MLGA | Concerning the Rationalist Trend in American Maoism

To accomplish this world-emancipating act [of revolution] is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To grasp the historical conditions of this act and therefore its very nature, and thus to bring the conditions and character of its own action to the consciousness of the class that is destined to act, the class that is now oppressed—this is the task of scientific socialism, the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement. - Friedrich Engels, Scientific and Utopian Socialism

For us new Maoists today, it is squarely in the inundation to a hodgepodge of ineffective and never-ending radical activism where our road begins. A disdain for pragmatism, electoralism, and social-reformism grows, propelling us into a serious study of serious things. We, therefore, begin to take ourselves very seriously. And perhaps we should. Amidst an assortment of supposedly Communist ideas, we have seemingly found the right road, the right path. A dream penetrates our conscious as we begin to see the long march towards a society we wish to build, an ultimate aim in our minds waiting to be fulfilled. Though, unfortunately for many of us it remains there, endlessly entangled in a web of scholarly ideas, bereft of any connection or practical ties to the working masses we are supposed to serve, the class we claim to represent.

Suffice it to say that the Communist movement in the US has been infamously disconnected from the working masses for over fifty years. The Maoist section of the movement, which has only ever constituted a small minority, has itself largely been bogged down by the ideologically revisionist and opportunist strains of Avakianism and Gonzaloism, both of which live and breath off of incredibly insular and highly obscure organizational lines, both deem themselves our revolutionary truth-sayers, jeering arrogantly at the delusion of those Marxists who are not entirely convinced by Maoism—yet doing very little to win them over. And despite some of its representatives having an online presence, it is either bogged down in outright adventurist or clandestine language, as is usually the case with our most hardline Gonzaloists, or it is deceitfully obscured philosophical idealism and opportunism cloaked in Maoist speak, as is the case with our Avakianists. However, I digress. The main subject of this article is not an in-depth analysis of Avakianism¹ or Gonzaloism², nor is it an assessment of the Communist movement as a whole—i.e. Maoist Marxism vs. Non-Maoist Marxism—although these are all being undertaken by our group and will be published in the immediate future (and we encourage other groups to publish their own ideas and findings as well). No, in fact, this article is particularly about a trend amongst our newer Maoists who have perhaps broken away from the worst misgivings of both of these revisionist strains, but have nevertheless come down with a bad case of lethargy. Lethargy in the form of rationalism, or a justified detachment from any and all revolutionary social practice.

This tendency of rationalism—which in the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist (MLM) epistemological sense is defined by a refusal to test out one’s rational knowledge, one’s theory or hypothesis, in the realm of practice (class struggle, experimentation, or production) to see whether or not such a theory is correct—manifests itself as a wide trend amongst a majority of those acclimated with the ideas of Marxism (not just Maoism). This is because of the fact that texts like all four volumes of Capital or other classic works have found a mainstay in American university curriculums, where Marx and Marxism is treated no differently than any other “school” or “brand” of philosophy. However, the Maoist movement, more than any other section and contrary to many outsiders looking in who think of Maoism as an extreme form of terrorism or anarchism, is in fact heavily plagued with this professorial and academic orientation. And this is unsurprising given the aforementioned historical and contemporary sectarianism by Maoist organizations. But there is another element. The study of MLM is incredibly vast, its history of revolutionary class struggle spanning almost 150 years, across different regions, along with scores of books, essays, articles, etc., by its proponents. It almost, out of necessity, requires a prolonged in-depth study of it; that much is clear. Therefore, in opposition to comrades who reject theory entirely, who attempt to change the world without any guiding principles or methods, a genuine study of MLM is, and should be, unending, as one must always read and re-read various texts at various stages in the revolution. Though, the problem of this paper lies not with those who hold the correct orientation, those who understand quite aptly that their task is always to move forward the revolutionary movement in the most concrete of ways via the dialectical unity—not separation—of theory and practice, of study and action. No, our problem lies with those who attempt to obscure such concrete tasks, who try and give justifications for their lack of action, and those who, due to a lack of experience, tail these rationalist academics. The latter we will briefly comment on here first and then in the concluding remarks of the article. The former we will analyze for the whole of the next section.

Within new groupings of Maoists, many end up tailing rationalism out of naiveté as excitement manifests around a general want or need of study. Quickly, study groups are then formed and meticulously structured. Curriculums are tirelessly labored over, ones which, via an even more studious facilitator, guide the participants through the annals of Marxism, touching on each and every important point. Participants are encouraged to become facilitators, facilitators themselves are encouraged to take up the honorary rank of Marxist aficionado. One then becomes versed in all things scientific, in all things dialectical, and thereby has even more of a duty than ever to enlighten his or her peers. More syllabi, more curriculums, more study guides. Our facilitator now becomes a great teacher of Marxism. Or rather, great professor, as this study group quickly becomes a university lecture hall, where discipline is expected but participation only sluggish. And unfortunately for the American working class, only one Communist appears onto the scene, the rest years out from the completion of their intellectual training. But rather than taking an interest in them, the single revolutionary’s focus drifts towards the written word, losing themselves in the ancient scriptures of the class they’re suppose to organize, solely focusing on promoting their unique brand of study, which does not even target a significant section of workers, but merely the droves of intellectuals and activists who are already predisposed to study. In the final word, study becomes an end of itself. But as these comrades fall deeper and deeper into the chasm of rationalism, they nevertheless, in the current moment, have the ability to turn back. Therefore, we must first off pinpoint and criticize the comrades who try and justify such ends, who, despite coming to terms with the specific tasks laid out before us, attempt to alter them and their historical application in favor of continuing their academic studies of Maoism.

