No Cheap Shots
Posted by Mike E on August 12, 2010
by Mike Ely
I want to argue for (what Maoists call) the high plane of two line struggle.
To do that I want to dissect some comments posted after we shared the recent communique from a little-known group, the Maoist Communist Party of China. In the following discussion, Walter Lippmann expressed exasperation that we would “take this kind of thing seriously.” I would like to engage Walter’s comments in detail.
Now, TNL has teased me for hammering questions of method ad nauseum. Heh. Well, here it comes again:
In order to have the serious ongoing reconception of communist theory that we need, we must articulate some very clear common understandings of how communists discuss differences. If we don’t, we will simply speak past each other and never develop a common language. And worse, we will simply speak past reality, and never actually sort out erroneous ideas from perceptive ones.
1) Compare and Contrast
We should engage opposing ideas to excavate whether or not they reflect reality. This is called “compare and contrast.”
Excavating ideas includes showing their context — i.e. the overall strategies they serve, and the assumptions they rest on.
But our method should not be “engage the idea in order to expose the person” (i.e. to focus on the motives or supposed essence of the person, rather than ideological and political line).
2) Burn the Strawmen
We should deal with the actual arguments people are raising — rather than re-packaging their arguments in distorting ways that make them seem ridiculous or dumbed down. We should quote people’s actual words, respectfully take the time to hear what they are saying and thinking, and then engage their actual views.
We should uphold the practice of publishing both sides of a dispute — as fully as possible. And we assume that people should generally hear important ideas (even very wrong ideas), full strength, from the mouths of their most articulate advocates advocates (not filtered, watered down and distorted through our characterizations and warnings.)
This means (to give one example) that the process of discrediting and defeating reactionary ideas requires (at some level) that people need continuing access to such ideas (to study and independently evaluate them). How can people fully understand fascism if “Mein Kampf” is made unavailable? How can we understand what is wrong with Liu Shaochi’s whole approach to socialism if we don’t read and debunk his “How to be a good communist“? You can’t raise real communist consciousness in some protected greenhouse where only our ideas are heard.
We have constantly run into a contrasting method that doesn’t quote anyone, but instead gives a distorted dumbed-down version of opposing views. They “attribute a stupid argument to someone, then call them stupid.”
3) Engage the most sophisticated, not the most incompetent
We should (very consciously) seek to engage the best and most sophisticated version of an opposing line.
We should not jump with glee at a badly formulated and accidental formulation — seeking to score points and discredit their overall argument based on a minor error.
Bob Avakian (back when he was a much more creative revolutionary) used to argue that if we can’t find a sufficiently coherent and articulate expression of an opposing argument, then (in our polemics) we should ourselves seek to create the best case that can be made (gather the best evidence for a case, find the most sophisticated formulation of its main arguments), so that our response would deal with the most sophisticated version of a theory, not its most flawed expression.
4) Don’t pretend the truth is obvious
We should not act like opposing views are simply ridiculous. The world is complex, and it is rarely true that important things are obvious. And what may be obvious to us (with our experience, or study, or exposure) is just no obvious to everyone. And since we are mainly speaking for the benefit of a gathered audience (and often for an audience of newbies), assuming things should be obvious often makes an insulting and patronizing impression.
Thinking that our views are “obviously” true flows a generally dumbed down view of reality and often from a rigid quasi-religious orthodoxy.
I prefer to engage the material basis that underlies and informs incorrect views…. and suggest ways that we can better understand that same material set of evidence.
5) Even a wrong argument may have something to teach
Part of the complexity of the world is that people who are OVERALL wrong (and even reactionary) often raise important insights and criticisms. It is not as if the revolutionary communist left has a lock on truth, and everyone else is simply wrong in every respect.
Often our various opponents see something (a flaw in us, or a new development in the world) long before we do. Often we (in our attempt at understanding) miss something important, or crudely deny something we just wish wasn’t true — while everyone else can see it. (this is true in individual life as well as political life.)
So when dealing with opponents we need to “divide one into two” and always be alert that their overall argument may be wrong, but parts of it may be worth learning from. (And it is always possible that their overall argument may be correct, and we should be open to being won over on points where opponents prove to actually be right.)
* * * * * * *
Now, a Quick Negative Example
Hopefully with sufficient respect to Walter’s actual words, I would like to break down his logic to critique his method.
Walter starts by complaining about the Chinese Maoists’ core thesis:
“Evidently these people, to the extent that they exist in China, are looking to be arrested and imprisoned for a long time. Imagine what it means politically when a group, supposedly based in the PRC writes:
‘We declare that the traitorous revisionist ruling bloc of the Chinese Communist Party is the top enemy of the peoples of China.’”
Then after that superficial dismissal, he moves on, seeking to discredit their thesis mainly by focusing on a very secondary and passing point:
“And when [the Maoist Communist Party of China writes] with evident pride of their being reported on by Radio Free Asia and by the Voice of America, one can only scratch ones head in bewilderment…. What do the editors of Kasama find so interesting from people who say they are glad that the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia are promoting them? Who takes this kind of posturing seriously???
His argument is implicit: You don’t need to actually evaluate their anti-government verdict — you can just look at their fawning on the CIA radio shows. The reader is left with the impression that these Maoists are really pro-imperialist, and Walter is amazed this is not obvious to the editors of Kasama (suggesting perhaps that their softness toward Maoists makes them, too, soft on CIA provocations and imperialism generally.)
Let me break down the method here:
First, this is an example of raising a secondary point to obscure the primary point. Why discuss the actual thesis of this communique, when Walter thinks we can deduce the political essence of these forces from one of their side comments?
However, second, if you look at what this communique actually says you can see that Walter’s characterization has distorted what they said.
Here is what the communication actually says on the Western CIA-style propaganda media:
“The pamphlet of our party To all the people of China … triggered a lot of international political responses. Radio Free Asia and Voice of America all made reports about us. Reactionary forces both inside and outside of China immediately felt threatened by our pamphlet, and started to attack our party and offered strategies to the ruling regime of China.”
Walter chose not to quote this passage, but rather (in the style of May 9) to paraphrase it in ways that serve his argument. He says they had “evident pride” that they were being reported on in the Western propaganda radio news and (in particular) he claims they “say they are glad that the Voice of America and Radio Free Asia are promoting them.”
In fact, as you can see that is not what the communique says. It very simply states that their existence was reported internationally. And then goes on to say that reactionary forces, that felt “threatened” and started to give the regime advice on how to suppress pro-Maoist sentiments in China.
So Walter paraphrases in order to distort. And to imply that the Maoist group in China is somehow pro-western (which is not a meaning you can draw from their actual words at all).
Is it a crime to want coverage?
In a second follow-up comment, Walter says (with rising indignation):
“Why would this supposedly much more “revolutionary” grouping observe, WITH OBVIOUS PRIDE, that they are being PROMOTED by these ultra-reactionary propaganda vehicles?”
Note: Walter doesn’t answer his rhetorical question. This isn’t the opening for some kind of explanation.
His argument is made solely by innuendo. His implication is that (a) these forces are being promoted by the CIA or whatever, (b) that they are openly proud of it, so (c) they must be pigs of some kind.
Let me answer Walter’s question in a different way:
If you are a small group emerging in a country on media lockdown, it is a big deal if you discover your impact is significant enough to get press coverage (domestic or international).
Such coverage is something revolutionary forces actively seek (that is why we issue press releases, have spokespeople, hold clear signs in front of TV cameras, etc.). We all seek coverage in the bourgeois press. Such coverage may not be a measure of actual influence, but it is one important way to reach new audiences (and to make oneself known to millions who are beyond reach). And this is true even if the particular press includes the more notoriously reactionary outlets– like U.S. government sponsored broadcasts, or Fox News, or whatever.
We have all seen communist forces try to get on Fox News — (including both the revolutonary and less revolutionary leftists get on Glenn Beck) — which is collectively as close to a fascist Ministry of Information as you can get.
Isn’t that a correct thing to do, Walter?
Another example: Creating an International Incident Using the World Press
In 1979, the RCP staged an “international incident” in Washington DC — leading to an evening of intense streetfighting in front of the White House — precisely so the international press would report (all over the world) that there were Maoists in the U.S. who were willing to shed blood to expose Deng Xiaoping. This was not because the RCP expected the world media to “promote” their political views — but because they wanted communists in distant and isolated corners of the world to know that they existed.
And it is significant (for a group in China and for us) if a Maoist message from China is reported in the international news. Of course the CIA press and the mainstream media have their own “spin” on such reports — and they are (as the Maoist group suggests) often arguing that the Chinese government should more creatively suppress pro-socialist and pro-Mao sentiment in their country.
But, how is our discussion served when Walter so casually distorts what the communique says, and implies that they have revealed a love of U.S. imperialism?
An argument for just ignoring others
Finally, Walter uses his comment (with its basic distortions) to take a further leap: to imply that the editors of Kasama lack the basic instinct and common sense to identify pro-imperialists forces and ignore them. Kasama can’t see what is clear to Walter. And yet it is so very obvious to Walter.
This communique is “glad” that the CIA “promotes” their last pamphlet, so it should be obvious to the editors of Kasama that nothing from this group should be published or discussed.
And our inability to see this, has Walter dumb-founded (with our backwardness and blindness). He writes:
“…one can only scratch ones head in bewilderment.”
So….
Walter starts by dismissing the key argument of the communique without substantive engagement. Then he distorts a secondary point to imply these forces are pro-imperialist. Finally he turns his attack on Kasama and implies we promote pro-imperialist trash that any honest person should see through.
This all-too-common method is like a filibuster that obstructs substantive engagement with reality.
Carl Davidson said
I think the most interesting things about the statement is that, one, it upheld Chou En-Lai, and, two, did a brief survey of all the opposition trends. Whether this group takes root and grows, of course, remains to be seen.
Mike E said
On that: Jiang Jing upheld Zhou Enlai at her public trial. While the RCP analyzed that Zhou played a key role in bringing the players of the 1976 coup into place (including the temporary rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping in 1974, with all that this represented within Chinese politics).
In other words, among Maoists who opposed the 1976 coup and capitalist restoration (including among those who were the target of the coup) there has never been a single common evaluation of Zhou Enlai.
There is a lot to say about that…. but not right now.
saoirse said
Mike there is some mythology around the “international incident” organized by the RCP in Washtington DC. Can you provide any context. This is after the RWH/RCP split was the party engaged in a prolonged campaign building the the DC action? was it an advanced action? How did folks sum it up?
Mike E said
Saoirse:
I’m not sure what you are asking. And I’m not sure what mythology you are referring to.
Yes it was an advanced action — it was a communist action by communists in defense of communism. That was its basis of unity. It was a public declaration in defiance of the notion that communism had failed, and that Mao’s politics had been repudiated by the rise of Deng (and restoration) in China.
We all (each of us) burned the American flag, and marched through the streets holding Red Books. The streetfighting broke out under a rain of coca-cola bottles that flew out of the crowd. One of the chants was “Mao Zedong did not fail. Revolution will prevail.”
The action was built as part of a much larger campaign to make the restoration of capitalism in China a major issue among progressive people — and to seek to regroup a new communist movement internationally that would not follow the Deng forces on their road.
In other places on his U.S. tour, Deng Xiaoping was personally confronted by Maoists. One reporter of the press corp stood up on the white house lawn, and heatedly denounced Deng’s restoration of capitalism, before being dragged away and arrested. (Sonya’s article had the tongue-in-cheek screamer headline: “I wave the Red Book in Deng Xiaoping’s face.”)
In Houston, Deng toured a factory, and a worker jumped out to denounce him and raise these issues to the gathered workers. And so on.
I am not sure how “folks” summed it up. I’ll say that I thought it was great (and now think it was great). One sister in Kasama who participated, decided then to become a communist after attending the action (so I’m certain she sums it up as great too).
And (as I say below) it had its intended effect of causing an “international incident” that would “light the sky” — and make it possible to regroup revolutionary communist forces internationally.
And it also served as a kind of “passage through the gate” for communists within the RCP (i.e. a few individuals left the RCP over this, and it was mutually understood that this was probably a necessary parting of ways.)
Here is what I wrote recently on the Deng demo. Check that out, and tell me if there is more you are asking.:
saoirse said
Mike that’s an awesome response. thank you. I think I may have missed your earlier post that you quote from here too. By mythology I was suggesting it was an action that prior to blogs, the internet, etc you only heard about but couldn’t really research. I appreciate and I think I agree with what your saying about ultra-leftism too. There isn’t much written about the RCP in the 80s and I would like to hear more.
Walter Lippmann said
Thanks to Mike E. for taking the time to look at the points I raised.
But what straw men or cheap shots have been taken?
Living and working here in the United States of America, for most of the past sixty-six years, my opinion that world capitalism headquartered in Washington, DC, is the principal obstacle to socialist progress in the modern world. People who follow the Maoist approach don’t share that perspective, but taking the Cuban Revolution as a reference point, I’ve found no reason to hold another view.
China, under Maoist leadership, even militarily attacked Vietnam in 1978, definitely not a helpful act just a few years after Vietnam won its struggle for national independence by defeating Washington.
So far as has been presented here, no one even knows if this group exists in China, or where it exists if it actually does. Anyone can write a document and post it on the Internet, after all, including using Chinese characters.
In his introduction to this document, Mike E. wrote:
So Mike E. who presented it doesn’t have any way to know if the group even exists at all. That’s why he sais is “reportedly comes from an underground organization within China”.
This is why, it would see to me, one ought not to be so concerned about how to discuss a group whose very existence is uncertain.
Isn’t it a bit like discussing how many angels can fit on the head of a needle? Or the existence of God? These are matters not subject to empirical verification.
So what’s the big deal? I really don’t get it. Really.
Mike E said
Thanks for responding Walter. I think your elaboration is clarifying: both explaining your views more fully, and helping me make my point more fully.
We all understand that the U.S. imperialists are a major pillar of capitalism today, the world’s strongest imperialist military, and that it has been actively on a global binge of aggression and threat.
But there is beyond that a view view that the U.S. imperialists are virtually the ONLY enemy of the people in the world today — so we can determine the nature of any political force by seeing whether the U.S. imperialists oppose them. And further, we can determine the political value of any political force simply by seeing if they agree that the U.S. imperialists are the only real enemy of everyone in the world today.
And so you get the mechanics of a cheap shot:
You don’t need to analyze anything. You just need to ask one question: Do they take some other force as their main enemy? Then they are defacto reactionary.
In a related essay, I pointed out that one way people arrive at this theory of “only one enemy” is to take the immediate interests of a socialist state as their approach to the whole world. When the Soviet Union was threatened by the Nazis, some communists thought this meant that the Nazis were the main enemy of everyone in the world. When revolutionary China was threatened by soviet social-imperialism, some communist thought this meant the Soviet Union was the main enemy of everyone in the world. And here, Walter explains that his partisanship toward Cuba (which clearly has been sharply threatenened by the U.S. imperialists for forty years) is the basis for his approach to the contradictions of the whole world
The idea that the Chinese government and ruling class are a huge and world-scale oppressor, and that they are the main oppressor within China doesn’t need to be analyzed or refuted — it simply is rejected because it goes against a simple set of assumptions (see above).
