Cultural Revolution

What lead to the Cultural Revolution Veeky Forums? Was it a more pure form of Marxism as it was enacted by the people instead of the state? Why is it not more widely taught?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_culture_movement
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a desire for equality and a willingness to kill for it led to the cultural revolution. it was pure marxism as enforced by the people, by machete and murder.

it's not widely taught because the result of it was murder and starvation

I have always found it odd that Maoism has been removed from Western Marxist canon. Lenin is still there with vanguardism a widespread belief. Third-worldism, however, is not.

Does anyone know why?

...

not the guy you replied to but what are you asking? Im interested in your question but im not entirely sure i understand what your asking

The way I see it, you are traditional Marxist in the west if you believe in Marx/Lenin/Gramsci. I would also argue that even if you're not a Marxist, there is sympathy for these ideas amongst the New Left/Progressives today.

However, Maoism is NEVER discussed, even amongst left-leaning people. I don't understand why this is. To me, Maoism is just M-L with more of a focus on the people doing the redistribution, not the government. Why does the Left like Leninism but shun Maoism?

who determines the western maxist leninist canon? university professors?

1. dumb fucking university professors don't speak chinese
2. the field as a whole has abandoned leninism as well, and has moved into the frankfurt school or porkheimer and adorno. gramsci also lays a significant role in universities

I can't really give you a better explanation than that. the frankfurt school is one arm that marxists used to subvert liberal thought in the popular sphere, gramsci is another arm used in the more intellectual traditions.

I couldn't tell you more specifically why communism overtly was abandoned other than it faced heavy reactions against it because it was a murderous fucking ideology, and SJWs love apple trnkets, and the frankfurt school is good at supplying those, and maoism is not.

>Why is it not more widely taught?

what? is this the state of american education?

Because Mao was losing power. He use gullible idiots (read: young university students) to become his personal army and physically remove all of his opponents.

Ah, yeah, OP, that's a pretty good insight. Given that modern marxism primarily operates via the humanities departments in universities, and Mao ordered students to kill their professors, that seems like a very practical incentive for professors to not teach maoism.

I don't think they have abandoned leninism. The idea of a revolutionary party/vanguard is alive and well, it's just located in universities now.

leninism advocates the abandonment of material good for the sake of the party.

I don't see college hipster communists abandoning their low-brand designer jeans or tech trinkets.

when I was in university it was all about horkheimer, adorno, and gramsci, depending on the "intellectual" level a writer was at.

they might not have outright abandoned leninism, it remains as the implicit goal of social movements, to create an army capable of murdering white people with machetes and stepping on the heads of babies, but I don't see it often expressed in writing

i'll just explain up until the start of it because it is really complicated, and got even more so once underway

long story short, mao lost prestige and credibility after the colossal failure of the great leap forward and radical command policies. so he had to take a step back from the spotlight while deng xiaoping and liu shaoqi took control and got the PRC back on a more firm footing.

mao, however, was not actually willing to relinquish power for long and still believe very strongly in radical command policies. he went about heavily politicizing the PLA(even more than it already was) and making lin biao his new henchman #1.

seizing on a big character poster a beijing student had posted on some wall at beijing U, mao called on the politburo to endorse his "sixteen points", which all basically alleged that there were counter revolutionary elements within the party opposing the revolution.

what mao was basically doing was mobilizing the masses, specifically youth who had grown up in his cult of personality, to sideline his political opponents. this did work, but the cultural revolution really grew out hand, and he had to oscillate between factions to retain paramount power beholden to nobody, and take down all possible challenges.

it is not more widely taught because it is an extremely complex affair.

you have no idea what you are talking about

much more concise than i, well done

ah, yes, mao managed to convince millions of people to kill each other without the motivational framework of equality and marxism. gotcha buddy.

You should try reading a book from time to time, if your brain can handle it.

that was just the vehicle for mao's goals, it wasn't the genesis of the event itself.

