Why MIM's attitude toward "leftist" groups by the Maoist Internationalist Movement 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.