Whence Maoism?
by Muhsin Yorulmaz
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This piece was originally a series of blog posts on a personal blog by friend and contributor to the Lever, Muhsin Yorulmaz. His personal blog is no longer accessible to the public, but he has volunteered this piece to The Lever due to the closeness of both Maoist and “less than Maoist” elements to our publication, in the hopes of provoking a discussion about what, concretely, behind the label ought to concern communist revolutionaries in 2019 about the Chinese experience and those who most strongly appropriate it. We hope for this to provide an introduction to a series of forthcoming essays on ‘anti-revisionism’ and it’s relevance today.
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In 1977, the Progressive Labor Party published a piece entitled “Whither Maoism?”, in which they provided a short analysis of various pro-Mao parties’ responses to Deng Xiaoping’s consolidation of power in the PRC. Maoism, it seemed, was no longer a revolutionary current in any meaningful sense, but an assortment of punchlines for a dark joke about what had gone wrong in China.
In the decades which have since passed, it has been shown again and again that in spite of the Chinese party’s betrayal (see Muhsin Yorulmaz and John Lawrence’s piece for Abstrakt Dergi), “Maoism”, as a concept, cannot be relegated with ease to the “dustbin of history”. Rather, whether one considers oneself a Maoist or not, whichever definition of “Maoism” one uses, Maoism manages to insert itself in all of the most pressing Marxist discussions. What can explain the longevity of Maoism, and on the other hand, why can the partisans of China’s much missed Chairman never fully impose “Maoism” as the anti-revisionism? I will try to explain the longevity of Maoism, and in the process, evaluate the positive and negative qualities of Maoism in its various forms. My goal is not, as with “Hoxhaite” polemics of years past, to “bury” Maoism, but to find a series of concrete positions around which communist revolutionaries may debate and hopefully ultimately find unity.
Even prior to the Sino-Soviet split, two important elements of what would later take the form of a kind of cult of Mao were already recognised in some form by all the Marxist-Leninists: Firstly, China was (and remains) an enormous country of tremendous historical and cultural importance in both “East” and “West”. No matter who had been at the head of the Communist Party of China, the world would have been watching. Secondly, Mao was recognised to have been a brilliant leader whose tactical line was decisive in the victory against the fascist Chiang Kai-Shek clique, humiliating the right wing of the KMT and forcing them to retreat to Taiwan.
China gained the attention of the international communist movement at a time when there were no self-described “Maoists”, at a time when almost all communists were more or less united. In celebration of this great historic achievement, Paul Robeson performed his rendition of the new anthem of the People’s Republic of China:
Why did Robeson not provide us with recordings of the national anthems of Poland, the DPRK, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the GDR, or Hungary, from the same period? The victory in China was viewed as greater because the stakes were higher: Bigger country, bigger history, bigger population, bigger influence. The Marxist-Leninist line at the time would have said that the October Revolution heralded a new era, of which the 1949 Revolution in China was an incredibly symbolic and significant new phase. The reader must remember that whatever significance one places on China, at the time, the whole world, and the communists in particular, were already looking to China for reasons unrelated to Mao or his theoretical stance.
But a trend of Maoism did emerge, not simply because of an identification with Mao against Chiang, not even because of an identification with Mao against Khrushchov, but because the later revolutionary experience in China was significant in its own right. To some of us, this significance is proportionate to China’s size but qualitatively similar to the significant twists and turns of our 20th century history in so many countries. To the Maoists, it is something more, a “Mao Zedong Thought” or a “third and higher stage”.
It is this disagreement in perspective, and more importantly the concrete positions behind it, which I wish to take up. But before doing so, let me emphasise once more for the reader: Mao as a revolutionary and thinker was already in an ideal position to capture the attention of the international communist movement on the grounds that China had the attention of the international communist movement. We must not assume that greater visibility always and necessarily means a more distinct stance. Let us turn, then, to Mao’s concrete positions which Maoists emphasise as unique.
