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*Further comments on the RIM (Not for MIM Notes)
The enemy has shown up in our camp and given us a challenge. He says, "look, I can show up under your nose, using your rhetoric, and even the name you came up with, and I can organize a detachment of my own military forces to defeat Iran and name Islamic terrorism the 'principal contradiction' for some peoples, and I will succeed, because your people do not know squat. They're too busy watching television to stop me." And when we look at the demonstrations happening outside the UN every few weeks, in coordination with headlines Uncle $am is making, we have to say, "you know what devil: you're partly right."
It's not easy to characterize these anti-Iran demonstrations. MIM cannot just write a MIM Notes saying, "oh, and Cheney spoke, followed by Horowitz and then Giuliani." No, this is not the imperialists or an excitable wing of the Republican Party. What we are seeing on this Iran question is people calling themselves "Marxist" of various varieties leading the attack.
For over six months, MIM has been pointing out the obvious. MIM does not like to be involved in these principally ideological struggles about not ignoring spies. We hate putting up articles like these on our website, because we know the audience capable of understanding them is too damn small. On the other hand, it is true that there is already a mass of people who have become interested in Maoism in the past few years, and so this is for them. So subjectively, we hate these articles, but objectively we have to acknowledge that the enemy is scoring on us and hence the articles have to be done.
We would rather put the principal emphasis on agitation and cultural work with any spare time for financial, counter-intelligence and other infrastructural work. Yet we have to put these articles up, because the devil hit us close to home in such a way as to disrupt the whole international communist movement. Great Satan is trying to destroy our very ability to launch Marxist-Leninist- Maoist parties, especially in the Islamic countries, but it could be anywhere that Uncle $am is trying to invade an oppressed country. So now we have to deal with this threat before we can go on and speak to our united front partners or real masses considering Maoism. We cannot allow this image of Maoism that is a such a direct destruction of what Mao stood for. It is a very concentrated political attack that must be countered.
What we are seeing is a further vindication of the cells approach. It's one thing when people follow a leader, because they think, "you know that issue could go that way or another way, but I'll just follow this leader here, because we need unity." The underlying assumption that is very important for such centralism is that the follower actually knows what is an issue that could go either way without ending up totally off track.
Now if we could sort of send off followers into a proletarian canyon, a groove that they could not get out of, then by all means follow the leader "single file" through the canyon would work out. What we see with Iran, and it's important to understand that the lesson applies to us as well, not just revisionists, is that an organization can have zombie followers that do not know the first thing about Maoism. The devil is right: he can show up and call just about anything "Maoism" and get away with it.
So Mao was right to focus his energies on the first question of who are our friends and who are our enemies. People calling themselves "Maoist" are now trying to defeat our friends and support Great Satan.
We need to know if there is a canyon with a path leading to socialism, so that no matter what the people in the canyon do, they will not go over the walls and end up in the embrace of imperialism. MIM's third cardinal principle is an attempt to find such a canyon with high walls making it impossible to make a mistake and end up with imperialists.
Democratic-centralism is not a mere abstraction. It is not a formality of following a leader. The concrete analysis aids in the formation of centralism. Poor class analysis will defeat centralism, because we can have all the formalities of democratic-centralism, but if we amalgamate the petty-bourgeoisie and proletariat, there is going to be endless vacillation and self-defeat for reasons that people do not understand.
That is why MIM emphasizes that the party must be small. We're not going to amalgamate the petty-bourgeois line and let people vacillate whatever way they want and then call themselves "Maoist." Those people should stay in the anti-war organizations and not call themselves "Maoist."
For the most part, the MIM third cardinal did protect us against an Iran fiasco in our own ranks. "What, you want to side with the super-exploiters against the super-exploited?" That would inevitably be the class question in the comrades' minds and no hoary stories about Iran's culture are going to be able to throw us off, because we are in a canyon with a path on this question.
