The pseudo-scientific quasi-religious basis of Maoism

Many of the Maoists having been to college or school had laid the foundation of some sort of intellectual career. But in order to achieve the 'populism' on the one hand and the 'folksiness' on the other much of this had to be draped in suitable language. Maoist 'science' became more of a pseudo religion with a materialist core, founded on the basis of Marxist Leninist-Maoism, full of sureties, megalomania and an incredible monopoly of the dialectic. God-made-Man plus the revelations. While preaching a messianic gospel of direct action, the idea of millions chanting a Little Red Book (like some miniature Gideon Bible) having a dramatic solution for even the most trivial of problems was therapeutic for the converted. The constant repetition of Mao's thoughts (or any thoughts) serves as a valuable drug and stimulant. Many Maoists liked the sommulant chanting which, when repeated often enough, had all the atmosphere of a satanic or Hari Krishna mass in a high cathedral. And after all they could feel themselves close enough to the cultural avant-garde (e.g. Allen Ginsberg's Mantras and chanting of litanies or Gary Synder's Cold Mountain Poems. Its essence was a neo-religion enmeshed with a neo aesthetics.

Its declamatory style, more a call to arms than a careful analysis of tendencies, marked its reductionist flight from theory. As Le Dantec was to put it in a footnote which sums up dictatorial thought; "At its furthest limits the revolutionary radicality of absolute politics implies that each thinks the same thing at the same moment", something which recalls Lin Piao's affirmation about one book, one opera etc being the scientific result of the mass line. It was this so-called "mass line" which took the place of godly revealed thought, the tongues of fire falling on the heads of the chosen ones who would interpret the correctness of this line.

In its most worldly expression this was arrived at through the attempts to abolish the frontiers between manual and intellectual work and which was reduced to reading extracts from Mao, simplified, taken out of their context and left to rot on their own. Masochistically many Maoists went to work in the factories not because they couldn't stand any longer their allotted cadre roles in alienated society but because they thought it the right thing to do regarding the party line. No doubt there was some guilt feeling running through this since some workers on learning that certain Maoists could work at less exacting jobs were left in awe as to why anyone would choose a car factory in Billancourt in the desolation of the new reified Parisian suburbs.

While many Maoists went to work inside the factories the Trotsyists remained at the gates handing out leaflets, which the Maoists then tore up as they left the factories. The Maoists never remaining in their ivory armchairs went to live in working class districts and became involved at first hand in real struggle. Their prognosis was of course pre-empted from the beginning. The Maoist leaders used their ideology only to push through conclusions which had already been drawn. As George an ex-student who like many French Maoists, left his studies and went to work in a factory relates in Les Mao's en France; "Very often this distinction was reduced in too simple a fashion..... After work, a few hours studying Mao's texts and perhaps some time working out strategy ..." He read nothing else while working there. In general there was the attempt at constant reductionism, to put things across in the most sloganeering way possible - in fact condescendingly in a way "the proletariat would understand." La Gauche Proletarienne reduced their whole bag of ideological tricks to "de nouveau dans le practique, proletarianization au maxim." Occasionally adding the famous chant "political power comes out of the barrel of a gun." And that's all more or less there was to it.

But it all neatly fitted into the Maoist preference for action that was never related to their real desires where there was praxis embracing a passionate desire for authentic life. It was ironically in the traditional framework they never broke out of, more anarchist than Marxist Leninist - an ideology of pure action. On the side of Bakunin rather than Marx emotively - a subconscious undertow never openly expressed - was partly a reflex of unreflecting spontaenism. It was therefore not surprizing that many a Maoist took down their ugly mug Mao poster and replaced it with one of the wild Mikhail himself, so much so in fact that a close overlap developed between neo-Maoism and a resuscitated but no less ridiculous anarchism willfully disregarding relevant analysis of the hell of existing conditions. The desire for God merely changed its graven image. Un-reflected spontaneity and catch phrases often had ludicrous outcomes. Thus the Weathermen were to praise the torching of a school by kids as a great anti-imperialist gesture and not as it was - proletarian insurgency against one of the major institutional colonizers of this society.

