I also read that attack on "tabloid voyeurism" on the RCP site and immediately knew whom it was directed at.

"Lies about people"? Come on, RCP people!

If there are lies on here, refute them in a principled way.

And how is anyone on this site "hounding and exposing the lives of prominent cultural and political figures" (as is the supposed "national pastime")?

What prominent cultural and political figure is being HOUNDED and EXPOSED by anything said here?

Some things are being exposed, for sure, but no one is being hounded---unless by "hounded" you mean subjected to criticism.

Should we not all be open to criticism and self-criticism?

And if someone has a recollection of something you said in front of hundreds, that may now embarrass you, is mentioning that (by your "glossary" definition) "counter-revolutionary"?

Clearly the RCP believes that (their quasi-"self-criticism" on the "homosexuality question" notwithstanding), any discussion of the earlier line and mindset behind it is (simply because it is so embarrassing, and apt to give pause to people working or thinking about with it) is counter-revolutionary.

They think:

"We are the revolutionary party, Avakian is our leader.

Thus, whatever homophobic things he or other leaders ever said or did should not be publicly discussed, because they serve the enemy, in this era when homosexuality is widely accepted.

They are "objectively counter-revolutionary" because they make Bob look bad."

Total ideological bankruptcy.

Have I missed something here? The RCP-USA article in the 'Glossary' doesn't seem to mention the issue of gay people, it just seems to be about attacks on leadership. It's a bit hard to know what the precise intention behind posting it is without them saying why they have posted it. There could be all sorts of reasons why its been posted again, I would have thought.

Mike,

I agree that that we should maintain an “appropriate and principled political culture” in order, among other things, to protect the security of all involved. And that we should as a rule avoid naming names.

And I agree with your point made in another context that what is obvious to some is not obvious to others. Certainly this is the case with issues related to sexuality.

I did on this site express,

<blockquote>“puzzlement as to how people who think of themselves as 'scientists' …could be so STUPID as to regard homosexual attraction as a problem requiring this kind of interference into a member or supporter’s intimate life.”</blockquote>

That comment may have been unfair to the RCP members referred to in this discussion. There is a difference between stupidity and ignorance. It is not in fact “obvious” to everyone on the planet that it’s ok to have sex with a member of your own sex.

But still... the statement in the RCP New Programme that “homosexuality...is perpetuated and fostered by the decay of capitalism, especially as it sinks into deeper crisis.... struggle will be waged to eliminate it and reform homosexuals” is indeed profoundly ignorant. That is more obvious to some people than others, because perceptions are based on experience. (That may be their own sexual experience, or just knowing gay or lesbian people.)

That many people in and around the RCP have been (and may continue to be) homophobic in various ways (and of course what is and what isn’t “homophobia” can be debated) isn’t the issue, from my point of view. People in a democratic centralist organization---in a party they believe is truly revolutionary and the best hope for social change---should not be faulted for following the party line on this or that issue.

And of course there should be no “reverse witch hunt.”

But while we should not name names of local party members who did or said this or that, manifesting homophobia, it’s fair to talk about leadership.

The institutionalized (party) homophobia had, for a very long period of time, an identifiable leader. The RCP’s failure to produce a genuine self-criticism has an identifiable leader. This ridiculous attack (on Kasama) on “tabloid journalism” has an identifiable leader.

Should we call him, as in the Harry Potter novels “He-who-must-not-be named”? Is mentioning him a “personal persecution”?

I have never been persecuted by the RCP at all, certainly not on the basis of sexuality. My indignation doesn’t come from personal experience but from empathy with the victims. And I think Bob Avakian should be specifically referenced when we express our critique. He’s not just one of the party leaders dragging a lesbian over the coals at a Starbucks---he’s the director of the policy. And he should be criticized.

I continue to respect the RCP, mainly because of its work in the antiwar movement under difficult conditions. I'd just urge any members defying orders and accessing this site to BOMBARD THE HEADQUARTERS.

I agree this series is one of the most important contributions of this website to what has to be a real accounting of the negative side of the NCM, from the perspective of people who didn't give up on revolution - and unlike <a href="/http://www.revolutionintheair.com/" rel="nofollow">Revolution in the Air</a>, which in spite of its wealth of information is ultimately a "why I quit" accounting, attempts to draw political lessons that radicalize rather than demobilize.

In particular, I think Mike's point in to be taken well:


<blockquote>
"This historic communist experience involves matters of sexuality, security used to prevent accountability, false claims of science, uncritical promotion of reactionary ideas by communists, unprincipled standards of recruitment, and methods of protracted denial."</blockquote>



From Lysenko to Avakian, from highly cultified cultures under the guise of a Democratic Centralism rich in centralism but poor on democracy, to the prosecution of queers and the debasement of women, all of these things happened.

But they also continue to happen, and in fact, continue to be upheld, by large sections of the movement. And often, the experiences in sect (rather than mass) organizations are full of differences in the experience of inner party/outer party experience, where these things are not experienced by those in, but are experienced by those out.

So its very easy to attack the RCP, but we must examine the current practice of the movement as a whole. I do not imply that Kasama in particular has problems around this - because I do not know - but its easy to collect disaffected experiences from former members of any organization.

I say this because I have seen, under other circumstances - such as when the Blob Avakian meme emerged - express ideas similar to what the RCP is expressing when defending itself from criticism - however valid that criticism might be.

We should just name him B-b and get it over with

I have zero respect for the RCP as a revolutionary organization.

While I had long broken with the politics it represented by the time the B-b self-coup happened, the distinct change from a Maoist organization that had a strong personality cult around a historic leader, to one that is simply an apolitical cult *of* the historic leader. Anyone who was a member before 2003 who hasn't left by now is probably already too traumatized to leave in a healthy fashion or too far the deep end to be rescued. Last good thing they had, which was NION, was essentially destroyed by 2005. An Suns- erm - S-ns-r- T-yl-r, who could have been a great spokesperson for revolutionary communism instead has become the torch bearer for a fraud.

Communists should never fear the truth...

This conversation on Kasama about the RCP’s line (and former lines) on LGBT issues and the related question of the culpability of those of us who went along with those lines despite disagreeing with them (along with the question of what exactly we were culpable of) has been an opportunity to reflect on my own past with the Party, the ethical implications of that involvement, and how this relates to larger ethical questions in the history and current comportment of the ICM.

