed,” after Krushchev’s speech of 1956, after Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1973 Gulag Archipelago, after Mao’s sharp rejection and critique of Stalin’s methods (over the 50s and 60s), after a rich body of scholarly work has emerged from the now-open archives in the 1990s.
Without (obviously) endorsing any or all of the works just mentioned (several of which are by notorious reactionaries), i’m saying it is rather bizarre for communists to ( a ) not engage these things publicly and deeply, and ( b ) act (as Avakian does) as if we just can’t know or say anything deep or complex or new about this period.
There is a body of analysis and debate that is rich, detailed, and nuanced — and it has gotten more so thanks to the recent work of scholars. And people will not forgive us if we sit it out, or answer with cartoon nonsense.
I was reading a book on developments in genetic biology — and one scientist remarked that “it will not be long before we will have pretty solid answers to all the main previous controversies around nature vs. nurture.” We will actually come to know much more precisely what is genetic and what is not, and what the interplay is. Similarly, on many matters of the 1930s, vast amounts of evidence and documentation is in, and the world is not waiting around for communists to come up with the final “particular assessment of specifics” — people are coming up with their own “particular assessment of specifics” in a real absense of communist engagement with those specifics.
And I am saying it is long past time to engage that existing set of informatin and a whole world of existing assessments. (And obviously, it is not as if all communists have abdicated — I have carefully studied this all my life, and met others who treat such serious matters seriously.)
Second, i’m saying that the evidence is quite unmistakable that the executions were in the hundreds of thousands (that is the low estimate), and the jailings (deportations etc.) were higher. And that quite of few of those who were jailed died there. (The issue is not specific numbers, which are disputed, but orders of magnitude which are less disputed.) And I am saying that huge numbers of those who were caught up in this were not spies, or reactionaries, or saboteurs, or deserving of death or punishment.
There was explicitly a policy (high in Stalin’s government) of “punishing ten to make sure one doesn’t go free.” There was a terrible rachetting up of harshness, so that the punishment for a casual remark could be denunciation, imprisonment and worse. (Should someone disappear into prison for saying “I wish the Tsar was back”? Mao, by contrast, said that people should be allowed to make such remarks without fear.)
There was in the 1930s USSR a conscious policy of “mopping up” — i.e. asusming that the time had come to remove everyone who had ever been suspect, or a problem, or had gotten some taint on their record (support for non-bolshevik parties in their past, involvement with an internal opposition, travels or relatives abroad, history of “making trouble,” and so on.)
And there was a policy of blanketly blaming all kinds of industrial breakdowns, snafus, accidents, shortfalls, confusion, chaos, delay, and disagreement on conscious sabotage — to deflect anger and impatience from those in power.
There was a conscious policy at the highest levels of using imprisonment and execution as the means of enforcing discipline within the government i.e. getting republic and enterprise officials to say “how high” when told to jump. (Molotov’s own wife was imprisoned after World War 2, held as a kind of hostage to his continued service.)
And faced with those official police campaigns, there was an outbreak of mass hysteria, spymania and massive false denunciation (a real dog-eat-dog climate of paranoia, where denouncing others may deflect attention from you.)
In other words, I’m saying that the heaviest means were directed in ways that dragged down large numbers of people — for no justifiable reason — while terrorizing the rest.
Who (among the people) would want to participate in Soviet politics after that? And those that did were trained to be the most servile yes-men and cautious careerists. Not only is that unjust, but it is deadly for the revolutionary process (for the existance of a “revolutionary people” to carry forward the revolution).
Are you saying that there were no persons engaged in counter-revolutionary activity in the Soviet Union?
First, there were obviously counterrevolutionaries in the Soviet Union. And yes, there probably were some conscious saboteurs within the Soviet economy — reactionary engineers or managers who wanted chaos and socialist collapse. But, that isn’t really the issue.
This society had had a bitter civil war. (And like after the U.S. civil war) the reactionaries did not go away, and some of them organized underground networks (just as the old slaveowners and conferates organized the KKK in the U.S.)
And there were new counterrevolutionaries — who emerged within the communist movement and its leadership…. who (one way or another) embraced political programs leading back to capitalism. And (after the purges, and through the purges) such people came more and more into power (certainly during World War 2, including people like Krushchev and General Zhukov, and then in the war’s aftermath).
Second, however, these purges were not, in the main, aimed at those networks. And the charge that the punished were agents and saboteurs were (in the main) fantasy, paranoia and conscious frameups.
I don’t think people like Trotsky, or Zinoviev, or Bukharin were secret Nazi spy masters and foreign-serving saboteurs. I think that anyone who puts that forward should go look again at the evidence of history (or else admit to a pretty militant and faith-based disdain for evidence and logic).
Clearly if you purge millions of people, and execute hundreds of thousands, your “catch” will include reactionaries. And there were reactionaries in the Gulag camps (as well as political oppositions of a more socialist character). But, the problem (in the Soviet Union by the 1930s) was not that the place was crisscrossed with vast spynetworks, assassination squads and pro-nazi cells that needed to be uprooted and crushed by relentless police roundups.
What there was in the Soviet Union was: Sharp two line struggles over how to proceed with the Soviet revolution — under very difficult conditions that presented very difficult choices. personally i think Bukharin was the first real “bourgeois democrat turned capitalist roader” — and his program foreshadowed Krushchev, Liberman and then Gorbachev.
Trotsky was (i believe) something else — with his own program, network and assumptions — much of it rooted in a view that Russia could not advance without western Europe, and so quickly going over to forms of desperate demoralization when Soviet Russia ended up standing alone.
But the idea that someone needed to kill hundreds of thousands of people to root out a Nazi “fifth column” in the Soviet Union is absurd — and, in fact, the purges did not prevent “fifth columns” to jump out, especially in those places like the western Ukraine or southern Russia most embittered by the collectivization and modernization of society.
The purges involved an overlay of several things:
a) a determined terrorizing of the “middle management” (inclouding especially communist leadership at the republic and enterprise level) to enforce an extreme responsiveness — in part as part of the preparation for war.
b) an approach to solving political problems and disunity that rested heavily on police killing or disappearing those raising political disagreements.
c) a runaway process of mutual denunciation and witchhunting that raged far outside any single central control (mutual denunciations, clique struggle by arrest, settling of old grievances and suspicions) etc.
d) an acute highlevel line struggle over how to deal with the threat of Nazi invasion (with litvinov, bukharin and perhaps Tukachevsky on the side of continuing to seek alliance with britain and france, and Molotov and Stalin deciding to deflect Hitler by seeking a “non-aggression pact.” It was a struggle analogous to the sharp fight between Lin Biao (on one side) and Mao with Zhou enlai (on the other) over how to deal with the mounting threat of a Soviet strike on chinese nuclear facilities.
“Do you believe that the raw numbers of executions, standing alone, necessarily condemns what was done?”
This is a fair and important question.
First, I don’t think the purges themselves are some kind of “rosetta stone” that “tell us all we need to know.” We are focusing on these purges of 1937-38, because they are a stark example of the previous communist approach to their own history — not because those purges are themselves the single decisive event of this history.
I think the study of the Soviet experience needs to study the whole arc… It is not so simple that a period of “red terror” condemns the revolution (though it has to be sharply debated whether the purges were an example of “red terror” against reactoinaries).
I think that the politics and directions of the 1930s should (overall) be sharply criticized (based on what we now know about socialism, about preventing the restoration of capitalism, and about the events in the Soviet Union). But it is not a matter of “raw numbers of execution” alone — all of this has to be seen in context (of isolatin, of Nazi threat, of the weaknesses of the Soviet state, of the extreme urgency of preparing national defense, the large swaths of resentful and angry people, etc.)
“Do you think, for example, after a successful revolution in the U.S. that it is not possible that there could be one, two, or three million relatively consciously counter-revolutionary people actively engaged in tryingt to restore the old system? Will we merely scold them with harsh language? Is it not possible that we might have to send lots of them to prison? Is it that unlikely that, in an individual year, there might have to be 680,000 executions?
To put it simply: Yes there will be millions of people (in a future socialist North America) who actively want return to the old ways. And yes, one way or another, the most active and vicious counterrevolutionary organizations (the modern equivilent of the post-civil war klan) would need to be pursued, exposed, broken up and politically exposed.
But it is starkly wrong to casually suggest that “Is it that unlikely that, in an individual year, there might have to be 680,000 executions?”
Yes it is “unlikely” that this would be correct, or necessary, or tolerable!
Yes, we should reject such an assessment, and we should make it clear that such events should never happen again.
Yes, that is not the preferred method. But wouldn’t that be better, if needed, than the possibility that these assholes would succeed, reimpose the imperialist system, and again impose the nightmare of domination by U.S. imperialism on the world?
Like Paul, I find the assumptions here “appalling.” First, that the dead in the Soviet Union were simply “assholes.” And second that problem of reactionary “assholes” needs to be (or CAN be) solved by mass execution.
No, on the contrary to what you say, if a post revolutionary society went that way, it would not be far away from creating a new U.S. empire, with a returned to the hardened, ruthless, murderous policies that massacred the Indians and enslaved African Americans.
As Mao wrote: “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”
Paul answered this well.
In warfare there are extreme measures taken. but the episode we are discussing was almost twenty years after the Soviet Civil war — these were measures that erupted within a society that was not (yet) at war, or in the midst of an armed internal uprising.
To take another brief passage from Fitzpatrick’s book:
After the outbreak of the Civil War, the Cheka became an organ of terror, dispensing sumary justice including executions, making mass arrests, and taking hostages at random in areas that had come under mass arrests, and taking hostages at random in areas that had come under white control or were suspect of leaning towards the Whites. According to Bolshevik figures for twenty provinces of European Russia in 1918 and the first half of 1919, at least 8,389 persons were shot without trial by the Cheka and 87,000 arested.” (page 76)
These are the kinds of events that Mao is talking about (during the intense life and death fighting of a civil war). And such thing happened in the Chinese revolution, and also in the actions of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam in the 1960s, and so on.
But we can see the different scale (orders of magnitude) that happened in the 1930s — when in fact mass roundups and executions happened in waves (often without evidence or trial or records or family notifications) in times that were relatively “peaceful” — i.e.amid sharp social conflict but without a war, or an armed uprising, where there was actually time for evidence and trials and public discussion.
Anyone who thinks that second kind of repression (recklessly using the full means of an established state in this way) is justified or should be imitated, has abdicated a responsibility to learn from this past, and has really announced their determination to become new oppressors. And even if you don’t think so, everyone else will!
And I might add: that people who want to conduct mass campaigns of execution should declare themselves early and loudly — so they can be carefully kept far far away from revolutionary preparations and future state power.

So yes, you can be a Maoist and critical of Stalin, as Mao was critical of Stalin himself. To us the debate is over to what extent should we be critical of Stalin, not whether we should be or not.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

What is the Maoist position on China today?

We believe that Capitalism was restored under Deng, so yes we think it is capitalist.


As for the rest of the questions, I think I am going to head off to bed so I'll answer them tommorow. But feel free to ask away! I'd like to turn this into a Maoist FAQ so I greatly appreciate the input.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

What are some of the must read maoist texts? I've read On Contradiction, On Practice (both some years ago) and Analysis of the classes in Chinese Society. Liked it a lot, thus my question.

Well, much of it has to do with evolution. For instance, depending on what specific sub-tendency you are interested in learning about it may be several different texts. On a limb I would say go with the basic texts: On Contradiction, On Practice, On Peoples' War, (all of the primary texts which deal with these topics) and from there delve into texts which augment theory shaping the modern two-line struggle.

For some study guide to some of Mao's works see here: http://www.revleft.com/vb/rev-left-study-t172829/index.html

For Party texts on various aspects of Protracted Peoples' Wars, see here (pages above): http://www.signalfire.org/

For Maoist regroupment see the topics tab here: http://archive.kasamaproject.org/

For in-depth texts on various aspects of Maoist oriented history in China: http://www.mlmrsg.com/

For a lengthy document on M-L-M: http://www.bannedthought.net/India/PeoplesMarch/PM1999-2006/publications/mlm/contents.htm

Information on the Mass Line: http://www.massline.info/

[Fourth Internationalist]

Some more questions... :)

Do you know some sources such as books or reliable websites that would give a pro-Mao view of the Chinese communist revolution, Mao's rule, and his policies?

What is the general Maoist position on the cult of personality that deveolped around Mao?

How authoritarian/democratic and cemtralized/decentralized is Maoism?

What attracted you to Maoism?

[kasama-rl]

What is the general Maoist position on the cult of personality that deveolped around Mao?


I wrote an essay about this which may be helpful to you:

On the cult of personality: Revisiting Chen Boda's ghost

http://kasamaproject.org/kasama/4353-letter-8-on-the-cult-of-personality-revisiting-chen-boda-s-ghost

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Do you know some sources such as books or reliable websites that would give a pro-Mao view of the Chinese communist revolution, Mao's rule, and his policies?

See the MLM Study Group: http://www.mlmrsg.com/

And the history section of Kasama: http://kasamaproject.org/history/4293-mao-s-biographer-han-suyin-one-divides-into-two

Here is a list from the MLM usergroup on RevLeft:


Memoirs by Chinese people of the Maoist years:
-The Crippled Tree, by Han Suyin
-A Mortal Flower, by Han Suyin
-Birdless Summer, by Han Suyin
-My House Has Two Doors, by Han Suyin
-The Dragon's Village, by Chen Yuan-tsung

First-hand accounts of Westerners who visited China during the Maoist years:
-Red Star Over China, by Edgar Snow
-Red China Today, by Edgar Snow
-The Long Revolution, by Edgar Snow
-Fanshen, by William Hinton
-Iron Oxen, by William Hinton
-Shenfan, by William Hinton
-Turning Point in China, by William Hinton
-China! Inside the People's Republic, by the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars
-The Great Reversal, by William Hinton

Narrative histories of the PRC that are at least nominally socialist or Mao-sympathetic or at least try to be fair:
-Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World: A Concise History, by Rebecca E. Karl
-Mao's China: A History of the People's Republic, by Maurice Meisner
-Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic, by Maurice Meisner
-Morning Deluge, by Han Suyin
-Wind in the Tower, by Han Suyin

Biographies of Mao and other famous party members of the time (Some of these are pretty liberal but they do tend to be more fair than others):
-Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China, by Han Suyin
-Mao Tsetung's Immortal Contributions, by Bob Avakian
-Mao Zedong: Man, Not God, by Quan Yanchi
-Mao Zedong: Biography, Assessment, Reminiscences, by Zhong Wenxian
-Mao Zedong: A Political and Intellectual Portrait, by Maurice Meisner
-Mao Zedong: A Life, by Jonathan D. Spence
-Was Mao Really a Monster?, by Gregor Benton and Lin Chun
-Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary, by Gao Wenqian
-Mao Zedong and China's Revolutions: A Brief History with Documents, by Timothy Cheek

Books about the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution:
-Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge, by Melissa Schrift
-The Battle for China's Past: Mao & the Cultural Revolution, by Mobo Gao
-The Unknown Cultural Revolution, by Han Dongping
-And Mao Makes 5, by Raymond Lotta
-Maoist Economics and the Revolutionary Road to Communism, by Raymond Lotta

How authoritarian/democratic and cemtralized/decentralized is Maoism? I do not know how a tendency can be centralized or authoritarian. I think for this you would be asking about specific groups or parties as that is where your comments come in. Maoism is theory and as such cannot be centralized, authoritarian or what have you. Depending on the group is can be either or: some groups are highly regimented (The American RCP) while others are decentralized (Kasama's collectives).


What attracted you to Maoism?It was more complete theory than other tendencies which would lean too heavily taking ultra-left stances and which both lacked coherency on the revolutionary movement and attacks more developed tendencies. With me it was the realism, self-criticism, focus on contradictions, and efforts at how pushing forward in the future will help the movement; dogma is still rooted by there are groups which are attempting to overcome such obstacles. That is it in a nutshell, anyway.

[Drosophila]

Isn't it a bit strange to call yourselves "anti-revisionists" if Mao openly revised Marxism (even at the expense of the rest of the CCP's actual Marxists)?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Isn't it a bit strange to call yourselves "anti-revisionists" if Mao openly revised Marxism (even at the expense of the rest of the CCP's actual Marxists)?

Mao creatively applied Marxism to China's conditions, he didn't "revise" it, to add to this he was an actual Marxist in that he applied Marx and Engels's theories to China. The difference is that creativity applying it allows it to breath and take root; this means that unlike revisionism, which to us means inclement of reactionary pro-capitalist lines which endorse bourgeois modes of thought, Marxism is allowed to manifest without some rigidness attempting to mechanically apply itself as a universal principal.

So to recap: anti-revisionist, to Maoists, mean anti-capitalist distortions of Marxism. Creativity applying it means free from mechanical lines. The two are different concepts. You are thinking of the "Hoxhaite" conception of anti-revisionism; this is something Maoists do not endorse.

This is not to be confused into believing that Maoism is free of such dogma for there are sects which attempt to do just this (Third-Worldism comes to mind with PPW proponents taking a lesser stage). There is a thin-line, yet one which is stark when one is able to differentiate between the two concepts.

A blog entry on this: http://archive.kasamaproject.org/threads/entry/the-cult-of-anti-revisionism#comments

[La Guaneña]

How do you see the developments in India and Nepal right now? How do Maoists view the formation process of the DPRK?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

How do you see the developments in India and Nepal right now? How do Maoists view the formation process of the DPRK?

The two places are at different moments right now:

Nepal: Pranchanda betrayed the revolution and has sold out to Indian Expansionism while turning reformist. This is while the revolutionary faction, the CPN-M, broke away and have threatened to renew the Peoples' War. This is the situation in a nutshell. This is in addition to the wider scene with India still considering Nepal a renegade province as well as international imperialism, as expressed through the UN, attempting to gain a foothold in Nepal. This is a difficult situation for revolutionaries to construct socialism in. Things are very precarious. There will only be a true victory for socialism in Nepal if a violent and bloody break with reactionaries happens. For this we will just have to wait and see in the future as events develop.

India: The PPW there is still within the Strategic Defensive. While the movement has been decades in the making what is seldom said is that it has developed in waves; meaning, the Maoist movement of the past, while connected to the present, had its own generation and goals. The current one is the latest building block. Currently this newborn is facing down a massive government offensive (Operation: Greenhunt) and is struggling to survive. I doubt they will be as easily wiped out as the Liberation Tigers in Sri Lanka but it is a obstacle to their organizing. Nonetheless India holds great potential for the world socialist movement. The Indian ruling class will not soon end this operation and any chance of a socialist India will depend on how well the Naxalite command is able to recover their losses and build more communities of resistance.

