Letter 9: Traveling Light, Coming from Within
|
|
| Tikapur, Nepal, Photo: TMG (all rights reserved) |
Nine Letters to Our Comrades
Letter 9: Traveling Light, Coming from Within
by Mike Ely
“…if, owing to objective and subjective conditions, this party exists and carries on for 40 or 50 years like the CPUSA before it and never leads a revolution, what’s so great about that? Really why would it be so terrible if somebody got together and formed another party and tried to learn from the positive and negative and went ahead and tried to make revolution?”
Bob Avakian, 1982 [122]
“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
From a song [123]
No overarching historical mechanism guarantees a revolutionary outcome. New things will ceaselessly and inevitably emerge — and either something radically liberating takes roots in society or it doesn’t. The implications for humanity are profound.
Mao said there is no need to inoculate ourselves from ideas. We must dare to go through things and come out the other side. [124] Maoists, following Mao in this, have to leave the comfort of reassuring illusions and misplaced authority. We have to confront that here in the U.S. we have neither a vanguard organization nor the theoretical breakthroughs we need.
The Maoist project centered on the RU/RCP never really “took off.” It never took root as a leading representative of the oppressed (other than in the most abstracted, self-defined sense). After grappling with this contradiction from many sides, this party’s leadership has now consolidated itself around a course that is a particularly sterile response to long-standing problems. This is concentrated in the adoption of “Avakian as the cardinal question.”
Throughout these letters I have been forced to repeat the words “real,” “actual,” and “living” — over and over — because so much of communist project here in the U.S. has been fantasy draped in fine words.
“The train has left the station”?
|
Even if a turn of events pumped new life into old “vehicles” (including the RCP itself), the heart of the problem would remain untouched. Specific, voluntarist verdicts are fully consolidated at the heights of the RCP. When they say “the train has left the station” — they truly mean that the debate over those verdicts within that party is over. So be it.
Forging a way forward requires moving beyond all this, even as this party’s leadership presses ahead, white-knuckled, on the course it has set.
Meanwhile, five minutes out that door is a beautiful blue planet crammed with contradiction and life. The rush into the future does not hang by any single thread — but it does demand something of us. One way or another, something different has to raise its head. It is now left for revolutionary communists, both inside and outside the RCP, to re-conceive as we re-group.
This is not the place to actually make a positive accounting of “what we possess.” But we must start that soon. We need a process, a going, where we sort things through, think afresh and start to act, together.
When Mao’s Red Army abandoned their early base area, they carried with them all the hard-won apparatus of rebel state power: they brought archives, printing presses, factory equipment, rolls of telephone wire, furniture and more. That baggage cost them dearly in lives, when the heavily burdened column faced its first tests of fire. They then simply left off the boxes and machinery of their old apparatus. What they kept was that material that made sense when integrated into their new mode of existence. They were traveling light. They were ready to improvise, live off the land, and fight.
The analogy to our theoretical moment: We need to discard ruthlessly, but cunningly, in order to fight under difficult conditions. We will be traveling light, without baggage and clutter from earlier modes of existence. We need to preserve precisely those implements that serve the advance, against fierce opposition, toward our end goal. We need to integrate them into a vibrant new communist coherency — as we thrive on the run.
Not a remake of the RCP. |
It is a great creative challenge. We don’t need a remake of the RCP, but better. The theoretical knife must cut deeper than that. There needs to be negation, affirmation, and then a real leap beyond what has gone before. We need a movement of all-the-way revolutionaries that lives in this 21st century. Not some reshuffling of old cadre, but the beginning reshuffling of a whole society.
We need to take up a great new project of practice — while applying and developing our theory.
I can propose two or three key places to start new practical work together. And I see at least four major problems for theoretical engagement:
First, we need to chart the uncharted course, sum up past practice and move to actually fuse revolutionary communism with the deep currents of discontent among the oppressed.
Second, communist theory needs to deeply comprehend our world today — the new connectedness of production and communications, the global shifts of industry, the mass migrations of people, the changes in class structures, the dynamics of modern warfare, the capitalist transformation of remaining feudal relations, the new interpenetrations and conflicts of imperialist powers, the basis and limitations shaping the unprecedented attempt to establish a global U.S. hegemony, the development of political Islam, and the stark historically-new ways the emancipation of women is posed. These changes (and more) are driving a world process quite different from the one explored in earlier communist analysis. There are related analyses of the U.S. itself that are needed, including deepening understanding of the impact of “de-industrialization” of the working class, and changes in the structures of national oppression (i.e., racist oppression of minority people in the U.S.).
We are at a fresh start. |
Third, communist theory needs to comprehend the twentieth century — especially what that century revealed about the socialist transition to communism and the wellsprings of capitalist restoration. When encountering communists, people all over the world demand to know what we have learned from this exhilarating and painful process and what we would now do differently. Our answer must come in deep historical analysis and theoretical proposals — but also in our style, our methods, our program and our larger practice.
Fourth, communist theory needs to clean its Augean stables [125] — uprooting this legacy of dogmatism, deepening its struggle against various forms of capitulation, and tackling long-standing philosophical and strategic problems that stand as real obstacles to communist revolution.
Discussing their history, the Maoists of Nepal touched on outlook. They made their mental leap toward the seizure of power, “by protecting revolution from the revolutionary phrases that we used to memorize in the early period.” And they say that then, later, they dared “to abandon the course once selected and have the courage to climb the unexplored mountain.” [126]
Something important is being said if our movement in the U.S. can (at long last) develop an ability to even hear the voices of others. We have to learn to look past the text, the glib phrase, the comforting myth — and look deeply into the living thing and our living practice of engagement. We have to actually know this shimmering, dancing world in the course of actually fighting to end its many horrors.
We are in many ways at a fresh start. Let’s re-teach ourselves to think with a critical spirit. Let’s struggle and debate creatively, as comrades. Let’s chart that uncharted course. Let’s actually “prepare minds and organize forces for revolution.” Let’s bring down the beast and move toward the final emancipation of humanity.
Previous Letter | Home
Notes
[122] “A Party is Not a Holy Thing – It’s Got to be A Vanguard,” published as a chapter in If There is to be Revolution, There Must be a Revolutionary Party, RCP Publications, June 1982
[123] During the Pittston coal strike in 1989, I came upon a small circle of religious radicals singing these stirring words in the middle of a tense scene.
[124] Conversations With Wang Hai-jung, December 21, 1970, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung: Vol. IX, marxists.org. Mao is talking to his niece about how to approach classic works of China’s feudal past.
[125] One of the “impossible” tasks that Hercules accomplished in Greek mythology was cleaning the vast Augean stables in a single day by diverting rivers to wash away long-accumulated muck.
[126] We don’t need to have verdicts on their particular “unexplored mountain” in order to appreciate their larger methodological point. Maoist Information Bulletin 17, July 2007, cpnm.org
Published: December 2007
Available online at mikeely.wordpress.com
Send comments to: kasamasite (at) yahoo (dot) com
Feel free to reprint, distribute or quote with attribution to Mike Ely and a link.
This website and all contents are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
Who links to me?
tellnolies said
In many ways this final letter is the most important one, I think, for those of us here who do not come out of the RCP. It imagines a real new beginning. The question, of course, that it poses is “precisely how light do you intend to travel?”
I don’t think we should make a fetish of labels, but the question hanging here is whether what is envisioned here will still think of itself as “Maoist.” While clearly this group of folks owes much of their political training (both bad and good) to Maoism, and while I think there are important internationalist responsibilities to the Maoist-led revolutionary movements in Nepal and India, it seems much less clear to me that this label does useful work for us here in the US (or in the rest of the advanced industrialized world).
There are people grappling with the same questions posed in these letters who come from a wide range of radical and revolutionary left currents and it seems to me that the critical thing to do is to engage them and not throw up obstacles to such engagement. If Maoism is dividing into two, three, many Maoisms it seems that the important thing to take from it/them is not the label rather what is most useful. To my mind the clearest items of value in this inventory are teh theory of the mass line and the understanding of the continuation of class struggle under socialism, but even here we should be aware of how other current have given different names to similar insights and strive to bring these different perspectives into conversation with each other.
treacherousbright said
a great line from letter 8 I think:
“Mao did not declare his own words ‘historic.’ He actually made history.”
yeah, ok, it made me laugh at bob’s expense, but it was a well placed paragraph!
What I really want to know is how the hell did this happen? I mean really.
I have been staying at arms length and sometimes further for 20 years. Some of the problems were evident even back then, like discouraging study, most especially of things that the party didn’t write. Back then, I had found the way they promoted themselves as being the strongest on the left re: the oppression of women to be very attractive. It was heartbreakingly not true. There’s some hinting at them being puritanical about sexuality in general in the letters in the discussions about the rcp’s stances on homosexuality. I think the fact that their approach to sexuality should be questioned also points to a need to question this supposedly excellent line regarding women and I think it’s yet another area where good criticism and definitely new analysis would help with our forward motion.
But when I left, they would never have lowered themselves to such obvious ridiculousness especially with this cult of the individual crap. By the time I finished this last letter here, I could hardly believe how bad its gotten.
How did that happen?
