/* Written 4:14 pm Nov 5, 1992 by
[email protected] in igc:gen.socialism
*/
/* ---------- "More on Lies re Maoism & Pol Pot/MI" ---------- */
So...................the fact of the matter is that China UNDER Mao
supported PIcnochet in Chile after this murdering dictator seized
power. Did Mao support this...cetainly HIS government did!!!! In
addition it was MAOs failed and very flakey policy in Indonesia that
led to the death of over 1/2 million communists an Chinese. Maoism is
just another varient of COUNTER REVOLUTIONARY Stalinism that has
stabbed the workers of the world in back for over 60 years. The
ideology is the antithesis of Bolshevism and socialism. Of course
there is always room for a NOSTALIGC tendency like the Maoist
Internationalist Movement to make serious Marxists grin.
----------------
Maoist Internationalist Movement replies:
If there is an "ABC" of Marxism, dialectical materialism is part of
it. The above criticism is not materialist.
Why? The critic merely provides us with his/her principles (ideas) of
what is right and wrong. No where does s/he show us where a
revolutionary ideology has had a better track record in practice than
Maoism. The reason is simple: there is no revolutionary ideology with
a better track record in action. There are a lot of critics, whose
records are worse than the Maoists'. But Mao led revolution in China
and influenced revolutions throughout the world. In those societies
where "Stalinist" and "Maoist" revolution succeeded, the people lived
much better and longer than before. In the case of our critics, they
can point to no action on their part because they have failed
everywhere to change the status quo.
Our critic wants to blame Mao for the Indonesian communists' failed
strategy. It's sort of like saying that the movement in the United
States is a failure or its members in prison or shot dead because
Comrade Gonzalo in Peru has had too much influence. Yet it was
precisely Mao who told admirers, "you fight your way; I'll fight
mine." He repeatedly instructed admirers that it was incorrect to copy
China's experience as universal. Mao and the "Stalinists" were much
more intelligent on this point than the Trotskyists, who have brought
about no revolution anywhere in the world after Trotsky split from
Lenin and Stalin. Trotskyism and "back-to-Marxism-Leninism" hence bear
the burden of being ideologies with no track record in the real world
for success. That means they are idealist pseudo-Marxisms which amount
to criticism of real-world revolutionaries and a fig-leaf for the
status quo.
The same is true of the point on Pinochet. The born-again Christians
with a Marxist veneer recoil in disgust when they learn that Mao
conducted diplomacy with Pinochet (or gasp, shook hands with Nixon.)
It were as if these idealists hoped to find an all-powerful God in Mao
Zedong and when he couldn't command events in Chile and Indonesia,
they blamed Mao for not being the God they were looking for.
It is well-beyond moralizing Christians that Third World government
leaders actually had some interests that set them in contradiction
with the imperialists. These Christians can't understand any of the
real-world things needed to conduct successful revolutionary movements
or how to line up the forces necessary for progressive change. All
this kind of Christian (a.k.a. Trotskyists, anarchists and back-
to-Marxist-Leninists) can understand is principles written in the Ten
Commandments or the equivalent. They don't recognize the difference
between real-world progress and the status quo of imperialism when
they see it.
Many people in our ranks are former Christians, er, Trotskyists or
other idealists. We are confident that anyone seeking classless,
boundary-less, patriarchy-less society and who believes like Mao that
"practice is principal" will eventually join our trend. When people
look around to see who has accomplished the most in taking the world
toward communism (in practice), they will realize that "Stalinism" and
Maoism are the answer. We welcome any attempt to prove that other
ideologies have been more progressive in practice, but we assert that
people who know some history of the international communist movement
will quickly find that Trotskyism and anarchism have brought not one
successful revolution anywhere in the world. We think that alone makes
the choice between Trotskyist-anarchist idealism on the one hand and
Maoism on the other hand very clear.
Those who have failed to make revolution are all the more to blame for
the massacre in Indonesia and Pinochet in Chile. It is the
Maoists--the materialists--who threaten the "world order" while it is
the idealists who prop it up, consciously or unconsciously.
