Archive for the ‘Soviet history’ Category
Posted by Mike E on August 10, 2010
by Radical Eyes
Often on this site, we see people bringing out that pithy but powerful Mao-phrase:
“No investigation, no right to speak.”
In dealing with the history of the Communist movement, and in particular the history of what actually transpired in the Soviet Union during the period of Stalin’s leadership, it would appear that we need to revise this guiding phrase a bit. This is because so much of what has been written – and read – in the way of “investigations” into this period are themselves in part or in full works of propaganda. (Most often they are “anti-Stalinist” and/or anticommunist, less often “pro-Stalin.”)
On top of this layer of “classic” works, there have further emerged several generations of scholars who are not themselves setting out to serve narrowly propagandist ends – at least not consciously – , and many of whom may even be “of the left” in one sense or another, but who nonetheless continue to build upon the – far from objectively verified, and often utterly falsified – accounts of previous generations of propaganda.
Even where these scholars may bring new theoretical approaches and subtle thinking to the old questions, they often remain on the terrain of “happenings” constructed by the unreliable and often thoroughly dishonest “scholarship” of earlier eras.
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Posted in Marxist theory, Socialism, Soviet history, Stalin and Stalinism | 19 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 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 3, 2010
Kronstadt Sailors
I am grateful for Green-Red’s question, which leads us deeper into some questions we have been exploring from a number of sides.
“What happened during the Kronstadt incident? Was it all a White [tsarist] conspiracy?”
For those who unfamiliar with the controversy:
There was an uprising at the Kronstadt naval base outside Petrograd — against the new Bolshevik government. This 1921 event has been an important episode for anarchists — who identify with the anti-bolshevik rebellion, and who remain outraged by the Bolshevik decision to send in the Red Army to retake Kronstadt by force.
I would like to sketch a brief analysis — and relate it to the controversies around Nepal, and our own strategic challenges. Feel free to flesh this out further — since I am not going to do more than sketch the details of these events. Feel free to provide links to various accounts. And certainly, jump in if you want to dispute my points below.
The first thing to know about Kronstadt is that this is the story of how a revolutionary core gets displaced and spread too thin — by all the challenges of actually leading a revolution. I’m going to simplify things somewhat by saying that at some point, the advanced in society give rise to a revolutionary people, out of which congeals a partisan revolutionary core.
In order to wage and win a revolution in our era there needs to be the emergence of a revolutionary people — i.e. a section of the people who consciously wants a particular kind of radical change and who (over time) have become more and more deeply connected (in an organic way) to the various currents of organized political trends.
Without that you can’t move from protest and opposition to actually taking power. And without that (even more important) you can’t actually continue the revolution and transform society.
And without finding “successors to the revolutionary cause” — i.e. new and younger waves of a revolutionary people in the midst of new challenges, the revolution itself will degrade, and ultimately reverse.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Mike Ely, Soviet history | 10 Comments »
Posted by Tell No Lies on May 30, 2010
Nestor Makhno, 1921.
from International Socialist Review
The history of the Makhnovists in the Russian Revolution is an important point of reference among anarchists, especially among the current known as Platformists, but it has received very little critical attention from either academic scholars or other revolutionary trends. The following article from the journal of the International Socialist Organization presents a detailed critique of both the myth-making around Makhno and the strategic conclusions anarchists have drawn from the semi-mythologized history they have created.
Makhno calls for the forms of Bolshevism—revolutionary discipline, vanguard party—without the content, the self-emancipation of the working class. He saw the degeneration in Russia primarily as a problem of ideas—“statism” and authoritarianism—instead of material conditions—poverty and isolation. Thus, he concludes that, “had anarchists been closely connected in organizational terms and had they in their actions abided strictly by a well-defined discipline, they would never have suffered such a rout.” But the strength required to fundamentally transform society and set it on new foundations cannot exist only among the enlightened few who “get it.” Instead, it is found in the collective energy and self-activity of the working class.