Strategy and Tactics: Mao and the Kuomintang (KMT)
Mao Zedong was not a founder of the Chinese CP, and it took some time for him to be recognised as a leader within it. Mao made a name for himself, rising up through its ranks due to his indisputably masterful strategy and tactics. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding: Mao’s leadership toppled the fascist Chiang Kai-shek clique and brought the CPC to power. On this point, the Maoists’ focus on Mao is quite scientific: One should be interested in the ideas which, against all apparent odds, overturn the old order. This is the science of revolution, of which Mao and his experience certainly played a decisive role. In its early years, the CPC formed the “left wing” of the KMT, the party which, at the time, was at the vanguard of revolutionary activity against the imperialist domination of China. Mao Zedong led the Communist Party through this process to become a party of millions, such that it was able to confront, stand its ground against, and ultimately defeat Chiang Kai-Shek’s numerically superior forces.
J. Moufawad-Paul, who can easily be called one of the more sincere, serious, and popular voice of anti-revisionism in the English-speaking world, summarises this history by telling us that it teaches us quite simply that “entryism is not a very good tactic”. I cannot say whether or not Mao himself agreed at some point, in retrospect, with the idea that the CPC should’ve never “entered” the KMT, that it should have, from the beginning, adhered to a purely rejectionist and military strategy against the KMT, with Sun Yat-sen being actively struggled against in the same way Chiang Kai-shek was.
If this was indeed Mao’s view at some point, it is a frightfully undialectical one. If Stalin was indeed mistaken in backing, from the beginning, the CPC’s presence within the KMT (and consequently, backing the KMT), then Stalin should have declared Sun Yat-sen a “fascist”, the CPC should’ve waged active struggle against the KMT in spite of their tactical common interests against the imperialist threat, and of course, the civil war should’ve started years earlier, before Mao’s strategic line transformed the CPC from a small party into the mass party it became. The CPC should never have worked within the KMT (with Sun Yat-Sen’s blessing) to carry out the anti-imperialist and national liberation struggle which gave the party credibility among the broad masses.
Regardless of their ideological stance, almost all historiographies of modern China would agree that the CPC gained its strength which it ultimately used against the KMT in the years of civil war, through its legal work within the KMT. This KMT “entryism” so impressed progressive nationalists like Sun Yat-sen that his wife Soong Ching-ling (better known by the sexist epithet “Madame Sun Yat-sen”) sided with the CPC when Chiang Kai-shek attempted to crush the communists after his fascist clique seized power.
The legacy of the KMT for the CPC was certainly not all negative in the eyes of Mao, who continued to praise Sun Yat-sen as a revolutionary hero, and allowed non-fascist KMT elements to continue to operate legally in the PRC after its founding, where, owing to this Dimotrov-style popular frontism, they remain to this day.
Mao’s different stages of political struggle, and distinct class alliances in pursuit of these goals, were based on the material dialectic which revealed itself when the party was tested in practice. This was the logic of February, and opposition to it is the vulgar thinking which characterised Trotsky’s so-called “Transitional Programme”. Quoting Stalin, addressing the anarchists:
“Today we are demanding a democratic republic. Can we say that a democratic republic is good in all respects, or bad in all respects? No we cannot! Why? Because a democratic republic is good only in one respect: when it destroys the feudal system; but it is bad in another respect: when it strengthens the bourgeois system. Hence we say: in so far as the democratic republic destroys the feudal system it is good — and we fight for it; but in so far as it strengthens the bourgeois system it is bad — and we fight against it.”
Fascism, as exemplified in Chiang Kai-shek’s campaign against the communists, is of course “the concentrated expression of the general offensive undertaken by the world bourgeoisie against the proletariat”, and the urgency of distinguishing this fight from the general struggle against all trends which arrest the class struggle is well-established. When the fascist trend emerged, Mao Zedong is widely recognised even by leftists otherwise not predisposed to praising him as having responded with exemplary guerrilla strategy and tactics. The People’s Republic of China was declared, and the international communist movement reached its highest heights of practical power for a few short years before disaster befell us.
