Khrushchev gained power by intentionally lying about Stalin, demonizing the socialist project, and implementing reforms that ultimately undermined the centralized system of the USSR, leading to stagnation and collapse. Deng, on the other hand, refused to do so:
Not only did Mao Zedong Thought lead us to victory in the revolution in the past; it is - and will continue to be - a treasured possession of the Chinese Communist Party and of our country. That is why we will forever keep Chairman Mao’s portrait on Tiananmen Gate as a symbol of our country, and we will always remember him as a founder of our Party and state. Moreover, we will adhere to Mao Zedong Thought. We will not do to Chairman Mao what Khrushchev did to Stalin.
Whether the socialist market economy of the PRC looks like the perfect ideal of socialism in our heads or not, we must recognize that the same failures caused by Kruschev have not come to pass:
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Marxism-Leninism/Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory are the core of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, rather than a rejection of Mao and historical nihilism.
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Socialism is upheld in the PRC, the large firms and key industries are firmly in the hands of the state, while the CPC maintains strong control of the medium firms.
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The centralized system of socialism in the PRC is upheld. Social unity in collective purpose is high, even if there is broad diversity in thought, there is unity in continuing to improve and develop socialism to higher stages.
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Rather than stagnating due to clunky liberalization undermining the planned economy, economic growth has stabilized and increased, allowing the PRC to commit to vast infrastructure projects and serve as an alternative to US Hegemony from within the global market.
The market reforms are not without their risks, nor their contradictions, but to be good Marxists we must correctly analyze material reality. The failures of Khrushchev and the successes of Deng’s market reforms are both lessons in practice. Dogmatism and book worship are to be opposed.
While I think the meme whitewashes Mao, I think this is whitewashing Deng in reference to Mao. Yes, you have repeated Deng’s rhetorical tact in his own estimation very well, but the substance of what Deng and the subsequent CPC said amounted to that Mao was a good revolutionary leader, and he did things here and there (like liberate Tibet) that were good, but it is an overall condemnation of the projects that he oversaw in office from start to finish, with the Cultural Revolution just being the most exaggerated example of this condemnations, despite itself featuring programs that were globally recognized as radically successful and beneficial to the people, like the Barefoot Doctors campaign, which withered and died under Deng (granted some of that was from development, but the gutting of social welfare made some aspects of this harmful).
The modern CPC recognizes Mao as 70% good, 30% bad, not 70% bad, 30% good. Further, many of Deng’s specific policies are outdated, which is why the modern CPC adheres to a “middle of the road” position upholding both Mao and Deng equally. The overall estimation of Mao is quite positive, but with a lot of the good from the Cultural Revolution came instability and excess, which is why not just the CPC, but the people of the PRC see it as a contentious subject.
I uphold both Mao and Deng as valid and important Marxist-Leninists, but not that all of their policies and actions are universal. I don’t think that’s an uncommon position, or one that elevates Deng over Mao, which would in my opinion err on right-deviationism.
It’s funny how, going by your own description (which again, I believe does accurately represent the CPC’s claims) the compromise position between Deng and Mao ends up being Deng’s position on Mao still. Further, I think you can only get to those actual numbers by starting in the 1920s, and even then the math seems shaky, especially since the CPC effectively threw out a lot of Mao’s pre-1949 positions as well as his post-1949 projects. In my view, they basically have warped Mao into a more purely nationalist figure by preserving (the better portion of) his accomplishments as a nationalist while throwing out so much of what made him more than that.
To the best of my knowledge, the Cultural Revolution is not a contentious subject to the CPC, because there’s no contending, there is just condemnation. Obviously, I think Mao did some foolish things throughout his career and, up until the end where he did that great reversal, most of his errors were effectively left-deviationist, but their scope is wildly exaggerated and even the Cultural Revolution, while representing great failure on his part in many critical aspects, was a failure of his ability to defeat the bureaucrats who virtually did a coup via their factions of the Red Guard, one that he ultimately surrendered to. I don’t think that the CPC tends to foreground this element.
