Hypothesis: Maoism is the basis of postmodern idpol

So I was listening to the second half of Anal Water's reading of Mao's "On Contradiction" where he made the claim that (to use his words) "Hegel would call Mao a subjectivist" because Mao isn't "getting to the real essence of things" (timestamp: youtu.be/o57X9jHPnbc?t=1h19m54s). This got me thinking about the role of Maoism in shaping postmodernism/post-structuralism and thus modern idpol, considering how the very basis of PoMo idpol is subjectivism and solipsism. (For instance, a classical Marxist would say something like: "We need a healthy proletariat," whereas a PoMo would say in response: "What do you mean by 'healthy'? Don't you know 'healthy' is a SOCIAL CONSTRUCT made up by the white cismale colonial heteropatriarchy to exclude certain factions of the population you shit-lord???" PoMos deny that there can be any truth outside of that which exists subjectively in our mind. Tumblr idpolers have taken this up to the extreme whereby they think the way we button up our shirts reproduces existing oppressive power structures.) Postmodernism is anti-essentialist in that it denies there can be any fixed essence to a thing or fixed definition of a word.

Take into account that the French intellectuals' habit of throwing out Hegel and returning to Spinoza (whose method was very similar to Mao's) coincides with the rise of French Maoism. Althusser wrote apologia for Mao's fucked up understanding of Marxism on the basis that Marx dissed Hegel entirely after The German Ideology (epistemological break) and embraced a theoretical antihumanism.

Mao's whole idea of unity-struggle-unity, or "all classes united against the imperialists" fits very well into idpol's anto-essentialism and rejection of the proletarian subject. (This is also why Roo is full of shit when he claims Maoism and idpol are completely at odds; a real Maoist would form a united front with all oppressed groups against imperialism.) Postmarxism, which comes out of Althusser, is pretty much this. It rejects any kind of proletarianism for a blanket taking advantage of any contradictions within the existing society and moving them towards socialist ends (VERY Maoist).

Any thoughts on the matter?

Other urls found in this thread:

opendemocracy.net/digitaliberties/chenchen-zhang/curious-rise-of-white-left-as-chinese-internet-insult
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Stopped reading.

Well, Mao would also say something along those lines.

Do you have an example of him saying anything along those lines?

Well, postcolonial theory (which was DIRECTLY influenced by Mao) does imply that colonizers and colonials have two different truths, and that the colonizers try to fuck with the peoples whom they colonize by forcing them into their own social standards as a form of social control.

Okay, and do you not think this happens?

What do you mean? I'm saying that Mao's methodology is the root of postmodernism.

Do you not think that the colonizers try to fuck with the peoples whom they colonize by forcing them into their own social standards as a form of social control?

They do, but it doesn't mean truth is subjective the way Mao and his PoMo disciples claim. For example, banning bride burning in India was objectively a good thing.

Hi Kermit

Who's Kermit?

Except bride burning is obviously not a good thing for the people who enjoy burning brides.
Your understanding of postmodernism is Holla Forums tier and you should stop shitting up a once great flag.
Rip leftcoms 2016-2017.

(Not OP)
Modern Maoist Third worldism comes from a place of prejudice against people in the third world and the belief that these "Poor brown people" need saving from the evil white man by them because they just cant help themselves
The Maoist idea of Third world basically just means poor and brown and first world means white and rich

Still doesn't mean Mao wasn't subjectivist.

M3W is a joke of an ideology which completely goes against historical reality. The "3rd World" was never able to achieve actual socialism, because they tried to force it on their populations via a vanguard party (almost always made up of intellectuals far above the general population); just imagine what would have happened if a capitalist vanguard party tried to force capitalism in the 1300s. Socialism can only come from capitalism's decay, and nowhere in the 3rd world is at that point yet.

Yeah, my beef with OP wasn't really with his claim about anything, as I said, I stopped reading when he presented a classically ignorant Holla Forums tier argument.

