HarshThakor
12th May 2013, 04:28
Trends
A major deviationist trend within the Marxist-Leninist Movement are the distortions of the polemics of Comrades Marx,.Lenin,Stalin and Mao Tse Tung .The chief proponent of this are the Nepalese U.P.C.N(M) and the Kasama group of U.S.A. Com.Mike Ely initiated the Kasama Project Group,a breakaway group from the R.C.P., U.S.A . The Kasama trend almost reduces Com Stalin to a non-Leninist and all Mao’s ideology as an anti-thesis of Stalinism..The Kasama project is one of the greatest ever Marxist-Leninist efforts to create a forum for debate, which has been lacking in the history of the Communist Movement ,but they deviate from strong theoretical foundation. Howevever its reading of Com.Mao’s cultural revolution and theories are virtually analyzed as something different or separate from Leninism.
. The other trend that needs to be combated is that of Maoist third worldism propogated by the Leading Light Communist Organisation (LLCO)that advocates that the entire first world working class is reactionary and only the third world proletariat is revolutionary.It also upholds Lin Biao’s line as the revolutionary line as against that of Com.Mao Tse Tung. Infact it attributes the theory of Peoples War to Lin Biao.It slashes Bob Avakian from a left sectarian standpoint and even overlooks Avakian’s positive points.True it upholds Lenin and Stalin but claims that Com.Mao later veered towards revisionism with Zhou En Lai etc.It terms some of the major third world Maoist struggles like that led by the Communist Party OF Phillipines or C.P.I.(Moaist) as that led by armed revisionists.Infact there is a significant connection between the Lin Biaoist ideology with that of rejecting the first world proletariat as a counter-revolutionary force strategically.Upholding Lin Biao’s line is counter to the correct trend in the International Communist Movement.True Lin did propogate the Peoples War concept but it was fundamentally derived from Com.Mao Tse Tung and not an original formulation of Lin Biao as advocated by the Leading Light group.
I have quoted comments and writings of intellectuals like Joseph Ball and Mike Ely.(Kasama group)Ball logically refutes Kasama’s looseness on the assessment of Stalin but he too finds fault with Mao’s line towards the end.
Significant points have been raised by this section on the class nature of the first world proletariat who reflect a general reactionary attitude and compared with workers of the third world countries live in relative luxury. However only for a temporary period first world workers will they not identify themselves with the struggles of the third world people. We must take into account the anti-war protests of European workesr and strikes combating the Imnperialist system.
Both these trends are harshly critical of the R.C.P.(U.S.A) led by Bob Avakian but from deviationist perspectives. Infact the R.C.P.took a progressive stand criticizing the Nepalese Maoists multi-party co-ordination nad defended the vanguard role of the single proletarian party. Infact Kasama has taken several ecclectical positions on Lenin and the dictatorship of the Proletariat. They see Maoism as something anatagonistic to Stalin’s ideology and even different from Leninism. True they foster a democratic spirit of discussion and debate and welcome a huge range of views but basically do not derive at a proletarian class analysis.I consider the R.C.P.U.S.A more progressive than the Kasama or the L.lc.o.I feel Avakain makes some very valid points in democracy Can we do better than that?”True the R.C.P has fallen victim to losseness in theory and practice and hardly drawn out a mass revolutionary programme for the working class.Nor has it given adequate support to the third world movements.A revolutionary writer Joseph Ball,a staunch opponent of the rightist trends within Kasama is sympathetic to certain aspects of the L.L.C.O . but also partially to the. R.C.P.Ball was critical of the m Nepalese Comrades multi-party approach which Bob Avakain also opposed.
Quoting Joseph Ball in defense of Avakian “Well, I didn’t think my comments on the UCPN(M) would go down too well here to be honest.It is true that you have a lot of good things to say about the exploitation of the Third World, and the First World worker’s complicity in all of that. My article on the UCPN(M) reflects some of this. RCP-USA is very aware of this type of analysis too. However, they still think revolution in the USA is possible for reasons other than economic ones. I reserve judgement on this line but I find it a lot easier to see how revolution could occur in Third World nations.I am afraid where Monkey Smashes Heaven (Leader of L.L.C.O.)fails and where Avakian succeeds is that his theory of the state in ‘Democracy Can’t We Do Better Than That?’ and ‘Democracy; More Than Ever Can’t We Do Better Than That?’ is correct wheras MSH and other groups that have shared its line seem to have a fairly anarchist view of the state. As far as I can tell, MSH favours a sort of Shanghai Commune approach to state organisation under socialism (correct me if I am wrong). This does not really take into account the full dialectical relationship between the need to use the state to defend the revolution and the need to advance the erosion of the differences between leaders and led and the withering away of the state.This criticism should be taken in the spirit in which it is intended.I’m not trying to ‘sell’ Avakian here but I think MSH tends to see his line in black and white, when it’s really shades of grey. After all, RCP-USA dropped its involvement in US labor unions precisely because it was felt that the strictly economic problems of US workers were pretty unimportant compared to the problems of the Third World proletariat. Not the MSH line, I know, but not really the MSH’s version of the RCP-USA line either.
Personally,the author recognizes the disparity between the first world and third world proletariat but feels disqualifying the role of the first world section would be capitulation.True the first world proletariat is complacent and much better paid but in recent times they have been affected by great level sof unemployment,jobcuts and also been launched into major strikes against globalization and anti war struggles.
2.Theory
A.First World v.Third World
1. Joseph Ball states:Here are two comments by Mike that worry me.
. The white working class in the USA is not going to form some sort of revolutionary core. In global terms, it is in effect a ruling class. They elect the US leaders that subjugate the world proletariat and ensure a flow of super-profits (whether through direct investment returns or unequal exchange) that keeps the US working class affluent.
This does not mean we should automatically label them as an enemy for all time as MIM/Monkey Smashes Heaven etc do. The art of revolution is about winning sections of the ruling class over to the proletarian side. This is what the Nepalese Maoists are doing and Mao was a master at this. However, you must do this from a proletarian base, not try to form your base in the ruling class.
The comment about Czechoslovakia is also a little worrying. Now, the USSR was led by capitalist roaders by 1968 and there was no way we should support the invasion of Czechoslavkia. But what were the Czechs trying to do in 1968?
After World War II, the Western nations saw a huge increase in affluence. The West (and Japan) virtually monopolised advanced industry on a world scale. Other nations had been forcibly prevented from industrialising since the nineteenth century by the imposition of unequal treaties, direct colonial rule and so on. This lack of world competition from non-imperialist nations greatly boosted the growth in wages of western industrial workers, as wages did not have to be kept down to keep the goods western workers produced competitive in price terms. This was a more or less deliberate policy put in place in order to buy them off and prevent revolution.
After Stalin died, the Warsaw Pact nations could not develop up to the same level of the West. There are many reasons for this. Some have drawn attention to the prevention of technology transfer by the US and I think we need to seriously consider this as a factor in the Eastern bloc’s lack of development. (Without exaggerating things, the Soviet bloc was not quite as poor as we are taught in the West now).
The seizure of land and resources without payment from Native Americans made US workers much more affluent than European workers (higher wages had to be paid to dissuade US workers from going off and stake a claim to land, not a problem in Europe, where peasants had been dispossessed of their land). This rich ‘home market’ for goods allowed a massive amount of capital to be generated by US business.
After the War, America was desperate to halt the advance of Soviet power. They did this by using this capital to revive the economies of Western European imperialist nations (Marshall Aid). These economies themselves had been developed through the plunder and impoverishment of the oppressed nations. Marshall Aid was also used to help relatively less well-off countries like Italy that had not developed large foreign empires.
There was a more or less deliberate attempt to establish an affluent West that would embarrass the less affluent socialist nations. Nations like Poland and Czechoslovakia in particular felt aggrieved that they could not be a part of this affluent club of Western countries. They had been relatively closer to the West than other Eastern bloc countries before the war and unlike some other Eastern European countries, they had not supported the Nazis.
The whole East European dissident business was really just an attempt by East European nations to get into the club of rich Western imperialist nations and get a share of the super-profit. It wasn’t really a movement for liberation against Soviet imperialism (unlike for instance the struggle against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan).
We need to understand that socialism in this day and age is a movement of the Third World masses and has been since at least the end of World War II. Most of the First World masses do not support it because they don’t really need it and wouldn’t really benefit from it. It is the Third World who will really benefit from equality and the right to develop their economies free of the imperialist strangle-hold. Once we grasp this we can understand why socialism apparently failed in Eastern Europe. We need to do this so we can stop wasting our time trying to come up with variants of socialism or bold new ideas for revolutionary movements that will appeal to Western workers. The Third World proletariat is our core.
