Dear Maoist-Third Worldist… On the split between Mao and Lin Biao

On the split between Mao and Lin Biao

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

 

“Dear Maoist Third Worldist,

I am trying to understand mystery behind Lin Biao’s downfall. Zhou and Deng used many quotations from chairman Mao against Lin but I am little bit confused regarding chairman Mao’s comment. There a lot of books regarding the matter but no one explain the matter politically. Whatever criticism against Lin based on some conspiracy theory but no body criticize him politically. Other than how can it be possible that chairman Mao never used a single word against 10th congress of Communist Party of China which is just opposite of 9th congress?”

Firstly, there is no real evidence that Lin Biao ever launched a coup. The official narrative of the Chinese Communist Party isn’t plausible. Secondly, crudely forged evidence such as the Outline for Project 571 was use against Lin Biao. However, Mao was planning to demote or purge Lin Biao prior to his death. Secondly, the line struggles matter more than the details of the alleged coup. The main reasons for the split between Mao and Lin Biao were most likely: 1. foreign policy and global outlook, 2. economic line in agriculture, 3. the role of the military in society. Overall, the lines associated with Lin Biao were to the left of Mao. 

 

1. Lin Biao was associated with the line that China ought promote the global people’s war. This was connected to dissemination of Maoism internationally. This put China at odds with almost every state in the world except revolutionary and popular ones. This line saw the imperialists as a single bloc and sought to fight both Western imperialism headed by the United States and social imperialism all at once. This line came to be seen as ultra-left. As early as 1969, Mao assigned people like Chen Yi and Deng Xiaoping to come up with a new line. Eventually the anti-Lin Biao line would recommend a Chinese-US alliance against the Soviet Union. This came to be justified after the fact by “Three Worlds Theory” of the 1970s. Lin Biao’s faction opposed this turn in foreign policy and global outlook. Mao is reported to have told Nixon that Lin Biao was the one who had opposed their reconciliation. 

 

2. Part of the reason Mao launched the Cultural Revolution was in order to return to the Maoist economic line, especially in agriculture. The Maoist line was associated with restoring the people’s communes that had been reduced in influence following the problems of the Great Leap Forward. Following the Great Leap, a compromise line was reached between Maoist and the Liu Shaoqi-ist factions. The Maoist line emphasized class struggle, social experiment, mass mobilization, collectivization of life, moral over material incentives, the human factor over technology, etc. The Liuist-Dengist line favored a de-collectivization and, ultimately, a return to capitalism. Lin Biao spearheaded the effort from 1968 to 1971 to restore the collective economy of the countryside to its previous levels. As Lin Biao’s PLA directed the efforts to collectivize the countryside to higher levels and rebuild the Party from 1968 to 1971, they began to meet resistance in 1971. For whatever reason, Mao shifted rightward and backed those of the Adverse Current and in the bureaucracies who opposed the Maoist line in agriculture. Following Lin Biao’s fall, the Maoist line was abandoned, although it would later be picked up by the Gang of Four. There was a restoration of something close to the compromise line that was reached between the Maoists and the Liuists following the Great Leap. There was a rightward move to reduce the power of the communes and to de-collectivize. 

 

3. There may have been a difference between Mao and Lin Biao over the role of the military in society. Following the mass movement and power seizure phase of the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1968, there was an effort to restore order throughout the country. The PLA was the main institution left standing. This made Lin Biao very powerful. Some speculate that Lin Biao did not want to restore power to the civilian bureaucracies. Lin Biao was associated with the militarization of society, a kind of barracks egalitarianism. Perhaps Mao opposed this direction.

 

The Ninth Congress and Tenth Congress Reports are in opposition. The Tenth Congress Report is a retreat from Maoism. Zhang Chunqiao, who had a hand in writing both reports, is said to have not been happy with the Tenth Congress Report. The Ninth Congress Report advanced Maoism, the Tenth Congress Report backed away from Maoism. The Tenth Congress Report corresponded with a turn rightward. This is because when Lin Biao fell, the revisionists filled the power vacuum. Within the PLA, the Adverse Current of 1967 that had opposed the Cultural Revolution came to power. Thus the PLA, “the pillar of the dictatorship of the proletariat,” was lost to revisionism. In addition, Zhou Enlai gained influence and Deng Xiaoping was restored to power. The period following the Lin Biao years is a period of reversal of socialism from its height from 1966 to 1971. During the 1970s, the momentum was with the revisionists. And, Mao had enabled this unhappy situation. In his last years, Mao waffled between supporting the revisionists and supporting the remaining, severely weakened left known as the Gang of Four. This waffling ultimately benefited those who would restore capitalism fully. 

Pigs deny Ward Churchill job and damages

Pigs deny Ward Churchill job and damages

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

 

In a recent ruling Chief Denver District Judge Larry Naves ruled against Ward Churchill’s request to be reinstated to Colorado University and against financial damages. This ruling is a contrast to the jury verdict in April that concluded that Churchill was illegally removed from his position for his political beliefs. The ruling gives regents of the University a free hand to fire whomever they want for their political beliefs. Churchill’s attorney David Lane stated:

“It’s an extremely rare thing for a judge to throw out a jury verdict — that’s big, that doesn’t happen… Here it’s being done at the expense of the Constitution of the United States of America, and it’s really a tragedy. It sends the message to the public of, ‘Oh, jury verdicts. Who cares?’”

Churchill lost his job after attention was drawn to an essay that he had written following the 9/11 attacks. In his essay, Churchill called those who died in the twin towers “little Eichmanns.” Thus Churchill compared the technocrats who worked in the Trade Center maintaining the US empire with technocrats in Nazi Germany. Churchill’s point is hardly radical. Churchill’s point comes from the work of Hannah Arendt’s account of the trial of Adolph Eichmann. The Nazi bureaucrat Eichmann, according to Arendt, was a banal individual whose evil was not motivated by strong ideological beliefs, but rather by conformism and careerism.  The evil of empire is made possible by a large strata of ordinary people who contribute to the evil of the system by staffing its bureaucracy. Like the verdicts at Nuremberg, Churchill’s point is that “I was just doing my job, just following orders” is not an acceptable defense for evil. Like the leaders of empire, the functionaries of empire are also responsible for its crimes. There is collective responsibility for the crimes of empire that go beyond the small circle of ideologists and figureheads who make policy. 

