“ALLIANCE!”
MARXIST-LENINIST
SPRING 2006
Foreword by Alliance
Those
familiar with Alliance and its views on the current divisions in the
Marxist-Leninist movement, will not be surprised that we publish here a
viewpoint
with which we have disagreements. We have long held that until
principled
discussions on the basis of fact are held, the dis-unity can not be
papered
over or resolved. It was to that end that we printed some years back an
“Open
Letter to Ludo Martens” of the Belgian movement – a committed Maoist
[See:http://www.allianceml.com/China/Anti-Martens-a.html].
Regrettably, this received no reply.
We have exchanged views with Pratyush – also a
committed Maoist – for some time.
We below give his views on the role of Mao. In our forthcoming
issue we will
offer a reply to comrade Pratyush - a principled
Marxist-Leninist.
MAO AND MARXISM-LENINISM:
ON THE ROLE OF MAO IN
DEVELOPMENT OF MARXISM
LENINISM IN THE CHINESE CONDITION
Submitted to Alliance by
Pratyush
The debate
over whether Mao was a Marxist or not is a complex one that is
prone to umpteen interpretations and arguments. For
his supporters, Mao’s thought epitomizes the next higher stage of
Marxism
Leninism. On the other end for his opponents Mao is a symbol of
revisionism,
one who deviated from the Marxism, and thus is not even worthy of being
called
as a Marxist Leninist leader. Though the subject is very wide, in this
paper an
attempt is made to understand the role of Mao in his development of the
ML movement,
in the prevailing objective and subjective conditions of the
pre-revolutionary
China in particular - and the Third World (also referred as the
countries of
East) in general. These conditions were quite different from the post
feudal
post-industrial revolution Europe that formed the back-drop of the
works of
Marx and Engels.
The emergence of Mao's
thought has a history behind it. Marx and Engels had dreamt of a
proletarian
revolution, that would begin from developed capitalist countries,
following which
the victorious proletariat would liberate the oppressed people of
colonies and
semi-colonies. However, revolution did not take the coveted route.
Socialist
revolution first broke out in a backward predominantly agrarian Russia.
Lenin
too had expected the Russian revolution to ignite the flame of
revolution first
in Germany, and then in the other advanced industrialised countries of
Western
Europe. That too did not come about. Lenin, therefore, emphasised the
organic
linkage between the Russian revolution and the national liberation
struggles of
colonies and semi-colonies. He analysed the objective shift of the
center of
world revolution towards Asia. He said:
“Everywhere
in
Asia a mighty democratic movement is growing, spreading and gaining in
strength.
The bourgeoisie there is siding
with the people against reaction.
Hundreds of
millions of people are awakening to
life, light and freedom. What delight this world movement is arousing
in the
hearts of all class-conscious workers, who know that the path to
collectivism
lies through democracy! What sympathy for young Asia imbues all honest
democrats!”.
(Forward
Asia, Backward Europe)
Therefore the emergence
of
Mao's thought was no accident. As the axis of revolution moved to the
East, the
emergence of a revolutionary theory from there was a historical
inevitability.
It could have been in India or any other country of the East as well.
Anyway,
it emerged from China, and Mao was the product of this historical
inevitability.
Those who
argue that Mao created a new distinct ideology different from
the Marxism-Leninism have given several arguments to show the so-called
Mao’s
revisionist steps. The crux of their argument boils down to the
following
points
·
The
first is based on the class nature of Mao’s revolutionary strategy.
Can a
proletariat revolution be attained in a society/country where
there is no real proletariat to speak of, and no bourgeois revolution
in place?
·
Can
a peasant-based revolution be a Marxist revolution?
Can the
peasantry take on the role of vanguard—a role hitherto reserved
for the proletariat?
And if this happens can that revolution be called as Socialist?
·
Is
the class analysis of Mao which gives primacy to the state of mind
rather than
to the economically determined class; negate the dialectics
which is the sole
of Marxism-Leninism?
Did Mao by
applying
this thesis move too far from Marx’s original ideas?
·
Contribution
of Mao in the development of Marxism Leninism.
We will now
try to analyse Mao’s role and contribution to the Marxist
Leninist movement one by one, though, due to various constraints we
will
somewhat limit it to examining the main
points.
