Refuting Maoist idealism (response to DashRendar) PART ONE

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/181959

NOTE: Please do not go out and attack or harass @DashRendar@lemmygrad.ml for writing this essay. This is meant to be a civil exchange of ideas, not a witch hunt. Thank you.

Well comrades, I'm back at it again for another response post. Last time we had fun clowning on Enigma's attempt to portray Russia as socialist, but this time around things are a bit more serious. Because recently @DashRendar@lemmygrad.ml, a well-respected comrade in our community known for his long, comprehensive essays, has gone down the hill a bit.

Recently Dash published a 46-minute long essay on Medium titled "Yo dawg, the Maoists have a point". In this appropriately-titled essay, Dash essentially argues that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is the only correct ideological path, that Marxism-Leninism itself is outdated and useless, and that only anti-revisionist Maoism can save us.

Here's a link to the original essay: https://dashthered.medium.com/yo-dawg-the-maoists-have-a-point-9024983ee56a

I want to start by saying I have a lot of respect for Dash and I have enjoyed many of his articles, which makes it all the more unfortunate to see him adopt such an unrealistic position as this. Therefore I see it as my civic duty to respond to this essay and refute its points to the best of my ability. Unlike last time I'm not gonna just go through the article dissecting every point I can - otherwise we'd be here all day - rather I'm going to organise Dash's main points into a numbered list and scrutinise them that way.

As Stalin would say, let us get down to business.

Claim #1 - "Maoists have accomplished way more than Marxist-Leninists in the past 40 years"

A recurring theme you will see in this essay is Dash being adamant about the fact that regular old Leninists have not achieved anything significant revolutionary-wise in the past 40 years, as compared to the several Maoist revolutions happening around the world today. While I do agree with this point in the sense that Leninists have made no real revolutionary gains since the fall of the USSR, I do find this criticism rather unfair.

What Dash doesn't seem to recognise is just how devastated the left was with the fall of the USSR, the most powerful socialist country in the world which funded and exported revolutions to numerous countries for decades, and also funded many international communist parties. When the USSR collapsed, it was like the heart being removed from the human body. Many communist parties completely fell off due to the loss of support, and many were even outright banned as a preemptive measure, as was the case with the Communist Party of Canada.

If anything, what China is doing today is arguably for the better by not trying to export revolution like the USSR did. As communists we cannot rely on a single state or a single central power to basically fund all our revolutions for us, tactically it's just incredibly prone to failure as the USSR's collapse perfectly demonstrated.

This is why, as Leninists, we have instead dedicated much of our time since the fall of the USSR to learning about the structure of AES like China, Cuba, the DPRK and Vietnam, countries that have not only survived in a post-Soviet world, but continue to thrive in it. It is our duty to learn about what these countries did that the USSR didn't do, which can provide something of a framework for our revolutions so that we don't fall into the same trap as the USSR.

Of course Dash doesn't see it that way. This is what he thinks of MLs supporting AES:

Where, even, is the [Marxist-Leninist] theoretical debate? It always defaults back to some form of shut up and critically support ‘Actually Existing Socialist states,’ with no theory or formula for bringing new socialisms into a state of actually existing.

I wonder why Dash is so hostile to AES states... oh yeah, I forgot. This is anti-SWCC, pro-Mao hit piece. Of course! Dash thinks all current AES states are revisionist.

Well, what does Dash suggest we do about preventing revisionism/eradicating bourgeois elements in our socialist society?

Claim #2 - "The Cultural Revolution was good for China"

Hoo boy.

That's right folks. Dash tries to argue that Mao successfully curbed revisionism and bourgeois elements of the Communist Party in China by launching the Cultural Revolution. Worse yet, Dash goes so far as to claim that the Cultural Revolution wasn't even about culture:

Part of the problem of understanding the Cultural Revolution (usually called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, or GPCR by Maoists) is that “Marxist-Leninists” think it was either like Mao trying to do-over China’s culture [...] Cultural Revolution is the continuation of Civil War — the fight to the death between the now dominant proletariat and the remnants of the bourgeoisie and their allies. The Cultural Revolution is the process of grinding down the bourgeoisie, taking away everything from them (their expertise, their wealth, their accumulation, their power, their institutions, and all the gates they keep) and distributing it to the masses and crushing all the capitalists and counter-revolutionaries that attempt to stop or impede this process.

Right, because it's not like cultural elements such as Buddhism became under heavy persecution during this time period, or anything else.

But even by your own definition of a so-called Cultural Revolution, all these attempts to "give back" to the proletariat were clearly a failure, as the Chinese economy continued to suffer from a short food supply and widespread poverty, especially among the peasantry, during the 1960s and 70s. Only when Deng assumed office did things begin to improve; so much so that China became one of the fastest-growing countries in the world as a result of market reforms and the introduction of the Chinese labour force to the global market. Only then did absolute poverty in China finally begin to take a nosedive.

This is because the Cultural Revolution was quite unabashedly about ideology over materialism. For all it emphasised the importance of taking everything away from the bourgeoisie and what have you, it was quite obviously a movement that prioritised ideology over material reality; it was about instilling a communist mentality into as many people in all sectors of China as possible, and it was the assumption of Mao that once this process was completed and the "communised" workers had all the means of production, then everything would suddenly work out. Somehow this would suddenly cure all the widespread poverty most peasants were still experiencing as a result of the failures of the Great Leap Forward.

This is pure idealism. And for someone like Dash who goes on and on about how Marx and Engels argued for scientific socialism in the face of revisionists of their time, this doesn't seem like a very scientific thought process to be advocating for.

I think @juchebot88@lemmygrad.ml said it best in his comment underneath Dash's original post:

One can argue that Deng went to far, and ultimately fell into right deviation. But we should not allow this to obscure the fact that Gang of Four were massively left-deviant, and that Deng’s occasional rightism was simply the inevitable reaction. Thus, if China during the 1990s came dangerously close to neoliberalism, it was ultimately the fault, not of Deng, but of the Gang of Four.

The reason Marxist-Leninists are either ambivalent or outright opposing of the Cultural Revolution is because it is pure left-deviant idealism that ignores material reality. And if you're a communist who rejects or ignores materialism, then, well, are you even a communist?

This is why you see fucking bourgeois assholes getting yelled at en masse by fifty thousand people waving red books at them in all these photos. They said or did something reactionary and the masses shamed and berated the shit out of them for it. It was fucking awesome.

Sorry Dash, but edgy internet quotes like these aren't going to eliminate absolute poverty in China.

Anyways, I'm going to leave it off here for right now, because my response to Claim #3 is too long to fit into Lemmy's character limit, and plus I've think I've written enough to keep you comrades entertained plenty. I'll try to come out with part two of my response tomorrow, but hopefully I've already given you comrades enough to think about with regards to the state of Marxism-Leninism and the Leninist critique of the Cultural Revolution.

Stay tuned comrades!