Why I've decided to Break with the RCP

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Alright, I've been a supporter of Revolution for like about a year now. When I first became active, I did it with alot of problems with the RCP, I always tried to struggle through them but the fact of the matter is that the RCP is wrong on alot of shit, there are too many problems that I have with the way things are done for me to continue to work with the RCP. I've brought up my critiscisms with a couple of supporters here in NYC, and everytime, usually the only response I get is "struggle through them, write them down". Nothing that can actually answer my problems. There is no change that can be made to the party from people like me. Let me just say that this is gonna be hopefully the last time I make a cristicism of a Leftist group because its time consuming and doesn't accomplish anything, but I feel like I need to say something on this.

Organizational Problems

we need a vangaurd, not just a paper

The RCP is not the RCP even anymore. The RCP is just Revolution Newspaper. There are no attempts to recruit the masses to the vangaurd, there are no attempts to encourage you to become a party member, to come to party functions. All there is is Revolution Newspaper. Political work of the RCP is just selling Revolution Newspapers, "Wanted" T-Shirts, DVDs, and orange bandanas which will magically drive out the Bush Regime. I feel like things aren't done in order to connect with the masses, to build a revolutionary workers' party, but just to make money that'll be sent up to the higher strata of the party. Everyone around the party is to call themselves "supporters". Even members. Yet to become a member you need to have the support of two members. How are you going to do that when you're not supposed to know who members are? A whole limbo process is created so that if you do go through the trouble of finding out how to become a member, you're basically not able to.

lack of democratic centralism

Why is this done?

Because, that keeps people around the party docile. It keeps you from actually excercising a say in the party through democratic centralism. It keeps the us around the party from changing anything, and instead going along with paper selling and the absurd promotion of Bob Avakian. It keeps things running the way the people high up in the party want.

This is a big problem. The bolsheviks split with the mensheviks over this type of organizational problem. Why? Because a party with such unorganizational problems cannot make a revolution. It can produce and sell a nice newspaper, but because it is alienated from the masses, it cannot make a revolution. I've been talking to members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and they know how to organize for a revolution. The PSL came into exsistance exactly out of this problem within the Revolutionary Left. Because parties like the WWP and the RCP have marginalized democratic centralism, they have become stagnant and won't make a revolution. These parties have been around forever, yet they're situation is not unsimiliar to what it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. Because of that, a New Revolutionary Worker's Party is necessary to unite our class in a democratic fashion. That's why the PSL has been so sucessful in only 3 fucking years. The PSL branch here in NYC is one of the newer branches of the party yet it has more members from all different nationalities, doing a much broader range of things then the RCP has after 25 years in my experience.

deemphasizing the working class

Another organizational problem I have is something that has been true since I became active, that was actually true since the RCP dropped Revolutionary Worker as its papers name and picked up Revolution, the RCP has abandoned the idea that the working class is the central focus, its also abandoned the type of ultra-militant journalism that is found in Revolutionary Worker articles like this one (http://revcom.us/a/v22/1070-79/1070/philly2.htm) where the actual actions done by RCPers are talked about, and instead replaced with articles like this one (http://revcom.us/a/102/jena-on-the-ground-en.html) which just brags about how many newspapers, t-shirts, and orange bandanas can be sold.


Changing the name of the newspaper, a newspaper from which 25 years of work has gone into, and is connected to the party's name, is not something you do on a whim. Alot of thought goes into it. Even RCPers admit that the reason for the change was an abandonment of "workerism", now every single time the working class is mentioned its always like "oh but don't worry businessmen and professionals have to be worked with". Yes its true, but the working class still needs to be the base, and that is not what's going on. Just as much work is done amongst the working class as is done with rich kids in Colombia, the upper class and upper middle class people living in the Upper West Side, and amongst non-proletarians everywhere else. There is no like emphasis on the working class it feels. Which is an important thing to be missing.

World Can't Wait defeatism

Also, there is a problem found in what the World Can't Wait has degenerated into. The WCW has taken a defeatist approach now. At this critical point, where Iran could be attacked at any moment, and a million Iraqis have died as a result of the US occupation. What is the WCW doing? Nothing. Not building for anything, just selling Orange Bandanas which I guess will magically stop imperialism in its track. While it is a great idea to pull in funds, its defeatist. WCWers told me straight up, we're not gonna have a day of mobilzation against the war, the torture, the crimes against humanity we're just gonna sell orange bandanas and let groups like ANSWER take care of stepping up resistance against the war machine.

The "cult"

Lastly, Chairman Avakian does say some very good shit, but the way the RCP promotes, him, the way he is on every other page represents making this revolution a revolution of a "great man" not of the masses. The fact that RCPers genuinely think we can't make a revolution if Bob Avakian dies is scary because it means that this is his revolution, and that people around the party are less and less relying on leadership within the party and just putting it all on BA. Yes, we do need leadership, but we don't need cultism.

Political Problems

Originally when I started formulating my exact problems with the RCP, it was just organizational. But more and more I have problems with Line. As I've started to study the PSL's line I realized, I always did have real problems with some of the stuff the RCP thinks which I just sorta tried to suppress.

Social Imperialism and the Analysis of the Historical Experience

Social Imperialism is fucking bullshit. The Soviet Union was never capitalist or imperialist. How can a nation overnight turn from Socialism to the Highest stage of Capitalism? It can't. Under the so called capitalist Krushchev, all property remained socialized, the universal healthcare, education, housing, communal kitchens and daycare, the soviets which the masses had fought so hard for during the Revolution, the civil war, and finally WWII remained. In fact, it was socialist education that scared the shit out of US imperialism.

50 years ago, today, Sputnik was launched. A shining example of what the working class can accomplish when it is in power. Socialist education meant education was a right of the people, it meant that the people would become their profession based on their desire and skill not on weither they could afford the training, the education, etc... a country, ravaged by WWII, still in the process of industrialization, beat a country which had hundreds of years of industrialization and had none of the disasterous effects on it as the USSR did by WWII because it was an ocean away. Why? Because the people were in control.

I'm not a revisionist though, and the theory of peaceful exsistance was anti-marxist and would I think in the end result in the build up of bureacratic problems in the USSR and elsewhere which was a reason for the collapse, but that doesn't mean that suddenly the USSR was capitalist and that the socialist state disapeared overnight.

The line that Cuba is not Socialist and Venezula is not on a socialist road is also something I have a problem with.

Also I have a problem with the fact that the RCP ends up siding with US imperialism and denying nations a right to resist unless its on their maoist-only terms.

the line on homosexuality

despite what many say, i was shocked to find that the position on homosexuality is still incredibly reactionary. I just can't stand for it. Basically, it says that gay people will disapear under socialism. Its homophobic and ends up just dividing the working class when we have the same struggle.

***

In Sum, I don't think the RCP can create a revolution, it has too many problems organizationally. I don't think it stands for the right things line wise either. I've tried to struggle these things out, and I would do it more but I feel like it wouldn't really matter because nothing is gonna change in the party, and I now know what I stand for. I don't think I can change my views on these issues. Especially the organizational onese. It's not easy to write this because I mean, I've devoted alot of myself to this for about a year now, but I feel like if I don't write this now, It's just gonna end up worse.

-LH

[Comrade Rage]

Originally posted by LeftyHenry
Lastly, Chairman Avakian does say some very good shit, but the way the RCP promotes, him, the way he is on every other page represents making this revolution a revolution of a "great man" not of the masses.
Thank You!!
Why is it that left-wing organizations either distrust their own leadership, or go to the other extreme and deify their leadership?

I'm not asking for people to stick their noses up a vanguards ass, just some freaking loyalty!

[Rawthentic]

The RCP is not the RCP even anymore. The RCP is just Revolution Newspaper. There are no attempts to recruit the masses to the vangaurd, there are no attempts to encourage you to become a party member, to come to party functions. All there is is Revolution Newspaper. Political work of the RCP is just selling Revolution Newspapers, "Wanted" T-Shirts, DVDs, and orange bandanas which will magically drive out the Bush Regime. I feel like things aren't done in order to connect with the masses, to build a revolutionary workers' party, but just to make money that'll be sent up to the higher strata of the party. Everyone around the party is to call themselves "supporters". Even members. Yet to become a member you need to have the support of two members. How are you going to do that when you're not supposed to know who members are? A whole limbo process is created so that if you do go through the trouble of finding out how to become a member, you're basically not able to.


A communist party is not about holding party meetings for everyone or that crap, its about disseminating its line to the masses in the most advanced way. Revolution newspaper does that. It is the tie between the Party and the masses. A revolutionary newspaper is a collective organizer, it is the central and most important organ of the party, something that Lenin emphasized.

What LH talks about membership in the RCP is just another misconception. Also as Lenin said, "fewer, but better", in reference to recruiting party members. There is a rigorous process in becoming a member, including interviews, your history (if you have one) of working with the masses and being a leader in that sense, etc. The more developed the vanguard is, the better it will be able to mobilize the proletariat and the masses.


Because, that keeps people around the party docile. It keeps you from actually excercising a say in the party through democratic centralism. It keeps the us around the party from changing anything, and instead going along with paper selling and the absurd promotion of Bob Avakian. It keeps things running the way the people high up in the party want.

This is a big problem. The bolsheviks split with the mensheviks over this type of organizational problem. Why? Because a party with such unorganizational problems cannot make a revolution. It can produce and sell a nice newspaper, but because it is alienated from the masses, it cannot make a revolution. I've been talking to members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and they know how to organize for a revolution. The PSL came into exsistance exactly out of this problem within the Revolutionary Left. Because parties like the WWP and the RCP have marginalized democratic centralism, they have become stagnant and won't make a revolution. These parties have been around forever, yet they're situation is not unsimiliar to what it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. Because of that, a New Revolutionary Worker's Party is necessary to unite our class in a democratic fashion. That's why the PSL has been so sucessful in only 3 fucking years. The PSL branch here in NYC is one of the newer branches of the party yet it has more members from all different nationalities, doing a much broader range of things then the RCP has after 25 years in my experience.


Allow me to say this for all to know: There is absolutely no way that LH can know about inner party democracy (of which he speaks of) because he is not a member. So, he is basically lying.


Another organizational problem I have is something that has been true since I became active, that was actually true since the RCP dropped Revolutionary Worker as its papers name and picked up Revolution, the RCP has abandoned the idea that the working class is the central focus, its also abandoned the type of ultra-militant journalism that is found in Revolutionary Worker articles like this one where the actual actions done by RCPers are talked about, and instead replaced with articles like this one which just brags about how many newspapers, t-shirts, and orange bandanas can be sold.

The idea that because the RCP dropped "worker" from their paper is another way of abandoning the proletariat is simply ridiculous. I know you understand the nature of the revolutionary newspaper, so I dont need to go over that again. All the work that was explained in the first article is still done.

"Workerism" or economism are very serious problems that need to be combatted, and the RCP is the one that has clearly broken free of this. Whatever work you did in NYC in no way reflects the work that other RCP comrades do in the rest of NYC or the country for that matter. Also, going into university campuses and agitating is a very important thing because universities are places where critical thinking is being stifled, and where a political struggle needs to be waged to stop the influx of fascist organizations and ideas. The fact of the matter is if all you ever organize is the proletariat, you will not make revolution because you will be ignoring key strata that must be won over such as scientists, professors, and other people that will be crucial in an immediate post-revolutionary society.


The fact that RCPers genuinely think we can't make a revolution if Bob Avakian dies is scary because it means that this is his revolution, and that people around the party are less and less relying on leadership within the party and just putting it all on BA. Yes, we do need leadership, but we don't need cultism.

You know that this is not true. I want proof where is shows that RCPers said that if Avakian dies there can be no revolution. The thing is that you simply dont understand the importance of leadership or the pivotal role it plays in making revolution.

The WWP and it's PSL split are both classical revisionist parties. They claim that Deng Xaioping (who led the capitalist coup in China that restored capitalism in China) is a "right wing leader of the proletariat." These Parties also both ignore political economy. For example, they ignore the fact that the political economy of Cuba never broke out of the production relations of imperialism. To them, it doesn't matter whether Cuba's entire economy is shaped around production of sugar and tourism for imperialist countries, or whether Venezuela's political economy is shaped around production of oil for the US imperialists, what matters is whether there is a single political party with power that calls itself communist.

To them, the cultural revolution was just a "struggle to reduce bureaucracy" instead of a life and death class struggle between the proletariat and the new emerging bourgeoisie within that party. As long as you have commodity production, which you have in socialism, Marx made the point that this constantly regenerates capitalism and the capitalist class. Without cultural revolution, we will never get to communism, and upholding Deng Xiaoping basically equates to upholding the overthrow of the proletariat.

Are you claiming that homosexual relationships are pinnacles of the perfection of social relationships and are somehow immune to the same social degredation that enflicts heterosexual relationships in bourgeois society? The RCP is merely applying the same long-standing critique over the nature of the bourgeois family to homosexual families. It does not say that gays will no longer exist under socialism, thats another straw man.

[Comrade Rage]

Google the RCP and all you get is Revolution Newspaper.

[Rawthentic]

That doesn't prove shit. People ignore how the RCP is busy in organizing key political battles that need communist leadership such as Stop Police Brutality, WCW, Free the Jena 6!, "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week", Defend Science, etc. This is how the Party has broken from economism by moving away from giving leadership to the day-to-day struggles of the proletariat (which they can already do and much better than we can) towards engaging in key political struggles that really raise the insights of the proletariat to revolution. Not the communists dont support them, but the definition of the labor movement is that of attempting to get a better wage for a day's work. Thats reformist.

So, unless you have some real shit to bring up, shut the fuck up.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

A communist party is not about holding party meetings for everyone or that crap, its about disseminating its line to the masses in the most advanced way. Revolution newspaper does that. It is the tie between the Party and the masses. A revolutionary newspaper is a collective organizer, it is the central and most important organ of the party, something that Lenin emphasized.

No. "Disseminating the party's line" is only part of the role of a revolutionary worker's party. It's not the only thing. That's why I'm joining a party which does this in a very pointed way. But a party can't just be a newspaper brother, it has to teach the masses and educate its members, it needs to use many tactics in disseminating its line, but it also needs to organize the masses. Something which is often secondary to paper and t-shirt selling here. A paper is a collective organizer, meetings are the step between putting what the paper says into practice, actually organizing to do that, so we don't end up like blind chickens.


What LH talks about membership in the RCP is just another misconception. Also as Lenin said, "fewer, but better", in reference to recruiting party members.

Where did he say that? I want to see the full context. The fact is that Lenin lived in a period where The masses were ready to rise up, the vanguard had upwards of 200,000 members and millions more supporters. It was a mass party aspiring to make its membership more militant, more devoted, more revolutionary. We are not at that stage. No party in the US is at that stage, we are at the stage where we still need to build that type of party.


Allow me to say this for all to know: There is absolutely no way that LH can know about inner party democracy (of which he speaks of) because he is not a member. So, he is basically lying.

no because the party doesn't recruit people. The party keeps supporters as away as it can. And don't speak for me comrade, I'm talking about decision making, about everything. I was a member of the RYCB. I was part of "the core" yet it came as a complete suprise, with no discussion, that it was suddenly dispersed here. And just the way shit is run, the way you are commanded to do things not asking you if you're even available quite often or weither you agree with it.

But what I'm saying is that even if there is "interparty democracy" which you don't know there is either, people are kept away by the limbo I was talking about, and by the fact that the party makes no attempts to bring people into the party, just sell papers.


The idea that because the RCP dropped "worker" from their paper is another way of abandoning the proletariat is simply ridiculous.

No, the RCP hasn't abandoned the probletariat. That's true, but it acts in and often speaks in a way that makes not differentiation between the working class and say businessmen. The fact that from Revolutionary Worker to Revolution, the working class has become deephasized is no secret. Just compare writing styles and who is being appealed to. the RCP more and more is trying to appeal to where the money's at, not to who is gonna make a revolution. There are party supporters who are assigned exclusively to non-working class elements now and its a problem.

Economism and workerism is a problem and people who are not working class and want to struggle should be more than welcome and shouldn't be looked down upon within the party, but at the same time they shouldn't be like a main focus or anything.


Whatever work you did in NYC in no way reflects the work that other RCP comrades do in the rest of NYC or the country for that matter.

true. Maybe the RCP, NYC is a rogue branch. Maybe. But the fact is that the comrades in RCP, NYC are good comrades. I don't think it has to do with the makeup, i think it just has to do with the way the party has become.


Also, going into university campuses and agitating is a very important thing because universities are places where critical thinking is being stifled, and where a political struggle needs to be waged to stop the influx of fascist organizations and ideas.

no doubt I'm not arguing against that.


You know that this is not true. I want proof where is shows that RCPers said that if Avakian dies there can be no revolution. The thing is that you simply dont understand the importance of leadership or the pivotal role it plays in making revolution.

How do you want me to prove something said?


The WWP and it's PSL split are both classical revisionist parties. They claim that Deng Xaioping (who led the capitalist coup in China that restored capitalism in China) is a "right wing leader of the proletariat."

WWP has the same undemocratic centralist tendencies as the RCP. And the PSL doesn't claim that Deng is a "right wing leader of the proletariat" you know that. You sent me an email with a PSL representitives response to your question on China comrade. In it the comrade said that Deng Xioping was a restorer of capitalism and he had been purged for that reason by Mao twice.

What's different about the line of the PSL from the RCP is that the PSL doesn't think that socialism can just be overthrown overnight like that. China had a revolution which set up a whole new state structure, a socialist one. The leadership since Mao however, has taken to destroying that. Now China remains to have a final battle between the fact that alot of property is public (socialized) yet capitalism grows everyday exploiting workers while privitizing and plundering the country, and the fact that the leadership is right wing and taking the side of the capitalists.


These Parties also both ignore political economy. For example, they ignore the fact that the political economy of Cuba never broke out of the production relations of imperialism. To them, it doesn't matter whether Cuba's entire economy is shaped around production of sugar and tourism for imperialist countries, or whether Venezuela's political economy is shaped around production of oil for the US imperialists, what matters is whether there is a single political party with power that calls itself communist.

No its just that the RCP doesn't understand what imperialism is lol. Trading with socialist countries and other oppressed countries where both countries gain mutually is not imperialism. Cuba traded with the Soviet Union and China and other socialist countries on favorable terms for the both of them. In addition unlike under US imperialism, Cubans have control of their industries and their rights. The wealth was in the hands of the people.

Venezuela does still trade with the US, yeah because that's the material conditions today, but US companies have been kicked out, Venezuelan people now have complete control of their oil. The so called "profit" only benefits them, paying for their healthcare, education and etc.. Before Chavez, Venezuela sold oil exclusively to imperialist countries in particular the US, however now, that has been replaced by other oppressed countries, in particular, countries resisting imperialism and this is only going to increase more and more.


Are you claiming that homosexual relationships are pinnacles of the perfection of social relationships and are somehow immune to the same social degredation that enflicts heterosexual relationships in bourgeois society? The RCP is merely applying the same long-standing critique over the nature of the bourgeois family to homosexual families. It does not say that gays will no longer exist under socialism, thats another straw man.

that's not what the RCP says though. It says that homosexuality "doesn't escape the corresponding social relations of this system". Translation: homosexuality won't exsist in socialism.

[The Advent of Anarchy]

I did that about 2 weeks ago when I saw a picture on that Political Photograph thread that showed a street with a banner over it that said "HONOUR BOB AVAKIAN DAY!", which creeped the hell out of me.

[The Advent of Anarchy]

And they charged me, a distributor, $3.00. I'm a teenager; I don't have that sort of cash!

[Rawthentic]

No. "Disseminating the party's line" is only part of the role of a revolutionary worker's party. It's not the only thing. That's why I'm joining a party which does this in a very pointed way. But a party can't just be a newspaper brother, it has to teach the masses and educate its members, it needs to use many tactics in disseminating its line, but it also needs to organize the masses. Something which is often secondary to paper and t-shirt selling here. A paper is a collective organizer, meetings are the step between putting what the paper says into practice, actually organizing to do that, so we don't end up like blind chickens.
The RCP puts forward leadership, theory, and education into into its central organ. There is not much more to see into this. I mean, you know that hundreds of people poured in to listen to Bob Avakian's DVD speech. So, if you are saying that the RCP does not organize, then that is simply not true.


No party in the US is at that stage, we are at the stage where we still need to build that type of party.
No Party has been around for 33 years that is still organizing the proletariat, putting forward socialist revolution and the transition to communism, or built the theoretical principles and programs to really make revolution. Thats why the vanguard needs to be built.


no because the party doesn't recruit people. The party keeps supporters as away as it can. And don't speak for me comrade, I'm talking about decision making, about everything. I was a member of the RYCB. I was part of "the core" yet it came as a complete suprise, with no discussion, that it was suddenly dispersed here. And just the way shit is run, the way you are commanded to do things not asking you if you're even available quite often or weither you agree with it.

But what I'm saying is that even if there is "interparty democracy" which you don't know there is either, people are kept away by the limbo I was talking about, and by the fact that the party makes no attempts to bring people into the party, just sell papers.
Uh, yes it does, it just doesn't go doing it all stupid and in the open so that the state can attack them. It is a much more serious and open thing, a more conscious look for advanced revolutionary communists than can help build the party. Communists are not people that just "want communism" or some shit like that, it is those that put their entire life and energy into the revolution, the masses, and the Party. Thats the core principle the RCP operates on. In fact, I have spoken with RCPers about this, and that is simply not true, but I cannot explain why over such a channel as this. I now know your underlying personalistic reason for leaving the Party.

Don't give me that crap about the RCYB being dismantled, you explained to me that it was to create neighborhood and school Revolution Clubs that would be more in contact with the masses. Fuck, you even told me you met with Carl Dix about this.

If you and I both dont know about the inner life of the Party, then dont say it doesnt operate on democratic centralism, because you simply cannot know.


No, the RCP hasn't abandoned the probletariat. That's true, but it acts in and often speaks in a way that makes not differentiation between the working class and say businessmen. The fact that from Revolutionary Worker to Revolution, the working class has become deephasized is no secret. Just compare writing styles and who is being appealed to. the RCP more and more is trying to appeal to where the money's at, not to who is gonna make a revolution. There are party supporters who are assigned exclusively to non-working class elements now and its a problem.
It doesn't differentiate between the proletariat or businessmen? Well lets see how well substantiated that claim is:

From the Draft Programme of the RCP, USA

"The Proletariat Will Free Itself and All Humanity

In the words of the Communist Manifesto, “what the bourgeoisie produces, above all else, is its own grave-diggers.”

The proletariat is that class of people who, under this system, can live only so long as they can work, and can work only so long as their work enriches someone else—the capitalist class. Their labor, collectively, is the foundation of society and produces tremendous wealth. But this wealth is stolen by a small number of capitalist exploiters who turn it into their “private property” and into a means of further exploitation. The proletarians are trapped in a vicious circle: they have to work in order to live, but the more they work, the more wealth they create, the more it is stolen and turned into power over them.

Acting as individuals, they cannot change this condition of enslavement. BUT AS A CLASS THEY DO HAVE A REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT.

The proletariat is an international class. It is more highly socialized and connected than it has ever been. Young women and children make the clothes and shoes in sweatshops for wages as low as 10 or 20 cents an hour in places like China or Bangladesh. Other proletarians then pack these items, and still others transport them to the docks or airports to be shipped to other parts of the world, where they are then unloaded, transported, and sold by yet other proletarians.

There is a proletariat in the U.S. that is part of this international class. The U.S. working class is large and diverse. Within it, in its most exploited and nothing-to-lose sections, is a hard-core proletariat of many millions who can be the backbone of the revolutionary struggle.

Many work in the small factory districts of the inner city and the suburbs for poverty-level wages, maybe making the computer chips of the so-called information economy. Others slave away in the garment sweatshops of the big cities under conditions that call to mind the hell-hole factories of a hundred years ago. Some stand on street corners every day, desperate to find even a few hours of work at some construction site.

Agricultural workers are also part of this proletariat. They cultivate and pick crops, work on ranches, prepare food for shipment. They connect with other sectors of workers who transport food to various distribution centers, where other workers freeze and stock it.

The discipline and the broad experience that comes from working collectively, day in day out, and even struggling collectively just to survive is a source of strength when the proletariat rises in struggle. And the experience of the many immigrants in the proletariat who fought imperialism “back home” (whether in Central America, the Middle East, or elsewhere) can bring valuable lessons to the whole class.

