| Theory |
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Disrupting the Services at St. Avakian's January 28, 2004 by RedStar2000 |
The "Revolutionary Communist Party" (Avakianite) has been kind of "busy" on the internet these days, spreading the "gospel" at several left message boards. As you probably know, I have never hesitated to carry "the banner of the damned" into battle with "the saved"...thus a return visit to St. Avakian's.
My reserved pew is in the shadows in the back of the church...where I unceasingly harass the disciples and their priests.
The "devil's" work is never done...but he has a lot of fun doing it.
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The speaker answered: "Look, I'm fat. you can see that. And I have been on many diets, which sometimes made some progress and then were reversed. So, I now see the light! I'm going to adopt your logic: the reason my weight loss failed is in the very idea of dieting. I'm not going to diet anymore, I'm just gonna to go STRAIGHT to thin!"
Not a new story; in fact, I think it's even been posted here before.
It would have been more interesting if the guy had not tried to be "witty" and instead had offered a critique of the Progressive Labor Party position. The PLP, in fact, proposes to replace the state with the party. Everyone has to be in the party; everyone has to submit to the discipline of the party; and the leadership of the party is completely unaccountable--even nominally--to the membership. The PLP doesn't even bother with elections inside the party any more; the leaders are "leaders for life".
What the PLP calls "communism" is really class society by a different name.
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The problem is that in previous revolutions, something happened and those revolutions were turned back, things got nasty and the oppression and exploitation re-emerged within society.
Emphasis added.
I like that. "Something happened." It sounds so...indefinite, so vague and fuzzy.
It was "just one of those things, just one of those crazy things...".
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The tendency is toward placing the blame on the transition period, then attempting to come up with ideas to bypass the transition itself in order to leap to a classless stateless society, and thus to attempt to skip over the possibility of counter-revolution within the period of transition. So the problem that people are trying to solve is that of restoration.
Well, I think we can rule out divine intervention and personal demonology...so that doesn't leave many alternatives.
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In general, the solution that they propose is to wait until some point in the future, after a lot of ground work (and there does have to be groundwork for revolution), and when people will be ready and society will be ready to make a leap to a classless and stateless society.
Well, they won't exactly be "waiting"...they will be doing that groundwork, explaining to people why proletarian revolution is both possible and desirable and proposing in as much detail as practical what the shape of a classless society will be like, what will have to be done to make it work, etc.
Otherwise, yes, that's the general idea.
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Various forms of radical democrats, anarchists and semi-anarchists think that we can solve the problem of restoration by extending the period of preparation until the problems are solved "before the revolution starts."
That's a little bit misleading. It's not given to us to either "extend" or "shorten" the "period of preparation" for proletarian revolution. Massive revolutions, real ones, depend on material conditions far more profound than any relatively small group of people can hope to "control" or "guide". The old system reaches a period of prolonged crisis in which it can no longer function...and, if we are fortunate, the masses rise up and overthrow it.
That's not inevitable, but it's a "high probability" event. Other outcomes are possible but less probable.
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This is a plan for postponing revolution forever. And that's what's wrong with it.
If you can't make revolution against capitalism, until a huge section of the people have *communist* consciousness -- you will never revolt against capitalism.
Well, as indicated, it's not a "plan" but rather a conclusion drawn from history. It's how real revolutions actually happen.
Will the people develop "communist consciousness" on their own, as a consequence of the normal functioning of capitalist society?
If Marx and Engels had never lived, would perceptive individuals have nevertheless discovered the same things as those guys did?
Does the actual day-to-day experience of being a wage-slave "generate" the "idea" of abolishing wage-slavery?
I think the answer to all three of these questions is yes!--and so did Marx and Engels.
But we could be wrong. The kind of "class for itself" consciousness that Marx and Engels predicted has been slow in arriving. It has emerged here and there, briefly and sporadically, bubbling to the surface and then subsiding back into placid "trade union consciousness" or even the muck of utterly demoralized servility.
