Kasama

by Mike Ely

Ka Frank expresses a view that has been common among Maoists in the U.S.:

“The Cultural Revolution is the key experience of what we need to do after power is seized and has laid the key theoretical and practical foundations for the socialist transition to communism. However, it doesn’t answer the question of how to build a revolutionary movement and seize power in the U.S. or any other country. As important as the Cultural Revolution is, that is the central task before us.”

This has previously been my own view too  (particularly in those years when I was an activist within the Revolutionary Communist Party). Crudely speaking:

• Before the revolution, study the October Road (i.e. the Bolshevik experience seen through the Comintern experience of “Leninist party, united front, political preparation and insurrection) and update as needed.
• Then after the revolution, learn from the cultural revolution (i.e. the Maoist experience of fighting capitalist restoration, forms of popular democracy and criticism, wavelike nature of mass class struggle etc.), update as needed.

But I suspect that we need to break out of this framework quite a bit. It is far too confined — it overestimates the  universality of these particular models (and of models in general).

I’m convinced that we need to take a  radical new look at our own previous schema for revolutionary work (includiing the October Road itself, and its assumptions about conjuncture, crisis, “telescoping,” insurrection and civil war) — not to reject everything, but to clear away the gunk of dogma, dilletantism and lazy thinking.

In that process and that we may have a lot to learn about the whole sweep of experience within the twentieth century (including especially the GPCR).

Some contemporary Maoist forces have stressed the importance of the Cultural revolution in strategic matters before the seizure of power — there is value in looking “backwards” from our experience with socialism-in-power, to our developing plans for preparing-to-take-power.)

Going Beyond Lenin’s Party Plus Stalin’s State?

First, the Indian Maoists recently put forward that they intended to study the cultural revolution more closely in developing their power structures in today’s liberated zones (exploring whether innovations like the three-in-one committees etc. apply).

Second, French Maoists (since the birth of their movement in 1968) have always thought that many of the innovations of the cultural revolution applied to (and modified) their strategic approaches to power (in sharp distinction with the whole tradition of Communist Party in France, and elsewhere, that came out of the Comintern, or that was trying to get back to the Comintern.) for example, Alain Badiou (in his essay on the currents of French Maoism) writes about his group, the UCFML:

“There were three essential points of Maoist provenance that we practiced:

The first was that you always had to link up with the people, that politics for intellectuals was a journey into society and not a discussion in a closed room. Political work was defined as work in factories, housing estates, hostels. It was always a matter of setting up political organizations in the midst of people’s actual life.

The second was that you should not take part in the institutions of the bourgeois state: we were against the traditional trade unions and the electoral mechanism. No infiltration of the so-called workers’ bureaucracies, no participation in elections; that distinguished us radically from the Trotskyists.

The third point was that we should be in no hurry to call ourselves a party, to take up old forms of organization; we had to remain very close to actual political processes. “

If you look at this on a deeper level, they had a particular view of what the Cultural Revolution means for the communist view of the Leninist party (and what they considered the later model of the “party-state.”) It is frustrating that Badiou’s sharpest work on this is not easily available online (“The Cultural Revolution: The Last Revolution?“)

But the giste of Badiou’s view (and of many French Maoists of the 1968 era) is that the cultural revolution represented the exhaustion of the leninist party — as an idea and instrument that had served its purpose but had revealed its limitations. And they viewed the cultural revolution (as some of its Chinese participants and red guards also did) as a revolt against the whole Party-state, and an attempt to form a new concept of power based on a commune-model.

(One of the most controversial points in the cultural revolutin is when the advanced wave of revolution, in Shanghai, set up the Shanghai commune based in several hundred mass organizations, but without a single, new unified communist party structure — and Mao argued that this innovation was mistaken, and would lead to a state structure that was too weak to defeat counterrevolution, advocating the “three in one” party committees, and a radically revised but rebuilt communist party at their core.)

In short, one of the questions posed by the cultural revolution (for Maoists) has been whether to take a fresh look at the codified “leninist party” taken from the Comintern, and the one-party state-as-model inherited from the Stalin years.

This is, i believe, what Bill Martin is asking when he says:

“If we really need a new synthesis—I agree that we do—then surely this will also mean a rethinking of the idea of the party, or of organization, as well—and I could develop a number of themes related to this. Wasn’t there a different conception of organization in every previous synthesis?”

I believe the view(that U.S. Maoists have had) that said “the cultural revolution has implications for socialism, not for our immediate revolutionary struggle” pushes away from that table, and doesn’t really want to engage those questions (posted by Badiou or Bill Martin).