Many other proletarians are locked down together in the housing projects across the U.S., living in a “community within a community.” Many are forced to move between dead-end jobs, hustles, and semi-legal activities, often ending up in prison. Many are youth, full of daring and defiance and a nothing-to-lose spirit. The bourgeoisie fears these proletarians as a powder keg of social dynamite, and it does everything to keep this section living under the gun and suppressed.

There are also millions within the working class, including many in important spheres of production, whose jobs have, for a certain period, brought somewhat higher wages and benefits, but who are now finding their job security, their conditions of work, and their earnings under attack. This is providing more of a basis for winning them to grasp that their interests lie with the revolutionary struggle of their class, the proletariat. The experience and discipline that large numbers of these workers have acquired from working collectively in large factories—and that many have gained from taking part in strikes and other struggles—can be a further source of strength for the cause of the proletariat.

With the strengths of its different sectors combined together, and with its most exploited and nothing-to-lose sections as the backbone, the U.S. proletariat has the capacity to lead an overall revolutionary struggle to bring the monster down. The proletariat within the U.S. is strategically and powerfully placed at the foundation of the capitalist-imperialist economy. Potentially, it IS an army of grave-diggers of capitalism. But this potential is concealed, both from society at large and even from the proletariat itself.

The bourgeoisie works overtime to keep the masses of proletarians from seeing their common interests and their mission as a class. They create desperate conditions in the communities and force the masses to compete against each other for jobs and survival. They spew out racist ideas that lie about people’s cultures. They try to conceal what proletarians of different nationalities have in common and the real strengths that exist in their differences.

This does not mean that the proletariat cannot fulfill its revolutionary mission. What it means—what it powerfully demonstrates—is that the proletariat needs its politically advanced and organized detachment, its vanguard party, to enable it to recognize and to carry out this revolutionary mission.

This vanguard party bases itself on the ideology that represents the revolutionary outlook and interests of the proletariat as a class, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. By systematically applying this ideology, the party works to expose the real nature of the capitalist-imperialist system and to build the all-around struggle of the people against this system; to bring to the forefront the revolutionary mission of the proletariat; and to continually strengthen the ranks of the party itself by recruiting and training revolutionary-minded people who come forward within the proletariat and among other sections of the people.

In this way, the party enables the class-conscious proletariat to lead the people in fighting against and finally overthrowing the capitalist system and transforming all of society as part of the world proletarian revolution. In this country, this party is the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.

As the proletariat increasingly rises in struggle, under the leadership of the Party, and begins to understand its nature and its historic mission as a class, then the hidden army of factory workers and the desperately unemployed, burger flippers and file clerks, nurse’s aides and housing project residents, truck drivers and fruit pickers will become a real army capable of making revolution and remaking society.

How mighty is this proletariat?

Potentially, it is mighty indeed. "


true. Maybe the RCP, NYC is a rogue branch. Maybe. But the fact is that the comrades in RCP, NYC are good comrades. I don't think it has to do with the makeup, i think it just has to do with the way the party has become.
There are many types of different people in the RCP; groups of immigrants, blacks, intellectuals, students, etc.


It says that homosexuality "doesn't escape the corresponding social relations of this system". Translation: homosexuality won't exsist in socialism.
Dude, you really have got to be kidding. Of course homosexuality does not escape the social relations of capitalism, thats what I've been saying all along!

[Led Zeppelin]

Originally posted by Live for the [email protected] 06, 2007 09:01 pm
Also as Lenin said, "fewer, but better", in reference to recruiting party members.
He was talking about the state-apparatus, not recruiting party-members, and it was about quality of products and efficiency in work, not quantity of people.

Better Fewer, But Better (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/mar/02.htm)

The only time when Lenin and the Bolshevik leadership wanted to put a stop to the mass-entry to the party was after the revolution when people started joining for careerism and influence, not for being truly communists.

RCP is far from reaching that stage, so it's ridiculous to even compare the two. It's in the best interest for any party in pre-revolutionary situations to have as much members as possible, especially in a country where they aren't hunted down like the Bolsheviks were in Russia or like for example is done in Iran today.

[BreadBros]

I disagree with you and the PSL on the USSR not being imperialist. But other than that, I would agree with your assertion that democratic centralism isn't practiced by the majority of Leninist groups in the US anymore. Thats part of what makes the debate over democratic centralism moot: fact is most groups are run pretty bureacratically/autocratically.

[Red Heretic]

Hey Henry,

I thought some of these points were worth addressing from my own point of view. I'd just like to be clear to anyone reading this that I am not a member of the RCP, and nothing I say here should be taken as the line of the RCP.

Anyway, lets get into this piece by piece.


Organizational Problems

we need a vangaurd, not just a paper

The RCP is not the RCP even anymore. The RCP is just Revolution Newspaper. There are no attempts to recruit the masses to the vangaurd, there are no attempts to encourage you to become a party member, to come to party functions. All there is is Revolution Newspaper. Political work of the RCP is just selling Revolution Newspapers, "Wanted" T-Shirts, DVDs, and orange bandanas which will magically drive out the Bush Regime.

First of all, this model that the RCP is using of "a newspaper as the hub and pivot of a revolutionary movement," where did they get that? This model is based upon the model of the Bolshevik revolution and Lenin's What is to be Done? It is a model which historically led to the seizure of power in Russia. The Bolsheviks built their entire revolution around their newspaper, Iskra.

Revolution Newspaper has to serve as a link between the Party and the masses, it has to be a hub through which the masses can get leadership from their vanguard party, or you are not going to actually be able to lead the masses of people in revolution. There is no fucking way that you are going to be able to go out and talk to all of the masses, or to give them the kind of deep in-depth analysis and truth that they get through Revolution Newspaper. The masses of people desperately need Revolution Newspaper! They need an analysis of how they can make revolution, they need an analysis of how the attacks on Black people are a part of the same system as the attacks on immigrants. They need communist leadership in order to become what we are calling on them to be... emancipators of humanity!

Without the masses of people taking up and distributing this newspaper as their own, how else are the masses of people, in their millions and millions, going to be able to get leadership from their vanguard party?

...and furthermore, I would just like to mention: A vanguard party exists for no other reason than to serve the people to make revolution.


I feel like things aren't done in order to connect with the masses, to build a revolutionary workers' party

The RCP is not a "revolutionary worker's party," which you keep saying throughout your post. It is a communist party. It is not, as Trotskyites and mensheviks argue for, a "organization of workers." It is a communist vanguard party of revolutionary communists. It exists to serve the people to make revolution.

I do not believe that you understand what it means to be a communist. A communist is not simply a worker who wants communism, or who is fighting for communism in some sort of abstract sense. Revolutionary communists devote their entire lives to the proletarian revolution, are prepared for nothing short of imprisonment or death at the hands of the enemy, and care more about the masses and the party than themselves.

There are a couple of documents which are good in reference to this:

Resolution: On Leaders and Leadership (http://revcom.us/a/firstvol/825/revolutionary_leadership.htm)

Some Points on the Question of Revolutionary Leadership and Individual Leaders (http://revcom.us/a/firstvol/825/revolutionary_leadership_points.htm)



lack of democratic centralism

Why is this done?

Because, that keeps people around the party docile. It keeps you from actually excercising a say in the party through democratic centralism. It keeps the us around the party from changing anything, and instead going along with paper selling and the absurd promotion of Bob Avakian. It keeps things running the way the people high up in the party want.

How the hell would you know how democratic centralism works in the RCP when you were never even a member?

Here's a quote from those two documents I linked to:

"Our Party is a collective organization, not just a collection of individuals. We decide things collectively and we act collectively. Our power resides in our collectivity--this enables us to correctly link with, unleash, and lead the initiative of the masses and give it its most powerful revolutionary expression in conformity with the fundamental interests of the masses. This collectivity is expressed and realized through the collective functioning of the units of the Party on the various levels, and through the Party's chain of knowledge and of command up and down throughout the Party."


This is a big problem. The bolsheviks split with the mensheviks over this type of organizational problem. Why? Because a party with such unorganizational problems cannot make a revolution. It can produce and sell a nice newspaper, but because it is alienated from the masses, it cannot make a revolution.

What you're describing is actually the Menshevik line, not the Bolshevik line. What you are describing is a party that tries to just have all of the workers join it rather than a party of revolutionary communists, who play a vanguard role of serving the masses of people to make revolution to transform the world.


deemphasizing the working class

Another organizational problem I have is something that has been true since I became active, that was actually true since the RCP dropped Revolutionary Worker as its papers name and picked up Revolution, the RCP has abandoned the idea that the working class is the central focus

Well, what does the Draft Programme of the RCP say?

The Party and the Masses (http://revcom.us/margorp/a-party-e.htm)


Changing the name of the newspaper, a newspaper from which 25 years of work has gone into, and is connected to the party's name, is not something you do on a whim. Alot of thought goes into it. Even RCPers admit that the reason for the change was an abandonment of "workerism", now every single time the working class is mentioned its always like "oh but don't worry businessmen and professionals have to be worked with". Yes its true, but the working class still needs to be the base, and that is not what's going on. Just as much work is done amongst the working class as is done with rich kids in Colombia, the upper class and upper middle class people living in the Upper West Side, and amongst non-proletarians everywhere else. There is no like emphasis on the working class it feels. Which is an important thing to be missing.

The name of Revolution was changed as a part of a break with economism. The proletariat is only important in that context that it can emancipate all of humanity. There are countless other oppressed classes throughout history. Workers are not some magical people that should be deified as gods.


World Can't Wait defeatism

Also, there is a problem found in what the World Can't Wait has degenerated into. The WCW has taken a defeatist approach now. At this critical point, where Iran could be attacked at any moment, and a million Iraqis have died as a result of the US occupation. What is the WCW doing? Nothing. Not building for anything, just selling Orange Bandanas which I guess will magically stop imperialism in its track. While it is a great idea to pull in funds, its defeatist. WCWers told me straight up, we're not gonna have a day of mobilzation against the war, the torture, the crimes against humanity we're just gonna sell orange bandanas and let groups like ANSWER take care of stepping up resistance against the war machine.

The "wearing orange" was specifically being called for as a part of building a mass movement of resistance to the horrors Bush regime. Read Sunsara's articles! Her most recent article specifically called on people to engage in resistance in relation to the "Four Crucial Political Battles."

Here's a quote from Sunsara:


This sea of orange must be coupled with, and reinforce, increasingly militant and growing outbreaks of real political resistance—actions of individuals or groupings that keep pace with and are on a scale commensurate with the horrors piling up. Some of that’s starting. But it’s not yet enough. We’ve got to stop waiting for a resistance to emerge, and go out and lead it. If we want to see a resistance movement, people need to start being one. Resistance needs to much more spring up like mushrooms after the rain, in all kinds of different forms and unexpected places, and everybody wearing orange can help spur that and spread it.

Read it here (http://revcom.us/a/101/drive-it-out-en.html)



The "cult"

Lastly, Chairman Avakian does say some very good shit, but the way the RCP promotes, him, the way he is on every other page represents making this revolution a revolution of a "great man" not of the masses.

Well first of all, is what the RCP is saying about Bob Avakian true? Is Bob Avakian really a leader of the caliber of Marx, Lenin, or Mao?


The fact that RCPers genuinely think we can't make a revolution if Bob Avakian dies is scary because it means that this is his revolution, and that people around the party are less and less relying on leadership within the party and just putting it all on BA. Yes, we do need leadership, but we don't need cultism.

There a couple of points from those two articles that I linked you to earlier that I'd like to point out to debunk this scarecrow the you are putting up Henry.

"Individual leaders are not gods or superhumans. They have their individual failings like anyone else, and they will make mistakes even when they are overall doing a good job of leading the revolution.

Some of them will even do worse than that and will at some point be broken, or in some way capitulate to the enemy and betray the revolution. And some will be taken from us by the enemy and jailed or killed.

Everyone must understand that such things can happen and must prepare for such eventualities, to minimize the possibility that such blows can fundamentally derail a revolutionary process and direction. But these possibilities cannot make us cynical or despair in the possibility of revolution. Because the hard-core strength of the revolution is the revolutionary base, the revolutionary people themselves. And it is true that as long as there is oppression the people will in time bring forth new revolutionary leaders to replace those who have fallen or been taken from us. But it must also be stressed that in a very real sense it is the responsibility of the party, together with the revolutionary masses, to minimize such losses, as well as to deal with the situation when such losses do occur.

Revolutionary leaders themselves should pay attention to fostering the greatest possible revolutionary collectivity and the greatest possible growth and all-rounded development of the revolutionary ranks and of many veteran and newly emerging leaders, so that, to the greatest extent possible, if they are taken from us, others will be ready to take their place.

On the other hand, there is no denying it: The loss of a true revolutionary leader--and all the more so if this is an individual who plays a key and critical leadership role--is like having a heart ripped out of our collective chest. When such things happen, we should deal with it--new leaders must step forward and be brought forward to continue to guide the revolutionary cause. But we should first of all do everything in our power to prevent such things from happening.

Key revolutionary leaders must be defended and protected with everything we've got. They are, in fact, the revolutionary people in concentrated form. They embody the very best that the people have to offer, that the people have given rise to and brought forward at a given point in history. To respect, protect and defend such revolutionary leaders is to respect, protect and defend the people themselves."

and

"Revolution, and in particular communist revolution, is and can only be the act of masses of people, organized and led to carry out increasingly conscious struggle to abolish, and advance humanity beyond, all systems and relations of exploitation and oppression."


The line that Cuba is not Socialist and Venezula is not on a socialist road is also something I have a problem with.

What is the political economy of these countries? How do they compare to the political economy of socialist China? Do their economies break out of the framework of imperialism, developing self-reliant socialist economies, or do they have economies built around the production of sugar and oil for the imperialist countries?

It would be interesting to compare the political economy of those two countries to the political economy described in "The Shanghai Textbook" that our comrades in China produced during the cultural revolution in China.



Also I have a problem with the fact that the RCP ends up siding with US imperialism and denying nations a right to resist unless its on their maoist-only terms.

What???


It says that homosexuality "doesn't escape the corresponding social relations of this system". Translation: homosexuality won't exsist in socialism.

That's not what this means at all. It is a reference to the inequalities and forms of oppression that exist in all relationships under capitalism, because of the effect of class society on those relationships. It is pointing out that homosexual relationships are not exempt from having inequalities and oppression in them simply because they are homosexual. They cannot escape the societies that they exist in.

***************

I'd like to turn this around Henry, and ask you about the PSL's line.

For example, regarding the cultural revolution, was this a life and death struggle between two different classes in Chinese society over what class would maintain control over the Chinese state, or was it simply a "struggle against beauracracy" as the PSL says?

Was Deng Xiaoping really a "right wing leader of the the proletariat" as the PSL says? Or was he a concentration of a new bourgeoisie within the communist party, who stage a coup and restored captialism?

Was Mao's legacy and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and all of the comrades in China who gave their lives trying to defend the dictatorship of the proletariat, was that all for nothing? Just a struggle to get rid of some bureaucracy?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH, may I congratulate you on your principled stance -- but you can now expect the same sort of bile thrown in your general direction as the rest of us non-Maoists have had to face over the years.

[fredbergen]

From one reformist swamp into another.

The PSL has nothing to do with the real revolution, pederast liberation! True revolutionaries would support NAMBLA and don't cave to bourgeois moralist demands!

[OneBrickOneVoice]

I'd just like to be clear to anyone reading this that I am not a member of the RCP, and nothing I say here should be taken as the line of the RCP.



How the hell would you know how democratic centralism works in the RCP when you were never even a member?

Doesn't that fucking bother you??? It bothered the shit out of me. The fact that membership was such a shady and creepy process, that because it was such a creepy process, most us supporters stay away, and thus we have no fucking say in what we're doing

That's NOT how the vanguard needs to be run. Running it in such a way is fine, but you can't claim to be Leninist, because it is not Leninist. Democratic Centralism is essential that's why I'm joining the Party for Socialism and Liberation. A party like the RCP which has limited democratic centralism as much as it can becomes stagnant and separated from the masses.


The RCP is not a "revolutionary worker's party," which you keep saying throughout your post. It is a communist party. It is not, as Trotskyites and mensheviks argue for, a "organization of workers." It is a communist vanguard party of revolutionary communists. It exists to serve the people to make revolution.



Well, what does the Draft Programme of the RCP say?

The Party and the Masses (http://revcom.us/margorp/a-party-e.htm)


See that's the contradiction I'm talking about. I think its because the Draft Programme is from the Revolutionary Worker days. But the way RCPers speak, like how they're like "oh you're a menshevik if you think it should be a worker's party" is exactly what I'm talking about comrade.
Its supposed to be a worker's party because that's the class that's gonna make the revolution.


First of all, this model that the RCP is using of "a newspaper as the hub and pivot of a revolutionary movement," where did they get that? This model is based upon the model of the Bolshevik revolution and Lenin's What is to be Done? It is a model which historically led to the seizure of power in Russia. The Bolsheviks built their entire revolution around their newspaper, Iskra.

Yeah but the bolsheviks used other tactics. they weren't just a paper. The paper is important and that's why I'm joining a group which has one, but we're not a newspaper we're a party.



I do not believe that you understand what it means to be a communist.

Why? Because I'm breaking with the RCP? That's upsurd.


The "wearing orange" was specifically being called for as a part of building a mass movement of resistance to the horrors Bush regime. Read Sunsara's articles! Her most recent article specifically called on people to engage in resistance in relation to the "Four Crucial Political Battles."

Yeah I've heard the Rhetoric before RH, I've read the article, but its fucking stupid. It's not doing anything. We're just hawking orange bandanas and telling people to resist on their own, like, you need to fucking be building, you need to be mobilizing in the streets. You can't just sell bandanas and say okay this is resistance. No, its not, resisting is getting arrested for taking your anti-imperialist message to the congress, resistance is dying in; civil disobedience, resistance is action not just wearing a color which most people don't know what it stands for.

That said, my problem is not that this is a campaign. It's a good idea for a campaign. My problem is that it is the main campaign of the World Can't Wait while ANSWER is organizing in the steets and already building for the next step, and the next step to ending the fucking war and making resistance more militant. Meanwhile the World Can't Wait hasn't done a major push since October last year and doesn't plan on doing one in the near future from what it seems like. Why? Because the WCW is scared of getting a fine and doesn't think it'll be enough people so they just don't do it. that's the fucking definition of defeatism!


Workers are not some magical people that should be deified as gods.

no that&#39;s bob avakian. Yeah fuck the workers, Bob Avakian is essential to this revolution <_< c&#39;mon man no one is deifying the workers, but its the workers who are going to make the revolution, not the fucking rich ass kids from Colombia the RCP NYC spends so much time on trying to win.


There a couple of points from those two articles that I linked you to earlier that I&#39;d like to point out to debunk this scarecrow the you are putting up Henry.

that&#39;s great, but this isn&#39;t something I&#39;m gonna lie about, I&#39;ve heard it countless times and its much more the oreintation of the party. I&#39;m not saying this stuff because i get a kick out of it but because this is the tendecies that I can&#39;t stand for anymore.


What is the political economy of these countries? How do they compare to the political economy of socialist China? Do their economies break out of the framework of imperialism, developing self-reliant socialist economies, or do they have economies built around the production of sugar and oil for the imperialist countries?


Trade isn&#39;t reactionary, Imperialism is. Countries can trade and not be socialist comrade. Cuba isn&#39;t tied to imperialism. Cuba trades with other oppressed nations, Cuba&#39;s industries are nationalized, the people are control of them and their "profits" not multinational corporations

As for Venezula its reactionary to say that just because Venezuela trades oil with the US it isn&#39;t on the socialist road. Since Chavez has come to power, US imperialist companies have been kicked out and shipments of oil for example to the US have dropped tremendously while increasing tremendously to other oppressed nations as well as nations resisting imperialism like Iran, Bolivia, and Cuba.

The RCP line on this is anti-materialist. This is a world dominated by imperialism. There is no way for a country to suddenly just "become self-sufficient". To build socialism countries need to first break imperialism, and that&#39;s what Venezuela is doing with ALBA, the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America. A trade agreement of oppressed nations with the goal of providing a alternative to imperialism.

The fact is that because China broke trade relations with other socialist countries except for Albania is a reason for the imperialist invasion. Chinese Revisionists turned to the US rather than trading mutually with socialist countries in order so that it could grow faster.


For example, regarding the cultural revolution, was this a life and death struggle between two different classes in Chinese society over what class would maintain control over the Chinese state, or was it simply a "struggle against beauracracy" as the PSL says?

I don&#39;t think the PSL says that, I think it was both.


Was Deng Xiaoping really a "right wing leader of the the proletariat" as the PSL says? Or was he a concentration of a new bourgeoisie within the communist party, who stage a coup and restored captialism?

PSL doesn&#39;t say that. they say he was key in bringing capitalism into the socialist state and attacking the gains of the working class.


Was Mao&#39;s legacy and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and all of the comrades in China who gave their lives trying to defend the dictatorship of the proletariat, was that all for nothing? Just a struggle to get rid of some bureaucracy?

No of course not, you underestimate what bureacracy means. Bureacracy is one of the key reasons the first socialist wave was defeated by the imperialists.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

From one reformist swamp into another.

The PSL is a pressure group on the Democrats and has nothing to do with Marxism.

what?????????? how so?


LH, may I congratulate you on your principled stance -- but you can now expect the same sort of bile thrown in your general direction as the rest of us non-Maoists have had to face over the years.

well I uphold Mao, i just disagree with some the dogma and organizational principles

[BreadBros]

Doesn&#39;t that fucking bother you??? It bothered the shit out of me. The fact that membership was such a shady and creepy process, that because it was such a creepy process, most us supporters stay away, and thus we have no fucking say in what we&#39;re doing

That&#39;s NOT how the vanguard needs to be run. Running it in such a way is fine, but you can&#39;t claim to be Leninist, because it is not Leninist. Democratic Centralism is essential that&#39;s why I&#39;m joining the Party for Socialism and Liberation. A party like the RCP which has limited democratic centralism as much as it can becomes stagnant and separated from the masses.

The question is: does the PSL not have this? Its been my experience that the vast majority of Leninist groups in the US talk alot about democratic centralism yet its nowhere to be found in practice. In your experience, what mechanisms does the PSL have to strengthen internal democracy and do away with groupthink and autocratic leadership?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

what?????????? how so?

They are a reformist group comrade, just as the WWP was and is.

They build illusions in the capitalist "justice" system, calling for a new trial for Mumia (in the same capitalist courts that railroaded him in the first place), instead of consistently pointing out that their can be no justice under capitalist and organizing workers to use their power to free him.

They organize marches aimed at pressuring Democratic politicians.. marching &#39;to scare them&#39; or to &#39;show them what the people want,&#39; etc. They have the anti-immigrant bourgeois politician Ralph Nader, who calls on anti-war protesters to give Dems in Congress "the courage to stand up" and Ramsey Clark, who raises the liberal demand for impeachment -- thus lending backhanded support to the Democrats -- as the main speakers at their rallies. In words they criticize the Dems, but on stage all that is heard are liberal remarks about protesting to give them &#39;the spine&#39; to stop the wars. They built for protests "less than two weeks before the election" to "force the issue of the Iraq war onto the U.S. political stage…" and foster the illusion that the imperialists can be influenced into reorganizing society to meet human need by raising the demand "Cut the Pentagon budget&#33; Double the education budget&#33;" They built their coalition around pacifist liberal calls to the imperialists to "Stop the war." Revolutionary defeatism and calling for the defeat of one&#39;s "own bourgeoisie" has been thrown out the window. Communists fight to defeat imperialism and overthrow the bourgeoisie (and its representatives), not to influence them or give them &#39;a spine&#39; (whatever that means).

They cling to the thoroughly discredited Marcyite theory of "global class war", which leads them to support all kinds of anti-worker tyrants and groupings.

They have largely replaced the communist emphasis on the class struggle as key with support of Black "pork chop" nationalism, bourgeois liberal feminism and &#39;LGBT liberationism&#39; that identifies not as a movement of workers with sexual orientations deemed &#39;undesirable&#39; by the bourgeoisie, but primarily as gay, lesbian, bi or transgender.... Having thrown out the main pillar of communism, they freely share stages with the racist, anti-semitic "New" Black Panthers&#33;

They call for "community control" of the police, which is a liberal demand that distorts the reality of what the police actually are -- a part of the capitalist state, used to repress the working class.