The Makhno Myth
By JASON YANOWITZ
STARTING IN the 1970s, a new consensus emerged among serious scholars of the Russian Revolution. Instead of seeing the rise of Stalinism as the predetermined outcome of Leninism or workers’ power, “revisionist” historians looked instead to the devastating effects of civil war and international isolation. They discovered that the early years of the workers’ state were far more complicated and rich than the standard right-wing inevitable-march-to-totalitarianism version. In its broad outlines, their work confirmed that material conditions, rather than Bolshevik original sin, transformed a mass, popular revolution into its opposite, Stalinism.1
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Posted in >> history, anarchism, Russia, Soviet history, Trotskyism | 42 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on May 10, 2010
Leon Trotsky (left), Joseph Stalin (right)
By Bill Martin
Interesting, I suppose, that we quickly get away from discussing what Lenin wrote and instead into Stalin/Trotsky and the like.
Here, at least along one line of analysis, is the connection. Lenin led a revolution. In this “Unexplored Mountain” essay, Lenin is stressing the need for visionary leadership, which entails not falling back on conventional thinking, especially when the process that is unfolding is entirely new and unprecedented.
Trotsky also played a role in leading the Bolshevik Revolution, and it is shameful that this role has been erased from the standard histories of the Revolution promulgated by Stalinists and Maoists. Even the erstwhile Maoists who have recently discovered truth stumble over this point (they choke, really), and we (who want to continue the revolutionary legacy of Maoism and develop it qualitatively) should draw some lessons from this.
My own view, for what it is worth, is that Trotsky’s Marxist theorizing, while interesting and creative, does not help us understand or make a revolution against imperialism; the legacy of Trotskyism is, in the main, to deny key elements of Lenin’s understanding of imperialism, and to return us to “classical Marxism.” Furthermore, for all kinds of reasons, Trotsky was never going to be the leader of the CPSU. However, none of this means that we shouldn’t study Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution and other work [some of which is just as "Stalinist" as anything Stalin wrote], or that we should not recognize the very important role that Trotsky played in the Bolshevik Revolution.
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Posted in Bill Martin, Communist Party, Mao Zedong, mass line, Soviet history, Stalin and Stalinism, Trotskyism | 75 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on May 9, 2010
This is from Lenin’s Notes of a Publicist. No direct analogy is implied. This is posted to give a sense of the complexity of real events, and the non-linear, wavelike nature of real-world events and real political advances.
by V.I. Lenin
Let us picture to ourselves a man ascending a very high, steep and hitherto unexplored mountain.
Let us assume that he has overcome unprecedented difficulties and dangers and has succeeded in reaching a much higher point than any of his predecessors, but still has not reached the summit.
He finds himself in a position where it is not only difficult and dangerous to proceed in the direction and along the path he has chosen, but positively impossible. He is forced to turn back, descend, seek another path, longer, perhaps, but one that will enable him to reach the summit. The descent from the height that no one before him has reached proves, perhaps, to be more dangerous and difficult for our imaginary traveler than the ascent—it is easier to slip; it is not so easy to choose a foothold; there is not that exhilaration that one feels in going upwards, straight to the goal, etc. One has to tie a rope round oneself, spend hours with all alpenstock to cut footholds or a projection to which the rope could be tied firmly; one has to move at a snail’s pace, and move downwards, descend, away from the goal; and one does not know where this extremely dangerous and painful descent will end, or whether there is a fairly safe detour by which one can ascend more boldly, more quickly and more directly to the summit.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Soviet history, V.I. Lenin | 18 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on April 16, 2010
The following exchange emerged from the still ongoing discussion around our “Understanding Che Guevara” essay.
By Phil Ferguson, TellNoLies and Mike Ely
Phil Ferguson wrote:
I agree with Mike E’s comment about there not being one, or even two, ways to power in Latin America (and elsewhere). Indeed, in Latin America this could be seen as early as 1979, with the FSLN overthrow of the Somoza regime.
