Mass line, Transitional method, and reform struggles (Part II)

[Die Neue Zeit]

Continued from here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/mass-line-vs-t87244/index.html


Sorry for the stupid question. Both these ideas sound somewhat similar so...

What is the difference between Mao's Mass Line and Trotsky's Transitional Method.

IMHO the Mass Line dresses itself up in more identity politics language, but I could be wrong.

Both approaches suffer from broad economism, not taking into consideration the working-class need for politico-ideological class independence, and revising the lost notion that the struggle for socialism is an economic struggle (merely a maximum goal of the economic struggle).

The political struggle and the economic struggle each have a two-fold, minimum-maximum character. For the economic struggle: economic struggles promoting politico-ideological independence for the working class now, social labour ("socialism") later on. For the political struggle: politico-ideological class independence now, the DOTP later on.

There are also peripheral sociocultural struggles of a minimum-maximum character around various issues.

1) The "mass line" substitutes identity politics ("peripheral sociocultural struggles") for economic struggles promoting politico-ideological class independence and ignores the real political struggle altogether, all the while claiming that such struggles reek of narrow economism and that political struggles for politico-ideological class independence are "bourgeois-democratist."

2) The original "transitional method" of Trotsky, like the original "transitional method" of the Comintern (http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/6th-congress/ch04.htm), already takes politico-ideological class independence (for granted) as the basis for new economic struggles.

3) The modern "transitional method" is merely more active than left-communist politics (http://www.revleft.com/vb/defensive-struggles-question-t102367/index.html) in its substitution of social-democratic struggles around nostalgic macroeconomic issues, defensive tred-iunionizm, and some identity politics (then adding "transitional demands" selectively) for economic struggles promoting politico-ideological class independence and ignores the real political struggle altogether, claiming that political struggles for politico-ideological class independence are "bourgeois-democratist."



4) Only the original Marxist minimum program (http://www.revleft.com/vb/begin-redefining-minimum-t90683/index.html) has at its core the constant need for politico-ideological class independence (http://www.revleft.com/vb/class-strugglist-labour-t95111/index.html), in both its "politico-political" demands and its "politico-economic" demands. Proceeding from that, the "maximum" political struggle is for the DOTP and the "maximum" economic struggle is for "socialism."

[Rawthentic]

I think you've got it all wrong with the mass line, jacob.

The mass line is a method of communist leadership. Whether that be in an economic or political struggle, it applies.

From the masses, to the masses. - Mao

It basically explains the dialectical relationship between communists and the people they strive to lead. We are not only teachers, but students as well. We put out a program/agenda amongst the people, investigate their conditions/environment, take in their own understandings, lead struggles, and sum it all up into a deeper theoretical foundation. And then the cycle starts again (not in the same order i put it).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

^^^And we already know that the 'mass' line was anything but. More like the 'mass lie', truth be told:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/mass-line-vs-t87244/index.html

[Rawthentic]

shut up. go babble pathetic, irrelevant concepts elsewhere.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RawNerve:


shut up. go babble pathetic, irrelevant concepts elsewhere.

Well, we have already established that you and your fellow Maoist travellers have swallowed this myth, since you could not provide the evidence that a single one of these 'mass lies', er..., sorry, 'lines' (whether these were concocted in the USA, China or elsewhere) was actually produced by the masses and not dictated to the masses.

So, it's no wonder you find you have throw your toys out of your pram again.

Have a nice dialectical fume...:)

[Die Neue Zeit]

Alas, you have to account for Cliffite economism. :(

[Rawthentic]

lol, no one said that the mass line came from the masses. It is produced by the masses and communists. If you dont know what it is by now, then I can't really help you.

Do you think the chinese revolution was carried out by millions of drones, blindly following the revolutionaries?

You believe the chinese communists managed to win over millions of peasants and workers to their cause by pursuing commandist methods?

In fact, your politics take on an elitist perspective on the people, since you assume they can easily be paraded around through decades of civil war and revolutionary transformation. How would any of that been possible were it not for the communist leadership winning them over through patient persuasion, using the mass line methods that deeply connected with the oppressed in china?

[LOLseph Stalin]

First of all why are you using language that most people cannot comprehend?

No offense Jacob, but zerg is right. I couldn't understand a word you said.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I hope you're familiar with the term "economism," to start with.

