Mao Tse-Tung

[Brother No. 1]

Comrades in your oppion is Mao Tse-tung a good revloutionary like lenin or a not so good revolutionary tell me your thoughs

[Saorsa]

Mao Zedong was awesome.

[Honggweilo]

I use Mao Zedong Thought to pick up girl at bars; succes guaranteed!

[scarletghoul]

Yes, he was. Better than Lenin in my oppinion.

I'm not even that fond of Lenin >>

[Brother No. 1]

Well I like Mao to even though he made some mistakes He was the best Revolutionary for China

[Saorsa]

Mao touches me in my dreams.

[Pogue]

Mao touches me in my dreams.

No thats me.

I admire Mao for fighting off the nationalists/fascists in the war, not so fond of what he did afterwards.

[Wanted Man]

Maoism was the first concrete answer to Soviet revisionism (after the defeat of the "Anti-Party Group", anyway). This can be recognised without having to support its extreme conclusions, such as the USSR being "state capitalist" and China's alliance with the imperialists and support for reactionary anti-communist insurgencies on that basis. The maoists also formulated how the struggle in the "third world" must be conducted. Maoists in the "third world" continue to play an important role.

Maoists in the "first world" are a mixed bag. They are often either isolated, sectarian, and/or dogmatic. They still see revisionist enemies lurking behind every bush, so they often have difficulty in cooperating with the communist parties because of past issues, even with the ones that have renounced revisionism since. But they can be (and have been) won over and contribute to the international communist movement as a whole, and add to it with their theories and experiences.

Also, this: http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1316749&postcount=14

[Dhul Fiqar]

Mao was a mixed bag. On one hand he had a good, sound ideological basis and was a genius. On the other his cult of personality and the fact that he lost power to the gang of four was a disaster for the Chinese people. I'd say he's best viewed as a legendary father figure - as most Chinese view him today. Even many people violently opposed to the communist party love him as the father of the nation.

[BobKKKindle$]

On the other his cult of personality and the fact that he lost power to the gang of four

What do you mean? All of the leaders who comprised the Gang of Four were captured shortly after Mao's death in 1976 and accused of having committed crimes against the party at a trial in 1981, resulting in imprisonment - Maoists generally see the Gang of Four as representing the revolutionary faction during the GPCR and understand their subsequent downfall as the first symptom of the victory of revisionist forces and China's eventual transition to state capitalism.

[Dhul Fiqar]

Maoists this and Maoists that, there are a lot of people stuck in the seventies - especially in the West. I'm more or less going on what I heard from Chinese communists in Beijing. The current thinking is extremely anti-gang-of-four. And all that shit happened when Mao was officially still on the watch (though obviously not in practice), and a lot of people blame it on the way he set up his regime without an heir apparent or any clear leadership structure in a post-Mao era.

It's not so much an indictment of his regime as it is a criticism of his lack of foresight. Had Mao been a bit more humble the transition would not have been the disaster it was and a capable leader would have taken power after he was incapacitated.

That being said, people in China generally LOVE Mao and care little for any details of his life or even his political theories. He's simply the father of the nation to them - a George Washington-like figure.


What do you mean? All of the leaders who comprised the Gang of Four were captured shortly after Mao's death in 1976 and accused of having committed crimes against the party at a trial in 1981, resulting in imprisonment - Maoists generally see the Gang of Four as representing the revolutionary faction during the GPCR and understand their subsequent downfall as the first symptom of the victory of revisionist forces and China's eventual transition to state capitalism.

[Brother No. 1]

Well many chinese still look up to the Father figure Mao with out him who knows what china would be right Comrades

[Invincible Summer]

Well many chinese still look up to the Father figure Mao with out him who knows what china would be right Comrades


Yeah... they really look up to Mao - while shopping at Consumer-capitalism superstores:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2188/2042161021_91eee57610.jpg

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

Mao was a great Comrade and leader, and a good Communist. He saved the People of China, fought off the fascists and the nationalists, destroyed bureaucracy and established true People's power.

[Cooler Reds Will Prevail]

Yeah... they really look up to Mao - while shopping at Consumer-capitalism superstores:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2188/2042161021_91eee57610.jpg

What's your point, that we should all just shop at overpriced petty-bourgeois shops until the corporations wither away? Wal-Mart is there, the people had no say in that matter or in China's transition to capitalism. If that's the least expensive way for them to get their products, they really don't have much of a choice. I shop at Target, Safeway, and Wal-Mart because I'm on a budget, there's nothing counterrevolutionary about that or in their choice (or not) to do the same. Obviously they should be organizing against the CPC for a legitimate revolution, but in the meantime, people have needs to fulfill.

Mao: Great leader of national liberation, great communist theoretician, great communist leader. Obviously not without his flaws and errors though.

[redguard2009]

The "anti Gang of Four" shit was really a beautiful work of art. Damned criminal, but you've got to admit they played that like a seasoned choir. They managed to simeltaneously denouce everything Mao had taught and said and changed, imprison his closest advisors, supporters and allies, criticize his "excesses" and generally turn the clock back on China, and yet managed to keep Mao's personality cult, conform it to support them, and convince the people that the real threat to Maoism was from the Gang of Four.

