by Ramin Mazaheri for The Saker Blog
What is Mao’s Little Red Book, first published in 1964 at the start of the Cultural Revolution? In 2019, I think we have to look at it in three ways:
The Little Red Book was a work of journalism. This means it sought to impart knowledge which was specific to its exact time, and as a response to the needs of its particular moment. Were you to read a report of mine from 2009, of course it would not be considered as relevant, hip and accurate were it to be directly applied to the situation in 2019… but that doesn’t mean it didn’t hit the nail on the head the day it was published. Mao’s Little Red Book served an immediate need for immediate decision-making, much like journalism does.
Secondly, the Little Red Book was essentially of code of conduct. It was aimed at workers in the government and preached an ascetic program of socialist officialdom. I.e., it was moral instruction for civil servants, telling government workers to be good workers.
Thirdly – and this is the source of the Little Red Book’s greatest social impact during the CR and the reason it is immortal – it was able to be used as a very real weapon of democratic empowerment for China’s lowest classes against bad civil servants.
This series examines The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village by Dongping Han, who was raised and educated in rural Jimo County, China, and is now a university professor in the US. Han interviewed hundreds of rebel leaders, farmers, officials and locals, and accessed official local data to provide an exhaustive analysis of seeming unparalled objectivity and focus regarding the Cultural Revolution (CR) in China. Han was kind enough to write the forward to my brand-new book, I’ll Ruin Everything you Are: Ending Western Propaganda in Red China. I hope you can buy a copy for yourself and your 300 closest friends.
Han does something which Westerners never do without total derision, total ignorance of its contents, and a general disinterest in the aims of socialism to begin with: he fairly discusses the impact of Mao’s Little Red Book. Han writes with his characteristic modesty and refusal to exaggerate:
“Fundamentally speaking, yang banxi (the model Beijing operas) and Mao’s quotations served important social functions. They promoted a democratic, modern political culture and established a highly demanding, though loosely worded, code of official conduct. They called on Communist Party members to accept hardship first and enjoyment later. They required government officials to think about the livelihood of the masses. They denounced high-handed oppressive behavior and promoted subtle persuasion in dealing with difficult persons. … They set up good examples for the officials to emulate, and, more importantly, they provided the ordinary people with a measuring stick of good official conduct.”
Providing a new measuring stick – is that not what Revolutions are all about?
“To the outside world and to the educated elite, songs based on Mao’s quotations and yang banxi constitute a personality cult carried to the extreme. But in a way this cult served to empower ordinary Chinese people. Ordinary villagers used Mao’s words to promote their own interests. What some outside observers don’t realize is that Mao’s works had become a de facto constitution for rural people. More importantly, this de facto constitution became an effective political weapon for ordinary villagers.”
There is no doubt that longtime China analysts in the West are flummoxed by such a positive, democratic analysis.
Just like journalism, we can only judge the true worth of the Little Red Book by accepting the judgment of the local masses. It’s easy to imagine that non-Chinese, especially properly educated ones, may view the Little Red Book as unnecessary instruction… but this was decidedly not the case in 1964 China for the average person. When “ability to increase the empowerment of the average person” becomes our measuring stick, then our assessment must change…but for this type of focus – which is egalitarian and communal, as opposed to individualistic – we need people like Han and not Harvard professors.
“Scholarly critics of the Cultural Revolution dismiss the study of Mao’s works as blind submission to Mao’s words as the final authority. That is very true. It is true that few people in China ever, particularly during the Cultural Revolution, subjected Mao’s work to any theoretical scrutiny, which is sad indeed. However, critics sometimes forget the social context of Chinese society in the mid-1960s, and the most urgent needs of ordinary people at that time. For the illiterate and powerless villagers, it was not the business of the day to subject Mao’s works to theoretical scrutiny, but to use Mao’s words as a weapon to empower themselves against official abuses and to overcome their traditional submissive culture.”
Again, Mao’s Little Red Book is a superb piece of urgently-needed journalism which created a code of conduct that people from the disempowered classes could immediately use as a democratic weapon.