Splits in the International Communist Movement
A few years after the declaration of the People’s Republic, Comrade Stalin died, opening a new chapter in communist history. With Khrushchov’s rise to power, the dictatorship of the proletariat was declared obsolete, and the foundations for a profit-based economy were laid again. These changes were recognised by the Chinese and Albanian parties as “modern revisionism”, and the two countries became firm allies for a period before disaster struck again (for a fuller discussion of the international context, I again direct the reader to the Abstrakt piece on the matter).
In private, Enver Hoxha was concerned about the gulf between China and Albania, but in public, he spent years heaping praise on Mao and China, something which, in light of later firey condemnations, has not gone unnoticed by the Maoists. But these disagreements were indeed present decades before the split. Chairman Mao flirted with Tito whilst condemning Khrushchov, an act which, even if excusable in the mind of the reader, certainly displays a considerable distance between Enver Hoxha and Chairman Mao, as the former bordered on fanaticism in his attacks on “the Titoites” (although it must also be mentioned that Mao publicly compared Tito to Bernstein, thus it would seem that diplomatic considerations determining who is and who is not a revisionist scoundrel were not a monopoly of the Albanian party).
In his fight with modern revisionism, Mao rightly concerned himself with enemies at home as well as abroad. In the process, we begin to see take shape the beginnings of a distinctly “Maoist” approach. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which included attacks on the “capitalist roaders” within the party, copies of the so-called “Little Red Book” (properly: Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung) were the main theoretical weapon of young revolutionaries in China, and Mao was in effect the interpreter of Marxism-Leninism (laying the foundations for the later emergence of an ideology of “Maoism” proper). The text itself was compiled by the People’s Liberation Army, then under the leadership of Lin Biao, prior to his falling out with Mao).
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, for its part, failed, and there are countless Maoists around the world today who rightly declare that the Chinese Party itself descended into revisionism. Many Maoists blame Deng Xiaoping for the current state of affairs, and view him as something of a Khrushchov to Mao’s Stalin. This may all well be true, but Mao Zedong himself seemed to have accepted this state of affairs by the end in a way that Stalin is not accused of doing, along with the “Three Worlds Theory”, a part of Maoist history that is not merely an incident, like so many in the history of Marxism-Leninism that can be brushed aside, but a theoretical point which led to differing interpretations of the core concepts of imperialism and social imperialism among various Maoist groups for years to come
Having already implicitly and explicitly criticised Mao Zedong in this piece, and before I continue to discuss points of purported Maoist distinction from Marxism-Leninism (as our common 20th century heritage), I wish to reemphasise that I have no aim to relegate Mao to the “dustbin of history”, as Hoxha and his comrades at the time of the Three Worlds Theory (perhaps understandably, given the urgency of the matter) once did. My personal line on what lessons we can draw from the 20th century Chinese experience can be summed up in two points:
1. Mao Zedong was a genuine struggler for socialism and against modern revisionism for some period, even if he seems to have surrendered near the end.
2. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, whatever its merits or shortcomings, had a similar effect to Stalin’s purges: It held back but could not prevent the victory of revisionism. China under Mao was no more successful in establishing an unshakable new socialist society than Albania or the Soviet Union, “losing its way” after “the great leader” passed on.
If the reader agrees with these points, the former point in particular forces us to look at Mao as somewhat less of an exemplary figure than Lenin or Stalin, much to the disappointment of many Maoist comrades. However, I am hesitant to condemn Mao in the language I would use for Khrushchov, Tito, and Trotsky for this. The Chinese revolution was a part of the world revolution, and not a contest with Albania or the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia. Like Hoxha or Stalin, and unlike Trotsky or Tito, Mao Zedong was for a time seen as a great champion of the poor and oppressed to people in far away lands. Like Lenin or Che, and unlike Khrushchov or Deng, we can in retrospect emphasise that Mao Zedong significantly pushed forward the cause of revolution in his own social context.
I am, to be fully clear, not a Maoist, but somewhat Mao defensive. But while attempting to criticise a cult of Mao necessitates something of a critical stance, my purpose here is also to determine what Maoism is and what specific parts we can judge against “non-Maoist” Marxism-Leninism.
In other words, having briefly summarised my views on who Mao was in the historical context of the splits in the international communist movement, I now wish to ask:
What is Maoism?
