Archive for the ‘comintern’ Category
Posted by kasama on May 18, 2012
The 1897 founding of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.
How should communists be organized? What are appropriate formation for action, debate and consolidation — in the inevitably different stages of a revolution’s life?
For some people even asking that question is heresy — since a very particular form of vanguard party is considered universal and a “settled question.”
This universalization of organizational questions is rooted in a particular reading of Russian and German history: It says Lenin separated off his Bolsheviks in a tight democratic centralist independent party early in the 1900s, and this allowed his forces the initiative and compactness they needed to contend for power in 1917. By contrast, it is said that Rosa Luxemburg and her Spartacist communists failed to break with German social democracy early enough — and so they were unable to consolidate or contend successfully, as communists, in the crisis of 1918-19.
This universalization has led small communist groupings to from small hostile sect-like groups — that declare themselves pre-party formations, or even parties — and that declare other parallel currents to be hopelessly corrupt.
We have discussed this reading (or rewriting) of Russian history before here on Kasama — particularly in the following posts and threads:
Posting this new piece is intended to continue engaging this once “settled” question — with a sharp eye on our needs today. Posting it is not intended as an endorsement by Kasama of historical claims or political conclusions made by the author.
This piece first appeared in the Weekly Worker (Britain) on May 17.
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How Lenin’s party became (Bolshevik)
By Lars T. Lih
From 1898 on, there existed a political party called the Rossiiskaia sotsial-demokraticheskaia rabochaia partiia (RSDRP), or Russian Social Democratic Worker Party. Rossiiskaia means “Russian” in the sense of citizens of the Russian state, as opposed to russkaia, which refers to ethnic Russians. Of course, the party title made no reference to either of its two later factions, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, comintern, communism, Communist Party, Lars T. Lih, Lenin, Soviet history, theory, V.I. Lenin, vanguard party | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on January 24, 2012
The ideas of the rank-and-file are more than just raw material for leadership decision-making. Democracy involves elements of real power and ongoing accountability.
by Mike Ely
How should communists and revolutionaries be organized? Even asking that ruffles some feathers — since some communist currents have considered this a “settled question.”
Well, we should un-settle it — problematize it — for the simple reason that the idea of a single “universalized” model of revolutionary organization has been a bad idea.
Its flaws and illusions have been revealed over the last decades — including in the grandiosity and self-delusion of various small self-declared “parties” within the U.S.
There are a number of issues involved — which we are only starting to touch on. But for now, we are exploring the communist organizational concept of “democratic centralism” (DC) — both what it means and whether it should be embraced as a common approach.
We have discussed how it got “settled” in the discussions of the new-born Third Communist International (between 1921 and 1924) and how the form of democratic centralism was further modified — especially in the “Bolshevization” campaigns of the late 1920s.
Now, Let’s go beyond the historical question of how specific organizational structures and processes got codified (“settled”) — let’s explore some of the concepts that pass as “settled,” their justifications and lessons.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, comintern, communism, Communist Party, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Mike Ely, Soviet history, Stalin and Stalinism, vanguard party | 106 Comments »
Posted by kasama on January 24, 2012
The Comintern decided that all communist organizations in the world should have the same name, the same structure, the same organizational principles and the same approach to controversies.
To reconceive communist views, it is valuable to have some sense of the previous conceptions.
Here is a quick and concentrated presentation of the previous communist view of organization — codified by the Third Communist International. This essay is written by J. Peters, as a chapter within the “The Communist Party: A Manual of Organization” published by the CPUSA in 1935.
We also have to evaluate the distance between what is espoused here (as principles and procedures) and how things REALLY worked. It would be silly to be taken in by lip-service in politics. For example: Once all parties are required to carry out decisions of the Comintern, and once it is announced (see below) that members do not “question” such decisions… then what is the purpose or domain of internal discussion and democratic processes? Once leaders are picked by the International, then what is the meaning of elaborate plans to elect them within the party?