What are we supposed to do with such an analysis of Mao’s Little Red Book? Are we to tell Professor Han – with all his research, personal background, knowledge and ability to provide context – that his point of view is less informed and intelligent than that of Western journalists and academics? This is why Han’s book is revolutionary: those who read it can either accept it and change their “measuring stick” of the CR, the Little Red Book and many other things Chinese socialist… or they can be fairly denounced as reactionaries who believe that upholding illogical but traditional thought – which only supports an obviously unequal status quo – is more important than the use of honesty, reason and moral fairness.
Han, not being a journalist as I am, is not at all prone to such indignant accusations, LOL.
Mao’s problem is that he was both a genius politician and a genius thinker. His double genius, and his incredible ineffectiveness at his chosen tasks, have inspired such awe and loyalty that the popularity of the Little Red Book is assumed in the West to be solely a product of a “cult of personality” for Mao instead of its amazing democratic utility.
I have never heard of a “cult of personality” applied to a Westerner. I’d like to discuss this with you sometime in France – we can go to the tiniest of villages and meet at Place du Charles de Gaulle, which is at the intersection of Avenue Charles de Gaulle and Rue Charles de Gaulle, and catty-corner from Allée Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle, I note, did not even produce an equivalent of the Little Red Book, and thank God for that – it would surely have been based merely around the grandeur of France, i.e. petty nationalism.
The ideas, beliefs and sayings of Mao compiled in the Little Red Book were obviously so dear and so accepted by the Chinese people that the Book’s popularity became proof of brainwashing to anti-socialists. However, to socialists the Book was obviously something much more: it was a necessary tool of empowerment.
Dismissing the Little Red Book shows that one either hasn’t read it, or is a loud-mouthed reactionary
For Han, schoolchildren using the Little Red Book to teach political empowerment to their illiterate parents is not the source of amusement, nor is it trivial, nor is it authoritarianism-cloaked-in-leftism – it is real leftism in action, and incredibly suited for its time and place. We can debate its academic/theoretical quality regarding socialist political theory, but Han relates how it was a superb tool of democracy against bad governance.
“I would argue that one reason why ordinary villagers made such an effort to study Mao’s works and why they could recite Mao’s quotations and other lengthy works at that time is because they gained power by doing so.”
That certainly seems logical: a low-level Party official might commit the Little Red Book to superficial memory, but why would an “ordinary villager” take the time out of their busy farming day to do so? This is a question which will endlessly flummox Westerners, and to the point where they resort to the most absurd fear-mongering: “Oh, they must have feared the gulag if they didn’t learn it.”
During the public forums for which the CR is known for, imagine a corrupt cadre being confronted publicly with Mao’s injunctions, such as:
However active the leading group may be, its activity will amount to fruitless effort by a handful of people unless combined with the activity of the masses. (Page 251)
This surely was used by Chinese peasants to compel Party cadres to include the democratic will when creating local policy, but to make cadres work in the fields (and that truly happened during the CR decade, and en masse).
If, in the absence of these movements, the landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements and monsters were allowed to crawl out – while our cadres were to shut their eyes to this and in many cases fail to even differentiate between the enemy and ourselves… the Marxist-Leninst Party would undoubtedly become a revisionist party or a fascist party and the whole of China would change its color. (Page 79)
These are honestly the two first passages I randomly turned to in my copy of the Little Red Book. Why are they so good? Because The Little Red Book is a “Greatest Hits of Mao Zedong” – it’s the best thoughts from his speeches, writings and interviews from over decades. I truly just turned at random again, and this is something de Gaulle would have hated (I knew it’d be easy to write this article):
“But we must be modest – not only now, but 45 years hence as well. (I.e., the year 2001, as this was written in 1956.) We should always be modest. In our international relations we Chinese people should get off great-power chauvinism resolutely, thoroughly, wholly and completely.”
Fake-leftists condemn Mao as a tyrant, yet his words were beloved by the masses because they were so empowering, clear-hearted and universal. It should be clear that his works were not memorized in a rote form as a way to pass a civil service test – they were learned by heart because they were so very intelligent yet so applicable. The reality is that during the CR decade old Chinese peasants who had just learned to read were waving the Little Red Book in the faces of shamefaced, younger Party cadres.
Han provides us fascinating, accurate, local insight into the impact, need for and democratically empowering motivations behind the Little Red Book. We should be able to see why the Cultural Revolution would not have spread far and wide within China without it.
