questions about RCP history

[lil bit o che]

i have some questions about rcp history, if someone wouldnt mind answring.

1. has rcp always endorsed the multinational proletariat line as opposed to the national liberation line for captive nations line?

2. has rcp always endorsed the october road over ppwar or other roads to power?

3. why are there people out there who say "RCP says that the lumpen will lead the revolution"? Did RCP ever have a viiew that focused on the lumpen as opposed to the traditional "working clasS"?

4. What was the thinking behind "revolution in the 80s. go for it!" slogan? Was this an RCP slogan? Did RCP think revolution was going to happen in the 80s?

5. In the 80s, what were the RCP's views on groups like groups fmln, fsln, urng, etc.. ?

6. How did the RCP view the USSR and USA in the early 80s? Did the RCP see them as "equally bad" or ?

[RosaRL]

3. why are there people out there who say "RCP says that the lumpen will lead the revolution"? Did RCP ever have a viiew that focused on the lumpen as opposed to the traditional "working clasS"?

I found that question interesting! I know when i was running across people saying things like that about the RCP, it was because the people I was talking to had a very narrow view of what and who the working class is.

For example, are not workers still workers if they are unemployed and currently on welfare? Or are you going to call them lumpen because they are on welfare (and all those people on welfare in general)? Are you going to forget that most people on welfare do actually work? And what about homeless workers? Are people from the class no longer proletarian if they go to prison? Many of the oppressed experience long periods of unemployment between jobs. Maoists see these people as being part of the proletariat -- and an important part at that! Many of these people are the people that most directly feel the need for change.

However people that I talked to with groups like cp-usa and swp considered these people to all be lumpen - to be broken and 'criminal' if they dont have some job in a factory every day and which to me feels like the same old crap that this system puts out about the poor -- about the oppressed.

[honky tonk]

lemme chime in. And add onto what sister rosa was writing.

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1. has rcp always endorsed the multinational proletariat line as opposed to the national liberation line for captive nations line?

To answer, I need to unravel some things. The line of the RCP is that the revolution in the U.S. is a merger of the struggle of the multinational proletariat for socialism with the struggle of oppressed nations and nationalities within the u.s. for national liberation.[/b]

From its very beginning, the RCP has firmly and energetically fought for the national liberation of oppressed nations. It was essentially formed out of suppoerters of the Panthers and the Black liberation struggle, and also out of antiimperialist supporters of the Vietnamese struggle for national liberation (and obviously these people overlapped!)

The RCP (and before it the RU) has always upheld the analysis that the U.S. has a multinational proletariat, and that Black people are a nation whose national liberation struggle is central to politics and revolution.

The RCP/RU have always held that the national liberation struggle of Puerto Rican people was a struggle for independence.

And has held that the national liberation struggle of Black people (within the U.S.) could (under some circumstances) lead to independence, but that the heart of that struggle (throughout history) has not been for independence.

This also involves the insight of MLM that it is in the interest of the international proletariat to liberate the largest possible socialist countries -- and not disperse the struggle (within multinational states) in fragmented, separate, struggles for independence.

And (obviously) the idea that Black people (largely concentrated in cities, including in the North) are basically and principally fighting to "free the land" in the South involves some creative imagining (and departure from real history and politics).

I.e. the RCP/RU have held that the internally oppressed nationalities (i.e. Black people, chicano people, Native peoples) are not essentially "captive nations" in these sense that Algeria or indochina was colonized by France. They are internal to a multinational state -- with all the differences that implies.

The most systematic discussion of this was Bob Avakian's "Living Socialism or Dead Dogma" -- a work written about 1974 in opposition to the "black belt theory" of dogmatists like the BWC or CLP etc.

2. has rcp always endorsed the october road over ppwar or other roads to power?

In the very early days of the RU, there was a current (led by Bruce Franklin) that put foward a line of "protracted people's war" -- in the course of resisting that nonsensical fantasy trip, Bob avakian wrote the key documents of Red Papers 4, that explained why (in an imperialist country with a strong central state, a highly integrated economy) it was impossible to build dual power using political base areas -- short of an all-out struggle for power. This struggle happened in 1969.

It was also pointed out that the events in Russia were not simply "some relatively bloodless coup" in October 1917 (as put forward by both bourgeois theoriests and in their own ways by trotskyists or revisionists). Avakian talked about the october road as "armed insurrection followed by c ountrywide civil war." In other words the "October Road" as understood by modern Maoists is itself a form of peoples war.

3. why are there people out there who say "RCP says that the lumpen will lead the revolution"? Did RCP ever have a viiew that focused on the lumpen as opposed to the traditional "working clasS"?

Vasrious revisionists consider the more oppressed sectons of the proletariat to be unreliable and semi-criminal.

