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Avakian's Conquer the World part
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[Avakian's
_Conquer the World_ part 4]
IV. Some Summation of
the Marxist-Leninist Movement Arising in the 1960s and
the Subjective Factor in Light of the Present and
Developing Situation and the Conjuncture Shaping
Up.
One of the things about which there is a
great deal of confusion and therefore is a cause of
demoralization to many revolutionaries—more than is
objectively necessary—is the question of why the ’60s
movement receded into an ebb in the ’70s, speaking in
broad terms, and why and how the upsurge that
characterized the ’60s generally in the world and
particularly in the “third world” turned into its
opposite not just in particular countries, but in many
aspects internationally.
This crucial question of
what happened to the revolutionary movement particularly
from the mid-’70s on, and why upsurges were not carried
through, did not succeed fully, did not realize the
potential they seemed to have at a certain point, and
why generally there was an ability on the part of
different imperialist forces and revisionism and social
imperialism to regroup and to make some gains while the
revolutionary movement in an overall way went into a
temporary ebb, cannot be understood fully or resolved by
looking at it country-by-country and trying to figure
out what happened to the movement in this country and
why didn’t we go further here, or why were we set back
there and so on. Again, it’s another example of how
things have to be looked at first, foremost and
fundamentally on an international basis.
Here I
just want to make a brief aside in relation to the
comrades in China who, assuming that they are genuine
and legitimate, have now apparently issued two
pamphlets.43 In this first pamphlet they sum up their
understanding, so far, of the reasons for the
revisionist triumph and the reversal in China: “Our
reversal is the reversal of the perseverance of the
Chinese Communist Party on the road of the
Marxist-Leninist line, it is the reversal of Mao’s
revolutionary line of continuing the revolution under
the dictatorship of the proletariat; it is also a
reversal of the line of the revolutionary people of
China and the world of combating revisionism and
preventing revisionism. And also because of this, the
more faults and mistakes we can consciously discover and
point out in a more concrete way, the more beneficial
for us it will be in taking warning from the past to be
more careful in the future. Thus these faults and
mistakes can be avoided, overcome and corrected one by
one, so that our revolutionary cause can go through a
thousand forgings and a hundred smeltings, and we can
unyieldingly persist in carrying it out to the
end.”
It’s in this same spirit that I want to
raise that I think the essence of the problem was not
addressed in that particular pamphlet, and that in
essence secondary questions, and even in some cases
erroneous analysis, were focused on and utilized in
attempting to sum up these errors. In particular a
certain circular and simplistic argument is made where
it’s suggested that the revolutionaries were too lenient
with the counter-revolutionaries and let them get out of
the net when they could have finished them all off with
one blow. Of course it would be nice to think that it
was that simple and that was the essential error that
needed to be summed up—and next time the proletariat has
power we’ll just learn how to cut off more heads and to
finish more counter-revolutionaries off at one stroke.
But I think that precisely without breaking out of this
framework the revisionist triumph cannot be
understood.
Now it’s very important that it’s
said in this statement that the loss there is not just
the loss of the Chinese Marxist-Leninists or the Chinese
people, but of the international revolutionary people,
the international proletariat, and I don’t want to
underestimate the tremendous importance of a
Marxist-Leninist stand and line being taken and put out,
even to the world, and the attempt being made to forge a
new Marxist-Leninist center there. What I’m saying is in
unity with that spirit, but attention needs to be called
to the deeper questions of why it was not possible to be
less lenient with counter-revolutionaries, why it was
not more possible to ferret out and to defeat more of
these at one blow, why compromises had to be made (and I
believe they did have to be made in many cases) with
vacillating elements or middle elements or centrist
elements or people who, in any case, when the struggle
reached another crisis or concentration point later on,
proved to be counter-revolutionaries and sometimes even
leading counter-revolutionaries. And, again, I believe
the answer to this doesn’t lie in the mistaken leniency
of the revolutionaries or their lack of vigilance or the
lack of military preparation on the part of the
revolutionaries—some of these things, some more than
others, may have real validity and relevance, some I
think are basically off, particularly the charge of
leniency on the part of the revolutionary
leaders.
