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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
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Bosko, I just saw the Chinese movie, "To Live." It certainly does paint a picture of China that seems Marxist during the 50's and 60's, while Mao was alive.
Last edited by Ned on 03-12-2003 at 18:15
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Bosh
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Taehan Mingook
Jan 1970
time: 00:32
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Reasons why Maoism =! Marxism (even in theory)
1. Marxism is a materialistic philosophy that bascially says that material conditions determine what people think and are the only things that really matter. Mao never liked this much and there is a strong Voluntarist strain in his philosophy which basically said what was most needed was strong collective Will, which isn't a typically Marxist concept at all. You can see this very cleary in this history in the GLF and the Cultural Revolution in which Mao tried to tap into the ferver of the "masses" in order to solve all of China's problems, which doesn't square very well with Marxism (or reality).
2. After getting thumped badly in the cities in the Nationalists the CCP went rural in a big way and based itself on the peasantry for well over a decade. The CCP didn't get its hand on any real cities again until it started making gains in Manchuria in the Civil War which took place after WWII. This squared well with Maoist in which "proletariat" was translated to mean "person without property" rather than industrial worker, which allowed the masses of the poor peasantry to be counted as the proletariat (which would make Marx, or Lenin for that matter, roll over in their graves since for them urban industrial workers were the only group a proper communist revolution could be based on).
3. The CCP was always intensely nationalistic from the beginning, it was pretty much founded on nationalistic resistance to the Japanese. This continued with intense zenophobia during the years in which Mao was in power and lots of silly attempts at "self-sufficiency" that were completely un-Marxist. Also in Maoist theory there is the idea of proletarianized nations (ie that by having imperialistic nations exploiting third world nations whole nations become bourgeoise and proletariat respectively) which is completely at odds with traditional Marxism.
4. Mao never had as much use for the Communist Party apparatus as Marx or (especially) Lenin. He generally preferred emtpy-headed mouthings about the masses. The Cultural Revolution is the best example of this, in which Mao tried to shake up a party that he viewed as having grown ossified and too narrowly involved in material conditions and launched the Red Guards at them (although the Cultural Revolution is a lot more complicated than that, largely due to Mao not being completely control of the events and very indecisive).
5. Unlike many communist countries there was no real program to have people indoctrinated with the writings of Marx himself (or any classical Marxist theorists at all) and Marx etc. were never really seen as all that much of a source of intellectual legitimacy within the PRC once Maoist thought got rolling, too many Little Red Books for that.
6. Mao was a damn good organizer of guerilla war but his attempts at theorizing outside that realm are really pretty juvenile, I doubt very much that he understud a lot of the nuances of Marxist theory all that well.
And as for the current PRC, its ditched everything except the rappings of Maoism (which wasn't especially Marxist in the first place) decades ago. Like I said, its about as communist as Texas.
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Bosh
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Taehan Mingook
Jan 1970
time: 00:32
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Bosko, so it began as a bastardization of Marxism and is now capitalist with Marxist sound bites. Is that about right? |
Yup.
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aren't all "Marxist states" from Cuba to Angola really just a bastardization of Marxism to suit the purposes of who ever is in power? |
Yeah, but most of them hewed closer to at least the theory theory of Marxism than China.
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From this point of view, Boshko is a revisionist. |
Nah, don't want to revise Marxism I want to get rid of it, its been a stone around the neck of the Left for far too long, but at least I know what it is 
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Marxism is after all superior to maoism. If two guys are trying to hit each other over the head with books, the marxist with Das Kapital would win over the guy with Mao's little red on KO. |
Yeah but newspapers printed by western Maoist parties make for funnier reading (MIM Notes being my favorite: http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/mn/ ).
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Peter Triggs, there seem to be two (or many) thoughts on whether Mao was a Marxist. |
Get some Jonathan Spence, he's easily my favorite China historian. He's knowledgable and objective, but most importantly his prose is awe-inspiringly good most of his writing reads like an excellent novel, his book on the Taiping Rebellion (God's Chinese Son) is one of the best pieces of historical writing I've ever come across, he also has what's supposed to be a top-notch book on Tienamin which I have to get my hands on.
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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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quote:
Originally posted by Boshko
2. After getting thumped badly in the cities in the Nationalists the CCP went rural in a big way and based itself on the peasantry for well over a decade. |
That's not correct. Mao himself led an uprising in Nanchang in 1928 IIRC, but he led the army to a nearby mountain range to establish the first "liberated area."
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Originally posted by Boshko
The CCP didn't get its hand on any real cities again until it started making gains in Manchuria in the Civil War which took place after WWII. |
That's not correct, either. In fact the CCP was controlling most of the NW, but they got booted out of the major cities in the NE (Manchuria).
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Originally posted by Boshko
This squared well with Maoist in which "proletariat" was translated to mean "person without property" rather than industrial worker, which allowed the masses of the poor peasantry to be counted as the proletariat (which would make Marx, or Lenin for that matter, roll over in their graves since for them urban industrial workers were the only group a proper communist revolution could be based on). |
Not exactly. Mao was adapting the Marxist theory to China, as he knew that there's no way workers alone could overthrow the KMT regime. He recruited the peasants to be the basis of the revolution even though he held that only workers had enough class awareness to lead.
