J.B. Connors: Learning from the Maobadi
Posted by jbconnors on March 30, 2009
By J.B. Connors
In June 2006, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) wrote a letter to RCP responding to criticisms. In the last week, attention has been given on this site to critiquing the dogmatic method of those RCP criticisms.
But we really need to focus a bit on what the Nepali Maoists are actually saying (and doing) — which in many ways is much more interesting than dissecting (yet again) the complaints of dogmatists. Our look at the Maobadi needs to be a thoughtful and critical one, not naïve cheerleading or wishful thinking. We need a clear idea of what they represent — in order that we can build broad understanding of this important revolution, and also so we can ourselves learn from the positive and negative of this experience as it unfolds.
Fresh Eyes on a Burning Issue
The CPN(M) (aka Maobadi) takes some pains to make clear what problem they are working on: how to lay the basis in the way they come to power for continuing the revolution while they are in power. They do not want to enter power with a narrow base. This is part of a larger strategy to prevent the corrosion and reversal of the revolution.
The CPN(M) writes:
“History is a witness that the proletarian class had succeeded in establishing its power in almost one-third of the globe, with the breath-taking sacrifice of millions in the twentieth century…. But questions have come up as to why those proletarian powers turned into their opposites without any bloodshed, right after the demise or capture of the main leadership? 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?…. These and alike are the questions for which we are trying to find correct answers. Only cursing the revisionists does not solve the problem.”
The Nepali communists are posing questions that all communists face — the questions handed us by the last century. What laid the basis for the reversal of the revolutions in Russia and China? How can the popular basis for socialism be more firm, more popular, more conscious, more sustained, more engaged? How do we struggle against capitalist restoration without producing a repressive atmosphere that downpresses the revolutionary people and weakens the emergence of successors?
The need to do better than previous revolutions underscores the need to break with previous models of socialism. This is nothing new:
The revolution Lenin led was very different than the Paris Commune. Mao had to disobey the Comintern to make a revolution in China. The “blueprint” that was the Russian revolution did not fit China. Mao’s party had to analyze the society that was China and freely create how to make the revolution there based on the situation of China.
These two communist revolutions were lost after a great leader passed. Stalin died in the early 1950s and the final reversal of the Soviet revolution was soon completed. Mao died in 1976 and the revolution in China was reversed in a coup.
In the shock following the restoration of capitalism in China, Bob Avakian said:
“Who will be Mao Zedong’s successors? …We will be Mao’s successors in our millions and hundreds of millions.”
I thought then this marked a solution to the problem.
Not that there won’t be irreplaceable leaders, but that the challenge is to broaden the revolution. So that at time of crisis and loss, real social ferment has happened to the point where there is a real possibility of new leaderships leading on the basis of real, active, conscious revolutionary mass support. But this would only be possible if the whole society were engaged in this social ferment and if advanced sections of the people are themselves stepping up to the plate.
The CPN(M) is not bullied into a dogmatic narrowing of choices. And for daring to try out a new thought they are catching a lot of shit. The CPN(M) makes this point:
“Memorizing things from books and interpreting for hours and hours on their basis is one thing, and applying them in living practice is qualitatively another. Frankly speaking, it is very easy not to commit any mistakes in strategy. But it is extremely difficult to take up and apply appropriate tactics in the service of strategy. It is dangerous too. Where there is more danger, there is more opportunity, this is dialectics.”
No Simple Models –Particularities Demand Creativity
The RCP writes in their March 2008 letter:
“The positions and policies of the CPN(M) over the last two years are, or should be, recognizable as a departure from basic Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (MLM) principles and the very basis on which our Movement was formed.”
This appeal to orthodoxy involves a conservative clinging to formulas and a dogmatic adherence of self-invented principles.
Bob Avakian once knew better. Thirty years ago, he wrote in Mao’s Immortal Contributions:
“It can be further said that it is even a law of revolution, and especially of proletarian revolution, that in order for it to succeed in any particular country, the struggle in that country and those leading it will have to depart from and even oppose certain particular conceptions or previous practices which have come to be invested with the stature of ‘established norms’ in the revolutionary movement.”
By contrast, the CPN(M) says that it is easy to be “right” in sweeping statements about goals and strategies. This is because it is harder to actually solve the problems of making the revolution in the real world — winning over the people, training the revolutionary cores, defeating the powerful enemies, winning the actual battles, neutralizing the actual middle forces, developing and implementing actual solutions and so on.
There are no recipes. Each revolution will present itself in a different way for many reasons: no two countries are the same, in a single countries conditions change in startling ways. The international situation and the very structures of the global capitalist system are undergoing rapid changes.
Tactics and alignments that might be useful to begin a revolution might be wrong at a different stage. And every decision is life-and-death.
Over and over through the revolutionary process there will be arrays of choices with an uncertain result. The pros and cons must be weighed in every case and every time with the possibility of uplifting victory or demoralizing defeat. Each time a crucial test is passed a new one is presented.
If you are skiing down a mountain you make a combination of left and right turns at high speed and different intervals, depending on the terrain. You could never take the combination of turns exactly as they were made on one mountain and replicate the turns exactly the same way on another and hope to get down the mountain alive.
This is the question of how we approach models in a non-dogmatic way. Just because one combination of tactics works in one situation and produces a revolution, does not mean the exact same combination of activities would work in another. When skiing the underlying principles of gravity and friction would remain constant, but how you wound your way down a mountain would have to vary from slope to slope.
