Marxists, please explain China.

[Ned]

In the recent Taiwan thread, several of our Chinese posters have painted a picture of today's China that seems radically inconsistent with socialism. The Chinese government is promoting private business and spending generously on infrastructure to support a private economy. At the same time, they are selling off SOE's as fast as possible.

In all our threads on Marxism vs. Capitalism, none of our Marxist friends has ever painted a picture of Marxism that even remotely resembles what we see today in China. Is this Marxism at all?

[Bosh]

Of course not. Mao wasn't a Marxist even in theory (far too much voluntarism and nationalism and too little focus on the proletariat) let alone practice while the PRC is about as Marxist as Texas nowadays

[Ned]

Bosko, I just saw the Chinese movie, "To Live." It certainly does paint a picture of China that seems Marxist during the 50's and 60's, while Mao was alive.

[Boris Godunov]

And we all know how movies NEVER LIE!

[Whoha]

Easy Ned, we are selling them the rope(or rather buying it from them) that they will use to hang us with :P

[Ned]

Whoha, but they are not Marxists, are they? China seems to have done a 180 and have gone directly from socialism as the paradigm to capitalism as a paradigm.

[mindseye]

It's hard to say just what China is now. With out-and-out capitalists now occupying high positions within the "Communist" Party, it sure ain't communist anymore. The Chinese usually call it "socialism with Chinese characteristics". I think of it as a dictatorial single party autocracy. In some ways it also resembles fascism. It's like some unusual two-headed critter the world hasn't seen the likes of before.

And like most two-headed critters, it's viability in its present form seems questionable.

Then again, whatever it is now, it won't be that way for long. It seems every d*mn thing is changing here, all at once. I don't think anyone can predict very accurately what it will be like even ten years from now. I think the general arc of trajectory is in a postive direction, but there are many enormous problems and challenges to be faced.

[Bosh]

Reasons why Maoism =! Marxism (even in theory)

1. Marxism is a materialistic philosophy that bascially says that material conditions determine what people think and are the only things that really matter. Mao never liked this much and there is a strong Voluntarist strain in his philosophy which basically said what was most needed was strong collective Will, which isn't a typically Marxist concept at all. You can see this very cleary in this history in the GLF and the Cultural Revolution in which Mao tried to tap into the ferver of the "masses" in order to solve all of China's problems, which doesn't square very well with Marxism (or reality).

2. After getting thumped badly in the cities in the Nationalists the CCP went rural in a big way and based itself on the peasantry for well over a decade. The CCP didn't get its hand on any real cities again until it started making gains in Manchuria in the Civil War which took place after WWII. This squared well with Maoist in which "proletariat" was translated to mean "person without property" rather than industrial worker, which allowed the masses of the poor peasantry to be counted as the proletariat (which would make Marx, or Lenin for that matter, roll over in their graves since for them urban industrial workers were the only group a proper communist revolution could be based on).

3. The CCP was always intensely nationalistic from the beginning, it was pretty much founded on nationalistic resistance to the Japanese. This continued with intense zenophobia during the years in which Mao was in power and lots of silly attempts at "self-sufficiency" that were completely un-Marxist. Also in Maoist theory there is the idea of proletarianized nations (ie that by having imperialistic nations exploiting third world nations whole nations become bourgeoise and proletariat respectively) which is completely at odds with traditional Marxism.

4. Mao never had as much use for the Communist Party apparatus as Marx or (especially) Lenin. He generally preferred emtpy-headed mouthings about the masses. The Cultural Revolution is the best example of this, in which Mao tried to shake up a party that he viewed as having grown ossified and too narrowly involved in material conditions and launched the Red Guards at them (although the Cultural Revolution is a lot more complicated than that, largely due to Mao not being completely control of the events and very indecisive).

5. Unlike many communist countries there was no real program to have people indoctrinated with the writings of Marx himself (or any classical Marxist theorists at all) and Marx etc. were never really seen as all that much of a source of intellectual legitimacy within the PRC once Maoist thought got rolling, too many Little Red Books for that.

6. Mao was a damn good organizer of guerilla war but his attempts at theorizing outside that realm are really pretty juvenile, I doubt very much that he understud a lot of the nuances of Marxist theory all that well.

And as for the current PRC, its ditched everything except the rappings of Maoism (which wasn't especially Marxist in the first place) decades ago. Like I said, its about as communist as Texas.

[Az]

overall, a pretty good summary, Boshko.

[Ned]

Bosko, so it began as a bastardization of Marxism and is now capitalist with Marxist sound bites. Is that about right?

[orange]

aren't all "Marxist states" from Cuba to Angola really just a bastardization of Marxism to suit the purposes of who ever is in power?

[Peter Triggs]

Comrade Mao Tse-tung is the greatest Marxist-Leninist of our era. He has inherited, defended and developed Marxism-Leninism with genius, creatively and comprehensively and has brought it to a higher and completely new stage.
Mao Tse-tung's thought is Marxism-Leninism of the era in which imperialism is heading for total collapse and socialism is advancing to world-wide victory. It is a powerful ideological weapon for opposing imperialism and for opposing revisionism and dogmatism. Mao Tse-tung's thought is the guiding principle for all the work of the Party, the army and the country.

http://art-bin.com/art/omaotoc.html

From this point of view, Boshko is a revisionist.

[Kropotkin]

Marxism is after all superior to maoism. If two guys are trying to hit each other over the head with books, the marxist with Das Kapital would win over the guy with Mao's little red on KO.

[Ned]

Peter Triggs, there seem to be two (or many) thoughts on whether Mao was a Marxist. But today's China is not Maoist either.

[Bosh]

Bosko, so it began as a bastardization of Marxism and is now capitalist with Marxist sound bites. Is that about right?

Yup.

aren't all "Marxist states" from Cuba to Angola really just a bastardization of Marxism to suit the purposes of who ever is in power?

Yeah, but most of them hewed closer to at least the theory theory of Marxism than China.

From this point of view, Boshko is a revisionist.

Nah, don't want to revise Marxism I want to get rid of it, its been a stone around the neck of the Left for far too long, but at least I know what it is

Marxism is after all superior to maoism. If two guys are trying to hit each other over the head with books, the marxist with Das Kapital would win over the guy with Mao's little red on KO.

Yeah but newspapers printed by western Maoist parties make for funnier reading (MIM Notes being my favorite: http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/mn/ ).

Peter Triggs, there seem to be two (or many) thoughts on whether Mao was a Marxist.

Get some Jonathan Spence, he's easily my favorite China historian. He's knowledgable and objective, but most importantly his prose is awe-inspiringly good most of his writing reads like an excellent novel, his book on the Taiping Rebellion (God's Chinese Son) is one of the best pieces of historical writing I've ever come across, he also has what's supposed to be a top-notch book on Tienamin which I have to get my hands on.