The reality is that Chinese peasants in 1965 were leap years ahead of Westerners, from a mental-political perspective – that’s what 16 years of socialism will do for somebody:
“To many Western scholars, Mao’s Cultural Revolution-era messages were extremely ambiguous. Andrew Walder, for instance, has written: ‘It takes an extraordinary amount of energy and imagination to figure out precisely what Mao really meant by such ideas as ‘the restoration of capitalism’ or ‘newly arisen bourgeoisie.’ However, to Chinese people, even to the illiterate villagers, these terms were not so hard to grasp. Due to China’s leap ahead in political modernity, and some subsequent obstacles, capitalism’s restoration meant incomplete land reform for farmers, and the new bourgeoisie were the Party leaders who acted very much like the old landlords.”
Such sentences from Walder-types are constant when reading Anglophones discuss socialism: they adore to subtly but clearly express their belief that – at its base – socialism is just a childish fantasy, without any grounding in logic or reality.
These cynical notions take one very far in the West. Walder won a Guggenheim fellowship and taught at Harvard and Stanford despite being far stupider than the average Chinese peasant (by his own admission). It’s incredible that someone who cannot understand those two simple terms would rise so far in the realm of political science academia; it is not surprising that such a person would produce obviously anti-China and anti-socialist works such as China Under Mao: A Revolution Derailed. Han’s work explains why the CR was in fact a re-railing of socialist revolution…but I do not think he will get a Guggenheim Fellowship for his efforts, sadly.
The reality is that until we learn to prioritize local/native studies and views we will always have great difficulty in understanding foreign cultures. Yet when it comes to socialist-inspired countries native voices are totally excluded in the allegedly-free press/free thought-loving West.
“Today farmers still say that, ‘Chairman Mao said what ordinary villagers wanted to say (shuo chu liao nongmin de xinli hua).’”
For those many Westerners who envision Mao burning in Hell, I think he’s pretty happy where he is because that is an extremely meritorious legacy for any politician – being a conduit for the ordinary People.
Conversely, ex-French President Francois Hollande was recently asked if what the French say about current President Emmanuel Macron is true: that he is the “president of the rich”. Hollande, who was bitterly derided by the decidedly not witty Nicolas Sarkozy as “Mr. Little Jokes”, responded: “No, he’s not. He’s the president of the super-rich.” (Where was this great analysis when you were charge, Francois?)
De Gaulle could never say what ordinary villagers wanted to say…unless they were French villagers – his political ideology was based on petty, blinkered French nationalism; he could never have united scores of European ethnicities, whereas Mao did (and still does) unite 56 officially-recognised ethnicities.
Macron is capitalist, De Gaulle was imperialist – both should not write even very little books, and of any color.
The Little Red Book remains a source of amusement in the West, but it’s not as if they understand it. And it’s not as if ever-surging, ever-united China needs Western acceptance in 2019.
Han has helped prove that the legacy of the Little Red Book will be that it enabled a new worship and devotion to the tenets of socialism (with Chinese characteristics) – Mao was merely the conduit of thoughts much larger than his person.
It is unfortunate that the West continues to build and worship their ignorant cult of anti-Mao, rather than understanding how the Little Red Book increased democracy and empowerment.
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This is the 4th article in an 8-part series which examines Dongping Han’s book The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village in order to drastically redefine a decade which has proven to be not just the basis of China’s current success, but also a beacon of hope for developing countries worldwide. Here is the list of articles slated to be published, and I hope you will find them useful in your leftist struggle!
Part 1 – A much-needed revolution in discussing China’s Cultural Revolution: an 8-part series
Part 2 – The story of a martyr FOR, and not BY, China’s Cultural Revolution
Part 3 – Why was a Cultural Revolution needed in already-Red China?
Part 4 – How the Little Red Book created a cult ‘of socialism’ and not ‘of Mao’
Part 5 – Red Guards ain’t all red: Who fought whom in China’s Cultural Revolution?
Part 6 – How the socioeconomic gains of China’s Cultural Revolution fuelled their 1980s boom
Part 7 – Ending a Cultural Revolution can only be counter-revolutionary
Part 8 – What the West can learn: Yellow Vests are demanding a Cultural Revolution
Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China. His work has appeared in various journals, magazines and websites, as well as on radio and television. He can be reached on Facebook.
Ramin, I am enjoying your series more and more with each part. The actual genius of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and of Mao’s statesmanship and vision, would have been hard to grasp without someone’s unpacking it into plain terms, and you’re really bringing it home.