 

The ruling is an unhappy ending to a long witch hunt. The ruling is a blow to academic freedom. 

 

Source: 

 

1. http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2009/jul/07/ward-churchill-job-university-colorado-boulder/

Historical distortion and Fascist Revival

Veteran of the Soviet Union's war to save the world from fascism

 

Historical distortion and Fascist Revival

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

 

The Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (of which Germoney is a prominent member) has just passed a resolution blaming the “totalitarian” regimes of Stalin and Hitler for starting World War II and in remembrance of all the victims of communist and fascist “totalitarianism”. Russian delegates reacted “angrily” to the resolution and tried to no avail to have it overturned. (1)

 

This outrageous distortion of historical truth is straight out of fascist and Trotskyist mythology. In particular, the pro-imperialist bourgeois cliques who today rule the Baltic states have been trying to rehabilitate the nationalistic ideology and practice of their countries’ Nazi collaborators and vicious anti-proletarian terrorists. In Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, where the anti-Stalin OSCE meeting was held, Nazis have statues erected in their honor, Nazi insignia is on prominent public display and Nazis parade regularly. The President of Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus, is an fact an ex-SS officer. Bourgeois forces like these played no small part in the break up of the social-imperialist USSR and have reaped a huge political windfall from the same. 

 

This latest fascist outburst by some of the leading imperialist powers and their eastern European hangers-on comes in the wake of NATO’s failure to destabilize and seize full control of the Caucasus by violently laying claim to South Ossetia against the wishes of its oppressed inhabitants and the security interests of imperialist Russia.

 

We do not favor inter-imperialist rivalry in most cases, but we do wonder what positive outcomes might possibly result from Russia’s strategic marriage of convenience with the fascist imperialist-puppets of the OSCE. 

 

Unfortunately, imperialist Russia cannot possibly defend with any rigor or intellectual honesty the world-historic contributions to progress and civilization made by the Soviet Union under Stalin. Since the Brezhnev era, Soviet defence of Stalin has been to some extent based upon ideological Russian chauvinism and is no different from elite unwillingness to criticize leaders from Russia’s thousand year period of Tsarist feudalism. Communists in Russia should take advantage of this conflict between Russia and its fascist “partners” in the OSCE to make a stronger case for Soviet socialist history.

 

We at Monkey Smashes Heaven are profoundly proud of the Soviet soldiers and citizens who pushed Nazi imperialism back into the hole it came out of. We will defend to the death the historical truth that communism saved the world from fascism.

 

Long live the memory of the Soviet Heroes who defeated Nazism in WWII!

 

Long Live Proletarian Consciousness in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Russia!

 

Sources:

 

1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8133749.stm

 

2. For further details on the fascist ascendancy in eastern Europe, see here: http://bronze-soldier.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=32

4th of July: Enjoy the fireworks, Amerikkka!

RAIM:Review of ‘The Old Future’s Gone: Progressive Strategy Amid Cascading Crisis,’ a talk by Robert Jensen

Review of ‘The Old Future’s Gone: Progressive Strategy Amid Cascading Crisis,’ a talk by Robert Jensen

(http://raimd.wordpress.com)

Last month, author and activist Robert Jensen spoke in Denver at an event sponsored by Argusfest entitled “The Old Future’s Gone: Progressive Strategy Amid Cascading Crisis.”  It was based on a writing that has circulated among left-liberal websites.  A professor of journalism at the University of Texas in Austin, he also has written many books and articles on topics such as imperialism, capitalism, white privilege and patriarchy.  He doesn’t quite go to our line, but he at least asks the right questions and approaches the right topics. Because of this, a few members of RAIM went to check out the event.

At best his talk could be summed up as eclectic with a sub-reformist emphasis.

Jensen also carries a sense of honest despair, admitting he sees little in the way of widespread, fundamental change. Rather than seeking out revolutionary means to revolutionary ends, he instead prefers to deal in ways in which he feels he’s made a more immediate, though irrelevant and fleeting, impact.

In talking about strategies for change, Jensen sees the Amerikan left engaged in three types: electoral politics, movement politics and local projects. He sees no use in electoral politics. Movement politics have their limits also, especially in their emphasis on protest marches. Bringing up the February 15, 2003 worldwide marches against the invasion of Iraq, the largest coordinated protest in history, which the New York Times said made world opinion a second superpower, he noted that they did nothing to stop that war. He sees more hope in local projects, things like community gardens and such. According to Jensen, the potential for dialogue and debate among others is increased in local projects, though he didn’t specify to what concrete end. The example he raised as his own efforts with local projects was a worker-owned cafe in Austin, though he admitted this effort failed to get off the ground.

While we understand the frustrations in observing the seemingly immovable state of Amerika and the world, the lack of radicalism in Amerikan mass politics, and the inability for radicals to act effectively in a minoritarian context, there were limits to Jensen’s insights beyond this.

When prodded by a RAIM comrade, Jensen admitted that the First World benefits from the exploitation of the Third World. When asked how this phenomenon of entire populations benefiting from others related to and could perhaps be overcome by local projects, he didn’t have an answer.  When asked about a solution in putting local projects to tackling this global issue of exploitation, he said the question was too big and too complicated to solve.

Jensen’s inability to answer straight questions were illuminating to the level of confusion within the Amerikan left, even amongst its intellectuals.  Jensen is one of the better intellectuals on the left, as he critiques metaphysical liberal ideas in favor of a more radical analyses.  Jensen’s desire for revolutionary change is in some ways genuine, though Jensen himself is unable to come up with an effective model for widespread fundamental change.  Instead he promotes feel-good sub-reformism in the form of local projects, something he himself admits won’t work all the time. As once stated by Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), “Confusion is the greatest enemy of revolution.”

