The capacity for military force alone isn’t enough to win power, especially when navigating a task as sensitive and intellectually demanding as proletarian revolution. Neither is the capacity for functional organization. There are self-professed communist organizations—like the Maoist party in the Philippines—that possess both of these qualities, but that are unable to defeat the capitalist state because of their theoretical deficiencies. And even when they practice correct revolutionary models that I’ll recommend throughout this essay, like democratic centralism, their adherence to ultra-leftist beliefs undermines them like an Achilles Heel. The Philippine Maoists refuse to ally with the urban proletariat, rigidly adhering to an outdated isolation towards the rural. Consequently, they remain unable to win their People’s War. This stems from Maoism’s hostility towards successful socialist projects like China, which by extension causes hostility towards the scientific approach which has made these projects successful.
Or worse, these strains are assimilated into the network of reactionary intrigue, falling prey to wreckers and splintering. To succeed, we need to properly understand our conditions, how to respond to them, and how to facilitate that response. In fulfilling these requirements, what all the proper procedures stem from is discipline. Because as I’ll show, the incorrect ideas that lead to adventurism, dogmatism, and other errors stem from a failure of intellectual humility and self-control.
Enforce democratic centralism or fail
In Guerrilla Warfare, Che Guevara describes just how severe revolutionary discipline becomes when the confrontation with the state is at its fiercest:
One of the most important features of military organization is disciplinary punishment. Discipline must be one of the bases of action of the guerrilla forces (this must be repeated again and again). As we have already said, it should spring from a carefully reasoned internal conviction; this produces an individual with inner discipline. When this discipline is violated, it is necessary always to punish the offender, whatever his rank, and to punish him drastically in a way that hurts. This is important, because pain is not felt by a guerrilla soldier in the same way as by a soldier of the regular army. The punishment of putting a soldier in jail for ten days constitutes for the guerrilla fighter a magnificent period of rest; ten days with nothing to do but eat, no marching, no work, no standing the customary guards, sleeping at will, resting, reading, etc. From this it can be deduced that deprivation of liberty ought not to be the only punishment available in the guerrilla situation.
Even when a cadre is functioning in the most friendly conditions imaginable, where there are no armed forces trying to track it down and the prospect of such a guerrilla scenario is distant, this disciplinary culture must be maintained in the proportions which correspond to the given conditions. Cadre members must always be willing to counter any incorrect ideas they encounter from their peers, in accordance with Mao’s warning that letting a stray remark slip is one type of liberalism. They must be willing to eject a member if the member refuses to learn from a mistake, and to enforce disciplinary protocols—like the mandate that one write out pledges for correcting their mistakes if the cadre agrees such self-scrutiny is necessary for them.
Mao’s Combat Liberalism provides a guide to the lapses in discipline that these kinds of measures are designed to help cadres avoid:
To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong….To indulge in irresponsible criticism in private instead of actively putting forward one's suggestions to the organization….To show no regard at all for the principles of collective life but to follow one's own inclination….To let things drift if they do not affect one personally; to say as little as possible while knowing perfectly well what is wrong, to be worldly wise and play safe and seek only to avoid blame….Not to obey orders but to give pride of place to one's own opinions. To demand special consideration from the organization but to reject its discipline….To indulge in personal attacks, pick quarrels, vent personal spite or seek revenge instead of entering into an argument and struggling against incorrect views for the sake of unity or progress or getting the work done properly….To hear incorrect views without rebutting them and even to hear counter-revolutionary remarks without reporting them, but instead to take them calmly as if nothing had happened….To be among the masses and fail to conduct propaganda and agitation….To see someone harming the interests of the masses and yet not feel indignant, or dissuade or stop him or reason with him, but to allow him to continue….To work half-heartedly without a definite plan or direction….To regard oneself as having rendered great service to the revolution, to pride oneself on being a veteran, to disdain minor assignments while being quite unequal to major tasks, to be slipshod in work and slack in study….To be aware of one's own mistakes and yet make no attempt to correct them, taking a liberal attitude towards oneself.
Steer clear of these errors, and you’ll be ensured against contributing to the many ills which cadres can fall victim to. Part of Marxism’s central principles is the relentless criticism of all things, and to apply this, we must be willing to make sacrifices. Sacrifices of the short-term comforts that come from letting a companion’s harmful actions go unaddressed for the sake of staying on good terms with them, or from going about one’s day passively despite encountering something that hurts the interests of the masses. Our emotions so often risk leading us astray, urging us to take the easy path under the rationale that even if we know we’re doing wrong, it can’t possibly be damaging to the revolution’s interests. But everything is connected, and every action or inaction we take has consequences. This is the thesis of Ho Chi Minh’s On Revolutionary Morality, which warns about the counterproductive mental habits that we must overcome:
Born and brought up in the old society, we all carry within ourselves, to varying extent, traces of that society in our thinking and habits. The worst and most dangerous vestige of the old society is individualism. Individualism runs counter to revolutionary morality. The least remaining trace of it will develop at the first opportunity, smother revolutionary virtues and prevent us from wholeheartedly struggling for the revolutionary cause. Individualism is something very deceitful and perfidious, it skillfully induces one to backslide. And everybody knows that it is easier to backslide than to progress. That is why it is very dangerous….those Party members who commit errors will lead the masses into error; therefore, they stand ready to correct any mistake they may make, and this in a timely way, and do not allow small errors to accumulate into big ones. They sincerely practise criticism and self criticism, which makes it possible for them to progress together.