Reaching as High as Mt. Tai

The New York group Mt. Tai Study Circle, in an older article When Americans Refuse to Read: The Task of Study Today, which formulated proudly the line of lazy and lethargic intellectual rationalism, stated:

A thorough understanding refers not to the extent of an amateur—or to make an analogue with school, an undergraduate level of understanding—but that of a professional scientist. We must understand the complexities of Capital to independently conduct a class analysis of not just the United States itself, but also its links to the rest of the world on account of its imperialist character. We need to understand not just the position of the labor movement as it is now, but as it developed historically; why it’s one trade and not another that is more or less ripe for revolutionary propaganda. In order to succeed, we must know ourselves and our enemies as deeply as possible.³

An interesting suggestion from a supposedly revolutionary grouping, given that practice is supplanted by theory and theory alone, waved off for implementation at a later date. And for purely comfortable reasons, as those with this task of theoretical and scientific analysis are seemingly exempt from taking any active part in the class struggle. But, as any Maoist should know, one can never really truly understand a thing until one has taken part in it. “If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself.”⁴ How can we conduct a class analysis of American society without helping to directly develop the class struggle ourselves? How can we figure out which trade “is more or less ripe for revolutionary propaganda” without actually propagandizing to any trade at all? How can we ever hope to “know ourselves and our enemies” without pitching a fierce battle against them? These tasks do, in fact, point out some of the burning questions of our movement, rightly forming the basis of a hypothesis. But the duty of any “professional scientist” is to not only formulate a hypothesis but to test it in practice. We must always remember that: “The basis is social science, class struggle. There is a struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie…It is only starting from this viewpoint that Marxism appeared. The foundation is class struggle. The study of philosophy can only come afterwards.”⁵ Instead, these rationalists preach, putting it plainly for us “simpletons”⁶, that the tasks for our movement are straightforward: “win over as many sympathizers and Marxists to study as…possible [again, only those predisposed”⁷, “keep [our] priorities straight”⁸, and “don’t emphasize practice at a stage where we don’t even know how [author’s emphasis] to evaluate practice.”⁹ I guess merely studying the pear, inquiring feverishly about the pear, will have us know its flavor far better than those who consume it.

Nevertheless, the author aims to justify this claim historically. And so, like any eager student, we shall try our best to keep up. After expounding on the history of the Russian Social-Democratic (Marxist) movement, they go on to summarize:

Russian Marxism, founded as a split from utopian socialism in 1883, spent up to 10 years focusing on theoretical development before prioritizing active political work [my emphasis]. Indeed, for Marxists like Plekhanov and Lenin, their priority of theoretical work continued until the foundation of the party where organizational matters took precedence.¹⁰

The crux of their argument, and thus the reasoning for their rationalism, is that since the Russian Marxist movement was supposedly focused on theoretical development for a substantial amount of time, we must needlessly do the same. This, in short, incorrectly assesses the role of theory in the Russian movement and oversimplifies the role of theory generally. It is not enough to simply call for more theoretical work, as that can mean anything and nothing at the same time (concerning our most consolidated rationalists, however, it quite clearly means excusing one’s own comfortable lethargy). The basis of any of the theoretical works of Lenin, or of others of that time like Plekhanov, Axelrod, Martov, etc., were rooted firmly in the development of the movement they were a part of. The former did not presuppose the latter. To argue against this, in a way, sensationalizes the minds of these revolutionaries, stripping them of their involvement in the revolutionary struggle itself. Moreover, such a thesis becomes mechanical, as it only tells us to follow directly in the footsteps of the Russian movement, retaking the same steps they took and thus falling into the same traps. We have the ability of historical hindsight and therefore must use it. That is to say, to actually follow in the steps of Lenin and others is to directly help develop the class struggle today while simultaneously researching and theorizing much broader economic or political class contradictions (while summing up direct practical experience), rather than remaining locked behind closed doors waiting for our contemporary great teachers to synthesize the correct path forward.

And this is all squarely in spite of their claim that Lenin did not principally theorize based off of his direct involvement in the formation of the St. Petersburg League of Struggle, but instead primarily focused on the completion and publication of his two famous books, What the “Friends of the People” are and How they Fight the Russian Social Democrats and The Development of Capitalism in Russia. There is no denying Lenin’s own intellectual prowess and cunning ability with the pen. However, we must reproach our professors by the fact that, unlike them, Lenin’s main drive, the main aim of his activity, was not concerned with gaining “European fame for his class analysis”¹¹. On the contrary, “Lenin not only knew Marxist theory, he knew how to apply it in practice.”¹² Never forgetting “that there were other forms of work…[Lenin] made a thorough study of factory legislation…[and] believed that explaining these laws to the workers made it much easier to show them the connection that existed between their position and the political regime. Evidences of this study are traceable in quite a number of articles and pamphlets which [Lenin] wrote at the time for workers, notably in the pamphlet The New Factory Act, and the articles ‘On Strikes,’ ‘On Industrial Courts’ and others.”¹³ Moreover, Ivan Babushkin, a factory worker turned ardent Bolshevik, recalled that Lenin “gave lists of previously prepared questions which prompted us to make a closer study and observation of factory and mill life.¹⁴ During working hours we found excuses to go into another shop to collect material, either by personal observation or, where possible, in conversation with the workers.”¹⁵ Thus, contrary to the belief that Lenin was perhaps aloof from the workers themselves, only theorizing from afar, gaining continental notoriety for his works, he was, in truth, a “regular worker correspondent. He visited workers and interviewed them…one of the workers recalls that Ilyich used to shower them with questions…[In] exile he became a peasant correspondent. The peasants knew he was a jurist and consulted him. [Lenin] readily advised them and at the same time asked them how they lived and worked. The answers helped him to build up a vast store of information.” What we find here is an actual representative of the working class. A comrade who understood the limitless value of studying not just books, but the workers themselves. A proletarian leader who was unafraid to present himself to the masses unconditionally, who fought relentlessly for their immediate interests and their most ultimate of aims, no matter the literary glory or mundane minutiae. We’d like to remind our rationalists, with a bit of finality on this point, that Lenin wrote The Development of Capitalism throughout fourteen months of solitary confinement—as well as three long years of travel and exile—from his direct role in the League of Struggle, while at the same time maintaining close correspondence with workers from all across Russia and his authorship of dozens of other important articles aimed at organizing a party, of struggling against the ills of economism, and of conceiving the plan for Iskra. Instead of wishing to write like Lenin, we encourage comrades to pull a page from his book of actions. A man who, without hesitation, abandoned the comfort of his study and charged straight into the blazing edifice of class struggle.

