9 Letters to Our Comrades
by Mike Ely
9 Letters to Our Comrades (online pdf)
9 Letters to Our Comrades (print pdf)
Web Versions:
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?
Renegade Eye said
I returned the favor, and linked back to you.
Renegade Eye said
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?
nhorning said
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.
redflags said
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.
Red Guard Camp said
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”.
liz burbank said
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/
ShineThePath said
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!
ShineThePath said
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.
tellnolies said
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 particular formulation. If we are serious about getting to the truth that is the spirit we will need.
Ulises said
In relation to this discussion of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, Democracy and revolution, I would just point out that Lenin had at least two opposing ideas of what this was to look like. The revolution was made on the slogan and promise of “all power to the soviets”. Lenin spoke of the arming of the whole populace as comprising the military functions. This is all in State and Revolution and his Letters from Afar. When I read this stuff, I am struck by how radical it is. This is a program that I would fight for.
I’m not so sure that they did the right thing in abandoning this path for the sake of saving the revolution. Perhaps the revolution, as a historic process, needs to meet its defeats squarely on this path in order to gain the knowledge and strength to finally succeed on that road. In other words, we shouldn’t be afraid to fail. And instead of replacing the earlier model with the later more Stalin-esque model, they should have put in an extra effort to be victorious on this other basis, and accepted the possibility of defeat.
As it is, we don’t know what would have happened if they really committed to “all power to the soviets”. Can it be said definitively that this would have meant defeat?
Pavel said
ShineThePath mentions “the failure of the Set the Record Straight Project.” I’m curious about what you mean by this STP.
I have big differences with the historical presentation Lotta made, and I agree that there are big failures in terms of lack of research and the deployment of the concept of “necessity” to justify what i consider unjustifiable. But what is your (or others’) assessment of the success of the university tour as an effort to get academics’ attention and gain intellectual respectability for BA?
The lectures (very long, reflecting unfamiliarity with audience attention spans and even academic etiquette, and perhaps designed to minimize questioning because most listeners tire and leave before Q&A ) ended with an appeal for those with questions to engage BA. The speaker avoids embarrassment, and the party can boast of its success in accessing audiences at prestigious universities.
Or maybe not. I’d be interested in learning how the effort has been a failure.
notsopoeticfeelings said
The Mole, the Ghost and the foolish old man.
The old mole is digging again,
teeth sharper than before
And will get sharper and sharper,
with each and every bite.
The ghost is hovering again,
Soaring high at times,
Gaze fixed to the ground.
The foolish old man,
That foolish old man and his shovel again,
Determined as ever,
One ear closed,
to the sound of laughter,
another open,
to the sound of the ground.
Can anyone doubt?
That this foolishness is sound?
They just have to wait,
for this Mount will ground.
tellnolies said
I presume folks have seen the statement from the Lakota Freedom Movement withdrawing from treaties with the US government and reasserting the independence of the Lakota Nation.
http://www.lakotafreedom.com/
I’m not familar with the Lakota Freedom Movement, but apparently Russel Means is involved. Is anyone here closer to the ground and able to offer a substantive analysis of what is happening?
Here is the statement:
zerohour said
I have checked and the Lakota Freedom movement is not connected in any substantial way to the Lakota Nation and is not authorized to speak on their behalf.
It is a self-aggrandizing move on Means’s part to re-establish his prominence in Native American politics without having to do the hard work of actually organizing. Sad really.
tellnolies said
For some reason, the statement itself did not appear in my first post. So here it is:
Lakotah Unilateral Withdrawal from All Agreements and Treaties with the United States of America.
We as the freedom loving Lakotah People are the predecessor sovereign of Dakota Territory as evidenced by the
Treaties with the United States Government, including, but not limited to, the Treaty of 1851 and the Treaty of 1868
at Fort Laramie.
Lakotah, formally and unilaterally withdraws from all agreements and treaties imposed by the United States
Government on the Lakotah People.
Lakotah , and the population therein, have waited for at least 155 years for the United States of America to adhere to
the provisions of the above referenced treaties. The continuing violations of these treaties’ terms have resulted in the near annihilation of our people physically, spiritually, and culturally.
Lakotah rejects United States Termination By Appropriation policy from 1871 to the present.
In addition, the evidence of gross violations of the above referenced treaties are listed herein.
Lakotah encourages the United States of America, through its Government, to enter into dialogue with Lakotah
regarding the boundaries, the land and the resources therein. Please contact the Lakotah Interests Section, Naomi
Archer, at (828) 230-1404 or info@Lakotafreedom.com.
Should the United States and its subordinate governments choose not to act in good faith concerning the rebirth of
our nation, we hereby advise the United States Government that Lakotah will begin to administer liens against real
estate transactions within the five state area of Lakotah.
Lakotah, through its government, appointed the following representatives to withdraw from all the treaties with the
United States of America based on the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties entered into force in 1980 and the
U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007:
Teghiya Kte
Heretofore known as Gary Rowland
Canupa Gluha Mani
Heretofore known as Duane Martin Sr.
Oyate Wacinyapin
Heretofore know as Russell Means
Mni yuha Najin Win
Heretofore known as Phyllis Young
*****
Zerohour, can you provide some support for your claims? Who is, in your view, authorized to speak on behalf of the Lakota Nation.
zerohour said
I don’t know if anyone is authorized to speak on behalf of the all the Lakota people but here’s how the Lakota Freedom Movement describe their relationship to the Lakota:
“Despite criticism the Delegation does not speak for the Lakota people, Delegation representatives have been in ongoing communication with the traditional chiefs and treaty councils all across Lakota for the last three and a half years.”
“The traditional treaty councils in the following communities were consulted:” [list follows]
“Additional consultation with the treaty council occurred during Defenders of Black Hills meeting in Rapid City. Mni yuha Najin Win (Phyllis Young) also consulted with the people in Standing Rock regarding this action.”
Notice how often the word “consult” and its derivatives appears? Well I can consult with the masses and declare socialist revolution! Anyone with me!?
They themselves declare they don’t represent all the Lakota: “With this in mind, the Delegation does not act for IRA Indians, “stay by the fort indians”, or other Lakota people unwilling to be free.” I don’t know what an “IRA Indian” is but I don’t see how you quantify the latter two groupings. What kind of spokespeople dismiss whole sections of their population?
I am very close to someone who is Native American [not a Lakota] who is in touch with Lakota from different reservations and they all state that there is no mass movement behind this statement and that it is just PR.
A substantial mass movement would be a better indication of legitimacy than a litany of past achievements by the statement signers.
zerohour said
BTW, my statement about Means’s motives was based purely on anecdotes from those who have met him and really explains nothing.
What I think might be more at issue is a mis-understanding of history. Many critics of 60s movements like the Black Panthers dismiss them as media creations. I think this is a case where activists cynically accept this verdict, and prefer to engage in spectacle over organizing, since they also believe this was the initial spark that drove those movements.
ShineThePath said
Pavel,
I attended the Set the Record Straight Campaign at Harvard and Columbia Universities. While I am of the mind that at both, Lotta had been engaging with the audience in his speech and Q & A [even allowing Sparts to go on], I think the approach that Lotta had to his historical look into China and the Soviet Union was Apologist in orientation to the actual history, actively distorting certain points [Speaking of Central Asian liberation of women, without the context of the mechanicism and authoritarian way in which this "liberation" occured under the Stalin era], the overlooking of important points (Purges, NVKD, Gulags), etc.
From a historical perspective, it was not satisfying at all. It was like a long simplistic article in the paper glorifying the Revolutionary legacy, ironically the premise of this whole campaign was to engage Intellectuals (who I would assume, know some what the history) in academia.
It seemed though the logic was clear in the Campaign. Jung Chang’s book has just come out, use this as an opportunity to “Set the Record Straight” by giving the apologist version of history, and fall back upon Bob Avakian’s new summation of the lessons, say “we’ve got to do better” if criticized for it.
I think your point on having the ability to boast about what Univeristies they were at. It is clear that the Set the Record Straight could have been had in many places, but these places were choosen out of the strategic vision RCP has of these Universities.
In fact, it was the same thread of thinking that ran through WCW on these Univeristies. Events of rebellion sprouting at Columbia, Harvard, etc. are influential because it is getting revolutionary politics out to the future administrators of this system and it would sort of trickle down to the rest of the country.
Does anyone remember being given this line. I remember repeatedly people speaking in this way.
tellnolies said
I don’t neccesarily have a problem with targetting elite universities. If you think that intellectuals are important to engage and you have limited resources, the elite research universities seem like exactly the right place to start. These places don’t just train administrators, they concentrate the academic elite and train future professors who are then hired by the second tier schools and in this manner exercise intellectual leadership over the whole college educated population of the country.
The problem with the RCP’s approach is two-fold. First, there is the content of what they are attempting to bring into these spaces, whether we are talking about STRS or the Engage campaign. As suggested above, it doesn’t reflect serious engagement with current scholarship. It just doesn’t pass the smell test. Getting people curious enough to fill an auditorium or tapping into their civil libertarian instincts enough to sign a statement is one thing, the sort of thing that is well withing the RCP’s comfort zone if you will. But actually being taken seriously by even a fraction of the radical intelligentsia, well that means BEING much more serious about the intellectual work itself.
Rather than dissolving the RCYB into the Engage campaign (or whatever the hell is happening) the RCP would have been much better advised to concentrate its youth in a number of carefully chosen colleges as STUDENTS where they could build and help lead the student movement and get some training as intellectuals that the party can’t really give them yet 9and that would enable them to eventually really contend in this environment). Now such an orientation doesn’t demand the same single-minded focus on elite schools as the (inevitably vain) get rich quick attempt to win over leading intellectuals to Avakian-thought.
The problem of course with getting serious about rooting themselves in a university environment is that its a harder place to maintain the info diet that seems to be so important to holding the RCP together. There’s always the danger that someone will learn about Althusser’s (much more interesting) notion of the “epistemological break” or discover that Avakian’s “pathbreaking critique” of previous socialist regimes recycles the common sense of a great deal of academic Marxism or learn that the arguments on the left over what Avakian calls “inevitablism” are a century old.
One thing that I think Mike’s letters don’t really get into, but that I think all of this discussion points to, is how FATEFUL, and perhaps irreversible, certain kinds of decisions to close the party off to outside influences proved to be. That is to say that the process of encapsulation has an effect of greatly strengthening the power of the leadership vis a vis the rest of the membership of the party such that any real re-opening in which members are really encouraged to pursue questions beyond the confines of party literature will be experienced as a threat to that power and therefore to the survival of the party itself.
zerohour said
I was initially interested in STRS believing it to be an opportunity to re-engage the history in an open and critical way. I was soon to find out this was not so. I was actually asked to work on the project and when I told them I wanted to participate in formulating the questions and approach, I was told that it would not happen that way. If there were issues to discuss, I could express them to someone and it would be communicated upwards, or a meeting with Lotta could be arranged. At no time, were any of my statements treated as more than suggestions to be evaluated by someone else. I don’t see how a substantial discussion of Stalin could be had this way but it’s obvious that a serious inquiry was not on the agenda. Nor was substantial participation a priority.
As for the “failure” of STRS, I don’t know how to measure it but I can imagine it has not gained much traction due to RCP’s inability to engage in the intellectual arena. Mountains of reactionary scholarship and a deeply entrenched popular anti-communism will not be dislodged by selective snippets of history and an appeal to Avakian’s approach.
Shine, I was given the same line when I asked why they only went to elite universities. When you ignore sites where working people are more concentrated the only direction for ideas to trickle in is down.
Anonyfuckingmous said
Want to know the real reason Avakian wants you to focus on the elite colleges? It’s simple.
Students at elite colleges have more money. Wealthy RCP dupes are the people who put food on Avakian’s table.
Some single mother at a community college isn’t going to be dedicating a lot of money “towards the cause”, the cause being Avakian’s bank account. Plus poor people seem to have street smarts for detecting cons and hustles than naive wealthy liberals do not.
Pavel said
Thanks ShineThePath, and Zerohour. Your comments help clarify some things about the project. But it sounds as though there was no conspicuous “failure” in the sense of some clear setback that the party would itself sum up as such–such as a pattern of audience rejection, negative reviews in campus papers (I think the one in the Harvard paper was pretty hostile), disappointing turnout, etc. Again, I would suppose the mere fact that Lotta was speaking at elite universities would cause the RCP to sum the project up as a victory. Henceforth Lotta can add to his credentials “…and has lectured at Harvard, Columbia, University of Chicago, Berkeley, UCLA etc.” That’s important in gaining access to and credibility among academics, which is obviously a goal, especially in terms of building the Avakian cuilt via the “engage” statement.
Jimmy Higgins said
Like any revolutionary socialist, I recognize that a summation, even a partial and awkward one, of the socialist experiment which commenced with the October Revolution is essential to rebuilding a revolutionary movement and a red party in the US.
I must confess that I did not have sufficient faith in the theoreticians of the RCP to attend any of the SRSC events or do much more than skim some RW articles. Can somebody refer me to a single piece–online–which capsulizes the position?
Ben Seattle said
Hi Jimmy,
I wrote a summation: Proletarism is anti-revisionist Marxism for the 21st century. It is easy to read, brutally concise and includes a graphical timeline of key events. I would be very interested in your comments on it, if you have any.
Ben Seattle
Mike E said
[Please note: I posted a separate comment on "The RCP and Public Intellectuals" which digs a little into what the RCP's plan is for enlisting prominent intellectuals and some of the things wrong with the approach and assumptions.]
STP wrote:
I agree that the STRS is precisely “not satisfying at all.”
(For those who don’t know: STRS is “Set the Record Straight” a project-as-speaking-tour of the RCP to publicly address the history of socialism in the 20th century. You can find the speech we are discussing on that site. Also see “Letter 4” and footnotes 46 and 47 for more critical discussion of STRS and its approach.)
And in many ways, one long speech that sweeps across the two great revolutions in the twentieth century CANNOT be satisfying… it is a gloss. It is a dense forced march through the RCP’s capsule summations of a century of socialist history. It is precisely not satisfying — especially when it continues to skirt the hardest (and most widely asked) questions like the purges, the Soviet collectivization, the Great Leap Forward or the complexities of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. People want to know is socialism is more oppression, or if it can be (and has been) truly liberating. We need to answer that, seriously, in depth, with respect for both our audiences and a truly dialectical and materialist approach to real history.
These are all passages in history that we MUST AND CAN talk about (from a revolutionary communist perspective) and we will.
But this method of taking the RCP’s previous summation, and “retooling it” by inserting Avakian’s latest verdicts, predictions and criticisms, and expecting that to address the social questions around the communist project (or expecting it to actually “set the record straight”) is riddled with self-deception, idealism, and (once again) a willful ignoring of both the questions (and the real knowledge) of your audience.
As you say, academic audiences have quite a high level of knowledge (in spots) and a high level of expectation.
For such events: Far better to pick ONE controversial moment (”the GPCR and the January storm”) or (boldly) “Soviet Union: 1937 and the Fighting Before the War” — and then REALLY apply materialist dialectics to that very important and complex set of events. And really say something new, and thought provoking. And really back it up.
Instead Avakian’s “method and approach” were consciously imposed on this project — a self-important and rather dilettantist scan that underestimates its audience and overestimates itself. And the results will be (predictably) not unleashing the debate or enthusiasm the way it needs.
I also think that having this project be a “one man show” (of Ray Lotta) is far less than what is needed: this is a project that needs an online debate center, and a stream of high level articles. This is a project that should have a journal — drawing materials from many sources, and engaging the many scholars of this field (some of whom do want to “set the record straight” and who do really know something about the past and also the present terrain). Because the bar for participating is set so high and the real scientific research is set so low (i.e. AP&P is the point, once again)… all this is unlikely.
But identifying these problems must not be a kvetch-moment for us. This is a process for us to identify the missed opportunity AS WE REGROUP. We can sketch for ourselves outlines for one of the tasks at hand FOR US.
Mike E said
btw:
I enjoyed the poem above…..
Yes…. the old mole is grubbing and will pop up again.
Yes the spector of communism is still haunting the powers (still, as the german revolutionaries say “trotz allem!”).
Yes we will be compared to classical China’s foolish old man (and his children) for thinking we can move mountains.
One ear closed,
to the sound of laughter,
another open,
to the sound of the ground.
yes. Let’s be oblivious to ridicule that says our project is impossible. And lets TRULY keep our ear to the ground.
Well put!
Pavel said
I found Mike’s notes on “RCP and Public Intellectuals,” which I read after posting my last comment on the Setting the Record Straight Project (STRS), quite illuminating. I had come to see what I supposed was the key role of STRS in the “engage Bob” project. The “new synthesis” as I see it involves upholding the historical experience of socialist construction in general as a good thing (hence the STRS), while acknowledging that major errors were made—and validly exposed and criticized not only by proletarian critics but by petty bourgeois academics including those with pretty reactionary politics (the “epistemological breakthrough” acknowledging that there is no such thing as “proletarian” versus “bourgeois” truth). The “synthesis” emerging from that history, plus those criticisms constitute the “vision” synthesized inside Bob’s head. (“Which vision will prevail?” the party has asked, although I haven’t seen this repeated lately, I dare to hope because some people came to realize it was just too embarrassing. “That of George W. Bush? Or of Bob Avakian?”).
The “epistemological breakthrough” was represented to me as this wonderfully liberating piece of news. Here’s a great communist leader talking about the need for intellectual freedom under socialism. At first I was puzzled that the recognition of this need—indeed a prerequisite for any future socialism in this country—constituted any sort of breakthrough at all. Now more cynically I see it as an effort to reach out to the public intellectuals Mike mentions, to assure them that Bob and the RCP will be much nicer to them than Stalin and Mao were to their intellectuals. I do not get the impression that even the most radical Marxist intellectuals, to say nothing of the numerous progressives more or less sympathetic to Maoist revolutionary movements, are exactly filled with gratitude in response. I think those seriously following the party are amused at this pretentiousness, or puzzled that the RCP should expect them to respond with intellectual excitement.
Having read Lotta’s series online, I was aware of the project’s shortcomings as an effort at historical scholarship. At the same time, aware that the teaching of Soviet and PRC history in academe is substantially hostile to the communist movement, I felt it a very good thing that some sort of Maoist reassessment was getting articulated at the institutions Lotta visited. I remain impressed with how the party, some of whose members make a very bad impression on scholars, was able to pull the SRSP off. What remains to be seen—the proof of the pudding—is whether or not the project drew a significant number of intellectuals closer to the party. My sense is that some drawn out of curiosity concluded that the talk was simplistic and dogmatic, even if welcome in the context of academic freedom as a challenge to anticommunist dogmatism. Others may have had less sympathetic responses, concluding that the RCP just doesn’t know what it’s talking about and ought to be ignored. How many were moved, convinced, inclined to heed Lotta’s call to “engage Bob” for more information?
As a loose gauge to measure this, I’d check out the “Engage” website and see who signs the statement. Michael Slate writes on the site that in asking “all sorts of people” to sign the statement, the question of BA not currently being under attack “has come up repeatedly.” That it seems to me is just common sense, or hesitation to publicly commit themselves to a certain view of Avakian. But he calls it “deadly logic.” I sense some frustration there, not too well masked by the party’s boast (in some exuberant piece I can’t find right now) that Cindy Sheehan and Fr. Berrigan have signed (and so everybody else should get on board).
notsopoeticfeelings said
On the question of historical assessments
Take the Stalin case for example. This debate has been going on in the Maoist camp for more than fifty years now. Why is it not settled?
I mean look at the Trotskyites; the question of Stalin is settled for them in the sense that you cannot be a Trotskist without being hostile to Stalin (I know this is an over-simplification and does not say why they are hostile). They still debate him and his era; they still search for historical facts; but they have this overall understanding that is the premises on which anything they do or say is based on.
The hostility is the universal symptom of that first premise but I’m not going to get into that and I’m not dealing with weather they are right or wrong.
I venture to assert that Maoists, and I count myself as a staunch one for those who are curious, have a first premise that is not a satisfactory one and until this is dealt with and settled no amount of historical research and revisiting, no matter how accurate and honest and “without prejudice”, will solve our problem . For this prejudice is in the first premise. And it does not matter, for now, if this prejudice is conscious or otherwise and if the political necessities of his (Mao’s) day compelled him to deal with it this way.
The first premise is Mao’s 70/30 assessment. All the research, debate, etc is taking place within this confine. Even those who are not using this formulation and those who have said this formulation is incorrect have not been able to transcend this because they have not been able to show why, in a clear and correct way.
This is where we have to zoom on. And this should only be done with a correct scientific tool.
Otherwise we once again get stuck in the mud, pressing hard on the gas pedal, with our eyes focused on a narrow field of vision ahead, hearing the sound of engine, thinking that we are moving to destination at full speed.
I am curious to know what others think of this. Am I factually or methodologically wrong?
Ben Seattle said
I think the Set the Record Straight (STRS) project was motivated by an effort to deal with the crisis of theory. The RCP has a view of “socialism” which is essentially a police state–where workers will not have the fundamental democratic rights of speech and organization (yes–Avalian says that people will speak out–but he also makes clear, in the fine print, that the ruling party will reserve the right to shut up counter-revolutionaries if and when it becomes necessary).
Such a view is not consistent with how society will function when the working class runs everything.
The workers _will_ have fundamental democratic rights and there will _not_ be a single ruling party.
The lack of a single ruling party follows from the simple fact that, if the working class has the democratic rights of speech and organization — then it will create organizations which are independent from one another (and from the ruling state) and these organizations will openly compete for (a) influence among the working class and masses and (b) control of the workers’ state. And, in such conditions, no single organization would be able to maintain a monopoly of influence among the masses or complete control over the workers’ state.
The view that democratic rights will be extended or denied by the ruling party and that a single party will run everything originates in the emergency measures taken in 1921 by Lenin during the period of martial law following the civil war in Russia. But Lenin never considered these measures to be normal or Soviet society at the time to be “socialism”. These were emergency measures taken in an extreme situation–in order to prevent bourgeois restoration and buy time so that workers’ rule might come about after there was more of a functioning economy.
Nor is it correct for activists today to view this period as the rule of society by the working class (or the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” as many call it). This is where the confusion (and the crisis of theory) emerges. Workers’ rule requires that the working class has a functioning immune system (ie: fundamental democratic rights): so that it can overthrow principles, people and parties which become incompetent or corrupt. Without this–you do not have the rule of society by the working class–but rather the rule of society by an organization which may (or may not) represent some working class interests.
Stalin played a major role in creating the crisis of theory when he proclaimed that the absence of democratic rights was consistent with “socialism” or the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. Mao did little to clear this up.
The theoretical question which must be faced concerns whether working class rule really requires that the voice of counter-revolutionaries be silenced.
I assert it does not. At least not in the conditions of a modern, stable society with a functioning economy (ie: our goal).
If working class rule is based on the stable support of the majority of society–then there is little need to restrict the democratic rights of speech and organization — even among those who advocate a return to bourgeois rule.
By this measure–we cannot regard the Soviet Union or China (at _any_ point) to have ever reached the stage of workers’ rule (or “socialism” or the “dictatorship of the proletariat”, etc).
This is a fundamental question. Ordinary people (who understand the “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely) understand that a police state would not be an improvement over bourgeois rule. If you claim something else–people will conclude (correctly) that you are not realistic in your thinking.
And this defeats what must be the center of the ideological war in the 21st century.
The concept of workers’ rule must be taken everywhere. This concept is the great unifying goal of everything that is healthy in the progressive movement. If we fail to understand this–then we are forced to either hide this goal — or take it out only on rare ceremonial occasions — or surround it with all kinds of cult-like protections aimed at discouraging scientific attitudes and intelligent investigation.
It is the crisis of theory which motivates the STRS project. But without going to the root of the problem (ie: the false conception that “socialism” is consistent with a a single-party state and a lack of democratic rights) any such effort is _bound_ to fall on its face. Intellectuals will not line up (in significant numbers) to support the idea of a police state that does not make any sense. Nor will students or ordinary people.
In this light I will make a few brief comments on previous remarks:
Mike E:
Mike I am glad to see that you are serious about regroupment. And this website/blog is a very good and healthy thing. But I think you miss the reason that the STRS project was bound to fail. Regardless of the details of what happened in 1937 or 1967 — Soviet and Chinese societies during the great purges and the cultural revolution were not run by the working class. It may be possible to defend Stalin and Mao for many of the things they did (conditions did improve remarkably for hundreds of millions of people in both contries) but these societies are not our goal — they are not a model of “socialism”. Our goal is something that has never existed. And we must do work to focus on better understanding our goal — so that we can make this goal the center of revolutionary work and agitation. I have done theoretical work toward this objective in the Anarcho-Leninist debate on the state and (more recently) created a chart comparing the DoP (”dictatorship of the proletariat”) with what I call the DoP-embryo which I believe sheds light on some of these theoretical questions (see Appendix A here).
If we fail to advance on this front with solid theory–then our work will forever be restricted to the struggles for partial demands. And we will have capitulated to the bourgeois offensive against the idea that the working class can run society.
