Excerpt from
An Interview with Harry Magdoff
by Christopher Phelps
May 1999
REFLECTIONS ON MAOISM
Q: What do you draw upon in Mao still?
MAGDOFF: To me, the important thing is a different view of development and socialism, one that puts a very strong emphasis on consciousness as a factor in overcoming the competitive spirit, which is not something that will happen overnight. It might even take centuries, but you have to work towards it. You have to think and be conscious of it.
Also the fact that there's always the tendency toward the formation of strata and classes, if not in Marx's sense of classes, at least group interests different from the masses' interests. You have to fight against that, have constant revolution, be conscious of it and struggle, not accept it as the firm established state, the one perfect way of doing things.
Then the strong emphasis on the peasantry, and the role of industry associated with the peasantry: “walking on two legs” as a principle.
There is also his critique of the notion that the development of the productive forces is the most important thing-that element of Soviet development, whether it came from theory, self-interest, or both. Of course, you've got to develop the productive forces. You go to China, and you see someone sitting on a roadside chiseling on a piece of stone with a hand chisel, and you think how many hours and days he's got to do it, when it could be done so easily. The productive forces are important to lighten the work and to get more product out of it for the people. But if you emphasize them to the exclusion of productive relations, then you go away from socialism. Privileges start to develop.
These, to me, are very important elements of Maoism. Now, you can find things in Mao, start looking again, analyze his every word, and so on-but these ideas are strictly important.
Q: I take it, then, that you disagree with the criticisms of the Cultural Revolution prevalent today?
MAGDOFF: The attempt in China to move the high school students and college students to the country sounds arbitrary. And it's true, it is. There's no other way of doing these things. The point is the city people looked down on the farm people, didn't under- stand what hard work was like and what their life was like. On the other hand, farm people needed that education. In many cases, there's no question that students were misused. There were all sorts of problems. But there were other areas: they instituted a speaker system and they learned about work.
Anything that you do on a mass scale is going to have complications and contradictions. When terrible things happened, it was the result of doing things before there was preparation and program. You have to have the institutions for it. It doesn't come by itself.
Now, I'm not defending everything that happened. I'm not saying that disasters did not occur for one reason or another. But the approach, the thinking, the ideas are fundamental socialist ideals that apply to the third world and should be applied to the first world, too, which has not been uppermost in the thinking of the Communist Parties. In that sense, Mao's words are not a Bible, but the ideas are fundamentally important. His criticism of the Soviet book on economics was very important.
Now, you say “politics are in command,” and then you get people who are members of the Communist Party but are no good, and so you get their politics in command. It's not a question of the Communist Party, but of the particular individuals that are involved, the particular clique that happens to develop. That's all part of it, part of the complexities of a developing society. But the idea of putting politics in command, that it's not productive forces but productive relations, is democracy-not in the classic sense, but democracy. One of the big things in the Cultural Revolution was that people began to talk. They got to speak up against their leaders. It was a new thing altogether. It failed, for all sorts of reasons. But the idea that you can speak up is very important.
Q: I see that anti-authoritarianism of the Cultural Revolution as being very contradictory, because at the same time there was a tremendous cult of personality around Mao and a great amount of arbitrary authority in his hands.
MAGDOFF: There's no question that it held them up. I'm not justifying it, because I really don't know what happened. Some of the Maoists have explanations of that: that it was not Mao's doing, and so on. I don't know whether that's so or not. In the turmoil, a revolution was produced. In the revolution, a lot of evil came out, and various forces that had been repressed came into conflict with one another, came out into the open. And it didn't work. There wasn't a preparation for it. But at the same time, there was a challenge, a challenge to the intellectuals. There were intellectuals who were tortured, and some of them were badly treated. Some of it was very stupid, very terrible. It's a big country with a lot of people in it, so many things happened at the same time. But something fundamental happened, and I think that the attitude of peasants and intellectuals differed toward the Cultural Revolution.
So it's not a question of taking a position for or against. I wouldn't even think in those terms. I think it needs examination, study, to be seen from different angles. And the positive things in it, I think, are very strong. Democratic ideas were introduced, even though authoritarianism was in control. The idea that you can challenge the leaders and question what they say, even though democracy was suppressed, opened things up for a period.
(Courtsey:http://www.monthlyreview.org/599phelpsmagdoff.htm )