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14, 2005, 9:32pm
Avakian's Conquer the World part
3 « Thread Started on Jul 26,
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[Here is
part 3 of dogmatist Bob Avakian's Conquer the
World.]
III. Leninism as the Bridge.
By
that I mean that in today’s situation Leninism is the
key link in upholding and applying Marxism-Leninism, Mao
Tsetung Thought. To put it somewhat provocatively,
Marxism without Leninism is Eurocentric
social-chauvinism and social democracy. Maoism without
Leninism is nationalism (and also, in certain contexts,
social-chauvinism) and bourgeois democracy. Now those
may sound like nice little axioms but they apply, and
have real importance, and this is, in my opinion, a
summation from experience of some phenomena that exist
in the world and around which there must be deeper
struggle.
Now, having said that, by way of a
rather sharp and provocative introduction, I want to say
a few words more on the question of revolutionary
defeatism in terms of its opposite, social-chauvinism.
Just a brief comment in passing on reading over a
particularly outrageous point in Sooner or Later38 and
an article printed by an Australian group which puts out
a bulletin where they’re having a debate on this very
question of social-chauvinism and the “three worlds”
theory. Members of this Australian group are generally
supportive of Mao and against the Chinese revisionists
but they are apparently dividing sharply between
Leninist internationalist policy and social-chauvinism,
three worldism.
In one of the articles upholding
the three worlds theory, as in the Sooner or Later
pamphlet, one of the most nauseating things is to read
this completely sophistic version of “internationalism.”
It says that it would be extremely narrow and
nationalist of us just to struggle against our own
bourgeoisie and not think about the whole world
situation and the whole world struggle, which translated
means: “It is narrow and nationalist of us to fight
against and try to overthrow our own imperialism, our
own bourgeoisie; to be internationalist we should
support and prop up our own imperialism and our own
bourgeoisie.”
And in this Australian article it
came out rather sharply because the author went into a
whole nauseating, syrupy argument about how, “here we
are and we’re being exploited and oppressed by U.S. and
Western imperialism and we could easily forget all about
the people in other parts of the world who are being
exploited and oppressed by Russian imperialism and the
fact that it’s posing the greatest danger to the people
of the world, and we could just think about ourselves
and the fact that our imperialism is exploiting us—that
would just be nationalism.” Immediately what leapt to my
mind is that the real problem such people are focusing
on is that “Russian imperialism is not giving us any of
the benefits of its plunder in the world, but our
imperialism is,” and this, translated and boiled down to
its essence, is the internationalism of these people.
But moving on...
I want to say a few words about
national nihilism and national pride. Here again is an
example of where it’s a fact that Lenin went against
Leninism, even though we didn’t say so in print, in
publishing the national nihilism article. But some
people (in particular the Marxist-Leninist Party, USA,
formerly COUSML) did point out the contradiction. They
dragged out this article by Lenin in 1914 called “The
National Pride of the Great Russians”39 in which,
instead of saying they shouldn’t have any, he went into
this whole attempt to combine two into one, frankly. You
can see the pressure was on him: the war had just
started and there was not only severe repression for
opposing the war but also a wave of patriotism
(chauvinism) that swept through Russia. Now Lenin
doesn’t go against the revolutionary defeatist line, he
upholds that line but he basically combines two into one
in the sense of saying basically that it’s because we
have national pride that we can’t stand to see Russia
play this imperialist role in the world and be under the
domination of these reactionary classes. Frankly, it’s
almost down the line the very arguments that he refutes,
and rather powerfully, when they are put forward by Rosa
Luxemburg under the pseudonym Junius, as exemplified in
his article on the “Junius Pamphlet”40 and, also, very
powerfully and slashingly in The Proletarian Revolution
and the Renegade Kautsky.41 But in this 1914 article
Lenin actually goes against the overall thrust of
Leninism on this crucial question.
