Hi! Long time lurker, first time poster. Been discussing stuff with MLs of all stripes recently, and have come across a common statement used by a lot of Maoists which frustrates me.
They seem to always fall back on statements like “The CPC allows billionaires in their ranks, so they are revisionist.”
Maoists have often used this as a kind of “gotcha” argument against more traditional MLs, or “Dengists” as they love to label us.
It’s frustrating, because…I don’t disagree really, allowing members of the bourgeoisie to hold political power is pretty much the definition of revisionism. The problem is, this feels more like a way to silence dissent or discussion rather than facilitate it. Feels like an overly simplistic hard line that simplifies history into binary divisions. Often followed by an implied “China is revisionist, therefore Maoism is the only working form of socialism.”
I’m reaching out to people to see if anyone has any ways to combat this, in a way that encourages discussion rather than it just devolving into insults or truisms hurled back and forth without thought.
And yet china refuses to make policies that support billionaires and benefit the bourgeoisie class specifically, they instead do the opposite and fuck them over to the point where western media makes articles about how china is fucking over billionaires as if that’s a bad thing.
That’s what separates MLs from reactionaries and people like maoists who do not understand dialectical materialism and operates on idealism and being dogmatic.
If china really were revisionist they would be stripping social safety nets, reducing funding for public infrastructure, increasing privatization of everything that’s currently public and increasing policies favoring the bourgeoisie. Change happens in elliptical motion. For example when the USSR became revisionist they switched over real quick and policies favoring the proletariat were quickly stripped away in favor of pro bourgeoisie ones. The revisionists in powere immediately enriched themselves with this.
Maoists and reactionaries don’t look at objective material reality.
Well that explains why Deng’s reforms worked while Gorby’s didn’t.
From the little I know (which is admittedly not a lot) China did seem to be sliding towards revisionism during the late 90’s through the aughts (I think the aughts were maybe the bigger issue). In that there was so much deep corruption at all levels. Which is certainly something Xi has made a point to both acknowledge and began dealing with. I read somewhere last year or so, that it really caught the US intelligence agencies with their guards down when Chinese intelligence agents were starting to do things to show off that they knew who was in the pockets of the US and the West. I think that the issue with what has become known as “Dengism” is that the push to allow a bit of bourgeois stage of development for catching up with modern industrialism and whatnot was given too much freedom. Which allowed for folks to claim that China is socialist in name only (I really didn’t mean for that to be a pun so sorry for that). It is awesome to see that the party and the current leadership is being so focused on correcting the mistakes. While also making sure to keep pushing for advancements as China is getting closer and closer in closing the remaining gaps in technical and industrial processes.
I just personally hope that they are able to push for getting the 996 stuff removed. I know they did rule that it isn’t constitutional, but it is still (from what I can gather) a thing that is a mindset and just kind of expected in various industries. Which being fair to China isn’t just a them thing, as it is in Japanese and Korean cultures too. But that is all just my opinion and I am not Chinese, and haven’t been there or worked there. So I am willing to yield to being super wrong on that and really all the above.