I have had this rudimentary summation in my head about how back in the days of trying to stop a nuclear 3rd world war really kind of put us all in this frantic spin and the idea of taking the time to pay attention to mass line and how cadre were doing was just too much. I think things got rather warped that way and pushed them into some pragmatism and began this whole volunteerism thing they have been into seemingly ever since.
Incidentally, I also remember days before then when the true beauty of communist vision just beamed in their work and in the interactions of cadre. the people around the RCP kept their optimism for a lot longer than most of the revolutionaries of the 60’s & 70’s. I feel fortunate to have been exposed to that.
I guess if you’ve switched over to hating on the masses and need to give a “simple” version of things (sounds like straight up economism to me), then you might as well get on the religious band wagon of the supposed theocratic takeover and give them their condescending savior.
I just don’t understand how these very same people could justify themselves.
Recently, I went to an event and spoke “casually” with some folks – some folks who, in light of my relatively minimal reading over the years, should be practically encyclopedic in comparison – and really tried hard to get them to explain to me what was new about this synthesis, because it would be really nice if I had a party to belong to again and because they kept trying to tell me I might actually like them better now, and these people were not able to address my more “classical” less “synthesized” view & memory of MLM. They couldn’t distinguish anything new from what I remembered of MLM 101 AND they kept calling bob the next Darwin based on it. It blew my mind, really.
If I can remember that blind faith and blaming the masses, does not a communist revolution make, how come they can’t? what the hell happened? What ARE they actually trying to accomplish as an organization now? Is someone getting some kind of personal gain? Is everyone just clinging to what they feel is the only revolutionary hope? As I read the letters, it sounds absurd to me from my vantage point, but I know, like everything, it really didn’t come from nowhere. whatever bug bit them in the ass, I really want to inoculate us all against.
I want to pull back the curtain and look upon the great “oz”.
There’s so much to hash out, y’all!
Happy New Year!
la lucha sigue
Pavel said
Treacherousbringht, in asking “How did that happen?” I think you’re asking, “How did sincere revolutionary communists (or people who see themselves as such) wind up as members of a quasi-religious cult centering upon a man whose teachings (which they cannot themselves even articulately summarize those they simply refer you to his books, “talks,” and tapes) are supposed to provide the answers?
What was going through members’ minds in 1995 when they passed the “Resolution on leadership”? Or made selling Bob’s autobiography their main thing?
I wonder how many rank and file members ever wonder what Bob did for a quarter century in France. Why are only 6 pages in his 446 page autobiography devoted to his “exile”? The man was born in 1943, left for France in 1981 and apparently returned only in 2006. He writes about “leading from exile.” Do party members and supporters wonder what he was doing from age 38 to 63? Of course everyone appreciates the need for security and secrecy. But does it not seem odd that someone unable to engage in mass work nevertheless acquires the wisdom necessary to lead the U.S. (and world) to liberation?
Bob is now depicted primarily as a great sage, a teacher, and a party member can do nothing more useful to the revolutionary cause than to convince others to “engage” Bob Avakian and devote many hours of time listening to videos that while interesting offer no breakthroughs (epistemological or otherwise). As Mike has shown, the party’s objective is to propel Bob into the superstructure, which I take it means television appearances, invitations to speak on campuses, etc., anticipating that once the masses can hear him speak, they will rise to his call. The campaign around the Engage! statement is one effort to enhance his reputation as a thinker who deserves to be heard.
How did this (personality cult) happen? It looks to me as though BA and the party, having despite some real (including recent) accomplishments failed to acquire a real social base, are opting in frustration for a very risky strategy. Since the party has failed to make breakthroughs (and Avakian might claim that failure is due to their failure to adequately implement his instructions given during his 25 years in France), they must now rely on him to personally speak to the American people.
They must sacrifice their time, in which they could be reading theory, or history, or occassionally mellowing out, and be kept in a constant state of tense effort leaving little opportunity for reflection. This is how cults work, and I think not coincidentally Avakian has been spending a lot of time thinking about religion.
treacherousbright said
pavel, yeah, in part I’m asking that about “sincere revolutionary communists” but more, I want a good historical study of their trajectory to help unearth their line(s) so we can proceed with that caution – kinda like asking, “how did all those people “just let” Hitler do that?” there were processes. something led them that way.
treacherousbright said
oops. wasn’t done….
and its not really about sincerity as much as how obviously contrary to mlm they are acting right now. how do they reconcile for that or do they even bother trying? or something like that….
Chuck Morse said
Treacherousbright, I think you raise an important question: how did the RCP become the weird, cultish and irrelevant sect that it is despite the fact that many of those who are (or have been) involved genuinely want(ed) to change the world for the better?
This points to something that I find truly sad about Mike’s “letters”: he is trying to answer this question through terms and ideas derived principally from Bob Avakian’s writings (hence all the quotes). Though I can understand how this might help him extricate himself from the group–and, for that, I’m happy–his method also shows the extent to which he’s still trapped within the twisted universe that is the RCP. It’s like watching a Branch Davidian cite David Koresh’s sermons in order to explain the Waco catastrophe: it might potentially yield an insight or two, but the method presupposes a vocabulary and a series of premises that are fundamentally non-sensical and indefensible.
Mike, you grant a degree of intellectual authority to Avakian that absolutely no one outside of the RCP concedes and that has no relationship to his real world accomplishments. Avakian is not an intellectual and he is not a theorist and he is not a leader. I’m sorry that you ever believed otherwise: clearly the RCP’s has the ability to draw confused, idealist people into its vortex.
So, how did the RCP become what it is? That’s obviously a big question, but I would argue, as a point of departure, that it’s cultish, nutty qualities exist in direct proportion to its political irrelevance. In other words, the more nutty it is, the more irrelevant it becomes and the more the irrelevant it is, the more nutty it must become.
I would also encourage people to check out On the Edge: Political Cults Right and Left by Dennis Tourish and Tim Wohlforth. It’s a decent book, in my view, with some germane material.
Saoirse said
Chuck,
The other day on this site you asked for some to put forth what they thought were some of the RCP’s accomplishments. After Pavel and I responsed to you thanked us. Since I assume your raising such a question was a form of acknoweledgement that you in fact know little about the RCP’s external political practice and accomplishments I find it hard to fathom how a few short days later you find it fair to call the a “weird, cultish and irrelevant sect.”
I have not read On the Edge and I am curious what organizations it studies. Mind you I am not suggesting that the RCP, the anarchist scene or the catholic church dont “act like,” “display aspects of,” etc of being cult-like. But that doesnt I am claiming any of the above can be compared to the Branch Davidians. Sorry I won’t go there. And I challenge you to rethink this line of reasoning.
For one its a massive digression from the aims of this website. I am sorry but you need to really lay out a forceful and detailed arguement before you can start saying (Mike Ely) “which he’s still trapped within the twisted universe that is the RCP.” Please be a little more respectful of things you (as you’ve already acknowledged) know little about.
Two if we’re going to look at the RCP through the lens of cults why stop there. The politics of John Africa and Move? The weathermen? How about the anarchist scene? Or the Democratic Party?
You say, “nutty qualities exist in direct proportion to its political irrelevance. In other words, the more nutty it is, the more irrelevant it becomes and the more the irrelevant it is, the more nutty it must become.” PROVE IT. Cause right now, with the level of actual knowledge you have displayed of the EXTERNAL workings of the RCP, never mind the internal dynamics that you’d have to have (a) first hand experience of, or (b) have done serious research and interviews with many current and ex-members make your posts ring hollow.
And that’s my last point. Mike 9 letter’s whatever I may think of them are certainly a serious above board effort to engage the RCP and the revolutionary left on serious questions of political theory and strategy. If you really want to put forth such a line of argument on this website or elsewhere you have the responsibility to put in the work. do the research and make a through analysis of the RCP.
Sincerely, Saoirse
Chuck Morse said
Hi Saoirse,
Your post is unclear to me: do you object to something that I said about the RCP or simply to the fact that I said anything at all? If it’s the former, then where do we differ exactly? Spell it out … If it’s the latter, well, then, that’s your problem.
Are you mainly upset that I compared the RCP to the Branch Davidians? Analogies, as you should know, are never exact, but I do believe that the RCP has strong cultish qualities. Do you disagree with that?
I addressed a question posted by treacherousbright: how did the RCP become what it has become? Do you really think that this is a “massive digression from the aims of this website”? Isn’t that one of Mike’s main concerns?
How would you explain the RCP’s fate? Please don’t tell me that it just has the “wrong line.” That doesn’t mean anything. “Lines” don’t make history, people do, and you need some insight into how and why they do so in order to explain how and why they’ve done so in a particular way and at a particular time. Unlike Mike, I’m convinced that you’re not going to find such insights in Bob Avakian’s writings. What do you think?
treacherousbright said
my questions stand …
Chuck, your post does not sound like criticism from the left, or friendly constructive criticism with a goal of figuring out how to do things better from within a revolutionary communist point of view. It sounds like criticism from the right – kind of attacking and at least lacking in unity with the direction of the 9 letters, or with any kernels of truth that the RCP might be carrying. Surely you’re not actually surprised at Saoirse’s response.