As stressed
before there is Leninism and there is Lenin, and if
Lenin didn’t always live up to Leninism, that doesn’t
make Leninism any less than what it is. And this, in a
certain way, harkens back to the point referred to
earlier on the general line put out by the
Comintern—that is, the united front against fascism
line—because this very article, “The National Pride of
the Great Russians,” and this very point were singled
out and harped on by Dimitroff and used to build up this
whole line in his report and the whole formulation of
the united front against fascism to single out the
fascist states as the main enemy.
In an
imperialist country, the national banner is held firmly
by the imperialists. Underlying this is a very important
point of Marxist-Leninist political economy. Imperialist
capital must operate on an international plane; it
requires this as a condition of its reproduction. And it
does at times, as Lenin pointed out, speed up economic
development in some of the backward countries. But this
occurs in the framework of domination and oppression
and, closely related, for all its “internationalism,”
imperialist capital remains profoundly national and
anchored in its national market, and thus has a profound
material stake in defense of the interests of its
nation. This is a crucial point analyzed and developed
in a thoroughgoing way in the forthcoming America in
Decline.42
I think that the line put forward in
the article in Revolution, “On the Question of So-Called
‘National Nihilism,’” is not only correct but extremely
important to grasp and to deepen. There have been
serious problems on this, even among the best in the
international communist movement, and there needs to be
further destruction and radical rupture. It’s a process
we’ve only begun and we have to forge further ahead
under the glorious ideological banner of “national
nihilism.” Now that’s a central point about which a lot
of people, either from the direction of so-called
“Marxism” and so-called “Maoism,” not only disagree but
will openly often attack Lenin for, saying that Lenin is
now passé or that this doesn’t apply any
longer.
Similarly with the phenomenon of
economism, imperialist economism in particular, which is
a phrase Lenin used a little bit differently than I’m
using it here, but with basically the same central point
in mind. He used it from the standpoint of referring to
people who denied the right of political independence to
oppressed nations, particularly the colonies. These
imperialist-economists tried to bolster their arguments
by pointing to the truth that no country unless it was
really socialist (and we can see now more clearly that
not even in an absolute sense is that true) but no
country could be free of the entanglements and the
domination of finance capital, at least in a qualitative
way, unless it was socialist. From this truth they made
the opportunist leap to saying that there was no use in
talking about political independence and national
liberation.
Lenin called this “imperialist
economism” and said these people were incapable of
grasping the dialectic between politics and economics
and how in fact the question of the struggle for
national liberation, in the colonies particularly, was
extremely important and couldn’t be negated on the basis
that ultimately it was impossible to be really
independent without breaking completely with the
domination of imperialism (finance capital) in the
economic sphere. But here we’re using the term, (though
I won’t go into it at real length since other things are
being discussed and written about this) in a little bit
different light, particularly with respect to those
people who downplay the role of politics and
internationalism in the imperialist
countries.
Let’s face it, economism is bad enough
in any form, and even where the masses are suffering
desperately, where the economic struggle takes on a much
more acute form and becomes the struggle of people for
bread, for fuel and literally to survive and has much
more potential to become a sharp struggle and become
part of a revolutionary uprising or revolutionary
movement among the masses and to contribute to that
movement, even in those conditions, which existed in
Russia when Lenin was struggling against economism, all
the things that Lenin stressed about economism are true.
But it’s so much the worse when you’re talking about it
in an imperialist country with not only a powerful labor
aristocracy, but broad, thoroughly bourgeoisified
strata, where it would be stretching it to even describe
a lot of the so-called economic struggle as struggle,
and certainly stretching things to call it any kind of
significant struggle.
In that context, to preach
economism to the workers and to focus their attention on
the narrow sphere of their relations with their
employer, or even frankly on the narrow sphere of their
relationship with their own bourgeoisie, without
focusing their attention on the world as a whole, is
what I call imperialist or chauvinist economism. Such
imperialist economism not only limits the movement to
reformism but leads it into the service of
counter-revolution, particularly the more so if it’s a
conscious policy. In fact, with regard to imperialist
countries, if one takes the standpoint of the nation,
especially in view of what was said earlier about
lopsidedness and international production relations, it
might be better to remain imperialist. But if one takes
the stand of the proletariat—which can only mean the
international proletariat—it would be better to make
socialist revolution and turn an imperialist country
into a base area for the advance of world revolution and
the advance to communism. The point is not to blame the
workers, even the backward ones, who are spontaneously
economist, but to blame the communists who tail behind
this and who promote this in the name of the working
class and socialism and communism.