Pavel:
Good point. We do need solid theoretical work. It will not so much be a “breakthrough” as a “break with” the worship of Stalin and Mao and the entire political religion that calls itself “Marxism-Leninism”.
notsopoeticfeelings:
I am in agreement with you. I am a former Maoist. I was a member and supporter of the Marxist-Leninist Party, which dissolved itself in 1993. I believe that the major factor in the collapse of the MLP was its failure to confront the crisis of theory. Ultimately this undermined our work and everyone’s confidence.
I recently wrote an article on how the crisis of theory cripples agitation on a present-day struggle (ie: health care for everyone).
The process of regroupment that Mike is working for is one that I support. I view this effort as something that must include more than maoists. The key question concerns whether our work is aimed at the overthrow of the system of bourgeois rule and the rule of society by the working class. In practice this also means unrelenting hostility to the domination of the progressive movement by the left-wing of the Democratic Party and its flunkies (and, unfortunately, I must place the RCP’s “World Can’t Wait” campaign in that category).
I have created a discussion list (one or two posts per week is the limit in order to keep the noise level acceptable for an open list) for the purpose of creating a community that is focused on the overthrow of bourgeois rule and the rule of society by the working class and I invite like-minded activists here to join. We need revolutionary activists who have experience and humility.
Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/ben/
notsopoeticfeelings said
On the question of historical assessments
Part 2
Generally speaking, when we deal with the historical question of Stalin and the purges of the thirties, the main qualifier, mitigating circumstance, the reason for his “mistakes” or his deviation, whatever you want to call it, is that he did not have a correct understanding of Dialectical Materialism. It is said his was a mechanical one and that’s why he came up with the idea that classes did not exist in USSR but only element, remnants. And since he believed there was no basis in USSR for their existence, those who opposed socialism(the official version of it) were labeled agents of the foreign external enemy. And the storey goes, since he mechanically equated opposition =enemy agent=treason, he tortured and killed a lot of people.
All the Maoist explanations, so far have been a version or another of this storey no matter how they are stated. Although I have not read Lotta’s latest speech I take the risk of claiming that I doubt he has ventured qualitatively far off this underlying explanation. If I’m wrong then it should be pointed out to me right here and now and I go read it immediately.
Now I agree totally with all of these about Stalin but I just don’t get it why from this to torture and killing is a frictionless slippery slope or a fall in a vacuum chamber.
Presumably no one believes that Stalin had an advanced understanding of Dialectical Materialism in 1919 which he forgot or reneged on in the thirties and forties.
In addition to that, the very idea that if you don’t understand Dialectical Materialism correctly, you are bound to become a torturer and murderer is very frightening to me. And if we are not saying this, then we have to assume that Stalin had a choice and made a very bad one to put it ridiculously mildly.
notsopoeticfeelings said
“Yes…. the old mole is grubbing and will pop up again.”
Yes but only if it uses its claws and not the imaginary teeth.
“Yes the spector of communism is still haunting the powers (still, as the german revolutionaries say “trotz allem!”).”
Yes but the spector (the ghost) has to get on the ground and materialise in the shape of the foolish old man (and his children).
zerohour said
I think the stakes in any evaluation of Stalin go beyond his motivations, theoretical development or historical circumstances but right to the heart of the matter: what is socialism?
A Maoist truism is that one divides into two. I imagine this must also apply to socialism. One way to interpret this is that within socialism there are potentials to either move towards communism or towards capitalist restoration. But can the dialectic of socialism be subsumed into this? Can there be a “bad socialism”? The tendency among Trostskyists and other radicals is to say that Stalin was not one of us. Was he?
Any progress towards answers must not start with the two a prioris that characterize RCP’s approach: 1] Stalin represented the only trend within the Bolsheviks that genuinely upheld socialism and 2] Mao’s assessment of Stalin was correct.
notsopoeticfeelings said
“The tendency among Trostskyists and other radicals is to say that Stalin was not one of us. Was he?”
I wrote a somewhat detailed piece on this to ssy why he is one of us, without saving it and somehow lost it. How frostrating and what a waste of time because of a silly mistake. I try to rewrite it again later.
notsopoeticfeelings said
On the question of historical assessments
Part 3
I said in the last part that presumably no one believes that Stalin had an advanced understanding of Dialectical Materialism in 1919 which he forgot or reneged on in the thirties and forties.
In 1919 Stalin wrote a veryinteresting long article that was published in Izvesti on 23/04/1919.
Papers and documents had come to the attention of the Party that the previous year, a British army captain had murdered in cold blood 26 high ranking Baku Soviet Bolsheviks. Rather than stay in the soviet and collaborate with imperialists, the Bolsheviks had resigned after the Mensheviks got the majority vote and invited the British Army in. they were on their way back to red areas when they were taken prisoners and the incident happened.
Here is how Stalin exposes this crime in the article:
“… the barbarous shooting without trial of 26 Soviet officials of the city of Baku …. by the British Captain Teague-Jones on the night of September 20, 1918, on the road from Krasnovodsk to Ashkhabad, to which he was convoying them as war prisoners.
……. confirms the barbarity of the British imperialists, and not merely testifies but cries out against the impunity and savagery of the British agents who vent their ferocity on Baku and Transcaspian “natives” just as they do on Negroes in Central Africa.”
….our Baku comrades,… were shot … by the cannibals from “civilized” and “humane” Britain.
In the “civilized” countries it is customary to talk about Bolshevik terror and Bolshevik atrocities, and the Anglo-French imperialists are usually depicted as foes of terror and shooting. But is it not clear that the Soviet Government had never dealt with its opponents so foully and basely as the “civilized” and “humane” British, and that only imperialist cannibals who are corrupt to the core and devoid of all moral integrity need to resort to murder by night, to criminal attacks on unarmed political leaders of the opposing camp? If there are any who sitll doubt this, let them read the documents we print below and call things by their proper names. “
Comrade Stalin, a man known for his calm and monotonous speeches was passonately lashing out at the savegery of the British imperialists.
Now read this document, written by Stalin in 1939 as a circular
To the Secretaries of oblast and regional party committees,
To the CCs of national Communist parties,
To the people’s commissars of internal affairs,
and to the heads of NKVD directorates
It has become known to the VKP CC that the secretaries of oblast and regional party committees, in checking up on employees of NKVD directorates, have laid blame on them for the use of physical pressure against those who have been arrested, treating it as something criminal. The VKP CC affirms that the use of physical pressure in the work of the NKVD has been permitted since 1937 in accordance with a resolution of the VKP CC. This directive indicated that physical pressure was to be used in exceptional cases and only against blatant enemies of the people who, when interrogated by humane methods, defiantly refuse to turn over the names of co-conspirators, and who refuse for months on end to provide any evidence, and who try to thwart the unmasking of co-conspirators who are still at large, and who thereby continue even from prison to wage a struggle against the Soviet regime. Experience has shown that such an arrangement has produced good results and has greatly expedited the unmasking of enemies of the people. True, subsequently in practice the method of physical pressure was abused by Zakovsky, Litvin, Uspensky, and other scoundrels, converting it from an exception into a rule and beginning to apply it against honest people who had been arrested accidentally. For these abuses, they [the scoundrels] have been given due punishment. But this in no way detracts from the value of the method itself when it is properly used. It is known that all bourgeois secret services use physical pressure against representatives of the socialist proletariat and rely on especially savage methods of it. We might therefore ask why a socialist secret service should be any more humane in relation to inveterate agent of the bourgeoisie and sworn enemies of the working class and collectivized farmers. The VKP CC believes that the use of physical pressure must absolutely be continued from here on in exceptional cases and against blatant and invidious enemies of the people, and that this is a perfectly appropriate and desirable method. The VKP CC demands that the secretaries of oblast and regional party committees and the CCs of national party committees bear in mind this explanation when they check up on the employees of NKVD directorates.
Secretary of the VKP CC
J. Stalin
10.1.1939
Exceptional cases my foot. If what happened was “exceptional”……its just beyond belief.
Now I ask what difference is there with the justifications for waterboading?
Should we assure people that it was all done with good intention? Don’t they say the same in pentagon?
Can you see any justification by Stalin that is different to Pentagons officials?
Or may be the difference is that we are good and they are bad. Then again this is exactly the same.
How can we go to people and say silence is complicity? If we don’t break the silence ourselves?
How can we go to Harvard, where these documents were translated and tell them it was mitigated?
In his article for Izvestia Stalin says”If there are any who sitll doubt this, let them read the documents we print below and call things by their proper names.”
Lets take his advise and “call things by their proper names.”
It’s a crime no matter who perpetrates it.
But venting anger is not the purpose of this article. Let us work hard to find a real way out of this kind of madness.
tellnolies said
A minor point, but one worth taking to heart: The term “Trotskyite” is an intentionally defamatory one of Stalinist origin and it shouldn’t be used by revolutionary communists. Whatever the particular merits and demerits of group/individual/idea in question, the correct term is “Trotskyist.”
The use of terms like “Trotskyite,” “Bundist,” and “Menshevik” by the RCP towards its opponents on the left was not only sectarian, but served an encapsulating function by training party members in the easy (and usually unread) dismissal of the ideas of other groups, rather than actually digging into them.
If people are serious about constituting a new revolutionary left politics for the 21st century this sort of crap has to go. I have my serious criticisms of Trotskyism, but as a current that attracts sincerely revolutionary minded people to it, often on the basis precisely of its critique of Stalinism, I think it is incumbent on serious revolutionaries to school themselves in what Trotsky said and the positions of at least the major variants of Trotskyism out there. Independent of that, it is critical to learn how to talk with people you disagree with without insulting them with the first words that come out of your mouth.
BobH said
notsopoeticfeelings is raising the question of torture, but in a way that seems to focus more on morality than on material questions of history and leadership.
State violence takes many forms: execution, imprisonment, torture, “disappearance”, persecution, self-censorship, etc. All states in history, without exception, have done these things to one degree or another. In the context of defending state socialism, there has always been a contradiction between apologetics and the washing of one’s hands. The former lends weight to the transformation of a living revolutionary spirit into dead ideology, the latter to utopian moralizing distant from real, practical politics, or worse. Furthermore, to use absolute moral yardsticks to measure history and politics is to abandon a great deal of the fundamentals of the Marxist approach to history. At the very least we can take a comparative approach: how does the state violence of socialism compare to the capitalist record?
For me, the main problems I have with Stalin is not the violence or excesses, which are true of all revolutions to some degree, it’s the transformation of the revolutionary spirit into the state ideology of Marxism-Leninism, and the corresponding need to cover up any defects and denounce critics as traitors. Acts of state violence should be open so that they are subject to the judgment of the masses and so that the political costs of excesses are understood by leaders
From what I can see, among Marxists there rarely seems to be serious efforts to look at Stalin and the early USSR to weight what was avoidable at the time and what was only clear in hindsight, what positive and negative lessons we can learn from the greater information we have, to what extent did the adoption of rapid industrialization drive parallel developments between the socialist and the capitalist state, etc. There seem to be some very serious questions here — not least of which is “what is socialism” — that
rate more than “summing up”.
These questions have served to define us along sectarian lines, it would be interesting if we could develop forms of investigating them that serve a unifying function. Imagine if we were to form study groups that try and pair up anarchists and communists, maoists and trotskyists, to jointly examine socialist history with and eye towards deeper understanding of the questions. Sheer fantasy, I know, but I wonder if anyone has ever tried anything like this as an exercise in overcoming sterile sectarian bickering?
tellnolies said
Has anyone ever tried anything like this?
Yes, actually bible scholars have done it. In several instances they have brought together scholars from multiple traditions in order to produce versions of the bible that are as true as possible to the unobtainable original texts.
Its a very scientific way of dealing with contested knowledges.
itsrighttorebel said
I want to thank you for these letters who are extremely important. I want to thank you for being brave enough to stand for what is right and true, indeed to be a communist.
All the things that you are describing are things that I witnessed again and again, working on political issues with supporters. Although not being from the “inside” I always had my suspicion, but you have illuminated my worst fears. I have raised the same questions that you write about without ever getting a complete answer (if at all).
I fully agree with your comments and would like to offer you some strength in the time to come and in the face of the replies that you will receive from old comrades.
notsopoeticfeelings said
BobH writes:
“notsopoeticfeelings is raising the question of torture, but in a way that seems to focus more on morality than on material questions of history and leadership.”
BobH correctly says that moralising won’t do. IF I sounded like aproaching the question at hand like the Wilsonian era preachers in the U.S. who supported the Bolsheviks but this time reversed, then I appologise. (For those who may not be familiar with history, after the October revolution there was a lot of support for revolution among preachers whose Sunday sermons were a call to support the Bolshevik revolution on moral grounds. They were even appealing to god to save the revolution. Some very emotional and powerfull speaches on par with Martin Luther King.)
But that was not what I was trying and several times throughout the 3 parts I apeal to using the correct scientific tool to solve problems. The third part was ONE example of our history that has to be dealt with. Not necessarily the MAIN one. Neither do I believe that Stalin’s main problem was torture. Here is the thing: if you don’t see that torture, as a problem, was an ACUTE symptom of some serious underlying problems, you won’t be taken seriously; not even as an agitator.
But that’s not where BobH differs with me.he believes torture and murder(different from killing) is no problem:
“State violence takes many forms: execution, imprisonment, torture, “disappearance”, persecution, self-censorship, etc. All states in history, without exception, have done these things to one degree or another.”(BobH)
he says, in effect, everyone does it, so there must be a good reason for it. Or, to be more charitable, he says since everyone has done it, and carries on doing it, we shouldn’t be singled out for scrutiny, specially since we havn’t done it as bad as they have. It’s a relative and comparative thing there is no absolute. Absolut is a religious thing:
“ At the very least we can take a comparative approach: how does the state violence of socialism compare to the capitalist record?”
And
“ Furthermore, to use absolute moral yardsticks to measure history and politics is to abandon a great deal of the fundamentals of the Marxist approach to history.”
Moral absolutists, often hypocritically, say violence is bad; they don’t say this particular violence in this particular context is absolutely bad. Yes I didn’t take it for granted that those who read these pages are “incapable” of distinguishing these not-so-subtle differences. The whole reason people in the Maoist camp are dissatisfied is that they DO understand these differences. They have long understood these differences; only this time they are not going to shut up about it anymore.
What do you think I meant by more than fifty years of debate in the Maoist camp?
Unless you think Maoists are half witted morons you will know what I meant. Let me give you only one example of our legacy. One amongst many: take Ibrahim Kaypakaya; in 1970 he took up a two line struggle within his party, a big one with mature and established leadership, and theoretically demolished all the arguments against starting the Peoples War. The party was split and a new party was formed with big membership, enormous mass support and unbelievable prestige. He was captured, tortured and murdered in 1974. HE WAS 24 YEAR OLD at the time of his death. So much so for the “half witted” Maoists.
Some people may delude themselves as to belive that we are either bereft of any theoretical or ideological underpinning and principles that we could be vooed in any direction. Or they may think that we are in such a psichological flux and confusion that could be treated like a recently devorced person on rebound, sleeping with everyone and anyone in their vicinity. Thanks but no thanks.
To all the non-Maoists out there, and I’m not necessarily talking to BobH here, I say stop psychoanalising us and day dream about vooing us. THIS door is closed. You want to contribute? Then tear our arguments apart scientifically. Our real arguments not the caricatures of it. Show us in detail and substantiate what we are saying is wrong. Some of the arguments I ‘m hearing goes like this: its like a street trader in cloth fabrics in front of a similar shop arguing with any passerbye not to buy from that shop: “whats this outmoded shirt you are wearing; you need a new one; don’t go into that shop, their fabric is rubbish; here is what I have it would look fabulous on you.” And then he would scratch his head and mumble, while the potential customer is walking away, “what a half witted twat. He doesn’t know what to wear.” That potential customer would be half witted if he was actually taken in by those lines of arguments. If it were me, I would look at the merchandize and decide on other criteria wheather that fabric satisfies my needs or not. No matter how many holes there are in my shirt.
One of the most important things about the philosophy of changing the world as opposed to interpreting it is to get the dialectics of the goals and means correctly.One- sided emphasis to exclusion of the other, on either direction will not do.
“For me, THE MAIN PROBLEMS I have with Stalin is not the violence or excesses, which are true of all revolutions to some degree, it’s the transformation of the revolutionary spirit into the state ideology of Marxism-Leninism, and the corresponding need to cover up any defects and denounce critics as traitors.”BobH
I take it that the contradiction in terms here is quite possibly a typo and does not assume that we the Maoists are so half witted as to believe in several main contradicions simultaneously in any given situation. Apart from this the first part of this paragraph is a misrepresentation of our understanding; a caricature; a strawman. Since when Maoists, or I for that matter, have condemned violence as a universal category of certain type of action? Is this a back door through which you want to smuggle in a justification for torture? Is it O.K. for the U.S. imperialists to commit this type of violence so long as they openly boast about it? Should we take the attitude of “I’ll wait until next ellection and vote against those who commit EXCESSIVE torture and murder”? is this your idea if “socialist promised land”? If not, then what do you mean by:
“ Acts of state violence should be open so that they are subject to the judgment of the masses and so that the political costs of excesses are understood by leaders….”
No seriously; does that mean anything more than “HAVE YOUR SAY THROUGH ELLECTIONS”? does it apply right now as well as the future socialist society?
“From what I can see, among Marxists there rarely seems to be serious efforts to look at Stalin and the early USSR to weight what was avoidable at the time and what was only clear in hindsight, what positive and negative lessons we can learn from the greater information we have, to what extent did the adoption of rapid industrialization drive parallel developments between the socialist and the capitalist state, etc. There seem to be some very serious questions here — not least of which is “what is socialism” — that
rate more than “summing up”. “ BobH
may be you have not paid enough attention to what Marxists have been saying. Or may be anything apart from your brand of understanding is automatically categorized as “NOT SERIOUS”. I really don’t know. I sure disagree with a lot of what you are saying but I would never question your seriousness because of those disagreements. This is why I would ask you to take Maoist arguments, for example the 9 Letters or other serious and meaty documents, and tare them appart in a scientific and comprehensive way. I for one would really appreciate that so far as it really shows our weaknesses.
If I have been frank and caustic does not mean that I wanted to be rude and disrespectful. If I have crossed the line I sincerely appologize in advance.
If people think this is not helpful and a diversion, they should ignore it totally and let me know, so I ‘ll be more carefull next time.
notsopoeticfeelings said
tellnolies Says:
A minor point, but one worth taking to heart: The term “Trotskyite” is an intentionally defamatory one of Stalinist origin and it shouldn’t be used by revolutionary communists. Whatever the particular merits and demerits of group/individual/idea in question, the correct term is “Trotskyist.”
I appologize for the unintended offence and the use of a derogatory word. I simply did not know the difference and did not know that particular word was so much loaded. I was looking for the correct spelling of the word Trotskist and the Word spelchecker came up with that. Check it out. Thanks for pointing it out.
By the way, don’t you think that “Stalinist” is derogetory, since no supporter of Stalin, staunch or otherwise, has ever used it to describe themselves?
tellnolies said
I made the comment about the use of Trotsktyite not because I took personal offense (I’m not and never have been a Trotskyist) but because I think its politically wrong to use.
I generally don’t use the term “Stalinist” either because it is so often used to flatten out distinctions between different experiences building socialism. But I think its a perfectly legitimate term for describing the politics of Stalin himself or the dominant political perspective within the Third International until his death. I try not to go around calling living people “Stalinists.”
In any event, the point is that the term “Trotskyite” was coined as a slur if not by Stalin himself by those engaged in the persecution of Trotsky and his followers under Stalin’s leadership.
I don’t mean to sound like Miss Manners, but I do think the revolutioanry left is poorly served by the casual resort to insulting language (so casual that we often don’t even recognize that it is insulting).
My view is that anybody who is in the presently tiny fraction of humanity who thinks the capitalist system is rotten and should be overthrown by revolutionary means and replaced with some sort of society in which the presently oppressed majority govern themselves deserves to be treated with a certain level of basic respect. This is not to call for papering over differences. Often they are very important. But we should conduct our discussions and debates in a truth-seeking manner that encourages everybody to really learn as much as they can about each others perspective. None of us has yet figured out what exactly it will take to carry through a socialist revolution in an advanced industrialized country which means all of us should be willing to genuinely learn from each others critiques and should offer our own in a spirit that improves the chances that they will be seriously considered.
BobH said
notsopoeticfeelings, I’m having a hard time understanding your arguments, so let me see if I can clarify some of what I mean:
Acts of state violence should be open so that they are subject to the judgment of the masses and so that the political costs of excesses are understood by leaders….”
No seriously; does that mean anything more than “HAVE YOUR SAY THROUGH ELLECTIONS”? does it apply right now as well as the future socialist society?
No, I mean that since some form of state violence (e.g. imprisonment of contras) is unavoidable, revolutionary states should be very open about it to the masses, our bases, etc. and not try and cover it up. If we go too far the masses will find a way of letting us know. In Stalin’s day, many people didn’t even know about the gulag until they were in it — and thought he didn’t know about it. Our political actions should be politically defensible, not something we have to hide. Under some circumstances, though, some unsavory forms of violence become necessary. That sounds identical to the bourgeois argument for torture, but I don’t believe that bourgeois violence is equivalent to proletarian violence, even if the form is identical. Do you?
I think that your original point is that most people today find torture unacceptible, and we have to reassure them that we won’t repeat the excesses of the Stalin era. On that I broadly agree, but I think it’s important that we not be stuck in the past. The conditions of the development of socialism and industrialization of the USSR and China don’t exist today. We know all kinds of things now about the problems of socialist states, about environmental fragility, we have speed-of-light information systems that allows for horizontal communication and planning like never before, etc. All these things seem to guarantee the past won’t repeat itself. What I was trying to suggest is that in evaluting Stalin or Mao’s China we often get caught up in the question of state violence, when there’s a lot of other stuff about that history that really needs to be carefully evaluated, especially when we’re talking to left/progressive people.
redflags said
“Trotskyite” was a sort of fill-in term for anyone who didn’t just follow orders in the Comintern-era communist movement. Like the contemporary term “authoritarian” it is used as a debate-ender, even before discussion really gets going. There are actually existing Trotskyites, but the whole idea that there is a “true” Leninism that we need to hold aloft, rather than the profound goal of “repeating Lenin” – well, I’m with the new, what remains to be done – not the glorious singularities of yesteryear.
That said, I have long used “Trot” as a stand-in for the vices of Leninism. It sort of strikes me like an aspectual criticism of Stalinism that replaces one mechanical certainty for an Idealism of one sort or another. Monday morning quarterbacking on the revolution, original sin – pick your metaphor.
There are going to be many flags on the field. Instead of arguing about what we can’t do – I suspect I’m not alone in wanting to see more of what we can do. I’m still (deeply) skeptical of the methods ingrained among Trotskyists – from my experiences working on campus (run-ins with the ISO) to the larger anti-imperialist movement (the myopia of Sam Marcy’s progeny).
But here we are, no?
redflags said
And regarding “Stalinism” – It certainly has existed, though not usually in the quarters ascribed to it. I wrote something up a few years back about the “dueling Stalinisms” of UFPJ and ANSWER.
When I say Stalinism, a term I use guardedly, I mean the Comintern-era insistence on a Popular Front where communists permanently subordinate themselves to the “democratic wing of capital.” This slow-motion death march of the left has left us in a position where the very revisionists who should have blown away like dust after the fall of the Soviet Union have managed to maintain positions of influence and authority within a larger left bereft of leadership. Because they glob onto positions (in unions, NGOs, etc.), they manage continuity of forces even without a (truly) unifiying political position.
In other words, that kind of pragmatic reduction of what the “movement” even exists for has a material basis: serving as the intermediaries between the “left” parties of the ruling classes and the social movements that arise in opposition to any given aspect of the existing system.
This is what feels so dull and detached to people not acultured to the “left” – call it “Stalinism” if you want, but it’s socialism without even a fig leaf of concern for the conscious activity of the proletariat. It’s a leftism who’s social base is activists. Draw a circle, put yourself in the middle… and float.
If that makes sense.
Ben Seattle said
It is important not to underestimate the need for democratic forms of struggle in post-bourgeois society. In capitalist society elections are a means for the bourgeoisie to determine which of its flunkies are best at deceiving the masses. But will there be elections (a different kind of elctions) after bourgeois rule is overthrown? I assert that there will be _some kind_ of _open struggle_ between people, parties and principles and the masses will be involved in this struggle whether by vote, by voice, by mass action, by other means or by all of the above. The merger of the state with a single ruling party is not marxism. This merger was advocated and practiced by Lenin simply as a temporary emergency measure because the resources and conditions were not available to do this right. It was not Lenin but Stalin and Mao who proclaimed the merger of party and state to be a permanent feature of “socialist” society. This is a key theoretical issue and until we understand this we will never be able to create a revolutionary movement which is deserving of the attention, respect and devotion of the working class and masses. In thinking and discussing working class rule in this country we must be focused on how things will work when we do them right. Otherwise the working class and masses will continue to “tune us out” and they will be completely correct in doing so.
This is a key point. Political transparency will characterize post-bourgeois society. This changes everything.
