Repudiate sub-reformism; fight revisionism!

Repudiate sub-reformism; study lifestyle scientifically

I. The LRS and the "Gang of Four"
II. The ultraleft in the Cultural Revolution and sub-reformism
III. A scientific approach to lifestyle

by MC5

I. The LRS and the "Gang of Four" 

In the July, 1979 publication of the now defunct organization 
League of Revolutionary Struggle (LRS) which gave rise to the 
revisionist Freedom Road Socialist Organization(FRSO), there is an 
article upholding Deng Xiaoping revisionism called "China Is 
Vigorously Building Socialism." The publication says that the 
"Gang of Four" went too far in attacking bourgeois right--the 
right to distribution according to work--and went too far toward 
communism. However, the way that the article put this attack into 
effect was as follows: "The 'gang of four' opposed fully 
implementing the principle 'to each according to one's work' and 
attacked workers who worked hard for socialism as backward."(1) 

This oversimplification of the problem of socialist transition 
toward communism is made to the point of caricature, as if the 
"Gang of Four" went about attacking workers instead of the 
policies of the central leaders they disagreed with. With such 
reasoning communism itself will be an attack on workers who work 
hard, because by definition, communism will not be "to each 
according to his work," but "to each according to his need" as 
Marx said. 

The article continues "In those areas where the gang held 
influence, socialist construction was seriously disrupted. In many 
factories workers stopped working altogether. These workers, 
however, continued to receive full pay whether or not they worked. 
In some areas this went on for several years. 

"What did this mean? It meant of course that socialist production 
suffered for the entire country. It meant that the burden on the 
workers who continued to labor became greater-- objectively some 
workers lived off the labor of those workers and peasants who did 
work hard for socialism."(1) 

Of course, anyone who reads Peking Review or any other Chinese 
publication from the time that the "Gang of Four" were in charge 
(1966 to 1976) can see that the above is a lie or 
oversimplification of the class struggle. The articles are full of 
calls for hard work and producing more for the state. If 
production did not increase or work stopped it must have been on 
account of those sabotaging it and running contrary to the stated 
line. When such enemies attacked, the workers may have had to stop 
production as well just to deal with them. In 1976 it was none 
other than Deng Xiaoping's supporters who staged the 
counterrevolutionary Tiananmen incident. Throughout the Cultural 
Revolution, conniving righists and sub- reformist ultraleftists 
did everything to distract attention from the basics of the mode 
of production. 

Not surprisingly, given their brief and caricatured treatment of 
the issues, the reasons the LRS gave for opposing the "Gang of 
Four" are exceedingly superficial. We will provide the whole 
argument they gave in their section "True nature of the 'gang of 
four'" right here. We will letter each paragraph for study 
purposes. 

A. "It is very important to understand that the gang's policies 
were leading to the restoration of capitalism in China. Their 
policies were weakening socialism and encouraging the development 
of backward and capitalist ideas. The gang themselves were 
bourgeois elements. 

B. "What makes this hard for some people outside of China to grasp 
is that the gang built up its reputation supposedly opposing 
capitalist restoration. But their talk was only a cover for their 
own attempts to get top power in the Party and country. We can't 
look at just what they proclaimed about themselves; we must 
examine their actual practice and effect on society. 

C. "The gang accused many veteran Party leaders of supposedly 
being capitalist-roaders. This was very similar to Trotsky's 
attacks on the old Bolsheviks during the time that Lenin was near 
death. The purpose of these attacks was the same in both cases: to 
discredit leaders who had made genuine contributions to revolution 
and replace them with new counter-revolutionary 'leaders.' 

D. "The lifestyle and behavior of the gang and their followers 
show their hypocrisy about wanting to restrict privileges and 
having more equality. The gang themselves lived extravagant 
lifestyles--this was revealed ironically by Jiang Qing (Chiang 
Ching) herself to an American author who wrote a biography about 
her. The gang's followers also live such a life. There is a very 
popular play in China today called ITALICS Where Silence Reigned, 
ITALICS END which shows how the gang and its followers attacked 
the veteran communists in an unprincipled way just to gain power, 
position and comfort. 