The fabric
of Marxism is spun around the economic conditions, as the
determinant of social and political change. Marxism is, perhaps above
all, an
economically deterministic ideology. Negating the importance of
economics as
the determinant of social and political change, means denying the basic
building blocks of Marxism itself. How can class struggle be possible
after the
revolution, when the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship has
removed
class divisions? Mao further deviated from the basic premises of Marx
by
arguing that transforming human thought can be the precursor to
economic change
(rather than economic change transforming human thought).
Mao’s
role then turns as a “voluntarist”,
who turns Marx
on his head by placing the primacy of willed social change as a
precondition
for economic change.
There
is no denying the fact that there are major differences
between Mao and Marx, and even between Mao and Lenin. But Marx, was not
only an
economic analyst who saw history from the prism of economics; his ideas
did
revolve around economic exploitation of one class by another. Yet Marx
was less
of an economic determinist than is often suggested, and he did discuss
the
importance of willed “cultural” change. By reducing Marx’s ideas to a
simple
economic determinist ideology, means over-simplifying the thousands of
words
that he wrote down to one simple idea. This tendency leads to a
mechanical
interpretation of the words of Marx carrying with it the
danger of
subjectivism on
cost of destroying the entire theoretical foundation of the most
profound
catalyst that the human history has had till date.
Furthermore,
Marx never intended his ideas to be a blueprint for all
countries to follow. He was writing about the specific situation in one
or two
European countries at a specific moment in time. Even Marx toyed with
the
notion that other forms of oppression (and therefore class conflict)
might
exist in oriental nations, of which he knew very little about. The
important
thing here is not following Marx’s exact prescriptions for
revolutionary
change, but to use his class analysis methodology.
Thus,
if we take the Marxist approach of identifying class
conflicts in society, and apply it to the Chinese situation, we arrive
at a
very different notion of the oppressing and revolutionary classes in
China,
than when using the same approach to investigate Britain and France in
the
nineteenth century.
In the 19th
century the main oppressing classes in China, were
the feudals (landlords, the Kuomintang-Guomindang
(KMT) and the Confucian
bureaucratic/imperial structure), and the agents of colonialism. It was
a
country where industrialisation was in infancy. The working class at
the
beginning of the 20th century was almost missing (the ratio between
workers and
peasants being 2:100) and they were concentrated at the Shanghai-Wuhuan
industrial complex and the Canton Hong Kong area, plus there were
around two hundred
thousand workers in the Hunan mines
Thus, in the
Chinese case, the oppressed class was the peasantry, facing
the brunt of decadent feudalism and newly expanding colonial powers. It
was
therefore entirely Marxist to develop a revolution based on the support
of the
peasantry and those urban groups which had been alienated by both the
foreign
colonisers, and the Guomindang’s response to those foreign colonisers.
Marx may
not have developed a notion of a semi-feudal semi-colonial state, but
that was
because his main backdrop of analysis was the post industrial
revolution Europe
where the bourgeoisie had become the ruling class with a briskly
expanding
Capital. Although the term is not found in Marx’s works, the idea of
semi-feudal semi-colonialism emerges from deploying Marxist
perspectives given
the objective and subjective conditions of China and other colonial
countries
of Asia and Third world. Whether you see Mao as a Marxist or not
essentially
depends on your view of Marx and his ideas - was it a blueprint, or
merely an
approach? An ideology or dogma?
Role of
Peasantry in a
Socialist Revolution: Can the Peasantry become a Vanguard of Revolution?
Another important point of
contradiction cited between Mao and the Marx is on the role of
peasantry in a
socialist revolution. It is evident that Marx gave primary importance
to the
proletariat as the vanguard of revolution, which will first free itself
then
all the other oppressed classes from the Bourgeoisies exploitation.
Who
is a proletariat? In the ‘Communist
Manifesto’, Marx and Engels said that apart from the industrial
Workers….The
lower strata of the middle class—the small trades people, shopkeepers,
and
retried tradesmen generally the handicraftsmen and peasants --- all
these sink
gradually into the proletariat…Thus, the proletariat is recruited from
all
class of the population.
The backdrop of Marx and
Engels’
analysis was the time when Capitalism had firmly uprooted the last
vestiges of
feudalism from Europe. Still they considered the peasant question to be
a vital
one and one which deserves serious theoretical attention by the party
of the
toiling masses. Engels in 'The Peasant
Question in
France and Germany' gives us some fundamental ideas of the
founder
of scientific socialist movement. Engels wrote:
“… The
conquest of political power by this
party (i.e. the Social-Democratic/Socialist/Worker’s Party which were
formed in
several European countries -- Author) must first go from the towns to
the
country, must become a power in the countryside. This party, which has
an
advantage over all others in that it possesses a clear insight into the
interconnections between economic causes and political effects and long
ago
described the wolf in the sheep's clothing of the big landowner, that
importunate friend of the peasant — may this party calmly leave the
doomed
peasant in the hands of his false protectors until he has been
transformed from
a passive into an active opponent of the industrial workers? This
brings us
right into the thick of the peasant question.”
