okay shall we move on to the second?

This is an expansion on the first quote. I think that quote by quote is going to be a bit redundant, but so far it's fine.

How do you come to that conclusion. You have just describe centralism, it has no indication of who make up these ranks. The masses can be organised in a centralised party.

They can express different views. You probally have never worked in a Marxist-Leninist party, so you don't know any better. Whenever planing and voting occurs at the lowest branch level to the highest level at the congress, anyone present can voice their opinion.

However you have to convince people your opinion is correct and best for the party. If you don't not coninve people, and people vote another way then the party has decided your idea was not the best present. For the sake of unity of the party comrades should follow what the party decides to be correct and best. In time if practice does prove you idea right, at the next appropriate time you can voice your opinions again.

Well I think people have moved to quickly into the book. If we are going to be serious about discussing this book then we need to talk about the book's production, purpose, intent, who was invovled, who the aimed audience was, the historical context etc. We also need to control ourselves and wait till the quote we want to discuss is up for discussion.

I think we should discuss the book in two ways. We should discuss it's theory as well as it's use a agitation and propaganda. The book wasn't realised as groundbreaking work in the realm of Marxism-Leninism.

It was produced as a collection of quotes from Mao's works, speaches and study on Marixism-Leninism and its application in China. It was chief desginer was Lin Biao, early editions have introduction by Biao. It was intended to educate many illiterate (to be literate) or poorly educated peasants and workers who had not long ago lived under a semi-feudal, semi-colonial society in the basics of Marxism-Leninism. It was not to be used as a text book as such, rather as a simple guide to discussing revolutionary change in China.

When we (first world Communist) discuss the book we need to keep this in mind. This is why we should discuss the books propoganda style. We need to apply the quotes to our situation and expand beyond the simple approach of each quote and relate it back to experince.

Not to be offensive, but your post shows the exact ignorant approach we don't need when studying this book.

I hate centralism, it's not democratic. You are subordinate to a representative, and not the other way around.

If you say that regular members can revoke a representative of any authority, you have to kidding. Unless there are multiple bureaucratic barriers.

I'm not talking about that.
Publicly, you can't express that you differ with the rest of your party on an issue, policy, or even the framework of the party.

But they are just statements...the are fragments of speeches. You say how a washing machine works by just having it's knob. MLism can't be "basic", same with any political theory, you have understand society's civil-mechanisms first before diving into any "basics".

A quote is just a quote, it's a fragment of a complete thought. Anyone can interpret quotes however they like. When that happens the content which the quote was in, then the context of the time it was taken out of are completely irrelevent to another situtation.

Sorry but I think it's worst book ever written. As you said, it wasn't really for insight but for learning to read. It didn't teach peasents and workers how to influence policy in their favour, it didn't say what mechanisms the new state had, it didn't give ideas in how to organize.

You can't make something relevant, it has to already be relevant.

the representation of any leftist movement, including a centralised vanguard party, has to be subordinate to the members

not the other way around.

I agree.

Quote:

Mao Zedong

If there is no vanguard which leads the working class and inspires political consciousness to them from without, then working class action will never reach beyond Economism (trade union actions, strikes, etc.) and spontaneous action because the political question was ignored. Not everyone in the working class has the time or the resources to study in full detail the specifics of political economy since they have to toil to maintain a bare subsistence for their own lives; hence the reason why we have the intellectual minority submitting to the working class majority in the form of a party.

Criticise: I think you need to criticise that piece of dogma (and live up to your name)

nah that would be revisionist

NKOS:

According to Lenin, no science is beyond or above revision.

Quote fixed.

"Ignore the infidel!" Oh, I just love this.

Mao's writings are so simple and dogmatic that they are only laughable. It is like the writings of a ten year old who had memorized the Stalinist dogma for his exam.

according to mao

anything that doesnt agree with him is revisionism

no revisionism is/has been basically the paved road to capitalism. IE "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and the Interest and Credit reforms of 1956. Critiscism and Self-Critiscism are important parts of Maoism.

very true. The vanguard of course, is made up of workers and peasants. Third quote?

Well, if you're searching for criticism, I did criticize the commonly held viewpoint (especially on this forum) that one does not necessarily need a vanguard to lead a revolution. In fact, as history has shown, chances of a successful revolution using vanguard tactics has a better chance of being successful.

Lefty:

In other words, as Maoists you have to give up thinking -- for to do so is to called a 'revisionist' (and, in China, say 40 years ago, risk being shot, etc.).

In other words, you can criticise anything but the party -- so the party becomes god.

Bottom line: Lenin was wrong; there is a theory that cannot be questione -- Maoism.

Count me out.

Criticise:

And yet, all have failed....

He wasn't talking about a Vanguard , he was just talking about a party. A party is just a group of people. As long as the party is formed around Marxism-Leninism it doesn't matter-- they can build their base at first as MList, their frame work can be bourgoeis socialist, and they can put like an Anarcho-Capitalist roof if they wanted to. Just as long as this group of people says they are for the working-class and makes it so they the workers have no other alternatives, they can lead the masses of workers.