E. "A key figure in this play is a high official who gained many 
privileges and material advantages because of his unscrupulous 
attacks on other communists during the Cultural Revolution. He is 
shown to be an out and out careerist. The play is very popular in 
China because it speaks to how many people in China actually feel 
about the gang--that all the gang's noise about combatting 
capitalism was nothing more than 'thief crying stop thief.' 

F. "Contrary to the bourgeois media's presentation of the gang as 
'austere proletarians who represented the revolutionary left' or 
even 'over enthusiastic, but well intentioned ultraleftists,' the 
'gang of four' were really self-seekers and capitalist elements 
who used Marxist words and some 'ultraleft' thinking to cover 
their own personal ambitions. 

G. "A good example of the type of reactionaries promoted by the 
gang is an opportunist called Wen Sung-ho. In China they say he 
personifies the gang's essence. His career illustrates what is 
called the new bourgeois elements that appear under socialism, and 
also what is meant by the gang's feudal fascism. 

H. "Before the Cultural Revolution, Wen worked in a Hangchow silk 
factory. He was not respected much by the other workers, for he 
was known as a pleasure seeker, paying little attention to 
Marxism-Leninism and work. He had been criticized for his attitude 
and behavior during the socialist education movement in the early 
1960's. 

I. "With the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, Wen suddenly 
became very active and incited factionalism and disruption at the 
factory. He carried out Lin Biao and the 'gang of four's' line of 
'overthrowing all' and attacked the veteran cadre. Soon afterwards 
he began to meet personally with Yao Wenyuan (Yao Wen Yuen) and 
Wang Hongwen (Wang Hung Wen), two of the 'gang of four.' With 
their backing, Wen rose up rapidly, first becoming a director at 
this factory and then even a member of the Standing Committee of 
the Provincial government. He also was admitted into the Party. 

J. "The masses of workers at Wen's plant strongly opposed he 
getting these posts. Ninety-five percent of the workers there, 
knowing his behavior, openly expressed their opposition to his 
Party membership. But the gang promoted him over these mass 
protestations. In 1974, Wang Hongwen got Wen to be a delegate to 
the 10th Party Congress, even though 550 out of the 581 Party 
members of the factory signed a letter opposing Wen's delegate 
status. But the gang disregarded the democratic centralism of the 
Party and the masses. 

K. "With his new power, Wen lorded over the workers. He persecuted 
the veteran cadre and reorganized the local militia into his 
personal shock force which he used to terrorize the workers. Wen 
retaliated against many of the workers who had previously opposed 
him--he had some workers beaten up right on the line, while he had 
others arrested in their homes in the dead of night, imprisoned 
and beaten for months. 

L. "Wen used workers' funds for his own pleasure, squandered money 
on banquets, appropriated five cars for himself and even converted 
a workers' sanitorium for his own personal use. He even had people 
carry him in a sedan chair once when he visited a scenic spot. 

M. "Finally in early 1975, Chairman Mao himself went to Hangchow 
and pointed out that Wen was a bad element. The Party soon sent 
Vice-Premier Ji Dengku (Chi Teng-kuei) to straighten out the 
situation in the province which culminated in Wen's arrest in late 
1975. 

N. "This struggle was conducted ITALICS before END ITALICS the 
gang itself fell in late 1976, and is an example of the masses 
fierce struggle against the gang and its followers."(2) 

There are so many things wrong with this quote, let's go over it 
point by point. 

Paragraph "A" is correct to ask how capitalist restoration 
occurred in China.. If the LRS wants to prove its point within 
Maoism it needs to prove what it says in paragraph "A." However, 
already it is in trouble, because Deng Xiaoping disallowed the 
concept of "bourgeoisie in the party" and discussions in China are 
no longer allowed to take the form that the LRS used in paragraph 
"A." They were already passe in China by the time LRS published 
its article. 

Paragraph "B" should be read as the beginning of a slide into 
Christian-style sub- reformism. Clearly what the LRS means by 
"practice" is one's persynal lifestyle. 

