>Doug Henwood writes:
>
> >> http://tinyurl.com/9jx48
>>
>> The takeaway being...shoot them?
>
>Obviously not. It might not kill you to actually read it, either.
I did. And it reads like something written in another place and another time that has very little relevance to the US of 2006.
And what about this?
>People who are liberals look upon the principles of Marxism as
>abstract dogma. They approve of Marxism, but are not prepared to
>practice it or to practice it in full; they are not prepared to
>replace their liberalism by Marxism. These people have their
>Marxism, but they have their liberalism as well--they talk Marxism
>but practice liberalism; they apply Marxism to others but liberalism
>to themselves. They keep both kinds of goods in stock and find a use
>for each. This is how the minds of certain people work.
What is this "Marxism" Mao writes about? While accusing liberals of treating it as abstract dogma, he does the same himself. Marxism, as I understand it, is a complex (and internally contested) way of understanding a complex world, with few guides to action. (Marx himself, in a passage beloved of Cde Cox, said it wasn't his job to write recipes for cookshops of the future.) Yet in Mao's hands, Marxism becomes the "correct" way of political behavior. Who holds the catechism of correct Marxism? Mao's long dead, so it can't be him. Can't be too many people in the CCP, since they're mostly courting foreign investment and practicing the accumulation of capital. The CPUSA? Andy Stern?
Doug