DVD – mininova: That Hate Amerikkka Beat

It is over 30 years now since the revisionists slaughtered socialism and restored capitalism in China. We have just concluded a section of this series that exposed one of the primary ideological weapons used against the Chinese people in accomplishing the murder of socialism in the People’s Republic – the international theory of the productive forces powered by the first world labor aristocracy. We saw there that even otherwise genuine Chinese Maoists, indeed, most of China’s best Maoists, were accomplices to this despicable crime against socialism and the international proletariat. Most of China’s best Maoists were complicit in ideologically disarming the Chinese masses in the face of imperialism’s fusillade of first worldism.

It’s critical that this process of ideological disarmament be understood with absolute clarity. So let’s go over it again.

Most of the best Chinese Maoists promoted the first world labor aristocracy as oppressed and exploited, and thus as class allies of the international proletariat. But China’s educated elites, those with the influence to accomplish ideological dissemination, knew from experience and study that this class analysis of the first world was a lie. Much of the Chinese Communist Party itself had roots in these educated elites, who already knew quite well that the first world populations were, across the board, among the richest people in the world. So the lie of first worlders as exploited promulgated by the CCP constituted winking at parasite wealth by denying it.

And this denial flashed the green light for the further cancerous spread of the international theory of the productive forces amongst the Chinese masses. What could be the problem with wanting to live at the economic level of “ordinary” first worlders if those good folks were themselves “downtrodden” and “exploited”? In denying first worlder wealth, and its bloody imperialist origin, most of China’s best Maoists were with a wink and a nod giving a deadly thumbs up to imperialism’s false promise of parasitic living – the amerikkkan way of life – for the world’s exploited majority. It was a deadly thumbs up for the bullshit explanation of first worlder wealth, the international theory of the productive forces.

This constituted the ideological disarmament of the Chinese masses. The pernicious offering of the international TOPF, recall, is essentially this: forget class struggle and you can live like first worlders, like amerikkkans. There is not even an ideological hair’s breadth between that reactionary formulation and “to get rich is glorious.” Even China’s best Maoists had been marketing the first formulation among the Chinese masses for years by winking at parasite riches. Is it any wonder that the second wasn’t then a terribly hard sell?

Now, we’ve gone over this process of the international TOPF contributing to the destruction of Chinese socialism because grasping that inglorious process is of paramount importance if the worldwide struggle for socialism is to be victorious. Grasping that inglorious process is, in fact, of such paramount importance that communists have had to define an entirely new stage of Marxism, Maoism-Third Worldism, just to take account of and combat the first worldist ideology which fuels the international TOPF. You want 21st century communism, you got it: Maoism-Third Worldism.

The best Maoists in China were then the world’s most advanced communists. And without doubt worldwide there were few if any communists then doing any better on the question of the first world labor aristocracy and the international TOPF. The international proletariat knows that the Chinese Maoists were absolutely no worse on this most critical issue than the rest of the ICM, which was universally and totally fucked up when it came to first world parasitism.

But, and this brings us right to today, the international proletariat reserves the right to expect more of the advanced. Because they’re positioned to see further. The international proletariat honors the advanced with its greater expectations.

And right now the international proletariat has, 30 years on from the bitter defeat of Chinese socialism, a primary burning concern on which its expectations turn. And the high expectation in regard to that burning concern which the international proletariat currently places on today’s advanced communist forces is that those forces must be fighting with every muscle and bone to not ideologically disarm their own proletariats and oppressed nations with precisely the same fucking imperialist lie of the international theory of the productive forces as powered by the first world labor aristocracy that, uncombatted as it was, could probably have taken down socialism in China all on its own.

And that’s not all. The international proletariat places the expectation on these advanced forces that they constitute the advanced international leaders of the proletariat’s ideological offensive against this deadly imperialist lie, by far the most powerful weapon the imperialists have ever had in their ideological arsenal. The first task of the advanced always is to point out and lead the attack on the main enemy.

Today the international proletariat expects the Third World forces conducting people’s war to be those advanced detachments of communism. Of necessity ruthlessly realistic, the international proletariat expects little other than revisionism from those first worldist formations calling themselves “communist” while fronting for their own parasite constituents. Likewise the international proletariat places no expectation other than betrayal on the Third World comprador cohorts of these first wordlists such as the Prachanda clique. (1)

But the international proletariat, in honoring the advanced Third World forces conducting people’s war, expects much more from those forces. Specifically and concretely, the international proletariat today expects of these forces, for instance, better than this:

In the US and other imperialist countries, the monopoly bourgeoisie are using all kinds of maneuvers to deflect attention from the root causes of exploitation and oppression and to push down the working class, immigrants, the youth and women. They play up and generate chauvinism, racism and fascism in order to divide the working class and to pit the people in the imperialist countries against those in other countries. They use the mass media and various forms of entertainment to conjure the illusion of democracy and deflect public attention from the most important social issues.

But the working class and the rest of the people in the imperialist countries are fighting back. There have been widespread strikes by workers, protest rallies and marches by migrants and militant street actions by the youth in various imperialist countries. We can anticipate greater protest mass actions against monopoly capitalism on international and domestic issues in the months and years to come. The current crisis of world capitalism will further worsen. (2)

As we stated, today the international proletariat expects the advanced forces to be proletarian leaders of the ideological struggle against the theory of the productive forces and the first world labor aristocracy, not leaders in peddling this deadly lie to the oppressed and exploited as does the above bullshit fantasy of an exploited first world “working class” in rebellion. Such leadership demands calling out this nefarious ideology itself, and, as we’ll further clarify in Part 6b, calling out those within the advanced forces who peddle it.

