Re: [Marxism] PSL on China

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

The inner cadre are in their 50's-60's and were long-time Workers World  
members until the split a few years back that resulted in the forming of  
PSL.<< 
 
Comment 
 
The desire to have a correct political line on every government on earth is 
 more than a purely ideological matter in America. America and our working 
class  was formed from continuous waves of European immigrants, formerly 
residing in  political states that colonized earth. For several generations, 
segments of the  population had a living personal interest in "world affairs," 
through their  country of origin.  That America is the "big dog" on the 
block called  earth, with political/military outposts in every country drives 
an impulse to  measure policy of every government. Add to this a historical 
sectarianism  imposed on the communist ideological movement and what appears 
is tiny  ideological groups with the "big dog" demeanor. 
 
We should not fall into this ideological trap. 
 
The "big dog" demeanor flows from a living material/economic relationship  
rather than a history of mistaken notions of democratic centralism. Comrades 
 over 50 years of age ought to remember real American history and 
understand the  inherent danger to an organization striving to have an official 
position on  everything. Seeking to classify governments as do our imperialist, 
is political  insanity for communists and can only end in creating categories 
like "failed  states." 
 
Here is what the imperialist call the majority of states on earth . . .  
"failed states." 
 
Some classified the Soviet state as a "failed state" or degenerate (failed) 
 state. And sought its overthrow for decades. One should learn from their  
experience. 
 
I have no bone to pick with Workers World Party or PSL and actually have a  
soft spot towards many of Sam Marcy's writings. Mr. Marcy is actually 
amongst a  small group of historical figures in American history inasmuch as 
his 
personal  history is bound up with the splitting of the communist movement 
based on the  ascendency of Nikita Khrushchev and later the Sino-Soviet 
split. Most of my life  I had looked at this split as more than less 
ideological 
but not today.  The  ideological nature of the split in the communists 
movement has a  material/economic foundation, which Sam Marcy apparently 
grasped 
in spite of his  earlier anti-Soviet government political orientation. 
 
World War II was a turning point in history. At the end of the war the  
fascist alliance was smashed. Both the Soviet Union and the United States  
emerged stronger than before the war. The victorious European imperialist  
countries were weakened and dependent on American imperialism for food. The  
European regimes and Japan which owned direct colonies were considerably  
weakened by the war. France in Indo-China, England in India, and Holland in  
Indonesia did not have the military forces to maintain colonialism or the 
direct  
colonial system. The direct colonial system was the material manifestation 
of  pre-financial-industrial imperialism, whose salient feature was the 
export of  commodities as the basis for the expansion of the capital/financial 
relations or  the money economy. . 
 
The multi faceted assault on the direct colonial system was exacerbated by  
American imperialism's drive to open up the closed colonial markets. The  
colonial world, taking advantage of weakened colonialism, went into political 
 revolution. 
 
Suddenly there were two enlarged revolutionary fronts. One was the struggle 
 of the workers in the advanced countries to stop resurgent fascism, 
prevent NATO  from attacking the Soviet Union, contain aggressive American 
imperialism and  expand domestic political liberties and the workers share of 
the 
social  products. The broads American middle class, expanding in leaps and 
bounds, and  various ideological communists groupings attempted to avoid war 
in order to  consolidate their post- war position. 
 
The other front was the expanding militancy of the anti-colonial struggle.  
This side needed to prevent imperialism from concentrating its military 
might  against the anti-colonial revolutions. They urged revolutionary activity 
in  Europe and the former colonies even at the risk of nuclear war. Thus 
the split  in the international communist movement was much more strategic 
than  ideological. The revolutionary movement in the imperialist countries 
split  between those wanting to seize power and those advocating a broad 
cross-class  front in the fight for peace. 
 
In my opinion this split within the international communist movement was  
outside of and very much indifferent to the old political antagonism between  
supporters of Soviet Power, called Stalinism and those advocating the 
overthrow  of the Soviet agreement under the rubric of political Trotskyism. In 
other words  the split domestically was not the polarity between the CPUSA 
and the SWP.  Rather, both of these groups split and in the process of 
reorganization of  competing poles within the old polarity a new pole emerged. 
The 
new pole to  emerged was expressed in groups like the WWP. The split in the 
communist  movement was formalized in 1958 at the CPUSAâs 16th convention. 
During the  pre-convention discussions the fragile peace between the party 
factions broke  down with at least four major factions emerging. During the 
Convention, one of  the major factions walked out of the Party and organized 
itself as The  Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute a 
Marxist-Leninist Communist  Party in the United States (POC). Other internal 
splits 
took place within the  CPUSA, leaving the right wing firmly in control. 
 