You should read a book besides your marxist trash.

it's blurry. the vehicle becomes the goal at some point, like any schelling point in history.

stability revolves around the emperor? the emperor is just a vehicle, but eventually, he becomes the goal too. any legitimate action needs to be taken in the interest of the emperor, otherwise you're a traitor, and you're executed

kill anyone who opposes equality. okay, so that's "just" mao's vehicle. now, you accomplish short term goal X. how do you move on to the next goal, without yourself being a target for purges? you need to legitimize a goal. that goal is "kill the enemies of equality." and so on and so forth. political coordination comes to revolve around these points, and eventually it becomes the goal itself.

I'm probably the furthest thing from a marxist which can possibly exist.

A cuck?

Mao wasn't an Orthodox Marxist. His interpretation of Marxism included some batshit insane ideas (like that only third-world workers were actually proletarian) that directly contradicted Marx. There's a huge influence of Chinese nationalism and Eastern philosophy that distances his works greatly from Soviet thinkers.

Historically, many Western communists were Maoists. But these people are generally just hardcore edgy liberals who want to exalt the non-West out of contrarianism.

There are Leninists everywhere man.

Most communists, even those who do not identify as MLs, are broadly Leninist.

Imagine if SJWs were given license to kill anyone they didn't like.

That's the Cultural Revolution.

It's interesting to read memoirs from it, because of how familiar their fanaticism seems for anyone who has studied in a Western university.

This is the only correct answer

>relying on memoirs of the butthurt people who lost privilege during the cultural revolution
>waaahh I lost my party position
>waaahh I have to go be held accountable to the people for my corruption and shittiness
>waahh I have to go to the countryside and live exactly like 90 percent of Chinese people do

Cultural revolution was based as fuck, it was the only time the masses and the cadres had true democracy, if you were a shitty official expect to get criticized and publicly humiliated.

Read Mobo Gao and Dongping Han for a perspective on the cultural revolution from the view of the masses instead of butt-hurt emigres.

there was no famine or widespread death in the cultural revolution. And it was not a fanatical crazy destroy history and learning orgy of violence.

Keep in mind that the terra cotta warriors were found and preserved during the cultural revolution, and it is also when Chinese scientist developed malaria medication and hybrid rice.

...

Of course people who did the killing are going to remember it fondly.

Got any recommendations?

Fun fact: the official line of the PRC on the Cultural Revolution was that Mao's fanatics took it out of control. They CCP didn't like it at all and at times even sicced the army to curb the excesses of the CR (i.e. when fanatics threatened to tear down the Forbidden City, Zhou Enlai surrounded it with troops).

Another fun fact: many of the Cultural Revolution's leaders would show up as one of the factions in Tienanmen Square. The Maoists angry at Deng's reforms.

>waahh I have to go to the countryside and live exactly like 90 percent of Chinese people do

I think the Cultural Revolution was a massive, complete clusterfuck and a human rights disaster, but holy shit every time this is brought up lol.

"Damn those privileged urban elite having their human rights abused by being forced to actually live like 95% of China does for a month"

Like, that's the fucking crime the west always focuses on, urban elite being forced to experience rural life.
The fuck? Not the giant civil wars between Red Guard leaving often thousands dead after a single battle? Not children killing their own parents? It's always:
"Rich fucks got their property destroyed"
"Urban elite were forced to live all expenses paid on a rural farm for a month"

>peasants forced to a rampage
>marxism
Pick one! Substituting industrial workers with farmers was already done in Russia. With known results. I'd say that unionized industrialized workers is the best application of Marx there is. Basically capitalism with a few corrections.

>Trying to force a switch to Socialism from the top down.

Why in fuck do Socialists always seem to miss that Socialism is a result of the economic and material conditions of late-stage Capitalism.