The FSLN had three tendencies, which had split apart for a while and then reunited in 1978. It was the fact that they were able to fight in three ways, not one, which made them the only radical movement in Latin America post-Cuba to actually topple a dictatorship. They waged prolonged people’s war and there was a section of the FSLN (led by Borge) devoted to that; they had an insurrectionalist tendency (led by the Ortega brothers) and a tendency oriented to the small but growing class of wage-labourers (the tendency led by Jaime Wheelock). Without bringing those aspects together in a multifaceted strategy, when the FSLN reunited in 1978, I think the July 1979 revolution would have been unimaginable.
Of course, what happened later was the succumbing to the pressures of imperialism (and the temptations of office/power) and the FSLN is now only a faint echo of the radicalism of Fonseca and the struggles of the 60s, 70s and its early years in power. But that is another story.
TNL writes:
The Sandinista experience has always suggested to me what I have called an “ecosystem approach” to revolutionary strategy. That is to say that real-life revolutions are not simply the result of the triumph of a single correct line over all the assorted incorrect lines, but rather a convergence or synchronization of sometimes competing but ultimately complementary strategies on the part of differently situated actors.
Sometimes this occurs within a party or a formal front, but often not. I think, for example, of the role of Left SRs and anarchists in the October Revolution and its immediate aftermath. One trend is almost always primary in this relationship, but success depends on the contributions of multiple formations. This doesn’t mean its not important to struggle over the correct line,a but it does mean that we should expect some of those struggles to be incomplete in their resolution and for trends that divide in order that certain forms of work are able to mature can come back together in later moments. I’m not sure how this fits into Bill Martin’s idea of a “vital mix” but Phil Ferguson’s comment brought it to mind.
Mike Ely then wrote — looking back at some history using TNL’s “ecosystem” analogy:
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Marxist theory, mass line, Mike Ely, revolution, Socialism, Soviet history, Tell No Lies, theory | 5 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 30, 2010
Gus Hall
By Mike Ely
Someone recently made a comment about the Communist Party USA leader Gus Hall, and triggered the following memory:
I was invited (as a young high school student) by my sister’s boyfriend to hear the CPUSA’s Gus Hall speak about a recent trip to the USSR. This was in the mid-60s and it was one of my very first political meeting.
It was held in an auditorium, and the turnout was respectable — this was (after all) New York City, and the CP had real roots and history.
I was first impressed by how truly frumpy and inbred the whole thing was — even the kids. They had no hint of the times, and were decked out in a very particular Pete Seeger-like subculture (with flannels and a lot of Russian embroidery). And the kids my age were mainly socializing with other red-diaper babies as if this was some boring church meeting that their parents made them attend.
Gus Hall started to speak about touring an auto plant in the USSR, and went off on a whole riff about how slowly the workers were moving. And he said he had remarked to his guide, that they “wouldn’t last a day” back in Detroit. His whole tone had an indignant and self-righteous disdain for the laziness of the Soviet workers, taking advantage of the (supposed) benevolence of their system and its bosses.
It was a moment of clarity for me. Because I felt (at that moment) that he was clearly not speaking as someone who connected with or represented those workers… He was on a hand-held VIP tour conducted by the plant manager — who Gus Hall was seeing as his “peer” and whose problems he was identifying with.
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Posted in Breshnev era, Mike Ely, Soviet history | 20 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on February 21, 2010
The following is a comment from our discussion of Living Revolution or Sterile Orthodoxy: Questions Around Nepal. It is written to engage and disagree with the views put forward by Mike Ely in that post.
“…countries as diverse as Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Korea, Albania, and men as dissimilar as Lenin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, have all found themselves arriving at the one-party state, then we might be forced to conclude that the proletariat HAS IN FACT ALREADY FOUND the form of political rule appropriate to itself as a class.”