And here’s
just sort of a side point. Lenin, you know, raised the
point in What Is To Be Done?: what is there in common
between terrorism and economism? And Lenin was very
clear that communists oppose the methods of individual
terror, assassinations, etc. And genuine communists do
oppose that, but they oppose it not because these things
are super-revolutionary, as their adherents sometimes
insist and as their bourgeois opponents sometimes claim,
but because, in fact, they are not ultimately
revolutionary, do not lead to revolution and are not a
strategy for revolution. It’s not a question of
condemning them, it’s a question of recognizing and
struggling against them as tendencies, because they are
not a strategy for revolution and can’t lead to
revolution.
This is true even of those variations
that attempt to take on an additional dimension and link
up with anarcho-syndicalist tendencies and try to talk
about the transformation of society and struggle more
broadly than in just the military sphere, but which have
in common with the economists, whether in capitalist or
in socialist society, the fact that they leave aside, or
at least significantly downplay, the crucial question of
the superstructure, of politics, ideology, world affairs
and internationalism. And as I said, there are those
people who sometimes from the terrorist side and
sometimes from the economist side (or often a
combination of both), even if they talk about revolution
in all society or even the world revolution at times,
reduce things to the narrowest sense of how to transform
production relations and how to control, even sometimes
literally, a single factory and precisely leave aside
and downplay the critical question of politics,
ideology, world affairs and the superstructure—which is
where these questions are in fact concentrated and
fought out in a concentrated way.
That’s a side
point but an important one because this question of
where do you concentrate the attention of the workers,
as I said, is important in all countries. Economism is
bad anywhere. But especially in the imperialist
countries, downplaying the question of the
superstructure, politics, ideology and focusing the
attention of the workers narrowly on the sphere of their
relationship with their own employers or even their own
bourgeoisie and their own state is in fact a recipe for
turning the workers against the rest of the
international proletariat. Whether that’s done with
revolutionary rhetoric or even acts which in the form of
terrorism take on a revolutionary appearance, still, at
the essence and at bottom, it is a question of narrowing
the workers’ sights and turning them, not only away from
revolution in general but against the rest of the
international proletariat.
Now, I want to briefly
touch on the question of the party, which is a much and,
I would have to say, continually underrated point down
to today in our own history. In concluding I will return
to it in a little more depth. What I’m attempting to do
here is sketch out some of the key points of Leninism
that in fact make it the bridge, and what I mean by the
bridge is precisely the bridge between Marxism and Mao
Tsetung Thought, what today is the key link in giving
Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought its overall
integral character and synthesis as the science of
revolution and the revolutionary ideology of the
proletariat.
It’s in this context that I’m
leaping from the point of revolutionary defeatism versus
social-chauvinism and the question of focusing the
workers’ attention on the question of politics and world
affairs in opposition to economism, in particular to
imperialist chauvinist economism. These are crucial
points around which people who claim to be Marxists,
claim to be Marxist-Leninists, even claim to be Maoists
frequently coalesce and make a stand in opposition to
Leninism in one form or another, and often openly. And
after all, the party is a sphere where Lenin’s
contributions and the Leninist line have been a
qualitative advance in Marxism and the struggle of the
international proletariat. Therefore, not surprisingly,
it’s also a sphere where, from the “classical Marxists”
or the newborn “Maoist” forces, there is often sharp and
bitter struggle in opposition to the Leninist
line.
