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The Decline of the RCP [Excerpt]
A Polemic by the Organization for Revolutionary Unity
[This is approximately the first half of the pamphlet published by the ORU around
1983. It includes the introductory overview material and the section on the mass line. The
entire pamphlet is available on this site in the form of an Adobe Acrobat document (325 KB) at:
http://www.massline.info/rcp/ORUvsRCP.pdf
The ORU was a small group which formed around 1982 with the merger of the Committee
for a Proletarian Party (CPP) and the Communist Organization, Bay Area (COBA). It announced
its existence with a public statement in March 1983. It had members along the West Coast,
especially in the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego. After putting out this and another
couple pamphlets ("Nature of Soviet Society", and "Central America: Imperialism and
Revolution") the ORU "turned increasingly to practice, in the Rainbow [coalition] and
the movement around El Salvador". The ORU merged into the newly formed Freedom Road
Socialist Party in 1986. (See the FRSO Page
for more information about that group’s view of the mass line.) The endnote references
in the excerpt below have been added by Scott H. as part of this posting on
MASSLINE.INFO.]
When the revisionists rose to state power in China in the 1970’s, the international
communist movement was dealt a devastating blow. It is to the credit of the Revolutionary
Communist Party, USA that it rose in defense of the historic contributions of Mao Tsetung
and the revolutionary left in China.
At that historical juncture the groups that went on to found the Organization for
Revolutionary Unity shared some common viewpoints with the RCP, USA on repudiating Chinese
revisionism as well as rejecting the "reversal of verdict" by the Party of Labor of
Albania on Mao Tsetung and the Chinese socialist revolution. It is these seemingly common
views on critical questions that make it necessary for the ORU to explain to other
communists and revolutionaries why it has deep and substantial differences with the RCP.
Beneath a superficial unity there were significant differences from the outset on how
to assess the setback in China. As has become more evident lately with the RCP’s more
comprehensive critique of Mao Tsetung, longstanding ideological tendencies in the RCP ran
against the grain of much of Mao’s theory and practice. These tendencies help to explain
why when the RCP arose and developed with some significant initial promise, as did many
other groups in the anti-revisionist movement world-wide, it has now become an increasingly
isolated and opportunist sect.
RCP has grappled with many of the burning contradictions challenging Marxist-Leninists
in the USA who have been struggling to forge the necessary strategy and tactics to make
a revolution in an advanced capitalist country. This is why examining the RCP necessarily
involves us in a much broader assessment of the anti-revisionist movement as a whole.
Although our polemic with the RCP, USA will concentrate on our differences with that
organization, we do not mean to imply that it has made no significant positive contributions
to the revolutionary movement in this country or that it has ceased altogether to make any
further advances. A number of the efforts of the RCP have helped, whether directly or
indirectly, to push forward the development of the whole anti-revisionist movement.
In the last few years, the RCP has done much in publications, public forums, and
demonstrations to champion the contributions of Mao Tsetung and the revolutionary left in
China. At the same time, it has played a key role in exposing the reactionary role of the
Chinese revisionists led by Teng Hsiao-ping and Hua Kuo-feng. Not confused by the claims
of the Chinese revisionists that Mao authored the theory of three worlds as a strategic
line for world revolution, the RCP has polemicized against this theory and exposed China’s
counter-revolutionary alliance with U.S. imperialism. The RCP also was quick to rebut
the Party of Labor of Albania when it trecherously reversed its verdict and began to openly
attack Mao’s contributions, the role of the Chinese Communist Party, and the advances of
socialism in China.
There are also some positive aspects to the RCP’s recent efforts to build international
unity among Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations, especially its translation and
publication of documents from other groups and the sponsoring of tours in this country.
