Against Moufawad-Paul and His “Revolutionary Communist Party”

A Collection of Polemics From US Maoists

Communist Workers Party (Organizing Committee)

2021
 Introduction

Outside of Canada, the US Maoist journal Struggle Sessions holds the honour of having
launched the first polemics against the Canadian professor of bourgeois philosophy, Joshua
Moufawad-Paul (JMP), and the postmodernist faction of the “Revolutionary Communist Party”
(RCP) which he leads. Largely due to the work of Struggle Sessions, JMP has been increasingly
exposed as a revisionist charlatan on par with his ideological forerunner, Bob Avakian, the leader
of a liquidationist organization of the same name in the USA.

The struggle against JMP and the Right-Opportunist Line of the RCP has recently taken a leap
forward with the formation of the Communist Workers Front (Organizing Committee) in Canada.
As part of this struggle, we present the complete set of anti-JMP polemics from Struggle
Sessions below. While this compilation should not be taken as an endorsement of every position
expressed in these documents, we believe the US comrades have made valuable contributions to
the defence of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism against the clique centered around this Canadian
arch-revisionist.

We call on revolutionaries across the country to study and promote these documents to help
sweep away the ideas of JMP and his organization in class struggle and two-line struggle,
serving the construction of a Communist Workers Front and the reconstitution of the Communist
Party of Canada for People’s War.
 In Defense of the Mass Line Against Rightist Attacks
Comrade Kavga, Struggle Sessions Editorial Board
22 June 2018

There are several major commonalities which run like threads, linking various rightist-revisionist
strains of thought. One prominent thread, or feature, is either a distortion of or an attack upon the
mass line. Those who claim to adhere to the mass line as well as those who think they have
outstripped it (while providing no evidence of this claim) both fundamentally misunderstand that
the mass line is the method of Communist leadership in which the guiding thought of revolution
is tested, refined, and improved. The revisionists and rightists see the mass line as anything but
the Communist method of leadership. Their attacks on the mass line are nothing short of an
attack on the concept of leadership—they seek to leave the masses where they are and stubbornly
attack anything which moves in a forward motion, the motion provided by correct leadership.

Avakianite Deviation

Revisionist and traitor to Maoism, Bob Avakian, under the common cover of having
concentrated the good from MLM while having “ruptured” with the “bad,” has claimed to have
established a new ideological guideline which he refers to as a “continuity and rupture.” In doing
so, he makes his own attack against the mass line. Of course, he tries to justify this attack with an
effort to debase Mao, using his own distorted understanding of Mao. According to Avakian:

“Mao did not determine that they needed to go to the countryside and launch a people’s war in
the countryside, rather than trying to build up the movement in the cities and then launch urban
insurrections—he did not determine that primarily, or essentially, by systematizing the scattered
ideas of the masses. He did it by making a scientific assessment of the contradictions in society,
and the relative strength of various forces, and where the strength of various forces was
concentrated—and that’s the way he developed that whole strategic approach of surrounding the
cities from the countryside and carrying out a new democratic revolution through protracted
people’s war in those circumstances.”

Perhaps when making an analysis of objective conditions, the primary consideration was not
exclusively the ideas of the masses. But in order to act upon these conditions, in order to
mobilize the masses to fight in accordance with the revolutionary strategy, in order for the Party
to lead in this—the mass line was essential. Knowing this, we have to understand basic
deviations from the mass line. One being tailism, which is to tail behind the pre-existing
consciousness of the masses refusing to advance them, and the other commandism, which is to
position elites as the wealth spring of correct ideas, and refusing to advance the masses by not
ever learning anything from them. If we understand these deviations we can understand what the
source of correct ideas is, derived from studying Mao’s other writings; It is social practice in
three main forms: the class struggle, scientific experiment, and production. All three are constant
(at various quantities and qualities) conditions of the masses, they form the reality of the masses.
Even so, there are relatively few advanced ideas among the masses, intermediate ideas are more
numerous, and some really backward ideas exist. It is the responsibility of the Communist to
analyze and synthesize these diverse ideas when attempting to lead the masses. Because of their
role in class struggle, experimentation, and production, the ideas of the masses are literally
invaluable. No one, regardless of their intelligence, can outthink the masses as a whole. Avakian
assumes to have accomplished just that—he has outthought not only the masses but the entirety
of the International Communist Movement.

Here Avakian tries to squirm around his own commandist method of leadership by insinuating
that the mass line is somehow antithetical to, or in irreconcilable contradiction with a concrete
analysis of concrete conditions. His contempt for the masses is so severe that in his idealism he
has come to see them as a hive of false consciousness. In a moment of honesty, and what might
be considered a Freudian slip, he admits that his Party, with himself at the helm, was only ever
distorters of the mass line:

“When we tried to incorporate this ‘mass line’ into our party documents—the Party Constitution,
or other things—we found we had to strain it, we had to stretch it and twist it so much that it no
longer was really the ‘mass line’ that Mao had put forward.”

In order to fully promote his own ideas, largely divorced from class struggle, scientific
experiment, and production, he must also attack leadership in the form of the mass line, because
it brings him one more demarcation between himself and Maoism—all while he is claiming to
have just outgrown it ideologically. This maneuver can only be understood as ego-driven
counterrevolutionary rightism in essence. To push this counterrevolutionary ideology on his
followers and would be followers, he must not position the masses as being valuable at all to the
process of revolution. Consequently, without faith in the masses, one ceases to be a revolutionary
and degenerates quickly into a cynic, and comes to see the masses as mainly backward thinking,
a mix of bad and worse ideas—especially in a country like the US where ruling class ideology
comes in a thousand and one different flavors of reaction.

However, as Mao insisted numerous times in his battles with rightists, 90 percent of the people
are good and can become sympathetic to the cause of socialism. The reason for this sympathy
lies in the fact that the concrete conditions of the masses in their great majority make them prone
to a certain type of thinking and ideas. After all, it is our material reality which determines our
consciousness and thinking. Mao never professed to leave the ideas of the masses intact or see
them as a homogenous group. Peasant ideology is rooted in feudalism, but the contradictions
mean that these ideas can be molded and worked forward with Communist leadership to develop
consciousness based on class struggle—class consciousness. The mode of production produces a
certain ideology, but it also produces the class struggle which creates opposing ideology. Let’s
look into this revisionist distortion by going back to Mao once more and engaging with the
assertion that Mao did not use the mass line when coming to his historic and world-changing
positions.

In 1927, Mao spent 32 days in Hunan, making a concrete analysis of concrete conditions to be
presented to his Party in the Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan. Of course, this great
report was initially rejected by the dogmatists and rightists in the Party who, like Avakian, lacked
faith in the masses of people. The Hunan report used a then-untheorized mass line. After all,
Mao based his analysis of the subjective conditions on nothing less than the ideas of the peasants
themselves. He would use the mass line not only to ascertain the subjective factor of the
peasantry and the Communists, but to lead the peasants in rising to match what was demanded
by the objective conditions. The ideas of the masses are determined by the concrete conditions
and by class contradictions, and not the other way around. However, to mobilize the masses in a
People’s War, they must be led on the basis of what they can grasp and what Communists can
convince them of. In short, they have to be led with the mass line method of Communist
leadership. Upon entering Hunan, Mao listened attentively to reports, which necessarily included
reports on what the peasants were thinking and feeling (their ideas), of who they thought of as
their main enemies and why. It was these reports that led Mao to the revolutionary conclusion
that the peasants would rise regardless of the revolutionaries’ ideas about the situation. He issued
a stern warning to those who remained in doubt:

“In a very short time, in China’s central, southern and northern provinces, several hundred
million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that
no power, however great, will be able to hold it back. They will smash all the trammels that bind
them and rush forward along the road to liberation. They will sweep all the imperialists,
warlords, corrupt officials, local tyrants and evil gentry into their graves. Every revolutionary
party and every revolutionary comrade will be put to the test, to be accepted or rejected as they
decide. There are three alternatives. To march at their head and lead them? To trail behind them,
gesticulating and criticizing? Or to stand in their way and oppose them? Every Chinese is free to
choose, but events will force you to make the choice quickly.”

Take note that all correct understandings of the mass line see it as a necessity to prevent standing
in the way of the masses or tailing behind the masses. This is why Maoists insist that it is the
method of Communist leadership. Surely Mao’s certainty of increasing uprisings was in no way
divorced from the ideas of the peasantry in Hunan—the very peasant masses who would put
these ideas into action under the leadership of the Party. Mao himself was no mystic; he was
never a fortune teller. It was through analysis and correct leadership methods that everything he
predicted would take place in the time frame he laid out in his report.
Ideology and ideas become part of a materialist analysis of concrete conditions. Such an analysis
works with the mass line and does not negate it, but completes it and leads the sequence forward.
By inserting a false contradiction Avakian simply jettisons the role of the people and cynically
insists that their ideas are wrong or irrelevant, or if we are charitable here, that the ideas of the
masses are inessential. By doing this he places experts, what he calls “scientific revolutionaries,”
in command. He sees himself as chief among these, and like every revisionist before him
including Liu Shao Chi and Deng Xiaoping, the ideas of what the people want are nothing but
the ramblings of ignorant and stupid hordes who need to sit down and listen to their experts. He
casts aside all lessons of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in this respect. In order to
accomplish all this, he makes the assumption (an assumption shared by rightists) that the mass
line is not the method of Communist leadership, but a method of analysis by itself. This position
has never at any point been held by actual Maoists.

Avakian is but one example of a largely discredited revisionist who openly rails against the mass
line. He is given priority here not because he has that many people listening to him, but precisely
because he does not. This fact alone should light a fire among other rightists and make them seek
to correctly grasp and apply the mass line.

The mass line is the method of leadership and not the method of analysis, but it is produced by
and in harmony with dialectical materialism, the philosophic base of all scientific Marxism,
which today is expressed in the form of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, and
not any “new-synthesis.” Rejecting the mass line is an essential requirement of putting forth a
“synthesis” that has never been tested by reality and cannot conform to it, and hence will find no
traction when it is propagated to and subsequently interrogated by the masses, which is the third
step of the reiterative mass line sequence. By rejecting the mass line, Avakian and his followers
have found a way out of the conundrum of the scientific method which tests every theory in
practice. Avakian just stops at constructing a hypothesis and pushes this like dope on a few
desperate people. Without the mass line, thankfully very few fall for his deceit, and his clique of
revisionists shrinks every year and will age into non-existence.

Pragmatism is Not the Mass Line

Many degenerate ideas regarding the mass line are based in a rightist conception of the masses
themselves, which sees revolutionary activity as pointless and instead supplements it with
protest-activist culture and lifestyleism. Think of all the people who show up at every
demonstration and pass out their signs to those in attendance just to take propaganda photos that
make their three people look like 300. These people are primarily interested in using the
intermediate ideas of the masses as an excuse to do next to nothing, exactly what they are used to
doing. They are content with protest hopping, getting into some city politics, or another electoral
“criticism” by running their tired and doomed candidates. They think the mass line means
kissing ass and false flattery—the very last thing the masses want from self-professed
revolutionaries. In essence, groups like Party for Socialism and Liberation as well as the
Avakianites are both guilty of this protest hopping, but only the former takes this rightist
approach to elections (claiming that it builds their base) while the latter outright rejects the ideas
of the masses. Both are fundamentally wrong.

The pragmatists often find themselves in student organizing and protest hopping or just riding
waves of spontaneity among the masses, because they reject any attempts to build sustainable
organizations of the masses on the community level. Orientation toward whatever movement is
in vogue or has any mass appeal at the time, without developing any real independent structures
or authentic base building projects which go lower and deeper among the most profound masses,
are the hallmarks of these deserters and rejecters of the mass line. They believe in “whatever
works.” This is a major ideological defect since the “whatever works” approach negates politics
and will not work in the long term anyway. This rightist opportunist error is most evident in the
left refoundationalists or big-tent socialists (with one example being Philly Socialists and another
being the former Kasama project), as well front organizations like the People’s Congress of
Resistance. Consequently, these same pragmatists, because of their ideological defects
(eclecticism among others), tend to attack anything resembling ideologically consolidated and
unified Maoists—all while claiming that their organizations “have Maoists in them.” What else
can the pragmatist claim while adhering to a “whatever works” mentality? Surely a Maoist
would stand for ideological struggle and find themselves in inevitable contradiction with these
projects anyway, and either capitulate to the big-tent eclecticism or be pushed out. The argument
that they maintain Maoist members is generally a red herring to distract from their basic
opposition to Maoism as an ideology and method of work. In any event, none can claim the
leadership of Maoists, they bust down the question of leadership to a trivial matter. This is in
harmony with their rejection of the mass line more generally in the ideological sense and more
specifically in their practice.

“Whatever works” is not the mass line. Whateverism is not Communist by any stretch of the
imagination. For the Communist, the question is not what works but what it is working toward,
which class is it actually serving, and so on. The pragmatist, due to these ideological defects,
cannot fathom the relationship between quantity and quality and the dialectical contradictions
which have produced them as a unity of opposites which is present in all mass work. The
pragmatic approach is to get as many people as possible at the expense of politics rather than to
get the politics to as many as possible.

Quantity and quality mutually transform one another in their internal processes. To focus on one
at the expense of the other is to reject both fundamentally, settling on a prop, a faked version to
display to the armature, and rope them into projects which essentially cannot provide
revolutionary leadership to the masses. True quantity and true quality are in reality inseparable.
Each is a product of the other’s existence. Those lured in by the very idea of big turn outs are
making a fundamental philosophical deviation not based on any revolutionary science or any
coherent political theory. They default to populism, right opportunism in a nut shell. As a
contradiction, quality and quantity play off one another and transform one another accordingly.
At a certain stage quantitative development will transform into its own specific quality, and that
new quality will accomplish a new quantity. In mass mobilizations, Communists, through
leadership or even simple participation, must draw the most advanced sections of the masses into
increasingly stable and disciplined forms of organization. This is how quantity and quality
interpenetrate organizing. Whether Communists accomplish this progression is totally
determined by their mastery of the mass line as the method of leadership they are providing. By
the way of historical materialism we can detect these sequences throughout every successful
revolution to date.

Other Distorters

Many right opportunists praise things like the “rapid expansion of the Party.” These rapid
expansions (and the praise for them) lack critical analysis or any Leninist conception of what a
Party of professional revolutionaries is, or how these revolutionaries are tempered in class
struggle. They attribute this “rapid expansion” to their use of the “mass line”—a mass line which
is seen as a method of organization or analysis more so than the method of leadership. Rapid
expansion at the expense of temperament and testing is not the mass line. It is, again, populism.
The populist, like the pragmatist, is concerned mainly with numbers and reproduction of
activism, and only secondarily with politics, so they lean toward eclecticism and become soft on
revisionism even while claiming to be consolidated around and united on the basis of MLM. Not
big-tent in form, but dig a little deeper and you will find the same eclectic reasoning behind the
demands for a new “heterodox” Maoism as espoused by the rapid expansionist braggarts.

This “heterodox Maoism” is like a “new synthesis of communism” for those who wish to
dispense with the content of MLM while brandishing the name as a distraction. This time, it is
MLM in name, but in essence it consists of whatever academic trends are in vogue at the
moment mashed together. After all, with a rejection of the mass line, the organization itself will
begin orienting toward incorrect sections of the masses, like campus liberals, red-washed
postmodernists, and other assorted incorrect ideas. These rightist organizations have to go soft on
them or they will alienate their social-media-cultural base. They are making “revolution” for the
likes, something Avakian correctly points out, only to come to the insane and opposite
conclusion that the masses’ ideas are stupid and wrong. We have entered into a revisionist house
of mirrors and must start to break them one by one in order to gravitate closer to the truth of
these errors.
The claim made by a faction of Canadians that “the mass line is the means by which organization
happens” is a distortion of politics, and particularly of Communist leadership. Organization
happens regardless of the mass line. Organization happens often with incorrect leadership,
incorrect methods of leadership, and even on the basis of many incorrect and sometimes
reactionary ideas. Organization can happen spontaneously and organically and is relative to its
adjacent disorganization. So the mass line is not the means by which organization happens. In
this case, what is correct and what is incorrect have not been understood as one dividing into
two, but are instead lumped together for the sake of “rapid expansion” or campus populism,
which necessarily has to pander toward the eclectic mess of a postmodern terrain. Two are
combined into one, and the mass line is now just “organization” with no class character, a thing
any old cretin can use. Calls for “heterodoxy” are presented as forward thinking and progressive,
but at their core they are calls to make excuses for ideological concessions and break with the
uncomfortable question of a high level of discipline (this is not to present an argument for
dogmatic Orthodoxy which casts its own foul shadows).

To accomplish this “rapid expansion,” the defector will assert that what they call “political
leadership” is preferable to organized leadership. They will frame working for official positions
of leadership as a “bureaucratic maneuver” instead of understanding properly that holding
official leadership positions should be understood as the result of providing good political
leadership, that both are part of a whole and not essentially at odds with one another.
Communists believe in the importance of organizing. So, when entering into mass organizations,
or mass struggles, the Communist aims to provide the best political leadership possible and
consciously works toward earning positions of official leadership via mass democracy. It’s
simply false to assume that organizational leadership comes at the expense of political leadership
or the other way around. By insisting that these are separate or mutually exclusive, the defector
of the mass line attempts to reduce leadership down to a vague influence. This method allows the
mass organizations to float ephemerally aside the Party and reduces the Party’s ability to exercise
its full potential in providing leadership to its own mass organization. This is a rightist attack on
the mass line.

“Rapid expansion” is only desirable to rightists who over-value quantity, falsely separating it
from quality, supposedly in the interests of the “mass party.” In some instances, this distortion of
the mass line is directly offered up as a cloaked pretext to “rupturing” with the very theory of a
vanguard Party of professional revolutionaries. Again, the excuse of “continuity and rupture” is
unpacked in the same way as Avakian, only the Maoist mask has not yet slipped all the way off.

According to J. Moufawad-Paul, when highlighting what he considers the universal tenants of

MLM in his book titled “Continuity and Rupture,” he claims that “the revolutionary party must
also become a mass party and renew itself by being held to account by those it claims to
represent (the mass line).”
Moufawad-Paul smuggles in two “ruptures” here which are not actually found in the works or
teachings of MLM’s 6 greatest teachers, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Gonzalo. Those
are 1) that the “party” must become a “mass party”, and 2) that the mass line is not so much a
method of leadership, but a method of accountability in transforming the vanguard Party of
professional revolutionaries into the a vast mass party. It should be noted that aspects of the mass
line do in fact hold leadership accountable to the masses by basing itself on the masses, however,
it is useful to examine Lenin on this question regarding the Party of the proletariat and not the
“mass party.” Lenin states:

“I assert: (1) that no revolutionary movement can endure without a stable organization of leaders
maintaining continuity; (2) that the broader the popular mass drawn spontaneously into the
struggle, which forms the basis of the movement and participates in it, the more urgent the need
for such an organization, and the more solid this organization must be (for it is much easier for
all sorts of demagogues to side-track the more backward sections of the masses); (3) that such an
organization must consist chiefly of people professionally engaged in revolutionary activity; (4)
that in an autocratic state, the more we confine the membership of such an organization to people
who are professionally engaged in revolutionary activity and who have been professionally
trained in the art of combating the political police, the more difficult will it be to unearth the
organization; and (5) the greater will be the number of people from the working class and from
the other social classes who will be able to join the movement and perform active work in it.”

Here Lenin makes a clear demarcation between the Party work of the professional
revolutionaries which form the stable core of leaders, those being Party cadres, and the masses
drawn into the movement. He insists that having this core not only draws more masses into the
struggle, but that the drawing of masses necessitates an even firmer core. As we know, the more
advanced the resistance becomes, the more repressive the bourgeois state becomes (more
autocratic). This nuanced and thoroughly dialectical materialist position put forward by Lenin is
the exact opposite of a “mass party,” which this one distorter of the mass line claims is a
characteristic of Maoism. Lenin, on the other hand, is actually relying on a nascent untheorized
mass line when promoting the exact antithesis of a “mass party.” It is clear that through this
nascent and untheorized mass line that Lenin is speaking of the Party’s role in leading the
masses. By inserting the bad formula of the “mass party,” JMP is not making an iteration of the
mass line but its negation. He is subverting the role of leadership by placing the masses into the
party as a “mass party.” This is a prime example of right opportunism’s insistence on tailing the
masses, and it speaks volumes about the theory of the “mass line” espoused by the party he
supports. By seeing the mass line and mainly the way the masses hold the Party accountable and
not as the principle means of leading the masses we can see the tailist thinking at play, which in
turn feeds the ideas of rapid expansion at the expense of ideology and the insistence that the
“Maoist party” is a “mass party”.
The way that the Party is able to mobilize the broadest and deepest masses is found in its
successful application and its correct grasp of the mass line. Gonzalo (Chairman of the
Communist Party of Peru and leader of the Protracted People’s War in Peru) explained that in
order for the Party to carry out its role as leader, the masses must sustain, support, and carry the
Party forward. Here, Gonzalo is presenting the dialectical materialist understanding of the
relationship between the Party and the masses and the way in which the former leads the later.
He explains that the masses “would come to see that it is their Party, that it defends their
interests. And it is the masses themselves who will settle accounts, giving a just punishment to
those who for decades have sold out and who continue to sell out the proletariat’s basic interests,
and they will also condemn and sanction those traitors who try to do so or begin to do so.” In
this, we can ascertain how the Party uses its links with the masses to develop a mighty,
unstoppable force, although it may be relatively small. Again, what is primary is the link
between the masses and the Party, not the quantity of masses in the Party. In both the
theorizations by Lenin and Gonzalo we see the fusion of quantity into quality and quality into
quantity—the Party itself is viewed as a contradiction which is a focal point of the contradictions
of the masses. The quantity and quality contradictions form a unity of opposites and its correct
leadership. The mass line is one means in which the Party ensures this unity and replenishes
itself with the most advanced and true children of the proletariat. It is no surprise that JMP, in the
same book, makes an attack on the Maoist conception of leadership in his critique of what he
misunderstands as “Jefatura” put forward by Gonzalo (which simply means great leadership as
opposed to nominal elected leadership). This critique goes so far as to unpack the old worn out
“personality cult” argument. This has already been addressed by others in other places so we will
leave it, and mention it simply to highlight the overall rejection of leadership espoused by the
author.

A fundamental understanding which must be stressed is that the mass line is not a neutral
occurrence, or a non-partisan tool or method of organizing. It is not simply “a method of
leadership,” it is the Communist method of leadership. It is not one option among several; it is all
powerful because it corresponds with reality and the laws of dialectical materialism. Another
aberration in theorizing the mass line can be found in the published sections of the book “The
Mass Line and the American Revolutionary Movement” by Scott Harrison, a former RCP-USA
member who left by the time that party lost all semblance of reason and drifted to the depths of
revisionist nonsense. Unfortunately, and in spite of the many good attributes of this book in
progress, the author finds himself in contradiction and presents the reader with a peculiar
analysis.

Even having left the RCP-USA and articulating some good disagreements with it (Avakianism
and their rejection wholesale of the mass line among others), Harrison still did not manage to
break with some of the long-held revisionist viewpoints of his former organization. Specifically,
he holds a dogmatic position on “October Road” insurrectionism, and rejected the universality of
Protracted People’s War. This might not obviously come into contradiction for some readers, but
dig a little deeper. By interrogating the most basic assumptions the contradictions reveal
themselves.