It IS true that the letters begin their logic from inside the container of the RCP and its problems, and the implication in your criticism of Mike Ely is that this is not sufficient. I think that Mike actually says this himself, maybe not in those words, but in this very letter, which maybe you should re-read now, he says
“Even if a turn of events pumped new life into old “vehicles” (including the RCP itself), the heart of the problem would remain untouched. Specific, voluntarist verdicts are fully consolidated at the heights of the RCP. When they say “the train has left the station” — they truly mean that the debate over those verdicts within that party is over. So be it.
Forging a way forward requires moving beyond all this, even as this party’s leadership presses ahead, white-knuckled, on the course it has set.
Meanwhile, five minutes out that door is a beautiful blue planet crammed with contradiction and life. The rush into the future does not hang by any single thread — but it does demand something of us. One way or another, something different has to raise its head. It is now left for revolutionary communists, both inside and outside the RCP, to re-conceive as we re-group.”
And I don’t really want to waste a lot of time and effort on addressing the concerns of those who criticize from the right. I also don’t want us to repeat the mistakes of dogmatism by just bashing people’s attacks in here.
i have more to say on that, but later.
my questions stand….
Ulises said
Chuck,
Well…
Look, you use intentionally extreme and emotional language to hack at not only the RCP, but even those that criticize them. To compare the RCP to the Branch Davidian’s is fucked up, and absurd.
And criticizing Avakian from the perspective of Maoism (as Ely claims to be doing) is not the same as criticizing him from within his own peculiar body of work and thoughts. You misunderstand all the quoting, it is not to try and use the line of the RCP to criticize the RCP, it is to expose the line of the RCP. When you confuse this in conjunction with your above distortion, you end up saying that Ely is like a follower of Koresh who has lost the faith. It is insulting. And damn if I don’t think that is your point to begin with.
Your dissimulating response to Saoirse is disingenuous in a way that is very peculiar to your method of throwing out a cheap shot and then acting as if you didn’t mean to give insult or piss people off. In other words, it smacks of a slightly sophisticated form of trolling.
Moreover, you do all of this in a very passive aggressive way by challenging other people to make your point for you. What do YOU think was the cause of the current line in the RCP with regards to Avakian’s leadership?
Let’s be clear, your argument here is ultimately over how you want to frame the debate. In your eyes the RCP is like the Branch Davidians, and a discussion of “what went wrong” should start with that assumption. But this doesn’t explain anything. The only conclusion that this line of thinking leads to is the circular logic that the RCP is a cult because the RCP is a cult. I don’t believe the RCP is a cult. I think there are cult-like practices involved, but this is not the same as the Branch Davidians and others, though it may go that way, whose to say. Most of us reject this line of thought. But you are free to make it.
Whether Avakian deserves it or not, there are people outside of the RCP who argue that he is of value to investigate and listen to as an intellectual. So your claim that “absolutely no one” believes this is wrong, and is yet another example of your extreme use of language.
I believe that a lot of what Avakian says at any given time is correct. I think, on the other hand, that this does not rise to the level of import that the RCP and Avakian seem to think it does, and that it lacks a level of depth that is necessary to really be taken seriously in society at large. Moreover, the current thinking of Avakian around how to build a revolutionary movement, and what the trajectory of the current situation is being driven by, are deeply flawed. But this does not mean that everything he says is total bullshit. See, there are alternatives to these binaries you are offering of either ex-cult member coming to terms with his own feelings about a cult leader (the pathological theory) and Avakian actually being what the RCP claims that he is (the originator of a historic new synthesis that redefines the project of human emancipation).
I think Ely’s position simply doesn’t fall into this either or view of things.
As for the book you reference, I would be interested to know how you think it relates to this discussion. How would the analysis in that book help us make sense of the situation?
tellnolies said
Chuck,
Saoirse is correct. You seem to want a reason to dismiss Ely not because he speaks the language of the RCP, but because he speaks the language of communism. These letters are a critique of Avakian. It is therefore entirely appropriate to quote Avakian, not because he is the great thinker and leader he claims to be, but precisely to demonstrate that he is not. Clearly Ely holds Avakian in higher regard on these counts than you do, (or than I do for that matter) but I think it is a mistake to read that difference as evidence that Ely is still trapped within Avakian’s framework. Ely has presented here a much more sophisticated critique of Avakian and the RCP than any of the rest of us here could do precisely because, after thirty years supporting the party and working on its press, he really knows his material. Knowing it inherently means giving it a credence that not knowing it doesn’t and I wouldn’t be surprised if a year or two from now Ely looked back on various formulations here as insufficiently critical. But that banal speculation shouldn’t detract from what is quite evident here: a trajectory born from a critical rupture not just with Avakian but also with the woodenness of Maoist orthodoxies that Avakian’s “new sythesis” pretends to but largely fails to overcome.
While it is true that very few people outside the RCP in the US presently take Avakian seriously this is not really a compelling argument that he shouldn’t be taken seriously. If you want to make such an argument you actually have to take the time to read what Avakian says and investigate what he has done. Its perfectly fine to make a cursory judgement that you don’t want to invest the energy in that sort of investigation (we all make such judgements all the time) but if you make that choice you shouldn’t then pretend to have a deeper understanding of Avakian or the RCP than you actually do. THis is a paradox inherent in making this sort of negative judgement. In order to really know that Avakian (or anybody else for that matter) shouldn’t be taken seriously, you have to take them seriously enough to investigate them.
As I’ve said elsewhere I think Avakian has some interesting things to say and he clearly played a role in the reconstution of international Maoism that demands acknowledgement, even if the more grandiose claims about his talents and importance are wronmg.
You urge people here to read a book by Tim Wohlforth. You don’t mention that Wohlforth was the leader of the very cultish Workers League and now that he has seen the errors of his ways is a member of (pause for drum roll) the Democratic Socialists of America. None of this neccesarily means what he has to say about political cults isn’t worth reading, its just to note that you’ve made a judgement that the one-time leader of much more irrelevant sect than the RCP is worth reading. The RCP has its pathologies. There is no doubt about that (and these Letters are probably the best diagnosis of them to date), but so does every other political current, not least of all your own. Sometimes there is a profit in looking at these pathologies, but I find Ely’s method of emphasizing questions of political line a lot more fruitful than most of the crude psychologizing I’ve seen directed at the RCP.
I don’t know which Democratic candidate (if any) Wohlforth as a member of DSA is presently supporting, but I have little doubt that the mechanisms of uncritical adulation around Edwards, Obama, and Clinton are a hundred times stronger (and more sophisticated) than the crude cult that exists around Avakian. That said, it would be profoundly mistaken to reduce the Democratic Party or its leaders to these dynamics. What we need much more than a critique of the cultishness of presidential campaigns is an analysis of the POLITICS each candidate represents.
The anarchist fixation on the psychological dynamics of other political tendencies (but rarely their own) is, IMHO, laregely an evasion of the work of seriously studying and critically engaging their politics. This is why all of the many anarchist “critiques” of the RCP are so canned, gossipy and substanceless. Not because there isn’t a good critique to be made, but because anarchism doesn’t have the tools to make it.
Ulises said
I would add that you’re challenging the wrong people to come up with a groundbreaking insight from Avakian. Most of the people here don’t think that he has one, that’s a major point in the 9 Letters. If he did have such an insight, it would not be so clear that his current program of self promotion was wrong.
As to why I think that the RCP is where it’s at…
I think that it has to do with a history inherited from the New Left, trying to take this and make something out of it throughout the 80’s and 90’s when the objective situation was very much against revolution. I think that this atmosphere enforced a siege mentality and a pattern of organizing which required that mistakes were papered over and that people were continuously hyped into a new campaign, simply to survive. Or at least that was the unconscious thinking going on. I think that a peculiar element of this has been the cult of personality around Avakian, which originated at a time when he and other revolutionaries actually were being suppressed and some even murdered. I think as the failures of line have accumulated over the decades, the party has come to a dead end where the only thing they have left, unless they actually take account of their own history, is the cult of personality around Avakian. And now they’re going with that for one last ditch attempt at relevance. I think we can all appreciate how this is not the same as a communist method of work, even if it has some similarities with socialists of the past, like some of the sects that developed around particular leaders like Lasalle. In other words, the overall sin of the RCP has been its sectarianism in the true sense, not in the fetishized sense that anarchists mean.
I always found this passage by Marx to have some relevance here:
“The first phase in the struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie is marked by the sectarian movement. This is justifiable at a time when the proletariat is not yet sufficiently developed to act as a class. Isolated thinkers subject the social antagonisms to criticism and at the same time give a fantastic solution of them which the mass of the workers have only to accept as complete, to propagate and to put into practical operation. It is in the nature of these sects, which are founded on the initiative of individuals, that they keep themselves aloof and remote from every real activity, from politics,strikes, trade unions, in a word, from every collective movement. The mass of the proletariat always remain indifferent, even hostile to their propaganda. The workers of Paris and Lyon were as little interested in the Saint-Simonists, Fourierists and Icarians, as the English Chartists and trade unionists in the Owenites. The Sects, at the outset a lever for the movement, become an obstacle as soon as this movement has overtaken them; they then become reactionary.”
