It retreated to academia because it was one of the only places, in America at least, where disseminating Marxism didn't put you on a blacklist. Even then...This critic could be made to part of academia too, discussing communism in Ivory towers never leaving there.
There are good things about Mao that are overshadowed by terrible implementation, Stalinist appropriation, his inability to truly break with the Staye, and his absolute terrible right wing turn towards the end.
because it's easy, but tribalism hardly ever seems to come without centralization and hierarchy becoming an end result, since once you abandon ideology as your basis for discourse all you're left with is a cult of personality around some nucleus of individuals.
"When it is my turn, there will be no one to bury me. "
Ideology, Social Mobility, and Individual Agency in the Cambodian Genocide
I am slightly more sympathetic to the Chinese experience and Mao than I am to Stalin. There are plenty of things to criticize Mao for (Adventurism, Personality Cult, Third Worldism/Three Worlds Theory, Richard Fucking Nixon, etc), and while the results of these campaigns are worth reflection and harsh criticism, they are their own separate events.
While not defending the results, the Great Leap Forward is the result of dogmatic "progressivism", in this case the absolute faith in the masses as a nebulous concept, and hundreds of years of the Chinese ruling class specifically denying knowledge of basic biology and chemistry to the Chinese people resulting in ignorant decisions made with no understanding of the consequences.
The GLF was an attempt to break away from the stratification of the industry/proletarian and agricultural/peasant divide that took over the Soviet Union. The Chinese wanted to avoid the reinforcing of class boundaries, the political stranglehold of centralized planning, and the creation of the market economy that had become entrenched in the USSR post Lenin. The Chinese saw the divide between the countryside and the city in the Soviet Union and in that they saw the economic problems that China had faced itself under the Dynasties. The Soviet Model did not address or solve their primary economic needs. And the result was "Birds are eating our crops? Kill the birds. We need more steel? Make pig iron." The scientific processes and side effects were simply unknown and the expertise completely lacking to understand. Areas with Cadre who know how to smelt iron and properly maintain fields saw less significant catastrophes than those areas that had no knowledge at all.
The GLF and the Cultural Revolution is an interesting contrast to the Holodomor and the Purges.
In regards to Violence, violence is unescapable. Violence in service to an immediate political ends and done so with mass political power is different than the desperate violence with no political outcome other than replacing political power with absolute power via a monopoly of force.
This is why the GLF and CR isn't a 1:1 comparison to Holodomor and the Purges. In regards to the GLF and CR, one was a mass attempt at societal change made through the choices of ignorance rooted in a historically designed withholding of education and the other was a mass uprising against the State as it existed/was expected to exist. Maoism in the sense of the GLF and the CR was a significant "break" from and against Stalinism.
Holodomor and the Purges were State Terror against the proletarian, intelligentsia, peasantry, the enlisted, and race/ethnic targets ("enemies of the people") for the single goal of ensuring State power and privilege in a political situation that saw it waning. It was systemic violence.
Supplementary reading:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/02/27/a-special-supplement-reflections-on-violence/
The issue concerning modern Khrushchevism/Maoism is the replacing of the proletarian revolution with military adventurism. The latter always romanticizes the noble soldier and the violence used in their goals and their campaign and it ultimately resembles/morphs into the same "patriotism" pretenses that give rise to the systemic violence practiced by every State.
Most Maoists, however, don't understand the break between Mao and Stalin and just adopt all the Stalinist State Capitalist shit and add a heaping spoonful of military fetishization on top of it (Which, when you think about it and given Stalin's overtures to patriotism and military romanticism, that form of "Maoism" isn't unique to Mao at all and is just Stalinism "With a Chinese Face")
Did we get called Nazis again ?So! How 'bout that fuckin' thread about millenials hedging their bets on capitalism being over, huh! That was quite the thread. Again. Phweeeeeeeeeee
Someday, hopefully, we'll get over the meme that socialists are entitled and all socialism is a centrally-planned economy with no charter of human rights. But today sure fuckin' seem like that day, huh, guys.
Not that bad this time. Just more "capitalism is great compared to all those nasty nasty communist ideologies that killed so many people. And all these entitled guys wanting the nanny state to come save them... *tsk tsk tsk.*"
Uggghhh. Well at least we weren't called Nazis this time. For a change.Not that bad this time. Just more "capitalism is great compared to all those nasty nasty communist ideologies that killed so many people. And all these entitled guys wanting the nanny state to come save them... *tsk tsk tsk.*"
Damn. I'm really sorry to hear that. Hope you're able to find something soon.People insisting that I'm doing something wrong because I can't find a job despite being an engineer. That kinda thing.
