Why Mao Matters

Mao Tse Tung was a perceptive reader of Marx's reading of Hegel. He understood the significance of Marx's Hegelian "head-stand": "It is man's social being that determines his thinking" (LRB, p. 206), but was careful to avoid falling into the vulgar materialism of unimaginative Marxists:

While we recognize that in the general development of history the material determines the mental and social being determines social consciousness, we also--and indeed must--recognize the reaction of mental on material things, of social consciousness on social being and of the superstructure on the economic base. This does not go against materialism; on the contrary, it avoids mechanical materialism and firmly upholds dialectical materialism (LRB, 222).

When I was in graduate school, working on my PhD in the field of Religious Studies, I was often perplexed by my colleagues's eagerness to dismiss Marx as a reductive religious critic. There was no deep encounter with the Marxian tradition, much less one with Hegel--and Mao was never even mentioned (except by me, of course). Perhaps, in the 21st century, the notion that the collapse of the Soviet Union represents a refutation of Marxist criticism appears to be self-evident to most aspirants to (and denizens of) the scribbling class.

My own study of the Marxian tradition alongside a study of the course of the political development of self-proclaimed Marxist polities suggests the opposite: Marx appreciated better than anyone before him (and possibly better than anyone since) the role of capital in the formation of human perceptions--including (and especially) the perception of socio-economic class and class interests.

Marxian materialism (like Darwinian science) reminds us that human beings are still members of the animal kingdom: we are all hard-wired to respond in a visceral way to the triggers of fear and greed. Most human beings wander through their lives bouncing like pin balls from one to the other. Capitalism is so successful because it continually appeals to these basic (and base) tendencies. Little wonder, then, that capitalist economies lurch from boom to bust.

Prophetic figures and other visionaries (like Marx and Engels) try to appeal to the "better angels" of our natures. “Have no fear! Have faith! Trust! Love! In spite of everything, love!” But such admonitions are difficult to hear over the noise and panic induced by capitalistic desire and defense.

Marxist polities struggled throughout the 20th century to address in a programmatic way the obstacles that our viscera place in the path of prophetic communalism. But vulgar (or mechanical) materialism can never yield the "beloved community." For that, dialectics in more than name only are required.

Or, as Mao put it elsewhere: "Not to have a correct political point of view is like having no soul" (LRB, 142).

"Soul-less" bureaucratic states dedicated to the mechanistic application of theory to practice are, at best, inhospitable, arid cultural deserts and, at worst (if not inevitably), laboratories of organized violence.

Dialectics in more than name only investigate the warp and woof of politics and metapolitics.

I consider such investigations to be the humanistic "science" of the religious imagination.