In any case, the answer to the reversal
in China has to be sought, yes, in terms of the
subjective factor as well as the objective factor, and
it can’t simply be an analysis that says, “Well, the
international situation became more unfavorable so the
revolution was bound to go down the drain.” But neither
do I think it can ignore the international arena; in
fact it has to look mainly to the international arena in
terms of understanding the objective factors
contributing to the setback and, in terms of the
subjective factor also, has to look to the ways in which
a perspective of the whole international struggle was
not thoroughly enough upheld and how this error
influenced the terrain on which and the ground from
which this battle was waged. That’s not to say the
leaders of this struggle, in particular Mao and the Four
and especially those two among them who continued to
uphold the revolutionary banner, were not, in a basic
sense and overall, internationalists. But to the degree
that they made errors it didn’t lie in the realm of
leniency against counter-revolutionaries, it lay in
shortcomings in how the relationship between the
carrying forward of the socialist revolution in China
and the overall world situation and world struggle was
viewed and handled.
Just another point in
connection with this for further reflection. To put it
somewhat provocatively in the form of a question: what
is there in common between Long Live the Victory of
Peoples’ War44 in the mid-’60s and the “three worlds”
theory as put forward in Peking Review 45, the overall
theoretical statement, if we can call it that, in 1977?
In particular, what are some of the common points
underlying them? In one of the excerpts reprinted in the
RW45 from something I wrote in connection with some of
these questions the point is made, in stressing the need
to learn from the impatience of Mao, like Lenin and Marx
before him, that a lot of the views put forward in Long
Live the Victory of Peoples’ War, including some of the
errors, reflect not only Lin Biao’s tendencies but, by
and large—though not some of the worst expressions—much
of the thinking of Mao at that time. And I think, on the
other hand, while there is a qualitative difference in
every sphere, including the international line, it is
also true as noted earlier that certain elements of the
analysis—though certainly not the overall political line
nor the ideological line—put forward in the “three
worlds” document also reflects to a certain extent, some
of Mao’s thinking and some of Mao’s approach to these
problems.
If you read Long Live the Victory of
Peoples’ War, it literally says that the touchstone,
dividing line between revolutionaries and
counter-revolutionaries in the world at that time, is
whether or not one dares to and does wage peoples’ war
against imperialism and whether one really supports it
or not. That was made the dividing line, which in the
particular circumstances then was a real dividing line
(whether it should have been made the fundamental
dividing line is at least questionable, but it was a
real dividing line). But then the world changed and I
think one of the things that happened was that the whole
revolutionary current that was sort of drawn around and
had its leading center in China and around Mao was
frankly taken off guard by and did not correctly respond
in significant ways to the shift in the whole world
balance of forces. (This is not to invoke the
revisionist formulation, “balance of forces,” but there
is something to “world balance of forces” viewed
dialectically and materialistically.) The
revolutionaries were taken off guard by the shift in the
position, strategy and tactics and methods of the
various forces. It was not the case in the ’70s that the
Soviet Union’s way of opposing revolution in the world
was consistently, or even often, expressed in terms of
refusing to support armed struggles and liberation wars
against imperialism. In fact, especially through the
’70s as things were changing in the world, they supplied
weaponry and gave material support in a big way to wars
of national liberation—not without pursuing their own
bourgeois interests even in narrow financial ways in
many cases, though in some cases they even did this at
immediate financial loss, having imperialist largeness
of mind. But once the Soviet revisionists decided to
enter this arena and switched from their policy of
avoiding confrontation at all costs with the U.S., even
avoiding support for liberation wars in order to avoid
such confrontation, then they were able in a certain way
to provide a lot more materiel and equipment and to make
more headway with a lot of the non-proletarian
leadership in many of these movements than the Chinese
were, at least in the short run. And as the U.S. began
to pull back from Vietnam, began to regroup, as the
Soviets began to have the necessity, and also more
possibility, to push out in the world, there was an
inevitable shift in the revolutionary movement in the
world.