Until recently when the direction of RCP became clear with the publication of Bob Avakian’s
"Conquer the World",[1] much of RCP’s theoretical work,
despite obvious problems, appeared to be more advanced than its practice. This seemed to
be the case, for example, with its critical examination of the history of the international
communist movement, such as in "On the Outcome of World War II and the Prospects for
Revolution in the West"[2] and "The ‘General Line Proposal
(1963)’ — A Critical Appraisal".[3]
What is now evident is that these theoretical efforts are culminating in the consolidation
of an idealist, ultra-left, and Trotskyite ideological general line within the organization.
Whereas before, one of our main criticisms would have been that RCP’s defense of Mao Tsetung
in theory was contradicted by its bad practice, we can see now that the theory has been
revamped to serve and justify such practice.
To gain a better understanding of why the RCP is fast departing from a Marxist-Leninist
ideological and political line on revolution in this country and on world revolution, it may
be useful to briefly relate the history of the organization. The predecessor of the RCP,
the Revolutionary Union, formed in 1968 in the San Francisco Bay Area. Although a few of the
founding members had been members of the Communist Party, USA, most of its membership were
young students and intellectuals new to the communist movement. While the early RU tended
to fight for a Marxist-Leninist perspective on the revolutionary struggle in the USA, it was
still heavily influenced by many New Left ideas and practices. It still tended to accommodate
a Marxist stand with the prevalent adventurism and counter-cultural approach of the
revolutionary youth movement. The most important influence in the early development of the
RU was the Black Panther Party. Although the RU followed some of the positive motion of the
Panthers in calling for armed revolution and popularizing the works of Mao Tsetung, it also
tended to conciliate to the negative aspects. Prominent among these were narrow nationalism,
glorification of the lumpen-proletariat, and blatant male chauvinism.
We are not implying that RCP should be criticized for some of its unorthodox views and
practices in the early years, just that these origins shed light on some of the deeply
ingrained ideological tendencies in the history of the organization—tendencies that seem to
be shooting up again in full force. In some interesting ways, the RCP appears to be vainly
trying to recapture some of the spirit of its youthful experiences. Those experiences
occurred in the context of a period in which millions of people world-wide were propelled
into revolutionary motion, sparked by the Vietnamese liberation struggle and the Chinese
Cultural Revolution. Here in the USA, the Black and Latino liberation movements added
impetus to this motion.
Given the fact that this revolutionary movement was still in its early development,
much of the "leftist" excesses of the period were understandable. And the Revolutionary
Union was no stranger to such excesses and unrealistic expectations. But in the 1980’s it
seems a cruel irony to find what should be a mature Marxist-Leninist organization trying
to rekindle some kind of lost or misplaced revolutionary spirit of the 1960’s.
White Chauvinism and Trotskyism: Some History
In the early years, the Revolutionary Union played a generally progressive role in
upholding and propagating Marxism. Thus, it was not unexpected that the incompatible
mixture of Marxism and New Leftism would lead to some form of political and organizational
split. In 1970 a faction within the RU split away and formed a short-lived group called
Venceremos. The positions that the Venceremos group were advancing represented a reworking
of the Weatherman position that the oppressed nationalities were the most revolutionary
force.
Venceremos charged that the oppressed nationalities in the USA were living under
conditions of fascism and that the correct strategy for revolution was the model of urban
guerrilla warfare. Venceremos probably came closest to representing the general world-wide
strategy of People’s War as advocated by the anarchist ultra-left wing within the Chinese
Communist Party during the period of the Cultural Revolution. This position postulated that
the world was gripped by a high tide of revolution and that the principal revolutionary
forces were the oppressed peoples of the colonial and dependent countries.
The majority of the membership of RU repudiated the line of Venceremos and upheld the
leading role of the multi-national industrial working class and the strategy of armed
insurrection in a developed imperialist country like the USA. On the whole, the split
with Venceremos was positive, with the RU able to identify and reject anarchism on these
major line questions. However, one unwelcome by-product of this split was the development
of a position on the relation between proletarian class struggle and the national movements
which tended to liquidate the independent revolutionary character of the latter.
