Let's Have a Dialect About Some Material Conditions on the Left in the First World.

   Don't worry, I won't make this a rant about what dialect materialism is. If you as a reader are not aware of what dialect materialism is then feel free to google it before continuing to read this post. This will be about what is material fact in the US and the west in general in re-guards to the left.

   In western nations (especially imperialist ones) there is a strong tendency among the left to throw logic and reality out of the window at every chance. The left is fractured, sectarian, ignorant of the masses wishes and desires. Most parties or groups in the Western nations believe they are leading the struggle for socialism. The US alone has about 10-15 self-proclaimed vanguard parties leading the revolution for communism!

   But in reality the left in the US is completely unknown outside of the left in the US. The organizations in this country would prefer to criticize each other and bicker over everything then they would to unite and struggle for what the people desperately need; socialism.

   Most all parties live in a utopian idealist setting where every time a group of people get upset they declare that socialism is winning and we are right around the corner from the revolution. Now lets be clear that no party in existence in the US is prepared for said revolution. Hell, most parties aren't ready to win 5% in a local election (with the exception of the socialist parties USA who just won a seat on a board of education in new jersey, congrats.) 

   See, in most all successful revolutions the party/organization leading the charge was not a specific ideology ready to split or kick people out for the smallest line difference at it's founding congress. 

  It is almost as if there was a secret meeting by all the leftist in the first world (with a few exceptions) where it was declared that all the left parties that are mainly unknown and not relevant whatsoever; must make their parties adherents follow and parrot a such sickly specific set of politics that the groups show little to no democratic potential. The "democratic" centralism practiced by most left parties in the US come off as drones who all mimic each other and have no thought process for themselves. So they take an already irrelevant group of organizers and then say to outsiders; 'you must follow our politics set by our leaders and parrot exactly what we say or else we will expel you from our group. Can we have your due's now.'  

   The left in the first world nations are so self defeating that it is depressing. We will literally split and fight over anything.

   Socialist revolutions are won because the socialist of said nation are willing to put aside silly issues and unite with other socialist/communist in the name of... wait for it... SOCIALISM! The left (for privileged reasons of course) in the west would rather argue over shit that happened in a different time, place and under different conditions then they would debate what we communist can do today to win the ultimate victory.

   The left is already irrelevant, fractured and unwilling to look at material conditions in order to fight for socialism. 

   Democracy is almost ignored, the masses can't connect to the parties because the parties set themselves apart from the masses by complaining about issues the masses don't care about. The masses don't know about socialism or anarchism enough to know rather there will be a state or not. Why do the elite/cadre of the left argue over things that only the proletarian masses will decide if a socialist revolution is achieved?

   The left in the US, and the UK are psychotically sectarian (in the actual meaning of the word) to the point we have multiple parties with the same ideology that exist separately because they refuse to unite either for opportunistic reasons or worse; individualistic pride in their said group.

   So there is the rant part now lets actually list some material truth about the left in the western nations.

We suck at showing the kind of democracy we want to enact after the revolution. It is confusing for the masses to see strict democratic centralism and then hear us speak of workers democracy.

The days of the one party/one ideology state/government are over. No one wants to be ruled by one clique of people. There will have to be greater democracy in any socialist revolution then there has been in the past.

Identity politics (while important to fight for on many issues) is not the end all be all. Just because your group goes to a LGBT rights event does not mean that the whole LGBT community in your area will now support socialism. Same goes for race etc. We need to make clear that under socialist society all people regardless of race, sex, hair color etc.will be equal and we stand for an egalitarian society based on co-operation and understanding.

We have an issue with complaining about the current thing that is upsetting leftist at any given time without putting forward a concrete unified statement as to why we as socialist oppose or support whatever it is that is popular at that time.

We have to get the hippie/pacifist element out of our revolutionary circles. It discredits us as a whole and every time something big happens the media just finds the hippie grouping and interviews them and instantly a whole movement is seen by the nation as a bunch of stoner peace loving hippies that have nothing better to do than to protest. 

