In the face of the momentary defeats the anti-imperialist struggle has seen in Syria, Nepal, and Bolivia, we need to study the ideas that have let our cause succeed. One of these universally applicable ideas is Juche, the model for revolutionary self-sufficiency that socialist Korea gave to the world. Another is Mao Zedong Thought, the political philosophy that brought China to its incredible level of advancement. The thing which these and the other provenly effective revolutionary approaches have in common is that they test which practices work. That they’re willing to discard the ideas which hold the struggle back, and apply the dialectical philosophy of treating political struggle as a science. The workers movement’s ranks must respond to the present crises within our struggle by studying this science, and becoming skilled in how to apply it.
This is how we lean into the strengths that our movement has at this moment in history, which are many. Even amid the last year’s successes for the imperialist forces, overall the world continues to change in favor of the revolutionary side. China’s rise is something that the capitalists have no way of effectively responding to, because the PRC’s gains are built upon a foundation of rigorous dialectical science. And when such science is put into practice, while the balance of forces allows the revolutionary project to keep advancing, there’s nothing that can stop the working-class forces. Mao wrote of how it’s these factors that will eventually go together to ensure our cause’s success, even when this success is delayed:
Generally speaking, those that succeed are correct and those that fail are incorrect, and this is especially true of man’s struggle with nature. In social struggle, the forces representing the advanced class sometimes suffer defeat not because their ideas are incorrect, but because, in the balance of forces engaged in struggle, they are not as powerful for the time being as the forces of reaction; they are therefore temporarily defeated, but they are bound to triumph sooner or later. Man’s knowledge makes another leap through the test of practice. This leap is more important than the previous one. For it is this leap alone that can prove the correctness or incorrectness of the first leap in cognition, i.e., of the ideas, theories, policies, plans or measures formulated in the course of reflecting the objective external world. There is no other way of testing truth.
This is the reality of historical struggle that we need to keep in mind, not just to maintain optimism in our efforts but also to keep ourselves focused on refining these theoretical skills. The recent setbacks must act as a call for us to reorient our movement, and rescue it from the danger of becoming stagnant in its thinking.
An example of such a dogmatic mindset within the workers movement comes from Greece’s KKE, which (among other harmful positions) promotes the “inter-imperialist warfare” view of the present global conflict. A struggle against the KKE’s warped view of imperialism is necessary for us to wage, and the KKE in particular is at this moment the most relevant problem within international Marxism. Something we always need to consider amid this struggle, though, is that it’s not enough to be against a harmful idea or organization. We need to offer the ranks of the KKE-aligned parties, and the broader working class, an alternative path that we can show is viable.
Chinese socialism, with its spectacular achievements, greatly aids us in demonstrating that our politics represent a path to a better future. So do the accomplishments of the workers states in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and Laos, as well as the gains which the other anti-imperialist countries have made for their people. Showing these examples to the people in our own countries can absolutely bring more places closer towards revolution. For such agitation propaganda to be effective, though, we must do more than prove that many countries are building better social systems. We must demonstrate the dialectical method that the peoples of these countries have utilized in order to escape American financial domination.
It’s when we teach this skill, the skill of being creative in one’s political practice, that the things we say and show about revolutionary theory take on a truly substantial quality. Communists have never won over the people by talking to them about Marxist theory; they’ve swayed the masses by showing them that our cause offers a path to a better future. This requires giving material aid to the people, successfully leading workers struggles, defending our communities from the violence of the class enemy, and other acts in which we become servants to the masses. We must do all of these things; but throughout each step in the mission, we have to avoid simply trying to copy what others in the struggle have done. We need to be testing what works for our situation, and bringing the people into this testing process. This was what Mao assessed as being the essence of political practice:
Marxists hold that man's social practice alone is the criterion of the truth of his knowledge of the external world. What actually happens is that man's knowledge is verified only when he achieves the anticipated results in the process of social practice (material production, class struggle or scientific experiment). If a man wants to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results, he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by "failure is the mother of success" and "a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit". The dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge places practice in the primary position, holding that human knowledge can in no way be separated from practice and repudiating all the erroneous theories which deny the importance of practice or separate knowledge from practice.
There are countless theories of these kinds. The KKE’s distorted idea of Marxism-Leninism; the modern Trotskyist trends that have been working to undermine Venezuela; the growing ultra-leftist elements that advocate for adventurism; we’re facing a wide host of enemies that seek to attach themselves to the “communist” label. For there to be so many problems within the movement certainly makes it harder to combat the broader ruling-class forces, and this can become overwhelming on a personal (and thereby organizational) level. When one has come to the right mindset, though, patience within the struggle becomes no longer an issue.
This mindset is the one which comes from applying the dialectical method towards one’s own mind and life, detaching from the desire to force one approach into working out. If there is an obstacle in the struggle, then the struggle changes. This is the only way we can go forward. We need to communicate this principle to the people, showing them how it can bring them towards victory even as they face countless obstacles.
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