[A-List] Gus Hall - (Hero or Zero) 2

[Waistline2 at aol.com]

The issue of insurrection and the insurrectionary process is rather simple  
and not to be avoided out of a false sense that one is "being bad," or can be  
jailed or hauled into a court of law  . . . in America today, because of a  
public discussion. Here all legalese has to be thrown out the window. If history 
 is kind many of us will live long enough to be recruited to the 
insurrectionary  movement and moment. 
 
I hate talking about thinking "dialectically" because of the overuse and  
misuse of the term. Nevertheless, whatever has "a front has a back." The "bigger  
the front the bigger the back." One presupposes the other. Between them is  
process logic. 
 
Ballot box socialism is a flat conception with no back. The front is that a  
small minority of voting America will bring about ballot box socialism or a  
socialist revolution through voting. Where is the "back" or all the processes  
that is the meaning of "the revolutionary crisis?" 
 
America has "back." 
 
"Baby got back" and lots of it, to say the least. 
 
The concept of "ballot box socialism," is like not knowing what  an election 
is. 
 
What actually happens as a Presidential election in America?  The act  of 
voting is the front or face of a political process. 
 
Every single presidential election in America involves 1). candidates; and  
2). both parties taking inordinate amounts of time to align themselves from the 
 standpoint of the insurrectionary process, or win over a section of th 
military  establishment. Which, even when dormant still exists. Every single 
candidate and  party must line up groupings of individuals representing the armed 
forces and  the intelligence agencies. Why? 
 
The answer is so simple a child of ten can understand it. "So that the  
primary and inherent forces of insurrection, will not be aligned against you."  And 
these are elections taking place under peaceful conditions. Then masses of  
people have to be organized and deployed on ones side. 
 
George W. most certainly represented the threat of an armed military coup  in 
2000, and then used the Supreme Court to take power. The Supreme Court as a  
living organism lines up for and against various interest represented and  
guarded by the military. The reason politically thinking writers draw a parallel  
between Bush 2000 and the Hayes-Tilden agreement (1876) is because political  
crisis always involve the state - (arms personified), taking sides.  In the  
case of 1876, withdrawing armed forces from the South was the "end game" and  
fundamental to realigning political America for the next 90 years. 
 
Socialist revolution never comers from voting and is an inaccurate concept  
of the revolutionary change process. Voting in a change of the productive 
forces  turns the concept of revolutionary change upside down. Apparently, the 
attention  given to condemning comrades who would not vote and refused to vote, 
and then  using Lenin writings to justify labeling folks as "ultra leftists" is 
based in a  vision that has no precedence in the history of the world. This 
vision is the  "doctrine" of ballot box socialism. 
 
The idea that Chavez is not the living insurrectionary process "super  
personified" is to throw away the fact that his whole life has been bound up  with 
the military and winning them over to his side. Chavez freedom took place  on 
the basis of the armed uprising. Armed uprising does not mean people running  
in the streets with guns. Armed uprising means what it meant for Lenin:  
"uprising" + "armed people" in the form of winning a section of the state. The  
section of the state won to the revolution by Lenin was organized into cells -  
organizations, whose sum total are called Soviets. 
 
We do not know the form of the American (Proletarian) Revolution. Whatever  
its form the real people that will constitute the American Revolution will be  
successful because a section of the armed forces have passed over to the side 
of  "the revolution." To say that socialist revolution will take place by the 
ballot  box and not armed insurrection is muddled thinking that confuses 
thinks. It is  muddled because the Marxist tradition suggests that the 
revolutionary crisis  involves the state in the form of the armed forces. What by chance 
will the army  be doing? And the police force?  And the navy? Not to mention 
the extra  legal organs of violence and private armies. Or the intelligence 
community? 
 
There is no reason to sweep these matters under the carpet and pretend they  
do not exist. I am confident that the forces of insurrection will be won to 
our  side. There is a clear precedence in our history. The working class or 
rather a  large and decisive section, in the North supported and stabilized 
slavery in  America. They did not want slave labor dumped unto the labor market. 
Rather than  hating slavery they blamed the slave. There was rioting against the 
call to arms  against the Slave power. The army split with generals going over 
to the side of  the counter revolution. Yet, these folks and the armed forces 
in the North were  won over to the cause of "the revolution." 
 
Ballot box socialism never presents a coherent picture or reasoning or line  
of march of real people or the path of "the revolution" but rather, distorts 
the  significance of voting and never even mentions something as obvious as the 
army.  Under intense pressure and discussion the "ballot box" socialist might 
agree  that the obviousness of the existence of the armed forces, might need 
to be  discussed. Further, members of the constitutional authority go over to 
the side  of the revolution but this process cannot be described as ballot box 
socialism. 
 
I have no knee jerk reaction or dislike of the CPUSA and our collective  
history, but they have never presented even the most simple discussion of a  
revolutionary transition in America - to my knowledge, that honors our  
revolutionary history and tradition. The lack of existence of a revolutionary  crisis for 
th past half century might have something to do with this. Yet, the  American 
people as a whole have a revolutionary tradition and this most  certainly 
includes and embraces insurrection. There is no such thing as an  unarmed 
insurrection. 
 
Socialist revolution does not come from armed insurrection either,  according 
to Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Insurrection is not the meaning of  
revolution. Insurrection is at all times, the act of a group of revolutionaries  
seizing the commanding heights of power. Revolution is the process of crisis  
generated by and rooted in changes in the productive forces. The most  
revolutionary of productive forces is the human mind. 
 
