Against Communist Fantasy Football or — Correct Handling of Two Line Struggle

The Communist Party of the Philippines’ response to a Gonzaloite criticism of a statement released by said party regarding the US election has had the Mao twittersphere ablaze for the past few days. I do not have a twitter account, but people have been sending me messages regarding what’s been going on there so I scrolled a few chat threads. The crux of the struggle seems to be that American Maoists feel a bit “let down” by what they misread as the CPP appearing to express support or some type of hope for the incoming Biden regime, or the electoral process in general. This is a strawman. The CPP in their first statement on the election situation calls on American Communists to:

Strengthen the call for an end to military support to the Duterte fascist terrorist regime. They must double their efforts to convince the American people that continuing US military support for the Duterte regime equals support for his tyranny, his bloody reign of murder and state terrorism against the Filipino people.

They must demand an end to the Operation Pacific Eagle-Philippines under which US military troops are deployed in the country in the name of “counter-terrorism” but which actually provide support to the AFP in its campaign of suppression against the Filipino people. At the same time, the Filipino people must demand complete abrogation of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) and other military treaties which perpetuate unequal military relations between the US and the Philippines.

There’s nothing wrong with this call. It’s an anti-imperialist call, calling on American friends of the Filipino people to apply mass pressure to help comrades overseas. The bone of contention for many seems to be this:

Under Trump, US imperialist militarism and aggression intensified. He continued to employ and expand economic sanctions against countries asserting independence. He expanded the US “war on terror” to push US military aggression. He ordered armed strikes in Iraq. He supported resurgence in production of nuclear weapons. He aggressively pushed for sales of US weapons to oppressive regimes. He walked back on US commitments against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles and contact-detonated mines, as well as to the Paris Agreement on climate change.

US President-elect Joe Biden rode on the crest of a gigantic wave of democratic mass movement which has engulfed the entire country. The Black Lives Matter movement since the start of May is the latest display of mass opposition following the show of mass resistance by American workers, immigrants, women, youth and other sectors of American society. Over the past few months, hundreds of thousands of workers have taken to the streets to protest racism, police brutality and attacks against civil rights, as well as to amplify the clamor for jobs, higher wages, work safety, subsidies for health and education, housing, proper public health response to the pandemic and other urgent demands.

Trump represents the most reactionary wing of the American bourgeoisie, he routinely mobilizes and appeals to fascists through his Twitter account which he used to issue open inflammatory statements, right-populist rhetoric and subtle dogwhistles. He was elected in major part due to the work (online and off) of the alt-right fascists. Leftists quibbling over whether or not Trump is a fascist are deluding themselves, if it walks like a duck and quacks like one, you can serve it with a nice honey glaze. Fascism is capable of reinventing itself and transitioning itself — only a fool would be parading around in a brownshirt in the year 2020 like a Hollywood actor. If that’s what you think fascism is, you’ll be chilling in a mass grave still arguing about how fascism isn’t here yet because Dimitrov didn’t say anything about it. In regards to Biden riding on the crest of a “mass democratic movement”, I see how this would confuse people. Many of MBL (Movement for Black Lives) organizers are appendages of the Democratic Party or social democratic formations and they spent most of the past few months channeling the rage of the people into the ballot box. So, in a way, Biden did “ride on the crest of the mass movement”, and this is not a good thing. This shows the necessity of Communists deepening our ties to the broadest segments of the masses, not just preaching to the already advanced. The advanced are the kids who are out tearing stuff up during uprisings and shouting FTP, well and good, we should organize and grow their ranks. Most of the people are not advanced, to grow their ranks requires political education and actual everyday organizing. Those kids overwhelmingly do not vote, but their working class parents and grandparents who remember the mainstream civil rights movement do. Our task should be organizing them as well. We shouldn’t mistake the positions of the advanced for those of the intermediate, the millions of people who will make or break the revolution through their support (passive or active) or their active opposition due to our own ultra-left posturing and stupidity. To the CPP, who are correctly dedicated mainly to struggling for liberation of the Philippines, the defeat of Trump is an objectively good thing from their perspective. That is what they are commending, not the election of Biden. They are perfectly clear that they believe that nothing concrete will change without the actions of millions of people. It’s a stretch to read the Filipinos’ statement as claiming “Biden is a victory for the people”. It’s a commendation to the movement to oust Trump which was a mass movement. The Filipinos probably see it as a sort of American parallel to the many mass movements that have toppled governments in their own country. I don’t see this comparison as being apt. The “anti-Trump” mass movement is comprised of military officials, centrist Republicans, Democrats, and a variety of other people that are enemies of Communists. Yet, it’s also comprised of people who are progressive and who we as Communists can unite with. As Communists, we should be capable of working in a variety of movements and winning over a variety of people. Communists in the US today seem to want to be hothouse tomatoes, afraid of catching the icky germs of revisionism, liberalism and other -isms. Then, of course, complain when these movements that involve millions of people fall to social democrats, revisionists or the myriad of other political actors on the scene today. I do think that the CPP, though, should take into consideration the fact that elections are of a different character in an imperialist country as opposed to a semi-colonial, semi-feudal one.