Much of this confusion can be seen in the trappings of left’s First Worldism.  Many on the left nominally go against imperialism while simultaneously campaigning to make Amerikans even better off. Jensen falls in this camp: he wants a better world but doesn’t want to alienate Amerikans. The truth is, Amerikans benefit from the global capitalist economic system as it is and have little material interest in working to create a new one.  This in part explains why revolutionary change seems so untenable within Amerika, even to those who genuinely desire it.

Unlike Jensen, we at RAIM apply global class analysis fully.  Doing simple math, Amerika is only 5 percent of the world population but the consumer of over 25 percent of the world’s resources.  The poorest half of the world lives on less than $2 a day, and the bottom 1.3 billion live on less than $1 a day.  Although Jensen admits this, RAIM-Denver plainly says the obvious truth and takes it to its logical end: Amerikans are part of the problem; they are a force which must be overcome during the course of progressive change. Unlike Jensen who is fruitlessly engaged in various forms of pandering to a population of petty exploiters and polluters, RAIM champions the cause of the world’s exploited and oppressed majority as the most direct route to creating a new world.

At one point, Jensen said that he struggles to identify as part of humanity and not Amerikan, white or male. In reality, to stand with humanity is to stand against Amerika and the First World.

The First World is destroying the planet and exploiting its people. On a structural level, this mean that the principal antagonism is between imperialism and the people of exploited nations. Exploitation-driven consumption and related environmental destruction affect the Third World the most, while benefits, even indirectly, trickle up to the First World.  The solution for this problem isn’t for those in the First World to engage in local projects. Rather, real change will come when Third World peoples wrestle stolen wealth out of the hands of First World imperialists. While this includes worker-owned industry on the part of currently exploited people, history has proven that this itself requires a fight and involves actual confrontations. Amerikans are not simply going to stop being exploiters: unlike the fluffy revolution of values Jensen dreams up, revolutions actually require revolution.

CP of India (Maoist) falls short of breaking with revisionism in Nepal.. Our response: Put politics in command.

 

CP of India (Maoist) falls short of breaking with revisionism in Nepal.. Our response: Put politics in command. 

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

 

An open letter has been written from the Communist Party of India (Maoist) to the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).  Like previous documents from the CPI(M) to the U/CPN(M), the new document lists several textbook revisionist lines adopted by Prachanda’s clique, but the CPI(M) falls just short of breaking their ties with revisionism in Nepal. The document by the CPI(M) is mostly correct in its criticisms even if it makes an opportunist error by failing to put politics fully in command. We are glad to see that we are not alone in pointing out the revisionism of the Prachanda clique.

 

On the ABCs of Marxism

 

The Indian document restates the ABCs of Marxism against Prachanda’s textbook revisionism: 

“[I]n the name of struggle against dogmatism, there have been serious deviations in the International Communist Movement (ICM), often going into an even greater, or at least equally dangerous, abyss of right deviation and revisionism. In the name of creative application of Marxism, communist parties have fallen into the trap of right opportunism, bourgeois pluralist Euro-Communism, rabid anti-Stalinism, anarchist post-modernism and outright revisionism.” (1) 

“After witnessing the full flowering of the concept of prachanda path one thing has now become clear to the Maoist revolutionaries everywhere: Lenin and Mao had indeed become an obstacle to Prachanda and the CPN(M) for carrying out their reformist, right opportunist formulations. They needed to discard the Leninist concept of state and revolution, and imperialism and proletarian revolution. They needed to throw overboard Mao’s theory of new democracy and two stages of revolution in semi-colonial semi-feudal countries, and to replace the path of PPW with an eclectic combination or fusion of people’s war and insurrection, and finally pursue the same old revisionist line put forth by the CPSU under Khrushchov against which comrade Mao had fought relentlessly. Prachanda path had finally turned out to be a theory that negates the fundamental teachings of Lenin and Mao and the essence of prachanda path is seen to be no different from the Khrushchovite thesis of peaceful transition.” (2)

“This peaceful path of com Prachanda has already led the Party and the PLA into a dark tunnel.” (3)

 Thus the Indian document echoes the criticisms that we’ve made for years. We wrote: 

“Prachanda’s organization flaunted their tossing of the ABCs of Marxism for years. It would be one thing had Prachanda developed the ABCs of Marxism in a revolutionary way. However, this is not the case. Prachanda’s revisionists tossed Lenin’s teaching on the state, dual power and the dictatorship of the proletariat. They embraced the theory of productive forces. They tossed the Maoist teaching on people’s war. They rejected Lin Biao’s global people’s war line; instead, they sought a settlement with the imperialists. They tossed cultural revolution for multi-party democracy. Prachanda’s organization put forward run-of-the-mill revisionisms of almost every variety. Prachanda advanced well known reactionary lines that are associated with revisionists like Kautsky, Liu Shaoqi, and even Trotsky. For years, Prachanda cozied up with the imperialists and their institutions such as the World Bank. ”  (4)

“Either Prachanda has found a new way to socialism or he hasn’t. If Prachanda’s fans had any courage,or brains, they would openly admit that Prachanda’s course contradicts what has heretofore been regarded as core, universal lessons of the 20th Century revolutionary experience. Rather than obfuscating in eclectics, the fans should admit that Lenin’s teachings on the state are not universal. They should admit to Prachanda’s novel contribution of extending the label ‘New Democracy’ to cover everything under the sun. They should admit that they have abandoned the legacy of the Cultural Revolution in all but its ’spirit.’ They should admit that they have abandoned people’s war as the principal means to ascend to power. And, in practice, to abandon people’s war as a principal means is to abandon it as a means at all. Such is the logic of mobilization, of a war footing. People’s war must be carried through to the end, or it isn’t carried through at all..” (5)

