Hank Roth recently commented that MIM incorrectly stresses that there
is one road into socialism and hence does not "work" with other
"leftists." Indeed, the plethora of "socialist" organizations out
there is daunting to the inexperienced. Why are there so many? "Why
don't they work together?" ask many people.
As MIM has said in previous postings, MIM in fact does work with other
people who are not Maoists. In fact, most of the people MIM works with
are not Maoists. Furthermore, MIM also has a history of working with
organizations that we believe have incorrectly revised Marxism. Yet,
despite these disclaimers, it is true that MIM aims to find the best
road into socialism. That is not the same thing as saying there is one
road into socialism, which is what our critics usually say when they
are simplifying matters.
MIM's basic problem with most "leftist" organizations is very simple:
Their ideologies and strategies have led no where toward the abolition
of class, national or gender oppression.
We would like to think more highly of the many people calling
themselves "leftists," "Trotskyists," "DeLeonists" etc., but alas it
is not possible. Of course, we ourselves were often Trotskyists,
anarchists and so on, but there is a difference between an
inexperienced fool and a calculated one. We are all fools, but some of
us learn from history, both recent and more distant.
It turns out in history that "unity" and "working together" in mushy
"leftist" coalitions DOES NOT WORK. Splitting opportunist
mush-collections for the benefit of theoretical clarity DOES WORK to
promote revolution and the abolition of oppression. It is
unfortunately--for our esteem for most Amerikan "leftists"-- that
simple. We invite our readers to study this carefully with us.
Lenin split the international "socialist" movement, and thank goodness
because most of the other fools (a.k.a. leftists) of his day lined up
for the World War. It was not the mushy Mensheviks who pulled the
Russians out of World War I. It was the mushy socialists who joined in
large majorities the imperialist war on the sides of their governments
throughout Europe. They failed to end World War I. Strike one against
opportunism this century.
Today the same thing is happening on the issue of the white working
class. The vast majority of "socialists" are doing something with
proven results--in South Africa: They USED oppressed Black workers to
whatever extent they could for the benefit of white workers' demands.
MIM cannot work with people to bolster the international apartheid
system known as u.s. imperialism. Just as in World War I, a majority
of "leftists" think they are doing fine, but in reality they are
fools, either inexperienced or calculated.
For every 1000 attempts at opportunist unity of "socialists" that end
up no where or supporting fascism (as with the United Left in Peru
today), there is one case of a well-disciplined and scientifically
guided organization actually leading change.
It was not the Trotskyists who have led a revolution anywhere since
1925. Not one country. Strike two against opportunism that would give
quarter to Trotskyism.
Meanwhile it was the revolutionary vanguard parties in the traditions
of Stalin and Mao (not just Marx and Lenin) who led successful
revolutions repeatedly throughout this century--USSR, China, Albania,
North Korea, Vietnam etc. It was also the Black Panthers, the New
People's Army in the Philippines etc. that started in the tradition of
Stalin and Mao (gasp, gasp). We could go on and on. Committed
communists who COMPARE the success of movements in various traditions
will inevitably come to MIM's conclusion.
It is very hard for us who follow in the traditions of Marx, Lenin,
Stalin and Mao to take Trotskyism, DeLeonism etc. seriously except in
the cases of the politically inexperienced. If we were in the business
of publishing poetry or writing academic journals then certainly we
would adopt the "coalition" and unity of "leftists" approach, because
certainly there are many, many "leftists" good at wasting time talking
about certain aspects of revolution.
When it comes to reality however, we at MIM have a duty to point out
the difference between poetry and action. People who study carefully
will find that the all too few successes this century have been in the
traditions of Stalin and Mao.
We at MIM believe people committed to ending oppression will look
seriously into history and what works and what doesn't. We can't take
seriously people who aren't able to do that after a certain point.
What follows is a MIM review of an article that was a feeble attempt
by Jim O'Brien to criticize "American Leninism in the 1970s." This
article concluded that building parties and achieving theoretical
clarity was a waste of time, mostly because none of the Maoist parties
or others surpassed the old Communist Party in size.
