On Maoism

“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” -Karl Marx

Outline:

  • no real movement will be perfect
    • some things will be due to the limits of the situation
    • genuine mistakes will also be made
  • How then to assess? High level - whether things are moving in the right direction
  • Examples:
    • Stalin:
      • Took over nascent USSR with limited development facing numerous threats
      • Years preparing for WWII involved incredibly hard work, requiring much of the people (not to mention subsequent war)
      • Internal threats required response to counter revolutionary threats
      • Famines took place during initial push to collectivize agriculture (we know about drought, kulaks, etc - don't buy genocidal arguments of western propaganda)
      • in short, no option for imagined socialism in mind of westerners, hard work and sacrifice needed
    • Mao

-Trots:

  • Claim to be adherents of Lenin but ardently opposed Stalin's actions (many of which are what Lenin would have most likely done)
  • They claim to uphold Marxist thought/practice up to some point after which everything is a betrayal/fall from grace etc. Notably, all their takes on important issues are awful - they are unable to examine concrete situations and instead presume imaginary roads should have instead been taken
  • In this regard, Maoists are no different - just a different cutoff date before which they accept decisions made by leaders in light of reality and after which everything is revisionist. This demonstrates a lack of ability to apply serious analysis to situations, instead dogmatically accepting certain things and rejecting others
  • Examples:
    • Trots will uphold Lenin, so Treaty of Brest-Litovsk will generally be upheld/accepted as necessary for the situation, whereas the MR pact will be viewed as some devious betrayal or Nazi alliance or w/e
    • Maoists on the other hand uphold Stalin, so they will accept the MR pact given the circumstances, but see reform and opening up as a devious betrayal without understanding the circumstances
    • Of course, reform and opening up was not without problems and contradictions, but neither were events during Stalin's rule or initiatives undertaken by Mao (GLF, GPCR). On those events, we can reject western atrocity propaganda while still accepting that the events were not imperfect, and more importantly, assessing the big picture

So, what is the big picture of post Mao China?
Massive development (never given absent-minded priority at the expense of all else forever as imagined)
Improved quality of life

But what about the peoples wars? Who is fighting them? Thoughts:

  • Preparation for war is as important as fighting it (imagine USSR w/o Stalin's 5 year plans)
  • War is a matter of life and death, in which traditional freedoms are curtailed for the purpose of victory. China is at once criticized for not.. more openly fighting enemies, but at the same time, the discipline of the working class necessary to improve, develop, and survive is seen as an unforgivable exploitation
  • On imperialism - pre WWI most of world was carved up between a few powers
    • colonies were brutally exploited
    • following WWII, formal decolonization took place but global counterrev always a threat
    • where open hostility has failed, sanctions have been key weapon used
    • upending that system is thus a revolutionary act. Multipolarity is inevitably good in that regard
      • "the dangers posed to human well-being by comprehensive economic sanctions are clear, present, and sometimes devastating, yet they have often been overlooked by scholars, policymakers, and the media"1
    • To treat that as the same as the state of the world pre WWI is absurd
    • Following end of WWII, US became head of "international dictatorship of bourgeoisie", head of a global imperialist umbrella seeking only vassals. Other members ("West") allowed to benefit but will be hampered when necessary. Conflicts among Western powers in the future could lead to inter imperialist rivalry
    • For the rest of the world, the process of decolonization is ongoing
      • as they gain sovereignty, their policies are more likely to be socialist (or at least developmentally focused) as capitalism can only work with expansion

Maoists are Trots in their supposed upholding of real socialism up to some point, after which they lose all ability to apply the same standards by which they would uphold achievements of the periods they approve of

They are Western leftists in their focus on tertiary contradictions over the big picture, pointing at anecdotes here and there, ignoring context and the big picture. Libs in essence. Their criticisms of "revisionism" end up being indistinguishable from anticommunist propaganda. Commitment to "principle" always ignores big picture and primary contradictions

So committed to "principle" even clear successes like poverty alleviation are ignored (someone in the city has been making the same wage for years so the improvements of a population where millions were making less than a dollar a day in 1980 are bogus!)

  1. Sanctions of Mass Destruction Foreign Affairs ↩