Chomsky on the Chinese Revolution

[VenceremosRed]

...relevant is the history of collectivization in China, which, as compared with the Soviet Union, shows a much higher reliance on persuasion and mutual aid than on force and terror, and appears to have been more successful. See Thomas P. Bernstein, “Leadership and Mass Mobilization in the Soviet and Chinese Collectivization Campaigns of 1929-30 and 1955-56: A Comparison,” China Quarterly, No. 31 (July-September 1967), pp. 1-47, for some interesting and suggestive comments and analysis.

The scale of the Chinese Revolution is so great and reports in depth are so fragmentary that it would no doubt be foolhardy to attempt a general evaluation. Still, all the reports that I have been able to study suggest that insofar as real successes were achieved in the several stages of land reform, mutual aid, collectivization, and formation of communes, they were traceable in large part to the complex interaction of the Communist party cadres and the gradually evolving peasant associations, a relation which seems to stray from the Leninist model of organization. This is particular evident in William Hinton's magnificent study Fanshen (New York, Monthly Review Press, 1966), which is unparalleled, to my knowledge, as an analysis of a moment of profound revolutionary change.

What seems to me particularly striking in his account of the early stages of revolution in one Chinese village is not only the extent to which party cadres submitted themselves to popular control, but also, and more significant, the ways in which exercise of control over steps of the revolutionary process was a factor in the developing the consciousness and insight of those who took part in the revolution, not only from the political and social point of view, but also with respect to the human relationships that were created. It is interesting, in this connection to note the strong populist element in early Chinese Marxism. For some very illuminating observations about this general matter, see Maurice Meisner, Li Ta-chao and the Origins of Chinese Marxism (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1967).

From: Chomsky on Anarchism, Objectivity and Liberal Scholarship, pp. 83-84. AK Press (May 1, 2005)

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I am posting this for Chomsky followers (myself included) who have misconceptions about Leninism and Maoism. Interesting stuff.

[Dimentio]

Almost all university radicals during the 60;s hailed Mao's China as the beginning of a new world, mostly due to the need of a utopia to contrast against the USA and the USSR, a utopia where individuality and egoism had been abolished. Later on, a lot of those radicals started to support Pol Pot [it was the end of industrialist aesthetics and the beginning of neoluddism inside the radical left-wing movements].

This phenomena is not new. During the 16th century, many European priests and intellectuals hailed the Aztec, Incan and Chinese empires as the absolute justice, equality and collectivism. During the 18th century, many intellectuals, like Voltaire for example, contrasted imperial China as a positive example in comparision with the European states.

The same tendency exists among intellectuals within the fascist sphere, for example Julius Evola [the Italian fascist who did'nt like Mussolini and therefore moved to Nazi Germany which he liked better], Eduard Limonov [who by all accounts seems to uphold the Mongol empire as an ideal state].

Intellectuals and "the intelligentsia" is sometimes surprisingly childlike and semi-religious.

[Son of a Strummer]

Serpent,

Although I suppose you are impressed by your own bluster, you might pause for a moment to notice that Chomsky is here making specific historical claims about certain progressive tendencies, and not making "a general evaluation" of the Chinese revolution. Moreover he is supporting such claims by referring to the work of historians who have looked closely at the matter. If you deny the claims concerning aspects of the collectivization and the progress of social development in the early stages of the revolution I would be interested in hearing about it. Such an exercise would be far more instructive, not to mention more interesting, than blurting irrelevant pseudo-sociological/historical examples to prop up a strawman argument. Or perhaps instead you would like to substantiate why you think the broad-brush, sweeping generalization approach to history is the only permissable one; and that therefore by analogy if we condemn capitalism on the whole, it follows that it must contain no progressive potentialities whatsoever, and even if there were, we would best not utter them publicly??????

[VenceremosRed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 07, 2006 12:41 pm
Almost all university radicals during the 60;s hailed Mao's China as the beginning of a new world, mostly due to the need of a utopia to contrast against the USA and the USSR, a utopia where individuality and egoism had been abolished. Later on, a lot of those radicals started to support Pol Pot [it was the end of industrialist aesthetics and the beginning of neoluddism inside the radical left-wing movements].

This phenomena is not new. During the 16th century, many European priests and intellectuals hailed the Aztec, Incan and Chinese empires as the absolute justice, equality and collectivism. During the 18th century, many intellectuals, like Voltaire for example, contrasted imperial China as a positive example in comparision with the European states.

The same tendency exists among intellectuals within the fascist sphere, for example Julius Evola [the Italian fascist who did'nt like Mussolini and therefore moved to Nazi Germany which he liked better], Eduard Limonov [who by all accounts seems to uphold the Mongol empire as an ideal state].

Intellectuals and "the intelligentsia" is sometimes surprisingly childlike and semi-religious.
Serpent's Eurocentrism and Stalinesque (technology, or excess = socialism) take on Chomsky's opinons ignore the fundamental points Chomsky raises. The Chinese Revolution, like the Cuban Revolution DID change the world in a very dynamic way. The revolutions swept away oppression of landlord's rent, and brought many changes needed to lay the groundwork for a socialist development.

The fact that he would compare support of these changes to imperialist/colonialist thinkers reveals his own bias.

[chimx]

What I find to be fascinating, is that while collectivization was far more voluntary in China than the Russia example, the breakup of the communes beginning in the 1970s was far more rapid than the soviet experience. I would personally attribute this phenomenon to two things in particular: (1) the break down of bureaucracy in China following the cultural revolution allowed the process of decollectivization to be much more fluid compared to the bureaucratic barriers to decollectivization in russia and (2) the cultural history of collective farming that existed for centuries in Czarist Russia.

I would also point out that it is in itself a misconception to view China's collectivization in terms of Maoism. Collectivization was initiated not by the party, but by peasants themselves. Mao simply encouraged what was already being done in the countryside.