redstar2000
28th June 2003, 11:12
As most of you already know, Leninism-Maoism has little enough to offer working people in the advanced capitalist countries; it is and has been from its inception a peasant ideology created for the purpose of managing the transition from despotism/feudalism/colonialism to independent modern capitalism. It borrows a good deal of terminology from Marx and Engels...but "adapts" it to the situation found in pre-capitalist or emerging capitalist countries. It is a way to make a bourgeois revolution without calling it that.
What happens when people nevertheless attempt to "apply" such an outlook to an advanced capitalist country? The official dogma, now completely divorced from the material reality from which it emerged, becomes a "cult", a "church" in which reverence for the leader is the only paramount virtue. The prophet delivers oracles and his followers ponder among themselves the profundity of the leader's eructations.
I was reminded of this when someone in another thread invited me to inspect the forums of Bob Avakian's "Revolutionary Communist Party". You may have a look for yourself...just to see that I'm not making this stuff up:
http://2changetheworld.info/disc/index.php...world&mylang=en (http://2changetheworld.info/disc/index.php?site=changetheworld&mylang=en)
What we have learned from history is that revolution tends to happen in the 3rd world countries...in the "weakest" link of imperialism.
From Avakian himself: And I would add, in keeping with the thrust of what Mao is saying here, that if you don't have a poetic spirit -- or at least a poetic side, it is very dangerous for you to lead a Marxist movement or be the leader of a socialist state.
The Draft Programme is infused with the collective wisdom of the whole Party, highlighted by many path-breaking contributions of RCP Chairman Bob Avakian.
Now, there is something I have been wondering about. I was following Bob Avakian's last series on Grasp Revolution/ Promote Production very closely and really fighting to try to get an understanding of it. The more I think about this question of the Central Task, the more I wonder what the relationship of GR/PP is to the Central Task. How is it applied to carrying out the Central Task?
...but Ill just cut to the chase on the above. I too love Stalin and Mao, but Bob Avakian is my Chairman...Should the RCP build a cult around our leader, Bob Avakian? Personally, I say damn straight...Do we take ourselves/our cause seriously enough to have cults around our best leaders leaders like Lenin and Mao and Bob Avakian, the Chairman of our Party here, the RCP?... As long as class society exists, every leader is a political representative of a class. Every class has its foremost political representatives who advances/concentrates the vision/plan/mission of that class, and gives direction on how to achieve such...It should be obvious to anyone whos read my posts over the past year on this website that I find the leadership of Bob Avakian to be indispensable for our Party and the movement as a whole to do what we need to do in order to change the world...In the storms now swirling and those ahead, we should build a huge cult around the personality of THIS leader of our class. The proletarian revolution needs THIS great proletarian leader.
And in Avakian's own words: The point is that in class society and with the division of labor (or significant remnants of the division of labor) characteristic of class-divided society, it is the case that certain individuals come to represent the truth in a concentrated way (as others do the false). This, of course, is not a once-and-for-all, lifetime-guaranteed thing and there is always the danger that building up such people could turn into a very bad thing if they no longer did represent the truth after a certain point. But even if there remains the real possibility that the individual may thus change, there will also remain the need for building up others who do continue to stand for the truth in a concentrated way. In any case such people play their role as leaders of a classand thus there is, as Mao described it, the combination of the role of the individual (in particular in this context the individual leader) and collective leadership.
Were there any disciples of St. Avakian present, I daresay they would complain bitterly about my "ripping off" a few random (if embarrassing) quotes from their website(s). They would whine that "this is not a serious criticism".
Fair enough. In all the religion threads we've had at Che-Lives, I have rarely involved myself in the details of theological disputes...I, like most sane people, find them boring. A truly serious criticism of "The Thoughts of Chairman Bob" would be tedious to read and even more tedious to write.
Fortunately, it's not really necessary. Once you grasp the idea that the "Revolutionary Communist Party" is a church, nothing further should be needed to keep you away from them.
Unless, of course, you're looking for that sort of thing.
:cool:
What happens when people nevertheless attempt to "apply" such an outlook to an advanced capitalist country? The official dogma, now completely divorced from the material reality from which it emerged, becomes a "cult", a "church" in which reverence for the leader is the only paramount virtue. The prophet delivers oracles and his followers ponder among themselves the profundity of the leader's eructations.
I was reminded of this when someone in another thread invited me to inspect the forums of Bob Avakian's "Revolutionary Communist Party". You may have a look for yourself...just to see that I'm not making this stuff up:
http://2changetheworld.info/disc/index.php...world&mylang=en (http://2changetheworld.info/disc/index.php?site=changetheworld&mylang=en)
What we have learned from history is that revolution tends to happen in the 3rd world countries...in the "weakest" link of imperialism.
From Avakian himself: And I would add, in keeping with the thrust of what Mao is saying here, that if you don't have a poetic spirit -- or at least a poetic side, it is very dangerous for you to lead a Marxist movement or be the leader of a socialist state.
The Draft Programme is infused with the collective wisdom of the whole Party, highlighted by many path-breaking contributions of RCP Chairman Bob Avakian.
Now, there is something I have been wondering about. I was following Bob Avakian's last series on Grasp Revolution/ Promote Production very closely and really fighting to try to get an understanding of it. The more I think about this question of the Central Task, the more I wonder what the relationship of GR/PP is to the Central Task. How is it applied to carrying out the Central Task?
...but Ill just cut to the chase on the above. I too love Stalin and Mao, but Bob Avakian is my Chairman...Should the RCP build a cult around our leader, Bob Avakian? Personally, I say damn straight...Do we take ourselves/our cause seriously enough to have cults around our best leaders leaders like Lenin and Mao and Bob Avakian, the Chairman of our Party here, the RCP?... As long as class society exists, every leader is a political representative of a class. Every class has its foremost political representatives who advances/concentrates the vision/plan/mission of that class, and gives direction on how to achieve such...It should be obvious to anyone whos read my posts over the past year on this website that I find the leadership of Bob Avakian to be indispensable for our Party and the movement as a whole to do what we need to do in order to change the world...In the storms now swirling and those ahead, we should build a huge cult around the personality of THIS leader of our class. The proletarian revolution needs THIS great proletarian leader.
And in Avakian's own words: The point is that in class society and with the division of labor (or significant remnants of the division of labor) characteristic of class-divided society, it is the case that certain individuals come to represent the truth in a concentrated way (as others do the false). This, of course, is not a once-and-for-all, lifetime-guaranteed thing and there is always the danger that building up such people could turn into a very bad thing if they no longer did represent the truth after a certain point. But even if there remains the real possibility that the individual may thus change, there will also remain the need for building up others who do continue to stand for the truth in a concentrated way. In any case such people play their role as leaders of a classand thus there is, as Mao described it, the combination of the role of the individual (in particular in this context the individual leader) and collective leadership.
Were there any disciples of St. Avakian present, I daresay they would complain bitterly about my "ripping off" a few random (if embarrassing) quotes from their website(s). They would whine that "this is not a serious criticism".
Fair enough. In all the religion threads we've had at Che-Lives, I have rarely involved myself in the details of theological disputes...I, like most sane people, find them boring. A truly serious criticism of "The Thoughts of Chairman Bob" would be tedious to read and even more tedious to write.
Fortunately, it's not really necessary. Once you grasp the idea that the "Revolutionary Communist Party" is a church, nothing further should be needed to keep you away from them.
Unless, of course, you're looking for that sort of thing.
:cool: