Marxism is not a Layer Cake
Posted by Mike E on July 13, 2010
by Mike Ely
I think this is one of the most important discussions we have… and one we need to press ahead with a lot more energy. It opened up with the publishing of a study guide of a familiar (orthodox) ML kind.
That study guide starts by proclaiming its focus is “the theory and practice of Marxism-Leninism, the science of revolution.”
And then it explains:
“Marxism-Leninism is the synthesis and summation of the historic experiences of the revolutionary struggles of working and oppressed people against capitalism and imperialism for more than 160 years, and as such it is a weapon to be used by working and oppressed people in their struggles for emancipation, liberation, and the building of a new world. As Stalin has said, Marxism-Leninism is not a dogma but a guide to action”
This is all very pat and very flat — and very un-contradictory. The synthesis, summation, weapon and science we need is right there, it exists, and it is ready to be our guide to action. (And it has been there presumably, all along, for a century or more.)
TNL dug into the issues here by saying:
“I think the idea of “classics” here is highly problematic. There is certainly much in this list that might be useful for particular studies and I can certainly see consulting it. But as actual courses of study these is really more about inculcating people into an already established ideology than they are about training people to think critically about these questions.”
Time’s up….
Here is my view:
If you teach scientific ideas in a religious way, you have not taught science, you have taught religion. If you gather up buckets of “true facts” and teach them in a rote and dogmatic way, you have not taught truth you have taught rote and dogma.
There is a great wealth of insight and experience embodied in the past revolutionary attempts — both in their theoretical work and their actual practice. It is extremely important to dig deeply into it, to become familiar with the history and theory of 19th and 20th century communist movements. (And almost all of the works listed in this guide are well worth reading.)
But the approach that turns a core set of such writings into “classics” is the teaching of religion not creative materialist thinking. And in the end it makes it impossible to learn many of the things we need to learn.
There is great power and precious material within the body of international Marxist theory and method — but if we treat it like an encapsulated and semi-finished doctrine we will be depriving ourselves of that power, and circulating dead verdicts out of space and time, drained of precisely the creative analytical approaches that Marx pioneered, and that Lenin and Mao advanced to lead revolutions.
For that reason it was valuable to raise that remark from Lenin:
“People for the most part (99 percent of the bourgeoisie, 98 percent of the liquidators, about 60‑70 percent of the Bolsheviks) don’t know how to think, they only learn words by heart.”
Badly Aging Orthodoxies
Let’s dissect the features of the too-familiar and common approach we are critiquing:
1) Teaching that we can take the “classic” works as simple truth — consume and then apply them with confidence that they are more-or-less universally relevant and correct.
There was an early debate in the Revolutionary Union:
“Is our common line the material contained in our own evolving organizational documents (Red Papers and so on), or is everything contained in Marx, Lenin and Mao also part of our basis of unity?”
And the second argument represents a certain view of Marxism-Leninism. I.e. that the theory we need exists (was created and fleshed out half a century ago) and that what we need to do is mainly assimilate it and apply it. And that whatever Lenin or Mao said is simply true, and it can be taken as true.
You see that thinking all the time, when someone quotes Lenin and assumes that because that quote said it we can proceed (in our discussion and logic) as if the point has been made and proven. (“The Bible says it, i believe it, and that’s that.”) In fact, there is value in examining what people like Lenin said and wrote on a topic. But when we do, we have the burden to show that what they said applies now (and even sometimes that it was true then) — or at least to so structure our argument and logic that we do not assume (or train others to assume) that it is simply and universally true.
If you look at this study guide– especially if you contrast it with the Sojourner Truth guide — you notice that there are no questions encouraging a discussion of “how do these works divide into two.”
- what do we uphold and apply?
- what can we modify?
- what should we discard?
- what do we need to develop new?
- how do we make those judgments?
Perhaps such questions are (in fact) raised in the study meetings — but I suspect not. And the reason is that you can see, in the very description of Marxism-Leninism that it is to bee seen as a (relatively) complete and worked out body of work.
It says (again):
“Marxism-Leninism is the synthesis and summation of the historic experiences of the revolutionary struggles of working and oppressed people against capitalism and imperialism for more than 160 years, and as such it is a weapon to be used by working and oppressed people in their struggles for emancipation, liberation, and the building of a new world.”
Tidy, available, worked out, and a deeply flawed construct.
And that tidyness is part of the attraction of Stalin-era Marxism for many. It is perhaps what David-D praises when he writes:
“I also think Stalin’s writings are succinct, to the point.”
In a friendly way, I would like to disagree. I think the simplicity of Stalin’s logic is deceptive — because reality is not like that. And when Stalin implies (over and over) that the truth is obvious if you just have the right motivation and honesty, and breaks it down with famous simplicity (“and hence….”) But this was actually a method that distorted reality. It was a bootcamp for the reduction of Marxist methodology.
Much of the “reductionism” and theoretical poverty of modern communism is entwined with the training of Stalin-era Marxism (and before it mechanical currents in European Social-Democracy generally). In Stalin’s case (from foundations of leninism on) the theory was far more about codifying a state-legitimizing doctrine than the exercise of a materialist exploratory scientific analysis of reality. There was a popularization of Marxism — but often it was undermined as a critical and creative analysis, and affirmed as a set of state-approved orthodoxies.
In the 9 Letters we wrote:
“… since Mao died in 1976, this Maoist movement has not been a fertile nursery of daring analyses and concepts. A mud streak has run through it. Even its best forces often cling to legitimizing orthodoxies, icons, and formulations. The popularization of largely-correct verdicts often replaces the high road of scientific theory — allowing Marxism itself to appear pat, simple and complete. Dogmatic thinking nurtures both self-delusion and triumphalism. In the name of taking established truths to the people, revolutionary communists have often cut themselves off from the new facts and creative thinking of our times.”
I repeat what we said then:
“We need to break with that fiercely, and seek out the others who agree.”
We should not uphold or continue Stalin’s simple and pat approach to Marxism.
And we should not (as this study plan does) uphold Stalin’s History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik) — on the contrary we should study it as a negative example of “cutting the toes to fit the shoes” and of “reading history backwards” so that events are all tidy, clear, predictable. It is an exercise in mechanical thinking — “This was this, that was that” — the events described are heroic and world historic, but it is done with a mechanical worldview that departs constantly from real history or materialist dialectics or the workings of real revolution. It is a book that has mythologized a very particular approach to revolutionary preparation — in ways that led whole generations of revolutionaries around in circles.
The implication of this study guide (its structure, its content, its self-description) is that we all need to insert a funnel in our heads, and just start pouring this wonderful stuff in — it assumes a doctrine and invites to an indoctrination. The common operational principle is to study, apply and (perhaps) refine.
And the underlying assumption is that the theory we need is “there for the taking,” and that the future development of Marxism-Leninism will mainly reflect the necessary adaptations to very particular and local conditions — not that we know (and discover every day) that after a century that there are some issues we need to rework in a much larger way.
That kind of doctrinal orthodoxy is attractive, even seductive, especially for new people who find the completeness breathtaking. The problem is that it is a deception — it is not, in fact, there. The coherence is a deception. Much that is presented as science is not actually scientific. Much that is presented as coherent is in fact (quite naturally) woolly and contradictory.
Harsh Thakor wrote, for example, in an earlier discussion:
“Mike Ely’s writings slander the achievements of Com.Stalin to a considerable extent ,and even deride Com.Lenin and Com.Mao on many an occasion.”
It does not take much to see that this kind of perception is based on the idea that it is heretical to approach our own previous theory with a critical mind, to make an independent and new assessment.
Did Lenin make mistakes? That very idea is part of what (i suspect) horrifies Harsh. But for me, that isn’t even the question. Sure, everyone makes errors, and obviously that includes Lenin.
But what is more profound is the question of the overall skein of Bolshevik theory and practice. What can we learn and adopt from them, and meanwhile what currents in their thinking should we look at more critically?
Avakian says the Bolsheviks had a kind of pragmatic instrumentalism that jumped out at various points — incliuding during the Red Terror. I think Avakian is wrong on some of that — and that it is an example of where Avakian has a detached and idealist incomprehension of what politics and class struggle for power actually (of necessity) looks like.
Meanwhile, others have raised whether there was too much “theory of the productive forces” in the whole Russian movement (Soviets plus electrification = Communism), so that their very radical revolution far too easily flipped over into a massive two decade effort focused on industrialization and modernization.
In any case, we need that kind of sweeping assessment of the Bolshevik problematic (not just an “overall defense of Lenin, while identifying Lenin’s particular and occasional errors.”) Anyone writing in the early 20th century wrote and acted in ways deeply marked by their times and assumptions.
Theory (even the theory of our best revolutionaries) isn’t like raisin bread with wonderful white stuff and a few pesky raisin “errors” stuck in randomly. In a sweeping way, Lenin led the first socialist revolution and led important revolutionary ruptures and advances — but there is a need to take an overall look at the whole Bolshevik problematic (its assumptions and characteristics) in a way the helps us construct an approach for the revolutions a century later.
2) Assuming that these works don’t contradict themselves or each other.
There was an early debate in the New Communist Movement over whether Marxism was like a layer cake. I.e. Marx and Engels laid down the first layer, then Lenin built on that, then Stalin built on that, then Mao build on that.
And you got a vision of a “development” of theory that had little dynamic contradiction — and where the new did not actually emerge from the internal contradictions of the old.
Why was something new, i.e. Leninism, necessary after 1914? In some people’s view, it is not because there were any contradictions within previous Marxism (including gaps, flaws, misjudgements, wrong steps), but simply because new conditions and new phenomena had emerged: i.e. imperialism, the first socialist revolution, monopoly capitalism replacing competitive capitalism.
So Leninism was seen as (first) an affirmation and (then) a needed development of Marx’s work (but without any real negation).
Leninism was (in those conceptions) the Marxism of the new era of imperialism and proletarian revolution. And so, problem solved: you needed a new leap because there were new problems. And you did not have to acknowledge that our theory needed (like all theory) to be self-critical, that it needed to step back sometimes and take a new direction. That there were whole parts of it that needed to be changed (not just updated but also just changed).
This is the analysis made in Stalin’s Foundations of Leninism.
And forty years later, this produced (for the dogmatically inclined) a real problem when it became clear that Mao had come up with a number of radical new developments.
“Can we declare a leap to Maoism if there is not a new era?”
It is virtually a theological problem (like contemplating the paradoxes of the Trinity). To declare a leap without an era is to imply weaknesses and incompleteness in the previous theory! It is to imply development through partial negation! and that was deeply disturbing for some people.
In revolutionary China, there was an attempt to solve this theological problem by trying to declare that there was (in fact) a new epoch, and Mao’s work was its new “ism.” At the Ninth Party Congress, Lin Biao declared:
“Mao Tsetung Thought is Marxism-Leninism of the era in which imperialism is heading for total collapse and socialism is advancing to world-wide victory.”
The three heads depiction of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism
The only problem was, of course, that it wasn’t true.
There was not a new era in that sense. Imperialism was not “heading for total collapse.” And (more important) the only way you could see socialism as advancing to worldwide victory is to view the Soviet bloc as semi-socialist — and so Lin Biao was smuggling a negation of Mao’s theory into his most public declaration of Mao Tsetung Thought.
Far into the 1980s and 1990s, some Maoists refused to talk about Maoism because of this issue — i.e. because the very use of the word “Maoism” meant that there was a leap beyond Leninism without a new era, and what could that mean but a critique and demotion of Stalin?
And in fact Mao’s theoretical developments involved precisely critique, partial negation and demotion of Stalin.
