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This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
Revolutionary Worker #1263, December 26, 2004, posted at rwor.org
Editors’ Note: The following are excerpts from a recent talk by Bob Avakian. They have been edited for publication and footnotes have been added here.
In going back over some previous remarks I made concerning the international struggle and the international movement, it struck me that, while these remarks focused on the question of principal contradiction in the world, and although this question—and in particular our party’s basic approach to this1 —very much relates to crucial principles for the international movement, and specifically to the concept and practice of internationalism, still there is the whole question of internationalism itself that needs to be gone into much more directly and explicitly and struggled out in the international communist movement. In the epistemology notes,2 I made the observation that from the time of Conquer the World 3 there has been a certain epistemological break or rupture that I have been pursuing. But, in going back to and re-reading CTW and also "Advancing the World Revolutionary Movement: Questions of Strategic Orientation,"4 another talk I gave in the first part of the 1980s, I was struck that there has been not just an epistemological rupture but also a rupture with regard to proletarian internationalism. Again, this is not just in CTW but also in "Advancing the World Revolutionary Movement"—which, even more than CTW, has not been made the focus of discussion and struggle to the extent that it should.
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There is, for example, in both those works, but actually developed more in "Advancing," a new synthesis brought forward of what internationalism is and means.
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mim3@mim.org replies for MIM: It was not "new," anymore than idealism
ever is. It was Trotskyism re-bottled.
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There is a discussion about the Connolly model of internationalism — the
viewpoint of that Irish revolutionary, a contemporary of Lenin’s, who basically
proceeded "from the nation out" and saw internationalism in that light,
essentially a nationalist view of internationalism—vs. the more Leninist view of
internationalism. In "Advancing" in particular there is, on the one hand, a
somewhat elaborated discussion about Lenin’s definition of
internationalism—striving for revolution in one’s own country and supporting
this line and program in other countries. And there is Lenin’s argument (for
example, in "The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky")5 that the fundamental orientation
should not be "my country" but my contribution to the world revolutionary
struggle . But what is in "Advancing" that is new and very important is not
only opposition to and criticism of what has become the prevailing view of
internationalism within the international communist movement—which is more in
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mim3@mim.org replies for MIM:
Translate: the People's Wars are not buying Avakianism, a let-down for his
"Moscow Bolsheviks" type supporters like the Internet "Repeater." I'm talking
about the kind of people who show up in the middle of a discussion about
surplus-value and the labor aristocracy to say that such and such parties signed
a joint resolution with the RCP=U$A and therefore MIM is wrong. Mao repeatedly
denounced these sorts and wrested power away from them in the Chinese communist
movement and on this particular question, we can also say that Kim Il Sung
and his criticizing of "flunkeyists" would
be better than the RCP=U$A which attracts simpleton Trotskyist types looking
for international legitimacy for the labor aristocracy.
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line with the Connolly view, even though Connolly wasn’t a communist, more in
line with the notion that internationalism is something extended from one
country to another, and in practice it is more "my country" than my
contribution to the world revolution that has been the basic point of
orientation and point of departure. First of all, there is, in "Advancing," a
rupture with and a critique of that. But, beyond that, there is a call to
combine Lenin’s stance on and definition of internationalism with an approach of
proceeding first and above all from the world level, and looking at the world as
a whole at any given time to determine where it is that, through a combination
of objective and subjective factors, the most important breakthroughs for the
whole international struggle can be made—and for parties in particular countries
to act accordingly, to give political support in relation to those
"breakthroughs," even at the cost of some sacrifice on the part of particular
parties and in terms of the struggle in "their" countries.
Avakian is going to get in trouble here, because Lenin said explicitly that the communists are to focus on their own countries and of course Stalin and Mao said the same thing. So the struggle goes from the inside to the outside and now Avakian is disagreeing. His followers have staked a lot on the Trotskyist idea that the prestige of an international organization justifies anything.
