Editorial Board
The recent article from Austin Revolutionary Study Group titled “Elections strengthen our enemies: Clarifying bourgeois democracy and debunking some common ‘revolutionary’ arguments for voting,” represents a certain type of opportunism, following the general ideological aberrations of Jimminy Krix, to which we respond here in the interests of upholding, defending, and applying Maoism.
In the article cited above, Austin RSG writes that “The undeniable proof” that elections cannot be used to end capitalist class rule “is the 40+ governments the US military and intelligence have worked to overthrow in the past 100 years, which happens like clockwork whenever some government in the Third World creates too much trouble for US global rule and imperialist profits.” Ambiguities aside, the argument assumes that these “40+ governments” somehow represented a change in class rule to begin with. To find “undeniable proof” on this basis inevitably means ignoring the internal contradictions of capitalism worldwide, assuming that imperialism has taken on the character ascribed to it by Kautsky and now Avakian.
US imperialism has carried out or been complicit in regime change in Iran, Guatemala, Chile, and Indonesia, just to name a few of the most well known examples. It has also engaged in major electoral interference in Italy, Japan, and the Philippines. But not a single one of these cases represented a government, or potential government, which represented a change in which class rules; they do not indicate a change from the propertied exploiting classes ruling to the propertyless exploited classes ruling. US imperialism seeks to undermine and oust those who it considers less than dependable administrators of its semi-colonial national oppression. In the event that the US was unable to effect regime change through color revolutions or electoral interference, the said governments would still be incapable of ending the rule of the capitalists and big landlords.
The list of governments overthrown by interference from US imperialism extends to those who came to power with guns and not votes as well. Burkina Faso and Libya, governments established by military means, were also overthrown ultimately by US imperialism; there is no common basis of an electoral road to taking control of the state bureaucracy between these examples—what they have in common is that US imperialism found the governments to be unreliable or hostile to securing its interests, and the fact that these governments were comprised of bourgeois nationalists, the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, etc. and in no way represented the seizure and defense of power by the proletariat. US imperialism will use every political, military, and economic means to secure its interest in exploiting and oppressing the Third World.
The logic of Austin RSG is one of concession to revisionism, steeped in years of failing to understand imperialism in decomposition and the role of bureaucratic capitalism. It is revisionism, which in collusion and contention with this or that imperialism, and towards which Austin RSG makes a conciliatory motion, that is responsible for the restoration of the capitalist ruling class in the countries that underwent genuine proletarian revolutions, such as Russia and China. The conciliatory logic smothers and ignores the class contradictions all over the world; it bends reality to fit a narrative and rejects seeking truth from the facts. As will be seen, the question of class contradictions, the way it is obliterated by the ideological aberrations of Mr. Krix and company, is intrinsically connected to their revisionist conception of power.
The other “proof” Austin RSG presents, this time “equally clear” (we agree, since it is no clearer than the above muddled formula), “is in the massive, disproportionate, and often illegal repression and murder wielded against domestic movements demanding deep reform whenever they get big enough, even if they are committed to nonviolence.” First, if the demand is “deep reform” then the objective from the start was never a change in class power, and if this was never on the agenda, then one can hardly draw such an “equally clear” proof from it.
The fact that white terror exists, that the imperialist ruling class exercises a dictatorship in which different organizations vie for the ability to represent the ruling class in the form of control over its state bureaucracy, says nothing about the ability to hold positions of authority of one or another representative. What it calls to attention is the question of which class holds political power, and why armed struggle, something Austin RSG avoids explicitly mentioning, is the sole path to political power for the proletariat and the principal means of defending its dictatorship. Armed struggle is not presented by Austin RSG as the means of making their ambiguous “revolution.”
Are elections “non-violent,” as the Austin RSG claims? No, the fight for control over the state bureaucracy and the ability to represent the interests of the imperialists is like the fight over a gun pointed at the world. It is the most expensive pageant ever produced, and it represents reactionary violence—it does not avoid violence, but only conceals it. The elections themselves are funded with money soaked in the blood of the people, and the imperialist political parties use whatever control they have over the justice department and judiciary to smack their rivals routinely; the whole process is one of essential and reactionary violence, of severe crisis and decomposition.
A rational analysis, and not postmodern irrationalism of the Krix variety, is needed in order to express the general decomposition of imperialism, which of course has its ramifications on the deformed bourgeois liberal democracy in the United States. Elections in such a process of decomposition become more reactionary, more of a circus, and more violent.
