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February 5, 2008
The Boston Globe has an article about Bob Avakian saying, "Chairman Bob [is] about as much threat to the US government as my grandmother." On the other hand, Bob Avakian's party is a threat to MIM, with a death threat delivered in persyn to a persyn minding her own business as recently as the summer of 2006 during the struggle over Iran.
The RCP=CIA Avakian leads is also good at discussing lifestyle and MIM security in public. One of the reasons that RCP writing is so empty is that articles often cater to individuals via allegorical discussion. Content goes out the window. What there is will have an audience that is a majority spies.
There is a big difference between MIM's use of allegorical language and that of fruitflies attacking us. MIM's allegorical language targets the imperialists, to such an extent that one CIA lackey working with RCP=USA openly questioned whether MIM uses allegorical language. It comes from a false strategic conception that questions should be handled in an audience of spies instead of in persyn or not at all. It also has to do with resisting ultra- democratic spontaneity--something the pragmato-individualists at RCP=CIA are entirely incapable of. They submit to airing white nationalist pressure every time instead of teaching people methods for being scientific revolutionaries.
Getting the RCP=CIA to abandon Marxism, dissolve into mass organizations and follow MIM is urgent for security reasons. People clued in know who the top threats to MIM are. Much lower down the list, there are also Bush minions going to Fox News saying Clinton has a "hit squad." It is imperative to bring international pressure on the RCP=CIA to maintain the connection between the proletarian camp inside imperialist country borders and the Third World.
The responses to this article are predictable.
1. "MIM opposes the mass line."
Those who cannot get over sizeism will come up with a host of complaints derivative of organization size. So they will say MIM does not work with "masses"--as if anyone in the united $tates were, again opportunism equivalent to saying the sun sets every day and MIM does not recognize it.
Part of what is going on here is that intellectuals have the flexibility to work in connection to masses without respect to borders. Various activist types in contrast will tend to make patriotic or even more parochial assumptions, that if MIM is not visible in various ways within U.$. borders, then there is no "mass line" via a bourgeois populist misinterpretation of Mao.
The best solution for these people would be to move somewhere there are millions of revolutionary-minded masses to gain self-assurance. People continuously bitching about the subject in the imperialist countries are generally mother-whipped--not able to kick a question to a theoretical level. Being able to understand under what conditions the Leninist party will be under what pressures is beyond these sorts.
2. "MIM is being 'sectarian.'"
Again, here MIM is aggressive in argument the way mother and father are sometimes, but some people even if they see mother hit father with a rolling pin with no explanation will support mother at an emotional level. If father says mother made a death threat, mother-whipped people will not believe it or deal with it. It's too inconvenient.
The whole question of Iran and Islam is about how to relate to a nine-digit figure of people supporting Osama Bin Laden and a 10 digit figure of Muslims overall. Sadly, patriots believe themselves more important than that issue and do not understand the concept that sectarianism is putting the organization above the class--exactly what they do when they attack MIM, which is the only organization answering the Islam question correctly.
Sectarianism should be reserved as a charge for questions only affecting a few people at the expense of a class. It should not be a charge fired when the very class itself is being discussed. It is not sectarianism to refuse to work with the CIA against oppressed nations. One has to discuss the class content of an issue first before charging "sectarianism." If there is class content to a dispute, then there is no "sectarianism" in the conflict.
3. "MIM is being mean."
We offer again that Avakian fold his party into "Not in Our Name" and "World Can't Wait" and acknowledge MIM leadership. Questions of love, shelter and hand-holding belong in the anti-war movement. Love has a big role to play in the right places.
People in Avakian's circles should set the example and draw the distinction. "The party is a place for scientific advance-- intellectual organization --and I believe that makes a difference to the direction and possibilities of the anti-war movement."
As long as it is not the only thing Avakian is doing, there is a place for the petty-bourgeois triangulation line regarding "McJihad" in the anti-war organizations. Many will lack the judgment to be able to understand that in the Cold War, Islam could be an "opposite pole of the same stupidity," because Islamic lackeys were propped up by Uncle $am against another imperialist bloc.
So, there was Western Liberal stupidity and pro-Western Islamic stupidity, in the same countries. Today, Uncle $am no where props up Islamic regimes against another imperialist bloc. Quite the contrary, today, the united $tates puts I$rael first if anything on this question. This has to be seen again as a complete lack of judgment ability in the RCP=CIA. How is it possible that that party could not see where the magic weapons of united front and armed struggle were pointing on this question and boiled down everything to the party, a persynality cult? If "opposite sides of the same stupidity" are at physical war with each other, it's time to recognize flow into a new set of contradictions. This is not an ultra-left Menshevik line reinforcing a right opportunist line opposing Leninism in the same party in the same country. Such opposite errors of the same stupidity occur when the underlying class situation is the same for both errors.