Scott Harrison correctly insists that the mass line is the method of Communist leadership, as we
have done here, so we are in agreement thus far. However, things get a bit jumbled when
leadership is not clearly defined in terms of trajectory—where is this method of leadership to
take the masses? Since the author in question rejects the validity of Protracted People’s War as a
universal strategy to be applied to the particular conditions of each country including imperialist
countries, and instead opts for an antiquated theory of October Road strategy (a strategy that has
systematically failed in every application) and considering that the insurrection of 1917 with the
Bolshevik storming of the Winter Palace was in reality part of an overall and then-untheorized
Protracted People’s War, this willful clinging to a mistheorization of the past results ironically in
a negation of the mass line. His conception is one in which the role of the masses in armed
struggle, their education in revolutionary violence is consciously or subconsciously undermined
and subverted. The logic then has to switch back to the pragmatism of “whatever works” as a
substitute for the mass line.

Either the masses make history or they do not, either the Party must lead and mobilize the masses
in the shaping of the world or it must not. There cannot be both at once. These opposites must
outdo one another, they are antagonistic. Any successful application of the mass line method of
Communist leadership will certainly involve the masses themselves in the central task, which is
the conquest of power, led by the Party. In this long war, the masses themselves will become
increasingly accomplished in revolutionary violence: this is where their blood fuses and mingles
with the Communists and the Red Army. This is where the Red Army becomes the main force of
the Party’s mass work and the masses themselves are drawn into expanding military formations.
This entire struggle is for the purpose of preparing the masses of people to exercise their
proletarian dictatorship over the bourgeoisie, and every step of the way it is the Party which
leads, and the masses are not spectators but fully active agents in this seizure of power. Again it
is the masses, led by the Party, who carry on this revolutionary struggle under socialism.

Those who seek to limit the role of the masses when it comes time for the highest expression of
class struggle, the armed struggle, are utilizing a hollowed out shell of the mass line. Maoism is a
series of contradictions which form a whole body, a coherent ideological basis for making
revolution in the world today. It is not a piecemeal mix of spare parts or a mix-a-bag where
anyone can just fabricate the aspects they like and expect what they come up with to maintain its
integrity. What they come up with, most certainly whether it claims to be the mass line or not,
no longer resembles the mass line, let alone Marxism.
This article is limited in its scope, as a genuine and succinct iteration of the mass line and its
subsequent theorization is carried out organizationally and primarily through mass work. The
intended purpose of this article is to highlight some common errors in grasping the mass line and
challenge these viewpoints in the interest of upholding its essence. It is neither intended to be a
polemic or a positions document and as such it is restricted by certain considerations. We, the
author and editors, recognize these considerations, and have not contended with an overall
theorization of the mass line. This article was produced in the interest of ideological struggle and
our hope is that it makes a modest contribution to correcting some of the aberrations and
deviations from the mass line. As it is an attempt at correction, it is just as much a defense of the
mass line against rightist attacks. The correct method of leadership is always in motion; once it is
mastered and matures it has a liberating effect on organizing.
 The Criticism of Mortals
Comrade Kavga, Struggle Sessions Editorial Board
29 June 2018

In only a matter of a few days, author JMP has responded to the article titled “In Defense of the
Mass Line against Rightist Attacks,” which critiques one of the conceptions he put forward
regarding the mass line and the Maoist Party. He failed however to include links to the article, or
even mention the article by name. We can forgive his indirectness but ask no forgiveness for the
fact that we at Struggle Sessions are direct. By failing to link the article, to quote it, or even cite
it, he has intentionally or not maneuvered around the critique in such a way as to move the
goalpost. His argument is that we think he is espousing “Luxemburgism”—we do not. For
starters, in spite of her many faults, Rosa Luxemburg was a genuine revolutionary, a martyr, and
an eagle of her Party; we do not consider JMP to be of this caliber any more than we consider his
conception of the Party to be in line with the insignificant tendency she created, albeit
unintentionally.

The argument, which he fails to mention, centers on the mass line being viewed by him as little
more than a process of accountability in which the Party becomes the “mass party.” While his
conception of the “mass party” is not the incorrect theory put forward by Luxemburg, it is still
incorrect in its own right. He totally ignores the argument for the mass line as the method
Communist leadership, principally.

So let’s talk of bringing the masses into the Party and JMP’s notion of the “mass vanguard
party.” The Party must always replenish and in some cases replace its ranks by developing the
advanced masses into Communists. This is not to say that the Party itself ever takes on the form
of a “mass party.” The vanguard Party has always been explained as the advanced detachment of
the masses. It is antithetical to the “mass party,” and there is no such thing as the “mass vanguard
party,” which is a contradiction in terms, or an oxymoron. The Maoist Party as expressed by
Gonzalo is where the few converge. In the General Political Line (GPL) of the Communist Party
of Peru, in the section dedicated to the mass line, Gonzalo gives us a precise quotation that sets
to rights the distortion expressed by JMP and others when it states, “Organize the masses so that
they can go beyond what is permitted by the existing legal order, so that they struggle to destroy
the old order and not to maintain it. This is accomplished by use of the three instruments of the
revolution: The Party where the few converge, the Army with more participants, and the new
State/Front which is the base which progressively accumulates the masses through leaps. In the
countryside, this is achieved through People’s Committees and in the cities through the People’s
Revolutionary Defense Movement. In this way, the tradition of electoral fronts, which the
revisionists and opportunists apply to channel the struggle of the peasantry and to divert the
masses in the cities from not seizing power through war, is destroyed.” This is very much in line
with the quotation from Lenin included in “Defending the Mass Line against Rightist Attacks.”
In the above quote, the relationship between the three instruments is articulated correctly, as well
as the forward motion of leadership through reiterative sequences that are encapsulated by the
mass line. This document (GPL) is one of most clear-cut articulations of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, to date. What is more, it is everything that
JMP is opposed to when it comes to his “mass line” and “mass party” position.

The convergence of the few is not a formulation the PCP put forward casually or by mistake; it is
actually the scientific way in which the Party acts as the spinal column of the whole mass
movement. The masses and the Party are clearly demarcated. It is not enough for JMP to insist
that he upholds the Leninist conception of the vanguard Party while he puts forward the exact
negation of its essence—he must go further, and try to use the “mass line” as a means for
liquidating the convergence of the few, which is a fundamental characteristic of the Maoist Party.

Academics, even left-academics, have an ingrained compulsion to reinvent the wheel, to put their
own stamp on what is already adequately explained by the great teachers of Communism. JMP is
no exception to this rule; on the contrary, his work is a glaring example of this phenomenon.
While the book Continuity and Rupture does, in fact, deserve a more nuanced and detailed
polemic than this blog/theoretical journal is able to provide at this time, we would be remiss if
we failed to criticize it altogether. So this rebranding of theory from both his blog, MLM
Mayhem, and his books needs to be addressed. This is particularly true because the author here
hides behind this rebranding. What he puts forward is neither new nor correct, but simply an
attempt on his part to seem like an interventionist and inventive theorist.

Throughout his work he uses these same maneuvers, rebranding what Lenin calls the worship of
the spontaneity of the masses—for this he makes up the term “movementism.” Combine this
with loose terminology like “oppressed genders” and “continuity and rupture” and you get the
general idea that he is making his name off of made-up terms to describe things that are already
clear while making minor distortions or lumping things together into hybrids. This article is
intended to unpack this criticism only a little when it comes to his positions on continuing and
rupturing.

The argument in his book is summed up in the following quotation in the recent blog post: “The
RIM position was thus a ruptural [sic] position because it broke from claims that there could be
nothing more than Marxism-Leninism, that a third stage of the science was somehow foreclosed,
and in breaking from this simplistic idea established scientific continuity.” He fails to be
anywhere near precise and does not let us know who these mysterious figures are that believed
revolutionary science could not ever develop past Marxism-Leninism. He could be referring to
the Hoxhaists, of course, and is hence implying that MLM is a rupture with Hoxhaism, and that
genuine Maoists (who are the Marxist-Leninists today) ruptured from Hoxhaists. This hardly
makes sense considering the fact that these people were never part of the general movements that
produced nascent Maoism to begin with. If anything their dogmato-revisionism is a rupture from
Marxism-Leninism and not the other way around. To be charitable, we could assume he means
that there are somewhere adherents to Mao Zedong Thought who are still convinced that ML
could not possibly reach a higher stage. These people still calling themselves Maoist seem to
already indict themselves as confused. Either way, it is not so much that these types believe that
Marxism-Leninism cannot be developed into a new stage, but that they contest that is has been,
in the form of Maoism. So who is it that insists revolutionary science cannot develop further?
Certainly, even MLM could develop to another stage, a fourth and higher stage. This would
require a serious development in all three component parts of Marxism, though. This overall
development is the criterion used to evaluate an ideology when considering whether or not it is a
new and higher stage. The criterion of rupturing is just reinventing the wheel–this time without
spokes or tires.

Breaking from “claims” that were never really claims made by the International Communist
Movement generally is hardly a “rupture with Marxism-Leninism.” In fact, if you go back to the
point in time when Marxism was synthesized (mainly by comrade Stalin) into
Marxism-Leninism, there was absolutely no need to frame this new and higher stage as “a
rupture with Marxism.” This is because Marxism-Leninism was clearly a development of and an
enrichment of Marxism. It was not the emergence of revisionism that Stalin was “rupturing
from” but new objective developments that, when incorporated into the ideology, advanced its
three component parts–Marxist political economy, scientific socialism, and Marxist philosophy.
It is the Trotskyites—not Marxist-Leninists—who claim that Stalin’s synthesis was a rupture
with Marxism. Likewise, when MLM was synthesized, mainly by Gonzalo, there was no
insistence that it was a rupture with Marxism-Leninism ideologically, but again an enrichment of
it, and recognition of its overall development into a new and higher stage on the basis of new
discoveries correlating with the objective conditions. In this case, we do not see so much of a
rebranding from JMP but more of an adulteration. This is an example of a desperate attempt on
his part to divorce himself from the legacy of Stalin, a desperation that is as common as
postmodernism among academics. There is, in fact, a rupture here, but it is not on the part of
MLM but on the part of JMP.

Let’s examine then where JMP is rupturing and what exactly he is rupturing with. He
consistently places the development of MLM to the credit of the Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement (RIM), while begrudgingly accepting the fact that Maoism, as we know it, was
actually synthesized by the Communist Party of Peru (PCP) as early as 1983 (even though he
would move this date back to 1988). By crediting the RIM, much later he is able to wedge some
distance between himself and the body of theory produced by the initiators of MLM. It is this
synthesis put forward by the PCP and their conception of Maoism that JMP is hell-bent on
rupturing with, obscuring and liquidating. His book, as mentioned in the previous article in this
journal, contains a clear attack on the theory of Jefatura, which translates into great leadership, as
opposed to just the position of elected leadership. Great leadership—which is recognized by the
Party and which has emerged in two-line struggle–also provides a guiding thought to the
revolution. Guiding thought is another tenet of MLM that JMP is rupturing with; elsewhere he
has shown a specific dismissal of Gonzalo Thought and squirms at the very idea that it could
have universal aspects that need to be applied to our specific conditions.

Critically, and what is the clearest indictment of the right-opportunism on the part of this author,
he also rejects Party militarization and the concentric construction of the three instruments of
revolution, both of which are irreconcilable with his ideas that the Maoist Party becomes a “mass
party.” Militarization and concentric construction were both put forward in the very documents
in which MLM was synthesized, as core parts of MLM, and not as a mere application of MLM to
the conditions of Peru. Even more obvious as an example of the rightism he pushes are his past
attacks on the formulation of principally Maoism. These are the real-world elements of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, which he is rupturing with, but he has been
trained to wiggle out of criticism and does a great job applying this training which he defaults to.
On one hand, he will invoke the name of the PCP (even using their propaganda art for his book
cover) and claim he is contributing to Maoism, while on the other he is gutting it of its essence
and promoting a “critical” (real talk: distorted) understanding of the PCP.

The rebranding comes back into play when he starts making excuses for his theory. What he
describes as “continuity and rupture” is sometimes just a convoluted intellectualization of the
very base concept of two-line struggle, now mystified by the drapery of “continuity and rupture.”
Maoists all understand that new developments are accomplished through internal line struggles
between left and right political lines. In the process, incorrect ideas are corrected and correct
ones emerge. All of this correlates to and interacts with the concrete conditions of class struggle,
which the Party is subject to. While one could say, “All JMP means by this expression is this
process of two-line struggle,” and while we would hardly disagree with the fact that line struggle
is the motor for internal changes, for adaptations and adjustments, we insist that this is not what
he is smuggling in. Two-line struggle has been explained and needs no new terminology to
justify itself or its process or what it accomplishes in terms of growth. Nonetheless two-line
struggle is also where revisionism is exposed. With organized two-line struggle the revisionists
are expelled and defeated. Part of two-line struggle is representing your opponent correctly–at
least mentioning the positions, books, or articles that you’re struggling against. This method is
not in his arsenal, so he must maneuver around the question. If the article is wrong then it is on
him to explain how; furthermore, this explanation should be precise and effective at proving the
article is rightist, revisionist, and so on. Instead he relies on the catch-all charge of dogmatism,
always leveled at anyone who defends the ideology against incorrect modifications, changes, and
adjustments that are actually in essence liquidationist.
Again, to frame this process of two-line struggle mainly as one of rupturing from revisionism
means that he considers the proletarian line to be nothing of its own but just a line that ceases to
be revisionist, making the revisionist line—that is to say the bourgeois line—principal and
default. This is a suspicious argument for a Maoist to make. Mao, while breaking with Soviet
modern revisionism, Mao was not actually rupturing with revisionism, he was never a
revisionist—revisionism was rupturing from Communism, and Mao simply articulated this. He
did so properly, without ever needing this formula of “continuity and rupture.” As mentioned,
this is not found in Mao’s writings on this or any other topic, at least to my understanding.

JMP claims that he adopted this terminology from the Communist (Maoist) Party of Afghanistan,
which is not surprising since he pushes their theory to the front and the theory of the PCP to the
side. To reiterate: the article never accused him of being original, just of being full of shit. It is
easy to see through his attempts to justify his terms by pushing the burden onto the CmPA. His
arguments against Jefatura are likewise reliant on accusations of a “personality cult,” which is
nothing new in the world of bourgeois academia and has a tradition all the way back to
Khrushchev himself, who reigned atop the revisionist kingdom. In the example of JMP, however,
it is not Khrushchev whom he is borrowing from, as the whole argument against Jefatura in his
book might as well be copied-and-pasted from “Against Avakianism” by Ajith. In the spirit of
understanding that two-line struggle does indeed exist in all things we have to always state,
without being shy that it exists in the ICM as well, that adherents to and propagandists of this
line–whether they are JMP, OCML/VP, Ajith, or others—are in fact the rightist line of the ICM
against the leftist line as represented by the teachings of Chairman Gonzalo and his students.

JMP, in his vague response to “In Defense of the Mass Line against Rightist Attacks,” goes so far
as to state that Marxism-Leninism had “revisionist limits,” which really negates where and why
revisionism emerges. Revisionism, like two-line struggle, will emerge in any and every
Communist formation until class has been abolished as surely as the class struggle will continue
on in the Party and under socialism. What is important is learning how to fight it, suppress it, and
eradicate it—In short, how to impose the left upon the right in organized two-line struggle.
Marxism-Leninism did not contain some imagined “revisionist limit” that it inevitably came to.
To argue this is to argue that revisionism is something ideologically innate in Marxism-Leninism
instead of a product of the class struggle that emerges in the expression of capitalist roaders
inside of the Communist Party. In fact, Marxism-Leninism waged tireless struggles against
revisionism from its inception, and it was in these struggles that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism,
principally Maoism, developed as the third and highest stage of Marxism.

As predicted before, without pause JMP resorts to charging “In Defense of the Mass Line against
Rightist Attacks” (and really all of his critics) with dogmatism. This is the go-to insult for some
academics and all of the big-tent socialists, an easy, prepackaged way to attack the ideologically
consolidated opponents to their “heterodoxy” or eclectic nonsense. This charge is tricky though
because it just shows a dogmatic adherence to his own supposed heterodoxy, a fidelity to his
false frameworks and the made-up terms he uses to smuggle in rightist lines under the banner of
MLM. A commitment to the teachings of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph
Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Chairman Gonzalo does not in and of itself mean “dogmatism.” It is
more just a defense of what is correct in the foundation of MLM, principally Maoism, and not
trying to make up terminology or jump at the chance to “rupture” with our core values. To be
dogmatic would mean an insistence that the science cannot grow or develop; this is not our
position. We assert simply that the “ruptures” of “theorists” like JMP are not so much
improvements or better articulations but themselves revisionist deviations.

Even the title of his response is obscurantist; by claiming that he is just still waiting for an
“honest” response to his work he frames all criticism of his work as dishonest. Of course, in his
view, anyone disagreeing with him is a challenge to his intellect and therefore must be a liar,
since he sees his working method as the absolute criterion of the truth. Maoists should at the very
least (keeping in mind the nature of two-line struggle) be able to admit the very possibility that
they are incorrect. What is more, they should try to prove the correctness of their theoretical
positions with engagement, not through deflection. The last article openly calls his specific work
into question, while he relies on vagueness to distort criticism and dismiss it on his blog.

His deflection is coupled neatly with the charge that all critiques are rooted in a “misreading” or
a misunderstanding of his work, due to our ignorance or possibly malice. In no universe he can
conceive of could the academic be contradicted by actual Maoists, loyal to the revolutionary
project. According to JMP, the only people stupid enough to criticize him are those who are too
dense to understand him. Either way, the fault is with everyone else and not the quality of his
work or which class it is in the service of. We critics are not content to leave this expert in
command and would much rather bombard his headquarters. He relies on his status as an
academic to invoke a social status above the lowly Maoists who have none of his bourgeois
training, as being the only “Maoist academic” in North America. He fancies himself special in
some way, even though he is only an adjunct professor. In the interests of reality and bringing
him back down to where the rest of us live, we should really inquire about who his supporters
are, since he’s already made it clear that he is beyond the criticism of mere mortals.

We have talked of the criticism of Continuity and Rupture, so let us ask him honestly: where is
the praise for it? We can all read the blurbs of praise from other “left” intellectuals in the first
world, but where is it being applied or studied in the actual struggles in the storm centers of
world revolution? Are there actual Maoists outside of Canada who find this book useful to our
ideology or enriching of its content? Has anyone encountered any? At best his book is ignored,
which is also evidenced by his title choice that he is still waiting for “honest” engagement. This
necessarily has to mean that no one at all in the Maoist world is praising it, since Maoists do not
praise uncritically. If there were honest praise (that is, from anyone but a cabal of followers)
there would be honest criticism, and he would not be left wondering where it is. The book itself
is only going to spread confusion on what Maoism is, where it emerged, and why, and is
ultimately put forward only in the interest of putting more titles into his list of writing
accomplishments. It is clear that the book, in its form and content, was not directed to actual
Maoists engaged in revolutionary struggle; its audience is other academics. This is something he
admits by and large. When the book is read critically against the classics, it is a major
disappointment. Clearly and based on the way in which he receives and responds to criticism, the
book is but a project of intellectual vanity, much like the blog associated with it. Regardless of
his lofty intentions, the book itself is an attempt to rebrand Maoism, its history, and its
worldview.

What is almost sad is that due to an inability to take criticism as anything but dishonest lies and
attacks JMP will likely have to keep waiting and waiting forever for an “honest critique” of
Continuity and Rupture. Surely nothing yelled from the mouths of mortals can reach the ears of
gods. He would be wise to hear, though, because history is merciless, and far crueler to the
arrogant than any polemic is capable of being.
 “Maoism” From Below
On the Right Opportunist, Revisionist, and Liquidationist Theory of J. Moufawad-Paul
Comrades Kavga and Anatoli K., Struggle Sessions Editorial Board
27 July 2018

Classical Trotskyite critiques of Marxism-Leninism tend to frame themselves as an attack on

“Stalinism” which is not actually a political tendency but a slur term used to void the teachings
of Lenin via an attack on the leadership of Stalin (this is now widely accepted by postmodernist
academics as well as Trotskyites). Some self-styled “Maoists” pick rotted fruit from the very
same tree as Tony Cliff, Hal Draper and other Trotskyites with persistent attacks on Lenin and
Stalin. Chief among these, at least in North America, is the blogger and adjunct professor of
philosophy J. Moufawad-Paul who is based out of Ontario, Canada. In his own words:

“Here we have a precise summation of that problem that can be called Stalinism: the monolithic
party that places centralism over democracy and thus, in the anxiety of safe-guarding the
revolution or even a revolutionary movement, produces dogmatism and a mechanistic approach
to theory and practice.” -Moufawad-Paul (Moufawad-paul.blogspot.com, on “Stalinism” Part 2,
emphasis ours)

By dismantling the above quotation we can see a sort of crypto-Trotskyite analysis. It is partially
true that due to making errors related to dialectical materialism Comrade Stalin did tend to make
the mistake of viewing things monolithically—including the Party and what he called advanced
socialist society. This however was not a matter of understanding centralism as principle over
democracy but due to negating the existence of internal two-line struggle, negating that class
struggle goes on inside of the Party itself. Moufawad-Paul is here attempting to flip democratic
centralism and excuse this inversion by misdiagnosing Stalin’s tendency to deprioritize internal
contradictions (over-determining the role of external factors) in favor of the old anti-Communist
trope of “totalitarianism” in other words. All Leninism and all Maoism view centralism as
principle over democracy in a unity of opposites—each requiring the existence of the other to
establish particular identities. Mao explains democratic centralism thus:

(1)the individual is subordinate to the organization;

(2) the minority is subordinate to the majority;
(3) the lower level is subordinate to the higher level; and
(4) the entire membership is subordinate to the Central Committee.

Points one and two deal with democracy, points three and four, which we have bolded for
emphasis, place centralism above democracy. It must be understood that in every historic
Communist Party worth remembering, the higher level is smaller than the lower level and the
Central Committee is even smaller—this is centralized structure in which the whole membership,
that means everyone in the Party is subjected to this centralism, making centralism the principle
aspect in this unity of opposites. This is not just a question of size, but the size reflects the
structure of discipline—the quantity and quality also forming a unity of opposites each lending
the other its particular identity as with democracy and centralism mentioned above. The
flattening of democratic centralism and the flattening of the quality/quantity contradiction are
two sprigs from the same failure at dialectics embodied in Moufawad-Paul’s positions and
theories.

Moufawad-Paul however in both his attacks on Stalin and his insistence on the “mass party” (see
struggle-sessions.com, The Criticism of Mortals) flattens out the unity of opposites, in his
distortion; no aspect of a contradiction is principle and dominant. Democracy and centralism stop
being a unity of opposites and start being two equals which co-exist peacefully without struggle.
He is, in short, gutting the essence of the Party. He is making an error in dialectical materialism
far worse than that of Stalin. Without this internal contradiction democratic centralism ceases to
function, by falsely smoothing over this contradiction he has eliminated the leading role of the
Party. One no longer divides into two; for Mouawad-Paul, two becomes one.

An argument quite similar to that of Moufawad-Paul’s was presented by Trotsky himself in

regard to “inter-party democracy” which was his way of framing his revisionist-liquidationist
politics. In practice Trotsky and his camp were extremely centralized, and the subsequent
Trotskyite movement was always centered on Trotsky the person. Nonetheless due to this
ideological maneuver and rattling of “democracy” as equal to centralism or dominant over
centralism, demands for “socialism from below” became the dog whistle of many Trotskyites
and remains so to this day. Dressed in some Mao-speak, Moufawad-Paul has made a new-return,
not to the principles foundational to Leninism but in the form of a distorted “Maoism” from
below. This is evidenced by his false equalizing of the democracy and centralism, quantity and
quality contradictions etc., a major issue we will continue addressing throughout the piece.

