Oppose Leftist Thought, Combat Rightist Thinking!

Chairman Mao and his close followers always stressed a certain point when it came to uniting all the forces than can be united to fight your enemy. They constantly wrote and spoke of the need to resist both leftist and rightist tendencies when it came to figuring who can be united with and who can not be.


To be a leftist in this sense meant to isolate yourself from potential ally's. To not unite with someone because they were not as radical as you or because they were not willing to push the issues to the same extreme that you were willing to. To look at a moderate communist and call him reactionary and struggle against him because he is not as radical as you is another example of this leftist thinking.


I have been guilty of leftist thinking and actions before and it is something I constantly self-criticize and try to improve about myself.


To relate it to today; many groups will not unite over what is in the objective realm of the real world meaningless line issues. I personally have been attacked as a reactionary imperialist supporter by MList simply because I view the USSR after a certain point as imperialist (I see no reason to call them social or red imperialist because imperialism is imperialism). Those individuals refuse to unite with me even though we agree on 80% of everything. This an example of leftist thinking and action.


Leftist thinking is hurtful to our goals as communist (as is rightist but I'll get to that). It stops us from uniting with the other progressive forces to fight whatever is being fought at that time. It isolates us to the extent that our voice is irrelevant and too small to make a noise. It also isolates us to the viewing public and the masses as a whole. How can we be taken seriously by the masses if they see us willing to split with fellow communist over the most trivial things?


To be a rightist in this sense is to unite with forces that should not be united with. To be more blunt it is the idea that we should "unite with everyone" regardless of what is going on in the struggle at that time. An example of this is the communist parties who's members took part in the Obama election under the guise that "they were working with the masses and that is where the masses were". This is very dangerous because while the group maybe participating with masses of people they are pushing the masses towards a reactionary idea and mind set. It gives a communist a false sense of accomplishing something when really they will just be advancing a reactionary line.


But I must state that these leftist and rightist ideas must be decided and combated on an issue to issue basis. For example; uniting with liberals to advance propaganda for universal health care is okay and should be done. But to campaign with liberals for liberal candidates (no matter their party) is a rightist line and should be halted at all cost!


In short conclusion we should be uniting with all of those WHO CAN BE UNITED WITH. However, we should not be uniting with forces that should not be united with. Communist should be constantly reviewing their situations and doing what they can to further advance and advocate communist ideas. If who you are working with is compromising that goal you are probably using a rightist line. If you are not accomplishing anything because you are refusing to unite with other radicals then you are probably advocating a leftist line.


(I decided to leave names of ORGs out of this post because it is really up to the individuals of a party or organization to combat these two extremes and find the correct allies to unite with and I didn't want members of those ORGs to see their groups name and stop reading the article because they viewed it as critical. Which is something that the left seems allergic to doing or hearing about their groups.) 

Some Thoughts on the Occupy Wall St. Movement.

I, like most of the American left have been following the Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS) very closely. Unfortunately due to finals and my partner plus myself being sick. I've not been able to go down to my local occupy movement.

When the "occupations" first started I was very wary of their origins and who was behind organizing them etc etc. This obviously was eventually discussed on Facebook between me and a friend to which Mike Ely from the Kasama Project asked me: "Share with me your "I don't know what I feel about it"? I am curious why some decent people are so ambivalent." Besides the fact that I was flattered that he called us "decent people" he raised a great point. Before I could answer him my friend replied with about the same answer I would have given: "I'm definitely down with the Occupy Wall Street end of things. They seem to have pretty good politics. I'm just a little worried about the Occupy St. Louis end. Looking at the page, it seems like there's a bunch of Zeitgeist Movement types, which makes me kind of nervous...So if the protest is going to be about limiting the financial sector, getting corporate money out of politics, preserving/strengthening the social safety net, and building a democratic, egalitarian, left-wing movement for radical change, I'm totally in. I'm just nervous that it might not be."

And I agree with this so I just added my two cents: "Ive gone to go to things close to this message and when I got there it was just a bunch of move on people raising money to lobby. Should have known by the fact that no anarchist or commies were invited."

To this day I am unsure of who or what started this movement. Another thing that baffles me is how it changes from city to city. Some cities seem to be led by radicals while other cities are being hijacked or were led by liberal the whole time. So it is hard at this time to really speak about or address the OWS movement as a whole because the orientation, the class background and direction of the OWS movement at this time is very blurred.

Permits: One thing I've heard differ from city to city is the question on rather or not to obtain permits for assembly in these public spaces.