They think that prisoners, and women on welfare, and the permanently unemployed, and proletarian kids in gangs, etc. are not workers.

This is tied to the view (their conservative and respectability view) that the proletariat is the "responsible and stable and constructive class." They say "the working class makes everything, and it is against desctruction."

And so they reject the idea that (a) the proletariat is an outlaw class and (b) that the revolutionary transition is a act involving great destructioni (as well as secondarily construction.

The RCP raises the concept of Lenin of "going lower and deeper into the proletariat as the pivot of our tactics." It does not seek to base itself on the more stable, better off, unionized, industrial workers.

To the revisionist, this approach is anathema. And it shows their larger distain for anything rebellious and rowdy and disrespectful.

4. What was the thinking behind "revolution in the 80s. go for it!" slogan? Was this an RCP slogan? Did RCP think revolution was going to happen in the 80s?

In 1976, Avakian wrote a rather pathbreaking work called "REvolutinary Work in a Non-Revolutionary Situation." It was a challenge to decades of "inherited" theory from the old CP -- in which you built a movement along non-revolutionary lines, and (maybe, someday) used that movement to challenge the bourgeoisie for power (way way down the road.)

The RCP thought that extreme dislocations were possible in the 1980s -- as the U.S. and the Soviet blocs threatened to go for war.

The slogan "Revolution in the 80s -- go for it!" was an orientation, not a prediction. It said "let's wring all we can out of whatever comes. Let's approach great storms with the idea of looking for openings for revolution. And lets meet preparations for world war with political preparations to put revolution centerstage."

This came at a time when many left forces were simply folding -- either literally falling behind their imperialists (i.e. the three worldists) or else giving up dreams of revolution and falling behind varous revisionist schemes for Soviet victory.

The RCP has (at the same time) summed up that it (somewhat mechancially) assumed that the imperialists would not be able to pull themselves back from world war -- and that the people of the world were facing a rather stark world war-or-revoltuion (or else, world-war-then-revolution) scenario. While the danger of world war was intense, and real, and the world came close -- the actual historic outcome (as we all know) involved the collapse of one of the two superpowers without war.

The RCP also worked to build a radical mass movement against war preparations (the NBAU network -- No Business As Usual) which was fun, quite rowdy, conscious, active, creative, and popular.

5. In the 80s, what were the RCP's views on groups like groups fmln, fsln, urng, etc.. ?

In the 1970s many of the revolutionary movements in the third world developed strategies that more and more relied on one of the major imperialist blocs. In many cases in Latin America, people adopted a Guevarist/Castroist view, that despared at proletarian revolution and New Democracy, and sought a "historic compromise" that involved an armed "slide into power" based on some mass struggle plus the backing of the soviet Union.

Maoists had a twofold approach:

In the U.S., the Maoists (of the RCP) supported the mass struggle and resistance against U.S. imperialism. The Revolutionary Worker published continual and extensive coverage of the struggles in El salvador and Nicaragua etc. that challenged local U.S. despots, and which faced death squad counterinsurgency by U.S. contra forces. The RCP participated in the anti-intervention movements (even while they raised the issue of World War, and the collision of two blocs).

On the other hand, when appropriate, the RCP pointed out that relying on one imperialist bloc to defeat immediate oppressors turned the masses into a "pressure group" -- and would not (in the final analysis) lead to socialism and liberation.

Perhaps, to put it crudely, The RCP strongly supported the struggle of the people of Nicaragua, El Salvador etc against U.S. imperialism -- but did not support the revisionist/reformist lines that often dominated their movements at that time.

6. How did the RCP view the USSR and USA in the early 80s? Did the RCP see them as "equally bad" or ?

Here again there are some nuanced things to say:

First: The RCP saw (and sees) imperialism as the enemy of the people of the world. And saw both war blocs of imperialism as enemies of the people.

Second: unlike some other forces, the RCP did not just see the U.S. and the Soviet union (i.e. the "two superpowers") as enemies of the people -- i.e. it did not relegate secondary but quite major imperialists (germany east and west, france, japan) into potential allies of the oppressed.

I.e. The RCP opposed both war BLOCS (not just the two superpowers.)

Third: The RCP was particularly hostile to any approach that saw the Soviet Union as a "main danger" -- and that therefore (inevitably) involved (one way or another) supporting the western imperialists.

Fourth: The RCP is inside the U.S. So it saw ITS main task as opposing and exposing (and overthrowing) U.S. imperialism.

So the exposure and opposition of U.S. moves were always given preference and priority within the political work and exposure of the RCP.

They did organize a 1983 theoretical conference on the Soviet Union: socialist or Social Imperialist -- which was fascinating, and productive, and involved a great deal of public wrangling and debate.

Does that answer your questions?