Mike Ely reply’s
1. However I still believe it was correct and important to try (with great energy and effort) to extend the revolutionary movement of the 1960s outside its core areas (among sections of Black people and radicalized students) — including especially to other sections of the working class. I had been (at that time) working to build support for the Black Panther Party in a couple cities, and like many young revolutionaries was deeply worried that the U.S. could reach some decisive crisis (in the years of the 1970s) under conditions where the influence of revolution had not spread broadly enough to carry through a successful socialist revolution. There was worry that Black people might be crushed in a revolutionary attempt that did not have broad enough support.
A key section of society to reach and influence were white working people — and I was particularly enthusiastic about going into the Appalachian coalfields where coal miners (often spearheaded by recently returned Viet Vets) were waging a fierce and intensifying struggle against their own conditions and their own direct oppressors.
I hope this makes clear my point (about answering Stokely’s call).
Joseph writes two things that made me pause:
“The white working class in the USA is not going to form some sort of revolutionary core.”
The working class in the U.S. is highly multinational. And “white working class” is not some separate class or monolith — and will not (by itself) form a revolutionary core. (In my opinion) any revolutionary core (for making revolution, but also for driving forward to the formation of a new socialist society and state) has to be rooted among the oppressed of all nationalities in the U.S.
There is stratification and bourgeoisification in the U.S. working class (quite a bit of it). But if you go down into the most oppressed levels of that class you will find that large numbers (and often overall a majority) are white (for example a majority of people on welfare, and until recently a majority of people in prison etc.) I can’t imagine a successful revolutionary movement in the U.S. that had not succeeded in influencing and winning over sections of white working people, and training the most advanced among them as communists. And this is true, even while, it is the working people of the oppressed nationalities that have had the most advanced consciousness and combativity since World War 2 (a dynamic uneveness which I assume we can expect to see continued, in new forms and manifestations, into the future).
I have tended to view the U.S. ruling class as the heights of capital — as the commanding centers of finance and monopoly, of the military and government. It will be to the advantage of revolution to have them in disarray, divided and ineffectual. But I don’t expect to “win sections over to the proletarian side” — though there might be some degrees of paralyzed neutrality if things fall particularly well.
I am saying that a revolutionary movement without any white working people supporting it is unlikely to succeed. And I also think that working people (of all nationalities) are oppressed by this system in ways far more significant than any advantages they get from living in the U.S.
The idea that the working people of the U.S. (or sections of them) are part of the ruling class does not correspond with reality.
On this score my views respect both viewpoints but are more in favour of Mike Ely as ultimately the white proletariat has to be won over.
Joseph Ball:
1. Celticfire asks ‘What would a genuinely revolutionary people or movement look like to you?’. My answer is a struggle of the Third World peoples to liberate their nations from imperialism, politically and economically and then unite to destroy US imperialism, break down the borders between Third World and First World and thus end the division of the world working class that prevents socialism in the First World countries.
Why hasn’t this been a reality in the past 30 years (at least not a reality led by Maoists?) Well, Mike mentions Kampuchea and I think Mike’s own work is very interesting in this regard. Mike wrote of Kampuchea in 1997:
‘The Khmer Rouge was driven back into rural base areas in western Cambodia–where they still exist as an armed force. At the time, a section of the population clearly fought to defend the Democratic Kampuchean government–and for years a sizable section of the population supported Pol Pot for his incorruptible reputation, his identification with the peasants and his relentless fight against foreign domination…Pol Pot kicked the U.S. imperialists out of Cambodia. And that’s why they hate him. By vilifying Pol Pot, the U.S. is pressing ahead with their attempts to slam the door on all dreams of social change–to declare that communist revolution and even national independence for oppressed countries must be rejected and denounced. They cannot be allowed to get away with this.’
I first read this a few years ago when I was getting into the Maoist line. I was impressed by Mike’s courage in defending someone generally regarded as indefensible but at the same time I believed Mike’s line was incorrect. To some extent I could see what Mike was trying to do. Before the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea western leftists had been gravitating towards the idea of the Third World as the ‘storm centre’ of world revolution and this notion was generally associated with Maoism. After the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea, this line tended to disintegrate. Marxists started to disavow the ideas of Third World national liberation and economic self-sufficiency for Third World countries. The death toll of Democratic Kampuchea was blamed on ‘nationalism’ and these attempts at economic self-sufficiency. Mike was trying to fight a rear-guard action to defend these notions by partially defending Pol Pot. ( I’d be interested to know Mike’s opinion of Pol Pot these days. )
My subsequent reading has demonstrated to me that despite serious errors, Democratic Kampuchea was socialist up until late 1976. After that point, it became revisionist, as Pol Pot came under the wing of Deng Xiaoping. Deng, Pol Pot and the US then came up with a tacit agreement that Kampuchea and China would make war on Vietnam to as part of an effort to further the aims of the US imperialist bloc to which they both now belonged to. Preparation for war led to mass killings and starvation in Kampuchea, much worse than anything that had happened in the first 2 years.
The fact was that there was a chance for a Third World based anti-imperialist movement to encircle and strangle US imperialism in the second half of the twentieth century. It was undermined by revisionism and the Three Worlds Theory, which provided the ideological underpinning for Pol Pot’s revisionism. The correct verdict is not turning away from the idea of the Third World proletariat as the vanguard or the idea of national liberation and neither is it an effort to rehabilitate Pol Pot’s line-Democratic Kampuchea in 1977-8 was firmly imbeded in the imperialist system, it was not a ‘liberated’ country. What we should accept is that revisionism and capitulation to the West temporarily side-lined a project, that with more ideological coherence, could lead to the liberation of humanity.
B.Multi-Party System
The most controversial trend within the Marxist-Leninist Movement is the finding fault with Comrades Lenin, Stalin and Mao and deploying of the multi-party System. The chief proponent of this are the Nepalese U.P.C.N(M) and the Kasama group of U.S.A. Com.Mike Ely initiated the Kasama Project Group,a breakaway group from the R.C.P., U.S.A . His writings slander the achievements of Com.Stalin to a considerable extent ,and even deride Com.Lenin and Com.Mao on many an occasion. The Kasama trend almost reduces Com Stalin to a non-Leninist and all Mao’s contributions achievements as an anti-thesis of Stalinism..True, Kasama project is one of the greatest ever Marxist-Leninist efforts to create a forum for debate, which has been lacking in the history of the Communist Movement .and made a historic contribution by launching outstanding debates on Maoist polemics .
However such forces are forgetting the important contribution of Lenin on the dictatorship of the Proletariat and the revisionist character of parliamentary democracy.Infact it was Trotsky who promoted the multi-party system and the institutions of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. By promoting multi-party system the proletarian revolutionary centre of power is denied and infact a Socialist State can be toppled. Let us remember the experiences of the Communist Movement in Nazi Germany or worldwide. It was the Leninist Party that promoted the building and consolidation of Socialist Societies in Soviet Union and China. Whether the Bolshevik Revolution,the civil War, the collectivization era, the Soviet World War Victory: all these achievements were the result of the foundation of the Leninist Party. Similarly in China although Mao called for continuous Revolution under the dictatorship of the Proletariat he called for a revolt within a proletarian party Structure. The sweeping victories of the Socialist Revolution,The Great Leap Forward, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution were unprecedented in history and can be attribute to Comrade Mao’s persistence with upholding the Leninist Principles of the Dicatatorship of the Proletariat. True there were opposing factions of revisionist nature like Lin Biao ,Liu Shao –Chi Etc ,but the struggle against them through mass campaigns was led by the proletarian party. It was the revolutionary trend within the proletarian party that fought the Lin Biaost forces politically and the rise of Lin Biao or Liu Shao Chi cannot be attributed to the lack of a multiparty System. True ,it was defeated by Deng Xiaoping’s rightist forces, but a multi-party Sustem may have promoted such forces much earlier. In Soviet Union Comrade Stalin violated democratic Centralism to a considerable extent and any dissent was put down .Comrade Mao, tried to correct this by initiating a broad mass Movement of the Chinese masses against the reactionary Forces, and got several members of the party to go through self-criticism and reform. It was historic that a mass Movement was led within the very Communist Party ,unlike in the Soviet Union. Mao had learnt from the Stalin era that a revolutionary Movement was required even within a socialist System.Below I am reproducing a debate between Mike Ely and Joseph Ball . on the multi-party System.
Mike Ely:First, let me say, as an introduction… that I don’t believe that multiparty competitive elections are a form that all future socialist society need universally adopt.