I don’t think this method will get at the world’s real dynamics. And i don’t think it will help identify the way to target and overthrow oppressors in the world’s liberation struggles. (And, in fact, it often goes with the assumption that there are not liberation struggles, and the best we can do is support “rogue states” and reactionary states who are on the American shit list.)
CWM said
Mike,
Can you point me to an account of the 1979 anti-Deng protest written by someone who was not associated with the RCP? Max Elbaum mentions the event in his book, but offers a very different description of it than you. He mentions the arrest of seventeen people, but says nothing about the riot of “almost a thousand” Maoists and specifically links the demo to the RCP’s abandonment of any attempt at base building. Given your propensity to hyperbole, my first impulse is to assume that Elbaum’s portrayal is accurate and that yours is not, but can you direct me to another account that might substantiate your claims?
I’m not sure what Saoirse had in mind, but I can see why she would raise the issue of mythology here given that in the (very hilarious) RCP lore it was this incident that prompted Avakain to flee into exile and presumably it is repercussions of the event that account for the “danger” that hovers of his every step as he leads the masses today.
Mike E said
Nope.
You are confusing two things: There were heavy felony charges pressed against seventeen people — “The Mao Tsetung Defendants.” But there were many more arrests at the event — i don’t know how many, but it was mass arrests (i would guess around a hundred, but don’t have the actual number at hand).
Beyond that, I’m not sure what you are asking? Are you questioning whether there was actually a demo and a riot? Are you disputing that there were hundreds of people involved (but not, as i said, more than 1,000)? Streetfighting? Beatings and arrests?
That would be a bit (uh) odd. The RCP put out a special edition of their paper — with pages of photographs. Go look at it.
There was (at that time) a decision to end the RCP’s previous heavy focus on industrial implantation. The RCP pulled its cadre out of the factories. (And I personally left the mines shortly after this). The campaign of communist colonizing in the industrial working class had been well intentioned — but it had largely been a disappointment, and more perseverance would not have led to better results.
Contrary to the impression you may haven gotten from Elbaum, the RCP went on to try to develop other political bases: among radical youth (NBAU?) and then (increasingly) in oppressed communities (Cabrini Green, Nickerson Gardens, Watts, MacArthur Park area of LA, etc.) This was a rather intensive effort, especially between 1988-2000. There is quite a bit to say and sum up about all that, which I won’t try here. But Elbaum’s claim that the RCP stopped organizing for a mass base is (at best) uninformed.
And this basebuilding happened precisely as Elbaum’s forces were focused (singlemindedly) on supporting Jesse Jackson’s efforts within the Democratic Presidential primaries. It helps his electoral argument to assert that no one else was doing any political work among the people — but that doesn’t make it true.
Distrust noted.
Chuck: I was there. I’m telling you what happened. Why would you be skeptical of these events? And, if you don’t believe it, why don’t you just do the work to look it up yourself (I’m sure it was covered in the Washington Post etc.)
It’s not lore, it is fact.
There were signs in 1979-80 that the government was planning to mop up remaining communist forces that were not dispersing — and it was treated very seriously by the folks leading those forces (including the RCP and the Communist Workers Party (CWP). In 1979 there was the Greensboro massacre in North Carolina (where supporters of the CWP were shot by the Klan), followed by the 1980 indictment of several CWP members during the West Coast NASSCO strike.
In the coalfields (just to pick the area I have personal knowledge of) the RCP members and supporters faced intense redbaiting campaigns, attempts to expel us from the United Mine Workers, violent attacks and beatings, assassination threats, and (in one case) the bombing of a comrade’s home. Personally, I have no doubt that a lot of this was connected with cointelpro activities of the authorities. Meanwhile, Avakian himself faced a lot of personal threats during his 1979 speaking tour.
And then came the massive Deng demo felony charges against Avakian. The government used the extraordinary argument that Avakian, as leader, was responsible for everything that happened, so they charged him with every alleged event of that evening — a huge stack of felony charges.
So we can discuss whether exile was an appropriate response. We might ask whether it made sense to stay in Europe after 1982 when those charges were dropped. And we can discuss the exaggerated sense of personal importance and danger that has gripped this RCP leader then and now.
But there is no factual dispute that (a) Avakian found himself possibly facing more than a lifetime behind bars, and (b) chose to go into exile because of that.
As for your remark that this is “very hilarious” — I didn’t and don’t find it funny.
It was a real attack on an organization that had dared to carry out revolutionary work (when some others were falling to pieces) and that chose to forcefully call out the (truly historic and terrible) restoration of capitalism in China. Like many others, I volunteered to go to Washington DC for the fall of 1979 to organize a campaign there among oppressed and progressive people in support of the Mao Tsetung Defendants — and (while we are talking) that campaign (to “Turn DC Upside Down!”) is not widely known today, and has some important lessons about how to build a mass campaign to defend revolutionaries who are under attack.
hobgoblins said
CWM, are you capable of posting without accusing others of “hyperbole”, etc. I mean, where has Mike engaged in that?? He is, even here, arguing for honest intellectual work without the kind of rancor and imputation you seem addicted to.
There is truth in the RCP’s abandonment of “base building”, and the Teng Demo was (in hindsight) certainly part of that. But by “base building” we could also understand what the nature of the argument was. As the insurgent movements of the 60s70s collapsed, due to popular exhaustion, partial victories, state violence and political betrayals of all sorts — a great debate broke out over how to proceed.
With Reagan around the corner, many radicals simply gave up and went home. Others found careers in labor unions, social welfare and professional “organizing”. And among these tendencies, there was a wholesale shift into the existing state of political affairs and towards the Democrat Party. The “base” they sought to build would be transformed into “electoral muscle” while “street heat” provided the simulacrum of “popular resistance”. And so on.
The question of “revolutionary work in non-revolutionary times” is crucial. Those who argue to “get real” by a form of base-building tied into reproducing the state are naive at best, profoundly corrupt at worst. It is in those milieu that Max Elbaum is speaking to. Those with revolutionary hearts, who actual (real, tangible and partisan) political work is tied into reproducing the same system people signed up to fight. Instead of challenging this, Elbaum obscures it. His long devotion to carrying water for the Soviet Union should be embarrassing, but he doesn’t speak of that much anymore. And why should he? Revolution In The Air was a recapitulation of Elbaum’s long-standing polemics AGAINST revolutionary politics and organization.
That Elbaum does indeed tailor his history, to the point that you would think EVERYONE signed up for the Democrats, and that those who didn’t were simply mad, often goes without comment. Which is the sign of an unsuccessful polemic: it doesn’t actually include the positions or work of those who Elbaum dismisses.
All that is to say: Elbaum never wanted a “new” communist movement. He wanted the venal, played-out and conservative CPUSA to update its lingo while maintaining the same corrupt politics of accommodation. If the CP couldn’t do it, Elbaum and his collaborators wanted to reproduce the same managerial function on social movements (and to a lesser extent unions) that the CP always aspired to. It didn’t work in any good way, though as Elbaum’s book describes, everyone who adopted his perspective promptly dissolved their organizations into futile, corrupt and dishonest Democrat Party politics in 1984 and 1988. Then their Soviet inspiration folded and Elbaum’s Line of March dissolved along with them.
Maybe that’s hyperbole, too. But it seems like true history. So maybe the RCP was crazy, but they didn’t sign up to be any nation-state’s errand boy, or turn their network into an apparatus of the Democrats.
Paul Saba said
I want to return to what I think was the central thrust of Mike’s original post – about how we conduct ideological struggle and relate to differences. I think your points, Mike, are enormously important for the future of our movement.
But I also hope they will encourage us to take a critical look at our movement’s past as well. The style of polemizing you critique has a long history in the M-L movement, dating back to the founders. And its negative impacts are clear.
One of the most important of these is its contribution to historical amnesia about our movement’s history. The history of the Marxist and communist movements is extremely diverse and complex, but that complexity and many heterodox thinkers and trends have been largely ignored and/or erased in the dominant triumphalist narratives, of which the notorious History of the CPSU(B) is only the best known.
We need to go back and revisit the history of our movement in its full complexity. When we do, I believe we will discover that many of these “discredited” thinkers, groups and trends had something valuable and correct to contribute to the revolutionary debates of their time – and to our current efforts to build a movement.
CWM said
Mike,
I have done my own research into the anti-Deng protest and have not found corroboration of your claims that “almost a thousand” Maoists rioted over a “dozen or more square blocks” or any mention of fights in a hospital. You also say that the action created “headlines of an “international incident,” but I haven’t been able to find such headlines. I have looked in databases of national newspapers (most of which are online now) and in Elbaum’s book.
If you understand you correctly, there are no sources that corroborate your assertions and you expect me to accept your account at face value. . . . That’s not going to work for me, but I would be interested in reading some non-RCP source that supports your depiction (if one should appear).
With respect to Avakain, you say that he was subject to “massive felony charges” and that the “government used the extraordinary argument that Avakian, as leader, was responsible for everything that happened, so they charged him with every alleged event of that evening — a huge stack of felony charges).” Is there any non-RCP source that affirms this?
Hobgoblins, Elbaum’s position on the democrats or the Soviet Union (or whatever) is not pertinent. If you disagree with his account of the protest against Deng, then just say so.
I don’t want to demonize mike, but you ask me to specify where Mike engages in hyperbole. Well, I would say that describing this protest as an “international incident” that was ““lighting the sky” worldwide” would qualify as hyperbole. It would also say that much of his writing about Nepal is hyperbolic and certainly the RCP’s newspaper, which I guess he edited for decades was, if nothing else, flooded with hyperbole.
But my point is not to put Mike down. I’m simply looking for corroboration of claims that he makes. Doesn’t the mastehead of this site say “study critically. test independently”?
jp said
I don’t regret having been part of the jackson 88 effort, but for me it definitively taught that tailing the d’s does not work. Elbaum never got this lesson – he was another victorious obama supporter in 2008.
Mike E said
It is a strange thing to describe events you experienced, and for someone to ask you for evidence. Want a source? I’m your source.
Put another way: We are discussing a militant street action in the darkness of a mid-winter Washington DC evening. Who is the primary source for the experience? The revolutionaries and the cops. There is no one else to interview. If that doesn’t satisfy you, (shrugs) I can’t help you. (And if someone like Elbaum has a counter-narrative, my only question would be: who are they interviewing for their description if not someone associated with the cops or the RCP? There was virtually no one else there.)
CWM writes:
Of course there are non-RCP sources. These were indictments, dude — they are part of the public record. There were hearings and trials. There were affidavits, petitions for refugee status, etc. etc.
I was involved in the political defense campaign. One of the Mao Tsetung Defendants reads this site– so may choose to speak personally about these things, like I have.
CWM writes:
Hmmm. The RCP’s intention was to create an “international incident” that “would light the sky.” That was our language at the time. And what I’m saying is that the results met those goals.
You may have other definitions of these terms.
But the point I’m making is about what we intended and what we accomplished: We wanted the Maoists of the world to know that not everyone was going along with the Deng coup. The loss of China had left the world Maoist movement in profound disarray — we had few horizontal contacts. Many were isolated in remote parts of the world (and remote parts of third world countries).
This incident was a way of getting into the international press in a way that someone in various countries might come across. The point was to start to regroup the anti-revisionist Maoists. And it had that effect. I met Maoists (later in the process of forming the RIM) who learned about the existence of anti-Deng Maoists (other than themselves) because of international coverage of this event.
This doesn’t strike me as far fetched… You don’t think a Maoist riot in DC during Deng’s visit got a few blips in news services? You don’t think someone in Senegal might have seen that in the press? (It had a bit of a man-bites-dog spin — because people around the world don’t expect Maoists in the U.S.)
As for the numbers of the march — I give a very rough order-of-magnitude estimate (hundreds, certainly not over a thousand). It was basically all the RCP supporters who could get there, and that was their rough size after the 1978 split. You somehow doubt that the RCP could mobilize several hundred people in 1979? Why?
I don’t have handy the exact number the RCP gave at the time. But confirming the rough size is not complicated: There are published photographs of the march. It was obviously several hundred (on the march I could neither see the end nor the beginning).
As for the hospital fighting
I have never written about this before. I don’t remember reading about it anywhere. It was a minor episode within the whole, hardly that important. But while we are talking, let me jot down some notes:
After the fighting broke out between the White House and Lafayette Park, we retreated across the park, fighting as we went. As I came to the far side of the park, a cop was sprawled injured on the street, and his motorcycle lying beside him.
One cop drove up behind me on his motorcycle and swung his club into the back of my head as i was running. I fell to the street bleeding from the blow. Six or more foot cops ran up and beat me. Where my arm was protecting my face, they battered my elbow and I believed (at the time) it had been broken. Later my left side was covered with large bruises from their clubs.
They had hurt me badly enough that their commander (who ran up) decided not to arrest me. So those pigs threw me under a cab stuck in traffic jam and just left me, pursuing my comrades down the street.
I crawled out from under the cab, across the sidewalk and passed out under a bush. When I came to, minutes later, I was alone, and most of the fighting had passed several blocks away. I walked dazed along the sidewalk until a block later some of the comrade (walking alongside me) realized the shape i was in, and carried me to a cab, and drove me to a nearby hospital. The place was packed and chaotic as i was helped in. There were bloody injuries on both sides. (Even police horses had been injured though obviously they weren’t in the hospital with us).
Cops and demonstrators were yelling at each other from stretchers, and started throwing shit. The uninjured cops (accompanying their injured colleagues) pulled out their clubs and started beating people in the waiting room, and some of us were able to fight back. (I was personally unable to stand at that point — but joined in the yelling until I started to pass out again).
At some point, a camera crew arrived at the waiting room and turned on their bright lights and started filming it, and they were attacked by the cops and forced back out into the street.
I didn’t see that last thing personally, i was being stitched up. The doctor working on me wanted to know what it was all about, said she had never seen anything like it. She was the one who told me that the hospital was trying to set up a separate emergency room for the cops, so this could be chilled out. (I.e. i didn’t actually see the other emergency room, obviously, and don’t know if they really set one up).
EnCee said
This is a great piece. Do the 5 ground rules you lay down at beginning come from a previous piece or were they made in response to Lippman’s comments?
Mike E said
They are not from a previous piece. But they are guidelines I have been applying for a long time. And they are in part the method we used within the earlier RCP when writing polemics.
hobgoblins said
Jeez, Mike. Stop speaking to the point already! [end sarcasm]
CMW:
If you argue that someone believes X when they hold Y, don’t berate them for not agreeing with you and then continue your rhetoric unhindered by clarification.