We are really bad at propaganda and using the media to our advantage. After the local occupy was put down (they literally singled out and beat the shit out of the radicals that were present) by the pigs, the leaders (of the leaderless occupy) were asked by a news station "what is occupy's response to the police actions here last night." and the guy said (no shitting you) "we were not able to reach a consensus on a statement for what happened last night."

Most groups are too single minded and only utilize one or two forums of organizing. Workerist are pretty plenty among the left but that is for a different post I suppose.

There are too many groups and parties ORGs etc. 

The masses are scared right now. The job market is not stable, the state is poor and still starting and getting involved in conflicts and cutting welfare services. People are pissed. Where is the left? We are on the sidelines complaining about socialism in one country or if Lin Piao was actually guilty. Or if the Hungarian revolution was reactionary or not? Was Tienanmen revolutionary or counter? We should all quit as socialist and become professional historian debaters because it appears that that is all the left wishes to be. We in the west/first world are in such a privileged position that we have put the main goal (communism/classless stateless society) on the back burner and have forgotten all about it. Why should we fight for socialism today when we could argue about what happened yesterday? Forward to more obscurity comrades! Forward to make sure no one is lying about what we conceived to have happened almost a hundred years ago! Revolution will come! No need to organize, we must argue amongst ourselves first!




*disclaimer for this post; obviously this is a very generalized criticism and not every statement/comment applies to every group. First world privilege is a very real threat to the left in the first world. I am willing to work with most anyone who wants a future run and controlled by the masses for the masses.

   

     

Communal Democracy-Great Proletarian Cultural Revolutionist-Feminist-Maoist Chinese Modelist...

"You are not a Maoist, you are a revisionist"


Things are not always black and white. The same goes with peoples ideological line. The acronym MLM can mean many different things to different people.


To some individuals or groups it means ML (which itself is used in many ways such as Hoxhaist or tankie or Stalinist) with some contributions from Mao. Some MLM uphold the Three head theory (Marx Lenin and Mao) and some uphold four (Marx Lenin Stalin and Mao). To some it means staunch anti-revisionism to any Marxist-Leninist revision. To others it means to revision all revolutionary theory to current and local conditions. Some Maoist support younger Mao's ideas and actions and some support older Mao's ideas and actions. Some dogmatically follow all his writing to a tee and some people see his ideas as a starting point and think it is against Maoism itself to be dogmatic. To some people to be a Maoist is to be a state-authoritarian, to others it is complete dictatorship of the proletariat from the bottom up.


I am writing this because I want to explain why I am the kind of Maoist that I am.


The great leap forward (GLF) is usually used as a way to attack Maoist so let me just say that first off the massive numbers of 16-70 million people that were "killed" by Mao has been disproved by many accounts (here is one). Many people did die during the GLF, but it was from starvation and not mass murder and no one set up the GLF so people would starve (there was also drought in some areas and natural disasters in others) . In fact it is impossible to prove how many people starved or that more people starved than in previous years. But the great leap forward was important in the country side because the nation didn't have good irrigation systems and in drought years whole villages would have to fight off starvation (which was a major problem under the old KMT and feudal system). So the CPC called for peasants to help build these huge irrigation systems. The problem was that no one was tasked with turning volunteers away and too many people volunteered and not enough people stayed home and grew food. So I see the GLF as both a success and a failure, if one person died because of the policy then it was one too many. However the GLF brought great harvest after this period and helped put a boot to the throat of mass starvation(many claims supported in link).


Just thought I should clear that up least someone thing Maoist think murdering millions is okay or justifiable.


One of the major reasons I am a Maoist is that I believe communal democracy as enacted in China during the liberation phase up til its dismantling by the soviet wing of the party was the greatest example of proletarian democracy. The old peasants associations and village congresses along with communal farms and kitchens were great corner stones for how a proletarian society should look.


