u/RedVentrata - originally from r/GenZhou
ik it’s kind of shitty to just link books and not add anything to the discussion but https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/

that is to say Lenin kinda went over all this ~100 years ago. ofc it won’t have anything to say about the modern state of China but for ultra-leftism in general it’s important reading. imo required reading for Marxist organizers.

edit: https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-4/mrl/index.htm (written by Albert Syzmanski, a great critique of ultra leftism I don’t see mentioned much. he wrote “is the red flag flying” which analyzes the economy of the USSR post-Stalin and argues that it’s still socialist)

and I’ll also recommend the book “Heavy Radicals”, which is a history of the RCP, the American maoist party (aka the bob avakian cult). it’s super interesting in its own right, and pretty scathing as a critique of ultra leftism. and, because it’s about the RCP, it highlights a lot of the tactics used during COINTELPRO to split and infiltrate the leftist movements of the 70s (which is the main focus of the book)

[deleted] - originally from r/GenZhou
[removed]

u/bluemagachud - originally from r/GenZhou
Where is the successful ultra revolution? How was it able to repel the forces of reaction and build a dictatorship of the proletariat? Oh, it has never even kind of happened, then why care? Let them froth uselessly in their armchairs. They’re dogmatic unscientific utopians unwilling to bend to the material conditions in the moment in order to continue the revolution at the pace that can be sustained. Like anarchists, they would much rather be dogmatically perfect in the realm of ideas and failures in practice.

u/parentis_shotgun - originally from r/GenZhou

On Ultra-leftism / Left-Communism

• What about the USSR, wasn’t it authoritarian? Watch this brilliant talk by Micheal Parenti, or read his article, Left anticommunism, the unkindest cut, audiobook
• Why do most Marxists dislike ultra-lefts / left-communists (the “not real socialism” crowd) ?
• Hakim - Why the USSR was socialist - A critique of left-communism.
• Cockshott - In what sense was the USSR socialist?
• Cockshott - Socialism and surplus - Why the USSR was socialist.
• Where are communists on the political compass?
• Lenin - “Left-Wing” Communism: An infantile disorder. Audiobook
• Western Marxism’s martyrdom / purity complex. Audiobook

• The CIA reads french postmodernist theory: how the CIA pushed “post-Marxist” theory to build support for imperialism.
• On MLM / Gonzalo, and the shining path. 2, 3, 4
• Norton - How the FBI used Anarchism to attack the left.

u/aimixin - originally from r/GenZhou
I feel like I’ve answered this question like several times already.

When I still had a limited understanding of Marxism, I had some ultra-leanings before understanding things better, but the more I read, the more I moved away from that.

Ultimately, I find ultras tend to have two stumbling blocks.

First, they tend to lack a rigorous historical materialist analysis. They understand, in very vague and abstract terms, that “capitalism lays the foundations for socialism”. But that’s about as much as they understand, without any specific details on what this means or how it achieves this. They treat development in a very abstract way, that during the course of capitalism’s development, there is some arbitrary line you cross where you can suddenly build full socialism.

Because of this, they will make absurd claims which I’ve seen multiple times from Maoists, like that China in the 1970s where only 10% of the population was urbanized had the productive forces necessary to abolish all private property.

Second, they tend to treat the abolition of private property as an almost holy decree. I have seen some Maoists before say that Cuba, for example, was socialist until they legally recognized private property in their constitution, then they stopped being socialist and abandoned Marxism. As if the abolition of private property is merely a legal thing.

Of course, if you point out how absurd it is for some of these countries to fully abolish private property, some might accept that, because you can point to how the USSR had collective farms which were not part of public property. But then will respond by saying that they still have “abandoned Marxism” because they could turn their underdeveloped sector into worker co-ops instead of bourgeois property.

There is a strong obsession from ultras with treating “abolition of private property” as something that you have to absolutely do almost immediately or you’ve “abandoned Marxism”, and for the ultras who will accept that making all property public is impossible at the current stage, they will instead insist that you still should “abolish all private property” immediately just by collectivizing the underdeveloped sectors.

While there can definitely be some benefits of collectivizing certain sectors of the economy into worker co-ops, there are also clearly some disadvantages, such as, it makes it difficult to integrate into the world economy in a capitalist world, it makes it difficult to bring in foreign investment.

The ultimate goal is not to merely reorganize private property into a different form, but to move beyond private property entirely, to centralized, large-scale public property. This requires development, and if worker co-ops in the underdeveloped sectors are slowing down development, then it is a retrograde step to use them.

How do you even get from Marxian theory the necessity to immediately move to co-ops even for the industrial sectors? It doesn’t exist anywhere in Marxian theory. At best you can find a few letters from Engels mentioning it may be beneficial, but Engels was not a prophet. You actually need to construct a theoretical argument, not “Engels said this”, to why it is necessary to have a universal application of to all underdeveloped sectors without exception.

