When did Mao bashing become popular?

[Nevsky]

You all know the popular equation "Hitler = Stalin", how it is used in bourgeois historian circles in context of the "totalitarianism" theory. A very old idea which is constantly reinvented in new anticommunist books and very popular in the political mainstream as well. It appears to me that nowadays the equation is more and more extended to "Hitler = Stalin = Mao", whereby many tend to credit Mao as the worst of the three, the biggest butcher of all time, killer of 70 million (!) people and whatnot.

Maybe I'm wrong but I perceived this as a pretty recent phenomenon. Not many years ago, Mao was still an icon amongst the leftist youth, not unlike Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh. Now Stalin never really inspired young rebellious hearts, but everyone used to have the little red book back in the 70s. Today most of my schoolmates simply think of him as a "monster" or a "dictator". So when exactly did bourgeois history industry decide that Mao should be the new Stalin (whom they always needed as new Hitler)?

[Brutus]

After Khruschev acted all nice, they needed another evil communist.
Mao's policies did kill, but that number is beyond ridiculous

[Os Cangaceiros]

Maybe I'm wrong but I perceived this as a pretty recent phenomenon. Not many years ago, Mao was still an icon amongst the leftist youth, not unlike Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh. Now Stalin never really inspired young rebellious hearts, but everyone used to have the little red book back in the 70s. Today most of my schoolmates simply think of him as a "monster" or a "dictator". So when exactly did bourgeois history industry decide that Mao should be the new Stalin (whom they always needed as new Hitler)?

Actually Stalin was quite popular among American communists during the 30's and 40's. Knowledge was limited about what was happening in the USSR at the time and many just took Moscow at it's word.

During the "New Left" period & the Cultural Revolution, Maoism was popular because people looked at it as something new and fresh, in light of the Sino-Soviet split and in the wake of what people perceived to be a stagnant, bureaucratic USSR. More historical distance from the events in question and more critical scholarship (from both left-wing and non-left sources) means that attitudes towards Mao on the left have cooled.

[TheEmancipator]

People don't like Hitler because his actions led to many people's lives being taken for really futile reasons.

People don't like Stalin because his actions led to many people's lives being taken for really futile reasons.

People don't like Mao because his actions led to many people's lives being taken for really futile reasons.

The figures can be debated, but when you look at the 3 most capitalist states you could imagine in China, Russia and Germany (somewhat) you can hardly say the human cost of their actions was justified for a so-called "revolutionary goal".

Three nationalists, three idealists, three tyrants. Don't see much difference to be honest.

Thankfully most intelligent Maoists actually abhor Mao's actions and openly condemn them but recognise his ideas as achievable without butchery.

[ind_com]

You all know the popular equation "Hitler = Stalin", how it is used in bourgeois historian circles in context of the "totalitarianism" theory. A very old idea which is constantly reinvented in new anticommunist books and very popular in the political mainstream as well. It appears to me that nowadays the equation is more and more extended to "Hitler = Stalin = Mao", whereby many tend to credit Mao as the worst of the three, the biggest butcher of all time, killer of 70 million (!) people and whatnot.

Maybe I'm wrong but I perceived this as a pretty recent phenomenon. Not many years ago, Mao was still an icon amongst the leftist youth, not unlike Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh. Now Stalin never really inspired young rebellious hearts, but everyone used to have the little red book back in the 70s. Today most of my schoolmates simply think of him as a "monster" or a "dictator". So when exactly did bourgeois history industry decide that Mao should be the new Stalin (whom they always needed as new Hitler)?

Mao bashing is increasing with Maoism emerging as the dominant ideology for militant communists worldwide. In the 70s, he was not bashed because of the then connection of Mao-lovers with petty bourgeois romanticism.

As Maoism is accepted more and more universally by proletarian revolutionaries, it takes responsibility for militant actions, which a large section of the petty bourgeoisie views as acts of terrorism. They tremble at the thought of workers seizing power instead of college students leading a peaceful revolution of love. So they not only attack Maoism from the right but also from the left. The attackers from the right call Maoists godless mass murderers, the ones from the left call Maoists nationalist dictators, but both of them essentially carry out the task of serving imperialism.

[Zostrianos]

You all know the popular equation "Hitler = Stalin", how it is used in bourgeois historian circles in context of the "totalitarianism" theory. A very old idea which is constantly reinvented in new anticommunist books and very popular in the political mainstream as well. It appears to me that nowadays the equation is more and more extended to "Hitler = Stalin = Mao", whereby many tend to credit Mao as the worst of the three, the biggest butcher of all time, killer of 70 million (!) people and whatnot.


As much as I despise Mao, he was actually the lesser evil of the 3. While every source I've seen so far does ascribe more victims to him (30- 60 million depending), most of those died of starvation as a side effect of his policies. The people who were deliberately executed under his reign are only a small portion of that total, 2 - 3 million if I recall.

[Captain Ahab]

I attribute this to anti-Mao works being released later than anti-Stalin works. Another factor to consider is the continuing existence of the PRC and its rising prominence. By attacking Mao one sends the message that their system is "evil" more so than the last baddie's.

[Let's Get Free]

By the 1960's, the Soviet bureaucracy lost most of its credibility as a revolutionary force. Maoism stepped into the shoes vacated by traditional Stalinism and attracted radical youth around the world as some kind of alternative to both Soviet "revisionism" and Western capitalism.

[Paul Cockshott]

As much as I despise Mao, he was actually the lesser evil of the 3. While every source I've seen so far does ascribe more victims to him (30- 60 million depending), most of those died of starvation as a side effect of his policies. The people who were deliberately executed under his reign are only a small portion of that total, 2 - 3 million if I recall.

You are giving credence to the most fantastic fabrications of right wing propaganda I suggest you read a critique of them by a competent demographer here: http://www.macroscan.net/pdfs/rep_hun.pdf

[Ismail]

Actually Stalin was quite popular among American communists during the 30's and 40's. Knowledge was limited about what was happening in the USSR at the time and many just took Moscow at it's word.Whatever one thinks about Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" (which was when the mass exodus of members from the CPUSA and CPGB, etc. began), it does illustrate the role of perception.

Case in point, sympathetic western visitors to Democratic Kampuchea reported that its people were happily building a new life through the arduous task of recovering from US bombings which had destroyed agriculture. Back then the public faces of the Khmer Rouge were Ieng Sary and Khieu Samphan, who made a favorable impression on westerners who met them. Noam Chomsky provided a relatively sympathetic view of the KR during this time. After the Vietnamese entered Pnom Penh the actual picture emerged and, well, yeah.

Reading many firsthand impressions of the Cultural Revolution written in the late 60's to mid-70's would reveal shocking differences with what came afterwards. Many of those who penned such works later changed their mind, claiming that either ideological blinders or being in politically "safe" areas (for westerners the Chinese were seeking to influence) rationalized away or otherwise prevented them from seeing things as they "really were."

There was also the fact that in the 70's China's foreign policy shifted significantly to the right, which combined with the move towards a market economy in the 80's caused a new generation of "political pilgrims" to visit countries like Mozambique and Nicaragua in search of an alternative to capitalism as they understood it. Mao's positive attributes in the minds of these people were now confined to his studies of guerrilla warfare (which influenced a number of anti-colonial liberation movements) rather than his leadership of China. We can see similar phenomenon today in visits of "solidarity" people undertake in Venezuela and Nepal.

A lot of these people weren't Marxists, they were liberals who faced alienation within bourgeois society on account of their own bourgeois or petty-bourgeois lifestyles. A few of these were social scientists who did produce works of enduring interest, but otherwise you had people visiting North Vietnam and talking about how Vietnamese children had no acne thanks to the absence of capitalism.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

Equating Mao with Stalin makes sense -- their politics and the class nature of the states they headed were very similar. Equating either with Hitler is either amazingly ignorant or just viciously anti-communist.

As a Trotskyist, I am no fan of Stalin or Mao, they were both nationalist bureaucrats that silenced revolutionary opposition to their program. But the bourgeoisie and liberals hate them not because of that, but because of their relative success in fighting capitalism. And when you join in the chorus you are on the wrong side of the class line.

[Rocky Rococo]

Interestingly enough, in the one place that it actually matters, China, Mao's image is increasingly being rehabilitated. In many respects this is in a mass-driven, bottom-up process. The Party leadership would happily be rid of all memory of Mao for many reasons, but he is acquiring some of the aspects of a popular "saint".

[Akshay!]

People don't like Hitler because his actions led to many people's lives being taken for really futile reasons.

People don't like Stalin because his actions led to many people's lives being taken for really futile reasons.

People don't like Mao because his actions led to many people's lives being taken for really futile reasons.

Three nationalists, three idealists, three tyrants. Don't see much difference to be honest.

WTF? You don't see a difference between Hitler and Mao? :confused:
Are you like... 10 or something? I suggest you read a book or two on fascism.