To make matters even more muddy, Moufawad-Paul claims that the false flattening of
contradictions in the form of equalizing democracy and centralism—which is in reality the
subordination of centralism to democracy, i.e. liquidationism — is a genuine contribution of
Chairman Mao! This argument however is absent in the major works and thought of Maoists. It
was made abundantly clear by those who synthesized it that MLM was not in any way a
diffusion of centralism.

We are among those who accuse Moufawad-Paul of importing postmodernism into Maoism
precisely because of his opposition to centralism which is taking the postmodernist diffused
power analysis and using it to diffuse the Party itself. The power of the masses is centralized in
the identity of the Party and this is the essence of Leninism and all subsequent theory derivative
of it.
Running like a thread throughout Moufawad-Paul’s blog, books, and twitter posts there is a
consistent revision of democratic centralism, the Party and the question of leadership. This has
finally manifested itself in the form of the now-rejected Party documents which one side of the
split in Canada still uphold and implement, this of course is the side in which Moufawad –Paul’s
ideas see heavy currency.

The error of “diffusing” the Party comes up again in Arsenal number 9 in various places, a
journal now denounced by the Party in Canada. In the article “The Mass Line and Communist
Methods of Mass Work” the camp which embraces the ideas of Moufawad-Paul state:

“In short, there must be a constant dialogue between the party and mass organization, with
neither overstepping the other in terms of importance”.

This is anti-Party rightism with little disguise.

Yet again we see the false flattening rejection of democratic centralism in the form of communist
“leadership” or precisely the lack of leadership. The mass organization and the party are here
placed as equals. Furthermore, the need for the Party to intervene on the masses and fully lead
them is reduced and withered down to merely a vague “dialogue” — just a discussion between
equals. This is tailism of mass organizations and a rejection of the leading role and
responsibilities of the Party itself. Tailist mis-leadership reduces the masses to their spontaneity
and volunteerism and robs them of their political leadership. For Moufawad-Paul and his
supporters leadership is only a question of discourse.

We can think of a practical scenario where the Party must “overstep” in order of importance. In
cases of state repression mass organizations have and must at times be dissolved or re-launched;
they remain fairly fluid as long as the Party itself remains protected. If a single mass organization
is sacrificed this is no great loss, but if the Party itself is sacrificed this is concrete step back for
the whole of the international Proletariat—the Party must be the priority. In this scenario it is
easy enough to see how the Party itself is far more important than any of its numerous mass
organizations and that the two things, Party and mass organization, are not to be regarded as
equally important. There are most often a multitude of revolutionary mass organizations and
Party generated organisms, opening and shutting according to necessity but there is only ever one
singular Party which leads the multitude of mass organizations, organisms and fronts. The Party
in every Communist sense is not just another organization; it is the most advanced organizational
expression of the proletariat and its political-military vanguard (again the quality/quantity
dialectic is at play here).
Maoists universally assert the leadership of the Party—itself a unity of opposites—over the mass
movement as the correct formula. In this it is leadership which is decisive—the Party leads in all
things, while the masses make history it is only with the leadership of the Party that they can
accomplish the task of taking power. Power being central to MLM, it places the Party itself in the
top position, a position above that of the mass movement or the Party’s own mass organizations.
Politics in command means the politics of the proletariat in command; the Party is the organized
expression of the proletariat—its highest body and most advanced detachment. Moufawad-Paul,
on the other hand, mystifies his readers with a mix of anarchism, postmodernism (detailed later
on the question of “sex-work”), Trotskyism (above), and revisionism (all of the above and
below). He has a lot of hats which can be switched out at a moment’s notice—he is a lot of
things, none of which are Maoist.

Some Critical Observations on the Bizarre Internet “Supporters” of the Moufawad-Paul Camp
in Canada

To get into the type of crowd that endorses Moufawad-Paul’s brand of faked-Maoism we have to
observe the erratic behavior and outlandish positions of social-media personalities, since we
cannot find any actual endorsement for his thought from any organized Party anywhere on earth
(with the dishonorable exception of pcrrcp.ca).

Individuals who claim support for the website and the people behind pcrrcp.ca (the actual
website for the PCR-RCP is pcr-rcp.ca and has been for a very long time) claim that any
criticism coming from anyone in the US is “chauvinism” and “wrecking” since their (always
unofficial) arguments boil down to an attempt at enforcing centrism on the question of the
Canadian split. Let us briefly go into how incorrect and even dangerous this position is.

In essence such a position is nothing but an argument in favor of not criticizing revisionism that
exists outside of one’s own country. If you are from the US, and we extend their logic, then it
would also be chauvinism to criticize any revisionist group outside of the US. Following this line
to its conclusion—we would then be chauvinists for criticizing Cuba or China or even the former
Soviet Union. What is worse is that these allegations of “chauvinism” come from people in
Canada, which is not an oppressed nation but an imperialist one itself.

While it gets very difficult to seriously take these critiques from people who view communism as
something of a costume—posing online in outdated Eastern Bloc and Chinese military uniforms
while holding fake weapons and claiming to be Maoists—this crew and their supporters actively
use banning and blocking on social media as well as turning off comments on posts to prevent
any detracting viewpoints from being made. Supporters of this clique at pcrrcp.ca have a history
of propagating and testing what will become an organizational political line on the internet so
that they can skirt criticism for their numerous weird ideas. Before the release of Arsenal number
9, recently denounced by the actual PCR-RCP, the views it contained were presented as the
unofficial lines of the Party all over social media spaces for years. Since the authors of this
article have no interest or means to engage in these social media rants in spaces controlled by
these supporters we choose to bring up some of the more ridiculous examples here.

Let’s engage with what some of these people are saying either online or on blogs that they run.

The simple act of supporting a Canadian organization becomes unintelligibly mutated into
“wrecking”:

“Tbh this recent intervention from RGA is wrecker shit. You have no place in this line struggle
and your interventions only hinder unity. No one needs your opinions/help, your interventions
have only led to clouding facts and creating disunity”.

Let’s engage with this then as basic historical and dialectical materialists. Now by virtue of
making support for one side (post-split) public the organization in question (RGA) becomes the
ones responsible for “creating disunity”. The fact is the reasons behind a split—that is to say the
natural process of one dividing into two, the fundamental law of opposites— is what created the
disunity; that is to say the internal contradictions were primary over external factors. One cannot
blame a statement of position issued almost a year after the split already took place for the
“disunity”.

On social media forums, especially ones that are controlled by these very same confused
supporters, this sort of reasoning is consumed without interrogation. Issuing a statement of
position is here stretched out of proportion to be US intervention in “line struggle”. The line
struggle has already resolved itself by resulting in the split of the Party. Once a split has
cemented you have the choice of supporting the left proletarian line or the right bourgeois line, of
supporting revisionists or revolutionaries—there is no other choice, centrism is just supporting
the right in the form of concession. The only reason for refraining from comment would be to
prevent an unprincipled split or not hasten an inevitable split at the expense of the revolutionary
side. Supporting revolutionaries is not “wrecking”, or impeding line two-line struggle, since
two-line struggle is an internal Party process which ceases after splits and continues in the new
form of class struggle and the struggle against revisionism outside of the party, which is always
necessarily handled differently than internal two-line struggle. Pushing for unprincipled splits is
in fact wrecking, taking sides after the split is not. If we consider taking sides to be an act of
wrecking we reduce Maoism to a non-partisan mess and oppose international solidarity, denying
support to revolutionaries everywhere who have just suffered or accomplished a split. The exact
kind of flattening Moufawad-Paul is engaged in ideologically—resulting likewise in a
non-partisan mess.
Once a Party has split it makes no sense for Maoists to uphold a centrist position and refuse to
support either side, especially after a year has passed and ample documents have been made
public. Of course there are those online supporters who engage in a sort of double standard,
while they welcome support for themselves or who they support they call for everyone else to
engage in centrism, silence, in essence demanding withholding support for the revolutionaries.

Everyone Who Criticizes Me is a Cult!

In a blatant display of how little regard they have for genuine international support, or the
analysis of anyone outside of Canada one of the supporters of the opportunist side insists:

“It’s a badge of pride to be opposed by these batshit [sic] dogmatists and their wacky cult.”

The final refuge of revisionists facing criticism is to default to charges of “cultism” which have a
very long tradition in anti-Communism. These online supporters take their cue from their
ideologue Moufawad-Paul who also uses the Khrushchev invocation of a cult against Stalin:

“When they still believe that the crude early twentieth century conception of democratic
centralism is akin to a magical formula. Here is where the cult of the leader emerges, or at least
the cult of the Central Committee, and we are presented with a top-down and inflexible party
structure that is haunted by the ghost of Stalinism regardless of all claims to the contrary… this
(mis)understanding of democractic [sic] centralism is precisely the monolithism [sic] that we can
name Stalinist––prior to over-bureaucratization, prior to the emergence of a leadership cult.”
(Moufawad-paul.blogspot.com)

And again in sections of his book Continuity and Rupture he repeats Khrushchev’s argument:

“Historically, then, there has indeed been a problem with communist organizations declaring
slavish devotion to significant revolutionary figures. The construction of the personality cult
around Stalin, for example, was hallmark of a certain period”.

He shifts his reckless labeling to attack the Communist Party of Peru by stating that:
“The PCP eventually raised Abimael Guzman (‘Gonzalo’) to sainthood declaring him the ‘fourth
sword’ of ‘Marxism’. Hence, dogmatism has been inherited from the past and should be
understood as a problem that needs to be overcome.”

His use of scare quotes around the name of Gonzalo—that is the name the masses of Peru and
the Party railed around—are in place only to insist on using the “real” government issued name.
There are no scare quotes around Lenin or Stalin or Trotsky; Gonzalo exists as a thorn in the side
of the postmodernist “Maoists”, and as such is undeserving of a Party name embraced by the
masses of people. He likewise defaults to use of the bourgeois label assigned to the PCP by
calling them “Sendero Luminoso” or at best “PCP-SL”, both of these variations have never been
used by the Party itself and are in currency lower them and pose them as a non-Party,
non-political terrorist group.

Further, Moufawad-Paul here is taking the Peruvian masses as a swarm of ignorant, mindless
fools, a racist trope used against the indigenous Andean people for centuries. After all, this trope
must be correct if they adored their leader and saw him as the so-called fourth sword of so-called
Marxism. What Moufawad-Paul is actually asking to overcome here is ideological consolidation
in favor of his own eclecticism. Here he is “rupturing” with the base history of MLM and
“continuing” with a reiteration of Khrushchev. Personality Cult arguments are anti-people,
because they always assume the masses must be tricked and lured into following an ideologue or
movement on the basis of personality and not politics, motivated not by their abject conditions
but by a shallow infatuation with an icon. It is easier for them to imagine a horde or swarm of ten
million ignorant masses who have been tricked by pictures of Great Leaders rather to imagine
the masses becoming class conscious of who their friends and enemies are. Throughout history
the masses themselves have embraced Great Leadership and demonstrated their politics with
images that the bourgeois have always labeled “slavish devotion.”

More from Continuity and Rupture:

“Indeed a strange Maoist tendency [that] has emerged in the wake of RIM’s dissolution is a
Maoism that, following the defeat of the PCP, uses the terminology
‘Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism’ and the cultish addendum ‘Gonzalo
Thought’”.

Gonzalo Thought is the application of universal Maoism to the particulars of Peru. It is argued to
also contain universal aspects itself. It is not a “cultish addendum” but recognition of the
successes of the Peruvian revolution, which, incidentally, has not been “defeated”, only set back.
He might as well just come out with it, that according to him Mao Zedong Thought must
necessarily have also been a “cultish addendum” to the already cultish Marxism-Leninism.
Principally Maoism, also opposed by Moufawad-Paul simply means that while we are
Marxist-Leninist-Maoists we are Mainly Maoists—that Maoism is not just another stage, but the
third and highest stage. Moufawad-Paul instead seeks to flatten MLM as well by viewing as a
third stage, a rupture with but not really any higher than anything else his mind is a plateau
where all things are equalized according to opportunism.

In order to not actually analyze revisionism and due to what must be bruised egos, the social
media commentators and their ideologue Moufawad-Paul have to insist that anyone who
disagrees with their distorted and eclectic brand of Maoism must be brainwashed (another slur
popular among anti-communists)—anyone who adheres to the basic classics of MLM must be a
dogmatist for not embracing his eclecticism. If your organization is not receiving international
support at all, and your opposition is, it would make good sense to oppose viewing this as a
“badge of pride” as the supporter quoted in the last section does.

Of course no Communist would take pride in the support of revisionism but no argument is made
in the short quips of these people to ever highlight or expose any revisionism. Instead they take
pride in not having support from anyone except others on social media.

To further deflect from criticism the same supporters of Moufawad-Paul insist; “I’ve been a
Maoist longer than most of the modern US Maoist movement has been around”.

Students of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution as well as anyone who ascribes to basic
Marxist logic can see the glaring fallacy of this rationale. We can remember the old revisionists
who invoked their participation in the Long March or their long-term Party status to defend
themselves having their capitalist headquarters bombarded. This is a sad sort of veteran’s
mentality — resting on one’s laurels all while never clearly presenting what it means to have
been a Maoist, or offering any proof that you actually are one. In both official documents as well
as unofficial commentary the opportunists and their supporters have dismissed any and all
criticism from those in the US because there is not a Maoist Party in the US. They quip back
like a wounded animal “get back to us when you have a party” as if a Party is just another form
and not a product of the class struggle. These offhand dismissals reek of middle-management
rationale, with no regard to essence or humility; critics outside of their metaphysical Party
structure are just too far beneath them.

Mao explains this sort of rationale very well: “A comrade with a short record of struggle may
shirk responsibility on this account, while a veteran may become opinionated because of his long
record of struggle… All such things become encumbrances or baggage if there is no critical
awareness” (Mao, “Our Study and The Current Situation”, 1944). In short it is not about time in
the work, but quality of work and the right revolutionary attitude which does not try and use such
cheap tricks to avoid criticism, rest on laurels, or use bragging rights; Maoists do not need these
things because the evidence of their character is ever-present and so they do not fear or squirm
under criticism.

It should be brought to the reader’s attention that in moments of debate and discussion the
social-media personality (which include Moufawad-Paul and his followers) typically loses
composure and control over their emotions, this is particularly inappropriate when individuals
claiming to be “party-supporters” “trained by the party” are just gushing their individual
opinions and emotions as substitution for an organizational line. While this does not invalidate
their criticism outright it shows just how casually they view the “party” and its discipline, clearly
“the party” has not “trained” them very well. A Party should be understood as a fighting
organization and not merely a point of pride and deflection. In any examination the Canadians
have followed US organizations in the initiation of anti-fascist work and “Serve the People”
programs. The latter of which they even use the exact same name, of course the essence and
methods of the program are mutated according to their ideology. The lack of a Party in the US
was no obstacle for reaching out about the STP programming in unofficial and official capacities
(according to sources which will remain private but are trusted by us).

With this sort of emotive impulse it is no surprise they seek hegemony over their over-valued
social media spaces as if this control will somehow translate to control over the split in Canada
itself. While back and forth internet discussions are generally fruitless, it is useful to unpack the
thinking behind those who engage in them as an emotional outlet to deal with their political
frustrations which are attached to real on-the-ground frustrations with their ability to have
maintained a unified Party. Due to this coping mechanism the supporters in this case are reduced
to flaunting that they “have a party” and “Americans don’t”. They have what they call a “party”
but the existence of such, even if it were a genuine Party, is no grounds for bragging rights. No
genuine internationalist would ever celebrate the lack of Party anywhere as Communism is
accomplished everywhere or nowhere. We harp on this point a little but to fully dig up their
opportunism.

More Oddities

The supporters of Moufawad-Paul perform a sort of identity politics—those from the United
States (based solely on an assigned-identity regardless of what nations they belong to in reality)
are not allowed to make observations or analysis of the final split in Canada without being great
nation chauvinists. All “Americans” are flattened by this shallow identitarian argument and
hence the content of their positions is removed in favor of the print on their birth certificates or
by coincidence of their address. Recognizing the objective presence of revisionists and
revolutionaries in another country becomes a taboo intervention, somehow dividing what was
already divided by internal contradictions—that is to say class contradictions. Of course, it is
other indentitarians who eat this up as an example of US great nation chauvinism unable to see
the essence past the form and not wanting to risk being viewed as “problematic” themselves. No
one in the US is trying to lead the Canadian proletariat; in fact, the RGA communique the
Moufawadites are so upset about directly recognizes Canadian Communist leadership of the
Canadian proletariat and at no point tries to speak for or over them on the matter.

This is another example of the postmodernist impulse to erase the question of power and turn it
simply into a two-dimensional “inter-personal aggression” based on some perceived
anti-Canadian prejudice, instead of a rejection and opposition to a major deviation from MLM
represented by their country’s revisionists while simultaneously supporting their country’s
revolutionaries.

The opportunists assert that their critics avoid mentioning the allegations that their country’s
revolutionaries were actually the ones who disregarded democratic centralism, the same
democratic centralism that had been eroded by their own ideology. They make many online
arguments which claim the revolutionaries who split were a “minority” in an effort to downplay
the split. Students of Communist history would do well to recall that the when the Chinese
Communists led by Mao split from the revisionists of the Soviet Union led by Khrushchev this
affected the whole ICM and the only Parties in power to compose the revolutionary camp—
China and Albania—were also in the “minority”. This in no way lends legitimacy to the
revisionists and the same must be said about Canada, even if their charges about their opposition
being a minority were true. Playing such numbers games is a parlor trick which avoids
ideological struggle.

“Sex-Work”?

Online the Moufawadites have time and time again insisted that they are not seeking the
formation of prostitution unions, that they “uphold” the document “On Prostitution” from the
Party prior to the split, which states:

“Prostitution is not the ordinary sale of labor power; it is not about labor exploitation of a person,
but the absolute exploitation of a person. Prostitution is not the sale and consumption of sexual
services: what is sold and consumed, it is the direct domination over a person. It is this
domination that is the use value of the commodity “prostitute”, while for wage labor in general,
dominance is rather a condition that allows the exploitation of the labor force. What the sex
industry showcases and brings to the market is not only the sexual body, but also, and especially
sexist violence: Prostitution being the most complete expression of this violence”.

And:

“To consider that prostitution is a job like any other, is to strengthen the notion that sexuality is a
task, one of responding to sexual-needs of a man. Materialism teaches us that men and women
are subject to a differentiated and hierarchical socialization. This socialization makes men see
their sexuality as a necessity, something that is their due. People who enter in a sexual relation
with them are doomed to meet a supposedly “natural” need—which is rather a socially
constructed need. In return, the socialization of women leads them to conceive their sexuality as
a response to the overwhelming desire of men, and therefore as a duty to satisfy them…with our
perspective of annihilating the bourgeoisie and popular power, prostitution will inevitably be
abolished.”

Now let us pose these quotations next to a few from Moufawad-Paul himself:

“If we believe that sex work is a form of labour … then we should struggle for unionization and
decriminalization just as we do for other workers. Nor should we treat sex workers in the way
that they’re treated by puritanical activists––as victims who need to be rescued from a ‘sinful’
existence––for the same reason we should not treat, for example, migrant workers as ignorant
and lacking agency”.

(Migrant workers do often lack agency, something they are keenly aware of and something they
must be organized to fight for.)

Mere use of the terminology “sex-work” already in and of itself makes the argument that
prostitution is simply work plus sex and that prostitution unions are a worthy reform to chase
after. Sex-work is a term in service of whitewashing rape; Moufawad-Paul is also actually
opposing fighting the sale of women by framing prostitution as something women consent to in
the first place, and that anyone who argues against prostitution is doing so from a conservative
mindset based on religious reasoning. Moufawad-Paul presents no real economic or social
analysis of the women who in the vast majority in the world are in fact forced into prostitution,
neglecting to even take note of the majority of women in prostitution who are forced to deliver
all of their earnings over to a pimp who then delegates a small portion for reproduction—making
it akin more to slavery than to proletarian labor.

Finally, let us contrast this to some positions from other Maoists on the topic:

“The advocates for legalisation demand that it be given the status of an industry and the sex must
be considered similar to any type of work and prostitutes be considered as sex workers”.

“Legalising prostitution is legalising violence: To describe prostitution as sex work and a

prostitute as a sex worker means to give legitimacy to sexual exploitation of helpless women and
children. It means ignoring the basic factors, which push women and children into prostitution
such as poverty, violence and inequalities. It tries to make the profession look dignified and as a
‘job like any other job’”

“By considering women in prostitution as workers, pimps as businessmen, and the buyers as
customers and thereby giving the entire sex industry recognition as an economic sector, the
governments are planning to abdicate all responsibilities for providing decent employment to
women. They are thus pushing more and more women into sex trade by creating the notion that
sex work is like any other work.”

The above quotations all come from a pamphlet titled “Prostitution is Sexual Violence” issued by
the Maoists in India in the now banned New Vistas Publications and organ of the Communist
Party of India (Maoist).

The Moufawadites have seriously bent the stick toward postmodernism and away from
Communism in terms of their ideas regarding prostitution rebranded as “sex-work”. After all
they orient toward a disenfranchised clique of online supporters and college campus
crowds—not toward the international or Canadian proletariat and in this they have to keep up
appearances. Communists for the past two hundred years have been making analysis of
prostitution and this analysis is completely voided by Moufawad-Paul and his supporters.

Alexandra Kollontai defended the position that prostitutes, far from being workers, were in fact
labor deserters and should be reformed the same way other labor deserters were to be reformed.
It was she who led the fight against prostitution in the Soviet Union. This “problematic” history
is all voided, no doubt included in the “rupture” espoused by Moufawad-Paul and his acolytes.

On Class (Class Struggle as the Key Link)

In the podcast “On Mass” Moufawad-Paul asserts several falsehoods, the first being that
Marxism –Leninism-Maoism did not emerge until the mid 80s or early 90s. He gives this
imprecise range in order to deemphasize the leading role of the PCP; this is one of his subtle
attacks on leadership in general. Basing his politics on anti-Communism he suggest that parties
before Maoism were “top-down” and “commandist” suggesting that the Bolsheviks etc. were not
“kept in check by the masses”. In reality this Party particularly had mass support and was
beloved by the masses, the whole of the Soviet Union and much of the world being thrust into
mourning when Stalin died in 1953. This whole period was guided by theory which precisely
served to keep the party linked to the masses:

“The Party must be able to combine the strictest adherence to principle (not to be confused with
sectarianism!) with the maximum of ties and contacts with the masses (not to be confused with
khvostism!); without this, the Party will be unable not only to teach the masses but also to learn
from them, it will be unable not only to lead the masses and raise them to its own level but also
to heed their voice and anticipate their urgent needs.”—Stalin

In the above quotation we see theorized the formula repeated by Maoists “Learn from the masses
and teach the masses”. Stalin would go on to state:
“The Party must systematically verify the execution of its decisions and directives; without this,
these decisions and directives are in danger of becoming empty promises, which can only rob the
Party of the confidence of the broad proletarian masses.

In the absence of these and similar conditions, Bolshevisation is just an empty sound.”

In the above quotations from Comrade Stalin, dated 1925, the ways the Party must maintain its
links with the people are made clear and it was this same text on Bolshevisation that Mao studied
to formulate his very important text Some Questions Concerning Methods of Leadership — the
text written 18 years later which would be foundational to the mass line.

Again with Moufawad-Paul we see the “personality cult” and “top down dictator” bourgeois
arguments which genuinely are insulting the masses of people who accepted this Great
Leadership.

