mao

Get Your Mao On (IV): Criticism and Self-Criticism

Liam — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:57:13 -0700

This is a short one that’s been a few days coming.

Kevin Rudd cussed.

KEVIN Rudd has had another expletive-riddled brain explosion - this time directed at Labor’s faction bosses, including three women MPs.
The outburst, which left even the hardened ALP operatives who witnessed it shocked, occurred two Mondays ago.
…
According to sources Mr Rudd said: “I don’t care what you f***ers think!”
He then went on, singling out Senator Feeney declaring: “You can get f***ed”. Before asking in regard to the printing allowance issue: “Don’t you f***ing understand?”
Sources said this was only a part of what was a much more detailed expletive-riddled verbal attack on the faction leaders.

Chairman Mao schooled.

…some comrades ignore the major issues and confine their attention to minor points when they make their criticism. They do not understand that the main task of criticism is to point out political and organizational mistakes. As to personal shortcomings, unless they are related to political and organizational mistakes, there is no need to be overcritical or the comrades concerned will be at a loss as to what to do. Moreover, once such criticism develops, there is the great danger that within the Party attention will be concentrated exclusively on minor faults, and everyone will become timid and overcautious and forget the Party’s political tasks.

Emphasis mine, hypocrisy Milne’s.

(Not, of course, that Glenn Milne, whose writings are a cancer on responsible journalism, is my or anyone else’s comrade).

Get Your Mao On (III): Relations Between Officers And Men

Liam — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:56:32 -0700

Our comrades must understand that ideological remolding involves long-term, patient and painstaking work, and they must not attempt to change people’s ideology, which has been shaped over decades of life, by giving a few lectures or by holding a few meetings. Persuasion, not compulsion, is the only way to convince them. Compulsion will never result in convincing them. To try to convince them by force simply won’t work.

I don’t know why “ideological” has to be an epithet in these post-normative days of universal middle-class entitlement mentality. I was brought up on my parents’ knees to understand ideology as an identifiable system of beliefs or a worldview which prompted measurable behaviour in a society, nothing more and nothing less.

Get Your Mao On (II): Contradictions Amongst The People

Liam — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:28:20 -0700

Recently there has been a falling off in ideological and political work among students and intellectuals, and some unhealthy tendencies have appeared. Some people seem to think that there is no longer any need to concern oneself with politics or with the future of the motherland and the ideals of mankind.

Plus ça change and all the rest of the French deviationist cliché. It’s not the Chairman’s fault that we’re made to imagine politics as a leadership race of inconsequence and personality, and if our Parties compete in an arena of mediocrity, subsidised homeownership and baby production. At least we have moments of sublime insanity to keep us entertained (if also repelled).

Sadly for him, and Morrissetti-ronic for me, Gerard Henderson agrees with Zedong. The Conservative intellectual tradition in Australia really is pretty moribund—moribund in the arse, an unkind person might say.

So… intellectual dormancy. What’s the big fella’s solution?

To counter these tendencies, we must strengthen our ideological and political work. Both students and intellectuals should study hard.

Thanks Mao. That was useful.

Get Your Mao On (I): Correcting Mistaken Ideas

Liam — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:20:38 -0700

With victory, certain moods may grow within the Party - arrogance, the airs of a self-styled hero, inertia and unwillingness to make progress, love of pleasure and distaste for continued hard living. With victory, the people will be grateful to us and the bourgeoisie will come forward to flatter us… the flattery of the bourgeoisie may conquer the weak-willed in our ranks.

This is from the famous Little Red Book so well-used by the sincere soixante-huitards and insincerely by banally sarcastic smartarses (as here).

This post will be the first in a series in which I apply selections from the Quotations to the current state of the Party of which I’m a despairing member, out of their twentieth century context, with a faux-ironic sense of sneering detachment. I’m all for moving forward in a spirit of consultation, but let’s also have a bit of enlightened self-criticism too.

Let’s remember that the labour movement can also make good use of things made in China.