Nevertheless, in an attempt to solidify their valiant position, the author pulls from Lenin’s text A Retrograde Trend in Russian Social-Democracy of which we must quote here in full:

In the eighties and at the beginning of the nineties, when Social-Democrats initiated their practical work in Russia, they were confronted firstly with the Narodnaya Volya [People’s Will—organization of Narodniks], which charged them with departing from the political struggle that had been inherited from the Russian revolutionary movement, and with which the Social-Democrats carried on a persistent polemic. Secondly, they were confronted with the Russian liberal circles, which were also dissatisfied with the turn taken by the revolutionary movement—from the Narodnaya Volya trend to Social-Democracy. The two fold polemic centred round the question of politics. In their struggle against the narrow conceptions of the Narodnaya Volya adherents, who reduced politics to conspiracy-making, the Social-Democrats could be led to, and did at times, declare themselves against politics in general (in view of the then prevailing narrow conception of politics). On the other hand, the Social-Democrats often heard, in the liberal and radical salons of bourgeois ‘society,’ regrets that the revolutionaries had abandoned terror; people who were mortally afraid for their own skins and at a decisive moment failed to give support to the heroes who struck blows at the autocracy, these people hypocritically accused the Social-Democrats of political indifferentism and yearned for the rebirth of a party that would pull the chestnuts out of the fire for them. Naturally, the Social-Democrats conceived a hatred for such people and their phrases, and they turned to the more mundane but more serious work of propaganda among the factory proletariat. At first it was inevitable that this work should have a narrow character and should be embodied in the narrow declarations of some Social-Democrats. This narrowness, however, did not frighten those Social Democrats who had not in the least forgotten the broad historical aims of the Russian working-class movement. Why does it matter if the words of the Social-Democrats sometimes have a narrow meaning when their deeds cover a broad field. They do not give themselves up to useless conspiracies, they do not hob-nob with the Balalaikin¹⁶ of bourgeois liberalism, but they go to that class which alone is the real revolutionary class and assist in the development of its forces! They believed that this narrowness would disappear of its own accord with each step that broadened Social-Democratic propaganda. And this, to a considerable degree, is what has happened. From propaganda they began to go over to widespread agitation. Widespread agitation, naturally, brought to the forefront a growing number of class-conscious advanced workers; revolutionary organisations began to take form (the St. Petersburg, Kiev, and other Leagues of Struggle, the Jewish Workers’ Union). These organisations naturally tended to merge and, eventually, they succeeded: they united and laid the foundations of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. It would seem that the old narrowness would then have been left without any basis and that it would be completely cast aside. But things turned out differently: the spread of their agitation brought the Social-Democrats into contact with the lower, less developed strata of the proletariat; to attract these strata it was necessary for the agitator to be able to adapt himself to the lowest level of understanding, he was taught to put the “demands and interests of the given moment” in the foreground and to push back the broad ideals of socialism and the political struggle. The fragmentary, amateur nature of Social-Democratic work, the extremely weak connections between the study circles in the different cities, between the Russian Social-Democrats and their comrades abroad who possessed a profounder knowledge and a richer revolutionary experience, as well as a wider political horizon, naturally led to a gross exaggeration of this (absolutely essential) aspect of Social-Democratic activity, which could bring some individuals to lose sight of the other aspects, especially since with every reverse the most developed workers and intellectuals were wrenched from the ranks of the struggling army, so that sound revolutionary traditions and continuity could not as yet be evolved. It is in this extreme exaggeration of one aspect of Social-Democratic work that we see the chief cause of the sad retreat from the ideals of Russian Social-Democracy. Add to this enthusiasm over a fashionable book, ignorance of the history of the Russian revolutionary movement, and a childish claim to originality, and you have all the elements that go to make up ‘the retrograde trend in Russian Social-Democracy’¹⁷

They then extrapolate the following:

Here, Lenin clearly describes the process in which early Social Democrats engaged with the working class. First, they started in study circles looking to understand the fundamentals of Marxism. Once qualified in preparing and conducting targeted propaganda in local factories (by the early 1890s), they did so. Once more class-conscious proletarians joined the ranks of Marxism [does the above quote not say that it was economic agitation that brought forward many advanced workers?], the range of propaganda broadened up to widespread agitation, leading to the formation of a variety of pre-party organizations across the Russian Empire.¹⁸

