I was going to post this on another blog of mine, but I thought, fuck it, we have this Mao blog, I may as well post to it. Comrades: feel free to remove my post if you feel my unilateral action is out of order.

This is the third quotation in the selected Quotations from Chairman Mao, generally known as 'the little red book':

Without the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party, without the Chinese Communists as the mainstay of the Chinese people, China can never achieve independence or liberation, or industrialization and the modernization of her agriculture.

"On Coalition Government" (April 24, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 318.*

This seems to me to be a dubious apriori assertion, in that it is not known whether, to use the obvious alternative, a KMT government, supported perhaps by the Soviet Union, or by America against the Soviet Union, might not have achieved independence and industrialized. HOWEVER, there is good reason to suspect that the KMT would not have been able to do these things. The reason for this is encapsulated in the previous quotation in the book:

Without a revolutionary party, without a party built on the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory and in the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary style, it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of the people to defeat imperialism and its running dogs.

"Revolutionary Forces of the World Unite, Fight Against Imperialist Aggression!" (November 1948), Selected Works, Vol. IV, p. 284*

That is to say that the reason why it might not be possible to become independent and industrialize without the Communist Party is that the Communist Party is, unlike the bourgeois nationalist KMT, a rigorously anti-imperialist party which will break the economic chains that keep China servile.

Compare the example of India, where the bourgeois nationalist Congress Party has pretty consistently held power since British decolonization, and where the same level of development seen in China has not taken place, despite protectionism, social democratic policies and the support of the Soviet Union and other powers from time to time. for most of that period (although India, like China has been hit hard by neoliberal globalization in recent years). Although it can be a misleading measure, the GDP per capita figures are clear enough, with China having at least twice that of India. I have lond thought that the reason for this disparity is without doubt the massive development programs unleashed by the CPC after smashing feudalism; in India, feudalism has remained entrenched and consequently remains a bar to the adoption of industrial mode of production.

Reading Mao

Dear comrades, both those signed up as authors of this blog and fellow travelers on other blogs,

Our reading group's been slow lately. I'd like to get the ball rolling again. I don't know Mao's writing well enough to really defend this, but my sense is that it divides roughly into three parts:

- organizational matters (say, the shape of the party)
- political analysis (say, the composition of the peasantry)
- philosophical work (say, work on dialectics)

I'm interested in all three, primarily the first, and I am of course happy to have this typology corrected or complicated. I'm also interested in the history of Mao(ism). I've been reading a book on Maoism and Trotskyism in the US and France, mainly because I was keen to know more about the French Maoists of the 60s and 70s.

Who is still interested in this project? What are others interested in reading? I would also be happy to expand the circle of who is in on this conversation, via adding people to this blog and/or by extending the conversation to other blogs, as long as we can keep the discussion comradely across our differences.

Please respond as to your interest and feel free to suggest a list of pieces we could read. I'd like to use the above typology (or any other) to generate a list of readings, so when we finish one we don't have to have a lag as to what to read next. (A lag because people need a break is fine as it's deliberate, an accidental lag is less acceptable.)

Best wishes,
Nate

Notes and questions on democratic centralism

Hey comrades, I feel like this is a bit scattershot, but here's my response to the piece. Thanks Celt for recommending it. From the title I really expected to respond a lot more negatively than I did as I read it.

From the preface:

They quote Mao, "Those who wish to rule and control others wish to keep them ignorant but those who wish to free the masses wish to keep them enlightened." That's a nice quote. Anyone know where he said it?

Ideological unity is the basis of all unity - I'm ambivalent about that. It all depends on what ideological unity consists in. Certainly revolutionaries must all be revolutionary. But I'm committed to an idea that people can have, for lack of a better term, objectively revolutionary demands (in some cases for some populations the demand to not be killed or consigned to a life of hyperexploitation). I'm also convinced that in some cases action on immediate interests is a better place to start than more abstract ideological points.


From the Mao piece:
Meeting procedure sounds good - distribute material, invite comment, amend based on comments, give and explain the report. I like that he recognizes the factor of time in meeting procedure. I've been to so many fucking long meetings, and people don't always realize that that's also a democracy issue - say for people who have to get home to kids and such.