Adressing that, detractors of post-colonial theory often have a surprisingly black and white view of "enlightenment" values they attribute to cultures in a vulgar archaic vs. progressive dichotomy. Žižek talks about this as well. India is a good example: The caste system and other reactionary elements in Indian culture was directly enforced by the British colonial rule sidelined with the introduction of liberal capitalism and the rule of law.

Reactionary values in the Third World almost always were hijacked by the colonial superstructure to enforce the introduction of enlightened capitalism at the same time.

This is a standard you can observe almost all throughout Asia and the Middle East, partly South America and possibly Africa (don't know much about Sub-Saharan Africa). A Marxist realizes that all struggles are connected, the resistence of Third World people against archaic hierarchies is inevitable tied to resistence against settler-colonialism shrouded in a chauvinistic distortion of "enlightenment values". Only by their own genuine development towards a progressive, authentic progression of culture can freedom for colonized people truly been achieved. In short: Never accept the recent distortion of Islam known as "Wahabism" or "Salfism" as genuine expressions of Islam, but at the same time, don't patronize Muslims into adopting western atheistic nihilism - this is based in projecting the stringent history of the West onto other cultures (for example, a dogmatist interpretation of historical materialism or the idea that you have to go through an "enlightenment phase [that's idealistic]), which would also be juxtaposed to what Marx wrote (in his assessment of the Indian caste system for example which he identified as different from both proto-capitalism as well as feudalism).

Just my2cents, not really based on any specific philosopher.

Jordan Peterson. No offense, but your critique of Post-Modernism (whatever that means) is something he'd say.

PROXIMITY TO BABOONS IS THE SOURCE OF IDPOL
FAREWELL BABOONS

Still doesn't change Anal Water's analysis of Mao.

Anal Water is a bigger retard than Roo.

this is the level of intellectual discourse the alt right has. Jesus

What do you think of AW's analysis of Mao?

Anal Water is a conman who never says anything substantial, similar as to how a politician talks. He rambles and mumbles arbitrary stuff into his mic that is based on his personal opinion and reading of "Phenomenology of Spirit".

There are dozens of good critiques of Mao out there. Why would you consult fucking Anal Waters?

You just can't understand his strategy.

What exactly does he get wrong about Mao? That's why I want to know. I listened to both videos of his plus the one he did on Althusser's Lenin Before Hegel essay (where he autistically goes over Hegelian philosophy and why Althusser was wrong).

I'd rather read a good book instead of listening to a namefag whispering in his mic for two hours. I'm sorry. The same reason that no educated Leftcom is going to take on FinBol's anti-Muke videos, no Maoist would try to refute AW. I'm not even a Maoist myself.

If you really want a rudimentary understanding of Maoism, read pdf related.

So, you're refusing to engage with his ideas. Why? You need to show how he's wrong.

I'm not personally obliged to listen and systematically refute every "idea" that disagrees with me, especially when the claimant is an absolute nobody with no credentials.

But since you made this thread two times now and continue to lust for extensive refutations of his two videos I might actually do so, just not the next two weeks cuz I'm on vacation.

In the meantime, you might engage with my post and contribute your own thoughts on this? I'd find this more interesting than Anal Water talking about a Mao book.

Was Anal Water correct in calling Mao a "subjectivist"?

Maoism was a mistake.

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Maoism is about the divide between rural and urban peoples.
Mao would prefer the rednecks over rainbow haired petit bourgeois trust fund kids

Wow. Go read a fucking book.

Pol Pot is that you?

even modern china looks down on white liberals


opendemocracy.net/digitaliberties/chenchen-zhang/curious-rise-of-white-left-as-chinese-internet-insult

See, if mao were an american he would form an alliance between rednecks, inner city ghetto blacks, Latino laborers, and native americans that live on the reservations.

