An Earnest Criticism of Struggle Sessions

“Utmost regard for the masses requires dedicated polemicists — there is a task to educate the masses who make history in the ideology of the proletariat, and this is not limited to speaking directly to the masses, but also involves confronting incorrect ideas among those advanced elements who have already pledged to the task of making revolution.”- Comrade Kavga, “In Defense of Polemics,” Struggle Sessions

Struggle Sessions has defined itself as the most prominent and influential theoretical publication of the United States’ communist (Maoist) movement. Not without merit has it come to this position. More than a few are Struggle Sessions’ significant contributions to Maoist theory in general and the development of a guiding thought for the US revolution specifically: the ideological dismantling of liberal feminist defenses of sexual exploitation in Political Economy and Prostitution, the brilliant theses put forward in Intercommunalism is Not a Marxist Idea and other works targeting revisionist currents of lumpenroletarian ideology, and the defense of written ideological line struggle within the movement in the above-quoted article- these are some example of the vital textual works Struggle Sessions has produced. There are, however, failings. This is hardly surprising- every revolutionary and every organ of revolution can and will have failings, and this is why criticism and self-criticism within the communist movement are vital. It is my opinion that certain failings of the editorial staff of Struggle Sessions, in two basic categories to be outlined below, have reached sufficient severity that an explicit written expression of such criticism is necessary. It is important to note that there is a difference between criticism and attack. Never will I question that these comrades are communists, never will I deny that they are important and valuable leaders of our communist movement. But, at the same time, I will never apologize for criticizing them where they have fallen short- for Marx himself has called us all to “ruthless criticism of all that exists!{1}”

It has been my observation that many polemicists of the US Maoist movement are reluctant to criticize Struggle Sessions because of the esteem in which they are held, especially because of their role as leaders. But this is illogical. Even if Struggle Sessions is an important arm of the apparent leadership of US Maoists, it is the job of leadership always to make itself worthy of the masses’ loyalty, to rise to the leadership of the proletariat by being its most advanced elements; it is not the job of the masses to give that loyalty without question. Mao said: “…[communists] hope that all our fellow fighters will courageously shoulder their responsibilities and overcome all setbacks, fearing no setbacks or gibes, nor hesitating to criticize us communists and give us their suggestions [italics added] {2},” and further “If there were no contradictions in the Party and no ideological struggles to resolve them, the Party’s life would come to an end{3}.”

The message here, further elaborated in the cited works, is clear: one should not fear healthy criticism and contradiction within the movement, especially within its leadership or between the leadership and the rank and file, because such is not in any respect a challenge to the integrity or strength of the movement- indeed, what it is is the manifestation of the universality of dialectical development, and that is the very thing that gives the proletarian revolutionary movement- and anything that moves within the universe- life. I can therefore set out, without reservation, to provide salient and earnest criticism of the problems I and several comrades have observed in the style and thinking of the editorial staff of Struggle Sessions, while of course maintaining solidarity with them in the US Maoist movement and admiration for their role as an important leader of theoretical struggle in that movement.

The two problems that have become apparent are dogmatism and laziness. I will address laziness first, because it has two aspects and the second of them is essentially manifested in dogmatism. The first aspect I will term editorial laziness. This is a lazy approach to the actual operations of being a source of theoretical information, and interacting with the audience of published materials. Far too often lately, the materials published by Struggle Sessions have shown this kind of laziness. Where once this journal produced, and still does now and again, great works of analysis like those named above, now we have an influx of simplistic screeds which in very few words present a notion but do nothing whatsoever to justify it, even when justification is sorely necessary. An example, from “Letter to the Editor: Class Struggle or Sexual Liberation?” (by the Editorial Board):

On the other hand, the ideology that underlies non-binary identification is rooted in idealism and reactionary postmodernism. It argues that one can escape the contradiction between men and women at an individual level through personal feeling and superficial changes in presentation. This is positioned as progressive and liberating. We see this as part of the ‘sexual liberation’ thesis that one can change society solely by changing one’s ideas or behavior, or that the only thing which matters is one’s ideas or behaviors, a total idealism opposed to materialism. It obscures the basis of women’s emancipation which is an essential question for revolution.

