Finding our own communist symbolism & presentation

Posted by Mike E on December 7, 2011

What is this intended to mean? How is it actually read by others? by Mike Ely CWM wrote: I find it confusing to read We declare fidelity to communist theory. Given that there are literally dozens of different (and often contradictory) variants of communist theory, what could it possibly mean to declare fidelity to communist theory as such? Equalize writes in another thread a kind of answer: IM A MAOIST. I think that it is sharp, fresh and real to be a Maoist. I feel good saying I am a Maoist. Im proud to be a Maoist. I am proud to be a conscious revolutionary person, and, when speaking to people that respect that, I am proud to call myself a Maoist. I can defend Mao and Maoism and am eager to do so, especially with awakened and conscious people. Maoism is not just the highest expression of internationalism and communism, Maoism is the part of communism that is most sharp, most fresh, and most true. My response in reading this is first to agree with Equalize. I too am a Maoist. But my second thought: Which of many existing Maoisms are you suggesting we defend and uphold?

My third response moves even further away: Is even the best of inherited or existent Maoism sufficient (either as banner or guide) for our tasks? One divides into two (and always did) I have spent a lifetime in the Maoist movement. It has been my school and the platform from which I have participated in the fight for liberation. Maoism represented something particular in 1968, when so many of us became communists. Maoist China was in sharp opposition to the odious, dull, oppressive, unliberated societies of Eastern Europe and post-revolutionary Soviet Union. It was in fierce opposition to the capitalism and imperialism of the West, and in violent conflict with the feudalism that crushed the lives of billions of people. It was unapologetic. It was fierce. It was optimistic. It was deeply embedded in the great turmoils of revolution. And all this was very very real a quarter of humanity, Red China, was gripped by a movement to move far beyond previously existing socialist norms. But is Maoism the banner we should grab and raise at this point four decades later? And what would it mean to do that? (Literally, what would it mean?) Throughout the last decades, the Maoism I have seen has been highly contradictory. Some of that Maoism has been (as Equalize says) a part of communism that was (in its time) the most sharp, most fresh and most true. That is (after all) why many of us became Maoists. But isnt that one aspect, not the whole? Maoism since Mao Hasnt there also always been contradiction within Maoism? Havent there been (all along) problems of formula, naive universalization of forms, stagnation of philosophical exploration, a sometimes-stubborn disinclination to investigate and learn, and an occasional willingness to uphold convenient half-truth over reality? Did that Maoist problematic have a specific birth, then an arc that revealed diverse opposing trends, and overtime a growth of exhaustion and age (meaning both a difficulty in solving new new problems, and a revealing of long-existing gaps)? The Revolutionary Internationalist Movement tried to form a movement on the basis of a synthesized Maoism but didnt its experience reveal (over time) how very different its component parts were? And wasnt there often among those Maoists-since-Mao a kind of stuck quality when facing the world. One set of example: It is a characteristic of the RCP,USA that they envisioned Leninist forms for the preparations of power but Maoist forms for the exercise of power. (See 1980s Conquer the World and its What-is-to-be-donism.) Meanwhile the Maoists of other countries (including France and India) sought to imagine the implications of the cultural revolution (and its mix of mass and party forms) for this immediate period of preparation (even to the point of questioning the previous party-state model of power under socialism).

Then, by contrast, yet another Maoist movement, the Peruvians, adopted a grim view of militarization of the party (and of the revolution) in language of iron and concentric circles that seemed to leave little room for creative disagreement, contending centers or popular agency at all. Declare sharpness or recapture it? What did it mean for most Maoist parties to insist (long after 1970s) that the Third World remained a storm center of revolution? How many sincere Maoist forces still subscribe to the idea that revolution has been permanently over the last decades the main trend in the world today? Isnt that an emblem of currents that have entrenched and hunkered down and that dont care much about the changes in reality? And isnt our task to recapture sharpness, freshness and truth for communism that, at this point unfortunately, is not generally characterized by those features? And how do we infuse such sharpness into our communism? what is the process and stance we should adopt? Todays calls for Ortho-Maoism Our current work coexists with a pull that I think of as ortho-Maoist where some communists (especially internationally, more rarely within the U.S.) argue that Maoism as it has been inherited (meaning as they have filtered it) is the necessary and sufficient rallying platform for communist unity today. If you look at their rather diverse conceptions and platforms, you see nonetheless that they seem to share as smoothing over, ignoring and denying many of the controversies and problems that (precisely!) demand energetic and creative engagements. For example, some who insist Make Maoism as the commander of the next wave of communist revolution (like some Peruvians and their co-thinkers) are asserting that the answers of our world are found in a relatively simplistic politics of models including their assumption/insistance that protracted peoples war is a universal. Let me look at some of the gaps such an approach: * Where (in any of the several existing Maoist syntheses) is the fresh analysis of the worlds political economy including the proletarianization of previously semifeudal countries and its implications for revolutionary strategy? What do we think about the massive urbanization of the poorer half of the world (from China to Lima to Mexico City to Kolkata, to plans to make Kathmandu a shantytown of cheap labor)? Where is the needed analysis of the new relations of imperialism that have replaces previous colonial ones? Maoism (even at its best) never had a sophisticated theory of capitalist political economy and some Maoists even dredged up the worst of Comintern theory (like the General Crisis theory) to fill that gap. When we published the Shanghai Political Economy textbook we deliberately didnt publish the second volume(on the political economy of capitalism) because it was terrible and our intention was allow it to drift away forgotten.

