Letter 1: A Time to Speak Out Clearly
Nine Letters to Our Comrades
Letter 1: A Time to Speak Out Clearly
by Mike Ely
For more than ten years Charles Darwin said nothing publicly about (what he called) his “very presumptuous work.” He wrote that talking about natural selection (even to friends) was “like confessing a murder.” [2] There were reasons for Darwin’s reluctance. He worried about possible errors in his analysis. He feared open debate might have unexpected consequences. But Darwin’s delay had to end and did. [3]
Without overstating an analogy, revolutionary communists need to undertake a “very presumptuous work.” It requires working through problems, not treating them as dark secrets. We too have reasons for caution. Our disputes take place within reach of a ruthless enemy. Yet, we need to deal with difficult truths about our movement, experiences and beliefs.
A very presumptuous work. |
Even the most revolutionary forces have been lagging seriously. In the thirty years since Mao’s death, there has not been another communist revolution, and a whole generation has grown up without revolutionary societies. Communism is not contending within the deep channels of the world’s politics, culture or thought. International efforts to regroup communist forces have not overcome long-standing fractures. As rapid changes rework this planet, there have rarely been parallel innovations in communist understanding and work.
The experience of the last century has convinced many that communist revolution has been a failed dream. And yet, rising from every corner of life, weighing on the brain like a living nightmare, there it is: the horrifying suffering of people and the mounting crimes of this system.
Faced with these challenges, revolutionary communism is dividing into two around us. Or to be more precise: Events are revealing how much this movement already exists as two, three, many Maoisms. Several distinct conceptions now contend among Maoists. [4] There is sharp struggle over how to make the breakthroughs we need in both communist theory and revolutionary practice.
Because these letters develop a critique of Bob Avakian’s new synthesis, I’d like to start by acknowledging positive aspects of what he and the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA (RCP) have represented: For decades, the RCP as been an important pole around which revolutionary communist forces could rally. There has been a long, serious, stubborn, principled effort by the RCP and its leadership core to solve problems that far too many others simply believed were unsolvable. This party has been determined to find a way to actually bring down U.S. imperialism from within. And Bob Avakian, in particular, has churned over many key questions of communist revolution, keeping them before others, refusing to settle for anything less.
There have been periods over the last decades when it appeared the RCP’s leadership might be on the road toward those leaps we need. Avakian has long argued that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism should be approached non-dogmatically — as a developing “synthesis.” He later called for making communism a “wrangling” and “self-interrogating” movement. And more recently, he urges communists to fearlessly confront often-difficult truths. He says communists should refuse to be a “residue of the past,” and should fight to become a “vanguard of the future.” [5]
And yet… and yet… the RCP has proven to be one of the disappointments of this moment. After raising some of the right questions, this party prematurely rushed to embrace a synthesis that falls short. As a result, a stark set of contradictions now defines the RCP.
There has been a devastating contrast between Avakian’s talk of critical scientific thinking and the crudely un-critical thinking that surrounds this party’s escalating cult of personality.
Avakian made welcome criticisms of simplistic methodologies (including of the reductionism [6] and inevitabilism [7]of several of his party’s more notorious errors. [8]) But then, the RCP put forward yet another over-reaching analysis. This time it is that there is a post-911 ruling class lurch toward theocratic fascism that is creating the outlines of a “coming civil war” and could become a “stage manager” for socialist revolution in the period ahead. [9]
Avakian criticized the method of manipulating people by fudging the truth, but his party is jacking people up using instrumentalist predictions. [10] Seeking (once again) to “keep the advanced elements tense,” the party is insisting (once again) that the world is rushing rapidly toward a very specific, irreversible disaster and that only this Chairman and his supporters can save the day.
In words, Avakian talks about the masses in their millions being the makers of history, while the party seems to move further and further away from actually organizing people in struggle and extending living roots among the oppressed.
Meanwhile the militant and heart-felt internationalism so closely associated with the RCP is being deeply compromised. For the last year, the living revolution of Nepal has been treated with a long sour public silence by the RCP. [11]
Many people see this as a bewildering disconnect between Avakian “talking the talk” and his party somehow failing to “walk the walk.” But that summation doesn’t get past the superficial appearance of things. Whatever else can be said: Bob Avakian’s theorizing is an internally coherent synthesis and it is in command. The flaws that now mark the RCP’s work fundamentally arise from Avakian’s synthesis itself, from the methods and thinking it unleashes, not from somewhere else.
The RCP does not have a correct appraisal of the objective situation. It does not apply the mass line correctly. [12] It has not developed the correct tactics and strategy for the revolutionary process in this country. These are profound shortcomings for any party. And they are tied to shortcomings in method and approach that are concentrated within Avakian’s developing synthesis.
The flaws in the RCP’s current work arise from Avakian’s synthesis,
|
People often ask “What is this new synthesis?” They find it hard to pin down when confronted with Avakian’s loosely-woven body of work. [13]
For the purposes of these letters, I will break this synthesis down into a number of main areas:
• The RCP asserts that the “emergence” of a “unique, special and irreplaceable leader” of a “special caliber” has implications for everything communists and the masses of people do in the world today. This theory of great leaders justifies a number of other major programmatic and strategic shifts — especially moving the “promotion and popularization” of Avakian to the heart of the party’s work.
• There is a claim to seek and uphold truth in an entirely new way. This is called “Avakian’s epistemological rupture” [14] with previous communist thinking.
• There is a new “envisioning” of the socialist transition to communism — with a special stress on holding firmly onto power while creating the conditions for mass debate over major challenges facing the continuing revolution. There is an assertion that this new re-conception of the communist road should take center stage in political discussions now — both among communists and broadly among the masses.
• This synthesis is viewed as a world-historic re-conception of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM). Avakian and his work is specifically compared and equated to the contributions Lenin and Mao made to communist theory. It is said that the masses worldwide must pass through the doorway that Bob Avakian has opened for the way out. And this leap in Marxism is said to be arising from Avakian’s summations of the whole previous history of communist revolution, not mainly from an application of MLM to the practice of making revolution in the U.S.
