McDonnell quotes Chairman Mao

[ALB]

What was he thinking of ! He seemed to be trying to make a joke about Osborne and his new-found "comrades" in China, but he must have known that, egged on by the media, most people would suppose that he was quoting Mao with approval as one "Marxist" quoting another. What an idiot (from his own point of view).

In any event, the passage he chose to quote (from something Mao said in 1949 just after the "Communist" Party got control of political power about learning how to run industry from the experts who had run it previously) wasn't very apt:

Quote:

We must learn to do economic work from all who know how, no matter who they are. We must esteem them as teachers, learning from them respectfully and conscientiously. We must not pretend to know when we do not know.

There were much more telling quotes in the section of the Little Red Book on "Building Our Country Through Diligence and Frugality":

Quote:

To make China rich and strong needs several decades of intense effort, which will include, among other things, the effort to practice strict economy and combat waste, i.e., the policy of building up our country through diligence and frugality.[1957]

Quote:

Diligence and frugality should be practiced in running factories and shops and all state-owned, co-operative and other enterprises. The principle of diligence and frugality should be observed in everything. This principle of economy is one of the basic principles of socialist economics. China is a big country, but she is still very poor. It will take several decades to make China prosperous. Even then we will still have to observe the principle of diligence and frugality. But it is in the coming few decades, during the present series of five-year plans, that we must particularly advocate diligence and frugality, that we must pay special attention to economy.[1955]

I think "diligence and frugality" is the Chinese for "austerity". It's certainly what the workers and peasants there had imposed on them under Mao as their consumption was held down to build up state-capitalist China's industrial and military night..

[imposs1904]

This has been doing the rounds on social media today:Link: New Statesman – Exclusive: John McDonnell named Lenin and Trotsky as his biggest influences in 2006

[alanjjohnstone]

Quote:

In terms of yourself, who has been most significant in terms of your thinking?If we go through it… the fundamental Marxist writers of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, basically. In terms of the ability to mobilise spontaneously, Rosa Luxemburg. Interestingly enough, for a long time I was quite interested by the writers of the New Left who appeared in the 60s. Williams, Miliband, Griffiths, E.P. Thompson and others, particularly around the historical issues themselves. That New Left that blossomed in the 60s were quite influential upon my generation, and they introduced us to Gramsci. If you remember, Gramsci wasn't even published in this country until that point in time. So that was important – and Perry Anderson too. Unfortunately, they exhausted themselves doing theoretical work without actually encouraging what they'd introduced us to, which was praxis – the mixture of theory and practice on the ground. I also think, in practical terms, some of them linked to the Stalinist parties etc., and others were taken down political paths which became either fairly sectarian, or irrelevant. When they took us down the cul-de-sac of Althusser, who was a complete headcase as far as I'm concerned, it drove us all into the sand. That sort of influence. Miliband for example was a brilliant writer, a brilliant Marxist writer in this country, but in terms of pragmatic practical politics was a complete disaster. At that point in time when he was encouraging people to leave the Labour Party, that was probably one of the strongest times for the left in dominating the Labour Party, through the late 70s and early 80s.

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