Many leftists have an inordinate obsession with size. However, as the
United Left in Peru has discovered, having a large number of prattling
intellectuals and even a portion of the electorate behind you is no
guarantee of having a political line with any semblance of long-run
sanity. The United Left has crashed as have countless opportunist
groups that simply could not focus on reality and a scientific
analysis of it.
In the end the Russian masses lined up with Lenin; although months
earlier many thought of him as "crazy." It just goes to show that the
truth often resides with the unpopular, especially in imperialist and
semi-imperialist countries.
-------------
August 7, 1990
by MC5
A xerox copy of the article by O'Brien is available for $3
cash. MIM, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-3576
The first thing to point out about this is that it is a historical
essay already because "American Leninism" is now in the Gorbachev era.
The pro-Moscow parties across the world are dropping their insistence
on upholding Lenin's What Is To Be Done? For example, the British
Communist Party has really dropped any semblance of communism; others
have dissolved
outright.
Still the essay is valuable because to understand where things come
from in the United States, you need to know this history. The recent
diatribes I wrote against revisionism in the United States and its
strangling of internationalism is much related to this past. (See MIM
Notes 42)
Soon however, we can hope that the CP will dissolve. Surely it cannot
avoid a period of even greater confusion and change very revealing to
people who follow things over a long period of time.
Anyway, about O'Brien's article: the main thing O'Brien wants to do is
piss on the idea of building a real communist party in this country.
The main thing that the author seeks to prove is that the parties that
arose out of SDS in the 1960s do not have the size or other kinds of
visible success of the Communist Party, which he did not imagine
having the kind of problems it has today. Therefore, if you look at
these efforts "objectively" in O'Brien's mind, you should give up on
revolution. Nothing even surpasses the CP.
O'Brien's ideology is what will be labelled "sizeism" and
"pragmatism." Really, this is an invidious comparisons game applied on
the organizational level.
Anyway, O'Brien goes through the history of the splinters since SDS.
This is the only reason to read his article. It's good sectarian
training.
It's just that none of this history can really prove the point O'Brien
wants to make. At a larger comparative historical level, O'Brien's
argument falls apart. It is really quite interesting that O'Brien
notices this without addressing it. "Second, the existence of more
than a dozen countries governed by Leninist parties offered a prospect
of apparent success." (p. 10)
In the United States, he also should have started with the CP in the
1930s. He would have noticed all the actual gains it won with its
power.
He should have noticed that the Maoist-inspired Black Panthers (before
they were smashed and degenerated) organized more Blacks for
revolutionary change than any previous group in post-World War II
history. Yet, this gets passed over in the discussion as the essay
focuses on other groups. O'Brien clearly does not take the Panthers
seriously, while he takes semi-Trotskyist groups like Workers Power or
the Socialist Worker Party that dropped its Leninism more seriously.
(There appear to be more noises about Marx and Lenin in the SWP paper
lately--ed.)
Anybody who takes Trotskyism more seriously than the Black Panthers
clearly hasn't thought too much about history. Even by O'Brien's own
measuring rod of numbers, the Trotskyists have been a failure, even in
this land of the bought-off white working class that according to the
Spartacist League in classic Trotskyist industrialized-is-better-form
"is amongst the most advanced in the world."
Another point is that the article proceeds without an analysis of
goals and talks vaguely about the "left" as most "leftists" are apt to
do. So for "O'Brien," organizing white workers is a success and with
that as a measuring rod he not surprisingly concludes that the
revolutionaries have been a failure.