Though Marx and Engels
saw small peasantry as:
“…survivor of a past mode of
production,…(Which) is hopelessly
doomed.”
Yet
they maintained that “The (Peasantry) is a
future proletarian.”
Marx and Engels were primarily concerned about the urban
proletariats—whom
they considered as class which was directly opposing the bourgeoisie.
They
considered proletariats to be the only class capable of overthrowing
bourgeoisie. But the notion that Marx had completely disregarded the
role of
peasantry in socialist transformation, is one of the several vicious
deceits
emanating from the Bourgeoisies and Trotskyite revisionist windbags.
To support their theses,
the revisionists quote Marx’s passage from “THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE OF LOUIS BONAPARTE”. Here Marx wrote that, in a
way, the
Bonapartist regime represented the French peasantry, a class that he
considered
to be an un-formed mass,
"much as
potatoes in a sack form a sack of
potatoes."
He added that "they
do not form a class" and since "they
cannot represent themselves, they need to be represented," and in this
case that vacuum had been unfortunately filled by Bonaparte”
(MECW 11, p. 187).
It its
true that Marx wrote this. Yet here he was primarily analysing the role
of
French peasants at a particular juncture (1851-52) of history. During
the
revolution of 1848, and in the subsequent events, the French peasantry
had not
developed a class consciousness and therefore fell into the trap of Bonapartism, as had the liberal
democrats. What
Marx was talking about, was the emergence of different tendencies among
the
French peasants, based on their specific class position and the uneven
development of their revolutionary consciousness. Marx said:
“But let there be no
misunderstanding. The Bonaparte
dynasty represents not the revolutionary, but the conservative peasant;
not the
peasant that strikes out beyond the condition of his social existence,
the
smallholding, but rather the peasant who wants to consolidate this
holding; not
the country folk who, linked up with the towns, want to overthrow the
old order
through their own energies in conjunction with the towns….It represents
not the
enlightenment, but the superstition of the peasant; not his judgment,
but his
prejudice; not his future, but his past…”
(MECW
11, p. 188).
The above is
one of the several paragraphs which
Marx wrote to suggest that peasantry may have a revolutionary role to
play.
In the CRITIQUE OF THE
GOTHA PROGRAM (1875), Marx clearly castigated the Lassallean view of the backwardness of
the
peasantry and the sole revolutionary potential of proletariats
Marx
asserted this point more visibly in his letter to Engels of April 11,
1856,
where he wrote of the dialectical relationship between peasant and
proletarian
struggles, going back to the 16th century peasant uprising in German on
which
Engels had written one of his best books, THE PEASANT WAR IN GERMANY (published
only two
years before the EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE).
Marx
wrote:
"The whole thing in Germany will depend upon the
possibility of backing the proletarian revolution by some second
edition of the
Peasant War. Then the affair will be splendid…”
In 'The Peasant Question in France and Germany' Engels wrote:
“...that we foresee the inevitable
doom of the small peasant, but that it is not our mission to hasten it
by any
interference on our part….…. that when we are in possession of state
power, we
shall not even think of forcibly expropriating the small peasants
(regardless of
whether with or without compensation), as we shall have to do in the
case of
the big landowners. Our task relative to the small peasant consists, in
the
first place, in effecting a transition of his private enterprise and
private
possession to cooperative ones, not forcibly but by dint of example and
the
proffer of social assistance for this purpose. And then, of course, we
shall
have ample means of showing to the small peasant prospective advantages
that
must be obvious to him even today.”
So
we see that though Marx and Engels did not see the peasantry as the
vanguard of
revolutionary forces, yet they had not completely annulled the role of
peasantry as an ally of Working class.
As said
before Marx was analyzing a continent
where:
“The
bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand,
has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has
pitilessly
torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural
superiors", and has left no other nexus between people than naked
self-interest, than callous "cash payment". It has drowned out the
most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm,
of
philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.
