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Why does China make so many "Marxist-Leninists" go crazy?
(lemmygrad.ml)
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this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2024
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I suspect that China is not truly so controversial outside of the western "left." It may help to understand that there are more CPC members then there are people in Germany. Marxism-Leninism is the dominant ideological strain of leftist thought, globally speaking. "Maoists," Hoxhaists, Anarchists, etc. are extremely marginal and don't even have the power and influence proportional to their minuscule population of adherents. They have no states, irrelevant parties, zero organization, and consequently no capacity for struggle, armed or otherwise. I cannot emphasize enough that these so-called socialists and communists can be safely ignored. They can not help or even meaningfully hinder their own political "projects," much less those of typical Marxist-Leninists.
As for why they exist, it boils down to an unscientific, anti-dialectical and idealist worldview. They don't conceive of political and economic systems as containing contradictory elements, but as pure, static forces that only change due to external influence. Notice how the libertarian types will insist that the presence of any public industry, welfare state, or regulatory agency in a capitalist country indicates it has "fallen to socialism/communism" and "isn't real capitalism" anymore. Likewise, ultras and leftcoms will take the existence of a stock market in China as evidence that the CPC has "abandoned Marxism/communism" and "isn't real socialism" anymore. Both of these groups will go on to insist that their pure, unadulterated version of their ideal system has "never been tried." One has to wonder why.
In capitalist/liberal economies, private profit is the guiding principle of all economic and political activity. The presence of "socialist" elements in these systems always serves that purpose, albeit sometimes indirectly. In socialist economies, the guiding principle is social necessity, and likewise, seemingly liberal elements of their systems serve the worker-led state. This is the difference between a Dictatorship of the Proletariat vs a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. The composition of these systems will be similar, but will serve different functions. This understanding is essential not just to being a good ML, but for making sense of the world in general and avoiding the purist mindset.
Let's be fair, there are a couple of Maoist groups that are engaged in meaningful struggle, e.g. in India and the Philippines.
Personally, I view those groups as fellow travellers and not as comrades. For me, the only distinction between those two terms being that we can both talk about the destination down the road we're heading to, but I will tune you out if you start talking about how we should be riding donkeys rather than driving the EV.
I mean, there's a difference between anprim bugbears and waging protracted guerilla warfare against an imperialist-aligned government. There are shitty maoists out there too, but also ones too involved in actual fights to be concerned with fighting over whether it's okay to drive an EV.
That there is, but there is also no rule that denies the capacity of any non-ML struggle from achieving good or combating imperialism and the philosophical distinction I gave above were made precisely for those groups.