While the RCP had repudiated the anarchist ultra-leftism of the urban guerrilla
warfare strategy, its struggle with the revolutionary nationalist position of Venceremos
propelled it in the direction of a Trotskyite stance on the national liberation struggles.
The primary ideological source for this Trotskyism was the strength of while chauvinism
within the organization, with the great majority of the RU cadre coming from white and
middle class backgrounds. These cadre are to be censured not for their background but
for their relative lack of success in overcoming its ideological baggage.
The RU’s deviations on the national question were the main factor which precipitated
the second major split in its organization in late 1973. Since 1972 the RU had been meeting
with the Black Workers Congress and the Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers Organization
in a National Liaison Committee, which was to lay the basis for the formation of a new
communist party. Within the committee, the RU waged a correct struggle insofar as it
pointed out that Marxism-Leninism is not to be confused with the ideology of revolutionary
nationalism. But this correct struggle turned into its opposite when it eventually led
to the position that Bundism, or narrow nationalism, was the main danger and had been for
some time within the new communist movement. This led to an irreversible split with the
BWC and PRRWO; and a small grouping, including a significant number of its Black members,
left the RU.
The RU’s new stand on the great danger of Bundism provided a convenient cover for the
organization’s longstanding problem with overcoming white chauvinism within its own ranks.
This problem with white chauvinism very soon bore fruit when in 1974 the RU put out the
call to smash the Boston Busing Plan. In calling for this action, the RU objectively put
itself in the camp of the reactionary forces who were opposed to busing for racist reasons.
This was the result of RU’s general line which pitted its false idea of working class
unity against real multi-national unity.
In subsequent positions on busing in other cities, the RU backed off from full-scale
opposition to busing as a means for redressing educational discrimination and generally
tried to soften its Trotskyite liquidation of the revolutionary aspects of national
struggles. But this change represented only a half-hearted political retreat, for as
we can see now, Trotskyism has rebounded to full favor within the present RCP. While Bob
Avakian once railed against Bundism as the great danger within the communist movement
in the USA, in his recent pronouncements in "Conquer the World" he has elevated nationalism
to the principal problem of the international communist movement since its beginning.
This is Trotskyism returned with a vengeance, Trotskyism masquerading under an increasingly
thin "Maoist" facade.
Economism and Chinese Revisionism: Some History
Following the split with Venceremos back in 1970, the RU plunged headlong into the task
of attempting to fuse Marxism-Leninism with the working class. Not surprisingly, much of
their practice in this period could be characterized as rightist in essence; economism,
pragmatism, "workerism" were typical deviations. Still, this rightist practice involved
in trying to fuse with the working class was forced into a shotgun wedding with much of
the ultra-left rhetoric, techniques, and tactics left over from RU’s New Left period.
The rightism of this middle period is not unexpected for such a young, inexperienced
revolutionary organization facing such a difficult task. In the 1970’s the U.S. working
class as a whole and the industrial workers in particular were still relatively backward
in terms of their political consciousness. Having come off an unprecedented period of
economic prosperity and a rising standard of living which had lasted through much of the
1960’s, the workers in the U.S. were not ripe for revolutionary struggle and not even
very militant in defense of their narrow economic interests. There seemed to be a common
assumption underlying RU’s practice at this time that if its members integrated themselves
well enough into the level of economic struggle of the working class, they would be well
positioned to give leadership to the imminent revolutionary struggle into which this same
working class was about to throw itself.
With the formation of the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1975, rightism in the
organization reached a whole new stage of development. Although RCP was making some
progress in understanding the economist nature of its past work and was struggling to
overcome it, its line that economic struggle was the center of gravity of the party’s
work still boxed the organization into economist positions and
practices.[4]
This struggle against right opportunism intensified and became a full-scale battle
with a "revisionist headquarters" within the party after the death of Mao Tsetung in
1976 and the seizure of power in the CPC by revisionist elements led by Hua Kuo-feng
and Teng Hsiao-ping. When a majority of the leadership of the RCP, led by its chairman,
correctly summed up the events in China as a defeat for the Marxist-Leninists and tried
to arm the organization with this understanding, a faction within the central committee
split from the organization and took with it approximately a third of the membership.