Another reason is that I admire the right and ability of people to criticize the government and their policies and have a chance to steer policy. Under communal democracy and especially during the cultural revolution until 68 the peasants and the working class held control over almost all aspects of their lives. At one point in time during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) the people of Shanghai actually took a vote to change what the colors on the stop lights meant. They voted to make red mean go because red was the color of socialism and thus the color of progress and a movement forward. Some may see this as silly but it illustrates how much power communal democracy gave to the masses. They ended up not changing the light system because it was agreed that it would be confusing to people not from the city and more important things could be discussed.


Since I brought it up I will discuss why I uphold the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR) as the furthest advance towards communism and why I believe that many cultural revolutions will be necessary to achieve communism.


Many critics of the GPCR on both the right-wing and the reactionary left simply brush off the GPCR as a violent period that was a result of Mao trying to hold onto power. This is simply an incorrect ahistorical view of the cultural revolution. While there was violence used in the GPCR it was purely because of anger that came forth from the masses over right-wing politicians attempts to turn China into a capitalist nation.


One point of the GPCR was to revolutionize the masses and to smash the reactionary ideas and customs of the old Chinese society. It was direct action by the people to destroy all lines that advocated capitalism as the way forward. Violence was unfortunately needed sometimes to unseat politicians, reactionary landlords or bosses. Everyone was subject to the peoples will. Party members were especially targeted if they were seen as capitalist roaders or as reactionaries.


I believe that cultural revolutions would only be needed in backwards nations and bourgeois minded societies. I do think that the GPCR brought many lessons that we can draw from to revolutionize the popular masses and keep radical people's power in charge. It was reported that when Mao was forced to order the red guards to disband that he did so with tears running down his cheeks. Was this because he knew that this symbolized the end of people's power in China? And that it also showed that the government was to take more power over the people as opposed to the people holding power over their government? Meaning that the "revolutionary Committees" were to be reinstated and that the Soviet wing and the capitalist roaders had won? This writer think these are the reasons for his tears that sad day for China. Most of China's politicians speak ill of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution today because as reactionary capitalist roaders and capitalisms running dogs these politicians would have been targeted during the GPCR, and rightly so.


Anti-anti-ideologies- I do not uphold any anti ideologies, I do believe every branch has something to contribute to the movement to some degree. I am not a anti-revisionist, I think revision to MLism is very important and needed to move forward. We live in a different time and under different conditions and in different places than any of these people who have become demigods. To treat people as infallible is in my opinion in itself against a dialects position. Also to not unite with those who can be united with, over silly reasons is considered leftism.


Self criticism- Is the most important trait that is need in any person or group that plans on taking a leadership position. Not only being able to make self criticisms but also learning from and fixing your short comings is so important to me. Ive never heard any group in the States say "we were wrong" or "that wasn't a correct tactic/slogan" etc. Ive never even heard a member of a party or group say "we were wrong/incorrect". Instead we hear excuses or straw arguments on how they were actually correct.  This I believe is brought on by the luxury of these groups being irrelevant in the bigger picture, they can afford to be wrong and ignore it because they are not accountable to anyone and their decisions don't affect any ones life. But these groups need to learn to do self criticisms and learn and grow from their mistakes or else they run the risk of never being taken seriously.

Qaddafi and Libya: A Self-Criticism.

I am writing this post to do a self-criticism of sorts because as a Maoist I see it as most important to be able to point out when you are wrong or when you have made mistakes on an issue or when you have given a false analogy.

When this conflict started Libyan leader Qaddafi was no less guilty then the so called rebels of being imperialism's friend with his connections to the UK and the Italians. But since the conflict has started and even more so recently, the battle lines have been drawn. All of Qaddafi's imperialist friends have turned their back on him, leaving him to fight off a NATO intervention.

The rebels on the other hand have used prejudice persecution of any African immigrants suspected of being a mercenary. Also the rebels dedication has even been brought into question. One has to wonder if the rebels would still be around if not for the NATO intervention. John Lee Anderson says of his first hand account that some rebels are offended when the Libyan army uses live ammo(1). How can we take any armed group seriously when they don't think live ammo should be used in a war? We can not take them seriously.