(For event both in Nepal and India see the respective newthreads in the Ongoing Struggles sub-forum)

The DPRK is as revisionist as one can imagine. It is not nor ever has been Maoist or Maoist-oriented. China assisted the Korean revolutionaries during the Japanese occupation, and have supported them since (albeit under capitalist rule) but this does not equate ideological conviction.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, then, is not the same as Mao Zedong Thought?

What is the M-L-M position on class blocks and the national bourgeoisie?

What is the M-L-M position on the G. P. Cultural Revolution; especially the decision to deploy the PLA to suppress the Red Guards?

I suppose that Marxists-Leninists-Maoists follow Mao's description of the revisionist regime in the Soviet Union as "state capitalist" and posit the existence of a "red bourgeoisie"? If so, what economic processes had, in their view, led to the restoration of capitalism?

What is the M-L-M position on the potential for a proletarian revolution in the so-called "First World" countries?

Apologies if any of these questions have already been answered, and I have not noticed.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, then, is not the same as Mao Zedong Thought?

I was never the keenest on this subject and it can be clouded somewhat when sectarianists become involved. By this I mean there are sects which have their own definition of what Mao Zedong thought is; as an example: Mike Ely, of the Kasama Project, considers himself a Maoist but other revolutionaries within the Maoist camp would consider him not a Maoist (MLM) by a "person who has successfully ascribed Mao Tse-tung thought into the modern day". This is further obstructed if we are talking about historical precedents; as, for another example, during Mao's leadership in China, there was a embryonic struggle between Mao's follwers: one side endorsed Mao Tse-tung thought, while another endorsed something Maoism, natrually conflict brewed; this survives to the present day struggle where this (false) dichotomy divides the movement (often taking the form of "Orthodox Maoism" and "Post-Maoism").

I would say there is no difference, however.


What is the M-L-M position on class blocks and the national bourgeoisie?Class Blocks: Depends on which classes you talk about and in which countries. In semi-feudal countries the oppressed classes uniting together to form a block, as described in Mao's New Democracy writings, is to be expected in order to carry out the task of industrializing the nation and utilizing such platforms as a jumping off point into socialism. This, of course, is reversed in the first world where, obviously, the conditions are different and as such cannot lead to the same conclusions.

The national bourgeoisie: Enemies to be conquered. They have their role in Third-World nations and countries in the sense that if the country is under imperialist assault, such as China by Japan at the start of the previous century, than they must be brought in line to fight the invader... but this is getting off track and has some overlap in the theory of Protracted Peoples' Wars.


What is the M-L-M position on the G. P. Cultural Revolution; especially the decision to deploy the PLA to suppress the Red Guards? Most MLMs support the GPCR and hail it as a triumph of socialist constructions. This is not to say that there weren't mistakes made, because rest assured there were more than enough errors made, but that Maoists tend to support the GPCR as a example of overcoming outdated cultural traditions and icons.

For an example of what I mean see this study paper: http://kasamaproject.org/history/991-23mlmrsg-evaluating-china-s-cultural-revolution-and-its-legacy-for-the-future

As from what I can remember the decision to deploy the PLA to suppress the Red Guards had to do with the violence resulting in the battles between the Red Guards and Red Rebels (who had a reactionary view of one another) as well as the conflict they had with the PLA to begin with: the PLA never saw eye to eye with Mao and during the time of the Red Guard movement there were clashes with PLA units often resulting in the guards looting the PLA barracks. The PLA, in turn, exerted pressure on Mao to end the movement, in part because of their own interest in maintaining their social-position. Mao at the time was playing delicate politicking games and so ordered the end of the movement. What would then follow is brutal suppression which I am sure the reactionary anti-Mao elements within the PLA thoroughly enjoyed.


I suppose that Marxists-Leninists-Maoists follow Mao's description of the revisionist regime in the Soviet Union as "state capitalist" and posit the existence of a "red bourgeoisie"? If so, what economic processes had, in their view, led to the restoration of capitalism? I have not studied this part of history so to be honest I can't really comment much. I am not sure on the State Capitalist question, as I am under the impression that this is more a Trotskyist understanding, but Maoist do see the fSu as reformist and revisionist (capitalist). I believe I have heard some comrades mention the existence of a Red Bourgeoisie but it is not something I generally hear a bunch of they consider them fully capitalist.


What is the M-L-M position on the potential for a proletarian revolution in the so-called "First World" countries? It is possible, all such Maoist agree (with the exception of MTW scum) but only through in my opinion,re-grouping and re-conceiving; this means, through a process of developing a modern day mass line and ideology series which resonates with that of today. To comment further on this I should say that the movement is split between those who believe that the best way to revolution is through that of PPW and those who believe in regrouping.

[goalkeeper]

Mao creatively applied Marxism to China's conditions, he didn't "revise" it, to add to this he was an actual Marxist in that he applied Marx and Engels's theories to China. The difference is that creativity applying it allows it to breath and take root; this means that unlike revisionism, which to us means inclement of reactionary pro-capitalist lines which endorse bourgeois modes of thought, Marxism is allowed to manifest without some rigidness attempting to mechanically apply itself as a universal principal.

So to recap: anti-revisionist, to Maoists, mean anti-capitalist distortions of Marxism. Creativity applying it means free from mechanical lines. The two are different concepts. You are thinking of the "Hoxhaite" conception of anti-revisionism; this is something Maoists do not endorse.

This is not to be confused into believing that Maoism is free of such dogma for there are sects which attempt to do just this (Third-Worldism comes to mind with PPW proponents taking a lesser stage). There is a thin-line, yet one which is stark when one is able to differentiate between the two concepts.

A blog entry on this: http://archive.kasamaproject.org/threads/entry/the-cult-of-anti-revisionism#comments

Basicaly all you are saying is revisionism= bad changes to Marxist theory, Maoism = good changes to Marxist theory

[goalkeeper]

WHat is "semi-feudalism"? Was Russia "semi-feual" before 1917?

[Let's Get Free]

In China, the Communists supposedly smashed the old feudal state and created a new 'workers state'. However, Deng Xiaoping and his successors seem quite able to use the 'workers state' for capitalism. How?
Why did the masses seem unable to tell the difference between the revolutionary line of Mao Zedong and the gang of four, and the revisionist line of Deng Xiaoping? TGU says capitalism was gradually restored by Deng Xia Ping, how was this done? Did the workers decide to hand their means of production back over to the capitalists? Why did no one notice the change of the entire mode of production?

[Ismail]

Basicaly all you are saying is revisionism= bad changes to Marxist theory, Maoism = good changes to Marxist theoryTo be fair, I'm pretty sure everyone can agree that, say, Lenin's elaborations and development of Marxism (whatever their value) are qualitatively different from any "elaborations" and/or "developments" made by Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Deng, the Eurocommunists and so on. Revisionists wouldn't be practicing revisionism if they didn't claim the mantle of Marxism and touting themselves as "creatively developing" it or even "continuing" the course of Marx, Engels and Lenin (and Stalin in the case of the Maoists, though this is their thread so I'll refrain) under supposedly new conditions.

[La Guaneña]

Thank you very much to the comrades answering questions here, I have one more:

What is the Maoist conception of the Party? From what I know, the Communist Party of Peru has a very militarized structure. Is that general rule?

Thanks once again.

[ind_com]

To be fair, I'm pretty sure everyone can agree that, say, Lenin's elaborations and development of Marxism (whatever their value) are qualitatively different from any "elaborations" and/or "developments" made by Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Deng, the Eurocommunists and so on. Revisionists wouldn't be practicing revisionism if they didn't claim the mantle of Marxism and touting themselves as "creatively developing" it or even "continuing" the course of Marx, Engels and Lenin (and Stalin in the case of the Maoists, though this is their thread so I'll refrain) under supposedly new conditions.

This thread is meant for Maoists answering questions asked by others. The above post is effectively void of content and just an attempt to start a flamewar and ruin the thread. I request mods to trash it as soon as possible or put it in a new thread where Hoxhaists can cite the worldwide successes of their glorious movements and prove how irrelevant Maoism is.

[Ismail]

This thread is meant for Maoists answering questions asked by others. The above post is effectively void of content and just an attempt to start a flamewar and ruin the thread. I request mods to trash it as soon as possible or put it in a new thread where Hoxhaists can cite the worldwide successes of their glorious movements and prove how irrelevant Maoism is.You're right, I shouldn't have defended the Maoists from a Trot.

What do the Maoists think of the Chinese border disputes with the USSR and Chinese efforts to rehabilitate Genghis Khan as a man who supposedly brought "superior" Chinese culture to other societies?

[ind_com]

Thank you very much to the comrades answering questions here, I have one more:

What is the Maoist conception of the Party?

This should help:

http://www.signalfire.org/?p=21092


From what I know, the Communist Party of Peru has a very militarized structure. Is that general rule?

Thanks once again.

The revolutionary army is strictly under the command of the party, and many red-soldiers are party members as well. Each guerrilla squad has a political instructor.

[Questionable]

I have a couple questions:

What do Maoists think about the Comintern's instructions for the CCP to start a mass movement among the industrial proletariat rather than guerilla warfare with peasants?

This one is an oldie, but I have to ask; why did Mao shake hands with President Nixon? Do the majority of Maoists agree with this course of action or no?

[ind_com]

I have a couple questions:

What do Maoists think about the Comintern's instructions for the CCP to start a mass movement among the industrial proletariat rather than guerilla warfare with peasants?

They were plain wrong. A mass movement without a properly organized communist army does not stand any chance against the state. In places like China, to maintain armed forces from the beginning, a communist movement has to concentrate more on the rural areas.



This one is an oldie, but I have to ask; why did Mao shake hands with President Nixon? Do the majority of Maoists agree with this course of action or no?It is irrelevant to Maoists whether Stalin or Mao shook hands with some capitalist president or not. Their policies matter more.

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

It is irrelevant to Maoists whether Stalin or Mao shook hands with some capitalist president or not. Their policies matter more.
I agree the handshake itself is irrelevant, but I´m honestly curious about what contemporary maoists think of PRC foreign policy at that time?
Do Maoists defend PRC allying itself with the US against the USSR at the time as a tactic or are some more critical of it?

[ind_com]

I agree the handshake itself is irrelevant, but I´m honestly curious about what contemporary maoists think of PRC foreign policy at that time?
Do Maoists defend PRC allying itself with the US against the USSR at the time as a tactic or are some more critical of it?

Maoists generally agree on the fact that though USA was globally the greatest enemy of the working classes, locally the revisionist USSR was the greatest threat to China. So the tactical alliance was justified.

[Questionable]

[quote]They were plain wrong. A mass movement without a properly organized communist army does not stand any chance against the state. In places like China, to maintain armed forces from the beginning, a communist movement has to concentrate more on the rural areas.

They were wrong to encourage the CCP to have a presence among the Chinese worker unions? The Chinese working class was actually quite strong in 1925-27. There were mass strikes and boycotts by CCP-led unions, a 12-month general strike in Hong Kong, and other instances of workers' activity. Afterwards there were still many workers in 'yellow' unions which the Comintern encouraged the CCP to infiltrate and convert to communism, while forming red unions whenever possible.

What were the particular conditions that lead to Mao's idea to focus on the countryside?

[ind_com]

They were wrong to encourage the CCP to have a presence among the Chinese worker unions? The Chinese working class was actually quite strong in 1925-27. There were mass strikes and boycotts by CCP-led unions, a 12-month general strike in Hong Kong, and other instances of workers' activity. Afterwards there were still many workers in 'yellow' unions which the Comintern encouraged the CCP to infiltrate and convert to communism, while forming red unions whenever possible.They were strong, but were not militarily prepared to carry on an independent movement. Strength in numbers and organization means nothing if there is not enough revolutionary military force to combat the onslaught of the state. The Comintern ignored this factor because is mistakenly considered GMD as a long-term ally. Of course communists must have presence in the urban areas too, but the way the Comintern planned it was wrong.


What were the particular conditions that lead to Mao's idea to focus on the countryside?1) Rural dependence of China's economy.

2) Concentration of the working classes in the rural areas.

3) Concentration of the state forces in the urban areas.

4) Availability of favourable terrain and space in and around the rural areas.

5) Destruction of the urban communist movement by the betrayal of the GMD.

[Questionable]

They were strong, but were not militarily prepared to carry on an independent movement. Strength in numbers and organization means nothing if there is not enough revolutionary military force to combat the onslaught of the state. The Comintern ignored this factor because is mistakenly considered GMD as a long-term ally. Of course communists must have presence in the urban areas too, but the way the Comintern planned it was wrong.

So a small guerilla minority is better than a mass movement from the working class?

The Comintern considered the KMT allies until they betrayed the CCP, then they began advising Chinese communists to infiltrate the large KMT unions to draw those workers to communism, to form red unions when the time was right, and to be there to assist in industrial struggles.. It's not as if they were instructing the Chinese communists to throw themselves at the state when they had no strength amongst the workers.


1) Rural dependence of China's economy.

2) Concentration of the working classes in the rural areas.

3) Concentration of the state forces in the urban areas.

4) Availability of favourable terrain and space in and around the rural areas.

5) Destruction of the urban communist movement by the betrayal of the GMD.

These conditions did make Mao's strategy of peoples' war useful, especially number five, but these are all conditions particular to China. What makes you think they can be converted into a doctrine for countries facing different conditions?

[$lim_$weezy]

In China, the Communists supposedly smashed the old feudal state and created a new 'workers state'. However, Deng Xiaoping and his successors seem quite able to use the 'workers state' for capitalism. How?
Why did the masses seem unable to tell the difference between the revolutionary line of Mao Zedong and the gang of four, and the revisionist line of Deng Xiaoping? TGU says capitalism was gradually restored by Deng Xia Ping, how was this done? Did the workers decide to hand their means of production back over to the capitalists? Why did no one notice the change of the entire mode of production?

I would like to know more about this as well.

[p0is0n]

What in particular makes maoists consider maoist China (the cultural revolution?) the furthest advance of socialism hitherto?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Basicaly all you are saying is revisionism= bad changes to Marxist theory, Maoism = good changes to Marxist theory

If by "bad" you mean introduction of capitalist ideas than yes, this is nothing new and not unique to Maoists. This being said there are certain strands of Maoism which believe their tendency to be the highest yet revolutionary concoction; I am not sure I am among those people as I do not believe in the "head worship" of old.

See here: http://kasamaproject.org/communist-organization/2454-86marxism-is-more-like-a-bush-in-an-ecosystem


WHat is "semi-feudalism"? Was Russia "semi-feual" before 1917?

Yes. Semi-feudal is when a nation has a small working class while possessing a larger peasant class. Places where serfdom still exist in the country side but more modern capitalist relations exist in the cities.



What is the Maoist conception of the Party? From what I know, the Communist Party of Peru has a very militarized structure. Is that general rule?

The PCP's conception of the party and the military's role was wrong, I believe. They had a system of militarization in which would have armed the whole population in a post-capitalist system resembling a more military oriented path than worker oriented.


What in particular makes maoists consider maoist China (the cultural revolution?) the furthest advance of socialism hitherto?

Mao developed and understood that even under socialism the class struggle not only continues by in fact intensifies. This is something other tendencies have not understood and have even gone as far to claim that socialism there are no class antagonisms. This is, to Maoists, wrong. It is in this manner that Maoists consider the examples in Maoist China the highest yet culmination of socialism.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

In China, the Communists supposedly smashed the old feudal state and created a new 'workers state'. However, Deng Xiaoping and his successors seem quite able to use the 'workers state' for capitalism. How?
Why did the masses seem unable to tell the difference between the revolutionary line of Mao Zedong and the gang of four, and the revisionist line of Deng Xiaoping? TGU says capitalism was gradually restored by Deng Xia Ping, how was this done? Did the workers decide to hand their means of production back over to the capitalists? Why did no one notice the change of the entire mode of production?

We have already been over this in other threads, Gladiator. But to recap: Deng gradually introduced pro-capitalist reforms using the labels of revolutionary content; this tricked the workers thereby dulling their reaction. Eventually these reforms eliminated workers control (under the guise of its merely changing), put elite managers back in charge in regards to production, removed accessible education for the masses (introducing more Western oriented modes of grading and acceptance), and opened up the country to foreign capital like never before (a rush which never existed under Mao's time). These reforms took time and were not "all at once".

Furthermore I do not think, after a time, the workers are as tricked as you believe them to be: while for a bit they were caught off guard this is being rectified today as seen in both Mobo Gabu's book "The Battle for China's Past" as well as in the streets with the emergence of the New Maoist movement. The workers are realizing just how horribly they have been screwed and are making a comeback. Obviously this is a bit difficult considering how well-entrenched the Chinese ruling class is, but it is a movement to keep an eye on.

[Let's Get Free]

We have already been over this in other threads, Gladiator. But to recap: Deng gradually introduced pro-capitalist reforms using the labels of revolutionary content; this tricked the workers thereby dulling their reaction. Eventually these reforms eliminated workers control (under the guise of its merely changing), put elite managers back in charge in regards to production, removed accessible education for the masses (introducing more Western oriented modes of grading and acceptance), and opened up the country to foreign capital like never before (a rush which never existed under Mao's time). These reforms took time and were not "all at once".

Furthermore I do not think, after a time, the workers are as tricked as you believe them to be: while for a bit they were caught off guard this is being rectified today as seen in both Mobo Gabu's book "The Battle for China's Past" as well as in the streets with the emergence of the New Maoist movement. The workers are realizing just how horribly they have been screwed and are making a comeback. Obviously this is a bit difficult considering how well-entrenched the Chinese ruling class is, but it is a movement to keep an eye on.

Yeah, I think the explanation that the Chinese Revolution was simply a bourgeois one from the very beginning employs far less mental gymnastics than yours.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Yeah, I think the explanation that the Chinese Revolution was simply a bourgeois one from the very beginning employs far less mental gymnastics than yours.

Stop posting in this thread or I will report your actions as trolling.

[subcp]

Are theories like New Democracy still upheld by contemporary Maoists?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Are theories like New Democracy still upheld by contemporary Maoists?