This in particular had inevitable
repercussions within China in response to it. It has
everything to do with the way in which Mao came into
contradiction with Lin Biao (and in which Lin Biao came
into opposition to Mao) and in the ways in which Lin
Biao’s view of the world was no longer able, or the view
put forward in Long Live the Victory of Peoples’ War was
no longer able, to draw a real dividing line between
Marxism and revisionism. And, on the other hand, these
changes in the world, part of the sharpening
conjuncture, became a framework within which some of the
erroneous tendencies on Mao’s own part led him into some
of the kind of errors that we’re familiar with—now
making the Soviet Union the main enemy and seeking to
develop a united front, similar to the anti-Japanese
united front, but now more broadly on a world scale,
against the Soviet Union.
In Long Live the
Victory of Peoples’ War it is said that U.S. imperialism
on a world scale plays the role that Japanese
imperialism played in China in World War 2. It isn’t a
very far leap from that, although it’s carrying the
error further and making it worse in the concrete
conditions of the ’70s, to say that the Soviet Union has
become the main enemy on a world scale and that other
forces should be allied with against the Soviet Union.
What’s missed here, what this and Long Live the Victory
of Peoples’ War have in common—and this becomes sharper
again and more of a problem in the ’70s as things do
sharpen up—is that they fail to correctly grasp the
spiral motion and development toward conjunctures. In
that light in particular, both Mao’s later views and
Long Live the Victory of Peoples’ War see the prospects
for revolution as existing almost entirely in the “third
world” and particularly do not correctly grasp the
importance of the heightening of the contradictions and
their gathering into a knot in the conjuncture. An
underestimation of the possibilities for revolution in
the imperialist countries is an error that is, on the
one hand, common to both Long Live the Victory of
Peoples’ War and the “three worlds” theory but stands
out more sharply in the more recent context of the
actual development toward a world-wide conjuncture and
toward heightened possibilities for revolution in the
imperialist countries, which don’t arise that often and
which, therefore in a certain sense, take on all the
more importance at times like this, and it is all the
more of an error to miss or underestimate
this.
But having said that, it is also important
to reaffirm what was said in that excerpt referred to
earlier, entitled “What’s Wrong with Impatience in the
Service of the International Proletariat”—this certainly
applied to Mao in the 1960s, as reflected even in Long
Live the Victory of Peoples’ War, as well as Lenin and
Marx before him. But more than that this obviously must
apply to and be applied by people who are upholding and
are carrying forward Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung
Thought now, because there is a need to stress again
that the present and developing situation and the
sharpening of the contradictions towards a conjuncture
on a world scale represents heightened opportunities, as
well as heightened difficulties and
necessity.
And it’s not as if we’re talking in a
vacuum or simply wishing for revolutionary elements to
appear! These elements are already asserting themselves
and developing. On the one hand, this is the case even
in the sense of the trouble of both superpowers and both
imperialist blocs in getting it together for the
confrontation between them. This shows up all the time,
for example, in such ways as the acuteness of how the
nuclear issue poses itself in Europe and the kind of
movement that this is giving rise to. Even if we take
into account that the revisionists are attempting to
fish in these waters, nevertheless the resistance is
much broader than that. Or look at the ways in which the
U.S. imperialists have real difficulty in holding their
bloc together and overcoming or mitigating the very
sharp contradictions within it. Thus the contradiction
between the reactionary Arab states and Israel is one
that not only consistently asserts itself but is always
assuming new and different forms. Of course, the
perverted logic of these Sooner or Later types who have
been declaiming against how the Soviet Union has
everything going for it and the U.S. has all this
trouble will now, as the Soviet Union starts having ever
more open difficulties, just say “ Good, that makes it
so much the better for the united front.” But from a
Marxist-Leninist and proletarian internationalist
standpoint it is a very good thing that both of these
imperialist blocs, and both of these superpowers in
particular, are having tremendous difficulty before the
thing has even come to a head.
And it’s not like
we have to invent or search desperately for the
favorable elements already developing beyond that sort
of positive negative (the positive developments in a
negative sense), that is, the difficulties of the enemy
in merely pulling and holding their blocs together.
There’s also the more directly positive element of the
mass upsurges, the resistance, even revolutionary
movements and struggles in both the Western and the
Eastern bloc. The U.S on the one hand has El Salvador,
the Soviet Union has Poland and
Afghanistan.
