Five Minute Polemic №4: The US Maoist Movement and Comrade K. Rashid Johnson
Comrade Kevin Rashid Johnson is an enigmatic and iconic figure in today’s Left. It has been my experience that few have a bad word to say about him, save the very worst and openest of opportunists and revisionists. This is for good reason- the man is an imprisoned communist who is managing to continue ardently promoting proletarian revolution from behind bars. We all must admire this dedication. And yet he and his followers and associated organizations seem to form one island of the communist movement in this country, quite distinct from the one in which I was educated and with which I associate (the lineage of contemporary Maoists and students thereof hailing from the legacy of the RGA and other Red Guard groups, and the SWMF, today associated with publications like the Tribune and groups like STP-LA and the CPUSA(CR)). These two separate lineages of communist thought and agitation in this country are divided from one another, and in certain senses contradicted with one another, but it is my contention that these contradictions can be non-antagonistically resolved and that these two elements must be unified, and each of them purged of its flaws and infused with the strengths of the other, in order to build toward the construction of a single revolutionary vanguard Party in this country.
Johnson’s name is associated, terminologically, with the term “intercommunalism.” This term as generally used refers to a current of revisionist ideology originated by Huey P. Newton, which the efforts of Struggle Sessions have roundly debunked. Johnson’s actual work, however, does not seem to advocate intercommunalism as it is generally understood; he seems to mean something else by his use of the term. Indeed, on many points where intercommunalism has sharply departed from proper Marxist-Leninist-Maoist scientific positions, Johnson reinforces them. He says:
Many people when presented with the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist idea that only the proletariat can lead in making all-the-way revolutionary class struggle question why it is, and why some other class (without changing its class perspective) cannot lead such a struggle. One reason is because the proletariat is the only class that has no real stake in preserving the class relations of the capitalist system, but has everything to gain in taking control over the social wealth it has itself created by its labor and the tools it uses to create it. Another reason is that the proletariat (in contrast to the lumpen), has the conditioning in patient work, social unity and cooperation necessary to wage the protracted class struggle required to abolish all exploitation and oppression… Translated into the revolutionary movement, the lumpen tendency has some thinking that militant swaggering, posturing, and “talking shit,” is acceptable behavior for revolutionaries which is very wrong and demonstrates political immaturity and lack of a true proletarian outlook.{1}
This is not the line of Newton’s revisionism; it is a true Maoist position on the role of the proletarian masses as revolutionary makers of history. Johnson and his associated groups have also broken sharply with the New Afrikan national chauvinism common to many of the present-day self-identified continuators of the original BPP. A follower of his, published on his site, writes:
…Mao was spot on [in saying that the white proletariat was not the enemy of the black proletariat], and it is the comrades [I would object to using this word, but that is minor] at Red Midwest who need to study up on American History, and more importantly to engage in practice with the oppressed masses and learn from them. Throughout U.S. History, there are few but significant examples of Black revolutionaries addressing the struggle from the perspective of building unity between oppressed Blacks and whites in opposition to the capitalist-imperialist ruling class. [emphasis mine]{2}
The same text also expresses support for the PCP and the ongoing People’s War in Peru:
One must acknowledge that despite the hue and cry raised by the bourgeoisie and echoed by “The Movement” in the U.S., the CPP (“Shining Path”) went on to establish red political power in the region with the overwhelming support of the poor peasants. By 1991, the “Shining Path” had control of much of the countryside of the center and south of Peru and had a large presence in the outskirts of Lima. It was a brutal civil war, but one the revolutionaries were winning up until the CIA captured Guzman and most of the top leadership by using advanced spying technology. This, plus the ferocity of the “white terror” unleashed upon the masses, with the backing of the U.S. military and CIA, turned the tide in favor of the imperialists, but the “Shining Path” was never completely defeated and the People’s War in Peru may yet prove victorious.
As for the other major point of division between Newton’s intercommunalism and genuine MLMism, the question of nations, the very name of the first major organization Johnson was involved in the leadership of (which he has since left for unrelated reasons), the New Afrikan Black Panther Party, makes clear that he rejects the denial of nations’ relevance in present politics and accepts the existence of a black nation (the New Afrikans) in the US.
The site he maintains has additionally published a document entitled “Intent to Constitute the Maoist Revolutionary Party” from a group calling themselves “Maoist Revolutionary Party (Constitution Committee),” which has called explicitly for both PPW and a new militarized Maoist Party in this country- while this group lacks the apparent communication with international comrades of the CPUSA(CR) and certain other elements of the Red Guard lineage (which must still be called the best hope for reconstituting a Party), this demonstrates at least association with correct ideas. Admittedly the document also appears to support the idea that this party must be subordinate to specifically New Afrikan leadership, embodied in the NABPP- I would call the idea that leadership of the Party should belong to any one nation totally wrongheaded and chauvinist, but an ultimately correctable error. In any case, this is not his writing, simply a document he has helped publicize which illustrates association with good (if not fully applied or realized) Maoist ideas.