Lenin elaborated this point:
“To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie…and to renounce in advance any change of tack, or any utilization of a conflict of interests (even if temporary) among one’s enemies, or any conciliation or compromise with possible allies (even if they are temporary, unstable, vacillating or conditional allies)… is it not like making a difficult ascent of an unexplored and hitherto inaccessible mountain and refusing in advance ever to move in zigzags, ever to retrace one’s steps, or ever to abandon a course once selected, and to try others?… ‘Political activity is not like the pavement of Nevsky Prospekt’ (the well-kept, broad and level pavement of the perfectly straight principal thoroughfare of St. Petersburg)… It is folly, not revolutionism, to deprive ourselves in advance of any freedom of action, openly to inform an enemy who is at present better armed than we are whether we shall fight him, and when. To accept battle at a time when it is obviously advantageous to the enemy, but not to us, is criminal; political leaders of the revolutionary class are absolutely useless if they are incapable of “changing tack, or offering conciliation and compromise” in order to take evasive action in a patently disadvantageous battle.”
Even back when the RCP supported the revolution in Nepal, in the 1990s, they exaggerated the extent to which the Nepali Maoists simply adopted Mao’s strategic approach from China. In fact the Nepalis have said all along that they developed a unique, new, hybrid approach that
(a) combined insurrection with protracted peoples war, and
(b) that they deliberately alternated political offensives with military offenses.
A political offensive made the initial insurrection possible, the peoples war made a new political offensive possible, this current period of political work may be making a new victorious military offensive possible.
By contrast, the RCP has tried to impose a verdict on the world communist movement that you can’t pause and then restart a peoples war once you’ve started it.
It is worth asking how exactly this became some supposed law of revolution. Even Mao himself stopped and restarted his people’s war several times — that’s why there were two civil wars in china separated by a substage in which the agrarian revolution was temporarily called off. That is why there was a major pause like the Chungking negotiations over post-WW2 coalition government, which included the dismantling of some base areas and shifting of revolutionary armies in some major temporary concessions.
Now that said, does this mean that the Nepalis are making the right decisions? We will see.
The Maobadi are engaged in a risky social experiment. They are trying some novel approaches to the riddles posed. And what is wrong with revolutionary experiment?! Even if it fails? Fear of failure leads to paralysis.
When making revolution, there are no guarantees and no proscribed path to power. There are not only two models (as some claim). Or to put it another way: If at this point in history the proletariat had made twenty revolutions, perhaps there would obviously be twenty “models,” meaning we might have realized there are no fixed models.
The complaint of the RCP is not that the Nepalis have a new reconception — but that the Maobadi rejected Bob Avakian’s reconception. Without Avakian’s synthesis, they insist, you will inevitably tumble into swamp or abyss. Their theory greatly exaggerates such necessity, or what the RCP calls “the logic of the logic.” U.S.-Soviet rivalry would inevitably lead to world war in the 1980s. The rise of the Religious Right would inevitably lead toward a civil war over theocracy in the U.S. and so on. Necessary outcomes that never arrived.
Their main criticisms is that the Nepali advocacy of multiparty democracy under socialism, and their use of the anti-monarchical upsurge as a transitional stage must lead to capitalism and capitulation.
The RCP had written:
“We feel that to make the most essential question one of formal democracy, and its expression in elections, competing political parties, and the like, is a serious mistake and will strengthen tendencies toward the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, or its outright overthrow by counter-revolutionaries.”
The Maobadi answered:
“We don’t think the question is as simple as you have placed here. Everyone knows there was no multiparty competition and the like, in Russia and China, which according to you is the main source of strengthening tendencies towards the abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Then why did Russia and China fail to sustain the revolution and continue with the dictatorship of the proletariat until communism?… Multiparty competition is not the only way by which imperialism can play a role to reverse the revolution. We request comrades to focus the debate on what positive and negative consequences it can lead to if such a competition is put into practice under the proletarian dictatorship, but not to reject it outright by accusing it as formal democracy of the bourgeoisie.”
The One-Party State: Why Is That A Given?
Bob Avakian puts forward his theory of broadening mass support for socialism: i.e., solid core with a lot of elasticity. This is essentially a theory of monolithic Stalin-style “solid core” leading society, a tight singularity around the great leader, plus the “elasticity” of more “vibrant dissent and wrangling.” This is essentially a re-imagining of the one-party state — centered on a promise of less repression aimed at intellectuals and the people generally.
Mao’s view of how to broaden the base to opposed revisionist takeover included having the masses go through mass experience of revolutionary storms. Avakian’s theory downplays that element. There are few mass storms in what he’s written over the last few years. What you have is the all-knowing solid core telling the elastic periphery what to do — there is even an expression, “the god-like role.”
This is really not the needed radical break from methods of the 20th century. And this theory of “solid core with elasticity” is ironically a major theoretical step backward from Mao’s own practice of waves of mass struggle pressing the revolution forward.
And isn’t our revolution, a communist revolution, a conscious revolution? If we are not constantly trying to draw the masses more into understanding the world around them, how to change it, what are we doing? If leaders and representatives can’t put themselves before the masses for criticism and judgement, then what are we doing?
We should be asking ourselves if there would be a different basis of support for the revolution after seizing if different tactics were used before it happened. What are the possibilities in that?
I believe communists need to dig into these theoretical and practical controversies around socialist democracy — in a way that I won’t even scratch here. But surely we have to acknowledge that our future socialist movements have no reason take the one-party state as a settled verdict — as if we can’t see its problems, and as if we can’t imagine any alternatives.