As Maoism is accepted more and more universally by proletarian revolutionaries, it takes responsibility for militant actions, which a large section of the petty bourgeoisie views as acts of terrorism. They tremble at the thought of workers seizing power instead of college students leading a peaceful revolution of love.

I totally agree with this (specially the underlined part).

[melvin]

mao was to the new left in the 60's/70's what stalin was to the old left in the 30's/40's, as os cangecerios said.

[MarxSchmarx]

I'm not sure about the whole Stalin=Hitler=Mao thing.

In the west it is quite common to see jokes with Stalin and Mao. I'm thinking of that communist party t-shirt with them holding plastic party cups. There's things like Stalin v. Martians and restaurants that joke about Mao Serving the People (TM).

By contrast, hardly anybody jokes about hitler in the west in the same way. Occasionally you might here a reference about nazi germany on the simpsons, and to be sure there are things like Mel Brooks's producers. But these are the exceptions that prove the rule. When the BBC tried to run Heil Honey I'm Home or something like that a sitcom aout Hitler and Eva Braun, it was pillored as having an incredibly tasteless premise. There is no way Hitler will be a popular culture icon, at least in my life time the way in a limited sense Stalin might be starting to. There is, I think in the minds of most westerners, still a distinction between Hitler and Stalin/Mao.

But to more directly answer the question, I think among the bourgeois elite, there has always been a lot of animosity directed at Mao and like most things the bourgeoisie hate, this percolates into schools and society. I wouldn't say Mao was ever very popular, but the bourgeoisie in the 60s and 70s did not see China as a major communist threat and anti-communist propaganda efforts had to be directed to the Soviet bloc. There was also I think in general less appreciation for foreign affairs outside of Europe, and less familiarity with atrocities in the third world until, as Ismail notes, the fall of the Democratic Kampuchea.

Finally I think there is always a tendency to count things up, and although the exact figures are never certain, a lot of people were killed and certainly had their lives disrupted in a major way by the cultural revolution and probably more substantially, the great leap forward. After China opened up to the world and Chinese (particularly the old elite who bore the brunt of the CR) started traveling abroad, I think the full scale of the devastating toll that took became apparent to the west perhaps in a way that Khruschev's denounciation of Stalin did.

[TheEmancipator]

WTF? You don't see a difference between Hitler and Mao? :confused:
Are you like... 10 or something? I suggest you read a book or two on fascism.


Both are third positionists who contradicted themselves daily to spout out populist drivel to convince the masses to support their "revolutionary nationalist" goals (note Mao's alliance with nationalists, although I'm sure you'll play the imperialist card yet again) and establish a one-man hero worship.

Both are brutal murderers in the name of ideology or xenophobia instead of any kind of proper revolutionary goal. Both are imperialists too.

Maoism's populist undertones have always led my critical self to associate it with the third positionist/nationalist socialist idea. As I said though, if you believe Mao was being serious when inventing all his lovely ideas and quotes, even then you have to question his butchery and idiocy.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I feel like Mao himself (and Maoist China) are actually pretty irrelevant to the current upsurge in anti-Mao propaganda which, as someone mentioned earlier in the thread, probably has a lot more to do with the ostensibly "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist" struggles in India, Nepal, the Philippines, etc.
Whether or not one has any attraction to Mao/ism, I think it's important to understand these struggles, and try to get our heads around why MLM (at least in name) is the guiding framework for some of the most marginalized of the world's people fighting all-out wars against global capitalism.
In this same light, I think it's important to be critical of anti-Mao/ist sentiments that are in vogue, and really flesh out what's up with them. I'm not saying we should rush to the defence of Mao by any means, but, rather, that we need to challenge bourgeois great-man-making-history decontextualized anticommunist shit-talking that parades itself as "humanitarian".

[Rusty Shackleford]

Both are third positionists who contradicted themselves daily to spout out populist drivel to convince the masses to support their "revolutionary nationalist" goals (note Mao's alliance with nationalists, although I'm sure you'll play the imperialist card yet again) and establish a one-man hero worship.

Both are brutal murderers in the name of ideology or xenophobia instead of any kind of proper revolutionary goal. Both are imperialists too.

Maoism's populist undertones have always led my critical self to associate it with the third positionist/nationalist socialist idea. As I said though, if you believe Mao was being serious when inventing all his lovely ideas and quotes, even then you have to question his butchery and idiocy.



I'm sorry, but do you even know what you are saying?


Do you know why the CCP tried to ally with the KMT?

the CCP and KMT have the same origins, in the nationalist movement in china. Sun Yat Sen was the major figure in it and strove for a chinese republic with a pretty cool social democratic system(not communist, but still for 1911?).

But EEW they're nationalists!!!

China was subjected to colonial occupation and imperial domination. Fiefdoms and warlord territories ruled the majority of 'non-european' china, and everywhere you went, backwards practices like hardcore confucianism and other cultural practices were carried on. Uniting china, and all its nations, was seen as a necessary step in just liberating people from subjugation.

When the CCP was formed, it formed as a faction in the KMT, but ended up splitting and becoming a party proper after some tough love by the KMT. There was a massacre of communists in 1927 which led to the formation of the red armies and the long process of creating soviet districts and the protracted, by reality, war of unification, anti-japanese imperialism, and proletarian revolution.

"Anti-japanese? But that is just Chinese racism against Japan! you see it all the time today!"

Japan was a major imperial force in the pacific, it was a competitor to western imperialism. It had colonized Korea and moved on into Manchuria and large swathes of china and indochina. the KMT would barely put up any resistance, and this infuriated many people. The whole time, the KMT was fighting extermination campaigns against the communists, but the communists were trying tobuild unity in the face of a more dangerous enemy, japanese occupation. This led to many KMT fighters to defect to the reds and did lead to some unity around the time of WWII.

Maybe it has to do with stagism, mabe it has to do with the incredibly underdeveloped nature of china, but the chinese revolution was a continuation of the 1911 revolution and then some.

I also dont think you can call chinese soviet life 'populist.' If you're going to be a communist, its probably worthwhile to know more than 'bourgeoisie and proletariat,' in fact, you should know how to make it understandable to ANYONE.

And Mao and Stalin were third positionists? Even the Lev will agree there is a different class basis between the 2 camps... yet you cant see it because petit bourgeois moralism is blinding you.

[TheEmancipator]

Do you know why the CCP tried to ally with the KMT?

To counter British imperialism. Enenmy's enemy equals friend then?


the CCP and KMT have the same origins, in the nationalist movement in china.

A communist party that has nationalist origins. Proving my point much?


Sun Yat Sen was the major figure in it and strove for a chinese republic with a pretty cool social democratic system(not communist, but still for 1911?).

But EEW they're nationalists!!!

Now, now, I never got into any axiom-based judgements. You're entitled to support Chinese nationalists (I would've given the historical context) as long as you admit they are nationalists and ultimately as nationalists served the interests of the Chinese state and people, not the proletariat.


China was subjected to colonial occupation and imperial domination. Fiefdoms and warlord territories ruled the majority of 'non-european' china, and everywhere you went, backwards practices like hardcore confucianism and other cultural practices were carried on. Uniting china, and all its nations, was seen as a necessary step in just liberating people from subjugation.



Maybe it has to do with stagism, mabe it has to do with the incredibly underdeveloped nature of china, but the chinese revolution was a continuation of the 1911 revolution and then some.

Yeah, I've got no problem with that.


I also dont think you can call chinese soviet life 'populist.' If you're going to be a communist, its probably worthwhile to know more than 'bourgeoisie and proletariat,' in fact, you should know how to make it understandable to ANYONE.

I am calling Maoism populist and third positionist. Not soviets in China.


And Mao and Stalin were third positionists? Even the Lev will agree there is a different class basis between the 2 camps... yet you cant see it because petit bourgeois moralism is blinding you.

Different class basis, same ideological background. Mao and Stalin eventually created artificial classes that favoured Chinese/Russian nationalist interests. No need for petty bourgeoisie here.

[Rusty Shackleford]

So heres a map of the 1911 revolution

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/images/china-11.gif

heres the long march and from then on ill base discussion on china.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/The_Long_March_1934_-_1935.PNG/775px-The_Long_March_1934_-_1935.PNG




also, if you pay attention to the map, there did exist soviets in china. In fact, all red territories had their own functioning economies, a soviet governing system, and an army that blended with the people pretty well. in the soviets, most land was expropriated if need be and given to peasants, some land was tilled by the army to feed the army. This is from the early part of the civil war, Did you know that there existed unions for women and children in the soviet districts too? not just workers and peasants?