Although many in our movement held that all member organizations of the RIM were revisionist for over a decade. We officially repudiated the entire Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) as revisionists around 2005 or 2006. Our repudiation of the RIM and all its member organizations as revisionist was mostly based on the RIM’s First Worldism and crypto-Trotskyism. We went on to further identify textbook revisionisms within Prachanda’s party  after the Seven Party Agreement (SPA) became available. Prior to the SPA, we had maintained that even though Prachanda’s group was revisionist, they were still landing blows against imperialism, comprador capitalism and feudalism. Thus they fell within the broad united front against imperialism, even though they were revisionists. However, the SPA agreement and the actions of Prachanda’s party at that time showed not only that they were textbook revisionists who deviated from the ABCs of Marxism, but Prachanda’s clique had ceased to be a member of the united front. We concluded this because when the Prachanda clique began imprisoning and decomissioning the PLA, dismanteling the dual power of the people’s state, and returning land, Prachanda’s group had crossed over from landing blows against imperialism, compradorism and feudalism to aiding imperialism, compradorism and feudalism. In other words, they shifted from being agents of New Democracy and proletarian power to being agents reversing New Democracy and proletarian power. Prachanda’s group tried to justify their course of actions by saying that they were still fighting the monarchy and that this justified their reversals. However, as we pointed out at the time, fighting the monarchy and fighting feudalism as a mode of production are two different things. This last point was one that the CPI(M) also made around the same time. What it really came down to was that the U/CPN(M) was embarking on a counter-revolutionary path that placed them far outside the united front, and they and their supporters threw up a bunch of smoke and mirrors to try to justify this turn. Even now, they and their supporters justify every revisionism under the sun in the name of “fighting dogmatism.” This is ridiculous because they and their supporters are the biggest dogmatists around, uncritically supporting First Worldism as they do even after First Worldism has been thoroughly exposed for over a quarter century now.  

 

On crypto-Trotskyism

 

What is especially interesting is that the Indian document critiques Prachanda’s crypto-Trotskyism: 

“[The U/CPN(M)] had made the formation of SASF [South Asia Soviet Federation] as a pre-condition for the victory of revolution in Nepal. This concept is similar to the Trotskyite concept of permanent revolution that denies the establishment of socialism in one country. Your Party document specifically mentioned that it is almost impossible to sustain the revolution in Nepal without a revolution in the entire sub-continent. The success of revolutions in India and other countries of South Asia has been made into a pre-condition for sustaining the revolution in Nepal. We think this too is a reason for the loss of conviction in advancing the revolution in Nepal to its final victory and, instead, taking the path of reconciliation and class compromise.” (6) 

Prachanda’s argument that socialism cannot be sustained in a single country is similar to  ideas developed in Bob Avakian’s Conquer The World. Bob Avakian’s claim is that “colonial and dependent” countries of the Third World cannot sustain socialist revolution without socialist revolution spreading outward, especially to the First World. In this view, the reason for this is that the productive forces of Third World countries are not advanced enough for socialist construction and, therefore, Third World countries need the help of First World countries to sustain socialist progress. The entire idea behind the RIM, as a fourth international, is to coordinate revolution on a global scale, between the First and Third Worlds. As the Indian document correctly points out, this kind of argument is orthodox Trotskyism. It is Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution, the basis of which is the Theory of Productive Forces. Maoist-Third Worldists, our predecessors, and similar groups have struggled against crypto-Trotskyism for decades. In the US, people are so unaware of what real Maoism is that they think that groups like RCP(USA) are Maoist even though their whole outlook is orthodox Trotskyism. RCP(USA) first articulated its crypto-Trotskyism in a set of polemics against “Lin Biaoism” in the early 1980s. In these polemics, not only did RCP(USA) reject the Lin Biao’s righteous global people’s war, they also rejected the idea that people’s war is the mark of Marxism over revisionism as “Lin Biaoist.” (7) Very few stood up to repudiate Bob Avakian’s revisionist attacks on people’s war as “Lin Biaoism.” This was a major failing of the “Maoist” movement globally. A thorough critique of crypto-Trotskyism requires not only repuitating Prachanda, but also Bob Avakian. After all, Bob Avakian’s crypto-Trotskyism, by declaring Third World socialism dependent on the First World,  is much worse than Prachanda’s crypto-Trotskyism. Bob Avakian’s crypto-Trotskyism is outright social imperialism. Also, it is no accident that alongside crypto-Trotskyism, both Prachanda and Bob Avakian tolerate the rejection of Stalin. 

 

On proletarian internationalism

 

The document also criticizes Prachanda’s lack of proletarian internationalism: 

“Another serious deviation in the leadership of CPN(M) lies in its abandoning the principle of proletarian internationalism, shelving the CCOMPOSA and the fight against Indian expansionism and US imperialism, adopting a totally nationalistic approach and sheer pragmatism in dealing with other countries and Parties. We can describe this trend as Left nationalism or radical nationalism displayed by the bourgeois class during its incipient stage of development. That is, nationalism of the national bourgeois class. Comrade Prachanda obliterates class content and class perspective, mixes up bourgeois democracy with people’s democracy and justifies all opportunist alliances as being in the interests of Nepal. When any tactic is divorced from our strategic goal of New Democratic Revolution it ends in opportunism.” (8)

“It is a great paradox that a Maoist-led government has not even ventured to severe its ties with the Zionist Israeli terrorist state particularly after its brutal blatant aggression of Gaza and the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians when governments such as those in Venezuela and Bolivia had dared to do so. Even more disgustful is the manner in which the CPN(M) leadership has been trying to get into the good books of the American imperialists. To curry favour with the American imperialists, a section of the CPN(M) leadership had even assured that it would remove the Maoist ‘tail’ from its Party name. It is high time the CPN(M) take a consistently anti-imperialist, anti-Indian expansionist approach and work to forge close, working relations with other forces worldwide to weaken imperialism and the reactionary forces.” (9) 

While the critique of Prachanda regarding proletarian internationalism is correct, the Indian document overestimates the possible unity between true communists and so-called Marxist-Leninist and Maoist parties worldwide: 

“This stand will not promote, but rather harm, the interests of Nepalese masses, undermine Nepal’s sovereignty in the long run, creates illusions on the reactionary parties in Nepal, and Indian expansionists outside. It undermines the need for a united struggle by ML parties world-wide against imperialism, particularly US imperialism.” (10)