In the Islam case, it would again be RCP=CIA's mechanical view of the world to see Islamic peoples equated with Amerikans class-wise. That's the only way that Avakian zombies can see McJihad and U.$. imperialism as opposite poles of the same stupidity. Imperialism is not a stupidity. That is language appropriate for dynamics in a single party or movement. Imperialism is a system run by an historically unique class. The oppressed nations opposing it have to unite.
4. "MIM is too much about purges and writing off."
This whole discussion is similar to the first charge about no "mass line," which some people are just using as an excuse to water.
When MIM set up its first bureaucratically formal joint discussion we had a pre-discussion with a white female and Black female about why we must agree in advance not to charge users of the forum with harassment of any kind. Probably that comes as a surprise to some of our readers stereotyping MIM, but actually MIM struggles to protect its channels of communication.
There was also a struggle to prevent people from starting the discussion before this was understood. It worked out, but outside the centers of post-modern upsurge in the 1980s and 1990s, it might not have been clear that MIM was actually the one trying to stop decadent writing off. Charges of racism and sexism generally go to the line level regarding general enemies and not the lifestyle level, and certainly not the verbal level of struggle. Racist line and racist harassment are separate.
It's regrettable that people go to the state sometimes to attack MIM, in which case there has to be writing off. On the other hand, MIM does tend to write off people in connection to cardinal principles. People struggling with us on the third cardinal have not been written off, but MIM would not undertake struggle with people showing obvious signs of resistance. The web page is for the public. Hand-holding is not for the public.
Hand-holding damages security but also the flow of information. Sometimes people want to be unaccountable in persynal ways indistinguishable from spying. If one has seen struggles where an identity is used to protect oneself from aggressive struggle, then one knows where MIM is coming from in handling intellectuals of the post- modern centers. The real underlying problem is mother-whipped resistance to science.
Mao himself was once demoted and he turned out OK.
Questions of hard struggle and writing off are connected to accountability and principle. On the question of being mother-whipped, Kristeva asks us to consider the daughter with a murdered father. Perhaps we should suspect that she compensates and successfully enters the symbolic order, thus being able to take up MIM-style internationalism.
So what if it is true that where one is female and one is quite clear she has seen injustice to the father or absence caused by the mother-- that this group of females has greater scientific achievements than other females. The wars the Soviet Union faced, the eradication of men doing World War II--did this contribute to the scientific advance of females who could not help being sure they were "mother-whipped," because men were not around? There's no avoiding in that situation: "I had no adult male influence in my life and I have to make up for that." Conversely, in 1976, the move toward technocracy disadvantaged females in China, because Chinese had a strong, in tact family. Is this really true, that where the female knows for sure she is lacking some male presence in her life, she can compensate and take up science, but not in general?
That brings us to the next point.
5. "MIM is too pessimistic."
Again, the point of the party is to know how things work and not waste time on things that don't work.
Important truths often cause initial despair. Rosa Luxemburg faced despair over World War I, the way intellectuals generally did, but Lenin's attitude embraced a more science-friendly approach. His approach was that World War I did indeed show something terribly important about class struggle, but in the midst of decadence he was happy to see the imperialists make a mess of themselves. He even found cheery slogans to put on reality by celebrating defeat of his own rulers.
He was not about conserving decadence. So in the imperialist countries the task is to get into the "mess" and figure out how it works--not just to despair. The ones painting the terrible picture of World War I are not to blame. It is the mother-whipped weaklings who cannot take the painting who are to blame. No matter how awful the message, one should not blame the messenger. If Lenin could be optimistic in the midst of World War I--then obviously charges against MIM for being "pessimistic" are stupid by comparison.
So if the terrible truth is that parasitism dominates, still there cannot be 100% loss and also there cannot be 100% success in cutting off proletarian individuals in the imperialist countries from the world's real masses.
As in rock music, the best revolutionary science often comes from contemplating the edge, the "dark" and brooding. Kristeva pondered the same gender questions and abandoned Maoism. The point of despair is dangerous but full of opportunity.
Maoists should confront Kristeva, who even writes on despair as a gender-related topic. Is she correct that MIM-style internationalism is only for fringe-style females anywhere in the world? Is it always going to be the females with murdered fathers or lesbians who are revolutionary scientific leaders? Is it true that no matter what one does, females will not proportionately enter the symbolic order and have to be left at the level of love, emotion and aesthetics? Is principled Joreen-style accountability simply alien to the female, and hence the problem in vanguard parties?
