Instead of finishing Maoism Will Be Incarnated
I chose to write flashcards for my presentation to the university's Philosophy Club, and I've decided to digitize them here for posterity.
Thesis - Maoism did not exist until 1988, it was declared as Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the Communist Party of Peru's Fundamental Documents and the General Political Line.
Still further, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism continued to consolidate throughout the 90's through the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, being adopted formally by major Communist parties in 1993 (in Nepal, India, the Philippines, etc.). [This short list of countries could be an inaccuracy, I'll have to double-check.]
Even in the Middle East we have the TKP-ML [Turkish Communist Party Marxist-Leninist] and the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan, whose objectives are now to overthrow the Taliban.
Now, other than Comrade Gonzalo there are a few other theorists who, beginning from anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism, came to theorize the beginnings of Maoism:
Abimael Guzmán, Ibrahim Kaypakkaya, Akram Yari, Charu Majumdar, and I chose to believe Fred Hampton would've been an excellent Maoist if he wasn't assassinated by the FBI.
Maoism, at least thus far, has been the result of intense and even violent political activity in the Global South, it isn't any more or less violent than the imperialism they've been historically subjected to.
Fred Hampton 1969 - First of all, we say primarily that the priority of this struggle is class. That Marx, Lenin, Che Guevara, and Mao Zedong and anybody else that has ever said or knew or practiced anything about revolution, always said that revolution is a class struggle. [...] Those that don't admit to that are those that don't want to get involved in a revolution, because they know that as long as they're dealing with a race thing, they'll never be involved in a revolution. [...] Political power doesn't flow from the sleeve of a dashiki. We know that political power flows from the barrel of a gun.
Now, on Marxist philosophy—this was Althusser's main struggle intellectually through the entirety of his academic career, because he chose to demarcate between Marxist social science (historical materialism) and Marxist philosophy (dialectical materialism) and identified the split as beginning with the writing of the 1846 work, The German Ideology. Althusser remarks that Capital is primarily a scientific work but that dialectical materialist philosophy is operative throughout
this work. After the discovery of historical materialism, Marxist philosophy didn't resume until 1877, with Engels' Anti-Dühring. He also remarks that Mao Zedong's On Practice and On Contradiction are excellent texts of dialectical materialism, but he says the results are largely descriptive.
No Marxist philosopher has ever left us a capital D Dialectics ... Perhaps for the best.
Lenin - Philosophical Notebooks, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism
Torsion and Tension
So, to begin to understand the idea of a philosopher of Marxism. First we must clarify something regarding philosophy and philosophers, a basic but important assertion: Science is prior to philosophy, it is a great pretension of philosophers (like Kant) to attempt to set sciences on a philosophical foundation, when really it's reversed.
The role of the philosopher is to force clarity about theoretical terrains, their role is similar to that of a cartographer, creating maps and guides about the fields of human knowledge. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is exactly this, a scientific terrain.
Why the emphasis on clarity? Because philosophers should strive for demystification, the philosopher must be counterpoised to the hierophants of ruling class ideology.
Sciences, much like anything else, develop historically through paradigm shifts in their field of knowledge.
Alchemy → Chymistry → Chemistry
M → ML → MLM
Too many philosophers are involved in the practice of occultation and this is precisely where philosophy becomes the sole possession of specialists instead of a theoretical weapon in the hands of the masses. In this, the Marxist philosopher accomplishes something rather disturbing. [It was at this point that I quote Mao Zedong, Liberate philosophy from the philosophers lecture halls and textbooks, and turn it into a sharp weapon in the hands of the masses.
]
To contrast, I would like to point to modern occultism. [That's a study for later.]
Another thing I'd like to bring up is that while the French Revolution was a source of thought for Kant and the ensuing German Idealist tradition, the Cultural Revolution should be a source of thought for potential revolutionary philosophers.
Another, Maoism was the eventual result of Communists reaching the theoretical and practical limits of Marxism-Leninism, prefigured in the works of Lukács and Gramsci and some of the Frankfurt School, particularly regarding the mass line, an example to point to is that every major socialist reform in China came after large mass movements involving millions.
Anti-Communism and psychological warfare: [Another time.]
The debate between idealist traditions in philosophy and materialist traditions is as old as philosophy itself, and it's no wonder that all of Democritus' works were burned. In India we find the unsurprisingly heterodox school of Charvaka. Unsurprising to any Marxist, materialist philosophy has been historically surpressed. This is why Kant was correct to describe philosophy as a battlefield in the realm of theory.
But, a mistake would be made if one were to treat this as immutable; dialectics is the study of the unity of opposites, and Althusser was correct to assert that [idealist] philosophy is haunted by materialism just as much as materialism is haunted by idealism.
Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan - formed 2004
Communist Party of India (Maoist) - 2004
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) - 1996
Communist Party of the Philippines - 1969
TKP/ML - 1972
ILA - 1980 Inicio la Lucha Armada (Peru)
The fundamental principle of Marxist philosophy is: One Divides into Two.
Capitalism not only secures the conditions of production but it must also secure the conditions of its reproduction. Althusser theorizes this through the functions of the Ideological State Apparatuses, which operate primarily through ideology, and the Repressive State Apparatus, which operates primarily through violence. The ISAs secure the ideological conditions for the reproduction of capitalism and the RSA secures the political conditions.
Now, what is ideology itself? Quite simply, ideology is the individual subject's imaginary relationship to their real conditions of existence. The function of ideology is to conceal relations of production, which, in the last instance, are relations of exploitation. Ideology has been with us since the beginning, without reserve, in every society.