I think that it is not possible to assert or assume any single form of state organization. Capitalist politics have many forms — constitutional monarchy, electoral democracy, fascism etc. And I assume that socialism will have a great many diverse forms over its historical transition — and it already has had quite diverse forms already — starting with the Paris Commune, the Russian Soviets, the stages of Stalin-era state, and the many Chinese forms from Chingkang mountains to the Cultural Revolution.
But I am interested to see an experiment in such an electoral form in some future revolution — including the one that the Nepali Maoists want to initiate. Competitive electoral democracy may not be possible or appropriate in some countries or in some revolutions or in some moments — there may not be “other” parties able to participate in such a process. But I would not rule it out, either.
Besides competitive electoral democracy, there may be other radical forms of socialist democracy we should consider (or invent together with the people): commune forms, cultural revolution style formations, and perhaps even yet-unimagined forms made possible by modern communications.
I think there may also be future cases where a party-state remains the only option possible — though even there our experience shows we would need to incorporate radical new proposals for popular input and supervision.
(An example from history: In 1918, Lenin tried to have a coalition government with the Left Social-Revolutionaries, but that coalition broke down over signing a peace treaty with Germany. Then a Left SR shot Lenin. The assassin declared that Lenin was restoring capitalism and caving in to imperialism. In other words, you can try to have a broader approach, but sometimes you don’t find viable partners in the actual political moment. Does Joseph Ball want to argue that this Russian attempt was wrong in principle, because the Left SR’s were inherently a bourgeois party — rather than a quite radical peasant-and-middle-class party? Was Lenin violating the dictatorship of the proletariat by bringing them into the government? Was Mao wrong in bringing a wing of the left GMD into his 1949 government? Hasn’t previous communist theory held that a worker peasant alliance in early USSR, or even a broader governmental united front in China can be a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat?)
Joseph Ball:
1. It’s sometimes claimed that the multi-party elections in this system will take place under the dictatorship of the proletariat. But this makes no sense at all. If it’s a dictatorship of the proletariat how can you allow bourgeois parties to compete for power with the party of the proletariat? It is absurd to believe that elections could routinely take place between two parties both with a proletarian line. The proletariat has a common interest. It’s vanguard should be encouraging unity not institutionalising a split so we can blindly copy bourgeois democracy. Multi-party democracy has a material basis in capitalism because different factions of the bourgeoisie have different selfish interests. Not so the proletariat. The proletariat’s essential interests can only be realised by the liberation of all humanity. Essentially, it has no selfish interests (though of course proletarians may act selfishly due to false consciousness or embourgeoisement). Where the proletariat does split, it is between socialist roaders and capitalist roaders. Some Maoists talk as if this split should be institutionalised by encouraging different parties and factions. This is ridiculous! A split between capitalist roaders and socialist roaders is by its nature class warfare. It is not some friendly expression of opinion. How can those taking the socialist road set up institutions that give their enemies a potential power base? Does the bourgeoisie do such a thing? No, they only tolerate phony communists. Real communists (and even many militant reformists) are rapidly suppressed in the bourgeois system. The proletariat can get rid of bad party leaderships by exercising power in the organs of revolutionary power and through inner-party struggle, if they are members of the Communist Party. They can achieve this only if they actually express power by becoming the administrators of the state and all society. This will make them a thousand times freer than Bhattarai’s half-baked reformist schemes for multi-party competition.
2.
Joseph Ball:
“The proletariat has a common interest.”
Therefore, (by deduction) it can only have one party. And further, it would be wrong to “split” into two parties. The bourgeoisie (which has rivalries and competing interests inherently) can have multiple parties, but we can have only one.
Further (by logical deduction from that initial assertion), a plan for a multiparty election under socialism must be a plan for allowing the supposedly overthrown bourgeoisie itself to repeatedly contest for power.
Then comes the second assertion: Allowing the bourgeoisie to organize and contest for power is inherently opposed to a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Finally, if you scan that list of assertions and deductions, you get presented with a conclusion that the plan for multiparty elections violates the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The author also refutes the Western multi-party democracy but still feels the question of a Socialist multi-party system remains unanswered .Mike Ely’s has analyzed the scope and development of bourgeois democracy which should not be confused with the creation sof structures in Socialist Societies.Eg He quotes so many oppressive forms.Historically he is correct about the alliances of Mao and Lenin but those were experiences after the Communist party had already seized revolutionary power.There was no multi-party system prevalent in the PARIS Commune,Chingkang mountains,Russian Soviets or Cultural Revolution.
However after the creation of a Socialist state there is a possibility that other parties could be allowed to participate in order to democraticize the superstructure .Afterall even sections of the proletariat can differ and may need different bodies representing them. The Communist party could still function as the vanguard and lead mass movements without imposing itself and allowing other viewpoints.Infact such a system can be a greater test for the democratic credentials of the Communist Party and it’s actual support of the people.Howevere this still has to be in opposition to the Western bourgeois electoral system.
C.Russia in World War 2
Another point of debate was the role of Soviet Russia in the World War.2
Joseph Ball:Mike Ely’s comments are so full of unproven assertions, derived from bourgeois slanders of socialism, that it is hard to know where to begin.
Mike Ely states-’When the Soviet army swept through Nazi Germany, there was systematic rape of German women — in retribution for the atrocities the Nazis had committed on Russian soil. Is that justified — or is it an example of how far that Soviet army had come from being a red army?’
Joseph Ball-Where is their evidence that there was ‘systematic rape’, i.e. rape sanctioned by the authorities as whole? All the evidence is that the Soviet authorities wanted to prevent rape as they believed such behaviour discredited the socialist ideals that the war had been fought for. In Iraq the sexual humiliation of prisoners by the yanks was clearly state sanctioned. When the US advanced into Germany at the end of World War 2, 500 soldiers a week were being charged with rape.
The fact that the Red Army still had some of the bad characteristics of bourgeois armies is a great tragedy but this was the first attempt at socialism and Mao did address many such problems in his theories of the People’s Army.
Mike Ely says ‘What did it mean in the Soviet Union when the most lofty and revolutionary of the youth were organized to deport whole peoples and imprison hundreds of thousands with a great deal of arbitrary injustice? It is one thing to ask what became of those targeted, and it is another (also important) thing to ask what becomes of the revolution and the revolutionaries, if the revolutionary gun gets pointed too long and too often at large sections of the people themselves.’
Joseph Ball-these policies took place in the context of a Nazi invasion that was intended to either annihalate or enslave the Soviet people in its entirity. The Nazis used the familar tactic of divide and rule, offering the prospect of survival to some people if they would betray their comrades. It was necessary to use harsh measures to defeat this tactic. If the divide and rule tactic had succeeded, then the Nazis would have won and world civilisation would have been extinguished. The whole world owes the Soviet people and their leader, Joseph Stalin for their world-historic victory over the Nazis.
D.Revolutionary Internationalist Movement
Another trend that has to be combated was that of prematurely forming a Communist International. This was led by the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement in it’s founding conferences in 1980 and 1984.In India and world over there have been wrong trends towards this approach. One tendency embraces the formation of a Communist International, while the other led by C.P.I.-M.L. led by K.N.Ramchandran , in the early stages promoted the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement in its early stages in 1980 and 1984and blamed the Socialist C.P.C.led by Com.Mao of neglecting the formation of a Communist International. It was the late Com.Harbhajan Singh Sohi,who was the greatest protagonist of the Correct International Line and approach towards the formation of a Communist International. With Comrade Moni Guha,earlier he had pioneered the struggle against the 3 worlds theory advocated by Deng Xiaoping of China and attributed to Com.Mao by several major components of the Communist Revolutionary camp.. A dialectical process involving unity of Communist Parties is required. Mutual exchange has to take place Actual experience should be shared, which would pave the way for more advanced form s of collective positions on issues and rallying of more forces worldwide. Mutual Exchange and Common stands, bilaterally and laterally, and multilateral platforms on the basis of the general line were required.Toady the R.I.M has virtually collapsed.It has been instruemtal in the capitulation of the Nepalese Maoist party and the collapse of the Shining Path.in Peru.It is significant that the Communist PARTY OF Phillipines was never a part of R.I.M. or the C.P.I.(Maoist) today.The CO R.I.M dominated the leadership of the third world armed struggles and such aisngle centre caused havoc.The R.C.P(U.S.A.)played agreat role in imposing itself on the struggles of the third world parties.Below I am reproducing a resolution of the C.P.R.C.I.(M.L) on the condition s for forming an International Organisation.
1.The vanguard the Communist parties , practicing proletarian internationalism have to exist. International Communist Unity and concerted action of Communist parties have to exist. The proletariat in each country fulfils it’s internationalist duty by striving for carrying out revolution.
