Opposing Lines on Maoist Revolution: RCP,USA and CP of Nepal (Maoist)
Posted by Mike E on March 23, 2009
Click to read
Kasama is publishing the key documents of the line struggle that has intensified between the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.
To read the main documents of this line struggle, print our new Kasama pamphlet (“Two Lines, Five Letters“).
We have posted below two RCP letters from (Nov. 2008 and Oct. 2005) and the single response from the CPN(M) (June 2006).
[Put comments about the RCP/CPN(M) exchange in this thread.]
zerohour said
Just a few quick remarks.
What struck me in RCP’s critique is its idealism. Instead of proceeding from the material conditions in Nepal and practice of the CPN[M], they raise the concept of New Democracy as an “ideal type” against which to measure the CPN[M]‘s public statements. Anything that doesn’t match up is dismissed as “revisionism”. A genuine materialist analysis would at least include the relations between the different political forces, not just other parties but mass organizations, and relatedly, political sentiment among the larger population. None of this is necessary, when one has a master text to filter reality through. Despite the obligatory quoting of Lenin on the “concrete analysis of concrete conditions” the exact opposite has occurred here.
RCP claim that a revolutionary state “”could take giant steps forward, and quickly, to solve many of the most basic problems of the masses, such as food security, employment within the country, sanitation, basic health services in the rural areas, and much more” but doesn’t say how this could be done differently in Nepal; with what resources, with what configuration of political forces, in what timeframe? Line isn’t about attractive-sounding proclamations but about how they get expressed in practice.
At one point the RCP puts their activity on the same level as the CPN[M]‘s by lamenting that “the actual communism of the twenty-first century as it is concretely emerging is being ignored, belittled or opposed” in favor of the Nepalese. By “actual”, RCP mean themselves. But what actuality could they be referring to? One that has the experience of mobilizing millions into a revolutionary movement that has made great strides toward seizing power? Or one that is encapsulated in a document and series of talks that has produced no serious results in terms of accurate analysis or mass influence? Or is the latter criticism pragmatist?
As I mentioned before, one thing missing from the critique is the masses, more specifically, the ways in which a revolution can bring people into political life and give expression to popular power. In the CPN[M] response to RCP in 2005, they say:
This is a problem an actual communist movement must face in the real world, not in the world of neat formulas.
RCP simply refuse to take seriously the CPN[M]‘s determination to win hegemony among the urban population before seizing power. This doesn’t speak well for their supposed breakthroughs in summing up the historical experience of socialism.
artemi0 said
The CPN M notes a pattern of erroneous conclusions and predictions the RCP has made about the revolution in Nepal going back 15 + yrs.
The RCP also predicted that in Nepal “most likely” CPN M would be defeated in the CA elections, and it was “extremely unlikely” the CPN M would lead the government.
The RCP’s predictions- concerning events in the USA haven’t turned out to be accurate either. A christian fascist theocracy that was on the verge, a hair away from consolidating total power? Revolution or World War 3 in the 1980′s?
Objective reality doesn’t seem to matter much to the RCP- despite all their talk of science and truth.
nando said
Artemio writes:
This actually stands out in many ways in their polemics (which are so packed with half-truths that it would take an answer the size of a phone book to unravel them.) I’ll give just one (somewhat obscure) example that jumped out at me.
The Question of Overtaking Switzerland
Several places, the RCP complains that the Nepalese Maoists make an analogy between Nepal and Switzerland. For example in the RCP’s letter dated Nov 2008 there is a subhead that says: ““Emancipators Of Humanity” Or Builders of A New Switzerland?” and they write:
a little later they add:
So there is a simple logic laid out here: Switzerland is an imperialist country, so anyone who makes an analogy between switzerland and nepal MUST be aspiring to become a capitalist place, or else (at the very least) must be highly confused about these basic distinctions.
And such an argument might be influential to anyone who (a) doesn’t know much about the history of socialist revolution, and (b) doesn’t know anything about switzerland, nepal and ways such an analogy has had a symbolic meaning in Nepali political discussions about “development.”
first of all, there is a long history of communist movements and socialist countries measuring their development goals by “overtaking” this or that imperialist country. for example, Mao raised the slogan (in the 1950s) of overtaking britain in fifteen years — and then during the Great Leap Forward the question was debated whether it would be possible to do that in ten years. Now that didn’t mean that Mao was confused (that he didn’t grasp that britain was an imperialist country), it didn’t mean that Mao wanted himself to lead an imperialist country or take china on that road, it didn’t mean that Mao was ignorant of the fact that BRITAIN’s development had been rooted in colonialism and slave trade.
It means the for Mao (and the Chinese Maoists) economic development (industrialization, mechanization of agriculture, development of infrastructure) were serious goals and achievements of the socialist revolution — and that they were determined to break out of the confines of colonialism and feudalism — and they took the world’s most developed economies as targets they could surpass (precisely using the means of New Democratic and socialist revolution).
I say this not because I want to promote the logic “If Mao did it, it must be right.” But because it points out that the RCP makes their arguments assuming their readers have no knowledge of how similar questions have posed themselves historically. And also because the RCP has reached a very idealist point where almost ANY discussion of development raised their suspicions that your don’t really intend to be an “emancipator of humanity.”
Development is not the only goal of revolution in a country like Nepal — but it is certainly a major one (given the “fourth world” conditions, and the extent of absolute impoverishment among the people). Given the RCP’s growing departure from connection with material reality, even a discussion of rapid economic development (and increase of the productive forces) in an oppressed country sounds suspicious and capitalist. And any discussion of overtaking a country like switzerland stinks of capitalism.
* * * * * *
Now why would the Nepali Maoists discuss overtaking Switzerland (instead of say, italy, or south Korea?)
Well, because there IS an analogy to be made. Switerland is a small country, that emerged between great powers in europe. It is a landlocked country made up of huge mountains and steep valleys, with very little farmland gathered in a few border areas. The country has few natural resource, and a very scattered population.
When the Maoists’ leadership of Nepal toured europe several years ago, they visited (and investigated) Switzerland. And they spelled out (in some detail) some things that they thought that a Nepali revolutionary might find interesting about Switzerland. For one thing, over its history, it remained free of both occupation and strategic entanglements with bigger surrounding powers. Second, switzerland (like Nepal) has a great deal of hydro-electric potential (and few other natural resources), and so the possibility of developing of Nepal’s waterfalls as a basis of electification meant that they found aspects of Switzerland’s infrastructure interesting. And finally, Switzerland (unlike almost any other country in the world) does not rely on a standing army — its military defenses are organized as a militia (where every adult man must serve) led by a much smaller core of trained professional soldiers. In this the Swiss bourgeoisie has relied on the difficulty of foreign powers to occupy the high mountains — and their vulnerability to an indigenous resistance. This corresponds with proposals made by the Maoists, that a revolutionary Nepal consider abandoning the model of a standing army, and use its fighters to train large numbers of the people in preparation for mass resistance (especially to the possibility of an Indian invasion, which remains the main military threat to the Nepali revolution and national independence).
In making such statements (which were aimed at explaining in a popular way some of the Maoist plans for New Nepal) were the Maoists confused about the capitalist nature of Switzerland? Uh, no. several times (I remember) they remarked that they were making these analogies and comparisons while understanding quite well that Switzerland is a capitalist country, and that as communists this is not the road they envision taking.
And so, the discussion of Switzerland in Nepalese politics is not really so silly — and not inherently rooted in confusion about the difference between capitalism and socialism. And when communists have been leading socialist societies or major revolutionary movements they have often made such analogies (not just Mao to britain, but Lenin and Stalin discussing things they intended to learn from the U.S.)
* * * * * * *
There are major line questions tied up in such analogies. And it all does ultimately depend on what you mean and what you intend to do. And there has always been a powerful tendency among some revolutionaries from Third World countries to see the socialist revolution (in the third world) as being simply an alternative way to achieve the development denied them by the configurations of the capitalist system.
We can and should discuss whether the Nepali Maoist approach to this is correct — or whether sections of their movement have different approaches on these questions. And discuss whether it is possible to rest economic development (in a poor and isolated future-socialist country) on hydroelectric power (which generally takes huge capital investments and technology that come with political strings attached). But, we can’t even get to that important and substantive discussion, if the whole political air is made murky by such dogmatic, idealist and deceptive methods.
and in this light, I’d like to add that the RCP’s polemics are almost completely devoid of such real-world discussions. Yes, they are right (in one sense) that there is a fundamental question (and matter of overall line) “whether development must come by being more integrated into the capitalist and imperialist system…”
But how do you SOLVE that problem? By simply asserting that you mustn’t be “integrated into the capitallist and imperialist system”? After a hundred years of complex experience, where are the summations and lessons of that? Are such things solved merely by asserting the “principles” (as the RCP says at the end of the Nov 2008 document) — or does that avoid the difficult question of exploring (both in theory and real life) how a small, poor, landlocked country develops a socialist economy (or, if it can’t, what it then takes as its strategic approach for serving the world revolution as a base area.)
My point (in raising this relatively obscure example of the RCP’s repeated discussion of Switzerland in their polemics) is that the whole thing is conducted repeatedly using a very rigid, misleading and categorical “logic” where there is only one thing that you need to know about Switzerland –that it is an imperialist country — and so by a false sequence of logical steps, any communist making analogies to Switzerland MUST be pro-capitalist or at best confused.
and it all builds up to the last paragraph (of the Nov 2008 letter) where (surprise!) the solution (this time as a rope, not just a thread!) is there for the taking in Bob Avakian’s New Synthesis.
And you get the sense that the authors of the RCP polemics are really speculating on the “info diet” — i.e. that a large part of their intended audience are people who will learn ‘the facts’ about Nepal FROM the RCP’s polemic, and will not have independently followed some of the discussions of Switzerland within Nepali politics and so (trapped in the singularity of their solid core) will not have any sense of how deceptive the RCP’s “logic” is.
And I’m raising this because these methods are applied throughout these polemics (and a number of other polemics the RCP has made recently) — and they rest on a misleading combination of dogmatism, mechanical logic and indifference to the actual particularities.
Rosa L. said
I would like to add to Nando’s sharp points, that these letters show something we already new by the years of RCP silence on the Nepalese revolution, but was not confirmed until now: the RCP basically gave up long time ago on the CPN(Maoist) and on the Nepalese revolution.
They characterized the CPN(Maoist) line as revisionist and as a betrayal long time ago. This is really disturbing because it shows how doctrinaire, eurocentric and dogmatic is RCP leadership. They have no respect for the tactics derived from very specific and concrete conditions the Nepalese maoists were facing. Abstract principles and Avakian’s self-citation pamphlets will not replace the “concrete analysis of concrete conditions.”
It is very easy to judge from an imperialist country what people are facing in the Third World and make condescending and sweeping statements against them without a deep understanding of the concrete conditions that inform their tactical options.
The latter and the point raised by Nando on the RCP underestimation of Nepaleses Maoist intelligence in the discussion about Switzerland is a form of epistemic racism, that is, the inferiorization of the world view, intelligence and perspective of peoples in the non-Western world. This is a form of white supremacy that is never discussed nor mentioned in discussions about “racism.”
RCP leaders can be radically anti-racist when it comes to social and economic issues, but reactionary racist when it comes to questions of epistemology. RCP do not see Third World Maoist such as Nepalese Maoist as epistemologically equal to them but as inferior in terms of the understanding of what needs to be done. RCP leaders reproduce a condescending and paternalizing epistemic racism treating the Nepalese Maoist as children that should read Avakian in order to learn and not to deviate from the correct line.
Moreover, by raising Avakianism to a universalist doctrine with disregard to the “concrete analysis of concrete conditions,” you have the reproduction of a form of Eurocentrism from the left. This Euro-American epistemic privilege given to Avakian and RCP leadership is a form of American chauvinism from the left. In attacking CPN-Maoist as “nationalist” they are really hiding their own chauvinism disguised as a so-called internationalist view. If someone in the Third World affirms a particular tactic with regard to the concrete conditions they face, they are accused by RCP as nationalist and anti-internationalist in the name of a chauvinistic eurocentric white supremacist epistemic racist dogma disguised as “scientific” and “objective”. The recipe they recommend is: READ AVAKIAN’S NEW SYNTHESIS.
Convert to the message of the new messiah! Avakianism is a new form of white supremacist epistemic chauvinism from the left. As much critiques we might have of what Nepalese maoist are doing today, back in 2005, 2006 and 2007 they were doing the right thing given the concrete situation they were faced in Nepal.
RCP leaders read history backwards. The RCP leaders basically says now that the “revisionist” trend inside the CPN(Maoist) goes back in time. This explains their silence over the years and their lack of solidarity towards the struggles of Nepalese people. RCP leaders demonstrate with this that they are not only a non-internationalist group but a “FirstWorldist” chauvinistic group. The struggle inside the Nepalese Maoist is not over yet even if RCP leaders gave up on them long time ago. The CPN)Maoist line to struggle for the formation of a democratic bourgeois parliament and to lead it in a context of struggle against a monarchy and agrarian landowners sustained by India and US imperialism, was not an incorrect tactic if you understand the concrete geopolitical conditions of Nepal.
The problem Nepalese maoists are facing now is that one divides in to two: some people in their leadership want to end the struggle there while others are fighting to move forward towards New Democracy. This struggle is not over yet and we have to be more humble in our judgements from afar. To dismiss Nepalese Maoist as revisionist as RCP leaders do is a doctrinaire and chauvinistic reproduction of epistemic white supremacy. Accordingly, Avakian has the superior view and the rest should follow him. If you are not with him, you are against him. Thus, the white supremacist chauvinistic conclusion of RCP leaders is: Nepalese people and Nepalese maoist are not worth of support and solidarity. Isn’t this similar to some of the worst problems of the Third International when dealing with struggles of oppressed nations? Didn’t Mao has to struggle against the chauvinistic and epistemic racist dictates of the Third International when they tried to imposed from Moscow their line about how to fight militarily a war or about what the the correct line should be? Isn’t Avakianism a reproduction of this same eurocentric problems faced before by the Third International in their conflictive relation with oppressed nations in the colonial and neo-colonial world? This is all “deja-vu” to me…
Green Red said
Have some mercy dear Ka Rosa L about their being judgemental about the third world nations. You know, maybe if i was in SDS and in touch with Black Panther Party and chair of Peace and Freedom Party and then inventing RIM of course I expected more respect… Before age takes somebody away s/he’s gotta write her/his greatest thing and become an unforgetable leader in history, at least amnong his peers.
But the parts of Nepalese Maoists’ response and asking very deep question about army that could get rid of Japanese imperialists but, couldn’t do a thing against Deng and, Soviet army could get rid of Nazis but couldn’t solve Stalin death and the betrayal after that. Experimenting new democracies with all its awkward route is truly an experience we should learn from.
Not much time has passed since prime minister is chosen, let’s see what comes out of him or, against him from the party radicals in the long rund but, generaly not only in this case, in many similar conditions of other people’s struggle, acting like a snob and judgmental about other nation’s struggle can only come from absolute egotism or, Marx forbid, megalomania.
I say it to all people. even when suggesting things, make your criticizm productive, not hateful, toward other parties. But beside that, if you have something to prove, prove it in your own struggle.
p.s. make something that works and, if it didn’t go far enough, don’t blame others!
J.B. Connors said
The RCP writes in the final paragraphs of 11/08 letter:
And then they finish the paragraph with:
In other words the Nepalis have the advanced practice, but it is, ha ha, Bob Avakian that has the advanced theories. This expression underscores the raw sectarianism of the RCP’s defining belief (since 2003) that Bob Avakian is THE cardinal question – the dividing line between Marxism and counter-revolutionary revisionism. To ascribe the “advanced understanding” to the RCP and limit the contributions of the Nepalis to just “advanced practice” is astounding arrogance. Both the self praise of the RCP and the implied disrespect to the Nepalis are completely undeserved.
Zack said
The Nepalese comrades state:
Shit, I think “frustrating” is putting it rather lightly. I’m in agreement with Rosa when she talks about the sort of chauvinistic tone the RCP produce in their initial letter of criticism with the Nepalese comrades. It reeks of a sort of, “you obviously haven’t really thought this stuff through, here… sit down and listen” mentality. A sort of “sit down/shut up/here’s the new synthesis” approach, if you will.
***
The second RCP letter which states:
The patronizing and dramatic language referring to the poor and seemingly helpless Nepalese comrades as drowning is rather contrary to reality. On a side not, this quote really brings out in public the sort of isolation the RCP has created for itself with its rather dogmatic/sectarian turns.
It’s all right there, for the taking… the New Synthesis. Pfffft.
***
It is good to see that the RCP has finally given up and decided to reveal yet another example of their rampant dogmatic and sectarian guidelines to what is/isn’t “communist.”
Makes for a lot less speculation, now.
gangbox said
There’s an old saying “even a broken clock is right twice a day”.
And I think that’s exactly what’s happening here.
The RCP is right on the money about the CPN(M).
The Nepali maoists have indeed renounced marxism leninism, and are far down the road of counterrevolution – and I’m glad the RCP has finally gone public in admitting that fact.
The only unfortunate thing is that they waited so long to go public – and, I suspect, based on the first document in the RCP’s series of statements, the CPN(M)’s public criticism of Bob Avakian is the primary reason the RCP has come out and publicly called the CPN(M) on it’s counterrevolutionary line.
But no matter – belatedly or not, and for the wrong reasons or not, the RCP is correct here – the CPN(M) is counterrevolutionary.
David_D said
I’m honestly rather surprised by this. I haven’t studies the documents yet, but gave a cursory overview. With this, RCP has rather formally broken with the Nepalese Maoist party, and in fact supported opposition factions. This is a pretty serious step. I know RCP never tried to make the Nepal support like its “Peru franchise,” but I’m surprised nonetheless.
My first step is to really wonder if, using RCP’s method of analysis here, would it have supported Mao Zedong’s leadership of the CPC during 1935-1945? I cannot see that it would do so.
The criticism of the Switzerland thing is just ludicrous grasping at straws. Of course Nepal’s Maoists want to develop the country.
artemi0 said
Nando,
I almost always find your posts informative, and deep. We should get into more what you are advancing about “this” particular example of an overall RCP method of distortion and half truths.
This polemic sets up a kind of false dichotomy between bourgois democracy and new democracy- in relation to the revolutionary struggle in Nepal. It’s false in the sense that it picks and chooses what statements it chooses to include, and those that are chosen for exclusion.
There is also a lot of mythologizing about past successful communist revolutions (namely Russia and China)- and what events in the process are highlighted, which statements by the leading party’s are selectively included, and those which are selectively excluded
This is not to say that an actual contradiction does not exist, in both the concept of new democracy itself and it’s concrete application in Nepal. Our comrades in Nepal are well aware of this contradiction- they have spoken to it at length. Nowhere have they made the claim that at this point in their revolution- New Democracy has been attained.
The RCP polemic pretends that they have. Even more- they don’t really view NDR as a process (spanning years or even decades)- full of twists and turns, highs and lows, peaks and valleys, and shifting alignments all along the way.
At this moment in the Nepalese revolution there is a fork in the road- which way forward is the question.
Socialism wretched from extremely difficult objective conditions?
Stagnation, hold on to what can be held- hoping to work out an advance tommorrow?
and even a line that the RCP correctly identifies as one that essentially says- this is the best we can do, we cant advance any more right now?
The Samir Amin article posted on the SA Rev site- provides a pretty good snapshot of where the revolution is at, upholding it’s advances, and putting the questions of the day on the table.
The heavy weight and chain of the absolute monarchy has been swept away through a decade of open conflict in the form of peoples war combined with the peoples movement. The Nepalese masses in their millions have been active participants in this struggle- in both rural and urban areas. The Maoist’s in Nepal- have earned the love, and respect of a sizable chunck of the population- through the actions of the PLA, the paralell governments, the peoples movements, and even, Yes…fucking god forbid, a constituent assembly election (and the demand for constituent assembly has a roughly 40 yr history in Nepali politics in general, Nepali communist politics in particular!).
Is there uneveness in the people’s understanding of the road forward? Yes- and it will never be otherwise in a real living revolution. I believe Lennin said something along the lines of- in a revolution it is never the case where the masses line up on one side and say,” We are for socialism.” and on the other the reactionary elements line up and say, “We are for capitalism.” and then square off from there. The RCP’s schematic thinking, formula, and doctrine wishes objectictive reality would fit neatly into this tidy confined box. And curses events unfolding on the ground for not being so.
