| Theory |
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The Devil at St. Avakian's February 15, 2004 by RedStar2000 |
There's another lefty on line who uses the expression "cargo cult Leninism"...and it's hard to imagine that the "Revolutionary Communist" Party (Avakianite) wasn't one of the groups he had in mind.
You'll note from this latest collection of posts that they rarely reply directly to any of the specific historical or theoretical points that I make...instead they stay "focused" on their "core message" -- that only they can liberate the proletariat. Without them, it can't be done.
"Salvation can only be attained through the Catholic Church" says the Baltimore Catechism.
With the RCP, it's sort of the same kind of thing.
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You think that what we communists do doesn't matter -- that the masses either make revolution or they don't. (i.e. it is an argument, made to the advanced, that there is no urgency for them to act.)
No, it matters to us.
What we do to emancipate our class from wage-slavery -- however marginal its historical effects -- follows from our knowledge of the real situation of our class. A "sense of urgency" can only derive from subjective factors--there's no real objective historical basis for it.
When abolitionists and ex-slaves organized the "underground railroad", they were hardly under any illusion that this would fatally undermine slavery or the state-power of the slave-holding class.
But it would serve "to help things along". The more ex-slaves in the north, the more speakers at abolitionist meetings with first-hand knowledge of the evils of slavery and the arrogance of slave-holders.
The more slaves who successfully escaped, the more the "awesome power" of the slave-holders didn't look quite so "awesome" any more.
When federal agents tried to re-capture escaped slaves, that was another weapon in the arsenal of the abolitionists...even some northern white racists resented federal efforts to enforce slavery to the point of indirectly allying themselves with the abolitionists.
What conscious communists can do, at their best, is "help things along".
Not play ***A WORLD-HISTORIC ROLE***, blah, blah, blah.
I don't want to sound unfeeling here, but the transition from capitalism to communism is not a block-buster movie project in which we are all competing for a "starring role".
That is one important thing that is wrong about the Leninist approach to revolution--you are deeply concerned with who is going to get the credit.
Look at the little blurbs you and others here drop into your posts every so often--"Here is where Bob Avakian made a deep and profound contribution to our understanding of blah, blah, blah".
It's not as bad as a pop-up ad yet...but the downside is that I know of no software that will block it either. (!)
Why do you want to make this guy into a "political rock star"? Are you so impressed with the bourgeois media's success at diverting the attentions of the masses with these cult figures that you feel as if you "must" have "one of your own" to "compete"?
True, the RCP is "your show" and I'm just a guy in the audience.
Who's not applauding.
And who knows that nothing really interesting is going to happen until the audience takes over the stage.
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You argue that all the examples of socialism were bullshit. You say Russia needed a bourgeois revolution (and was not ready for a socialist one) -- so the communists just caused the people more misery by trying to push too far.
To say that "all socialist revolutions" were not what they purported to be is not the same as saying they were all "bullshit".
Revolutions are never "bullshit"...in one fashion or another, that's one of the main ways that history moves.
Nor would I argue that the Russian Bolsheviks necessarily "caused" more human misery than would otherwise have been the case. Could a doubtlessly corrupt Russian bourgeois republic have staved off the designs of German imperialism in World War II? As "bad" as Stalin purportedly "was", the historical alternative could have been far worse.
And, as I pointed out elsewhere, would anyone care to argue that the gangster-fascist regime of Chiang's KMT was really "preferable" to Mao's "red" despotism?
But what you have to realize is that we've reached a point in history in which all the old scenery and costumes of the Leninist paradigm have become shoddy and worn...and easy to see through.
It's really no longer possible to fly some red flags and throw out some "Marxist" terminology and expect to maintain any credibility.
If there's nothing really substantively different in your vision of "improved" class society (socialism) from what we have now...then people not only won't "buy" it, they won't accept it as a gift.
Nor should they!
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And then in your evaluation of Maoism (in particular) you take that to its conclusion -- this is just some peasant phenomenon. No new methods of work. No new insights into socialism. No insights into restoration of capitalism. No insights into socialist economics. No insights into revolutionary warfare. No insights into methods of analysis, or philosophy, or methods of leadership or whatever.
Yeah, that's my summary. Of course, there's lots to be learned from Maoism if you yourself are a peasant revolutionary. Since the ideology is rooted in the material conditions of the peasant class, its practice in the appropriate circumstances will "work".
We, of course, are not peasants and we live in countries where only a small number of "kulaks" remain from the old peasantry.
