The Maoist Revolution in Tibet
by Mike Ely
Tibet is one place where “common knowledge” clashes sharply with reality.
Pre-revolutionary Tibetan society is wildly romanticized, so that many people have very little sense of the brutality and horrific backwardness enforced by a theocracy of monks. Based on such a myth, the arrival of revolutionary forces can be portrayed as a foreign invasion. And, thanks to the propaganda of exiled monks, the following decades of socialism are portrayed as a genocide.
The facts are very different as you will see in the following pages.
This book has gone through a number of printings in several countries, since it was originally published as a 1998 series in the Revolutionary Worker newspaper. Since then new scholarship and thinking sheds light on these historical events. However I believe that the analysis and descriptions here still stand up well.
I welcome comments and critiques.
1: When the Dalai Lamas Ruled: Hell on Earth
Discusses how old Tibetan society was an extremely oppressive place: the vast majority of people were enslaved, brutalized and exploited by a tiny ruling class of aristocrats and top lamas (Buddhist priests).
2: Storming Heaven and 3: Red Guards & People’s Communes
How Maoists organized the oppressed class of Tibet to liberate themselves — seizing the land from old exploiters, abolishing centuries-old feudal privileges, challenging the stranglehold of superstition, and developing collective new forms of ownership and power.
4: Oppression Returns — After the Coup in China
In 1976, an anti-Maoist coup within the Communist Party brought profound changes to China, and to Tibet. This restoration of capitalism reversed Mao’s policies in every area: As a result, rich and poor have re-emerged in Tibet’s countryside, “Han chauvinist” policies threaten the culture and rights of minority peoples like the Tibetans, and the state’s military power is directed against the people themselves.
5: Life Under the Dalai Lama in Exile
On the class nature of the Dalai Lama’s forces in exile–describing how the exiled Tibetan ruling class helped create a contra army backed by the CIA and how they organized an oppressive class society in the camps of Tibean exiles.
6: The Earthly Dreams of the Dalai Lama
A beginning analysis of the current politics of the Dalai Lama’s class nature — his proposals for autonomy within a capitalist China, and why they have nothing to do with the liberation of Tibet’s people.
Available online at mikeely.wordpress.com
Send comments: kasamasite (at) yahoo (dot) com
Published: December 2007
Feel free to reprint, distribute or quote this with attribution.
This website and all its contents are licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Jorein Versteege said
Maoism is no way beter than the rule of the Dalai Lama. Tibet was a feudal state and it was a theocracy, but neither Mao nor somebody else has the right to invade a nation. Tibet became independent in 1911 when the Empire of China collapsed. Tibet was a independent nation till 1950 when the Maoist fascists took China.
So I doesn’t matter how Tibet was before 1950. Mao Zedong was a imperialist dictator who was not a communist and those people’s communes were not democratic, because Maoism is like Stalinism: a system of oppression and left fascism.
onejustworld said
Maoist revolution, nice as it sounds, but all it brought was accelerated mass murder.
Was Mao responsible for 50 or 100 million deaths under his rule?
Was he the biggest mass murderer ever in front of his fellow commie tyrant Stalin?
I matters not, for this system is as vile as no other tyranny ever was before and after, in fact the slaughter continues today.
And only someone thoroughly mendacious, or an utter fool would sympathise with such abject criminals like Mao and his CCP, still in power and still slaughtering innocent people, just for being in their way holding on to power for power’s sake.
Sickening:
http://one-just-world.blogspot.com/2008/08/will-olympic-spirit-survive.html
Mike E said
I suggest you read the articles you are commenting on…. and then make your remarks.
If you think Mao didn’t lead huge leaps and radical changes over the Lamaist system — then I suspect you haven’t looked at the most basic fact.
so give it a read, then re-engage on that basis.
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Ben Peterson said
I think the real issue is one of National Self determination, which the Tibetans, and all nationalities, have the right to.
I dont think that anyone on the left would say that the chinese revolution didnt bring massive benefits and progress to Tibet, as you rightfully point out. The issue is that China is a VERY different place now, and as you also admit, now the Tibetans are quite brutally oppressed by the Chinese state.
I think this is the point of the issue, and it is important to then support the Tibetans in their struggle. I dont think this is to throw your support behind the Dalai Lama lobby, but i dont think that we should let the Dalai Lama lobby usurp the struggle of the Tibetan people from the outside. If you look at the rallies ect within Tibet, the demands are for democracy an freedom from discrimination, rarely a mention of the Dalai Lama.
I think it is important to remember that all the left calls for the the overthrow of the American bourgeois democracy, but that doesnt mean that anyone is advocating the return of the brittish monarchy.
The left should be advocating a third option, and in my experiance in the Tibetan movement, can often put forward this option effectively, that the only “Free Tibet” is a Tibet that is not oppressed by the capitalist chinese OR the fuedal Lamas.
Id be interested to hear what you think of that
Comrade Basa said
Good Work Comrade – This would be useful to anyone researching the subject! Regards.
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[...] The Maoist Revolution in Tibet [...]