Where they are applicable, yes. So this means in the Third-World semi-feudal countries. New Democracy is a stepping stone to socialism in such places where industry and democratic practices are built up under revolutionary guidance. Naturally this excludes any such inclusion in first-world nations.

[Let's Get Free]

Stop posting in this thread or I will report your actions as trolling.

I'll post wherever I damn well please, thank you.

[kasama-rl]

New Democracy was a stage of socialist revolution in China, where there was a significant anti-feudal and anti-imperialist character to the seizure of power.

Is the theory of New democracy upheld by Maoists today?

This question presumes there is a "theory of New Democracy." And i'm not sure what that means.

Maoists (obviously) think that Mao's New Democracy was an innovative and successful path to socialism -- uh, since it was. (Some people say "It was a terrible idea...." but overlook that it was highly successful, and produced the worlds second great socialist revolution.)

Is it applicable in the world today? Well, in many ways it is. For example, it is highly relevant that Mao make a unique and innovative analysis of a unique country -- and charted a unique path to power. That part of his theory is universally applicable.

There are some countries with significant feudal relations remaining in the world (though less and less each year). In countries that are heavily feudal (and Nepal was an example) there was some direct relevance of New Democracy (including today). But fewer countries today can be considered semifeudal because of the inroads of capitalist argriculture and the increasing urbanization of most countries. Under such conditions China's New Democracy doesn't *directly* apply -- though some local stages or unique strategies are not only possible, but inevitable.

[subcp]

I worded the question in that way due to it being defended (vociferously) by Maoists in other threads. It struck me odd; for the same reason people call themselves 'Titoists'; as in identifying examples of realpolitik carried out by regimes of the 20th century, with ideological gloss at the time, as some kind of unified 'theory' that can be adhered to today.

[ind_com]

So a small guerilla minority is better than a mass movement from the working class?

Yes. To construct an unarmed mass movement is to work for something that can be destroyed by the ruling class in a few weeks of military operation. A smaller mass base with a 'small guerrilla minority' as you put it, can be gradually expanded to an armed mass movement that can overthrow the state.


The Comintern considered the KMT allies until they betrayed the CCP, then they began advising Chinese communists to infiltrate the large KMT unions to draw those workers to communism, to form red unions when the time was right, and to be there to assist in industrial struggles.. It's not as if they were instructing the Chinese communists to throw themselves at the state when they had no strength amongst the workers.


They had no separate military plan for the communist party. No matter how much organizational strength you have within workers, it all amounts to throwing yourself into the jaws of the state if you keep expanding your movement beyond a certain threshold without arming it.



These conditions did make Mao's strategy of peoples' war useful, especially number five, but these are all conditions particular to China. What makes you think they can be converted into a doctrine for countries facing different conditions?

The Chinese model is not applicable to countries facing radically different conditions. However, the strategy of Protracted People's War is a much broader theory and includes different models for countries facing different conditions.

[Questionable]

They had no separate military plan for the communist party. No matter how much organizational strength you have within workers, it all amounts to throwing yourself into the jaws of the state if you keep expanding your movement beyond a certain threshold without arming it.

Why could they not simultaneously arm a mass movement while building it? I don't see a contradiction. Even if the Comintern didn't explicitly say "get guns and shoot the KMT," they cautioned the CCP to act safely whenever they told them not to form red unions unless the conditions were right. If you have a mass movement in the first place, I think a certain level of strength can be presumed.


The Chinese model is not applicable to countries facing radically different conditions. However, the strategy of Protracted People's War is a much broader theory and includes different models for countries facing different conditions.

How much of these theories have been put into practice?

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Well this thread sure did blossom. I thank my comrades Mike Ely and TGU for the assistance, however since I come from the MLM tradition of 1993 while Mike and TGU are of the Kasama school of thought I think I ought to try to answer these questions from my perspective. For now I'll just start with this one




Are theories like New Democracy still upheld by contemporary Maoists?

I was having this discussion with some of my comrades in Reddit the other day. I was putting forth the idea that there was a "Young Mao" and an "Old Mao" in a similar fashion that there is a "Young Marx" and an "Old Marx". However my comrade corrected me and argued that there is a universally applicable Mao and a Mao of a particular instance.

So to get to your point, is the theory of New Democracy universally applicable or is it only applicable to the particular conditions of China? First of all, we need to understand that while Leninism represents Marxism in the field of Praxis, Maoism represents a philosophy of Marxism. By this I mean that Maoism assumes that there are universal and particular laws that underlie the logic and application of Marxism. (For more clarification on what I mean, I recommend that you read the works of Louis Athusser or the interblog dialog on MLM Mayhem that I will link here http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/p/3-headed-beast.html )

Now, the most essential component of this philosophy of Marxism is Dialectical Materialism. Now while Marx's dialectic identifies the contradiction between the Bourgeois and the Proletariat and most of his dialectic revolves around that sole contradiction, the Maoist dialectic focus more on this method and elaborates on it significantly. Although I can not summerize the entirety of Mao's contribution to Dialectics, I will simply say that there is a concept within the Maoist Dialectic called the primary and the particular contradiction and interrelation of contradictions. When Mao called for New Democracy he was speaking of a the nessecity of a united front against imperialism in the particular instance of China where the primary contradiction was between the oppressed nation and imperialism, and not the proletariat and capitalism which can only occur once capitalism exists as a mode of production.

The reason for this is that in a nation of 400 million where there are only 3 million proletarians, the working class simply can not overthrow imperialism, capitalism, and exersize a dictatorship over the peasentry and the bourgeois at the same time. It would be more reasonable that you ask your little brother to move a mountain.

That being said, as I mentioned early there is a question of universal or particularity and I would say that the conditions of New Democracy are particular only to countries where the primary contradiction is that of Imperialism. The only countries where I know that the local bourgeois openly support communist groups are North Ireland, Turkey, Kurdistan, and perhaps Afghanistan. Otherwise in my opinion it is not applicable anywhere else.

[ind_com]

Why could they not simultaneously arm a mass movement while building it? I don't see a contradiction. Even if the Comintern didn't explicitly say "get guns and shoot the KMT," they cautioned the CCP to act safely whenever they told them not to form red unions unless the conditions were right.

Building an armed mass movement would have been one of the best things possible. However, building an unarmed mass movement and building an armed mass movement are quite different things. Telling a party to act safe is far from advising it to form an armed mass movement.


If you have a mass movement in the first place, I think a certain level of strength can be presumed.

May be so in some cases, but mostly it will fail in front of an all-out onslaught by the state.



How much of these theories have been put into practice?

The city based model of PPW is relatively new and hasn't been implemented. But it draws its inspiration from armed urban workers' resistance throughout history. Several versions of the agrarian-revolution based model of PPW have been put into practice.

[Questionable]

Building an armed mass movement would have been one of the best things possible. However, building an unarmed mass movement and building an armed mass movement are quite different things. Telling a party to act safe is far from advising it to form an armed mass movement.

Did you want the Comintern to explicitly tell the CCP To get guns? It's stated in all the writings of Marx and Lenin that the revolution will be violent. I don't think the Comintern needed to tell them they would face repression from the state, it had already happened. I still don't see the contradiction here; a mass movement has its own kind of strength.


May be so in some cases, but mostly it will fail in front of an all-out onslaught by the state.

If you say so.

[ind_com]

Did you want the Comintern to explicitly tell the CCP To get guns?

I don't expect any external group to formulate a correct line to begin revolution for the communist party of some other country, but explicitly suggesting the construction of an armed movement would have made the Comintern's line correct.


It's stated in all the writings of Marx and Lenin that the revolution will be violent. I don't think the Comintern needed to tell them they would face repression from the state, it had already happened.

So what? If you assume that the CCP needed to deduce their own strategy (which indeed was the case), then what is the point of discussing the Comintern line? After all, the CCP did formulate its own line after a while.


I still don't see the contradiction here; a mass movement has its own kind of strength.
It does have its own kind of strength, but the strength of a mass movement cannot substitute military strength. A large mass movement can help in the revolution only if the revolutionary armed forces match the state forces and prevent them from destroying the mass movement.

[goalkeeper]

If by "bad" you mean introduction of capitalist ideas than yes, this is nothing new and not unique to Maoists. This being said there are certain strands of Maoism which believe their tendency to be the highest yet revolutionary concoction; I am not sure I am among those people as I do not believe in the "head worship" of old.

Surely insisting on the "bloc of four classes" and insisting of the Democratic People's Dictatorship/New Democracy before "socialism could be introduced" in the 1950s was 1) revisionism 2)introducing capitalist ideas

I mean, what could be more capitalist than insisting on the inclusion of capitalists in the revolution?




Yes. Semi-feudal is when a nation has a small working class while possessing a larger peasant class. Places where serfdom still exist in the country side but more modern capitalist relations exist in the cities.

So you are admitting that Russia was "semi-feudal"? If that is the case, why in China did "semi-feudal" relations necessitate Mao's new "creative application"?






Mao developed and understood that even under socialism the class struggle not only continues by in fact intensifies. This is something other tendencies have not understood and have even gone as far to claim that socialism there are no class antagonisms. This is, to Maoists, wrong. It is in this manner that Maoists consider the examples in Maoist China the highest yet culmination of socialism.

Except Stalin said...exactly the same thing.

[kasama-rl]

I responded to Goalkeeper's rather stark comment:

"I mean, what could be more capitalist than insisting on the inclusion of capitalists in the revolution?"

I appreciate the elegant simplicity of this argument, and hope that (by responding to it) I can generate some clarity on these issues.

BTW: Should we also say "What is more middle class than including middle class people in the revolution?" or "What is more lumpen than including lumpens in the revolution?"

Is it a peasant idea to include peasants in the revolution? (Or is it perhaps a communist idea?)

My response is here: "Mao's Block of Four Classes: Lessons for Revolutionary Alliance (http://www.revleft.com/vb/maos-block-four-t179196/index.html?p=2587904#post2587904)"

I also posted it on Kasama (http://kasamaproject.org/threads/entry/mao-s-block-of-four-classes-a-revolutionary-alliance-for-its-time).

[subcp]

When Mao called for New Democracy he was speaking of a the nessecity of a united front against imperialism in the particular instance of China where the primary contradiction was between the oppressed nation and imperialism, and not the proletariat and capitalism which can only occur once capitalism exists as a mode of production.That last statement is part of a question I had earlier- Marx describes the formal domination of capital as capitalist social relations co-opting existing institutions, states and economic relations, and the real domination of capital as capitalism removing old vestiges of pre-capitalist modes of production (the peasantry, landed nobility) and recreating all relations in its own image. But even in its period of formal domination (a process considered complete in the first industrialized capitalist nations in the 1850's, the 1870's in the US and Germany), capitalism is still dominant, regardless of the traces of pre-capitalist social relations and institutions.

Even in the era of the formal domination of capital, where the traditional pre-capitalist social forms, strata and institutions still exist (but are bent to fit the needs of capital), the class struggle is between the proletariat and bourgeoisie- something proved by the revolutionary outbursts in Russia, Hungary, Ukraine, China itself; the Chinese proletariat were near the end of the revolutionary crisis (1927) before engaging in self-organization and revolt. But the events in Russia and Hungary, where the old forms of power and traces of pre-capitalist social relations still existed, the primary center of power was the urban industrial regions- where the class struggle was sharpest; and also where the power to bend the peasantry to the needs of either the class struggle or capital were decided.

So the bigger question is; isn't it obvious that capitalism has undergone changes over time, and the period between 1945-1973, and 1973-present have shown the transition from the formal to the real domination of capital in even most of the emerging/peripheral nations? That the global conditions of capitalism as an international, world system are apparent in nearly every part of the globe, where the majority of the world population has been proletarianized, and portions of the former peripheral nations have become zones of production?

I am a bit confused as to this part:


The only countries where I know that the local bourgeois openly support communist groups are North Ireland, Turkey, Kurdistan, and perhaps Afghanistan. Otherwise in my opinion it is not applicable anywhere else.That almost sounds like a way to support or excuse things like the 'Ulster Workers Council' where the bourgeoisie backed (Protestant) workers strikes and organization.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Surely insisting on the "bloc of four classes" and insisting of the Democratic People's Dictatorship/New Democracy before "socialism could be introduced" in the 1950s was 1) revisionism 2)introducing capitalist ideas

Why would it if the country in question is economically incapable of reaching socialism? Places like Nepal, India, and Mao's china (prior to the revolution) were not places which could support industrial socialism. It is not in any way revisionist to insist on a period of national build-up prior to the start of the construction of socialism. Nor could it have been "capitalist ideas" as it was propsed and guided by dedicated anti-capitalists who knew the path forward; they were under no illusions about the next step of why New Democracy existed in the first place.


So you are admitting that Russia was "semi-feudal"? If that is the case, why in China did "semi-feudal" relations necessitate Mao's new "creative application"?

Russia was more industrialized than China. And while a good portion still were living under peasant social-relations a great deal were immigrating to the city and becoming workers. The process in Russia reached a crescendo were is was possible to establish a majority in socialist relations; this was not true in Mao's China.


Except Stalin said...exactly the same thing.

...and Mao built upon it; the same deal applies to understanding and resolving contradictions, what is your point?

[kasama-rl]

Let me build on something GLU just opened up:

Mechanical materialism says that some specific and prerequisite level of productive forces have to be in place for a new social system to emerge. Lenin says (in varous places) that this may be true, but no one can say (apart from actual political events) what *precisely* that level is.

Mao (building on this) pointed out that in the 19th century, the main productive forces of industrial capitalism were built AFTER the bourgeois democratic revolutions. In other words, the French Revolution happened in 1789, based on a certain conflict between merchant capital, peasants and the feudal-monarchical system.

But the productive forces necessary for modern industrial capitalism didn't develop until after that bourgeois revolution.... Similarly, in the U.S. the bourgeois democratic revolution took the form of a civil war against slavery (in which the main leading antagonists were the northern merchant capitalits and the southern slavocracy). ---- But, the productive forces for U.S. capitalism IN THE MAIN developed after that Civil War (and to some extent through that Civil War) in an explosive growth of productive power UNLEASHED by the revolution (and its victory).

It means that there isn't some mechanical process by which (first) you have some huge expanse of the necessary productive materials, and (then!) you have the revolution that uses them.

Mao argued that revolution is (as marx said) by contradictions between the productive forces and the base (in his usual pithy language he says "in one sense, tools speak through men.")

But he (like lenin) argued there wasn't some mechanical pre-conditions for a revolution.

He argued -- why can the oppressed (led by the communists) take power, and then build the material prerequisites for socialism? Why is that forbidden (essentially by Menshevik mechanical thinking)?

So the anti-feudal revolution created the political conditions for an energetic *socialist* industrialization of China -- where economic modernization, the devleopment of new productive forces AND the socialist revolution developed TOGETHER (on the basis of China's powerful and ground-pounding anti-feudal and anti-imperialist revolution).

Some mechanical materialists (including trotskyism rather generally) argues linearly that "socialist revolutin is not possible in a non-industrial country" -- because supposedly the material "preconditions" for socialism don't exist (i.e. workers are not the majoirty, society had not already been industrialized by capitalism etc.)

The Chinese revolution (and the tremendous, even towering, accomplishments of Maoist revolution) negated those kinds of thinking.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Thank you Mike, that was what I was trying to touch upon.

[subcp]

Mechanical materialism says that some specific and prerequisite level of productive forces have to be in place for a new social system to emerge. Lenin says (in varous places) that this may be true, but no one can say (apart from actual political events) what *precisely* that level is.

Mao (building on this) pointed out that in the 19th century, the main productive forces of industrial capitalism were built AFTER the bourgeois democratic revolutions. In other words, the French Revolution happened in 1789, based on a certain conflict between merchant capital, peasants and the feudal-monarchical system.

But the productive forces necessary for modern industrial capitalism didn't develop until after that bourgeois revolution....

Marx demonstrated through the formal/real domination of capital that pre-capitalist social relations and property forms are at first co-opted by capitalism, then re-created as strictly capitalist social relations and property forms according to the needs of continued accumulation, development of the productive forces, needs of the commodity form and production of value etc. Based on this, it's understood that capitalism is a world system which invades and takes over existing institutions and relations and forms before recreating them in its own image- that capitalism is a world system that acts as a world system- seen first in England prior to the bourgeois revolution there (a century earlier than France), then France and Holland, then the rest of what became the advanced/central capitalist nations. I agree that it is mechanistic and deterministic when reformist wings of Social Democracy supported developing the productive forces and imperialism; but- the base understanding is that capitalism is a world system, and thus the preconditions for communism are decided on the macro level: whether or not capitalism as a world system has become a fetter on further development and has established the productive, distributive and consumptive apparatus to support the real meeting of human needs and desires. I don't agree with Maoists; but that aside, questions concerning New Democracy and other theories related to 'backward' (underdeveloped) areas of the Earth and how 'socialist construction' develops the productive forces, etc. seem superfluous today. World capitalism has restructured- former colonies are now zoned according to manufacturing/productive needs of a world capitalist system. Is there any doubt that the world is capable of communism; that the productive forces are not only mature but that capitalism as a system is senile and degenerating since completing the world market; I'm confused as to why theories related to developing the productive forces in the periphery exist today.

Does that mean Maoists think capitalism has not prepared the necessary development of the productive forces (and associated technological advances) to support world communism?

[goalkeeper]

Why would it if the country in question is economically incapable of reaching socialism? Places like Nepal, India, and Mao's china (prior to the revolution) were not places which could support industrial socialism.

I think it is disingenuous to use countries like Nepal in the 21st century as "examples". Nepal is a small country with little to no resources or labour pool. Likewise, in the 21st century there is no "socialist bloc" with which it can align itself. This is not the same for China. While China was underdeveloped, it had a massive pool of labour to draw upon and the ability to draw in resources and assistance from other nominally socialist states.

So the period before socialism in China was the late 1940s to the mid 1950s, correct?
What exactly changed in China that allowed to break with capitalism and embark upon socialism?


It is not in any way revisionist to insist on a period of national build-up prior to the start of the construction of socialism.

Well, see this depends on what you mean by revisionism. I think you would be hard pressed to draw this conclusion from the classic works of Marx and Engels. So it is a "revision" of Marxism in that sense. Of course though when you say revisionism you mean revisions you don't like.


Nor could it have been "capitalist ideas" as it was propsed and guided by dedicated anti-capitalists who knew the path forward; they were under no illusions about the next step of why New Democracy existed in the first place.