Roots of Restoration
The RCP emphasizes the restoration of capitalism in the “last battles” of coup-like moments (1956 in the USSR, and 1976 in China). This is such a fixation, that after forty years, the RCP has still not bothered to make an analysis of the 1930s, and the roots of restoration in the repressions and conservative winds of that period.
But the Nepalis are not satisfied with that method of focusing on coups:
“…this kind of interpretation doesn’t represent dialectical materialism, because it negates the inevitability of quantitative development for a qualitative leap. There was a material basis mainly in the superstructure for the counter-revolution to take place, which was constantly developing from within the socialist state itself…. Had there been no such material basis, counter-revolution could not have taken place in a single stroke on the wish of revisionists.”
“[T]his kind of argument leads to the conclusion that it is the revisionists alone who are responsible for counter-revolution. This way of thinking does not go into the depth of the problem but skips the question of why revolutionaries failed to prevent the emergence of revisionists from within a revolutionary party. Revolutionaries must not remain self-content only by cursing revisionists for the damaging consequences, but should emphasize more what mistakes they made in the past and what measures they should take to correct them at present. The trend of cursing others for a mistake and enjoying oneself from such acts does not represent either a proletarian responsibility or culture.”
The Nepali Maoists are pointing out that the seeds of the counter-revolution in China developed along with the revolution.
The RCP has argued all my communist life that the loss in China and Russia was a defeat, not a failure. The other (revisionist/bourgeois) side just proved stronger. Okay, I suppose that can be true, but it’s not a very complete answer. We also have to look at the methods of the revolutionaries — to understand how we can do better. It’s more than just ideologically identifying and avoiding revisionism.
The Maobadi are saying that it is not enough to declare something as wrong or revisionist. They want us to work on the “question of why revolutionaries failed to prevent the emergence of revisionists from within a revolutionary party.”
The Maobadi say:
“The trend of cursing others for a mistake and enjoying oneself from such acts does not represent either a proletarian responsibility or culture.”
The Mass Line — Leading the People Through Schools of Revolution
The Nepalis have talked about the transformation of contraction being its principle aspect. This means you work to win people over, not eliminate them or silence them.
Is it not the case that they are trying to walk the masses through these various forms of power? So that they understand for themselves what the limitations are and will demand more. Isn’t that what happened in the Russian revolution? The masses from April to October tried every form of power before insurrection. And there was a period of dual power in the USSR also a period where there were the workers’ Soviets holding and wielding power along side the Provisional government.
The Maobadi have created a situation where they are formally running the government of a state they have not yet overthrown, and where there are still two fundamentally different armies confronting and coexisting in ways that mean the situation of final power has not yet been decided. This is not similar to the confrontation of the Soviets with the Provisional government in Russia — but it does have major elements of “dual power.” The RCP implies that the Nepali theory of “transition” at this point is inherently and simply a theory of peaceful transition of the bourgeois state through structural reforms and a capitalist period — but this is a misreading and misrepresentation of the Maoists’ position. Certainly there are significant and vocal forces among them who see “transition” as meaning a period of dual power where the conditions for a final seizure of power are being hatched. And it comes out in some important ways in the increasing question within the Maoist press over whether this period of “transition” may now be coming to an end.
Here in this country, we have a legacy of 30 years of dogmatism within the communist movement to work our way through. And with that background, it is disconcerting for many to see someone else make progress at this.
The goal of our movement is to have the people emancipate themselves — in the protracted revolutionary movement toward communism. We want to start now to imagine and create the ways of doing this. And one lesson I’ve drawn from Nepal is that this can’t be done by proscribed paths or familiar formulas.
Stefandav said
THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
I’d like to say where I disagree with your analysis.. oops nowhere! The juxtaposition with historical events is really great and helpful no end to less knowledgeable like me. There are several key points in what you say, yet the over-riding one is regarding the proper process of and necessity of on-going novelty in historical development (IMHO). I am bored with our refutation of the RCPUSA polemics.. I finished that off my agenda with a final vs their parallel polemic against Badiou is which essentially that key point of novelty was central. I have posted that at
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/discussion-thread-the-controversy-over-nepals-maoist-revolution/#comment-12441
I am a little burned out at the moment as it has been 14 hours straight at the moment.. but I want to formulate from your analysis some questions to ask of key Maoists directly in the coming days. Kasama is an invaluable resource for this investigation as it is the place where real discussion is occurring as I know so far. I hope to see some action on this thread and will formulate the questions I have in mind from its content in the next 24 hours or so.
Abyotawi said
Obviously, the PW could not have advanced as far as it did with a “narrow base”.
It seems, what the former CPN(M) is now doing, is not as much expanding its base as simply shifting it.
Here is one piece (out of many similar), from Nepal (since spatial location of a writer seems more important than his/her the ideological inclinations, to certain commentators at this site), that underlines this:
http://peoplesreview.com.np/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8883&Itemid=697
Stefandav said
re: #2 Abyotawi – Yes the Yadav split is important and has somehow dropped out of the picture since it happened. I am wondering if its an element anomalous to the situation.. particularly if it is counter to corruption within the lower levels of the Prachandra-Bhattarai Maoist movement. The independent stance of your publication is interesting and I would like to talk to you in Kathmandu. This kind of struggling journalism is important.. i am both amused and interested in your business links to colon cleansing. We got to keep the movement going, no shit.
Sorry for the humor, I’m tired.
Stefandav said
I was impressed by Yadav statements in th March 8 article:
http://www.telegraphnepal.com/news_det.php?news_id=4972
He offers a stance completely outside the existing power coordinates, any of the political parties.. is he not even aligning with any ethnic or regional groups? I for one would like to know more.