In both MIM's case and Avakian's case, we are considering a greater role for external causation than what Lenin and Mao said was generally true. In Avakian's case, external causation has meant taking up all the Trotskyist lines on imperialism not being decadent, labor aristocracy workers being ultra-productive, technology and accumulation dynamics key, Cominterns being necessary, united fronts wrong, Stalin bad and Mao's Three Worlds Theory beyond the pale.
For MIM, we would say "to give political support to those 'breakthroughs,' even at the cost of some sacrifice on the part of particular parties" like Avakian says, but we would base it on an examination of only the majority-exploiter countries, particularly Germany in 1945 as our best example so far. The correct reason for prioritizing a struggle outside one's own country would be that the majority of one's own country is exploiters. In addition, in the empire states typified by New York, London, Paris and Moscow, it's just tactically necessary to work in many languages because the best social material for revolution does not speak the dominant language. This is not just another b.s. assertion. Comrades should check what I'm saying if there is any doubt. In U.$. history, our movement was doing best when dominated by recent immigrants. When those immigrants "melted" into the melting pot and the CIO won too many "labor" demands, our movement waned. That continued into the 1960s when Black nationalism flared up and brought us our greatest upsurge in imperialist North Amerika yet. We waned again with the victory of the Martin Luther King line.
To return to Lenin and Mao, the communists looking at the empire-states internally are going to conclude that their best material for revolution has its heart in other countries anyway. The bourgeois empires have bourgeois internationalism and their ideas about integration, but we communists operating inside these empires end up having to prioritize the outside to get back to our inside. Whether we say it was inside-out or outside-in becomes somewhat semantic.
Finally, both Avakian and MIM felt compelled to depart from Lenin and Mao on the question of the inside to outside orientation. But once departing, Avakian followed the well-travelled Trotskyist road while we accentuated things already in Lenin. We at MIM did not buy a whole series of pre-fitted and pre-digested lines to depart from Lenin. Instead we accentuated Lenin's ideas about parasitism and decadence and found ourselves able to defend Stalin better while blaming the German labor aristocracy more.
As we dig into our labor aristocracy more and the reason we had to go look at external causation to begin with, we also come across a better understanding of the origins of Mao's ideas on the Cultural Revolution. For example, before his party allowed him to speak of a "bourgeoisie in the party," Mao attributed capitalist restoration to the labor aristocracy in obvious echoes of Lenin. Mao also developed a whole struggle against the "theory of the productive forces," but that struggle originated with Marx for a German context. So, another problem with Avakian's approach is what it does to the process of rational knowledge production--the encouragement of a whole dogmatic-sectarian milieu unrooted in any empirical knowledge. It's one thing to want to prioritize another country's struggle, but it's another thing to be able to do so with the correct degree of concrete understanding.
What is going on in the united $tates and majority-exploiter countries generally is not a small part of rational knowledge necessary, not just for communists here inside majority-exploiter country borders but globally. We have the obligation to serve as the inside tribunes of exploitation headquarters. We should have the inside scoop and for many important questions to the international communist movement, ideally MIM would have half the answers--the inside scoop on u.$. imperialism. Even in a small imperialist country, it could be that careful examination of internal conditions would produce rational knowledge which might spur a Mao in another country. At the very least such careful study of internal conditions might confirm some more general rational knowledge circulating.
Recently, the u.$. imperialist armed forces sent spotters to places in the Mideast before doing battle. They might be a handful of people setting up radios or laser-lighting targets and they can in no way be the "main force" to win any kind of battle, let alone a war. Likewise, when it comes to detailing knowledge of imperialist exploitation, there can be no excuse by the imperialist country communists for not getting the job done.
As we have told the RCP=U$A many times before, ferretting out closet Hoxhaites in Turkey is not higher priority than knowing the concrete details of what it would take to actually know we have eradicated exploitation. Done correctly, investigation of majority-exploiter country conditions will also provide key insight into demands that the oppressed nations can and should make while also improving the unity of the exploited globally.
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This call for a synthesis of those two things is new in the international movement. But this has been not sufficiently engaged and struggled over.
