Tibet: Mao's Afghanistan
Maoists all over the world ore screaming about Soviet "imperialism" subjugating "poor little" Afghanistan. Yet 20 years ago the Chinese deformed workers state had to quell an analogous uprising of Buddhist monks,feudal landlords and tribesmen in Tibet. The then-Trotskyist Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) denounced the imperialist propaganda campaign for the Tibetan counterrevolutionaries. We reprint a leaflet issued by the Eugene V. Debs CIub of Berkeley, California and the East Bay YSA (Young Socialist, June 1959). It occasioned some reaction in the local radical milieu as it was known to have been written by Jim Robertson, a former long-time Shachtmanite "third campist," as his first statement of Trotskyist Soviet defensism.
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A hue and cry has gone up throughout the "free" world and especially in the United States over the latest alleged atrocity of the Chinese (Communist) government. This
"atrocity" is the attempt, assured of final success, to reestablish Chinese dominance in the face of revolt planned and led by the Tibetan priestly and landowning classes.
The situation is clear enough in broad outline. To their discredit, the Chinese government has attempted to conciliate with the Tibetan feudal classes for the past eight years. At the same time, as the product of a revolutionary upheaval, the Chinese regime brings with it certain reforms. These reforms, such as rudimentary education,
threatened the age-old system of oppression of the peasants by the native rulers. These latter worthies, headed by their "god-king," felt undermined, and while they still had at least a measure of popular support staged a coup which ran into Chinese military resistance.
As an aside to those in the West who profess to admire the quaint devotion of the more backward in Asia to their religious leaders, let it be noted that these condescending attitudes went out with the "humble, devout" French serf of before 1789 and the "carefree, contented" Negro slaves in America. Oppression and obscurantism that lead to blighted and shortened lives are vicious. The path of human betterment is through increasing men's understanding and control of their universe, not by use of rosaries and prayer wheels.
Several defenses have been put forward in favor of the Tibetan feudalists. (1) “Freedom and democracy”!! When in the last two thousand years have the Tibetan people voted or been asked about anything? The very revolt was in part against the eventual possibility of that sort of thing.
(2) "Another Hungary". In Hungary the revolution fought to go forward, seeking to smash the Stalinist bureaucracy (the brothers of Mao and company) in favor of rule from below and for socialism. and against the old order of great landed estates, privately owned factories, clericalism, and political rule by Admiral Horthy's fascist
gang.
(3) "Self-determination" might have been a serious basis for deciding in favor of Tibetan independence could someone figure out how the Tibetan people are to express their choice in a nation where the "god-king" gives all the answers as well as asks all the questions. But in reality this aspect is without meaning.
The real choice for Tibet if Chinese control were thrown off is not independent nationhood but abject dependence on American arms, money and advisors. One has but to look at the other reactionary and feudal regimes in Asia to see both the reality and meaning of American imperialist domination: the military dictatorships in Pakistan and Thailand, the corrupt "democracies" of [capitalist] Viet Nam and the Philippine, the personal tyrannies in South Korea and Formosa. Not a pretty picture.
The victory of the Chinese Communist government is clearly the progressive choice in the present contest. However, to recognize this is not to whitewash that regime. But even in its distorted way it is part of great and positive changes on the Asian mainland, changes that eventually will be the Maoists' own undoing. Through these very achievements the regime will be overthrown by the mass of people anxious to rule their own destinies without the intervention of a privileged elite. That is the future; the Tibetan monk-rulers are the past.
But what about the hue and cry in America? How easily fine words are twisted to meet the needs of American "world leadership"! How morally corrupt our public figures are, men whose political complexion runs the entire respectable spectrum. Nationally a pro-Tibetan committee has been set up ranging in composition from the Formosa lobby mouthpiece, Henry Luce of Life-Time-Fortune, to Norman Thomas, accurately described as "the State Department socialist." At California, the self-styled "Tibetan Brigade" has sprung up and in its publicity seeking fashion faithfully echoes the rhetoric of their elders.
All this noise in a country that backs dictators the world over and as in Guatemala forcibly puts puppets into power with plots staged by the Counter Intelligence Agency. And at a time when, to take a most outstanding example, in Algeria, a whole people have been waging a desperate, bloody war for years against fascist colonials and an
imperialist army supplied with American arms. Here is hypocrisy of world-historic proportions. We socialists say: no thank you!---(Spartacist, Winter 1979-80)
Maoists all over the world ore screaming about Soviet "imperialism" subjugating "poor little" Afghanistan. Yet 20 years ago the Chinese deformed workers state had to quell an analogous uprising of Buddhist monks,feudal landlords and tribesmen in Tibet. The then-Trotskyist Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) denounced the imperialist propaganda campaign for the Tibetan counterrevolutionaries. We reprint a leaflet issued by the Eugene V. Debs CIub of Berkeley, California and the East Bay YSA (Young Socialist, June 1959). It occasioned some reaction in the local radical milieu as it was known to have been written by Jim Robertson, a former long-time Shachtmanite "third campist," as his first statement of Trotskyist Soviet defensism.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A hue and cry has gone up throughout the "free" world and especially in the United States over the latest alleged atrocity of the Chinese (Communist) government. This
"atrocity" is the attempt, assured of final success, to reestablish Chinese dominance in the face of revolt planned and led by the Tibetan priestly and landowning classes.