The motivation to believing in a universal application of co-ops, of course, comes from their treatment of “abolition of private property” as some sort of holy decree, that you have to achieve this as rapidly as possible without exception or else you’ve “betrayed Marxism”. When, in reality, the “abolition of private property” occurs gradually, in the same way the state withers away over time, or the money as money withers away over time, etc, etc, none of these happen immediately from the top-down, but are all gradual in line with economic development.

u/dornish1919 - originally from r/GenZhou
Ultras are inherently dogmatic and overly idealistic. They place the words of a singular person or person(s) over that of everyone else while engaging in a cult-like worship. They ignore dialectics and materialism despite using ML terminology to justify their blind devotion. One thing specifically about Maoists I notice is that they like to cherry pick historical narratives or quotes from their idols/adversaries and claim anything else that is contrary to be “revisionism” or “propaganda”. Especially concerning Deng and modern China, it’s always funny pointing out how “Deng is a Maoist” joking to anyone whose actually read him, while Maoists will actively lose their shit or resort to name-calling when you show them this reality they refuse to acknowledge.

u/proletariat_hero - originally from r/GenZhou
[I’ll address Maoism specifically bc I haven’t really had personal irl experience with other ultras]

As an anarchist I was attracted to Maoism when I first became interested in Marxism. It seemed to be the most logically consistent and “pure”. It only took me a month to see through it all though, and reject it entirely - but that took some serious digging into the claims made by Maoists, particularly concerning modern China.

The more I researched the history of Reform and Opening Up, the more I realized that these “Marxist-Leninist-Maoists” were deliberately misrepresenting everything that happened in China post-Mao in really, really egregious ways. They would outright lie if it furthered their objectives, but much more often they would just throw a statistic or factoid out there out of context and use it to assert a broader point or support a broader narrative that wasn’t actually true.

For instance, this piece has circulated around Maoist circles for a while now and is very popular - it’s also full of verifiable lies, which this commenter called out: https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/9hsmen/china_a_modern_socialimperialist_power_cpimaoist/e6fi19s?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3

I’ve asked Maoists why they would share an article which claims that there were 83,000,000 private businesses in China in 1983, when there were less than 90,000 -

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://apebhconference.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/zhang-qin-20081.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiBoZ-47-v1AhX9JzQIHQd7BrAQFnoECAQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0FnszNENlNnyIwKMu-1UXR

They just say “it was a translation error, that doesn’t invalidate the argument”. I always run into this kind of thinking with them. They only read sources that are Maoist sources about modern China - like Pao Yu-Ching for instance - and disregard/refuse to even read anything written by any modern Chinese Marxist leader or theorist. I’ve read many Maoist books but I also read Xi Jinping - I’m almost done with his series on the governance of China - I also talk to people in China, including comrades in the Communist Party (I’m in the CPUSA and they’re a fraternal party, we collaborate and even do educational workshops for each other sometimes).

Maoists’ twisted conception of what life is like in China is so beyond bizarre compared to the reality. They are somehow convinced that the Communist Party decided to do the bidding of a bourgeois class which didn’t even exist at the time (in 1978), and which the revolutionary guerillas who implemented reform and opening up (like Deng Xiaoping) inexplicably and sadistically wanted to restore the power of the people they had just sacrificed decades of their lives fighting to overthrow. Even though at the time of reform and opening up the CPC Central Committee implemented the 4 Cardinal Principles, which every party member must now vow to uphold:

1.The principle of upholding the socialist path

2. The principle of upholding the people’s democratic dictatorship

3.The principle of upholding the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC)

4. The principle of upholding Mao Zedong Thought and Marxism–Leninism

Ultras (not just Maoists, but Hoxhaists, LeftComs, etc) tend to really only read or consider sources or evidence that supports their views, and are outraged at even the idea of engaging with the theories of people they’ve labelled “revisionist”. I have never met a Maoist online or irl who has read any Deng Xiaoping or Xi Jinping. Yet every ML reads Mao.

Imo, it’s petty-bourgeois radicalism. It’s a tendency people have in the imperial core to want to be more ideologically “pure” than everyone else and thus feel superior without having to do the hard work of building a movement. In fact, more often than not, Maoists just try to wreck our movements. They attack us online and in person, sometimes even with physical violence. They wage wars on socialist countries. They vow to overthrow every socialist state on earth. Online, they regularly tell me to kill myself and joke about throwing me out of 3rd story windows (like they did to Deng Xiaoping’s son) on Twitter. These guys are not our allies. I’ve never encountered the kind of vitriol I’ve received from Maoists from any group of people in my life. It’s unreal… I just wish they’d leave us alone tbh

u/MakersEye - originally from r/GenZhou
What am I? Tired of trying to define myself, to be honest.

[deleted] - originally from r/GenZhou
[removed]