• 9 LETTERS
by Mike Ely
9 Letters (online reading pdf)
9 Letters (print-to-paper pdf)
Excerpts from the 9 letters
Letter 1: A Time to Speak Clearly
Letter 2: A Gaping Hole Instead of Partisan Bases
Letter 3: Forays, Wrong Turns and Blaming the People
Letter 4: Truth, Practice and a Confession of Poverty
Letter 5: Particularities of Christians and Fascists
Letter 6: The Theory Surrounding “A Leader of This Caliber”
Letter 7: Whateverism in Evaluating Avakian
Letter 8: On the Cult of Personality: Revisiting Chen Boda’s Ghost
Letter 9: Traveling Light, Coming from Within
Online Introduction
How do we make revolution in a world that seems to conspire against liberation?
With apparent singlemindedness, the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP) has been insisting that its leader, Bob Avakian, has the answers for humanity. His new theoretical synthesis (this party says) is a major rupture with, and leap beyond, even the best of previous communism, including Marx, Lenin and Mao. And (this party says) this New Synthesis represents the best and even only hope for the future.
The “Nine Letters” unfold a detailed Maoist critique of Avakian’s synthesis. It engages and criticizes Avakian’s claims and methods. The main author is Mike Ely, a former editor of the RCP’s Revolution newspaper.
These “Nine Letters” excavate the RCP’s inability to establish any mass base or revolutionary movement over more than thirty-five years. They dissect the RCP’s escalating cult of personality around Avakian – with special focus on the cult’s theoretical assumptions, denial of practice, and implications for revolutionary strategy.
In a beginning way, these Nine Letters point to a different road for communists and call on others to join in a very presumptuous work of re-conception and new revolutionary practice.
Preface
Standing at a lectern, young Omar looks into the camera.
The crisis in the communist movement, he says, “has given us the right to make a precise accounting of what we possess, to call by their correct names both our riches and our predicament, to think and argue out loud about our problems, and to engage in the rigors of real research.”
This moment has, Omar continues, “allowed us to emerge from our theoretical provincialism, to recognize and engage with the existence of others outside ourselves. And on connecting with this outer world, to begin to see ourselves better. It has allowed us to develop an honest self-appraisal by laying bare where we stand in regard to the knowledge and ignorance of Marxism.”
Omar scans his comrades scattered across the room and adds: “Any questions?”[1]
[1] La Chinoise, film by Jean Luc Godard,1967, Our translation from French. The crisis Omar was discussing was the great struggle that followed Stalin’s death and Krushchev’s denunciation.
About:
These letters emerge from a collective process. Mike Ely has been a supporter of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP,USA) since its founding in 1975. Over the last 25 years, he worked as staff writer and then an editor of the party’s press. Many comrades, inside and outside circles of the RCP, sharpened the work. Among them: J.B. Connors, Rosa Harris, DMC, JB and JS shaped and deepened the letters at every stage, fighting to go from perception to underlying dynamics.
Principled Restraint:
These letters attempt a critical excavation of political and ideological substance. However, they carefully avoid direct reference to internal events, documents, organizational structures and internal activities of specific personalities. This restraint means that potential documentation of some arguments remains submerged.
Footnotes and Quotes:
I have used footnotes to fill in background information for readers not familiar with the history and terminology of the RCP. Quotations that are not directly cited are formulations used by the RCP.
Published: December 2007
Feel free to reprint, distribute or quote this with attribution.
Available online at mikeely.wordpress.com
Send comments to: kasamasite (at) yahoo (dot) com
This website and all its contents are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Who links to me?
December 21, 2007 at 5:23 pm
I returned the favor, and linked back to you.
December 24, 2007 at 9:30 pm
I’ve been getting several hits from this site, someone is reading it.
Is Avakian going at it alone, like Progressive Labor did, when it broke from Maoism and nationalism?
December 25, 2007 at 12:56 am
I’ve been getting hits from here too. It’s interesting critique for me. I had a district committee member in Pokhara tell me that in Nepal they consider Avakian a great writer but not a great leader. That’s the context that I’m viewing this in.
It’s not the main focus here, but Mike seems to keep returning to the point that [ever since the ceasefire] there has been a deafening silence from the RCP on the Nepal front. My educated guess is that the rift is over the Nepalese Maoist decision to incorporate competitive multi-party democracy into the “D of the P.” That just can’t sit well with BA.
December 25, 2007 at 10:03 am
An interesting note: Last year I read Avakian’s memoir From Ike to Mao… And Beyond. It is an excellent chronicle of political development in the heat of the movement. Over and over, we learn how Avakian doesn’t want to compromise but push forward into a revolutionary situation. It’s a series of engaged disputes… until the RCP is established, splits and then stands alone.