My critique is that there is no consideration for working-class independence in both political and ideological aspects.

1) Why call for a 32-hour workweek (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1380106&postcount=7) as a mere leisure and/or anti-unemployment measure when participatory democracy resulting from a shorter workweek is much more important (http://www.revleft.com/vb/six-hour-day-t103404/index2.html) (or at least "civic participation" within a parliamentary system :glare: )?

2) Why call for "an end to police brutality," "scrapping all anti-union laws," "upholding the right to strike," and "giving criminals the right to vote," when they're all part of a bigger picture - class-strugglist assembly and association (http://www.revleft.com/vb/class-strugglist-assembly-t99908/index.html)?

3) Why call for higher taxes on the rich when direct proposals and votes of taxes on an annual basis (http://www.revleft.com/vb/socio-income-democracy-t92929/index.html) can facilitate this better?

4) Why call for "opening the books" - commercial transparancy - when political transparency (against popular concepts of "state secrets" and more mundane state secrecy in normal administration) is also important?

[Sorry for the links, but perhaps they can provide a clearer picture.]




First of all why are you using language that most people cannot comprehend?
According to the transitional program , socialism the struggle for socialism is not just an economic struggle. The minimum program is put forward in such a way as to connect it to the maximum program and give it a political character.

Transitional Program = Updated Rabocheye Delo-ism ("Economism")??? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/transitional-program-updated-t99491/index.html)


"Krichevskii advanced his soon-to-be notorious 'stages theory' within this Erfurtian framework. Workers advanced to political class awareness through a series of predictable stages. The first and lowest stage was 'purely economic agitation'. Next was political agitation still strongly tied to immediate economic interests. Then came agitation still linked to economic interests but intended to show how the wider political planks in the Social-Democratic platform (for example, political freedom) were necessary for economic struggle. Finally, came political agitation not tied to economic interests but, rather, to the proletariat's role as leader of the people. At this stage, political agitation should 'embrace without exception all questions of social-political life', since everything affects the class interests of the proletariat." (http://books.google.ca/books?id=8AVUvEUsdCgC&pg=PA294&lpg=PA294&dq=krichevskii+stages+theory+erfurtian&source=bl&ots=5i3q6svIZt&sig=RDY-JaK_p7csygxX1YTywcOmzEE&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA294,M1) (Lars Lih)



Upon re-reading Trotsky's Transitional Program, I am but reminded of this rather provocative statement above by Lars Lih on the background of the "Economist" group that was subject to Lenin's attack in What Is To Be Done?, the Rabocheye Delo group of Krichevskii, Nadezhdin (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/638/lenin.htm) (CPGB review of Lih's book), and so on.



"The first and lowest stage was 'purely economic agitation'"

Check. The very first "transitional demand" raised in the Transitional Program was the call for a "sliding scale of wages":


Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.

Notice that this demand is not leveled at the bourgeois-capitalist state at all, but rather at the lower level of union dealings (http://www.revleft.com/vb/sliding-scale-wages-t98609/index.html) (link)!



"Next was political agitation still strongly tied to immediate economic interests"

Check. Indeed, the next demands that Trotsky raised pertained to trade unions (in modern times, calls for the abolition of anti-union laws), factory committees, and their "sit-down strikes" (in modern times, calls for militant workplace occupations and what not).

The CPGB's Mike Macnair had some very interesting remarks on anti-union laws recently, BTW:

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/751/crisisand.html


A communist minimum programme requires at its heart the struggle for the democratic republic: election and recallability of all public officials (and hence abolition of the monarchy and the House of Lords), the replacement of the standing armed forces with a militia, generalised trial by jury, self-government of the localities, separation of church and state, and so on. But that is an offensive programme for the working class to take political power. The use of democratic demands in connection with defensive struggles against the effects of crisis is the use of selected elements of the minimum programme which are particularly relevant to the crisis.

The first and most fundamental of these is (partially) shared by all the left ‘action programmes’: abolition of the anti-union laws. The slogan should be expressed as “abolition”, not “repeal”: trade unions are illegal at common law (the first anti-union Act of Parliament was the Confederacies of Masons Act 1424; picketing has been unlawful since around the 1240s) and even repeal of everything passed since 1970 would still allow judges to invent new means of penalising unions or reinvent ancient ones.

“Partially shared” because there is a more general democratic principle involved: freedom of association.