The Tribune criticism is arrogant fingerwagging, which is not surprising for anyone who regularly reads their dogmato-revisionist boilerplate positing itself as people’s journalism. It lambasts the CPP for being “revisionists” and calls them “MZT-inspired” instead of Maoist, so we see them starting out in bad faith. The CPP is a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party. I’m not surprised that the Filipinos responded the way they did. More hilarious, though, was the response in the internet Gonzalosphere. Twitter was full of Gonzaloites crying about how the CPP “failed to practice proletarian internationalism”, calling them the “right wing of the ICM”, and one even jokingly said that I helped co-write the statement. Once again, amateurish fantasy football and failure to correctly grasp politics. Politics is the science, the work, of moving millions of people, of influencing them. Communist politics is the work of mobilizing millions of people around Communist demands, integrating activists in workplaces and neighborhoods into the Communist movement, and developing ties with every sector that has an objective interest in a strategic (ending capitalism and US imperialism) and tactical (getting this landlord to do what we want) goal. Communists must be both strategists, as well as tacticians. Failure to correctly grasp strategy leads you down the movementist/economist rabbit hole. Failure to correctly grasp tactics leads to the armchair theorist/sectarian rabbit hole. We all know that Biden is a vile imperialist — now what? Talking about it does nothing. Communists must integrate into the masses thoroughly and become a part of the people’s lives so that our politics become motive forces for millions of people. The CPP has success because it correctly handles both strategy and tactics.

Finally, the CPP’s response — I don’t think that Tribune genuinely despises the American people. I do think that they are dogmatists and hothouse vegetables who blow off anything that doesn’t agree with their childishly simplistic view of the world or politics in general. I’d wager that many of these people writing for Tribune are just getting into Communist politics and are, like everyone who discovers something new, especially Communism-as-religion, impetuous and seeking to spread their 100% correct politics to all and sundry. The better of them will grow out of it, the most stubborn will be the 60 year old Avakianite standing on the street corner hawking the same shit they did at 25. At the end of the day, more Americans vote than would actually participate in an armed struggle at this point. This is the reality. To build this up requires, again, consistent mass work over the course of years, especially in a country this size, with this population, and with the majority of the people concentrated in cities. Keep in mind also that Americans of all classes are routinely fed anti-Communist narratives both openly and subtly through television, film, literature, and the classroom. There is also postmodernist ideology that has a stranglehold on the universities through which many organizers pass. It is important for Communists to develop mass political education programs beyond yammering about Gonzalo and Mao and spraypainting shit on walls, or denouncing/disrupting DSA events. Like the CPP says:

Because of its infantilism, the TOP fails to grasp that for the revolutionary proletariat to lead the working class and oppressed people, it will take more than exposing the class nature of elections and asserting the truism that the elections are reactionary contests which leave people with no choice, i.e. that Trump and Biden both represent the same class of monopoly capitalists. To accomplish the task of winning over the broad masses in their millions and of educating and raising the political and class consciousness of workers and oppressed people, the vanguard party must be able to militate and win over the middle section and guide their actions, not by speaking above their heads, but by speaking the language they understand.

Speaking the language they understand. This doesn’t just mean talking to one or two people, this means winning over people who do vote. Repeating “DontVoteDontVoteDontVote” over and over again like a chant solves nothing, organizes nobody, and isolates you. Election boycotts should be organized through popular programs and conversations with groups of the masses, not through slogans on walls. Until the people adopt them as their own, they are simply paint.

The CPP does not believe that US imperialist policies, domestically and internationally, will change fundamentally under the incoming Biden regime. This is precisely the point when it stated that Biden will now be head of the US imperialist state. As representative of the ruling monopoly capitalists, Biden is now set to preside over the crisis-stricken US economy and implement policies which will intensify the oppression and exploitation of the working class and people.

Again. Only a fool would claim that this reads as congratulating Biden. Once again, we see the embarrassment that comes from failing to properly grasp and practice politics. Finally, in regards to the peace talks, the CPP is a party, leading an army, that is conducting a war. Some will retort with the Gonzalo quote about “only negotiating what has been gained on the battlefield”. Perhaps this position is why he’s currently in prison in Callao as opposed to the Presidential Palace in Lima. War has ebbs and flows, ups and downs. Sometimes you must talk, sometimes you must fight. Only this way can victory be won. Furthermore, if the PCP had successfully won power in Peru, it would have either been forced to pragmatically shift its positions to survive, or it would have been isolated and destroyed either through internal strife or foreign attack. Just a thought. Winning ain’t ruling.

In regards to the Twitter beef, line struggle can’t happen in a hundred and a half characters. I’ve seen many people claiming that they’ll leave twitter, yet they never do. It’s a time sink that breeds liberalism, bad ideas, and bad behavior. I’ve seen people using this CPP statement to dunk on Maoists in general — and Gonzalo fans using this to try to degrade the validity of the statement. Both sides are wrong. Dunking on each other and using the statements of comrades overseas to do so is the epitome of unprincipled behavior and extreme onlineness that has made the US Left in general an impotent joke. Get off Twitter, stop writing trash, stop picking quarrels, get to work among the people. Line struggle should happen cordially, be done to genuinely improve comrades’ line and work, and be based on concrete ties established through struggle. Not a nasty letter or a “critique” sent to comrades overseas who are actually engaging in the shit we talk about.