The biggest blow to Socialism were these upstarts trying to implement "Communism" in the 20th century. When Socialism won't be viable as an economic system until probably the mid-21st century thanks to automation, AI, Communications etc.

>Not the giant civil wars between Red Guard leaving often thousands dead after a single battle?
I've read in Anuha Gao's To The Edge of The Sky that the army handed out weapons to the various factions. Don't know why, but probably because they wanted the civil war to end quicker. Just my 2 cents.

It was basically a peasant revolution on steroids

>peasant revolution
Yeah, the peasants came by themselves up with the idea to kill off all sparrows, paving the way for insect. Or to run shitty steel mills in the backyards. Yeah...

>Cultural Revolution.
>Idiot talks about Great Leap Forward.
Veeky Forums

Yes who doesn't love university students ransacking your house, raping your daughters, beating you near death and then publicly humiliate you all for owning a fucking iron Wok.

I want to seize her means of production

Many Chinese remember the Cultural Revolution days fondly. When Bo Xilai used some of its nostalgia for his own political program in Chongqing, it was immensely popular and the Party had to remove him from power and expel him for some bullshit reasons.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_culture_movement

Then again, saying this is not an endorsement of the Cultural Revolution. As I said, most people will remember fondly a time when they had no responsabilities, when the government gave them free passage around the country in trains so they could travel around ruining historical monuments and killing people.

Yuan Gao - Born Red.

It really reads like SJW politics on steroids and without any limitations on its desire to "change the world".

Nobody knew what was going on. Different parts of the PLA was allied with different Red Guard factions in different cities.

In the end I think Mao got tired and just told the PLA to crush everyone and be done with it.

The Cultural Revolution was mainly an urban movement.

>What lead to the Cultural Revolution Veeky Forums?

Read all of Lu Xun's literary works.

>Was it a more pure form of Marxism as it was enacted by the people instead of the state?

No it was a philosophical thought based on the works of Lu Xun.

>Many Chinese remember the Cultural Revolution days fondly. When Bo Xilai used some of its nostalgia for his own political program in Chongqing, it was immensely popular and the Party had to remove him from power and expel him for some bullshit reasons.

That's when I'm reminded of people who root for the collapse of the CCP regime in China, thinking that what we will get out of it is a liberal democracy headed by good disciples of the Open Society Foundation, like those boys from the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong.

If the CCP ever fall from power, what we will get in its place is Neo-Maoism.

mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/alan-badiou_cultural-_revolution_.pdf

strongwindpress.com/pdfs/ebook/The_Battle_for_Chinas_Past.pdf

>Shortly after Lu Xun's death, Mao Zedong called him "the saint of modern China," but used his legacy selectively to promote his own political goals. In 1942 he quoted Lu out of context to tell his audience to be "a willing ox" like Lu Xun was, but told writers and artists who believed in freedom of expression that, because Communist areas were already "free", they did not need to be like Lu Xun. After the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, Communist Party literary theorists portrayed his work as orthodox examples of communist literature, yet every one of Lu's close disciples from the 1930s was purged. Mao admitted that, had Lu survived until the 1950s, he would "either have gone silent or gone to prison".

Damn.

Mao really was an asshole.

>implying they are not parts a greater era of purges and shit

>As I said, most people will remember fondly a time when they had no responsabilities, when the government gave them free passage around the country in trains so they could travel around ruining historical monuments and killing people.
Yeah, fuck old people with their half-truths.

I see. Would make for a lovely war game.

>I see. Would make for a lovely war game.

I would jizz for a ck2 mod.

Bump

What makes the Red Guards so similar to the SJW's of today? Is it tactics? Will the SJW's lead to a new Red Guard?

>I want to seize her means of reproduction
ftfy

>ck2

moddb.com/mods/romance-of-the-three-kingdoms

Well its RT3K, but I suppose its still Chinese.

Looks pretty epic. I'm surprised it's not on Steam but I'll check it out.