[...]

The struggle for freedom of association is a struggle for a general democratic demand. But it is also the struggle for the most elementary need of the working class as a class: to organise itself freely and independently of the capitalist state. Conditions of economic crisis and recession make this need more, not less, urgent.



"Then came agitation still linked to economic interests but intended to show how the wider political planks in the Social-Democratic platform (for example, political freedom) were necessary for economic struggle"

Check. Trotsky then raises the elimination of business secrets to expropriations of the commanding heights (today's "nationalize the top such and such... compensation to be given only on the basis of need" and so on) to picket-line militias. On the subject of business secrets, Macnair had this to say in that same article:


The Trotskyist versions of action programmes contain a demand sanctified by its presence in the 1938 Transitional programme, but none the worse for all that: “Open the books!” The versions of the pro-bureaucratic left (LEAP, SWP, Morning Star-CPB) naturally omit this demand. Implementing it would be as painful for labour bureaucrats - even the toytown miniature bureaucrats of the SWP’s top-down hierarchy of full-timers - as it would be for capitalists.

In the Transitional programme the question is posed as one of workers’ control. And it is indeed true that working class action, in which the administrative and financial staff of a firm act in solidarity with its direct producers, can expose secrets which the employers would prefer to keep hidden. But the question of transparency is much larger than this. Capitalists and bureaucrats alike rely on legal rights to the control of information: official secrecy, commercial confidentiality, ‘privacy’, and ‘intellectual property rights’ (copyright, patents, etc). An outrider is the principle of ‘candour’ applied to justify secret discussions in the civil service and the SWP alike. Private law is used to protect official secrets, as in the Spycatcher case; ‘state security’ is used to protect murky corporate dealings, as in the Al-Yamamah arms scandal. Transparency - the abolition of state and private rights to control the publication of information, and the insistence that the inner workings of state and business alike should be exposed to public view - is thus a democratic demand.

The present crisis poses this question with particular sharpness. The continuing severity of the ‘credit crunch’ is partly due to the fact that it is very hard for lenders to discover whether borrowers are solvent or not. This difficulty flows from ‘off balance-sheet’ transactions, ‘creative accounting’, and murky networks of holding and subsidiary corporations and offshore set-ups of one sort or another. Capitalism, in other words, needs more transparency than it is currently able to deliver. Its baroque efforts to construct secrecy, which served it well in increasing the share of profits at the expense of labour and taxes in the 1970s-2000s, are now paralysing its own ability to function.

Transparency thus extends beyond the simple abolition of legal rights to secrecy. An attack on both ‘offshore’, and the legal doctrine of the separate corporate personality of even wholly artificial companies (Salomon v Salomon) is needed.



"Finally, came political agitation not tied to economic interests but, rather, to the proletariat's role as leader of the people"

Check. Trotsky finally talks about ending imperialist warfare and the formation of soviets:


The slogan of soviets, therefore, crowns the program of transitional demands.



And what did Lenin have to say about Krichevskii's stageism and broad economism (http://www.revleft.com/vb/broad-economism-t99348/index.html)?


It shows that we were right when we identified the basic reason for the crisis in Russian Social Democracy as the leader/guides ("ideologues", revolutionaries, Social Democrats) who fall behind the stikhiinyi upsurge of the masses. It shows that all the ruminations of the authors of the "Economist" letter (in Iskra, No. 12), of B. Krichevskii and Martynov, about the danger of underestimating the significance of the stikhiinyi element or of the grey ongoing struggles, about tactics-as-process and so forth - all these ruminations are exactly a glorification and defence of artisanal limitations. These people who cannot pronounce the word "theorist" without a condescending smirk - who label their own genuflection before simple lack of preparation and lack of development as "a feel for real life" - are, in fact, exposing their failure to understand our most pressing practical tasks. They shout to people who are falling behind: Keep in step! Don't get ahead! To people who are suffering from a lack of energy and initiative in organizational work, from a shortage of "plans" for a broad and audacious approach to the issues, they shout about the need for "tactics/process". At a time when our fundamental sin consists in lowering our political and organizational tasks to the most immediate "tangible" and "concrete" interests of the ongoing economic struggle, all we hear is the same old song: we must impart a political character to the economic struggle itself! To say it once again: this kind of "feel for real life" is literally the same kind as the hero of the popular epic who cries "Many happy returns of the day!" to a funeral procession.

