Review of Patel and McMichael’s “Third Worldism and the Lineages of global fascism”

Review of Patel and McMichael’s “Third Worldism and the Lineages of global fascism”

(jacobinternationalism.wordpress.com)

The Internationalist Jacobin Club has taken an interest in the conversation started by a couple articles from RAIM late last year.  One was RAIM-Denver’s review of Arun Gupta and the pitfalls of an “anti-imperialism” based on the Amerikkkan people. The other was RAIM-Seattle’s analysis of the “Battle of Seattle,” and the foolhardy illusion of an alliance between the Third World masses and the First World labor aristocracy. In both articles, the First Worldist politics of this newly emergent “global resistance movement” is RAIM’s focus.  There is a common thread among these First Worldist dominated movements in their identification of the amorphous “state” as the main enemy.  The fuzzy reclassification of scientific terms  like “the state,” “imperialism,” and “fascism” cover up the parasitic relationship of the First World towards the Third World.

To delve into these concepts further, we will review “Third Worldism and the lineages of global fascism:  the regrouping of the global South in the neoliberal era,” by Rajeev Patel and Philip McMichael. (1)  Philip McMichael is a Professor of Development Sociology at Cornell University and has authored numerous pieces on the “globalization” phenomenon.  Raj Patel is a writer and “food sovereignty” activist with Via Campesina and was an organizer of the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle.  Naturally, articles like these from the intelligentsia discussing Third Worldism are of interest to the Maoist-Third Worldist movement.

Patel and McMichael present the reader with their paradigm.   They present the trajectory of the “sovereign state” in history as moving towards what they view as “global fascism.”  The history of fascism is discussed as it is known conventionally, represented by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.  Patel and McMichael herald Foucault’s concept of “biopolitics,” the use of political coercive power in every aspect of human experience.

The authors point to the positivism of modern philosophers such as Auguste Comte (1798-1857), and its notions of the nation-state during the era of European colonialism, as the unwitting ideological forebears of “fascism.”  The connections are made between the Enlightenment positivist views of social progress and the chauvinist attitudes of European colonialists towards the “backwardness” of the colonies, thus “justifying” colonial domination.  Furthermore, “the sovereign state,” as the positivists’ proposed vehicle for this progress, is this “civilizing” force.  That is, a civilizing force that utilizes biopolitics to socially engineer total human submission to capital.  This omniscience of capital due to the biopolitics of the modern sovereign state is the hallmark of Patel and McMichael’s definition of fascism.

Patel and McMichael point to the rise of Third Worldism during the period of “decolonization” (1940’s-80’s) as a failed promise for the liberation of the exploited and oppressed.  It is explained that the Third World elites, who initially led the decolonization efforts post-WWII sold out the struggles against imperialism.  Political liberation of the colonies wasn’t followed by economic liberation from empire, resulting in neocolonialism. The authors declare that the conception of “state sovereignty” by Third World elites did not fundamentally differ from that of the European colonialists.  This common “statist” ideology is what facilitated this sellout, according to Patel and McMichael.  Beyond the mere sellout, it is asserted that these Third World elites were in a better position to enforce the rule of capital than the more “direct” domination of imperialism (as in the 1800’s).  It is explained that while the Third World elites and imperialists share a common “statist” biopolitical approach to ruling, the Third World elites biopolitics are localized.  The authoritarian, centralized state apparatus in the Third World nations enforcing the neoliberal policies of finance capital is what is referred to as “global fascism.”

However, the reader is not left without an alternative to the failure of Third Worldism.  Patel and McMichael point to the Zapatista resistance and Via Campesina as examples of ” ‘new internationalisms’ arise from the ashes of Third Worldism, with an altered understanding of ‘sovereignty’ that challenges the trajectory of the Third World sovereign state.”  An emphasis is made on rejecting a “universalist” conception of human rights based on state sovereignty.  It is claimed that these movements represent a “decentralized” conception of rights based on single-issues, identity politics, and other “particularities” of oppression.  These movements represent the contemporary resistance to global fascism, as the authors see it.

Fascism, even when globalized, always has a mass base

Many on the so-called “left” have been playing fast and loose with the word “fascism” since 1945.  It became quite common for the left-wing of parasitism use it simply as a pejorative against any authoritarian, right -wing politician (“Bush, that fascist pig!”).  The right-wing of parasitism even started calling their liberal “big government” haute-bourgeoisie “fascists” as well (“Obama’s a Nazi!”).  Eventually, should this nonsense continue, if the paperboy misses an Amerikkkan’s porch when tossing the morning paper, he should be declared a “fascist” as well.  Fascism is more than just a pejorative.  It is a specific phenomenon in the imperialist system.

Comrades Georgi Dimitrov and R. Palme Dutt upheld the view of the Third International that fascism is the “open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.” (2)  Comrade Dimitrov said that “Fascism acts in the interests of the extreme imperialists, but it presents itself to the masses in the guise of champion of an ill-treated nation, and appeals to outraged national sentiments, as German fascism did, for instance, when it won the support of the masses of the petty bourgeoisie by the slogan ‘Down with the Versailles Treaty.’ “ (3)  Comrade Dutt mentioned that the fascist programme in Italy “call[ed] for the hanging of speculators, the seizure of land by the peasantry, occupations of factories by the workers,” and in an additional interesting twist to this populist aspect of fascism, “denounced the State as the enemy- ‘Down with the State in all its forms!’ ” (4)

Patel and McMichael’s’ presentation of “global fascism”, on the other hand, tends to obscure the mass base of petit-bourgeiosie of fascism.  Fascism is not the preferred system of the haute-bourgeoisie, whether in the First World or the Third World.  Liberal bourgeois democracy is the preferred state arrangement of the imperialists.  Bubba and his crackkker pals take up fascist “revolution” when their parasitic class privileges are threatened.  It is not as if a petit-bourgeois class (and a parasite class at that) is capable of running a state on its own, as opposed to the bourgeoisie or proletariat.  However, the populist, even “anti-imperialist” rhetoric of fascism is an emergency imperialist agenda to; 1) radically redistribute the spoils of imperialism to the labor aristocracy, 2) severely limit what national groups can take part in this fascist oppression and  parasitism.  While initially costing the haute-bourgeiosie its normally larger profit margin under liberal imperialism, the emergency measure of fascism is an insurance policy taken out on future uninterrupted superprofit extraction.  Covering their own asses, the imperialists essentially give the increasingly nervous, bitter, and piggish labor aristocracy a “grand new bribe” in jointly crushing the proletariat in an openly terroristic capitalist dictatorship.

