The Coffee Marxist

Freedom Road Socialist Organization is an odd duck in the cesspool of myriad revisionist parties currently residing comfortably in the US, what with its awkward name, logo worthy of some sort of Marxist Dr. Seuss parody and opportunist zigzagging line worthy of the CP-USA. FRSO has a long history of being left-refoundationist and finding political struggles far too complex and sectarian to consider. Take, for example, this excerpt from a blog of theirs:

“Why was the movement divided into so many different organizations and why were there so many splits? [….] The movement considered “anti-revisionist” Marxism-Leninism to be the only genuine revolutionary framework. It insisted upon a controversial [!] interpretation of communist history which considered the Soviet CP (and allied parties) revolutionary under Stalin but ‘revisionist’ since the time of Khrushchev. It embraced an ‘orthodox’ model of the ‘party of a new type’ in which there could be only a single vanguard in any given country and the writings of Stalin and Mao were looked to for guidance about how to practice democratic centralism, handle inner-party differences, determine relations with ‘non-party’ groups and individuals, etc. A significant section of the movement (including all of FRSO’s predecessor organizations) adopted even more specific views: They [...] argued that the post-Stalin USSR had restored capitalism and become a ’social imperialist’ superpower.”

The language here doesn’t really say what is WRONG with that view, but it pretty obviously says that the FRSO doesn’t hold that (correct) view, since this paragraph goes to great lengths to show that their “predecessors” did. It seems Marxism-Leninism of the non-revisionist type is utterly bewildering to Freedom Road—perhaps that is why they endorsed Obama and promote Chavez’s reformist “21^st Century Socialism” program. The fact that they felt the need to put sarcastic quotation marks around words like “revisionism” and “social-imperialism,” as if these words meant nothing doesn’t say much for their theoretical chops either.

FRSO is a pathetic sect that can be described as belonging to the new “pan-socialist” movement that is sadly gaining strength with the recent decline of Maoism. Other parties in this pan-socialist movement include the Party For Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and Workers’ World Party (WWP).

First off, let me say I really have no idea what separates these three groups. All of them seem to have about the exact same political line on most issues: they support ANYONE who has ever called themselves “socialist,” from Trotsky, to Gorbachev, to Luxemburg to Ho Chi Minh.

Among other very alarming positions, they:

1. Support Soviet social-imperialism, or outright deny the existence of revisionism.

2. Are pro-USSR even up to Gorby.

3. Are apologists for Khrushchev and Brezhnev, and their invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and (yes) Afghanistan.

4. Claim that modern China is a socialist nation.

5. Support Cuba and the DPRK models of Marxism-Leninism and as fully socialist (and not revisionist) nations.

6. Support the Chinese military against the protesters at Tienanmen Square.

7. Support the reactionary government of Milosevic and claim the Kosovo independence movement was “social-fascist” and backed by the NATO bloc.

8. Support the Janjaweed militia in Sudan.

9. Support Obama for president. (The PSL did not take this position, since they had a candidate running for president. One wonders what they would’ve done had they not.)

The list of opportunist positions just goes on and on. These movements are simply obsessed with choosing one corrupt force against another in every situation, and always allying with the “better” of two opposing bourgeois or reactionary forces. This is not to say such positions are always wrong. Some compromise with the bourgeoisie is necessary even in revolutionary situation and even under socialism itself. But the point is that these parties almost never do it in a correct way.

The PSL, FRSO and WWP refuse to draw any theoretical lines as to correct practice, and thus end up on the side of the bourgeoisie in almost every case. This can be seen literally, in their calls for communists and workers to unite with the ruling cliques of certain countries they label as “anti-imperialist,” even if a social revolution is imminent. This is not even done in the name of the national right to self-determination, but in the name of it being better for the working class.

As a perfect example, look at their article on the anniversary of Tienanmen:

http://www.frso.org/about/statements/2009/looking-back-at-tiananmen-square.htm

Why exactly would a so-called “Marxist-Leninist” party support and ally with a capitalist ruling clique and their military junta against the masses of people? Your guess is as good as mine. The author argues that it was right for the Chinese government to suppress the movement, as it “aimed at overthrowing socialism and restoring capitalism.” It is simply absurd to claim that China was socialist in 1989. Anyone who does has no idea what socialism is.

There are those so-called “socialists” out there who will always defend a revisionist country when it comes time to defend Marxism-Leninism. These types usually side with the revisionist government, claiming that they are “preserving what is left of the revolution.” This is essentially a Trotskyite argument that has a lot in common with the concept of “deformed workers’ state.” Trotsky too, didn’t believe in revisionism nor social-imperialism. He held the metaphysical world outlook that revisionist nations could magically go back to being Marxist-Leninist any day now.

Indeed, it seems the FRSO and Mick Kelly’s analysis just shows the absolute stupidity in “defending socialism” when China was never a Marxist-Leninist nation, even under Mao.

When faced with the doubtless fact that many of the protesters were, in fact, bourgeois liberals, and pro-US, and pro-imperialist, and were in fact agitating for capitalism, it is important to keep Lenin’s words regarding the Easter Rebellion in mind. At the time of the revolt, many of the “socialist” papers were doing the same thing the FRSO and PSL are doing now with the Iranian uprising. The Zimmerwald group called the Irish rebellion a “purely urban, petty-bourgeois movement, which, notwithstanding the sensation it caused, had not much social backing.”

In response, Lenin wrote:

“The centuries-old Irish national movement [...] manifested itself in street fighting conducted by a section of the urban petty bourgeoisie and a section of the workers after a long period of mass agitation, demonstrations, suppression of newspapers, etc. Whoever calls such a rebellion a ‘putsch’ is either a hardened reactionary, or a doctrinaire hopelessly incapable of envisaging a social revolution as a living phenomenon

To imagine that social revolution is conceivable without revolts by small nations in the colonies and in Europe, without revolutionary outbursts by a section of the petty bourgeoisie with all its prejudices, without a movement of the politically non-conscious proletarian and semi-proletarian masses against oppression by the landowners, the church, and the monarchy, against national oppression, etc.-to imagine all this is to repudiate social revolution. So one army lines up in one place and says, ‘We are for socialism,’ and another, somewhere else and says, ‘We are for imperialism,’ and that will he a social revolution! […] Whoever expects a ‘pure’ social revolution will never live to see it. Such a person pays lip-service to revolution without understanding what revolution is.”

No doubt there are other revisionist apologists out here who would ask me, “Well, what should the Chinese government have done?” How’s this for an answer: they should have died. Why do I, as a Marxist-Leninist, care what happens to a bunch of capitalist rulers? This is essentially the same as asking, “what should the US do in Afghanistan?” Simple answer: they should go to hell.

It is unfortunate that Fight Back! News, as well as the PSL and others, have chosen to finally and completely abandon Marxism and the revolution in order to protect a revisionist party defending capitalism in the sweatshop of the world. To imagine that the die-hard capitalist Deng Xiaoping was saving anything worth saving by rolling over the protesters with tanks is hopelessly idiotic.

I ask you dear reader: what is China? The magically harmonious society in which the Communist Party and the bourgeoisie join hands? Is that socialism? According to the FRSO, it looks like it.