Maoist mirage

 

Förbundet Kommunist (often spelled Förbundet KOMMUNIST) was a small and peculiar left-wing group in Sweden from 1970 to 1982. It published a "newspaper" called Arbetarkamp (originally Röda Arbetet) and the theoretical magazine Kommunist (after which the group was named). FK´s political line was highly eclectic, but could perhaps be termed anti-Stalinist Maoism. While that´s a contradiction in terms (Mao infamously said that Stalin was 70% good and 30% bad), many radical leftists during the 1960´s hoped that China would develop into an alternative to the bureaucratic system in the Soviet Union. The Cultural Revolution in particular was seen as an gigantic experiment in direct democracy, workers´ self-management or student power. Absurd? Of course, but such was the Zeitgeist. The fact that China´s foreign policy was periodically more radical than the Soviet "line", also attracted many New Leftists to the banners of Maoism. I think the FK becomes less mysterious if seen in this context. 

I also think FK was something of an "experimental" group, which explored several different ideologies, rather than adopting any of them uncritically, the latter being the usual approach on the Swedish extreme left. The Trotskyists of the RMF/KAF wrote many exasperated polemics against FK, since in their opinion, consistent anti-Stalinist Marxism simply must be Trotskyist. I don´t know why FK eventually dissolved, but I suspect they (after the 57th political U-turn) became too similar to the broader and somewhat softer left (insert complaint about "vacillating petty bourgeois layers" here). Today, most people hardly even remember this little episode in Swedish far left historiography. Except me, of course, but then, I´m a trollish blogger, so what did you expect? ;-)

The book "Kina - klasskampen går vidare" (China - the class struggle continues) was published by FK in 1973. The authors are given as Nils Börjesson and Sven B Svensson. The book was Förbundet Kommunist´s main statement on China and Maoism. I actually have an old copy, but it´s also available free on the web. As far as I know, it only exists in a Swedish version. To be honest, the book is badly written and often comes across more like a draft. It´s also very "empirical", with the analyses often being along the lines of "on the one hand...on the other hand...". Of course, a reader who is used to either "Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought" or Trotskyism, will consider FK´s musings on the PRC to be "centrism", "crystallized confusion", and so on. For once, I think the dogmatists do have a point...

Still, certain tendencies are discernible. FK regards the Communist Party of China (CCP) as clearly to the left of Stalin, and its practice as somehow objectively anti-Stalinist, something the authors believe the CCP should develop further. Mao´s relative independence of the Comintern, and his refusal to liquidate the People´s Liberation Army or the red base areas during the popular frontist period, are seen as examples of this anti-Stalinism. FK further points to the "voluntary collectivization" of the people´s communes, the attempts to abolish "the division of labor", and the mass mobilizations during the Cultural Revolution. China is seen as a transitional society in movement towards socialism, while the Soviet Union is transitioning in the opposite direction, towards capitalism. 

The fight against the division of labor is central, according to FK, since only in this way can "socialist productive forces" be created. Examples include: students are sent to the countryside, white collar employees must work in production, workers and peasants should gain admission to the city universities (where top-down hierarchies should be broken). FK explicitly argues in favor of more decentralization and localization of the economy. Industrial plants should be relatively small, so the workers can easily oversee them. Cities, too, should be small. Each plant should produce its own machinery, or adapt existing machinery to local conditions, and the workers should "experiment" with the technology. This is surprisingly easy to combine with a Green perspective, although no such conclusion is drawn. Of course, it´s also important that the correct "line" is in command at the headquarters...

Thus, we are dealing with a kind of idealized "Great Leap Forward" plus "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" Maoism. Or perhaps not, since FK actually admit that there were huge problems with both (they don´t mention the mass starvation, though, except maybe obliquely). Thus, the Red Guards during the GPCR often lacked a real working class consciousness, fought each other, and created chaos in several provinces. This forced the PLA to step in, but that in turn led to "formalism" and bureaucratization, which then weakened the Cultural Revolution overall, setting the stage for a comeback of the "right wing" of the party. And somewhere along the way, Lin Biao simply disappeared! The bizarre personality cult of Mao (which the book blames on Lin) was another problem. Still, FK believes that the Cultural Revolution should have been developed further, rather than discontinued.

There are several glaring contradictions in FK´s analysis. First, if read carefully, FK is actually *opposed* to workers power in China, since the working class is still "immature". While they blame this on the objective conditions (the limited social weight of the industrial working class in pre-revolutionary China), it does raise the question who exercises the power instead? FK´s response seems to be that the CCP represents the working class. But who rules the CCP? The logical answer is, of course, the bureaucracy. But FK attacks the Trotskyists for daring to suggest this, so presumably they believe that Mao and his faction were a kind of non-proletarian but still somehow pro-proletarian Communist cadre. The real bureaucrats are the capitalist roaders around Liu Shaoqi, and so on. From a Trotskyist perspective, this is easy to criticize: FK really wants the "left" Stalinists to bureaucratically control the working class. And without actual soviets, the abolition of the division of labor simply means that a somewhat more proletarianized mass continues to be subordinate to the Party. 

Another contradiction is that FK explicitly rejects Trotsky´s theory of permanent revolution as somehow ultraleft, instead favoring the Maoist "New Democracy", all the while supporting the Cultural Revolution, which could be seen as even more ultraleft than Trotsky´s strategy. Logically, FK should have been centrist Maoists (a bit like the small Swedish group SKA, perhaps?) rather than Gang of Four fanboys. Their view of Chinese foreign policy is equally inconsistent. On the one hand, they actually criticize the CCP for taking a "rightist" position on everything from Indonesia to Ceylon and Pakistan. Only during the Cultural Revolution was the foreign policy truly internationalist. But on the other hand, FK actually wants closer unity (or perhaps unity-struggle-unity) with pro-Moscow forces! They criticize the CCP for boycotting an international youth festival in East Berlin, and the CCP´s general "sectarianism" towards pro-Soviet Communist parties. Apparently, the Chinese regime supported "reactionary" Sudanese leader Nimeiry´s repression of the pro-Soviet CP in that country. Here, FK are slouching towards positions more reminescent of those Maoists who eventually became more positive towards the Soviet Union, in Sweden the KFML(r). But of course, the main problem with Förbundet KOMMUNIST is that they were caught up in the Maoist mirage in the first place...

Not sure who might be interested in this work presently, but in the case you are, I just made your day!