Sometimes I hang out with Maoists. But like many in this group I am not a Maoist myself (uphold Deng!). This makes it kind of hard to ask them tough questions because I dont want to sound like an idiot or some kind of wrecker that causes trouble among the Maoists but I would like to ask some questions. One tough question is the question of child soldiers.
Moaists in the Philippines and in India have been accused of using child soldiers for quite some time. Maybe im wrong but among communists it seems kind of specific to Maoists. But I have never even one time heard a Maoist bring this up much less try to give rationalization or explanation.
Now I know better than to just trust HRW and take them at face value, so I always figured its at least possible that there is more going on here. Does anyone here have anything to say about communists, especially Maoists, and child soldiers? Have you heard a Maoist respond to this issue? Do you have any insight to the issue of child soldiers?
Okay so I’m not sure about India, but in the Philippines the NPA has a minimum age requirement of 18- that’s a year older than the official military in the Philippines which allows 17 year olds to join. I know he’s a Maoist but Marxist Paul recently did a great video on the movement in the Philippines and while there are real critiques, this one is just imperialist propaganda.
Just like principled Maoist reject the imperialist propaganda surrounding Xinjiang, we should reject imperialist propaganda about left revolutionaries of any stripe. Real Marxist critique is where it’s at.
I dont have a readily available line on child soldiers that is beyond skin deep, but I bring this up because it is not as obvious to me that the child soldiers accusation is false/propaganda in the way the Xinjiang accusations are. Child soldiers are rarely brought up at all. Academics are the only people in my life even bringing it up. Just seems like it should be discussed more than it is, especially among Maoists or anyone fixated on protracted people’s war.
Marxist Paul is a maoist? Why does he call himself a Marxist then?
I will try my best not to express bias one way or another, but full disclosure, I am a former Maoist and as of now don’t really know exactly where I stand since I am not fully convinced any particular ~ism is suitable to the material conditions here inside the imperial core… yet. If you want more on this, feel free to ask. Now to the question and my best attempt at an answer:
Maoists still consider themselves Marxists, which is why they label themselves MLM (Marxist - Leninst - Maoist).
The way to think about it is roughly like this:
In physics, Newton is often credited as a sort of founder, much like Marx is credited as the founder of Communism. Then you have other physicists contribute to the science, adding on to it and amending the mistakes of predecessors, leading up to Michio Kaku or Hawking or Penrose or Hooft or what have you of today.
The same with Marxism. Marx’s analysis, while a great foundation, was not enough to explain the material conditions in Russia, so Lenin and company added to the science by including their own analysis. Then China happened, and the contributions of Marx, Lenin, and others weren’t enough to explain the material conditions adequately in China, so Mao and company added their own analysis.
Just as in certain circumstances in physics it is best to invoke principles of Newtonian physics to best analyze a certain physical problem, while in other circumstances principles of Einsteinian “Relativity” or Kaku’s “String Theory” might be best applied, so too in Marxism do we often invoke principles laid out in the foundational “Marx” original analysis, while sometimes Lenin has the best answer, and sometimes Mao.
I hope this helps answer your question as to why Maoists still refer to themselves as Marxists.
EDIT: Didn’t see the [BANNED] thing and that this comment was made one month ago. Whoops. Well then hopefully this helps anyone else looking for answers to this question.