Maoism

zizek is better

imo Mao recognizing in the 50s already that the path the soviet union took would lead to a restauration of Capitalism from the top is quite impressive and shows he was on to something.
Then there's the simple fact that the guy lead a communist Revolution based in the peasantry and not the urban proletariat. Maos understanding of imperialism becoming the primary contradiction and leading to revolutionary potential throws a lot of previous ideas in Marxism into question.

Another interesiting thing is the idea and the historical phenomenon of the cultural Revolution. In my opinion the cultural Revolution is an attempt to solve the fundamental contradiction in Marxism-Leninism, which is the relation of the party to the masses. It is this contradiction that gives rise to revisionism, that is the big lesson of the 20th century (unless Xi turns it around but lol come on). What makes all this pretty depressing is that the cultural Revolution failed in a pretty colossal way (although there also was a lot of good stuff the central objectives weren't achieved at all, and also a shitton of cruelty and insanity went down).

I think that Maoism is important to examine and understand because it deals with precisely the problems which undid 20th century socialism. However i'm not sure it does hold the answers, and i wouldn't call myself a Maoist.
Maoism might be the highest stage of Marxism-Leninism wrestling with its own contradictions, however it does not overcome them. It might require further development and practice. Another view is that it and the historical experience associated with it demonstrates precisely the inability of Marxism-Leninism to overcome its inherent contradictions, pointing to more fundamental flaws in the theory.

Maoism is vitally important because even though its experiments failed, they might provide us with the necessary insight to move forward.

It's not Žižek's book. It's a collection of Mao's writings with Žižek's introduction, I think.

You have to be seriously brain damaged not to appreciate these intros Zizek did to Lenin, Trotsky, Robespierre, and Mao.

Mao was pretty cool, although he did have his failures. But he was a Marxist-Leninist. Read Marx, read Lenin, Stalin etc, and Mao if you want to. But avoid everybody calling themselves a Maoist and not a Marxist-Leninist. Maoists are basically all retarded anarchists who are against scientific socialism.

kys

He also noticed that China was on the same path. Smart guy, but his solutions couldn't prevent either in the end.

he literally cites jung chang, just straight up propaganda because he doesn't give a shit

Could someone familiar with Mao and the surrounding history explain to me why Maoists always talk about "the masses" instead of the proletariat? Is it a simple catch all to include peasants and lumpens? Because while that makes sense it seems to be a vague term used vaguely by contemporary Maoists, and has some inherent ahistorical overlap with populist and even fascist appeals to "The People."

In what way, I am actually curious.

The Cultural Revolution failed, because it was already too late at that stage to try something like that. The contradiction you speak of can't be resolved within the party, and it can't be resolved from without once the DoP has been established, or at least it will be extremely difficult.

The contradiction needs to be resolved (or rather, contained) at the very structure of the state as it's being established. In order to prevent revisionism, we need a robust governing power for the masses themselves to counterbalance and oversee the Party. While the Party holds the ultimate power over the economy, foreign policy, military matters and law making, we should have a People's Assembly to whom the Party is answerable.

I remember Cockshott talking about some form of Greek radical democracy, where people were chosen at random instead of electoral politics. This is how we should set it up. Every four years or so every adult citizen who hasn't served a term already needs to stand for election, and the people are chosen at random. We should have quotas for expertise and so on, but you get the idea. The Assembly's sole job is to oversee that the Party is acting in accordance to the constitution and the benefit of the people.

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Well i think its because Mao and the CPC did things without the Proletariat. The Chinese Communist Party tried to organize urban workers until 1927, when they were violently driven out of the cities and forced into the countryside. Following this they noticed that the peasants had Revolutionary potential and that they didnt need the Proletariat to make Revolution. Their Praxis and experience shows this empirically. So the Marxist focus on the Proletariat is kinda thrown into question, hence the term 'the masses'. Instead of a struggle between Bourgeois and Proletarian, the Maoists mobilize 'the masses' against imperialism.

Because it breaks with the Marxist tradition of focusing on the Proletariat as the revolutionary agent, and it does so succesfully. This might lead one to question the deeper assumptions behind the traditional Marxist understanding of class struggle.