The RCP’s Teng Demo was a flare that showed there were revolutionary communists who were not errand boys of the Chinese government. At a point of profound weakness in the movement, this action of the advanced targeted the consciousness of comrades. But to CWM, I suspect the very idea that there is class struggle under socialism, that there was a great battle over capitalist restoration being lost in China, and that revolutionaries could feel a sense of profound responsibility to rise to that occasion is all just “hyperbole”.
Well, the Maoists were right in China. There was a bourgeoisie inside the communist party, and it was hell-bent on instituting the very authoritarian capitalist state we see today. That people could resist this defies the orthodoxies (and ideological necessities) that CWM is comfortable with.
That’s the underlying issue: to him, there can be no revolutionary communists, only the same gallery of dupes, fools and bullies that Glenn Beck traffics in. It’s the same mentality: socialism is authoritarianism, and “autonomy” (né liberty) is the preserve of the anti-communist.
So when applied to revolutionary groups out of power, engaging in tasks of building an independent revolutionary movement — it’s all just bullshit designed to control people’s minds. So of course Avakian was never actually under threat. Whatever the felony charges stacked up on him. Avakian is a nut (no argument these days), so everything he (or his comrades) ever did was (of course) bullshit.
Well, it’s not. And in fact, in this very case — the commitment NOT TO SURRENDER or lower our sights — we can respect the work that “several hundred” cadre fought the American state in its capital to expose Teng’s plans.
The effect was the regroupment of revolutionary communists internationally — and it helped keep the red flag alive. If you don’t respect the goal, no doubt its easier to pretend everyone else is an idiot. But if that’s the case, then why did the fools who fought police in Washington DC get what was happening in China while the Max Elbaums of the world were busy writing revolution out of history?
hobgoblins said
CWM writes:
I’m curious to review your research of the Teng Demo. It’s poorly reported, as noted above — and no doubt your research has some light to cast on the whole affair, since it was (to you) enough investigation for the right to call witnesses, and an apparent casualty, hyperbolic.
Any photos, written or verbal accounts you could reference?
Thanks.
Walter Lippmann said
One very small editorial:
My last name is spelled Lippmann.
[moderator note: correction made to main post above. Sorry for typo.]
Again, I feel a bit like a fly on the wall of someone else’s discussion since my political background is so different from that of the editors and most posting here. I’m a former Trotskyist who is now oriented primarily toward Cuba, around which my work centers.
I appreciate the possibility of reading and participating here.
CWM said
Hobgoblins, I’m going to ignore you from here on. Your level of invective, and the fact that you keep on attributing views to me, makes me feel like I stepped in dog shit every time I read one of your “replies” to me here.
Mike, you say that the anti-Deng demo was an attempt to get in the international press, and you mention “blips in news services” that “someone in Senegal might have seen,” but I can’t find any accounts of the demo at all.
You say: “These were indictments, dude — they are part of the public record. There were hearings and trials. There were affidavits, petitions for refugee status, etc. etc. ” Is there any available account of these hearings or trials or petitions for refugee status (dude)? Anything?
Mike E said
CWM:
I can’t help it if you can’t find headlines. Did you look in the Washington post? Did you look at the reports on coverage in the RW? Did you go to the DC courthouse? Did you go to Revolution books and go through their back issues for photos and transcripts? Give it a try.
And (forgive me) I can’t take your claims of “I can’t find any accounts” too seriously. If you mean you googled a 1979 event and it doesn’t show up…. I mean, tough. You are simply trolling me, and obviously so.
I’m not your intern and don’t feel the need to explain the ABCs of research, when the stuff is obvious.
Dozens of people reading this site were there, and were involved in those events. This is not some obscure claim on my psrt.
Second: Of course, there are accounts of the hearings and petitions.
Some were reprinted in the RW — where you can find dates, and details for corroboration.
I have stacks of documents and transcripts in a box somewhere.
But really, I don’t feel obliged to document for you that there was a government attack on Avakian in 1979 — it is exactly like any other factual event…. there is a paper trail, and if you want to find it you can.
saoirse said
CWM I found at least two citations on Bob Avakian’s wiki page also worth tracking down.
“For detailed accounts of this case and its significance from a legal and political repression perspective, including the implications of the severity of the charges that had been leveled against the demonstrators, see Athan G. Theoharis, “FBI Surveillance: Past and Present”, Cornell Law Review, Vol. 69 (April 1984); and Peter Erlinder with Doug Cassel, “Bazooka Justice: The Case of the Mao Tse Tung Defendents – Overreaction Or Foreshadowing?”, Public Eye, Vol. II, No. 3&4 (1980), pp. 40-43.”
I raised questions around the 79 demo b/c I do feel like its an under-reported chapter in the history of the ML movement in this country. I tried for many years to read back issues of the RW while living in NY. I wasnt until I visit Revolution books in LA that I was really able to delve into them. Its ashame they are not more accessible as they are a great resource. Max Elbaum for many has written a definitive history of the period of party building. At this point he probably has the most widely read account of the history we are debating. I seriously question Avakian’s decision of remain in exile all these years. I think its flat out weird. I think a lot of serious revolutionaries across the political spectrum understood at the time that the charges were quite real and quite heavy. i
May9 said
This post oozes macho bravado. Celebrating violence (fighting at a hospital, really?). Incidentally, my search of newspaper archive databases for the period Deng visited – January 28 – Feb. 5, 1979 reveals Washington Post articles which say that there were 400 members of the RCP throwing bottles, bricks, nails, and lead weights at police in Lafayette Park, as well as wielding sticks and poles. 70 of them were arrested, 50 were released the following day, 9 were released the day after, including Avakian, because they could afford the reduced bonds. They filed detailed charges against only Avakian, according to the report, because they claimed the attack was premeditated and he was the ringleader. Avakian told police to “expect anything” prior to the protest.
A line from a lawyer involved in protests in the article is quite revealing, who says that there is comparison between the Maoist attack and the anti-war demos of the 1960s, because the former were part of a ‘mass movement’. Hence the ultra-leftism of the RCP.
At any rate, the line of ‘capitalist coup d’etat’ in 1976 is interesting, if not strange. How was Hua Guofeng a ‘capitalist’? Was capitalism ‘restored’ in 1959-1960 too? How does this conception of restoration work?
hobgoblins said
Good luck herding the cats, Mike.
Mike E said
May 9 states the government’s version of events well. but it confirms a number of things (including that it was in the Washington Post, and that the numbers were several hundred, even by their account). His aversion to violence is (uh) interesting.
celticfire said
uh– how many of us involved in heated struggles haven’t noticed the mainstream media twisting numbers or events, even downplaying them?
I was involved in an SDS demonstration a few years ago which was pretty militant and involved some of us climbing up the mayors office demanding he make a statement against the war.
The news that evening made it sound like it was “no big deal.” And in fact, the recent story of the little girls lemonade stand getting shut down got exponentially more media attention.
So arguing that the numbers of anti-Deng demonstration to prove some idealogical point May9, is really weird and an ineffective method of arguing your point.
May9 said
You misunderstand me, I was simply interested in the reports which existed, so I looked them up and reported them as they were written. I don’t care if there were 1,000 rioters or 400 or 40.
I am not ‘averse’ to violence – in the sense of being a pacifist, nor do I celebrate and glorify it as you do. Especially an event such as this which ultimately failed to bring any large scale working class sympathy to the Gang of Four clique in the US, which was its objective. It was simply violence for its own sake, detached from any movement. Maybe for the purpose of RCPers bragging about it 30 years later? Typical RCP ultra-leftism.
Timo said
May9 you say
Mike has said
May9 you just made a good and simple case study of the method the main article of this thread was criticizing. Thanks.
May9 said
Bob Avakian said that the goal was to get people to say “These people are crazy, but they’re serious”. Mike E talks about how people asked him questions about China because he was bruised. He then goes on to chide those who would suggest that beating up police would alienate the working class. That certainly seems to indicate that a goal going into it was getting people interested in the events going on in China, and radicalizing people against the unorthodox views of the new leadership in the PRC.
If the event cared nothing about relating to the working class or any movement in the US, then that explains everything about their group. Beating up cops to impress small pockets of Maoists around the world, or appeal to small bands of already existing ultra-leftists in the US? Great idea. Why would the Maoist parties feel like there was nothing going on in the US against ‘revisionism’ in China unless the RCP threw bricks and nails at cops? This is what anarchists do. Beat people up and destroy things to get their name in the paper. Who cares if it builds a mass movement. Bob Avakian gets more press.
Small wonder (ex) RCPers feel like they can sit and criticize M-L theory and strategy! They light the path.
Timo said
Where does Avakian say the goal was to get people to say “These people are crazy, but they’re serious?”
I don’t think any one is chiding “those who would suggest that beating up police would alienate the working class.” Rather there is a clear line difference, one that says violence is ALWAYS alienating and one that says it is not.
Mike fleshes out his line pretty well in
http://kasamaproject.org/2010/06/29/violence-street-fighting-who-says-it-alienates-the-people/
I recommend you read it, unless of course you are trying to distort the opposing line on purpose. Also could you please point out where anyone other then you say that the point of the “Deng Demo” was “to impress small pockets of Maoists around the world.” Out of curiosity May9, did you read the main article of this thread, “No Cheap Shots?”
Otto said
To start off, I remember the Anti-Deng Demo and I wasn’t even a Maoist yet, at least I didn’t belong to any groups. Deng was visiting and pro-Maoist people I knew at the University of Kansas, had explained to me how much they despised Deng for rolling back Mao and restoring capitalism.
I don’t know why anyone would deny this happened and I don’t see much relevance from it regarding the communique from a little-known group, the Maoist Communist Party of China. It is possible that is a hoax and the group does not exist, but if it does I see it as very significant. I posted it on my own blog.
It is amazing that a Maoist international of any kind exists today, considering in 1979 so many anti-Maoists were gloating at all of us, celebrating the end of the Maoist era. Today we not only have Maoist groups, we have “people’s wars” going on (in some fashion) in the Philippines, Peru, India, Bhutan, and Nepal. Nearly every group calling itself Maoist is anti-China and China has shown no interest in supporting Maoists revolutions.
We have plenty of reasons to believe that Maoists are among the ideologies that the Chinese government has worked so hard at suppressing. I no of no Maoist websites that are getting any feedback from China. This is interesting because I have gotten hits on my own website from Laos and Vietnam. I got 20 from Vietnam so it would appear that my site is not seen as a danger to the government of Vietnam or Laos, yet I got 4 hits from China and considering how large that country is and that the name Mao is on my web page in Chinese, that I never get significant hits from China.
This reminds me of the Soviet-Afghanistan situation in which a pro-soviet Marxist government was at war with at least 2 Maoist insurgent groups.
In other words—a communist insurgence within a communist government.
I remember a small group sent a communiqué to the RIM 20 years ago supporting the gang of four. One of the arguments of the right is that it is impossible for a Marxist group to oppose a Marxist government once people are living under such a regime…
It is also interesting that a Maoist movement may actually exist in China, the home of Maoism. If that is not significant, then I can’t imagine why. It’s hard to imagine this group will actually overthrow the Chinese government anytime soon, still, if they can reach out to us (those of us who favor Maoism) that would be a significant breakthrough.
Green Red said
I took a general look at Ka Walter Lippmann’s site…
And while on the first glance well of course i was please to see interesting caricatures such as the following that i surely saved:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/long-live-castro.gif
by seeing how much this friend covers Cuba, i got a better understanding of where he may come from.
http://www.walterlippmann.com/fc-china.html
the speech here mentioned that of Fidel Castro in 1999 gives a general understanding of some people standing for left overs of – be it Vietnam or China and unfortunately up to Islamic regime of Iran – partially or thorougly since they have better relations with Cuba.
Same applies for example to things like Hizbollah of Lebonan and, even Hamas. If somebody is against the Zionist Israel then, s/he is our friend. If somebody the US dislikes, or, if the US promotes Dalai Lama of Tibet then let’s get down supporting the Chinese regime.
I remember for example i had similar feelings around the incident of Tinanman Square since, there was whatever you want to call it – Goddess of Freedom or, Statu of Liberty (both western culture stuff anyways) and with all my negative feelings for the post Mao’s regime, still it sounded too much made in the west stuff. Then, somebody explained that within the protesters there were Maoists too….
Anyhow, Fidel’s position on a foreign country is due to his interest for his own nation’s welfare. And same applies to other leaders too.
If a foreign nation has a trade relations with a relatively progressive or, socialist country, does that justify that country’s policies within its borders?
The way of the 20th century is over and, i want to point out that lots of false foreign policies of the ex socialist countries, China included and, however one may want to dissociate him from the three world theory, still it was China of his time that it started, those are all over.
I stand for Mao’s revolutionary approach for the way to build thre revolution and, parts of the way he built China. And i stand strongly for Cuba as being the least compromising so called socialist country that, although by the US pressure it fell into the Soviet block – call it social imperialist or call it deform state capitalist – it is already death – but still it has not sold out yet like many, many other countries. Do you agree on this much dear Walter?
And please look upon the revolutionaries in Nepal who wave pictures of Che Guevara; read what Chair Sison of Communist party of Philippine has written about Che (and their genral policies toward Cuba) and most of all, see the greatest revolution that is occurring right now in India and tomorrow 13th in San Francisco for example, people are rallying against the consulate of India.
What i mean is, even if not necessarily a Maoist group you can stand for in China but what about Indian revolution? It is the biggest and most important inevitable revolution that is gradually growing after decades of defeat and learning of the Maoist guerrillas when the knife of the regime has touched necks of the indegenous Indian people (Adivasis), all oppressed, ones in the forest and countyside. Regardless of say, what position this site in general takes about Cuba (there for sure are supporters among readers of course,) on the other arenas where the Maoists are standing, where are you comrade? Let us not forget that the revolution in Cuba had its own spectacular and unique way of occurrence and other still semi feudal countries need Mao’s teaching… for first world countries, etc., as you can see, they are searching for their way, as you see, in such pretty much tru democratic related sites.
Nice meeting you again, comrade Walter and i will be proud of you standing next to us re. many international matters.
Cultural Animal said
I like it.
I asked myself a tiny bit ago, when the idea of “no investigation, no right to speak” was being cited robustly, whether I actually desire discussion when I post things here or do I just want to get something off my chest. I concluded that in general for me it is the latter. Then I was able to start guiding myself towards a sense of, if I wanted discussion, what that would look like and started getting more of a sense of the science path, getting more respect for it as a mental discipline. It made me feel good, it made me feel supported on a meta level- a sense of solid support for positive and liberatory goals that I think I have been unconsciously seeking from radical politics for a long time.
Alastair Reith said
Mike, it’d be great if you wrote something up about this.
Gary said
Mike,
You say there is a lot more to say about Zhou Enlai, but not now. (Ok. Take your time.) But I’m very interested in how the RCP evaluated this figure and came up with the assessment repeatedly put forward by Raymond Lotta–that he was a revisionist in league with Deng and a program of capitalist resoration.