Are there personalities and strong currents in the CPN M who’s political lines converge with stagnation? Yes
or taking a step backward? Yes
Are there personalities and strong currents in the CPN M who’s political lines- are pushing for advance, taking a leap forward? Yes
This data does not compute with the RCP’s theoretical vision, and current practice- of a monolithic party. The grim pull of singularity that the RCP demands- has not and will not lead to any revolutionary progression or advance in the U.S. Further-a strong rope will not be enough to rescue the RCP as a whole from demise. It would take a cosmic realignment, a shift of planetary forces, to shift the gravity out of the black hole the RCP has fallen (and been sucked into) over the last 3-5 years.
The 1 positive thing I can gather from the RCP polemics against our Nepalese comrades- is that in a pompous, parental, dilletantist, and roundabout way- they manage to (if one really reads between the lines) acknowledge this pitchfork in the road.
The Nepalese revolution- right now- is either going to fail, capitulate,be defeated- OR- advance on the path towards socialism and communism. The upsetting thing about it is the RCP seems to have already arrived at the conclusion that the revolution in Nepal is destined to fail BECAUSE it has not adopted the new synthesis “pioneered” by bob avakian.
No revolution is destined to suceed- revolutions that are mythologized and presented this way are always done so after the fact of success. Most genuine, sincere, revolutionary communist forces (unfortunately)-meet failure, defeat, or capitulate eventually. This is a “truth” that makes us cringe. We must confront it and deal with it nonetheless.
The RCP ironically- makes the error- of stagnation- holding onto what can be held, a “pure” ideology, mythologized, romanticized, eulogized, divorced from practice- in hopes that an advance may be made tommorrow by stubbornly clinging to these notions- without any real daring or experiment in strategic or tactical practice.
There is much to excavate in these polemical exchanges. I am in no rush- to rush- and craft a quick rebuttel or response to this. The RCP took their sweet ass time before making these polemics public. I think Kasama participants should spend some time exploring all the issues raised by both sides in this sharp struggle- without rushing towards a dogmatic verdict.
So let’s take a week or so to think it over.
(Lol- Just Kidding- it will take longer than that)- laughter
I would like to take the opportunity here- to get into the questions of New Democracy.
Is the NDR a formula or model sucessfully pioneered by Mao- that has never been reproduced or replicated since his time? which would be 60yrs since a victory, 85 yrs since an initiation?
New Democratic Revolution is by definition, a contradictory concept, that involves stages and substages, and a combination of stages- depending on the concrete conditions in a particular country- to make leaps.
Doesn’t NDR complete the tasks of the bourgeois revolution, but under the leadership of the proletariat, on the road toward socialism? What does this mean in our modern era? Where in the world are we talking about ?
artemi0 said
Gangbox,
I have another saying- that’s not exactly a cliche
A broken clock is wrong exactly 86,398 times each and every single day.
That’s a more accurate description of the RCP
Stiofan said
The crusty leftoids over at marxmail have succinctly sumarised the Avakian line as
“RCP to Nepal: Drop Dead.”
Green/Red rev said
But see, at least they were honest in some parts like they predicted CPN M won’t get elected in the CA election. Then when it went otherwise, they admitted they’d been wrong on that part.
It happens to be the largest party, with biggest massive support and that is the key matter of its survival and future.
You never know, if their Federal Democratic People’s Republic is someday formed and gets closer to old fashion style they worship (Stagnation – I learnt new English word!) eventualy they admit their error and start accepting its special condition and road.
Rosa L. said
J.B. Connors is right in his point above: for the RCP leaders
The quotes from RCP letters that J.B. Connors provides are very illustrative of this point. This is exactly the way epistemic racism works: through a condescending sense of epistemic superiority vis-a-vis the inferior thought of the non-Western others. In epistemic racism, third world people/people of color have the practice and experience (but their knowledge is inferior) while white/European people have the advanced theories because their knowledge is considered to be superior.
This epistemic racism of RCP leaders is exactly the way Western philosophers (Kant and Hegel included) thought about the North/South division of the world: reason and advanced theories are geopolitically located in the Western/European world while irrationality and lack of reason is located in the non-European/non-Western world. The underlying unstated assumption is: Western people have higher intelligence than non-Western peoples. This is eurocentrism at its best!!!
Avakian and RCP leaders reproduces a form of white supremacist epistemic racism. We need to dig more on this question because it is not enough to be socially and economically anti-racist if you still behave in condescending racist ways underestimating the intelligence of non-Western people, inferiorizing their thought and on top of this telling them that they need to read Bob Avakian to get it right.
There is a contradiction here in the RCP leadership: on the one hand they are socially and economically radical anti-racist while at the same time are conservative epistemic racist. This is an old problem in the International Communist Movement that goes back to the First, Second and Third International. Lenin was probably the most radical European thinker of his time while Mao had to go against the canon and directives of the Third International to successfully develop the Chinese Revolution.
Avakian has raised his thought to a global/imperial design from the left and cannot stand that his so-called new synthesis is not taken seriously by most parties in the RIM.
Any tactic developed in relation to the concrete situation of the practice of revolution is characterized by RCP leaders as nationalist, empiricist and pragmatist because it deviates from the abstract universal dogmatic eurocentric principles of Avakianism. For RCP, MLM is over and is being rapidly replaced by Avakianism. Any one who dares to identify today as MLM without following and appreciating Avakian’s thought is for them a revisionist of some type….
David_D said
RCP’s error is a “Leftist” one. If a new-democratic system were established, would a section of the Maoist leadership do over to the camp of reaction? Almost certainly, yes. Are there Maoists who are really bourgeois democrats? Yes, almost assuredly. And some would go from being bourgeois democrats to capitalist roaders in the future. But right now, what the Maoists are fighting for is not socialism, but a new-democratic system, with a multi-class alliance. The proposed constitution, as pointed out on this site, would prohibit pro-imperialist political parties. They are struggling to neutralize the reactionaries in a state of dual power.
And, during this complicated process, the RCP has to publically release these letters. It reminds me of Trotsky during the negotiations with the Germans after the Bolshevik Revolution – in the name of “revolution,” refusing to have tactical flexibility with what became the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. It also reminds me what RCP rightly termed Enver Hoxha’s “dogmato-revisionism” after the counterrevolution in China. Instead of rising to the occasion, Hoxha attacked Mao as a social-democrat and right-winger for, among other things, his advocacy of New Democracy. Hoxha pulled out all kinds of quotes showing how Mao was allegedly pro-capitalist because of things he said in the late 30′s and 40′s. RCP definitely reminds me of this “Left” revisionism with these letters.
David_D said
Addressing Rosa L’s comments: I do not know on what basis you make the accusation of Euro-chauvinism.
RCP is wrong, but how is it imperialist chauvinism? Simply because RCP is a first world party criticizing a third world party?
That wouldn’t be a sufficient basis for such a conclusion. “Tone” or “form” of the criticisms? If that is it, then what about it?
I’m hesitant to in any way accept the argument that “just” because a party has led armed struggle that its political positions must be more correct than a party that has never done so. That said, the Nepalese party, I believe, has done more than simply lead armed struggle: it has continuously creatively solved problems facing the Nepalese revolution. We could be looking at an entirely different situation right now, in which the Nepalese Maoists were crushed, as happened in Peru. But Gyanendra’s auto-coup didn’t work and a multi-class alliance was forged, tentative as it was. I have wondered if PCP had sought out a front with APRA and United Left in April 1993, radically modifying its tactics, might things have gone differently.
nando said
gangbox writes:
Correct me if i’m wrong, Gangbox, but as a trotskyist of the most extremely sectarian and workerist camps, you believe that the whole Maoist approach of New Democracy (anti-feudal, anti-imperialist revolution as a first stage of the socialist revolution) is “far down the road of counterrevolution.” Right?
However, even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day, and Gangbox goes from his support for the RCP to a salient observation:
It is literally impossible to overestimate how central the RCP makes the “appreciation of Bob Avakian.” I mean literally. You think you have grasped their embrace of singularity (and Stalin-like monolithicity — in the name of “solid core”). but then it crops up in newer and more extreme forms.
In their view “appreciation of Bob Avakian” is THE dividing line among communists (as JB connors points out above). And whether or not, communists around the world “engage” with Bob Avakian’s writings (and his drumbeat of advice-by-letter) is THE basis for evaluating communists internationally.
The fact that Red Star published a piece that was openly critical of Avakian was (we can certainly assume) a huge factor in the public outing of the RCP’s long-hidden-and-denied distain for the Maoists of Nepal. and it is not accidental that the Nov. 2008 letter (which is essentially an open break, a labeling of the Nepalis as revisionists and a call for a split-or-revolt against their central leadership) ends with a call for engaging Avakian’s New Synthesis. Again: in the RCP’s universe, this is THE dividing line. Avakian’s very flawed synthesis is (in their worldview) the slender cord by which the whole fate of humanity hangs.
(It is worth noting, in passing, that Red Star is not an official organ of the CPN(M), including in the sense that articles in that newspaper don’t all represent the views of the Maoist. This was also true, for example, in the Peruvian revolution, when El Diario was “associated” with the Shining Path, but where major figures on the paper, like Luis Arce borja, proved to have a distinctly different politics. This is another half-truth in the RCP polemic (in their January 2009 letter) — where they beat up on the CPN(M) because the Red Star posted an essentially anti-Marxist article by Roshan Kisson. Kasama too, by the way, posts pieces that don’t represent its own core views — and some RCP supporters have responded, here too, by making charges about “promoting revisionists, mensheviks and reformists.” However, dogmatists will just have to get used to living in a world, where debates are held and even welcomed.)
I am (like David) bewildered by Rosa L’s insistance that the RCP’s arrogance must be viewed as “epistemic racism.” I think there is no particular evidence for this. And it involves (as David implies) a logical leap that assumes arrogance toward anyone in the third world MUST be assumed to be (ipse facto) racism. (Sorry, R.L., but I see those leaps-without-evidence whenever you post….)
Let me put it like this: the assertion of “Avakian as the cardinal question” is hardly aimed at the third world revolutionaries in any specific way. When that Avakian principle was asserted (as the defining belief of the RCP) in Avakian’s auto-golpe (self-coup) of 2003, it was aimed at the whole communist world — starting above all with his own central committee, and the rest of that party. It led to years of internal struggle and purges.
The line that Avakian’s contributions are decisive is (first of all) wrong — because the contributions are deeply flawed by idealism. And it is helpful when David writes:
This is an astute observation worth discussing in more detail. And I would expand it: with their idealist method, with their approach of proceeding from abstracted models rather than reality, with their view of how politics should be conducted, with their rather startling lack of appreciation of the mass line….. I don’t see how this RCP could appreciate (or even understand) the living revolutionary activities of ANY real revolutionary work: the refusal of Marx and Engels to endorse or join the many “Marxist” sects of their day, Lenin in 1906 when he fought to have his supporters run for the Russian parliament and enter the Duma, Lenin after 1905 when he approached the Mensheviks for possible re-merging, Lenin in 1917 when he twisted and turned to lead the masses of people (and his own party) through a massive training process (including by raising the possibility of peaceful transition to power), the actions of Lenin-in-power in making a huge retreat to the 1921 New economic policy, the actions and statements of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai at the Chungking negotiations (including when THEY tactically raised the possibility of peaceful transition to power)… and so on.
I think that without exception this method (i.e. this synthesis) put forward by the RCP would lead to the same kind of sterile, dogmatic, and idealist appraisal of all moments of revolutionary political maneuver in complex situations — especially the ones where the revolutionary party is seeking to allign millions for an actual seizure of power.
Yes, there is a remarkable arrogance (as the CPN(M) has repeatedly pointed out) for the RCP to make pronouncements about a revolution without any serious knowledge or analysis of the actual conditions. It defies the basics of materialism. but the problem revealed here is not specific to some “encounter with colonialized people” — it explains why the RCP’s work in THIS country is so very sterile.
(Look at how they just went to their few and scattered allies within World Can’t Wait and insisted that people must adopt the RCP’s insulting talk about “Obama’lade” — treating the millions of people with illusions about Obama as if they are simply complicit or fools. Tactless, tin-eared, dogmatic, closed, encapsulated, self-isolating….!)
Someone said to me the other day, that we need to explore more deeply the ways in which Avakian’s synthesis embodies a real capitulation — how they assume that the “complicity” of the great majority is objective, and the best they can do is what they are doing (i.e. preaching in incomprehensible and oddly religious ways at people about their great leader.) There is a saying promoted within the RCP: “If we don’t do anything else well, we must do the promotion of Avakian well.” And that view really embodies an implicit view that you really CAN’T do anything else well, and that the only thing possible to do in this moment is the promotion of Avakian — in some way that preserves his “library of Alexandria” contributions for the future, or that allow it to take root in some other country. It is a capitulationist and very very bitter politics.
One way to dig into this is to look at this attack on the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) in relation to this poison pill: the verdict that appreciation of Avakian (as a person and as a new synthesis) is the cardinal question for communists.
(A cardinal question in communist usage means a question that is so decisive that a wrong answer to the question puts you on the wrong side of the fence. Historically, recognition of the need for a revolutionary communist party, the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the necessity for the overthrow of the bourgeois state were taken as “cardinal questions” of this kind — as the historically established dividing lines between marxism and revisionism i.e. counterrevolutionary bourgeois politics disguised as communism.)
Avakian’s self-coup of 2003 established “germanic appreciation” of avakian as a cardinal question (“just like the dictatorship of the proletariat and the need for a party.”) But that quickly escalated: soon it was said that it would be impossible to understand the dictatorship of the proletariat and the party correctly EXCEPT through the new synthesis of Avakian. In other words, “germanic appreciation” of Avakian had gone from being a cardinal question, to THE cardinal question.
For a period, it was said (tactically) that it was a “cardinal question for communists in the U.S.” — but that was obviously and logically only a passing phase — since clearly (from the beginning and by design) Avakian’s special contributions were seen as decisive for ALL OF HUMANITY, for the communist movement internationally — at a time when (it was said) “communism hangs by a thread.”
So these letters represent several things:
* They represent a real and public break with the Nepali Maoists (and, it needs to be said, represents the defacto public announcement that the RIM has been a fiction for over a decade).
* they represent a “coming out” of the view that Avakian is a cardinal question INTERNATIONALLY too. And by extension represents a retreat toward some tiny cloistered sectarian international grouping in which Avakian can play ringmaster. At this point, it appears clear that none of the major Maoist forces in the world (from Turkey, India, Nepal, Philippines, etc) have relationships with the RCP.
* they represent a moment when RCP supporters should reflect: for years, some people have attacked the Kasama Project (and the 9 Letters) as liars — for saying that the RCP had stepped back from internationalist support for the Nepalese revolution, for implying that the RCP has isolated itself internationally, for pointing out the ways that these criticisms had initially appeared in various documents. People should reflect on how the basic situation had been kept from them — how they have been kept on an “info diet” — and how they found themselves attacking those forces trying to have a principled debate over these (truly cardinal!) matters. It is literally true, that all kinds of appeals to security and centralism have been used to keep supporters of the RCP from having the most basic understanding of the facts of their own movement — often when any casual observer can deduce the situation.
In that regard, one of the truly bizarre statements in these open polemics appears in the RCP’s less restrained slam (the article they are having their supporters read, which not one of the letters) in their Revolution #160, when they write:
Where? When?
The RCP published a book on the Peoples War in Nepal — but as it went to press a chapter was inserted at the end that already started the half-veiled critique of the Nepalese Maoists. the author of that book did a few speaking gigs. And a few (actually remarkably few) articles appeared in the RCP press, and quickly petered out.
David states the facts when he writes:
As I pointed out above (using the obscure switerland example), these polemics are riddled with distortions and half-truths — that speculate on the enforced ignorance of their audience. “Significant efforts to popularize the heroic struggle”? Puleeeez. Compared to what? Compared to the significant work of supporters of the FARC or Zapatistas? Compared to how the RCP promoted the Peoples War in Nepal — or the campaign to save the life of Gonzalo?
There was never ANY organized activity around Nepal’s revolution: There were postersized graphics in the RCP’s May Day issues, but never attempts to organize committees of support.
And (it needs to be pointed) this retreat came as the 9/11 events raised the stakes for anyone daring internationalist work (i.e. 2001). And most party supporters were completely unaware of this retreat — because it was not accompanied with even a whisper of critique — until slowly, slowly, slowly after the 2003 self-coup by Avakian, when his started to leak down through the ranks.
This touches on yet another half-truth: a casual reader of the “letters” from the RCP might get the impression that the disagreement started in 2005 when the CPN(M) entered into negotiations, and decided to embark on an anti-monarchist substage of their New Democratic revolution.
the article in Revolution #160 writes:
No. sure, the polemics between these parties escalated more and more openly, as the RCP wrote its letters of critique in 2005. That marked the start of polemics. But in fact, you can’t understand the sharpening line struggle WITHIN the RCP (which culminated with the self-coup of 2003) without understanding Avakian’s increasing concern that some other Maoist forces would overshadow his claim to a New Synthesis.
And, the words of the Nepalis themselves repudiate this claim (that the struggle started in 2005 with the Maoist decision to create a substage):
In fact, the Nepalis point out that the RCP opposed their approach to the peoples war — where the Nepali Maoists entered and won elections (especially in Rukum and Rolpa), and then, on that basis launched an insurrection to create base areas. And how many supporters of the RCP (and readers of Onesto’s book) even have a clue of the complex and innovative tactics that made this peoples war possible?
I will stop here. but one thing i’m hoping we can all dig into is the question of method: where the RCP’s polemic is devoid of materialist assessment and analysis (especially analysis of the way crucial contradictions are actually posing themselves to the revolution in Nepal) and how its work is a “deduction from pre-existing principles” — i.e. an idealist method.
EME said
I agree with Gangbox on this one. It is frustrating and disheartening, but the RCP gets it right, again. While it is clear that the RCP has had a history of idealism in their analysis of the “objective” situation, with their repeated insistence that the moment “is almost here!” they have actually done very well in identifying revisionism both here and internationally. It is not thought a matter of being a stopped clock. Look back at their breaking with Vietnam, Cuba, China, Central America, Peru. In each case the RCP (or RU), hit the nail on the head. The reactions were the same – the RCP was giving up on socialism and the masses. But they were right in each case. It is not helpful to negate the contributions that this party can continue to make, in my opinion. In this case all one really needs to look at is the relative positions of the old army and the revolutionary army. This is quite stark and put rather well by the RCP. Can one imagine Lenin or Mao locking up their victorious revolutionary armies and just giving new uniforms and weopons to the old and defeated armies of the capitalists, and then calling them a neutral army?! Funny, but heartbreaking.
The secrecy by the RCP is nauseating. This was their method on Peru as well. It disarms people and makes it impossible to actually get the masses involved in the struggle over which line is right. I see it as another example of the RCP fearing the people and their involvement in any issue that they have not already “settled.” Now they can tell people and try to “engage” the masses and bring the truth down to them.
EME
n3wday said
re: rosa l and david d
it should be noted that that is the RCP’s approach to EVERYONE, not just our comrades in Nepal. So, I think it’s less a question of racism, and more a question of dogmatism and arrogance.
nando said
EME writes:
I think that your characterization is wrong — both in your assumptions of Lenin and Mao, and also in your understanding of what the Nepali Maoists are doing.
I don’t want to contribute to a narrow world where “if Mao or Lenin did it, it must be ok, if they didn’t do it, it must be wrong….”
However, i do need to note (with david) that if the RCP’s method was applied to Mao, he would be denounced.
Mao agreed to merge his armies into the KMT armies. there were famous mini-revolts of PLA soldiers who refused to remove the red stars from their caps. then after the war, Mao agreed to withdraw his armies from the southern half of china, causing great suffering among both the people and the fighters. (I read one painful book, about wounded PLA soldiers left behind during the withdrawal to suffer a fate at the hands of their enemies and other depriviation.)
the Maoists in Nepal raise the possibility of sections of the National Army joining in a resistance if the Indians invade…. In fact Lenin’s Red Army was heavily drawn from the old Tsarist army exactly on such a basis (not just the working class and peasant rank and file, but literally large chunks of the officer corps and high command). Mao recruited and won over large bodies of KMT forces (with their commanders) at key junctures in the final battles.