Miles Ahead said
On another thread about the Uighur national minority, I had questions about what the significance of semiautonomous regions really meant and consisted of. Mike refered me to this article and others on Tibet, and so I reread them. And I have to say, rather spontaneously, I thought that there were differences in the approach to the Uighurs vs. the Tibetans, even though and importantly so, Mao was trying to carry out the “mass line.” And while I should undoubtedly go back and reread these posts again, one stark difference seemed to me to be that we uphold the Uighur’s right to be practicing Muslims, but didn’t give the same weight to the Tibetans who are mostly Buddhists, and simply characterized the Tibetans rights as simply viewed through the eyes of the Dalai Lama.
So, I very much agree with what Ben Peterson wrote in his comment on this thread, No. 7.
Mike E said
Miles writes:
I suspect this is starting from a misunderstanding. Who here believes we should not uphold Tibetan rights against the oppression they face in modern China? Communist revolutionaries should support the right of oppressed people to rebel — and certainly Tibet’s people today suffer tremendous oppression at the hands of the Chinese state (as I tried to document in my chapter on that.)
I think that part of the dilemma here is that the religions of these peoples have been enmeshed in historic forms of oppression (i.e. Lamaist Buddhism is not merely a way of believing, but is a theocratic form of society rooted in intense oppression of the people by parasitic monasteries justified by religious dogmas.)
I am very cautious of direct comparisons between today’s religions and the Christian middle ages (and some people have made such comparisons in a chauvinist and mechanical way). But we can say that French culture in 1500 was inseparable from very conservative and entrenched Catholicism, and the oppression of the people led to an anti-clerical revolution as part of its anti-feudal transformations. Is that so wrong? Do french people have a “right to be Catholic” — well of course. But does Catholicism have a right to organize and constrain life and thought in France — in a way that would recreate feudalism? No.
The issue in Tibet during the revolutionary struggles was finding the ways to overthrow a very odious theocracy — and there was class struggle among the communists over how to approach the deep-seated beliefs of the masses of people. (In general, it was the ‘modernizing” bourgeois rightists who disdained the beliefs of the people, and the Maoists (by contrast) who thought that other matters were the main target of struggle.)
I’m not sure where you see a difference between the approach to Uigurs and Tibetans — either in Mao or in communist politics today. Where are Tibetans rights “simply viewed through the eyes of the Dalai Lama”?
Mao pointed out (shortly after the Chinese 1949 revolution that the Uigur people of northwest China were considerably more integrated into the rest of the world than Tibet — i.e. there were roads connecting their areas to China, there was more advanced industry and trade etc. By contrast the Tibetan people were isolated in remarkable way (without roads, industrial goods, trade in foodstuffs or even tea etc.) For that reason, the revolutionary process moved more rapidly in Xinjiang than in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR), though land reform proceeded in the early fifties in some tibetan ethnic regions outside the TAR.
* * * * * * *
Now for a different and broader discussion….. of “self-determination”
As for the discussion of self-determination… I suppose that depends on what we decide to mean by that term.
These days it is widely said (by radical) people that they simply support everyone’s”right self-determination” — and in fact revolution itself is often seen as self-determination pure and simple by everyone involved. I.e. revolution is seen as the process by which oppressed people determine what is to happen. And in some ways, that often gives rise to an approach to revolution and “self-determination” where rights and demands are appraised apart from material conditions.
By contrast, for Marxists at least, national self-determination has historically had a very specific meaning: i.e. the right of a specific people (a historically constituted community of people) to independence. And this has been seen as a “negative right” (similar to the right to divorce): it includes the right to independence, but does not require it in each case — since different nationalities might also choose other arrangements short of independence (like autonomy or even “integration” within a future revolutionary multinational state).
Just one example: i have recently discussed with someone whether Chicano and Mexican people have a right to self-determination in Aztlan. On one level that sounds just (i.e. the southwest was land stolen from Mexico).
But if that self-determination is exercised in Aztlan, what rights to the Black people of Compton have? What happens to the claims and rights of Navaho and Hopi people in Four Corners? Do such new state arrangements happen without the input and demands of Asian peoples living in Los Angeles? What is the meaning of upholding “self-determination of a people” on land where they have not been a majority population in a long time?
And the issue is: What will end the racist oppression and divisions among people — not recreate them in new ways within a future socialist society?
For Puerto Rican people on the island of Puerto Rico, it is quite likely that there will be a powerful and just demand for independence for their island — and that demand would clearly offer an end to the colonial oppression the people have suffered for over a hundred years. But what would “self-determination” mean for Puerto Rican people in New York City — where they have long formed a national minority (and in their majority, been a heavily exploited section of the larger multinational working class). Independence will not solve the oppression of Puerto Ricans in New York — but rather the common anti-racist demands of a multinational revolutionary movement creating new forms of state power within a new revolutionary multinational state. In a place like New York City, it is hard to imagine liberation coming except out of a multinational revolutionary movement — where national self-determination for its constituents is not the cutting edge, but where forms of both autonomy and integration will emerge out of the common struggle and its particular twists and turns.