To counter British imperialism. Enenmy's enemy equals friend then?


its more than just anti-imperialism, it was also about national unification and the end of the monarchy. Also, it was not just british imperialism, most european powers had a little slice of the chinese piece on the coast. major indurstial cities, where the proletariat existed, were actually policed by french, german, etc, troops and police forces, or were commanded by various imperialists.



A communist party that has nationalist origins. Proving my point much?
you have to understand that nationalism, like the state, has various forms. for example, nationalism as a product of capitalism has actually eased the growth of productive forces, and by the same token, actually unified large sections of the proletariat into national sections. communists want to unify the proletariat among the national sections into one block and one ruling, and therefore non existent class.


there does exist a non-genocidal, non-goose stepping form of nationalism that does not parody the nazis 24/7. for example, the war in vietnam was nationalist as much as it was proletarian. you didnt hear people crying about how the vietnamese were evil because they were part of a national liberation front, no, you saw people out in the streets defending them, even the hippies. you had people in the streets of france chanting "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh. Che, Che, Che Guevara!"



Now, now, I never got into any axiom-based judgements. You're entitled to support Chinese nationalists (I would've given the historical context) as long as you admit they are nationalists and ultimately as nationalists served the interests of the Chinese state and people, not the proletariat.


China has a nationalist foreign policy today that is not in any way proletarian, this nationalism i do not support politically.

Chinese nationalism in the 20s - 49 had two wings. the left and the right. capital sided more with the right (the KMT) and even the comintern was more supportive of the KMT because they didnt think it was possible for the communists to actually win.


the left wing though was a unification movement, in the sense of nationalism (and it was multinational to boot) with a proletarian and peasant basis, politically.

serving the state and the people though?

the communists built a new state, the one of the KMT, the various fiefdoms, and the old empire were destroyed and replaced with the PRC. The functions of the state fell more in line with socialist construction than simply having communists walk into the executive office of the republic .


what is so bad about serving the interests of the people? the majority of the worlds population is dispossessed, and generally, communists like people, correct?





I am calling Maoism populist and third positionist. Not soviets in China.


Mao was not a third positionist. You really need to stop saying this. Third Positionism is in opposition to socialism and 'capitalism' advocationg a completely 'national way' to all things. if anything mao and some others were to the left of other communists who were arguably more 'third positionist' like deng and crew advocating a 'national way to socialism' you know, 'socialism with chinese characteristics.'


also the red army in china did not form as a bunch of nationalist thugs hating on reds and betting paid by industrialists. quite the opposite.


in fact, Zhou Enlai i believe led an uprising in shanghai of the proletariat. it ended in slaughter, but yes, the communists did try the orthodox proletarian way before mao and crew started organizing amongst the peasantry.


Different class basis, same ideological background. Mao and Stalin eventually created artificial classes that favoured Chinese/Russian nationalist interests. No need for petty bourgeoisie here.


if you say it has a different class basis then it necessarily has a different ideological background.


what do you mean by an artificial class? if a class exists, it exists, its origin does not necessarily matter.

Also the soviet union was even characterized by a capitalist theoretician as being an empire in reverse, that is paid out money to its 'subjects' instead of robbing them.

[Rafiq]

I have always been suspicious of moral outcry against the "excesses" of the cultural revolution. Not because I regard them as proletarian in nature, but because it taps into the unconscious fears of those unwilling to accept the changes of not only a social but a superstructutal revolution.

Mao, though, was a romantic bourgeois revolutionary. And Maoism is pure garbage.

Sent from my SPH-D710 using Tapatalk 2

[Zostrianos]

I have always been suspicious of moral outcry against the "excesses" of the cultural revolution. Not because I regard them as proletarian in nature, but because it taps into the unconscious fears of those unwilling to accept the changes of not only a social but a superstructutal revolution.

One can support some of the intentions behind a certain action, but condemn what actually takes place. Take the Syrian revolution for instance, it had noble intentions when it started out (freeing the people from a dictatorship), but it quickly turned into a bloodbath, with the 'liberators' becoming even worse than the regime, and brutal theocratic laws being imposed by them in much of the areas they control, and often raping women. Much like the Cultural Revolution, which may have had some good goals behind it but almost immediately turned into a campaign to eradicate chinese culture and terrorize (or kill) everyone remotely suspected of being a reactionary, including intellectuals, writers, artists, etc, many of whom were innocent.

[Ismail]

I have always been suspicious of moral outcry against the "excesses" of the cultural revolution. Not because I regard them as proletarian in nature, but because it taps into the unconscious fears of those unwilling to accept the changes of not only a social but a superstructutal revolution.The Albanians made being religious practically illegal and significantly improved women's rights in a country that had by far the worst record in Europe up to liberation in 1944. They likewise were able to assess earlier history through the lens of historical materialism, come up with the most egalitarian wage structure in the world, etc. None of this involved "Red Guards" that fought with each other over what Enver Hoxha "really" thought, students denouncing workers, the authority and prestige of the Party of Labour breaking apart, higher education ceasing to function, or other "revolutionary" acts that completely discredited any "superstructural revolution." Not to mention that, as Hoxha noted, the "GPCR" was a "palace putsch on an all-China scale" against Mao's enemies within the Party.

Already in 1966 Hoxha was privately criticizing the "GPCR" and noting that the Albanians weren't going to "revolutionize" society the way Mao was doing. This wasn't because Hoxha was "unwilling to accept" anything, it was because he recognized that the "GPCR" was leading to anarchy and that Mao was ridiculously suggesting that every country on earth go through the same process.

[RedHal]

People don't like Hitler because his actions led to many people's lives being taken for really futile reasons.

People don't like Stalin because his actions led to many people's lives being taken for really futile reasons.

People don't like Mao because his actions led to many people's lives being taken for really futile reasons.

The figures can be debated, but when you look at the 3 most capitalist states you could imagine in China, Russia and Germany (somewhat) you can hardly say the human cost of their actions was justified for a so-called "revolutionary goal".

Three nationalists, three idealists, three tyrants. Don't see much difference to be honest.

Thankfully most intelligent Maoists actually abhor Mao's actions and openly condemn them but recognise his ideas as achievable without butchery.

Good thing the majority of the world's most oppressed don't view Mao the same way as petty beorgious fuckfaces like yourself.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Good thing the majority of the world's most oppressed don't view Mao the same way as petty beorgious fuckfaces like yourself.

Count this as a warning, keep discussion civil or this will result in an infraction if continued - Rusty Shackleford

[vizzek]

Good thing the majority of the world's most oppressed don't view Mao the same way as petty beorgious fuckfaces like yourself.

you're right - they either don't know about him or don't care about him

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

I'm sorry, but do you even know what you are saying?


Do you know why the CCP tried to ally with the KMT?

the CCP and KMT have the same origins, in the nationalist movement in china. Sun Yat Sen was the major figure in it and strove for a chinese republic with a pretty cool social democratic system(not communist, but still for 1911?).

But EEW they're nationalists!!!

China was subjected to colonial occupation and imperial domination. Fiefdoms and warlord territories ruled the majority of 'non-european' china, and everywhere you went, backwards practices like hardcore confucianism and other cultural practices were carried on. Uniting china, and all its nations, was seen as a necessary step in just liberating people from subjugation.

When the CCP was formed, it formed as a faction in the KMT, but ended up splitting and becoming a party proper after some tough love by the KMT. There was a massacre of communists in 1927 which led to the formation of the red armies and the long process of creating soviet districts and the protracted, by reality, war of unification, anti-japanese imperialism, and proletarian revolution.

"Anti-japanese? But that is just Chinese racism against Japan! you see it all the time today!"

Japan was a major imperial force in the pacific, it was a competitor to western imperialism. It had colonized Korea and moved on into Manchuria and large swathes of china and indochina. the KMT would barely put up any resistance, and this infuriated many people. The whole time, the KMT was fighting extermination campaigns against the communists, but the communists were trying tobuild unity in the face of a more dangerous enemy, japanese occupation. This led to many KMT fighters to defect to the reds and did lead to some unity around the time of WWII.

Maybe it has to do with stagism, mabe it has to do with the incredibly underdeveloped nature of china, but the chinese revolution was a continuation of the 1911 revolution and then some.

I also dont think you can call chinese soviet life 'populist.' If you're going to be a communist, its probably worthwhile to know more than 'bourgeoisie and proletariat,' in fact, you should know how to make it understandable to ANYONE.

And Mao and Stalin were third positionists? Even the Lev will agree there is a different class basis between the 2 camps... yet you cant see it because petit bourgeois moralism is blinding you.