I think we should engage those questions.

One-Sidedness on the Supposed Exhaustion of the Party-State

I think that Badiou and his current of French maoists are basically wrong in their read of the cultural revolution. I don’t think this truly great revolutionary movement was (in its essence) a revolt against (and a refutation of) the whole “party-state” of the Chinese revolution. I don’t think Mao was “the last leninist.”

The GPCR was, in fact, a revolution against capitalit roaders within the state and party, and (importantly) it was a sweeping attempt to bring the masses into the revolutionary process in a radically new way. It is often not appreciated that the GPCR was the first mass movement where the question of “transition to communism” was squarely centerstage — for literally tens of millions of people. In the great Russian revolution (for example) the central demands were “bread, peace and land” and “all power to the soviets” — reflecting a merger of immediate demands with a transition to socialism. But in the GPCR, in a radically different way, the felt needs and deep grievances of the people were connected with many of the most profound questions of reaching CLASSLESS society worldwide. And for millions, the question of “what is real marxism leading to communism, what is  disguised bourgeois politics leading to capitalism” was posed and engaged in a way never before seen on earth.

Again, there was a profound debate WITHIN the cultural revolution over whether to “over throw all” — i.e. abolish the existing party and state and start afresh” — or whether to form a grand alliance of the revoutionary elements (among the masses, among the existing veteran cadre within the army and state, and within the rising revolutionary Maoist forces within the old party). Some forces (Kuai Dafu comes to mind) had the first position, and others (Mao and the Four in particular) thought that approach would lead to quick and complete disaster. So there were certainly powerful forces (especially among the radical activists at the base) supporting the overthrow of the existing party-state — but they were clearly not (once things sorted out) the Maoists, and (what is a separate matter) they were not correct.

(For those interested in this, it is worth reading Mao’s Talks st Three Meetings With Comrades Chang Ch’un-ch’iao And Yao Wen-yuan. And I won’t repeat his arguments here.)

Mao was clearly fighting for a party leading the revolution — but a newly reorganized party, essentially a new KIND of party, built from the newly emerging revolutionary elements (and that included significant sections of the 0ld party and state cadre) — new in the sense of a new consolidation around a line of revolutionary advance (under the dictatorship of the proletariat) and new in the sense that it had a different culture, structure, and relationship to the people.

Mao said (in the three meetings):

“If  everything were changed into commune, then what about the party? Where would we place the party? Among commune committee members are both party members and non-party members. Where would we place the party committee? There must be a party somehow! There must be a nucleus, no matter what we call it. Be it called the Communist party, or social democratic party, or Kuomintang, or I-kuan-tao, it must have a party. The commune must have a party, but can the commune replace the party?”

This whole issue: the relationship between a leading core (including professional cadre and leaders) and the broad masses of the people is a central issue in all of this. It is the question of political representation and a problem of political substitution. It is a condition where necessary divisions potentially  give rise to new oppression. And it is a question of the continuing, objective contradiction of mental and manual labor in class society.

The whoe problem (in my opinion) is that it can’t just be wished away (i.e. you can’t just decide to forgo leadership or leadership organizations, and go for direct democracy). As mao says, you can’t just declare a commune and direct democracy, and think you have solved anything.

You can’t just run a complex modern society (with foreign affairs and planned socialist economic development) by mass democratic forms. And so the issue is resolved concretely: in the development and evolution of organizational forms, and in the initiating and waging of real-world struggles over direction, in the ongoing analysis of problems and solution, and in the deepening involvement of the people (and the most conscious sections of the people) in their own developing emancipation.

Critical of Inherited Schema

In an analogy: I think we need to take a sharply critical view of the codified party forms we have “inherited” — but not start with the assumption that the whole Bolshevik experience is “exhausted.”

We have had a bad experiences with a particular form of “democratic centralism” — but that doesn’t mean we don’t need an organized revolutionary core that has democracy and centralism.

I am particularly struck by one fact: The folks who argue that the Leninist party (as such) is exhausted and outdated, have very little to offer as an alternative  (even though some of them  have been offering their negative verdict on leninism for literally decades.)

Badiou himself has advocated an approach of “politics without party” — which is an attempt to have a “post-Leninist” revolutionary politics of a new kind. But has anyone (including Badiou) explained what that means? Or what its outcome and successes have been (including in France where it has been implemented as Badiou’s “Organization Politique”)?