They have members that vocally defend Leonel Fernandez, the bourgeois president of the Dominican Republic, whose most recent actions include a photo-op with a rightist military leader who fought against the 1965 Revolution with full U.S. backing. Their reason? He invited Fidel to the DR several years ago&#33;

They actively reject in-depth theory and theoretical struggle and study, in the name of action of any cost. Of course action is the most important thing, but in the end, if you have no theory, all the action in the world won&#39;t amount to a hill of beans; you&#39;ll just burn out running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

Admittedly, their rhetoric is more radical than some others, which can be appealing to some in a &#39;super revolutionary&#39; ultra-leftist kind of way, but that doesn&#39;t change their general direction.

I also know there are some good comrades in that group, but that, also, doesn&#39;t change the fact that the organization is fundamentally a reformist one.


but its the workers who are going to make the revolution, not the fucking rich ass kids from Colombia the RCP NYC spends so much time on trying to win.

You say this, and you&#39;re going to join the "we&#39;re going to unite all sectors of society to overthrow capitalism" PSL? Have you been to a PSL meeting in NYC?

I don&#39;t mean this in a disrespectful manner. I&#39;m asking a serious question.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

On Democratic Centralism and the like, I would like to again point out the following piece to comrades: Guidelines on the Organizational Structure of Communist Parties, on the Methods and Content of their Work (http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/3rd-congress/organisation/guidelines.htm)

I urge you to take a look at all the things laid out in that piece and compare them with the practice of the group/s you are in or around that claim to be "Leninist."

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:


well I uphold Mao, i just disagree with some the dogma and organizational principles

I uphold him too, like a rope upholds a hanging man. :D

Sorry&#33; :(

Well, I still applaud your bravery -- you are already receiving some of the bile us Trots get... :P

[OneBrickOneVoice]

They are a reformist group comrade, just as the WWP was and is.

I disagree, I think that is just one of many differences between the two organizations


They build illusions in the capitalist "justice" system, calling for a new trial for Mumia (in the same capitalist courts that railroaded him in the first place), instead of consistently pointing out that their can be no justice under capitalist and organizing workers to use their power to free him.

hmm well this article (http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6753) on the PSL website says otherwise


All progressives and revolutionaries must continue to struggle for Mumia’s freedom. Mumia represents more than himself. He represents tens of thousands of others behind bars—predominantly from Black and Latino oppressed communities—who have been snatched off the street, and wrongfully convicted by the so-called “justice” system.

Free Mumia&#33; Free all U.S. political prisoners&#33;


They organize marches aimed at pressuring Democratic politicians..

no not really. ANSWER marches are always the most militant ones. The slogan of ANSWER now is "The longer this war goes on, the more we will resist&#33;". I&#39;ll have you remember that it was ANSWER who organized the counter-inaugural demonstration in 2004 while other groups were busy campaigning for Kerry, ANSWER planned on organizing against the war no matter which side of the same coin was elected.


marching &#39;to scare them&#39; or to &#39;show them what the people want,&#39; etc. They have the anti-immigrant bourgeois politician Ralph Nader, who calls on anti-war protesters to give Dems in Congress "the courage to stand up" and Ramsey Clark, who raises the liberal demand for impeachment -- thus lending backhanded support to the Democrats -- as the main speakers at their rallies.

actually they weren&#39;t the main speakers. Besides the rally was endorsed by alot of different groups who had speakers. That doesn&#39;t reflect the PSL&#39;s line, it reflects that the PSL and ANSWER do however, know how to mobilize the masses. Look at the march on the 29th, it only pulled in a couple hundred.

that said, you can&#39;t say that it wouldn&#39;t be a big victory for the people if the people did force the imperialists to pull out of Iraq and end the war because of mass mobilization. The more concessions the imperialists are forced to make to the working class and masses, the weaker the system becomes, the easier it is for a revolution to succeed.


They cling to the thoroughly discredited Marcyite theory of "global class war", which leads them to support all kinds of anti-worker tyrants and groupings.

You mean the PSL recognizes the Iraqi people&#39;s right to rebel while other leftist (and maoist) groups don&#39;t and think resistance to imperialism is stupid if it isn&#39;t communist?


They have largely replaced the communist emphasis on the class struggle

nonsense comrade, the PSL is all about class struggle. The LGBT movement, woman&#39;s oppression, and oppression of black people are tied into that.


They call for "community control" of the police, which is a liberal demand that distorts the reality of what the police actually are -- a part of the capitalist state, used to repress the working class.

hmm? How do you know? Is there a link. I&#39;d like to see the context. I&#39;ve been around the party for only about 2 or 3 weeks so I curious about this


They have members that vocally defend Leonel Fernandez, the bourgeois president of the Dominican Republic, whose most recent actions include a photo-op with a rightist military leader who fought against the 1965 Revolution with full U.S. backing. Their reason? He invited Fidel to the DR several years ago&#33;

hmm well this article (http://socialismandliberation.org/mag/index.php?aid=594) begs to differ


To this day, the Dominican Republic has been kept in a dependent relationship to U.S. imperialism. Consecutive governments have imposed economic austerity programs and cutbacks, forcing millions to emigrate to the United States in search of decent jobs. Its economy is dominated by “free trade” agreements like the Central American-Dominican Republic-United States Free Trade Agreement. Its police are trained by U.S. military and police units.

In September 1965, President Caamaño spoke before the Dominican National Congress on behalf of the Constitutionalists.

“We pledge to fight for the withdrawal of foreign troops on the territory of our country. We pledge to fight for the observance of democratic freedoms and human rights, and not to permit any attempt to reestablish dictatorship. We pledge to fight for the unity of all patriotic sectors to make our nation truly free, truly sovereign, truly democratic.”

Those tasks remain to be accomplished. The difference between today and 1965 is that only the Dominican working class is capable of fulfilling them in exactly the direction that the U.S. administration in 1965 feared most: socialist revolution.

also the first party function I went to, I was talking to a comrade in the party who said he couldn&#39;t stay because he was off to a protest against the Dominican president.


They actively reject in-depth theory and theoretical struggle and study, in the name of action of any cost. Of course action is the most important thing, but in the end, if you have no theory, all the action in the world won&#39;t amount to a hill of beans; you&#39;ll just burn out running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

Really? That&#39;s odd because I was at an educational today on the Bolivarian Revolution and a Party Meeting on Friday with two presentations one on who and what JOMA stands for, and the other on the Jena 6, how we need a united people&#39;s movement, how socialism is the way to end racism.


You say this, and you&#39;re going to join the "we&#39;re going to unite all sectors of society to overthrow capitalism" PSL? Have you been to a PSL meeting in NYC?

I don&#39;t mean this in a disrespectful manner. I&#39;m asking a serious question.

Yes I have. It&#39;s not that I disagree with that statement, its just that the RCP has dropped the centrality of the working class in that. It hardly focuses on the working class, the PSL however, focuses centrally on the working class.

I mean comrade, the PSL no doubt probably has problems but compared to other organizations I think it is the most revolutionary.

In regards to your organization, yeah, I agree largely with its line, but the same goes for WWP. But what separates the PSL from your organization and the WWP is organizational principles. The WWP is stagnant and doesn&#39;t employ DC, while the FPM is not a vanguard. It doesn&#39;t claim to be a vanguard of the masses, it just says its a "movement". Movements are important, but movements, like ANSWER, can only bring sharp concessions from the ruling class. A vanguard though, will overthrow it. You know this. That&#39;s why you uphold China, the USSR, Cuba, etc.. yet you don&#39;t see that the vanguard was key in these revolutions??? what?

Aside from that, FPM is small, its limited compared to the PSL and the RCP. I don&#39;t think it can mobilize the masses in the way these parties do. Look at how you guys make a big deal of basic things. The newest article on your site for example proclaims a victory at selling 9 copies of your newspaper at an event lol. No disrespect comrade. But I want to be part of a party which is ultra-active and larger than smaller.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Originally posted by Rosa [email protected] 07, 2007 11:51 pm
LH:


well I uphold Mao, i just disagree with some the dogma and organizational principles

I uphold him too, like a rope upholds a hanging man. :D

Sorry&#33; :(

Well, I still applaud your bravery -- you are already receiving some of the bile us Trots get... :P
:lol: nah you still get it worse

[Rawthentic]

You mean the PSL recognizes the Iraqi people&#39;s right to rebel while other leftist (and maoist) groups don&#39;t and think resistance to imperialism is stupid if it isn&#39;t communist?
When you give support to anti-communist criminals, you are on the side of imperialism because when they come to power, which is what the PSL is directly doing in their support, they murder workers, communists, and all sorts of progressive people in their struggle to maintain power. Is that not on the side of imperialism?

At least the RCP and FPM take a principled communist stance on the issue. For example. the RCP&#39;s line is that both Islamic fundamentalism and the reactionary "war on terror" oppose each other while at the same time strengthening each other. This is because the imperialist war aggravates the conditions that give rise to Islamic fundamentalism, and neither are way towards the liberation of humanity. Thats not sectarianism, thats communism.


Its supposed to be a worker&#39;s party because that&#39;s the class that&#39;s gonna make the revolution.
The proletariat is the backbone of the revolution? Really? lol

That is an economist stance, and you know it. You are clearly saying that a party is an "organization of workers" instead of a vanguard of the most advanced revolutionary communists. A vanguard party exists to serve the people in revolution like RH said, and nothing else.

[Ultra-Violence]

Well nice to see you see for what the RCP realy is LH i hope your happy wherever you may go.










side note:

And pretty much A.N.S.W.E.R is the only actualy doin aything

[YSR]

Originally posted by Live for the [email protected] 07, 2007 07:27 pm
The proletariat is the backbone of the revolution? Really? lol
I hate to burst into this discussion but this is the most genius quote over. You Maoists crack me up sometimes. "Yeah, those stupid workers. What do they know? We&#39;re doing this for them, unwashed ingrates&#33;"

Alright, I&#39;ll leave now.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

hmm well this article on the PSL website says otherwise

No it doesn&#39;t. It says "All progressives and revolutionaries must continue to struggle for Mumia’s freedom." They&#39;re not "consistently pointing out that their can be no justice under capitalist and organizing workers to use their power to free him."


no not really. ANSWER marches are always the most militant ones. The slogan of ANSWER now is "The longer this war goes on, the more we will resist&#33;". I&#39;ll have you remember that it was ANSWER who organized the counter-inaugural demonstration in 2004 while other groups were busy campaigning for Kerry, ANSWER planned on organizing against the war no matter which side of the same coin was elected.

So why did A.N.S.W.E.R. (which, let&#39;s be honest, is controlled by the PSL) call a protest "less than two weeks before the election" to "force the issue of the Iraq war onto the U.S. political stage…"? What is the "U.S. political stage" two weeks before an election LH??

What is all the shit about &#39;helping congress get a spine&#39;?

Why is Ramsey Clark calling for impeachment?

Why does the PSL foster illusions that the capitalists can reorganize society to meet human need by raising demands to "Cut the Pentagon budget&#33; Double the education budget&#33;"? Why do they appeal to the imperialists to "Stop the war"?

What happened to revolutionary defeatism and calling for the defeat of one&#39;s "own bourgeoisie"?

What does having the "most militant" march mean? That the most people get arrested at your demos?


actually they weren&#39;t the main speakers.

So who were?


Besides the rally was endorsed by alot of different groups who had speakers. That doesn&#39;t reflect the PSL&#39;s line, it reflects that the PSL and ANSWER do however, know how to mobilize the masses. Look at the march on the 29th, it only pulled in a couple hundred.

Actually there were a few thousand.

The march on the 15th wasn&#39;t that much bigger.

Marches have continued to get smaller and smaller as time goes on. The imperialists are actually increasing their presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, the PSL though doesn&#39;t think it necessary to honestly evaluate the situation and reconsider strategy and tactics. Instead, they just keep calling for bigger protests (and getting smaller ones).

You don&#39;t see a problem there?


that said, you can&#39;t say that it wouldn&#39;t be a big victory for the people if the people did force the imperialists to pull out of Iraq and end the war because of mass mobilization.

"The people" aren&#39;t going to force the imperialists to do shit "because of mass mobilization." That&#39;s a liberal illusion.

A few things can get the imperialists out of Iraq: A military defeat, workers&#39; power or a change in strategy by the imperialists themselves.


The more concessions the imperialists are forced to make to the working class and masses, the weaker the system becomes, the easier it is for a revolution to succeed.

That is reformism, comrade. "Just one more reform and the system will be weak enough to overthrow."

Communist certainly don&#39;t reject the day to day demands of our fellow workers, but we intervene in the struggles for those demands to transform them into the fight for revolution -- the only real solution.

We don&#39;t fight for some magical number of reforms that will somehow make capitalism weak enough to overthrow. The bourgeoisie will never reform itself out of existence or into a position of severe weakness.

And really, in the U.S., the age of reform is over. The only people making "concessions" right now are workers.


You mean the PSL recognizes the Iraqi people&#39;s right to rebel while other leftist (and maoist) groups don&#39;t and think resistance to imperialism is stupid if it isn&#39;t communist?

Let&#39;s not be dishonest. I don&#39;t know of any group that doesn&#39;t recognize the right to resist the U.S. occupation. That doesn&#39;t, however, mean that we should support religious fanatics that blow up day laborers and who would wipe out leftists, unions and homosexuals and enslave women if they had the chance.

Lenin pointed out "the need to combat Pan-Islamism and similar trends, which strive to combine the liberation movement against European and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the positions of the khans, landowners, mullahs, etc."

But no, I was talking more about their support for the bourgeois regime in Sudan and imperialist-henchman Saddam Hussein.


nonsense comrade, the PSL is all about class struggle. The LGBT movement, woman&#39;s oppression, and oppression of black people are tied into that.

The class struggle is the main struggle. Of course we have to fight against the super-exploitation of Blacks, the oppression of women, etc. but the class question is key, because all of that flows out of capitalism and can&#39;t be abolished without the abolition of it. Separatist Black "pork chop" nationalists, &#39;classless&#39; LGBT &#39;movements&#39; and bourgeois feminists fighting for an opportunity to join the "boys club" will not and cannot (and don&#39;t even pretend to want or be able to) accomplish this task. Communists seek to integrate all workers into the fight to overthrow capitalist rule. Single issue campaigns are for liberal reformists.


hmm? How do you know? Is there a link. I&#39;d like to see the context. I&#39;ve been around the party for only about 2 or 3 weeks so I curious about this

"Demanding true community control over the police is a relevant, progressive demand as police violence against working-class communities goes otherwise unchecked." - Source (http://www.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6279)

That was the first thing that came up on their site from a search on "community control." I&#39;m sure there is more. They regularly raise this demand, it&#39;s no secret.


hmm well this article begs to differ

I wrote that "They have members that vocally defend Leonel Fernandez". I never said they all did.


also the first party function I went to, I was talking to a comrade in the party who said he couldn&#39;t stay because he was off to a protest against the Dominican president.

And a PSL comrade told me a week before that event, in front of all of her comrades, that she&#39;d be on the other side, demonstrating in support of Leonel. If you have supporters of murderous bourgeois executives in your "Marxist-Leninist vanguard" you have problems, don&#39;t you think?


Really? That&#39;s odd because I was at an educational today on the Bolivarian Revolution and a Party Meeting on Friday with two presentations one on who and what JOMA stands for, and the other on the Jena 6, how we need a united people&#39;s movement, how socialism is the way to end racism.

You mean a cadre is going to tell some people the party line? I&#39;m not sure how that counters what I said.

Try to engage some PSL comrades in theoretical debate and see how far you get.


Yes I have. It&#39;s not that I disagree with that statement, its just that the RCP has dropped the centrality of the working class in that. It hardly focuses on the working class, the PSL however, focuses centrally on the working class.

It does? What does "uniting all sectors" or organizing largely on campuses and having mostly college students as members have to do with "focusing on the working class"?

Where is the organized labor presence in A.N.S.W.E.R.? Where was it at the Sept. 15 demo?


I mean comrade, the PSL no doubt probably has problems but compared to other organizations I think it is the most revolutionary.

What does that mean, "the most revolutionary"? I&#39;m genuinely interested in an answer on this question.


In regards to your organization, yeah, I agree largely with its line, but the same goes for WWP. But what separates the PSL from your organization and the WWP is organizational principles. The WWP is stagnant and doesn&#39;t employ DC, while the FPM is not a vanguard. It doesn&#39;t claim to be a vanguard of the masses, it just says its a "movement". Movements are important, but movements, like ANSWER, can only bring sharp concessions from the ruling class. A vanguard though, will overthrow it. You know this. That&#39;s why you uphold China, the USSR, Cuba, etc.. yet you don&#39;t see that the vanguard was key in these revolutions??? what?

You mean Cuba, where the revolution was lead by the 26 July Movement and Fidel "The masses, not parties, make revolutions" Castro?

And what about Che, the guy the PSL loves to put on their website header and fliers? Did he work to build "Marxist-Leninist vanguard parties" in the Congo or Bolivia? Did he tell comrades to do that elsewhere? No.

Every situation is different. Just because something worked in Russia in 1917 doesn&#39;t mean it will work in the U.S. in 2007. We have to be flexible in tactics.

And no, the FPM is not the vanguard of the working class in the U.S.. The PSL isn&#39;t either.

Like Fidel and Che pointed out, one can&#39;t simply proclaim themselves "the vanguard." The vanguard is the most advanced section of the toiling masses. Sometimes it emerges in advance, sometimes it emerges in the heat of struggle.. rarely does it announce itself the vanguard in a non-revolutionary period and become that.


Aside from that, FPM is small, its limited compared to the PSL and the RCP. I don&#39;t think it can mobilize the masses in the way these parties do. Look at how you guys make a big deal of basic things. The newest article on your site for example proclaims a victory at selling 9 copies of your newspaper at an event lol. No disrespect comrade. But I want to be part of a party which is ultra-active and larger than smaller.

We have members all over the world, including strong Branches in places like Uganda. And we built our movement from scratch, we didn&#39;t break from another party taking resources with us. Everything we&#39;ve done has come from our hard work and funding has come from our paychecks.

The PSL is certainly bigger than us in the U.S. (though not by that much), but the Democrats are larger than all leftist parties combined and multiplied. A "big party" does not mean a good party, or one with a correct outlook that can lead to revolution.

We don&#39;t make a big deal of selling 9 papers, we simply report on our activities as much as possible, especially when we&#39;re talking about things like raising funds. We want to be honest with our supporters and let them know when we advance and when we fail, when we have events, how they did, what kind of support and hearings we&#39;re winning, etc. That&#39;s called being transparent and open. Most groups are neither (though that is understandable in some situations). Still, selling 9 papers and several pamphlets in less than an hour isn&#39;t too bad :)

[Rawthentic]

I hate to burst into this discussion but this is the most genius quote over. You Maoists crack me up sometimes. "Yeah, those stupid workers. What do they know? We&#39;re doing this for them, unwashed ingrates&#33;"
Wait...I don&#39;t understand, is this directed at me, and why?

[OneBrickOneVoice]

No it doesn&#39;t. It says "All progressives and revolutionaries must continue to struggle for Mumia’s freedom." They&#39;re not "consistently pointing out that their can be no justice under capitalist and organizing workers to use their power to free him."

Uh did you miss the rest. As for the need for working class organization, that&#39;s emphasized in the join the party section


He represents tens of thousands of others behind bars—predominantly from Black and Latino oppressed communities—who have been snatched off the street, and wrongfully convicted by the so-called “justice” system.

Free Mumia&#33; Free all U.S. political prisoners&#33;


So why did A.N.S.W.E.R. (which, let&#39;s be honest, is controlled by the PSL) call a protest "less than two weeks before the election" to "force the issue of the Iraq war onto the U.S. political stage…"? What is the "U.S. political stage" two weeks before an election LH??


ANSWER is a coalition, something you obviously don&#39;t understand which is why SDTWM considers 5 people a contingent to a major anti-war demonstration. ANSWER is a number of groups building a united front to end the imperialist war. Are you saying that that&#39;s a bad thing? That&#39;s important&#33; The capitalists attempt to take the masses attention off of the horrors in Iraq by ignoring the war.

These critiscisms are petty, ANSWER is a coalition. ANSWERs line is always to stand with the oppressed against imperialism and for the people&#39;s needs. That&#39;s why it focuses on imperialisms effects on Cuba and Palestine as well as Iraq.


What is all the shit about &#39;helping congress get a spine&#39;?


That&#39;s one speaker. ANSWER built a united front with alot of different groups for September 15th, There were all kinds of speakers with different views, the point was to unite the masses against the war.


Why does the PSL foster illusions that the capitalists can reorganize society to meet human need by raising demands to "Cut the Pentagon budget&#33; Double the education budget&#33;"? Why do they appeal to the imperialists to "Stop the war"?


um they can&#39;t reorganize society, they can ever be forced to make concessions to the masses.


What happened to revolutionary defeatism and calling for the defeat of one&#39;s "own bourgeoisie"?

That&#39;s what the PSL does. ANSWER is just a anti-imperialist, anti-racist coalition, it&#39;s a people&#39;s movement to resist imperialism. The PSL is the vanguad to overthrow the system.


Marches have continued to get smaller and smaller as time goes on. The imperialists are actually increasing their presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

what? September 15th was much bigger than March 17.


"The people" aren&#39;t going to force the imperialists to do shit "because of mass mobilization." That&#39;s a liberal illusion.

fuck are you talking about? The mass movement of the 1960s was essential to the troops leaving. The bourgeois was afraid a revolution would errupt.

Have you forgot what Lenin said on fighting for reforms? I guess he&#39;s a liberal now?


Unlike the anarchists, the Marxists recognise struggle for reforms, i.e., for measures that improve the conditions if the working people without destroying the power of the ruling class. At the same time, however, the Marxists wage a most resolute struggle against the reformists, who, directly or indirectly, restrict the aims and activities of the working class to the winning of reforms


http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/sep/12b.htm

this is exactly why the PSL promotes the slogan "War is the symptom, Capitalism is the diesease, Revolution is the cure" and why ANSWER planned to demonstrate no matter who got elected because ANSWER holds no illusions in reforming th system, only winning gains of the people from the system.


That is reformism, comrade.

no reformism would be that "we don&#39;t need to overthrow the system we just need to make it nicer". Fighting for worker&#39;s gains and revolution is called marxism comrade. What you&#39;re advocating is what we call ultra-leftism.


We don&#39;t fight for some magical number of reforms that will somehow make capitalism weak enough to overthrow. The bourgeoisie will never reform itself out of existence or into a position of severe weakness.

That&#39;s not the reason we fight for reforms, but its true, by making concessions to the working class, it puts the ruling class in a less powerful position. That said it won&#39;t matter unless the system is overthrown and socialism implemented. It is possible for the revolution to happen peacefully until a point where the bourgeois realizes that if it doesn&#39;t act violently it will be thrown out at which a final battle in fought.

Here&#39;s what the PSL&#39;s line is


n the Party for Socialism and Liberation, we do more than discuss the ideas of socialism and the concept of revolution. We are a party of action. We believe that freedoms and rights are only won through determined struggle. Although we believe only revolution can emancipate humanity from the wage slavery of capitalism, our Party also fights for progressive democratic reforms.

I think that&#39;s the right oreintation. Fighting for worker&#39;s rights within the framework of realizing that only revolution is the solution.


That was the first thing that came up on their site from a search on "community control." I&#39;m sure there is more. They regularly raise this demand, it&#39;s no secret.

I don&#39;t see what&#39;s so wrong with this demand.


You mean Cuba, where the revolution was lead by the 26 July Movement and Fidel "The masses, not parties, make revolutions" Castro?

the socialist revolution isn&#39;t just seizure of power. the actual uprising can happen without a vanguard, but actually implementing socialism has always required a vanguard.

I think you&#39;re seriously misguided on what reformism means.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

No, brother, it&#39;s clear that you are. Just because one says "I want revolution" does not mean they are not reformists.

