How to interpret the Marxist re-indoctrination of Chinese society in the 21st century?

 How to interpret the Marxist re-indoctrination of Chinese society in the 21st century?

Igor Parra

This commentary could occupy several chapters of a political-military essay, however we will limit it to the essential and the concise, the practical and the urgent. At some point, some of the kind readers, who read me in different countries, will realize what this hypothesis I am presenting below means in the short and medium term.

First of all, the stage has been set by Chinese President Xi Jinping himself and has been reported in the international press. Indeed the president declared the reintroduction of Marxism in the national education plans at different levels and grades. In some Western press it has been interpreted as a step towards the arteriosclerosis of the regime of the Asian country.

However, in the Asian press, in the countries neighboring China, there have been no excessively negative comments. What is most interesting from my point of view is that it is in the Vietnamese press where there is no trace of negative commentary, only a relative vacuum since they limit themselves to reproducing summaries of press agencies. At least in the newspapers and journals that we can access from the West via the web.

From a purely Asian, and especially Vietnamese, military strategy point of view, this re-indoctrination could only mean that the Chinese leaders are deeply convinced that they will be attacked by a US-led alliance in the not too distant future. Perhaps no more than 5 years (the latter is a derivative of the main hypothesis).

Indeed, when the functioning of the communist armies is known, an aspect that has never been well understood in the West is the utmost importance of the political indoctrination of the troops at all levels of the military echelon. Otherwise it would be difficult to explain the Soviet Russian triumph not only in the Second World War but also in the civil war against the interventionism of all its near and remote neighbors. It would be equally difficult to understand the Vietnamese triumph over the Americans, and along the same logical line, that of the Vietnamese against the French and Japanese colonial power. Likewise, it would not be possible to understand the triumph of the Chinese communists over the Japanese invaders and the direct and frontal confrontation against the Americans in Korea.

The communist ideological component goes far beyond the classic indoctrination and morale of troops typical of Western armies, which has been practiced for several centuries, especially as a moral religious component, for example the text engraved in metal on the belts of German soldiers in various wars: Got mit Uns (God with us).

Who has written best about this in depth is the Vietnamese strategist Vo Nguyen Giap. The titles of his works clearly indicate the fundamental role given to Marxist ideology in the organization of anti-imperialist guerrilla warfare, whether Japanese, French or American. These texts on the one hand summarize the military writings of Marx himself, as well as those of other revolutionary thinkers, but they contribute a very characteristic vision of the relationship not only of the corps or combat echelon, whichever it may be, with coordination and strategic movement, something that Mao succeeds in synthesizing and improving in a notable way, but he adds a particular accentuation to the political relationship between the military political cadre and its own instrument of defense and attack. It is perhaps the best operational compilation of the enormous importance of the political education of a military cadre; its conclusion is that without deeply assimilated ideological content the enormous difficulty of modern warfare from the revolutionary camp cannot be executed in spite of any technologically superior military instrument or complex. Only political superiority operationally projects sufficient willpower to the body of combatants armed no longer with material weapons, but with conceptual weapons.

Having said the above, which is known to scholars of the political indoctrination of modern armies, it is worth proposing that we can interpret as a clear sign of readiness for war the fact that Chinese society activates its Marxist political indoctrination in a transversal way. This has several operational implications far greater than incorporating this or that aircraft carrier, or developing this or that super sonic missile system. 

If we read Mao and his best pupil Vo Nguyen Giap carefully, the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China is preparing for a new kind of revolutionary war. We will continue to comment on this in future posts. In the meantime, readers who lack a Vietnamese revolutionary military education would do well to start reading Vo Nguyen Giap very carefully.

The Mao's super synthesis

  The Chinese Clock (Part One): Mao's super synthesis

 I.

In line with my a-periodic commentaries on this blog on the situation in Egypt, the Middle East (Syria, Israel, Palestine, Turkey), I accentuate those sporadic analytical visits even further east. 

When we approach China we are imbued with a sense of entering a space where strategic thinking has been not only conceptualised but efficiently put into action, over several groups of hundreds of years summing up millennia, almost in a continuous way through time and space. There, the greatest strategic change emerged at Mao's death with the development of an unprecedented and far-reaching action, which was not initially understood in the West: the operational synthesis of successful Western capitalism with a local form of war communism, in fact a variant of the one triumphantly imposed by the Bolsheviks around 1922 on the ruins of the defeated Tsarist Empire, and on the defeated Western alliances to wipe out communism militarily.

II.

Mao conceived years before his death the fundamental theoretical principle used by the political-military leadership of the Chinese system during the post-Mao transition. This Maoist concept, his main contribution to political theory, is based on how to overcome the "classical" Hegelian, Marxist and Leninist debate on "reality". Until Mao, the highest level of the socio-economic historical process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis ended with "the change of reality" which arises from an organised political will, oriented towards the seizure of power in order to precisely "change the reality" of the living conditions of the population. Mao proposes something radically different, going beyond the classical synthesis, which he criticises as "weak": it is no longer enough to interpret reality, nor to change reality... but: a new reality must be created.