[Black Dagger]

Renamed thread at OP's request.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RawSomething:


lol, no one said that the mass line came from the masses. It is produced by the masses and communists. If you dont know what it is by now, then I can't really help you.

Do you think the chinese revolution was carried out by millions of drones, blindly following the revolutionaries?

We went through all this in that other thread. You failed to produce the evidence then (merely abuse and bluster) and here we see the same again.

Just admit it: you have accepted this mythical tale uncritically, without yourself seeing the evidence.

And sure, the type of top-down revolution that occurred in China can be pushed through without the masses being inviolved in the decision process -- unless you have hard evidence to the contrary, and stop spouting the propagandistic line you have swallowed.



In fact, your politics take on an elitist perspective on the people, since you assume they can easily be paraded around through decades of civil war and revolutionary transformation. How would any of that been possible were it not for the communist leadership winning them over through patient persuasion, using the mass line methods that deeply connected with the oppressed in china?

So, in the place of evidence, you just attack me (once more) -- and we know why: you are trying to distract attention from the fact that you have naively swallowed a fairytale based on no hard evidence, just supposition.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

JR:


Alas, you have to account for Cliffite economism.

I take this to be your indication that we are no longer friends...

[Rawthentic]

No, its not a fairytale. That kinda thing just doesnt phase me. It's been well documented in books I pointed you towards in that other thread. If you want to ignore them, that is fine.

I suggest you read up on the land reform process that encompassed nearly 80% of china. Read up on that revolutionary transformation and tell me that the communists forced the peasants along. Tell me that communist leadership wasnt based on the aspirations and desires of millions of people.

In addition, leadership, including communist leadership, contains hierarchical structures. But, like in the chinese revolution, it also encompasses horizontal forms of organization. Either way, it is a bit silly to suggest that chinese people played a non-participatory role in that process.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Raw:


That kinda thing just doesnt phase me. It's been well documented in books I pointed you towards in that other thread. If you want to ignore them, that is fine.

What you mean is that you have seen some of the secondary and tertiary 'evidence', but have not actually seen the primary data.

So, you have swallowed this fairytale, after all.


I suggest you read up on the land reform process that encompassed nearly 80% of china. Read up on that revolutionary transformation and tell me that the communists forced the peasants along. Tell me that communist leadership wasnt based on the aspirations and desires of millions of people.

In addition, leadership, including communist leadership, contains hierarchical structures. But, like in the chinese revolution, it also encompasses horizontal forms of organization. Either way, it is a bit silly to suggest that chinese people played a non-participatory role in that process.

You want me to sink into the morass of propaganda that has engulfed you?

No thanks.

Primary data please...

[Rawthentic]

what primary data do you want, lol? You want questionnaires haha? Maybe, Mao should have hired professional pollsters.

Are you afraid to research the land reform movement because it will disprove you? Are you that narrow?

The point is: if you take the time to actually learn something about the chinese revolution, the evidence is there to support how the chinese communists won the people over.

In addition, if you are opposed to the mass line, what methods of leadership do you propose, that neither Lenin nor Mao used? I mean, there is no evidence of their politics connecting and fusing with the people in either russia or china, right?

[Rawthentic]

I suggest you read: Fanshen by William Hinton, Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow, or The Battle for China's Past by Mobo Gao. All these books have first hand as well as documented evidence of the chinese revolutionary process.

In addition, there's a few links that get into this question:

http://www.massline.info/China/JHorn-ML.htm - This is an edited version of a lecture given by Dr. Joshua Horn and his experiences.

http://www.massline.org/PekingReview/PR1965/PR1965-09k.htm - article on the use of the mass line in industrial management in china

http://www.massline.org/PekingReview/PR1975/PR1975-02c.htm - investigation into the methods used in an oil refinery

but, i strongly recommend reading Mao Tse-tung's Report from Xunwu

amazon described this book as:
In his pre-1949 incarnation, Mao Zedong firmly believed that empirical social research should serve as the foundation for correct revolutionary policy. On several occasions he himself carried out such research. In the guise of rural sociologist, Mao wrote this fascinating report on a rural county in Jiangxi province in May 1930. (It was not published in China until 1982.) The report provides an intimate and unadorned view of Chinese society at the ground level, with a crowded cast of local characters--merchants, landlords, artisans, prostitutes, peasants, workers, etc.--and their economic links, social customs, and personal relations. Mao's commentary brings to life the otherwise abstract notions of class conflict and exploitation, and reminds us of how richly variegated was the pattern of life and society in the prerevolutionary Chinese countryside. Thompson's excellent translation of the original text follows after an illuminating introduction. For scholars and specialists.

