Maoist sense of humour?

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

IMO "Maoists" would do well to take David Walters' remarks about
their lack of a sense of humour, as not a wholly destructive
criticism from a Trotskyist, but potentially a constructive one.

If you can't pick up a sense of humour, you cannnot swim like fish
in the sea of the people, and you end up gasping and spluttering
unsure who your friends, are when the police call.

It illustrates the two faces of Maoism, mainly the later face, of
ranting ideologues, transporting without regard to context, the
ideological campaigns within the socialist Chinese state of the 1960's
into the conditions of advanced western capitalism.

The Peruvian revolutionaries have the excuse of their own
difficult struggle to pursue. But they are in danger of finding
themselves in alliance with self-declared western "Maoists" who
cannot orientate themselves in the conditions of political
struggle in their own countries. The combination of this and
exile politics is pretty risky. Avakian is unlucky on both counts
is he not?


Chris B,
London.


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