What happens when we fail to live up to these criteria? We undermine our own cause. The inverse to this impulse towards being apathetic and complacent is the one towards being reckless. Towards acting out of step with what one’s cadre has agreed is the right course of action, or with what the interests of the masses demand. And it’s the latter type of error that we so often have the responsibility to counter when we see someone else committing it. To avoid both of these kinds of errors—complacency and recklessness—we must identify exactly what types of actions constitute recklessness. Which starts with identifying the ahistorical and undialectical ideas that produce them.
Case study in ahistorical ideas: gang fetishism & its resulting ultraviolence
My cadre once let in an individual who proudly declared that he was a Sureno, a member of California’s Chicano gang. His gangster upbringing had made him highly eager for the ideas of militancy, and of forming a dynamic of close brotherhood. But soon the downside of this became apparent: because his concept of organization was entirely focused on “having each other’s backs,” and being willing to engage in violence on a whim, he responded to an ideological dispute we had with African communists by recklessly threatening violence against them. He refused to self-criticize for this mistake, because in his mind the situation undoubtedly called for such an escalation, and that the rest of us disagreed with his course of action was a betrayal. Democratic centralism, which mandates that one consult the party before taking a risky action and learn from one’s mistake should they fail to do this, was interpreted by him as disloyal. There was no room for good-faith criticism, only a binary between uncritical agreement with him and irreconcilable conflict.
It was this narrative about the supposed evils of party discipline which correlated with the viewpoint he then pushed about gangs being instrumental for the revolution. In time, I learned that this gang fetishist perspective didn’t come out of nowhere; it’s an ultra-leftist position that goes back decades. In the Marxist-Leninist October League’s 1970s list of demands for the liberation of the Chicano people, the dangers of this position were addressed by the 12th point:
12. Jobs and job training programs for Chicano youth. The lack of jobs and job training has led to the extremely high unemployment rate (40-50 percent) for young Chicanos and to the flourishing of lumpen-type gang organizations. This situation has given rise to organizations like “La Colectiva,” a barrio youth organization in Los Angeles aimed at getting the gang members to fight against imperialism instead of each other. Special youth organizations and youth-oriented programs and propaganda must be developed.
With this analysis, the League didn’t pretend that the proliferation of gangs is a positive development; it diagnosed the gangs as being active obstacles in the effort to unite the lumpen behind liberation movements, requiring the introduction of alternative social outlets into these communities. It said the individuals within these gangs have revolutionary potential, but it made clear that this was in spite of their being part of gangs. Then with the 13th point, it became apparent why the League objected to trying to use gangs as a revolutionary tool. It described a need to eliminate the drug pushers, who are given institutional power by the gangs:
13. The removal of (government-backed) drug pushers in the Chicano community. The link between the government and the drug pushers is indisputable. The CIA’s involvement in the drug traffic in Vietnam has been exposed. The bourgeoisie promotes the use of drugs in the Chicano and other minority communities in an attempt to keep the people passive and to undermine their striving for revolution. Chicanos like Los Tres del Barrio have fought to get the drug pushers out of their communities and are now facing repression from the police.
The debate within the Chicano movement over whether to incorporate gangs into the struggle is tied in with the larger debate, prevalent within both the Chicano and African liberation movements, over whether a racial supremacist ideology is correct. This is because the reactionary position that an oppressed nation should replicate colonialism, elevating itself to the disadvantage of other groups, naturally finds ideological support within the gang fetishist stance. Gang fetishism promotes an in-group out-group mentality, a macho obsession with pure physical strength, and an anti-intellectual rejection of the theory that’s required to achieve socialism. Because if militancy alone is achieved, it says, victory is assured regardless of what a dialectical analysis says needs to be done. The bourgeois class character of gangs, and their assimilation into reactionary intrigue, aren’t worthy of concern. Everything can be simplified to a compelling story of the gangsters harnessing their masculine strength and changing the world.
In other words, such strains align with the psychological patterns explained by Umberto Eco’s Ur-Fascism, which diagnoses the fascist mindset as one of intellectually closed off, warlike tribalism. It’s what’s behind the Aztlan model for “decolonization,” which argues that national liberation will be achieved simply if Mexico gains back the territory that the U.S. empire took from it. The grievous contradiction that this argument entails, where Mexico would be exercising jurisdiction over hundreds of indigenous First Nations without the consent of these nations, is deliberately ignored by the position’s driving logic. Like the white supremacist “patriotic socialism” argument, which says the United States should be maintained in a “socialist” form, it embraces the preservation of colonial borders through a demagogic romanticism of “national unity.” And unsurprisingly, this vision for a recolonization of the First Nations by Mexico was another idea that was pushed by that individual my cadre encountered.
