According to followers of Enver Hoxha and some people claiming to uphold Stalin, Mao was wrong because there cannot be a "bourgeoisie in the party" unless the party tolerates it. In contrast, Maoism sticks to Marxism which holds that class is not a political line and exists regardless of line; although it may certainly identify itself by line. People in the party either had access to the means of production in a less than classless society or they did not.
This is the essence of the whole question, a scientific question on the causation of the restoration of capitalism. For anyone with an ounce of brain or political integrity, the appearance of Gorbachev and Yeltsin after Hoxha died more than settled the question by showing that the bourgeoisie does in fact arise in the party, not outside it. To believe otherwise is to talk about a restoration of capitalism without a bourgeoisie. Nor were Gorbachev and Yeltsin recent phenomena as they had been in the party with leadership roles going back to the Khruschev era of the early 1960s.
In fact, the reason that the anti-Mao line persists in the name of Stalin is not a scientific question but a social one. In the first place, there are a number of Russophiles, people who love Russia as their first priority. These Russophiles do not study Mao for the simple reason that Mao came to power in a society more backward than what Lenin came to power in in the Soviet Union. These sort of lazy liberals and racists did not care to learn the context of Mao's line. They also found it easier to deal with the Western labor aristocracy by talking about whites in Russia rather than Asians.
A second major social reason for the continued defense of obviously wrong lines in the face of the historical facts is that many in the world received their paychecks from Brezhnev and they wish nothing more than to start those paychecks flowing again by the hands of new Brezhnevites in a restored Soviet Union. With every passing year, some of these spies, labor bureacrats and apparatchiks die off or lose hope instead of correctly reassessing their old political lines. Unfortunately everything about history shows that revolution is the task of the youth and that it becomes difficult for the elderly to admit that they have been wrong for decades at a time, even in the face of evidence so obvious as the complete dissolution of the USSR.
Finally, the metaphysical Hoxha line persists thanks to pure stupidity by taking advantage of the brain-dead among us who would otherwise be in a church. The well-intentioned but backward among us must not seize leadership of the communist parties or we will doom ourselves. Stalin did not "tolerate" the bourgeoisie in the party, but Khruschev and the Politburo members who supported him were hidden traitors. When someone is hidden, it's not a question of "tolerating" or not tolerating someone. Khruschev, Yeltsin, Brezhnev--all these scum were already in the high ranks of the party by the early 1960s. Let's be clear that Stalin put them there. Intelligent people have a choice: they can conclude that the Soviet Union did not have capitalism restored or they can conclude on who restored it. For all but the brain-dead it is an easy choice; nonetheless, there are those forming organizations and attacking MIM precisely in the name of a brain-dead position calling on the proletariat as if there were nothing to learn from the restoration of capitalism and as if we could afford the blood of millions to spill again without learning from the past.
The following is a letter from someone we presume to be Brazilian. S/he has a web page in Portuguese and Russian. I have interspersed my replies throughout. The gist of the letter is a defense of today's remaining confused Brezhnevites and a call for easy acceptance of the world's confused half-way Stalin-supporters. We have edited the English. Mr. "owner of truths", The marxist-leninist literature is very rich, not just because it talks about the economy, politics and tactics to the proletarian class, but also because it talks about science. There is a very good book of Engels, the famous "Anti-Dühring", where itīs author denounces those who pretend to be the "owners of eternal truths," calling them as "pretentious prophets", as "farces" and simply "suckers." (I think that is the correct translation in English, the word of my Portuguese translation was "canalhas"). I remembered these characteristics and phrases to give a small illustration of dogmatism and sectarianism. The MIM commited the absurd of say show the Northstar Compass as "Brezhnevites" and the Russian VKPB as the same... [mim3@mim.org replies: That is correct. MIM called the Northstar Compass (NSC) Brezhnevite and stands by its characterization. The NSC claims to uphold Stalin but like many other Brezhnevites it constantly references the 1965-1982 domestic and foreign politics of the "USSR," which was a time when the USSR did not uphold Stalin. Those who did uphold Stalin did so mostly in secret until Gorbachev. The problem of this critic and many others is that they do not know what the Brezhnev line was and cannot recognize it today or they do not care, again for the social (not scientific) reasons mentioned above.]