Basic Principles of Party Organization
by J. Peters
The Communist Party is organized in such a way as to guarantee, first, complete inner unity of outlook; and, second, combination of the strictest discipline with the widest initiative and independent activity of the Party membership. Both of these conditions are guaranteed because the Party is organized on the basis of democratic centralism.
DEMOCRATIC CENTRALISM
Democratic centralism is the system according to which:
1. All leading committees of the Party, from the Unit Bureaus up to the highest committees, are elected by the membership or delegates of the given Party organization.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, comintern, Soviet history, vanguard party | 8 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on October 22, 2011
Cleansing and reclaiming the red flag
The following is an important and highly controversial document from the previous communist movement (of the 1970 and 80s). This is an argument against socialist revolution attempting to reclaim patriotism or nationalist symbols in a country like the United States. The essay was part of a major theoretical effort by the Revolutionary Communist Party in the period of 1979-1984 to break with rightist and patriotic legacies within the international communist movement. It contains extensive sections written by Bob Avakian during this period — one of the times when a younger Avakian was still pressing the envelope of communist thinking and making creative contributions.
This essay was first published in 1980 and has been unavailable for decades. It has been republished by the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line. It is part of an archival project making documents of the “New Communist Movement” available to revolutionaries today for study, evaluation and summation.
* * * * * * * * *
On the Question of So-Called “National Nihilism”:
You Can’t Beat the Enemy While Raising His Flag
Can revolution in the U.S. today come wrapped in the American flag? Can we “claim it as our own”? Should a revolutionary party be motivated by a desire to “save America. . . from her rulers and for her people”? Can a class-conscious revolutionary in the U.S. “have pride in the true history of this country”? These are questions which have posed themselves again and again in the development of the revolutionary movement in the U.S. and are doing so today. In fact, similar questions of national pride and patriotism have historically been very important in the advances–and setbacks–of the international communist movement.
Earl Browder, the naked revisionist former leader of the Communist Party, USA gave his infamous answer to these questions in the mid-1930s when he coined the phrase “Communism is 20th Century Americanism” and said that the CPUSA was carrying on the revolutionary tradition of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and the like. Unfortunately, when all was said and done, Earl Browder was right about the CPUSA (though most certainly wrong about genuine communism) because the CP had completely taken up the program and outlook of bourgeois democracy. Such a stand may be American and definitely is bourgeois, but for a communist it is a thoroughly counter-revolutionary one, especially here in the imperialist USA in this, the era of proletarian revolution.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, comintern, Lenin, Maoism, Marxist theory, RCPUSA, Socialism, Stalin and Stalinism, V.I. Lenin | 25 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on August 28, 2011
Mao Zedong's road of protracted peoples war emerged in opposition to the Comintern's strategy of basing revolution on urban workers and using rural base areas to seize urban areas.
In the last months the EROL archives has posted a rich new body of past communist writings. (EROL is the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-line)
We wish to extend special thanks to Paul Saba, whose work has been tireless and extremely important to both our common ongoing project of communist summation and coming project of communist regroupment.
In the next few days, we will point out some of the remarkable documents now available online.But for the moment we will start here:
Over and over, we have received requests (on Kasama) for reposting a particular document: the Revolutionary Communist Party’s sharp and extensive critique of Hoxhaism.
This 1979 piece on Mao and Hoxha was one of the more effective and powerful polemics made on a number of key questions dividing the international communist movement in the late 1970s — in the wake of the counter-revolutionary events engulfing China after Mao’s death.
We have gotten these requests because the dispute between Maoism and Hoxhaism is one of the sharp historic collision points between creative Marxism and dogmatic Marxism — and because Hoxhaism concentrated a number of arguments for Comintern-era thinking that have maintained power within parts of the international communist movement.
This document is extensive, and we will simply make it available here. It was first published in the RCP’s theoretical journal The Communist #5.