I think a lot of people know better, though, and have for awhile. Many Chinese feel the current government is extraordinarily corrupt and useless, and are able to differentiate between their corrupt anti-socialist policies and the socialist values Mao aspired to (something many supposedly educated communists fail to grasp, oddly enough). But like western governments the Chinese government has made a lot of effort to suppress real revolutionary ideals and for the most part they've succeeded. In short, real revolutionaries in China face the same challenges we do.

[The Deepest Red]

destroyed bureaucracy
What makes you say that? I think it is clear enough to both Maoist and non-Maoist alike that the bureaucracy prevailed in the PRC as it did in the USSR twenty years previously. What may not be so clear is that the degeneration of both revolutions had the same political and cultural (as in the culture of the prevailing politics not the general culture of China and the Soviet republics) roots.

[Comrade B]

Mao was a mixed bag. On one hand he had a good, sound ideological basis and was a genius. On the other his cult of personality and the fact that he lost power to the gang of four was a disaster for the Chinese people.
I don't see the terrible problems with a cult of personality, however I agree with the rest of this

[Mister X]

hat the bureaucracy prevailed in the PRC as it did in the USSR twenty years previously. What may not be so clear is that the degeneration of both revolutions had the same political and cultural (as in the culture of the prevailing politics not the general culture of China and the Soviet republics) roots.

China was never degenerated. It was a deformed workers state from the start due to the way the bourgeoisie was overthrown(guerilaism) and also due to the influence of the already degenerated Soviet Union.

[Socialist Scum]

I have spoken to large amount of people in China, and many seem to have the same opinion on him, which I have come to agree with myself. One man I was talking too in Shanghai says that he was a great military leader, able to really the people. His military skills were almost unmatched in China, and under his direction they beat the KMT. They (And I come to agree) believe that Chiang would have been far, far worse for China. He would have succumbed to US imperialism, and China may have been smaller, weaker states. The good old US making their allies weaker.

Whilst Mao may have been a great military leader, they all agree to say economically he was not so skilled. Ambitious targets with no roots to them led of course to disaster. So overall, my opinions are based on the Chinese peoples themselves. He was a great militaryy leader, but economically unlucky.

[Rangi]

I second that. Mao may have been a great military leader but his social policy decision making was poor. The 'Great Leap Forward' cost some 14,000,000 - 20,000,000 Chinese people their lives.

You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette I suppose - but that's a hell of a lot of eggs.

[The Deepest Red]

China was never degenerated. It was a deformed workers state from the start due to the way the bourgeoisie was overthrown(guerilaism) and also due to the influence of the already degenerated Soviet Union.

Now you're just nitpicking. The process of degeneration I was clearly referring to was the restoration of capitalism in China. I never claimed that the PRC was ever anything other than a deformed workers' state. And in time no doubt it will fully develop into an imperialist power extracting labour, resources and super-profits from Africa and south Asia to fuel its own economy.

[Labor Shall Rule]

I'd say that Maoism is a necessary tool to vanquish the forces of imperialism and domestic reaction, to carry out agrarian and other social reforms while developing a national economy and culture, and to then ultimately vanquish the 'patriotic' national bourgeoisie to prop up a proletarian order. His methods were based on the "concrete conditions" that were grounded in backward semi-feudal, semi-colonial China.


Processes change, old processes and old contradictions disappear, new processes and new contradictions emerge, and the methods of resolving contradictions differ accordingly. In Russia, there was a fundamental difference between the contradiction resolved by the February Revolution and the contradiction resolved by the October Revolution, as well as between the methods used to resolve them. The principle of using different methods to resolve different contradictions is one which Marxist-Leninists must strictly observe. The dogmatists do not observe this principle; they do not understand that conditions differ in different kinds of revolution and so do not understand that different methods should be used to resolve different contradictions; on the contrary, they invariably adopt what they imagine to be an unalterable formula and arbitrarily apply it everywhere, which only causes setbacks to the revolution or makes a sorry mess of what was originally well done.

There are plenty of 'left' dogmatists on this site that act like a *****y children and cry about how revolutionary projects (or movements) are not 'proletarian enough' to their liking. If you want to dive into Mao Tse-Tung Thought, I must recommend that you avoid that here. It's highly mechanical and unmaterialist.

[Kassad]

Ideologies can sound as attractive as you want. When it cost millions of people their lives, there is little justification for it. I view the initial Chinese Revolution positively and Mao was a great political and military leader, but I don't care how much he did in that aspect. That much blood on your hands will overshadow just about anything you do.

[Pogue]

Official statistics: 7/10 good, 3/10 bad! Source: Chinese Government

[Rawthentic]

As a Maoist, I do think that maoism is a useful guide to liberation today, although there is a dire need for a "new synthesis" so to speak, that can take into account the vast and dramatic changes the world has seen since the 1970s.