It has
resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the
numberless
indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable
freedom
-- Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and
political
illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal
exploitation.” (
‘The Communist Manifesto’).
Still he
had not lost hopes of the peasantry
joining hands with the proletariats. Marx towards the end of his life,
came to
perceive that conditions were not necessarily the same for peasants in
other
countries particularly Russia. Whereas, the French peasantry had
developed a
strong individualist tradition which discouraged collective action, the
Russian
peasants retained a strong communal tradition that centered around the
ancient
mir. For this and other reasons, Marx expressed a cautious optimism
concerning
the revolutionary potential of the Russian peasantry. And as it turned
out what
was true for the Russian peasantry was even truer for the peasants of
China,
Vietnam, and other Asian countries.
Due to their pragmatism,
certainly the urban workers developed a class character more profound
than the
peasants, yet we cannot say that peasants as a whole never revolted
against the
prevailing condition. Numerous examples can be cited, from past and not
so distant
past where peasantry played a pivotal role in leading a mass upsurge.
In 1857
the first Indian revolt against imperialism in the entire British
Empire was
led by the peasants. Similarly in entire Asia and Africa peasants had
time to
time revolted against the tyranny of colonial-feudal regimes. All these
revolts
LENIN ON REVOLUTIONARY
POTENTIAL OF PESANTRY:
It is commonly believed that Lenin like the other Russian Marxists had
ignored the peasant element in Russia, but his slogan of “Peace, Land,
Bread,”
used to pacify peasants in the Ukraine suggests otherwise. When
examining the
revolutionary potential of the peasants, it is equally relevant to
refer to the
role of the revolutionary proletariat. On the alliance between
proletariat and
peasantry Lenin said:
“our
principal and indispensable task is to strengthen the
alliance of the rural
proletarians and semi-proletarians with the urban proletarians.
For this
alliance we need at once, immediately, complete
political liberty for the people, complete equality of rights for the
peasants
and the abolition of serf bondage. And when that alliance is
established
and strengthened, we shall easily expose all the deceit the bourgeoisie
resorts
to in order to attract the middle peasant; we shall easily and quickly
take the
second, the third and the last step against the entire bourgeoisie,
against all
the government forces, and we shall unswervingly march to victory and
rapidly
achieve the complete emancipation of
all working people. ”.
Lenin was the first
Marxist
leader and thinker to study the revolutionary potential of the peasants
in the
less developed backward countries like Russia, and the countries of the
East
where the proletariat was still in infancy and the society and economy
had not
completely changed to Capitalist mode of production.
In the face of much
criticism by early Russian Marxists who, according to Esther
Kingston-Mann,
were “rooted in denial of…sociological insights,” (See
Lenin and the Problem of the Marxist Peasant
Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983) - Lenin formulated an
ideology that featured the peasantry as a
revolutionary ally. Some analysts like Vera Broido suggest
that Lenin was a mere opportunist who recognized the “desperate and
dangerous”
mood of the peasantry and “harnessed it to his advantage.” Lenin would
have
recognized the peasantry to represent the “sphinx of all the Russias” (Turgenov)
who, if on your side, would assure your victory. Esther
Kingston-Mann defends
Lenin, by saying his “opportunism” had not
“invalidated his real
political insights or defined the overall character of his theory and
practice.”
(Lenin
and the Problem of the Marxist Peasant
Revolution (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1983)
Lenin was careful not to
overlook the peasant question, which Stalin referred to as the
‘national question.’ Lenin believed the peasantry to be a potential
revolutionary ally to the workers because of its antagonism to
feudalism, and
saw the peasantry as a tool to resolve the contradiction between
industrial
workers and feudalism.
Lenin saw the peasantry
as
a petty bourgeoisie whose main concern was to attain private plots of
land, and
although it was capable of revolutionary action, leadership could only
lie in
the hands of an urban proletariat. Only under the leadership of the
cities
could they hope to achieve the abolition of feudalism, the
nationalization of
land, and the establishment of a provisional revolutionary government.
Lenin
summarizes his perspective when speaking of the Bolshevik Revolution of
1905:
“…the real ‘possibility of holding power’ -- namely, in the
revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry,
in
their joint mass strength, which is capable of outweighing all the
forces of
counterrevolution.”
In Lenin’s address “To the
Rural Poor” (1903), we find the first formulation of a Marxist policy
on the
Peasant question. He called the peasantry to realize their need for
political
and civil liberty, to be aware of the materialistic reasons for their
poverty,
and to finally recognize the urban workers as a body with similar
goals.
