I don’t think any “communization” occurred during the Mao era. During the GLF and in the “people’s commune” system in general I think it’s more helpful to say that some “communistic” elements emerged but were warped by their subordination to a system whose primary function was surplus-value extraction. In the CR the situation was different: whereas the communistic elements of the GLF/people’s commune system I think mainly came from the actual desire for something like communism shared by both some peasants and some party leaders (wrongly believed to go hand in hand with a rapid increase in “development of the forces of production” and increased extraction of surplus-value), in the CR the most communistic tendencies were mainly not intended by the central maoist leaders – it was more a matter of proletarians (and to some extent peasants) taking advantage of the opportunity to push their own “economistic” demands that threatened the system (mainly through strikes), and inspired a small amount of “ultra-left” theory that pointed toward something like communization. LG seems confused here to say the CR “wrecked the economy” – this seems to repeat the narrative shared by Dengists and liberals. One thing Yiching emphasizes is how the central maoist leaders used the need to restore economic growth as an excuse to put workers back to work and supress street fighting, etc. – the slogan (from the original 16 points) was “promote production (while) embracing revolution.” I suspect LG is able to make this mistake b/c of his own productivism (and what Théorie Commuiste calls “programmatism”) – he thinks of communist rev as involving a continuation of economic growth under workers control, rather than the destruction of the economy as such.

But here I also disagree with NPC, in that I think the closest the CR got to communization was these two rudimentary elements: (1) strikes and disruption of the economy (especially the shanghai general strike in december 1966), and (2) the mere ideas being proposed by groups like shengwulian, but not acted upon (they didn’t get a chance to act on them, and it may have already been too late anyway). Yiching basically argues that the “shanghai commune” was already a compromise between the striking workers and the maoist leaders who wanted to restore order. Yes it was later also suppressed and reorganized into a “3-in-1 revolutionary committee” where the party and military had more control over it, but the “commune” itself was already the first step toward recuperation.

Later there were things like weapons seizures in Wuhan, but my understanding is that this was mainly about factional struggles among the various rebel groups that had “seized power” (with military backing – so it was really just the spectacle of power). They wanted weapons so they could more effectively kill the other faction leaders and hold onto the illusion of power themselves, not so they could transform the system. In other words, most of this was about political rev (coup d’etat) not social rev.

I recently talked to a former CR rebel in Chongqing and he re-emphasized this to me, since already at that time he was beginning to critique the other rebels (including his own faction) for not recognizing the diff between political and social rev, but he said no one agreed with him. Much later he learned about the ultra-left currents and basically agreed with them (although he became a liberal – as did most of the ultra-leftists).

from here: http://chinastudygroup.net/2012/10/maoism-communism-debate/

getfiscal posted:

whenever i read ultraleft stuff i tend to think something like Will it play in Peoria? ... like... how do you get from revolutionary fever pitch to a sort of normalcy of everyday life. like it's easy to say all these big revolutionary things but you need to put together a program that can unite more than a handful of ultraleftists. which is the whole point of marxism. there's a maoist slogan "a minority with a correct revolutionary line is no longer a minority"... which means more than just "if you figure out a good line you'll win", it means that any reasonable political minority needs to depend on people as they really exist and build a majority out of correct relation to them rather than just coming up with plans on paper about how we'll communize everything or whatever.

This is basically nonsense. You're presuming a 'normal' subject which is opposed to a 'revolutionary' subject, however I see no reason why this presumption is true at all. In reality, people think of themselves as revolutionary subjects, just ask any American about the founding fathers, a Frenchman about the revolution and maybe even the commune, and definitely go ask people in the third world their thoughts on post-colonial revolutionary governments. Whether there is a revolutionary situation or not is a different question, you're talking about hegemony and people's consciousness, which is entirely a creation of the war of position. If you're interested in how normal life works under a revolutionary situation read Fanshen (you probably have), however if you're interested in how people who are not revolutionaries think this is entirely a creation of your mind, everyone has the potential for revolutionary consciousness.

Agnus_Dei posted:

Juche is a religious movement now which worships the monarchy.

much like your posting

Lykourgos posted:

If some place being "nominally communist" excites you, then you're doing it wrong. good politics is about having a distinct ruling class, no high-level democracy, and a legal and economic system based on inequality between the commons and peers. Political/legal institutions with exclusive membership, authority and privilege are supposed to make you smile because they exist above the penny-pinchers who think a few dollars somehow makes you high class. Marble columns, judicial robes, ritualised legal trials, political/military celebrations, all of these are ornaments and jewelry that beautify the state and its superior concerns.

Could you please restate this in terms of a preference for either Romulan or Cardassian society?