I find it sort of admirable, the main mistakes Mao made if we avoid getting into issues of international relations, because we can see a consistent through-line of him being almost an anarchist in some respects, basically just hoping people will spontaneously be communists, and then it doesn’t pan out. You saw it with the Hundred Flowers campaign, with the research phase of the Four Pests campaign, with certain aspects of the Great Leap Forward, and most catastrophically with the Red Guards. It’s very unfortunate in part because this wasn’t just a dogma that he was beating against a brick wall, it worked out great sometimes, like with the land reform, but there are critical differences in these cases. In any case, I view these failures as having been used as a smokescreen by a fundamentally more crassly nationalist faction to undermine socialist construction and produce the state we see today where Marxism is relegated to an alcove in the humanities and Keynesians make the economic policy (albeit much more faithfully than the Keynesians in somewhere like America).
I guess I don’t agree that Marxism is pushed aside, just interpreting different conditions. There certainly are liberals in the PRC, but as previously stated, the DotP remains, the large firms and key industries are overwhelmingly publicly owned, and central planning is still the main reason why the PRC is doing as well as it is.
I don’t consider Lenin to have been undermining socialism with the NEP, same with the SME in the PRC, as long as the large firms and key industries remain dominated by public ownership and as the medium fims grow they too are increasingly sublimated.
We’ll have to see if this continues to pay off or not.
We’ll have to see if this continues to pay off or not.
You’re a Historical Materialism Guy, aren’t you? China is historically progressive, anyone who says otherwise should be laughed out of the room, but that feature is not a binary and socialism is not a necessary condition of historical progressivism (it is the highest form of historical progressivism). China can do good things in the world without being Marxist, and indeed doing good things while not being Marxist is exactly what it is doing.
I guess I don’t agree that Marxism is pushed aside, just interpreting different conditions.
But you are objectively, observably wrong here if you’re responding, as it seems you are, to when I said:
the state we see today where Marxism is relegated to an alcove in the humanities and Keynesians make the economic policy
This is not even really a secret, it is out there in the open that Marxist economics literally just aren’t part of the mainstream discussion in China. On the broadest possible level, China talks about stages of socialist development, but then when it comes to assessing the actual behavior of the economy even a single step lower in abstraction than that, historically you were literally more likely to encounter an Austrian economist than a Marxist outside of academic cloisters, and today I think it’s mostly Keynesian factions. If you read more of what is published by the CPC itself on Qiushi rather than wishcasters like Ben Norton, I think this will become obvious to you over time. We’ve had a couple of Chinese posters in the history of the site who talk about this, where their politicians are literally all arguing on fundamentally nationalist, (sometimes state) capitalist lines and Marxism has been dead from a policy standpoint for decades
I acknowledged that the PRC has liberals, many of whom infest the CPC. At the same time, Marxism-Leninism is still what is upheld as the party line, and is what is integral to the top levels of the CPC. I read a lot of what users like Xiaohongshu post, including the reality that liberals have gained in influence, but I disagree that Marxism is suddenly meaningless in the PRC.
Maybe I do need to read more Qiushi, but I don’t really listen to Ben Norton already. There is an ideological struggle between liberalism and Marxism in the PRC, a consequence of Reform and Opening Up, no doubt, but I just haven’t seen any evidence that liberalism has definitively won out in influence and that Marxism has been tossed aside entirely.
Norton was just an example, I view him as sort of the champion of the Marxist China wishcasters in the current day, but there are many people with virtually identical beliefs who will tell you most of the same things.
Have you read a lot of Xiaohongshu’s posts?
There are no Marxist voices in the mainstream today. All the distinguished Marxist economists have long been banished to the humanities and social science departments long ago. They do write books, sometimes articles/blogs on the internet, and newspaper columns, but they have very little influence on policymaking. The mainstream is full on dominated by Western economists these days.
If you actually listen to the debate, both sides are openly making fun of the Mao era central planners for being inefficient lol.
Also FYI the correct term for Marxist economics in China is “political economy” (政治经济学). Nobody uses the word Marxist economics. Similarly, neoclassical economics is called “Western economics” (西方经济学). If you don’t know the correct terminology in Chinese, it can be very difficult to search for the relevant information you want.
https://hexbear.net/comment/6291342
I personally know someone who grew up under Mao, who was sent to work in a factory as a teenager under his policy (and doesn’t really cherish those memories but maintains a life-defining respect for him). He’s a huge revisionist and makes silly claims about China if you start from a zoomed-out ideological standpoint (claims silly enough that I refuted them in seconds such that he admitted they weren’t right), but has plenty of knowledge about the state of the country in many more concrete respects (he can talk my head off about manufacturing), and everything that he’s told me in terms of concrete facts comports with Xiaohongshu’s characterizations: Marxism exists in academia, but when people are studying economics, they are studying Western economics and those are the lines along which they debate economics, it just manifests very differently because China has different circumstances from places like America and has threats to its sovereignty that are a lot more imminent than merely imploding under its own weight, which is America’s only threat (and one that is still killing it anyway). That is why a basically nationalist project remains historically progressive.