The fact is that nearly every party today calling itself “Marxist-Leninist” and, even, “Maoist,” is revisionist. Many of them are socialist imperialist parties. There can be no strategic unity between the real revolutionary movement and the social imperialists posing as Marxists. Nearly every party calling itself “Marxist-Leninist” or “Maoist” upholds the false belief that the First World working class is an ally of the Third World. Again and again, our movement has proven that not only that there is no reasonable sense in which the First World working classes are exploited, but they are also arch-reactionary classes. They are enemies of the Third World and they are the social base of fascism in the First World. Those who uphold First Worldist revisionism will eventually end up lackeys of imperialism. Those who seek unity between the popular classes of the Third World and the reactionary classes of the First World are not Marxists, they collaborate with the enemy. They sell out the Third World to the First World. Those organizations that refuse to adopt Third Worldism (by this we DO NOT mean the reactionary Three Worlds Theory of the 1970s) are incapable of scientific analysis and cannot be consider Marxist. 

 

On Empire

 

The document correctly repudiates Prachanda’s concept of a globalized state as a new stage of imperialism: 

“The conclusion regarding globalised state goes against dialectics as it relegates inter-imperialist contradictions to the background and attempts to make imperialism as a whole into a homogeneous mass. This formulation was put forth for the first time by your Party towards the end of December 2006 after striking an alliance with the SPA. In fact, we can say that your 12-point agreement with the SPA, your decision to become part of the interim government sharing power with the comprador-feudal reactionary parties in Nepal, your participation in the elections to the Constituent Assembly and forming a government under your leadership once again with the reactionary forces, and theorizing on peaceful competition with these parties—all these had arisen from the above assessment of your Party regarding imperialism and the conclusion that it has assumed the form of a globalised state. It is only natural that such an assessment, similar to the thesis of ultra-imperialism proposed by Karl Kautsky in 1912 and which was laid bare by comrade Lenin, cannot but lead to the conclusion of a peaceful path and peaceful transition to people’s democracy and socialism. The fusion theory had ultimately led to the theory of peaceful transition! Now there is neither people’s war nor insurrection but peaceful competition with other Parliamentary parties for achieving power through elections!!” (11) 

The idea of a globalized state resembles the theory of Empire developed by Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt. Their view is that a global empire made up of transnational structures has come to replace the nation-based imperialism. There are parallels between this type of view and Kautsky’s theory of ultra-imperialism. While these views are incorrect, it is true that imperialism has changed. 

 

The idea that imperialism is stagnant and must be the same today as it was in 1917 is a metaphysical one. The imperialists have learned from their mistakes. The imperialist world wars of the past nearly wiped capitalism off the map. The first world war saw the birth of the Soviet Union. The second world war was followed by the creation of proletarian dictatorship over a fourth of humanity in China, the birth of people’s democracies across Europe, and a wave of wars of national liberation throughout the Third World. Imperialists are not likely to engage in world wars that threaten the capitalist system itself anytime soon. Instead, inter-imperialilst conflict has been de-escalated since the fall of the Soviet Union. Revolutionary movements should not bet on significant inter-imperialist conflict in the current period. More and more, the world is one where the imperialist countries as a whole are set against the imperialized countries as whole; the First World is set against the Third World. The world situation should be seen as a global people’s war where the global city is pitted against the global countryside.   

 

The way forward

 

The Indian document states:

“[The UCPN(M)] should pull out the PLA from the UN-supervised barracks which are virtually like prisons for the fighters, reconstruct the organs of people’s revolutionary power at various levels, retake and consolidate the base areas, and expand the guerrilla war, and class and mass struggles throughout the country. “ (12)

We agree with the sentiment expressed in the Indian document that Prachanda ought return to the revolutionary path. However, asking Prachanda to return to the revolutionary path is as naive as expecting revisionists to stop being revisionists or capitalists to stop being capitalists. The CPI(M) falsely believes that there is a two-line struggle still being waged with the revisionists in Nepal. Prachanda and his followers are not merely right opportunists, their behavior is textbook revisionism. There is no question about this. Just because Prachanda’s party uses Mao as an icon and plays lip service to Maoism should not shield them from repudiation as revisionists. In fact, that they wrap their revisionism in Mao’s banner makes it all the more insidious. The CPI(M) should admit that they made a serious error in maintaining fraternal relations with a revisionist party for so long. Real Maoists are not afraid to admit when they have made errors.   

 

The Communist Party of India (Maoist) correctly points out that in this time of economic crisis, there needs to be a genuine communist pole in the world. (13) This is not a time to fudge revolutionary science. If there is to be a new wave of people’s wars, then communists must lead by example. If the Communist Party of India (Maoist) or another people’s war group in the Third World embraces Maoism-Third Worldism, shock waves will be sent throughout the proletarian struggle worldwide. A new, revolutionary pole and people’s wars will emerge. Communists must repudiate all forms of revisionism, especially First Worldism. Revisionism is revisionism. Politics must be put in command otherwise “Maoism” means nothing.

 

Monkey Smashes Heaven 

June 29, 2009  

 

Notes. 

 

1. Open Letter to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/06/28/indian-maoists-on-world-controversies-among-communists/

2. ibid.

3. ibid.