(1) http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2006/12/21/again-on-the-%e2%80%9crim%e2%80%9d-renegades-in-nepal/

(2) http://www.josemariasison.org/jumi02/inps/speech2ilpsaus.htm

The “Hate America Campaign.” That’s what the United Snakes State Department called China’s offensive to eradicate bourgeois ideology in the ranks of the educators.(1) Would that those reactionary goons have been correct.

The Chinese Communist Party’s struggle to ideologically re-educate the educators began before liberation in the areas under CCP control. After liberation this effort became an all out nation-wide campaign.

Political classes were set up at all universities and all members of the universities – administrators, professors, students, and all staff – were required to attend. Similar political classes were initiated at primary and secondary schools. Revolutionary dramas were staged in the schools and other proletarian agitation was conducted. Criticism and self criticism sessions were held in which teachers were encouraged to examine their bourgeois ideas. Students were encouraged to criticize backward thinking of teachers. During school holidays teachers were required to attend special political classes. “Revolutionary universities” were established for the sole purpose of intense re-education of the educators. Teachers were also sent out into the villages to learn from the masses and to propagate proletarian ideology.(2)

Much of this campaign of ideological remolding was in name aimed at the “love America” ideology rampant among Chinese educators.

But … Well, here’s a representative example of the political line of the CCP in this campaign. This is from one professor’s self criticism.

Because of my worship-America and pro-America ideology, I forfeited my national stand during the anti-Japanese war and fell into the embrace of American imperialism. … When I spent my first four years in the United States, I was able to see only the superficial things, like the skyscrapers, the motorcars, and the shamelessly dissolute and free-spending life of the exploiting class, but not the tragic oppression of the toiling people by the monopolistic capitalists. I did not realize that the exploiting class had to squeeze the broad masses of the American people and to steal their fruits of toil before they could afford to live a free-spending life.(3)

This self criticism echoes the complaint of the Deputy Minister that we reviewed in Part 5b, that Chinese teachers “do not see the poverty of the American working people.” Here’s yet another educator who overlooked the amerikan proletariat. Who was right there in amerikkka for four entire years and still somehow missed that overwhelming majority of impoverished “American working people.” Who somehow in all those years just hadn’t come across the “tragic oppression” of those “broad masses” of “toiling people.”

The political line of the Chinese Communist Party in the educational rectification campaign (as in all other spheres) was just this: against imperialism and imperialists, for the general populaces of the imperialist nations, because those general populations were exploited “toiling people.”

This political line entailed the assumption that hundreds of thousands of Amerikan and European trained Chinese educators had each one just had a bit of bad luck in not encountering a first world proletariat in all their travels and studies. That was surely an odd coincidence of oversight, but it could be rectified by educating them (and the Chinese masses generally) as to what they had so curiously missed. So they were told by the CCP that an amerikan proletariat exists. They were told that “the exploiting class had to squeeze the broad masses of the American people and to steal their fruits of toil.”

Comrade Mao himself held this line. So, when criticizing those educators and other elements of Chinese society who spread the ideology of “love-America,” Comrade Mao himself formulated the accusation like this:

They are the very people who have illusions about the United States. They are unwilling to draw a distinction between the U.S. imperialists, who are in power, and the American people, who are not …(4)

The distinction demanded by the CCP line on the first world was in fact the demand for a trumped up class analysis that indicted the imperialists as exploiters but exonerated the first world labor aristocracy as exploited.

Here, of course, Comrade Mao is criticizing the line that exonerates the imperialists by not distinguishing them from their “good”, “exploited” populaces. Tragically, by explicitly letting the first world labor aristocracy off the hook, Comrade Mao’s and the CCP’s line implicitly lets imperialism itself off the hook. If the vast wealth of the first world aristocracy is denied, then the source of this wealth – the extent of imperialist super-profit extraction from the Third World – must perforce be denied.

And that vast first world labor aristocracy wealth was denied by the CCP, which just flat lied to the Chinese people in claiming that amerikkkans and other first worlders were “laboring masses” and “great” people.

As Maoists-Third Worldists we cannot shirk our duty to the international proletariat by calling this trumped up class analysis anything other than a flat-out lie on the part of the CCP. We cannot pretend the CCP was somehow unaware that first worlders were among the world’s richest people. Whole generations of China’s elites, responsible for imparting information about the world to the young, had known and preached about the rich “American way of life.” Hell, we’ve already seen that Peng Zhen, mayor of Beijing and Secretariat of the CCP Central Committee, made widespread Chinese knowledge of first world labor aristocracy wealth the very basis of his own nefarious push for capitalist restoration.

In the context of such widespread knowledge of first worlder wealth, the CCP’s false claims about “laboring masses” could only serve as a stamp of approval for imperialist parasitism, a wink and a nod at first world labor aristocracy exploitation of the Third World. The CCP’s fabricated first world class analysis opened wide the door to a bogus “acceptable” explanation of first worlder wealth, the theory of the productive forces.