By this token, Redflags, the RCP is stalinist. Its “World Can’t Wait” campaign involves an alliance with the “democratic wing of capital”. This alliance helps the left-wing of the imperialist Democratic Party maintain its ideological domination over the progressive and antiwar movements–and has the effect of weakening and undermining the antiwar movement. The fact that the RCP is various places condemns the Democratic Party does not negate the fact that the RCP is promoting the influence of this treacherous imperialist party in their actions that reach the most people. I would like to see activists such as you make a clear statement to opposes this kind of unprincipled alliance with imperialist politicians.
Mike E said
Here is a clear set of statements (but not the one Ben Seattle calls for):
1) We have to make a distinction between the masses of people and who is leading them at every particular point.
2) It is a serious error to beleive that unity with broad number of liberals equates with treacherous unity with the imperialist party (or that it assumes *subordination* to the democrats). It is mechanical thinking of an extreme kind.
3) If you look at the revolutionary united front that we need (and need to build) — its social forces are (today!) overwhelmingly within the Democratic Party (even while some factions are alienated outside that party.)
4) One of the most important political schisms of modern U.S. politics is between the progressive “base” of the democrats and the party’s “establishment” leadership (i.e. ruling class leadership). This is a hot faultline — and for objective class reasons it may well get more and more intense THIS VERY YEAR, as people realize (in uneven ways) that they are supporting a Democratic ticket that is highly duplicitous on key issues of war (in Iraq etc.)
5) Saying that uniting with liberals against the war is promoting the democratic party as such — is a deeply sectarian impulse, and goes against exactly what needs doing. I think the argument Ben Seattle has been making is profoundly wrong and puny — it is mechanical thinking at its worst. The problem with the popular front is not the impulse to unite broadly around burning questions, but the decision to subordinate politically to the imperialists. Whatever else we say about the RCP (and I have been saying quite a few critical things) their line has not been to subordinate to the Democratic imperialists, but unite broadly with antiwar masses (who are often CURRENTLY liberal in their own thinking). This is not wrong, it is essential.
6) The issue for me is not “whether to unite” (which is self-evident) — but how. We need to be creating a dynamic that moves people away from their moorings within the electoral system — even while we recognize that it will be uneven, protracted, and have wavelike feature that include major backsliding.
7) What is key is to develop a strong, visible, viable, attractive revolutionary pole — that can speak to the folks we are uniting with — in an ongoing way. Creative. Shameless. Shocking. The RCP has tried this, but has deep problems of line and style. We need to create such a revolutionary pole — obviously not solely or mainly “to unite with the liberals,” but to carry out revolutionary political work in serious way on several fronts.
redflags said
I’m sorry, Ben – but I have to disagree with you on what World Can’t Wait has done. I’ve helped organize rallies where Democrats spoke, both with WCW and other groups – and that is just not the same thing as endorsing the Democratic Party. WCW has worked with forces ranging from genuinely progressive Dems like Tom Duane to former CIA analysts (Ray McGovern) and even the retired General who ran Abu Ghraib!
I have criticisms of the way WCW organized (or, more to the point didn’t) – but the carping about promoting the Dems is actually a distortion, and it really denies the political reality we inhabit. There are millions of people who are in the social base that the Democratic Party draws from, at this point most of the population. That there is a giant crash of disillusion is a fact. It’s real.
The mechanisms the system offers up to resolve its internal contradictions are coming smack dab up agains the necessity to defend the entire imperialist system.
There has been no spokesperson more on point about the Dems than WCW initator Sunsara Taylor. Not just in occassional articles, not just in her media appearances, not just in the strategic discussions of WCW.
Further, and speaking personally, I’ve learned a great deal about exactly this question from Avakian – specifically from the Conquer the World article by Avakian written back in the 80s. Breaking with that model was long the defining characteristic of the RCP that made them so attractive. And was this breakthrough that led many of the Maoists now fed up with Avakianism to put up with so much of the other shite for so long.
If you want to insist that the RCP was in “alliance” with Dems, you’re missing that WCW was open to REPUBLICANS… to anyone, really, who wanted to bring a mass popular movement of resistance into being. That WCW failed to do this requires summation, no doubt. But I would disagree with you in terms of both what WCW sought to do, what it in fact did – and the very clear line of demarcation between the different forces brought into coalition.
Marc Luzietti said
Mike E writes:
“4) One of the most important political schisms of modern U.S. politics is between the progressive “base” of the democrats and the party’s “establishment” leadership (i.e. ruling class leadership). This is a hot faultline — and for objective class reasons it may well get more and more intense THIS VERY YEAR, as people realize (in uneven ways) that they are supporting a Democratic ticket that is highly duplicitous on key issues of war (in Iraq etc.)
5) Saying that uniting with liberals against the war is promoting the democratic party as such — is a deeply sectarian impulse, and goes against exactly what needs doing. I think the argument Ben Seattle has been making is profoundly wrong and puny — it is mechanical thinking at its worst. The problem with the popular front is not the impulse to unite broadly around burning questions, but the decision to subordinate politically to the imperialists. Whatever else we say about the RCP (and I have been saying quite a few critical things) their line has not been to subordinate to the Democratic imperialists, but unite broadly with antiwar masses (who are often CURRENTLY liberal in their own thinking). This is not wrong, it is essential.”
I wonder, Mike, how you would relate four and five together. I have no problem working with anyone opposing the war, and I think we need to serve as a revolutionary alternative to the leadership groups like UFPJ, yet when it comes to a group like the Greens, I am extremely leery of attempts by even some of the overtly revolutionary comrades in Solidarity to argue that we should support work within the organization or their presidential campaign if McKinny gets the mod, because it represents a layer of people who’ve broken with the two corporate parties. The group is run by people who basically want to be a pressure group on the Dems, yet its base is of people who’ve definitely broken with them and are open to socialism. Still, the group isn’t socialist or proletarian and seeks to save capitalism from the corporations.
My gut reaction is that this is opportunism, and yet there is some truth to the fact that this is a layer of people who are open to socialist ideas. Am I being sectarian or are they being opportunist . . . or both?
your comrade,
chegitz guevara
SUN! SURF! SOCIALISM!
Stiofan said
I have just finshed the “Nine Letters” and it is a very impressive work. Comrade Ely’s arguments are compelling and the chapter on the complex nature of popular religous sentiment is particularly well done. Understandably, the frustration of decades of disappointing results, also produced a degree of pessimism which is unwarranted.
A new generation of revolutionaries turned to Marxist-Leninist thought and practice in the late sixties precisely because it was an effective vehicle for those confronting the many organizational and intellectual limitations in the various movements for social change. Max Elbaum captures this period wonderfully in his book ” Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che.” What Elbaum also captures was the profound misreading of the times that all the new communist groups made then which lead them to pursue fundamentally flawed strategies. This letters are a part now of a very positive positive debate about the tasks at hand in an era when Republican party right wing domination is crumbling and we are once again stuck with an ineffectual “peace movemenmt” that will collapse when the ruling class finally pulls the plug on the occupation of Iraq.
Ely writes in Chapter 9,
“… much of the communist project here in U.S. has been fantasy draped in fine words.”
I would counter that the mistakes, disappointments and the hopes of communists are more than fantasy. Whatever the profound errors of organizations, a historically grounded struggle for emanciptaion continues. After the French Revolution of 1789, Europe underweant a century of radical turmoil and every single one of those revolutions failed. What did not fail was the resolve of generations of men and women commited to the destuction of the rule of Kings and the relics of feudalism.
After having endured the obscenity of two protracted imperialist wars in my lifetime I am seriously commited now, for the first time really, to the need for a social revolution lead by the organized vanguard of the working class. It is right to rebel and this time it is our duty to study, learn, and do it better. Thank you Comrade Ely for contributing this work to that great effort.
emma said
Isn’t the role of people in the vangaurd to revolutionize the party? If somebody in the party has disagreements or arguments about line, there needs to be struggle within the part to put it onto the correct line. If those things are completely exhausted then it is the responsibility to being a new party.
This is something that Ely has failed to mention and as far as I know failed to do. In that aspect I see these letters , although having some truth in them, to be unprincipled.
Instead he has emailed these letters to everyone the party has come into contact with, not calling for people to struggle or critically debate with the RCP on these matters, but as if some sort of way to break cracks into revolutionary ties that are being built.
I see these as being very bad and very counter revolutionary.
For examples of “some truths”, It is true that the party had a very bad line on homosexuality at one point. But what is lied about is the fact that the party DID sum up the wrong methods that we used to have the incorrect line of homosexuality being a political dividing line. There is a whole program on it and you can find it publicly at any Revolution Book Store.
Another thing Ely mentions is the way that Avakian has not yet led any sort of sucessful revolutionary movement, although there is some truth to this, there is no mention of the fact that Avakian led many Black Panther Rallies in the 60’s and has synthesized the experience of the rallies and that party.
RCP also just led the masses in New Orleans to rise up against the housing demolitions, the people in this country were inspired to see people standing in front of bulldozers and refusing to leave. They also organized people from Jena to be down there.
And you can’t and you won’t have millions of people in motion around revolution until we approach a revolutionary situation. This is the importance of hastening while awaiting. Something else that I believe Avakian had importantly developed and brought forward, I think that what happened in New Orleans is a reflection of that.
But I strongly recommend people to continue this debate, raise criticisms or concerns you have also with people around and within RCP, and to do so in way that seriously forges a path to revolution and open debate. We need to go forward with theory& method, not forging the road backwards to Soviet or even China (although there were important breakthroughs)
There are other things that I would like to raise but I think what is needed it to be doing work amongst the people at this critical time and juncture. Different forces are coming together to plan a day of civil disobedience against the crimes of this governemt. People need to be part of the uprising of the Hurricane Katrina victims, the uprisings in Jena, the uprising against the war and the Bush Regime and Uprising against Torture.
It is unacceptable to not be a part of this, no matter what contradictions you have with people who are around it, leading it or inside it.
Pavel said
Emma says: “Isn’t the role of people in the vangaurd to revolutionize the party? If somebody in the party has disagreements or arguments about line, there needs to be struggle within the part to put it onto the correct line. If those things are completely exhausted then it is the responsibility to being [sic] a new party.
This is something that Ely has failed to mention and as far as I know failed to do. In that aspect I see these letters , although having some truth in them, to be unprincipled. ”
I swear I can almost hear my mom saying, “Pavel, if you don’t have anything nice to say about somebody, don’t say anything at all.”
Seriously I think that’s the level of thinking in this statement. Obviously Ely thought the possibility of changing the party from within had been exhausted when he left. That is WHY he left.
I think your ungrammatical sentence is intended to mean that the person with disagreements “has the responsibility to form a new party.” Is Mike supposed to do that, all of a sudden? He writes in all modesty of the need for “revolutionary communists, both inside and outside the RCP, to re-conceive as we re-group (Letter 9).” Perhaps he, with others, WILL form a new party, based on lines collectively forged and pointedly avoiding any cult-like features.
Mike’s work is both destructive (particularly in its effort to expose the “culture of APP” and encourage critical thinking among those debilitated by it) and constructive (especially in drawing together those sympathetic or committed to revolutionary communism but alienated from the party as it’s morphed into this BA cheering section).
If people do begin to organize afresh as a result of these efforts, you will perhaps call that, too, “unprincipled” and “counterrevolutionary” solely on the basis of the fact that any new organization will emerge alongside a shrinking RCP.
SS said
Emma,
Well as for the first three paragraphs… That’s probably something only Mike has the knowledge (through personal experience) to address. If that’s true then that’s quite disapointing. But that doesn’t lessen the fact that the letters do in fact bring up many important and valid criticisms of the party. Let’s not confuse people with ideas.
”For examples of “some truths”, It is true that the party had a very bad line on homosexuality at one point. But what is lied about is the fact that the party DID sum up the wrong methods that we used to have the incorrect line of homosexuality being a political dividing line. There is a whole program on it and you can find it publicly at any Revolution Book Store.”
I think Mike actually did address the sumnation of the party, that being that it was wrong ”methods” and thinking used to come to the wrong conclusions in question. The point he was bringing up was that those wrong ”methods” for 30 years kept coming up with the overall same message but dressing it up in different packages. The same ”reductionist” thinking was coming up with different answers over a long period of time but the overall verdict always remained the same. He was noting that as quite a strange phenomena, and was pointing to the fact that its origins were most likely rooted not in bad methodology, but in prejudice (which they failed to honestly sum up). He also mentions the heat and tension during discussions of that topic (another strong indication of homophobia?). Do problems (dare I say serious anger?) of that nature emerge simply from the bad methods described by the party? Maybe rather than referencing stuff at revolution books (since I don’t have one in my town) the issue could be discussed over this blog.
I think in the beginning of the letters Mike does briefly mention that the party has accomplished many things in its time. But also that it has failed to accomplish that which is desperately needed.
Their work surrounding Jena (maybe in New Orleans too) has been very good. They were the only party that was in the big rally down there in force, am I right?
As for having millions rallying around revolutionary ideas, I dont think Mike is expecting that. Just more than a relatively insignificant number, and he poses the question, why has the party failed to gain more that an insignificant number for 30 years?
And to address the last paragraph. Balance between theory and practice is what’s needed, not just practice. Without a combination of both there will be no movement. If we are not actively addressing the questions posed within these letters (and not just the RCP but rev communities in general)in a thorough way then we will never accomplish much. Practice, theory, then practice more. Another point brought up in the letters!
Perhaps first closely reading the articles and preparing substancive arguments would be a better way to enter the debate.
”But I strongly recommend people to continue this debate, raise criticisms or concerns you have also with people around and within RCP, and to do so in way that seriously forges a path to revolution and open debate. We need to go forward with theory& method, not forging the road backwards to Soviet or even China (although there were important breakthroughs)”
If that’s what you think then join us.
rosarl said
Emma,
I want to reply to you in detail…
“Isn’t the role of people in the vangaurd to revolutionize the party? If somebody in the party has disagreements or arguments about line, there needs to be struggle within the part to put it onto the correct line. If those things are completely exhausted then it is the responsibility to being a new party.
This is something that Ely has failed to mention and as far as I know failed to do. In that aspect I see these letters, although having some truth in them, to be unprincipled. “
Keep it in the family? But what about when problems are raised very seriously and ignored or called counter-revolutionary within the party and the party unit in which you are working? It is extremely hard to be heard when anything that is raised that contradicts what is being put out by Bob Avakian is considered counter-revolutionary or revisionist. This makes the only discussion possible the discussion about why you believe that Bob Avakian is correct.
Party formation is a long and extremely complex process. It cannot be done overnight with a few people. It has a starting point and has to progress through numerous contradictions to be successful. This is not to say one way or the other if this is our intent, but to simply point out the fact. It would be very presumptuous to START at announcing a new party, wouldn’t it, and especially if that party was to ever be able to become an actual vanguard force? Not only would that be presumptuous, it would be a recipe for failure and a betrayal of the international proletariat.
“Instead he has emailed these letters to everyone the party has come into contact with, not calling for people to struggle or critically debate with the RCP on these matters, but as if some sort of way to break cracks into revolutionary ties that are being built.
“I see these as being very bad and very counter revolutionary.”
Actually, in emailing these letters to everyone we know we are engaging people and engaging Bob Avakian in struggle over what line is correct. If it is not possible to carry out the discussion within the party – and this was tried in more than one place – then it becomes necessary to go to people from the outside. This is not unprincipled, but rather it is a duty to do so. The other option would be to just remain silent. It is tragic that you see it as ‘very counter-revolutionary’ rather than being willing to deeply engage what is being said.
For examples of “some truths”, It is true that the party had a very bad line on homosexuality at one point. But what is lied about is the fact that the party DID sum up the wrong methods that we used to have the incorrect line of homosexuality being a political dividing line. There is a whole program on it and you can find it publicly at any Revolution Book Store.
As someone has already mentioned – this is addressed in the Letters.
Another thing Ely mentions is the way that Avakian has not yet led any sort of sucessful revolutionary movement, although there is some truth to this, there is no mention of the fact that Avakian led many Black Panther Rallies in the 60’s and has synthesized the experience of the rallies and that party.
“RCP also just led the masses in New Orleans to rise up against the housing demolitions, the people in this country were inspired to see people standing in front of bulldozers and refusing to leave. They also organized people from Jena to be down there.”
Side point here – so did the NAACP, does that make their leadership revolutionary? Many liberal forces were involved in these struggles and are part of the bigger picture but they are never really mentioned in the paper. In fact it was the NAACP that was credited with the mass organization of the event in Jena. Now granted, Revolution did report on it much earlier on than many other forces but that should not give them the credit for organizing something that was far beyond them at the time.
“And you can’t and you won’t have millions of people in motion around revolution until we approach a revolutionary situation.
This is the importance of hastening while awaiting. Something else that I believe Avakian had importantly developed and brought forward, I think that what happened in New Orleans is a reflection of that.”
Lenin defined the conditions necessary for revolution long before Bob Avakian was even a twinkle in his mother’s eye.
However, what you are talking about is a bit different, isn’t it? It’s the formulation that Bob Avakian must be part of ‘everything we do’ … in fact that he must be the very backbone of hastening while awaiting… and of creating public opinion. It is linked to the fact that the party views him as ‘our only hope’ which is a very grim position. The masses are the ones that are really our only hope. Without them there is nothing – not even leaders.
Bob Avakian and the party do not have the masses behind them – they do not have the deep ties to the masses and never have had them. Although they have tried very hard to be a vanguard party, they have never been able to succeed at this. They have been unwilling to really sum up their past failures deeply and in fact while criticizing the position in the 80’s around nuclear war, in many ways they have only replaced that line with a lot of hype about Fascism and the people ain’t buying it any more than they have been buying CPUSA’S ranting about fascism for generations.
Such claims ring as hallow as Republicans calling Liberals “Communists”! Now that is not to say that society and the world is not moving in a dark direction, but rather that the method that the party is using to approach this is not in essence any different than the one that they criticized around the possibility of Nuclear war. We are now told basically that its Fascism or Communism… fact is that there are many varied possibly in terms of the ultimate direction that this society will take just as there was the unseen possibility that Soviet Imperialism would collapse.
“But I strongly recommend people to continue this debate, raise criticisms or concerns you have also with people around and within RCP, and to do so in way that seriously forges a path to revolution and open debate. We need to go forward with theory& method, not forging the road backwards to Soviet or even China (although there were important breakthroughs)”
We do need to forge a road forward, not backward. A repeat of the past is neither desirable nor possible. We need to get beyond models and down to the actually application of Marxism to reality. Marxism has the potential to cut through all the bullshit like a knife through butter. We welcome you to the debate and hope that you will continue to engage the ideas and criticisms put forward in these letters.
“There are other things that I would like to raise but I think what is needed it to be doing work amongst the people at this critical time and juncture. Different forces are coming together to plan a day of civil disobedience against the crimes of this governemt. People need to be part of the uprising of the Hurricane Katrina victims, the uprisings in Jena, the uprising against the war and the Bush Regime and Uprising against Torture.
It is unacceptable to not be a part of this, no matter what contradictions you have with people who are around it, leading it or inside it.”
No one here is calling for ceasing political action. But theory is a necessary guide to political action.
If your underlying theory is wrong you will not get to the right place no matter how hard you try to get there. I’m not for abandoning action, but I’m also not for approaching this from the perspective of ‘first we have to get the truck rolling’… I’m sure you understand.
Theory and practice must complement and inform one another so while movements are important, dig in and take these letters to task and see if they hold up to the light of day…
Rosa Harris
treacherousbright said
re: emma’s post, et al.
I just wanted to add this to the other responses:
1.
That whole issue of not wanting to be “counter-revolutionary” by openly opposing the RCP kept me silent for the first bunch of years – I watched and waited (and stewed); how principled of me!
I have to echo the experience of attempting struggle within and finding, not only the efforts were lost like tears in rain, but that no one seemed to mind what line was being practiced to ignore efforts for struggle from within, even if it was capitulating, and even if the silence it bought (from me and others) relied, by default, on the ways class society and oppression shuts people up. I did not feel my fury being unleashed as a mighty force for revolution AT ALL… well, there was this one time I did. But that’s the painful by-product of shitty lines.
I remember very well being shamed for being “unprincipled” no matter which way I raised questions. Is there a set of guidelines for how to be “principled”? Like a 10 point program or something? I want it. No? There’s not? These principles are just as political as everything else and we have to look to the content.
I think “unprincipled” is when there is attacking from the right (as opposed to criticizing from the left) without providing any content to back it up.
I think my favorite principled polemicist to date is Lenin. He cracks me the fuck up! He clearly lays shit out at length and with depth and now and then humorously frames the arguments of so called Marxists such that I often bust a rib when I read him. Is Lenin unprincipled? Are the 9 Letters unprincipled? They don’t even take the shots that Lenin might have. The 9 Letters are not unprincipled and it is an avoidance of their content to continue asserting that (although I’m sure this will be said a thousand times more).
2. (and probably more important)
emma says:
“It is unacceptable to not be a part of this [current resistance including in Jena and New Orleans], no matter what contradictions you have with people who are around it, leading it or inside it.”
Maybe it wasn’t mean it this way but in the context of the post this is a defeatist attitude. It sounds like “we don’t care if we win or lose or fuck up along the way, just fight!” And with that attitude, we’ve already lost.
This is the volunteerist attitude as well. (Yes, volunteerism is defeatist.) It says, “Guilt should drive you into working with us! Shame on you for wasting time thinking and stuff!”
In that one last sentence of Emma’s post, the whole point of being red and not something else is thrown out the window. What is it we would be fighting for out there in Jena and New Orleans? Would we really be doing a service to the future of the oppressed by promoting Avakian as the better savior?
um…
Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win!
I don’t even think I need to qualify that more.
chegitz guevara said
I was at the national kick off of the Party of Socialism and Labor’s Presidential campaign. I mentioned Mike by name to the VP candidate and he said, “Oh yeah, I just read his 9 letters.” The only critique I’ve heard so far is that the 9 letters deal exclusively with the RCP, and ignore the half dozen other Maoist and umpteen million Trotskyist groups out there in the same position as the RCP.
It’s not that Mike has written anything new. Many of us have been saying similar things for decades now. On the one hand, it’s how he says it, in an amazingly non-sectarian way free from the bitterness one usually finds in people settling accounts with their old groups. On the other hand, he touches on a hunger in the revolutionary left for something new.
Just thought I’d pass that along.
your comrade,
chegitz guevara
SUN! SURF! SOCIALISM!
Stiofan said
Comrades,
In response to Chegitz, let me put in one more plug for “Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che” by Maz Elbaum which covers the whole gamut of the new communist movement. Both the “Letters” and “Revolution in the Air” should be required reading for anyone seriously contemplating the task of the communit movement in the US. There is, indeed, a new synthesis awaiting us to help guide our work in the coming era but I am convinced now but it has yet to be formulated.
Pavel said
The last (Dec. 30) issue of Revolution came out on Dec 23, soon after this site went up. Today’s (Jan. 13) issue is the first to come out since the discussion has really taken off. By my count 41 people have posted since Dec. 20, so 2 new people every day so far sharing experience and criticism. Only 2 people I think trashing Mike’s efforts as “unprincipled” or “counter-revolutionary.”
I suggest that any participating in this discussion who’d like to do so comment on the content of this most recent Rev as a way of further focusing criticism (and praise, where warranted). I’m struck by the complete silence of the Dantewada prison break last month in India, led by the CPI (Maoist) and the abolition of the Nepali monarchy, as a result of the effort led by the CPN(M).
The lede article on Pakistan was pretty good, I thought, although in emphasizing Pakistan’s relationship with US imperialism it leaves China out of the picture. And the Avakian quote was unhelpfully and crudely inserted.
Analysis of torture-gate, good, and also the coverage of the writers’ strike. But the last section of the latter, repeating BA’s notion of what “must be” under socialism very vague. It’s not spelled out how the substitution of a state structure led by the RCP will better decide what gets recorded, filmed, written, distributed producing a more humanistic and liberating culture than the current state structure that serves the needs of Hollywood, the big recording companies, etc. There’s no addressing of the question of how the internet has both expanded the audience for “independent” media (a good thing) and denied the artist compensation (a main issue in the strike).
Alice Woodward’s article interesting, evidence for continuing good RCP work, whatever you think about the “Rev club” idea.
I have comments on the other articles too but will end this here.
Matt said
Seems to ignore alot of important events in the RCP crysis, most notably the Grant split
Pavel said
You’ll have to explain that, Matt.
Saoirse said
Pavel.
is there discussion on the rwor.org website about mike’s letters? where please.
Saoirse
Pavel said
I wasn’t suggesting there was any discussion of this site on rwor.com, Saoirse. Maybe you misunderstood.
I said:
Today’s (Jan. 13) issue [of Rev] is the first to come out since the discussion [on the 9 Letters website] has really taken off.
I’d be very surprised if the rwor.org site ever allowed open discussion of Mike’s polemic!
ulises said
Take a look at “Meaningful Revolutionary Work”, it confirms Mike’s characterizations of the RCP’s line, and is yet another example of Avakian and the RCP simply asserting that his ideas are necessary and profound without backing it up in any substantive way.
http://revcom.us/a/115/makingrevolution-p2-03-en.html
Saoirse said
sorry Pavel. I totally jumped the gun. Hope springs eternal, eh?