Even Leon Trotsky, the ideological guru of many of these First Worldist trends that throw the word “fascism” around meaninglessly (while trying to fruitlessly win the above mentioned crackers to “socialism”) originally agreed that fascism had a populist character. (5)  Since the defeat of the Axis powers, the term “fascist” had been increasingly been used to describe extremely reactionary, militaristic, and anti-communist regimes in the Third World.  The authors advance a similar idea here with their “global fascism” concept.  The peculiar difference here is that the mass base for this fascism is not readily apparent within a nation exploited by imperialism.*  This would normally lead us to dismiss such a definition of fascism as pre-scientific.  Incidentally, this globalized fascism does have a mass base, although not within the fascist-led exploited nation itself.  In essence, the mass base of Third World fascism is that populist movement of displaced labor aristocrats, settlers, and other petit-bourgeois parasite forces within the First World.  This is counter-intuitive to the conventional understanding of fascism, both historically and currently.

The hordes of “Joe the Plumber”-type crackers are the m”Ass” base for Third World fascists like the late Pinochet and Suharto.  These same fascist bastards in the First World cheered on Saddam Hussein so long as he killed revolutionary Shia, and rooted for Manuel Noriega so long as he snitched out peasant rebels in Latin America to the u$.  This new global fascism is a more stable fascism, with its different social components now compartmentalized within the First World and the Third World.  Patel and McMichael, whether they know better or not, leave out the key social force behind the advent of global fascism; the First World labor aristocracy.

Patel and McMichael quote a 1994 Zapatista communiqué:

“When we rose up against a national [Mexican] government, we found that it did not exist. In reality we were up against great financial capital, against speculation and investment, which makes all decisions in Mexico, as well as in Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania, the Americas—everywhere.”

We would tell the Zapatistas that they actually did rise up against an existing national government – the government of the united $tates.  Amerikkka, and Amerikkkans themselves, are the enforcers of the financial capital that are behind all lackey regimes in the Third World, whether “democratic” or outright fascist.  Amerikkkans themselves, and their sacred “way of life,”  are ultimately the legitimate targets of national liberation movements.  The end of the First World generally, and Amerikkkan imperialism particularly, will be the final end of fascism.

What is “the state,” anyway?

Patel and McMichael’s view of the sovereign state resembles the views of anarchism, indigenism (“Fourth Worldism”), and deep ecology.  Adherence to this “anti-centralist” impulse amounts to the exploited and oppressed running around in circles.  From the same EZLN communiqué:

“[We call for]…a political dynamic not interested in taking political power but in building a democracy where those who govern, govern by obeying.”

Whether you govern in service of the people or in the service of profits, governing still means wielding state power!  The Zapatistas themselves exercise a form of state power in the Chiapas territories that they hold:

The above signage proves that, despite the anarchist semantics, that the Zapatistas actually utilize a form of centralized state sovereignty.  Like it or not, it is an exercise of dictatorship.  Otherwise, such statements on prohibiting anti-people activities are meaningless.  Even anarchists during the 1999 WTO rebellion had “house rules” in the squats they occupied.  Rules that they ruthlessly enforced – and rightfully so, with all the pig activity going on.  In 2001, Raj Patel himself seems to endorse the universalist conception of human rights, that Patel himself came to criticize with Philip McMichael later in 2004.  Here is what he said with regards to the role of People’s Global Action (PGA) during the 1999 WTO rebellion:

“The principles of decentralisation and autonomy adopted by many within radical movements can also, unintentionally and remediably, be exclusionary. Many radical groups have anarchist principles behind them – non-hierarchical, consensus decision-making, often no formal structure. One problem with this is that it is often used to dismiss talk of what ‘the movement’ can do about issues of race and gender, on the grounds that we’re not a movement, we’re a collection of individuals and so we can’t make decisions about the ‘movement.’ But UK EF! , or Peoples’ Global Action, for example *are* movements, or at least networks with informal hierarchies and structures and unwritten rules. Every action involves a decision and a choice and it is important that these are open. For example, saying that we cannot exclude fascists from gatherings involves a choice – if people are allowed to say overtly racist comments, you exclude people of color, or at least prevent any chance of us feeling comfortable. This why at its last conference made explicit moves to overtly condemn discrimination.” (7)

Here, Patel argues for a dictatorial approach towards movement organizing, whether he acknowledges it or not.  He is also fighting the real fascists here with such a universalist approach, whether he acknowledges it or not.

Another side of the problem with reflexive anti-authoritarianism is seen in what Patel and McMichael uphold in Via Campesina.  The Via Campesina approach to peasant liberation “is a contradictory understanding of rights—where the state remains a guarantor of the [people's] rights, but where it plays no role in the authorship of these rights.” Via Campesina ought to move beyond the constraints of bourgeois democracy and be both the author and guarantor of rights?  Yes, this requires that you wield some state power, or be centrally organized as such.  If groups such as Via Campesina and the EZLN acknowledge that the state is tool to be used by opposing classes, they would make great advances toward the defeat of imperialism.  The imperialists utilize leadership, centralism, and the state.  Until the day imperialism is wiped off the map, the proletariat should utilize these tools as well.  Comrade Lenin quotes Comrade Engels in The State and Revolution:

“… When I counter the most rabid anti-authoritarians with these arguments, they only answer they can give me is the following: Oh, that’s true, except that here it is not a question of authority with which we vest our delegates, but of a commission!  These people imagine they can change a thing by changing its name….”

“Had the autonomists,” he wrote, “contented themselves with saying that the social organization of the future would allow authority only within the bounds which the conditions of production make inevitable, one could have come to terms with them. But they are blind to all facts that make authority necessary and they passionately fight the word.”

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All socialists are agreed that the state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and become mere administrative functions of watching over social interests. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social relations that gave both to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority.“Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is an act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon, all of which are highly authoritarian means. And the victorious party must maintain its rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted more than a day if it had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Cannot we, on the contrary, blame it for having made too little use of that authority? Therefore, one of two things: either that anti-authoritarians don’t know what they are talking about, in which case they are creating nothing but confusion. Or they do know, and in that case they are betraying the cause of the proletariat. In either case they serve only reaction.” (8)

And here’s Comrade Lenin from “Left-Wing” Communism:

“We hope that the reader will understand why the Russian Bolshevik, who has known this mechanism for twenty-five years and has seen it develop out of small, illegal and underground circles, cannot help regarding all this talk about ‘from above’ or ‘from below,’ about the dictatorship of leaders or the dictatorship of the masses, etc., as ridiculous and childish nonsense, something like discussing whether a man’s left leg or right arm is of greater use to him.” (9)

Patel and McMichael shouldn’t sell themselves, and the Third World, short with the decentralized anti-statist approach and obscuring the role of the First World labor aristocracy’s support for global fascism.  Maoism-Third Worldism provides both the vision for a classless and ultimately stateless future, and the strategy of People’s War to get there.  The EZLN and other groups have the means to enter the early stage of people’s war, the setting up of revolutionary base areas It must not fear the sovereign power exercised in the base areas,  nor the establishment new democracy afterward, nor the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry after that.  Also, they must not be fooled by phony claims of solidarity from First Worldists, as they (consciously or not) attempt to rally the “mASS” base for fascism.  This parasite labor aristocracy of the First World need to be expropriated by the Joint Dictatorship of the Proletariat of the Exploited Nations (JDPEN), not allied with.

