The Question of Individualism

An interesting piece. It clearly follow's Lenin's line that the industrial proletariat are conditioned to accept discipline, which for Lenin is a primary mode of capitalism's sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Mao seems to think that though the Chinese peasantry are not naturally inclined to accept discipline, that they can be conditioned to do so with a modicom of political education - Mao's thinking has, I think, been powerfully born out by the results in this regard, so I think he must have been right about that.

I expect questions about post-Fordism will raise their heads here: the modern workplace does not enforce discipline, but rather encourages and harnesses petty bourgeois individualism etc.

Such questions seem to me to be only a relatively small aspect of the general problem of revolution in the contemporary First World - or indeed, in the First World in general, where it's really just never taken off. It seems fairly clear that People's War is a strategy which can only be applied in agrarian societies with a relatively weak state. The only group I know of who think otherwise are the new French Parti Communiste (marxiste-léniniste-maoïste). I'm not very clear what kind of armed struggle they would advocate, moreover. It seems quite likely that one would have to advocate an urban guerilla stretegy à la the RAF, which then seems to me like it would come under Mao's heading of 'vagabondage' and 'putschism' - though the circumstances being so different, perhaps we can't take Mao's 1929 comments as speaking against such strategies in 21st century Europe - though of course there are any number of other reasons for repudiating them!

Broadly I am sympathetic to the repudiation of individualism and, a fortiori, subjectivism, on the epistemological grounds that individuals are generally not in any kind of position to make overall strategic decisions, and moreover since I think an objective analysis is superior to one conducted at from the point of view of the contents of consciousness. Still, there are always in war times when the commanders are out of touch with the real situation and where soldiers on the front line do indeed know better. And the great general argument for military democracy is surely based on this fact. While ultra-democracy is (by definition) too anarchic, we might ask whether democratic centralism is really democratic enough - I'm in fact not clear on exactly how much democracy is being advocated here.