Not to take it as gospel, but I think there are some clear similarities here, even as it doesn’t fit the picture prefectly.
Saoirse said
Chuck,
I have already stated I have worked with the RCP on many occasions over the past many years. I have learned from them. I have respect for them. And I have disagreements with them.
I know very little about cults and specifically with your comparisons of the RCP and the Branch Davidians. Since you’ve yet to layout what the specifics of a such a comparasion are. Nor done any serious research of the RCP I think you should check yourself. Further I think you owe Mike an apology for disrespecting his politics.
I will ask this Chuck, what is the RCP’s fate? Is it much different than the anarchist scene? Are both somewhat marginal political organizations and tendencies in the US today?
I can only go back to my own experiences and suggest that both have serious flaws. That’s why I am here on this site. both readin and commenting. Because I care about the future. I care about revolutionary politics and I want to contribute to a dialogue that moves things forward. And this digression into comparing the RCP to a cult is just plain old wrong.
Joseph Ball said
I think all this talk of the RCP-USA as being ‘cult-like’ is bourgeois in origin. If a leader can help develop a mass line that can liberate the people, then we should respect their contribution. I really don’t accept this idea that individuals should follow no form of authority and should just make their own individual feelings and opinions the primary factor in all matters. This approach is subjective and unscientific.
Look at the typical middle class youth in the USA or the UK. They accept no ideology, no authority, no leadership except their own passing whims. Yet in their names their governments exploit and oppress the masses of the Third World, impoverishing them, bombing and killing them. What can the middle class individualist line offer to these youths except the line of denying responsibility and saying this is nothing to do with them? Is this good enough? Or do we need unity and leadership to unite these individuals with the proletariat into a fighting force?
The reason these youths have this incorrect line cannot be fully blamed on them. If we offer no leadership and no education, then we are allowing this situation to happen and the blame lies with us!
Now, I’m not saying that no-one should criticise Avakian. I live in a different country from Avakian and a party in this country would have a different line, reflecting different priorities-
. If it existed it would not simply follow every dot and comma of RCP-USA thinking, it would have its own line. Also, I believe the McWorld vs. Jihad line is inapplicable in any circumstances. But should people negate Avakian and the RCP-USA because of this? Mike Ely has a right to raise criticisms, but leaving the party and then raising them in this kind of public forum… Was this correct? Now these criticisms seem to be attracting a lot of very bourgeois, individualist criticism. Is this the right way to proceed? I think people need to consider these matters seriously.
ulises276/2 said
1) We cannot be afraid of bourgeois ideas and individualists. We cannot hide from these things, rather we must learn to deal with them in the process of having this discussion about the way forward. If we do not learn to deal with them in an above board way, they will simply end up being expressed in other less obvious forms internally. You might as well argue that a party cannot put its line out in public because it will attract bourgeois and individualist critics. This is true, but so what?
2) The point here is that Avakian’s line is not correct. That is why he is being criticized. Even as parts and aspects of what he has to say may be true or correct, he does not represent or have in hand a synthesis on the level of a Mao or Lenin, and his program of hyping himself is going to fail, is failing. So before we get into how much Avakian should be respected we have to come to a decision as to whether he actually has a line “that can liberate the people”, as you say. To argue that we should respect Avakian without having a position on exactly this question is indeed “whateverism”. And to argue that we should be silent because otherwise people like Chuck are going to distort and interfere in any debate or discussion about these issues… It’s just not a good argument.
3) You assume that Avakian is right, therefore any criticism of him in public is fodder for our enemies and unprincipled. But your assumption is wrong.
4) Not everyone here is taking a bourgeois and individualist take on this issue, it is wrong to characterize the whole conversation in such a way because of a few comments.
5) As has been pointed out, many of the criticisms in the 9 Letters were made internally from many different people at different times over the period of years, and of course Mike also raised criticisms internally, but the RCP has ignored them and declared that the time for criticisms around many of these issues is now over. The RCP believes that it should be able to decide the time, place, and in the end the substance of whatever criticisms are “principled” and which they will engage. This locks down almost all criticism, and then all you get is the highly deferential cautiously worded and circumscribed “criticism” that the RCP publishes in its paper twice a year. You do not get to choose the time, place and substance of criticisms aimed at you. You have to deal with them all on the basis of their substance. Some are more substantive than others. Ely’s is the most substantive to date.
treacherousbright said
Ulises, thanks for taking a shot at my original question in your first post here.
So, are you saying you feel like in less favorable times for the movement towards revolution the upper echelons of the organization began to act in desperation just to keep the ranks and this became primary over analyzing and reacting to the world?
Would you concur that they have become pragmatic out of that desperation?
Are you saying you think they have blinded themselves from the world outside of their bellybutton in their desperation to keep existing and that’s how these used-to-be-communists can carry on day to day?
The Marx quote you pulled is intriguing. It paints a picture of the reacting under the difficult times of being surrounded by imperialism (capitalism) and its dominating ideologies. where is it from?
tellnolies said
Chuck,
You write:
“Lines” don’t make history, people do, and you need some insight into how and why they do so in order to explain how and why they’ve done so in a particular way and at a particular time.
Yes, people make history. But lines matter precisely because they exist in peoples minds and direct, in varying degrees, their actions. You can’t understand the RCP without understanding its “line,” that is to say its analysis of the world and the course of action it derives from that analysis. The same is true of the Catholic Church or the Institute of Anarchist Studies. Each organization has a line (even if they don’t use the terminology of “line”) that is an important element of any proper understanding of what they do in the world. Pathologizing groups is a often a way of flattening out important distinctions in their actual politics.
ulises276/2 said
Not just the upper echelons, treacherousbright. I think a lot of people are rightly invested in making a revolution, but that under the intense stress of impending “irrelevance” all manner of deviations develop. One of the most obvious is the sectarian deviation. And I would suggest that this has its place, as Marx suggests, but that the problem with the RCP is that it has become more and more sectarian, and that even this sectarianism has not contributed to the development of a revolutionary people or movement. In fact, after 30yrs we find ourselves on the possible cusp of an intense and prolonged crisis in imperialism, and all the RCP has got in answer to that is that everyone should “engage Bob Avakian”. This speaks for itself in many ways, but a close investigation of his work pretty much seals the verdict against “following Bob Avakian”.
What makes this so stark is the brief period between 2003 and today when it actually seemed as if they were going to abandon a lot of this sectarian baggage. Unfortunately, after a couple years of talking the talk, but not walking the walk, it’s plain for everyone to see that behind the pretty stage setting is the same brick wall of narrow and wishful thinking.
It’s a strange pragmatism if it’s pragmatic. I think that many groups go pragmatic, but the RCP has gone in the opposite direction, more of an ultra-leftism and sectarianism than a pragmatism. There is nothing pragmatic about a cult of personality around a communist leader in the United States. But even this is too simple. The RCP’s sectarianism is of a particular kind. It’s not that they can’t play with others, it’s not like they are Spartacists, it’s just that these others have to be “led” by the RCP whether they know it or not. At least in certain instances this has been true. Though in other instances, as pavel and others have pointed out, the RCP has worked very well with other groups. At any rate, the ultimate manifestation of this is that everyone who wants to change the world for the better absolutely HAS to “wrangle with Bob Avakian” in the squared circle of his body of works.
“Are you saying you think they have blinded themselves from the world outside of their bellybutton in their desperation to keep existing and that’s how these used-to-be-communists can carry on day to day?”
Yes.
The quote comes from a pamphlet Marx wrote, directed against the Bakuninists, called “The Alleged Splits in the International”.
chegitz guevara said
The question of whether or not the RCP or any other specific group on the left was or was not a cult is not the question that Mike is debating here, though he raises the fact that the RCP is now openly styling itself as a Cult of Bob. Mike is able to do so only because the RCP and BA themselves have made those assertions in public.
I am not sure the discussion of which left political groups are or are not cults can be much expanded upon. Although the implosions of the Democratic Workers Party in the US and the Workers Revolutionary Party in the UK, not to mention many others happened in the mid-80s, it wasn’t until about ten years later that many of those of us who went through such cults began to really understand and process just what happened. Wolforth’s book is just one of a number of books by survivors of the Maoist and Trotskyist movements. Regardless of his current trajectory, given that he was a leader of a cult, much what he has to say is rather instructive.
Politically, Wolforth may have become a reformist, but most of us who come out of these organizations end up doing so. Groups like Solidarity are basically a recovery group for ex-cult members, and their previous terrible experience is in a large part responsible for the politics they follow today. It is completely natural and human for that to happen, also. It’s only a handful of the truly deluded, like myself, that seek to rescue Lenin from “Leninism” and still hue to a revolutionary line.
At this juncture, and in this venue, however, blanket accusations of the RCP being a cult without supporting evidence and arguments will allow those still in the RCP or its periphery to label this entire effort of Comrade Ely’s as sectarian and unprincipled, that he has been seduced by the bourgeoisie, etc. It will close off discussion with those who can be saved. We want the discussion expanded. We want everyone on the left taking up the discussion.
your comrade,
chegitz guevara
SUN! SURF! SOCIALISM!
treacherousbright said
Ulises,
I’m not convinced that the main problem is their sectarianism, but I still find the way you raised it with that Marx quote pretty interesting.