We are not at this point prepared to claim that the CCP’s promotion of first world labor aristocracy ideology was the most powerful force paving the road to capitalist restoration in China. We’ve already acknowledged the ongoing presence of other reactionary ideologies in China against which the genuine Maoists of the time were forced to contend. At the same time, we question whether even feudalism, bureaucrat capitalism, and Confucianism combined could begin to offer the illusory payoff of material riches (in exchange for forgetting class struggle) held out by the bloody hand of the international theory of the productive forces as powered by the first world labor aristocracy.

To be sure, we are only in the infant stage of investigating and analyzing the role of the pernicious ideology of the international TOPF to the defeat of socialism in the People’s Republic. That we are only now initiating such critical studies is itself a testament to the victory of this imperialist ideology over the ICM throughout the last century.

But the international proletariat is done with the deadly revisionism that waves the red flag with one hand and the reactionary flag of the first world labor aristocracy with the other. It is past time to name names and call out the bullshit.

The Chinese Communist Party claimed they could build socialism while embracing the international theory of the productive forces as powered by the first world labor aristocracy. Maoism-Third Worldism calls that out right here and now as bullshit.

Today even Third World forces professing People’s War claim they can achieve proletarian victory without an all out fight against the first wordlist ideology that was instrumental in defeating socialism in China. In Part 6, Maoism-Third Worldism calls out those bullshitters as well.

(1) The “Hate America” Campaign in Communist China (Washington, D.C: Office of Intelligence Research of the United States Department of State, 1952) cited in Stuart Fraser (Ed) Chinese Communist Education: Records of the First Decade (Nashville, 1965), p.140.

(2) Hsia, Adrain. The Chinese Cultural Revolution (New York, 1972), pp. 78-80.

(3) Chou P’ei-yuan, ‘Criticizing My Decadent Bourgeois Ideology’ in Stuart Fraser (Ed) Chinese Communist Education: Records of the First Decade (Nashville, 1965), p.142.

(4) Mao Tse-tung, ‘Cast Away Illusions, Prepare for Struggle’ in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1969), vol. IV, p. 428.

In 1964, Chinese newspapers reported that … in major cities like Shanghai and Peking, and even in distant provinces such as Shensi and Shansi, numerous young people were going about with long hair, pointed shoes and tight trousers. … Other aspects of western culture also found favour with a section of Chinese youth at that time. … These young people had become ‘degenerate, disaffected’ and politically unreliable.

By and large, the children of former capitalists did not follow the western fashion; they were always suspect, and so could not afford to expose themselves in this way. And, in fact, it was the young people with socially acceptable class affiliations – above all, the sons and daughters of senior functionaries - who flaunted their bourgeois and western tastes. (1) 

We’re still examining the possible contribution of the international (first world labor aristocracy) theory of the productive forces to the defeat of socialism in China. In Part 4 the guts of this bourgeois ideology was shown to be the bogus promise: forget class struggle and you’ll get to live like amerikkkans, like the richest people on earth. Then in Part 5 we spotlighted the mayor of Beijing, Peng Zhen, as pushing a revisionist, capitalist restorationist line which was in fact dependent upon the international TOPF for its efficacy. We said there that Peng’s line indicated some significant buying into this fallacy of first worldism amongst the Chinese masses – otherwise international TOPF-based lines such as Peng’s would have no hope of gaining traction.

That analysis was all quite reasonable but its end assertion – that the ideology of first worldism was probably widespread amongst the Chinese masses – was still mainly a product of logical conclusion rather than factual examination. The italicized article above, however, appears to provide concrete historical evidence of that same conclusion, at least within a particular section of the Chinese people. The “degenerate, disaffect” youth depicted in the Chinese news reports were not aping the reactionary culture of Chinese feudal lords or even that of Chinese capitalists. They were emulating “ordinary” first world labor aristocrats, “ordinary” rich amerikkkans. So yes, those 1964 reports do appear to be some confirming evidence that to some significant degree first world labor aristocrat thinking was prevalent in China.

But perhaps this love-amerikkka ideology was anomalous in China, a brief flirtation with the international TOPF confined to this particular section of the people.

Not so. Take a look at just one extremely influential sector of Chinese society, education. This is then Vice-Minister of Education, Tseng Chao-lun:

For the past hundred years, American imperialism has not only been carrying out the most blatant sort of military, political, and economic aggression, but, what is far more pernicious, it has always employed a small part of the spoils derived from the Chinese people for the establishment of missionary schools … in an attempt to achieve the spiritual enslavement of Chinese children and youths through the dissemination of poisonous pro-America, revere-America, and fear-America sentiments. (2)

Complementing the cultural aggression of the amerikan-sponsored schools within China was the bourgeois schooling of Chinese educators in the first world itself.