Against these developments in
particular, as well as the sharpening of the overall
situation, the weaknesses in the subjective factor on an
international scale and within the different countries
stand out. But I hasten to add, this is not the time for
handwringing, moaning, weeping and so on about the
crisis of the Marxist-Leninist movement. As the Basic
Principles document stresses, it’s a time for stepped up
efforts—on all levels and in all spheres, theoretical
and practical and the dialectical relationship between
the two—to rise to the challenges and opportunities. And
this is not mere rhetoric or routine calls to communist
duty.
Let’s just take a few examples of the real
challenges before the movement internationally and in
the various countries, the rebellions in Great Britain
and Northern Ireland; add to that the youth revolts,
even the uprisings with anarchist trends in Western
Europe in particular; all these are both an inspiration
and a challenge. And it’s precisely not easy to give
Marxist-Leninist leadership to movements and struggles
of this kind and it’s also not easy to forge and develop
and temper a Marxist-Leninist force, that is a
party.
It should be said in terms of giving
Marxist-Leninist leadership, that one of the reasons it
is not easy is precisely that it means not suffocating
but channeling the revolutionary sentiments and upsurges
that are reflected here, channeling and developing and
leading all these different strands toward proletarian
revolution. But our basic orientation should be infused
with the kind of thinking that would cause us to ask the
question: How could anarchists be more revolutionary
than Marxist-Leninists? It is not that these people are
somehow too much out of control and too revolutionary.
In fact there is nothing more revolutionary than
Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung Thought, if it’s really
that and it’s really that synthesis.
We have to
find the ways of linking up with and giving
Marxist-Leninist leadership, the ways to give real and
full and the deepest revolutionary expression to these
upsurges and forces that are newborn and coming into
existence now. And while not looking to the past and
focusing our attention there, but precisely looking to
the future, we also have to find the way to make a call
and to bring forward many of the best, both the best
people and the best tendencies that were expressed in
the ’60s, precisely again, in light of the present and
developing situation. All this is closely linked to our
vision, to put it that way, of socialism and the
transition to communism, as well as our summation—not a
one-sided negation and in fact upholding an historical,
sweeping view of the tremendous gains and at the same
time grasping the lessons, positive and negative, of the
Soviet experience and the Chinese experience and our
historical experience in proletarian revolution and
socialist transformation, overall. This is linked with
the ability to draw forward the best in terms of people,
in terms of forces, in terms of sentiments and in terms
of political expression that arose in that period of
upsurge in the ’60s, and the necessary task of merging
and fusing all that into the present, linking it with
the present upsurge and the newborn forces.
All
this is crucial in terms of the coming storm, because
this coming storm will precisely not be an idealist or
an idyllic vision or dream; whatever its particular
features, it will be full of destruction and horror—and
the more so, it has to be said, if advances of the
revolution in the world don’t develop far enough fast
enough to actually prevent world war. What was stressed
in that little article “Crowns Will Roll on the
Pavements”46 is exactly what the situation will be like.
We’re not talking about something pretty, but there
still is the question of seizing and wrenching the
future—or as much of an advance toward it as is at all
possible—out of all the madness and destruction that
will be there. This is precisely, if we’re going to grow
up, what we should grow up to.
This requires—and
we should really grasp this generally as in the field of
culture—a synthesis of revolutionary romanticism and
revolutionary realism, a synthesis that lies precisely
in the living science of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung
Thought. Somehow we have to find the ways to take this
out, both to the newborn forces and also to the best
tendencies, the best expressions, the best forces and
the highest aspirations that were called forth in the
upsurges of the ’60s in the various countries and on a
world scale, and infuse these with a real living,
scientific content and in that way synthesize them and
lead people forward to proletarian revolution, to wrench
literally out of all this madness and horror as much of
the future as at all possible. It’s this kind of
challenge, this kind of task that lies before the
subjective factor, that is, the conscious revolutionary
forces: to go as far as possible and to bring the
subjective factor as far as possible in line with the
development of the objective situation and the
possibilities, the opportunities it poses within the
different countries but overall on an international
scale.
