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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 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.
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
"Love Other Human Beings like you would Yourself"
-- Ho Chi Minh
"We Don't Care who gets elected, because whoever it is will be Overthrown"
-- Subcomandante Marcos
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!
formerly Brick
formerly COMRADE CRUM
"To defend Stalin requires more courage than making the Revolution." -Hafizullah Amin
Join the Midwest Marxist-Leninist group.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution." - George Jackson
Google the RCP and all you get is Revolution Newspaper.
formerly Brick
formerly COMRADE CRUM
"To defend Stalin requires more courage than making the Revolution." -Hafizullah Amin
Join the Midwest Marxist-Leninist group.
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.
Kasama Project- We Are the Ones
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Kasama Threads
"Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution." - George Jackson
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
no doubt I'm not arguing against that.
How do you want me to prove something said?
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.
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.
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.
"Love Other Human Beings like you would Yourself"
-- Ho Chi Minh
"We Don't Care who gets elected, because whoever it is will be Overthrown"
-- Subcomandante Marcos
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.
To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.
-Mikhail Bakunin
And they charged me, a distributor, $3.00. I'm a teenager; I don't have that sort of cash!
To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.
-Mikhail Bakunin
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 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.
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.
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. "
There are many types of different people in the RCP; groups of immigrants, blacks, intellectuals, students, etc.
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!
Kasama Project- We Are the Ones
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"Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution." - George Jackson
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
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.
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.
<span style=\'color:red\'>"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."
-Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852)</span>
<span style=\'color:blue\'>"When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express the fact that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created."
-Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto</span>
Industrial Workers of the World | Radio Rebelde!
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.
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.
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
Some Points on the Question of Revolutionary Leadership and Individual Leaders
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."
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.
Well, what does the Draft Programme of the RCP say?
The Party and the Masses
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.
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:
Read it here
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?
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."
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.
What???
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.
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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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Why? Because I'm breaking with the RCP? That's upsurd.
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!
no that's bob avakian. Yeah fuck the workers, Bob Avakian is essential to this revolution <_< c'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.
that's great, but this isn't something I'm gonna lie about, I've heard it countless times and its much more the oreintation of the party. I'm not saying this stuff because i get a kick out of it but because this is the tendecies that I can't stand for anymore.
Trade isn't reactionary, Imperialism is. Countries can trade and not be socialist comrade. Cuba isn't tied to imperialism. Cuba trades with other oppressed nations, Cuba'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'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'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.
I don't think the PSL says that, I think it was both.
PSL doesn't say that. they say he was key in bringing capitalism into the socialist state and attacking the gains of the working class.
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.
"Love Other Human Beings like you would Yourself"
-- Ho Chi Minh
"We Don't Care who gets elected, because whoever it is will be Overthrown"
-- Subcomandante Marcos
what?????????? how so?
well I uphold Mao, i just disagree with some the dogma and organizational principles
"Love Other Human Beings like you would Yourself"
-- Ho Chi Minh
"We Don't Care who gets elected, because whoever it is will be Overthrown"
-- Subcomandante Marcos
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?
<span style=\'color:red\'>"Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."
-Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852)</span>
<span style=\'color:blue\'>"When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society, they do but express the fact that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created."
-Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto</span>
Industrial Workers of the World | Radio Rebelde!
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 'to scare them' or to 'show them what the people want,' 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 'the spine' 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! Double the education budget!" They built their coalition around pacifist liberal calls to the imperialists to "Stop the war." Revolutionary defeatism and calling for the defeat of one'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 'a spine' (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 'LGBT liberationism' that identifies not as a movement of workers with sexual orientations deemed 'undesirable' 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!
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!
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't amount to a hill of beans; you'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 'super revolutionary' ultra-leftist kind of way, but that doesn't change their general direction.
I also know there are some good comrades in that group, but that, also, doesn't change the fact that the organization is fundamentally a reformist one.
You say this, and you're going to join the "we're going to unite all sectors of society to overthrow capitalism" PSL? Have you been to a PSL meeting in NYC?
I don't mean this in a disrespectful manner. I'm asking a serious question.
"Getting a job, finding a mate, having a place to live, finding a creative outlet. Life is a war of attrition. You have to stay active on all fronts. It's one thing after another. I've tried to control a chaotic universe. And it's a losing battle. But I can't let go. I've tried, but I can't." - Harvey Pekar
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
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."
"Getting a job, finding a mate, having a place to live, finding a creative outlet. Life is a war of attrition. You have to stay active on all fronts. It's one thing after another. I've tried to control a chaotic universe. And it's a losing battle. But I can't let go. I've tried, but I can't." - Harvey Pekar
LH:
I uphold him too, like a rope upholds a hanging man.
Sorry!
Well, I still applaud your bravery -- you are already receiving some of the bile us Trots get... :P