If they foster illusions that the capitalists will (or even can) reorganize society (for example, by using funding for the very military they rely on to enforce their domination to better fund public education&#33;) they are reformist. If they build illusions in the ability of the capitalist courts to carry out justice, and don&#39;t consistently talk about the need for workers power to be unleashed as a social force to free class-war prisoners, they are reformist. If they unite with sections of the bourgeoisie, reactionary scum and other "sectors" in the name of &#39;maximum unity&#39; to push for reforms as a final goal, they are reformist. If they call for "community control" (whatever the fuck that means, what class makes up &#39;a community&#39;??) of the police -- which are the armed enforcers of capitalist rule and actually make up their state -- thus essentially (and ludicrously) claiming "the people" can administer a section of the bourgeois state they are reformist.

You even thought that last bit was questionable as early as yesterday.. now it&#39;s okay. Did you go to a PSL class and got fed some cover for that reformist rubbish or something?

Yeah, yeah, after organizing a protest around the bourgeois elections, A.N.S.W.E.R. protested &#39;no matter who won&#39;.. what does that mean? They organized to &#39;influence&#39; either of the ruling parties of capitalism.. to &#39;pressure them&#39; to withdraw the troops. Please.

And yeah Sept. 15, on one of the nicest days of the year, was a little bigger than the March demo which was held on one of the coldest and most miserable days. Both were much smaller than earlier protests like Aug 2005, Spring 2005, etc.

And no I didn&#39;t "forget" what Lenin wrote. Unlike you, I actually understand it. Lenin is calling for the exact same thing I said, joining in the struggles for day to day demands while actively working to turn them into revolutionary fights. Cheerleading doesn&#39;t help anyone.

And no, it wasn&#39;t "one speaker." Maybe you weren&#39;t listening to what the speakers were saying (don&#39;t feel bad, about 90% of the people there weren&#39;t).. A main call, repeated again and again (and this is confirmed by a number of sources) was to &#39;help congress get a spine.&#39;

And no, the bourgeoisie won&#39;t reform itself into a "much weaker position." Reformism actually helps them keep their hold on power by diverting the revolutionary energy of the workers. It&#39;s sort of like allowing protests to foster illusions that we live in a democracy.

And no, the "masses" didn&#39;t end the Viet Nam war. The U.S. lost, militarily. They also had huge problems with soldiers not only deserting, but turning on their commanders in the field and/or refusing to take orders. The protests themselves could have never ended the war.

You didn&#39;t really respond to any of the criticisms I raised, instead you just blew them off (and in some cases, like that of Che and the various reformist movements, ignored them completely). I&#39;m pretty busy so I won&#39;t waste my time on this discussion if you&#39;re not serious about engaging in it.

One thing is for certain, floating from tendency to tendency, and from organization to organization, strongly condemning anyone who opposes the one you&#39;re currently affiliated to and uncritically supporting it before moving on, will not help the class struggle in any way. It also won&#39;t help you reach any sort of clarity.

[RNK]

O... M... G...

Another discussion about the RCPUSA&#33; :rolleyes:

How did I miss this?&#33; Oh well, here goes&#33;


I uphold him too, like a rope upholds a hanging man.

Or an ice axe&#33; Wait, that doesn&#39;t uphold people, it just kills them.


Well, I still applaud your bravery -- you are already receiving some of the bile us Trots get...

The difference is, you deserve that bile, while LH here does not. Though I agree, he should be applauded, as should anyone who stands up and brings forth realistic criticism rather than idealistic potty-mouthery (so that counts you out, sorry).


Still, selling 9 papers and several pamphlets in less than an hour isn&#39;t too bad

It sure isn&#39;t. Do you have that "one guy" that always seems to manage to sell an inhuman amount of papers in a short amount of time? I think every organization has one of those.

Anyway, LH, I have one thing to say. You seem like a good guy with a good head on your shoulders. There are enough reasons for you to lose faith with the RCP. It&#39;s always been a possibility. The RCP is far from perfect; they have almost entirely turned into an editorial/periodical commentary newspaper that acts like it has some authority when in reality it has none, and that&#39;s fine. It may be that the RCP is no longer a functioning revolutionary organization. Atleast you didn&#39;t come in here like others with the "Omfg Mao is a monster and Avakian is his puppetdemon&#33;&#33;&#33;" like many others do. So I take your criticisms seriously and I hope others do as well.

I must however caution you... you seem like a very impressionable guy who is quick to jump on bandwagons without thoroughly analyzing the situation. We all get caught up sometimes. Just be careful of that. This PSL sounds like nothing but Kautskyite oppurtunists who pay lip-service to revolutionary communism without actually taking it to heart.

Anyway, good luck, I&#39;m sure you&#39;ll make it out fine. You could always move up here to Canada and join the only real revolutionary movement in North America :lol:

[Comrade Rage]

Originally posted by LFTP
So, unless you have some real shit to bring up, shut the fuck up.
I had to go get my mom dinner. I do have something to bring up. How about the fact that outside LA the RCP doesn&#39;t have a presence?

Or the fact that they have FAILED in attracting support in mid-sized cities?

Or the fact that they have FAILED in attracting support from the migrant community, at least outside of LA?

Or the fact that they have FAILED in outreach to labor?

What about 1991? According to the wise, exalted, His Excellency Chairman-for-Life Avakian that was the beginning of an awakening against police brutality.

YOU fuck off&#33; It seems you have a lot more work to do rebuilding the Revolution Newspaper Party than to curse out a mere mortal like me.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

If they foster illusions that the capitalists will (or even can) reorganize society (for example, by using funding for the very military they rely on to enforce their domination to better fund public education&#33;) they are reformist

the fact is that there is where you are wrong. The ANSWER coalition doesn&#39;t hold this view because they believe that the ruling class will do this as part of reorganizing society, they do it because it is a people&#39;s need, it is a reform which can be won by struggle, and it is in those very struggles that a revolution can be born.


If they build illusions in the ability of the capitalist courts to carry out justice, and don&#39;t consistently talk about the need for workers power to be unleashed as a social force to free class-war prisoners, they are reformist.

on the contrary the PSL doesn&#39;t have faith in the capitalist courts, it does have faith in the people though, the people can force the ruling class to make alot of concessions in order to save itself, that&#39;s how alot of our struggles have been won.

Look I think you have alot of misconceptions about the PSL. Have you been around the PSL at all? You can&#39;t know until you have. In the paper, in the party literature, in educationals revolution and socialism; defined as a system where the working class controls the wealth and uses it to benefit all is constant.

We&#39;re basically arguing you&#39;re "super-revolutionary" rhetoric. In reality it doesn&#39;t hold truth. I don&#39;t see what you&#39;re arguement is against forcing the ruling class to concede to people&#39;s movement is other than you just calling it reformist, but what really is Shut the War Machine Down doing? It attempts to force the ruling class to bring the troops home because they are not able to fight the war anymore. That would be reformism by your definition, when in reality, it is simply fighting for better conditions under capitalism while knowing that revolution is the only solution.

I think you are making these criticiscisms because the PSL is so involved in these struggles and winning them is so central to the program of the party that you think its their only goal just winning one struggle at a time.

Building coalitions is the only way for struggle to be won. It&#39;s not reactionary, its what accomplishes shit.

As for community control, that was originally put forward by the BPP. No shit it won&#39;t be the solution, but it is a progressive goal, the communities which are most subject to police oppression are working class community, thus it would mean the working class has control of the police. I don&#39;t know It&#39;s definately something I&#39;m not sure about, I&#39;ve only been around the party for like 2 three weeks.

This is what the PSL says on reform.


We stand for the socialist reorganization of society. There is no "third way." Illusions about a "kinder, gentler" capitalism are just that—illusions. The idea that the bosses and the capitalist state&#39;s grip on society can be abolished through any means other than a revolutionary overturn is utopian fantasy.

The reason I didn&#39;t respond to every single point in your post is that I feel I&#39;ve responded enough to them in my post already. In regards to Che and Cuba, the revolution isn&#39;t just a seizure of power, its the whole process that follows, without the CPC, the vanguard, the revolution would not be where it is today, it most likely would be drowned in blood by the imperialists.

[Rawthentic]

Or the fact that they have FAILED in attracting support in mid-sized cities?
Maybe because they are most concentrated in the larger cities?


Or the fact that they have FAILED in attracting support from the migrant community, at least outside of LA?
And you know this..how? And this is simply not true, I&#39;ve talked to comrades from both the Bay Area and Houston that could easily disprove you, because the fact of the matter is that you are just bringing up shit you don&#39;t know about.


Or the fact that they have FAILED in outreach to labor?
Because its a revolutionary communist party, not a labor organization. Plus, organized labor in the US is about 15% of the proletariat, and the RCP focuses more on those that will have a direct and profound leadership in the revolution: the black and latino proletariat. "Outreach to labor" is just another way of saying economism.


The RCP is far from perfect; they have almost entirely turned into an editorial/periodical commentary newspaper that acts like it has some authority when in reality it has none, and that&#39;s fine.
I really think you misunderstand the central organ of the RCP and what its purpose is. I suggest re-reading what RedHeretic said on it in the 1st page of this thread.

[black magick hustla]

CDL, just a quick comment about LGBT community.

Not all organizations are "socialist", and therefore, just because the LGBT organizations don&#39;t have a"class line", it doesn&#39;t means it is bad to support ithem. Communist organizations unwilling to work with organizations that aren&#39;t exactly communist will surely isolate themselves. However, this doesn&#39;t means we should tolerate ultrareactionary shit like those who support the NBNP.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

The fundamental question is one of class. Organizations that don&#39;t see the class question as central practice identity politics and actually serve to reinforce the separation of the working class.

There will be no equal rights without socialist revolution, and that&#39;s a fact.

[black magick hustla]

Originally posted by Compañ[email protected] 10, 2007 04:46 am
The fundamental question is one of class. Organizations that don&#39;t see the class question as central practice identity politics and actually serve to reinforce the separation of the working class.

There will be no equal rights without socialist revolution, and that&#39;s a fact.
What about the day to day demands?

The original BNP, while the leadership being communist and being extremely militant about their work, was engaged also in day to day demands, and arguably, many times being "reformist" in the sense that some of their demands didn&#39;t imply immediate communist revolution.

Was the BNP reformist? Well, the leadership hardly was (although there where "pork chop" nationalist tendencies inside the organization".

It is true that the fundmanetal question boils down to class. However, supporting identity groups serves a propagandistic purpose. I have met lots of very driven comrades in the "chicano student organizations" that I wouldn&#39;t call socialist, but they have a lot of potential of turning to our side. When they realize that socialists are willing to support their struggle against racism, and TRANSCEND IT to a struggle of class, they would realize we aren&#39;t the bad guys, after all.

[Comrade Rage]

Originally posted by LFTP+--> (LFTP)Maybe because they are most concentrated in the larger cities?
[/b]
My point exactly. You can&#39;t even begin to think a revolution will be successful if you concentrate on the 2.5 million that live in Hell A (or LA). Last time I checked America was a country of 300 mil.


Originally posted by [email protected]
And you know this..how? And this is simply not true, I&#39;ve talked to comrades from both the Bay Area and Houston that could easily disprove you, because the fact of the matter is that you are just bringing up shit you don&#39;t know about.
Well then freaking disprove me&#33; How many RCP comrades have helped out migrants?


LFTP
Because its a revolutionary communist party, not a labor organization. Plus, organized labor in the US is about 15% of the proletariat, and the RCP focuses more on those that will have a direct and profound leadership in the revolution: the black and latino proletariat.
Love how you dismiss labor unions while claiming to be &#39;revolutionary communist&#39;.
So the black and latino proletariat will have leadership in your revolution, but labor unions won&#39;t?&#33;

State Capitalist Alert&#33;


"Outreach to labor" is just another way of saying economism. [/CODE]
No it isn&#39;t, &#39;Maoist&#39;.

Or should I say, Dengite? <_<

[black magick hustla]

Originally posted by Marmot+October 10, 2007 02:31 pm--> (Marmot @ October 10, 2007 02:31 pm)
Compañ[email protected] 10, 2007 04:46 am
The fundamental question is one of class. Organizations that don&#39;t see the class question as central practice identity politics and actually serve to reinforce the separation of the working class.

There will be no equal rights without socialist revolution, and that&#39;s a fact.
What about the day to day demands?

The original BNP, while the leadership being communist and being extremely militant about their work, was engaged also in day to day demands, and arguably, many times being "reformist" in the sense that some of their demands didn&#39;t imply immediate communist revolution.

Was the BNP reformist? Well, the leadership hardly was (although there where "pork chop" nationalist tendencies inside the organization".

It is true that the fundmanetal question boils down to class. However, supporting identity groups serves a propagandistic purpose. I have met lots of very driven comrades in the "chicano student organizations" that I wouldn&#39;t call socialist, but they have a lot of potential of turning to our side. When they realize that socialists are willing to support their struggle against racism, and TRANSCEND IT to a struggle of class, they would realize we aren&#39;t the bad guys, after all. [/b]
lol the BPP not the BNP

[RNK]

State Capitalist Alert&#33;
Oh noes&#33; The RCP doesn&#39;t completely and utterly embrace the labour unions&#33; They must be state capitalists&#33; Only a food would claim that unions today are nothing but vats of oppurtunism and greed&#33;

[Comrade Rage]

IWW (http://www.iww.org)

I do think most of the AFL-CIO unions are influenced by greed, that&#39;s why I haven&#39;t joined one.

[Rawthentic]

My point exactly. You can&#39;t even begin to think a revolution will be successful if you concentrate on the 2.5 million that live in Hell A (or LA). Last time I checked America was a country of 300 mil.

LA, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Houston, Cleveland, Atlanta, plus all the other cities where the paper gets out. The RCP is active and many times leads every major political battle.


Well then freaking disprove me&#33; How many RCP comrades have helped out migrants?
What do you mean, "help them out"? Is it getting the newspaper Revolution and putting forward a revolutionary line or telling them how they need to get their wages raised?


Love how you dismiss labor unions while claiming to be &#39;revolutionary communist&#39;.
So the black and latino proletariat will have leadership in your revolution, but labor unions won&#39;t?&#33;

Working within the confines of the labor movement makes you an economist and reformist, because the very definition of that movement is a better day&#39;s wages for a day&#39;s work. What creates revolution is communist leadership in major political battles like the RCP is doing in WCW, OCt. 22 Against Police Brutality, the Jena 6 Battle, "Islamo-Fascism Week", and Defend Science.

Its also funny how you equate state-capitalism with not working within labor unions. And you don&#39;t even know what Deng Xiaoping represents so shut it.
Or should I say, Dengite

[Comrade Rage]

LFTP:I get it, your newspaper will solve every problem in the US. How couldn&#39;t it, it&#39;s the gospel from your deity-Bob Avakian. :lol:


Originally posted by LFTP+--> (LFTP)Working within the confines of the labor movement makes you an economist and reformist, because the very definition of that movement is a better day&#39;s wages for a day&#39;s work.[/b]
iww.org (http://WWW.IWW.ORG)
Abolition of the wage system&#33;


LFTP
And you don&#39;t even know what Deng Xiaoping represents so shut it.
He represented the bourgeosie element of the Chinese CP. The same element your &#39;party&#39; is rife with.

Are you aware that sounding like a fundamentalist troll is not helping your argument? That&#39;s another RCP problem: the fact you guys come off the same way as street preachers.

Maybe because you are.

I like most of what the RCP says and does, just stop pretending you have no flaws.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Look I think you have alot of misconceptions about the PSL. Have you been around the PSL at all? You can&#39;t know until you have.

Yes, I have.


As for community control, that was originally put forward by the BPP. No shit it won&#39;t be the solution, but it is a progressive goal, the communities which are most subject to police oppression are working class community, thus it would mean the working class has control of the police. I don&#39;t know It&#39;s definately something I&#39;m not sure about, I&#39;ve only been around the party for like 2 three weeks.

It&#39;s impossible. The police are part of the bourgeois state. The working class cannot get control of the bourgeois state and use it for its own ends. To say otherwise builds illusions in the character of the police.


but what really is Shut the War Machine Down doing? It attempts to force the ruling class to bring the troops home because they are not able to fight the war anymore.

No, the SDTWM campaign seeks to build a general strike, to make the bourgeoisie unable to continue their wars.

Contrast that to &#39;pressuring&#39; them.

Or building the illusions that the bourgeoisie has any interest, or even the ability, to reorganize society to meet human need (i.e. by transferring funds away from their imperialist wars and into schools and infrastructure).


It sure isn&#39;t. Do you have that "one guy" that always seems to manage to sell an inhuman amount of papers in a short amount of time? I think every organization has one of those.

We had &#39;that one woman&#39; for a while. She was uncanny. She would sell a stack of papers at a protest in five minutes.

Now, here at least, we all work pretty equally in that area. We compare our sales at the end of each outing, to see who did the best, and to encourage emulation.


What about the day to day demands?

The original BNP, while the leadership being communist and being extremely militant about their work, was engaged also in day to day demands, and arguably, many times being "reformist" in the sense that some of their demands didn&#39;t imply immediate communist revolution.

Was the BNP reformist? Well, the leadership hardly was (although there where "pork chop" nationalist tendencies inside the organization".

It is true that the fundmanetal question boils down to class. However, supporting identity groups serves a propagandistic purpose. I have met lots of very driven comrades in the "chicano student organizations" that I wouldn&#39;t call socialist, but they have a lot of potential of turning to our side. When they realize that socialists are willing to support their struggle against racism, and TRANSCEND IT to a struggle of class, they would realize we aren&#39;t the bad guys, after all.

The BPP had survival programs because if people can&#39;t eat they can&#39;t be active in politics.. they had to address immediate needs first. The CPUSA did this sort of thing too, early on, as all communist parties around the world did (i.e. moving folks back into homes they were evicted from, daycare/schools for children, Sunday meals/socials, etc.)

What that has to do with trying to influence the bourgeoisie, in building illusions that the bourgeoisie can reorganize society, in building illusions in the capitalist &#39;justice&#39; system, in supporting separatist nationalist and &#39;identity&#39; groups, I don&#39;t know.

[black magick hustla]

Originally posted by Compañ[email protected] 13, 2007 08:44 pm


What that has to do with trying to influence the bourgeoisie, in building illusions that the bourgeoisie can reorganize society, in building illusions in the capitalist &#39;justice&#39; system, in supporting separatist nationalist and &#39;identity&#39; groups, I don&#39;t know.
I think we have a problem of communication here comrade.

First, I never implied we should support totally identity groups. More like, support some of their aims and help them in some of their aims, at the same time trying to detourn them from empty identity-politics to class based politics.

Me and some of the socialists I am working with helped some black comrades detourn the identity group they were in (WEB DEBOIS Society) into a more "revolutionary" organization by helping them in their events and pointing out things like debois being a communist and that malcolm x was an anticapitalist. It was pretty much a success; they ousted their president and instead created a web of ad-hoc commitees with an anticapitalist outlook.

This is the type of work I am talking about. Showing that you are an ally of their cause (LGBT ácceptance and black liberation) makes it possible for them to accept a class line.

I was never supporting the emtpy rhetoric of "make congress grow a spine" or that bullshit.

Btw, mass mobilizations did help end the vietnam war. The mass mobilitations weren&#39;t "peaceful" as many people like to say. There where many armed groups, riots, and all sorts of violence.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

And mutinies and a military defeat (which were the main forces).

But on the rest, I do agree with you for the most part. But groups like the PSL, which I was originally focusing on, does not.

[Random Precision]

Originally posted by Live for the [email protected] 09, 2007 03:04 am
Wait...I don&#39;t understand, is this directed at me, and why?
If I may be permitted to respond...

You said, "The proletariat is the backbone of the revolution? Really? lol That is an economist stance, and you know it. You are clearly saying that a party is an "organization of workers" instead of a vanguard of the most advanced revolutionary communists. A vanguard party exists to serve the people in revolution like RH said, and nothing else.

I think YSR is right, This is typical of Maoists, who in Mao&#39;s time called notions of workers&#39; control "economist" and use the same label for anything that implies that the proletariat are, in fact, the revolutionary force. One thing that I appreciate about the decline of the Left is that these counter-revolutionaries no longer have hedgemony over it.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Community control of police is like fighting for universal healthcare under the capitalist system. It&#39;s just a reform, no one is saying it is the solution only revolution can solve the problems of the police oppression and universal healthcare, but as marxists we gotta fight for it within the context that only revolution will be the full solution.

As for SDTWM being better than any other Anti-war organization because it makes the ruling class unable to wage war, constant mass outpourings, with civil disobedience, increasing resistance, etc.. would make the ruling class just as unable to wage a war. The Anti-War movement however hasn&#39;t got to that point. However I think September 15th was the first step in that direction. For the first time the participants were charged enough to engage in civil disobedience on a mass scale. that&#39;s a beginning of something.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

No, fighting for "community control" of the capitalist state is nothing like fighting for universal healthcare. They&#39;re not even close.

SDTWM is not an organization, but a campaign. A general strike is nothing like 7,500 people (with no distinct class character) marching down the empty streets of D.C. on a Saturday, aiming to "scare congress" by having 200 people jump over a barrier and get arrested.

I would seriously suggest going back and consulting the works of Marx and Engels if you&#39;re genuinely unable to understand the differences.

[Rawthentic]

Catbert, you are a fucking liar.

I said:
"The proletariat is the backbone of the revolution? Really? lol

That is an economist stance, and you know it. You are clearly saying that a party is an "organization of workers" instead of a vanguard of the most advanced revolutionary communists. A vanguard party exists to serve the people in revolution like RH said, and nothing else.


As a response to when LeftyHenry said this:


Its supposed to be a worker&#39;s party because that&#39;s the class that&#39;s gonna make the revolution.


use the same label for anything that implies that the proletariat are, in fact, the revolutionary force. One thing that I appreciate about the decline of the Left is that these counter-revolutionaries no longer have hedgemony over it.
More dishonesty. In fact, Maoists are one the few from what I&#39;ve seen that clearly say that the proletariat is the first class in history that can emancipate humanity and achieve the "4 alls" as Marx and Mao put it. Just to prove your dishonesty with the RCP&#39;s Draft Programme:


The Proletariat Will Free Itself and All Humanity

In the words of the Communist Manifesto, �what the bourgeoisie produces, above all else, is its own grave-diggers.�

The proletariat is that class of people who, under this system, can live only so long as they can work, and can work only so long as their work enriches someone else�the capitalist class. Their labor, collectively, is the foundation of society and produces tremendous wealth. But this wealth is stolen by a small number of capitalist exploiters who turn it into their �private property� and into a means of further exploitation. The proletarians are trapped in a vicious circle: they have to work in order to live, but the more they work, the more wealth they create, the more it is stolen and turned into power over them.

Acting as individuals, they cannot change this condition of enslavement. BUT AS A CLASS THEY DO HAVE A REVOLUTIONARY WAY OUT.

The proletariat is an international class. It is more highly socialized and connected than it has ever been. Young women and children make the clothes and shoes in sweatshops for wages as low as 10 or 20 cents an hour in places like China or Bangladesh. Other proletarians then pack these items, and still others transport them to the docks or airports to be shipped to other parts of the world, where they are then unloaded, transported, and sold by yet other proletarians.

There is a proletariat in the U.S. that is part of this international class. The U.S. working class is large and diverse. Within it, in its most exploited and nothing-to-lose sections, is a hard-core proletariat of many millions who can be the backbone of the revolutionary struggle.

Many work in the small factory districts of the inner city and the suburbs for poverty-level wages, maybe making the computer chips of the so-called information economy. Others slave away in the garment sweatshops of the big cities under conditions that call to mind the hell-hole factories of a hundred years ago. Some stand on street corners every day, desperate to find even a few hours of work at some construction site.

Agricultural workers are also part of this proletariat. They cultivate and pick crops, work on ranches, prepare food for shipment. They connect with other sectors of workers who transport food to various distribution centers, where other workers freeze and stock it.

The discipline and the broad experience that comes from working collectively, day in day out, and even struggling collectively just to survive is a source of strength when the proletariat rises in struggle. And the experience of the many immigrants in the proletariat who fought imperialism �back home� (whether in Central America, the Middle East, or elsewhere) can bring valuable lessons to the whole class.

Many other proletarians are locked down together in the housing projects across the U.S., living in a �community within a community.� Many are forced to move between dead-end jobs, hustles, and semi-legal activities, often ending up in prison. Many are youth, full of daring and defiance and a nothing-to-lose spirit. The bourgeoisie fears these proletarians as a powder keg of social dynamite, and it does everything to keep this section living under the gun and suppressed.

