Hi! Long time lurker, first time poster. Been discussing stuff with MLs of all stripes recently, and have come across a common statement used by a lot of Maoists which frustrates me.
They seem to always fall back on statements like “The CPC allows billionaires in their ranks, so they are revisionist.”
Maoists have often used this as a kind of “gotcha” argument against more traditional MLs, or “Dengists” as they love to label us.
It’s frustrating, because…I don’t disagree really, allowing members of the bourgeoisie to hold political power is pretty much the definition of revisionism. The problem is, this feels more like a way to silence dissent or discussion rather than facilitate it. Feels like an overly simplistic hard line that simplifies history into binary divisions. Often followed by an implied “China is revisionist, therefore Maoism is the only working form of socialism.”
I’m reaching out to people to see if anyone has any ways to combat this, in a way that encourages discussion rather than it just devolving into insults or truisms hurled back and forth without thought.
allowing members of the bourgeoisie to hold political power is pretty much the definition of revisionism.
Here’s one of the holes.
Being a member of the CPC doesn’t grant you political power any more than being a registered Democrat or Republican does. You get a vote in party matters just like Pubs and Dems get a vote in closed caucuses or primaries, and that’s the extent of ‘power’ you get it at basic membership.
Being a wealthy party member gets you less advantage in the CPC because of the strict regulations on how money can be used in politics, i.e. you can’t influence through donation. You also get excluded from considerstion for promotion. You get the same voice as every other member, and put on committees that match your area of expertise, but you’re not on the promotion track toward the Central Committee if you’re a billionaire.
Jack Ma built up Ant Group in the private sector and got rich but not promoted, Jiang Zemin built up First Auto Works in the state-owned sector and got promoted but not rich. They are not the same.
Name one time in the past 50 years that a western country has nationalized the assets of, and imprisoned or executed a corrupt billionaire found to be violating or manipulating the law to their benefit.
China on the other hand has no qualms with that. Even if allowing the corruption to continue might even be…. Profitable, in some circumstances.
First of all, don’t start by assuming there is anything to refute - never accept the premise of an anti-communist argument without investigating whether it’s actually true! Does China really have billionaires in the ranks of the party or is that just a myth that has been popularized to try and discredit the CPC in the eyes of gullible western leftists with ultra tendencies? If they do then how many and in what positions? What is the proportion of capitalists to non-capitalists in the party, and more importantly how much actual influence and power do they really have?
Do not simply accept the framing of these sorts of “gotchas”, you must always dig deeper and investigate beyond the cliche phrases and surface appearances, instead looking into the actual dialectical conditions that exist. Whether or not individual capitalist elements are allowed in the ranks of the party says nothing about the fundamental class character of the party itself. If the party was supposedly taken over by revisionist and bourgeois forces, then how is it that the way the Chinese state and economy are run and the results that their system produces are still so radically different from what we see in Western capitalist systems? If the same class is supposedly in power in China as in the West why are they not experiencing the same social and economic dynamics? If the CPC is so revisionist why has it not liberalized the country into the ground and abolished itself like the CPSU did once it was hijacked by revisionists?
And bear in mind that what happened in the USSR happened despite there technically being no capitalists whatsoever in their ruling party right up until that party voluntarily totally disempowered itself and dissolved the dictatorship of the proletariat handing the country to the enemies of the working class on a silver platter. Clearly one must look not just at the composition (though that also matters) but at the guiding ideology and the dominant political line within the party, in addition to how the party is organized and how it governs in practice.
Ah! Thank you! That’s exactly the problem I’ve been having. I’ve been feeling lost when I try to understand them, because I’ve been feeling obligated to discuss these things on their terms. I can’t challenge the ideas that AES are revisionist without feeling dogpiled, and I can’t bring up ideas of how the western left is obsessed with purity and matyrdom without being told that they are sick of being accused of having a purity fetish. (Funny how MLs keep saying the same things to them and they just respond with “stop saying that” rather than analyzing why people say it) Hell, when talking to them, it feels like I can’t bring up any counter points at all without being told I’m “stifling discussion” or something. Hence my initial question. I’m perpetually on the defensive because they take these things as gospel and state them with the confidence of a smug liberal. It’s all a smokescreen, saying something technically or arguably true, that misses the forest for the trees. It’s frustrating, because I really do want to understand their arguments and point of view, but it all seems to boil down (sorry) to this sort of thing. Just ignoring overall material conditions in favour of purity tests. A shame I can’t really get this across to any Maoists without just getting banned or blocked (hell, I’ll probably be banned from at least one discord server just for posting that initial question here.) But if their response to someone trying to understand their form of Marxism is to shut them out, it only shows their lack of understanding.
One of the things i really appreciate about ML spaces is the ability to address controversial subjects and not be immediately shut down for it in the way it happens in liberal and ultra spaces. And if someone is egregiously wrong but is engaging in an honest fashion and not just trying to troll there are always comrades who are ready and willing to educate them and explain exactly how and why they are wrong.
Sometimes this takes a lot of effort, and it can become tiresome and we always have to remain cognizant that getting communists to waste their time having to explain the same thing over and over again is a wrecker tactic, so it may be necessary on occasion in the interest of saving time to simply point people in the direction of sources they can go to learn more.