It has been troubling to me that this has had to come out as a series of anecdotal stories, rather than as an attempt at making a comprehensive summation of the past practice of the Party. Yet, this seems to me to be a product of necessity. In the absence of a sweeping command of the experience of the Party, people who want to explore this topic only have, for the time being, the various data points of individual experience that are necessarily anecdotal (the term anecdotal has, at times, been used as something akin to a slur in online discussions about the experience of the revolutionary communist proletarian internationalists in the United States (in particular, during the 2changetheworld.info discussions and the discussions that followed in the wake of the closure of that worthy project), so I want to be clear that I mean no slur or disrespect in using that term here). (Of course, this assumes that none of the leaders of Kasama were in a position to have a comprehensive understanding of the overall workings of the Party. They have claimed that this was not the case, and for the time being I am willing to grant them that assumption.) Since there is a collective project going on of piecing together this history through sharing anecdotal histories, I would like to share my own experience as a contribution to the synthesis that will come out of all this (even if no one puts together a well-researched synthetic piece, everyone reading this is in the process of creating their own synthetic understandings in their own heads (although I do hope something more synthetic comes out of all this)).

During my time as a close supporter of the RCP, I had a history as a bisexual man that was well-known to my immediate Party leadership from early in my time working with the Party. In my area lesbian women participated as members of the RCYB and I do not remember anyone being challenged about their sexuality. In fact, I remember very clearly a young woman in the YB, who later joined the Party after the line changed, telling a comrade who played a leading role in the work she was doing among our base that she was a lesbian and him telling her that he didn’t care and then the conversation moved on. In my experience, we made frequent efforts to link up our united front work with LGBT activists and organizations, and we often dealt with attacks (both principled and unprincipled) on our united front efforts (in a variety of areas) by forces that disagreed with our line on LGBT issues.

The principled attacks were made by LGBT people who legitimately sensed that our line was wrong and struggled with us to change it. The unprincipled attacks were made by groups that saw this as a weak point where they could attack us since they knew they couldn’t get by with straightforward anti-communism. (And sometimes the principled and unprincipled combined in the actions of particular individuals, who combined righteous opposition to a bad line with anti-communism. (For example, some of the forces who decided to stage a kiss-in at Revolution Books in NYC as part of the Stonewall 25/Stonewall Now! events.))

So my experience was with a Party that was not overtly homophobic, except in its written policy statements. I disagreed with these written policies and I was relatively open about this disagreement. I never argued for this line and, whenever I thought that it did not undermine the work of the Party, I semi-publicly stated my opposition. I know many other people who did the same. At the same time, when faced with what I, or we, perceived to be anti-Party attacks, I always upheld the right of the Party to hold this line and struggled against efforts by anti-communists to use the Party’s wrong line on LGBT issues to ice the Party out of various coalitions or discredit the Party’s work in a variety of fields.

The stated politics of the Party were troubling, despite the fact that I saw no follow-up in the form of overt homophobia on the party of Party members or supporters. Initially I decided that despite these errors, the RCP was the closest thing to a serious revolutionary organization in the USA, and I combined this with a nationalist error of my own in seeing the RCP’s work among oppressed nationality base communities in several major cities as far outweighing its line on LGBT issues (even though I recognized that, were the RCP to triumph in a revolution the day after I began supporting the Party, I would likely be a victim of its bad line). I think that there were many other people who made a similar decision. The whole effort that the RCP made among our base is largely unappreciated, and it seems that leftists who have not seen it or, better, experienced that work cannot actually believe that it occurred, despite the fact that they have been told about it in some detail numerous times. (And it is clear that no one with detailed knowledge of that work has appeared to talk about it on Kasama, apart from Mike Ely’s experience of the 1970s.)

Personally, it became clear at one point that my own bisexual history was an obstacle in going forward with my party membership application, but this was one of several issues and we never went in depth in talking about it as an obstacle.

After several years, I and others that I knew were told that young party members had waged a heroic line struggle resulting in the change of the line on LGBT issues in the Draft Programme, and young communists were brought from another city to explain the new line at a conference. Clearly, judging from the discussion here on Kasama, this is not how this news was delivered to the people commenting here.

To be clear, I am communicating this experience to provide another data point for this overall summation of the RCP’s line on homosexuality. This experience was very different from the experiences that have been communicated on this website so far, and is not meant to challenge or to try to invalidate those experiences. Rather, this is to help us understand just how varied people’s experiences were. Under these conditions, the RCP still had a wrong line, it just didn’t express that line very often (except when attacked for having that line). It made it much easier to focus on the many positive aspects of the Party’s work, and it seems that in retrospect I benefited from having a local leadership that either a) disagreed with the stated line or b) pragmatically decided to ignore the stated line whenever it could (or both).

The change in line, and lack of self-criticism, produced a lot of different responses. Most people I knew cheered the new line and just wanted to move on. We had disagreed with the line and now we wanted to just get away from it. Other people, who had apparently really gotten some heat when struggling over the old line internally, were furious at the lack of self-criticism. One good friend/comrade of mine left the Party over the struggles that ensued over this, after having swallowed the earlier line that she disagreed with for decades.

So that’s my experience, and I suspect that it is representative of many others who did not leave the Party or its orbit over this issues, despite having serious disagreements for many years. Despite this suspicion, I only speak for myself, and I may well be wrong about this being a representative example.

This does, however, beg the question: Why stick with the Party when I did in fact have serious disagreements with this line? Why not seek out other venues for ‘activism’ or ‘revolutionary activity’? I’m sure everyone has their own answer to this question, but mine hinges on an understanding of the historical context of the RCP as a legitimate heir of the tradition of the ICM in the USA. If you believe(d) that the RCP is(was) the embodiment of the tradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao in our time period, or recent past, in the USA, and you have an actual understanding of the real-world limitations of the historical experience of the ICM, how on earth could this question on its own drive you from the Party? After all, if you uphold the experience of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China, you have to come to terms with the actual real failings of that experience in addition to its triumphs. At the end of the day, was it an advance for humanity that the Great Leap Forward happened, despite its costs? What about various efforts during the Stalin years that advanced and harmed both our cause and millions of human beings? Or, to push the envelope in simplifying the issue, do we throw out Marx because he impregnated his maid (what an ugly juxtaposition with Strauss-Kahn)?

As someone who likes to think of himself as a thorough-going materialist, it did not surprise me that the RCP had serious shortcomings. But it had other marks of seriousness and potential that no other group on the left came close to, not the ISO, Love and Rage or the Lurpies. And for that matter, it also displayed signs of being more serious about revolution than groups like the EZLN, the PKK or the FARC, but substantiating that claim would be a whole other discussion. On the other-hand, this desire to think of oneself as a ‘thorough-going materialist who recognizes shortcomings’ has the shortcoming of predisposing one to forgive errors of this kind. The ‘tough-minded materialist’ has often been unkind to LGBT people historically, and this is something worth thinking about.