This activist conception that jettisons any consciousness as an encumbrance was given a forcible quasi-Dadaistic interpretation by La Gauche prolétarienne cadre who insisted, "You must make of your head an empty casserole." An ironic statement when one reflects that the empty headed notion of a vanguard party was never rejected.

Thought came from the mouth in the Little Red Book, but not in the way Tristan Tzara intended a symbol rather than a text which anybody else could hardly take seriously but it was precisely as a symbol of something exterior to themselves; a touchstone which gave it its importance. Here was a ritual plus bible and the warmth of being amongst the faithful. All sacrificial religion requires a cornerstone and certain outward rituals. For Maoism it was the sense of sacrifice (of one's studies, career and even life) coursing via a death wish and a horrible burden of guilt, which could only be washed pure by bathing in the waters of 'proletarian' correct thought. On a more general level Maoism must be inserted in the drift towards a spreading mysticism itself anchored in changes in the economy particularly the passage from absolute to relative surplus value.

"With the development of relative surplus value in the actual specifically capitalist mode of production, whereby the productive powers of social labour are developed, these productive powers and the social interrelations of labour in the direct labour-process seem transferred from labour to capiital. Capital thus becomes a very mystic being since all of labour's social productive forces appear due to capital, rather than labour as such, and seem to issue from the womb of capital itself". (Marx: Capital: Vol 111 p.827)

...This really is the foundation of The Society of the Spectacle. It is in this sense that Maoism and the Jonestown massacre are part of the same moment of capital....

Maoism gained its power from the sect. Without the sect it was to become indistinguishable from social democracy. Freud has related megalomania to narcissism and the separation of libido from objects, seeing it in that very dubious term as an "infantile disorder" which in reality is not so much disorder as the need to maintain the false order of a grubby little racket. The Maoist belief in the "true path" which they themselves knew and divulged to others in the hope of them becoming like themselves stemmed from narcissism. The sect became the new socializing institution (or counter institution) and was defended with paranoid passion, usually by an older professional surrounded by acolytes usually school or college kids. Such a sect like all others constantly needed scapegoats and blood in order to maintain its ever-threatened ideological coherence. It's not difficult to see its similarity to the family or fashion clique, which must constantly expel its dangerous element in the hope of reducing its negation to a gibbering wreck. Maoism created enemies where there wasn't really one through savage denunciations of other sects so close in many other ways. Such attacks like all bitter internal wrangling among estranged sects contending for top dog status were usually more savage than the attacks on the dominant strata of the ruling class. Although not confined to Maoism - it is the product of every groupuscule - it reached something of an apotheosis with them. It wasn't so much violent proletarian auto-critique as elimination stakes among the ultra alienated middle classes fermenting to the point of delirium. That such phenomenon are related to a detachment of libido from the dominant institutions of capitalist society - school, family, work etc. - may help explain the militancy of certain Maoists and their journey into psychosis which was rather more authentic than their 'militant' period. When such a detachment occurred an aggressive egocentric narcissism took its place.

For the Maoists who didn't reject theory altogether (and many of them only paid lip service to Lenin's famous dictum that no revolutionary organization could emerge without revolutionary theory) the cornerstone was elevated to a fetishism of 'scientific' thought, Marxist-Leninist-Maoist thought. In essence the French Maoists never really broke from PCF hacks like Althusser over basic dogma (e.g. the repellant Popular Front notion etc) as they moved towards their neo-religious beliefs where even the gobbledygook of "theoretical practice" was reduced to zero where heroic catch phrases were to count the most within the political consensus of the 'people' or 'masses'. In fact you could justify almost anything of the liberal old world in this mish mash and you didn't have to be accurate about your social position in society. The Maoists only had a very inadequate critique of objective roles, which assist in the reproduction of capital. Thus in his book Le Dantec never mentions his job in that little known institution, Les Ecole des Beaux Arts while super militant editor of La Cause du Peuple. Later on becoming an editor for Gallimard, the big shot French publishing company, Le Dantec could afford to entertain a lot of romantic nonsense about Brittany because his material existence was not rooted there. The paper leopard had not changed his spots.