Raj Patel and Philip McMichael are correct that Third Worldism failed, but not because of the existence of state sovereignty.  Rather, Third Worldism’s failure is due to state sovereignty being controlled by the bourgeoisie rather than the proletariat. This is not to say that everything about the dictatorship of the proletariat is rosy – it’s not full communism yet.  As Comrade Marx pointed out, certain inequalities can only be restricted until the proletarian dictatorship abolishes the “4-Alls”:  “Abolition of class distinctions generally, to the abolition of all the relations of production on which they rest, to the abolition of all the social relations that correspond to these relations of production, and to the revolutionizing of all the ideas that result from these social relations.“  (10)  Even Comrade Mao said that because of the inherent inequalities involved with wielding state power, “…it will be quite easy for them to rig up the capitalist system.” (11)  That is why Maoism, and Maoism-Third Worldism by extension, calls for continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.  The egalitarian example set by the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution objectively accomplished more of anarchism’s goals towards building a stateless global society than the anarchists themselves!

Maoism-Third Worldism is the real “new internationalism” rising from the ashes of Third Worldism to confront imperialism.  This is because Maoism-Third Worldism is  Maoism without the First Worldism, and Third Worldism without the capitalism.  Only with Maoism-Third Worldism can the Third World both transcend the traditional bourgeois state, and defeat the real fascist danger coming from the united $nakes of imperialism.

Notes:

1.  Rajeev Patel and Philip McMichael; “Third Worldism and the lineages of global fascism: the regrouping of the global South in the neoliberal era;” article in Third World Quarterly, Vol 25, No 1, pp 231–254, 2004; http://abahlali.org/files/ThirdWorldQuarterlypatelmcmichael2004.pdf

2.  Georgi Dimitrov; The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism; http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/dimitrov/works/1935/08_02.htm#s2

3.  Ibid.

4.  R. Palme Dutt; Fascism and Social Revolution; http://www.plp.org/books/dutt.pdf
5. Leon Trotsky; The Turn in the Communist International and the Situation in Germany; http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1930/300926.htm

6.  hxttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Mexico.Chis.EZLN.01.jpg

7.  Kolya Abramsky; “Cultures of Domination: Race and Gender in Radical movements;” article in Restructuring and Resistance: Diverse Voices of Struggle in Western Europe,  (ed.), March 2001; hxttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples_Global_Action

8.  V.I. Lenin; The State and Revolution; http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch04.htm#s2

9.  V.I. Lenin; “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder; http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/pdf/Lenin_Left_wing_Communism.pdf

10.  Zhang Chunqiao; On Exercising All-Round Dictatorship Over the Bourgeoisie; http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/zhang/1975/x01/x01.htm

11.  Ibid. [For more on the true role of Lin Biao in the GPCR, often obscured by those claiming to uphold the so-called "Gang of Four," see Prairie Fire's Two Roads Defeated at hxttp://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2008/08/18/part-one-the-two-roads-not-taken, http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/two-roads-not-taken-part-2-of-3-still-under-revision, and http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2008/11/05/two-roads-defeated-part-3-proletarian-jacobins]

* An exception to this notion are perhaps “fascist” Hindu nationalist movements who have a local Third World mass base (like RSS). Some scholars dispute whether these Hindu religious chauvinists are truly fascistic by definition.


RAIM reviews Arun Gupta

Review: Arun Gupta Asks, “What Anti-War Movement” (presented by Democracy Now!, September 24th, 2009)

(http://raimd.wordpress.com)

A year after Barack Obama’s presidential election and with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still raging (and spreading into Pakistan), many within anti-war circles are engaged in dialogue about which way the movement should go. A large part of the problem faced by anti-war activists is that their once relatively large movement is now far smaller and less vibrant. Much focus has been given as to why this is. Many of those still dedicated to the anti-war cause are now taking a critical look at the movement’s preceeding years, attempting to find lessons which can help them recover from a major slump in organizing and mass action.

One such activist is Arun Gupta, editor of the New York City ‘left’-oriented newspaper, the Indypendent. In a speech presented by Democracy Now!, another nominally left media outlet, Arun Gupta attempts to answer some of the hows and whys of the death of the anti-war movement and offers prescriptions for future organizing.

Talking about his background, Gupta says he cut his political teeth as part of solidarity activism for the South African anti-apartheid movement and Latin American struggles. In explaining thoughts at the time about wider radical organizing, Gupta states, “there’s always been this notion that the left would re-found itself into a mass base movement if we only had some sort of imperialist war that we could oppose, something on the scale of Vietnam; that this would radicalize the population enough and it would show the true face of imperialism.” Gupta begins by noting how this never came to fruition.

Gupta on the death of the Amerikan anti-war movement

In attempting to answer why a mass, radical anti-war movement never came into being, Gupta reflects on one of the main US anti-war organizations, United For Peace and Justice (UFPJ). Gupta rightly pegs UFPJ as a shill for the war-mongering Democratic Party, something most remaining Amerikan anti-war activists are aware of. Citing mostly anecdotes and quotes, Gupta describes UFPJ’s role inside the anti-war movement as one of shepherding activists towards the reformist morass of mainstream electoral politics.

After the Democratic Party gained a congressional majority in 2006, UFPJ supporters, including Gupta, were advocating a ‘power of the purse strategy,” urging Democrats to use their federal budgeting power to cut funding to the war. Gupta says the leader of UFPJ, Judith LeBlanc, characterized that strategy, reformist as is was, as being “on the outside shaking our fists,” and told supporters that the way forward was working within the Democratic Party. Gupta also notes how long-time ‘leftists’ such as Carl Davidson, who campaigned for Barack Obama, hailed his presidential victory as a milestone for “class struggle.” According to Gupta, UFPJ and leaders such as Carl Davidson are why the anti-war movement collapsed.

Gupta also says there was a failure on the part of the “great hope” that was the “direct action left,” “anti-globalization movement,” “anarchists,” “student-led groups” and “some of the parties” [most likely referring to the 'Party for Socialism and Liberation' and 'Workers World Party']. Though there was a lot of talk between these groups about reforming and refocusing on anti-war work, he states, “nothing has really come from it.” He dwells little on why this is and fails to examine the politics of any of these groups. Instead, he still thinks they could potentially come together to form a “new, radical, principled anti-war movement.” According to Gupta, because it isn’t happening, UFPJ still maintains power in the passive, anti-war movement which now supports Obama.

Where Gupta gets it wrong

While UFPJ and Carl Davidson helped lead the anti-war movement’s shift towards support for the Democratic Party, Gupta adds no analysis or understandings beyond this. His answer of why the anti-war movement never coalesced into a mass-radical movement is shallow, bordering on conspiratorial. Thus, Gupta misses the point entirely.