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Beat back the dogmato-revisionist attack on Mao Tsetung Thought
Comments on Enver Hoxha’s Imperialism and the Revolution
by J. Werner
Introduction
Upon first examining Enver Hoxha’s new book, Imperialism and the Revolution, one is tempted to dismiss it as a petty and shallow hatchet job and refer the reader to the works of Mao Tsetung, which make clear that most of the charges hurled at Mao are simply the worst type of blatant misquotations, distortions and downright lies, and also refer the reader to the many Soviet criticisms of Mao which, while sharing the same method and most of the same arguments as Hoxha, at least have the virtue of a more systematic and well-rounded presentation of the revisionist line.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, China, comintern, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Marxist theory, New Com. Movement, RCPUSA | 38 Comments »
Posted by kasama on August 11, 2011
Click to download
Our new Kasama pamphlet contains two essays on the Communist Organization of Greece. — a creative revolutionary formation playing a leading role within Greece’s “movement of the squares.” It is now available for download in printable PDF format. And will soon be available in epubs format for e-readers.
The pamphlet features Eric Ribellarsi’s essay Greece’s Communist Organization: Learning to Swim in Stormy Weather.
What unfolded in Athens’ Syntagma Square was not expected, and for much of the left in Greece, there is a real fury that something like this dared to develop without them. There is a painful irrelevance settling in on strategies that have no faith in the people and their uprisings, and instead wish to fold everything into official political arena and its parliament.
The one thing in this experience that I have been most impressed with was the KOE’s creativity and willingness to shift when something unexpected happens, and at the same time holding on to a revolutionary strategy. Without calling for imposing a very different situation on our own in the U.S., I will say that I think there is a great deal to learn from the methods of revolutionaries like the KOE and others. And there are also things to learn about the intense tensions this has produced in and around KOE – as they try to resist tailing a new movement, as they try to replace discarded assumptions, and as they face inevitable generational differences (which are naturally intensified by new and younger recruitment).
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Posted in >> analysis of news, comintern, communism, Eric Ribellarsi, Greece, Kasama, Kasama pamphlets, Maoism, New Com. Movement, theory, vanguard party, winter has its end blog | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on March 31, 2011
by Mike Ely
Gregory Lucero’s essay “Thoughts on Student Organizing” produced an engagement here on Kasama over how we communists do our work — how we connect our communist dreams with the people, their concerns and struggles.
In my own response to Greg, I mentioned that there is a historic trend that imagines revolutionary work as “leading day-to-day struggles of the workers, plus talking socialism.” This has deep roots in the socialist movement of the U.S. and took shape as the early Communist Party USA’s “left economist” approach (until their major right turn in the mid-1930s).
I wrote:
“Left economism does involve some public discussion of socialism and communism. It is an approach that attempts to be revolutionary — and that disdains the crass rightism of ‘hidden’ socialists. But while an attempt at revolutionary work, left economism involves a built-in inherent disconnect between that talk of socialism and the dynamics emerging from its particular expectations from immediate struggles.
“It assumes that we will lead people in their struggles (and win their trust), and we will creatively promote socialism as an idea — and out of that mix, the people will adopt our views and become pro-socialist. In fact, history shows that this is not how things come out.”
Soapbox responded:
“when you say that we resolve the disconnect between immediate struggles and final goals by “considering all our work . . . in terms of that final goal . . .” what does this concretely mean?”
For the moment, I can just list a few points because of time constraints.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Black Panthers, comintern, communism, Mike Ely, V.I. Lenin | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on March 21, 2011
Intro by Mike Ely
The following essay, “Advancing the World Revolutionary Movement: Questions of Strategic Orientation,”criticizes the long-entrenched communist assumption that it is possible to identify a single world enemy (usually a single imperialist power or coalition) on a world scale — and more, it also criticizes the doctrine :
- that it is then necessary for communists everywhere in the world to form a single global united front against that “main enemy.”
