[Marxism] Good guys and bad guys? (was: Re: Anybody heard Bob Avakian MP3)

[Henning Böke <Henning.Boeke@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear comrades, as an inhabitant of Europe I subscribed this mailing
list because it provides some useful information, in particular on
what is going on in both Americas. But sometimes there are
discussions which I do not consider to be helpful.

Recently some rather confused messages of Juan Carlos appeared (a
peculiar mixture of "scientific socialism" and "spiritual change"),
which most of you obviously prefer to ignore. Now, Prem K
Govindaswamy replied to Juan Carlos' inquiry concerning Bob Avakian.

Of course, Prem's warnings are correct. Judging from some writings of
Avakian which I had the "pleasure" to read, I would call Avakian
simply a crackpot. A typical guru of a political sect, simply
decreeing a "truth" which we have to follow, and if we do not, surely
our destiny under Avakian's rule would not be pleasant. I think most
of you, whatever your political background might be, will agree to me
that Avakian represents a kind of politics which in fact is, as Prem
rightly said, a "dead end", without any real perspective.

But having stated this, Prem adds a comment on Maoism in which he
himself reveals a style of thinking which, in my humble opinion, is
not too much more attractive and convincing than Avakian's. Maoism is
a complex issue which cannot be treated like this. And it is not fair
to make Mao Zedong responsible for psychopaths and sect preachers
like Avakian.

> Bob Avakian is a Maoist. Mao was an Agrarian Stalinist, and Avakian refuses
> to recognize the reality of China under Mao.

Mao's agrarian policy failed. It was highly ambiguous - in spite of
some attempts to avoid the mistakes of the Soviet Union, it shared
some basic structural problems of Stalinism. But Dazhai, Mao's
beloved model village, was not Stalinism. It was a heroic - and quite
successful - effort, guided by a poor rural worker, to overcome the
poverty of a barren mountainous countryside by collective action and
self-reliance. - And please do not forget that "primitive socialist
accumulation" was Preobrazhensky's idea, Stalin just copied it, and
Mao modified it a bit, but not enough.

>  A. The Maoist concept "revisionism"-believes that everything went wrong w/
> Kruschev, not in 1928, Stalin was overall correct, just made a some errors,
> which Avakian fully  clings to.

The Maoist concept "revisionism" was highly ambiguous. On the one
side, Maoists defended Stalin ("seventy percent merits, thirty
percent mistakes"), on the other hand they criticized some of his
basic ideas. Even more: Paradoxically, Maoists criticized the
"primacy of the productive forces", i.e. an "orthodox" assumption, as
"revisionism". You can think of this whatever you want, but it is not
Stalinist.

> B. Refuses to use sci-socialism, sees what he wants to see.

Most of the adherents of "scientific socialism" I know tend to prefer
to see what they want to see.

>     1.Claims of USSR as "imperialist"
>        a.Ignores the scientific understanding of imperialism-exploits and
> extracts much more from underdeveloped countries than it puts in, obtains
> superprofits
>          -USSR did no such things ex. Cuba, Afghanistan, Egypt (Aswan Dam),
>  India, Korea, Ruble dipolomacy, etc.

If we stick to Prem's definition, this might be right, and I do not
want to defend the theory of "social imperialism" which, in my
opinion, was rather based on opportunistic manoeuvres. But remember
that e.g. Albania left the Comecon because Enver Hoxha did not want
to accept the division of labour within the Comecon planned by the
USSR, according to which Albania should become the socialist
countries' lemon garden, whereas Hoxha insisted on an autonomous
industrialization.

> C. Dumps class struggle by asserting primacy of "Christian-Fascist" mov't,
> not much different that orientalists who say that the struggles in Midle
> east are nothing more than inherent inferioirty of Islam
> D. Cultural revolution- way of purging dissent, was under Mao's absolute
> control, bypassing the party bureaucracy in order to re-establish a party
> absolutely loyal to him w/ no grassroots democracy or dissent.
>      1. purge of Lui Shaqi who advocated primacy of proletariat in struggle

You should read some research on the social history of the Cultural
Revolution. If you do so, you will find that "Liu Shaoqi advocated
primacy of proletariat in struggle" is rubbish. It is rubbish because
the generic use of the notion "proletariat" (as Trotskyists like it)
does not fit China's reality in the 1960s. It was Mao's great
illusion that the broad masses of the workers and peasants would
unanimously stand up against the "capitalist roaders". But the
Cultural Revolution revealed a quite different reality: The Chinese
working class was deeply divided into a privileged group - the
regularly employed workers of the State's enterprises, with high
wages and all-round social security - and a broad segment which today
we would call "precarious": mostly younger workers with limited
contracts and low wages. The first group profited from Liu Shaoqi and
supported him, the latter suffered from Liu's policy and supported
the "revolutionary rebel" groups.