In other words, when people say (as you just did): “Can one imagine Lenin or Mao…..[doing this or that]” — it often reflects a very romanticized and dogmatic sense of what Lenin and Mao (or Stalin, or Ho Chi Minh, or….) ACTUALLY DID.
Yes, of course, I can imagine Lenin and Mao doing these (or similar) things. Yes both lenin and Mao were accused of being traitors and revisionsists (especially at those key junctures where they were up against a wall, making concessions, and maneuvering for the ways to carry out the next advance.) Yes, Lenin and Mao said many things that (on examination) represented tactical moves — in order to bring the masses with them.
And all i can do is suggest that you take another (materialist) look at Lenin and Mao.
The romanticized and selective mythologies of “what Lenin and Mao did” are not just deceptive and simplistic, but as we can see in this debate, they are used to create idealized models of a dogmatic kind — so that when real-world revolutionaries face real-world choices and create real-world tactics…. communists are (far too often) shocked and confused.
Tell No Lies said
The extreme character of the RCP’s insistence on Avakian as the cardinal question neccesarily obscures a discussion of any Eurocentrism on their part. Since the arrogance is basically directed at the entire rest of humanity outside the RCP its difficult to draw out what is particularly Eurocentric in its approach. That said, I think Rosa is correct that it IS Eurocentric. It is certainly true that the RCP could quite easily take a similar tone in relation to another First World party of organization. But such an attitude, while unacceptable, would not be nearly as objectionable as the fact that they take this tone in relation to the CPN(M). Why? Because no First World organizations with which the RCP might polemicize hav accomplished anything near what the CPN(M) has. Leading an actual revolutionary process does not entitle the CPN(M) to blind deference, but it does entitle them to a modicum of respect that is absent here.
The problem in unpacking the Eurocentrism of the RCP’s approach I think is that, unlike a criticism of the positively surreal insistence on Avakian as the cardinal question, such an analysis will inevitably cut a little closer to home for us. That is to say much that is Eurocentric in the RCPs theory and method is Eurocentric in the ICM more broadly, particularly but by no means exclusively in First World organizations.
Back in the day, a Norwegian Maoist group produced what I remember as a very insightful analysis of Eurocentrism in the Communist Movement that I know was popular among folks in FRSO. I don’t have it at my fingertip or know if it is available on or offline, but I think it would be worth going back to if possible.
Mike E said
Part of what bothers me about the form such discussions of euro-chauvinism takes… is that they seem divorced from content.
thought experiment: If the criticisms of the RCP were correct, would it be euro-chauvinist for a “first world” group to make them?
For example the RCP made some correct criticisms of the 1976 coup by capitalist roaders in China. and supporters of the coup (naturally) raised that this was just a denial of self-determination — that “the chinese” knew best, that how could anyone else decide what was right for the chinese people. etc.
In fact, this raises national lines and divisions to a primary position — in a way that denies the international character of the communist movement. And it assumes that racism and chauvinism are so endemic in “the first world” that it is impossible to have principled internationalist relations of equality and struggle among communists — that, no matter what we do, any criticisms or struggle will (inherently) be marked by chauvinism. And it assumes they are so inherent, that no one even needs to prove there is chauvinism in operation — it can be deduced from the sole evidence that someone in the “first world” is making a systematic criticism of someone in the third world.
I don’t think that is a justified assumption… and I don’t think it is actually a communist approach (to questions of nationality, racism and communist organization).
I don’t want to nitpick TNL’s remarks, but let’s take a look at one sentence:
It seems to me that the issue of chauvinism is abstracted from the thinking of the people accused of chauvinism. In other words, chauvinism is not (here) something thought by the RCP, it is something measured by other standards. It implies that if something is “objectionable” by some apriori standard (rooted in assumptions of self-determination of a particular kind), that is proof of chauvinism on the part of the sender.
This is the standard widely adopted in identity politics — where there is no proof of chauvinism needed other than that someone of an identity group finds it “offensive.” but in fact, characterizing someone as chauvinist should actually be a statement of what their thinking is, and has to be rooted in an analysis of their thinking.
Put another way: this leading clique running the RCP treats everyone with unbelievable arrogance and grandiosity (their own members, their own periphery, scientists and intellectuals, critics, other left groups, the masses of people generally who get accused of complicity and “obamalade,” other communist organizations in the world, and so one). that leads me to believe that the ideological problem here is related to this generalized arrogance and grandiosity.
There is a history of real chauvinism in the revolutionary and communist movement — i don’t want to downplay that at all. The history of browderism (and that whole period internationalism in the ICM) is raw and crude. And I suspect that there were problems built into having a European revolutionary movement control the creation of a communist international (though the problem often had to do with the objective state interests of the Soviet Union, not principally some permeating ubiquitous wash of euro-chauvinism among all white people.)
but it strikes me as a subjective method to assume that the RCP’s approach is idealism, grandiousity and arrogance toward everyone, but then chauvinism when directed toward the Nepalis. (Is Avakian-cardinal-question then male chauvinism when that whateverism is demanded of female RCP supporters, but not when demanded in an identical way at the male supporters? And so on…..)
On a related point: the RCP denigrates both practice and particularlity — in a general and systematic way. This is because their “new synthesis” arises in ways startlingly devoid of practice and particularity – and so a defense of this synthesis requires an generalized assertion of the possibility that sweeping new universalities can emerge apart from real practice. Their argument against the Nepalis is, as JB pointed out, that the Nepalis have “advanced practice” but that their chairman Avakian is the holder of “advanced understanding.” The RCP has been unable to develop any base of support, and can now mobilize people in the hundreds (after forty years of intense work). And yet they believe their line should be imposed on the international communist movement and on humanity as a whole. (That is as TNL points out “surreal.”)
Is this somehow an expression of racism toward the non-white peoples of Asia, or one stark example (among many) of a systematic denigration of practice and particularity?
It is true, i genuinely assume, that a criticism leveled at a third world revolutionary movement (especially an unjust one) plays into various forms of chauvinism (inside and outside the communist movement). But that is a separate matter, right?
But, overall, this identification-of-error-by-assumption-of-impact strikes me as a subjective method. That separates verdict from any real examination of actual nuances of content or context. And more, it strikes me as a method that inevitably gets used to undermine the very process of making materialist analyses of things in the world, and of having struggle over our various attempts to make such analyses. (The object of our critical discussions would become the supposed stains on our brains which are assumed to be largely beyond evidence or transformation — and the actual clash of analyses would become an epiphenomenon.)
The problem here with the RCP polemics is that the criticisms are wrong. And that is what i think we should focus on. If we make the verdict that they are chauvinist for making a negative analysis — then the content becomes less and less relevant. In fact look at this thread, and what has suddenly emerged as one of its key discussions….! It is a debate over whether to evaluate the RCP’s motives and impact apart from the correctness or incorrectness of their analysis.
Specifically that their method asserts a dogmatic and idealist approach to communist politics that will lead anyone into sterility. Some of their criticisms and observations are even accurate, but they are mobilized (through a bad method) in service to an objectively wrong conclusion.
David_D said
Tell No Lies: Why would leading such a struggle entitle a party to a modicum of respect? Isn’t line key, at all times and everywhere? I indeed believe the UCPN(M) is entitled to respect, but not because they have led such a struggle in the past. If they indeed had adopted a right-wing reactionary line of capitulation, they’d be deserving of nothing but contempt and opposition. If nothing else, since this is apparently RCP’s position, they are prevaricating with their sweet words addressed to the party leadership.
I still do not see how RCP is being Euro-centric. I’m not even sure there’s much value in the term “Euro-centric.” Are we talking about imperialist chauvinism? Or are we talking about some sort of cultural prejudice like liberals talk about at times? I only raise this point because I think the as yet unfounded accusations of what amounts to racism muddies the waters significantly here, distracting from what is certainly clear here.
emil said
it seems to me that the rcp, like most maoist groups, have an unquestioned assumption that Peoples War is invincible and always the way forward. for most maoist groups, RIM etc, PW is the way to do revolution. but, the PW could not smash the state in nepal. also it failed in peru, and the indian maoists have been fighting for some 30 years, and cannot smash the state. also, most maoist groups say that ‘the ideological-political decides everything’. yet, this is not true, because objective conditions decide everything, not the political line, and in the end, the objective conditions will change the political line. there are so many parties with the one and only one correct revolutionary line, like the rcp, but they cannot really do anything. but it is good that they have made their criticism public.
David_D said
Emil: I think that few would say that the correctness of line somehow overrides material conditions. Line is decisive. This isn’t a voluntarist conception though, that somehow simply being “correct” will lead to victory. And indeed the changing conditions mean that strategy and tactics will likewise have to be modified. Looking at Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, we certainly do not see a single strategy and tactics by any means. But at the same time, the proletarian-socialist revolution was, in the main, upheld – its interests were defended, and the truth of Marxist ideology was the guide to practice.
You also state that’s it’s good they made their criticism public. I am not so sure. While it is more “principled” from a certain perspective, I would have preferred they continue their years-long silence rather than attack the Nepalese comrades. Their unprincipled silence was better than their more aboveboard errors.
Epistemology Indeed said
An interesting contrast:
Revolution #160: “The organs of people’s power built up in the countryside of Nepal through the revolutionary war have been dissolved, the old police forces have been brought back, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), although never defeated on the battlefield, has been disarmed and confined to “cantonments” while the old reactionary army (formerly the Royal Nepal Army, now renamed the Nepal Army) which previously feared to travel outside its barracks, except in large heavily armed convoys, is now free to patrol the country—with the blessing of a CPN(M) Defense Minister.”
International Crisis Group Report on Nepal dated Feb. 19, 2009 (“Nepal’s Faltering Peace Process”):”Control over the security sector remains at the heart of the power struggle; the impasse over the question of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) integration and the broader issues are discussed in detail below. Many other aspects of the peace deal remain unresolved or unimplemented. Apart from a few exceptions, the Maoists have not fulfilled their repeated promises to return property seized during the conflict, nor have they fully dismantled parallel structures. Local government is yet to be re-established, although cross-party consensus on creating interim bodies appears close.” (p. 2)
One commentator has conducted extensive on the ground investigation, another has read diplomatic agreements as if they were exact representations of reality.
Mike E said
emil:
You are raising some important issues, but you are generalizing a bit much. It is not helpful to start by a general characterization (i.e. what “most maoists groups” think) and then make particular assumptions. This is dogmatic thinking and uses formal logic to reach wrong conclusions.
There has been a major controversy among Maoists over how to view peoples war. But in such debates, the RCP certainly has never held anything remotely like a view that people’s war is “invincible.” (I.e. that any particular peoples war is guaranteed victory because it cannot be defeated.) And I’m not sure “most maoist groups” have any “unquestioned assumption” about that either.
In fact, there ARE political forces who encourage the chant “the people united can never be defeated” (a formulation that is simply naive and wrong) — but it is not the Maoists.
For the RCP and the RIM, it is also not true protracted peoples war has been seen as “the way to do revolution” — they hold that for imperialist countries there is the “October road” (insurrection followed by civil war), and for the other “type” of country, protracted peoples war has general application. This was a point of contention, because some parties thought that protracted peoples war were also appropriate for imperialist countries (a thought floated out, for example, in the 1988 interview with Peru’s Gonzalo, and embraced by a few small groups in Europe.)
As for the Nepalis, one of the innovations they attribute to Prachanda (and to Prachanda Path), is the idea that insurrection and people’s war should now be fused in new ways — and that such a fusion has “universal” application. In other words, it is not true (for the Nepali Maoists either) that “your granddaddy’s peoples war” is assumed to be the way to go.
* * * * *
You are right in a certain sense that there have been many attempts to take up Maoist peoples war and that none have actually seized power since China in 1949 and the Vietnamese variation (in the fifties and sixties).
The list is even longer than you give: There were attempts at peoples war in Malaysia, Burma, the Philippines (at least two attempts), Mexico, Turkey, Iran, Oman, Kurdistan, Palestine and more (in addition to Peru, Nepal and India, which you mention).
Now what this reveals is (imho) two things: Most attempts at revolution fail (and this has always been true throughout history). And there has been a major problem in the communist movement of taking successful experiences as rigid, universally applicable “models” — a method that increases the real danger of failure.
And it may very well be that the Nepali attempt will fail: there is a great deal stacked against them, as there inevitably is in all attempts at revolution. Unlike your implications: If they fail in Nepal, their error is unlikely to have been that they were dogmatic in thinking that “peoples war is invincible” — since in many ways, and from several sides, they have stood out in the way they have NOT taken up dogmatic methods that have (otherwise) been rather common among Maoists.
If you want to analyze the failures of the past, you actually have to do so. It is not enough to point to failures and then deduce that this or that approach to revolution “cannot smash the state.” Perhaps, perhaps not. But if you want to put forward such views, you need a real argument.
At the same time, it is worth summing up (as the Nepali Maoists have) that you can’t mechanically apply the lessons of other — you can’t reproduce (or replicate) a previous revolution. A number of correct criticisms can probably be made of the nepali maoist approach — but that creative insight they have is worth leaning from because without it revolution would be impossible.
* * * * *
It is interesting to note that Mao in his early writings made a point that the Chinese revolution took the particular form of protracted peoples war because of specific conditions in China (contested by several imperialist powers, large country, divided by warlords etc.) and that at a certain point (in the late 1960s, under the influence of Lin Biao) the Chinese “model” started to be put forward as a universal method for countries of a particular type. (There is a famous case of a footnote in Mao’s military writings being rewritten in the 1960s to reverse its meaning.)
I suspect that we will discover that there are important conjunctural issues (and particularities) in the launching and winning of revolution in ANY country — and that even in the Third World a lot of “water has passed under the bridge” (a lot of changes have happened) since China’s protracted revolutinary war (1930-1949).
* * * * * *
It would be absurd to state that “ideological and political line decides everything” IF by that someone meant that only subjective ideas matter, and objective conditions have no bearing. There may be people who believe that, but i think it would be wrong to say that this characterizes “most maoist groups.”
This is one of the places where the RCP has undergone a major shift — from seeing “the subjective factor” (the party, its line and its ties to the people) as one key factor in a revolutionary situation — to seeing the leadership of the party (the emergence of a key leader like “a Lenin or a Mao”) as being the sole most decisive factor.
In a startling and revealing statement of idealism, Avakian openly speculated that “perhaps the reason there were revolutions in Russia and China” was because each had a “stubborn” leader who refused to “accept anything less than revolution.” This is a speculation that (even if only half-meant) throws out materialism, conjunctures, decades of preparatory work, communist theories of “weak link,” and the whole communist view of masses — (the mass line).
In fact, the RCP no longer stresses that line is key — but has more and more stressed that “leadership is key” (i.e. the way that line is embodied in particular special, rare, unique and irreplacable leaders), and this becomes a “whateverist” view that it is Bob Avakian whose presence, influence and degree of appreciation “decides everything.”
David_D said
I would like to point out this much more pointed 2006 criticism of the Nepalese Maoists from the Iranian RIM organization:
http://www.sarbedaran.org/language/2cpnm-edited-iran.htm
The Nepalese comrades’ strategy will make Nepal a “comprador-feudal Republic around the axis of the Congress party and the Maoists who –as they think– would have been transformed from a revolutionary war party to a political party of the status quo.”
The critique was referenced by Mike E here:
http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2008/09/29/maoist-debate-over-nepal-revolution-the-sarbedaran-critique/
So in a sense the Iran party paved the way for RCP’s current criticism. So who are the RIM comrades that RCP says “thrown flowers to the floundering comrades?”
Some questions I have:
Can RIM survive in any meaningful way under current conditions?
Is “Nepal” now going to emerge as a dividing line question among communist forces, much as was seen, for instance, with China post-1976?
How, if at all, does RCP’s internal “cultural revolution” link up with this broadside against the Nepalese Maoists?
I see that things may develop quickly in terms of the emergence of dividing lines. A number of parties have broken with the Nepalese comrades, including CP India (Maoist), and, it seems the remnants of the Peruvian party. How can international unity be forged from this situation, and what are main obstacles?
…
Shifting focus, I will add that it is true that the Nepalese party has published many articles and its leading figures have made many statements that are far from revolutionary in content. North Korea’s Juche being praised as a path to socialism, China being praised, etc. etc. While communists are not pragmatists, I think that it is funny for the RCP to lecture to the Nepalese comrades about being aboveboard and principled and consistent. RCP has zero experience in statecraft, in leading a new state. Nepal is a small country surrounded by large countries with powerful militaries. Of course the Nepalese comrades are engaging in diplomacy and will sometimes even say things that we may not like. Winning China to friendly neutrality is the correct strategy for them to adopt. Furthermore, it’s working. RCP applauded, contrarily, when the Peruvian comrades bombed the Chinese embassy in Lima. RCP disagrees with the strategy of united front against imperialism, but it is the correct one for the government of Nepal to adopt. Interesting that the Chinese could support UNITA and largely ignore Pinochet’s crimes while being considered socialist by RCP, but the comrades in Nepal are condemned out of hand. Hope I’m not flooding the comments too much… this is just surprising and dismaying to me.
Jose M said
Just finished reading the first letter. I’ve been sick the past few days, and, when I started reading, my cough returned.
I think it is somewhat clear the RCP proceeds and begins analysis using not a materialist analysis of Nepali social conditions, but a priori principles borrowed from past experiences, which, as important as they are, cannot fully account for a well done appraisal and critique of the CPN(M)’s politics.
But, I wanted to raise a question.
We are communists. As a part of that, we uphold basic communist principles, many which guide our overall orientation and work. In addition, when conducting analysis, we take into careful account the social environment in which the subject we are studying resides. We’ve praised the Maoists in Nepal for being anti-dogmatic, creative revolutionaries who summed up past socialist experiences and fused that into a revolutionary people’s war in their own country.
So, my question is: where do we draw the line between upholding communist principles in a non-dogmatic manner and acknowledging the national particularities facing a revolutionary movement?
In other words: how far can we take our appreciation for particularities without falling into eclecticism?
The current Chinese government says that their socialism is of “Chinese characteristics.” In this manner, they hope to escape criticism and actual communist analysis of their political/economic structure and their role w/in world imperialism.
When it comes to Nepal, how do we avoid falling into such a trap where the claim of Nepal’s particularities blurs our own critical application of communist principles and analysis?
nando said
I would like to comment on some specific questions posted above by David_D:
The RIM has long been a fiction. It has already not survived in any meaningful way.
The RIM was always less unified than the RCP tried to suggest, and that unity really ruptured in a deep way after 1992 when Gonzalo (leader of Peru’s Shining Path) was captured, and a very deep disagreement emerged over how to deal with it.
But, underlying that were, all along, major disagreements over politics and ideology — including what was the main trend in the world, whether peoples war was a universal form for all countries, what the principal contradiction in the world was (and had been) and so on.
After the capture of Gonzalo it became harder and harder for the RIM as an international formation to issue joint statements. The last attempt came in the Millennial statement “For a Century of People’s Wars! Forward towards the Victory of Socialism and Communism!”
As you can see by going to any page gathering RIM and CoRIM statements there have been very few other statements of the RIM as a movement since its 1993 statement upholding Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
For example, the 1995 statement of the RIM “Rally to the Defence of Our Red Flag Flying in Peru” is described as a “A Call by the Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement” and clearly represents the views of only one faction of the RIM, and specifically not any of the factions of the Peruvian PCP.
In fact, the 2000 Millennial statement was only possible because the RCP,USA was willing to accept the triumphalist stance, and (more) the specific formulations of others within the RIM — it contains statements that it is a “hoax” that Gonazlo was behind the peace accords line. It says that “revolution is the main trend in the world today,” and asserts that “The principal contradiction is between imperialism and the oppressed peoples and nations.”
In other words, the 2000 statement was only possible on the basis of the RCP agreeing to views it did not hold. And the decision to sign this statement has since been subjected to sharp criticism.
What I am saying, to be blunt, is that the RIM has been a fiction for quite some time. And this has been relatively obvious to most serious observers. The CoRIM (the committee of the RIM) speaks for itself, not any real constellation of living political parties. And this too has been obvious for anyone who cared to look.
As for the fact that this has NOT been known (or even suspected) by most supporters of the RCP… Well, welcome to the “info diet.”
I think this is probably not a great way to pose this — especially since what “Nepal” represents is a bit complex (and contradictory) and is not simply one dividing line.