- that this united front naturally includes all the many diverse forces globally that (for their own class interests) can be arrayed (or can be fantasized to be in array) “against” that main enemy.
- that in each country, communists and the oppressed should be universally required to make far-reaching compromises (or even alliances) with their own oppressors — in the name of such an international united front against the main enemy, and in the name of the great good that it supposedly represents.
- And (as an often unspoken corollary) that this “main enemy” is usually the imperialists who are most directly threatening the main existing socialist countries (either USSR in the late 1930s, or China in the 1970s).
This piece was written by Bob Avakian during the early 1980s, as part of a larger series of breaks with many once-unquestioned orthodoxies of previous communisms. It appeared during a creative period of debate and new thinking within the RCP’ that might be hard now for a newer generation of revolutionaries to even imagine.
This first appeared in Revolution magazine in Spring 1984 and is generally viewed as Part 2 of an earlier work “Conquer the World? The International Proletariat Must and Will” (which is also worth your time).
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Posted in Bob Avakian, comintern, communism, Mike Ely, RCPUSA, Stalin and Stalinism | 3 Comments »
Posted by Rosa Harris on February 21, 2011
Thanks to Rosa Harris for gathering together some of Kasama’s posts for February, Black History Month. We have a page of Reading Clusters.
Kasama essays on Black history:
Oppression, resistance & visions
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Posted in >> analysis of news, anti-racist action, Attica, Black History, Black History Month, Black Panthers, comintern, Kasama, Mao Zedong, study guides | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on January 1, 2011
Here are previous posts and threads grouped loosely by topic. They’re available on our Navigation Bar on each page >>
A post kicks it off, and then the threaded discussion refines and deepens… and lays the basis for the next post.
Want an overview of what we have done together over these three years? That’s one place to look around.
Want to back up and study? Here it is.
Posted in >> analysis of news, >> communist politics, >> Kasama Project, 9 Letters, comintern, communism, Cultural Revolution, Kasama, Kasama pamphlets, revolution, Socialism, Stalin and Stalinism, study guides, theory | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on September 28, 2010
Yippies parading Pigasus, their candidate for American president, New York City 1968
“It is often a surprise to many communists, but electoral abstentionism has never been a communist principle… I have grave doubts about whether communists can successfully use that arena to make our views known, and to ‘build a socialist electorate’ — under currently foreseeable circumstances. I have doubts, but I really think we should creatively ‘walk it through’ to see what the possibilities are — not dismiss it in a mechanical way. And we should re-discuss it (over and over as needed) when conditions change.”
by Mike Ely
Please forgive the rough nature of these notes… My focus is somewhere else for the moment, but I did want to engage the important exchange happening in many places on our site (including most recently here).
People in their millions will be voting all through any future process of radicalization. People awakening to political life and suddenly determined to solve key problems will try many methods and tactics (even ones that seem contradictory to us) — and they will certainly alternate between militant forms of mass struggle and rather traditional electoral strategies, even while they are sporadically considering (and even initiating) revolutionary attempts.
In my opinion: The eventual discrediting, splintering and collapse of the Democratic Party is (like the collapse of the Jacksonian Whigs before the anti-slavery Civil War) a kind of precondition for the emergence of a revolutionary united front capable of seizing power.
But in any conceivable scenario, even a collapse of the Democrats (or a schism in ways that isolate the deeply imperialist establishment) will likely take both electoral and non-electoral forms. And many of the political formations that will play important roles in radical political life (and contribute toward revolutionary moods) will often have one foot (and sometimes two!) in electoral politics — of a left Democratic, or third party social democratic, or post-Democratic kind.
