Godard's Maoist phase

"La Chinoise"
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
1967

"Wind from the East"
French "Le Vent d'Est"
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
1969

"Tout Va Bien"
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard
1972

Looking at these films in 2004 there is one question we want to answer right away, and it is
whether or not Godard was serious. Today when we see Mao's image in the West mixed in with
fancy advertising it is to mock Mao and demonstrate the power of consumer obsessions in
cultures even as distant from the West's as China. At best, mainstream usage of Mao's image
today is paradoxical, because it carries great advertisement endorsement weight in China while
everyone knows that Mao was a communist. In contrast, Godard as an advanced film-maker
during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) used Mao's images entirely seriously--and even
created a jingle for Mao. We can say there is an accuracy to these films, an understanding of
Maoist politics, theory and method. 

It's astounding to see that "La Chinoise" came out in 1967. Godard not only grasped the split
between Mao and the Soviet revisionist leaders, but Godard actually put out a film about that
split. He was very timely. In "La Chinoise" and "Wind from the East" Godard slams Soviet
revisionism, the French "Communist Party," social-democracy and the labor bureaucracy. 

There are many striking things about "Wind from the East," but the film's greatest contributions
and arguably Godard's overall contributions come in the theory of making films, because in "Wind
from the East" and to a lesser extent in "La Chinoise" Godard advertises how he believes Maoist
film should be done. The most important question that Godard raised was how struggle and the
how-tos of struggle depicted in film benefit the proletariat while most representations and
methods we see in film to this day benefit the rulers.

Mao-era Godard said that even sociological films on the conditions of the proletariat are not
helpful if they exclude depiction of struggle. Exposure of horrific conditions can cause despair as
well as action, so the important thing is to show how to rebel.

Politically there are some things we do not like about these films, especially "Tout Va Bien,"
which is largely about a French worker takeover at a food processing plant. The facts of Godard's
day in France were more ambiguous as to the nature of imperialist country workers than they are
today. After World War II, the French had to rebuild their economies and even intellectuals
wondered whether the imperialist gravy train was good enough to ever get the French to anything
close to the U.$. living standard.

Godard like many others of his day thought he might be living through a period in which socialist
revolution would come about in the imperialist countries supported by a majority of French for
example. Had it been true that French workers were exploited, Godard's approach to them would
have been mostly correct by Maoist standards. Godard was wrong about that one point while
being right about most of the others.

From the vantage point of 2004, we can see  that the huge salary and wage increases won in
militant strikes of May 1968 solidified the hold of imperialist parasitism in France. Nothing could
demonstrate that more than the meat plant  womyn worker character in "Tout Va Bien" who says in
a rhetorical flourish that if the boss gives a dollar the workers each want a thousand--as if value of
that magnitude could show up out of no where. At the end of the movie young people organize a
"break-out" kind of event at a super-market where people start taking out grocery carts full of
commodities without paying. Of course it's a good question why people have to pay at grocery
stores when society could afford not to require payment, but the whole tone to the movie was too
much in the direction of economic demands by imperialist country workers--this despite the fact
that Godard separated from social-democracy and revisionism while showing how the imperialists
exploit the Third World for the benefit of themselves and their lackeys.

Aside from Godard's faith in the French worker as someone exploited and with a cause worth
championing, MIM has very little disagreement with these films. That may seem like a big proviso
to make, but in fact, Godard teaches methods of thought in his films. "La Chinoise" attempts to
explain to viewers how Marxism-Leninism in his day was a science. Thus the facts of economic
life may change, but some of the basic methods of arriving at truth do not, which is why we still
can see Godard's Maoist phase as fresh despite our disagreements with him on the nature of the
French working class. France became a parasitic nation in its entirety, but most of what Godard
said in these films is still current.

When Godard called theory building the principal task of film production in the "Wind from the
East," it did not matter what his view of French workers concretely in his day was. The question of
the principal task for film remains to this day. Further investigation shows that he was wrong about
French workers, but that question of the principal task remains.

MIM disagrees with Godard on the principal task, because we have named it "building public
opinion and the independent institutions of the oppressed to seize power." From MIM's  point of
view, the "Matrix" might be a greater contribution than "La Chinoise." However, if we accepted
Godard's yardstick, we might say "La Chinoise" makes a bigger contribution than the "Matrix,"
because "La Chinoise" directly tackles Maoist method and specific theories produced in the
Cultural Revolution. In contrast, the "Matrix" would probably never lead to a serious consideration
of Maoism without heavy outside intervention.

By this, we mean to raise the question of what the international proletariat and its imperialist
country allies in particular really need at this moment. The choice is between building theory or
something with more rapid and wider appeal. This too is a scientific question--whether MIM or
Godard are correct about the principal task. Either one or the other outlook does more to speed up
the revolution.

