Conjuring Mao against Maoism: Prachanda and Žižek
Prairie Fire
LLCO.org
In a recent interview, Baburam Bhattarai in the Washington Times, number two in the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), said that their party is considering changing its name. Along with this, there is another move to merge with open revisionist parties in Nepal. (1) This turn of events is not surprising to genuine Maoists. The movement toward open revisionism is part of a larger trend in the so-called international communist movement. There is a movement afoot to negate Leninism and Maoism by conjuring the ghosts of Lenin and Mao. Slavoj Žižek’s works are an intellectual reflection of this trend. In his essay Repeating Lenin, Žižek advocates a return to Lenin. However, Žižek’s return to Lenin is a return without Leninism. Žižek implies that to repeat Lenin is to abandon Leninism, since there was no Leninism when the Bolsheviks launched the October uprising. For Žižek, to repeat Lenin is to open up revolutionary possibilities, to act, to not be afraid to win, without Leninism. What is missing from Žižek’s equation is science. Žižek’s return to Lenin is a call to abandon Leninism in the name of the spirit of Lenin: Lenin without Leninism. (2) Žižek’s call has been answered in Nepal.
These revisionists ask: Is it not the ultimate Maoist act to reject Maoism? For these movements, to embrace the spirit of Mao today is to reject core, universal aspects of the science of Maoism. It is to reject people’s war, new democracy, dual power, the united front, and cultural revolution. This taming of Maoism is presented as a rebel movement against dogma and the “ultra-left.” On Jiang Qing’s orders, ex-red guards and other demonstrators were dispersed on the 5th of April after they showed up at Tiananmen Square durring the Qingming festival in 1976. They sought to honor the recently deceased Zhou Enlai as a protest against the remaining Maoists in the Chinese leadership. No doubt those who took to the streets saw themselves as rebel iconoclasts. Trotskyists saw themselves as rebels too.
Theirs is the world of the post-Leninist, the post-Maoist. The call to abandon science in Mao’s name as the ultimate scientific act is a reaction to the frozen-in-time brands of “Marxism” in the so-called international communist movement. Žižek and those like him present a false choice between post-Maoism and the kind of dogmatic “Marxism-Leninism” or “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” disseminated by the followers of Hoxha, the RIM, the ICMLPO, etc. Even the split with Trotskyism is papered over, in the name of combating dogma. (3)
The revisionists in Nepal should change the name of their party to more accurately reflect their politics. More than likely, they will rename their party in a way that sits well with the World Bank, IMF and US. This move comes at a time when the Nepalese state is seeking 400 million in imperialist aid. (4) They will most likely opt for a name that plays up “democracy” at the expense of socialism. The fakes and fans of Mao that populate the international scene, those that run interference on the advance of actual science, should follow the lead of the revisionists in Nepal. They should stop referring to themselves as “Maoists” also.
Whatever errors they may have made, Lin Biao and Chen Boda were the ones who brought forward Maoism as Maoism. Lin Biao and Chen Boda, more than anyone else, systemitized Maoism as the third stage of revolutionary science. Later, the dishonest and opportunist RIM attempted to obscure the origins of the new stage idea by claiming that they originated the new stage. Today, Leading Light Communism has brought forward a new, fourth stage of science at the same time that one-time claimants to “Maoism” are jumping ship from what they once called “new, third and higher stage of Marxism.” It is no accident that renewed attacks against Lin Biao and Chen Boda accompany revisionist defenses of those in Nepal and elsewhere who openly unite with Trotskyists, Khrushchevists, Liu Shaoqists, First Worldists, White chauvinists, Obamaists, the World Bank, the IMF and the US government. Attacks on Lin Biao and Chen Boda are going hand-in-hand with the abandonment of people’s war, new democracy, dual power, and the cultural revolution. The new revisionists are arch-hypocrites. This is a case of history repeating: When the RIM articulated their theory of permanent revolution in the early 1980s, they launched an attack against “Lin Biaoism” as a proxy for Maoism. In order to clear they way for new revisionist trends, once again Lin Biao is targeted as a way to strike blows against true revolutionary science, people’s war in particular.
It is more important than ever that revolutionaries stand their ground. It is more important than ever to raise the banner of science against the fakes. In the past century, there were incredible breakthroughs forwarding the communist project, the project of universal human emancipation. The Soviet and Chinese peoples stood up. This project, and the lessons of the past hundred years, are now threatened. Unless science can go forward, unless Leading Light Communism is taken up by people’s movements, a new dark age will descend.
Notes
- http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.com/2008/10/baburam-bhattarai-nepals-new-finance.html
- Žižek, Slavoj. Repeating Lenin. http://www.lacan.com/replenin.htm
- See Mikeely.wordpress.com. Mike Ely’s trend draws much of its inspiration from Prachanda’s path in Nepal. They have also been moving toward a kind of post-Maoist, post-Trotskyist First-Woldist utopianism.
- http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot….ew-finance.html