COMRADE NIKOGDA, "What direction the U.S. working class takes at this moment is so important to the future of the world revolutionary movement because it possesses among its ranks the most advanced experience of modern conditions of capitalist production. But it desperately needs revolutionary theory and the last more than a century of American pragmatic philosophy in all fields has blocked that theoretical advance. The largest piece of that block was actually put in place by Browder and his wrecking of the Party in his day."
COMMENT: Please go on describing the revisionist path of the OLD CPUSA.... and perhaps some thing new and better would come of it. Something terribly happened in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe with the collapse of socialism and it would have to be summed up sometime because it would provide the clue to what is occurring in the communist movement today in America, USA and perhaps throughout Europe and elsewhere. What the working class and its fight for emancipation is certainly experiencing TODAY is the RESULTS of that phenomenon which two leading Marxist during that time loudly proclaimed as REVISIONISM, and that would be MAO and ENVER HOXHA. I blame the dominance of Imperialism for setting the conditions and difficulties for a socialist society to survive in this era, but it only meant that the communist parties had to be all that much more keen in its dictatorship and vigilance, and correct in its manipulation and engagement with Imperialism. That is why I maintain that some form of socialism and indeed State Capitalism holds on in China, DPRK, Cuba, and Vietnam. I could only wish the revolutionary contingents in these countries victory over the REVISIONIST squadron and pray that the same retrograde fate of Russia and Eastern Europe does not become of them. I'm a product of the anti revisionist movement of the 70's, which gave rise to quite a few anti revisionist groupings which we may be familiar with and which I won't elaborate here now. We had judged the CPUSA: Not revolutionary, and so two aspects to the communist movement interlocked...... and I'll say, even to this day! I dare say that this character, here, represents remnants of that revisionist politics degenerated to its logical conclusion...... the ostracizing of the working class as the revolutionary aspect in its contradiction with capital. After all, the revisionists, starting with Khruschev, began the process of removing the class, little by little, from its commanding status, while the Party, being steadily infiltrated by extra class elements, underground economists, criminals and the like, began to dictate to the class. The RESULTS is what we now know. The dictatorship of the proletariat, via its non party organizations and councils, etc. is very, very key in maintaining socialism and onward to communism... if we haven't learned that lesson, then where the #$%^& is our mind. We are still in the era of Imperialism...... what little has changed? ..... What' a 60 years span in history? ..... Practically NOTHING! Sure, there's been some qualitative changes in the process: Space exploration, robotics, medicine...... many "breakthroughs" in the civil rights movement. But the capitalist process has not changed. Imperialism, in all its ramifications, remains more or less as that described by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and still, nowadays, by leading communists; IT CONTINUES TO DECAY while the people's movement blooms. Lenin and Stalin, and perhaps even Fidel and sometimes Mao, represented an advanced stage of people relationship during the era of Imperialism. They supervised, if you will, the attempted construction of socialism in one country.... and, may I add, were quite successful. Their major menace was Imperialism and its internal objective agents within the Parties. The DPRK, Cuba, [to name just these two, that I'm certain of] were able to impose a more stringent dictatorship AGAINST CAPITAL AND IMPERIALISM and perhaps that it why they've been able to maintain a stronger direction toward socialism than, let's say China. I don't know.... it's a thesis of mine. But, these socialist societies, representing an "advanced stage of people's relationship", contain the substance of what it takes to build socialism, and the fact that Imperialism oppresses and exploits them, to this day, and imposes its upper heavy hand upon them and invents robotics and techniques to further exploit and impoverish the working classes here and there, does not indicate the preponderance of Imperialist "economic communism" upon them. And that is the offense which the "new class" theory, as expounded by this guy, is suggesting. There is no doubt that the new means of production will alleviate drudgery and grant us, on the other hand, leisure and satisfaction...... that is the power of the productive forces as supported by our materialist conception of history, and there is no ifs and buts about it. The productive forces leads the way. BUT, here is a BUT on a parallel matter....... the Imperialist order is destructive and moribund. Marx and Engels, and Lenin, and Stalin, and the experience of socialism, and the significance of the dictatorship of the proletariat, demonstrates that it takes a seizure of the State, the center of the superstructure, a revolution in the RELATIONS, in that the fetters of capitalism be abolished and the release of the new productive forces be effective in serving the people. Machines are nevertheless a TOOL in the hands of the proletariat or its State. The "new class" thesis propagates much of this understanding, above, to its merit.... but it commits a grave error in that it over emphasizes these productive forces aspect of the contradiction between it and the RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION to the exclusion of the Marxist revolutionary class, and invents a new one which it claims has NO connection whatsoever to capitalism yet does so to the ROBOTIC means of production in so much that the "new class" does not labor and must be sustain according to the communist principle: "to each according to their needs", OMITTING the first part of that phrase: "FROM EACH ACCORDING TO THEIR ABILITY......" Nevertheless, the ostracism of the Marxist revolutionary working class is revisionism of a very vile and new type. And world events prove otherwise. The time will come, here in America, USA, when the working class will assume socialism again, like Engels predicted of the "bourgeoisified" workers of England, and so confounding elements and unbelievers will come again scrambling behind the working class begging forgiveness and nonchalantly and casually redefining their revisionism to meet the new demands of the time.... and again they will be judged by the revolutionary class.... "Labor will become man's prime want" Marx; when the working class is emancipated. Something not understood by the new class advocates. yours, f580 --- On Thu, 1/20/11, Nikogda Nichevo <intangib...@aphenomenal.com> wrote: From: Nikogda Nichevo <intangib...