To extend the parallel: How do we characterize people who supported the Soviet Union during the 1930s when it carried out heroic efforts which ultimately benefited humanity and simultaneously carried out genocidal policies against border peoples who were deemed enemy nationalities? This is a question that the ICM really hasn’t opened up, but I would say that these people could be both heroic and despicable simultaneously. I guess those of us who put up with unconscionable politics regarding LGBT people in order to make heroic efforts for revolution in the USA in other contexts also qualify for a similarly contradictory label, and I do not mean here for the positive side of this contradiction to ‘eat up’ the negative side.

I do think it is likely that the RCP’s re-posting of its “What Is Counter-Revolution” (http://revcom.us/a/146/counter_rev-en.html) article is related to this discussion, although I think the Kasama community should be open to the notion that the RCP has a hand in many issues and events and that, as Ball stated, this may be in relation to any number of things. The RCP remains the most advanced detachment of revolution in the United States, and I think that Gary’s singling out of its anti-war work only reveals his own blindspots, because there are many other areas where the RCP is doing admirable work. It is clear to me how the various exposures of homophobia within the RCP in the past could be used to attack the RCP today, and the denials of this fact by commentators here seem disingenuous to me. Whatever the motivation, of course these stories of the RCP’s past can (and probably will) be used to attack the RCP today. Because of this, I post this comment here with some trepidation. Still, this conversation will happen whether the Party wants it to or not, and the attacks are the results of a wrong line and bad actions on the part of figures of authority within the Party over many years, and not mainly the machinations of revisionists and counter-revolutionaries out to destroy the Party. The Party should embrace what is correct in the criticisms and move forward, not stick its head in the sand and declare people counter-revolutionary who are dealing with the emotional grief of having been denied a chance at making revolution (see Mao on Lu Xun’s “The True Story of Ah Q” in “On the Ten Major Relationships”).

As a final note, I do want to mention that there is a tremendous need for this type of knowledge to be synthesized into a larger summation and not left at the level of individual stories, even though these are currently our necessarily primitive data points for a more comprehensive synthesis. I have an ironic anecdote about the weakness of anecdotal accounts. When the friend that I mentioned above left the Party after the change in line on LGBT issues, she claimed that one of the people who was a big stalwart of the old LGBT line was Mike Ely. After meeting with Mike shortly after he left the Party, I concluded that she was wrong and that she was mistaking his position as someone upholding the Party (at that time) for his actual position on the Party’s LGBT line. I suspect that over the years my own defense of the Party came off to others as much more of a defense of a wrong line that I disagreed with and that I did not intend to defend and not as the defense of the Party itself, as I intended. I suspect that many of us who defended the Party at the time inadvertently came off as homophobes. If that happened to Mike, who is sponsoring this discussion (or at least moderating it), surely there were many other miscommunications that might inadvertently be portrayed inaccurately in an anecdotal account.

Thank you for that thoughtful contribution, Sylvanus.

Mike says-

<blockquote>'I have to say I have been shocked by the discussion by Libri, Andrew and Susie’s experience — and the fact that I didn’t know about any of this is not some personal alibi.' </blockquote>

As I have said before I really don't believe this business that Mike had no idea what was going on.

I think this smacks of poltical opportunism. Attack Avakian's leadership while making no self-criticism. Given the open line of RCP-USA I just don't see how Mike can act so shocked now about the stories he is hearing and think he can launch a campaign against Avakian's leadership on this issue without making any self-criticism.

This idea that Mike knew of the anti-gay line political line but is now shocked to hear that gay people suffered discrimination in an RCP-USA linked organisation is absolutely incredible. Even if Mike didn't know any individual cases of this at the time how can he be so shocked now to find out this happened, given the line of the Party of which he was a member?

Whether this comment is allowed to appear on this website (unlike another one on the same issue) is a test of whether Kasama's commitment to democracy is genuine or just yet more hypocrisy. The idea that this comments cannot appear because it contains 'an attack on an individual'-i.e. MIke would be total hypocrisy when you are trying to put together an attack on Avakian's leadership on this issue.

Are you satisfied, Joseph, that your post above appeared?

It seems to me that Mike (and the site) are approaching this question squarely, and not self-defensively.

Mike writes:

<blockquote>"...the 2changetheworld discussion site (which Rosa and I collaborated in creating for the RCP) was treated as something to be killed as soon as possible — as something suspect and alien. And while many participants summed it up as a positive new thing — there was quite a bit of bitter hostility thrown its way internally (since it opened up horizontal communications, and leaked into water tight kingdoms). In many areas, party members and youth supporters were forbidden to participate (go online to read, or post), and many were reduced to reading this complex threaded discussion in the impossible form of thick printed pages delivered weeks apart. (Which made it impossible for those reading it to grasp the lively, fast moving conversational nature of this medium, and just made it look fragmented and confusing.)

That discussion community was destroyed without discussion or explanation or appeal. I simply received a note that said kill it now, end of story."</blockquote>

I <em>LOVED</em> that site.... to me it showed that the RCP was open to discussion and the input of the masses into the formulation of line, at a time when the RCP was (supposedly) formulating a new program. It was like a forum in which you cold post your "big character posters."

That was when I felt most supportive of the party.

Then it was terminated, abruptly and without explanation, and no new program's ever been presented. Was the clash of ideas there, on things ranging from religion to sexuality, just too troubling to Bob?

I never knew of any attempts to force gay people to act straight when I worked with the RCP. I always thought it was all in the theoretical realm, not with actually trying to push lesbians into having sex with men. Ugh.

I remembered wondering how it was ok for men around the rcp to be single and have no obvious interest in women, but not ok for a man to declare he was gay. But I never voiced this and totally believe Mike never knew about how the rcp actually treated revolutionary LGBT people any more than I did.

The RCP leadership does not want revolution. I can't prove this but I think their actions over the last 5+ years make this obvious. They are more interested in promoting the cult of BA than communism. Even allowing for the fact that we are living in very dissatisfied (but non-revolutionary) times in the US.

Is Joseph Ball the only voice in this conversation that can call it how it looks-an "opportunist....attack" on AVAKIAN and the PARTY under the cover of a legitimate LGBT issue in the history of the ICM. I guess with opportunity comes opportunists.

Since almost everyone here seems to think personal experience or perception from those who are obviously biased toward the PARTY <em>equals</em> actual facts that we are all suppose to swallow as "insider" truth, let me then say that my experience over a number of years working with the PARTY have proven to be the exact opposite of some of the claims here.

I have heard nothing but self criticism from the RCP on this old line with nothing but support for the LGBT issues. Not the anti-gay or homophobia which is claimed here. Actually this latest ATTACK on the PARTY and AVAKIAN from Kasama resembles the slanders that some Trotskyists have spewed out at times. But thats just "MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE".