There are other components to Avakian’s synthesis which will need excavation at another time, including Avakian’s particular view of communist revolution as a world process, an idiosyncratic critique of democracy, and the RCP’s spiral/conjunctural theory of capitalist crisis. [15]
In the letters that follow, I will make some initial critiques — sometimes in detail, sometimes by indicating a line of thought. Many problems I unravel have been noted over years by others coming from their own diverse politics.
These letters can’t (and won’t) offer a tidy counter-synthesis to Avakian’s synthesis. That is because we are at the beginning, not the end, of our “very presumptuous work.” However woven into these letters will be thoughts about a different path that I believe serious revolutionaries need to take.
I hope this critical exploration will help gather now-dispersed forces for all that we need to bring into being.
Notes
[2] Charles Darwin’s Letter to J. D. Hooker, January 11, 1844
[3] Niles Eldredge, Darwin – Discovering the Tree of Life, W.W. Norton, 2005
[4] There are, at this moment at least three “packages” making claims to some universal (i.e. global) applicability: Gonzalo Thought of the Communist Party of Peru (Shining Path), Prachanda Path of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and Avakian’s New Synthesis. Other major Maoist parties, like the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the Communist Party of the Philippines have their own distinctive analyses and approaches. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has taken initiatives to regroup the international communist movement on a new basis. (Worker 11 p.35)
[5] The public theoretical work of Bob Avakian, particularly his work since the mid 1990s can generally be found on two web pages: revcom.us/avakian/ and bobavakian.net .
[6] Reductionism is an analytical method that incorrectly boils down complex processes to just one or two determining factors. RCP’s self-criticism for previous reductionism appears in Notes on Political Economy – Our analysis of the 1980s, Issues of Methodology, and the Current World Situation, RCP Publications, 2000, revcom.us/a/special_postings/poltoc_e.htm
[7] Inevitabilism refers to an assumption that end results in nature and society are inevitable given the nature of defining contradictions and processes. It is particularly associated with the oft-stated view within communist theory that communism is the inevitable outcome of the contradictions of class society. It is also refers to a tendency to overestimate the objective limits and inflexibility of capitalism, and therefore to overestimate the degree to which the existing system cannot offer “a way out.” RCP criticism of inevitabilism appears in “Views on Socialism and Communism: A Radically New Kind Of State, A Radically Different And Far Greater Vision Of Freedom.” revcom.us
[8] One well-known example of reductionism was the RCP’s insistence for many years that same sex orientation was a personal ideological decision. A prominent error of both reductionism and inevitabilism was the RCP’s fervent insistence that a nuclear world war was inevitable in the 1980s unless there was revolution “in large and/or strategic parts of the world.”
[9] Bob Avakian, The Coming Civil War and Repolarization for Revolution in the Present Era, 2005, revcom.us
[10] “By ‘instrumentalism’ here I mean torturing reality in the attempt to make a distorted version of reality an instrument of certain aims.” (Avakian, Bringing Forward Another Way, 2006, revcom.us)
To the RCP, instrumentalism means slanting and crafting ideas to serve political purposes in a manipulative or self-deceptive way.
[11] After initially supporting the Maoist revolution in Nepal, the RCP has stopped most references to that struggle and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). There has been virtually no public work building support for the revolution in Nepal against ongoing U.S. intervention. This is rooted in disputes over line and strategy – over the Nepali communist view of Avakian, their views on democracy and their temporary decision to enter Nepal’s government. Quite a few of Avakian’s recent writings can be read as polemics against the CPN(M)’s Prachanda Path. Even if things were to change and that silence were to finally end, there is a method exposed here that needs a critical look: The assumption is that the RCP can judge the zigs-and-zags of a party confronting complex transitions to power, based essentially on general principles and textual analysis from afar. This reveals a debilitating dogmatism rooted in the denigration of practice that runs through Avakian’s synthesis.
[12] The definition from the RCP’s Draft Programme:
“The mass line is the method through which the party both learns from and leads the masses. To apply the mass line means to seek out and learn from the ideas of the masses and to apply the science of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to concentrate what is correct in these ideas, distilling and synthesizing them into a more all-sided and correct reflection of reality and what must be done to change it. The party then takes this back to the masses in the form of line and policies, works to win the people to take these up, and unites with the masses to carry them out — summing up the results and then repeating the process. The mass line is an ongoing process which links theory with practice and the vanguard with the masses in an ever-deepening way all in the service of the masses’ fundamental revolutionary interests.” (2001, revcom.us)
This program has not been publicly adopted by the RCP and it is unclear which draft formulations are still being upheld.
[13] Avakian recently gave a one-sentence capsule of his new synthesis. Here it is:
“This new synthesis involves a recasting and recombining of the positive aspects of the experience so far of the communist movement and of socialist society, while learning from the negative aspects of this experience, in the philosophical and ideological as well as the political dimensions, so as to have a more deeply and firmly rooted scientific orientation, method and approach with regard not only to making revolution and seizing power but then, yes, to meeting the material requirements of society and the needs of the masses of people, in an increasingly expanding way, in socialist society — overcoming the deep scars of the past and continuing the revolutionary transformation of society, while at the same time actively supporting the world revolutionary struggle and acting on the recognition that the world arena and the world struggle are most fundamental and important, in an overall sense — together with opening up qualitatively more space to give expression to the intellectual and cultural needs of the people, broadly understood, and enabling a more diverse and rich process of exploration and experimentation in the realms of science, art and culture, and intellectual life overall, with increasing scope for the contention of different ideas and schools of thought and for individual initiative and creativity and protection of individual rights, including space for individuals to interact in ‘civil society’ independently of the state — all within an overall cooperative and collective framework and at the same time as state power is maintained and further developed as a revolutionary state power serving the interests of the proletarian revolution, in the particular country and worldwide, with this state being the leading and central element in the economy and in the overall direction of society, while the state itself is being continually transformed into something radically different from all previous states, as a crucial part of the advance toward the eventual abolition of the state with the achievement of communism on a world scale.” Making Revolution And Emancipating Humanity, Part 1: Beyond The Narrow Horizon Of Bourgeois Right, 2007, revcom.us
[14] Epistemology is the study of how human beings come to know reality – answering Mao’s question “where do correct ideas come from?”