Those who upheld Marxism-Leninism-Maoism often tended to portray the “three heads” (of Marx, Lenin and Mao), while many of those clinging to other formulations (of Marxism Leninism, or Marxism-Leninism Mao Tsetung Thought), tended to put forward the “five heads” (where Engels and Stalin are on equal footing in the pantheon). And some used both, eclectically.
And this is what is involved when David_d says:
“I do think that Stalin merits a lot of study – almost as much as Mao Zedong.”
The very different approach of "five heads" puts Stalin's work on a par with Lenin and Mao
Or Harsh Thakor charges (with considerable exaggeration):
“The Kasama trend almost reduces Com Stalin to a non-Leninist and all Mao’s contributions achievements as an anti-thesis of Stalinism.
The development of theory and the critical examination of past theory can be agonizing (and even outrageous) to those who want each of the “classic” theorists to be assumed “correct”, and want each generation of Marxism to be a non-interacting sediment — like a distinctly layered cake which develops through new applications, but does not significantly self-negate.
In an earlier discussion (following The Predicament of Inherited Maoism) in which I wrote
“…all our views and verdicts divide into two and will fray over time. And like all correct insights their correctness will often become more relative the farther you get from the conditions and times where they were developed.”
In response Nat W wrote:
“This statement I think is generally correct, however, it poses a few questions I have about the project of reconception. I’ll start by analogy. Darwin developed the theory of evolution and since then, despite some need for correction or slight modification, it has continued to be held by biologists and other scientists as generally correct. Now it maybe true that many years down the line as human knowledge and technology advance it maybe that our understanding of evolution or natural or development as such ceases to be best explained the theory of evolution of species through natural selection. As for now however, it is the best working theory that scientists have in order to understand and impact this given phenomena.”
In fact, Darwin’s theory has been modified in very basic ways. It did not survive intact “as for now.”
Examples: Darwin did not know about genes and he thought that acquired traits could be passed on. The development of genetics (from the 1920s to the 1930s especially) required a huge leap in evolutionary theory — incorporating genetics in a structural way. (And lets not forget: the doctrinal conservatism of that era’s Marxist-Leninists led them to reject and denounce that leap in evolutionary theory. they had become quite doctrinally conservative and even fearful.)
In that process no one discarded Darwin, no scientist disrespected him. But there was a profound change in key parts of his theory. And even on his most durable contribution (the theory of natural selection) there has been major controversy and change — just for example on the question of “what level does selection happen at?” — some argue it is selection at the level of genes, some at the level of individuals, Gould argues that it is at multiple levels — i.e. individual selection and species selection. This is a major revision of Darwin, by someone seen as one of Darwin’s greatest fans.
In fact our communist use of the word “synthesis” is related to the creation of a modern scientific synthesis in evolutionary biology.
Nat goes on to say that key Marxist concepts should (like Darwin’s theory) be taken as essentially true:
“I think that the materialist conception of history and the labor theory of value are similar theories developed by Marx for understanding the development of societies, that for revolutionaries are the best working paradigms we now have for transforming societies in a more just, collective, and egalitarian way. Now these theories are highly contested (as is evolution in mainstream culture), being a key component of the class struggle, another working theory of marxist revolutionaries that I have seen Kasama contributors and moderators firmly uphold.”
This is an important argument Nat is making, and I want to inject a question:
“Which materialist conception of history? Which one?”
Because if you look over the body of Marxism and communist theory, there is not a pat (commonly appreciated) “materialist conception of history” — but sharply contending and different approaches, in which people have drawn and assumed very different things “in Marx.”
In other words, it is not a matter of throwing everything “up for grabs” (and still less of “throwing away the baby with the bathwater”). But of actually recognizing the state of our theory and the tasks the lie at hand.
Jean Luc Godard’s Omar opens the 9 Letters to Our Comrades saying that the crisis in the communist movement,
“…has given us the right to make a precise accounting of what we possess, to call by their correct names both our riches and our predicament, to think and argue out loud about our problems, and to engage in the rigors of real research.”
3) Not wanting to see communist theory as an evolving, fluid and contradictory synthesis.
I mention all this tortured history (arguing over the name of our “ism”) to draw out how stubborn the dogmatism has been and how the existence of doctrine had injected the culture of theology.
Some people made Marxism (and Marxism Leninism, and MLM) into something like a series of prophesies that build on each other in a revelatory way. (Elijah spoke of the coming of John the Baptist who announced the coming of the Messiah.)
In fact, life, science and our theory is far more messy than that. Marxism is not a layer cake.
Our communist theory has throughout its history both discarded and assimilated. There are no layers, sitting there distinct, separated only by a little frosting and supporting each other bravely as the stack rises.
Marxism has always changed its approach when there was new evidence and phenomena, but it has also sometimes changed its approach simply because the previous one was wrong. And unfortunately the available history of Marxism has obscured that.
Furthermore, communist theory is not “one thing” — i.e. it is not one coherent doctrine being occasionally nipped here and refined there. It is (and always has been) a complex of contradictory and often contending investigations — with gaps and dead zones amid vibrant brilliant insights. It is far less coherent than it is presented.
Example: Just try to unravel a Marxist theory of crisis — at any point in Marxism’s history — and you will realize that there is, in fact, no theory of crisis. And examine the pretenders to that throne (Comintern General Crisis theory, or Mandelian Long wave crisis theory, or Avakian-Lotta spiral conjuncture theory) — and you will see that there is little continuity or power in any of them. And people keep trying to develop a communist understanding of capitalist crisis, and we should! But we should not pretend or claim that we have it all tamped down — “there for the taking.”
Avakian (back when he was a creative thinker and engaged with the world around him) came up with an important point when he discussed our communist theory as “a synthesis.” It was an important break from those who approached it as a slowly expanding blob of uncontradictory doctrine. At the time, Avakian called for “taking a Marxist view of Marxism.” These were the long ago days of the 1980 essay “Conquer the World.”
And if you take the view of communist theory as a synthesis — and i think we should — it doesn’t make sense to use a layer cake name. I.e. the very name Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-NextGuyism internalizes a whole set of assumptions about how communist theory develops. And also assumptions about how tidy the synthesis proces is and how we can/should exclude all kinds of works and thinkers and currents from the inquiry and the canon).
I view myself as a Marxist, a Leninist and a Maoist (as is well known and documented). But I don’t think the decision of the Communist Party of Peru (Shining Path) to adopt a new label of “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism” was a correct one. And I don’t think the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement was correct in adopting Gonzalo’s formulation under pressure. Avakian and the RCP had a different proposal in Conquer the World. But they went along because of the politics of the International Communist Movement after the emergence of the Shining Path. (After all, formulations are not themselves matters of principle.)
This adoption of the term MLM repeated (and implicitly) continued the adoption of Marxism-Leninism as a term in the 1920s– and uncritically adopted the process of codification (within the Comintern) which has been quite suffocating for the needed theoretical exploration.
I think we should call our developing evolving contradictory synthesis “communist theory” — and stop promoting a very mechanical heads-in-profile.
Again, it is not as if the doctrine just exists — and we either “uphold it” or “deviate” from it. (A framework that bring Catholic assumptions into communist discussion.) It is a religious approach that assumes finalized revelation and dangerous heresy.
No. Our theory is a large sprawling and contradictory body of inquiry — and it is constantly developing and decomposing. It is encountering new problems, and showing its seams and strains. It is borrowing from nearby thinkers and inquiries (philosophy, economics, science, gender studies, etc.) — just as Marx, Engels and Lenin borrowed actively (and openly!) from the advancing thinkers of their time.
In fact Lenin chose to both affirm and negate significant verdicts in previous Marxism — and he chose to pose as simply the defender of orthodox Marxism against “revisionism.”
And (in fact) Mao’s major new developments of communist theory came on the basis of major critical summations of the Soviet experience (and some very deep criticisms of Stalin’s work in both theory and practice), and when the break came, Mao chose to portray himself as a critical defender of Stalin’s legacy against the Krushchevite revisionists who were seeking to negate Stalin completely.
But in fact Marxism is not a layer cake. Each body of theory is highly contradictory and fluid. And the attempt to apply and develop communist theory in different times and places produces a real need for creative thinking (for both affirmation and negation of previous theory). And all this is very upsetting for the religiously inclined.
4) Looking at Marxism in an encapsulated way.
If you think only five men developed Marxism, then there are a number of things that follow: You call your ideology after those men. You look to your current candidates for that kind of development. You adopt a certain encapsulation of the theoretical and practical process (that assumes a one-to-many relationship between the party leadership and the rest of the world).
In fact Marxism is the product of a great many minds. And many currents of modern Marxism have (unfortunately) been reluctant to engage and assimilate new ideas (in the way Marx, Engels and Lenin did with great energy).
Look at the impoverished study plan for Art and Culture (though really you can look at any part of the study guide). It is amazing how they act as if thought stopped decades ago — when in fact it has exploded, and when in fact art and culture have changed profoundly, and when (in fact) the dogmas of socialist realism (which they are promoting) were deeply flawed even back in the 1930s.
It is not true that for every topic (the national question, art and culture, organization) we have a tidy set of answers in our ML grabbag. To tell people we do is a lie. To lead people in that way will move away from the actual road they need to take.
There is (in fact) a lot of NEW work that needs to be done. Tons of it. Exciting, envigorating, NEW work that is being dumped in the lap of a new generation. Work! Research, thinking, new analysis, exploration, debate, synthesis, summation! Just look at the work that needs doing in regard to the theory, analysis and practice around Black people’s oppression and liberation.
It was already bizarre and mind-numbing in the 1960s that some people wanted to suckle on creaky aging 1930s comintern documents — but it is infinitely more bizarre to try it again fifty years later. (People should be familiar with those analyses, of course, but not go there to drink as if it will quench your thirst.)
On such topics we need a great opening and regrouping — we need to cast the net (both widely and critically), and have a fresh start.
And if we were to confine ourselves to the inherited doctrines, and if we were to study them uncritically — we would be rendering ourselves sterile, and mute, and uninteresting.
5) Been reluctant to study opposing views.
TNL asks the question: How can you understand (or criticize) Trotskyism without studying Trotsky?
“I’m not particularly sympathetic towards Trotskyism, but its really astounding to see a study on the subject that doesn’t include some selections of writings by Trotsky or at least a defense of Trotskyism by an actual Trotskyist. Even if the intention of the study is to expose Trotskyism, the exclusion of works by Trotsky betrays a bankrupt methodology. No investigation, no right to speak.”
The study plan includes Liu Shaoqi’s “How to be a Good Communist.” I think we can take that inclusion as an endorsement of a political work once considered one of the most revisionist influences in the Chinese Communist movement. Like Mao, I think we should criticize the self-cultivationist content of that work. It advocates a terrible approach and method — and it echos (unfortunately) ideas that are very influential today.
And (speaking for myself) I would never have occurred to me to criticize Trotskyism or Liu’s work without reading them. During the cultural revolution it was quite natural to my approach to seek out “How to be a good communist” to understand what was being criticized by the Maoists (and to see if I agreed). And among the Maoists of the RU I was hardly alone in reading it for those reasons.
But I do believe we should read that work, and consider its ideas, and debate them. Otherwise we will never learn from the process of discarding.
It is a basic principle of science and critical thought that wrong ideas should be studied — and that they can’t even be correctly understood as “wrong” until they are understood.
Creative Reconception not Orthodoxy
“Study critically, test independently”
Mao Zedong
In contrast to the study guide we need to approach theory as a critical and creative process — because only that kind of theory can be communist and a guide to action. We need to have a method of study that encourages debate and critical appraisal.