So what is meant by an alliance with the national capitalists in practice? Drop the phraseology; how the hell do two classes with antagonistic interests form an alliance?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I think it is disingenuous to use countries like Nepal in the 21st century as "examples". Nepal is a small country with little to no resources or labour pool.

Precisely, so you see the need for New Democracy and the unique challenges which present themselves to the Nepalis revolution.


So the period before socialism in China was the late 1940s to the mid 1950s, correct?

More or less, yes. This was the period of New Democracy.


What exactly changed in China that allowed to break with capitalism and embark upon socialism?

A build-up of worker controlled industrial forces which enabled it to usher in the programs of labor and culture necessary for the embankment of socialist construction; the forces gathered up during the period of New Democracy, heralded under by revolutionary forces, allowed such a build-up to occur.


Well, see this depends on what you mean by revisionism. I think you would be hard pressed to draw this conclusion from the classic works of Marx and Engels. So it is a "revision" of Marxism in that sense. Of course though when you say revisionism you mean revisions you don't like.

As we have already been through: if your definition of revisionism is different from mine then we are going to have a fundamental break in opinion; if you hold a dogmatic view of revisionism, which it is everything that doesn't fit perfectly into Marx and Engels's conception, disregarding evolution and allowing in bourgeois practices, then yes, one could say it is "developments" which I, as an revolutionary anti-capitalist, would not like. Now, if you endorse pro-capitalist strains of "Marxism" as legitimate modes of Marxist thought, thus labeling Maoism's pro-socialist line as revisionist because it rejects such "development, as you are doing now, then you would naturally come to such a conclusion.


So what is meant by an alliance with the national capitalists in practice? Drop the phraseology; how the hell do two classes with antagonistic interests form an alliance?

As I explained previously: to fight against para-fascist imperialist aggression, or what is otherwise known as a United Front. Does the concept of forging a temporary military alliance for the sake national defense confuse you?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Seriously though, this is something of great importance to you? Because this discussion is sidetracking the thread making it into something it was originally not.

[goalkeeper]

Russia was more industrialized than China. And while a good portion still were living under peasant social-relations a great deal were immigrating to the city and becoming workers. The process in Russia reached a crescendo were is was possible to establish a majority in socialist relations; this was not true in Mao's China.


The vast majority of Russia was, of course, rural. The vast majority worked the land as peasants. Plus the war had provoked a return to the countryside, IIRC. Russian certainly was not some great centre of industry; rather there were a few small concentrated pockets of industry in the major urban centres - outside this, not much.

What percentage more did China need to reach the "crescendo were is was possible to establish a majority in socialist relations"? WHere is the threshold between not very industrialised and majority peasant society like Russia not very industrialised and majority peasant society like China? Obviously the former was more industrial; but how much more would China have needed to be classed as part of the same category as Russia?

My opinion is that the Chinese Communist party was destroyed int the urban areas after 1927. Rather than try to restart the building of the party etc in urban areas which was rather hard considering the murderous political climate, Mao and his lot thought it would be easier, or perhaps the only option was, to build up a peasant army. All this "theory" is just justification, dressing up in Marxist drag.



...and Mao built upon it; the same deal applies to understanding and resolving contradictions, what is your point?

How did Mao "build upon it"? You (or whoever else said that) said it was Mao's idea. No it wasn't.

[goalkeeper]

Precisely, so you see the need for New Democracy and the unique challenges which present themselves to the Nepalis revolution.

Of course 21st century Nepal is not China in the mid 1940s.





A build-up of worker controlled industrial forces which enabled it to usher in the programs of labor and culture necessary for the embankment of socialist construction; the forces gathered up during the period of New Democracy, heralded under by revolutionary forces, allowed such a build-up to occur.

You are talking in phrases here and it makes little sense mate.






As we have already been through: if your definition of revisionism is different from mine then we are going to have a fundamental break in opinion; if you hold a dogmatic view of revisionism, which it is everything that doesn't fit perfectly into Marx and Engels's conception, disregarding evolution and allowing in bourgeois practices, then yes, one could say it is "developments" which I, as an revolutionary anti-capitalist, would not like. Now, if you endorse pro-capitalist strains of "Marxism" as legitimate modes of Marxist thought, thus labeling Maoism's pro-socialist line as revisionist because it rejects such "development, as you are doing now, then you would naturally come to such a conclusion.

Hey, I have no problem with revising Marx and Engels. I don't consider "revisionism" a slur. You guys are basically redefining what it means to revise something. Its really weird.




As I explained previously: to fight against para-fascist imperialist aggression, or what is otherwise known as a United Front. Does the concept of forging a temporary military alliance for the sake national defense confuse you?
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Seriously though, this is something of great importance to you? Because this discussion is sidetracking the thread making it into something it was originally not.

What is an alliance in practice

Its all very well talking of "alliances" but what do they look like? Individual support from capitalists? Alliances with pro-capitalist parties?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

The vast majority of Russia was, of course, rural. The vast majority worked the land as peasants. Plus the war had provoked a return to the countryside, IIRC. Russian certainly was not some great centre of industry; rather there were a few small concentrated pockets of industry in the major urban centres - outside this, not much.

I know. I read Trotsky as well and though his Results and Prospects showed this rather well along with the rapid rate of industrialization that follows any such semi-feudal nation.


What percentage more did China need to reach the "crescendo were is was possible to establish a majority in socialist relations"? WHere is the threshold between not very industrialised and majority peasant society like Russia not very industrialised and majority peasant society like China? Obviously the former was more industrial; but how much more would China have needed to be classed as part of the same category as Russia?

Because I do not have a monopoly of knowledge on Third-World theories like New Democracy I cannot quite remember the exact time when the CCP declared it had built up enough social-forces to launch into socialism (1960s or mid-50s I think). But to answer your question more directly there is no established figure for what is needed to establish a socialist majority; this is in part to Maoist ideology which says that-*gasp*-the peasantry can be led by socialist thought which enables them to be led by the working class, however small it is. If you are talking about "industrial socialism" then who knows, maybe 50%? It is not my concern. It is dogma.


My opinion is that the Chinese Communist party was destroyed int the urban areas after 1927.

A good deal of their soldiers were destroyed in part due to the backward thinking some of the more conservative element's city oriented line, yes. This heightens the fact that dogma-industrial socialism-does not lead to a victory when mechanically applied (as if everywhere is as applicable as it was in Germany, Russia, Britain, etc).


Rather than try to restart the building of the party etc in urban areas which was rather hard considering the murderous political climate, Mao and his lot thought it would be easier, or perhaps the only option was, to build up a peasant army.

"Restarting the party",as you so claim, within the nationalist strongholds would have been disastrous. Mao was correct in his theory of going to the countryside (which shows in history of his line winning out). Attempts in urban centers would have failed.


All this "theory" is just justification, dressing up in Marxist drag.

lol... why did you out the word 'theory' in parenthesis? How is Mao's theories not actually theories? At any rate it shows your rigid line of thinking.


How did Mao "build upon it"? You (or whoever else said that) said it was Mao's idea. No it wasn't.

Mao built upon previous conception of the class struggle continuing under socialism; while it may be true he didn't invent it wholesale, he contributed much to the theory that it was only with him that it was truly brought out into the open as a fulcrum of Marxism in and of itself. He understood that the class struggle not only continues but intensifies under socialism and that logical debate mixed with militant struggle against incorrect ideas were the proper modes of eliminating such reactionary ideas from the masses.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Of course 21st century Nepal is not China in the mid 1940s.

We've been through this, but yeah, so you see the challenges which will confront Nepal. Nepal doesn't have a large labor pool to draw from, is interposed between two large imperialist powers (one of which considers it a renegade province), and is faced with a great majority of the land living under feudal social-relations. This is in addition to possessing nothing but a network of rural bases and urban support in addition to its modest sized PLA.


You are talking in phrases here and it makes little sense mate.

What does not make sense? I am only using terminology in order to make myself known without lapsing into elongated explanation. If you are unsure of what I mean in a certain term than ask directly, please.


Hey, I have no problem with revising Marx and Engels. I don't consider "revisionism" a slur. You guys are basically redefining what it means to revise something. Its really weird.

Good to see we are, mostly, on the same page but I disagree with your third sentence. I suppose on this point we will have to agree to disagree.


What is an alliance in practice

Street level propaganda work for civilians and joint-military operations for the armed branches.


Its all very well talking of "alliances" but what do they look like? Individual support from capitalists? Alliances with pro-capitalist parties?

I am no historian on the subject but generally speaking all native parties which have a vested interest in fighting off foreign aggression.

[Zostrianos]

How do Maoists reconcile the contradiction between their theoretical principles of emancipating the masses and catering to their demands and needs, with the countless indiscriminate abuses that occurred against those very masses during the Cultural Revolution, indiscriminate killing, rape (http://books.google.ca/books?id=bAD-R6uGTbIC&pg=PA47&dq=tibet+cultural+revolution+rape&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-A04Uf3sMqXE0AGepoGgAw&ved=0CFcQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=tibet%20cultural%20revolution%20rape&f=false), deportations into forced labour, terror, etc.?

And on that same note, if the demands of the people are to be respected, should they not be able to freely have whatever cultural or religious beliefs or convictions they desire privately, if they otherwise contribute to a socialist society?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

How do Maoists reconcile the contradiction between their theoretical principles of emancipating the masses and catering to their demands and needs, with the countless indiscriminate abuses that occurred against those very masses during the Cultural Revolution, indiscriminate killing, rape (http://books.google.ca/books?id=bAD-R6uGTbIC&pg=PA47&dq=tibet+cultural+revolution+rape&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-A04Uf3sMqXE0AGepoGgAw&ved=0CFcQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=tibet%20cultural%20revolution%20rape&f=false), deportations into forced labour, terror, etc.?

The country was divided, comrade, between revolutionists and reactionary. When the Communist Part overthrew the Nationalist government and seized power even bourgeois historians admit that literally overnight millions of pro-capitalist intellectuals, sympathizers, and groups feigned allegiance to the new state so as to avoid being persecuted; one day they were openly capitalist and the next they were using revolutionary phraseology to disguise their beliefs.

The Cultural Revolution was the attempt to dislodge these mistaken opinions and ferret out those who held such reactionary understandings. To do this great series of debates, spectacles, and incarceration were launched after individuals and groups had been identified. In the hysteria to find opponants innocent people were persecuted, yes, and many were sent off to labor camps (of varying degrees of intensity) for freely displaying what their conception of revolution was.

This was to be expected. Eliminating such contradictions from society inevitably means discord; after all, revolution is not a tea party or an essay: people die. Those accesses were punished. Peoples who raped were punished, efforts were made to cut-down on persons investigated (IE clamp-down on the hysteria), and the killings gradually subsided as the tasks of the revolution came to a zenith. Any great effort will have some bugs to work out but the important fact to remember is whether these bugs were worked out or not. Indeed I believe they were.


And on that same note, if the demands of the people are to be respected, should they not be able to freely have whatever cultural or religious beliefs or convictions they desire privately, if they otherwise contribute to a socialist society?

As it has been said by many comrades before, the icons and symbols of the past were targets and many rabid Mao supporters took to heart eradicating all traces of the old ways. Yet their enthusiasm went beyond Mao's intention; indeed Mao took it to heart and attempted to persuade the Red Guards not too so be so violent in their persecution. Culture was preserved as best as it could be with temples being restored, and Mao advocating that in order to overcome the past they should read about it (this is seen in his advocacy of reading classic Chinese works). This stands in stark contrast to the detractor's view of him which paints a picture of a mad-man. On the contrary he was very controlled and knew what he was advocating.

To answer your question directly: yes, I believe that so as long as people contribute to socialist construction they should be allowed to live their private lives as they see fit. However this also means that they must not obstruct state ventures when said state begins campaigns against aspects of their inter-personal lives (by this I mean if the state promotes atheism,for example, then the religious socialist must not lash out at the state for doing so); to know and respect the actions of the state while still holding true to themselves, is the primary point I am stressing.

[Charles Marxley]

what are your positions on Alain Badiou and the idea of post-Maoism?

[goalkeeper]

Because I do not have a monopoly of knowledge on Third-World theories like New Democracy I cannot quite remember the exact time when the CCP declared it had built up enough social-forces to launch into socialism (1960s or mid-50s I think). But to answer your question more directly there is no established figure for what is needed to establish a socialist majority; this is in part to Maoist ideology which says that-*gasp*-the peasantry can be led by socialist thought which enables them to be led by the working class, however small it is. If you are talking about "industrial socialism" then who knows, maybe 50%? It is not my concern. It is dogma.

You have not answered the question. You said in Russia it was possible for socialist revolution in 1917 due to the size of its industrial working class. China in the 1930s and 1940s was not able to have a socialist revolution because it's industrial working class was smaller, and hence New Democracy and "nation build up" was required first.
If we accept that the industrial working class in Russia was a small minority, as well as in China; what was the quantitative difference in size that necessitated a qualitative difference in approach to revolution i.e. the focus on the peasant in the latter.




"Restarting the party",as you so claim, within the nationalist strongholds would have been disastrous. Mao was correct in his theory of going to the countryside (which shows in history of his line winning out). Attempts in urban centers would have failed.

Well yeah. The approach was "party victory at all costs".



lol... why did you out the word 'theory' in parenthesis? How is Mao's theories not actually theories? At any rate it shows your rigid line of thinking.

Because it all seems for the most part to be ad hoc justification for actions rather than theory worth anything.



Mao built upon previous conception of the class struggle continuing under socialism; while it may be true he didn't invent it wholesale, he contributed much to the theory that it was only with him that it was truly brought out into the open as a fulcrum of Marxism in and of itself. He understood that the class struggle not only continues but intensifies under socialism and that logical debate mixed with militant struggle against incorrect ideas were the proper modes of eliminating such reactionary ideas from the masses.

You are going back to talking in empty phrases like a PR man.
All I can gather from this is you are saying: yes, Stalin said it first, but Mao built upon it. But, how? I want to know how?
Saying Mao "truly brought out into the open as a fulcrum of Marxism in and of itself" and "logical debate mixed with militant struggle against incorrect ideas were the proper modes of eliminating such reactionary ideas from the masses" are not answers.

[goalkeeper]

We've been through this, but yeah, so you see the challenges which will confront Nepal. Nepal doesn't have a large labor pool to draw from, is interposed between two large imperialist powers (one of which considers it a renegade province), and is faced with a great majority of the land living under feudal social-relations. This is in addition to possessing nothing but a network of rural bases and urban support in addition to its modest sized PLA.

Of course Nepal is not China. Hence why I said earlier it is disingenuous bribing it into this discussion.




What does not make sense? I am only using terminology in order to make myself known without lapsing into elongated explanation. If you are unsure of what I mean in a certain term than ask directly, please.

You speak in pre concocted phrases. Communist cliches. Maoist public relations slogans. It is a sign you don't really know what to say so you cover it up with vague and unclear language. Rewrite that paragraph like a normal person and I'll do my best to respond.




Street level propaganda work for civilians and joint-military operations for the armed branches.

I am no historian on the subject but generally speaking all native parties which have a vested interest in fighting off foreign aggression.

And are the capitalists in the alliance aware of the program of their Communist allies? Are they, effectively, joining into an alliance they know will result in their dissolution as a class?

[ind_com]

You have not answered the question. You said in Russia it was possible for socialist revolution in 1917 due to the size of its industrial working class. China in the 1930s and 1940s was not able to have a socialist revolution because it's industrial working class was smaller, and hence New Democracy and "nation build up" was required first.
If we accept that the industrial working class in Russia was a small minority, as well as in China; what was the quantitative difference in size that necessitated a qualitative difference in approach to revolution i.e. the focus on the peasant in the latter.

There was a bourgeois revolution in Russia in 1917, and there was a power vacuum after that. That is why the Bolsheviks were legal for sometime. Though it was one of the least developed of the capitalist countries, Russia was one of the top imperialist powers of the time. Also, the Russian army was engaged in a war that it was losing.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

what are your positions on Alain Badiou and the idea of post-Maoism?

I haven't read Alain Badiou so I cannot comment there.

Post-Maoism is not a real tendency but rather is this creation used by more dogmatic comrades who see Maoist regroupment projects and parties (such as the Kasama Project and the Revolutionary Initiative) as "deviations" because they do not endorse the supposed universality of Protracted Peoples' Wars. This line of thinking negates the fact that Mao himself intended his theories to be flexible and understood that very few theoretical concepts could be mechanically applied the world over.


You have not answered the question. You said in Russia it was possible for socialist revolution in 1917 due to the size of its industrial working class. China in the 1930s and 1940s was not able to have a socialist revolution because it's industrial working class was smaller, and hence New Democracy and "nation build up" was required first.
If we accept that the industrial working class in Russia was a small minority, as well as in China; what was the quantitative difference in size that necessitated a qualitative difference in approach to revolution i.e. the focus on the peasant in the latter.

See comrade Ind.com's response as he hit the nail on the head.


Well yeah. The approach was "party victory at all costs". Which translates to a victory for the proletariat. Simply because you have a disdain for the only tired and true means of waging revolutionary struggles doesn't mean the rest of us do.


Because it all seems for the most part to be ad hoc justification for actions rather than theory worth anything. No, it is theory: fact. Just because you don't like it doesn't negate it value (buzzwords aside).


You are going back to talking in empty phrases like a PR man.
All I can gather from this is you are saying: yes, Stalin said it first, but Mao built upon it. But, how? I want to know how?
Saying Mao "truly brought out into the open as a fulcrum of Marxism in and of itself" and "logical debate mixed with militant struggle against incorrect ideas were the proper modes of eliminating such reactionary ideas from the masses" are not answers.I think all these are actually quite self-explanatory (at least for those of us actually active in the movement and who have some semblance of history) but since you seem hard-pressed to understand I will try my best to spell it out for you.

Logical debate: Level-headed debate with reactionaries concerning vital political (revolutionary) matters. With the exposure of incorrect (reactionary) ideas comes the counterrevolutionary's acceptance of Marxism; this is only attained, however, through principled (re: honest) practice where the two parties are willing to change their minds with the arrival of new information.

Militant struggle: Unending grassroots struggle (violent and non-violent) against reactionary ideas and institutions. Actions undertaken by students during the Cultural Revolution is a good example of what I mean (or for the US during the Vietnam anti-war movement).