One one side, most of the left packed up and went home. On the other, the RCP became what Mike Ely calls “encapsulated.” That process of giving up politics for ideology means that Avakian will find ANY manifestation beyond his grasp or capacity problematic.
Many leaders have done this. In power, you get the Castro situation where the motherf’er won’t retire, or passes executive power on to his brother – while the majority of Cubans were born after the revolution and get no say in any matters of state. Out of power, Avakian is reduced to establishing a sect dedicated to his personal promotion.
The RCP is not a political party, and I’d have to agree with Neil’s second-hand assessment: Avakian has, in fact, helped develop revolutionary communism after the loss of China… while not finding the ways to make it a living force in the USA (or, as Nepal attests internationally).
On the “multi-party” tip: I’d argue, perhaps in the minority, that ALL governments are “multi-party”. Take China or Mexico under the PRI… or any supposed “one-party” state and you’ll find SHARP disputes, often far greater than within the parliamentary systems of Europe where you can vote for 20 parties but only one system.
“Form follows function” is the best way of seeing what a party or state is. Who is exercising the power, by what means.
Avakian wants to be the guarantee, but there is no turn of events, no outlying possibility, that he will become the keystone of revolutionary change in the USA. His cult of personality precludes being taken seriously by the very intermediate and advanced people who backbone any such struggle.
I’m genuinely thankful that Ely has taken the time and energy to lay out these issues, particularly for a readership of communists. This is a deeply engaged polemic. A rare bird. The RCP says “engage bob avakian” – well, here it is.
December 25, 2007 at 9:30 pm
This polemic isn’t new or original at all. It’s one in a series within New Communist Movement over “mass-line.” These types of “critiques” have been taking place since the mid-seventies. None have resulted in anything tangible. Check out my critique of “mass-line” idealism and the “New Communist Movement”.
December 25, 2007 at 10:17 pm
I’m a formerly RU and another founding RCP member Mike. Just now heard about your 9 letters — eager to digest and discuss. Meanwhile FYI here’s my critique of the revisionist line behind RCP/BA ‘Impeach Bush”line/campaign:
RCP/wcw CAMPAIGN to ‘drive out the bush regime’ is a TRAVESTY of REVOLUTIONARY MARXISM and a BETRAYAL of the PEOPLES of the WORLD:
THE WORLD CAN’T WAIT! DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME “NO! THIS REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT US! AND WE WILL DRIVE IT OUT!” This movement is not stopping until the Bush regime is driven out… http://www.worldcantwait.org/
WHEN REVOLUTIONARY TRUTH & ACTION IS SO URGENTLY NEEDED, RCP DISHES OUT REFORMIST PAP:
Electoral regime change is what the RCP is ‘leading’. Instead of doing its job, putting out a revolutionary pole for revolutionary organizing at this historic conjuncture, telling people what they do not already but urgently need to know to become conscious agents of revolutionary historical change:
[1] the systemic source of the horrors, not just a litany of its effects: how capitalism’s nature and crisis– forcing it into fascist mode to execute
its bipartisan imperialist agenda for world domination –is a function of its strategic weakness, not strength, making it increasingly vulnerable to
the growing global resistance and revolution
[2] the nature of capitalism’s deep structural & conjunctural crisis and our life or death choice: staying complicit in the electoral- politics trap to save the system, or taking up the opportunity, responsibility and truly urgent need this capitalist crisis presents
[3]the need for revolutionary internationalist leadership in the ‘homeland’ in theoretical and programmatic unity with the heroic struggles of our sisters & brothers worldwide to seize this historic opportunity
RCP BETRAYS the PEOPLE & its RESPONSIBILITY:
The RCP has fought hard for this campaign’s counter-revolutionary line. It got what it wanted and paid for with revisionist politics. The RCP has always (truthfully) declared that ‘line is leadership’. Here we have its counter-revolutionary leading line: demagogic liberal garbage about changing the world by ‘driving out the bush regime change’, uncritically uniting with “lesser-evil” liberal imperialist-zionist democrats behind demagogic bravado like “NO! THIS REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT US! AND WE WILL DRIVE IT OUT!” to cover its shit leaving systemic capitalist imperialism untouched — shamelessly pandering to enemies of anti-US imperialist/zionist struggle, [even liberal zionist rabbi Michael Lerner was a speaker
http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/10/181835.php.
