Polemic Targets Avakian's New Synthesis

[kasama-rl]

A major document was just published:

9 Letters to Our Comrades: (http://mikeely.wordpress.com) Getting Beyond Avakian's New Synthesis.

It is a Maoist critique of the RCP, of Avakian's claims to have made a major leap in Marxism and goes into depth about the errors of the escalating cult of personality.

It is written by Mike Ely, a founding member of the RCP and until recently an editor of its Revolution newspaper.

Letter 1: A Time to Speak Clearly
Letter 2: A Gaping Hole Instead of Partisan Bases
Letter 3: Forays, Wrong Turns and Blaming the People
Letter 4: Truth, Practice and a Confession of Poverty
Letter 5: Particularities of Christians and Fascists
Letter 6: The Theory Surrounding “A Leader of This Caliber”
Letter 7: Whateverism in Evaluating Avakian
Letter 8: On the Cult of Personality: Revisiting Chen Boda’s Ghost
Letter 9: Traveling Light, Coming from Within

I will post a series of excerpts from these letters tomorrow.

[marxist_god]

Originally posted by kasama-[email protected] 20, 2007 04:48 am
A major document was just published:

9 Letters to Our Comrades: (http://mikeely.wordpress.com) Getting Beyond Avakian's New Synthesis.

It is a Maoist critique of the RCP, of Avakian's claims to have made a major leap in Marxism and goes into depth about the errors of the escalating cult of personality.

It is written by Mike Ely, a founding member of the RCP and until recently an editor of its Revolution newspaper.

Letter 1: A Time to Speak Clearly
Letter 2: A Gaping Hole Instead of Partisan Bases
Letter 3: Forays, Wrong Turns and Blaming the People
Letter 4: Truth, Practice and a Confession of Poverty
Letter 5: Particularities of Christians and Fascists
Letter 6: The Theory Surrounding “A Leader of This Caliber”
Letter 7: Whateverism in Evaluating Avakian
Letter 8: On the Cult of Personality: Revisiting Chen Boda’s Ghost
Letter 9: Traveling Light, Coming from Within

I will post a series of excerpts from these letters tomorrow.

Hello my friend, even though i critisize Bob Avakian often, i like him a lot and his party RCP USA in the sense that the RCP-USA deffends black people a lot, more than other movements out there. RCP-USA claims that US's blacks have been living in a slavery since USA was founded and not liberated since, the history of black people in USA has been a history of pain and depressions.

Well i will read that link you posted, thanx

marxist_god

[Red October]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20, 2007 12:07 am
RCP-USA claims that US's blacks have been living in a slavery since USA was founded and not liberated since, the history of black people in USA has been a history of pain and depressions.
This claim is shared by almost all over revolutionary leftist movements/parties/organizations I know of. The RCP does not have a monopoly on this issue.

[Rawthentic]

This claim is shared by almost all over revolutionary leftist movements/parties/organizations I know of. The RCP does not have a monopoly on this issue.
Yeah, but there is no other revolutionary party in this country that has developed the ties with the masses that the RCP has. Not even close.

[repeater138]

Yeah, but there is no other revolutionary party in this country that has developed the ties with the masses that the RCP has. Not even close.

The RCP has no significant ties with the masses. What are you talking about?

[Rawthentic]

Just about reality. Significant ties in the sense of a revolutionary movement, no, of course not.

We are living in an imperialist nation in a non-revolutionary period. Making revolution here is the hardest fucking thing in the world. So like I said, there is no party that does the political work the RCP does or that gets the support they do.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

Originally posted by marxist_god+December 20, 2007 05:07 am--> (marxist_god @ December 20, 2007 05:07 am)
kasama-[email protected] 20, 2007 04:48 am
A major document was just published:

9 Letters to Our Comrades: (http://mikeely.wordpress.com) Getting Beyond Avakian's New Synthesis.

It is a Maoist critique of the RCP, of Avakian's claims to have made a major leap in Marxism and goes into depth about the errors of the escalating cult of personality.