2.Carrying out revolution I one’s own country and striking at imperialism worldwide are distinct though inter-related he 3rd International took p this task .Unfortunately it dissolved itself in 1943 when it found that it’s form was no longer suitable
3. Ever since the dissolution strong efforts have been made to establish proletarian internationalism with their own revolutionary practice. This was initiated by the C.PC from it’s lessons of a protracted Peoples War.It valiantly ought the revisionism of Khrushchev.
Since the fall of proletarian power in the C.C.P. there is no Socialist base in the World. History remembers that despite the achievement of C.P.C under Mao ,the party did not go towards establishing he Communist International or establishing an International Organisation. Instead it stressed for he Communist Parties of the camp to apply he universal truths of Marxism-Leninism in the concrete situation of their country. It emphasized that other countries should not copy the Chinese Experience to-to but apply the Chinese experience in accordance to their own condition.
The main reason for the C.P.C’s caution was a .Imperialism was devising through its local regimes new forms of neo-colonial rule and only a native communist party could analsye and review such situations. An outside force could not grasp the concrete reality. Thus he necessity of political independence of each country’s communist party.
b.Chauvinistic tendencies may develop under Communist Parties .The more developed and advanced may act chauvinistically and deliver big-brother ttreatment to the less developed or successful parties.
The victory of a revolution in a country under the leadership of a Communist Party indicates that certain crucial contemporary problems of he revolutionary movement have been resolved by it ,and thus the experience can be passed on to Communist Parties of othe Countries.At presnt there is no such party in the World..The ideological political struggle against Oppurtunism withi the revolutionary Camp is firce and bitter in each country.
A dialectical process involving unity of Communist Parties is required. Mutual exchange has to take place Actual experience should be shared, which would pave the ay for more advanced form s of collective positions on issues and ralying of more forces worldwide. Mutual Exchange and Common stands,bilaterally and laterally,,and multilateral platforms on the basis of the general line are required
Today in India and in other Countries the reorganization of he Communist Party is still in the process of being realized It is crucial to struggle to implement the correct line and establish its content with opportunism. In this process Communist revolutionaries have to strive to achieve unity on the basis of settling various line questions in connection with the revolutionary practice of the masers of the Indian people.
Joseph Ball:
1. What I always say to the ‘Avakian is a mediocrity’ brigade is read ‘Mao’s Immortal Contributions’. Don’t be put off by the (slightly idealist) title. The work itself is clearly not the work of a mediocrity. Don’t forget at the end of the 70s, when Avakian was working on this book, the communist movement was falling apart, following the restoration of capitalism in China. Avakian stood against revisionism and upheld the line of the so-called ‘Gang of Four’ when thousands of communists around the world were not doing so and were leading the proletarian movement to ruin. In that sense he anticipated the struggles in Peru and Nepal that followed this line. It’s also worth noting that the Naxalites praise Avakian for clarifying matters on the issue of the so-called Gang of Four.
You might ask me whether ‘McWorld vs. Jihad’ or recent comments about the importance of ‘individual rights’ in a socialist society or a worrying approach to the evaluation of Stalin’s legacy meet the high standard of ‘Mao’s Immortal Contributions’. Well, I’m not going to go into that here. Suffice to say that communists must unite with national liberation struggles, individual contributions are welcome in so far as they further social goals (otherwise what use are they?) and that Stalin’s contributions far outweigh his errors (for example, Hitler did not win the war in Europe and the Soviet people were liberated from poverty and backwardness).
The science of revolution makes progress by uniting with the good in an individuals work and by studying and learning from errors. It does not proceed by pure negation. Even when a revolutionary makes mistakes, we do not unite with right-wing criticisms of these mistakes.
E. Dissent within a Socialist Society
A most important debate is the one initiated by Com.Bob Avakian ,of the Revolutionary Communist Party,U..S.A.It has historical significance.He feels that Socialist Society should allow for the greatest dissent and criticism ..In Stalinist Soviet Union opposition was suppressed and in Mao’s China there was unjust persecution of Intellectuals writers. Scientists and Artists who differed from the system..Theoretically,a Socialist Structure represents the dictatorship of the proletariat and thus,the press ,cultural organs etc represent their cause.The experiment lies whether in such a state allowing for ideas that are considered reactionary,or poetry ,music or novels which do not represent the proletarian cause,or intellectuals who are critical of the Socialist System is progressive.We must remember the huge range of ideas that persisted within the Russian Socialist Movement like Plekhanov,Trotsky,Bukarin, Zinoviev Etc In 1957 Mao initiated the hundred Flowers campaign ,inviting criticism of the rightist forces,which led to tremendous dissent. We may not agree with the works of views of Boris Pasternak,Alexander Solzhenityn,Roy Mededev in Russia,Milovan Djilas,bit I don’t think it would be progressive to ban them.Einstein and Freud too had some reactionary political views but yet made immortal contributions.It is significant that Stalinist Russia banned the works of Freud and Einstein. In the author’s view the broadest amount of debate must exist within a Socialist System, but that must be to consolidate the dictatorship of the Proletariat and not to destroy it.
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Here it must be said that there has been a problem in previous socialist societies. There has been a tendency to see intellectual activity that is not directly serving or linked to the agenda of the socialist state at any given time as not that important—or as disruptive of that agenda.
Now in bringing forward this understanding and pointing to these weaknesses, Avakian has been retracing the experience of proletarian revolution in the intellectual and scientific realms. In his reenvisioning of socialism, Bob Avakian has been emphasizing the role of dissent in socialist society. Avakian has said that dissent must not only be allowed but actively fostered, and this includes opposition to the government.
Avakian has written that it would be a good thing to allow even reactionaries to publish some books and speak out in socialist society. This would contribute to the process through which the masses of people would come to know the world more fully and be able to sort out more thoroughly what does and does not correspond to reality, and what does and does not correspond to their fundamental interests in abolishing exploitation, oppression, and social inequalities. This is an important way in which the masses will be better able to take part in running society and transforming that society and the world as a whole toward the goal of communism.
Quoting a revolutionary Journal the Comrade(1991 after the collapse of U.S.S.R and revisionist East European regimes )“A section of Communist revolutionary forces is getting engaged in analyzing and debating the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariatand the cause of capitalist restoration in the erstwhile countries ,and is ending up with he verdicts of the alleged mistakes of Comrades Stalin and Mao. That is tantamount to affirming in practice the very link between the recent developments in revisionist countries and he past practices of Socialism which need to be refuted, and so lends credibility to the propaganda plank of the bourgeoisie.
These comrades have hardly thought over what the alleged mistakes were of Stalin and Mao and the relevance of their reviews of the available theory and practice of Socialism to heir task of countering the bourgeois propaganda. It is not clear which target group they have in mind- ,which can hardly be the common masses of the people. Analysis and debate concerning the Theory and practice of socialism amongst Communist Revolutinary forces s necessary. However open debate is for correcting or refuting ideological deviations and not for seeking unanimity of views between contending sides.A so called friendly public debate serves only to add to the confusion of the people. It actually hides the character of the conflict of views behind it's friendly signboard thus lowering the guard of the revolutionary masses against hostile ideological tendencies, secondly it invariably projects a lot of loud-thinking and tentative stands of the participants. Organised Communist Revolutionaries are expected to provide reliable leadership to the democratic revolutionary movement o he India people, can not afford too such a thing.
The current offensive of the bourgeoise is against the concept of the Leninist party, especially the class distinctive politics and the democratic centralist organization of the party.The Communist revolutionaries should come out in defence of the party concept, but give greater attention to the building o the party. That would be he most appropriate step in countering the bourgeoisie propaganda offensive.
The class enemy would train it's guns at the dicatatorship of the proletariat, the party and the great revolutionary leaders. The class enemy's frenzied attacks should make the Communist Revolutionaries better appreciate these precious assets and prompt them to grasp, defend and promote the same vein more firmly.They should never look back and only The criticism of the revolutionary masses, for the advancement of the revolutionary cause, should prompt Communist Revolutionaries to analyze and ponder over any faults and defects and where it lies.”
The author although sympathetic to this objective differs with this writing on the point of debate.Without debate we cannot derive the correct revolutionary standpoint or bring it to the revolutionary masses.We have to evaluate how Comrades Marx,Lenin and Mao arrived at their theories.The very scope of debate facilitated it.Marx never envisaged that Russia would be the first country to have a proletarian revolution while Lenin did not forsee that the revolution sin colonial or semi-colonial countries would be rural –based which Mao discovered.It is this approach that hardly enables us to detect or analyse the true errors and the root causes for revisionism returning.