If we try to apply Maoism to our material situation, nothing happens. It's like trying to repair a computer...with a pitchfork.
For us, Maoism is the wrong tool for the job.
It's not my place, of course, to advise "western" Leninists on how to develop their ideology...but if my advice were asked, I would tell them to go back to Lenin and start from there. Lenin, for all his many shortcomings, was actually oriented towards the working class...and not the peasantry.
His strategy might be wrong (in my opinion, of course), but at least it would be relevant.
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So your arguments (over and over) boil down to:
Nothing we do matters, and nothing we think matters. No need for marxism, no need for marxists.
Let's all sink deeper into our seats and snore.
I'd respond to this base canard but...it's time for my nap.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on February 9, 2004
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Instead of sitting here and debating the Russian Revolution till I die of old age, let's get into this point:
If the Bolsheviks had not taken the initiative and focused the revolutionary sentiment of the masses onto their oppressors and exploiters, and unleashed this revolutionary sentiment in a coordinated and conscious way, then there would not have been an October Revolution, and the Soviet Union would never have come into existence.
That is what is known as an assertion of inevitability.
You are saying (or whoever you're quoting is saying) that what did happen was the only thing that could have happened.
That is a common and respectable view among many historians...but if you are going to "hold to it" on this occasion, then you must hold to it on all occasions.
You can't "cherry pick" your historical developments so that you get credit for the "wins" and avoid blame for the "losses".
If the Bolsheviks "made" the October "revolution" then they also "lost" it. If the Maoists "made" the revolution of 1945-49, then they also "lost" it.
You can't, for example (as some Maoists like to do now), say that Lenin and Mao overcame imperialism to make revolution and then turn around and blame the ultimate defeat of those revolutions on imperialism.
It's a "package deal"--the more you allow a small group to "make history" for "good", the more they get the "blame" for "making history" for "ill".
Are you sure you want to go that route?
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This points to a fact that is not just particular to the Russian Revolution, but is universal in this world. To unleash, wage and win a socialist revolution some people are going to have to take initiative to see it happen and responsibility for it to succeed. Other material factors are involved in whether or not it will be able to win, but without the initiative, confidence, and responsibility needed, such a revolution would have a damn near impossible time even starting, and if it somehow did, would never be able to marshal the forces needed to establish socialism.
And this, of course, is sheer speculation. It could be true; it could be false; it could be true or false depending on a whole series of complex and particular circumstances.
What the two paragraphs really do is take the October 1917 experience and generalize it into a universal rule.
As a "universal rule", it has thus far been a universal flop--inspite of hundreds of "vanguard parties" in the advanced capitalist countries doing their best to "imitate" Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
Of course one can always blame the "backward masses" for failing to see the "need" to entrust their destinies to those who promise a more benevolent version of class society.
While that may provide some consolation in the winter of your discontent, it's not of much practical use.
Let me ask you this: granted that in any revolutionary period there will be people who will "take initiative" and "responsibility" for the formal "transfer of power", why does it have to be the RCP?
Assuming that the Greater New York Council of Workers' Deputies sees the need for an executive committee to handle its day-to-day decisions, why should you be in control of that committee?
And if you are in control of it, what happens when the next elections roll around and the Workers' World Party or Progressive Labor or ("God" save us!) the Socialist Workers' Party wins a majority of the deputies? Are you going to disperse the Workers' Councils "for their own good" and rule by decree?
That's what Lenin did! By early 1918 (before the start of the civil war), soviets that failed to return a Bolshevik majority were either dissolved or additional delegates were appointed so as to insure a Bolshevik majority.
Think that will fly...in the information age?
But, I digress. The correct response to your two paragraphs is that it would be extraordinarily foolish to generalize from a single (and temporary) success to the universe of proletarian revolutions at all times in all places.
There were many "roads to power" for the bourgeoisie; why should it not be the same for the proletariat?
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on February 10, 2004
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We may have opportunities to contribute to the liberation of people -- but to be in position to make those contributions we have a lot of work to do. If the moments of opening/crisis/and opportunity come, and we are *no where* -- then important opportunities can be thrown away.
This is, at least faintly, an almost bourgeois outlook...the revolutionary as "entrepreneur" on the prowl for "investment opportunities".
If you don't "get in on the ground floor", you're sunk! The "opportunity" is "thrown away".