Red Banner Society continues: The Red Banner Society, well shown by The Red Page (Portuguese, Russian and soon in English language), the bigger communist weekly compass of South America, denounces the trotskyite attitudes of the so called "MIM", as well as itīs arrogant sectarianism and adventurism shown in itīs prophesies and dogmas. [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: As usual, one of our critics throws around the word "sectarian" without defining it. MIM criticizes Northstar Compass for Brezhnevism, but it also sends web page readers to Northstar Compass to read a quotation from Paul Robeson on Stalin on the Northstar Compass website. That is the proof that MIM is not sectarian toward the Northstar Compass. Even though their overall line is wrong, we work with them on those things that are correct.]
Red Banner Society continues: I donīt give a 10 to my English, but I think that the members (and not comrades) of MIM have a very poor English when it shows the NSC as brezhnevite... Just to give an illustration, letīs read some parts of NSC: In a published article of the Red Youth, from Vladikavkaz, Russia "As a matter of fact, the Khrushchev-Brezhnev period in the USSR had nothing to do with socialism..." In an article of Rafal Martinez "If we dig deeper into the "patriotic" ideas of T.M. Khabarova, we see no more than "Soviet" great-nation chauvinism, disguised by revisionist phraseology about the restoration of the USSR. We are dealing here with bourgeois patriotism, in the final analyses something that we already know from Brezhnevs time." In a tribute for the life of I. V. Stalin "The interim somewhat muddled intervention by Brezhnev and with Khrushchev's removal in 1964 and subsequent actions by other leaderships did not stem the flood of growing bureaucracy and failed Marxism-Leninism that led to the alienation of the working class in the "mighty land" Gorbachev Shevernadze Yeltsin Yakovlev treachery." In an article of A. Maevsky "Our task is to build socialism and not the opportunistic variety or social-democratic models as was started by former leaders such as Khrushchev, Brezhnev or Gorbachev..." And many other documents denounce the revisionism of Brezhnev, Khrushev, Gorbatchev & company... Another short passages also shows some realization of Brezhnev, but this doesnīt mean that NSC is Brezhnevite, it just shows that NSC is not extremist(we also must remember that Marx points some merits of capitalism, but this doesnīt mean that he is capitalist)! [mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: Of course we do not blame you for your English and we in fact thank you for it, because our Portuguese would be much more difficult to follow. The Redstar Compass has been coming out a long time and we do not deny it has some articles in there by self-proclaimed Maoists, which our critic does not mention. On the web page that the critic is referring to, MIM says NSC: "consists of reprints of various communist and so-called communist organizations." At the same time, the NSC not only runs many Brezhnevite articles, but also it runs KPRF types of articles even further into social-democracy (the right) than that. Unfortunately, many in the world do not know the difference. That's what it boils down to with Brezhnevism. Over at one political forum called www.sovietrevolution.com they attacked MIM for saying they were Brezhnevite while running links to a Brezhnevite organization the same day. (All links of all sort now seem to be gone there.) The "Communist Party of the USA" is still defending Khruschev and Brezhnev against Stalin and Mao. Revisionism never wears a "kick me I'm a revisionist" sign. All revisionism is by definition using a cloak. In this case it is unfortunate that some well-intentioned people provide Soviet Brezhnevism a cloak in NSC.] Red Banner Society continues: About the VKPB, well represented by comrade Nina Andreyeva and itīs activists, it is a marxist-leninist party and not a Brezhnevite party! It doesnīt consider Brezhnev as a bad leader just because he was not a good administrator, but also for his revisionist thesis and attitudes! Sure that VKPB doesnīt forget that in his epoch the women had rights as well as the power of Red Army in that epoch, more developed than in previous eras... But this doesnīt mean that VKPB is Brezhnevite. [mim3@mim.org replies: I'm not sure what you are referring to, but there are positive as well as negative mentions of Nina Andreyeva on our website. RMP comrades said that her position on Chechnya has degenerated. In general, MIM is not apt to believe that organizations in countries where there is a majority of exploited people are hopeless. Northstar Compass and the whole ex-nomenklatura of the Soviet Union should be generalized to be hopeless. There are exceptions, but we have to have generalizations.]