However, Lenin never let go of his fundamental belief that workers were
the
central revolutionary force in Russia, and only accepted the peasantry
as an
ally led by the proletariat in the bourgeoisie-democratic phase in
history:
“…all Russian workers and all the rural poor must fight with both hands
and on two sides; with one hand – fight against all the bourgeois, in
alliance
with all the workers; and with the other hand – fight against the rural
officials,
against the feudal landlords, in alliance with all the peasants.”
On the question of
Revolution in the colonial country Lenin had warned communists not to
place an
over-emphasis on the strength of the proletariats. He said “"…there
can be no question of purely proletarian movement,' where, 'There is
practically no industrial proletariat." (See Alliance-ML at http://www.allianceml.com/AllianceIssues/All-5table.htm)
Stalin, when addressing
the
People's of the East had distinguished by 1925: "at least three
categories
of colonial and dependent countries":
"Firstly
countries like Morocco who have little or not proletariat, and are
industrially
quite undeveloped. Secondly countries like China and Egypt which are
under-developed industries and have a relatively small proletariat.
Thirdly
countries like India, which are capitalistically more or less developed
and
have a more or less numerous national proletariat. Clearly all these
countries
cannot possibly be put on a par with one another."
(J.V.Stalin. "Political Tasks of the University of Peoples of the
East." May 18. 1925. Reprinted San Francisco, 1975 in: J.V.Stalin.
Marxism
and the National Colonial question. P.317-8)
Mao made the peasantry
an invincible ally of Working Class.
It is interesting to note
that on the day of Lenin’s death, January 24, 1924, the First
National Congress of the Guomindang
(KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
included the peasantry in their strategy for national liberation.
China was not
industrialized and still had some elements of feudalism; Mao described
it as
“semi-feudal.” The next step should have been for the people to free
themselves
by establishing capitalism. China was not completely without
capitalism, but
the country was not a fully-developed, industrial society with a
revolutionary,
industrial proletariat that formed the majority of the population.
However, Mao
did not even want such a capitalist system like the one necessary in
Marxism. In
his 1940 work On
New Democracy, Mao wrote, “We must never
establish a capitalist society of the
European-American type…”.
Mao placed the end of
feudalism at the time of the Opium War in China - recognizing, however,
that
China was not ready to have a proletarian, socialist revolution. Mao
believed
that two revolutions were necessary before China could be considered
communist. First, the peasants,
workers, and the petty and national capitalists, a combination of
China’s
proletariat and bourgeoisie, would unite in an anti-imperialist,
nationalist
revolution. They would remove the
foreigners, feudal landlords, and the bureaucratic capitalists, people
who
controlled the economy for their own profit, established monopolies,
and took
state property for their own use. The proletariat would support the
bourgeoisie
in a nationalist revolution, though pushing for the rights of the
proletariat
and intending to take over later in a proletarian socialist revolution.
The
development of communism in China before 1949 was a long and laborious
process.
The first important transition of its development happened after the
"Autumn Harvest uprising," when Mao withdrew to the province of
Jiangxi and created the very first Soviet.
After
its creation in 1921, the CCP was totally under the Soviet’s influence.
Overall
we have to recognize that firstly, with the emergence of communism in
China,
for the first time, the notion of equality, democracy or Keming
(revolution) were introduced to Chinese elitists, among them the
president Sun Yat-sen and his young wife.
President Sun admired
very much the Soviet organization and how its revolution proceeded, as
a
result, the early infrastructure of KMT had a direct influence of
Lenin’s
organizational thinking. When Chen Duxiu was the head of the CCP,
he regarded the labor
unions as the first priority. Yet with the brutal suppression from
warlords, it
was a predominant need for the young movement to form a union front
with the
KMT, as the Comintern had suggested. As the result, the CCP grew
rapidly and
its influence overshadowed that of the KMT. In 1927, Chiang
Kai-shek
organized the "white terror" in
order to eliminate the entire communist organization; this was the
first
decline for CCP. Presumably, the idea of taking power in collaboration
with KMT
became unrealistic. As ordered by Moscow, Qu Qiubai replaced Chen, and Qu
carried the new policy
of organize urban insurrection. At the time, the CCP was weaponless,
with the
failure of this policy, members who had survived the "white terror"
became even fewer.