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Here I want to make a few additional comments about this approach to
internationalism, and the emphasis that the world arena is ultimately and
fundamentally decisive—which, yes, involves some criticism of Mao’s internal and
external point (Mao’s argument that the internal conditions within particular
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If there is anything wrong with Mao's philosophy of the internal basis of contradiction it is
how we might apply it to count imperialist country parasites as "internal" to imperialism. In this sense,
if the oppressor nation is "internal" to imperialism, then we can say that "external" causation
of change is necessary for the minority of countries that are imperialist. That is how it actually
happened in Germany, 1945--and that can no longer be debated so we would have to challenge
any philosophical approach evading that. Philosophy is not an excuse for evasion of reality
or introduction of a "poetic" or "romantic" spirit as Avakian says, which is why Marx wrote a book
titled the Poverty of Philosophy and actually asked that philosophy be done away with.
Another interesting part of this is that Germany tried to make European territory internal to itself and that's
what resulted in its downfall. Likewise, U.$. imperialism acts as if Iraq is part of itself internally. So if the
united $tates is administering Iraq, perhaps it is not far-fetched to say that the Iraqi people are part of the
internal basis of change of u.$. imperialism.
The Trotskyists and crypto-Trotskyists err in bringing the message of external causation to the Third World,
because the masses do make history, and the masses overwhelmingly do not live in the imperialist countries.
It is the five billion out of six billion living in the Third World who are the basis of change and whether
in Peru or Nepal, they are "internal" to those countries. The fact that imperialism dominates those
countries like never before is not decisive, contrary to Avakian. Imperialism is a paper tiger. Having
strategic confidence in the international proletariat means continuing to uphold that the masses make history,
not Bu$h or Clinton. For this reason, we can still say that no matter how we interpret the imperialist
countries, Mao on the "internal basis" is still mostly correct and Lenin's interpretation of internationalism
is still correct, not Avakian's.
mim3@mim.org replies:
OK, Avakian is catching up with the rest of the world. MIM criticized him on this point
in print ten years ago. Avakian's ideas of external and internal correspond to imperialist
dominance of the world. In the quote below and elsewhere,
he takes imperialist dominance and turns that into an "epistemology" and then has the nerve
to call his critics mechanical.
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countries are decisive in terms of struggle and change in those particular
countries, and that conditions and developments "outside" those countries are
external and secondary elements). Some time ago in the RW there was an
article by me, "The Philosophical
Basis of Proletarian Internationalism," 6 which argued that, in fact, in the
era of imperialism in particular, the international arena, and changes and
developments on that level, are more decisive and determining of what happens in
particular countries than the "internal conditions" in the particular countries,
taken by themselves. This is an extremely important—and extremely
controversial—point.
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However, we should not ourselves conceive of this, nor allow others to
characterize it, as a conception that means that we are all, as Lenin once put
it, "suspended in mid-air" and nobody can make revolution anywhere, in any
particular country, because the international arena is ultimately and
fundamentally decisive. That itself is a mechanical vulgarization of this
principle.
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mim3@mim.org replies: The above sounded better in Trotsky's original version of
"permanent revolution."
