Hi! Long time lurker, first time poster. Been discussing stuff with MLs of all stripes recently, and have come across a common statement used by a lot of Maoists which frustrates me.
They seem to always fall back on statements like "The CPC allows billionaires in their ranks, so they are revisionist."
Maoists have often used this as a kind of "gotcha" argument against more traditional MLs, or "Dengists" as they love to label us.
It's frustrating, because...I don't disagree really, allowing members of the bourgeoisie to hold political power is pretty much the definition of revisionism. The problem is, this feels more like a way to silence dissent or discussion rather than facilitate it. Feels like an overly simplistic hard line that simplifies history into binary divisions. Often followed by an implied "China is revisionist, therefore Maoism is the only working form of socialism."
I'm reaching out to people to see if anyone has any ways to combat this, in a way that encourages discussion rather than it just devolving into insults or truisms hurled back and forth without thought.
China is kinda revisionist. It is making a gamble through its special economic zones and embedding in global capital, and there are real fights among those with power about which direction(s) to go. There are even neoliberals, usually Western-trained, vying for power and influence over policy. Under Xi, many of these elements have been weakened, but hardly totally. There are also various kinds of communist there all pulling in other directions.
On the plus side, the gamble is working out pretty great so far. The need to reign in the great satan is paramount and China is doing that. The communist party also has primary control over the country, including making sweeping decisions about whole sectors and preventing the takeover of finance capital (it really needs to do even more on that, though).
Anyways revisionism tends to be a silly word. Orthodoxy doesn't matter, only accurate analysis and socialist revolution matter (in that domain). The conditions of countries all over the planet would require "revisionism" for any real revolution to happen there and Mao was called a revisionist in his time. Building revolution primarily from the peasantry was a big deal, quite different from other folks who had tried purist approaches of building the proletarian class up first (including a similar suggestion by the USSR itself that this is how revolution must develop in China).
The key to a healthy perspective on revisionism is really just whether someone, or some project, is incorrect. Whether they understand their country, the people, the material base, and can apply Marxist theory nevertheless to reach truth.
Oh for sure, there is a discussion to be had about China, I don't really know of anyone who isn't just a Chinese nationalist that would say China hasn't deviated from a pure socialist path. But like you've said, it's a gamble, one that seems to be paying off for them. Though time will tell if it actually does, or if they end up going the way of the USSR.
I was more pointing out the tendency (at least in my experience with them) for (online) Maoists to basically just behave like left-coms when it comes to China, just declaring them "revisionist" and stopping their investigation there. Simply ignoring their historical material conditions and insisting China was perfectly fine before evil revisionist Deng came to power like an evil dictator. They do the work of the US state department for them half the time.
People who start and end the conversation on China with a one-liner like that aren't really part of a Maoist program either, since they should be explaining themselves and trying to recruit. Instead, they are employing a conversation-stopper, which will really just be a way to feel good about themselves, or to protect themselves.
If they're even Maoists, they're not very good ones.
Hence why I put the (online) bit there. I've had solid conversations with Maoists about China, where we can recognise the same positives and negatives, but ultimately feel differently about the nation.
But a lot of terminally online Maoists tend to just be exactly what you're talking about. People who are just trying to jerk themselves off over how much better they are than revisionist MLs. Obviously, this isn't exclusive to Maoists either. It's a tendency amongst all of the online left really, where those who need to "touch grass" really badly tend to be overly humourless and demand others accept their position without question. I welcome people making fun of MLs, something like: "No you don't understand, the billionaires are just there for the productive forces you guys! Seriously, it's all part of the plan! Just trust us!"
I don't really trust anyone who can't handle people making fun of their own position, if they take themselves too seriously they'll never convince anyone. People don't want to join an ideology that requires a stick to be installed up their ass.
First of all, don't start by assuming there is anything to refute - never accept the premise of an anti-communist argument without investigating whether it's actually true! Does China really have billionaires in the ranks of the party or is that just a myth that has been popularized to try and discredit the CPC in the eyes of gullible western leftists with ultra tendencies? If they do then how many and in what positions? What is the proportion of capitalists to non-capitalists in the party, and more importantly how much actual influence and power do they really have?
Do not simply accept the framing of these sorts of "gotchas", you must always dig deeper and investigate beyond the cliche phrases and surface appearances, instead looking into the actual dialectical conditions that exist. Whether or not individual capitalist elements are allowed in the ranks of the party says nothing about the fundamental class character of the party itself. If the party was supposedly taken over by revisionist and bourgeois forces, then how is it that the way the Chinese state and economy are run and the results that their system produces are still so radically different from what we see in Western capitalist systems? If the same class is supposedly in power in China as in the West why are they not experiencing the same social and economic dynamics? If the CPC is so revisionist why has it not liberalized the country into the ground and abolished itself like the CPSU did once it was hijacked by revisionists?