From the beginning, the anti-war movement was a largely anti-Bush movement, a domestic reaction to the brash, John Wayne-esque brand of imperialism. There was almost none, if any, focused internationalism coming from the largely pro-Amerika movement. Almost all internationalist actions and slogans were by accident, as parts of the anti-war movement took up anti-militarist causes: one memorable example being when Portland ‘anarchists’ burnt an effigy of a US troop while chanting “Bye bye G.I., in Iraq you’re gonna die.” It is important to note this example was a fringe rejected by the mainstream of Amerikan anti-war sentiment. Moreover, the ‘anarchists’ undertook the action based on liberal anti-militarism, never bridging over towards a long-term, principled stand with the world’s oppressed against imperialism.

One meme to come out of the anti-war movement was that Bush had turned world opinion against the US. Another was that “peace is patriotic.” Hardly internationalist or radical slogans, the anti-war movement peddled the mythology of historic Amerikan greatness and a false picture international fraternity. It actually saw itself as trying to improve Amerika’s image worldwide. More contrived was the anti-war movement’s talk about how the wars are supposedly against the interests of Amerikans. Moaning about ‘our’ wasted tax money was common throughout the anti-war movement. The obvious problem with this is that imperialism, which Amerikans do benefit from, requires imperialist wars. Amerika’s wealth is and always has been based on the oppression of other peoples. Amerikans intuitively understand this and most never joined the anti-war movement.

Into 2005, as the war dragged on, and with Bush’s incompetence and instability in Iraq dominating attention, more Amerikans began seeing the wars as becoming overly costly and offering less in the way of long term returns, even describing them as a burden to Amerika’s interests. However, this is not an anti-imperialist view. Afterall, even ardent imperialists, such as Obama, have described the Iraq war in this light.

In the end, UFPJ didn’t simply act as a pied piper, marching the anti-war movement to grave of the Democratic Party. UFPJ is simply on the same page with those nominally opposed to the war. While Gupta thinks there is mass, radical potential within First World, UFPJ has a better understanding of where most Amerikans stand on. Thus, groups like UFPJ are able to maintain leadership of the anti-war movement despite the appearance of a seemingly radical fringe. The anti-war movement’s shift towards Obama was a natural one, not principally engineered by UFPJ.

Gupta’s “anti-imperialism”

Gupta, under mistaken notions about Amerika and the anti-war movement, says that the way forward is building a mass “anti-imperialist” movement.

From the beginning, Gupta defines imperialism in a metaphysical, abstract way. According the Gupta, capitalist-imperialism is “the defining if not dominant inter-state relation and flows of power in the world today.” Gupta points to the Iraq war as an example of Western imperialism’s attempt to secure Mideast oil against gains by the lesser imperialist bloc of Russian and China. While this is true to an extent, Gupta misses the point.

Capitalist-imperialism, today’s “flow of power,” is the process of capital accumulation on a global scale: it is the exploitation of the global majority, the Third World masses, to the effect of benefitting and buying-off virtually all of the First World. A primary feature of the current capitalist-imperialist system is vast global inequality between the exploiter First World and the exploited Third World.

Gupta is also wrong to say that imperialism is the “defining inter-state relations.” In actuality, states are propped up over the course of class struggle to enforce class rule. With few exceptions, Third World states are extentions of imperialism, surrogates to the process of capital accumulation. Also, while divisions between the imperialists of different countries exist, they are rarely a principal feature. What is significant about the Iraq war is not possible ambitions to wedge out lesser imperialist forces, but rather a multi-national, U.S.-led force invaded and occupied to country to secure a greater stake in oil reserves against the interests of the Iraqi and Third World masses.

Throughout his speech, Gupta never does come to terms what imperialism really is. Rather than stating the obvious– First Worlders enjoy greater rates of consumption, more leisure time, little repression, are visibly better off than most of the world’s people and thus have little reason to radicalize or become anti-imperialists– Gupta uses a ridiculous abstraction, “consensual hegemony,” to explain why First Worlders support the imperialist system. Gupta simply refuses to approach reality: the First World masses support imperialism because it supports them.

Because of this, Gupta’s “anti-imperialism” remains hollow. Not based on serious analysis, Gupta posits an “anti-imperialism” which almost anyone can embrace. Gupta’s “anti-imperialism” changes nothing in terms of practical implications for those who do uphold it. In this case, “anti-imperialism” is an abstract tag-on phrase, a meaningless slogan, for ultimately First Worldist, movementarian politics. Gupta is not concerned with doing a serious study of imperialism, including coming to terms with its consequences. For Gupta, his goal has always been to organize Amerikans.

The magic key theory

According to Gupta, there is a magic key that can unlock a radical potential in Amerikans. First Gupta thought it would be an imperialist war. Then he decides that supporting UFPJ and doing ‘independent’ journalism would somehow radicalize Amerikan masses. Now Gupta calls for “principled anti-imperialism” as part of his latest attempt to inspire a radical idealism into Amerikans. Gupta’s calls for “anti-imperialism,” like his calls for other moralistic positions, will fall on deaf ears as long as he sees Amerikans and the First World as a social base for radical, progressive change.

Because Gupta is a proponent of the magic key theory, his critique of other groups are petty. He claims that the more radical sectors of the anti-war movement never really confronted the state. He says that the anti-war movement was really never able to break free from the limitations of the state, and thus was never able to expand as a radical movement. But what does this mean and is it true? Just in Denver, for example, anti-war graffiti popped up. Khristopher Kolumbus and other statues have been vandalized multiple times. During the DNC, a protest led by a black bloc took the streets and marched downtown. Denver has solidarity networks for prisoners and victims of police brutality and active chapters of Copwatch. Most recently, a nominal anarchist has been accused by the pigs of breaking windows at the Democratic Party Headquarters.

What does Gupta think was missing? “A golden opportunity was missed in the counter-recruitment movement,” he says. Surely, counter-recruitment was another one of Gupta’s magic keys: another one that didn’t work supposedly because the “left” wasn’t turning hard enough.

Like Gupta’s “anti-imperialism,” his prescribed necessity to confront state power is abstract. Besides his counter-recruitment spiel, Gupta never defines “confronting state power.” He doesn’t give other examples, historic or modern. “Confronting state power,” for Gupta, is another movementarian fantasy, speculatively postulated in a way that ignores the real social and material basis of mass apathy and reaction-ism in Amerika.

Gupta’s chauvinism

Gupta’s “anti-imperialism” is not anti-imperialism at all. Instead, Gupta’s politics is one of chauvinism wrapped in loosely-construed, “anti-imperialist” slogans.

As a matter of narrowness and “left” Amerikan exceptionalism, Gupta never once mentions resistance efforts on the part of oppressed peoples in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Third World. Gupta, now a self-described “anti-imperialist,” not once mentions those exploited by imperialism in the Third World! Instead he focuses solely on the “radical potential” of the largely defunct anti-war movement in the First World. We ask, how can this possibly be  anti-imperialism?