The reason I imply the upper echelons is because its such a top down organization. these various campaigns come from somewhere “up there”. The the job is to get the lower ranks to carry things out.
I don’t think I would call cult of the individual ultra-left because it fist so well with the bourgeois push towards religion and with the subsequent mainstream idealist trends of late in all directions.
I actually think that pragmatism easily gives way to idealism. If convincing people to just have faith is what is working at the moment, then use it.
Here’s what I mean about pragmatism:
Consider that even the pragmatist has a goal in mind. They ask, “how do i get from point A to point B”. Sure, the RCP’s point B seems pretty rad (in writing), but when they have functionally thrown out real communist methods of analysis and work, what are they relying on? They become more empirical and less scientific; they stop looking for underlying causes of things; they stop working from those lofty goals on back; they do anything to get to point B. That’s pragmatism to me, even if what they are pragmatically reaching for is not mainstream.
so maybe, really, I’m answering half of my own question: how did they stray so far without noticing? They were overwhelmed by pragmatism.
I’m just reaching to put some flesh on those bones over a long period.
Some people musta noticed tho, I’m sure of it. There have been so many really smart, sharp people around. Maybe it bugged the hell out of them but they couldn’t leave because the idea of starting fresh or causing a split is a bit daunting and overwhelming. Plus there really hasn’t been a way to struggle with leadership since 1980. Certainly I wasn’t the one writing 9 Letters way back when. Then again, it wasn’t nearly as glaring, the contradictions hadn’t sharpened up so much, it hadn’t gone so far and there wasn’t any kind of critical mass.
… thinking aloud …
the road is still treacherous, the future is still bright. I wish I had become an expert on economy during those years. We really need the analysis.
Joseph Ball said
I have some questions for Mike Ely.
Mike criticises the RCP for a) failing to make revolution a closer prospect and b)responding to this by exaggerating the importance of Bob Avakian’s thinking.
In itself, these aren’t really strong enough reasons for withdrawing support for a party to set up something new. Did Mike have some strong alternative line that he believes would have been more likely to make revolution a closer prospect that he was unable to get RCP to adopt?
I ask this because Mike wants us all to support his line. He’s not just saying he wants to stop supporting RCP because he’s personally fed up with it. At the moment it seems mainly a negative line. He is against Bob’s approach. But is Mike against Bob’s approach because he wants a more left-wing program or a more right-wing program? Does he want a program that stresses ‘individual freedom’ more and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat less, for example? I’m not for a moment saying he does, but the fact is we don’t know because he hasn’t said.
Also, what is wrong with Avakian’s line, in Mike’s opinion, other than the fact it hasn’t worked out in practice, according to Mike? I mean what is wrong with it as an analysis of capitalist society and a guide to action. I know that Mike opposes the ‘Avakian is a very important leader’ line, but surely his disagreements must go a bit deeper than that for him to be taking the action he has done.
Avakian has an analysis that imperialist super-profit makes the economic struggle of US workers not the main issue. He argues that revolutionary issues are to be found in the superstructure in the US. I would argue that the objective difficulties created by the affluence of the western worker is one of the primary reasons for the failure of revolutionary parties in the US (and Western Europe). However, it should be stressed that I am not completely convinced of Bob’s ‘superstructual’ approach.
None of this is an argument for defeatism. One way or another we should find a path to socialism for the western nations. But how does Mike intend to overcome the affluence-induced passivity of the US working class better than Avakian has managed?
I know the usual answer is ‘We must listen to the masses and learn by practice.’ But is that enough? You cannot just go to the masses like a blank sheet you hope they will fill. It’s like going into a lab to mix chemicals to try and come up with a cure for cancer without any prior scientific knowledge, hoping you will achieve your objective by learning from practice. ‘Learning from practice’is certainly vital, you will never find the revolutionary line without it, just as the most qualified scientist could not find a cure for anything without testing through experimentation. But learning from practice is not enough on its own.
Every generation of revolutionaries cannot start anew as blank sheets, ignoring all the science that has gone before. They must have their own interpretation of the science that has been developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao (and by the attempts to build revolution by Gonzalo, Prachanda, Ganapathy, Sison etc.). This is what they must test in practice. What is Mike’s interpretation of the thinking of those who have gone before him? What is the science he will test in practice and how will it differ from Avakian’s?
Mike says he wants a new approach which sums up the twentieth century experience of communism, defeats dogmatism etc. But these are all generalities. What does Mike actually think about these issues?
Doing what he has done is quite a big step. I have seen many other people withdraw support for parties because they think they are stagnant and they want to create something new, they just don’t know what exactly. These people always say they are doing this because they want to ‘ask questions’ and ‘re-examine our ideas in the light of new developments’-always in an ‘open’ manner, without ‘pre-judging anything’. These attempts are not usually very successful, for fairly obvious reasons. They do appeal to a lot of liberal ideas about ‘freedom of thought’ and questioning authority. But they lack substance and just come to nothing. Can Mike say how he is going to do better than those that have tried the approach I have just described?
notsopoeticfeelings said
Joseph,
Although I have not seen Mike issuing a “call to support” his line as you state, I think what you have formulated as questions for Mike to answer are extremely important ones that have to be addressed in fullness of time.
For this I salute your meticulous effort to shine a directed beam of light on the path to be traversed, posting signs along the way as to pitfalls.
Again, your query as to which turn Mike is taking, to the right or left, sounds alarm bells as to the dangers and possibilities ahead. This also merit absolute admiration. The not-so-implicit warnings to everyone reading these pages to not give a blank cheque to Mike is again, another case of this admirable attention to fine detail and small print.
All in all, this sounds like a very principled clarion call to everyone not to behave like a bunch of anchovies running like a massive ball toward a wide open jaws of a dolphin, nay, a Whale in waiting.
What puzzles me though, is you do all this regarding the future without addressing a very simple question regarding the immediate past. You visit this past frequently, only to ask more questions from mike as to the wisdom of leaving the RCP.
Let me ask you this key question regarding the immediate past:
If you were him, what would you do?
Big L said
Joseph writes – “Every generation of revolutionaries cannot start anew as blank sheets, ignoring all the science that has gone before. They must have their own interpretation of the science that has been developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao (and by the attempts to build revolution by Gonzalo, Prachanda, Ganapathy, Sison etc.). This is what they must test in practice. What is Mike’s interpretation of the thinking of those who have gone before him? What is the science he will test in practice and how will it differ from Avakian’s?”
I don’t speak for Mike, but speaking for myself I would begin by questioning the prevailing wisdom that the science of revolution has been developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao (along with the maoist leaders you listed.) The problem I see with this logic is that it considers only those of a particular tendency as having developed the science – as having the “true” communistic thinking which has been put into practice. We should study Stalin? Ok, I agree – but I’ll take it a step further: shouldn’t we then study Trotsky as well? What about anarchist movements? Have there been none which are revolutionary that may be learned from?
I think that to truly move forward means to leave behind much of the sectarianism that arises from holding onto conventional wisdom and simplistic reductions of different tendencies as having “divergent class interests” from the tendency we may feel more strongly pulled toward. But it’s not just about not being sectarian – as important as that is – it’s also about trying to get deeper at the the truth (!) about what it will take to successfully build revolutionary organizational structures which can truly unleash people and challenge the state for power.
Joseph writes: “Doing what he has done is quite a big step. I have seen many other people withdraw support for parties because they think they are stagnant and they want to create something new, they just don’t know what exactly . . . These attempts are not usually very successful, for fairly obvious reasons. They do appeal to a lot of liberal ideas about ‘freedom of thought’ and questioning authority. But they lack substance and just come to nothing. Can Mike say how he is going to do better than those that have tried the approach I have just described?”
Again, can’t answer for Mike, but it strikes me as odd that questioning authority and ‘freedom of thought’ are liberal ideas? Shouldn’t radical, revolutionary politics be about questioning conventional wisdom – in fact questioning it even if it comes from revolutionary leaders – past or present?
I think that in order to do better organizationally we can’t be satisfied with accepting theoretical orthodoxy as dogma – which means critically interrogating the past – and in my opinion this involves not only the struggles of maoists but of different revolutionary tendencies – in order to move forward. In relation to this we also must seriously develop the pedagogical skills to facilitate the transfer of revolutionary consciousness amongst the masses – particularly the oppressed masses, and especially amongst the youth. How can this be done by clinging to one, often narrow, set of revolutionary politics? I’m not arguing for an eclectic hodgepodge which will be little more than a muddle, but rather for an approach which can truly “embrace” and assimilate the good in what different groupings have accomplished, while leaving behind the wackness.
How else can we move beyond acting like evangelical preachers hawking the “truth” on street corners and actually begin to sink roots, particularly, amongst the oppressed communities who have the potential to become the revolutionary social bases Mike critiques the RCP for failing to build?
antiimperialistgrrl said
Mike,
your pamphlet is a salve for sore wounds. I look forward to a new communist movement in which investigation, summation, and strruggle is actualy done. I’m down!
