The following is from an interview by correspondence with Comrade Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, the Minister of Defense of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party–Prison Chapter (NABPP-PC), conducted by Anarchist Comrade Anthony Rayson of the South Chicago ABC Zine Distro.
Anthony Rayson: You’ve expressed admiration for Hamas, the revolutionary Palestinian group. (1) They’ve managed to build popular support and established social/survival programs, even under horrific occupational conditions–extreme violence, poverty, etc.–yet they are not an explicitly Marxist–Leninist group, but rather a national liberation organization, with a strong religious (Muslim) component. These popular organizations have come in many flavors, including Communist and Anarchist. Why do you believe so strongly in the traditional Leninist model (Vanguard Party/Democratic Centralism, etc.) in this uniquely racialist, consumerist, extreme capitalist country, with such a moribund, marginalized and subservient (to Moscow) Marxist tradition?
Rashid: Why in today’s struggle do I promote the need for a Marxist–Leninist–Maoist (MLM) style party leadership? This is a question asked often of and by many avowed Communists, which many can’t answer. Many also reject the ‘Vanguard’ party concept as you do because it’s been frequently misapplied and misunderstood. But to me, the answer seems pretty simple–common sense really–once you get past rhetoric and stereotypes, and face the concrete realities and needs of revolutionary struggle. I’ll begin with this question, then move on to your other points.
Why the Vanguard Party?
Once you understand that class lies at the center of any genuine struggle against capitalism, namely the struggle between the working class (proletariat) and the capitalist class (bourgeoisie), then it becomes clear that there’s need to awaken the consciousness of workers (as a common class) to the fact and cause of their exploitation and oppression, and the criminal rule of the bourgeoisie. Also the working class needs to be united and organized to challenge their oppression. Furthermore they need to understand that overcoming their exploitation compels coordinated struggle on many fronts, beyond merely seeking better wages/work conditions, job security/benefits, etc., which is the typical extent of what workers struggle for when left to their own spontaneous activism. They must realize that it is a broad political struggle, and the bourgeoisie oppresses many sectors other than just the working class. To accomplish this, and uniting them with other oppressed sectors against the bourgeoisie, requires a proletarian–based leadership structure.
But the critical problem which opponents of the Vanguard Party have never answered in over 100 years of debate is the theoretical and practical question of how to unify the broad and fragmented working class into a united movement wherein it is conscious of itself (and its interests) as a class. Only genuine ML(M) parties have solved this problem, and been able to awaken and maintain working class consciousness and unity, and on a level of struggle higher than mere trade union politics (what Lenin called Economism).
Many on the ‘Left,’ (including Anarchists and avowed Communists) because they can’t resolve this problem, avoid, downplay, distort or have altogether abandoned the question of class struggle and its central role in any genuine anti-capitalist revolutionary movement, or they otherwise endlessly speculate how working class success might be achieved.
Karl Marx expressed early on that capitalism could be destroyed and a free and equal society ultimately achieved, only by the proletariat first overthrowing the bourgeois class, and then exercising its own (economic, political, military and cultural) dictatorship over the bourgeoisie. Failure to suppress the bourgeoisie after its power was overthrown would only result in its regaining state power. This he witnessed first hand.
Because proletarian struggle was only in its infant stages during his day, Marx was unable to answer how it could effectively defeat and exercise its dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. But his studies of those early workers’ struggles, specifically the Paris Commune of 1871, gave him some ideas on the methods that the workers were in process of discovering. He did recognize, although he supported the commune as an heroic effort, that it could not successfully hold onto its power because the French proletariat was not yet sufficiently class conscious, united and organized.
Subsequently, Lenin, who analyzed and actively participated in the day to day fight against the even more advanced, consolidated and powerful capitalist system (monopoly capitalism or imperialism) of his era, furthered Marx’s analyses and was able to devise and apply a definite organizational form and tactics with which to unite and organize the proletarian struggle. He realized that a disciplined Party, committed explicitly to the interests and philosophy of the working class, was needed to awaken the proletariat on a nationwide scale to their common class identity and interests, to unite and organize them upon this common class stand against and to overthrow the bourgeoisie, and to hold onto that power and repress the bourgeoisie.
And his method – the ML Party–above all others, worked. In fact, it achieved the first working class Socialist state (in Russia in 1917), which doesn’t discount that in the process many mistakes were made alongside the achievements. And errors were to be expected, since it was the first successful struggle of its type, and met with determined resistance from the capitalist class in Russia and the major imperialist powers, all of whom promptly invaded Russia attempting to overthrow the new Socialist state.
Unlike much of today’s academic and petty bourgeoisie ‘Left,’ Lenin and company did not refuse to take the lead for fear of failure or a fight, nor get bogged down in moral dithering. Instead they stoutly took the lead, defied and endured the severest state repression, applied theory to practice, refined their tactics, and gave the world and those to follow an invaluable standard of leadership and struggle to learn from and build upon.
In China, Mao Tse-Tung, studying and observing Marx’s, Lenin’s and Russia’s examples, further advanced the ML Party concept, and adapted it to his own people’s struggles against multiple advanced imperialist powers and internal class enemies of the Chinese masses. From this experience Mao discovered that even after a proletarian revolution succeeds in defeating the bourgeoisie and achieving a Socialist society, the class struggle continues–often in forms more complicated than the initial struggle to overthrow capitalist state power. This because, although overthrown, the bourgeoisie and its influences still exist within the new society, and they will struggle unceasingly to regain power. To combat this tendency he found that a series of revolutions in culture had to be waged to wipe out bourgeois influences and values, and that class struggle had to continue especially within the Vanguard Party itself and upper levels of the Socialist state, to keep the party loyal to the proletariat and ensure it wasn’t subverted by aspiring and regenerated bourgeois elements into their own vanguard. This required giving the masses greater oversight and control over the party and state, and active power to combat bureaucratic degeneration. He thus enhanced Party democracy.
But in any event, the Party structure is indispensable. The key issue is what class’s interests it serves and is loyal to. It’s ironic that many people ask why the working class–which is infinitely larger and thus more difficult to organize than the bourgeoisie–(or oppressed nationalities of people) need a leading Party to unite and organize them in struggle against the imperialist class and system. Yet no one ever questions–nor even recognizes–that the capitalist class also has and needs its own political organizations to successfully exercise and organize its own unity and dictatorship over the working class and everyone else. Lest we forget, bourgeois political structures and leaders preceded, and led, every movement where capitalism and imperialism overthrew feudal, slave-owning, etc. political economies (especially here in Amerika…. what indeed were the Whigs, Democrats, Republicans, Tories, etc. but parties of the existing or aspiring ruling classes?) And it is these parties that rule in capitalist societies in the interests of the bourgeoisie.
In case you didn’t notice, it’s the wealthy minority who the entire political system and its Parties serve in capitalist society, and it’s against the working class, poor and other marginalized groups that their laws, courts, police, military, prisons, etc. exert control. This is why you have no genuine ML Parties (I should say MLM Parties) operating legally in any capitalist country.
The bourgeoisie everywhere is very class conscious; and remains vigilant in keeping the workers atomized; divided against each other along racial, gender, national, religious and other lines; and focused on immediate individual survival needs.
To counter this, to awaken, unite, organize and coordinate the proletariat as a common class against bourgeois rule, requires a leading organization that is totally committed in theory and practice to, and is rooted in, the working class. This is what the MLM revolutionary vanguard Party is all about and why it’s needed.