By the way I am NOT a member or ever was a member of the RCP but have worked with and supported the PARTY over a number of years but I do not claim to speak on their behalf. These are my own thoughts.

Dom: How is "opportunist" to tell and share the truth of things you've experienced? Maybe Joseph Ball (and now you) are the only ones calling this "opportunist" because of those participating in this conversation only you are upset that the RCP (which you respect so much you need to call it "the PARTY") is being subject to criticism.

But nothing should be immune from principled criticism. Marxism is all about "merciless criticism of all existing conditions."

How do accounts of real-life experience constitute "Trotskyist"-type "slanders"?

I think what you're really saying is that it's more important to shield "the PARTY and AVAKIAN" from criticism and embarrassment than to reveal the details of the RCP's homophobic past. And that implies that homophobia is, after all, not such a big problem.

Joseph writes:

<blockquote>Attack Avakian’s leadership while making no self-criticism.</blockquote>

A fascinating strawman argument. It is precisely the opposite of what Mike said in the post you are calling opportunist. For example:

<blockquote>Again: this discussion is about OUR common history. Which they don’t own.

In fact in some ways, we are not hoisting these errors onto them — but taking them on ourselves. We are appropriating this history (piece by piece by piece). We are taking the responsibility that the past requires that we take.

This is about summing up the previous communist movement. It is not about today’s RCP, who do not participate in such matters, or figure much in anyone’s calculations.

It is the chance for some of us to do a combination of excavation and public self-criticism — which is important for any future communist movement. And there are other episodes that are not as grievous or negative — and we will learn from them with more celebration.</blockquote>

If anything, Mike's post strained to be tame towards the modern day RCP. He goes out of his way by NOT making it about the current micro-group that has kept the name RCP. [snip]

Joseph and Dom: was the summation of anti-gay lines that appeared on Kasama about organizations other than the RCP also unprincipled nad opportunist? Or is it only opportunist when it is directed at "THE PARTY" (maybe if you say that in all caps enough times in will become true)? A fascinating epistemology on so many levels.

But again: The discussion hasn't hinged on that because this isn't about the mini-relic that kept the RCP name. It's about communist summation of communist history.

I don't think "opportunistic" is the right word, but I think that Mike's discussion of the RCP's homophobia is a little fanciful insofar as he does not link it to a critique of Leninism or the long tradition of communist puritanism or any real insights into what led people to devote themselves to a loopy cult. After all, all these problems in and with the RCP have a context.

CWM writes:

<blockquote>"I think that Mike’s discussion of the RCP’s homophobia is a little fanciful insofar as he does not link it to a critique of Leninism or the long tradition of communist puritanism..."</blockquote>

I don't think you understand my view, but I appreciate the chance to clarify.

I don't think there is a single "Leninism." There are many approaches that self-describe as Leninism, and then there is (rather separately) the actual practice of the Bolsheviks and V.I.Lenin himself.

You (CWM) are much more fixated on closed/fixed doctrine than I am (or than I think we should be).

I view the communist movement as a bush -- as an evolving set of ideas and practices that often are in sharp contradictions and conflict with each other. (See the essay <a href="/http://kasamaproject.org/2010/07/15/marxism-is-more-like-a-bush/" rel="nofollow">"Marxism is more like a bush in an ecosystem"</a>

My own summation of the terrible RCP practices vis-a-vis gay people is precisely that it resides in the mistaken ideas inherited from previous communist movement (and from the surrounding bigotry of society) <em>but also</em> that it was possible to entrench those errors <em>for decades</em> because of the particular practice of "democratic centralism" in the RCP. And i would add that a general indifference/hostility toward sexuality made the issue appear "less important" in ways that now look shameful.

Let's look at one factor: The organizational structure of the RCP had no democracy in it. A former member mentioned to me yesterday that she don't remembers any serious debate during her years in that organization. I saw some (over articles on the newspaper staff, in some pre-congress discussions, etc.) -- but that was rare since most members were rarely involved in such discussion.

Meanwhile, I think I can count the number of formal "votes" i saw on ten fingers -- and they were virtually all "pro-forma" and unanimous votes, with very few exceptions.

In other words debate-followed-by-voting was not generally used as a mechanism for decision-making, and very few members were near at <em>any</em> locus of major decision-making or involved in significant decision-making.

And with that problem (no democracy) you could have the perpetuation of <em>this</em> particular set of practices -- even in the face of rising internal frustration. But that same lack of democracy also caused <em>other</em> errors and legacies and madness. The anti-gay policies are only one manifestation of a problem that caused <em>many</em> forms of self-blinding and the promotion of a terribly passive habit of obedience among cadre.

But there is nothing inherently "Leninist" about that problem.

I believe history shows that the conditions inside Lenin's own circles and periphery were very different (and also that they evolved over time, and the organizational practices of the Bolsheviks were radically different in different periods). To put it crudely: I don't think Lenin's Bolsheviks operated anything like Avakian's RCP (even if the RCP would take Lenin as their justification).

Further: Lenin never spoke of "democratic centralism" as some overarching principle (i believe you can only find the words once, in passing, in his works). And the attempt to establish a single universal set of organizational principles, codify them, impose them on the world movement, and elevate (through that universalization) those <em>particular</em> rules (no factions, no real debates etc.) -- was not the work of Lenin, but the invention of a particular Leninism <em>by others</em>.

If you look back over what I have written, CWM, you will see that over and over again I raise the matter that the RCP's problem (and the lesson to draw from it) was not <em>simply</em> some simple sinister blanketing homophobia -- but involved a deeper organizational problem (no accountability, no ability to reverse wrong decisions, no penetration of the outside world into inner circles, inability to hear others, overemphasis on inherited orthodoxy, etc.)

I am not engaged in a critique (demonization, rejection) of Leninism -- since I don't believe such a Leninism exists <em>as a fixed, closed</em> doctrine. -- but mine is a critique of previous organization assumptions of many previous Leninists (including myself).

Put another way:

There is a simplistic caricature sometimes painted of the RCP -- where it was a bunch of raving haters, foaming with homophobia, who manufactured cynical "theoretical" language to disguise their raw bigotry. And it is assumed that this whole practice was (more or less simply) to be placed at the feet of Avakian (because, in this scenario, he is the little puppet-master running this small authoritarian structure).

Like all caricatures, it has a tiny whiff of truth, but it is essentially false.

