Thoughts on Maoism by Finnish Bolshevik - Our Critique

Marxism Leninism Maoism what is it ; Finnish Bolshevik thinks that Marxism Leninism Mao Zedong Thought is OK but Marxism Leninism Maoism developed by Chairman Gonzalo and PCP is not OK.

We offer some comradely criticisms of Finnish Bolshevik who we have praised for his work in the past.

Protracted People's Revolutionary War

MLM developed by Chairman Gonzalo and PCP sees Protracted Revolutionary People's War as a process not just an event like an insurrection.

The New Italian Communist Party has outlined what a process and event is in the context of Russia and China and why Protracted Peoples War is a universal strategy of MLM and not just a particularity of China under Mao Zedong.


The Protracted Revolutionary People’s War (PRPW) is socialist revolution that is being built. 

The Protracted Revolutionary People's War (PRPW) as conception, is opposed to the conception of common sense (that is to say the current ways of speaking and thinking, the result of clergy and bourgeoisie’s dominant role) that the socialist revolution would break out, that would be a spontaneous rebellion of masses of the people forced to intolerable conditions. 

The communist movement at its beginning (1848) inherited this conception and understood the socialist revolution as a revolution that breaks out, the way of the revolutions of the past. 

This conception of the socialist revolution, anyway, was at odds with the experience that the communist movement was developing. 

The Communists little by little realized this contrast between their conception of the socialist revolution and the practice of socialist revolution.

Engels was the first who, in 1895, exhibited in an organic way the concept that the socialist revolution was by its nature a form different from the revolutions of the past, that does not break out but it is being built.

But the socialist parties of the time (which were connected to each other in the Second International) did not accept his discovery. 

Even leaders of those parties who professed themselves Marxists, such as the German Social Democratic Party, joined Marxism in a dogmatic way, albeit in different gradations. 

Communism, socialism and socialist revolution were articles of faith, which were not put in the lines for guiding the current activity of the parties. 

Precisely for this reason they were unable to cope with their task, as the events of 1914 blatantly demonstrated. 

Among the socialist parties of the time, only Lenin’s party put Engels’ conception in his practice, but it did it without making Engels’ conception a weapon in the struggle against dogmatism, opportunism and economism.

He built the revolution in Russia as a Protracted Revolutionary People War (PRPW), but without being aware of it (so confirming that the practice is generally richer than the theory). 

Similarly, Stalin and the Communist International in the early part of the last century led a successful socialist revolution internationally as Protracted Revolutionary People's War (PRPW)  of which the Soviet Union was the world red base, but did not reach full consciousness of what they were doing. 

This gave way in the Communist International to dogmatism, opportunism and economism that came to light openly in the 50s of last century.

Mao Tse-tung was the first party leader who developed the conception of the PRPW as a strategy of socialist revolution. 

Mao Tse-tung, however, enunciated this conception as a strategy of the revolution in China, tying it to the specific features of Chinese social and political situation (Why Can Red Power Exist in China? - October 1928 Selected Works of Mao Tse -tung, vol. 2 Editions Social Relations, available on the website of the (n)PCI http://www.nuovopci.it/arcspip/article0c16.html in Italian language). https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_3.htm in English.

Later it was indicated as the strategy of the revolution for all the colonial, semi-colonial and neo-colonial countries in which the mass of the population was still made up of peasants. 

Only with the rise of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the third and higher stage of communist thought it was acquired the conception that the Protracted Revolutionary People's War is the universal strategy of the socialist revolution, the strategy that the Communists must follow in every country in order to win.

Most European Maoists now are applying strategic concept of Protracted Revolutionary Peoples War to their own countries in France, British Isles,Germany and Norway and Italy and developing the concept of counter power and red base areas in their own countries in a wide variety of ways to build up the internal process of revolution in conjunction with the development of the mass line.

That Finnish Bolshevik cannot imagine RPPW in Ukraine despite the contradictions with Kiev and Moscow over self determination in the Donbass and shows a lack of revolutionary imagination about the historic role that the Donbass has played in Russian History.

New Democracy

Democracy and Class Struggle agree that New Democracy is meant for semi feudal semi capitalist countries but we also see that the democratic revolution in many western countries being aborted or incomplete and it is the task of MLM to complete the democratic revolution especially in relation to the national question in Imperialist States like UK, France and Spain.

Mass Line

We agree that the idea of the mass line was developed in Leninism but Mao took it to an altogether higher practical methodical new level in 1943.

MLM an Integral Science

Revolutionary Protracted Peoples War and Mass Line and Cultural Revolution and Maoist Philosophy are not just an items list for eclectics but integrated concepts - you cannot just support Cultural Revolution and Mass Line and be against RPPW like some revisionists in RCPUSA argue - the totality of Maoist Science is employed to move the revolutionary process.

Finnish Bolshevik

Finnish Bolshevik  fails to understand the rich profundity and centrality of  Revolutionary Protracted People's War in the totality of Maoism and we suggest he study the work of the New Italian Communist Party and Revolutionary Communist Party of Canada pathfinders in its application in the West.

FURTHER READING :


https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/gramsci-and-protracted-revolutionary.html


http://www.redspark.nu/en/imperialist-states/jmp-the-argument-of-continuity-and-rupture/

http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/the-mass-line-soviet-union-stalin-and.html

https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/marxism-leninism-maoism-and-mao-tse.html

http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/misconceptions-about-maoism.html

https://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/without-revolutionary-strategy-there_29.html