A Letter to Maoist and Revolutionary Organizations
Recently the Communist Party
of Italy (Maoist) called for the convening of an international meeting of
Maoist organizations. This call comes some years after the RIM collapsed
following the development of evident revisionism within two of its leading organizations,
the RCP-USA and the UCPN.
Comrades! Let us carry out
and celebrate the firm break with the revisionism emanating from the leadership
of the RCP-USA and the UCPN. In doing so, let us reaffirm our defining points
of unity based on the experience of class struggle and distilled into
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
These include:
-All of history is the
result of the development of the means of production and the struggle between
classes over their ownership and use.
-Under capitalism, labor is
utilized for the sake of profit. Capital is accumulated surplus labor turned
against the masses of workers.
-That capitalist-imperialism
entails the indirect and direct exploitation of the majority of people by
dominant monopoly capital and reveals widening contradictions inherent in
capitalism.
-The only alternative to the
continued barbarism of imperialism is the struggle for socialism and communism.
Broadly speaking, people’s wars and united fronts are the most immediate,
reliable means to struggle for communism.
-Socialism entails the
forceful seizure of power by the proletariat. However, socialism is not the end
of the struggle. Under socialism, the conditions exist for the development of a
‘new bourgeoisie’ which will seek to establish itself as a new ruling class. In
order to counter this tendency, class struggle must be waged relentlessly under
socialism through the development of communism.
These are points all Maoists
can agree on. Yet these do not capture all significant features of today’s
world.
Comrades! A discourse and
struggle over the nature of class under imperialism is sorely needed.
The Revolutionary
Anti-Imperialist Movement puts forward a line that includes the understanding
that a majority section of the populations of imperialist countries are embourgeoisfied.
This embourgeoification
often contours around national oppression cast in the history of colonialism
and settler-colonialism. It is most wholly construed, however, as an ongoing
global distinction between parasitic workers in imperialist core economies and
exploited workers in the vast Third World periphery.
Though understandings of
this split in the working class was popularized as the ‘labor-aristocracy’ by
Lenin, the phenomenon itself was first noted by Friedrich Engels in a letter to
Karl Marx:
“[T]he English proletariat
is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that the ultimate aim of this
most bourgeois of all nations would appear to be the possession, alongside the
bourgeoisie, of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat. In the
case of a nation which exploits the entire world this is, of course, justified
to some extent.”
With some exceptions,
Marxists have focused and debated primarily on the ideological effects of the
controversial ‘theory of the labor aristocracy.’ Unfortunately, less attention
has been paid to the economic dimensions of the ‘labor aristocracy.’
Within the imperialist
world-economy, First World workers (a minority of workers in the world) receive
compensation which exceeds the monetary rate of the full value of labor. In
effect, First World workers are a section of the petty-bourgeoisie due to the
fact that they consume a greater portion of social labor than they concretely
expend. This difference is made up with the super-exploitation of Third World workers.
Because prices (including those of labor power) deviate from values, this
allows First World firms to obtain profits at equivalent rates while still
paying ‘their’ workers a wage above the full monetary rate of labor value. The
First World workers’ compensation above the monetary rate of the full labor
value is also an investment, i.e., a structural means of by which surplus value
is saturated and concentrated in the core at the expense of the periphery.
The structural elevation of
First World workers also has strong implications for the struggle for
communism.
One of the most dangerous
and devastatingly popular misconceptions is that social and political reforms
can raise the material standard of living for Third World workers up to the
level enjoyed by First World workers.
The illusion that Third
World peoples can ‘catch up’ with imperialist countries through various reforms
is objectively aided by the common yet false First Worldist belief that First
World workers are exploited as a class.
If, as the First Worldist
line states, First Worlder workers have attained high wages through reformist
class struggle and advanced technology, then Third World workers should be able
to follow a similar route towards a capitalism modeled after ‘advanced
capitalist countries.’ By claiming that a majority of First Worlders are
exploited proletarians, First Worldism creates the illusion that all workers
could create a similar deal for themselves without overturning capitalism. By
obscuring the fundamental relationship between imperialist exploitation of
Third World workers and embourgeoisfication of First World workers, First
Worldism actually serves to hinder the tide of proletarian revolution
internationally.