Thus, the successors of the "great helmsman" did not deepen the errors of the war communism practised by the Soviet Union and its satellites, for they did as their leader had written: the chinese did not reinterpret or change reality... they created another reality. They made the most innovative strategic synthesis since the Council of Nicea, 1694 years ago, when the Roman Empire converted to Christianity. The Maoist synthesis can be called the Super Synthesis because it surpasses the previous level of strategic analysis and practice. It was Mao's political adversary, Deng Xiaoping, who launched the experiment, but conceptually it was totally in line with the political-theoretical line that Mao had created. Thus, all political-military and civilian cadres of any rank were perfectly familiar with that part of Mao's theoretical legacy. In the West, only the few communists who had seriously read Mao understood the profound meaning of this concept, of this Super Synthesis, when the profound economic transformations in China began 10 years later. What was mistakenly seen from the West as the partial or complete westernisation of a communist regime, for millions of senior cadres, Chinese communist party militants and ordinary citizens, it was actually the creation of a new singular reality , not a mere change of reality. The gang of 4 belonged to the past with their criticism of this radically new policy for a new reality, they still were  about changing reality, thus they totally lost their ticket to the big scenario.

In the Western we tend to operate under pre Maoist rationales , just doing a simplistic kind of taxonomy when we say that the Chinese are just summing up capitalist market concepts and practices within a communist formal dictatorship. I dare to say that this is a weak analysis of what is really happening in China.

Igor Parra, Vitacura-Lebu 2021

Abrupt Civilization Change

Is there life after that?

Igor Parra

Is it possible for a politically organised group to be resilient to Abrupt Civilization Change? That is, is it possible for people to survive temporal Abrupt Change which is rapid, when compared with human small-scale proportions - even when politically organised? This is an interesting question because, in general, the answer is in the negative. There is human life beyond Abrupt Civilisation Change, however.
We have already mentioned the particular case when the whole of Ebla Civilisation was materially destroyed by military invasion. I think that there are many other examples throughout History that will conform to this theory. In the face of terrible violent and catastrophic changes that have been brought about by war for instance, we see very many extraordinary examples of human adaptability.
There are other valuable examples available to us in contemporary western history. Let us look at Germany. Firstly, let us notice that Germany, France, Britain and other European countries have shared significant similarities in religious and political structures for centuries. These civilisations have consequentially developed comparable social organisations. Twice during the 20th century war was resorted to between these close neighbours, in an inter Western Civilization attempt to solve geopolitical differences that had arisen due to colonial matters causing fluctuations in the power balance and because of other influences within Western and Eastern Europe at the time.
These two wars ended the world influence of Europe because ten years of war (4 years of the First World War and 6 for the Second) exhausted Europe in terms of direct material destruction. This temporal 10 % of the 20th century means the decline of the European economy based on the colonies of Africa, Asia and America. This decline was not the result of alien attacks on the European countries; they collided among themselves with all the “efficient” might that their industrial technology could provide them. As a consequence we see the notorious emergence of America as a world power, born from the ashes of these European wars.
Germany is an interesting case, similar to Ebla, because of her big cultural and economical influence on Europe before, throughout and after both World Wars. Huge damage occurred to Russian and Eastern European territories at the hands of Germany during the Second World War but an equivalent revenge was had in 1945.
It took four decades for Germany to disappear as a notable political entity. We must remember that the political and geographical unity that Germany reached by the middle of the nineteenth century was a modern situation. It has recently been shown by a British scholar how terribly the Germans suffered after the Second World War, when more than 3 million died violently. Rapes were often used as punishment by both Soviet and American Forces. These facts were first heard in the Memories of Konrad Adenauer. More recently Gilles Mc Donogh gives us a precise account of this post war event. Never before or since in recent history was defeat so complete, as it was for Germany in 1945. Its fate was similar to that of Ebla and several other old civilisations that were obliterated in total political and material destruction.
The German case here illustrates two somewhat different scenarios rather well. Firstly we have a scenario where destruction happens between close neighbours who share the same Western Civilisation ideologies and socio-economic organisation. Secondly we have a scenario that shows a resilient outcome to Abrupt Change caused by total military defeat. This Abrupt Change was a destructive one, but it did not mean dramatic changes of the socio economic structure in Western Germany, therefore it was an Abrupt Change but not an Abrupt Civilisation Change.


What about when such brutal violent change involves deep changes in the economy, and in the social organisation too?