[15] See Notes on Political Economy – Our analysis of the 1980s, Issues of Methodology, and the Current World Situation, revcom.us
Next letter…
Published: December 2007
Available online at mikeely.wordpress.com
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Who links to me?
Ben Seattle said
Hi Mike,
A friend here in Seattle emailed me news of your 9 part criticism of the RCP and I took a look at it.
I think what you are doing is good.
You saw that the RCP had major problems — and you had hopes that the organization would overcome these problems and become healthy.
And you were disappointed.
And now, thanks to the emerging revolution in communications, you have an opportunity to bring your criticism to people in and around the RCP and to the left in general.
And your efforts may generate some clarity.
I believe that the RCP itself, as an organization, will eventually split up or simply collapse. But creating clarity today — can help to salvage the healthy revolutionary energy and enthusiasm which still exists among many of the RCP’s members and supporters — so that something positive may emerge from the ashes.
The RCP has three principle problems:
(1) a very strong cultish internal life
(2) a well-developed alliance with the left wing of the imperialist Democratic Party
(3) ideological problems related to Maoism and the historical debris of the failed revolutions in Russia and China in the last century.
The first two problems have been described in detail in many places (see my footnote below). I am a theoretician and my work has been focused on the third problem and what I call the “crisis of theory” which I believe has led to the paralysis of the revolutionary movement.
The essence of this crisis is that we want to see the working class in power but we are unable to understand or describe how working class rule will function in a way that makes sense to ordinary people.
Avakian’s “new synthesis” and his empty words about opposing dogmatism have the aim, in my view, of rescuing the RCP from the effects of the crisis of theory. As such, it is a doomed effort. Avakian is unable to confront the crisis of theory. The RCP cannot be rescued.
What most stands out about the crisis of theory is that, today, communists in countries like the US, where ordinary people have the democratic rights of speech and organization, are supposedly in favor of a society which is ruled by a single organization and where the working class will not have these fundamental democratic rights. Such a view is the product of what I call Cargo-cult Leninism. Such a view is not based on materialism but is rather a religious conception which originates from a failure to understand the context of many of the harsh and undemocratic emergency measures which, unfortunately, were necessary during the period in which Lenin was alive.
All of Avakian’s empty talk about the “increasing scope for the contention of different ideas” and “protection of individual rights” reflects an attempt to protect his followers from the shock waves created by the increasingly obvious chasm between what is an essentially religious view (ie: the goal of a single party state with the ability to suppress the voice of its opponents) and the reality that ordinary people understand quite well and reflected in the popular dictum: “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.
I know you (and your readers) are busy. I have written more about these, and related, topics in Marxism-Leninism is anti-Marxist, anti-Leninist and revisionist which is part of my own 9 part series called Cargo-Cult Leninism vs. Political Transparency
Ben Seattle
– footnote –
See, for example: the Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee’s Statement on “World Can’t Wait” at http://www.seattleaic.org/?p=9 or my own essay “Crying ‘Wolf’ over Fascism – Hysteria about ‘fascism’ serves to hide the essential role of the Democratic Party in the political and economic system of imperialism” at http://struggle.net/Ben/2005/rcp_cries_wolf.htm
tellnolies said
What is striking about this polemic is that it is the most serious actual “engagement” with the work of Avakian that I’ve ever seen and yet those who are calling for people to “Engage! Bob Avakian”TM will quite possibly studiously evade discussion of it.
One-Man Red Army said
Google search the pamphlet “Mythology of a White-led ‘Vanguard’”, written by a black anarchist in the 1990′s.
It speaks to the RCP’s dismissive, reductionist, and left-wing white supremacist attitude to workers of color at the grassroots level.
Some of their more insulting missionary-type attitudes and a-historical assumptions (of many) include:
1. Blacks in amerikka do not constitute a nation; that this was a concept imposed by the CP-USA under Stalin’s guidence.
This ignores decades of slave rebellions, as recounted in “Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat”, many of which openly declared huge swaths of the south (via linked plantations) as Black republics; most were inspired by the national revolution in Haiti led by Toussaint L’Overture.
This also ignores the teachings of Noble Drew Ali, Marcus Garvey, W.D. Fard, Elijah Muhammmed, the African Blood Brotherhood, and Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika.
While only the ABB and PGRNA were open “communist”, all were openly pro-national liberation (either by land expropriation or repatriation), all advocated social welfare for the oppressed, connected the struggles of all non-white peoples, and all were independent of settler-radical control (including the ABB, which was eventually denounced and cut off finanically by the CP-USA for independently organizing armed militias amongst Black sharecroppers vs. the KKK and local law enforcement).
2. That Blacks and other people of color, are just waiting for Bob Avakian and co. to swoop in and save us…from ourselves.
Avakian and co. make no effort to connect with community-based organization and leadership on a principled basis, they only seem to come around in order to manipulate, conquor, undermine, or discredit.
I found it ironic to read in Avakian’s memoir how he takes the CP-USA to task for attempting to do that to the Black Panther Party!
The RCP has no visible public relations with fighting communist vanguard organizations within oppressed communities like the African Peoples Socialist Party/International Uhuru Movement, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Prisoners Of Conciousness Commitee (under the leadership of Fred Hampton, Jr.), Union Del Barrio, Brown Berets, and the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, for example.
What’s their position on the recent declaration of sovereignty by the Lakotas? If one was to read their essay in “Marxism and Native Americans” (edited by Ward Churchill), one would assume they would be AGAINST Native people’s independent attempts at real independence just as much as any republikkkan!
3. That the international communist movement has generally let down workers of color in the world.
This has occured movement-wide (not just the RCP)in the form of active non-support and open denunication of POC revolutionary organizations and liberation projects facing attack by the state, by attempting to take over POC initatives/revolutionary organizations and then sabotaging them in the process, and (in the case of the RCP) dimissing criticism (along with the bad-jacketing of critics) coming from active, left-leaning People of Color (POC).
The RCP is not the only organization guilty of this, and while they pay lip-service to this phenomenon, they do not apply an all-sided look at this; only a selective gaze.