The fetishism of science with them as high priests and priestesses served to back up their belief that they and they alone, constituted the embryonic theory of these 'masses'. "If you are not Marxist Leninist then you are not revolutionary" (a large wall-poster put up in Portugal in 1976) was a belief that the title ML was a passport to salvation. This certainty was to bring them to positions – often pathological whereby all discussion was impossible and where science had come thundering into social relations in the often somewhat whimsical form of professors like Bettelheim. For the Maoists there was little attempt to come to terms with modern capitalism or explain contemporary control mechanisms. Capitalists were invariably fat and ugly with tall hats like in the 19th century, (c.f. the contemporary Red Ladder street theatre in the UK) while the proletariat was an anonymous mass of cretins following behind the Maoist flag of certainty. Like some Sergio Leone spaghetti western they reduced struggles whereby the good guys and gals fought gallantly against the baddies (called bourgeois, capitalists, fascists, social-fascists etc). In passing it's worth noting that Leone was undoubtedly the best Western Maoist who through the media of film actually did capture the masses for his cause. Unlike other Maoists at least Leone's films were a good laugh and Clint Eastwood was rather more successful as an individual and imaginative hero than Maoists who put forward hair brained schemes in spurts of rebellious lunacy - c.f. the catapults in the biography of Le Dantec. They were highly amusing if not amused themselves. Even as Leninists there was no attempt to produce a theoretical equivalent of Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia without which Lenin arrogantly (and as it happens wrongly) had said the Russian proletariat would have been lost. In general what passed for theory among them was generally a rehash of the ideas of Lenin or Marx written many years ago. There was no attempt to explain modern mechanisms of control thus no real subversion could ensue against them. No critique of consumption was made which had anything to say from what had already been said in the 19th century when Dept 11 was weak and notions about the spectacle were in their infancy. Always looking to the Third World (and with an ideological construct of what it should be too) this was hardly surprizing. They had to wise up somewhat and after the end of the heroic (suicidal) phase drew to a close they became more 'intelligent'. Thus the somewhat ridiculous Maoist cum pro-situ fellow traveler, Jean Baudrillard in The Mirror of Production erred in the opposite direction viewing consumption as the motor of production and unable consequently to explain why periodically living standards fall any and there are severe economic downturns in the history of capitalist accumulation.

The Maoist defence of Stalinism meant that they produced a version of history with all the lies and slanders that Stalin had institutionalized. They produced all the old shit of the CP line in the 1930s and 1940s only branching off with Kruschev 'revisionism' – as it is fondly called by hacks. They slandered the Kronstadt movement in Lenin's Russia- in agreement with the Trotskyists - and reproduced all the lies about the Workers Opposition and Council Communists, took the Communist party line against the FAI-CNT from the Spanish Civil War and repeated all the scurrilous fabrications about Durutti and conveniently forgot movements, which they could not explain. Although neo-Maoism has shame-facedly abandoned all this rubbish it has not ceased to malign the real proletarian movement of the present epoch.

Maoist hieroglyphics provided a global worldview for the initiated and allowed them to practise an almost Masonic type of 'telepathy'. It provided a link between the "fallen flesh" and the "resurrection of the body" by heroically posing the proletariat as the extension of their own world, something that falsified the proletariat and in the real world of production relations made it difficult for the working class to see themselves as having this historical role.

Mao heralds the epoch of Maoism in much the same way as Christ heralds in the Christian era. The difference is in magic, the unscientific utopianism of Christ (and St Paul and Aquinas) and the 'scientific' utopianism of Mao (and Chiang Ching etc). The rejected Christian tradition of the West (and unlike the Communist party there were few, if any, Christian Marxists amongst the Maoists) - was replaced with the work of secular piety. The ruling class theological attitude towards religion in the early I8th century had given way to a more political attitude to religion at the middle of the 19th century but as Marx pointed out "political emancipation from religion is never consistent or thorough going" hinting at a more profound continuity than is generally acknowledged in the formal disestablishment of church and state. Maoism underlies it.

