An anarchist in love with Mao’s China - Herbert Read’s ‘letters from China’ ... Plus a list of dubious accounts of ‘successful’ revolutions, from Russia to Rojava

Several points:
1. Sir Herbert Read was always an arsehole; the fact that he called himself an anarchist says a lot about the nature of British anarchism. The term "anarchist", whilst often adopted by those genuinely opposed to this society, is, like all "ists", also something adopted by very conventional people (eg Terry Jones, Russell Brand, Bill Oddie - celebrity-comedians in the Uk who never take risks - have all at times defined themselves as "anarchists"). Despite Sir Herbert's "To Hell with Culture" he in fact supported modern culture as much as any other modern art establishment figure (he was a trustee of the Tate Gallery, a curator at the Victoria & Albert Museum and a co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts with Roland Penrose). He had no notion of the realisation and suppression of art, and was merely opposed to some of its more archaic forms. Even within the framework of art he never did anything innovative like the surrealists or lettrists, though in the archaic culture of the UK merely supporting the surrealists might have seemed a little daring.

2. When this article says "possibly 30 million died" during the Great Leap Forward into mass starvation and brutal primitive capital accumulation that seems to be a fairly conservative estimate. The Chinese state itself, which still treats Mao as a national God, estimates 15 million. Others, less implicated in such hero-worship, have suggested at least 45 million. The probable figure is round about 35 million. The man in charge of agriculture at that time was Tan Zhenlin, who in 1958 said, “Communisation is the communist revolution”. Theoretically, communisation meant forcing the merging of small collectives into huge communes, involving the immediate breaking down of the separation between production units, the abolition of property, wages and individual land patches. In practice this meant squads of Communist Party cadres went round smashing up peasant cottages, burning down villages, confiscating all peasant tools and cooking utensils. Peasants were forced into collective slave labour camps. Any independent means to collect, store or even prepare food was taken away and the cadres imposed a monopoly of food supply in the communal dining halls, used as a weapon of social control. Those who didn’t co-operate were deliberately starved to death. In Henan, for instance, from the winter of 1959 to the spring of 1960, at least one million people starved to death – 12.5% of the population. For Read to have said that these communes came into existence "spontaneously" is about as close to the truth as saying Nazi Concentration camps came into existence spontaneously.

3. Ocalan used to be a Maoist. As far as I know he has not denounced Mao publicly, which you would have thought would be the case if he'd decided to re-model himself in the image of Bookchin. The cult of the personality that was intrinsic to Mao's China, is reflected in the cult of the personality of Ocalan also, even down to the similarity of some of the artistic depictions of Ocalan (him appearing in the sky with beams of sunlight behind his head, for instance). What's absurd is for anarchists to hail Kobane as the revolution, with Graeber comparing it to Spain '36-7, when there's probably only 5% of the original population living there in the most dire of circumstances, just trying to get through the day and night without starving or freezing to death. How desperate does one have to be to so clutch at straws that one can dress this up as some anarchist experiment?

4. Victor Serge was almost invariably a fence-sitter. During the Kronstadt uprising he despaired over the calumnies of Lenin and Trotsky but still justified putting the revolt down because the alternative was "chaos". How often have we heard that before? Because of his international reputation, he was probably the only person in Russia at that time who could have denounced the Bolsheviks publicly and lived to see another day. During the Bonnot gang trial he very carefully distanced himself from the others, who felt betrayed by him. Which is not to say that he didn't write some excellent things, merely to say that someone's writing is not the sole or primary focus for judging someone.

- here

In this "Anti-War" publication, he/she/they provided some interesting links to texts to read about "useful idiots" who praised some last decades impostures: China, Vietnam, Kampuchea, North Korea, etc. If readers didn't make the effort to click on each of those links, here I publish one of these texts. It's the interview of Dan Burstein about its visit to Kampuchea in 1978:

Rojava... (Whoops) Kampuchea Takes the Socialist Road

Let's just emphasize among all the bullshit of this beautiful fairy tale this quote about the system of cooperatives:

"The cooperative system, which was actually initiated in the liberated zones in 1973, has now been firmly established throughout the entire country. About 90% of the population lives in agricultural cooperatives which are able to provide most of the daily necessities needed by their members.

The cooperative system has also, been a great tool for tapping the enthusiasm of the masses and educating them in Marxism. Very broad democracy exists in the cooperatives. Every three days there are mass meetings of the whole cooperative to discuss practical tasks, and every 10 days there are meetings to make long-range plans, carry out study, and hold criticism and self-criticism sessions. Through this system the people speak their minds freely with the result that new ideas and innovations come forward at every cooperative.

[...]

Of course these successes of the revolution don’t mean that there have been no failures, mistakes and problems. There are plenty of shortcomings and the Kampuchean people and Communist Party leaders are well aware of them. But the overall picture is very bright. The revolution is going forward full speed."

https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-5/burstein-class-struggle.htm

I know that "comparisons are odious" (Frenchies say "comparaison n'est pas raison", litterally "comparison is not reason") but it's somehow interesting to juxtapose this quote with some praising the same cooperative system in Rojava and you will see that there is the same uncritical mood to believe and praise any "radical" reform that sounds like, that smells like, that looks like revolution but that is nothing else than a watered-down version (Frenchies would say a Canada Dry version):

"The main economic activity here is agriculture, and so the majority of cooperatives are concentrated in agriculture. That is our community economy. The other cantons function in the same way.

