Powerlessness Corrupts

[Charles Brown <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Charles,

You've asked the question.  I'm answering, though I suspect that you're
never going to convince people on this by email, and I don't expect to
convince you by email either.

^^^
CB: Yes, Mark it is honest of you to try to articulate what you think on
this.  As long as we continue to be honest about what comes out in the
exchange, there's a chance of us all being convinced of the truth.

I know that one of the things other Marxist critics of the CP think is that
they are , well, smarter than the Cpers. I've known that for a long time, so
I've been looking at it for a long time. From looking at it, and to a
certain extent looking at it from the outside, I don't think the CP critics
succeed in making their claim of intellectual superiority to "the" CP (
which is quite a range of people). But we'll see what you and the complex
thinker Jim D come up with this time.

^^^^^^

Objections to the CP aren't just that it tends to be overly simplistic.
That's a problem that goes beyond the CP to any organization, I guess.
However, the CP does seem to be particularly adamant.  If you disagree with
the party, you get denounced as a scum-sucking reactionary, revisionist
bastard.  That does irritate people.

^^^^^^
CB: Mark, surely you are not saying that _every_time someone disagrees with
the CP, the CP calls them a scum-sucking reactionary, revisionist bastard.

Are you putting me on ? :>) I thought we were going to have a serious
debate.

^^^^^


However what really irritates them is that you can be denounced a
scum-sucking reactionary, revisionist bastard one day by a party that is
perfectly capable of adopting the position it just denounced and which then
still denounces you as a scum-sucking reactionary, revisionist bastard for
not having had the position that you did and do have.

^^^^^
CB: Yes, that would be a problem.

However, I note that that (and what follows below) is more evidence of
complexity than oversimplistic, black and white thinking. Didn't Marx say
something like intelligence is marked by the ability to hold two
contradictory ideas in mind at the same time ? All the rapid back and forth
in tactics you describe is more a mark of complex thinking, holding complex
contradictions in mind and generating complex practice, sharp zig-zags,
difficult twists and turns. This is all the complete opposite of the
simplistic thinking that Jim D. claims.

^^^^

The real problem with the CP's record is that it's perfectly capable of
making 180-degree turns.  Ideologically dominated by the idea that it needed
to defend the Soviet Union, it was dragged through hell by Stalin.  Under
Stalin, what would get you shot in the Soviet Union one day would get you a
medal a few weeks later.  Here, what might be totally denounced as
reactionary drivel one day can become progressive and laudatory the next.
The "third period" marked years of intense (and howling mad) sectarianism in
which they insisted on having their own "red unions," and this flipped to
allow the party to train and elevate a generation of secondary leaders of
the militantly class collaborationist AFL-CIO.  The party's shifts and
shambles in the years leading to World War Two inspired observers (and
members) to refer to its leader, William Z. Foster as "Zig-zag Foster."  He
was replaced by Earl Browder, whose nonsensical "Communism is 20th century
Americanism" suited a wartime party's cozying up to a US government in
alliance with the Soviet Union, but ended pretty quickly with another major
reversal.

The result by the 1960s and 1970s makes the CP a hard sell to many people
who weren't "legacies," that is from CP families.  Welcome to rush week.

I think the CP achieved some good things, and I'm glad you are happy with
it.

^^^^^^^^
CB: Happy with it is not quite accurate. It's sort of like being "happy"
with anthropology or Darwinism. There are some horrible things that happen
through evolution,and development , but I kinda  have to accept them as
objective. Similarly , the social revolution is not always fun and games,
and happiness, but I have to accept it as an objective fact.  The SU, CP's
and revolutions so far have had trials and errors. But truth is derived from
correction of error etc. a process of practical-critical activity, etc. ,
etc. I'm not going to disgard the lessons of the practical-critical activity
of the parties and socialist nations.

^^^^^^

Really.

^^^^^
Uhuh

^^^^^

However, you have a very, very hard sell to convince anyone familiar with
the party's history that it can ever be anything more.

Solidarity!
Mark L.

^^^^^^
CB: Depends on whether they are willing to think as hard as Lenin.