> E. Mao as Stalinist
>     1. Mao as Han Chauvanist, Third world National Chauvanist, thus
> abrogates world revolution and solidarity
>     2. Building of Bases for US in Viet Nam (William Blum in Killing Hope,
> Vietnam section)
>     3. Popular Front w/ KMT, who were more interested in Collaborating w/
> Japanese and killing communists.
>     4. Visits w/ Kissinger and Nixon, at the same time that Genocide
> against Southeast Asia takes place
>     5. No democracy in the rank and File
>             a. opposition factions such as Lui Shaqi, as well as Chinese Left
> oppositionists/Trotskyists were banned.

If I had to write a comment on this, I would have to say: Trotskyist
rubbish. But I do not want to cultivate such a style, so please
ignore it.

> Mao superficially co-opted Left oppostion and anarchist platforms in a
> Stalinist Way.

I do not understand what you mean.

> Mao's "differences" w/ Kruschev, Hoxha, Stalin, Tito etc.
> are like the split between the AFL-CIO and the CtW-both of those groups
> pretend to have ideological differences, but the split is bureaucracy
> driven, and they both remain committed to business unionism. In the same
> way, Mao's split w/ Hoxha, Stalin, Tito, were a pretense of theoretical
> difference, bureacractically driven, and committed to a top-down,
> bureaucratic, Stalinism.

There were serious theoretical differences. They were not just
pretended. Enver Hoxha, for instance, would never have dared to
mobilize "masses" outside the party without strict control. Mao at
least tried it. Mao's populist idea of the "mass line", according to
which the party cadres must be educated by ordinary people, does not
exist in "Marxism-Leninism". In 1957, Mao held a speech in the
central committee in which he said: "We must listen to anyone's
opinions, no matter if he is a street sweeper or a liquid manure
carrier." I think this was neither Stalin's nor Trotsky's point of
view. For Mao, a skilled industrial worker (the idol of "scientific
socialism") was not superior to a poor rural day labourer. And Mao
did not share the classical Marxist resentment against the
lumpenproletariat.

>  Titoists did the same in Yugoslavia w/ the concept of workers
> self-management as opposed to bureaucracy, but they are routinely derided
> by maoists as "revisionists"
> Contrast to USSR 1917-1928, debate over differences between camps led by
> Trotsky and Bukharin, etc, and the fact that there was a workers democracy.

What did you say above about persons who see what they want to see?

I think the crucial problem of Prem's point of view is the
simplifying and arbitrary effect of the Trotskyist concept of
"bureaucracy". Trotsky first used this concept in a strict and
precise sense, pointing to the character of the Russian "workers
State" where, according to him, circumstances of backwardness
favoured the development of a self-acting bureaucracy as an
"appendix" (I think he said "vermiform appendix") of the proletariat.
In my opinion, Trotsky's analysis is not really convincing because of
its dogmatic premises. But at least it is precise. Later, the
Trotskyists often promoted an abstract use of the term "bureaucracy",
applying it to any more or less institutional entity which does not
fit to their taste. For some Trotskyists, Fidel Castro is a
"Stalinist bureaucrat" who must be overthrown and replaced by a true
and pure workers democracy (as if the Cuban "opposition" in Miami and
elsewhere wanted this), others try to explain why Cuba is not or not
too bureaucratic. This shows how arbitrary the generalized use of the
notion "bureaucracy" - as the supposed key to everything what went
wrong - is.