In 1922 China adopted the American system of education. From then onwards her university teachers received a “bourgeois” education, either in China or – in the majority of cases – in the USA or Europe. These university teachers then trained the secondary and primary school teachers. As a result, nearly all Chinese educationalists came to acquire a “bourgeois” mentality: they admired the “bourgeois” culture of America and Europe for its economic, technological and scientific advancements, and its political freedom. (3)

At the time of liberation, then, the Chinese educational corps was in fact awash in love-amerika ideology. And so much so that two years after liberation the Deputy Minister of Education, reporting on the “pro-America, worship-America, fear-America mentality” of Chinese teachers, would state frankly that

… not a small number of teachers in higher educational institutions are still preserving strong European-American reactionary capitalist-class thoughts, especially a tendency to worship the American Capitalist class. Even now they still stubbornly worship the mode of living of the Anglo-American capitalist class, especially the so-called “American way of life.” They admire American wealth (they do not see the poverty of the American working people) … (4)

Let’s remove the parentheses from that last statement: They admire American wealth – they do not see the poverty of the American working people. Of course not. The “American way of life” so worshiped by China’s educators was not that of the amerikkkan super-rich and the yacht club set but that of “average” amerikan “workers,” the majority of whom, we’ll continue to point out, were among the world’s richest people – there was no poverty to be seen. It’s absolutely critical to understand this about China’s educational corps. Their own “education” in the first world had not taught them a longing to be big capitalists squeezing the lifeblood from their “own” first world populations of subsistence-living proletarians. They learned “only” the longing to live like the “regular folks” of those first world populations – that was the “American wealth” and “American way of life” of their ideological aspirations. The Chinese educational corps, across the board, had acquired, and were intent on disseminating, nothing more or less than first world labor aristocracy ideology. They were thoroughly infected with the lie of the international theory of the productive forces.

So, far from being anomalous, those “degenerate, disaffected” Chinese youth in 1964 were symptomatic of a much more widespread first world labor aristocracy cancer in Chinese society, extending at the time of liberation at least throughout the nation’s educational ranks.

To be sure, the first worldism prevalent in China was not the only reactionary ideology inherited by the People’s Republic from the old society. Feudalism had prevailed for thousands of years. China’s bureaucrat capitalism had been around for a hundred years. But, we will argue in Part 5c, the ideology of the first world labor aristocracy was a viciously powerful reactionary vehicle for accomplishing the restoration of capitalism in China, and it was an ideology that the Chinese communists not only failed to combat, but in fact promoted.

(1) Hsia, Adrain. The Chinese Cultural Revolution (New York), p.69.

(2) Tseng Chaolun, ‘The Disposal of American-Subsidized Schools is the First Task on the Cultural Front Now’ in Stuart Fraser (Ed) Chinese Communist Education: Records of the First Decade (Nashville, 1965), p.98.

(3) Hsia, p.38.

(4) Chien Chun-jui, ‘The Key to Reform of Higher Education’ in Stuart Fraser (Ed) Chinese Communist Education: Records of the First Decade (Nashville, 1965), p.123.

From the video:

When China was socialist, many good Maoists made war on this imperialist lie (the theory of the productive forces). They understood that the lie of forgetting class struggle led back to capitalism.

They fought very hard. And their struggle remains a glorious inspiration for the world’s oppressed and exploited majority.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution remains the furthest advance toward communism in the history of humankind. And fundamentally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was pitched class war against bourgeois traitors to Chinese socialism peddling the duplicitous theory of the productive forces.

The battle was not new. The Peking Review article published by MIWS, The Essence of “Theory of Productive Forces” Is to Oppose Proletarian Revolution leaves no doubt that the struggle against this deadly ideology reached back to the earliest days of China’s new-democratic revolution. And it was not a battle on the Chinese ideological periphery. The traitor Liu Shaoqi, for instance, was obviously centrally positioned in the Chinese Communist Party. Further, the struggle in socialist China against the lie of the theory of the productive forces was not episodic, but continuous. The fight can be seen clearly as raging during the Great Leap Forward, throughout the Socialist Education Movement, and to its culmination in Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution itself.

In the end, of course, the traitors won. Socialism was defeated. And the international proletariat demands answers.

Not some shameless goober theoretic answer like, “Well, there was a coup, you know.” Or any of the other equally contemptuous individualistic, frequently anti-communist, and always bone-head dumb judgments of so-called “communists” which provide no universal lessons with which to better arm the international proletariat. These fake communist non-assessments amount to little more than saying “they should have done better” or “the individual x was bad, and so, well, you know …” MIWS provides an essential guide to elementary revolutionary political analysis that explicitly calls out the frauds and pretenders offering such crap explanations on capitalist restoration in China.

Now, there is much to say about Prairie Fire’s article, Some notes on lines within the Chinese Communist Party in the Maoist period, which the international proletariat is wholeheartedly applauding. But the first thing to say is that it is unprecedented. The article is to our knowledge an absolutely unprecedented political/historical analysis of the role played by the ideology of the international theory of the productive forces and first world labor aristocracy in the defeat of Chinese socialism.

That’s a mouthful, so let’s break it down:

The article is the first in history to analyze concretely

the possible contribution

to the defeat of Chinese socialism

of the imperialist lie of the international theory of the productive forces

as powered by the first world labor aristocracy.

For nearly the entirety of the ICM this will be no big deal. Less than no big deal. Because to nearly the entirety of the ICM such an enterprise is just akin to chasing after ghosts. For them it’s like saying ghosts had a hand in capitalist restoration because, just like ghosts, there is no such thing as an international theory of the productive forces powered by the first world labor aristocracy because, just like ghosts, there is no first world labor aristocracy to speak of. “Well, my goodness,” they’d tell us, “for a lie like that to have any power at all it’d have to be backed up with millions upon millions of actual first world parasites on the majority of humanity. Why, there’d have to be whole nations of those leeches and bloodsuckers. It’s hard to even imagine, but we’re sure glad nothing like that’s happening so far as we can see.”

