• 0 Posts
  • 13 Comments
Joined 11 days ago
cake
Cake day: October 19th, 2024

help-circle

  • I’ve seen self described Maoists just be pro-Khmer Rouge and you could tie this with the fetishization of violence in the movement because it’s often not a critical support either that takes into account their awful situation but just saying the genocide was deserved and shit (often playing into anti-communist exaggerations of the already horrible events too). Western Maoists are a different breed tho than the CPI (Maoist) so I’m not sure about the latter’s thoughts on the matter or any of the other third world Maoist parties.

    Some Hoxhaist anti-revisionists that don’t take the whole Maoist line also cite Hoxha’s “Can the Chinese revolution be considered a proletariat revolution?” to discount the project as communist/marxist and paint it as revisionist from the beginning, laying this to blame for their tactical moves with the US


  • Leninists were, at a time, what trotskyists called themselves in opposition to “Stalinists”, where as Stalin outlined the philosophy of “Marxism-Leninism” so it’s defined in that old polemic I believe. Don’t hear Leninism too often anymore though. I think Marxism is emphasized mostly because of how he able to outline dialectical materialism as opposed to his other socialist/communist contemporaries, and even if we say Marx was more incorrect than those who came after him he’s still foundational or at least inspirational to a lot of the work that came after him. Mao built on Lenin’s theories in incredibly important ways as well but calling myself a Maoist has different connotations like Leninist might have, and ppl generally accept MZT as part of ML so it’s been an effective way of communicating the contemporary communist position (siding with Stalin over Trotsky, Sino over Soviet, MZT over Maoism).

    Considering the many great communists that have existed, even those who never took inspiration from Marx, or who saw his work as accurate and useful but not central to their communist thought (Frantz Fanon comes to mind, never feeling a need to call himself a Marxist) I generally prefer a simple “communist” as it gives a bit less eurocentrism and doesn’t pay special attention to anyone in a movement that belongs to the masses. However, “Marxism” as a name for the eternal science of dialectical materialism and it’s application is very effective as a means of communicating this school of thought and valuable contribution he made in outlining it, where as terms like “Leninism” “Maoist” “Hoxhaist” “Marxism-Leninism” “Dengist” often refer to a specific polemic outlined by an influencial figure in the overall movement as opposed to the quality of the named people’s contributions to this science or its application.







  • Bring the colonial question back in full force in all fields, namely studies into neocolonialism and the settler colonialist nature of the US, the inseparability of colonialism and capitalism, and most importantly bringing unrepresented groups like Kazakhs into the high soviets which were overwhelming Russian at the time. No toleration approach for Russian chauvinism. Going for a “reeducation by the peasants” approach for many of the detached and comfortable leadership. Teach less to the liberation movements springing up, and learn more from them.

    Do opposite glasnost, strengthen the party’s rule and policing of the second economy + incentives to not participate in it (bolstering the first economy). Bringing back Stalin iconography and what he represents while still allowing for the critical re-evaluation of his past, but emphasizing his great fight against fascism and how it’s still left to be finished. Setting up functional systemic processes for weeding out corruption and heavy emphasis on revolutionary education for the masses, reexamining all curriculum. Don’t back out of Afghanistan. Beg on my hands and knees for forgiveness by the CPC and ways to cooperate. Nuke Israel.


  • Basically he believes China is revisionist and capitalist, and the failures of socialism thus far have been through revisionism (the failure to adhere to core marxist principles). He also doesn’t cover many liberation movements that don’t fully fit the communist/marxist ideal he supports.

    IMO this view obfuscates some of the more material sources for why movements fail, most notably in his viewing the failure of the CPUSA not through its history of settler communism/labor zionism but its failure to adhere to marxist tenets leading up to the open revisionism of CPUSA’s Eric Browder, without seeing why his revisionism was so accepted and popular. This leaves praxis to adhering to a closer marxist orthodoxy that’s quite dogmatist instead of using the dialectical materialist analysis to see that the material basis for a revolution in the USA would be the superexploited native and black peoples that aren’t represented in the CPUSA or even most other communist groups.

    I remember him receiving a question on a stream once about covering the black panthers and he said he preferred not to because he didn’t like the kind of work they did or something to that effect, so he’s kinda got a big blindspot there and I would suggest you try and find some audiobooks of Gerald Horne and Frantz Fanon’s works, would also suggest Assata’s autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, Kwame Ture’s Black Power, Red Nation Rising just to name a few. Also educating yourself on China through a seperate source I’d recommends Roland Boer’s “Socialism With Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners” if you can find an audiobook “The East is Still Red” is also good, or even just reading the works of Deng/Xi Jinping for yourself, unfortunately a lot of the history and study here is in Chinese lol but I’d avoid S4A’s content on the topic personally.



  • I guess my main point is a western made video that seems to think china abandoned 5 year plans and believes conspiracies like Xi actually has a ton of secret financial assets, as well as not properly historically contextualizing the reform and opening up but opting for the ideological purism that Roland describes that westerners tend to have re:china I don’t think offers much expert insight beyond peddling some myths and “viewing china with western eyes” as roland says. Deng def made rightist mistakes and hurt class struggle on the global front (Vietnam and such) but the reform and opening up era was certainly a good move for China and kept them on the road to socialism, a step made necessary by their “chinese characteristics” and not really comparable to Khrushchev’s declaration of the end of class struggle


  • I really suggest "Socialism With Chinese Characteristics a Guide for Foreigners " on this, the author was the first non-chinese employee at the school for marxism and knows Chinese and has read marx and lenin in their original languages and has a wide knowledge of Chinese socialism. Goes over a lot of the myths this guy seems to be falling for, namely the idea that Deng abandoned class struggle and purposefully took the capitalist road, ruining the project forever. Paired with its historical materialist analysis of China and deep knowledge of party history it offers so much more than any westerner that’s never been to China could offer. I have yet to learn the opinion of maoists in the third world (something that I’d like to learn a lot more about ) but this video was pretty ahistorical and western brained tbh