There are also millions within the working class, including many in important spheres of production, whose jobs have, for a certain period, brought somewhat higher wages and benefits, but who are now finding their job security, their conditions of work, and their earnings under attack. This is providing more of a basis for winning them to grasp that their interests lie with the revolutionary struggle of their class, the proletariat. The experience and discipline that large numbers of these workers have acquired from working collectively in large factories�and that many have gained from taking part in strikes and other struggles�can be a further source of strength for the cause of the proletariat.

With the strengths of its different sectors combined together, and with its most exploited and nothing-to-lose sections as the backbone, the U.S. proletariat has the capacity to lead an overall revolutionary struggle to bring the monster down. The proletariat within the U.S. is strategically and powerfully placed at the foundation of the capitalist-imperialist economy. Potentially, it IS an army of grave-diggers of capitalism. But this potential is concealed, both from society at large and even from the proletariat itself.

The bourgeoisie works overtime to keep the masses of proletarians from seeing their common interests and their mission as a class. They create desperate conditions in the communities and force the masses to compete against each other for jobs and survival. They spew out racist ideas that lie about people�s cultures. They try to conceal what proletarians of different nationalities have in common and the real strengths that exist in their differences.

This does not mean that the proletariat cannot fulfill its revolutionary mission. What it means�what it powerfully demonstrates�is that the proletariat needs its politically advanced and organized detachment, its vanguard party, to enable it to recognize and to carry out this revolutionary mission.

And the "Left" is now dominated by student-based reformist organizations? Or maybe the Green Party? :)

[Random Precision]

More dishonesty. In fact, Maoists are one the few from what I&#39;ve seen that clearly say that the proletariat is the first class in history that can emancipate humanity and achieve the "4 alls" as Marx and Mao put it.

Riiiiiiight. What about every other Marxist organization?


And the "Left" is now dominated by student-based reformist organizations? Or maybe the Green Party?

Very funny.

[Rawthentic]

Riiiiiiight. What about every other Marxist organization?
Point another one out that puts this forward.


Very funny.
Most definitely.

I thought thats all you had to say.

[Random Precision]

Point another one out that puts this forward.

Every self-respecting Marxist believes that the proletariat will liberate itself through revolution and all humanity through socialism. Now if by "all humanity" you refer to the peasant class, I don&#39;t think we need to pay them as much attention.


I thought thats all you had to say.

Prove that the ISO is reformist, or shut the fuck up.

[Rawthentic]

Prove that the ISO is reformist, or shut the fuck up.
Supporting the Green Party or Ralph Nader is not exactly what I&#39;d call revolutionary, now is it?

[black magick hustla]

Originally posted by Live for the [email protected] 15, 2007 12:00 am

Prove that the ISO is reformist, or shut the fuck up.
Supporting the Green Party or Ralph Nader is not exactly what I&#39;d call revolutionary, now is it?
Says the party that was leading that campaign to impeach bush. :lol:

[Rawthentic]

I don&#39;t agree with it much, but the RCP has never supported a capitalist party and always emphasizes proletarian revolution as the solution.

[Random Precision]

Originally posted by Live for the [email protected] 15, 2007 12:00 am
Supporting the Green Party or Ralph Nader is not exactly what I&#39;d call revolutionary, now is it?
Well, I disagree with that particular effort by the ISO, but I understand that it was the result of a desire to help build a stronger revolutionary movement, however misguided it might have been.

[RGacky3]

And the "Left" is now dominated by student-based reformist organizations? Or maybe the Green Party?

You&#39;d be suprised, if you look closely, you&#39;ll find Socialistic ideas in the places you least expect. I would&#39;nt look for the American &#39;left&#39;, in the Traditional &#39;leftist&#39; areas, I would look in local governments, Unions, community organizations, farmers associations, immigrant associations. the American &#39;Left&#39; is no longer about a Party or a single organization, thankfully. I think the movement being community and workplace minded rather than partd minded is a good think/

BTW: Kudos for breaking with the RCP, I don&#39;t think Bob needs more of an Ego Boost :P.

I think leftists in America should stop looking for Parties, and start looking for struggles, the immigrant struggle, your workplace, your community, your Union.

[Andrei Kuznetsov]

Since LeftHenry made a very interesting (and engaging) post about why he has decided to break with the RCYB, I decided to throw out my own opinions on the situation by posting an essay I recently wrote as part of my wishes to break with the RCYB.


It’s A Sin:
My Experiences and Thoughts on the Current Line of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade

I am a Communist, and have always (at heart, at least) been one across my very young life. I believe that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is the only ideology that can bring us to a better world, and that revolution is the only solution to breaking all chains of oppression, exploitation, and tyranny in the world. I believe this from the bottom of my heart, and that is why I have spent the past 5 years in the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade and actively supported the Revolutionary Communist Party and Chairman Bob Avakian for slightly longer. However, recently I have stepped back from the RCYB in order to take care of some personal issues and have time to think about why, for the past 6 months, my work with the RCYB has not set right with me. After months of silence, thinking, writing, and studying, I have decided it is time to discuss why, with heavy heart, I think it is time to part ways with the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade, and why as a Communist I cannot continue upholding the current line of the Revolutionary Communist Party with a clear conscience. I think it’s time to see why the RCP is going on a self-isolating, semi-revisionist, and very tragic path perpetuated by many things within the current line that has arisen across the past 2 ½ years…

1)“We want no condescending saviours”

The second stanza of the Internationale, the international anthem of the working class, states that the workers “want no condescending saviours”. The RCP seems to have sadly forgotten this, as I watch the cult of Avakian grow out of control and out of proportion with each issue of Revolution I read.

I am a Maoist; at the end of the day, I have no problem with a “culture of appreciation” or “cult of personality” built around a leader if that leader is at the forefront of a key revolutionary line. I make no apologies for this. However, Communists must constantly interrogate themselves around the question of leadership and how to exercise it, asking at all times “on what basis and with what methods should we Communists use to promote our leadership”? Even with a revolutionary line, a cult of personality around a great leader can become counter-productive- nay, even dangerous- if it is upheld in a wrong way.

The Revolutionary Communist Party speaks of Comrade Avakian in messianic terms, such as “once in a while, a great leader comes forward…” and sees him as the “single thread” that the International Communist Movement “hangs by”. The RCP speaks of their leadership as the “revolutionary people in a concentrated form”, which has arisen out of this particular epoch in history due to its virtuousness and greatness. The RCP, in its methods of upholding Avakian, hearken back to the capitalist-roaders in China such as Chen Boda, who tried to uphold the cult of Mao on the basis of the “genius theory” (the concept of a leader arising periodically across history that concentrates a great leap in understanding or theory), a theory that Mao criticized deeply. Lin Biao, the revisionist leader who eventually tried to pull a coup d’etat against Mao, put forward unscientific ideas such as “Every sentence of Chairman Mao’s works is a truth; one single sentence of his surpasses ten thousand of ours.” Looking at these quotes and theories, and looking at the way the RCP uphold Avakian (just read through the special issue of Revolution “The Crossroads We Face, The Leadership We Need”&#33;) can one say that the RCP’s method of promoting their leader is any different from the way Lin and Chen promoted Mao?

2)The “humility to be led”

Avakian constantly speaks of the need for a “solid core with a lot of elasticity”, and the need for vibrant dissent in the Party and socialist society. Avakian’s writings on these are very important, and to his credit he has at many key times provided a refreshing view on the nature of dissent under socialism, and brought forward many key questions that were at one point “blasphemous” in the International Communist Movement. His work “Conquer the World?” was groundbreaking in its anti-dogmatic, and anti-religious message to the world’s Communists. He constantly speaks of the need to learn from non-communist forces and from revisionists themselves.

Sadly, my experience in the RCYB has not led me to believe this is true. In theory, the RCP should be a vibrant Maoist party filled with dissent, wrangling, and struggle. In practice, any criticism of what Avakian says is viewed with suspicion, and any cadre who does such is subject to guilt-tripping for “not protecting” and “not appreciating” this “precious leadership”. Avakian is constantly needed to be “defended” at all times from a very hostile world, and anyone who raises genuine or significant criticism of his or his Party’s line is seen as undedicated and defiant against Avakian’s “new synthesis”. It has caused the RCYB to become “chilled” in terms of vibrant debate and dissent, and a very rigid, dogmatic, and unthinking method of upholding Comrade Avakian’s works has come about. In this light, the Chairman’s talks of “a solid core with a lot of elasticity” and the need to “fly high without a safety net ” sound mockingly hollow to a young communist such as myself.

I came into the RCYB hoping for a refreshing, open-minded, and dynamic philosophical and ideological atmosphere, and indeed during my first few years in the Brigade, I found that. Sadly, I have seen less and less of such in the organization. I personally have been (and have seen others) criticized or ostracized for being interested in studying non-communist philosophers and movements. If Avakian speaks so much of the need to hurl ourselves into all sorts of realms of ideas and thinking, why is it that a communist who studies (and not even agreeing with&#33;) Nietzsche, St. Thomas Aquinas, Gramsci, Guevara, Luxembourg, Chavez, etc. looked at with suspicion? Why is there such a distinct lack of comrades who have a decent grasp on philosophy, history, and other realms of knowledge outside of Communist theory? Why have I always felt shamed and guilt-tripped for enthusiastically studying such great (if non-communist) struggles such as Northern Ireland, Chiapas, the French Revolution, and the Basque country or even critically and comprehensively studying reactionary regimes such as the Third Reich or the revisionist North Koreans? Why is studying and understanding what we oppose so dangerous and suspicious? [i]Is the RCP, in reality, terrified of new and different ideas outside of what Avakian teaches?

The Communist Party of Peru, whose 25 year-long people’s war was a great inspiration to oppressed peoples the world over, was greatly compromised by a similar line. In A World to Win #32, we hear of how the leadership of Chairman Gonzalo led to great setbacks for his party:

“At the core of the party’s historical identity was the concept of jefatura, the idea that Gonzalo was more than the chairman of the party’s Central Committee, a jefe (literally chief, but here meant to designate a special category of leader) who played a role not only through the party but over and above it. Party members swore their unconditional subordination to him personally." (AWTW 32/2006, p. 58)

Because of this, when Gonzalo was captured and began to speak (whether voluntarily or coerced by Peruvian authorities) of “peace talks”, it shattered the PCP and caused major setbacks (for more information, see the article “A Sober Look at the Situation of the Peru Revolution and Its Needs”). Building a firm cult of personality and building blind devotion to a party’s leadership (whether it is explicit or not), while it may seem at first to be a good way of protecting and upholding a leader’s line, can in fact have the opposite effect. The RCP should greatly consider this when they promote their leadership in cultish ways.

3)Blaming the masses, or the “cult of will”

“All this—and the whole experience that is captured with the metaphor of living in the house of Tony Soprano—does come back around to the question of complicity. Now, in this connection I want to say a few things about the mobilization on October 5 (2006) that was called by World Can&#39;t Wait, and the fact that, frankly, in terms of numbers and accordingly in terms of impact, this fell far short of what was needed. Now, as Maoists, we&#39;re not supposed to blame the masses when things don&#39;t go well. But goddamnit—I want to blame the masses a little bit&#33;”

BLAMING THE MASSES? What kind of Communist BLAMES THE MASSES?&#33;&#33;&#33;

This quote, by Chairman Avakian in “Bringing Forward Another Way”, encapsulates a great deal of what is wrong with the general line of the Party. The quote goes exactly against what Lenin said in What Is To Be Done? when he said that if the masses don’t awaken, then it is the fault of the communists. The cult of Avakian, the theoretical errors of his work (which I will dig into in later writings), and the dogmatic unquestioning thinking around him has created a “cult of will” within the RCP and RCYB. Instead of looking at the material conditions or at the method of how the party works with the people, the RCP and RCYB separate theory from practice and decides that will and determination alone can build a revolutionary movement and surge it forward.

Because of this idealistic fetishization of “will” and the religiousness of the line concerning leadership, the method in which the RCYB deals with the masses and with its own cadre has become appalling. If something does not go right, does the RCYB sit down, analyze the objective/material conditions of the situation, and analyze our line or our methods? Does the RCYB use Mao Tse-Tung’s “4 Point Method” in a genuinely scientific and multi-faceted way? No. The RCYB instead blames themselves and their fellow cadre, using guilt-tripping and Amish-style “shunning” to coerce their comrades into feeling bad for why an event or action went wrong. Instead of changing our methods or viewpoints around the situation, instead we just beat ourselves up around these things and just believe that “will” alone can solve everything; thus, we inevitably throw ourselves back into the situation, to repeat the same mistakes again, albeit with greater enthusiasm and intensity...

The pushing of people to make the same mistakes repeatedly and- when they achieve no results- criticize them repeatedly is causing deeply personal, cadre-centered problems as well. Such a method burns people out and disillusions them, and causes cadre to become suspicious of, exploit, and abuse each other. It causes a “chill” in the ideological growth of the movement, and makes people frightened of making mistakes or opposing the general line. It has led to an unscientific assessment on such things as health issues; things ranging from carpal tunnel syndrom, depression, pneumonia, alcoholism, etc. are treated as a “line issue” that can be simply struggled away and are to be “criticized” and “rooted out” from a person by political wrangling. It is everywhere in our movement; a comrade has depression and cannot go out and do political work, and instead of their comrades being understanding and supportive, instead they criticize them and talk of how they aren’t “serious” about changing the world. This story has not just happened to me; I have learned that it has happened to many other comrades around our movement as well.

Frankly, the line of the RCYB deeply affected me on a personal level. I had become terrified to voice my opinion in most matters concerning line and method. The constant guilt-tripping, criticism, and fruitless campaigns had led to my self-confidence levels plummeting, my depression and self-injury to intensify, and - on one occasion- a suicide attempt on my part. Yes, I at one point attempted to hang myself because I felt that, despite living my entire life for communism and for the emancipation of humanity, nothing I did was ever good enough for the Party and Youth Brigade, and that thus my existence was useless.

When the “cult of will” has its way, and it does not achieve results, a comrade can eventually feel that no matter what they do, it is never good enough; it eventually leads to burn-out, and then the consequences can indeed be disastrous.

4)Instrumentality, the “Great Leader”, and Leninism

The general line of the Revolutionary Communist Party as of now has in a sense erased the Revolutionary Communist Party from being a sensible organization. The Central Task of the RCP, USA in 2001 was “Create Public Opinion, Seize Power&#33; Prepare Minds and Organize Forces for Revolution”. Officially, it still is, but in my observations I have noticed the Party, Youth Brigade, and Revolution newspaper pushed further and further onto the backburner as the cult of Avakian takes over. Now the Party, Youth Brigade, and newspaper have been reduced to a crude instrumentality; simple tools whose sole use is to use the newspaper and the Party’s literature to promote the Chairman. The RCP is no longer the vanguard party that Lenin spoke of- “tribunes of the people”- instead we have people used as tools to promote the Chairman in the realm of popular culture in a way that does not unleash the masses, but instead places them in the role of being disciples to the “Great Leader”. A Bob Avakian street preacher team, if you will.

Such an attitude towards the Party, Youth Brigade, and the masses lends to people seeing as nothing more than tools for the promotion of the Party’s line; people are not seen as people, and this leads to even more abuse, exploitation, and distrust among comrades. Basic Maoist concepts such as “Serve the People” (a beautiful phrase that was denounced and literally mocked by Avakian in Marxism & the Call of the Future), the Mass Line, and the vanguard party as “tribunes of the people” are thrown out the window with this new synthesis and the methods that surround it. The central task of the RCP, for all intensive purposes, is now the idea that connecting the masses to the Leader will make revolution and push history forward. This idealistic, leader-fetishizing, and rigid doctrine has, for me, begun to reek of something more out of a book by Kim il-Sung than a book by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, or Mao. Although I have much to agree with and thank Avakian for, at times the “new synthesis” he puts forward has a whiff of Juche to it- more than I am comfortable with.

Thus, I ask: is the Revolutionary Communist Party a Leninist party, or has it finally become the “cult” that so many other leftists have accused it of being after all these years?

5)It’s A Sin… or “Confiteor Avakianus omnipotenti”

We live in dangerous times. Horrific wars have been unleashed upon the world, and there is a deep possibility or a war against Iran on the way. We are at a crossroads and in the great rapids of history, and things could go in either very good or very bad ways. Anyone who considers themselves a revolutionary knows this all too well. Tragically, the RCP and RCYB have failed in their task of building a revolutionary movement capable of emancipating humanity, and I think much of that potential has been greatly compromised by the line that the RCP has taken in the past few years.

The sociologist Dr. Louis Jolyon West describes a cult as "a group or movement exhibiting a great or excessive devotion or dedication to some person, idea or thing and employing unethically manipulative techniques of persuasion and control (e.g. isolation from former friends and family, debilitation, use of special methods to heighten suggestibility and subservience, powerful group pressures, information management, suspension of individuality or critical judgment, promotion of total dependency on the group and fear of [consequences of] leaving it, etc) designed to advance the goals of the group&#39;s leaders to the actual or possible detriment of members, their families, or the community."

Looking at how the Revolutionary Communist Party has operated towards the masses and its cadre, and how it has taken the cult of personality around Chairman Avakian to such extremes, such a definition is uncomfortably familiar. Because of this I can no longer be a member of the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigade or support the Revolutionary Communist Party with a clear conscience or without causing myself further psychological and emotional damage.

I am not here to say I can provide a solution to any of these questions. I don’t know, exactly right now, where Communists in the United States should go next in the fight to build a coherent revolutionary movement. It will be in my thoughts though, and I only hope that my comrades in the RCP and RCYB will break out of this suffocating religious, mechanical methodology and bring forward a scientific understanding of Marxism that is worth upholding. It is tragic that it has come to this.

It’s a sin, really.


When I look back upon my life
It&#39;s always with a sense of shame
I&#39;ve always been the one to blame
For everything I long to do
No matter when or where or who
Has one thing in common, too

It&#39;s a, it&#39;s a, it&#39;s a, it&#39;s a sin
It&#39;s a sin
Everything I&#39;ve ever done
Everything I ever do
Every place I&#39;ve ever been
Everywhere I&#39;m going to
It&#39;s a sin

At school (in the YB) they taught me how to be
So pure in thought and word and deed
They didn&#39;t quite succeed
For everything I long to do
No matter when or where or who
Has one thing in common, too

It&#39;s a, it&#39;s a, it&#39;s a, it&#39;s a sin
It&#39;s a sin
Everything I&#39;ve ever done
Everything I ever do
Every place I&#39;ve ever been
Everywhere I&#39;m going to
It&#39;s a sin…

[Red Heretic]

Andrei,

A lot of what you have written here goes directly up against my personal experience in working with the RCP and my conception of what the line of the RCP is.

For example, the RCP has never, ever used this phrase that you repeatedly criticized it for using "Great Leader." I think using that slogan would actually do much greater harm to the RCP and to Avakian than it would promote either. However, I do believe that what the RCP is asserting... that Avakian is a leader of the caliber of Marx, Lenin, or Mao is true.

If people go around trying to drill Avakian into people&#39;s heads or attack people for critically grappling with Avakian&#39;s works, then that is a serious problem. The RCP has asserted that it believes that people should "follow critically."

[blackstone]

Originally posted by Red [email protected] 22, 2007 11:55 pm
Andrei,

A lot of what you have written here goes directly up against my personal experience in working with the RCP and my conception of what the line of the RCP is.

For example, the RCP has never, ever used this phrase that you repeatedly criticized it for using "Great Leader." I think using that slogan would actually do much greater harm to the RCP and to Avakian than it would promote either. However, I do believe that what the RCP is asserting... that Avakian is a leader of the caliber of Marx, Lenin, or Mao is true.

If people go around trying to drill Avakian into people&#39;s heads or attack people for critically grappling with Avakian&#39;s works, then that is a serious problem. The RCP has asserted that it believes that people should "follow critically."
Did i misunderstand, or did you just say Avakian is a leader of the caliber of Lenin, Marx and Mao?

That can&#39;t be right.

[kasama-rl]

The importance of Andrei&#39;s critique is that it is a *Maoist* critique of the RCP&#39;s new turn and its new theories (including Avakian&#39;s theory about himself).

It is true that the RCP does not literally use the Korean expression "Great Leader" -- but they do have a ritual and fixed list of adjectives that they insist describe their leadership.

Avakian is officially described as "unique, special, rare and irreplacable" and he has been called "this most beloved leader who we should be proud to celebrate and claim as our own."

This is not just rhetoric -- it rests on a set of theories about leadership and humanity and about how revolutions happen. In other words, the RCP now embraces a theory that there are leaders "of a certain caliber" who "emerge" at a certain point and make revolution possible because they (personally) "know the way out."

The theory is that when such a leader "emerges" that all other communists (in the world) need to "race to catch up" and "appreciate" what this leader has "brought forward." And the whole society needs to be informed that he has arrived. (It has a real messianic feel, that is why, I assume, Andrei made his sharp reference to the Internationale anthems rejection of "condescending saviors.")

And their theory is that Avakian, in particular, right now, has brought forward a new leap in Marxism (beyond, and in a number of key ways in conscious contrast to, what Marx, Lenin, and Mao had previously analyzed.) And that his leadership, as a person, is crucial for making revolution.

They don&#39;t say "if he is gone revolution is impossible" -- but they come very very close to that -- saying that it would be like the Bulls winning the national championship without Michael Jordan, or the Brazilian soccer team winning without their one-time superstar Pele. In other words, without him, good luck. And (on one level) leaders do make a different, IF THEY ACTUALLY CONCENTRATE A CORRECT LINE. And that, is of course the key issue here: Is Avakian&#39;s theory really what he claims it is... the necessary form for future Marxism?

The remarkable thing is that the RCP asserts this without ever simply listing anywhere (outside the pathways of Avakian&#39;s own talks) what the key features of this "new synthesis" actually are... And as a result, every one notices that Avakian&#39;s own followers often have difficulty seriously explaining (or even describing) what this "new synthesis" is.

This is a politically revealing moment: if so many of the key supporters can&#39;t explain what is so wonderful about this new theory (in anything but the most sketchy ways) you have to ask: have they accepted this greatness on faith? And if that method is so common among them, then how scientific and revolutionary can this new form of Marxism be?

This is whole theory and the changes in political work that come with it has led a number of people to leave the party and the brigade -- because they simply don&#39;t agree with this, and criticize it from a Maoist, revolutionary communist point of view.

[Brownfist]

I think that the RCP(USA) or the RCYB must respond to the stated allegations by both Com. Left Henry and Com. Andrei Mazenov more substantively than what has been provided in the previous rounds of debate. Com. Red Heretic&#39;s statement on the matter just does not deal with the substantive arguments that have been made by Com. Andrei and thus, Com. Andrei&#39;s assumptions must be assumed to stand. I do not seek to suggest that it is the sole responsibility, or even the responsibility, of Com. Red Heretic to respond to the criticisms that have been leveled against the RCP, the RCYB or Com. Bob Avakian himself, however, until an adequate response or statement is made to counter the allegations, one must assume that they contain some validity.

I will however, make one statement on the question of Avakian being "a leader of the caliber of Marx, Lenin, or Mao". I think that this is akin to the Mormon argument that America has its own prophet in the form of Joseph Smith. However, of course the RCP(USA) is not content to suggest that Avakian&#39;s ideas and thought may be only applicable to the USA, rather, they make the more brazen argument that Avakian&#39;s thought has a universal character and its globally applicable. I mean this is an extraordinary claim from a party and a leader that has been unable to successfully lead a serious mass movement in many years, forget a revolution. I do not seek to suggest that Communism is now hermeneutically sealed between Marxism and Maoism, but rather, I think that we need to be careful to make such grandiose claims about any particular party or leader. Indeed, we do not see even people like Com. Prachanda, Com. Baburam Bhattarai, or Com. Parvati making such comments about themselves. Indeed, the only person who has made similar claims that I know of besides the Peruvian comrades, has been the Indian comrades who have made similar claims about Com. Charu Majumdar.