Syrian Turkish-backed forces went on the rampage in Afrin on Sunday, pillaging shops and homes after taking control of the northern city, AFP correspondents and a monitor said.
After chasing Kurdish fighters from Afrin, the pro-Ankara fighters broke into shops, restaurants and houses and left with foodstuff, electronic equipment, blankets and other goods, the correspondents said.
They placed the loot in cars and small trucks and drove them out of the city, they added.
Into ?This whole Facebook fiasco really feels like the first step into a sci fi dystopia.
Which brings us to Canada, another outlier, the only low inequality/low redistribution country. It has maintained Nordic-type levels of low market inequality via the public provision of universal human-capital-enhancing programs (e.g high quality health care, education, etc.), while implementing only USA-type levels of redistribution. Current political battles and outcomes related to the minimum wage, taxes and social assistance indicate that market inequality-reducing measures (e.g. minimum wage, etc.) continue to be more politically-feasible than those that increase redistribution and reduce poverty outcomes (e.g. more progressive taxation, increased social assistance, etc.). While fighting to maintain and expand universal social programs, progressives should work harder to prepare the political ground for Canada to increase redistribution, especially for when market inequality increases.
Local school control is sort of real in the sense that the federal government can't directly legislate on it, but what it can do is set standards and then tell states that if those standards aren't implemented they won't get money to build highways, which is basically the same thing. Obama barely needed any money to push his horrible charter school agenda and obviously Bush passed through similarly terrible education reform with NCLB.Getting single payer, or at least even a public option, in the US and fixing the absolutely broken education system would do wonders for sure. We seem to finally be making progress on the healthcare front in terms of the Dems lining up behind UHC but education is a disaster due to the way that it's locally controlled at a pre-college level; college and beyond are themselves a whole 'nother disaster with the student debt crisis and the way that secondary education institutions are becoming subsumed to the market above all else at this point.
Mr. Mike, what is the traditional explanation for Canada's relatively low market inequality? Is it the relatively high amount of highly-educated/skilled immigrants?
Local school control is sort of real in the sense that the federal government can't directly legislate on it, but what it can do is set standards and then tell states that if those standards aren't implemented they won't get money to build highways, which is basically the same thing. Obama barely needed any money to push his horrible charter school agenda and obviously Bush passed through similarly terrible education reform with NCLB.
I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure a lot of this can still be mandated by the state government. There's a big battle going on right now in Idaho over whether or not to include any sort of climate change education in the curriculum and even my ass-backwards reactionary hometown where both science teachers were Mormons ended up teaching evolution, I assume because it was state-mandated. I'm pretty sure an aggressively progressive legislature could use cross-cutting regulation to unfuck a lot of our primary and secondary education, it would just require Democrats to have a spine, so it will never happen.There's that, but I was thinking more about the local level fuckery that stills happens like science class teachers treating evolution and creationism on an equal level and the way that school boards influence curricula and textbooks.
This is one of the right things to do if we are going to try to reform current systems, but it also feels like something that's never going to have popular support unless you suddenly achieve the sort of class conflict awareness that would allow for much greater change. Like, when you're at the point where 100% income taxes aren't getting laughed off of the stage you can probably do even moreEh. I dunno. I feel like a 100% inheritance tax and a 100% income tax on those with an income of, like... ten million dollars or more would be beneficial too as a prophylactic measure against regulatory capture which would continue to dismantle these institutions, as a supplement to the introduction of minimum wage increase, healthcare improvements, and possibly housing subsidies.
But that's talking more social democracy and democratic socialism.
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred.
Mr. Mike, what is the traditional explanation for Canada's relatively low market inequality? Is it the relatively high amount of highly-educated/skilled immigrants?
Yeah even as a social democrat/democratic socialist I don't really think the New Deal should be the model or goal going forward, outside of maybe some particularly successful programs. At the same time, having even a single party leader willing to voice any sort of class conflict, even if ultimately only a liberal kind, is something that is pretty hard to imagine now."New Deal"ism isn't really workable. The conditions that made it a thing are well into the past and not repeatable.
