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When did Mao bashing become popular?
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)?
Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement. - V.I. Lenin
After Khruschev acted all nice, they needed another evil communist.
Mao's policies did kill, but that number is beyond ridiculous
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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.
"Win, lose or draw...long as you squabble and you get down, that's gangsta."
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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
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.
Last edited by Ismail; 29th May 2013 at 02:10.
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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.
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".
WTF? You don't see a difference between Hitler and Mao?
Are you like... 10 or something? I suggest you read a book or two on fascism.
I totally agree with this (specially the underlined part).
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.
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.
百花齐放
-----------------------------
la luz
de un Rojo Amanecer
anuncia ya
la vida que vendrá.
-Quilapayun
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.WTF? You don't see a difference between Hitler and Mao?
Are you like... 10 or something? I suggest you read a book or two on fascism.
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 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".
Last edited by The Garbage Disposal Unit; 31st May 2013 at 14:54.
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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.
FKA Vacant
"snook up behind him and took his koran, he said sumthin about burnin the koran. i was like DUDE YOU HAVE NO KORAN and ran off." - Jacob Isom, Amarillo Resident.
To counter British imperialism. Enenmy's enemy equals friend then?
A communist party that has nationalist origins. Proving my point much?
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.
Yeah, I've got no problem with that.
I am calling Maoism populist and third positionist. Not soviets in China.
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.
So heres a map of the 1911 revolution
heres the long march and from then on ill base discussion on china.
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?
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.
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!"
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?
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.
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.
FKA Vacant
"snook up behind him and took his koran, he said sumthin about burnin the koran. i was like DUDE YOU HAVE NO KORAN and ran off." - Jacob Isom, Amarillo Resident.