To return to an aspect of this for one
second, I think the point needs to be driven home about
the ’60s, and particularly the ebb of the ’70s, that a
summation of that is not simply a question and should
not be seen in the light of consoling those people who
wonder where all that went, or trying to pluck up the
courage of those who are somehow still dragging on
forward from the burst of energy they got then, yet are
now running out of gas. But, on the other hand, it is
crucial to make a scientific summation of that by
focusing on the lessons that we’ve been drawing out and
have been attempting to zero in on here, particularly
looking at the international arena, the development of
these contradictions on a world scale, the shift that
took place in the international arena at that stage and
how it affected the movement and the tendencies of that
time. Why the Soviet Union was able to come forward in a
certain way and make headway where before they had lost
ground? On the other hand, why China and the line
pursued by China, even the revolutionaries in China, ran
into temporary and new difficulties and how do we
understand the incorrect responses to that? How within
the particular countries, for example just to take the
U.S.—and certainly it can’t be understood outside this
context—the bourgeoisie was able to respond to the
upsurges of the time and how the shift internationally
affected the movement that erupted around the Vietnam
war? How the bourgeoisie was able to maneuver, not only
through repression, but also in bringing forward
petty-bourgeois forces and building them up, for example
within the Black liberation movement (which is an
element we haven’t focused in on enough in terms of
summing this movement up)?
We must analyze how
all these different things—not just within the
particular countries but focusing, first of all and
fundamentally, on the international arena and then
looking within that to the various countries—how on the
one hand things came together in a certain way to lead
in general to a temporary ebb (not uniformly and in
every place in the same way and to the same degree, but
generally an ebb); and yet, how there has never been, on
the other hand, even in the ’70s, a quiet moment or a
time when in some part of the world there wasn’t upsurge
and struggle, and how already by the end of the ’70s
there were revolutionary movements once again shaking
the foundation of imperialism in key and various parts
of the world.
Imagine, for example, what it would
have been like if the revolutionary line in China had
been more clearly and firmly an internationalist one
and, on that basis, if the revolutionary leadership had
been able to mobilize the proletariat to keep power in
China—which such a line could not have guaranteed but
would have made more possible—and then things erupted
the way they did in Iran, think about where we would be
on that basis now! But even without that, even with the
loss in China, think about Iran, Nicaragua, El Salvador,
Poland, Afghanistan, England, Ireland, other parts of
Europe, the resurgence beginning in the U.S. and, for
god’s sake, in New Zealand! I hope this is not taken for
chauvinism against New Zealand but… nobody, even people
in New Zealand, expected that and that just proves the
point. And precisely what it proves is that a summation
of why there was a temporary ebb will arm us and equip
us to be much better able to seize the opportunities
that are sharpening and already are breaking through the
surface, not just in one place, but in one place after
another, even if not without contradictions
certainly.
Re: Avakian's Conquer the World part
4 « Reply #1 on Sept 24,
2005, 9:44pm »
Quote:
This crucial
question of what happened to the revolutionary
movement particularly from the mid-’70s on, and
why upsurges were not carried through, did not
succeed fully, did not realize the potential
they seemed to have at a certain point, and why
generally there was an ability on the part of
different imperialist forces and revisionism and
social imperialism to regroup and to make some
gains while the revolutionary movement in an
overall way went into a temporary ebb, cannot be
understood fully or resolved by looking at it
country-by-country and trying to figure out what
happened to the movement in this country and why
didn’t we go further here, or why were we set
back there and so on. Again, it’s another
example of how things have to be looked at
first, foremost and fundamentally on an
international basis
In
one sense, this is obviously true. It is obviously true
that in order to understand the ebb and flow of world
revolution, that we must look beyond one nation's
borders. World War 2 weakened European imperialist
powers, the victory of the Chinese revolution, Eastern
Europe, imperialist defeats in Vietnam and other nations
in the 3rd world, the GPCR, etc. all contributed to
shaping the revolutionary upsurge following world war 2.
The reversals of the Soviet and Chinese revolution, the
restoration of capitalism in nations that encompassed
over a quarter of the world's population, affected
movements everywhere. The rise of Soviet social
imperialism and Khrushchev doctrine of peaceful
coexistence also had a major impact on movements across
the globe. Among other events, these contributed to the
ebb of the revolutionary movement worldwide in the 1980s
and onward.