In periods of reaction--like this one--it seems that "it will never happen" or at least it will never happen on a sufficient scale as to make any difference.
I suggest that these pessimistic impressions--and the measures of desperation that they provoke--are products of the brief life spans of individual humans. We are, to a large extent, "fixed" in our own temporal period and find it difficult to grasp the "longer" events in history. Try as we may, we almost always succumb to the temptation to think that "tomorrow" will be "sort of like today".
It won't be...at least if history is any guide.
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Socialism is born from the contradictions of capitalism. It is a transitional society. So, these contradictions will still exist, and will have to be dealt with in a manner that will bring society closer and closer to eliminating class contradictions in society altogether.
And speaking of "measures of desperation", this is exactly to what I refer. These folks believe that "communist consciousness" is not an emergent property of capitalist society but must rather be artificially imposed on the "stupefied masses"..."for their own good", of course.
They "mean well"--at least the ordinary members undoubtedly do. But looking at present reality, they can't see anything changing "for the better" unless they "make it happen". The "sweep" and "magnitude" of historical change is something that they've never really grasped.
The most they can see is a "better form" of class society, somewhat more "humane", less grossly exploitative, less openly racist and sexist, etc.
"From" there, they think, we can go "on" to communism...even though that never happened in practice.
"Something happened" to prevent it.
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First, to join a Maoist party you have to dedicate your life to the world-historic process of transition to communism, classless society.
It's a plus if you can do without sleep...indefinitely.
One should always be deeply suspicious of those who advocate the "Aztec theory" of political activity--you know, where you drape yourself on the altar of history and cut out your heart "for the revolution".
Revolutionary politics is not a religion and doesn't require self-immolation.
It does require, though, that "you keep your head about you".
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The Maoists "win people to communism" all the time.
Curious, since that's not what they actually plan to implement. Their first project is socialism...a form of class society.
Whatever they are "winning" people to, I don't think it's communism.
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The idea that 5 million workers say "yeah, classless egalitarianism is a good idea" and that this is somehow enough to actually create such classless egalitarianism (all at once, in one leap) is totally idealist.
No more so than creating "socialism" or anything else. The actual kind of classless egalitarianism that they might create would depend greatly on the material conditions that they found themselves in; many countries in the world today are simply too backward and underdeveloped to sustain a communist society.
But that too is changing. Capitalism is relentless in spreading into every corner of the world, shoving aside all the old pre-capitalist social formations. The material conditions for communist society continue to develop and even accelerate as capitalism ages.
And with that, of course, comes the growth of communist consciousness...even if we can't see it yet, it's there, digging away at the foundations of capitalist society.
And when real proletarian revolution "suddenly" emerges "to everyone's surprise", we'll be able to echo Marx: "Well dug, old mole."
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First posted at Che-Lives on January 16, 2004
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...and in fact there were places where Marx has been proven wrong over time through practice.
No question about it...and that even happened in his own lifetime.
He was a mortal man...and not a "god" or a "prophet".
But I think it's often interesting to look at the various criticisms of Marx or "proofs" that Marx was wrong about something...and see what sorts of conclusions were and are being drawn.
For example, bourgeois historians and even some bourgeois sociologists "use Marxism" in a non-revolutionary way--stripped of its revolutionary content, Marxism remains useful for analyzing class societies past and present...certainly superior to anything they have ever come up with. (They do this without ever mentioning Marx by name, of course.)
Some "left-Keynesian" bourgeois economists are not above borrowing from Marx as well.
And the apparent failure of Marx's prediction of the "immiseration of the proletariat" at the beginning of the 20th century laid the ideological foundation for the collapse of Social Democracy at the beginning of World War I.
What they all had/have in common is the rejection of Marx's revolutionary conclusions as "falsified by history".
Without victorious proletarian revolutions in several advanced capitalist countries, revolutionary Marxism remains a hypothesis which those folks would very much like never to be tested.