Was Mao good? In terms of morality, hell yes, he was. He led China to defeat both the Japanese imperialists and the Kuomintang and built a tremendous socialist nation. He broke with soviet revisionism, denounced stalin's methodology, led a crucially important new theory of cultural revolution under socialist society, and is still a beacon to revolutionaries around the world.

I'd say he's a good guy, but made mistakes (as we all do).

And, as LSR said, studying Maoism on this site should be avoided, for its highly biased and idealist outlook both on communism and on China (and beyond).

[Rangi]

I have made some mistakes, but then again 14,000,000 to 20,000,000 people didn't die as a result.

[Socialist Scum]

I have made some mistakes, but then again 14,000,000 to 20,000,000 people didn't die as a result.

Now I'm not one to defend Mao, but that seems a rather flippant response to all of this.

[Rangi]

You call me flippant like it's a bad thing.

[#FF0000]

I never thought much of Mao (thoroughly inept as a leader), or Maoists (Cult-like and dogmatic. More like representatives of a fringe religious sect than socialists). Maoism has one or two interesting ideas. Beyond that, nothing of much interest to me.

[Kassad]

It isn't flippant to be aware that Mao's leadership caused millions of deaths. That needs to be acknowledged.

[scarletghoul]

Whether those deaths were caused by Mao's leadership, or if that many occured, is very debatable. These estimates vary so wildly and it seems there is no credible source. Besides, China Socialism saved millions more lives. During Maos years life expectancy increased very much and great improvements were made to China.

I read an interesting Chomsky article earlier today actually-
http://www.spectrezine.org/global/chomsky.htm
(it gets to Maos death toll just over half way)

[Rawthentic]

Kassad:

don't be so naive and superficial.

Mao's leadership is still upheld by chinese workers and peasants and for a good reason.

To state that it was "mao's fault" is falling into bourgeois idealism, since such huge, complex, and dynamic events such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution could not have been the whim of one madman (and they weren't).

Was Mao perfect? hell no, he made mistakes. And they need to be acknowledged in a fearless spirit. But, I do believe that what he represents and what he led in China FAR outweighs the negative aspects of his communist leadership.

[scarletghoul]

Yes, I think 9/10 good 1/10 bad is more accurate.

[Kassad]

You're missing my point. In my earlier post, I said that it "needs to be acknowledged." That isn't me praising Mao and it isn't be criticizing him either. It is me saying that there were negative aspects and if we are to lead more successful revolutions today, we need to learn from the mistakes of our comrades in the past, such as Lenin, Stalin and Mao.

Scarletghoul, I cite that link a lot. I don't think it justifies the millions dead, just because more died somewhere else under capitalism, but it does well to shut up the people who mindlessly spout the "communism has killed 100 million" propaganda. Also, the death tolls vary. Stalin varies from 3 million to 25 million, but I haven't found any credible sources for much above 5 million, really. Mao varies from 10 million to 100 million. Still, propaganda is everywhere. We're lucky that we're awake enough to realize that the corporate and bourgeosie-controlled media can say whatever they want and it will be taken as truth.

[Old Man Diogenes]

I admire Mao for fighting off the nationalists/fascists in the war, not so fond of what he did afterwards.

I don't that much about Mao, I know that he brought revolution to China but what did he do? And was he a dictator?

[Pogue]

Yeh he was a dictator. Typical Leninist really.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

What makes you say that? I think it is clear enough to both Maoist and non-Maoist alike that the bureaucracy prevailed in the PRC as it did in the USSR twenty years previously. What may not be so clear is that the degeneration of both revolutions had the same political and cultural (as in the culture of the prevailing politics not the general culture of China and the Soviet republics) roots.
Bureaucracy in China started after the traitor Deng Xiaoping took over and threw the "Gang of Four", renowned for their hard struggle against bureaucracy, in prison.

[Pogue]

Bureaucracy in China started after the traitor Deng Xiaoping took over and threw the "Gang of Four", renowned for their hard struggle against bureaucracy, in prison.

You Stalinists do lvoe finding your scapegoats don't you :lol:

[scarletghoul]

Yeah and anarchists never blame the entire failure of russian socialism on Lenin..

[scarletghoul]

Anyway Mao wasn't a full dictator, as he didnt have dictatorial powers (until maybe the height of the personality cult in the cultural revolution). He had to work within the party framework and on many occasions was not able to implement his ideas because the party disagreed with him.
The biggest example is after the failure of the great leap forward, he had to let go of a lot of power and take responsability. A true dictator would never do that. This is when Liu and Deng took charge, even though Mao disagreed with many of their policies.
It was only in the cultural revolution, and with the support of the masses of people, that mao gained greater powers and overthrew liu and deng and other bureucratic capitalist party members. In other words his authority was imposed on the rest of the party by the people's mass movement of the gpcr. So he was certainly not a top down dictator

[Pogue]

Ok. Who elected him?

[gorillafuck]

I admire his military leadership and he had a few cool ideas like The People's Commune, and I think that history has been unfair to him (obviously it will be). I dislike a lot of what he did though and am in no way a Maoist.

[Random Precision]

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