What Avakian does is take a banal
observation and turn it into a justification for his
crypto-Trotskyism. Trotskyists say that socialism in one
country won't work. Many Trotskyists believe that world
revolution in the earlier part of the last century
failed because the Soviet Union by adopting a policy of
socialism in one country abandoned the world movement.
They hold that Lenin's and Stalin's policies had adverse
results in developing revolution in technologically
advanced nations like Germany. Trotskyists think that
had there been a revolution in Germany or Western
Europe, the "backward" Soviet Union could be bailed out
and saved. The Trotskyists were proven wrong when Stalin
lead the CP in the construction of socialism in the
Soviet Union. The policies of Stalin also lead to
socialism coming to Eastern Europe including Germany
during and following WW2. In any case, like Avakian, the
Trotskyists's assessment of the impossibility of
socialism in one country is based on pure dogma. What
does Avakian and the Trotskyist see as the answer to
what they see as the impossibility of socialism in one
country? Like the Trotskyists's, Avakian's solution is a
world party that will lead revolutions across the globe.
Like Avakian, Trotskyists set out to rebuild the
Comintern. The Comintern was dissolved by Stalin for
good reasons - it had become a hindrance to advancing
revolutions. It was a breeding ground for opportunism
and dogmatism. This was also Mao's experience in the
early phases of the Chinese revolution - which is one
reason why Mao never sought to establish a new
Comintern.
Quote:
“That’s not to say
the leaders of this struggle, in particular Mao
and the Four and especially those two among them
who continued to uphold the revolutionary
banner, were not, in a basic sense and overall,
internationalists. But to the degree that they
made errors it didn’t lie in the realm of
leniency against counter-revolutionaries, it lay
in shortcomings in how the relationship between
the carrying forward of the socialist revolution
in China and the overall world situation and
world struggle was viewed and
handled.
Despite
Avakian's denial, what Avakian says is exactly that
Stalin and Mao were not internationalists. That is
exactly the point of _TCTW_. Avakian is making the exact
same critique of socialism in one country and national
liberation as the Trotskyists do. He even opts for the
same solution.
Quote:
what is there in
common between Long Live the Victory of Peoples’
War44 in the mid-’60s and the “three worlds”
theory as put forward in Peking Review 45, the
overall theoretical statement, if we can call it
that, in 1977? In particular, what are some of
the common points underlying them? In one of the
excerpts reprinted in the RW45 from something I
wrote in connection with some of these questions
the point is made, in stressing the need to
learn from the impatience of Mao, like Lenin and
Marx before him, that a lot of the views put
forward in Long Live the Victory of Peoples’
War, including some of the errors, reflect not
only Lin Biao’s tendencies but, by and
large—though not some of the worst
expressions—much of the thinking of Mao at that
time. And I think, on the other hand, while
there is a qualitative difference in every
sphere, including the international line, it is
also true as noted earlier that certain elements
of the analysis—though certainly not the overall
political line nor the ideological line—put
forward in the “three worlds” document also
reflects to a certain extent, some of Mao’s
thinking and some of Mao’s approach to these
problems.
Here
Avakian says that Mao's alleged position was wrong. What
Avakian is doing here is attributing a version of three
world's theory to Mao that eventually, in the hands of
Deng, would lead to a China-centered geopolitics and
alliances with the u$.
First of all, it is very
questionable if Mao ever held such a theory. In all of
Mao's writings, speeches, conversations, and interviews,
there is only one very short reference to three worlds
theory. Mao is alleged to have said to an African
leader, "In my view, the United States and the Soviet
Union form the first world. Japan, Europe and Canada,
the middle section, belong to the second world. We are
the third world. The third world has a huge population.
With the exception of Japan, Asia belongs to the third
world. The whole of Africa belongs to the third world
and Latin America too." ("Chairman Mao's Theory of the
Differentiation of the Three Worlds is a Major
Contribution to Marxism-Leninism," Peking Review, Vol.
20 No. 45, p. 11, 4 Nov. 1977.) This alleged quote was
used to justify Deng's foreign policy, the quote only
appeared in Peking Review after Mao was already dead.