Your observation that Jiang Jing upheld him at her trial intrigues me.
Travelling through China in the 80s and 90s I encountered admiring references to Zhou. He intervened to protect religious monuments during the Cultural Revolution, when some Red Guards, with about the same degree of sophistication as the Taliban who pulivarized the Buddhas of Bamiyan, targeted religious objects in China. I think he became alarmed at a certain point at how GPCR was empowering people lashing out randomly at the Chinese past.
The Cultural Revolution in my opinion was a heroic effort to save 20th century socialism. It itself produced a lot of stupid suffering, but it should be upheld, conditionally, simply because we have nothing else.
Mike E said
Alastair:
There are a number of campaigns of the RCP where I am not (personally) in a position to do much overall summation. The “Turn DC Upside Down” is one of them. I was active (I was part of a team with Clark Kissinger in charge of doing political education of the other volunteers.) But I really can’t describe (overall) what was done and its results in a way that represents a real summation. But from my small vantage point it was clear that there was a huge effort on many levels (among the poor, among artists, in the local radio, in massive postering, etc.) to make this trial a major issue among the people.
But the overall summation will have to come from some larger process involving more people. (Just like the work of summing up the RCP’s work in Cabrini Green, or Nickersons, or around the LA Four, or the Mumia campaign, or R&R, etc.)
* ** ** * * *
Gary:
a brief response: I think Mao had a vision of a grand alliance, where the revolutionary forces in the country would reconstitute themselves and build a newly revolutionized Communist Party (and communist leadership). Key to his conception was bringing together the new forces (from the Red Guards and other revolutionary mass organizations) with revolutionary representatives of the party/state/army apparatus (i.e. with those most willing to support the ongoing revolution).
That grand alliance failed. It didn’t materialize. And (at the end) when Mao died, his core supporters (the Four) proved to be relatively isolated.
The real history of this is complex, and largely unwritten. But I believe that Mao was unable to win over either side of the contradiction to a stable and firm alliance.
the Red Guards really splintered into factional battles and were unable to see the larger picture — and (unfortunately) the “overthrow all” line gained support among some of the most important (and promising) forces among the new generation. (Overthrow all means, precisely, that they were not willing to unite with elements of the old party or the current state — and that they didn’t think that there were significant elements there, in the current apparatus, to unite with.)
Mao argued tirelessly that it was necessary to win over the great mass of the existing cadre to a revolutionary line, and that there was potential to do this. and he said to his own supporters “Don’t be a Gang of Four” — meaning “don’t try to go it alone, form these grand alliances for power.”
Zhou Enlai emerged (i believe) as the leader of a great swath of the existing party cadre (and state leadership at many levels). And acted as their representative in the complex struggle. And there too, unfortunately, I don’t believe they (or he) was won over when all was said and done. Zhou Enlai was one of the main targets of the “overthrow all” forces — and Mao’s defense of him (and his determination to find allies among the forces Zhou most represented) was in some ways the breaking point of Mao’s own relationship with those sections of the Red Guards.
By 1971, when the army (and Lin Biao in particular) were pushed back from overall power (and the danger of a military coup was averted), Zhou played a key role in rebuilding a functioning ruling coalition and program. And (within that) it is hard to overlook that he tirelessly brought back the discredited high level cadre that had been associated with the worst revisionism. In particular Zhou sponsored and elevated Deng Xiaoping (in a process that certainly looks sinister in retrospect, now that no one can deny the program that Deng represented). As Zhou declined in health, it was Deng who took over his day to day work as Premier.
It is a larger discussion, but my view is that Zhou’s program (like Deng’s) represented at this point a rightist one. And particularly it was expressed in terms of “modernization” — i.e. the vision of Chinese socialism that mean a highly efficient, industrialized, tightly wound, highly powerful country taking its place on the world stage — a vision that saw the main problem as the backwardness and ignorance of the peasant millions, not the capitalist content that the modernization strategies tended to uncritically adopt.
The RCP’s thesis (articulated by both Avakian and Lotta) is that Mao waged on “last battle” from 1974 to 1976 against the very forces that took power in September 1976. this was a complex series of events that are generally rather opaque unless you have the key that unlocks them: i.e. that the right was gathering its forces, fighting for its program, biding its time, preparing its ranks… and that “the Gang of Five” (Four plus Mao himself) were scrambling (somewhat desperately) to warn and mobilize people against what was coming.
In that “last battle,” both Mao and Zhou were dying (Zhou had cancer and died first). But it seems clear to me that by that point (i.e. after 1971) Zhou and Mao took more and more distance from each other (strategically and politically) and were really on different sides.
There are many ways in which Zhou is seen as the one who held things together, stopped things from going to extremes, protected those who felt persecuted, helped bring people back from political disgrace, etc. and there was a basis (especially among the educated and cadre) for a real popularity.
And this has come out in many ways (right down to today), but at the time came out most sharply in the “counterrevolutionary incident” of April 1976 (as Mao’s death and the revolution’s endgame was approaching) — where a memorial to Zhou became the occasion for a whole outpouring in the streets of militant opposition to Mao and the Cultural Revolution. (And this incident was the occasion for knocking down Deng a second time…)
Obviously Zhou is not responsible for things that happened after his death. But it is a snapshot of what he had come to represent (at that point) and the degree to which he (personally) was a rallying point for those forces who would (very very soon) take power and overthrow everything Mao and the Cultural Revolution stood for.
I’m saying, in short, that a great deal of what Avakian and Lotta argued has always been convincing for me. And corroboration for this analysis of Zhou comes from an interesting quarter: I read with great interest the book “Eldest Son” (a biography of Zhou Enlai by Han Suyin, who had by then emerged as a fiercely partisan supporter of the Deng revisionists.) And her thesis is that Zhou is the under-appreciated patron saint and godfather of the 1976 coup, and the patient, long-suffering protector of those targeted by the storms of the Cultural Revolution.
[Han Suyin. Eldest Son: Zhou Enlai and the Making of Modern China. New York: Hill & Wang, 1994.]
I know the issue of religion is close to your heart, gary. And there is an interesting set of line struggles and contradictions involved there. Here is my basic understanding (much simplified): The Maoist camp saw the main religious problem as the various foreign-connected established churches that (they believed) were tied to imperialism. The revisionist camp saw the main problem as the “superstition” and backwardness of the people. (This from the wonderful documentary collection called “Religious Policy in Maoist China.” or something like that.) Zhou was firmly in the anti-superstition camp — and toward the end argued (in many visible ways) that the Chinese revolution still had massive anti-feudal tasks to take up for modernization, and that it was premature to think that pushing socialism forward in new ways was on the agenda.
Finally, it is true, as i said, that Jiang Jing mentioned Zhou Enlai as a comrade in her speech during her 1980 trial. I assume she was (like Mao) seeking to speak to that large swathe of cadre in the party and state who he represented (and who, Mao believed, ultimately wanted socialism not capitalist restoration). Beyond that, I have no special insight into her remarks and views.
Thoughts?
May9 said
“Where does Avakian say the goal was to get people to say “These people are crazy, but they’re serious?””
In one of the Washington Post articles about the event. I believe the one from January 29, 1979. I would link you but it’s not possible.
“Rather there is a clear line difference, one that says violence is ALWAYS alienating and one that says it is not.”
Mike E’s posts in both threads go well beyond making the small claim that “violence is not always alienating” against the straw man of “violence is always alienating”. In fact he tries to portray the working class as ‘politically attracted’ to violence itself.
He says – “But the issue there is not violence per se. Many among the people respect violence and militancy, and find it attractive politically.”
He goes on to cite the anti-colonial struggle in No. Ireland as ‘proof’, or West Virginia beer joints (nice stereotype).
But he does make an important point in the link you gave, which I believe speaks to the ‘street fighting’ in 1979.
“It is wrong for left forces to act like they are already at “war” with the government. The power of the state and the coherence of the system means that those foolish people who move to such a war footing will either be hunted down and captured (relatively quickly), or else they will be forced to burrow so deep into an isolated “underground” that they will politically self-neutralize.
Venceremos was rounded up quickly. Weatherman basically just hide out, and made a few symbolic acts with made pompous declarations. The Puerto Rican armed groups were broken up and captured. The BLA and allied groups like May 19 were a fiasco. Their politics were (at best) symbolic — manifestos without prospects of influence or power. They were not about “preparing minds and organizing forces for revolution.””
That last sentence is key. How on earth did throwing bricks at police at the ’79 demo do anything to build organization and prepare minds for revolution?
Timo says
“Also could you please point out where anyone other then you say that the point of the “Deng Demo” was “to impress small pockets of Maoists around the world.” Out of curiosity May9, did you read the main article of this thread, “No Cheap Shots?””
My goodness, evidently I need to quote your own post back to you.
“May9 you say
“Especially an event such as this which ultimately failed to bring any large scale working class sympathy to the Gang of Four clique in the US, which was its objective.”
Mike has said
“But the point I’m making is about what we intended and what we accomplished: We wanted the Maoists of the world to know that not everyone was going along with the Deng coup. The loss of China had left the world Maoist movement in profound disarray — we had few horizontal contacts. Many were isolated in remote parts of the world (and remote parts of third world countries).
This incident was a way of getting into the international press in a way that someone in various countries might come across. The point was to start to regroup the anti-revisionist Maoists. And it had that effect. I met Maoists (later in the process of forming the RIM) who learned about the existence of anti-Deng Maoists (other than themselves) because of international coverage of this event.”
That’s what YOU wrote. How does that contradict what I said? “Thanks”.
May9 said
Ultimately it would be great if the method warriors would follow their own advice. If anything it just looks like these long and repeated rants about method are nothing but cover for attacks and distortions of particular commentators who disagree with the polemics being posted here.
Mike E said
May 9 writes:
Viewing it this way is an extension of your other highly-developed views. But discussions of line are exactly not disguised discussions of personalities.
I wrote:
And we have not focused on you, personally. (And I don’t know anything about you personally).
Some “particular commentators” express lines and employ methods that we communists need to excavate. And I’m grateful (even appreciative) when “particular commentators” express those lines and methods in concentrated form.
Cameron said
CWM I have just spent 5 minutes browsing through the Washington Post via Proquest newspaper database that I can access from my university. I have found a number of newspaper articles from 1979 about the RCP anti-Deng demo. They corroborate Mike’s account.
Park, D.C. Police Gird For Teng Visit Violence
By Christopher Dickey Washington Post Staff Writer
The Washington Post (1974-Current file); Jan 26, 1979
5 Men Arrested After Attack on China Chancery
By Christopher Dickey and Alfred E. Lewis Washington Post Staff Writers
The Washington Post (1974-Current file); Jan 25, 1979
Two Maoists Disrupt Teng Ceremonies
By Edward Walsh Washington Post Staff Writer
The Washington Post (1974-Current file); Jan 30, 1979
Violence Flares Briefly in Day of Varied Protests
By Paul W. Valentine and Christopher Dickey Washington Post Staff Writers
The Washington Post (1974-Current file); Jan 30, 1979
Nine Protesters Given Release
The Washington Post (1974-Current file); Feb 2, 1979
Demonstrations, Parades Planned This Weekend
The Washington Post (1974-Current file); May 5, 1979
I have not had time to look through any other newspapers yet but I’m sure they would have mentioned the Deng demo. I believe someone earlier in the discussion mentioned the articles written by legal scholars about the Mao defendents’ case.
Athan G. Theoharis, “FBI Surveillance: Past and Present”, Cornell Law Review, Vol. 69 (April 1984); and Peter Erlinder with Doug Cassel, “Bazooka Justice: The Case of the Mao Tse Tung Defendents – Overreaction Or Foreshadowing?”, Public Eye, Vol. II, No. 3&4 (1980), pp. 40-43.
Cameron said
Mike would you be able to write a more detailed post about the Deng demo, what lead up to it, what happened on the day and afterwards etc. I think this part of US left history should be better known. It would also be good to learn more about China’s capitalist restoration.
It is hard to find information about it without trawling through old newspapers. Would be good to have a good online account.
Leslie1917 said
Since Elbaum’s history of the new communist movement has been mentioned several times in this thread, I’d like to ask a question: Am I correct in thinking that eight years after the book was published it remains the most ambitious effort to provide a comprehensive history of the new communist movement?
If I am correct–and I think I am:
1–It’s unfortunate that the most ambitious history of this movement was written by someone so hostile to its perspective; i.e, as was remarked–I’m not sure by whom—when the book first appeared, it’s a revisionist account of a movement that sought to define itself in opposition to revisionism.
[One telling indication of Elbaum's grossly one-sided view of the new communist movement is the attention he devotes to its ultra-leftism, a term that occupies three lines in the book's index. By contrast, "rightism" and "economism" don't appear in the index, and Elbaum blithely overlooks the possibility that these problems also characterized important aspects of the new communist movement's activity (which, in my not so humble opinion, they certainly did). Moreover, at the risk of displaying the scholasticism that the Kasama project justifiably tries to avoid, I would add that Elbaum's comments about the new communist's movement's ultra-leftism are buttressed by genuflecting to Lenin's Left-Wing Communism, without noting that even in this polemic, Lenin viewed what he called right-wing doctrinarism as much more dangerous than its leftist counterpart. Reasonable people can disagree about whether and at what points rightism or ultra-leftism was the main problem of various aspects of the new communist movement. But the problem with Elbaum's book is its almost exclusive focus on ultra-leftism. And that one-sided focus should provide prima facie evidence not to take for granted the validity of what he says about any particular event, including the demonstration against Deng].
2–It’s also puzzling. Why hasn’t any one (or group) more sympathetic to the new communist movement attempted a more balanced and equally ambitious history of it? Mike, did any of the RCP’s publications ever review the book or comment on it? A few years after the book was published, I mentioned it to several long time rank and file RCP cadre. They had never heard of it, so I assumed there hadn’t even been any internal discussion of the book, at least at the rank and file level. In my view, the fact that they didn’t even know of the book’s existence was evidence of the bubble-like character of many aspects of life inside the RCP–but that’s a different issue.
land said
This is a response to the people who were not able to be part of the response of many of us to the visit of Deng Xiaoping to the U.S.
Really I was so proud reading over the accounts in D.C. For the people who are so skeptical that this even happened there is not much to say because it has been said.
The whole purpose of this was to make come alive Mao’s statement in 1966 “If people like Deng stage a coup they will know no peace.” But no one expected the response of the media to our resistance to the US parading Deng around the country. It was front page. The Revolutionary Communist Party was front page. People were asking “what is this? Who are these people? What is happening in China?
I think Mike mentions this but they had a press conference on the lawn of the White House and it was disrupted by Maoists from the Revolutionary Worker with Red Books.
This disruption of Deng’a visit was biggest in D.C., but it was happening all over the country everywhere he went. It was making international news.