Lev will agree, but with some qualifications. First and foremost, yes there is a different class basis, and we draw our conclusions accordingly. However, the CCP did not originate as a faction in the KMT. It entered the KMT due to an ill-conceived Comintern policy. The leading Chinese cadre began to fight to leave the KMT when it became clear that this was a dead-end (and by "dead" I mean suicidal) policy. But the CCP did not enter the KMT because it was nationalist at the time -- it sought to intersect the masses it what was thought to be a progressive movement. The LO began to agitate as early as 1925 to leave the KMT. Sadly, the CCP was instrumental to building the KMT and to giving it a hold on the urban proletariat. As the situation in China deteriorated, the Triumvirate and than the Duumvirate clung to the policy of entry, even after Chaing had butchered loads of Communists. It delayed the Chinese Revolution for a generation. And instead of a worker-led revolution, you got a peasant-led revolution. Ah, but that is a discussion for another thread.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Interestingly enough, in the one place that it actually matters, China, Mao's image is increasingly being rehabilitated. In many respects this is in a mass-driven, bottom-up process. The Party leadership would happily be rid of all memory of Mao for many reasons, but he is acquiring some of the aspects of a popular "saint".

Bullshit, buddy. He's on every fucking wall, every fucking government building and in every fucking shop.

[Ismail]

Bullshit, buddy. He's on every fucking wall, every fucking government building and in every fucking shop.Only because he was practically the founder of the CCP as we know it. They have long since turned Mao into an inoffensive figure and the "GPCR" is mostly blamed on his wife somehow manipulating him. His 1930's-50's writings on "New Democracy" and other "unite everyone and develop China" subjects are stressed.

The point is that the Maoists inside China are putting forward the "communist" Mao as opposed to the "grandfatherly founder of new China who opposed those who subjected it to stagnation or occupation (e.g. feudal lords, Chiang Kai-shek, Imperial Japan, etc.)" Mao promoted by the CCP today.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Both the Three Red Banners (Great Leap Forward) campaign and the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution were unmitigated disasters. Mao was deeply involved in both and therefore his reputation has suffered.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

So, a funny related anecdote. Yesterday, some friends of mine were having their graduation ceremony, and an economist who was receiving an honorary PhD actually went on a bizarre tangent about how the Great Leap Forward proved the necessity/innate goodness/whatever of private property. It was bizarre. Like, "Yeah dude! Confront that resurgent Maoism among students at prestigious Canadian universities!" What?

[Geiseric]

So, a funny related anecdote. Yesterday, some friends of mine were having their graduation ceremony, and an economist who was receiving an honorary PhD actually went on a bizarre tangent about how the Great Leap Forward proved the necessity/innate goodness/whatever of private property. It was bizarre. Like, "Yeah dude! Confront that resurgent Maoism among students at prestigious Canadian universities!" What?
I think it's a strawman set up to compare real socialists (who want to get rid of property) with Maoites whom for some reason think that there were no ethical problems with the stuff Mao did. They all support assad and ghadaffi for some reason too. I don't think Maoism is actually applicable even in a third world country, ideas such as the bloc of four classes are inheritly and explicitly menshevik.

[TheEmancipator]

Good thing the majority of the world's most oppressed don't view Mao the same way as petty beorgious fuckfaces like yourself.

So which third-world country are you leading the Maoist revolution from then, my dear fellow?

[Dropdead]

Anarchists, left coms, trotskyists etc love bashing Mao and Stalin. What's new about that?
It has always been ''popular''

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I think it's a strawman set up to compare real socialists (who want to get rid of property) with Maoites whom for some reason think that there were no ethical problems with the stuff Mao did. They all support assad and ghadaffi for some reason too. I don't think Maoism is actually applicable even in a third world country, ideas such as the bloc of four classes are inheritly and explicitly menshevik.

See: this is part of the problem - framing "Mao" in terms bourgeois narratives of brown-authoritarians-who-are-all-basically-the-same-and-not-"real" (read: nice, white)-socialists. I'm not saying you're racist, and I'm not saying we need to defend Mao: but we do need to critique Mao from a place of solidarity with third world struggles that identify themselves as MLMist. Therefore, Mao=Assad=Ghadaffi is an error when made not only by shallow "anti-imperialists", but also by communists who find all three falling far short of emancipatory communist superheros.

[Geiseric]

See: this is part of the problem - framing "Mao" in terms bourgeois narratives of brown-authoritarians-who-are-all-basically-the-same-and-not-"real" (read: nice, white)-socialists. I'm not saying you're racist, and I'm not saying we need to defend Mao: but we do need to critique Mao from a place of solidarity with third world struggles that identify themselves as MLMist. Therefore, Mao=Assad=Ghadaffi is an error when made not only by shallow "anti-imperialists", but also by communists who find all three falling far short of emancipatory communist superheros.

I wasn't comparing them I was stating that Maoists support those dictators for whatever reason. Mao crushed any independent working class political bodies in China as well so any supporters of him are against that direct democracy thing if they actually know his history.

[Broviet Union]

There is something wrong with the impulse to bash Mao and the impulse to defend Mao.

Mao failed to establish a lasting Chinese communism. His achievements in the war were impressive, but ultimately led to a bourgeois great power state pretending to be communist.

Mao then cannot be a model of the way forward. If you want what Mao got, do what Mao did. Nothing about the PRC appeals to me, however.

[Rusty Shackleford]

There is something wrong with the impulse to bash Mao and the impulse to defend Mao.

Mao failed to establish a lasting Chinese communism. His achievements in the war were impressive, but ultimately led to a bourgeois great power state pretending to be communist.

Mao then cannot be a model of the way forward. If you want what Mao got, do what Mao did. Nothing about the PRC appeals to me, however.

Mao alone did not do everything that makes china china.


some of the policies of the CPC were rather right wing, but, an this is a question, could the alignment with the national bourgeoisie post-revolution be in response to the historically weak support given to the chinese communists by the comintern and soviet union?


with the split, it led to a right shift in the party as well?

[Ismail]

some of the policies of the CPC were rather right wing, but, an this is a question, could the alignment with the national bourgeoisie post-revolution be in response to the historically weak support given to the chinese communists by the comintern and soviet union? Considering that Mao denounced the Comintern's directives as "dogmatic" and retreated into the peasantry, and that it was through the Manchurian bases provided by the USSR that the CCP was able to take power when it did (not to mention the economic support given by the USSR after 1949), I don't see how you can call such support "historically weak."

[Akshay!]

To sum up, there are three kinds of people:

1) Socialists who support Mao, and agree with his policies.
2) Socialists who have some specific criticism(s) of Mao.
3) "Socialists" who equate him with Hitler.

I think the people who come under 3) shouldn't even remotely be considered "leftist" or anything.

-- and this is not coming from a Maoist. This is coming from a person who hasn't yet decided which specific tendency he agrees with.

[TheEmancipator]

To sum up, there are three kinds of people:

1) Socialists who support Mao, and agree with his policies.
2) Socialists who have some specific criticism(s) of Mao.
3) "Socialists" who equate him with Hitler.

I think the people who come under 3) shouldn't even remotely be considered "leftist" or anything.

-- and this is not coming from a Maoist. This is coming from a person who hasn't yet decided which specific tendency he agrees with.

Maoism is not Nazism. However, Mao can be compared with Hitler because he's a nationalist, he's a megalomaniac tyrant and he killed about 20 million people on orders (conservative number).

Amazing how gullible some can be. Anybody who flies the hammer and sickle flag and quotes from the Manifesto is auto-hailed as the next great revolutionary yet someone who, ermm, actually cares about all the proletarians Mao killed is a petty bourgeois counter-revolutionary.

Grow up, seriously.

[Ismail]

because he's a nationalist,I don't see how you can make a statement like this while on other occasions praising Tito (who was proclaimed "President for life," which seems rather "tyrannical") whose closest allies were men like Kim Il Sung, Ceaușescu, Nasser, Ben Bella, and Nehru.

This doesn't change the character of Maoism, but on Soviet revisionism the Chinese took correct lines, which is why the Albanians sided with them. Tito not only praised Soviet revisionism, but cited the New Deal as a supposed example of "evolutionary socialism" in the USA. If Mao's border disputes with the USSR were an example of nationalism (and they were), Tito's fixation on obtaining Trieste and his attempts to annex Albania were not much different.

[TheEmancipator]

I don't see how you can make a statement like this while on other occasions praising Tito (who was proclaimed "President for life," which seems rather "tyrannical") whose closest allies were men like Kim Il Sung, Ceaușescu, Nasser, Ben Bella, and Nehru.

This doesn't change the character of Maoism, but on Soviet revisionism the Chinese took correct lines, which is why the Albanians sided with them. Tito not only praised Soviet revisionism, but cited the New Deal as a supposed example of "evolutionary socialism" in the USA. If Mao's border disputes with the USSR were an example of nationalism (and they were), Tito's fixation on obtaining Trieste and his attempts to annex Albania were not much different.

Tito always had the interests of the worldwide proletariat at heart, judging by his support for (legitimate) revolutionary bodies in Greece and Africa. But he was also pragmatic in international politics, realising that the second third world (to use Maoist terminology) was being drawn into an imperialist, nationalist ideological war between the USA and the USSR. He was smart enough to realise class war would not come in the form of nationalistic wars.

