Re: Powerlessness Corrupts

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

> >  ... the CP are encouraged to think in totally black and white terms. Those >> organizations themselves tended to think in black/white terms.

Charles:
> > What's your argument for this claim ?

me:
> my experience.

Charles:
> Are you saying you think in more subtle terms than the CP ?

I'd like to.

> By "black and white" you mean overly simplistic ?<

what else could I mean?

--
Jim Devine

 

 

Comment

 

The Communist Party, like Jehova Witnesses, Mormon, Democrats, Republicans and indeed most political and ideological groupings, must by definition "think" in "black/white" terms or lose the possibility of having a continuously widening social and mass basis in the population.

 

The higher the qualitative aspect of any social group or club, the more limited will be its membership because the bar of entry is raised and requires a continuous and greater and greater intellectual commitment. Take the Jehovah Witness, Mormons and CP for instance. One can read their literature and become interested in their general view of the human condition and how problems in society are defined. These problems must be defined simplistic or as polarities because that is how people think things out, before they advance to a willingness to study the various and complex phenomena that exist between the polarity and constitutes the actual logic of the problem one is examining.

 

Take Pen-L for instance. As a sphere for economists, it must always relax its bar of entry and make things appealing to a broad cross section of people, who are more or less studied in economic matters. Then the moderator step in to ensure a certain intellectual standard is more than less adhered to.

 

The simplicity of the CP flows from its fundamental ideological stance, which states that society is increasing driven in class struggle between owners of means of production and those who must work for wages. And also the every present demand to hold ones organization together under changing conditions of life.

 

Upon entry into the CP or any other Marxist type grouping, - or the Mormons for that matter, my experience is that the individual is free to and driven to study the economic and political doctrines that underlay that, which makes these groups distinctive. For instance, everyone is not driven to understand the specific of the life of Mr. Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons or the life of Lenin and Marx and Engels. Everyone does not aspire to theologian or expert in a particular field of Marxist theory and doctrine.

 

The CP, like all political and ideological organizations is composed of layers of people operating at different capacities. To remain an organization, the CP, like other organizations must have and maintain an administrative apparatus. The point is that I seriously doubt if any single individual is as "smart" as an organization or view things in a manner more complex than an entire organization, or has the capacity to think out the complexity of life or a problem in more detail that any entire organizations. Sure, their are expectational individuals, but an organization such as the CP is also a historical entity with a historical literature within and without its formal organization.

 

Then all organizations are dogmatic by definition. Creativity of the individual and organization comes at another period of its growth and development and then organizations hit the wall of historical limitation and try to change. American history is a gold mine(d) of such occurrences. Look at IBM and how it was superseded by a Cisco and Microsoft, as they evolved the software and then built routers - the mechanics of a new infrastructure, while big Blue was stuck in history in its cash cow, the main frame.  

 

All of us more than less hit the wall of historical limitation. And the next generation builds upon or simplistic concepts, although what became simplistic was not "simple" 40 years ago.

 

The CP is not an individual, and must by definition express the outlook of individuals in different locales, different fields of work, different intellectual capability, different experience and different ways of viewing the same thing. In this sense the CP can be likened to certain features in an industrial union. Entry into a union is not determined by ones intellectual capability or if one think things out and understand the world in polarities - black/white, but rather, areas of employment. Entry into the CP and most left wings group is based on ones fighting capacity and then the individual is won over to the doctrines peculiar to the CP.

 

Individuals that would for instance, join the CP based on say, contact with its members working in the world of publishing or economic analysis, would be of a different character and experince, than a person joining the CP based on the integrity of one fighting grievance on the factory floor.

 

Organizations - all organizations, generally present their politics and ideas in black and white terms in their publications to attract people. There is of course the issue of doctrine and ideological bent. The bottom line is that to attract people, who are going to vary in their thinking by definition, requires presenting issues of the day as polarity, unless you set yourself the task of recruiting only a certain kind of person with a wealth of experience and study.

 

No, I have never belonged to the CPUSA. The CP conform to a general process logic all of us are more than less subject to. In this sense why would one treat the CPUSA - or any organization, any different from IBM, in the meaning of being unable to morph from one qualitative set of relations to another? All of the last century prove that we communists have a horrible time adjusting to new relations of the class struggle, but so do the capitalists.

 

Last point: When the African American Peoples Movement broke wide December 4, 1955 in Montgomery Alabama, and then picked up world historic change proportions, the CPUSA did not simply suffer from "bad ideology" or following the dictates of whoever happen to be in power as the dominant ideology in the Soviet Party, but it faced the need to transform its administrative apparatus and infrastructure basis in heavy industry and shift to the new social explosions.

 

Lets be more adult about this matter - less "black and white," and place ourselves at the helm of power in the CPUSA at the time. Remember we are individuals that have come together over a purpose, rather than abstract men and women abstractly trying to think out a problem, which generally reduces itself to "whose wrong" rather than "what is wrong." After one solves the "what" the "who" is real easy to isolate becomes a matter of political struggle.

 

What do we do with the outbreak of the Negro Peoples Movement and the budding antiwar movement?

 

Demand that everyone quit their jobs and go to the Negro Peoples front? And then after the Chicano Moratorium, what??? . . . another shift? With what forces? See, on a real basic level the CPUSA was historically stuck in the front curve of the industrial union movement. And this same dynamic of being stuck is no different from what happened to IBM or the Soviet Union.

 

Now, were their individuals players in this process logic? Of course, because the process becomes manifest on the basis of real people. Blaming William Z. Foster for the ills of the CPUSA and the clown who dared utter the words, "Communism is 20th Century Americanism" . . . (during a period when they were putting nooses around a bother neck), is one level of insight, but it does not get down to the nitty gritty of the logic of change - our specific American change. Foster was an industrial syndicalists - a hell of an organizer, (infinitely better than me) and his syndicalism is much of the logic of our heritage. My heritage in the first person sense.

 

Actually, this point of view reveals much about Fosters individual politics and ideology.

 

Melvin P.