From Bác’s speech “Bài nói tại Hội nghị đại biểu những người tích cực trong phong trào vǎn hoá quần chúng”, delivered in Vietnamese on 11 February 1960 and later published in print on Nhân Dân newspaper’s issue 2156 on 12 February 1960. Later, that speech is included in Hồ Chí Minh Toàn tập (2011), volume 12.
This is the quote’s Vietnamese original:
Muốn tiến lên chủ nghĩa xã hội thì phải phát triển kinh tế và vǎn hoá. Vì sao không nói phát triển vǎn hoá và kinh tế? Tục ngữ ta có câu: Có thực mới vực được đạo; vì thế kinh tế phải đi trước.
You can’t think about building a post-capitalist society without first developing the productive forces. That’s why I’m so against these “marxists” who dislike Deng. More than a great leader, Deng was a brilliant Marxist. He wasn’t anti-Maoist, as they want us to believe. Mao was absolutely necessary for Deng’s structural reforms to take place. Mao plowed the land so that in the future, it could be harvested.
??
What is “Dengist” about this? The base tending to be predominant relative to the superstructure is generally uncontroversial among marxists. And nothing in this quotation specifies a strategy of economic development emphasizing private investment. I don’t get it.
Ultras, Hoxhaists, Maoists, and anarchists love to say that Deng was a counter-revolutionary force, a revisionist, and that his program was anti-communist in nature.
The fact that he chose to use the mechanisms of capitalism to achieve the development of the economic base is the obvious point of contention, but none of Deng’s critics have been able to present an alternative solution. Capitalism is a historical process qua social arrangement that emerges from the material base. One can no more skip over capitalism than one can simply push the communism button.
We have not seen an industrial society that did not go through some form of capitalist arrangement. Even the USSR had the NEP. Moving through this phase of industrial development of the economic base requires the efficient allocation of surplus and purely pre-planber micromanaging bureaucracy has not shown itself to be up to the challenge, historically
MaoistsFollowers of Gonzalo thought.
Maybe I am missing the context of the quote in the image, but by itself it just sounds like something Lenin or Stalin might have said.
You’re missing the silent ‘/s’.
Then add it
Never talked to an Ultra, I see. Good. Keep it that way.
By “marxists” I do of course mean those who have read and comprehended the primary texts of marxism. Why read or respond to silly letters?
There are a lot of “marxists” that just read Marx, Lenin and other revolutionary leaders just as if they were reading the bible, removing the context, the history, the contradictions of the time, and even the relations between the leaders themselves. So, from this, some traditions are born where people simply worship Trotsky and hate Stalin, or worship Stalin and hate Trotsky, or worship Mao and hate Deng, or worship Hoxha and hate Tito, or worship Marx but hate Lenin, (these would be some anarchists or left coms)… The list is immense, unfortunately.
Real ones don’t read any of them and simply parrot what the current trend is, last year I was anti AES, this year im ChinaMaxxing, and tomorrow I’m ordering some ACP merch just in case they take off as I’ve projected
This way I can never be wrong and laugh at the people who make criticizable posts with everyone else
How about reading them all and using dialectics and historical materialism as a framework to understand the context of their ideas?
Marx and Engels envisioned the revolution would come first from the most advanced countries, and this dominated Marxist thinking in the late 19th century. Lenin broke from this idea comprehending by his study related to imperialism. He saw backwards Russia not as a feudal state but one that already begun in its capitalist development. He understood that capitalism wouldn’t develop in the same way in the imperial core and in the periphery and this is a core pillar on Soviet thinking and foreign policy. In Russia, he promoted an alliance between the peasants and workers of Russian urban centers to sponsor the revolution. Mao took a step further and positioned the peasantry as the main revolutionary class in China, due to the agrarian configuration of the country. After the revolution, Mao combined Soviet planning and agrarian communes but failed to industrialize the country, even though it created on the communes and industrial base. Deng integrated China in the international system and adopted liberal reforms to finally industrialize the country, but still maintained CPC power. Other CPC members (which I don’t know the names) softened Deng stance on market reforms to avoid the bad effects of a shock therapy and this opened way to a more experimental approach to create the Chinese industry we see today.
So basically every socialist leader acted on the contradictions of the previous ones and dialectically transformed one model into another. Basically different material conditions and different contradictions gave rise to new higher forms. And that is the beauty of dialectics and historical materialism, it does not enforce a static theory, but a dynamic one that is constantly changing.
How about re-reading my reply and using dialectics to understand that no one is actually buying ACP merch?
Poor you. Got downvoted for a joke.
ho-lee sheeit…but being serious, the good ho chi minh was talking about the forgotten knowledge of “freaking material conditions”
That’s some conquest of bread shit. /s
That’s kind of Taoist. “Empty mind/full belly” “Wu wei (wu).”
*Edit: do nothing, win
It’s not remotely revisionism lol
Didn’t get the sarcasm, I see.