Gupta uses his privilege and broadcasts a phoney “anti-imperialism,” objectively to the disservice of real anti-imperialism. Those in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in the Third World, for whom anti-imperialist struggles are often ones of life and death, do not have the luxury to freely and openly broadcast their ideas and experiences on their common struggle against imperialism. Instead, this is a luxury for Gupta, who not only speaks the colonizer’s language but has the privilege of doing so without repression. Does he take this privilege seriously? No. For Gupta, “anti-imperialism” is another phrase, liberally thrown around to see if Amerikans bite. Without a second thought, he uses his membership of the world’s richest 15% to broadcast an effective lie, that Amerikans are friends of the Third World, calling it “anti-imperialism.” Again, we ask, what is Gupta doing besides objectively blunting real anti-imperialism worldwide?

Revolutionary anti-imperialism

The difference between Gupta and ourselves is obvious. Gupta conceives of unity between the Third and First World masses where none meaningfully exists; he insists that Amerikans are potentially revolutionary when they clearly are not. Thus, his politics will always be implicitly pro-Amerikan and not representative of the immediate interest of the world’s people.

Real anti-imperialism, the politics of the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement, derives its strength from and seeks to inspire the global masses, the 80% of the people in the Third World for whom resistance is a way of life. Real anti-imperialists see Amerikans for what they are– class enemies of the Third World masses– and understand this: imperialism will only come crashing down through the advancements of the struggle by Third World peoples for liberation.

Our strategy

While Gupta is wasting time trying to radicalize Amerikans, the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement (RAIM) is engaged in real strategies for real revolutionary change. Whereas “anti-imperialism” is just a buzzword for Gupta and First Worldists, RAIM understands that imperialism is the crux of world dynamics and proceeds from there. A hallmark of RAIM’s strategy is accounting for limitations imposed on us by the fact that Amerikans support imperialism and using our privilege to develop real aid in the revolutionary struggle.

We don’t water down genuine anti-imperialist politics to pander to First Worlders. Above all, RAIM speaks the truth and says it loud and clear: First Worlders maintain their decadent lifestyles via imperialism; are class enemies of the real masses in the Third World; the complicit ‘Volk’ in a murderous global empire; and must be overthrown along with imperialism. We openly represents anti-imperialist politics and broadcast our analysis to a global audience, using our own privilege to do so, even if most Amerikans don’t like or ‘get’ it.

First World mass movements come and go, along with most of its participants. Rather than trying to build an “anti-imperialist” mass movement in the First World, RAIM is a politically sophisticated and technically versatile one, with the aim of best serving the Third World masses and their struggle.  We want dedicated, determined comrades who are all in for the long haul. RAIM broadcasts a consistent message of anti-imperialist solidarity globally and is a focal point of revolutionary agitation, education and political development within  the belly of the beast, Amerika. Through RAIM, we seek out and educate those few First Worlders who can be best won over the consistent anti-imperialist politics. Through RAIM, we develop both politically and technically, becoming more of an asset to the revolutionary struggle.

RAIM is important as a national network which openly represents anti-imperialist politics, but it should be seen for what it is: an appendage to the vast Third World struggle; our collective effort to contribute to this larger revolutionary movement. RAIM’s message is huge, too big for RAIM alone. We encourage constant political and technical development, specialization and the application of Third World-oriented, revolutionary politics to different types and forms of work. We support those who support the movement of the exploited Third World against the imperialist First.

The scorecard

Arun Gupta and RAIM represent two very different types of “anti-imperialism.” Gupta’s is one of magic keys and preeminent, potentially ‘radical’ First World ‘masses.’ He brings little new to the table. His explanations of everything from why the anti-war movement collapsed to what is imperialism seem shallow or abstract. His analysis is neither real anti-imperialism nor a strategy for revolutionary change.

Nearing the end of his speech, after talking for thirty minutes, in the typical manner of First Worldist intellectuals, asking how to build a genuine, radical mass movement, Gupta says it’s something he’s thought about a lot about, but doesn’t have any real answers for. Typical.

RAIM posits an anti-imperialism that is new, that explains things in a way Gupta can’t. Our anti-imperialism is groundbreaking and changes the focus and look revolutionary political work for those in the First World.

RAIM won’t lead a revolutionary mass movement, nor do we intend to. Nevertheless, we still have a positive role to play in the global revolutionary struggle. By working together, representing and broadcasting a consistent anti-imperialist message, operating as a school to our own and others’ political and technical development and promoting Third World-oriented, revolutionary unity, we can act as agents of global revolutionary change in a way that First Worldists such as Gupta can’t.

The difference is simple. Gupta is First Worlder who’s into nominally-’leftist’ mass movements. RAIM? The name says it all.

[Video of Gupta's speech can be found here: http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2009/9/24/arun_gupta_asks_where_is_the_anti_war_movement]

Bob Afakean’s cult still bashing Iran as imperialists gear up for military strike

Bob Afakean’s cult still bashing Iran as imperialists gear up for military strike

(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

 

Vice President Joe Biden speaking for the Obama administration recently green-lighted an attack on Iran by Israel:

“Israel can determine for itself — it’s a sovereign nation — what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else.” (1)

 In a recent issue of Revolution, RCP issued a call for a protest at the UN against Iran:

“On September 23 and 24, 2009 Ahmadinejad is expected to take part in a UN meeting. We will be there in order to be a voice of the recent uprising of the people of Iran against the Islamic Republic; in order to show our solidarity with thousands of political prisoners and the families of those who were brutally butchered by the security and police forces of the IRI during street protests or in dungeons of Evin and Kahrizak; in order to show our solidarity with millions of youth who are fighting for a new and liberatory society; in order to show our solidarity with millions of women who are determined not to be crushed by a medieval patriarchal system and today are constituting the front rows of battle against the IRI.

 

We invite the Iranians and people in North America who have wholeheartedly supported the uplifting struggles of the brave people of Iran against the criminal IRI, to join us in this protest.” (2) 

This latest RCP-led event is part of a long series of similar anti-Iranian, pro-war events directed against the Islamic Republic. Once again, the RCP and an exile group known as “the Communist Party of Iran (Maoist)” lay the ideological groundwork within the imperial “left” for war against Iran. Another organization with a similar approach is the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), a well-known CIA asset that claims to be influenced by Marxism-Leninism. Some of these kinds of organizations, which are based outside of Iran, exist because of continuing patronage from the imperialists. They are objectively pro-imperialist despite their Marxoid rhetoric. Revisionism doesn’t wear a “kick me” sign. Revisionism has to be exposed through science. 