Red Banner Society continues: These points are simply replies to the hypotheses that MIM launches on itīs site. I could point to many other theoretical errors and a lack of the perception of reality of a party wich shows the ideas of the Vozhd(I. Stalin) as revisionists or with a minority importance. The same movement that shows the blacks as "a simple mass of manouvers"(and the author of this e-mail is black). The same movement which is preoccupied not with the revolution, not with working people, but in the search for the "hall of fame," as well as the trotskyite, who fights not for socialism and the people, but against the "evil and rogue stalinists." And the infantile immature MIM acts like this, fighting against the marxist-leninist movement, wich has like bases the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin. [mim3@mim.org replies: I can't say I understand the English above. That's not the comrade's fault. It's ours. However, I will say that the comrade like many others does not know what Brezhnevism is. If we do not study the line of the 1965 to 1982 period, we won't know when we are facing Brezhnevism as something distinct from Stalin. MIM knows the difference, because MIM started in the early 1980s when Brezhnevism numerically and politically choked Maoism in the imperialist countries.]
Red Banner Society continues: The objective of MIM is to destroy the unity that is being stronger each day, through ultra-leftism, dogmatism and sectarianism. As in the camp of ideas a criteria for identification are the actions, the MIM acts like a merely trotskyite party. MIM itīs not compromissed with the formation of a massive marxist- leninist revolutionary party. [mim3@mim.org replies: The question is "unity" of what? Brezhnev also united people calling themselves "communists" and "Marxist-Leninists," but they were neither. This whole article is an open defense of including Brezhnevites in the communist movement. No where does the Red Banner Society deny that numerous Brezhnevite articles ran in the NSC. Red Banner Society only points out the articles that criticized Khruschev and Brezhnev. More numerous have been the articles only attacking Gorbachev and Yeltsin and thereby leaving Khruschev and Brezhnev off the hook--why? Because they were leaders of a "Soviet Union" and countless articles in NSC are only about restoring the borders and passports of the "USSR"--and to these people it does not seem to matter much whether the line leading the restored USSR is Brezhnevite or not.] Red Banner Society continues: Despite all aspects showed, itīs also important to remember some theoretical errors of Mao. Sure that he was a contributor of communism, but the Cultural Revolution was done in a wrong way. As shown by the comrade Will Bland, the C. Revolution broke the discs of Mozart in magazines, havenīt them also broked the discs of Tchaikovsky because he was Russian? [mim3@mim.org replies: This is pretty typical for our lazy, Liberal Russophile types. It does not give us a reference to follow up exactly what this author intends.
The Maoist line opposed all instrumental music unaccompanied by words, not just Tchaikovsky, but look how the Russophile above uncritically interprets that! See our review of this subject in a more up-to-date context here.
Then again we see here a kind of "so what" question. So what if Mao had "theoretical errors"? Who does not have "theoretical errors"? It is typical that these people claiming to follow Stalin over Mao do not know how to distinguish a cardinal question from a question of music. The Cultural Revolution had a lot of things happen that Mao did not like either. To prove a point, our critic should show what Mao's line was and why our critic opposes it. Instead we get more Newsweek magazine descriptions of communism, rather shallow and lacking in cardinal importance.]
Red Banner Society continues: The Cultural Revolution, as shown by the Progressive labour party, made possible the rightists to reach the power in China, something well shown in reality! [mim3@mim.org replies: The Cultural Revolution was the first struggle in the world to target the bourgeoisie in the party. In contrast, the PLP line has not succeeded anywhere in the world to any degree. There is not a single armed struggle in the world that the Progressive Labor Party speaks of positively. The PLP condemns every single one as bourgeois. Talk about "eternal truths" and metaphysics and sectarianism! And this Red Banner Society cretin has the nerve to call MIM "sectarian"! The Progressive Labor Party has spent a generation condemning every existing armed struggle and this is the kind of reformism we are being attacked with!] Red Banner Society continues: If MIM declares war to each communist who uses a tie and that who does a strong defence of M-L, as well as showns adversity from communist principles shoud itīs leftist revisionist, so condemned by comrade Lenin. This great leader, one of greatest of XX century and whole history, taught us communists to fight against leftist and rightist opportunism, following the ideas of the Russian revolutionary and the work of the Vozhd, The Red Page denounces the MIM as ENEMY OF PEOPLE, SOVIET STATE AND INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM! The Red Page will exposes this farce so-called MIM as trotskyites under maoist cloak. Still there is time to analyse concepts and return to the light of communist science, the same that changed the life of 1/3 of the population of the world and was the sword of people against fascist hordes, itīs a question of will and internal revolution in the minds!
PS: The address of The Red Page was not divulged for lack of some modifications, which couldīt be possible in the last days.
[mim3@mim.org replies: In other words the comrade has time to condemn MIM's web page but not actually do any work to replace it.]