The minds of Maoists

"The Communist" was a theoretical journal published by the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), a Maoist group in the United States. The group still exists, but seems to have changed many of its politics.

This issue of "The Communist" (no. 5) was published in 1979 and is 240 pages long. It's probably of interest only to avid left-watchers or perhaps budding Maoists.

The main article has the typically Maoist title "Beat back the dogmato-revisionist attack on Mao Tsetung Thought". It's a polemic against Enver Hoxha, the Communist leader of Albania, who had broken with China a few years earlier and written "Imperialism and revolution", a book containing attacks on Mao and Maoism. Since the RCP had also broken with China after the death of Mao, the article doesn't attempt to defend the pro-American foreign policy of China's new rulers. Rather, it concentrates on defending Mao himself from Hoxha's attacks.

Most of the article is very tedious, detailing various factional controversies within the Chinese Communist movement. Still, it does have certain ironic qualities. The Albanian leader had criticized Mao for excessive popular frontism and "new democracy". RCP points out that Hoxha himself had acted in a similar manner in Albania. What about the Democratic Front? RCP also wonders why Hoxha's ruling party is called the Party of Labour of Albania. Hoxha believed that Mao overestimated the peasantry, but when the Albanian party changed its name from "Communist Party" to "Party of Labour", the great mass of Albanian peasants was cited as the reason. The RCP also point out that Hoxha had taken his analysis of the Soviet Union as "social imperialist" from the writings of the Chinese leaders he later attacked. Finally, the RCP quote a Soviet attack on Mao which is almost identical, word for word, to one of Hoxha's attacks on Mao. Since Hoxha claimed to be anti-Soviet as well as anti-Chinese, this is something of an embarrassment.

Of course, the main point of the article is to defend the Cultural Revolution in China. Hoxha had sharply attacked it in "Imperialism and revolution". The RCP has little trouble exposing the fact, that Hoxha's line amounts to support for Liu Shaoqi and indirectly Deng Xiaoping, two of the main victims of the Cultural Revolution. In other words, the orthodox Marxist-Leninist Enver Hoxha actually supported the "capitalist-roaders".

Another article in "The Communist" is called "Plato: Classical Ideologue of Reaction". It's a Marxist analysis of Plato and Socrates. Naturally, the RCP regards Plato as an anti-democratic, reactionary representative of the old oligarchic landowners. They even imply that the framing and execution of Socrates was a good thing! Socrates' way of ironically questioning people and holding them up for ridicule is seen as profoundly anti-democratic. It's an attack on the the democratic notion that the common man can have real knowledge and hence become part of the active citizenry. Plato's "utopianism" was simply an idealization of the old society dominated by oligarchs. The RCP also points out the curious fact that the austere guardians and philosopher-kings are superimposed on a society very similar to Athens of Plato's own day, i.e. an Athens with merchants and a merchant economy. In effect, Plato was the representative of those forces who wanted to turn Athens into an oligarchy, while retaining the basic social relations of the expanding, mercantile slave society. Or so the RCP believes.

A third article in this journal is called "China, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Professor Bettelheim". It's a criticism of Charles Bettelheim, a distinguished French professor with strong Maoist leanings who broke with the Chinese a few years after Mao's death. Bettelheim contributed to the book "China since Mao", apparently a bestseller on the left when it was first published. RCP commends Bettelheim for defending Mao against the new leaders of China, but believes that he is too critical of the Gang of Four and makes other errors as well. Interestingly, RCP believes that Bettelheim puts to much emphasis on democracy under socialism. Bettelheim seems to have supported the Cultural Revolution in the belief that it was more democratic than the usual Communist command systems. When Mao abolished the radically democratic Shanghai Commune in favour of a "revolutionary committee", Bettelheim believed that the Cultural Revolution was in retreat. RCP takes the opposite position: there was *too much* democracy during the first phase of the Cultural Revolution, and Mao therefore did the right thing when he abolished the Commune. The leadership of the true Communists must be upheld at all times, the RCP believes. (The guardians and philosopher-kings?) Bettelheim is also criticized for his past association with Trotskyist and "revisionist" groups, and for attacking Stalin in favour of Bukharin.

"The Communist" (no. 5) is a very esoteric publication, unless you are very interested in the topics covered. Still, it does give a certain insight into the minds of Maoists.