Another one from our comrade:
That was before Hudson and Harvey went to the Marx conference in Beijing in 2018, where they were both stunned that Capital Vol. 3 was never taught in China.
Read his interview from 2018 here: China’s housing: It Doesn’t Have to be This Way
You’d think that China would have learned this by looking at the West, or at least by reading Volume 3 of Capital. In fact the Peking University meeting, the Second World Conference on Marxism, David Harvey gave the opening and closing speech. His point was that the Chinese should read Volume III of Capital to understand why and how the volume of debt and credit grows exponentially. As banks get richer and richer, the One Percent get richer. They need to nurture more and more markets for their credit and debt creation. So they lend on easier and easier terms, at a rising proportion of the home’s value. So it’s bank credit that has been inflating the price of housing.
David Harvey asked how China can let the price of housing go up so high in Shanghai (the most privatized city) that almost everybody who has a house is a millionaire. How can China expect to remain competitive in exporting industrial products when the cost of housing is so high?
Unfortunately, his talk and mine were almost the only economic talks at the meeting in Peking. As one of the Russian attendees pointed out to me, “Marxism” is the Chinese word for politics. “Marxism with Chinese characteristics” means to doing what they want politically. But economically they’ve sent their students to the United States, to attend business schools to learn how U.S. financial engineering practices.
Shanghai is where Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys came in the 1970s and early 80s, because the Chinese government worried that if western Marxists came over, they would tend to interfere with domestic Chinese politics. So actually, China had less exposure to foreign Marxian economics than to U.S.-style neoliberal teaching.
https://hexbear.net/comment/6313832
I won’t pretend that my views are identical to theirs, that is not remotely true, but the central point in this branch of our discussion is something where I believe they agree with me.
we have Keynesians in America?
“Historical nihilism” is a term used by patsocs to attack communist who oppose settler-colonialism and its history in the United States.
Disapproving of mud-slinging towards previous socialist heads of state like Stalin, Mao, Deng, etc. has nothing at all to do with denying settler-colonialism in the US. You have literally no evidence of me denying the US Empire’s settler-colonial nature, I regularly push for decolonization and landback, especially over on my Lemmy.ml account where there are far more bloodthirsty settlers.
You laser-focused on a strawman because you aren’t interested in discussion, like you claim, but sowing division until you eventually get banned. Wrecker behavior.
If I was not interested in discussion, I would not be on a discussion board to begin with. That makes no sense.
This is largely a shitposting site. If you want discussion, post in the theory or politics comms, or the news comms. Further, you said this was to provoke discussion, but you accused me of being a patsoc unprovoked after I gave a thoughtful response. You’re just a wrecker, and not even an entertaining one at that.
I am not your entertainment committee.
I’m opening the floor to the motion to elect this user and every member associated with his order of the “The Radiant Trail” [preliminary] ACP(M) to be elected to the official hexbear entertainment committee for a period of five years.
Aye.
Aye
aye
aye
Aye
Aye
Aye
aye
Aye
Aye
Aye
Aye
是
You’re also not interested in discussion yet claim to be doing this to spark discussion, you’ve been on Hexbear for years but you also just joined, etc. etc. Is this dialectics? /s
Also, this is the meme community.
Everything is dialectics, so yes, my responses are dialectical. My words have dual meaning. I am new insofar as this is a new account, but I am senior here because I have been here on many other accounts.
So yes, I am new here.
Yes you are
You disprove your point even as you make it, because you are ignoring most of what they put forward over and over again.
To be frank you’re pontificating harder than the Spartacist League trot I met in L.A who sold me a newspaper while bickering and nitpicking over anything I said.
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I like that you compare these two in a way that suggests you think they are the same, and that it is ridiculous for people to have different opinions of them despite them taking the same actions.
It works really well as a humorous comparison, because as we all know, the Chinese communist party lost power, the socialist project was utterly dismantled, and the country was broken apart and ravaged by the West resulting in a massive drop in life expectancy, education, and housing, and a massive increase in poverty, unemployment, and alcoholism, just like what happened in the USSR. These are nearly identical situations.