This faction formed itself into the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters[5]
and distinguished itself by defending the revisionist leadership in China and wholeheartedly
embracing much of the economist practice which had plagued the RCP for the previous few
years.
While at the time this split with the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters seemed
justified and necessary, it also tended to unleash with full fury some of the longstanding
ultra-left tendencies within the RCP. In what seemed to be a generally correct struggle
against revisionism, opposition to ultra-leftism was apparently disarmed. The Revolutionary
Workers Headquarters was able to foretell some of the impending degeneration of the RCP when
it focused its criticism on what it called RCP’s "left idealist" line. Sure enough, RCP
entered upon a new stage of development in which its main weaknesses assumed the form of
left opportunism.
It is not pre-ordained, of course, that every split in an organization like the RCP has
to assume the form of a pitched battle between Marxism and revisionism. There is always
the alternative that the slings and arrows that each faction hurls at each other could
be on target. In the case of the RCP, ultra-left lines, policies and practices have gained
in such strength in recent years that the positive contributions it has made in defending
Mao Tsetung and the revolutionary left in China are fast being undermined.
One of the more absurd although sadly predictable manifestations of this ultra-leftism
was the emergence of an infantile cult of personality devoted to the RCP’s chairman, Bob
Avakian. The cult seemed to spring up rather spontaneously during the period of the split
with the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters. This probably represented, at least in part,
the confusion of cadre poorly prepared ideologically, searching for some sort of idolatrous
certainty. If the cult of personality was initially spontaneous, it was soon to be
consciously manipulated by the RCP during the Mao Tsetung Defendants campaign. At that
time, the patently ridiculous assertion that a U.S. revolution was impossible
without the leadership of Bob Avakian became commonplace among RCP cadre.
With much of the impetus apparently coming from its chairman, the RCP is rapidly
constructing a new ideological edifice for what is described as a "revolutionary
communist/proletarian internationalist trend". One of the chief new tenets of this trend
is that "Maoism without Leninism is nationalism... and bourgeois democracy". (Conquer
the World, p. 39) Mao is criticized, among other things, for a tendency to view world
revolution as a process which happens principally country by country. Instead, RCP is now
emphatic that revolution is conditioned mainly by what happens in the world as a whole
and that we are dealing with an integral world revolutionary process which assumes a
spiral development leading up to the decisive global conjunctures.
In the present conditions in the world, RCP argues further that the principal
contradiction is no longer that between the great imperialist superpowers and the peoples
of the colonial and neo-colonial countries, but instead has become the contradiction
between the two superpower blocs headed by the USA and USSR. (Basic Principles for
the Unity of Marxist-Leninists and for the Line of the International Communist Movement,
RCP-Chile, RCP-USA, p. 2 and 7.[6]) This situation heightens
the danger of world war, and thus dictates a more intense struggle against nationalism,
especially social chauvinism.
When this analysis is translated by RCP into a political line and practice, the
effort to fight national oppression and unite the working class movement with the
struggles of the oppressed nationalities is pushed into the background. As evidenced by
the 1980 May Day actions and since, RCP’s attempts to mobilize and organize the
class-conscious proletariat customarily assumes the form of super-revolutionary
elitism, adventurism, and anarchist propaganda by the deed. With the highly charged
campaign around boosting the distribution of the Revolutionary Worker, RCP
exhibits still another full-blown deviation, committed by an abundant number of other
so-called anti-revisionists, of an idealist revolution-by-rhetoric line which tends
to absolutize the role of agitation and propaganda and belittle the leadership role of
communists in mass struggles for reform as well as for revolution.