The last thing he would do is be hanging around a bunch of white coastal liberals and academics

Han chauvinism needs to be crushed

This actually sounds like a swell idea. The problem is that things like like racial, gender etc. fractures are exploited not with the aim of breaking the system and establishing socialism, but for pure representism. Is it prima facie impossible to productively use such antagonism? I'm skeptical. Stalin for example handily juggled with national aspirations within the space of the former Russian empire to establish Soviet power, so it can to some extent be done if only you are a committed and cynical enough Marxist.

Based tbh

By your logic, Makhno was a better Maoist than Mao himself.

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That middle image is wrong. All the stick figures need to be white.

What kind of pussy nazi are you? Kill yourself.

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To clarify what I meant by subjectivist, it's not directly linkable to idpol though it is linkable. When one treats the knowledge of the object on its own account abstracted from all other contingency (empirical history) one has 'objective' knowledge of what it is in itself. When you do not do this you are de facto subjective in your knowledge because you can only know what *appears* to you, and that can be anything from naive realism and histmat to cultural relativism and speculative physics.

I have no idea what Spinoza's method has to do with Mao, albeit the rationalism is generally similar in its monism. Admittedly, I don't know enough Spinoza to judge.

As for the idpol stuff, yeah, seems you can link the logic as you propound. The people arguing against you are missing the point in thinking you can be refuted by further elaborations of Maoism such that we find Mao's explicit rejection of it. Such a rejection would amount to nothing, for what is of interest is not what Mao thought his logic amounts to, but rather it is about what his logic ultimately does amount to.

Mao's class collaborationism was clearly based on pragmatism and was theoretically integrated after the fact. I think there is more than enough evidence for a strong argument to be made that Mao's theories in general are justifications for pragmatic decisions after the fact in order to *seem* to have a practice that derived from 'Marxist' theory.

Much better.

This meme needs to end. All politics is ultimately identity politics insofar as it advances the interests of one group at the expense of another. The criterion according to which group identity is constructed can be broader or narrower, but that doesn't make its politics any less identarian. Anyone who makes "idpol" anathemas whilst holding political positions is intellectually dishonest and shortsighted to say the least.

Kind of a strawman against feminists but okay.

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What's wrong with idpol? Explain without the usual catchphrases like "it's UNSCIENTIFIC" or "it's IDEALIST". You have to explain why.

Idpol is a spook

Identity politics are anti-egaliterian.
Identity politics are anti-universalism.
Identity politics push essentialism.
Identity politics are not left-wing.
Identity politics are incompatible with socialism.
Identity politics seeks to solve a problem caused by identity politics.
To keep identity politics is no benefit, to destroy identity politics is no loss.

Cathphrase/10 try again next year


Explain in detail.

National liberation comes first, even according to Stalin (and Mao). Universalism can't exist today because we still have to deal with shit like decolonization, race struggles, national liberationist struggles, and so on. Tell a Palestinian to give up their identity for the sake of "universalism" and they'll tell you to fuck off (and rightfully so).

Plus, "universalism" can be just as much a toxic dogma as nationalism can.

So we maintain a class essentialism then? You're not making a case with any of these.

Doesn't mean they can't be utilized to advance left wing struggles.

Huge blanket statement right here.

Just like how Marxists sought to solve a problem of one class over another through one class over another.

Catchphrase/10. You too should try again next year.

brainlet

They can't.
Class is not an identity.

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The major problem with Zizek's analyses and obsession with universalism and the Enlightenment is that it's still fundamentally stuck in the outdated Cold War paradigm of "anything reactionary must be denounced, anything egalitarian must be upheld." Obviously this isn't true anymore. Supporting Palestinian feminists ultimately means supporting apartheid and ethnic cleansing in Palestine since feminism will cause Palestinian birthrates to go down, which will in turn enable orthodox settlers to outbreed them and wipe them out in a generation or so. Keeping Palestinian women as incubators helps anti-imperialism (and socialism) in the long-term, because large Palestinian birthrates keep the Zionist entity from gobbling up more land. If you don't believe me just look at how Palestinian political prisoners go so far as to smuggle their semen out of prison to give to their wives so they can successfully breed future freedom fighters. They know perfectly well this is about a war of demography. We can also look at Jews and see how the biggest anti-Zionists are also the most right-wring (Neturei Karta). Same thing in Iran. If we support Iranian socialists over the Ayatollah we are de facto supporting American imperialism and the Zionist entity. Supporting atheism and feminism in the Islamic World in general means supporting Zionism and Americanization aka capitalism.