The Nepali Maoists noted (very sharply) that none of the existing international groupings of communist organizations made ANY comment on their remarkable and unexpected victory in the Constitutional Assembly elections. Meaning that for them the indifference, silence and opposition from many of the world’s maoist forces is a dividing line matter (in ways that are quite understandable).
The Maoists of Nepal have been one of the few groups that has repeatedly referred to the RIM in their documents over the years, but it has increasingly been done in the past tense. In other words, the CPN(M) always gives props to the RIM for its advice during the 1990s (even while in other documents making pointed comments about the criticisms they received from the RIM and the RCP.)
But the CPN(M) has made it quite clear (including in explicit statements) that they intend to take a much more active role reorganizing the international communist movement — and it is hard to imagine that this will take shape within the framework of the current RIM.
Little is known now about such plans in Nepal, and they are a bit (uh) busy with other matters, and so (obviously) it is hard to know (yet) what identification of “dividing lines” this would entail.
It is my view that the RCP’s “cultural revolution” was intimately tied up with line struggles around Nepal.
Avakian’s self-coup of 2003 was conditioned by and pushed forward by a deepening concern that the Nepali Maoists were now going to exert a powerful influence internationally, but even more, within his own party. Avakian clearly felt that major chunks of his own party and leadership would be attracted and encouraged by the approaches that the Nepalis were taking to politics.
You can go back and read Avakian’s political work over the last decade as a rolling engagement and critique of the Nepalis’ politics — without mentioning them of course. All of the elaborate discussion of bourgeois democracy, the hairsplitting of constitutional rights under socialism, the elaboration of “solid core with a lot of elasticity” — all of it cannot be separated from his preparations to inoculate his own party against the emerging political theses of the Nepalis.
That is why, in many ways, it is misleading for the RCP to imply (in Revolution #160) that this line struggle only erupted in 2005 and was triggered by the specific decisions that the Nepalis made then (to end the peoples war, to enter the anti-monarchist struggle, to develop a substage centered around the Constituent Assembly etc.)
Put another way: the RCP’s manifesto puts the question of democracy and bourgeois democracy as a key dividing line in the crossroads of the international communist movement. They raise this in their recent polemic against Badiou and their polemics against the Nepali communists. And it was a central issue in the protracted internal line struggle that followed the Avakian self-coup. These things are all entwined.
There has been a major fragmentation among Maoist and other left communist forces internationally.
The RIM has (as i argue above) not existed as a unified movement for a long time — and always represented (at best) a sliver of the revolutionary communist forces in the world. The RCP is highly isolated with only a few, very small groups alligned with Avakian’s new synthesis.
Other international “formations” (around the PTB of Belgium and around the Philippine party) were (from the beginning) highly eclectic and ill-defined (and often deliberately straddled the major previous dividing lines between communist and non-communist).
The CP India (Maoist) was never part of the RIM, and their contradictions with the Nepalis are particularly complex, and have to do with both ideological matters and also the inherent complexities of approaching state power (conducting foreign policy with the governments of powerful neighbors etc.)
How will unity be achieved? Well imho it obviously depends on what happens now (especially in India and Nepal, where there are real openings for revolutionary advances). And it also depends on what emerges from the larger process of “reconception” — which is a process that is far from limited to the Kasama Project, but which clearly cuts across a broad swathe of revolutionary forces and individuals (many of whom have not had any particular ties to the ICM-as-defined-by-RCP.)
celticfire said
Tell No Lies:
I think you were talking about this article, Challenging Eurocentrism by Juliet Ucelli and Dennis O‘Neil. I reccomend it.
David_D said
Jose M:
I think that it is not a question mainly of Nepal’s particularity. Many countries face the same dilemmas were a revolutionary movement to come to the fore. The communist movement needs a whole lot more flexibility in terms of what is permissible strategy and tactics and defeating imperialism and class exploitation generally.
Otherwise communist politics will continue to fall into obscurity. I know we’ve heard from revisionists time and again about “renovation,” and so it is something that many, myself included, reflexively recoil against. But nonetheless it must be worked out. Certain core principles must be articulated, but otherwise, the question should be: is this (policy) furthering the conquest of political power?
As an aside about China, peripherally mentioned in your post: I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the linguistic formulation “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Socialism assumes various concrete national forms and state power is exercised via those conduits. The problem with China would be that the proletariat does not exercise state power, principally. All else pales in comparison from my perspective. I don’t have a fundamental problem with a private sector operating in China, foreign direct investment, etc., under certain conditions (people’s democratic dictatorship). I also would state that it is a “Left” error to deny that assuming progressively more advanced relations of production requires a certain threshold of economic development. Furthermore, China should be won to an international united front against imperialism, which is precisely the policy of the comrades in Nepal toward China.
In other words: how far can we take our appreciation for particularities without falling into eclecticism?
The current Chinese government says that their socialism is of “Chinese characteristics.” In this manner, they hope to escape criticism and actual communist analysis of their political/economic structure and their role w/in world imperialism.
When it comes to Nepal, how do we avoid falling into such a trap where the claim of Nepal’s particularities blurs our own critical application of communist principles and analysis?
Green Red said
Thanks David D. # 28 for historical examples of Chinese wrong foreign policies I invite people to read a copy of
Chinese Foreign Policy during the Maoist Era and its Lessons for Today
By the MLM Revolutionary Study Group in the U.S. (January 2007)
- – - –
epistemic racism or arrogance? Latter makes more sence. Jee, they’re not racist. They might be Cult like, selfish, etc.
Even when Stalin and Mao were alive in my veiw it would have been wrong to consider either of them the cardinal question for communists.
#19 N3wday says it all that the matter is that’s party’s general attitude to everybody.
It is not North vs South, West vs East. It is simply a self assured vanguard party of a sort with as some referred to an idealistic vision. Sometimes i wonder what difference it would make now that there are other things being formed without “monolithic” hard core dogmatism
Thanks for the clarification.
land said
I thought important was the statement by the CPNM (page 48) the sentence that begins with
This was written in June 2006. I think the last World to Win was published in March 2006.
The RCP’s polemic is certainly much more readable than the polemics against Kasama. I haven’t finished everything but I do not think the RCP goes into how to make revolution in the two types of countries from the perspective of taking a second look.
In one of the polemics they refer to “what would have happened if the Party had not gone deeply into the struggle against revisionism after Mao died.” I do think that is important. But for today we are trying to figure out why revolutionaries were not able to defeat the revisionism.
The CPNM says:
I think the revolutionaries in Nepal and other places too are trying to break out of something that was figured out with past
experience.
I hope they win this. But with revolution there are no assurances. They are very open about the line struggles that are going on and we all can learn from this.
The RCP does not mention revolution in India. They are critical of forces in the RIM who have not come out openly to criticize the CPNM.
Looking forward to more discussion on this.
More later.
The CPNM
David_D said
I do think a couple of quotations from Mao Zedong are in order:
“Some people suspect that the Chinese Communists are opposed to the development of individual initiative, the growth of private capital and the protection of private property, but they are mistaken. It is foreign oppression and feudal oppression that cruelly fetter the development of the individual initiative of the Chinese people, hamper the growth of private capital and destroy the property of the people. It is the very task of the New Democracy we advocate to remove these fetters and stop this destruction, to guarantee that the people can freely develop their individuality within the framework of society and freely develop such private capitalist economy as will benefit and not ‘dominate the livelihood of the people’, and to protect all appropriate forms of private property.”
“Some people fail to understand why, so far from fearing capitalism, Communists should advocate its development in certain given conditions. Our answer is simple. The substitution of a certain degree of capitalist development for the oppression of foreign imperialism and domestic feudalism is not only an advance but an unavoidable process. It benefits the proletariat as well as the bourgeoisie, and the former perhaps more. It is not domestic capitalism but foreign imperialism and domestic feudalism which are superfluous in China today; indeed, we have too little of capitalism. Strangely enough, some spokesmen of the Chinese bourgeoisie fight shy of openly advocating the development of capitalism, but refer to it obliquely. There are other people who flatly deny that China should permit a necessary degree of capitalist development and who talk about reaching socialism in one stride and “accomplishing at one stroke” the tasks of the Three People’s Principles and socialism. Obviously, these opinions either reflect the weakness of the Chinese national bourgeoisie or are a demagogic trick on the part of the big landlords and the big bourgeoisie. From our knowledge of the Marxist laws of social development, we Communists clearly understand that under the state system of New Democracy in China it will be necessary in the interests of social progress to facilitate the development of the private capitalist sector of the economy (provided it does not dominate the livelihood of the people) besides the development of the state sector and of the individual and co-operative sectors run by the labouring people. We Communists will not let empty talk or deceitful tricks befuddle us.”
“The policy of adjusting the interests of labour and capital will be adopted under the new-democratic state system. On the one hand, it will protect the interests of the workers, institute an eight- to ten-hour working day according to circumstances, provide suitable unemployment relief and social insurance and safeguard trade union rights; on the other hand, it will guarantee legitimate profits to properly managed state, private and co-operative enterprises–so that both the public and the private sectors and both labour and capital will work together to develop industrial production.”
- On Coalition Government, 1945
These quotes might be considered when viewing the RCP’s criticisms of the UCPN(M).
Green Red said
in #34, comrade Land says a thing that i’ve been wondering for a long time.
—–
————–
I wondered why the rcp wasn’t paying attention to for example interview with Comrade AZAD, the spoikeperson of the Maoist party of India. Now i’m getting it. you are either with us or against us.
Comrades of rcp who are reading this site,
honorable comrade Bob Avakian, with your brite past of struggle,
Please, improve your relations with revolutionary parties of the world not on basis of their relations with you theories but rather, with our common enemy, imperialism and capitalism.
The most outstanding thing i read was thing like since this guy, Mike Ely is not for our revolution, then he is counter revolutionary!
That is way passed reductionism comrade/friends. If someone disagrees with some of your theory, that doesn’t make him in impossible ally in say demonstrations, events, etc.
Otherwise at some point, many people incluind me will loose their minute hopes upon the future of RCP. Please improve yourself.
But re another comrade somewhere saying that Marxists who are not in direct struggles, i.e. armed, are not forbidden to judge the armed struggling parties.
It is not if you deserve to judge other people’s struggle. It is rather, fundamentaly, you are in different shoes, view angle, and therefore immeidate understanding.
Another element about India, Nepal… all readers, cultural differences do make things different in China vs India. You shall see in their inevitable – revolution, that is the greatest struggle on the earth right now. A country with a Billion people and an older history than many with places worse than African saharas, its future will shake the world up.
Please read Charu Mazumdar The Indian People’s Democratic Revolution that can be attained on Marxist archive. Even though the earth political atmosphere is very different from then but, still India remains a very important strategic part of all humans’ lives.
Hopefully Nepal’s Maoists further success and eventual success of Indian Maoists will occur in our lifetimes.
Rosa L. said
The reactions to my points on RCP leaders’ Epistemic racism and Eurocentrism in this page affirms the need for a “cultural revolution” in the international communist movement with regard to our deep complicity with eurocentric thinking and the need to decolonize our theoretical framework.
It is interesting that when I used the terms eurocentrism and epistemic racism to refer to RCP leaders’ unfair judgement/treatment/characterization of the Nepalese Maoist (a critique done in the absence of a concrete analysis of the concrete situation of Nepal) together with their:
1) condescending and paternalistic attitudes towards Nepalese Maoists,
2) underestimation of the intelligence of Nepalese Maoist (a point also made indirectly by Nando in his discussion of RCP points of Switzerland),
3) division of intellectual/manual labor where Avakian has the “advanced theory” and the Nepalese have the “advanced practice” (a point also make by J.B. Connors);
the immediate assumption and reaction by several comrades is to identify my point as equivalent to a list of simplistic arguments such as: “identity politics”:
,
I am defending none of the above. I find these comments symptomatic of an underestimation of how deeply rooted eurocentrism is in the international communist movement (and I include myself here).
How can a simple comment provoke all of these reactions putting words in my mouth that are simply not there and not even implied anywhere in what I said. I cannot in this space defend myself point by point in all the details that this important discussion merits.
Just wanted to say that “Eurocentrism” and “epistemic racism” is a disease of the Communist movement that have lasted a long time and we are not exempt from it. Google these two concept and read more about it and maybe you get what I mean even if we disagree….
Carl Davidson said
This is ridiculous on the face of it.
Bob Avakian, who can’t organize his way out of a wet paper bag here in the US, reduced to promoting his own cult, and who hasn’t ever led anything of any scale, is now lecturing revolutionaries and people in Nepal on how to run their revolution.
The superpower mentality knows no bounds…
nando said
Sister Rosa L…
First let me say that I think we all agree that there is something profoundly arrogant here — and that when such arrogance plays out toward the third world, it has a creepy, colonialist feel.
And yes, I agree that there is an astonishing assumption about mental/manual divides when an American revolutionary announced that he has “advanced understanding” while those leading a genuine revolution merely have “advanced practice.”
I think we could spend a lot of time together just unraveling THAT particular formulation in the RCP letters. And such unbelievable statements plug into hundreds of years of european teachings on their own supposed superiority and intellect.
It boggles the mind that such a thing can be put onto paper, shared around the RCP, edited, finalized, send to the Nepalis, prepared for publication, proofread, inserted into a webpage…. and the dozens of RCP supporters in that long chain didn’t revolt in anger and outrage. What happened to internationalism and even a basic sense of perspective?
I have long felt that one of the most startling things about the “new party of Avakian” is its complete inability to see itself (and its pronouncements) as others see them. And that (as should be obvious) is a fatal flaw in any political enterprise.
Meanwhile, I have to express some real disappointment in your non-engagement on the issue of euro-centrism.
1) You write a verdict on the RCP polemic that roots it in eurocentrism .
2) Some of us disagree.
3) You respond that our views are symptomatic of the problem.
4) But then you simply announce that you will not dig into the matter.
How is that possible? Or fair?
(I’m tempted to ask: Does that mean that the only non-eurocentric response is to quickly agree to all charges of eurocentrism without debate? How materialist is that?)
Tell No Lies said
I didn’t read Rosa’s comment as a refusal to “dig into the matter” but rather a statement on the limits of her own capacity at this moment to offer a point by point refutation of what was directed at her (and also my comments). Tis the nature of online discussions like these that sometimes people can’t give them their all at the moment that they arise. I read the responses to Rosa’s an my comments and thought “shit, this will take all day to write a response to and I simply don’t have the time.” I wrote a brief response on a couple points and then my browser crashed and I said “screw it.”
I think Rosa quite clearly indicated the basis for her belief (and mine) that the responses were symptomatic of the larger problem. She laid out quite explicitly what was eurocentric in the RCP’s polemic and then how words were put in her mouth to make her out to be a defender of the great bogey “identity politics” rather than to actually dig into the substance of her points.
Frankly, I don’t think this thread is the best place to conduct a discussion of the larger question of eurocentrism in the communist movement. The RCP’s polemic offers too much low hanging fruit as it were making it tempting to pile on them rather than to seriously reflect on how our own theory and practice may suffer from similar problems.
I don’t think there is anything inherently eurocentric about First World revolutionaries making criticisms of Third World ones. I do question the importance that many First World revs place on such activity given the enormity of the work we have to do in our own countries and the general shallowness of the knowledge on which such ceriticisms are so very often based.
I’ve read a lot of criticisms of the EZLN made by people with little or no on the ground familiarity with conditions in Chiapas or Mexico. Often enough those criticisms make points that I agree with, but the arguments they make to support the points are almost always so shallow, so devoid of reference to any of counter-tendencies, contradictions and complexities of the actual situation as to render them essentially worthless not only to the Zapatistas themselves but to the activists and organizers in the First World who read them and then imagine that they understand the situation.
The casual dismissal of the enormous methodological problems that arise from trying to form verdicts from afar in this manner is, I believe, a characteristic feature of eurocentric discourse. It is a presumption of omniscience that was neccesary to administer vast colonial empires that is, I think, poisonous to serious revolutionary theory.
There are times, and the rise of Deng in China is one, where it may be critically important for First World revs to articulate sharp criticisms. But precisely because such criticisms may be neccesary it is critical that they not be made casually or routinely on the basis of a feeble knowledge of the facts. There is a practice, most pronounced but hardly limited to Trotskyist groups, of “re-writing the New York Times,” that is to say taking the facts presented in the New York Times about some event, usually in a Third World country where the group doesn’t have any real contacts, and “applying” the template of previous verdicts. Sometimes such a method will lead to a correct verdict about the orientation of some other group, but as a method it stinks of imperialist arrogance and brings general discredit on all criticisms emantaing from those who use it.
I have not read all or even most of the RCP’s analyses of the events in China after Mao’s death. I don’t know therefore to what degree they relied on analyses of polemical documents produced by leaders representing different lines and to what degree they relied on deeper empirical investigation of the social processes taking place and contacts closer to the ground inside China. It strikes me as entirely possible however to, on the basis of analyzing documents, come to a correct verdict that the leadership of the CCP was taking the capitalist road and at the same time for the method used to come to that verdict to still suffer from the sort of eurocentrism Rosa identified in the letter on Nepal. And there is a high price paid when such things occur because it sows confusion precisely amongst those who see the eurocentrism but who should be won over to the particular verdict and who are then prone to being swayed to responses that emphasize the eurocentrism involved.
Rosa’s reluctance to rattle off an instant response to everything said in response to her was, I imagine, a reflection of an appreciation of the seriousness with which this issue needs to be addressed. Rather than try to have it in a thread about this particualr polemic between the RCP and the CPN(M) I think it would be more fruitful to have it around the article by O’Neill and Ucelli linked to above by Celticfire, or even better around selections from the pamphlet “Eurocentrism in the Communist Movement” that is one of the pieces reviewed in the O’Neill and Ucelli articel.
EME said
Regarding the Quotes above from Mao on capitalism under New Democacy. I think you are misreading and mismatching things here.
But, here are the key words from your quotes “to guarantee that the people can freely develop their individuality within the framework of society and freely develop such private capitalist economy as will benefit and not ‘dominate the livelihood of the people’, and to protect all appropriate forms of private property.”
and from the next paragraph: “it will guarantee legitimate profits to properly managed state, private and co-operative enterprises–so that both the public and the private sectors and both labour and capital will work together to develop industrial production.”
So Mao is giving very narrow terms to capitalism as to what was going to be allowed, i.e. “appropriate” and what was not. Consciously using capitalism with ever greater limits in order to build up the basis for the collectives and later the communes is one thing, uncritical embracing “free markets” as the next step of a country’s development is something completely different.
I don’t know enough about the facts on the ground in Nepal, but agree with the RCP that line is decisive and the blurring of which class is going to rule, and which class is going to be dictated to, is a bad sign.
Mike E said
In someways, the RCP critique is a very very small sideshow to a larger and actually important set of events. And it is not surprising that the Nepalis gave one response — and then moved back to work. TNL:
I also think that it would be valuable to spend more time in this thread, looking at what the Nepalis said — rather than fixating on the “low hanging fruit” of a very flawed critique. In other words, it is odd if we focus mainly on what the RCP wrote, and not on the letter from the Nepalis. In some ways, the whole point of debunking the RCP’s method, is to clear the ground for a better method, and (with that) a real engagement with what is happening in Nepal.
Let me put it another way: I think that quite a few people have serious and important questions about what is happening in Nepal. Quite a few people have said to me that (while they don’t want to be associated with the RCP’s crude misleading polemics) they have their own questions about the Nepali strategies.
THOSE are things we need to get into. People really want to dig into what it means when a party is going for New Democracy, rather than directly for socialism.
And running a state that still has a bourgeos/feudal army…. what is that about? Is this a transitional state form (or is this, as I believe, a form of dual power that will resolve itself one way or another)?
* * * * * *
And then there are remarks made in the Nepali letter that I think need to be explored.
Just to give an example, the CPN(M) writes a provocative thought here:
Also, I think they have very interesting things to say about how to bring large numbers of people to a higher level of consciousness, and into an active fighting relationship with the system.
They write:
Jay Rothermel said
http://www.themilitant.com/2008/7219/721951.html
….“We are fighting feudalism, we are not fighting against capitalism,” CPN(M) leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, known as Prachanda, told the New York Times before election day. “In this phase of our socioeconomic development, it is not possible to have a socialist revolution … We will create a conducive atmosphere to have more profit for the capitalist.” ….