RCP says line is leadership: but the party has historically liquidated the struggle against national oppression in the US, as was evident again Oct. 5 in deafening silence about the Black & Latino movements, the most important revolutionary leadership potential today in the usa. Because national oppression, with its ideological engine racism is the lynchpin of capitalist domination worldwide, oppressed nations and nationalities have historically, and will increasingly, play a leading role in the broader revolutionary working class movement worldwide and here.
WHY THIS UGLY SELF-EXPOSURE OCT.5?
To increase WCW/RCP body count?
Maybe worse.
RCP's treacherous line at this key moment in history follows the precedent set in another historic conjuncture by the Comintern/Stalin line of uniting with the 'lesser-evil' "allies" against the "axis" powers under the guise of 'fighting fascism' in WW2, [as if fascism isn't capitalism in crisis, shifting gears from bourgeois democratic to the fascist mode always operative against oppressed nations and peoples] a counter-revolutionary line that suppressed
revolutionary struggles for the sake of unity with imperialist “anti-fascists” — for what? For “peaceful” U.S. imperialist world domination at the expense of millions of heroic fighters and the international communist movement. This helps explain why, “despite his errors”, the RCP continues to uphold Stalin as a ‘great M-L revolutionary’ …to ‘justify’ leading us down this same treacherous road. The world is still paying for the line Stalin/ICM implemented. The basis for revolutionary struggle is revolutionary M-L-M theory — as Lenin said without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary practice. The RCP’s revisionist theory again proves it.
IGNOMINY OR IGNORANCE?
Judge for yourself: nowhere in WCW material is there even a hint of a M-L-M analysis of the world situation, the U.S. imperialist agenda and the only
way forward for fundamental change: RCP’s official material acknowledges the danger of the bipartisan capitalist trap — then proceeds to its
disingenuous, impossibly illogical, reactionary conclusion that ‘driving out bush regime…’ is the most critical step!
[ * RCP's official statement, "We don't want a better War on the World: Behind the Democrats' Tough Talk on the War" is below, the following WCW
statement]
” A message from the World Can’t Wait - Drive Out the Bush Regime Steering Committee on Oct. 5″:The following is being read at Oct. 5 rallies around the country: http://www.worldcantwait.org/
December 27, 2007 at 2:51 am
Nhoring, I have heard similiar things from other sources of how they regard Avakian in the International movement. In fact, sometimes it astounds people to learn how small the RCP actually is. It seems to me because of this, we in the US have to acesss what is valuable in Bob Avakian’s work and thought (if there is much at all). The fact we are, where we are, is coming out of Bob Avakian’s line in my opinion. Of coruse there are real objective factors to this, we can’t turn into subjectivist and put the power of our Will above what is real and concrete in the world; however as Mike Ely I think has noted in this polemic, there is possibility for much more growth and preparation of minds and our spirits for Revolution in this country. We can have a vibrant party that is struggling to lead the masses of people in struggle.
However I think the all too real problems of Bob Avakian’s line will make this impossible.
These problems I think are his Subjective attitude toward developing crisis in this country, his liberal critique of making revolution, the lack of will to give a real critical historical analysis the Soviet Union and China [the failure here of the Set the Record Straight campaign comes to mind], and his mechanical materialist (dare I say Empiricist) “rupture” that he pits against a Dialectical one.
On Redflags point of have different tendencies in Parties, I agree that is always true. It seems to be political organizations and parties must have different trends and lines competeing for hegemony and realization in political practice. There is always a battle of summation and practice, and this comes out of the real theoretical and social contradictions within.
But here is where I see myself sympathetic on some level to the “multi-party” conception that is earning itself a righteous discussion amongst the ICM again. If politics develop out of these contradictions, if things MUST split into two, isn’t it true then that we must let a hundred flowers bloom and contend? It seems that a real revolutionary society must foster a certain ‘Flourishing’ that Bill Martin was speaking for in his conversations with Bob Avakian.
If we truly have a liberated society, it would seem it only possible for there to be Multi-parties or tendencies, etc. In contention for a path. When it comes to the question of democracy in, it sometimes always suprises me that this is where we sometimes lose faith in the people.
I don’t think also that the question of democracy in the socialist transition is necessarily limited to the critique of Anarchists, Trotskyists, revisionist, etc. It is a real concern of Maoists, and was what Mao pitted as one of the internal kernels of his critique of Stalin. His lack of faith in the masses, not allowing the political development of the masses, but seeing the road as a linear progression of history in which the people are only be activated for their part.