Paragraph "C" is obviously ridiculous. Stalin also attacked and 
had shot plenty of "Old Bolsheviks"--Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin 
and Trotsky himself. The question is not whether they "had made 
genuine contributions" as LRS itself says. The question was 
whether or not they were still making contributions. The answer to 
this is obvious because these "veterans" named in the "Adverse 
Current" in 1967 and Deng Xiaoping's legions came to power in 
China without the "Gang of Four" and proved their substance. They 
abolished collective farming, issued all land as private plots, 
allowed for agricultural goods to be traded mostly on a free 
market for profit and instituted industrial production for profit 
with massive unemployment. All of this about the mode of 
production in China is admitted fully and openly in official 
Chinese publications by the "veteran comrades" of which LRS 
speaks. 

Paragraphs "D" through "F" are about lifestyle again. Far more 
attention is given to the alleged lifestyle of the "Gang of Four" 
than to matters of distribution under socialist transition. That 
is not to mention there is NOTHING about the abolition of 
collective farming or the revolutionary committees in industry 
that were running factories instead of the old style of single-
responsibility system bosses. Without fail the strategy of 
reactionaries is to attack the revolutionaries' motivations 
instead of their line and impact on the mode of production. In 
many cases, Christian individualists and other pre- political 
people are incapable of understanding the nature of structural 
change, so they reduce issues to individual lifestyles that they 
can understand.

Paragraphs "G" through "L" are about Wen. Yet, again the focus is 
on Wen persynally, not his line. All we learn about his line with 
regard to class struggle is that he terrorized workers according 
to LRS. The rest is all lifestyle talk and irrelevant persynal 
detail. Where did Wen want the province to go? What was he saying 
and implementing in factory policy? There is mostly no answer. 

Paragraphs "M" and "N" only prove that Mao did not regard the 
"Gang of Four" as bourgeois elements. He corrected a mistake and 
no where did he call the "Gang of Four" "bourgeois elements." He 
certainly did call Deng Xiaoping a capitalist-roader though and 
had him removed from office in 1976. The League of Revolutionary 
Struggle does not face that fact anywhere in the article: Deng 
Xiaoping is simply not mentioned despite his having a well-known 
line, and not just a lifestyle.

Everything that the Gang of Four said about the "veteran comrades" 
it attacked proved to be true. The "veteran comrades" had decades 
in power after 1976 to prove the "Gang of Four" correct about 
them. 

If there were still collective farming in China, no unemployment 
and firms were not openly run for profit, then we would have to 
consider whether it was worth getting rid of the "Gang of Four." 
Yet, the facts are in: it is a good thing that the "Gang of Four" 
sought power and had in fact two seats on the highest party 
committee when Mao died. It wasn't just for persynal ambition and 
lifestyle that the Gang of Four pursued power; the change of 
China's mode of production without the "Gang of Four" is the 
proof. 

If every single lifestyle charge they made against the "Gang of 
Four" (and now Mao too with all these rumors about his sex life 
coming to light), it would not add up to a hill of beans. 
Socialism is not a lifestyle. It is a mode of production that 
underlies propensities to make lifestyle choices. Reformists at 
least aim at change affecting the whole society. Sub-reformists 
look at change in individuals. The League of Revolutionary 
Struggle (LRS) was a subjectivist, empiricist, sub-reformist, 
individualist organization paving the way for post-modernism. 

In discussions with MIM in the early 1980s, the LRS attacked MIM 
with post-modernism. Always the Chinese were right, because they 
were Chinese according to the LRS. So goes their line across-the-
board. The LRS should have studied the Red Flag article 
(23September1964) "The Subjective Idealist Substance of Pragmatist 
Empiricism." It is not the experience of a Black persyn, a Chinese 
persyn or a Latin King or Queen that makes that persyn correct or 
not. 

Describing American pragmatist William James, Red Flag said, "From 
his viewpoint so-called 'pure experience' is a primitive, obscure 
entity; experience is wholly 'self- sufficient' and not dependent 
on the realistic world; it in itself is the only true reality." To 
translate for the current issue at hand, the mode of production in 
China is the mode of production in China, no matter what any 
Chinese say about it--and that should be obvious as we are talking 
about Deng Xiaoping and his cronies that the LRS defended. 