We need to study a wide array of different and opposing views — including by non-Marxists who have insights and influence. We need to study those we disagree with, and we need to study them both to explore those disagreements, but also to learn about the weaknesses in our own previous understandings.
And we need (in ways I have just touched on) to have a theoretical process that is aimed at teaching ourselves and others how to think deeply about the world — “to know things to change things.” That requires something different from the assertion of a doctrine and the development of indoctrination.
In short our theoretical work and study needs to start with the world, with material reality, its contradictions and developments, and we need to investigate how communist and revolutionary thinkers have explored those contradictions and challenged-or-affirmed previous understandings, and we need to approach that process in a way that contributes to making the communist revolution (including by identifying and developing those insights that make such revolution possible).
celticfire said
There is a lot to think about here. For starters, I think we need to start with the perspective of Marx’s motto: De omnibus dubitandum, question everything.
I think Stalin’s edifice has needed to be smashed for a long while, in terms of both the historical practice he (the other leaders of that period) represented and the methodology he put forth.
My experiences of engaging with people that specifically hold Stalin in such high regard (almost in a creepy personal way) is that there is a lot of facts hidden or neatly disposed of when talking about the crimes and brutalities committed in the name of communism under Stalin’s leadership, such as the forcible relocations of millions of people.
These things happened, and I am not interested in living (and certainly not fighting for) any society where errors can be quickly removed from public viewing.
Our approach can not be simply and narrowly to “refute the lies of the anticommunists.” We need to be scientific and honest in evaluating the entire socialist experience, while upholding the attempts of our class to achieve communism, and in doing so, scientifically determine how to achieve greater success in future socialist revolutions. There were real and deep problems with previous attempts at building socialism.
Just brushing those away will not help, and it only encourages a religious and non-materialist approach among revolutionary communists.
There is, I would add a lot lacking in contemporary Marxism. Where is theory around the personality, or as Mike pointed out Black liberation in this country?
We do indeed have a lot of work to do.
David_D said
I see this continuous effort to criticize the allegedly pat formulations of the past; or, more accurately, criticizing the methodology that gave rise to them. Indeed, there is something highly mechanical seeming about Stalin’s basic reasoning at times. That is the negative aspect of the “succinct, to the point” nature to which I referred.
Moving past the class content of the such thinking for a moment, we can see that, although the Communist Party of China has radically changed its ideological orientation since Mao’s time, there is a striking similarity to the way political lines are constructed and propagated throughout the CPC. “Mao Zedong Thought” to “Deng Xiaoping Theory.” “Four alls” to “eight honors and disgraces.” Reading lists for CPC members aren’t too different in many cases as for as the “classics” are concerned, but the way in which they are interpreted has changed. Let us call this structure of propagating ideology “dogmatism” for the sake of discussion.
Can communists do without “dogmatism?” Can a revolutionary fighting organization out of power, or a governing party of communists do without “dogmatism?” I haven’t seem it yet. I’ve seen “dogmatism” and what could be called liberal, pragmatic, “post-ideological” positions counterposed. I have not seen a success in dispensing with “revolutionary formulations” while at the same time maintaining organization.
I’m not trying to construct a straw man, I’m just honestly asking, because I do see the weakness of “three heads,” “five heads,” and all the “succinct, to the point” formulations that may be good in rudimentary political training but not in comprehensive communist education.
The Marxist-Leninist said
Just to clearify, without getting into a debate that I’m not interested in: this isn’t a FRSO study guide. Those actually do exist, but this isn’t one of them. It is simply a reading guide I put together. It is not the result of a collective process. And anyway, it is unfortunate that this is being called “religious” in its approach. Certainly there’s nothing written that’s beyond question or criticism, but there are some things carry the weight of having been tested and found more successful than others in practice.
Doug said
Something that has annoyed me in my political involvement and study materials is the idea of a received canon. Whether it is Marx to Lenin to Stalin to Mao, or replacing the last two with Trotsky. I personally am of the opinion that all should be read and studied.
Yet there seems to be a disengagement with many important Marxist theorists who have made important contributions. The Monthly Review school for instance (Sweezy, Magdoff, and Foster) have made important insights into political economy. Or Istvan Meszaros in regards to philosophy. Or Charles Bettelheim on the USSR. Ernest Mandel on Late Capitalism.
While in Marxist groups I was never told about Lukacs, Korsch, Mariategui or Althusser. I’m not saying that these thinkers are without flaws, but to not study them strikes me as odd.
Something else that struck me on reading the FRSO guide was the lack of any mention of Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. I personally found Marx’s analysis of alienation under capitalism to be a very profound insight.
andy said
a few comments, which do not form a theorem, they’re just separate comments.
1). Marxism is principally a method, a way of thinking, not just a series of conclusions.
2). It was E. P. Thompson who pointed out so forcefully that as a science Marxism is tendentional, not deductive. That means that you can’t put a date on when something is supposed to happen, or even if it is going to happen at all. You are dealing with trends. That doesn’t mean its not a science, just that its a different kind of science from say, physics.
3). The reason Lenin is so hard to read is that he is always so concrete. Every one of his major works is about events of his time. And it leaves today’s reader at a loss. This is NOT a defect of Lenin. “Imperialism” is the most general, and it is still concrete, not just ‘theory’. Even that massive work of Philosophy that will choke your mind, “Materialism and Empirocriticism”, is still concrete in that its all about philosophical currents in Russia, at the time.
I wish we could get concrete like that. I mean, how much do we really understand about the classes and nationalities in US society, for example. We can’t even get a grip on what ‘The Working Class’ is, let alone the ‘middle class(es?)’.
I would disagree with that it’s up to someone who quotes Lenin to prove he still applies. Its just something to think about. With all the new theories floating about, sometimes its useful to be reminded that they’re not so new. Damn, I love “The Critique of the Gotha Program”.
If your going to disagree with Lenin, or Marx, or Mao you oughtta say why. Was it something that didn’t pan out, a flaw in their methodology, an oversight, etc. None of the Greats are above criticism, but their works are a starting point.
4). We need to take old Joe down off that picture of the 5. When he was good, he was pretty good, but when he was bad, he was really awful. Y’all know what I mean.
David_D said
I think in light of comment 3, this post should be amended to make clear there is no reference to FRSO (ML). I think that is very important.
Kamran Heiss said
I posted a mild criticism at the ML blog from the opposite direction. Precisely because most of the Marxist works are polemical in nature and directed towards specific historical events, I find that textbooks that universalize the laws of ML are more useful at least for the beginner. While textbook may sound more academic than classic, in fact I think that they provide a more realistic education for workers than having them learn the intricacies of 19th century French radicalism in order to understand a reference. And so I found the introductory works by Stalin and later Progress Publishers from the USSR to be incredibly useful. So while universal laws may be abstract, what are the classic works concrete about? They are concrete about unique historical situations from the 19th and 20th centuries.
While Mao was very focused on experience and concrete practice, he also pushed peasants and workers to learn the most abstract element of Marxism- dialectics- and apply it to their laws. So ironically it is the most abstract parts of Marxism that are most easy to implement in direct action.
As for being in dialogue with post-Marxist trends I agree that there is much useful material coming out of certain branches of the Academy, influenced by the likes of Gramsci and the Frankfurt school. And we should be open to certain elements of bourgeois social science and philosophy.
On the other hand, the idea that newer ideas are inherently better, is to apply a mechanistic view. While it is almost always true in the natural sciences, I think the social sciences and humanities have taken a decisive reactionary turn since the 80s or so. Thus bourgeois thinkers of the 19th-20th century are often more clear-headed than the ones of today. And even the natural sciences are not immune, witness the rise of sociobiology & evolutionary psychology. Even many leftist academics in the wake of our late defeats have retreated into an obscurantism & quietism. The main “leftist” philosophy these days would probably be some brand of post-modern de-deconstructionism. Highly erosive to the Marxist project.
Maybe there is something to be said for the vulgar Stalinist practice of debunking bourgeois ideologies with class analysis.
Mike E said
The ML wrote:
Clarification noted. I will make a correction in the text, so that it doesn’t attribute it to FRSO(ML).
Also: please don’t feel this is a focus on your own personal compilation. I have seen and followed a dozen similar study guides — the structure and content of what you put together is not yours alone, but follows a pattern and a methodology that is very familiar, which is why this discussion is happening.
Mukwa said
I think the test of theory – including theory that bills it self as “creative” – is practice. It would be a good thing if the Kasama took it’s ideas, established some level of organization and put said ideas to work. it would go a long way towards establishing who is right and who is wrong.
chegitz guevara said
I would have to disagree with Comrade Kamran Heiss as to the utility of introductory works. Such works are not objective or neutral, but carry with them a particular set of assumptions. It is one of my criticisms of the ISO, for example, that they will have you read books interpreting Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, for you, rather than having you read, Marx, Lenin or Trotsky (though that was 20 years ago and I understand there has been some introduction of the originals). When you finally do get around to reading the originals, you’ve already been primed to interpret them a particular way.
It took me a long time to unlearn the ideas I acquired in Spark and later. It was as if Marxism stopped developing with the assassination of Trotsky, and even folks like Novak and Cannon only were figuring out better ways to say what the Old Man had taught. Now I try not to give my thoughts on the texts we read, at least not at first.
I will say, however, that we tend to concentrate on the classics simply because everyone has access to them, whereas modern stuff isn’t available to everyone (for example, we tried to do Poor People’s Movements, but no one could get the book). What thrills me about the study group with the anarchists is the exposure to material I never even heard of, some of it rather good.
Ka Frank said
I agree with Mike that that there are many, often contradictory, views of what Marxism,
Leninism and Maoism are (as well as things such as imperialist crisis, insurrection/civil war),
and that we have a great deal of necessary work to dig into those differences.
MLM should be looked at as a foundation and a guide, to be studied critically, to be applied where relevant to current conditions, and to be developed to a higher level based on its creative application to the present and efforts to correct wrong views in the past that were part of the “accepted” canon of MLM.
MLM is both an invaluable method of analysis as well as many substantive ideological and political principles and worked out political lines, which must be studied critically and culled prior to application to practice.
Based on this, I disagree with Mike that we need to discard MLM as a term and a way of looking at theory. I think we need to study and uphold MLM critically, apply it and develop it to a higher level.
chegitz guevara said
I suppose the giving thoughts would make more sense if I had mentioned I lead two study groups: one communist, one primarily anarchists, but with some commies tossed in.
andy said
Well, maybe I shouldn’t have posted that, it was a quick response in the middle of the night. Its the the punch line to a very old joke about whether to use “Trotskyist” or “Trotskyite”. Please take it down.
[moderator note: we have taken that other comment down.]
The point is, if they are giving you a filtered version of what their top theorist says, its not really the intact original theory, its a theory a generation removed, and its not the same theory. With the proliferation of wildly varied Trotskyist (there, I said it) groups its impossible to tell what “real Trotskyism” is.
Kamran Heiss said
The Short Course was singled out as being the worst form of dogmatism in the list of classics. I guess to use the analogy of Catholicism, dogmatism means treating the Classics as the Bible and textbooks as scholasticism. But it seems to me that Marxist textbooks are the best means of developing a living Marxism. It sounds paradoxical since textbooks bring back memories of dry boring high school learning. But if we are serious about treating Marxism as a science, that is how science is taught. Nobody today learns biology from the Origin of Species. At the same time most introductory science textbooks are not going to be “fluid” or engaging with ground-breaking heresies. They are generally somewhat closed and systematic. So while I agree some-what with the criticism of route learning from the classics, I’m aware that many well regard my medicine as more Stalinist-dogmatic than the illness.