What would an attack on leadership be without an attack on the proletarian’s military strategy?
Always willing to make concessions to the right, Moufawad-Paul states that Protracted People’s
War is still “debatable” in the “Maoist movement”. Yet, had he actually been honest he would
know that the universality of People’s War has always been a basic part of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. With all his talk of “rupture” he still makes backward acceptance of
the outdated Mao Zedong Thought.

After revising Communist history pre-Mao he has to move on to attack the Four, by removing
the central role of class struggle and replacing it with his own prescribed left-populism:

“The Cultural Revolution lost because it was theorized too little too late. It didn’t really
understand the extent to the problems”.

After slandering the GPCR he moves along to doubt the existence of the coup led by Deng,
casually referring to the GPCR leaders who followed the teachings of Mao in the bourgeois
terminology which labels them a “gang” of four. There are several big problems with this
formula — first, it reduces them to four individuals rather than the top leaders of what had been
the red line in the GPCR, even going so far as to state “people didn’t like them in China”; this
shallow analysis must be pointed out even though the context in which it was mentioned is fairly
casual. Moufawad-Paul’s dismissal of the Four shows a certain disdain for Maoism and a tailing
of the masses. Instead of a genuine analysis he peddles cheap populism. His analysis here once
more is a rejection of leadership true to the form of his typical arguments.

While capitalist restoration and the reversals in China requires its own separate piece, it must be
stated that what transpired was a coup and the arrest of the Four, the leaders of the GPCR, was
not due to some flippant dislike among the people. The right wing of the Party lead by Deng had
managed to win deep control over the military and was able to utilize the contradiction between
the Party and the Army as well as the Army and the masses to turn the Peoples Liberation Army
against the revolutionary line. Not only was the right in control of large state media outlets but
the Cultural Revolution proceeded along the lines of uneven development across China and was
theorized to be one of many in a wave-like motion with reiterative cultural revolutions, advances
retreats, swells and calms.

Maoists in the form of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism have theorized the way
out of this contradiction and solved the riddle of restoration with the Militarized Party,
Concentric Construction of the three Instruments of Revolution and the Sea of Armed Masses;
consequently, these are all principles foundational to Maoism which Moufawad-Paul explicitly
rejects. But for the sake of keeping the coup and counter revolution in China in perspective and
avoiding such casual dismissal we should look again at history.

The Four were, along with Mao, the camp who were exposing the counter revolutionary attack of
Lin Biao as a rightist attack, while the other rightists (those who sought alignment with the USA
instead of the USSR) Zhau En-Lai etc. portrayed Lin Biao as an “ultra-leftist”. We must bear in
mind that Lin Biao having been disgraced created a favorable opening for the other rightists who
were opposed to him, in regards to their ability in both penetration of the military and attacking
the GPCR. Since 1971 Yeh Chien-ying, a support of Zhou and notable anti-leftist had
maintained control of the military and had been running a successful campaign to prevent
revolutionaries from propagating their line within it. Utilizing the contradictions he could
construct and independent kingdom in the PLA, which would be invaluable to the coup. This is
not unlike the role of the red army under Zhukov during the Khrushchevite coup just 20 years
prior.

This provided the right wing in China much stronger footing than it had enjoyed in the past years
of Cultural Revolution. Here they had a recently deceased national hero in the form of Zhou, a
centrist concession at the top of the party in the form of Hua Guofeng, a rehabilitated Deng
Xiaoping (leading all of this from behind the scenes) and Yeh, in charge of the military who had
been a strong anti-leftist and successful at blocking leftist education at the top of the military,
maintaining the support of the commanders.

The bourgeoisie according to Mao emerge from within the Party because of the existence of
bourgeois right unrestricted in society, which itself provides the social base of the emergence.
The Party becomes the site of emergence precisely because it is the seat of power.

Without exception the bourgeois will rise from the contradictions in society due to the mode of
production—which is a transitory epoch—and will emerge directly from within places of power,
not limited to just the Party but also within (and in the case of China most obviously) in the
People’s Liberation Army. The PLA (due to fear of external enemies making use of it) had not
been bombarded in the same ways that the Party had been during the GPCR. The PLA had to
intervene (sometimes in favor of the revolution and sometimes against it) on multiple occasions.

Having identified this problem, Mao was able to help get Chang Chunquiao elected as head of
the PLA political education department, but most of his campaigns were preemptively blocked or
frustrated by the right who knew full well they had to keep cultural revolution campaigns from
reaching the heart of the PLA. The limited way in which the GPCR had to develop in the
military allowed it a certain zone of movement divorced from some of the major campaigns or at
the very least it created a contradiction between the Party and the military on one hand and the
military and the masses on the other which would prove to be the exact place the rightists would
position themselves to carry out the coup. Left-populism and even the revolutionary energy of
the masses were not able to prevent the army from servicing reaction. In fact, untold numbers
were mass-arrested and killed by the forces of Deng who would go on to implement domestic
fascism.

We can see that the coup is anything but a simple matter, however; it actually took a great deal of
analysis for Communists to make sense of it. It is far more complex and nuanced than “the left
lost because no one liked them”, a populist dismissal of historical materialism.

Let us dwell a bit on the charge of the Four “not being liked” and how half-baked and false this
is. Chang Chunquiao was the leader of the massively popular Shanghai Commune (the highest
point so far in all class struggle!); he had been selected by Mao to lead the GPCR and was
already a very popular writer and journalist. He was young when recruited and viewed as a
strong leftist which made him particularly beloved by the masses and hated by the right. Mao
wanted Chang as a successor but knew the right would never go for it so he endorsed Hua which
was a concession from both the left as well as the right, such concessions offer capitulation to the
right eventually, since centrism is a form of rightism and cannot really serve the partisan nature
of class struggle in favor of the proletariat.

Chiang Ching on the other hand was a household name, seen not only as the wife of Chairman
Mao, but as a revolutionary in her own right. Her plays and operas were the soundtracks and
backdrops to the GPCR which as we know mobilized millions of revolutionaries from among the
peasant and worker masses. To suggest that “the people did not like her” is outright historical
revisionism. For the first time in Chinese history the masses of workers and peasants in their
millions finally had access to cultural events like plays and operas that they could attend—and
they did attend them en mass—and almost each one of these was stamped with the name of
Comrade Chiang Ching; these plays and their architect were extremely popular and well-liked.
No attack on leadership would be complete without an attack on the Communist Party of Peru,
so in the podcast Moufawad-Paul moves from his populist revisionism into attacking the PCP
again on the basis of “personality cult” complete with chortles from the host (another of his
followers) at the very mention of Gonzalo Thought, as if the specific experience in Peru is
laughable to these Canadians. This is telling of their overall political line, hatred and disdain for
revolutionary leaders, and the emergence of guiding thought anywhere, as well as their aversion
to basic lessons from revolution. To add a twist of irony, the blind lead the blind as
Moufawad-Paul and his supporter conducting the interview mention their shortcomings in
evaluating history with the supporter going so far as to attribute Deng’s three worlds theory to
Mao himself. It’s as if they are here grasping desperately for any criticism of Mao which will
demonstrate to the internet how un-dogmatic they are! This is an entirely performative pandering
to liberals, which seeks to offer a disclaimer with any endorsement of Communist history.
Genuine Communists make no apologies for the terror; we see it as a good thing.

Conclusion

In conclusion we can ponder the old saying of the apple not falling far from the tree, as
Moufawad-Paul himself was an anarchist who stumbled into Maoism and many of his most
ardent online supporters and accomplices were recruited from Trotskyite backgrounds. This is
not to argue that these backward ideas can never be changed, merely that they have not been in
this case. Their training and past ideas have not been overcome and they let aspects of these
schools compel them to revise Maoism while either claiming to articulate it correctly or improve
upon its historic principles.

In consideration of the tendency to deflect and avoid discussion among the Moufawad-Paul
camp we should clearly state our purpose for authoring and releasing this article. If a general
body of theoretical work emerges and begins to display certain qualities and promote certain
trends, once this is propagated online and in books then it becomes the property of the world to
contend with. The border does not magically prevent these ideas from seeping south and
influencing people in the US; theory does not stay in a bubble. So, we should also understand
that theory made public which reacts upon and interacts with the movement in the US should
also face critical engagement from the revolutionaries in the US. And in the case of postmodern
and Party-liquidationalist theory, like that of Moufawad-Paul it should be exposed and defeated.

Our purpose is to challenge this brand of so-called Maoism put forward by Moufawad-Paul and
his supporters disguised MLM. We should look at it, evaluate its content and follow its lines to
their conclusion, making an assessment and thus we should oppose it. This process is inevitable
when you put your ideas into the world, you will get a response, it might not always be the praise
you are hoping for or an accumulation of sympathetic Facebook likes. Sadly and predictably,
every critique made of his work is responded to with charges of “cult” or “dogmatist”, and this is
what is to be expected even when the attack on his theory is articulated and detailed, as we have
attempted to do here.

The body of work produced by Moufawad-Paul is not Maoism, and he is no expert on Maoism;
he is neither red nor expert in fact. His tendency represents the accumulation of deviations which
split the Maoist Party in Canada. Ideology when applied to the revolutionary situation will often
express itself by accumulating in the works of individuals who stand out. This is a basic law of
leadership. You will have Lenin’s and Plekhanov’s emerge as you will have Trotsky’s and
Prachanda’s emerge to give a name to a general approach to understanding and articulating
revolutionary or reactionary theory. Thus, the revisionist camp in Canada has found its
ideologue.

When revisionists see well enough to notice that no one is interested in joining the post-Maoist
movement, they intend to bring post-Maoism to us dressed as Maoism, as if we can so soon
forget the early 1980s and the emergence of Maoism in the cauldron of People’s War. Ideology
must always undergo adjustment and improvement and this happens in the field of class struggle
and the life of a Party; no one can oppose this because it is necessary. But what Moufawad-Paul
represents is a retrograde rejection of leadership disguised as a forward motion. In essence a
“Maoism” from below. It is the criterion of the contemporary revisionist to use self-identification
as a measure “I identify with MLM, therefore I cannot be a revisionist!” of course no revisionist
self-identifies as such and this maneuver only tricks the most gullible and novice students of
Marxism.

The ideology expressed and promoted by this camp is like an invasive weed that has pollinated
itself throughout the US (and elsewhere) and seeks to destroy the very conception of Maoist
leadership and replace it with a dumbed down and flattened horizontalism between the masses,
the mass organizations, and the Party. Even if it poses itself as a forward attack on post-Maoism,
it is in essence backward motion and post-Maoist. The US left already being so prone to
phony-progressivism finds such a flattening favorable to their palette. Canadian and US societies
are both bourgeois democracies which foster this kind of ever considerate-reaction. It is not
surprising that such ideology would be born from these genes and find sympathy in these
conditions.

What is much harder and ultimately correct is rebellion, against the considerate-reaction. The
truth is revolutionary and it is not always going to pander to what the established legal left and
academic courts wish to hear. The truth is in defense of Maoist leadership, in defense of the Party
as the most advanced military organization of the proletariat, the truth is proletarian discipline. In
short the foundations of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism do not need revision, as Moufawad-Paul,
Avakian, or Prachanda might insist albeit from varying perspectives. Fidelity to what is
foundational is not “dogma”, for Marxists dogma is actually counterpoised to the fidelity to our
foundational ideas, which in themselves run counter to dogma. There are creative applications of
revolutionary science which necessitate breaking new ground, trying new things and always
experimentation (guiding thought could not emerge from dogma for this reason)—then there is
declaring open season on foundational principles and on Leninism specifically, which is an
attempt to revise the vanguard Party into a watered down and eclectic mess served up in
platitudes and uninspiring discourse which attempt to credit Mao himself with their ideological
desertion of Maoism.
 Postmodernism Always Dines On Its Own Flesh
Commentary on the Joshua Moufawad Paul Interview with the New Inquiry
Comrade Kavga, Struggle Sessions Editorial Board
14 August 2019

The June 10 interview “The Limit Does Not Exist” is introduced by the interviewer with a
negation of Marxism, a negation of class struggle producing certain verifiable results throughout
history:

“There is no question that a revolution is needed, but neither is there any certainty that it can ever
be obtained.”

This sentiment is a truism of the contemporary, cynical, anti-Marxist left; it runs counter to
Marxism, which insists with great certainty that the bourgeoisie is a doomed class, that
imperialism can go no further and that the proletariat is the last class in history. All these Marxist
positions speak to the truth of Marxism: revolution is natural and unavoidable even if it does not
proceed in a straight line. In the very first chapter of the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels
lay this matter to rest; it is anathema that there still exist those who several hundred years later
still oppose this most basic Marxist position:

“The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on
which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore
produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are
equally inevitable.”

This leaves no room to doubt that revolution can most certainly be attained. It is not surprising
that JMP fails to challenge his interviewer on this specific topic, considering the general
tendency of his work, his opposition to revolutionary optimism, his views on the Party, etc. Marx
of course spent his whole life defending basic concepts like the one quoted above and theorizing
each concept presented in the Manifesto in great detail. Denying the above Marxist position is to
deny the proletariat of its role as the revolutionary subject and makes them just another potential
hopeful on the world’s historic saga.

The interview begins with a “critique” of Foucault; this critique, however, is inconclusive. After
the introduction’s “nothing is certain”—a postmodernist position itself—JMP leads the criticism
of Foucault by way of postmodernism, his reliance of Spivak is nothing but a defense of
postmodernism in Marxist dressing. Attacking a postmodernist with postmodernists is a
cornerstone of postmodern academia. The whole school of thought is precisely about this
maneuver and it is why the whole train exists on a track far away from material reality, existing
in the minds of professional thinkers only and in their interests, which of course have aligned
historically with the interests of imperialism.

What is key in Skivak’s criticism of Foucault, is not at all a defense of Marxism but a doubling
down on postmodernism, she is simply arguing that Foucault, by way of being European is just
as “exclusionary” as Marxism is, an argument repeated by JMP in other essays which default to
identity politics:

“Postmodernism, especially post-colonialism, has been quite critical of the discourse of, to put it
in Spivak’s terms, the discourse of ‘Europe and the Other’; some of its more polemical
dismissals of marxism [sic] concern the fact that Marx was ‘a white European male’… And
though Marx’s historical specificity is something that historical materialists should also note (for
it explains Marx’s theoretical limitations while, at the same time, allows us to use Marx’s method
to critique his own short-comings), and though we should perhaps take some of these
postmodern/post-colonial critiques seriously, we also cannot accept that the same eurocentric
limitations do not apply to a theory that is mainly significant in eurocentric academia and is built
on the same, supposedly flawed and suspicious, foundations of European specificity.”

JMP is both echoing and defending Spivak, he is doing what he is good at—that is, importing
postmodernism into Marxism to “critique” the latter. He is a Trojan horse.

Contrary to JMP’s presentation, Spivak is not defending Marxism as universally for the
oppressed and exploited, and in essence neither is JMP. Both are simply arguing that Foucault is
“exclusionary too.” Both offer the same critique only slightly adapted to their respected
audiences.

Marx on the contrary is analyzing matters in class terms, which exist among all peoples and all
stages of development. The framework created by Karl Marx and Frederic Engels far transcends
them, something JMP admits but does not make proper use of. The issue the postmodernists have
is that—while Marxism is a great unifier—their analysis without synthesis approach is eternal
division.

As is typical, JMP moves on to a total conflation of Marxism and revisionism; he positions

Althusser as the underdog hero to the villainy of CIA translated Foucault. Note that the CIA
regularly translated revisionists as well, and the phenomenon goes well beyond their hand in
postmodernist philosophers. Of course, JMP fails to critically examine the role of Althusser as a
historical materialist must; what was his relationship to class struggle, what were the positions he
took on the actual class struggles of his times? JMP while feigning adherence to historical
materialism—that is, fidelity to the fact that history is understood only and fundamentally
through class struggle—rejects this when it comes to matters of the mind and philosophy. If we
assess Althusser as historical materialists he comes out mainly in the negative, his theories begin
to show the rough wear of revisionism. Not only was he a member of the revisionist Communist
Party of France, but he supported their pro-bourgeois position on May 68; many of his students
would go on to promote many horrible theories on “Marxism.” To call a revisionist a “Marxist”
as JMP is committed to doing (while ramping up for an attack on the great Lenin) is to
completely void Marxism of being a revolutionary science. In essence JMP only plays lip service
to Marxism, what is consistent is his attacks on revolutionary leaders while smuggling in
postmodernist and revisionist thinkers. He attacks Lenin, Stalin, Gonzalo and more while
defending Spivak, Zizek, Badiou, Althusser, etc. His half-way critique of Foucault does not
absolve him in any way of his conflations, which are in essence conflations of class and the ideas
it produces.

In essence JMP, his defenders, and those like them reject the analysis of Chairman Gonzalo,
who, deriving his position from Mao, insists that the “main danger” to Marxism is revisionism.
This important position is not simply a posture put a precise synthesis produced from
scrutinizing the history of the Communist movement.

In the past JMP has tried to slither out of allegations that his defining/defanging of Maoism is
actually just an attack on Leninism. When the interviewer frames things as:

“The challenge for a revolutionary party has been to maintain a coherent vanguard identity, and
at the same time safeguard itself against the kind of internal corruption that you write about as
endemic to Leninism.”

JMP does not defend himself at all against the claim that internal corruption is par for the
Leninist course. This again conflates Marxism with revisionism and fails to demarcate the two.
Like the “party” which JMP supports (pcrrcp.ca), his attacks on Lenin and Leninism come
packaged in a distortion of the mass line, as if the latter is a negation of the former rather than a
discovery made possible through its application. This relies on considering the masses as “not
ready for socialism” and the mass line as a means to condition them for receiving propaganda—a
wholly bourgeois and negative view of the masses (cynicism toward the masses). This bourgeois
view allows a neat departure point for other bourgeois views regarding “cults” and “brainwash.”

Always the artist of conflating ideas JMP claims:

“When I conceptualize the party in the general way that I did in Continuity and Rupture, and
other works, it is based on putting together a bunch of texts that come out through a certain
region of Marxist theory, conceptions from the Communist Party of the Philippines or the
Communist Party of Peru, for example.”
To be clear the Party concept espoused by the Filipino Party is quite different than the one
espoused by the Peruvian Party, and both are different from the one promoted by JMP. In spite of
his flirtation with the imagery belonging to the PCP which he uses on the cover of his first two
books, these books’ contents are not only an attack on the political line of the PCP, but a
consistent refusal to understand the ideology of the PCP. The Filipinos, however, do not, nor
have they ever, upheld MLM as theorized by the PCP as distinct from Mao Zedong Thought. For
JMP these are nothing but convenient names to traffic with, lending legitimacy to his views
which are totally disconnected from armed struggle. Neither of the two mentioned Parties
position the Maoist Party as a “mass party” as JMP has and neither of them consider their
ideologies a “rupture” from Leninism.

His conflations continue when he claims Charles Bettelheim is a “Maoist.” If anything,

Bettelheim must be considered the type of “left-wing communist” which Lenin so avidly
polemicized; this is due to the theoretical and ideological content of the very works JMP is
promoting. Among Bettelheim’s views are the ideas that socialism was never accomplished in
the Soviet Union, his refusal to recognize the four comrades of Mao (Jiang Qing, Zhang
Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen) taken out by the Deng-led coup in 1976 as Mao’s
successors, and worst of all his total negation of the Party form and denunciation of the
dictatorship of the proletariat and the Cultural revolution as maintained in volume 3 of his “Class
Struggles in the USSR.” All these things JMP conveniently forgets when making his
endorsement. This is not to argue that the texts are totally useless, but that they are not “Maoist”
texts, nor is Bettelheim a “Maoist” by any stretch of the imagination.

Crediting Mao with insistence that class struggle continues under socialism is a strange
maneuver, considering that Mao did not originate this theory and went to great pains to situate
this as a position upheld by Lenin himself. Once again, JMP does not concern himself with
Mao’s actual assessments of comrade Stalin, which Mao insisted was mainly good, JMP instead
uses the criticism of Stalin to attack the great Lenin. By doing this, he is snuggling up to the
views of the interviewer that corruption is “endemic to Leninism.” He forgoes a defense of MLM
only to curry more favor among trendy intellectuals. At worst this is revisionism, but even the
most charitable view forces us to acknowledge his liberalism at play by refusing to correct
mistaken ideas aired publicly by his interviewer. The interviewer hits the nail on the head by
attributing the viewpoint to JMP who confirms it by failing to condemn it.

The more he speaks, the more he condemns himself and this recent interview just adds to the
mountain of evidence of the corruption endemic not to Leninism but rightism. Rightism is best
understood as a tailing of the bourgeoisie or in other instances, to tail the masses. Based on the
cynical formula that the masses are not ready for socialism, the view that anti-communism has
fundamentally made the masses skeptical are based in the idea that there is no real demarcation
between Communist and revisionist ideology, which is JMP’s most frequent conflation of
opposites. In spite of his claim that philosophy must make interventions on the movement, he has
fully failed to address our repeated criticism, which speaks volumes on the quality of said
philosophy. While JMP finds time to engage with countless postmodernist academics, and give
interviews to hipster-left rags like New Inquiry, he will no doubt systematically avoid and ignore
our Maoist criticism, this is intellectual cowardice.

At this point, it is only the willfully ignorant and the incurable rightists who still cling to his
stinking barge.
 The Pseudo-Intellectualism of Joshua Moufawad-Paul
Regarding “Critique of Maoist Reason”
Comrade Cathal, Struggle Sessions Editorial Board
24 August 2020

“Consider it as an audacious step that we must take; all audacious steps are the beginning of a
new task, and the new has a problem: a terrain not sufficiently known; let’s take firm steps, being
sure that all beginnings are nothing but that, the beginning, that many issues will be developed,
because there are things which we do not have enough knowledge of; and therefore, be more
farsighted, more firm, more demanding of ourselves. Let’s apply: Wage the battle and you will
know how it unfolds. We communists are audacious and we are so because we are consequent
materialists, and we are not afraid of making mistakes, nor are we afraid of confronting anybody
because truth is on our side. This is our conviction and we can have no other; we are men of
conviction, ‘convinced and confessed’ in the greatest transforming scientific ideology proved in
thousands of glorious battles. There has not been nor there is any ideology on Earth that has had
the practical test like Marxism-Leninism-Maoism; never have so many millions of people been
and will be dragged along by so powerful revolutionary storm.”

“In the IV Plenum Session of our Central Committee we agreed upon the slogan of: Towards
Maoism!, in this session we have assumed the task of: Impose Marxism-Leninism-Maoism,
mainly Maoism as the command and general guide of all our Party activity, and to serve and
strive also, so that Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, mainly Maoism, be the command and guide of
the world revolution, all on behalf of the indeclinable and glorious goal of all humanity:
Communism.”

-Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru, 1982

“In the last nine years our Movement has been engaged in a long, rich and thoroughgoing
discussion and struggle to more fully grasp Mao Zedong’s development of Marxism. During this
same period the parties and organisations of our Movement and RIM as a whole have been
engaged in revolutionary struggle against imperialism and reaction. Most important has been the
advanced experience of the People’s War led by the Communist Party of Peru which has
succeeded in mobilising the masses in their millions, sweeping aside the state in many parts of
the country and establishing the power of the workers and peasants in these areas. These
advances, in theory and practice, have enabled us to further deepen our grasp of the proletarian
ideology and on that basis take a far-reaching step, the recognition of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the new, third and higher stage of Marxism”

-Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, 1993

“The international proletariat needs to fully overcome the current dispersion of forces –which
began with the counterrevolutionary coup of Deng Xiaoping’s clique in China after the death of
Chairman Mao, sharpened by the liquidation of the RIM by the new revisionism of Avakian,
Prachanda and their adulator –, to realize a Unified Maoist International Conference, to advance
the formulation of the General Line for the International Communist Movement and the
formation of a New International Organization of the Proletariat, which serves the struggle to put
Maoism in the command and guide of the World Revolution.”