Incidentally, it’s these kinds of mentalities that are extremely useful for movement wreckers. Which is the lesson that I’ve picked up on from my personal experiences with these types.
Rejecting the attempts by wreckers to exploit contradictions
What I’ve learned about movement wreckers is that they don’t have to be feds to act as wreckers. Even if you’re dealing with a wrecker who believes their own rhetoric, and is acting out of their genuine convictions, you should treat them as if they’re a fed, because they’re functionally the same as a paid agent provocateur. This is because the route for destabilization used by all wreckers, feds or not, takes the same insidious form: exploiting contradictions to sow discord and division within an organization, and promoting reactionary ideas like gang fetishism or racial supremacy. It’s this nature of movement wrecking that makes the non-fed wreckers dangerous, because a bad actor who sincerely believes they’re fighting for a good cause is as impossible to reason with as an actual clandestine agent.
In their findings on how movement infiltrators operate, Media for Justice describes a sabotage approach that indeed could be utilized just as easily by a true zealot as by an agent:
Because they make use of legitimate concerns to push their destabilisation agenda it is very difficult to stand up to them. They know there is an outrage and fundamentalist moralism that comes with certain topics and anyone who challenges this approach will be called an apologist or denialist or an assaulter. This is called the weaponization of legitimate narratives for ulterior motives and agents receive training in this field because it is so effective in breaking up unity in movements. This is an injustice to those who developed sound theory which is then warped for maximum negative impact and sold to young minds as truth. No matter how many authentic overtures you make to them to engage on the contentious issue, workshop it, write manifestos and codes of conduct to deal with the issues they will all be turned down. It does not suit this agenda to solve the issue. The mandate is to make sure the problem is perpetual until it breaks the movement. Their methodology is to spread chaos as widely as possible not to create harmony. They have a clear adversary and everything they do, or ask you to do, is to discredit or destroy their targeted adversary.
It’s this last point that can put earnest organizers in such jeopardy. We have a passion for advancing justice and addressing contradictions, so when a wrecker who’s gained our trust approaches us with one of their “concerns,” our impulse is to help them. According to Media for Justice, wreckers identify an adversary within the organization—preferably someone who’s especially good at getting organizing done—and manufactures a reason to see them as unfit to be part of the movement. They construct a “victim and demon” narrative, where the target gets cast as the one who’s acting in bad faith. This can take the form of a fabricated abuse allegation, or a rumor about them engaging in some wild and uncharacteristic act of bigotry, or a minor criticism that’s blown way out of proportion. In my case, it was a narrative that my cadre’s leadership had betrayed the inflexible gang fetishist concept of “solidarity.” But what the destabilization agenda always involves is a narrative that the wrecker is waging a righteous crusade, working to hold the facilitators of oppression accountable whatever the costs.
When you’re aware of these tactics that infiltrators (or genuine fanatics who act like infiltrators) use, you’re better equipped to avoid falling prey to their manipulations. And manipulations is the operative word, because the recognition that not everyone you’ll encounter is sincere, and that your own psychological vulnerabilities can be exploited, are crucial towards surviving the struggle. Che stresses how when the revolutionary confrontation has begun, and a cadre has had to start operating in total secrecy, talking about the cadre’s activities to any outsiders is a decision that should get a member separated from the cadre—both because this endangers security and because it’s a breach of party discipline. Applying this clandestine approach requires such an awareness of the danger of manipulation. The only people who you should ever discuss your sensitive revolutionary matters with are the ones who’ve been vetted to be part of your cadre. And keep in mind that even someone you think has been vetted must constantly be scrutinized to see if they’re trustworthy, as well as that the definition of which information is “sensitive” gets progressively expanded as the revolutionary crisis intensifies. We must always be vigilant.
This all sounds crushingly complex and intimidating. But others have navigated the process of revolutionary warfare before, and the proof is in all of history’s socialist states. What makes navigating it so much easier is the ability to identify incorrect ideas, to trace adventurism, dogmatism, individualism, opportunism, and all other errors back to the counterrevolutionary ideologies they stem from. Because when we’re aware of what kinds of ideas are incompatible with our movement, we can notice these ideas among bad actors, then deal with these actors accordingly.
With that individual in my cadre who went against democratic centralism, I at first assumed his grievances were worth taking seriously, because I wasn’t familiar with the ideas that informed his activities—namely gang fetishism, ultraviolence, and reactionary Chicano nationalism. Which was a dangerous act of liberalism on my part, as I had known from the outset that he had done wrong but was holding back on confronting him for the sake of friendship. But upon learning about these ideas, the harmful nature of what our cadre experienced appears all too clear to me. Others can have such awakenings by studying incorrect ideas, and learning how to combat them.
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