Mike E said
Well put, Kamran — this helps tease out some important matters.
Let’s use the analogy of science: there are different approachs to the science:
1) There is the need for living research (experimentation, new theorization, creative and critical testing of old theorization).
2) There is a need for application — i.e. engineering, deployment, production. Where the science is put to the practical use of humanity (or corporations or the military). There is the practice where science is the guide to action.
3) there is a need for popularization — where new people are introduced to both science itself, and to the discoveries of science. Let me note there are two parts to this: i.e. people need a wide acquaintance with what science tells us of the world (how evolution happens, how living beings reproduce, how matter is structured at the microscopic level, how elements combine into molecules, etc.) But people also need a real acquaintance with the critical method of science — the development and testing of hypothesis through social practice and data, the collective vetting of ideas, the restless and systematic replacement of initial partial insights with more refined and accurate truths.)
That gives me a chance to dig into your specific point:
There is a very popular current of thinking (and understandable one) that says: the problem of the revolutionary movement is that we are small and relatively isolated. Our story has not been well told. Our movement is relatively unknown. Even discontented people don’t see non-electoral radical political as a viable option — many don’t even know it exists (and don’t know that communism is the name of a movement of liberation).
So, on one level, obviously, we face a huge work of popularization — to get radical politics a “second look” and a fresh look, wiithin a new generation that has been cut off from access to socialism, communism, etc.
this has to be a highly innovative and creative work of popularization. Energetic, unapologetic, collective, operating on many levels and in many media.
And the point of the popularization is to move to the engineering — i.e. to know the world to change the world. I.e. revolutionaries are the makers of revolution, and revolution is the work of the people themselves.
But all that is not the beginning and end of the discussion… because the question is “what are we to popularize?” And there is a tendency to “grab the pitchfork” of inherited Marxisms and rush into battle — as was done by the New Communist Movement in the early 1970s.
Several of us have argued that this is not a good approach now — and that we need to pause, for a second, as the last wave of socialist revolutions subsided, and think through a recast, reconceived project to regroup around.
My beef with the “short course” is not that it is popularization. It is that it is pseudo-scientific and pseudo-historical — it is a mythology not a history (even though it is crammed with actual facts, real events, interesting insights, good quotes etc. etc. about a world historic event).
The problem is not that it is a textbook, but that it is a textbook with bad science (i.e. in this case bad history, bad politics, bad teleological and mechanical philosophy).
It popularizes Marxist concepts and verdicts frozen in a lucite cube of quasi religious thinking. It instructs some ideas in a framework of unscientific methodology (teleological, half-honest at best, self-delusional, magical, etc.) And so it is not popularizing a scientific and critical method. And that too needs popularizaiton if people are going to actually change the world (not simply “become followers” of those promising to change the world.)
more to come….
Bob H said
Mike writes (as usual) a lucid, well-thought out critique of dogmatism and book worship that I largely agree with. Yet I can’t help think that there is a touch of hypocrisy in his application.
I’m thinking, for instance, of this recent thread on violence. Again, it’s something I largely agree with, but about 2/3 of the way in Mike dismisses people’s war in imperialist countries. He does this mainly by appealing to C. Mao’s authority. He quotes something Mao wrote in China in 1938 in the context of the Comintern’s politics to universally condemn certain forms of struggle in imperialist countries.
Now, I’m not saying it’s wrong to quote Mao, and I’m quite sure that Mike could write at length on that particular subject and expand on it non-dogmatically. What I’m saying is about method. Mike is generally advocating non-dogmatic approaches, but on this particular question he’s using an appeal to authority (and implicitly accepting the verdicts of his own political trend at the time).
Looking at this particular question non-dogmatically, I suppose one could say that if we look at the New Left of the imperialist countries in the ’60s overall, almost everywhere we see a contradiction between the party building trend and the direct action trend. In hindsight both trends largely failed to accomplish their goals, only one failed more rapidly. I think there could be a fruitful discussion looking at those debates and trends again and finding useful and correct ideas on *both* sides. I don’t think the appeal to authority Mike used to draw his conclusion is correct, or consistent with his own stated approach to politics.
I’ve noticed this, btw, in the posting of a lot of veterans of the ’60s who break with sectarian politics. There’s a touch of “you can take the boy out of the RCP/SWP/etc. but can’t take the RCP/SWP/etc. out of the boy”. Not trying to get personal, just pointing out what looks like a contradiction to me. And a self-critical note for not pointing this out in the thread at the time.
Nat W. said
I’m at a library computer and my time is almost up. Havn’t had a chance to read everything but am glad you spoke to some of my questions. I will try to respond soon once I can read all in detail.
Isaac said
I’m not sure if this analogy has already been made – I don’t have time right now to closely read everything on this page.
But, I think use of a baking metaphor is a good one in approaching theory. Baking is an applied use of a certain type of science, chemistry. Chemistry experiments can deliver reproducible results in a closed laboratory; most people’s experience with the chemistry of cooking is very different because the subjective and objective conditions aren’t exact, or under our control. We don’t have a measuring cup and so we guess how much flour we’re using, don’t realize that an ingredient is missing until we already start, we forget about whatever is in the oven and leave it in too long, the oven doesn’t really keep a consistent temperature, and so on.
There are cookbooks that people use to learn the basics – how to bake bread. Most cooks diverge from the cookbook and experiment a fair amount. Maybe some interesting ingredient was on sale, so we substitute it in the listed recipe. Technically, it’s possible to cook using precise understanding of the “hard” scientific chemical processes involved (the magazine Cooks Illustrated does this). But most people improvise. Cooking like revolution is equally an art and a science.
To continue the metaphor and incorporate the thinking associated with Mariategui (well, by me – maybe this is also a component of what is meant by Mao’s “socialism in one country”), many bakers incorporate passed-down recipes and folk knowledge. Some may have never even seen a cookbook, and the well schooled culinary masters can’t reproduce what they are able to do. Along with the theoretical traditions there are rich, indigenous practices in revolution that we can find on every corner of the earth.
By the way, yes, this is also a conscious attempt to re-center the idea of science and theory away from “great men” (even if they’re our “great men”) and into a world which most everybody is familiar with but is particularly associated with gendered, domestic work… An additional problem with the theoretical traditions of trotskyism or stalinism or maoism is this emphasis on a certain kind of intellectual production. (I’m not making, or not trying to make, an anti-intellectual argument – but saying that if we indeed need to start our cake from scratch we should be aware of the gender problems.)
Otto said
Ka Frank said
“MLM should be looked at as a foundation and a guide, to be studied critically, to be applied where relevant to current conditions, and to be developed to a higher level based on its creative application to the present and efforts to correct wrong views in the past that were part of the “accepted” canon of MLM.”
I would agree with this except if you look at the volume of both Marx and Mao as far as really knowing these ideologies, it takes a lot of reading. It does seem there is a difference between some one who just read the Communist Manifesto and decided to further study Marxism and someone who has read a number of Marxist-Leninist materials to the point of understanding the basics of Marxism. I surly didn’t read all of Mao’s writing in one night or even one week. Das Capital alone is a major undertaking to read it all and digest it as well.
I agree we can’t really be against an ideology, such as Trotskyism, if we never read any of it. There is probably enough Marxist writers who have contributed something significant to Marxist ideology that would could right a huge article, maybe even a book, to cover all of them, For example, Herbert Marcuse did a good job of analyzing how the industrialized bourgeoisie has learned to control and prevent dissent in the industrialized countries.
Maybe we just need to consider at what level a person is at in order to build a useful study guide.
Cecilia B. said
I think dialogues need to start somewhere, and some works are easier to digest as an introduction to communist theory (as varied and evolving as it is). I probably read the Communist Manifesto first. If I recall correctly, it was part of an organizational communication college course in which I truly became aware that the exploitation of the working class was an inherent part of capitalism. Without that basic understanding, further study of communism wouldn’t make much sense. Works such as the Manifesto provided the background ideas that allowed me to develop deeper thoughts on labour, social interaction, etc., and subsequently start discussing such ideas with others. It doesn’t mean that I have to accept everything Marx or other “classic” writers/theorists said as solid fact and the only way to go about things, but I think it’s a means of determining why we even care to learn about, discuss and develop communist theory in the first place.
Mike E said
Otto writes:
And Cecilia writes:
Yes, I agree, I suppose. If the issue is popularization of communist ideas to new people… I think we can make some useful introductory suggestions, and those would necessarily involve introductory works.
But I am preoccupied with a very different question. To me, communist theory is not principally a tool for outreach and the development of new activists into communists.
Those of us seeking to found and lead a new revolutionary movement need to study communist theory (i.e. Marxism). And the question we face is how to do THAT. To me this is very different from the question of popularization or “introductory study groups.”
And frankly that is always a more important and difficult question than “how do we do introductory classes?”
Put another way:
We are not mainly trying to recruit new people into an existing movement. We don’t HAVE an existing movement.
We are mainly trying to envision a still-nonexistent movement — so that we can ground it, build it. We are at the beginning, not the middle.
That is a different moment and a different task. And our approach to theory is marked by that (or it should be).
For example:
If we want to develop (or identify) a strategy for making revolution in the U.S. — what should we start with? What theory should we apply to DEVELOP such a strategy? How do we sum up previous strategies and how does one even make a strategy for revolution?
I have many initial thoughts on these questions — and think we all collectively need to engage these questions (theoretically and practically). This is not a matter of “what do we tell new people?” — it is a matter of “what do we tell ourselves?” (i.e. those communists wanting to create a new revolutionary movement).
Or similarly, if our revolutionary movement is going to eradicate the racist oppression of black people — how do we develop a movement and a strategy that will do that? And what theory should we apply (and develop) to get there?
Or if we are going to have a new revolutionary movement that doesn’t stumble into old and familiar patterns of male supremacy, what theory should we embrace and apply? Where is it? And if we don’t have it yet, how do we develop it?
Again, in this discussion, some folks are focused on the popularization of basic communist ideas. Ok… that is important. And we should discuss that.
But the main job of Marxism and communist theory is not popularization of basic ideas. It is a “guide to action” — at the strategic and world historic level.
How do we organize our ranks? How do we forge methods of leadership? How do we develop a movement in the U.S. that finally develops roots among the oppressed (and brings them into conscious activity)?
Where is our theory for THAT? What do we absorb from inherited Marxism? What do we sift from other sources and assimilate into our communist approach? What do we have to develop anew? How do we know? How do we start?
Those are the questions I’m trying to dig into.
David_D said
My former associates and I studied three books intently, and not much else:
Lenin: State and Revolution
Stalin: Foundations of Leninism
Mao: Quotations of Chairman Mao
I find it interesting, because we had no formal connection to anyone and nothing was going on with grouplets locally. We just perused and these kind of struck us, all teenagers. This discussion is making me think about the implications of that… We were rather consciously looking for “pat” and “concise” or “digestible” communist theory. I tend to think that we chose wisely from that standpoint… However, it’s the standpoint that is in question.
Otto said
Mike:
It almost sounds as if you are actually developing a writing list or strategy rather than a study of reading. We can’t photocopy, in actions, what has been done in the past. There are many useful ideas from a lot of past Marxist writers, but to move beyond a study of looking back at history, it sounds like you’re talking about constructing a new theory that can be applied specifically to the US.
John Steele said
I’d like to try to bring this discussion back to the main points in Mike’s post, as I understand them — or maybe I should say I’m going to emphasize and heighten a couple of points that imo are most striking and valuable.
Mike says, and I agree completely:
Let me put this another way. There is no such thing as “pure Marxism,” including in the writings of Karl Marx, which contain (like the work of any great thinker) contradictions, ambiguities and all sorts of complexities and tendencies, as well as developments in new directions and gaps due to the fact that Marx left something aside in order to pursue something else.