SS said
I thought the majority of the new issue of Revolution was good. Especially the Woodward piece. It seem maybe that one should have been entitled, ”Meaningful Revolutionary Work” rather than the one on Bob. Which was devoid of really anything important.
One thing I would like to see more of is discussion on building real community ties as revolutionaries (is this the right place to discuss this?). One thing that really stuck out to me was the talk (somewhere on this site) of being ”revolutionary ambulance chasers.” The Woodward piece, although it was focused on an ”ambulance,” so to speak (Jena), contained a lot of good stuff. It was more than showing up at a controversy and throwing some papers around. I’ve seen RCP articles in the past that were basically just tallying how many issues of revolution were sold. While work like that is important, I think the real backbone of any movement is going to be created through the process shown in that article. The problem is however, not everyone can get to crisis areas like Jena and NO and actually have time to build relationships with people. To appear as something besides outsiders.
I would like to hear what types of home town community work people have done that have yielded real results. Maybe some battles won, while at the same time developing revolutionary relationships. Ones that lasted and left their mark on the community.
Does anyone have experience with this? If this isn’t the correct forum for this discussion please disregard.
Blackstone said
That Woodward article almost made me throw up my breakfast.
I really think the article and RCP in general, their style of writing need to be addressed, because i find it very patronizing.
chegitz guevara said
Honestly, I only ever read The Revolutionary Worker or Revolution for Mike’s articles. Otherwise the paper is as bad as any other left commie paper in the U.S.
your comrade,
chegitz guevara
SUN! SURF! SOCIALISM!
rosarl said
In letter 3 Mike quotes Bob:
“All this — and the whole experience that is captured with the metaphor of living in the house of Tony Soprano — does come back around to the question of complicity. Now, in this connection I want to say a few things about the mobilization on October 5 (2006) that was called by World Can’t Wait, and the fact that, frankly, in terms of numbers and accordingly in terms of impact, this fell far short of what was needed. Now, as Maoists, we’re not supposed to blame the masses when things don’t go well. But goddamnit — I want to blame the masses a little bit! Not strategically. Ultimately it is our responsibility — it is the responsibility of those who do understand the urgent need for massive opposition and political resistance to this whole course that the Bush regime is driving things on. But in line with, and as a part of, that responsibility, terms have to be presented sharply to people. Someone made the point that we should say to those people who knew about October 5, and who said they agreed with its basic stance and aims but did not come out that day: ‘Shame on you if you sat on your ass on October 5! If you knew about it or had a basis to know about it and you did not make use of this vehicle and help make this vehicle as powerful as possible — shame on you’!”
“I want to say, just for the record, that at times I myself have been acutely disappointed by — and, yes, have cursed in graphic terms — the people in this society who are sitting by and doing nothing in the face of atrocities and horrors committed by their government and in their name…”
This whole attitude is tied up with the patronizing tone that the party is taking toward the masses. They are treated as part of the problem rather than analyzing the failures and finding out why this or that approach is not working. I’ve also seem guilt tripping and gut checking in the paper as well which are rather crude.
Rosa Harris
Pavel said
I have criticisms of the paper too, but in fairness I think one should consider this:
http://revcom.us/a/109/project-censored-award-en.html
and this
http://www.revolutionbooks.org/product-p/skbreak-evolution.htm
SS said
Well, perhaps I’m mistaken but the purpose of these “9 Letters” is to criticize the RCP with the aim of opening up dialogue on how to improve the left Communist movement in general. Am I wrong?
So with that being said Blackstone can you elaborate? I appreciate what you are saying and I’m sure your actual opinion of the article has merit, but just saying it “almost made you throw up” is a waste of space and time for everyone interested in this blog. Same thing for you Chegitz. Maybe some open suggestions for the US communist movement would be a little more constructive? Or comparing better articles of similar nature to cite examples of good, non-patronizing writing, that is on a similar topic. I’m here to learn so I don’t repeat the mistakes cited in the letters (or in that paper). However raising criticisms in that manner doesn’t achieve anything. Just slinging mud never got anyone anywhere.
chegitz guevara said
SS,
My criticism isn’t of the RCP’s paper solely, but really of the whole communist movement in the U.S. A non-political friend once said to me, “You know what I like about you, Marc? You talk to me like I’m intelligent.” That is exactly what is so refreshing about Mike’s writing. There has never been a paper that I have read (keep in mind I’m a sample size of one), that is consistently at that level of writing. There are some journals or magazines, Monthly Review, Bulletin in Defense of Marxism, Lutte Ouvriere’s old tri-lingual magazine that are/were consistently intelligently written (BIDOM hasn’t been published since the mid-90s).
I realize that partly this is a problem of the medium, that articles for papers need to be written quickly and compress ideas into a small area. I think it’s also partly the quality of American comrades. I meet very few comrades who engage with Marxism is any serious way. Much of what they know is given to them from pamphlets and learned by rote. Their understanding of Marxism is mechanical, vulgar, one-sided, teleological.
I got lucky in that the first group I met was Spark, which I got pressured into joining, and which has an extremely rigorous reading list, one book a week, almost all classics. The Spart’s bulletin on Spark called them the most knowledgeable comrades on the left. As Americans, we come out of a school system which isn’t very rigorous and we have a strain of intellectual laziness and contempt for intellectualism. We bring that with us into the movement, know matter how much we like to think we don’t. Too many comrades see learning theory as a waste of time, there are lives to be saved right now. So we have to write articles for people who only have the most superficial understanding of Marxism. Where are the great debates that readers once followed in Vorworts or Iskra?
We need a paper that takes us seriously intellectually and demands we take ourselves seriously intellectually. We need a paper that can teach us lessons about actual struggles and experience. How did the comrades (Maoists, btw) in Alachua County, Florida, organize a county wide vote (albeit a straw ballot) for universal health care, which won! How are the Coalition of Immokalee Workers managing to win their victories? How did the RCP, NAACP and others successfully build the Jena 6 movement? We need to look beyond our own organizations for lessons. I’m a Trotskyist, and that has never stopped me from learning from Mike. I once knew an anarchist who said stuff that just made me really think. Something the head of the CP in Chicago once said blew my mind.
I once wrote an email post about the environment in Chicago in the decades leading up to the Haymarket Massacre, which Mike read, and he commented to me afterwards that it made him think about how many revolutions and social upheavals are caused by disasters (in this case the Chicago Fire). I don’t know if he’d been thinking about it for a while or if it just hit him, but he learned something from me, and I in turn learned it back from him. That happened by chance. What if it could have been deliberate. Imagine how much more it could be with more cross fertilization.
We need a place where all those currents can mix together in a respectful and comradely way, cuz regardless of how much we all think our own tendency has the answers, the truth is, we can all learn a hell of a lot from each other. We need an organization that is both serious and respectful, that is disciplined without being onerous, that is genuinely democratic, where people don’t feel the need to expel a group of people just because they have a different understanding of the nature of the Castro government (or the need to split for the same reason). That group hasn’t really existed since Zinoviev completely distorted Lenin’s conception of the party.
How do we even start to build such a place, when there is so much distrust and bad blood? Simply declaring yourself to be the place is as empty as declaring yourself the vanguard. We can’t simply force ourselves together as an “unprincipled” combination. I think the first step is to start thinking of the whole socialist movement as your organization, rather than vice versa. We overcome sectarianism by refusing to be sectarian. Anti-sectarianism, such as Solidarity purports to be, is really just another way of being sectarian. Instead, embrace your revolutionary brothers and sisters. Let’s work together where we agree. Where we don’t, we don’t, but without accusing one side or the other of being traitors to the movement. Hell, there’s enough important work that needs to be done that we can’t all focus on the same thing anyway.
I think we need to come together socially, outside of politics. I tried doing Socializing for Socialists (and Minigolf for Marxists, Bowling for Bolsheviks is still in the works). Mike once told me about how the prostitutes of Shanghai (iirc) were taken from the city after the revolution and just allowed to play and be human again. That has always stuck with me. Play and silliness is just as important for communists as it is for everyone else. When I lived in Chicago I toyed with the idea of a socialist softball league. All the groups would make a team and we’d play against each other and have fun.
We need to also try and find activities where we can win. Organizing against the war is important, but let’s face it, we’re in for the long haul. The RCP, when it organized to defend against an eviction, was able to win a victory, even a small and limited, and temporary one. But we need to win every once and a while. We’re human, and our morale can’t be kept up by pep speeches forever.
Right now a handful of groups from different tendencies are looking in to holding a joint summer school. Last year we had the U.S. Social Forum. The revolution will not be made through such events, but getting American comrades to start coming together and talking and socializing and being comrades is a start.
your comrade,
chegitz guevara
SUN! SURF! SOCIALISM!
chegitz guevara said
Something like this?
http://www.brechtforum.org/node/1489?bc=
your comrade,
chegitz guevara
SUN! SURF! SOCIALISM!
Joseph Ball said
Rosa quotes Avakian on the World Can’t Wait as saying “I want to say, just for the record, that at times I myself have been acutely disappointed by — and, yes, have cursed in graphic terms — the people in this society who are sitting by and doing nothing in the face of atrocities and horrors committed by their government and in their name…”
Rosa then says of Avakian ‘This whole attitude is tied up with the patronizing tone that the party is taking toward the masses. They are treated as part of the problem rather than analyzing the failures and finding out why this or that approach is not working.’
But Bob’s blaming the masses for living in an imperialist country and not doing very much about the murder and plunder carried on by their government on their behalf. Bob isn’t just throwing ‘blaming the masses’ for the failures of his party. There is a very consistent line here going back to 1981 (and maybe before-I haven’t researched back much further) when Bob states in ‘Conquer The World’ that class struggle over economic issues in imperialist countries is not the right approach and that we need to make revolution over superstructual issues. This is to do with the way the imperialist system plunders oppressed nations and uses a portion of this plunder to solve the economic problems of the western working class. It’s not just a case that Bob is ‘blaming the masses’, his approach is actually based on an objective assessment of the economic situation of the masses in imperialist countries.
This is the essential crux of Bob’s thinking when it comes to making revolution in imperialist countries. Whether people think it is correct or incorrect, I think it needs to be discussed in a deeper manner than has been the case in the debates on the 9 Letters.
SS said
Thanks Chegitz,
Yes, those things are exactly what I was asking for, I’m familiar with the monthly review but the others are new to me.
The Brecht institute seems quite interesting. That sort of organization (and the various struggles you mentioned) are the sort of struggles I was asking about in one of my earlier posts. They certainly do need more exposure. I haven’t had the opportunity to listen to any of the lectures, but I will as soon as I have time.
In many ways I agree about the problems of party papers. They are mostly meant to be propaganda tools for introducing people to the ideas of Marxism (and the problems of Capitalism). But in my limited experience, I have noticed that they do often fall short of that aim. There is also quite a divisive edge to the few polemics I have read (and there are far too few). Rather than being intellectual exchanges and struggles they seem like pompous lectures (not to say I’ve never taken that tone before, because I most certainly have, haha).
“We need to also try and find activities where we can win. Organizing against the war is important, but let’s face it, we’re in for the long haul. The RCP, when it organized to defend against an eviction, was able to win a victory, even a small and limited, and temporary one. But we need to win every once and a while. We’re human, and our morale can’t be kept up by pep speeches forever.”
I agree, lectures on complicity won’t cut it either. Small victories seem like they can have large impacts on communities and activists. Organizing against eviction or things of that nature, have a really big impact on peoples daily lives. They forge genuine ties. I’m sure people, who’s lives have been positively impacted by someone involved with things like the anti-war movement, would become a lot more receptive to ideas like anti-war activism through the process of struggle on different levels. It’s the whole “not coming from the outside” thing.
“Bob isn’t just throwing ‘blaming the masses’ for the failures of his party. There is a very consistent line here going back to 1981 (and maybe before-I haven’t researched back much further) when Bob states in ‘Conquer The World’ that class struggle over economic issues in imperialist countries is not the right approach and that we need to make revolution over superstructual issues.”
Struggling against economist tendencies is one thing. But just calling for a massive demonstration and assuming you will get results is another. It’s essentially idealist, the way Bob frames it also reduces the issue to something that is a lot more simple that the struggle actually is.
I am very familiar with The World Cant Wait. It’s not a mass organization. It doesn’t have a lot of credibility. It doesn’t have a huge amount of organizational power. With that being said, it does do a lot of good work within its particular capacity. However there are a lot of complex issues activists have to struggle against. Just saying “you’re complicit if you don’t come” and putting a few ads in the paper, then expecting huge results is silly. It will get some people out, but not the numbers that WCW was expecting.
Some people don’t think it’s complicity, not to come to an anti-war rally because they don’t think marching is going to accomplish anything. This is often because they never hear about the very real struggles and victories that often occur. The media rarely covers anti-war stuff, so the victories that are achieved, like the heroic people who blocked war shipments from military ports recently, never get talked about. That was a really inspiring event. Thirty – fifty people or so, from a small town, blocked ports where military shipments were going through for the better part of a day. They were subject to mace, tear gas and other forms of physical punishment for hours, yet they endured. This was a valiant effort, but if I wasn’t an organizer for anti-war groups, I most likely would have never heard it happened. This is by no means a complete picture of why a lot of people are against the war, won’t come to anti-war rallies. But what I said above does scratch the surface.
In posing the situation of Oct 5 in the way Bob does, doesn’t take into consideration how incredibly complicated people, and the struggle to unite with them is. I only mentioned a few things above, but there are an innumerable amount of issues activists have to struggle against to get people to come out. Calling for a mass rally and putting some ads in the paper doesn’t cut it. It’s ambitious which is good, but you can’t blame its failure solely on people. That’s a really simple answer to a really complicated question.
I agree that things like this do need to be discussed on a deeper level. That is the framework for these letters. They bring up questions for struggle, but don’t serve as complete answers. Just as framework for debate.
Jimmy Higgins said
Cheygitz, in the only digression I’ve permitted myself since Kasama opened, I have to say I’m impressed by the Spart’s endorsement of your training. Once when I was in the RU, the Workers Vanguard did call an ad hoc crew I found myself part of something like “brutal Stalinist goons.”
zerohour said
I have to admit that I had a bit of agreement with Avakian on “blaming the masses.” Not becasue I think the masses should be “blamed” for imperialism, genocide, etc., but how do we hold them responsible without blaming them? Isn’t it infantilizing not to hold the masses responsible for anything?
When we encounter a rapist, we still hold him accountable for his actions even if the larger responsibility rests with misogyny. Are racists not responsible, only racism? If the masses do something heroic and revolutionary we applaud and support it. In this way, we assume that they are exercising agency. We do not credit liberal ideas of “democracy” or “freedom of speech” but rather point to “class consciousness.” When they do something fucked up, they’ve been manipulated by imperialism – agency has disappeared.
The dialectic between structure and agency needs to be thought thorough better than commies have, if only because we assume that holding people responsible for their behavior within the system also makes them responsible for the system. For propagandistic or polemical reasons, I can see why we want to focus on the system, but for analytical reasons we should not assume anything. A prevalent view about human nature that reduces us down to greed and brutality is what the bourgeoisie wants us to believe. Anarchists idealistically reduce us down to some inherent drive towards freedom, compassion and solidarity. We are capable of all of that shit and there is no reason to believe that those masses who opt for Bush are mislead. They might actually prefer the comfort of authority and obedience.
During the Feburary 2003 demos against the war, I thought it was great that 1 million in NYC came out. I thought it was fucked that it wasn’t 5 million. I don’t blame the left for this. You didn’t have to be radical to see how flimsy the Bush administration’s arguments and “proof” was about WMDs. No dialectical analysis was needed to see how pathetic Colin Powell’s slideshow presentation on supposed mobile chemical labs in Iraq was. He didn’t even use photos, he had illustrations! No one on the left wants to admit it but a large part of the proletariat wanted to believe Bush. They weren’t just deceived, they were also self-deceived, why do we just ignore this?
Does this equate to blaming them for imperialism? No, but it does mean that they are not innocent and we should not blame someone like Avakian for expressing his frustration about this. We certainly need to account for this and lecturing or manipulating are no substitutes for patient struggle, but denial of agency is not the same as standing with the masses either.
chegitz guevara said
I think comrades who are angry at the masses need to take a materialist look at the situation most people face today. It isn’t that people are necessarily apathetic or on the other side. Many of them are demoralized by the fact that this government really doesn’t care what we think on the issue, so no matter what we do, short of revolution, we aren’t getting out of this war on the people’s terms.
The other thing to consider is that the 40 hour work week is a thing of the past in America. The average work week is now 45 hours, and remember, when you stand next to Bill Gates, the two of you have an average of 19 billion dollars each. People are more fearful than ever of losing their jobs. We need our jobs in order to have health care (assuming we have it, and actually, 5 out of 6 of us do). We leave college (or trade schools–half of us go to post-secondary school in this country) whether or not we graduate deeply in debt. We must work while we are in school to make ends meet. Political activism is simply not a “luxury” most people can afford. Only someone completely disconnected from the reality of the masses would get upset at them for not getting active.
Chairman Bob spent 25 years in France, completely divorced from life in America. Scolding the masses is the ultimate act of sectarianism. It displays the same level of being out of touch as when George H. W. Bush showed his amazement at laser scanning technology when buying some socks during a photo-op.
your comrade,
chegitz guevera
SUN! SURF! SOCIALISM!
zerohour said
I’m not in France, I’m a proletarian as well and it’s not a just a matter of being angry or frustrated at people’s lack of political activity. Even without being active, the amount of deception they are willing to accept is mind-boggling. Even without hitting the streets, people should be able to see through ridiculous lies, no?
I know what kind of conditions people face, but your comment avoids my questions. Can we hold the proletariat responsible for anything? If not, are we not treating them like passive children to be manipulated? How can we laud them for heroism but not criticize them for reactionary behavior? Are they responsible for one and not the other? I remember people arguing with me on the job that Bush was right to go into Iraq [this was early 2003]. These people were not apathetic nor are they reactionaries, these were liberals! Demoralized? Hardly, they took a deliberate stand with the other side. They have since changed their minds, but a lot of people had to die first. Let’s be honest, many people hate Bush for different reasons, but mainly because the US is losing the war, not because leftist analysis makes sense to them.
A position of not criticizing the masses is condescending. This assumes the position of “benevolent saviors” who must patiently explain their errors from on high, while patting them on the head and handing out cookies for good behavior. Engagement with the masses must come from a position of identification with their heroism and shortcomings, which are ours [activists] as well. The system may be ultimately responsible, but we’re in the shit. We decide if we want to get out of the shit, not the system.
emma said
I think that it is excellent that people are talking about Avakian and is the new synthesis correct? That is very good, but what I don’t think is good is if people just sit behind their computers and pick things apart, without actually getting into the works of Avakian.
Example, the link on the side that talks about the “Avakian’synthesis” is actually incorrect. For people who are interested in seeing the real new synthesis ( and debating on it) http://revcom.us/a/075/banewsynthesis-en.html
As far as what I mention about these letters being sent to RCP contacts, I do find that unprincipled. Most of this contact information is hard to acquire unless you were in the RCP or already formed a relationship with these people ( which I doubt is the case)
Around the Engage Committee, http://www.engagewithbobavakian.com/
People around RCP worked very hard to forge relationships with people around Revolutionary Ideas, including prominent people and specifically around RCP line. These 9 letter were emailed to every person who signed the Engage Statement, who RCP had worked very hard to acquire by sitting down with people and getting into deep discussion over the content of communism.
If you leave an organization, you do not try and capitilize off the work they have done, stealing contacts and such.
You work on your own methods and line to bring new people forward, to get your own contacts and forge your own relationships.
This in its own right, along with other things that I have been recently been reading, proves that RCP is the only political party that does have the method, the program and leadership to unleash masses of people for Revolution and the transition to communism.
Does this mean we can’t learn from other people? No. Does that mean new leadership and new methods and programs won’t forge through? No.
And I think that people should be bring them forward, debating Avakian’s ideas broadly and openly.
Jimmy Higgins said
Emma, two questions.
First, I clicked on the link you included and as best I can tell, the non-”incorrect” definition of the new synthesis is this passage:
Is this a better summation of the new synthesis than the passage Mike quotes in Footnote 13 to Letter 1?
Second, is there a special significance to the upper case initials in “Revolutionary Ideas”?
Jimmy Higgins said
[Resubmitted with, I hope, a live link. Mike, you might include a Preview feature here to help commentors avoid technical, grammatical or political errors (all three of which I am prone to).]
Emma, two questions.
First, I clicked on the link you included and as best I can tell, the non-”incorrect” definition of the new synthesis is this passage:
Is this a better summation of the new synthesis than the passage Mike quotes in Footnote 13 to Letter 1?
Second, is there a special significance to the upper case initials in “Revolutionary Ideas”?
zerohour said
To follow up on Jimmy’s post, here’s the first paragraph from the link Emma gave:
“The first point that needs to be made is that this is something that is dealing with real world contradictions—it’s not some idealist imaginings of what it would be nice to have a society be like. When we talk about a world we want to live in, it is not a utopian notion of inventing a society out of whole cloth and then trying to reimpose that on the world once again. But it is dealing with real-world contradictions, summing up the end of a stage (the first stage of socialist revolutions) 1 and what can be learned out of that stage, attempting to draw the lessons from that and dealing with real-world contradictions in aspects, important aspects, that are new. It is a synthesis that involves taking what was positive from previous experience, working through and discarding what was negative, recasting some of what was positive and bringing it forward in a new framework. So, again, it’s dealing with real-world contradictions—but in a new way.”
What exactly is new here?
ulises276/2 said
Zerohour says,
“I know what kind of conditions people face, but your comment avoids my questions. Can we hold the proletariat responsible for anything? If not, are we not treating them like passive children to be manipulated? How can we laud them for heroism but not criticize them for reactionary behavior? Are they responsible for one and not the other? I remember people arguing with me on the job that Bush was right to go into Iraq [this was early 2003]. These people were not apathetic nor are they reactionaries, these were liberals! Demoralized? Hardly, they took a deliberate stand with the other side. They have since changed their minds, but a lot of people had to die first. Let’s be honest, many people hate Bush for different reasons, but mainly because the US is losing the war, not because leftist analysis makes sense to them.”
The problem here is not that the issue of complicity is raised at all, but rather that it covers over an assumption that the reason people are not resisting and coming out on different levels isn’t related to a LACK of leadership. The assumption on the part of the RCP is that they have the line, the leadership, and the plan to make a revolution here. The only thing that is missing is mass support. So since the line, the plan, and the leadership is correct, there is something wrong with the masses. Again it is the assumption that the Party itself has nothing to learn, and that it just needs to go out and literally shame the masses to begin developing a revolutionary movement. Avakian says, “Shame on you if you sat on your ass on October 5!” But what if the Party’s plan, leadership, and line is why Oct. 5th failed? Then shouldn’t it be “shame on you RCP” for wasting our time sucking people into a poorly conceived and organize vehicle. And lets be clear, the RCP relied on volunteerism with the WCW. At each event they got smaller and smaller circles of NEW people into resistance, and once these people came forward they found that their was no second stage to the plan. It was literally just get a bunch of people in the streets, and then boom the Bush Regime is gone. This actually demoralized people. It actually contributed to the situation where people would rather sit on their ass than follow Bob Avakian.
But this assumption on their part is just an echo of the larger assumption that Avakian’s synthesis and leadership is the highest expression of communism and is therefore a cardinal question on the level of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. And yet, once again, if you were to take them up on their hype, you would soon see that they do not have the plan for making a revolution here. That is, they are building another confidence scam, an ideological pyramid scheme. There is no basis for the claim that Avakian and his synthesis are “the cardinal question”. It is unjustified, and at base uninterrogated. But Avakian has gone out and once again made the claims without justifying them: http://revcom.us/a/115/makingrevolution-p2-03-en.html
Whatever problems the masses have, and they have many, the problem HERE is the line of the RCP.
ulises276/2 said
And I would add that “Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution” is just another manifestation of the problem. A dialectical look at the relationship between the people and the party would note that to transform the people you must transform the party. But the RCP believes that it exists as some ontological exception, literally “coming from without” the same contradictions and the same reality as the masses. The RCP’s idea of revolution is based on the assumption that they’re correct NOW, and that they only have to patiently explain, maybe even guilt trip or shame, the masses in the ways of Bob Thought. They believe that if they promote Bob Avakian, the masses will learn what communism is and that this will lead to a revolutionary movement. And let’s be clear, it is this “appreciation” which is central to EVERYTHING they do. Which means that it is the self-replicating, self-referencing, and self-enforcing cult of personality around Bob Avakian, which is at the center of even their “fighting the power”. And how is that fight going? After 30yrs the RCP seems to think it deserves plaudits for having helped organize a civil disturbance in New Orleans. Let me just ask what happened to their houses? Why should we follow a party which said of Katrina,
“There is such a revolutionary leadership—the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, and its Chairman Bob Avakian. But to put things squarely and honestly, while the Party has been exerting real efforts to take up its responsibility in relation to the events surrounding hurricane Katrina, the ability of the Party to actually lead in these dire and urgent circumstances has been far short of what it needs to be. If the influence of the Party and its organized ties with masses of people had been much greater, leading into these events surrounding hurricane Katrina, the Party would be able to play a far greater role in raising the understanding of the masses of people as to what was happening and why: why the government and the whole ruling class reacted the way they have—with the loss of thousands of lives, and terrible suffering for hundreds of thousands more, much of which could have been prevented or significantly lessened—and what this says about the nature of their system and why we need a radically different system. The Party could have been playing a far greater role in enabling masses of people, in the areas immediately affected and throughout the country, to be organized to respond to these events and to wage organized political struggle, on a much higher level and in a much more powerful way, to force steps to be taken immediately to save hundreds and probably thousands of lives that have been, and are still being, needlessly lost. And all this could be having the effect of raising the consciousness and the organized strength of masses of people to a far higher level, with the necessary goal of revolution more clearly and sharply in view. These events surrounding hurricane Katrina and all that has been forced into the light of day in connection with this, has shown the great need for the Party to rise to its responsibilities and play its leadership role in this way, on a whole other level, and for masses of people to rally to, to support, to join and build, and to defend—this necessary and crucial revolutionary leadership, as embodied in the Revolutionary Communist Party and its Chairman Bob Avakian.”