* * * * * * *
By John Carter
Comrades,
First, I think it’s extremely cool that Mike has chosen to directly engage the divergent views expressed in this thread. Coming from the orbit of the CPUSA, where criticism is dismissed out of hand when it’s not ignored, I hardly know how to respond … I lack recent practice in maintaining a polemic.
But that’s fine. We need to encourage and find ways to foster and nurture the kind of intellectual and ideological struggle that characterized the Bolshevik Party during Lenin’s lifetime, while still remaining comrades. I quite certain Mike would agree with that.
Anyway -
At first blush, it might seem that allowing room for a multiplicity of competing socialist parties, the basic premise of the Maobadi’s “new mainstream” And here I stand corrected, BTW; it is quite correct that the parties of the exploiters and the bourgeoisie are excluded from this spectrum), is a natrual evolution from the insight that tendencies are going to exist within the vanguard party, and so we might as well let them struggle in the open rather than suppressing them through administrative means or worse.
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Posted in >> communist politics, communism, Communist Party, Marxist theory, Socialism, Soviet history, Stalin and Stalinism | 23 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.”
* * * * * **
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 February 18, 2010
Here are some of the essays Kasama has shared about the experience and oppression of African people in the U.S.
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| Photo: Danny Lyon, by permission to John Steele (click for more) |
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[Available as a printable PDF pamphlet]
By John Steele
In the summer of 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi. They are known to the world as Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner. But back then, in the days before they died, I knew them as Andy, JE, and Mickey.
I want to share with you my memories of the time we drove south together to join the Mississippi Freedom Summer project. I want to tell a bit of the story of that summer, and tell it for a purpose. I believe it has implications for today.
Driving South
Mickey was driving as we pulled out of Oxford, Ohio in his station wagon, windows down, through the lush green of early summer. The four of us were volunteers. We were excited. And we felt some fear. We were part of a project to fight white supremacy in Mississippi, where the most basic democratic rights were denied to African American people. We were going to throw ourselves into the front lines of a cause that called itself, simply, the Movement.
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by Mike Ely
“They don’t just want my death, they want my silence.”
Mumia Abu-Jamal [1]
From Panther to Voice of the Voiceless
On August 8, 1978, Mayor Frank Rizzo was in a combative mood at a special afternoon press conference in Philadelphia’s City Hall. Just hours before, Rizzo’s police had staged a massive raid on the home of the radical MOVE organization on Powelton Avenue. After attacking the house with intense gunfire, tear gas and a flood of water, police arrested the MOVE members and publicly beat Delbert Africa as he surrendered.
At City Hall, Rizzo was blunt with the press: he expected them to close ranks in support of police actions. Then, from the crowded pack of reporters, a young Black journalist spoke out in the resonant tones of a radio broadcaster. He raised pointed questions about the official police story Rizzo had just laid out.
Mayor Rizzo exploded in fury and spat out a thinly veiled threat: “They believe what you write, and what you say, and it’s got to stop. And one day–and I hope it’s in my career–that you’re going to have to be held responsible and accountable for what you do.” [2]
The journalist who challenged Rizzo that day was Mumia Abu-Jamal. He had spent a decade exposing the racism of Philadelphia’s police and legal system.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, >> history, Attica, Black History, Black History Month, Black Panthers, civil rights, cointelpro, lynching, slavery, Soviet history | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on November 9, 2009
This article appeared on the New York Times op-ed page on Nov. 9, 2009.
20 Years of Collapse
By SLAVOJ ZIZEK
TODAY is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. During this time of reflection, it is common to emphasize the miraculous nature of the events that began that day: a dream seemed to come true, the Communist regimes collapsed like a house of cards, and the world suddenly changed in ways that had been inconceivable only a few months earlier. Who in Poland could ever have imagined free elections with Lech Walesa as president?