4. On Recent Revisionist Yapping on Nepal,  http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/on-recent-revisionist-yapping-on-nepal/

5. Prairie Fire. Prachanda wins. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is dead, Maoism-Third Worldism lives http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/prachanda-wins-marxism-leninism-maoism-is-dead/

6. Open Letter to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) 

7. Bob Avakian. For a Harvest of Dragons. RCP Publications. USA:1983. p 150-151. “ ….to cling to at least aspects of Lin Biao-ism. Lin Biao was a top leader of the communist Party of China in the 1960s and he is associated with the line of singling out U.S. imperialism for a common onslaught from the “third world,” with simultaneous national liberation wars defeating U.S. imperialism throughout the “third world,” and even possibly destroying it altogether. His line (as expressed in a 1965 pamphlet [written by Lin Biao], Long Live The Victory of People’s War) represented the absolutizing of what was then the principal contradiction in the world (between oppressed nations and imperialism) — raising it out of context of world relations and contradictions in which it actually exists and treating it as a thing unto itself and virtually the only significant contradiction in the world. While recognizing the existence of revolutionary situations and favorable revolutionary prospects in many countries in the “third world” it exaggerated this into a tendency to treat the “third world” as an undifferentiated whole, ripe everywhere for revolution. Related to this, in upholding the importance of armed struggle as a necessary means for replacing the old order with the new and insisting on the fact that in many places in the “third world” it was possible and necessary to make armed struggle the main and immediate form of struggle — in opposition to the Soviet revisionist line that attempted to make economic development the main task in the “third world” neo-colonies — Lin Biao’s line exaggerated this to a point of virtually insisting that everywhere in the “third world” revolutionary warfare could and must be launched right away (in Long Live the victory, whether one dares to wage a people’s war is made the touchstone of distinguishing Marxism-Leninism from revisionism). As part of this whole line, the objective fact that the proletarian revolution had been delayed in the imperialist countries and that there was as yet no proletarian revolutionary movement there was absolutized, so that the prospect of such revolution in the imperialist countries was all but dismissed…
…But to attempt to cling to Lin Biaoism in the world situation of today, with all its profound changes since the 1960s, including the principal contradiction, can only have very serious and disastrous consequences…”

8. Open Letter to the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

9. ibid.

10. ibid.

11. ibid.

12. ibid

13. ibid.

 

***

 

Also see: Our Maoism and Theirs, Prachanda’s Gamble,  On the recent revisionist yapping on Nepal, Matrika Yadav will raise a people’s army?, Matrika Yadav says Prachanda’s party revolutionary in words, not deeds.. 100 cadres leave , Prachanda’s party accused of revisionism in Nepal, First Worldist fake Maoists echo Neo-cons.. no surprise to those paying attention, New Document Criticizes Revisionists in Nepal, Conjuring Mao against Maoism: Prachanda and Žižek,  Prachanda wins. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is dead, Maoism-Third Worldism lives, Simple questions by the numbers.. the majority in the United Snakes: revolutionary or not?, Interesting developments in Nepal?, Again on the “RIM” Renegades in Nepal

Coup d’état in Honduras underway, Amerikkkan involvement alleged

Coup d’état in Honduras underway, Amerikkkan involvement alleged 

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

 

Elected president Manuel Zelaya of Honduras is fighting against a military coup d’état. Days ago, tanks rolled through the streets. A dozen soldiers disarmed his personal security and entered his compound outside the capitol city of Tegucigalpa. Zelaya and his bodyguards were reportedly beaten and then exiled to Costa Rica. From Costa Rica, Zelaya still claims to be president and called on people to “defend the rule of law.”

 

“They kidnapped him like cowards,” stated Zelaya supporter Melissa Gaitan, 21, an employee of the official government television station, as tears streamed down her face. “We have to rally the people to defend our president.”

 

600 rallied at the palace to support Zelaya, hundreds of military personnel in riot gear dispersed them with tear gas. Zelaya’s supporters continue to take to the streets, confronting the military by shouting “traitors! traitors!” The media was shut down by the military. Also, the ambassadors of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba were taken hostage by the military. 

 

Many have alleged U$ involvement with the coup. Even though the U$ has made obligatory statements against the coup, it is unlikely the coup would have gone forward unless  the plotters felt that they had a degree of support from the U$. The U$ has long considered Latin America its backyard, to do with as it pleases. The Honduran military has long standing links with the U$ going back at least to the Contras. The U$ supported its mercenary army in Honduras in their war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s. Hugo Chávez of Venezuela stated, “There is a coup d’etat under way and it must be stopped.” He claimed that “The United $tates has a lot to do with this.” He went on to say that the CIA was involved. Chávez reportedly claimed that “the bourgeoisie and rich seek to transform Honduras into a banana republic, a political, military and terrorist base of the U$ and of the U$ empire.” Chávez has also promised to “bring down” any government sworn in by the coup plotters.  

 

Civic Council of People’s and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras also denounced the coup and U$ meddling, “We also denounce the interference and involvement of the U$ government and its ambassador to Honduras. Told in advance of these actions, they quit the country, and called on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and other institutions under their influence to do the same. This clearly shows their complicity with the pro-coup forces.”  

 

Fidel Castro said: “[Zelaya] forcefully denounced the crude, reactionary attempt to block an important popular referendum. That is the ‘democracy’ that imperialism defends.” 

 

Bolivian President Evo Morales expressed his “absolute rejection of any coup attempt or threat to the democratic process in the sister republic of Honduras.”

 

President Cristina Fernández of Argentina called the coup a “return to barbarism.”

 

There has been international outcry against Zelaya’s ousting. The EU denounced the coup and demanded Zelaya’s release. Also, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), and even the Organization of American States (OAS), issued statements supporting Zelaya against the coup. The coup has been condemned throughout the region. 

 

Zelaya is an ally of Hugo Chávez who is an outspoken critic of U$ imperialism. Honduras, under Zelaya’s administration, had joined the ALBA, which includes Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, Ecuador, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Antigua and Barbuda. ALBA is a bloc of trading partners that seek an alternative to U$ domination of the region. 

 

The catalyst for the coup was an unofficial vote supported by Zelaya to gauge whether or not the public supports lifting constitutional limits on presidential terms. Last Wednesday Zelaya fired the head of the military when the military refused his demand to distribute 15,000 ballot boxes for Sunday’s referendum.  Zelaya was ordered by the Supreme Court to reinstate the general even though the court does not have the legal authority to order this. When Zelaya refused, the Congress began an investigation for his refusal.