On other questions, MIM has not devised any system where we can follow a leader single-file. If all questions were like our third cardinal, we would be tempted to put up a leader and just say, "go this way, single-file please." The enemy did not get our party ranks this time with the Iran question, but he might be able to on other questions where we have not found an equivalent analysis or answer.
MIM also teaches the "principal contradiction" while the zombie organization has been dropping bits of acid on it periodically for decades. This is all fine and good, and we point the world to this example of how to stay out of the embrace of imperialism, but we also need to be humble in knowing that there are a lot of other questions in this world, and it could be us next time.
We should imagine this situation where MIM had retained democratic-centralism without cells and a leader and then we piled up members, and if we can imagine that the CIA bought our leader and then the followers do not know enough about Maoism to say, "hold on there: that can't be true about defeating Iran as part of Maoism!" Before we get to that point, we want people functioning on their own in cells, often with themselves as leaders.
Nor do we want to just acknowledge all bourgeois cells and end up in bourgeois Liberalism. What we want is to use the third cardinal and a confrontational stand on Iran to set ourselves up. The enemy will still fly the red flag to defeat the red flag by falsely claiming to agree with our third cardinal and our stance calling for dissolution of RIM because of the Iran question, but we will weed out large portions of the petty-bourgeoisie who will not attempt to form such a cell. The spies will still outnumber us, but it won't be as bad as with all kinds of random petty-bourgeois claiming to be Maoists in the imperialist countries.
Then we need to have the two-line struggle to make sure that our other stands on other questions are for real. For example, violations of democratic-centralism happen two ways. One is where the persyn realizes consciously that he or she disagrees. Another way is unconscious, where the issue at stake has not reached a conscious stage. The unconscious issues can eat the most time. And this is not always the followers' fault if to divide it into a leaders/led question. There may be no easy way for a leader to explain why a certain stand or issue or approach to centralism is wrong. Then what we are talking about is a limitation of our class at this point in history.
The third cardinal issue of the labor aristocracy is not a limitation of our class at this point. This issue though highly controversial with the petty- bourgeoisie has been gone over many times and the implications shown.
Then from there, we should have strategic confidence. The imperialist country comrades can be a fulcrum. Our stout stand on the imperialist wars inspires some pacifists, but that is not the important thing right now. We also have to inspire those who need to take up protracted People's War where it is not now happening. So we have to teach anti-imperialism and hope to catapult some people into forming new parties.
With just the third cardinal and principal contradiction nailed down correctly, we can be highly confident about the rest. As MIM said in its article on the Mao era, we may need to shuffle or overthrow leaders 1000 times. It's part of the knowledge-gaining process of the proletariat.
In the Cultural Revolution in China in the countryside, we often read how for years at a time political power would shift back and forth between leadership groups. The leadership there from the 1950s would be overthrown. Then people would realize, "wow, our new leaders have even bigger flaws," and then they would bring back the old leaders they were calling running dogs and so on a few years ago. "I was a running dog for not seeing through those other leaders. I'm sorry I called you a running dog." Then the pattern would repeat with each time the masses hoping their leaders would be more perfect than last time. Partly it has to do with the fact that the masses did not zero in on what is cardinal and principal from the beginning, but it also has to do with being able to recognize the materialist truth, that overthrowing leaders does not ensure bringing new spotless ones. It's important that leaders not take that process only persynally and try to cut it short. It is a process for the class. Part of what is happening is that a leader may indeed be right, "I am way better than that other leader, but they just can't see it." Inevitably, some of the leaders thinking this are not just ego-trippers and they really are better leaders. Well then, the masses are just going to have to process that in a way through practice. What we have to do is look out against leaders who do not teach people the true meaning of the word "sectarianism," which is putting the needs of the organization above the class. Just follow the leader is not some way to bring class unity, because the proletariat is a living body with contradictions and unevenness. MIM has reached a concrete point where we cannot advance democratic- centralism further the old way and we need cells to bring life to a process of contention and resolution of problems of unevenness.
