Someone said boo?

The Revolutionary Communist Party has decreed on a "matter of basic orientation." The unsigned author(s) don't mention the object of their scorn by name, but they call the Nine Letters to Our Comrades nothing but "completely dishonest and unprincipled attacks, including crude distortions of our views, aims, and methods." The distortions and purported lies are not discussed, noted in particular or corrected. Off limits and not up for consideration. Decided. Think about that. Read the Nine Letters, then the RCP's initial public response and hear the elastic snap.

Nor is any shadow of a doubt left up to wonder about the motives of Mike Ely or the other comrades involved, myself included:

...there are some people who have sunk to the point where they can do nothing more than act as “parasitic critics” in relation to our revolutionary role and work—having themselves nothing positive to offer in terms of achieving a radical alternative to the monstrous system we live under, having no defining or unifying mission other than seeking to sabotage our efforts to bring such a radical alternative into being.

Peculiar, considering the sharp use of weasel words, is the total refusal to even say what this is all about. As if saying the words gave them power, which is dialectically speaking, exactly what silence does. It imparts fear and wonder when you can regulate what can and can't be said. Which you can't, by the way, beyond those who will put up with it in demonstration of their fealty to the mantle of revolution, rhetorically claimed.

Anyway, Bob, I'll see your reality and raise you a check. Lyrics on the link.

And you thought someone said boo?

Lyrics and song by Bob Dylan. I don't know if he'll mind, but I doubt he cares. And that's a shame, but Dylan done did alright already. We have our day to seize. 

For more on this discussion, check Kasama daily.

 

Comments

[Anon]

Does this statement seem to be the only response we’re going to hear from RCP?

It seems like things are being brushed off as “just not important enough with everything that’s going on.”

What’s the rationality behind something like that? Where does that lead? They’re right (RCP) and need not even bother with these criticisms? The criticisms are so wrong they don’t deserve an actual refutation?

These questions come to my mind with this paltry and inadequate addressing.

[the burningman]

The last issue of the paper, with this weird rant signed by the RCP, and not its actual author(s) will not meet the need. It also includes the Willie Mobile Shaw eulogy and the 1995 Avakian declaration.

If Avakian could have avoided this, he would have. Apparently he can't.

Now he's trying to dispense with it internally through what is a de facto threat of ex-communication for upholding this polemic even in part.

What is coming into the light, for anyone now who cares to look, is that the RCP has abdicated the responsibility of building a revolutionary party and settled for a diminishing half-life as a Bob Avakian promotional sect.

It didn't have to go that way, but Avakian and his closest followers are set. The discussion is over, and anyone who disagrees is apparently not just opposed to the cult of personality (and the other issues discussed in depth in the Nine Letters, but has "nothing better to do" and is about obstructing the RCP.

Or, as the unsigned author(s) put it:

But in this country today there are some people who have sunk to the point where they can do nothing more than act as “parasitic critics” in relation to our revolutionary role and work—having themselves nothing positive to offer in terms of achieving a radical alternative to the monstrous system we live under, having no defining or unifying mission other than seeking to sabotage our efforts to bring such a radical alternative into being.

Does anyone actually believe this?

It's basically a commandment to turn your brain off and do what you're told.

[zerohour]

Queen Jane Approximately! How appropriate, especially these lines:

Now when all the clowns that you have commissioned
Have died in battle or in vain
And you're sick of all this repetition
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

When all of your advisers heave their plastic
At your feet to convince you of your pain
Trying to prove that your conclusions should be more drastic
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane?

Not that all Party supporters were clowns of course...

[occam]

Loving the feuding Bob Dylan quotes as a subtext to all this.... I remember in "Ike To Mao" Avakian has an aside about not liking Dylan after John Wesley Harding. Now, opinions on particular albums can differ, but I read that as a fairly typical "I only like straightforward political art." Amongst fans, not liking post-motorcycle crash Dylan is as reductive as not liking electric Dylan.

So it's slightly ironic for the Chairman to quote Dylan's "I heard you, you booed" line. And besides, anyone who doesn't love Blood on the Tracks is not to be trusted.

[occam]

And on the Chairman himself, this verse seems most apposite:

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society's pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he's in.

[blackstone]

Burningman says he heard the elastic snap, i posit, there was NEVER really any elasticity.

[Ira Wechsler]

Sorry if I am gloating, but the chickens are finally coming home to roost. For years Avakian has used cult of personality and charisma to obscure a basically bankrupt revisionsist organization. Lenin in many ways advanced the theory and practice of the communist movement. Because both he and Marx were incorrect in their perception of nationalism as a potentially revolutionary force, does that mean we write them off? Because Stalin and Mao eventually paved the way for capitalist restoration in Russia and China does that mean we do not value their contributions to revolutionary practice? No , not, at all. It is through the process of historical materialism and dialectical materialism that we can see back and realize the vast destruction caused by nationalism in the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Russian Revolutions. It is from the incorrect concept of a wage-based socialism , the N.E.P. , and New Democracy that the basis for the emergence of new capitalist classes emerged and negated the first proletarian dictatorships on the globe.
These errors could not have been foreseen in the time of Marx, Lenin, or
possibly even Mao , or we would have seen evidence of a more advanced and organized communist LEFT. It is from our study of our practical work that we were able to realize that nationalism , and socialism itself were concepts antagonistic to the development of the communist movement. The loss of a Left center in the revolutionary movement has set back the the revolutionary movement by decades. To a degree it has led to a demoralization of communist cadre and as well to the working class's aspiration for a tangible alternative to capitalist exploitation. This period will wean out those wedded to moribund ideology and practice. It is
an era of opportunity for growth and prosperity in spite of the conditions of the imminent fascist threat facing the international working class.
As Mao once said March or Die!

[neomaoist]

Wil you do like Eddie Romero?

http://www.viddler.com/explore/jasontucker/videos/43/

[ed]

I was once a member of the rcp as a young man and i remeber that as i made an attemtp to become an invovled member i came to recogmize that that was an organization that was mainly about promoting whites under the diguise of defeating nationalism and nothing more.All of their political rhetoric was nothing more than a smoke screen as is there remarks about Obama. I'm glad that I grew up.

[Internationalists]

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