Matigari said
My 2nd point of apprehension with 9-Letters:
9-Letters deemphasizes the issue of Marxist economic analysis, though there is an implicit reference to it in Letter 9: “Communist theory needs to deeply comprehend our world today—the new connectedness of production and communications, the global shifts of industry, the mass migrations of people, the changes in class structures, the dynamics of modern warfare, the capitalist transformation of remaining feudal relations, the new interpenetrations and conflicts of imperialist powers, the basis and limitations shaping the unprecedented attempt to establish a global U.S. hegemony, the development of political Islam, and the stark historically-new ways the emancipation of women is posed.” I would add two things to this list: (a) the rampant despoliation of the environment; & (b) the more intense interweaving of the military in the functioning of the economy. On the 2nd issue, I do not mean merely examining the “military Keynesianism” thesis but also, & probably more importantly, the role of the military in control of vital resources & in propping up the currency. We have come a long way from the dismantling of the then-superior Indian textile industry by the British to open up the market for British textiles in the 18th & 19th centuries, using their military might.
The deemphasis of political economy in 9-Letters is worrisome. The U.S. economy is in deep trouble & has been poised on the brink of a precipice for some time, certainly throughout the reign of Bush II, with the enormous runup of debt, both private & public, the huge trade deficit & the runaway costs of medical care. I suspect that the bubbles we have experienced —the dot-com & credit/housing bubbles—temporarily staved off the crisis that the economy is now spiraling into. [Since writing this sentence, I have heard that Greenspan claims that this was his motivation for dramatic lowering of the prime interest.] In fact, I think there are grounds for suspecting that the entire neo-con strategy was rooted in an anticipation of the possibility of current economic problems emerging. It seems that they were making a desperate gamble by invading Afghanistan & Iraq (especially the latter) to restructure the global economic situation, hoping to stave off these problems by strengthening U.S. control of Middle-East oil in anticipation of increasing scarcity (not merely for more profits from oil but control of the global economy as a whole). If things had gone their way, this would have enabled the U.S. to dictate terms to comparatively oil-less competitors, such as China, India, Japan & EU countries. Instead, their gamble failed & has exacerbated the very crisis it was meant to avert. How correct is this view? This needs investigation & wrangling.
Our understanding of political economy must go far beyond the primitive levels that are normally encountered among revolutionary activists. For example, I have not been able to find any Maoist explanation of the Great Stagflation of the 70’s. It is glaring that the RCP’s heavy hitter in economics, Raymond Lotta, has never addressed the issue publicly, to my knowledge. (This is especially glaring, since the RCP itself was founded during this period.) We are not even sure if the Great Stagflation was an aberration in the functioning of capitalism in the mature imperialist era or if stagflation is a normal phase of every production crisis, & that what needs to be explained is how it lasted so long, was so deep, & how a subsequent depression was averted.
Also, while we are on the subject, Mike does not climb into any real criticism of (a) the war/revolution line of the RCP that they were forced to drop by the collapse of the Soviet Union & the subsequent cessation of the cold war. The RCP’s self-criticism in Notes on Political economy can hardly be called a communist self-criticism—it treats the Russian imperialists as though they were not the arms & legs (the mind & the voice) of capital. What is little noticed about Lotta’s America in Decline, is that its framework of analysis—the war/revolution (spiral/conjuncture) thesis—actually deemphasizes (if not precludes) what happens in capitalist production crises. Gorbachev was instrumental in aiding something that resembled a takeover by a hostile firm, which allowed Russian capital to survive though badly damaged (this is a very simplistic statement that requires a lot of fleshing out actually). The Russians were indeed acting as the arms & legs of capital & not merely as humans who have volition.
This raises a question: Are production crises inevitable under capitalism? I think the answer is YES! However, we need to re-examine Marx’s discussion of this point & be able to argue the case—I feel strongly that we are very likely at the beginnings of such a crisis today. Let’s roll up our sleeves & get to work on this issue.
I agree with Mike E.’s remark that “The RCP does not have a correct appraisal of the objective situation,” which, of course, begs the question—What is a correct appraisal? Certainly a correct appraisal must have political economy at its core. These days, even Chalmers Johnson is raising the specter of revolution in the US because of the economic decline (& in his view, especially the national debt—about $150K per family of four!!—as of Jan 2008).
The issue of the economy underlies several other things I’m uncomfortable with in 9-Letters.
Mike E said
There is quite a list of things that the 9 Letters does not address. And here in Letter 9 we list some of them — as theoretical projects going forward.
We need a movement that can point out the LIMITS of what it knows — even while it affirms the important insights that we DO CORRECTLY have. I don’t think you should be “uncomfortable” to discover gaps — it means we think these issues are TOO important to handle in a half-baked way.
Spouting prematurely would mean that we had not understood our own critique of the RCP’s method! We need to shed that facile dilettantism, and that far-too-quick willingness to congeal theories out of a passing brainstorm.
I touched on this in a deliberately blunt way in “On Nepal: What Should we Do and Say?” Among other things, I mention that basic methodological point from Sagan: “I try not to think with my gut. Really, it’s okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.” And the related point from Richard Dawkins, “There is nothing wrong with being agnostic in cases where we lack evidence one way or another.”
In line with those two scientists: I think we need to hold our tongues on really important controversies, until we have something real to say. We should point out which controversies ARE important and urgent (and that is something we have evidence for.) In fact there are quite a few theoretical and practical issues that “stand before us.” And I urge you to join in that work. We are at the beginning of a presumptuous work.
* * * * *
On the gaps themselves:
You are right we don’t have an economic analysis in the 9 Letters — we didn’t put it in because we don’t yet have one. We also don’t have any analysis of the deep and important controversies over “democracy” (that are such a defining contradiction within the international communist movement right now). There are also many episodes of the RCP’s past that we don’t comment on. War and Revolution in the 1980s is (as you point out) one of them. So is May Day 1980s. The very idea of forming a party in 1975 — and assuming that the prerequisites were there — is also not summed up (pro or con).
On the struggle for a partisan base…. Yo has implied that this is the core of the 9 Letters projected strategy — but actually the 9 Letters doesn’t comment on whether that strategy of “two shifts” was correct or not. We say what we have to say: that this effort happened, and that a real materialist analysis of this needs to be made. We have been talking to (interviewing actually) a number of people who were involved in various ways in the attempts to build base areas in the housing projects — but we are far from being able to make any overall summation of that experience and line.
* * * * *
On the Spiral conjunctural theory:
I think that this conceptualization of interimperialist war and rivalry as the locus of capitalist crisis in the imperialist era has proven hollow. It is remarkable how the post 1992 world (post Social imperialist world) has not taken the form of new blocs, new open rivalries (even while there is obviously interimperialist conflict, and even much more than the RCP’s analysis of “two outmodeds” allows.) The problem with the spiral conjunctural analysis was not just that it (falsely) predicted a specific range of outcomes for the 1980s — (an error which the RCP criticized in its “Political Economy NOtes” document) — but also that the whole framework of spiral conjuncture has proven so non-explanatory for the events since the 1980s — (an error the RCP has not touched on to my knowledge, especially since the “Political Economy Notes” explicitly and rather apriori declares that theory mainly correct.) Raymond Lotta has publicly attributed to Avakian a central role in inventing this theory. It is a significant part of the new synthesis — though it is de-emphasized recently (presumably because it has not stood the test of reality).
Matigari writes:
Exactly. A critique doesn’t necessarily answer its own questions. It poses them — in this case rather urgently.
We need to systematically move away from the current focus on the criticisms and flaws of the RCP. We should have no intention of being a cold moon revolving around a dead planet. Now comes the hard work: a theoretical project that forms the backbone of “reconceive as we regroup.”
matagari said
Following my last post (#25 in the comments to Letter 9), Mike raised the image of a moon orbiting a dead planet:
“We need to systematically move away from the current focus on the criticisms & flaws of the RCP. We should have no intention of being a cold moon revolving around a dead planet. Now comes the hard work: a theoretical project that forms the backbone of ‘reconceive as we regroup.’”
Coming on the heels of my expression of what I felt apprehensive about in reading 9-Letters, Mike’s remark seems to say that raising issues such as the RCP’s view of political economy was not very productive—we need to move on. I get that impression from his submersion of the subject as merely one of a long list of equally important (if not more important) topics he had chosen not to raise. Don’t get me wrong—RCP-bashing is not particularly helpful. However, if you ever thought that the RCP was once a serious revolutionary organization, then understanding its MAJOR errors are essential, as the starting point of “a theoretical project that forms the backbone of ‘reconceive as we regroup’.” I trust that we will not be merely “a cold moon revolv-ing around a dead planet,” but will be, instead, a satellite loaded with solid scientific instruments, studying the planet for clues that help us to understand its life-trajectory—& our own.