Let me be very clear here; if you have a permit then you are not occupying a space. You are permitted to hang out in that spot. 'oh but that is just being ultra-leftist' some might say. But the truth is that you are as my comrade put it: "All we've got is a giant hang out spot"

The same quoted comrade above brought up another great point (and you can and should read the whole article here) that is the "pro-police" activity that has been occurring in some cities. The pigs are our class enemies, period. They defend structures like wall street. That is their job. Their pay rate may land them in the "99%" but they defend the 1% and thus are only logically our class enemy. Not to mention it shows how unorganized this movement is by the fact that the police are attacking this movement in some cities. Even in New York itself where all this started the police have attacked protesters. So show some solidarity with the people from your own movement and stop pro-police demonstrations and stop letting them control your occupation.

The populist nature of the movement: good or bad? I have actually had someone tell me that there is no basis for the claim that this movement is populist. My response is simple; How can a movement who's main slogan is "we are 99%" not be coined populist?

One reoccurring theme I hear from both the left and the right about these occupations is that "we don't know what they stand for or really what they want." I disagree because we do know what they want, they released a list of demands when all this started.

My problem with the populism? Is that it really lacks class analogy. The top twenty percent of the population in the US owns around 83% of all the wealth. Leaving the bottom 80% of the population with only 17% of the nations wealth (1). I must reiterate the lack of class analogy. The next 19% are no better than the top 1%. I'm sure most of those 19% would love to be in the 1%. I know "we are 99" is a better slogan than "we are 80" but siding with the other top 19% just doesn't sit well with me.

What do I think are the positives with the populism? I have thought for a long time now that any movement in the US has to be semi-populist to be successful. I like that a left leaning movement that is large and in the media is pinning "us against them" even if I disagree with the amount of "them" (the rich) they are pinning themselves against.

Plus as an anti-capitalist it is inspiring to see all the "eat the rich" "tax the rich" and "smash wall street" style signs. I truly think if we took the populism out of these occupations that they would disappear fast.

Final Thoughts? There is still a lot to be seen as far as what the future holds for the OWS movement. There is very lose organization going on, some cities are very radical while some cities are playing liberal pacifism. Denouncing each other in some cities, signing papers promising not to denounce each others groups in other cities. To me it is all still very confusing and I am eager to see the outcome and results from this when all is said and done.

One thing I think deserves mentioning is the international solidarity these occupations have received from many of nations, including but not exclusive to: Australia, Russia, France, Brazil, South Africa and many more nations. And another very interesting development is a Chinese protest that echoed the OWS protest.

Written by: Dustin Slagle

(1) William Domhoff. "Wealth. Income and Power". Who Rules America. UCSC, July 2011. WEB. October 14 2011. http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

What Does the Death of Osama Mean for US Politics?

First I would like to distance myself from the "deathers" (people who think the US government is lying about the death of Bin Laden) I do believe Osama to be dead even if the way they buried him was fishy (lol get it.) I think all stories from all sides point to the real death of Osama(1)(2).


Any one who watched the news the night that this news broke saw video of people celebrating in the streets. It was a block party styled celebration with people chanting national slogans and singing the national anthem and singing America the beautiful. I don't really want to call this nationalism as it is an insult to real nationalism (left-wing nationalism).


What we saw that night was the birth of a new feeling in the US, a more patriotic jingoism that has already existed in the US. Only now the people of the USA will have a excuse to express that jingoist patriotism more publicly and more forcefully. Ive heard the statement "Now that we have killed Osama we can end the war." while these comrades have the best of intentions and I agree that the war is now at a quagmire if it is not ended. We should know from the past, and the fact we live in an imperialist nation with a majority pro-imperialist population. The US government is not going to leave Afghanistan. The trade routes that Afghanistan hold is too valuable to the imperialist for them to let it go. Why else would imperialist powers through out history seek to conquer Afghanistan?


In fact the death of Osama, if anything will allow the Obama regime to muster enough support from the people to justify the invasion of say Libya or Syria or any number of other nations.


Ive also heard things said like "this patriotism over the death of Osama won't last with all of the budget cuts happening"(I'm paraphrasing) If you are a normal reader you already know I don't agree with this statement. If anything, Osama's death will pacify the people enough to allow the budget cuts to pass. Not that the people of the US were going to revolt to stop the budget cuts anyway.