This is precisely why we need to abandon left and right and come up with a way of thinking that's completely new. Marxists can't explain the situation in the Middle East nor can they explain something like the black question or occupied Aztlan question.

There is nothing wrong with ad hoc justifications. You have to win somehow. Who cares if it involves rewriting the entirety of Marxism or using "bad dialectics?" Mao's true genius was being able to change Marxism so it can fit with his conditions and it proved to work.

Explain how I'm being ridiculous.

Please.

this is so ridiculously retarded i'm not even going to pretend that there is anything that could be adresses in a serious argument.
anarkiddy faggots going apeshit again with their false flags.

>>>/leftpol/
seriously just drop your act and fuck off to your sectarian circlejerk, fucking libshit

Your post is garbage. Fuck off to the booru, search for 'idpol' and read.


This post is garbage too.

So far, you have yet to provide any logical reason for why idpol needs to be opposed, nor have you made any case for universalism. Explain it in your own words, not with screencaps.

Fuck off back to Holla Forums, then.

No, YOU make a case for universalism and anti-idpol (the two aren't antagonistic BTW).

Holla Forumsyp, pls go.

so retards

I'm not a fan of national liberation, but MLs certainly are.

This is wrong, Stalin wrote there would be times where the proletarian struggle and the struggle for socialism would have to take precedence over national liberation struggles he cited the Soviet war with Poland as an example of this. National liberation is important but its not the end all and be all for MLs and other socialists for good reason.

It was the end all be all for Lenin, and that's what matters.

National Liberation is only good when the group fighting for national liberation is simotamiously fighting for socialism.

I mean not really. Beyond letting Finland have independence they pretty much sidelined the nationalists across Tsarist territory. As regards Finland, they probably only allowed it because the communist forces in Finland were so well-organized they believed it would go communist…but then came Mannerheim.

You could argue that the Mongolian Revolution of 1921 was "imperialist" because it involved the Bolsheviks exporting their revolution to Mongolia and setting up an aligned peoples republic. Mongolia wasn't even Tsarist territory but a part of Qing China that had seceded in 1911.

Likewise, in Central Asia, the Bolsheviks fought Islamist counter-insurgencies through much of the 1920s. Lenin's policy of national autonomy and the right of oppressed nations to secede was a good idea but they did not implement it at the cost of losing socialism or giving new operating bases to imperialism.

this is actually much more reactionary than shit that regularly gets people banned here these days

haha

Dumb post

Are you ever going to go back to reading Deleuze since it seems like these idpol-tier concepts are laid out in that book IIRC.

What if Muslims WANT salafist fundamentalism?

They have the right to fight, and get crushed under socialist bootheels. This is how history works.

The vast majority of Muslims does not want Salafism.

The ones in SA do.

They only do because their entire nation is basically on welfare financed by slave labor and oil sales. Arabs in Saudi-Arabia don't have to work, obviously they are complacent

Wew lad.

Many Western Maoist militants from the New Left era went on to become champions of idpol, but that has more to do with sociology than ideas tbh.

I'd like to continue it, but I've been reading stuff that's actually useful to my own theory lately.

That's not what idpol means, and neither is it the aim of all politics (the ultimate aim of class politics: abolishing existing class relations). Identity is not just group-group, it refers to a characteristic perceived as inherent to the individual. Class based politics on the other hand is concerned with the relations to the means of production, not inherent individual characteristics. Not to mention that the ultimate goal is to abolish this sort of class relations altogether, rather than just get more benefits for the preferred group. Therefor it can be universal, while idpol is always limited and exclusionary.