Increasingly I admire the socialist venture that China embarked upon. This was your hope in writing about it, I’m sure. It’s working :) Keep it up – and many thanks!
I recently re-read Edgar Snow’s ‘Red Star Over China’, and found it both perhaps just as riveting as an adventure story as I did as a teenager when reading it while racking-off from school, and poignant as a testament of an attempt to change the course of history, which, alas, has taken a turn for the very worst in the years since. Not in China, which, in my opinion, represents the last hope for humanity to save itself, but here in Austfailia and throughout the Western world, where scarcely imaginable omnicidal Evil has triumphed in the last forty odd years.
I stayed in a village for six years in China during CR . I deeply feel that the hongbaoshu was effective for the village leaders to control the peasants, or commune members, and not useful for the members to fight against the corrupted leaders because of the economic and political system at that time.
https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201904181074238385-macron-notre-dame-blaze-stage-national-unity/
And meanwhile Macron burns a church so he can rebuild it according to his masonic tastes.
The masonic monster Macron intends to heal the wound inflicted on the Roman Church by Napoleon. Macron intends to rule as king. Macron is an abomination.
Mr Mazaheri, thank you for supplying us, Westerners, with such an enlightning piece of history.
Having said that, you, in spite of your moral advantage over our governments policies which are destroying the whole world, should take a look to the amazing social and economical concerns of De Gaulle, who cared and defended his people as much as Mao.
You deserve the intellectual hubris, but that also means you must fight it. Like Mao did, so you taught many of us, me being just an example. Seriously, thank you very much, but do think about it.
Leftists are patronising China by praising Mao. There is no reason to demonise Mao, but he would never have been able to impose the extremist western invention of classwar unto his countrymen and would not have opted to limit China to the colonial idea of appropriate technology meaning not trying to catch up with western technology as fast as possible. It isnt black and white but that characterisation contains a deal of truth. You dont send the welleducated into exile if you want the country to develop.
That happened because the leaders were influenced by british ideas.
Japan was allowed by the Us to have an effective economy because the Us wanted it to be a counter example so not all of Asia would join China. The imperial (british) balance of power strategy.
Without a somewhat backward communist comparison the contrast wouldnt be useful.
The leftists are basically antiscientific dreamers who dont like the entrepreneurial spirit.
What is the real purpose of cheering for Mao? Of course it means leftists would like China to slow down her pace of development. And it illustrates that leftists have been unwitting stooges of the empire all the time. Or worse, they actually want to pull the breaks on a competitor out of selfish reasons. So they dont have to be industrious.
Peter; Your ideological approach is clearly successfully contradicted by the scientific approach of Ramin and the author he quotes so well. His documented and accurate scientific research clearly proves that the Chinese cultural revolution, quite to the contrary of your bourgeois argument, was the real driver of the amazing progress China has achieved from that time on. The very thing that you claim to advocate was in fact achieved by Mao’s democratic empowerment revolution that liberated China. The hard data and facts in the article speak for themselves. Your ideological advocacy of Western bourgeois bias falls flat when the science proves that your professed aim was in actual fact achieved by Mao and the cultural revolution; that being the democratic foundation for flourishing abundance. I suggest you try some objective open minded science. in the meantime good luck with your theories!
@Snow leopard: “Scientific research”?
Perhaps you mean “scholarly research.” Mr. Mazaheri is not doing “science” when doing the work of journalism.
@Mulga Mumblebrain: “China, which, in my opinion, represents the last hope for humanity to save itself.”
Dear God! Seriously? I hope you were just hyperventilating when you thought that.
JohnD Your distinction is appreciated. However I would add that the research carried out by mr Han, the author Ramin quotes from extensively appears to be of such a high and well organized, and materially grounded, quality of scholarship that it deserves the status of scientific validity. I fail to see how such a high quality of comprehensive scholarship, with so much documentation of facts on the ground amongst the people, in any way falls short of scholarship that displays scientific integrity. Of course if one holds to a view of “science” as by definition exclusively confined to the hard material sciences I could see the logic of your argument.