….They also weld anti-working-class moral strictures to the probusiness policies. Prachanda has advocated banning alcohol, gambling, and “vulgar” literature from India and the United States. Last year CPN(M) cadre in Kathmandu warned homeowners not to rent rooms to gays and lesbians, claiming homosexuality is “a by-product of capitalism.” ….
Tell No Lies said
Jay,
What you are engaging in is the potshot method of argument. Toss out a few supposedly “revealing” facts that supposedly “speak for themselves” and sit back and watch the fireworks. Its not a constructive nor a serious method and it shows contempt for the critical thinking skills of the people who read what you have to say.
Both of the facts that you present have been discussed on this site at some length. the revolution in Nepal is, like all revolutions, complex and contradictory. This means that isolated facts of the sort you offer have to be ANALYZED to determine what they really mean.
What do Prachanda’s reassuring words to the US’s newspaper of record mean in the overall context of everything else Prachanda and other leaders of the CPN(M) have had to say? That would of course require actually investigating the matter rather than relying on the NYTimes to determine the CPN(M)’s orientation.
Similarly the measures proposed by Prachanda need to be analyzed concretely. Are they responses to real problems (widespread alcoholism or racist beauty standard promoted by foreign media) or are they just kneejerk acts of repression or some combination of the two? Again real investigation is called for.
Also with the anti-gay and lesbian events, it is quite clear that there is a struggle taking place and that the CPN(M)’s outlook is very much in flux. You should check out the interview with the activists from the Blue Diamond Society that recently appeared on Kasama if you want a more rounded picture of what is happening in Nepal.
Finally, thank you for the link to the article from “The Militant.” It very neatly illustrates the point I made in a post above about the practice of “rewriting the New York Times.” The author, Terry Coggan, writing from Aukland, New Zealand, relies exclusively on the capitalist press for his facts, tidily constructing a narrative that conforms with a preformed verdict. There is no evidence in it that Coggan has even been to Nepal or talked to any Nepalis or even to anybody who has been to Nepal. This is revolutionary journalism?
Rosa L. said
Thanks, Nando for your comments and thanks to Tell No Lies for your clarification to Nando and your well taken points on the problem of Eurocentrism.
Nando, you are one of the persons in this space of KASAMA whose comments I find always interesting, nuanced, profound and to the point. In my opinion, you, together with Mike, bring to this page the most important interventions to our discussions.
As Tell No Lies said in the comment before (I think Tell No Lies captured very well the spirit of my comments), I did not respond in detail not because I “chickened-out” but due to the fact that the topic is too serious, long and profound to discuss in a serious manner in an online space.
It is in the nature of this kind of spaces that there are limits in terms of how far can we go in the deepening of issues. Having said this, I did provide enough evidence to sustain my points. Another thing is if this evidence is not perceived as evidence. For years I’ve been reading you guys in KASAMA and making zero comments in this page because I knew that I would be constantly misunderstood given the limitations of online spaces for debates and discussions of this kind. However, I decided to end my silence and come out of the closet even at the risk of being misunderstood.
If you watch carefully, I constantly bring topics to the discussion that are provocative and against our MLM “common sense”. Even if I cannot treat in detail and with the needed nuances the points I raised, I decided that at least it would create enough curiosity as to stimulate debate and to move people to dig more into issues that are never considered in a serious manner in the international MLM movement. Remember my discussion with Nando on the question of RCP being a Christian-like messianic sect. Many times I bring subjects that require not a few paragraphs but a long document to sustain it.
However, I decided to take the risk of being misunderstood rather than remaining silent as I did for several years reading KASAMA.
* * * * * *
What is Eurocentrism? What is epistemic racism?
How the international communist movement reproduced these epistemic problems and what were the consequences in the past and what are the consequences for our revolutionary practice in the present?
How relevant are these questions to our re-building of a new international MLM movement?
Let me say something else here that is indirectly related to the eurocentrism point that I raised before:
Are you aware of the fact that the Selected Works of Mao published in the early fifties were sanitized to avoid conflicts with Stalin? Did you know that there are tones of passages delete by Mao and a team of Chinese Communist while editing the Selected Works to avoid being accuse by Stalin of nationalism or revisionism?
Stuart Schram in his project at Harvard University translated and published around 10 volumes of Mao’s writings entitled Mao’s Road to Power. The difference between the Schram’s volumes on Mao’s writings and the Selected Works is that Mao was forced to delete many passages from his original writings and speeches when he edited his Selected Works in the early fifties.
This was due to his already conflictive relationship with Stalin. He was afraid that he would be accused by Stalin of nationalism or revisionism. The consequences of a rupture with Stalin at that point in time would have had enormous consequences for the Chinese Revolution. What is important about Schram’s project is that:
1) he translated all of Mao’s work from 1912 until 1949 including re-translation of all the essays that were published in Mao’s Selected Works; and
2) he put in BOLD letter everything that Mao was forced to delete in the essays published in his Selected Works.
This is a very different Mao from the one we get in the Selected Works. Mao was constantly calling for a “Chinification” of Marxism and was constantly using a lot of Chinese Thought and Chinese Philosophy in his work. In other words, the Mao we have read and learned, we need to unlearn. It is a eurocentric Mao to please Stalin and the eurocentric “common sense” of the Communist movement of his times. Mao was not a Western Marxist (which is the hegemonic way we read him based on the Selected Works and on our own eurocentric and epistemic racist biases). Mao was a Chinese Marxist and a non-Western, Chinese Philosopher.
Read the fascinating book entitled History and Will: Philosophical Perspectives of Mao Tse-Tung’s Thought (ISBN: 0520029070 / 0-520-02907-0) by Frederic Wakeman Jr. Wakeman is an academic that is not a revolutionary, but offers very interesting insights on the influence of Chinese Thought and Chinese Philosophy on Mao’s Thought..
The implications of the above is so enormous that I cannot even scratch the surface in this limited space….
land said
Post #34.
The ending CPNM was a typo. If you can erase it. Sorry.
Two things I missed earlier on. How early this line struggle began. Or retreat from internationalism by the RCP began. As far back as around the 911 events. There was a genuine effort to make sure that supporters of the RCP did not even know the facts of their own movement.
(Post 17)
Another point in Post 17.
“Someone said to me the other day, that we need to explore more deeply the ways Avakian’s synthesis embodies a real capitulation – how they assume that the “complicity” of the great majority is objective, and the best they can do is what they are doing (i.e. preaching in incomprehensible and oddly religious ways AT people about their great leader.)
I want to think more about how this capitulation has presented itself. One way is their disdain for the people. The Nepali people and people everywhere.
A
Tell No Lies said
The point about Schram’s work is important. Shram has a shorter single-volume work, “The Thought of Mao Tse Tung” that also illustrates Rosa’s point. The changes made, for example in the Selected Works version of a defining work like “A Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” are politically profound. Now I don’t think this simply comes down to obeisance to the Soviet Union, I think it must also be understood as an attempt to assert Chinese title to guardianship of Marxist orthodoxy, but Rosa is right that the result is a Westernized Mao, not just for international consumption, but for Chinese consumption as well.
nando said
Rosa L:
let me just say that everything you wrote in that last post is fascinating. I knew that Mao’s works went through repeated editing and periodic revisions over the years. Several works were rewritten — but the examples I knew about all had to do with injecting his later conclusions into earlier works (especially on the existance of classes and the ongoing need for revolution).
I look forward to giving Shram’s Mao volumes a close look.
David_D said
Rose L: “Mao was not a Western Marxist (which is the hegemonic way we read him based on the Selected Works and on our own eurocentric and epistemic racist biases). Mao was a Chinese Marxist and a non-Western, Chinese Philosopher.”
This is a big subject. Wasn’t Mao a Marxist *period*, and not just a Marxist of Chinese nationality? There is no “Chinese Marxism” – just Marxism, which is a universally-valid worldview. The forms with which this worldview is expressed or the methods by which it is applied will vary from country to country, culture to culture, but at its root, Marxism is Marxism.
Do we really need Marxism to be tailored to national conditions? Isn’t it more of a question of political strategy and tactics being determined by national conditions, but guided by a universally applicable ideology? If not, what’s wrong with this line of thinking?
Tell No Lies said
The idea that there is “just Marxism” is silly.
There are many Marxisms and national variations are only one of the axes along which they have developed. We can pretend that the differences are simply ones of form and application of a “universally-valid worldview” but the real-world contradictions between them suggest otherwise. Marxism has given us a language in which we have attempted to articulate a “universally-valid worldview” (and I am not in postmodernist fashion hostile to this as an objective) but to think it is therefore an accomplished fact is preposterous. It is very much something we are still striving towards.
Anyone familiar with the academic social sciences knows how much they are stamped with a distinctive national character in different countries. I think the same is pretty clearly the case with Marxism. None of this is to suggest in a cultural relativist fashion that the labor theory of value, for example, doesn’t operate over the entire globe, but when we move from certain fundamental economic dynamics to questions like those of revolutionary political strategy we enter territory where questions of culture and national particularities impinge a great deal and what is “universally-valid” is far less apparent. And even in the area of political economy, we are confronted with often quite distinctive national social configurations where a correct analysis can not simply resort to established “universally-valid” truisms. The development of a unified field theory of revolution is very much still a work in progress in which national and other variations do not all yet fit together neatly.
Part of the struggle to constitute a truly universally-valid theory, as I see it, is the struggle against all sorts of largely unconscious expressions of eurocentrism that have persisted within Marxism despite many peoples best intentions. Bringing Chinese philosophical traditions to bear in these discussions may (or may not) prove to be an important part of this process. (I don’t feel like I know anywhere near enough on the subject of Chinese philosophy to really have an informed opinion on this question.)
David_D said
Tell No Lies: “There are many Marxisms and national variations are only one of the axes along which they have developed… Part of the struggle to constitute a truly universally-valid theory, as I see it, is the struggle against all sorts of largely unconscious expressions of eurocentrism that have persisted within Marxism despite many peoples best intentions.”
If the various expressions of Marxist theory are accompanied by a national-specific residue, why would Eurocentrism be the only such impediment to developing “truly universally-valid theory?” Wouldn’t, for instance, proceeding from this perspective, the alleged “Sino-centrism” of Mao’s original writing also be an impediment? Or any national-centric other expressions permeating the theory, regardless of nation?
Was Mao right to allegedly call for Sinicizing Marxism? If he was correct, then are the alleged Euro-centric editions most appropriate for study by Marxists in Western countries, because it somehow reflects Western “axes of development” of theory?
A related question series of questions is: did these editorial changes to Mao’s works impact the ideological content of the works? If they did, which version is more correct? Are these differences reflective of national-specific characteristics of “axes of development?” If so, do non-Western national-specific characteristics have a specific ideological content superior to Western national-specific characteristics?
I’m think this discussion is worthy of further attention; in particular, it would be great if concrete examples of Mao’s Sinocization of Marxism, and the subsequent Eurocentric editorial changes in the same works could be identified, and their ideological content assessed. At least from my perspective, this would greatly clarify the questions raised with regard to “epistemic racism” as relating to the RCP letters to the Nepalese comrades.
Eddy Laing said
Tell No Lies wrote:
The specificity of social relationships is variable within a range of actually existing expressions (possibilities). But the existence of social relationships and the fundamental qualities of certain types of relationships are indeed generalizable; there are shared qualities among all human societies.
For example, every society is organized around social practices, a ‘mode of existence’, and such mode is comprised of an ‘economic base’ and political and ideological superstructures (social relationships) which operate in relation to that base, facilitating and directing its function, among other things.
Among all human societies, the forms of economic base follow certain forms of social organization, align with certain types of technologies, etc. So when one points to specificity, it is a specificity within shared sets of parameters.
The distinction between the specificities may appear to be ‘national social configurations’ but that interpretation side-steps the fact that ‘nation’ is itself historical and political, not an innate or ‘universal’ human quality.
Rosa L. said
David_L:
The questions you raised are so serious and profound that in the absence of a profound study of the texts suggested by Tell No Lies, myself and other texts that have not been mentioned yet in this discussion, we cannot resolve them or have a meaningful conversation.
I do not want to sound arrogant. The point is that this is one of the limits of online discussions.
Serious and profound study cannot be replaced by online chatting or debates. As much as we learn from each other in these conversations and debates we have to be humble and acknowledge the limits of online spaces. Part of what entails to fight for a re-foundation of the communist project in the 21st century is to study and to revise many of our assumptions and many of the concepts and theories we have learned and taken for granted as MLM principles.
Avakianism is a desperate attempt at trying to produce such a re-foundation. The problem is that Avakianism is the result of a rush for a “new-synthesis” without doing his homework of a serious and profound study mainly due to the pressure, as Nando very well explained in one of his comments above, from the Nepalese successes and out of fear of being downplayed by Prachanda or some other Maoist leader. The result of this rush was a mediocre proposal that is not to the level of our times. Avakianism is a recycling of more of the same with no profound examination of the many assumptions that are required to be re-examined in order for us to produce a new vision of communism for the 21st century.
One of the problems with the rush towards a “new synthesis” is precisely the problem of Eurocentrism and what it entails in terms of our theory/practice relationship. Concepts such a universalism, science, dialectics, philosophy, truth, objectivity, consciousness, superstructure, infrastructure, etc. needs to be re-examined from a non-eurocentric outlook in order to overcome some of the problems we face today. Eurocentric ideas and persepctives were carry over into our vision by the hegemony of Western Marxism and this happened in a “commonsensical”, spontaneous and unconscious way. This trapped us into dilemmas that other traditions of thought do not share, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes times for bad reason. Here I am not talking about just “national specificites” but about cosmological/epistemological differences, that is, different ways of thinking and acting. Mao’s breakthroughs in ML thought were precisely done, for good reasons, thanks to his access to a different tradition of thought, in this case Chinese Philosophical traditon. Read the texts suggested before…
Just think about this: If what we’ve understood as Mao’s Thought is based on his sanitized Selected Works published in the early fifties and gave us, as Tell No Lies said, a “Westernized Mao,” then we need to re-examine what we have called “Maoism.” This is not something we can discuss or debate in an online space in the absence of a serious study.
BobH said
A question for Rosa L: your posts clearly indicate that you view eurocentric (note the lower-case ‘e’ to not be Eurocentric!) thought and a racialized epistemology to be a central problem to all the serious theoretical and practical problems of today. Understanding that this not something that can be resolved in a few blog posts, could you outline what you mean by eurocentric thinking (as opposed to other kinds of problematic thinking: lazy, shallow, arrogant, etc.)
Also, list of texts you consider to be key in understanding eurocentric thought would be helpful, beyond what’s already been mentioned.
I raise this because I’m concerned that anti-eurocentric critiques sometimes tend to paint with too broad a brush. There are some well-known pitfalls: conspiracy theories about AIDs, some of the more extreme Afrocentric ideas on history without much evidence, rejecting sound medical practice, etc.
I’m asking if you could outline how you steer between eurocentric thought and abandoning science and universality as many people end up doing. Are there any established heuristics for distinguishing between what is universal and what is eurocentric?
Green Red said
I only can recall parts of a statement of his that was saying like, read Marx Engels, Lenin, Stalin’s writings and learn the thinking pattern.
To me it sounds like stop fighting about how to title the wrong interpretation. Some force is wasted, for Euro whateverism or self centerism or other cause, fine. Make a better one but, does it really matter how to name somebody an opportunist or anything else?!
And probably tomorrow we’ll say that Parachanda’s Path is a Nepal interpretation…
For them, let’s see if their way works but, for us, let’s plan to deal with realitys back here in the belly of the beast!
Green Red said
I just noticed the above Bob H’s saying. We want to admit it or not, the west happens to be the corner where all eons of other civilizations’ achievement was collected and synthesized into modern science through colonialism and aftermath.
It only happens to be on their “name”, but, in an of it all, aren’t we the same specie? Now this American Armenian fellow, Avakian has say non-Asian, non-African perspective. Then what? What’s the usage of the argument. Honestly I am asking sister since, i want to find out when proven, what happens next with it. Does it get scholastic awards? do we go in streets and say this damned Eurocentric guy is way passed judjmental about our true revolutionary comrades in Nepal?
To make it simple, let them sell their books. SWP has done that too!
chegitz guevara said
I’ve read Nando’s, Mike Es, Tell No Lies, and Rosa L’s comments on Eurocentrism and the truth is, I find them all compelling. I think both can be true at the same time. It’s absolutely true that this same tone and style of critique would emerge from the RCP, no matter whom the target was. As we have constantly pointed out on the left, racism does not have to be intentional. It doesn’t matter if the RCP intended to put down the CPN(M) for being Third World comrades, the fact is they did so, in a manner reminiscent of, as Nando admits, that has a colonialist feel. Just as it is incumbent on white revolutionaries to be careful of how they address comrades of color or how men treat women, those of us in the imperialist world have a higher burden not to repeat the same type of relations with our Third world comrades (especially ones who have done more than we have) as existed in colonialism.
The RCP was out of line for a whole host of reasons. Eurocentrism is just one of them.
Rosa L. said
Thanks Chegitz for your comment! You are absolutely right: The fact that RCP leaders behave in arrogant and disrespectful ways with First World Euro-American camrades do not take away from their colonial attitude and epistemic racism towards Nepalese maoists.
The discussion here should not be an “either/or” type of dilemma as some camrades tried to represent it… BobH, you asked what is eurocentrism because you are worried about some kind of anti-Western crusade and Green Red, you seem to think this is some kind of stupid identity politics. Here is the answer: research, study, investigate and inform yourself.
As Mao said:
Begin to find an answer to your questions by studying seriously the following books (the order is irrelevant):
1-Samir Amin Eurocentrism
http://www.amazon.com/Eurocentrism-Samir-Amin/dp/0853457867/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238046521&sr=1-4
2-Boaventura de Sousa Santos (Editor) Another Knowledge is Possible (Reinventing Social Emancipation: Toward New Manifestos) (Paperback)
http://www.amazon.com/Another-Knowledge-Possible-Reinventing-Emancipation/dp/1844672565/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238046196&sr=1-1
3-Immanuel Wallerstein European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power
http://www.amazon.com/European-Universalism-Rhetoric-Immanuel-Wallerstein/dp/1595580611/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238046020&sr=1-3
4-Ella Shohat and Robert Stam Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media
http://www.amazon.com/Unthinking-Eurocentrism-Multiculturalism-Media-Sightlines/dp/0415063256/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238045862&sr=1-3
5-Walter Mignolo Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking
http://www.amazon.com/Histories-Global-Designs-Walter-Mignolo/dp/0691001405/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238046272&sr=1-1
6-Walter Mignolo The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, & Colonization, 2nd Edition
http://www.amazon.com/Darker-Side-Renaissance-Territoriality-Colonization/dp/0472089315/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238046306&sr=1-3
7-James Blaut The Colonizer’s Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History
http://www.amazon.com/Colonizers-Model-World-Geographical-Diffusionism/dp/0898623480/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238046597&sr=1-1
8-Martin E. Lewis and Karen E. Wigen The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520207432/ref=pd_luc_gc_rec_03_03
9-Enrique Dussel The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of “the Other” and the Myth of Modernity
http://www.ifil.org/Biblioteca/dussel/html/23-1.html
10-Edward Said Orientalism
http://www.amazon.com/Orientalism-Edward-W-Said/dp/039474067X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238047774&sr=1-1
11-Peter Gran Beyond Eurocentrism: A New View of Modern World History
http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Eurocentrism-Modern-World-History/dp/0815626932/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238047815&sr=1-3
12-Kenneth Pomeranz The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Divergence-Europe-Making-Economy/dp/0691090106/ref=pd_sim_b_4
13-Giovanni Arrighi Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century
http://www.amazon.com/Adam-Smith-Beijing-Lineages-Twenty-First/dp/1844671046/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238048104&sr=1-2
14-Michel-Rolph Trouillot Silencing the Past
http://www.amazon.com/Silencing-Past-Michel-Rolph-Trouillot/dp/0807043117/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238049206&sr=8-1
15-Andre Gunder Frank ReORIENT: Global Economy in the Asian Age
http://www.amazon.com/ReORIENT-Global-Economy-Asian-Age/dp/0520214749/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238049323&sr=1-1
16-Janet L. Abu-Lughod Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350
http://www.amazon.com/Before-European-Hegemony-D-1250-1350/dp/0195067746/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238049439&sr=1-1
17-Eric Wolf Europe and the People Without History
http://www.amazon.com/Europe-People-Without-History-Eric/dp/0520048989/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238049495&sr=1-7
18-Martin Bernal Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985, Volume 1)
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Athena-Afroasiatic-Civilization-Fabrication/dp/0813512778/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_ttl_in
19-Martin Bernal Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics
http://www.amazon.com/Black-Athena-Writes-Back-Responds/dp/0822327171/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238050783&sr=1-4
20-Eric H Mielants The Origins of Capitalism and the “Rise of the West”
http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Capitalism-Rise-West/dp/1592135765/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238050838&sr=1-1
arthur said
In #42 Mike Ely almost seemed to get something right by saying:
The Nepalis said, loud and clear (and are illustrating by their practice) that multi-party democracy is absolutely critical for both establishing proletarian rule and for maintaining maintaining it against revisionist degeneration.