A major deviationist trend within the Marxist-Leninist Movement are the distortions of the polemics of Comrades Marx,.Lenin,Stalin and Mao Tse Tung .The chief proponent of this are the Nepalese U.P.C.N(M) and the Kasama group of U.S.A. Com.Mike Ely initiated the Kasama Project Group,a breakaway group from the R.C.P., U.S.A . The Kasama trend almost reduces Com Stalin to a non-Leninist and all Mao’s ideology as an anti-thesis of Stalinism..The Kasama project is one of the greatest ever Marxist-Leninist efforts to create a forum for debate, which has been lacking in the history of the Communist Movement ,but they deviate from strong theoretical foundation. Howevever its reading of Com.Mao’s cultural revolution and theories are virtually analyzed as something different or separate from Leninism.
. The other trend that needs to be combated is that of Maoist third worldism propogated by the Leading Light Communist Organisation (LLCO)that advocates that the entire first world working class is reactionary and only the third world proletariat is revolutionary.It also upholds Lin Biao’s line as the revolutionary line as against that of Com.Mao Tse Tung. Infact it attributes the theory of Peoples War to Lin Biao.It slashes Bob Avakian from a left sectarian standpoint and even overlooks Avakian’s positive points.True it upholds Lenin and Stalin but claims that Com.Mao later veered towards revisionism with Zhou En Lai etc.It terms some of the major third world Maoist struggles like that led by the Communist Party OF Phillipines or C.P.I.(Moaist) as that led by armed revisionists.Infact there is a significant connection between the Lin Biaoist ideology with that of rejecting the first world proletariat as a counter-revolutionary force strategically.Upholding Lin Biao’s line is counter to the correct trend in the International Communist Movement.True Lin did propogate the Peoples War concept but it was fundamentally derived from Com.Mao Tse Tung and not an original formulation of Lin Biao as advocated by the Leading Light group.
I have quoted comments and writings of intellectuals like Joseph Ball and Mike Ely.(Kasama group)Ball logically refutes Kasama’s looseness on the assessment of Stalin but he too finds fault with Mao’s line towards the end.
Significant points have been raised by this section on the class nature of the first world proletariat who reflect a general reactionary attitude and compared with workers of the third world countries live in relative luxury. However only for a temporary period first world workers will they not identify themselves with the struggles of the third world people. We must take into account the anti-war protests of European workesr and strikes combating the Imnperialist system.
Both these trends are harshly critical of the R.C.P.(U.S.A) led by Bob Avakian but from deviationist perspectives. Infact the R.C.P.took a progressive stand criticizing the Nepalese Maoists multi-party co-ordination nad defended the vanguard role of the single proletarian party. Infact Kasama has taken several ecclectical positions on Lenin and the dictatorship of the Proletariat. They see Maoism as something anatagonistic to Stalin’s ideology and even different from Leninism. True they foster a democratic spirit of discussion and debate and welcome a huge range of views but basically do not derive at a proletarian class analysis.I consider the R.C.P.U.S.A more progressive than the Kasama or the L.lc.o.I feel Avakain makes some very valid points in democracy Can we do better than that?”True the R.C.P has fallen victim to losseness in theory and practice and hardly drawn out a mass revolutionary programme for the working class.Nor has it given adequate support to the third world movements.A revolutionary writer Joseph Ball,a staunch opponent of the rightist trends within Kasama is sympathetic to certain aspects of the L.L.C.O . but also partially to the. R.C.P.Ball was critical of the m Nepalese Comrades multi-party approach which Bob Avakain also opposed.
Quoting Joseph Ball in defense of Avakian “Well, I didn’t think my comments on the UCPN(M) would go down too well here to be honest.It is true that you have a lot of good things to say about the exploitation of the Third World, and the First World worker’s complicity in all of that. My article on the UCPN(M) reflects some of this. RCP-USA is very aware of this type of analysis too. However, they still think revolution in the USA is possible for reasons other than economic ones. I reserve judgement on this line but I find it a lot easier to see how revolution could occur in Third World nations.I am afraid where Monkey Smashes Heaven (Leader of L.L.C.O.)fails and where Avakian succeeds is that his theory of the state in ‘Democracy Can’t We Do Better Than That?’ and ‘Democracy; More Than Ever Can’t We Do Better Than That?’ is correct wheras MSH and other groups that have shared its line seem to have a fairly anarchist view of the state. As far as I can tell, MSH favours a sort of Shanghai Commune approach to state organisation under socialism (correct me if I am wrong). This does not really take into account the full dialectical relationship between the need to use the state to defend the revolution and the need to advance the erosion of the differences between leaders and led and the withering away of the state.This criticism should be taken in the spirit in which it is intended.I’m not trying to ‘sell’ Avakian here but I think MSH tends to see his line in black and white, when it’s really shades of grey. After all, RCP-USA dropped its involvement in US labor unions precisely because it was felt that the strictly economic problems of US workers were pretty unimportant compared to the problems of the Third World proletariat. Not the MSH line, I know, but not really the MSH’s version of the RCP-USA line either.
Personally,the author recognizes the disparity between the first world and third world proletariat but feels disqualifying the role of the first world section would be capitulation.True the first world proletariat is complacent and much better paid but in recent times they have been affected by great level sof unemployment,jobcuts and also been launched into major strikes against globalization and anti war struggles.
2.Theory
A.First World v.Third World
1. Joseph Ball states:Here are two comments by Mike that worry me.
. The white working class in the USA is not going to form some sort of revolutionary core. In global terms, it is in effect a ruling class. They elect the US leaders that subjugate the world proletariat and ensure a flow of super-profits (whether through direct investment returns or unequal exchange) that keeps the US working class affluent.
This does not mean we should automatically label them as an enemy for all time as MIM/Monkey Smashes Heaven etc do. The art of revolution is about winning sections of the ruling class over to the proletarian side. This is what the Nepalese Maoists are doing and Mao was a master at this. However, you must do this from a proletarian base, not try to form your base in the ruling class.
The comment about Czechoslovakia is also a little worrying. Now, the USSR was led by capitalist roaders by 1968 and there was no way we should support the invasion of Czechoslavkia. But what were the Czechs trying to do in 1968?
After World War II, the Western nations saw a huge increase in affluence. The West (and Japan) virtually monopolised advanced industry on a world scale. Other nations had been forcibly prevented from industrialising since the nineteenth century by the imposition of unequal treaties, direct colonial rule and so on. This lack of world competition from non-imperialist nations greatly boosted the growth in wages of western industrial workers, as wages did not have to be kept down to keep the goods western workers produced competitive in price terms. This was a more or less deliberate policy put in place in order to buy them off and prevent revolution.
After Stalin died, the Warsaw Pact nations could not develop up to the same level of the West. There are many reasons for this. Some have drawn attention to the prevention of technology transfer by the US and I think we need to seriously consider this as a factor in the Eastern bloc’s lack of development. (Without exaggerating things, the Soviet bloc was not quite as poor as we are taught in the West now).
The seizure of land and resources without payment from Native Americans made US workers much more affluent than European workers (higher wages had to be paid to dissuade US workers from going off and stake a claim to land, not a problem in Europe, where peasants had been dispossessed of their land). This rich ‘home market’ for goods allowed a massive amount of capital to be generated by US business.
After the War, America was desperate to halt the advance of Soviet power. They did this by using this capital to revive the economies of Western European imperialist nations (Marshall Aid). These economies themselves had been developed through the plunder and impoverishment of the oppressed nations. Marshall Aid was also used to help relatively less well-off countries like Italy that had not developed large foreign empires.
There was a more or less deliberate attempt to establish an affluent West that would embarrass the less affluent socialist nations. Nations like Poland and Czechoslovakia in particular felt aggrieved that they could not be a part of this affluent club of Western countries. They had been relatively closer to the West than other Eastern bloc countries before the war and unlike some other Eastern European countries, they had not supported the Nazis.
The whole East European dissident business was really just an attempt by East European nations to get into the club of rich Western imperialist nations and get a share of the super-profit. It wasn’t really a movement for liberation against Soviet imperialism (unlike for instance the struggle against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan).
We need to understand that socialism in this day and age is a movement of the Third World masses and has been since at least the end of World War II. Most of the First World masses do not support it because they don’t really need it and wouldn’t really benefit from it. It is the Third World who will really benefit from equality and the right to develop their economies free of the imperialist strangle-hold. Once we grasp this we can understand why socialism apparently failed in Eastern Europe. We need to do this so we can stop wasting our time trying to come up with variants of socialism or bold new ideas for revolutionary movements that will appeal to Western workers. The Third World proletariat is our core.
