Various media have asked us to comment on the Brixton "slavery" affair. As the media might have established by now, Aravindan Balakrishnan was expelled from an organisation which preceded our own in 1974, at a time when it carried a large amount of work against state-organised racist and fascist violence and in defence of minority rights and the right of the Irish people to self-determination.
You can see with the current revelations in the police investigation that the organisation which expelled him must have had good reason – first and foremost, opposition to his penchant for cultism.
For the rest, any media attempts to connect his rotten activities with Marxism-Leninism for purposes of presenting Marxism-Leninism as cultism and extremism are pure disinformation and sensationalism. Such attempts in no way assist to show what Marxism-Leninism is and we do not think they deserve an answer.
Working people are facing serious problems today as a result of the neo-liberal anti-social offensive and all its attendant injustices and ills. Turning a wretched episode in the lives of some miserable people into a salacious investigation is surely a new low even for the British media.
We have no further comment on this matter.
Democracy and Class Struggle welcomes this statement from RCPB (ML) against the poison in the British Media particularly in the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph smearing the Left concerning the events in Brixton surrounding Aravindan Balakrishnan's activities.
Our Statement is here :
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/aravindan-balakrishnan-maoists.html
Democracy and Class Struggle welcomes this statement from RCPB (ML) against the poison in the British Media particularly in the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph smearing the Left concerning the events in Brixton surrounding Aravindan Balakrishnan's activities.
Our Statement is here :
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/aravindan-balakrishnan-maoists.html
What about the RCPB(ML)'s own penchant for cultism in the form of their ridiculous adherence to the line of Hardial Bains?
ReplyDeleteActually one can find a strong current of cultism in the Maoist movement generally as can be seen in the example of Charu Mazumdar in India (something that the CPI(ML)[PWG] itself rebuked the movement for), or Chairman Gonzalo in Peru and more recently in a series of contemporary Latin American parties, or even in China under Mao. Indeed, Mao himself struggled against some of these forms of cultism in his article about how he hated Mao pins because they diverted much needed resources from state projects. Mao, even in his discussion with a Yugoslav delegation, himself admits that there was a problem of lack of critical thinking and cultism in China, which he thought needed to be struggled against. This does not mean that we should not be inspired by Mao and his thought, but that we need to do so in a critical manner, rather, in the dare-I-say cultish manner that has become far too common in contemporary Maoisms around the world.
ReplyDeleteWe at Democracy and Class Struggle have been exposing the wrong politics and cult around Bob Avakian of the RCPUSA - we agree with previous comment that we must be alert to cultism whenever it appears in Maoist movement and root it out.
ReplyDeleteDear Nick,
ReplyDeleteI agree that D+CS has done an admirable job re: Bob Avakian cult, however, it seems to me that at the same time there has been little critique of the cult around Gonzalo that has been promoted by various European and Latin American movements and parties (to call some of these people "parties" and "movements" is a bit laughable and their incapacity mobilise people in their own countries is in part because of this). Indeed, the almost absolute silence around MOVADEF and the repression that they are experiencing on your blog, which I regularly read, seems to me to because of an acquiescence of a certain cult-like adherence to a very particular form of Gonzaloism, which neither matches the realities on the ground in Peru nor even has currency in the ideological cultishness within MOVADEF (in fact, MOVADEF is just the mirror image of the Gonzaloism found in these groups/persons). I hope in the future to see you do very similar work to reject the Gonzalo cult and publish a reasoned critique of not only Avakianism (which is truly idiotic), but also Gonzaloism.
We have been looking for a good self criticism of the failures of Gonzalo and would be happy to publish if you know any good ones.
ReplyDeleteWe have great respect for Chairman Gonzalo and if he were free we would expect a self criticism from him has a constructive way to rectify mistakes and advance revolution in Peru.
However we have not yet seen a proper analysis of failures in Peru or Nepal- we are aware of some self criticism by Indian Comrades over failures in Lagarth and are awaiting a translation into English.
Criticism and SELF Criticism are live blood of Marxism Leninism Maoism and we hope in future to contribute to process of criticism and self criticism to advance our great cause of human liberation - it is our hope.