One can only assume that they will be just as brutal as previous amerikkkan regimes if the do manage to seize power, based upon the indignation and intolerance displayed by rank and file members of the RCP when ‘criticism/self-criticism’ directed at the party by workers of color; Black and Native people, in particular.
What happened to “bombard the headquarters” and “let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend”?
From what I’ve seen, it’s due to the objective reality of the “vanguard party” as an insitution, as pointed out by Chairman Mao himself years before China went revisionist: “all reaction comes from within the party”. Only this time, the ideological ‘leap’ made by Avakian and co. is to manifest this reaction from within the party (in regards to POC revolutionaries and the people who support them) before the dictatorship of the proletariat is achieved.
It seems to come out unconsciously.
I believe it’s due to organizational cultism, and the contradictions associated with a party being led settler-community radicals. The roots of this part of the contradiction lie in their relationship to the state, the relative privilege they experience, and how this colors (no pun intended) their analysis on a whole host of issues, current and historical; especially in regards to oppressed nations within the borders of the U.S.
“Left-wing” white supremacist views are upheld by many of the RCP’s rank and file, and are transmitted and reinforced by party leadership due to the above-mentioned weaknesses, despite Avakian’s occasional cautions and exhortations to the contrary over the years.
tellnolies said
One doesn’t have to accept the analysis presented in “Settlers” to appreciate some important truths here about how the RCP relates to the Black community.
It is important to recognize how the long-standing cult of personality around Avakian and the ideological self-encapsulation of the organization that folks are now recognizing as so problematic was further experienced as a form of white chauvinism by many revolutionary minded Black folks whether they were in nationalist organizations or not.
I’m not one who thinks that white communists have no right to argue for communist politics among Black folks, but I do think that this is often done in an incredibly arrogant manner reflecting a real failure to investigate (and promote within left organizations) the history of radical and revolutionary politics in eth Black community (which in turn is reflected in the existence of various formations). The results of this have been not only a failure to promote the development of “partisan bases” among the historically most revolutionary section of the US proletariat, but worse an innoculation of many revolutionary-minded Black folks against communism.
That this was a problem for the RCP was reflected in a number of very deliberate attempts to publically promote Black leadership in the RCP (the naming of Dix as spokesman and the RC4 tour come to mind). The failures of these particular moves need to be analyzed with as much seriousness as has been applied to the analysis of WCW, the Christian Fascism thesis, the STRS tour and so on.
redflags said
To say it bluntly, that piece by Greg Jackson is exactly the kind of half-assed polemic that shows (literally) none of the concern for being principled, truthful or productive that these letters do. Much of it was just outright fiction, where any rumor gets added in as fuel to a fire that never quite catches.
This is part of the reason that these letters are such a big deal: for years, revolutionaries throughout the country have looked to the RCP for leadership (or as the embodiment of what to avoid). Since the RCP has “left the station” on the whole Avakian cult of personality, and other anti-capitalist trends have filled that space, that is going to change… like now.
Just dumping on some group for their more obvious foibles doesn’t teach us how to do better, what to really sum up – or chart a way to move forward. Even being reminded of that Jackson piece… people should read it if only to study how NOT to learn, how NOT to conduct criticism, how NOT to look at conducting politics in multi-ethnic societies.
Just another thing: if you think the nationality of an author “says it all” – then you really don’t know how to read. Race-baiting, rumor-mongering and lazy analogies aren’t what we need. They make people stupider.
These Nine Letters may bend too far in giving respect and credence to Avakian, but they are a full engagement with the essence of the Avakian method. For that, even people who aren’t influenced by MLM or revolutionary communism have something to learn.
ulises138 said
Excellent points, redflags. The Greg Jackson piece is one of a handful of unprincipled and politically myopic critiques of the RCP, which have been put out over the years. These Letters are very different, both in spirit and in content. The amount that can be learned by people of many different political and ideological stripes is quite high as a result.
Marc Luzietti said
The only thing new I see in the RCP lately is their leaning towards the Democrats, which admittedly, is a very serious problem for any group pretending to be revolutionary. At the point when the Socialist Party USA is more radical than you, you no longer get to call yourself a revolutionary organization.
The other problems with the organization, including the cult around Avakian have been obvious, however, for decades. Nonetheless, some very good comrades have been in and around this organization, including Comrade Ely, from whom I learned so much during our discussions while I worked at New World in Chicago.
Blight said
I read that piece. It’s mostly recounting interactions he and others had with RCP members.
What is “unprincipled” about criticizing the way a vanguard organization operates and interacts with others in a community, especially when those community people have to live with the serious consequences of political actions that go down in their neighborhood long after everybody else goes home?
The previous two posters seem angry that Jackson had the nerve to say anything about them; as if the RCP is above criticism, unless it comes from within the party.
He is very hostile to the RCP, but nowhere does he call for the party to disband or be destroyed.
redflags said
The problem with the Jackson piece is that it conflates anecdotes, facts and straight-up fiction into a superficial, race-baiting heap of useless.
I know several of the claims (some of which even admit that they are rumor/hearsay) to be false from direct personal experience. That some people find it useful to pass on such BS as a way of avoiding debate, there’s no doubt. But rhetorically convenient fiction is still fiction…
If people want to debate that piece, why don’t the anarchists who hoist it online allow debate where it already is? It’s kind of funny, APOC (Ernesto Aguilar) posted it to a site, but forbid any discussion or clarification of its untruths. Infoshop.org posts it, but they delete any articulate responses from communists or anyone with direct personal experience. Always a hoot when anarchists refuse debate over their own dissembling… Eager to talk shit, terrified of an open debate.
Lars said
“Eager to talk shit, terrified of an open debate.”
Hmmm. I don’t think it’s just one isolated anarchist with an axe to grind.
The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) has also taken the RCP to task for their dismissive, white chauvanist attitude towards oppressed nations in imperialist countries (among other things), which they attribute to the RCP’s overall line and the cult of Avakian.
In the recent past, the RCP was getting criticized sharply by other Maoist parties like MIM for their support of a faction within the central committee of the CP of Peru (MLM). After Chairman Gonzalo was captured and the CP of Peru (MLM) split around the question of ceasing the people’s war and negotiating with the government for his freedom, the RCP sided with the forces in the party who sought an immediate cease of hostilities and reconciliation with the Peruvian government.
