Post 2546556 by lyliawisteria@enby.club
(DIR) More posts by lyliawisteria@enby.club
(DIR) Post #2202459 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2018-12-22T00:32:38Z
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Mao was an opportunist. the PRC could never be a negotiation of the negation, it could never be a proletarian dictatorship and it could never be an end to capital.Marx lays out how the proletariat are 'the revolutionary subject' of capitalism. this means that they are the underclass who will rise up to negate the previous order for a new one, and in the case of the proletariat they will complete the dialectic and negate the negation via an abolition of class
(DIR) Post #2546376 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2018-12-22T00:35:18Z
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the peasantry are not this. capitalism has specific factors that produce the proletariat to act as they do. capitalism is a mode of production with it's own specific things that are unique and thus the pressures on the proletariat are unique. those pressures are innate to the organization of production that is ONLY in capitalism. these are, the division of labour, alienation, the selling of the labour power of the proletarian to a capitalist so they can survive through this exchange, and it's important to highlight that this *exchange*of their time and power is what feeds them
(DIR) Post #2546377 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2018-12-22T00:37:53Z
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the peasantry do not sell their labour power, they do not exist within this capitalist mode of production as commodities themselves. they exist as a separate class from a different mode of production. their material pressures are different and thus their negation of a ruling class is inherently different to the proletariat. and second of all the peasantry aren't the revolutionary subject of feudal production, the bourgeoisie are and in their negation of feudal relations they create capitalism and liberalism
(DIR) Post #2546378 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2018-12-22T00:41:09Z
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and so, we come back to Mao, but more specifically the Chinese civil war. so, we're gonna need a crash course on China.China until 1911 was ruled by an imperial dynasty, the Qing, and had been like this for thousands of years. but, through western ideals, a few prominent people had come to the idea a republic is pretty neat. the foremost of these was Sun Yat Sen Sun Yat Sen is almost a Lenin of the Republic of China, but he wasn't there directly, more an inspirational thinker from afar China had been FUCKED HARD by western imperialism, cities had been stolen and the Chinese were fucking fed up with the imperial order, so they rose up
(DIR) Post #2546379 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2018-12-22T00:48:16Z
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when they rose up, they overthrew the Qing and established their republic, the Republic of China, which had a cool flag too. and everything was good, right?well, not entirety shall we say. the Republic wasn't strong, the military held a lot of power and long story short Sun Yat Sen was deposed for Yuan Shikai via a "sir, **I'm in power** okie?" and SUn Yat Sen basically never held power well, Yuan Shikai decided that being president wasn't enough, he crowned himself Emperor of China. in a country that had just had a republican revolution... so there was some minor revolts that were utterly crushed and in their wake military governors were put in power
(DIR) Post #2546380 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2018-12-22T00:51:46Z
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well, when Yuan died those local military governors had their troops loyal to them, and only them. and there was no central authority. so China exploded into a million pieces. this is called 'the warlord era' where local warlords ruled over their own areas NOW LISTEN, I know we're all asking "where does Mao come into this?" but you gotta understand what China was like during this era. fractured, in constant civil war. there effectively was no 'China' along with western ideals of liberalism came socialism, as the USSR established itself copies of poorly translated theory ended up in China. among the students they spread like wild fire
(DIR) Post #2546381 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2018-12-22T00:56:39Z
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these students were in the urban areas where Capitalism did exist. they could see the proletariat in it's form Marx describes . they were on the east coastal developed areas. they became quite the substantial force too.the KMT ( you don't need me to say their whole name) were the 'true' airs to the Republic and wished to re-unify China. the communists agreed with them. from their base in the south they established a power base to try and unify China , together.Needless to say, this didn't lastthey went on what is called 'the northern expedition' where they marched north together and quite handily smashed the warlords to unify a lot of China
(DIR) Post #2546382 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2018-12-22T01:01:53Z
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Chiang Kai-shek comes in here, he's a kind of a big deal. so Chiang Kai-shek is a big deal in the KMT and HATES the communists. he is a big part of the right wing nationalists in the KMT. well in Shanghai they betray the communists. they massacre them and begin the Chinese civil war in what is now 1927following this the communists have to flee, but where can they go? nowhere really, so they flee to the mountains. they dwindle and dwindle. they march with no supplies, no equipment, constant death and abandonment of the cause. it's a wonder they didn't all die on this the 'Long March'. this is where Mao is elected leader of the CPC too
(DIR) Post #2546383 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2018-12-22T01:04:19Z
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most importantly in their push back from the developed east they no longer have a proletariat to work with. they are now in the undeveloped peasant areas. rice farmers, villages, collective small farmsteds, this is their new underclass. these people don't sell their labour power, these people do not deal with industrialist capitalism, they are not alienated as marx describes. and they re not the revolutionary subject who have these pressures that make them act to end capitalism like the proletariat do
(DIR) Post #2546384 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2018-12-22T01:07:17Z
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but who is there? who else is there to pick up the torch of revolution? the CPC is tatters, almost all of them are dead or half starved. and this here is the death of Chinese communism. they turn to the peasantry to be the new base of the revolution. they wanted to win the war, they didn't want to truly supplant capitalism as the class conscious proletariat does , because they do not have those pressures that capitalism has specifically here is where Maoist doctrine is formed. this reliance on the peasant, the injection of so much anti-marxism that it stops being communism. Maoism is a deviation so strong from even that of Stalin that it's not related
(DIR) Post #2546385 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2018-12-22T01:11:14Z
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and we can see this in what the PRC becomes. it becomes a place that doesn't end the contradictions of capitalism ,because those contradictions aren't what fueled the revolution. anti-imperialism against Japan and the west did, peasant collectivism which is not communism. communism is the negation of the negation, what this means is that it is the abolition of class and production orientated society. and all of this goes back to the fact that the CPC was forced away from the true revolutionary subject and so defaulted to what they could find. this is opportunism , and it's what Maoism is founded upon. thus, Maoism can not produce communism.