@aphenomenal.com> Subject: Re: [MLL] The Communist society thesis: Goodbye Stalin To: "For the reaffirmation of Marxism-Leninism" <marxist-leninist-list@lists.econ.utah.edu> Date: Thursday, January 20, 2011, 6:17 PM Greetings on Day 4 of the Tunisian revolt! These youth are like our own youth from the '60s -- they fear nothing and no-one. Outside the country the situation looks very murky and unreadable but the repeated turnout of the people into the streets every time the caretaker transition government tries to pull another piece of wool over the people's eyes is a pretty good indicator that nothing's going to calm down until the people see a government shorn of agents of the Old Guard. And every day the movement returns to the streets the other Arab reactionary governments shiver and shake further in their boots. Many more things are starting to come out, like the fact that Ghaddafi offered the fleeing Ben Ali refuge before the latter decided he preferred the relative safety and protected obscurity of a palace in under the protection of the Saud royal house. The US seems utterly flummoxed at the moment and France, the real neocolonial power there is also at their wits' end. I raise this ... 1. because the Tunisian revolt from below is a development that seems bound to further stir the movements in the Arab world at the expense of the established oligarchies; 2. because it is the deed of the masses themselves from below in which the youth seem to have lost all fear of the repressive powers still in the hands of the state [although temporarily somewhat cowed by the mass scale that they are expected somehow to "contain"]; and 3. because it seems to illustrate a very essential truth we all need to remember in here that if one is revolutionary but not necessarily or yet Marxist, matters can still progress, whereas if one is [book-]Marxist but not revolutionary or revolutionary-minded, any "movement" will become quickly co-opted. It took the U.S. authorities some time to exhaust and co-opt the rebellious youth of the 1960s and many of those who were revolutionary and became Marxist at that time remained in motion for decades since, down to this day, whereas those who were "Marxist" but revolutionary not-so-much drifted off or joined the State one way or another. Matters will be settled in Tunisia when the working masses of town and country can come together and put their stamp on things. Apparently the Tunisian CP's return from exile and removed from the stigma of illegality is widely mooted to be happening soon. The U.S. imperialist state has always been as murderous as they come so literally thousands of activists suffered at their hands, yet even among these comrades, those who took up M-L and were not exterminated in prison "riots" or rigged-up assassinations were able by and large to come to terms with the experience of state repression and use it a source of lessons for the future. The working class did not lead the mass movement in the '60s but many of its best activists recognised the temporary vanguard role played for a short while by the youth, students, African-American community etc. in re-stoking the spirit of rebellion that had been repressed among the workers. The workers across the U.S. and Canada have been playing a much bigger role in the antiwar movements of the last decade than at any time in the preceding 40 years. So... the revolutionary instinct and the class instinct eventually find each other and hook up but whether they accomplish much depends on how consciously they make use of their collective experiences of struggle and for this the telescope and microscope of dialectical and historical materialism are indispensable as is the accumulated political wisdom and lessons of the movement organised and led first by V.I Lenin and then by J.V. Stalin. It is quite glorious to be alive and active at a time when this spirit seems to be unfolding in the Arab world, and not necessarily in antagonistic contradiction with Islam but on the basis of working with all those whose thirst for social justice prepares them to stand the gaffe and ready themselves for unprecedented sacrifice for the collective goal of social and national liberation. Cdces here will have note that I allude from time to time to Browderite revisionism. It really did untold damage to the movement of the U.S. workers because it seriously proposed that the workers should give up the independent politics of the revolutionary proletariat and reduce Marxism-Leninism to the work of an educational society. Longer-term veterans of the movement than me can point out that such stuff is meaningless because the movement today doesn't have any hangovers from that negative experience. However, here I would have to disagree and pretty militantly, because the fact is the US communists themselves did not put paid to Browder's legacy themselves, and confined themselves to affirming the Cominform's condemnation, as though that ended matters. Lenin's article about "The Heritage We Renounce" provides a guideline that I wish the communist worker comrades in the U.S. would reflect on and find a way to apply with regard to explicitly putting Browderism behind the movement from this point on. What direction the U.S. working class takes at this moment is so important to the future of the world revolutionary movement because it possesses among its ranks the most advanced experience of modern conditions of capitalist production. But it desperately needs revolutionary theory and the last more than a century of American pragmatic philosophy in all fields has blocked that theoretical advance. The iargest piece of that block was actually put in place by Browder and his wrecking of the Party in his day. The U.S. working class needs M-L theory today to move forward in the same sense that Cde Stalin was telling the Soviet executives 70 years ago why they needed to Bolshevik sweep combined with American efficiency in order to ensure that Soviet socialist industrialization would be positioned to ensure the country's ability not only to produce and distribute industrial goods and consumer goods but also to ensure that agriculture was modernized with the machinery needed to ensure the populace was fed by agriculture adequately, as well as to ensure the defence of the country from foreign invasion etc. The working class has to play its leading role if revolution is to "take" in the U.S.; lackadaisical attitude to theory will mean it can't fulfill that leading role. The workers can always make use of M-L theory to wage the economic struggle better, of course, but they also need it as a guideline so they can plan to take and actually win state power. As annoying as I find individual revisionist lullabies in here and sometimes feel provoked into responding to "directly", I try to keep the thrust against revisionism as a trend that blocks the class and the society from being able to move forward. Personally I find the experiences that Cdes Mark Scott and f580 share here are quite valuable because they reflect that fighting spirit of a working class that has had to fight especially hard for theory and figuring out how to apply it to solve or even address concrete problems confronting the practical movement. Best regards PS - What can we call these characters or this thinking that recognizes the contributions of Josef Vissarionovich Stalin and yet repeatedly seeks ways of saying well this don't apply here or today. Maybe we can call such thinking "Stalinoid"? What say you all? _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list Marxist-Leninist-List@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list _______________________________________________ Marxist-Leninist-List mailing list Marxist-Leninist-List@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxist-leninist-list