Let us examine, perhaps with a bit more patience than the author, what is summarized by Lenin in the above quote. First of all, Lenin characterizes the early work by the Russian Marxists as “propaganda among the factory proletariat.” He does not make the claim that “theoretical work” nor plain and isolated study, as stated by our rationalist, was the primary—and necessary—activity of Marxists. But let us assume, with the simplicity which Mt. Tai operates on, that this propaganda work amongst the industrial proletariat was, in fact, synonymous with theoretical work and study. This was nonetheless defined by Lenin as still being mired in narrowness, regardless of whether or not he was defending their ultimate aims. The entire premise of a retrograde trend is that it intends to hold or push the movement backwards into the annals of its narrow beginnings. Whereas the early Russian Marxists resorted to isolated propaganda out of sheer ignorance and a lack of experience, the economists were trying to justify their own narrowness, their own abandonment of Marxist principles, conscientiously and deceitfully. Therefore, we can accurately gain from this quote that it is not reasonable to throw unnecessary criticism to the earlier days of those who knew no better, and that it is, instead, much more sound to, once the tasks of revolutionaries have taken shape and are known ever so clearly, fiercely expose and struggle against those who fein ignorance, who rationalize or excuse their own naiveté and amateurishness. The early Russian Marxists did not know of the “absolutely essential” need to conduct broad economic agitation in tandem with concerted political propaganda, although, as Lenin notes (in the quote they themselves cited), they certainly did later. So, with over a hundred years separating the Russian movement from our own, should we, to reiterate, erase from our minds already formulated general truths? Should we walk tit-for-tat upon the same path as the Russian Marxists, even through the portions in which they did not know any better, through mistakes that later revolutionaries ought to learn from and thus avoid altogether? Furthermore, to now assume correctly the distinction between theoretical work and propaganda amongst the factory proletariat, is to say, for us Maoists, that we have a nauseating amount of the former yet none of the latter! We have no connection whatsoever to the working class, not even in the most narrow of ways: that of isolated propaganda and study circles filled principally with many workers themselves, as the Russians had done throughout the late 1880s and early 1890s. What study circle today is founded on the principles of patiently teaching workers Maoist politics? What “pre-party” formation today has arisen from a concrete fusion with a significant section of the proletariat? Which organization has “assisted in the development of its forces”?¹⁹ Mt. Tai, in its own words and justifications, certainly has not. In truth, we, as exemplified so distinctly by our rationalists (as well as our Avakianists and Gonzaloists) are not only horribly narrow, but laughably obscure and out-of-touch. We are not amateurs but mere pretenders. What have we to show for in any propaganda or agitation with the working class? Social media posts? Unknown websites or blogs? Obscure doctoral style essays? Study curriculums? Syllabi? What these sorts of methods signify, in truth, is material that, on the surface, looks as revolutionary and as proletarian as ever, yet, in essence, is wholly devoid of any and all practical work with or of any connection to the class we claim to represent. The early Russian Marxists, in spite of their initial obscurity, ultimately sought to broaden the level of their activity, while nonetheless bringing in many class-conscious and advanced (i.e. Communist) workers to the fore, which we, as a matter of fact, wholeheartedly lack in the entirety of the US!²⁰ Today, our rationalists ultimately seek to maintain our activity to the confines of detached political sloganeering and endless theoretical study.

To continue, perhaps Lenin, a modest Communist, thought it unnecessary to gloat about his own personal role in advocating for stepping away from the aforementioned narrowness. Because, in point of fact, his role was terribly impactful and cannot be ignored, even if he himself does not mention it in the appraisal of the Russian movement up to that point. For example, once Lenin had arrived in St. Petersburg around 1893, he was one of the most ardent supporters for consciously moving away from narrow propaganda and towards parallel political propaganda and economic agitation, towards broadening up the level of activity of Russian Marxists. It was not by any account, as Mt. Tai posits, a form of strategy which necessitated dwelling in propaganda circles and detached theoretical work until it was time, whether by hitting an arbitrary accrual of forces or having simply gained enough knowledge, for broad agitation to ensue. In a short biographical pamphlet titled Lenin’s Road to the October Revolution, Bolshevik Revolutionary Cecilia Bobrovskaya makes this point absolutely clear:

Before Lenin’s arrival the “old men” [St. Petersburg Marxists] had confined themselves to Marxist propaganda in circles of advanced workers, not yet approaching the broad masses of workers, although, despite the prophecies from the Narodnik camp, industry in Russia was rapidly attaining tremendous growth, and with it the revolutionary movement among the working-class masses. Naturally, Lenin felt this most acutely, and he therefore confronted the “old men” with the need of changing their revolutionary tactics. Under Lenin’s influence and leadership the “old men” came to realize the necessity of conducting, along with their propaganda, widespread agitation among the masses on the basis of their daily needs, drawing the masses into active economic and political struggle. At the same time Lenin warned them against one-sidedly overstressing the economic struggle alone in their agitation. He taught them to combine [my emphasis] the economic struggle of the working class with the political struggle, the struggle against tsarist autocracy.²¹

And in P. M. Kerzhentsev’s Life of Lenin, the author wrote: “Prior to Lenin, propaganda had been confined to small workers’ study circles. Lenin succeeded in bringing about a change to widespread agitation among the masses on the base of their daily economic needs.”²² You would think that our copiously studious Marxists of Mt. Tai would be privy to historical analysis, yet from what we have already seen and in the rest of the cited article they demonstrate a terrible lack of any profundity of MLM—for example, lazily pointing to Mao’s formation of the New People’s Study Society and his writing of Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society (of which it dedicates barely two pages) as proof of study being primary, disregarding Mao’s “years of political agitation among workers from 1921 to 1925 [and] the schools for workers he organized,”²³ where he “circulated [a weekly paper] among the miners, and established a branch bookstore. He then tried to get the men to learn reading and writing; urged them to write their own articles in their own newspaper—a suggestion which stunned the hard-driven illiterates who worked naked and had almost come to accept their half-beast condition.”²⁴ Perhaps, before making unsubstantiated and unproven claims, our bookish comrades could help themselves a little by properly digesting the books they cram down.