OP has done pretty much nothing but attempt to start struggle sessions since making his account a few days ago, so it’s unsurprising.
Oh for sure, this is almost certainly Wisconcom, who has been making weird anti-revisionist screeds on lemmygrad across many accounts for literally years. He loves Hoxha and hates Deng, and if you get him upset he will “go thermonuclear” on us all.
Oh for sure, I saw Crit’s comments in the other thread (really sad I missed it, lol). This is just wrecker behavior at this point.
Wenger sends his regards.
I am here to generate productive discussion around hot-button issues which surround the left. I have no intent on starting undue drama or struggle sessions.
What gave you the impression that these were “hot button issues” worthy of bringing up in discussion, and the way you have been? Productive discussion is handled from a focus on unity, not splitting and divisiveness. I understand that Hexbear is a shitposting site and not a communist party, but that makes it even more counterproductive to try to spark a struggle sesh on purpose.
I have done nothing but called on the Hexbear community to get together to form a collective line on these hot button issues and unite under democratic centralism for the benefit of the proletariat and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to syndicate a new society and to unite the party, build the collectives, and build the party.
It’s that simple.
Hexbear isn’t demcent. We have anarchists, Marxist-Leninists, and more. Hexbear is not a party. Hexbear is a shitposting site for leftists, not a replacement for organizing in real life. It’s a third space for leftists to go to to hang out and not need to take everything so seriously, while also not needing to deal with the incessant liberalism on the mainstream English-speaking internet.
If you want to develop a cohesive line, then join a party.
Firstly, if Hexbear is left-unity, how come I only see Dengites? Secondly, I AM THE PROCESS OF FORMING THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY (MAOIST).
If you were actually familiar with Hexbear like you claimed, then you’d know how many people here don’t like Chinese reform. Especially in the news mega, lots of criticism of China’s market policies. You’re allowed to criticize China, lots of people do, but then other people are going to have their say about what they think of your criticisms, and this could be an interesting and informative discussion or it could be you yelling at everyone they are revisionists, but that’s up to you.
“Dengism” is not a thing. Deng Xiaoping Theory is Marxism-Leninism applied to the conditions of the PRC at the time Deng was in power, adapting to the fundamental errors made by the Gang of Four. Just as Mao Zedong Thought was Marxism-Leninism applied to the conditions of the PRC under Mao, Deng necessarily was dealing with different circumstances. Now that the PRC is developing Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in a New Era, Xi Jinping Thought is now Marxism-Leninism applied to the PRC’s present conditions.
There is no “Dengism.” Not every leader needs an “ism” attached to their name. The reason you see support for Deng’s reforms is the same as elsewhere, Hexbear has a large number of Marxist-Leninists, who uphold the PRC as AES.
Good for you on getting organized. You’d do well to focus more on it than trying to start struggle sessions on a niche communist shitposting site.
AMERICAN
cringe
there are better names than ACP for a US communist party
I am calling for a full shutdown of the United States until we can figure out what the hell is going on.
This is a meme website
Hexbear is not that important
Then you wouldn’t just passive-aggressively post memes and cherrypick sentences within the responses you reply to to acknowledge, usually in the direction of interpersonal dramatics while ignoring substantive claims.
The main problem with trolls and wreckers who pop up here is that they have no education, whether its politics in general or this site’s history
So when they start yapping like strawman versions of us, we spot them immediately
Vindicated yet again
Strange of you to say that. I am directly connected with some of the brightest and most educated Marxist-Leninist-Maoists in the United States and know the founder of the world’s most politically advanced online encyclopedia to ever exist.
Do you have these same connections?
I am directly connected with some of the brightest and most educated Marxist-Leninist-Maoists in the United States and know the founder of the world’s most politically advanced online encyclopedia to ever exist.
lmao great bit
wake up tagline, new babe just dropped
Eh, think he already played it out on the Russia thread.
A bit eventually getting played out is as inevitable as the historical process that lead to capitalism.
I’ll take that as a no.
Take it how ya want, just don’t call me late for supper
I know people who claim to be knowledgeable therefore I also am smart.
Funny because I am fairly certain that some folks on this site (myself included) have been far more engaged with actual revolutionary organizing in practice than any of his loser friends ever have.
It’s mean to bully children old nak
Fuck them kids. I was getting tear gassed at anti-war protests before they were borne.