From the angle of the “Marxists,” a lot of
them reject the Leninist party and see in it, as I’ll
come back to a little bit later, the germ or the seed or
the basis of the whole degeneration of the revolution in
Russia, they see in it a dictatorship of the party and
of a handful of bureaucrats. On the other hand, there
are those so-called and pretended “Maoists” who think
that because of the experience of the Cultural
Revolution in China the basic principle of the Leninist
party, of democratic centralism and so on, has been
superseded and surpassed and is no longer correct and
applicable, and that some new form, that is, a new
bourgeois-democratic form, can be found in which to
eliminate in fact the role of the party. You will notice
in that quote I read earlier about the Paris Commune,
Mao makes the point that we have to have a party; even
though he says sarcastically, “I don’t care if it’s a
communist party or social democratic party,” he is
talking about a communist Leninist party and that’s
clear, and we can say that without fear of being
confused with Enver Hoxha!
Re: Avakian's Conquer the World part
3 « Reply #1 on Jul 31, 2005,
12:44am »
Quote:
By that I mean that
in today’s situation Leninism is the key link in
upholding and applying Marxism-Leninism, Mao
Tsetung Thought. To put it somewhat
provocatively, Marxism without Leninism is
Eurocentric social-chauvinism and social
democracy.
Lenin
was right about the center of gravity for proletarian
revolution moving East. And it is true that the
revisionism of Kautsky and Bernstein, of the social
democrats, is chauvinist. As is Avakian. What Avakian
leaves out is that those are revisions of Marx. Social
Democracy is not Marxism. Marxism is a science, it is
not one metaphysical system one can pick like an item
off a buffet. Marx and Engels point toward Lenin, not
Kautsky. To say Kautskyist social democracy is the real
Marxism in any sense is wrong; to say Lenin is the one
doing the revising, gets everything backwards and mixed
up. More is going on than Avakian just being
provacative.
Quote:
Maoism without
Leninism is nationalism (and also, in certain
contexts, social-chauvinism) and bourgeois
democracy.
If
you accept that Maoism without Leninism is nationalism,
then you need to show how Leninism is separate from
revolutionary nationalism (MT 4, p 96). And, this is
Avakian’s goal. Everything in _To Conquer the World_ is
to downplay the viability of nation liberation movements
and play up Avakian-Trotsky’s theory of permanent
revolution. This is why Avakian goes on and on about the
impossibility of sustaining a 3rd world revolution -
this is an underhanded way to deny Stalin. What is
Avakian’s theory of breaking encirclement if not
Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution? What is it if
not a denial of the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution as a way to continue the revolution under the
dictatorship of the proletariat? Avakian also embraces
Trotsky’s theory of productive forces being decisive -
which is why he embraces what he thinks of as the
advanced West. In _From Ike to Mao and Beyond_ on p.
243- 245, Avakian goes so far as to call Lenin and
Stalin's theory of parasiticism historical
baggage!
So, let's be clear about this. What
Avakian calls his epistemological rapture is 1. bags
Lenin and Stalin on parasiticism, 2. denies the
possibility of socialism in one country and a nation by
nation approach. 3. denies the possibility of sustaining
socialism in a 3rd world country without a 1st world
breaking the encirclement, which is also, 4. a denial of
the cultural revolution as the decisive way to continue
the revolution under the dictatorship of the
proletariat, 5. Avakian has a metaphysical outlook which
thinks of Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism as separable
from each other - this completely bags the whole idea of
MLM as a 3rd higher stage of Marxism; he bags the ida
that Maoism as what it means to be a communist in this
era. 6. RcP=u$a bags scientific epistemology and upholds
the idea that rational knowledge comes from
irreplaceable main men. Recently in another forum, they
have proclaimed Avakian "the most radical communist of
our times!" (see: http://w2.hidemyass.com/index.php?q=aHR0cDovL3d3dy5pcnRyLm9yZy9hcmNoaXZlL21hcnhsZW5pbm1hby5wcm9ib2FyZHM0My5jb20vLi4vZXh0ZXJuYWwuaHRtbD9saW5rPWh0dHA6Ly93d3cucmV2b2x1dGlvbmFyeWxlZnQuY29tL2luZGV4LnBocD9zaG93dG9waWM9MzgzNjQmaGw9cmN5Yg%3D%3D)
An absurd claim, since Avakian is not much of a thinker,
nor is he leading any people's war.