I think that the death of Osama will spark patriotism in the liberals, much how 9/11 sparked patriot jingoism in the conservatives. The moderates may fall for this jingoist patriotism as well for the time being. The American people have waited a long time for revenge on Osama and it is only natural that this will spark patriotism.


But to someone who pays attention to the real situation in the US and doesn't live in their own world where the average citizen here doesn't trust the government. They would know that jingoist patriotism is a rampant disease in the USA that has been around for generations. The average person is generally proud to be an American even if they don't understand all that entitles.


The fact is that we should be vigilant as the government could use this patriotism to attack militant opposition groups. The government was already bold enough to attack the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the FRSO (FB) for supporting oppressed people of Colombia and Palestine. This could give them the public support they need to crack down on any group advocating for revolution as terrorist.











(1) http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/osama-bin-ladens-death-confirmed-al-qaeda/story?id=13543148

(2)http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-06/world/bin.laden.qaeda.comment_1_site-intelligence-group-bin-laden-al-qaeda?_s=PM:WORLD

The Point of Polemics.

A polemic is a critique of a organization, groups, person, idea, tendency etc. It was brought to my attention lately by a leftist pal of mine that I am not a good communist because I don't help the local reformist and liberal class collaborators who pose as communist (not his words, but mine). I didn't think much of it at first because he is a "do something, anything-ist" but I think that he had a point in there somewhere. That even by not supporting a reformist party I am doing nothing because I don't participate in many local activities. While I do participate in some local activities, I try to keep to little circles who I think have potential or to participate in militant activities. I am not interested in how many news papers I can sell at a rally, but rather I am interested in meeting people and hearing of their thoughts and experiences. And through discussion trying to reshape their ideas to be more communist and create more awareness among the people, person by person.



While I must confess that to some leftist this does not fall into their category of "doing something" but I have had great success with this strategy. It is also more inspiring and energizing for me to do this than to go to a leftist event and hearing liberal and reactionary ideas being regurgitated as fast as they can be re-consumed by the ORGs followers.



It is no secret that others in my area read this blog. The reason why I write polemics about these groups and people (most polemics I write are about multiple ORGS and many of them are taken out of context) is because they have many incorrect theories, they are calling themselves revolutionaries while championing reformism and liberalism under the guise of workers power. They are using other leftist to further their goals and have personally told me that there will come a day when they have to turn their backs on the other groups (that's called opportunism). I write polemics because many groups have become theoretically ignorant and use dogmatism as their guiding light.



Polemics are important in making groups and people better themselves. If you read a polemic about your group or about your ideas and you brush it off for any reason than you may be a dogmatic follower. If you discredit anything that was said or written by Mao simply because it was written or said by Mao than you are dogmatic and thus anti-dialects. Same goes for other people if you discredit everything Stalin said because it was Stalin who said it, if you discredit everything Trots say just because they are trots than you are a dogmatic person. This is not to say that you can't disagree with all of someones thoughts and ideas. But disagree because you've read it and don't just refute because of who wrote it. I don't agree with 99% of what Trotsky wrote. But it is because I think he wrote things from a purest and Utopian view point and not just because it was Trotsky who wrote it.



If polemics scare you as an ORG than you probably need to reevaluate yourself as an ORG. Only great people and groups use a good polemic to better themselves. Only cowards who are theoretically bankrupt and dogmatic cry when a polemic is written about them. A polemic is a good place to start doing some self criticism and theoretical advancement.



Written by; Dustin Slagle

Is 'fighting back' counter productive?

In the past and in the present whenever there are any cuts made to the education budget or cuts to government jobs you will find socialist in the streets protesting to "fight back" against the cuts. But after a hundred or so years, we as a movement in the United States need to sit back and think to ourselves "is this really working for us? is this really productive to our cause? is this really raising consciousness among workers? Or is this showing the average US citizen that reforism works?"



Is fighting back against the cuts working for us? (By 'us' meaning communist orgs and groups) There are a lot of ways to approach this question and many more ways to answer it. The short answer is no. When we do 'fight back' we do not gain members nor does it raise awareness to real communist theories and ideas, or even radical ideas for a matter of fact. Some say "well if we advance communist slogans and try to organize as communist than no one will show up to the protest" Well to that I would say: "What is the point of being a communist organizer if you never organize for communism?" Some people feel like if other people are not organizing a group of people to yell at the US government for whatever reason they can find then they are bad communist and "arm chair revolutionaries". But I do not see these people who organize liberals into protesting as any more revolutionary than actual arm chair revolutionaries. In fact these organizers do little but reassure liberals that reformism works and that there is no need to revolt against the current capitalist system. Why would liberals radicalize if they think it is possible to reform capitalism from the inside or outside? which we all know is not possible.