What does “politically advanced” even mean???
over 9000
Revolupedia adheres to the revolutionary framework of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism. MLMpM is the leading theory of the proletariat in the epoch of revisionism, imperialism, and bureaucrat capitalism. MLM is the third and highest stage of Marxism, being a development of Marxism and Marxism-Leninism respectively.
morbid curiosity got the best of me and i decided to take a look at the article on the PRC
China, officially the People’s Republic of China (PRC), is a fascist and social-imperialist state located in East Asia.
you are even more deeply unserious than the libs over at lemmy.world
You obviously need to read more theory. Revolupedia describes in intense detail what fascism and social-imperialism are from Marxist lens.
Speaking on a high-horse about theory when you have no practice as yet to speak of is peak hubris. You have no way of knowing how much theory Midnight_Pearl has read, nor do you have the practical experience to be considered an authority.
How would you know? I have spent years doing on-the-ground activism in some form.
ah yes i’ll be sure to read all the badly-written “theory” from your MLM
site and get back to you on that
nope you’re still full of it
No for sure and my girlfriend is real too… she just goes to another school ok?? … in canada.
Oh shit oh fuck!! Run everybody its…
I would be entirely unsurprised if he was one of them.
holy shit, I’ve woken up in late 2019
I don’t like Dengism in principle, but it worked so I have to adjust my principles to account for praxis challenging theory
“Dengism” isn’t even a thing, Deng Xiaoping Theory is just Marxism-Leninism applied to the conditions of the PRC at the time he was in power. Not every socialist leader needs an “ism” attached to their name, that’s usually reserved for major, universal updates on Marxism (be they valid or contested).
i mean, its pretty normal to add an ism to describe the thoughts/ideals of someone or group without going for an long specific name, it doesnt have to be reseved only for big updates on a science or belief and its not only used for marxists/socialists
Fair enough, but that’s not how OP seems to be using it. OP seems to be using it the same way anti-communists call Marxism-Leninism “Stalinism,” to evoke removal from genuine Marxism. I largely agree with this essay on the subject.
Dengism is when Deng does stuff, and the more stuff Deng does the more Dengism it is, and if he does a whole lot of stuff thats revisionism or something
Deng was on the cusp of fully implementing Dengism until he accidentally implemented cringe and became old
Considering the competition between the left and right wings of the CPC historically, it seems like a good thing to have names for each of them rather than letting one camouflage as merely being an indifferent application of Marxism-Leninism, because it question-begs their legitimacy.
“Mao Zedong Thought,” “Deng Xiaoping Theory,” “Xi Jinping Thought,” etc. already exist. Are you saying more terms are necessary? Genuinely curious, I’m not opposed to your point.
We have a historical division in the terms “Maoism” and “Mao Zedong Thought,” but no such division exists for “DXT” and “Dengism” except that Dengism tends to be more derisive. I think overcorrecting people using the latter term is silly when it’s more succinct than the official terminology and communicates basically the same thing. You’ll see elsewhere in this thread our respected comrade Alaskaball refers to themselves as a “Stalinist” because it’s just the easy shorthand, not because they agree with the idea pushed by Trots of “Stalinism” as a novel ideology totally alien to Lenin. I recognize that it was also half-jokingly, but that makes it half-serious as well.
Alaskaball refers to themselves as a “Stalinist” because it’s just the easy shorthand
It’s more of a sectarianism play because every “stalinist” refers to themselves as either communist, marxist, leninist, marxist-leninist, so forth as a political claim on being the orthodox catholic position with all other tendencies being protestant splinters, with said splinters calling the Communists “Stalinists” as a means of squabbling for political legitimacy of being the default representation of what communist and communism is.
Ergo why maoists are called maoists even though they baselessly claim they’re the most successful, advanced, and contemporary marxist ideology, why trots are trots, hoxiaists hoxiaists, etc.
It’s basically wordplay power-dynamics and I’m being a catty bitch anytime I facetiously call myself a Stalinist whenever the prevailing topic of the post relates to some sort of marxist ideology
Fair enough, I still think “There’s no such thing as Dengism” is still just not a constructive conversation approach for reasons suggested by your reply, and “Stalinism” still has more coherent reference in your usage than a liberal sarcastically calling themselves a communist for being left of Hitler (on domestic issues), because you still (rightly) endorse many positions promoted by Stalin in a historical debate with Trots and others, while the liberal bears much less in common with a communist.