To sum this
all up, Avakian is a Trotskyist. He shares the whole
idealist and dogmatic approach of Trotskyism. It is no
surprise that Avakian would end up advocating Trotsky's
theory of permanent revolution.
Quote:
But in this 1914
article Lenin actually goes against the overall
thrust of Leninism on this crucial question.
So
do you Avakian! We all agree to reject narrow
nationalism. But, Avakian’s goals are to downplay
national liberation entirely. Avakian in a very deep way
rejects Mao's idea that national liberation is applied
internationalism. He rejects the overall thrust of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. Instead, Avakian resurrects
Trotsky. Avakian rejects proletarian internationalism
and strategic confidence in the international
proletariat. Avakian rejects Lenin and Stalin’s notion
that revolutions happen more or less within the context
of nation. Instead, Avakian replaces this with
Avakian-Trotsky’s theory that a 3rd world socialism
cannot survive without a bail out from the first world.
Avakian tries to hide his theory of permanent revolution
with a lot of idealist dogma.
Quote:
Similarly with the
phenomenon of economism, imperialist economism
in particular, which is a phrase Lenin used a
little bit differently than I’m using it here..
Quote:
Let’s face it,
economism is bad enough in any form, and even
where the masses are suffering desperately,
where the economic struggle takes on a much more
acute form and becomes the struggle of people
for bread, for fuel and literally to survive and
has much more potential to become a sharp
struggle and become part of a revolutionary
uprising or revolutionary movement among the
masses and to contribute to that movement, even
in those conditions, which existed in Russia
when Lenin was struggling against economism, all
the things that Lenin stressed about economism
are true. But it’s so much the worse when you’re
talking about it in an imperialist country with
not only a powerful labor aristocracy, but
broad, thoroughly bourgeoisified strata, where
it would be stretching it to even describe a lot
of the so-called economic struggle as struggle,
and certainly stretching things to call it any
kind of significant struggle... In that context,
to preach economism to the workers and to focus
their attention on the narrow sphere of their
relations with their employer, or even frankly
on the narrow sphere of their relationship with
their own bourgeoisie, without focusing their
attention on the world as a whole, is what I
call imperialist or chauvinist economism. Such
imperialist economism not only limits the
movement to reformism but leads it into the
service of counter-revolution, particularly the
more so if it’s a conscious policy.
Avakian
has almost understood Lenin! Here Avakian clearly
recognizes parasiticism and the bourgeoisification of
the imperial nation so called working class. Avakian
even states that agitating for economic benefits for the
1st world bourgeoisified strata is chauvinist. So, the
question here is how big is what Avakian calls the
bourgeoisified strata? Engels thought that entire 1st
world nations could be bourgeoisified. Engels called the
entire English working class "bourgeoisified." Lenin
also thought that entire nations could be parasitic,
bourgeoisified. So, here Avakian is basically
recognizing "a powerful labor aristocracy" and a
"bourgeoisified strata." Yet, at the same time, Avakian
calls for uniting with 90% of Amerikans. Besides being
just ridiculous on the face of it, obviously someone
making 100,000$ a year does not have an interest in
overthrowing imperialism, Avakian's 90/10 line from the
RcP=u$a's "New Draft Programme" doesn't fit exactly with
what he has written in _CTW_. In addition, in _From Ike
to Mao and Beyond_ p245, Avakian rejects Stalin's (and
Lenin's) theory that 1st world workers have a stake in
imperialist wars because they are bought off and
parasitic. Since 1981 when _CTW_ was published, Avakian
has been moving even more toward Trotskyism.
Quote:
In fact, with regard
to imperialist countries, if one takes the
standpoint of the nation, especially in view of
what was said earlier about lopsidedness and
international production relations, it might be
better to remain imperialist. But if one takes
the stand of the proletariat—which can only mean
the international proletariat—it would be better
to make socialist revolution and turn an
imperialist country into a base area for the
advance of world revolution and the advance to
communism.