Sadly, that’s the ICM, and has been. Sadder still, that’s even most Third World parties claiming to be waging People’s War, and we’ll most certainly come back to that.

For the Third World masses, on the other hand, Prairie Fire’s article is cause for celebration. Finally, some actual communists, the Maoists-Third Worldists, are catching up theoretically with the long existing global material conditions of the TOPF. And the Maoists-Third Worldists are beginning to apply that understanding to one of the international proletariat’s most grave defeats at the hands of imperialism.

It’s only a beginning, to be sure. But even being so early on this analysis proves readily that Maoism-Third Worldism is an indispensably powerful weapon for fully understanding past proletarian defeats, just as it is an indispensably powerful weapon to ensure current and future proletarian victory.

Take the article’s discussion of Peng Zhen. And remember, the international proletariat is highly suspicious that the international TOPF as powered by the first world labor aristocracy has for some time been much more robust and ubiquitous than has been admitted by the ICM, most of which still doesn’t even acknowledge its very existence.

So now take Peng Zhen. He was accused of saying that Chinese capitalists were more progressive than amerikan “workers.” Why? Because amerikan “workers” were richer than most Chinese capitalists.

Prairie Fire points out that this political line sought to use a correct class analysis – amerikkkans as reactionary labor aristocracy – to excuse Chinese capitalists from class struggle. Peng Zhen was saying, in effect, if we’re calling the richest, most reactionary populations on earth “a great people” and allies of the proletariat, then you’d have to think at least as well of China’s capitalists, who obviously pale in comparison. By this method Peng Zhen pushed a local version of the TOPF to the Chinese masses: forget class struggle against Chinese capitalists because even the world’s biggest enemies are friends.

But the message of Peng’s TOPF doesn’t stop there. We spoke before of the powerful “payoff” offered by the international TOPF for the good behavior of forgetting class struggle. By bringing amerikan parasite labor aristocrats into the picture the implied payoff was beefed up considerably: and then you’ll get to live like amerikkkans. That was the true message of payoff hawked by Peng Zhen’s “local” TOPF.

You could possibly try to argue that, no, Peng Zhen’s line was totally local, that the line only intended to fool the Chinese masses into thinking that the payoff was that they’d get to live like Chinese capitalists.

But it would be silly to argue that when Peng’s whole line depended on admitting loudly and clearly that amerikkkans were rich, it depended on contrasting the great wealth of “ordinary” amerikans with that of Chinese capitalists. This line was just plainly powered by the first-world-labor-aristocracy-fueled international TOPF.

Ok then, suppose we’re right so far. Suppose Peng Zhen’s line was indeed powered by the promise, and then you’ll get to live like amerikans.

Then some questions arise.

For instance. Peng knew the masses. He was against the masses, but he knew the masses. So what made him think that the masses would buy this payoff? Wouldn’t it be only if he knew that the Chinese masses were already aware of the truth of amerikkkan wealth? And wouldn’t it be only if the Chinese masses already had some idea that that was something perfectly acceptable to aspire to?

Think of it this way. Would Peng’s offer have had any currency amongst the masses if the consistent Chinese Communist Party line had all along been that the first world populations are  parasites and enemies of the oppressed and exploited? How well would Peng have anticipated his offer of and then you’ll get to live like amerikans going over with the masses had that been the case?

See, only if you assume of the Chinese masses that they had been set up by the CCP to believe that becoming a rich amerikkkan is a good thing does Peng’s offer even make sense. And that could only happen if the CCP, as they mostly did, had bought into the international theory of the productive forces as powered by the first world labor aristocracy, and had been in turn selling it to the Chinese masses. The criticism of Peng Zhen, recall, was that his line let Chinese capitalists off the hook, not that the line let the richest populations on earth off the hook.

So here, right off the bat in an initial Maoist-Third Worldist analysis, we see a shining concrete example of how the CCP’s error on the international TOPF “weakened,” as the video says, “the struggle against capitalism.” A reactionary line such as Peng Zhen’s is only possible through that error.

This was not “just” mistaking amerikans for friends. This was in effect throwing the Chinese masses to the dogs of capitalist restoration, not only by setting them up for Peng’s particular reactionary line, but all the similar reactionary lines aiming for capitalist restoration.

The video then concludes of the seriousness of this CCP error:

The cost may have been socialism in the People’s Republic.

By now some readers will have begun to see the possible truth of such a claim. Many will have not. But for now let’s take a break to let everybody chew on this section a bit. 

Here’s what we’ve got so far.

- In the early 1970’s, an international communist movement so mired in mistaking parasitic first world populations for class allies of the world proletariat that even otherwise genuine Maoists in China were committing the same deadly error.

- An international proletariat highly suspicious that in the 1970’s it was already quite late in the material day for communists to be fucking up on this issue on such a grand scale.

- An international proletariat highly suspicious that this grand fuck up can be attributed to a massive ideological lacuna afflicting the ICM throughout the 20th century, that lacuna itself being symptomatic of virulent infection of the ICM by a particular form of bourgeois ideology, the theory of the productive forces.

- A global form of the theory of the productive forces that draws its pernicious and lethal potency from the showcase populations of the first world labor aristocracy.

- And, finally, the lie behind the lie, the root deceit propping up this international form of the enemy lie of the TOPF: the lie that the whole world can have a first world standard of living. The succinct version being, that the whole world can live like amerikkkans.