From confusion to carefully concealed positions concurrent with revisionism, Austin RSG states its purpose of electoral boycott: “primarily to educate on (1) the true nature of elections and the state; (2) the need to develop a revolutionary movement into an embryonic new, workers’ state to destroy the old, capitalist state.” As we have seen, Austin RSG has obscured the nature of elections and the state by conciliation and a lack of understanding class contradictions, but point 2 is the more concerning aberration. Let’s examine “the need to develop a revolutionary movement into an embryonic new, worker’s state to destroy the old capitalist state” from the viewpoint of Maoism.
A revolutionary “movement” is not “developed” into a new state and then able to “destroy” the old state. All this, with no mention of armed struggle, specifically people’s war, just circles back to revisionism. One cannot develop a new state without first conquering power; the existence of the old state forbids this—the concept peddled by Krix and others, that mass movements can just “build” or “develop” dual power, or in this case, “an embryonic new, worker’s state”, are simple cover for their reformism. Austin RSG just considers itself educators, not partisans in class combat, and this displays the type of corrupted intellectualism lurking behind their attempts to traffic with the masses, reducing Marxism to an exercise of flexing and dueling with the intellect.
Political power for the proletariat is conquered and defended through people’s war; this is avoided by Austin RSG who never once in their “education” attempts bother to mention the role of the Communist Party, of the very real lack of one in the US. Incrementally, and only in the highest expression of class struggle—armed struggle—can the Communist Party lead the revolutionary masses to conquer areas, and this is never just ambiguously developed by the revolutionary masses. The reconstitution of the Communist Party is the most important question today, and it is one Austin RSG painstakingly avoids, using centrism to preserve their deviationist path to revisionism. It is ultimately an anarchist idea that through education by intellectuals the masses can make revolution in the absence of their vanguard party.
Distorting and mangling Marx beyond recognition, Austin RSG writes that “The only way a workers’ state can be created is through a revolutionary movement getting big enough and well-organized enough to destroy the capitalist state while turning itself into the new workers’ state in the process.”
Hidden by the pseudo-Maoist theoretical obfuscation is the preservation of the Avakianite criteria prized for the past 9 years by Krix and company, a rightist pandering and conciliatory formula. After all, “a revolutionary movement getting big enough and well-organized enough to destroy the capitalist state” promotes nothing other than the stale accumulation of forces, the worst distortions of insurrectionist theory. It avoids the fact that for a revolutionary movement to exist, a revolutionary Party is necessary, and that for this Party to accumulate masses in leaps in must wield revolutionary violence.
It is Bob Avakian and not Chairman Mao who promotes a large movement metabolizing the old state without mention of the omnipotence of revolutionary violence in the process or of the type of leadership required. Phrases like “destroy the capitalist state while turning itself into a new workers’ state in the process” are not only Avakianite by intentional omission, an attempt to appeal to liberals, but they cede even more ground by negating the Party’s leading role. It is akin to semi-anarchist, anti-party revisionism so common to postmodernists. What is missing is the process through which small disorganized forces become large and organized ones, the entire question of reconstitution, the ideology which must guide the process, and how the election boycott must be subordinated to it.
Movement worship is itself derived from classical revisionism—there is the old Bernstein claim that “the ultimate aim of socialism is nothing, but the movement is everything”, and this finds its expression in the ramblings of revisionism ever since. Austin RSG claims: “The movement we need must consciously seek to destroy every aspect of the capitalist state, and therefore must call to oppose every aspect of it—including the electoral system that claims to officially legitimize it while objectively breeding popular support for it.” A movement does not and cannot destroy the old state. Movements do not do this; the best they can effect is regime change with the same old ruling class. What is required is the Communist Party in strict command of its Red Army with the United Front, concentrically constructed and mobilizing the broad masses, and not a “movement”. The intentional negligence of the comrades at Austin RSG, its very concept of education stripped from practice in class struggle, and its quack pot formulas are a rejection of scientific socialism.
The proposition that the electoral process “objectively” breeds “popular support” for the old state is deaf and dumb to the concrete conditions in which the electoral farce more and more hemorrhages popular support, exposing itself as a humiliating ruse even for those who still place value on the ritual of voting. The actual supporters of either political candidate who are enthusiastic are dwindling, and more often than not the voters are voting despite increasingly clear apprehension and opposition to a growing number of positions held by the candidate. This desperation led to the end of Joe Biden’s run, the result of a crisis imposed on the Democrats.
The ruling class struggles hard and spends billions to lend its state false legitimacy, and the fact that the US has among the lowest voter turnout of all industrialized countries without promising to improve only confirms it. There are more non-voters than voters in every single election, and it is the duty of revolutionaries to clarify the process of conquering and defending political power by the working class that is necessary to transform abstention into class conscious boycott of the electoral farce. If they do not clarify what it means to be revolutionary, then they should cease proclaiming themselves as such.