And bear in mind that what happened in the USSR happened despite there technically being no capitalists whatsoever in their ruling party right up until that party voluntarily totally disempowered itself and dissolved the dictatorship of the proletariat handing the country to the enemies of the working class on a silver platter. Clearly one must look not just at the composition (though that also matters) but at the guiding ideology and the dominant political line within the party, in addition to how the party is organized and how it governs in practice.
Ah! Thank you! That's exactly the problem I've been having. I've been feeling lost when I try to understand them, because I've been feeling obligated to discuss these things on their terms. I can't challenge the ideas that AES are revisionist without feeling dogpiled, and I can't bring up ideas of how the western left is obsessed with purity and matyrdom without being told that they are sick of being accused of having a purity fetish. (Funny how MLs keep saying the same things to them and they just respond with "stop saying that" rather than analyzing why people say it) Hell, when talking to them, it feels like I can't bring up any counter points at all without being told I'm "stifling discussion" or something. Hence my initial question. I'm perpetually on the defensive because they take these things as gospel and state them with the confidence of a smug liberal. It's all a smokescreen, saying something technically or arguably true, that misses the forest for the trees. It's frustrating, because I really do want to understand their arguments and point of view, but it all seems to boil down (sorry) to this sort of thing. Just ignoring overall material conditions in favour of purity tests. A shame I can't really get this across to any Maoists without just getting banned or blocked (hell, I'll probably be banned from at least one discord server just for posting that initial question here.) But if their response to someone trying to understand their form of Marxism is to shut them out, it only shows their lack of understanding.
One of the things i really appreciate about ML spaces is the ability to address controversial subjects and not be immediately shut down for it in the way it happens in liberal and ultra spaces. And if someone is egregiously wrong but is engaging in an honest fashion and not just trying to troll there are always comrades who are ready and willing to educate them and explain exactly how and why they are wrong.
Sometimes this takes a lot of effort, and it can become tiresome and we always have to remain cognizant that getting communists to waste their time having to explain the same thing over and over again is a wrecker tactic, so it may be necessary on occasion in the interest of saving time to simply point people in the direction of sources they can go to learn more.
But on the whole i find that we can generally tell when someone is engaging in good faith and we are willing to discuss and explain. I don't find the same willingness in ultra-left spaces to engage with arguments and do the work of investigating what the actual facts are. Reality is messy and complex and not always so black and white as they prefer to pretend.
Instead ultras adopt the liberal preference for simple, well-established narratives that are considered true by virtue of being repeated often enough, and of course the prioritizing of moralistic idealism and ideological purity over actual materialist analysis and engaging with the real world as it exists not as we may wish it.
Instead ultras adopt the liberal preference for simple, well-established narratives that are considered true by virtue of being repeated often enough, and of course the prioritizing of moralistic idealism and ideological purity over actual materialist analysis and engaging with the real world as it exists not as we may wish it
Perhaps a little strangely, this paragraph evoked in me the memory of "All Cops Are Bastards (Including "Socialist" Ones!)" discourse I was subjected (and sometimes contributed) to in online anarchist circles.
An example of what I'm talking about
Show
All virtue signaling and no substance beyond sloganeering. All cops means all cops! Wow, so true! The cool-ass slogan says "all cops", why wouldn't that include north Korean or Chinese cops?
As if "police" serve nearly the same function under a dictatorship of the proletariat as they do under a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The nonsense 'police protect the interests of capital and private property, that is their sole purpose'... I've heard it often from those aforementioned anarchists. Extrapolating the roles and actions of the Amerikan police onto the socialist world is just another example of the ultra (and the orientalist)'s incredible aptitude for projection.
Sorry, fellow Amerikans! The rest of the world is not so fucking savage as we are. DPRKorean police actually serve the people, you know, like law enforcement should in civilized society? Chinese police protect striking workers!
Amerikan cops are the ones murdering black folk en masse, not Chinese ones, not Iranian ones, not Korean ones, not Russian ones... take your "all cops" and shove it.
edit: (ACAB is still a good slogan tho and all Amerikan cops most certainly are, even the kindest ones)
It just felt like I was missing something the whole time while trying to talk to them.
I've read a bit of Maoist theory and listened to them, but it just feels really...unexciting? Like PPW is basically just standard guerilla tactics. They insist it isn't, but it feels like it is special because they assign special value to it, not because it actually has additional value beyond that.
