The phrase was coined in this article by Jo Freeman who was criticizing individualist Anarchist influenced trends in the feminist movement, in the 70s. It spawned a whole series of interesting debates among Marxist and Anarchist feminists at the time.
Basically, the idea is that organizations without sufficient structure to guide them, will develop informal leadership that winds up unaccountable.
So when I use that phrase to describe the Cultural Revolution, I’m saying that, because there was this Hyper-skepticism towards party structures and authority (“Bombard the headquarters", etc.) that various personalities or idealist errors could just swoop in and catch people up in these wild frenzies.
like University students getting in knife fights over the correct Marxist theory of art. Or believing that a person having bourgeois parents makes them also bourgeois by some transitive property, regardless of their actual material conditions or relations to production.
Just bizzare and unproductive shit that the cultural revolution was supposed to prevent, but ended up facilitating. Like, the underlying ideas of cultural revolution, that class struggle persists under Socialism, and that lingering Superstructural ideas can lead to negative outcomes, all make sense. But the implementation in China was a bit of a hot mess.
The development of bloodline theory was spontaneous and organic. However it’s ability to be enforced came from Mao’s approval and reaction to the Loyalist Red Guards actions during the cultural revolution. Mao’s reform campaigns had a problem that they were so simplified for peasants, that they could be interpreted in various anti-socialist ways. It’s a similar problem to the USSR’s New Soviet Man and de-kulakization, except like you mention way more grass roots and bottom up. In the USSR you can blame the party’s management for “kulak” becoming an abstract label meaning “enemy” however in China the same issue with “bourgeoisie” came more from peasants interpretations of Mao’s directives.
However the Party did in fact empower these things. I think the issue with Mao’s handling of the cultural revolution was an issue of uniting such a large varied country under a brand new set of principles. The CPC essentially did not know how much would “take”.
Chen Boda was the first party leader to actually go against the bloodline theory, and that happened fairly early on in its development AFAIR, like within a year or two.
Can you expand on the idea of “tyranny of structurelessness”? Sounds interesting
The phrase was coined in this article by Jo Freeman who was criticizing individualist Anarchist influenced trends in the feminist movement, in the 70s. It spawned a whole series of interesting debates among Marxist and Anarchist feminists at the time.
Basically, the idea is that organizations without sufficient structure to guide them, will develop informal leadership that winds up unaccountable.
So when I use that phrase to describe the Cultural Revolution, I’m saying that, because there was this Hyper-skepticism towards party structures and authority (“Bombard the headquarters", etc.) that various personalities or idealist errors could just swoop in and catch people up in these wild frenzies.
like University students getting in knife fights over the correct Marxist theory of art. Or believing that a person having bourgeois parents makes them also bourgeois by some transitive property, regardless of their actual material conditions or relations to production.
Just bizzare and unproductive shit that the cultural revolution was supposed to prevent, but ended up facilitating. Like, the underlying ideas of cultural revolution, that class struggle persists under Socialism, and that lingering Superstructural ideas can lead to negative outcomes, all make sense. But the implementation in China was a bit of a hot mess.
Yes and no.
The development of bloodline theory was spontaneous and organic. However it’s ability to be enforced came from Mao’s approval and reaction to the Loyalist Red Guards actions during the cultural revolution. Mao’s reform campaigns had a problem that they were so simplified for peasants, that they could be interpreted in various anti-socialist ways. It’s a similar problem to the USSR’s New Soviet Man and de-kulakization, except like you mention way more grass roots and bottom up. In the USSR you can blame the party’s management for “kulak” becoming an abstract label meaning “enemy” however in China the same issue with “bourgeoisie” came more from peasants interpretations of Mao’s directives.
However the Party did in fact empower these things. I think the issue with Mao’s handling of the cultural revolution was an issue of uniting such a large varied country under a brand new set of principles. The CPC essentially did not know how much would “take”.
Chen Boda was the first party leader to actually go against the bloodline theory, and that happened fairly early on in its development AFAIR, like within a year or two.
Thanks!