"The World Can't Wait"! Drive Out The Bush Regime! This movement is the brain child of the Revolutionary Communist Party and its leader Bob Avakian. The Revolutionary Communist Party is a Maoist formation, allied with groups as Peru's Louminous Path, India's Naxalite Movement and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). The World Can't Wait Movement is organized around impeaching George Bush, and will culminate with mass actions on October 05th, 2006. It has compiled an impressive list of endorsers as James Abourezk, Aris Anagnos, Anti-Flag, Edward Asner, Russell Banks, Ed Begley Jr., Harry Belafonte, St. Clair Bourne, Gabriel Byrne, Margaret Cho, Ward Churchill, Kate Clinton, US Rep. John Conyers Jr., John Densmore, Jesse Diaz Jr., Ariel Dorfman, Tom Duane, Michael Eric Dyson, Steve Earle, Niles Eldredge, Daniel Ellsberg, Barbara Ehrenreich, Eve Ensler, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jane Fonda, Michael Franti, reg e. gaines, Martin Garbus, Wavy Gravy, André Gregory, Paul Haggis, Sam Hamill, Suheir Hammad, Kathleen Hanna, Stephen Hays, Merle Hoffman, Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Bill T. Jones, Rickie Lee Jones, Sarah Jones, Brig. Gen. (ret) Janis Karpinski, Casey Kasem, Ron Kovic, Jonathan Kozol, Jessica Lange, Mark Leno, Rabbi Michael Lerner, George Lois, Ray McGovern, US Rep. Cynthia McKinney, Mark Crispin Miller, Tom Morello, Viggo Mortensen, Craig Murray, US Rep. Major Owens, Ozomatli, Grace Paley, Harvey Pekar, Sean Penn, Jeremy Pikser, Harold Pinter, Frances Fox Piven, Michael Ratner, Boots Riley, Scott Ritter, Steven Rohde, Mark Ruffalo, US Rep. Bobby Rush, Susan Sarandon, James Schamus, Richard Serra, Rev. Al Sharpton, Cindy Sheehan, Martin Sheen, Gary Soto, Nancy Spero, Gloria Steinem, Lynne Stewart, Serj Tankian, Jonathan Tasini, Sunsara Taylor, Studs Terkel, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Walker, Naomi Wallace, Lt. Ehren Watada, US Rep. Maxine Waters, Cornel West, Saul Williams, Tim Wise, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Ann Wright, Howard Zinn, and thousands more.
The rightist critics will use words as "communist front", to put down the Revolutionary Communist Party. I give them credit for putting together such a group. I'm against red baiting. They are being low profile in the coalition. They are defending themselves defensively, by saying the coalition also includes Democrats, Greens, Catholics, Gays etc.
In the Philippines the Maoists are trying to impeach Arroyo, even involving rightist generals in their movement. I'm sure Avakian is inspired by his comrades. In the Philippines, Arroyo is actually one of the cleaner leaders. If you impeach a capitalist leader, you only end up with another. As much as their rhetoric is heated, the Maoists only work for reform; in Manilla, Katmandu or Washington D.C.
After impeaching Bush, what is the alternative? To most of the endorsers of their statement, electing a liberal Democrat would do. More should be expected from a so called vanguard communist party. With all the different views represented in the group, how do you keep the group together with vague demands?
I will attend a World Can't Wait event to network. I can wait for real change. See: The World Can't Wait.RENEGADE EYE
24 comments:
My comment section was disabled today. Now it seems to be working.
I want to make the point, I'm not arguing that RCP should be raising the demand of socialism. I'm arguing their protest will lead nowhere, and they no better.
I also object to their misuse of the term fascist. If Bush is fascist, what is Bill Clinton?
It did not take very long reading down the list alphabetically to get to these two notables: Ward Churchill and Harry Belefonte. I would rather stick hot needles in my eyes than endorse anything these two are in favor of.
Funny how sometimes a person actually personifies values which are so diametrically in opposition that one can be immediately repulsed without even knowing what the cause is? Maybe, if a few of these notables were excluded, there may be a stronger sense of acceptance by the large numbers nearer the center instead of the loony few at the extreme left.
Well Blair is on his way...