Red Flag continued: "'Experience' is the philosophical conception 
with which pragmatists are fondest of toying. . . Pragmatists are 
so fond of discussing experience, principally because they seek to 
utilize this conception for carrying on sophism and concealing the 
subjective idealist substance of their philosophy. . . They have 
extended the scope of experience immeasurably, make it include and 
embrace everything under the sun. The pragmatist interpretation of 
experience is confused and incoherent. What pragmatists call 
experience is not limited to what is ordinarily called sense 
experience, but includes all man's ideologies and psychological 
impressions, even dreams, rambling thoughts, magic, and 
superstition. . . .At other times they stress with all their 
effort that experience is not subjective itself and not dependent 
on any subject." The experience of being Chinese does not make 
one's line on China correct, because experience comes with 
idealist inaccuracy. However, the LRS line paved the way at some 
major U.$. colleges for post-modernism--with a social basis in the 
tokenism that exalted experience and said people with different 
experience should be hired as faculty for that reason. 

Now even former members of the LRS such as Amiri Baraka have 
admitted that the LRS followed the yuppie ideology and surrendered 
the weapon of ideological struggle. They certainly did: they and 
their FRSO descendants are for feel-good subjectivist politics. 
For this reason they still haven't admitted that China is 
capitalist. 

The LRS represents the equivalent of the right wing in the 
Communist Party of China, the bourgeois wing. They are not unlike 
the hard- right bourgeois elements who sought to oust President 
Clinton for his lifestyle. 

The FRSO that descended from LRS merged with the centrist elements 
supporting Hua Guofeng, who himself was the one who ended the 
campaign against Deng and allowed him back to power without a 
fight. The FRSO still hasn't come clean to this day and jumbles 
the question of capitalist restoration; although the masses 
clearly should require from us communists clarity on that before 
we ask them to sacrifice their blood in struggle! 

II. The ultraleft in the Cultural Revolution and sub-reformism 

Apart from the counterrevolutionary right like the LRS and the 
center-right turned counterrevolutionary like the FRSO, the 
ultraleft was also obsessed with sub-reformism and also broke up 
the proletarian camp by examining one individual lifestyle at a 
time during the Cultural Revolution. Although it is a lie by the 
LRS that the "Gang of Four" ever said "overthrow all," the 
Progressive Labor Party and affiliated Red Guard groups in China 
were openly for overthrowing 95% percent of the party. Other 
anarchists and Trotskyists were for 100% overthrow. These 
ultraleft factions wanted to fry Jiang Qing in oil as they said 
themselves. 

Not surprisingly when tens of millions of workers and peasants 
seem wrong to you, the focus ends up being on each individual 
lifestyle--what is wrong with each of these people, else how else 
can one attack the 95% who are workers and peasants? People like 
Deng Xiaoping can be attacked for their lines in power and what 
they want to do with the mode of production. Yet the mode of 
production and structure of society with regard to patriarchy 
bored the rightists and ultraleftists during the Cultural 
Revolution. They also didn't like it when Mao kept telling them 
the enemy was only 5 percent of the party--and not a different 
five percent every day. They sought to bring about disunity in the 
proletarian camp by focussing on lifestyle questions. 

Even now in "Road to Revolution 4.5" the PLP talks about breaking 
with nationalism and breaking with reformism. Then they say about 
those breaks: "Every one of our breaks represents yet another 
halting step towards communism."(3) For them, joining a party and 
changing one's mind is revolution. Not surprisingly they say most 
of their practice has been reformist. The reason is that their 
root conception of class struggle is sub- reformist. No wonder 
there is not a single armed struggle in the world that PLP 
supports fully and fraternally. For MIM, in contrast, a step 
toward communism is a change in the structure of society or at 
least an armed struggle in progress. 

We must now teach the masses the lesson of the Cultural Revolution 
-- how to oppose both rightism and ultraleftism in party-led mass 
movements. Repudiating sub-reformism is one key to the struggle. 