And that is why it is worth pointing out (as I have done, but also as <a href="/http://kasamaproject.org/2011/08/02/opening-the-red-closets-door-then-a-demand-to-shut-it/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/08/02/opening-the-red-closets-door-then-a-demand-to-shut-it/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/08/02/opening-the-red-closets-door-then-a-demand-to-shut-it/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/08/02/opening-the-red-closets-door-then-a-demand-to-shut-it/#comment-41172" rel="nofollow">Dom does</a> and as <a href="/http://kasamaproject.org/2011/08/02/opening-the-red-closets-door-then-a-demand-to-shut-it/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/08/02/opening-the-red-closets-door-then-a-demand-to-shut-it/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/08/02/opening-the-red-closets-door-then-a-demand-to-shut-it/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/08/02/opening-the-red-closets-door-then-a-demand-to-shut-it/#comment-41132" rel="nofollow">Sylvanus Windrunner </a> does) that you could conduct <em>years</em> of political work in and around the RCP without hearing anti-gay slurs.

SW writes:

<blockquote>“The stated politics of the Party were troubling, despite the fact that I saw no follow-up in the form of overt homophobia on the party of Party members or supporters."</blockquote>

Andrew <a href="/http://kasamaproject.org/2011/07/10/rejected-by-comrades-my-love-was-just-love/" rel="nofollow">writes</a>:

<blockquote>"Honestly, I don’t know how and why I never realized that the party had an anti-gay stance. It just never came up.</blockquote>

Think about that!? Isn't that a bit amazing?! This is a <em>generalized</em> experience.

I'll go further -- (to take up Joseph's question of "attacking Bob Avakian") -- I have known Bob personally. We spent a lot of time together at various points -- in ways that didn't just involve meetings. And I never saw any sign of a virulent anti-gay bigotry (you know the seething kind I mean). No casual expressions of hatred, no comments when seeing gay people on the street. Nothing. Ever.

I'm not saying there were not wrong ideas involved! Obviously there were.

I was certainly guilty of "wrong ideas" on this (including specifically on the relative importance of this so-called "question" -- but not <em>just</em> that).

And obviously Avakian is also guilty of wrong ideas on gay people (including the very idea that there is something inherently wrong about being gay). And he has particular responsibility as a leader (and, one assumes, motive force) in these anti-gay policies and views.

But I am saying that this whole episode is an example of a <em>revolutionary</em> community gone wrong -- and it happened in ways where very different things were going on <em>on the surface</em> and then <em>behind the scenes.</em> And where (for us, now) an overview <em>requires</em> an excavation.

Eric (above) <a href="/http://kasamaproject.org/2011/08/02/opening-the-red-closets-door-then-a-demand-to-shut-it/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/08/02/opening-the-red-closets-door-then-a-demand-to-shut-it/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/08/02/opening-the-red-closets-door-then-a-demand-to-shut-it/">http://kasamaproject.org/2011/08/02/opening-the-red-closets-door-then-a-demand-to-shut-it/#comment-41174" rel="nofollow">says the things</a> that I would want to say in answer to Joseph's misrepresentation of my views.

But on one level, I don't blame Joseph for finding it hard to believe that you can be inside the RCP (for decades!) and not <em>know</em> what is happening to gay people discovered in the organization. It <em>is</em> shocking -- and I was shocked. And I don't blame Joe (or anyone else) for finding it strange.

As I said: we all knew there was a "theoretical position" -- but there was zero discussion (ever) of subsequent policy implications -- other than that gay men and lesbians could (supposedly) not be communists. I knew that gay contacts were kept off the recruitment track, but we also all knew (as SW mentions) that there were active efforts to reach out to gay activists on common issues (by mass initiatives like Refuse &amp; Resist). And even as the RCP claimed to "change their line" -- the leadership only repudiated their "theoretical position" but never acknowledged their practices (shunning and expulsion of gay people, certainly not a practice of urging gay people to adopt heterosexuality under pressure (!), and so on...) And anyone who started to unravel their own homophobia or start to excavate the results of this "theory" -- they were sharply criticized and rather harshly snapped back. ( could give many examples of this).

The point of this excavation -- actually comparing what most people knew with what was actually happening -- is hardly to avoid blame. It is to <em>take</em> responsibility. It is to confront the results of passivity and organizational insulation -- and prevent it from happening again. It is to identify the techniques in play (of info diet, secrecy, imposed discipline despite disagreement, etc.)

And, at the same time, there are people who <em>did</em> know the details -- there were leading people who conducted these bombardment sessions, who suggested that lesbians live as heterosexuals, who organized the shunning and expulsion of people. And it would be good if they would step forward too.

* * * * * * *

If we were to take a different approach -- to simply dismiss the whole process as just a cultist bunch of authoritarian homophobes, then (a) we would be misunderstanding what happened, and (b) we would precisely prevent a summation that can help guide a new communist effort.

<strong>A strange anti-sexual current</strong>
<strong>
I want to end with a note of uniting with CWM on one point:</strong> I don't think we have (yet) excavated much about "the long tradition of communist puritanism" (at least not here on Kasama).

We have started this (for example the widely visited post <a href="/On Telling Each Other “How to Fuck”" rel="nofollow">"Telling Each Other How to Fuck"</a>. But we have barely scratched the surface.

And even here, the issue is not some monolithic "Leninism," since (as I'm sure many people know) there have been both libertine and puritanical currents within modern communism -- and many examples where the approach on sexuality was very radical (for time and place, like rural China and Nepal), while <em>seeming</em> puritanical to those within American sexual subcultures.

We need to address that more.

Mike, I think I understand your comments, but the lack of internal democracy that you describe within the RCP is something that we find over and over and over against among Marxist Leninist groups during the last century—it is definitely the norm, not the exception.

If we accept that fact, then we must either argue a) most Marxist Leninists misunderstood Marxist Leninism or, b) there is something inherently undemocratic about Marxist Leninism. It's really one or the other.

<blockquote>

<b>Internal culture</b>

"Yet beyond such considerations, there is a further obstacle to the research of even the most scrupulous historians: the limited nature of the sources, and the difficulties of their interpretation. Communist parties—by virtue of their ideology, organizational form and the conditions in which they had to operate—were far from transparent. Debates on fundamental questions were concentrated within highly restricted and often informal party gatherings; participants were bound to confidentiality and even amongst themselves spoke cautiously, out of concern for unity. Political resolutions took genuine account of the positions of party activists, and lower-level debates were often lively and well attended; but the decisions were ultimately accepted and defended by everyone, albeit with shades of nuance. Proven ability was valued in promoting party leaders, but the process took place through co-optation from above, and measures of loyalty also carried weight. In some countries and at certain moments, there was no hesitation in censoring the facts or providing only cursory explanations of policies to the outside world or even to the party’s own base; the goal of consolidation and mobilization took precedence—if need be at the expense of truth. But even when and where spaces developed in which a degree of dissent would be tolerated, for example in the Central Committees—as in Italy from the start of the 60s—it was expressed in prudent, partially coded language. Record-keeping was meticulous at all levels, but also very sober and often, whether willingly or out of official duty, self-censored..." </blockquote>

No the lengthy quote above is not from any thread on opening or slamming shut “The Red Closet” door (or the latest in this thread (via the rcp’s “Glossary” – response--of their glossing over major political differences about same sex relationships, etc.).