I'm sorry, but this all strikes me as utterly subjective. Consider two rival Leninist parties: one says that such and such a situation is "a real opportunity"; the other says that it's a minor "tempest-in-a-teapot" and not worth fussing over.
We actually have little way of knowing ahead of time whether it's "a real opportunity" or not...and afterwards there can be decades of discussion on whether or not it was "a real opportunity".
So we judge "the easy way"...if the party that said it was "a real opportunity" grows substantially as a consequence of its participation, then we say "they got it right; it really was a real opportunity".
But if there is no success to celebrate, then we either say it wasn't a real opportunity after all or else we say that the party's line was fucked up in some crucial fashion...and "a real opportunity" was "thrown away". The Leninist party that claimed all along that it was a "tempest-in-a-teapot" now crows about its "correct evaluation" of the situation.
All pure subjectivity. It always boils down to "if we had done this" or "if they had done that", etc., etc.
Don't misunderstand me. We all want to make a "difference" in history. In certain very limited ways it is possible for us to do so.
But do you have any idea "how it looks" when you claim that this or that individual or small group was "indispensable"? Or even go so far as to claim that for yourselves?
The transition from capitalism to communism is indeed a "world-historic event"...it's the biggest change in human society since the emergence of classes some ten thousand years ago.
Do you really think "it can't happen" unless you or someone like you is there to "make it happen"???
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As if there is communist revolution without communists playing important decisive roles in that? (What planet is your experience drawn from?)
You betray your mixed feelings here. Which role do communists play? Important? Or Decisive?
Since we have not yet had a proletarian revolution in the Marxist sense (that is, in an advanced capitalist country), my "experience" comes from the same planet yours does...just a different part.
You are still trying to squeeze proletarian juice from a peasant fruit...an utterly futile endeavor.
As I noted earlier, I think conscious communists can "help things along", period. That may be "important" in certain limited circumstances...it will never be "decisive".
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Over and over, you have asked what possible contributions of Avakian people are talking about. (Just go reread your posts on ISF.) So -- complying in a friendly way -- I have mentioned in discussion when we are touching on one of those contributions.
Then you turn around and make this nasty comment -- when you yourself asked for this.
go figger.
Puzzling. I don't believe I've ever posted at ISF...perhaps you are thinking of someone else.
I have questioned the "contributions" of Chairman Bob here...but I sort of expected to see a developed argument that I could respond to, not just a series of blurbs.
In any event, and to avoid further misunderstanding, I withdraw the request. Let us hear no more of Chairman Bob.
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We need our own leaders, heros, organizations, ideas, movement, goals, dreams...And one key way to promote a revolutionary line and ideology in this society is to make millions of people aware of the lifeswork of Bob Avakian.
Spoke too soon!!! To be honest, I find this a simply staggering statement for a communist to make.
It sounds downright religious.
Is it so hard to understand that what the masses need is an understanding of communist ideas and not "leaders" and "heroes" and "dreams"? (Why not "myths" while you're at it?)
It is almost as if you see the relationship of communists to the masses as a kind of "courtship ritual"...you will inspire them with dreams and they will love you for it.
It makes me feel so..."old-fashioned". All I wish to accomplish is to enlighten people with communist ideas. I don't expect to be "loved" or even necessarily "liked" -- and I expect the masses to give up dreaming in favor of changing the real world.
Clearly, I am either far behind the times...or far ahead.
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For my part: I think MLM is omnipotent, because it is true.
Omnipotent?
Let us pray.
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First posted at AnotherWorld Is Possible on February 10, 2004
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The issue is not promoting a political line and leader, but the fact that some people don't like the revolutionary Maoist line and leader?
Well, there is that.
Speaking only for myself, I detest "leader worship" and "hero worship" in the realm of serious politics.
I think it always leads to a "bad end"...no matter who the chosen icon is.
Why? Because it's always an invitation to us to give up the hard work of figuring out things for ourselves...we let "daddy" take care of it. "Daddy" always has "our best interests" at heart...and he "knows a lot more than we do". All that's required of us is that we "do what daddy tells us to do" and everything "will work out fine".
Bob Avakian could be a perfectly decent chap with a poor understanding of Marxism. He could also be "Jack the Ripper".
Granting him a personal despotism--even over a tiny group like the RCP--seems to me to be a...well, imprudent decision. You're gambling that this one particular guy will not fuck you over...like so many leaders in the past have done.
It's your life, of course, and you can bet it on anyone you wish.
I would rather keep mine in my own hands. At least I can really trust myself.