The planetary probes sent around actual dead planets have, in fact, enriched our knowledge about the origins of the solar system & about various features that we have encountered on Earth. I took the RCP seriously & as I said in a previous post, I still feel that I learned much from the RCP & accepted & welcomed its leadership of various struggles at that time. Especially because of this, it has been very important to me to understand how good intentions & some good—even very good—revolutionary gains, have gotten turned around. We need not be doomed to repeat their failures & it is likely that we will if we do not understand how they went wrong. So I believe it is important for us to send satellites to orbit this dead planet, even more important, in the short run, than the physical probe currently about to go into orbit around Mercury.
If this interpretation of Mike’s remarks is not correct, then the two points below are not necessarily applicable. If it is correct, here is what I have to say about his remarks:
1) As Mike has said a number of times, the RCP was serious about solving vexing questions of how to make revolution in the U.S. If so, how does a genuine revolutionary organiza-tion lose its way, despite its initially good intentions? It may well be, as I strongly sus-pect, that one factor is its wrong analyses on various aspects of the objective situation. How we understand political economy has been crucial to revolutionaries in our grasp of the objective situation. This topic cannot be treated as one amongst many, but, in fact, must be the beginnings of any analysis that claims Marx as one of its guiding lights.
2)I not only wonder about the role of the war/revolution or spiral/conjuncture conception in helping derail the RCP from the revolutionary road—which is what their Madison Avenue approach screams out—We have the line, the organization, the leadership!! I believe that certain fundamental errors in Avakian’s view of dialectical materialism, erroneous philosophical formulations of Mao’s that Avakian then took out to lunch, also played a role in crippling the RCP’s ability to stay on the scientific road. I will discuss this last point in future communications.
* * * * *
A relatively small point—the meaning of AGNOSTICISM, even as used by Huxley:
Agnosticism has more to do with CAN’T know rather than DON’T know, even in the case of Thomas Huxley. The brief discussion in
http://www.essortment.com/agnosticdefinit_rmak.htm
is pretty good for a first dip in the pool & says:
“The essential problem was that Huxley believed the problem was unsolvable. And thus far, despite the existence of famous thinkers like Emmanuel Kant and David Hume who philosophically agreed with him on the matter, there wasn’t a name for someone who believed you could never know the source of, nor reason for existence.”
So that’s just an initial explanation. Lenin’s discussion of agnosticism in Materialism & Empirio-Criticism is not only much better in terms of depth but is also really funny.
I think Mike misused the term—following Dawkins. I don’t think Mike means we CAN’T know about Nepal or political economy but that we DON’T know a lot yet.
Withholding judgment on something until sufficient knowledge is accrued is indeed an important aspect of doing scientific work. However, it is also true that advancing hypotheses—guesses—to be tested in the crucible of experience, is also essential to the actual doing of scientific work. In good scientific work, scientists often end up eating their “great” hypotheses for breakfast—this is simply part of the process. Much of what we have come to know as truth has occurred through the process of beginning with partial knowledge, putting forward guesses—usually infected with error, even a lot of error—testing against reality, & then forming better hypotheses based on the test. We strive to move along a spiral with these basic legs to continually expand our knowledge of the world. The fact of the matter is that the process is a never-ending one, for we never have “all the facts,” even as we acquire deeper understanding of the world. Truth never appears in pure form but is always mixed with error—there is no “brick wall” separating truth & error. Waiting for all the facts to come in is tantamount to agnosticism, for you will have to wait forever; i.e., we can’t know. This is not how to make progress in science.
I raised my 2nd apprehension with 9-Letters—the deemphasis of political economy—not as a matter of expecting a full-scale analysis of recent developments, much less developments throughout the 20th century. We need to do a lot of work around this. I spelled out some of the features of the current situation that led me to raise some conjectures on the current trajectory though I have no pretensions of being an economist. It is somewhat puzzling that Mike should take this as an occasion to warn us not to pass premature judgments, based on “a passing brainstorm.”
I found it worrisome that 9-Letters did not seem to consider the RCP’s deficiencies on this issue to be something worthy of being raised & demanding study. Again, this is not a matter of getting off on RCP bashing, “for fun & profit.” If anything, it feels more like a necessary autopsy—like learning about Mars’s missing atmosphere, which seems to have dissipated at about the same time that its magnetic field weakened dramatically, opening up the conjecture that the solar winds might have stripped off the Martian atmosphere, when its protective magnetic field vanished. As a point of fact, the Earth’s magnetic field shows definite signs of flipping, its North & South Poles changing places!! So is this the fate of the Earth’s atmosphere too & if so, can we do anything about it? Orbiting a dead planet might well be useful.
Mike E said
Just to be clear:
YOu write:
I spent six months writing the 9 Letters — i.e. working up a serious engagement and critique of the politics and history of the RCP. I am committed to having Kasama be a forum for continuing that, for quite a while. And I think that political economy (and particularly the spiral conjunctural theory) is an important part of that.
“Necessary autopsy”? Exactly. I completely agree. To explain: there are QUITE A FEW crucial theoretical questions that the 9 Letters don’t engage. (Avakian’s idiosyncratic theory of Democracy is one, political economy is another, aspects of the history of communism, the Stalin question, whether Marxism is literally a science and so on…) This is not because they are not important (or worthy of study!) On the contrary: it is because these matters were too important to handle in passing — or to handle based on current assumptions and verdicts. We did not have the time to handle all questions in 9 Letters. And we picked silence over superficiality when those were the main choices. These were points “left for later” — later, i.e. meaning “STARTING NOW AND GOING FORWARD.”
Want to dig into political economy. Do it here. Send me posts with substance to get the discussion going — we will create a thread on Kasama. Email me.
* * * * *
And I want to repeat the astronomical point that you touch on: We deal with the issues, errors, summations and experience of the RCP because we are planning to go somewhere else. This is not a “grudge match.” We are not “at war with the RCP.” We need to dig into these theoretical issues, seriously and polemically, with an eye toward actually unleashing a new process and a new going.
In the 9 letters we talk about “negation, affirmation and transformation.” And the negation part is now. The affirmation is what we will carry with us on this Long March. And the transformation…. well, that is still unwritten. We are not here to “lay down the law” — but to change as we move forward. To learn, to listen, to think, to reconceive as we regroup.
Matagari — NOTHING said here is intended to “shut you down.” Or to dismiss the importance of new theoretical excavations. On the contrary!
Welcome home. Let’s dive in.
matigari said
Thanks, Mike. Happy to join in the mix.
There is much in your list of topics not raised in 9-Letters that I am & have been concerned about, vexing questions for which I really would like to have answerED.
I am working on a post (unfortunely long), based on my manuscript,about the question of dialectical materialism. As you remarked, there are “matters…too important to handle in passing — or to handle based on current assumptions and verdicts.”
One is the nature of science & scientific statements. People seem to take for granted what is meant by science–erroneously I think. This question is extremely relevant to the issue of how many roads there are to communism–how there can be laws of revolution but many roads, inevitability that arises from laws of nature, society & thought (objective, operating behind the backs of humans) but accompanied by a rich assortment (essentially infinite)of possible pathways of the development of reality? (If we rewound the evolutionary clock, would the same species that currently exist, emerge once again? Gould says NO–& I agree with him–but he never really explained why, certainly not as deeply as it can be explained[& needs to be, especially in the case of roads to communism]. We need to get into why this is the case, even as we appreciate the existence of natural laws governing all aspects of biological evolution.)
Closely related to this is the question of materialist dialectics. For example, is there only one single “communism” that is the final goal of all communists? If so, what is it & why? If not, why not? I think that there is a crying need to examine communist methodology–materialist dialectics–precisely because the “current assumptions and verdicts” we have inherited are seriously flawed, in my opinion. One psrticular issue is the notorious & mysterious “negation of the negation” that Avakian so wholeheartedly thrashes–to this day–& that was quietly dropped by the 3rd International & later by Mao. How does it impact our views of laws of nature & society?
I think the question of the economy actually requires grounding in the philosophical questions, at least if we are to get past the perceptual to reach the conceptual level. However, prior to that, we could begin to amass significant facts about the current economic situation, including since WW II–this could be a new thread. It could also include struggling to understand why crises are inevitable, as laid out by Marx, before we come to grips with what has happened in the imperialist phase. However, I believe a Marxist analysis requires more–philosophical strength coupled with a grasp of economic developments. I will give your suggestion some serious thought.
Carl Davidson said
For what it’s worth, a brief comment, since I’ve only read a sampling of this but not all. Same with Avakian’s stuff, I read enough to see he was still stuck in old ideas. At least most of you are trying to break out of that cul-de-sac.
We are living, in this country, in nonrevolutionary conditions, and are likely to continue doing so, in the near term anyway. What’s required is a revolutionary theory for non-revolutionary conditions, to gather strength until a different period. The fatal flaw in Avakian’s approach is to take a politics for revolutionary situation and then try to compel the period to change by the actions of the vanguard itself–a view with roots in the 6th Comintern, the Wang Ming line, even going back to Bakunin.
All the rest are footnotes to this. You end up with a foolish caricature of revolutionary politics. I don’t doubt the sacrifice of time, energy and resources by many of you in the service of this line. It will cause enormous anger, based on what I know from the CPML liquidation, and we didn’t have a ‘cult of Mike’ [Klonsky] to deal with. You’ll have to deal with people wanting to leave the communist movement altogether.