I mean, why should we follow a Party which admits it’s inability to lead in REAL terms, at the same time that it demands that they are the only possible leadership? And moreover, why should we follow a leadership that keeps LOSING, for 30yrs?! Don’t you think after 30yrs, they should have the base, the organized ties to be more effective than they are? The fact that they organized people to get all pissed off at a city council meeting does not discount the fact that under the RCP’s leadership these people were defeated in their political goals of saving their homes.
These questions have much more to do with why the masses can’t get behind the RCP than the “corruption and complicity” of the masses. It is a failure of leadership, not a failure of the people.
zerohour said
Ulises
The RCP’s influence isn’t strong enough to demoralize, or demobilize, millions, so let’s not give them more weight than they deserve. Whatever RCP’s line, or anyone’s line for that matter, I think we have to stop glossing over the very real problem of popular complicity. Even while you acknowledge it, you then place all the blame on RCP. Even if RCP and WCW had the greatest plan ever devised, chances are the masses would not have responded favorably anyway. There are objective reasons for this, which many of us have enumerated, but what about the masses? Are they just demoralized? Or are they just tired of THIS imperialist and looking for a more “humane” one?
BTW, I agree with your criticisms of RCP, but people aren’t looking for revolutionary leadership they are looking for saviors. They have been conditioned to have someone else do the liberating for them. We have to help break them out of that, but we can’t underestimate the subjective problems we face. As Voltaire said, “It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”
Jimmy Higgins said
On the question of “blaming the masses” and imperial privilege, I have just posted a different argument, this one made by James McMurtry, over at Fire on the Mountain.
emma said
Response Jimmy Higgins
Well one of the things that is in that introduction that is new is Avakian bringing forward “a solid core with a lot of elacity” where he talks about the need for a solid core of communist leadership, but also not putting everything in the hands of the party. This IS new.
And the dialectical relationship between this in making revolution, during revolution and to the transformation from socialism to communism.
The actually New Synthesis and I would be interested to hear what people think about it. Does it corresponed with reality? If not, why not? http://revcom.us/avakian/basis-goals-methods/
Pavel said
This is the kind of information that the RCP ought to immediately make available to its cadre and newspaper readership.
Blackstone said
I think this portion of an article by one of my favorite social scientists, makes some important points, here is a portion of that portion, the rest of the discussion on The People are Not Bamboozled can be found at the link
#1. The People Are Not Bamboozled
Faced with their many failures to convince even a significant minority of the American population to act in ways that they assume are in the best interests of the overwhelming majority, many leftists tend to blame this lack of success on the fact that most people do not understand the nature of the social system or their class interests. These failures on the part of ordinary citizens are said to be due to the overwhelming ideological and persuasive powers of the capitalist class and its ideological allies. Although the argument is cast in terms of concepts like “false consciousness,” “ideological hegemony,” “regimes of power/knowledge,” or “cultural logics,” it says in effect that people are being bamboozled or brainwashed by the powers that be. Thanks to the sophistication of this argument, as legitimated by famous theorists and philosophers such as Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse, leftists seldom consider the possibility that the solutions they offer are rejected by people because they are unworkable, or might put current freedoms and rights at risk, or could even make things worse for the poorest and most marginalized people.
More here
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_freshstart.html
zerohour said
Jimmy -
I read your piece and was struck by this: “Some of those responding have pointed out that in an imperialist power like the US, even ordinary working people partake of imperial privileges and they share the responsibility for the global crimes of the US government unless they opt to stand against those crimes.” If you are attempting to draw this conclusion from my remarks, you are off-base and only confirming that we would rather avoid the issue of complicity than deal with it. I don’t hold the proletariat responsible for imperialism and explicitly said so. What I was trying to determine is what we DO hold proletarians responsible for? Harriet Tubman once said: “I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more, if they had known they were slaves.” Was she blaming the slaves or recognizing that in order to be free, you have to start by wanting it? There are objective and subjective aspects to this process. We are more comfortable with the objective because to deal with the subjective we would have to deal with real people in all their potential for greatness and malevolence. Too many of us revolutionaries like our sufferers to be pure.
Perhaps this argument is more philosophical and sociological than people really want to get into. Such a position would not make good political literature, where any kind of dialectical argument allows reactionaries to seize on the negative aspect and inflate it beyond proportion.
Emma -
The position might be new to RCP but it’s not new to anyone who has ever studied the history of communism, or the debates regarding how organizational forms relate to revolutionary politics. What is new is the formulation but it is a restatement of the old problem regarding organization/spontaneity. I personally don’t have a problem with the “new” synthesis, I just don’t think it’s the breakthrough the Party makes it out to be.
emma said
zerohour
The solid core with a lot of elacity is actually not just referring to organization and spontaneity. Although it does speak to that. But getting into how do we embrace non-communist ideas,non communist people, and perspectives very widely while at the same time not letting go of the goal to communism ( in a broad way while at the same time allowing dissent)
And then also making sure that we don’t have too much elacicity, where we just unite people for Revolution for the sake of uniting ( while not struggling further for them to understand the necessity to takeit all the way to communism.
And then on the other hand making sure that we are not just dogmatic, and trying to control every tiny aspect of the revolution, micro-managing it.
The part of the new synthesis , that I sent the link out on earlier gets in to this.
zerohour said
Emma -
The debate has been going on at least since the 1917. See The Cultural Front and Bolshevik Visions. Also, how can you forget Mao’s Hundred Flowers Campaign?
As I said, I don’t have a problem with “solid core/elasticity”. It’s a necessary discussion and I’m glad RCP is willing to put it on the table, but in no way is Avakain raising the level of debate to the degree that he and his followers say he is.
Ulises said
Zerohour,
I didn’t say anything about millions. But it is true in my experience that the majority of the THOUSANDS of people who came out in support of the WCW at one time or another ended up deactivated and demoralized.
We can look at this from the issue of objective and subjective as you suggest, but then you’ve got them all reversed. The objective situation is the position of the masses inside a society that has a parasitic relationship with the rest of the world. The subjective situation is both the consciousness among the masses of that reality and the line of the Party in terms of changing that reality. The RCP focuses on the objective character of the masses as having a parasitic or complicit role in the system that they are a part of in order to get away from having to take responsibility for the ways in which their line has failed to affect this objective situation. I do not deny that the U.S. has a parasitic relationship with the rest of the world, but then I don’t think that this overall relationship characterizes all the elements of U.S. society. This thinking is fallacious, and it is very close to MIM’s ideas with regards to the character of the masses and their relationship to the parasitism of U.S. society.
Moreover, I think your conception of “the proletariat” smacks of reification. Who exactly are you talking about? It seems to me that when we talk about classes and class dynamics we are talking about social RELATIONS, not about easily quantified blocks and groups of people that all come under some shared category of “proletarian”. If we look at class from this perspective, the moralistic notion of complicity begins to look very superficial. At any rate, if we are to stick with that notion of who to blame, I would not blame the RCP entirely for the failures of the last 30yrs. Rather, I think this has been a generalized failure throughout the Left internationally. On the other hand, each element of that Left needs to address that failure from the perspective of their own history. The RCP does not do this, they very clearly say that the reason people haven’t taken up Bob’s new “highest synthesis of communism” is because they are complicit and comfortable and that the way to change this is to, literally in certain cases, shame them into a realization about the importance of Bob Avakian.
The bottom line here is not whether the RCP is entirely to blame for the situation (that would be giving them too much importance and is obviously not true), nor is it a question of whether the masses are “complicit” or not. The issue is whether we believe that the objective conditions in the U.S. (with the masses in relation to the overall parasitism of U.S. society) always excuse political failure. If we take this stance, if the subjective element of political lines and programs have no relation to the objective situation or are entirely overwhelmed by them, then the logical conclusion is that revolution in the U.S. is impossible barring some catastrophic collapse. Of course the opposite mistake to make would be to think that one can overcome these problems through simple subjective will. At any rate, I am not arguing for this second extreme, but I do believe that with a different line over the last 30yrs, and more importantly with a different line today, we can develop a vibrant and strategically placed revolutionary movement in North America.
Emma:
The whole problem is that the “solid core” is the culture of appreciation around Avakian, which precludes serious discussion and debate because it insists that one agree with incorrect assumptions about the nature of Avakian’s leadership.
Your characterization of the RCP’s line repeats a method: simply state what you intend to do, but never describe how you are actually going to do it. In fact the assumption on your part is that you are already doing it, that is, you are already embracing non-communist ideas, and “allowing” dissent. But there is no substantive evidence for this. In fact there is quite a bit of evidence to the contrary.
And please, since you are a follower of Bob Avakian, please explain how his synthesis is new, why it is necessary, how it is groundbreaking. And explain for all of us how it “reflects reality”. And if you get a chance, please clarify whether it is in fact the program of the RCP that Avakian’s leadership and synthesis are THE cardinal question, and that the best way to “hasten while awaiting” is to promote that leadership and his synthesis, even if you don’t understand it or can’t justify the grandiose claims made around it.
Seriously, lets bring this discussion back to the central issue up for debate. The RCP claims that Avakian’s synthesis and his personal leadership is THE CARDINAL QUESTION. This is the RCP’s line. So let’s all tackle this central aspect of the New Synthesis and ask ourselves if it is correct or not. And for those that believe it to be correct, please address how and why. I for one agree with the criticisms that Ely has laid out as to why this line is incorrect.
Mike E said
emma wrote:
“These 9 letter were emailed to every person who signed the Engage Statement…”
This is not true as far as I know. Please confirm that you made this statement without knowing the facts, emma.
SS said
“Seriously, lets bring this discussion back to the central issue up for debate. The RCP claims that Avakian’s synthesis and his personal leadership is THE CARDINAL QUESTION. This is the RCP’s line. So let’s all tackle this central aspect of the New Synthesis and ask ourselves if it is correct or not. And for those that believe it to be correct, please address how and why. I for one agree with the criticisms that Ely has laid out as to why this line is incorrect.”
As far as I know there is only one, maybe two people that are defending the RCP on that level (on this site). There are a lot of people taking up for them at various other levels (to name a few examples the paper, or whether they have or have not done significant work around different social issues over the years, or whether WCW is a worthwhile organization), but I don’t think anyone with the exception of Emma is arguing that Avakian has come up with a groundbreaking new formula to save the Communist movement. I’m not so sure discussion of that at this point would be fruitful.
But if anyone disagrees, and has some new insights to contribute please speak up and I will gladly quiet myself.
Jimmy Higgins said
To locate this in historical context, 9 Letters has had me thinking in recent days of another Maoist grouping in the United States which made very similar public claims for its leader. That would be the long-defunct Communist Workers Party (founded in 1979 out of the Workers Viewpoint Organization), remembered today principally for being the main victims of the Greensboro Massacre.
In 1980 the CWP staged a militant march/assault on the Democratic National Convention in New York, one of their stronger bases (and got the crap beat out of them if memory serves). In the aftermath, the CWP made statements to the effect of “The choice is now clear to the American working class–either the misery of continued capitalist rule or the CWP.”
In the early ’80s, they took to placing full page head shots of their chairman Jerry Tung, clearly based on those the Chinese used of Mao, in all of the party’s organs. An accompanying short, adulatory biography included the claim (this is a very close paraphrase, from memory) “Chairman Tung has creatively solved the problem of making revolution in an advanced imperialist country.” This creativity went on display during 1981, when he published an intensely ballyhooed book detailing his discovery that the Soviet Union was socialist after all. Despite the hype, it contained little in new argument on the topic.
I raise this not to downplay the importance of the work Mike has embarked here, but to suggest additional lines of investigation and thought. I suspect that this kind of cult of the leader (which, despite the far-reaching accomplishments and virtues attributed to Avakian of late, are not a recent development in the RCP) is one practical response to the problem of maintaining an organized revolutionary core inside of a major imperialist power during an extended non-revolutionary period. How much of the form is a direct product of the Maoist tradition is something else that might be worth looking at.
Pavel said
Quoting Emma:
The solid core with a lot of elacity is actually not just referring to organization and spontaneity. Although it does speak to that. But getting into how do we embrace non-communist ideas,non communist people, and perspectives very widely while at the same time not letting go of the goal to communism ( in a broad way while at the same time allowing dissent)
And then also making sure that we don’t have too much elacicity, where we just unite people for Revolution for the sake of uniting ( while not struggling further for them to understand the necessity to takeit all the way to communism.
And then on the other hand making sure that we are not just dogmatic, and trying to control every tiny aspect of the revolution, micro-managing it.
The part of the new synthesis , that I sent the link out on earlier gets in to this.
Emma—
Do you really believe all this gibberish yourself? It’s about “getting in to how do we…in a broad way” etc. etc.?
Aren’t you uncomfortable yourself with the total unclarity here? Why aren’t you able to articulate precisely, yourself, what’s of value in what Bob’s saying? What has Bob taught you about how to “embrace non-communist ideas,non communist people, and perspectives very widely while at the same time not letting go of the goal to communism”?
You’re referring the reader to Bob-links, to Bob “getting in to” stuff. I’ve spent all too much time “engaging” Bob, and when I do, I find there’s not much there, or often what’s there’s just plain wrong.
zerohour said
Jimmy -
For further investigation, I would recommend that people try to find and read Edgar Snow’s The Long Revolution. It is a long conversation with Mao published in 1972 as the Cultural Revolution was winding down. Snow persistently questioned Mao about the cult of personality. In contrast to RCP which thinks all such talk is reactionary, Mao actually admits to fomenting one for political reasons, at the same time being aware of its dangers. One doesn’t have to agree with Mao but I feel his comments do add some dimension to the discussion.
Ulises, I’d like to respond to your comments, but for now I’d like to second SS’s point: we mostly agree that Avakian is NOT the cardinal question so why keep circling around it?
leftspot said
I think it’s interesting to compare these 9 Letters with previous substantive polemics with the RCP. Particularly I find two polemics written by groups that went on to found Freedom Road Socialist Organization to be the most substantive and compelling.
During their split with the RCP in the late 1970s, the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters published a series of polemics (many based on internal documents during the time leading up to the split) that have some themes that are very similar to things found in the 9 Letters, but also some differences (the polemics on the nature of China being the most obviously different). I’ve started scanning in some of the RWH polemics found in Red Papers 8 (put out after the RWH-RCP split), specifically the ones on how to approach the class struggle in the U.S. You can find those here.
Another substantive polemic with the RCP was written by the Organization for Revolutionary Unity (ORU), another group that later merged into Freedom Road. The Decline of the RCP is their polemic written in the early 80s. This one is perhaps more similar to the 9 Letters in its focus.
Anyway, I just wanted to share that these polemics from an earlier period are out there in case folks want to read or discuss them.
ulises276/2 said
No SS,
That IS their line. I asked a representative of the Party and they said, “yes, absolutely” they believe that Avakian is “the cardinal question”. Moreover, this line actually IS expressed both in their Engage! statement that says that Avakian’s ideas are “necessary” and that he has a “special role to play”, and in the recent excerpts from Avakian’s speech on “Meaningful Revolutionary Work” http://revcom.us/a/115/makingrevolution-p2-03-en.html
They mean all their statements about the nature and quality of Avakian’s work LITERALLY.
The fact that people are confused about this is due to the unprincipled nature of how the RCP has enacted this line, that is, without telling everyone how extreme their claims are, thus leaving wiggle room for people such as yourself and those in the YB and lower levels of their organization to deflect or deny that they believe that Avakian is “the cardinal question”.
It is time for clarity now. We know, and in effect the RCP has publicly admitted in print (with Avakian’s latest speech), that the RCP holds his work to be a “cardinal question” on the level of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Now people either agree with this or they don’t, and as it is central to all the work that they are doing, disagreeing with this means that one cannot in good conscience work to further the RCP’s agenda, because furthering their agenda means supporting this “key” verdict.
We need to talk about this line because this is the main and basic criticism of the 9 Letters and is the point at which people have to make a decision as to whether they agree with the RCP’s line or not. Does Avakian’s work represent the “most advanced representation” of communism? Avakian says it does in the above linked speech. He says that their key plan for revolution is to promote his person and body of work as that “most advanced representation”. It is clear. Why do people still insist on ignoring this?
Zerohour,
It is important to get this question out in the open as SS, and others, plainly do not believe that the RCP holds this line, or are confused about its central and defining role. Supporters of the RCP should be challenged to defend this line. If they believe that Avakian is the cardinal question, then we should struggle with them to find out why, on the off chance that they might have a reason and could even prove it right. But also because if they do not agree with this line, then they shouldn’t be supporting it. Rather, they should be working to figure out what would be a better program and plan for revolution in our current situation. And if they do agree with it, but can’t explain why or justify it, then we should seriously question to what extent RCP supporters are approaching political analysis and work as a faith-based project (something that most of the Left is doing).
We should focus on this issue because everything that the RCP does, EVERYTHING, is subordinated to and should be viewed through that key line (that Avakian is the cardinal question). Let’s understand what a “cardinal question” is. It is a line question that separates revolution from counter-revolution. They hold that if you do not follow Bob Avakian you CANNOT be a communist. They additionally hold that the key work of communists is to put forward and agitate for the “most advanced representation” of communism which they believe is Avakian’s new synthesis. That even where they’re “fighting the power” they are doing this primarily through, or with a key element being, the promotion of Bob Avakian.
Now if we are going to discuss the way forward from the perspective of a criticism of the RCP, we need to explain why THIS program is wrong. And we don’t do that by focusing on the dissimulating of RCP supporters, or by deflecting the discussion into how we really like this or that article in the new issue of Revolution. This latter point exactly misses that the “cardinal question” nullifies whatever good is being done in other elements of their work, that it characterizes everything that they are doing.
On the other hand, I am very much for broadening out the scope of this criticism to encompass most of the Left. All this mealy-mouthed dissimulating, all these hang-ups on sects, all these unaccountable leaders and stale dogmas sucking the life out of good people who want to change the world… All of this needs to be swept away and something new and refreshing, and above all something actually capable of organizing the power to change the world for the better, needs to be put in its place.
Leftspot,
I’d like to know what you think about how we might avoid ending up like Freedom Road and others. I mean, you think there are similarities here between the criticisms, but I hope those similarities are superficial because it seems clear to me that Freedom Road, like the Left in general, have utterly failed to put forward a positive alternative that can breath life into or give manifestation to a revolutionary movement. I have read one of the criticisms from the early split several times, and I thought that it had many good points, but I guess I was just hoping you’d extrapolate on what you see as the similarities and perhaps on how the RWH and ORU critiques relate to what the RWH and ORU became, and how we might avoid that.
ulises276/2 said
To sum up, we should focus on this because THIS is the line question.
zerohour said
Ulises -
I think you’re confusing audiences. If you are saying that we should focus on “Avakian as the cardinal question” when speaking to RCP supporters, that’s one thing but if you are saying that we should continue to re-gash this question to each other on this board, perhaps you should specify what we have not gotten into that you think we should.
As for your earlier points about complicity, you are doing what others have always done, polarizing the question to avoid it. As you frame it, the question of complicity either makes the masses responsible for imperialism or responsible for nothing.
I do tend to interchange “proletariat” with “masses” and this is wrong when referring to the forces for revolution in the US but in no way is using a term simply reification. Is there no proletariat in the US? What about “imperialism”? Reification or proper designation of a social system? I agree that we must see the subjectivity of the masses as embedded in the larger objective context, but we must do more than see it, we have to understand it. Part of understanding it is not dismissing it as either some inherent “class interest” or “false consciousness” imposed by imperialism. Do the masses have no active role in ideological formation – are they just passive helpless children? Uncovering this is important if we are to know who and what we’re dealing with. Ignoring this question is a reflection of pragmatism. It’s a way of saying that the only thing that matters is what people think, but not why they think it. Actually it’s worse, it’s dogmatic. When people stand against the system they are expressing free will. When they cooperate with the system, they’ve been misled by the media. Either way the masses are innocents. Since we already have all the answers, why look any further?
What I am suggesting here is not proper for a political manifesto or popular agitation, but a necessary part of social investigation. Also, I am not trying to refute or confirm RCP’s stance on any of this, I was just using Avakian’s quote as a jumping off point for further discussion.
Ulises said
Zerohour,
My intention is not to frame the debate around the question of complicity, but to abandon that terminology entirely. The social system of U.S. capital has an exploitive and parasitic relationship with most of the world. “Complicity” is a term which has no meaning in this relationship. It is loaded, emotional language. It is unscientific. If we view classes in their existence as RELATIONS, then yes “the proletariat” is “complicit”, totally complicit in capitalism, and always has been as they are the basis for the creation of the value that is expropriated. So what, how does that explain the situation in the U.S.?
The point I am making is, again, not to frame things around this meaningless phrase in order to find blame, but that a real investigation of this issue will abandon that terminology and deal with the complexity of the social system as it really exists. Opposing this method, the RCP wants to talk about “complicity”.
You are not reifying the proletariat by simply referring to its assumed existence, the problem is that your category “proletariat” does not tell us what that is. It is an abstraction disconnected from a concrete analysis of class in the United States. The question would be not only “is there a proletariat”, but also “what is it?” Is it a category, or is it a relationship? And then how does it concretely manifest itself in our situation? How do the various elements that exist in this relationship to domestic capital relate to the overall character of the U.S. as an imperialist society? “Complicity” is a naive concept, at best, for discussing this issue. Just as the attempts so far in all of this discussion to focus things around the “pathology” of the RCP’s “cultism” have been naive, at best.
Are immigrant workers proletarians? Why? What about all the other workers in the U.S.? How do they fit into this?
I will quote Ernesto Laclau:
“There is an ethical imperative in intellectual work, which Leonardo called “obstinate rigor”. It means, in practical terms – and especially when one is dealing with political matters, which are always highly charged with emotion – that one has to resist several temptations. They can be condensed into a single formula: never succumb to the terrorism of words. As Freud wrote, one must avoid making concessions to faintheartedness: “One can never tell where that road may lead one; one gives way first in words, and then little by little in substance too.” One of the main forms this faintheartedness takes in our time is the replacement of analysis by ethical condemnation. Some subjects, such as fascism or the Holocaust, are particularly prone to this type of exercise. There is nothing wrong, of course, in condemning the Holocaust. The problem begins when condemnation replaces explanation, which is what happens when some phenomena are seen as aberrations dispossessed of any rationally graspable cause. We can only begin to understand fascism if we see it as one of the internal possibilities inherent to societies, not as something beyond any rational explanation. The same happens with the terms that have a positive emotional connotation. On the Left, terms such as “class struggle,” “determination in the last instance by the economy,” or “centrality of the working class” function – or functioned until recently – as emotionally charged fetishes, the meanings of which were increasingly less clear, although their discursive appeal could not be diminished.”
I would suggest that the discussion of the “complicity of the masses” is an example of one of these fetishes, as is your particular use of the term “the proletariat”, moreover I would argue that the line of the RCP around Bob Avakian has taken this practice in leftist politics to new heights (and is the clearest expression of something which is wide spread throughout the left) by directly fetishizing his “new synthesis” and his personal leadership.
Ulises said
Zerohour,
I would add, once again, that their are people on this board who still do not understand what the RCP’s line on Avakian’s leadership and synthesis is. That is, “this audience” is not monolithic is not all of the same understanding of the RCP’s position on Avakian’s leadership. It is completely reasonable to discuss this matter. What I don’t understand is why some people are so insistent about NOT discussing it. As if it is irrelevant to the polemic and to a continued struggle over the validity and correctness of Avakian’s synthesis. I believe it is important to inform those who still do not know about the RCP’s line on Avakian of that line and to engage them in debate about it. But this is not a dictatorship. I have no ability to silence whatever conversation others would like to have. I am simply pointing out what I think are the central issues at stake in this polemic and the discussion around it.
SS said
Ulises,
You misunderstood me.
Let me repost my comment.