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In the current climate, cynicism (especially about revolutionary projects) is fashionable. And revolutionary plans or enthusiasm is met with "oh come on, get over it."
There's some truth to that observation; we do live, after all, in a period of reaction.
But it's not my approach. I am certainly willing to entertain any ideas that people may have for revolutionary projects or strategies. But I insist on looking at them in the same way Marx and Engels looked at ideas when they were alive: in a critical fashion. Red-flag waving, "Marxist" rhetoric, and icon-worshiping do not impress me. I've lived too long and seen far too much of that sort of thing to be intimidated into silence about it.
Real communists don't need a "daddy".
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on February 11, 2004
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In academia, people put little citations at their own little "original ideas" -- and expect those nuggets to be *starred* with their names forever.
Indeed they do; often, their jobs depend on it.
Genuinely original "breakthroughs" are rare indeed. But they certainly do exist...and the names of the people that made those breakthroughs are rightfully honored even if, in the long run, only by historians.
Whenever someone claims to have made an original contribution to a field of knowledge, critics will gather at once...to see what holes they can poke, what faults they can find, etc. Sometimes an important discovery can actually be suppressed for decades--it's "on the fringes", a "crackpot notion", or even a "deliberate fraud".
But, as you know, material reality prevails. Sooner or later, the truth gets out. Perhaps someone rediscovers the suppressed discovery; perhaps new and compelling evidence suddenly emerges; etc.
And it goes into the books as a "win"...even if the honors are all posthumous. So-and-so made a brilliant discovery in 18-- or 19-- and the dolts surrounding her completely missed the significance. Fools!
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And obviously we are not talking about "new" works in that sense.
So I gathered. Your argument seems to be that Chairman Bob has simply come up with a variant on Maoist ideology...one that you feel incorporates and develops its "strengths" while negating its weaknesses.
So that we might someday speak of "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Avakianism".
And, of course, I'm obviously one of the "fault-finding" critics. Am I one of the "fools" who fails to recognize the significance of Avakian's contribution?
Or is "MLMA" really a "crackpot notion"?
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All the more reason to dig into this, and grapple with the conversation (about communism, revolution and ideology) Avakian has been unfolding over the last decades.
Yeah, I guess there's no getting around it.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on February 13, 2004
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On this point: Avakian explicitly does not have personal control over the RCP. The RCP wrote a detailed leadership document that affirmed the concept of collective leadership.
Avakian is chairman of the deciding body (the central committee when the congress is not in session). He does not "decide" in some "one-man management way."
Now there's a document that I would like to have a look at! But I would surmise that it's not available to the public.
Indeed, I think there's much to be learned from how organizations are put together on paper and how they actually function. You can see in the American constitution, for example, how it was originally drafted to keep the slave-holding aristocracy in power and how the rising bourgeoisie modified the provisions through amendments to ensure its own dominance after 1860.
In any event, you must realize that the more strenuous your efforts to "build up" your party's chairman, the more people will conclude that the RCP is a personal despotism...no matter how much you claim otherwise. Even people quite favorably disposed to Fidel Castro, for example, nevertheless assume that "Castro decides everything" -- a wildly implausible assumption given the man's age and the complexity of an entire society.
Also, people who join your party will start with the assumption that the Chairman "must be right" -- the more "famous" he is, the "righter" he will be thought. If the Chairman makes a mistake, who will have the courage to challenge him? And what support could she anticipate from the party's membership?
Then there is the problem of succession. Chairman Bob and I are about the same age...and even if he's healthier than I am (which is probably true), both of us feel the icy winds of mortality. If the chairman is "famous", who can replace him? As you noted (I think it was you), "anyone" can be selected to be Chairman of the Communist Party of China...but that doesn't make him another Mao.
Perhaps these are questions that you would rather "not think about right now".
But they are relevant to this thread and to the Leninist paradigm generally.
You may ignore them...but they won't ignore you.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on February 13, 2004
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The documents you'd love to get your hands on are available publicly, online even...
Well, it was only one document. And, in substance, rather thin. I've noticed a high "noise-to-signal" ratio in a lot of RCP material that has been referred to me. Still, we work with what's available, so...
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A leadership which can, at all times, keep strategic objectives firmly in the forefront of revolutionary practice. A leadership which can consistently and effectively keep the revolutionary movement from straying off course and which can recognize and take advantage of openings for action and advance. -- The Central Committee of the RCP (1995)
No "false modesty" here!
