/* Written 4:14 pm Nov 5, 1992 by dwalters@igc.apc.org in igc:gen.socialism
  
   */
   
   /* ---------- "More on Lies re Maoism & Pol Pot/MI" ---------- */
   
   So...................the fact of the matter is that China UNDER Mao
   supported PIcnochet in Chile after this murdering dictator seized
   power. Did Mao support this...cetainly HIS government did!!!! In
   addition it was MAOs failed and very flakey policy in Indonesia that
   led to the death of over 1/2 million communists an Chinese. Maoism is
   just another varient of COUNTER REVOLUTIONARY Stalinism that has
   stabbed the workers of the world in back for over 60 years. The
   ideology is the antithesis of Bolshevism and socialism. Of course
   there is always room for a NOSTALIGC tendency like the Maoist
   Internationalist Movement to make serious Marxists grin.
   
   ----------------
   
  Maoist Internationalist Movement replies:
  
   If there is an "ABC" of Marxism, dialectical materialism is part of
   it. The above criticism is not materialist.
   
   Why? The critic merely provides us with his/her principles (ideas) of
   what is right and wrong. No where does s/he show us where a
   revolutionary ideology has had a better track record in practice than
   Maoism. The reason is simple: there is no revolutionary ideology with
   a better track record in action. There are a lot of critics, whose
   records are worse than the Maoists'. But Mao led revolution in China
   and influenced revolutions throughout the world. In those societies
   where "Stalinist" and "Maoist" revolution succeeded, the people lived
   much better and longer than before. In the case of our critics, they
   can point to no action on their part because they have failed
   everywhere to change the status quo.
   
   
   
   Our critic wants to blame Mao for the Indonesian communists' failed
   strategy. It's sort of like saying that the movement in the United
   States is a failure or its members in prison or shot dead because
   Comrade Gonzalo in Peru has had too much influence. Yet it was
   precisely Mao who told admirers, "you fight your way; I'll fight
   mine." He repeatedly instructed admirers that it was incorrect to copy
   China's experience as universal. Mao and the "Stalinists" were much
   more intelligent on this point than the Trotskyists, who have brought
   about no revolution anywhere in the world after Trotsky split from
   Lenin and Stalin. Trotskyism and "back-to-Marxism-Leninism" hence bear
   the burden of being ideologies with no track record in the real world
   for success. That means they are idealist pseudo-Marxisms which amount
   to criticism of real-world revolutionaries and a fig-leaf for the
   status quo.
   
   
   
   The same is true of the point on Pinochet. The born-again Christians
   with a Marxist veneer recoil in disgust when they learn that Mao
   conducted diplomacy with Pinochet (or gasp, shook hands with Nixon.)
   It were as if these idealists hoped to find an all-powerful God in Mao
   Zedong and when he couldn't command events in Chile and Indonesia,
   they blamed Mao for not being the God they were looking for.
   
   It is well-beyond moralizing Christians that Third World government
   leaders actually had some interests that set them in contradiction
   with the imperialists. These Christians can't understand any of the
   real-world things needed to conduct successful revolutionary movements
   or how to line up the forces necessary for progressive change. All
   this kind of Christian (a.k.a. Trotskyists, anarchists and back-
   to-Marxist-Leninists) can understand is principles written in the Ten
   Commandments or the equivalent. They don't recognize the difference
   between real-world progress and the status quo of imperialism when
   they see it.
   
   
   
   Many people in our ranks are former Christians, er, Trotskyists or
   other idealists. We are confident that anyone seeking classless,
   boundary-less, patriarchy-less society and who believes like Mao that
   "practice is principal" will eventually join our trend. When people
   look around to see who has accomplished the most in taking the world
   toward communism (in practice), they will realize that "Stalinism" and
   Maoism are the answer. We welcome any attempt to prove that other
   ideologies have been more progressive in practice, but we assert that
   people who know some history of the international communist movement
   will quickly find that Trotskyism and anarchism have brought not one
   successful revolution anywhere in the world. We think that alone makes
   the choice between Trotskyist-anarchist idealism on the one hand and
   Maoism on the other hand very clear.
   
   
   
   Those who have failed to make revolution are all the more to blame for
   the massacre in Indonesia and Pinochet in Chile. It is the
   Maoists--the materialists--who threaten the "world order" while it is
   the idealists who prop it up, consciously or unconsciously.