Postmodern pandering is a principle expressed in the Austin RSG article when they assure readers “we don’t shame people for voting or not.” From this, do we conclude that while we are not for voting, we are not against voting? This is an agnostic approach. The orientation toward the intermediate and backward here fails to really take seriously consolidating the advanced. Part of political education, always inside of class struggle, is correcting mistaken ideas, combating liberalism, and exposing the complicity behind endorsing genocidal imperialists in order to put an end to these kinds of depressed endorsements to begin with.
The comrades write: “To be clear, it’s counterproductive for revolutionaries to insult or condemn people who vote for capitalist politicians. As we’ve seen above, a vote is not actually capable of causing any significant effect in the world. If we held individual voters responsible for the actions of the politicians they voted for, we ourselves would be forced to identify 150 million people in the US as enemies—and we would therefore be playing right into the hands of the ruling class’s desire that we stay divided.”
Who are they talking about? Where are these ultra-dangerous insults and condemnations against individuals taking place? It is a ruse and a distraction from the issue.
Hidden in the pandering of Austin RSG is an actual rejection of what a boycott is. One boycotts something to harm its normal operation as much as possible, and to draw a line of demarcation between those imposing a boycott and those rejecting it by propping up the thing being boycotted, and, yes, this involves pointing out how harmful it is to support it, inevitably distorted into “shaming” by postmodernism. If we are picketing a factory, we oppose all those who cross the line; for those who know no better, we educate them on why their position is wrong and encourage them into our ranks, and for those who are well aware of their actions, revolutionaries organize to confront them as violently as possible given the capabilities of their ranks.
Imagine saying to anyone there is no shame in voting. The entire election is a shame! To condemn one’s activity, especially backward ideas that lead to the activity, is not the same thing, however, as identifying them as enemies. This classic Krix leap to conclusions is a scare tactic, one designed to restrain the election boycott to the most acceptable norms of bourgeois decency and decorum, making it an alternative component part of the electoral farce, and not an opposition to it. By being so afraid of “shaming” voters, the comrades fail utterly to demarcate between the minority of common masses who are still deceived into voting, the majority of the masses who do not participate, and the die-hard reactionaries who are instrumental to the electoral farce. If pointing out the true character of the imperialists makes active voters ashamed then so be it, but there is no shame in rejecting one’s backwardness. This hysteria about “shaming” should not be considered to the point of declaring opposition to it the way our Right deviationists do.
Further disfigurement of Maoism is found from Austin RSG when discussing fascism. The comrades write “both of these key elements of fascism (the one in the ruling class, and the one among the population) can only be stopped by force. Either (a) the other sections of the ruling class who believe fascism would be counterproductive at that time will—all by themselves, and at their own discretion, and for their own benefit—direct the state to intervene and disempower the fascist subsection of the ruling class or at least their reactionary servants among the population—and no vote can influence them to oppose fascism if they’ve already made up their minds not to. Or else (b) the fascist threat in the ruling class and among the rest of the population will be stopped by force by a large-scale revolutionary movement, which also cannot be produced by a vote.”
The comrades have rejected the entirety of the hard earned Communist perspective on fascism, expressed precisely in the Seventh Congress of the Communist International and have instead taken on the position of Avakianism. When and where have the bourgeoisie effectively prevented the rise of fascism or fascist movements? Never and nowhere. The bourgeoisie in its minority may not prefer fascism, but they cannot prevent fascism because the conditions for it to impose itself remove the ability of that class to prevent it, which is exactly why the leadership of Communists is critical to the realization of the united anti-fascist front. Such concerns cannot be left in the hands of the ruling class.
Austin RSG paints the struggle of the demo-liberal section of the bourgeoisie against fascism as a question of “ma[king] up their minds”, an idealist standpoint that ignores the collusion and contention that exists among the bourgeoisie tied to their material interests. When the economic situation enters such a crisis that the imperialist ruling class prefers fascism in its majority, the minority democratic sections of the bourgeoisie are already feeble and must enter a united front with Communists. This is what the history of the class struggle has proven. It is never done “all by themselves”; it is simply a question of fascists transgressing what is acceptable under demo-liberal types of government when the crisis has not matured enough to promise them support. It is never the case that the demo-liberal bourgeoisie are stopping fascism from becoming the form of class rule. By portraying the bourgeoisie as capable of overcoming fascism independently “at their own discretion”, the natural conclusion of such an argument is then to vote for the demo-liberal representatives of the bourgeoisie in the hopes of giving them the upper hand over the fascist elements—exactly the position of Avakian and his “Revolutionary Communist Party” in their endorsement of Biden in the 2020 elections and defense of former FBI director James Comey when being fired by Trump.
