>Those not wondering what a Maoist is wonder how I could have been one. It’s a historical moment that has vanished without a trace.
>In the early 1970s, when I came of age politically, the U.S. government was raining death on Vietnam abroad and hunting down Black militants at home. The system manifestly required more than a little tinkering to be set right. Anyhow, I had committed myself not just to a reformed world but a world turned upside down. For all its Marxist pretences, Russia seemed to resemble the United States. The grey-on-grey of Soviet-style socialism didn’t exactly fire the imagination. On the other hand, China appeared on the brink of ushering in a new world. Those coming back from Maoist China echoed the writer Lincoln Steffens on his return from Lenin’s Russia: “I have seen the future, and it works.” From Chairman Mao down to the ordinary worker and peasant, everyone seemed to be practicing a simple, austere lifestyle, contemptuous of bourgeois amenities and devoted to a larger collective purpose. I still remember the sense of moral inferiority on my first sighting of a real-life exemplar of this “new socialist man” from China (in fact, a woman, Carmelita Hinton, daughter of famed Maoist author William Hinton) at a left-wing conference in New York. Shamed by my bourgeois baggage, I decided against introducing myself to her.
>Maoism seemed irrefutable proof of an alternative to the rat-race existence. To cynics who maintained that creating a society based on non-acquisitive values was utopian, I replied: Look at China! It was even said that petty theft had disappeared. Bicycles weren’t chained up, lost items were returned. While I was taking a nap late one winter’s night in my college student centre, someone stole my brand new work shoes from, literally, right under my feet. Furious at the theft and having had to walk home barefoot in the slush, the next day in my Chinese foreign policy class I indignantly declared, “This wouldn’t have happened in China!” Many of my classmates no doubt silently thought that it served this self-righteous ass**** right.
>The precepts of Chinese Communism mirrored my own of a decent society. Prime Minister Chou En-Lai always had pinned to his lapel the button, “Serve the people.” Praising the wisdom and dignity of ordinary workers, a Mao quotation declared that the “workers and peasants were the cleanest people, and even though their hands were soiled and their feet smeared with cow-dung, they were really cleaner than the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intellectuals.” A sports meet in China would open and close with the chant, “Friendship first, competition second.” The eyes of a sceptical female co-worker of mine lit up when I quoted Mao’s aphorism, “Women hold up half the sky.” In one parable I emotionally recited, Mao wrote, “Death can be weightier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather. To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to die for the fascists and oppressors is lighter than a feather.”
>What clinched my disenchantment was the increasing sterility of Bettelheim’s, and my own, “problematic.” After Mao’s death, his heirs, the “Gang of Four,” were in short order dethroned, and his legacy was dismantled. The theory of socialist transition, on which I intended to write my doctoral dissertation, seemed more than ever divorced from reality. In addition, the rapid collapse of Maoism forced me to rethink many of my beliefs. There must have been a lot more rot at the core of the Chinese Revolution than I was led—and allowed myself to be led, and led others—to believe. What hurt most for someone who thought he knew so much was how foolish he had been. I remember one non-believer telling this true believer that, before I ever got to China, there would be a McDonald’s at the Great Wall. I sneeringly dismissed his “petty-bourgeois” cynicism. (He in turn recoiled at being labelled merely a “petty” and not a full-fledged bourgeois.) Well, a McDonald’s did open for business at the Great Wall while I lost all interest in making pilgrimage to China. In fact, from the day the Gang of Four was overthrown to this day I’ve not opened a single book or read through to the end a single news article on China. The wound runs deep, the pain lingers. For the first three weeks after the coup I could barely make it out of bed. I was later told that Bettelheim had to be hospitalized. Whether, in my case, this was due more to disappointment or embarrassment, I cannot say. In any event, I learned an important, albeit excruciating, lesson: de omnibus dubitandum (Marx’s credo).
>>2824004Truth nuke. obviously there’s a lot of complexity in these movements but I really wish these people people would actually read about what was militarily happening with them instead of cheering for every “left-wing” group some diaspora student they met at university supported. Like Christ, I’ve met Western leftists who support the PPP.