 

Sources: 

 

1. http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/800/41205

2. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=TX-PAR-LYQ71&show_article=1

3. http://www.cubanews.ain.cu/2009/0626ALBAHONDURAS.htm

4. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/lt_honduras_referendum

5. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/honduras/5675065/Coup-in-Honduras-defiant-president-arrives-in-Costa-Rica.html

6. http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/5686711/hondurass-zelaya-says-us-helped-thwart-coup-report/

7. http://www.fsrn.org/audio/headlines-friday-june-26-2009/4959

8. http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=24&art_id=nw20090628170356777C659900

9. http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/800/41204

10.http://www.telam.com.ar/vernota.php?tipo=N&dis=1&sec=1&idPub=151654&id=299608&idnota=299608

11. http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Honduras-President-Manuel-Zelaya-Deposed-In-Coup-Venezuela-Threatens-Military-Attack/Article/200906415321924?lpos=World_News_First_World_News_Article_Teaser_Region_0&lid=ARTICLE_15321924_Honduras_President_Manuel_Zelaya_Deposed_In_Coup%3A_Venezuela_Threatens_Military_Attack

12. http://www.telam.com.ar/vernota.php?tipo=N&dis=1&sec=1&idPub=151654&id=299608&idnota=299608

13. http://www.lademajagua.co.cu/infgran11257.htm

 

*

Who are the real pirates? Amerikkkan imperialists threaten northern Korean ship

Who are the real pirates? Amerikkkan imperialists threaten northern Korean ship

(lossanpatricios.wordpress.com)

 

A US Navy destroyer is poised to intercept the northern Korean, cargo ship, the Kang Nam. The US is threatening to search the vessel in order to enforce sanctions placed on northern Korea by the UN. The US suspects the vessel of transporting arms. The northern Koreans have stated that it would regard an interception as an “act of war.”

 

According to so-called international law, if the Korean ship refuses a US search, the US destroyer is not allowed to board the ship. However, the US destroyer can “escort” the Korean ship to a port to be searched by the port authorities of that country. Singapore has stated that it will search the Korean vessel on behalf of the US.

 

The Kang Nam is the first ship to be targeted by the US after UN sanctions were adopted recently.  The US has sought to provoke northern Korea since before the so-called Korean war that began in 1950, with hostilities temporarily halted since 1953 with the signing of an armistice. This latest threat by the imperialists is one in a long series of threats. Bullying of northern Korean sea commerce is yet another way that the imperialists seek to strangle the Korean people into submission. This latest threat against the Korean people reveals that it is the US and other imperialists who are the real pirates on the high seas.

 

Maoists-Third Worldists stand for the right of the northern Korean state to conduct commerce without imperialist meddling. Maoist-Third Worldists stand against imperialist intervention and attacks on Third World peoples. The UN sanctions are nothing more than thinly veiled piracy. Northern Korea’s Rodong Sinmum recently stated defiantly, “If they point a gun at us, we will get back with a cannon. If they point a cannon, we will point missiles and for sanctions, we will give them revenge. Getting back with a nuclear weapon for a nuclear weapon is what we do.”

 

Sources

 

http://tothecenter.com/news.php?readmore=10205

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE55J1GB20090621

Some tentative thoughts on “the social factory”

Some tentative thoughts on “the social factory” (1)

by Prairie Fire

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

 

The social factory

 

According to Antonio Negri, there are three distinct phases of capitalist development. And, along with these phases, three distinct types of working class. The “professional worker” is the first type. The “professional worker” is dominant from the middle of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of the World Wars. The second type is the “mass worker.” The “mass worker” is the main type from 1918 to the late 1960s. The third type is the “socialized worker.”  

 

According to proponents of this theory, in the era of the socialized worker, production is dispersed throughout society. No longer is production concentrated in factories that are distinct from other areas of society. All of social life mingles with production such that production can no longer be isolated from other social activity. Thus, all of society becomes the “social factory.” Labor power and capitalist command are dispersed throughout society to such an extent that all of society should be seen as a moment of production. The extraction of surplus value is no longer limited to the workplace. Rather, the reproduction of capital and extraction of value is bound up with every waking hour of our lives. Capitalism has transformed so that it is not just a majority that is exploited for some of the time. Rather, according to this view, in today’s capitalism, at least in the First World, everyone is dominated, “exploited” the majority of the time. Marxist dichotomies break down. Material and immaterial labor breaks down in the social factory. As does the dichotomy between base and superstructure. Such are the implications of the social factory.

 

Another consequence of this theory is that there is no sharp distinction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. As Negri states, “[t]he proletariat is everywhere, just as the boss is.”  There is no stable distinction between the immaterial labor of the socialize worker and the productive activity of  ”the boss.” Rather, to be in society is to be a producer. Instead, humanity itself is oppressed by an ever-present, totalitarian system, the social factory. (2) Here, the social factory theory intersects with Marcuse’s thesis of one dimensionality and Foucault’s analysis of power. Humanity in every aspect of life is reduced to a cog in the machine of production. The subject is always already determined by a malicious system of control. The principal adversary in such schemes is not a ruling class, but a totalitarian system. Instead of the proletariat facing off against the bourgeoisie, humanity faces off against the system. 

 

There are two main, interconnected problems with this outlook. 1) The first problem is that the social factory outlook does not reflect reality. 2) The second problem is that the social factory outlook lacks all explanatory and predictive  power.

 

Reality? 

 

What is correct about this view is that it tries to account for the obvious changes in production in the First World over the past century. Obviously production does not exist in the First World as it once did. Factories no longer dominate the lives of First World peoples. In fact, only a small percentage of people in the First World work in factories anymore. A far greater number are employed in management, services, etc. This can be described in Marx’s terms as a decline in the percentage of the population engaged in productive labor. For Marx, productive labor is labor that adds to the total social product. 

 

Maoist-Third Worldist have described this as the rise of First World, mall economies. Many First World economies can be described as a mall writ large.  Nothing is produced at the mall. Yet people are employed managing, transporting, securing, etc. goods that are produced elsewhere but are sold at the mall.  It is the influx of goods from outside the mall that keeps the mall afloat. Production is going on outside the mall, in the Third World. These goods are not secured through “fair exchange” since the mall doesn’t produce anything to begin with nor does is exchange services with those who do. The goods that keep the mall economy up and running are secured through imperialism. Obviously, like all abstract models, this is a big oversimplification. However, it makes an important point about global trends and the relationship between the non-productive segments of the First World and the productive segments of the Third World. 