It is written by Mike Ely, a founding member of the RCP and until recently an editor of its Revolution newspaper.

Letter 1: A Time to Speak Clearly
Letter 2: A Gaping Hole Instead of Partisan Bases
Letter 3: Forays, Wrong Turns and Blaming the People
Letter 4: Truth, Practice and a Confession of Poverty
Letter 5: Particularities of Christians and Fascists
Letter 6: The Theory Surrounding “A Leader of This Caliber”
Letter 7: Whateverism in Evaluating Avakian
Letter 8: On the Cult of Personality: Revisiting Chen Boda’s Ghost
Letter 9: Traveling Light, Coming from Within

I will post a series of excerpts from these letters tomorrow.

Hello my friend, even though i critisize Bob Avakian often, i like him a lot and his party RCP USA in the sense that the RCP-USA deffends black people a lot, more than other movements out there. RCP-USA claims that US's blacks have been living in a slavery since USA was founded and not liberated since, the history of black people in USA has been a history of pain and depressions.

Well i will read that link you posted, thanx

marxist_god [/b]
Oh and WWP (http://www.workers.org/) doesn't fight for black people aswell as other minorities????

[repeater138]

Originally posted by Live for the [email protected] 20, 2007 11:16 pm
Just about reality. Significant ties in the sense of a revolutionary movement, no, of course not.

We are living in an imperialist nation in a non-revolutionary period. Making revolution here is the hardest fucking thing in the world. So like I said, there is no party that does the political work the RCP does or that gets the support they do.
It is not true that the RCP has significant ties to the masses. The story of the RCP is a story of the inability to develop ties with the masses over 35 years.

Of course it's hard. No one is saying it isn't, but you can't just claim the RCP has these special ties to the masses when everything points in the exact opposite direction.

[Dros]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20, 2007 11:11 pm

Yeah, but there is no other revolutionary party in this country that has developed the ties with the masses that the RCP has. Not even close.

The RCP has no significant ties with the masses. What are you talking about?
Why do you link to their site in your signature?!

To Kasama-rl:

What is so "major" about these letters of yours? I will read them closely and look at what you are bringing out but I hope you won't be referencing any "secret lines" in these letters.

[repeater138]

Originally posted by drosera99+December 21, 2007 12:09 am--> (drosera99 @ December 21, 2007 12:09 am)
[email protected] 20, 2007 11:11 pm

Yeah, but there is no other revolutionary party in this country that has developed the ties with the masses that the RCP has. Not even close.

The RCP has no significant ties with the masses. What are you talking about?
Why do you link to their site in your signature?!

To Kasama-rl:

What is so "major" about these letters of yours? I will read them closely and look at what you are bringing out but I hope you won't be referencing any "secret lines" in these letters. [/b]
Because I used to support them, and I hadn't changed my signature. At any rate, I don't argue that people shouldn't visit their webpage and engage them on some level, just that they are wrong in some fundamental ways, and that many of the claims that are made on their behalf, such as Live For the People's claims, are not true.

Beyond this, I think we all need to work very hard to come up with some new ideas that can begin to really address the making of a North American revolution. RCP isn't going to do this. Their New Synthesis is old wine in a new bottle. It cannot address the moment that we find ourselves in. It's attempts to do so have failed.

[peaccenicked]

The idea of the ''confession of poverty'' is useless. We need a better understanding of poverty objectively. Habemas 's idea of intersubjectivity is very good ideally but it does not examine the real relations between class forces and the left concretely. That is a poverty. I will point you to my recent thread (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=74425) in which I tackle this question head on, in my reply.