He has also, significantly, put forward criticisms of major revisionists like J. Sakai and the MIM(P). We may say, then, that in spite of the use of strange and perhaps inappropriate terminology, Johnson and the set of organizations that follow his line and his leadership- chief among them the RIBPP- are legitimate communist progressive elements in the US.
And yet the work and actions of this lineage of communists seem essentially unconnected from the other lineage, that represented by the admirable work of the many other MLMist and MLMist-influenced revolutionary groups in this country- the various STPs, the UNDM, the PWM/MFP, the Tribune of the People support committees, the Oxnard Revolutionary Study Group and other study groups, and of course the clandestine CPUSA(CR), and many more. This seems to me counterproductive. A bifurcation of a movement is like a bifurcation of an animal (excepting certain flatworms and echinoderms)- not conducive to its health. It is particularly unfavorable to the emergence of a vanguard party at the head of the movement to lay out democratically the line the masses and revolutionary militants must follow in building socialist dual power- to extend the animal simile a bit unreasonably, imagine it has not merely been bifurcated but had its skull cleanly split in two; it has no brain to direct it, and will surely die.
What I contend is that this situation of bifurcation should therefore be rectified. I propose, recognizing that I propose this from the position of a minor individual on the fringe of the movement with no significant experience in any major revolutionary grouping but nonetheless proposing it in all sincerity and earnestness, that these two islands must be united into a great continent of revolution, out of which can emerge a single cohesive movement with a single centralized democratic leader- a reconstituted communist party for the present-day US, militarized, prepared for leading a future People’s War, and adherent to MLMism-Gonzalo Thought.
Of course, the nature of dialectical advancement of things across time is that two do not unite into one, but rather one divides into two as contradictions intensify; the right divides from the wrong, the exploited from the exploiter, the new from the old, the correct from the incorrect. I believe that exactly this last sort of dialectical struggle, a purging through dialectical division of the incorrect aspects of political lines, can occur in both islands of the movement through their movement towards unity. In learning from one another and moving closer together, the Red lines in the movement can become more distinct and can struggle against and purge out mistaken ones. From the Panther lineage, the Red Guard lineage can learn a sense of dynamic application and gain a greater base of support, and learn to purge out dogmatism. From the Red Guard lineage, the Panther lineage can learn a clearer understanding of Gonzalo’s theoretical contributions (though neither lineage has developed understanding of Gonzalo Thought to the same extent as, say, the Canadian comrades of CWF-OC), and learn to purge out the trappings of Newton’s revisionism, which taint somewhat their genuine MLMist credentials.
Lenin said, “Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism.{3}” What is meant by this is that we must denounce all who stand in the way of revolutionary struggle and in the same moment unite together all who fight for it. History has shown that the victory of proletarian revolution depends on the unification of the movement for it under a vanguard Party. In all frankness, I do not believe that Johnson’s party as it is has the potential to become the vanguard Party in this country; its base of support is too confined to specifically the New Afrikan nation and the imprisoned proletariat and lumpenproletariat. Nor do I believe the CPUSA(CR) is yet in position to facilitate the reconstitution of a vanguard Party; even with the great work of it and a vast number of wonderful mass organizations, the Red Guard revolutionary lineage is still unknown to much of the masses outside its areas of greatest activity. Together, however, the two organizations and the two lineages of communist revolutionary organizing they represent can surely succeed in building the new Party to guide the American proletariat forward.
UNITE THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES!
RECONSTITUTE THE COMMUNIST PARTY ON THE BASIS OF MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM-GONZALO THOUGHT!
PREPARE TO WAGE REVOLUTIONARY PEOPLE’S WAR!
SOURCES
1. “NABPP-PC: Our Line,” quoted in “Promoting Proletarian Consciousness as Prisoner Rehabilitation (2007),” Kevin Rashid Johnson
2. “Pantherism and Revolutionary Intercommunalism vs. Sham ‘Marxism-Leninism-Maoism’,” Tom Watts, on behalf of WPO and NABPP-PC- a critique of revisionist and chauvinist lines taken by individuals styling themselves as “Red Midwest,” published on rashidmod.com, Comrade Johnson’s site.
3. “Unity,” VI Lenin, published in Pravda or Put’ Pravdy