Simply put, the theory of the productive forces is a lie in prescriptive form peddled to the oppressed and exploited: do this, and you’ll get that. The “this” is the invitation to forget class struggle, to focus instead on building up the forces of production, acquiring technology, etc. – in fact, it’s the invitation to do anything but remember class struggle. The “that” is the proffered reward to the oppressed and exploited for this good behavior. And the international form of the TOPF offers a stunning illusory payoff: hey, you’ll get to live like amerikkkans, because that’s how they got where they are.

Let’s once again go over the broad economics of this to see just how very stunning such an offer is. The first world populations are far and away the richest on the planet. Nearly every single first worlder is part of the world’s richest 15%. The majority of amerikkkans, that paradigm population of parasite “prosperity,” are among the world’s richest 10%. Even those at the economic bottommost of the first world nations live whole levels above the world majority, who by contrast live at subsistence level and less.

So naturally at this point the video says, in referring to these first world parasite populations, that they are “the wealthy few of the planet.” Because that’s beyond refutation.

Continuing on then, the video says, “And, as Maoists, we know that the wealth of the few comes from thievery.” You just don’t get much more elemental in your basic Marxism, your basic proletarian internationalism, than that: the wealth of the few derives from the impoverishment of the many.

Marxists are supposed to know this. So Maoists are supposed to know that the TOPF is, in all its forms, local and international, a lie. The first world populations did not obtain their riches in the manner their TOPF prescribes to the world’s oppressed and exploited majority. First worlders did not acquire their wealth by building up their productive forces and becoming technological whiz kids. There is nothing “innovative” in the genocide by which they stole a continent. There is nothing “new and improved” in enslaving a nation to build your own nation. And the military/political agenda of the few (the first world) dominating and exploiting the many (the Third World), well we know, if we’re Marxists, that that’s old hat, not high tech.

Of course, as with all things of first world origin, the opposite of what is claimed is true. It is only the centuries old continuous theft of wealth from the Third World and all oppressed nations that makes possible all that gleaming blood-drenched first world advanced technology.

Not for one instant in all those centuries did the first world populations forget class struggle. It was by keeping class struggle against the oppressed nations topmost on their political program – keeping the politics of oppression and exploitation in command – that got these parasites the riches of decadence that they possess today. 

So the international theory of the productive forces is a lie because Marxism is correct: exploitation exists. And therefore the entire world cannot live at the economic level of the world’s richest 10%, or the world’s richest 15%. The international TOPF is a lie because, for the entire planet to live like the first world, like amerikkkans, a whole new planet, several times earth’s population, would have to be discovered, conquered, oppressed, exploited and sucked off of just as the first world for centuries has sucked off the Third World. That’s not hard to see. For a rich minority to become a rich minority, they have to oppress and steal from an oppressed majority. And, yes, the same thing goes for the process of remaining a rich minority.

The lie of the international TOPF is just not that theoretically complex, and the raw facts of the worldwide class analysis it entails are not hard to come by. Is anyone arguing that nearly all of the first world is not part of the world’s richest 15%? Is anyone arguing that most amerikkkans are not part of the world’s richest 10%? Is anyone arguing that nearly half the world does not live on less than $2 a day? No, the facts of first world hegemony are all just common, everyday prima facie stuff.

But then we come right back to the international proletariat’s nagging suspicion that the parasitic nature of the first world populations has been prima facie stuff pretty much throughout the entire last century. How long has it been, for instance, that amerikkka has been globally acknowledged as the land of milk and honey? Not just for the rarefied tip top economic strata of amerikkkans, but for all amerikkkans – the land of money, honey. How long has it been, for another instance, that the economic disparity between the first world populations and the Third World has been, shall we say, conspicuous?

And so the international proletariat is to be forgiven for then asking quite bluntly, where in the fuck was the great bulk of the international communist movement for the last century while it was tasked with exposing just such pernicious enemy lies as this international theory of the productive forces?

Further, the international proletariat is to be forgiven for its as yet un-allayed suspicion that the bulk of the ICM was in fact for most of that century asleep at the wheel, drugged out on dreams of the oppressed and exploited “advancing” toward a parasite first world standard of living. Just plain drugged out on the international TOPF.

We explained in Part 3 that the potency of the international TOPF derives from the showcase populations of the first world labor aristocracy. You can think of it this way. Would any proletarian forces buy a bit of this lie if the vast majority of the first world lived on $2 a day? An international TOPF like that, that promised do this (forget class struggle) and you can get this (a subsistence level existence just like the one you have now), would ring up precious few sales among the oppressed. 

But with the actual first world labor aristocracy on parade – millions of Dicks and Janes who look for all the world like garden variety “regular folks” but who enjoy a standard of living stratospherically above the world majority – then you’ve got a huckster’s shill that’ll draw in a crowd. And that, the international proletariat suspicions, is exactly what happened to the ICM. The promise of first world richness for the world majority was too enticing to turn down, to disbelieve, so by the multitudes the ICM stepped right up, forked over a goodly portion of their precious revolutionary responsibilities, and bought themselves a heaping helping of the lie of the TOPF, the bogus amerikkkan dream peddled to the oppressed and exploited.

Now, discerning readers will have noticed that we’ve continued to stress the proletariat’s suspicions about the ICM’s errors on the international TOPF in the 20th century without mentioning that today the ICM is for the most part every bit as fucked up on this question as it has been for the last century. By all means we’ll get to that.