Point (b) sits in the same dirty diapers as the rest of the article; it is not a vague “large scale revolutionary movement” which by force stops fascism, rather it is the leadership and independent initiative of the Communist Party in the united front that does. Where in history was a movement without such a Party able to accomplish this? Erasure of the Party question leads to more and more nonsensical positions: “the only action that people outside the ruling class can actually take to oppose the rise of fascism or an otherwise despotic government is to organize a large, militant revolutionary movement—and the principle of the election boycott helps to do just that, while ‘tactical revolutionary voting’ only hinders it.” Not an army, mind you, not a Party, but a movement; the anarchists would wholeheartedly agree and have been promoting their failed conception of “antifascist action” for decades. Postmodernism, the influence of critical theory and revisionism, etc. have for a long time plagued the left of the imperialist countries; this is more Marcuse than Stalin. As the process of reconstitution develops in this country, we must consistently demarcate between those who seek to liquidate the Party, in concept or in germination, from those who struggle to realize reconstitution.
When pretending to defend Lenin’s “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder from its common distortions by revisionists to champion parliamentary cretinism, the Austin RSG similarly misses the point. Lenin’s main lesson to the English workers was that they needed to form a Communist Party, and only with this could they implement parliamentary alliances that would be in their interests in gaining the revolutionary advantage over the middle elements at the expense of the right and parliament itself. As we have seen, Austin RSG consistently rejects the question of the Communist Party and the United Front; they cannot even arrive at this from Lenin who is so clear on the matter. Lenin began his address to the workers of Great Britain like this: “There is no Communist Party in Great Britain as yet, but there is a fresh, broad, powerful and rapidly growing communist movement among the workers, which justifies the best hopes.” And of course: “the British Communists should unite their four parties and groups (all very weak, and some of them very, very weak) into a single Communist Party on the basis of the principles of the Third International and of obligatory participation in parliament.” What is universally applicable here in principle is lost on Austin RSG.
In all of their “education”, Austin RSG fails miserably to heed what is universal in Lenin’s position; they ignore the question of Communism and the Communist Party which Lenin puts first before the question of participation (or not) in parliament. By doing this they reject Lenin in the name of promoting the election boycott and distort both the boycott and Lenin. Their only mention of communists, or the Communist Party in the entire essay is external to the US, once when talking ignorantly about the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and again when mentioning Lenin addressing the British communists—there is no consideration of what is universally necessary and applicable to conditions in the US, the Party and the United Front.
In synthesis, Austin RSG traffics with the election boycott, strapping it to the crumbling tail of their movement worship, which is a new form of bowing to spontaneity. In contrast, The Worker has put forward the position that the election boycott tactic is a joint action carried out by revolutionaries under the banner of uniting under Maoism. This is the difference: as the revolutionaries, acting on the real conditions and not assumed moral conditions, struggle to unite under Maoism—this is the first thing, unite under Maoism—they can and must carry out parallel actions leading to joint actions, and this is where the election boycott finds its expression. Or, as the International Communist League put it in this year’s just and correct May 1st Statement:
“The upheavals and eruptions in the imperialist world system are expressions of the period of its decline and downfall, although the communists must firmly fight against illusions and theories of the automatic ‘collapse’ of imperialism, and persistently continue on the path of reconstitution or further strengthening the Communist Parties as the decisive instrument for the conquest of political power, applying the principle that ‘everything reactionary is the same; if you don’t hit it, it won’t fall.’”
“The reconstitution or the further construction of the Communist Parties is the decisive task for the progress of the Proletarian Revolution, for the construction of Socialism, through the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, which again is established through the Socialist Revolution, and in perspective – Proletarian Cultural Revolutions until Communism. Reconstituting or further strengthening the Communist Party as the axis, the communists also have to struggle for the leadership of the proletariat in the anti-imperialist, democratic or economic struggles of the broad masses, organizing or preparing the masses for the great and complex tasks of revolution.”
“The spectacles which are prepared this year by the ruling classes in a row of elections (US, EU, India, etc.) trying to put up a ‘democratic mask’, will even deepen their political crisis and the communists and revolutionary forces have to use these occasions for waging out campaigns of active election boycott to strengthen and lead the masses in their spontaneous strive against the oppression and exploitation.”
Contrast the above, which clearly establishes the need for the Communist Party, the socialist and cultural revolutions, etc., to the intentional omissions, the bourgeois ideological pandering of the Austin RSG. The Austin RSG takes up centrist positions, which are hurling themselves to the Right, denying the need to reconstitute the Party, refusing to accept armed struggle and revolutionary violence, failing to combat or even identify revisionism (lest they see their own reflection), failing in denominating the ideology, failing to identify the need to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and so on. The election boycott is reduced to anarchistic phrase-mongering if it does not serve the effort to reconstitute the Communist Party under the banner of Maoism, which alone can lead people’s war in the conquest and defense of political power.