They aren’t just proposing it as a tactical necessity due to the particularlities of their situation but as a fundamental issue that must be grasped by communists worldwide, including in countries like the USA.
It was absurd of them to imagine that a cult such as the RCP(USA) could think that through.
So far the discussion in this thread suggests it isn’t something refugees from the RCP are ready to think through either.
Its a much easier conclusion to reach as being utterly obvious in countries like the USA and Australia where nobody serious could imagine the working class putting up with the pretentions of would be lemmingists establishing a one party state and calling it a dictatorship of the proletariat.
But surely there must be at least some inkling among kasama supporters that you are actually going to have to deal with it, not in the context of Nepal, but in the context of the complete irrelevance of groups claiming to be Maoist to actual politics in any modern bourgeois democracy?
Or do you just keep banning people who disagree with you?
While you remain unable to even notice or discuss it and can only ban
Mike E said
arthur writes:
Moderator note: Huh?
* * * * * * * *
General Reference on the very minimal Kasama site rules:
In the fourteen months of this site, only a very small number of people have been banned. (Under five.) The bannings have virtually all been for repeated posting of reactionary views and spamming.
It is important, in general, to engage and debunk the views of openly pro-imperialist, racist, conservative people. But that is just not the purpose of this site. And leaving this site open to pro-war views (for example) would make much more difficult the discussions that this site is trying to pursue.
In another set of cases, this site has put some people on “moderation” (usually temporary) — where after repeated warnings, their comments are “moderated” (meaning that after comments are posted, a moderator needs to approve them before they appear.)
Again only a small number of people have been put “on moderation” — and this has almost exclusively been for violating another of the very simple rules of this site: no flaming, no hostile personalizing of political differences.
so the rules are relatively simple:
1) this site is for civil and substantive analysis/debate among revolutionaries and progressive people.
2) we do not allow flaming, spamming or trolling.
3) we do not allow openly reactionary, pro-system views to drag down the level of discussion.
4) Disputes over moderation are handled by email or on Kasama threads, not in the threads of the site.
And the application of those rules are also relatively simple:
1) The moderators deliberately try to be laid back.
2) People violating the rules generally get repeated warnings and explanations.
3) People on moderation are encouraged to comments, and moderation is lifted if comments adhere to the site guidelines.
Finally, there is a place to raise questions or disagreements over moderation….it is the “moderation and policy” comments on the Kasama Threads “Cage” forum.
If you have any questions about the policies we just listed….. go there.
Mike E said
Rosa L writes (btw — Rosa L is not the same person as Rosa Harris, who is one of the founders of this site):
I think Rosa L’s point here is important in its own right.
the kind of threaded discussion we are having here is valuable for raising questioins, pointing to major political issues, giving people an initial sense of opposing views on a topic, pointing in the direction of solutions.
The core of the “presumptuous work” of reconceiving the communist project and regrouping a revoutionary movement — that work requires an engagement with theory in ways that cannot be done in threaded debate.
People need to write and present more systematic work — i.e. articles and books. And that more systematic work then needs to be engaged in a serious and systematic way (i.e. with rejoinders, critical investigation, practice, and counterposed works).
Rosa L is quite write to indicate such areas — i.e. to decline to give sound-bites where only a serious analysis will do.
Kasama is working energetically now to develop its theoretical project with the idea of creating and engaging precisely such more systematic works. We encourage anyone interested in that to contact John Steele (via the Kasama email addy), since he is playing a central role in planning and coordinating that area of work.
In addition, I would simply like to invite Rosa L to consider writing a longer piece that starts to explore (open up) the issues that she has indicated here in this thread. Or perhaps she can indicate an existing piece that we can post in order to dig into these matters (in their own right).
Rosa L: if you would like to write an initial piece dealing with the experiences and problems of previous communist work, and if you would like to more systematically outline the kinds of changes you think communists should make in their assumptions and concepts, this site would be eager to present it.
Otto said
There are so many responses here, I haven’t had time to read them all. But my main observation is that a party that first won a revolutionary war, then an election, had to have met the perceived needs of many of the country’s people. They have responded to what those people wanted and needed.
The RCP is very small and has a lot of nerve trying to tell a successful party what to do when all they can do is muster less than 1 percent of US popular support. I really don’t believe a single party state will ever fly in this country. We already have a near one party dictatorship now (two parties with only superficial differences). From where I live, I can guarantee that constantly attacking religion will not win over many of the Midwestern workers. This is where a Maoist group has to take in to consideration the concrete realities of its own workers and find a way to apply its ideology in a meaning full way that will win over those who have balked at socialism in the past.
They managed that in Nepal. Until we can say the same, who are any of us to criticize their movement, at least as long as they are being successful.
Tell No Lies said
Arthur challenges us to more seriously engage the Nepali comrades points about multi-party democracy. I agree that this is improtant and also that there has been resistance to getting into it.
A few points to get started:
1. Whether there is a one-party or a multi-party system there is still going to be competition and struggle between different political perspectives and interests. So the idea that this can be overcome by a one-party system is wrong. Rather what tends to happen in one-party systemes is that these struggles are waged covertly, indirectly or dishonestly (raising the red flag to fight the red flag).
2. There is no inherent obstacle to capitalist forces working within a one-party system from gaining control of the party and using it to return to the capitalist road. Indeed that has been the pattern.
3. The period of socialist transition is a period in which the masses are supposed to learn to rule. That process is better served by open contestation between opposing viewpoints than either by palace intrigues or struggles in which confusion abounds because all forces are using the same terminology (and in the course of things draining it of its critical power).
None of this is to suggest that we have a clear model of what a multi-party socialist political system would look like, what features it would and wouldn’t share with multi-party capitalist political systems, what forces would be allowed or prohibited from participating, and so on. Here I think there is much to learn from Latin American experiences in Chile, Nicaragua, and more recently in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.
One thing that I think a comparison of the Chilean and Venezuelan experiences shows is that the question of a multi-party form can’t be divorced from the question of the armed forces. An army under (even quasi) socialist control can make a world of difference. Another important point I think is the role of political processes outside the arena of the state, that is to say at the level of popular movements and organizations. I believe state power is key to carrying forward a socialist transformation, but that the development of a robust civil society outside of the state is also neccesary.
In any event, these are a few points to jump off from.
David_D said
Tell No Lies: “An army under (even quasi) socialist control can make a world of difference.”
Concerning state power, and opening to multi-party participation, this is absolutely true. I think there are precedents for multi-party forms under socialism. Just not multi-party competition. China, GDR, Czechoslovakia, Poland, even DPRK had multi-party systems under real or nominal socialism. But it was “multi-party cooperation.” It would be a mistake though to presume that these other non-leading parties did not represent certain social forces and ideologies distict from the leading parties. But I think we’re talking about something else here, which is doing away with the concept of “leading party.” That is, not guaranteeing any role for a particular party or for Marxist ideology under a state constitution. That’s a big leap. Is it correct?
Communist parties are free to participate in elections in bourgeois democracy in many countries because there is absolutely no danger that they will win. There is so little social basis for such parties. But do we really imagine that in a post-revolutionary North America or Western Europe, that there would be little social basis for a restorationist party or parties? I cannot imagine that. Would it be correct for communists to raise the principle of political party pluralism to the point of inviolability? I think that would be irresponsible. On the other hand, opening the door as wide as possible, while firmly grasping power through the armed forces, judiciary, and other institutions (like maybe local committees), is a good idea. Maybe there can be some sort of division of powers in that regard.
Tell No Lies said
Just to be clear, I’m using the term “civil society” in the more popular sense that it acquired in Eastern Europe and Latin America in the 1980s as the organization of the citizenry outside of the state. This usage has roots in but is different from Gramsci’s usage which in turn is quite different from Hegel’s. While I’m aware of the ways that the more popular usage has been used to obscure class antagonisms, I still think it represents a useful category when talking about state-society relations.
Mike E said
I think there are further distinctions to be explored:
The issue is whether to hold competitive multiparty elections for national office. And which political forces will be considered appropriate for participation in the “new mainstream” that the elections are based on. And (to put it even more sharply): the issue is whether the main revolutionary party commits itself to step down from power if it were to lose an election.
These things are close to the heart of the controversies.
The RCP has nibbled around the edges of all of this: saying that competitive elections would probably be ok (at lower levels), suggesting that other organized groups may be allowed (as part of either “elasticity” or the “John stuart Mill point”).
But the heart of the K. Venu critique is the idea that it would be very hard to win open competitive elections everytime — and for the communists “you only need to lose once” (and then the process would presumably be ended by some election-justified counterrevolution).
The example raised is the Nicaraguan sandinistas stepping down after losing national elections to a pro-U.S. candidate. (The nepalis speak of their attention to this Nicaraguan experience, and to the Chilean coup, in their writings. And we need to understand what they are referring to when they make these references.)
* * * * * *
Part of the issue here (not engaged enough) is the Nepali notion of a “new mainstream.”
They have argued that bourgeois politics has its political spectrum and “mainstream” — operating within the legal framework of capitalist law and institutions. And that the new society needs a “new mainstream” — which means that the competitive elections would be held between parties that correspond to that new framework — i.e. of New Democracy and then socialism.
This assumes that there can (and will be) several parties that will have fidelity to the new socialist society — and so the exchange of power would not (inherently) mean the rise to power of a militant counterrevolution.
It also assumes that counterrevolutionary parties (that existed in the old society — those that represent the overthrow oppressors) would not be part of this new mainstream.
I suspect that part of this is an assumption of two things:
a) that with some hard work, the main revolutionary party (the equivalent of Mao’s communist party) can win a broad and stable long term support …. so that it will remain at the core of various coalition governments for a very long period of time. (i.e. that the various competitive elections would sound warning bells, would act as accountability before the people, would shift the various coalitions — but not constantly threaten to overthrow the whole socialist transition process).
b) that the kinds of “different factions” that existed within Mao’s party-in-power would sooner or later be represented as DIFFERENT parties in the new society — and their opposing programs would be fought out in public.
I think that these views need to be drawn out — and particular the question of “what happens when the revolutionaries lose a national election” needs to be addressed frontally. Will it mean that the revolution and the people will be drenched in blood and their hard won gains just allowed to be reversed? Is the promise to “step down on electoral defeat” inherently and inevitably a promise to betray the people’s hopes and interests?
* * * * *
The other thing that needs to be discussed is the argument (by the CPNM) that this institutional structure of “multiparty competitive elections under socialism” is now something universal. (They describe it as one of the elements of Prachanda path that should be viewed as universal. another one is Prachanda’s view that insurrection and people’s war now will need to happen in an intertwined or fused way in future revolutions — and that the previous analysis of “two types of countries, two roads” is outdated.
In short: they are arguing that the institutional forms and plans they have put forward for new socialist Nepal contain something that should be considered essential to future forms of socialism everywhere.
(Speaking for myself, i have become very reluctant to embrace quick pronouncements of “universality” for local attempts at innovation — i think a lot of overreaching and dogmatism has been unleashed using those arguments. And this is especially true when “universality” is claimed before an initial experiment has even been tried in one or two places. But all that too is a question for discussion.)
boris max said
I saw two main points of disagreement in the letters: whether the Nepalese were correct to use democratic republic as a tactical slogan and how communists ought to understand the socialist state in light of capitalist restoration in the USSR and China. I think the first issue has to be answered on the basis of a concrete analysis of the concrete conditions in Nepal, throughout the larger region, and on the international level. What is needed is the opposite of the idealistic method of the RCP critique, something that many of the comments have already pointed out in relation to the section on Switzerland, in comparison to “re-writing the New York Times” like the Trotskyists, and in the discussion on Eurocentrism.
However, I think the second issue also needs to be discussed. In their letter, the Nepalese are clearly calling for more investigation into the reasons for capitalist restoration in the 20th century and the means to prevent it in the future:
“Why did Comrade Stalin fail to control the emergence of revisionists from within the Party he had led, despite that he did his best, including forceful suppression against them? Why did the CPC under Mao’s leadership, despite that it launched the Cultural Revolution, fail to stop revisionist Deng and his clique from grabbing power after his demise? Why did the Russian Red Army that was able to defeat the fascist Hitler and his powerful army with the sacrifice of about 20 million Russian patriots, fail to retain proletarian power after the death of Comrade Stalin? Why did the Chinese PLA, which was able to defeat Japanese imperialist aggression and 5.5 million in the Chinese reactionary army, turn out to be a silent spectator when the revisionist Deng clique grabbed power? . . . These and alike are the questions for which we are trying to find correct answers. . . . We need assistance in our effort to try to connect the missing links in the ICM by which our class had to lose its power in the twentieth century . . .”
To the question of preventing restoration, the Nepalese pose a few preliminary answers: making mass action against mistaken leaders a regular phenomenon under socialism, guaranteeing more democracy for the oppressed classes which strengthens their voluntary unity and their dictatorship over ruling classes, multiparty competition within an anti-feudal (or anti-bourgeois) and anti-imperialist constitutional framework, and institutionalizing the people’s right to supervise their representatives (including through recall). The basis of these views was previously and further outlined in the article in The Worker #9, “The Question of Building a New Type of State,” to which the October 2005 RCP letter repeatedly refers and criticizes.
In response, the RCP dismisses the idea of multiparty competition as “formal democracy” and claims that the Nepalese are looking for “some kind of supposed ‘guarantee’ for the prevention of capitalist restoration.” First, I don’t think arguing for multiparty competition is simply arguing for more “formal democracy,” since multiparty competition may be one way (even if not the only way) for the masses to train themselves in differentiating between political lines, administering the state and becoming the masters of society. Second, as far as I’m aware, nowhere in their writings do the Nepalese say that they have found any “guarantee” against capitalist restoration. They are simply thinking the question in the context of leading a revolutionary mass movement.
The RCP letter puts forward its own view on the question of preventing capitalist restoration:
“Whether a state continues to advance toward the ultimate goal of communism, and its own eventual withering away, depends on whether and how that state is fighting to transform all of the objective material and ideological conditions that make the existence of the state necessary.”
IMHO, this is a non-answer to the invitation of the Nepalese to think more deeply about the causes and means of preventing capitalist restoration. Yes, whether the state continues on the socialist road depends on how the state is transforming the 4 Alls. But, what exactly are the best ways to do this in light of the experience of the 20th century? What about the masses? What is their role?
In both this polemic and the Badiou polemic, the RCP raises the charge that the other party is “retreating into the whole past era of bourgeois revolution and its principles” and throwing out the experience of the ICM altogether. Instead of this, I think the RCP is not even asking the questions that are necessary to sum up the 20th century and develop a genuine new synthesis to bring us out of the crisis in socialist theory.
Carl Davidson said
What I find odd about this discussion of multiparty electoral politics, government, state and the socialist path is that it’s unfolding around Nepal. As important as a popular victory is there, the conditions are about as far removed from ours here as they can be. Moreover, I’d bet that, apart from reading a few articles and pamphlets at great remove, people in this debate know next to nothing about the problems and conditions there, whichever side they take in this debate.
So why not carry out this debate over condition we face rather than we don’t face, over problems we have, rather than don’t have?
For my part, I don’t think the number of parties engaged in a revolutionary process at any stage is set in the stone of theory or principle. It could be one or several, depending on what happens. It could be for a short time of a longer time. The Left SRs held power for a time together with the Bolsheviks, until they engaged in counter-revolutionary actions. Even then, their initial removal was aimed at them, not all parties for all time. That was changed later by Stalin.
Given the diverse nature of our country, a variety of forces are on the field, and they will represent a range of forces on either side of the political divide. Why not make this our starting point for discussion, and see if we can make an assessment and chart a path forward here, where we know something about the topic?
I posted an assessment of this sort here. If its not suitable, someone should post another.
Should communists stand down if defeated in a more-or-less honest election? Why not? First, holding government posts is not the same as state power. Second, one can still lead from a minority opposition. Third, if you’re not willing to step down, why bother with the election at all? If people can’t choose their leaders from contending platforms and schools of thought, it would be more honest to do away with popular democracy altogether.
Of course you won’t get very far in most countries with that approach. The people do have convictions about these things, and if the ‘mass line’ method on learning and seeking truth is more than iconic verbiage, you might want to mull it over some.
We have the task of making revolution, not only in a bourgeois democratic country, but also one with a history of open fascist trends, varieties of populism, and a Constitution rooted far more in Locke than Rousseau, which means what many Americans think is normal and obvious, is viewed as libertarian and semi-anarchist in the other bourgeois democracies. This is what a socialist path ‘with American characteristics’ is going to reflect, to one degree or another.
Finally, part of the debate here is, frankly, Talmudic. It’s all about citing quotes from ossified dogma and seeing who strays from overall coherence. In that sense, being over Nepal or any other country doesn’t really matter, because current conditions, problems and proposed solutions have little to do with it. I, for one, have no intention of entering that monastery.
Tell No Lies said
Well Carl, I think there is a very good reason for having this discussion about Nepal, and that is precisely that they are in the process of an actual revolution that is confronting these questions concretely, whereas we in the US are presently very far from such a situation. What forces will be on the field in the event of a revolutionary situation in the US is much more a matter of speculation than what is happening now in Nepal, even if it is true that our empirical knowledge of what is happening there is presently thin. The question of what “socialism with American characteristics” is likely to look like is interesting to me, but part of how we learn to look at our own society at enough of a distance to really understand it is, I think, by looking at others. I wouldn’t pose the questions against each other.
Now I think that when you take a polemic launched by the RCP as your starting point its hardly surprising that the discussion is occasionally a bit Talmudic. For the ex-RCPers here this is, for better or worse, an opportunity to revisit old assumptions. I think also that elements in the RCPs critique of the CPN(M) resonate among those trained in the RCPs line and that there is a need to unpack that. But I don’t think the overall tone of this discussion nor the thrust of the site in general can be characterized as Talmudic. Everybody brings their baggage to these discussions and we strive to find ways to really rethink things and find a new common language appropriate to new conditions, some admittedly more sincerely than others. I think its a remarkable space for that and I think your repeated interventions suggest that you also appreciate this.
Carl Davidson said
Fair enough on your last point.
On your opening point, that we are ‘very far from such a situation’ as Nepal, is one I’ve made repeatedly here from the start, albeit with a different twist. I’m for focusing on our conditions, and developing plans accordingly, even if the situation isn’t revolutionary.
But let the thread unfold…
boris max said
In response to Carl Davidson, I think that beyond the particularities of Nepal, which require concrete analysis of concrete conditions, the letters also deal with the Marxist theory of the state in a more universal sense. The Nepalese point out in their letter that more investigation and debate around this is needed.
There is a need to sum up the 20th century and, more specifically, what happened during the Cultural Revolution, why it failed, and what are the implications for socialist theory and practice. I think the task is similar to Marx’s study of the Paris Commune and his development of the theory that the existing state apparatus must be smashed. The RCP, the Nepalese Maoists, Alain Badiou, and others have drawn different lessons from the GPCR (in the case of the RCP I would say it is just a descriptive theory of giving space to intellectuals, fostering dissent, “the truth is important,” which doesn’t really go as deep as the others have). For example, see:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/magdoff010706.html
Mike E said
It is true that there are not two countries on earth farther apart than Nepal and the U.S. — using any scale or measure or historical marker you want to pick.
And I agree with TNL that there is (nonetheless) a great deal to learn from the practice and theory of the Nepali Maoists (and I believe this will be true even if they lose, and obviously even more true if they make it over the next hurdle.)
That is because the world has gone a long time without a communist revolution — and part of the bewilderment among communists is that they have never seen one, and they really don’t know what a real revolution looks like, and they are very used to judging movements and people merely by what they SAY (in a narrow textual way) not by what they are bringing into being. (Witness the fetish of the word.)