A particularly dogmatically anti-Mao Marxist-Leninist might use the term “Maoist” to deride Maoists with a mostly correct understanding of the world and a mostly revolutionary stance within it, as well as the base Three World Theorist revisionists who are in communion with the Chinese party today. While I wish to show due respect to the many Maoists whose line is close to my own by not over-emphasizing the Chinese party post-Mao, when, it has to be said, both in China and abroad, those who most sincerely defend the Mao era are exactly those whose positions on China today are closest to my own.
Besides, even without these caveats, a “Hoxhaite” like myself will still be painted with the same brush by our ideological enemies. Consider that Trotskyites have found occasion to refer to anti-revisionism as a whole as “Maoism”, just as they might refer to “Maoism” as “Stalinism [with Chinese characteristics]”.
If we are concerned with the essence of things, rather than pithy labels, we must turn to what positions those really sincere Maoists have themselves identified.
The closest thing to a retrospective document which concisely and coherently identifies the doctrines of “Maoism” is the document “Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!” released by the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. While I consider that there are many Maoists close to my line who do not identify with this particular tradition (of RIM/MLM), none of them have identified any “Maoist” positions not found in this document, which I will take as a kind of “Maoist manifesto” that we might assume other Maoists may take less than all of in forming their own Maoist ideology.
But let me also be clear: with an “official” move by the RIM towards “recognition of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the new, third and higher stage of Marxism”, they forced other Marxist-Leninists, regardless of their views on Mao and the Chinese struggle, to formally declare that we do NOT view “Maoism” as a “third and higher stage” (a debate that up until then we would not have realised we were meant to have). Consequently, in their eyes, we suddenly become “dogmato-revisionists”.
Of course, we are not “dogmatically anti-Che” for not holding that “Marxism-Leninism-Guevarism” is a “new, third, and higher stage of Marxism”, even if we do think Che is an inspiring figure and a great Marxist-Leninist. The parallels may seem odd to “Marxist-Leninist-Maoists”, for whom Mao is indeed a second Lenin, but in fact, many (likely most) Maoist comrades continue to self-identify as “Marxist-Leninist”. We do not see this level of confusion over the division between Marxist-Leninists and so-called “Orthodox Marxists”, with whom we have so little common ground on the question of Lenin as to prevent debate from occurring in the first place. And anyway, we do not consider that “Marxism” is “retroactively” “dogmato-revisionist” in upholding Lenin and the developments in theory and practice associated with him and the 20th century experience. There is simply no parallel for the sectarian fashion in which some Maoists insist on the specific acceptance of Mao as co-equal in a Marxist trinity with Marx and Lenin.
If I invoke religious language to make my point, it is because, to outsiders (including many Maoist outsiders), this brand of “Maoism” appears, more than anything else, to be pointlessly sectarian. While dogmatic Hoxhaites are viewed as very sectarian by Maoists, we cannot say that any Hoxhaite organisation has ever defined revisionism negatively in terms of Enver Hoxha the way “Marxist-Leninist-Maoists” do with Mao.
We are told, by those who uphold the RIM’s line, that Mao did indeed have unique theoretical insights which must be grasped in order to be a true communist (to not descend into “dogmato-revisionism”). What are these insights? The document “Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!” emphasises several ideas which are often repeated by various kinds of Maoist, the most frequently repeated of which seem to be “cultural revolution”, “the mass line”, and “people’s war”. If I am mistaken that these are the issues which separate Maoism and/or “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” from “dogmato-revisionist” Marxism-Leninism, I invite Maoist comrades to correct me. However, based on this assumption, I will give my appraisal of these ideas in the order I have given them above.
Cultural Revolution
I have previously commented briefly on the fact that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution failed (as well as published elsewhere on some theoretical discussion of why it may have fated itself to do so). It is a fact that it failed in its mission to defeat the revisionists, but I do not mean this, as I had implied, merely in the sense that Stalin’s purges failed to prevent revisionism in the Soviet Union.
I mean it failed in the most immediate sense, while Mao was alive, to the point where he was forced to accept Deng as a power player even while Jiang Qing and others continued to (rightly) condemn him.