Mao bringing it into the open: Before Mao the concept of class struggle under socialism wasn't as well known or developed. With Mao this concept gained great amounts of exposure and was developed to the point where it became infused with over all Maoist oriented line of thought; because Maoists see their ideology as the highest yet development in revolutionary anti-capitalist theory it would be appropriate for them to say this concept (class struggle continuing under socialism) was a fulcrum (support pillar) of Marxism in general.

If you still do not understand I have no idea how to make this any more clear than I am already making it. Other than that I can only recommend reading Mao's works on contradiction.


Of course Nepal is not China. Hence why I said earlier it is disingenuous bribing it into this discussion.

The conditions are different, yes, but that simply means the struggle will take different shapes and roads. The base social-conditions are the same and hence it applies to Nepal's economic development.


You speak in pre concocted phrases. Communist cliches. Maoist public relations slogans. It is a sign you don't really know what to say so you cover it up with vague and unclear language. Rewrite that paragraph like a normal person and I'll do my best to respond. I am writing like a revolutionary who knows what he is talking about, not a newcomer who hasn't yet learned some Leftist terms. If you need something spelled out then say so and I will try my best to accommodate you.


And are the capitalists in the alliance aware of the program of their Communist allies? Are they, effectively, joining into an alliance they know will result in their dissolution as a class?Of course they are aware of the alliance. In regards to the Chinese Nationalists Mao had years and years of efforts before the Nationalists were convinced to wage war against the Japanese invaders; indeed he only got this alliance through tactical and diplomatic actions (military victory and realpolitik). He had to both deal Kai-seng Shek serious military blows and release, after capturing him, in order to secure the military alliance which was desperately needed at the time.

Furthermore who is saying that this alliance would disintegrate the capitalist class? That is not the purpose of an alliance; rather, the purpose of the alliance is what I have already said it to be: a military and social alliance aimed at combating foreign aggression and promoting the various classes to take action against the invaders. This talk of "dissolution" is your own creation.

[Drosophila]

This was to be expected. Eliminating such contradictions from society inevitably means discord; after all, revolution is not a tea party or an essay: people die. Those accesses were punished. Peoples who raped were punished, efforts were made to cut-down on persons investigated (IE clamp-down on the hysteria), and the killings gradually subsided as the tasks of the revolution came to a zenith. Any great effort will have some bugs to work out but the important fact to remember is whether these bugs were worked out or not. Indeed I believe they were.

Characterizing the Cultural Revolution as an actual proletarian revolution is entirely wrong, since it was entirely carried out by angst-ridden students looking for adventure and self-worth. It was not natural in any way, and happened as a result of Mao's provocation. Most historians of China would agree that it was simply an attempt by Mao to consolidate his own rule within the party. It was only quelled once he realized that the situation was getting out of control.

There is really no good reason to defend the Cultural Revolution.





Which translates to a victory for the proletariat. Simply because you have a disdain for the only tired and true means of waging revolutionary struggles doesn't mean the rest of us do.

This is an absurd statement. The party represents the entire proletarian class? That's simply ridiculous.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Characterizing the Cultural Revolution as an actual proletarian revolution is entirely wrong, since it was entirely carried out by angst-ridden students looking for adventure and self-worth. It was not natural in any way, and happened as a result of Mao's provocation. Most historians of China would agree that it was simply an attempt by Mao to consolidate his own rule within the party. It was only quelled once he realized that the situation was getting out of control.

There is really no good reason to defend the Cultural Revolution.

I suppose you could say so if you ignore all the countless workers, peasants, intellectuals and PLA individuals who partook within the revolution, but if not, then no. First of all I never said it was a "Proletarian revolution", it was a interior revolution which had the support of various socialist-led classes in an effort to "bombard the bourgeois headquarters" which was lodged within the Communist Party. There was a two-line struggle in regards how best to eliminate backward cultural convictions which were holding back socialist construction (which has its roots tracing back to the Socialist Education Movement) and the Cultural Revolution was the line which Mao represented. As shown by history his line was correct.

What is most historians? China is an incredibly conservative place nowadays with many historians disdaining the mere sight of Mao and trying their best to whitewash his contributions to Chinese society. They are bourgeois and I fail to see you point in that capitalist-supporters hate Mao.

The rest of your post if gibberish and absurd generalizations.


This is an absurd statement. The party represents the entire proletarian class? That's simply ridiculous.

Welcome to the concept of the Vanguard Party; the only political organization which represents the working class and their interest.... where else are you going to see a organization representing the working class? I think nowhere. It is quite simple: the working class has their labor exploited and the vanguard party fights on their behalf in order to establish pro-worker measures and establish socialism.
- - - - - - - - - - -
Seriously though, as if we haven't heard this conversation a thousand times before. Do you actually have a point in positing in this thread or are you just here to troll because you can't stand seeing another tendency defend their convictions?

[Drosophila]

I suppose you could say so if you ignore all the countless workers, peasants, intellectuals and PLA individuals who partook within the revolution, but if not, then no. First of all I never said it was a "Proletarian revolution", it was a interior revolution which had the support of various socialist-led classes in an effort to "bombard the bourgeois headquarters" which was lodged within the Communist Party. There was a two-line struggle in regards how best to eliminate backward cultural convictions which were holding back socialist construction (which has its roots tracing back to the Socialist Education Movement) and the Cultural Revolution was the line which Mao represented. As shown by history his line was correct.

The Red Guards consisted almost solely of students, it was certainly not a proletarian movement in any way. Not surprising, considering students are a malleable and easily persuaded group. To say that the Cultural Revolution was done to advance socialism really doesn't fit with the accounts of what actually happened. Murdering historians, destroying ancient artifacts, attacking the CCP's actual Marxists, and worshiping Mao are hardly signs of socialist revolution.


What is most historians? China is an incredibly conservative place nowadays with many historians disdaining the mere sight of Mao and trying their best to whitewash his contributions to Chinese society. They are bourgeois and I fail to see you point in that capitalist-supporters hate Mao.Y'know, the historians that actually study Chinese history. I don't know what kind of Maoist propaganda you've been reading, but the notion that the Cultural Revolution essentially consolidated Mao's rule within the CCP is obvious to anyone who's actually studied the period.



Welcome to the concept of the Vanguard Party; the only political organization which represents the working class and their interest.... where else are you going to see a organization representing the working class? I think nowhere. It is quite simple: the working class has their labor exploited and the vanguard party fights on their behalf in order to establish pro-worker measures and establish socialism.What? Explain to me how a small, tightly knit organization running society can be in anyway a direct representation of the entire working class. It's impossible, especially in a nation where the "vanguard party" exercises autocratic rule. Use your head: the party has control of the police, military, media, economy, and political hierarchy. Do you really think that it will pursue the interests of the working class all the time?


Seriously though, as if we haven't heard this conversation a thousand times before. Do you actually have a point in positing in this thread or are you just here to troll because you can't stand seeing another tendency defend their convictions?I'm not trolling, I'm only try to challenge what I think are mistruths being purported in this thread. I actually do have an interest in Modern Chinese history.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

The Red Guards consisted almost solely of students, it was certainly not a proletarian movement in any way. Not surprising, considering students are a malleable and easily persuaded group. To say that the Cultural Revolution was done to advance socialism really doesn't fit with the accounts of what actually happened. Murdering historians, destroying ancient artifacts, attacking the CCP's actual Marxists, and worshiping Mao are hardly signs of socialist revolution.

Yeah, those were the Red Guards... maybe you will remember that the GPCR has more than simply students in it. When you do remember you will also remember everything I said previously (about the worker participation).


Y'know, the historians that actually study Chinese history. I don't know what kind of Maoist propaganda you've been reading, but the notion that the Cultural Revolution essentially consolidated Mao's rule within the CCP is obvious to anyone who's actually studied the period.

If you are using bourgeois historians as "evidence" and completely ignoring the two-line struggle then there isn't much to be said aside from your anti-Marxist bias. No one is saying that Mao's position wasn't consolidated but the consolidation was a natural result from his line winning out over the opposition's.


What? Explain to me how a small, tightly knit organization running society can be in anyway a direct representation of the entire working class. It's impossible, especially in a nation where the "vanguard party" exercises autocratic rule. Use your head: the party has control of the police, military, media, economy, and political hierarchy. Do you really think that it will pursue the interests of the working class all the time?

I won't explain it to you because such isn't the purpose of the thread. Nice try at derailing though.


I'm not trolling, I'm only try to challenge what I think are mistruths being purported in this thread. I actually do have an interest in Modern Chinese history.

Yes you are: this thread was originally about asking Maoists a question and receiving an answer but thanks to trolls/tendency warriors like yourself, who argue every little detail because of your own insecurities, it has been sidetracked.

[Drosophila]

If you're just going to ignore historical evidence and denounce everything as "bourgeois history" then I don't see how you even expect to seriously debate anyone on this topic. This whole thread is a joke, anyway. Judging by your conduct, asking a Maoist about the PRC seems to be the equivalent of asking a fascist about Nazi Germany.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

If you're just going to ignore historical evidence and denounce everything as "bourgeois history" then I don't see how you even expect to seriously debate anyone on this topic. This whole thread is a joke, anyway. Judging by your conduct, asking a Maoist about the PRC seems to be the equivalent of asking a fascist about Nazi Germany.

Thank you for demonstrating your sectarian bias and have a nice day.

[Fourth Internationalist]

How can a small, tightly knit organization running society, the vanguard party, be a direct representation of the entire working class?

Do you think that it will pursue the interests of the working class all the time?

:)

[TheGodlessUtopian]

How can a small, tightly knit organization running society, the vanguard party, be a direct representation of the entire working class?

The Vanguard Party integrates itself into the creation of a socialist state, which in turn becomes the neccesary apparatus in which Workers councils use in which to then build and construct socialism. It is not the de-facto government in and of itself. It is part of a larger structure. This hasn't always been the historical example but is how it should be directed, in my opinion.


Do you think that it will pursue the interests of the working class all the time?

:)


Of course. When it ceases to is when the body has become infected with revisionists and other kinds of reformists. Run by revolutionaries it remains healthy and able to push forward with the tasks ahead.
- - - - - -

That is all I am gong to say about the Vanguard Party because this thread is not about the merits of such a theory.

[goalkeeper]

No, it is theory: fact. Just because you don't like it doesn't negate it value (buzzwords aside).

I think it explains the reason for the change in CCP policy quite well.



I think all these are actually quite self-explanatory (at least for those of us actually active in the movement and who have some semblance of history) but since you seem hard-pressed to understand I will try my best to spell it out for you.

LOL, shut up. Don't try and act like you have some great knowledge of Marxism because you recited the works of the Micky Mao club.




Logical debate: Level-headed debate with reactionaries concerning vital political (revolutionary) matters. With the exposure of incorrect (reactionary) ideas comes the counterrevolutionary's acceptance of Marxism; this is only attained, however, through principled (re: honest) practice where the two parties are willing to change their minds with the arrival of new information.

Militant struggle: Unending grassroots struggle (violent and non-violent) against reactionary ideas and institutions. Actions undertaken by students during the Cultural Revolution is a good example of what I mean (or for the US during the Vietnam anti-war movement).

Mao bringing it into the open: Before Mao the concept of class struggle under socialism wasn't as well known or developed. With Mao this concept gained great amounts of exposure and was developed to the point where it became infused with over all Maoist oriented line of thought; because Maoists see their ideology as the highest yet development in revolutionary anti-capitalist theory it would be appropriate for them to say this concept (class struggle continuing under socialism) was a fulcrum (support pillar) of Marxism in general.

If you still do not understand I have no idea how to make this any more clear than I am already making it. Other than that I can only recommend reading Mao's works on contradiction.



Well you see you have explained what a militant struggle is, and you have explained what a debate is. I still see no way in which you have shown how exactly Mao "developed" this theory. You said it was "infused with over all Maoist oriented line of thought" but did not expand on this further. You have said it gained "exposure" under Mao but thats not really saying much. Really, the problem here is not my lack of understanding of leftist theory or history or whatever (LOL), but your inability to clearly articulate politics. This is, of course, a common feature of political writing for states pertaining to be socialist etc in the 20th century, and indeed politics in general. It either shows a lack of clear understanding of the actual issues or a means by which to cloud over and mystify what is being said.




The conditions are different, yes, but that simply means the struggle will take different shapes and roads. The base social-conditions are the same and hence it applies to Nepal's economic development.

LOL, you cannot seriously wish to contrast Nepal and China, it is beyond ridiculous.



I am writing like a revolutionary who knows what he is talking about, not a newcomer who hasn't yet learned some Leftist terms. If you need something spelled out then say so and I will try my best to accommodate you.

You have so far demonstrated little ability to "spell stuff out". Whether this is a failing of unclear prose or unclear thinking producing unclear prose, I do not know.




Furthermore who is saying that this alliance would disintegrate the capitalist class? That is not the purpose of an alliance; rather, the purpose of the alliance is what I have already said it to be: a military and social alliance aimed at combating foreign aggression and promoting the various classes to take action against the invaders. This talk of "dissolution" is your own creation.

So the intended end of the alliance is not the takeover of power by the proletariat (or a party claiming to act in its interests, more specifically) and dissolution of capitalism? The "left turn" in the 1950s and beginning of socialism being created in China was mere accident?
You seem to talking about the military alliance though, with the KMT when Japan invaded. What we are discussing in the "New Democracy" crap that Mao claimed to be instituting after the Communists won the civil war. I am not wrong in thinking that when the Communists seized power they claimed it to be on a basis of an alliance with "national bourgeois" elements of the capitalist class am i?
So my question again; did these capitalists who joined the alliance know that they were in effect opting for holding hands with their supposed hangmen?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

LOL, shut up. Don't try and act like you have some great knowledge of Marxism because you recited the works of the Micky Mao club.

Stop flaming or I will report your post. Communicate like a mature adult or avoid posting at all.


Well you see you have explained what a militant struggle is, and you have explained what a debate is. I still see no way in which you have shown how exactly Mao "developed" this theory. You said it was "infused with over all Maoist oriented line of thought" but did not expand on this further. You have said it gained "exposure" under Mao but thats not really saying much. Really, the problem here is not my lack of understanding of leftist theory or history or whatever (LOL), but your inability to clearly articulate politics. This is, of course, a common feature of political writing for states pertaining to be socialist etc in the 20th century, and indeed politics in general. It either shows a lack of clear understanding of the actual issues or a means by which to cloud over and mystify what is being said. The irony here is that you are accusing me of your own inability to understand your opponent's lingo all while attempting to say the opposite. I would say more on the subject at hand but honestly, I have already explained myself so I am not going to repeat it a thousant times simply because you have reading comprehension problems.


LOL, you cannot seriously wish to contrast Nepal and China, it is beyond ridiculous. It is not at all ridiculous. It is a theory which applies to both countries which will take shape in both countries according to their specific situations. Furthermore you do not say why it is absurd to compare the two and simply regulate your argument down to "they are so different!" cries.



So the intended end of the alliance is not the takeover of power by the proletariat (or a party claiming to act in its interests, more specifically) and dissolution of capitalism? The "left turn" in the 1950s and beginning of socialism being created in China was mere accident? You are either ignorant or trolling at this point, nothing was done "by accident" and you are missing the point of the United Front (alliance). The alliance was specifically to fight Japanese aggression-that's it!


You seem to talking about the military alliance though, with the KMT when Japan invaded. Then why on earth were you talking about period which didn't correspond to the primary point of contention and conflate the two eras as one in the same?


What we are discussing in the "New Democracy" crap that Mao claimed to be instituting after the Communists won the civil war. No, you have been "era jumping" and conflating New Democracy (after the civil war, when the CCP seized power) with the United Front (before the civil war when there was a national union).


I am not wrong in thinking that when the Communists seized power they claimed it to be on a basis of an alliance with "national bourgeois" elements of the capitalist class am i? Nothing you say is correct and it shows your grievous ignorance of history.

After the period of the United Front, after Japan was defeated, the alliance between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Kuomintang was ended; its purpose was completed and had run its course. After the dissolution of this alliance civil war broke out in which the communists and nationalist fought over China's future. In the end the communists won, destroyed the old state power, and erected in its place a New Democratic system which would eventually give way to socialism. They did this on their own while fighting the national bourgeoisie.


So my question again; did these capitalists who joined the alliance know that they were in effect opting for holding hands with their supposed hangmen?How would they know they will lose the civil war?

[Zealot]

I agree the handshake itself is irrelevant, but I´m honestly curious about what contemporary maoists think of PRC foreign policy at that time?

The meeting was to the advantage of China since it resulted in America recognising the One-China Policy, were granted a seat at the UN in place of Taiwan, and American forces in Taiwan were cut back. After this, Nixon visited some schools, took a few photos and that's pretty much it.


Do Maoists defend PRC allying itself with the US against the USSR at the time as a tactic or are some more critical of it?

They didn't "ally" with the US although no doubt the Soviets felt threatened by the meeting. Keep in mind that the USSR and China were pretty hostile at this point including armed conflicts on the border. It is even claimed by some historians that the Soviets planned to drop nukes on China in 1969, stopped only by the US who threatened retaliation if it happened since they saw the Soviets as more of a threat. If that is the case, then the meeting in 1972 would have seemed even more worrying to the Soviets.




They were wrong to encourage the CCP to have a presence among the Chinese worker unions? The Chinese working class was actually quite strong in 1925-27. There were mass strikes and boycotts by CCP-led unions, a 12-month general strike in Hong Kong, and other instances of workers' activity. Afterwards there were still many workers in 'yellow' unions which the Comintern encouraged the CCP to infiltrate and convert to communism, while forming red unions whenever possible.

What were the particular conditions that lead to Mao's idea to focus on the countryside?Being a Communist in China at that time got you killed. The CCP tried hard to organise in the cities but times were quite brutal. Mao's focus on the countryside was simply just a reflection of reality.

[Ismail]

The meeting was to the advantage of China since it resulted in America recognising the One-China Policy, were granted a seat at the UN in place of Taiwan, and American forces in Taiwan were cut back. After this, Nixon visited some schools, took a few photos and that's pretty much it.The tide was already turning against Taiwan parading itself as "China" in the UN. Continued intransigence on the part of the USA was unlikely to last much longer, not to mention that the whole rationale for the USA letting China take Taiwan's place as a result of the Kissinger and Nixon meetings was because the former would obviously be of greater assistance to US imperialism than an island ruled by a delusional strongman.