I understand why people find signs of exhaustion in the rigid party formulas we have inherited — but i believe that there are very real and material contradictions (within society and class struggle) that require serious forms of combat organization (including discipline, levels of unity, leadership, security and so on).

Clearly our understanding of communist organization needs new creativity, new attention to real conditions and (as a concept) it needs revolutionizing.

Clearly it has been nuts to assume that the same organizational form and formulas apply in all places and all time (all levels of struggle, all moments within the revolutionary preparation)….. it has been ritual and dogma, not the serious development and evolution of organization in service to a living revolutionary process. Clearly we need to develop a revolutionary set of organizations that are connected organizally with a mass revolutinary upsurge (and with the people themelves) — or else we would be repeating the tragi-comedy of shrinking sects puffing themselves up as “vanguards” (of what? of who? by what bare wisp of legitmate accomplishment or real representation ?)

Revolutionizing Communist Organization – Study Critically, Test Independently

So, in short, I’m for a focused and creative revolutionizing of communist organization — and of our theory of communist organization. (I.e., not just a regrouping on an old basis — as some “old school RCP but without that party’s most recent madnesses.” That doesn’t appreciate the depth of the problems.)

And I think that we should draw for this from several sources:

1) from a demythologized study of what the actual experience of the bolsheviks was.

There is a formula passed on as history — where a small, isolated ultra-militarized bolshevik party borrowed away as a propaganda sect 15 years before the masses “discovered” them in 1917, and they were able to “telescope” to state power. It is a myth that (obviously) serves to pluck up the courgage of small, isolated, propaganda sects — but it has little in common with what the Bolshevik Party actually was, how it changed over time in major ways, how it developed organic ties among the people, how it connected with spontaneousl revolutionary energies, etc. Much more acquaintance with the actual history of this period would help dispell many lingering dogmatic assumptions.

2) from a fresh look at the cultural revolution — its implications for the relations of the party with the people, its sense of the role of consciousness and the importance of the communist endgoal, its revealing of the wavelike character of the class struggle and more.

3) I think we should think through the experience of repeated capitalist restoration in the twentieth century — and ask what that means for the structures and cultures of future revolutionary attempts.

Put sharply: One of the hardest questions of the twentieth century, was why did capitalist restoration in the soviet union and china happen with so little sharp conflict? why did it not take a civil war? why were the people often not armed to resist (with the consciousness, self-controlled organization and weapons neccesary to resist a seizure at the heights of party power). Why were other levels of party organization not able to “take the reins and ride” in opposition to people like Krushchev and Deng?

I think we need to consider the fact that the experience of the twentieth century may suggest important modifications in how revoutionary movements are developed (including now before the seizure of power). And I think we should assume that our revolutionary state power will not take  Stalin’s highly centralized, police-guarded, one-party state as a universal model.

4) we need to study and critically assumilate the experiences and proposals of communists in other parts of the world.

I think it is intiguing and bold for the Nepali Maoists to try to carve a new path toward socialism — and to consider maintaining a multi-party dynamic into the socialist period. I don’t know if THEIR specific experiement will succeed.  I think they are wrong  in ann9uncing their schema  as univeral, but i think it is also very odd for others to rule out the experiment a priori.   Bourgeois states have been highly diverse in form and complextion — from the first hanseatic states three hundred years ago, to the modern capitaist states of today. The capitalists  have used constitutional monarchies, hanseatic city states, theocratic governments, fascist dictatorships, military juntas, radical democratic directorates, social democratic parliamentary states, and many other forms. These state forms were all (in their class nature) bourgeois (built on and serving a capitalist economic base) — but they had a diversity of form that arose from the complex particularities of time and place. Why should socialism be any different? Why should the particular state forms that arose in russia (under very specific conditions, in a place marked by a very specific political culture and history) be universal? I don’t believe it

5) I think we need to take a deep look into the PARTICULAR social formation (the U.S.) that we are attempting to revolutionize (in the interests of the people of the world) — its history, its forms, the political assumptions of its peoples, the real embedded objective contradictions that give rise to various dynamics, and more. I was always struck by the rather raw indifference of the RCP to analyze the political dynamics and forms of the U.S. — the complexities of this large country, the reasons for its weak central power, the reasons for generalized suspition of central state power, etc. Without understanding such things (both their objective roots and their subjective expiessions) deeply, from a communist revolutionary prespective, revolution is impossible.