We in the ORU believe that this is a period in which mass political consciousness
must be developed by patient and consistent work among the masses together with the
broad dissemination of revolutionary agitation and propaganda. While it is not
impossible that a revolutionary situation might emerge from some cataclysmic change in
conditions during the 1980’s, we consider this very improbable. Ours is a protracted
struggle within the strongest bourgeois fortress on earth. The development of objective
conditions at home and the collapse of the imperialist system abroad will create the
revolutionary opportunity, not the actions of a handful of rebels.
In the rest of this paper, we will attempt to expand on these points. The polemic
will be divided into four main sections, covering the topics of the mass line, the
united front, the nature of communist work in trade unions, and the relation between
proletarian revolution and the national movements.
The Mass Line
One of Mao’s greatest contributions to the international communist movement in both
theory and practice was the development of the mass line. There are many related aspects
to the mass line, but its essence involves the struggle to achieve a revolutionary
relationship between communists and the masses. If communists carry out the mass line
correctly, they will remain inseparably linked with the masses while leading them to
struggle for their genuine revolutionary interests.
When we recognize the particular historical context for Mao’s efforts in developing
the mass line approach, we can understand why the major thrust of what he is advocating
emphasizes that communists must be good at integrating with the masses. Within China,
Mao had to be most concerned with the historical task of combatting Confucianism and
the heavy weight of the traditional Mandarin bureaucracy. In addition, Mao was in a
position to sum up the experiences of several decades of building socialism in the
Soviet Union and concluded that a major source of degeneration of the communist party
and the proletarian dictatorship was their increasing bureaucratization, overcentralization,
and the use of commandist methods in relation to the masses.
Hence, in order to combat these deviations from the mass line, Mao felt obliged to
affirm and stress the revolutionary role of the masses themselves. In other words, what
was important for communists to recognize was that before they could put themselves
forward as teachers of the masses, they had to first learn how to be good pupils. To be
good puils, they had to adopt the orientation, as Mao says, that "the masses are the
real heroes while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant..." (Preface and Post-script
to Rural Surveys[7]).
Since the split with the Revolutionary Workers Headquarters, the main thrust of RCP’s
activities appears to be cutting in the opposite direction from that of Mao. Whereas in
the middle 1970’s the RCP could have been justifiably accused of believing that the
economic militancy of the U.S. working class would spontaneously intensify into full-scale
political struggle, in recent years it seems to have become increasingly cynical about
the revolutionary potential of the basic industrial proletariat of this country. It has
gone in search of what it calls the "real proletariat" and resorted more and more to
bold "vanguard" actions which will shock, jolt, and propel the masses into revolutionary
action.
The chair of the organization, Bob Avakian, has even been so bold as to question the
applicability of the mass line to the conditions of this country. He is ready to concede
that the mass line might have made some sense in China where the revolutionary movement
could draw on the national sentiments of the people. But in the USA with such a large
bought-off and bourgeoisified sector of the working class and the apparent necessity of
going against the tide of nationalism in order to seize the opportunity of revolution
out of the danger of world war, trying to put the mass line into practice would probably
mean capitulating to imperialism.[8]
Of course, this new ideological twist only serves to justify the kind of practice that
RCP has been prone to, in one form or another, since the early years of its predecessor,
the Revolutionary Union. For example, one of the more well-known tactics of the RCP for
a long time has been the so-called "Single Spark Method". In its 1975 program, RCP
describes it as the method to "seize on every spark of struggle, fan and spread it as
broadly as possible throughout the working class and among its allies" (p. 107). RCP
further characterizes it as one of the key methods for building the united front against
imperialism and one of the main weapons for both the party and the working class.