It’s a whole field of academic study ultimately.
Deng Xiaoping Theory is not recognized as as major of an advancement as Mao Zedong Thought or Xi Jinping Thought. Theory comes second to Thought, the CPC upholds both Mao’s and Deng’s contributions while recognizing ultimately Mao’s advancements were more significant overall, and that Xi Jinping’s own advancements and upholding of both Mao and Deng are the only sets of policy positions and ideological thinking to earn the title of “Thought” after Mao.
Alaskaball already clarified “Stalinism,” which I see as similar to self-identification as a “tankie.” Self-identifying Stalinists are usually doing so as a play on those who try to slander Marxism-Leninism as more Stalin than Marx and Lenin. I see “Dengism” largely as the same way, the only ones calling themselves “Dengists” are generally taking something levied as an insult and owning it, not as an actual political line.
I largely agree with this essay on the concept of “Dengism” vs Deng Xiaoping Theory.
Then let me retreat back to my initial point, which is that it is question-begging, and exactly part of the rhetorical angle of “DXT” that it basically does not exist and it’s all just Chinese Marxist-Leninism with some contributions from our favorite cadaver Mao and the groundbreaking theory of Xi, which was that we must uphold DXT and also that environmentalism is cool. Seriously, I find Xi much more respectable than Deng, but the idea that he iterated more on state ideology than Deng did is just silly. Deng championed at risk to his own life his own nominal socialism for decades until it finally overtook Mao at the latter’s pitiful concession, but by casting out so much of what Mao did as deviationism, and just being “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” is such a flagrant sleight-of-hand that it’s more like swallowing the ball in a game of three card monte and then asking the contestant to pick which cup it’s under. As I said, it’s a smokescreen.
I can’t say I agree with your final assessment, but returning to the base of the question, I don’t really consider “Dengism” to be a thing just like I don’t consider “Stalinism” to be a thing. I suppose I will concede that they can be used when specifically talking about Deng’s policies in his era, and questions like Socialism in One Country for Stalin, but that “Dengists” do not exist as people who put Deng as a major, universalized advancement on Marxism-Leninism.
I don’t like Dengism in principle, but it worked
Same. The idea sounds wack, but it worked, and I care about outcomes over ideology, so
I mean one major difference on the latter point is that Deng criticized Mao, but he never deMaoized the party. He did target the Red Guards and the Gang of Four, but he was selective. Khrushchev effectively killed as much Soviet patriotism and pride as he could in order to make his position more secure personally, at the cost of institutional legitimacy
Cool. Deng spent most of his time at the helm murdering communists internationally with the Americans.
Or do we just not care about conspiring with americans to invade, wage war on, undermine or kill communists? Is that just not a metric we’re supposed to care about?I am one of the more anti-Deng people here. I am just saying what a major difference is in perception. Khrushchev set himself as opposed to the existing paradigm of communism everywhere at that time, including domestically. The pivot west was already happening under Mao, and Deng was not leading the international communist movement. So it felt like less of a betrayal, more just an awful expansion of prior PRC post-split policy. Other communists already did not have great relations with China when Deng pivoted, so the Angolan Communists for instance did not experience much of a betrayal. Those that did feel betrayed like in Burma, already had been harmed by Chinese foreign policy under Mao. Vietnam was never Maoist and had already firmly placed itself in the Soviet sphere.
It is easier for people to view Deng pragmatically as all that is left of communist superpowers, whereas Khrushchev caused things to fall from their peak
I am not concerned with the moral judgement, just stating why people react differently.
Can you recommend something to read that goes into these topics/issues?
One of my main examples is from the Communist Party of Burma’s newspaper during the turning point in their relations with the PRC. For reference the “Chinese Khrushchev” mentioned over and over is Liu Shaoqi who was an old comrade of Mao’s who Mao denounced as a capitalist roader and traitor during the Cultural Revolution. He is very much rehabilitated by Deng and his allies, and famously wrote the book “how to be a good communist”, so before anyone jump down my throat, I am not saying he was evil or deserved it, just giving the context of who the paper is speaking about.
But so Ne Win the self-proclaimed Socialist military junta leader of Burma following his so called “Burmese Road to Socialism” was isolationist, but also upheld by foreign powers. The USA protected him, as did the PRC, even though there was a famous incident which this article is responding to, in which the Chinese ethic population and overseas students in Burma got slaughtered by Ne Win because of accusations of a plot against Burma. Earlier during a coup against Ne Win in '64, China warned him and later sent Zhou Enlai to tell Ne Win he had their support. All this while the CPB is armed by the PRC and is actively being killed by Ne Win.