Abyotawi said
Stefandav/
I am neither in Kathmandu nor in any way connected to People’s Review. I posted the link as reminder that the shift in stratefy means as least as many retreats as advances.
Sure, the former CPN(M) might have gained som support in urban centres since calling of the PW, but here is evidence that they are also loosing support. Support from senior leaders, commanders, soldiers and workers.
Sure, the former CPN(M) is now the leading party in the government of the old state, but the New State embronic structure, that is the URPC has been dismantled, abolished.
Now really, and I think most supporters of the CPN(M) know this to be true. We should not expect the PLA to survive much longer.
Arthur said
Ok, this thread is a substantial improvement in directly focussing on the Nepalese Maoists proposition that multi-party democracy is a vital issue for communists worldwide and in particular central to any resolution of how to fight revisionist degeneration.
Since there are (several) separate threads on the RCPs views on the subject could we simply ignore that here and focus on the issue actually raised by the Nepalese?
I think its a real breakthrough of critical importance in the least developed countries where, for understandable reasons the dominant view has previously been that the Soviet and Chinese experience that both involved an (essentially) one party state was applicable.
But frankly its only significance for countries like the USA and Australia is that it might shake up some sectarians into thinking a bit and having to abandon their legacy and traditions. I’m not optimistic about that, but there’s no harm in trying.
Lenin spelt out the reasoning behind departing from what was the well established Marxist orthodoxy in Western Europe fairly bluntly in Our Revolution:
I cannot find the reference but recall there was an even more vivid quote something like:
If 5,000 tsarist landlord families could preside over creating the modern civilized conditions necessary for a socialist revolution in Russia, why couldn’t 50,000 bolsheviks do a better job of it.
That was the choice. There wasn’t any option of West European style development. So the Kautskyites and Mensheviks were rightly denounced as total renegades for pretending that waiting for the old order to mature the conditions necessary for socialism was some kind of Marxist principle. The communist proletariat had to lead the bourgeois revolution, not wait for the insipid Russian or Chinese bourgeoisie to get its act together.
This was even more obvious in China, which was far more backward and a more coherent theorization in terms of “New Democratic Revolution” was developed there.
Until very recently autocracies and one party states (often claiming to be “socialist”) have been the norm in these backward countries – especially in Africa but also in most of Asia and Latin America.
What requires theoretical analysis is not why the bourgeoisie ultimately ended up leading the bourgeois revolution in countries like Russia and China despite the best efforts of proletarian communist parties in power. That just isn’t all that big a surprise for Marxists. Nor does it imply that there was anything futile, utopian, .voluntarist etc in leaders like Lenin, Stalin and Mao trying to take things as far as they could. They succeeded to a remarkable extent and the world movement is better for it.
What does require some deep reflection in the West is how on earth the absurd idea that the forms appropriate at a particular stage in those countries, in particular the essentially one party state, had any relevance at all in the West. Its no use blaming Stalin. The Chinese party was able to overthrow Comintern leadership and the “28.5 bolsheviks” without suffering the dreadful fate Trotskyists claimed would befall anyone who didn’t follow their own far more absurd prescriptions than Stalin’s.
Rosa Luxembourg’s critique of the bolsheviks one party state as inevitably resulting in bureaucratization, depolitication of the working class etc is sometimes seen as prescient. I think she just didn’t grasp what was unavoidable and essential and simply had no alternative in societies she understood little about.
But her critique is simply a no-brainer in the West. You have to be completely off the planet to imagine a working class that has experienced a century of multi-party bourgeois democracy tolerating, let alone benefiting from a one party state in the USA and Australia.
Nobody but a few hundred or at most a few thousand sectarians in the USA has ever seriously believed that.
The only reason I can think of as to why they ever held such a risible position was that the orthodox position had also completely failed with the bankruptcy of the mass workers parties of the second international in Western Europe.
Nevertheless, it is not and never has been, anything but patently absurd.
That may sound like abuse when said to a group that obviously originates from one of the nuttier of the tiny sects that believed it and is still engaged in refuting their former great leader.
But shaking you and shouting “your sick” is a time honoured Maoist principle for dealing with certain contradictions that may or may not be among the people.
nando said
As has been said: in many ways, a critique of the RCP letters is mainly useful in clearing the ground for the main act, which is learning from the revolutionary attempt in Nepal, its claims, imagining, plans and weaknesses.
Mainly the RCP’s arguments are handled by an exposure of their dogmatic method — since the details of their argument are build on that foundation. (Theirs is a set of argument virtually without reference to the actually problems, contradictions, developments, lessons etc. of Nepal’s living revolution.)
For tactical reasons, for an international audience, their dogmatic argumentation (in these letters) adopt a considerably more “orthodox” posture than the RCP adopts elsewhere. JBC cites the RCP quote:
But that is hardly the actual stance of the RCP which has been QUITE willing to discard all kinds of principles that other people see as “basic” to MLM. For example their rejection of the “basic” view among communists and Maoists that in the third world, “patriotism is applies internationalism.” Or their rejection of the “basic” view that there should be a world wide united front that is focused on one or another main danger among the imperialists. and so on.)
And the tactical reason for that is obvious: orthodoxy has considerable influence among communists internatinally (even if Avakian’s particular twists do not). All the more reason we should expose their dogmatic method well, and deeply.
But then move on to the main events….
