I know the two groups view post-Mao China in very different ways. MLM denounce everything, claiming that the entire party has succumbed to capitalist revision, that they were all pretend communists who truly believed in nothing.
Or the views of MLs who say that the CPC was right to open up like the NEP, to improve material conditions in order to develop to a higher stage of socialism. But how does this contradict anything from Mao?
How does this contradict New Democracy? Coalitions formed through the class system under the leadership of the CPC. That sounds like Deng propaganda!
Deng allowed for the creation of a new bourgeoisie that it nonetheless kept under the rule of the Party. Xi currently shows this best of all with the anti-corruption campaigns. If these billionaires lived in any other country they’d be the ruling class, but in China they’re not. It still is a DotP.
How is the improvement of material conditions not a vitally Maoist position?
Regardless of your opinions on the Cultural Revolution, for most of Mao’s life his theory was incredibly pragmatic. What mattered most was actually creating a proletarian state, and so most of his ideas comes from that war perspective.
And even the name Dengism, it’s not a real -ism. Deng is right, he was a a committed Marxist, but his thought is really just a continuation of Mao and Lenin. As such modern China is not Dengist but are still committed to ML.
But again why is there this ideological split? It seems the only aspect of MLM that ML reject is a denunciation of the CPC. Because I don’t think there’s anything from Mao that contradicts or majorly reverses previously held ideas. (thus as ML inverting the idea of revolution in the imperial core to outside it in the periphery). In the same way I don’t see much of the reform phase that is antithetical to anything from Mao.
Thank you! This is what bothers me about Maoists the most. Their ideal solution for China is often some kind of second cultural revolution, or even outright civil war. They seem to treat China as if it exists in a vacuum, and a civil war/cultural revolution that destroys infrastructure and sets the country back, potentially decades, wouldn’t be something the Yankees would take advantage of. They act like the west would just sit around and let things play out, let the Maoist faction win, then give them all the time in the world they need to build up their productive forces. Or, sometimes they will admit that the west will probably get involved, and will proudly PPW all over the place. As if dragging China into a decades long guerrilla war with the west would somehow be beneficial to the population. I despise their adventurism and glorification of war.