“As far as I know there is only one, maybe two people that are defending the RCP on that level (on this site). There are a lot of people taking up for them at various other levels (to name a few examples the paper, or whether they have or have not done significant work around different social issues over the years, or whether WCW is a worthwhile organization), but I don’t think anyone with the exception of Emma is arguing that Avakian has come up with a groundbreaking new formula to save the Communist movement. I’m not so sure discussion of that at this point would be fruitful.”
I was not saying that Avakian being the cardinal question was not the RCPs line. It is. I’ve read a lot of RCP stuff. I know their program. My point was that no one posting on this site agrees with that so to discuss it would not be productive. Generally having a debate when no one is there to defend the other side is pointless. When more RCP supporters start posting, or when Emma or someone else posts again it would be worth discussing. However right now we would just be echoing each other which = dead end.
SS said
In the post you were responding to I was saying that a lot of people who aren’t “supporters” so to speak, were defending different parts of the RCP. Discussing those questions could lead somewhere interesting. But anything short of actual discourse is pointless unless you just want to here someone tell you you’re right.
ulises276/2 said
Well I’m glad WE are clear on this issue. I misunderstood your post, because it seemed to argue that the issue was completely out of bounds. And frankly you still seem to be saying that because we “all” agree I should not speak. At any rate, I think my posts have a lot more substance than you are giving them credit for, and I would note that I was directly asking Emma to come to terms with this issue (the cardinal question) and take a stand on it. But I feel that my posts are also a open invitation to any RCP supporters to address and justify this line of “cardinal question”.
Some examples of how what I have been talking about is definitely not just “echoing”:
I have addressed the issue of objective and subjective factors in estimating the correctness of line. And I have criticized a line that the objective factors overwhelm the subjective in all cases. I think that this leads to an argument that one can find throughout the Left, “everyone has failed, so no one can say that we were wrong”. I am sick of this logic and this argument. Generalized failure does not excuse particular failures of line. If we fail to achieve our goals, then we must either address what in our line was mistaken or what in our analysis of the situation (which is very closely related) was wrong. To put the question squarely, do we believe that it is possible to build a revolutionary movement in this environment or not? I believe that it is, and I believe that while many of the mistakes that have been made up to this point are understandable on some levels, this does not excuse the fact that the mistakes were made or that they continue to be made.
One very popular line out their right now is that “the masses are complicit”, I disagree with this understanding, especially since it does not rely on a rigorous investigation of political economy, and is based in a fallacious logic that because the overall character of U.S. imperialism is parasitic, then the particular elements of that society all share that characteristic. Here is one strange paradox in this line of “the masses are complicit”… Immigrant workers. Huge numbers of these workers come up for work and then return voluntarily to Mexico to establish themselves with their families, returning as needs be. Even more continually send back billions of dollars in remittances (accounting for Mexico’s third largest source of income). The U.S. has an exploitive relationship with Mexico. So what? Are these workers then complicit in exploiting Mexico? This is not only ridiculous, it’s deeply insulting to these masses of people.
Furthermore, I disagree specifically in relation to the RCP, because the assumption here is that the vehicles that they have put before the masses are indeed the answer. And in my experience of working through these vehicles that was definitely NOT true. So in the particular case of the RCP, the question of objective situation, and complicity of the masses, very much is a dodge from taking responsibility for their bad line on a number of issues.
I am against the use of the terminology of “complicity” and I have gone into how I think this term, and others like it, do not address substantive issues. In fact, as I see it the Cult of Personality of the RCP is just an extreme example of how this way of thinking and “analyzing” is endemic in the Left.
I have clearly tried to bring into this discussion exactly how these issues relate, not only to the RCP, but to the Left in general, and thus broaden the scope of the discussion.
So I don’t think I’m trying to narrow the discussion or police its boundaries. Quite the opposite, I am trying broaden and deepen the discussion while at the same time directly confronting those supporters of the RCP with their line on the cult of personality.
SS says:
“In the post you were responding to I was saying that a lot of people who aren’t “supporters” so to speak, were defending different parts of the RCP. Discussing those questions could lead somewhere interesting. But anything short of actual discourse is pointless unless you just want to here someone tell you you’re right.”
Certainly, some of those issues are interesting and important in their own right, and I have been addressing them as part of focusing my remarks in other directions. Please develop those interesting prospects where they exist.
I suppose I am a bit impatient, because I do not intend to hang around debating the RCP on these issues forever. It seems that developing a positive agenda and line is something that we should begin moving toward, especially since it is going to take a lot of very deep investigation (and not primarily investigation of the RCP). The longer the supporters of the RCP dissimulate on the criticisms of the 9 Letters, the longer it is going to take to establish their truth. And since on one key level (the cardinal question) this should not be in question, I am forcefully trying to establish this truth.
notsopoeticfeelings said
SS Says:
“…anything short of actual discourse is pointless unless you just want to here someone tell you you’re right.”
My take on ulysis’ post is somewhat different. I did not read it as an implicit invitation to pat ourselves on the back. on the contrary, s/he is saying we should go deeper because our (the whole left )understanding of the question and therefore the unity around it is somewhat superficial. It certainly got me thinking again. It’s a call for a totally different way of looking at things. different from what has been done here so far by all of us. it certainly merits paying attention to.
SS said
Apologies,
I didn’t mean to frame it in a manner that appears to reduce what you were saying to unimportant. I typed out the response without reviewing it and thinking about the wording and mis-characterized my opinion once again. I’ve thought the posts in regards to the line on complicity of the RCP and many leftists in general was really interesting (and correct). I wasn’t attacking the discussion up to this point. Just the direction I thought you were suggesting it go in.
Any in depth analysis of the situation is welcome, but my point was that I don’t see much point to discussing whether Avakian is or is not the key to the international Communist movement, unless there are people defending that specific point (so we should probably wait for RCP supporters for that). Taking the discussion deeper than that, such as specific reasons why he is not, and how those negative trends manifest themselves in the left, or topics of that nature are great. When it becomes relevant to the left movement in general I have no problems with it being in addressed with context to the RCP (which is what you have been doing). But when it is framed in response to an RCP line, in a manner that would only be meaningful someone in the RCP, then I don’t see much point to discussing it at the moment.
Sorry if I sounded rash or arrogant, it wasn’t my intent.
ulises276/2 said
There’s no need for self deprecation. I think I made a mistake in posting this comment: “To sum up, we should focus on this because THIS is the line question.”
It probably contributed to some confusion by putting too forceful a emphasis on the point.
The problem with non threaded discussion is that multiple lines of conversation get crossed up.
On the one hand, yes we need to be talking about the “cardinal question”. We need to be holding RCP supporters accountable for this line and pressing them to justify it or abandon it. This is what I was trying to focus on with Emma. You and Zerohour thought that such a discussion shouldn’t occur.
As another aspect of this question, I believe that the thinking around the “cult of personality” in the RCP actually reflects (or even concentrates) a lot of the same incorrect thinking throughout the Left, and so it should be investigated from that perspective as well. And can help us make a generalized criticism of what is lacking throughout the Left.
I also believe that to get into discussion with RCPers about issues aside from this “cardinal question” avoids the real issue with regards to what is specifically wrong with that Party and its program. I don’t think that people shouldn’t do it, just that any other thread of conversation with them will ultimately lead back to the same assumption (and the thinking characterized by that assumption) that Avakian’s new synthesis is the highest expression of communism and marks the only way forward for those who want to change the world or make revolution. That is, any attempt to take other aspects of their line at face value, or to struggle with them over it, will eventually bring you face to face with the One Big Line about Avakian. And if not that, then some other one like, “we are scientists”, or “everything we are doing is about revolution”. So taking them to task about the most obviously incorrect manifestation of this pattern of thinking can help to unravel all the bad thinking and can ultimately help to give us some understanding of what is ailing the revolutionary project in general.
While the discussion on complicity was interesting, how it relates to the RCP is that some of their supporters are using the issue of the “objective situation” to deny the importance of Ely’s criticism. And this spontaneous line is linking up with Avakian’s line on “complicity” which is expressly criticized in these Letters. I think that our conversation is also the grounds upon which some of these different lines and attempts to avoid line issues are being raised and fought out. And in this respect I wanted to raise what is the central issue and criticism of these 9 Letters which everyone, but especially the RCP supporters, is ignoring, namely the issue of “the cardinal question”.
But as I said, I can’t actually control where any of this conversation goes. I can only interject where I think it is helpful or where I think I need to clarify my own points.
zerohour said
Ulises -
I didn’t say the discussion shouldn’t occur. In fact the discussion has already been occurring. I said that you should be more specific about the points you wanted to discuss rather than have us repeat points we’ve already made.
I agree with you on the word “complicity” and see how it makes the masses responsible for imperialism. It was a bad choice and did not reflect what I wanted to convey. I did use the word “responsibility” but not to make the masses, or the left responsible for imperialism. Rather I wanted to ask the question: what does it mean to be responsible for revolution? Yes there is an element of moralism here but there are other questions regarding the relationship between activists and the broader population.
You might be sick of certain left formulations, but I’m sick of leftist avoidances that leave the masses as inert material to be molded by imperialist media or the correct revolutionary line. Yes, we do need thorough study of political economy, but we definitely need to study ideology and not just as something imposed by the bourgeoisie.
Are millions of Mexican immigrants part of the masses? Of course they are. I didn’t mean to imply that they or any other sections of the masses automatically support imperialism just by being part of the economy [even if it's sometimes underground], but why do you suppose that they don’t? Because they are its victims? They certainly have no interest in supporting it but we need deeper investigation in what that means and how it gets expressed.
Also I am not raising these points to debate RCP supporters. I wasn’t under the impression that every point raised here had to be geared towards that purpose. Complicity is a bad line, but so is a one-sided focus on the “objective factor.” A dialectical conception of ideology in which the masses play an active role, good and bad, is part of what we need. I apologize if my ideas have been confused or otherwise badly formulated but I’m still working this through.
YO said
The definition being used here of the acceptance of Bob Avakian’s leadership as a “cardinal question” — “It is a line question that separates revolution from counter-revolution” — is clearly NOT what the RCP is saying. No one is saying that you are a counter-revolutionary if you’re not down with Bob! That’s a ridiculous distortion and an easy straw man to knock down. What they are saying is very clearly put in the ENGAGE statement: people serious about revolution should engage what this guy has to say. Ulises says, “They additionally hold that the key work of communists is to put forward and agitate for the ‘most advanced representation’ of communism which they believe is Avakian’s new synthesis. That even where they’re ‘fighting the power’ they are doing this primarily through, or with a key element being, the promotion of Bob Avakian.”
What’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t communists fight for people to grasp the most advanced understanding of communism? And promote it?
Ulises said
Yo,
The problem here is that it is not true that Avakian’s synthesis is the “most advanced representation” of communism. The problem is that the RCP assumes this without being able to justify the extravagant claim.
Explain to me how it is the most advanced understanding, and then we will be having a discussion. But as of yet RCP supporters and Avakian himself just keep repeating the mantra as if its “truth” is self evident.
The position of the RCP is that you are not on the revolutionary road if you do not uphold Avakian’s leadership and his synthesis.
If you have another definition of “cardinal question” please give it. I’m willing to acknowledge that characterizing it as being between revolution and counter-revolution is too extreme, if in fact they don’t believe this. But then, since you know all these things, maybe you could explain what it means to say that Bob Avakian’s leadership and synthesis “is a cardinal question on the level of the dictatorship of the proletariat”. Not upholding something like the dictatorship of the proletariat puts you outside of the revolution, and whether you then call that reformist, revisionist, or counter-revolutionary is simply a matter of degree, no?
They are saying more than people should simply engage him. They are also saying that his synthesis is of a higher level than Mao or Lenin’s, that his ideas are “necessary” for everyone to grapple with if they want to change the world, that he himself has “a special role to play” in bringing that all about, etc. This is just a small sampling of what is claimed without any justification in both the Engage! statement itself, and in the most recent excerpts from an Avakian speech here: http://revcom.us/a/115/makingrevolution-p2-03-en.html
Justify it! Come on and tell us in what way is Avakian’s synthesis “the most advanced representation” of communism. In what way has it broken new ground?
And then maybe you can explain how this all fits into the RCP’s “plan” for making a revolution in the U.S. by “hoisting Avakian into the superstructure” and making him a “household name”. And then you can explain why this plan is going to work.
This forum is completely open for supporters of the RCP to clear up all the “distortions” and make plain what exactly their program is. I for one have been waiting for someone to actually do so, and I really do hope that you or someone else will explain, if not why the Party believes that Avakian’s synthesis is the “most advanced expression” of communism, why YOU think that.
Zerohour,
My point is that many of the “left formulations” facilitate “leftist avoidances”.
We both agree that the revolution isn’t going to happen all on its own and that the masses have to be a part of it. I am not arguing for anything else. I think we just have a slightly different understanding of the issue of objective and subjective and how the agency of the masses is formed. This will come out over a much deeper and longer discussion of these issues.
Mike E said
Yo writes: “The definition being used here of the acceptance of Bob Avakian’s leadership as a ‘cardinal question’ — ‘It is a line question that separates revolution from counter-revolution” — is clearly NOT what the RCP is saying. No one is saying that you are a counter-revolutionary if you’re not down with Bob! That’s a ridiculous distortion and an easy straw man to knock down.’”
The view of the RCP is that Avakian, his leadership, body of work, method and approach are “the cardinal question” among communists. (Sometimes it is said “a cardinal question,” but quite often “THE cardinal question.”
This means that the “appreciation of Avakian” is (in the party’s official view) the dividing line between revisionism and Marxism among communists — between revolution and counterrevolution AMONG COMMUNISTS. They also believe that whether or not this appreciation takes root (among the people and communists throughout the world) is crucial to whether communist revolution can successfully happen and advance anywhere.
One thing that we are finding in several places is that close supporters think our description of the RCP’s line MUST be a distortion, because this assertion about Avakian strikes them as ridiculous and unsustainable. It is quite remarkable that the RCP’s central evaluation of Avakian and his importance for the communist movement is unknown to quite a few close supporters of their party. But this is a quite simple contradiction to resolve: simply ask the party if this is their actual line. This view of “Avakian as the cardinal question” is in fact CENTRAL to their line. It is a defining assertion of their line. And so I believe they will not generally deny it.
* * * * *
To be clear on the confusion that I believe Yo is making: The RCP does not say that ANYONE who does not engage Avakian is “a counterrevolutionary.” And I have never suggested that in the 9 Letters or anywhere else.
The RCP claims that AMONG COMMUNISTS it is the dividing line. That is why they claim that if someone AMONG THE RANKS OF COMMUNISTS (AND, FOR EXAMPLE, WITHIN THE RCP) opposes AP&P (the culture of appreciation, promotion and popularization of Avakian) then they are promoting “the revisionist line” — which by definition is the road of capitulation and counterrevolution AMONG COMMUNISTS. That is the logic of the last part of the RCP’s response, and of various party supporters who are verbally repeating that script in various places. The script (usually called orientation or guidance) implicitly compares Avakian to Lenin, and the 9 Letters to Kautsky (who went from socialist leader to counterrevolutionary opponent of the Russian revolution).
For what we are saying, Yo: You can look again at Letter 6 “The Theory Surrounding a ‘Leader of this Caliber’.” In the opening of that letter it describes six inter-related verdicts that the RCP has articulated. The fourth one listed says “That this ‘appreciation’ of Avakian and his synthesis is now formally a ‘cardinal question’ for communists in the U.S., and a decisive question facing the world movement.”
The footnote to that point explains what it means to say something is a cardinal question among communists: “A cardinal question is an issue that is a dividing line between revolutionary communism and counterrevolutionary revisionism. The RCP now holds that the appreciation of Bob Avakian and his synthesis is such a question – literally on the level of whether to uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat or the need for a vanguard party.”
This description in Letter 6 is true and accurate.
I look forward to moving this discussion past the continuing denial of the facts: Once it is clear to all WHAT the RCP (in fact) believes — we can more fully engage the more important issue of whether this core belief is justified — whether Avakian as a person and “what he is bringing forward” are indispensable for the future and possible survival of humanity as a whole.
Whoever is eager to defend that view, this site is a perfect forum to make your case.
Mike E said
What should we focus on?
Several people have raised this.
First, I think we need to critically excavate the RCP’s line. We need to do that because the RCP has occupied a certain position among revolutionary forces in the U.S. — and developing a summation of their practice and line will help us move on to a more correct road.
We need to settle accounts with the RCP on the high plane of principled two-line struggle. And we need to win revolutionaries away from the stampede-to-nowhere represented by the RCP’s current program. The RCP increasingly confronts people with a fervent demand: “FIRE YOUR IDEAS, HIRE HIS.” (My capsule description, not theirs.) If we don’t expose the errors of that, an important section of organized communists in the U.S. will be squandered, burned out and scattered (by the actions and continuing failures of the RCP). and digging into those errors is NOT DEPENDENT ON having supporters of the RCP fully engage on this site — the RCP’s current supporters will be watching the discussions here closely (whether the RCP forbids it or not).
But ultimately and basically, we should focus on OUR responsibility, and we should recognize the CHALLENGE that presents: how to help emancipate humanity, how to move this world past the horrors of modern capitalism, how to end U.S. imperialism.
There are both sweeping theoretical issues and some very urgent practical question facing us as we reconceive and regroup. And this involves engaging a broad range of experiences and ideas — and it also involves critically learning from the considerable revolutionary organizing the RCP has done among oppressed sections of the people.
I am not interested in snarky grudge matches. This discussion is about line and about the future — or else it is really not worth having. And I am eager to expand the discussion to include “what will we now do differently?” — on every level: theory, practice, style, relations to people, listening, thinking critically and debating collectively.
That is why our slogan is “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
Let’s do that heavy lifting.
SS said
“One thing that we are finding in several places is that close supporters think our description of the RCP’s line MUST be a distortion, because this assertion about Avakian strikes them as ridiculous and unsustainable. It is quite remarkable that the RCP’s central evaluation of Avakian and his importance for the communist movement is unknown to quite a few close supporters of their party.”
Perhaps this would be a good topic to address? Although I only have had limited experience with the RCP as an actual organization, beyond the available position papers and a few people I’ve done work with, my feeling is that confusion about key questions such as this would arise due to closed lines of communication between upper party and the lower level cadre. I think this was touched on somewhere else on this blog, unfortunately I don’t remember where exactly (if someone knows or remember that would be another good reference point). It seems to me that if there is a lack of transparency, and communication often occurs through “sending suggestions up the line” and waiting for orders to come back down, then there is much room left for interpretation of the parties program, in theory and in practice (see the post and comments on http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2007/12/29/strs-and-public-intellectuals/ and the different comments for a good example). So rather than lower and upper levels engaging with each other in clear ways, where the ideas and strategy behind various theories and practice are made clear and discussed, much of the parties communication amounts to sending down plans and encouraging people to read the paper and “engage Bob.” Some of secrecy in regards to certain issues would be necessary for party security, but then the question arises, how much is necessary and when does it hinder the ability of a party to function? But I don’t think that such a gross lack of clarity arises all from security issues. It seems that confusion over security issues would be much lower than the current level of problems (but I am lacking experience in that department, perhaps someone with more experience could confirm or refute that point).
Is this an accurate portrayal of how the party works?
If it is then everything party supporters read is going to immediately travel through perceptual filters, based on unclear and preconceived notions about what the party stands for. And if there is an atmosphere that what is being presented to you is THE truth and shouldn’t be questioned it, probably inadvertently encourages wide interpretations of party line without really engaging in a lot deep discussion and clarification. There is a term for this in the communication field called “group think.” It essentially means that communication within a group has broken down and everyone continues functioning believing that everyone else understands their position and is in agreement.
I must say that saying Bob is “a cardinal question”, and saying he is the dividing line between revolution and revisionism evoke two different feelings. The former seems to say he is an important figure while the latter seems to say he is “the” only important, current figure. If saying he is “a” and also saying he is “the” cardinal question, is interchanged throughout party writings, then that is a very confusing position indeed.
I could be way off about what I’ve said above due to lack of personal experience. But from what I have gathered from what people have said (and read here and other places) about the parties organization, this seems to be an accurate characterization.
chegitz guevara said
zerohour Says:
January 9, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I’m not in France, I’m a proletarian as well and it’s not a just a matter of being angry or frustrated at people’s lack of political activity. Even without being active, the amount of deception they are willing to accept is mind-boggling. Even without hitting the streets, people should be able to see through ridiculous lies, no?
I know what kind of conditions people face, but your comment avoids my questions. Can we hold the proletariat responsible for anything? If not, are we not treating them like passive children to be manipulated? How can we laud them for heroism but not criticize them for reactionary behavior? Are they responsible for one and not the other?
I think you forget to what extent the ruling class engages in a continual propaganda project. In the mid90s a study came out that the average American saw 1600 commercials a week, which is to say, they saw at least 1600 pieces of propaganda promoting capitalism every week. Everywhere you turn around, there is a constant message that this is the best of all possible worlds. The ruling class seriously studies how best to manipulate people. When I look at the Nazi propaganda films of the 1930s, I am struck by what rank amateurs they are compared to Madison Ave. I recommend a book by Douglas Rushkoff, Coersion: Why we do what they say. He’s no Adorno or Horkheimer, but it is quite illuminating nonetheless.
Recognizing that the proletariat in America has both serious material reasons for failing to be active and that the ruling class does as much as it can to lull the proletariat into sleep is not treating them like passive children. Blaming the proletariat for not fighting back is like blaming a rape victim for not fighting back. We are objects as much as we are subjects. As Marx wrote, we don’t make history of our own free choosing, but only in the circumstances as they are given to us.
Yes, a few weird people like you and me see through the BS. For whatever reason, we’re different. The vast majority of people are willing to put up with a lot of crap. A lot of people internalize their oppression as well; “capitalism isn’t what’s wrong, I’m just a loser” or “what happens to me in this life isn’t important as long as I am with God in the next.” People generally only revolt in two situations: when they have no other choice but revolt or die or when they’ve been oppressed for a long time and the ruling class suddenly (for whatever reason) let’s up enough that the oppressed are able to maneuver and revolt.
Whether or not we have the correct line or do all the correct things only makes a difference when the masses are ready. We cannot will the revolution into being. It will happen when it happens. Our job is to be ready, to build the connections that make it possible that when the moment is ripe, the masses will trust us to lead them.
Right now, people are demoralized. They don’t trust us. Their standard of living is at grave risk. Why should they take a risk simply because we claim to have the right answers? We have not proven ourselves. We ourselves have been led astray, parachuting into one struggle after another, claiming to have all the answers if the people will only follow us, then off to the next. We put down no roots. We build no permanent connections. We’re just that funny communist that someone met once or knew in college.
This isn’t just problematic for the masses, it’s also problematic for us as revolutionaries. It keeps us dependent on the party for human connections and keeps us from being able to test the party/leader’s ideas against reality. That’s how someone like Chairman Bob or Jack Barnes or Sam Marcy can stay leader of an organization after 35 (nearly 50 in the case of Marcy) years of more or less continual failure.
Ultimately, the most important reason for not blaming the proletariat is that no one like being scolded. Shaming others is a terrible way to get people to be active. It doesn’t work and merely makes it that much harder to actually get people to listen to you.
your comrade,
chegitz guevara
SUN! SURF! SOCIALISM!
zerohour said
cheglitz -
I really wish I didn’t have to repeat myself but I am not MAINLY talking about why more people aren’t in the streets. I don’t regard participation in demonstrations, or visible protest, as the only way to gauge popular thinking, people don’t attend those for different reasons, even when they are sympathetic to the caues. My concern is IDEOLOGY. This requires real investigation and part of what we must do is divest ourselves of a priori assumptions about the masses and why they believe what they do.
You say people don’t trust “us”. Correct, but do they have to fall for blatant lies of the ruling class? I brought up the example of the pre-war Iraq propaganda to make a point. Bush and co. did not spin elaborate, complex lies. These were pathetically simplistic lies that do not require years of communist training to see through. Even with all the factors you mentioned, which I agree with, it takes little effort to disbelieve an obvious lie – even if you do it while drinking a beer on the couch. And in that case, much of the masses failed to do even that. No amount of propaganda, demoralization or leftist failure can make someone believe the sky is purple if it’s not. Con artists are only effective if people meet them half way.
You’re right, shaming the masses does not help, but I’m not advocating an organizing strategy, just trying to put something on the table that I feel the revolutionary left has not done much work on. Many cultural theorists have, including Marxists, but I have yet to see any awareness of this reflected in revolutionary communist literature.
chegitz guevara said
Let me try an analogy. I’m a web designer by trade (an unemployed one as of Thursday, btw). For me, things like HTML, CSS, Photoshop are so amazingly simple that I seriously undervalue my own work (which isn’t to say I don’t charge as much as I can get). It’s not work to me. I’m stealing from those who would employ me because its just so easy. But it’s not easy for others apparently. I was constantly told by my coworkers, who were wizzes at Java and JSP and other programming languages that they were amazed at my ability to do what I did.