They didn't "ally" with the US although no doubt the Soviets felt threatened by the meeting.From sending millions in aid to Chile under Pinochet and Mobutu's Zaire, to supporting South African intervention in Angola, pressuring the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to cease its struggle against the puppet government in the south, and formulating anti-Marxist "theories" such as that of the "Three Worlds" to justify such reactionary initiatives, China was allied with US imperialism.


Keep in mind that the USSR and China were pretty hostile at this point including armed conflicts on the border.That has nothing to do with portraying NATO as a "defensive alliance" against Soviet social-imperialism, reducing ties with Marxist-Leninist parties to the bare minimum to appease the West, or other actions which clearly showed China's foreign policy was purely pragmatic and opportunistic.

[goalkeeper]

The irony here is that you are accusing me of your own inability to understand your opponent's lingo all while attempting to say the opposite. I would say more on the subject at hand but honestly, I have already explained myself so I am not going to repeat it a thousant times simply because you have reading comprehension problems.

You have not explained yourself.



It is not at all ridiculous. It is a theory which applies to both countries which will take shape in both countries according to their specific situations. Furthermore you do not say why it is absurd to compare the two and simply regulate your argument down to "they are so different!" cries.

I already explained why the two were different but you wilfully ignored it so the only resort left was to call it ridiculous.



You are either ignorant or trolling at this point, nothing was done "by accident" and you are missing the point of the United Front (alliance). The alliance was specifically to fight Japanese aggression-that's it!

Then why on earth were you talking about period which didn't correspond to the primary point of contention and conflate the two eras as one in the same?

No, you have been "era jumping" and conflating New Democracy (after the civil war, when the CCP seized power) with the United Front (before the civil war when there was a national union).

Nothing you say is correct and it shows your grievous ignorance of history.

After the period of the United Front, after Japan was defeated, the alliance between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalist Kuomintang was ended; its purpose was completed and had run its course. After the dissolution of this alliance civil war broke out in which the communists and nationalist fought over China's future. In the end the communists won, destroyed the old state power, and erected in its place a New Democratic system which would eventually give way to socialism. They did this on their own while fighting the national bourgeoisie.

How would they know they will lose the civil war?

What? You are the one who started talking about the KMT.

I am talking about New Democracy and always was.

“... the people’s democratic dictatorship ... to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that right. Who are the people? At the present stage in China they are the working class, the peasantry, the urban petit-bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. These classes, led by the working class and the Communist Party, unite to form their own state and elect their own government; they enforce their dictatorship over the running dogs of imperialism – the landlord class and the bureaucratic-bourgeoisie, as well as the representatives of those classes, the Kuomintang reactionaries and their accomplices. ... Democracy is practiced within the ranks of the people, who enjoy the rights of freedom of speech, assembly, association and so on.” [On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship, Mao Zedong, March 1949]

Mao is clearly alluding to an alliance here between these classes. Of course the Communist party is in charge, but essentially he is saying these classes have united. They have formed a "bloc of four classes". Perhaps alliance was the wrong word, seeing as Maoists have a habit of redefining words, but there was some sort of "joining of forces" here, between the working class and national bourgeoisie according to Mao, as he says they have "unite[d] to form their own state and elect their own government". So, my assumption here is that Mao is saying that the national bourgeoisie has entered into this contract and situation because it views it in its class interests? They are choosing to support New Democracy. However, you have said that New Democracy is the laying of the ground work for socialism. Socialism would entail the liquidation of the national bourgeoisie, of course. So my question stands, did the national bourgeoisie know that New Democracy was merely the ground work for their own demise as a class? If so, why would they support it?

[Willin']

Why did mao got so fat when he took over China?

[ind_com]

^ Best question in the whole thread.

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

What do maoists think of Zhou Enlai and his role in the CPC?

[ind_com]

What do maoists think of Zhou Enlai and his role in the CPC?

Maoists are divided on this issue. Some uphold him while some accuse him of protecting capitalist roaders including Deng.

[Ismail]

Maoists are divided on this issue. Some uphold him while some accuse him of protecting capitalist roaders including Deng.What do Maoists think of the fact that Deng was protected by Mao, rehabilitated by Mao, and sent by Mao to, among other things, announce the "Three Worlds Theory" at the UN?

[Brutus]

What do Maoists think of the cult of personality built up around Mao? Sorry if this has been answered

[ind_com]

What do Maoists think of the fact that Deng was protected by Mao, rehabilitated by Mao, and sent by Mao to, among other things, announce the "Three Worlds Theory" at the UN?

Maoists are divided on this issue too. Some think that Mao was responsible for it and he was wrong, and some see it as the triumph of the anti-Maoist blocs in the CCP, who were becoming powerful.


What do Maoists think of the cult of personality built up around Mao? Sorry if this has been answered

Some Maoists uphold Mao's own evaluation on the personality cult, stating that some cults are good while others are bad. However, the CPI(Maoist) opposes all personality cults.

[Willin']

^ Best question in the whole thread.

Hey hey i want an answer. He spoiled when he got power,when he was an idealist he was a good man but when he got control he turned spoiled like every single dictator in our history.

The fat proves it so don't denie it

[ind_com]

Hey hey i want an answer. He spoiled when he got power,when he was an idealist he was a good man but when he got control he turned spoiled like every single dictator in our history.

The fat proves it so don't denie it

I love you. :lol:

[TheGodlessUtopian]

You have not explained yourself.

Yes I have. You simply choose to ignore it.


What? You are the one who started talking about the KMT. No you started talking about the Nationalists role without even realizing it. I only talked about the KMT because you referenced them without,apparently, knowing it.


I am talking about New Democracy and always was.

“... the people’s democratic dictatorship ... to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that right. Who are the people? At the present stage in China they are the working class, the peasantry, the urban petit-bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. These classes, led by the working class and the Communist Party, unite to form their own state and elect their own government; they enforce their dictatorship over the running dogs of imperialism – the landlord class and the bureaucratic-bourgeoisie, as well as the representatives of those classes, the Kuomintang reactionaries and their accomplices. ... Democracy is practiced within the ranks of the people, who enjoy the rights of freedom of speech, assembly, association and so on.” [On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship, Mao Zedong, March 1949]

Mao is clearly alluding to an alliance here between these classes. Of course the Communist party is in charge, but essentially he is saying these classes have united. They have formed a "bloc of four classes". Perhaps alliance was the wrong word, seeing as Maoists have a habit of redefining words, but there was some sort of "joining of forces" here, between the working class and national bourgeoisie according to Mao, as he says they have "unite[d] to form their own state and elect their own government". So, my assumption here is that Mao is saying that the national bourgeoisie has entered into this contract and situation because it views it in its class interests? They are choosing to support New Democracy. However, you have said that New Democracy is the laying of the ground work for socialism. Socialism would entail the liquidation of the national bourgeoisie, of course. So my question stands, did the national bourgeoisie know that New Democracy was merely the ground work for their own demise as a class? If so, why would they support it?If you want to have a discussion on the bloc of four classes take your musings to this thread (the OP even mentioned your name): http://www.revleft.com/vb/maos-block-four-t179196/index.html


Why did mao got so fat when he took over China?

I suppose it was all that palace food mixed with a sedentary lifestyle.lol


What do maoists think of Zhou Enlai and his role in the CPC?

I haven't studied his role to any great degree so I cannot say outside of what comrade Ind.com has already mentioned.


What do Maoists think of the cult of personality built up around Mao? Sorry if this has been answered

The personality cult around Mao began to be built with the publication of "Mao's little red book of quotes" which was actually thrown together by Deng in an effort to amass for himself capital and to politically isolate Mao; this was done more for succession which would seemingly allow Deng to solidify his position as Mao's "heir". It wasn't something which Mao himself promoted (though admittedly he didn't have great tools to fight back or showed much of an interest in doing so. Anyways, I think the personality cult was something expected: I think it is a shame that it ran to such extents that it did but today peoples seem to be able to evaluate him in a more level head, so, aside from dogmatists, no harm done.

[Mauve Osprey]

Hi there, I am interested in learning more about Maoism. I have only just recently got into revolutionary politics and I am finding myself more and more interested with Mao and Maoism. What would be some good books, websites, pamphlets, etc for someone who is new to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism?

[Zealot]

The tide was already turning against Taiwan parading itself as "China" in the UN. Continued intransigence on the part of the USA was unlikely to last much longer, not to mention that the whole rationale for the USA letting China take Taiwan's place as a result of the Kissinger and Nixon meetings was because the former would obviously be of greater assistance to US imperialism than an island ruled by a delusional strongman.

The tide may have been turning but it really doesn't mean that much when the UN is overwhelmingly dominated by the US imperialists and their allies.


From sending millions in aid to Chile under Pinochet and Mobutu's Zaire, to supporting South African intervention in Angola, pressuring the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to cease its struggle against the puppet government in the south, and formulating anti-Marxist "theories" such as that of the "Three Worlds" to justify such reactionary initiatives, China was allied with US imperialism.

Your history is extremely simplistic. They didn't support South African intervention at all and withdrew from the conflict when it took place. They were obviously embarrassed that South Africa sent troops in to support the armies they themselves were aiding but to say that they were "supporting South African intervention in Angola" is dishonest. China had been supporting the FNLA and UNITA since the national liberation movement against Portugal (i.e, before the civil war even took place). In fact, they supported all three (FNLA, UNITA and MPLA) at one point, which changed when the Soviets began to have more influence in the MPLA. At this point, it obviously became the next victim of the Cold War and the Chinese found themselves supporting groups who were now being supported by South Africa and the USA. Please explain how this is an alliance with US imperialism. I won't even bother with the rest but suffice it to say that Mao made it clear to the US he would not withdraw aid for North Vietnam and stuck to his word.


That has nothing to do with portraying NATO as a "defensive alliance" against Soviet social-imperialism, reducing ties with Marxist-Leninist parties to the bare minimum to appease the West, or other actions which clearly showed China's foreign policy was purely pragmatic and opportunistic.

What? "nothing to do with", in fact, I'm trying to figure out how anything you just said is relevant to the question I was answering.

[Parvati]

@Mauve

It's at the same time instructive and fun, but you've got this amazing summarize by JMP about the "3 headed beast"
http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.ca/p/3-headed-beast.html

And the entire blog is pretty interesting also, covering various topics depending on your questions and interests.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Except Stalin said...exactly the same thing.

A fair amount has been said about the Maoist notion of class struggle under socialism but I feel that this issue has not been addressed completly. Because I am a bit tired I do not feel that I will do it the appropriate justice. But I would like to deal with the specific relationship between Mao's conception and Stalin's conception.

The idea of "class struggle under socialism" largely originates in Stalin's USSR, although Lenin did speak of such a thing during the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. In essence, Stalin's main fear was of political opponents and western spies so the concept was formulated in response to the idea that once socialism is established, there are no longer any antagonistic contradictions. This concept was formulated in 1933 and was used as a theoretical justification for the occurances in that time period that we are all well aware of. In 1936 it was declared that there were no longer any class antagonisms in the USSR and this line was soon after abandoned.

Mao criticized Stalin's conception for three reasons, first he criticized Stalin for abandoning Class struggle under socialism in 1936 because since the state is a tool of class repression then the only logical result of abandoning this concept ought to be the abolition of the state, which we all know did not occur and probably shouldn't have occurred, and the fact that it could not yet occur clearly means that the class struggle wasn't done yet. The second reason was the fact that Stalin flip flopped on the issue that it wasn't much of a "theory" than just a phrase he threw around once and a while for his own interests. The third reason is probably the most simple, where is the proletariat in this class struggle?

I think this differentiates Mao's line from Stalin's line adequate. However I will elaborate on the exact content of this theory tommorow morning.

[LOLseph Stalin]

I realize this has probably already been addressed in this thread but one issue I find myself having with Maoism is their upholding of Stalin. I do agree with some of Mao's stuff such as peasants playing a role in the revolution. However, I doubt I could ever be a Maoist because of the Stalin issue. I tend to take Trotsky's stance on revolution rather than Stalin's and obviously that's not compatible with Maoism, or is it?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I realize this has probably already been addressed in this thread but one issue I find myself having with Maoism is their upholding of Stalin. I do agree with some of Mao's stuff such as peasants playing a role in the revolution. However, I doubt I could ever be a Maoist because of the Stalin issue. I tend to take Trotsky's stance on revolution rather than Stalin's and obviously that's not compatible with Maoism, or is it?

Well it depends on what you mean by upholding. There are Maoists highly critical of Stalin but tend to support his actions defending the Soviet Union and its socialist construction. To this it carries over to theory in the sense of do you believe Marxism is layered or do you believe it is flexible? I would say the latter and as much go as far to say that Trotsky's stance on revolution (Permanent Revolution) and Stalin's (Socialism in One Country) aren't as mutually exclusive as previously thought (but this is off-track entirely).

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I realize this has probably already been addressed in this thread but one issue I find myself having with Maoism is their upholding of Stalin. I do agree with some of Mao's stuff such as peasants playing a role in the revolution. However, I doubt I could ever be a Maoist because of the Stalin issue. I tend to take Trotsky's stance on revolution rather than Stalin's and obviously that's not compatible with Maoism, or is it?

I have addressed this on multiple occasions and I am sure all the Left-Comms/Trot's I ranted at when they called me a "stalinist" can link you to a large number of posts on this topic. However this question has been addressed on page one I believe, if it isn't there then I think it was on page two. If you would like further clarification then please ask me what you need clarification on and I'll try to do my best.

[LOLseph Stalin]

Well it depends on what you mean by upholding. There are Maoists highly critical of Stalin but tend to support his actions defending the Soviet Union and its socialist construction. To this it carries over to theory in the sense of do you believe Marxism is layered or do you believe it is flexible? I would say the latter and as much go as far to say that Trotsky's stance on revolution (Permanent Revolution) and Stalin's (Socialism in One Country) aren't as mutually exclusive as previously thought (but this is off-track entirely).

Well for one I don't really consider the USSR under Stalin to be socialist so that by default puts me at odds with Maoists. And yes, I'm referring to Permanent Revolution.

[Ismail]

Your history is extremely simplistic. They didn't support South African intervention at all and withdrew from the conflict when it took place."Immediately thereafter Ford left for his first trip to China [December 1975], where he met Mao Zedong and other top Chinese leaders and was lectured on U.S. lack of resolve vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. On his return Ford told the Republican congressional leadership, 'There is a very strong anti-Soviet attitude. It is almost unbelievable. The Chinese . . . urged us to prevent Soviet expansion anywhere, but especially in the Middle East, the Pacific and in Africa.'"
(Gleijeses, Piero. Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959-1976. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2002. p. 330.)


At this point, it obviously became the next victim of the Cold War and the Chinese found themselves supporting groups who were now being supported by South Africa and the USA. Please explain how this is an alliance with US imperialism.Probably because it collaborated with the USA and South Africa in aiding UNITA after 1975.


I won't even bother with the rest but suffice it to say that Mao made it clear to the US he would not withdraw aid for North Vietnam and stuck to his word.Another idiotic statement. The North Vietnamese denounced Zhou when he went to Hanoi to discuss the Kissinger (and later Nixon) meetings. They said China had no right to decide the country's fate.

[goalkeeper]

Why are Maoists so adept at talking waffle, saying a lot but saying it reality nothing at all?


This isn't just a dig at people in this thread, its an observation. Bob Avakian is probably the prime example of this.

[Zealot]

"Immediately thereafter Ford left for his first trip to China [December 1975], where he met Mao Zedong and other top Chinese leaders and was lectured on U.S. lack of resolve vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. On his return Ford told the Republican congressional leadership, 'There is a very strong anti-Soviet attitude. It is almost unbelievable. The Chinese . . . urged us to prevent Soviet expansion anywhere, but especially in the Middle East, the Pacific and in Africa.'"
(Gleijeses, Piero. Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959-1976. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2002. p. 330.)

So Mao complained about Soviet imperialism to the Americans at a time when a Chinese-Soviet war seemed very feasible. Point being? Although I'm not sure what relevance that is to the South African intervention.


Probably because it collaborated with the USA and South Africa in aiding UNITA after 1975.

You either didn't read my post or still don't understand the historical and political situation.


Another idiotic statement. The North Vietnamese denounced Zhou when he went to Hanoi to discuss the Kissinger (and later Nixon) meetings. They said China had no right to decide the country's fate.

Zhou passed on the views of Kissinger to Vietnam, which he himself had laughed at. Moreover, the idea that China welcomed the Americans into Vietnam as you suggest is simply ridiculous. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that having an American neo-colony on your border is a pretty bad idea.

[Ismail]

So Mao complained about Soviet imperialism to the Americans at a time when a Chinese-Soviet war seemed very feasible. Point being?The point being that, as Hoxha noted, you cannot rely on one imperialism to oppose another. China's foreign policy was designed to ally itself with US imperialism, to the extent that the popular uprising of workers and students in Iran in 1979 was portrayed in the Chinese press as a dangerous attempt at subversion by the Soviet social-imperialists against the Shah of Iran because of his supposedly "anti-hegemonic" (i.e. anti-Soviet) foreign policy.

The Chinese were telling the Americans to ramp up their imperialist adventures abroad. One of these areas was Africa, of which Angola occupied a premier role. In the West various pro-Chinese parties denounced "appeasers" (such as Jimmy Carter) who were supposedly afraid to confront Soviet social-imperialism.

If you can't see why this is a profoundly reactionary position to take, one which calls on the working-class of the world to unite with and strengthen one imperialist power against another, and to encourage the most reactionary and anti-communist strata of the bourgeoisie of each state, then you've pretty clearly removed yourself from the realm of Marxism-Leninism.

[Parvati]

@InsertNameHere

Maybe you could be interested in the text "Maoism or Trotskyism" by JMP, as it seriously adressed the question of which path is politically stronger : http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.ca/2012/10/maoism-or-trotskyism-free-download.html

[Zealot]

The point being that, as Hoxha noted, you cannot rely on one imperialism to oppose another. China's foreign policy was designed to ally itself with US imperialism, to the extent that the popular uprising of workers and students in Iran in 1979 was portrayed in the Chinese press as a dangerous attempt at subversion by the Soviet social-imperialists against the Shah of Iran because of his supposedly "anti-hegemonic" (i.e. anti-Soviet) foreign policy.

1979? You mean almost three years after Mao had died?