It is taken from the post,<a href="/http://kasamaproject.org/2011/08/01/the-tailor-of-ulm-an-overview-of-communism-and-our-world/" rel="nofollow"> <b>The Tailor of Ulm: An Overview of Communism &amp; Our World</b>.
</a>
Reason being—IMO, there are some underlying questions, both historically and currently, about the very formation of a communist organization or party, especially as revolutionary communists try and reconceive and regroup, that linger, or even make potential members gun-shy about actually joining in the process of forming a new org. or party. Democratic centralism being one of, but probably one of the most prevalent, 800 lb. gorillas in the room…at least d.c. as many of us understand it.

And the trepidation felt by very genuine revolutionary-minded, or otherwise revolutionary communists, has little if anything to do with ultimately being “anti-communist” but is based on some real experience overall within the communist movement, harkening back to way back when.

And I will go as far as to say, that while I applaud the openness (in discussion, polemics and debate) of the Kasama Project, as an individual I’ve had some grave differences with some supporters and participants, whose line(s) I interpret as a reflection of some past thinking (and methods) and even if some of what I consider incorrect lines being cloaked in some current (“p.c.”) political jargon.

Are there inherent problems, pitfalls and contradictions in the various or basic formations of communist organizations (or parties), as we know them? And if so, how do we form a cohesive revolutionary communist organization of a new type? (Obviously not by just claiming we’ve done so.)

How do we excavate and debate some underlying problems that might have ultimately led to the discussion, testimony and rebuttal of the rotten line around homosexuality…surely not just a rotten line in the rcp and amongst its leadership. There have been numerous comments and posts by people who were members or on the periphery of other communist organizations; which comments I have found just as enlightening as those who were in or around the rcp.

Anecdotally I have thought of myself as a communist for at least 50 years, although obviously when I was a lot younger wouldn’t have particularly articulated my politics as such. And the reason I commented on the original post from Comrade Libri was to try and say—albeit probably sounding somewhat self-righteous—was, hey, there were those of us who were straight, who tried to take on the backward and reactionary line around homosexuality in the rcp, even in the early ‘70s, but who consistently ran up against our own obstacles. Some risking being isolated (characterized as disruptive) within the framework of an organization people were willing to give their lives for. And some actually did—not just Comrade Damian Garcia. It became more important to not go along, or share in some complicity—even under the signboard of overall unity, or unity with the prevailing line of leadership.

And why the hell was such a reactionary line able to hold sway for so long? Did it have more to do with the “internal culture” (referenced above) as it was developing, and taking a firmer hold, and based on some spoken and unspoken die-hard (and perhaps misinterpreted) Leninist principles around organizational forms and methods?

In my view, what I saw developing was an aristocracy (and hierarchy) of “knowledge.” Where do correct ideas come from? How are those ideas synthesized and moved to a higher plane?

And least we not forget—would we even be having the discussion around homosexuality and/or homophobia, had it not been for both the organized as well as some seemingly spontaneous struggle of the LGBT community in the first place? Unfortunately, groups like the rcp weren’t really listening, or paying enuf attention, and could have learned a hell of a lot from people engaged in a righteous struggle against oppression and repression.

Call me a liberal, counter-revolutionary, whatever(ism)…with the exception of certain very particular circumstances, I believe that the struggles for human rights are non-negotiable.

Oh dear…was writing this before Mike’s last comment, which I just started to read.

Like SW I am also posting with trepidation. As a former member of the party I still support the party and view it as the only viable force for revolution in our country. My contact with them currently is limited but I left on good terms and want to keep it that way.

At the same time I think I do need to weigh in on the discussion because I was part of series of discussions with a potential recruit from the YB who was gay. The descriptions given by Libri and others are similar to what we did with this youth who came out while in the brigade.

At the time my thinking was that it was our responsibility to publicly uphold the party’s line even if we didn’t personally agree with it. I deeply regret being part of this and the damage it caused a very impressionable and somewhat immature high schooler.

In reflecting on what happened and why, and why I didn’t reject the instructions I was given or stand up or questions the authority of my leadership more, I see that there were three main issues:

1. My reactions and behaviors and decision making processes were strongly shaped by working with the party and I was taught, so to speak, not to question authority or to disobey directions no matter how abhorrent or even silly the directions seemed.

2. Information was used as a weapon of sorts, with it often being withheld unnecessarily to control and contain discussion or dissent. So within our local few people actually knew what was happening with whom and for what reason.

3. Security was given as the reason for everything. For a time I was frequently sent to take care of a background task. I had to rent meeting space, buy things, and arrange for transportation for people without knowing who they were, what the purpose of the meetings were or what was actually going to happen there. I did these things as I was told to do them because I assumed that certain information was being withheld from me for security reasons. Similarly, when later I was given directions to do things that had a negative impact on people (by shunning them, not following through on contacting them, etc) I did this even though I didn’t want to because I assumed or was told that there was a larger security issue at stake that I didn’t know anything about (and that I shouldn’t know anything about for security reasons).

Although I disagree with much of the discussion on this blog I do agree that there were many dysfunctional aspects to the way that that party was organized, the way that leadership interacted with lower level cadre, the way some where favored over others publicly, and the process for dealing with conflict, disagreement and discussion. Whether this is/was a perversion of centralism, I’m not sure. But I do agree with some others here who have said that the party continues to do good work and I think it should be supported.

Yes, we should criticism what happened in the past, but also let’s find areas in which we can still unite with them and let’s encourage the party leadership to confront these problems and change. Because when we look at it there is really no other party capable of leading revolution in the united states.

Am sure a lot of us here on Kasama can respect Pat’s (and some others) upholding the rcp in general, even if we don’t feel the same allegiance. And I think Pat’s comments are constructive and informative.

But I found the following “upsetting,” for lack of a better term:

<blockquote>“In reflecting on what happened and why, and why I didn’t reject the instructions I was given or stand up or questions the authority of my leadership more, I see that there were three main issues:

My reactions and behaviors and decision making processes were strongly shaped by working with the party and I was taught, so to speak, not to question authority or to disobey directions no matter how abhorrent or even silly the directions seemed.” </blockquote>

When I was in the RU/rcp I remember hearing criticisms of the old SDS …the way it was run…how it seemed to take forever to make a decision, everything up for grabs, some naivete, Robert’s Rules of Order but at the same time, trying desperately to be “democratic” in form. I just accepted these criticisms at face value, never having been in SDS, as I was a “worker and part time student.”