There is a difference between being a nationalist and adapting policy to suit the material conditions of the nation-state you are in control of. Tito did the latter. He did not think Yugoslavia was some kind of example that the whole world must follow. The whole point of Yugoslavia was to transcend nationalism in the Balkans anyway. It was an artificial state held together by a proper statesman.

Meanwhile, Mao was engaging in rampant irredentism to suit his war propaganda (Dare I say Tibet on these forums, or are we still accepting the old line that China were "liberating" them? No, I'll just say Vietnam instead). All while consolidating his power, making up revisionist policies as he went along and ultimately was responsible for China becoming a state capitalist country. Straight out of Hitler's textbook.

Market Socialism vs State Capitalism, Ismail. Do you really want to have that debate? Because we both know which system benefits the working class more.


Tito's fixation on obtaining Trieste and his attempts to annex Albania were not much different.Trieste is historically Slovenian. Slovenia was a republic part of Yugoslavia.

Attempts to annex Albania? I smell a tin foil hat...

How many countries did Stalin annex again, Ismail?


(who was proclaimed "President for life," which seems rather "tyrannical")

Tito fought on the front line and was responsible along with his partisans for the liberation of Yugoslavia from Nazi rule. He was nothing short of a hero to them. Where was Stalin during WW2, Ismail? Fighting on the front line? Where was he during the Russian Civil War? Commanding the Red Army? Or writing more poetry?

[Ismail]

Tito always had the interests of the worldwide proletariat at heart, judging by his support for (legitimate) revolutionary bodies in Greece and Africa.The Albanians and Bulgarians gave greater support to the Greek Communists than the Yugoslavs did by the time the war was ending. Tito later formed a defense pact with Greece and Turkey.

I also don't get what you mean by "legitimate revolutionary bodies" in Africa. The Soviet revisionists and Tito had the same allies.


But he was also pragmatic in international politics, realising that the second third world (to use Maoist terminology) was being drawn into an imperialist, nationalist ideological war between the USA and the USSR. He was smart enough to realise class war would not come in the form of nationalistic wars.Apparently it would come via collaboration with social-democratic parties in the West, via "evolutionary" means, which is also what the Soviet revisionists claimed.

Titoite foreign policy was sheer opportunism. It is on that basis that the Yugoslavs and Romanians got along so well.

"The [Romanian Communist Party] has redefined and extrapolated the Leninist definition of conflicts as being 'antagonistic' or 'nonantagonistic' to the sphere of international relations in general and to the South in particular... Thus, conflicts between Communist states (China and the Soviet Union, Kampuchea and Vietnam) or between various developing countries are defined as basically 'nonantagonistic,' to be solved through negotiations and compromise only. While the Soviets admit no compromise (and neither do the Chinese) between 'revisionism' and Marxism-Leninism, or between 'reactionary' and 'progressive' developing countries, the RCP has not used the word 'revisionism' since the 1950s, when it applied it [at the time] to Tito, and rejects the very distinction between 'progressive' and 'reactionary' regimes in the South, a distinction which provides the basis for Soviet involvement in support of various radical regimes and groups there. In the words of a Romanian commentator:

'The emphasis placed on dividing the developing countries into 'progressive' and 'moderate' ones and opposing them to each other in international relations runs counter to the unanimously recognized principle of peaceful coexistence of countries with different social and political systems, feeding instead the theory of the spheres of influence, which is used to weaken the unity of the developing countries in the international arena.'

This position is very similar to that of the Yugoslavs, reflecting once again the similarity of viewpoint between Belgrade and Bucharest concerning the role and character of the Nonaligned Movement...

The very foundation of the RCP ideology, its demand that every Communist party be free to choose its own way of applying Marxism-Leninism, is linked to a rather particular assessment of the international situation as a whole. Although Bucharest does occasionally admit the existence of international conflicts, as Ceausescu puts it, 'Imperialism is much weaker than most people would say, and to overestimate its strength would lead to panic.'"
(Radu, Michael (ed). [I]Eastern Europe and the Third World: East vs. South. New York: Praeger Publishers. 1981. pp. 239-240.)


There is a difference between being a nationalist and adapting policy to suit the material conditions of the nation-state you are in control of. Tito did the latter. He did not think Yugoslavia was some kind of example that the whole world must follow.Plenty of bourgeois leaders adopted some form of "workers' self-management," from Ben Bella to Gaddafi. Yugoslavia's prestige as a supposedly "non-aligned" country was used by it in all sorts of ways. No one has ever been against "adapting policy to suit the material conditions of the nation-state," good ol' Stalin pointed out the necessity of this at various times. Marxism-Leninism, as a scientific doctrine, necessitates such a course. Yet I don't think 15% unemployment or the idea that religions are nations (as occurred in Yugoslavia) constitutes any sort of "creative development" of the ideology, just as the vast majority of Polish agriculture being in private hands after 1956 or Kim's Juche doctrine don't represent anything "creative" either, except how to creatively feign socialism.


The whole point of Yugoslavia was to transcend nationalism in the Balkans anyway.Yugoslavia tried to annex Albania, treated actual Albanians in Kosovo like an enemy nation, and tried to exert hegemony over Bulgaria and other neighboring states. Whatever "anti-nationalist" posturing Tito made, it was only in the context of Slavs and was gradually broken up over the course of decades as capitalism made its mark via competition and economic disputes between the republics, inequality between nations, etc.


Market Socialism vs State Capitalism, Ismail. Do you really want to have that debate? Because we both know which system benefits the working class more.Considering that Yugoslav "market socialism" led to genocide and influenced Deng Xiaoping in pursuing "reforms" in his own country, it's obvious that neither capitalism nor state-capitalism can secure a good life for the working-class, only socialism can.


Attempts to annex Albania? I smell a tin foil hat...It's pretty much impossible to find a source which states that the Yugoslavs didn't want to annex Albania into Yugoslavia as a "Seventh Republic." Tito complained to his cohorts that he was afraid of "the Russians" influencing Albania before this could occur, and this was before his split with the USSR. Every single bourgeois historian on Albania is unanimous in how Yugoslavia treated Albania as a neo-colony, introduced mandatory Serbo-Croatian classes in schools, killed off leaders it didn't like (Nako Spiru), and sought to absorb the country into its own.


Tito fought on the front line and was responsible along with his partisans for the liberation of Yugoslavia from Nazi rule. He was nothing short of a hero to them.Yes, and it is a shame that he misused the prestige gained for his own anti-Marxist ends, just as Mao and Kim did.

[TheEmancipator]

The Albanians and Bulgarians gave greater support to the Greek Communists than the Yugoslavs did by the time the war was ending. Tito later formed a defense pact with Greece and Turkey.

That's because the Greek Civil War ended, and the KKE was legalised in the democratic institution, which was ultimately the goal.

I won't question the Albanian aid, but I don't think "far greater" qualifies as a term to describe Albania's aid vis-à-vis Yugoslavia's.

Before that of course :


A significant blow to the KKE and DSE, however, was to be political, not military. In June 1948, the Soviet Union (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union) and the other newly founded socialist states broke off relations with President Josip Broz Tito (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josip_Broz_Tito) of Yugoslavia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslavia). In one of the meetings held in Kremlin with Yugoslav representatives, during the Soviet-Yugoslav crisis,[55] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Civil_War#cite_note-55) Joseph Stalin stated his unqualified opposition to the "Greek uprising". Stalin explained to the Yugoslav delegation that the situation in Greece has always been different from the one in Yugoslavia, because the US and Britain would "never permit [Greece] to break off their lines of communication in the Mediterranean." (Stalin used the word svernut, Russian for "fold up", to express what the Greek Communists should do.)Stalin certainly didn't aid much did he?


I also don't get what you mean by "legitimate revolutionary bodies" in Africa. The Soviet revisionists and Tito had the same allies.And this therefore makes the revolutionaries illegitimate?


Apparently it would come via collaboration with social-democratic parties in the West, via "evolutionary" means, which is also what the Soviet revisionists claimed.Are you implying Titio collaborated with the West because he worked with eurocommunist parties? Seriously, and you don't think your USSR vs the West is a nationalistic war instead of a class war like most Cold War enthusiasts seem to think?


Titoite foreign policy was sheer opportunism. It is on that basis that the Yugoslavs and Romanians got along so well.No, it was pragmatism in a world with nationalistic leaders posing as ideological flag-bearers. Tito could only sort out Yugoslavia, so he did. He always, however, supported the idea of liberation movements around the world


Plenty of bourgeois leaders adopted some form of "workers' self-management," from Ben Bella to Gaddafi.Damn, how come those bourgeois tyrants managed to do it and Stalin didn't? Oh wait, because he's just a bourgeois tyrant that didn't do workers councils.