Observar y Pensar: Estrategia en el Mediterráneo Occidental

Observar y Pensar: Estrategia en el Mediterráneo Occidental

Abrupt Civilization Change 3

“remember that thou are dust”...but dust with a memory

Igor Parra

Abrupt Civilization Change does result in overt material destruction for many people, in many cases. When cities become deserted or destroyed by men and/or by climate hazards these hardships might cause many people to emigrate, to leave their family homes in an attempt to keep ahead of starvation and the looting and burning of their houses. In short, what the Bible tells us about the destruction that comes behind Apocalypses is what many of us, in the western Judeo-Christian tradition, experience and associate as similar to the damage that Abrupt Civilization Change brings.

As we have pointed out before: there are many historic examples of so-called Abrupt Change which are neither rapid nor catastrophic, but rather smooth evolutionary changes in social structures that  sometimes relate to climatic changes.  We can assume that real Abrupt Change happens when particular circumstances such as social upheavel combined with climate change, produces sudden and complete destruction of some civilizations.

It is not very long since the methodological condition raised by us allows us to regard Abrupt as a rapid temporal change.  However, there are dramatic Abrupt Civilization Changes well documented by Archaeology and found throughout History which show the disappearance of material remains of a Civilization collapsing over a prolonged interval of time.  Therefore although sometimes we do observe sudden total destruction, there will be those who remember how things were before the Abrupt Civilization Change occurred and do not cut it off from the memory of men.  Moreover, there are periods and places where such total destruction over a relatively short period of time for a Civilization, is followed by resettlement of the destroyed places.

In 2005 I had the opportunity to visit such a place in Syria: the city of Ebla.  It was a very impressive Civilization, a four thousand year old library, with some 20 000 cuneiform tablets, it was uncovered from oblivion and silence, on the site of the old city. 

The city was totally destroyed, by the family of the King Sargon of Akad, around 4250 years ago, but life continued in the form of urban settlements that followed upon the same place, during several thousand of years after the first destruction, or Abrupt Civilization Change that dissolved the Eblaite Civilization. That change provoked by Sargon´s family in Ebla had all the conditions required by us today, to list it as an Abrupt Civilization Change: it was very abrupt, because in less than a year complete destruction of the city and of the political and social system was implemented manu military; that is by huge military force.  Archaeologists and Palaeoclimatologists are still looking for evidence to link this brutal attack against Ebla with some abrupt climatic change that might have been happening in Mesopotamia at this time.  I think they will find some evidence to prove that climate had a big part to play in the dissolution of the Eblaite Civilization.  

Later we are going to deal with these mechanisms, but right here this example is instrumental to show us that on the one hand life does not end after  Abrupt Civilization Change, and on the other hand that, in some cases, Abrupt Climate Change seems to be related to some Civilization Change, not only because of the physical consequences of the Climate Change but, most interestingly, because of the reaction of some Civilizations against other Civilizations during such critical Abrupt short intervals of time.

Abrupt Civilization Change 2

Abrupt Falls

I.Parra

Modern man has kept a constant focus on certain historic moments. One of the most frequently observed is the collapse of the Roman Empire. This is curious because the Roman fall was very smooth. It started at around the III century A.D. and the last political signal as Roman State was sent to the History in the Vth century, when the Prefect of the Annona stopped the free distribution of bread to the Roman poor in 476 A.D.

Therefore the Roman collapse is not an Abrupt Collapse, it is just like many other collapses - a decline of territorial “imperium”, political unity. It is worth mentioning that Roman armies won most of the wars engaged against their German foe.

Another very important thing normally forgotten…or even never learned…is that the Roman Empire was divided into two sections several centuries before the collapse of the western area. The eastern section survived a long time after the western collapse until 1453. It is a fact that Constantinople was the capital of the surviving eastern Roman Empire. Its decline was also very smooth, and, paradoxically, Constantinople´s decline is related to Christian invasions and partial destruction made by war fleets and armies from Gene, Catalonia. One of these Christian attacks on the capital of the Holy Roman Empire was from Crusaders going to Jerusalem in 1205. In this way the final decline of Constantinople was a sum, such as that of the Western Roman Empire, of successive crises lasting dozens of years through, at least a couple of centuries.

Thus, when we talk or read about the Collapse of the Roman Empire we are before one of the best documented long declines of a political entity in known History.

If we look before the Roman glorious period and its smooth decline, we find the Greek-Hellenic-conglomerate of city-states federated under Alexander’s domain. The cause of this Pan-Hellenic federation under Alexander is the loss of power by Athens and Sparta. The former occurred in a very short span of time, and the latter through a political and military eclipse before the strength of the Macedonian king Phillipos, the father of Alexander.