To pose the more of the questions that come up:
Can the Chippewa people (Anishinabe) scattered across Wisconsin, Minnesota, Canada and major cities like Chicago and Minneapolis be independent? (I.e. can they form an independent state, with its own foreign policy, military affairs, economic policies, socialist national market etc — as opposed to some form of national autonomy within a revolutionary multinational state? And if the Anishinabe (for example) can’t realistically form an independent state (in today’s world) — what does it mean to advocate a right of independence (rather than, and as opposed to, liberating forms of autonomy)?
There is often a bit of a nationalist assumption involved in blanket endorsement of self-determination — i.e. that every ethnic group in the world should decide their future as a group and that such decisions (in the course of revolution) should naturally and inevitably involve the highest degree of national independence possible. In fact, many nationalities are entwined and can (under certain conditions and as a result of revolutionary work) have a basis for common life in multinational states — in ways that form a basis for liberation.
And there is a bit of a nationalist assumption (in some places) that envisioning radical new forms of autonomous self-government for various nationalities would be some kinds of half-assed measure for solving oppression (which presumably can only come through secession and independence.) But is that true? Wouldn’t true community control be quite a radical thing (community control of police and schools?) Wouldn’t forms of African American power (in autonomous majority areas — including over means of production and housing and education) be quite a change from today, and an important basis for really solving some fundamental problems of structural and institutional racism?
(And in some cases a large multinational state forms a basis for liberation in ways that a small, isolated, independent state does not. Often some people argue “What was nicaragua (or cuba or…) supposed to do?” Meaning that a state that small had trouble making progress toward socialism on its own… which forms part of the argument for larger multinational socialist states.)
Another issue at hand: There has been an important historic demand (among some communists and some “free the land” nationalists) for self determination for African American people in the Black Belt south. (This was not the demand of the Black Panther Party, but it was of the Republic of New Afrika and the 1930s CPUSA). And there are important historic reasons this demand emerged — Black people have suffered intense and ongoing oppression as a people in the U.S., and the Black Belt plantation areas are the “soil of our suffering” where the population of Black people was once concentrated (and where they once constituted a majority).
But what would it mean (in real politics, today, and in a future revolutionary situation) to move to form an independent African American country within the modern Southern states? Would that lay the basis for a revolutionary advance in north America? Is that the correct way to end the oppression of Black people — or is a better approach to advocate power and autonomy (community control etc.) within the framework of a new multinational revolutionary state (including within areas outside the Black Belt, like Compton, or Newark, harlem, Chicago’s South and West sides etc.)?
Such are the very concrete questions involved in evaluating the demand for self-determination:
Should Tibet’s people be independent of China? What would that concretely mean? Should people around the world raise the demand for independent Tibet — even if the Tibetans themselves are NOT raising that demand for self-determination (but are in fact rebelling around demands for autonomy, and against assimilation and exploitaiton). (In fact, very few forces in Tibet demand independence, and most do not — including the Dalai Lama.)Are the Tibetan people able to be independent (in the real world) — i.e. do they have the material prerequisites for an independent state (i.e. basis for a national market, etc.)?
On one level, these are not questions for ud to answer (i.e. for us, sitting as revolutionaries in the U.S.) The world’s people is not waiting breathless for us to speak on these matters (which require deep investigation into the conditions and struggle and relations of peoples).
But i am mentioning these things to raise that calling blanketly and casually for the independence of all minority peoples may reflect as much a rush to judgment (from afar) as the uninformed denunciation of independence demands.
B said
Hi Mike,
Thank you for bringing up the issue of self determination of people within the U.S. who have historically been oppressed. I don’t believe the framework of how to create a true solution to this has ever been proposed. There are many complex and intertwining issues involved, some of which you allude to, and many revolve around the question of land and government in a place where there are original inhabitants as well as people who were forcibly brought here. In my opinion, the only way to truly forge a path forward for liberation of all oppressed people here (and all others) has to begin with frank dialogue among the communities affected. No revolutionary party can come up with the correct program on these matters in absence of this dialogue. Self determination, independence, autonomy, new forms of collective alliances and cooperatives, and maybe other forms of governance not yet envisioned, are all inalienable rights of people and communities oppressed by u.s.imperialism. The tendency for maoists to push for the multinational solution VERSUS self determination and independence to me is chauvenist and eurocentric, and does not recognize the depth of complexity of these issues, or the fact that new solutions can be created. A much better approach, I believe, would be to call for inter-community revolutionary dialogue to begin the process of forging a revolutionary path forward in u.s. for all oppressed people. This would be a forum for people to air out differences, begin to form deeper alliances, as well as creatively address the issues. Along with this I think it would be important to promote as much education as possible about the true nature of this system, and true history, and revolutionary science. I don’t believe that any revolutionary movement in the u.s. that does not open its mind to new and creative solutions to these type of questions by the communities most affected will succeed. In fact, I believe this is a cornerstone question for revolution here.