Maoism, Marxism of Our Time

Group for the Foundation of the Union of Communists of France Marxist-Leninist,

Bruno Bosteels

positions: east asia cultures critique, Volume 13, Number 3, Winter 2005,
pp. 523-533 (Article)

Published by Duke University Press

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/190195

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Maoism, Marxism of Our Time

Group for the Foundation of the Union of Communists of France Marxist-Leninist (UCFML)

Presentation

This text is that of the central intervention of the Group for the Founda-
tion of the Union of Communists of France Marxist-Leninist (UCFML)
at the meeting-debate held at the Mutualité on Saturday, November 6,
1976. Through forums, exhibitions, and interventions, this meeting-debate
revolved around the theme: What is Maoist politics?
This meeting has been a great success. We have proof that there exists a
revolutionary Maoist current of public opinion.

I. In Europe the Question of the Revolution is the Order of the Day

Our aim is the proletarian revolution in France. We say that this question
is the order of the day; this does not mean that the situation is immediately

positions 13:3 © 2005 by Duke University Press.

positions 13:3  Winter 2005 524

prerevolutionary. But it means: the political tasks of the revolutionary pro-

letariat have been made sufficiently clear by the class struggle itself to give
meaning and strength to its sustained accomplishment.
We say, against all the defeatists, all those who shamefully rally to the
Union of the Left: organizing the proletarian revolution is today the only
meaning and the only force.
In the last fifteen years the world has seen considerable upheavals. These
years have been marked by unprecedented proletarian and popular assaults.
Europe itself has been stirred up by mass movements of great scope. The
Europe of the German students’ movement, the Europe of the storm of May
’68, the Europe of the workers from Asturias, the Europe of the proletarians
in Turin and Milan, the Europe of the workers and peasants against fascism
and revisionism in Portugal, the Europe of the Irish people against British
colonialism, the Europe of the Polish workers against social-fascism, and so
many others! We are proud of this Europe of class struggles, this Europe
of storms!
At the same time, these years have seen the imperialist and bourgeois
counteroffensive unfold. In Southern Europe in particular, we see the great
maneuvers of the revisionist bourgeoisie to lift themselves into power.
People find standing in their path the sad quartet of usurpers of the new
bourgeoisie, the quartet Marchais-Berlinguer-Carrillo-Cunhal, with their
big syndicalist stick and the honeypot of so-called Eurocommunism. They
go to great lengths, but they will end badly.
In the end, for those who look further and perceive the principal ten-
dencies, these vast movements, with their flow back and forth, create new
historical conditions that generate enthusiasm for the proletarian revolution-
aries in Europe.
It is in these new historical conditions that we say: to practice the ques-
tion of communist organization, necessary for the people’s victory, means to
practice a revolutionary Maoist politics.
To be Maoist, and not only Marxist-Leninist, to declare oneself Maoist,
is a precise political choice. Our organization, the UCFML, which now has
seven years of existence, is the only one to make this choice. And here we
want to explain it.
UCFML ❘ Maoism, Marxism of Our Time 525

II. The Two Sources of Maoism in France

We were born at the high point of the popular assaults of the sixties. Our
historical date of origin is the revolutionary storm of May ’68.
Our ideological and theoretical base for support is the Great Proletar-
ian Cultural Revolution. MAY ’68 AND GREAT PROLETARIAN CUL-
TURAL REVOLUTION: these are, if you want, the two sources of Mao-
ism in France, in the way we see its force and its duration.
These two sources are not on the same level. We have never been simply
“pro-China” for a decisive reason: politics cannot be imported. A people’s
revolutionary path is drawn in its own consciousness, in its accumulated
experiences, in its own historical existence.
The Maoists in France appeared on the scene of history ten years ago.
Who were they? They were those who said that here and now a revolution-
ary politics was possible. They said this against the shameful revisionists,
against those who, in order not to do any politics here, had eyes only for the
third world. They said that in order to produce this revolutionary politics, it
was necessary radically to move forward. They refused to mimic the rituals
of 1936, or those of the split of the Tours conference, which gave birth, more
than fifty years ago, to the so-called French Communist Party (PCF). They
affirmed that it was necessary to have confidence in the masses, and to learn
from them about the politics of our time.
Let all the upstarts and renegades snigger! We remember this memorable
explosion that saw young people by the hundreds join tightly with people
from the popular neighborhoods around strong anti-imperialist guidelines
in support of the Vietnamese people. This era saw hundreds and then thou-
sands of students break with universities and bourgeois promises in order to
establish themselves in the factory. We say that they have written an admi-
rable page of the ideological history of our people. We say: GLORY TO
THE MAOIST PIONEERS OF THE SIXTIES!

