I know the two groups view post-Mao China in very different ways. MLM denounce everything, claiming that the entire party has succumbed to capitalist revision, that they were all pretend communists who truly believed in nothing.
Or the views of MLs who say that the CPC was right to open up like the NEP, to improve material conditions in order to develop to a higher stage of socialism. But how does this contradict anything from Mao?
How does this contradict New Democracy? Coalitions formed through the class system under the leadership of the CPC. That sounds like Deng propaganda!
Deng allowed for the creation of a new bourgeoisie that it nonetheless kept under the rule of the Party. Xi currently shows this best of all with the anti-corruption campaigns. If these billionaires lived in any other country they’d be the ruling class, but in China they’re not. It still is a DotP.
How is the improvement of material conditions not a vitally Maoist position?
Regardless of your opinions on the Cultural Revolution, for most of Mao’s life his theory was incredibly pragmatic. What mattered most was actually creating a proletarian state, and so most of his ideas comes from that war perspective.
And even the name Dengism, it’s not a real -ism. Deng is right, he was a a committed Marxist, but his thought is really just a continuation of Mao and Lenin. As such modern China is not Dengist but are still committed to ML.
But again why is there this ideological split? It seems the only aspect of MLM that ML reject is a denunciation of the CPC. Because I don’t think there’s anything from Mao that contradicts or majorly reverses previously held ideas. (thus as ML inverting the idea of revolution in the imperial core to outside it in the periphery). In the same way I don’t see much of the reform phase that is antithetical to anything from Mao.
Because modern day so-called “Maoists” are ultra-left idealists who do not actually follow Mao’s teachings, which are properly referred to as “Mao Zedong Thought” and something that the CPC of course still adheres to.
It seems to come down to idealism and dogmatism. This is true of certain ‘Maoists’ and other types of Marxist who criticise modern China for various ‘impurities’.
Roland Boer argues, as do you, that Deng was an ML who directly borrows from Mao, especially early Mao. But who challenges later Mao. Deng says that following Mao even when he was wrong (he’s talking about much of the cultural revolution) is dogmatic. It comes down to a question of following the letter or the spirit of Mao.
It seems clear that Deng was largely correct because it’s now a historical fact that his approach materially lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. Was there another way? Possibly. But it’s irrelevant. The way that was tried worked. And the CPC remains in control even though opening up gave some power to the bourgeoisie.
We’re still in capitalism, so it’s not without antagonistic contradictions. So e.g. critics might rightly point out that recent land reforms are giving power to the banks: https://michael-hudson.com/2023/06/buying-us-debt-subsidizes-imperialism/. But this doesn’t mean that China is betraying the revolution just yet. This situation will be worth keeping an eye on, to see how China resolves this and other contradictions.
To simply say that Mao’s successors aren’t doing what Mao did or would’ve done is remarkably blunt thinking. Perhaps that’s why so called Maoists, as with other non-ML (and non-Juche) Marxists haven’t had much success.
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Haha, fixed!
The strangest experience I have with Maoists is that they would insist they have a lot of success, that they are the most successful ML organizations working in the world today (of course, they naturally exclude all other movements and AES for being “revisionist” so they are the only ones left.)
They seem to define success quite differently to more traditional MLs, instead of looking at QOL of the people, they seem to think that the more ideologically pure a movement is, the more success it has. I’ve heard outright Trot statements from them before, that if China wants to be seen as no longer revisionist (and impress all those mighty western leftists) they should actively export revolution around the world, geopolitical and material conditions be damned.
Ironically, these same people will call all the exporting of socialism the USSR did “social imperialism” so if China did flip the trot switch and engaged in permanent revolution, it’s probably not going to actually sway these western Maoists anyway, China could do exactly what they say it should do and they’d still find some impurity in their methods and dismiss them.
It all comes down to dialectics and the transition from quantity to quality, basically. There’s no such thing as Maoism or Dengism, simply Marxism Leninism, and that was too what Mao thought, hence why he preferred the term Mao Zedong Thought, which would imply simply, theory written by him. The reason why there is a difference between Marxism and Marxism Leninism is because Lenin effectively changed Marxist theory in a way that modified the quality of the content in a way that it is no longer essentially the same. Lenin focused his ideas in the time were capitalism was adapting to new ways under the disguise of imperialism, and focused on praxis, creating a completely different analysis than that which Marx and Engels had written. On the other hand, all of the thinkers that came after him are simply following his steps and expanding the Marxist Leninist thought but not in a way that radically changes the thought. People who call themselves Maoists, or even worse, Dengists, are nothing but people who failed to understand dialectical materialism and are trapped within a dogmatic crossroads. If you read Mao, and you read Deng, you’ll notice that both of them have policies that are in accordance with each other and when you look at the policies taken by them through the lenses of a 50 year old time lapse in the future, they decisions improved the lives of the working class.