The situation is clear enough in broad outline. To their discredit, the Chinese government has attempted to conciliate with the Tibetan feudal classes for the past eight years. At the same time, as the product of a revolutionary upheaval, the Chinese regime brings with it certain reforms. These reforms, such as rudimentary education,
threatened the age-old system of oppression of the peasants by the native rulers. These latter worthies, headed by their "god-king," felt undermined, and while they still had at least a measure of popular support staged a coup which ran into Chinese military resistance.
As an aside to those in the West who profess to admire the quaint devotion of the more backward in Asia to their religious leaders, let it be noted that these condescending attitudes went out with the "humble, devout" French serf of before 1789 and the "carefree, contented" Negro slaves in America. Oppression and obscurantism that lead to blighted and shortened lives are vicious. The path of human betterment is through increasing men's understanding and control of their universe, not by use of rosaries and prayer wheels.
Several defenses have been put forward in favor of the Tibetan feudalists. (1) “Freedom and democracy”!! When in the last two thousand years have the Tibetan people voted or been asked about anything? The very revolt was in part against the eventual possibility of that sort of thing.
(2) "Another Hungary". In Hungary the revolution fought to go forward, seeking to smash the Stalinist bureaucracy (the brothers of Mao and company) in favor of rule from below and for socialism. and against the old order of great landed estates, privately owned factories, clericalism, and political rule by Admiral Horthy's fascist
gang.
(3) "Self-determination" might have been a serious basis for deciding in favor of Tibetan independence could someone figure out how the Tibetan people are to express their choice in a nation where the "god-king" gives all the answers as well as asks all the questions. But in reality this aspect is without meaning.
The real choice for Tibet if Chinese control were thrown off is not independent nationhood but abject dependence on American arms, money and advisors. One has but to look at the other reactionary and feudal regimes in Asia to see both the reality and meaning of American imperialist domination: the military dictatorships in Pakistan and Thailand, the corrupt "democracies" of [capitalist] Viet Nam and the Philippine, the personal tyrannies in South Korea and Formosa. Not a pretty picture.
The victory of the Chinese Communist government is clearly the progressive choice in the present contest. However, to recognize this is not to whitewash that regime. But even in its distorted way it is part of great and positive changes on the Asian mainland, changes that eventually will be the Maoists' own undoing. Through these very achievements the regime will be overthrown by the mass of people anxious to rule their own destinies without the intervention of a privileged elite. That is the future; the Tibetan monk-rulers are the past.
But what about the hue and cry in America? How easily fine words are twisted to meet the needs of American "world leadership"! How morally corrupt our public figures are, men whose political complexion runs the entire respectable spectrum. Nationally a pro-Tibetan committee has been set up ranging in composition from the Formosa lobby mouthpiece, Henry Luce of Life-Time-Fortune, to Norman Thomas, accurately described as "the State Department socialist." At California, the self-styled "Tibetan Brigade" has sprung up and in its publicity seeking fashion faithfully echoes the rhetoric of their elders.
All this noise in a country that backs dictators the world over and as in Guatemala forcibly puts puppets into power with plots staged by the Counter Intelligence Agency. And at a time when, to take a most outstanding example, in Algeria, a whole people have been waging a desperate, bloody war for years against fascist colonials and an
imperialist army supplied with American arms. Here is hypocrisy of world-historic proportions. We socialists say: no thank you!---(Spartacist, Winter 1979-80)
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Tibet, 2010. Jopuen Emantzipazioaren Eguneko ospakizuna
Tibet, 2010. Celebración del día de la Emancipación de los Siervos:
Nazio askapenik ez kontrairaultzarekinNo hay liberación nacional con la contrarrevolución:Afganistan, AAPDko emazte borrokalariak.
Esklabutza Iraultza aurreko Tibet "librean"
Afganistán, mujeres luchadoras del PDPA:
Esklabutza Iraultza aurreko Tibet "librean" Esclavitud en el "libre" Tibet pre-revolucionario:
Red Tibet, 1965. Under the guidance of a teacher, students in the Lhasa Secondary School perform experiments. Many of these students are former serfs or slaves. Tibet now has seven middle schools over 1,600 primary schools with a total enrollment of over 60,000 students.
Red Tibet, 1965. Under the guidance of a teacher, students in the Lhasa Secondary School perform experiments. Many of these students are former serfs or slaves. Tibet now has seven middle schools over 1,600 primary schools with a total enrollment of over 60,000 students. 