Is this why there has been relative RCP silence on Nepal or the Maoist guerilla movement in southern India (which has been in a state of perpetual armed rebellion for over 20 years)?
As far as the Jackson piece, I have yet to read any RCP presentation of the so-called “factual errors” in it. And it was written back in 1993-94, so it isn’t like there hasn’t been time and opportunity to do so.
I heard that Jackson himself challenged the RCP to debate him around it, but still hasn’t gotten any reply; besides slander, name-calling, bad jacketing, and a failed attempt at physical assault from rank and file RCP members (I hope this is not true).
tellnolies said
I think its important to separate the question of the RCP’s line on and relations with oppressed nationalities in the US from the particular litany that appears in Jackson’s piece, which quite simply doesn’t pass the smell test.
Lars himself repeats a claim that Jackson was the victim of a failed attempt at physical assault and then turns around and says “I hope this is not true.” Which raises the elementary question “If you don’t feel confident that this accusation is true, why the hell are you repeating it online?” This method of just throwing whatever shit you’ve heard at the RCP (or any other opponent), which is Jackson’s method here, is pure poison and the RCP, whwtever its other faults, is absolutely correct not to dignify such shit with a response.
That is one of the things that makes the Nine Letters so refreshing, precisely the refusal to get into petty disputes and the insistence on focusing on the underlying questions of political line.
Individual members of all sorts of groups do fucked up things that really have little to do with the line and method of the organization. In making a principled critique of an organization the proper approach is to focus not on those sorts of incidents (or rumors of such incidents) but on the most coherent articulation of the underlying line. What Mike Ely does here is an excellent example of such an approach. Ely, quite frankly, restates what Avakian’s “New Synthesis” actually is in a way that is clearer than anything that I’ve read coming from Avakian or the party. Rather than focusing in on this or that incident in which some supporter of the RCP said something completely whacked out about Avakian, Ely keeps his focus on the actual line that the RCP’s leadership is attempting to implement. Which is precisely what makes it a thousand times more compelling a critique than what Jackson has put out.
zerohour said
Lars –
The fact that many different political trends have criticized the Party still doesn’t make any of the criticisms valid. In fact, I can’t think of any poltical trend or organizations taht does not have numerous detactors. Criticism should be evaluated in its own merits, not by the number of people involved
What you or anyone “heard” about Jackson is irrelevant. It is just hearsay. This kind of rumor-mongering [how ironic you refer to "slander" and "bad jacketing"] is counter-productive and can be dangerous in a more heightened context. COINTELPRO relied on the that kind of behavior and tried to foster it wherever possible. Let’s try not to help them out.
zerohour said
Lars -
Another thing, the RCP did not “side with the forces in the party who sought an immediate cease of hostilities and reconciliation with the Peruvian government.” Where did you get this from?
Lars said
The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) has been criticising the RCP around the Peoples War in Peru, claiming that the RCP supports a clique within the CP of Peru’s central committee who wanted to end the peoples war in order to free Gonzalo. They also view the RCP as a “quasi-trotskyist” and “revisionist” (their words)organization due to their “incorrect” line on oppressed people in imperialist countries and their vanguard role.
I was hoping someone would have some insights around this. MIM uses some very cryptic language that seems to require that one be an “insider” in order to grasp what they’re talking about.
I re-read the Jackson piece, and to dismiss it out of hand lends some credibility to what he wrote. And it’s totally wrong-headed to put it in the same catagory as virulent anti-communist propaganda (ala J. Edgar Hoover). Also, I thought the Malcolm X quote at the end provided some food for thought; I’d never heard that before.
What if the RCP was in power and an ordinary citizen made a complaint about a policy, policymaker, or low-level party official? Ever been to the welfare office? Sometimes the masses can be less than clear and articulate when they’re upset, confused, and angry.
Would they too be dismissed out-of-hand if the party didn’t like how that person presented their greivance? Does that mean that their complaint is somehow less ‘legitimate’?
On the subject of using anetdotes, I just finished “From Ike to Mao”. In that book, Avakian also uses his own anetdotes to make points on trends within the movement. Some of his anetdotes don’t really flesh out the essence of the issue he’s dealing with.
Instead, he just says “oh this person is this way”, rather than explaining what’s wrong with their line. In one instance, he says that a comrade who was able to quote long tracts from Mao and Lenin is simply “dogmatic”. Well, my question is: what makes this person “dogmatic”?
Later, he criticises the entire Black left (including the BPP) for studying theory and history from struggles and leaders other than Mao and China, calling it “an ecclectic mish-mash”. Isn’t that the problem with organized religion: a myopic method of study, an intolereance of anything outside of ‘official’ church doctrine, and a strictly linear line of thought?
As for potential COINTELPRO, this is why I ask for confirmation on a very serious claim that was made, from people (you?) who might know the real story. I don’t assume anyone has a monopoly on the “the truth”.
BTW, my apologies for deviating away from the specific Nine Letters discussion.
BobH said
I’d like to clarify a bit about the RCP and the PCP. There is a long history of struggle between these two organizations which few Maoists in the U.S. really know much about. In 1984, Gonzalo made the decision to join the RIM with the PCP as a “red fraction” to push for line of “Marxism-Leninis-Maoism, principally Maoism”, which was formally achieved in 1993 (if memory serves). In the PCP’s own statement on joining the RIM (which was not published by AWTW) there was a clear warning about “hegemonic tendencies” in the RIM, which everyone understood to be a reference to the RCP. In 1988 the PCP’s First Congress published the BUP (basis of party unity) which included “the international line”, which also referred to the hegemonic tendencies. Only the “fundamental documents” part of the BUP, which centers on MLM, principally Maoism, was published by AWTW.
I became active with the gonzalo-thought inspired movement around the PCP about the time of the capture of CG and the “peace accords” hoax. There was a very intense struggle in the support movement against the ROL (right opportunist line), which was never viewed as a split by the PCP, because they said those who advocated the line were prisoners and people abroad who put themselves outside the Party; the inner-party struggle was around “points of convergence” with the ROL. This is semantics of course, but very important to the PCP. The CoRIM and RCP of course treated it as a split with their long period of silence (“investigations”) to set themselves as the arbiter of the correct line, a position which infuriated GT loyalists. The situation was further complicated when individuals like Luis Arce Borja went off on their own to denounce the RCP as revisionist in an unprincipled way (in the sense of not focusing on line but on plots, individuals, etc.)