Of a somewhat different character is the Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist critique: that "proletarian" (really peasant) revolutions must take place throughout much of the underdeveloped world before the advanced capitalist countries will be sufficiently weakened to make proletarian revolution possible there.
This critique looked fairly robust in the 1960s and 1970s--"The East Wind Prevails Over the West Wind", and all that.
It looks pretty anemic now; the "west wind" is prevailing more than ever before. The U.S. imperialists and their lackeys don't have "everything" their own way, of course. There is scattered resistance on every continent, of various and even conflicting ideological tendencies. Anti-globalizationists in Europe and Muslim fundamentalists don't have much in common...except a determination to resist American hegemony.
But, for the moment, the enemies of the empire remain weak and divided.
I can see the appeal of the Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist critique of Marxism to revolutionaries that actually live in underdeveloped, colonialized countries. Right or wrong, it puts them "center-stage" in the global revolutionary process.
What is more difficult for me to understand is why "western" Marxists find that thesis so seductive. Does it serve as kind of a "historical excuse" for the failures of western revolutionaries? Do western Marxists "feel guilty" because they haven't "lived up" to Marx's expectations?
Whatever the reasons, the thesis provides no strategy or even the possibility of strategy for western revolutionaries except as "support groups" for distant revolutions. In the U.S. today, you can easily find a "support group" for whatever distant revolution you personally admire...from southern Mexico to Nepal, with many intermediate stops.
A "support group", of course, is not really a political group in the Marxist sense at all. It is a kind of "progressive charity" with a much smaller bureaucracy than traditional bourgeois charities.
It also has the character of a lobbyist or "pressure group" in the bourgeois political landscape. On the one hand, we have the "We Hate Fidel" Gusano Political Association and, over here on the other hand, we have the "We Love Fidel" Solidarity With Cuba Association...and these groups compete with each other for attention in the bourgeois media and influence with bourgeois politicians.
What seems to be missing from Marxism in the west is an actual attempt to apply it to class struggle at home. It's embarrassing to admit, but even some of the anarchists are at least trying to participate in and radicalize class struggle in some western countries...where are the real communists?
It's a puzzle...and I think Marx would have found it as puzzling as I do.
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First posted at Che-Lives on January 18, 2004
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quote:
I'm not sure what to say to your last post. It seems that you have the RCP and Bob Avakian confused with MIM.
Not at all. The Maoist Internationalist Movement are widely understood to be "comic book Maoists", more interested in spelling reform (humyn, etc.) and "revolutionary chastity" than in anything real.
If you think that I have misrepresented the essential Maoist hypothesis, tell me wherein I have erred.
Or answer a simple question:
Does the RCP accept Marx's hypothesis that proletarian revolution will first take place in the advanced capitalist countries?
Or does it accept Mao's hypothesis that anti-imperialist revolutions must first sweep the underdeveloped world and weaken the advanced capitalist countries to the point where proletarian revolution can take place there?
It's a pretty clear choice between the two and leads to radically different strategies within the advanced capitalist countries.
The Marxist hypothesis leads to a strategy of attempting to build support for proletarian revolution "at home".
The Maoist hypothesis leads to "support groups" for distant revolutions.
Of course, there's nothing that says you "have to decide"--and my limited knowledge of Chairman Bob's methods suggests he will probably lay some chips on both numbers.
But, for want of a better way to put it, I think your "heart" is in one place or the other.
If you fundamentally perceive your own exploitation and oppression as primary, then "revolution at home" will be your focus.
If you think--in a sort of half-conscious way--that others are far more exploited and oppressed than you are, then you will be inclined to "cheer-lead" for those distant revolutions. Their "need" is "greater" than "yours".
The history of the "revolutionary" left in the advanced capitalist countries has mostly been one of "cheer-leading"...going all the way back to 1918 but especially after 1960 or thereabouts.