However, having said that. I think that it must be stated that I do not think that Lenin or Mao were of the same caliber as Marx. Rather, I think that the roles and contributions of Marx, Lenin and Mao must be understood in their own historical specificity and role in Communist history. Thus, the reason that Lenin is not of the same caliber of Marx is not that he was "not worthy", but rather because his performative role was different and effectively so were his contributions. Thus, from Marx we derive political economy, theories of alienation etc. Effectively, the basic theoretical underpinnings of Marxism-Leninism(-Maoism/Mao Zedong Thought). Lenin besides his important contribution to the question of Imperialism, gets to be part of the heads, not because of serious theoretical interventions but rather, due to his operationalization of Marxism through the party form. And Mao, gets to become a head, due to his practical contributions in the context of PPW, Two-Line Struggle, Mass Line, the GPCR and the role of the peasantry. Thus, Mao is not of the same caliber as Marx or Lenin, but remains a fundamentally important character to the development of the Communist movement in general. Of course some people would argue that Stalin gets to be part of the heads due to his attacks on Trotskyite revisionism, his being the leader of the USSR etc. So now one must turn to the contributions of Avakian and attempt to recognize: 1) the nature of said contributions; 2) their universal applicability; 3) and what does Avakian fundamentally bring to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism?

[Brownfist]

I would like to clarify by difference in caliber I mean what the contributions and roles differed, but all contributed to the overall synthesizing of MLM. I do not mean to say that Marx is the greatest &#39;head&#39;.

[kasama-rl]

As you correctly question Avakian&#39;s claim to be "of the caliber of a Lenin or Mao," brownfist, your argument has a logical hole.

Bownfist says: "I mean this is an extraordinary claim from a party and a leader that has been unable to successfully lead a serious mass movement in many years, forget a revolution."

But in the very same post, you put forward the theory that Marx was the most significant contributor to communist theory (you even, falsely imho, put him above Lenin and Mao.)

But aren&#39;t you overlooking that Marx too did not lead any "serous mass movement" or revolution?&#33;

The Paris Commune leaders of his day led a revolution, but were not Marxists. And marx critiqued them (correctly, imho) even though he himself had not led a revolution. The fact is that theory arises from practice -- but it need not arise from DIRECT personal practice. Marx was able to sum up the Paris Commune (which was profound and important social practice of revolution) without personally being its leader.

And Avakian claims to be summing up the whole last century of proletarian revolution -- and insists that he doesn&#39;t need to have actually led a revolution to get that analysis correct.

My view: The issue is not really or fundamentally whether Avakian has led a revolution -- it is whether his theory is correct.

Though, you do have to say, the lack of growth of the RCP over 35 years, and its lack of any support and influence among the basic working class people, and the rather ineffective methods it adopts of lecturing and jacking people up, all do suggest in their own way that this synthesis has some real flaws.

In America there is a reactionary slogan "if you&#39;re so smart, how come you ain&#39;t rich." Meaning: you can&#39;t be right if you haven&#39;t yet gotten over. I don&#39;t think it is methodologically correct to take up that approach. Methodologically you have to deal with what someone is saying, not dismiss them ad hominem without dealing with their theory.

The actual synthesis (formulated by Avakian) should be presented and tested critically (by debate and practice and research). Here among other places.

Theories like "there is a coming civil war" between the reality based people in the U.S, and the ranks of christian fascists seeking theocracy. And that this coming collision can be a stage manager for Avakian&#39;s own rise to power as the leader of a new socialist state if he is promoted correctly among the people.

Theories like that should not dismissed with our own version of "if you are so smart..." But they SHOULD be critically examined IN RELATIONSHIP TO REALITY.

And it would be good if supporters of that synthesis stepped forward to articulate it and defend it. If they can.

also:
I think you are mistaken about the claims to "universality" -- clearly Prachanda makes claims of universality for parts of Prachanda Path. Avakian does not baldly say "my theories are the next -ism." But that is the implication of the claim of being "of the caliber of a lenin or a Mao" (both of which are assumed to have led a global leap in marxism, and both of which have their own -ism). And I don&#39;t think there is any doubt that supporters of Gonzalo Thought think it is a leap in Marxism with universal importance. (A very wrong view in my opinion.)

[Brownfist]

Hello Com. Kasama-rl,
Thank you for your insights into my post and the apparent flaw in my argument. I would like to respond by stating that I think that Marx&#39;s serious contribution as I stated in my above statement was providing a theoretical underpinning to what we know refer to as Marxism. He, as you correctly, suggest did not lead any "serious mass movement" in the context that the Communist League was quite small and was unable to successfully lead any revolutions. However, it becomes important to remember that Marx was a pre-Leninist thinker, as compared to Avakian who is a post-Leninist thinker. Lenin here becomes fundamentally important due to his "operationalizing" of Marxism through the development of the party-form. I mean Lenin&#39;s brilliance was not in my opinion, in his theory of imperialism (which undoubtedly is an important contribution), but rather was in his articulation of the Communist party etc.

Furthermore, I think that there is a serious flaw in your argument, which is reminiscent of the Marxist structuralists, where you write,
The fact is that theory arises from practice -- but it need not arise from DIRECT personal practice. Marx was able to sum up the Paris Commune (which was profound and important social practice of revolution) without personally being its leader. I think that if theory did arise from practice then we would be within the quandry that there is no one prior to Lenin engaged in communist practice, so then how did Lenin articulate a theory of the Leninist party. Thus, we fall into the problem of the infinite regression that has been demonstrated by some communists and anarchists that there were pre-Communists societies that resembled or practiced communist life. Rather, I think that the question becomes the production of political theory from an understanding and grounding in the economic modes of production and an articulation of a possible negation. But, I do not think that it is surprising that Marx hardly ever mentions or articulates what he thinks Communism will look like. Thus, Marx&#39;s own theory is only a reflection of his current society, and per say does not have the prescriptive qualities that many communists today utilize. Now this is different in the context of strategy/tactics arises from a summation of past practice. However, I think that we should differentiate between theory and strategy/tactics.


I think you are mistaken about the claims to "universality" -- clearly Prachanda makes claims of universality for parts of Prachanda Path. Avakian does not baldly say "my theories are the next -ism.".
I have studied the works and speeches of Prachanda and have found no mention of an attempt to universalize Prachanda Path. However, I may have overlooked something or perhaps it may be a question of interpretation. The two things that people who do suggest that Prachanda is universalizing his Path, are on the question of elections and multi-party democracy. Of course, the elections statement comes from an interview with The Hindu in which he states that he does believe that communist parties should engage in elections. This is not new. Rather, Prachanda is just re-articulating a position that had been articulated by Lenin and rather is engaging in a South-Asian debate on the question of the strategic use of elections. On the question of multi-party democracy I have not done enough study to see whether an universalist claim is being made. On Avakian&#39;s attempt to universalize himself, when some claims a "new synthesis" or an "epistemological break", then one is talking about a dramatic revolutionary shift which cannot be particular in nature. This of course is supplanted by members and/or supporters of his party consistently re-articulating his universal role of as a Marxist leader and as Communist leader of our current epoch.

[kasama-rl]

Originally posted by [email protected] 23, 2007 10:21 pm
Furthermore, I think that there is a serious flaw in your argument, which is reminiscent of the Marxist structuralists, where you write,
The fact is that theory arises from practice -- but it need not arise from DIRECT personal practice. Marx was able to sum up the Paris Commune (which was profound and important social practice of revolution) without personally being its leader. I think that if theory did arise from practice then we would be within the quandry that there is no one prior to Lenin engaged in communist practice, so then how did Lenin articulate a theory of the Leninist party. Thus, we fall into the problem of the infinite regression that has been demonstrated by some communists and anarchists that there were pre-Communists societies that resembled or practiced communist life.
Thanks for responding Brownfist.

I don&#39;t want to make a diversion from the topic of this thread. But I believe this discussion of practice is relevent.

First, you and I have a different notion of "practice" and so are talking past each other.

All human knowledge arises from practice -- which is the activity by which humans change the world (and themselves as part of the world). Mao (somewhat schematically) described it as arising from three areas: class struggle, scientific experiment, and the struggle for production. All of those are arenas of human practice.

What I am saying is that communist theory similarly arises from practice. And ultimately all practice is rooted in "direct experience" (of SOME one), but most of us receive most of our knowledge indirectly (from the practice of others). The highly developed ability to absorb indirect experience (through language and culture, and theory) is what makes humans unique as a species.

Back to our point: Marxism does not develop simply from the experience of class struggle. If it did, then it could emerge spontaneously from the experience of workers in struggle. But in fact, Marxism emerged from a much more sweeping intellectual explosion -- bringing together sceintific insights and revolutionary understandings from many spheres (of philosophy, history, economics, the explosion of new scientific insight, even Clausewitz and military affairs etc.) Marx and Engels (and their coworkers like Dietzgen) brought much of that together through the nineteenth century. But it was not rooted in their own direct experience and practice in the clsss truggle (though they obviously had some) -- but in the sweeping and scientific summation of much broader social practice.

There is a role for new practice in the development of new theory. It is now possible to sum up in unprecedented ways the experience of the first wave of socialist transition. There were two major revolutions in the last century, and a number of attempts of various kinds. There was a whole new experience -- with socialist construction, with capitalist restoration, with being a socialist country within a capitalist-dominated world, etc. etc. And that practice (experience and ongoing activity of changing the world) can be summed up in new ways.

It is in that sense that I said "theory arises from practice." And to dig into that I suggest looking closely at Mao&#39;s work ON PRACTICE, or Lenin&#39;s book criticizing Empirio-criticism.

And if we are going to criticize Avakian&#39;s new "re-envisioning" of communism -- it has to be on that materialist basis. We have to compare his work to reality, and determine whether it is true or correct.

It is methodologically wrong to say "He hasn&#39;t lead a revolution, what right does he have to put forward a new scientific thesis."

See what I&#39;m saying?

* * * * * * *

I believe you are mistaken about Prachanda.

There are several parts of the Prachanda Path that his party say have universal application. And their claims vary with the struggle within their party (including at their recent unity congress, when the Prachanda Path was now de-emphasized). But their views on democracy is one thing (as you say) that they claim is universal. Prachanda has also said that his view of the intertwining of peoples war and insurrection is universal (i.e. that there are not "two countries, two paths" anymore, in his view).

Another example... in the essay "Philosophical Concept of Prachanda Path," his party claims three ways that new universal contributions have been made in philosophy...
it is in the collection called "PROBLEMS & PROSPECTS OF REVOLUTION IN NEPAL."

* * * * * * *

Anyway... these issues are part of deepening the discussion:

How do we deepen our communist theory? How can we tell a correct new theory from a false one? How can we tell false claims from correct ones?

My view is that they need to be examined. Mao said "study critically, test independently." The RCP basically says "No, swallow whole, based on your assessment of his rare, special and unique character as a leader." It is a blank check, and is methodologically unscientific.

Even if this party promotes its leader unscientifically, that STILL doesn&#39;t prove that his theories are false (though it is itself eveidence of wrong method.) You still need to study the theories and compare them to reality.

They said the Christian right was gaining in power, and that this would define the future from here on. Is this really true? Are they not just a force to recon with but a UNIQUELY defining force in bourgeois power structures?

These kinds of things need to be dissected. Their arguments FOR these theories need to be examined deeply... and so on.

Similar with their claims of "epistemological break." They say Avakian has developed a unique theory of knowledge, that breaks fundamentally and deeply from all previous communist thinkers. That is quite a claim. So we need to compare Marx&#39;s Theses on Feuerbach, and Lenin&#39;s empirio-criticism, and Mao&#39;s 4 essays on philosophy with Avakian&#39;s claims on truth, class truth, political truth and so on.

Part of the problem is that his supporters don&#39;t seem to have a lot of clarity or a lot of daring. I (like you brownfist) would love to see them step out here and answer Andrei on this.

[Andrei Kuznetsov]

I was wondering if there were any other RCP supporters on this board who would be willing to dig into the questions I raised in my post. I know that it would be unnecessary to get into the personal questions I raise- that would be debating simple hearsay- but I want to hear how RCP supporters view "critical thinking" within the Party and movement and why they think the cult of Avakian in its current form is worth upholding.

It would also be interesting to see what people consider the "new synthesis" to be, and WHY exactly Avakian is a leader of the caliber of Marx, Lenin, or Mao.

[Rawthentic]

Andrei, I believe everything you said was summed up quote well by RedHeretic.

About the "cult" of Avakian: I do not believe there is a cult of personality, and I can say that with the Bay Area comrades I&#39;ve talked to, they never uphold Avakian as a super-hero or anything. In fact, they have encouraged me to always look at all sides to bring myself to an understanding I feel comfortable with. The Party&#39;s line explicitly is the need for criticism from the masses about Avakian&#39;s leadership and the RCP&#39;s line, those who do not do that and dogmatically follow any of both 1) are not Maoists, and 2)do not and cannot speak genuinely in the Party&#39;s name because they are misrepresenting its line.

I do not believe that the RCP asserts that Avakian is equal to Marx,Lenin, or Mao in the sense of revolutionary activity or popularity, but line. What he brings forward in his writings and speeches are definitely building on the socialist experiences.

[ShineThePath]

In the Spirit of Com. Andrei, I would like to post my thoughts on this matter. I was active in the RCYB in NYC for around three years, I have left over a year ago. Before I do indeed speak about my experiences, I must speak to the fact that the RCP and the RCYB served as a place for my radical political education, and helped me understood the world in a scientific and dialectically engaged way. I have to thank the staff of the Bookstore mostly for this, and the many fellow travellers who camed to the bookstore for engaging and discussing with some High School kid from the Bronx about some serious meaning revolutionary politics. To contrast my experience to that of Andrei&#39;s, I have to say most of the people in that bookstore encouraged me to read and understand different works, and asked me even to read works not put out by Maoists on history and tell them what I thought. This was part of the intellectually engaging experience that I loved around that bookstore, and I appreciate every man and woman who staffed it.

However, as I have said I am writing in the Spirit, in our like minded concerns, of the words of Com. Andrei, and I do agree with his general insights about what life was like in the RCYB and why this is occuring. I understand in one crucial sense, my experience in the RCYB is more priviledged than many others that were in it nationally. I have heard similar stories to Com. Andrei&#39;s coming out of Cleveland, Seattle, Chicago, and else where. I know of many Comrades who were treated quite unfairly in the YB chapter and forced out of it. I know that there was a lot of top handed approach to our chapter (in NYC) specifically after the RNC.

My experience, as I have said, is a mixed bag. This qualifies it into being divided into two. Not in its dogmatic sense, such as good YB and bad YB or early YB vs. Current YB, but must take grasp of the general and particular contradictions which have produced what OUR Youth Brigade became. I mean that with all honesty, I am writing as a young man who went through the Youth Brigade, and came through still as a Revolutionary Communist and Maoist militant partisan. It was OUR organization at some point as it was Red Heretic&#39;s. We write in justified concern and anger, and acknowledging the need for something concrete to be realized out of this. Something that will actually lead a Revolutionary Communist line rather than hinder it.

It must be said, what currently passes in our organization for the Mass line and "work with the masses" to polarize society and engage them is disgustingly clear, from a standing that is grounded in the masses, is pure Idealism and Demagogurey. There was a point when RCYB took the street, acted courageously in putting forward a Line to the masses. What is different? The members of RCYB and the former ones who have left in confusion or anger over the new path being LED, have not dropped their courageousness, but no longer puts forward a revolutionary pole that indeed polarizes politics and changing the consciousness of the masses of oppressed and exploited. It is now a line that is correctly called by Andrei, the line of Lin Biao, a line that promotes the &#39;caliber&#39; and the type of man Bob Avakian is rather than the actual "new synthesis" he supposedly has developed. In other words, "fake it till you make it," as it has been described else where. While I value, in my own little way, Avakian&#39;s work in part and value his determination to build a revolutionary party...it is his political line that is actually objectivily turning RCP, USA into a group that is frantically on the campaign of hashing out Memoirs and DvDs, and not actually putting a Revolutionary Communist line to the masses in work amongst the masses.

It became a joke and it was embarrassing to be known for promoting a Cult of Personality as a principle organizing tactic, when it was not accepted by the masses and ended up alienating many, even amongst ourselves. Some good friends and Comrades around called it &#39;creepy,&#39; and honestly I can&#39;t see where this is wrong.

First thing must be about his works&#39; is, that in a general sense, Avakian has a body of work and has a synthesis in the sense that his work has a holist character. It does put forward a particular line. The question arises of whether such a synthesis is braving a new world, charting unknown in the ocean of the International Communist Movement, and further and more importantly whether or not this line is actually correct.

I would contend that both are not the case, and that there is really no &#39;new synthesis&#39; or epistemological break. When the RCYBers&#39; and supporters on this board speak about Avakian in the same light of Marx, Lenin, Mao, etc, It is suprising. One has to ask, what are these questions of Line where Avakian has clearly ruptured, and not only ruptured, how is it correct? It is one thing to assert there is a real Rupture happening, but it is another thing to give detail to it and what this actually is?

What is also striking is those who are current RCYBers&#39; on this board, or at the very least, its supporters absolute distrust and unwillingness to engage what both LeftyHenry and Com. Andrei&#39;s have spoken about in their experiences. This is in very fact a certain distrust of those who criticize, and a certain insularity toward handling criticism. Further there is a lot that amounts to straight up dishonesty.

[kasama-rl]

I just saw STP&#39;s post, and want to read it a few more times before commenting.

But for now here is a key quote on the question of cult of personality:

Avakian writes:

“I remember, for example, being challenged by someone interviewing me -- I believe this was on a college radio station in Madison, Wisconsin -- who asked insistently: "Is there a &#39;cult of personality&#39; developing around Bob Avakian?" And I replied: ‘I certainly hope so -- we&#39;ve been working very hard to create one.’”

Source:

From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist, page 393, Insight Press, 2005

in the next post I will paste a recent statement by avakian on what he says his new leap in Marxism is.

[Chicano Shamrock]

Originally posted by [email protected] 16, 2007 08:50 am

And the "Left" is now dominated by student-based reformist organizations? Or maybe the Green Party?

You&#39;d be suprised, if you look closely, you&#39;ll find Socialistic ideas in the places you least expect. I would&#39;nt look for the American &#39;left&#39;, in the Traditional &#39;leftist&#39; areas, I would look in local governments, Unions, community organizations, farmers associations, immigrant associations. the American &#39;Left&#39; is no longer about a Party or a single organization, thankfully. I think the movement being community and workplace minded rather than partd minded is a good think/

BTW: Kudos for breaking with the RCP, I don&#39;t think Bob needs more of an Ego Boost :P.

I think leftists in America should stop looking for Parties, and start looking for struggles, the immigrant struggle, your workplace, your community, your Union.
I agree. I think he is experiencing the alienation of his power that is a result of being a capital C Communist in a Communist Party. Lefty Henry you seem to want to go from one party to the next but I doubt you will find what you are looking for in a party. Maybe try local groups fighting for a change. It doesn&#39;t need to be communist change. It doesn&#39;t need to be anarchistic. Just look for something that progresses humans into a better life. Shit maybe a better life under this system.

Would it be the worst thing in the world if we got more people a meal tonight and we were still under capitalism tomorrow?

[manic expression]

Originally posted by Chicano [email protected] 28, 2007 10:18 pm
I agree. I think he is experiencing the alienation of his power that is a result of being a capital C Communist in a Communist Party. Lefty Henry you seem to want to go from one party to the next but I doubt you will find what you are looking for in a party. Maybe try local groups fighting for a change. It doesn&#39;t need to be communist change. It doesn&#39;t need to be anarchistic. Just look for something that progresses humans into a better life. Shit maybe a better life under this system.

Would it be the worst thing in the world if we got more people a meal tonight and we were still under capitalism tomorrow?
Why are you so intent on smearing an entire movement with such an unnecessarily broad brush? Disciplined communist parties themselves are certainly not the problem here, I trust you can figure that much out.

[RedJacobin]

Originally posted by Chicano [email protected] 28, 2007 10:18 pm
I agree. I think he is experiencing the alienation of his power that is a result of being a capital C Communist in a Communist Party. Lefty Henry you seem to want to go from one party to the next but I doubt you will find what you are looking for in a party. Maybe try local groups fighting for a change. It doesn&#39;t need to be communist change. It doesn&#39;t need to be anarchistic. Just look for something that progresses humans into a better life. Shit maybe a better life under this system.

Would it be the worst thing in the world if we got more people a meal tonight and we were still under capitalism tomorrow?
Iraq? Katrina? The rounding-up of immigrants? One million Black people in prison? What kind of better life is possible under this system?

Focusing on local change is a failure to live up to the responsibilities of people living in an imperialist country that is committing horrible crimes all around the world.

There are plenty of groups trying to get more people a meal tonight, leaving aside the whole question of capitalism. Even when they are sincere, and not mere poverty pimps, what&#39;s their record? Given the 30-year right-wing backlash, not too good I would think.

Andrei and others have raised many good points on the difficulties of building a revolutionary movement in the belly of the beast and several criticisms of the theory and practice of one particular group. Hopefully more people will address them in a serious way.

[ShineThePath]

There are few things to the subject of local autonomous organizing based upon the real concrete struggle of the nationally oppressed and the most marginalized of working classes in this country. When we are left with this just this as a form and outlet for the expression of struggle, we are left devoid of politics, and become service agents rather than revolutionaries. These forms deserve a role in creating the revolutionary spirit and consciousness among the masses necessary for revolution, they deserve to be taken seriously, and I believe organizations like Revolutionary Communist Party, USA has all but put all such work on the ends of its lines...considering it either &#39;economist, &#39;tailist,&#39; &#39;movementist,&#39; etc.

However left in itself as just &#39;work&#39; with no political orientation, these spontaneous forms from the masses left to its own without the necessary engagement of revolutionaries, and more importantly, Revolutionary Communists with the methodology of Mass Line, are in vain. In many cases such &#39;spontaneous&#39; local orgs from the masses has its own leadership, and if you scratch it, you will see what color it bleeds. They organize in &#39;the killing confines&#39; of Capital and can&#39;t be said to make necessary change to the political, economic, and ideological structures that reproduce the symptoms of this vicious system. If these organizations are already certain about their politics and what kind of work they do, then what can we hope of accomplishing by merely joining its ranks?

Take it another way, the Catholic Church has for the past two centuries been amongst the working classes, the small farmers, etc. giving relief and aid. So has Non-Govermental Organizations. In Pakistan you have feudal lords and comprador Bourgeois donating money to mosques to redistribute to those whom they have brutally exploited. Philantrophy is not the anwser, the masses making history is a better one.

In other words, we need political forms of organized Revolutionary Commmunists (with the biggest "C" possible) to be out there polarizing politics in a way to begin organizing to seize State power. Not acknowledging this as presmise to your work will lead you down the dire straights [and utterly boring] of reformism with a big &#39;R,&#39; and sooner or later electing Democrats with a big &#39;D.&#39;

[Brownfist]

I do not want to push this discussion too far off course, especially because I do think that this discussion about the nature of the Communist and Maoist movement in the USA and the RCP are important, however I do think this debate that has been raised is important to this previous debate. It seems to me that there has been a false binary, whilst recognizing the formal differences, between local, national/international struggles. In which we must pick whether to work on local issues or to work on national/international issues. I do not think that one can actually de-link either struggle. Indeed, I do think that one of the more fundamental problems that we have had in the Left is that we have been unable to develop or link both kinds of work. This of course has resulted in either 1) firmly economistic views which result in reformism; 2) completely utopian thinking in which one just clamors on about global revolution.

For example. The RCP(USA) correctly identified the Nepalese revolutionary movement as being a fundamentally important. However, it is interesting to note that unlike in the case of the Peruvian struggle that there was no establishment of solidarity groups and whilst the party was promoting the Nepalese revolution was being unable to link it to localized struggles. I think that what is needed is a dialectical relation between the local and the global.

[kasama-rl]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30, 2007 12:23 am
For example. The RCP(USA) correctly identified the Nepalese revolutionary movement as being a fundamentally important. However, it is interesting to note that unlike in the case of the Peruvian struggle that there was no establishment of solidarity groups and whilst the party was promoting the Nepalese revolution was being unable to link it to localized struggles. I think that what is needed is a dialectical relation between the local and the global.
Well, that is one theory: i.e. that the RCP is not taking up active political support for nepal because they don&#39;t have dialectical view of "local and global."

