Western Maoism: its effects on a changing state apparatus becoming "neurotically insupportable"

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A prelude to the breakdown of the state?

Like Le Dantec writes, so too could one of our modern statesmen: replying to an article written by a former friend in the Trotsykist, Ligue Communiste Revolutionaire he writes:

"Unfortunately for me I am no longer a virgin, having experiences, I think, all the contemporary versions of Marxism; Stalinism, Guevarism, Trotskyism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, Basism."

If this is an exclusive list (what's Basism?) then we can understand why this figure walks alone amongst the granite promontories with a King Arthur asleep somewhere in the sky above waiting his alarm call.

The state left its 'virginity' behind and from 1968 on has learned to live with a new host of partial critiques and small pressure groups. Of course neither Le Dantec nor our modern 'states persons' have learned to live with the increased combativity of the working class, a combativity, which in ever-increasing ways has relied on its own autonomous forms and invisible leadership, which unlike old conspirators of Bakunist persuasion is not hidden rather is not even there to be known. It is so threatening that the modern state would like, more than ever, to be able to see and negotiate with its enemy, if only it could find its centre. (For a description of the effect of these elitist groups on the organisation of class autonomy see in particular, Portugal, The Impossible Revolution? Phil Mailer, Solidarity, London 1977 and Wildcat Spain Encounters Democracy, Autonomia Proletaria etc, BM Bis, London 1979.)

The role of these small elitist groups within the autonomy of the class based organisations of strikes and other struggles has been extremely negative, and the way in which they fall in with and anticipate certain tendencies within national capitalisms has put them on the side of the state. To locate the reasons for this would be to go a long way to explaining the tail-ending of reformism and the novel and often surprising forms in which these groups, by choosing the terrain of national capital vis-à-vis national independence, anti-imperialism etc, managed to play the role of parallel state control mechanisms. The precise role that the Maoist organisations played in the reorganizations of the Chinese state, over the period 1969-75, by smashing the workers' movements from the revolutionary period of the Cultural Revolution has been documented to some extent. Their role in the West is less so.

As in China, where the weakness of the Maoist cadres had to appeal to partial control by the workers over management – something organised and separated by the Maoists - the western Maoists, even weaker within the state apparatus, had to appeal directly to the strength of the workers as somehow synonymous with the strength of the Maoists. The workers are the life-blood of any capitalism and he who controls the flow of this blood controls this capitalism. The pseudo-scientific elitism of the Maoist groups made them believe that they had a strong case to say that they controlled a good part, dialectical fiction in the worst socialist-realist fashion.

It was a general characteristic of the Maoists whether radical or reformist (basically there was no difference) that the existing institutions had first to be captured in order to be destroyed (they would destroy them afterwards) that power must first be consolidated before it could be put at the disposal of the 'workers' etc. But given the weak base of most of the Maoist groups and their desire to increase this base it was impossible to make this assault on power head-on. Just as the Maoist cadres in China had to appeal to partial control by the workers - organised and separated by them - the Western Maoists had to appeal to the framework of the existing institutions, unions, liberal organisations etc. They believed that by forcing these institutions into confrontation, led by the direct action of the Maoists themselves, that they could radically transform the nature of these institutions. Little did they realise that they were modernizing them and servicing them, something which those in power were unable to do themselves. Any group which seeks power makes the appeal of that power greater, revitalizes it and gives it substance, makes itself conscious and triggers a series of early-warning devices throughout its institutions. It is in this sense that most Maoist groups served the interest of the technocrats, as they never attempted to destroy the manifold state apparatus from the bottom up. The only revolutionary attitude towards all state institutions be they police stations, tourist boards, art galleries, DJ music palliatives on the transistors etc, is their complete and utter subversion / destruction.

How did it come about that the revolution of everyday life passionately felt and desired in the late 1960s could so quickly be beheaded and replaced with a permanent reformism of everyday life jam packed with committees, issue-politics mini-stars, ad hoc charities cum para statist bodies e.g. law centres / child battered wimen centres / the single homeless / 'live' music pressure groups / plasterers against the Nazis / rock against sub-contracting etc.??????

The left are into seizing the state machinery, making of it, an organism as supple as a millimetre sheet of rubber with the kick of an elephant. There is no question that arouses so much bitterness as that of the state and though more energy now has been devoted to the analysis of the state than ever before it aims at its 'mastery' rather than abolition. The more that state-capitalism develops and the more complex it becomes, all the time creating more and more ministries, organisations, special police units, social workers and even more recently, anti-organisations to guard against the bureaucracy of the existing organisations, the more that factional fighting within state capitalism will grow. The para-statist bodies force revolt the better to contain it. Maoist populism allowed the nature of these parallel factions to remain hidden thus arresting the development of an autonomous proletarian movement against them all.

