What Neo-Maoism Shows

...This was true not only under the anti-capitalist "left" strategy, but also under the anti-Fascist "right" strategy of the Popular Front, which called for "top alliances" with other parties, including bourgeois ones...

...The Vietnamese Communist party, in a manifesto in 1951, declared that "the national bourgeoisie shall be encouraged, assisted and guided in their undertakings in order to contribute to the development of the national economy...

...While these would supposedly benefit, above all, the vast poverty-stricken masses of the underdeveloped countries, the Communist program for industrialization has, in fact, its chief attraction for the intellectuals...

...The fact that Lenin sincerely believed that he remained a genuine Marxist is here of no more significance than the theories with which he justified his seizure of power...

...but we realize that, at the present stage of China's economic development, such exploitation is unavoidable and even socially useful...

...At the root of Lenin's thought, on the other hand, like that of all the impatient pre-Marxian socialists from Babeuf to Bakunin...

...to Lenin, the proletariat became a tool of the party...

...Marx believed that socialism would grow out of existing material conditions and that the working class itself would be the revolutionary agent introducing socialism at a time when both the economy and the proletariat itself had reached the necessary maturity...

...Nevertheless, the continued use of Marxian terminology and the invocation of Marx and Engels, as well as Lenin and Mao, as the prophets of present-day Communism are by no means without significance, for they deceive both Communists and anti-Communists...

...167-168...

...Leninism has reached its fullest development: it has become more Leninist— and therefore less Marxist—than Lenin himself could ever be...

...Here lies the secret of the relative success of the Communist appeal in underdeveloped areas and of its relative failure in the advanced countries...

...Chang Chih-yi in Peking Ta Kung Pao, March 31, 1957...

...The real meaning of the perversion he introduced into Marxism has become fully clear only with its transplantation to countries even less developed than early 20th-century Russia...

...50, December 1956...

...Louis and author of Moscow and the Communist Party of India...

...But the chief reason for its acceptance in Moscow lies not in Chinese influence but in the fact that it proved to be the strategy best suited to Soviet foreign-policy needs in a period of cold war...

...Since the onset of the cold war, a third and entirely new strategy has been adopted by international Communism...

...The Bolshevik Revolution, then, is to be understood not as the first proletarian-socialist revolution but as the first successful seizure of power by such an intelligentsia...

...If you do a really good job in developing your business, and train your children to be first-class technical experts, you will be the obvious people to put in charge of the nationalized enterprises and you may find that you earn more as managers of a socialized enterprise than as owners...

...The Communists, since Lenin's day, have tried to conceal this significant shift by identifying their party with the proletariat and often, in effect, by referring to the party as the working class...

...Like the "right" strategy, it seeks the cooperation of non-Communist groups, both labor and bourgeois...

...Until World War II, Communist parties throughout the world regarded themselves as primarily the parties of the industrial proletariat...

...Needless to say, none of this means that Communists, once in power, really represent the interests of the capitalists...

...Once it is accomplished, there is no longer any compelling theoretical reason why the party, which by definition always acts for the proletariat regardless of whether the latter agrees or even exists, cannot use some other class in its quest for power...

...Just by virtue of this fact, this new strategy demonstrates, better than the old "left" and "right" ones, how far Communism has departed from Marxism...

...To Marx, the party had been the instrument of the proletariat...

...Both these strategies were faithfully followed by Communist parties outside Europe as well as in it, even though in underdeveloped countries the very basis for their successful application was generally absent, for an industrial proletariat hardly existed there...

...rather, it reminds us that to be crushed and manipulated by the regime is the fate of all classes, including the proletariat, once the Communist party has attained power...

...The trade unions are the schools for socialism...

...Thus, in one of his earliest directives on Communist strategy in underdeveloped countries, drawn up for the Second Comintern Congress of 1920, he went so far as to state that "all the Communist parties must assist the bourgeois-democratic liberation movement in these countries," but even here he went on to insist that they "must not merge with it, and must unconditionally preserve the independence of the proletarian movement even in its most rudimentary form...

...The Indian Communist party in its Election Manifesto of 1951 promised that a Communist-dominated government in India would "develop India's industry cooperating with private industrialists, who will be guaranteed profits stipulated by law and whose interests will be guaranteed...

...Shortly after the completion of the Communist conquest of China, Liu Shao-chi is reported to have addressed Chinese businessmen along the following lines: "As Communists we consider that you are exploiting your workers...

...In fact, this is no paradox at all, but merely an irrelevancy: What came to power was simply not Marxism but Leninism—which quite illegitimately but very successfully claimed the Marxian heritage by assuming the name "Marxism-Leninism"—and its legitimate successor, neo-Maoism...

...According to that view, social classes and their ideologies evolve only as a result of the growth of material productive forces...