Another possibility is that your first sentence is mistaken. Perhaps the RCP has not correctly identified the importance of the revolution in nepal. Perhaps they have gone a year without writing any significant articles about this revolution (and only reprinting occasional news service articles.) Perhaps they think that (from a far) they can judge whether the Nepali party is taking a correct path, and therefore think they must withdraw comment (or even support) when that party seems (to them) to be on a wrong road.

Which is the more likely theory?

* * * * * * *

I also note that no one currently supporting the RCP has taken up this thread.... even though three different former RCYBers have sought to engage major questions of line here (from rather different perspectives).

Here are attempts to critique the RCP while upholding Maoism (and MLM) on the part of two of the participants. What happened to Red Heretic? or Live for the people?

There is talk about wrangling and engaging, but functionally is the RCP and its supporters unable to actually wrangle and engage?

This party says it wants and expects and welcomes "wild and wooly debate" but then why does it act like it can&#39;t handle things when the debate gets wild and wooly?

This contradiction is a clue to the larger problems.

Or is there another reason you can&#39;t participate?

[Andrei Kuznetsov]

Agree, Kasama.

I can understand about glossing over some of the things in my post- I will admit some of it is hearsay and I cannot prove outright (at least in this medium), but I feel I&#39;m entitled at least to a reply to the line questions I raised. RedHeretic and LiveForThePeople jumped in, but in the end just basically said "Nuh uh, you&#39;re wrong", which I think is (frankly) a cop-out.

I just wish that more Maoists would jump into this conversation because I feel it IS important to understand why the RCP and RCYB are in flux, because it seems to me I am not the only one with problems...

We should remember what Mao said:


The Communist Party does not fear criticism because we are Marxists, the truth is on our side, and the basic masses, the workers and peasants, are on our side.

and


If we have shortcomings, we are not afraid to have them pointed out and criticized, because we serve the people. Anyone, no matter who, may point out our shortcomings. If he is right, we will correct them. If what he proposes will benefit the people, we will act upon it.

(both quotes from the chapter "Criticism & Self-Criticism" in the Little Red Book)

Where is the Maoist spirit of "It&#39;s right to rebel"? Where did we lose the spark? And indeed, like Kasama said, why can&#39;t RCP supporters give a serious explanation on WHY Avakian is supposedly on the same level as Marx, Lenin, or Mao, which I disagree with; I think a revolutionary communist leader can make GREAT contributions to the International Communist Movement and Marxist theory without necessarily having to be on the level of Marx or Lenin... what is wrong with being a Charu Mazumdar, or an Ibrahim Kaypakkaya, a Chiang Chun-chiao, or a Frederick Engels? Many communists have helped develop and make advances in communist theory and building revolutionary movements without necessarily embodying a new stage of Marxism. Avakian may be bringing out a lot of questions that need to be discussed in communist circles and he says a LOT of good things... but I fail to see how he is some kind of new stage of communism, even if he is exploring new areas of thought...

[Red Heretic]

Originally posted by Andrei [email protected] 03, 2007 01:50 am
I can understand about glossing over some of the things in my post- I will admit some of it is hearsay and I cannot prove outright (at least in this medium), but I feel I&#39;m entitled at least to a reply to the line questions I raised. RedHeretic and LiveForThePeople jumped in, but in the end just basically said "Nuh uh, you&#39;re wrong", which I think is (frankly) a cop-out.
It was not meant to be a "cop out" comrade. I am straining day and night on my revolutionary work, and it is very difficult for me to devote hours of time to these internet forums.

Either way, I think there is a point I want to address here about the caliber of Comrade Avakian&#39;s leadership. I would like to repost some of what I just recently posted in another similar thread on this forum:





(Brownfist @ November 06, 2007 07:17 am)

Com. Red Heretic has basically asked the question that I think that is really important about this debate, especially in relation to the "culture of appreciation". Within the Maoist movement there has been a consistent debate about the "cult of personality" and its desirability. I do not think this is necessarily the best place to have that debate, but I do think the relevant debate is situated in whether "Avakian is a leader of the caliber of Marx, Lenin, or Mao". I would like to give an opportunity for the comrades who are supporters of the RCP and Bob Avakian to please elaborate upon this statement, and please do not simply answer "because of the new synthesis". If you believe that the new synthesis is really important for the overall development of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, please explain why. So what is Avakian&#39;s real contributions. I mean numerous theorists have provided a series of important contributions to the debates and development of MLM like Louis Althusser, Alain Badiou etc. however, we do not argue that they are of the same "caliber" as Marx, Lenin or Mao.

On the Possibility of Revolution
Com. Red Heretic is right that this is an important editorial piece because it does suggest that there are numerous line differences with the RCP(Canada) for example, which till now have not been as clear. I do not want to comment on the article itself because I think that requires its own thread and discussion, however, I would like someone to clarify the role of the editor in the RCP newspaper. Does the editorial response in Revolution constitute the formal line of the party on this question? The reason I ask is because often, especially in earlier communist history, the editorials of the party newspaper did not reflect necessarily the views of the party or the CC of the party unless clearly stated otherwise. Thus, would it be fair to assume that this is indeed the line of the CC? I would like to have this clarified because any polemics on that question must be directed towards the right person.

I really appreciate your post Brownfist. I&#39;m not an RCP member, so let&#39;s see if I can do this half the justice it deserves...

I think that the new synthesis represent a leap ahead in the science MLM, and that it concentrates very key things in how we are going to get to communism. For comrades who unfamiliar with the new synthesis, I would like to post a brief except from Avakian defining it:


(Bob Avakian)
I want to move on now—everything that’s been spoken to so far forms, in one aspect, a kind of a background for this—to speak more directly and fully to the question: What is the new synthesis?

The first point that needs to be made is that this is something that is dealing with real world contradictions—it’s not some idealist imaginings of what it would be nice to have a society be like. When we talk about a world we want to live in, it is not a utopian notion of inventing a society out of whole cloth and then trying to reimpose that on the world once again. But it is dealing with real-world contradictions, summing up the end of a stage (the first stage of socialist revolutions) 1 and what can be learned out of that stage, attempting to draw the lessons from that and dealing with real-world contradictions in aspects, important aspects, that are new. It is a synthesis that involves taking what was positive from previous experience, working through and discarding what was negative, recasting some of what was positive and bringing it forward in a new framework. So, again, it’s dealing with real-world contradictions—but in a new way.


I personally do not believe without the key points that are being made in the new synthesis, that we will be able to get to communism. If we just repeat previous socialist experiences without learning from them... repeating the way that intellectuals were treated, and parading intellectuals around with dunce caps on their heads... If we keep suppressing the viewpoints of reactionaries and not trying to learn from even them, repeating a lot of the dogmatism like what happened with Lysenko in the Soviet Union or the slogan that our Chinese comrades had that everything that is good for the proletariat is true... and if we keep repeating the exact same method through which leadership has been given... well, that isn&#39;t going to get us where we need to go. We&#39;re not going to get to communism that way, and we&#39;re not going to achieve the "four alls" that Marx talked about.

This is part of why I believe this call on the proletarians to become emancipators of all humanity is so important. It&#39;s why I think Avakian&#39;s theory of having a solid core leadership with all of this elasticity and things going in all kinds of different directions is so important, and that this theory is important both leading the revolutionary seizure of power, as well as playing a very important role in maintaining proletarian rule after the seizure of power. It&#39;s why I think that the break with a lot of the old epistemology and how you get at the truth... saying that "all truth is good for the proletariat and getting to communism" is so important, and proceeding from that point of view to allow reactionaries to publish books under socialism, while both criticizing them and trying to learn anything we can from them. I also think documents like "On the Possibility of Revolution" (which I posted earlier) that put forward a new revolutionary strategy based on carefully analyzing centuries of the experience of the International Communist Movement and the proletariat are extremely important (and by the way ShineThePath, I think that one of the theories that was encapsulated in Prachanda Path regarding changes in the oppressed countries and its implications for waging revolutionary war is wrangled with in this article if comrades study it carefully, see the first point under "Upholding Some Basic Principles").

This new synthesis is a huge break with a lot of what has been in the international communist movement... and I believe it is key to getting to communism.

[kasama-rl]

on the cult of personality I have a couple of things to say in regard to what RedHeretic wrote:

a) First, if your synthesis is not right, then the broad appreciation is not justified. So to evaluate the promotion of avakian, we need to critically evaluate his line and analysis. I think he often raises important questions, but on some of the key points of controversy doesn&#39;t provide the correct answers.

b) You can&#39;t create artificial prestige -- it becomes hype and celebrity-style public relations. Mao had a genuine mass following and authority -- because he had led the emancipation of a quarter of humanity... so he could mobilize that real authority in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. But if you haven&#39;t yet ever led a genuine mass movement of people, then it is very hard to promote yourself as a great leader. It kinda puts the cart before the horse.

c) The form of the cult of personality promoted by the RCP has elements that go against communist thinking. The whole idea that there are "people of a special caliber" is filled with assumptions that are wrong, and implications that are wrong. There is not in history a special category of "great" people who just "emerge." Oppressed people have forged remarkable leaders in the course of their revolutions... but they are not a type ("a Lenin or a Mao") like some category, or special niche. There is a reason that many progressive people go "ew" when they run into this promotion... the style of this campaign around Avakian runs raw against progressive sentiments, and implies a view of the masses and other communists that is not revolutionary.

d) A great deal of the specialness of Avakian is asserted -- sight unseen. Many people who promote Avakian can&#39;t clearly articulate what this "new synthesis" actually is. That means they have embraced it (and him) on a different basis: they have been won over to the idea of a "great leader" without scientifically and critically evaluating what this leader stands for. This is not a communist approach, it has a religious aspect, an idealist aspect.

Sure we need leaders. And we need a new modern form of Marxism -- where many key issues have been struggled through in a fresh and visionary way. But that is a process... it isn&#39;t something settled or worked out easily. And it is a process that needs a critical approach -- a scientific process of testing, questioning, probing, debating. Not accepting whole like a religious revelation or an expression of wide-eyed religious faith.

[Red_Guard]

So this is my first time posting on this board guys so, SUP&#33; ^_^

And I also want to say, like RH, that I do not claim to represent the RCP but I do support it. The RCP is the Vanguard of the Proletariat, of Revolution in the United States, and yes a Vanguard is necessary. The Vanguard of the Proletariat is not a Workers Party, but a Communist Party made up of the most advanced Communists who give their whole life to making Revolution. To leading those with nothing to lose but their chains to emancipate themselves and all of Humanity.


Its supposed to be a worker&#39;s party because that&#39;s the class that&#39;s gonna make the revolution.

This approach is exactly the definition of economism. It is fundamentally mechanical and narrow approach to revolution and the role of the proletariat and cannot even grasp the actual role of the proletariat or how they can fundamentally transform class society. The proletariat is the class whose fundamental interests it serves to make revolution, this does not make it a worker&#39;s party. But rather a party to lead the proletariat to do what it as a CLASS can do and only that class can do and serve that classes interests. This is not to tail after INDIVIDUAL proletarians and whatever their sentiments may be at a given time. The role of this party is to lead them to make this revolution and UNLEASH them transform the world.

Let me make this clear: The proletariat is the only class that can transform the world in the interests of the vast majority of humanity but they need leadership to do it. The role of the vanguard party is to do that, not be a party made up of workers even while more and more Revolutionary Communist Proletarians should be drawn into the party.



First of all, this model that the RCP is using of "a newspaper as the hub and pivot of a revolutionary movement," where did they get that? This model is based upon the model of the Bolshevik revolution and Lenin&#39;s What is to be Done? It is a model which historically led to the seizure of power in Russia. The Bolsheviks built their entire revolution around their newspaper, Iskra.


Yeah but the bolsheviks used other tactics. they weren&#39;t just a paper. The paper is important and that&#39;s why I&#39;m joining a group which has one, but we&#39;re not a newspaper we&#39;re a party.

The point that RH was making was that it ISN&#39;T everything the RCP is about. It is important and vital to every aspect of making revolution but that is because revolutionary consciousness is what is going to enable the people to make revolution and the RCP grasps that in a fundamental sense. And as the hub and pivot of the revolutionary movement it does need to be out there in a much more bold and broad way, but in no way is it left at that. The RCP doesn&#39;t say "Oh, read the paper and then there will be Revolution." It says that this paper can be a means to organize, to take guidance in concrete ways in the struggle and to give flights to the deepest aspirations of those on the bottom of society. What does it mean that thousands of prisoners are asking for subs to the paper? And there is a major contradiction because there is too much demand for the paper&#33; These prisoners pass it under cell doors, and use it to raise their sights to bringing about a better world. This is a concrete example of what a truly revolutionary press can do in the hands of the proletariat and as contradictions sharpen and as this paper does get out there on a whole other level it can play an even more crucial role in bringing forward the very struggle and resistance we need in these times.


I think the most recent formulation from the RCP says it best: Fight the Power&#33; Transform the People for Revolution&#33;

This encapsulates the dialectical relationship between the resistance we build now, how we lead the people, as Revolutionary Communists, to fight back against the injustices of this system and the role of revolutionary consciousness in actually bringing forward the struggle to make Revolution.

The reality is this, you are not starting from what is true or the actual line of the RCP or even what it is doing right now. Rather, you actually disagree with what that line is, and that is manifested through your line. You don&#39;t think we need a Vanguard party, you think we need an organization of workers. Well lets struggle over that&#33; Thats one thing as communists we need to do is to welcome the decent of others and of the masses&#33; And we do need organization of the Proletariat, but we need the vanguard to lead them and the struggle overall that is not simply made up of workers but encapsulates the highest and most advanced understanding and devotion to the masses of people in society at that time. You say because you weren&#39;t included in democratic centralism that the RCP doesn&#39;t operate by it, well you weren&#39;t in the party and the party operates on democratic centralism within the party. The RCP is playing a crucial role in building struggle and resistance against the deepest crimes of the system, and continues to do so in a better way.

We do need more mass actions and to be drawing the proletariat and people from all strata into the streets. We need more and more militant resistance against this system, but be a part of figuring out how that can happen&#33; Offer suggestions, wade into the contradictions, organize and help to lead the people to what is really necessary and possible. And yes Revolution Newspaper and its expansion and fund drive is a vital part of making that happen and raising people&#39;s sights to what is really necessary: Revolution. That is what the RCP is calling on people to do.

And in response to some of what you said about Avakian: There is a difference between idolizing him and promoting what is true and necessary right now. That is leadership and real revolutionary analysis. This is being brought forward by Avakian and I&#39;m sorry dude but you need to engage with it too&#33; One of the very important things about Avakian is that he DOESN&#39;T say that people should just take what he says by authority but rather encourages people to engage, struggle, and debate around it&#33; I really recommend what is being printed in Revolution right now: Making Revolution and Emancipating all of Humanity: http://revcom.us/


The proletariat is the backbone of the revolution? Really? lol

I&#39;m sorry man, I&#39;m a Maoist and I have to say, yes the proletariat will be and is the backbone of the revolution.


I hate to burst into this discussion but this is the most genius quote over. You Maoists crack me up sometimes. "Yeah, those stupid workers. What do they know? We&#39;re doing this for them, unwashed ingrates&#33;"


That is NOT the position of Maoists and even if it was it would be a fucked up position. It was Mao who said we should never blame the masses, and it is them and only them that are the real heroes and can change the world. THAT is a Maoist view of the masses.

[AmbitiousHedonism]

Well lets struggle over that&#33;

Am I the only one who thinks it&#39;s weird that the word "struggle" is used by Avakianoids to mean have a discussion with communists and not kick the shit out of capitalists and politicians?

[blackstone]

I&#39;d rather struggle than wrangle.

[dirgenightingale]

Originally posted by COMRADE [email protected] 06, 2007 04:11 pm
Google the RCP and all you get is Revolution Newspaper.
just because it&#39;s not on the internet doesn&#39;t denote it doesn&#39;t exist. i am NOT stating anything else does exist, because i have no idea. just throwing an observation in.

[dirgenightingale]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 10:09 pm
And they charged me, a distributor, &#036;3.00. I&#39;m a teenager; I don&#39;t have that sort of cash&#33;
what was their reasoning for charging a distributor?

[Rawthentic]

Maybe because it costs to print the paper.

[patient persuasion]

This is my first post as well . . .

I&#39;m not a member of the RCP, but I am friendly towards the party.

It seems to me that Lenin emphasized the role of the newspaper as an ORGANIZING tool. After reading some of Bob&#39;s new stuff in the Rev. paper, I&#39;ve come to understand that the RCP&#39;s strategy of "enhanced what is to be done-ism" as being a strategy of seeing the newspaper as a way to train people how to think - train people in the ideology of the RCP. Is this wrong? It depends on whom you ask. IMHO, focusing so much on ideological unity leads to rigidity in thinking. There&#39;s a lot of talk over "solid core with elasticity" which I generally think is positive, but we must judge people and parties by their practice and not merely by their rhetoric.

It seems to me, from my limited experience, that the RCP has focused much more heavily on ideological reproduction (getting more and more people down with Bob&#39;s vision) than they have at actually using the newspaper as an organizing tool - to organize the masses in order to prepare them to fight the system. I&#39;ve seen and heard of many professors signing the "Engage" statement, but where are the ghettos which the RCP has developed organized ties, and roots with? Where are the oppressed communities which are being led by the RCP to overthrow the system and begin the process of socialism? From my admittedly limited perspective, I haven&#39;t seen it. I wish it were there, but it doesn&#39;t seem to be.

This heavy focus on ideological reproduction - which the RCP would say is a form of organizing - seems to me to be a substitute for organizing oppressed communities. If the people aren&#39;t "advanced" enough to see the "importance of Bob&#39;s leadership" then what happens? are they just bowing to spontaneity? That seems to me to be too simple. Does the RCP truly have a method of engaging the masses which involves dialog? Or is it a one-sided conversation from the get - with those not "advanced" enough being left unorganized?

I feel that it&#39;s important to get into these questions, as I respect many of the folks I have come in contact with who work with the RCP. And to be very materialist about it, these are issues which have not merely been noticed from the RCP - in fact, most contemporary u.s. Leninist organizations display similar syndromes.

[marxist_god]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 06:04 pm
Alright, I&#39;ve been a supporter of Revolution for like about a year now. When I first became active, I did it with alot of problems with the RCP, I always tried to struggle through them but the fact of the matter is that the RCP is wrong on alot of shit, there are too many problems that I have with the way things are done for me to continue to work with the RCP. I&#39;ve brought up my critiscisms with a couple of supporters here in NYC, and everytime, usually the only response I get is "struggle through them, write them down". Nothing that can actually answer my problems. There is no change that can be made to the party from people like me. Let me just say that this is gonna be hopefully the last time I make a cristicism of a Leftist group because its time consuming and doesn&#39;t accomplish anything, but I feel like I need to say something on this.

Organizational Problems

we need a vangaurd, not just a paper

The RCP is not the RCP even anymore. The RCP is just Revolution Newspaper. There are no attempts to recruit the masses to the vangaurd, there are no attempts to encourage you to become a party member, to come to party functions. All there is is Revolution Newspaper. Political work of the RCP is just selling Revolution Newspapers, "Wanted" T-Shirts, DVDs, and orange bandanas which will magically drive out the Bush Regime. I feel like things aren&#39;t done in order to connect with the masses, to build a revolutionary workers&#39; party, but just to make money that&#39;ll be sent up to the higher strata of the party. Everyone around the party is to call themselves "supporters". Even members. Yet to become a member you need to have the support of two members. How are you going to do that when you&#39;re not supposed to know who members are? A whole limbo process is created so that if you do go through the trouble of finding out how to become a member, you&#39;re basically not able to.

lack of democratic centralism

Why is this done?

Because, that keeps people around the party docile. It keeps you from actually excercising a say in the party through democratic centralism. It keeps the us around the party from changing anything, and instead going along with paper selling and the absurd promotion of Bob Avakian. It keeps things running the way the people high up in the party want.

This is a big problem. The bolsheviks split with the mensheviks over this type of organizational problem. Why? Because a party with such unorganizational problems cannot make a revolution. It can produce and sell a nice newspaper, but because it is alienated from the masses, it cannot make a revolution. I&#39;ve been talking to members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and they know how to organize for a revolution. The PSL came into exsistance exactly out of this problem within the Revolutionary Left. Because parties like the WWP and the RCP have marginalized democratic centralism, they have become stagnant and won&#39;t make a revolution. These parties have been around forever, yet they&#39;re situation is not unsimiliar to what it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. Because of that, a New Revolutionary Worker&#39;s Party is necessary to unite our class in a democratic fashion. That&#39;s why the PSL has been so sucessful in only 3 fucking years. The PSL branch here in NYC is one of the newer branches of the party yet it has more members from all different nationalities, doing a much broader range of things then the RCP has after 25 years in my experience.

deemphasizing the working class

Another organizational problem I have is something that has been true since I became active, that was actually true since the RCP dropped Revolutionary Worker as its papers name and picked up Revolution, the RCP has abandoned the idea that the working class is the central focus, its also abandoned the type of ultra-militant journalism that is found in Revolutionary Worker articles like this one (http://revcom.us/a/v22/1070-79/1070/philly2.htm) where the actual actions done by RCPers are talked about, and instead replaced with articles like this one (http://revcom.us/a/102/jena-on-the-ground-en.html) which just brags about how many newspapers, t-shirts, and orange bandanas can be sold.


Changing the name of the newspaper, a newspaper from which 25 years of work has gone into, and is connected to the party&#39;s name, is not something you do on a whim. Alot of thought goes into it. Even RCPers admit that the reason for the change was an abandonment of "workerism", now every single time the working class is mentioned its always like "oh but don&#39;t worry businessmen and professionals have to be worked with". Yes its true, but the working class still needs to be the base, and that is not what&#39;s going on. Just as much work is done amongst the working class as is done with rich kids in Colombia, the upper class and upper middle class people living in the Upper West Side, and amongst non-proletarians everywhere else. There is no like emphasis on the working class it feels. Which is an important thing to be missing.

World Can&#39;t Wait defeatism

Also, there is a problem found in what the World Can&#39;t Wait has degenerated into. The WCW has taken a defeatist approach now. At this critical point, where Iran could be attacked at any moment, and a million Iraqis have died as a result of the US occupation. What is the WCW doing? Nothing. Not building for anything, just selling Orange Bandanas which I guess will magically stop imperialism in its track. While it is a great idea to pull in funds, its defeatist. WCWers told me straight up, we&#39;re not gonna have a day of mobilzation against the war, the torture, the crimes against humanity we&#39;re just gonna sell orange bandanas and let groups like ANSWER take care of stepping up resistance against the war machine.

The "cult"

Lastly, Chairman Avakian does say some very good shit, but the way the RCP promotes, him, the way he is on every other page represents making this revolution a revolution of a "great man" not of the masses. The fact that RCPers genuinely think we can&#39;t make a revolution if Bob Avakian dies is scary because it means that this is his revolution, and that people around the party are less and less relying on leadership within the party and just putting it all on BA. Yes, we do need leadership, but we don&#39;t need cultism.

Political Problems

Originally when I started formulating my exact problems with the RCP, it was just organizational. But more and more I have problems with Line. As I&#39;ve started to study the PSL&#39;s line I realized, I always did have real problems with some of the stuff the RCP thinks which I just sorta tried to suppress.

Social Imperialism and the Analysis of the Historical Experience

Social Imperialism is fucking bullshit. The Soviet Union was never capitalist or imperialist. How can a nation overnight turn from Socialism to the Highest stage of Capitalism? It can&#39;t. Under the so called capitalist Krushchev, all property remained socialized, the universal healthcare, education, housing, communal kitchens and daycare, the soviets which the masses had fought so hard for during the Revolution, the civil war, and finally WWII remained. In fact, it was socialist education that scared the shit out of US imperialism.

50 years ago, today, Sputnik was launched. A shining example of what the working class can accomplish when it is in power. Socialist education meant education was a right of the people, it meant that the people would become their profession based on their desire and skill not on weither they could afford the training, the education, etc... a country, ravaged by WWII, still in the process of industrialization, beat a country which had hundreds of years of industrialization and had none of the disasterous effects on it as the USSR did by WWII because it was an ocean away. Why? Because the people were in control.

I&#39;m not a revisionist though, and the theory of peaceful exsistance was anti-marxist and would I think in the end result in the build up of bureacratic problems in the USSR and elsewhere which was a reason for the collapse, but that doesn&#39;t mean that suddenly the USSR was capitalist and that the socialist state disapeared overnight.

