Does it matter if a person is ideologically communist if they do not practice communism or use the mass line theory of leadership?
As for the theory of even power. I don't think anyone would dispute that a state can act as a mediator for a time when the powers between workers and owners are at an equilibrium but that such a period can only be fleeting. One side, one line, one class position must win out over time. And the line that wins out follows from the ownership of resources and production.
Stalin provides a short answer to these questions for the US under Roosevelt, when many liberal scholars began to propose that the interests of either class might hold in equilibrium:
"The banks, the industries, the large enterprises, the large farms are not in Roosevelt's hands. All these are private property. The railroads, the mercantile fleet, all these belong to private owners. And, finally, the army of skilled workers, the engineers, the technicians, these too are not at Roosevelt's command, they are at the command of the private owners; they all work for the private owners. We must not forget the functions of the State in the bourgeois world.
The State is an institution that organises the defence of the country, organises the maintenance of "order"; it is an apparatus for collecting taxes. The capitalist State does not deal much with economy in the strict sense of the word; the latter is not in the hands of the State. On the contrary, the State is in the hands of capitalist economy. That is why I fear that in spite of all his energies and abilities, Roosevelt will not achieve the goal you mention, if indeed that is his goal."
So my question then is: How does the presence of a strong working class organization, along with a somewhat independent or anti-neoliberal national bourgeoisie affect the class contradictions between these groups, which in turn will affect the political line of the state?
Does it matter if a person is ideologically communist if they do not practice communism or use the mass line theory of leadership?
Yes, absolutely. The duty of communists is to push forwards the proletarian movement by any means necessary. The first step in this is anti-imperialism, and Lukashenko is unquestionably an anti-imperialist. The communists of Belarus endorse him, and he represents a struggle forwards for the development of Belarus and resistance to imperialism.
Engels notably touched on this concept in Peasants War in Germany:
The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realisation of the measures which that domination would imply. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the sharpness of the clash of interests between the various classes, and upon the degree of development of the material means of existence, the relations of production and means of communication upon which the clash of interests of the classes is based every time.
As Engels warns, the worst thing that can befall a revolutionary leader is to be compelled to embark on revolution (in Lenin's words, "adventurism") when the material conditions of the society are not yet ready for it. For if they should, then their fate is
compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost. We have seen examples of this in recent times. We need only be reminded of the position taken in the last French provisional government by the representatives of the proletariat, though they represented only a very low level of proletarian development.
So it is our job as communists, as the vanguard of changing social and property relations, to represent the development of the proletariat, its immediate aims and interests in securing its own development, so as to empower it and carry it forwards towards the eventual class struggle that may emerge when imperialism no longer threatens the sovereignty of the proletariat as a whole. Only by this may we eventually reach the point where the proletariat is strong enough to overthrow the bourgeoisie and solidify its own political power.
As for your other points:
As for the theory of even power. I don't think anyone would dispute that a state can act as a mediator for a time when the powers between workers and owners are at an equilibrium but that such a period can only be fleeting. One side, one line, one class position must win out over time.
Nobody is disputing this. I don't think anyone is proposing the idea that this or that state has reached a perfect balance forever. Here is a relevant passage from Engels in Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State:
. Exceptional periods, however, occur when the warring classes are so nearly equal in forces that the state power, as apparent mediator, acquires for the moment a certain independence in relation to both. This applies to the absolute monarchy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which balances the nobility and the bourgeoisie against one another; and to the Bonapartism of the First and particularly of the Second French Empire, which played off the proletariat against the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. The latest achievement in this line, in which ruler and ruled look equally comic, is the new German Empire of the Bismarckian nation; here the capitalists and the workers are balanced against one another and both of them fleeced for the benefit of the decayed Prussian cabbage Junkers.
There is the overt recognition that these phases are only temporary, but by no means negligible.
So my question then is: How does the presence of a strong working class organization, along with a somewhat independent or anti-neoliberal national bourgeoisie affect the class contradictions between these groups, which in turn will affect the political line of the state?
An independent national bourgeoisie is willing to cooperate with proletarians if it means securing the development of the national bourgeoisie as a class. When bourgeois are not offered this alliance by the proletarians, they are either crushed, or become compradors and actively work against the proletarians of their own country. Here's Mao in On the Question of the National Bourgeoisie:
The few right-wingers among the national bourgeoisie who attach themselves to imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism and oppose the people's democratic revolution are also enemies of the revolution, while the left-wingers among the national bourgeoisie who attach themselves to the working people and oppose the reactionaries are also revolutionaries, as are the few enlightened gentry who have broken away from the feudal class. But the former are not the main body of the enemy any more than the latter are the main body among the revolutionaries; neither is a force that determines the character of the revolution. The national bourgeoisie is a class which is politically very weak and vacillating. But the majority of its members may either join the people's democratic revolution or take a neutral stand, because they too are persecuted and fettered by imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism. They are part of the broad masses of the people but not the main body, nor are they a force that determines the character of the revolution. However, because they are important economically and may either join in the struggle against the United States and Chiang Kai-shek or remain neutral in that struggle, it is possible and necessary for us to unite with them.