But I can’t help but wonder if the entrenched authoritative atmosphere in say, the rcp, with emphasis on centralism (with its security—which to me became a siege mentality—as part of the mix, or even everything being of the utmost urgency) wasn’t in some way a backlash against an SDS-type organization.

But what struck me about what Pat said above was—not to train most especially cadre, to question “authority”, or some authoritative line, but instead to create an atmosphere so stifling for dissent or even questions, is a mirror image of so many student/teacher, worker/boss, politicians and government vs. the people, priest and congregation, even a lot of parents and their offspring, in bourgeois (and paternalistic) society.

Parent to child: “Just do what I say!” Child, “why?” Parent, “because I said so.” Oh, okay…

With all the profound questions and upheaval on our and the people’s plate, that we collectively have and will face, for a burgeoning communist organization to be so top heavy is self-defeating. For the chasm between leadership and led to be even further widened, especially in non-revolutionary times, only exacerbates the situation.

I think that an important role for real leadership to play is to in fact work to lessen that (somewhat inevitable and contradictory) chasm. It is crucial that cadre and the advanced need to engage, and not be trained as some sort of automaton. Conversely, cadre needn’t simply play the “devil’s advocate.” For one thing—to open things up more for real discussion or debate, shows some faith in the cadre, and ultimately the people.

I am not trying to promote individualistic acts or attitudes. But am a big advocate for collectivity and collective struggle. Am also not trying to promote putting the organization at risk. There are going to be plenty of moments when communist revolutionaries need to act as an Iron Fist, even if a part of that fist has some disagreements with a particular political line.

But how are cadre trained? To simply follow orders or parrot whatever the line of the day is from “leadership”? And how is that same cadre, if they aren’t trained to be critical thinkers, and are part of waging principled line struggle, able to convert and transmit even the loftiest of ideas to those they’re associated with outside of a particular organization?

I don’t know about others, but for myself, it was communist ideals and principles, and a whole new way of looking at the world and its events, that captured my imagination…not one particular organization.

I’ve had some conversations with an old comrade—an intellectual who was very much groomed in theory. Since leaving the rcp year’s ago, he now says, “The communist project is dead.” I don’t agree. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater, por favor. But at the same time, with some very superficial understanding of Badiou, I tend to think that much of the old formations and methods of many communist organizations and parties just might be “saturated.”

How all that will translate for the future is up for grabs. I also think it is up to revolutionary-minded people, and communists, to try and struggle to create a different kind of atmosphere, with avenues to engage and struggle with a wider array of forces and to maximize the potential contributions of the many as opposed to only a few.

Wow, the level of brainwashing the RCP subjects its members is such that even after leaving the party, recognizing its utter lack of any real political life internally outside of the leadership, a person still supports it, and " view it as the only viable force for revolution in our country" with no problems.

I am deeply saddened :/

I found Pat's honesty refreshing (although of course I disagree with him/her about the RCP).

It is by no means surprising that s/he found a culture of servility and slavishness within the RCP. Such a culture has been a common feature of all communist parties over the last century.

It is not aberrant but inherent within Marxist Leninist project itself. If the purpose of a revolutionary party is to seize power, then it must naturally put a premium on obedience and internal hierarchy. Democracy, if anything, is a hindrance to such a party. You need members that will, above all, take orders. This is why communist parties have always been hierarchical and authoritarian.

However, if the purpose of a revolutionary organization is to prefigure the type of society that we want to build, then revolutionaries will not only tolerate things like democracy and sexual/gender diversity (etc) but they will also celebrate and encourage them.

I may have missed it, but can we really say that serious opposition to the line on homosexuality was also thwarted by the homophobia that most of us carry as part of the cultural baggage of being raised in this culture? In fact, this may be the heart of the matter for many of us, the internal nexus around which it was easy to glomb onto the so-called political reasons of security, not being very important in the grand scheme of making revolution, following the discipline of demoncratic centralism, etc.

Somewhere, if a new society is to emerge out of the nightmare of capitalism/imperialism, all human rights (as Miles says) have to be non-negotiable. Part of getting there is the dialectical relationship -- nay, the alchemical marriage -- between theory our there and our beliefs in here. Anyone can mouth M-L-M scripture and still be a homophobe, still by mysoginist, still have racial blinders. But can we live and act from the place of opposing all oppression? Can we be motivated by the love that Che speaks of? Can we afford to put off our own transformation in the process of radically changing class society?

If we think that counterrevolution and capitalist restoration is mainly a matter of the superiority of arms, rather that ideological rot, than let us think again. The struggle over homosexuality involves the experiences of the RCP and the experiences of the ICM. These experiences can tell us a great deal about the world we want to create and how we might contribute to the birth of that world.

There are dozens of revolutionary organizations in the USA. All of them are more viable forces for revolution in the USA - whatever their problems internal and external - than the RCP, and have been so for decades (if they existed then) or if they didn't, have been so since they were founded. Even other organizations with leadership cults, like the WWP, have had a wider-reaching positive impact on the subjective conditions of the revolutionary movement as a whole.

I am not ignoring the political points. I am confronting them head on. I understand that Kasama orients towards the RCP, and that indeed the RCP has done many good things. But these things can be done without having to believe that there has to be *A* organization, and certainly without believing that organization is simply the RCP without the bad stuff, because to a large extent that bad stuff was the result of bad politics.

Fair enough. We do agree on the ecosystem perspective, which is why I do not ignore Kasama, basically unique in using that view.

Ecosystemic views are at the core of the most revolutionary innovations in the last decades in a number of fields, including the world wide web itself. The Web was neither the first internet information service, nor the most widely adopted when it started, but whose creator rather than making up a bunch of rules and describing and programming the system rigidly, as others had done before, basically set up a series of abstract principles and some initial coding and allowed the ecosystem to flourish. Yes this ecosystem is a morass of capitalism and idle entertainment - but it was a key part of the most revolutionary event in the last decade, the emergence of the Arab Spring. It is the ecosystemic basis, the letting of a hundred flowers to bloom, that must be embraced as the future of communism - lest we perish in our tiny sects and isolated guerilla hideouts...

That said I can agree on the "unradical", in the most etymological sense of the word - dealing with the root cause of issues -, description of the left in the USA, but not the "non-revolutionary", unless that term becomes meaningless or a cliche of Mao pins and red flags flying.