Mao
turned to the state of the peasantry as early as 1925, when he was
assigned to
Hunan, his home province, to organize peasant movement. He was
convinced that
within the peasantry, there was an enormous revolution potential. For
Mao, to
understand the peasantry was to understand the majority of people,
which he
qualified as "mass line." Mao believed that it is strategic to have
the peasants’ support, because once peasantry was on the CCP’s side it
would
detest the potential to takeover China against the KMT.
Mao
saw “masses” as “peasants, workers or proletarians”. Mao argued that:
"the
basic method of leadership is to
sum up the views of the masses, take the results back to the masses so
that the
masses give them their firm support and so work out sound ideas for
leading the
work on hand."
This
sounds a sage governmental decision, trying to minimize the social gap
between
the rulers and ruled. He firmly believed that the correct leadership
can only
be developed on the principle of "from the mass, to the mass."
What feared Mao was the C.C.P would not link the leadership with the
masses,
and if so, the C.C.P will lose its legitimacy of being a revolutionary
movement
from the Chinese people, and for this purpose, the party’s cadres need
to
participate in the labor production.
On the class unity of the
working masses Mao echoes same idea as that of other Lenin where he
says:
“The
people's democratic dictatorship is based on the alliance of the
working class,
the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie, and mainly on the
alliance of
the workers and the peasants, because these two classes comprise 80 to
90 per
cent of China's population. These two classes are the main force in
overthrowing imperialism and the Kuomintang reactionaries. The
transition from
New Democracy to socialism also depends mainly upon their alliance. The
people's democratic dictatorship needs the leadership of the working
class. For
it is only the working class that is the most farsighted, most selfless
and
most thoroughly revolutionary. The entire history of revolution proves
that
without the leadership of the working class revolution triumphs. In the
epoch
of imperialism, in no country can any other class lead any genuine
revolution
to victory. This is clearly proved by the fact that the many
revolutions led by
China's petty bourgeoisie and national bourgeoisie all failed....”
(From Mao Zedong (Mao Tsetung), Speech "In Commemoration
of the
28th Anniversary of the Communist Party of China, June 30, 1949," in Selected Works, vol. 5)
Now we discuss Mao’s
philosophical thinking, which he used to further the
philosophy of Marxism Leninism. According to Marx and
Engels,
communism was the next stage after capitalism, which was the stage
after
feudalism, in economic development. Engels said that serfs in feudalism
were
very different from the proletariat because the serf used an “instrument of production, a piece of land,”
and gave up part of his or her product or labor and kept the rest to
survive. The proletariat used
instruments of production that were completely controlled by the
bourgeoisie,
and they had to depend on the bourgeoisie to give them part of the
profits of
what they produced.
In feudalism, the serfs
could free themselves by
getting into the owning class: they could move to the city and become
“handicraftsmen,” buy the property that they worked from the lord,
overthrow
the lord. Proletarians could become
free by abolishing private property and class differences.
Hence, feudalism goes to capitalism, and
capitalism goes to communism.
The
concept of two stage of revolution
Mao gave more concrete
shape to Lenin’s concept of two stage
revolution for the backward countries in the post-1917 era.
Lenin, while opposing
Trotskyite and other such deviations,
clearly stated that revolutions cannot skip stages according to the
whims of
any party, but will develop according to laws inherent in the
socio-economic
system. The task of the revolutionary is to discover those laws and act
accordingly. So, in Russia, the struggle against Tsarist autocracy went
through
democratic revolutions in 1905 and February 1917 and then the socialist
revolution in October 1917.
Mao repeatedly pointed
out
that the contradiction between capitalism and socialism is far from
resolved.
This struggle will go on for many years to come may be a few hundred
years, and
thus the question: ‘who will win?’ - is yet to be resolved. The then
Kruschevite revisionist Soviet leadership claimed that socialism can
only grow
into developed socialism and then into communism. Mao completely
negated this
theory as a bundle of. This was yet another major contribution of Mao
in the
field of Marxist philosophy and theory.
Mao gave a tangible shape
to the relation between knowledge and practice, between knowing and
doing. He
detailed the process of cognition from lower to higher levels and its
transformation of reality through practice.
"Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice
verify and develop the truth. Start from perceptual knowledge and
actively
develop it into rational knowledge; then start from rational knowledge
and
actively guide revolutionary practice to change both the subjective and
the
objective world. Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again
knowledge. This
form repeats itself in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content
of
practice and knowledge rises to a higher level. such is the whole of
the
dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and such is the
dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing."