Mao talks of "the present conference" - where and when was this talk given? He also talks of the "working experience of 12 years", what's the a reference to? Who is he addressing?

"Contradictions among the people can't be resolved by curses or fists, still less by knives or guns. They can be resolved only by discussion and reasoning, criticism and self-criticism. In a word, they can be resolved only by the democratic method, by letting the masses speak out."

Presumably 'the people' here means 'the working classes', not 'everyone', as there are enemies with whom discussion won't suffice. Later on he equates proletarian dictatorship with people's dictatorship, specifying that it will be "let by the proletariat and based on the alliance of the workers and peasants." The peasants, then, presumably are a subsidiary sector of the people. The communist party is the mechanism for proletarian leadership of the peasants, since the party is the vanguard of the proletariat. (As in, the party is the vanguard, or whatever is the leading sector shall function in the role as the party? I'm pretty sure it's the former.)

I like the point that under socialism errors will persist.

I find it interesting that the role of the party in being open to criticism is to explain to the masses and the cadre what the situation is, and then allow them to speak out in response.

Centralism=discipline, democracy=freedom. The former is more important for overcoming difficulties but can't exist without the latter. ("Without a high degree of centralism it is impossible to establish a socialist economy.")

Centralism requires nondivergence of views, unity of understanding, shared correct ideas. Democracy is a means for producing these conditions that make up centralism (like removing a blockage such as unexpressed opinions or unvented anger). The leadership 'merely' process the results of democracy in order to produce the unity of centralism and the formulation of lines, principles, policies, and methods. Democracy is also a means for knowing what's happening at the base. The base is/provides raw material that the leadership work over, as in a factory.

The topic of the conference he's addressing is 'opposition to decentralism,' 'strengthening centralism and unity'. What does decentralism mean? Who were its proponents?

I like the comparison of inflexible people in leadership roles with a government who will get overthrown, but it's interesting that it's an overthrowing in the form of conquest by a different state, not a revolt from below.

Exploitation no longer exists in China, according to Mao. I'm not convinced, though I have no evidence. I think exploitation does occur under socialism (as it does under social democracy). This is not to say it may not be less exploitative, more preferible, or that there may be a balance of power in this condition that favors those who are exploited (that's the most important matter).

New bourgeois elements continue to emerge in socialist society. Classes and class struggle still exist. (But not exploitation?) On what basis do these exist/emerge?

On 'On democratic centralism'

Well, this is maifestly an intervention into a specific climate, into the CCP in - well, I'm not sure what year. Still, it's clearly a didactic method aimed at guiding the practice of the Party, which is in this period clearly wavering from what it should be. I think it's important to remember here that Mao is just a participant in a struggle, albeit one with a very privileged position, who is trying to make an intervention with the aims of guiding the revolution in the right direction.

The point which most alarmed me was Mao insistence on the necessity of "unity of understanding," which seemed to me at first blush to be an insistence that all people have the same ideas, which is impossible, hence a dangerous goal to try to pusue politically. However, given the context and audience, it is clear that what Mao is trying to say is that the masses themselves must understand what is being done by the Party, and that the Party must understand the perspective of the masses, rather than the Party believing themselves to have the understanding and treating the masses like animals to be herded, which at the same time in fact must mean that the Party themselves do not understand what is going on.

The following passage appears prescient from our present perspective:

Unless we fully promote people's democracy and inner-Party democracy ad unless we fully impelement [sic] proletarian democracy, it will be impossible for China to have true proletarian centralism [i.e., as I outlined above, the unity of Party and masses — I would love to be able to analyse the Chinese on this point]. Without a high degree of democracy it is impossible to have a high degree of centralism, and without a high degree of centralism it is impossible to establish a socialist economy. And what will happen to our country if we fail to establish a socialist economy? It will turn into a revisionist state, indeed a bourgeois state, and the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, and a reactionary, fascist dictatorship at that. This is a question which very much deserves our vigilance and I hope our comrades will give it a good deal of though.