The religious connection between pious strivings and the broadening of democracy requires explanations. Like certain British leftist organizations in the last century (including much of the Fabian society for example) Maoism was also to see in the state the pious yearnings of an established church. Pious does not mean sanctimonious, it refers to the nature of political illusions and how they survive. "The members of the political state are religious to the extent that the individual member regards his true life as that political life beyond his individuality" Marx was to write. Maoism was for seizing the state machinery, bringing in communism through it. Such illusion of state and party building is the expression of a pious hope to ameliorate the conditions rather than destroy the premises that give rise to them. There is the connection between the belief in the state and the belief in religion and in Maoism they were often to reach fanatical proportions.

With Maoism this lack of realism was closely related to the quasi-divine status of the leader himself; it differs from absolute monarchy only in that someone like Louis XIV received his powers directly from God whereas Mao (or Kim II Sung or Enver Hoxha ) receives his power through the interaction with the "workers' state" and the correctness of the "mass-line". The mass of those without property are asked to emulate this fantasy through an ideal bureaucracy.

A nascent bureaucracy like that which existed within Maoist groups, from Progressive Labour to La Gauche Proletarienne represents the 'class' consciousness of guilt which expiates itself by projecting its fallen idol onto the working class. Some of these heroic demands were to trap parts of the proletariat usually through unions. But usually the effigy of the proletarian hulk - all muscle and cleanliness - strangling diminutive capitalists turned into a fanciful Goliath of morality, which was duly rejected. One can imagine a film scenario in which the Maoist liberal eyes the workers and the workers eye the Maoist; an ideological camera shot where the one is flattered by the attention shown him, the historical power of his class, while the other is envious of that pristine state of revolt which is reputably ethical but lawless. Between them is the reproduction of bourgeois power and the scattering and dispersion of class struggle.

Maoist doses of self-criticism, which were administered, have more to do with Catholic flagellation than with protestant internal suffering with maybe the outlet of a psychiatrist to relieve some of the pain. This form of self-criticism had nothing in common with proletarian self-emancipation precisely because these investigative processes (one group in the UK had a Commissar for Personal Relationships) were embryonic forms of a state judiciary - the moral punishment bar none. Participants were encouraged to reveal their inner selves and hang ups then to be democratically tortured by the rest of the group. Drunkards claiming that they loved drink more than the workers, frustrated men telling how they bought some pornographic magazine rather than the party newspaper are sufficiently well known to anyone with any contact with the Maoists and their fall out into issue politicking groups of everyday life that they don't bear repeating here. Materialism would come to occupy the position of father confessor (forgiver-of-sins within the party assembly). In front of the group, here was evidence of the fall, a silent inquisition worse than anything that the Jesuits were able to imagine and by which the renunciation of the flesh (dressed in the new lefty ascetism) was the only path to salvation. In a secular form it retains the Catholic laissez faire while, like Luther, it feels lasciviously the irresistible attraction of the power of capitalism all around and interpret it as the Devil's final seizure of power in this world, while at the same time prophesying "the second coming" and the Devil's overthrow. The world is the Devil's and the people in it have become pure devils. At times just how far removed were some Maoist ideologues from a Lutheran apocalypse?

As RH Tawney in Religion and the rise of Capitalism was to write on Luther so too we could write on Maoist organizations especially at their purest.

"Confronted with the complexities of foreign trade and financial organization or with the subtleties of economic analysis he is like a savage introduced to a dynamo or a steam engine. He is too frightened and angry even to feel curiosity. Attempts to explain the mechanism merely enrage him; he can only repeat that there is a devil in it."

He can only repeat that there is a devil in it. Perhaps this is the kindest way to look at the Maoists. But there is a difference between the early Lutherans and the Maoists, a fundamental one, one which separates it from the early capitalists (who were to use neo-Lutheranism to defend their interests) and the present day state-capitalists. The Devil, which the Maoists called from the flames, was different only in the manner in which he appears. While for Luther "We are the Devil's property" was a slogan which started out from original sin, for the Maoists this slogan had become, as previously mentioned, "de nouveau dans la practique proletarianisation au maxim" for La Gauche Proletarienne. Luther's "money was the word of the devil" was no different for the Maoist as the devil was shrugged off onto another class the workers, who could be tamed through the proper ideological management and the burden of original sin "the token whereby the world is sold into grievous sins" borne by the liberals.