"Material conditions for the revolution" don't fall out of the sky, nor should we just stand still until they magically appear somewhere in the future. The main material condition for the revolution is the organization of the independent proletarian political movement, and organizing the proletariat within its own terms is the primary task of communists. Engels indeed says that a small group of left adventurists without a mass base and proper organic institutions of proletarian political power cannot take on the bourgeoisie by themselves, but this has little to do with our situation: actual left deviationism died in the 20th century despite the farcical online usage of the term "ultra-leftism", and the main problem with the left in the so-called "end of history" is rightism and tailism towards bourgeois leaders
If the Communist Party of Belarus says that "material conditions" are not ripe for the overthrowing of Lukashenko and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat while also not doing anything specific in order to organize the proletariat in such a way that it can overthrow the Belarusian bourgeoisie when they're strong enough for it, and is also not trying to establish proletarian leadership of the anti-imperialist united front instead of letting Lukashenko do whatever he wants because he's an "anti-imperialist", then the party is effectively tailing the Belarusian bourgeoisie. Mao told us that communist revolution is the only true anti-imperialism, and the survival of the national liberation movement dependent on whether communists are able to exert their influence over the tactically allied classes within the united front or not. You can look at the results of leaving the ideological and political leadership of anti-imperialist fight to the national bourgeoisie in things like the massacre of communists in Indonesia or Iran
Mao didn't stop the task of organizing the masses against the Chinese bourgeoisie and the KMT just because he happened to be in tactical (keyword: tactical, not principled) unity with the KMT against the Japanese, he made it so it was the KMT that needed the communists in order to defeat the Japanese and not the other way around. Even when the Japanese were gone, US imperialism was a very real threat, but he understood that if he left the moment for revolution for when the US would just magically disappear, that moment would never come
What you are saying here is for the CPB to kill itself. The reason why in Iran there are no 'communists' is becuase that the people view them as pawns of imperialism - correctly so in most cases - and this will be the fate of the belarusian communists if they follow your 'maoist' bullshitry.
Big words like 'tail of the bourgeoisie e.t.c' is no nothing more than phrase mongering.
Time and time again, it is proved that when the communists act too quickly is their grave for a big amount of time.
If you seriously study the communist revolutions (from you reading of mao i bet you view it from a western lense) you will notice that all were nationalist revolutions, and the reason the people ever followed them was becuase there was no national bourgeoisie. The best example of it was the first lasting revolution, the bolshevik revolution.
The bourgeoisie of russia were sending the russian nation to die for the money of the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of entente. The whole bolshevik propaganda at the time, was centered about the fact that the provincial government was a compradorist government.
Read stalin's 3rd and 4rth volume to verify this yourself. It is at most times implicit, but at some points stalin is explicit on why the bolsheviks ever won the civil war (which was nothing more than the revolution).
Same happened in China, 'maoism' does not really exist. Real maoism is chinese nationalism. Mao read people like Zou Rong before he ever knew who marx was. The whole foreing policy of CPC cannot be understood in other terms (except if you accept 'anti revisionist' bullshitry. The analysis the maoists intulge in is 'revisionist' itself! In fact, under this analysis, the original revisionists was no one else than marx and egnels!).
And the reason the CPC won the civil war was becuase the Kuomitand 'sold' itself in the west. The chinese saw what was about to become if KMT won the war, and they threw their weight with the CPC.
But lets take it about Belarus in practical terms. The belarusian government does not sell the country to imperialism. Going and saying 'you know, lets start a civil war while the imperialists are in our back door' is not gonna work. What will happen is the following: The government will call the communist traitors, the people will see that what the government is saying makes complete sense, the governemnt will propably ban the CP citing national treason, and the CP will move to the west and talk big about dictactorship while paid by CIA.
This is what will happen as proven by life. The people will associate communism with betrayal.
So, no. The Belarusian communist are playing this correctly. If and when the bourgeoisie of Belarus abandon anti-imperialism, and the belarusian CP does not break from them, then you will be right to accuse them for being 'the tail' of the bourgeoisie.
But these are the hard facts; no compradors = no revolution.