The line that Cuba is not Socialist and Venezula is not on a socialist road is also something I have a problem with.

Also I have a problem with the fact that the RCP ends up siding with US imperialism and denying nations a right to resist unless its on their maoist-only terms.

the line on homosexuality

despite what many say, i was shocked to find that the position on homosexuality is still incredibly reactionary. I just can&#39;t stand for it. Basically, it says that gay people will disapear under socialism. Its homophobic and ends up just dividing the working class when we have the same struggle.

***

In Sum, I don&#39;t think the RCP can create a revolution, it has too many problems organizationally. I don&#39;t think it stands for the right things line wise either. I&#39;ve tried to struggle these things out, and I would do it more but I feel like it wouldn&#39;t really matter because nothing is gonna change in the party, and I now know what I stand for. I don&#39;t think I can change my views on these issues. Especially the organizational onese. It&#39;s not easy to write this because I mean, I&#39;ve devoted alot of myself to this for about a year now, but I feel like if I don&#39;t write this now, It&#39;s just gonna end up worse.

-LH

Hello my friend, i have read a lot of anti-Bob Avakian articles out there and how in the USA (The nation of bashing people per exellence) Avakian is so despised and hated.

But from my own point of view, i think Bob Avakian is not evil and corrupt, even if his party is not perfect the RCPUSA is ok to me.

In fact i think that the whole world and USA left has problems not just RCP USA

marxist_god

[repeater138]

In relation to this thread, people should checkout this new critique of Avakian&#39;s New Synthesis:

http://mikeely.wordpress.com/

Excerpt from Letter 3: Letter 3:

Forays, Wrong Turns and Blaming the People

Problems of dogmatism, self-isolation and political fantasy — that have always plagued the RCP — are now in command to a new degree. The heart of this is how the RCP’s central leader, Bob Avakian, is seen and promoted.

In place of the mass line, there is a one-sided stress on telling — in patronizing ways. The fetish of the word morphs into the fetish of the leader and tries to “vault over” the complicated processes by which people really decide what to think and how to act.

Leaders dream up grand schemes out of whole cloth — without forming alliances, constituencies or trained networks over time. They don’t have their own base to bring to the process. They “plan” to reach millions without actually organizing thousands. We should be suspicious of such contrivances and “get rich quick” schemes.

There is complicity and corruption within an imperialist superpower. But blaming, shaming and literally cursing the masses is wrong — both in principle and in this particular moment.

Seriously attempting what is needed will require something quite different from what we now have. We need a revolutionary current that grows – as thousands of radical people go through a series of political processes together, under conditions where creative communist politics can seriously contend and transform.

[kasama-rl]

The Kasama site (http://mikeely.wordpress.com) has developed a whole discussion with many people who have been leaving the RCP, and others joining in. Andrei, who posted his resignation letter here on revleft, is one of the main participants. (though I haven't seen left henry there at all, yet).

[Ben Seattle]

one of the most interesting pages on Mike's blog is this one (below). The discussion has focused on the reasons for the liberal-reformist illusions that have poured forth from the "World Can't Wait" compaign:

mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/election-illusions-the-mccain-attraction-and-revolutionary-hopes

[RNK]

Is there any place for comrades who wish to break with Avakian's synthesis to go? Is there any fledgeling organization going on, or are most just scattering in the winds?

[lutondave]

one of the most interesting pages on Mike's blog is this one (below). The discussion has focused on the reasons for the liberal-reformist illusions that have poured forth from the "World Can't Wait" compaign:

mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/election-illusions-the-mccain-attraction-and-revolutionary-hopes

What is your problem.

[kasama-rl]

Is there any place for comrades who wish to break with Avakian's synthesis to go? Is there any fledgeling organization going on, or are most just scattering in the winds?

we are forming a new revolutionary current. One "place" to discuss it is at kasama (http://mikeely.wordpress.com)

[RNK]

I see that, and I'll try to take part. I'm very, very interested in where this is going; I am not from the United States but I'd like to remain as close to this as possible. This development is very interesting for us revolutionary Maoists up north.

[kasama-rl]

why?

[a.r.g.]

Here's a position paper I wrote today.
Open Letter on RCP’s Idealism and Cult of Personality
Bob Avakian’s “New Synthesis” criticizes Marxism-Leninism-Maoism for having a tendency toward mechanical materialism and viewing revolution as inevitable. When I first read that, I was open to the idea. It has since become clear that this marks a break with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. MLM lead the two greatest historical events of the 20th century, the revolutions in Russia and China. So far the RCP in “Revolution” has published no critique or commentary on this major ideological shift in its line.
I was a friend of the RCP’s who has subscribed to the paper for ten years or more. I am a MLM intellectual, and was in an Intermediate Workers Organization and MLM study group lead by the Revolutionary Union (RCP’s predecessor) in the ‘70s. I turned to other MLM organizations, then when they all fell apart I turned back to the RCP.
Proving the New Synthesis in Theory and Practice
Avakian’s criticism of MLM for having a mechanical materialism tendency is a basic ideological criticism. Right or wrong, it is from an idealist perspective, emphasizing the role of the conscious factor. Initially I was very positive toward this and to concepts like “enriched What Is To Be Done-ism,” “solid core and great elasticity,” and “hastening while awaiting.”
A fundamental criticism of MLM requires two things: 1. A detailed, textual, and philosophical critique of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao (I believe Stalin was a mechanical materialist) including quotes that specifically identify the mechanical materialist and inevitablist tendency. 2. Applying the New Synthesis in the practice of the American revolution, in winning the masses to MLM and the fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Neither of these two things has been done by the RCP, it has not come out publicly. In fact, the opposite is the case. The RCP has declared that the New Synthesis is a major advance of MLM, in effect canonizing the New Synthesis with no support in theory or practice.
The Idealist Analysis of Christian “Fascism”
Avakian’s analysis that the “pendulum will not swing back” and that the Bush administration and the Christian Right were moving toward fascism has been proven incorrect by facts on the ground. The line was that only a repolarization by a communist lead mass movement could stop the tendency toward fascism. The RCP did not realize that Bush dumped both the neo-conservatives and the Christian Right in 2006. The RCP was caught by surprise by the Obama phenomenon.
The analysis of this trend toward fascism was based completely on the Biblical ideology and politics of the dominionists among the Christian Right and of Bush’s political actions—the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, Guantanamo and torture, etc. There was no analysis of three important material and historical conditions: 1. the economic and political reserves of the bourgeoisie; 2. the history of bourgeois democracy in the United States; 3. the Christian Right’s organizational and military strength. Any such analysis would have revealed that: 1. the bourgeoisie had large economic reserves, wealth to buy people off, and political reserves, credibility among the masses; 2. the bourgeoisie has a 250 year history of successful rule through bourgeois democracy—they were not about to give up that tried and true practice for unproven fascist rule. 3. The Christian dominionists had no political party or military wing, as Hitler and Mussolini had, to enable them to act as an independent political force pressuring the bourgeoisie to put them in power, and they have since fallen into disarray.
Fascism is always a danger in the U.S., and the bourgeoisie will always string along potential fascist movements. The dominionists have a fascist ideology, but fascists are ideological opportunists and other secular fascists such as skinheads, if they acquire an ideology, could become the major danger. The bourgeoisie puts fascists in power—that is what happened in Germany and Italy—and they will only make that choice when they are no longer able to rule in the old way, in a deep legitimacy crisis, when class struggle is intensifying, and when they foresee the possibility of a revolutionary situation developing. This was not the case with the Bush administration and that is now obvious.
The failure of the RCP to repudiate this line has lead to a complete misunderstanding of the entire bourgeoisie’s, Democrats’ and Republicans’, turn toward bourgeois reformism, and the whole meaning of the election: Avakian’s summary analysis of World Can’t Wait mentions a danger that the election might be cancelled; identifying Palin as a fascist threat when she was completely isolated within the bourgeoisie, and was a Youtube joke; a leaflet a few days before the election claiming that the election might be stolen. Avakian’s article summing up WCW attempted to address demoralization while avoiding the elephant in the room—the wrong line on developing fascism that lead to the failures and frustrations of WCW.
The line appears to have been dropped after the election. Interestingly, no key political line has replaced it—the RCP has not focused on the intensification of economic exploitation worldwide and in the U.S. Has the RCP been unable to recover from its major error?
Avakian obsessively critiques Christianity for being oppressive and inconsistent. The Bible expresses tribal beliefs and it was written over the course of almost a thousand years, so this is no big surprise. Religion survives among the masses because they are oppressed. Get rid of capitalism and religious consciousness will die out, not the other way around.
The RCP promotes the New Synthesis as a new breakthrough in MLM. In reality it is thinly disguised Hegelianism, the idea that human consciousness develops largely independently of material conditions and is the driving force in history, an ideology that Marx soundly defeated 150 years ago.
Democratic centralism or the Cult of Personality
Avakian played a decisive role in upholding Maoism against the CCP coup. Portugal, France, and Italy had Maoist movements of tens of thousands in the seventies, but they lacked a leader like Avakian, so now they have next to nothing. Avakian correctly repudiated the line of the Third International, under Lenin, that CPs should be based on factory cells (instead of electoral districts.) He upheld “What Is To Be Done” and going lower and deeper into the proletariat, grasping the importance of the oppressed minorities as the social basis for revolution in the U.S. Avakian saved Maoism in the belly of the beast. This was a major accomplishment in the MLM movement.
. I have always felt that the main accomplishment of Avakian and the RCP was survival—upholding and defending MLM for 30 years in the belly of the beast. The RCP is relatively isolated from the masses at this point, not principally because of errors, but because of material and historical conditions—the masses in the U.S. benefit from imperialism and many buy into it. Lenin was in exile for eleven years and maintained his line, and the RCP has fought for its line for almost three times as long.
There are many difficulties to be overcome in fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariat in a country like the U.S. In the 30 year long ebb period in the mass movement it was difficult to maintain ties with the masses. There has never been a revolutionary tradition and true communist party in the U.S. linked to the masses. The CP in the ‘30s had strong ties to the masses but was revisionist.
In this wealthy country, strong ties to the industrial proletariat can be the social basis for economism and revisionism. On the other hand, isolation from the masses, and a largely petit bourgeois intellectual party membership can be the social basis for dogmatism and idealism. A party isolated from the practical class struggle can develop lines based not on analysis of objective conditions or on response to the struggles of the masses, but upon internal organizational dynamics.
Prior to a revolutionary situation, the principle organizational task in an advanced capitalist country is to build the party as the vanguard of the proletariat in the heat of the class struggle. The RCP must enter into a revolutionary situation with: 1st, the correct line; and 2nd, strong ties with the proletariat and credibility among the masses, as the Bolshevik Party did.
What is the advantage of promoting the leadership, Avakian’s ideas, over promoting the party? The ideological and political lines of Avakian and of the RCP are identical. But ideas become a material force in history through organization. The task of the party is to link the conscious factor with the spontaneous movement on a revolutionary basis. Linking the party to the masses creates both the link of line and the more enduring connection of organization and practice; promoting Avakian is only a link of ideas.
How does promoting Avakian increase his security? Mao’s principle that guerillas are fish in the sea of the people calls for the opposite. Rather than raise the profile of Avakian, the RCP should be fighting for and linking so closely with the masses that the bourgeoisie is either afraid to single out Avakian for attack or realizes that the struggle will simply produce new leaders to replace him.
Avakian’s article in a recent “Revolution” defended his tendency to quote himself by giving his reading list of the past forty years and by saying that many of his ideas are so new he can’t quote anyone else. Lenin quoted from Marx, not from himself, because he wanted to demonstrate that he was applying Marxism to the Russian and 20th century conditions. It is now apparent that Avakian’s quoting himself and not MLM has resulted in distinguishing his line from MLM, and that he has succeeded in establishing his line in total control of the RCP.
Mao promoted his personality cult during the Cultural Revolution because he had lost control of the Party. To promote the correct line he had to promote himself. Lenin threatened to quit the Party twice over line differences—the April Theses and the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. When there is no difference in line, there is no justification for promoting a leader over a party.
The promotion of Avakian as a visionary has clearly stifled any debate within the RCP. It is self-serving and not in any way in the interests of the revolution or the masses.
The RCP as a whole and RCP members as individuals should be loyal primarily to two things—MLM, since the correct ideological and political line decides everything; and the masses of the world, the class stand of being willing to fight and die for the oppressed. When a party places loyalty to an individual leader above loyalty to MLM and the masses, it has become opportunist and revisionist.
The combined effect of promoting the leadership, failure to struggle around Avakian’s line, and isolation from the masses has lead to organizational bureaucratic centralism—all aspects of the ideological and political line flow down from Avakian, and nothing of any importance flows up from the masses. “Revolution” is heavy on Avakian articles and very light on articles based upon organizing among the masses. Two examples of RCP practice among the masses are: a sound truck in an Oakland barrio talking about Avakian’s visionary leadership, and showing a DVD of Avakian at a rally in support of illegal immigrants. This is not fighting for the masses, but asking the masses to fight for Avakian. Internationally, look what happened in Peru and Nepal even at high points in their revolutions, with MLM “Gonzalo Thought” and MLM “Prachanda Path.” Leaders can make tremendous advances, then irreparable mistakes.
The Coming Crisis
Class conflict and conflict between imperialist and oppressed nations is intensifying. It is certainly possible that we are entering into a period that could lead to a revolutionary situation in the U.S. I saw the results in the ‘60s, as Avakian did, of the absence of communist leadership. They were exciting times, but everyone was reinventing the wheel. We have seen that it is essential that the masses have a party with a correct line.
I am not raising a call to dogmatically defend MLM en toto. I agree for the most part with the RIM’s criticism of the three worlds theory, which was Mao’s tactical international line. I think that Marx’s concept of “the absolute impoverization of the proletariat” and Lenin’s concept that monopoly capitalism is technologically moribund have been disproved by history. What I am saying is that these lines must be thoroughly and completely hashed out.
It would be tragic if the masses enter into the next mass upsurge without a party of the proletariat, and if a revolutionary situation developed and failed because of incorrect leadership, it would be a tragedy of world historic importance.
a.r.g.

[Pogue]

Here's a position paper I wrote today.
Open Letter on RCP’s Idealism and Cult of Personality
Bob Avakian’s “New Synthesis” criticizes Marxism-Leninism-Maoism for having a tendency toward mechanical materialism and viewing revolution as inevitable. When I first read that, I was open to the idea. It has since become clear that this marks a break with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. MLM lead the two greatest historical events of the 20th century, the revolutions in Russia and China. So far the RCP in “Revolution” has published no critique or commentary on this major ideological shift in its line.
I was a friend of the RCP’s who has subscribed to the paper for ten years or more. I am a MLM intellectual, and was in an Intermediate Workers Organization and MLM study group lead by the Revolutionary Union (RCP’s predecessor) in the ‘70s. I turned to other MLM organizations, then when they all fell apart I turned back to the RCP.
Proving the New Synthesis in Theory and Practice
Avakian’s criticism of MLM for having a mechanical materialism tendency is a basic ideological criticism. Right or wrong, it is from an idealist perspective, emphasizing the role of the conscious factor. Initially I was very positive toward this and to concepts like “enriched What Is To Be Done-ism,” “solid core and great elasticity,” and “hastening while awaiting.”
A fundamental criticism of MLM requires two things: 1. A detailed, textual, and philosophical critique of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao (I believe Stalin was a mechanical materialist) including quotes that specifically identify the mechanical materialist and inevitablist tendency. 2. Applying the New Synthesis in the practice of the American revolution, in winning the masses to MLM and the fight for the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Neither of these two things has been done by the RCP, it has not come out publicly. In fact, the opposite is the case. The RCP has declared that the New Synthesis is a major advance of MLM, in effect canonizing the New Synthesis with no support in theory or practice.
The Idealist Analysis of Christian “Fascism”
Avakian’s analysis that the “pendulum will not swing back” and that the Bush administration and the Christian Right were moving toward fascism has been proven incorrect by facts on the ground. The line was that only a repolarization by a communist lead mass movement could stop the tendency toward fascism. The RCP did not realize that Bush dumped both the neo-conservatives and the Christian Right in 2006. The RCP was caught by surprise by the Obama phenomenon.
The analysis of this trend toward fascism was based completely on the Biblical ideology and politics of the dominionists among the Christian Right and of Bush’s political actions—the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act, Guantanamo and torture, etc. There was no analysis of three important material and historical conditions: 1. the economic and political reserves of the bourgeoisie; 2. the history of bourgeois democracy in the United States; 3. the Christian Right’s organizational and military strength. Any such analysis would have revealed that: 1. the bourgeoisie had large economic reserves, wealth to buy people off, and political reserves, credibility among the masses; 2. the bourgeoisie has a 250 year history of successful rule through bourgeois democracy—they were not about to give up that tried and true practice for unproven fascist rule. 3. The Christian dominionists had no political party or military wing, as Hitler and Mussolini had, to enable them to act as an independent political force pressuring the bourgeoisie to put them in power, and they have since fallen into disarray.
Fascism is always a danger in the U.S., and the bourgeoisie will always string along potential fascist movements. The dominionists have a fascist ideology, but fascists are ideological opportunists and other secular fascists such as skinheads, if they acquire an ideology, could become the major danger. The bourgeoisie puts fascists in power—that is what happened in Germany and Italy—and they will only make that choice when they are no longer able to rule in the old way, in a deep legitimacy crisis, when class struggle is intensifying, and when they foresee the possibility of a revolutionary situation developing. This was not the case with the Bush administration and that is now obvious.
The failure of the RCP to repudiate this line has lead to a complete misunderstanding of the entire bourgeoisie’s, Democrats’ and Republicans’, turn toward bourgeois reformism, and the whole meaning of the election: Avakian’s summary analysis of World Can’t Wait mentions a danger that the election might be cancelled; identifying Palin as a fascist threat when she was completely isolated within the bourgeoisie, and was a Youtube joke; a leaflet a few days before the election claiming that the election might be stolen. Avakian’s article summing up WCW attempted to address demoralization while avoiding the elephant in the room—the wrong line on developing fascism that lead to the failures and frustrations of WCW.
The line appears to have been dropped after the election. Interestingly, no key political line has replaced it—the RCP has not focused on the intensification of economic exploitation worldwide and in the U.S. Has the RCP been unable to recover from its major error?
Avakian obsessively critiques Christianity for being oppressive and inconsistent. The Bible expresses tribal beliefs and it was written over the course of almost a thousand years, so this is no big surprise. Religion survives among the masses because they are oppressed. Get rid of capitalism and religious consciousness will die out, not the other way around.
The RCP promotes the New Synthesis as a new breakthrough in MLM. In reality it is thinly disguised Hegelianism, the idea that human consciousness develops largely independently of material conditions and is the driving force in history, an ideology that Marx soundly defeated 150 years ago.
Democratic centralism or the Cult of Personality
Avakian played a decisive role in upholding Maoism against the CCP coup. Portugal, France, and Italy had Maoist movements of tens of thousands in the seventies, but they lacked a leader like Avakian, so now they have next to nothing. Avakian correctly repudiated the line of the Third International, under Lenin, that CPs should be based on factory cells (instead of electoral districts.) He upheld “What Is To Be Done” and going lower and deeper into the proletariat, grasping the importance of the oppressed minorities as the social basis for revolution in the U.S. Avakian saved Maoism in the belly of the beast. This was a major accomplishment in the MLM movement.
. I have always felt that the main accomplishment of Avakian and the RCP was survival—upholding and defending MLM for 30 years in the belly of the beast. The RCP is relatively isolated from the masses at this point, not principally because of errors, but because of material and historical conditions—the masses in the U.S. benefit from imperialism and many buy into it. Lenin was in exile for eleven years and maintained his line, and the RCP has fought for its line for almost three times as long.
There are many difficulties to be overcome in fighting for the dictatorship of the proletariat in a country like the U.S. In the 30 year long ebb period in the mass movement it was difficult to maintain ties with the masses. There has never been a revolutionary tradition and true communist party in the U.S. linked to the masses. The CP in the ‘30s had strong ties to the masses but was revisionist.
In this wealthy country, strong ties to the industrial proletariat can be the social basis for economism and revisionism. On the other hand, isolation from the masses, and a largely petit bourgeois intellectual party membership can be the social basis for dogmatism and idealism. A party isolated from the practical class struggle can develop lines based not on analysis of objective conditions or on response to the struggles of the masses, but upon internal organizational dynamics.
Prior to a revolutionary situation, the principle organizational task in an advanced capitalist country is to build the party as the vanguard of the proletariat in the heat of the class struggle. The RCP must enter into a revolutionary situation with: 1st, the correct line; and 2nd, strong ties with the proletariat and credibility among the masses, as the Bolshevik Party did.
What is the advantage of promoting the leadership, Avakian’s ideas, over promoting the party? The ideological and political lines of Avakian and of the RCP are identical. But ideas become a material force in history through organization. The task of the party is to link the conscious factor with the spontaneous movement on a revolutionary basis. Linking the party to the masses creates both the link of line and the more enduring connection of organization and practice; promoting Avakian is only a link of ideas.
How does promoting Avakian increase his security? Mao’s principle that guerillas are fish in the sea of the people calls for the opposite. Rather than raise the profile of Avakian, the RCP should be fighting for and linking so closely with the masses that the bourgeoisie is either afraid to single out Avakian for attack or realizes that the struggle will simply produce new leaders to replace him.
Avakian’s article in a recent “Revolution” defended his tendency to quote himself by giving his reading list of the past forty years and by saying that many of his ideas are so new he can’t quote anyone else. Lenin quoted from Marx, not from himself, because he wanted to demonstrate that he was applying Marxism to the Russian and 20th century conditions. It is now apparent that Avakian’s quoting himself and not MLM has resulted in distinguishing his line from MLM, and that he has succeeded in establishing his line in total control of the RCP.
Mao promoted his personality cult during the Cultural Revolution because he had lost control of the Party. To promote the correct line he had to promote himself. Lenin threatened to quit the Party twice over line differences—the April Theses and the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. When there is no difference in line, there is no justification for promoting a leader over a party.
The promotion of Avakian as a visionary has clearly stifled any debate within the RCP. It is self-serving and not in any way in the interests of the revolution or the masses.
The RCP as a whole and RCP members as individuals should be loyal primarily to two things—MLM, since the correct ideological and political line decides everything; and the masses of the world, the class stand of being willing to fight and die for the oppressed. When a party places loyalty to an individual leader above loyalty to MLM and the masses, it has become opportunist and revisionist.
The combined effect of promoting the leadership, failure to struggle around Avakian’s line, and isolation from the masses has lead to organizational bureaucratic centralism—all aspects of the ideological and political line flow down from Avakian, and nothing of any importance flows up from the masses. “Revolution” is heavy on Avakian articles and very light on articles based upon organizing among the masses. Two examples of RCP practice among the masses are: a sound truck in an Oakland barrio talking about Avakian’s visionary leadership, and showing a DVD of Avakian at a rally in support of illegal immigrants. This is not fighting for the masses, but asking the masses to fight for Avakian. Internationally, look what happened in Peru and Nepal even at high points in their revolutions, with MLM “Gonzalo Thought” and MLM “Prachanda Path.” Leaders can make tremendous advances, then irreparable mistakes.
The Coming Crisis
Class conflict and conflict between imperialist and oppressed nations is intensifying. It is certainly possible that we are entering into a period that could lead to a revolutionary situation in the U.S. I saw the results in the ‘60s, as Avakian did, of the absence of communist leadership. They were exciting times, but everyone was reinventing the wheel. We have seen that it is essential that the masses have a party with a correct line.
I am not raising a call to dogmatically defend MLM en toto. I agree for the most part with the RIM’s criticism of the three worlds theory, which was Mao’s tactical international line. I think that Marx’s concept of “the absolute impoverization of the proletariat” and Lenin’s concept that monopoly capitalism is technologically moribund have been disproved by history. What I am saying is that these lines must be thoroughly and completely hashed out.
It would be tragic if the masses enter into the next mass upsurge without a party of the proletariat, and if a revolutionary situation developed and failed because of incorrect leadership, it would be a tragedy of world historic importance.
a.r.g.

You win the double prize! Thread necromancy combined with wal of text

And its only your first post here!

Your the man, dog!