Well, do you find those ambitions realistic? Do you think a small group of people can do that?
In my opinion, this kind of ambition completely misunderstands the nature of mass revolution -- it is as if one proposed to "guide" a hurricane and keep it from drifting "off course".
A hurricane is a good analogy. The National Hurricane Center in Miami uses nine different mathematical "models" of hurricanes to predict the course and intensity of a real hurricane. The equations are enormously complex and it takes several hours of super-computer time to run them.
The models are very good ones...most of the time they agree closely and the hurricane really does stay very close to its predicted path and intensity. (From what I've seen, the models are slightly biased to predict a slightly more intense hurricane at landfall than actually happens...this is probably a safety precaution.)
Most would agree, I think, that human behavior -- especially in revolutionary situations when "order" is drastically upset -- is much more complex than the natural forces involved in creating and sustaining a hurricane.
And yet this is what the RCP proposes to "guide" and perhaps even "prepare" and "organize".
Can you even begin to grasp the magnitude of my skepticism? Try galactic!
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Today our Party continues to be an evolving expression, distillation, and concentration of the strivings of the masses of people for revolutionary change.
That's a claim...is it true? How would we know that?
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Our power resides in our collectivity--this enables us to correctly link with, unleash, and lead the initiative of the masses and give it its most powerful revolutionary expression in conformity with the fundamental interests of the masses.
Why should "collectivity" necessarily result in "correctly" linking with anything or leading anything?
It seems to me that a "correct" understanding of anything is independent of the number of people who have it or who were involved in reaching it. It's either "correct" or "incorrect"...whether the whole world thinks so or just one single person.
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This collectivity is expressed and realized through the collective functioning of the units of the Party on the various levels, and through the Party's chain of knowledge and of command up and down throughout the Party.
Hmm. "Chain of knowledge and of command up and down throughout the Party". That's beginning to sound familiar.
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...in order to concentrate the best of the masses' collective knowledge and experience over time and return it to the masses in the form of revolutionary line and policies and practical revolutionary guidance.
Yes, I suppose all serious communists try to do this in one way or another. If the masses spontaneously do something that we think is "good", we go to them and say "do it some more." And we usually add "while you're at it, you could try this next step."
I guess you could call this "revolutionary guidance"...but I don't think it's a "big deal". It seems like plain common sense to me. When working people "raise the ante" in class struggle, what kind of "communist" would try to discourage that?
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And we do so while maintaining the strongest possible wall of unity and discipline which is difficult for the enemy to breach.
The "fortress" mentality, eh?
Well, I can sympathize somewhat. Bourgeois ideology permeates every facet of our existence...it's in the air we breathe. The last 150 years has seen an endless procession of "revolutionary innovations" that turned out to be the "same old shit" underneath the glittery packaging.
But "difficult for the enemy to breach" is not the same as "impossible" for the enemy to breach. No fortress is ideologically "air-tight".
And the "fortress mentality" is one that, over time, becomes intensely conservative and unable to either effectively deal with new situations or confront ideas that really are new.
I have, as you may have guessed by this time, had some considerable contact with a fair number of "Marxist"-Leninist parties -- and the word that comes to mind is "time-warp".
For the most part, they are "stuck" in a certain time-period that loops back on itself over and over again. Since no one here will be upset at this example, I recently read of a British Trotskyist party arguing vigorously for "re-capturing" of the British Labour Party...on the basis of some quotes from Trotsky made more than 60 years ago. For them, history stopped in 1940.
I could mention other examples, of course.
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Inside the Party there is (and should always be) much collective discussion and wrangling over what to do, over right and wrong in the development of the revolutionary theory and practice to which all comrades contribute.
If true, that's "a good thing". Too bad the masses never get to see it. They might learn something.
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The Party organization consists of various small groupings and units, each with its own leadership, which funnel into various higher leading bodies. The collectivity of the Party as a whole is most concentrated, and best represented, in our Central Committee.
Well, you'd sort of expect the Central Committee itself to say that, wouldn't you? They're not going to say that the collectivity is best represented by the rank-and-file party members, are they?
The CC of the RCP wrote (after more than 60 lines of effusive praise of Bob Avakian): quote:
...and he has never even lost his sense of humor!
That's good to know. (?)
Not a single other member of the RCP is even identified in the entire document.
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The Central Committee of the RCP hereby enthusiastically reaffirms its respect, love, and firm support for Comrade Avakian and his role as Chair of the Central Committee of the RCP,USA.