...Under this new strategy, the Communist party claims to be the true representative not only of the "exploited" classes but also of their "exploiters" and seeks to unite them all against their supposedly common enemy, American "imperialism" and the governments regarded as subservient to it...

...they may, therefore, in many cases not be particularly frightened by the prospect of becoming a Communist government's industrial managers and bureaucrats...

...all peace-loving people"—struggling not for any class interests but in the "national interest" for "national independence...

...In fact, the national bourgeoisie, or patriotic capitalists who have not tied themselves with Anglo-American cartels, would have every reason to welcome such a changeover...

...From the standpoint of the evolution of Leninist thought, however, the direct Communist appeal to the capitalists is the most startling innovation of neo-Maoism...

...With a strategy openly appealing to all classes, the Communists are no longer tied to a nonexistent proletarian base or obliged to attack the native bourgeoisie or, for that matter, any other native groups except those closely connected with "imperialist" interests...

...As these pronouncements show, Communist parties in underdeveloped countries want to cooperate with the capitalists because they need them for industrialization...

...Not only were they based on a faulty analysis of the situation in the West, but they were really no more than tortuous rationalizations designed to show that the existence in one place of Marx's prerequisites of a socialist revolution could justify such a revolution in another place where the prerequisites were lacking...

...This is beyond doubt.'' However, while Lenin maintained the Marxian belief that the Communist party must be linked to the proletariat, he gave up the Marxian idea underlying this belief: that a proletariat and its party can mature only in a highly industrialized country...

...peasants, as under the "left" strategy, but also to the rich peasants, the capitalists and even "feudal" elements...

...lay the notion that the realization of socialism was a matter not of historically conditioned prerequisites, but merely of insight, will and, above all, the conquest of political power...

...In any event, neo-Maoism became, during the past decade, the strategy of Communist parties in all underdeveloped countries, and its characteristic appeal "from below" to all groups of the population, regardless of class, for the liberation of the country from American "imperialism" and its native servants has even been adopted by the Communist parties in the West...

...Lenin's impatient desire to skip one of Marx's inevitable stages of history inexorably led him back to ideas which Marx and Engels thought they had overcome in their "scientific" socialism...

...Russia is too close to Western Europe and Lenin was too close to Marx for these implications to have become clear either to him or to most of his generation...

...You may be afraid of what will happen to you and your families when wo develop from New Democracy to Socialism...

...the taking of a short-sighted, one-sided view of the so-called "welfare of the toilers' instead of making our objective the development of production, the prosperil\ of our economy, the taking into account of both public and private interests and benefits to both labor and capital...

...They are the only group capable of grasping the implications of industrialization, and they hope that such rapid economic change would provide a leading role for them in the new order which has been frequently denied to them in the colonial economy...

...These are typical of socialist thought in times and countries where both industry and the labor movement are still quite backward and were held by such diverse thinkers as the Utopian Socialists, Blanqui, and Bakunin...

...In the underdeveloped areas, some capitalists may be potential supporters of Soviet foreign policy, because they suffer from competition from Western countries or are drawn by promises of trade with Communist countries...

...Some writers have thought they discovered the proof of Marx's failure in the paradox that Marxism, an ideology of and for the industrialized West, first came to power in the backward East...

...Of course, neo-Maoism, like Leninism, contains remnants of the Marxian vocabulary...

...In neo-Maoism, which seeks to appeal to nomadic herdsman and capitalist alike and which has brought the proletarian revolution to the jungles of Malaya and the plateaus of Tibet...

...The contrast between Marx and Lenin on this point emerges clearly from a comparison of Lenin's famous statement in What Is to Be Done...

...All political parties, whichever they may be, inspire the mass of workers only temporarily...

...We will use private capital to reconstruct the economy, develop production, train technical specialists, to avoid unemployment, to expand the turnover of goods, and for many, many other purposes...

...Under neo-Maoism, the international class enemy of the proletariat has openly been replaced by the national enemy of the Soviet Union...

...Better than anything, this demonstrates how Communism, following Lenin's substitution of his party for Marx's proletariat, has developed a party composed of an elite of intellectuals representing no given social class but seeking a base for the realization of its ambitions in any class from which it can draw support...

...cit., pp...

...Similarly, the leader of the Brazilian Communist party stated as early as 1946 that "even among the landlords a good proportion of the liberals can work with us...

...But this does not prove that the Communists are still at heart proletarian anti-capitalists...

...After a decade of neo-Maoism, it now appears more clearly than ever that Lenin was not voicing the ideology of an industrial proletariat but was the spokesman of a part of the intelligentsia in an underdeveloped country, of a group in quest of political power and in search of a short-cut to industrialization...

...To Marx and Engels, the Communist party was conceivable only as the representative of the industrial proletariat, which, of course, was created only by an industrialization already achieved...