This single spark method of operation has usually taken the form of RCP cadre
scurrying around to find out where the action is and intervening from the outside into
an arena where there happens to be a high level of mass struggle. When the struggle dies
down, they move on. This kind of method has always been a dead give-away for detecting
the basic orientation of a group of petit-bourgeois revolutionists who prefer to avoid
the protracted and mundane work of educating and organizing the masses on a daily basis
to integrate their battles for reforms with the struggle for revolution. Of course,
given the RCP’s subsequent disdain for reform struggles, not even full-fledged prairie
fires could attract their attention. Only global conflagrations need apply.
This seems to be one of the underlying reasons that RCP’s overall activities
typically take the form of one big, exhilarating public relations campaign after
another. For a while it was Revolutionary May Day; then it was 100,000 Revolutionary
Workers a week; and every new campaign is billed as a big qualitative leap in the
revolutionary movement in the USA. Slower quantitative development is not exciting
enough; RCP seems bent on making revolution in this country almost solely on the basis
of flying leaps.
As Avakian puts it, the RCP is the "Silky Sullivan of the proletarian
revolution"[9] straining to catch up with the rapidly
ripening conditions for world war and revolution. The party will have to make a lot of
radical ruptures and dramatic leaps forward to meet the challenges of the coming
conjuncture. On the face of it, it is difficult not to regard this approach as voluntarism
run amuck. The results seem predictable: a lot of cadre end up taking a flying leap into
a self-constructed brick wall, get burned out, demoralized, disorientated, and leave in
disgust.
If we take a close look at the history of the RCP going back a few years, we can see
that it has been grappling with some very real problems and contradictions involved in
trying to link the day-to-day struggle of the masses with the revolutionary goal of
socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. It has struggled to stick to what it
calls the "high, hard road" and carry out revolutionary work among sectors of the U.S.
working class that have been only marginally responsive to the RCP’s clarion call to
take up such struggle.
We are not trying to argue that such a task is easy, only that we don’t need a line,
method, and policies which make a hard task that much more difficult. This task is
definitely made more difficult by RCP’s distorted understanding and implementation of
the mass line.
The very real contradictions that have to be resolved in carrying out the mass line
follow from the fact that the mass line is not supposed to just mirror the spontaneous
level of consciousness of the masses at any given time, but is supposed to enable
communists to give political leadership that the masses themselves have the potential
to see is correct. The masses are not a "blank slate" but are predisposed to take
certain actions based on their ideological preconceptions and perceived needs. Under
capitalism, where the dominant ideology is bourgeois, there will always be a contradiction
between what the masses are conditioned to perceive as their needs and what their actual
needs are.
The role of communists is to help the masses sum up their own understanding, initially
unsystematic and contradictory, of what their real needs are. This task is accomplished
by revolutionary agitation and propaganda in conjunction with giving leadership to the
day-to-day struggles of the masses for reforms. Periodically, mass struggles will
develop which have an inherently revolutionary thrust, but it would be a grave mistake
for communists to try to manufacture or concoct some kind of "revolutionary struggle".
The task of "following through" on agitation and propaganda and trying to integrate the
struggle for reforms with the struggle for revolution is necessarily a protracted process
with many twists and turns, setbacks and advances, wherein the masses learn from their
own experience in struggle and are thrust into motion by the ripening objective
conditions.
The RCP abandons such a materialist approach in favor of an idealist, semi-anarchist
line which glorifies the model of a small, bold group of super-revolutionary heroes, pure
and uncorrupted by reform struggles, who engage in isolated vanguard actions that are
supposed to serve as electrifying examples for the masses themselves.
The RCP appears convinced that when it heroically goes against the tide and even gets
itself isolated and scorned with thought-provoking slogans like "Red, White and Blue,
We Spit on You", that in the end the masses will recognize that it was right all along.