This is what Mike said: “The point I’m making is about what we intended and what we accomplished: We wanted the Maoists of the world to know that not everyone was going along with the Deng coup. The loss of China had left the world Maoist movement in profound disarray – we had few horizontal contacts. Many were isolated in remote parts of the world (and remote parts of third world countries).
This incident was a way of getting into the international press in a way that someone in various countries might come across. The point was to start to regroup the anti-revisionist Maoists. And it had that effect. I met Maoists (later in the process of forming the RIM) who learned about the existence of anti-Deng Maoists (other than themselves) because of international coverage of this event.”
I personally wasn’t able to come out to the DC demo. I made it to several in areas further away.
And I did come out to DC to build support for Bob Avakian when he was charged with the conspiracy crimes after the demo. And I think it was right for the RCP to seriously build the defense for Avakian and the other Defendants.
For people who seem to doubt that this happened in such a major way there is evidence of this – just find the time to research it. But the most important thing was that revolutionaries grasped the importance of making such an internationalist statement – a atatement made in the streets – that Mao’s legacy was going to continue to live on.
Miles Ahead said
I WAS ONE OF THE ORIGINAL 79 Mao Defendants, thus I think I can speak with SOME (emphasis some) authority on the demo and what occurred afterwards.
Before I explain what to me was a very important lesson from this experience, I want to raise something else, and I think some of the comments heretofore circuitously bring this to the fore.
This is a question that nags at me still. That is—how much do we rely on individuals’ empirical experience and knowledge to sum up an entire event, or how do we really delve into political impact and repercussions, in attempts to examine and sum things up in a more sweeping (or realistic political) way?
IMO, the main thrust of the 1979 demonstration, and what was the glue that united the 400-500 demonstrators (some in the RCP, others not members), was to uphold Mao and defend the Chinese Revolution in the face of the revisionist coup led by Deng. (And let’s not forget what the U.S. imperialists’ had in mind with the entrance of Deng at “the helm.”)
The Chinese revolution, and the subsequent Cultural Revolution, had already been a beacon light –the international skies alit – and there were many people internationally who wanted to fight against those who would attempt to extinguish the bright light of revolution.
Perhaps some of the tactics employed in 1979 could possibly be summed up as ultra-left, but for huge numbers, not just in the U.S., to take on the revisionists, and give voice to revolutionary-minded people internationally, was what was called for and much needed. And the anti-Deng demo, overall, rose to that occasion.
But a lot of how you viewed or reacted during the course of the demonstration very much depended on where you were situated. Maybe this is only my own perception (and experience), but personally I was not, nor do I think lots of other people were prepared for the “melee” that ensued.
So when my fellow RW reporter and I turned the corner, after chanting and scribbling copious notes, what I witnessed was some of the worst and most wanton police brutality that I’ve ever seen…and shit, I have participated in 100s of demonstrations, militant and otherwise.
(It was reported that there were 500 cops there, but what is etched in my mind was, there seemed to be a motorcycle cop right next to every single demonstrator, along the route. And that’s not counting the po-lice troops assembled around the corner.)
Just two examples of the riotous and vicious cops: there was a very petite woman, just ahead, and within minutes, had not only been knocked to the ground by numerous police wielding their billy clubs, but the cops knocked out practically all of her teeth (she ending up with 43 stitches in her mouth alone), and she was laying unconscious in a pool of blood. My RW reporter/partner was immediately clubbed in the face, breaking her cheek bone. And the list goes on.
After much back and forth to D.C.—arraignments et al. and after initially spending 5 days in the D.C. jail, eventually the charges were dropped on most of the Mao Defendants, and then eventually levelled at TWO –, not just Bob Avakian, but Tina Fishman. I have never understood why Tina’s name seems to have been dropped nor linked with Bob’s…especially since she was facing if not the same amount, close to the same amount, of charges as well as jail time.
But here is what I want to retell, and hopefully not come off either hyperbolic or with some hyped bravado.
The 79 arrested were separated by gender. (Some of the men were continually beaten in jail.) As I recall there were 43 of us women in one small cell, including those who were in dire need of medical attention, which attention they did not receive for at least two days. (This included the woman whose teeth were knocked out BTW.)
And I’m convinced the only reason they received any medical care was because not only were the 43 of us relentless in our militancy and demands for their care, but we also managed to unite with the general incarcerated female prison population—some of whom were originally planted as snitches, and who joined in with our super vocal and non-stop demands. Political discussion and debate reigned in the DC jail, much to our jailors’ chagrin.
But among the 43, there were obvious differences in terms of political commitment, “consciousness,” revolutionary communists alongside non-communists, etc.
One of the main and understandable concerns among the women was—“What’s gonna happen to my kids?” “Who’s caring for them?” etc. (Like it or not, and no matter how stalwart you may be, or appear to be, this is a thought that crosses your mind, even if subconsciously. But some of the women were verbalizing their concern, even expressing fear.)
Our continuous political discussion and struggle was completely participatory. At different intervals we tried to sum up what was happening, or anticipate what the enemy had in store, etc., be prepared as a collective, and at the same time, and perhaps even more so, we were trying to keep the larger picture and our purpose in mind.
But in the face of tremendous adversity, constant mental and physical harassment from the female guards, et al., instead of haranguing our fellow comrades who might have been wavering at different points, some more “seasoned” comrades definitely helped carry on intense, but not rhetorical or hype-type, political discussion and struggle. I would have to say that this is where we collectively drew our greatest strength and determination.
Each woman had ease of mind that they could ask questions or lay out differences, without being made to feel politically inferior, or that they’d come under some sort scrutiny or verbal attack.
(Some of us had managed to smuggle The Red Book into our cell.) We tried to put “[correct] politics in command,” unite into our own “iron fist” and throughout the “process,” if you want to call it that, managed to win over many women outside our “enclave.”
(In fact, we were eventually put into our own mini-cells while “awaiting arraignment” and had become such a cause célèbre that many in the prison population were slipping us smokes, coffee, etc. Our political work didn’t stop when we were separated…lots of continued disruption and non-stop discussion squeezed through the bars.)
One little incident that I will forever remember was—when we were separated, and alone, it was clear that not only were the jailors trying to divide and conquer, but they were hoping that the Mao Defendants would act like they should receive some sort of preferential treatment, thus alienating us from our new-found comrades in the general population. Au contraire. When I entered the solitary cell, I realized that it must belong to a “regular”; all of their belongings still in tact. Immediately I thought of the Panthers and Mao… “never take a needle or thread from the masses.” So for 3 days I didn’t touch a thing.
Had lots of discussion with my immediate “neighbors” Some of these women were not familiar with Mao or the Chinese Revolution before the Mao Defendants arrival but sure as hell knew who the BPP was. Next thing I knew, was given an entire pack of smokes.
Personally I don’t view the “need” for political dissection of the anti-Deng demonstration, initiated by the rcp, or the Mao Defendants as some sort of all-important historical event, most especially if it is taken out of context and is somehow taking on some sort of life of its own.
Instead, when I reflect back to those times, I prefer to view it as part of a more sweeping revolutionary process and a particular segment in our history where some revolutionaries and revolutionary-minded people were willing to “seize the time”, step up to the plate, and give voice to the millions around the world who continued to uphold the Chinese revolution, our revolutionary comrades, and the leadership of Mao Zedong.
Were errors made in the process…sure, natch, of course. But what was the overall thrust and impact—at least at the time and for some time to come? I’d have to say overwhelmingly positive and necessary.
Cameron said
Thankyou Miles Ahead. That was an incredible post.
land said
Thank you Miles Ahead. The discussion of being inside that you give and the discussion outside as with Mike and the miners is an important part of the summation of this amazing event.
Also the description of the police brutality. It was very vicious.
As you say people stepped to the plate for Mao and the people of the world.
One of the questions that has been thrown out in the call for Do Up Some Revolutionary Strategy
by Radical Eyes is what does it mean for the ruling class not to be able to rule.
The ruling class thought they could bring Deng to this country and parade him around. And they were not able to do this. And people around the world saw that they were not able to do this.
They were not able to parade around quietly that revolution and Mao had been defeated
in China. And the police brutality showed the lengths they were willing to go. And they still couldn’t do it.
I am not sure how this applies to the times we are in now. Certainly it applies to our efforts in relation to Nepal. In some ways it applies to the continued efforts around Mumia Abu-Jamal.
But it mainly is going to take a new analysis. How does the Deng demo fit into this Or does it?
Miles Ahead said
Land, you raise some good questions, as per usual.
I think your point about the cops and their blatant, over-the-top brutality, is an example of how the anti-Deng demonstration (along with the subsequent charges and continued harassment and brutality) shows that a real nerve was struck. That nerve wasn’t solely touched among the likes of the U.S. rulers, but with Deng and his cohorts as well.
But I also think that it is important not to blow this event out of proportion. It is easy to fall into a voluntaristic view of things, and can provide fodder for the skeptics who cry “hyperbole.”
Certainly it was extremely important for U.S. revolutionaries to take a staunch stand, and obviously important for the international community as well.
IMO, it was pivotal to uphold revolution ala China and Mao, when it looked like revolution had been defeated. I have to applaud the rcp in this instance for taking a vanguard position at the time, while lots of people and organizations were in disarray after China’s revisionist coup.
Some people left various organizations, including the rcp, or revolutionary politics altogether, feeling defeated after the coup. Some individuals even said to me they felt personally (¡ay caray!) “betrayed.” In the long run, maybe even worse yet, is what I’ve heard among some former (and BTW honest) revolutionaries, that the “communist project is dead.”
IMO, it wasn’t so much that they’d lost their revolutionary zeal, but that they looked at revolution, and China in particular, idealistically.
Am not trying to minimize the loss with this reversal; it was a huge blow to revolutionary forces (and the world’s people) everywhere. But I do uphold Mao and China’s “legacy,” hopefully not with blinders on. And that pole needed to be out there—back then and now.
As we can see, others around the world have picked up the gauntlet. Not only that, but because of Mao and the revolutionaries in China, we are in a better position to analyze the inherent contradictions, what’s principal, secondary, tertiary within both revolutionary movements and situations today, as well as (initially) victorious revolutions.
For Mao to say that under socialism the bourgeoisie resides in the communist party itself, was more than enlightening. It seems sad but true that some of the idealists did not heed Mao’s correct analysis. Thus, while reading over some of commentary on K in regards to China, there are those people, while very adept politically, who seem to still be in denial about the reversal in China.
Like I said, the “event”—the Deng demo–was overwhelmingly positive and necessary, especially at that time. In 1979—there was a lot going on on the world stage—Iran for starters. So I would like to reiterate that I also think it necessary not to take things out of context.
Land said:
The Deng demo was 31 years ago, so for some that must feel like a lifetime. What I think would be an error is if we tried to neatly fit various past events into some tidy new package. But even today, and for our future, there are various lessons to be learned—both positive and negative.
IMO there were errors made during this overall positive event and campaign plus its offshoots. And what I think was a big error on the part of the rcp, was not to sum up those errors. At least a summation was not forthcoming to the rank and file, even to those of us who had been busted.
A few somewhat enigmatic points on that—I’m not able to get into great detail because they might touch on some security questions. But…what the following few examples might point to is when some of us get so swept up in the moment, or when our particular work or cause gets so overblown, we can lose sight of the other contradictions looming large in society, and we end up alienated from the very people we’re trying to reach.
Before the “Turn D.C. Upside Down” campaign was launched, and when the Mao Defendants (79) were still going back and forth to D.C., a few of us (all white women and Mao Defendants) were sent (dropped off really by a male comrade) into the Black community to do agitation and leaflet about the demo, arrests, etc.; except, to my knowledge, no groundwork had been done in this community.
(Part of the march was through the streets of the Black community—it was pretty haunting, what contrast, seeing as the White House was in full view at the end of one of the streets.) But as far as I know, the day of the demo was the first time the majority of the Black community had heard anything about why we were even there.
So, not only were we women very isolated (even isolated from one another), the situation became dangerous. My instinct was to “rely on the masses”, at least those who seemed sympathetic and interested in revolution and China. And personally I was able to turn the situation around, at least temporarily, as some of the community came to my defense.
Could some lessons from how we implement the mass line be had from this experience?
But the point is…there needed to be preliminary political work done in this community to help set the stage for further agitation. And not only did that not seem to be the case, but when I raised what I thought a potentially grave error, never heard another word about it. We shouldn’t be afraid of both acknowledging errors or wanting to correct them.
In order to move forward, it is necessary to have a more thoroughgoing and COLLECTIVE summation, of both positive and negative aspects. Otherwise, it’s as if every event is something new, or the most pivotal, with lots of hype, and unfortunately you just might repeat some of those errors. Plus, if the summation isn’t more collective, and cadre feel some ease of mind, as we can see with the rcp, a lot of those cadre just say what they think the leadership wants to hear…which might not reflect reality at all..
It is interesting to me that not all that long after the Deng demo, the campaign for May Day 1980 was launched—and it is still unclear on what basis the call for 100,000 in the streets came to be. May Day 1980 was on the heels of the murder of Damian Gárcia, and his courageous act at the Alamo; also not long after the CWP Greensboro slaughter.
There is nothing wrong with striving and setting your sights for 100,000 in the streets, but to present things with “red colored glasses” to not only the masses but the cadre, does a disservice to, and disarms them both. Or to simply or overall sum things up after the event as if things went off without a hitch, or blame the cadre for only 10,000 participants instead of 100,000 is ludicrous.)
Here’s something else I don’t agree with coming off the pro-revolution/Mao demo. To me, in part, it is a lesson in how we handle the contradiction of leadership/led. In retrospect, the groundwork for the focus being so overly tilted onto Bob Avakian, had already started to be laid.
An article appeared in the RW about cherishing our leaders (with sops to leadership/led)—which was pretty watered down by today’s rcp standards; another one with Bob not being apologetic for being an intellectual.
I mentioned Tina Fishman (as the co-defendant), and for a while the campaign around the Mao Defendants certainly incorporated her in the mix. But then it was as if she just disappeared (except the charges against her, and the potential jail time didn’t.) The next focus was Bob going into exile, and why.
(There has been a lot of speculation on the Left as to why Bob even joined the Deng demo. But speculation gets you just so far.)
But I think the whole revolutionary and international tone of the Deng demo got lost (even “lost in translation.”) “A single spark can start a prairie fire”, except the fire segued into being about Bob Avakian. And worse yet, the focus and campaign became a further entrenchment of cult of the personality.
I am not so naïve as to not understand that there are leaders who come forth in our struggle(s), nor the fact that the need for good leadership is a given. It is not necessary to get into whether or not Bob Avakian, the individual, deserves to be touted as “the” revolutionary leader in the U.S. But to make the very real contradiction between leadership and led, with the leader aspect principal—even to gloat over it, is to me counter-revolutionary. We weren’t called the Mao Defend-ants for nothing.