* * * * * * *
Part of those main events need to involve evaluating (ourselves) a number of the CPNM’s theoretical concepts. They obviously should not be embraced uncritically:
1) I think we should do our own critique of Bhattarai’s “New State” document — because it really is important to dig into some fundamental questions of the state (beyond a repeat of Marx’s point of “cannot lay hands on the old state, and need instead to break it up.” And there needs to be an evaluation of the degree to which this document is actually an expression of Prachanda Path or of some separate current within the CPNM
2) I think we need to take a look at the early assertions that part of the Nepali experience should be viewed as universally applicable: specifically the idea that multiparty elections within a new socialist mainstream will be a universal feature of emerging socialism of this century and the idea that a hybrid of insurrection and protracted peoples war has universality as well (i.e. that there are no longer “two roads” in the world.)
3) These questions of “universality” become particularly important if (as seems possible) the CPNM carrys through on its promise to play a much more active role in restructuring and realligning the international communist movement. What basis will that be on? Will the chosen bases be right and helpful or will they assert what isn’t proven and prop up what needs to be superceded?
There is a long history of iinfluential communist parties (obviously starting with Russia and China)asserting their experiences and theories as “universal” in ways that have been destructive. Mao argued against that (and refused for a number of reasons not to reform an organized comintern around Mao Zedong Thought) — but there were still powerful tendencies by the Chinese party to assume that the path to revolution was clear for much of the world (and that it was illuminated by the experience of China).
4) I think we need to problematize and discuss the questions of tactics and strategy.
The Nepali letter writes:
This is an argument that many strategic matters are settled, and the creative/challenging part is in the tactical application to a particular country. Ie. orthodoxy in strategy, creative departures in tactics.
I suspect this is not really true, and that is rather hard “not to commit any mistakes in strategy.”
In some ways, this seems particularly acute for revolutionaries in the Northern/imperialist countries because the strategic approaches of making socialist revolution still seem so impoverished and unsettled — i.e. we are attempting to chart a still-uncharted course.
From here, it clearly seems as if the creative realm is strategy — the forging of a road to revolution. And the development of tactics represents a different but not more-central creative challenge.
5) One issue here is how much to assume that current Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is sufficient for crafting a movement of revolutionary preparations. If it is sufficient, that means we have strategy, and are moving toward creative “application” and tactics (what the chinese called the sinification of marxism. If it is insufficient, then the challenge is reconception, and the focus is strategic.
I think that the Nepali assumption that MLM is sufficient to start explain (in part) their rather distinctive downplaying of revolutionary theory. There is a current of “let’s just do it” in their theory. Which comes up in their insistance that the RCP is just raising the “ABC’s of Marxism” and that the real arena is in application.
I think (by contrast) that we should assume that MLM (as it has been variously formulated in competing ways) is not sufficient — and it is even impoverished and somewhat exhausted as a framework altogether. And I think that whenever someone talks about “the ABCs of marxism” that (somewhat inherently) there is a troubling downplaying of the problems and challenges of developing a revolutinoary framework. There are really no “ABCs of marxism” (and when someone tries to codify them, they pretty much always end up strangling marxism are a living theory). We need to popularize the basics of revolutionary theory — but that popularization has some inherent problems when the actual wielding and application of theory is inherently difficult to make “simple.”
There are precious moments, of course, when revolutionaries are “doing it” and not talking about doing it. And it would be insane to complain when people are writing on the canvas of living events — that they are not “engaging” enough with someone like Avakian, or not jotting their guiding theory down for our benefit.
But it is still a real problem and a real theoretical mistake to assert a view that the ABC’s of Marxism are relatively settled, and strategic matters are relatively settled (and easy), and existing theory is basically sufficient (in its MLM form) — and that the creative arena has shifted to tactics of application.
And part of the situation may involve one of the real particularities of Nepal: i.e. that (unlike everywhere else) a huge part of Nepal’s political spectrum is various shades of communist parties — with the UML in particular being a major establishment parties.
The language and assumptions of orthodox Marxism-Leninism are not a background that gave rise to the CPNM alone, it frames much of the political discussion in Nepal (of all the various class forces). Ironically, Nepal is one of the few places where (I suspect) there is a external pull upon the CPNM toward maintaining an orthodox framework and language that is independent of their own inclinations. In other words, I suspect the CPNM are less orthodox in their thinking than in their mode of speech. And in fact, they have shown with their discussions of substages, that their strategic thinking is not so fixed.
6) Something JBC writes that I think is worth endorsing:
There is a great deal to say about this. And we really haven’t “scratched” it — for example, the 9 letters (rather deliberately) does not take up issues of democracy.
The international communist movement has not handled matters of democracy well — often tailing bourgeois democracy in both theory and practice, while often using the means of dictatorship in shortsighted, self-defeating and even frankly unjust ways. The way the Soviet Constitution of 1936 (which mimicked the formalities of bourgeois democracy) was quickly followed by the horrifying purges, show trials and mass arrests of 1936-38 is a particularly perverse concentration of both problems.
We need to take this up — in critiques of real-existing bourgeois democracy, in theoretical critical evaluations of inherited marxism on these matters, in a fearless evaluation of the experience of socialism in the 20th century, in a serious engagement with the various thinking that has emerged among communists today, and so on.
there is more to raise… but that will come later.
n3wday said
Abyotawi said,
“Sure, the former CPN(M) is now the leading party in the government of the old state, but the New State embronic structure, that is the URPC has been dismantled, abolished.”
According to this document, that is not true. Perhaps you could cite a source we can investigate to back up your assertion.