By the same token, there’s no one homogeneous theory (or practice) that is Marxism. There are many Marxisms (many Leninisms too, etc.).
This doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as Marxism, just that the term encompasses a family, not a pure singularity. Likewise with Marxists — there are many varieties of Marxists (which seems a rather obvious fact).
But the real point in all this is political. Why worry about what Marxism is? Because we believe that it is a valuable (indispensable, really, I believe) intellectual tool in grasping and understanding the world in such a way as to be able to change it in a truly emancipatory way. Now, and here’s the nub — what we need are the tools that will enable us to do this in the circumstances that engulf as in the present world, and it’s a very safe bet that the tools of our grandfathers will not be adequate.
Honestly, the idea that to confront the crisis of our age we must regain an original purity whose loss is the source of our defeats — this is such an ancient and essentially religious stance that it’s strange to see it coupled with an invocation of ‘science’.
And btw, if readers of this thread are interested in theoretical explorations with a revolutionary intent, that is what we are attempting to do at Kasama’s sister site khukuri. Stop by, read, learn, ask questions, comment.
EnCee said
One author which kept popping in my head when reading this was Paolo Freire. I attended an interesting workshop about critical pedagogy at the ISO’s socialism conference. Afterward I had a conversation that was very much informed by much of the discussion on this site. The main thing for me, and it may be the thing I am looking for in any group now, is there ability to critically apply and actually push the limits of current theory. I think this lack of genuine “theoretical exploration” is severely lacking in too much of the left and we suffer for it.
David_D said
Stalin Stalin Stalin… It always seems to come right back to Stalin. That’s fine. If Marx himself is to be upheld, then I always say the same of Stalin. Both erred to be sure, but were glorious trailblazers, pioneers of humanity. This, to me, has nothing to do with whether or not we display three heads, five heads and what have you, but rather fundamentally demarcating between “Yenan and Sian,” as Mike Ely has said. Someone said that Stalin’s errors could not eclipse his contributions any more than sun spots could extinguish the sun – I suppose I agree with the spirit of this.
It does concern me that I don’t hear much said about the positive aspects of Stalin’s contributions.
I also strongly disagree with the notion that promotion of Maoism means a “demotion” of Stalin. The Communist Party of Peru would not have agreed with this, and they were first in RIM to promote Maoism. The Nepalese comrades certainly still uphold the “five heads,” if that says anything. Mao was standing on the shoulders of Lenin and Stalin and had the ability to learn from the historical experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is how the theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat was formulated.
Mike E said
It is about bushiness, not about Stalin
“My problem is not with the idea of “who is in the lineup.” My complaint is the very idea of this lineup of busts.
“Marxism is not a layer cake or a relay race — where the leaders of various parties hand off theoretical batons to each other in a linear ascent. It is not how Marxism will develop — and it is not (in fact) how it did develop…
“Why should we not consciously develop our revolutionary understandings today knowing that it will emerge as a contentious communist bush woven into a larger revolutionary and social ecosystem of ideas and struggles?
“Communism’s emergence and development is more of a cross fertilizing bush of pathways (and always has been) — than a relay race of great theorists and parties. Marxism emerged as a bush, not a pantheon. And we need to recognize the cross fertilization of ideas (including from non-marxists to marxists) if we are to develop it now. “
* * * * * *
David D writes:
I would like to get to the point (quickly?) where this is NOT a major issue. Our main problems are not about Stalin, but about doing the new creative work that is needed. And our solutions will not emerge mainly from “settling accounts” with previous Marxism.
And (frankly) most people (and most revolutionaries) in the world are not that hung up on Stalin. It is a very very old question — and many of the verdicts are in (and they are still contending of course).
The rest of the world has moved on long ago, and there are some small pockets (among some communists) who think that there was a golden age of clarity and revolution — and it is to be found (as John discussed above) in the Comintern and its codified Marxism. That search for a tidy cure-all doctrine is naive at best. And it is certainly an idea that leads away from what we need to do. The theoretical knife has to cut deeper than that. And we have to be far far more innovative than that to have the slightest chance of success.
Really, what we need to do is get to the work of looking at how to make revolution in our world today (and in our particular social formations with their very particular histories and politics).
As for the upholding:
I make a distinction between the theoretical legacy and the political evaluation.
I think we need to uphold the Soviet revolutionary experience within which both Lenin and Stalin play such a major role. I think we need to understand that experience, its strengths, its weaknesses, it blindingly bold experimental attempts, its unfolding of certain major problems. This is one of histories great attempts at socialist transition to communism — and its rich lessons need to be accessed by anyone serious about revolution. And those lessons are not accessed if the experiences are approached, as they so often are, in blanket dismissals of standard anti-communist kinds, or if the experiences are approached in a defensive and myth-making way… We need materialism. And we also need evaluation of the many mass movements in the Soviet Union. Of the many different lines and figures who emerged in the Soviet Union (especially Bukharin and Krushchev, but also others, like Trotsky and later Brezhnev, and even non-communist forces like the Russian Narodnaya populists, the anarchists and the radicals of the Socialist Revolutionary Party).
The movement that the Bolsheviks led to victory was prepared and organized by radicals of many different political colorations — and that understanding is important for us today. It is what TNL calls an ecosystem of revolutionary politics — where many different and even competing radical groups develop in different niches and contribute in interwoven ways to the overthrow of the Tsar, the peasant seizure of estates and the demand for socialism. That is very different from the version of events described in the official History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik).
And within that arc, I think we should uphold much about Stalin — especially the early Stalin. (Mao also made the distinction between the early and late Stalin for reasons that should be obvious.) And there is much to uphold about the first attempt at a planned economy, and at a socialized agriculture, and the first socialist industrialization, and (of course) the breathtaking accomplishment of defeating Nazi Germany. But I do want to say that this is not a binary thing: where the issue is whether to uphold or not. And i don’t even think it is a simple arithmetic sum (like the famous 70-30 evaluation of Stalin by Mao). I think we need to understand the problems that the communists faced in the Soviet Union, and understand what road they chose and where it led them, and explore what other roads may have been possible, etc.
But really: we have only a very small number of major experiences with real revolutions in the twentieth century. Two of them — China and Russia — were very radical, and were in countries large enough to go quite far in attempting to build new economies and societies. Others (like Cuba, Vietnam and South Africa) had their own trajectories and stopping points (for better or worse) — and faced problems that are very common in the world today, so that looking at their experiences and choices (positive and negative) are important too.
And to get close on the issues David raises: There is a difference between our questions of theory and the questions of political experience. There is a difference between Stalin (the political leader) and the matters of theory (his impact and legacy on communist thinking and assumptions). And I feel like David (and Patrick earlier) muddles that a bit. It is possible (and necessary) to evaluate Stalin’s attempt to conceptualize and codify Leninism (starting with his important work on self-determination of nationalities and then Foundations of Leninism, and his important critique of Trotskyism in “On the Opposition“), without having at every point to frame that with a discussion of the events of the late thirties (the stifling of political life in the Soviet Union, the arrest and elimination of oppositional communists, the sweeping purges of military and party, the deportation of whole peoples etc.)
And similarly I don’t feel the need to accompany every criticism of Comintern ideology with some “equal time” list of the Comintern’s (and Stalin’s) contribution. We are not children. We can have a nuanced discussion. We can criticize without one-sidedly dismissing. We can sort through theory and politics (as different-but-related spheres). We all know that political evaluation is not some simple matter of character.
(In American politics, everything is dumbed down by making the discussion the personal “character” of their various pig-politicians. And I feel like some people have a similar naive simplicity in their discussion of Stalin — i.e. “that beast” killed people, so how can we discuss how his theory on nationalities influenced the struggles and liberation of hundreds of millions of people? Uh, lets have some complexity of thought and analysis, folks.)
David writes:
Fine. But I would respond that that view is objectively tied to a “demotion” of many of Mao’s most important contributions. I.e. on philosophy, military affairs, socialist planning and (of course) the continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. If you don’t understand them as negating verdicts deep in Stalin’s view then you don’t understand them that well.
David writes:
Sure, that is true. But there is an element of the new (the quite radically NEW) in Mao — that is not an affirmation or extension of previous orthodoxy. there is both affirmation and negation — and that is a good thing. The rise of Einstein meant a demotion of Newton — and how could it not.
Put another way: Some people choose read the Soviet revolution through Stalin’s eyes, and the Chinese revolution through Mao’s eyes. (Just look at how the RCP, for example, chose to discuss the struggle with trotskyism, on the rare occasions when they discuss it.) That is eclectic at best — and it does not apply a coherent theory to our whole history. And some people see Mao through Stalin’s eyes (i.e. think Mao is 70-30 at best when it comes to affirming Comintern orthodoxy — or, in the case of Hoxha are even more negative).
If Mao is right about where capitalist restoration comes from (i.e. from capitalist roaders forming an aspiring class within the socialist state — arising from capitalist aspects of the socialist mode of production itself), then Stalin’s analysis of politics in the Soviet Union was rather wrong (including his theory of networks of fascist agents and class enemies worming their way into the otherwise monolithic vanguard party of the class, his theory of the disappearance of antagonistic class contradiction by the late 1930s and so on).
To put it crudely, the verdict on Stalin is a highly critical one. Obviously there is sharp contradiction between the anti-communist verdict on Stalin and the communist verdict…. but our verdict has to include his role in one of the worlds great revolutions and quite sharp distance from major facets of his thought and work. In this, he is a very complex and transitional historical figure — similar to Napoleon who shaped both the continuation and the conservatization of the French Revolution.
Does our theory not allow for sharp coiled raging contradiction? And contradictory figures? Must we all be pigs or heroes? Must historical figures either be “upheld” or condemned as counterrevolutionaries? What if reality is muddy, complex, highly contradictory, a mix of heroism and horror?
The History of Shaving: A Wrong Depiction of Development
David writes:
Gonzalo had a very close relationship with Comintern communism, and also with the Lin Biao forms of Maoist politics. He was raised up in that generation that had Stalin’s “Problems of Leninism” as their basic text of communism. (Just as a previous generation had taken Engels late popularizations (like Dialectics of Nature) as their basic text of Marxism.
And yet, the Peruvian concept of “Maoism as commander” and “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, especially Maoism” is (if you think about it) a particular form of asserting a set of theoretical negations of previous marxism. (That is the whole point of “especially Maoism” — which the RCP and Avakian opposed by promoting the idea of New Synthesis).
David add “if that says anything” precisely because he senses that it doesn’t say anything.
The Nepali Maoists are the most critical of Stalin of the worlds Maoists. (When the Indian Maoist party writes of the “great Stalin,” Avakian remarks that you can detect deep problems right there, and clearly the Nepali Maoists are even more critical of Stalin than Avakian.
And you don’t have to look far in their writings to see that they think our answers are not mainly to be found in poking around in orthodoxy, or arguing over which old verdict or old figure or old theory to uphold. They are very forward looking and very engaged in the world around them — even while they have adopted much of the traditional clipart and language of inherited communism.
Here is my point in bringing up the “history of shaving” images:
My problem is not with the idea of “who is in the line up” (which is what David is focusing on). My complaint is the very idea of this lineup of busts.
Marxism is not a layer cake or a relay race — where the leaders of various parties hand off theoretical batons to each other in a linear ascent. It is not how Marxism will develop — and it is not (in fact) how it did develop.
The history of shaving is as mistaken as that classic picture of “evolution” showing the linear “march” from fish to reptile to mammal to man. No. things don’t emerge in such linear ways (even if some, like Avakian, describe them a little-more-dialectically as a series of sequential “leaps” — that too represents an ill-disguised linearity).
