dredmond at efn.org wrote:
>
> On Thu, January 1, 2009 12:13 pm, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> > But Maoism is stupid. And look where it ended up -
> > in a spectacular instance of a new kind of capitalism. Maybe a little more
> > critical thinking would have helped.
>
> We should distinguish Maoism as the belief-structure of the 1927-49
> Chinese revolution -- something which brought immense positive changes to
> China and the world, in the teeth of Fascist invasion and US
> neocolonialism -- and Maoism as a post-revolutionary ideology of an
> autarkic state, which industrialized under duress. Put another way, Mao
> had the fortune (or misfortune) to be China's Lenin and Stalin.
>
Four things, or rather three processes, not the same:
Mao
Marxism-leninism
Mao-thought
"Maoism"
"Maoism" was a western invention, and of course many different political processes are hidden under that misleading label. The Chinese and/or Mao seemed to have shifted from Mao-thought to Maoism on the occasion of,prior to, or after the split with Moscow as a rationalizing of Chinese foreign policy. It was quite wrong in many ways, but to reduce even that with the opaque label of "stupd" is not very bright or insightful.
"Marxism-Leninism" was the ideological expression of resistance to fascism in the inter-war period and got increasingly fossilized in pretty ineffective parties in the years after WW2.
Mao-thought was the praxis of one of the most stupendous episodes in modern history, and I think Dennis is more or less accurate in what he says about it.
Mao! It's a century or two too soon to reach a judgment. I think Andie once said something like he was a monster (or some negative term) but no dummy. For us now he is his published works, and like all published works (as the post-structuralism Doug loves so much emphasizes) their construal is a function both of their origin and of the constext in which they are construed. So no one label fits them either.
All in all the flat statement "Maoism is stupid" probably belongs in a comic book rather than an adult discussion.
Carfrol