>>2824002i read that all in his voice
Mark Rudd talked about something similar with the Weather Underground during the Nixon–Mao talks. people were literally wailing, crying and bedridden. They genuinely believed it was ‘over’ that they’d been betrayed first by the Soviets and now by the CCP.
I have a hard time considering western maoist as anything beside an edgy posture and terrorism considering the western peasantry was basically dead when it started while rurality was already becoming moribund
>>2824088>Basically, he argues that the USA never developed even a basic socdem labor party They did though. The Democrats were America's social democratic party from the New Deal period until their neoliberal turn in the 90s.
>>2824093they were only social democrats for a very brief period, not even in the new deal era, but from 72-84
>>2824088>>2824093This is one of those after the fact sweeping generalizations that never really looks at things objectively. After WWII the overwhelming majority of labor unions joined the AFL-CIO, which was closely aligned with the Republican Party. Meanwhile, the ‘Old Left’ was fading and the New Left was rising through universities and academia. Broadly similar things were happening in France and Britain too.
This was basically the culmination of the New Left’s argument, that the traditional working class wouldn’t lead the revolution, instead it would come from a global marginalized class, which included university students. They held onto that delusion until the Nixon–Mao talks happened and it became clear there wasn’t going to be some Chianco/black Maoist uprising either and they would became regular Democrat voters.
What you were left with in the end was a movement that dominated academia but couldn’t connect with working-class people to save its life
>>2824128I mean the New Left stuff just sounds like ethno-religious conflict again preventing a solidly labor party. But also globalism and the Vietnam War this time.
From my reading on 20th-century American politics, regardless of how one views the Democrats or Republicans, it’s easy to see how they remained the only viable political forces. The American far left largely rallied around Maoism and Third Worldism, which became something of a grand delusion for many activists. When the Nixon–Mao talks took place it dealt a devastating spiritual and ideological blow to them. More radical left-wing groups were often too disorganized or incompetent to seriously challenge the state or inflict significant damage, whereas far-right groups were far more operationally effective and often more dangerous in their acts of terrorism, which consequently drew greater attention from the FBI.
>>2824128They were wrong about "marginalized classes" leading The Revolution but correct about the working class not having the potential for it.
>>2824308They needed to look at the material conditions. In the United States the post-war economic order was largely supportive of pro-state labor unions and because America functioned as the world’s primary industrial center, this arrangement delivered substantial economic benefits to the working class. This system was ultimately unsustainable. With the rise of neoconservatism and neoliberalism, the working class was gradually abandoned as cheaper sources of industrial production emerged abroad. That was the critical moment when the left could have consolidated working-class support, but by then their reputation had already deteriorated. Obviously, hindsight is 20/20, but they have no one to blame but themselves.
Ultimately, it was the RCP and certain other New Communist Movement sects that had it more right than both the Old and the rest of the New Left on the "proletarianization" front in the 70s. That they couldn't pivot to supply a formidable resistance to the offshoring and deindustrialization waves of the 80s was the great tragedy no one really talks about, not that there was much they could do in the short time they broke into the scene after the RYM II vs Weatherman debate/split.
>>2824004I's funny how people rave about "western leftism" and how the 60s destroyed the socialism movement due to CIA or whatever. But anti-imperialis and "opressed nations" are ideas that come from that time lmao.
>>2824349(They were bad ideas tbh tbh)
>>2824295>The American far left largely rallied around Maoism and Third Worldism, which became something of a grand delusion for many activists.In the 1960s, 1970s yeah. But going back to the Old Left, the relationship between the CPUSA (when it was really peak Stalinist) and the New Deal coalition in the 1930s is a highly weird and interesting period, like you have this one relatively big communist organization that was also acting like the DSA's right does today. By right I mean the sectors of the DSA that you really see in New York City which Mamdani came out of.