This is one of the principal reasons that it is undaunted in proselytizing the value of
propaganda by the deed, shocking actions that will shake the masses from their bourgeois
slumber. An example of this orientation can be found in its sum up of the 1980 May Day
campaign: "In the same way that May First was a manifesto—jolting people awake, reawakening
feelings and yearnings for a way out of this madness, and posing the alternatives sharply
to millions—many of the actions that built for May First were themselves a powerful form
of agitation." ("Welding of a Class-Conscious Force", p. 18 of Revolution, July,
1980.) Among the actions it lists are "slapping the May Day manifesto on George Meany’s
coffin as it was carried into the funeral" and "the splashing of red paint in the faces
of U.S. and Soviet UN representatives".
Not surprisingly, these actions elicit a counter-attack from the ruling class. Having
elicited the counter-attack the RCP desires, it then attempts to capitalize on its plight
to manufacture greater publicity for its organization and its leadership. This whole
media-grabbing tactic is justified by the RCP on the grounds that "revolution proceeds
by giving rise to a strong and united counter-revolution" (ibid., p. 19). What the RCP
should seriously ask itself is whether its actions are doing more to unite and strengthen
the counter-revolutionary forces than they are doing to build the revolutionary movement.
To be attacked by the enemy is a good thing only insofar as the attack is in response to
a successful effort to educate, organize, and mobilize the masses for revolutionary class
struggle.
When other groups criticize RCP for adventurism and impetuosity, RCP usually responds
that these groups are hopelessly reformist, "advising these workers to have more patience
and accept the slow death of preoccupying themselves with struggles around ‘the immediate
concerns of the masses’".[10] The RCP betrays its
petit-bourgeois elitism and arrogance by not being at all troubled about the immediate
concerns of the masses. RCP justifies this "revolutionary" indifference by pointing to
the necessity of diverting the struggle of the masses around their immediate needs onto
the high, hard road of revolutionary struggle for state power. As Avakian expressed it
bluntly in his speech "Coming from Behind to Make Revolution",[11]
"I’ll even say that we’ve got to have a conscious determination not to link up with all
the struggles of the masses." (p. 14.)
While Avakian qualifies his statement to assure his listeners that the RCP would
support all genuine outbreaks of mass protest and rebellion, what his advice has led to
in practice is a retreat all along the line from the immediate struggles of the masses,
a disdain for winning reforms, and such fear of tailing the working class movement that
little real linking up with its day-to-day struggles is now taking place.
Of course, this aloofness only fuels the anti-communist prejudices of the masses who
have been well conditioned to view communists as being hopelessly impractical utopians
who have little concern for people’s needs but only want to use them for their own ends.
RCP may fancy that it is heroically going against the tide of the bourgeois prejudices
which are influential among the masses, but it is really only reinforcing them.
Consciousness and Struggle
RCP activities in recent years are clear evidence of a general retreat from giving
any real leadership to the spontaneous struggles of the masses. This retreat has been
justified on a number of different bases. RCP will commit itself only to "genuinely
revolutionary struggles", not run-of-the-mill spontaneous mass struggles for reforms.
Confining their attention to revolutionary struggles considerably narrows the scope
of their activities, especially when these struggles are defined usually as the
semi-anarchist, adventurist, isolated actions of their own members and close supporters.
For RCP, advocating organizing the masses to struggle for reforms of any kind smacks
too much of a Menshevik, economist line of trying to "reduce the ranks of communists
to promoting struggles for immediate, palpable results." ("Create Public Opinion,
Seize Power!", p. 30.[12])
Instead of trying to provide revolutionary direction to the spontaneous mass
movements, RCP borrows a phrase from Mao, "Create Public Opinion, Seize Power!", to
elaborate a line which focuses on revolutionary agitation in a newspaper as the
central task of communists. The trouble with phrases when they are taken out of
context and mechanically applied is that they do not often give very dialectical
advice about the complicated task of making a revolution in an advanced capitalist
country like the USA. If it is not obvious from RCP’s theory, it should be crystal
clear from its practice that it severs the dialectical relationship between struggle
and consciousness.