Of course we can call the conflicts between and within communist
regimes "bureaucracy-driven" - insofar as they were situated within a
sphere of political institutions. Of course you can call anyone who
acts within an institutional framework a "bureaucrat". But what does
this explain? Of course we can call e.g. the Maoist "Gang of Four" a
"bureaucratic" group. In fact they represented a current which tried
to oust the old establishment replacing it by a new one. But this
does not explain the sharp contradictions between the factions. If
they all were bureaucrats, why did they not arrange with each other?
In 1975, Deng Xiaoping demanded more prescreptions and severe
controlling of discipline in the factories in order to increase
productivity. The "Gang of Four" theorist Yao Wenyuan (who died
recently) wrote: "How far are we to go in this severity? Are we to
introduce the capitalist mode of production, which even keeps check
on the time the workers spend when they go to the toilet?" Deng
Xiaoping and Yao Wenyuan both acted within the State apparatus and
used means of repression. Surely the "Gang of Four" was less
"bureaucratic" than their opponents, they encouraged workers to
resist the bureaucratic and authoritarian factory management. The
real problem was: There was no rule of law in China. There were
democratic rights like the right to write wallpapers, but there were
no independent institutions which guaranteed the possibility of
exercising these rights without sanctions. There were fierce
conflicts within the society and between different segments of the
working class to which the different party factions referred, but
there was no "civil society" which allowed to carry out these
conflicts in a civilized way. I do not see that the Trotskyist
theoretical framework based on the opposition of "bureaucracy" and an
abstract, idealistic fiction of a true and pure workers democracy
would allow to grasp these real problems. By the way, Trotsky always
spoke of "workers", not of Mao's street sweeper and liquid manure
carrier, persons who do not enjoy a high prestige in "scientific
socialism".

> This isn't to say that Trotskyists, Castroists, DeLeonists, Morenoists,etc.
> always see the world through impeccable scientific understanding, but their
> understandings generally coincide more often w/ scientific view of the
> world hundreds of times more than Maoists, Stalinists, etc, who in turn see
> the world in a much more scientific lens than 98% of capitalists,
> Raygunites, Bushites, Clintonites, untra rightwingers, and liberal
> capitalists.

Prem sorts good guys and bad guys. The bad guys are "Stalinists" and
"Maoists". Among the good guys, besides "Trotskyists" and
"Castroists" he mentions "DeLeonists" and "Morenoists" - never heard
of. Why did all these good guys, except the Castroists, never succeed
in changing reality, in spite of their famous "scientific
understanding"? Surely my question is a bit "pragmatistic", but it
was Engels who said: "The proof of the pudding is the eating."

Final remark: Most of you seem to have a more or less "Trotskyist"
background which I do not share. This should not be a problem - I am
not a Stalinist, but an advocate of Marxist pluralism. I am rather a
"French style" Marxist, influenced mainly by Althusser and Bettelheim
who first tried wo work out a modernized kind of "scientific
socialism" and then found out that this was impossible. I do not
adhere to any orthodoxy.

But after Prem has told us what he thinks about Maoism, now I will
tell you what I think about Trotskyism, at the risk that you will
stone me to death. I know some Trotskyists, "Mandelist" Fourth
International militants - sometimes I cooperate whith them, most of
their political opinions are quite OK, anyway they are trustworthy.
In general, I would describe their political role in Germany as
positive. But I find their theory - if they have one, most of them do
not really care about it - simply weak. They are really good-minded
people, but also ingenuous idealists. Some Trotskyists are crackpots,
but I think most of them are good guys who unfortunately stick to a
wrong theory. In my opinion, Trotskyism surely has some historical
merits, but nowadays it is a useless attempt to maintain an
"innocent" orthodoxy. Blaming "Stalinism" for any negative reality
which appeared in the name of Marxism, Trotskyists try to defend an
allegedly sane, uncompromised Marx-Lenin orthodoxy. (The Fourth
Internationalists now try to mix it with some Porto Alegre
movementism without understanding that this mixture cannot function
consistently.) I always preferred Bettelheim's analysis of the Soviet
Union to that given by Trotsky because Bettelheim was aware of some
ambiguities of "scientific socialism" itself which Trotsky never put
into question. As a "Bettelheimite", today I believe that most of the
negative features for which Trotskyists blame Stalinism are rooted in
Leninism, as Leninism is rooted in classical social-democratic
Marxism which was rooted in bourgeois "scientific" 19th century
progressism. By this, I do not mean that Lenin and Stalin were all
the same, and I do not deny the merits of Lenin. I think the actual
question is: How could Marx's idea of a social self-emancipation of
the proletariat (the class of the dispossessed) be transformed into a
kind of social technology executed by an authoritarian State
apparatus (whereas Marx and Lenin expected the State to whither
away)? For Trotskyists, Stalin was a "traitor", his policy a
deviation from true revolutionary Marxism, possible under particular
circumstances in Russia. But can we explain the fact that all
"Leninist"-style revolutions produced similar negative results by
"treachery" and "deviation"?