It's understandable...people want to go "where the action is" if only in their heads. Every month or two on this board, some young lad will post to the effect that he intends to go "join some guerrilla group" as soon as he's old enough...and which one would we recommend.
As you've probably gathered, I think that's a bad idea.
What's a good idea? Did you know that "platformist anarchists" in Montpelier, Vermont, are trying to organize "one big union" for the whole city? They have quite a few workers signed up already. They've won the support of the United Electrical Workers union. They reject the apparatus of the National Labor Relations Board...in favor of direct confrontation between workers and bosses.
That doesn't mean they reject solidarity with the exploited and oppressed in other places...it means they think that the best way to show real solidarity is to directly attack the common enemy, the capitalist class.
I don't mean to exaggerate this effort; Montpelier is a very small city and Vermont is a very small state...and they haven't won much of anything yet (one small contract, I believe).
But you can easily see where something like this might lead someday.
A good place to go to.
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In fact, I had noticed through much of this debate you have not been debating against the positions that I put forward but against some idea you have of what you think my position must be.
Be specific; if I have misunderstood you or carelessly distorted your real position, tell me and I will respond with a more pertinent post.
You understand, of course, that there's not much I can say when you go off on a rhapsody about Chairman Bob.
I don't worship at that church.
quote:
I really think that you should check out the RCP's draft programme - if for no other reason than to know what it is you are debating against.
As you know, it is a massive document and time is always short.
And there is so much to read...
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First posted at Che-Lives on January 19, 2004
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quote:
However, materialist dialectics (not dialectical mysticism) is the theoretical underpinnings of the Marxist method -- without which Das Kapital and the manifesto would have been impossible.
I disagree.
I think that the "theoretical underpinning" of the Marxist method is historical materialism and that "dialectics"--however useful Marx and Engels might have found it as scaffolding when their theory was still developing--should have been discarded as superfluous.
I contend that you (or anyone) could begin with historical materialism, class analysis, empirical data, and ordinary logic and arrive at a reasonably accurate analysis of any social phenomenon...without bothering with "dialectics" at all.
The fact is, had not Marx grown up in an era in which Hegel "dominated" German philosophy, we would know "dialectics" only from a footnote in "history of philosophy" texts.
Even as you and me, Marx was once young and impressionable.
In my opinion, "dialectics" didn't "hurt" Marx and Engels; when they went to work, they used the same scientific method that everyone uses...argument and evidence.
After all, asserting that X happened and not Y "because" of the "dialectic" is not any different from saying it happened "because" of "God's will".
"Dialectics" can't explain anything in a useful way.
Marx and Engels were sincere and committed revolutionaries.
Others, years later, have made entirely different uses of "the dialectic".
And we have, as I previously noted, a "perfect example" from the "anti-redstar2000 post"...
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In order to uproot the basis of a need for leadership, one must surpass classes, a process that requires leadership.
If I were to say to you: "in order to liberate women, we must first oppress them even more than they are now"...what would be your reaction?
From a "dialectical" standpoint, that is just as valid as the statement about leadership.
You see the problem? "Dialectics" is the logical equivalent of arithmetical division by zero. In arithmetic, if division by zero is permitted, then you can "prove" that any number is "equal" to any other number. That's a useless version of arithmetic...as "dialectics" is a useless "tool" of social analysis--it can be used to "prove" anything.
That slavery is freedom, for example.
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Without materialist dialectics what do you have? Voodoo Marxism?
Well, you have this...
The Tools of Marxism
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Being that you have thrown out the method, I don't find the cynicism surprising at all!
I think that "cynicism" is another one of those qualities that's "in the eye of the beholder". One person's "cynic" is another person's "realist".
But one should not forget the word's origins. The original Greek cynics were corrosive critics of all of the ruling class mythologies of their era.
Not a bad place to start.
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What a shock to you it must be to encounter Bob Avakian's works when you hold such ideas! Here is someone using that method that is capable of making fresh analysis and deepening the understanding of Marxism. Your beliefs seem to say 'but wait, that is impossible!' yet, there he is -- living proof!