III. The Lessons of the Revolutionary Storm of May ’68

May ’68 has been the resounding confirmation of this path. When, despite
the rantings of the syndicalists, students and workers shoulder to shoulder
positions 13:3  Winter 2005 526

successfully attacked the CRS near the factory of Flins, it became clear that
something new and inevitable was born.
With May ’68 it is no longer a question only of an ideological break. May
’68 opens the political possibility to be a revolutionary Maoist. May ’68 sets
the task because, on the level of organization, the revolutionary storm makes
painfully obvious the absence of all general headquarters.
The category of revolutionary Maoist is a category of May ’68. We are
proud of this: it proves that Maoist politics means the politics of mass move-
ments and class confrontations.
The vitality of May ’68 is such that its lessons are still the object today of
a fierce ideological struggle. Which lessons, which content?
May ’68 marks the upsurge of an irreducible capacity for anticapitalist
and antibourgeois revolt. This revolt destroys, for our time, the old distinc-
tion between “economical struggle” and “political struggle” that is the very
basis of syndicalism. The mass strike of ’68, the Action Committees, the
revolutionary violence in the street, the mass democracy, is all that econom-
ics, plus a little bit of politics? It is altogether different!
What is born with ’68 is a different distinction, a decisive confrontation,
between two realities and two concepts of the mass struggle themselves: on
the one hand, the reactionary conception, of the purely vindicating type, of
the workerist type, with its robust syndicalist and bourgeois parliamentary
framework. On the other, and meeting syndicalism head-on with its political
conception, there is the novelty of a political and autonomous mass struggle.
In May ’68, and in the years that followed, the word autonomy resounded
everywhere there was a class confrontation. Even if this word was ambigu-
ous and divided, it marked the path and gave the spark. It opened the way
for the long road of today’s proletariat: that of its absolute political indepen-
dence with regard to the bourgeoisie, with regard to all the bourgeoisies.
We know from now on that all real mass mobilization of our time sees
two paths, two lines, and, in the final instance, two politics confront each
other in its midst and all along its course.
This experience of the struggle between two paths has allowed us to gain
access to and to understand the politics at work during the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution. We say the politics of the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution, and not simply the ideology of revolt of the Red Guards.
UCFML ❘ Maoism, Marxism of Our Time 527

And on this topic as well, on the lessons of the Cultural Revolution, an

intense ideological struggle was going to take place.
It was from this convergence between two ideological struggles, on the
balance sheet of May ’68 and on the teachings of the Great Proletarian Cul-
tural Revolution, that would be born Maoist politics, of which we are at this
point the principal organized form.

IV. The Principles and Practice of Maoist Politics

Maoist politics rely on three great principles:

1. To learn from the real movement of the class struggle; to learn from the
anticapitalist and anti-imperialist mass movement.
2. To lead antirevisionism all the way to the end.
3. To be a Marxist of this time, a Marxist of the time of the teachings of the
Cultural Revolution. To be a Maoist, because Maoism is the Marxism of
this time.
At the basis of all this lies an essential Marxist-Leninist-Maoist convic-
tion: yes, that which is weak can become strong; that which is dominated
can become dominant!
This certainty is the ground on which a prolonged practice is built,
whereby what is essential is not the inevitable fluctuation of forces but the
political and ideological line.
The bourgeoisie and the proletariat confront one another with two con-
ceptions of political power and of the state.
It is true: the consciousness of oppression and exploitation is the practical
basis from which political consciousness is born. This is the state of affairs
we are in: the mass revolt must transform itself into proletarian revolution. Such
is the essential task for political organizations.
But not every movement is the class struggle, not every movement is the
carrier of proletarian and popular politics. To discern and sustain the politi-
cal antagonism, as the kernel to the apparent movement, that is what vital
Maoism is all about.
May ’68 has been prolonged into the workers’ revolts from 1969 to 1971.
Since then, the thread of antagonism can be followed: in the revolt of the
positions 13:3  Winter 2005 528