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I was recently re-reading "Two Great Humps,"7 it quotes the following from
Phony Communism is Dead, Long Live Real Communism ,8 which I think is very important in
this context:
"‘the achievement of [the necessary conditions for communism] must take place on a world scale, through a long and tortuous process of revolutionary transformation in which there will be uneven development, the seizure of power in different countries at different times, and a complex dialectical interplay between the revolutionary struggles and the revolutionization of society in these different countries—a dialectic in which the world arena is fundamentally and ultimately decisive while the mutually interacting and mutually supporting struggles of the proletarians in different countries constitute the key link in fundamentally transforming the world as a whole.’" (citing Phony/Real, p. 116, footnote 21)
And, in another part of "Two Great Humps," this related point is emphasized:
"the initiative seized by the revolutionary vanguard and masses in particular countries and the advances they make in the revolutionary struggle will significantly affect the international situation and struggle and may, in certain circumstances, even qualitatively transform it. Here again is an illustration of the dialectical relation between the situation and developments on the world level and in particular countries, and the ‘interweaving’ and constant interpenetration between them, including the fact that aspects of the one exist in the other—changes in particular countries are both part of that aspect (the particular country) and part of the other aspect (the world situation), and major changes in particular countries will both be bound up with and in turn will significantly affect the international situation....While recognizing the ultimately decisive importance of the world arena, and while taking the world revolutionary struggle as their fundamental point of orientation and doing everything they can to contribute to that struggle, they [the vanguard and masses in the various countries] should seize the maximum possible initiative at any given point, transform necessity into freedom to the greatest degree possible at every point, and keep their eye fixed firmly on the prize, so as not to miss, or throw away, the chance to get over the first great hump and go all-out for the seizure of power, whenever and however—through whatever combination of objective and subjective factors, within the particular country and worldwide—that opportunity arises."
In a real sense, a lot of what is "up," a major way in which all these decisive matters get concentrated, is in the question— not only for our party but for the whole international movement—of whether we are going to be simply a residue of the past (even in the sense of the residue of the past waves of proletarian revolution) or are we going to be a vanguard of the future? With all the twists and turns that this involves—invoking once again Mao’s very important and insightful observation that the future is bright, the road is tortuous—are we going to be the representatives of the revolution of the future? This is what is actually being battled out—and it needs to be battled out much more consistently and thoroughly and systematically: Are we going to be a residue of the past or a vanguard of the future? And this whole question of how to understand and how therefore to carry out proletarian internationalism—this is of decisive importance in terms of those two possibilities, those two roads: being a residue of the past or a vanguard of the future.
***********************************************************************************This article does not say anything new. Not one part is anything Trotsky did not say. Those of us who have not read Trotsky should not try to claim to be Maoists following Avakian. If external causation does play a decisive role, history has proved that it is in the case of the imperialist countries such as Germany in 1945. Such countries are not the majority. That's just another way of saying that most of the "inside" is the Third World.
FOOTNOTES:
1These remarks were part of the discussions at the fourth plenary session of the Central Committee of the RCP,USA in 1980 and were published under the title "Fundamental and Principal Contradictions on a World Scale," in RW #132 (November 27, 1981). This was republished in RW #172 (September 17, 1982), along with a new article "More on the Principal Contradiction in the World Today."
2"On Epistemology—On Knowing, and Changing, the World," RW #1262 (December 19, 2004).
3 Conquer the World? The International Proletariat Must and Will, in Revolution Special Issue, No. 50, December 1981.
4 Revolution, No. 51, Spring 1984.
5V.I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965, pp. 105-113).
6 "The Philosophical Basis of Proletarian Internationalism," RW #96 (March 13, 1981).
7 Getting Over the Two Great Humps: Further Thoughts on Conquering the World is a talk given by Bob Avakian in the late 1990s. Excerpts from this talk appeared in the Revolutionary Worker and are available on the web at rwor.org. The series "On Proletarian Democracy and Proletarian Dictatorship—A Radically Different View of Leading Society," appeared in RW #1214 through 1226 (October 5, 2003-January 25, 2004). The series "Getting Over the Hump" appeared in RW #927, 930, 932, and 936-940 (October 12, November 2, November 16, and December 14, 1997 through January 18, 1998). Two additional excerpts from this talk are "Materialism and Romanticism: Can We Do Without Myth?" in RW #1211 (August 24, 2003) and "Re-reading George Jackson" in RW #968 (August 9, 1998).
All of the articles mentioned above can be found on the web at rwor.org/chair_e.htm under the following headings: On Proletarian Democracy and Proletarian Dictatorship, Getting Over the Hump, Recent Writings, and Further Thoughts and Writings.
8Bob Avakian, Phony Communism Is Dead... Long Live Real Communism!, 2nd edition (Chicago: RCP Publications, 2004).