Avakain
calls for a 1st world revolution after having just
listed major reasons why it isn't possible. So, either
Avakian is adopting some Marcusian or anarchist
utopianism where class is not decisive or he is
contradicting himself. Since, the discussion is embedded
in a critique of economism, it is safe to say that
Avakian is engaged in a slight of hand here. He is
criticizing a narrow economism in order to undermine the
idea that class is decisive at all. This is a complete
rejection of Marxism in favor of some vague notion that
everyone in the first world is oppressed and has an
interest in revolution. This is the only way Avakian can
get his 90% of Amerikans as friends.
Avakian
thinks, with Trotsky, that 1st world revolution is
decisive for 3rd world revolution. In a perverse move,
Avakian pins Maoist rhetoric on his theory of permanent
revolution. He even calls for a 1st world "base area" to
help bail out and carry the world revolution forward.
Lenin said that the center of world revolution was in
the East; Trotsky and Avakian disagree.
Quote:
And here’s just sort
of a side point. Lenin, you know, raised the
point in What Is To Be Done?: what is there in
common between terrorism and economism? And
Lenin was very clear that communists oppose the
methods of individual terror, assassinations,
etc. And genuine communists do oppose that, but
they oppose it not because these things are
super-revolutionary, as their adherents
sometimes insist and as their bourgeois
opponents sometimes claim, but because, in fact,
they are not ultimately revolutionary, do not
lead to revolution and are not a strategy for
revolution. It’s not a question of condemning
them, it’s a question of recognizing and
struggling against them as tendencies, because
they are not a strategy for revolution and can’t
lead to revolution.
Terrorism
isn’t going to make revolution - no doubt.
Here
Avakian misses the mark. The fact is that revolution
isn't going to happen at all in the 1st world without
some dramatic change of circumstances in the 3rd world.
So, the issue of terrorism as a primary means of taking
state power or insurrection or elections is beside the
point.
Quote:
That’s a side point
but an important one because this question of
where do you concentrate the attention of the
workers, as I said, is important in all
countries. Economism is bad anywhere. But
especially in the imperialist countries,
downplaying the question of the superstructure,
politics, ideology and focusing the attention of
the workers narrowly on the sphere of their
relationship with their own employers or even
their own bourgeoisie and their own state is in
fact a recipe for turning the workers against
the rest of the international proletariat.
Whether that’s done with revolutionary rhetoric
or even acts which in the form of terrorism take
on a revolutionary appearance, still, at the
essence and at bottom, it is a question of
narrowing the workers’ sights and turning them,
not only away from revolution in general but
against the rest of the international
proletariat.
Avakian's
attack is not just on economism - which would be fine.
Avakian's real goal is to avoid a discussion of class at
all. And, this is again why in the thousands of pages of
RcP=u$a literature, you won't find anything like a
calculation of global surplus value. Avakian bags Marx's
LVT entirely. In Avakian's mushy thinking everyone is
oppressed despite what class or social strata they are
in. For Avakian, everyone can be mobilized in a general
way against oppression.
Quote:
You will notice in
that quote I read earlier about the Paris
Commune, Mao makes the point that we have to
have a party; even though he says sarcastically,
“I don’t care if it’s a communist party or
social democratic party,” he is talking about a
communist Leninist party and that’s clear, and
we can say that without fear of being confused
with Enver Hoxha!
Yes,
we need a vanguard party. And, the RcP=u$a isn't a
vanguard. The RcP=u$a is very interesting in a way. It
really has blazed a path of crypto-Trotskyism in a way
that no other party has. Maoists can learn from the
RcP=u$a in order to better identify crypto-Trotskyist
revisionism in the future.
The RcP=u$a are a
bunch of mushy thinkers who vacillate between Trotskyist
social democracy and utopianism. Since they have no
science to anchor them, they drift this way and that
way. Fundamentally what holds them together is Avakian
as a leader. It really doesn't matter what he says - all
that matters is that he is there to keep the RcP=u$a on
a course - any
course.