We should repudiate sub-reformism confidently, because there will 
never be a time when the society produces no advanced elements. 
Some communists will degenerate, but others will be born to take 
up the struggle unless the species ends itself. As long as the 
"Gang of Four" opposed private agriculture and profit in command, 
it was the duty of the proletariat and revolutionary masses to 
support them. 

The emphasis in lifestyle questions must be voluntary and non-
obtrusive. Obtrusive struggles aimed at using state or mass 
movement power to change individual lifestyles backfire and 
produce anarchism. During the Cultural Revolution's latter phases, 
the leadership of the movement realized that revolutionizing other 
people is easier than revolutionizing oneself. In other words, ego 
gets in the way of revolutionary remolding; however, the solution 
is to struggle at the general line level and let individuals draw 
their own conclusions about themselves. 

In the Cultural Revolution, to deal with the ultraleftists, the 
slogan arose of "repudiate self; fight revisionism." Another 
version was "combat self-interest, criticize and repudiate 
revisionism."(4) Even this slogan ended up being too much of a 
concession to the ultraleft. It must be made clear that people 
should voluntarily repudiate self and that uncovering hypocrisy 
and lifestyle flaws in others is not the goal of revolutionaries. 
The ultraleftists were out to revolutionize everyone else or 95% 
of everyone else in lifestyle questions and they were being 
encouraged by the slogan to look at themselves in terms of 
ideological remolding first and primarily while also attacking the 
5% of party members on the capitalist-road. Ideological remolding 
of the masses must in no way be equated with the necessity of 
power-struggle against the capitalist-roaders in the party. 
Putting ideological remolding of oneself first may result in New 
Age ideas or other mystical traps. Fighting revisionists or 
imperialists in power is principal over ideological remolding or 
we will tend to fall into the sub-reformist trap. Number one 
target of the Cultural Revolution Liu Shaoqi was famous for his 
work along these lines stressing "self-cultivation." 

III. A scientific approach to lifestyle 

In MIM we have a party "primer." It constitutes numerous rules and 
regulations for party members. They are based on appearances that 
we need to make to be attractive to the masses and mostly what the 
causes of political degeneration are. Through long years of 
dealing with the masses, of combating pseudo-feminism, of 
listening to extremist lifestyle pseudo-environmentalists, of 
defending Stalin and Mao against what our critics think are 
devastating blows having to do with lifestyle and from dealing 
with the history of political degeneration in and outside MIM, MIM 
has come to an increasing understanding of the uses and 
limitations of a primer and any lifestyle related sub-reformism. 

The primer is helpful in the functioning of our party. In addition 
to the issue of degeneration, it is easier to be an effective 
communist with some lifestyles rather than others--by living near 
large numbers of people for instance. For this reason, our Central 
Committee takes up the burden of revolution including living by 
the primer. 

We no longer require living by the primer of all members, only our 
best ones. Even that is not to say that the primer would be any 
protection if revisionism arose in the Central Committee. The best 
upholding of the primer will mean nothing in a context of struggle 
over general line--unless we are guilty of sub-reformism. Not for 
nothing Hitler titled his book "My Struggle" and not for nothing 
"practice is principal" does not mean "my practice is principal." 

We have geographic restrictions in the party primer. The reason 
for that is the experience of our party and other North American 
organizations historically that it is more difficult to be a 
communist in some geographic locations than others, especially if 
one is alone as a communist in that locale. Eventually we will 
have communists everywhere, but right now we seek to prevent the 
ones we have from degenerating. The science involved says that 
geographic choices cause degeneration or political reliability. 

There is a science in preventing political degeneration. We give 
advice on finances, geography, drugs and marriage. Yet, we must be 
clear that none of these are the mode of production. None of these 
amount to self- determination for the oppressed nation masses. 
Every single thing mentioned in the primer is less than secondary, 
because lifestyle questions are less than secondary. 

Patriarchy is an example of a secondary contradiction right now 
and lifestyle questions are all less than secondary. Of the three 
major strands of oppression, it is gender oppression in the 
imperialist countries that tends to be most susceptible to causing 
sub- reformist thought. We must say frankly that we do not trust 
the anarchists or pseudo- feminists seeking to reform men by 
lifestyle choices within the existing patriarchy. Men cannot be 
reformed within patriarchy, only revolutionized. 