That is why I wrote a piece on the RCP’s debt to Althusser, and the reason that is whited out. Because the real world was and is bushy.
It is no accident that after asserting the label Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the Peruvians moved to establish Gonzalo as the “fourth sword,” And Avakian tried to craft his diffuse ideas into a “New Synthesis.” And so on.
The assertion of MLM was the preparation for new cloistered “isms” with mistaken claims of universality (no matter what they chose to call them). It led to the narrowing of the discussion internationally, its ghettoization into jealously competing “isms” — at a time when the whole thing needs to be opened up a great deal, with some open-minded cross fertilization.
The assertion of MLM as a labor (like the even more mechanical insistence on “continuity of program” in some Trotskyism) is a declaration that privileges continuity over discontinuity, tradition over innovation, and that leads to assumptions of 19th century “one to many” rather than “many to many.”
My issue is not wanting to pick “3 heads” over “5 heads” (though I think it would be very wrong not to elevate Mao over Stalin).
My point is that Marxism is not linear — not a layer cake. It is a bush of many pathways (even when they seem to call themselves the same thing — Marxist, or Maoist, or whatever.)
And it is much more useful to revisit Bill Martin’s term: the vital mix – because there are conjunctural incubators of revolutionary ideas that don’t respect mechanical demarcations.
We 60s Maoists learned from Black nationalists, and feminists, and Althusser, and Marcuse, and Abby Hoffman, and Stephen Gould’s later post-modern questions about linear directionality – whether we publicly acknowledged it or not. And why should we not have acknowledged those debts — the way Marx and Engels eagerly celebrated the thinkers around them?
Why should we not consciously develop our revolutionary understandings today knowing that it will emerge as a contentious communist bush woven into a larger revolutionary and social ecosystem of ideas and struggles?
Communism’s emergence and development is more of a cross fertilizing bush of pathways (and always has been) — than a relay race of great theorists and parties. Marxism emerged as a bush, not a pantheon. And we need to recognize the cross fertilization of ideas (including from non-marxists to marxists) if we are to develop it now.
And there have been great theorists (and some of them were also great leaders of revolution). But it was not confined, simple, linear ascent — and there has been a great deal more negation and contradiction than some people have chosen to believe.
b_y said
i think a critical orientation to context and the historical sources from which theories and strategies developed is incredibly valuable. this involves reflecting on strengths, missed opportunities and grave errors from previous revolutionary traditions, and our own experiences. but returning to my question about whether we are in a ‘world-historical moment where the “universal contributions of comrade joseph stalin” or trotskyism require intensive/consuming inquiry and debate?’ – i think it would be particularly useful, especially for younger people moving toward revolutionary organizations, to speak about the experience of ‘actual existing trotskyism/stalinism/maoism/anarchism’ in the 21st century, and what their strengths and errors look like as they unfold in the present rather than returning to the 30′s or 60′s/70′s. i think a lot can be gained from critically studying the work that’s being done by organizations in the present, avoiding sectarian tone whenever possible (i realize this is difficult for many), and investigating the capacities that are being developed and unleashed or stultified by the culture and theoretical investments of those organizations.
for those that haven’t seen it yet, i just picked up the new collection of the team colors book ‘uses of a whirlwind’, which is a collection of interviews examining the work of contemporary radical community organizations, and i highly recommend it.
http://warmachines.info/index.php?page_id=26
there was brief discussion at the book release party about the omission of explicitly revolutionary political organizations from the collection. while i won’t fault the organizers/editors of this project for that, i think revolutionary organizations themselves should adopt similar forms of militant research about their own work and other tendencies if they want to move away from anachronism or problematic investments in theoretical purity.
Nat W. said
Mike says:
While I generally agree with the approach taking in Mike’s entire analysis, I think this explanation reveals a point I am trying to make about Marxism.
Notice that while there were profound changes in parts of his theory the notion that natural selection happens is not questioned, only the level or levels at which the process takes place. Thus there is a coherence to the way the questions are asked and through which the science develops that runs through Darwin’s original propositions.
When I talk abot the materialist conception of history I am speaking specifically of Engles’s Anti-Duhring, where the Engels first synthesizes Marx’s ideas into a coherent “science”. Now I learned this myself from reading Etienne Balibar’s Philosophy of Marx, a book which calls Engles’s work and its subsequent adoption by the international communist movement a big problem. I disagree with this assessment and I will expalin why.
It was through Anti-Durhing that the idea of historical materialism as a distinct theory first developed.Both Lenin and Mao, as Mike correctly say, made profound and even fundamental changes to Marxist theory; however I would argue that the changes they made were very much based on this synthesis developed by Engels. Particularly Mao’s theoritical ideas around contradiction and dialectics have there roots in Anti-Durhing even while they break with key parts of things that Engels upholds (such as the actuality of the negation of the negation). Thus you have a situation where the two most successful revolutionaries of the twentieth century developed and transformed a certain current of Marxism (the current that was actually able to make revolution) trough its engagement with the synthesis developed by Engels in this work.
Now certainly Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao all grappled and used the incites of other Marxists and non-Marxists in developing their own ideas. On this point I would not quarrel with Mike. But certainlt the theoretical foundation, the catapult from which Lenin and Mao were able to take off was grounded in the synthesizing work done by Engels.
Now J. Steele say that there is not any one homogeneous theory or practice that is Marxism. This is almost verbatim the argument of Balibar. In and of itself this statement is true. Many contributions have been made to marxism by people like Gramsci and Lukacs, Balibar and Althusser, even Ely and Steele and many other contemporary Marxist thinkers. And much has been learned by Marxist thinkers by those who are not Marxists. Perhaps it is tru that one or some or many of these theorists will make a profound analysis of how capital is developing in the current conjuncture or how to organize a revolutionary movement in acountry such as this one. Certainly this work needs to be done and cannot be done by a return to the classics. So Iagree with Mike and John on those points.
However, I would also argue that perhaps The ideas of Lenin and Mao do in fact deserve a special place in figuring out how and we study, based on the fact that these were in fact the most successful thinkers in bringing us to where we want to go. And also it should be recognized that their thinking is rooted in a certain strain of Marxist thought, and is unique in that way. Now that does not mean that the we should ignore these other thinkers, and perhaps we can and will learn much from them. I think though we might go back to think about why some strains of Marxism were more successful than and others. (Even why Mao was able to accomplish wht he did through mostly going against the theory and politics of the third Comintern, for example).
Fern said
As someone who has made direct use of ‘Orthodox’ ML guides like the one found on The Marxist-Leninist in doing practical work (like organizing a 400 person occupation of our school’s board of trustees meeting after Kofi Adu-Brempong was shot by UF campus police in March and occupying the State Attorney’s office later the next month and helping Kofi get justice), I am taken aback by the attack on studies that made me the Communist I am today.
I don’t know of many successful revolutionaries who rejected Stalin’s contributions, but I suppose we have different views of what successful revolutions looked like – one view studies history for what success looks like and the other view rejects historical experiences like that of the USSR because they don’t fit an ideal of Socialism.
Of course Marx and Lenin made errors but to reject applying their core and ‘classic’ principles is to insult the working class and its ideology, for Marx and Lenin are meaningless as individuals and only attain importance because they represent the best theory and organizational work of the international proletariat. Individuals don’t make history, the masses of people do.
To attack Stalin is to insult the Soviet People, for it implies that the Russian people could overthrow the tyrant Tzar and his allies, but were too weak to escape the yoke of a cartoonishly slandered short Georgian named Stalin.
Marx, Lenin, and Stalin represent different lines the proletariat took at different times, and if one thinks those lines lead to failure, then I hope someday to ‘fail’ as the Bolsheviks did in 1917 and for decades beyond.
May9 said
All of this ink spilled because someone wrote a study guide of important theoretical work from people who’ve actually succeeded in implementing socialism?
My goodness, some self-proclaimed ‘Maoists’ (or is that too concrete and specific to say) just love to criticize and tear down. It is the height of irony that those criticizing the study guides for supposed rigidity and dogma are the very same people who expel X, Y, and Z socialist country or theoretician from the ranks of “real” socialists for not abiding by some principle or another.
Not that anywhere in these guides was anything ever said about how one had to uncritically accept everything ever written in order to really understand the material. This whole ‘discussion’ is built on the edifice of a giant strawman.
Also, am I to understand that certain people are being criticized for being too clear and simple in their writing style? Oh that fiendish Stalin! Writing in easy to understand language was all part of his devilish plot to control everyone! Only true Marxists write in the form of meandering jargon-loaded drivel that has no practical value.
Mike E said
I’d like to respond to some line-by-line statements. Forgive me if that feels a bit detailed.
Nat writes:
I don’t want to “pin” you on a passing formulation. But I do think that you state it wrong. Actually all of Darwin and all of science are questioned. And in that questioning, some parts hold up well, and others do not.
But it is not like some parts of science suddenly get a “pass” and are no longer questioned. Often, those communists who feel most deeply that “Marxism is a science” have a view of science that is a bit religious — and don’t really have a sense of the relative in our relative truths — its partial, conditional, preliminary, contested nature.
Darwin’s whole theoretical work has been subjected to unrelenting questioning (both within science and within larger society). And that includes natural selection. And as new theories emerged about how natural selection happens, it required modifications in Darwin’s theory.
Even our most cherished and durable theories, even those theoretical points and posulates that hold up best, should not be immune from fresh and repeated questioning.
* * * * * * * *
Fern said:
Why?
So you used this study guide in a building occupation. Ok. And you personally were trained with this guide. Ok.
And, what is your point?
I too was trained by such study guides (which have been circulated for over fifty and sixty years), it made me the communist I became (at one point). And then (especially confronting how inapplicable much of that method was to making revolutionary progress) I (and a larger we) were forced to unlearn and critique much of the methodology embedded in that way of approaching “classical” marxism. I had to unlearn “the communist it made of me” in order to actually become a communist.
Communist politics is not a matter of credentials. (I.e. “I led this or that struggle, so my opinion on study is worth a lot.”) And on the main point: I don’t doubt that such study plans made you “the communist you are today” — but we are arguing that we need a different kind of communist from the kind produced by this method of study — and we are arguing that this debate (over dogmatism and orthodoxy) can help you become a better communist (i.e. someone able to develop creative, flexible analysis unblindered by dogmatic training and mechanical thinking).
This is not a matter of some utopian (and unrealizable) “ideal of socialism.” No one is establishing an unattainable ideal, and declaring that reality falls short.
And you may have misunderstood my own personal views: But I uphold Stalin’s contributions, and I believe that the Soviet Union was socialist in his lifetime.
The discussion here (on the study list) is not the value of reading these works (since they obviously have value) — but how they should be read. With an assumption that they are right? With an assumption that they don’t contradict each other? With an assumption that truth is found in their pages and not in other places (science, fiction, non-marxist works, other radical thinkers)? With the idea that they are a kind of “classic” that can be taken as gospel (universal, a given, etc.)?
Here is my main point on the “orthodox”:
We are not debating whether these early communist works have value — they have tremendous value, and form a literally irreplacable treasure trove of communist theory. They are (in many ways) what we have left from the first wave of communist revolution — and it is precious.
But it is not valuable, if it is turned into dogma, classics, formulas, gospel, etc. Then the living has turned to dust. The creative has become rote. And we would be training “communists” who can’t analyze reality, and see the world through obscuring spectacles.
Well, first, let me acknowledge that you have agreed these folks made errors. That is important. And not everyone acknowledges that.
Then one immediate question is (of course) what were those errors?