special workers, after the struggles at the presses at Renault; in the revolt
of the immigrants, up until the great fight of Sonacotra, and for the equal-
ity of rights; among the people of Corsica for their national rights; among
the poor peasants and the wine growers in the south of France; among
the youth: everywhere it is necessary to study whatever confronts the state,
whatever bears in it elements of the revolutionary program, whatever is vio-
lently opposed to the bourgeoisie.
Maoism, comrades, is that which, in the conditions of our world, is the just
outlook to attack the bourgeoisie TO THE END.
In our historical field, we also must have an eye for the importance of an
active point of view with regard to alliances. Poor peasants, youth, small
employees, women’s movement: these are forces in the storm. They are
organically part of the people’s camp. The Leninist concept of people has
the greatest actuality. WE SALUTE, WE SUPPORT, THE REVOLU-
TIONARY REVOLTS OF ALL THE STRATA OF THE PEOPLE!
UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF THE WORKERS, THEY WILL
HAVE THEIR RIGHT, THEIR JUSTICE, AND THEIR VICTORY!

V. The Universal Significance of the Cultural Revolution

On this solid political basis that comes from our history, we must take hold
of the question of Marxism, of Maoism as worldwide revolutionary current,
as theoretical and ideological basis, as systematization of the greatest revo-
lutionary experiment of our time: the GREAT PROLETARIAN CUL-
TURAL REVOLUTION.
The Cultural Revolution is not a simple tactical phase in the construc-
tion of socialism in China. It is not a simple mass movement to rectify and
regenerate the party. It is, as our Chinese comrades say, “without precedent
in history.” It is THE great revolution of our time. It is for the second half of
the twentieth century that which the Paris Commune has been for the end
of the nineteenth, and October 1917 for the beginning of the twentieth cen-
tury. Taking a stance on this point is what radically distinguishes Marxism-
Leninism from modern revisionism.
Our maxim is as follows: “Tell me what you think of the Cultural Revolu-
tion, and I will tell you if you are a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist.”
UCFML ❘ Maoism, Marxism of Our Time 529

The Cultural Revolution is a REVOLUTION in the full sense of the term:

the popular masses take up the question of the state, they meddle with the
affairs of the state. It is a question of flushing out and bringing down the
political representatives of a class: the new bourgeoisie that is present within
the Communist Party.
The Cultural Revolution is a PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. In it the
working class puts forward and practices the guideline: “THE WORK-
ING CLASS MUST LEAD IN EVERYTHING.” Beginning with the
workers’ revolutionary storms in Shanghai in January 1967, the proletariat
makes its massive entry on the political scene, on a scale never seen before.
It enters the universities and will directly lead the struggle on the level of
the superstructure.
The Cultural Revolution in reality gives birth to socialist novelties that
were hitherto unknown:
• THE TRIPLE-UNION REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEES, which
take the management of production-units in their own hands
• THE UNIVERSITY LINKED TO THE FACTORIES, the entry of
poor peasants and workers into the universities. All this organizes the reduc-
tion OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MANUAL AND INTEL-
LECTUAL LABOR
• THE MASSIVE STUDY OF MARXISM, and in particular of PHILOS-
OPHY, which blocks the elitist monopoly of the closed conception of the
party
• THE MOBILIZATION FOR A TRULY PROLETARIAN ART AND
CULTURE
• THE GENERALIZED PARTICIPATION OF ALL CADRES IN PRO­
DUCTIVE LABOR
• THE MASSIVE ESTABLISHMENT OF EDUCATED YOUTH
AMONG POOR PEASANTS
And many other revolutionary transformations that aim to make of the
masses an invincible bastion against the restoration of capitalism.
On the basis of the Cultural Revolution, Maoism deepens and transforms
all the great concepts of Marxism.
positions 13:3  Winter 2005 530

The concept of social class itself is subject to reexamination: that “bour-

geoisie in the midst of the party” of which Mao Zedong talks is not defined
in terms of ownership of the means of production! What is at stake is its
project for the state, its political project. The task involved is one of put-
ting politics in the command post, of seeking out the social base of the new
revisionist bourgeoisie, of its political project. At the time of the programme
commun, you have an indication that is decisive.
The Cultural Revolution and Maoism, centrally, transform the very
notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They make evident that the axis is
not the construction of socialism. The axis is the class struggle. Lenin said:
“Is not Marxist he who does not extend the recognition of the class struggle
all the way to include that of the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
The Cultural Revolution teaches us: “Is not Marxist he who does extend the
recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat all the way to include that of
the class struggle.”
Socialism is not in the first place a “construction.” It is a class struggle.
This is why the Cultural Revolution is the revolution of our time. We say:
LONG LIVE THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REV-
OLUTION, LONG LIVE THE CLASS STRUGGLE UNDER THE
DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT!