The tactic of condemning the freely elected leadership of a sovereign nation is symptomatic of the irrational mindset of collectivists.
The consent of the governed is required. Whether it be through hardship (The Great Depression was the communists' best chance to win over Americans, for example), persuasion at the point of a spear or reason, a sustained political movement can only maintained from the bottom up.
In America, collectivists are relegated to dabbling at the margins, there is no momentum toward their thinking nor any event that might catalyze a following.
Aside from the skepticism with which most aculturated capitalists in Western populations view totalitarianist collectivism, there is very little offered by supporters that would compel those who have experienced even the imperfect participation that republics provide to abandon what they have.
It is a cute, but unremarkable tilt at the windmill.
I often read what goes on here at Renegade Eye because I find your debates insightful and passionate, if not a bit intense. But whenever I comment I am usually ignored. I am wondering maybe my soft/humanist approach may not be able to stand up to the decisive sometimes heated discussions that transpire here. RE himself often reads and comments on my blog and I appreciate this. But….
I am rambling. I just wrote this brief intro to ask a few of you to come over to my blog read this article on the new front in the war in the middle east and put in your two cents. I often find that political discussion, especially in the blogosphere becomes warped and a bit worthless, but like any junkie I can’t get my fix. So although my blog can lean a bit soft and artsy, I do have a strong desire to hash out some political arguments now and then. And this is one of those times.
Be gentle, while I consider myself a Marxist of sorts and like to think of myself as well-read, I do not like to choose sides and simply spout ideology. I guess I see politics as a means to an end. Not the end itself. I am interested in change that leads to peace.
Sorry Renegade for basically posting in your comments section. I am just looking for some new blood over at Intrepid Flame.
As for your latest post I agree, while I think the list actually looks impressive, there can be no change in America until a culture of labor is born, and what I mean by that is that we dispel the idea of the American dream, wake up the populace to how they can effect change in their communities and workplaces, and take back their roles in the running of their lives.
It is not the Bush administration that is the cause of the problems in the US or the world it is the system that allows these governments to form. No democrat will solve the problems we re fighting for. Until the free market system for profit is examined and altered we will suffer under successive pro-business regimes, fighting war after war for profits….
Roman: Whoever endorsed the event is not the issue. The endorsers came after the RCP and Bob Avakian initiated this drive. I'm concerned about where it all leads. The Maoists are helping the Democrats.
BZ: Your blog is a quality blog, everyone should check it out.
CB: Impeachment is a universal tactic. You must know you set yourself up for the Clinton impeachment analogy?
Revolutionary Blogger: The US is not going to allow China to rise, without competition.
The Maoists in Nepal and the Philipines believe in enacting a 'new democratic' programme. I think Mao used to the term 'bloc of four classes' to describe it: workers, peasants, artisians, national bourgeosie. Supposedly, this bloc is supposed to encourage development permit the working class and peasants to organise freely.
The Maoists in the United States use the WCW as a breeding ground for radical leftism. Awkwardly, this could be interpreted as an echo of The Transitional Programme. Remember, Maoism was born out of Chinese Trotskyism and anarchism
Maoism flowed from Trotskyists and anarchists?? Why did Chairman Mao jail them?
I can't find a good source online but Maurice Meisner goes in to detail in his Mao's China and After: A History of the People's Republic.
Ren,
The Clinton impeachment was silly too.
So I read the RCPs Battle for the Future, which promised to be a new innovative ‘historical’ document that will lead us to revolution ;-)
But there is nothing new at all, it is just the same old tired leftist sloganizing, which doesn’t seem to have noticed that things have changed qualitatively in the last 20 years.
But of course the choice bit is that the Bushies are Christian Fascists—dangerous fanatics who aim to make the U.S. a religious dictatorship and to force this upon the world.
This comes in the first few lines of something that has apparently taken them years to write. And it’s just the ramblings of a lunatic.
The funniest bit in their revolutionary document is about the ‘Clash of two future’…on one side there is George Bush and on the other…Bob Avakian!!! I had to look up who this Bob is…old New Left guy that nobody outside the wardrobe that is cranky US left politics has heard of.
