this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2023
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chapotraphouse
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It may seem pedantic, but plenty of Mao's writings have use outside of the Chinese context the same way Lenin's writings can be used outside the Russian context. SwCC is by definition stuff that should only apply to the conditions in China, which I think narrows the view on the usefulness of Mao to a less informed reader.
If you're going to be looser with the definition of socialism in that way, may I recommend relabeling the header "non-Marxist Socialism" or something like that?
I can appreciate the goal, but I think it's a bit of a waste to do so and not have some editorial insight or at least critique of works by parties that are communist in name as this is another way to confuse new communists.
And thank you for taking the time to consider my gripes!
You're not wrong with the SWCC, it might be to generalist a term. Likewise for the communist/socialist demarcation, I think we agree but in different ways.
It's possible documents can confuse new readers, but I think that remains to be proven. Sometimes there's also good analysis in places, and bad analysis in others. One thing we don't want to do is edit the works we put in the library, which is something that marxists.org does, like editing Stalin to make him look bad. We're strictly a publisher for now.
That's fine but publishers aren't neutral, so if the ProleWiki team hosts something from an otherwise disagreeable source it would be good if the editorial team or submitter justified why a particular piece of analysis is worthwhile. Having that clarity helps guide people in the right direction versus them cobbling together a patchwork idea of communism based on assumptions like the CPC and CPRF are of the same importance because both of their works are featured
ooh that sounds interesting, is there a link I can read more about this?
I'm not sure it's documented anywhere, but if you read anything by Trotsky on there it's full of inline notes to explain what he means, and these notes are full of words like "Stalinists" or "bureaucrats" lol.
Here they admit themselves to editing Lenin to remove "pro-Stalin bias" from editors: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/note.htm
They also removed portions from Mastering Bolshevism about restraint and care, compare yourself:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1937/03/03.htm
http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/MB37.html