International Crisis Group Report on Nepal (Feb. 19, 2009) ”Nepal’s Faltering Peace Process”:
http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=5929
“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)
Tell No Lies said
Arthur’s contributions are often infuriating, sometimes provocative, and generally wrong. I think however that he is absolutely correct here, both on the likely neccessity of the one-party state under the conditions that existed in Russia and Chian at the time of their respective socialist revolutions AND on the total (and obvious) non-viability of this form under the conditions that exist in countries with long histories of multi-party bourgeois democracy.
A few points on this:
First, it is wrong to simply characterize multi-party bourgeois democracy as the preferred form of capitalist rule. The truth is that there are a variety of ways to organize state power that are perfectly amenable to the bourgeoisie. The liberal multi-party democractic form is the result of and accomodation to STRUGGLE on the part of the popular classes and sectors and certian features, chiefly in the area of relative freedom of thought, expression and organization, must be viewed as political conquests of the oppressed.
Second, while it is true that a revolutionary situation in the US would likely involve wholesale disgust with the workings of bourgeois democracy, I see no reason to believe that such disgust would (or should) turn to one-party rule as preferable. What is disgusting about US democracy is not that it has one too many parties, but rather that both parties ultimately largely represent the same class interests, and that therefore the choices on offer are too narrow. The American people would not consider, much less tolerate, a one-party state, nor should they. Any organization that does not understand this fundamental fact will never amount to more than a sect.
Third, the reason one-party systems made sense in Russia and China was the near total absence of what we now call “civil society.” Gramsci understood this as the key challenge facing revolutionaries in Central and Western Europe and is the starting point, IMHO, of any serious discussion of this whole question. The past several decades has seen the emergence of more or less robust civil societies over most of the globe and everywhere that has occurred it has been accompanied by demands for liberal democratic rights to freedom of expression and to political organization. I suspect that the Maobadi’s stance is as much a reflection of such a process taking place in Nepal as it is the result of reflection on the failure of the Russian and Chinese revolutions. Or rather the latter reflection is driven as much by the democratic expectations of the Nepali people as it is by the internal ideological dynamics of the CPN(M). And if this is the case in a country as poor, underdeveloped, and still characterized by semi-feudal social relations as Nepal it seems fair to say that the conditions that once justified the form taken by the Russian and Chinese revolutions no longer exist anywhere on earth.
Taking all that into account, the precise form that a multi-party democratic and revolutionary socialist political system needs to take in Nepal or Venezuela or the US or whereever is still very much unsettled. The experiment we are witnessing in Nepal is therefore of paramount importance and deserves our closest attention.
Tell No Lies said
Another point: I think the Maobadi’s conception of the alternation between military and political offensives is a challenge to how we understand not just what is happening in Nepal, but also the strategy purued by the Zapatistas, and what we are seeing in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, where while they never pursued a strategy of protracted peoples war, in each case there was a military or insurrectionary phase to the struggle and where the prospect that it might be renewed is very much a part of their discourses.
Abyotawi said
n3wday/
Sure thing. The United Revolutionary People’s Council, the embryonic new state’s concrete form, was officially disbanded in February 2009, even though it had been rendered obsolete long before.
http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2009/feb/feb21/news12.php
“At the meeting, the Maoists officially dissolved the Revolutionary People’s Council – a structure created parallel to the government when the party was in people’s war”
Unrelated, but important, is a point on the International Crisis Group, that you quote. The ICG has produced a lot of material on Nepal, and a lot of its information is very useful. However, it’s important to remember what interests ICG serves, something you’ll get a good picture of by reading the list of members of it’s board of directors.
When ICG is describing “problems” of the former CPN(M) not having FULLY dismantled all parallel structures, they are doing so with the aim of exerting pressure on the movement to abandon what little is left. Next in line, mark my words, is PLA.
Arthur said
Nando responds:
Any difference here is purely terminological or perhaps diplomatic. There’s no reason to assume the Nepalese actually believe the RCP has a strategy. The point they are making is really about “making no mistakes” by just spouting dogma instead of actually succeeding or failing at anything in particular by actually having anything to take part in political struggle around.
Far from “downplaying revolutionary theory” the letter is an excellent example of taking theory very seriously on the question of revisionism and multi-party democracy. Its level and style confirms that the Nepalese leadership is of a very different calibre from the impression one might get by casual reading of press statements etc (including “Red Star”).
As the original post points out:
Those 3 wasted decades aren’t unique to the USA or the RCP but a worldwide problem. Studying what’s going on in Nepal cannot be for the purpose of advising them, but of learning from their success in breaking out of that period.
If Nando is acknowledging that there is currently no strategy in countries like the USA that may be a good starting point for recovery.
I can proudly boast that some of us in Australia recognized the (obvious) absurdity of the RCP pretensions nearly 3 decades before the Nepalese (when the “ICM” drifted into pro-Deng, pro-Hoxha and pro-RCP camps debating “theory of 3 worlds” and we concluded there was no point arguing with these people about grand strategy as these tendencies clearly did not have a clue and there was no ICM capable of having a strategy).
Unfortunately I cannot claim that escaping the 3 decades of dogmatism has produced any practical results, let alone a strategy. So seeing the obvious earlier isn’t much to boast about.
Frankly I don’t think the Comintern ever developed a viable strategic line for developed western countries so there hasn’t been one since the collapse of the second international.
It isn’t going to be easy. But acknowledging things that are obvious is an essential preliminary step.
TNL and I agree that:
So its a proposition that doesn’t require agreement about much else ;-)
Nevertheless it has a lot of implications. In particular it goes far beyond merely saying that the opposite view isn’t settled.