This passage is obviously wrong. But it is furthermore lazy. It is clear that whoever has written it has failed utterly to investigate the topic, and absurd that they can believe they can dismiss the very existence of an entire demographic of the masses- and their struggles- with a single solitary paragraph unconnected to any larger analysis. Indeed, it is clear reading it that whichever editor came up with this knew nothing whatsoever of the nonbinary question. The “‘sexual liberation’ thesis” does not remotely enter into it- it is not a sexual matter! It is a matter of place within societal relations, not of sexual biology, and this is common knowledge to much of the proletariat in the US- but not to these comrades, who though they strive to lead the masses are in fact trailing behind on this question. And it also is more than a belief in “changing society solely through one’s ideas,” indeed I do not think most nonbinary people believe this is possible (those who do should of course be corrected). Their being nonbinary is not an attempt to change society, it is a personal phenomenon of their own relation to it, and not connected to their view of it as a whole. Some nonbinary people are communists, some are liberals, some are postmodernists- none of them are so because they are nonbinary. The idea that it boils down to nothing more than “superficial changes in presentation” is equally silly- anyone who has ever encountered a person who is seriously committed to a nonbinary identity† understands that it is a deep and complex psychosocial phenomenon, not in the least “superficial.” As to the idea that one cannot simultaneously support women’s and nonbinary proletarians’ liberation, this is frankly absurd, and seems to imply one can only support one cause at a time- so I suppose, if we apply the editorial board’s thinking, we will have to choose whether women or the racially oppressed are more important, as well!

The way the editorial staff has responded to criticism of this obvious lack of investigation does not help their case, and indeed I contend that the most grievous manifestation of their editorial laziness is laziness in response to criticism. I have tried to contact them to point out the wrongheadedness of these theses, as have comrades I have spoken too, as have the comrades of The Red Flag, who have also presented some of the most valuable writing on the subject of the nonbinary question that is actually correct and scientific. All have been unfailingly polite, and attempted to provide helpful criticism. None have received answers. This is, in itself, excusable. What is not is the way in which Struggle Sessions has responded to those criticisms it has actually responded to. While it would be imprudent of me to reveal exactly any personal correspondences between individuals or groups, I can attest from my own experience and that of comrades that the manner in which Struggle Sessions responds to its critics is frankly disheartening. Anyone who contacts them with a view on any given question differing from theirs is told that daring to hold this view shows “hubris.” Anyone criticizing other communists is shouted down for being divisive. I have known comrades to express genuine fear at the prospect of responding negatively to a Struggle Sessions article, for fear of how the editorial staff will insult them! Remember, Mao instructed communists to “hope that all our fellow fighters… [will] criticize us communists and give us their suggestions{4}.” I ask, is Struggle Sessions’ the kind of response to criticism Mao and Maoism would deem appropriate? I think not.

From editorial laziness, we move on to address ideological laziness- laziness in the study and thought of ideological matters- and dogmatism. The two are inextricably connected: because one is lazy, because one refuses to dynamically investigate the issues at hand and realize how Maoist theory applies to them, one instead turns theory into dogma. Earlier I have criticized the habit of Struggle Sessions to produce brief pontifications which fail to justify their positions adequately- these manifestations of editorial laziness are indicative of ideological laziness, of failure to investigate and think through problems adequately, and the ideological positions they take are dogmatic. Nowhere is Struggle Sessions’ ideological laziness and resultant dogmatism more apparent than in their habit of flinging the dreaded moniker of “postmodernism” upon all and sundry of those they disagree with or simply do not understand.

It is unquestionable that postmodernism poses a serious threat to the development and spread of Maoist ideology. Its nature is that, under pretenses of progressivism, it winds its way into the minds of the downtrodden and those who would be their advocates and infects them with sectarianism, subjectivism, and apathy. Its entry into the spaces of philosophical analysis of race, gender, sexuality, etc. is dangerous and should be obstructed. But one cannot combat an enemy without a clear understanding of who it is, and in this sense Struggle Sessions’ insistence on calling anyone and anything “postmodern” is not helpful but actively harmful to ideological combat against actual postmodernism.