For us, seeing through the ruling classes lies comes easy. We’re already inclined to distrust the capitalist media and dive into a deeper analysis. The vast majority of people, however, will not believe that the media is an active participant in government lies. “If the media says something, it must be true, because we have a free media and we live in a democratic society. There’s nothing stopping other news organizations from reporting the truth if one lies, so if they all have the same story, then it must be the truth.” I have had conversations with many, many people that follow that line. Even exceptionally intelligent people simply refuse to believe that the media is that biased, to the extent that even organizations like the BBC are considered anti-American as the only explanation for why they differ slightly from American media.
Even in my media studies classes, led by self-proclaimed leftists (possibly even socialists) attributed bias in the media less to the function of the media in a capitalist society and more to structural bias (like the Washington media all socializing with politicians, etc.). Which isn’t to say that those structural reasons do not play a role. Most people do not have anything close to a critical understanding of the structure and function of media.
One other thing should be mentioned is that with the rise of the internet, most people now are not exposed to media with which they do not agree. So liberals read the Daily Kos and right-wingers follow the Drudge Report and commies read CounterPunch, etc. People are not challenged to question their media.
Frankly, the people who watch FOX only can’t understand why the rest of the country doesn’t understand why George W. Bush is the greatest president in history. Liberals can’t understand why anyone would watch FOX. You wonder why others can’t see the truth when it is so self-evident.
I think you also underestimate the ability of the media to confuse people. After the first Bush-Hussein war, a majority of Americans believed the Kuwait was a democracy. They did not believe that before the war. Even today, something like one-third to forty percent of Americans believe that WMDs were found in Iraq. Try to wrap your noodle around that. Even Bush has admitted that there were no WMDs, and yet a sizable minority of people think that we did. So why is it so hard to believe that before and at the beginning of the war, people would fall for the lies?
That doesn’t bother more so much, or at least I’ve come to terms with my fellow Americans being gullible. What bothers me is that this war is more unpopular than the Vietnam War, and we can’t mobilize even half the numbers of our parents generation. I have watched the antiwar movement completely collapse over the last year and a half. A million Iraqis are dead, and our fellow citizens are resigned to the notion that nothing they can do will make a difference. Knowing why that is doesn’t make it any less frustrating.
your comrade,
chegitz guevara
SUN! SURF! SOCIALISM!
chegitz guevara said
Comrade Ely says better what I’m trying to say here.
zerohour said
cheglitz -
A supporter of the Party responded to Ely using you r wexample of rape: “It’s as if a person witnesses a rape, and decides not to stop it because they wanted to play the latest video game.”
The masses are not automatically responsible JUST because they are in the US or because they are a constituent part of the system. But when confronted with horrendous crimes of the system and they choose to ignore them or rationalize them can we still only point fingers at the system? What would you say to your friend if they witnessed a rape and did nothing – not even call the cops, as distasteful as that might be? How would you characterize this behavior?
Here’s how Ely characterized the situation: “True: the masses don’t *see* alternatives, so they don’t create alternatives. They *believe* that the Dems will end the war — or more precisely they confuse their hopes and projections with belief. They are buffered, pacified, atomized, bombarded by lies, not monolithic and restless.” I completely agree. But are the masses at least partially responsible for their beliefs? When people kept characterizing John Kerry as the “anti-war candidate” despite his open and prominent claims that he would expand the troop levels and time commitment how was that just media deception? Self-deception, which Ely acknowledges in a later post, may come from despair and a lack of alternatives but it is a willfull act nonetheless and one which deserves to be called out, not ignored.
zerohour said
Correction: the party supporter was not directly referring to cheglitz’s example, he/she just happened to bring up an example using the same circumstance.
zerohour said
BTW, I’m just venting frustration. I am not suggesting that the need for organizing is any less urgent or that I have any better ideas than anyone else. I am sick of leftist self-flagellation: “it’s all our fault – except when it’s the system’s”. Given the current alignment of forces and the degree of demoralization and confusion what do we expect even in the best case scenarios?
I don’t think Avakian is wrong to feel frustration with the masses or even blame them privately. That’s something that can be resolved by struggle among comrades. Even in some of Engels’s letters, he reveals that Marx was often angry with the masses [and I don't mean the "idiocy of rural life"]. It’s another thing to talk about it in a party paper intended for organizing [the "pivot"] – that makes it an official position.
tellnolies said
The question is what exactly does it mean to say that the masses are “responsible” for their beliefs? In the sense that people should be aware of their world and stand up to evident injustices, sure, but how does looking at the question this way actually advance anything? Where does it get you other than crude moralizing and finger wagging?
It seems to me that our starting point should be that all (or almost all) people have an intrinsic cognitive capacity to understand social reality and respond to it in an ethical manner. That capacity is an emergent one, both in the sense of the development of the individual, and in the long historical development of an increasingly global sense of common humanity/life. Then there is the fact that this capacity largely goes unrealized, not just in the U.S., but definitely in the U.S. in ways that have horrendous consequences for the planet and most of humanity.
So the real question that should matter to us is “why?” What are the obstacles to Americans seeing what the U.S. does in the world and rising to the moral challenge that this realization should pose?
The answer to this question is not a simple one. It involves all the various processes by which the dominant ideology of the U.S. is reproduced and the ways in which revolutionaries and other radical critics of the system fail in THEIR responsibilities.
To say that the masses themselves are “responsible” at first glance seems like a recognition of their agency. But I would suggest that it is no such thing, that it is reallly just a moralistic claim that is about passing off OUR responsibilities as revolutionaries to adequately analyze the problem and develop an effective course of action for actually winning over the masses. Its actually a downplaying of our own agency, a way of saying “well we did what we needed to do, but it failed because the masses were just too morally lazy.”
What are we as revolutionaries, if not masses who have ostrensibly moved further along in our own development and who teherefore have greater responsibilities. What Avakian does in this comment is essentially embrace a politics of guilt and shame and if one follows its logic it won’t stop with blaming “the masses.” It only follows that if the masses are to be held morally responsible and “blamed”, then the same should be true of ourselves before we became revolutionaries, and even after in so far as we fail to pour every bit of ourselves into whatever task the party assigns us.
Avakian’s seemingly casual comment should be understood as fully consistent with all the other cultish mechanisms of the RCP that have been discussed in the Nine Letters and in comments here. Training people in a political practice of moralistically hectoring the masses (as we saw in some of the WCW guerrilla theater) can not help but rebound into accepting similar treatment of the rank and file by leadership in the RCP. It is a method that is poisonous to the process of really developing people as conscious critical thinkers and that has no place in a revolutioanry movement.
Yikes! said
It is always heartening to see honest facing up to shortcomings. But on the other hand, there are probably not 5,000 people in the country that would get anything at all out of the soul-searching on this site, and not 500 that would seek it out. It’s been apparent for more than two decades that the RCP had nothing to say that interested the nation. The problem is not that Bob Avakian runs a tawdry little nothing cult. The New Communist movement offered a variety of flavors, and none of them caught on.
The fundamental problem is the conceit that a central organization can lead and manage history in all it’s depth and immensity.
This is not a statement of giving up on improving the world, it’s a recognition of the limitations of possible.
Yikes! said
On a site devoted to revitalizing Maoism, I don’t know if there will be much interest in engaging with a challenge to the whole ML project, but I’ll give it a try.
I am convinced that the idea of a general staff conducting an entire social transformation is obsolete.
Practice has shown that a single, centralized organization is incapable of managing even an economy, much less an entire society. From the FMLN to China to the Soviet Union, when communist parties have faced the real-world challenges of managing society, they have either collapsed, or abandoned Leninism. The reality is that the Leninist model can only seize power, not administrate it. (At least not anything as complex as a society, in any acceptable manner). The reason ML parties always turn to despotism is because they cannot be sustained by their program, which never delivers. It never delivers because mortals cannot regiment the oceans.
Scanning the landscape of failures, how much more proof could possibly be needed? The green revolution was supposed to solve hunger. Should people keep talking about why it really should work, or move on?
I still see a role for cadre organizations, because they keep in action the most committed, honest, and compassionate activists there are. But Leninism is based on the idea that society can be measured, planned, and managed in detail. To be more useful, people need to dispense with the incredible hubris that history can be tamed.
This does not mean giving up on social change, just the idea that as soon as the hundredth monkey starts washing his food, all will do so. (And not just washing food all around the world at the same time, but in rhythm too.)
tellnolies said
Yikes,
While I think there is much that is positive to learn from Mao and the Chinese Revolution I am not here because of any interest in “revitalizing Maoism” and I suspect there are others who feel the same.
The challenge you raise is an important one. I see the question as considerably more complex than you pose it. It seems to me that there are several questions wrapped up in your critique of Leninism in power.
One is the posssibility of a planned economy. The examples of socialist Russia and China clearly reveal the profound difficulties of making such a thing work under the inherited conditions of those societies. But far more ambitious sorts of planning are carried out all the time right now by multinational corporations. Whatever one wants to say about Wal-Mart’s role in the global race to the bottom, there is little question that they have done things in anticipating future demand and managing production and distribution flows that Soviet central planners could only have dreamed of. The real question is not so much whether a planned economy can work, but whether it can be made genuinely accountable to the masses, that is to say whether a Wal-Mart can be brought under democratic control.
A second, and related question concerns the question of political rule by a single party. Here I think it is critical to understand how the Russian model was a product of the both the profound vulnerability of the revolutionary process there to external threats and the underdevelopment of the institutions of civil society and why similar conditions in much of the rest of the Third World led to an embrace of variations on that model. Many here have acknowledged the profound problems that have arisen from this experience and this is why there is special interest in what is happening in Nepal where the CPN(M) has sought to conduct some of their internal debates in public and where they have declared a desire for a multi-partypolitical system. As others here have noted, even under single party rule there is de facto contestation for power among different factions. The real problem is how do you pull something like that off without repeating the experiences of revolutionary reversals of a Chile or a Nicaragua. These are not problems that get solved in a book or on a blog but in the concrete practice of making revolution.
Finally there is a methodological question. You seem to take the view that the historical experience of Leninism in power consists of simple unadulterated failures that condemn us to go back to zero. I would suggest that, following the Green Revolution analogy, that real advances were made and real limitations of the model revealed in the process. The Green Revolution didn’t eliminate hunger, and it carried in its train all sorts of both intended and unanticipated negative consequences, but it did dramatically increase global crop yields and that is nothing to sneeze at.
Revolutionaries facing the 21st century shouldn’t feel bound to previous models, but neither can they afford to treat them simplistically as good or bad. They were rather contradictory phenomena, expressions of the persistent logics of the old society in the process of the first attempts to build the new under the most hostile circumstances. They demand real study rather than the summary verdicts that the ideological instititutions of capitalist society (the mass media, academia, etc…) demand.
Ulises said
Yikes! writes:
“I am convinced that the idea of a general staff conducting an entire social transformation is obsolete.”
I would agree with this statement completely. Though I’m not sure to what extent it accurately represents a communist view of leadership. It certainly represents the RCP’s conception to a great degree.
I believe that we should think of a revolutionary organization as a relatively centralized force which makes strategic and timely interventions which can then divert or alter general tendencies in spontaneous social relations. The idea is not to encompass those social relations entirely, but to intervene in them, and to influence them in new directions. This takes sometimes more extreme versions of intervention, such as the use of violence or coercion, sometimes much more agreeable forms, such as education, debate, study and research. This develops with sometimes a narrow scope of a local situation, and sometimes with a global scope. It sometimes takes the form of more centralization, and sometimes less.
Yikes writes: “Practice has shown that a single, centralized organization is incapable of managing even an economy, much less an entire society. From the FMLN to China to the Soviet Union, when communist parties have faced the real-world challenges of managing society, they have either collapsed, or abandoned Leninism. The reality is that the Leninist model can only seize power, not administrate it. (At least not anything as complex as a society, in any acceptable manner). The reason ML parties always turn to despotism is because they cannot be sustained by their program, which never delivers. It never delivers because mortals cannot regiment the oceans.”
Yes, revolutionary organization cannot “regiment the ocean”, but it can literally move mountains. It can change the flow of entire rivers, it can change the way that cities are built, it can change the way that food is grown, and more importantly it can change human consciousness. These do not require a orientation towards “regimenting” all of existence. If this was the position of previous communist revolutions, then it was wrong, but it seems to be a rather pat distortion on your part.
The green revolution could solve hunger right now. There is more than enough food produced every year to feed every single human being. It is the orientation around capital profit which sends large amounts of this food into cattle feed lots, whole oceans of fish become pet food, and then some people eat far more than their share. Your scan of the landscape is very superficial.
Yikes writes:
“But Leninism is based on the idea that society can be measured, planned, and managed in detail.”
So is our own society in the United States. Where do you think Lenin got his ideas about industrial regimentation? From the Fordist factory floor. In the meantime the dotcom boom, deindustrialization, and the magnified importance of finance capital have all relied on new technologies that seek to, and increasingly are becoming capable of, measuring, planning and managing society in detail. Again, a scan of the landscape does not back up your thinking.
First, it’s not possible to regiment all of society. It is not possible to master all of reality, to make it run like a machine. On the other hand, this does not mean that it isn’t possible to develop more and more conscious control over our natural environment, and ourselves. The history of humanity has been driven forward by such developments. So no, absolute control is not possible, but such an idea is outside of our conception of what needs to be done and can be done. It’s a straw man.
Ulises said
I would add that once it becomes possible for humanity’s spontaneous and anarchic existence to destroy the very ability of life to continue on the entire planet, it then becomes more and more pressing that this same humanity learn how to bring its spontaneous development and anarchic social existence under control. The possibility of our unorganized ability to destroy ourselves has now outstripped our ability to control it, unless we make significant leaps in cognition and social organization.
This reality makes exactly the kind of revolution we are talking about something which needs to be seriously argued with and discussed, and not dismissed as “impossible”. Understanding again that the idea that the revolution we are talking about is working toward total control and mastery of reality, is a straw man.
Yikes! said
Ulises writes: “I believe that we should think of a revolutionary organization as a relatively centralized force which makes strategic and timely interventions…. The idea is not to encompass those social relations entirely, but to intervene in them.”
I like that formulation, it’s a sensible approach. But I submit that it is no longer Leninism, which seeks the D of the P, and a monopoly on state power, achieved through a single vanguard party.
If you have moved beyond Leninism, why not let go also of its rhetorical baggage, which is so archaic, unpopular, and reprehensible when actually in power?
Added note: when I used terms like “regiment” “control” I did not mean to evoke glib caricatures. What I mean is that Leninism’s state project is entirely inadequate. We believed at one time that once state power was achieved, everything would fall into place. There would still be struggle, but the fundamental question will have been settled. State power was supposed to be sufficient to put all the other changes into motion. But it didn’t work even once. It is clear to me that the close manipulation of social forces that put the Bolsheviks in power, and succeeded in other agrarian societies, does not scale up.
And what I meant about the green revolution: it’s failure demonstrates that poverty is not a question of agricultural productivity. So should Norman Borlaug keep tinkering with hybrids, or address something other than volume? Should revolutionaries keep reformulating Leninism in hopes it will fly, or get past the vanguard model? Should all our activity be pointed toward The Revolution, or can we recognize that that particular form of social change might never come?
Ulises said
These are good questions Yikes!
I think part of my personal reticence in letting go of the “leninist baggage”, is that I see a lot of what I’m talking about as being informed by that baggage. Let me put it this way, I am for moving far beyond Lenin and Leninism, I think we have to, but I don’t believe that means we throw out the wealth of experience and theory that was developed by Lenin and by Leninists. We throw out the dogma, we keep the revolution. And I think that Lenin was extremely revolutionary for his time. Reading his “Letters From Afar” and “State and Revolution”, I think he’s pretty damn revolutionary for our time as well. That doesn’t mean I advocate copying him, or parading around his particular slogans, phrases and formulations. But to throw this body of knowledge and lived experience in the dumpster simply because of it is archaic and unpopular today is a mistake. And to characterize the entire experience as “unpopular” and “reprehensible” is inaccurate.
Of course I can’t speak for everyone. I would let those who want to argue for a literal or orthodox Leninism make that argument on their own.
Leninism’s “state project” is contradictory. It went through different phases and developments. At any rate, say what you will about the ethics and morals of using state power to actively change society, you can’t seriously argue that it doesn’t indeed have an ability to create massive changes in a social system. Again, excusing the issue of the cost of doing so and the methods used, state power in the hands of a single ideological organization turned the Soviet Union in to an industrial society that at one point held partial sway over the Globe as a competing imperialism to the United States. Also, what do you mean by the “close manipulation of social forces that put the Bolsheviks in power”. The main mechanism for the Bolsheviks coming to power was their ideological stand as the only political force that was expressing the desires of the masses at that particular time. They didn’t have any ability to “closely manipulate” anyone, except, with differing degrees of control, those people who were actually members of the Party.
I am for developing a truly new movement, but not for doing so by abandoning the important experiences and ideas of previous revolutionary struggles. But I also don’t think that ideas and lessons are prisoners to the words used to describe them. There is indeed no need to chant tired slogans from 1917.
The issue is not whether we “reformulate Leninism” or not. The issue is whether we reformulate humanity to exist in the new situation that it itself has created. The issue is what direction that reformulation, or evolution, is going to take. I don’t know what you mean by “The Revolution”, but if you don’t think that a revolution is needed, and if you’re putting your bet down that revolutionary social change will never come, then we have disagreement.
Yikes! said
Ulises wrote:
“But to throw this body of knowledge and lived experience in the dumpster simply because of it is archaic and unpopular today is a mistake.”
First, there’s nothing stopping anyone from learning from 20th Century communism. Ceasing to be a Leninist does not mean its past is no longer usable.
But more importantly, what knowledge and “lived experience” are we talking about? I hear a lot about the need to study 20th Century communism, sum up the RCP, squeeze out the useful lessons. That’s all well and good, but what exactly are we talking about?
What insight’s about the US today does Leninism provide that could not be reached by another route?
If we study hard enough, will we learn how to build unions in a post-industrial society?? How do we get evolution back into my son’s elementary school, and what would be Leninist about such a campaign? All these issues can be translated into Leninist terminology, a freshman Spart can do that. But what about ML will generate real novelty? Hopefully, something more specific than “unleashing the spontaneous creativity of the masses.” (Apologizing in advance for the unfair cheap shot.)
As for the prospect of revolution, I refuse to predict whether one could or will occur. It would be nice, but I know of no reason to think it likely, much less inevitable. I’m certain a Bolshevik style revolution could not occur, where seizing several cities was enough to make it go. US power is too immense, has way too many targets, for a military operation. If a revolution is possible and genuine, gaining state power would be the culmination of social transformation, not stage I.
Although Leninism had pretensions to universality, I think it is autochthonous to a particular time and place, and it is a procrustean effort to make it apply to the US today.
I think what you are left with is that the only use for the “lived experience” of Leninism is in keeping together a cadre organization. But the groups that try to be relevant to the lives of other human beings always face the same dilemma: keep the commie talk quiet (which usually destroys a group) or go the Chairman Bob route.
Why not do politics that other people find meaningful?
Yikes! said
tellnolies:
You’ve given a very thoughtful reply. I admit to sweeping simplifications, mainly negative. I plead the shackles of brevity.
I agree that the planning and management carried out by the Mal-Warts have a lot to say about what’s possible. I don’t mean to suggest that a planned economy has been proven impossible. In fact, we do live in a planned economy — with the wrong planners. My argument is with the Leninist vanguard model, both pre and post seizure of power.
I very much agree with your statement that single-party approaches were very much related to the times, especially their physical vulnerability. But for me, that deepens the critique of Leninism. Since the D of P military vanguard parties, which I consider defining features of Leninism, were of a particular time and place, they have limited relevance to the U.S. And less and less as we tried them. So why make that philosophy our starting point?
I’m also challenging the Leninist concept of revolution. The difficulties of 20th century socialist countries demonstrate the limitations of a politico-military revolt. I’m certain that if a major break with the past is possible, it will come from a Gramscian sort of cultural evolution. If it doesn’t emerge that way, and instead comes out of violent convulsions, we will get more of the same. The means determine the ends.
I do not reject all violence on principle, but I shudder at how bad conditions would have to be to produce a massive, violent overthrow that Avakianites glibbly fantasize about. To me, a violent revolution would signal the failure of revolutionaries. A class war Armageddon might come, but I cringe at people who anticipate and work toward that end. If we must have models, the collapse of the Soviet Union is a better model than the start, in the sense that disbelief in the system was so universal that violence was moot.
Much of your post discusses the need for careful consideration of Leninist experiments, which I address in another post. My main point is that once you squeeze Leninism into something useful for today, it is no longer recognizable as such, so why not make a clean break.
anon said
In response to: “Why not do politics that other people find meaningful?”
You mean like voting Green Party?
I’d rather do nothing then less than nothing.
Jaroslav O. said
Mike:
I am extremely glad to have read your polemic. I don’t agree with 100% of it (e.g. though I think RCP hasn’t handled well the situation of supporting Nepal PW, neither do I think Nepal party is currently on correct path, after all even some things can be seen from afar). However the overwhelming majority of what you say, I find to be right on target. In any case your polemic is a breath of fresh air for me & others. I hope that this can materialise into at least the beginning of something organised.
-J.O.-
PS. Feel free to contact me via e-mail I provided. Short background on me: I’d been RCP supporter since shortly after I came to US in late ‘99, helped refound RCYB in one city, & stopped party work voluntarily (though amidst some conflict) in early ‘07.
Jaroslav O. said
Mike:
Also, I have a question that hopefully you can shed light on: What is/was behind the name change of the RCP’s newspaper?
In the first issue of Revolution they promised to “soon” provide a more detailed explanation, but none has ever come. In addition I myself asked numerous times verbally & in writing but was never given response. I understand that the old name sounds economist, but there are infinite possibilities besides simply “Revolution”, e.g. “Revolutionary Communist”, “Proletarian Revolution”, “RCP Weekly”, etc etc; simply “Revolution” strikes me as somewhat wishy-washy in that in doesn’t specify what kind of revolution. And also the way that it was just changed seemingly overnight with no real explanation seems to indicate a problem with how the RCP makes decisions & relates to people both within & without its ranks. So anyway hopefully you could shed some light on the line struggle / process in general, without reference ‘internal activities of specific personalities’ etc.
-J.O.-
Mike E said
I think that the name change happened as the RCP was at a crossroads and several different lines were sharply contending. And so the purpose of the change was seen differently by the different forces. And (perhaps not surprisingly) there was, in the midst of the rather intense line struggles, little time to publicly explain even something so basic.
The old name “Revolutionary Worker” suggested that the focus and audience of the paper was the workers — which is a rather sharp narrowing of who a communist newspaper should reach. We have also had the added problem that in the lower sections of the U.S. working class, many people (and especially the youth) have been distant from employment so long and so often that many don’t think of themselves (and their circles) as workers at all — and the name “Revolutionary Worker” seemed aimed at someone else. When in fact it needed to be aimed directly at them.
I don’t think that a name needs to “specify” all that much. The idea that a newspaper needs a label like a medicine bottle so that you can (as fast as possible) get an immediate “take” on what it is about…. I think that underestimates the complexity of the communist press, and ignores the power of symbolism. I believe that we need names that are powerful and evocative… not that in some precise formula “capture” what we or the paper are about. The Russian communists had names like “spark,” “flame,” and “truth” — which captures the feeling of so many under Tsarism that they lived under a long night of absolutism based in ignorance and lies. There was a deep feel that “enlightenment” (literally) was needed.
In the Sixties there was a wonderful eruption of radical journalism with joyous and powerful names (Rat, Old Mole, The Movement, Leviathan, The Black Panther, The Eye, The East Village Other, and so on) that broke with the stodgey prescriptions of the dying revisionist left. (What could have more of a tin ear than “Peoples Daily World”?) The RU/RCP (unfortunately) drifted back toward stiff and backward looking names (The Worker, etc.)
I have always been a fan of the word “Revolution” — it has power and edginess, it conveys an uncompromising desire for convulsion, defiance and rupture. And I think we should simply wrest that word away from the RCP, and not allow them to pose (and mythologize themselves) as a real or significant revolutionary alternative.
There is a fearless soberness to this moment, a need to break with cheap nostalgia and self-deceptive glorifications of our own past. People don’t want easy answers, but real answers. And at the same time they want and need something fearless and defiant — something unburdened by all the defensiveness and hesitancy that progressive thought has adopted.
So we need to become creative in this. We need names for our coming projects and new media that live in THIS moment, and captures a daring contemporary spirit and sensibility that (at long last) recaptures an ability to genuinely shock the times to life.
Jaroslav O. said
Thanks for response, good point the name no need be a ‘prescription label’, but yeah the main complaint I had wasn’t the new name per se, but that a promise of public explanation was given in writing & never followed up on.
celticfire said
Something about the whole fervent search for a “new synthesis” has me worried.
If we accept that the RCP is a failed Party, then we have to look deeply into why it is a failed Party.
9 Letters has definitely opened that up for discussion.
But in reading 9 letters and thinking about the RCP, we know:
There hasn’t been a real attempt to apply Maoist methodology in America.
If that is the case, why should we all be looking for a new synthesis when the old one was never carried out?