The Great Leap Forward as some sort of purge doesnt make any sense. That shit killed anyone regardless of political affiliation.

>Keyboard warriors.
>Similar to politically empowered thugs who are out in the streets taking people.

>idiot poster
the great leap forward was the INSTITUTIONALIZATION of purges as a method to access political power, because non purge methods of law become inaccessible.

Fanatical belief in equality, absolute hatred of any kind of philosophical or political opposition, and no self-limitation on desire to change the world through revolutionary action.

If Obama came out and said "the State will be totes ok if you go out and start killing conservatives, do you think they wouldn't do it"?

They've been intellectually preparing to justify it for decades.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(1995_film)

>left wing will kill right wing conservatives with the support of the state
>they have been ideologicaly prepared for decades
>look this film, here is your proof.

I took a screencap for future keks

hillary comes right out and calls half of all of american whites deplorable

how is this anything but a setup for persecution?

She called half of half of American whites deplorable. So about a quarter. I know you're not good at math though.

I dunno.

I can tell you this though: you're doing the exact keyboard-fu those ebil esjeydabolyoos are doing.

The Great Leap Forward was a retarded economic plan, not a political purge.

half of american whites is half of america

this is nothing but a setup for a persecution.

you'd be right, except for the part where he literally used gangs of students to round up and execute his enemies. which makes you wrong.

post the screencap.

>except for the part where he literally used gangs of students to round up and execute his enemies
That is the Cultural Revolution.

Can you please admit you do not know anything of Chinese history?

Really just an inept attempt to shut down your opponent because you can't actually engagement with their arguments. People who use 'cuck' as the last word have nothing to bring to the table, because they're incapable of doing so.

She called out frogposters, legitimately deplorable people.

You asshole, I had almost quit.

I had plans for my life! Plans!

yet she doesn't call out black lives matter, who have actually killed a few dozen people at this point.

she doesn't have the right to throw half the country under the bus. she's literally just agitating to kill white people so she can gain points with criminals.

fuck her. she's mao 2.0

Mao was an insecure fat faggot who was a good military leader, but a horrible country builder, and the party realized this and started undermining his power, which caused him to backlash.

Because Maoism is ingrained in its belief that the first world will always oppress the third world, which is something not found in M-L.

Lenin talks at length about this in his works on imperialism. This was also an important observation of Bakunin's a contemporary to Marx.

You're right. They're already at a stage of being willing to utilize violence while preaching about how tolerant they are. A proto-SJW guard exists in groups like ANTIFA and Momentum. All they need is an opportunity.

Can't say I know much about it but that's probably why Trotsky and others wanted so badly to export the revolution from Russia into the rest of Europe ASAP.

> implying Obama, a guy who's center - right politically and spent half of his time in office bending over to appease obstructionist Republicans, ever legitimatizing left-wing violence
>implying SJWS would actually act

You vastly underestimate the spinelessness of bourgeois identity politics

What is defining for Maoism according to Kolakowski is the Asian interpretation of Leninism. This means a kinda weird focus on the 'will of the people's as the instrument in order to create the social change to a true Maoist society. So it is basically Lenin mixed with The Secret (you can reach something if you truly want it! xD). Add a snuff of disapproval for intellectual thinking on top of that (you can only understand something if you practice that in a material way instead of a theoretical way, you only 'get' a car once you build one, so a classical example of 'vulgar materialism') and you got Mao's thinking

Mao was dogshit as a theorist anyway, so don't try to get too deep in his philosophical thinking as he himself didn't even do so. Mao was a staunch anti intellectual and even though he encouraged the Chinese to learn how to read, he claimed that one should never read more than a dozen books during their life, as it would only muddy ones thinking for instance.

If anything the guy was amazing as an organizer and political strategist, which is why he was able to stay in control all the time, but you should see him more through the lenses of a ruthless dictator than a Marxist thinker.

>Many Chinese remember the Cultural Revolution days fondly.