A Review of Ray O. Light Boxholder DLD-354 58 Batterymarch St. Boston, MA 02110 "For a General Line of the International Communist Movement," 1999 Toward Victorious Afro-American National Liberation, 1982, 421pp. pb "In Support of the Struggle of the Party of Albania Against Revisionism," 1978 "The Present Party-Building Movement in the USA and the Materialist Conception of History", 1977 reviewed by the International Minister, December 16, 2000 Ray O. Light is someone who appears to cling to Stalin's formulations of class struggle under socialism. The occasional perysn like Ray O. Light who denies the existence of a bourgeoisie in the party as Mao's cardinal thesis explained presents a problem for MIM, because their errors seem to have some claim to Stalinist orthodoxy since Stalin never came up with Mao's thesis that there is a bourgeoisie in the party. Of course, Stalin was a dialectician, and no one knows what he would have said had he seen Khruschev take power after Stalin's death. Perhaps Stalin would have said the same thing as Mao did. Then there is also the question of what Stalin would have said after seeing Ramiz Alia in Albania openly restore capitalism after Hoxha died. Then there is the question of what to make of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Would Stalin have seen all these people in the party and would he have stayed the same on his line? Also of interest to MIM is Ray O. Light's work to promote the Black Belt thesis of the COMINTERN. The bulk of the material we have from Ray O. Light is on this subject. MIM's third cardinal Ray O. Light's book on "Afro-American National Liberation" is long on politics and short on the material realities connected to the Black Belt thesis. Nonetheless, Ray O. Light does offer some fairness in characterizing various political forces in the United $tates concerning Black liberation. We agree with Ray O. Light that Stalin's intervention into U.$. politics on the Black nation was a crucial aid to the fledgling communist movement here. Even though calling themselves communist, still many white communists practiced segregation in their own organizations and social lives, to a severe and antagonistic extent. Without Stalin's prestige behind it, the movement against white chauvinism would have been held back by the rank-and-file Euro-Amerikan communists. Stalin's attention also bolstered the hopes of Blacks themselves, who had often had little reason for cheer when it came to finding dependable international allies. After Stalin launched the attack against white chauvinism rooted in the labor aristocracy, many Blacks started to say that communists were the only whites who fought chauvinism. Today, the United $tates could use another Stalin to come along and tell the movement that those calling themselves "communist" still mostly take white chauvinist stands. Ray O. Light recognized this exactly correctly. In 1970, he said, "The nature and direction of US imperialist society today, of the 'great American people' necessitates that the oppressed peoples carry out ruthless struggle to isolate US whites from the rest of the peoples of the world, and that the oppressed peoples carry out merciless armed struggle against the US white citizen soldiers wherever US imperialism sends them. "It is only on the basis of victories for the national liberation struggles [italics] based on a recognition of the real nature of the 'great American people'[end of italics] that, in the long run, the few US (white) Marxist- Leninists will possibly be able to mobilize a section of the US working class to the side of national liberation."(1982, p. 42) This statement of Ray O. Light's is great in its international significance. In 1970, Ray O. Light's allies said, "No imperialist country has achieved such clear dominance over the rest of the imperialist countries that it could buy off its working class [italics] as a whole [end italics] since England of the 1890's until US imperialism of the 1950's and 1960's."(1982, p. 107) On the other hand, lacking precise materialist details in his work, Ray O. Light relies on political acumen alone. Not surprisingly, he points to the PATCO (air traffic controllers) strike under Reagan as signs of the progressive potential of the white working class.(1982, p. xxix) While making such errors, most of Ray O. Light's work is more consistent with MIM's third cardinal than it is with the enemy's line on the white working class. Historical points of interest Like many others, Ray O. Light notes the leadership role of Robert Williams in organizing armed self- defense and extending Black friendship to Mao's China in the early 1960s just when the Communist Party had gone down the drain. On the other hand, it appears Robert Williams returned to the United $tates to a normal life, after testifying voluntarily before the U.S. Congress.(1982, p. 8) In 1968 though, a U.$. group called "Youth for Stalin" gave Williams credit for struggling with the Chinese, and we have to admit that the story rings true: "You pointed out that the vast majority of the white people in the US have been bribed and corrupted by US imperialism and, at the present time, support US imperialist exploitation and suppression of the oppressed peoples."(p. 10) Youth for Stalin expressed dismay that Williams later fell into line to express more belief in the potential of white workers. In context, we do have to recall that the most popular Black leader in the early 1960s was Malcolm X and Martin Luther King was also coming on strong and about to peak. As MIM already said in MIM Theory #10, "it is true that Mao somewhat reversed Stalin's view of Blacks as a nation and made a point of struggling with Blacks to view themselves as a race that needs to hook up with white workers. We see Mao wrong in this regard."(MT #10, p. 42) Apparently, in 1968, "Youth for Stalin" were there to criticize Mao correctly on this one point: "the Afro-American people are advised to 'tail' the white 'aristocrats of labor'."