For myself I regard such a narrow and intentionally exclusory definition of “science” as quite false. Unfortunately that definition is very prevalent amongst Western university educated people. In my opinion to their detriment. There is plenty of room for a humanist approach to a science that can embrace the human experience itself without leaving the realm of legitimate science. However the Western university system seems driven to need to maintain a prior denial of this – for subjective ideological reasons. Then its exponents feel arrogant enough to stand on their high horses and proclaim they have ideological custody of the very definition of “science.” To me that is just another bourgeois power game
I think “scholarly research” is quite accurate and sufficient. Excellent journalism doesn’t have to have recourse to a wannabe “science” label or to claim it is carrying out “scientific research.”
Western racist civilizational supremacists see ‘science’ as Western, and by definition ‘mere Asiatics’ are incapable of innovative thought, just imitation of their Western betters. You see that racism manifested in the garbage about ‘Chinese intellectual property theft’, when the USA, as Snowden’s revelations showed, is the world’s paramount technology thief, and China is now the world’s leading scientific and technological power-house.
Oh, I mean it most definitely. First China is not the USA or its omnicidal stooges. It has ONE overseas military base, unlike the USA that has about one thousand(no-one really knows how many). It is in Africa spreading economic progress and mutually beneficial investment. The USA and other Western countries are in Africa to spread military conflict and destruction. The same situation pertains in Latin America.
China is the leading industrial power driving the technological progress towards cheaper renewable energy, electric vehicles and other means to avert climate destabilisation. Its Government is dedicated to creating an ‘ecological civilization’ ie one that is sustainable in the long term. It does not interfere in the politics of other countries, in utter contrast to the USA which has malevolently intervened in the politics of scores of countries, causing the deaths of tens of millions through sanction, subversion, sabotage and outright military aggression. It has raised more people out of poverty than the rest of the world put together. I could go on all day.
I find, Snow, that Western racist supremacists will utilise any ‘argument’, no matter how obtuse, to denigrate China and its civilization, and its rise to global prominence, because, I would say, of terror at the prospect of Western eclipse. I have read fakestream media reports in this country for decades, and have never encountered one, or any on any medium, that was positive in regard to China. In fact almost every story (I would estimate >95%)has been negative, to ever greater degree, culminating (so far) in the increasingly frequent description of China as a new Nazi Germany, particularly in relation to the lurid lies concerning Chinese Moslems. It is that which ‘Western Civilization’ does best-hatemongering racism and contempt, to prepare the ever blood-thirsty Western publics for aggressive war.
Why wasnt it applied earlier? Because western marxist ideas were the guide. That precluded capitalism although there is nothing in Kon Fu Tse’s teaching that would forbid that.
When you claim the article is backed up by science you omit that there is no comparison.
Its like cutting a mark in the side of a boat to measure the sea level.
You havent proven what Chiang Kai Shek would have achieved, following Sun Yat Sens program.
He wanted to emulate what works in the west not what the west encouraged them to do(Marxism). And Chiang Kai Shek was a Kon Fu Tsian and just like the current leaders both he and the wife were encouraging a moral sentiment among the population. I think Russia also has a bit of that .. (but their westoriented elites are not much help there?)
Leftists are usually not very interested in natural science and dont like to encourage learning.
They put the emphasis on ‘egalitarian’ conditions stretched so far that John Dewey, one of the western ideologues who wanted to prevent capitalism in China, preached that ideas that couldnt be widely hed were not worth considering. That is insane in my view, but that was the kind of influence the angloamerican fabians were influencing their contemporary with including the chinese.
That was part of the deliberate dumbing down of americans supported by the oligarchy which also spread communism to Russia and China.
Western class war means the middle class is treated like an enemy. It was invented because Marx was a stooge of the oligarchy and they didnt want the critique to concern them. Instead they pit the poor against the middle class leaving the empires wealthy classes unscathed.
The leftist sentimentality for their failed dreams will maintain the myths for a long time, just like the french keep celebrating britains coup d’etat from 1789. In that coup d’etat and execution of members of the academy of science a similar type of jacobinism was put to use as in the culture revolution. The purpose is presented in Rousseaus writing about the noble savages. He didnt use those exact words but the idea was to maintain the colonials in ignorance so they would be more easily looted and would never rise to be competitive. Yet this dirty trick is still presented as part of the enlightenment. This goes to show how completely false the official western narratives are of their own history
But I never assumed that everything about Maos nationalism was bad. Compared to colonialism which deliberately exploits and subdues. However the western idea of Marxism was not intended to do good. It was intended to weaken the rivals of the empire that protected Marx. The jacobinism in the culture revolution was inspired by the same empire that gave Marx the best working conditions in his life.
