It’s like China is just that one country (aside from the Khmer Rouge) that every ML (aside from Dengists like us) agrees to hate on.
Fellow Traveler and leftypol uploaded videos criticizing them, the Shining Path hung up literal dogs to protest them, Maoists go all insane saying that it’s some red fash social-imperialist nation because (insert nato propaganda here). And Hoxhaists claim that China was never socialist and that the only socialist nation ever was USSR before Khrushchev and almighty holy Albania.
What is it that makes China so controversial even among MLs? I get that it’s not perfect and every AES state has their Ls, but jesus.
The empire invested ludicrous amounts into anti-china mindcontrol.
Hoxhaists are odd. I agree w some of their takes, but then they either go homophobic/transphobic, they focus too much on one historical event from 60-80 yrs ago or just refuse to admit some Ls that definitely existed in their version of AES
I suspect that China is not truly so controversial outside of the western “left.” It may help to understand that there are more CPC members then there are people in Germany. Marxism-Leninism is the dominant ideological strain of leftist thought, globally speaking. “Maoists,” Hoxhaists, Anarchists, etc. are extremely marginal and don’t even have the power and influence proportional to their minuscule population of adherents. They have no states, irrelevant parties, zero organization, and consequently no capacity for struggle, armed or otherwise. I cannot emphasize enough that these so-called socialists and communists can be safely ignored. They can not help or even meaningfully hinder their own political “projects,” much less those of typical Marxist-Leninists.
As for why they exist, it boils down to an unscientific, anti-dialectical and idealist worldview. They don’t conceive of political and economic systems as containing contradictory elements, but as pure, static forces that only change due to external influence. Notice how the libertarian types will insist that the presence of any public industry, welfare state, or regulatory agency in a capitalist country indicates it has “fallen to socialism/communism” and “isn’t real capitalism” anymore. Likewise, ultras and leftcoms will take the existence of a stock market in China as evidence that the CPC has “abandoned Marxism/communism” and “isn’t real socialism” anymore. Both of these groups will go on to insist that their pure, unadulterated version of their ideal system has “never been tried.” One has to wonder why.
In capitalist/liberal economies, private profit is the guiding principle of all economic and political activity. The presence of “socialist” elements in these systems always serves that purpose, albeit sometimes indirectly. In socialist economies, the guiding principle is social necessity, and likewise, seemingly liberal elements of their systems serve the worker-led state. This is the difference between a Dictatorship of the Proletariat vs a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. The composition of these systems will be similar, but will serve different functions. This understanding is essential not just to being a good ML, but for making sense of the world in general and avoiding the purist mindset.
Let’s be fair, there are a couple of Maoist groups that are engaged in meaningful struggle, e.g. in India and the Philippines.
Personally, I view those groups as fellow travellers and not as comrades. For me, the only distinction between those two terms being that we can both talk about the destination down the road we’re heading to, but I will tune you out if you start talking about how we should be riding donkeys rather than driving the EV.
I mean, there’s a difference between anprim bugbears and waging protracted guerilla warfare against an imperialist-aligned government. There are shitty maoists out there too, but also ones too involved in actual fights to be concerned with fighting over whether it’s okay to drive an EV.
The truth is that there’s some straight up freaks that pose as MLs and the unfortunate thing about the marginalization of the left in the non-AES world and the need for leftist “unity” is that we have to suffer their presence in our discourse. It’s been the state of things back when the USSR still endured and it’s still the case today as seen with “ML” takes on China.
I remember reading Keeran and Kenny’s work on the dissolution of the USSR, how the capitalist restoration led the greatest humanitarian disaster since the Second World War, still ongoing today through legacy conflicts like Ukraine. K&K observed how some sociopathic Western “MLs” actually celebrated its collapse at the time because “now that the USSR was gone, real socialism could finally begin.”
I think they allow themselves to believe western lies about China and the negative framing that tends to be put on articles of that sort. I know I had to filter through a lot of propaganda to understand what is actually happening there, and to realize that I’d probably enjoy a visit. I personally noticed that there’s a lot of sinophobia that tends to cluster around those beliefs, so I imagine a select few are driving these discussions with the express purpose of furthering racism.