>More radical left-wing groups were often too disorganized or incompetent to seriously challenge the state or inflict significant damage, whereas far-right groups were far more operationally effective and often more dangerous in their acts of terrorism, which consequently drew greater attention from the FBI.An underexplored thing is the relationship between far-right groups and local police departments. Like if you've met people who were active in the hard left in the 70s (who are old now), it's not uncommon to hear stories about having the local police plant bombs under their cars, or do drive-bys. Also shortwave and pirate radio was big then so leftists would set up transmitter towers and then the cops would blow them up.
I wouldn't say the repression was anything close to Latin America. But reading a bit about this book
>>2824088 and one of the theories is that the American state's repression is one of the major reasons for the lack of an American labor party. But it might also be that the American state seems less repressive than in Latin America because the U.S. state has been much stronger. The Colombian state historically was much more violent towards leftists but it was also weaker and didn't control swathes of rural territory.
BTW there was an interesting English filmmaker named Peter Watkins who made faux documentaries in the 60s, 70s and one depicted an authoritarian U.S. that rounds up leftists and sends them on death marches. I think this was the inspiration for that one MIA video.
>>2824349>I's funny how people rave about "western leftism" and how the 60s destroyed the socialism movement due to CIA or whatever. But anti-imperialis and "opressed nations" are ideas that come from that time lmao.Yeah a lot of that is very bizarre, and I've held for awhile that the contemporary CPUSA is actually more similar to the "Old Left" than, say, Caleb Maupin is. There's just a more direct line between that and their program. Actually sit down and read "People's Front" by Earl Browder and you'll recognize it.
>>2824453>if you don't like gulag or peasants dying for industrialization you're cia o algoyawn
>>2824479<if you don't like gulag or peasants dying for industrialization you're cia o algoYes
>>2824446Hey what is meant by the first sentence of Orientalism being a falsification?
Is it talking about the opening quote by Marx?
<They cannot represent themselves, they must be representedWhere Marx is talking about french peasants but Said seemingly implies that he's talking about the orient?
I can see that as a falsification I suppose, but how exactly does Said subsequently reject historical materialism?
This is just a guy who aged out of being an activist and was never a serious revolutionary. He got disallusioned just because the people he supported lost to the capitalists rather than because they actually got proven wrong. This isn't even a criticism against Maoism it's just purely emotional shit. He never really was a Maoist or believed in Maoism as an ideology he was just rooting for his favourite sports star on the world stage. It's pathetic and nowadays he is just some rich intellectual who isn't even a Communist.
Anyway the idea Western Maoism died is just laughable. The 60s and 70s were only the beginning of Maoism.
>>2824530So he doesn't really explicitly reject historical materialism then?
>>2824678He literally does
>>2824677>he was just rooting for his favourite sports star on the world stage.that's all western leftists
>Anyway the idea Western Maoism died is just laughable. The 60s and 70s were only the beginning of Maoism.What, some irreverent university professor or an equally irreverent union in a district in a Democratic state?
>>2824677>rich intellectualFinkelstein? Hardly rich. Alan Dershowitz basically destroyed his academic career so his ability to find consistent work teaching has been difficult. He lives a pretty austere lifestyle in in a rent-stabilized apartment he inherited from his parents.
>>2824708>He literally doesProvide the quote then
>>2824815>Marx himself was both extraordinarily insightful and disappointingly limited when it came to the Orient.>“In the case of Marx, at least, it is possible to argue that his attempts to be aware of the injustice of British colonialism were defeated by the fact that he was still trapped within Orientalist discourse.”at the same time, he was sucking off Focault
>>2824708>What, some irreverent university professor or an equally irreverent union in a district in a Democratic state?Unironically educate yourself. Also why are you assuming I was only talking about America? I know it's difficult for some of you to understand but the entire world is not America.
>>2824814Ok but still a liberal academic who is not a communist.
>>2824834You said Western Maoists?
>>2824832This is just saying Marx might have had a western european bias? Nothing too controversial or incorrect. You might agree or disagree with it, but that is not a rejection of historical materialism at all
imagine being a boomer communist and like seeing the fall of the soviet union and china opening up to nixon and deng embracing capitalism.
Must have been very black pilling events
>>2824855Imagine being a silent generation communist and seeing all the lib red flag countries popping up.