Take as an example the insistence of Struggle Sessions that “…the ideology that underlies non-binary identification is rooted in idealism and reactionary postmodernism.{5}” It has already been established by the criticisms of many comrades, most notably in my view those of The Red Flag, that this is nonsense. What it amounts to is calling the entire topic of the nonbinary question postmodernist simply because some of those who contemplate it are postmodernists- this is like calling the question of rocket science fascist simply because some rocket scientists have been nazis. It is a childish and oversimplified dogmatic understanding. And furthermore, it is actively detrimental to efforts to combat postmodern views of the nonbinary question. Why? Because what Maoists should be doing in response to postmodern opinions on the nonbinary question is presenting our own more correct positions, and winning the nonbinary masses over to them. Dogmatically lashing out against nonbinary people will do the opposite, it will make us look like their enemies, will drive them away from proletarian liberation- and further into the arms of postmodern liberalism. This is why Struggle Sessions’ laziness and resultant dogmatism is an active threat to the Maoist movement in this country.

Another example of this particular dogmatic habit can be found in Struggle Sessions’ dismissal of prominent anti-colonial philosopher and national liberation fighter Frantz Fanon. From “Bourgeois Culture is a Cadaver, it Cannot Construct Anything New” by Comrade Cathal (another editorially lazy polemic that ultimately does little more than state a vague thesis and do nothing to elucidate or legitimize it):

It is clear that the popular consumption of such programming has a political affect on the thinking of the people, and well beyond the college campuses where Deleuze, Fanon, Hooks, Spivak, Foucault, Butler and so on have replaced Marxists, and terms such as “lived experience,” “intersectional,” “oppressed genders,” “hetero-normalcy,” “skin privilege” and “cis” have become common and metaphysical stand-ins for scientific and Marxist analysis…

Once again, there is a heaping helping of nonsense to be analyzed here. In the first place, putting Fanon in the same list with Hooks and Butler is nothing short of a gross insult. While the latter two were impotent academics, Fanon was a man who died fighting against imperialism in Algeria and whose words, in works of philosophy like The Wretched of the Earth, have inspired the downtrodden the world over. Nothing in his work is postmodern, and calling it such can be symptomatic only of a dogmatic over-application of the term, of a total lack of investigation, and of a paranoid doctrine of guilt-by-association whereby anybody postmodernists claim to admire must also be a postmodernist. This doctrine is obviously foolish and wrongheaded- for some of them claim to admire Marx! Fanon may not have been a Marxist, but that alone is not enough to consign the entirety of his ideas to the pyre reserved for the postmodern. We must remember that Marxist doctrine is a scientific ideological method and not a dogma. And scientists do not refuse to learn anything from anyone who does not totally match up with present scientific insights. The early astronomer Johannes Kepler held many beliefs that were, it is now clear, absurd- for instance, he believed seriously in the archaic superstition that the motions of the planets formed a perfect musical composition. And yet the astronomers of today, even while happily acknowledging where he was wrong, will not fail to learn from where he was right. So it should be with the Marxists’ scientific approach to philosophy: we may quite rightly wish Fanon had had a closer adherence to Marxist principles than he did, but the fact he did not does not lessen the ideological value of a work like “Concerning Violence.{6}”

A similar guilt-by-association doctrine is also going on in this passage with regard to ideas and terminology: some of the ideas Cathal is denouncing deserve it, and others quite obviously do not. “Lived experience” is a silly term, yes, it implies a subjective nature of truth and this is an antimaterialist idea. But how in the hell is talking of “oppressed genders” postmodern- is it not a demonstrable fact that women are oppressed? And trying to denounce the word “cis” is as silly as trying to denounce the word “blue”- it’s just a word, referring to a concept and a phenomenon that objectively exists (in this case, people who aren’t trans). It does not imply any particular ideological bent at all, and trying to denounce it on ideological grounds is asinine. And so, indeed, is all such lazily dogmatic ideological posturing.