Another long-term
implication of the global division of workers is the ecological consequences of
the inflated petty-bourgeois lifestyles enjoyed by the world’s richest 15-20%.
First World workers currently consume and generate waste at a far greater rate
than is ecologically sustainable. The First Worldist line, which effectively
states First World workers should have even greater capacity to consume under a
future socialism (that is, First Worldists believe First Worlders are entitled
to an even greater share of social product than they currently receive), has obvious
utopian qualities which can only misguide the proletariat over the long term.
It is safe to say that First
Worldism is the root cause of the problems associated with the Revolutionary
Communist Party-USA (RCP-USA) and the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (UCPN).
The RCP-USA, desiring some
positive significance to offset its terminal failure to organize what it sees
as a U.S. proletariat, chose to intervene in various international issues. This
typically occurred to the disservice of the proletarian struggle. Now the
RCP-USA heavily promotes Bob Avakian and his ‘New Synthesis.’ This ‘New
Synthesis’ is better describes as an old bag of revisionisms. Today, the
RCP-USA, Bob Avakian, and his revisionist ‘New Synthesis’ is a distraction from
many of the important issues facing the international proletariat.
The UCPN has given up the
path of global socialism and communism. It has instead sought to conciliate and
collude with imperialism in hopes of achieving conditions for class-neutral
development. It foolishly assumes monopoly capital will allow it be anything
but ‘red’ compradors or that Nepal will become anything other than a source of
super-exploited labor. The UCPN has abrogated the task of constructing an
independent economic base and socialist foreign policy. It has instead embarked
hand-in-hand with monopoly capital on a path they wrongly believe will lead to
progressive capitalist development.
Through the examples set
forth by both the RCP-USA and the UCPN, it is evident how First Worldism
corrupts even nominal Maoists into becoming promulgators of the most backwards
revisionisms. The RCP-USA is deceptive and wrong in its claim that it is
organizing a U.S. proletariat. In reality it wrecks the international communist
movement for the sake of the U.S. petty-bourgeois masses. The UCPN, whose
leadership falsely believes capitalist development will bring positive material
effects for the masses of Nepal, has abandoned the struggle for socialism and
communism. The RCP-USA claims to represent what it wrongly describes as an
exploited U.S. proletariat. The UCPN takes great inspiration in the level of
material wealth attained by what it wrongly assumes to be an exploited First
World proletariat.
Comrades! Our analysis must
start with the questions, “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?” These
questions must be answered foremost in the structural sense (i.e., how do
groups fundamentally relate to the process of capital accumulation), secondly
in the historical sense (i.e. what can history tell us about such class
divisions and their implications for today), and lastly in a political sense,
(i.e., given what we know about the complex nature of class structures of
modern imperialism, how can we best organize class alliances so as to advance
the revolutionary interests of the proletariat at large).
First Worldism is a fatal
flaw. It is both a hegemonic narrative within the ‘left’ and a trademark of
reformism, revisionism, and chauvinism. Unfortunately, First Worldism is
all-too-common within international Maoism.
Comrades! The consistent
struggle against First Worldism is an extension of the communist struggle
against both social chauvinism and the theory of the productive forces. As
such, it is the duty of all genuine Communists to struggle against First
Worldism.
Comrades! First Worldism has
already done enough damage to our forces internationally. Now is the time to
struggle against First Worldism and decisively break with the errors of the
past.
The importance of knowing
“who are our enemies?” and “who are our friends” never goes away. Instead,
those who fail in these understandings are prone to wider deviations. Gone
unchecked, First Worldism sets back the struggle for communism.
Comrades! We hope the topics
of class under imperialism and the necessity of the struggle against First
Worldism come up as specific points of future discussion within and between
Maoist organizations. The raising of these questions and the firm refutation of
First Worldism will mark a qualitative advance for international communism.
Death to imperialism!
Long live the victories of
people’s wars!
Revolutionary
Anti-Imperialist Movement
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