I do not intend to use this space to detail every mistake that was made, as almost all Maoists would admit that mistakes were made and have their own views on what they were, etc. (without any admission of mistakes, we are hard-pressed to explain our failures without resorting to the “logic” of the Trotskyites, by which every failure is just blamed on our bad enemies and if only everyone listened to us).
What is worth discussing, in my view, is why this particular revolutionary moment is not merely upheld, but held up above all others. Maoists would respond that it is important because it represented the masses taking power into their own hands, in a way that, they claim, was typically Maoist. Indeed, I agree that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution resembled Mao’s practice in general: it was but one of Mao’s many mass campaigns. Mao’s “mass line” meant that such mass campaigns were a tremendous part of his practice, something which they frequently mention as a reason to uphold Mao. Why then the emphasis on the last one? Was it the most successful? One may argue to the contrary, that this was the mass campaign that led to Mao’s surrender, and the military stepping in per the wishes of Mao’s opponents, etc. By contrast, the Cultural and Ideological Revolution in Albania resulted in no such immediate counter-revolution, or indeed, any such regression until the 1980s.
In short, was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution the most important moment in Chinese history, or merely the largest (but still ultimately unsuccessful) example of “the mass line”?
The Mass Line
I did not merely redirect the Cultural Revolution to the mass line in order to degrade Mao’s practice in this area. Marxism-Leninism has always been a radically democratic ideology, in spite of our enemies willful misunderstanding of our theory and practice. The idea of “the mass line” comes out of a thorough and scientific investigation into the dialectical relationship between the vanguard party and the masses. It is the idea that the party must lead the masses not merely by standing one step ahead of them in the march towards victory, not merely by agitating among the masses to teach them the way forward, but by learning from the masses, so as to better teach them. One of Mao’s many succinct aphorisms explains the concept in terms I have always found sympathetic:
“Communists should set an example in study; at all times they should be pupils of the masses as well as their teachers.”
It is easy to see why Paulo Freire was so sympathetic towards Mao and the Cultural Revolution. But was this an idea original to Mao in Marxist-Leninist history? Let us ask Comrade Stalin:
“Lenin taught us not only to teach the masses, but also to learn from them.
What does this mean?
It means, first, that we leaders must not become conceited; and we must understand that if we are members of the Central Committee or are People’s Commissars, this does not mean that we possess all the knowledge for giving correct leadership. An official position by itself does not provide knowledge and experience. This is still more the case in respect to a title.
This means, second, that our experience alone, the experience of leaders, is insufficient to give correct leadership; that, consequently, it is necessary that one’s experience, the experience of leaders, be supplemented by the experience of the masses, by the experience of the rank-and-file Party members, by the experience of the working class, by the experience of the people.
This means, third, that we must not for one moment weaken, and still less break, our connection with the masses.
This means, fourth, that we must pay careful attention to the voice of the masses, to the voice of the rank-and-file members of the Party, to the voice of the so-called “small men”, to the voice of the people.”
And so forth.
Those familiar with the writings of Mao on practical work will note similarities without my having to point them out. This is not to attack Mao as an unoriginal thinker: It was Mao himself who emphasised “the mass line” was “the Marxist theory of knowledge” (and all Marxists ought to agree, if they understand dialectics), and “self-criticism” as a “Marxist-Leninist weapon”. Some Maoists take no issue with this, and on the contrary, embrace Stalin’s “mass line” approach.
And so we turn to Chairman Mao’s other commonly cited theoretical breakthrough: “the universality of people’s war”.
People’s War
In the first few paragraphs of the section of “Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!” entitled “Mao Tsetung”, we are told that among Mao’s key contributions was “people’s war”. Indeed, long prior to the RIM, the popular view among many casual observers was that “people’s war” was the essence of Mao’s practice. Certainly Mao’s military strategy inspired many, and is defended by many non-Maoists. The document “Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!” declares “Mao Tsetung's theory of People's War is universally applicable in all countries”.
“The seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution. This Marxist-Leninist principle of revolution holds good universally, for China and for all other countries.
