Re: On misreading Trotsky (was Re: [A-List] accumulation/financialisation - a query)

[Macdonald Stainsby <mstainsby@xxxxxxxxx>]

Nestor Gorojovsky wrote:

> In concrete struggle and bid for power, Mao acted as Trotsky would
> have acted, he put Permanent Revolution in action even though he did
> not accept it in words.  With a basically peasant army, in a
> basically peasant country, he turned to socialism for revolution.

Indeed, and this is the greatest gift that Mao has left to those who
study history: that one must deal with concrete conditions to attempt
advance, learn from your own situation and be damned with "orthodoxy",
instead allowing the *human content* to a revolutionary struggle. In the
situations we face today, there are only broad lessons to be learned,
there are no blueprints. The inherent contradictions of our time simply
do not have precedent.

Despite the grotesque dogmatism of those sects that have called
themselves "Maoist", the struggle today is for exactly this kind of
thinking-- where we take tools not rules, apply our analysis to the
situation, but even more importantly, the other great gift (espite the
tales of his detractors): infusing the importance of the human role in
their own liberation. The role of idealism, of mass motivations and
inspirations were also new-- the idea that we can struggle against
seemingly impossible conditions with the weapon of ideas. Such is truly
anathema to those who call themselves "Maoists", but is more needed than
ever before.

Such is also, from my distant view, missing in china today.

--
Macdonald Stainsby
http://independentmedia.ca/survivingcanada
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope
   --Bertholt Brecht.