That is the essence of
the
works of Marx. Let us all remember that Marx gave primacy to practical
work in
place of academic thinking.
Marx
believed that he could study history and society scientifically and
discern tendencies of history and the resulting outcome of social
conflicts.
Some followers of Marx concluded, therefore, that a communist
revolution is
inevitable….Consequently, most followers of Marx are not fatalists, but
activists
who believe that revolutionaries must organize social change.”
(From Wikipedia
Encyclopedia on Karl Marx at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx )
That is the dynamics of
Marxism which sets it apart from the other political thinking.
Bourgeois
intellectuals distort Marxism alleging that it is nothing but economic
determinism. But Marx and Engels had very clearly explained the
dialectical
relations between base and superstructure. Mao visibly pointed out, in
his
analysis of contradictions, the dialectical relations between these and
also
the decisive role that superstructure play in some situations:
"The principal aspect is the one playing the leading role in the
contradiction. The nature of a thing is determined mainly by the
principal
aspect of a contradiction, the aspect which has gained the dominant
position.
"But this
situation is not static; the principal and the
non-principal aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into each
other
and the nature of the thing changes accordingly………
"Some
people think that this is not true of certain contradictions.
For instance, in the contradiction between the productive forces and
the
relations of production, the productive forces are the principal
aspect; in the
contradiction between theory and practice, practice is the principal
aspect; in
the contradiction between the economic base and the superstructure, the
economic base is the principal aspect; and there is no change in their
respective positions. This is the mechanical materialist conception,
not the
dialectical materialist conception. True, the productive forces,
practice and
the economic base generally play the principal and decisive role;
whoever
denies this is not materialist. But it must also be admitted that in
certain
conditions, such aspects as the relations of the production, theory and
the
superstructure in turn manifest themselves in the principal and
decisive
role."
Mao analysed in detail
how
exactly a socialist country may transform itself back into capitalism.
He
opined that class struggle exists in socialist society too and there
remains a
bourgeoisie. This bourgeoisie organises itself within the communist
party, and
capitalist roaders emerge from within the Party headquarters. Later on
events
in Soviet Union have corroborated his analysis. Socialism's retreat to
capitalism
and the capturing of Party headquarters from within by capitalist
roaders
occurred in Russia in exactly the way Mao had predicted. And this is
the basic
reason for the growing attraction towards Mao's thought particularly
after
Soviet collapse.
CONCLUSION
There is no denying the fact that during his course of revolutionary
sojourn Mao certainly committed some major mistakes.
But who does not? Did
not Marx’s prophesy of revolution being in advanced European country
prove
wrong?
Or did
not Lenin’s analysis that the Bolshevik revolution would be followed by
a world
revolution prove to be wrong?
But that does not negate their contribution to the advancement of human
history.
Mistakes are committed by those who dare to act and not by those who
only
speak. That is why today we follow path shown by Marx and not Proudhon;
that of
Lenin not of Kerenski. All leaders have committed mistakes and it is
natural
when one is cruising in the vast un-chartered water of social
transformation
against the most crook and powerful mode of production and
exploitation. The
mistakes committed by Mao should not overshadow his contributions nor
should it
eclipse his colossus thought which gave the Marxist-Leninists of the
third
world a new weapon of analysis to struggle against the
feudal-capitalist-imperialist enemy.
Furthermore, if Mao is not a Marxist, then what about Lenin and the
Soviet revolution?
Where did Marx talk about imperialism as the highest stage of
capitalism?
Marx
argued that revolution would occur in the most advanced capitalist
nations, so
what does Lenin’s conclusion - that it can occur in the weakest links
of the
international capitalist chain - mean?
And
where did Lenin find his justification for an elite group of
revolutionaries
leading a revolution of an undeveloped proletariat in the works of Marx?
The answer is that Lenin applied basic Marxist approaches
to the
specifics of the Russian situation to develop an understanding of the
revolutionary situation in a specific and unique case study.
And if Mao
denies economic determinism, then what about the policies adapted in
the New
Economic Policy in the Soviet Union to build the economic base that
Marx said
was a pre-requisite for developing revolutionary consciousness in the
proletariat?
Surely, once
Lenin had done this, and still remained a Marxist, then
anything that Mao was doing was in exactly the same vein?
Lenin and
Mao shared fundamental
similarities in terms of their assessment of the revolutionary
potential of the
peasants, yet Mao held a more profound belief in the peasantry and
their
transformation into a revolutionary army.