Though, there is one single point that we must zero in on before concluding. And that is precisely found in the dangerous and revealing postulation made by our professors towards the end of the article that “we [American Maoists] are the advanced sections of the proletariat, ‘we’ referring to all workers who are not only class conscious but also are actively working towards elevating our understanding of socialism and the means to attain it.”²⁵ How interesting! They then, in a footnote, try to defend this absurdity by saying: “by ‘all workers’ we’re inclusive [my emphasis] of those who may not have had exclusively proletarian upbringings, but nonetheless work towards the liberation of the proletariat and politically embody a proletarian class consciousness.” Our rationalist author takes a bold step forward, thereby showing their true colors, a real freudian slip some would call! Instead of assessing the reality in which we live in, instead of taking stock of objective factors like the gulf that lies between the Communist and working class movement, or the complete absence of a working-class intelligentsia, i.e. a strata of advanced workers (which would, by the way, signify an actual semblance of fusion in the most concrete of terms), our author is pleased with merely obscuring the line between the intelligentsia and the (non-existent) advanced workers entirely, by stating that our out-of-touch, insular, academic, and annoyingly self-important intelligentsia itself makes up a significant section of class-conscious workers. How mad! How utterly devoid of any rationale! “Never mind a legitimate understanding of the Russian Marxist movement”, mouth our rationalists in Mt. Tai, “never mind our complete lack of ties to the working class, never mind our clean clothes and our avoidance of the class struggle, we, your great professors are in fact the advanced workers you have been so desperately missing!” No, we are not in need of any actual workers who become skilled propagandists and agitators, not any workers who take up a leading role in the class struggle, not any workers who take up Maoism so firmly and so resolutely. We have absolutely no need! On the contrary, all we must do is revise and distort Lenin’s definition of an advanced worker²⁶ so as to excuse our utterly lethargic, lazy, and leisurely studies. What theoretical bankruptcy! I guess anyone claiming to be proletarian, no matter their actions, no matter the content of their activity or their practical work, is in fact a proletarian! What a way to circumvent necessity and what a way to excuse one’s lack of action! Mao himself, despite the amount of knowledge he accrued as a young pupil, still acknowledged his own need to remold his petty-bourgeois²⁷ and intellectually-minded thinking:

I began life as a student and at school acquired the ways of a student; I then used to feel it undignified to do even a little manual labour, such as carrying my own luggage in the presence of my fellow students, who were incapable of carrying anything, either on their shoulders or in their hands. At that time I felt that intellectuals were the only clean people in the world, while in comparison workers and peasants were dirty. I did not mind wearing the clothes of other intellectuals, believing them clean, but I would not put on clothes belonging to a worker or peasant, believing them dirty. But after I became a revolutionary and lived with workers and peasants and with soldiers of the revolutionary army, I gradually came to know them well, and they gradually came to know me well too. It was then, and only then, that I fundamentally changed the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois feelings implanted in me in the bourgeois schools. I came to feel that compared with the workers and peasants the unremoulded intellectuals were not clean and that, in the last analysis, the workers and peasants were the cleanest people and, even though their hands were soiled and their feet smeared with cow-dung, they were really cleaner than the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois intellectuals. That is what is meant by a change in feelings, a change from one class to another. If our writers and artists who come from the intelligentsia want their works to be well received by the masses, they must change and remould their thinking and their feelings. Without such a change, without such remoulding, they can do nothing well and will be misfits.²⁸

In their ineptitude, our rationalists end up taking a page, not out of Lenin or Mao’s book, but out of Bob Avakian’s, proclaiming oneself the leaders of the labor movement while at the same time having absolutely no strong links with it to speak of! Such a sorry plea by those who claim to uphold the principles of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and such a demonstrably pathetic attempt by our rationalists in Mt. Tai to deceitfully lure newer Maoists into following their lethargic and narrow ways. Reaching such intellectual heights has sickened you comrades! But, if you so wish to continue your studies atop the summits of Mt. Tai²⁹, we only ask that you be truthful with your intentions and thus keep Maoism and the revolutionary class struggle far from the content of your dissertations and study materials, of which it should have no place.

Overcoming Rationalism

The reader then may ultimately ask: isn’t study important? How else can we learn the definite framework of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism if we do not come to understand it in its totality, or at the very least, as much as possible, so that we may know exactly how to think and act like a Marxist? On the one hand, an in-depth study of Marxism, of the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, of the political history of Russia and China, etc. etc. is necessary, and in fact, something which any supposed Marxist must take up at all times, at every stage and at every point of the revolution. On the other hand, this constitutes only one activity of any revolutionary. The complex and many-sided struggle of the economic emancipation of the proletariat through the violent seizure of political power requires a complex and many-sided approach. Study—especially collective study—is one of the many component parts of bringing the revolution to fruition. The fundamental problem with our rationalists is that study becomes the only activity of a revolutionary. The question of pushing forward the movement becomes less about broader aims and more about narrow or amateurish tasks, like the development of a course or curriculum, or the promotion of said curriculum online or locally. Marxism quickly becomes diluted down to intellectual and pedagogical interests, rather than a guide to action.³⁰ Basic aims, for example party-building, get misconstrued as simply uniting or working with other study circles or groups, rather than party-building arising in direct relation to a wider mass movement. As a result, the gulf which lies between us Communists and the working masses, remains as wide as a canyon, the building of a bridge deemed too “pragmatic” and “ill-fated”. Krupskaya referred to Lenin rereading “Marx again and again in the most difficult, crucial moments of the Revolution,”³¹ not because Lenin thought it more pertinent or more necessary to detach himself from the work, but to pour himself ever more deeply into it with the most resolute of mindset, to solve real and practical problems, not merely recite them to a class of bohemian intellectuals. Despite Mao being “an ardent student of philosophy,”³² someone who “consumed [several] books in three or four nights of intensive reading, during which he seemed oblivious to everything else,”³³ he only ever used this to fuel his efforts in turning the tide of revolution in favor of the base areas, of defeating both the Fascist Japanese invasion and the comprador-bourgeois Kuomintang. He did not ever, for a moment, put the task of study above his duties as a Red Army commander and of a central Communist Party leader. Though, all that being said, the question still remains: how can we overcome the tendency of isolation from the working class and the class struggle?

