So, I’m currently reading On Contradiction, just got done with Chapter 3
And I came across this banger “The dogmatists do not observe this principle; they do not understand that conditions differ in different kinds of revolution and so do not understand that different methods should be used to resolve different contradictions; on the contrary, they invariably adopt what they imagine to be an unalterable formula and arbitrarily apply it everywhere, which only causes setbacks to the revolution or makes a sorry mess of what was originally well done.”
Mao Zedong in On Contradiction, Ch. 3, par. 8
Mao Zedong would have completely been against modern-day MLMs and saying stuff like “China is capitalist because they don’t do XYZ”
Ultras/Maoists are pure moralists. Anyone who knows a lick of Marxian theory knows that the purpose of nationalizing industry under a dictatorship of the proletariat is to resolve the contradiction between socialized production (big industry) and private appropriation (due to private ownership). Hence, it makes no sense to nationalize small industry as this would be introducing socialized appropriation on top of private production.
Everyone was in agreement on this. The Manifesto only recommends initially extending state ownership over the biggest enterprises and then encouraging rapid economic development so that small industry can become big, and so they can gradually be nationalized. In The Principles of Communism Engels is clear that markets are necessary for small industry to transform itself into big industry, and thus private property cannot be abolished in one stroke but only gradually alongside the development of the forces of production. Even Lenin said multiple times it would be “economic suicide” to nationalize the small producers and we must “learn to live alongside them.”
This is why Marx even believed a dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary. A state is a tool of class oppression, so you cannot have a state without class distinctions and one class oppressing another. Marx says clearly in Conspectus on Bakhunin’s State and Anarchy that the reason for the DOTP is that private property will still exist exist for some time, and thus class distinctions will still exist, so the state is necessary to enforce the role of the proletariat over other classes.
Ultras/Maoists don’t care about any of this because they are pure moralists and don’t understand, or don’t even care about, historical materialism. For them, “private property = morally bad,” and therefore it should all be outlawed as quickly as possible. They will tell you they don’t believe in nationalizing all private property in one stroke, but if you talk to them long enough you realize they still believe in nationalizing all enterprises regardless of their level of development, but just recognize doing this will take a little bit of time, maybe a few years.
They don’t actually understand that the reason Marx and Engels believed it cannot be done in one stroke is not simply because nationalizing everything is a time-consuming process, but because you cannot nationalize small industry without introducing contradictions to your economy that would be detrimental towards its development, so all you can do is encourage development until more small industries develop into big industries so they can be nationalized.
Ultras/Maoists simply refuse to ever read a word of Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Mao, and if you try to explain this to them it completely goes over their heads and they genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about because they don’t read anything, and will often just resort to calling you an evil immoral revisionist capitalist roader for daring to question the complete nationalization of all economic sectors regardless of their level of development.
This is because they are not Marxists but moralists. The ultraleft and Maoism should be understood to be a variation of utopian socialism and not Marxism.
I always say that if MLMs actually read Mao they wouldn’t be MLMs.
My favorite is when you bring some Mao into a conversation, get “oppose book worship!” thrown back at you, then after further discussion you start to think they haven’t actually read that beyond the quote itself.
Strangely enough, within the Communist Party there are also people who always say in a discussion, “Show me where it’s written in the book.” When we say that a directive of a higher organ of leadership is correct, that is not just because it comes from “a higher organ of leadership” but because its contents conform with both the objective and subjective circumstances of the struggle and meet its requirements…
We need books, but we must overcome book worship, which is divorced from the actual situation.
It’s basically “theory isn’t prophecy; learn from it, but make sure it applies to your actual situation.” It’s certainly not “I don’t need to read anything at all.”
Exactly, books provide you with a foundation of knowledge, but they’re not instruction guides. The knowledge has to then be applied to solving problems within the current circumstances one finds themselves in. Furthermore, our understanding evolves over time. The whole idea of dialectics is that it’s a dynamic, living process. People who insist on some absolute truths lack fundamental understanding of what Marxism is.
The Ultras that spend thousands of hours studying every paragraph of the economic aspects of Marxism but ignore or misunderstand Dialectical Materialism are the most guilty of this dogmatism and rigid mechanical thinking, in my experience.
Exactly, it’s intellectual laziness where they just want a paint by numbers set of instructions instead of actually having to think for themselves.
Essentially, they fail to apply Marxist theory to Marxism :D
they’re just LARPers :)
One of the reasons, for sure
That’s very true specifically for the MLM3Ws, who in the imperial core have very little in common with actual MLMs. They’ll read the same revolutionary study guide/book for a year+, dissect it from each and every angle, spend countless hours arguing the tiniest points and mistranslations, kick out half of the group for minute (or fundamental) disagreements, and call themselves revolutionaries. And then never do an ounce of Marxist analysis on what the fuck did they spend that time on, or why have they never went outside to talk to a single person while preaching about the mass line.
the number one thing you learn by doing the reading is that hardly anyone does the reading
Honestly one of the most glaringly obvious points I’ve noticed after I started reading, it really seems like most people coast by on Wikipedia alone.
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Ultras are the equivalent of programmers who shallowly learned a programming language and never wrote a single program
