Question for Maoists

[INDK]

I'm a bit confused to as to what the contemporary Maoist might think the revolution would physically look like. See, back during the day's of people's war in China, the Maoist could simply answer "Mao has written all about this!" But the bottom line is, he included and focused on the peasantry because those were his material conditions at the time and nowadays we gotta realize the urban proletariat is much larger in most countries. The peasantry just doesn't seem to have that revolutionary potential anymore, especially not as much as it did in China. So, Maoist, how do you think revolt will go down, since Mao's work on the physical aspects of revolution are, in a few ways, outdated?

[Great Helmsman]

Mao's work isn't outdated at all. The peasants are still 1/2 of the world's population, and all concentrated in the third world. Lin Biao's Long Live the Victory of People's War! outlines how world revolution will go down. The third world is the global countryside, and the first world is the global cities. Through Maoist People's War, the oppressed nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America will unite to encircle and defeat the imperialist nations.

[spartan]

Mao's work isn't outdated at all. The peasants are still 1/2 of the world's population, and all concentrated in the third world.

The trouble with the majority of the third world is that it hasnt yet got to the material conditions necessary for Socialism.

Marx argued against the peasant class, saying that the only worth that they had was as a potential revolutionary force during a revolution, but not as a basis for a Socialist society.

Indeed Marx argued that the peasants would and should dissapear in a Capitalist society (Which is the only society that creates the material conditions necessary for Socialism) with the majority of the peasants becoming urban Proletariats and a small minority becoming land owners (Wealthy farmers).

[Labor Shall Rule]

Well, first off, he realized that all revolutionary national gains would be useless if it didn't spread to not only neighboring countries, but to industrialized imperialist countries.


Mao Zedong, speech of December 21, 1939, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Volume 2 (Peking, 1965):

Comrade Norma Bethune, a member of the Communist Party of Canada, was around fifty when he was sent by the Communist Parties of Canada and the United States to China; he made light of traveling thousands of miles to help us in our War of Resistance Against Japan. He arrived in Yenan in the spring of the last year [1938], went to work in the Wutai Mountains, and to our great sorrow died a martyr at his post. What kind of spirit is this that makes a foreigner selflessly adopt the cause of the Chinese people's liberation as his own? It is the spirit of internationalism, the spirit of communism, from which every Chinese Communist must learn...

We must unite with the proletariat of all the capitalist countries, with the proletariat of Japan, Britain, United States, Germany, Italy and all other capitalist countries, for this is the only way to overthrow imperialism, to liberate our nation and people and to liberate the other nations and peoples of the world. This is our internationalism, the internationalism in which we oppose narrow nationalism and narrow patriotism.

As for the question of the peasantry, I don't think it is safe to be too dismissive.

The peasantry is still predominant in South and Central America, Southeastern Africa, the South subregion of Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh), and parts of the Pacific.

While peasants may not play an essential role in capitalist production as the urban proletariat does, they do play an essential role in the circulation of commodities and in the exchange process. Peasants’ strategic role in paralyzing circulation has the same impact as factory workers downing their tools and stopping production with a general strike— both undermine capitalist profitability and lead to disaccumulation and crisis. W.E.B Du Dois once called the mass flight of black slaves from their plantations a "general strike" for this same reason.

[Juche96]

The trouble with the majority of the third world is that it hasnt yet got to the material conditions necessary for Socialism.

The third world is essentially where the proletariat is located, so that is where a revolution will have to, or most likely take place. You claim that in theory that the material conditions do not exist there, but history has shown us that they do. Revolutions have occurred in Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and even briefly in Africa. All of these societies were preindustrial when socialist revolutions broke out. The urban population, by the way, has been sympathetic to these revolutions.


Marx argued against the peasant class, saying that the only worth that they had was as a potential revolutionary force during a revolution, but not as a basis for a Socialist society.

Peasants have played an important role in carrying out the revolution, however, socialist societies must industrialize. In a sense, Marx and Mao are both correct.

[bezdomni]

Marx argued against the peasant class, saying that the only worth that they had was as a potential revolutionary force during a revolution, but not as a basis for a Socialist society.


Marx didn't "argue against" the peasantry any more than he "argued against" the petty bourgeoisie.

He was right in saying that neither class can be the backbone of a socialist revolution, because neither class is the backbone of capitalism - the proletariat and only the proletariat is the class with "nothing to lose but its chains". However, what Marx didn't know is that imperialist exploitation turns a huge section of the third world peasantry against capitalism and imperialism...making the "joint dictatorship of the peasantry and proletariat" a viable way to largely bypass the capitalist mode of production and make it to socialism.

[RNK]

Marx argued against the peasant class, saying that the only worth that they had was as a potential revolutionary force during a revolution, but not as a basis for a Socialist society.

A line that does not differ from Mao's. Hence the Great Leap Forward and the attempt to radically industrialize China and transform peasants into communal agricultural workers.