My point is (earlier) that it is not some web of error free clarity, with a few pesky “errors” stuck in (like raisins in raisinbread). On the contrary, the so-called “errors” of earlier marxists are more complex and embedded (often inextricably) with their contributions. Marx assumed that revolution would break out where capitalism was most developed and that the transition through socialism to communism would be relatively rapid.
This was tied to his times, the nature of the world then (which had huge tribal and feudal areas outside commodity production), the nature of the philosophy he inherited (notions of progress common in europe etc.).
It’s not like you just “identify” those “errors” and the rest stands cleansed as core principles.
Furthermore, I actually don’t think scientific analyses boil down to a few “core and classic principles.” What “principles” are you alluding to? Where did Marx EVER describe his life’s work as refining and promoting a few “core and classic principles” — that very notion is very alien to Marx and what he was trying to do.
Our work does not consist of identifying such “core and classic principles” and then “applying” them. In fact, there are no such “core and classic principles” (at least not in the sense you mean).
And when people try to claim there are, and try to put them forward — you generally discover that these are their own core principles, that they are ascribing to Marx. It is a form of religious thinking to reduce Marxism to a few core principles — rather than method, analysis, preliminary verdicts, summation of experience, etc. (Often those invented and non-Marxist principles prove to have something do with a very narrow and identity politics view of class — and an economist view of the capitalist and working class conflict.)
Unlike you, I don’t think the working class is particularly insulted by a creative and materialist approach to Marx and Lenin. And as for the concept of “the working class ideology” — my whole point is that we discover that this an important object of our work… i.e. that our views and methods and ideas are not simply “there for the taking” — but need to be developed from a living and creative analysis of the world and struggle around us.
This is an example of the kind of statement that some people treat as “core and classic principles.” But in fact, on close observation prove to be very confused.
Yes, one theme of communist theory is that history is ultimately made by large numbers of people — acting out of their objective interests, and reacting to complex contradictions in the society around them.
But where is it written that “individuals don’t make history”? In fact, individuals have (always and everywhere) made a huge difference in how history turns out. And that is part of the contradictoriness of it all.
That is because history is not a given, and the outcome does not follow some rutted pattern. And the decisions and actions of individuals have a huge impact.
It does not take a great imagination to realize that if Lenin or Mao had not existed (or had died early), the history of Russia and China and the world would be radically different. (And if you want the “classic” Marxist discussion of that, I suggest you read Plekhanov’s “role of the individual in history” — which has a lot to offer us, even after all these years.)
Take a moment and think of the implications of your method.
Perhaps we should not criticize Minister Farrakhan or Martin Luther King — because it would be an insult to African American people to imply that they can’t find or develop revolutonary leaders for their national liberation struggle?
Is it an insult to the American people to criticize Obama (who almost all progressive people, unfortunately, chose to trust and support)?
Perhaps it is an insult to the Chinese people to say that capitalism has been restored there — and so we should not try an analysis of how the Cultural Revolution was defeated, and how Deng’s capitalist roaders rose to power?
Is history and communist analysis a game of bolstering the self-estime of oppressed people? And we are afraid to make a critican analysis because the verdicts we arrive at somehow “insult” or “offend” someone?
How scientific is it to evaluate our analysis by whether certain people might find it offensive or insulting?
This is an important thought, that is worth thinking about.
Don’t you think there were problems with how things turned out in the Soviet Union?
Should we hope to do as well as they did — or isn’t the point of history, for us to learn to do better?
There is a lot of debate about “when precisely things turned bad” in the Soviet Union — ok, we don’t have to argue here over the chronology, but clearly they did turn bad. And it would be irresponsible for us not to stick our fingers right into that questoin.
* * * * * * *
May 9 writes:
Yes, because the question is not just what we study (which works), but also how we study those works.
If you teach Marxism as a religion of universal classics, you have taught religion not revolutoin. And the people emerging from that study will not be able to think or act as communists.
Orthodoxy is anathema to revolution. It is very conservative (in training and implications).
Well, let’s apply some Maoist dialectics: There is a unity of opposites between construction and destruction. You can’t construct the new without elements of destroying the old. Not that the world is leveled, and you start from scratch. Not that you throw out the baby with the bathwater.
But there is a necessary element of negation in all work of creation. (And there is a necessary element of affirmation as well).
In fact, it strikes me as odd, when revolutionaries squirm uncomfortably and complain about those who “criticize and tear down.” Heh, isn’t that the heart of revolution? And shouldn’t we take a revolutionary and critical approach to our own views — espeically when they have aged and become hidebound?
In fact our inherited communist theory has gaps, problems, dead zones, along side its brilliant parts. And some are very agonizingly in need of work. We say (in Letter 9) that “communist theory needs to clean its Augean stables.”
This is an example of assigning a stupid view to someone, then calling them stupid.
There was (understandably) a deep debate in the 1960s over whether the Soviet Union (and eastern europe) were still socialist. It was not a question of “some principle or another” (as you put it).
It was a question of whether people were oppressed or liberated. Whether the mode of production was socialist or some new form of capitalism.
And of course we did not “expel” them! You have to read history to understand the violence and viciousness with which the orthodox Soviet oriented parties attacked (and expelled!) those who criticized revisionism.
And it was not a matter of principles (in some spacey domain): I went to eastern Europe. I went to Czechoslovakia during the Soviet invasion. I spend a month and more traveling the country, meeting people, listening, watching. I learned how people view dtheir society (and the invaders), and got a good sense that this Czech society had never been socialist. And that what the Soviets were imposing was totally opposed to any hopes the people had for moving in more radical directions.
You can accuse us of stupid things. But how does that help our discussion or clarity?
No. the study guides are very clear — and their verdicts are very clear. And it comes out (clearly) in several sections and in the promotion of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Look at the section on the “national question.” Or the threadbare section on Women (why don’t you find that “insulting”?)
We have been grappling with this whole school of orthodox marxism for over seventy years. I have attended and led tons of such study groups. I have spent years trying to simply “apply” the “classic principles” that we inherited. I too have read stacks of comintern documents seeking answers to current problems.
This orthodox study plan is as familiar and well-worn as it can be. And you (or the author of the plan) may not actually know yourselves the full history, impact, underlying assumptions of the ideology you are supporting. that is quite possible.
but there is no strawman here. this is a very important questoin: how do we deal with inherited and codified forms of Marxism, and what kind of an obstacle are they to the kind of creative reconception that actual revolution requires?
Talk about inventing strawmen.
The issue is not clarity. The issue is reductionism. It is a mechanical rendering of complex matters overly simplistic. And the problem is not just “dumbing down.” (Though, I have to say that there is a reason why people in America today might be found promoting the dumbed down versions of communist theory…. it is very American.) But the problem is not just the dumbing down of complex matters… But the treatment of the world as far more simple and far less unpredictable than it really is.
Philosophically it is a denigration of the role of particularity and accident. It is an overestimation of inevitability and universality. It is the promotion of “class instinct” and the mockery of intellectual work. It is the glorification of the concrete, and the very odd distrust of the abstract.
these are all a legacy of that orthodox communism.
And if people are not trained to really think hard, together, then revolution is impossible.
And this spoonfed orthodoxy of tidy old formulas and oh-so-simple didactic logic, will simply not carry us where we want to go — which is revolution.
Writing in easy to understand language was all part of his devilish plot to control everyone! Only true Marxists write in the form of meandering jargon-loaded drivel that has no practical value.
Pink said
Mike this whole discussion seems like nothing but strawmen to me. “Look at this random blog or that random blog. They obviously represent the official line of such and such tendencies. Hey, look at this list they have. This and that is missing! How terrible!”
Please, give me a break.
Mike E said
we are having a discussion of the continuing Comintern legacy (from the 1930s) among communists today, Pink.
Perhaps you are not familiar with that, or you don’t recognize it when people promote it (around us) as a kind of orthodox Marxism.
I suggest you read the response here of May 9, because you can see that there are, in fact, major issues of theory and line being debated.
May9 said
Mike Ely wrote
1) Nobody is teaching Marxism as “religion”. There is your bogus construction.
The authors of the study guides take the common sense notion that we can learn from people and places where revolution was successful. We can understand what led to these successes. The process of criticism and self criticism helps us understand where there were errors and where things went wrong. But that doesn’t mean we have to reinvent the wheel and discard what we know has worked. The study guides, for those who actually bother to read, have lots of material from those who aren’t the “Big 5″. They have more contemporary summations of struggles, etc. But that’s an inconvenient fact.
2) Do you not see the contradiction in slamming “orthodoxy” while claiming that the Communist Parties were “revisionist”? How can you be anti-”orthodox” and anti-revisionist? That makes no sense. In order to revise something you have to have a previously accepted line, so-called “orthodoxy”. The “Maoists” used to be the people who denounced the Communist Parties for deviating from “orthodoxy”. Most parties today accept the view that the reason why socialism ended in many countries was because so many deviations took place that capitalism took root. Now suddenly “Maoism”, or your version of it, has turned into anything goes liberalism and criticism for its own sake.
Mike Ely said:
Really because throwing the baby out with the bathwater sounds exactly like what you are doing, otherwise I don’t know what on earth this debate is about. Descriptions such as “old, worn and hidebound” very obviously indicate a desire to discard these works and concentrate on the new. All the ML blog did was say that such and such theoreticians, books, and pamphlets are a good starting point, are important to read because they worked. Never did it suggest not reading other ML material. Nor did it suggest uncritical readings. So it must be the very fact that the guides suggested these readings bugs you.
Criticism and negation for its own sake is not productive and doesn’t get us closer to revolution. You’re not constructing anything. I don’t see your new syntheses leading revolutions. Instead I see them heaping all sorts of abuse on places that require solidarity. Believing that criticizing everything is necessarily to be ‘revolutionary’ is why the left is so fragmented and divided. We’re waging cultural revolutions on ourselves when we’re not even close to state power yet.
Ely says
So ML theory requires some severe “cleaning”. So here’s where the disagreement lies.
You think ML theory is mostly wrong and requires serious reworking (all the while claiming you’re anti-revisionist). I believe ML theory is more correct than incorrect, and that the errors do not require some cleaning of stables but rather some adjustments for current conditions.
Whatever errors that occurred do not require us discarding or ignoring the work of those who succeeded for the sake of blindly accepting new work from those who haven’t accomplished much of anything.
Ely said:
Hmm, well if you suddenly changed your mind and believe China is socialist, Vietnam is socialist, Cuba is socialist, DPRK is socialist, Laos is socialist – defend the Soviet Union post 1956 as socialist, etc, then that’s a happy reversal.
But what I’ve seen come out of the Kasama project is nothing but attacks on the “deviations” of socialist countries and support for counterrevolutionary groups who attack socialist countries.
Ely writes
What a strange statement. The revisionists were also Orthodox. Then why do you call them revisionists?
What are they “revising”? Why were the anti-revisionists criticizing the revisionists? Could it be because they, like you, believed in discarding the old ML theory and revising it in such a way that there was a danger of capitalism being restored?
I’ve read the history quite exhaustively.
I make it a special point to read the history, because unlike those who believe that everything old is bad and we need to “refound” the left, I think the history tells us a lot. The anti-revisionists and revisionists both attacked and expelled the other. To say otherwise is to be blind to errors, something you supposedly abhor.
Liu Shaoqi, who you’ve criticized here, was expelled by the anti-revisionists and died in prison. How can you say otherwise? Deng Xiaoping was sent to the countryside and ousted from power during that same time.