This is a really good text on the subject.
People who call themselves Maoists, or even worse, Dengists
😭
They discovered us, we’re finished.
I asked a similar question about a month ago, some of the answers in there might be helpful to you:
I’m just going to add that the term Dengism is almost exclusively used by Ultras and the proper term is Deng Xiaoping Thought and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
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First of all, I think it’s important to realize that people who have lived through the Mao-era, the pre-PRC era (before 1949), and even pre-CPC era (before 1921) are still living and breathing in China.
Here are some relevant population statistics from China’s Seventh National Population Census conducted in 2020 (71 years since the founding of the PRC in 1949, 99 years since the founding of the CPC in 1921):
- 70 to 74 years old: 15,504,914
- 75 to 79 years old: 9,606,840
- 80 to 84 years old: 6,800,356
- 85 to 89 years old: 3,687,435
- 90 to 94 years old: 1,252,811
- 95 to 99 years old: 279,430
- 100 years old or more: 40,382
- Total for the above age groups: 37,172,168.
I looked up the current population of different countries in the world, and Canada has around 38 milllion people, so the number of people over 70 years old in China in 2020 rivals that of Canada’s entire population.
Now back to the topic of “Maoism vs Dengism”. There are definitely self-proclaimed Maoists in China and within the CPC who genuinely hate Reform and Opening Up and rampant liberal/capitalist views shared by a sizable amount of people since then. But going further as to pit one leader against another is not something that people who support a united China would do.
Anyone who tries to pit one Chinese leader against another is trying to split the CPC into factions and create sectarian infighting, which would sow discord and create confusion both within the party and across the country. China will not replicate the downfall of the Soviet Union by allowing such damage to unity/cohesion to occur. It’s not just “Mao vs Deng”, any combination of “X vs Y” can be created as long as there is a need for such topics, but “Mao vs Deng” is definitely a hot favourite due to their profound impact on China.
If “Maoists” are worried that the top CPC leaders are actually capitalists who sneaked into the party pretending to be Marxists, I would ask how they can “prove” to anyone that they are “genuine Maoists”. Trying to “prove” anyone’s belief isn’t going to work by debate, nor is there any widely-available mind-reading technology yet. It all comes down to what someone says and does, but more emphasis should be given to what they’ve done, while also keeping in mind what they’ve said.
“Maoists” followed Mao when he was still living, there’s not much to complain about there other than possible lack of critical thinking. After Mao’s death and since Reform and Opening Up, it’s understandable that they worry about building up local capital and inviting foreign investment, so far so good. But it’s currently 2023, and “Maoists” who still question the integrity of the CPC today are actually helping western capitalists by questioning the strongest socialist competitor to capitalism that exists today.
Thank you! This is what bothers me about Maoists the most. Their ideal solution for China is often some kind of second cultural revolution, or even outright civil war. They seem to treat China as if it exists in a vacuum, and a civil war/cultural revolution that destroys infrastructure and sets the country back, potentially decades, wouldn’t be something the Yankees would take advantage of. They act like the west would just sit around and let things play out, let the Maoist faction win, then give them all the time in the world they need to build up their productive forces. Or, sometimes they will admit that the west will probably get involved, and will proudly PPW all over the place. As if dragging China into a decades long guerrilla war with the west would somehow be beneficial to the population. I despise their adventurism and glorification of war.
I want to also add this quote, which I think illustrates my point quite clearly.
Marxism-Leninism holds that each of the two stages in the process of cognition has its own characteristics, with knowledge manifesting itself as perceptual at the lower stage and logical at the higher stage, but that both are stages in an integrated process of cognition. The perceptual and the rational are qualitatively different, but are not divorced from each other; they are unified on the basis of practice. Our practice proves that what is perceived cannot at once be comprehended and that only what is comprehended can be more deeply perceived. Perception only solves the problem of phenomena; theory alone can solve the problem of essence. The solving of both these problems is not separable in the slightest degree from practice. Whoever wants to know a thing has no way of doing so except by coming into contact with it, that is, by living (practicing) in its environment. In feudal society it was impossible to know the laws of capitalist society in advance because capitalism had not yet emerged, the relevant practice was lacking. Marxism could be the product only of capitalist society. Marx, in the era of laissez-faire capitalism, could not concretely know certain laws peculiar to the era of imperialism beforehand, because imperialism, the last stage of capitalism, had not yet emerged and the relevant practice was lacking; only Lenin and Stalin could undertake this task. Leaving aside their genius, the reason why Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin could work out their theories was mainly that they personally took part in the practice of the class struggle and the scientific experimentation of their time; lacking this condition, no genius could have succeeded.