[repeater138]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21, 2007 01:17 am
The idea of the ''confession of poverty'' is useless. We need a better understanding of poverty objectively. Habemas 's idea of intersubjectivity is very good ideally but it does not examine the real relations between class forces and the left concretely. That is a poverty. I will point you to my recent thread (http://www.revleft.com/index.php?showtopic=74425) in which I tackle this question head on, in my reply.
I think you misunderstand the usage of the word "poverty" here. It is not meant to refer to people who are poor. It is meant to refer to a profound lack with regards to practice and the truth derived from it in the experience of the RCP. See Marx's "Poverty of Philosophy" for a similar usage of the word.

pov·er·ty
–noun
1. the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor; indigence.
2. deficiency of necessary or desirable ingredients, qualities, etc.: poverty of the soil.
3. scantiness; insufficiency: Their efforts to stamp out disease were hampered by a poverty of medical supplies.

[peaccenicked]

I think you misunderstand the usage of the word "poverty" here


This is a misunderstanding. I am using Marx's sense of poverty in the "Poverty of Philosophy."
What I am saying that the politics of intersubjectivity...which include the process of self criticism are essentially poor compared to an actual concrete analysis of the concrete situation. It what might be richer still is realisation of this,but let us abandon navel gazing as far as possible.

[repeater138]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22, 2007 12:01 am

I think you misunderstand the usage of the word "poverty" here


This is a misunderstanding. I am using Marx's sense of poverty in the "Poverty of Philosophy."
What I am saying that the politics of intersubjectivity...which include the process of self criticism are essentially poor compared to an actual concrete analysis of the concrete situation. It what might be richer still is realisation of this,but let us abandon navel gazing as far as possible.
Ok, when I looked at your link it seemed you were talking about regular old poverty. My mistake.

At any rate you seem to be focusing on the title of one of these letters. The content of the letters actually enumerates what it is that is lacking in the situation in general, as well as with the RCP in particular. It also lays out a better and more nuanced epistemology.

Secondly, the act of "confessing" to this lack and implying a better way of thinking is not navel gazing, but rather a political act that is a necessary first step in clarifying exactly where we are, and what we have as a movement of revolutionary communists in the U.S.

In other words it is describing the concrete political situation of revolutionary communists. It is pointing out what we lack, and suggesting a new direction.

Here are some excerpts from Letter 4:

http://mikeely.wordpress.com/letter-4/




Letter 4: Truth, Practice and a Confession of Poverty

Step into a room full of geologists or working philosophers, and announce “Our leader Bob Avakian has made a major epistemological break. He says we have to go for the truth, rather than hiding things.” Would anyone be impressed?

The issue facing our movement is not so much “are we for truth?” The issue is much more “what is true and what isn’t?” With Avakian’s method and approach, relative truth, objective truth, and absolute truth are pancaked flat, producing a simplified set of ideological assertions, where the RCP can give lip service to critical thinking and yet promote a logic of close-minded zealotry.

A persistent example of the denigration of practice is the marked dilettantism of Avakian’s analysis. Avakian is an innovative and provocative thinker, but his expositions are often brainstorms masquerading as science. For example, the RCP’s conclusion that there is a concerted rush toward fascist theocracy that is threatening a deep social schism (even perhaps literally “civil war”) between thinking people and theocrats within the U.S. Look at the fragmentary work which underlies that claim — not just underlying the public argumentation, but the analysis itself.

It is extremely important to grapple, theoretically and practically, with the problems of socialism and capitalist restoration. It is extremely important to correctly sum up the experiences of the 20th century and make those insights known broadly among the people. But there is an idealist air of classic utopian socialism about Avakian’s work on this: as if we can show people how to act now by fleshing out fully (from our current imaginings) details the future society must adopt.

Take the theoretical speculation made on the future transition to communism, and compare it to the glaring poverty of theoretical work that has been devoted to many other core problems of the specific revolution we need to take responsibility for: on the struggle to create a revolutionary base, on deindustrialization and the situation of African American people, on the entwining of the revolutionary processes across North America, and a dozen other ignored questions.