This alone should make you suspicious. But leftists never are.
Second, those who changed modern China like Deng, probably didnt denounce everything in the previous decades of maoism but since the economical ideas of Marxism dont work he said it doesnt matter what colour the cat has as long as it catches rats.
Like I posted under a previous part of the series, the modern chinese recently sent students to the farmers areas to spread knowledge. In the culture revolution they were sent there as a part of class war.
That was just a loss for Chinas competitiveness. While the modern variant follows konfutsian trust in the rational mind.
Kon Fu Tse teaches that you use knowledge. Meaning you have an open and critical mind. That means, that in the event you borrow from other cultures you dont swallow everything as with a secterian ideology like Marxism.
Kon Fu Tse also teaches that you, unlike in the case of Marxism, apply a humane approach.
In contrast with the lowly murderous instincts let loose by Marxism.
Kon Fu Tse’s philosophy is a simple constructive set of rules. No lofty theories of proletarian dictature.
I’m sorry Peter but I’ve not read such a litany of odd opinions for some time. ‘Leftists don’t like to encourage learning’, eh? News to me. And, believe me, Confucianism with its emphasis on honesty and moral uprightness, conscientiousness and loyalty, altruism and compassion, integrity and politeness etc, are about as complete an antithesis of capitalism with its insatiable greed, egomania, unscrupulousness etc, as one can imagine. And Chiang Kai-shek was a stooge of the USA, a ‘compradore’, a type the Chinese well knew in those days.
Outright balderdash with no understanding of Chinese civilization and history. Mao was far more a figure created by Chinese history and thought than by Western, Marxist, ideologies.
I recommend the book“ Out of the Crucible: literary works about the rusticated youth”, which shows how the Red Gard/zhiqing generation abandoned Maoist revolutionary ideology after living in the extremely poor rural area for several years. The little red book of Mao , hongbaoshu , could do nothing to change the peasants life and solve the problem of the corruption of the party leaders.
That book shows that SOME Chinese youth rejected Maoism, then found patrons in the West prepared to publish their propaganda, and hand them some coins for their services. The Chinese know the behaviour of ‘compradores’ like these, and real swine like the loathsome Liu Xiao-bo all too well.
Mulga; Thank you once again for your passionate comradely support. My following remarks are directed primarily to you for I expect you the have little trouble understanding and appreciating them.
In deliberately ascribing to Mr Han and comrade Ramin’s spectacularly coherent work the status of “science” I considered myself correctly appropriating one of the justly outstanding features of Western science. That being what I consider its legitimate claim to “authority.” This is really where the Western concept of science really comes to the fore in an enormously powerful way. Let us recall that Western science is actually a long and organized attempt to accurately discern the mind of God. It is from this that science derives its enormous commanding power and authority. The truth of the Creator is the meaning of the word authority. This is a valid scientific formulation. To the extent that sound science achieves this it brings genuine authority to itself.
My point to you is that there is a very sound reason why Socialists claim that Socialism is actually a “science.” Properly understood Socialism carries much of the authority and dignity of authentic humanist science. I consider this objectively verifiable if one approaches the question in a balanced way. In reaction it becomes a bourgeois position to desperately refute even the conceptual possibility that socialism could in any way be understood as a “science” cable of displaying the organizing power and dignity of genuine authority. The bourgeois are really quite terrified of being forced into this conceptual concession and have devised a myriad of ways to culturally obscure this possibility. The core truth is that, to quote a 19th century female socialist, “Socialism is obedience to God.” Being such it has a legitimate right to present the organizing structure of that obedience with something of the authority of science. I consider Marxism and socialism as quite capable of doing this when given a chance to present itself in a balanced, humanistic and comprehensive manner. It is my happy judgement that Mr Han and Ramin are actually excelling at doing precisely that. Hence I deem it both accurate and appropriate to honor the compelling integrity of their work with the word science. Provided of course it is seen as a solid “humanist” expression of science. The real point is that science is the search for solidly variable data. This can be applied successfully across a broad spectrum of human experience. As Mao brilliantly displayed You and I can surely appreciate this enormous cultural power latent within socialism
is desperately resisted by the bourgeois cultural intelligencia. This desperate rear guard position then seeks to completely control and possess for itself the meaning of science, in an attempt to forestall any possibility of the mass recognition of socialism as a science that conveys any authority whatsoever. This is a cultural offensive on their part which is very highly organized. It is clearly visible in the way Western universities attempt to inculcate any exclusively Cartesian definition of science. This is all very noticeable within the English academic system. They make this approach on their part spectacularly visible. i myself have been confronted by it with compelling intellectual force many times. Clearly numerous commentators on this site have never examined this issue with any depth and can be relied upon to respond with a “university” i.e., bourgeois definition of science without even realizing they are doing it. I doubt however that Ramin misses the point.