Fresh analysis? Deepening the understanding of Marxism? Living proof?
We are now on the 8th page of this thread and I just went back and looked at all the previous posts. Both you and I and others have quoted from Avakian's writings.
I have seen no evidence in the quoted excerpts of anything resembling a "fresh analysis" or a "deepening of the understanding of Marxism".
You may, if you wish, assert that Avakian is the foremost living exponent of Leninism-Maoism. I will not contest that assertion (though rival Leninists certainly will).
I simply don't think that's "anything to boast of".
I assert, in fact, that Leninism-Maoism is a demonstrated failure in the advanced capitalist countries...and that a Bob Avakian personality cult will not change that.
Finally, if you are "really serious" about revolution, I think that you must confront--sooner or later--the ultimately reactionary implications of the Leninist paradigm.
Leninism, like Social Democracy, was a wrong turn...an enormous historical blunder which should be placed in a museum and otherwise ignored.
Do we need a "fresh analysis" and a "deeper understanding of Marx"? You bet!
And we'll get one...eventually.
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First posted at Che-Lives on January 21, 2004
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While we obviously disagree on many points, it amazes me that you continue to mischaracterize what you are debating against without taking the time to find out what it is. I find it a very dishonest approach and very misleading to those who may be reading this.
It's not sufficient to say that I "mischaracterize" or have a "dishonest approach" without stating the alternatives in a clear way.
I cited a specific example of the "use" of the "dialectic" from someone who supports your party...not a "revisionist".
Here it is again...
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In order to uproot the basis of a need for leadership, one must surpass classes, a process that requires leadership.
In plain language, that means that in order to "free" ourselves, we must submit to the dictatorship of a "vanguard party" and a "great leader". No other meaning is remotely plausible considering the source.
And then I asked you a direct question...
quote:
If I were to say to you: "in order to liberate women, we must first oppress them even more than they are now"...what would be your reaction?
You cannot uphold a "general principle" and then balk at its specific applications...if you're serious.
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This idea of 'one big fuzzy dialectic' indeed has nothing to do with the method of Marx, Engels, Lenin or Mao -- or Bob Avakian for that matter.
That is "easy" to say. But all the evidence that I've seen suggests that fuzzy is exactly the right word. You can use it to "prove" anything you want...which means that, in fact, you've proved nothing.
And you're right back at square one...again.
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First posted at Che-Lives on January 22, 2004
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Why no antithesis of communism?
The pertinent question!
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because the history of society is a constant class struggle eventually resulting the complete dissolution of class at which point the struggle is over.
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It is the most advanced and "correct" stage of society.
If you didn't know anything about "dialectics", answers like those would suggest at once that "something's wrong".
After 150,000 years, "all of a sudden" human history "stops"? That can't possibly be right.
Yes, there will no longer be economic classes as they were known under capitalism.
But communism is not "Heaven" and humans do not become "angels".
There will undoubtedly be new conflicts and struggles...over matters which we cannot, perhaps, even imagine, taking forms that no one has yet thought of.
Human history does not "end" until the last human being in the universe dies.
But this is what comes of "dialectics"...it always seems to end up with stuff that makes no sense.
As I once noted in another thread, the development of communist theory would have proceeded far more smoothly if Marx and Engels had been educated in France and England instead of the Grand Dungeon of Prussia and its philosophical warden Hegel.
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First posted at Che-Lives on January 22, 2004
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quote:
You would think, reading RS2000, that Marxists who uphold Materialist Dialects only see one contradiction within all of society, indeed - within all the universe! But that is far from the truth.
Contradiction is the key to the existence itself. Every phenomena in the universe is driven forward by its own internal set of contradictions, however this is not obvious on the surface.
If you want to assert that "Every phenomena in the universe is driven forward by its own internal set of contradictions", fine. But until you specify the details, you haven't said anything useful.