So yes, I agree we need some new revolutionary analysis, but we do have some history under our belts, parts of the puzzle, that deserve some further analysis and excavation as well. (“New”-”revolutionary” analysis almost could be construed as an oxymoron.)
I was just thinking the other day, how could Badiou say an event was saturated if he hadn’t more thoroughly studied that event in the first place?
land said
I think what you are saying about summation is so needed and important. When I was learning about Mao I remember his 1,2,3,4 summation. You make plans, you sum them up, you make new plans and you sum them up. That’s what we did. And after a period that just didn’t happen anymore.
I have read a lot of posts about how upset people were and are bout the lack of summation and how people feel the need for summation. I certainly do but I think it is only through Kasama that we are going to see this happen.
At the time I barely knew who Bob Avakian was. I knew the Panthers but I mainly wanted to know ab out Mao and the revolution in China. You mentioned that it was at the time that there was upheaval in Iran. I do remember Avakian saying in a speech “People tell me that with these charges I have the party should be more cautious in defending the Iranians.” And Avakian said “if we didn’t defend the Iranians we wouldn’t be worth defending.” I was impressed.
The Party has gone along way from that kind of internationalismt today..
I didn’t mean to say that we should necessarily take a look at 30 years ago when we are making our plans for the next period. But reading over the posts on the Deng demo it seemed there were many people because of their age or politics that didn’t get the significance of this in terms of defending revolution and revolutionaries or as Mike said in relation to Nepal “this is what a revolution looks like.” The other side got the significance of it.
And I think your comment is interesting that the Defendants were called the MaoTseTung Defendants. They were not called the Bob Avakian Defendants.
I would be interested in you going more into the last sentence about Badiou and the event.
Miles Ahead said
Oh dear…am still struggling through lots of Badiou, and instead have really been trying to study and restudy Bill Martin’s “Into the Wild”-on Khukuri-which I find to be a huge breakthrough in even how we approach theory and analysis.
But, think it was Mike who mentioned that we might even consider reading Mein Kampf to get a better understanding of what the hell fascism is. Have to admit that at this point in my life am not particularly interested in doing that. However…
think the main point he might have been making is that we need to scour all sorts of sources (even unlikely ones).
So…if Badiou proposes that certain historical events are “saturated”–to put it crassly “been there, done that”, my (rhetorical) question is, how could he even arrive at that analysis if he hadn’t more thoroughly studied the event in its own right?
By way of what I think negative example. There has been a flurry of comments at different times on K. around the Panthers (or the 60s). “Over, done with, so what?” kinda attitude. But how can we be so cavalier in our “summation” of say the Panthers without really studying not just them, but the conditions and politics surrounding their rise, their peak, and even what were some of the causes of their “downfall,” to be able to better arrive at some “saturated” conclusion?
How can we be so dismissive out of hand, in our search and quest for truth in today’s reality, if we don’t try and study and learn about movements and revolutions, economics and politics, that affected entire generations?
IMO to take that quasi-philistine approach is sort of like an “instant gratification” one to bringing about revolutionary change.
I am not purporting we get all nostalgic. What I am trying to say is that we strive to be better materialists.
Land has mentioned several times how much John Steele’s post “Where is Our Mississippi?” has impacted on her and others. imo, what was part of why this piece was so powerful was, clearly it pointed to the necessity of our reconceiving and regrouping, and moving forward, but it also traced some important historical steps taken in order to even get to where we’re at today.
There is a new documentary being released very soon called “Neshoba, The Price of Freedom,” about Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman. The headline of the review in the NYT is: “A Long, Hot Summer in Mississippi That Still Burns.”
What does that say in terms of our understanding the past, or even “saturated” events, in relation to the here and now, and for our future? Or even getting a better handle on the Obama phenomena–both the people that support him as well as the intense hatred of him and the ever present racism that still abounds.
CWM said
Miles ahead, it is interesting to read your account of the demo.
I’m wondering: did you really believe that you might be able to mobilize the people of D.C. against Deng? Did you think that ordinary residents might rally against his visit, even though what happens in China has almost zero relevance to Americans’ lives?
Miles Ahead said
CWM writes:
To your first question, re mobilizing the people of D.C. against Deng, whether you intended it or not, think this is a rather silly question (or some sort of tease) and one that we both already know the answer to. Of course not. You and I both know this is a bogus debate.
Has any struggle, fight against injustice, war, strike, ad infinitum, which was initiated by a relatively smaller (and more advanced) group (historically the students and youth have been the key initiators) ever amassed an entire population or even a “majority” at the onset, won over an entire people of a region, country, et al.? Of course not.
A huge part of our battle as revolutionaries is in the ideological sphere. By viewing the “American” public as only caring about their immediate and personal situation or needs is a dangerous one. At least, it reiterates and aids the imperialists ideologically and strengthens the imperialists’ hegemony (for their own interests), over the U.S. people.
(A sticky wicket and nit-picking subject with me—we in the U.S. are North Americans—and North America includes Canada and Mexico.)
I still believe in the basic tenet of “create public opinion, seize power,” although am not sure that simply creating public opinion by itself is the answer to a very complex world situation. However…
When Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, was she supposed to wait patiently for another 50 years to do so because she hadn’t won over the hearts and minds of the southern populace, let alone the U.S. as a whole? Was the Iranian Student Association supposed to be silent (while residing in the U.S. or Europe) and not expose the Shah, the Iranian people’s plight, U.S. machinations in Iran, etc. because the majority of the U.S. population probably had never even heard of Iran?
Was it ultra-left for the ILWU or The Wobblies to bill themselves as “international” unions? Was the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, which became a worldwide cause, with individuals like Steve Biko or Nelson Mandela, or Soweto as lightening rods, for naught because after all, South Africa is in Africa, and what has that got to do with someone miles away in Podunk Amerikkka?
Were the Bolsheviks & Lenin in error to attempt and realize the first proletarian revolution because they were in the minority, or after the revolution form the ICM? Is “Workers of the World Unite” just an empty and rhetorical slogan?
Obviously what I want to take issue with is around a more fundamental ideological outlook. Obviously and unfortunately, the U.S. and other bourgeois and imperialist forces have hegemony in this sphere, i.e., nationalism (and know-nothing-ism) vs. internationalism and progressive or revolutionary consciousness.
Unfortunately these ideological differences are not unique to the U.S. (you can be privy to it even amongst some of the most oppressed worldwide), but surely the xenophobia, jingoism,nationalism and anti-internationalism (and Sarah Palinism, philistinism and counter-revolutionary-ism) is grossest in the U.S.
As far as relevance goes, I think your statement is a continuation of the same toxic ideology of our rulers. They for sure don’t want people at large to see the relevance or connection between people globally, and most especially not with revolutionary peoples.
To slam dunk China, and its revolutionary past, is almost sacrosanct. I say that because, you appear to be viewing revolutionary China through the prism of U.S. nationalism; maybe even syndicalism. At the very least, IMO a it’s a narrow view of both world events and the world’s people.
What revolutionary China represented, inspired and symbolized to the oppressed of this world is beyond measure.
Yes, the Deng demo was an advanced and bold action, but it resonated with many people not only around the world, but many, most especially, progressive forces in the U.S. But I view this demonstration, not as an end in itself, but as part of the fight for revolution, representative of the international community.
Personally I would be hesitant to say that this demo “lit up the skies” but will say that I think it helped sharpen the lines of demarcation with some force. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall at the U.S./China Friendship Association (a very progressive organization) but instead was in the D.C. jail.
???’s–The relevance of what “happens in China” to “American” lives (and not just some import from China that has lead-based paint—actually that product is a result of the reversal in China.). The relevance of what happens in Nepal or India to “American” lives. The relevance of the struggle of the Palestinians to “American” lives.??
Did the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, or Salvador Allende in Chile, even though these assassinations were instigated and carried out by the U.S. CIA have nothing to do with Amerikaners? (Apparently the U.S. government thought Lumumba and Allende big enough threats to their imperialist system to murder them.)Did the wars for national liberation in Africa not impact on the U.S. population? Is what happens politically, economically and culturally in Latin America so insignificant that it doesn’t affect people (and governments) everywhere?
Was “The Battle of Algiers” a waste of celluloid? Did the Panthers go off the deep end by waving, studying and popularizing The Red Book????
(Certainly with the development of a more entwined and interconnected global economy, and the phenomenon of the Internet, what happens around the world appears to have even more relevance to American lives than ever before. At least there is more awareness of the rest of the world.)
Immigration, and undocumented workers, is a hot topic these days…actually it has been at least a simmering or near boiling topic for years! As the U.S. imperialists sow seeds of confusion, or slander immigrants as “illegal aliens” who are •taking jobs (what jobs?) away from “American” workers, do we sit idly by, appealing to the lowest “common” dominator while the U.S. imperialists totally exploit both the workers here, and doubly exploit the workers from Mexico or Central America? Oppressed and exploited by the same damn imperialists.
Don’t we have a responsibility to fight tooth and nail against say SB1070 in AZ, while the U.S. media says the “majority” of people, most especially in AZ, are for it? What happens politically and economically in Mexico and the U.S. impacts more on the people of those two countries than maybe a lot of people would like to admit.
And what happens in the world reverberates on all the people of the world to one degree or another.
This reminds me of–May Day 2010 in the Bay Area, when some Kasama comrades were interviewing lots of people at the demonstration—which demonstration was focused on immigration. The K. comrade didn’t simply limit his questions to immigration, but also talked about the revolution in Nepal. The overwhelming response was not a narrow one; instead the people themselves understood the links between their own struggle and that of the revolution in Nepal.
What was for me one of the most jarring reminders of both an internationalist bent and consciousness was the day before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Hundreds of Braceros, transported in 20+ public buses from all over Mexico, descended on the Paseo Reforma in Mexico City, supposedly only to continue their fight of 40 years. The Braceros, who are now in their 70’s, 80’s and even 90’s, were hobbling up the steps to the top of the Angel de la Independencia (across the street from the U.S. Embassy). And what was the very first huge banner they unfurled? “U.S. Stay Out of Iraq! ¡No más Guerra! No to U.S. imperialism!”
(This action was followed the next day with a march to the Zocalo consisting of 30,000—Mexicanos, Venezuelans, Cubans, Salvadorans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, etc. with a smattering of Gringos.) You might ask, what did Iraq have to do with all these people, including the Braceros? Apparently they thought it relevant.
In 1964 I went to my first anti-Vietnam war “demonstration,” This after being exposed (and open) to some real research and facts about Vietnam and the Vietnamese’s struggle for national liberation. Believe me, I was not some Marxist, couldn’t even claim to be anti-imperialist since I didn’t know what that really meant. I’d been schooled in the Civil Rights Movement.
There were only ten of us at UCLA, carrying picket signs. We had to dodge the eggs, tomatoes and general garbage being thrown, and had to listen to such ignorant epithets as “Go back to Russia.” In 1969, I was marching along with 500,000 strong in NYC, protesting the war in Vietnam. The throngs were still lining up to march to Central Park at 4 p.m. and the march had begun at 9 a.m. What impressed me most was, there were banners in every language—and people from all walks of life, including huge contingents of rank and file “American” workers.
So my question is back to you. What were progressives and revolutionaries supposed to do in light of the reversal in China? What are progressive/revolutionary minded people supposed to do in confronting injustice, racism, oppression et al. even if the majority of the people aren’t united—a pipe dream, or think any of this is relevant to their individual lives? How do you see making these “matters” relevant?
CWM said
Miles Ahead,
I don’t think it’s “bold” or “advanced” for a small sect of Americans to mobilize around events in China. What happens in China has almost zero relevance to 99.999% of Americans’ lives. I think it would be “bold” and “advanced” to take a position on something that actually mattered to the people who inhabit the country you live in.
You mention that the RCP failed to build a base in DC. Had it occurred to you that there might be a connection between the RCP’s focus on China and its failure to build a base?
I will also point out that your narrative about this event is contradictory. You say what “revolutionary China represented, inspired and symbolized to the oppressed of this world is beyond measure” and yet also indicate the DC residents didn’t know anything about events in China and your job was to inform them. In other words, in your idealistic narrative, “what revolutionary China represented, inspired and symbolized to the oppressed of this world is beyond measure” but, in reality, the real oppressed that you interacted with–living, breathing, ordinary people–didn’t care and apparently wanted to attack you (judging from your account of leafleting in DC in comment #47).
In my view, a real assessment of this event should begin from a very different point of departure than yours and, specifically, abandon the idealistic, romanticized depictions of “the people” that is so prevalent in RCP/Kasama rhetoric.
Mike E said
I agree with Miles’ comment from many sides.
1) The RCP had little organizing going on in DC. It held its demo there because President Carter was meeting with Deng Xiaoping there. There was some work of outreach in that city, but it was not the goal of the action. And that is true for many demos in DC (which as the capital has a unique character).
2) By contrast, there was a major attempt to “Turn DC Upsidedown” a year later — as the Mao Defendants were going on trial in DC, many people (a hundred? two hundred?) volunteered to go to DC as the core of an outreach campaign. And I would love to hear an assessment of how successful that was.
But that campaign was an attempt to reach the people of DC (especially in the oppressed, largely black communities, but also artists, progressive forces etc.)
3) I share Miles response to the remark:
This is a false assessment with far ranging implications.
By contrast, every modern radical upsurge in the U.S. has been closely tied to international events (from Haiti inspiring slave rebellions, or Germany’s 1848 stirring the most radical forces of the U.S. and the Civil War, and even more acutely in the 20th century, when the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the anti-colonial revolutions of 40s and 50s had a huge impact on radical immigrants and African American people.)
The existence of revolutionary China had a huge and very direct impact on the 1960s worldwide (and in the U.S.). Mainly among the politically advanced, of course (which is, by definition, the more conscious minority at any given point within the population).
I particularly appreciate Miles question:
4) It is revealing that CWM comes back by saying:
This is confused on a number of levels — including because that 1979 demo came after a decade of relentless RCP effort to build a base (around politics which were not focused “on China” in any sense).
The “focus on china” (specifically in a short period between 1978-79) involved the particular effort to deal with claims that “revolution are over in the world” — that followed the restoration of capitalism in China. It was a response to particular events — that the bourgeoisie was trumpeting (not just us).
This was not some vague or distant or abstract or foreign question… it was the question for revolutionaries. Is revolution possible? Has it been extinguished? Is socialism over?
No revolutionary movement (then or now) can advanced without creative ways of dealing with it (including publicly in their outreach work).
And my own experience runs completely contrary to CWM’s claim that
I have to say i am rather stunned by the stark conservatism of this assumption. And by how starkly it contradicts my own experience. It really is an argument for absorption in the narrowest self-interest and against even a pretense of internationalism.
As for my own experience: I had done endless work around Black Lung benefits, miner safety, the right to strike, etc. But none of those campaigns generated the same political interest that our work around African liberation did — or especially this Deng demo around the restoration of capitalism in china.