How does one "love" a political leader? Do you send him Valentine's Day cards & flowers? Or Christmas gifts? Do you have "daydreams" about him? Imagine yourself being thrilled to meet him in person? Do you put his 30-year-old picture up on the wall?
You see, even if I were a Leninist, I could never be this kind of Leninist...someone who took seriously the idea of a "beloved leader".
It's an idea so alien to the culture of the working class in advanced capitalist countries...that I don't see how it will ever "fly".
It's just too weird.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on February 14, 2004
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I guess it's time to "sharpen" the struggle a little; the RCP guy is definitely in a waspish mood.
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Some people think that the "ambitions" of revolution and changing the world are unrealistic.
But I, of course, am not one of them. Revolution and changing the world are inevitable...IF Marx was right.
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To forge socialist revolution out of that requires "guiding the hurricane" -- or, as Lenin says, "diverting the spontaneous."
Emphasis added.
And this after I went to some length to show how difficult it is to predict a hurricane.
You propose to "guide" one. Very well, what kinds of algorithms have you developed to predict human behavior in periods of revolution? How long does your super-computer take to run your "models"?
Or do you envision yourself "just doing what Lenin did" in October 1917?
Wow! Perhaps you should go back to my previous post and consider more carefully what I said about political time-warps.
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Redstar is amazed that communists think they can lead mass movements and historical developments. And then he dismisses the role and politics of Lenin and Mao (who are valuable guides and examples and teachers in doing just that.)
Lenin staged a coup. Mao led a peasant revolution. If you want to do either of those things, those are good guys to study and learn from.
When it comes to proletarian revolution and communism, they're not of much use. So yes, I dismiss them. I have no interest in staging a coup or fomenting a peasant revolution.
(In both cases, by the way, their versions of "socialism" just led back to capitalism...so any "lessons" there would be almost certainly negative.)
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You always try to put words in people's mouths.
That's a criticism I hear with some frequency...so perhaps on occasion it's justified. It seems to me that I take what people say and draw the logical inference of their view.
If you say A and it seems to me that B is a logical continuation of that view, then I assume that you are comfortable with B.
The usually unstated alternative is that you're not really aware that B follows A.
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Answer: uh, because the point of the collectivity is leading the revolution? I don't think there is any way of explaining it to Redstar because he (a) thinks revolution is impossible (b) thinks leadership is impossible (c) thinks there is little to do to affect or accelerate historic processes.
That's a non sequitur -- my point is that "correctness" doesn't have anything to do with the actual number of people involved at any given point in time. There was a point in history when the knowledge of the correct size of the earth resided in the brain of one old Greek mathematician...and then he wrote a book and now anyone who's interested can look it up.
Simply because you have a collective -- whether it's "leading the revolution" or thinks it is or not -- is no "automatic guarantee" of "correctness"...which contradicts what the RCP document seems to be saying.
But, speaking of putting words in people's mouths, where and when have I ever said that "revolution is impossible"?
What I have said is that "making" a real proletarian revolution -- as if you were making a pizza -- is impossible.
Or, if you like, the Leninist paradigm cannot deliver on its promises; the nature of proletarian revolution will not permit that.
I think it's also reasonable to assert that "leadership" -- in the Leninist sense of "command & control" -- is likewise impossible in a real revolution.
As to "accelerating historical processes", I think that there are things we can do to "help". But I very definitely balk at the idea that history is something we can "mold" to suit our own priorities...it's too big...and far too complicated.
To tell people that we "can" do something that we quite obviously cannot do is to invite the justified scorn of the working class. That wouldn't be so bad if it was just us as people...but the scorn will attach itself to our ideas as well.
For example, "The USSR proved that communism can't work."
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This concept "chain of knowledge/chain of command" is an expression and application of the marxist view of the theory of knowledge (epistemology) to developing political knowledge.
Would you like to elaborate on this claim? I'm curious to see how a chain of command gets converted into a "theory of knowledge".
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Of course it's true. And of course the masses get to "see it" -- it is inherent in how communists work, not only within their movement, but among the masses.
Do you mean to say here that the RCP, unlike any other Leninist party that I've ever heard of, opens its internal disputes to the inspection of the masses???
I find this unbelievable...but I have to be willing to look at the evidence.
If you actually do this, then what becomes of the traditional Leninist doctrine that the party presents "one face and one line" to the masses? Have you junked that approach?