The Chinese were telling the Americans to ramp up their imperialist adventures abroad. One of these areas was Africa, of which Angola occupied a premier role.

I've already gone over that.


In the West various pro-Chinese parties denounced "appeasers" (such as Jimmy Carter) who were supposedly afraid to confront Soviet social-imperialism.

So?


If you can't see why this is a profoundly reactionary position to take, one which calls on the working-class of the world to unite with and strengthen one imperialist power against another, and to encourage the most reactionary and anti-communist strata of the bourgeoisie of each state, then you've pretty clearly removed yourself from the realm of Marxism-Leninism.

That's obviously a reactionary position but one which I do not subscribe to. You clearly have a different interpretation of historical events that I do not agree with.

[Mauve Osprey]

@Mauve

It's at the same time instructive and fun, but you've got this amazing summarize by JMP about the "3 headed beast"

And the entire blog is pretty interesting also, covering various topics depending on your questions and interests.

Thank you comrade! Unfortunately with me being with school I don't have much time for tackling larger theoretical books, so I'm finding Internet resources very useful! I read through the intro and I was quite interested to see that the uprising in tiaianemen square was actually an uprising against revisionism, not a revolt against socialism like bourgeois historians say. I hope to read the rest later.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

Why are Maoists so adept at talking waffle, saying a lot but saying it reality nothing at all?


This isn't just a dig at people in this thread, its an observation. Bob Avakian is probably the prime example of this.

Ignoring the flamebaiting, most of the MLM movement rejects Bob Avakian. The Communist Party of Afghanistan actually wrote a lengthy polemic against him.

http://www.sholajawid.org/english/main_english/A_respose_to_the_rcp_USA_sh28.html

[Ismail]

1979? You mean almost three years after Mao had died?Yes, wherein his chosen successor Hua visited Iran and praised the Shah, carrying forward the foreign policy line established by Mao.

After all it would be quite difficult for the USA to expand its efforts against the USSR in the world when one of its prime sources of spying on the USSR (and strategic regions) falls to a popular uprising.


So?So, following Mao's call, many Maoists throughout the world called for an alliance between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie of the Western and pro-US countries against Soviet social-imperialism. Of course many others, like Bob Avakian's, pretended that Mao had nothing to do with the "Three Worlds" theory and thus partially saved face.


You clearly have a different interpretation of historical events that I do not agree with.Of course not, that would mean admitting Mao was a petty-bourgeois "revolutionary" with an opportunistic foreign policy. Mao, like his friends Kim Il Sung and Ceaușescu, attacked Stalin for his "dogmatism." The road of denouncing Stalin ended up, as always, on the side of revisionism and imperialism. Refusing to look this reality in the face puts Maoists alongside Castroists, Trotskyists, and other ideologies which take the same road away from Marxism-Leninism.

[Mauve Osprey]

Also, another question I forgot to ask. What do most MLMs in America feel about the idea of national liberation in places like the southern Black Belt region, as suggested by groups like ROL. Personally I am a little on the fence about it.

[Charles Marxley]

Could you help me understand the concept of "two-line struggle?"

Perhaps you could also explain how this functioned in the PCP-SL.

[Mauve Osprey]

Could you help me understand the concept of "two-line struggle?"

Perhaps you could also explain how this functioned in the PCP-SL.


I found an article on aworldtoowin.org called "On the Maoist Conception of Two-Line Struggle", unfortunately I cannot post links, but it does talk about the concept of Two-line Struggle and talks about its uses in the PCP-SL. I have not read much on Two-line Struggle, but I believe it has to do with fighting counter-revolutionaries within the party, but what I am not sure of is if it means focusing on counter-revolutionaries who call themselves Communists or all the counter-revolutionaries?

Edit:
I looked into it and Two-Line Struggle means that a struggle takes place in the party, revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries compete for the title of communist. It is necessary for the party to stamp out the counter-revolutionary elements and form a true Revolutionary Party rather than a fake one led by counter-revolutionary elements that will try to trick the masses.

[black magick hustla]

Mao creatively applied Marxism to China's conditions, he didn't "revise" it, to add to this he was an actual Marxist in that he applied Marx and Engels's theories to China.]
actually, when mao developed his "marxism", marx was very scantly translated. mao's "marxism" owes a lot to comintern stalinist policy, chinese populist nationalism, and some of the chinese, populist versions of "anarchism" that existed before maoism took root. now, i don't want to say that "modifying" theory is wrong, but maoists which are obsessed with the authenticity of their line, are pretty dishonest when discussing their ideology. in fact, maoism as a "theory" wasn't really synthesized after much later imho.

[Ismail]

actually, when mao developed his "marxism", marx was very scantly translated. mao's "marxism" owes a lot to comintern stalinist policy, chinese populist nationalism, and some of the chinese, populist versions of "anarchism" that existed before maoism took root. now, i don't want to say that "modifying" theory is wrong, but maoists which are obsessed with the authenticity of their line, are pretty dishonest when discussing their ideology. in fact, maoism as a "theory" wasn't really synthesized after much later imho.Molotov recalled in his memoirs Mao being a poor Marxist, being told by him that he didn't even read Capital, whereas Molotov recalled that as a seminarian Stalin copied down the whole book in clandestine conditions.

Mao and the Comintern weren't on the best of terms, so even while "adhering" to it he still displayed nationalist tendencies. What happened after 1949 was that, as with the Soviet revisionists, the façade of a "proletarian vanguard" existed (along with terminology, etc.) while in practice socialism was not being built, right-wing theories were being propagated, and in fact capitalism was the order of the day. Then in the late 60's Mao's "anarchist" origins came to the fore and he more or less liquidated the CCP in practice, replacing collective leadership with the principle of the "great helmsman."

"In these conditions, with those concepts the CCP could never be a Marxist-Leninist party. The philosophy which guided it was idealist bourgeois, retrograde, because China itself, its society despite its democratic bourgeois revolution, has remained a closed society, with old beliefs and mentality dominated by mysticism and by philosophical and organisational state principles archaic in essence but which have allegedly evolved superficially. We can see this in the construction and form of the state, in the development of the economy, in the way the education and cultural system has been built, in the organisation of the army, etc. Everything bore the specific Chinese seal, from ideological literature down to the slogans." (Hoxha, 1978 letter to Hysni Kapo in Letra të zgjedhura Vol. I, p. 396.) Hoxha also recalled how many early Chinese "Communists," who were in reality bourgeois-democrats using the ideology to further their aims, called for a war between the "yellow races" and "white races," something Mao more or less took advantage of in his efforts to "Sinicize" Marxism.

[kasama-rl]

actually, when mao developed his "marxism", marx was very scantly translated. mao's "marxism" owes a lot to comintern stalinist policy, chinese populist nationalism, and some of the chinese, populist versions of "anarchism" that existed before maoism took root. now, i don't want to say that "modifying" theory is wrong, but maoists which are obsessed with the authenticity of their line, are pretty dishonest when discussing their ideology. in fact, maoism as a "theory" wasn't really synthesized after much later imho.

When people say things like this, I always suspect they know zero about Mao's theories.

In fact, his worldview and synthesis was developed over literally fifty years... with new elements emerging until his death in 1976.

Core elements had developed by 1937 when (at the Tsunyi conference on the long march) Mao was elected leadership of the party. By then they had held power and led agrarian revolution in a number of areas (which were larger than many countries in the world). By 1942, elements of a distinct synthesis was in place, and the Chinese party adopted Mao Tsetung Thought as its overall approach (in sharp contrast to the Comintern's codification of Marxism and its programmatic assumptions for China).

But this was an early syntesis, and a great deal more developed over the course of the following decades of revolution. (With major contribution, the core of Mao's work, only emerging after 1966 during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.)

I'm not sure what the point about translation or whatever is. But few communists in history have led so many people under such varied and difficult conditions for so long, and over the course of that practice a great work of creative Marxism was unfolded.

Generally when people write such things, you discover that they are completely unfamiliar with any core elements of Maoist synthesis (questions of negation of negation, theory of antagonism and contradictions among the people, the concept of mass line, the theory of continuing revolution, and so on.) In other words, we often hear negative verdicts based on uninformed prejudices.

As mao said (as part of his great historic defence of materialism): "no investigation, no right to speak."

[black magick hustla]

I'm not sure what the point about translation or whatever is. But few communists in history have led so many people under such varied and difficult conditions for so long, and over the course of that practice a great work of creative Marxism was unfolded.

um, the point is that mao's "marxism" has very little continuity with marx' works, because the man wasn't even well versed in them. as i said, i don't think it matters as much, i'm just saying that maoists are obsessed with sounding "authentic" and being "anti revisionist". the utility of mlm is another topic in itself.

[Ismail]

Mao pointed out that "his" concept of the mass line was taken from the classics.

"From the very beginning our Party has emulated the Soviet Union. The mass line, our political work, and [the theory of] the dictatorship of the proletariat have all been learned from the October Revolution. At that time, Lenin had focused on the mobilization of the masses, and on organizing the worker-peasant-soldier soviet, and so on. He did not rely on [doing things by] administrative decree. Rather, Lenin sent Party representatives to carry out political work."
(Mao Zedong, quoted in Michael Y.M. Kau & John K. Leung (eds). The Writings of Mao Zedong, 1949-1976 Volume II. New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc. 1992. p. 185.)

"We, on our part, stick to studying Marxism-Leninism and learning from the October Revolution. Marx has left us a great many writings, and so has Lenin. To rely on the masses, to follow the mass line—this is what we have learned from them."
(Mao Zedong. Selected Works Vol. V. Peking: Foreign Languages Press. 1977. p. 342.)

Hoxha recalled Stalin saying to him in a meeting that,

"To be able to lead, you must know the masses, and in order to know them, you must go down among the masses."
(Enver Hoxha. With Stalin: Memoirs. Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House. 1981. p. 86.)

As with his attempts to "revolutionize" dialectics, Mao's pretensions at "elevating" the mass line into some sort of coherent doctrine were an effort to justify right-wing policies.

[kasama-rl]

Ismail:

Just because you can find quotes where Mao (with modesty) says he learned from others, doesn't make a case that Maoist synthesis is just a reworking from some so-called "classics". Maoism is not. And no scientific method talks of "classics" in that way -- that is instead a thinking rooted in doctrine, not science -- and has a quasi-prophetic view of how truth emerges.

The Chinese communists developed methods (including mass line) that no one else had developed or applied.

Ofthen in his work, Mao credits the international communist movement and others for things (as we all should). But the fact remains that Mao's mass line is a unique and precious piece of political technology that we should uphold and apply.

[subcp]

"no investigation, no right to speak."I can appreciate being solid in one's convictions; but a lot of the contributor's here are familiar with specific Maoist concepts or Mao's work- and can still rightly say it is not Marxism nor connected to the communist project.


A lively, new polemic about the concepts 'one divides into two' and 'two fuse into one' is unfolding on the philosophical front in the country. This debate is a struggle between those who are for and those who are against the materialist dialectic, a struggle between two conceptions of the world: the proletarian and the bourgeois conception. Those who maintain that 'one divides into two' is the fundamental law of things are on the side of the materialist dialectic; those who maintain that the fundamental law of things is that 'two fuse into one' are against the materialist dialectic. The two sides have drawn a clear line of demarcation between them, and their arguments are diametrically opposed. This polemic reflects, on the ideological level, the acute and complex class struggle taking place in China and in the world. - 'The Red Flag of Peking', September 21, 1964

You say theoretical development and rigor; all I see is obfuscation, ideological gloss, to cover realpolitik on the terrain of capitalism. A faction fight, struggling for control of the politico-economic apparatus of the state.

Mao's 'negation of the negation'- bourgeois Machiavellianism, the polemics about Stalin and the USSR: maneuvers, of one competing bureaucracy against another, for the leading position as 'legitimate bureaucracy'- the official opposition to the 'normal' capitalist spectacle.

I still can't figure out where the realpolitik of the Chinese regime and ruling party end and 'Maoism' begins.

[kasama-rl]

subscp's comment is worth looking at closely.

It is a good example of the problem I'm talking about.

Here is a sophisticated political theory -- that developed out of fifty years of revolution in the worlds largest country and played a role in liberating hundreds of millions of people.

And some people want to dismiss it without (in any visible or substantive way) even bothering to explore what it says or believes.

I have no problem with people disagreeing with Maoism (obviously) but at the level of method it seems anti-materialist to reject what you have not investigated. What kind of Marxism is that?

[subcp]

This is what I was talking about- where Maoism begins and the practices of Mao and the CCP (historically) end. I see this line get obfuscated on this forum- in another thread, New Democracy was brought up (along with a contemporary defense of it) as a facet of Maoism- but when questioned on this thread, there is backpeddling- that it actually isn't a part of Maoism.

You say millions of people have been liberated: from what? Colonialism/semi-colonialism? They are still clearly exploited by capitalism.

I don't particularly see a leg to stand on regarding attempts to revise the historical legacy of M-L states (and Maoist parties in government and trade unions), but this often gets mixed in with attempts to defend Maoism as a contemporary political tendency divorced from said historical legacy. Makes it a moving target where the 'ignorance' of detractors can be used to stifle discussion.

[kasama-rl]

"This is what I was talking about- where Maoism begins and the practices of Mao and the CCP (historically) end. I see this line get obfuscated on this forum- in another thread, New Democracy was brought up (along with a contemporary defense of it) as a facet of Maoism- but when questioned on this thread, there is backpeddling- that it actually isn't a part of Maoism."

Perhaps I missed that.

Obviously, the Chinese revolution underwent a new democratic revolution -- and this approach (class alliances, targeting of main enemy, development of communist revolution through stages, continuous revolution going over to socialism etc.) is part of Maoism.

But what do we draw from that? Obviously not that Maoists advocate "new democracy" in all countries.... (since that would be absurd) -- but that we need to learn from this creative method (investigation of concrete conditions, ability to change direction under changed conditions, the method of seeking to advance further toward communism with each new advance.)


"You say millions of people have been liberated: from what? Colonialism/semi-colonialism? They are still clearly exploited by capitalism."

There is a lot coiled up in these sentences.

First, we all know that the wave of socialist revolutions in the 20th century were ultimately reversed (i.e.that capitalism was restored).

Second, that doesn't mean that there wasn't liberation or periods of socialism, it means that it could not be sustained without the larger world revolution "coming to the rescue" in one way or another.

Yes, the Chinese revolution liberated people from colonialism, semi-colonialism, vast feudal conditions, and then (in a protracted struggle over decades) from the pull toward state capitalism.

And it was based on a pathbreaking and critical summation of the Soviet experience, and it gave rise to its own protracted experience and theoretical work for us to sum up (and apply).

[subcp]

But what do we draw from that? Obviously not that Maoists advocate "new democracy" in all countries.... (since that would be absurd) -- but that we need to learn from this creative method (investigation of concrete conditions, ability to change direction under changed conditions, the method of seeking to advance further toward communism with each new advance.)



What I'm trying to get at specifically are the immutable aspects of Maoism that are generally considered the planks of contemporary Maoist organizations (aside from the normal variation on certain points), or important historical actions of the PRC state or Mao or other CCP members which are upheld as models or actions that are considered today to have been correct at the time. I'm sure you're familiar with the so-called 'China Debate' that was sparked by Lauren Goldner's article on Maoism; it came as a response to one of Kasama's meetings. My starting point is similar to Insurgent Notes, but don't want any discussion of Maoism to turn into a moving target with accusations of ignorance or dishonesty- where examples of thought and practice of the PRC or CCP or Mao are used in one moment, then retracted as not indicative of contemporary Maoism in the next.


The original Goldner article:


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

[kasama-rl]

I am not familiar with any significant debate triggered by Goldner's article. I read it of course, but I was amazed by how uniformed it was. It was a discussion of the Chinese revolution, not of Maoism as a political current and synthesis. And it is riddled with howling factual errors that underscore how superficial it is.

Maoism is a synthesis of communist political theory and practice. Its key elements include a distinctive philosophy and approach to contradiction, military doctrine, approach to contradictions among the people, mass line, view of continous revoulution, approach of a communist road, and a distinctive theory of capitalist restoration.

None of these components are discussed by Goldner with any depth. I really got the feeling that he was writing a smear and a slam of a political theory he had not bothered to investigate.

And I'm making the same point here. If you want to discuss Maoism, fine.... but discuss Maoism, a political current that emerged in 1935 and that deepened (in sophistication and distinctiveness) during Mao's life, and then since then by a wide range of Mao influenced thinkers and practitioners (including among them Badiou, Althusser, Peru's Gonzalo, Indian Naxalites, and more).

[Ismail]

Goldner's article is basically crap, from apologizing for Bukharin ("there was in reality no one more reactionary than Stalin") and Khrushchev (including the ludicrous claim that Maoists and Marxist-Leninists think capitalism was restored in the USSR because Khrushchev made a speech, thus proving their "idealism" on this point as if the works of Martin Nicolaus, Bill Bland, the RCPUSA, etc. didn't exist) to repeating the standard Trot line on how Stalin ruined everything. The critique of Maoism, although noting Mao's right-wing views, suffers as a result.

It even uses the godawful meme usage of "real existing socialism" (always in ironic quote marks, of course), something the Soviet revisionists under Brezhnev coined as a way of denying that socialism was a transitional period from capitalism to communism and which Maoist and Marxist-Leninist parties (including the CCP and PLA themselves) denounced.

On a related note, the author pointing out how many Maoist student radicals later became bourgeois politicians is obviously meant as an indictment against Maoism, but that isn't really honest when in a footnote the author notes that "[Harold] Isaacs, a Trotskyist when he wrote the book, later became a 'State Department socialist' and toned down the book with each reprint, but later editions still tell the essential story." In fact if many Maoist student radicals could be accused of abandoning their politics (an obviously true charge), adult Trotskyists who were close associates of the man (Shachtman, Eastman) had an alarming tendency to join open reaction.

Maoism needs a better critique than this.

[subcp]

I mention the Goldner article specifically because it spawned a wider discussion (I was under the impression it was known more widely), which may have been useful to discussion here- I was mistaken. The ICC's series is a far more comprehensive account of Maoism and the history of the CPC (has 8 or 9 parts at least).

Marx outlines in his descriptions of the formal to real domination of capital, characterized by the generalized extraction of absolute surplus value (formal domination) and relative surplus value (real domination), but also the means by which capital, the 'social inertia', bends existing social forms and relations (pre-capitalist classes, relations and institutions) to its will before re-making them in its own image.

