Your criticism of Avakian’s personality cult is quite justified. Unlike the revolutionaries in India, Peru, Nepal and the Philippines, his party does not control base areas or run a people’s government, and has never accomplished anything to speak of. Avakian’s inability to make self-criticisms and his self-promotion serve no purpose except to make Maoism look stupid and discredit the aforementioned People’s Wars.
That said, the rest of the letters are a step backwards. Breaking from the RCP provides the opportunity to do what Avakian refused. Namely, to analyze the class structure of the United States and, most importantly, how it has been affected by the influx of super-profits from the Third World, which have only increased since the fall of Soviet social-imperialism. The nine letters do not contain a single sentence of materialist analysis, except at the end where you briefly mention the need to analyze material conditions, but say nothing of substance.
Equally worrying is your silence on Avakian’s blatant euro-American chauvinism, which the RCP applies in its “analysis” of the Iraqi resistance. Avakian and his followers have written numerous articles condemning the anti-imperialist fighters in Iraq. He goes so far as to say-without any evidence-that they reinforce American imperialism even as they militarily defeat the U.S. army and Iraqi puppet police. Instead of exposing the reactionary nature of the “third pole” strategy of the RCP, you compare Avakian to John Brown. That comparison is nonsense because despite his flaws, John Brown fought and died for the masses, whereas Avakian supports a CIA line. *1
Supporting the Muslim national bourgeoisie (although many of the movements the RCP opposes, such as the Iraqi Ba’ath, are not entirely bourgeois) in no way entails endorsing Islam on a philosophical or ideological level anymore than Mao endorsed the Guomindang or Stalin endorsed Winston Churchill. What is needed is the recognition that the Iraqi national resistance represents the Iraqi people. Any self-proclaimed anti imperialist who does not support anti-imperialist movements is not an anti-imperialist. To truly rupture from Avakian’s utopian “new syntheses” it is necessary to reject his chauvinism.
Your letter either ignores many glaring errors of the RCP or fails to get at the source. The reason for their vacillation between trade unionist economism in the RU period and their current strategic bankruptcy combined with blind promotion of Avakian is due to a lack of materialist analysis. Both Nine Letters and the RCP proceed from the assumption that the United States is a majority proletarian nation, and then formulate an ideology and strategy. Needless to say, this is diametrically opposed to dialectical materialism.
Their “leftist” opposition to the anti-imperialist struggles in Iraq and Palestine are also due to a false assumption that most euro-americans are exploited. When the RCP says that political Islam reinforces imperialism, it is inconceivable except when one considers U.S. public opinion, which is opposed to all national liberation struggles. The RCP seems to think that if it weren’t for Islamic fundamentalism, the exploited American workers would have risen up and smashed imperialism.
I will not reiterate the economic analysis of Lenin, Stalin, the Maoist Internationalist Movement and others that demonstrates that the imperialist-country workers have no economic interest in overthrowing imperialism. It cannot be stressed enough; to agitate for the economic demands of the majority in the U.S. is to support the super exploitation of the third world. However, your letters advocate more alliances with the labor aristocracy, the outright abandonment of the lumpen and subordinating the interests of the oppressed nations. If anything, your letter seems to criticize Avakian for not enough economism. How could agitating for the economic demands of a class that already lives off of stolen super profits possibly lead in a direction other than social imperialism?
Rural People’s Party
(Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)
http://www.freewebs.com/ruralmaoism
*1) In her book Who Paid the Piper?: the CIA and the Cultural Cold War, Frances Stonor Saunders describes the CIA’s cold-war tactic of financing anyone who claimed to oppose both Stalinism and imperialism. From this it can be inferred that groups that claim to find a “third pole” are acting as CIA agents, whether they know it or not.
That said, the rest of the letters are a step backwards. Breaking from the RCP provides the opportunity to do what Avakian refused. Namely, to analyze the class structure of the United States and, most importantly, how it has been affected by the influx of super-profits from the Third World, which have only increased since the fall of Soviet social-imperialism. The nine letters do not contain a single sentence of materialist analysis, except at the end where you briefly mention the need to analyze material conditions, but say nothing of substance.
Equally worrying is your silence on Avakian’s blatant euro-American chauvinism, which the RCP applies in its “analysis” of the Iraqi resistance. Avakian and his followers have written numerous articles condemning the anti-imperialist fighters in Iraq. He goes so far as to say-without any evidence-that they reinforce American imperialism even as they militarily defeat the U.S. army and Iraqi puppet police. Instead of exposing the reactionary nature of the “third pole” strategy of the RCP, you compare Avakian to John Brown. That comparison is nonsense because despite his flaws, John Brown fought and died for the masses, whereas Avakian supports a CIA line. *1
Supporting the Muslim national bourgeoisie (although many of the movements the RCP opposes, such as the Iraqi Ba’ath, are not entirely bourgeois) in no way entails endorsing Islam on a philosophical or ideological level anymore than Mao endorsed the Guomindang or Stalin endorsed Winston Churchill. What is needed is the recognition that the Iraqi national resistance represents the Iraqi people. Any self-proclaimed anti imperialist who does not support anti-imperialist movements is not an anti-imperialist. To truly rupture from Avakian’s utopian “new syntheses” it is necessary to reject his chauvinism.
Your letter either ignores many glaring errors of the RCP or fails to get at the source. The reason for their vacillation between trade unionist economism in the RU period and their current strategic bankruptcy combined with blind promotion of Avakian is due to a lack of materialist analysis. Both Nine Letters and the RCP proceed from the assumption that the United States is a majority proletarian nation, and then formulate an ideology and strategy. Needless to say, this is diametrically opposed to dialectical materialism.
Their “leftist” opposition to the anti-imperialist struggles in Iraq and Palestine are also due to a false assumption that most euro-americans are exploited. When the RCP says that political Islam reinforces imperialism, it is inconceivable except when one considers U.S. public opinion, which is opposed to all national liberation struggles. The RCP seems to think that if it weren’t for Islamic fundamentalism, the exploited American workers would have risen up and smashed imperialism.
I will not reiterate the economic analysis of Lenin, Stalin, the Maoist Internationalist Movement and others that demonstrates that the imperialist-country workers have no economic interest in overthrowing imperialism. It cannot be stressed enough; to agitate for the economic demands of the majority in the U.S. is to support the super exploitation of the third world. However, your letters advocate more alliances with the labor aristocracy, the outright abandonment of the lumpen and subordinating the interests of the oppressed nations. If anything, your letter seems to criticize Avakian for not enough economism. How could agitating for the economic demands of a class that already lives off of stolen super profits possibly lead in a direction other than social imperialism?
Rural People’s Party
(Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)
http://www.freewebs.com/ruralmaoism
*1) In her book Who Paid the Piper?: the CIA and the Cultural Cold War, Frances Stonor Saunders describes the CIA’s cold-war tactic of financing anyone who claimed to oppose both Stalinism and imperialism. From this it can be inferred that groups that claim to find a “third pole” are acting as CIA agents, whether they know it or not.