But we cannot fully understand the enemy’s contemporary ideological victories via the TOPF if we do not fully grasp the power and reach of the international TOPF as fueled by the first world labor aristocracy. And that means comprehending the enormity of the ICM’s past defeat by this imperialist ideological weapon, a defeat that extends back over scores of years and has been nearly absolute. And the efforts toward the investigation and study aimed at fully comprehending that defeat have, sadly, begun only recently.

Fortunately, we have some good and capable comrades leading the way in this investigation and study. The international proletariat demands to know what part this massive enemy ideological victory has played on the two main fronts of the proletarian struggle: the struggle for national liberation of the oppressed nations, and the attempts to build socialism in the former socialist nations. In Part 5 we will consider the possible damage done by the international theory of the productive forces in a particular instance of latter area, the murder of socialism in the People’s Republic of China.

In that Part we will make much use of Prairie Fire’s fine article posted at MSH, Some notes on lines within the Chinese Communist Party in the Maoist period. This article is an excellent example of the kind of theoretical and investigative work demanded by the international proletariat to assure the defeat of the imperialist weapon of the international TOPF and to hasten the defeat of the first world itself. So read that work well in the meantime.

Lessons in hating amerikkka.

DVD – mininova:

On the Theory of the Productive Forces (English)

Before publishing the video “On the Theory of the Productive Forces” we recommended some pertinent readings for optimal viewing pleasure. For this series of articles we’re adding to that list a work by Prairie Fire recently posted at MSH. The list:

Some notes on lines within the Chinese Communist Party in the Maoist period

The Lin Biao Centennial, hooray! 

Peking Review: “The Essence of “Theory of Productive Forces” Is to Oppose Proletarian Revolution” (1969 September 19)  

Lin Biao excerpt on the theory of the productive forces  

Peking Review: “U.S. Imperialism Steps Up Ruthless Plunder and Exploitation of Latin American People” (1969 September 3)

Now, the video says:

Maoism is the science of remembering class struggle, because Maoism is the ideology of the oppressed and exploited. And only by class struggle will the oppressed and exploited win. That’s why the oppressors and exploiters want the oppressed and exploited to forget class struggle. So the enemy tries to peddle this shit to the world’s oppressed and exploited majority. This is the theory of the productive forces, an enemy lie.

Readers who’ve accomplished the assigned readings will recognize at a glance that the graphic sums up the essentials of the theory of the productive forces. Fundamentally, this enemy lie hawks elevating the forces of production over the relations of production, economics over politics, advancing technology over advancing class struggle.That’s the theory of the productive forces generally. But readers who’ve been both diligent and astute in their homework will recognize that the graphic also depicts clearly the TOPF in its most urgent international particularity: an enemy lie powered exclusively and in its entirety by the existence of the first world labor aristocracy.

We’ll be talking about this particular form of the TOPF. We’ll be talking to those who are already diligent and astute in their revolutionary studies, and we’ll be talking to those endeavoring to become more diligent and more astute in those studies. We won’t be talking to these folks: “…people calling themselves Maoist who can’t say anything about what ‘theory of the productive forces’ refers to and who Liu Shaoqi was because they don’t remember their leader talking about them …” (1) Or these: “…many who can mouth some words against Liu Shaoqi and the theory of the productive forces as it was manifested in the past, but don’t actually uphold the lessons of the struggle against the new bourgeoisie in China and the world-wide struggle against revisionism.”(2) Bottom line, we won’t be talking about the international form of the TOPF as powered by the first world labor aristocracy to those who haven’t even been diligent and astute enough to know that the first world populations are enemy to the world majority. You know, pearls before swine and all that.

So then, for our remaining readers, let’s consider how the existence of the parasite populations of the first world fuels the perniciousness of the theory of the productive forces.

First, what’s the point of a labor aristocracy anyway? Well, of course one function is just that of providing more bodies committed to brute defense of imperialism – like more of those parasite cuties above to peddle deadly lies to the proletariat. But the more important labor aristocracy function is to provide a showcase population. A showcase class position that can be paraded before the desperate eyes of the oppressed and exploited. A seemingly attainable showcase class position to which the proletariat can by all appearances aspire. As actually unattainable as the carrot dangled right up close in front of the workhorse, and serving precisely the same function. For the proletariat, getting tricked means death.

That’s where, and we’ll come back to this more than once, the international TOPF gets its power, from the living and breathing, decadent, globally in your face labor aristocracy “proof” of the efficacy of the TOPF. Without the first world labor aristocracy there is no international form of the TOPF, only “local” or “domestic” forms. With the showcase population of the first world parasite populations you get an epidemic of mutating international forms of the TOPF that can augment, rival, or even put to shame the “local” and “domestic” forms of this enemy lie. You get international variants of the TOPF like these, as parsed by MIWS:

-          Lack of clarity on whether First World wealth is due to domestic productive forces or exploitation of foreign workers leads to implementing the theory of the productive forces, because of the objective divorce between practice, on the one hand, and knowledge of the relations of production, on the other, and because of the tendency to, by habit, continue engaging in production without transforming the production relations.

-          Assuming that First World worker so-called productivity is due to different levels of development of productive forces is an expression of the theory of the productive forces, because of the conception of the productive forces in isolation from international economic relations; there is inevitably a resulting underestimation of how decadent imperialism is.