In the contemporary explanation of New Democracy from another thread, which reads:


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." There is an implicit understanding that capital shapes the world in 2 distinct ways; the theory of New Democracy takes this vision of 2 phases or faces of capitalism to mean that societies (nation-states, geographical/geopolitical regions) in the 'formal domination of capital' to be independent of the forces that shape social relations under capitalism (areas already under the real domination of capital, the central capitalist nations)- that the areas which were later in developing the productive forces (and thus at the mercy of the advanced capitalist nations) were somehow outside of these influences or forces, and thus able to resist 'capitalism' in a revolutionary bulwark while simultaneously being subject to capitalist laws of the economy: which is (I'd argue) the opposite of Marx's observations of the same phenomenon (how capital shapes, bends and then changes existing institutions, classes and social relations in pre-capitalist areas), and Marxist understanding of how capitalism works.

Is this a fair understanding of one of the points of Maoism regarding the social relations and development of production in the emerging or underdeveloped regions? I understand the recognition that New Democracy was an historical phenomenon, a 'creative application' of Maoism- what's at issue is the underlying understanding of social relations and mode of production on which New Democracy emerged in practice. I want to know if this is still a conception of history and the world today, generally, to Maoism.




You mention the Mass Line- I take it that that means it is considered a generally accepted aspect of contemporary Maoism?

The concept of the Mass Line says a lot about the underlying view of how class consciousness develops, how communists develop (how the pro-revolutionary is created and develops) and the relationship of communists to the wider class. The basis of which is the same Kautsky/Lenin schema regarding class consciousness that Russian social-democracy held, that those with class consciousness are responsible for introducing it into the economic struggles of workers (who can only attain 'trade union consciousness'); and that the communist minority is itself an external agent or something outside of the working-class (rather than an organic part of the class). That the CPSU later used this as a basis for the 'Transmission Belt' idea where the Party uses its representatives in the mass organizations (trade unions) to bring the Party Line to 'the masses'. Yet the Maoist application was much wider than that- in organizations composed of other strata and classes besides the proletariat. This suggests a number of things about Maoism (the view that the proletariat is not the only class with revolutionary agency under capitalism, that it is the task of the Party to directly take over and lead, rather than lead organically or through defense of the communist program, in mass organizations, a Kautsky-Lenin view of consciousness, etc.). In practice, like in the USSR and the Transmission Belts, the Mass Line was useful realpolitik, a means to organize society directly from the top down, while the party sits at the helm of an all powerful state- a state which had control over the economy as well as all political functions. Its place in contemporary Maoism suggests a desire to repeat the kind of regimes or organizations of society that permeated the 20th century.

[Comrade #138672]

Not sure if it has been asked before, but can Maoism work in a country with a peasant minority and a big labour aristocracy?

[ind_com]

Not sure if it has been asked before, but can Maoism work in a country with a peasant minority and a big labour aristocracy?

Yes. Then the proletariat will become the main as well as the leading force of revolution. Also, no matter how big the labour aristocracy is, it is always a small percentage of the working class.

[kasama-rl]

Yes. Then the proletariat will become the main as well as the leading force of revolution.

I agree with ind-com: Yes, Maoism is highly applicable to revolution in the world today regardless of the particular conditions. I.e. Maoism is not 'communism applied to semifeudal countries" -- it is an all-sided synthesis of communism (whose most significant aspect is not a particular political strategy, but a groundbreaking analysis of socialism and the dangers of capitalist restoration).

I would like to engage ind-com a little bit on his second sentence:


"Also, no matter how big the labour aristocracy is, it is always a small percentage of the working class."

I'm curious to know what basis you assert that.

My understanding is that this may have been true when lenin was first writing (around World War 1) but does not correspond to modern conditions.

The analysis I was part of making (in the 1990s) based on research and experience suggested that about a third of the U.S. proletariat lives under conditions where they are (essentially) making barely survival wages (i.e. they are making, what Marxists call, wages close to the 'value of their labor power").

Another third has had rather stable and well-paid conditions -- living what would (in the U.S.) be called "a middle class lifestyle." (I remember visiting the home of a highly skilled worker in West Virginia who had a large Winnebego travel trailer in his driveway, and thinking.... will workers who own a house, two cars, and a trailer like this be likely to build barricades?)

I'm not arguing that this upper tier is inherently counter-revolutionary -- but that their position has been comfortable, relatively stable for decades, and quite conservatizing. And when they break into struggle it is often a demand to go "back" to "better days" -- when their position was stable and virtually an "entitlement."

Obviously there are two things going on here: the development of widely separated tiers in the U.S. working class (which is not simply based on race, but in which Black and Latino workers are often much more heavily concentratedin the lower tiers.) And then there is a second trend, in which (overall) the workings of capitalism are undermining the "social compact" that more stable and well paid workers thought was theirs.

[Malesori]

What is the possibility of a democratic Maoism?

[ind_com]

What is the possibility of a democratic Maoism?

Maoism is democratic. The basis of Maoism lies in the empowerment of the working classes.

[subcp]

Another third has had rather stable and well-paid conditions -- living what would (in the U.S.) be called "a middle class lifestyle." (I remember visiting the home of a highly skilled worker in West Virginia who had a large Winnebego travel trailer in his driveway, and thinking.... will workers who own a house, two cars, and a trailer like this be likely to build barricades?)

I'm not arguing that this upper tier is inherently counter-revolutionary -- but that their position has been comfortable, relatively stable for decades, and quite conservatizing. And when they break into struggle it is often a demand to go "back" to "better days" -- when their position was stable and virtually an "entitlement."

Modern experience contradicts that assessment; the standards of living for workers in the central capitalist nations had never been higher as in the 1960's-1980's, and there were explosive struggles (along with hints and flashpoints foreshadowing revolution)- this is again happening (to a lesser extent so far) since the latest manifestation of the crisis since 2008.

Higher standards of living, high wages and benefits (when they were linked to rising productivity) seem to have had the opposite effect, particularly in flashpoints like May '68, the Italian 'hot autumn' in '69, the Polish mass strikes in 1980-81, etc.

[Lord Hargreaves]

Perhaps I've entirely missed the point here, but what is the relevance of Maoism for political/class struggle within "first world" countries? I don't see any. Or do Maoists believe that a communist revolution begins in the "third world" and thus this is a relegated, perhaps relatively unimportant, problem?

I was struck by someone in this thread (can't remember who now, sorry whoever you are) using Louis Althusser's analysis of dialectics and contradiction as a continuation of Mao's understanding of the topic. But then that leads on to Althusser's relative abandonment of class struggle as a theoretical problem within his work, which in post-Althusserian thought - like that of Laclau and Mouffe - becomes a pluralism which sees class as just one contradiction among many. Is Maoism guilty of this - does it displace the struggle of the proletariat with a generalized concern with anti-imperialism, postcolonial state building, alleviating absolute poverty, anti-racism, rights of rural communities, etc? Is it really just a form of localized struggle that infused Marxism within its own hodge-podge ideology, but never was thoroughly "Marxist"?

Lastly, how does Maoism relate to contemporary postcolonial theory? It seems to involve a shift of emphasis within particular Westernized ways of thought, rather than being a thoroughgoing criticism of the West and its thought. Perhaps I'm being ignorant here, but it seems to downplay significantly the extent to which the Third World is not undeveloped but underdeveloped, something which was made and remade by the First World in its own interests, in a sense "socially constructed", and which has a subordinate role within a world system rather than being "outside" it. Is this a fair criticism?

[ind_com]

Perhaps I've entirely missed the point here, but what is the relevance of Maoism for political/class struggle within "first world" countries? I don't see any. Or do Maoists believe that a communist revolution begins in the "third world" and thus this is a relegated, perhaps relatively unimportant, problem?

I was struck by someone in this thread (can't remember who now, sorry whoever you are) using Louis Althusser's analysis of dialectics and contradiction as a continuation of Mao's understanding of the topic. But then that leads on to Althusser's relative abandonment of class struggle as a theoretical problem within his work, which in post-Althusserian thought - like that of Laclau and Mouffe - becomes a pluralism which sees class as just one contradiction among many. Is Maoism guilty of this - does it displace the struggle of the proletariat with a generalized concern with anti-imperialism, postcolonial state building, alleviating absolute poverty, anti-racism, rights of rural communities, etc? Is it really just a form of localized struggle that infused Marxism within its own hodge-podge ideology, but never was thoroughly "Marxist"?


Maoism holds that revolution is not possible without class war. So, revolutions will take place first in the countries where class war intensifies first. As long as imperialist countries manage to smoothly transfer the crises of capitalism to the third world countries, the situation in imperialist countries is less favourable for class war. This does not mean that class war is not impossible in imperialist countries; but it implies that a Maoist party in any imperialist country is generally supposed to go through a longer period of mass-struggle before declaring war against the state.

Maoists indeed don't see the contradiction between the proletariat and bourgeoisie as the principal contradiction in the world. The global principal contradiction is between imperialism and the oppressed classes of the colonies/neo-colonies. So, for third world countries this amounts to the struggle of several oppressed classes led by the proletariat, against imperialism, semi-feudalism and comprador capitalism. But even in developed imperialist countries, where the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is principal and the proletariat is the most numerous oppressed class and the main force of revolution, the issues of anti-racism, queer rights etc. are extremely important to pull different communities into the class war as allies of the proletariat.



Lastly, how does Maoism relate to contemporary postcolonial theory? It seems to involve a shift of emphasis within particular Westernized ways of thought, rather than being a thoroughgoing criticism of the West and its thought. Perhaps I'm being ignorant here, but it seems to downplay significantly the extent to which the Third World is not undeveloped but underdeveloped, something which was made and remade by the First World in its own interests, in a sense "socially constructed", and which has a subordinate role within a world system rather than being "outside" it. Is this a fair criticism?I think I don't understand this part of your question. Undeveloped and underdeveloped usually mean the same. Of course today you can't imagine to find most of the peasantry in conditions identical to those of the 18th century.

[Lord Hargreaves]

Maoism holds that revolution is not possible without class war. So, revolutions will take place first in the countries where class war intensifies first. As long as imperialist countries manage to smoothly transfer the crises of capitalism to the third world countries, the situation in imperialist countries is less favourable for class war. This does not mean that class war is not impossible in imperialist countries; but it implies that a Maoist party in any imperialist country is generally supposed to go through a longer period of mass-struggle before declaring war against the state.

I wonder perhaps whether there is some circularity in this argument: if Maoists see the class struggle as taking the form of a "peoples war", or armed guerrilla insurrection against the cities, formation of "base areas", etc., then of course this is more likely to occur in the third world, because it is precisely a third worldist conception of politics.

But it seems a bit simplistic, a bit mechanistic/utilitarian, to argue that the conditions for class war in the imperialist countries is lessened because the proletariat there is relatively well off (vis a vis workers and peasants elsewhere.) Class consciousness is not just about being poor and not liking it.


Maoists indeed don't see the contradiction between the proletariat and bourgeoisie as the principal contradiction in the world. The global principal contradiction is between imperialism and the oppressed classes of the colonies/neo-colonies. So, for third world countries this amounts to the struggle of several oppressed classes led by the proletariat, against imperialism, semi-feudalism and comprador capitalism.

I think this is a very important insight, for sure. Marx doesn't really deal with capitalism as a world system, the relationships between core and periphery, or imperialism. Here Maoism, as a perspective of the colonial subject, could offer a vital corrective.

Perhaps there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem though, since the proletariat/bourgeoisie "contradiction" (or social relation) within the imperialist countries is a big reason behind the imperialism in the first place. To what extent is imperialism a mere "displacement" of this initial class contradiction from first to third worlds?


I think I don't understand this part of your question. Undeveloped and underdeveloped usually mean the same. Of course today you can't imagine to find most of the peasantry in conditions identical to those of the 18th century.

I meant to say: can we see Maoism as a critique of the Western idea of (universal) Progress, as one monolithic History that covers all peoples from poverty through development to prosperity? Is there any philosophical questioning, as in postcolonial theory or other critical theory? Or is Maoism just a strategic perspective on how to achieve revolution in the third world?

[kasama-rl]

I think I can help elaborate a little on Maoism's view of contradictions within society, and contradictions operating on a world scale, and "what is the principal contradiction."

There are several levels to this:

* * * * * * * * * * *

1) Maoism (and Marxism before it) sees the fundamental contradiction of capitalism as being between socialized production and private appropriation.

2) That fundamental contradiction has (according to Engels) two forms of motion:
One form of motion is the contradiction between socialized production and the anarchy

One form of motion is the world-historic contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie (i.e. the class struggle that potentially gives rise to communism through revolution.)

The other form of motion is the contradiction between anarchy and organization i.e. between the organization within particular capitalist enterprises and corporations, and the anarchy of multiple ownership( i.e. many rival loci of ownership where surplus value is appropriated). This second is the form of motion that gives rise to capitalist crisis, reactionary war, economic competition, and imperialist rivalry.

In ordinarly workings of capitalism, it is the second form of motion that predominates many events. The class struggle emerges with force often (and is a permament influence in soiety) but it imerges as determinant at key conjunctural movments.

3) At the level of actual politics (over the last century), the Maoists analyzed that there were "four main contradictions on a world scale"

These four contradictions were:
Contradiction 1) the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie (on a world scale, and within particular countries)
Contradiction 2) The contradiction between imperialist countries and their ruling classes (the struggle of competition and redivision that gives rise to interimperialist rivalry and war)
Contradiction 3) the contradiction between oppressed countries and imperialism
Contradiction 4) The contradiction between capitalism and socialism (when there are socialist countries)

4) There has been debate (over many decades) among Maoists over which of those four main contradictions is principal.

At the time of the great growth and maturing of anticolonial struggles (1935-1976) Maoists put forward that was the principal contradiction on a world scale.

The soviet revisionists by contrast argued that the defense of the Soviet Union, and the upholding of its interests were always principal, and that all forms of revolutionary struggles needed to be subordinate to those interests.

By the mid-seventies, world events and balances of forces changed in some major ways. Significant forces among the Maoists (soon concentrated within the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement) argued that the principal contradiction had changed -- and that the principal contradiction had become the contradiction between the two superpower blocks (U.S. imperialism and soviet social imperialism).

Some Maoists in the Third World, including the Peruvian Shining Path (PCP) and some forces among the Indian Naxalites, never fully embraced that argument -- and some among them have (then and now) held that the principal contradiction (on a world scale) is more-or-less permanently (automatically? inherently? without change>) the one between oppressed countries and imperialism as a system.

In shorth, today there is no common or universal agreement among Maoists over what is the principal contradiction on a world scale. And unfortunately the level of debate over this has not been particularly high (in fact, it is a good example of the low level of analysis and thought promoted in some quarters). Some people (still) hold that the principal contradiction is imperialism vs. oppressed countries of the Third World. I have never seen a convincing analysis of why that should be upheld. in fact I have never seen any analysis arguing for this at all, merely an assertion -- and I don't find it a convincing one (and i perceive its method as rather mechanical and undialectical, and divorced from actual analysis of real events).

There are today no socialist countries... and so the fourth contradiction has been (temporarily I hope!) removed from the world stage by the late 20th century process of capitalist restoration.

the three existing contradictions (prol vs. bourgeoisie, interimperialist, and imperialism vs. oppressed countries) all are in motion, and all exist, and all seem to have intensified in significant ways (not everywhere but overall in the world). I'm not sure if one contradiction is clearly principal -- and question whether it is a given that one or another must be principal. (The world is a big place -- perhaps one or another of those major contradictions may be more influential in different regions, even while they all (obviously) interpenetrate in significant ways.)

I hope that helps clarify Maoism's approach to these significant matters (of dialectics, analysis and political judgement).

[kasama-rl]

BTW: I took my comment here on the "4 main contradictions" etc. and fleshed it out a bit more, posting it as an essay on Kasama:

http://kasamaproject.org/threads/entry/background-maoist-views-on-contradictions-defining-world-politics

My thanks to ind-com, Lord Hargreaves and of course YABM for kicking this part of our discussion this open.

[ind_com]

I wonder perhaps whether there is some circularity in this argument: if Maoists see the class struggle as taking the form of a "peoples war", or armed guerrilla insurrection against the cities, formation of "base areas", etc., then of course this is more likely to occur in the third world, because it is precisely a third worldist conception of politics.

For imperialist countries, the proposed model of peoples' war is to initiate armed struggle in the cities and take control of the cities first. Protracted people's war is a general form of class war, which is not identical everywhere to the Chinese model.


But it seems a bit simplistic, a bit mechanistic/utilitarian, to argue that the conditions for class war in the imperialist countries is lessened because the proletariat there is relatively well off (vis a vis workers and peasants elsewhere.) Class consciousness is not just about being poor and not liking it.

Of course, there are many other conditions, and depending on their cumulative effect, class war might break out in relatively better of sections of the working classes as well. But the level of oppression is indeed a major factor, and the single most important cause behind the absence of class war in the imperialist countries so far. There are other causes too, but they are secondary. This disadvantage can be overcome by a long struggle under a militant communist party, so that class war can start in the imperialist countries too.


I think this is a very important insight, for sure. Marx doesn't really deal with capitalism as a world system, the relationships between core and periphery, or imperialism. Here Maoism, as a perspective of the colonial subject, could offer a vital corrective.

Perhaps there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem though, since the proletariat/bourgeoisie "contradiction" (or social relation) within the imperialist countries is a big reason behind the imperialism in the first place. To what extent is imperialism a mere "displacement" of this initial class contradiction from first to third worlds?

The class-contradiction of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is present heavily in the centers of imperialism. But when capitalism became imperialism, it encountered a different set of class contradiction in its colonies. The colonies had more primitive working classes struggling with their oppressors. To centralize the system of exploitation into the imperialist bases, these pre-capitalist class contradictions were somewhat modified, still keeping them distinct from class contradictions in the imperialist countries to such an extent that the proletariat might not even be the main force of revolution.



I meant to say: can we see Maoism as a critique of the Western idea of (universal) Progress, as one monolithic History that covers all peoples from poverty through development to prosperity? Is there any philosophical questioning, as in postcolonial theory or other critical theory? Or is Maoism just a strategic perspective on how to achieve revolution in the third world?

Sorry, I am not very familiar with these theories, so I can't really compare Maoism with these.