I seriously winder about the mental health of these people….
roman, if your ideal is having us all meet in the meek and mild center with our average thoughts and median ideas, count me out of this hell.If the process of establishing "reasonable" discourse is the simple process of taking both extremes and dividing down the middle, all politics becomes mathematics.
cb, is all collectivism inherantly totalitarian? Please explain.You state 'there is no momentum toward thier thinking nor any event that might catalyze a following" (towards collectivism)Can't you imagine a crisis of capitalism, economic collapse or world war or both, that could precipitate such momentum? Did anyone see the Russian Revolution coming? Not even Lenin did.
beatroot , you are correct that most RCP material is polemical sloganeering aimed at true believers but Avakian pointing out aspects of Christian ideology which inform Bush and his followers is not unreasonable.And don't kid yourself that more nuanced analysis from the far left would find a reception in the mainstream media where those outside of the "wardrobe" could see it.
renegade- your link got cut off in my comments section so i was unable to find the place you were referring to.
Revolutionary fresh water fish said: .... but Avakian pointing out aspects of Christian ideology which inform Bush and his followers is not… [stupid]
Pointing out that Bush is ‘influenced’ by the religious right is about as illuminating as saying ‘water is wet’. But to claim that Bush wants to create a christian fascist dictatorship is the kind of statement you hear late at night in a pub by a drunken conspiracy theorists.
It’s mindless bullshit. And they wonder why they can get their AGMs inside a flat pack wardrobe!
betmo see:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm#p0
troutsky,
You said: "roman, if your ideal is having us all meet in the meek and mild center with our average thoughts and median ideas, count me out of this hell."
Not IN the center but NEAR the center where the vast majority resides. Politics in any true representative democracy is about numbers. If one refuses to accept this fact, one will remain forever just an idealist on the "fringe". There is still plenty of room for creative non violent positive change without resorting to chaotic revolutionary mindsets that will ultimately result in uncontrolled anarchy and undesirable consequences. To defy history is the hight of political egotism.
You want mindless bullshit? Did you hear the vice pres of the US this morning? And he is on national TV, fills auditoriums everytime he speaks. Avakian actually has some scholarly work to his credit as well as polemics.It ALL has an ideological bent, but some of it is considered "mainstream" and some of it is designated "fringe". This is done by counting, not analyzing the content.
I, Modern Pitung, the erstwhile Mao-influenced blogger makes his first foray into a Trotsky-flavored blog's comments section. To paraphrase a saying in our tradition -- to win the flamewar is but the first step in the long march of a thousand li.
First of all, I am affirmedly not a member of the RCP, nor a "Maoist" in their tradition (and in fact, I'm quite critical of Avakian's theory and such).
There are, however, some factual matters that are in need of correction here.
First of all, "Maoism" as a proper term for an ideology, is quite new. In the era during which Mao Zedong was alive and kicking, the proper term was "Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought" ("Maoism" actually being a term of derision in both the Trotskyist and pro-Soviet Left - e.g., the CPUSA and SWP (US) ). Alternately, a common demarcation by pro-Mao/pro-PRC forces outside of that country was "anti-revisionist" (used both to describe Mao's China and Hoxha's Albania).
Second of all, the shift to the use of the term "Maoism" or "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism" (instead of Mao Zedong Thought) as a proper term for an ideology was something that came from the Communist Party of Peru (PCP, also known as Sendero Luminoso/Shining Path), and became popularized through its participation in the Revolutionary International Movement (RIM), of which the RCP is a member.
The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) are another participant in the RIM, and for a while it seemed the RCP were backing them big time (matters may be changing as matters in Nepal shift). So yes, it is generally correct to make something of a link.
The Communist Party of the Philippines, on the other hand, is not, and in fact I've seen quite a bit of abuse of the CP-Philippines by the RCP (a lot of it, in my mind, being of an unprincipled sort).
Speaking substantively of the World Can't Wait group, indications are quite clear that it's an RCP-initiated and led group with both the good and the bad that brings to the table.
On the good side, it's about time a radical force began to actively call for the ousting of the president openly. That door needed to be busted open a long time ago. And to the contrary of the reporting, the RCP is broad-minded enough to avoid using the word "impeachment" as the be-all to end-all of regime change -- that's why their slogan is "Drive Out the Bush Regime" and not "Impeachment Now" or somesuch.