 

A history of Crypto-Trotskyism

 

RCP abandoned Maoism when they criticized the Maoist conception of people’s war as outdated. Bob Avakian, guru of the RCP, criticized the idea that the world revolution should be conceived as a global people’s war as “Lin Biaoist” in the early 1980s. According to the view articulated in Lin Biao’s Long Live Victory of People’s War!, the world revolution is a giant people’s war that advances from the global countryside to the global city. In this struggle, both the Western imperialists headed by the US and the social imperialists are pitted against the masses of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In this worldwide struggle, the socialist countries are conceived as base areas in the global people’s war. Thus proletarian internationalism plays a big role in this model. According to this view, in the final analysis, the world revolution hinges on the struggles in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In other words, the traditional Maoist view has a Third Worldist orientation.

 

In place of the people’s war approach, Bob Avakian advances the Trotskyist view of Permanent Revolution. According to the RCP’s view, socialism in a single, Third World country is not sustainable without help of the “advanced” economies of the First World. In other words, it is possible to have a revolution in a single, Third World country, but unless that revolution spreads to “advanced” economies of the First World, socialism will fail in the Third World. Underlying this is the Theory of Productive Forces, a theory criticized by the Maoists during the Cultural Revolution. Whereas Mao criticized the Comintern because of its meddling, the RCP, like Trotsky, attempted to re-invent a Fourth International in order to coordinate their world revolution, in order to place Third World revolutions in the service of the First World. The Maoist model places primary importance on people’s war in the Third World. By contrast, Bob Avakian’s model, like Trotsky’s, sees First World revolution as decisive. Thus, like Trotsky, Bob Avakian advances a doctrine that is both ideologically and organizationally chauvinist and social imperialist, not proletarian internationalist. RCP’s approach is thoroughly First Worldist in orientation.

 

Part of RCP’s criticism of so-called “Lin Biaoism” is also a criticism of the Maoist idea that there is a principal contradiction. Rather, RCP advances the agnostic, post-modern, unscientific view that there is no principal contradiction. Thus RCP does away with the Maoist-Third Worldist view that the principal contradiction is between exploiter versus exploiter countries, the global city versus the global countryside, the First versus the Third World. RCP also does away with the Maoist claim that the principal contradiction is between oppressor and oppressed nations. Rather than seeing the defense of Iran, as a Third World country, as a priority, RCP is spreading anti-Iran sentiment in a war atmosphere. In practice, RCP thinks it is more important to criticize Iran and Islam than to criticize imperialism. Thus, RCP does not land on the side of the oppressed and exploited peoples of the Third World. Rather, RCP has entered into a tacit alliance with the US and other imperialists. RCP has abandoned the Maoist conception of the broad united front against imperialism. 

 

RCP promotes the line of “left” compradorism in Iran. RCP has entered into an alliance with groups like the Communist Party of Iran (Maoist) and similar outfits. These movements know that they have little hope of toppling the Islamic regime at present, which has a degree of popular support because of its quasi-social democracy and quasi-anti-imperialism. So, these “left” comprador movements seek to promote an imperialist invasion of Iran as a means to elevating themselves to power. They have perverted Lenin’s strategy of revolutionary defeatism and replaced it with its opposite. Lenin’s approach was to transform the war between Germany and the Russian Empire into a revolutionary war of the proletariat. In other words, the Bolsheviks struck when the Russian empire had been weakened by World War 1. The key difference here is that Lenin’s strategy was one that led to the defeat of an imperialist country, the Russian empire. By contrast, the strategy of these “left” comprador, fake-communist organizations is one that leads to the defeat of an oppressed country and the strengthening of US imperialism. In other words, these movements are willing to ride to power on imperialist tanks, just as Trotsky toyed with the idea of hitchhiking with the Nazis during World War 2. 

 

RCP reads from the State Department script on Iran

 

Even though the Bush administration is out of power, its neo-con policies have been largely adopted by the Obama administration. During the Bush administration, RCP disseminated anti-Iran and anti-Islamic agitation and propaganda. RCP continues its anti-Iran policies today. RCP has joined the anti-Iranian choir that includes the mainstream media, the Zionists, and the US government. In previous issues of their newspaper, RCP denounced the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, echoing the neo-con and liberal hawks. Thus RCP takes the line that Third World countries, like Iran, do not have the right to defend themselves from imperialism by any means necessary. Thus RCP agrees with the State Department. RCP also echoes Khrushchev, who was criticized by Mao for backing down during the Cuban missile crisis. RCP condemns Iran over its supposed treatment of women, just as the neo-cons do to split the women’s movement in the imperialist countries from the anti-war movement. According to such an outlook, since imperialism will bring modernity and bring freedom to Iranian women, imperialist control of Iran is progressive. Thus RCP aligns itself with the neo-cons who criticize “Islamo-fascism” in Iran. This is no surprise, since both the RCP and neo-cons share the same Trotskyist outlook.

 

 

Sources:

 

1. http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp07072009.html

2. http://revcom.us/a/175/iran_call-en.html

On the death of Corazon Aquino

On the death of Corazon Aquino

(amihanmalaya.wordpress.com and monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

 

Corazon Aquino died a week ago. The death of a former puppet is the latest talk of the town. As usual, the media has started yet another campaign to glorify her. The media serves its own agenda as a mouthpiece for the one section of reactionaries who trumpet the victory of “democracy” over the Marcos-led dictatorship as some kind of mystical event. Not only does this media-driven charade obscure the real historical narrative, it popularizes grandiose lies that bamboozle the masses under the banner of “peaceful revolution” — as if. Such idealist rhetoric leaves us with nothing concrete. Rather than such empty hype, the masses must embrace science and learn from history.

 

Let’s take a look back, in the late 80s and in the 90s, when the movement was in turmoil. Sison, as a leading theoretician, had the daunting task of putting the revolution back on track, to rectify the entire revolutionary movement. Sison outlined everything from organizational errors to ideological deviation. Sison was absolutely correct in reasserting Maoism as the universal ideological weapon of the oppressed and exploited peoples. In many of the party documents, Sison evaluates the aftermath of the EDSA 1986 “revolution.” He states that conditions under the U$-Aquino regime was as bad or worse than its predecessor. (1) An alternative news source, the Bulatlat describes Aquino’s regime:

“Aquino also implemented the same militarist solution to the armed conflict by ‘unsheathing the sword of war,’ displacing more than a million people in rural areas. The ‘low intensity conflict’ strategy that the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) learned from the US Armed Forces and was implemented by the Aquino government included arming anti-communist vigilante groups, which was responsible for brutal attacks against the people in rural areas.” (2)

State terrorism was higher under Aquino than under either Marcos or Arroyo. The U$-Aquino regime unleashed many cutthroat vigilante groups, baranggay defense units, and other mercenaries, even calling them “defenders of democracy.” These were simply goons of the Aquino-Cojuanco clan, especially clerico-fascist cult outfits, Tat-tad, Ilaga to name a few. This also includes the heightened formal anti-insurgency operations of the repressive police and the military.