You can see here the attitude of “oh it must be that any support he got from the PRC was from Shaoqi, because before he took power Mao openly armed us”, only for it to become clearer and clearer than the PRC, while pissed about its citizens and ethnic brothers being killed, did not consider this a dealbreaker. And certainly did not consider the continued butchering of the Communist Party and the peasants it represented to be worth caring about.
China cut ties with Burma for 3 years and there was support for the Communist Party who had still been fighting Ne Win from his rise to power to this point. However this ended 1 year in when Zhou Enlai took control of the foreign ministry though the ceasing of cooperation with Burma economically and with friendship societies did continue to halt. In 1971 Enlai began claiming that the foreign affairs ministry was taken over by the Red Guard supporters in '68 and THAT is what caused Chinese citizens in Burma to oppose the government that was harassing them. Effectively pushing blame off of Ne Win and onto the Cultural Revolution for China’s mostly rhetorical opposition to the slaughter.
the PRC did maintain assistance for the CPB up to Mao’s death, but even before then the party felt that there was a segment within the PRC that was opposed to them. During their own Cultural Revolution they purged their ranks to an absurd degree, including executing some of their most important members, calling them the “Burmese Deng and Shaoqi”.
Ne Win supported the Khmer Rouge in order to appease China in the 70s right after Mao died, essentially gaining the support of the PRC against the CPB. The CPB leadership also had effectively been replaced with ethnic Wa by this point, the intense fighting and decades of moving around and losing Red Base Areas meant radical shifts in party makeup. By 1978 the PRC pulled its support and left the CPB high and dry.
https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1967/PR1967-29.pdf
https://www.irrawaddy.com/from-the-archive/how-ne-wins-diplomacy-weakened-burmas-communists.html
I amend my point about the CPB being already betrayed, because it really is Deng who cut all their aid, but still importantly during Mao’s life the supposed capitalist roaders had been able to push for support of both the CPB and Ne Win. Mao himself is untouchable for the CPB, and so Deng, despite being their big enemy, not denouncing Mao, meant that they could sort of realign their positions especially by the Third Party Congress in the mid 80s.
For Maoists in many places, the PRC was already contradictory in its support, and so weirdly when Deng takes over, those in active warfare are less obsessed with him as they had been during Mao’s lifetime when he was used as the reason for limits in Chinese support. Now it was just easier to accept that they are mostly on their own instead of supported and their enemies being supported at once.
Maintaining Mao as a symbol meant there was no clear break. Now Maoists in the Philippines do have a much clearer opposition to Deng and the modern PRC, but that is due to them not having the high levels of support the CPB once had, and their own internal developments particularly post Mao. Similar case with the Naxalites.
Thank you! It’s difficult for me to assess what you’re saying, I’m a bit tired but I also don’t know much about this history, but I want to thank you for posting this and I’ll reread it a couple of times.
I mean the Split with the Soviets and Detente with the West happened while Mao was still in charge, im not defending anything he did but he was not solely responsible for China’s foreign policy shift
Oh well Malenkov and Beria were also destalinising so obviously we cant blame Khruschchev there either. Right?
Deng had control of Chinese foreign policy for decades and in those decades the Chinese foreign policy was utterly shit.
Yes.
If you asked me to choose between the USSR under Khruschev and the US, I’ll choose Khruschev. If you ask me to choose between the PRC under Deng and the US, I’ll choose Deng. That’s not so much an endorsement of every single thing they did or believed as it is about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to ideological disagreements or imperfect implementations.
Also, the same idea can be good under certain circumstances and bad in others. That’s the whole point. Marxism isn’t about a certain set of policies, it’s a materialist, class based method of analysis, specific policies should be developed based around specific circumstances.
The only problem is that it is not that simple. Communists support neither the revisionists nor imperialists (including social-imperialists), but the people. For instance, in China there exists a Maoist Communist Party. There is also a Maoist party in Russia.
Yeah, and there’s also a Trotskyist party in China (Hong Kong). So what?