VI. The Tasks of the Maoists

Our task as Maoists is to bring about the fusion of the universal lessons
of the Cultural Revolution with the concrete situation of the revolution in
France.
The goal of this stage is known to everyone: it is the edification of a gen-
eral headquarters of the proletariat and the revolutionary people. IT IS
THE QUESTION OF THE PARTY. Our entire orientation is grounded
on a conviction: THIS PARTY WILL BE THAT OF THE ERA OF
THE GREAT PROLETARIAN CULTURAL REVOLUTION, OR
IT WILL NOT BE. It is a question, for the workers’ vanguard itself, to
build the Communist Party of a new type, the party whose edification will
already be an obstacle to the revisionist degeneration.
UCFML ❘ Maoism, Marxism of Our Time 531

On this point, in the experience of the working class, there have been tri-
als and errors since May 1968. We have seen the autonomous factory organi-
zations, the Action Committees or the Base Committees. We have seen the
gatherings on this or that point of the program: “Justice for the immigrants”
or “a single class of special workers.” But in the end, what has become clear
today is the need for true COMMUNIST WORKERS’ KERNELS, bearers
of a conviction and a centralized project with regard to the stages in the
edification of the party.
It is in these kernels that our Maoist guideline becomes materialized:
“PUT THE QUESTION OF THE PARTY BACK IN THE HANDS
OF THE WORKING CLASS, ORGANIZE THE WORKERS’ VAN-
GUARD, AND BUILD THE COMMUNIST ORGANIZATION IN
THE MIDST OF THE MASS MOVEMENT.”
This line unfolds today in a complex and fierce moment of the class strug-
gle. What seems to dominate the scene is the rivalry between the two great
bourgeois forces: the old bourgeoisie, the classical monopoly of Giscard and
Chirac; and the new bourgeoisie, the monopoly of state bureaucracy, that of
Marchais and Mitterrand, of Séguy and Edmond Maire.
These two forces vie for the indoctrination of our people behind their
reactionary political project. The electoral machinery is there to fix the out-
come of this indoctrination.
On this point, the lessons from the Cultural Revolution and from Mao-
ism are clear: we find ourselves in a world in which the autonomy of the
proletariat plays itself out between two bourgeoisies: the old and the new.
The class struggle takes place on two fronts. The petty Machiavellis of the
“provisory,” “tactical,” or “critical” rallying to the project of the [French]
Communist Party (PCF) play completely into the hands of modern revision-
ism. Together with the entire workers’ vanguard, we struggle stubbornly
against the polarization around the two dueling bourgeois cliques.
We immediately call on all honest revolutionaries to debate and organize
themselves on this question. It is imperative that we oppose the electoral
maneuvers of indoctrination with an autonomous and popular mass force.
We are ready to participate in the largest regrouping based on the guide-
lines:
positions 13:3  Winter 2005 532

NEITHER GISCARD-CHIRAC NOR MARCHAIS-MITTERRAND!

LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE’S REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS!

VII. Maoism Means Victory

In the world today we have three reference points:

• Global history gives us the stable point that is the Great Proletarian Cul-
tural Revolution
• Ideological history gives us Marxism-Leninism and Mao-Zedong thought
• The history of our country gives us May ’68, the class struggle on two
fronts, revolutionary Maoism.
If we hold strong on these points of reference, if their internal linkage guides
us, on the basis of our practice, we will serve as force and support. For those
who hold strong and know on what basis to guide themselves, defeatism
and powerlessness are definitively eliminated. To be Maoist, finally, means
to be an integral part of the victories of this time.

LONG LIVE MAOISM, THE MARXISM OF OUR TIME!

LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTIONARY STORM OF MAY ’68!
LONG LIVE THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS OF
FRANCE!
LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST WORKERS’ KERNELS!

LET US LEAD THE CLASS STRUGGLE ON TWO FRONTS TO

THE END!
LONG LIVE THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT!
Translated by Bruno Bosteels
UCFML ❘ Maoism, Marxism of Our Time 533

Note

This text was originally published as a twenty-four-page pamphlet by Editions Potemkine

in Marseille (April 1976), the local publishing house tied to the UCFML. In keeping with
the style of the original pamphlet, no additional reference notes were added for this transla-
tion. For a complete list of pamphlets and books published by the UCFML, see the bibliog-
raphy in the appendix to this special issue. —Trans.