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Originally posted by Boshko
3. The CCP was always intensely nationalistic from the beginning, it was pretty much founded on nationalistic resistance to the Japanese. |
Nope. The CCP was founded in 1921 in Shanghai.
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Originally posted by Boshko
This continued with intense zenophobia during the years in which Mao was in power and lots of silly attempts at "self-sufficiency" that were completely un-Marxist. |
I am not aware that Marx was advocating free trade.
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Originally posted by Boshko
Also in Maoist theory there is the idea of proletarianized nations (ie that by having imperialistic nations exploiting third world nations whole nations become bourgeoise and proletariat respectively) which is completely at odds with traditional Marxism. |
What? 
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Originally posted by Boshko
4. Mao never had as much use for the Communist Party apparatus as Marx or (especially) Lenin. He generally preferred emtpy-headed mouthings about the masses. The Cultural Revolution is the best example of this, in which Mao tried to shake up a party that he viewed as having grown ossified and too narrowly involved in material conditions and launched the Red Guards at them (although the Cultural Revolution is a lot more complicated than that, largely due to Mao not being completely control of the events and very indecisive). |
The Cultural Revolution is a bad example because there are more theories about it than you can shake a stick at. Okay, maybe not that many, but the thing is there does not seem to be a dominant explanation for the whole mess.
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Originally posted by Boshko
6. Mao was a damn good organizer of guerilla war but his attempts at theorizing outside that realm are really pretty juvenile, I doubt very much that he understud a lot of the nuances of Marxist theory all that well. |
You sure? Last I checked his writings consisted of many volumes.
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Bosh
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Taehan Mingook
Jan 1970
time: 00:32
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That's not correct. Mao himself led an uprising in Nanchang in 1928 IIRC, but he led the army to a nearby mountain range to establish the first "liberated area." |
Right, that was before "getting thumped badly in the cities."
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In fact the CCP was controlling most of the NW |
There wasn't much of anything in the way of cities in the Yan'an region (or in the southern Soviets from which the Long March was launched). And the commies didn't hold onto any real cities in the early bit of the civil war for long enough for it to matter until they got their hands on Harbin, IIRC. The simple fact that is when the PRC was established the fast majority of the communist cadres were from rural backgrounds.
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Mao was adapting the Marxist theory to China, as he knew that there's no way workers alone could overthrow the KMT regime. |
If he was an orthodox Marxist he would have known that China had no business having a communist revolution (ie the Menshevik line). Hell even in Russia were the proletariat were a distinct minority there were enough of them to provide the backbone of the communist strength, while they were nothing of the sort in China.
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he held that only workers had enough class awareness to lead |
Which didn't happen.
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Nope. The CCP was founded in 1921 in Shanghai. |
In a girl's school in the International Concession, I know. But even then the Japanese weren't too popular (1895) and the communists only started gathering real strength when anti-Japanese ideas became really central and this remained a central thing right on through (Second United Front etc.).
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I am not aware that Marx was advocating free trade. |
I was not aware that Marx ever advocated anything other than internationalism.
Basic Maoist idea. The colonial nations exploit the colonized nations en masse making it a sort of bourgeoise/proletariat relationship on a national scale. However, from what I've seen non-Chinese Maoist movements concentrate on these sorts of ideas more, specifically the Maoist International Movement whose newspaper I recommended above as a good source of humor. But this sort of thinking was definately present in Mao's own thinking, I can dig up some quotes if you want.
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but the thing is there does not seem to be a dominant explanation for the whole mess |
Right, but Mao never trusted the party to nearly the extent that, say, Lenin did. Too much meglomania and primitive populism in Mao's makeup.
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Last I checked his writings consisted of many volumes. |
Quantity =! quality. I've read a collection of his works, the stuff that had anything to do with guerilla warfare were excellent and very insightful the rest weren't of much use and didn't display any really deep thinking.
And keep in mind that I don't have that much more use for orthodox Marxism than I do for Maoism.
Oh and:
7. All that ridiculousness about proper class backgrounds in which people were discriminated against according to the class of their parents (although China didn't take this to anywhere near the extent that North Korea took it, where its become almost a quasi-caste system).
Last edited by Bosh on 03-12-2003 at 22:14
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Zylka
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quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
I'll come back to deal with this thread later. |
Go deal with your Pizza Pop, instead.
Nobody wants to hear your selective babble on why China kinda sorta barely resembles Communism via five whole bold header paragraphs.
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Sandman
China's successful transition to capitalism was, in part, helped by the socialist aspects of the country. The literacy and healthcare rates were far in advance of India (the nearest comparable country), and these helped China to be competitive on the world market. The Chinese revolution also saw the end of tenant farming, and when collectivisation was finally ended in the early eighties, every peasant was given a small plot of land, helping to increase the average wealth.
Although we can't ignore the twin examples of supreme misgovernment, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in the deaths of millions of people. Ironically, the CCP is both the greatest villain and the greatest hero of the twentieth century. |
Sandman, even though you and I rarely, if ever, agree, I do agree with this post. Post Mao China is a wonder to behold.
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03-12-2003 17:49
Free Trade creates a world system and facilitates the union of workers.
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