OK, so what Mao is doing here is laying out the conditions under which socialism can flourish in China. It is impossible to know whether he was right about this: I think it is clear that there wasn't that much democracy, but I think it is impossible to know how much would have been enough, or indeed if any amount would have been enough without other factors also being there. It is clear in any case that this struggle was lost and that Mao's intervention, both that showcased here and the apparently extreme intervention of launching the cultural revolution simply did not prevent the restoration of capitalism in China.

It's clear then that the 'democratic' line which Prachanda is now pushing in Nepal is based on extending the Maoist logic, attempting from the beginning to insist on democratic mechanisms that were not applied in China. Of course, this makes sense in Nepal because, unlike in China, there is already a bourgeois electoral system in place which can be harnessed towards this purpose, which seems to be the way Prachanada is pushing, which also enables him to hook up with the established parties. I ought also here to acknowledge the extent to which this thinking seems to me to come from Bob Avakian, although it also seems to me that this is pretty much the only noteworthy contribution from Avakian that I am aware of, and that both he and Prachanda seem to me to err on the side of dodgy personality cultism, as indeed does Mao.

Mao is interesting in this piece, however, in admonishing the Partymen for not having publicised Mao's own self-criticism. This in fact segues nicely with some stuff I was reading recently from Stalin apologists arguing with some plausibility that the cult of personality of Stalin served not Stalin, but rather bureaucratic functionaries, and that it was they who propagated it against Stalin's wishes. One can well believe this with Mao, particularly considering that Mao has continued to be deployed by the CCP as a symbol for them to use as a cloak for their restoration of everything Mao opposed.

COMRADES! A film about our beloved chairman has recently been made

http://www.thepassionofthemao.com/index.html

view the funny trailer

On Democratic Centralism

I suggest we read "On Democratic Centralism" next. It's mostly a practical explanation of democratic centralism, but in contains important chides at the emerging revisionist forces. For Those of you with a book of Mao's writings or access to them it is in Chairman Mao Talks to the People, Stuart Schram, 1974.

Update from Mark: this reading is the second section of this larger document from 1962 (thanks to cf for the link). If y'all haven't read the reading yet, this is probably a better source to read from as it is in html.

A few more mistaken ideas

Hey y'all,

In my response I focus on disagreements, but I like the piece quite a bit. I'd really like to know more of the historical context. The piece or the intro mentions the Red Army, formed August 1927 during the Nanchang uprising. I've searched a bit (not a lot, I confess) and haven't found much on this. It also mentions a Communist Party organization within the Red Army, presumably then the Army itself was not a Communist organization, at least not in origin or in direction initially. That's all really interesting. Any advice on short stuff to read, preferably online? Maybe this blog could start linking to occasional relevant pieces of historical background? I'd find that useful, but I don't think I have enough bearings yet to really contribute to the collection of that sort of material. After I had more of a starting grasp on the history I could be more helpful along those lines. In any case, onto the article, so y'all can correct me ...

I don't find the causal connection between mistaken ideas and class background compelling. Given that people can be convinced out of their ideas by the Party's leading bodies and be educated into the correct line, clearly class does not determine consciousness. Perhaps this is more of a historical (rather than historical materialist?) point, though - along the lines of 'generally, it is the case that many people from X background hold Y ideas, and it is likely that many of them who come into our organization will have done so without having changed those ideas change.' This would be something like Mao's diagnosis of a 'low political level' existing empirically w/in the ranks. If that's the case, then no objection from me. I just don't see any worthwhile use to (nor do I believe in) the appeal to origins, especially in any kind of strong sense.

I like the piece about workers and peasants with experience in struggle taking on leadership roles in the Red Army.

I don't like the 'petty bourgeois individualistic aversion to discipline' thing in the criticism of ultra-democracy. That's just an ad hominem. I'm not I would agree with Mao about the correct balance of democracy and class struggle, nor am I convinced at the ability of the higher bodies to make objective decisions, at a minimum there's an epistemological problem here that is immediately political: who determines what objectivity is in this context? And if the lower bodies and the masses aren't qualified to judge the objectivity of the higher bodies - because presumably without access to objectivity one can not judge whether or not someone else has access to an objective perspective and is acting correctly based on that objective perspective - then genuinely revolutionary decisions based on objective bases and self-interested decisions based on a sectorial interest must look the same from the lower perspective. If someone below objects to an objective decision wrongly or to a self-interested decision rightly, in both cases the response will be "you are not fit to judge" presumably with the balance of ideological and organizational power tipped in favor of the higher bodies. I have a hard time distinguishing this from 'shut up and obey.' I'm also curious how this relates to the 'minority should agree to go along with the majority decision' line. If there was some situation wherein the majority/minority distribution was such that the minority was the leadership (the higher bodies) and the minority was everyone else presumably Mao would not agree that the minority should go along with the majority.