No matter what the ideological formulations the split in the communist  
movement has a material/economic reality that cannot be ascertained on the 
basis  of the ideological documents and pronouncement of the groups. One must 
ascertain  shifting economic and political phenomena to understand the context 
of the  ideological component. 
 
The colonial revolution split between the national bourgeoisie and the  
popular forces. The result was a fundamental split within the international  
communist movement reflected by splits within each national communist party.  
This split within the world communist movement allowed for the resurgence of 
a  revisionist Marxism, and the demise of the 3rd International and was the 
impetus  for the "New Communist Movement." 
 
By the mid-1970s, a series of developments were at play. One, a new economy 
 was arising based on electronic production. Secondly, the colonial 
revolutions  shifted the center of gravity away from the traditional base of 
the 
organized  industrial worker. Thirdly, the decline of the parties of the 3rd 
International  opened the way for new organizations. 
 
In this sense Sam Marcy has a footnote in American history as a leading  
individual driving the formation of a political group on the basis of the post 
 WW II political reconfiguration of the world. 
 
As these new groups spread during the 1970's each sought to have the  
"correct" political position of all matters earthly.  By 1985 it was clear  
that 
an entirely new form of production was coming into prominence. The  
globalization of both the market and production was followed by a dramatic  
decline 
of the power of the unions and the practical destruction of the  communist 
parties as revolutionary organizations. New economic classes evolved  from 
the new economy and it was clear that a new type of revolutionary  
organization was necessary. 
 
Sam Marcy grasped the impact of the emergence of a new technological regime 
 and why its coming forth meant the reconfiguration of the working class. 
 
"The scientific-technological revolution has become such an enormous  
economic factor that it has changed the social composition of the U.S. working  
class."  S Marcy. 
 
All the grouping formed and recast between 1958 and 1985 collapsed and/or  
began reformulation  under the impact of the change in the material power  
of the productive forces.  
 
The revolutionary movement is now leaping into a new quality of struggle.  
It cannot help but do so since it is the subjective or political expression 
of  the leap from industry to the electronic economy. This process will go 
through a  number of quantitative stages. At each stage, the revolutionaries 
will have to  regroup on new foundations. 
 
History has delivered its verdict. All who supported Soviet Power, despite  
its warts and distortions cannot by any stretch of the imagination be 
called in  error. All those who advocated the overthrow of the Soviet 
government, 
no matter  what their reasoning, intersected with the most reactionary and 
fascistic  political currents seeking the overthrow of Soviet socialism. Sam 
Marcy walked  the line, and in my opinion belong amongst the former. 
 
Posing the question of China from the standpoint of whether or not to  
advocate the overthrow of its government and the CPC is on the wrong side of 
the 
 political equation and places one within the camp of those welding the 
concept  of "failed states" as reasoning for imperialist aggression. In my 
estimate this  is not the legacy of Sam Marcy. 
 
Why not lean from the past? 
 
None of us are required to wage the correct "principled" struggle for the  
"correct position" on foreign governments. The idea of forming a political  
organization where such discussion takes place openly in the groups press 
means  splitting the organization into a hundred tiny ideological groups, when 
in fact  ones attitude toward the Prague Spring of 1968 is irrelevant, 
except to old  farts, stuck in the quicksands of their own mind. And it means 
opening the doors  wide to the political operatives of the intelligence 
community, who would rather  wreck ones group than pass out newspapers, 
pamphlets 
and collectivize contacts  and potential recruits. 
 
Communists should be about the business of educating a new generation in  
politics, theory and the art of political insurgency. Some of us are still 
stuck  in the 1960s penning away about the black community when a huge section 
of our  working class is in motion. It is slow motion but slow motion beats 
no motion. 
 
We need to grow up quick. 
 
Whether or not to support the overthrow of the government of China, as a  
public question is part of the work of the intelligence community and/or  
political knuckleheads. 
 
Advocacy of political groups to do as did Lenin and publicly debate in  
their press all the questions of the world is failure to understand the  
elementary logic of political organization, and blocks American communists from 
 
waging the history making battle to detach the workers from the ideological  
political middle. 
 
One might as well form or join a political group and announce, "I am here  
to destroy the group by endlessly debating the correct position about 
everything  in existence." 
 
And then discover the means to get your paycheck. 
 

WL. 
 
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