They have to defeat the running dogs, but as for the sitting cats, they can live.

Actually the cultural revolution was about criticizing the party and "bombarding the headquarters" so yeah, you're wrong.

That's such a simplistic answer. No analysis of the quantitative and qualitative changes taking place with these revolutions throughout the twentieth century, no study of the objective material conditions and the strategies taken which either advanced or slowed down the revolutionary movement...all you have done is dismissed all of the practical experience of the past century and a half entirely without giving any second thought to what actually happened.

Quote:

In other words, as Maoists you have to give up thinking -- for to do so is to called a 'revisionist'

Astounding. You do not know what a revisionist is, do you? Revisionists are people who are Marxists in words, but anti-communist or reactionary in deeds. One is not a revisionist based on "thinking" or non-thinking, as you so colorfully describe.

Quote:

EL KABLAMO

Lenin once said that a proletarian party has a vanguard role. I note no contradiction between this and Mao's quote and my comment.

Their "frame work" (sic) is to organize the working class politically and instill in the workers a political consciousness. Without political consciousness, the revolutionary movement can never move beyond temporary gains such as wage increases and shorter working hours when the big goal is to seize political power from the bourgeois class and institute the proletarian dictatorship and make these temporary gains along with many other improvements to material life permanent. The working class needs to see "the bigger picture," the working class needs to know its enemy. Its enemy- the bourgeois class- thinks politically, therefore the working class must think politically if it is to win the class struggle.

And what other alternatives would there be, exactly?

And who would the "sitting cats" be, if we are to follow your metaphor? Bureaucrats, I presume?

Criticise:

This is the learning section; what else do you expect?

Except, for all its simplicity, it is still true.

I have in fact revised the term (on the lines advocated by Lenin himself).

According to Lenin, this is a revisable claim, too.

You need to criticise more, and except less on faith alone.

Or, change your name to 'criticise only some things'....

I did not expect a long, exhaustive essay (which is your field of expertise, writing much about nothing on subjects you fail to comprehend). But quality does count, and your simple phrase "yet all have failed" lacks miserably in quality. Why does it lack in quality? As I said before, you simply dismissed the past experiences of a century and a half in revolution and counterrevolutions, all of the gains and all of the accomplishments made.

You have revised the term to accommodate your own views- which means you adopt Marxist words, but in deed distance yourself from Marxism as a theory successfully tested in practice and still applicable as a philosophy to the current world situation. It would be curious to know just which "lines advocated by Lenin" you employ in your action, and whether or not you truly understood those "lines."

You must remember that if a theory does not work in practice, then the theory must be changed to work in tune with the objective conditions. Studying the objective conditions in the working class movement, we see that without politically conscious organization (a vanguard), there can never be a successful revolution because the working class does not have the political consciousness necessary to seize power and to make the necessary changes to improve life and better the world. If this "claim" did not work in practice (and history has shown that it did and still does), then it would need to be revised.

I do not rely on "faith," I rely on what works. If something does not work, then it is criticized. That is the whole point of criticism, to demonstrate what has failed in order to define what must be improved or changed. Marxism works. Dialectical materialism works. It has been applicable in the past, and in the present. And as a theory dialectical materialism is not so difficult to comprehend once you study practical experience.

Moving along, I'm looking forward to other statements about Mao's second quote. If there are enough responses, or no one responds after a lengthy period of time, I shall move on to the third quote.

Criticise:

I have to be honest here, I matched the quality of my answer to the perceived quality of the comments already posted by your good self and others.

So, point a few fingers at yourself.

Nonetheless, it is true for all that: every 'vanguardist' revolution has failed.

Not really, since I have not said what I have revised it to, or on what basis. Now, you might want me to revise my version, but then you too would be a revisionist.

I am happy to welcome you aboard.

The point is, that if all things are revisable, according to Lenin, then not even Mao (shock, horror!!) was right.

And 'tested in practice'?

You are joking, surely?

Marxism is perhaps the most unsuccessful political theory in history (when it need not be so). The philosophy behind it is partly responsible, since it was inherited from a ruling-class hack (Hegel).

More details at my site.

So, on that basis, dialectics should be the first thing out of the window.

And, you are once again just quoting dogma at me; there is nothing in history, nor theory, to show that workers cannot win their own revolution.

For sure, petty-bourgeois Maoists might want to argue differently, to defend their own attempts to substititute themselves for workers (as they did in China, in 1948, for instance), so that they can cling onto their position as the new ruling-class, but I think we are wise to that.

Or are we???

Maybe not....

I chose the word 'faith' carefully, since your brand of Marxism does not work.

And of all theories, Dialectical Materialsm is one of the weakest in human history.

Once more: details at my site.

Good luck with your Bible study, though....