-          Comparing First World living standards and Third World living standards without adequately addressing the role of parasitism in the difference is an expression of the theory of the productive forces, because the aspiration to reach the level of the First World living standards is not connected to correct knowledge of the role of productive forces — in relations to production relations — to those living standards.

-          Treating First World workers as if they were more productive than Third World workers, because of technology and training in the First World, is an expression of the theory, because of the assumption that Third World workers could generate the same amount of wealth with the same technology and skills, and because of the frequently held notion that technology produces value or enables workers to create more value.

-          Treating First World parasitism as insignificant while welcoming foreign investment to improve backward productive forces in the Third World is the theory of the productive forces in action, because the overall pattern is one of allowing world imperialism to continue plundering the oppressed nations under the pretext of developing the productive forces to imperialist-country levels.(3)

Yes, the pathogen of the TOPF seeks to metastasize amongst the proletariat in a variety of configurations and articulations. Here we’ll simplify. Underlying and propping up all these forms of the lie of the theory of the productive forces is yet another lie: that the whole world can live at first world standards. More specifically, that the whole world can live like amerikkkans. That’s a lie of such gigantic proportions as to deserve its own series of articles. Right now we’ll devote just one, next.

(1) Peking Review: “The Essence of “Theory of Productive Forces” Is to Oppose Proletarian Revolution” (1969 September 19)

(2) Ibid.

(3) Ibid.

Never forget class struggle!

The video under discussion, “On the Theory of the Productive Forces,” opens in stirring proclamation of this fundamental principle of Maoism. And our introductory anecdote describes incidents over 30 years ago in which Chinese communists and members of the new communist movement were unfortunately doing just that, forgetting class struggle by denying the parasitic class position of the first world populations.

The MSH document “The sun rises in the East and sets in the West” is correct in still designating as “Maoist” those genuine Chinese Maoists who made this mistake, because global class analysis had not then fully matured to today’s standard. Those of the infant new communist movement can be for the same reason correctly excused for buying into the “Americans are a great people” nonsense. Besides, there being no material basis in the first world for such a movement to arise in the first place, the NCM was fomented solely on the basis of external revolutionary forces: the Black Nation rebellion, the Chinese Revolution and Cultural Revolution, and the Vietnamese heroically sending body bags back to “the states” by the thousands. It’s little wonder that these new communists could bow to the fallacy of the argument from Chinese communist authority, especially when the received argument confirmed their own first world white nationalist education and inclination.

Still, the video is adamant in stating flatly that this was a “serious error.” How serious? Well, the video pretty boldly claims “the cost may well have been socialism in the People’s Republic.” We’ll get back to the TOPF and the restoration of capitalism in China, but that’s just for starters in the seriousness of this error. It’ll turn out, of course, that this error was so serious that the international proletariat demands a whole new stage of Marxism be delineated mainly just to provide a full accounting of this particular error and to make absolutely sure that that it never, ever happens again. But we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves.

How serious was this error in terms of evaluating comrades of thirty and more years ago? Such evaluation must certainly consider the severity of the consequences of the error, and, as we’ve said, the consequences were plenty severe.  But a materialist approach also says look around and see how many contemporaries were doing better on this question. Do that and you won’t find nearly many enough to warrant denying the title of “Maoist” to any of those Chinese who were at the time otherwise genuine Maoists.

That’s not the end of it, though. As a full accounting the international proletariat demands to know if it is actually something more than hopeless idealism to ask why there weren’t at the time more communists worldwide, including more of the Chinese Maoists, who had a correct understanding of the first world as enemy to the world’s oppressed and exploited majority. In fact, the international proletariat is highly suspicious that the salient global material conditions for that correct understanding were present in compelling form throughout the past century. A first world fully consolidated as the first world on the basis of plundering the Third World. A paltry, then vanishing, then nonexistent first world proletariat. First world populations which had hardly so much as blinked while their “own” imperialists hunted down and subjujated the oppressed nations of the Third World one after another after another. In the 1970’s these were not new or recent material conditions, nor were they in the least obscure. The facts of first world parasitism and political reaction were undisguised and in your face global phenomena. Hell, a full seventy years earlier, at the turn of the 20^th century, amerikans, the first world population flagship of parasitism, were still living on stolen land and had only recently got done killing each other by the hundreds of thousands just so that the outright enslavement of the oppressed Black Nation could end.

So the international proletariat is highly suspicious that from a purely materialist standpoint there were a host of salient and compelling global material conditions which would otherwise have much earlier given rise to a correct understanding among many communists that the first world is enemy to the world’s truly oppressed and exploited.

The sticking point, the international proletariat suspicions, was ideology. Bourgeois ideology propagated amongst the international proletariat and their leadership which countervailed these long standing material conditions and delayed with deadly effectiveness the development of a correct understanding of the parasite first world. Bourgeois ideology most specifically in the form of the theory of the productive forces, the overwhelming suspicion being that this enemy lie has for many years been much more ubiquitous and entrenched worldwide than previously acknowledged.

The full accounting of past communist errors on this question demanded by the international proletariat requires that Maoists-Third Worldists relentlessly track these suspicions to a satisfactory conclusion. Then and only then do we stand the best chance of smashing the theory of the productive forces and upholding class struggle.

To this point we’ve said little directly about the pernicious lie of the theory of the productive forces itself. That’ll be next.