Marx' thinking has two main components: 1) a radical criticism of the
bourgeois society and its "fetishism", the self-mystification of a
mode of production in which the accumulation of abstract wealth is
executed as an inevitable "necessity" - the producers are mastered by
the process of production instead of mastering it; 2) a philosophy of
history based on a 19th century idea of progress - not a plain, but a
dialectical progress in which nevertheless the goal of universal
liberation is alleged to a "necessity" of history itself and
"science" is the key to liberation. It is the idea that the
liberation of productive forces would finally be identical with human
emancipation. In classical social-democratic Marxism, the first
component was largely ignored (Rosa Luxemburg was closest to it, but
she was very ambiguous and believed firmly in economic necessities).
Instead "scientific socialism" was entirely embedded in a eurocentric
progressism. If you want to experience the authentic spirit of
"scientific socialism", read Kautsky's comment on the Erfurt
programme of the SPD, where Kautsky diligently sorts people into a
hierarchy of politically competent and incompetent groups according
to their economic identity. Obviously he would not have trusted Mao's
street sweepers and liquid manure carriers. (And August Bebel
believed that "negro women" are less intelligent than European women.)

It was Lenin's merit to re-locate class struggle in a broader
international framework, introducing concepts like "imperialism",
"labour aristocracy", "national self-determination" - concepts which
are of course ambiguous and limited in themselves, but the allowed to
widen the horizon and to correct some errors. On the other hand,
Lenin (who in Russia was a resolute "westerner" against the
narodniki) did not question some basic assumptions of
social-democrate progressism. For instance, there was a shift of
meaning of the concept of "proletariat" between Marx and Lenin: For
Marx, the proletariat was the class of those who can only liberate
themselves by liberating the whole mankind; for Lenin (see his
article on communist subbotniks) the concept of "proletariat" was
identical with industrial workers to whom he alleged the task of
promoting industrial "discipline" against the laziness of peasants
who only worked for their personal needs - there was a shift from
"self-emancipation" to "discipline". In 1920, Bukharin advocated
"proletarian coercion" like executions and forced labour as means of
creating the "communist mankind" from the "human material" (!!!) of
the capitalist epoch. Lenin resolutely agreed. I do not intend to
condemn Lenin, who made considerable corrections in his NEP ideas (he
and Bukharin were able to learn), I just want to point out how under
the label of "scientific socialism" concepts like "proletariat"
changed their meaning.

Maoism was, in spite of its failure, an important experience. As a
theorist, Mao worked out a concept of "contradiction" which is much
more complex than the classical economicist reductionism (Althusser
took note of this in 1963). Maoists came to discover some serious
questions which classical Marxism had never asked: Does increasing
productivity automatically mean a step forward to human liberation?
Are the produtive forces socially neutral? The Maoists noticed
(differing from Trotsky) that not "backwardness" in itself was the
main problem, but dangers came from a certain, technocratic way to
overcome backwardness (because this meant that hierarchical divisions
of labour replaced ancient forms of domination by new ones) - they
put into question the one-way road of western modernity. They could
not resolve this problem - and had to yield up to Deng Xiaoping who
imposed a solution which was economically efficent, but is
reproducing the problem with increasing intensity. Of course, Maoism
was linked to Stalinism and reproduced some of its catastrophic
effects. Mao had some crazy ideas, e.g. when he called the Chinese
people an empty sheet of paper on which he could draw his characters.
In Maoism, a radical idea of self-liberation (the Dazhai model) was
linked with a utopian voluntarism. Maoism was less bureaucratic than
Stalinism, but the Maoists completely ignored questions like the rule
of law (which is at stake in China today). Maoism included some forms
of workers democracy, for instance the Anshan charter, but if you
examine the struggles within the Anshan steel plant, you will notice
that there was a constant tension between democratic participation
and autogestion (promoted by the "Gang of Four") and productivity
(promoted by the Deng faction). (In the 70s, the German liberal
jounalist Gerd Ruge wrote a detailed report from Anshan. His highly
interesting book "Begegnung mit China", published in 1978, was a
translation from English, so there must have been an English edition,
but I do not know the title.) In sum, Maoism asked some questions
which are crucial for a critical reconstruction of Marxism. I am
writing a book on Maoism (of course, in German) in which I will
discuss these questions.