...Today we can dismiss these theories of breaking the chain of imperialism at its weakest link and of a Russian revolution bringing about revolutions in the West which would ultimately save it...

...As Chinese experience proves, their class and their organizations are atomized and they are used as individuals for the purposes of the regime...

...For at a certain stage of revolution and under given historical conditions the interests of the working class are identical with the interests of certain democratic classes...

...They sometimes claimed to represent the interests of the poor peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie also, but never those of the capitalists...

...In 1952, an Indian Communist propagandist returned from China had ibis message for Indian capitalists: "Supposing, therefore, Communism of the Chinese type comes to India, a majority of our capitalists and, particularly, the industrialists would not only survive but receive every possible encouragement from Government in the interest of production...

...Once the greater mass of the workers has attained the insight that their material situation must be improved, they may belong to any party they like...

...K. Karanjia, China Stands Up, Bombay, 1952, p. 160...

...They all imply that the workers do not know their own long-run interests and are by themselves incapable of grasping them—that is, of becoming socialists and of carrying through a socialist transformation of society...

...Communism still has a hankering for "socialist" and "proletarian" language, although Marxian terms such as "proletariat" and "working class" are being replaced more and more by the "toiling people...

...In the trade unions, the workers are educated to become socialists, because there they have the struggle with capital before their eyes day after day...

...The main plank of this program is the promise of rapid industrialization on the Soviet and Chinese model, which opens up vistas not only of economic and political independence from Western influence but also of welfare, wealth and power...

...And this simply makes no sense in Marxian terms...

...This link between party and class, a logical necessity in Marxian thought, became a non-essential element in Communist theory...

...It is clear, then, that the current neo-Maoist strategy of international Communism is well adjusted to conditions in underdeveloped countries...

...This article is expanded and revised from an earlier study ivhich was published in Soviet Survey of London...

...Borovik, "Shanghai Capitalists," Ogonyok, No...

...Its main enemy is neither capitalism nor Fascism but "imperialism," i.e., the United States...

...They define the working class in terms of an ideology rather than of economic and social criteria, an approach which would have amazed Marx and which can result in the formation of "proletarian" parties establishing or aiming to establish "proletarian" states in countries like Mongolia...

...For if the material situation of the worker is improved, he can devote himself better to the education of his children, his wife and children need no longer go to the factory, he himself can better cultivate his mind and look after his body, he becomes a socialist without having an inkling of it...

...Among the numerous Chinese Communist statements in a similar vein, the following recent one well illustrates the strikingly non-Marxian view of class relations underlying this approach: "Even at the present stage of Socialist Revolution, an alliance is still maintained with the national bourgeoisie, their legitimate interests are looked after...

...The entire notion of a Communist party coming to power in a country without a strong proletariat is quite incompatible with Marxism as a basic view of social development...

...Volks-staat [Leipzig], 1869, No...

...They can thus ally themselves with and make use of any group to whom their program of "national liberation" appeals...

...It mav now be time to abandon the categories of thought in which Lenin conceived of himself and his revolution and in which most of his contemporaries, both friends and foes, were almost necessarily entrapped...

...It came when Lenin began to adjust Marx's theory of socialist revolution to his desire to see and make such a revolution in industrially backward Russia...

...A strategy demanding, as Liu Shao-chi did in 1949 of Asian Communists, that "the working class must unite with all classes, parties, groups, organizations and individuals" has obviously for all practical purposes given up the basic Marxian concept of the class struggle...

...The basic break that has so obviously occurred somewhere in the long development of ideas from Marxism to neo-Maoism came neither with Mao nor with Stalin...

...the class struggle has been replaced by the cold war...

...the "popular masses...

...And its Politburo, in a resolution of August 1952, suggested that "the demands of the working class in each industry should be linked with demands of the industry itself so that the working class can come before the people as the builder and defender of national economy, which monopoly interests subservient to foreign powers are ruining...

...A political party, representing the ideology and interests of a class, can therefore not come to power before that class has matured, much less before even the material foundations for its growth have been laid...

...On the other hand, the Communists have learned a good deal since, on the eve of his coup d'etat, Lenin wrote in The State and Revolution that accounting and control of production and distribution "have become the extraordinarily simple operations of checking, recording and issuing receipts, which anyone who can read and write and who knows the first four rules of arithmetic can perform...

...What we want is for you to go ahead and develop production as fast as possible and we will do what we can to help you...

...at its Third Congress in 1953, it asserted that "the working class must come out for the protection of national industries against the competition of the imperialists...

...The right of patriotic landlords to collect land rent in accordance with the law shall be guaranteed...

...Communists have not sought "top alliances...

...Lenin himself was quite willing to use the peasantry in Russia, and Mao relied on it almost exclusively until finally his peasant troops conquered the cities to provide him with his proletarian base...