There was more, easy, casual support for any struggle around Black Lung benefits — but no political engagement or thought were needed for that support. By contrast, these other campaigns generated interest and debate. By then, there were huge red-baiting campaigns against us, and there was a general curiosity to find out what communists believed and wanted.
But beyond that, this world is tightly intertwined. And the events around the world have always deeply affected radical moods in the U.S.
And though some of us here may not have personally experienced the 1960s, I repeat: you can’t understand the radical movements of those times (SDS, Panthers, SNCC, the revolutoinary nationalists generally, the uptick in socialist politics, etc.) without understanding the PALPABLE impact that revolutionary China had (the cultural revolution, the red guards, the red book) in inspiring radical hopes and approaches.
Further: CWM doesn’t even address my own discussion above, about the impact of the Deng Demo on my own work in the coalfields.
It wasn’t alienating. It wasn’t impossible to grasp. Several of the workers had been in the Korean or Vietnam wars, and had their own views on the Chinese Revolution. It made questions of socialism and revolution rather real and immediate– not just as some vague “personal belief” a few of us had.
Deal with it.
5) And at the heart of this part of our discussion is larger strategic question: Should our politics should be aimed at “ordinary” Americans or the relatively advanced/radical.
First, the relatively advanced are very influenced and understanding of the importance of world events (it is part of what makes them advanced).
Second, if we assume that we can only do politics that are immediately understandable by the “ordinary” american, what will we be doing? think about it. There would be no civil rights movment. No antiwar movement. No anti-patriotism. No bucking of any tide or prejudice.
Going against the tide (precisely of mainstream and accepted views) is a prerequisite for a viable and successful radical politics. We have to vibe and connect among the people — but that means to vibe and connect with the advanced among the people (in order to reach and leverage the intermediate over time).
If we limit ourselves to what the “ordinary” American understands (at any point), we will (pretty obviously) discard anything radical (not just our internationalism) and be forced to adopt the framework and language of bourgeois politics.
And in those days (right after the 1960s) consciousness was (of course) rather different from now. You never went out among the people (especially Black populations in urban areas) without having people declare “I’m down with Mao, and down with the revolution” — there was a mass popular sentiment among the advanced. And it was real, and lingered. And it was that sentiment that was under attack by the “death of communism” rhetoric. And so when we did our political work (and not just in DC obviously) it was aimed at informing many people (who did not know much about politics) but also rallying and attracting the advanced (who often had quite sophisticated ideas). And so our views don’t represent some “romantization” of “the people” — but a rather materialist sense of how “the people” broke down into advanced, intermediate and backward (and also how the views of “the people” have changed over time, and such views/summation were themselves part of a battleground of the ongoing class struggle.)
Miles asks if there is “zero relevance” to “Americans” when the worlds main socialist country is destroyed — then what relevance is there in discussing revolution around the world, or opposing the killing of Iraqis, or the suffering in Gaza?
The blindness, narrowness, nationalism and general tailing of backwardness implied in this is stunning — and (if adopted) would be devastating in its implications for left politics. This is the doorway to a very rightist and non-revolutionary politics. (And certainly a politics denuded of internationalism and revolution.)
6) Miles talks about what motivated those marching in the Deng demo — i.e. wanting to make a living manifesto for Mao and revolution.
I have been talking more about the purpose of the Demo — why it was organized — which was to send up a visible flare that would help regroup communists worldwide.
And you can’t understand the Deng Demo without understanding both aspects.
Left politics in the U.S. have become very routinized and quite conservative in their conception. The all-to-common assumption is that our main problem is that we need to reach bigger numbers, and that our own leftism needs to be toned down to get anywhere.
But this Deng Demo is not understandable in those terms. It was not about any “day to day organizing” or some short-term plan to “reach” local populations in DC. It wasn’t about anyone’s immediate interest. It was about regrouping communists, and developing understanding around revolution, socialism and capitalist restoration among the advanced (including among us communists ourselves).
And those are important and worthwhile tasks (in their own right) — including today. (In fact: especially today!)
And it is worth talking about the Deng demo for exactly that reason.
It was a manifesto intended to rally revolutionary forces — to “raise a pole” or “light the sky” under conditions where the ruling class was saying “revolution is over.” And we were literally willing to shed blood (including our own) to make that statement. In fact the fierceness of the fighting was necessary because it made it harder to white-out.
7) Final point, several comments above (including my own) have discussed the extreme police brutality at the Deng Demo. And there was extreme police brutality. But what stands out to me about the Deng Demo is that this was fighting…. that the injuries were not one way. That the emergency room I was in was filled with both sides.
May 9 repeated the claims from the mainstream press that “members of the RCP throwing bottles, bricks, nails, and lead weights at police in Lafayette Park, as well as wielding sticks and poles.”
Those who participated (on the revolutionary side) have not given full descriptions of what they may have seen (or done) that evening — for understandable reasons of legality and security.
But this was not some one-sided police attack. And should not be imagined as something like Black Bloc tactics where people focus on trashing things, while playing cat and mouse with the cops.) It was a real fight. And the extreme brutality of the police was (in part) a result of their shock and fury over taking such injuries.
Miles Ahead said
Minor point of clarification—because I think I may have been misleading..
When I laid out my criticism of the rcp (my own perception) not doing more “mass” work in the Black community, this criticism was aimed at after the busts and demo had occurred. (There was about a 3 week lapse between when we got out of jail, and had to return to D.C., and I felt we “should strike while the iron was hot.”) I was not trying to say that there should have been a mass effort or campaign before the demo, because that would not have been particularly productive and undoubtedly impractical.
Re the experience as an “outsider” suddenly plunked down in the Black community–as you may recall I said I relied on the people from the neighbourhood who actually ended up defending me against one person. And I think it safe to say, those who came to my aid did so because they could unite with my overall politics. If they didn’t unite in some way, why would they even bother to defend me?
What I neglected to write about was—along the march mainly through the Black community, it wasn’t some small isolated sect of 4-500 people vs. the community. Sure, there were people who didn’t care—for whatever reasons—but there were also people who could unite with the sentiments of the demo, plus, there were more than a few people who ran inside their homes retrieving their old copies of the Red Book, one even telling me he had been in the Black Panther Party.
While these anecdotes, or individual experiences do help flesh things out, they in and of themselves are not that “relevant” or informative unless put in the larger, more sweeping and more collective context. E.g., it would be inaccurate to make it out like everyone was running to get their old Red Books and just because I witnessed a few people doing this, didn’t mean that everyone was. Conversely, think it is wrong to say 99.999% of the people, “ordinary” or otherwise, don’t give a shit.
As I recall, “Turn D.C. Upside Down” was a success in reaching and uniting w/lots of people and making it much more difficult for the rulers.
—BUT the politics were not watered down to try and appeal to every Tom, Dick or Harriet. There was no need to “apologize” for the demo—and people generally respect or trust you, if you do take a righteous stand, even though they may not fully agree with you.
And while I still maintain some criticisms, mainly as to how we could have done better, I am unrepentant, have no regrets, and am proud and grateful that I was part of this event that took a righteous revolutionary and internationalist stand in the face of reactionary obstacles and reactionary forces.
There is a big difference between trying to make your politics more palpable vs. really listening to and learning from people and them learning from you.
(Also –Think it is a little presumptuous to assume that people are automatically not going to be interested in revolutionary politics simply because they appear to be solely interested in their own struggle.)
And last but not least, if you examine history, it is catalyctic world events that actually shake things up from the “norm.”
Personally I care a tremendous amount about people, their lives and struggles on lots of levels. Am convinced that is what drew me to revolutionary communist politics in the first place.
But not every struggle, while perhaps worthy, provides a catalyst or impetus for moving mountains, and moving mountains is what’s on the agenda.
If you’re not some dogmatist, IMO being armed with a revolutionary and communist outlook and analysis enables you to better understand the world more all-sidedly, that is, understand the world in order to change it.
Even Mike and I were in different places and have slightly different takes on the situation as it unfolded. But I think it is safe to say that we are in agreement as to the overall political thrust of this demo, its implications and impact, and its audience.
May9 said
There is considerable confusion about the Mass Line when discussing the “advanced” and “intermediate” here. It is quite interesting how the Mass Line seems to be ignored – when the Mass Line was probably the most important strategic and theoretical development of Mao.
The strategy for revolution is ‘from the masses, to the masses’. You start from where people are at, systematize and structure the unstructured ideas, and propagate these ideas back to the masses. The RCP street battle did not do that. It ran way ahead of the masses and focused on appealing to people already committed to RCP politics. You cannot appeal to Communist cadre and call that the ‘advanced’. The advanced are those who are politically active among the masses. Now, there is a place for “advanced actions”, in which some kind of confrontation or direct action is done, but this has to be done with the support of the advanced – from among the masses – not some vanguard action done only by the cadre.
Another thing that is mentioned here which I don’t understand. Some here are quite insistent that the goings-on of China affect Americans, and that international events in general have an impact on what happens here.
This doesn’t coincide well with the earlier debate had about the ‘main danger’ & WWII and today. In that debate, the same people who insisted on the importance of the so-called “Deng coup” for Americans believe that in WWII you could separate out each country into an isolated set of contradictions, rejecting the idea of an overall main danger in the international system. That India could oppose the Allies and struggle for revolution, without somehow being a detriment to the struggle against fascism.
How can you insist on local contradictions being always primary and reject the idea of a main danger while still claiming that international events are so important for domestic revolutionary struggle?
nando said
May 9 raises a common view of the mass line — and (in my opinion) a common misconception.
No one can or should argue that every action by communists has to proceed from where the people are at during that moment — for every tactic, for every move. It would lead to a hopelessly tailist movement (and it does lead there for those who apply the “mass line” in this way).
As communists we do lots of things that (at that moment) are not particularly comprehensible to the broad masses of people — we develop communist philosophy, we hold congresses at a high level of theory and struggle, we write theoretical journals, we take actions to unite communists (at both a national and international level).
And there is no law of communism that suggests that all these actions need to apply some rigid or schematic adherance to what the masses of people understand at that moment.
Similarly the Deng demo was not intended to be an “organizing tool” among the broad masses of people — it was intended as an action that would unite communists, and put out an explicitly communist pole (in the world) for the purpose of galvanizing the most advanced (at a time when that was needed). It had an impact more broadly (in the experience of everyone who you want to talk to). but that was not its main purpose.
Communists have a strategic view of relying on the people, and liberation itself is an act of the people (or else it doesn’t happen). But to turn that strategic approach into a schema that says “you can’t do anything that doesn’t connect ‘where the people are at’” would (rather quickly) mean to liquidate communist organization, theory, struggle and articulation.
And, in fact, this is a particularly important thing (and a particularly burning issue) now when we don’t have much of a unified communist movement, or a distinct communist strategy that unites us. If we were to limit ourselves to what “the masses” understand — we would have to dissolve this Kasama site. We would have to stop debating communist theory in public (which is certainly not comprehensible to most people). It would, in practice, mean abandoning some of our currently most-important tasks.
Nothing in Mao’s view of the mass line (or in his practice) calls for limiting communist work to what is immediately comprehensible. (You think the long march was immediately comprehensible to the broad masses in china. Many of the areas they went through were intensely hostile, and the masses there had zero comprehension of what this march was about. Should they have called it off? Obviously not. The mass line was systematically applied by the Chinese Maoists, but that didn’t mean that ever action, every offensive, every decision had to be immediately comprehensible to the the people.
Often you have to *win* people to a new, difficult and advanced understanding — that too is part of the mass line.
* * * * * * * *
I have to add that discussing with May 9 is very frustrating because he seems unable to hear what others are saying.
for example he says:
And of course, no one insists that “local conditions are always primarly.” The discussoin is whether there is always a single global “main danger.”
But it is typically mechanical for him to assume that the absence of a single global main danger means that “local conditions must always be primary.” In other words, he says if his personal mechanical formulation isn’t adopted then we must (somehow) be advocating some other mechanical formulation.
In fact, you have to do an analysis — about the global conditions, regional conditions. naitonal conditions, local conditions, in order to understand how the contradictions play out, and what the main points of attack are.
We are arguing against glib and mechanical formulas. Not swing from one mechanical conception to another.
nando said
To deal with this some more:
The world in interconnected — it was always inherently interconnected (as an ecosystem etc.) But the social structures started to knit together globally once capitalism created a new degree of world market. And this became even more intense once imperialism started to internationalize its circuits of production.
There is then a whole structure of global, diplomatic, military, economic and social interactions globally….
And in many ways the internationalism of the communist movement is a reflection of two facts: that the resolution of our oppression has to happen (ultimately) on a world scale (with international communism), and our world today (its classes, production and events) are intertwined.
That doesn’t (mechanically) mean that there is always and everywhere only one imperialist power that is our “main enemy.”
The contradictions of this epoch play themselves out at many levels (internaitonally, regionally, nationally, and locally). And (as is obvious to everyone) the whole of human affairs has become increasingly internationalized. Those people who lived outside of commodity exchange have increasingly been drawn into national markets — and then almost immediately into the webs of international exchange.
No one argues that the world is atomized — that each country or nation is isolated, or that revolutionary contradictions can be understood by looking at one country in isolation.
But (for example) if you look at Lenin’s analysis of World War 1, you can see how he believed that the oppressed of each country should mainly face their “own” imperialist class and he also said that while some countries (Serbia, Belgium) had questions of national liberation within the context of world war — that did not change the character of that war overall, internationally. Here too there were multiple contradictions (nationally, regionally and internationally), and Lenin (and the other communists) had to do specific analysis.
Lenin identified the Russian Tsarism and imperialism as the main enemy of the working peole of the Russian Empire. While his comrades on the other side of the trenches argued powerfully that German imperialism was their main opponent. (“Hauptfeind ist im eigenem land” as the Spartacists said.)
Main point: That was not done by analyzing each country in isolation (as May9) assumes. But precisely on looking at imperialism as a world system, and understanding the tasks of the proletarians to make revolution in the specific and concrete conditions within their part of that system.
nando said
May 9 writes:
this is a mistaken view of who the advanced are. The advanced are not identical to the active (though it is obviously positive when these two groupings overlap!)
there are many times when the politically intermediate are politically active (around their politically non-advanced ideas). This is often true (for example) in election times. And some forms of struggle (like tradeunionism) often have active cores that are politically intermediate (or even politically backward) — and in such situations the politically advanced often have a complex relationship with that struggle.
This was brought out very sharply in the analysis of the coalminers upsurge of the 1970s, and the Revolutionary Union’s initial belief that the politically advanced and radical would be concentrated among those most active in the wildcat strike movement. Reality proved very different.
This early assumption of the RU (articulated by Leibel Bergman in the opening pages of the RU’s Red Papers 6) proved to be mistaken (and was connected to a cluster of other mistaken economist ideas).
May9 said
Nando should not conjure up arguments never made [while once again criticizing this practice]. Nando also has a commandist view of Communist organization.