It's a shame, because they really do seem to be sincere in their beliefs, and the optimism with which they will defend Maoist groups, insisting that none have ever truly failed is almost admirable. I wish I had their optimism and confidence in my position.
I just don't understand them. It really seems like they are Maoists because it provides them with the same simple black and white worldview that Liberals have, just replacing Harry Potters and Voldemorts with Gonzalo and Revisionists/Capitalists.
I really feel like I'm missing something, but I also feel like I can't talk to them without them just telling me I'm wrong loudly and aggressively, but not substantively, never telling me why I am wrong, just that I am and should accept what they say. I don't know how they ever hope to reach people with this mentality.
I don't know if i have enough knowledge on the theory of Protracted People's War to say how it differs from regular guerilla warfare, but certainly the kind of guerilla warfare that for example Che Guevara describes in his famous manual on guerilla warfare seems to either have arrived independently at some of the same strategies or have been inspired by it.
As for the various ultra-left tendencies, i am on the whole not too worried about them. I personally gravitate towards believing in a kind of natural selection of ideologies in the sense that those ideological frameworks that are not rooted in reality will, over time, tend to be supplanted by those that are simply because the latter will invariably achieve better results in practice. Maoism has all but died out as a politically relevant ideology with the exception of a few frozen guerilla conflicts that have been treading water for decades never actually managing to seize state power.
Of course the degree to which such idealism manages to take root in the revolutionary movement, even if only temporarily, still matters because it can weaken revolutionary forces and delay their victory or cause them to blunder into some pretty serious setbacks. It is for this reason that COINTELPRO has tried to foster ultra left deviationism, promoting it over the ideologies that have an actual track record of success and which the bourgeois state actually fears.
But as it becomes increasingly impossible to deny the success of AES states and all of the progress and development that they are achieving, it will be harder and harder to still convince people to subscribe to these unserious and by now mostly meme ideologies. They will still exist in niche online communities but the people doing real work in the real world will have very little interest in them.
In the Maoist circles I was in, Che's Guerilla Warfare was considered mandatory reading.
It was pretty good, really inspiring honestly, though I can't speak to the universality of the tactics. I especially liked the bit where he admonished western leftists who excused lack of revolution on the presupposed indestructibility of the imperial militaries. Of course, Che did not have to face drones and robot dogs.
He does, however, make explicit note of how poor Cuban revolutionaries overthrew a military dictatorship supported by U.S. aircraft and other technologies well beyond the means of Cuban workers.
Funnily, though mandatory reading in my circle, I have seen Gonzaloite tweets come out since then denouncing Che's Guerilla Warfare as "Focoist revisionism", among other things. I do not see how becoming so enraged at a successful revolutionary giving tips on making revolution helps anyone, but ultras are a silly lot.
allowing members of the bourgeoisie to hold political power is pretty much the definition of revisionism.
Here's one of the holes.
Being a member of the CPC doesn't grant you political power any more than being a registered Democrat or Republican does. You get a vote in party matters just like Pubs and Dems get a vote in closed caucuses or primaries, and that's the extent of 'power' you get it at basic membership.
Being a wealthy party member gets you less advantage in the CPC because of the strict regulations on how money can be used in politics, i.e. you can't influence through donation. You also get excluded from considerstion for promotion. You get the same voice as every other member, and put on committees that match your area of expertise, but you're not on the promotion track toward the Central Committee if you're a billionaire.
Jack Ma built up Ant Group in the private sector and got rich but not promoted, Jiang Zemin built up First Auto Works in the state-owned sector and got promoted but not rich. They are not the same.
allowing members of the bourgeoisie to hold political power is pretty much the definition of revisionism
I'm also curious as to where this is defined.
Maybe you find this essay has some useful ways to think about it: https://redsails.org/china-has-billionaires/
It quotes from mainstream media sources to support the charge that the communist party keeps their reins on the billionaires in a way that just doesn't happen in capitalist countries, with an eye towards long term goals.
Name one time in the past 50 years that a western country has nationalized the assets of, and imprisoned or executed a corrupt billionaire found to be violating or manipulating the law to their benefit.
China on the other hand has no qualms with that. Even if allowing the corruption to continue might even be…. Profitable, in some circumstances.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/05/china-sentences-top-banker-to-death-for-corruption-and-bigamy
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-07-23/china-executes-14-billionaires-in-8-years-culture-news-reports#xj4y7vzkg
The bigamy thing is sad though. I'm not poly and don't understand them, but I think it's wrong to force all people to be monogamous. Many people aren't naturally monogamous and will be miserable when forced into it.