Now it isn’t easy for people here to “relate” to the revolution in nepal: our struggle here is to overthrow a developed capitalism that has always existed in a bourgeois democratic form, and establish socialism. Their current stage of revolution has focused on overthrowing a monarchy and the feudalism it rests on, and (in some ways) grappling with what kind of popular democracy will actually enable the needed changes.
But I think those distances can be overcome through creative communist work — and there is some IMPORTANCE to having revolutionaries in the U.S. understand what New Democratic revolution is (two stage socialist revolution in semi-feudal countries) — because it is a part of the world we live in. And understanding a living new democratic revolution in Nepal requires learning the kind of historical materialism that we need to understand all kinds of different conditions and situations in the world.
On the issues of elections:
I think there is a kind of “common sense” that says : Any socialist society needs forms of popular democracy, and why shouldn’t American socialism adopt the forms of democracy most familiar to the people here?
I’m suspicious of that seemingly simple assertion, for three reasons:
1) First, we have (hundreds of millions of us) lived under U.S. bourgeois democracy and many of us have some profound sense of what a sham it is.
Rounding up the people every four years to “select” one of two pre-chosen candidates (while the mass media shamelessly indoctrinates everyone in bourgeois policy logic and “choices”). There is no popular agency there. It is a form for legitimizing this system and it is intense periodic mass training of the broad population in raw bourgeois thinking and politics.
The very idea of focusing “democracy” on voting is tied to an atomization of interest — where you are supposed to stand as an unorganized individual in the voting booth trying to decide what is in YOUR narrowest personal interests (The famous “undecided voter” agonizing on whether to support more taxes or more schools? do I have kids likely to benefit? Do i need a little extra cash next year etc.)
I can’t imagine a revolutionary change in the U.S. that doesn’t involve a deep exposure and disenchantment with this institutionalized form of “democracy” — and of many of the illusions that underpin it.
So I think it is quite possible, and perhaps even likely, that the forms that socialist democracy will take in North America may be radically different from the historic forms of bourgeois democracy. That the oppressed and revolutionary events will drive toward a rupturing on institutional forms — not a mimicry of the Jefferson-Hamilton-Franklin-Washington concepts.
If the Russian people could invent Soviets (radical workers councils that repeatedly overshadowed previous assumptions about Tsarist Dumas and German-style parliaments) — why can’t future revolutions in the 21st century throw up forms of popular agency and representation that differ radically from the “contested multiparty elections” that emerged from some west European political traditions and were transplanted by colonialism into South Asian culture?
Here (as on so many questions) there are people who think: “What is realistic is what is possible, what is possible is what currently exists.” But I see no reason that this particular current two-party political system in the U.S. with its peculiar theory and patchwork of congressional, presidential, regional and local elections — a system which has seemed popular at times and discredited at other times — won’t become as despised and exposed as the Weimar Republic became in Germany in 1930 — when the radically different communist and Nazi alternatives gained rapid favor.
The U.S. has a corrupt, broken and declining political system — whose institutions have become remarkably unpopular and discredited. Why assume that socialism will resurrect or imitate any of that?
2) I think that in imagining a new revolutionary society, we have to understand that it is likely to have the characteristics of a post-civil war politics. I.e. it will be stamped by the real, existing power struggle it emerges out of.
It’s not like “the people” will exist as one polity, and be able to work out easy compromises and adjustments.
To have a radical change in a place like the U.S., one section of the people (in the tens of millions) will need to organize itself and forcibly smash the resistance of other more conservative sections of the people. There will inevitably be an intense polarization — and it won’t be ended or resolved by the victory of the revolution. The scars of both the revolution and the old society will mark the landscape for a long time.
I think that we can take the 1860s U.S. civil war as an analogy. It’s not like after the smashing of the confederacy, you could just reextend pre-war bourgeois democracy to the defeated South.
To establish the new social and political conditions (for Black people), the confederate soldiers and officers had to be deprived of the ability to organize politically. Many were prevented from voting and holding office. And it is not accidental that the reversing of the anti-slavery revolution (i.e. overthrowing “Reconstruction”) involved a re-empowerment of the white propertied classes.
In other words, in a place like the U.S. the creation of a “new political mainstream” will require institutionalizing the verdicts of the revolutionary victory itself — in who is empowered and who is not.
One example: in the U.S., “States Rights” has always meant “let the crackers decide” — it was a way of “allowing” the most backward parts of the country the “freedom” to impose the most oppressive conditions. It was a way of exploiting extreme uneven development between regions in the u.s. to give the most backward and racist the maximum “freedom” to define their localities, and influence national politics. There was always an open element of bourgeois democracy involved in the assertion of those local rights — a point that the confederates made during the war and the post-civil-war racists then made for a hundred following years.
So the issue is not simply: if you lose an election, do you step down from power? The issue is also, who do you allow to participate in the elections? How do you prevent the new institutions of the new society from becoming a shell through which hated oppressors fight their way back to power?
Carl writes (as an example of the appearance of “common sense” i mentioned above):
Yeah but what does “a more or less honest election” mean? Is it true that one can always “still lead from a minority opposition”?
To use the analogy of the Deep South after the Civil War: Was it really OK to accept the electoral defeat of reconstruction governments (knowing that those power shifts would plunge Black people into a hundred years of lynch law)?
Sometimes losing an election (or a power struggle) means that you will never be an opposition again — that (as Mao said) you will fall into an abyss and your bones will break (because the victorious counterrevolution will never allow you to have a second chance. You don’t always “live to fight another way” — and accepting a temporary defeat can mean objectively betraying the people’s highest hopes.
Look closely at Carl’s sentence: “If people can’t choose their leaders from contending platforms and schools of thought, it would be more honest to do away with popular democracy altogether.”
Well, who are “people” in this sentence? Is there one seamless people who emerge from the coming revolution with a common claim to participate in “popular democracy”?
Will we be able to know before the revolution, its outcome and post-revolutionary polarizations are clear? Isn’t it likely that North America will be a checkerboard — with strongholds of the socialist revolution in uneasy cohabitation with lingering strongholds of today’s “red states”?
Is it impossible that some parts of North America will (like the post-confederate Reconstruction South) be under a period of martial law, that literally enables “popular democracy” of a socialist kind in some areas? For example what will Texas’ politics look like in the first years after a socialist revolution?
Or to take another historical example, what did it mean in Zimbabwe that the vicious white racist leader Ian Smith remained one of most prominent politicians of the country after the revolution(and that the white elite kept having the power to “choose” him as their leader)? didn’t it mean that the revolution had been betrayed by Mugabe, and the fertile land had not been divided up among the African people, and that the white colonial-settler landowners had not been expropriated as a class?
Sometimes the existence of popular democracy means that some sections of “people” may not get to choose “their” leaders — or have them contest in the “contested elections.”
The creation of a “new mainstream” operating within a radically new social framework is going to be a process with radical ruptures — in which new forms of mass dictatorship are entwined on new forms of mass democracy, and in which they are mutually dependent.
3) I believe that countries do have characteristics that arise historically, and are relatively autonomous from the changing social orders. There are real reasons why France (which had an absolutist monarchy, gave rise to a republic that had an almost absolutist presidency). There are reasons why the state institutions of the Soviet Union had some structural similarities with Tsarism (in ways rooted in the multinational character of the place, and in objective pulls for centralization, and in the repeated experiences of invasions over flat plains).
There are reasons why Switzerland, the U.S., and a new Nepal are federated — having to do with nationalities within a multinational state, and objective geographic conditions that produced a history of localism. And so on….
in that sense i think there is some truth to Carl’s carefully-worded remark:
Sure, “to one degree or another.” Every revolution will have its own characteristics — some of which are drawn from the past, some shaped by radical breaks with the past.
That is, in part, why it is important to break with dogmatic ideas of “universality” — either the idea that there is something universal about Stalin’s party formation, or about the state that was formed around one party. And why i suspect we should not embrace the assumption that multi-party elections are now “universal” for all countries (when in fact revolutionary necessities and local conditions may lead another way.)
Carl Davidson said
I also think Nepal is interesting, Mike, but not because it’s a ‘communist revolution.’ Rather, because it’s a communist-led anti-feudal and new democratic revolution in an era of globalization and crisis.
In my opinion, there has never been a communist revolution, and one is not likely for some time. We have had a number of socialist revolutions led by communist parties, with Russia and China being the major ones. We’ve even seen a socialist revolution, Cuba, where the Communist Party was formed afterwards, with the existing CP taking a back seat to the July 26 movement up to and during the seizure of power. And we’ve had communist parties lead national and democratic revolutions, such as South Africa, that have yet to take the socialist path to any decisive degree.
Making a communist revolution requires a considerable period of development, of socialist reconstruction, before the conditions are ready for it. If you want to look at the GPCR as an attempt to bring communism into being in the China of the 1970s, you’ll find one of the reasons for its defeat right there.
To demand that Nepal unfold a socialist revolution right now, let alone a communist one, would be foolish, showing one knows little about either communism or Nepal.
As for our country, bourgeois democracy has never been pretty. I use the anniversary of Fred Hampton’s death as a case in point to teach about it, alongside Fannie Lou Hamer’s battle at the DNC in Atlantic City. Nonetheless, I’d be the last to belittle the importance to the working class of every bit of democratic reforms won under the dictatorship of capital.
Even in the various forms of dual power, including the Soviets (which Lenin tipped his hat to Daniel Deleon for), the workers are still not likely to give up their right to vote and to speak. ‘Bolshevik,’ after all, is Russian for ‘the majority,’ meaning Lenin’s team won more votes in the RSDLP than the Mensheviks, ‘the minority.’
My only rule of thumb for how a workers and a popular democracy in its various possible forms will unfold here is ‘work for the best, prepare for the worst,’ meaning that I’m trying to ‘win the battle for democracy,’ not to concede it because it’s complex or difficult. I’ve with you on being dubious about ‘universals’ here, for all the reasons you cite. Still, I’m more upbeat in tone and spirit, I think. I’m also an advocate of ‘participatory democracy,’ going back to my SDS days and even further to John Dewey, who coined the term, in opposition to the corporate liberals of his day. It’s roots are deep in the American grain, and not just Anglo-America. There are even more interesting cyberfuturist ideas projected by Toffler, ‘anticipatory democracy,’ but we can save those for another day.
Stefandav said
A portion below from my blog entries re this RCPUSA polemic. Italics below are from the November 08 letter to Maoists:
The above is clearly something a “true communist” as they say would uphold. Yea, I like it, but it is not quite clear that the Maoist think otherwise.. in fact the RCP goes on to say the issue is still actually in question:
Some pages follow with some doctrine and history we can all appreciate. Again the implication not really substantiated is that somehow it is clearly the case that the Maoists in Nepal are following a contrary line.. if they are, then in still awaits in the rest of the letter to show that it is so. Next we see, the RCP has not exactly been correct is its prognostications regarding the Nepal Maoists:
Oh, never mind.. it did not really mean anything:
The RCP then develops the polemic with the prime example (which at this point as then remains an assumption) that the Maoist plan of integration of the NA and the PLA will result in essentially a reactionary army:
Is this prognosis showing itself to be true? On the contrary, recent news has been centered on the Maoist moves outmaneuvering the reactionary parties by removing the top eight generals of the NA. The letter then goes on to admonish the Maoists for failing to see that the imperative at this point is to smash the state, not to participate in its clearly bourgeois democracy. Again, however, current events see the Maoists issuing warning to the other parties against subterfuge, clearly putting forth the probability of renewed revolutionary violence. They are already establishing plans to develop the capacity of the masses to engage in armed resistance to Indian aggression.
The rest of the letter offers us the alternative to the supposed revisionist Nepal Maoist line – namely Bob’s Communism:
Those pesky Nepal Maoists however just seem to think and keep demonstrating they just may have their own working and workable tactics to reach the new democracy, a novel development in the communist hypothesis. They gave the RCP only one concise letter of reply and otherwise seem to be failing to appropriately respond to the RCP with its “actual communism of the twenty-first century”:
The next section is a criticism of the fact that the Maoists are studying the economic model of Switzerland. The implication is that this means the intention is to foster capitalist exploitation:
This use of the study of Switzerland gets considerable play in the Kasama discussion. The exposition of the evils of China and others who allowed capitalism to consume the revolution is interesting, but in fact there is nothing to prove the Maoists actually intend to foster exploitation, only that they intend to participate in a period of capitalist development. This not a revision of Maoism, in fact it follows the line of Mao himself as can be seen here
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/mao-from-his-period-of-negotiations/.
The RCP however concludes the straw man attack with the wrong information about Mao’s complete repudiation of capitalist methods for advancing productive forces:
There is no evidence that the Maoists are following the line of Deng Xiao-ping nor can it be said their planning is a revision of Mao’s own policy of engaging capitalist modes of production under constraints preventing exploitation. Yes there is the danger of revisionism, but there is no evidence that this is the intention. The whole continuation of the RCP polemic vs the eclecticism and centrism is rooted in the assumption that any engagement of capitalist modes is doomed:
Reactionary forces are indeed involved in the state apparatus, in the UML and NC factions especially and in their influence in the National Army and the Supreme Court. Just because the Maoists have chosen to allow this as a tactical measure does not make them reactionary. Indeed even a cursory examination of the news shows the Maoists are clearly stating that if the reactionaries impede the decisions of the government under Maoist leadership they will indeed smash the apparatus. The point is this need not occur unless in fact exploitation cannot be eradicated and prevented following the present line. The fact is we don’t know yet.
emil said
i am curious if the nepal maoists care very much about the rcp criticism? does anyone know. my ‘guess’ is that they do not care very much, after all they have to deal with UN, India, china, etc, and rcp usa does not actually have any actual power to influence events in nepal. for example, prachanda met Jimmy carter. i imagine that the agreements he made with Carter far outweigh any with the rcp because of the mere fact of power.
Stefandav said
Emil asked:
“i am curious if the nepal maoists care very much about the rcp criticism? does anyone know”
Well they sent them one letter in 2006, he he .. somehow I don’t think Bob causes them to lose much sleep
Still, there are “hardliners” among the Maoists who also take issue with Prachanda-Bhattarai going too far to the center.. but these are not apparently very serious opposition internally. The other powerful figures among the Maoists like C.P Gajurel or Mohan Baidya have theoretical differences with them but are clearly in solidarity I introduced something on this debate in the other thread http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/nepals-kiran-threatening-another-bend-in-the-street-struggle/#comment-12388
The amusing thing is the UML and NC like to perpetrate the idea of serious weakening internal divisions among the Maoists.. maybe they should contract this out to the RCPUSA
Green Red said
Comrade Otto on # 62
Although i wouldn’t necessarily use that lucid language of yours but i have to admit i agree with you.
Except though, that one percent thing was lots of optimism about one percent…. 3 million suppporters for rcp? I’ll be glad to see that day!
But then coming to be judgmental, remember the Progressive Labor Party’s stand on the Communist party of Peru? Have you read Socialist Workers Party (the mother party of Workers World, Socialist Action, Organizer and X more other Trotskists) say they’re welding “anti working class” moral since supposedly they’re banning alcohol, gambling, vulgar lit from the US. Well, looking at the language of these other part of that whole less than one percent of the Yankee populace at least rcp doesn’t say such bad things!!! Look at the Militant saying:
“They also weld anti-working-class moral strictures to the probusiness policies. Prachanda has advocated banning alcohol, gambling, and “vulgar” literature from India and the United States. Last year CPN(M) cadre in Kathmandu warned homeowners not to rent rooms to gays and lesbians, claiming homosexuality is “a by-product of capitalism.”
But in and of it all, still let’s wish all progressives of the US get their minds clear of their dogma … Eurocentric this sister calls it and, focus on their own people’s crisis.
Their judgmental attitude over a third world country’s just struggle only takes away their own value and their calibre gets smaller but should CPN M care? Of course they have kept their language on a professional revolutionary language. so let it remain there. But thanks again for being blunt.
poorrighteous7 said
Rosa L said:
“Concepts such a universalism, science, dialectics, philosophy, truth, objectivity, consciousness, superstructure, infrastructure, etc. needs to be re-examined from a non-eurocentric outlook in order to overcome some of the problems we face today.”
So Correct. Please see peacecomrade.org, website of the Poor Righteous Party of the Black Nation also read a recent review from Philly-Kassama group at http://www.buildanewworld.org/news.php
Comradely,
Peace
Arthur said
I agree (strongly) with TNL’s initial 3 points in #63.
Don’t understand:
I am not as familiar with Latin America as North Americans would be, and cannot even guess why the experiences in those countries might be thought more relevant in North America than the experience of the English speaking peoples going back to the 17th Century bourgeois revolution that preceded Continental democracy by a century.
Seems obvious that if a tiny bourgeois minority can maintain its rule despite free multi-party elections there is nothing about such freedom inimical to a large working class majority maintaining its rule without having to worry much about such matters as “what forces would be allowed or prohibited from participating”. The forces to be excluded pretty easily identify themselves by attempting to impose their minority rule by force.
Seems equally obvious that the communist revolution, like the bourgeois revolution, will be a long drawn out historical process with alternating periods of advance and retrogression, revolution and restoration, both peaceful and violent.
It isn’t possible to imagine revolutionary councils defeating a bourgeois fascist counter-revolution that attempted to abolish formal democracy without free elections among the multiple parties involved in forming those councils.
So those issues simply dont arise for revolutionary communists in countries like the USA, Australia.
They are issues only for the sectarians:
Fictitious Splits in the International
The details that can be found at that link are somewhat tedious but the basic hostility of modern “lemmingist” sects, towards working class democracy and their forms of “elite” organization to impose their “advanced” conceptions on the masses they seek to rule have a remarkable resemblance to the anarchist “International Alliance for Socialist Democracy” expelled from the First International.
One significant difference might be that the old sects did have various utopian schemes as to how they wished to change the world, whereas our modern sects seem to literally have no proposals whatever but simply a desire to be followed.
Its no accident the Internationale includes:
No saviours from on high deliver,No trust have we in prince or peer,
Our own right hands the chains must shiver,
Chains of hatred, greed and fear.
In #68 Carl finds it odd that this discussion is unfolding over Nepal and asks:
Discussion in this thread too has quickly drifted back to the same old stuff about the RCP and about what people think is happening or should happen in Nepal. Plus of course an ongoing denunciation of the RCP for Eurocentrism while simply ignoring what the Nepali comrades are saying to the rest of the world as though they hadn’t said it (and done it, and made it impossible to ignore) and we are just to discuss whether their own practice makes sense in their own conditions.
I think the answer to Carl’s question can be found in the difficulty of the issue.
Every attempt so far to establish a revolutionary communist movement in countries like the USA and Australia has ended up going in one of two directions.
Those that have, like Carl attempted to establish or maintain some real connection with the actual movements among working people and political issues of the day, have always ended up a reformist tail of the established bourgeois system, as happened to the mass workers parties of the Second International.
Those that avoided that fate and clung to communist “principles” have never become more than sects and generally degenerate into quite reactionary sects (eg opposed to modern industry, virulently hostile to basic solidarity with bourgeois democratic revolution in other parts of the world etc).
We are moving into a different period now.
There may soon by real struggles about how the economic system is to be run, and by whom.
It may become possible to establish organizations that really are involved in mass politics and really do have communist principles.
The fact that its been done in Nepal doesn’t prove it can be done in the USA or Australia. But it was done in Nepal during a decade of total bankruptcy in left politics generally (pseudo-lefts in mourning for the collapse of social fascism).
The economic crisis means its not only possible, but necessary now and a lot will depend on whether its successful.
Apologies in advance as I don’t have time to participate much here at the moment.
No apologies for not wishing to “discuss” a moderation policy that placed me on moderation for supporting war on the Taliban where all right thinking “communists” are opposed to such “imperialism”.
Suffice to say that obviously revolutionary councils in the USA would be at war with the Taliban and a lot more vigorously than the imperialist/warlord coalition, but they could probably afford to treat the politically irrelevant “protests” of domestic opponents with at least as much contemptuous tolerance as the imperialist bourgeoisie is able to do today.
m.g. said
RCP, the vanguard party in the U.S., today posted this notice on its website. The opportunist counter-revolutionaries at Kasama should immediately delete their “pamphlet”, and, preferably, disband. That is what the non-party masses demand.