So i do have a sense of what TNL is talking about when he says we are trying to build a conscious self-identifying movement for socialism — and that part of that may be reflected in the emergence of a “socialist electorate.” I’m not sure that electoral work (and particularly electoral work internal to the Democratic party) is favorable to that (in the U.S., and in this moment). But I understand TNL’s strategic approach and desire.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, comintern, Democratic Party, election, Mike Ely, Tell No Lies | 11 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on August 7, 2010
U.S. reconquest of the Pacific: Was this mainly an antifascist act or a colonialist one?
“Our world strategy should place revolution and the defeat of imperialism central in our thinking and action — not this or that state interest of socialist states, not temporary alliances with various reactionary powers.”
by Mike Ely
May 9 objected angrily to my analysis that World War 2 was principally an interimperialist war.
Let me open up my argument by stepping back, and seeing the current importance of this argument against “international united front against a single main enemy.”
This question is not just historic but acutely strategic:
Is there a single worldwide united front against a main enemy today?
Can one be built?
Do the people of the world (at each point) somehow have one single “main enemy”worldwide (among the various imperialists and reactionary powers they face)? And if so, how is it determined?
Part of the reasonv this matters is that the argument of “united front against main enemy” has been used in the present time to portray any force opposed to the United States as (somehow) “objectively anti-imperialist.”Even in the absence of an organized international communist movement or a major socialist country, this view is asserted — so that a number of different, highly reactionary forces are portrayed as “objectively” allies of oppressed people (including, in some cases, oppressors like Islamist theocrats or Milosevic style chauvinists in the Balkans or Saddam Hussein in Iraq, or revanchist Russian imperialism in the Caucasus etc.)
We needto look at the arguments (claiming such forces are “allies”) in an objective class analysis, and also examine the theoretical framework that assumes there is a single “main enemy” (and that its existence defines the objective role of various reactionary forces).
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Posted in comintern, Mao Zedong, Marxist theory, Mike Ely, Socialism, Stalin and Stalinism, theory, World War II | 28 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on July 30, 2010
by Mike Ely
My response here is not about Zizek. It is about how to criticize Zizek. It is in response to an essay posted nearby: “Slavoj Žižek: A Case Study in Opportunism”
Militant Know-Nothingism
Believe it or not, this essay starts by saying:
“I don’t pretend to understand Dr. Žižek’s ‘Lacanian,’ ‘post-Maoist’ philosophy or critiques of popular culture or whatever it is that he does.”
That says it all — right in the opening sentence. It is a confession.
Friendly suggestion: Perhaps if you don’t understand someone’s work, you should remain silent. And listen to those who have done the hard work of understanding and actually critiquing that work.
In fact, this opening statement is a declaration that you don’t have to understand something to evaluate it. And that alone is revealing. It is a form of identity politics — it says we can categorize and dismiss an idea by considering the source. If we can peg the person speaking, then we can dismiss the idea. We don’t have to evaluate it, we don’t have to “divide it into two,” we con’t even need to understand it (or even “pretend to understand it”!)
In short, the essay starts with a militant statement of know-nothingism. that is its main theme, it is its main method. And it is truly militant: it is right there, proudly, in the opening sentence.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, comintern, Maoism, Marxist theory, Mike Ely, Slavoj Žižek, Soviet history, Stalin and Stalinism, theory | 35 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on July 20, 2010
The depiction of the African American nation in 1930 -- from James Allen's work. Should we approach Black Liberation as if this is still the situation, using theory developed in re-World War 1 Eastern Europe?
We have been debating whether to embrace and promote a communist orthodoxy lifted mainly from the 1930s Comintern period. and digging into many related questions. Our discussion started by examining a study plan promoted by “The Marxist Leninist.” It continued in the post “Marxism is not a Layer Cake” and Marxism is more like a Bush.”
This post is a response to remarks by May9 within the “Layer Cake” discussion.
by Mike Ely
First, i want to say to May 9 that I respect and appreciate this engagement. Our views are sharply different — and far too often, such views are not able to engage in public. And I believe it is helpful (not just to me, but to many people watching) to see the exchange in some depth.
What does religious thinking look like?
