Comment by zozbot234
5 years ago
There is a direct line of descent between Maoist agitation in Western countries throughout the late-1960s and 1970s and the current radical left. They have explicitly approved of the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" in the past - often enthusiastically so - and for all we know, they continue to do so. The M.O. is certainly comparable.
Maybe it's not direct yet. And that's what makes me a little nervous about where this all could head.
If people are willing to hunt and cancel people without giving the accused a chance to even defend themselves (leading to reputation, job loss, etc), physical harm seems like the next logical step.
Meanwhile, protestors are now routinely being run over by actual physical automobiles driven by right-wing terrorists (https://www.npr.org/2020/06/21/880963592/vehicle-attacks-ris...). But sure, the hypothetical harm done at some future date by progressive-minded folks is far more concerning.
This sounds terrible. Can you provide some recent sources including proof of the drivers motivations?
6 replies →
That's the kind of sweeping claim that really needs to be sourced.
Source?
There is a direct line of descent between the Nazi government in Germany and the current space efforts, too.
>There is a direct line of descent between Maoist agitation in Western countries throughout the late-1960s and 1970s and the current radical left.
Do you have any sources I can read on this? If anything, it seems the radical left actually left Badiou and his ilk behind for the Frankfurt School, and even then, I'm doubtful as to what that intellectual heritage means to your average "radical leftist" today. This is all beside the point, however - is there a recent (from the past 20 years) poll or anything similar surveying the "radical left" (which, mind you, includes anti-statists and anarcho-Communists) on their opinion of the Cultural Revolution? One of the largest "radical leftist" groups in the West is Antifa, but from what I know, it's hard to see any Maoism (or Maoist ideas) present in its members[0]. The Sino-Soviet split and the ascension of Deng liberalizing China has practically deadened Maoist ideology in the West. You'd have a better (but still somewhat shaky) case to say the radical left today draws from Stalinism instead (as opposed to Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, etc.).
>They have approved of the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" in the past
To what degree? In what numbers? For example, I can't name a single leftist journal which the majority of contributors could be aligned with Maoist views, never mind views supporting the Cultural Revolution. Even the Maoists I know of with some influence (e.g. Badiou) are critical of the cultural revolution.
>and for all we know, they continue to do so
So it's a superstition?
>The M.O. is certainly similar.
Which mainstream leftist organizations (mainstream enough to guide the course of the modern "radical left") approve of state-sanctioned murder and imprisonment of intellectuals?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifa_(United_States)#Ideolog...
> One of the largest "radical leftist" groups in the West is Antifa, but from what I know, it's hard to see any Maoism (or Maoist ideas) present in its members
"The modern Antifa movement has its roots in the West German Außerparlamentarische Opposition left-wing student movement ... The first Antifa groups in this tradition were founded by the Maoist Communist League in the early 1970s. From the late 1980s, West Germany's squatter scene and left-wing autonomism movement were the main contributors to the new Antifa movement ..."
The reference to "autonomism" implies a historical link to "revolutionary spontaneism" groups who, generally speaking, were especially enthusiastic about Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (that is, Mao Zedong Thought as "transferred" to the Western context) and the CR in particular. It might be hard to believe, but the links are quite clear once you do some digging.
> The Sino-Soviet split and the ascension of Deng liberalizing China has practically deadened Maoist ideology in the West.
Maybe so in the United States, but it did not have the same outcome elsewhere in the West. (And the real turning point was Nixon going to China, that made overt references to Maoist China somewhat unpalatable for radicals in the U.S. and to some extent the UK. Changes in deeper ideology are not nearly as easy or quick, however.)
You're again using a historical example to characterize the extent of the current sway of a particular intellectual heritage, and a tenuous one at that: autonomism does not imply revolutionary spontaneism at all (again, evidence please!), and it is rather closer associated with left-communism, a historical and current communist movement best associated with early Lenin and a return to Marx, rejecting Stalinism and Maoism. Operaismo/workerism and later autonomism rejected Third-Worldism, even in a time when it was popular.
"The plight of Trotskyism had been even more bleak, reduced to eking out a semi-clandestine existence within the PCI. Neither of these fates par-ticularly appealed to the editors of Classe Operaia; nor, for that matter, did they show any great interest in the first murmurings of Italian Maoism. Their reasons for such diffidence, beyond the vagaries of sectarian politiCS, were rational enough, being based on the realisation that a new organisation unable to command the support of a large slice of the working class was doomed to failure. This lesson, moreover, had been reinforced for the Venetians by their unsuccessful attempts to build workplace committees outside the offiCial labour movement, a failure that led them temporarily to advance a more cautious approach to autonomous organisation. Both the Northerners and Romans, then, were initially united in rejecting what they called 'Trotskyist tactics' and 'Chinese dances' (Tronti 1966: 32), even if their motives for doing so were rather different." (from Storming Heaven by Steve Wright[0]).
You're going to need a stronger case than saying that the West German movement was Maoist and therefore Antifa in the US and elsewhere today is Maoist too - especially when you contradict your own claim that by the 1980s they'd moved on to autonomism. Please provide an analysis of the prevalence of Maoism or Maoist ideas as it exists today within the mainstream American radical left.
[0] https://libcom.org/files/Wright%20S%20-%20Storming%20Heaven%...
The last American 1970s Maoist I met (ca. 2005) was by then an investment manager. There are Marxists nostalgists out there, but not many. The left is much more into identity politics these days.