Ambiguity caused thousands of workers and students to take Maoism seriously, to accept the 'peoples / masses' as a valid concept and to ignore class. Many of them sold their wild oats in the name of Maoism and by 1969 moved into the frontier posts of modern capitalism in community work, Adventure Playgrounds, (Britain and the USA) and social service industries. They continued to be Maoist in the sense that they continued to provide the link between the 'people' and the state. They became the new sad policeman / women of the state institutions without even the ranting official militia ideology to back them up.

A group can see and dislike the injustice of various aspects and consequences of the history of capitalism; homosexuals discriminated against, women paid less for the same work, the beaches filled with tar, the rivers full of toxic chemicals, the racist culture. And those who wish to destroy the state in order to recreate it really call for the liberalization of this state, but being against the sexist state, the racist state, the polluted state, the artless state, the badly managed state only hides the real issues, and aids the reorganization on a partial basis of this self-name state.

Though the state has grown more repressive since 1968 (particularly the police) there has been an enormous liberalization cum libidinization. Yet it has done so by managing to increase the already heavy burden of guilt, something that would have doubtless surprised Freud. 1,000 complexes have become a demand upon the state to change its ways (e.g. "smash the sexist state"). More and more tabooed subjects are brought out into the open, which the rags of Victorian morality can barely hope to contain, but done so as a demand upon the state. Partial demands spread throughout society help secure the cohesive function of the state - guarantor finally of capitalism. Thrown onto the state - the guilt inducing structure today par excellence, itself inheritor of religion - partial demands never escape the dynamic of the tendency for guilt to deepen; as Marx formulated it: "The political state is related to civil society as spiritualistically as earth is to heaven." A total revolution has fragmented into many unrelated guilt ridden pieces. The development of a 'sensitive' state capitalism is now in the process of making civilization "neurotically insupportable" as hinted at by Freud in Civilization and its Discontents. The changing fabric of the state compounded by issue politics is possibly bringing about the Rubicon of neurosis – a situation Freud could hardly have envisaged. New and old-fashioned Maoism with its statist trajectory has greatly accelerated this process whereby the state maybe becoming neurotically insupportable – more vulnerable to overthrow - along with the rest of its old hideous functions.

The desire to help, once the terrain of the state limits it, is always overshot by the desire to control. Such organisations are doomed to end up as para-statist, with modified versions of those who presently control this state. They like workers who have become union organisers, convert the rebel into the social worker and the converted social worker into a saint. Spontaneist and those without the guiding light of Mao thought (or other ideological thought which comes from without) becomes as much their enemy as it is to the state. They are creatures at the extreme limit of social determinism for which everything worthwhile has been done, all help has been given and yet they foolishly reject it and they appear for no apparent reason not to want to help themselves. The 'good' worker in this scenario - so common amongst the left - is the one who is moralised and fights for union recognition, decent houses, play spaces etc. The 'bad' worker is the one who makes impossible demands, ones which neither the state nor the para-statists can fulfill, has little truck with the "fundamental laws", goes his / her own way and in the end refuses to fit into the reformist, even revolutionary reformist schema of these well laid plans of mice and men.

The moral sense of the para-statist is the modern Dostoyevskian tale of crime and punishment. When the crime is stopped and the barbarian is civilised, the 'revolutionary' social worker is also sad. It was not what he / she wanted, - to kill an old woman for the sake of a few roubles. Even in getting others to feel guilty there is really little satisfaction. Contemptuous of the spineless creature they have produced they only kick themselves when kicking this wretch. When the state re-echoes this demand and even goes that little way, even spectacularly, to do something about it, he feels cheated and robbed of his Promethean fire.

The leftist Maoist thus finds himself in the comprehensible guilt of the Tower of Babel. The practititioners of guilt usually reinforce the division of labour in society because the incomprehensible guilt is directed against those whose experience of capitalist social relations is greatest. It reinforces the guilty liberal at the expense of the proletariat all the time forcing the state to become an image of itself, something above the conflicting interests of classes, above society, above class struggle.

The reformist of the para-statist is a sword of Damocles, cutting both ways. While the proletarian finds it an obstacle to self-organisation (although he /she may use the access to Xerox machines etc for his or her own purpose) the Maoist sees it as a route to increasing the numerical strength of the party. Even anti-Maoists fail to understand the significance of this polarity because Chinese totalitarianism, as the envoy of our collective futures, has also reinforced liberalism. The victory of the Hua-faction in the Chinese Communist party and the imprisonment of The Gang of Four have strengthened it.