“The opportunist plans for a broad unity, independently of ideological and political unity, must
be rejected. As affirmed by Lenin, ‘It is not a question of numbers, but of giving correct
expression to the ideas and policies of the truly revolutionary proletariat’.”

“The Communist Movement is reappearing with renewed strength, today the objective and
subjective situation for a Unified Maoist International Conference and the formation of an
International Organization of the Proletariat are far better than when the RIM was founded,
enough to say that in its foundation meeting in 1984, the participation of parties and
organizations that opposed Maoism as the new, third and superior stage of development of
Marxism was predominant, and it only adopted ‘Mao Zedong Thought’ and only much later they
accepted Maoism, even though it was only formally.”

-Joint Declaration of Maoist Parties and organizations May 1, 2018

Introduction

With the release of Canadian professor of philosophy and pseudo-intellectual, Joshua

Moufawad-Paul’s (JMP) new book “Critique of Maoist Reason,” it is important to examine its
political lines. For our purposes we will commit to the examination of chapters 3 and 4, as they
are most pertinent. In doing so, we must acknowledge two things. The first is that these chapters
deserve a public response due to the fact that they address important issues in the International
Communist Movement (ICM), particularly between US Maoists and Canadian thinkers like JMP.
Secondly, the chapters demarcate two lines in the ICM, and are not simply the views of a few
individual thinkers or organizations. With that being said, we must clearly state that Struggle
Sessions speaks only for itself, and does not represent the positions of others, including the
Parties and organizations we support or share ideological principles with.

We wish to set the tone by expressing that JMP represents an ideological trend bigger than his
work. Due to a poverty in academia in the imperialist centers, he has emerged as a significant
thinker in what is otherwise an abysmal swamp of bourgeois thinking. At the very least, he
promotes some basic principles we agree with, albeit routed by his own deviations. Thus, we
intend to focus mainly on the errors being made and not on the individual making them.
The main obstacle that makes formulating a response to his new book so difficult is his penchant
for creating phantom arguments for his opponents, and how he takes these arguments apart rather
than engaging with the real arguments. This can be understood by his tendency to mistake form
for essence. This error is present throughout all of his work and most evident in his responses to
what he calls “principally Maoists.” In essence, “Critique of Maoist Reason,” when thoroughly
examined, reveals itself as a straw man and falls into pieces.

All Maoism (meaning everything labeling itself as such) must correctly assert that Maoism is the
third and superior stage of revolutionary science, and hence, in the formulation of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Maoism is principal. For this reason, we reject the “MLMpM”
abbreviation peddled by JMP and others and continue using MLM. After all, to be a superior
stage means a higher quality, making it the principle aspect of the whole; a new stage cannot be
reached if you mainly adhere to its less-developed precursors. MLM is principally Maoist and no
new abbreviations are needed.

In this response, we intend to address various distortions of history and confused points, as well
as the acrobatics on display in the furtherance of conflating and flatting MLM to the most
general formality. We expect that our readers are familiar with the book we are discussing and
the work of the author, and we recommend studying him.

For those who have not familiarized themselves with his work, we will quote at length so that we
do our best to not divorce his positions from their context. We intend to present his views as they
are, and responsibly rise to issue our disagreements in the interest of further solidifying the great
wave of international Maoist unity being accomplished in the ICM, most notably among the
signatories of the May 1 joint declarations which include the majority of the Latin American and
European organizations for the past three years, noting the fact that the list of signatures has
grown each year, with more in 2020 than any other claiming to follow MLM. We do not bring
this up to focus on the quantity of signatories, but the quality of the politics and practice which
secures ever greater support for the joint declaration.

Part I: The Importance of the Point of Origin and Our Disagreement on “Consummation”

Chapter three of “Critique of Maoist Reason” begins by expressing its most common theme:

“[T]he point of origin for Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is found in the sequence begun by the
PCP and consummated by the RIM. Anything else did not generate Maoism as Maoism (what I
have called ‘Maoism-qua-Maoism’) and was only a prefiguration to or adjacent of revolutionary
science.”
It is obvious enough that we take no issue with the position that the Communist Party of Peru
(PCP) began to impose Maoism as the command and guide of the world proletarian revolution,
and that they utilized the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) in this interest. This is
an indelible mark made by the PCP, which has offered the most radiant light to guide the Parties
and organizations which were created or came to MLM post-RIM. We should more closely
examine which theoretical articulations and contributions of universal validity from Chairman
Gonzalo guaranteed that Maoism would be generated beyond the shores of Mao Zedong
Thought, and how these interacted with the RIM, which would take up the form of MLM more
than a decade later.

As JMP insists correctly, points of origin are important and cannot be dispensed with:

“Why does the grounding of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in a univocal origin matter? Most

importantly, because origins matter to any theory that speaks in the name of science as those who
oppose the totalizing aspect of revolutionary science have made patently clear.”

In 1982, before the existence of the RIM, the PCP’s Central Committee declared a campaign to
impose Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as their ideology; it would not be possible to spread this to
the movement outside of Peru for several more years. We should not simply state that because
this happened before RIM’s declaration that it is therefore correct, but we must be precise in
pinpointing the origin of the ideology to better chart its development, which will assist in the task
of proving what is correct and what is not, and why.

In November of 1982, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Peru
delivered a report which detailed the campaign concerning Maoism. They stated that:

“We must hoist the slogan: LONG LIVE MAOISM! in order to initiate this great campaign
which, obviously, is of a strategical character. It is a campaign of vast dimensions and a complex
problem: it is a difficult task, but it is an obligation that we have as communists, as about the
complexities of this campaign, but the importance that it has weighs much more, and historically
it is necessity because world revolution needs Maoism in order to unfold a higher peaks, in order
that the strategical offensive of world revolution be unfolded, tasks in which we communists of
the world are engaged. We do not pretend to say that Maoism reaches only till there.
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism possesses programmatic points, laws, principles which go until
communism, and as we march toward this great goal it is being specified starting from what is
established since Marx. Because the ideology of the proletariat is a powerful science that
develops itself through big leaps, generators of higher stages each time: with Marx, Marxism,
with Lenin, Leninism and with Chairman Mao, Maoism, as the first, second and third successive
stages, Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and, today mainly Maoism.” [emphasis ours]
While this would make major headway with the successful and historic First Congress and the
publication of the documents composing the General Political Line in 1988, followed by the
Interview of the Century with Chairman Gonzalo, all important in materially delineating Maoism
for the world to comprehend, we can be precise in arguing that MLM, as the third and superior
stage of revolutionary science, has already been articulated as Maoism since 1982. This was two
years before the formation of the RIM, and 11 years before their acceptance of MLM in form.
This is important, not for bragging rights or any such bourgeois nonsense, but to highlight the
fact that the leading force fighting for the establishment of MLM was the PCP, and foremost its
Great Leadership, Chairman Gonzalo. This is a critical matter of two-line struggle being the
motive force in political, organizational, and ideological development. To deny this is dogmatic
and erases the role of two-line struggle and contradiction as the basis of change.

The “consummation” theory as peddled by JMP, is a distortion of history meant to impose the
liquidation of the leading role of the PCP and specifically Chairman Gonzalo as the point of
origin. That is not to say that opportunism can dispense with the contributions of the PCP in
developing MLM, this would expose its filth and get nowhere. Instead, the device of
opportunism is to give partial credit to the PCP and Chairman Gonzalo, who fought to conquer
ideological leadership and impose Maoism for 11 years, as this process was partially successful
for some time before RIM’s moral and political degeneration. Opportunism must make a partial
concession to the role of the PCP, otherwise it exposes itself too-nakedly as an attack on MLM
and hence it would not be able to uphold the legacy of RIM as uncritically as it does, due to the
PCP’s monumental role in the formation of MLM as well as conducting line struggle to win RIM
over to it (formally). We will later address the fact that the PCP was not uncritical here, and that
the RIM was not a homogenous monolithic entity as the worshipers at its desecrated temple
would like to maintain.

Since we have no major disagreements with JMP regarding the various past ideas or groups that
used the term MLM but basically had nothing new to say (or said mainly nonsense), it is not
important to go over these; our view may be less charitable on certain points, but we can and
must find general agreement here. What he identifies as the “adjacents” is a far more important
area to engage. He expresses that the “prefiguratives” include steps to conceptualize Maoism, but
that they did not go beyond Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought until the “PCP-RIM
sequence” and that there were “adjacents” that would eventually come to MLM. The latter
assertion has its own problems which are ignored by JMP.

He correctly explains that:

“We cannot accept the mythology of multiple lines of descent that are all equal because that
would be analogical to our biologist declaring that there were multiple lines of evolutionary
emergence, numerous points around the globe where the human species evolved independently.”
However, it fails in many respects to adhere to his own principles here by utilizing various
conflations, theoretical acrobatics, and a poor reading of history. This is what is happening with
JMP’s admittance that the PCP initiated MLM, but that it could not be “consummated” until after
the arrest of Chairman Gonzalo, invalidating his specific work on the topic for a less coherent
version expressed by the RIM.

The “adjacents” explained by JMP include the Communist Party of the Philippines, who
maintain that MLM and Mao Zedong Thought are identical, as well as promoting the idea that
their point of origin and acceptance of MLM were fully independent of the PCP (and RIM for
that matter), which is in direct contradiction with the principle expressed in the above quote.
Without acknowledging these positions (the contradiction we point out), JMP includes them in
his fly-by-night definition of MLM. Such flippancy cannot do anything but muddy the waters
and make a precise understanding of MLM illusive. The fact that the CPP never upheld the RIM
conception of MLM (albeit a limited one) only brings into focus the fact that JMP is really
bending the stick. This is an attempt to legitimize the RIM’s defects by including those outside of
it in its tradition because they wage People’s War.

It is important to account for the fact than none of the “inheritors of RIM” ( the organizations in
Canada, Italy, Afghanistan, etc.) ever led a people’s war, begging the question of which legacy
they follow. Two groups who maintained consistent membership in RIM and actually waged
People’s War were the PCP and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). The latter led to
capitulation and has less to offer to this specific examination.

This conundrum leaves those like JMP grasping for sources (people’s wars) outside the RIM to
support their diluted conception of MLM since they have no reference point within it that does
not rely on the PCP or the liquidationists in Nepal. “Critique of Maoist Reason” does this by
putting forward the concept of “adjacents,” mainly through channeling the People’s Wars in
India and the Philippines into their own conceptions, neither of which hold organizational,
political, or ideological adherence to the RIM, which would necessarily be reflected in their
official organizational statements. What is clear from studying these is that neither uphold the
RIM as the correct model, and authors like JMP play slight of hand here duping their followers.

The RIM existed in 2004 when the Communist Party of India (Maoist) was declared, but they
did not join the RIM. The Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist Leninist was at one point a RIM
organization which led a People’s War, but did not remain in the formation, which then went on
to recognize the revisionist Maoist Communist Party of Turkey (MKP). As has been well
documented, the Filipino revolutionaries refused to join and instead maintained international
relationships with more conservative formations than the RIM. This history is all conveniently
forgotten by “Critique of Maoist Reason”, opportunism must change its colors rapidly and rely
upon forgetting in order to do so. The fact that some of the existing People’s Wars do not follow
MLM as outlined by the PCP has no bearing on whether it is correct or not, and most certainly
does not strike a blow to impose the RIM’s formalization as correct.

To illustrate this convenient forgetfulness, we quote “Critique of Maoist Reason” at length:

“The people’s war in India, led by the CPI(Maoist), is probably the easiest to grasp as an
adjacent process that confirms the significance of the PCP-RIM sequence. Although the Charu
Majumdar led Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) [CPI(ML)] pre-existed the PCP
[NOTE this claim is false since the PCP was founded in the 1920’s by Jose Carlos
Mariategui-S-S] and the RIM, and was veiling itself as Maoist as it associated itself with the
original Naxal Rebellion, like the majority of the New Communist Movement it never really
theorized Maoism as a third stage and was instead an anti-revisionist variant of
Marxism-Leninism declaring ‘China’s chairman is our chairman.’ When it fragmented into
multiple proto-Maoist groups [NOTE: it fragmented into multiple reformist and legalist
anti-Maoist groups as well-S-S], however, two of these groups ended up joining the RIM: the
Maoist Communist Centre [MCC] [NOTE: MCC was not a fragment from Majumdars group, it
was independent and led by Kanai Chatterjee who during Majumdar’s leadership of CPI(ML) did
not join due to ideological differences and maintained the group Dakhshin Desh- S-S] and the
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Naxalbari [CPI(ML) Naxalbari]. At the high-point
of the RIM the MCC ended up uniting with another post-Majumdar Indian revolutionary
organization, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People’s War Group [CPI(ML)
PWG], and their unity would be on the basis of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and not
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought [NOTE: this claim is irrelevant since their material as
CPI (Maoist) makes no distinction between the two other than the name-S-S]. The CPI(ML)
Naxalbari would join the CPI(Maoist) years later, after the dissolution of the RIM, thus
signifying the importance of the theoretical conjuncture that the PCP-RIM sequence had sealed:
Ajith, one of RIM’s primary theorists of Maoism-qua-Maoism, was now a theorist of the
CPI(Maoist). The overall point, here, is that although aspects of the Maoism developing in the
people’s war in India were adjacent to the PCP-RIM process, it was also intimately connected to
this process and its current understanding of MLM cannot be treated as separate any more than
the Communist Party of Turkey Marxist-Leninist [TKP/ ML] or the Maoist Communist Party of
Turkey [MKP] are separate from this process.”

Above we see a selective memory, the truth is used, but only partially with regard to the fact that
as MCC dissolved in order to help form CPI (Maoist), the new organization itself was never
compelled to join RIM. This means that the comrades in MCC effectively left the RIM when
merging to form CPI (Maoist). Without more information we cannot reach a position on the
decision of these comrades; in our view RIM already showed signs of serious degeneration by
2004 when the Party in India formed, and joining such a rat-infested (Prachanda, Avakian) vessel
would have been reasonably unappealing. It is precisely the critique we have of RIM that
explains its degeneration, a fact most often ignored for convenience by JMP. This should
significantly expose the way in which JMP traffics with the glorious People’s War in India to
legitimize the RIM’s defects. In essence, JMP hides behind the People’s War in India, which both
sides of this debate actively support and defend, as a kind of ruse to divide the ICM on the very
points on which it unites. This maneuver serves neither the consolidation of Maoism, nor the
support and defense of the People’s War in India.

A preliminary word on Ajith; it should be recalled that the most vigorous calls to free Ajith came
from the exact groups that JMP seeks to counterpose to the Indian comrades and comrade Ajith,
who has defended many principled positions including the PCP’s role in imposing MLM, the fact
that MLM and MZT are not the same (a position we have not encountered in our study of official
CPI (Maoist) documents). Disagreements on Great Leadership, which Ajith mistakenly
conflates with “the cult of personality,” are withstanding, and while struggle on this is needed
from more capable organizations, the main thing from the Maoist movements which JMP seeks
to cleave from India has always been support for Ajith and the People’s War in India, leaving
criticism and line struggle open which will only increase unity and strengthen all Maoist forces.
We ask our readers to investigate this tangential point; where was the support for the campaign to
free Ajith in Canada, the homeland of JMP where his ideas are most accepted and defended? We
have seen little proof that such a campaign was taken up as it was in the US, Brazil, Germany,
Norway, and other places. We insist that practice be evaluated and taken seriously as Maoism is
more than a thinking exercise.

Our assessment of the RIM is that it was (for a time) a step toward establishing Maoism as the
command and guide of world proletarian revolution, a necessary step that fell off the path with
the emergence of Avakianism, etc. This is the only correct view when proceeding from two-line
struggle, and the history of the formation. JMP, on the other hand, seeks to preserve the right and
center as the progenitors of Maoism who “consummated” the unfinished or incorrect (in his
view) ideas of Chairman Gonzalo, whom he tirelessly attacks in a backhanded and cowardly
way. What he seeks to preserve is a more red-looking version of Avakianism, as we have
described elsewhere in our journal.

JMP’s conflations are abundantly clear. For example, his recognition of the TKP/ML and MKP
as equally legitimate, which is not the case. Similarly, the international declarations he supports
are signed by both splits of the PCR-RCP (the eclecticists he supports and the dogmatists he
opposes); they are both recognized as equally legitimate. Anything goes, it is all “Maoism.”
Following this illogical conflation, any country could boast numerous “Maoist Parties” which is
a rejection of the critical and important positions held by Lenin in the Communist International,
that were correct to insist that there could only be one singular Communist Party in each country.
Liberalism replaces Marxism-Leninism ideologically on this question.
Regarding the Philippines, we encounter an even more muddled ‘making the shoe fit’ method:

“The people’s war in the Philippines, however, is different from the Indian case because the
Communist Party of the Philippines [CPP] never joined the RIM and yet was pursuing a people’s
war under the name of Maoism before the PCP initiated its own people’s war and declared
Maoism as the third stage of revolutionary science. Since the CPP initially embraced an ideology
of anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism, eventually adopting the terminology ‘Mao Zedong
Thought’ it might seem that the CPP is not properly Maoist, as some have claimed. Indeed, in
Stand For Socialism Against Modern Revisionism, a classic CPP anti-revisionist text from 1992,
‘Marxism-Leninism’ is the terminology used for revolutionary science. In this sense it may
appear as if the CPP is closer to the CPI(ML), or at least similar to the NCM Marxist-Leninist
‘Maoist’ groupings, in its understanding of Marxism.

At the same time however, the CPP participated as observers in the first RIM meeting and those
Maoist organizations that came out of RIM largely recognize the CPP’s people’s war as an
advanced Maoist revolution. Most importantly, however, is the fact that the 2016 Constitution of
the Communist Party of the Philippines begins by asserting the universality of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.” [“Critique of Maoist Reason”]

Inching toward the truth then abruptly reversing position, now all that is required to legitimize
the defects of the RIM is “observing” the first RIM meeting! No value is placed on the fact that
their observation did not lead to any unity, let alone their joining RIM. Instead of going into the
reasons the CPP determined not to join RIM (preferring unilateral international relationships, and
opposing democratic centralism being required at the international level, among other things),
JMP is content to find evidence that the CPP has in fact adopted MLM as outlined by RIM (in
2016!). This is an act of faith not supported by any material evidence. Perhaps he should read
one his own rants against “theology” in Maoism.

Terminology (as JMP would surely agree with) does not denote ideological or political unity, as
the terminology of Marxism is used by revisionism as a mainstay in its efforts to confuse the
proletariat into the pockets of the bourgeoisie. This is a general truth to highlight that
terminology is form, and how that terminology is understood is the essence, it is not a comment
on the CPP. Going out on a limb, the author arrogantly speaks for the CPP, again to legitimize his
own views instead of letting them speak for themselves. The CPP does not offer an argument that
the incomplete and seldom practiced formulas of the RIM were taken as legitimate, let alone the
consummation of Maoism. The CPP remained outside of the RIM, and their conception of
Maoism upholds neither the so-called RIM definition of Maoism nor the PCP’s definition.
Furthermore, there is no evidence that any MLM Party or organization does not support the
People’s War in the Philippines, and this is abundantly clear when reading the joint international
declarations. Furthermore, the CPP itself poses an independent point of MLM’s origin which is
at variance with the very scientific approach espoused by JMP earlier, he ignores this to fabricate
his bad theoreticization.

In these acrobatics JMP finds himself exposed with regard to the debates on the universality of
People’s War, in which the CPP takes the position that it is only applicable to third world
conditions, his handling of this question is quite interesting:

“None of this is to say that these adjacent emergences of MLM are homogenous with the
PCP-RIM process, or with each other, but only that they are adjacent to the latter’s conception of
MLM and eventually participated, echoed, and reasserted that conception of MLM. Although
some aspects of the PCP-RIM conception of MLM are not accepted in these adjacent versions
that exist as a constellation around the point of origin––for example, the universality of
Protracted People’s War––it is notable that they otherwise are largely in agreement with the way
in which the RIM statement conceptualized Maoism.”

After using the People’s Wars in India and the Philippines to legitimize the so-called RIM
conception and flattening the PCP into this (via negation of the ideological and political struggles
within RIM), the author takes a step back to admit that these are not homogenous, but similar.
This is a cop out because all adherents to MLM are similar at least in the way of terminology,
and if they were so similar as to be the same thing, then there would be little need for the major
ideological disputes which prompted the writing of “Critique of Maoist Reason” to begin with.

The fact is, nothing is monolithic and homogenous, and there will always be two-line struggle in
the ICM. The issue of Universal People’s War is a significant disagreement, but it is casually set
aside by JMP because in his RIM worship, he understands that this was accepted as a formality
and never taken seriously in essence. The proof of our assertion here can be found in what passed
for the “military strategy” of one of the main leading groups and founders of the RIM, the
RCP-USA. While RIM (in form) claimed that People’s War was universal, the RCP, who again
was a leading force in the RIM, never updated any of its own positions to reflect this. What they
maintained from before RIM to after its collapse was the stale legalistic accumulation of forces
theory followed by the so-called “October Road” to insurrection, not People’s War. This was
only polished slightly by the “New Synthesis of Communism” to include Avakian’s “original
contribution” of “hastening while waiting” on insurrection. The later adjustments only officiate
the typical stale accumulation of forces theory, which promote legalism and “non-violent”
agitation in a protracted way to “help hasten” the coming insurrection, which is fully dependent
on the masses of people accepting Avakian and his ideas as their own. This is an impossible and
hopeless strategy which negates both People’s War and the mass line.
Just like with Avakian, the issue of the universal and only scientific military strategy of the
proletariat is a voluntary side point which has no real bearing on the difference between MLM
and any of its “adjacents” or “prefigurations.” What we get is Mao-ish and not Maoist, a grab
bag of assorted ideas that reject systematization and a program for revolution. The universality of
people’s war is integral to Maoism, so much that it must be struggled for as a point of unity in
the ICM. Since those denouncing the strategy as non-universal such as the CPP, would never
have the chance to apply it to an imperialist country, they must be won over to support and
defend its application, lest they promote a non-starter, stale accumulation of forces with legalist
“hastening” while “awaiting” an insurrectionist moment in the nations which oppress them.
Opposing the military strategy of your comrades is not an impediment from supporting them
overall, but unity must still be struggled over so that the correct kind of internationalism can be
in command—making revolution in one’s own country as part of the world proletarian revolution
while supporting foreign national liberation struggles as well as new democratic and socialist
revolutions. In order for revolutionaries to make revolution in the imperialist centers, they
necessarily have to accept the universal (and creative) application of people’s war as their sole
military strategy.

JMP is more than willing to surrender the argument before even having it:

“revolutionary parties such as the CPP still deny the universality of Protracted People’s War is
somewhat meaningless since they are engaged in People’s Wars themselves, and thus proving its
significance in practice, and are not based in the imperialist metropoles and thus cannot really
speak to the strategy of particular contexts outside of their revolutionary practice.”