In the period from 1994 up to the capture of Feliciano there was intense struggle agaist the RCP/CoRIM lines led by the PCP’s supporters abroad with support from Turkish and Italian maoists (this was very clear at the RIM’s 1998 public celebration in Germany of the 100th anniversary of the Manifesto, where the two-line struggle was very open). Of course after the capture of Feliciano the people’s war really went off the rails and GT movement went into decline with it’s obsessive cultishness (which ironically is the only aspect of Gonzalo Thought Avakian really assimilated, it appears). With the decline of the PW in Peru and the rise of the PW in Nepal, the GT-led criticism of the CoRIM and Avakian could be safely ignored.
One thing that was striking to me at the time was the thoroughness of the critiques of Avakian and the general maturity in handling it through unity and criticism, when talking to the comrades abroad formed in MLM, GT. What I learned from that is that Maoism in the U.S. is in general a lot less theoretically and organizationally developed than it is in other countries. I would often use the analogy how “in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king” to explain the appeal of Avakian when talking to Maoists abroad.
While I personally no longer regard myself as a Maoist (because I think there is a fundamental problem with turning the Marxist method into ideology), I think quite a lot of good things were lost with the decline of the PCP, and some valuable experiences with how to handle 2LS, how to build organizations, how to create strategic centralization and tactical decentralization, how to handle the contradiction between the political and military, between cadre and masses, etc. have not been preserved and transmitted, and that is a kind of secondary loss (beyond the greater loss of a red base area in the world) that is poorly understood.
I understand this can be mostly taken as hearsay, but there were quite a lot of public documents around in Spanish on the strugggle against Avakian in the 1990s. To my knowledge there is no good written synthesis of the workstyle and practice of the PCP, unfortunately.
zerohour said
Lars -
You did not just ask for confirmation of claims. In the case of Peru, you actually stated a claim as a fact. There was no question asked. Now you reveal your source as MIM. What was their source?
I’ll give you a bit of the story. No citations because I don’t have my sources at hand right now. After Gonzalo was captured, the Peruvian government distributed a letter supposedly written by Gonzalo in captivity which called for an end to the armed struggle. The PCP split into two factions, one believing the letter to be real [or claiming to believe it] and saying that they should abide by Gonzalo’s wishes, the other saying the letter was obviously fake and they should continue on as they had been. Both positions were based on the same mistaken premise, political strategy was to be determined by Gonzalo’s decree, they just disagreed on whether it was really his decree. RCP actually took the stance that whether the letter was written by Gonzalo or not, they accepted that it could be – we don’t know what they’re doing to Gonzalo in there – it would be better for PCP to undergo a two-line struggle rather than splitting. Furthermore, they argued that political strategy has to be determined by concrete analysis of the situation, not just the words of Gonzalo. If they took a later position of supporting an end to armed struggle in Peru, I’m not aware of it and I’d like to see sources on that.
You also made the point that Jackson was not the only one to criticize the Party. That’s true, but what conclusions can you draw from that? Anarchists, Maoists, Trotskyists and other political trends criticize each other all the time.
It’s one thing to characterize one’s political line as “quasi-Trotskyist” it’s another to speculate [as Jackson did] on a personal history of abuse. The former is debatable, the latter is just character assassination.
In order to give Jackson’s piece more treatment, it would have to warrant it. And why does a piece largely based on anecdotal and hearsay warrant a sustained response? If Jackson were simply recounting personal experiences it would be one thing, but he was claiming to have a broader critique of RCP’s politics. Contrast his method of critique with Ely’s here. It is one thing for MIM to characterize RCP as “quasi-trotskyist” and “revisionist” and another to speculate as to a history of personal abuse as Jackson did. The former is debatable the latter is just character assassination of individuals.
No one dismissed him out of hand, we’ve read his piece. Even if we did dismiss his argument out of hand doesn’t give credence to his charges. If someone goes to a scientist and says that she can prove the earth is flat, you can bet she will be ignored. That doesn’t make the earth any less round.
“From Ike to Mao” is a memoir of Avakian’s personal experience, not a history so the burdens of evidence are not as strong. In fact, there are key events in RCP history that Avakian doesn’t even refer to probably due to a combination of space limitations and the fact that he wasn’t always present. Contrast this to Max Elbaum’s “Revolution in the Air” which IS a history of that period and covers RCP as well. Because it is a history his arguments have to be constructed differently and require more evidence. Anecdotes can be used in a larger analysis but with an awareness of their strong limitations, and can never comprise the substance of an analysis.
Obviously this website exists because many of us see problems with the RCP – many of which have been referred to by others, Jackson included. The challenge is to present a rational, well-documented argument which seeks to learn from those problems.
Here’s a good website to check out: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
It describes many logical fallacies. We have all been guilty of them on more than one occasion. Let’s not keep repeating our mistakes.
redflags said
Speaking personally here, from Greg Jackson to the whackjobs of “MIM” – the world is full of nutty f-ckers with hangups on just about everything. MIM is a deranged grouplet. Anyone who browses their website (the only place they exist) and doesn’t immediately notice that they are out of their minds (in the literal sense) is caught up in a world of signifiers.
Adopting a vocabulary isn’t the same thing as carrying out an analysis.
For many years past, I’ve defended the RCP (and Avakian) to organizers and activists in social movements. Along the way, I became quite familiar with the range of criticism. Much of it from anarchists was informed by their generally sloppy, egoistic and half-asses style of name-calling and anecdote. How one “feels” about something is supposed to tell us what the thing actually “is”. Well, that’s one approach.
Other critiques tended to come a truly “economist” or “identity politic” perspective – which essentially argued that ANY synthesis beyond the viscerally felt needs of the masses (in their diversity, etc.) was itself the problem. Many demobilized communists who found homes in the labor bureaucracy, NGO-world and the lower echelons of the Democratic Party used the RCP as a whipping horse to show the “ends” of “ultra-leftism” and “micro-leninism”.