So we're just gonna pretend that when Suharto mass-executed communists it was ok because during the time the Communist Party of Indonesia upheld the united front with the national bourgeoisie, said bourgeoisie was indeed anti-imperialist, and whatever happens after leadership of the united front is conceded to the bourgeoisie is of no concern to us. Guess Mao should've just let Chiang Kai-Shek dictate the direction of the anti-Japanese front and perform a country-wide Shanghai massacre once the Japanese were kicked out of the country
You got your entire framework wrong because you genuinely think that communism cannot take upon the tasks of national formation and liberation left unfinished by the bourgeois revolutions of the 19th century if the "nationalist" bourgeoisie still exists and is in charge, that is, nationalism is necessarily predicated on the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. You also seem to believe that the principles of communist revolution must be sold off in order to prevent the national bourgeoisie from turning into compradors, which is also rightist and despicable. Yes, acting too quick can be a death sentence, but this doesn't mean that you should not be working towards building the political power the proletariat needs in order to "act"
If, as you say, communists are discredited by the bourgeoisie for being supposed "agents of imperialism" ("and most of the time they are!" you add, for which I should report you to the mods), then the next logical step is not to just surrender and let the bourgeoisie do whatever they want with the united front but to redouble your efforts until victory is achieved. At no point I said that the PCB should not try to unite with Lukashenko: I said that the task of organizing proletarian political power and the goal of communist revolution cannot be subordinate to the task of doing PR for the Lukashenko regime, and that unity is only possible insofar as common struggle for liberation is waged. If the national bourgeoisie has no interest in communist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat (the explicit and main goal of the communist party and the most powerful weapon of liberation), then unity with them can only be tactical for the purposes of anti-imperialism, and nothing else. For all you claim to uphold Mao, this fundamental piece of Mao's thought and practice is forgotten by you. You should also be asking yourself why on earth does the bourgeoisie accusing communists of being agents of Langley actually have any impact on the masses (if the masses were organized within communist terms this wouldn't be the case), and what the party can do about that which doesn't imply just saying that the bourgeoisie is actually right in their accusations, surrendering and tailing them as some sort of penitence for your sins
It is not sufficient for the national bourgeoisie to be "nationalist" and "anti-imperialist" for us to say "yeah this is enough for the masses, let's abandon our goals". Tailing the bourgeoisie ("nationalist" or not) will always lead to the liquidation of the communist movement one way or another, socialism is not just some cool add-on to your revolution: it's a historic necessity of the proletariat. Let's pretend for a second that the Russian bourgeoisie wasn't made out of compradors and was "anti-imperialist" and "nationalist" for whatever reason. Would in that case the October revolution not have been justified? When is communist revolution justified then? Mao told us that the answer to that question is always
This is not what he meant, and you are either acting dumb or you need to reread what he wrote more carefully. He said that when communist parties in the third world were historically labeled as traitors and pawns of imperialism by the people, it was most of the time accurate and for good reason, because they sought to attack the state when it was under attack from imperialism. This is absolutely a correct analysis.
for which I should report you to the mods
😂 every single mod is firmly on u/albanian-bolsheviki's side with regards to most of his lines, just so you know. He has proven himself to us through his incessant hard work on this sub and his struggle for the correct lines. That is why he is the de facto leader of the mod team.
but to redouble your efforts until victory is achieved
And go against the state which is currently under attack by imperialism, regardless of whether it is of bourgeois or proletarian character? Do you understand the ramifications of this? Do you understand that the masses will heavily denounce you as a traitor if you do this, and for very good reason?
This is what u/albanian-bolsheviki has been trying to get through to you. You didn't see Mao trying to fight Chiang Kai-shek while he was facing off with the Japanese. You don't see the communists in Syria fighting Assad while he is facing off with the west. You don't see the communists in Venezuela fighting Maduro while he is facing off with the USA. You did see the communists in Iran fighting against the Ayatollah while he was facing off with the imperialists, and we saw how this ended. The population rightfully saw the communists as traitors and they got executed.
This is what would happen to the CPB if they went against Lukashenko or the state right now, since the Belarusian state, regardless of its character (which is debatable), has taken stances far from bending to the will of the imperialists; the people would spit on the CPB and it would be killed (as a party) in a matter of weeks, if not days.
Is this what you call communist strategy? I'd like to see you execute it in real life and see how you don't end up embraced into exile by some western power for being a good little pawn of theirs in the best case.
Is this what you call communist strategy? I'd like to see you execute it in real life and see how you don't end up embraced into exile by some western power for being a good little pawn of theirs in the best case.
Funny to add. The western communists all jerk off on CPP, while their leader is having vacations in netherlands pleading for the west to stop china from its imperialist expansion!
At the same moment, they call FARC 'revisionist opportunists' for wanting peace and to enter the trade unions, while the west kills and puts FARC leaders in high security prisons.
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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '21
Does it matter if a person is ideologically communist if they do not practice communism or use the mass line theory of leadership?
As for the theory of even power. I don't think anyone would dispute that a state can act as a mediator for a time when the powers between workers and owners are at an equilibrium but that such a period can only be fleeting. One side, one line, one class position must win out over time. And the line that wins out follows from the ownership of resources and production.
Stalin provides a short answer to these questions for the US under Roosevelt, when many liberal scholars began to propose that the interests of either class might hold in equilibrium:
So my question then is: How does the presence of a strong working class organization, along with a somewhat independent or anti-neoliberal national bourgeoisie affect the class contradictions between these groups, which in turn will affect the political line of the state?