RCP is correct in asserting that people’s consciousness is incredibly important
in preparing to seize state power. But what it fails to solve is how to build up
people’s revolutionary consciousness during what can be a very long preparatory
period typified by non-revolutionary conditions. Developing such revolutionary
consciousness is affected by revolutionary agitation and propaganda, but to isolate
these two factors as cause and effect is to lapse into an idealist analysis. What
is missing is the living link established between agitation and propaganda and the
experience of the masses gained directly in struggle.
When the role of communists is effectively eliminated in giving leadership to
the struggle of the masses for reforms, their role as effective agitators and
propagandists in creating public opinion is drastically diminished. What RCP fails
to realize, even in being able to win the advanced, is that public opinion will be
created in proportion to the success of its protracted and varied preparatory work
of organizing the masses to fight for their interests. The masses learn principally
through struggle and the summing up of this ongoing struggle against oppression.
When RCP makes revolutionary agitation the center of gravity of its work, it may
be successful in combatting past economist errors, but it is certainly not assuring
itself of developing beyond a small and irrelevant propaganda sect. This fate is
being realized by the RCP largely because not only is it still groping in the dark
to relate consciousness to struggle, but also it still only has the faintest idea
about how to integrate the struggle for reforms with the struggle for revolution.
[End of excerpt]
[Notes]
[These citations and explanatory notes have been added by Scott H.
for this posting of the ORU document on MASSLINE.INFO.]
1 "Conquer the World? The International Proletariat Must and Will", by Bob
Avakian. This 50-page speech took up an entire issue of the RCP’s journal
Revolution [vol. 6, No. 2 (Whole number 50), December 1981].
2 "On the Outcome of World War II and the Prospects for Revolution in the
West", by "C.R.", The Communist, vol. 2, #2, Summer/Fall 1978, pp.
61-113.
3 "The ‘General Line Proposal (1963)’—A Critical Appraisal", unsigned article,
Revolution, vol. 4, #6 (June 1979), p. 24ff.
4 The RCP’s "center of gravity" formulation appeared in Bob Avakian’s article
"The Day to Day Struggle and the Revolutionary Goal", Revolution, May
15, 1976. This was the third article in a three-part series that was later
published as the pamphlet The Mass Line (1976). The entire pamphlet
is available online on this site at: http://www.massline.info/rcp/ml_rcp.htm
Later on the RCP abandoned and criticized this
"center of gravity" formulation. See: "‘Center of Gravity’ Repudiated: Economic
Struggle and Revolutionary Tasks", unsigned article, Revolution, vol. 3,
#10 [called "vol. 3, #9" on the the cover], July 1978, pp. 3, 16-17.
5 The Revolutionary Workers Headquarters group split off from the RCP early in
1978. It operated as an independent organization for several years, and then
merged with some other groups to form the Freedom Road Socialist Organization
in 1985. Ironically, despite the ORU’s criticism of the RWH in this pamphlet,
the ORU also merged into the newly formed FRSO in 1986.
6 Basic Principles for the Unity of Marxit-Leninists and for the Line of the
International Communist Movement, by the RCP, Chile and the RCP, USA. This
document was published as a pamphlet by the RCPUSA early in 1981.
7 Mao Tsetung, Selected Works, vol. III, p. 12.
8 Unfortunately the ORU pamphlet does not provide a citation for the remarks
against the applicability of the mass line in the U.S., which it attributes to
Bob Avakian. It would be interesting to know his exact words on this matter.
9 Bob Avakian, Coming from Behind to Make Revolution, [pamphlet], RCP
Publications, 1980. This document was originally published as a supplement to
the RCP’s newspaper under the title "Is Revolution Really Possible this Decade
and What Does May First Have to Do With It?", Revolutionary Worker, issue
#49, April 11, 1980.
10 [Citation to be added.]
11 See note 9 above.
12 "Create Public Opinion, Seize Power!" [Citation to be added.]
— End —
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