Maoists must oppose this liberal “agree to disagree” approach to internationalism, and in its
place insist upon broadening and deepening the two-line struggle over the question. While he
claims they “cannot really speak” to the strategy of applying People’s War in an imperialist
country, they can and do, especially with respect to the Philippines who have important and
historic ideologues publicly taking positions on this question, and official Party websites sharing
these positions without objection to any of their contents. Furthermore, it is a sort of chauvinistic
identity politics that would suggest that comrades in the third world could not comprehend nor
take positions on the revolutionary strategy in other countries different from their own; their vast
experience in making revolution alone earns them this qualification. Maoism can be understood
by anyone regardless of their geographic identity, this is the exact same reason why the PCP,
being based in the third world, was still qualified to assert that people’s war is universal and can
be applied to imperialist countries as well. No Maoist should ever fear two-line struggle or even
fierce debate with those they support, and hence they cannot surrender the way JMP does. Just as
North and South American Maoists were qualified to denounce focoism, which cannot be
applied outside of inaccessible terrain (geography being one of the key points in Regis Debray’s
work on the topic), third world-based revolutionaries must engage with the military strategy of
the first world, as both are part of the world proletarian revolution, which includes all People’s
Wars and national liberation struggles.

The thirst to preserve the RIM’s worst defects comes at the cost of failing to defend the
universality of People’s War in a thoroughgoing way, or even calling for line struggle over the
question. JMP only states that the CPP “proves” the theory of peoples war is “significant” a point
which no one has denied. Instead of the most important question in Maoism—the conquest of
power—JMP devotes whole sections of his books to casting aspersions against the formulations
of the PCP as well as those who defend them. He is eclectic enough to concede, in his mind, that
MLM does not include the universality of People’s War, and he certainly denounces the concept
of “jefatura.” In short, MLM is, according to JMP, a category of convenience with no real
consolidated fundamental content, beyond what Mao has already stated. In all his rallying
against dogmatism, he fails to see the dogma in his own position, which invariably rejects the
new fundamental content of Maoism but insists on maintaining that it is the third and superior
stage, even if he finds what makes it such largely dispensable.

In all of this, the position of Mao-ish eclecticism seeks a watered-down variant of what RIM at
its best advocated for in its 1993 formal adoption of MLM, and certainly falls short of what the
PCP taught the world of Maoism’s fundamental content. The PCP not only struggled fiercely to
impose MLM as the command and guide of the world proletarian revolution, but their
understanding of it was also clearer and stronger; the struggle in the RIM sharpened the PCP’s
understanding of MLM, which was a conquest of the People’s War in Peru. It is not about who
first raised the red flag of MLM, but to what highest summit it has reached, and for that answer
we look to the Andes. It was the PCP, led by Chairman Gonzalo, who dragged the right and the
center of the RIM higher along the path to Maoism, and this was still incomplete when the bend
in the road befell the ICM and the RIM degenerated. As the ’93 RIM statement made clear, the
experience gained from the People’s War in Peru led by the PCP was of the highest importance,
placing it above the other revolutionary experience is not accidental nor was it empty political
flattery. What we see is JMP moving the goal post to the point of reversing the verdict.

As the Brazilian comrades made clear in their polemic against the Communist (maoist) Party of
Afghanistan (CmPA):

“We consider that the RIM was a step forward at the time, and that a correct and justified
evaluation of its experience is necessary. To make this correct and justified evaluation of the
RIM, it is necessary to analyze the history of the two-line struggle within it and the role of each
party in it. Like every revolutionary organization, the RIM was divided between left, center and
right. Those who now advocate legitimate ‘heirs’ of RIM should clearly state which heritage
they claim and which heritage they renounce. A centrist position on it is nothing more than
adhering to revisionism.”
The position of the Brazilian comrades is fleshed out in the Joint International

Statement “In defense of the life of Chairman Gonzalo, Hoist Higher the Flag of Maoism” which
correctly analyzes the life and death of RIM so well that we cannot hope to improve upon it and
instead quote it at length:

“If we see the real state of the struggle for the reunification of the communists in the world we
can see that in many aspects we are much better off than we were during the best moments of the
Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), because although the RIM was correctly
characterized by Chairman Gonzalo as a ‘step forward’, he also pointed out – with his proper
precision – that ‘as long as it follows a just and correct ideological-political line’ the RIM will be
a step forward, and it was, and it served to unite the communists on the basis of the red line and
this could be no other than the line of Chairman Gonzalo. That is to say, the principal in the
evaluation of the RIM is to state that it served the Proletarian World Revolution – and
particularly the struggle to reunite the communists, while it served the struggle to impose
Maoism as its sole command and guide – that is to say, the struggle which was led by Chairman
Gonzalo – and that it ceased to play a positive role when the revisionists of the ‘RCP’ from
United States – taking advantage of the problematic situation of the left due to the bend in the
People’s War in Peru – turned to totally hegemonize it. We must never forget that the unity is to
serve the revolution and it only serves it, if the interest of the proletariat is imposed. The unity of
the communists today in the world can only be achieved on the basis of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, or else it is not a unity of communists but a
kind of ‘front’ with revisionism and opportunism.

“RIM was liquidated by revisionism’s handling of the two-line struggle. The maneuver of
Avakian was, to state – as a starting point of his ‘criticism’ of the second Right Opportunist Line,
revisionist and capitulationist, in Peru – that supposedly ‘the author would not matter, only the
line’, which precisely led to centering the debate on who ‘the author’ was. Or did this miserable
not know that the communists of the world would rise when their Great Leadership was
questioned? This is how the two-line struggle was derailed. The Problem for the left in the ICM
was the hard and complex situation in which the PCP entered after the arrest of Chairman
Gonzalo.

“Despite everything, the PCP continued fulfilling its role as the Red Fraction in the ICM and the
People’s War continued to be beacon and guide of PWR [NOTE: “proletarian world
revolution”-S-S]. Because the life of the party can never be detained and the People’s War was
not stopped for even a moment. However, situations like the lack of the Great Leader caused
problems in the left. The right could then state their positions (the attacks on the dictatorship of
the proletariat, the ‘justification of peace negotiations as tactics’, the negation of semifeudality
and evolution of bureaucratic capitalism, the negation of the three characteristics of imperialism,
etc.) and all this remained in second place because the attention was centered on ‘debating’ the
maneuvers of the psychological warfare of imperialism and the sinister actions of traitors.
Around the turning of the century, the struggle was sharpened. Then the left went into trouble
and a great part fell into Avakian’s trap, the initiative fell into the hands of the right and they
could lead the two-line struggle into exploding and thus revisionism liquidated the RIM.”

Part II: Addressing the Claims Made Against Our Journal and the Parties and Organizations We
Support

“In many countries where the communist forces were on a very underdeveloped stage, Parties
and Organizations that uphold Marxism-Leninism-Maoism reemerged and who struggle to
reconstitute their Communist Parties that were destroyed by revisionism. The majority of these
forces took clear position for the definition of Maoism made by Chairman Gonzalo. This makes
some people, aloof from any Marxist criteria, label them as ‘Gonzaloists’ and impute the left to
be ‘sectarian and dogmatic’. Apart from the obvious – that opportunism and revisionism have
always branded Marxists this way – it reveals that they have not understood that we are in the
period of struggle to impose Maoism as the sole command and guide of the Proletarian World
Revolution and that when assuming Maoism as the third stage of development of the ideology of
the international proletariat, many parties and organizations, in essence, have only seen it as
changing one formulation, that to speak of Maoism was a ‘more modern’ form to speak about
Mao Zedong Thought.

“So the problem in the ICM is not principally rooted in that Maoism is not formally
acknowledged, but how some understand it, and this is why it is important to start with who
defined Maoism as the new, third and superior stage of our ideology; because it is only by
starting from what was scientifically established by Chairman Gonzalo that we can understand
Maoism as one unit, as one harmonic system. If one does not take the work of Chairman
Gonzalo as a starting point, one falls into eclecticism, counterposing quotes but not
understanding the ideas. If we understand this, we can understand the reason why there are not
few Parties and Organizations that, while taking longer time, have become stuck and have not
made leaps in their processes, while those who put the most effort into learning from Chairman
Gonzalo are, in general, advancing principally in qualitative terms, but also in quantitative terms.
We advise those who rush to give labels to open their eyes to the material truth instead of getting
carried away by their imaginations.” – In defense of the life of Chairman Gonzalo, Hoist Higher
the Flag of Maoism

The above more or less stands to address the arguments in chapter 4 of “Critique of Maoist
Reason” and we highlight this even though it was published years before “Critique of Maoist
Reason” in order to point out the faulty approach of JMP when addressing oppositional
viewpoints, and again we must acknowledge that he is not alone in this approach. It is his
proximity to the US and his direct mention of our journal which demand that we address his
claims directly, and as he makes them instead of basing our arguments on assumption. The
above-quoted document signed by Maoist Parties and organizations around the world already
does a good job of this and should be studied. We intend to continue building upon what has
been said for years, and we hope to make modest contributions on our front.

Chapter 4 of “Critique of Maoist Reason” starts out sensibly enough by making the argument
that the “sign posts” of revolution, (who we would call the great leaders of the world proletarian
revolution), Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, all had a deep thirst for knowledge and
studied everything which might be at all useful in service of their cause. We agree with their
methods of course, and we hold that such obvious truth is stated by JMP to imply that these
methods are rejected by the majority of the ICM, making his conclusion what we reject.

Maoists of course do not oppose being “extremely well read” and to reiterate our earlier point,
everything should be studied from a foundation rooted in Marxism, and with this lens, the useful
can be demarcated from the useless. Likewise, the emergence of dogmatism as a substitute for
Marxism occurs throughout all revolutionary struggles, just as two-line struggle persists.
Dogmatism fails to uphold the logic of Marx, which is to be the ruthless critic. “Critique of
Maoist Reason” does not provide a full picture, using only partial examples without dividing a
thing into two, this is a subjectivist mistake:

“During the course of the New Communist Movement in the imperialist metropoles, for
example, there is a point where all of the polemics devolve into quote mongering protectionism
of little ML kingdoms––of whose hermeneutics is the most faithful to a pure
Marxism-Leninism.”

The so-called New Communist Movement was not simply lost to dogma, while dogmatism
undoubtedly existed, the “NCM” was born (at least in the US) from a partial anti-revisionism and
mired with the birth defect of nascent identity politics. This was in the 1970’s when
postmodernism was just being implemented as a counter-revolutionary ideology to replace
Marxism on campuses in imperialist countries. This defect predated the dogmatism and actually
helped sectarianism and dogmatism ferment. The defects of the “NCM” which most align with
the ideas of JMP are ignored for the defects he assumes most exemplify his opponents. It must be
expressed that we revolutionaries are correct to detest Badiou etc., not because they are
intellectuals, but because they are revisionist enemies of Marxism. After all, we are guilty as
charged of following the teachings and ideas of Chairman Gonzalo, who was also an intellectual.
Instead of just understanding the anti-revisionist stance against bourgeois ideas, the author here
assumes anti-intellectualism, while offering no actual examples of it in the living movement. We
must express that our opposition to JMP is not due to his job as a low-level part-time professor,
but because of his role in the implementation of bourgeois ideas in the revolutionary struggle.

We encounter grand generalizations in the place of concrete examples derived from the facts:

“It has become commonplace for young Maoists, who in their laudable desire to stand against
contemporary revisionism and anti-communism (which also takes pseudo-radical forms such as
post-modernism), adopt the same kind of anti-intellectualism as previous generations that is in
direct contradiction to the expansiveness of intellectual rigour and investigation that the great
theorists and philosophers of Marxism demonstrated. They even treat the theoretical
achievements of these thinkers as theological artifacts, though they employ the name of ‘science’
to hide their hermeneutics, forgetting that these great theorists came to their conceptual insights
partly because of their expansive intellectual rigour”

We ask, where is this “commonplace”? Who are these “young Maoists”? To what formation do
they belong and what is their practical application of this error? Surely answering these questions
would be beneficial to the argument being made. Instead we are given only the vaguest
generalizations without substantiation. In our assessment this is likely due to the author’s
immersion in subcultural social media websites, where unknown and unorganized individuals,
the majority of whom have no practice, profess knowledge of Maoism inappropriately. We are
not of the view that this is evidence of errors in the existing, living movement, nor are we
determined to take them seriously as if they were part of the movement at this point. We prefer
citing published material and engaging with opinions that can be attributed to an organized group
or an individual linked to said group.

No argument can be made against JMP if he is saying that unorganized but newly interested and
enthusiastic supporters of the movement who manifest online tend toward immaturity, and
defend the movement at times in inappropriate ways. There is a vital criticism here: the
movement must struggle to educate, uplift and organize these well-meaning supporters, which it
has yet to accomplish in a meaningful way. Even with opportunistic criticism, one must search
for what is useful and reject what is only meant as slander. With this approach, even the
opportunist attacks can improve the work of genuine Maoists. At the very least, we can learn to
disarm the opposition.

We must however condemn the method likely being used here: that is to engage in internet
arguments with unorganized people who speak for no organization in the US and are not active
with their support, and then take this experience as proof of issues in the actual movement in
which they play no part. This is almost certainly the case, since no example can be cited. A lack
of professionalism taints the argument being made by JMP and highlights the intentional
negligence of his editors. If your only connection to Maoism in a country is through anonymous
online accounts, then you cannot claim to have anything resembling an accurate idea and such
data has no bearing, it is irrelevant. Instead of attempting to make a materialist argument, JMP
and his editors have mined social-media websites and not cited their sources so that they can find
filler for their straw man argument; it is amateurish and slimy.

He continues:

“the great theorists from Marx to Gonzalo did not shy away from intellectual investigation, and
in fact held such investigation to be supremely worthwhile, there is now a troubling
anti-intellectual current that fears engagement with any text that is not canonical. All Marxist
theorists and philosophers outside of this core canon are treated as immediately suspicious. At
best they are vaguely interesting curiosities; at worst they are seen as impure academics who
exist to seduce the masses.”

Of course the great theorists had a thorough method of intellectual investigation, otherwise they
could not have become great theorists. This truism hardly requires mention on its own, it is only
necessary to transition into false charges. Is it wrong to be suspicious of non-Marxist thinkers?
After all, there is not a thought that exists outside of class, if Marxism is the ideology of the
proletariat, then to what class does non-Marxist ideology belong? And, should proletarian
intellectuals embrace bourgeois or petty bourgeois thinking without any skepticism? We leave
the answer to our readers and only suggest that healthy skepticism is what allowed Marx to turn
Hegel on his head and claim political economy for the proletariat by taking apart the ideas of
Smith and Ricardo. We applaud the skepticism of Marx, as well as his acute ability to separate
the true from the false with his sharp criticism. The same goes for military science. Approaching
bourgeois military science without any skepticism of its over-reliance on weaponry leads to
error, approaching it as Marxists allows one to gain many insights from bourgeois military
theorists; Clausewitz and Danton are shining examples of great theorists from among the
bourgeoisie, and these are not “canonical.”

A study of our journal would help clarify the matter, bourgeois thinkers are referenced and cited
for two reasons: either to express and defend what is true, or expose the maneuvers of the
ideology to promote what is false—they are divided into two. Our journal has defended Darwin,
Freud, and others, all while remaining Marxist. Are these cannon? No, they are not. At the same
time, we have opposed the incorrect ideas and even worse application of these ideas from those
who are accepted as “cannon,” such as Antonio Gramsci, who while heroic in his efforts to found
and lead the Italian CP, represented much of the ideas that led to its later reformist degeneration.
Ideology and which class it serves has far more to do with our evaluation and reliance than
“cannon,” and of course, we are willing to study everything under the sun, provided we do so as
Marxists. We are well aware that the position we have published on Gramsci differs from many
comrades internationally whom we unite with. This respect has not prevented us from asserting
our own views on the matter and going against the “canonical” tide, wrong or right.

If the criticism is that we do all this with too much reliance on Marxism and not enough “good
faith” to the ideology of other classes, this is a criticism which has be exposed as an opportunist
attack and tossed aside.

Our criticism of JMP and company has never been that they study too many things, or that they
appropriate from these things what is true and useful. If this were the case, the movement in
Canada would be vibrant and growing, would be able to march in the streets on May 1st or at
least show signs of increasing ideological and political unity, however this is not the case
anywhere in that country currently. Anyone paying attention to the Canadian struggle sees the
deep and lasting effects of dogmatism and eclecticism, it is undeniable. The proof is in the
practice and not what they say in books, magazine articles, or blogs.

We are witness to a deeply fractured movement with two hostile sides—one totally degenerated
by the errors JMP most exemplifies, that is the wholesale and opportunist importation of
bourgeois “common sense” into Maoism, which muddles and destroys “Maoist reason,” and the
other is the bankrupt and outdated fossil of dogmatism, which cannot mobilize, organize, or
affect the class struggle. Thus, with all his ranting against dogmatism and eclecticism, he should
gaze into the mirror thoughtfully and self-critically; these errors have feasted on his movement,
and those whom he flings mud at have only grown in quantity and quality over a significantly
shorter time period in places like the US. This practical metric is of no use to JMP or his cohorts,
but it is testimony to the fact that a small number of people with the correct ideology and good
working methods can persist, and polished but incorrect ideas with bad working methods will
degenerate. We reiterate and paraphrase Stalin to the ire of our opponents—that which is
growing is invincible and that which is decaying is already dead!

He finally drops the ambiguity for a direct assault:

“we have the phenomenon of Maoist militants who should be aware of the failures of the
previous anti-revisionist sequence, who should be conscious of the fact that the thinking
produced by the PCP-RIM experience was critical and creative, who fall into the worst patterns
of hermeneutical exegesis. Such failure in thought is endemic to the ‘principally Maoist’ trend,
with several outliers, and the aforementioned US-American platform Struggle Sessions is
paradigmatic of this poverty in thought. Nearly every article on this site reads like a hermeneutic
of classical texts, demonstrating a fear of critically engaging with thought itself, resulting in a
tragic repetition of the worst examples of the previous generation of anti-revisionism: ‘This is
wrong because Gonzalo/Mao/Lenin once wrote x.’”
Our journal is “guilty” of making arguments and substantiating them with established Marxist
positions derived from the classics, and it is also focused on the practical experience which
earned these classics the prestige of being fundamental texts. We hold, like all Maoists, that
practice is the best method of attaining and accessing rational knowledge, and hence rely upon
the practice (historical and contemporary) of the ICM in its highest expressions of class struggle.
The criticism here is reduced to a criticism of form, a criticism that we do not engage enough
with vogue theories from bourgeois schools of thought that are divorced from the class struggle
of the proletariat. This can be understood in part as an objection to studying and defending
classic positions. Historical materialism is a science, and to utilize it one has to be familiar with
the history of class struggle; for the proletariat this means familiarization with the history of
Marxism. We have never made the argument that this material is correct simply because it was
written by great Marxists, it is the historical practice which proves its validity. JMP hardly
concerns himself with weather the political line being put forward is correct or incorrect, and
instead takes issue with citing positions held by great leaders past and present.

While we are accused vaguely of being skeptical of non-Marxist texts, JMP has concluded that
we are not skeptical enough of Marxist texts—this position reflects his class stand. This tendency
from some critics is derived from the position that Marxism itself was a flawed and limited
science, rather than one already containing the analytic means of overcoming practical
limitations with new discoveries and the ability to reach superior stages. When someone
claiming to adhere to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism is making statements that directly contradict
the work, principles, or laws espoused Marx, Lenin, or Mao, this should be pointed out and
discussed. If the contradiction is correct (like the fact that Mao expressed base areas as only
possible in China and similar countries) we have no qualms with issuing disagreement here and
stating our reasons for disagreeing. Furthermore, we do not insist something is correct or
incorrect on account of who said it, our method is to explain why something is correct or not, and
of course it is not wrong to substantiate these positions with the positions of our great teachers
and great leaders. JMP attempts to encourage his readers to believe that quoiting from the
classics to substantiate actual arguments being made is “hermeneutic” in an effort to rid himself
of the responsibility to be a Marxist!

He continues with an attack on the majority of the ICM:

“Such theological thinking results in a doctrinaire application of categories, as it always has, that
eclipses scientific rigour. For example, the ‘principally Maoist’ trend is wont to claim that all
forms of Maoism that do not fully agree with the way in which the PCP conceptualized MLM
prior to the RIM sequence are either examples of ‘rightism’ or ‘centrism’.”

After the admittance of ideological line struggle, are we then to assume that both lines are
equally correct? Are we to drop our banner? Line struggle over fundamental questions regarding
differences is now reduced to theology. There has to be a left, a right, and a center in any line
struggle. Ignoring this for unprincipled ideological peace stinks of opportunism. While JMP has
conducted work to attack Maoist principles such as Great Leadership (derived from Leninist
principles), he has done so with the same means—accusing people of being religious. In many
cases, he has provided no “scientific rigour” at all concerning the questions of militarization and
concentric construction, and the groups which he defends have themselves never attempted to
answer the questions that militarization and concentric construction do. We are not of the mind
that these positions are correct just because they were upheld by the greatest living
Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, Chairman Gonzalo. We have insisted that they are necessary to resolve
the question of capitalist restoration as they grapple with the role of the People’s Liberation
Army in the restoration of capitalism in China, and the Red Army’s role in the restoration of
capitalism in the Soviet Union, and further speak to the issue of raising People’s War in a world
where imperialism has developed further militarization itself. JMP and company are anemic on
these positions, and instead of being rigorous scientists, they simply repeat platitudes that the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution “did not happen soon enough” or that Mao’s successors
just were “not popular enough;” these are dollar store theories from the clearance bin.
Furthermore, the dogmatic rejection of militarization and concentric construction is a rightist
deviation, it seeks to tail the masses in every way and not to crystallize or rethink solutions to
problems which threw the ICM off its course with capitalist restoration.

We hold that Mao’s theory of cultural revolutions was his most transcendental contribution, and
that it fundamentally changed the way Communists view revolution. This was of course possible,
not because it was Mao who said it, but because Mao had the vantage point of witnessing
capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union. We will not discount Mao’s genius here, but insist that
he was not a god, he had the great experience of the People’s War and was witness to totally new
developments. Likewise, Chairman Gonzalo was not god, we do not uphold his analysis of
Maoism simply because he made it, but we adhere to the principle that Maoism is all powerful
because it is true. Chairman Gonzalo was in a unique position in the ICM (leading the most
important People’s War even according to RIM), he also had a unique vantage point, bearing
witness to the restoration of capitalism in China and identifying its internal contradictions,
posing solutions to them which were derived not merely from his own genius but from that of
Marx, Lenin, and Mao. Those who JMP is eager to dismiss as theologians have done rigorous
and scientific work on explaining this, as well as explaining why rightists oppose this in
numerous articles, magazines, and online journals, to which our own pales in comparison. We
highly recommend studying the magazine El Maoista and in particular the article “Lenin and the
Militarized Communist Party.” The point being, disagreements on the matter cannot be equally
correct, equally left, there must be a left, right, and center. If we follow the logic of JMP we
should capitulate in our principled disagreements and not struggle to come closer to the truth. We
insist that this struggle between left and right is exactly how we come to correct ideas and
improve upon the existing ones, and we do not need a bloc of Mao quotes to substantiate this.
While JMP fears labeling Chairman Gonzalo a “theologian” outright, he still does so in an
indirect and cowardly manner, by ignoring the fact that Chairman Gonzalo completed the theory
of Party Militarization and proclaimed it necessary for all MLM parties on earth for a reason.