From the masses to the masses does not result in liquidationism or tailism. It does *not* mean following behind what the intermediate wants and capitulating to the worries and fears of the intermediate. Within any mass group there is a core of advanced activists – the main criteria for determining their being advanced is there desire to be active. The goal is to unite this core group while winning over the intermediate to the advanced position. It is a rather wrong and condescending view to hold that there are elements within the masses that want to struggle and fight, and therefore starting from where the masses are at will inhibit the building of revolutionary organization
So no, from the masses to the masses will result in dissolving ourselves or engaging in exclusively bourgeois politics or any other slippery slope fallacy. From the masses to the masses will prevent infantile ultra-leftist activity such as playing at insurrection with no social base of support – the very thing Lenin warned about in his polemics against Trotsky. It precludes launching protests in communities without doing any build-up work, thus alienating your movement from the people you supposedly support. This very quickly can result in losing the support of the advanced, which is the worst thing that can happen. The mass line involves democratically listening to the concerns and views of the people, not commanding from on high what they should think and do.
May9 said
*Correction – it is wrong to say there are *no* elements within the masses that want to fight and struggle and that starting from where the masses are at will inhibit revolutionary organization.
Maz said
This is all a very interesting history and discussion, but some questions keeps gnawing at me, for one: Was it worth it? The early RCP seems to have paid a very heavy price for the action, which resulted in the permanent exile of their leader. By the accounts, it also seems fortunate that none of their members were killed. If the intention was to send a signal to international forces that anti-Deng Maoists were active in the US, could this have been accomplished by other means? Was this the only action feasible?
I agree that not every single thing communists have to do will immediately relate to where the masses are at. That is worth pointing out, so we don’t distort the power of the mass line into tailism, as Nando pointed out. However, it seems that some types of actions almost certainly need the active participation of at least some advanced masses, and a pitched street fight sort of jumps out as one of those types of things. Without their participation, isn’t isolation and defeat inevitable?
Use of the Long March as an analogy for a communist action that is “incomprehensible” to people here seems misplaced. The Long March was only possible because the Chinese Communists had already built powerful armies from the Chinese people in their earlier base-building efforts. Sure there were places where they met hostility along the march but they applied a mass line to win over or neutralize the people who were originally hostile to them. Throughout the Long March, Communists spread their views throughout China, and recruited people to fight with them along the way. When they arrived in Yan’an, they met up with their fellow Communists who had already established base areas in the North. The Long March is more like an expression of the Maoist Mass Line, not some cadre-only jaunt through a bewildered population.
May9 said
“this is a mistaken view of who the advanced are. The advanced are not identical to the active (though it is obviously positive when these two groupings overlap!)”
Just because a core is advanced does not mean there are no backward views among them. Having correct views is meaningless if people are not willing to act upon them. You can have people who theoretically want ‘socialist revolution’ within a trade union movement, but if they’re going to sit on the sidelines during a strike, they aren’t advanced. The way to struggle against backward views among the advanced is to win the struggle of summation.
nando said
May 9:
I’m arguing for “from the masses, to the masses” as a method.
I’m saying your view of “mass line” is a revisionist one, which is contrary (opposed) to the Maoist mass line. And your conception of “from the masses, to the masses” is not the Maoist one.
There has been (for a long time, decades) a tendency among the more conservative and timid currents of communists an attempt to invent a “mass line” that essentially mirrors (or tails) the intermediate sectionso f the people. And that seeks to confine communist work to what people already understand (or immediately support). This leads to liquidationism (and has over and over). Liquidationism means the dissolution of communist organization and work into various reform movements.
In fact, there is a tremendous component of bringing things “from without” needed in communist work, and the mass line (Mao’s mass line, not this revisionist one) is the best methodology we have for doing that.
As for commanding and listening: Yes we need to listen a great deal. And communists have not been good at that in my experience. But the mass line is precisely a method of communist leadership — of giving the struggle of the people a communist direction. That is the point. And often that requires winning people (or sections of the people) to actions that are (at first) strange or new to them.
Many of the things we have to do do not come “from the people.” You won’t go among the people and get a poll result that says “we need a better understanding of dialectics.” Or “We need a summation of which section of the working class has the best potential for revolution.” Or “we need a new communist organization based on a creative new vision of how to do communist work.”
Many, many things we need do will not be suggested (or demanded) by non-communist sections of the people. And doing them doesn’t violate the Mass line (if it is a mass line for communist leadership, not a formula for tailing intermediate sentiments).
May9 said
“And of course, no one insists that “local conditions are always primarly.” The discussoin is whether there is always a single global “main danger.”
But it is typically mechanical for him to assume that the absence of a single global main danger means that “local conditions must always be primary.” In other words, he says if his personal mechanical formulation isn’t adopted then we must (somehow) be advocating some other mechanical formulation.
In fact, you have to do an analysis — about the global conditions, regional conditions. naitonal conditions, local conditions, in order to understand how the contradictions play out, and what the main points of attack are.”
And yet in both WWI and WWII you have not pointed to a single case where the main points of attack are not local, according to you. In both cases, according to the dominant line here, it was the task of each proletarian movement to call for national liberation or attack their domestic bourgeoisie, thus subordinating the threat of German militarism to national liberation in WWI, and subordinating the struggle against fascism to the local needs of the independence movements within colonial territories.
So when, in fact, have local (national) contradictions not been primary?
nando said
Maz writes:
That is a fair question, and it is hard to quantify an answer. My sense is yes, it was worth it, and rather important.
It is hard to know how the international communist movement might have come together — and whether pro-Deng trends would have won even more territory.
In general, we should seek to rely on the people (and draw them in) as a basic method.
And that was done in many ways during the execution of the Deng demo and the political defense that followed. But i don’t think this action led to isolation or defeat at all. It was a rather successful action. And I think you will find that those who participated have a very high opinion of it. It is one of the places where we Maoists feel a real pride of accomplishment.
And that is in contrast to other events, like May Day 1980, for example, that were a much much more mixed experience, and were impossible for the RCP to sum up internally or publicly.
May 9 is saying you can’t undertake something major if it doesn’t somehow come “from the masses.” Well neither the creation of the base areas, nor the long march came “from the masses” in that way.
The idea of base areas came “from without” — and was introduced into the defeated Autumn harvest movement by Mao. And the Long March passed through many areas where the masses (including the somewhat advanced) had no way of understanding and supporting it. (In other cases, peasants sent delegations begging the Communists to pass through their counties — to overthrow the landlords and liberate them — so there were some people who understood what it was about.)
I am arguing against a mechanical and schematic view — where every action has to come “from the masses” in some mechanical way, or where nothing can be undertaken unless “the masses” can grasp it in some direct and immediate sense. this is not always the case.
And yes, the Communists applied the mass line to deal with their problems along the long march. (As you say, or at least they did when a better line was in command, which was not always true.)
The Deng Demo was a rather exceptional thing — it was about consolidating communist and revolutionary forces under a very specific international conditions. And it was an example of doing something that did not ‘make sense’ viewed in strictly local conditions — it was something required by international contradictions and events.
But within that, the mass line was applied at many level — in how the demo was conceived, in how its slogans and forms were conceived. In its symbolism (the use of coke bottles etc.) In how we interacted with people at every point (in our home areas, in the communities we were operating within, in the jails, later in our defense work).
The mass line was our method (or at least, it was when the better lines were in command).
But the idea to publicly and forcefully make a manifesto against the counterrevolution in china — that did not bubble up from “the masses” in some schematic way. And there is nothing in communist politics, that forbids us to do something like this, when it is needed (strategically). there are lots of things that we must do (tactically and strategically, then and now) that will not emerge (mechanically) from our investigations of popular mood and understanding.
May9 said
“There has been (for a long time, decades) a tendency among the more conservative and timid currents of communists an attempt to invent a “mass line” that essentially mirrors (or tails) the intermediate sectionso f the people. And that seeks to confine communist work to what people already understand (or immediately support). This leads to liquidationism (and has over and over). Liquidationism means the dissolution of communist organization and work into various reform movements.”
In the movements I have been in, this is not the case. No one is advocating tailing behind the intermediate or liquidationism. You can invent positions that aren’t held if you please, but this isn’t the line I’m advocating.
“”Many of the things we have to do do not come “from the people.” You won’t go among the people and get a poll result that says “we need a better understanding of dialectics.” Or “We need a summation of which section of the working class has the best potential for revolution.” Or “we need a new communist organization based on a creative new vision of how to do communist work.” ”
You’re confusing work done internally (red work) with mass work and blurring the lines between the two. Of course one can do internal studies about dialectics and class divisions among the cadre. The mass line does not apply to internal activity. But if you’re trying to build a mass organization and a mass movement, then you have to start from where the masses (specifically – the advanced activists) are at.
The problem with the RCP is that it committed its practical activity to the advancement of red work, while ignoring mass work.
nando said
I wrote:
May 9 says he doesn’t know what i’m talking about — and that he doesn’t know of such tendencies.
Of course May 9 is right in one sense, no one sits around openly advocating “tailing behind the intermediate.” And no communist sits around openly saying “liquidationism that’s what we need.”
But to be clear: the current i’m talking about is FRSO (in both of its current incarnations) — and the invention I’m talking about is a common vision of the mass line they have which has been discussed here on Kasama numerous times.
For example, May 9′s definition of “the advanced” is not his own invention — it id part-and-parcel of this rightist approach to politics (subsuming communism within social democratic reform politics).
I found the following comment by May 9 very significant:
This idea, that “red work” is internal, is wrong. This is exactly the politics of the most conservative and timid currents on the left.
It is the idea that communist politics must be hidden away. That “red work” should only be done with those who are already communist (i.e. internally, for cadre only). It assumes that “red work” is inherently alienating among the people — that you can’t (and shouldn’t!) do public communist work. (And that is, in part, why they have invented a mushy concept called “revolutionary socialism.”)
It is also a view of mass line that is a series of tactical techniques and doesn’t view the mass line as a method of communist leadership.
Is it surprising that this view has historically been connected with “liquidating” first public communist work, then communist organization itself.
When this current says the word “ultraleft” what are they referring to? They are referring to people who do work among the people that goes beyond “the mass movement” of the moment. (IT is what Mao called “everything through the united front.”)
For example: Are questions of dialectics and class analysis for cadre alone? Shouldn’t communist dialectics be publicly discussed and promoted (including in academic philosophical circles, also more widely, including among the workers?) Perhaps we should make Kasama into a small “members only” list?
You think your mass work is solely and simply about “building a mass organization and a mass movement.” If so, when do you create public opinion for overthrowing capitalism? How does socialist revolution become one of the debated political programs among the people?
I am asking a sincere question: Do you talk about communism with people you work with politically? Or is it “internal”? Do you discuss the history of socialism in the twentieth century, its accomplishments and its reversal by restoration? Does your work include arguing about the need for a self-consciously revolutionary movement — and not just a series of diverse reform movements?
In fact, this rightist view (where “red work” is somehow “internal”) does not build a revolutionary movement — it can’t. It often does quite the opposite: It takes aspiring revolutionaries and trains them to be timid generic activists within various mass movements.
Communist mass work should be conducted within popular movements and organizations — in a sophisticated and nuanced way. Communists don’t just ‘build the mass movement” we also help lead those struggles in radical directions. We also promote revolutionary consciousness (which means what it says: consciousness of the need for the forceful overthrow of capitalism and its political institutions). And an important part of our mass work is building communist organization (building its public presence, recruiting the most conscious into its ranks, having communist organizations emerge as trusted representatives of the interests of the people).
We communists need to be organizers of the most important struggles against this system’s crimes. But we also need to create a public presence for revolutionary politics. We need a publicly operating communist movement, which finds creative ways to make its existence, its views, its long-range program part of the political atmosphere wherever people rise to resist.
jp said
i’m pretty much an observer in this thread, and this is just a tangent, but this May9 line caught my eye: ” the threat of German militarism to national liberation in WWI…”
is this proposing that german miitarism in wwI be considered a more overriding threat than the militarism of its allied enemies? the irish, for one people, didn’t think so.
andy said
How nice of the Advanced Workers to all be so similar that you can serialize them with a nice catch-phrase.
nando said
Andy, having a conceptual category doesn’t mean we have a homogenous group.
We talk about the “homeless” — though they too are very diverse (both in their demographics and their reason for homelessness.)
As you suggest the “advanced” are quite diverse — and part of the task of the revolutionaries is not only to understand who they are, but to help them recognize each other.
It is really common that the most radical minded (say) among the employed workers don’t “recognize” the most radical minded among students or artists — they don’t automatically have the same views, or language, or cultural markers, or vision of what liberation would be like.
One of the common features of the advanced in U.S. society is that they often feel isolated and alone. Because of the low level of struggle, they don’t see (on the coarse political landscape of society) manifestations of people like them very often (or other advanced forces they can identify with and orient with.)
It was common in the factories of the 1970s for politically awakening white workers to say “You know the black workers in Detroit have something they call a caucus, we should check out what that is.” And what they were talking about was not some lame “union reform movement” but the the Detroit Revolutionary Union Movement — which was a very radical development in the auto plants.
And that shows how in the high tide of the 1960s, the advanced throughout society had various forces “lighting the sky” — radical students, urban rebellions, the Panthers, DRUM, revolutionary China, liberation fighters in Vietnam and Africa — so that even in remote rural areas like West Virginia, there was a possibility of identifying and drawing inspiration.
Right now, the advanced are particular fragmented and diverse. We (revolutionaries) don’t yet see the outlines of a radical upsurge on the horizon — and the advanced who are also, on their own, looking for such things don’t see many cultural and political developments yet they can gravitate towards or learn from.
Often the advanced among Black youth walk past the advanced among the immigrant workers without interaction or mutual recognision. And it is one of the goals (and one of the outcomes) of revolutionary work that such people come into contact with revolutionaries and with each other. and this interaction (and out of it the forging of networks within an emerging “revolutionary people”) is a great hope-creating factor.
nando said
JP writes:
The right social democrats of World War 1 declared there was a “main enemy” in that war — usually the enemy of their own ruling class.
It was the internationalist communists who rejected this “main enemy” theory — and said that “the main enemy is in our own country.”
And this Leninist approach (and other internationalist anti-patriotic elements of his outlook) were increasingly discarded within the communist movement as time went on.
there was however a change after world war 1: there was now a major socialist country which did fact major imperialist threats. And the argument in WW2 was that the main enemy of the USSR was the main enemy of the people of the world. (They did not recognize that there might be a contradiction between Soviet state interests and proletarian world revolutionary interests — so they did not develop dialectical ways to handle that contradiction concretely in ways that would prevent antagonistic impact on revolutionary prospects in many parts of the world, especially British and American dominated countries like India or Puerto Rico or Ireland.)
jp said
the argument at least had some coherence in ww2, and it’s hard to blame those who took that road. i didn’t think there were still socialists holding that ww1 is still on the table – except as a clear example of what socialists ought not to do.