RCP split

[abbielives!]

I heard rumors that the RCP split anyone know if this is true/what the causes are?

[Comrade-Z]

I haven't heard anything, but that would sorta make sense in my opinion. I'll often read their newspaper online, and it has this schizophrenic quality to it. Some articles will seem so rational and so insightful and open-eyed (like their articles criticizing Obamania)...and then right next to those will be these transparently ridiculous articles fretting over "Bob Avakian's New Synthesis" or some shit.

Maybe a section of RCP wants to drop all the leader-worship nonsense that is so obviously and unnecessarily sabotaging their political effectiveness. What do they have to gain from that? Is it really necessary for holding the movement together? Are there large numbers of radically-predisposed people in the U.S. who really go for that leader-worship shit?

[abbielives!]

it was over something called 'false consiousness' so the rumor says anyways, I am just trying to see if it has any substance to it.

[Taboo Tongue]

The only thing I have seen on any recent split in the RCP is Kasama (http://mikeely.wordpress.com/) but I didn't find any mention of the number of members\writers or whatever.

[misanthroshit]

friggin maoists always splitting.

[RedAnarchist]

friggin maoists always splitting.

I know Trotskyists are stereotyped as always splitting, but Maoists?

[Wanted Man]

I don't think so. It is true that some members, like Mike Ely, have left and written the "9 Letters". The RCP did apparently find it important enough to respond to. http://mikeely.wordpress.com/

One comrade on Soviet-Empire, who used to be in the RCYB, wrote this enlightening piece for Ely's website: http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/its-a-sin-thoughts-of-a-former-youth-brigader/

[misanthroshit]

I know Trotskyists are stereotyped as always splitting, but Maoists?

i thought it was a funny joke. meh.

[bezdomni]

I heard rumors that the RCP split anyone know if this is true/what the causes are?

No, the party has not split...unless you are talking about what happened in the 1980s, which I assume you are not.


Maybe a section of RCP wants to drop all the leader-worship nonsense that is so obviously and unnecessarily sabotaging their political effectiveness. What do they have to gain from that? Is it really necessary for holding the movement together? Are there large numbers of radically-predisposed people in the U.S. who really go for that leader-worship shit?
Find one strand of "leader worship" by the RCP and I will eat my hat.

This is bullshit propaganda that you are spreading about the RCP, and overall it strengthens the bourgeoisie. If anybody has a schizophrenic quality in their political line, it is the people who know that what the RCP is saying makes sense, yet completely dismiss it as a revolutionary vanguard due to some illusions about us being a big Bob Avakian cult.

Hell, the party is saying "engage with Bob Avakian" not "mindlessly follow Bob Avakian to the ends of the Earth".


it was over something called 'false consiousness' so the rumor says anyways, I am just trying to see if it has any substance to it.
Where did you hear this rumor? A link or something would be helpful, because otherwise this is really just (harmful) speculation about something that isn't true.


I know Trotskyists are stereotyped as always splitting, but Maoists?
No, although some people who call themselves Maoists are Trotskyists in practice.

If you look at the history of the RCP, epsecially the split in the 80's...you'll notice that there was a substantial Trotskyist/menshevik line in the faction that was expelled from the party.

[Enragé]

Great news :)

[Hit The North]

Hell, the party is saying "engage with Bob Avakian" not "mindlessly follow Bob Avakian to the ends of the Earth".

That's redolent of a personality cult. The party should be saying "engage with the RCP".


If you look at the history of the RCP, epsecially the split in the 80's...you'll notice that there was a substantial Trotskyist/menshevik line in the faction that was expelled from the party.

:lol: WTF is "Trotskyist/Menshevik line" except a political insult?

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ One thing I like about "tankies": they have the sense to replace the blatant cult of the Leader with the more subtle still-a-cult of the Party (Nikita Khrushchev and especially Leonid "Glory to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union" Brezhnev). ;)

[And no revolutionary Marxist party should ever have as a slogan "engage with the Party" :glare: ]

[Hit The North]

[And no revolutionary Marxist party should ever have as a slogan "engage with the Party" :glare: ]

Why not?

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ I don't think Lenin ever used that as a slogan (even after the revolution).

The revolutionary mass party (social-proletocratic) may indeed be the organizational manifestation of the revolutionary merger of Marxism (not political socialism in general, like Fabian socialism) and the whole workers' movement (not just the labour movement) - and this is the subject of Chapter 5 ( ;) ) - but slogans should always be about the working class themselves ("all power to you working-class folks") or about revolutionary Marxism ("engage with revolutionary Marxism").