Yugoslavia's prestige as a supposedly "non-aligned" country was used by it in all sorts of ways. No one has ever been against "adapting policy to suit the material conditions of the nation-state," good ol' Stalin pointed out the necessity of this at various times. Marxism-Leninism, as a scientific doctrine, necessitates such a course. Yes, excpet Stalin also banged on about socialism in one country and annexing half of Eastern Europe for nationalistic reasons, while Tito in the Badlung conference openly condemned imperialism from all sides of all forms and wished to reverse colonialism long before the revisionists used it as an excuse to forward their own national interests.

That's why Tito had prestige.


Yet I don't think 15% unemploymentSource?


or the idea that religions are nations (as occurred in Yugoslavia) That Tito did his upmost to handle during his reign, and was successful in keeping most of them happy with devolution powers, and crushing any kind of nationalistic rhetoric. Ironic that he had the most trouble with Slovenia, arguably the most atheist state.

constitutes any sort of "creative development" of the ideology, just as the vast majority of Polish agriculture being in private hands after 1956 or Kim's Juche doctrine don't represent anything "creative" either, except how to creatively feign socialism.[/QUOTE]

I agree that Tito's rhetoric left the door open to mass revisionism. Titio's actions in Yugoslavia, a successful socialist state until his death and the rise of nationalists (who if you look at the recent ICC events were supported by the CIA precisely because they saw Yugoslavia as the last man standing) speak for themselves


Yugoslavia tried to annex Albania,Again, source?


treated actual Albanians in Kosovo like an enemy nation, You mean by giving devolutionary powers to Kosovars, effectively forcing the Serbs to back down on their claim to a Serbian Kosovo.


and tried to exert hegemony over Bulgaria and other neighboring states.He wanted to create a united Balkans. Doesn't sound like a bad idea considering the insane amount of hatred that followed in the 90s between the various groups in the area.


Whatever "anti-nationalist" posturing Tito made, it was only in the context of Slavs and was gradually broken up over the course of decades as capitalism made its mark via competition and economic disputes between the republics, inequality between nations, etc.That has nothing to do with Tito and everything to do with Western interventionism in the area.


Considering that Yugoslav "market socialism" led to genocideAgain, how is Tito remotely responsible for the genocide in the 90s? You are aware that the Serbian nationalists were only instructed to adopt a Titoist line because they could then hold a claim to the whole of Yugoslavia? Secretly they hated Tito precisely because he weakened Serbia in the Federal Republic, most notably with his handling of Kosovo.


and influenced Deng Xiaoping in pursuing "reforms" in his own country, it's obvious that neither capitalism nor state-capitalism can secure a good life for the working-class, only socialism can.Deng Xiaoping was another opportunist who talked a good game. You cannot blame Tito for careerists like him and the Kims exploiting his ideas. You look at Tito's actions...did he remotely encourage the kind of (state) capitalism we see in China today?


It's pretty much impossible to find a source which states that the Yugoslavs didn't want to annex Albania into Yugoslavia as a "Seventh Republic." He wanted Albania as the 7th Republic. He never tried to militarily invade or force the issue. So I don't see the problem.


Tito complained to his cohorts that he was afraid of "the Russians" influencing Albania before this could occur, and this was before his split with the USSR. Every single bourgeois historian on Albania is unanimous in how Yugoslavia treated Albania as a neo-colony, introduced mandatory Serbo-Croatian classes in schools, killed off leaders it didn't like (Nako Spiru), and sought to absorb the country into its own.Because Albania had become another Russian protectorate, and Tito saw the opportunity to help the Albanian people divorce themselves from Moscow rule in order to join a Federal Republic where workers could organise themselves and petty nationalism would only become something for the football stadiums. I see no problem with this. Yugoslavia is an artificial state. It is not a particular set of countries.


Yes, and it is a shame that he misused the prestige gained for his own anti-Marxist ends, just as Mao and Kim did.Tito was elected by his people, loved by his people, and served the interests of his people. He enjoyed massive popular support. Mao and Kim did not. They didn't have the legitimacy to order the actions that they did. And unlike Tito they abused their power to great measures, practically making themselves into living Gods. While being directly responsible for far more bloodshed than you claim Tito has on his hands

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Why would Tito's actions in world war 2 justify him being president for life?

[TheEmancipator]

Why would Tito's actions in world war 2 justify him being president for life?

Well, for a start, his role as president did hold as much power as you think. His job was to keep the Federation together, and he did it pretty well considering the nationalistic sentiments. Otherwise the Republics had a lot of devo-powers depending on the state.

Otherwise, I would argue that liberating the state from Nazi occupation and being elected with a crushing majority is a far better claim than any of the Marxist-Leninist dictators, some of which were *******s claiming credit for the revolutionary dawn (Stalin, for example).

EDIT : why is r-ooster censored :p

[Ismail]

That's because the Greek Civil War ended, and the KKE was legalised in the democratic institution, which was ultimately the goal.... Greece in the 40's-50's was a bourgeois dictatorship backed by British and American arms. The KKE was persecuted.


Stalin certainly didn't aid much did he?Yes he did, actually. The Chinese and Korean Communists were quite thankful for his aid, the Yugoslavs were thankful at first as well, considering that Soviet tanks played a big role in liberating Belgrade and other areas.


And this therefore makes the revolutionaries illegitimate?Hoxha noted of Ben Bella that, "He is a dubious character, a petty-bourgeois careerist and megalomaniac, ready to adopt any colour, a person who regards himself as 'a great man of history', with not only Algerian, but only African, but world 'perspectives'. He dressed himself in the 'toga' of the fighter without firing a short, took advantage of the war to seize power and to become a 'world figure', to follow the 'road of Castro', etc. Openly and secretly Ben Bella retained, developed and went on developing his connections with the French capitalists; he posed as a Khrushchevite and succeeded in getting from the Soviet revisionists the decoration 'Hero of the Soviet Union', the Lenin Peace Prize and the Order of Lenin.... Ben Bella became a close friend of Tito's and adopted the capitalist form of self-administration which, in the eyes of the revisionists, strengthened Ben Bella's 'socialism'... Castro considered Ben Bella his revolutionary double, and through him sought to penetrate into Africa, allegedly in order to activize 'the struggle of the African peoples' for 'socialism', as in Cuba." (Reflections on the Middle East, pp. 26-28.)

The Soviets and Yugoslavs were friends of all sorts of anti-communist "socialists," Ben Bella, Nasser and so on included.


Are you implying Titio collaborated with the West because he worked with eurocommunist parties?Oh, of course not; Tito collaborated with the West via exporting huge amounts of Yugoslav labor to West Germany, collaborated with the West through the various forms of military aid he received, and collaborated with the West through the massive and ultimately unpayable loans he acquired from them for his services against socialism. His defense of Eurocommunism and other anti-Marxist trends was a part of this process, but his collaboration with the West assumed the concrete forms I just mentioned.


Seriously, and you don't think your USSR vs the West is a nationalistic war instead of a class war like most Cold War enthusiasts seem to think?This depends on the period. In the 40's and 50's the Yugoslavs slandered the work of Stalin, declared that the USSR was an "aggressor," and so on. When the Soviet revisionists restored capitalism and pursued a social-imperialist foreign policy, Yugoslavia adopted a collaborative attitude, although in the case of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 relations were temporarily strained, because Tito had backed Nagy and Dubček whereas the Soviets were backing those loyal to both revisionism and Soviet social-imperialism.

Tito took no principled stand on the struggle against imperialism and social-imperialism, unlike the Albanians.


No, it was pragmatism in a world with nationalistic leaders posing as ideological flag-bearers. Tito could only sort out Yugoslavia, so he did. He always, however, supported the idea of liberation movements around the worldIt depends what one means by "support." After all, no one can deny that the USSR and Cuba supplied the bulk of the military aid to the PAIGC, Frelimo, and whatnot. Yet that does not constitute "support for national liberation," it constituted an attempt to tie those liberation movements into the orbit of Soviet social-imperialism.


Damn, how come those bourgeois tyrants managed to do it and Stalin didn't? Oh wait, because he's just a bourgeois tyrant that didn't do workers councils.Because Stalin did not derive his authority from "Allah" or "Arab socialism" as Gaddafi and Ben Bella did, nor bourgeois nationalism and the "specific socialism" pursued by the Titoites and others. Stalin carried on the work of Marx, Engels and Lenin against reformism and revisionism.


while Tito in the Badlung conference openly condemned imperialism from all sides of all forms and wished to reverse colonialism long before the revisionists used it as an excuse to forward their own national interests.The Albanians also praised the Bandung Conference, but they never had any pretensions about the "socialism" of the various third-world countries.


