Re: marxism & (under)development

[dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx (Doug Henwood)]

At 12:29 PM 4/10/96, zodiac wrote:

>I am increasingly forced to side with Adolfo, and against my friends, on
>this issue of the PCP. I'm sure that makes Adolfo smile, as it is part of
>Mao's strategy of confrontation in certain ripe environments. Smile away.
>But I cannot sit by idly while people trash the PCP as some sort of backward
>organization of "dumb illiterates."

Illiterate doesn't mean dumb. Over one in five Peruvian women can't read;
that's a fact, if the reference books are to be believed.

>What I don't understand about the few people in here who like to slag the
>PCP is: What is your point? Your intent? Is it just coz Adolfo peed on your
>shoes? Or are you trying to extrapolate some "universal" series of
>organizational principles from this particular application of Mao? I'm
>serious, if you could explain the root of your hostility to the civil war in
>Peru, I'd be appreciative because I still haven't heard a cogent
>counterargument. Instead, I regularly read Gary M.'s interweaving of the
>personality of Adolfo with the entire movement. That movement existed long
>before he appeared on the list.

I'm not talking just about Peru, much less about AO himself; I think it's
time for some serious reflection on what has happened in China, the home of
Maoism. Why does the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party now say "to
get rich is glorious"? Why are stocks trading once again in Shanghai?

Marx's argument about the development of socialism out of advanced
capitalism is logical and well known. I want to hear how he was wrong on
this issue.


>>Maybe all the attempts to revise
>>Marxism to apply to semi-literate, semi-industrialized agrarian-rural
>>societies - and the enthusiasm of First World radical intellectuals for
>>such a project - have been mistakes after all.
>
>"Mistakes?"
>
>I think that, say, what the Vietnamese people accomplished was historic and
>should never be thought of as a "mistake," nor the millions who died
>forgotten.

Of course it was heroic - or to turn it around, the US-led murder of 2-3
million Indochinese was a great crime against humanity.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, though, Western intellectuals turned against
the First World working class, often holding them in contempt, and looked
to the Third World as the avant garde of revolution. In hindsight, that
looks like a mistake.


Doug

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Doug Henwood
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