And as for me, I am sick and tired of devoting my entire life to politics and nothing is happening. I sacrificed my youth studying history and theory to either burn bridges by trying to agitate people to get involved or just do nothing with it in which case, just was simply useless. I am feeling the joy of friends not out of politics, but out of a simple lovely connection, I am dating, getting into fashion, and enjoying the simple things in life in such a wretched and diseased world.
Then there was the generation of 68 which was more of a break from the working class and now started to become more existentialist in nature with individuals such as Sartre and the Frankfurt school, but at least there was some collective action going on, namely the anger and frustration of the youth against the Auschwitz generation and their complacency with what was happening in Vietnam. And there is today. When I ran a SDS branch for my university, the only people I was able to recruit were incredibly sad people, mostly nerds, druggies, feminists who could not fit in our FMLA, and the freaks of society in general. Whenever I talked to them, politics to them seemed to be something for them to cope with their personal alienation and that is not what politics is, that is philosophy.
lol I have given up on Asian nationalism and Marxism. Whenever I get to know most of the radical leftists I meet, the first thing that comes to mind is alienation, but less so the alienation of labor and more of an existential crisis. Whenever I see old photos and read about Marxists in the early 20th century, the impression I get is a bunch of workers who feel they deserve much more in a society of extreme wealth but paradoxically, extreme poverty.
Again, thank you for the insight. Do you still consider yourself a Marxist? (just curious since you put your title as "Asian Nationalist")
It really is a damn shame I think - Maoism, to me, has a lot of theoretical and philosophical promise lurking beneath the deformed Stalinist face. I still carry a book of "Quotations from Mao Tse-tung" around with me today, because the quotations themselves are not reactionary; they are romantic and inspirational, or deeply philosophical (my favourite being "Women hold up half the sky"). The reason I asked you is because I was considering Maoism again, thinking I could try to steer clear of the cultish Jim Jonesian submissiveness and religious dogmatism, but alas it's probably best to stay away; thank you for the advice... it's just a sad fact that the reality of Maoist movements do not correlate with some of the ingeniousness of the theory. I don't even think Mao would be in favour of all the weird sects of "Maoism" out there today, and in some ways I think that gives me the ability to keep on seeing him as an inspiration in the same vein as Che or Rosa.
And my God, there were the Third World Maoists. The Maoists in Burma were pretty cool, they launched a very brave struggle against the Burmese state which was borderline fascist but when reading what they were all about, they were batshit crazy, immune to sectarianism and even had their own Cultural Revolution. The Shining Path were like the Nardoniki, privileged students who talked about peasant life only to massacre them in the end. The Naxalites are interesting. There have been many different phases but the recent struggle is something that deserves support when the Indian state has proven to be more than happy to massacre thousands of innocents and to sell their territory to international corporations but when you look into the political structure, it is the same old cultism. What about Maoism in China today? I was initially pretty excited to see rebellious communists but when you listen to the rhetoric, the best comparison I could think of was the TEA Party here in the US.
Maoism proved to be nothing more than a religion and the organizations turned into nothing but cults. Is it a coincidence that Bob Avakian, Abdullah Ocalan, Guzman, Comrade Bala, and even Greg Lucero ended up developing cults around themselves? Niot to mention the party splits, they initially seemed like ideological disputes but looking deeper, especially at Greg, he was simply accumulating power and popularity around himself. And the Orwellian nature of Maoism. Discipline was obedience. Reactionary was someone against the guru. The Cultural Revolution (especially outside of China) were nothing more than party purges. And when people mentioned the Mass Line, they were bullshitting themselves and everyone else around them.
I heard you used to be a Maoist. What made you stop being one, if you don't mind me asking?