Of course, as the old Engelian saying is, Revolution is indeed Authoritarian…and we have got to break some eggs. Compromising on this essential point, that revolution is necessary and that the Dictatorship for the Proletariat must be upheld, is to slip into liberal revisionism. Here is where we see the compromise of Lenin, that instead of power to the Soviets, it became power to the Party. As RedFlags rightfully points out, form does follow function. Sometimes to hold on to Revolution, move it forward, and not collapse, we need the most militant and authoritarian needs to fight. There was a need for the Red Army to be disciplined, for the presses to censured, for the Cheka, for the execution of the Tsarists.
In the process of making revolution, you need discipline and resolve, leadership and humility. If you have the chance to win State power, you will most probably in the immediate period need to turn to (as I recall Michael Parenti dubbing it) “Siege Socialism.” A Dictatorship “for” the Proletariat.
Stalin here comes to mind, as the actual embodied line of “Siege Socialism.” Against the dogmatic liquidationists like Trotsky, who argued mechanically that the USSR will fail because of the failure of revolution in the West, Stalin stood against this line and pushed forward for “socialism in one nation,” for socialist reconstruction of the economy, of the relations to production, and against trends with Opportunist lines. His fight essentially to keep the Soviet Union intact.
But in this line isn’t there a mockery of sorts here of actual revolutionary politics, a turn to conservatism? Where, loyalty and commitment to the Revolution is found on the basis of who goes about their lives, who promotes production, who doesn’t shake up the politics. In such conditions could a more revolutionary line come out of it? It seems such a line internalizes actual reactionary politics, and I think you find this inside the Brezhenivite-Marcyist camp. Revolution becomes who best defends Uncle Joe, gives “Another View of Stalin.” Commitment to Revolution who best accepts their fate (here the example of Nikolai Buhkarin’s trial and Slavoj Zizek’s interesting look into this in his essay “When the Party Commits Suicide).
One of the many things I have found very dissatisfying about RCP, USA, is that there is hardly any talk of the Shanghai Commune, its development, its history, unless it is to defend Mao’s position of liquidating this form of governance of the city. I think such a defence is important, especially against the historical revisionist current that is out there promoting one sidedly Lin Piao that can be found and amongst PSL, but it seems to me there is really no other discussion of it.
Nepal is given silence I suspect much for the same reason.
I think what the Nepalese comrades are doing should be looked at closely, what is possible in this route remains to be seen, and I have fiath in our comrades in Nepal to actually do something incredible. The dogmatic verdicts of the past just be given a new dressing (as Set the Record Straight did). Here I dare say lets learn from the Nepalese and comend them for trying to break out from this problem and actually admit, yes indeed there is a poverty here. Prachanda doesn’t want to have be chairman for life, and he shouldn’t be!
December 27, 2007 at 2:53 am
sorry the last part of my section is linked because I messed up with the html. It links to Caleb Maupin’s article glorifying Lin Piao on quite wrong historical assumptions.
December 27, 2007 at 9:32 am
While I appreciate Shine’s comments I think we need to be willing to go back further and revisit the whole range of established orthodoxies (Marxist, Leninist or Maoist). The general point that a revolutionary regime in a hostile world will have to resort to repressive measure is I think correct. But the formulation “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” implies much more than that. First, it implies that we have a clear understanding of what or who exactly the proletariat is; that its a stable category; that it can, should and will become conscious of itself as a class in a manner that enables it to rule; that it self-consciousness will take the form of a party; etc…
There are similar questions surrounding all sorts of our conceptions, including the vanguard party, the mass line, and more.
I’m not arguing that all of this needs to be thrown out, but rather that it needs to be revisted. That we need to subject it all to the most ruthless critique we are capable.
Really breaking with inevitablism must mean re-examing all of the theoretical formulations that were constituted within the inevitablist framework of second and third international Marxism and Maoism.
Fortunately its not exactly like we are starting from zero. The RCP refugees who are taking up this particular discussion are actually pretty late to some of these critiques. Obviously anarchists and Trotskyists have made some similar criticisms. But the more robust critiques are to be found, as I’ve argued before, in Lukacs, Gramsci, Reich, the Frankfurt School, Althusser, Foucault, Deleuze and others. None of this should be taken up as whole cloth (much of it wasn’t meant to be and there a re sharp contradictions between these thinkers), but I don’t think we can claim to be serious about developing revolutionary theory suitable to the 21st century without seriously engaging these thinkers and their various critiques of orthodox Marxism.
Of course we will all be old and grey before we finish such a reading list. In the meantime our theoretical searchings should be grounded in engagement in practical work, not because this in itself will give us the answers we seek, but because without it we can’t even understand the questions.
What is needed at this moment is decidedly NOT a reassurance of ourselves that the DofP or some other formulation remains intact, but rather the creation of fora (like this one) in which it can really be investigated and wrangled over and in which one isn’t shouted down for either upholdiong or criticizing a particu