This is great: "Inner-Party criticism is a weapon for strengthening the Party organization and increasing its fighting capacity. In the Party organization of the Red Army, however, criticism is not always of this character, and sometimes turns into personal attack. As a result, it damages the Party organization as well as individuals. (...) The method of correction is to help Party members understand that the purpose of criticism is to increase the Party's fighting capacity in order to achieve victory in the class struggle and that it should not be used as a means of personal attack."

Many other Marxists could learn from this. But there's still a problem with regard to what is and is not a personal attack. Mao says that personal criticism is "a manifestation of petty-bourgeois individualism," which strikes me as at least potentially itself a personal attack, depending on its use in context. Particularly given that "the main task of criticism is to point out political and organizational mistakes," what difference does the appeal to origins make? To my mind that difference is a political one not aimed at educating the comrade involved but rather at politically isolating them. I'm willing to concede that some situations may well require that type of activity, but this is not criticism, it's political intrigue and machination, and the difference should be one we're aware of (though, of course, political machination that admits that that's what it is will be unlikely to succeed).

"Absolute equalitarianism, like ultra-democracy in political matters, is the product of a handicraft and small peasant economy--the only difference being that the one manifests itself in material affairs, while the other manifests itself in political affairs." Again with this stuff... what's the deal with this?

I think this is a pretty good criticism of socialism: "under socialism (...) things will then be distributed on the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work"" in that socialism retains the pegging of means of subsistence to labor, which is essentially value production, and given that there must still be a coordinating body (class) like the Party who will also need to be supported, there will still be surplus value extraction. I am, of course, all for the redistributive aspects of socialism - I would happily emigrate to a country with a more intact welfare state etc - but this is still a form of capitalism.

This is great: "Some people want to increase our political influence only by means of roving guerrilla actions, but are unwilling to increase it by undertaking the arduous task of building up base areas and establishing the people's political power."

I don't know enough of the history to actually back this claim up if push came to shove regarding specific past example, but I think this could apply to many cases of armed struggle of the clandestine variety - the Red Brigades, the Weathermen, etc - and of the occasional fetishizing of this kind of activity in some lefty circles in North America (often expressed in terms of wishing some 'real' action would take place). Also, in a different context, "roving guerilla" could be replaced with "PR-related" and it would describe a lot of other activity that takes place, including some bigger union campaigns, activity which doesn't know how to or isn't interested in building rank and file power.


Along the same lines, "some people follow the line of "hiring men and buying horses" and "recruiting deserters and accepting mutineers"," which the footnote describes as follows:

"In the application of these methods, attention was paid to numbers rather than to quality, and people of all sorts were indiscriminately recruited to swell the ranks."

I think this is pretty important, in the sense that organization must be deliberate, and must assess based on both quantity and quality. It is the case that more is more, but more of what? More people holding membership cards? What's that really mean? I've seen this in some of the nonprofit places I've worked, where the idea is just to get people to call themselves members, with little attention paid to the capacities of members either in terms of targeted recruitment based on organizational/campaign needs (a la "Draw active workers and peasants experienced in struggle into the ranks of the Red Army so as to change its composition") or in terms of member education.

I think the emphasis on education, especially internal education, is one of the main virtues of this piece, and while I disagree on several respects (disagreements I've already voiced), clearly Mao had success around his goals which suggests that his emphasis on education is something to emulate organizationally, even though I differ on some of the contents and the organizational forms. I also really like that education isn't simply 'produce correct ideas' a la the vulgar "we need to have a line on X issue" of sectarian groups, but includes an organizational infrastructure and practice - meeting procedures and the like, techniques. That's super important and is in some respects much more materialist (not that the name matters all that much, more important is that it's much more effective).

Over and out.

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.