 

The shift in First World employment from productive labor to non-productive labor is noteworthy because Marx saw the paradigmatic case of exploitation as the exploitation of those engaged in productive labor. Maoist-Third Worldists point out that what Marx considered exploitation no longer exists in the First World. First World workers have seen rising incomes, higher standards of living, greater access to and more varied leisure time, greater diversity of life options, greater social mobility, more and more access to capital for much of the past century. This, plus the fact that there has been nothing even close to a First World, socialist revolution, has led Maoist-Third Worldists to rightly conclude that the First World working class is no longer the revolutionary subject that Marx described as having “nothing to lose but its chains.”  In fact, the First World lacks a significant, revolutionary subject entirely; there is no First World proletariat. 

 

Instead what has occurred is that First World countries have become relatively homogenized blocks that do not contain antagonistic class contradictions. Engels referred to this process as the “bourgeoisification” of  entire  countries. Because antagonistic contradictions have been so reduced within First World countries, and even between First World countries, writers like Francis Fukuyama have declared that the end of history has been reached. Similarly, critics such as Richard Rorty are happy that First World society has reached  its current liberal, post-modern, ironic peak. Life options, fantasies, and pursuits once reserved only to the ruling classes have been democratized within the First World. This multi-dimensionality of life thrives as First World peoples have more access to leisure time today than past generations had. Such exists, however, at the expense of the Third World. 

 

P & e

 

The social factory theory has little, if any, scientific power. Everyone agrees that the capitalist system is a causal nexus that reproduces itself. The scientific approach is to isolate aspects of this process in order to better explain and predict social change. Science isolates production from other human activities within the system. Science isolates the base from the super-structure. Science isolates the phenomena of exploitation from other oppressions. Science isolates oppression that takes place at work from oppression that takes place in the context of the family, for example. Science describes as much of the system as possible quantitatively. Hence,  science measures exploitation within populations. Science describes other mechanisms of oppression mathematically, such as unequal exchange. Science takes a rigorous approach to distribution and justice. All of this is at the very heart of revolutionary science, Maoism-Third Worldism. Instead of approaching the processes of capitalism scientifically, the unscientific, social factory theorist mystifies these processes and mixes them altogether into a single, mysterious whole. Scientific terms such as “exploitation,” “production,” “labor,” “oppression,” even “proletariat,” become stripped, with only the vaguest meaning remaining. Instead of a scientific analysis of how capitalism works in the concrete, we are left only with a dystopian just-so story about a totalitarian system so mysterious that it cannot be understood except in metaphors, a fantasy of the First World left to justify its meager existence. 

 

Notes

 

1. These thoughts are a response to the following question:

 

“Dear Maoist-Third worldists, 

 

The Autonomists believed that “workers” in first world countries produce surplus value while even outside of the factory – through creation of cultural objects, thorugh ruminating about how to solve problems at work, and so forth. Can this theory of the social factory account for any profits perhaps created by workers in the first world, thus being exploited? Or is it a sham?” 

 

2. Anti-capitalists movements. December, 2001. http://freelyassociating.org/anti-capitalist-movements/

 

One billion go hungry.. socialism is better than capitalism

One billion go hungry.. socialism is better than capitalism

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com) 

 

The global financial meltdown has had devastating effects for the world’s poor according to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization. War, drought, political instability, high food prices are compounded by the financial meltdown. Today, according to the UN’s FAO, over one billion people go hungry. Hunger now affects one in six people. 

 

Since last year, 100 million more people have slipped into hunger. The number of hungry people has risen  11 percent. The number of hungry people is estimated to have reached 1.02 billion according to a recent UN report.  In addition, the hunger rate is rising. The number of hungry people is growing more quickly than the global population. 

 

Asia and the Pacific have the largest number of hungry people at 642 million. Sub-Saharan Africa has 265 million hungry people. The entire “developed world” has, by comparison, 15 million hungry people. The vast majority of all the world’s hungry people exist in the Third World. These statistics once again point to the very concrete way that imperialism affects the lives of those in the Third World, driving them into extreme poverty and despair. And, it shows how imperialism affects the lives of those in the First World largely insulating them from catastrophic hunger as experienced by the Third World.  

 

Hunger, as defined by the UN’s FAO, is consuming less than 1,800 calories a day. This threshold is, on average, the number of calories that a person needs to maintain their body weight.

 

UN officials are worried that crossing this 1 billion milestone does not bode well for imperial stability.  Josette Sheeran of the World Food Program, a UN agency based in Rome, pointed out that hungry people rioted in at least 30 countries last year. In one case, high food prices led to riots in Haiti that overthrew the prime minister.  According to the FAO, on average, food prices were 24 percent higher in real terms at the end of 2008 compared to 2006. “A hungry world is a dangerous world,” Sheeran said. “Without food, people have only three options: They riot, they emigrate or they die. None of these are acceptable options.” Of course, there is another option: socialist revolution. 

 

Those who think that capitalism has a better track record than socialism should take a closer look. Capitalism has never come close to solving the problem of hunger. Instead global capitalism has generated a situation where hunger is mostly eliminated for a minority of very wealthy countries, and massive hunger exists for the vast majority of poor countries. One billion people go hungry every day under global capitalism, almost all live in the Third World. Although socialist societies experienced problems as society was reorganized to try to eliminate oppression, eventually socialist societies were able to solve the food problem for the most part. When Mao came to power in China, a quarter of the world’s population lived under the threat of hunger and famine. And, sadly, China once again faces the problems of capitalism. However, by the end of the Mao era, this threat no longer existed. Socialism solved the food question for a quarter of humanity. And, unlike the imperialist countries of the First World, socialist China solved its food issue without exploiting other countries. Contrary to capitalism, socialism solves its food problems peacefully. 

 

Sources

 

1. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090619/ap_on_re_eu/eu_un_world_hunger