A week ago I got a post from Ben, a High School student in the Bay Area, asking me for information on Maoism. I haven't even pulled together the next "lesson" in the socialism series, dealing with Marx, and am nowhere close to Mao. Yet I think having taken the time to jot these notes down, and even more, the notes in Part Two from Ethan Young, to whom I'd sent Ben's query and who has the advantage over me of having been in the Maoist movement in this country, it would be wrong not to get them in the post while I screw up my courage to cope with Marx and "class war".

I'll do you a favor if you'll do one for me. I now seem to have "lost" the earlier posts on "what is socialism" - and also your emails giving me the web site. Can I have that (once more) please. I'll post it on my forehead. I'll post it on the computer really this time. I want to print out all the early sections so I'll know where I want to go by knowing where I have been.

Maoism: I am not an expert. But what I do know goes back to the break between the Soviets and the Chinese in the early days. Stalin either put out a contract on Mao's life, or wanted to. Mao did the unthinkable - he rejected Moscow's "advice" (read orders) before and during WW II and left the cities (and the small working class that Stalin thought was the "base"), headed for the countryside, built his base among the peasants, and won. Had he followed Stalin's orders he would have been killed when Chiang Kai Shek launched a bloody attack on one of the cities that had been his base. Mao knew China, Stalin didn't. (Read a very good book on this - Edgar Snow's "Red Star Over China" - this was a period when many Americans sympathized with Mao because the Red Army was honest and really did change China)

So the first lesson of "Maoism" is a willingness to build theory from facts (actually quite good Marxism). Lacking a strong working class, Mao went to the peasants.

Second lesson, with dangerous implications around the mid-1950's, was the willingness to "go it alone" against orders from Moscow (and this was very close to heresy in a world movement which, at that time, and in ways it is hard for you now to even understand, was "totally controlled" from the Kremlin, all the way from Moscow to Saigon to Lima to Harlem to Paris to Timbuktu. The only thing close to it - and that also has gone into the trash basket before you were born - was the ABSOLUTE rule of Rome over Catholics around the world. There was NO DISSENT. When I joined the radical movement the ONLY radical Catholics in this country were the handful around Dorothy Day at the Catholic Worker (and on religious issues, Dorothy was very orthodox). There were NO Catholics in the socialist movement. NO Catholics in the pacifist movement. A FEW Catholics in the trade union movement leadership.

With Pope John the XXIII all of this changed, quickly, and profoundly. The Catholic Church today is "a thousand light years" from what it was only a few years before you were born.

So if you think of Maoism as an "original heresy" similar to Trotsky (who was murdered on Stalin's orders) or Tito in Yugoslavia, but in Mao's case a heresy which won out in a country with the world's largest population, you can see it was important.

Then, when Stalin died, my own mentor, A. J. Muste, wrote a paper saying that from that point on the world communist movement would be "multi-polar", since China would not accept Stalin's successor, but rather would insist that world leadership pass to the next oldest actual revolutionist, and that was Mao. Mao and the Chinese party never accepted Khruschev as "the" leader of International Communism. Moscow thought the world revolution would continue to be led from the Kremlin and the Chinese basically said "why"? (So, I might add, did Ho Chi Minh, very very very quietly - he had been a founding member of the Comintern when he was in France during WW I as a laborer brought in by the French from Indochina). The "Sino-Soviet conflict" was part of what we might call "Maoism" - ie., each country has its own path.

It was interesting that when the world split came - after all, starting around 1960 (I don't have the exact date) you had "two Popes", each claiming to be infallible, Khruschev in Moscow and Mao in Peking, and every Communist had to decide which Pope was right. Very painful, this matter of thinking things out for yourself! To some extent this had happened with Trotsky, but Trotsky didn't rule a huge country. And with Tito, but Yugoslavia was very small. Mao was a real problem.

Anyway to complete that thought which got lost for a moment, what was interesting was that Mao never tried to set up a "Chinese International" in the way Moscow had a Communist International. China would, "sort of", recognize which Maoist group in each country had its favor, but they never put them all together in some kind of international meeting. Maoism was to stress the fact that "great power hegemony" was wrong. Maoism also tended to support third world revolutions more easily than Moscow.

Internal to China, Mao made extraordinary mistakes with the "great leap forward" campaign, trying to turn China into an industrial power overnight, with people building iron foundries in their backyards (I exaggerate but not by much). China had an unlimited supply of raw labor but that by itself it could not industrialize China. (And, as Ethan and I agreed in a later exchange between us before I realized I should send all this to all of you, Mao and the Chinese Communists, can take credit for profound changes in China in terms of literacy, rights of women -ending centuries of the barbaric practice of "foot-binding" - better distribution of food, etc.).

Then we enter the period where I am much less sure what "Maoism" is. The "Cultural Revolution" was a crazy period when Mao tried to win back power over the heads of the Party bureaucrats by appealing to the youth, setting them loose. It was not a good period. It was a disaster (from what little I know).

Mao's widow tried to carry on, one of the "Gang of Four" that were finally placed under arrest when the new Chinese leadership began the present "short march toward something like capitalism".

So you have a really authentic Maoism from the early stages up to the consolidation of the Communist Party's power. Stress on each nation seeking its own path (actually quite sensible). And a naive faith in the people - naive in that Mao never really seemed to grasp that US atomic bombs could have destroyed China. Mao never traveled outside of China except, I think, to Moscow. Much more loved in China was (and still is) Cho En Lai who was perhaps as important as Mao. I think much more rational. I am also skipping lots of things that involved power struggles within China.

In the final days Mao had lost direction, the Cultural Revolution was a bad misstep. Maoists in this country are lost groups - the RCP, which has lots of energy, is working in NION ("Not In Our Name"), and supports the Shining Path in Peru. In their political view they are out of touch, given to slogans, and still pledge allegiance to their "leader" Avakian who is suffering terribly from exile - he "has to live in Paris" (poor man!).

Among the really stupid things the RCP did, until recently, was condemn homosexuality as a deviation that the revolution could cure.

I'm sending this also to Ethan Young, who was part of this movement, can correct my errors, and direct you to better sources. Also the book on the "New Communist" movement by Max Elbaum - which I have to get and read. One movement linked to the Maoists was Line of March, sensible people who dissolved. Another is Freedom Road Socialists, who are small but not bad. The RCP is, I think, a real waste of time.

Mao gave his blessing to the Chinese invasion of Vietnam to "punish" Vietnam for its invasion of Cambodia in 1979 - wait, not sure if Mao was still alive, he died just about then. In any case China was still following his policies and the Chinese did invade Vietnam, they got badly bruised by the Vietnamese and retreated with a bloody nose.

If you go to Google.com (as I'm sure you know) you'll gets lots more info, more facts, and correct spelling. All that I can offer is an opinionated view.

(next post, Ethan's additions)