Mike Ely wrote
“If you teach Marxism as a religion of universal classics, you have taught religion not revolution… Orthodoxy is anathema to revolution. It is very conservative (in training and implications).”
May 9 responds:
“Nobody is teaching Marxism as “religion”. There is your bogus construction.”
Nah. Everyone knows there is a religous quality to major strains of communist doctrine.
And a big part of the change that happened with the codification of Marxism (after the first great socialist revolution in Russia) was that it got confined in a doctrinal way — and had the qualities of a state religion.
Now perhaps these terms are confusing…. so let me be clearer.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, African American, anti-racist action, Black History, China, comintern, Kasama, Maoism, Marxist theory, methodology, Mike Ely, New Com. Movement, Stalin and Stalinism | 40 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on June 22, 2010
The recent uprising of Iran's people against the bloody mullah dictatorship
“But reducing imperialism to those acts (and thinking that opposing particular imperialist actions is inherently “anti-imperialism”) leaves out the revolution and waters down anti-imperialist until it means little more than anti-intervention.”
by Mike Ely
Worker Antagonism wrote:
“When you start talking about ‘anti-imperialist politics,’ an important question is what exactly is meant by ‘imperialism.’
“It seems that for the Workers World Party and a lot of Left groupings, ‘imperialism’ refers concretely primarily to the power position of the US and its allies and that by extension any opposition to the US and its allies is anti-imperialist. Within that framework which is IMO basically geopolitical and not social revolutionary in its criteria, it makes sense to align with Cuba, China etc….
“However if you view imperialism as i do as the world system of monopolistic capital following Bukharin,Lenin etc,then its difficult to see how the PRC or DPRK etc are any more ‘anti-imperialist’ than the USA/EU, in all you have a variable combination of state/private monopoly capital integrated within the world market system.”
I agree with your main point: Imperialism is a system, that defines the world’s current economic and political order.
Imperialism is another name for monopoly capitalism. It is the currently dominant form of class society. This is what we need to be against, what we need to unite with others to oppose and overthrow. It is also what we need to analyze anew because of its many changes and developments — we can’t just affirm Lenin’s work from a century ago.
As part of opposing imperialism, we should of course be energetically against specific imperialist acts — aggression, threats, assassination-by-drone, assassination-by-deathsquad, Guantanamo Bay, interventions, plunder, nuclear blackmail, military aid to proxies, covert intrigues, unequal treaties, robbery of resources etc. etc.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, comintern, communism, Maoism, Marxist theory, revolution, Soviet history, Stalin and Stalinism, theory | 18 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on June 15, 2010
The atomic explosion over Hiroshima -- a historic crime
“We need to fight U.S. imperialism — and not concoct crude or sophisticated justifications for not doing so. …We communists need to promote a culture of strategic courage — of being willing to risk prison, public demonization, , and even worse in serving the people and advancing the revolution…
“And we need … a core movement of revolutionaries that can help ‘create favorable conditions through struggle’ — so that the resistance that emerges is coordinated, coherent, conscious, visible, effective, and connected (in sophisticated ways) to the project of revolution.”
* * * * * * * *
In a parallel thread, we have been discussing the role of communists in the Manhattan Project — the vast secret World War 2 scientific operation that produced the atomic weapons dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is perhaps not widely known, but progressive, leftist and even communist scientists played important (even crucial) roles in the development of these American super-weapons. And our sister Joan Hinton (who recently died) was one of those physicists, who went on to play a quite internationalist role in revolutionary China for much of her life.
I raised some thoughts:
“[These scientists were] often sincere in their attempt to ‘do the right thing.’ And virtually their whole generation was won over to the idea that they needed to make an alliance with U.S. imperialism against a greater evil (Nazi Germany) — especially in order to defend the Soviet Union. And this played a huge role in the nuclear program, where quite a few of the scientists were rather radical and left — and yet threw themselves into the work of giving this monstrous weapon to the U.S. government.