It seems like the kids in the RU desperately wanted to do just that, but the situation quickly turned into defending the “one hope.” And that was that.
If we don’t grasp that; what will be the consequences of the 9 Letters of now, or the “New” Avakian tomorrow?
9 Letters starts from pointing out things that have already been pointed out on this blog and elsewhere and gave them some coherency. That’s a good starting point.
Is 9-letters a new “synthesis”?
Do we need a synthesis?
Maybe we should try applying MLM to our political aspirations today before chucking them to history in search of our new “synthesis,” or the next guy who promises revolutionary salvation.
The Cold Lamper said
My beef with Revolution as a newspaper name is that it sounds so blase in a nation where “revolutionary” is regularly used to hock George Foreman grills or describe dramatic political changes of even a reactionary nature–the Reagan revolution, the Nazionale Fascista revolution, the 1800 Jefferson revolution.
It’s like choosing between “Ministers” and “People’s Commissariats”. I think Jiang Qing was much more of a revolutionary as a Minister of Culture than Ivan Serov was as an NKGB. If you have to constantly remind everyone how “revolutionary” or “people’s” each institution is, it might start to sound glib and even disingenuous. “You ain’t brother Joe Brown, Monseigneur Chief Justice!”
jose the red fox said
mike,
glad you finally put this out.
this space has opened up a very much needed dialogue for those who were at one time “supporters of the party”. you know what i mean. jack gardener, presente!
be humble amongst the people, and vicious against the enemy.
jp
Yo said
Mike, I know a fair amount of people who have been around the party and are no longer active with it for various reasons. Although there was ideological struggle with all of them about what they wanted to do with their lives, in my (short) experience, the main reason people split was not because of the “culture of appreciation, promotion, and popularization of Avakian,” but for much more basic reasons. Mostly it was because dedicating their lives to being out in front in difficult years and leading revolution was not, ultimately, what they wanted to do. Some of these folks are academics, some social workers, some drifting toward anarchism or trotskyism or other forms of tailing the masses.
So my question to you is: where is the social base for your project Mike? Where are all these revolutionaries who are frustrated by the RCP? My point here is that you may have a certain attraction to the 9 Letters among ex-party folks and other people on the left who are frustrated by the rcp, but 95% (this isn’t a scientific #) are not revolutionary. Most of them are scholastic or economist or reformist or into identity politics and postmodernism or all of the above. In fact, I don’t know anyone who’s split with the P that’s doing anything remotely close to what the party is doing — leading battles around torture, police-brutality, Islamo-fascism awareness week, the Jena 6, etc… all the while putting revolution and communism back on the map in new and creative ways. And if your goal is just to reconstitute some generic “radical current” — what’s the point?
Every day there are new young people coming into rev. books, hooking up with the rev. club, etc. I say, out with the old and stale, in with the new.
zerohour said
YO-
Isn’t this thinking cult-like? If the majority of the people who left the Party are non-revolutionary types, shouldn’t you wonder if the Party itself might have produced this effect?
Yes, new people might be hooking up with the bookstore and the rev clubs, so what? Even more people are going to hook up with the Democrats. What does that prove? The question is: how many will stay, and on what basis?
Yo said
It makes perfect sense that most people who decide to split with RCP would focus on self, career, social work, and other non/less-revolutionary forms of politics. That’s why they split! They didn’t make the cut… or they did and changed their mind. That’s fine, they’re not evil people, and some of them can be worked with in different ways. These are not times when there is any spontaneous pull toward the vanguard. It is not cool. There is no social aprobation (is that the word) like during the 60s. You can’t make a career out of it. But still, when you have a revolutionary pole out there, people gravitate toward it, especially in times of crisis. That’s what’s so great about the RCP being WAY out there, despite smaller numbers than a group like ISO for example.
Speaking of them, you know how much turnover there is in the ISO? Alot. Turnover is not bad… it’s good. Think about how much turnover there was during the cultural revolution!
Mike E said
Yo:
I don’t see a lot of value in circulating or comparing anecdotal information — it is not a helpful way of discerning what is happening.
It is true (in my opinion) that many people leaving the RCP leave political life — for all kinds of reasons. Often people despair over whether revolution is possible. I think a great deal of that has to do with objective conditions (not merely the line of the RCP).
While we are comparing notes and sharing impressions: I suspect you underestimate the “ew factor” of the intensifying cult of personality in its effect both inside and outside the RCP. Without getting into anecdotal details, I believe it is considerable. And I don’t think it is the only element of the new synthesis that provokes sharp disagreement and line struggles. I think it is true that “everyday there are new young people” checking out the RCP (and other political trends)…. the real question is what will they embrace? And what will actually help carve a road to revolution? I think you are right that the 9 Letters have attracted interest from many different forces — which I think is quite fine. This includes revolutionary and communist activists — but is hardly limited to that — and that too is quite fine with me. I think the discussion we need has to be broad, even while we need to congeal a new revolutionary core if possible.
I think it is true that the current wave of people leaving the RCP have not yet found their way into a new formation with other forces. This struggle around the RCP is relatively new. People often leave with disparate summations of “what went wrong.” And (significantly, for various reasons) the imposition of “Avakian as a cardinal question” took place without the emergence of an organized and revolutionary counter-pole.
We will see now see what emerges from the necessary (and inevitable) process of “reconceiving as we regroup.” i think it will take a period of theoretical and practical work before the results becomes clear. And I think it will take far more forces than those who immediately embrace the 9 Letters.
What is the “social base” for a revolutionary trend? It is the discontent in society (ultimately) spurred by intolerable events and outrages. It gives rise the determination of all kinds of forces to dig into a way forward and to forge a new consciousness for themselves. I expect that quite of few will step forward who were never drawn close to the RCP in the first place.
Here is part of the current situation: The RCP is not a particularly significant or influential political force in the U.S. — it is certainly not a particularly attractive one. It has positioned itself over years (for better or worse) as THE Maoist organization, and has promoted itself as a serious and hardcore revolutionary attempt. In fact, it is losing that mantle, and that it is pointing in a wrong direction for the communist and revolutionary movement. The argument that “this is all we have” is not a true or potent one, given all that. It is a fading argument. And when you dig into the details, there is not much “there” there.
In some ways, any talk about “The RCP is doing more than any countercurrent among Maoists” is a bit of a red herring. Unfortunately I think it is hard to call what the RCP is doing “leading battles” (as you put it) — the RCP does seem to be occasionally leading small demonstrations or joining in with actions organized by other forces in various places — mainly it mobilizes and remobilizes a small periphery that generally falls away as fast as it accretes. The RCP’s major “mass initiatives” (Nion, R&R, O22) have largely withered and disappeared. Its current initiative WCW went from early promise to a skeletal state — having all the life sucked out of it by its own sectarianism, fantasy pronouncements, and the approach of elections. However the point really is not to belittle this rather limited if hectic activity, but to argue (as we do in the 9 Letters) that the leading political line and synthesis cannot lead to a revolutionary movement. Really the question is line — what has the potential to lead toward revolution and liberation (and what does not).
The most important question you pose is this:
The point is to change the world. To break out of a small self-proscribed “ghetto” of hype and circular logic, and actually find a way to actually fuse revolutionary politics with growing numbers of people. The point is that the people are bitterly oppressed around the world, and there is a rather urgent need to create a revolutionary politics that can actually connect and accelerate events.
What is the point? Communists are makers of revolution, and this has to be done IN THE REAL WORLD, not in our fantasies.
Here is how we put it in Letter 9:
The rush to the future, the situation of humanity and its rapid changes, DOES DEMAND SOMETHING OF US. Something real, even if it necessarily starts modest. In fact, don’t you agree that “modest but real” would be very refreshing.
Kevin S said
Mike, I have to say I loved, loved, loved your piece. As well as being something that needed to be said for a long time, it also posed a number of points about the “cult of personality” that I had not thought of before.
The last time got into a discussion with some RCP types, it occurred to me that they didn’t see how ludicrous pushing “Bob” was. iI he is a great thinker, we should be able to tell that for ourselves. The fact the party was so behind, for so many years, on the gay rights issues proves how out of step it was. The local RCP people I know get very defensive when you try to discuss this part of the party’s history with them. So much for their openness to critique!
What are your thoughts about the MIM? They have critiqued the RCP over the “mass line” issue for years. What do you think about them and their critique?
Yo said
Mike, the “ew” factor about Avakian has a pretty strong class dimension, just like the “ew” factor about leaders and vanguards does. In the U.S.A., probably the most individualistic and anti-communist country in the world, there’s a pretty strong “ew” factor about communism. So, obviously, “ew” is not the criterion. And my point was that it wasn’t the main reason that people leave RCP circles… the main reason seems to be getting overwhelmed by the task before us and settling for something more “possible.”
You completely avoided the question of who your social base is. Your 9 Letters are “to our comrades.” It’s not “9 letters to the masses.” Who are these comrades who you plan to regroup? I look around at people who used to be part of RCP circles and they are no where… cuz they’ve already settled for something more possible.
I asked you: if your goal is just to reconstitute some generic “radical current” — what’s the point? And you answered “the point is to change the world…” But you missed the point of me askng you that. Without a solid core in the midst of that radical current, we’re going no where. Since we already have a solid core (the party), why settle simply for some generic “radical current.” No where in your 9 Letters do you call for any real “solid core” alternative to the RCP. If you did form another group/party, that was anything serious — and not simply tailing behind the RCP gesticulating and criticizing — you would run into the same necessity, the same world historic challenges that Avakian and the Party are grappling with. What’s your solution? I look around at the people who’ve left with various ideological disagreements, and few of them are vanguard material.
Lily said
Yo, please stop. Stop the arrogance, stop declaring everyone who disagrees with the party and Avakian not material for the vanguard. Look, many people were considered very fine material up to the point of disagreeing with that vanguard.
You are running a tautology; a logic that is so simple that it relieves you of actually digging into the content of these questions.
So, please stop, and please become an actual part of this debate.
You say “since we already have a solid core (the party)why settle simply for some ‘generic radical current.’”
The question is one of political and ideological line. A solid core without a correct line is not a vanguard. If the struggle that erupts from unresolved contradictions under socialism can be led by a genuine party to vitalize and further revolutionize that society and the party, how is it possible for the party to revolutionize itself if, as a solid core, if it is a closed system of thought?
So, before i jump into this further (which I plan to do), I want to say don’t be so afraid of dissent; don’t diminish the seriousness of what is happening around you by essentially labeling all of the people you have lost as irrelevant or people who settled. How would you even know? Your train may have left the station, but there is a reason so few people are onboard. The revolutionary importance of a solid core within a radical current (your term, not mine) hinges on that core being able to actually lead the masses in revolutionary struggle and developing revolutionary class consciousness.
I suppose that any tightly bound group can call itself a solid core, but, I think you would agree, the issue is one of line– is the line correct? Do you not think that the questions posed and addressed, if even in a beginning way, are actually important? Is your answer that they have already been answered…end sentence? Is the party still debating, and has the party — and here I am talking about the ranks of the party — debated out these questions? The methodology of your remarks, I would guess, is the basic approach to debate inside the party.
You can talk about the “ew” factor, correctly point out the degree of anti-communism in this country, equate Avakian with communism and then deduce therefore the “ew” about Avakian is equal to anti-communism end discussion. Not a satisfying argument, Yo. These times are urgent and difficult and pose challenges and opportunities and I know you know that. Bob Avakian is a profoundly important person and voice, with this I wholeheartedly agree.and I think one of the groundrules for this struggle should be the importance of safeguarding Bob Avakian. Yo, many people out here, who really care about Bob and the Party and all of this are disturbed, we’re troubled by what we’re seeing.
Open the windows and pull up the blinds, time to let some fresh air and light inside.
steve said
Comrade Mike, I just want to say I also loved reading your piece. It helped me understand many things about the RCP (even though I still need to do more study), but also, I think that 9 Letters are relevant to all revolutionary communists — even if they are not in the RCP, or even if they are not in the U.S.
The situation of the revolutionary communist movement in my country is very different from the one in the U.S., but I can sometimes see in 9 Letters some criticisms that also apply here to different organizations/parties. I think this piece can help Maoists in their struggle to define better revolutionary strategies, and that’s why I’ll try to find some time to translate it in my language (it may take me a while though).
Lily said
This is not an academic or scholastic debate. I think that the need to unify around line is very urgent given the pace of developments in the situation insided the US and internationally.
I also want to make clear that I believe to make a revolution you must have a revolutionary (vanguard) party. I also do not think that it is acceptable to fall into K. Venu type lines on the vanguard and the DOP as basically being a talk shop for various classes and their outlooks. This is not the debate I have in mind, by the way.
I also am not arguing for a debate that acts as if we have no knowledge and summation of trotsykism or anarchism or kautsky or economism.
The revolution in nepal is of great importance, whether or not the RCP agrees with the line and strategy of the CPN. Obviously the RCP has spoken, in a polemical way, about critical questions posed by the developments in the struggle; as has the party in Nepal. But still, I do not understand why the RCP has said little to nothing about those developments on the ground– even as news. this, I think is highly irresponsible.
I think that what is needed in part is an excavation of the central focuses of the struggle: is the cult of personality that is now the centerpiece of the RCP line a correct synthesis on the question of communist leadership/the relationship between objective situation and subjective forces/ the criteria for proclaiming someone or something “historic”/the analysis of the objective situation in the US/ the strategy for revolution in the US.
I would also like to understand why the RCP no longer has a programme?
What is the RCP’s strategy for revolution in the US? Has the RCP dropped the “united front” as its strategy? (and here I am not talking about united fronts built around specific campaigns or projects) I am talking about an analysis of classes and strata in the US and their general posture towards the proletarian revolution.
Is “Fight the Power, transform the people for revolution” a new slogan/orientation built upon a deep and thoroughgoing summation of the practice unleashed around previous slogans/orientations? where is the summation?
Why are the authors of the 9 Letters not struggling these questions out from within the Party?
How has the deadening state of political struggle in the US affected the RCP?
Why did it take the Party so long after Katrina to begin organizing in Louisiana in earnest?
Beyond the difficulties of the objective situation why has the RCP been unable to make its line a significant material force?
Is there anything that the Party think is correct in the critique?
YO said
Lily, I’m not trying to dis people who’ve left RCP circles because I’m arrogant and anyone who’s disagrees is counterrevolutionary. I was honestly trying to ask Mike who are the “comrades” the 9 letters was written for. What are the non-rcp revolutionaries doing right now? If Mike had a party/organization, what would he be doing differently right now? How would his “Free the Jena 6″ flyer look different from the Harlem Revolution Club’s? How would he take on Obama in a way that’s different from the article in this week’s revolution? How would he explain revolution and communism in a better way than Avakian did in the Revolution DVD? I’m not afraid of dissent or debate… otherwise I wouldn’t be like the only person defending the party on this website. And I’m actually looking forward to seeing what comes out of this 9 letter thing when/if it moves beyond just being a critic of the party and actually struggles to build an alternative pole. I have my doubts though.
Lily, you tell me to stop running a tautology and get into the content of the debate. I have, in a limited way. I’ve pointed out in other posts that Mike has a narrow view of practice, which I will expand upon soon. You seem to also, judging from your statement:
“The revolutionary importance of a solid core within a radical current (your term, not mine) hinges on that core being able to actually lead the masses in revolutionary struggle and developing revolutionary class consciousness.”
Your above statement can be boiled down to: if you’re not winning (practice concieved narrowly), you’re not important, and you must be wrong. You and Mike are not recognizing:
1)the terrible years that the RCP has been operating in, objectively
2)that the rcp has been on the front lines of trying to figure out a way to breakthrough, and is all the time drawing from experience(33 years of practice plus all the historical summations of the communist movement, etc.) and adjusting tactics and strategy.
3)the fact that ideas, like the New Synthesis, are a material force that have the potential to “ideologize” communism back onto the map.
4)you can have the correct idea before it’s been taken up by the masses in struggle. That’s why we need communists in the first place, to bring those ideas to the masses!
I also pointed out a number of distortions about Avakian and the rcp’s actual positions that Mike makes throughout the 9 letters. Here are a few of them which haven’t been answered:
1) Your 4 point caricature of the new synthesis at the end of the first letter has almost nothing to do with what Avakian’s new synthesis actually about. It’s amazing that you could be around for so long and have so little understanding of it… unless there was some other intent.
2) Your assertion in letter 2 that a leading line in the RCP is saying that “The party itself ‘got in the way’ of the chairman’s ability to reach and transform the masses.” This is just ridiculous. Read the section called “building the party” by BA in last week’s (Jan. 20) Revolution newspaper.
3) In your next paragraph you say: “Communist work must now be centered around the task of “appreciating, promoting, and popularizing this rare, unique and special leader, his body of work, method and approach.” Well, this is one crucial aspect of communist work… and should be integrated into everything we do. But I’ve never heard anyone say that everything must be centered around this aspect, especially not in the ways that you suggest.
4) In the next paragraph you say: “There is a fantasy of ‘re-polarizing’ the society around the one leader…’ I remember reading someone on the Red Flags website making this same assertion (maybe it was Mike Ely?). So I specifically asked a Party person about it and they said that was not what we’re trying to do. The point is to RE-POLARIZE FOR REVOLUTION. This involves broad re-polarization in the ways that WCW is attempting, but most importantly, re-polarizing around the 3 main points in the paper. Avakian definitely needs to be out there being debated by people broadly during this re-polarization process, and in particular, his synthesis needs to be grasped and applied by the solid core that is actually leading the re-polarization. This is a very different, and actually much more ambitious and radical, conception than repolarizing around one leader.
5) Your comparison in letter 3 of the two newspaper covers is ridiculous. You could have compared the May Day 1980 paper to the May Day 2007 paper and you would’ve seen a remarkable political improvement. Or you could have compared one of the newspapers from back then defending and promoting avakian during his national speaking tour to the 2007 special edition on BA. Instead you chose to compare apples and oranges in a sense, in order to make your point. The person is clearly NOT looking at the word leadership (even though, in the real world, the masses are looking for leadership)! It is also not clear who the person is (party supporter or not), and that is hardly the point. And “adoration” is no where in the picture!
6)Is Avakian THE “Cardinal Question” as Mike and others here suggest? Avakian’s new synthesis IS A cardinal question — something without which we will not get where we are trying to go. The woman question, the national question, and others, are also cardinal questions in that sense. This is different from it being THE cardinal question — particularly when the definition being used by Mike is that a cardinal question is something that divides revolution from counter-revolution.
a couple more
7) The RCP says that “Communism is hanging by a thread.” I couldn’t agree more. Look at how the conscious forces have been snuffed out in Indonesia, much of the Middle East, Africa, etc. Mike Ely asserts that even though the RCP doesn’t say it, what they really mean is that the thread that the future of humanity hangs by is Avakian. Well no, if they thought that they would say it. The conscious forces, and the New Synthesis that is a material force within that, ARE the thread. But that is different than B.A. as the thread.
8)On the question of “A leader of this caliber,” Mike Ely states: “Revolution requires farsighted leadership. But there is no law of history or biology that creates a special notch or ‘caliber’ within humanity called ‘a lenin’ or ‘a Mao’…” Well, we’re not talking about calibers of humanity, we were talking about calibers of leadership. There’s no question that there is differentiation in our ability to grasp and apply the science of revolution, just like there is differentiation in our ability to play soccer or piano. Some are better leaders/soccer players/pianists than others… it doesn’t make them better humans (whatever that would mean anyway).
9) The whole section on homosexuality is incredibly simplistic and distorted. There was discussion/wrangling for many years about the line within the Party, there was discussion about why the change took so long (in the Bill Martin book), and there was a really advanced view taken in the most recent piece “On the Position of Homosexuality in the New Draft Programme.” Mike has nothing to say about this new position except, “The new party analysis acknowledged that homosexuality is not inherently counterrevolutionary…” Where’s the engagement?
10) Mike Ely says there’s no difference between the PCP’s “jefetura” and the RCP’s promotion of Avakian. For one, Avakian is on the central committee, elected by the central committee, and not above the collectivity of the party. He is not infallible, as he points out, and encourages his followers to be scientific and not slavish.
11) Ely takes Bob’s quote from the memoir about trying to create a cult of personality out of context, and said Bob is “embracing” the phrase. Not exactly. Right after Bob said that, he then said, “I was being provocative to get at the real point about leadership.” In other words, what he was embracing is leadership, not cults.
But my question to you, Lily, is if you care about B.A. and the Party, why are you not more “disturbed” and “troubled” by such blatant distortions that saturate the 9 letters?
Lily said
Yo, your post has a lot of substance that I promise I will think alot about today and respond to point by point (including defending points and the party where I agree). I do want to write briefly about your first point about a narrow conception of practice. I believe that practice involves work and struggle in various spheres– the class struggle, the theoretical realm, science. I think that the RCP has a very deep appreciation for the importance of “practice” not being taken narrowly and has waged sharp struggle against economism in its many forms. Also, I do not think that “if you’re not winning you can’t be correct”– that is absurd. You most definitely can have a correct line and still be without a mass base or large-scale support. And yes, the RCP, has without doubt been consistntly out there exposing through its newspaper and agitation and practically making gigantic efforts to build struggle around many of the cardinal questions you identify later in your post. Yet, exactly because the RCP is a democratic centralist party with a rich history and sights set on communism, it has an extrordinary responsibility for self examination as well as analysis of the objective situation at every point in time. (And, by the way, I agree that the comparison between the May day 1980 poster and the Revolution cover on leadership is apples to oranges, contrived and just wrong about where the silhouetted figure is looking). Regarding Jena: it is not enough to ask how would Mike Ely or anyone write the flyer differently? I have bigger question of the RCP and everyone else for that matter, including the author(s) of the 9 Letters, how do we break through in places like Jena, Eunice, Jackson Miss? Right now my view is that Party is doing the right thing but that nobody is doing the kind of work that is going to really effectively organize, including because the bulk of revolutionary work being done in this country does not really involve getting to know the people, and, by this, I do not mean knowing them so you can tail them.
Jaroslav said
Steve: What language are you translating into? Maybe some of us are able help you out with it.
Yo: Actually numerous party members have told me, without exception, that BA is ‘both part of the party’s collectivity & yet above it also in some ways’. Although this has ironic similarity to Christianity’s trinity idea (fulfilling mutually exclusive conditions simultaneously); but seriously I think when combined with observation of RCP’s theory & practise regarding BA’s leadership role & promotion, one gets the sense that the line really is jefatura or jefatura-lite, but that they are reluctant to admit as much (not in a ‘PR’ way, but even to admit this to themself).
abyes said
Yo:
Your method of scattershot and inaccurate charges is not a very substantive contribution to debate. I’ll just deal with one thing.
You say (#2 in your letter above):
“Your assertion in letter 2 that a leading line in the RCP is saying that “The party itself ‘got in the way’ of the chairman’s ability to reach and transform the masses.” This is just ridiculous. Read the section called “building the party” by BA in last week’s (Jan. 20) Revolution newspaper.”
So Avakian, in the place you cite, speaks today of the “crucial importance of building the Party.” Mike, in Letter 2, says that “In the last few years, a new leading line in the RCP argues that the problem over decades has been that the party (as a whole) was gripped by a “revisionist package,” in opposition to Avakian. The party itself “got in the way” of its own chairman’s ability to reach and transform the masses.”
An important task today is to build the party. In the past the party got in the way of Avakian’s ability to reach the masses. How are those in contradiction? They’re not. Especially since, as you say in your next point, the task of “appreciating, promoting, and popularizing this rare, unique and special leader, his body of work, method and approach” is a “crucial aspect of communist work… and should be integrated into everything we do.”
In other words, the party as now constituted is not about to get in the way of Avakian, but devotes itself to “appreciating, promoting, and popularizing this rare, unique and special leader” as a “crucial aspect” of its work. This party must be built. How is this in contradiction with Mike’s assertion?
Having said this, though, we haven’t touched on the basic point Mike was making – that this argument that “the party got in the way of the chairman” is offered as an explanation for the failure of the party over several decades to develop a mass partisan base for revolutionary communist politics. The fact that the party has not made – or attempted – a serious materialist summation of the failure of its many serious efforts: that is the main point of this letter. It’s one of the central points of the Nine Letters. If you want to enter into serious debate about the Nine Letters, this is something you need to grapple with.
The point is that (to quote again from Letter 2), “The spiral from theory to practice back to theory has been broken.” The question is the relation of theory to practice (also developed elsewhere in the Nine Letters). The point is that in the absence of a real materialist summation of past practice, a sort of fantasy summation has taken hold (“the party got in the way of Avakian’s ability to reach the masses”), and an idealist “solution” has been put into effect, revolving around a one-sided emphasis on telling and on the promotion of Avakian.
The question of the relation of theory and practice is central in the Nine Letters, so I am glad to see you say that you plan to expand upon this issue soon. But please don’t just reiterate your attribution to Mike of the line that “if you’re not winning (practice conceived narrowly), you’re not important, and you must be wrong” (which you now attribute to Lilly too). This isn’t what’s said in the Nine Letters, as I pointed out in a previous post.
Let’s have more engagement with the substance of this critique.
Lily said
Why not engage wi