Maoism Vs. Bolshevism: The 1965 Catastrophe in Indonesia, China's "Cultural Revolution" & the Disintegration of World Stalinism

by Joseph Hansen

Following the Chinese revolution of 1949, many workers and youth in Asia and elsewhere -- inspired by that historic blow to imperialism -- were politically misled by the Mao Zedong leadership. These articles, reports, and resolutions explain the communist alternative to Mao's Stalinist course, which in 1965 paved the way for a bloody CIA-backed coup in Indonesia.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of writings by Joseph Hansen, lifelong leader of the Socialist Workers Party on Maoism, which many, including in the Fourth International had illusions in. Maoism is just a national variant of Stalinism--Mao's revolutionary rhetoric ended once the US recognized China. Revolutionaries, of course, welcomed the recognition, but it was not won by revolutionary struggle but by backroom deals with Nixon, which included selling the Vietnamese Revolution down the river.

Hansen had been a secretary to Leon Trotsky in Mexico, played a big role in defending the Cuban Revolution, both from imperialism and from sectarians in the SWP who couldn't recognize a genuine revolution when they saw one (see his book Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: A Marxist Appreciation. He played a major role in the Fourth International and wrote a particularly important essay The Workers and Farmers Government. which played a role in the SWP's critique of the permanent revolution as tending toward ultraleftism (see Their Trotsky and Ours: Communist Continuity Today by Jack Barnes).

See also The Chinese Revolution and Its Development and On China by Leon Trotsky.