If you have a suspicion that MIM in the past has done something wrong (and you are not someone who is just saying that purging numbers of people is wrong), then you need to consider forming a cell and proving that somehow, especially at the margin. If you start a cell right now, you won't necessarily prove that what you do in the next six months is better overall than what MIM did since 1983. That would be a main body illusion. However, it is possible that at the margin you could come up with something that is right where MIM has been wrong. This is why Marx said he was hoping to grow some dragons. And maybe some of us who try this are not going to be dragons, but at least mini-dragons. Even coming up with one contribution at the margin is a good thing.
Our conditions are somewhat different than China's, because in many countryside regions of China, the enemy is not going to be sending tons of spies. There will be a local bourgeoisie that grows and corrupts the party. In the imperialist countries, with such a small number of real communists, the spy factor becomes important. They outnumber us and this has to be accounted for. Nonetheless, the idea that we can, within the operation of our third cardinal, have multiple leaderships for the process of knowledge-accumulation AND eventual improvement of formal centralist organization is somewhat analogous to what happened in the Cultural Revolution.
There is a part of the mass line that we want to apply to the proletarian camp. It's not going to work for us as well as it does in large populations, but we still need it. It's not just that correct ideas come from the people, but specifically that includes ideas about democratic-centralism. So MIM is now saying, "OK, these third cardinal and principal contradiction ideas get you pretty far for laying a basis of democratic-centralism that is going to work, but we cannot take that and then put the whole emphasis on the fact that some leaders must be more advanced than others." Even for the most advanced, there is a question of how to state something so that it can be easily comprehended and acted on. That can come from the mass line as long as we know we are applying the mass line to the proletarian camp and not the imperialist country petty- bourgeoisie. By having cells, we can start to see how issues play out in people's minds, and in this, even spies can play a role, because after all, they are humyn too. Spies may provide us some data. Spies will provide disinformation, but it could be anybody who ends up triggering a new formulation that aids in the formation of democratic-centralism at higher levels.
This also has to do with some of Mao's last words about "going against the tide." It said right in the 10th Party Congress that proletarian revolutionaries cannot fear ridicule or even death. If you stand up against the tide and say "hold on there, that bit about Iran cannot be even remotely true about Maoism," maybe you'll be ridiculed or feel isolated, because every struggle starts somewhere and not with the whole class mobilized at once. The problem with just following Mao's leadership at that time was that China lost something that the revolutionary process had while the bourgeoisie and landlords were still in power.
So patriots of proletarianism do not fear ridicule or death. They do not seek protective cover of a leader. They should be ridiculed and not allowed to call themselves proletarianists, IF they are not on board with MIM's third cardinal. We cannot even start with people who are not on-board with the third cardinal and principal contradiction. So we want to start people with one good example of analysis of class issues before going further. But once we have a minimal level of unity, including support of the Cultural Revolution and opposition to Soviet revisionism, it is important not to fear ridicule. It will be one's duty to take ridicule in political life. It will even be one's duty to figure out when one deserved the ridicule. One will realize that playing one's individual role to the maximum was good for the class. Maybe 99 out of 100 times one will be ridiculed and rightly so, but maybe one will make a contribution that 100th time. Even the other 99 times are a contribution for the rest of the class observing. (That's not a license to have persynal feuds or a license for example to deny the 99% correctness of your critics just because you get it right the 100th time. As long as people are clear about that they can do their duty correctly.) That's why it's a process. That's also what's wrong with the people coming to us and comparing size with other organizations. They are not asking what is going to maximize their individual contribution to revolution or what is good for the international proletariat. They never stop to wonder how MIM does more with fewer members. They are asking how they can take shelter in numbers and leaders and where they can find a force that is going to tip over capitalism for them, sort of like going to Burger King and thinking, "I shop here, because they give me my burger the way I like it. They do it all for me." Mao was confident that if the proletariat and oppressed went against the tide and did not fear anything from ridicule to death, then they would win in the long run, by playing their role in the struggle. That is how we can address zombieism, not just on issues like Iran, but smaller ones as well, issues that nonetheless will contribute to our forming a concretely higher level of democratic-centralism.