Revisionists and Yugoslav sympathizers were purged in both the USSR (pre-1953) and Albania. China prior to 1976 broke off relations with the entire socialist world because of their ‘deviations from Orthodoxy’, and considered them to be WORSE than the capitalist powers. Because of this folly they made alliances with the imperialists against the socialist countries. I need not go on. The record is clear.
Ely writes
This is exactly what I speak of. Czechoslovakia was “never really socialist”. So again, the socialist experience of Czechoslovakia is negated because it did not follow your version of Orthodoxy. Yet you criticize orthodoxy and call for new syntheses. Your argument contradicts itself.
The claim that the Czechs and Slovaks never really experienced socialism is a bogus and slanderous one to boot. 95% of agriculture in Czechoslovakia was collectivized, industry was nationalized in virtually all sectors and planning replaced the anarchy of production in all phases. The problems of 1968 stemmed from reform initiatives that had begun to take place in the early part of the decade as a result of economic problems. These reforms allowed for counterrevolutionary forces to grow in power, and they almost took power.
And we see the danger from your criticize everything approach. By negating the socialist credentials of Czechoslovakia we have “Maoists” who end up cheering for capitalist restoration and counterrevolution in 1968. We have people who hail the rise of theocratic maniac Vaclav Havel and Slovak chauvinist Meciar as good things or at the very least no worse than the previous “not really socialist” regimes.
Ely says:
The Soviets restored the economic model that had been operating prior to the Czech’s attempts at economic restructuring.
The New Economic Model of ’67-68 did not advocate a more “radical” direction, but instead claimed that class antagonisms no longer existed so the Communist Party no longer needed to maintain the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Anti-Soviet press that developed during this time wanted to go even further and restore capitalism. Such a view was normally criticized as counterrevolutionary by “Maoists”, but some Maoists care more about embarrassing the Soviet Union.
Ely says:
Clear about what? You say clear as if it means anything.
There are no predetermined conclusions to be drawn from mentioning these works. Having attended study groups also (ooh a competition!) my experience has been that these works are read critically and with an eye toward what works for current conditions and practical work. There is plenty of “classic” work on womens liberation, if the ML blog didn’t post it that’s not because it doesn’t exist or hasn’t been studied. Why not be constructive and help the blog produce more work in the womens section instead of trying to be petty and score cheap points?
Ely claims:
The tactic of implying someone who disagrees isn’t as well-read as you is old and worn, not the classics.
If the question is does Marxism need to be “refounded” on the basis of (liberalism) new theory, the answer is no. ML theory works and continues to guide revolutions – notably the one in Nepal and struggles in Colombia and the Philippines. Can it be adjusted? Sure, but that doesn’t mean we need to denigrate and reject it. Most of it is very helpful, surely more helpful that the so-called attempts to “refound” the left.
Ely writes:
Nice, a chauvinistic attack on “Americans” for liking dumbed down stuff. That’ll surely win the hearts and minds of the US working class.
Elitist snobbery isn’t going to win us any revolutions. Being needlessly complicated will ensure that the movement stays entrenched in the bourgeois and petty bourgeois classes and never becomes a movement of the working class. If the critics of JVS can show me multiple passages where his speaking in simple terms leads to incorrect assessments of reality than please do.
Otherwise, I find it hilarious that a “Maoist” – whose legacy is persuading intellectuals to go to the countryside to learn practical knowledge and learn from the masses, is denigrating Stalin for dumbing things down and anti-intellectualism.
Eike Me-lie said
[moderator note: raise moderation issues in our moderation thread.]
I am always impressed by the ability of Mike Ely to write so much yet say so very little. Where this essay says anything at all, it merely repeats truisms as fact. Particularly striking is when Mike Ely speaks about evolution. It is one of the few things he wants to give “examples” of, only to reveal his own lack of sophisticated understanding:
–In fact, Darwin’s theory has been modified in very basic ways. It did not survive intact “as for now.”
Examples: Darwin did not know about genes and he thought that acquired traits could be passed on. The development of genetics (from the 1920s to the 1930s especially) required a huge leap in evolutionary theory — incorporating genetics in a structural way. (And lets not forget: the doctrinal conservatism of that era’s Marxist-Leninists led them to reject and denounce that leap in evolutionary theory. they had become quite doctrinally conservative and even fearful.):–
Notice how Mike Ely simply repeats this just-so story told by many a rabid atheist who just read a Dawkins’ book. In fact, there was no wide acceptance of the basic assumptions of the “modern synthesis” for a long time, because it could be demonstrated in only a few cases that something no one could see called “genes” controlled the expression of certain traits. Mendel’s experiments hardly proved that anything resembling a gene controlled the expression of say, skin color, for instance. Mendelian genetics was devoid of any actual physical explanation that could be observed under a microscope, and instead depended on a statistical analysis of a few experiments where it seemed to explain the outcome. Nor has it ever been demonstrated, as per another assumption of the “modern synthesis,” that you can not inherent changes from your environment that pass on to your offspring. Perhaps Dr. Ely should put the words “epigenetics” in a search engine and read something about biology written in the last decade.
Of course, this whole thing brushes aside the –politics– associated with the “modern synthesis.” It is no accident that one of the men who discovered DNA (decades after the formation of the “modern synthesis”) is a known racist. Yes, Nobel-Prize winner James Watson believes black people are genetically less intelligent than whites. It has been known he believed this for years privately, but no one ever bothered to expose him, until he did it himself. Since Dr. Ely likes reading Gould so much (who not only has more training as a scientist than Dr. Ely, but was also himself quite a learned Marxist), I suggest he read his “Mismeasure of Man.” It might give Dr. Ely a little more insight into the racist underpinnings of the thinking going on in American biology at the time.
The rest of this essay is hard to comment. It is more curious to me what Ely’s motivations for this attack on Marxism-Leninism are. I mean, it’s hysterical he would basically attack the Marxist-Leninist blog as being dogmatic and unwilling to discard wrong ideas, when Ely is completely wedded to the dogmatic and un-Marxist idea of “State Capitalism” as expounded decades ago by the Cliffites, Titoites, and Maoists.
Ely privately clings to basically –all– of the old Maoist dogmas regarding the Sino-Soviet split, as interpreted through the Avakian cult (indeed, everyone comments on how Kasama is basically the RCP-line without Avakian). He uses these dogmas as a basis for his attack on countries like Cuba, the DPRK, China, etc, all of which he despises with a passion.
Contrary to the dogmas of old, Marxist-Leninists all over the world have been discarding a lot of ideas from the previous eras, without resulting to crass opportunism in the process.
Fern said
The following response is directed at the criticisms found in Comment #32 directed against comment #30 by ‘Fern.’ I thank Mr. Ely for taking the time to critically examine the comments and making me reexamine my own thoughts and thinking processes. This discussion has served to further demonstrate to me the correctness of Marxism-Leninism, and has rooted me further in that theoretical foundation. A prompter response was prevented by several days worth of Internet problems associated with moving.
—
There are several objections raised against my comment that I would like to address.
The first such objection looks at the fact that a ‘Classical’ Marxist-Leninist theoretical foundation helped someone (if not many of us) attain a Marxist consciousness and attempts to devalue it, presumingly since such a theoretical foundation is meant to be a starting point from which the mature theoretician steps before criticizing and expelling the incorrect portions of this foundation. I am not claiming that anyone objects to reading Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao – only that there is a school of thought which argues these must be read critically, not dogmatically, and the mature theoretician must go beyond “book worship” or “hero worship.”
But where does this school of thought take us? Is it so new that it hasn’t had time to be put into practice? The history of the Communist movement is filled with those attempting to rework “outdated” theory, picking only what they believe to be true and rejecting what they believe led to failures. This is an old debate. On one side stands the Kautstkyites, Bernsteins and Co., and on the other stand “Orthodox” Marxist-Leninists who understood that Communist theory has only come to be interwoven not incorrectly or happenstance, but because the theory has been built upon over time by other Marxist-Leninists who validated the correctness of previous theory.
The second objection is made to what some interpreted as a ‘tooting of one’s own horn’ i.e. the listing of “activist credentials” for the purpose of making a weaker argument seem stronger. “Look at me, I did X Y and Z, therefore I’m a great Communist.” Such sentiments are petty at best and destructive at worst. I cannot blame anyone for interpreting a portion of my previous comment to mean just that, since I failed to clearly make my point, so here I will explain in greater deal what I meant to convey and correct the ambiguity of my previous statement.
There are many groups of Communists attempting to link their theory with their practice in the U.S. today. The forms of practice vary precisely with the theory from which they are derived. I may not have been around as an activist for very long, but I have seen my fair share of Progessive Democrats, Social Democrats, Left Refoundationists, Trotskyists, Maoists, Marxist-Leninists, Hoxhaists, even a few Titoites and ‘Critical Marxists’ at work. Some of the work they do is fantastic, and some of the work probably doesn’t take us any closer to revolution. However, the people I have met who consistently do the best and most revolutionary work have always been Marxist-Leninists. This led me to conclude that Marxism-Leninism not only claims to be “the theory and science of revolution” but is in fact just that. Perhaps there was much wrong with the various Proletarian Revolutions of the 20th century, but no movement guided by theoretical foundations other than Marxism-Leninism ever got as far as those guided by ML Theory. Perhaps I am a poor scientist, with only a primitive understanding of the dialectical relationship between theory and practice, but I believe that observing the results of a tested theory is critical to reaching a conclusion about which theory is correct. Trotskyism, Maoism, ‘Critical Marxism,’ and Anarchism all have one thing in common – they have produced no results worth mentioning which I can observe and study.
The third set of objections I will address center around a criticism of my statement that Marxism-Leninism has “core and classic principles.”
It may sound academic and “enlightened” to reject the notion that Communist “theory” has no “core and classic principles” and to overemphasize it’s fluid, dynamic, changing and evolving state, but where does that leave us? What happens when we reject the core principle that “The Masses are the Makers of History?” What happens when we reject the core principle that “Economism will never bring about Socialism?” What happens when we reject the core and classic principle that material conditions produce the ideas in people’s heads? I think I have an answer: when we reject “core and classic principles” in favor of critical, intangible thoughts that can’t be put into practice, we are no longer Marxists. I am not suggesting anyone participating in this debate is not a Marxist, only that claiming there are no core and classic principles of Marxism doesn’t make sense, because we are Marxists and do believe in those principles.
The final criticism before I retire from the discussion and leave the final word up for grabs that I will examine here objects to my claim that “To attack Stalin is to insult the Soviet People.” It claims that my method is problematic, and tries to list counter-examples which attempt to prove that this method of thinking leads to errors.
The problem with the counter-examples provided, like “attacking MLK Jr. -> insults African Americans” and “criticizing Obama -> insults the American People” is that neither MLK Jr. or Obama were Proletarian Revolutionaries. As such, they were not the Revolutionary leaders of these groups. Criticizing China for being Capitalist (a belief I don’t share) is, in my mind, insulting to the Chinese people, although I’m not foolish enough to believe that Comrade Ely intends to offend.
I know that Comrade Ely presents his ideas and criticisms in the best spirit of Revolutionary Commitment and Proletarian Internationalism, and I commend the Comrade for doing so. I only hope my response presented another view.
that guy said
oh nevermind, I see I am wrong.
nando said
“That Guy,” can you explain a bit more? Have you changed your view?
When you now say “I see I am wrong” — what are you now seeing?
Marxist Hypocrisy 101 said
Marxism is not a science, it is closer to being religious dogma kept aloft through totalitarianism and genocide and by distracting the feudal serfs with false promises of revolution that never comes, nor is intended to.
workandstudy said
What a beautiful story!!!! Made my eyes tear!!! I enjoy your blog, and I love your photos and antecdotes