“History shows that many of their hopes were betrayed: this was not used to defeat Nazi Germany (after all) or defend the Soviet Union. It was dropped on Japan in a genocidal way, and was an attempt to intimidate the revolutionary forces of China and the USSR. And it gave the U.S. imperialists an unprecedented power to use — in harvesting a new global empire out of the chaos of World War 2.“
Bob H raises a series of questions about what kind of stand scientists could have taken during World War 2. David_D takes up the issues of “united front against fascism.” The following is my own friendly exploration of those questions.
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Posted in antiwar, atomic bomb, comintern, genocide, Mike Ely, World War II | 12 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on June 10, 2010
Mao in the Yenan base area
The following are extracted from the larger essay “9 Letters to Our Comrades: Getting Beyond Avakian’s Synthesis.” They are offered as a contribution (and counterpoint) to the discussions of Maoism we have recently been having.
“There is real glory and continuing value to Maoism, as a body of thought and as a movement for liberation. As a distinct international trend, it was born during the 1960s in raging opposition to both the global rampages of the U.S. and the suffocating gray norms of the Soviet Union. Maoism proclaimed ‘It is right to rebel against reactionaries,’ and gave new life to the revolutionary dream. It said ‘Serve the People,’ and promised that no one (not even the communist vanguard) would be above the interrogations of the people. A loose global current congealed from many eclectic streams, and it included many of the world’s most serious revolutionaries. There have been important and heroic attempts at power — in Turkey, Iran, India, the Philippines, Peru, Nepal and more. There were important revolutionary movements of 1968 that included Maoists in France, Germany, Italy and more. There was real ferment around the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and then at times around the RCP in the U.S.
“But since Mao died in 1976, this Maoist movement has not been a fertile nursery of daring analyses and concepts. A mud streak has run through it.
“Even its best forces often cling to legitimizing orthodoxies, icons, and formulations. The popularization of largely-correct verdicts often replaces the high road of scientific theory — allowing Marxism itself to appear pat, simple and complete.
“Dogmatic thinking nurtures both self-delusion and triumphalism. In the name of taking established truths to the people, revolutionary communists have often cut themselves off from the new facts and creative thinking of our times.
“We need to break with that fiercely, and seek out the others who agree.”
* * * * * * * *
by Mike Ely
Preface from Godard’s La Chinoise
Standing at a lectern, young Omar looks into the camera.
The crisis in the communist movement, he says, “has given us the right to make a precise accounting of what we possess, to call by their correct names both our riches and our predicament, to think and argue out loud about our problems, and to engage in the rigors of real research.”
This moment has, Omar continues, “allowed us to emerge from our theoretical provincialism, to recognize and engage with the existence of others outside ourselves. And on connecting with this outer world, to begin to see ourselves better. It has allowed us to develop an honest self-appraisal by laying bare where we stand in regard to the knowledge and ignorance of Marxism.”
Omar scans his comrades scattered across the room and adds: “Any questions?”
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Posted in >> Kasama Project, 9 Letters, comintern, Cultural Revolution, Maoism, Mike Ely | 20 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on May 5, 2010
Eldridge Cleaver proclaimed:
“This is a stickup motherfucker! We’re coming for what’s ours.”
Che said:
“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.”
How do we portray revolution and its motives? How do our images and tone reflect morality and goals?
Is the revolution a furnace of anger and payback? An act for a greater humanity, or as a long suppressed grab for “us and ours”?
Are we about identity or universality? Or both? And how do we convey that?
Is our hand extended or clenched? Or both? Is there an ecology of revolution with multiple streams, audiences, and modalities? And how do we convey that?
If stereotypical communist imagery is exhausted, what potent new symbolism do we now adopt (or invent)?
Is our banner “Serve the People” or “Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker”? Both? And in what mix? With what impact?