(DIR) Post #2546386 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2018-12-22T01:13:11Z
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this thread was very infodump heavy because I have to presume nobody knows about China pre Mao. but by all means ask questions and make counter points!
(DIR) Post #2546387 by GreenandBlack@sunbeam.city
2019-01-02T14:27:39Z
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@CornishRepublicanArmy Amazing thread, thanks for writing it. Am just wondering where the Shanghai People's Commune fits into all this?
(DIR) Post #2546388 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2019-01-02T14:34:57Z
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@GreenandBlack thank you for reading it! I love to shit on Mao. The Shianghai commune was radical and woke in it's establishment, but as soon as it gained legitimacy it began to lose that bottom up demand for state down authority, and this is why it was then dissolved by the Maoist state and subsided into the order. It was legitimate proletarian socialism though
(DIR) Post #2546389 by GreenandBlack@sunbeam.city
2019-01-02T14:37:28Z
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@CornishRepublicanArmy Oh yeah, shitting on dictators is tight!I recently read up on the Khmer Rouge and found out that Pol Pot was apparently never a Marxist, but a Stalinist? What would this make Mao, where does he fit in on the political compass?
(DIR) Post #2546390 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2019-01-02T14:42:57Z
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@GreenandBlack he was an ultra maoist and broke hard with marx and lenin. But also pol pot was a fucking crazy guy so... Mao is peasant collectvism to me, which grew into capitalism with time and the party line had to grow with this (see Deng)
(DIR) Post #2546391 by lyliawisteria@enby.club
2019-01-02T14:58:53Z
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@CornishRepublicanArmy @GreenandBlack don't you think it's kind of telling that everyone who has tried to build a new society based on the writings of Marx has ended up producing a worse capitalist nightmare and never communism?
(DIR) Post #2546392 by GreenandBlack@sunbeam.city
2019-01-02T15:05:15Z
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@lyliawisteria @CornishRepublicanArmy No. Capital and the Communist Manifesto don't necessarily imply authoritarianism. Marx's actions in the First International sowed the seeds for that. It was Lenin that bastardized Marx's writings into his own 'State Capitalism'
(DIR) Post #2546393 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2019-01-02T15:09:33Z
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@GreenandBlack @lyliawisteria there's also an entire brand of Marxists who quite literally exist that bastardisation, we're called left communists :blobcoffee: . there's even an entire strand specifically anti vanguardist, the Dutch and German ones
(DIR) Post #2546394 by GreenandBlack@sunbeam.city
2019-01-02T15:12:22Z
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@CornishRepublicanArmy @lyliawisteria My issues with Marx are purely at a personal level. He single-handedly divided the left, and yet somehow has cemented a century long habit of blaming LibSocs for it.
(DIR) Post #2546395 by GreenandBlack@sunbeam.city
2019-01-02T15:13:13Z
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@CornishRepublicanArmy @lyliawisteria This is to say nothing of Engels, who is just... the worst on every level
(DIR) Post #2546396 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2019-01-02T15:13:41Z
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@GreenandBlack @lyliawisteria NOW WE AGREE. I've still never read capital volume 3 and never will lol
(DIR) Post #2546397 by GreenandBlack@sunbeam.city
2019-01-02T15:14:22Z
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@CornishRepublicanArmy @lyliawisteria I will say this. Reading "On Authority" made me understand why tankies are so fucking condescending.
(DIR) Post #2546556 by lyliawisteria@enby.club
2019-01-02T15:16:19Z
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@GreenandBlack @CornishRepublicanArmy Marx's politics were social democratic, ie capitalist reformistthe life he lived does not reflect any kind of thing that could be called communism. the fact that virtually no one inspired by Marx has produced a functional communist society and instead produced more capitalism should tell you he wasn't a very good communist, and really only believed in reforming capitalism - 1/2
(DIR) Post #2546557 by CornishRepublicanArmy@witches.live
2019-01-02T15:19:46Z
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@lyliawisteria @GreenandBlack fundamentally, that's a misreading of Marx that seems to come from the communist manifesto. that thing is so shit I swear to god... Marx pretty clearly lays out the whole "rise the fuck up, kill em all, smash capitalism for a negation of the negation and an end to class". I have also yet to see anybody inspired by Kroptkin, Proudhon or Bakunin produce working or lasting communism. the left is fucking awful historically if you look at all we've tried, seriously we can't pull off shit
(DIR) Post #2546558 by dtluna@leftlibertarian.club
2019-01-02T15:23:53.170897Z
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@CornishRepublicanArmy @GreenandBlack @lyliawisteria Maybe, just maybe, it's because communism is a philosophically unsound doctrine?Capitalism is cancer though, I'm not arguing in favor of that.
(DIR) Post #2546636 by lyliawisteria@enby.club
2019-01-02T15:25:40Z
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@dtluna @GreenandBlack @CornishRepublicanArmy communism isn't a doctrine. Marx didn't invent communism.
(DIR) Post #2546637 by dtluna@leftlibertarian.club
2019-01-02T15:26:21.325247Z
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@lyliawisteria @CornishRepublicanArmy @GreenandBlack is "dialectical materialism" a fine term to use?