Pigs Cannot Make Revolution, but the Third World Masses Can Smash U$ Imperialism!
RCP=U$A chair Bob Avakian once again sets his sails towards billowy clouds in the May 29, 2011 issue of ‘Revolution’ newspaper, the official mouthpiece of the rcp=u$a, in which the party leader once more makes the case for a socialist revolution in the U.$. with the labor aristocracy at the helm. He puts forth this idea in a talk broken down into series of articles titled: “Birds cannot give birth to crocodiles, but humanity can soar beyond the horizon.” He states that: “…in imperialist countries in particular it is only with major qualitative change in the situation - that is, the eruption of a revolutionary crisis and the emergence of a revolutionary people in the millions and millions - that it becomes possible to wage the all out struggle for the seizure of power…”
To begin with, it is important that we point out that socialist revolution will not reach the bastions of imperialism until the Third World proletariat and peasantry rises in the billions to first eject the imperialists, subsequently defeating the compradors and then mobilizing itself to smash the imperialists on their home turf with the help of the oppressed nation lumpen of the internal semi-colonies. These oppressed nation lumpen who are currently situated within the internal semi-colonies, i.e. barrios/ghettos/reservations of amerika and it’s prisons, are the only people in the U.$. with any kind of revolutionary potential whatsoever!
So we don’t know where all these “millions of millions” of revolutionary people that Avakian loves to harp about will be drawn from, unless he’s counting on the labor aristocracy to take up arms and call itself “comrade.”
Something else worth nothing here in the chairman’s flawed war thesis, if you could even call it that, is that this economist/opportunist deviation is not just owed to the RCP’s failure to acknowledge the outcome of a proper class analysis, but also, because of their erroneous line on the self-determination rights of the oppressed nations. The rcp-u$a’s line is that all nationalism is bourgeoisie, hence reactionary. More pointedly they don’t think there’s any nations within the United $tates that need liberating, with a possible exception for the Black Nation.
The party leader goes on to talk about how important it is for the struggle not to settle into “protractedness” because according to Avakian “that would very much be a recipe for defeat.” The chairman then makes some completely ludicrous and out of context comparisons when he describes how the Maoist concept of a protracted Peoples War is no longer a viable solution in the Third World and certainly is not suited for U.$. conditions. Well, he’s certainly right that in regards to the United $tates this is not a viable solution. However, with respect to the former, Avakian attributes this to a lack of “finiteness” in the struggle, instead, pushing for one big decisive battle. I assume here that Mr. Avakian is referring to the now defunct Maoist struggles of Nepal and Tamil of which the rcp=u$a has been very critical.
The fact that the rcp=u$a would denigrate various revolutionary Third World struggles as “too much of things unto themselves” (which is also a common rcp-u$a criticism of the Chinese Cultural Revolution) is a straight up disrespect to the Third World masses dying daily at the hands of imperialism and it’s comprador cartels, as well as delegitimizing to the real science of revolutions: M-L-M.
No Mr. Avakian, the fact that the Nepalese and Tamil struggle has not brought the proletariat victory has nothing to do with the failure of the Maoist concept of a protracted peoples war, rather failure in these struggles can be directly linked to revisionist leadership of the rcp-u$a sort!
Continuing with this bourgeois-centric analysis, the party leader then goes into some detail concerning the crucialness of public opinion building and cultural work in general when it comes to preparing the “masses” for revolution. However, and this is where you have to watch him, he gets sneaky and besides already counting the labor aristocracy as proletariat, he attempts to smuggle broad sections of the petit-bourgeoisie into the revolution and eventually the dictatorship, thereby killing the dictatorship of the proletariat before it’s ever even born. This is what he says: “there is also, very importantly, the problem of the development of the necessary political and ideological conditions for the initiation of this struggle for the seizure of power - and the organized expression of the political and ideological influence of the vanguard - among the basic masses but also, to the greatest degree possible at every point along the way, among other strata of the people as well, in order to have the best possible basis for carrying forward the struggle for power once it has been launched and not, in fact to be contained and crushed, but to have the best possible basis to ‘break out of encirclement.’”
It is true, historically speaking, that once socialist revolutions had begun and proletarian victory was within reach, hoards of the enemy class have come over to the side of the revolution. However, it has never been the intent of the vanguard to focus their efforts so ferociously on the enticement of parasites as Afakian and the rcp-u$a so incessantly advocate for. It was however and remains so the principal task of the revolutionaries, to unite all who can be united, i.e. the truly oppressed and exploited.
If sections of the bourgeoisie so wish to either, (a) commit class suicide and join the revolution or (b) see that victory is inevitable for the proletariat and it’s allies and decide it better to be on the winning side of the war, then so much the better. But neither Marx nor Engels, Lenin, Stalin or Mao ever sought to actively recruit pigs who were not dedicated to the revolution and neither should we.
If anything, the “middle” and “broad strata” would only be too happy to swell the ranks of the imperialists armed forces and smash the internal semi-colonies to pieces; they know which side their bread is buttered on.
Indeed, seasoned readers of Kautsky’s, I mean Afakian and the RCP’s vile distortions of M-L-M have come to understand that whenever Avakian and company casually, indirectly or directly throw out the terms “middle” and “broad strata” what they’re really trying to emphasize is the reliance and inclusion of the bought off traitorous sections of the population into and with the revolution. Notice how they consciously exclude the true element of change from the equation the Third World masses.
The rest of the chairman’s article basically rehashes some of the points already made such as work in the cultural sphere prior to and during the seizure of power, the importance of the “one, two, knockout blow” to the bourgeoisie which serves to counteract the problem of “finiteness.” And of course, he can’t emphasize enough the reliance of the revolution on the “middle” and “broad strata”. And oh yea his deep lamentations that white people have been turned against the oppressed by way of propaganda, and all that’s needed for their return to the side of the revolution is arduous public opinion building.
It is fitting that Bob Avakian’s piece is concluded by his making companions between Mao’s China, pre-liberation and the United $tates today, drawing parallels between the middle strata of the revolutionary base areas in the Chinese countryside (the better off peasants) and the decadent labor aristocracy which the rcp-u$a knows and loves today.
Truly, Bob Avakian is delusional.
MIM(Prisons) adds: For more on this topic check out other articles on the rcp=u$a and our analysis of the labor aristocracy in the First World.
