NationStates

The title says it all: this thread is devoted to a thorough commentary on the works of Mao Zedong (or Mao Tse-Tung) and his followers. Whether or not you agree with Mao's ideas, this thread will attempt to create a new understanding of works that heavily influence China to this day.

Important Texts can be found here, listed in order by date.

Rules of the thread:
1. No trolling.
2. Try to keep a minimum of two sentences in all your posts.
3. Keep your posts on topic.
4. Don't break standard NS procedures.
5. Follow the rules.

EDIT: STOP POSTING GENERAL OPINIONS ON MAOISM. THIS THREAD HAS MOVED ON FROM THAT. THE TOPIC CURRENTLY BEING DISCUSSED IS THE FIRST CHAPTER OF THE LITTLE RED BOOK.

Boorish variant of Marxism that would make Marx turn in his grave.

I will give it praise in that it came very close to restructuring Chinese society, although the methods and the path it was going wasn't one worthy of any positive comment.

And for what? Modern China is almost the complete opposite once more.

Communist nonsense that resulted in thousands of people being killed for no reason other than so that Mao and his friends could get in power.
Yep, I'm a capitalist.

Maybe it would have worked better if Mao himself wasn't a criminally incompetent statesman. Successful modernization programs generally aren't measured in tens of millions of deaths.

I haven't read any of Mao's works, neither do I have a profound knowledge of Maoism, but considering what he did with the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, I'm not very fond of him.

Free People of the World wrote:Communist nonsense that resulted in thousands of people being killed for no reason other than so that Mao and his friends could get in power.
Yep, I'm a capitalist.

"Let's ignore all of the bat shit insane capitalist leaders and powers that committed horrible atrocities against various peoples throughout the ages, and instead shit on Communism because it's new and spooky."

Mao was a liar and fool who had zero grip on reality. His writings on guerrila warfare have some tactical merit, mainly because they borrow heavily from other authors, Sun Tzu among them, but his economic and ideological theories are not worth the time I once briefly spent reading about them.

And that's from a socialist perspective.

Pandeeria wrote:"Let's ignore all of the bat shit insane capitalist leaders and powers that committed horrible atrocities against various peoples throughout the ages, and instead shit on Communism because it's new and spooky."

To be fair, Mao is far from communism's poster boy now. Most communist parties that still exist (apart from the one in China itself that decided to become market capitalist) don't even seem to bother with him, as far as I can surmise.

Nusaresa wrote:Boorish variant of Marxism that would make Marx turn in his grave.

I will give it praise in that it came very close to restructuring Chinese society, although the methods and the path it was going wasn't one worthy of any positive comment.

And for what? Modern China is almost the complete opposite once more.

China being a capitalist state today is more in part due to Deng Xiaoping rather than what Mao left behind. Despite all the horror and all the purges in the Cultural Revolution, all the senseless killings and arrests and tortures, all of that and Mao's legacy still get fucked right away.

The Remote Islands wrote:

Pandeeria wrote:"Let's ignore all of the bat shit insane capitalist leaders and powers that committed horrible atrocities against various peoples throughout the ages, and instead shit on Communism because it's new and spooky."

To be fair, Mao is far from communism's poster boy now. Most communist parties that still exist (apart from the one in China itself that decided to become market capitalist) don't even seem to bother with him, as far as I can surmise.

That's because he betrayed his own revolution and stomped on the ideals of freedom and equality, and that the Chinese revolution was an outgrowth the earlier Bolshevik (and at the time, Stalinist) Revolution.

That doesn't mean we should collectively discredit Communism.

Mao was a fool who took the progress made by the CCP and ruined it in favor of playing personality cult and claiming brilliance on matters he had zero understanding of.

Now, I'm going to let you folks at it until the beginning of the third page, at which point I'm gonna post the link to a specific piece of Maoist literature and ask you to read it and critique it. This is going to go on until we've gotten through quite a bit. OK?

Pandeeria wrote:That's because he betrayed his own revolution and stomped on the ideals of freedom and equality, and that the Chinese revolution was an outgrowth the earlier Bolshevik (and at the time, Stalinist) Revolution.

That doesn't mean we should collectively discredit Communism.

I'm curious whether there's an argument to be made if his revolution was really about freedom and equality or not. Plenty of people have implied as much about Leninism, and while I don't latch to the idea with the strength of an ardent capitalist, I can see it being the case.

Pandeeria wrote:

The Remote Islands wrote:
To be fair, Mao is far from communism's poster boy now. Most communist parties that still exist (apart from the one in China itself that decided to become market capitalist) don't even seem to bother with him, as far as I can surmise.

That's because he betrayed his own revolution and stomped on the ideals of freedom and equality, and that the Chinese revolution was an outgrowth the earlier Bolshevik (and at the time, Stalinist) Revolution.

That doesn't mean we should collectively discredit Communism.

Don't you regularly participate in collectively discrediting of Capitalism.

FelrikTheDeleted wrote:

Pandeeria wrote:
That's because he betrayed his own revolution and stomped on the ideals of freedom and equality, and that the Chinese revolution was an outgrowth the earlier Bolshevik (and at the time, Stalinist) Revolution.

That doesn't mean we should collectively discredit Communism.

Don't you regularly participate in collectively discrediting of Capitalism.