But on the whole i find that we can generally tell when someone is engaging in good faith and we are willing to discuss and explain. I don’t find the same willingness in ultra-left spaces to engage with arguments and do the work of investigating what the actual facts are. Reality is messy and complex and not always so black and white as they prefer to pretend.
Instead ultras adopt the liberal preference for simple, well-established narratives that are considered true by virtue of being repeated often enough, and of course the prioritizing of moralistic idealism and ideological purity over actual materialist analysis and engaging with the real world as it exists not as we may wish it.
It just felt like I was missing something the whole time while trying to talk to them.
I’ve read a bit of Maoist theory and listened to them, but it just feels really…unexciting? Like PPW is basically just standard guerilla tactics. They insist it isn’t, but it feels like it is special because they assign special value to it, not because it actually has additional value beyond that.
It’s a shame, because they really do seem to be sincere in their beliefs, and the optimism with which they will defend Maoist groups, insisting that none have ever truly failed is almost admirable. I wish I had their optimism and confidence in my position.
I just don’t understand them. It really seems like they are Maoists because it provides them with the same simple black and white worldview that Liberals have, just replacing Harry Potters and Voldemorts with Gonzalo and Revisionists/Capitalists.
I really feel like I’m missing something, but I also feel like I can’t talk to them without them just telling me I’m wrong loudly and aggressively, but not substantively, never telling me why I am wrong, just that I am and should accept what they say. I don’t know how they ever hope to reach people with this mentality.
Instead ultras adopt the liberal preference for simple, well-established narratives that are considered true by virtue of being repeated often enough, and of course the prioritizing of moralistic idealism and ideological purity over actual materialist analysis and engaging with the real world as it exists not as we may wish it
Perhaps a little strangely, this paragraph evoked in me the memory of “All Cops Are Bastards (Including “Socialist” Ones!)” discourse I was subjected (and sometimes contributed) to in online anarchist circles.
An example of what I'm talking about
All virtue signaling and no substance beyond sloganeering. All cops means all cops! Wow, so true! The cool-ass slogan says “all cops”, why wouldn’t that include north Korean or Chinese cops?
As if “police” serve nearly the same function under a dictatorship of the proletariat as they do under a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The nonsense ‘police protect the interests of capital and private property, that is their sole purpose’… I’ve heard it often from those aforementioned anarchists. Extrapolating the roles and actions of the Amerikan police onto the socialist world is just another example of the ultra (and the orientalist)'s incredible aptitude for projection.
Sorry, fellow Amerikans! The rest of the world is not so fucking savage as we are. DPRKorean police actually serve the people, you know, like law enforcement should in civilized society? Chinese police protect striking workers!
Amerikan cops are the ones murdering black folk en masse, not Chinese ones, not Iranian ones, not Korean ones, not Russian ones… take your “all cops” and shove it.
edit: (ACAB is still a good slogan tho and all Amerikan cops most certainly are, even the kindest ones)
And yet china refuses to make policies that support billionaires and benefit the bourgeoisie class specifically, they instead do the opposite and fuck them over to the point where western media makes articles about how china is fucking over billionaires as if that’s a bad thing.
That’s what separates MLs from reactionaries and people like maoists who do not understand dialectical materialism and operates on idealism and being dogmatic.
If china really were revisionist they would be stripping social safety nets, reducing funding for public infrastructure, increasing privatization of everything that’s currently public and increasing policies favoring the bourgeoisie. Change happens in elliptical motion. For example when the USSR became revisionist they switched over real quick and policies favoring the proletariat were quickly stripped away in favor of pro bourgeoisie ones. The revisionists in powere immediately enriched themselves with this.
Maoists and reactionaries don’t look at objective material reality.
From the little I know (which is admittedly not a lot) China did seem to be sliding towards revisionism during the late 90’s through the aughts (I think the aughts were maybe the bigger issue). In that there was so much deep corruption at all levels. Which is certainly something Xi has made a point to both acknowledge and began dealing with. I read somewhere last year or so, that it really caught the US intelligence agencies with their guards down when Chinese intelligence agents were starting to do things to show off that they knew who was in the pockets of the US and the West. I think that the issue with what has become known as “Dengism” is that the push to allow a bit of bourgeois stage of development for catching up with modern industrialism and whatnot was given too much freedom. Which allowed for folks to claim that China is socialist in name only (I really didn’t mean for that to be a pun so sorry for that). It is awesome to see that the party and the current leadership is being so focused on correcting the mistakes. While also making sure to keep pushing for advancements as China is getting closer and closer in closing the remaining gaps in technical and industrial processes.
I just personally hope that they are able to push for getting the 996 stuff removed. I know they did rule that it isn’t constitutional, but it is still (from what I can gather) a thing that is a mindset and just kind of expected in various industries. Which being fair to China isn’t just a them thing, as it is in Japanese and Korean cultures too. But that is all just my opinion and I am not Chinese, and haven’t been there or worked there. So I am willing to yield to being super wrong on that and really all the above.
A rule of thumb is to look at Deng vs Gorby.
Deng’s reforms are actually less drastic compared to Gorby’s. What Gorby did was essentially fuck the country over and let the boojees run amok. Deng on the other hand said “hey, you boojeee scum can exist for now. But cross the line and you’re fucked”