6) I think we need to actually understand how the world (as a whole has changed) — and what it means to have a much more tightly integrated world system (information, economy, military, population migrations etc).

I think we should take our inherited formulas (leninist party, democratic centralism, cellular structure, claims of vanguard status, conceptions of discipline and political unanimity, squelching of internal debate and groupings, and so on) and subject it all to a real and protracted critique — identifying what is real, important, general, and necessary, and also identifying what is isolating, unnecessary, inapplicable and previously imposed without sense of time-or-place.

Specifically On Mao’s Cultural Revolution — And the Need for a Communist Vision

Back to the specific issue raised by Carl and Ka Frank: I argue there is much in the cultural revolution that has relvance now  as we study and debate new communist organization:

First: Like the Cultural revolution I don’t think we should assume that PREVIOUS forms of communist organization are fixed, permanent and universal. I think we need to be much more critical, creative and flexible as we regroup — and “make each decision justify itself” (on a basis more materialist than “this is how it has always been done.”)

Second, the Cultural Revolution represented a sweeping assertion of the importance of the conscious role of people –  conscious activism of the oppressed people themselves, and of advanced revolutionary militants emerging from the people – of the role of “knowing the world to change the world.” And in particular the importance of grappling with the end goal — with the transition to communist itself (and the abolition of the four alls). This vision is quite different (for example) form the notion of “program of  transitional demands,” where people are tirelessly mobilized around (and trained to be preoccupied with) immediate self interest and structural reforms — with the idea of initiating a kind of  sli-i-i-i-i-ide into taking power, as the people finally  ”realize” that no other means exists for reaching their desired goals.

This approach negates the need for communist political work WITHIN the key movements of class struggle, and so produces no real communist political work (except in a notoriously sterile and scholastic way). From the beginning, the people need a movement for an alternative society — envisioned as a counter-pole to this society, not seen through a fragmenting into smaller demands. And they need this, even while they are (inevitably and necessarily, and in their masses) fighting for smaller demands — against injustices, atrocities, bitter oppressions that they (and their brothers and sisters around the world) are facing.

Third, I also think that there is great value in the startling way the cultural revolution de-mythologized the communist party and its aparatus. The deadening sense of infallibility and unquestioning legitimacy was discarded. (From “Don’t touch the tiger’s ass” to “Bombard the headquarters!”)

In many ways, the political forces of society had to present to the people their goals and aspirations, and also their short comings. In the cultural revolution, leaders had to be “both target and motive force” — i.e. they had to lead (as a motive force pushing forward), but also present themselves as target (i.e. to be evaluated and if-need-be criticized and asked to transform, or even asked to step down).

This is not so much a demand for each communist leader to be “laid bare” — but a suggestion of how a movement (as a whole) can present itself to the people — as something that serves them, that is (objectively) fallible but fighting for the road forward. (Both motive force and target!)

It suggests a relationship (between the party and the people) that demands participation and critical consciousness from all, and assumes nothing is infallible. It is worth noting the obvious here: that the Lin Biao-Chenboda cult of Mao was a countercurrent to this — an attempt to use Mao’s leadership (and prestige) as a way to backdoor the concept of “infallibility” — and to create a relationship between the party and the masses that would better serve fascism (and a Lin-headed military dictatorship) than a communist revolution.

I draw from that (yet again) that we need a communist movement (in the sense of a movement GOING for this kind of communist future) — and not just some militant “fight-back” movement, or a plodding reform movement vaguely “inspired” by occasional reference to its plodding vision of “socialism”).

We need to go through quite a bit of transformation before we have conceived of a new communist movement that can really organically connect to the people around us, and can also genuinely serve (in a farsighted way) their interests of a radicallly new society.

Are there things that need to be incorporated into the very culture and organizaiton of the revolutionary movement that will prove crucial in maintaining revolutionary engerty and consciousness through the transition period?

Does our experiences demand more attention to critical thinking (even in the earlier stages where the movement faces close conflict with the repressive state), does our experience suggest more emphasis on acocuntability “from below” to prevent the party structure (and leadership) from disconnecting with reality (and the real popular needs and thinking)?

Are there modifications to our “mass line” that we should make (based on the experience of both the cultural revolution, and also the bitter result of capitalist restoration)?

These questions have implications for how the socialist transition is organized and led (underscoring Mao’s insistance on mass upsurges, which are btw startlingly absent from the benovolent despotism of Avakian’s new synthesis).

And I suspect these questions have implications for how the socialist revolution is organized and led before the revolution itself…. right?