 

Now Sison has reversed himself. Two decades after, Sison implies that Cory is a “progressive.” In recent interviews with Sison himself, he reminisces about the friendly ties he had with the Aquinos prior to the downfall of the U$-Marcos regime. According to Sison, he had maintained a good relationship with the Aquinos even though he publicly opposed them. (3) (4) Now the misleaders of the popular movement in the Philippines, the NDF, not only conveyed their condolences to the Aquino family, they also align themselves with Aquino, the hated fraud. The NDF even states that the U$-backed Aquino regime promoted human rights, civil liberties, nationalist and progressive programs, land reform, etc. as called for by the 1986 Constitution. (5) To set the record straight, the U$-Aquino regime upheld such idealist rhetoric only on paper; to say otherwise is to betray the masses, whom the NDF claims to be fighting for. Nobody with a brain believes such nonsense. The Aquino government was an instrument of class rule. Like the Marcos dictatorship before it, Aquino’s regime inflicted terror upon the masses as an instrument of the comprador bourgeoisie, landlords and land thieves.

 

This unprincipled media stunt by Sison and the NDF is an effort to gain popularity with certain segments of the population, especially the middle classes. For decades, these segments have had a negative opinion of the popular movement for the most part. So, Sison sacrifices Maoism to win some points as a bourgeois politician.

 

This degenerate forgive-and-forget bullshit is unacceptable. These statements by Sison and the NDF are a betrayal of those who have suffered abuses under Aquino’s reactionary government. Sison only confuses the masses by making such opportunist statements. Such opportunism undermines Maoism as revolutionary science. It is now clear that the NDF has joined the yellow flag waving horde of intellectually bankrupt hippies. They have lost their revolutionary character many times over. And, they have lost their very minds by joining in the Pro-Aquino chorus. Nothing distinguishes the NDF from their predecessor groups. Revisionists are revisionists. And, they have misled the proletariat for far too long. If they can’t even distinguish friends from enemies, how can we expect them to lead the masses to socialism? Unlike the NDF and Sison, Maoist-Third Worldists are steadfast and determined to take principled stands. Genuine revolutionaries speak the truth. The shining path to communism is Maoism-Third Worldism. We shed no tear for a fraud such as Corazon Aquino: the death of an oppressor means nothing to the poor peasants, whom they kill and starve.

 

Notes

 

1. http://www.philippinerevolution.net/cgi-bin/cpp/pdocs.pl?id=reafe;page=05

2. http://www.bulatlat.com/main/2009/08/01/cory-aquino%E2%80%99s-place-in-history/

3. http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/nation/view/20090803-218598/CPP-founder-Aquino-was-true-to-her-word

4. http://www.josemariasison.org/jumi02/inps/Coryexceprel.htm

5. http://www.philippinerevolution.net/cgi-bin/statements/stmts.pl?author=ndfnp;date=090802;lang=eng

 

*

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

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

(raimd.wordpress.com)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Review: Communist Party (U$A)

Reviewed: Communist Party (U$A) (cpusa.org)

 

(linez.wordpress.com)

 

The Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) is a revisionist, First Worldist, social democratic, patriotic pro-Amerikkkan, social imperialist and social fascist party posing as a communist party. Today, they are led by Sam Webb. The CPUSA was, historically, the pro-Moscow party within the US. They moved away from Stalin, even liquidated at one point under the influence of Earl Browder. They supported Khrushchev’s turn away from Stalin in the 1950s and his later attacks on Maoism. Thus they supported the social imperialist turn by the Soviet Union. Even though they rejected China in its Maoist period, today they support revisionist , counter-revolutionary China and other similar states falsely claiming to be socialist. Today, there is nothing communist about the CPUSA except for its name. They have thrown the ABCs of Marxism out the door.

 

CPUSA have dropped revolutionary Marxism entirely. They reject scientific, global class analysis. They are typical First Worldist revisionists. CPUSA sees the majority of Amerikans as an exploited, working class even though the poorest, employed Amerikans fall within the richest 15% of the world’s population. They seek to increase the Amerikan standard of living, even though the Amerikan standard of living is already one of the highest in the world as a result of exploitation of the Third World.  Amerikans already receive more than the value of their labor. Amerikans receive a larger share of the global social product than a worldwide, egalitarian distribution would entail. Amerikans would lose out in any socialist, just distribution of the global social product. Thus by seeking to increase the Amerikan share of the global pie, CPUSA seeks to increase the exploitation of the Third World. Thus they are social imperialist: socialist in name, imperialist in content.  They are also social fascist since, to this end, they pander to the same social forces as the Minutemen. 

 

They share the typical, White chauvinism of the social base they try to appeal to. CPUSA claims that there is one “multi-racial” working class within the United States. They do not see Blacks, Chicanos and Mexicans, Indigenous peoples, etc. as separate nations that are worthy of independence. Instead they see these groups as “racial minority groups” who are a part of Amerika. Their slogan is “Black, Brown and White unite.” Like most First Worldist revisionists, they see national liberation movements as attempts to divide the working class. Thus they reject national liberation within US borders. 

 

Overall, CPUSA have little solid criticism of US imperialism. What criticism they do have tends to be thoroughly confused and nationalist, not internationalist. In other words, not unlike the fascist Pat Buchanan, their criticism is based on the supposed effects of imperialism on US citizens, not on the effects of imperialism on the vast majority of humanity. They point out that funding the war machine takes money away from schools and social programs. Their “anti-militarism” and “anti-imperialism,” such that it is exists, is US-centered. Lacking all science, like most of the First Worldist “left,” they fail to point out that Amerikans mostly benefit from imperialism.  

 

They are bourgeois liberals. They believe in gradual reform through bourgeois institutions, not revolutionary leaps. They have abandoned the lessons of Lenin for run-of-the-mill bourgeois, electoral reformism. They call this approach “Bill of Rights Socialism.” CPUSA’s politics attempt to pull the bourgeois establishment to the left, especially the Democratic Party. Being partisans of the Democratic Party, they even go so far as to dedicate significant time attacking bourgeois, third parties such as the Green Party as “spoilers” who aid the Republicans. They often justify their work for the Democratic Party by claiming that there is an eminent, fascist threat in the form of the “ultra-right” Republican Party. They also pander to the union bureaucracies and non-profit organizations.  

 

CPUSA’s main web page is here: http://www.cpusa.org/ 

 

Here is an article on their conception of socialism: Socialism, USA

 

Their weekly paper is the People’s Weekly World and their journal is Political Affairs. 

Review: Workers World Party

Workers World Party (workers.org)

 

(linez.wordpress.com)

 

Workers World Party (WWP) is one of the larger parties in the United Snakes calling itself socialist. They are revisionist in numerous ways: First Worldist, Trotskyist, etc. They are arch-opportunists who stay away from theory. They see real Marxists are ultra-left, sectarian, and so on. Their core members may be united around a line, but most of their members don’t know the difference between a Trotskyist and a Maoist. Their general membership is united in WWP because WWP tends to be one of the more visibly active groups around. So, they attract activists and movementarians who don’t care about political line. 