However, when the sublime mist of the velvet revolutions was dispelled by the new democratic-capitalist reality, people reacted with an unavoidable disappointment that manifested itself, in turn, as nostalgia for the “good old” Communist times; as rightist, nationalist populism; and as renewed, belated anti-Communist paranoia.
The first two reactions are easy to comprehend. The same rightists who decades ago were shouting, “Better dead than red!” are now often heard mumbling, “Better red than eating hamburgers.” But the Communist nostalgia should not be taken too seriously: far from expressing an actual wish to return to the gray Socialist reality, it is more a form of mourning, of gently getting rid of the past. As for the rise of the rightist populism, it is not an Eastern European specialty, but a common feature of all countries caught in the vortex of globalization.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Slavoj Žižek, Soviet history | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on October 30, 2009
Our discussion of the nature of the post-50s Soviet Union and their bloc is (not surprisingly) producing some strong and differing views. I think we should plan to engage this, with substance and patience, over time. I’m going to argue for my own partisan analysis in these discussions — because i think that having this Maoist pole represented well will draw out opposing views and (hopefully) raise the quality of the engagement.
by Mike Ely
Let’s take up some of Saoirse’s points (and hopefully others will do it from their perspective).
“Aside from the USSR and China were there any other socialist revolutions?”
I think there were two major socialist revolutions in the last century. The major socialist revolutions intepenetrated with a huge wave of anti-colonial struggles that burst from the exhaustion of Euro-powers during both world wars. And they interpenetrated with the liberation of Eastern Europe from Nazi occupation in 1945. And while many states emerged with socialist coloration from those events (both in the third world and in eastern europe), they were (in most cases, in my view) not able to actually initiate and propell forward a genuinely socialist revolutionary process.
There was a major element of center and periphery in those dynamics — where the emergence of major socialist power greatly influenced the politics at their edges.
I discussed my views on this, in some detail, with in an earlier essay “A Revolutionary People & the Problems at Its Periphery.” I won’t repeat all those arguments here.
But I’m trying to make the point that a major socialist revolution ripples into the surrounding areas in complex ways.
For example, after there was a socialist revolution in the urban heart of the Russian empire it extended its influence (by various political, economic and military means) far beyond the core of its conscious popular support. And the farther you got to the periphery of that influence — the more certain contradictions emerged. Someone above mentioned the armed intrusion of Bolshevik power into Georgia (February 15 – March 17 1921, during the civil war. Another examples: I wrote a book on Tibet where that is the core issue.
Bob Avakian once said (in the early 80s):
“There is nothing wrong with exporting revolution, but there has to be someone there to import it.”
I think that gets it right, and that dilemma is inherent in the spread and consolidation of revolutions. If you think about the complexity and diversity of North America (or even a medium sized country like Columbia), this dynamic of center and periphery will certainly mark any conceivable revolution in the future.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Afghanistan, Africa, capitalism, Chile, communism, Cuba, Czech Republic, Fidel Castro, imperialism, Korea, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Mike Ely, revolution, Russia, Soviet history, Tibet, Vietnam, Vietnam War | 8 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 14, 2009
by Mike Ely
Richard Stark recently wrote to me:
“If we had just ONE socialist state in the world! At this point I’d bloody well settle for Lichtenstein or San Marino!”
And he added in another note:
“India has a whole lot of Maoists. We need to do our share, wherever we are, for the world revolution.”
I think there are three parts to this that demand our attention:
First, I think that it is just not widely understood just how precious it is to have a radical socialist state in the world. (Even, as Richard says, “just one!”)
It has been a long time (too long) since the world saw a socialist state like Mao’s China that was truly a “beacon of revolution” in the world — training and helping revolutionary movements, providing revolutionary theory and literature, creating a pole among states in the world outside the empires and the dominance of commodity markets, and providing the inspiration of ongoing radical social change.