Is this productive for the communist cause? While getting into the streets may cause direct contact with other people it actually draws people away from revolutionary socialism. As said above it only leads people to believe that reformism is possible and thus kills the idea of the need for revolution in the minds of the people. Although getting into the streets along with other people who are screaming can be inspirational to the communist but this inspiration is founded on false grounds because the bulk of the people around you are not in any way revolutionary. It would actually be better for the cause if we took anti-reformist stances and didn't participate in the organizing of liberals into shout squads. If the woman of this nation knew what the communist did for her as far as woman rights goes, if the average worker knew what communist have gone through to win him/her their workers rights then maybe 'communist' wouldn't be such a bad work. If workers knew what the world would look like without the 'reds' before us that organized so hard for their minimum wage and workers rights then they would be flocking to our revolutionary cause. But some socialist's constant complacency to just organize and move liberals in the streets in the name of "fight the power" for mere reforms are keeping us at the same numbers in memberships. Yes we know some of the protester based orgs are growing right now but as soon as it comes time to revolt these same orgs that are now growing would lose most of their membership. But what else should these orgs actually expect? When you advance liberal slogans you attract a liberal following and liberals will always chose flight before revolt. If these groups advanced communist slogans they would attract communist and maybe even convert a few fence sitting liberals over to our side.



Is this type of campaigning raising workers consciousness? Well let us be serious and completely honest about this. The average American worker does not care about politics and are especially xenophobic to anything new or different. Doing a 'fight back' campaign mainly reaches out to people who work for the government. At first you want to think 'well if they work for the government, and the government is trying to fire them and they see us trying to fight for their jobs won't they be more open to our ideas?' Not really, they may be thankful but we must remember that most socialist groups do these campaigns behind their liberal front groups so while the group may get new supporters and members for its front group these campaigns do little to forward the cause and ideas of communism.



I think I answered the question already to "is this showing the average US citizen that reforism works?" which the answer would be yes.



It is worth mentioning that while we should not use our communist groups to attempt to achieve reformism. It is important that we as individuals participate in trying to get lower tuition fees for collage and trying to stop charter schools from taking over public school buildings. We as individuals before being communist can not stand aside while kids parents are paying top dollar for a bottom tier education. Even though today the schools are capitalist and teach capitalism because education is in the hands of the capitalist. We communist must ensure that the children can read and write. We cannot control education and we cannot educate the masses into revolution or even educate them to have revolutionary ideas because as it was said "education in today's world is capitalist education." (1) So if education of the masses to revolution is not possible then we must support our children getting the best education they can get. It will just be up to us as individuals to teach our kids correct history.



Now here are some things Ive had said to me regarding my stance on these issues. "We should stay where the masses are. Marxist don't create their own groups separate of the masses." Lenin did and it worked out well for him. This sentence makes me think "well then go join the democrats" the same people who say that about not separating from the masses turn around and attack the CP-USA line for joining the democrats but they only do it for opportunistic reasons because they use the rhetoric that supports this move seeing as that is where the majority of the working class are in this country, with the democrats. So creating fight back campaigns does not keep you with the masses but just a few workers who might lose their job.



Ive heard "well, protesting and fighting back is a way to stay in 'the struggle' and to be a leader in the struggle". First off it should be clear that there is little to no 'struggle' happening in the US at the moment. Once again when I hear "leader in the struggle" I go right back to the liberal problem. Liberals don't struggle they complain and gripe then give up. Ive heard leadership in a socialist party say "well we didn't win and they made the cuts anyway but we got some new members out of the deal so it was worth it" that's a direct quote.



Fighting back doesn't help "the struggle" for socialism, it doesn't raise awareness. It just gives socialist something to do in their free time and then they are inspired by the protest which gives them a false hope which keeps them in the reformism circle. Fight back campaigns help prop up this capitalist system. As Ive explained; doing fight back campaigns is counter-productive because it gives the outsiders the idea that reformism can fix the system when any real revolutionary can tell you that the only thing that can fix this messed up imperialist, racist, capitalist system is a proletarian revolution by putting guns and "politics in command".


Say no to reformism!

When a reformist group posing as revolutionaries ask you to join, JUST SAY NO!

Let the system fall and we communist will pick up the pieces!

They say cut backs? We say wait til the people are pissed and arm them!