Let me explain that in all three cantons we are surrounded—we are embargoed. Rojava is rich in natural resources and agriculture, but we receive no infrastructure investment. Internationally there’s no investment here. Internationally Rojava isn’t recognized—it doesn’t exist. If we want to develop in Rojava, we have to build everything ourselves."

http://www.biehlonbookchin.com/rojavas-threefold-economy/

"In Rojava, neighborhood assemblies make up the largest number of councils. Every person (including teenagers) can participate in an assembly near where they live. In addition to these neighborhood assemblies, there are councils based on workplaces, civic organizations, religious organizations, political parties, and other affinity-based councils (e.g. Youth). People often are part of a number of local councils depending on their life circumstances. These councils can be as small as a couple dozen people or they can have hundreds of participants. But regardless of size, they operate similarly. The councils work on a direct democracy model, meaning that anyone at the council may speak, suggest topics to be decided upon, and vote on proposals.

[...]

How do you base a government on anarchism? Rojava is not the first, and hopefully won’t be the last, experiment in creating a new form of a decentralized non-state government without hierarchy. In the past two years, two-and-half million people in Rojava have been participating in this new form of governance, a governance related to that of the Spanish Revolution (1936), the Zapatistas (1994), the Argentinian Neighborhood Assembly Movement (2001-2003), and Murray Bookchin’s libertarian municipalism. Despite some similarities to these past experiments and ideas, what is being implemented in war-torn Rojava is unique—and it’s extremely ambitious. It’s no hyperbole to say that this revolution in northern Syria is historic, especially for anarchists.

[...]

Radicals in the West have been mostly silent as regards the Rojava Revolution, and we find ourselves in a strange situation where the mainstream media seems more interested in these events than we are. There are of course a number of reasons, and excuses, for this lack of interest in the revolutionary experiment going on in Northern Syria."

http://libcom.org/library/mountain-river-has-many-bends

The link for Chomsky's quote regarding "mutual aid" and "popular control" in Mao's collectivisation goes to an article for NY Books where he's discussing a village in Thanh Hoa, writing:

There are still some peasants who have not joined the cooperatives, but apparently not many, the advantages of joining being rather obvious, including not only state assistance but also the benefits achieved through mutual aid.

That is, a state sanctioned entity also carries benefits which arrive through the free arrangements of individual members. Possibly the least contentious political statement I've seen made. To claim that Vietnamese collectives were the result of Maoist policy is to embrace the most reactionary stance on history.

Popular control is referred to in the following passage:

My personal guess is that, unhindered by imperialist intervention, the Vietnamese would develop a modern industrial society with much popular participation in its implementation and much direct democracy at the lower levels of organization. It would be a highly egalitarian society with excellent conditions of welfare and technical education, but with a degree of centralization of control which, in the long run, will pose serious problems that can be overcome only if they eliminate party direction in favor of direct popular control at all levels

High degree of participation?

Although there appears to be a high degree of democratic participation at the village and regional levels, and some degree of leeway for independent planning at these levels—limited, to be sure, by the exigencies of war—still major planning is highly centralized in the hands of the state authorities.

Perhaps that's an unconscionable statement.

A couple of point:

in which Serge, a former anarchist exiled in Russia, defends the Bolshevik Party, saying the Party ‘must know how to stand firm sometimes against the masses’ and ‘to bring dissent to obey’.

Yes, a former anarchist who, when he wrote the work in question, had been a Leninist for nearly a decade. Unsurprisingly, a Bolshevik is defending the Bolshevik party...

(for more on Serge, see my Victor Serge: The Worst of the Anarchists)

As for Chomsky:

in which Chomsky says ‘there appears to be high degree of democratic participation at the village and regional levels.’

Talk about selective quoting. Chomsky actually states:

Although there appears to be a high degree of democratic participation at the village and regional levels, and some degree of leeway for independent planning at these levels—limited, to be sure, by the exigencies of war—still major planning is highly centralized in the hands of the state authorities.

he also states:

My personal guess is that, unhindered by imperialist intervention, the Vietnamese would develop a modern industrial society with much popular participation in its implementation and much direct democracy at the lower levels of organization. It would be a highly egalitarian society with excellent conditions of welfare and technical education, but with a degree of centralization of control which, in the long run, will pose serious problems that can be overcome only if they eliminate party direction in favor of direct popular control at all levels.

So he clearly indicates that the regime had "centralisation of control" with "party direction", so hardly saying what is being claimed he said. In other words, he is saying there are good elements and bad ones within the regime.

As for the "mutual aid" comment, he is simply stating that co-operation (joint effort) has advantages. He also noted that this was the case in the old regime as well:

We were also told that in traditional Vietnamese peasant society there was a certain degree of mutual aid and some communal land, and also considerable village and regional independence. Land holdings were limited in size by the “law of the king.”

Presumably him noting these facts means that he is a supporter of feudalism?

So less of the selective quoting -- I can only assume the link was provided on the assumption that no one would check...