- cross-posted to:
- genzedong@lemmygrad.ml
- cross-posted to:
- genzedong@lemmygrad.ml
Eastern Marxist Leninists have refuted this position multiple times. I refuse to be apart of this community if its going the route of maoists.
Maoists can post articles here, but they don’t control the community. You are 100% allowed and encouraged to ridicule them and their dogmatic ideas.
I am from China and this reply was translated by DEEPL. In my province there is a high school with outstanding results called Double Ten(双十). We often hear stories about this school. This school was established to commemorate the Xinhai Revolution, which took place on the 10th of October. The Xinhai Revolution overthrew the imperial system and established the Republic of China, which retreated to Taiwan Province and part of Fujian Province in 1949, which was under the control of the People’s Republic of China. During the Cultural Revolution that school was plundered several times because of its name. There were many absurdities during the Cultural Revolution and the victims were not bourgeois, maybe they were just returning from studying abroad, maybe they just had problems with certain people but were criticised for it. Ordinary people in China respected both Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong. Although Mao produced mistakes like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, he established the People’s Republic of China and the industrial, political and military achievements of the Mao era laid the foundations for Deng Xiaoping’s reforms. Mao and Deng were not adversaries, they were close collaborators, and together they made China what it is today. (Of course without the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution perhaps China would be a better place today) Workers did have a high status in Mao’s time, but the peasants, who made up the majority of the population, were not well off. In the north, a peasant could only keep 180 kg of grain, in the south it was 200 kg. In many places peasants therefore kept arable land for themselves and refused to allow it to join collective farms, but these were disparaged as “capitalist”. Some peasants felt that they could not benefit from joining a collective farm and wanted to leave but were refused. Incidentally, today China has about 500 kg of food per person and the quality has improved, not only in terms of corn and potatoes, but also in terms of meat, vegetables and fruit. Mao promised to give the peasants a better life, but from the 1950s to the 1970s the food situation in China did not improve much and could even be described as stagnant, with the vast majority of peasants still living in poverty, excluding some of the model socialist villages, and it was in this context that Deng Xiaoping began his reforms. Deng Xiaoping’s reforms introduced Western capital, which came to China to exploit the Chinese. But on the other hand, the Western investment also increased China’s productivity and a large number of peasants became workers, which did not affect China’s agricultural production, as there were too many peasants compared to the cultivated land. As for agriculture, since Deng Xiaoping no longer collected surplus grain but used taxes, farmers would not only grow 180 kg or 200 kg of grain, they were willing to grow more. Every era has its own problems, but to reject reform because of the problems is like 因噎废食(Refusing to eat because of fear of food getting stuck in the throat) Without Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, socialist China would probably have disappeared long ago, as the Soviet Union did. Marxism is about keeping up with the times. Mao’s measures were out of date and therefore had to be reformed, and the left had to be realistic.
Maoists do make compelling points. As communists we should be considering the Maoist point of view without shit-slinging and we should consider criticisms to be in good faith.
The obstacle for me is that Maoist organizing has only gotten weaker support from the masses since the 90s and there has not been any successful projects. From an analysis of theory standpoint, I often find them spot on in many of their observations. The global communist movement is a lot weaker than we (in the West at least) would like to admit. China may be making advances for China and helping to weaken Western imperialism’s hold on the world, which we all obviously applaud, but there’s no concrete evidence to suggest that they will be leading the global communist movement from a place of ideology anytime soon.
We are in a period of retreat and concession to the bourgeoisie still. Are there encouraging signs for the future? Sure. But we’ve got a long way to go. It’s no surprise that there are some overwhelming obstacles for M-L parties in the world that have nerfed the revolutionary energy. But communists are still in the position of gaining support among the masses and you can’t force the revolution without a truly revolutionary situation, especially after 30+ years of unimpeded neoliberalism. Perfect theory is never perfect in practice, and Maoism from Peru and the RIM is proof of this. Meanwhile, the general strike happening in India is a result of the M-L party organizing workers, not the Maoist party. We’re really only just getting started. We can’t let our desperate hopes put the cart before the horse.
Sorry if this comment wasn’t the most clear or connected. I’m just kind of spitballing what’s coming to mind. I personally thought it was a good article. Thanks for sharing.
but there’s no concrete evidence to suggest that they will be leading the global communist movement from a place of ideology anytime soon.
SWCC, the Doi Moi reforms, and other similar measures are showing that utilizing markets to serve socialism is 100% effective. China is either already beating or about to beat the US on every meaningful metric: % of world trade, life expectancy, home ownership rates, education, patents / tech advancement… etc.
Maoists on the other hand are still playing theory games in their heads, constantly bickering with each other about who is more revisionist, and killing and alienating themselves from every group / peoples they encounter.