Source?"The leadership of the Communist party acknowledged officially in 1950 that unemployment could exist under socialism, and the number of people registered as unemployed and as seeking work became ever larger as the years went by. In 1952, the newly reopened employment bureaus recorded a rate of unemployment at least two points above the 5 percent then considered the normal rate in Western Europe; in 1985, when the number of Yugoslavs looking for work went above one million, the rate surpassed 15 percent, ranging from 1.5 percent in Slovenia to more than 30 percent in Kosovo and Macedonia." (Susan L. Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia: 1945-1990, p. 4.)

Unemployment under socialism. Just one of the many "creative developments" of Yugoslav "socialism."


That Tito did his upmost to handle during his reign, and was successful in keeping most of them happy with devolution powers, and crushing any kind of nationalistic rhetoric. Ironic that he had the most trouble with Slovenia, arguably the most atheist state.Tito had told Hoxha that Kosovo belonged to Albania, but that "Great-Serb reaction" would not permit him to hold a plebiscite in the region. Some "crushing of any kind of nationalistic rhetoric" that was. And then the Yugoslav state proceeded to treat Kosovar Albanians as an enemy nation, as I noted, from basic persecution to expelling many of them as "Turks" (a practice carried out by the prewar bourgeois regime) to Turkey.


Again, source?I could literally give you any book about Albanian history, but two good introductory reads which mention the subject are Miranda Vickers' The Albanians: A Modern History and James S. O'Donnell's A Coming of Age: Albania under Enver Hoxha. Milovan Đilas in Rise and Fall considers Yugoslav policies towards Albania during the 1944-48 period shameful.


You mean by giving devolutionary powers to Kosovars, effectively forcing the Serbs to back down on their claim to a Serbian Kosovo.Kosovar Albanians had to rise up and demand basic things like a University and the ability to fly their own flag in the late 60's. Joint worker-student protests by Kosovar Albanians were crushed by tanks in 1981.


You look at Tito's actions...did he remotely encourage the kind of (state) capitalism we see in China today?His economic system obviously did, otherwise the Chinese revisionists wouldn't have emulated it.


He wanted Albania as the 7th Republic. He never tried to militarily invade or force the issue. So I don't see the problem.Actually he tried to bring the Yugoslav military into Albania, something both Hoxha and Stalin protested. Koçi Xoxe, Tito's man in Albania, forced Nako Spiru into suicide and had expelled a number of persons who were seen as standing in the way of the incorporation.


Because Albania had become another Russian protectorate,That's a pretty weird claim to make considering that Albania wasn't invited to the Cominform (Yugoslavia represented it) and Stalin was reliant on what the Yugoslavs were saying about Albania as far as information about it went. Soviet-Albanian ties were limited in 1944-48.


While being directly responsible for far more bloodshed than you claim Tito has on his hands"The persecution of Communists ['Stalinists,' or 'Cominformists'] in Yugoslavia that began in 1948-49 was probably one of the most massive persecution movements that Europe had yet witnessed, including those of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1940s, Germany in the 1930s, and the repression of Communists during the Nazi occupation. What happened in Yugoslavia was a truly immense phenomenon considering the number of inhabitants and the number of Communists. According to official sources that were long kept secret, the purges affected 16,371 people, 5,037 of whom were brought to trial and three-quarters of whom were sent to Goli Otok and Grgur. Independent analysis by Vladimir Dedijer suggests that between 31,000 and 32,000 people went through the Goli Otok camp alone. But even the most recent research has been unable to come up with a figure for the number of prisoners who died as victims of executions, exhaustion, hunger, epidemics, or even suicide—a solution chosen by many Communists to escape their cruel situation."
(Stéphane Courtois & Mark Kramer (trans.). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. 1999. p. 425.)


Otherwise, I would argue that liberating the state from Nazi occupationHoxha did it, and yet strangely never saw the need to have himself proclaimed "President for life."

[TheEmancipator]

... Greece in the 40's-50's was a bourgeois dictatorship backed by British and American arms. The KKE was persecuted.

Yes, and then it was allowed to stand for election. The Greek Civil War was a messy affair, but some of the communists' goals were achieved.


Yes he did, actually. The Chinese and Korean Communists were quite thankful for his aid, the Yugoslavs were thankful at first as well, considering that Soviet tanks played a big role in liberating Belgrade and other areas.

We were talking about Greece. I wonder how Stalin "aided" the Polish or Belarussian partisans during WW2 though?


Hoxha noted of Ben Bella that, "He is a dubious character, a petty-bourgeois careerist and megalomaniac, ready to adopt any colour, a person who regards himself as 'a great man of history', with not only Algerian, but only African, but world 'perspectives'. He dressed himself in the 'toga' of the fighter without firing a short, took advantage of the war to seize power and to become a 'world figure', to follow the 'road of Castro', etc. Openly and secretly Ben Bella retained, developed and went on developing his connections with the French capitalists; he posed as a Khrushchevite and succeeded in getting from the Soviet revisionists the decoration 'Hero of the Soviet Union', the Lenin Peace Prize and the Order of Lenin.... Ben Bella became a close friend of Tito's and adopted the capitalist form of self-administration which, in the eyes of the revisionists, strengthened Ben Bella's 'socialism'... Castro considered Ben Bella his revolutionary double, and through him sought to penetrate into Africa, allegedly in order to activize 'the struggle of the African peoples' for 'socialism', as in Cuba." (Reflections on the Middle East, pp. 26-28.)

When I mean revolutionary movements I mean grassroots movements not the kind of wannabe dictators like Ben Bella, who ultimately just figureheads.


The Soviets and Yugoslavs were friends of all sorts of anti-communist "socialists," Ben Bella, Nasser and so on included.

Well, we've admittedly seen that Ba'athism was one major fuck up, but let's not pretend Stalin did not support variants of "socialism" to support his national interests. Meanwhile, Tito hardly had much to gain by becoming non-aligned, being surrounded by two superpowers who wanted him gone.


Oh, of course not; Tito collaborated with the West via exporting huge amounts of Yugoslav labor to West Germany, collaborated with the West through the various forms of military aid he received, and collaborated with the West through the massive and ultimately unpayable loans he acquired from them for his services against socialism. His defense of Eurocommunism and other anti-Marxist trends was a part of this process, but his collaboration with the West assumed the concrete forms I just mentioned.

Exaggerated claims. Military aid? Are you insane? Loans in exchange for "services against socialism". We're talking about a man who risked his life for the name of socialism just like Hoxha. Very much unlike the Georgian Poet or other bourgeois nationalists. I didn't see Mao or Castro on the front line. They were busy doing deals with questionable "revolutionaries" and other nationalists.


Tito took no principled stand on the struggle against imperialism and social-imperialism, unlike the Albanians.

What on earth are you talking about? I admire the Albanians for their strict anti-imperialist stance, despite Hoxha's admiration for an imperialist and his relations with Mao's regime. Precisely because they backed Titio's declarations at the Badlung conference which took a strong stance against all forms of national imperialism. You even detail it here :


The Albanians also praised the Bandung Conference, but they never had any pretensions about the "socialism" of the various third-world countries.

Tito never forced his own brand of socialism on anyone. He believed historical conditions would need to be fulfilled for socialism to flourish.


It depends what one means by "support." After all, no one can deny that the USSR and Cuba supplied the bulk of the military aid to the PAIGC, Frelimo, and whatnot. Yet that does not constitute "support for national liberation," it constituted an attempt to tie those liberation movements into the orbit of Soviet social-imperialism.

And what orbit was Tito trying to get them to join? The non-aligned? If so, good. It meant they didn't have to suffer the consequences that you detail above.


Because Stalin did not derive his authority from "Allah" or "Arab socialism" as Gaddafi and Ben Bella did, nor bourgeois nationalism and the "specific socialism" pursued by the Titoites and others. Stalin carried on the work of Marx, Engels and Lenin against reformism and revisionism.

No. Just no. His foreign policy is not what I expect of a Marxist. He is the one who started social-imperialism for goodness sake. Post-WW2 he is the one who annexed half of Europe in the name of Socialism, but only to forward the nationalistic interests of the USSR. Anyway, it is another debate.




"The leadership of the Communist party acknowledged officially in 1950 that unemployment could exist under socialism, and the number of people registered as unemployed and as seeking work became ever larger as the years went by. In 1952, the newly reopened employment bureaus recorded a rate of unemployment at least two points above the 5 percent then considered the normal rate in Western Europe; in 1985, when the number of Yugoslavs looking for work went above one million, the rate surpassed 15 percent, ranging from 1.5 percent in Slovenia to more than 30 percent in Kosovo and Macedonia." (Susan L. Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia: 1945-1990, p. 4.)

Unemployment under socialism. Just one of the many "creative developments" of Yugoslav "socialism."

If you look carefully at the Yugoslav system it is incomparable to what we could now call "unemployed" since these people were essentially either peasants who needed skill training (and were offered it) but were still cared for or confederate republics such as Kosovo not implementing socialist reforms.


