[lbo-talk] "Theory's Empire," an anti-"Theory" anthology

Marvin Gandall marvgandall at videotron.ca
Thu May 29 19:48:44 PDT 2008


Wojtek writes:


> [WS:] I guess people read into those events whatever
> suits their views. I happen to live through Mao's
> cultural revolution (in a safe bubble of a foreign
> post, to be sure) and I've seen enough of witch hunt,
> intellectual bashing, brainwashing and intimidation to
> develop a point of view that markedly differ from the
> one that you describe.
>
>[...]


> And how do you view Mao's backstabbing of Vietnam and
> supporting the genocidal thug Pol Pot, in cahoots with
> Nixon, to spite the Russians?


> Revolutionary? He was not even "our thug."
==================================== Yes, there was all that, and if your original post had dealt with the political crimes of the Maoist leadership of the Chinese Revolution, I would have found little reason to object. In the interest of a more rounded view, I might have added that like all processes, the Chinese revolution was contradictory, and that a proper assessment would have to set the political repression and counter-revolutionary foreign policies which you describe above against the social, economic, and cultural gains which improved the conditions of the mass of the population and laid the foundations of a modern independent industrial state. I'd say much the same about the former Soviet Union.

What I was objecting to was not your characterization of the Chinese revolution - which was wholly absent in your post - but your characterization of it's supporters in the West as juveniles bent on shocking their parents and peers, and Chris' addendum that they were romantic "orientalists". In a very few cases maybe, but as a general proposition this struck me as shallow and patronizing, reminiscent of the cheap pop psychology the right has traditionally employed to discredit the legitimate appeal anticapitalist revolutions had for left-wing intellectuals of all persuasions, and that as such it warranted a reply. Stalinism was a political rather than a psychological phenomenon in the countries where it took root and among its international supporters, and is better understood and indicted in those terms.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list