Dennis Perrin wrote:
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> I'm no fan of Maoism -- I think it's a cultish perversion of socialism.
Let's open this up a bit. First of all, "Maoism" (at least until the 1950s) was a label which was incompatible with Chinese Communist thought: they were deadly serious in that formulation, "MarxISM-LenISM-Mao THOUGHT. The Chinese translated as "ism" indicates fundamental theory, and the assumption was that the 'theory' so designated held, more or less universally, for the whole era of imperialism and its overthrow. (The validity or non-validity of that assumption is not my concern here.) Thought was the embodiment of that theory within specific national conditions which (presumably) varied from nation to nation and from one time to another.
A practical advantage of this of course was that it allowed the Chinese in the '30s and '40s to remain nominally faithful to the 3rd International while maintaining their independence within China itself. How influentical that consideration may have been I have no idea.
But as late as the early '70s Mao, speaking to a visiting University of Chicago physicist, asked him if u.s. scientists drew a distinction between theory and thought -- so perhaps Mao & the CPC did make the distinction seriously and act on it on its own merits.
If this is roughly accurate, then "Maoism" is a contradiction in terms, and those in the west who have adopted that label have rejected Mao's own thought! But of course western criticisms of "Maoism" are also talking about something that never existed to be either praised or criticized. What happened in China over a period of some 40 years beginning in the mid-30s, then, was a process that isn't to be understood by comparing to some mental map. Moreover, it is at least arguable that the Chinese (during Mao's lifetime) never claimed to have done more than set the nation on a "socialist road." And in that sense it is rather beside the point to call it either a manifestation _or_ a "perversion" of socialism.
But I've got some other tasks right now, & I'll break off her til some other day. Carrol