There's your evidence. The thing is, even though the evidence exists, it is wrong (yet typical of you) to reduce methods of communist leadership to numbers or questionnaires or whatever the fuck you want.

But, read some of this, and come back with a substantive reply (for once).

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Raw:


I suggest you read: Fanshen by William Hinton, Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow, or The Battle for China's Past by Mobo Gao. All these books have first hand as well as documented evidence of the chinese revolutionary process.

Read them a while back, but I failed to notice where they included the primary field data for the surveys I am sure the cadres must have carried out with hundreds of millions of peasants/workers.

Help me out here, on what page are these to be found?

Once more, your other sources seem to have ommitted this data too!

[Several of them do report secondary and tertiary data, as I indicated earlier, but it is the prmary data that is required. All several hundred million data sheets!]

Is this just bad luck, or incompetence, I wonder?

Or is it because the 'mass line' is really the 'mass lie', as we established was the case in that other thread on this topic?

I fear it is...:(

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Raw:


what primary data do you want, lol? You want questionnaires haha? Maybe, Mao should have hired professional pollsters.

Unless you can produce it, not even you know whether or not the mass line is the mass line or whether it's the mass lie.


Are you afraid to research the land reform movement because it will disprove you? Are you that narrow?

No, but I am afraid you haven't got the proof.


The point is: if you take the time to actually learn something about the chinese revolution, the evidence is there to support how the chinese communists won the people over.

By this you mean: if I decide to swallow the same state propaganda that you have woolfed down, I take it?


In addition, if you are opposed to the mass line, what methods of leadership do you propose, that neither Lenin nor Mao used? I mean, there is no evidence of their politics connecting and fusing with the people in either russia or china, right?

If it was indeed the 'mass line' I'd be all in favour of it -- but I rather think I am right in supposing it to be the mass lie instead.

Unless you are just toying with us, and have to hand the hundreds of contaiiner loads of original data sheets upon which. I am sure, your claims are based?

Don't tell me you haven't... http://www.mysmiley.net/imgs/smile/scared/scared0017.gif

[Rawthentic]

like I said, not going to bother. your antics don't phase me at all.

you think the cpp used surveys to learn from the people? ridiculous. Do you really think communist leadership can be reduced to that?

why the fuck dont you show the maturity to really engage what this thread is about?

why not show why those articles i linked to are wrong? can you? are you capable? in fact, i dont think ive ever, ever seen you make a well thought out post with some theoretical substance outside of your little anti dialectical world.

[Rawthentic]

lets make something clear:

the mass line is not something were communists go amongst the people to conduct surveys and interviews. that has never been what the mass line is about.

you asking for questionnaires and surveys shows your misunderstanding of anything relevant to communist leadership. you're asking for something that simply doesn't pertain.

in fact, why don't you prove to us how they instead forced the peasants along with them? can you? can you also show us how lenin and mao did not use the mass line to make revolution? I dont think you can, only because such deep social transformations require the conscious participation of millions of workers and peasants.

lol. you really think the chinese communists went out, surveys in hand, and pigeon holed people liked that? wow, i think it is more clear now that you have no understanding of maoism or the chinese revolution. you know that as well. at least many people get to read these threads. it exposes your bankrupt methods.

hey! do you need documentation that the chinese revolution happened too? ill see if i can get surveys and questionnaires to prove that the land reform movement actually happened lol.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Raw:


like I said, not going to bother. your antics don't phase me at all.

Translated, this reads: "Oh dear; I seem to have swallowed this myth without checking the original data!"


you think the cpp used surveys to learn from the people? ridiculous. Do you really think communist leadership can be reduced to that?

No I do not think they did surveys, and that is why it can't be the 'mass line'.

My request to you to produce this data was to expose this fact -- and that is why no one has ever produced it.

It does not exist.


why the fuck dont you show the maturity to really engage what this thread is about?