First off, it is clear that this epistemological deviation is represented and defended primarily by a minority of an already small American Maoist movement.³⁴ However, its influence, as we have stated, finds itself present in many new collectives and formations across the country. These smaller circles, of which are sporadically in contact with one another, albeit minimally and with a lack of unity or organization, have much work to do in terms of moving forward the movement, which right now should be nothing short of building a truly Communist party. And getting away from this rationalist orientation is only one aspect, or obstacle, in achieving such aims. For example, generally, the Maoist movement needs to be able to win over the rest of the sporadic and divided masses (masses in the relative sense) in the broader American Communist movement. This will need to be done both theoretically and practically, both in the realm of consistent intellectual debate and through agitation, propaganda, and education directed principally to the working class, as opposed to the mentality by our rationalists that we forego the latter completely for the former. We need to convince the rest of the movement to join us in our efforts by challenging them ideologically, by being able to honestly and aptly lay out the reasoning for Maoism as the highest advancement of Marxism and the importance of the Chinese Revolution of 1949 and of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, and by being able to offer concrete practical tasks instead of merely posturing like an intelligent and enlightened bunch, who only have to offer an endless waterfall of words. If we are to be Marxist-Leninist-Maoists, we must act like them! Take from the rich experience of over 150 years of class struggle and be modest and humble, be honest and aboveboard. Learn from our antecedents not by mechanically pasting what they did onto the present, but—along with the guidance of the fundamental principles of Marxism—using one’s own head.

Secondly, here in Austin, although agitating, propagandizing, and ultimately connecting with the working class has been minimal due to much of our recent activity centering on a considerable amount of preparatory work—e.g. conducting substantial social investigation on local conditions, debating on the most appropriate section of the proletariat to begin with, settling on and creating the agitational material, preemptively arranging the proper security, etc., etc.—we feel extremely confident in our position not because of some idealist reasoning, but because our approach is one of achieving a higher stage of concrete revolutionary practice—rather than acting like we are already doing so simply because we are Maoists. We aim, instead, to take stock of both aspects of the contradiction, both the objective necessity of our limitations and the subjective freedom of our Marxist attitude. In practical terms, we aim to agitate to the widest amount of workers as necessary in the most efficient way possible; i.e. targeted and direct through digital and physical mediums—not simply posting online and into the void—while simultaneously politically training up those who take a further step than the others; i.e. bringing into being that of the “working class intelligentsia” or class-conscious proletarians who constitute the “elements necessary for the formation of an independent working-class political party.”³⁵ This looks like, for example, pasting flyers around workplaces, working-class neighborhoods, bars etc., that contain agitational language and material attached to them—via qr codes or something similar for easy access—that directly point out company or industry specific grievances from a Maoist point of view, connecting the economic to the political, like a poster which hits on the working conditions in logistics warehouses in a few words thereby effectively attracting logistics workers to it. Or, coming to terms with our objective lack of knowledge of the workers, we can create an in-depth questionnaire which aims to gain a rich collection of raw data given to us by workers through their own words, while simultaneously gaining their trust in the process. Moreover, in our day and age we have the ability and the technology to do something like this en masse with relatively few numbers at present (e.g. printing hundreds of flyers at a time for low cost, putting digital access on each flyer for workers to gain more information instantaneously, etc.) which makes complaining about a lack of forces rather superfluous. Nevertheless, these are only a couple of forms agitation and propaganda will take, barely scratching the surface on the multitude of creative avenues comrades can, and should, venture on down. After all, our mission is to creatively apply Marxism to our current conditions is it not?

Lastly, if one still has trouble understanding or visualizing the impact effective agitation and propaganda can have, look no further than the actual early activity of Lenin and the Russian Marxists:

At the beginning, in the 1890s, the workers were chiefly concerned with the long working hours, fines, deductions from wages, and brutal treatment. Here is what Lenin’s circle did: a comrade would visit some factory and help the workers to formulate definite demands to the employers. These demands were explained and printed in special leaflets. The latter united the workers, and they joined forces in backing the demands.²⁶

The aforementioned ideas, which some comrades may look down upon as being too simple or crude, strike a stunning resemblance to the practical and simple methodology of Lenin and company. Too often are we so confident about our words or our ideas that we assume being merely well-read and well-written is more than enough. We must struggle against this type of petty-bourgeois and academic thinking. Propaganda and agitation is difficult and tedious work, but it is a cornerstone of every supposed revolutionary, it therefore must be done and done well. We must scrupulously investigate worker’s living conditions, touching upon modern day legislation which obscures class contractions, or shed light on certain hidden technicalities that demonstrate the terms of their exploitation. Using logistics workers as an example again, Communists could explain to those in Amazon and Fedex the inner-workings of the delivery-service-partner system that intentionally creates competition between workers, fuels anti-unionization efforts, and demonstrates the existence of the class struggle, the antagonism between labor and capital, rather clearly. Or, in another example, deconstruct the facade that is the UPS Driver’s Choice Program, which promised a too-good-to-be-true one-time lump sum to its drivers and warehouse workers in exchange for them to leave the company, just so that they could offload higher paid and older (close to retirement) workers in order to hire brand new labor at abhorrent wages, extracting even more surplus value and salvaging their rate of profit. These are only two small yet particular and understandable instances of capitalist exploitation that are aimed directly to the workers—issues they themselves are discussing and are quite correctly concerned about.³⁷ This sort of work should increase a thousand-fold all across the country, in every locality and state, in every branch of every industry—not even mentioning the endless task of political exposures, like the war in Iran, Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, ICE terror, etc., in which workers are “trained to respond to all cases, without exception, of tyranny, oppression, violence and abuse, no matter what class is affected.”³⁸ And so I ask any of our skeptical comrades: how can we ever hope to lead any struggles of the workers (e.g. economic and political strikes, walkouts, demonstrations, etc.), much less lead them in the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist class, if we cannot complete and carry out these most basic and most fundamental of tasks?