Socialist support for idpol should never be anything but pragmatic, opportunistic and most of all, temporary.

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Sort of, but the way you phrased the question makes it clear that you don't have much understanding of the relevant history. Read up on Students for a Democratic Society, and the New Communist Movement.

Literally the only reason why "Maoism" became a thing in the West was due to white guilt by coffeehouse intellectuals (Althusser and others), namely that Marxists sought to reject Hegel and Hegelianism on the basis that it was "too eurocentric" (read: decolonize science). So they went along with Asian dialectics through Mao and ended up giving us all of this quasi-Spinozaist bullshit like "post Marxism".

wew

wew
wew

This is actually correct and ol' Louie himself admitted to it.

Why does everyone on this board fucking hate A.W.? Why does his very name send Holla Forums into shockwaves?

Because it's easier to insult and dismiss than engage in discussion. Just note how they virtually never can say why I'm wrong, only that I am. The ones who offer any argument are rare, but unfortunately they're more interested in argument rather than discussion, and I'm not into butting two walls together to no end.

I can't tell why you are wrong not because you are right, but because I haven't listened to your stuff. I've only seen you posting here and that discouraged me completely from listening to anything ever from you that's longer than five minutes.

idpol is antidialectical because it leaves out class condition and treat a group of people with one characteristic in common as a homogeneous with the same goal

f.e. Feminism puts women all in the same fight when is obvious a proletarian woman don't have the same interest nor goal as a burger woman

The rich, burger woman doesn't care about poor women being exploited or forced into prostitution if she can get profit from that

this happens with every idpol, race, gender etc.

idpols try to put people with different interest in the same level just for one characteristic they are born with

Whatever ideological similarity pomo and maoism have, they're not influenced by each other.

And similarities between "leftist" idpol and cultural revolution are not related to either of them, just convergent evolution at work. The ideology behind them isn't important - just an excuse to unify and channel youth rebellion into a destructive force.

I have read something to this effect, but ultimately, idpol was created by Derrick Bell and Peggy McIntosh, two hacks who had absolutely nothing to do with any form of socialism or anarchism.

Modern idpol is a synthesis of american progressivism with american liberal-capitalism. It took some dialectic and police suppression, but around 1970's the remnants progressivism was battered enough to give up on true socialism and accept the liberal midway solution.

Idpol is the result of a defanged socialist revolution where everyone is equally free to labor for the capitalist classes. It actively seeks to integrate everyone into the system, even fringes and non-citizens in order to suppress wages.

That's my take.

Mao

There is a bit of truth to this. The kind of militant idpol feminism we see today really was first legitimized and encouraged by the CCP during the Cultural Revolution so as to break down traditional gender roles. Of course lgbt and race issues weren't part of the equation then, it was a more female focused feminism, but the level of rhetoric and anger was similar, as were its goals.

Just curious, is it really a remotely mainstream postmodern attitude to think "health" is a problematic concept?

only interesting point in your whole post

I think that Mao inadvertently and probably accidentally helped push Western academics away from Marxist class analysis, but this direct philosophical lineage of Maosim to postmodernism is spurious

National Liberation = idpol

that's cool
I'm moving to China

who embraced it? Marx? where can I read more

Also tell me, aren't proletarians those who produce/create everything? How can a proletarian be "non-existent" if he creates our material culture?

Althusser wrote quite a bit on this subject, says Marx abandoned Hegelianism right before he wrote The German Ideology.

Mao Zedong Thought/Maoism doesn't believe in a proletarian subject.

umm, can you please explain what exactly is this non-hegelian antihumanism?

so, who produces things according to them?

nice imperialism faggot

China is capitalist, there'd be no point, they hate foreigners, especially westerners, they'll never consider you their countrymen, family, or even neighbors, they have nothing but contempt for you, especially white Maoists.

Ask a certain pseud who was name-dropped several times in this thread.