Likewise, JMP makes a serious error by using a bourgeois framework for success and failure,
which, if applied logically and consistently, would liquidate the communist struggle for the end
of history. This is a particularly misguided notion (even he knows better) so it needs some
specific attention:

“it asserts that it [‘principally Maoism’] is properly ‘left’ only because the claim that Maoism
was the third stage of the science was first declared by the PCP but then, despite the PCP’s
failure, refuses to accept the later instantiation located in the RIM sequence. Moreover, it refuses
to account for the PCP’s failure in a historical materialist sense”

“Failure” here is a precise word choice, and we should examine that. What is the failure of the
PCP? A failure to accomplish seizure of state power for the class at this current moment? We
remind our readers that no People’s War since the one led by Chairman Mao has accomplished
this, including those JMP traffics with to legitimize his line. So we can cross that off the list, it
cannot serve as a metric here. In fact, whatever “failure” (we call it what it is, a setback) of the
PCP regarding the bend in the road still far outran all the successes of those whom he is most
aligned with (Italy, Afghanistan, Canada), which is precisely why the RIM expressed that the
People’s War led by the PCP was “most important.” Marxists must understand success and
failure in the context of class struggle, and the dialectical understanding that it does not proceed
in a straight line. We often rely on the example of the Long March in China, which was falsely
qualified as a failure (by the bourgeoisie at the time) but proved to be a great success in spite of
the setback that eliminated the majority of the Party and army. An even better example for a
deeper understanding of failure and success, which JMP would be compelled to agree with, is the
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR), which on one hand unarguably failed to prevent
capitalist restoration, and on the other hand lit the path forward to do just that—by the
continuance of the socialist revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat to prevent
restoration of capitalism and secure the path to luminous communism. We can only conclude that
the GPCR was a success in terms of what it offered the world. Should there exist those who seek
to argue for an entirely new approach to class struggle, which dismisses the GPCR as a “failure,”
this would invariably result in post-Maoism of the Avakianite variety. After all, Avakian’s
so-called contributions are based on the idea that the general period of revolution depicted by
Marx, Lenin, and Mao has closed, opening the need to adopt the “New Synthesis of
Communism.” We see here JMP using this logic, the PCP did not accomplish state power
throughout Peru, therefore we must jettison their contributions.
The Marxist method of dialectically comprehending the success/failure contradiction has to
extend to comprehending the bend in the road facing the People’s War in Peru, understanding
that the Party is in the stage of reorganization (this is not unprecedented as the CPC had to
replenish itself in the Yenan period). This is laid out clearly in the very important interview with
Comrade Laura of the PCP. The People’s War in Peru continues and within the war the Party is
being reorganized. We cannot consider the continued struggle, with twists and turns, advances
and setbacks, as anything but dialectical materialists, hence it is a foolish conclusion to claim
that the PCP “failed.”

Setbacks and advances form a dialectic, these must be weighed and measured. Hence, we cannot
say that the PCP reached a dead end, as the so-called “NCM” did. In fact, their experience with
the creative application of Maoism outside of China made them the most important (the leading
force) in the world proletarian revolution and allowed them to articulate and impose MLM.
Without this, the struggle for communism would not have advanced as far as it has today.
Claiming “failure” is using failure in the bourgeois sense, and not the Marxist sense. This is done
opportunistically, to attack the PCP and those who defend them. Strange causes which do not
rely upon a class analysis are credited for this supposed “failure,” like the “cult of personality”
supposedly inherent in Great Leadership, militarization, etc. These are dispensed with by way of
a superficial understanding that stinks of the novices who claim capitalism was restored in the
Soviet Union just because “Stalin died,” when in fact we understand that the preservation of
bourgeois right and the lag in the superstructure had far more to do with it, and that signs of this
were becoming visible even during Stalin’s lifetime.

A major shortcoming of “Critique of Maoist Reason” is its lukewarm hesitancy which refuses to
define “principally Maoism” as either a correct stand or a rightist deviation—then what is it? It
cannot exist floating ephemerally beyond a left and right framework. The issues were significant
enough to the author to merit several chapters in several books (although not considered
important enough to diligently examine these things or cite his positions at all!), but he cannot
express where they fall within two-line struggle? It is disingenuous to claim that a thing is
theological, yet not rightist as theology itself cannot be leftist or materialist. The hesitancy here
is nothing but posturing to appear on the “high road” and “non-sectarian,” but in essence the
whole argument is a charge of dogmatic rightism—revisionism, only delivered in a liberal
backhanded way with minced words. This method too is opportunism, and we should not shy
away from saying that anymore that we should shy away from expressing optimism that such
methods can be overcome and unity can be accomplished through direct struggle, without
mincing words and concealing views.

Regarding the argument of synthesis posed in “Critique of Maoist Reason,” we assert that it was
Engels who continued leading the fight of Marx after his death, and it was Stalin who continued
leading the fight of Lenin after his, spatial and temporal aspects are secondary to the political
line in the ICM, which these great leaders represented. The same holds true for Chairman
Gonzalo continuing to lead the fight of Mao in the ICM. These torchbearers cannot be written off
due to questions of physical or chronological proximity. Politics in command here means that the
political line is what we examine over direct contact or spatial and temporal concerns, or any
other desperate obfuscation which ignores the political content. After all, Bernstein bore more
spatial and temporal connection to Engels than Lenin, who never met Engels, yet it was Lenin
who maintained the political connection to Marx and Engels and not Bernstein. We find that this
view illustrates the shortcomings in what is expressed by JMP:

“That is, Gonzalo synthesized Marxism-Leninism-Maoism just as Stalin synthesized

Marxism-Leninism and Engels synthesized Marxism. At first glance, such an interpretation
appears to make sense but, at the level of substance, it begins to fall apart. The comparison of
Gonzalo to Stalin and both to Engels is a faulty analogy. First of all, whereas Gonzalo was
temporally and spatially removed from the sequence of the Chinese Revolution, Stalin was
intimately involved with Lenin in the Russian Revolution; he was a fellow cadre whose practice
was bound up with the Bolshevik Party and thus his work on Marxism-Leninism (the work that
first gave us the name Marxism-Leninism) is the work of someone practically involved and
invested in what would come to be known as the Leninist sequence.”

We remind our readers that not only did Chairman Gonzalo receive ideological, political, and
military training in China at the peak of the GPCR, but that he also gave MLM its name. This is
not what is most important here though, the issue of utmost importance is who carried on Mao’s
work, who developed the understanding, and who imposed Maoism as the third and superior
stage of Marxism? The only answer to this question, which JMP has already admitted, is
Chairman Gonzalo. We need not use crass methods of geographical distance and timing to
undermine our correct political positions when political proximity is the principal aspect.
Chairman Gonzalo embodied the red line in the ICM, and at a time of general crisis and major
setback, he propelled things further with breakthroughs represented by the initiation of the
People’s War in Peru. Much the way that Mao, who was just becoming a Marxist around the time
of the Great October Socialist Revolution and just before Lenin’s death, would carry on Stalin’s
role in the ICM, Mao was temporally and spatially separate from Lenin, but inextricably linked
to Lenin politically. This is why the banners of our revolution and the name of our ideology
reflect Marx, Lenin, and Mao. We oppose the superficial compartmentalization that JMP is using
as an escape hatch.

“Critique of Maoist Reason” and, before that, “Continuity and Rupture” both claim that “the
procession of sequences themselves are the synthesis.” This strange position is an elimination of
both the mass line and the dialectical relationship between practice, analysis, and synthesis. If the
sequences themselves are the synthesis, Maoism would be a playbook of rules, a blueprint for
making revolution; this is actually the viewpoint of dogmatists who see theory as scripture. In
reality, sequences must be analyzed, and the lessons derived from this analysis must undergo
synthesis. In this way, all the lessons of the world proletarian revolution were subject to analysis
by Chairman Gonzalo and the PCP, allowing for a complete understanding of MLM to be
presented to the world by 1988. Unfortunately, the RIM only adopted MLM at the point in
which they were robbed of this direct Great Leadership, never completely grasping MLM but
taking it up in form, only grasping it partially. This caused the left to face real setbacks and
allowed for the right and center to mount a coup, which is visible in the pages of the unofficial
organ of RIM (A World to Win magazine) which hosted numerous official RIM statements.

Understanding that this will be loathsome to JMP we will quote Chairman Gonzalo on the point
of the relationship between analysis and synthesis, since he explains it masterfully and neatly
exposes why one of the aspects without the other results in deviation:

“Pay attention to analysis and synthesis — these are two aspects of a contradiction and synthesis
is the principal one. Analysis allows us to break down and set elements apart in order to achieve
a better understanding, but this is only one aspect. It is not, nor can it ever be, the entire process
of knowledge. It requires its other aspect — synthesis. It is synthesis which enables us to grasp
the essence of knowledge. If there is no synthesis there is no qualitative leap in knowledge.
Synthesis is the decisive aspect, the main aspect, the one which enables the formulation of
objective laws.

“Grasping this question is a problem of an ideological nature. It is an essential part of the

application of the Marxist theory of knowledge, of dialectical materialism. Grasping this point
runs counter to bourgeois idealist ideology which strives to separate analysis from synthesis.
From the standpoint of proletarian ideology, from the standpoint of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism,
these are two aspects of the same unity but synthesis is the principal aspect since it produces a
higher level of knowledge, a qualitative change, a qualitative leap.

“There are two classic examples of this. One is the example of the clock. In order to understand
its mechanism it is first necessary to take it apart. This allows us to know its components and the
functions of each one of them. But if the clock is not put together again there is no clock, only its
parts. Even if they were to be placed together in a group that would only constitute a pile of
pieces, never a clock.

“The other example is the development of the various disciplines of natural science since the
fifteenth century. This process historically demonstrates where lack of synthesis leads to. The
great development of science enabled us to grasp various aspects of nature through studies such
as mathematics, astronomy, physics, etc. But this development, entailing the breaking apart, the
analytical process of science, its differentiation into various fields, often led to metaphysical
theories.
“Even the eighteenth century, a century of great materialist scientific advance, produced
metaphysical knowledge. Nevertheless, all this breaking into constituent parts, all this separation
of fields of knowledge, laid the foundations for the qualitative leap. It generated the conditions,
first for the appearance of Hegel’s idealist dialectics and, later, of Marx’s materialist dialectics.

“Therefore this breaking down required synthesis, a thoroughgoing condensation. It laid the
ground and the appropriate conditions for that dialectical materialism achieved by Marx and
Engels, principally by Marx. The arrival at this milestone, at the proletarian outlook, at Marxist
philosophy, at dialectical materialism, was a process linked to a powerful synthesis. It was in this
same manner that we arrived at the central question of the proletarian outlook, at the question of
the universality of contradiction, an historical qualitative leap of monumental importance.

“Both examples show the need for synthesis, for the qualitative leap. Therefore let us pay special
attention to analysis and to synthesis, principally to synthesis.

“From the various contributions to the debate we can see a problem arising the process of
breaking down into constituent parts leads to talk about ‘quotations’. The contributions say
‘quotations from the document’ or, ‘on reading the words of Marx’, or, ‘on grasping the
quotations of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’. In this manner they fall into listing
isolated quotations which are not applied to actual and current problems. In this way the lack of
grasp of synthesis generates a problem: a failure to grasp the proletarian ideology as a unity — as
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. We can see this problem even in some peoples’ way of expressing
themselves. For example, in one of the contributions the question of
‘Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, and the fact that, here in Peru, this ideology’s
creative application is Gonzalo Thought’ is barely mentioned a couple of times

“It is not sufficient to grasp only the facts. Wherever there is a problem one must seek the cause.
This is an ideological question and since, in the realm of ideology, the contradiction between
proletarian and bourgeois ideology manifests itself, there is always resistance and bourgeois
ideology reflects itself in that specific and concrete moment in time as taking precedence over
the proletarian ideology. This is but part and parcel of the struggle between these two ideologies
which commonly arises in those inexperienced people who themselves are still in the midst of
their ideological development. This entails the need to demolish bourgeois ideology in order to
build up proletarian ideology. Without demolition there can be no construction. The dead weight
of tradition, of old ideas and customs, of deformities in the ideological level, constitutes an
encumbrance presenting strong resistance.

“Therein lies the need for a profound effort in the direction of transformation. Human beings are
practical beings, not contemplative entities, particularly so when acting upon reality in order to
change it in the service of the proletariat and the people. Hence humanity is capable of
overcoming the old and obsolete ideology and of embracing the proletarian ideology, the only
ideology able to comprehend and transform the world in the service of the class and the
oppressed peoples.

“Very well. But, when studying, this contradiction is an issue of analysis and synthesis. From the
standpoint of knowledge this is the driving force which generates a qualitative leap. In the
absence of a correct handling of this contradiction problems will arise in the handling of the
proletarian ideology. Therein, at this level, lies the root cause of the failure to take a stand for
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, as universal truth, as the outlook uniting the
communists of the whole world and, specifically, the failure to take a stand principally for
Gonzalo Thought here in Peru for this, our Peruvian revolution. Taking up positions based on
isolated quotations on the international situation or on the national political situation, on the
questions of the Party and its Three Instruments, or on work among the masses, etc., reveals a
failure to conceive of Marxism as a unity. When studying, to restrict oneself to the analysis and
to fail in the handling of the synthesis as the principal factor, constitutes a problem of a bourgeois
ideological character involving failure to carry out a qualitative leap. Taking a stand for
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism, as guide and center, is the axis upon which
everything depends. It is this standpoint, the one which generates comprehension and the
elucidating of the objective law, the grasping of which makes possible the changing of
everything — nature, society and ideas.

“One must always learn this lesson well. Limiting oneself merely to analysis leads to
metaphysics. Undertaking synthesis leads to dialectical materialism. In studying the document
this outlook enables us to arrive at Marxism. Arriving at Marxism leads us to Leninism, and
Leninism to Maoism. Of all these three, Maoism is principal. Moreover, Maoism leads us to
Gonzalo Thought, which is the universal truth specific to the concrete reality of Peruvian society
and specific to the concrete conditions of the class struggle today.

“It is synthesis which enables us to understand the document and to understand its Marxist
character. To grasp the way in which the Party understands Marxism today while basing itself on
the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, Gonzalo Thought, thesis which holds that Maoism is the new and
superior stage.

“All of us, communists, fighters and masses, must forge ourselves in the proletarian ideology —
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Gonzalo Thought.”

History is a set of class contradictions, and hence the study of history is the study of these
contradictions. A sequence must be broken down in order to be understood in its totality, the
bourgeoisie divided from the proletariat, and with the elimination of the former, this process is
eradicated with the revisionist position that a sequence is a synthesis itself—exposing that JMP’s
conception of MLM is that it has not been synthesized (according to him the PCP “failed,” and
while he does not comment on the degeneration and dissolution of the RIM, this should qualify
as having reached its conclusion and being liquidated by revisionism). The purpose of historical
materialism is done away with for the superficial acceptance of the exact type that JMP poses
regarding RIM. According to the logic of JMP, the PCP “failed” and therefore provided no
synthesis, the synthesis was “consummated” in the RIM only after the “failure of the PCP” and
therefore, even though the RIM also “failed” it contains the real synthesis!

In fact, the position that the “sequence is the synthesis” is the single thread linking all of his
dollar store, bargain bin concepts. If the RIM sequence is the synthesis itself, there is no longer a
need to analyze it and synthesize a way out of its quagmire, and it is then treated lifelessly
without line struggle—a left, a right, and a center. Contrary to this ideologically bankrupt notion,
the ICM has accomplished increased unity behind the banner of Chairman Gonzalo and is
making heroic strides for a Unified International Maoist Conference. It is precisely the refusal to
grasp how Maoism must be applied today that leaves thinkers like JMP stranded in the past,
craving answers to their own quagmires. This, along with a tendency to ignore what the PCP
was actually teaching the RIM, has them heavily leaning on bourgeois ideologies like
postmodernism to answer things that they cannot answer with a mastery of Marxism.

Understanding that a sequence such as the GCPR must be analyzed and synthesized after its
conclusion is essential to thinking through its fundamental problematic—the question of power.
Mao died and his four leading comrades were imprisoned by the end of the GPCR, and hence
were unable to analyze it in totality, and this charge was left to the forthcoming
torchbearers—the PCP. The same is true for the RIM sequence, which is now undergoing
interrogation so that synthesis of its experience is possible.

Importantly, our assertion is that the completed and harmonious system of MLM was present in
the work of Chairman Gonzalo in 1982 (being presented to the world by 1988), 11 years before
its formal acceptance by the RIM. The latter did not further develop Chairman Gonzalo’s
contributions but hesitantly tailed behind them, advancing only so far in part, restrained by
conservative apprehension and not articulated disagreement. This cannot be used to distort
reality and proclaim that the RIM “consummated Maoism;” such a position is to claim that the
PCP went “too far” in terms of ideology and practice and that restraint, holding on to Mao
Zedong Thought, was the advance! They pose a “strategic retreat” from MLM only to smuggle
in eclecticism without merit and dogmatically cling to this deviation as if it were god’s truth.

It is evident that the data produced by the sequence contains the lessons within it, but
disassembled lessons themselves are not a synthesis. The process of synthesis is so important
that Chairman Gonzalo highlighted its role as the principle aspect between analysis and
synthesis. The so-called “failure” of the PCP does not discredit its role in this process, nor does it
allow for the dismissal of the correct and universal contributions of Chairman Gonzalo any more
than the total degeneration of the RIM can be used to dismiss MLM as a whole. We find
inconsistency in the fact that the devotees of an uncritical reading of the RIM’s history (lacking
analysis and synthesis) simultaneously credit it with the “consummation of Maoism” and at the
same time dismiss the PCP for its bend in the road, conveniently forgetting the fact that the RIM
suffered its own bend in the road to the point of non-existence (unlike the PCP). We must also
point out that the claim of “MLM being consummated” in 1993 places it well after the bend in
the road of the Peruvian People’s War, as a way to circumvent the monumental Great Leadership
role of Chairman Gonzalo.

“Critique of Maoist Reason” expresses the above-described ideological coup clearly:

“Finally, Maoism was not synthesized by Gonzalo: as discussed in the previous chapter it must
be understood as the product of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement of which the PCP,
though significant for putting the question of Maoism on the map, was a member. That is,
Gonzalo’s early theorization of Maoism was bound to his particular context and it is only
through the social process of the RIM, in a statement that his [sic] PCP endorsed, where we find
a universal conception of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism that spills beyond the regional context of
Peru.”

Our point, which we have consistently made, is that many of the positions fundamental to MLM
as taught to the ICM by the PCP were not Peruvian particularities or aspects only of Gonzalo
Thought. If we were addressing Gonzalo Thought, we would agree in part; while aspects of
Chairman Gonzalo’s contributions are indeed universal, other aspects are specific to Peru. This is
why the PCP has been consistent in its position that for the world the ideological line is
expressed in Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, mainly Maoism, and for Peru it presents itself in the
distinct form of mainly Gonzalo Thought. For the world it is mainly Maoism and in Peru in is
mainly Gonzalo Thought. We must reiterate however that to understand MLM one has to
understand Gonzalo Thought, as the Brazilian comrades have expressed so well:

“The Campaign for Maoism cannot make a great leap only with declarations, studies and debate
if it does not advance in more People’s Wars in the world, in addition to further development of
those that are taking place. On the other hand, no party can advance the central and principal task
of reconstituting or constituting a CP to initiate the People’s War, without understanding and
assuming the contributions of universal validity of Gonzalo thought, as an inseparable and
indispensable part for the application of Maoism as ideological-political embodiment.

“That is why we reaffirm that Maoism is the third, new and superior stage of the ideology of the
international proletariat, today’s Marxism. Gonzalo thought is the creative application of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to the Revolution in Peru through People’s War, without which we
could not understand Maoism.”

It was through the specific application of Mao Zedong Thought to the Peruvian reality that
allowed for MLM to be understood (synthesized) as the third and superior stage. The PCP was
correct to state that People’s War is a universal and fundamental quality of MLM, and they were
to correct to insist the same for militarization, concentric construction, and so on. The argument
that the RIM was correct to dispense with these things in essence is nothing but an argument for
diluting Maoist theory to appeal to those who wish to remain in the past, who superstitiously
convince themselves that “the sequence is the synthesis.” By doing so, they go against the
Marxist theory of knowledge and two-line struggle as the motive force of communist
development. This dogma, too cowardly to gaze at its own reflection, instead projects its inherent
insecurities on all who struggle for clarity—they call us the dogmatists. After all, they present no
improvements to the concepts outlined by Gonzalo, they just arrest Maoist development for the
sake of convenience.

Hence a “sequence” cannot itself be the “synthesis,” it has to be synthesized. Likewise, a

previous sequence cannot be synthesized by the proceeding sequence—this diffuses,
disorganizes, and decentralizes synthesis, which is a concentration of the information and a
breakthrough in its application. A new sequence cannot be started without an analysis and
synthesis of the former sequence. A synthesis is a combination and systemization of ideas to
form a theory, the ideas of Mao Zedong Thought were combined by 1982 by Chairman Gonzalo
to assert themselves as MLM. Over a decade later, the RIM did not advance this concentration,
they only grabbed parts of it, grasping it formally but partially, and hence did not offer anything
new. The argument that “the sequence is the synthesis” is an erasure, rank opportunism.

On top of this erasure, there exists even more opportunism—suggesting that because the PCP
united with the minimum points of unity in RIM, that they did not see a need to bring things
further and were not struggling within it according to principles. This thinking is reminiscent of
Enver Hoxha and not at all up to Maoist standards. The implementation of any minimum
program requires minimum unity, which was in fact accomplished by RIM, but matter does not
remain in stasis, it remains in motion, driven by contradiction (in this case two-line
struggle)—that is to say a struggle for unity, a higher level of ideological unity developing an
improved program. By agreeing on the basic principle of Unity-Struggle-Unity, we are correct to
appraise the role of the PCP as uniting in order to struggle for increased unity around Maoism
within RIM (and we will say this as many times as we need to until those with ears use them).
The conception of MLM by the Peruvian comrades did initiate and lead a People’s War, and this
credential belongs to the PCP alone, as no other consistent RIM organization can claim to have
done this before the PCP. What has their “improved” version of Maoism accomplished in
practice? Where are the “inheritors” of the RIM today but taking a step back? Maoism must
advance ever forward. The PCP creatively applied Mao Zedong thought in a new and different
way, which allowed them to comprehend Maoism as a new and superior stage, and to
concentrate these ideas into a new theory: MLM. This was not incomplete—it led the People’s
War for a decade before the bend in the road and the RIM’s formal adoption of MLM.

While our critic insists that:

“Indeed the US MLMpM movement have designated my Continuity and Rupture, which was
only ever a sum-up and thinking through of what the main currents of the Maoist international
movement was asserting at the time, as putting forward a revisionist ‘theory of rupture’ and then
claiming that it was tantamount to a rupture with Leninism. Reducing the dialectic of
continuity-rupture to a ‘theory of rupture’, while a misrepresentation of what I actually argued, is
perhaps the only way that those who understand revolutionary science as an
unbroken/continuous destiny promised by Marx and Engels can conceive of a position that
undermines such a political theology.”

In synthesis, “Continuity and Rupture” was not a summary of “the main currents” in the
international movement, it was focused on elaborating the most conservative aspects of it in a
more vulgar iteration, with less skill than its compatriots. It is not a matter of “pure continuity”
or “pure rupture;” this is not, nor has it ever been the argument. It is precisely a matter of what is
being continued and what is being ruptured with. We view this matter with regard to dialectical
materialism. The book is a continuity with the worst aspects of RIM, a continuity with the worst
aspects of Badiou, Bettleheim, etc., and a continuity with “MLM” in form but a rupture with it in
essence, a rupture from the vital role and lessons imparted by the PCP, and yes, a rupture with
many vital aspects of Leninism, which it launches many of its attacks against without declaring
so openly. Of course, by situating itself within the Marxist tradition, at least in form, it presents
continuity with some true aspects as well.