Moreover, this conclusion has not come to us without faults. We ourselves remained mired in endless study, in arrogantly viewing our own narrow and insular activity as worthwhile, for more than half a year. It was upon the realization of our narrowness, of our limited work, that we have eagerly and earnestly sought to turn the other way, to change our methods and our practice. And we have still a ways to go, for we are not satisfied with merely a change in mentality, but with actual concrete results, like, for example, creating strong revolutionary committees made up of a crop of new advanced workers (not clandestine local pre-party collectives) here in Austin and in the broader state of Texas through the diligent work of agitation and propaganda, and the continual development of fusion and of the class struggle, connecting with other comrades doing the same in their own localities, and beginning the arduous work of establishing an all-national party-building organ (a collective organizer, propagandizer, and agitator) similar to that of Iskra and Zarya. And although we have a low amount of forces currently available, like we said that will not prevent us from building up the work, from shedding the tendencies of rationalism, and from connecting with the working class. If anything, that has been motivation for us to go directly to the proletariat itself and gain Maoist forces principally from it. And “to which section of these workers must we go to?”, a comrade may ask. “Aren’t we in need of a class analysis?”, another may ask. To be brief, we are operating on the correctness of the October Road as a general truth for revolution in advanced capitalist-imperialist countries, that being insurrection by the proletariat and its party in urban areas, not protracted people’s war—i.e. surrounding the cities in the countryside—like Mao led in China, as the United States is not a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country. However, we must walk a tight rope against all deviations and refrain from merely doing the same thing and expecting the same results. What’s more, in regards to Lenin’s time, the industrial proletariat was most primed with revolutionary potential, which was figured out through decades of both theoretical and practical work, in the application of Marxism to Russia and the development of the class struggle. In regards to our time, I am of the opinion that, given the industrial proletariat (which includes logistics workers as they are the backbone of heavy and light industry) contains the most acute manifestation of the fundamental contradiction in capitalism—i.e. socialized production under private ownership—and given its strategic importance to the functioning of capitalism-imperialism in general, the industrial proletariat is still the section of the working class Communists today should prioritize in linking with. It should have our most indestructible and most durable ties, ties we here in Austin, for example, aim to begin building in the logistics sector.³⁹ However, perhaps contrary to my assertion, things are different. Perhaps our main attention needs to be devoted to the heavily overworked strata of healthcare workers or the millions of undocumented agricultural and restaurant workers, or another strata entirely. Regardless, comrades must employ a concrete analysis of concrete conditions and prove through practice what section that is, rather than dogmatically applying the conclusions of tsarist Russia to America or going based off of what is merely convenient. If, because of your activity in the class struggle, you believe we are to go to the nurses or teachers or factory workers first, then it is your utmost responsibility to convince the rest of the movement to join you and not prate about incessantly amongst ourselves for purely intellectual and prideful reasons. In the end, whichever way we proceed, whichever section we go to, we must march toward it collectively and as unflinchingly and unwaveringly as possible.

And so on that note comrades, do not be afraid to taste the pear! Break free from the confines of our collective narrowness and work to broaden the level of our activity! Do not conceal our aims and take Maoism directly to the workers! Build the strongest of ties, the most organic and unbreakable of links! Talk to them, study them, formulate questions for them, understand their most immediate grievances, their most particular pains and criticisms, so that they will, in turn, come to trust you, so that they may listen to your words when you speak of Maoist politics, when you speak of their class’ most ultimate aims. In a word, squarely “proceeding from the workers’ needs, [leading] them step by step to the question of the necessity of political struggle.”⁴⁰ The strongest core of our army, the generation of fighters who will take the lead in smashing the ramparts of American capitalism-imperialism and establishing a new society, a new epoch for mankind, will not come principally from academic philosophical circles or university lecture halls, but primarily from the laboring class of wage-workers, from the American proletariat.

To conclude, it is apparent how such a refusal to engage in any sort of explicit revolutionary practice until all of the knowledge of the world has been consumed only abets a certain type of insularity and obscurity to reign within a section of our movement. And it has been shown how even these supposed exemplary students of Marxism—as opposed to what they themselves call “wannabe Marxists”⁴¹—mistake basic facts of revolutionary history. Though, I will give them the benefit of the doubt, in that they can still prove me wrong. Maybe once they have cracked the code in say ten, fifteen, thirty or eighty years, after the perfect bible of class analysis has been created, after the mounds of books have piled up as high as Mt. Tai itself, I’ll be forced to eat my words. Until then, we must get on with much more important matters.