...the unions, however, tie the mass of the workers to themselves permanently, only they are able to represent a real labor party and to oppose the power of capital...

...Three fascinating examples of such appeals may serve to illustrate this...

...Foreign imperialism, unlike capitalism and Fascism, is an enemy widely known and hated in these countries...

...The Communists, on the other hand, embarrassed by it, have sought to rationalize it away...

...In 1947...

...Instead, they have been appealing against the major parties and their leaders directly "from below," not only to the proletariat, the petty bourgeoisie and the poor John H. Kautsky, grandson of the famous German Social Democratic theoretician, is assistant professor of political science at Washington University in St...

...This new strategy was first developed by Mao Tse-tung during World War II, and its adoption in Moscow coincides with the conquest of China by the Communists...

...From its very beginnings in Leninism, Communism has been a highly relevant doctrine for underdeveloped countries, but has been irrelevant for the advanced countries, which have, by definition, already solved the problem of industrialization, the problem Communism proposes to solve in a manner so attractive to the intelligentsia...

...that the workers by their own efforts can only develop trade-union consciousness and that socialist consciousness has to be brought to them from without by intellectuals with the following little-known remarks made by Marx in an interview with a German trade-union official: "If the trade unions are to fulfil their functions, they must never be connected with or made dependent on a political organization...

...Thus, Leninism now appears in a new perspective...

...This ill-concealed switch in the roles of the proletariat and "its" party, a switch made by Lenin, is crucial...

...To do this is to give them a death blow...

...They lack the background of the bourgeoisie of Western Europe, which rose independently of and sometimes in opposition to state policies...

...How he might have felt about the neo-Maoist appeal by the Communist party to all classes as the true representative of their interests can perhaps be gathered from his sharp admonition in Two Tactics (1905) : "A Social Democrat must never, even for an instant, forget that the proletarian class struggle against the most democratic and republican bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie is inevitable...

...Lenin, no less than Marx and Engels, believed that the Communist party had to be the representative of the proletariat...

...The expectation of rapid industrialization under Communist auspices may also hold some attraction for them...

...Mao Tselung, in language more reminiscent of that of an employ-era' association than that of Marx, sharply condemned "the advocacy of uneconomically high standards in working conditions: excessively high income-tax rates...

...Quoted in Otto B. van der Sprenkcl, cd., New China: Three Views, London, 1950, p. 139...

...In this process, Communism had to abandon the very essentials of Marxism, though its present strategy in underdeveloped countries is a further development of Leninism...

...Only a minority of intellectuals can do these things, either in the workers' place (as with the Utopians), or on their behalf (as with Blanqui and Bakunin), or as their vanguard (as with Lenin...

...G...

...The suggestion that a Communist party take power in a non-industrialized country in order to industrialize it and thus create a proletariat would, therefore, have struck them as preposterous...

...The Communist Manifesto stated that "the first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, these attempts necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone...

...imperialism demonstrates how much Lenin and his disciples diverged from Marx's concepts of a proletarian party By John H. Kautsky After thirty years of following strategies initially inspired by conditions in advanced industrial countries, international Communism has in its fourth decade adopted a strategy well suited to areas where industrialization is still in its beginnings or a mere aspiration...

...Hence the Communists' appeals to the capitalists make sense in underdeveloped countries...

...Unlike the two older strategies, neo-Maoism is well adjusted to the needs of Communist parties in underdeveloped countries...

...Perhaps the ultimate point in this development was reached when first Mao and then all of international Communism accepted the capitalists, too, as proper tools of the party—a party which was once supposed to fight the proletarian class struggle against capital...

...A few quotations from Communist directives in various underdeveloped countries will make clear how far Communism has traveled along this path...

...A Classe Operaria, Rio de Janeiro, July 20, 1946...

...He thought of the Communist party, a "shock troop" of intellectuals, rather than of Marx's "mass of the workers," as the "maker" of revolution and of a no longer inevitable historical development...

...They know that the realization of their plans for industrialization will require trained specialists, that these are scarce in their underdeveloped countries, and that a chief source for them is the present capitalists...

...Finally, a very interesting recent report by a Soviet correspondent on a Shanghai "academy for capitalists" contains this passage: "The people's state has an economic stake in supporting the national bourgeoisie...

...However, except in the rare cases where these are sufficiently anti-American and pro-Soviet (Guatemala under Arbenz, Iran under Mossadegh, etc...

...We back the progressive national bourgeoisie when it wishes to liquidate the remains of feudalism, to develop capitalism, with the collaboration of the proletariat...

...But you need not really be afraid...

...The industrial bourgeoisie in countries still in the early stages of industrialization are always more or less dependent on their governments' support...

...On the Present Situation and Our Tasks," van der Sprenkel, op...