There is certainly much to criticize about Mao-era politics, and I’m personally of the view that the CPC was essentially awful from 9th party congress in 1969 up until they got their wakeup call from the Tiananmen Square protests. During this whole period, they were essentially aligned with US imperialism, just as most English-speaking “Maoists” are today.
The belief that capitalism was restored during this period, however, is simply a myth. The best book deconstructing this myth that I know of is China’s Regulatory State: A New Strategy for Globalization by Roselyn Hsueh, which documents the massive control over the economy that the party continued to exert during this period, and still exerts to this day. I’m convinced the continued belief in this myth is more important at fooling “Right” wingers than it is “Leftists,” as China really is the biggest example in the whole world about what is possible when you’re able to develop outside of the dictates of “Western” imperialism. Granted, part of the “West” allowing China to develop at this time was due to their opportunism on the international stage, something which the PLA has even admitted to in their propaganda video The Silent War (unable to find a video of it online at this time, seems to have been scrubbed off the internet).
I have in the past tried to lay ideological traps for people, who would take upholding the Cultural Revolution as a cardinal principle, by pointing out various unpleasant things about the youthful Red Guards, but this isn’t really the point. Most people simply don’t know, or care much about the factual details, such as the fairly consistent use by the Red Guards of accusing people of being homosexuals (Chinese people are still largely anti-gay, seeing it as a “Western” thing, but have little problem with the Lady Boys of Thailand, or their own opera history of men dressing up as women). The Cultural Revolution becomes a symbol of some “Left” in-group/out-group status, what little details people know about it revolve around a handful of personalities. Mao is Chinese Jesus, Deng Xiaoping is Judas, Hua Guofeng and the Gang of Four are his idiotic disciples who couldn’t understand the master, etc. It becomes a story of individual personalities, rather than a story about China itself. It’s the same thing with Trotskyists, who pinpoint the date socialism died in the USSR as the day Trotsky was sent into exile. For them, political lines, much less political analysis, doesn’t matter. It is all about cult worship of individuals and their personal identification with them. In reality, the Cultural Revolution basically ended up as a conflict between radicalized youth against the PLA itself, which ultimately put it down. Without an army, you don’t have anything, as the CPC is crystal clear about.
Xi Jinping is better than Mao, because Xi Jinping is the Chinese leader that has been the most willing to confront US imperialism on an international stage, and the most willing to repudiate the disastrous “Soviet Social Imperialism” nonsense that justified kowtowing to the “West.”
There is certainly much to criticize about Mao-era politics, and I’m personally of the view that the CPC was essentially awful from 9th party congress in 1969 up until they got their wakeup call from the Tiananmen Square protests. During this whole period, they were essentially aligned with US imperialism, just as most English-speaking “Maoists” are today.
The belief that capitalism was restored during this period, however, is simply a myth. The best book deconstructing this myth that I know of is China’s Regulatory State: A New Strategy for Globalization by Roselyn Hsueh, which documents the massive control over the economy that the party continued to exert during this period, and still exerts to this day. I’m convinced the continued belief in this myth is more important at fooling “Right” wingers than it is “Leftists,” as China really is the biggest example in the whole world about what is possible when you’re able to develop outside of the dictates of “Western” imperialism. Granted, part of the “West” allowing China to develop at this time was due to their opportunism on the international stage, something which the PLA has even admitted to in their propaganda video The Silent War (unable to find a video of it online at this time, seems to have been scrubbed off the internet).
I have in the past tried to lay ideological traps for people, who would take upholding the Cultural Revolution as a cardinal principle, by pointing out various unpleasant things about the youthful Red Guards, but this isn’t really the point. Most people simply don’t know, or care much about the factual details, such as the fairly consistent use by the Red Guards of accusing people of being homosexuals (Chinese people are still largely anti-gay, seeing it as a “Western” thing, but have little problem with the Lady Boys of Thailand, or their own opera history of men dressing up as women). The Cultural Revolution becomes a symbol of some “Left” in-group/out-group status, what little details people know about it revolve around a handful of personalities. Mao is Chinese Jesus, Deng Xiaoping is Judas, Hua Guofeng and the Gang of Four are his idiotic disciples who couldn’t understand the master, etc. It becomes a story of individual personalities, rather than a story about China itself. It’s the same thing with Trotskyists, who pinpoint the date socialism died in the USSR as the day Trotsky was sent into exile. For them, political lines, much less political analysis, doesn’t matter. It is all about cult worship of individuals and their personal identification with them. In reality, the Cultural Revolution basically ended up as a conflict between radicalized youth against the PLA itself, which ultimately put it down. Without an army, you don’t have anything, as the CPC is crystal clear about.
Xi Jinping is better than Mao, because Xi Jinping is the Chinese leader that has been the most willing to confront US imperialism on an international stage, and the most willing to repudiate the disastrous “Soviet Social Imperialism” nonsense that justified kowtowing to the “West.”
I think you hit the nail on the head, though I’m still deciding on all this.