Anyone who disagrees should tear themselves away from studying Nepal or anything else and write a very convincinging refutation. This stuff catches on easily once you actually admit it and unfortunately it does NOT in itself make it any easier to get ones act together but rather highlights just how difficult its going to be. So if its wrong, now’s the time to prove it.
Ka Frank said
On Tuesday night, two people who are former supporters of the RCP and are not members of Kasama were refused entrance to the RCP’s program on Nepal on the UC Berkeley campus, apparently on suspicion of being members of Kasama. When challenged to allow for the presence of dissenting views, an RCP cadre said the issue is not that but “counter-revolution.”
This indicates that the independent communist perspectives present on Kasama are perceived as a significant threat by the RCP.
land said
In regards to the post by Ka Frank on people being refused entrance to Nepal program.
To turn someone away from a Nepal program because they are perceived as Kasama is part of the Notice to the Public. – It does show that they are
taking us seriously. Maybe someone could write a short article on this.
If there is a Nepal program in anyone’s area they should make it a point to attend.
With Kasama lit.
Tell No Lies said
Who gives a shit whether the RCP takes us seriously since nobody really takes THEM seriously anymore. Their refusal to admit people to an event is obnoxious, to be sure, but its not important. What matters is not whether the RCP takes Kasama seriously. (Clearly they do since Kasama is a direct challenge to their whole schtick.) What matters is whether serious revolutionary minded people in the US take Kasama seriously. Insofar as there are any of those left in the RCP I suspect they won’t be there for much longer. Taking Kasama lit to RCP events is fine, but there are so many other places it needs to be distributed.
Mike E said
I basically think it would a waste of time. And not what we should be doing. There are many other places where significant gatherings of revolutionary-minded people are taking place — where it would be valuable to go with Kasama literature. These small RCP events are really not that signficant or interesting. And most people who attend them already have full access to Kasama’s thoughts on this.
The most important thing about the “Two Talks, Five Letters” is the letter from the Nepalis — which deserves a close critical read. The rest is rooted in the same circular logic we have all seen: “The Nepalis don’t uphold Avakian’s theories, Avakian is right, so the nepalis must be wrong and revisionist.” Facts and analysis really don’t enter into the picture — and when they appear they are often inconvenient. there is a lot of “cutting the toes to fit the shoes.”
The argument is basically done by “the logic of the logic” (which the RCP has always overestimated.) I.e. that “if you haven’t capitulated yet doesn’t matter, you are going to, and we can tell you are going to because your texts have a wrong position on a number of things that Avakian is very clear and correct on.”
I think there is great value in understanding what is happening and said within the international Maoist movement, but the RCP’s “look at me” polemics are among the least interesting.
Having said that, I think there IS a lot to say about the Marxist theory of the state, the communist approach to democracy, the question of how do you not have “tactics eat up strategy” and more — things sharply raised by the Nepali road… and needing some real investigation and discussion.
Green Red said
I certainly have lots of personal respect, ethical debt, dues and other positive things toward certain rcp comrades. And i guess until not purged and sent to Siberia, whereever they need general solidarity on general matters, mostly along lots of others fine, i, and others might as well be there.
And as before have said strong personal dislike to use certain mass languages in public or at all in general.
But in the particular matter of ultra dogmatic attitude of if you’re not exactly with us your against us and the revolution – as if it is a copyrighted property – then excuse my petty boourgiouse – prolterian sounding – terms on such inside movement insanity but, counter revolution yo mama, yo papa and depth of your counter productive attitude of discussion!!
These two ex rcp supporters, Kasama fellows or anybody, who might as well be relatively wrong, or lest right, or something in between; whence they come to good old Berkley book store well, doesn’t your Marxist Leninist Maoist Avakian Thougtht anti fascist buy my book disco synthesizer doesn’t have an epsilon of let’s broaden the discussion to figure out we’re right after all?
Please, comrades, supporters of rcp, their leadership, great particular leader and everybody in between, regardless of some sharp differences on Nepal or few other matters… evade religious cult alike sectarianism since, if great chair Bob’s theory is correct, that old poetry of Nazi times that echoes in my mind about how fascit Nazis killed this other fellow since s/he was a Jew, then killed the other one since it was a communist, then killed the other one since it was a gypsy, etc. might kill us all if we are so scattered that we cannot look into semi allies in their eyes.
I recall on May first in San Francisco at the time of Rodney King related uprising, rcp paper sellers when surrounded by the Police with around a thousand fellows between 23rd and 21st and Mission, continued to have papers up and couragously resisted while people of all radical walks of life were getting hancuffed with plastic bands and like cattled pushed into trucks. Of course on a first worlder state they have had their glorious moments. Couldn’t they mellow down the mini party’s great leadership cultural revolution and, i don’t know, probably bring one or two fellows blame themselves of this ultra left sounding attitude and look back at at discussion of us first worlders at best as a Coffee Shopt Communist chat and until didn’t manage to, in adition to be in solidarity with third world country liberation struggles do something better than DVD selling and only us programs?
No hard feelings fellows, though, we are all trying to act communist while it’s been in decline for sometime.
land said
I do not think we should go to these events to give the RCP credibility. But this debate is important. If it only draws a few people I wouldn’t bother. But if the events draw a broader crowd people should at least consider it.
We had a program here on Nepal by Li Onesto before the RCP stopped talking about this revolution. There were many students who had some ties with Nepalwho came. And there were several professors who helped sponsor the program.
So I wouldn’t write it off without investigating if it is going to draw broader forces. If it is just a few I agree there is no point.