[bezdomni]

^^^ I don't think Lenin ever used that as a slogan (even after the revolution).

The revolutionary mass party (social-proletocratic) may indeed be the organizational manifestation of the revolutionary merger of Marxism (not political socialism in general, like Fabian socialism) and the whole workers' movement (not just the labour movement) - and this is the subject of Chapter 5 ( ;) ) - but slogans should always be about the working class themselves ("all power to you working-class folks") or about revolutionary Marxism ("engage with revolutionary Marxism").

To engage with the party is to engage with the most developed and militant section of the working class. The interests and actions of the communist party are inextricably linked to the interests of the proletariat.

I think there is a lot of confusion about why this. Why the interests of the proletariat? Quite simply, because the proletariat is the only class that has absolutely no interest in anything other than the complete destruction of capitalism and private property and the abolition of class society altogether.

We aren't communists because we think workers should get a bigger share of the pie, and that isn't our principle concern. The workers can and do conduct the day-to-day struggles on their own, without communist revolutionaries. The task of communists is to elevate the level of struggle and raise class consciousness to encompass revolutionary demands and action, rather than to put all of our energies into isolated and spontaneous mobilizations of workers.

Bob Avakian is a revolutionary communist. To study his contributions to Marxism in a critical way is to engage with the ideas and principles of revolutionary communism in the United States. To engage with Bob Avakian is to engage with the highest concentration of the RCP's ideology, which is revolutionary communism.

The slogans of communists should be about communism and what we have to do to get there. Right now, we can't call for "All power to the working class" in the United States because the working class is not organized in a way that it is ready to seize state power. If there were already soviets, it would be a different story. But that isn't the case, so what we gotta do is organize the masses and agitate and raise class consciousness to prepare the masses in the U.S. for the seizure of state and economic power.

Actually, Bob Avakian treats this subject really well. I suggest comrades actually read a few of the articles regarding the "new synthesis"...rather than dogmatically brushing it off.


That's redolent of a personality cult. The party should be saying "engage with the RCP".

Bob Avakian is the chairman of the party. Leadership is necessarily the most developed concentration of an organization's political line. What part of that is so difficult to understand?

Would you like the RCP if Bob Avakian stopped writing? If yes, then may I ask...what is the point in having a chairman or any leadership if they are not allowed to express their ideas?

There is this underlying fear of the "cult of personality" among liberals, and I know where they are coming from...but you gotta understand what is meant by "cult of personality" (which is actually not a very descriptive phrase, and the RCP doesn't use it anymore). We don't mean a dogmatic or religious following of any leader, but a critical and materialist investigation of what revolutionary leadership is putting forward. Obviously, the RCP has Avakian as its chairman because his line is the most developed and representative of the Central Committee...so we try to get people to engage with his works and ideas, along with the ideas of other leaders of the party like Carl Dix or Sunsara Taylor or Travis Morales...etc.

As I said above, we don't use the phrase "cult of personality" anymore, and instead use the more descriptive phrase "culture of appreciation". Qualitatively, the two are no different...just different words to describe the same thing. The word "cult" implies a religiosity that we oppose, hence the change.

We don't propose just having a culture of appreciation around the works of Bob Avakian (also note that the culture of appreciation is specific to ideology...we don't care if people share a similar taste in music with Bob Avakian or enjoy the same food as him), but around a wide range of thinkers. Obviously the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao all deserve to be engaged with seriously...and I would propose a culture of appreciation around the work of even non-communists like Charles Darwin or Edwin Hubble or whomever, since they also did groundbreaking things that revolutionary communists should and do appreciate.

[Hit The North]

Bob Avakian is the chairman of the party. Leadership is necessarily the most developed concentration of an organization's political line. What part of that is so difficult to understand?Nothing difficult to understand, sunshine. The point is that you should be creating a party of leaders, not elevating an individual to a Popeish pedestal.

"[T]he most developed concentration of an organization's political line," eh? The next step is to argue that the organization is "the most developed concentration of proletarian class consciousness" and you've created a de facto cult of personality around Chairman Bob, prophet of the working class!

Don't you understand that?

[Hit The North]

Sorry, I've just noticed this:
As I said above, we don't use the phrase "cult of personality" anymore, and instead use the more descriptive phrase "culture of appreciation"

That's really quite dialectical. You've raised the phrase to a new level of abstraction but managed to preserve the word "cult" :laugh:.