But while the principle remains the same, its application by the party of the proletariat finds expression in varying ways according to the varying conditions. Internally, capitalist countries practice bourgeois democracy (not feudalism) when they are not fascist or not at war; in their external relations, they are not oppressed by, but themselves oppress, other nations. Because of these characteristics, it is the task of the party of the proletariat in the capitalist countries to educate the workers and build up strength through a long period of legal struggle, and thus prepare for the final overthrow of capitalism. In these countries, the question is one of a long legal struggle, of utilizing parliament as a platform, of economic and political strikes, of organizing trade unions and educating the workers. There the form of organization is legal and the form of struggle bloodless (non-military). On the issue of war, the Communist Parties in the capitalist countries oppose the imperialist wars waged by their own countries; if such wars occur, the policy of these Parties is to bring about the defeat of the reactionary governments of their own countries. The one war they want to fight is the civil war for which they are preparing. But this insurrection and war should not be launched until the bourgeoisie becomes really helpless, until the majority of the proletariat are determined to rise in arms and fight, and until the rural masses are giving willing help to the proletariat. And when the time comes to launch such an insurrection and war, the first step will be to seize the cities, and then advance into the countryside’ and not the other way about. All this has been done by Communist Parties in capitalist countries, and it has been proved correct by the October Revolution in Russia.”
What does this mean? Does this mean that peasant revolution is to be carried out everywhere? “Maoists” insist that it does not. And yet the truly fascinating and historically noteworthy feature of the Chinese Civil War (from the perspective of proletarian internationalists and bourgeois observers alike) was how a popular front strategy could lean so heavily on the peasantry of a backwards country, mobilising them to defeat a professional military backed by the imperialist powers. Otherwise, what is Maoist “people’s war”? Let us go to the source, and we will see that Mao does not argue for universalising the lessons of China, rather he views the call for revolutionary violence (when called for by the conditions) as already an accepted part of what it means to be “Marxist-Leninist”:
It would seem Mao Zedong was quite clear that he didn’t view himself as having done anything more in the military sphere other than to lead a [correct, even ingenious] strategic line based on the principles already established as “Marxist-Leninist”, “proved correct by the October Revolution”.
If partisans of “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” are not adventurists, and merely seek to avoid pacifism and eventually overthrow the bourgeois state, and they are not peasant-ists, if they are not, to be brief, anything like the Narodniks, then if they align with Mao’s understanding, the “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist” “people’s war” appears to be yet another case where Maoist packaging makes orthodox Marxism-Leninism look brand new, contrasted against the revisionism and opportunism of surrounding non-“Marxist-Leninist-Maoist” parties (and, it is worth noting, many such revisionist and opportunist parties themselves “uphold” Mao, just as many non-revisionist parties do not).
If any Maoists doubt that Mao’s military strategy is acceptable to non-Maoists, that there is some fanatical commitment to some particular type of military strategy which precludes Mao’s preferred method of guerrilla warfare, etc., they should note the reception of Ho Chi Minh in even anti-Maoist and more dogmatic “Hoxhaite” circles, and then should explain how Ho Chi Minh was not practising “people’s war” (by whatever definition).
This is but the tip of the iceberg in terms of Mao’s theory and practice, as Mao wrote prolifically and eloquently and oversaw many twists and turns in domestic and foreign policy. It is intended, and published here at The Lever, to spark a discussion with Maoist comrades (and perhaps to help non-Maoist comrades articulate our common ground with the Maoists).
My goal is not division, but rather unity. Speaking for myself, but knowing that there are no shortage of anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninists who share my views: Mao Zedong was a great revolutionary for a significant period, but in light of his failures and in light of our common failures as a movement by the end of the 20th century, we should not use the Sino-Albanian split or the total failure of the RIM as our shibboleth to determine who our real comrades and who the revisionists are. We have a rich history of many triumphs to draw on in the 20th century, but we must soberly accept that we have lost everything we once had in our hands. The question is, what are our positions today? Are they such that we can build in these tumultuous times for new revolutionary triumphs?
“There is great chaos under heaven, the situation is excellent.”