 

WWP has an odd history that reflects the arch-opportunist nature of the organization. The WWP began as a Sam Marcy-led split from the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the 1959. They split from the SWP over various issues, one of which was that WWP supported the Soviet intervention in Hungry in 1956, which SWP opposed. WWP supported the Chinese revolution. They also supported Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party in 1948. 

 

WWP, even if it identifies as Trotskyist at its core, swims in First Worldist “Marxist-Leninist” and “Stalinist” waters. They have attended international seminars that seek unity within the international communist movement on a “Marxist-Leninist” or “anti-revisionist” basis. First Worldism has blurred traditional lines of demarcation in the First World; thus, Tortskyists and “Stalinists” can rub shoulders as First Worldists. WWP calls its view the theory of “global class war.” According to this view, struggles in various countries, even if they are not led by communist parties, can still be objectively advancing the proletarian struggle. This is standard Marxism-Leninism, nothing unique to WWP. Thus, WWP correctly supports Third World countries in their struggles against imperialism. However, because of WWP’s First Worldism, WWP, at the same time, incorrectly supports more imperialism in order to raise the First World stand of living. Of course, WWP isn’t smart or honest enough to admit that they are working cross-purposes by supporting anti-imperialism and imperialism at the same time. In addition, WWP waffles in its support of national liberation within US borders. Even though they lend nominal support to some of these struggles, like so many other chauvinist outfits, they are known for trying to co-opt such national liberation movements. 

 

WWP was one of the larger parties calling itself socialist in North America before its split with the ideologically identical Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). So, now WWP is much smaller. Of course, all parties in North America are miniscule because the so-called working class in North America has no interest in real or fake socialism of any kind. The so-called working class in North America knows that its interests are served better by out-and-out bourgeois parties than by tiny, fake Marxist sects and cults. In chasing after every First Worlder from the Archie Bunkers to the PC crowd,  WWP goes in for lowest common denominator politics. They are also known for organizing the bigger anti-war demonstrations in the United Snakes for the past decade or so. They do solidarity work for Cuba, Venezuela and northern Korea. This solidarity work falls silent on Amerikan ears. Workers World has never seen a revisionist in power that it didn’t like. Thus they seek to be the fraternal, North American franchise of any revisionist with state power that will have them. Of course, revisionists with state power don’t really care about such things anymore.  

 

Even though they support the revisionists in China today, WWP supported the Maoists during the Cultural Revolution. Sam Marcy’s analysis, although primitive and confused, correctly saw that the fall of the leftist leadership in the PLA under Lin Biao in 1971 was a major turning point in the Chinese revolution. Sam Marcy also supported the Gang of Four at the time of their fall in 1976. Strangely, WWP published an article praising Lin Biao on the anniversary of his birth by Caleb T. Maupin. Again, the leadership of WWP is not intelligent enough to see that  everything in Lin Biao’s writing points against their approach, their First Worldism and Trotskyism. Perhaps they are trying to capitalize on the recent interest in Lin Biao. Who knows.

 

Their paper is Workers World.

 

Here are some typical First Worldist, social imperialist articles: No Jobs on the Moon, Wall Street Profits Soar 

Here is some decent coverage of Iran on their Iran page. 

 

Review: Monkey Smashes Heaven

Review: Monkey Smashes Heaven (monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)

(linez.wordpress.com)

Monkey Smashes Heaven (MSH) describes itself as the online journal of the fourth stage of revolutionary science. That’s a mouthful, but it’s accurate. MSH evolved out of various movements, but its main ideological predecessor was the It’s Right To Rebel Group (IRTR) that existed from May 2005 through June 2007.  MSH provides the ideological leadership to a large, autonomous, global movement calling itself “Maoist-Third Worldist.” MSH provides the general line, the general framework for the Maoist-Third Worldist movement as a whole that has cells from the Philippines to Mexico to North America. This movement includes such notable organizations as Shubel Morgan, Amihan Malaya, Internationalist Jacobin Club, It’s (Radio) to Rebel and others. These other pages will be reviewed at a later date.

What distinguishes MSH from most of the so-called “left” is MSH’s Third Worldism and Maoism. MSH has been the principal vehicle for Maoism-Third Worldism, the fourth stage of Marxism. Today, what distinguishes real Marxists from fake Marxists is one’s attitude toward Maoism-Third Worldism. MSH is adamant that its Third Worldism has nothing to do with Mao’s Three Worlds Theory of the 1970s. Rather, MSH’s outlook is closer to that of Lin Biao’s Long Live the Victory of People’s War!  MSH sees the world revolution as a global people’s war from the global countryside (the Third World) to the global cities (the First World). The principal contradiction is exploited versus exploiter nations, the Third versus the First Worlds, global countryside versus global cities, etc. 

Maoist-Third Worldists hold that there is no significant proletariat in the imperialist nations, in the First World. There is no revolutionary subject nor an exploited class in a meaningful sense in the First World.  Rather, the First World is comprised of parasite classes that exist through super-exploitation of the Third World. The working class of the First World is not a revolutionary class, but a class of bought-off, labor aristocrats who are the social base for fascism. Because the working class and lower stratas in the First World already receive more than their fair share of the global pie, those “leftist” organizations that advocate on their behalf are not agitating for socialism. Rather, they are agitating for social fascism, i.e. socialism in words, fascism in reality. They are advocating for more imperialism in order to increase the share of parasites.  For this reason, MSH correctly denounce the entire First Worldist “left.” 

Maoism is also a big part of MSH. MSH upholds the universal truths of Maoism. According to Maoism, the Chinese Cultural Revolution was the furthest advance toward communism in human history. The Cultural Revolution was a response to, what Mao accurately described as, “a new bourgeoisie” that arises out of the structural and ideological problems of socialism itself. Unless this new class is combatted, they will restore capitalism. The counter-revolution occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1950s, and in China in the 1970s. A big part of MSH’s work has been an honest accounting of past socialist experiences, especially the Cultural Revolution. As part of this, MSH has rehabilitated Lin Biao, which is a controversial point among many who claim to be Maoist.

MSH’s research far outshines anything else out there. Their work in political economy, history and other areas of theory sets the bar for serious, scientific work. However, they also write culture reviews and news articles covering current events. 

Here are some examples of MSH’s political economy: A rough estimate of the value of labor, Global Inequality or Socialist Equality, A Maoist-Third Worldist position on Unequal Exchange, Some tentative thoughts on “the social factory”

Examples of history work: Two Roads Defeated part 1, part 2, part 3, Some of Us Reviewed part 1, part 2, part 3, Socialism and Reversal part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5

Movie reviews: Reds (1981): Goldman vs. Reed vs. Zinoviev, To Live (1994), Bandidas (2006)