[blackstone]

Why did you direct us to Mike Elys site theres nothing there about a split.

[blackstone]

While your here SovietPants, care to comment on this?


Look at this poster for Avakians new book really closely.
http://rwor.org/a/125/awag-spread-poster-en.html
Then refer to my post
http://power-2-people.blogspot.com/2008/02/manufacture-of-dissent-in-revolution.html
I think this recent poster validates my analysis of Revolution Paper, but this can be applied to the whole left in general.
There’s four or five quotes preceding, the quote from “22 year old Black man from Harlem”, yet noone else is identified, much less by their race. Why was he singled out?
Hook, sink, we got a black person to support us! Look everybody!
We really are making inroads!
Can we prove this is a factual quote, much less one from a black person? No, but look anyway!

[chegitz guevara]

There isn't so much a split as significant defection.

[bezdomni]

Nothing difficult to understand, sunshine. The point is that you should be creating a party of leaders, not elevating an individual to a Popeish pedestal.The party has a wide array of leadership, and there is nothing "popeish" about the way Avakian's leadership is put forward. You are making shit up and guess what - the bourgeoisie love it because all of these rumors and bullshit serve to undermine the RCP. Straight from the pages of COINTELPRO - divide and conquer.

The reason it is very important for communists to actually be communists, and to look at the world through the lens of rigorous materialism is because when we are critically investigating the rumors that we hear and don't just spread them for the sake of doing so, the rumors that the state either plants or perpetuates never spread.

We're glad you disagree with us, and encourage you to keep on doing so as long as you feel like (give your disagreements have some basis in reality, even if they are wrong). However, perpetuating rumors and making up bullshit is not cool, and it pisses me off that you are accusing me and all of my comrades of being members of a religious cult. If you seriously think RCP supporters are a bunch of Bob Avakian drones, then I advise you to kindly go fuck yourself.


The next step is to argue that the organization is "the most developed concentration of proletarian class consciousness" and you've created a de facto cult of personality around Chairman Bob, prophet of the working class!The communist party is the most developed concentration of the revolutionary proletariat. That doesn't make its leadership a group of prophets, although it does make its leadership worth listening to. Which is really all I'm saying - you should think about what the RCP, specifically its chairman, is saying about communism and revolution.

Blackstone - I am not sure why specific writers in the paper bring attention to the fact that certain people are black. I understand why that seems weird to you, and I really don't have a solid "well, this is why blah blah blah" kind of answer. I can say that it is sometimes important to clarify where a person is coming from with their class/ethnic background when they are saying something that is affected by their background. For example, a black person living in New Orleans is probably going to have a very different way of looking at things than a white person in New Orleans if you just pick one white person and one black person at random. That's because black people are being forced out of their homes and out of the city, and the parts that black people are getting kicked out of are becoming more and more white washed. So it makes sense in a case like that to clarify a person you talked to in New Orleans about housing demolition was black or white.

But yeah, there are probably many instances where it is unnecessary to clarify an individual's ethnicity. The potential causes of this could be anything from careless editing to the author of an article holding non-communist identity politics.

I hope my answer is satisfactory. If it isn't, I think you should e-mail the author of the article you linked and ask them why they write the way they do.



That's really quite dialectical. You've raised the phrase to a new level of abstraction but managed to preserve the word "cult" And you've managed to waste my time with your nonsense. Congratulations.

[bezdomni]

There isn't so much a split as significant defection.
Yeah, a split implies that cadre or members leave or get expelled from one party and then re-organize themselves into a different organization or group or organizations.

No such thing has happened here. Mike Ely has left the party, and a few others seem to have followed. I don't know if I would even call this a "significant defection" in terms of the numbers involved (although I admittedly do not know the numbers), but rather in terms of the amount of noise that has been made on the internet about it.

[chegitz guevara]

Splits are usually organized factions. If an unorganized mass leaves an organization, for whatever reason, I wouldn't argue that constitutes a split.

The Kasama group is looking to organize something, but the comrades aren't sure what that something is yet. They are having a meeting this weekend to look into what direction they want to take. Coincidentally, the RCP will be releasing the long awaited response to the 9 Letters the day they begin--I don't hold out a lot of hope for it being a principled criticism, based on the "trailer" the RCP released.

I am personally close to Mike Ely. He's a friend and also a comrade, and he certainly shaped my view of Marxism. I was an ortho-Trot before I had about two years of discussions with him back in the mid-90s. I consider myself a comrade of the Kasama group, and I hope to be at this meeting, but outside factors may prevent that from happening. :(