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But anyone who has been among the people knows how deeply people love various political leaders depending on their consciousness. Ever talk to old teamsters about Jimmy Hoffa or talk to coal miners about John L. Lewis. Or Black people who variously love Malcolm or Martin Luther King, or even Jesse Jackson. Ever discuss Ho Chi Minh with people of the Vietnam era? In World War 2 millions of fighters rose from their trenches with the name "Stalin" on their lips -- and not just fighters from the Soviet Union. Not to mention the profound love that people in China and around the world have had for Mao (both for leading the Chinese revolution, and then for opposing gray, stagnant counterrevolutionary Soviet bloc methods.)
I think you laid it on pretty thick there...but let it pass. Do you think this is a "good thing"? Something to be "encouraged"?
Of course you do. To me, such displays are evidence of profound backwardness...the ancient heritage of class society; the search for the good king. If only we could find "the good king" and put him on the throne of the world, then "all would be well". We would "love him" and he would "love us".
To those enmeshed in such fantasies, there is little that a real communist can say except WAKE UP!
There have never been and will never be any "good kings". (One reason for that is that you don't get to be a king by being "good".)
Some people believe in a "good God" and others in a "good king"...and it's all for nothing.
Very sad.
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Let me put it another way: is there any significant movement in history that has not put its leaders on its banners? (including the anti-leadership anarchists who uphold Durrutti and Makhno).
The answer to your question is mostly negative. SDS, to its credit, did not put its leaders on its banners...but to that you might well reply that SDS was not really a "significant movement".
But there is a question that stands along side yours. Has there ever been a historically "significant movement" that has actually freed us from the chains of wage-slavery and class society?
Not yet.
Is is possible that there might be some connection between the answer to your question and the answer to mine?
I think so.
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First, this is the third or fourth time that you have implied something about the people who are OUTSIDE the so-called "advanced" countries.
So-called? What are you implying? There are clearly advanced capitalist countries and others that are less advanced and some that have not even begun the transition to capitalism.
The political consciousness of the people in those countries corresponds more or less with the material conditions in those countries.
That's basic Marxism -- are you giving up on that?
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Second, you claim there is something in the "culture" of these "advanced" countries that rebels against leaders blah blah blah. I don't know what "advanced" corner you live in. But it is far from reality -- as any experience with the masses of workers in the U.S. will tell you.
Well, I suppose we could argue about who has "more experience with the masses"...but I see little point in it.
The general trend in capitalist societies as they develop (with ups and downs) is the discrediting of "leadership" and "authority" -- partly because of the demonstrated failure of this or that leader or authority to perform in a competent manner and partly because as the general cultural and educational level rises, people are more conscious of their autonomy (such as they think it is) and more resentful of anyone who attempts to infringe upon it.
"Faith" in "God", "Leaders", or anything else is a recurring casualty of capitalism.
Before people can overthrow a social order, they must first "disengage" their sympathies with all the major characteristics of that order. Every viable class society lives in an "age of faith" -- the abolition of class society requires the abolition of all faith.
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But, to me, it just shows again the wide gap between your views and ANY concept of political action -- the distance you are from any hope of liberation.
Now, now, let's not get carried away. There is no "gap" between my views and "any" concept of political action -- my concepts are just different from yours. In a real situation of potential or actual class struggle, we might even come to identical conclusions regarding the best thing to do next.
The difference is that I would merely propose the step and "let the people decide". If it were possible, you would command it.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on February 14, 2004
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Revolution is only inevitable in the sense that the contradictions of living society produce (sooner or later) living people (in groups, organizations, classes, intellectual movements, political parties, etc.) that make those changes.
Did you imagine I was speaking in terms of the "world-spirit"?
Come on! Yes, living humans develop the understanding required to both justify and execute revolutionary change. Who do you imagine is going to argue with that?
If you think that commonplace observation serves as a "material basis" for Leninism, then permit me to disabuse you of the notion.
It doesn't.
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And if human beings don't form organizations and develop plans, things don't happen.
Ah, but which humans and what plans and under what circumstances?
A commonplace observation is not sufficient foundation for your very particular form of organization and its plans.
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This is the standard high school anticommunist summation of these things.
You must have gone to a different high school than I did.
But I fail to see how it is "anti-communist" to state the simple truth of the matter.
I have no doubt that Lenin and Mao were subjectively convinced that they were "on the road to communism" -- that they thought they were "doing the right thing".
