It seems very similar to Trotsky’s transitional program. However the resources I’ve found online explaining it have been few and short, so I’m still confused how mass line actually works in practice. It seems like a fantastic tactic for the left to deploy right now, but I haven’t found any resources that explain it in detail.
The mass line is a way of ensuring a dialectical relationship between the vanguard party and the masses. The masses educate the party through consultation on their needs, the party educates the masses to develop their consciousness. The party trains and guides the most developed and revolutionary members of the masses, and the masses supplies those members to the party. It’s a strategy to prevent the worker’s party becoming detached and losing sight of the needs and goals of the proletariat. It was one of Mao’s strategies to prevent the descent into revisionism he saw in the USSR.
In practice it looks like surveying people about their needs - maybe some town has poor water supply. The party takes this complaint, draws up plans and so on. These plans would then also be taken for discussion with the masses. It’s an ongoing thing. Even once you say, built your new water system, the masses would be consulted again, to see whether it was effective, whether more was needed, what was good and bad about the project, etc.
As communists we believe the conscious/revolutionary proletariat to be the most developed social force in history, the mass line is a way of harnessing that force rather than excluding it from political rule.
The party trains and guides the most developed and revolutionary members of the masses, and the masses supplies those members to the party. It’s a strategy to prevent the worker’s party becoming detached and losing sight of the needs and goals of the proletariat
or more realistically just uplift whoever is convenient to local profit structures and economic incentives
This should not be confused with the Mass Swine which is us.
Would love to see this discussion I just want to link this amazing post:
You should read this pamphlet: Some Points on the Mass Line .
The principles it outlined were very helpfull for me when I was organising protests.
It is a way of obscuring the inherently anti-communist dichotomy between “masses” and a hierarchical party structure which is separate from society which produces it.
Third positionism but for self-described communists