Mike Ely reply’s
1. However I still believe it was correct and important to try (with great energy and effort) to extend the revolutionary movement of the 1960s outside its core areas (among sections of Black people and radicalized students) — including especially to other sections of the working class. I had been (at that time) working to build support for the Black Panther Party in a couple cities, and like many young revolutionaries was deeply worried that the U.S. could reach some decisive crisis (in the years of the 1970s) under conditions where the influence of revolution had not spread broadly enough to carry through a successful socialist revolution. There was worry that Black people might be crushed in a revolutionary attempt that did not have broad enough support.
A key section of society to reach and influence were white working people — and I was particularly enthusiastic about going into the Appalachian coalfields where coal miners (often spearheaded by recently returned Viet Vets) were waging a fierce and intensifying struggle against their own conditions and their own direct oppressors.
I hope this makes clear my point (about answering Stokely’s call).
Joseph writes two things that made me pause:
“The white working class in the USA is not going to form some sort of revolutionary core.”
The working class in the U.S. is highly multinational. And “white working class” is not some separate class or monolith — and will not (by itself) form a revolutionary core. (In my opinion) any revolutionary core (for making revolution, but also for driving forward to the formation of a new socialist society and state) has to be rooted among the oppressed of all nationalities in the U.S.
There is stratification and bourgeoisification in the U.S. working class (quite a bit of it). But if you go down into the most oppressed levels of that class you will find that large numbers (and often overall a majority) are white (for example a majority of people on welfare, and until recently a majority of people in prison etc.) I can’t imagine a successful revolutionary movement in the U.S. that had not succeeded in influencing and winning over sections of white working people, and training the most advanced among them as communists. And this is true, even while, it is the working people of the oppressed nationalities that have had the most advanced consciousness and combativity since World War 2 (a dynamic uneveness which I assume we can expect to see continued, in new forms and manifestations, into the future).
I have tended to view the U.S. ruling class as the heights of capital — as the commanding centers of finance and monopoly, of the military and government. It will be to the advantage of revolution to have them in disarray, divided and ineffectual. But I don’t expect to “win sections over to the proletarian side” — though there might be some degrees of paralyzed neutrality if things fall particularly well.
I am saying that a revolutionary movement without any white working people supporting it is unlikely to succeed. And I also think that working people (of all nationalities) are oppressed by this system in ways far more significant than any advantages they get from living in the U.S.
The idea that the working people of the U.S. (or sections of them) are part of the ruling class does not correspond with reality.
On this score my views respect both viewpoints but are more in favour of Mike Ely as ultimately the white proletariat has to be won over.
Joseph Ball:
1. Celticfire asks ‘What would a genuinely revolutionary people or movement look like to you?’. My answer is a struggle of the Third World peoples to liberate their nations from imperialism, politically and economically and then unite to destroy US imperialism, break down the borders between Third World and First World and thus end the division of the world working class that prevents socialism in the First World countries.
Why hasn’t this been a reality in the past 30 years (at least not a reality led by Maoists?) Well, Mike mentions Kampuchea and I think Mike’s own work is very interesting in this regard. Mike wrote of Kampuchea in 1997:
‘The Khmer Rouge was driven back into rural base areas in western Cambodia–where they still exist as an armed force. At the time, a section of the population clearly fought to defend the Democratic Kampuchean government–and for years a sizable section of the population supported Pol Pot for his incorruptible reputation, his identification with the peasants and his relentless fight against foreign domination…Pol Pot kicked the U.S. imperialists out of Cambodia. And that’s why they hate him. By vilifying Pol Pot, the U.S. is pressing ahead with their attempts to slam the door on all dreams of social change–to declare that communist revolution and even national independence for oppressed countries must be rejected and denounced. They cannot be allowed to get away with this.’
I first read this a few years ago when I was getting into the Maoist line. I was impressed by Mike’s courage in defending someone generally regarded as indefensible but at the same time I believed Mike’s line was incorrect. To some extent I could see what Mike was trying to do. Before the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea western leftists had been gravitating towards the idea of the Third World as the ‘storm centre’ of world revolution and this notion was generally associated with Maoism. After the overthrow of Democratic Kampuchea, this line tended to disintegrate. Marxists started to disavow the ideas of Third World national liberation and economic self-sufficiency for Third World countries. The death toll of Democratic Kampuchea was blamed on ‘nationalism’ and these attempts at economic self-sufficiency. Mike was trying to fight a rear-guard action to defend these notions by partially defending Pol Pot. ( I’d be interested to know Mike’s opinion of Pol Pot these days. )
My subsequent reading has demonstrated to me that despite serious errors, Democratic Kampuchea was socialist up until late 1976. After that point, it became revisionist, as Pol Pot came under the wing of Deng Xiaoping. Deng, Pol Pot and the US then came up with a tacit agreement that Kampuchea and China would make war on Vietnam to as part of an effort to further the aims of the US imperialist bloc to which they both now belonged to. Preparation for war led to mass killings and starvation in Kampuchea, much worse than anything that had happened in the first 2 years.
The fact was that there was a chance for a Third World based anti-imperialist movement to encircle and strangle US imperialism in the second half of the twentieth century. It was undermined by revisionism and the Three Worlds Theory, which provided the ideological underpinning for Pol Pot’s revisionism. The correct verdict is not turning away from the idea of the Third World proletariat as the vanguard or the idea of national liberation and neither is it an effort to rehabilitate Pol Pot’s line-Democratic Kampuchea in 1977-8 was firmly imbeded in the imperialist system, it was not a ‘liberated’ country. What we should accept is that revisionism and capitulation to the West temporarily side-lined a project, that with more ideological coherence, could lead to the liberation of humanity.
B.Multi-Party System
The most controversial trend within the Marxist-Leninist Movement is the finding fault with Comrades Lenin, Stalin and Mao and deploying of the multi-party System. The chief proponent of this are the Nepalese U.P.C.N(M) and the Kasama group of U.S.A. Com.Mike Ely initiated the Kasama Project Group,a breakaway group from the R.C.P., U.S.A . His writings slander the achievements of Com.Stalin to a considerable extent ,and even deride Com.Lenin and Com.Mao on many an occasion. The Kasama trend almost reduces Com Stalin to a non-Leninist and all Mao’s contributions achievements as an anti-thesis of Stalinism..True, Kasama project is one of the greatest ever Marxist-Leninist efforts to create a forum for debate, which has been lacking in the history of the Communist Movement .and made a historic contribution by launching outstanding debates on Maoist polemics .
However such forces are forgetting the important contribution of Lenin on the dictatorship of the Proletariat and the revisionist character of parliamentary democracy.Infact it was Trotsky who promoted the multi-party system and the institutions of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. By promoting multi-party system the proletarian revolutionary centre of power is denied and infact a Socialist State can be toppled. Let us remember the experiences of the Communist Movement in Nazi Germany or worldwide. It was the Leninist Party that promoted the building and consolidation of Socialist Societies in Soviet Union and China. Whether the Bolshevik Revolution,the civil War, the collectivization era, the Soviet World War Victory: all these achievements were the result of the foundation of the Leninist Party. Similarly in China although Mao called for continuous Revolution under the dictatorship of the Proletariat he called for a revolt within a proletarian party Structure. The sweeping victories of the Socialist Revolution,The Great Leap Forward, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution were unprecedented in history and can be attribute to Comrade Mao’s persistence with upholding the Leninist Principles of the Dicatatorship of the Proletariat. True there were opposing factions of revisionist nature like Lin Biao ,Liu Shao –Chi Etc ,but the struggle against them through mass campaigns was led by the proletarian party. It was the revolutionary trend within the proletarian party that fought the Lin Biaost forces politically and the rise of Lin Biao or Liu Shao Chi cannot be attributed to the lack of a multiparty System. True ,it was defeated by Deng Xiaoping’s rightist forces, but a multi-party Sustem may have promoted such forces much earlier. In Soviet Union Comrade Stalin violated democratic Centralism to a considerable extent and any dissent was put down .Comrade Mao, tried to correct this by initiating a broad mass Movement of the Chinese masses against the reactionary Forces, and got several members of the party to go through self-criticism and reform. It was historic that a mass Movement was led within the very Communist Party ,unlike in the Soviet Union. Mao had learnt from the Stalin era that a revolutionary Movement was required even within a socialist System.Below I am reproducing a debate between Mike Ely and Joseph Ball . on the multi-party System.
Mike Ely:First, let me say, as an introduction… that I don’t believe that multiparty competitive elections are a form that all future socialist society need universally adopt.