Who are we seeking to attract? Who are we willing to repel? What is the spirit we want to invoke and spread? What are impulses can marshaled to push on through to victory?
These issues are played out in many ways. In whether we have humor or not, in whether we can take criticism (even from enemies), in how we react when living revolutions portray themselves as patient and welcoming.
The following is part of an essay by the Black novelist Richard Wright, on the messages and difficulties of communist self-image. It was first published in the Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 174, No 2 August 1944. (Thanks to Land who transcribed this for posting.)
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Posted in >> communist politics, art, comintern, mass line | 14 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on February 20, 2010
This article originally appeared in Red Star and was suggested by NSPF.
“The recently-held Central Committee Meeting of our party has correctly assessed that the New Democratic revolution in Nepal is at a crossroads of great potentiality of victory and serious danger of defeat. In the present world situation, it is only our country Nepal where New Democratic revolution is possible. However, whether or not the Nepalese proletariat can seize this opportunity depends upon whether or not our party can develop a correct ideological and political line, consolidate party unity based on it and rally the world proletariat around it. If we succeed to achieve this, no one in the world will be able to stop us from establishing People’s Federal Republic of Nepal.”
“We should keep in mind that sustenance of the proletarian power in a single country is in the present world situation equally difficult to or more challenging than the seizure of political power. Sustenance of people’s power is inseparably related with the expansion and development of revolutionary class struggles in other countries.”
“At the present juncture, which is full of opportunities and challenges, only by developing a correct ideological and political line, party unity based on it and pushing forward the aforesaid international tasks in a planned way will we be able to establish People’s Republic in Nepal. This and this will be a service to world revolution and genuine proletarian internationalism too.”
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by Indra Mohan Sigdel (Basanta)
Politbureau member of Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
The proletariat class, which is deprived of means of production, is forced to sell its labour as a commodity into the market to those bourgeois who grab them. In a capitalist society, those who produce commodity with the expense of their labour are deprived of appropriating the very product while those who are not at all involved in production appropriate it. It is not particular to a certain country but a universal phenomenon where the capitalist mode of production exists.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, >> communist politics, Basanta, comintern, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Nepal, revolution, Soviet history, UCP Nepal (Maoist), UCP Nepal (Maoist) | 4 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on October 26, 2009
by Mike Ely
MPBW objected (with dismissive anger) to remarks on the theory and history of Trotskyism. I’m going to set aside the tone of MPBW’s comments, and deal with a few points.
1) I think there is a general problem of “decline” in the forms of radical left activity forged in the previous century. And i think part of what we need to regroup is forces who want to understand and break out of that pattern.
And I believe that is possible because that decline is independent of the acute suffering of the people globally and the very real potential for radical social alternatives. We (the revolutionary left) need to actively press beyond this moment — and pull something new out of this crisis.
2) I suggested that Trotskyism as a trend is deep into disarray and dispersal. And that is hard to deny. The Fourth International was rather still-born already in Trotsky’s life in the 1930s. It found some pockets of intellectual adherents, but shattered as a trend. Its surviving components have maintained themselves largely by taking distance (in some basic ways) from their own initial beliefs. We could plot the trajectories of Ernest Mandel’s trend, or de-trotskyization of the Workers World and PSL, or Jack Barnes’ withdrawal from Permanent Revolution, or the flurry around post-Trotskyist formations of the Third Camp kind — but those who are interested in such matters already know about them.
3) Here is the point: I don’t think that this kind of crisis is peculiar to Trotskyism. The various left political trends are different in a number of ways, but they do share the common appearance of crisis. And in this I’m including anarchism (which had a spurt of generational growth in the 1980s). And it is even true of the more electoral left forces identified with the Greens or Nader — for whom the appearance of “spoiler” after the tied 2000 election has proven to be such a trauma.
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Posted in >> communist politics, comintern, communism, Kasama, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Marxist theory, mass line, Mike Ely, revolution, Stalin and Stalinism | 5 Comments »