Fair enough… except the whole point of those critiques was to innoculate active people to the lure of revolutionary politics.
No thanks!
So, what is funny to me is that when a revolutionary and forward-looking criticism comes – there are those who seem frustrated it’s not petty and anecdotal, nor even content to be right about about how the RCP is wrong.
We, and I mean the big we, are at the beginning of a “very audacious work.” This is not a “so long to all that.” It’s an opened door.
ulises138 said
It is true that MIM had a class analysis. I’ve read portions of their works on economic issues and I understand that their line was that the workers of imperialist countries are “parasites”. On the other hand, RCP has it’s own political-economic analysis and this can be found in “Notes on Political Economy”. So if you, Nick, want to go on an attack of the RCP’s line on political-economy go ahead and do it, deal with their own statements about the issue. But don’t bring it back here and try to hang it around our necks as our line.
Your trend’s attempt to interject Greg Jackson’s loaded criticism of the RCP into the conversation, and then transition into some kind of discussion of the nonexistent MIM’s politics versus the RCP’s politics (a party which is being criticized here, and whom no one is claiming to represent) is completely beside the point and bizarre.
The reason that most people don’t listen to or deal in any depth with MIM’s analysis is that they says outright that revolution in the U.S. is an impossibility and that not only is its audience comprised of parasites, but seeing as everyone in the U.S. is a parasite, so are the supporters of MIM itself.
This kind of extreme third-worldism, and avowed Lin Biaoism, amounts to a call for demobilization at best and at worse a literal call for everyone to just fuck off and die. The latter being exactly the kind of tone that mimites take with anyone and everyone who does not agree with their bizarre, self-defeating, and spart-like sect.
There is no cause to assume that because people don’t agree with your class analysis, that they then agree with the RCP’s.
Jimmy Higgins said
Again coming from the outside as far as the RCP(USA) goes, I have to raise a big fat issue. I’ve read the various descriptions and summations of Avakian’s “new synthesis” and I am always glad to see that there are others commenting here seem as mystified as I am about what this acclaimed “synthesis” really is.
One place to start is to try and figure what is actually meant by “synthesis” in this formulation. In Hegelian dialectics, to simplify brutally, a thesis (an idea or social formation or historical tendency or…) creates its own antithesis, and the clash of the two create a synthesis, which in turn becomes a new synthesis and the process continues to unfold. If this is what we are talking about, what is being negated (to use the more familiar term from the Maoist tradition)? Comintern-style ML, maybe? If so, how exactly did it generate its own opposite, clash with it, get “eaten up” by it and in the process bring into being this “new synthesis”?
Or, from my reading, it is more likely that “synthesis” is being employed here in the vernacular sense, meaning the admixture of disparate elements to create a new whole. Not to be blunt, but this is hardly a new feature of Marxism. Lenin’s influential article “The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism” identifies Marxism itself as the product of “German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism.”
In fact, the only thing that makes Marxism a living ideology is its ability to absorb and make use of the advances in thinking and understanding that are constantly being won in struggle and in social practice of other types in disparate arenas. What Marxist organization today, for instance, has not incorporated, whether consciously and systematically or haphazardly and spontaneously, some of the enormous theoretical and practical gains won by the modern women’s movement over the last forty years or so?
The Unity Statement of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad declares that
and goes on to assert
I cite this because I am familiar with it, not to claim special merit for the formulations. I am certain that other red organizations in the US and globally have similar statements in their basic documents.
Other elements I personally think would need to be considered for incorporation in any genuine “new synthesis” include queer theory, privilege theory, the critique of Eurocentrism, the critique of the productivist strain in Marxist economics, advances in cognition theory. Had the caffeine only kicked in already, I’m sure that a half dozen more would leap to mind.
lily said
To quote Avakian,
the “new synthesis” is an analysis of the first wave of expierence of proletarian revolutions. It is an analysis that says that this history is monumental and brought forward tremendous changes for the masses of people worldwide. It says that on the basis of upholding and embracing this history as our own, we also have to look at it’s problems, errors, and limitations. The approach says that without coming to understand some basic questions posed by the practice of seizing power, our current and further attempts will not be able to go further.
These questions in volve some of the most controversial questions about communism, including the dictatorship of the proletariat, the role of dissent, the approach towards intellectuals, the challenge to keep people vigorous, the challenge to transform more and more people so that they are fit to rule, the crucial element of leadership– what is communist leadership, how should it be exercised and regarded; the role of ideology and epistemology.
If you are looking for a 4 short point answer on what is being summed up about all of this, you will have a hard time because the subject in fact involves a huge examination that is still developing. It is coherent because it is held together by a consistent approach and basic themes…for example, while upholding the dictatorship of the proletariat, Avakian critiques the exercise of that dictatorship in the first wave of revolutions; including in the tendency to move between quashing debate and dissent and negating the need for dictatorship.
Why discuss these questions at such length now? because reinvigorating the communist project and goal which has been under huge attack and which has not base areas of power from which to fight, requires us to fight for it to be on the map.
How does this relate to the revolution developing in Nepal? In my opinion, it enters into the question of what communist revolutions are fighting for, a position that can’t be left for “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” I also think that how we fight today will set some of the terms for what we do or do not do, when power is seized, in one or more countries.
At the same time, the New Synthesis IS NOT now a catch all phrase that says there are no other questions or important struggles. Nepal is a living laboratory for revolution, the outcome of which will and already has huge meaning for the world.
I think that making revolution in a country like the US is not made possible by the existence of this New Synthesis. The road has to be charted on the ground with a spiral of theory to practice to theory. Clearly, we in this country are facing a very difficult situation. But, historically speaking no more difficult than that faced by the Chinese revolutionaries, Bolsheviks, our comrades in Nepal.
Obviously, the RCP’s line on leadership and on Bob Avakian impacts on how they see making revolution, how they see situating a leader, how they see training people to look at and approach the world, past, present, and future. The RCp has also been on the ground around major faultlines continuously. The lack of traction is, unfortunately, not unique to the RCP.