Tito had told Hoxha that Kosovo belonged to Albania, but that "Great-Serb reaction" would not permit him to hold a plebiscite in the region. Some "crushing of any kind of nationalistic rhetoric" that was.

Because Kosovo is historically a part of Serbia. Tito still defended the Albanians in Kosovo and kept them somewhat happy with devolutionary powers from Serbia.


And then the Yugoslav state proceeded to treat Kosovar Albanians as an enemy nation, as I noted, from basic persecution to expelling many of them as "Turks" (a practice carried out by the prewar bourgeois regime) to Turkey.

This requires sourcing. Sounds more like Milosevic.


Kosovar Albanians had to rise up and demand basic things like a University and the ability to fly their own flag in the late 60's. Joint worker-student protests by Kosovar Albanians were crushed by tanks in 1981.

Only because they wanted to reattach themselves to Albania despite concessions being made by the Federal Republic and despite Kosovo being historically Serbia. I wonder if Hoxha would be so kind as to give up part of his territory to Moscow revisionist rule if some minority would emigrate into that part of his territory.


His economic system obviously did, otherwise the Chinese revisionists wouldn't have emulated it.

Tito's economic system is nowhere near that of China's at any stage of history. Even so, Tito would be the first to say that copying a "model" from a country with completely different material and geopolitical problems is the wrong way to go.


Actually he tried to bring the Yugoslav military into Albania, something both Hoxha and Stalin protested. Koçi Xoxe, Tito's man in Albania, forced Nako Spiru into suicide and had expelled a number of persons who were seen as standing in the way of the incorporation.

That last bit is speculation. Stalin and Hoxha kicked up a fuss because they didn't want more nations being liberated from Moscow's iron grip. Hoxha was scared of Tito's grand plan for the Balkans anyway. He wanted to play dictator too.


That's a pretty weird claim to make considering that Albania wasn't invited to the Cominform (Yugoslavia represented it) and Stalin was reliant on what the Yugoslavs were saying about Albania as far as information about it went. Soviet-Albanian ties were limited in 1944-48.

You are right. This may be due to the fact Hoxha already bent over backwards to please Stalin, who has no interest in Albania anyway.


"The persecution of Communists ['Stalinists,' or 'Cominformists'] in Yugoslavia that began in 1948-49 was probably one of the most massive persecution movements that Europe had yet witnessed, including those of the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1940s, Germany in the 1930s, and the repression of Communists during the Nazi occupation. What happened in Yugoslavia was a truly immense phenomenon considering the number of inhabitants and the number of Communists. According to official sources that were long kept secret, the purges affected 16,371 people, 5,037 of whom were brought to trial and three-quarters of whom were sent to Goli Otok and Grgur. Independent analysis by Vladimir Dedijer suggests that between 31,000 and 32,000 people went through the Goli Otok camp alone. But even the most recent research has been unable to come up with a figure for the number of prisoners who died as victims of executions, exhaustion, hunger, epidemics, or even suicide—a solution chosen by many Communists to escape their cruel situation."
(Stéphane Courtois & Mark Kramer (trans.). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. 1999. p. 425.)

Black Book of Communism has a very loose take on Communist regime crimes, as you should well know, considering what they say about Stalin.

Tito "persecuted" people who directly threatened the stability of the Federal Republic. What is he supposed to do, let them destroy all his good work to install a Soviet stooge-led regime? Absolutely nothing compared to the Stalinist Terror where thousands of honest hard working proletarians and professional revolutionaries were sent to gulags or executed for lifting a finger.

I will not excuse Tito for killing dissidents, but I will not accept that you judge him in such a humanistic context yet ignore Stalin's crimes completely.

Meanwhile in Albania : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigurimi


Hoxha did it, and yet strangely never saw the need to have himself proclaimed "President for life."

Hoxha was never elected (unlike Tito) and his regime lasted from his unelected ascendency to his death. He was a President for life in all but name!

[Ismail]

We were talking about Greece. I wonder how Stalin "aided" the Polish or Belarussian partisans during WW2 though?Considering that Soviet rule was restored in Byelorussia and Poland was liberated from Nazism, I'd say he aided them pretty well.


Well, we've admittedly seen that Ba'athism was one major fuck up, but let's not pretend Stalin did not support variants of "socialism" to support his national interests.Name one. Nehru was denounced in Stalin's time as a lackey of imperialism. The officers' coup in Egypt was likewise denounced. The Soviet revisionists did a 180 on both and Tito was friends with both.


Meanwhile, Tito hardly had much to gain by becoming non-aligned, being surrounded by two superpowers who wanted him gone.
"Nevertheless, the growing tension with the Soviet Union and the rest of the Communist bloc brought about a patriotic surge of support within Yugoslavia for the new regime. Tito and the Communists had been losing popularity between 1945 and 1948 with a substantial part of the 94 per cent of the population who did not belong to the party. Now a majority of the people rallied behind them...

Before long, however, they were to get an additional source of support, perhaps unexpectedly... Following the expulsion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform, the Truman administration took a decision to offer economic assistance which would help keep an independent Yugoslavia afloat. US Secretary of State Dean Acheson, in a communication with the American embassy in Belgrade in early 1949, said that it was in the 'obvious interest' of the United States that 'Titoism' should continue to exist as an 'erosive and disintegrating force' in the Soviet sphere. In November 1950, President Truman sent a letter to Congress in support of a Yugoslav Emergency Relief Act, making no mention of Yugoslavia's Communist political and economic structure, but using a strategic argument: 'The continued independence of Yugoslavia is of great importance to the security of the United States. We can help preserve the independence of a nation which is defying the savage threats of the Soviet imperialists, and keeping Soviet power out of Europe's most strategic areas. This is clearly in our national interest.'"
(Archie Brown. The Rise and Fall of Communism. New York: HarperCollins. 2009. pp. 208-209.)


What on earth are you talking about? I admire the Albanians for their strict anti-imperialist stance, despite Hoxha's admiration for an imperialist and his relations with Mao's regime. Precisely because they backed Titio's declarations at the Badlung conference which took a strong stance against all forms of national imperialism.Khrushchev praised the Bandung Conference as well. As did Mao. As did everyone. It hardly qualifies Tito as exceptional.


Tito never forced his own brand of socialism on anyone.Neither did the Albanians, who simply noted that it was up to the Soviet, Yugoslav, Chinese, and other working-classes to overthrow their bourgeois regimes and establish scientific socialism.


He believed historical conditions would need to be fulfilled for socialism to flourish.Just like every other Marxist in history.


And what orbit was Tito trying to get them to join? The non-aligned? If so, good. It meant they didn't have to suffer the consequences that you detail above.Yugoslavia was trying to gain prestige through such "support," just as the North Koreans were attempting, and Cubans.

There is no such thing as "non-alignment." There is only alignment with the socialist camp or with the imperialists. Yugoslavia belonged to the latter, as did the Cubans and others.


Because Kosovo is historically a part of Serbia.Thankfully Marxists don't care what is "historically" part of what, only what the on-the-ground situation was, and that situation was a national liberation movement in Kosovo during the war which expected unity with the Albanian state at its conclusion, and which was promptly betrayed by the Yugoslav revisionists.


Tito still defended the Albanians in Kosovo and kept them somewhat happy with devolutionary powers from Serbia.Again, Kosovar Albanians struggled for basic things, and were viciously repressed in the 40's and 50's.


This requires sourcing. Sounds more like Milosevic.See for instance Noel Malcolm's work on Kosovo.


I wonder if Hoxha would be so kind as to give up part of his territory to Moscow revisionist rule if some minority would emigrate into that part of his territory.And this is the heart of the matter: endorsing Serbian chauvinist views that Albanians were "immigrants" (or "invaders") rather than having continuously inhabited the region since antiquity. It ignores the fact that Kosovo was severed from Albania in 1913, that there were struggles waged by Isa Boletini, Bajram Curri, Azem and Shota Galica, and others to reverse this partition imposed by the imperialist powers, that the Comintern supported these struggles, and that the Yugoslav Communists supported these struggles right up until WWII.


That last bit is speculation.It's not speculation at all, every single source speaks forthrightly of Spiru being denounced as a "nationalist" by Xoxe and being forced to commit suicide. Mehmet Shehu, Spiru's wife Liri Belishova, and others were removed from their positions because of their opposition to the annexation plans. Hoxha was next for targeting.


Hoxha was never elected (unlike Tito)Albania never had a Presidency, an institution associated with bourgeois republics rather than ones based on the Soviet model wherein the Presidium played the role of collective head of state. The Democratic Front (of which Hoxha was Chairman) polled 93% of the vote in the 1945 election, which was judged as representative of public opinion in Albania by various bourgeois observers.