To be brief, Avakianism arose during in the New Communist Movement in the 60s and 70s by the theory and practice of Bob Avakian and the Revolutionary Union/Revolutionary Communist Party USA, an insular and cultish group which, unfortunately, exerted the most influence and longevity out of all American Maoist orgs. Today, Avakianists (many of them either ex-RCPers or associated closely with them), while hiding their adherence to it, try to prop up the idea that Avakian and the RU/RCP was not an opportunist clique from the beginning, using the militant gloss of the 60s and 70s as a way to mask their sectarian and unprincipled methods. For more information on Avakianism, read Against Avakianism by Ajith (K. Murali) and First as Tragedy, Then as Farce: The Legacy of the Revolutionary Communist Party’s Revisionism in the US “Maoist” Movement Today by T. Kobayashi.
Gonzaloism is the theory and practice of Abimael Guzman, or Chairman Gonzalo, of the Peruvian Communist Party, who tried to revise Maoism by preaching the idea of jefetura (guiding thought by a single great leader), the universality of people’s war, the necessity of an arbitrarily militarized party, among other things, and who ultimately got arrested and failed. Today, many American Maoists follow the ideas of Gonzalo, claiming he contributed to the development of Maoism or even synthesized it to a higher stage (similar to Avakian’s New Synthesis). At present, they attempt to mechanically graft his incorrect methods onto American class society. For more, read Gonzaloism: A “Left” Revisionist Deviation by Thomas Berg.
Mt. Tai Study Circle, “When Americans Refuse to Read: The Task of Study Today,” n.d.,.
Mao Zedong, On Practice, 1937.
Mao Zedong, Talks on Questions of Philosophy, 1964.
Mt. Tai Study Circle, op. cit.
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
Ibid
N. K. Krupskaya, “Lenin the Propagandist and Agitator ,” in On Education: Selected Articles and Speeches (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2022), p. 74,.
N. K. Krupskaya, Reminiscences of Lenin (International Publishers Co., 1970).
The following is an excerpt from one such questionnaire prepared by Lenin: “(1) The number of workers in the institution — men, women, adolescents, children, the total number. (2) When and how long the employment is for, or if it is with out a definite term. Is there anything special about it? (Employment through a con tractor, the district authorities, an artel, etc.) (3) Does the owner break the terms of employment before their term has expired, e.g. by paying less? (4) Do workers leave the employer before their term has expired? In droves or one at a time? How does the owner react? Does he complain to a court or to an inspector, does he protest to other owners? (5) How many hours a day does the work last? Is there night and holiday work? Always or from time to time? How are the shifts arranged? Is there frequently work outside hours? Can one refuse to work on holidays and outside hours?…” V. I. Lenin, “Questionnaire on the Situation of Workers in Enterprises,” in Marxism in Russia: Key Documents 1879-1906 (Great Britain : Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 138-139,
I. V. Babushkin, Recollections of Ivan Vasilyevich Babushkin, 1893-1900 (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1957), pp. 56-57
Balalaikin—a character from Saltykov-Shchedrin’s novel “Modern Idyll”; a liberal windbag, adventurer, and liar. [Footnote from original document]
V. I. Lenin, A Retrograde Trend in Russian Social Democracy, 1899.
Mt. Tai Study Circle, op. cit.
Ibid.
Meaning, that, unlike many Communists who proclaim there are many “advanced workers” in America, we believe, correctly, that for any class-conscious workers to exist, some level of fusion, as noted by Lenin, has to have taken place between Communism and the proletariat. Today, with hardly a drop in the bucket, there exists no advanced strata of workers, no “working-class intelligentsia” to speak of, which is only one unsettling example of the utter detachment by the American Communist movement to the proletariat.
Cecilia Bobrovskaya, Lenin’s Road to the October Revolution: A Biographical Sketch (London: Modern Books Limited, n.d.), p. 10-11,
P. M. Kerzhentsev, Life of Lenin (New York: International Publishers, 1939), p. 25,
Han Suyin, The Morning Deluge (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1972), p. 117
Ibid., p. 118.
Mt. Tai Study Circle, op. cit.
Lenin, in A Retrograde Trend, the very article they cite, defines advanced workers as “real heroes [who] are coming to the fore from amongst the workers, who, despite their wretched living conditions, despite the stultifying penal servitude of factory labour, possess so much character and will-power that they study, study, study, and turn them selves into conscious Social-Democrats—‘the working-class intelligentsia.’” Never once in the entirety of the cited article by Lenin does he confound the intelligentsia and the advanced workers, never once does he simplify the problem by combining two distinct aspects into one indistinguishable whole.
This transformation is different from what many Maoists today like to term “proletarianization”, which in theory simply romanticizes the working class as being “pure” or without faults and in practice results in non-Communist psychoanalysis and manipulation where comrades are forced to expunge all the bourgeois evils from their being. It also tends to fall into modern day workerism, where Maoist intellectuals a part of covert “cadre” organizations simply get jobs as the workers they intend to organize, thereby becoming virtuous proletarians themselves and demonstrating another way of shortcutting fusion by proclaiming the existence of advanced workers who are actually just petty-bourgeois academics dressing up in worker’s clothes. Though, more must be—and will be—said on this point as it relates to the history of American Communists in the labor movement in general.
Mao Zedong, Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, 1964.
It is unsurprising to note that Mt. Tai is a front organization for the Brooklyn Revolutionary Collective, a clandestine “Maoist” pre-party formation which has direct ties to the Maoist Communist Group, an Avakianist collective from the mid to late 2010s.
I want to reiterate that I am not talking about those new fresh faces who hold a genuine interest in learning more about Marxism, and do not know yet of its historical mission and of its required tasks, i.e. developing the class struggle in order to overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. The force of my criticism is aimed squarely at those who, after having studied for a significant amount of time, come face to face with these tasks and still consciously ignore them, opting to enjoy Marxism as an academic or cultural pursuit, and along the way theoretically—and childishly—defending such cowardly decisions, as our folks in Mt. Tai do.
N. K. Krupskaya, “How Lenin Studied Marx ,” in On Education: Selected Articles and Speeches (Paris: Foreign Languages Press, 2022), p. 49.
Edgar Snow, Red Star over China (1937; repr., London: Grove Press UK, 1968), p. 94.
Ibid.
Mt. Tai, despite having published the article criticized above not terribly recently, still exerts its influence today by giving direct guidance to many unknown/non-public study circles or comrades looking to get involved across the country, pushing forward its line of rationalism.
V. I. Lenin 1899, op. cit.
Krupskaya 2022, op. cit., p. 77.
Simply browsing online forums where UPS, Amazon, and Fedex workers post their grievances everyday has given our group a plethora of information (although it is certainly not the only method we intend to use).
V. I. Lenin, What is to be Done?, 1902.
This is not because of some weird glorification with this sector, but because we have come to the decision collectively based on our research that it makes the most sense. Moreover, we are not stating that the logistics sector is the most advanced section of the American industrial proletariat (and therefore of the proletariat as a whole)—we will come to find that out only through revolutionary practice, like how the Russian metal workers came to be vanguard in the 1905 revolution. No, we intend only to begin here, to build up the strongest of links so we may approach the rest of the industrial proletariat and subsequently the whole of the class. Nevertheless, on this point, our group will share findings, research, and more in the coming months, especially as our work ramps up.
Krupskaya 1970, op. cit.
Mt. Tai Study Circle, op. cit.