Let’s look at the argument posed by “Critique of Maoist Reason” a little closer:

“According to this view [belonging to those who uphold the universal contributions of Chairman
Gonzalo], the emergence of Maoism is nothing more than a sequence that could not have been
otherwise, like Hegel’s Geist, from the very beginning. The great thinkers, like Napoleon, are
programmed moments from the potential seed in the work of Marx and Engels that will actualize
themselves at unavoidable historical moments. In this sense, Maoism is reached according to a
quantitative arithmetic that is prophetic: Marx + Engels + Lenin + Stalin + Mao + Gonzalo.”

This is mainly an incorrect assessment, while it is true that Marxists hold the view that the class
struggle inevitably will produce proletarian revolutionaries who will grasp out for the science of
Marxism, it is false that our view is deterministic like Hegel’s Geist. Chairman Gonzalo
expresses the issue in his 1988 interview:

“In Engels’ view, it is necessity that generates leaders, and a top leader, but just who that is is
determined by chance, by a set of specific conditions that come together at a particular place and
time. In this way, in our case too, a Great Leadership has been generated.”

We have published on this topic in the article “Guiding Thought the Guarantor of Victory,” with
an updated conclusion based on correct criticism from our comrades:

“Chairman Gonzalo is speaking of ‘necessity’ and ‘chance’ as philosophical categories, drawing

from Engels. We must understand the two as a unity of opposites, this is a requirement for
assessing the matter correctly and arriving at the correct understanding of the combination of
phenomena which determine leadership and not a superficial, subjectivist viewpoint…”

It is Engels and Chairman Gonzalo who are teaching this point, not Hegel. If the argument is that
Engels and Gonzalo are suffering from Hegelian logic and have not “ruptured” into “Maoist
reason” then the author should direct his criticism appropriately rather than raising phantoms. In
fact, the unity of opposites between necessity and chance in the emergence of great leadership,
specifically does away with Hegelian determinism.

“Critique of Maoist Reason” continues:

“to claim that Maoism is the third and highest stage of revolutionary theory is to in fact claim
some notion of rupture along with a foundational notion of continuity gleaned from the unity of
related stages. Asserting that one theoretical stage is higher than another is to say that is not the
same as the previous stage, is in some form of discontinuity, because to be logically continuous
is to be logically identical, which means that there can be no higher stages just as there can be no
lower stages. Something new is not in perfect continuity with the old even if this newness
highlights and unlocks truths and germinal insights in older moments––which would be the
continuity preserved in such a theoretical development.”

Continuity in development does not even imply on its own an identical nature. Continuity, in
fact, even within a specific stage, reaches milestones and developments without having the
overall leap into a new stage. It is far-fetched to suggest that Marxism upon its very inception
remained identical to the Marxism practiced at the start of the Russian Revolution. So yes, one
stage is not identical to the next—this argument has not been made by anyone—and even within
a stage, things to do not remain identical. There exist quality and quantity (understood as a unity
of opposites) cycles inside of each stage, otherwise one stage leading to a higher would be
impossible. To be logically continuous is not to be logically identical, logic itself grows, changes,
and develops as it is being applied, mistakes being corrected through theoretical and organic
adjustments do not require rupture, at least not in the sense that it is used by JMP.

Instead of the mire posed by the already muddled “continuity and rupture” discourse, we would
rather express similar concepts with the terminology used by Mao when developing dialectical
materialism on the basis of the only fundamental law (contradiction), which would be to speak of
affirmation and negation. While Marxism was on one hand affirmed totally by
Marxism-Leninism through the creative application of Marxism to Lenin’s time and the
conditions, Marxism-Leninism only negated Marxism as a standalone stage, as Stalin insisted
there was no Marxism completely outside of Marxism-Leninism. It was affirmed in essence and
negated in the form which existed prior to Lenin’s theoretical interventions. Lenin did not correct
the course of an inherently flawed Marxism that would require “rupture” in the JMP sense, he
affirmed Marxism with its creative application, and this experience negated standalone Marxism
without Leninism, to allow Marxism to stand alone would be to counterpose Marxism to
Leninism. For all its terminology, the “dialectical materialism” contained in both “Continuity and
Rupture” and “Critique of Maoist Reason” is nothing but compartmentalist formalism itself, a
very amateur and stale understanding of philosophy. We must ask genuinely what was so false in
Marxism that Lenin had to negate it? We adhere to principles of affirming what is correct and
negating what is incorrect, so the question demands an answer. Likewise, Marxism-Leninism
was correct, and Mao was not negating, he was developing it, and the negation was that of
Marxism-Leninism still existing without Maoism. The “continuity and rupture” theory uses a
dialectical materialist appearance but does not contain a dialectical materialist core. It is a piece
of fruit with appealing skin, but when you bite into it, the flesh is rotten. After all, its real
argument is that Marxism-Leninism was incorrect or flawed inherently, and that these flaws had
to be “ruptured with.” This is so similar to the essence of Avakianism that we can categorize
them in the same group—the only difference is that JMP wants to keep up the appearance of
Maoism to better attack it, while Avakian, due to his monumental egoism, has to shed the Maoist
appearance to better promote his own self-appraisal of genius. This is why we deem JMP’s not
so original interventions as “Avakianism without Avakian.”

We must elaborate on this latter point. Avakian, by way of being self-obsessed, has done the
world a favor by discarding his ragged “Maoist” garb, he is now naked and should be filled with
shame. We cannot call him a traitor because he was never really on our side. JMP however
represents a more toxic strand of the same virus, only his maintenance of “Maoist” garb allows
the promotion of opportunism within Maoism, in fact as Maoism itself. In the struggle to impose
Maoism, we can denounce Avakian, who has shown himself out, and at the same time fiercely
struggle against his proteges who still insist on calling themselves MLM. Ideological struggle
here must take place and we proceed from the principle that most can be convinced to break with
Avakianism fully.
What follows this argument in “Critique of Maoist Reason” is the warn-out argument that
Maoists are confusing non-antagonistic contradictions for antagonistic ones. Pages of the book
are dedicated to this, but again these claims are not substantiated by any fact so we will not
respond in full to it and simply state that mistakes are made in the handling and identification of
types of contradiction, but this does not inform the character of the ideology itself. It is possible
to handle an antagonistic contradiction with antagonism but lack the subjective capability of
winning in this attack, hence errors can be made even when the contradiction is correctly
identified. The best example of this is that the contradiction between the people and the police is
antagonistic, yet in the absence of appropriate subjective conditions, it would be an error to
handle every forced interaction with the police with the use of antagonistic responses. The
question still has to be handled tactically, regardless of the nature of the contradiction. The nature
of the contradiction determines the strategic method of resolving it absolutely.

The contradiction between revisionism and Marxism remains antagonistic at all times
objectively. This is not to imply that everyone mislead by revisionism has to be dealt with
antagonistically, nonetheless we find sloppy handling of revisionism from JMP and company:

“[T]he forcing of antagonism on the part of the Avakianites was a good thing for the rest of the
Maoist movement because it revealed the RCP-USA’s revisionism quite quickly and resulted in a
useful series of demarcations. However, it is notable that the group that pushed this contradiction
into antagonism was the locus of revisionism. Those who persist in treating all contradictions as
antagonistic will most likely be those through whom revisionism will manifest.”

There are a few big assumptions here: first is the assumption that the contradiction between
Avakian’s attempt to liquidate Maoism internationally, replacing it with his own “New
Synthesis,” and the Maoist movement’s need to exist and uphold Maoism was non-antagonistic.
This included the direct slander against Chairman Gonzalo, propping up the Right Opportunist
Line in Peru, which serves the agenda of the old Peruvian state and the CIA—it is and was
antagonistic. It is reasonable and in fact sensible to attempt to persuade others
non-antagonistically to reject Avakianism, but we should not mistake the contradiction itself as
non-antagonistic since we can only situate this contradiction with an understanding of class
struggle between the two main forces: the proletariat and bourgeoisie.

Maoism holds that imperialism and revisionism have to be combated inseparably and without
relent, making it very clear that the contradiction between revolutionaries and revisionists is
antagonistic. The second major assumption JMP makes is that treating revisionism
antagonistically makes one a revisionist or prone to revisionism. This last assumption gives a
lifeline to revisionism and attacks Maoism, forbidding Maoists from combating revisionism
relentlessly and inseparably. This furthers the goal of preserving Avakianism without Avakian.
We raise no objection to the collusion and contention between dogmatism and eclecticism and
have pointed out that even the critics we are dealing with here express this character. Those who
uphold an eclectic mess of theory are most typically dogmatic adherents to this mess. Likewise,
those who dogmatically cling to history, rejecting what is newly formulated from it
(militarization and concentric construction for instance), tend toward desperately grasping for
imported frameworks from the bourgeoisie.

The commentary on eclecticism and dogmatism is useful, especially for understanding the
conditions in Canada, which have driven the former leadership of one group calling itself the
PCR-RCP into the mud of post-Maoism (“Jumping from the Leninist Family Tree”) and the
other tiny band to dive headfirst into the most lifeless dogmatic reading of Maoism, which insists
that Mao Zedong Thought and Maoism are identical (the Montreal-based fossil clique). The
former were the most dedicated students of JMP and the latter were his old comrades. This alone
does not provide commentary on his work, it merely highlights the fact that eclecticism and
dogmatism plague the movements calling themselves Maoist in Canada, rendering them to
near-nonexistence, a husk in Montreal and a declining presence throughout the rest of country.
This is not the case for the countries he names explicitly in his work. He notes that Brazil has
seen the growth of Maoism but does not mention the same about the US, however it is evident
for anyone following the movement in the US, and it would be evident to him as well had he
actually investigated properly in preparation for his book. The contemporary Maoist movement
in the US has been finding its footing for just over five years, and it has been marked by growth
and consolidation, guided by its ideology. We should consider the practical role of ideology in
getting results and not discount that. Why is the dogmatism (according to JMP) seeing to the
growth (here we speak mainly of quality but also of quantity) of the US Maoist movement, and
the dogmatism in Canada doing just the opposite?

Following “Critique of Maoist Reason” to its inevitable conclusion results in the liquidation of
two-line struggle. For instance, it states that:

“The MLMpM tendency of Maoism, along with tendencies of Maoist reason that function in a
similar manner, is not as different from the Avakianite revisionism as it would like to pretend. On
the one hand, this tendency is antagonistic to all theoretical expressions that seem to betray the
Marxist classics, locking itself into the standpoint of theological purity. On the other hand, it
promotes the militarization of the party and jefatura––which are not directly found in the classics
and can indeed be treated as eclectic developments––as doctrinaire.”

The above, in a very unqualified treatment of theory, dismisses upholding the works of Marx,
Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao as dogmatism, while at the same time dismissing necessary
articulations and development of their works as eclecticism. If the author were to genuinely
engage with the theory, he would comprehend that in each case the developments are derived
from the work of the banners of the ideology—that is mainly Marx, Lenin, and Mao. The
principles of leadership are found in Lenin’s work, and its creative application inevitably results
in development. Militarization of the Communist Parties deals with specific questions largely
derived from the GPCR. The argument of “Critique of Maoist Reason” is against anyone not
following the nebulous Mao-ish ideas and actually struggling to more clearly define the ideology,
while defending it from distortion and upholding its specific application in which it develops. We
also argue that there is a basis for militarization of the Party in Lenin’s work, the magazine El
Maoista expresses this in an article written by the Brazilian comrades, but it would seem JMP
remains unaware of what his subject actually believes or is at ease with ignoring it:

“The conception of Militarized Communist Party has the beginning of its formulation with
Chairman Mao, and is developed and completed with Chairman Gonzalo, however the need for it
and its realization was already put forward and took place in embryonic form with Lenin.
Because of this and in order to highlight the importance of the celebration of the 100 years of the
Great Socialist October Revolution, we will then highlight what was developed by Lenin
regarding the principles of the party of a New Type, Communist Party, to show its full validity in
the Militarized Communist Party.”

To argue against a concept, you must at the very least familiarize yourself with it. The statement
that militarization is not found in classic texts is as incorrect as the idea that it is a doctrinaire and
eclectic addition. As the above points out, it was completed by Chairman Gonzalo, but did not
simply emerge from his mind—it emerged from the practice of the ICM in class struggle,
beginning with Mao, but in its embryonic form with Lenin and the Bolsheviks and was
completed, in the theoretical sense by Gonzalo. In any case, JMP systematically fails to engage
with the theory itself, as articulated by Peruvian, Brazilian, or even US sources. Instead, he
dismisses the theory as “eclectic,” “doctrinaire,” and “dogmatic” with a mere wave of the hand.
This lack of seriousness exposes irresponsible positions in his work, which excludes the work
from the category of scientific.

“Critique of Maoist Reason” would be greatly benefited by better editors, at times the whole
chapter in question reads like a very long social media screed:

“some of the most faithful adherents to this tendency openly proclaim their devotion to
eclecticism by claiming that we should only read the works of Gonzalo and the PCP because
everything else to date, and everything produced by ongoing people’s wars, is infected with
revisionism.”

It is very tedious to engage with the ridiculous phantoms that haunt the mind of JMP. Since he
and his editors fail miserably to cite their work, we must issue criticism for their total lack of
responsibility to situate their arguments in reality—they do not seek truth from the facts. Who
are these “most faithful adherents?” And where can we find their “open proclamation?” If such a
position exists, it might be useful to examine it, and of course, to criticize it. We are forced to
consider the fact that this is an intentionally vague accusation to portray his ideological
opponents in the ICM as sectarian and senseless, which would be a stand-in for an actual
argument—make up a position, then attack that with no regard for reality.

Following the work of the publications and organizations he has managed to name, would
quickly shred this allegation to ribbons. Struggle Sessions has relied upon the work of Charu
Majumdar and Ibrahim Kaypakkaya in making specific arguments many times, and both of these
men are quite essential to the People’s Wars in India and Turkey. This is not a major sticking
point, but we are right to demand honest engagement from JMP at the very least. Beyond this, all
those who he seeks to label here would staunchly reject this claim—no one, least of all Maoists,
are accusing the great teachers and leaders of Marxism of revisionism. A strange accusation
coming from a man who just proclaimed that we Maoists uphold perfect continuity, and recite
Marx, etc., with religious fervor.

We would remind both our readers and his, that the news and international organs most closely
associated with the Maoist movement that JMP is targeting in chapter 4 of “Critique of Maoist
Reason” consistently publish on the People’s War in India, covering campaigns and defending
political prisoners of that country as well as highlighting numerous celebrations of important
dates related to the People’s Wars. His criticism is so much hot air that it cannot even be cited
with any evidence. We encounter more false claims based on a failure to actually read our journal
and others:

“The US online principally Maoist journal Struggle Sessions is evidence of such assimilated
thought: nearly every article is an ad hoc exercise in maintaining the boundaries, refusing to
think through any critiques of its particular variant of Maoism, and demonstrating the theological
practice of repeating slogans and terms, defining these terms in the relation to the unquestioned
truth of the tendency, and generally failing to think its own thought.”

Our journal has covered a variety of concepts and issues in which we have had to think for
ourselves. In some cases, it is true that we have defended long-established Marxist positions
against postmodernist trends taken as common sense within the left in imperialist countries,
hence we denounce the frameworks of “sex work” from a Marxist perspective.

We have also provided space in our journal for contending views with the 100 Flowers section,
in this section we have promoted thinking and two-line struggle. Any theoretical journal should
seek to defend and explain Marxist theory, as well as to use it to address major and minor
disagreements. We insist that those who are committed to rupturing from established positions of
the ICM should qualify the necessity of this, and not just pretend that the position they are
rupturing from is non-existent.

We have written on topics which are relatively newer and not addressed in any of the classics,
such as the role of postmodernism as an imperialist cultural export, and the mutations from the
French to the US variants. We have also addressed social media, putting forward material
reasons for why it is a faulty place to gain data and conduct communist propaganda. Again, the
charges placed by JMP do not stick, except in the minds of the already-committed who read his
work but not our journal.

Much of our work is necessarily defending Maoism from distortion—this is a requirement when
there are those who misrepresent your arguments. We have earned special ire from JMP, which
we recognize and celebrate, as we are the first MLM journal to write articles exposing his role as
a hackneyed theorist and pseudo-intellectual. We are not at all ashamed of this, someone needed
to do it. His bad ideas were causing real problems in the US movement, until demarcation began
taking place in a real way. We do not seek to harm or defame the man; we seek to combat his
ideas without relenting. In his book and various interviews it is clear that he is wounded and
takes political line struggle personally, and seeks to avoid the political essence of the two line
struggle. This is also evident in his consistent denial of the charges made against him, while still
failing to provide a convincing theoretical argument.

Some months ago, JMP made reckless and unfounded accusations against the revolutionary news
service, Tribune of the People, calling them “Covid Truthers.” After being confronted with direct
quotations from the publication that refuted this, he did the right thing, and admitted that his
view was derived from something he heard on Twitter and did not actually investigate. This
seems to us to be the JMP method of investigation and analysis passing for revolutionary
theory—he hears things on Twitter and does not bother to perform any deeper investigation.
Even by bourgeois standards, this is not an acceptable form of intellectual engagement. We will
await the citations for his claims, but do not hold out any hope that he or his editors will take
responsibility for their straw man arguments, sectarianism, and practice of basing views off what
they hear on Twitter, or Facebook, etc.

Conclusion

To give “Critique of Maoist Reason” the attention it deserves would require a series of articles,
dealing with the entirety of its contents. This is not possible to release all at once, and will
hopefully be more feasible with time. Focusing on the chapters that are most pertinent for us
must be understood as a starting point and not a finishing one.

On our disagreements with the publishers of “Critique of Maoist Reason”:

We would be negligent in our duties if we failed to contextualize the book in the struggles facing
our movement, and its relationship to “Foreign Language Press,” which is a pet project from the
same individual behind the sub-par news site Redspark. This individual can only be considered a
servant for the white line in the ICM, who seeks to condemn Maoism and promote a
watered-down variant of it. The material he chooses to publish reflects this political line. The
project began as a hobby for this servant of the white line. It started by publishing “the Collected
Works of the PCP. Vol 1 of 4” with very bad editing and even worse translations, many of which
were sourced in part from RCP-USA translations, which have been known to be imprecise in
such a way as to promote distortions. However, his first release sold quickly and revived a lot of
interest in the PCP. The servant of the white line would never publish the other 3 volumes or any
other material of the PCP after this.

As far as his role in Redspark, the website ceased all coverage of the US Maoist movement after
a group of collectives in the US denounced a clique of his friends and allies, the former
rightist-liquidators of Germany Jugendwiderstand, who have since collapsed. This website has
instead interviewed “US Maoists” who are disorganized and unknown to the actual movement, in
an effort to prop up a counter-pole sympathetic to the white line in the ICM. On top of this, the
web page which portrays itself as news simply alters words from bourgeois articles, changing the
word “terrorist” to “Maoist,” etc. but leaving the rest of the content intact uncritically. This
exposes the right opportunism of the individual in charge, his control over the project and the
fact that he relies on friends he makes on the internet who are politically under-developed for this
work (according to some of the websites former contributors).

Word adjustments suffice for this opportunist when the analysis remains essentially the same and
the individual lacks the dedication to actually write new articles about what is going on in the
world and instead opts to just change the form of bourgeois anti-communist articles, a shoddy
attempt at internationalist news. The more recent inclusion of original content (some of it is very
good even) does not absolve or transform the project or its role as an agent of international
revisionism, which seeks to prop up revisionists in other countries. The individual was based in
the Netherlands at the office of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF-P), and
his view of internationalism is as despicable as his role as a functionary of revisionism. What is
clear is that the website fails to live up to its own objectives, a Google news search would be
more effective and less insulting to the reader, because at least then the articles are openly
bourgeois and do not try to masquerade as red.

We denounce “Foreign Language Press” and are not all surprised that it would release such
shoddy material as “Critique of Maoist Reason,” which spews allegations without citing them,
relying on the a priori prejudice of their small bubble audience. They preach to the converted in
hopes that their myths become common sense assumption about the Maoist movement. This
former assistant of Jose Maria Sisson finds common ground with JMP for the purpose of
attacking Maoism and dispensing with it, even if the two are likely to disagree on Sisson’s
definition of Maoism, rejection of the universality of people’s war, and embarrassing social
media behavior.

On our disagreements with Ajith:

Unlike JMP or “FLP” we consider Ajith a qualified and well-respected revolutionary who has
produced many useful theoretical texts which should be seriously examined. We intend to do this
in the most comradely way possible, stating our disagreements here only briefly. We of course
reject the conflation of Great Leadership with the “personality cult” and insist on more
discussion around this topic. This disagreement does not transition into a denunciation of
comrade Ajith, who we celebrate the liberation of and extend respect and gratitude toward with
high revolutionary honors. His work speaks for itself as well as his revolutionary life.
Opportunists, like the one we addressed in our article “Cackle of Hens,” have taken his nuanced
positions and vulgarized them, denigrating his work and using it to dispense with Leninism in
ways that Ajith himself has never done. We must be extremely clear on this: we do not consider
the theory of JMP or other opportunists to be in accordance with what is being said by Ajith,
even if they speak on similar topics and share some positions.

JMP attempts to misrepresent our views and others when he states, again without any citation of
Maoist publications or organizations, that:

“I am well aware that Ajith is now being called a ‘rightist’ by those elements of the Maoist
milieu who would lock us into an emaciated version of Maoism that has not developed since the
possibility of such a new stage was first conceived. This charge of ‘rightism’, though, is merely
rhetorical since it is only an insult thrown out by those who see themselves as properly left and
thus cannot conceive of any deviation from their line as anything but rightist.”

We have already discussed this as an attempt to divide and insist that it is baseless. We intend to
expose the methods of opportunism to divide and not unite, via what we have to state is a
collusion between the opportunists in Canada and the agents behind “Foreign Language Press” to
distort our views and the views of others to maximize division and denigrate comradely debate.
We do not consider Ajith to be a right opportunist. We disagree with some of his articulations
and support and encourage struggling over these disagreements, however we do not assume our
journal has met the qualification to do so effectively and trust that more experienced comrades
will rise to this task when needed. We are not aware of any legitimate Maoist publication or
organization labeling comrade Ajith as a rightist, and we would not support such reckless
labeling without proving this claim with comprehensive engagement with his theoretical work.
We simply believe it is untrue, a fabrication from JMP and his co-conspirators. We leave the
burden of proof to JMP and “FLP” and will take a failure to respond as an admission of guilt.
Only desperate vagrants who hang onto the fringes of the movement dare make such baseless
allegations or publish such trash. These are spurious and offensive, and they should be held to
task for making them, even by those sympathetic to their political line.

Concluding remarks on “Critique of Maoist Reason”:

Through ignoring the two-line struggle within RIM, the author fails to highlight how the RIM’s
conception advanced, perfected, or completed what was put forward by the PCP. There is no
attempt at all to do this, the PCP is just fully conflated with RIM as if the RIM were monolithic.
It is not done because it is not doable—there is no evidence to support the bogus
“consummation” theory. JMP is such a terrible philosopher that he cannot even begin to
approach the question of internal contradictions to his so called “PCP-RIM sequence” even
though he claims it to be the very synthesis of Maoism.

JMP acknowledges the differences in the viewpoints while at the same time shirking the duty to
express exactly how the RIM answered correctly the questions that the PCP answered differently.
Instead of conceptualizing the PCP as a dull patch on the sword of Maoism, as JMP alludes, we
should insist that it was in fact the blacksmith who forged and brandished the sword. Combining
the raw material of all the most important revolutionary struggles known to mankind. Likewise,
we Maoists will not be ground away by time as the opportunists hope, and they lack the will
power and skill to defeat us. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, principally Maoism will be imposed as
the sole command and guide of the world proletarian revolution. This is already happening and
there is nothing the naysayers can do to drive the tide out to sea, their desperate gesticulations are
that of frightened and cornered cowards and nothing more.