Avakian says that Chrisitianity is the imperialist answer for the gender aristocracy. We would say the Christian fascist thesis should not be elevated too high, because the gender aristocracy dynamic is not principal. Finance capital did not throw the Democrats, State Department and CIA in prison under the Bush regime. That did not happen, no despair or over-analysis due.
Not in MIM's experience, but in looking at the 1960s as they flowed into the 1970s, despair is due for what happened to imperialist country Maoism with the burgeoning of pseudo-feminism. How can we deny Kristeva her despair on the one level? Then when we look at the resistance or non-dealing with the MIM gender line, again, is Kristeva just right? Is that why there is not even an alternative to the MIM gender line out there, no competition even offered? (Spare us the lines that are basically reducing gender down to nation and class.)
Overall, it is correct to "feel" despair in connection to imperialist country gender questions at first. But then we must go past the Rosa Luxemburg stage and see what kind of "mess" did imperialism create itself. And MIM did this, and we have found a couple things--a reduction in the birth rate and thus less cannon fodder, and a lack of ability to focus in certain important subjects, something also referred to by Avakian. So what was so bad then about taking up the MIM line on the gender aristocracy? Did MIM say all females in the world were gender aristocracy? No. Does even the gender aristocracy give imperialism an air-tight solution for its problems? No. Would one even answer these questions without despairing first? Probably not. If you see World War I, you better despair first. Then try to follow up in Lenin's manner. If you didn't despair, we might be worried that you did not notice how the bourgeoisie sent the proletariat to war.
6. "MIM is just quitting or dissolving."
Sometimes a lot of theory is up on the blackboard for people to see from afar, but they can't figure out how it is in practice. The most parochial cannot even see the masses involved. One way to find out is for MIM to stop practicing it and see what happens. An example was how the Clintons won New Hampshire. There was a lot of talk, but the Clintons proved something their way. It's the same thing, now what if Kobe Bryant just decided to stop playing one day? What is going to happen? There can be a lot of discussion before-hand, especially with the tabloids racing for profits, but when it actually happens, then we find out for sure.
MIM is sure that Avakian and some of his contemporaries are aware of 10% of our current influence. MIM has a decisive and historical influence on the national bourgeoisie right now that no one even discusses. Therefore, some things that MIM does will not be apparent if MIM stops playing.
Clued in people will see that MIM is saying for intellectuals to do the things only they can do for the communist movement. That means if they stop doing those things, there will be results that one can see. It is not just a matter of religious faith in a party.
Conclusion
"MIM opposes the mass line," "MIM is being sectarian," "MIM is mean," "MIM is too harsh," "MIM is about purges and writing off," "MIM is for revenge like Bin Laden," "MIM is too pessimistic" and "MIM is just quitting" are all the same thing--people fearful of the critical gaze. They are all affect-laden charges from mother-whipped Liberals. These are the kinds of people who rush to the defense of the mother even if she has nothing to say in her conflict with the father.
In other contexts these false "mass liners" would be born-again Christians. In contrast, the finance capitalists are more advanced than these mother-whipped would-be scientific communists. If one does a Google search for "make money when the market is down," "making money when the market is down" etc. one while will find countless people including the likes of Forbes Magazine--not a bunch of whining about how the analysis is "too pessimistic." The finance capitalists would love to have the equivalent of a MIM to tell them where reality is at and what direction it is going, because the finance capitalists can conceive of strategy and tactics once line has been set. Our supposed comrades who might as well be born-agains cannot do that. They are fouling up the international communist movement and creating a bad impression of Lenin.
The RCP=CIA way of writing off the mother-whipped is to let them be in a party through love of Avakian. Unlike RCP=CIA, MIM never writes off people's scientific capabilities and says, "no, love belongs elsewhere. We believe you can love and also analyze, and without knowing how society works, one cannot change it. One has to be able to look for opportunities for progressive change. Wishing for change does not make change and trying harder to protect mother only very rarely makes change." Often times by hand-holding or watering, one delivers a non-political or pre-scientific message that incorrectly blocks scientific development. Because of the problem of "mixed messages" so delivered, writing someone off to handle their own thoughts can be a way to advance people scientifically. In Leninist theory, we say we let people handle their own bourgeois and white nationalist spontaneity with publicly provided resources anonymously delivered.
Note:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/01/27/free_bob_avakian/?page=3