Finally, it is this kind of unspecified measuring rod of the movement
that leads O'Brien to conclude that party organization itself is a
waste of time. "Even at best, a tremendous amount of time, for members
of nearly all the Leninist groups, is spent in activities whose chief
purpose is to build the organization itself rather than to spur
working class activity more directly." (p. 33) This implies that
O'Brien thinks that people should dissolve their parties and just join
the working class, something he also implies by saying that the
Leninist who were students who took up blue- collar work are doing the
best work. (p. 32)
In the closing pages of the article, O'Brien hammers the issue of size
and concludes that the plan to build a genuine communist party is a
failure. Then he throws in that the SWP degenerated into reformism (no
surprise to those who never took the Trotskyists seriously.) For the
rest he attacks each group with one anecdote each and thinks that is a
serious evaluation of their revolutionary coherence. And while MIM
does not agree with any of the groups O'Brien cites, MIM would not use
that kind of empiricist method to attack them.
So whenever O'Brien intends to lead people, he ends up taking them
into anarchism, sizeism and pragmatism. No where does he take his own
measuring rods and examine them from a comparative historical
perspective to see if they have any meaning.
Yet, MIM has already done this. Size of an organization says nothing
about its eventual historical impact as the Bolshevik party and the
Chinese Communist Party have both already proved in comparison with
larger organizations--mush-collections without a scientific class
analysis.
And like it or not, organization is necessary to get things done. It
is not an accident that the Communist Party of the 1930s accomplished
what it did in putting together the CIO and the whole deal for labor
at the time. On the reverse side of things, while disciplined
organizations have seized power again and again in the world,
mush-collections and individualist organizers have failed again and
again in the world in creating social change.
The best historical example to the contrary is the FSLN of Nicaragua,
which is pretty mushy although not totally devoid of organization or a
line. To a large extent, the FSLN led part of a bourgeois revolution,
and much of what is said above does not apply to bourgeois
revolutions. Yet even to the extent that the FSLN seemed to be for
something more, the FSLN still proves the weaknesses of pluralist
approaches in an imperialist-dominated world. The FSLN took on a
battle within the rules of the pluralist game and lost. In the end,
the legacy that the FSLN leaves in the struggle toward ending
oppression is smaller than that of Albania, another small agricultural
country with a population of 3 million. Nicaragua seems "heavier" in
many deluded people's minds, but in actuality, the revolution in
Albania went further. If the FSLN is to have success in the future, it
will be to the degree it ignores its own pluralistic rhetoric and
takes up Maoism.
In conclusion, O'Brien's whole problem is the measuring rods of
success that he chose. Size, pluralism of views and white working
class roots have no proven track record of being important in the
battle against oppression. Where steps toward the ending of oppression
have been made, these factors were not relevant.
------------------
Some concluding notes for p.news
Although influenced by Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, Castro and the
FSLN in Nicaragua we must recognize as "their own thing." There is at
least something to talk about in their cases, as opposed to the cases
of Trotskyism, anarchism or DeLeonism.
Perhaps we could make allowances for no revolutionary movements in a
country over a period of 70 years. But a whole planet? Unless we are
pure dogmatists or poets, rejection by the whole planet over a 70 year
period of time should be a clue. Unfortunately, most of our
intellectual-nihilist critics are not able to get that clue.
Why don't they get a clue? Why do intellectuals make useless
criticisms of real world progress? Why don't they get on board and try
to improve successful movements from within? The reason is that they
were trained by the ruling class to get their acclaim for picking
apart intellectual ideas. Create an intellectual fad and make yourself
famous the bourgeoisie has trained intellectuals to think. Hence,
intellectuals are willing to destroy what is beautiful in the real
world for the benefit of what is beautiful in their heads --and that
is in the best case scenarios. (By the way, for the same reasons many
intellectuals reject democratic centralism; they uphold their
individual ideas as more important than practical unity and capacity
to strike at the reactionaries.)
Many intellectuals and activists are consciously opposed to the goals
of abolishing class, nation and gender oppression. Some work
professionally for the white nation labor aristocracy. It's a way to
make a living. Others are paid to serve bourgeois interests more
directly. Therefore, it is unrealistic to expect a "unity" of the
"left." First we have to define "left" and then we have to agree on
what success is.