A student attended a typical pseudo-feminist led "Take Back the 
Night" march of the U.$. anti-rape movement and he brought his 
mother. His mother was a little taken aback and said to her son, 
"don't you think the speakers are a little radical?" His reply was 
that she was out of touch, "no ma, they are not radical; they are 
mainstream. There--that's radical" and he snatched a MIM Notes 
from a comrade at the rally and gave it to his mother. The story 
raises that for too many imperialist country people, the meaning 
of "radical" has been lost. It has been so stifled that people 
don't know what it is anymore and assume a radical is looking for 
a new lifestyle, because their politics or lack thereof has no 
other reference point other than maybe Christianity or Buddhism at 
best. 

MIM does not want to know about Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky. 
MIM wants to make on-the-job sexual harassment impossible by 
guaranteeing everyone a job and geographic mobility in their jobs. 
Anyone who wants to turn down a sexual advance by a "superior" or 
rebuke that superior will be able to do so under socialism by 
leaving a job if necessary without fear of career loss. If it is 
true Mao chased after wimmin in his late years in power, at least 
the wimmin he chased had jobs guaranteed. Hence, his achievements 
far outweigh anything his objectively patriarchal critics might 
raise. The question of political leaders is what affects the 
millions of people, not just the one. 

That is the difference between an individualist sub-reformist and 
a radical or structuralist. A radical looks for some simple 
underlying solution to a problem affecting everyone or large 
groups of people; whereas people chasing down the details and 
wanting everyone to get excited about Paula Jones and Monica 
Lewinsky are sub-reformists. They burn the people out in 
ideological struggle case-by-case and thereby set back the 
movement. The most red-hot of these sub- reformists are usually 
ultraleftists shouting militant rhetoric even against 
revolutionaries and then getting bogged down in burnout and 
reformism. 

People raising a fuss about gay and lesbian lifestyles either for 
or against are far removed from cardinal questions. We will not 
tolerate splitting the Maoist forces so that some prudes will rest 
easy at night with regard to his or her comrades' lifestyle in 
bed. The number of gay or lesbian revolutionaries raising 
lifestyle up as a cardinal question can be listed on a single 
hand. Mostly this problem of putting lifestyle above cardinal 
principles comes from the right. These counterrevolutionary 
rightists don't understand what a cardinal question is anyway, so 
we do not go out of our way to attract them to the party. Let them 
be dissuaded by our lesbian liberation logo or by our hammer and 
sickle. 

In the national oppression question, there are those who say one 
has to wear certain clothes, have certain hairdos and listen to 
certain music. The Black Panthers disdained these "pork-chop 
nationalists" and the Panthers were right. A lifestyle is no 
substitute for real politics. 

In class exploitation questions, we have the movement "for social 
responsibility" that says each individual should invest in funds 
that carry out responsible capitalism. These petty- bourgeois have 
made lifestyle yet again the focus. Meanwhile, MIM is in favor of 
making money any way legally possible and handing it over to 
PIRAO, so we do not believe that lifestyle on these questions is 
paramount. 

MIM is not really in favor of reviewing lifestyles case-by-case. 
Any politics that leads in that direction will necessarily divide 
the proletarian camp into little bits. This is what we mean by 
repudiating sub-reformism. In Amerika we have the unconscious 
background of thinking about the "Ten Commandments" and living in 
"hypocrisy" with regard to those "Ten Commandments." As we pointed 
out in the Stalin MT, even comrades engaged in armed struggle such 
as in Yugoslavia found themselves breaking with the Russian 
comrades over lifestyle questions, especially food and drink. We 
need to break with unscientific preconceptions and no longer seek 
to draw our sense of outrage from them. In fact, we need to put 
these sub-reformists on the defensive every time they raise up 
their drivel to being principal or even secondary. 

At any time, some elements of the international communist movement 
are progressing and some are degenerating. We ask that comrades 
manipulate themselves into progressing. 