(1982, p. 12) While the Chinese Communist Party was always careful to tell people they could not say anything about national conditions in other countries that was definitive and for that reason they did not want to re- constitute the COMINTERN, nonetheless, what the CCP said was less correct than what "Youth for Stalin" said with regard to white workers in 1968. Of much greater interest to MIM and perhaps the most interesting part of the whole 1982 book is the role of Harry Haywood and Cyril Briggs in resisting Gus Hall's Khruschevite remake of the Communist Party- USA. Although MIM was aware that various individuals had to be purged from Gus Hall's party and that the Progressive Labor Party formed as a result, MIM was not aware to the extent the CP-USA was willing to let more famous Black members go. Harry Haywood got the boot and ended up in the Central Committee of an organization calling itself Maoist. His friend Cyril Briggs (whose spat with Marcus Garvey is most famous), helped Harry Haywood criticize the Khruschevites in southern California, when he was 72 years old. After a lengthy essay on the Black nation opposing Browderism and integrationism, while upholding Stalin repeatedly by name, Harry Haywood attacked the Khruschev line of "peaceful transition" from capitalism to socialism.(1982, p. 400) Most significantly, Haywood did this in November of 1959. The three Black men Harry Haywood, Cyril Briggs and Robert Williams can testify to the damage of the Khruschev line in their struggle. To those who say Khruschev made no difference, there are three important Black men we can point to in history who knew it was a problem, almost in their bones, so fast was their recognition. As for Ray O. Light, his circle of Stalinists apparently had to beat a hasty retreat after the busing struggle in Boston. People who work out of cookbooks for political principles have a hard time seeing that there are good reasons and bad reasons to oppose integration. Most of the whites opposing busing in Boston had bad reasons and the failure to oppose them on ideological grounds was an error. Apparently, the busing struggle was one of many demoralizing blows that eliminated Ray O. Light's milieu.(1982, p. 32) Ray O. Light took up the Menshevik interpretation of the labor aristocracy thesis, which is that political activity amongst whites was a waste of time.(1982, pp. 39-40) He believed that it was best for whites to attempt to give theoretical guidance to Blacks in their liberation struggle. In contrast, MIM agitates everywhere as Lenin instructed. Even though we do not put forward the natural parasitic class demands of U.$. whites, we do put forward demands as much as possible that will ally whatever portion we can get (without selling out to imperialism) with the international proletariat. Brezhnevite nitpicking By 1979, having never connected much to details of the mode of production, even in the Black Belt, and not understanding the relationship between geopolitical decisions and the mode of production, Ray O. Light was well on his way toward the unity with Brezhnevism that he displays today. His newsletter of 1979 and much of his work centers on defending the Hoxhaite critique of the "Three Worlds Theory."(e.g., 1982, p. 242) As MIM has pointed out, these same "Stalinists" defend the Stalin-Hitler pact which involved concrete delivery of material resources to Hitler, but they pounce on the "Three Worlds Theory" as if it were proof of Mao's revisionism. Shaking hands with Nixon and getting into the United Nations was tantamount to proof in Mao's case, thus using different standards when it came to benefiting the "great Russian people" and the Chinese. It's not surprising that many international supposed communists--largely bribed out of Brezhnev era Soviet money--hanker for that money and geopolitical power again. Aping the Brezhnev line on international affairs is so popular we see ex-Maoist Ludo Martens do it; Ray O. Light do it and even neo-Trotskyist Workers World do it, perhaps best of all in 100% mimicry. Making geopolitics more of a focus than the mode of production, Ray O. Light contributes to the resuscitation of international revisionism. See, MIM's criticism of geopolitical pragmatism as a substitute for Marxism So detached from the realities of the mode of production is Ray O. Light, that he upholds the Dengist League of Revolutionary Struggle (LRS)(1982, p. 288) and quotes favorably from Liu Shaoqi.(1978, p. 102) MIM's second and third cardinals The nub of the question of why Ray O. Light is not Maoist is as follows according to Ray O. Light: "In 'Left Wing Communism,' Comrade Lenin had warned that, 'Whoever weakens ever so little the iron discipline of the party of the proletariat (especially during the time of its dictatorship) actually aids the bourgeoisie against the proletariat.'(p. 29) Yet without attempting to explain either what concrete historical development had rendered Comrade Lenin's proposition outmoded, or that Lenin had been wrong to begin with, the CR [Cultural Revolution--ed.] leadership from its very inception was clearly based on the proposition that 'The main target of the present movement is those [italics] Party [end italics] person in power taking the capitalist road.'"(1977, pp. 84-5) In this way, Ray O. Light pretends to continue naively Stalin's line. However, it is wrong both ideologically and factually. Ideologically, weakening the party means burrowing as a bourgeoisie from within, either secretly or openly. Ray O. Light thus undermines the criticism of Khruschev, because what Khruschev did was not break from party discipline. What he did was break from principles and thereby cause splits. Khruschev was already in power while Stalin was alive. It was not simply a matter of Stalin's will that there would be no bourgeoisie in the party. Like it or not, Khruschev was in the party, and like it or not, he restored capitalism, not the United $tates, old landlords or old capitalists. Furthermore, Ray O. Light is factually wrong, because no where in the world was it so often explained what Khruschev revisionism was as during the Cultural Revolution in China. It turned out just as Mao said with Khruschev, Brezhnev etc. to Yeltsin, and Hoxha's hand-picked successor and Hua Guofeng and Deng Xiaoping all restoring capitalism and all being party leaders. That is a fact that cannot be wished away with metaphysics like we used to hear from Hoxha supporters before Hoxha's successor openly restored capitalism in Albania. Supposedly Mao tolerated revisionists in his midst according to the Hoxhaites and Ray O. Light, but by that standard, Hoxha not only tolerated but actively promoted a revisionist who open restored capitalism in Albania. Not surprisingly with such metaphysics, Ray O. Light has done the least investigation of any writer I know of who claims to know something about the Cultural Revolution in China. What he says is in no way backed with documentary references. It's a complete jumble, and not worth refuting.