But more importantly, once you do specify the details, you don't need the dialectic.
That is, an accurate description of any natural or social phenomenon will include by definition its "laws of motion", "tendencies to change and in what directions under what conditions", etc. To drag in "dialectics" is to impose a "meta-description" that is superfluous.
To say that "contradictions" hold the atom together is no significant improvement on the atomic hypothesis of Demicritus.
To specify (mathematically) the four forces that affect atomic structure and change tells us something useful about atoms and how they actually "work". To verify those forces by experiment really "nails it down".
To say that human history develops "because" of "contradictions" is, again, a useless statement.
To empirically demonstrate that it is characterized by class struggle that ultimately derives from changes in material conditions and human technology...now we're beginning to learn something useful.
The more we can learn about how those factors interact with each other to produce social change, the more assuredly we can take political action with the hope of getting the anticipated results.
You can, of course, take any natural or social phenomenon and "make it fit" into "dialectics"...but why? If you really understand the phenomenon, you don't need "dialectics". And if you don't really understand the phenomenon, sprinkling your remarks with "dialectical terminology" may or may not serve to successfully disguise your real ignorance...but your practice will be crap! You won't "have any idea of what you're really doing".
Consider the embarrassment of Frederick Engels--The Dialectics of Nature--which hardly anyone bothers to read any more...for good reason.
It is packed with illustrations of the "power" of "dialectical analysis"...however, since it was based on 19th century science, it's almost all wrong! Of course, every 19th century science text is almost "all wrong"--Engels made use of the best science available at the time.
His error was to assume that "dialectics" was a "guarantee against error".
It's not...in fact, it doesn't help a bit.
I use the phrase "dialectical mysticism" to describe all such foolery...regardless of whether it's overtly idealistic (Hegel) or nominally materialist (Marx, etc.). It is an arbitrary "special logic" that is disconnected from real world phenomena. It can, as I indicated, be used to "prove" anything.
Mysticism can always be used to "prove" anything.
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First posted at Che-Lives on January 22, 2004
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quote:
You want my answer. That is not an application of Dialectical Materialism. At best, it is a very mechanical statement.
And there's your problem with "dialectics". If you don't like someone else's application, then make up your own. All you have to say is "that's not a real application" and who can deny you? On what grounds?
In fact, any political analysis can be denounced as "mechanical" or praised as "dialectical" on any basis you like...they have no objective, empirical basis at all!
quote:
I would say that in order for women to be liberated, the source of their oppression must be overcome.
Now, I like this answer: it suggests a real starting point for investigating the question. What are the sources of women's oppression? How have they evolved historically? What would have to happen to reduce and ultimately eliminate them? How could it be done?
I take the same approach to proletarian revolution and the establishment of communism. I look at the history of 20th century "communism" with its "vanguard parties", "great leaders", etc., and I conclude that it did not work.
In a fundamental sense, it never could have worked where it was tried--every one of the "socialist" countries was, in fact, at the stage of bourgeois revolution and the rise of capitalism. And, sure enough, that's what they got. Material conditions prevail.
But I've also looked at "vanguard parties" in the "first world"--where, if Leninism was valid, there should have been at least some serious attempts at proletarian revolution that were actually led by such parties.
Nothing! No Leninist party in the "first world" has ever amounted to squat...unless they became de facto social democrats (France, Italy, etc.).
Proletarian revolution? Forget it!
The abortive proletarian revolutions that actually have happened--Petrograd (February 1917), Barcelona (1936), Paris (May 1968)--took place independently of and/or inspite of Leninist parties.
The real evidence is clear and definitive.
Thus, I advocate a "new" and "fresh" approach: if Leninism is wrong, then what would be right?
Meanwhile, let's not forget how this thread began...in an effort to "justify" a personality cult around Bob Avakian.
You have not done so, nor have any of the other advocates of that "strategy".
How about it?
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First posted at Che-Lives on January 22, 2004
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