Your thoughts Mulga?
Well, Snow, I do think that true science has Authority only in so far as it is honest in the pursuit of Truth, or the closest approximation to it that we can attain. The Scientific Method of speculation, hypothesis, testing, peer review, then affirmation or refutation, followed by better hypothesisation etc, seems to me powerful and empowering, as knowledge is power and affirmation. Affirmation of what, either ‘ultimate reality’, ‘God’, ‘the Nature of Being’ etc, depends a good deal on one’s personal preferences.
And the severing of the link between Science and Truth, as we see in the various denialist industries that refute tobacco harm, anthropogenic climate destabilisation etc and commit so much fraud in pharmaceutical and other research, is one of the sure signs, I would say, of capitalism’s basic perfidy.
I would concur that ‘the mind of God’ is a true description of the Truth, as God must be Truth, or all morality ends up out of joint, but I’m not sure whether ‘God’ is best thought of metaphorically, or literally or even poetically. It all depends on your temperament I suppose.
I can only agree that the study and explication of socialism is truly scientific, in the best meaning of the term, ie the pursuit of Truth in regard to human existence, both individual and collective, now and for as long as humanity survives. ‘Socialism is obedience to God’ for the Believers, seems to me to be self-evident, as any God worthy of the name must be concerned with all his creatures, not just the greedy and unscrupulous few-indeed I believe true religion, particularly Christianity, is the antithesis of capitalism, the God of which is Mammon. Personally, as an agnostic, my socialist God is ‘the Good’, a fair metaphor I would say.
Where you said ‘…science is the search for solidly ‘variable’ data’, did you mean ‘solidly verifiable’ data’?
As for bourgeois ‘science’ that attempts to prove the centrality of greed, competition, egotism etc ie the ‘virtues’ of capitalism, to human existence and civilization, well, they would say that wouldn’t they? It pays the bills, because it pleases the paymasters. The Academy has been ruthlessly and relentlessly corrupted by power since the days of Socrates at the very least, and today, in the West, it is virtually moribund, caught between the force of the money power that demands that greed be deified, and the bellum omnium contra omnes explained as ‘natural’. ‘inherent’ and ‘Darwinian’, and that of the useful idiocy of the Identity Politics splitters, with their moral and intellectual obsessions with ever more infinitesimal factions (a social and intellectual reductio ad absurdum) who demand that their ‘identities’ be recognised, when it is only their living, human, identity that really counts.
Another brilliant essay in this series…the notion of the ‘rich’ peasant struck me as the quite real danger of the petty bourgeoisie…it is alive and well in western society today and is a brake on any kind of real social progress…for instance I have a group of relatives that have achieved minor wealth [low seven figures] in the despicable slumlord business in the Bay Area…
Not one of their kids has amounted to anything intellectually…opting instead for the easy money of speculation…yet just an hour’s drive away is the NASA Ames Research Center, where as a young engineer I got to see up close and personal just how big man’s dreams can be…
Another ridiculous commenter on this thread displays the same kind of petty beourgoie blinkers while muttering some nonsense about how the ‘left’ is supposedly antithetical to science…not actually having any professional knowledge of the world of science, of course…and completely oblivious to the fact that it was socialist ideas like central planning that made possible every single giant stride mankind has made…the examples in the US are the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Program…both of which were top down projects that would never in a zillion years spring into being from so called ‘free enterprise’…
In the postwar Soviet Union, the massive advance in science, especially in the aerospace sector, gave mankind just about everything we know today to take us beyond our own world…a similar collective effort resulted in the peaceful use of the atom…
Capitalism has done nothing for science…but reality will never stop the ignorant…