Some might say that these films are "didactic" as in preachy, but in fact, Godard tries to get
viewers to distinguish the various camps: 1) the Western imperialist camp 2) the social-
democratic/revisionist & labor bureaucratic camp including Brezhnev's Soviet Union 3) the
proletarian camp. Each camp gets its say in these movies while Godard shows that the first two are
linked together in one. While getting people to distinguish these aspects of the struggles, Godard
probably thought of "didactic" film as bourgeois film, representations without struggle.

Godard's central task of theory-building puts a heavy burden on film directors to avoid caving in to
audiences and finance capital. Probably much of the resonance of his work stems from his putting
his finger on this question of "artistic integrity," a question that vexes any artistic petty-
bourgeoisie. It's the theory-building task that fits in with Godard's popular image as "artsy" or
"high-brow."

Having named these few disagreements with these films, we should also point out where time has
proved the Godard Maoist phase correct. Godard's repeated bashing of Soviet revisionism has since
proved true with the bankruptcy of the Soviet Union and its satellite parties like the French
"Communist" Party. Only the most deluded Russophile element believes that the
Khruschev/Brezhnev era was "socialism."

In the "Wind from the East," the film participants debate about Stalin. A popular phrase-mongering
of that day and today is "autonomy" in contrast with Stalin's centralized economic approach.
Godard goes over the history of the "autonomy" movement and how it sidetracks the proletariat.
While Godard again criticized all art under Stalin while making the artists of Stalin's day to blame-
-and even poked at Lenin since the treaty of Brest-Litovsk by noting Trotsky's excessive artistic
influence since then--Godard completely took Stalin's side on the question of "autonomy" and its
ideological expression in Tito's Yugoslavia. It is fitting that Mao linked together the questions of
the labor aristocracy, labor bureaucracy and the fight against revisionism in his 1963 essay that
Godard seems to have read: "Is Yugoslavia a Socialist Country?"

From the 1960s through the 1980s, counter-revolutionaries held up Yugoslavia as an example to
sap the will of followers of Marx and Lenin and to serve as a half-way house for people who might
otherwise make the leap to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism from capitalism. Yugoslavia was "market
socialism" with "autonomous" enterprises. Noticeably missing was a Mao or Stalin-style central
economic power. Yet, when all semblance of Stalin's influence was dead in the Soviet Union and
the Gorbachev/Yeltsin bourgeoisie came out in the open, Yugoslavia fell apart most violently of
all. That genocidal violence came as no surprise to us followers of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and
Mao, because the material basis and guiding star of Yugoslavia's people had been set at the local
level. The slogan, "Think globally, act locally" can be an example of a profound mistake in this
direction. What economic "autonomy" did was to encourage the provinces to think at the expense
of each other. That created the material basis for a narrowly provincial war.

The violent collapse of "autonomy" favorite Yugoslavia proves that Marx's and Engels's theories
about centralized socialism in the immediate aftermath of capitalism are absolutely correct.
"Autonomy" is another word for breaking the solidarity of the proletariat. "Autonomy" is really the
watchword of the petty-bourgeoisie seeking to float above both the proletariat and the capitalist
class. The same is true of the womyn question. Of course, gender is relatively autonomous from the
class question, because not all wimmin are workers, but it remains true that autonomy and
individualism in the gender question break the unity of the oppressed and exploited. There is no
choice but to find the scientifically correct group-level answer to the question of wimmin's path
forward. It's not a question of individual feelings, individual abilities or even decentralized
communes.

Marx's labor theory of value stressed how workers could unite on a concrete question--that of their
own labor. Without a means to decide who is exploited and who is not, proletarian unity will
suffer. Questions of exploitation and reparations have to be taken very seriously or the result will
be genocidal warfare as seen in Yugoslavia. It is a key task of the workers to learn how to get along
with other workers not just in their factory or province but whole countries and the whole planet.
Instead of "autonomy," the exploited need the "labor theory of value." The central authorities must
succeed in assisting the workers to know each others' conditions concretely. If workers are unable
to feel the existence of each others' material conditions concretely, they will fail to unite thoroughly
at the highest level possible. Through one centralized economic power the workers can adjust their
relations among each other. Without that ability a Yugoslavia-type situation is bound to arise.

The words of the dialogues in these movies carry the main burden of advance in these Mao-era
Godard films. Secondarily, Godard makes use of limited action, throwing blood-red paint and
having characters writhe in blood  being one most frequent action. Thirdly, Godard also makes use
of some footage to accomplish something while teaching viewers about how images of
photography or film can easily benefit the bourgeoisie. At the end of "Tout Va Bien," Godard is
showing footage of France that is less than flattering while playing silly tourism or French
nationalist jingles in the background. In "Wind from the East," Godard also makes extensive use of
ordinary footage of two acting characters who are making a bourgeois film. We conjure up images
of a conquistador film with great make-up, props and dim lighting, but Godard shows us a man
leading another man around as a prisoner, in broad daylight, without special background--as it
might really look to the actors themselves minus their many props--pretty plain. While the
bourgeoisie treats viewers to placid scenes with great background beauty, Godard in his Maoist
phase shows us that beauty is in the struggle.