Moving this objective situation forward is not a matter of will, though I do think that the immense work of communists, revoltuionaries, and progressive people makes a difference, and at key moments, can suddenly seize initiative. This is a deep problem in the US. And the arguement has been made and is being made, that, as tough as it is, the RCP’s promotion of Avakian is only making it tougher. I think that is a complicated thing to sort out. Perhaps in short term mobilizations it acts that way, but for building a communist movement, the barriers erected by historic losses and bourgeois offensives, the lack of a revolutionary movement among any sections of people, and summation and the lack of a material force in the form of a socialist base area, these barriers do needs to be traversed and not either shined on or ignored.
I think that in attempting do popularize revolutionary communism with a contemporary edge, it has strengths and weaknesses. I think there are genuinely fine attempts to have Avakian engage with some important intellectuals. I also think that broadly popularizing Avakian’s edge and love for the people and refusal to give up is fine as well. Yet, I also think that some of the RCP’s style and approach is incredibly difficult for people to relate to. There is a lot ritualistic approach to discussion; an almost stilted nod to the improtance of debate and dissent and yet an impatience and looking for the conversation to quiet so the line can be run out. I think that RCP members easily feel threatened when the discussion doesn’t easily go their way. I also think that life inside the party is terribly lacking ease of mind. In part this is probably due to the party summing up that with the dangers of facism, and the repressive climate mounting, it must be a tight ship, in every way, and this, I believe, has a lot5 of merit to it. But, I do think that the move to consolidate equally as tightly around Avakian’s analysis and synthesis is a road with many pitfalls. Maybe it’s fair to say that it’s a bit of a “soft launch” to what life would be like after the seizure of power. What makes line struggle lively? Simply, I think a lively atmosphere requires the following: differences that can be articulated and put on the table; correct dividing lines and knowing when to agree to disagree; a willingness to be proven wrong; the absence of religious-like loyalty oaths. I also think it involves change, embracing it. I could also throw in being able to learn from people or trends with whom you disagree (a feature, I believe, of Avakian’s writings)
The discussion of Bookchin is interesting, and worth culling lessons from , without forgetting the anarchist framework and thinking about how this may effect the summation of experience.
There is a whole question of the meaning and practice of solid core with a lot of elasticity inside and outside the Party, and they also interact because what was practiced outside interacts with inside, including because you bring people in; and vice versa, what goes on inside interacts with outside. It is a dynamic contradiction. Is the Party THE solid core? I think that is a narrow understanding. I think it is the Party and the advanced. Or it can be also looked at on a larger, world scale, or a smaller scale of particular battles. In a way it is an approach and relates to unite the adavnced, the win over the intermediate, to neutralize the backwards (politically speaking). It is related to this, but not the same as this because the need for a party that is at rthe core of leadership and exercising power. In the long haud there is the historic question of bringing more and more masses into being able to take the reins of leading society.
But, going back, I think the Party does better among strata where it does not have the expectation of winning them all the way to their line and ideology, at least not now. Among the progressive youth and activists, I think it has had a harder time, and has tended toward a utilitarian view towards people- uniting with cores of people when it wants to launch a new initiative or mass organization and then casting them off when it is ready to move on or when those people reach a limit of their unity with the party. This is a big problem I think and has left way to many people joining bands of ex-supporters. The party should address this problem and it will not help if it is either denied or blamed on the non-party people. In New Orelans there are some pretty amazing stories of how, for example, the Common Grounds Free Clinic came into being; stories of real heroism and incredible innovation and determination; things that flowed from a deep love for the people and a selflessness when it came to motive– they were not building themselves or an ideology. And I think the RCP has lost a bit of this deep love and willingness to put its agenda aside for a moment. I have no idea what the summation of Katrina is that was alluded to in the article by Avakian, but I think it might be helpful for it to be in the open more. The Party was absent for quite some time, save some forays to sell papers. I have no problem with selling papers but, honestly, the situation was on a whole other level in terms of the enormity of events and impacts on people’s lives. I think partly the Party, at least from an outsider’s ability to know, was so wrapped up in World Can’t Wait that it did not “see” the importance of what happened in New Orleans and the Gulf coast. I think there is something to being among the people for the lomg haul, beyond the timetables set by the subjective forces. In a way, I think that the Party had become so focused on the struggle over Avakian, that it slipped a bit on it attention to key faultlines. This I think was also compounded by going from one mass org to another, based out of the “blue” states that it had downplayed certain developments and historic contradictions. O22 was/is very important, but conditions in Jena and in a whole area of the country that has strategic significance was not encompassed by the centering of of the RCP practically and intellectually in the north.A friend of mine, who pays tons of attention to the crafting of different messages, was saying for years that the RCP is not so good at this; that it still speaks a language that evades the masses of people. I think that the writers for Revolution should sometimes have a little more caution in how they paint broad strokes about the religious beliefs of the masses. Actually, why hasn’t the RCP opened up more mass discussion of how revolutionaries should work in, let’s say, the deep south.
RCP Response Version 3.0: Still Dodging Truth, Substance and Reality « Kasama said
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RCP: The Flight of the Worker Bees « Kasama said
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Zerohour on RCP Response: Both Ahead of Itself & Behind The Curve « Kasama said
[...] “These letters can’t (and won’t) offer a tidy counter-synthesis to Avakian’s synthesis. That is because we are at the beginning, not the end, of our ‘very presumptuous work.’ However woven into these letters will be thoughts about a different path that I believe serious revolutionaries need to take. ” [Letter 1] [...]
Pavel said
Why no Revolution newspaper today? It’s Monday.
Lost Artemio said
For the third week of April they don’t publish. Revolution volume 29, No. 42 is a two week issue.
Morse & Ely: Opening a Larger Discussion of Maoism « Kasama said
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AGUS FAISAL said
Yes, is good for open mind from your info in RCP.
Thanks, In solidarity,
Agus FAisal
On New Communist Methods & Kasama’s Love of Debate « Kasama said
[...] in our most recent split (over the issue of “Avakian as the cardinal question“), the RCP has reverted to a 1930s mode — and tried to argue that people should not [...]
Dr. Tomato said
This site needs a concise logical explanation of Bob Avakian and his ideas, everything I’ve seen here is off topic and ambiguous.