So while there may be a clear and real distinction between Marx and
Mao,
the key link lies in Lenin’s reinvention of Marxism to fit the Russian
situation. If Lenin can reinterpret Marxism, then surely Mao can
reinterpret
Leninism. Only very few authors would disregard Lenin as being a
Marxist. Some authors
example, argues that once Lenin “compromised”
Marxism and tried to “fabricate the
entire missing industrial base”, then the path to Mao’s deviations
and a
new Maoist ideology were clearly set in place. Mao was convinced that
he was
right and convinced that his was the correct Marxist approach. While it
is true
that Mao wanted power, he did not just want power for its own sake. He
was also
motivated by ensuring that his correct Marxist ideas were followed, and
if
people got in the way and relied on inappropriate Russian models, then
these
obstacles had to be removed.
Most important for this study, Mao had to argue that his ideas were
the correct Marxist ideas in competition with those Chinese and other
leaders
of Third World who instinctively and ideologically looked to Moscow for
their
inspiration. Unable to dominate the specifics of policy making on a
day-to-day
level within the party-state bureaucracy, Mao’s major way of
reasserting
himself in the political arena was to maintain the importance of
ideology on
the political agenda. By continually keeping the ideological debate
alive, and
by continually emphasising the correct Marxist approach of seeking
truth from
facts and asserting the primacy of the Chinese experience, Mao could
reassert
his views over and above those of his colleagues, and use the Marxism
debate as
a tool to attack his opponents. Defending his ideas as the correct
interpretation of Marxism in the Chinese and Oriental case was a
crucial
component of Mao’s political strategy.
For those people who still analyse the world from prism of dogmatic
Marxist perspective the word of Lenin on the method to be adopted by
communist
revolutionaries should act as an eye opener where he said:
“But the doctrine of Social-Democracy must
not be taught from books alone; every instance, every case of
oppression and
injustice we see around us must be used for this purpose. The
Social-Democratic
doctrine is one of struggle against all oppression, all robbery, all
injustice.
Only he who knows the causes of oppression and who all
his life fights every case of oppression is a real
Social-Democrat. How can this
be done? When they gather in their town or village, class-conscious
Social-Democrats must themselves decide how it must be done to the best
advantage of the entire working class.”
Marx asserted “philosophers
have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is
to
change it” and Mao
definitely as Marxist-Leninist tried to change it.
Reference
1.
Fredrick Engels, “The
Principles of Communism,” section
8, in Selected Works, Vol. 1,
trans. Paul Sweezy [Book Online] Moscow,
USSR: Progress Publishers, 1969. available from http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm;
Internet.
2.
Karl Marx, The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte; at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/index.htm
3.
Mao Zedong, “The Economy
of New Democracy,” in On New
Democracy, as quoted in Mao Zedong Reference Archive,
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1940/01.htm;
4.
Mao Zedong, “Economy.”
5.
Mao Zedong ‘Introducing
the Communist’,
6.
Mao Zedong ‘Chinese
Revolution and the Chinese Communist
Party’ and
7.
Mao Zedong ‘On New
Democracy’ (all written in 1939/40) gave
this Leninist concept a more concrete scientific shape in his concept
of new
democratic revolution.
8.
Mao Tse Tung A Selected
Works"; 1960, Peking.
9.
Mao Zedong
"Chinese Revolution and Chinese Communist Party" Vol 2.
10.
Mao Zedong
"The
Tasks Of The CCP In the Period Of The Resistance To Japan"; May 1937;
Vol
1.
11.
Mao Zedong
"On
Policy"; December 1940; Vol 2.
12.
Mao Zedong
"On
Coalition Government"; April 1945; Vol 3.
13.
Mao Zedong
"Chinese Revolution and Chinese Communist Party"; Vol 2
14.
Mao Zedong
"On
New Democracy"; Vol 2.
15.
Mao Zedong
"Chinese Revolution and Chinese Communist Party"; Vol 2.
16.
Mao Zedong
"On
the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People'; February
1957; Vol 5.
17.
Mao Zedong "The Only Road
For
the Transformation of Capitalist Industry and Commerce"; September
1953;
Vol 5.
18.
"On the Draft
Constitution of
People’s Republic of China"; Vol 5.
19.
Alliance ML http://www.allianceml.com/AllianceIssues/All-5table.htm
20.
Collected works of Lenin,
Mao and
Stalin at http://www.marxists.org/
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