We see revolutionary actions on the part of the left all the time, because almost any counter-system action in the USA is a revolutionary action, so utterly reactionary this country is. The immigrant mayday strikes, the Republic WIndows and Steela D'oro strikes, the 2003-2005 anti-war movement, the anti-police actions, the slow steady acceptance of gay marriage even in a reactionary cultural environment, even the election of a black president, those are but a few of the revolutionary actions the existing left took an active and significant role in.

Yes, not radical, but revolutionary nevertheless...

You know:
<a href="/http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch11.">http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch11." rel="nofollow">
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch11.">http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch11.</a>

reading Sylvanius' shit trying to make those who suffered under the RCP's policies read more crap on counter revolutionary behavior is crap. I've seen this dribble before. "this is a Kasama thing". No. this is an RCP problem and they wouldn't know truth if it hit them in the face.

"If things had been opened up the RCP-as-such might have flown apart (probably)– but that might not have been so bad. Especially if it created conditions for a much more creative and fresh reallignment and regroupment on a very radical, revolutionary, communist basis (of the kind we now need to be trying). things might have restarted twenty years ago — with that earlier generation (which instead was so widely repelled by the RCP’s anti-gay politics, and then later by its bizarre deepening of the cult of personality.)"

Interestingly this process began 30 years ago in both the Trotskyite and NCM traditions, one culminating in Solidarity (a small, but somewhat influential multi-tendency organization, with a heavy DNA in workerist Trotskyism, but also among anarchists and post-Trotskyism and post-Maoism) the other more or less splitting into two somewhat orthodox ML organizations, LRNA and FRSO (the one with the website frso.org) and also given us whatever the current FRSO (the one with the website freedomroad.org) is. In other words, the impulse of reconstruction, regrougment, and refoundation of revolutionary communist/socialist is something that there is much dialectical experience (ie not all of it positive, not all of it negative), and investigation into those insights is important. Ignoring them, or dismissing their experiences superficially I would argue is a negative thing.

Interestingly enough, the then-unified FRSO was one of the first NCM organizations to self-criticize around the issue of LGBT rights, and one of the basis of unity of Solidarity when it emerged was the support of LGBT liberation. In other words, some of the early organizations to grapple with these questions and reach conclusions that a constructive break from the past was needed had the LGBT issue at the front of this process.

curious what kasama make of this veiled critique of Mike Ely's nine letters and the kasama project by the RCP USA .

http://rwor.org/a/135/Observations_By_Reader-en.html

apologies if you have already dealt with it elsewhere, but i would be curious to know where. it is not a serious criticism of kasama and the nine letters however, but interesting to see how the RCP dealt with the nine letters.

what became of the post which was to "articulate the RCP's official position"?

Was it posted?

One thing, about Mike (and other elders who were veterans of the RCP) — Mike says he was shocked to discover the personal experiences of abuse, the drumming of young revolutionaries out of the organization or into the closet: but wasn't that ignorance self-imposed? Wasn't the organizational culture that refused to listen to horizontal experience, that precluded discussion without verdicts a way of creating and fostering that ignorance?

If the RCP didn't allow LGBT members — how could such thing not have happened? How could an organization so fixated on micro-control not have had bizarre formulations and abusive practice? Of course it did. It was built into the structure.

CWM argues this is inherent to all communist parties, indeed to all political parties who wished to engage in "state control." That the anarchist conclusion of "all politics is inherently authoritarian" ignores how the informal, utterly brutal consensus of anarchist groups demands adherence to vocabularies and micro-sects, to "friends" and "community." There is a leap that says hierarchy is the problem, when many hierarchies are profoundly democratic, where parties engage in the fight to create authority, where oppressed people are mired in self-hatred and idol worship. Such facile non-solutions as anarchist anti-politics mean little. We critique ML parties, because ML politics have been the only place oppressed peoples have entered politics. The inability of them to triumph, all and once and everywhere, is only a problem to the religious mind.

We are not talmudic scholars. We are revolutionaries engaging in self-criticism. That CWM sees all problems as having the same, simple solution — well, good luck with that. But the certainties of the religious mean little when we require the means to advance right now.

All that said, I think Mike's "shock" at the abuse of the anti-gay RCP line is telling about how deeply effective the RCP's internal culture was on those who chose to adopt it.

<blockquote>"what became of the post which was to “articulate the RCP’s official position”? Was it posted?"</blockquote>

Not yet.


<blockquote>
If the RCP didn’t allow LGBT members — how could such thing not have happened? How could an organization so fixated on micro-control not have had bizarre formulations and abusive practice? Of course it did. It was built into the structure.</blockquote>

Once something unknown is exposed, it suddenly seems obvious, necessary, structural, etc.

And part of the cautionary lesson we should draw is that there are things going on around us (or that will happen within our own furture movement) that may not be known or obvious -- unless we uncover ways of surfacing uncomfortable truths. And this doesn't just mean the specific issue here of micro-managing communist sexual activity and intimacy based on socially conservative views -- but also the potential issues of corrupt practices and deception and reactionary behaviors and coverups of many kinds within a movement.

The fact remains that this series exposes practices that were carefully conducted in enforced secrecy (and the general implementation of these operations was unknown to most party members, and even to the gay communists who were its target). What we have revealed here is not just surprising to me, but even to people like Libri who until now had no way of knowing that what they experienced wasn't a sick local aberration (as also happened in various "water-tight kingdoms"), but a routinized and enforced national policy.

"Need to know" meant that people were on a strict info diet regarding their own movement -- and many of its most basic (and even defining) features.

<blockquote>
All that said, I think Mike’s “shock” at the abuse of the anti-gay RCP line is telling about how deeply effective the RCP’s internal culture was on those who chose to adopt it.</blockquote>

I think our Red Closet series underscores just how true this is.

It is also true that this is not unique to the RCP -- we only have to read memoirs of Black Panther Party members (for example) to get a sense of the kinds of things that went down (unknown) there.

The fact that there was such a serious betrayal of trust in the RCP, and that its routine use of security concerns to cover up failures and unjustifiable practices is now exposed, means that we cannot again approach these issues with such a mix of complicity and naivite.

But resolving (with all sincerity) "never again" is not yet a counter-policy. It is just the start of developing a counter-policy.

And I don't think that some policy of simple "transparency" (on organizational matters) would solve this problem of corrosive secrecy and non-accountability -- because transparency introduces other problems (of a social democratic kind). A movement unable to maintain important secrets ultimately cannot carry out serious revolutionary preparation in a hostile class society.

This is not a simple thing. It is a difficult contradiction -- that can only be solved in the specific. And it can only be solved in an ongoing way through ongoing struggle.