Returning to Trotsky, I see his strengths in understanding capitalism
as a world system. But his weakness was his schematic approach,
guided by generic "principles" based on a highly economistic
understanding of Marx. Obviously you will beat me, but the book "On
Trotskyism" written by the Greek-French Maoist Kostas Mavrakis in
1971 revealed, in spite of Mavrakis's die-hard Mao dogmatism, these
weaknesses. In my opinion, if you allow me the polemic remark,
"typical" Trotskyists are people who tend to always compare reality
with ideas, checking any social movement whether it fits to Trotsky's
programme or not. On this mailing list, someone confirmed that Hugo
Chavez fits to Trotskyism (which I do not really believe, but
fortunately it is not my task to decide it). If you like this kind of
debate, I will not disturb you, but to me, this seems a little
peculiar - I am not used to compare actual revolutions to predefined
"isms", "principles" and programmes. Of course, there are reasonable
Trotskyists, who often find themselves attacked for "betraying"
Trotskyism by other Trotskyists. I would not like to participate in
discussions on who is a "true" Trotskyist. I simply think that such
discussions on "isms" are not useful.

You can criticize Mao and Maoism, but the level of argumentation
should be a little bit higher than Prem's schematic stuff (which
could be from a Trotskyist brochure). If someone does not share my
opinion, I am always ready to listen to the arguments, but I do not
like this labeling with "isms" (post-modernists call me a "Leninist",
Leninists call me a "post-modernist", Stalinists say that I am a
"revisionist", revisionists call me a "Maoist", for lovers of the
true and pure Marx I am a "structuralist" - what is the use of
this?). I have some preferences, but I do not sort good and bad guys.
If someone is a Trotskyist (or calls himself a "revolutionary
Marxist", using the codename preferred by many Trotskyists), then I
think that he is likely to tend to idealistic and schematic views and
might have difficulties in understanding realities which do not fit
to Trotsky's "principles", but there are Trotskyists who are able to
avoid these stupidities. I am not a Stalinist and will never condemn
someone because he is Trotskyist - I really do not believe that
Trotskyists are "counterrevolutionaries" and "secret agents". (There
are some cases where some Trotskyists, e.g. those who want to
overthrow Castro in the name of their true principles, behave as if
they were a caricature by Stalin, but I do not generalize this.) My
criticism on Trotskyism is based on an experience which tells me that
the current which is called "Trotskyism" is not or not sufficiently
aware of some crucial problems of "orthodox" Marxism (or "scientific
socialism") itself. For instance, Alex Callinicos, one of the most
intelligent "Trotskyist" theorists of our time (who does not like to
be called a "Trotskyist") pleas for returning to "classical Marxism".
In my opinion, this return is impossible. This is the point.

Concerning Bob Avakian, in my opinion it does not make any sense to
blame him for "Maoism" and to criticize him in the name of "true"
scientific socialism, "true" Leninism or whatever "true" tradition
you like. In my opinion the point is that Avakian represents a style
of politics which is senseless and completely undemocratic. He is
someone who decrees the "truth" without any real experience and
without accepting any open discussion including the actual social
actors: He will never ask Mao's street sweeper. This is not "Maoist",
it is, if we can attribute such a bad habit to any "ism", rather a
"Leninist" temptation. Trotsky was someone who wanted to tell the
truth about the situation in the suburbs of Shanghai from his exile
in Mexico. But he also had some better sides which are missing in
Avakian.

Revolutionary greetings from Old Europe

Henning Boeke
Frankfurt - Germany




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