Second, Avakian says that three world's theory
and Lin Biao's theory in _Long Live the Victory of
People's War_ are similar in their limited scope - their
failure to think globally, to be proletarian
internationalist. While this is true of three world's
theory, it isn't true of Lin's theory. The real reason
Avakian objects to Lin's theory is that it recognizes
the universality of people's war as the way to make
revolution and it locates the center of gravity
correctly in the third world. Lin goes to far as to say,
"Taking the entire globe, if North America and Western
Europe are called the cities of the world, then Asia,
Africa, and Latin America constitute the rural areas of
the world."
Lin continues, "Since World War II,
the proletarian revolutionary movement has for various
reasons been temporarily held back in the North
American, and West European capitalist countries, while
the people's revolutionary movement in Asia, Africa, and
Latin America has been growing vigorously. In a sense,
contemporary world revolution also presents a picture of
encirclement of cities by rural areas. In the final
analysis, the whole cause of world revolution hinges on
the revolutionary struggles of Asian, African, and Latin
American peoples who make up the overwhelming majority
of the world's population. The socialist countries
should regard it as their internationalist duty to
support the people's revolutionary struggles in Asia,
Africa, and Latin America." (_Mao Tse Tung and Lin Piao
Post Revolutionary Writings_ edited by K. Fan. Anchor
Books, 1972.) Lin correctly correctly understands that
world revolution hinges on the outcome of 3rd world
struggles. This view is the exact opposite of
Avakian-Trotskyist view that what is decisive is
revolution in amerika and europe. Lin fails to go far
enough and say that the real reason for the lack of a
first world revolution is the lack of a first world
proletariat.
Quote:
If you read Long
Live the Victory of Peoples’ War, it literally
says that the touchstone, dividing line between
revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries in
the world at that time, is whether or not one
dares to and does wage peoples’ war against
imperialism and whether one really supports it
or not. That was made the dividing line, which
in the particular circumstances then was a real
dividing line (whether it should have been made
the fundamental dividing line is at least
questionable, but it was a real dividing line).
Avakian
avoids Lin's real point. The real dividing line is not
so much between picking up the gun or not in the here
and now as a measure of a revolutionary movement. The
real dividing line is between the cities and the
countryside of the world. Revolution will be made by the
third world, not the first world. Revolution in the
first world hinges on revolution in the third world.
This is the exact opposite of Avakian's and Trotsky's
view that socialism is not possible in the third world
without a bail-out from the technologically advanced
West.
For Lin, since, the center of
revolutionary gravity is in the third world and people's
war is the way to power. Avakian tries to box _Long Live
the Victory of People's War_ as narrow, as limited, as
nationalist, as failing to be truly internationalist,
because it implies lack of revolutionary possibility in
the first world.
Quote:
Long Live the
Victory of Peoples’ War was no longer able, to
draw a real dividing line between Marxism and
revisionism.
Avakian
confuses the issue by making it one only of armed
struggle. It is obviously true that there is more to
distinguishing Marxism and revisionism than the question
of armed struggle. Nothing like this is implied by the
text. In fact, Lin writes that the social imperialists
and revisions throw Marxism to the wind - they raise the
red flag to oppose it. They oppose and sabotage
oppressed nation liberation struggles in oder to further
their own imperial ends. This is a pretty big dividing
line.
Quote:
In Long Live the
Victory of Peoples’ War it is said that U.S.
imperialism on a world scale plays the role that
Japanese imperialism played in China in World
War 2.
The
text clearly identifies both the u$ and Soviet
imperialists as enemies. Lin says, "Khrushchev
revisionists have come to [Amerikan imperialist's]
rescue just when it was panic stricken and helpless in
its efforts to deal with people's war." Lin goes on to
talk of the political deal that the Soviets are trying
to strike with the amerikans. And, "Khrushchev
revisionism has a dwindling audience among the
revolutionary people of the world. Wherever there is
armed aggression and suppression by imperialism and its
lackeys, there is bound to be people's wars against
aggression and oppression..Khrushchev is finished.. The
imperialists, the reactionaries and the Khrushchev
revisionists, who have all set themselves against
people's war, will be swept like dust from the stage of
history by the mighty broom of the revolutionary
people."