Written by: Dustin Slagle

*this article is about campaigns aiming to "fight back" against budget cuts and should not be viewed as and was not a polemic about FRSO (FB)

The Need to Combat Liberalism in the US!

Brothers and sisters the left wing and the communist/socialist movement in the US has been hijacked by liberals and liberal class collaborators!


In my opinion there is a huge reason why there is no strong communist movement in the states. It is because most of the parties and ORGs have adapted tailism as their main ideology. Meaning most parties or ORGs simply tail the liberal anti-war movements or use liberal slogans to gain support. And some groups even create liberal fronts for a certain subject or movement and do not use their fronts to create an opportunity to advocate for socialism. This tailism has been going on since the 60's (maybe earlier) and has proven to be an incorrect method of building a real movement.






As this picture says, the reason people are STILL protesting is because protesting doesn't work. Protesting as a tactic to "fight the power" or "fight the man" is a pacifist joke and the fact that the socialist groups in the US have bought into this crap is nothing less than a crime against the people. The masses need us to be working for them and leading them forward. Not standing on the streets with a bunch of pacifist liberals yelling their liberal slogans. The protesting activist circles are not the masses nor are they revolutionary. Why are these socialist wasting their time on reformist, pacifist liberals? I don't know the answer but if someone does then please let me know.



It is important to fight liberalism in our country because liberal slogans and the liberal activist circle has been the death of our movement. Of course like Ive mentioned in previous post it will take some converting of liberals in this country in order to build a communist movement but talking to/trying to convert liberals and playing tailism with them are two majorly different things.



Converting liberals to socialism is one way to combat liberalism but we on the left need to think of creative ways to take that battle further. Of course a huge part of being a Maoist is knowing who is a class enemy and why they are a class enemy. The ignorance in a person might say "well the liberals are poor so they are not our class enemy". But this is incorrect because while some poor people in society might be liberals, most poor people do not vote and certainly the most oppressed section of the US population (migrant workers) don't/can't vote. Most liberals still stand up for capitalism and some liberals do not even want full social services. Most liberals are middle class "blue collar" workers, or small business owners (bourgeoisie).



The liberals do not fight for the empowerment of the people or even for the betterment of the people. The liberals do not even fight for the betterment of the middle class workers. They too fight for the corporations and the big bosses just as much as the neo-conservatives do. A big sign that the liberals are a big enemy of the people are things like "Moveon.org" who fool people left of the liberals by saying "we want something better" but then just support the democrats and they refuse to criticize the democrats to any end. And this group has millions of members, it is depressing to see the people cheated like that. They are an enemy of the people, because they are herding progressives right around back into supporting the people we already know to be against the people.



But part of the blame is on US the communist. We have played tailism and have not shown the masses any alternative to the liberals to the point that some progressive democrats have called themselves "left-wing". We argue so much between ourselves that no one outside of our socialist and the activist circles even know we exist. We have no sway in politics at all, is this not depressing to anyone else? The only "communist" organization with any sway (they are not revolutionary communist that is for sure) is the CPUSA and that doesn't even count because they only have a very little fraction of a sway in the.......that's right the democratic party AKA they play tailism.



If we are to move forward to socialism in this country then all the parties need to start advocating for socialism and stop using their front groups to promote liberalism. Of course some parties and ORGs are more guilty of this than others but in the name unity I won't point them out by name. If we do not advocate for socialism how will people even know we exist? Let alone what we stand for. Every group has a "What we stand for" book or brochure but they don't advocate for socialism outside of these papers. So how would the average Joe ever convert to socialism if at all the rallies he goes to the socialist are the ones follow and chanting the same slogans as the liberals? He wouldn't, he would think that socialist are just the extreme side of the democrats.



Another way to combat liberalism is that the people reading this need to unseat all defeatist from their parties leadership. Defeatism in the leadership will only cement your parties/organizations tailism as it's main tactic. Someone in a leadership role once said to me: "you cannot just wish different conditions into existence" he said this as a defense for carrying out tailism under his leadership. To which I replied "Of course we cannot wish anything into existence, there is no such thing as magic lamps. But we can make different conditions for ourselves through hard work and advocating for socialism." He then ended the conversation.




The future is up to us. We can stay on this same 40+ year old path or we can make our own path and start moving forward. We have been the ones who have been holding ourselves back so it is time we let ourselves go in a different direction. A direction the movement has not gone since the 60's: forward!



Written by: Dustin Slagle