I think that it is not possible to assert or assume any single form of state organization. Capitalist politics have many forms — constitutional monarchy, electoral democracy, fascism etc. And I assume that socialism will have a great many diverse forms over its historical transition — and it already has had quite diverse forms already — starting with the Paris Commune, the Russian Soviets, the stages of Stalin-era state, and the many Chinese forms from Chingkang mountains to the Cultural Revolution.
But I am interested to see an experiment in such an electoral form in some future revolution — including the one that the Nepali Maoists want to initiate. Competitive electoral democracy may not be possible or appropriate in some countries or in some revolutions or in some moments — there may not be “other” parties able to participate in such a process. But I would not rule it out, either.
Besides competitive electoral democracy, there may be other radical forms of socialist democracy we should consider (or invent together with the people): commune forms, cultural revolution style formations, and perhaps even yet-unimagined forms made possible by modern communications.
I think there may also be future cases where a party-state remains the only option possible — though even there our experience shows we would need to incorporate radical new proposals for popular input and supervision.
(An example from history: In 1918, Lenin tried to have a coalition government with the Left Social-Revolutionaries, but that coalition broke down over signing a peace treaty with Germany. Then a Left SR shot Lenin. The assassin declared that Lenin was restoring capitalism and caving in to imperialism. In other words, you can try to have a broader approach, but sometimes you don’t find viable partners in the actual political moment. Does Joseph Ball want to argue that this Russian attempt was wrong in principle, because the Left SR’s were inherently a bourgeois party — rather than a quite radical peasant-and-middle-class party? Was Lenin violating the dictatorship of the proletariat by bringing them into the government? Was Mao wrong in bringing a wing of the left GMD into his 1949 government? Hasn’t previous communist theory held that a worker peasant alliance in early USSR, or even a broader governmental united front in China can be a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat?)
Joseph Ball:
1. It’s sometimes claimed that the multi-party elections in this system will take place under the dictatorship of the proletariat. But this makes no sense at all. If it’s a dictatorship of the proletariat how can you allow bourgeois parties to compete for power with the party of the proletariat? It is absurd to believe that elections could routinely take place between two parties both with a proletarian line. The proletariat has a common interest. It’s vanguard should be encouraging unity not institutionalising a split so we can blindly copy bourgeois democracy. Multi-party democracy has a material basis in capitalism because different factions of the bourgeoisie have different selfish interests. Not so the proletariat. The proletariat’s essential interests can only be realised by the liberation of all humanity. Essentially, it has no selfish interests (though of course proletarians may act selfishly due to false consciousness or embourgeoisement). Where the proletariat does split, it is between socialist roaders and capitalist roaders. Some Maoists talk as if this split should be institutionalised by encouraging different parties and factions. This is ridiculous! A split between capitalist roaders and socialist roaders is by its nature class warfare. It is not some friendly expression of opinion. How can those taking the socialist road set up institutions that give their enemies a potential power base? Does the bourgeoisie do such a thing? No, they only tolerate phony communists. Real communists (and even many militant reformists) are rapidly suppressed in the bourgeois system. The proletariat can get rid of bad party leaderships by exercising power in the organs of revolutionary power and through inner-party struggle, if they are members of the Communist Party. They can achieve this only if they actually express power by becoming the administrators of the state and all society. This will make them a thousand times freer than Bhattarai’s half-baked reformist schemes for multi-party competition.
2.
Joseph Ball:
“The proletariat has a common interest.”
Therefore, (by deduction) it can only have one party. And further, it would be wrong to “split” into two parties. The bourgeoisie (which has rivalries and competing interests inherently) can have multiple parties, but we can have only one.
Further (by logical deduction from that initial assertion), a plan for a multiparty election under socialism must be a plan for allowing the supposedly overthrown bourgeoisie itself to repeatedly contest for power.
Then comes the second assertion: Allowing the bourgeoisie to organize and contest for power is inherently opposed to a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Finally, if you scan that list of assertions and deductions, you get presented with a conclusion that the plan for multiparty elections violates the principle of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
The author also refutes the Western multi-party democracy but still feels the question of a Socialist multi-party system remains unanswered .Mike Ely’s has analyzed the scope and development of bourgeois democracy which should not be confused with the creation sof structures in Socialist Societies.Eg He quotes so many oppressive forms.Historically he is correct about the alliances of Mao and Lenin but those were experiences after the Communist party had already seized revolutionary power.There was no multi-party system prevalent in the PARIS Commune,Chingkang mountains,Russian Soviets or Cultural Revolution.
However after the creation of a Socialist state there is a possibility that other parties could be allowed to participate in order to democraticize the superstructure .Afterall even sections of the proletariat can differ and may need different bodies representing them. The Communist party could still function as the vanguard and lead mass movements without imposing itself and allowing other viewpoints.Infact such a system can be a greater test for the democratic credentials of the Communist Party and it’s actual support of the people.Howevere this still has to be in opposition to the Western bourgeois electoral system.
C.Russia in World War 2
Another point of debate was the role of Soviet Russia in the World War.2
Joseph Ball:Mike Ely’s comments are so full of unproven assertions, derived from bourgeois slanders of socialism, that it is hard to know where to begin.
Mike Ely states-’When the Soviet army swept through Nazi Germany, there was systematic rape of German women — in retribution for the atrocities the Nazis had committed on Russian soil. Is that justified — or is it an example of how far that Soviet army had come from being a red army?’
Joseph Ball-Where is their evidence that there was ‘systematic rape’, i.e. rape sanctioned by the authorities as whole? All the evidence is that the Soviet authorities wanted to prevent rape as they believed such behaviour discredited the socialist ideals that the war had been fought for. In Iraq the sexual humiliation of prisoners by the yanks was clearly state sanctioned. When the US advanced into Germany at the end of World War 2, 500 soldiers a week were being charged with rape.
The fact that the Red Army still had some of the bad characteristics of bourgeois armies is a great tragedy but this was the first attempt at socialism and Mao did address many such problems in his theories of the People’s Army.
Mike Ely says ‘What did it mean in the Soviet Union when the most lofty and revolutionary of the youth were organized to deport whole peoples and imprison hundreds of thousands with a great deal of arbitrary injustice? It is one thing to ask what became of those targeted, and it is another (also important) thing to ask what becomes of the revolution and the revolutionaries, if the revolutionary gun gets pointed too long and too often at large sections of the people themselves.’
Joseph Ball-these policies took place in the context of a Nazi invasion that was intended to either annihalate or enslave the Soviet people in its entirity. The Nazis used the familar tactic of divide and rule, offering the prospect of survival to some people if they would betray their comrades. It was necessary to use harsh measures to defeat this tactic. If the divide and rule tactic had succeeded, then the Nazis would have won and world civilisation would have been extinguished. The whole world owes the Soviet people and their leader, Joseph Stalin for their world-historic victory over the Nazis.
D.Revolutionary Internationalist Movement
Another trend that has to be combated was that of prematurely forming a Communist International. This was led by the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement in it’s founding conferences in 1980 and 1984.In India and world over there have been wrong trends towards this approach. One tendency embraces the formation of a Communist International, while the other led by C.P.I.-M.L. led by K.N.Ramchandran , in the early stages promoted the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement in its early stages in 1980 and 1984and blamed the Socialist C.P.C.led by Com.Mao of neglecting the formation of a Communist International. It was the late Com.Harbhajan Singh Sohi,who was the greatest protagonist of the Correct International Line and approach towards the formation of a Communist International. With Comrade Moni Guha,earlier he had pioneered the struggle against the 3 worlds theory advocated by Deng Xiaoping of China and attributed to Com.Mao by several major components of the Communist Revolutionary camp.. A dialectical process involving unity of Communist Parties is required. Mutual exchange has to take place Actual experience should be shared, which would pave the way for more advanced form s of collective positions on issues and rallying of more forces worldwide. Mutual Exchange and Common stands, bilaterally and laterally, and multilateral platforms on the basis of the general line were required.Toady the R.I.M has virtually collapsed.It has been instruemtal in the capitulation of the Nepalese Maoist party and the collapse of the Shining Path.in Peru.It is significant that the Communist PARTY OF Phillipines was never a part of R.I.M. or the C.P.I.(Maoist) today.The CO R.I.M dominated the leadership of the third world armed struggles and such aisngle centre caused havoc.The R.C.P(U.S.A.)played agreat role in imposing itself on the struggles of the third world parties.Below I am reproducing a resolution of the C.P.R.C.I.(M.L) on the condition s for forming an International Organisation.
1.The vanguard the Communist parties , practicing proletarian internationalism have to exist. International Communist Unity and concerted action of Communist parties have to exist. The proletariat in each country fulfils it’s internationalist duty by striving for carrying out revolution.