It is an apparent fact that we are living in the early stages of a time of great revolutionary changes, as I have said before. People’s War is being waged in Peru*, India (including the national liberation struggle in Manipur), Turkey, and the Philippines˙; it looms imminently in Brazil and Ecuador and less imminently in many other countries. In a time such as this it is vital that we have publishers of Maoist ideas like Struggle Sessions spreading the ideology of the proletariat (Marxism-Leninism-Maoism) among the masses, and that they are doing this in the most effective and correct ways. Lenin told us that there can be no revolutionary movement without a revolutionary theory, and a theory does no good if it cannot be taught and applied to and by many people- this is the (or one) vital role of theoretical journals, study circles, mass organizations, book distributers, et cetera. Whatever else is true, we should commend and thank Struggle Sessions’ staff for their work toward this. But the fact remains that the problems described above have undeniably hindered their ability to do this:

• Their editorial laziness has led to the frequent publication of polemics too vague and brief in defining their theses to convince anyone of anything
• It has also led to antagonism and apathy toward criticism, which can only obfuscate the ideological development and progression of our country’s communist movement- after all, as Mao taught us, it is in healthy struggle that ideas are forged
• Their ideological laziness and refusal to investigate topics thoroughly, in addition to contributing to the first of the above points, has also led to their using “postmodern” as a catchall term for anything they don’t understand, whether or not it applies and whether or not the things they call “postmodern” are even bad- this unprincipled use of language is damaging to ideological education as it encourages vagueness, and damaging to the Maoist movement as it makes us look like we do not know what the hell we are talking about
• The dogmatic and unprincipled use of accusations of “postmodernism” against all and sundry has also extended to dangerously anti-queer messaging, which risks alienating queer proletarians from our cause- it does not help the fact that liberals are already constantly telling them we are their enemies, when in fact (as the CPP and MPP among others have stated) we fight for their freedom as much as for that of cisgender heterosexual proletarians. The whole phenomenon, I might add, is especially disheartening given that it is apparently a step back for the US revolutionary movement, which once had the very admirable queer revolutionary organization of the SWMF but now appears to be sliding back into totally ignoring queer questions

Simply put, even as we acknowledge the tremendous positive aspects of Struggle Sessions’ work, there are quite significant negative aspects. Being frank, given the importance of the above-stated function of a theoretical journal, the movement in this country deserves better. We can only hope that Struggle Sessions improves and returns to producing consistently insightful works as they have in the past, or else, if they fail to do so, that a new leading theoretical journal will emerge.

SOURCES AND FOOTNOTES

1. Marx said this in an 1843 letter
2. “Speech at the CPC’s National Congress on Propaganda Work,” Mao Tse Tung
3. On Contradiction, Mao Tse Tung
4. see 2.
5. “Letter from the Editor: Class Struggle or Sexual Liberation?,” Struggle Sessions, Struggle Sessions Editorial Board
6. this essay is the first chapter of The Wretched of the Earth.

†Which is admittedly not all “nonbinary” people- some people experiment for a time with nonbinary social roles and ultimately decide to leave them behind. But this is, in my view, perfectly healthy as well, and equally legitimate… but that is not the topic at hand right now, nor am I especially qualified to address it, so I will not go into detail here.

*Claims of liquidation of the struggle in that country made in polemics by the CPS(RF) appear to be unfounded; the CPS(RF) should be criticized for this and the ICM must maintain solidarity with Comrade Laura, the PCP, and the MPP in the spirit of proletarian revolution and the memory of Chairman Gonzalo.

˙Even as the CPP has its ideological shortcomings- failure to recognize the clear synthesis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as a qualitative leap forward from Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought, and thus to accept things like the universality of PPW, etc.- , which have resulted in my view chiefly from the continuing influence of the now-revisionist, once-communist JoMa Sison, they are nonetheless waging a prominent People’s War for New Power in their country, and therefore we should maintain solidarity with them as part of the ICM.

This document will be sent to Struggle Sessions. I will add a note below if their editorial staff responds.

Update as of early November: I have had correspondence with Struggle Sessions on these points. So far I feel it has been positive.

Update as of mid-November: the publication of this statement shows in my view good receptiveness to the criticisms made by myself and others. This is a very positive sign for the development of the US communist movement and the Struggle Sessions journal as an organ of it.