Quote:
It isn’t a very far
leap from that, although it’s carrying the error
further and making it worse in the concrete
conditions of the ’70s, to say that the Soviet
Union has become the main enemy on a world scale
and that other forces should be allied with
against the Soviet Union...... What’s missed
here, what this and Long Live the Victory of
Peoples’ War have in common—and this becomes
sharper again and more of a problem in the ’70s
as things do sharpen up—is that they fail to
correctly grasp the spiral motion and
development toward conjunctures. In that light
in particular, both Mao’s later views and Long
Live the Victory of Peoples’ War see the
prospects for revolution as existing almost
entirely in the “third world” and particularly
do not correctly grasp the importance of the
heightening of the contradictions and their
gathering into a knot in the conjuncture.
This
is the revisionist theory of three worlds that Avakian
is attributing to Mao on the basis of the quote that
appeared suspiciously after Mao died. Avakian is trying
to say that Lin's and "Mao's" errors are two sides of
one nationalist coin. Avakian is saying: "Mao's"/Deng's
theory is narrow nationalist because it puts China first
at the expense of the international proletariat -
including the imaginary first world proletariat; Lin's
theory is narrow nationalist in the sense that it writes
off first world nations, it writes of the cities of the
world - it fails to be truly internationalist -
according to Avakian. This is similar to Avakian's silly
blather about what he calls "bundism."
Quote:
An underestimation
of the possibilities for revolution in the
imperialist countries is an error that is, on
the one hand, common to both Long Live the
Victory of Peoples’ War and the “three worlds”
theory but stands out more sharply in the more
recent context of the actual development toward
a world-wide conjuncture and toward heightened
possibilities for revolution in the imperialist
countries, which don’t arise that often and
which, therefore in a certain sense, take on all
the more importance at times like this, and it
is all the more of an error to miss or
underestimate this.
More
dogma from Avakian. The RcP=u$a's conviction that 90% of
amerikans can be united with to make revolution is akin
to a religious conviction. RcP=u$a hasn't done a shred
of scientific investigation into the class structure in
the u$ or global surplus value.
Quote:
And it’s not as if
we’re talking in a vacuum or simply wishing for
revolutionary elements to appear!
Actually,
that is exactly what Avakian is doing. The obvious lack
of revolutionary movements in the first world is due to
the fact that there is no proletariat in the first
world.
Quote:
All this is crucial
in terms of the coming storm, because this
coming storm will precisely not be an idealist
or an idyllic vision or dream; whatever its
particular features, it will be full of
destruction and horror—and the more so, it has
to be said, if advances of the revolution in the
world don’t develop far enough fast enough to
actually prevent world war.
Avakian
is a total dogmatist. His idealist approach is exactly
backwards. Rather than examine class structure of the u$
and then develop a strategy around that, Avakian has a
metaphysical commitment that an October road revolution
will happen in the u$, then he goes on to develop an
analysis around his fantasy. This is just like social
democrats and labor bureaucrats who label the majority
of amerikans "exploited" because they want to benefit
from the gravy train, run for office, receive
appointments, etc. This exactly the kind of metaphysical
approach that Trotskyists, social democrats, and
anarchists share. Despite all the historical evidence,
Trotskyists hold onto an idea of how a revolution must
look and reject anything that doesn't match up to the
idea in their head. This is the meaning of their "main
man's" "epistemological rapture" - that rational
knowledge does not sterm from practice, that practice is
not the sole criterion of truth. Lenin opposed this kind
of pre-scientific opportunism. Lenin was not afraid to
apply the label "bourgeois" to the majority of World War
1 era Germany. It is simply not Marxist to argue from
strategy to class structure as Avakian does.
RcP=u$a's silly response is to say that Maoists
are pessimistic and defeatist. Avakian repeats today
what Trotsky said of Stalin. Like Trotsky, the
chauvinist Avakian does not think that it is possible
for the proletariat (which is mostly in the 3rd world)
to build socialism.
What Maoists have and
Avakian lacks is strategic confidence in the
international proletariat. Maoists face facts.
Trotskyists like Avakian dream up fantasies about
wretched toiling exploited masses in a nation of
shopping malls and SUVs.
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Sept 28, 2005, 5:21pm by prairiefire
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