Arthur said
That seemed to be what the post for this particular thread was intended for, as opposed to the several other threads on the RCP.
So please proceed.
A central theme in the letter from Nepal is “the communist approach to democracy”.
Waffle about tactics in other types of society or analysis of past or future revolutions just doesn’t cut it any more than exposing the RCP’s attitudes cuts it.
A sharp challenge on that question has been posed by the Nepalis and both TNL and I have put it even more sharply for countries like the USA by saying that any organization that doesn’t understand the “obvious” necessity of multi-party democracy can never become anything more than a sect.
If that’s agreed, let’s declare it as won and recorded and then explore the implications and develop it. Even though its so bloody obvious, it surely deserves a pamphlet for wide distribution in view of the widespread confusion about whether Maoism is a sect.
If, as seems far more likely, it isn’t agreed, then a refutation is required, not more chatter about the RCP. Its also higher priority than the other important topics mentioned since nobody would really care what investigation and study an organization that can never become anything more than a sect engages in on such questions as the Marxist theory of the State, let alone strategy and tactics.
n3wday said
Arthur,
You, by all appearances seem to have well developed views on Socialist democracy. Would you please expound them so we can begin the debate there, rather than telling everyone else what they’re saying won’t “cut it”? In other words bait with substance, it’s much more productive.
As for me, I think democracy will be necessary. But, what does that really mean? Democracy within an explicitly socialist framework? Democracy where a capitalist party will be allowed to run (wouldn’t they be running anyway if outlawed, just under a different name)? What are the +’s and -’s with those approaches? There are innumerable questions involved here, like, what will the media look like, and how will that effect how political figures run campaigns? How can it be structured to favor Socialism and socialist hegemony?
In other words, I don’t have developed views on this subject. Just a set a questions that starts with, “democracy, yes”.
So, please, tell us what your views are so we can start a discussion from there.
Green Red rev said
Thanks Ka Arthur for re directing the thread to the matter of multi party democracy issue.
When more than one in the least, everything cannot be blamed on this particular party or that particular big brother or sister. It is economic and political reality of a whole nation vs our nation matter in the globlized imperialism.
As i read, heard about the way the indegenous people’s struggle in south Mexico goes by the Zapatista comrades, for each and every great matter, the matter is discussed with the Elders and Leadership of each and every tribe involved in every village, etc.
The bottom line is, if the progressive – eh – revolutionary action didn’t work out well, at least people can say we discussed and did it all together so, we were wrong not this or that LEADER.
But important fact:
All this reality doesn’t absolutely put down the book of Chair Avakian’s Democracy, can’t we do better than that which, had several good historical observations. But instead, let’s talk about workers and toiler of any kind’s democracy, something in which people can have a saying and relative experimental field of trying to do better for all.
And in this terrible world capitalism moment, we can watch and see how the capitalist monsters are gonna be fought with by prime minister’s line of thinking in Nepal and as said regarding military phases by great writer comrade Tell No Lies.
Arthur said
I don’t have “well developed views on Socialist democracy”. In fact I am inclined to avoid the term Socialist wherever possible.
Nor do I have much of a concept of what a revolutionary movement would look like in countries like the USA and Australia, how it would win, what victory would look like or where we would go from there.
I can however offer the following half-baked points for discussion:
1. Communists are always and everwhere first of all revolutionary democrats. We instinctively side with the people against any “saviours from high” and work for the forcible overthrow of all existing conditions.
2. Our enemies own the means of production, including the means of mental production. Their ideas are the dominant ideas among the working class and will remain either dominant or a serious challenge throughout the historical epoch in which the proletariat is learning how to take actual control of the means of production and how to rule. Their ideas can only be defeated in open contention with maximum freedom to organize and advocate. The enemy’s material advantage will decline as they lose control over the means of production and hence of the resources of “opinion leaders”. But there will be periods in which they have majority support alternating with periods in which the revolution has majority support.
3. Revolutionaries will remain a small minority throughout any series of revolutionary upheavals and social transformation. We may at periods have majority support but it will not be support for a maximum program but for whatever concrete proposals are the tasks of the day. When the majority of workers become consciously communist the proletarian revolution will already be over and it will be time for the next revolution.
4. Major battles will be fought and won (or lost) in periods when we do not have majority support for even our minimum program of the day but are merely part of a much wider united front that includes hostile parties temporarily united against a common enemy around programs that are essentially limited to defeating that enemy. How to exercise independence and initiative within such united fronts will be the critical test of tactics.
5. It is always critical for both long and short term aims to draw the masses into political struggles as much as possible. Bourgeois rule depends on excluding the majority despite formal rights. Overcoming it requires including them and ensuring maximum ease of mind and liveliness for contending ideas to clash and develop.
6. We expect and must prepare for the enemy resorting to force to eliminate formal democratic rights that are as dangerous for them as they are vital for us. We openly declare that the working class can and will suppress by force any attempt at limiting free expression of political opinion, free organization of political parties and regular competitive elections to choose the leadership of all social institutions.
7. We also expect the enemy to continue to resort to deception. As Republican and Democrat style advocacy of capitalism becomes less popular we can rely on the bourgeois parties adopting names like “Socialist”, “Communist” etc. They will also develop attacks that are left in form but right in essence and parties well to our left will cause major problems. We will have to expose that hypocrisy, not encourage it, let alone require hypocrisy as a condition of participation.
n3wday said
Hey Arthur,
Just read your comment on one of the Badiou threads, and it reminded me I forgot about this discussion, allow me some time to chew on what you’ve written, and I’ll attempt to contribute soon.