Not to mention there is no clear ideology among the rebels. This coupled with the fact the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Qaddafi I think the battle lines are even more clear(2). It is now all to obvious that the rebels will allow imperialist free reign in their nation if their side is the victors. The ICC will only issue arrest warrants for people who are not imperialist running dogs. Notice how no warrants have been issued for Uribe the ex-Colombian "president" or any leaders who have had their citizens murdered.

This is to say that the battle lines are more clear today than when this conflict started. Today it is clear what side the communist and anti-imperialist should be on. We should now be clearly on the side of Qaddafi. To where earlier on the battle lines were fuzzy (though I'm sure that some groups that jumped the gun with supporting Qaddafi just because he has an anti-US history will claim they knew and were right all along no matter how big of a lie that would be) because both sides had imperialist interest invested in them, and the rebels at the beginning wanted only supply aid and opposed intervention. Today the rebels want ground troop (probably because they are afraid of and offended by the use of live ammo) intervention and have even sold some oil to their imperialist masters, including the US.(3)

As an anti-imperialist my first desire for all nations is the right to self determination. The Libyan people have directly stood up in favor of their leader Qaddafi. There is no question in my mind that if had NATO never intervened that the rebels would have lost this fight months ago. There for my desire for the self determination of the Libyan people has left me with no other group to support than that of the Qaddafi regime.

I believe that in light of recent events and in light of recent information it is the duty of all revolutionaries and anti-imperialist to support the Qaddafi regime.

Death to imperialism, and all of their running dogs!
Self-determination for the masses of Libya!



Written by: Dustin Slagle




(1)Anderson John Lee. Who are the rebels. The New Yorker. 4/4/2011. Web. 06/05/2011
(2)Schreck Adam, Corder Mike. Gaddafi Arrest Warrant Issued by International Criminal Court. Huffington Post. AP. 06/27/2011. Web. 07/06/2011
(3)Crawford Jamie. Libyan rebel group sells first oil to U.S. CNN. 06/08/2011. Web. 07/01/2011

The Socialist Parties: A Collective Problem (part 2 expansion and corrections on the original)

If you have not read my first entry on this subject you can find part one here where I try to explain the reason why democratic centralism naturally degenerates in bureaucracy. I wrote part one when the topic was very personal to me and I made some simple minded errors that make me disgraced to admit I had ever written it. Instead of deleting it and pretending I never wrote it I would like to make corrections and expand on why democratic centralism often becomes corrupt. A comrade that has been around for a while showed me one of the major errors of that article and I will address all the problems with my first article first.


In the first entry I wrote: "Even Trotskyist use the democratic centralism model in most of their parties but when a party or country degenerates to bureaucratic centralism the trots call that party/country Stalinist. Of course a Trotskyist is never going to pass up a chance to jab at Stalin but in reality it was Lenin's model of democratic centralism that is/was incorrect."- I would like to be clear that I was wrong in this statement because the fact is that parties who have degenerated from DCism into dictatorship of the leadership are not following real Leninism. Lenin called for open detailed debate and that the party would then chose the best course of action. What happens in most parties in the US is that their leader or leaders make all the choices and the rank and file are expected to follow suit or else they are party traitors. And do not be fooled I have heard this story multiple time from members of Trotskyist, Hoxhaist, Maoist, ML and any other party. But I wanted to clear myself for my mistaken ideas of attacking Lenin's style dcism when it is not a historical figures fault but it differs on a party to party basis. I would like to reiterate that this is not a form of "Stalinism" but is a dialectal problem and should not be so simply brushed off.


