The Deadly Virus of Ultra Leftism in the Belly of the Beast.

   Something that is consistent in Mao's writings and speeches is the need to combat ultra left thinking and actions. He describes one aspect of "ultra leftism" as the refusal to work or unite with other groups or individuals that could be united with. He explains that these people split over the most miniscule and petty reasons.


   A communist number one goal is and should always be the victory of the broad working masses. Socialism over capitalism, self-determination and independence over imperialism. An ultra leftist would compromise this goal by refusing to work with other progressive elements on basis of "principle" or sometimes just plain arrogance.


   We in the USA, the largest imperialist nation on earth, a first world nation, have the luxury of ultra leftism. Ultra leftism is (in the USA) a luxury for communist in first world and imperialist nations. We can afford to keep to our small ineffectual, intellectual circles that only allow in a certain ideology and refuses to work with other groups who don't believe the exact same thing that we do. Why should we prepare for revolution when we can stay busy arguing with other people that we could be uniting with to create a revolutionary situation? 


   I don't believe I need to continue to rant on this overall situation because any communist reading this is already aware that ultra leftism, or; the inability to work well with others. Is holding us back and makes it impossible to create the correct situation for revolution. I'm not calling for communist to unite with everyone. That is ultra right-wing communism to go about uniting with others for opportunistic or utopian reasons.


   In a nation where there are sooooo many different groups and a lot of different ideologies are represented it is important to know who you can unite with for revolution and those that you can not. Our goal is proletarian revolution! The democratic dictatorship of the broad working classes over the bourgeoisie and imperialist forces. We can not and will never achieve our goals under the current situation of ultra leftism on one side of the communist movement and ultra rightism on the other.

                             ULTRA LEFTISM IN THE MAOIST MOVEMENT

   We Maoist are ourselves guilty of ultra leftism to the highest degree. We split ourselves over everything from the GLF to the 100 flower movement to the GPCR. We split from those who see the USSR as social imperialist and those who don't. We split from those who support the shinning path and those who don't. We split over which line we support in the Nepal revolution. We would split over anything it seems. We have no functional party to work in as a unit. We are fractured, sectarian and ineffectual. Of course I do not mean all Maoist living in the US, some Maoist here are shinning examples of how to be a good communist. But for the most part we are ultra leftist talking revolution but not willing to step outside our circles and comfort zone to actually achieve a revolutionary situation.


   I myself am guilty of ultra leftism earlier in my political life. I used to never want to work with anyone who wasn't a marxist leninist. But we must see and draw on past lessons. (as maoist) It is important to work with all who can be united with. What is better? One large, unified, comprehensive communist/progressive movement based in and on the broad working masses? Or a small, fractured, schizophrenic movement based on intellectual circles and protest activist?  The answer is easy and was handed to us long ago by Mao himself. The real question is what are we going to do about it?
 


    

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.

   

     

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

Calling Out Sectarianism!

Sometimes the best way to combat something is to bring it out into light. One thing the socialist movement in the US suffers heavily from is sectarianism (not the broadly misused form of the word sectarian where people call you sectarian for writing a polemic against a certain group or ideology, or for calling an idea Utopian or liberal). Sectarianism is when someone or a group cause splits in the movement for opportunist reasons rather it be money, members, leader control etc etc etc. A great example is when two groups share the same politics, same political line and yet still do not unite their parties for silly reasons thus keeping divisions over small or petty reasons (members, money, leader control.)


Nothing annoys me more than when I say I disagree with the Trotskyist/anarchist/social-democrats and their tactics and instantly the other person yells; "sectarian!". This is a misuse of the word. If I had said; "don't be a trotskyist/anarchist/social-democrat because they eat babies and want to enslave the working class" with the intention to keep people from joining a Trotskyist/anarchist/social-democrat ORG so they would join mine then that would be sectarian. I just wanted to make that clear before moving on.


I hope to bring light to some sectarian organizations and parties in this post. Not just to attack these groups but to hopefully help them get over this problem and maybe we can create a bigger movement if we can get over sectarian problems.


First I'd like to address the Trotskyist sectarian groups. First of all it is important to point out that the third campist who constantly blame Stalin for everything to the point that they sound like conspiracy theorist are being sectarian (and annoying). They cause the largest split between socialist in this nation. What happened in the thirteen congress is over, Trotsky lost, Stalin won, there was no conspiracy, Trotsky was in the party for only a few years and Stalin's line won get over it and move forward this is the USA 2011 not Russia 19-anything. You will have to work with Stalinist if you want the revolution to happen. (this is just a small example but I don't wanna turn this into a Trot bash but in my opinion the Trotskyist line is almost pure sectarian under fake calls for unity/solidarity)


Now I would like to point out point blank the sectarian Trotskyist parties who's politics differ so little that the fact they do not combine their groups is prof of true sectarianism. Even though I don't view them as real communist and see them as no more than paper boy liberals the ISO (international socialist ORG) is one of the first groups I think of when sectarianism comes to mind. Besides their members being notoriously rude/sectarian and pompous asses they share many political stances with other groups. The ISO could easily merge with the SWP (socialist Workers Party) they could also absorb Socialist Action. If all of these groups joined together they could have a small but considerate amount of influence on the political landscape. But that would mean working together across their international groups which would mean throwing off the chains of sectarianism. I can't speak for the SWP as I have never even met a SWP member but I don't think that the ISO would be capable of building this network between other groups.


Other groups that could be joined in with those same parties are the Socialist Organizer, the International Marxist Tendency's US group, the Workers International League and the Socialist Alternative. Though these groups are much smaller and would have a smaller impact but coupled with the SA, ISO and SWP they could have some political relevance.


Now I am going to address the APL (American Party of Labor) who seem to think only Hoxha and Stalin had any clue what socialism was and how it is to be built and everyone else is a revisionist/reactionary etc etc etc. This is another group who's members are notoriously assholes and are almost irrelevant in every struggle. If the APL got over their selves and focused on ground work and not insulting other groups they could probably grow and become relevant. Although to give credit where credit is due; they are pretty much unique in their political line so their main form of sectarianism is their in-ability to work with anyone who is not a Hoxhaist.


My next group of people I address will be the tankie Marxist Leninist groups. Now seeing as I was in one of these groups I am most knowledgeable in this section and this section breaks my heart the most. Unfortunately the sectarianism in this area is based on recruiting members to their groups and leaders. I think if the tankie/anti-imperialist groups all got together that they could have a large group with a good amount of political sway in the country. You probably know all of these parties if you are from the US left if not; The PSL (Party for Socialism and Liberation) the FRSO-FB (freedom road socialist organization-fight back) and the WWP (workers world party). I think if these groups joined together that the US would have the biggest socialist movement it has had since the 60's. With the PSL's numbers and the FRSO's ability to motivate people into the streets I really think this coalition would be an unmovable force with a great amount of influence.


What is sad that these groups are not very sectarian besides this aspect, in fact I think all these groups are good at working with other parties and groups to achieve their goals.


The differences between these three parties are so minuscule that they are not even worth mentioning. This is the saddest case of sectarianism I see in the US today. When I think of the best opportunity to create a large and relevant movement in the USA this is the number one way I think that it should be done. These three groups should unite and they should unite today!