What it comes down to, for me at least, is that I don’t really have any influence over what happens in China, except through my government fucking with them. And I don’t want my government to fuck with them. So you can verbally “support” whatever group with whatever line you like but I don’t see how that’s really going to have any material impact on anything, unless you live there. I suppose there are other forms of mutual cooperation, but it’s not as though I’m mailing envelopes of cash to the Chinese embassy, and if they ever decided to start sending me envelopes of cash, you know, baller.
To put it another way, for all intents and purposes, I support China. Any policy question that’s “Should we (meaning my, the US, government) mess with China?” is going to be answered in the negative. If you would also answer that question in the negative, then we’re on the same page, mostly just disgreeing on phrasing. If, on the other hand, you’re potentially willing to support the US government against China, then that’s a bit of an issue, and a position that you would need to actually defend.
Otherwise, can you give a practical, realistic example of how my support for China and your opposition to China manifest in tangible differences?
I think this is the best, most practical answer.
Always ask what the point of a speech-act is, how it’s going to influence the world in a given historical context. And the context here is speaking to mostly people outside China, while a global imperialist coalition actively prepares war against China. It’s absolutely clear, that the primary task of leftists in the imperial core is to work against these war preparations. I wish this side had more comrades who are actually from China to weigh in on such questions.
It all comes down to the question “Will you still stand for peace, if the US goes to war with China?” We’ll have to stand against the empire, even if they force China to act first by attempting to station nuclear weapons on Taiwan. Because I totally see some people falling for this old trick and switching sides if this happens. Like: “I thought China wants peace, but now they’re evil for having started it instead of just letting a mortal enemy build up deadly weapons of mass destruction on their doorstep.”
So you think Maoists are comparable to Trotskyites?
Are you just contractually bound to only respond to one facet of what a person says at a time?
Those groups in China seem comparable in size and power, and I think that’s the point
Yes
That’s what you got from that?
Putting aside that you’re completely ignoring my actual point and that this is a completely irrelevant tangent, yes, actually, I do. Both groups tend to denounce any revolution that’s actually successful because it doesn’t match the ideal in their head. Both have a similar concept of “permanent revolution.” Really the major difference I see between them is attitude and branding. At the end of the day, both ideologies are about placing unrealistic demands on existing socialist projects and then denouncing them when they don’t live up to them, one of them just hates Stalin more.
As Vladimir Lemon once said “socialism is when you get rid of markets and the fewer markets there are, the more socialism there is”
lmao ratioed
17 updengs
140 khromments
best ratio i’ve seen on this site in years lmao
Ah, but there is a difference.
Write this down: we will never do to Mao Zedong what Khrushchev did to Stalin at the twentieth Congress of the CPSU.
From an interview with Deng many years ago: https://redsails.org/deng-and-fallaci/
Likewise, the notable difference is Deng’s reforms fucking worked. China is the world’s largest economy and is still run by the Communist Party. The Soviet Union uhhhhhhh isn’t around anymore.
Removed by mod
I mean the initial citation is from a book by an Italian journalist, but sure whatever. That’s quite a take to have on fucking Hexbear lol, you’re aware where you are, right?
I am on the ideological battleground that is the internet. All is fair in love and war.
You are deep into a cycle of quixotic one-sided beef
Oooh! I was struggling to think of the word to describe this sort of behaviour, “quixotic” is perfect, thank you!
Reported by OP. Reason: Anti-intellectualism, ableism against people with visual disabilities.
As a glasses enjoyer, lol no
ultras are awesome lmao
It’s incredibly rude to misgender people
A transphobic Gonzaloite?
I did not intentionally misgender them.
Really not difficult to double-check before using pronouns to describe someone.
You did though.
I would never misgender somebody purposefully. When have I said anything transphobic or otherwise anti-LGBTQ+?
When you called someone with they/she pronouns listed “he?” When you specifically had their comment up to report it(pronouns visible)
I was not focusing on that person’s username. I simply was concentrating on other things. Can you stop bombarding me for an honest mistake I apologized for?
Lmao
My apologies, I did not look to see their pronouns.
Well at least you’re responsible enough to own up to your mistakes
woah, a cursive t where you don’t have to do the cross bit with a different penstroke
I actually didn’t even recognize the cursive as text before reading this
Fingerpainting cursive will catch on one of these days
This all you do?
Yea
Maybe
Yea
Maybe
Of course not.
The three genders.
Of course not.
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It’s like I’m really on the moretankiechapo discord in its heyday but in reverse lol
I vividly remember posting stuff and getting slapped down with comments of “but that’s dengist!”
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