Mike Ely, a longtime supporter of the Revolutionary Communist Party and former editor of the RCP’s newspaper, recently published a paper opposing Chairman Bob Avakian’s “New Synthesis,” a new take on Communism that is promoted to be the next great leap in the political philosophy. In addition, Ely chronicles the failures of the RCP in its quest to become a leading party in North America. An excerpt:

Problems of dogmatism, self-isolation and political fantasy — that have always plagued the RCP — are now in command to a new degree. The heart of this is how the RCP’s central leader, Bob Avakian, is seen and promoted.

In place of the mass line, there is a one-sided stress on telling — in patronizing ways. The fetish of the word morphs into the fetish of the leader and tries to “vault over” the complicated processes by which people really decide what to think and how to act.

Leaders dream up grand schemes out of whole cloth — without forming alliances, constituencies or trained networks over time. They don’t have their own base to bring to the process. They “plan” to reach millions without actually organizing thousands. We should be suspicious of such contrivances and “get rich quick” schemes.

There is complicity and corruption within an imperialist superpower. But blaming, shaming and literally cursing the masses is wrong — both in principle and in this particular moment.

His paper, Nine Letters to Our Comrades: Getting Beyond Avakian’s New Synthesis (PDF), is available for download now.

The RCP has since fired back with a 37-page response at Ely’s missive. The party’s letter, available in PDF on Ely’s website, Kasama, reads in part:

In Mike Ely and his Nine Letters, on the other hand, we have both an opposition to this advance in our science, and in the process an inexcusable retreat to and replay of a road traversed before, strewn with the betrayal and blood of the masses of people – the road of economism… Mike Ely’s main “sales pitch” for this tired old line is his past associations with and supposed “inside information” on the RCP, and an implicit – and sometimes explicit – assertion that his narrative is the “real deal” – his claims and experience being the “truth” that trumps any scientific assessment of the line and practice of the RCP. On this, we would like to quote the following excerpt from “Matters of Principle and Standards”:3 “Anyone who is not authorized by the RCP to do so but who claims to be revealing ‘inside information’ about the RCP establishes himself or herself, by that very act, as someone who, at a minimum, is acting very irresponsibly. Beyond that, spreading gossip, rumors, and distortions about the RCP, and/or others in the communist movement, marks anyone who does so as thoroughly dishonest and highly unprincipled. The more that life unfolds, the more the opportunist character of people who do such things will be revealed.” Quite frankly, the fact that Mike Ely has gone about things in this way and not been immediately and roundly castigated says that the standards of the revolutionary movement need to be raised on questions of principle.

While Ely’s paper is instructive in covering the travails of the RCP, it should also be fascinating to those interested in revolutionary movements. Well worth downloading and checking out.

EDIT: Gotten a question about why post about the RCP’s internal squabbles, and why it is relevant to anarchists and people of color. The illvox collective chose to post stuff like that because anarchists and radicals of color have to deal with the RCP in various movements — they seek to recruit us, coopt our organizing, etc. — and getting the skinny on the organization, how it operates, etc. is strategically helpful for anti-authoritarians who think about how we work opposite authoritarian leftists, and for anti-authoritarians who have heard the RCP’s political line, but may not have enough information (especially ‘credible’ info from someone who knows the inner workings) to know what issues anarchists are facing. In the past, illvox has posted several anti-RCP pieces, and the collective figured getting some dirt like this was too priceless not to post. Hope that explanation helps! No, APOC is still not Maoist.

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