(Thank God we can think things out! :-) 
 
It has to be stated over and over again, to sweep the cloud of mental  
confusion the bourgeoisie keeps the people  and revolutionaries in; that  the 
insurrection involves winning the armed forces over to the side of  revolution. 
Without this revolutionary act, change is impossible. To 1) vote or  2). not to 
vote and talk about armed insurrection is not the dialectic of  revolutionary 
change as described by Marx, Lenin or Engels. Revolutionary crisis  and the 
polarization of classes and the state and then winning over the  insurrectionary 
aspects of the state is job one, if one is to make sense of "the  revolution." 
 
It would seem that this thread and Lenin's "Left Wing Communism" does have  a 
context and meaning as constructive discussion on this list and in the 
context  of the Obama victory. 
 
The election of Obama signifies one thing and only one thing only in my  
estimate; and given the fact that he is not yet in power it is pretty hard to  
pre-determine what will be his legacy; that voting America has taken another  
major step in overcoming the legacy of Jim Crow. Overcoming the legacy of Jim  
Crow has been a process onto itself spanning 40 years. And I am so glad I voted  
for him as part of this distinct process. 
 
Lots of people (not just "white people" - the kind of language and analysis  
we should be moving away from) made his election possible. The data and  
information suggests that the African Americans was the last ones in and hence  the 
most backward section during the past presidential election, if ones vision  
is that Obama's election was a victory in our post Jim Crow history and  
revolutionary. If anything, the tradition in all presidential elections, where  
votes are more than less divided between the majority, is that blacks are the  
swing vote to ensure victory. If anything one should be proud of the blacks for  
relinquishing a backwards position. Many black folk said no sir, "change has 
not  really taken place in America." After millions showed up in support of 
Obama the  thinking was "damn, maybe some change has taken place in America." 
 
It would seem that through the lens of "ballot box socialism," voting for  
Obama is equated with a quantitative step in instituting a communist regime in  
America. Perhaps, I am reading and understanding the underlying logic of our  
dialogue wrong. 
 
"If you did not vote for Obama you are wrong and if you are a socialist,  
communist, or Marxist or any combination of the three, and did not vote for  
Obama or support him now, you are an ultra leftist." Why? Because the path of  the 
revolution in America is obviously ballot box socialism. 
 
According to Lenin no doubt. 
 
But, then again, the right wing of communism - (not the left wing), saw  
something revolutionary in the Roosevelt regime and the Roosevelt Coalition. I  
believe that history has answered the question of the "revolutionary quality" of 
 the Roosevelt regime and coalition. The Roosevelt regime and coalition were  
neither revolutionary or non-revolutionary in the context of our history, but 
 did institutes programs beneficial to our working class and tying them more  
tightly to protection of our bourgeois relations. This took place under  
conditions of the existence of Jim Crow. Jim Crow had a "back" under the  
Roosevelt regime. The bigger the front the bigger the back. 
 
I most certainly agree when Hall writes: 
 
"We believe that socialism USA will be built according to the traditions,  
history, culture and conditions of the United States. Thus, it will be different 
 from any other socialist society in the world. It will be uniquely 
American." 
 
What this has to do with "ballot box socialism is beyond me," since change  - 
revolutionary and reform, in America came through institutional violence and  
insurrection. 
 
The difference seem to be an understanding of "tradition," "history," and  
"culture" in America, rather than "uniquely American." 
 
Ours is the most revolutionary of traditions and countries. Every heard of  
the banner of 1776? What of the tradition of 1865? 
 
These are uniquely American events. Name me one country on earth other than  
America, where different sectors of capital waged a long destructive civil war 
-  (without either side representing or expressing foreign capital or 
imperial  intrigue) to determine who within "national" capital would rule the state?  
Conflicts within capital - rather than between capital and labor, generate 
sharp  and violent struggle but never on the level of the American Civil War. 
All the  political revolutions of the past century were bound up with the 
overthrow of  political feudalism as an institutional power to one degree or another 
and not a  purely inner class affairs of the heart. America was not 
exceptional in the  meaning of outside the revolution theory framework of Marx, but 
just unique. 
 
1776 was profoundly revolutionary and began a wave of colonial revolutions  
(called national liberation by the communists) that would go on to span two  
centuries, ending in the victory of the forces of the Vietnamese Revolution -  
1976 (proclaiming the Socialist Republic of Vietnam).  The uniqueness in  this 
instance is America as the "starting point" of a long drawn out process of  
national liberation. 
 
Remember "the British are coming!" "the British are coming!" This is not to  
say the contending of various class forces was not involved. Modern literature 
-  in the last decade or two, suggest that our national liberation was bound 
up  with outlawing slavery and the need for a sector of capital to protect its 
 interest in slavery. The point is that America inaugurated a wave of 
national  liberation movements and that is our tradition. 
 
I personally have no reason to doubt that we will inaugurate a new wave of  
communist political revolution, consistent with our on-going changes in the  
productive forces. The forms of revolution will by definition manifest our  
history. 
 
Ballot box socialism seems to be (I am not sure) the end ideology and  vision 
of political syndicalism and right wing communism. A section of communism  
that has not severed its thinking from the ideas of revolution characteristic of 
 our bourgeoisie.  The bourgeoisie knows power is about winning the armed  
forces and capturing the insurrectionary movement. 
 
Who ever thinks and leave out the "little" matter of the state as an armed  
body of men personifying the insurrectionary process, needs to study American  
history more and the history of classes on earth, and the Russian Revolutions  
and the October Revolution. 
 
WL.
 
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