I don't think they were "power-mad maniacs" or "agents of the devil" or any of the usual slanders directed against them.
I do think that they profoundly misunderstood both the consequences of their actions and the constraints of material reality.
After all, even within the limits of the Leninist paradigm, how can you really establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat" in two countries where the proletariat was a small minority?
How could such a dictatorship not degenerate into a despotism?
Granted, this is "hindsight"...no one probably understood what was going to happen at the time Lenin and Mao began their work.
But that's why we study history, isn't it?
"Hindsight" keeps us from making the same mistakes over and over again.
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Or, perhaps you should also visit before spouting off (i.e. saying "I find this unbelievable.")
I have visited the site before. Perhaps you could recommend one or two threads where RCPers actually developed a serious argument with one another. The thread I looked at -- "straight to communism" -- was one in which all the RCPers jumped on some hapless wretch from Progressive Labor.
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Actually the whole language of "advanced" versus "backward" countries is colonialist.
Well, the words may be. But if you deny the material differences between the "imperialist" and the "colonized" countries, then it seems to me that you've tossed Marx into the garbage can.
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Bourgeois sociology is full of that language of "advanced," or "developing" etc. And (as in so many other ways) Redstar adopts whatever is floating through the bourgeois air, and (indignantly) insists it is "marxist."
You wish to quibble over terminology and then conclude that I "adopt whatever is floating through the bourgeois air"?
You're not being serious.
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The core issue we are debating is whether revolution is possible, and what the role of conscious activity is in fighting to have the larger world revolutionary process advance toward classless society. And whether we can just passively sit back and abandon the responsibility of struggling to understand events around us, and then transforming them in line with communist politics and goals.
There's that damn armchair again. Anyone who rejects the Leninist paradigm "must" be "guilty" of "passively sitting back" and "abandoning the responsibility" of "transforming events".
I shall pass over that grotesque assertion with the silent contempt that it so richly deserves.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on February 14, 2004
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However, it is "floating in the bourgeois air" that any firm belief is "ideological and metaphysical." The post-modern mood of agnosticism and despair holds we can't "believe" or embrace anything. That we can't know anything. That scientific understanding is merely "scientism" (i.e. another ideological illusion). That the very idea of "correct ideas" is a conceit. The very idea that we can act (based on some real knowledge) and change the world (in directions we have resolved to go) is not just an illusion, but is the roots of "totalitarianism" -- and so on blah blah blah.
All of this we need to reject.
Yes, I agree that is probably the most "fashionable" ideological current of the present time...and its usefulness to the ruling class is obvious.
Except there is a tiny kernel of truth in that mountain of obfuscation: "beliefs" are "metaphysical".
There is a profound difference between saying "I believe another world is possible" and saying "I think another world is possible based on this knowledge and that line of reasoning". The first is essentially religious; the second is scientific (or at least may be scientific).
I trust you will not think I'm merely "word-splitting" here; the choice between the metaphysical and the materialist approach to reality makes all the difference in the world.
If what you convey to the masses is a message of "faith in us, our party, our leader" then you have conveyed a religious message.
That wouldn't necessarily stop you from "winning" -- religious messages have proven to be, on occasion, very powerful in motivating the masses to act. Consider the "Crusades", for example.
But the outcome will be "rule by priesthood", especially the "great leader" (high priest). You may have heard, perhaps, of the "natural miracles" that supposedly "take place" on the birthday of North Korea's "beloved leader". These manifestations of superstition are not at all unusual in the circumstances -- don't they remind you of the sorts of things that were said about the supreme ruler in ancient despotisms...when the ruler was "god" or the "son of god"?
What the working class needs to hear is not a message of faith -- even in itself, much less in any leadership. What's needed is a materialist understanding of how the world came to be as it is...and what would have to be done to change it.
I note that you express the same sentiment...
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We need materialism -- we need to actually uncover and promote truths in a world of lies. And we need to change the world based on KNOWING something about that world.
But then you...hedge.
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And when we find someone who leads us in doing that, whose work "pulls back the veil" in many ways -- then we need to help make more people aware of that. For obvious reasons. Some people "hold some truth in their hands" and we need that for our liberation.
You want to make people aware that "this particular person" "holds some truth in their hands". I think the identity of the "truth holder" is utterly irrelevant and even a counter-productive distraction.
What really counts is the "truth"...and how true it actually is.
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First posted at AnotherWorldIsPossible on February 16, 2004
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