>>2824853Doesn't matter, he still thought a pedo rapist was a better alternative
>>2824868Thank you for conceding that your little meme is inaccurate
>>2824349it is pretty funny how people will hate on western leftists while being a leftist in the west shilling Marcuse's old thesis about "substratum of outcasts and outsiders" being the new revolutionary class.
>>2824002>>2824939>>2824295I have a theory that a lot of these people’s bizarre leaps in logic and completely “untactical” understanding of military affairs might come from bad translations of On Guerrilla Warfare.
If you look up translations of On Guerrilla Warfare by Mao, you’ll find the version published by the US Marine Corps archives and translated by Samuel B. Griffith. Griffith was a Marine Raider, served as a foreign attache with Chinese forces, spoke Mandarin and had a PhD in Chinese military history from Oxford, basically the platonic ideal for that kind of work.
I seriously doubt that was the version a lot of Western radicals were reading at the time. More likely, they were relying on translations done by people with weaker Chinese and little familiarity with military terminology or Chinese strategic thought. That probably made the works read more like vague philosophical manifestos than concrete military manuals, which could explain why they walked away with such distorted ideas about strategy and warfare.
>>2825300I love how basically every American general sent to China during WWII was like,
>Now, I’m no fan of communism, but this Mao guy and his cadres are genuinely helping people and doing some real good. finkelstein should stick to talking about eretz yisrael
>>2825335It’s because Chiang and his forces were so unbelievably fucking terrible that even at their absolute lowest, the Communists still looked better by comparison. He let every corrupt warlord and gangster be a General in his Army, keeping their soldiers, their dirty money, their criminal networks, and their ties to the triads. Hell Chiang himself was tied in with the triads and was even sworn brothers with a major Green Gang boss.
And the triads did what they always do: drug trafficking, protection rackets, brothels, extortion, and violently crushing workers who dared demand decent conditions So If your an American officer watching this unfold. You see cities effectively controlled by organized crime, an Army run by corrupt ex-bandits, supplies vanishing into black markets, Generals enriching themselves while soldiers starved, and a government too incompetent to function without stealing from its own people. Against that backdrop, of course the communists looked more disciplined and capable. They didn’t have to be perfect, they just had to look less utterly broken than Chiang’s regime.
Prescient thread. A day after it was created, Daniela Klette, of Red Army Faction, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for armed robberies.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx21dr3lekpoShe's 67, so that's pretty much a life sentence.
>>2824834>Ok but still a liberal academic who is not a communist.I don't care but he's a big Rosa guy iirc. Like when he wants to cope with how vulgar and trashy everything is today he reads Rosa.
>>2825300I'm not sure how much translations would change it because "On Guerrilla Warfare" does read differently from highly technical U.S. military field manuals. Like that stuff from Mao was more like a handbook to shaping the correct mindset in guerrilla cadre because they operated independently and outside communication. Also how do you phase operations and levels of organization up or down depending on the situation. Stuff like that. It's not advice on setting up a firing position, they either had other manuals for that or just experimented because it's a peasant guerrilla army, they can figure it out.
I think some of these 60s leftists were just going on vibes. Like a lot of them were literal teenagers (or in any case quite young, few older than early 20s) who wanted to be like Che, and they just completely misread that stuff because they believed they could do in the United States what Che did in Cuba. A lot of romanticism about that. Otoh most of the Chinese Red Army in the 1930s/1940s were teens too but it was different growing up in rural China back then.
The "wise" old Fink does take his time to find the party with a less correct line. Seems book publishing money on pet topics was too good enough for such silly and embarrassing things like the communist movement.
>>2825598>Like that stuff from Mao was more like a handbook to shaping the correct mindset in guerrilla cadre because they operated independently and outside communication.Yeah and I can totally imagine someone who isn’t that good at translating Chinese and isn’t familiar at all with what actual war was like or what Chinese peasants were like completely misunderstanding those concepts and turning the whole thing into some kind of religious text. Also, all of the modern available translations of Mao’s military writings we have right now are basically from Griffith and other US military officials and we really have no idea what earlier translations were like.
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