Why aren't you man enough to admit you have been duped?


why not show why those articles i linked to are wrong? can you? are you capable? in fact, i dont think ive ever, ever seen you make a well thought out post with some theoretical substance outside of your little anti dialectical world.

If a scientist or a sociologist tells us about a new theory, we expect him/her to produce the primary (not just secondary) data.

If they can't, their results cannot stand.

Hence, debating such bogus theories (if there is no primary data supporting them) is a waste of time.

Same here -- that is, until you produce this non-existent data...

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Raw:


lets make something clear:

the mass line is not something were communists go amongst the people to conduct surveys and interviews. that has never been what the mass line is about.

So, it's not 'from the people to the people', then?

It's 'from the party to the people'.


you asking for questionnaires and surveys shows your misunderstanding of anything relevant to communist leadership. you're asking for something that simply doesn't pertain.

My asking for primary data was to expose the fact that you have no proof that the people (or large sections of them) were ever consulted.


in fact, why don't you prove to us how they instead forced the peasants along with them? can you? can you also show us how lenin and mao did not use the mass line to make revolution? I dont think you can, only because such deep social transformations require the conscious participation of millions of workers and peasants.

I am not here to prove anything; you have to do that -- or withdraw the claim that this was 'from the people to the people'.

And slave societies managed to make huge transformations; you'll be telling us next that the Pharoah's also had a 'mass line' when they built the pyramids!


lol. you really think the chinese communists went out, surveys in hand, and pigeon holed people liked that? wow, i think it is more clear now that you have no understanding of maoism or the chinese revolution. you know that as well. at least many people get to read these threads. it exposes your bankrupt methods.

You can 'lol' all you like, and attack me personally, but the bottom line is that you have no proof, and are rather embarrassed to have been exposed as a naive wally.

Hence the invective, and the 'lol'-ing.

And now you are getting really desperate:


hey! do you need documentation that the chinese revolution happened too? ill see if i can get surveys and questionnaires to prove that the land reform movement actually happened lol.

Oh no, not another 'lol'; that's me put in my place...:(

We can get to the Chinese Revolution later. One thing at a time, please.

You are struggling enough as it is...

[Rawthentic]

ok. i am done. i no longer feel the need to debate. when you have the ability to discuss and debate theory and content, hit me up. if not, well, you can continue with the fact that you ask for "surveys" or whatever to hide the reality behind you ignorance of the mass line or the chinese revolution. goodbye.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

RawNerve:


ok. i am done. i no longer feel the need to debate. when you have the ability to discuss and debate theory and content, hit me up. if not, well, you can continue with the fact that you ask for "surveys" or whatever to hide the reality behind you ignorance of the mass line or the chinese revolution.

No stamina you Maoists...


goodbye.

Good riddance...

[Die Neue Zeit]

Rawthentic, could you please provide an application of the "mass line" in the United States or in any other developed country that is revolutionary?

[Rawthentic]

what do you mean?

Like, examples of when its been used?

Off the top of my head, the best example is the Black Panther Party. They sold the book and used the mass line methods outlined in that book to develop their base and politics. The Panthers went from hood to hood, talking to Black people and investigating their conditions. They lead Black people using a platform that corresponded their burning problems. In relation to that, they put forward politics that, at the time, represented the most advanced revolutionary movement in the US.

I also want to put out that your framing the mass line as non-revolutionary or whatever is false. The mass line is a method of communist leadership. Many times, those methods can be used to develop reformist, economist politics, or for revolutionary ones.

why do you put scare quotes around the mass line? whats that supposed to do?

anyways, thanks for engaging the content of this thread.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I was under the impression that the "mass line" involved specific immediate demands being raised, like in a party program. BTW, I apologize for saying just the US, when I meant "the United States or any other developed country." :(

[Rawthentic]

Jacob:

It indeed involves the raising of demands. Like I said, the mass line is a methodology developed by Mao, but is many times used for reformist and other capitulationist politics.

The demands developed by using the mass line correspond to that back and forth interplay between the people and communists, including the synthesizing of theory and practice by communists. The demands should be a reflection of the use of the mass line;they should correspond to the highest interests, aspirations, and hopes people have.

So, yes, demands are made. Remember, the mass line embraces communist work and should be the methodology used. If not, then we aren't communists.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Any modern examples, though?

[Rawthentic]

In the US today, I don't Jacob. And of course, that is a real problem.