2.Carrying out revolution I one’s own country and striking at imperialism worldwide are distinct though inter-related he 3rd International took p this task .Unfortunately it dissolved itself in 1943 when it found that it’s form was no longer suitable
3. Ever since the dissolution strong efforts have been made to establish proletarian internationalism with their own revolutionary practice. This was initiated by the C.PC from it’s lessons of a protracted Peoples War.It valiantly ought the revisionism of Khrushchev.
Since the fall of proletarian power in the C.C.P. there is no Socialist base in the World. History remembers that despite the achievement of C.P.C under Mao ,the party did not go towards establishing he Communist International or establishing an International Organisation. Instead it stressed for he Communist Parties of the camp to apply he universal truths of Marxism-Leninism in the concrete situation of their country. It emphasized that other countries should not copy the Chinese Experience to-to but apply the Chinese experience in accordance to their own condition.
The main reason for the C.P.C’s caution was a .Imperialism was devising through its local regimes new forms of neo-colonial rule and only a native communist party could analsye and review such situations. An outside force could not grasp the concrete reality. Thus he necessity of political independence of each country’s communist party.
b.Chauvinistic tendencies may develop under Communist Parties .The more developed and advanced may act chauvinistically and deliver big-brother ttreatment to the less developed or successful parties.
The victory of a revolution in a country under the leadership of a Communist Party indicates that certain crucial contemporary problems of he revolutionary movement have been resolved by it ,and thus the experience can be passed on to Communist Parties of othe Countries.At presnt there is no such party in the World..The ideological political struggle against Oppurtunism withi the revolutionary Camp is firce and bitter in each country.
A dialectical process involving unity of Communist Parties is required. Mutual exchange has to take place Actual experience should be shared, which would pave the ay for more advanced form s of collective positions on issues and ralying of more forces worldwide. Mutual Exchange and Common stands,bilaterally and laterally,,and multilateral platforms on the basis of the general line are required
Today in India and in other Countries the reorganization of he Communist Party is still in the process of being realized It is crucial to struggle to implement the correct line and establish its content with opportunism. In this process Communist revolutionaries have to strive to achieve unity on the basis of settling various line questions in connection with the revolutionary practice of the masers of the Indian people.
Joseph Ball:
1. What I always say to the ‘Avakian is a mediocrity’ brigade is read ‘Mao’s Immortal Contributions’. Don’t be put off by the (slightly idealist) title. The work itself is clearly not the work of a mediocrity. Don’t forget at the end of the 70s, when Avakian was working on this book, the communist movement was falling apart, following the restoration of capitalism in China. Avakian stood against revisionism and upheld the line of the so-called ‘Gang of Four’ when thousands of communists around the world were not doing so and were leading the proletarian movement to ruin. In that sense he anticipated the struggles in Peru and Nepal that followed this line. It’s also worth noting that the Naxalites praise Avakian for clarifying matters on the issue of the so-called Gang of Four.
You might ask me whether ‘McWorld vs. Jihad’ or recent comments about the importance of ‘individual rights’ in a socialist society or a worrying approach to the evaluation of Stalin’s legacy meet the high standard of ‘Mao’s Immortal Contributions’. Well, I’m not going to go into that here. Suffice to say that communists must unite with national liberation struggles, individual contributions are welcome in so far as they further social goals (otherwise what use are they?) and that Stalin’s contributions far outweigh his errors (for example, Hitler did not win the war in Europe and the Soviet people were liberated from poverty and backwardness).
The science of revolution makes progress by uniting with the good in an individuals work and by studying and learning from errors. It does not proceed by pure negation. Even when a revolutionary makes mistakes, we do not unite with right-wing criticisms of these mistakes.
E. Dissent within a Socialist Society
A most important debate is the one initiated by Com.Bob Avakian ,of the Revolutionary Communist Party,U..S.A.It has historical significance.He feels that Socialist Society should allow for the greatest dissent and criticism ..In Stalinist Soviet Union opposition was suppressed and in Mao’s China there was unjust persecution of Intellectuals writers. Scientists and Artists who differed from the system..Theoretically,a Socialist Structure represents the dictatorship of the proletariat and thus,the press ,cultural organs etc represent their cause.The experiment lies whether in such a state allowing for ideas that are considered reactionary,or poetry ,music or novels which do not represent the proletarian cause,or intellectuals who are critical of the Socialist System is progressive.We must remember the huge range of ideas that persisted within the Russian Socialist Movement like Plekhanov,Trotsky,Bukarin, Zinoviev Etc In 1957 Mao initiated the hundred Flowers campaign ,inviting criticism of the rightist forces,which led to tremendous dissent. We may not agree with the works of views of Boris Pasternak,Alexander Solzhenityn,Roy Mededev in Russia,Milovan Djilas,bit I don’t think it would be progressive to ban them.Einstein and Freud too had some reactionary political views but yet made immortal contributions.It is significant that Stalinist Russia banned the works of Freud and Einstein. In the author’s view the broadest amount of debate must exist within a Socialist System, but that must be to consolidate the dictatorship of the Proletariat and not to destroy it.
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Here it must be said that there has been a problem in previous socialist societies. There has been a tendency to see intellectual activity that is not directly serving or linked to the agenda of the socialist state at any given time as not that important—or as disruptive of that agenda.
Now in bringing forward this understanding and pointing to these weaknesses, Avakian has been retracing the experience of proletarian revolution in the intellectual and scientific realms. In his reenvisioning of socialism, Bob Avakian has been emphasizing the role of dissent in socialist society. Avakian has said that dissent must not only be allowed but actively fostered, and this includes opposition to the government.
Avakian has written that it would be a good thing to allow even reactionaries to publish some books and speak out in socialist society. This would contribute to the process through which the masses of people would come to know the world more fully and be able to sort out more thoroughly what does and does not correspond to reality, and what does and does not correspond to their fundamental interests in abolishing exploitation, oppression, and social inequalities. This is an important way in which the masses will be better able to take part in running society and transforming that society and the world as a whole toward the goal of communism.
Quoting a revolutionary Journal the Comrade(1991 after the collapse of U.S.S.R and revisionist East European regimes )“A section of Communist revolutionary forces is getting engaged in analyzing and debating the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariatand the cause of capitalist restoration in the erstwhile countries ,and is ending up with he verdicts of the alleged mistakes of Comrades Stalin and Mao. That is tantamount to affirming in practice the very link between the recent developments in revisionist countries and he past practices of Socialism which need to be refuted, and so lends credibility to the propaganda plank of the bourgeoisie.
These comrades have hardly thought over what the alleged mistakes were of Stalin and Mao and the relevance of their reviews of the available theory and practice of Socialism to heir task of countering the bourgeois propaganda. It is not clear which target group they have in mind- ,which can hardly be the common masses of the people. Analysis and debate concerning the Theory and practice of socialism amongst Communist Revolutinary forces s necessary. However open debate is for correcting or refuting ideological deviations and not for seeking unanimity of views between contending sides.A so called friendly public debate serves only to add to the confusion of the people. It actually hides the character of the conflict of views behind it's friendly signboard thus lowering the guard of the revolutionary masses against hostile ideological tendencies, secondly it invariably projects a lot of loud-thinking and tentative stands of the participants. Organised Communist Revolutionaries are expected to provide reliable leadership to the democratic revolutionary movement o he India people, can not afford too such a thing.
The current offensive of the bourgeoise is against the concept of the Leninist party, especially the class distinctive politics and the democratic centralist organization of the party.The Communist revolutionaries should come out in defence of the party concept, but give greater attention to the building o the party. That would be he most appropriate step in countering the bourgeoisie propaganda offensive.
The class enemy would train it's guns at the dicatatorship of the proletariat, the party and the great revolutionary leaders. The class enemy's frenzied attacks should make the Communist Revolutionaries better appreciate these precious assets and prompt them to grasp, defend and promote the same vein more firmly.They should never look back and only The criticism of the revolutionary masses, for the advancement of the revolutionary cause, should prompt Communist Revolutionaries to analyze and ponder over any faults and defects and where it lies.”
The author although sympathetic to this objective differs with this writing on the point of debate.Without debate we cannot derive the correct revolutionary standpoint or bring it to the revolutionary masses.We have to evaluate how Comrades Marx,Lenin and Mao arrived at their theories.The very scope of debate facilitated it.Marx never envisaged that Russia would be the first country to have a proletarian revolution while Lenin did not forsee that the revolution sin colonial or semi-colonial countries would be rural –based which Mao discovered.It is this approach that hardly enables us to detect or analyse the true errors and the root causes for revisionism returning.