Not only that, but FDR should be a real lesson on why anything short of dismantling private ownership will fall short. Concessions when capitalism is weak go away when it regains strength. I'm embarrassed that this realization came to me in my forties and not sooner."New Deal"ism isn't really workable. The conditions that made it a thing are well into the past and not repeatable.
Saw this funny picture on China social media. The subtitles said" the Corn is holding Khrushchev."
https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/prove_you_are_not_an_Evil_corporate_person/This whole Facebook fiasco really feels like the first step into a sci fi dystopia.
Hi guys,
With the recent discussion on The Great Leap Forward, what do you think of the thesis that Mao only went with it because the numbers his people gave him made it seem possible with no real consequences.
That the blame should be on the party and not him.
I want to read if you have something to say about this.
Do you think maybe we should have a thread on Etcetera covering misconceptions about socialism?
Are there any other misconceptions you guys regularly encounter?
With the recent discussion on The Great Leap Forward, what do you think of the thesis that Mao only went with it because the numbers his people gave him made it seem possible with no real consequences.
Just because it's rooted in material causes doesn't mean it's not an ideology. Materialism is itself an ideology.It's not an ideology because it isn't something that can be concretely defined and implemented. It can't be built. "Building Socialism" is was a motivator for Stalinism, not a liberator of the working class.
Capitalism isn't an ideology and neither is Socialism. Capitalism changes constantly, how we relate to it and how it generates profit. If Capitalism were a specific ideology to be implemented then you just end up with immobile and unreformable monolithic organizations like the Stalinist state capitalism.
-Socialism demands forms of violent revolution.
'Violence is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one'
What about libertarian socialists? They tend to be not-wholly discredited by the rest of the movement at large, right?-Socialism for sure means that you need to get rid of the free market.
It's the destruction of the market in all of its forms.
Well, it does require a vanguard in the sense of "group that gets the ball rolling and actually understands what socialism is," but not in the sense of "a bunch of people make unilateral decisions for society at large." See my whole Bookchin-loving thing.
Define "vastly," I guess. This is more of a "Yes, and" situation. Because for one, you have to distinguish between ancaps and every other flavor of anarchist. This is actually the context in which I frame anarchist and socialist movements as more similar than they are distinct. We've got guys like Bookchin who switch without really having to change their ideas nearly at all, just the label and circles in which they run. You've got people like me and some of my friends who identify strongly with both movements and try to coordinate with both. You've got a mutual geographical/historical coincidence in figures like Marx and Stirner, a basis that is either revolutionary or permuted from such, and an end-goal of abolishing the state.-Socialism and anarchism are vastly different movements.
They are.
Well yeah. This is an excuse to introduce people to dudes like Tolstoy, or how liberation theology intersects with socialism. Weren't the Sandinistas an explicitly Christian movement as well, or am I misremembering? It's also a good place to commemorate the Islamic communist movements that were sadly quashed-- most people aren't aware of these movements.-Socialism is an majority-atheist, or even wholly atheistic movement.
No, only the intelligentsia pretending to be socialists espouse that.
There are people who are socialists, and they are occasionally known to think. I dunno about that. My intent with this misconception is to describe how the antecedents of communalism had influences on socialist thought, and how thinkers within Marx's lifetime like those in the Paris Commune who might have been inspired by him but were ideologically distinct from him can and do influence communist thoughts.-Socialist thought has no antecedents prior to Marx.
There's no such thing as "Socialist Thought".
-Major socialist thinkers post-Marx tended to either excuse mass murderers or be mass murderers themselves. (I've only encountered this one through inference, I guess, where people just aren't aware that most socialists a) aren't fuckin' tankies and b) have ideas not made by fuckin' tankies)
The first bullet point about Violence applies here. Both China and Russia would have experienced significant violence even without Lenin, Mao, Stalin, etc, as they were societies struggling with advancing to the next phase of life.
Weren't the Sandinistas an explicitly Christian movement as well, or am I misremembering? It's also a good place to commemorate the Islamic communist movements that were sadly quashed-- most people aren't aware of these movements.
There are people who are socialists, and they are occasionally known to think. I dunno about that. My intent with this misconception is to describe how the antecedents of communalism had influences on socialist thought, and how thinkers within Marx's lifetime like those in the Paris Commune who might have been inspired by him but were ideologically distinct from him can and do influence communist thoughts.
Discussing African socialist movements and what happened to them might be appropriate here as well.