In many ways it almost seems strange to a new generation when they read how captivated previous generations of communists were by the experiences of the Soviet Union and then (after the 1950s) of revolutionary China. It seems unbalanced for revolutionary movements in this country to be so closely entwined with events and movements so far away.
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Posted in China, comintern, communism, Cuba, Maoism, Mike Ely, revolution, Socialism, Soviet history, Stalin and Stalinism, Trotskyism, UCP Nepal (Maoist), UCP Nepal (Maoist) | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on July 20, 2009
The Historical Failure of Anarchism: Implications for the Future of the Revolutionary Project
[Available in a web version on Kasama.]
by Chris Day
Chris Day’s essay “The Historical Failure of Anarchism” was written for a conference on anarchist strategy in 1996 — and quickly sparked a far ranging ideological struggle the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation. It was seen as a call for a break with inherited anarchism — and for a fresh look at the revolutionary process and previous historical experience. The resulting debates led to the breakup of Love and Rage in 1998 — and a number of its supporters did, in fact, move out of the framework of inherited anarchism.
But the importance of this pamphlet is not just its critique of anarchism‘s weaknesses and complacencies. The essay starts with a challenge to those who refuse to acknowledge or learn from their own failures… and who simply ascribe their own setbacks to the evil of others. And that speaks to many of us.
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Posted in anarchism, Chris Day, communism, revolution, Soviet history, Spanish Civil War, theory | 34 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on July 18, 2009
Broad criticism of wrong policies and ideas were organized during the GPCR (Chinese Cultural Revolution)
by Mike Ely
Joseph Ball writes as part of our ongoing discussion of socialist democracy:
“Has it occurred to anyone that it might be right to put capitalist-roader leaders in dunce’s caps? When these people took over they imposed slavery and oppression on the working class and peasantry. Why on Earth should we be so concerned with the rights of oppressors and exploiters? Those who impose a life of humiliation on others surely deserve a few hours of humiliation themselves.
When I was a high school student (in 1967-68), it was precisely the dunce caps on academic big-shots and authority figures that made me love (and investigate) the Maoist red guards. “Finally!” I thought. I loved the idea that petty oppressors and tormentors would be dragged into public, dis-empowered, and made to answer for their crimes.
Mao wrote early in the Chinese revolution: Without going to extremes, wrongs can’t be righted. And I have always believed there is real truth to that. And I think such things do happen in the course of any real revolution. (But that doesn’t mean that the extremes are justified or overall positive or without consequences.)there is a question of whether specific forms of treatment correspond to our goals and values. Sure reactionaries deserve to be removed from power. Their hold on people deserves to be de-legitimized. Their crimes deserve to be exposed. They deserve to be given new work where they can’t oppress any longer.
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Posted in communism, Cultural Revolution, Maoism, mass line, methodology, Mike Ely, revolution, Socialism, Soviet history | 52 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on July 13, 2009
There are times when a determined, revolutionary section of the people emerges. It is a rare and precious thing.
by Mike Ely
I think that the success and development of a revolution rests heavily on the emergence of a “revolutionary people” and its development, renewal and maturation through different stages of a complex revolutionary process. By revolutionary people, we have generally meant a section of the people that is, one way or another, to one degree or another, consciously for a revolutionary change — and increasingly willing to fight for that. In the great revolutions of the past, such forces have been “militant minorities” — when viewed against the whole of the population, but they have been real popular forces of many hundreds of thousands or millions, who are the core social basis for revolutionary parties, for new revolutionary ideas and for the revolution itself.