« Last Edit:
Aug 3, 2005, 12:26am by prairiefire
»
Re: Avakian's Conquer the World part
3 « Reply #2 on Aug 5, 2005,
12:06am »
It should
also be noted that Avakian's attack against Dimitroff is
also an attack on Stalin and Lenin- which is no suprise.
One wonders why Avakian just does finally be done with
it and dump Stalin and Lenin directly. RcP=u$a should
just end all their crypto-Trotskyism and opt for open
Trotskyism. So, Stalin is historical baggage according
to Avakian. And to uphold Stalin and what Avakian calls
Stalin's "grevious errors" is to run the risk of
becoming a "historical residue." These are Avakian's own
words.
Quote:
As stressed before
there is Leninism and there is Lenin, and if
Lenin didn’t always live up to Leninism, that
doesn’t make Leninism any less than what it is.
And this, in a certain way, harkens back to the
point referred to earlier on the general line
put out by the Comintern—that is, the united
front against fascism line—because this very
article, “The National Pride of the Great
Russians,” and this very point were singled out
and harped on by Dimitroff and used to build up
this whole line in his report and the whole
formulation of the united front against fascism
to single out the fascist states as the main
enemy.
His
comment on Lenin is another fake left by Avakian. What
is so ironic is that Avakian's whole article is denying
the importance of national liberation. In objective
terms, Avakian is akin to the chauvinist social
democrats that Lenin criticizes in the article. This is
just cover for Avakian's attack on national liberation,
parasiticism, and MLM. In today's context, it is
Avakian's, anti-Dimitroff soft line on social democrats
(not cited in the above quote) that play into the hands
of the chauvinists and imperialists. From the 1930s up
through today, Liberals including most Trotskyists
criticized Stalin for attacking social democrats as
"social-fascists" in the 1930s. Now with every passing
day and as more historical archives open, Stalin has
been shown more and more to be correct.
Despite
Avakian's left rhetoric, RcP=u$a tails the "CP"=u$a with
their anything but Bu$h Wold Can't Wait campaigns. They
make a rhetorical left turn against Dimitroff in order
to run right as fast as they can.
Among other
things, Avakian's attack on Dimitroff is also an attack
against Stalin. Avakian rejects the idea of a united
front against fascism - this is an attack on the
"CP"=u$a's politics during WW2. Avakian thinks that the
Stalin/Dimitroff line that NAZI Germany was the main
enemy durring WW2 is false. The issue that throws light
on this is Lenin and Stalin's thesis of parasiticism -
that 1st world workers are bought off. Avakian would
choose petty bourgeois labor aristocratic politics over
defending the Soviet Union during WW2. Avakian would put
the interests of the Amerikan petty bourgeoisie/labor
aristocracy above the interests of the Soviet and
international proletariat.
Joined: Jun 2005 Gender:
Female Posts: 234 Location: stolen land
Re: Avakian's Conquer the World part
3 « Reply #3 on Aug 7, 2005,
2:23am »
Yeah, i can
never figure out the whole Dimitrov thing talking to the
rcp. When you accuse them of tailing the demokkkrats
they say 'we can't be like Dimitrov.' But then they are
saying, lets ally with Kerry to get the 'christian
fascists' out of power. Isn't that the strategy Dimitrov
put forth? except that he was correct to do that and
you're not.
So i appreciated this post. It really
got into what's going on with that line.
It
sounds so inconsistent and contradictory, but there is
one consistency: You say that Avakian opposed the
United Front during WW2 in favor of labor aristocrats
fighting for their own economic interests. But today,
the United Front with social-demokrats and the
demokratic party itself is ok cuz it means fighting for
labor aristocrats interests.
Logged
The truth may hurt and be depressing. It does not mean
we can afford to do without the truth of oppression and
exploitation. We have always said that if people do not
find the current reality depressing and hurtful, then
there is something wrong with them. They need to be
taken out of the
"Matrix."
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