It was charged because he was cheating and his other wife was completely unaware of the other marriage and his second family. Something that should absolutely be punished. Polygamy must still be consensual.
And yet china refuses to make policies that support billionaires and benefit the bourgeoisie class specifically, they instead do the opposite and fuck them over to the point where western media makes articles about how china is fucking over billionaires as if that's a bad thing.
That's what separates MLs from reactionaries and people like maoists who do not understand dialectical materialism and operates on idealism and being dogmatic.
If china really were revisionist they would be stripping social safety nets, reducing funding for public infrastructure, increasing privatization of everything that's currently public and increasing policies favoring the bourgeoisie. Change happens in elliptical motion. For example when the USSR became revisionist they switched over real quick and policies favoring the proletariat were quickly stripped away in favor of pro bourgeoisie ones. The revisionists in powere immediately enriched themselves with this.
Maoists and reactionaries don't look at objective material reality.
From the little I know (which is admittedly not a lot) China did seem to be sliding towards revisionism during the late 90's through the aughts (I think the aughts were maybe the bigger issue). In that there was so much deep corruption at all levels. Which is certainly something Xi has made a point to both acknowledge and began dealing with. I read somewhere last year or so, that it really caught the US intelligence agencies with their guards down when Chinese intelligence agents were starting to do things to show off that they knew who was in the pockets of the US and the West. I think that the issue with what has become known as "Dengism" is that the push to allow a bit of bourgeois stage of development for catching up with modern industrialism and whatnot was given too much freedom. Which allowed for folks to claim that China is socialist in name only (I really didn't mean for that to be a pun so sorry for that). It is awesome to see that the party and the current leadership is being so focused on correcting the mistakes. While also making sure to keep pushing for advancements as China is getting closer and closer in closing the remaining gaps in technical and industrial processes.
I just personally hope that they are able to push for getting the 996 stuff removed. I know they did rule that it isn't constitutional, but it is still (from what I can gather) a thing that is a mindset and just kind of expected in various industries. Which being fair to China isn't just a them thing, as it is in Japanese and Korean cultures too. But that is all just my opinion and I am not Chinese, and haven't been there or worked there. So I am willing to yield to being super wrong on that and really all the above.
The amendment to the constitution of the CPC in 2002 allowed "any advanced element of other social strata" to join the party, this was and still is controversial even among party members.
Private entrepreneurs do not equate to capitalists, though they do attract the same negative sentiments due to capitalistic tendencies. There are national laws and party rules/regulations that prevent both civil servants and party-member leading cadres from holding posts in private enterprises. So private entrepreneurs can join the party, but cannot hold government or party posts unless they stop participating in private businesses.
From Law of the People’s Republic of China on Civil Servants:
Article 59 Civil servants shall abide by disciplinary rules and laws. They shall not commit any of the following acts:
(16) Engaging or participating in for-profit activities and concurrently holding a post in enterprises or other for-profit organizations in violation of relevant regulations;
Note that out of the 96.7 million CPC members (as of 2021), there are
- 25.9 million farmers/herdsmen/fishermen
- 15.5 million technical personnel
- 10.9 million in management positions
- 7.8 million party/government workers
- 6.6 million skilled workers
- 3.1 million students
- 7.5 million in other professions
- 19.4 million retired personnel
Not saying that private entrepreneurs don't have any voice, but they are a very small minority in both political representation and political power.
One of the stars on the PRC's flag is for the petite bourgeoisie. It's a continuation of new democracy (https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/New_Democracy) started under Mao.
Maoists don't care about any of this, yesterday I had one tell me Chinese people were "literally fleeing" the countryside after the communes were disbanded. When I pointed out they were now staying in the countryside (since at least 2018) because the level of development was catching up to that of the cities, they suddenly disengaged.
The wierd thing with this argument is that there isn't even a clear contradiction with the very basis of Mao's action and theory. Just look at the flag of the PRC : it is a reference to a speech where Mao defines the four classes of Chinese society that converges towards the Party (hence the four stars pointing at one big star). Those four classes are, obviously the proletariat and peasantry, but also the urban bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. Note that there is no ambiguity on what bourgeoisie means here, since there is two dedicated stars to include both the intellectual and cultural elite but also the national-level property owners.
If the national bourgeoisie is represented on the flag of the PRC as a class that is united with the others around the Party then why would they be barred from entering the party like every citizen who's able to pass the test.
Mao was never about pressing the Communism button and destroying the national bourgeoisie, he was about building the ship that will eventually lead the people to Communism after a long trip where the national bourgeoisie has a role to play.