Part of the discussion of the Soviet purges (in the 1930s) is the story of the exhaustion, cooptation, demoralization and depoliticization of what had previously constituted a “revolutionary people” within the Soviet revolution. And similarly there is a story to tell, within the Chinese Cultural Revolution, about how an enthusiastic new “revolutionary people” emerged (and was “unleashed) in the early stages of the Maoist cultural revolution (1966-68) — and how the complexities of that struggle left them dispersed, bewildered, divided and unable to act as the 70s progressed, and as the capitalist roaders tightened their garrot-hold on the revolution.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, >> Kasama Project, China, comintern, communism, Cultural Revolution, Mike Ely, Nepal, organizing, political prisoners, Russia, Soviet history, Vietnam War, working class | 9 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on July 13, 2009
We have been discussing the importance of summing up the history of socialist revolution in the twentieth century — and the problem of silence on such events as the “Great Purges” in the 1930s Soviet Union. In that thread, a commentator “Reading You” wrote a defense of the mass executions of those times. Here is a reply.
By Mike Ely
On one level, there is a mind-numbing contradiction at play. The communist movement (justifiably!) denounces the beating of Rodney King, the killing of Oscar Grant, the shooting of Amadou Diallo, the assassination of Malcolm or King, the jailing of Peltier and Mumia, the holding of so-called “enemy combatants” without evidence or trial… These are outrages — and often the innocence of the victim is a part of that outrage.
So what does it mean, if someone like “Reading You” can (with a wave of their hand) minimize the state execution of hundreds of thousands of people (without trial and often, it must be said, without evidence)? Is it that different because those were nominally socialist cops who pulled the triggers?
There were in the 1930s quotas for arrests (just like there were quotas for other forms of production) — i.e. the cops in a particular locality were required to produce so many spies and reactionaries. Imagine what that produced? There was permission to torture signed at the highest level. Imagine what that meant for the emergence of “confessions” and new denunciations of new suspects for the machinery.
How often we rage when cops in the U.S. presume the guilt of “perps” (”They wouldn’t have been arrested if they hadn’t done something” or “I can tell a criminal just by looking at him.”) Does it suddenly become ok, to arrest and punish without evidence or public hearings if the system is socialist?
And what kind of justice would the people get from activists with such a blindspot if they got to be part of a new state power?
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Posted in comintern, communism, Mao Zedong, Mike Ely, political prisoners, prison, revolution, Soviet history, Stalin and Stalinism, torture | 15 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on July 12, 2009
Our summation has deal with the reality of revolutions, not their romanticized self-images
This is a response to the discussion in our thread on “Socialist Democracy, Snowflakes and the Restoration of Capitalism” and Rosa Blanc’s essay on the state. It focuses on one aspect of all this: i.e. the need for communists to dig fearlessly into the history of socialism (and communist revolution) in the twentieth century. There have been a number of discussions on these topics on our site.
by Mike Ely
Quite simply, we need to tell the truth about the twentieth century and the experience of socialist revolution. Seductive myths and self-deception thrive in the absence of information — where manufactured images pass as the available data. But ultimately, an accurate appraisal of these complex experiences is necessary for the work that lies ahead — and people will not settle for anything less. And it needs to be said, there are powerful and positive experiences that are at the heart of that story — as well as grievous developments that cannot and should not be covered over (or upheld).
The defenders of the current American political order have largely succeeded in presenting their system as democratic and protective of popular rights, while portraying the socialist experiences as inherently dictatorial, capricious and oppressive. This is an intolerable and unjustified situation that must be reversed in the course of revolutionary political work. And as an important part of that is digging deeply and candidly into the socialist experiences of the twentieth century.I believe we cannot possibly go before people of the 21st century with the half-true myths that were occasionally attractive in the previous century — and this has been true for decades. We can’t be the last ones to deal publicly with the sharpest controversies of the first wave of socialist revolutions.
There is in this new generation of radical activists a serious desire for what is “real” — not for easy answers or romanticized imaginings. And this is a good thing.
Lacunae and Avoidance
A lot of this is, understandably, tied up with the question of the Stalin years — but not just there. There is really a whole century of struggles and revolutions — together with their conceptions, organizations, achievements and failures to understand.
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Posted in Mike Ely, Socialism, Soviet history, Stalin and Stalinism | 11 Comments »