Notice to the Public
Posted March 28, 2009 at http://www.revcom.us
On March 23rd, a set of documents on developments in Nepal was released to the public and posted at revcom.us; these included the article: “On Developments in Nepal and the Stakes for the Communist Movement: Letters to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, 2005-2008 (With a Reply from the CPN[M], 2006)”; 4 Letters from the RCP,USA to the CPN (M); one letter from the CPN(M) to the RCP,USA; and two Appendices by Bob Avakian–“The Creative Development of MLM, Not of Revisionism” and “Some Further Thinking on The Socialist State as a New Kind of State.” This set of documents was made available to the public by the RCP, USA. The collected documents are available as a single PDF file at revcom.us, and may be distributed, downloaded and republished in full as long as they are credited to the Revolution newspaper website, revcom.us.
Shortly after the posting of this set of documents, the Kasama website immediately packaged and posted a “pirate”, unauthorized, inaccurate and incomplete version as their own “webpamphlet,” under the title “Two Lines, Five Letters”. Mike Ely and others connected to Kasama have posted links to this unauthorized, incomplete version on other websites as well.
Notably what was omitted were the article “On Developments in Nepal and the Stakes for the Communist Movement: Letters to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, 2005-2008 (With a Reply from the CPN[M] 2006)” and the above-mentioned Appendices.
The publication of this unauthorized and incomplete set of materials reveals and is yet another expression of a completely opportunist and dishonest method and approach. In this case, the publication and dissemination of this selectively edited set of documents distorts the content of the material, and obstructs the kind of thorough and serious study, discussion, and struggle required in relation to these documents.
Again, the full set of documents, “On Developments in Nepal and the Stakes for the Communist Movement: Letters to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, 2005-2008 (With a Reply from the CPN[M], 2006)” is available to the public, and may be downloaded at revcom.us. And these materials may be distributed and republished in full (that means without addition or subtraction) as long as they are credited to the Revolution newspaper website, revcom.us.
carldavidson said
File this under ‘the small shopkeeper mentality,’ wherein the proprietor finds a few loyal customers to demand that his rivals down the street, who are starting to thrive, close up shop. The ‘non-party masses,’ indeed. And trying to dictate the terms of how someone might make use of documents you’ve put in the public square. Good grief.
nando said
Sometimes I shake my head and think “it would be hard to write parodies of this stuff.”
And then, you realize how revealing such a tidy statement is — about mentality, expectations and a panicked sense of everything slipping away.
1) I admit I particularly like the charge of “pirate” version. The RCP takes a place in that long line of whining, stodgey forces hoping to protect their patents and property rights from “piracy.” So much for “Communists are Rebels!”
2) This “Notice to the Public” reveals that the RCP really thinks these discussions and documents somehow “belong to them,” or that they (somehow) have the right and ability to control how things are discussed. Here are letters exchanged between these two organizations which are (objectively) now public documents of the international communist movement (and of the general public discourse). The RCP published them (and augmented them!) without input or permission from the Nepali party. And then, the RCP seems to believe that these important letters can’t travel through the world without a bodyguard appendix of Avakian add-on of various kinds. Well, they are free to publish and read the letters in that way…
3) The RCP leadership also think that they can (in this day and age) somehow control the flow of information and discussion. In fact, they can’t even impose it on that very tiny bubble of people who surround them. (Welcome to the crumbling world of “info diet.”) And meanwhile, the real flow of information and discussion is (and will remain) rippling wild and free way way outside their control.
4) There is also a strange confusion around reality here. The RCP seems to play-act and posture as if they (somehow) alone have the authority to decide what is “authorized” or not. As if things not “approved” (by them!) are somehow “unauthorized” or “incomplete.” As if they can dictate what is “addition” and what is “subtraction.” Well, to quote Lenin, “Without state power, all is illusion.” To impose their “info diet” on the rest of us, they would need police — and I suspect even then it wouldn’t work.
5) I found myself wondering how much of the public would even notice this “Notice to the Public” if it wasn’t discussed here on Kasama.
Maz said
Good Grief indeed. Will people now have to print all of B.A.’s collected works if they quote a passage from an RCP article?
Also, on “what the non-party masses demand” I think we should take a cue from Wikipedia and toss a “citation required” on that.
And calling this project counter-revolutionary, saying it should disband, etc… I know this has been said before, but I’ll say it again: Who in their right mind would want to live in a society run by a Party that deals with political differences in such a way?
nando said
While we are talking….
The recent RCP assault on Alain Badiou contains a bizarre little injunction:
Let me get this straight: You publish a crude smear job about a prominent revolutionary philosopher. You make the pronouncement:
But you think you can (somehow) forbid people from even quoting this polemic? I guess that is one way to avoid being refuted: I write my stuff, put it online, and insert a prominent phrase at the beginning — I forbid you to quote, refute, or even mention this writing. Brilliant. Simple. But, uh, how exactly does that work out?
* * * * * *
note to maz: i think the “non-party masses demand” was a unauthorized addition by M.G. It is not actually part of the authorized “Notice to the Public.” That whole introduction is not in the RCP original.
* * * * * *
Also: The RCP public notice didn’t bother to link to their own pdf…. So we can perhaps perform that service, so folks can check out the two versions:
Here is the RCP collection: “Letters to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, 2005-2008 (With a Reply from the CPN(M), 2006)”
Here is the new more streamlined Kasama collection called “Two Lines Over Maoist Revolution in Nepal“
Stefandav said
I’d like to wrap up and not spend any more time on these polemics. I was really struck by the fact that the Nepal Maoists and the philosophy of Badiou have become my main points of interest over the last few years and the RCPUSA has chosen precisely these two elements in the development of 21st Century communism about which should have the most fear. I feel encouraged therefore that I may be on the right track. Nothing more tosay on the Maoist polemic as I think IMHO it has been fairly discredited in prior comments above already. I do want to say at least a bit on the Badiou, then ‘nough said.
Each section of the polemic is repleat with quotes employed from Mr. Marx supplemented by the wisdoms of Bob and well salted with exhortations against the evils I am sure all of us abhore without resorting to such hyperbole. But at the end of each section we do get an original statement and these comprise the heart of the polemic. Beginning at the very end of the document:
To this I would like to supply Badiou’s statement of the “communist hypothesis” from an article on Sarkozy (bourgois right, isn’t he) written sometime before his (Badiou’s) now famous attack on the president in the latest book – the article:
http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2705
So that is Badiou “stuck in bourgeois society”. The polemic is clearly focused on the question of Badiou’s “egalitarian maxim” axiomatic as in the key statement ending the second to last section:
Well first of all I want to say “Well no shit”. If “people” (and I guess they mean something that means everybody) spontaneously embraced truth, then I that truth whatever it may be would not be something humanity failed to embrace. Obviously Badiou is not indicationg that. The “criterion of equality” is based on the “capacity for truth” not its spontaneous embrace by anyone (and here we are discussing the internal logic of the stement in the polemic, not at all what Badiou says). What is missing is a comprehension of Badiou’s philosophy of the “Event” and the “Truth Process”. If, and this means “if” , a genuine novel “Event” occurs engendering a truth, it is only by individuals acting in allegiance to what they believe is a novel truth in this process (yes its an atheistic faith, perhaps even an embrace in a different sense) that the establishment of their having been an actual event occurs, it is realized future anterior. It is the case says Badiou that the advent of Marxism itself is in its truth process and marked by such manifestations as May 68 and the Cultural Revolution. The hypothesis is even said to be operative far into the past or not so far before Marx during the French Revolution. In a lack of understanding of Badiou we see the conclusions from the third to last section of the polemic:
Actually Badiou presents the idea of revolutionary phases, positioning the state of the communist hypothesis at the start of the 21st century:
So we come at last to the beginning of the polemic:
Then shortly after that in the same concluding statement of the first subsection:
Something “far higher than equality”? The polemic tries to tell us Badiou is stuck in an earlier sequence from Rousseu to a present radicalized petty bourgeoisie. Actually, to put it in terms something like the way Badiou employs set-theory, the RCPUSA is circumscribed by a set situation made up of dogmatic elements, demonstrating the inadequacy of their party for 21st century communism because all they have is their rigid conclusions and anything else is revisionist. Badiou says there is the void, always a multiplicity exceeding set situations in the scope of our present understanding of how communism, or the egalitarian maxim, may manifest. Concluding with Badiou from the same article cited on the need to understand the novel phase underway:
Zack said
LOLZ @ “pirate”
Shit… communists should be the best pirates!
Zack said
Further… the RCP should join up with the RIAA and Anti-Piracy movie industry in their pursuit to rid the InterTubes of ye’ dirty ol’ pirates.
***
Shit, if RCP were to ever hold state power, it would be a boring and chilling environment to live in… and something like this (completely misunderstanding how the Internet works, thinking one can “hold on” to your web material in such a -dare I say, bourgeois/copy-right-mad way) is completely antithetical to what should be a CENTRAL goal of our movement for a libratory nature of ideas/thoughts far surpassing that of our bourgeois dominated notions of “Intellectual Property”, copy-rights, etc.
josetheredfox said
now, according the Old Guard, the Kasama project is embarking on “piracy”?
is this a joke? are they serious?
they (along with Metallica et al) really need to get hip cuz the kids won’t/don’t take this “patent/intellectual rights” bullshit in any kind of society.
the tools will cry out and speak through men and womyn: through underground zines, pirated mix-tapes, graffiti walls, pirated pdf e-books, pirate radio stations, and yes, even the “world wide web” (as the RCP once referred to it)…they will scream, Its Right to Rebel!
in the spirit of Sun Ra, palante.
Tell No Lies said
No discussion of intellectual property is complete without this description of the terrible costs of piracy:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28467
hee hee.
saoirse said
guess I’m a bit old school I think artists deserve to get paid for their labor.
born again Franklin said
watch out Zack, you’ll be purged by chairman Avakian!
Tell No Lies said
Indeed they do, but intellectual property rights have much more to do with enabling large corporations to extract rents from monopoly control over reproduction. There are all sorts of ways to enable artists to live without doing this (publically supported grants, performances, teaching, etc…). The question isn’t limited to the arts either, though it is always cited. It also involves pharamaceutical patents on the products of publiclly funded research, patents on genes, and so on. The past few decades have seen an explosion in the fraction of value that is represented in the form of intellectual property and I think it actually throws into stark relief the irrationality of private property overall.
Carl Davidson said
Actually, Saoirse, there’s a story there I once heard from John Perry Barlow, lyricist for the Grateful Dead, in a talk he gave at the U of C with Linus Torvald on ‘How to get paid in Cyberspace.’ The Dead were somewhat unique among top bands for encouraging people to tape and bootleg their concerts, and spreading the bootlegs far and wide. Barlow said they weren’t in the business of selling tapes, but saw the bootlegs as free ads for what they really were selling, a transactional experience gained by actually attending a Dead concert. Now for all you Deadheads out there, you know exactly what I mean, and the band was paid rather well.
Now if the RCP saw bootlegs of their stuff as free ads to get speaking engagements for Chairman Bob, they’d get the idea, but then Chairman Bob doesn’t do public events, so they’re caught inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues again.
You just have to shift gears from second wave to third wave thinking
nando said
heh, let’s not get too lost in the “pirate” charge.
It is not “piracy” to print documents that have been released to the public. We are not talking about art, or music, or even copyrighted material. We are talking about someone’s assumption that they have the right (the authority) to tightly control how they and their views are transmitted and discussed. It is completely out of time and space. And it is no exaggeration to say that it is chilling to imagine the society where people of that mentality hold power.
And it is not dishonest (or somehow “incomplete”) to circulate the five letters of this exchange — without including backlog of essays by Bob Avakian on related topics.
In the RCP version of this exchange the ratio is seven-to-one: i.e. seven essays by the RCP versus one included from the Nepalis. The Nepalis are reduced to a slim footnote in a discussion supposedly about their own revolution! It is a beyond tacky to pad in your own polemical material, and reduce your opponents to a thin solitary presence — and then proclaim that this is the only “complete” format for discussion. It would have been different if the appendix had provided background essays by Avakian, but also writings by Prachanda and Bhattarai’s essay on the state (which are criticized but not included).
In the Kasama version, the radio is four-to-one: Four letters by the RCP together with the one respond from Nepal. Kasama is now discussing putting out an expanded version that includes (in its appendix, background pieces by both parties).
* * * * * *
On the question of honesty and principles
The RCP’s very snooty and legalese “Notice to the Public” says (packing four “ands” into one sentence):
It is worth pointing out something not previously mentioned:
The Kasama Project has had copies of the first three letters exchanged between the CPNM and the RCP in its possession all along. Kasama “sat on” those documents for the last two years — precisely because of its principles in regard to other organzations. Because it did not seem right to publish (or even quietly circulate) letters of two communist parties before those participants had themselves made them public.
And so the “9 Letters to Our Comrades” does not mention or quote these letters (which then were in the authors’ possession).
The RCP kept these documents secret, and exploited the secrecy to accuse Kasama of distortions. And for the last year (since the publication of the 9 Letters), supporters of the RCP have argued that any implication of a rift between the RCP and CPNM was a distortion and a lie. And Kasama kept these documents secret as well, precisely because of its principles.
But once the RCP itself made the exchanges public, then it was (clearly) fine to publish, circulate, explore and debate the documents — especially for what they reveal about the line and intentions of the Nepali Maoists.
Similarly, the 9 Letters and the Kasama project did not release information about the 2003 self-coup that Avakian staged, or the subsequent internal party conflicts and purges. It did not quote or publish the voluminous documents from those internal events. Only once the RCP itself publicly described this “important party meeting” of 2003 and the unleashing of the so-called “cultural revolution” over the next years within the RCP — then Kasama and people writing on this site, started discussing the self-coup and the subsequent purges.
And still to this day, Kasama has not described the details (or even the name) of this “important party meeting,” or published eyewitness accounts of those events — other than to characterize the nodal point that this self-coup represented in the RCP’s development and in the subsequent metastasis of the party’s cult of personality.
And meanwhile, Kasama is (in a principled way) STILL (today!) not publishing, naming or excerpting other documents that the RCP has not yet released.
At various times (especially in the 9 letters) there has been careful (and very accurate) characterization by Kasama of the line of the RCP — but the full documentation of those characterizations will have to wait until the RCP itself dares to publish its own rather-bizarre new beliefs in detail. And so, in the meanwhile, here too, the RCP exploits its own silence — accusing Kasama of vague and unspecified “distortion,” but declining to publish (before the world) its full views (especially on its own voluminously-elaborated core principle of “Avakian as the cardinal question” for communists of the world.)
And so it is beyond ironic, that the RCP now accuses Kasama of being “completely opportunist and dishonest” for publishing and circulating the documents after the RCP itself has made them public.
josetheredfox said
Nando, thanks for this detailed and contextualized posting. It makes sense now.
As far as artists getting, paid, I’m with TNL on this: its about monopoly control over reproduction.
Whether “old school” or “new school”, the artists I have worked with/performed with do not see getting paid for “our labor” as the main incentive for doing what we do. Sure, it helps to have an income, but this misses the larger point…as Coltrane once put it: “I think music is an instrument than can change the thinking of people”.
the young tigers.
josetheredfox said
actually, I was paraphrasing Coltrane but now that I have looked at the original quote, it should read: “I think music is an instrument than can create the initial patterns that can change the thinking of people” (circa 1963).
the young tigers (2).
Zack said
Not to harp on the piracy thing but the way I see it is if the artist in question that I pirate from is doing it for the green, I probably am not even interested in their sort of thing to being with. The real way to support an artist is to put funds directly into their hands, not their record label’s.
If the artist is long dead and gone, I obviously needn’t compensate anyone for their work.
Let’s get to a society where art is freely expressed and transmitted from one side of the globe to the other in common. No more fetters.
Richard Stark said
RCP wants a solid core with a lot of elasticity. I see that right here in this discussion.
I would caution in being one-sided in evaluating the RCP.
The line they put out in the 80s, saying essentially “Revolution or WWIII!” was mistaken, but they themselves did a self-criticism on that one, to their credit.
Even Sylvia Brown, the psychic, missed the collapse of the SU!
In criticizing the RCP, always be comradely and seeking to unite. What we’re after here is objective truth. That and state power.
Don’t negate the RCP’s accomplishments, just as I would say to the RCP, “Don’t negate Kasama’s accomplishments. Kasama is a treasure-trove of delicious goodies, sharing, and wrangling” If they have criticisms of RCP, meet those criticisms head on.
RCP did a long answer to the Nine Letters, but I can’t access it. I want to read the Nine Letters and the criticism together. Let’s collectively determine what’s true, and act on what this contradiction between Kasama and RCP turns up.
We want a broad united front against the system, eh? Let’s fight for that.
Mike E said
Richard wrote:
I too would caution against being one-sided in evaluating the RCP. I think we can now say that there is no party in the U.S. that is playing a leading role. But among the small Marxist groups, the RCP has made some real contributions over time — and their attempts at revolutionary organizing (both their successes and failures) are important to sum up accurately.
I did not rush to reach a verdict on Avakian’s theory of “solid core with a lot of elasticity…” I literally thought about it for five years, and also watched how the RCP itself sought to implement that concept.
Here is what I have decided: The concept of solid core is (at least in how the RCP has sought to carry it out) a ressurection of Stalin’s notions of a monolithic party. In other words, their approach to solid core has been to seek to create a “new party” that is tightly consolidated around Avakian’s synthesis, and that has consciously attempted to force all other conceptions out of their ranks. But in fact, while any revolution needs disciplined, unified, militant, far-sighted and tightly organized forces to succeed — that concept of “solid” will not succeed. As Avakian himself noted in 1981, the kind of larger party we will need to make a revolution will also have a larger right wing.
Mao’s insight about the nature of revolutionary parties, the necessary existence of dynamic groups and lines within those parties, the existence of line struggle as the very “lifeblood” of a party’s life… these are all concepts rather sharply in contrast to the RCP’s current practice of “solid core.”
Mao’s approach to the party (and to the waging of two-line struggle over the life of a party) was consciously in sharp contrast to Stalin’s notion of “a monolithic party” (which posited the idea of having and enforcing an extremely high level of party unity with a complete absense of factions or overt political disagreements). Mao argued that this was neither possible nor necessary to have such a monolithic character, and that, in fact, a party needed an ongoing debate, and that it was inevitable that such debate would erupt in sharp power struggles at key crossroads of the revolution. Mao saw a much more dynamic and conditional unity for a party — and assumed that there would inevitably be wings to a party, various power centers, shifting levels of agreement, the struggle between new and old, and the struggle between classes within the party. So rather than trying (mechanically) to drive other lines out of the party (to achieve a particularly homogenous solidity) Mao sought to wage and lead that line struggle over time — identifying key moments to develop and solidify new unities, and to develop new understandings, and around them new groupings of revolutionary communists within the overall party itself.
Stalin’s party was in power — and he could not in fact create a monolithic party. Avakian’s party is marginalized, and their approach of “solid core” is reducing them to a tiny cultlike status.
On the larger question involved in “solid core with a lot of elasticity” — it is true that a revolutionary movement needs an organized core — which (in my opinion) means both organized groupings of revolutionaries and also a broader revolutionary people (a section ofthe people that is consciously supporting and pressing forward the revolutionary change). What defines these organized cores is not some singular “vision” of the most ultimate goals (communism of a particular kind, crossing the narrow horizon of bourgeois right etc.) but a mixture of long-range goals, and tight unity around how to overcome the immediate tasks of the revolution. And that means that the solid cores are not static but will inevitably change over time (dynamically) precisely on the basis of “one divides into two” — where the complex and ongoing line struggle within the cores is pushed forward and conditioned by the emergence of sharp crossroads in the class struggle itself.
For these reasons (and some others), i have concluded that “solid core with a lot of elasticity” is not a concept communists should adopt — and that it represents a step backward from Mao’s quite dialectical view of party life, unity and struggle — back toward Stalin’s conception of a monolithic party. Avakian does not literally call for a “solid core” without contradiction or debate (andhe talks at times about elasticity within the solid core etc.) — but in fact, it has been increasingly clear that this slogan of “solid core” has been an accompaniment of a notion of a party organized around a singularity (and around the whateverist accomodation to a single man’s evolving utterances). It’s not a good idea. It doesn’t correspond with how communists should view their organizational life. And it doesn’t correspond with what Mao taught us about the dynamic operations of the revolutionary process.
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