If we raise Maoism as a banner today, would we be, as some do, promoting an outmoded thinking about semifeudal/semicolonial countries and North-South relations one that is stuck in the anti-colonial storms of the mid-1950s and 60s? What does it mean when countries like China, South Korea, and Taiwan export capital to other countries? What are the implications of the moving of worldwide manufacturing to the western Pacific rim? * Where is the new big picture of our world revolutionary process and its real historic process of unfolding? The transition from class society to communism has not been simply characterized by a sinking capitalism challenged by a rising socialism, as Lin Biao implied at the 9th Party Congress. On the contrary, we have been seeing (and living through) a far more complex and real process of revolution and counter-revolution, of restoration and counter-restoration and a protracted period without socialism that may erupt into a new wave of revolutions. The Soviets thought world revolution was like a spreading inkblot that moved out from the first socialist revolution and would gradually absorb the world. The Chinese thought of the world socialist revolution as an outgrowth of the anti-colonial wave, that might surround the imperialist citadels from among the great storms of the South. What do we think now? What does the Arab Spring skipping from continent to continent tell us about how things might now work? Where and how do oppressed people raise the red flag of state power in a world of drones, nukes, instant communication, and satellite lookdown? How might things at distance from the state emerge under todays conditions as embryos of countrywide (and worldwide) power? * What is our view of previous autarchic theories of socialist self-reliance? Is socialism possible on one country today after decades of stampeding globalization and integration of previously national markets? And if so, can it be automatically possible in every country? (Including even smaller countries integrated into the world market like Puerto Rico? Or deeply impoverished countries like Guatemala or Nepal? Can we answer those questions by simply repeating verdicts made in the 1920s Soviet debates? Or do we need to seriously reexamine this together with others? * And what about the role (and mechanisms) of popular agency (of democracy and the increasing involvement of the people themselves in decision-making and liberation)? What from the Maoist legacy will we pluck out as our political forms going forward? What is (on the contrary) not possible to pluck from the past? What must be invented anew in a new set of conditions? Looking over the sequence of forms applied in history commune, soviet, shock brigades of land reform, peoples democracies in Eastern Europe, peoples communes in china, city communes in Shanghais high tide, three-in-one committees, Stalins structure of bosses and

police, constituent assemblies, even our newly-minted General Assemblies dont we see in that record the continuing need for a creative process utterly embedded in time and place? * How do we envision a planned socialist economy (given the complexity of modern societies that are not, simply, facing a rush to development and industrialization)? What role will markets, political decision-making, popular empowerment, and bioregionalism have in how highly complicated socialized production functions? Would we want to take Mao or Maoisms approaches to the environment or industrial development as our own? Decked out in old costumes and old enthusiasms? When asked What is your vision of a communist movement? I think we should start by referencing the infuriating present and breath-taking future, not glory days in a previous century. In the 18th Brumaire, Marx describes the power of earlier revolutions on the conceptions, language and forms of contemporary revolutions but he doesnt really see that as a good thing. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in timehonored disguise and borrowed language. Thus Luther put on the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789-1814 draped itself alternately in the guise of the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the revolutionary tradition of 1793-95. Like Equalize, I would say: I can defend Mao and Maoism and am eager to do so, especially with awakened and conscious people. But lets not drape ourselves in the guise of previous revolutions and revolutionaries. Our movement has to breathe the air of this moment. That is what all successful revolutions have done. The Russian symbol of hammer and sickle was once completely fresh. The image of a black panther was brimming with symbolic power for its moment of 1968. More: Isnt there now a need for different centers of revolutionary thinking and practice to cross pollinate? John Steele has pointed to anarchist-communists doing important work. Many of us are working to learn from thinkers who are outside the framework of Marxism-Leninism-

Maoism (including Mariategui, Badiou, Althusser, Johnson-Forest and more). TNL is deep into an investigation of the fusion process that created the Zapatistas. Doesnt all that influence what we become? Doesnt raising very particular old demarcations imply some rejection of those explorations. Lets not underestimate 1) how much we need to critically evaluate that past (even the best of it) and how our partisan extolling of previous socialism needs to include a thoughtful discussion of what we have learned not to repeat. 2) how much we need to fight to have a contemporary re-presentation of communism to get a hearing. 3) how much we need to learn and assimilate from this moment and its radicalizing forces to actually form a modern communist project and to invent or adapt symbols and language that have power now.