I also said: "When a party starts there are usually a few members who are more dedicated than others or do more work than other members. This rightfully earns this said person a certain amount of respect among the founding members and new members. So they are elected to a seat of power. The problem is that as time goes on the people who started the group want to make sure things are run the way they want and that they stay in charge. So what ends up happening is that the original members end up with multiple seats or too much power."- I was mainly wrong in writing this in that corruption doesn't have to start at the beginning. It can also happen after a certain wing takes over main seats in the party. The person who is the leader will assign people that follow his line or people that will parrot everything they say to the point that democracy is not even needed in the party because everyone 'already agrees' but in reality this is corruption. What will then happen is that any one in the party who challenges the leadership on party lines or tactics, the leadership will say that you are disrespecting the choice of the party when in reality you may just disagree with the leaders who have no desire for real line struggle.


"we may need to do away with democratic centralism all together."- I think this statement was a result of my emotions I fear because we do need democratic centralism. But there needs to be more emphasis put on the democracy of the many. A small central committee made up of all like minded people shouldn't control a whole party. I think this is the reason that the corruption problem lies within most parties CC's.

A suggested solution: Central Committee's should be made up of people of different ideas and backgrounds. If you have healthy debate and different representatives in the CC I believe this could help eliminate the corruption problem most parties face. There is no reason why then people who are all friends and who all believe in the same exact line should all be on the CC. There should be a wide variety of ages on a CC also. Young people are more militant and adventurous when it comes to politics and older comrades seem to be more reserved and calculating (in a good way). We need a healthy mix of the two, not one or the other extreme.


I wrote at the end: "Obviously this writer knows he doesn't have all the answers but I am sick of seeing hundreds of intelligent individuals walking around parroting what their leaders, elders and party tell them to."- this I still believe and yes it still makes me sick.


I still have a deep mistrust of democratic centralism but this does not mean that I do not think it can not be properly implemented. I still think that communal democracy could be a good substitute or should be intertwined with democratic centralism. I am still a strong supporter of local chapters, cells or whatever they are called in a party having more power over their locals than the national party. As I said in my last post: "Communal socialism would be better because how is some one in LA or DC or NYC suppose to know what we need in Mississippi or Illinois or Colorado etc? Only the people from those areas know exactly what they are producing and what they need. Each area would be more personally in charge of themselves and thus wouldn't feel the constant oppression of the centralized state." I still uphold this view.


Another problem I see is that the rank and file members of a group or party dogmatically defend their own submission to these kind of fake democratic centralism's. I think this half stems from a kind of sub-understanding of what real democratic centralism is and the other half can be contributed two ways. One; the dogmatic nature of communist who think just because Lenin said or wrote something and their party quotes him out of context that the must be right. And two; the party or group itself twist the ideas of democratic centralism to mean that rank and file members listen and are subordinate to their leaders and to self criticize or try to create a line struggle is against what Lenin taught and thus you are a naughty commie and need to be punished.


I think it may be time to start having Marxist Leninist debate nights between groups so as to force people to be theoretically involved and to force people to think outside of their parties little box. I for one can not stand when you are having a debate with someone from a party/ORG about their political line and all they do is shove their fingers in their ears and repetitively say the same thing their parties site says over and over again.


There is no reason why a group with less than 300 members should all be subordinate to 7-15 people. That is ridiculous and no one can make a strong enough claim to me that this is in any way democratic. Which brings me to my next point which is when the dogmatics after being out debated say 'well you have a liberal/bourgeois idea of democracy'. Democracy is a word that cannot mean but one thing. If we use word parts here it means "rule of the people" (google it if you don't believe me) so how can you call your group "democratic" centralist if you don't use democracy? In fact you are using a bourgeois definition of the word if you are defending a few people ruling over the greater number of people in your group. As this is how the bourgeoisie use the word democracy is to say that a few rule over the masses.


In short I think we need a open national debate on democratic centralism and what it means and how to use it properly. I think the true idea of democratic centralism has become lost and distorted to benefit a few leaders when it is meant to benefit the greater populace in a group.


I would really love to see some comments and peoples ideas at the bottom of this page. It is time to start discussing things of this nature.




Written by; Dustin Slagle