We point to the common policies that help with degeneration 
prevention and reduce the chances for subjectivist and 
individualist infighting in the proletarian camp. That's how we 
address lifestyle questions--by informing people of what choices 
they can make to increase their chances of not degenerating. There 
will be those who do not believe the Party in its historical 
experience with many similar people and organizations, but we 
should struggle with the non-believers in a general theoretical 
and historical way and not with reference to their own lifestyle 
to be examined case-by-case. 

Monogamy increases the chances of inner-party stability and helps 
truly oppressed and proletarian mothers who need help caring for 
young children. Not taking drugs keeps one from getting arrested 
or drifting off into escapist political space. So on and so on-- 
there are lifestyle things one can do to improve one's chances of 
making revolutionary contributions. Each of these questions will 
hit hard at the individual level, but we must seek to answer them 
at the level of general line. The general line talks about the 
things that everyone can refer to and therefore is the only way 
for people to envision how to work together. 

In 1976, the people of China had a choice. They could support the 
"Gang of Four" despite whatever perceived lifestyle flaws they had 
or they could support Hua and Deng. The result is now history. 

That is not to say we do not vigorously promote a science of 
lifestyle. We must let the party members and masses considering 
becoming revolutionaries know what is most likely to promote their 
revolutionary consciousness. We must also take a clear stand of 
right and wrong on all lifestyle questions-- not case-by-case but 
in general. Failure to do so only results in more endless 
relativist and ultraleftist conflicts, often through the informal 
channels of gossip favoring the oppressor. 

Taking a clear stand on lifestyle questions should never mean 
choosing one's leaders and consequently the line one is following 
based on lifestyle of individuals. No one calling him or herself 
"radical" -- not to mention revolutionary -- should substitute 
sub- reformism for communism. We would have picked the "Gang of 
Four" and Mao over Deng Xiaoping, Hua Guofeng and the Adverse 
Current group of "veteran comrades" who restored capitalism in 
China whether or not all the lifestyle charges against Mao and the 
Four were true. 

The weapon of lifestyle criticism must be removed from the hands 
of those who claim to be in our movement against class, nation and 
gender oppression. We should rely on voluntary efforts in 
lifestyle questions while vigorously making known the statistical 
truths about where certain lifestyle choices lead politically. 
Criticism of comrades should be restricted to questions of the 
general line, never to lifestyle. Today, we speak of the Mark Rudd 
lifestyle with regard to wimmin, but we do so with no particular 
animosity against Rudd. Rather we mean to sum up the damage that 
'60s men practicing the "free love" line did in our movement. 

We are confident that the progress of society does not depend on 
one-on- one struggles relating to lifestyle. Even the question of 
suicide itself is a question of the general line--one's attitude 
toward the international proletariat. MIM has no magic lifestyle 
solutions within capitalist society that make everyone happy. To 
be happy living within imperialism is itself a crime against the 
international communist movement. 

Asking individuals for sacrifice for the Central Committee does 
not necessarily help provide such sacrifice. We seek people to 
abide by our primer voluntarily in order to become useful Central 
Committee members. A Central Committee member tripping out on 
drugs or caring for children s/he shouldn't have had in the 
imperialist countries--such a Central Committee member is little 
use to the proletariat. Hence, we ask our people who join the CC 
voluntarily to put revolution ahead of drugs and child-raising. 

Science does not advance by single case studies alone. In fact, 
such a science is impossible. Likewise, when it comes to 
lifestyle, MIM's primer and ideological position is based on what 
tends to be true statistically, not in each case. Even following 
every single rule in the primer is not a guarantee of 
revolutionary consciousness. A certain percentage of cases will 
always turn against us and a certain percentage of cases will 
always turn up in our favor when we didn't expect them to. We are 
presenting generalizations to the masses and struggling to make 
sure the masses and party members understand these 
generalizations. Hence, our slogan is "repudiate sub-reformism; 
study lifestyle scientifically." 

Notes:

1. Forward, July 1979, p. 33.

2. Forward, July 1979, pp. 39-41.

3. See www.plp.org to find "Road to Revolution 4.5"

4. See for example, Peking's Red Flag No. 15, 6 October 1967: 
"This is the basic guiding principle of the Great Proletarian 
Cultural Revolution."