I think the fall of Athens is full of interesting, useful, information, going well beyond its chronological frame, a glimpse of this phenomenon will follow:

The long war between Sparta and Athens lasted a grand total of 26 years from 431 to 404 B.C., and it marked the abrupt military decline of Athens. This war is well known through Thucydides book “The Peloponnesian War”, where a lot of interesting details of ancient war are shown for the very first time. For me the most useful information, derived from this detailed written source, is the abrupt decline of Athens because of its catastrophic naval expedition against Sicily in 415 B.C. The power of Athens was at its highest threshold, the continuous mutual attacks between Athenians and Spartan armies were of no consequence since both acted on different strategic spheres: the Athenians preferred to war at sea while the powerful terrestrial army of Sparta kept their battles on the ground. Therefore, quoting Thucydides, neither enemy destroyed the military might of their rival despite many long years of war. But Athens did step into a naval-terrestrial expedition into Sicily which foresaw that the strategic key to win against her enemy was by attacking one of the most rich and active rearguards of the Peloponnesus league, controlled by Sparta. The Athenian expedition ended in 415 with the complete destruction of the Athenian army, her soldiers were killed or enslaved. From this moment on, Athens lost not simply an army but a very qualified one: in this Sicilian expedition her soldiers were very well trained sailors and the operative core of her fleet. The final battle of Aegospotami in 405 was a paradoxical battle where the superior speed of the Spartan fleet trapped the Athenian ships lying in shore. In less than 10 years from the Sicilian catastrophe Athens lost military control of the Ionian sea, the access to the Hellespont, and most importantly, the leadership of the Dalian League. The late did mean the abrupt loss of any ability to reshape her former power among the Hellenic city-States. Athens, after her military and political Abrupt Change, did not disappear from either the maps or from the memory of men. But nothing was the same again for them. In this sense it is worth mentioning that some Abrupt Changes within the geopolitical sphere do not necessarily imply the physical smashing of cities, people and civil organisations. This kind of abrupt geopolitical change does not have to imply abrupt civilization change.

Is there any other example where such an Abrupt Change provoked physical destruction of cities and the dispersion of their inhabitants? Yes, indeed, and in our next post we are going to surf onto some key examples. 

Abrupt Civilization Change 1

            Abrupt Civilization Change

I. Parra

What does “Abrupt Civilization Change” mean?

On one hand we could define it as significant technological change.  On the other hand we could explain it as temporal, where there are many very rapid, short intervals of change, during which modified social structures, economic dynamics, disruption of trade markets, and other movements occur.

How rapid must a change be to become an “Abrupt” Change?  It all depends upon the scale of observation.  From our point of view, that is, in an average Western life, “abrupt” could range from between 2 or 4 years up to 20 or 40 years.  Something big could be happening within a couple of statistical human generations spanning 25 years each.

During my 36 years living in Europe and my first 15 years growing up in South America - a lot of important things happened to me that could be considered Abrupt Changes, perhaps not on a “civilization” scale, but I suspect that many of these smaller events are part of much bigger changes.

Let me draw your attention to some of the major events that punctuated my and all of the lives of people living in this time.

The consolidation and the fall of the Soviet system; the rise of Chinese power as independent from Russian communists; the independence of dozens of African European colonies; massive changes in communications and transport; more and faster long distance “unwired” communications for voice, data and image; an increase in numbers of planes in the sky travelling at greater speeds; more high speed trains and in larger numbers; more destructive war systems and many more people inhabiting the planet – all consuming energy at a vast rate.

The list is actually much longer than this very synthetic flash abstract.  In further posts we will go deeper, showing you in greater detail the phenomena that participate in the processes of both technological and social change.

It is evident that during the last 50 years we have witnessed extremely rapid civilization change.  In the last hundred years the magnitude of consequences as a result of new technology has already accelerated massively from those of just 200 years ago.

Besides, in Archaeology the technological level of armies is seldom used to get insight into the corresponding technological level of the society sustaining that technology.  This is a common practice since the first professional archaeologist start some 120 years ago to explore old Asian cultures, such as Troy, Mesopotamia, Hittites, and the most well known of all old African cultures, that of Egypt.  Thus let us compare for a moment the modern armies with those of 100 years ago.  This comparison shall show radical differences, not only in fire power but also in logistics, drilling systems, communications and cultural level of soldiers.  The latter is not a minor point: in the mid 1800ths half of the European population was unable to read a newspaper.  When compared to modern armies a technological revolution is needed to explain not only the quality of changes but the quantity too.  This is an important matter when dealing with Abrupt Civilization changes: quantities matter a lot, that is quantities of people attained by such or such other qualitative change, quantities of objects, quantities of information and quantities of new technologies achieved and spread out in short time intervals.

All of this corresponds to an abridged synthesis of Abrupt Changes operating as positive exponential curves. How to start surfing on those changes promoting, preceding and causing Abrupt falls of complete civilizations, which are observed in relatively short intervals of time?

In the next post we are going to look at it in a bit more detail.  This is a very first approach to what we can point out as “positive” Abrupt Civilization Change.