No I do not.

The Remote Islands wrote:

Pandeeria wrote:That's because he betrayed his own revolution and stomped on the ideals of freedom and equality, and that the Chinese revolution was an outgrowth the earlier Bolshevik (and at the time, Stalinist) Revolution.

That doesn't mean we should collectively discredit Communism.

I'm curious whether there's an argument to be made if his revolution was really about freedom and equality or not. Plenty of people have implied as much about Leninism, and while I don't latch to the idea with the strength of an ardent capitalist, I can see it being the case.

There were definitely people in the movement that believed in freedom and equality, and Mao's revolution was made under said premise. Whether he genuinely believed in it or not, I don't know.

FelrikTheDeleted wrote:

Pandeeria wrote:
That's because he betrayed his own revolution and stomped on the ideals of freedom and equality, and that the Chinese revolution was an outgrowth the earlier Bolshevik (and at the time, Stalinist) Revolution.

That doesn't mean we should collectively discredit Communism.

Don't you regularly participate in collectively discrediting of Capitalism.

Now, now, let's stay on topic please. I did not make this thread so that we could discuss Pandeeria's opinion on Communism, I made it so we could discuss Maoism.

The Northern Chinese Provinces wrote:First question: What are your initial opinions on Maoism?

You should answer your own question. The mods don't take favourably to "Here's a question, discuss" threads.

Freefall11111 wrote:

The Northern Chinese Provinces wrote:First question: What are your initial opinions on Maoism?

You should answer your own question. The mods don't take favourably to "Here's a question, discuss" threads.

That, however, is not what this thread is.

What are the basic tenets of Moaism that sets it apart from Leninism, Stalinism, and Trotskyism?

Pandeeria wrote:What are the basic tenets of Moaism that sets it apart from Leninism, Stalinism, and Trotskyism?

Mainly, it is that Maoism sees the peasants, not the working class, as the proletariat. It works around this central theme, including within it some tenets of Leninism, Stalinism, and Trotskyism at once, but all tailor-made for China alone.

The Northern Chinese Provinces wrote:

Pandeeria wrote:What are the basic tenets of Moaism that sets it apart from Leninism, Stalinism, and Trotskyism?

Mainly, it is that Maoism sees the peasants as the proletariat, not the actual working class. It works around this central theme, including within it some tenets of Leninism, Stalinism, and Trotskyism at once, but all tailor-made for China alone.

What if I consider both the peasantry and industrial laborers apart of the working class?

Pandeeria wrote:

The Northern Chinese Provinces wrote:Mainly, it is that Maoism sees the peasants as the proletariat, not the actual working class. It works around this central theme, including within it some tenets of Leninism, Stalinism, and Trotskyism at once, but all tailor-made for China alone.

What if I consider both the peasantry and industrial laborers apart of the working class?

Then, in the Maoist sense, you are wrong.

I have truly not read enough of Mao to understand why exactly this is true, but I have a hunch that a less-than-socialist motive was underlying it: the peasantry, as the most oppressed class in China at the time, was more subject to the appeal of liberation than the rural landowners or industrial workers, who believed they had already found liberation in form of the Kuomintang.

The Northern Chinese Provinces wrote:

Pandeeria wrote:
What if I consider both the peasantry and industrial laborers apart of the working class?

Then, in the Maoist sense, you are wrong.

I have truly not read enough of Mao to understand why exactly this is true, but I have a hunch that a less-than-socialist motive was underlying it: the peasantry, as the most oppressed class in China at the time, was more subject to the appeal of liberation than the rural landowners or industrial workers, who believed they had already found liberation in form of the Kuomintang.

There were also a lot more peasants than industrial workers.

Regardless, if Mao purely viewed the peasantry as the working class and also wanted to specifically adopted his ideology to the conditions of China alone (perhaps in an attempt to preserve various feudal and capitalist traits), then I think Mao was stupid, counter-revolutionary, and only dangerous to the worker's movement.

The Northern Chinese Provinces wrote:

Pandeeria wrote:What are the basic tenets of Moaism that sets it apart from Leninism, Stalinism, and Trotskyism?

Mainly, it is that Maoism sees the peasants, not the working class, as the proletariat. It works around this central theme, including within it some tenets of Leninism, Stalinism, and Trotskyism at once, but all tailor-made for China alone.

Not really, it just argues that in pre-industrial societies, the peasants ARE the chief working class.

I can see the point of that idea, but then again, Marxist historical analysis predicates that society progresses in stages. Maoism attempts to leapfrog the capitalist stage that Marx thought essential and break feudalism down straight into socialism.

The result? Very bad things.

Cedoria wrote:

The Northern Chinese Provinces wrote:Mainly, it is that Maoism sees the peasants, not the working class, as the proletariat. It works around this central theme, including within it some tenets of Leninism, Stalinism, and Trotskyism at once, but all tailor-made for China alone.

Not really, it just argues that in pre-industrial societies, the peasants ARE the chief working class.

I can see the point of that idea, but then again, Marxist historical analysis predicates that society progresses in stages. Maoism attempts to leapfrog the capitalist stage that Marx thought essential and break feudalism down straight into socialism.

The result? Very bad things.

Bad things as in Great Leap Forward bad?