There are many of you who think I and others already have, but then, that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? The dreaded ‘R’ word. But some of us actually are trying to develop a revolutionary theory for these times, and are still plugging away, even making a few gains, but they are only marginally in this ballpark.
Finally, the clue is in the opening line of the RCP response. It presents the party as the liberators, not the masses as their own liberators, as in ‘We want no condescending saviours…’
the burningman said
Mike, I believe, is far less interested in excavating political geneologies than he could be… but going back to the liquidation of CPML (another of the parties that formed in the 1970s New Communist Movement, formerly known as October League), no doubt there was anger on dissolving.
People give their lives, their best years and personal security. When those sacrifices don’t pan out in an immediate sense, if at all, there is certainly a complex mix of feelings and stretched loyalties.
My mother ended her involvement in communist politics in the early 90s. The first in her family to attend college (on a scholarship to an Ivy League school), she dropped out to serve the people at a high point of struggle. Two decades later she “woke up”, depressed, impoverished and lonely. It was a painful, tortured affair that she never fully recovered from.
I’ve seen it with friends who felt degrees of betrayal, shock at their own naive trust, anger at the so-called “masses” or the condescending saviors they placed their trust in.
And such are the real challenges of coming from behind to make revolution. No guarantees, hardly.
Though I was long a fellow traveler of the RCP, and deeply influenced by (at least) the idea of a re-formulated Marxism based on more than defending police states with socialist rhetoric – I did not ever give authority in my life over to that organization. I attempted, as I could, to bring revolutionary communist insight into existing social movements in a way that people could “take up” on their own and try to make real among a new generation.
When 911 happened and I saw the RCP more prepared than most (truly) to take out an anti-imperialist politic right into the face of “United We Stand” – I was impressed. Launching initiatives like Not In Our Name and World Can’t Wait was a breath of fresh air compared to the bureaucratic maneuvering of the CP/WWP old left. They’d rally forever, utterly wed to habits built over decades of defeat.
Less Avakian’s uniquitude, it was what I saw as the “habits and patterns” of the existing left that kept me in the RCP’s orbit. After watching the skilled machineries of political cooptation at work, all across this county through several movement upsurges, it was the RCP’s long-standing refusal to get caught up in the Democratic Party that kept their flag high in my estimation. I was willing to take strategic advice, but rarely saw their on-the-ground leadership as even understanding how political movements actually develop, grow and transform!
Not being bound by their puritanical codes of personal conduct (sexual conservatism, antipathy to intoxication and general tendency towards pleasure sublimation as proof of dedication) or having to turn on a dime every time the organization went through a wacky phase – I tried, as best I could, to bring out the kernel of revolutionary communism… of thinking about where we want to get to… to challenge the End Times eschatologies that treated any particular manifestation mainly as a lacking…
In other words, people struggling with what is available to them is not the same thing as “economism” or “identity politics” – even as those essentially reformist (at best) ideologies have held general sway for a generation.
Revolutionary communism can point a way beyond all that. But the RCP has long been more interested in it’s particular organizational standing (and even more interested in Avakian’s personal status than meeting even the goals they set themselves among the very people who themselves must fight for liberation. If ever a conflict arose, one could be sure that broader influence and connections were not nearly as important as the marble count at the end of the day.
There was always a “cut” that precluded the responsibilities of actual leadership.
————
My conscious involvement began in the 80s as a youth organizer with the RCYB. I was what is called a “red diaper baby” having been raised by committed communists. Which is another discussion worth having…
Banning, insulting and ultimately threatening gay people (whatever sophistry pathetically tried to cover that up) turned off literally every thinking radical who came into their periphery. This was in the years when Act-Up, Queer Nation and other anti-heteronormative groups were facing down an epidemic and demonization on the very streets I was growing up on.
That issue was used to separate out those who could sublimate their common sense, close their eyes to the civil rights movement of our generation and learn to repeat any bullshit because it came down from on high.
So those comrades, at that point, who joined the RCP from among my friends were exactly those who saw the importance of upholding the wrong line on principle. Doing the wrong thing was a testament to their commitment. From there… ooooh boy.
The RCP did gather committed communists in a way groups like the CPML or Line of March did not. They did, in fact try to break through to a better synthesis of what the communist movement aimed for, and what means it would use to get there. They weren’t about waving the dingy banners of Breznev or Deng, jockeying for position under a narrowing horizon.
Refusing to triangulate. That’s what it was for a long time, with all the attendant vices of “encapsulation” – or what is generally called “sectarianism”.
So – be done with that!
Carl – we certainly disagree on summation and intention. I think we also disagree on the nature of the times we live in.
We are living, in this country, in nonrevolutionary conditions, and are likely to continue doing so, in the near term anyway.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Though I don’t see political insurrection led by a socialist vanguard party going down in, hypothetically, St. Louis next week – I do think a few things are happening: the rulers cannot rule in the old ways, the people cannot live in the old ways – and we know that however things shake out they will be radically different in ten years.
It is in these kinds of historical rapids that the conscious, directed activity of revolutionaries can, in fact, change the game. We can actually change the choices people have to make in ways with a radical, structural impact.
Especially among those who remember the 60s… and the long dull 80s/90s, there is this sense that “we’ve seen all the revolution we’re going to see”.
And so I watch what happens when folks with your politics are confronted by revolutions, Carl – and whether or not they continue to use Marxist, ML or even MLM phrasology – they scurry for their position within the “desert of the real.”
In only the last few years, Nepal, Peru, the Philippines and India we have seen formally Marxist-Leninst (or otherwise “left”) parties assist with counter-insurgency – openly alling with the captitalist state.
They go from mocking the “ultras” or “extremists” or, even in the case of Walden Bello, calling revolutionary communists “terrorists like Al Qaeda” to literally joining up to crush the revolutionary forces. This dismissal of the “extreme” has nothing to do with the lives of the masses of people, though their needs and poverty are flattered. It is the institutional imperative of such “revisionist” groups to seek a footstool at the table of power. Their dismissal and antagonism to the revolutionary left (whether it is a viable force or not!) is about proving their own bona fides as reliable partners.
I’m not saying you do this, Carl. But in your method, which leads from the center of dissent; or, more accurately, gravitating to exactly the point where the base meets the superstructure and confusing the exigencies of that space with the realm of the possible.
It is matter of “line” and not personal predilecation.
Carl Davidson said
If you’re ‘not sure’ whether we currently have a nonrevolutionary situation, and are likely to have it at least for the near term, ‘burningman,’ then it would serve you and your comrades well to get ‘sure’, and the sooner the better.
Concrete analysis of concrete conditions, as a wise man put it, had best be your starting point. If you don’t know where you are, it’s not so easy to figure out how to get where you want to go.
The rulers can’t rule in the old way and the masses can’t live in the old way? Bourgeois methods of rule, like the electoral arena, are more popular now than in some time. The economic crisis remains structural, with a deep impact on some sectors, but much less across the board–not that it’s getting any better of course, but the average worker is hardly like ‘Mulely’ in the ‘Grapes of Wrath,’ asking Tom Joad, ‘Who Do I Shoot?’
Unlike some reformists, subjectively I’d wish you were right and I was wrong on this. But I don’t think so. And I have no stake in this order, and a considerable one in seeming a revolutionary transformation before my time comes to return to this Earth.
But there are at least two very different sets of strategy and tactics for us, depending on what time it is, and what works well at one time fails miserably in the other. So while keeping your eyes on the prize, look at the place and time of day soberly, so your feet are on the ground. Then you can move forward.
Waldon Bello, by the way, has a death warrant against him, from some people known to carry such things out. Unless you’re for settling disputes this way, I’d cut him some slack, especially with a seat from afar, as your’s is. Take that as advice from someone who once defended Pol Pot, and decided to learn a lesson or two.
RCP Response Ver. 3.0: Still Dodging Truth, Substance and Reality « Kasama said
[…] 9 […]
Zerohour on RCP Response: Both Ahead of Itself & Behind The Curve « Kasama said
[…] 9 […]
nsf said
As Carl stated above:
Concrete analysis of concrete conditions, as a wise man put it, had best be your starting point. If you don’t know where you are, it’s not so easy to figure out how to get where you want to go.
What do people think of Raymond Lotta’s ongoing analysis of global economic conditions?
John Steele said
Nsf – There’s some discussion of his analysis so far over on Kasama Threads. There’s a link to Threads on the right side near the top of the Kasama site. The discussion of Lotta’s analysis is at
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=151&st=0&#entry1270679
N3wDay said
There’s is a discussion of that going on here – http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=151
N3wDay said
the above post is directed to Nsf
When RCP Comrades Call: “Pick Your Stop, Time to Get Off” « Kasama said
[…] 9 […]
Bill Martin’s Rubber & Glue 3: The Symptoms of Exhaustion « Kasama said
[…] 9 […]
A Critical Approach to Communist Theory: Both Now and Later « Kasama said
[…] the 9 letters we talk about the encrustments and closing that happened to communist theory as a result of holding […]
Learning from Egypt: The Birthing of New Revolutionary Subjects « Kasama said
[…] The final letter of the “9 Letters to Our Comrades” calls this “traveling light”: […]