On the other hand, the RCP are displaying a typical lack of political savvy, as well as a bit of their patented blend of fatalism, that in the end gets them stuck in traps. That is to say, they're broad enough not to get stuck on impeachment -- but they're also so narrow that it's likely they'd aim as much (if not more) of their fire to pro-impeachment forces than to the Bush administration itself.
ALso, it goes without saying, that the RCP has a long and storied history (even among Mao-influenced forces) of having a certain millennarian streak to them: their mass efforts inevitably center around how either the world will end tomorrow by nuclear war, or that America will go Christian fascist overnight -- unless you join the personality cult to Bob Avakian.
On that point, it is worth keeping in mind that the developments around the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) have actually led to visible frictions within and around the RCP -- the CPN(M) are publishing a great deal against Stalinist methods, as well as against personality cults in direct contradiction to the RCP's line of how "culture of reverence" toward Bob Avakian is somehow revolutionary.
For all who want a peek into the world beyond the Fourth International, you all should see some of the work coming out of late in the Mao-influenced blogs (of which I am a humble novice) -- I promise you will not be disappointed.
A few of them, in no particular order:
Red Flags
Bronx Bolshevik
Pottawatomie Creek
Left Spot
Cheers.
Oh, and before I pass this up -- Casey Kasem is actually of Arab descent (even if his voice is more Middle American than Middle Eastern). And in fact, Kasem has spoken at more than his fair share of rallies in defense of Palestine and Lebanon against Israeli aggression.
Renegade, where do you get the notion the US is not going to permit China to rise? The US is responsible for every advancement China has made, beginning with admitting them to the UN while kicking out Taiwan in the process, on through the selling of technology in the Clinton era, and now, through Bush, we are selling them our debt. They now own a substantial percentage of it, maybe as much as forty percent.
Pagan Temple: Capitalist countries naturally compete with each other for resources. The US policy toward China, in the last decade is contradictory. Having an altercation with Iran, can cause slowing down China receiving its oil. That is of benefit to the US.
Modern Pitung: Welcome to this blog. I hope you'll take part in discussions here.
Stalinists use the term Marxist-Leninist to describe themselves, because it negates the Bolsheviks, who were killed or jailed by Stalin. Trotskyists call themselves Bolshevik-Leninist.
I believe Avakian tapped into the hatred with Bush. He obviously has no program, only vague slogans. It will end up being, a Democratic Party rally.
Eh, the Trotskyist universe has a multiplicity of approved doctrinal names. The Spartacist League and others use "Marxist-Leninist Trotskyist" with "Bolshevik Tendency" being used elsewhere.
I find thi business to be really a matter of style, rather than substance. On our end of the communist family tree, I find that the tension between the "Maoist" v. "Mao Zedong Thought" to be a mask for issues much larger than Mao and his theoretical contributions. That is to say, I believe the leaderships of the PCP and RCP used it as a strawman argument against foes, and made a mountain out of a molehill.
As for the use of Bolshevik, I find that the use of the term has tended toward those forces of a Soviet-chauvinist character (often by those forces that embrace the "deformed workers' states theory), and used to discredit Mao and the accomplishments of the PRC in his tenure. I mean, gee, a revolution was made in a nation even larger and contradiction-laden than Russia -- the least that could be done is not to get in the dickfight of who came first.
And by the way, I find the use of "Stalinist" a reductionist formulation. I personally don't find much good in Stalin that is his own (rather than what he cribbed from Lenin), nor that lasted very long after his death -- so elevation of the man into an "-ism" is kind of foolish to start. I am sorry to say that not all of the history of Marx or Lenin got filtered through the lens of Stalin v. Trotsky. Mao himself ended up quite critical of Stalin's inattention to matters of superstructure and fetishism for technical cadre.
Modern Pitung,
Mao himself ended up quite critical of Stalin's inattention to matters of superstructure and fetishism for technical cadre.
I am sure he did. Personally, I would be more critical of Stalin's genocide of kulak peasants and his orders to shoot retreating Red Army soldiers in the back, but that's just me...
that the fight always is strong companion, who never decays in gandas to want a better world for the future generations, by always we will win
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