I’m not gonna lie, Revolutionary Catechism reads like cult shit. Lines like this are especially unhinged:
Oh it absolutely has unhinged parts. But pursuing revolution itself is slightly unhinged anyway.
But if that’s the kind of philosophy you go by, it’s no wonder we don’t see eye to eye.
It’s not just been an influence on me, we have it on good authority from Bonch-Bruyevich that Lenin liked Nechayev very much and insisted on making sure his complete works were published. Unless you think he was lying, which I see no reason to do so.
Che Guevara also referenced Nechayev and regularly read the Catechism.
Eldridge Cleaver, an early leader in the Black Panthers called it “his bible”.
Huey P. Newton’s Revolutionary Suicide explicitly references Revolutionary Catechism.
Bobby Seale and George Jackson also cited it.
but that doesn’t mean it’s effective organizing strategy that is proven to attain and maintain political power
I don’t think the above crowd is the wrong crowd to be in. I think many in the left today ignoring these works are ignoring what a significant influence they have been on previous movements and - importantly - just how much commitment and self sacrifice is necessary to win. Are all of these people also unhinged? Yes, they probably were to some extent, I think it’s probably a necessary trait.
It’s possible history will vindicate you (I don’t claim to know the future or be right about everything), but whichever way it goes, the best we can do is aid the anti-imperialist cause. In my view, it borders on falling for a psyop how much energy people are expending on whether Venezuela is compromised or held hostage. Versus energy spent on “how can we help with their sovereignty? With keeping the empire’s claws from digging in?”
A fair point. Unfortunately from where I am there is little I can do materially. Hence my efforts focus on things closer to home, like Elbit.
Thinking it all comes down to Delcy Rodriguez would be great man theory.
No. This is an error. The levers of power are real and exist. It doesn’t matter whether it is Delcy or some other traitor, she’s not exceptional, but she is the traitor currently in the position.
The only difference between the conditions under her and the conditions under Maduro is who is occupying that role. The difference does lie with her. Under Maduro this would not be happening, he was willing to fight and sacrifice himself whereas she is not. That is fundamental to my entire point. She is a lesser committed person than he was and a more committed person would not be taking her actions.
Nah, I disagree. Revolution is not unhinged and those who embrace it as unhinged are usually what we’d call “adventurist”. It’s more that what looks unhinged in one context looks sensible in another. That’s why I say that in the desperate times of Czarist Russia, the Revolutionary Catechism makes more sense as deriving from those material conditions. You can point to specific revolutionaries who embraced those works after the fact, but many of the ones you named died/failed to succeed in revolutionary goals. Might sound harsh, and I’m not saying they didn’t contribute to the struggle (hell, Blood in My Eye was one of the first reads for me when I was getting introduced to marxism and it’s a good book); the Panthers were up against a hell of a lot in the belly of the beast and did the best they could. I believe that. But we have to grapple with the realities of what has succeeded and what hasn’t.
I’m not saying this to throw any revolutionary under the bus. It’s very possible that your claim of Lenin liking Nechayev was precisely because he wanted to honor and uplift his dedication to the cause. And to be clear, I don’t mean it as judgment of those who “go too far” or something. It’s more that I don’t think it is a solid tactical ground on a broad organizational level and has not been proven as such; and I would not expect it to be considering the parts of it that will put a person in a position where they are essentially closing themself off to normal human traits.
Which is fundamentally part of what this Delcy Rodriguez stuff loops back to, along with the argument about Lenin and Brest-Litovsk. From what I remember reading, somebody literally tried to assassinate Lenin over Brest-Litovsk (and not a counter-revolutionary). That’s how controversial it was. Now imagine with all this hatred being stirred up toward Rodriguez. What if someone with good intentions assassinates her? Where does that leave the Bolivarian revolution? Unless there are hardliners ready to take over and be ready for US invasion and occupation, what are they gonna do with the power vacuum? The US could seize on it to insert a straightforward puppet.
This is part of why I criticize it as great man theory. It’s not that she has no power. It’s that focusing in on one individual and branding them traitor like that can be very dangerous to revolutionary thinking and organization if the judgment call is wrong. You can tell yourself that under Maduro, this would not be happening, but you don’t know that. The forces of liberation need to win. I for one am sick of how many times they’ve lost and lost good people to the fight. There are people who doubted China’s Reform and Opening Up as a betrayal of the cause for the longest time, some who probably still do, and yet China is now the primary bulwark of anti-imperialism in the world while also being run still by a communist vanguard.
So, it’s fair to doubt and question. But when it comes to branding people as traitor, well… look at what happened with the USSR and Stalin’s legacy. Dirt thrown on it, the USSR’s identity put into crisis, the USSR ultimately came apart. The empire loves to exploit and foment these kind of sincere concerns into frenzied rejection, until people can’t see straight on what is difference of tactics and what is an outright traitor.
I read through it yesterday. My impression was, this is the line that matters:
The Venezuelan government’s reorientation cannot be placed at their feet alone. The ultimate responsibility of revolutionaries in the US is not to condemn the Venezuelan government and the Bolivarian Revolution but rather to struggle to defeat the imperialist government that imposes these conditions on Venezuela.
The rest, while not without value especially for those who are out of the loop on the situation, is largely re-litigating things people have debating for months and I don’t feel it is doing so with sufficient evidence to conclude something drastically different than previous reads of the situation. It’s not a bad analysis or anything, I just don’t think it’s elucidating anything all that meaningful that others haven’t already been saying. It’s another analysis in the ongoing debate of what the situation actually is and a fair counterweight to analyses arguing the “strategic retreat” angle, but not in my view, a debate ender.
For the time being, I hold to the line that if the PSUV “quietly gives up on” the communes (or loudly, for that matter), then I will have to admit the situation is far worse than I had hoped.
What about you? What do you make of the PSL article?
Nah, I disagree. Revolution is not unhinged and those who embrace it as unhinged are usually what we’d call “adventurist”. It’s more that what looks unhinged in one context looks sensible in another. That’s why I say that in the desperate times of Czarist Russia, the Revolutionary Catechism makes more sense as deriving from those material conditions. You can point to specific revolutionaries who embraced those works after the fact, but many of the ones you named died/failed to succeed in revolutionary goals. Might sound harsh, and I’m not saying they didn’t contribute to the struggle (hell, Blood in My Eye was one of the first reads for me when I was getting introduced to marxism and it’s a good book); the Panthers were up against a hell of a lot in the belly of the beast and did the best they could. I believe that. But we have to grapple with the realities of what has succeeded and what hasn’t.
I just think ultimately it’s the level of commitment necessary to win. And it is totally and completely self-sacrificing. Everyone that has won did so in some shape or manner, whether among the leadership or among the rest of the party. Many many thousands willingly self sacrificed. Revolutionary conditions are simply like that, whether it’s in Russia, Cuba, China or anywhere else that revolution succeeded, the Catechism comes up again and again among the inner-circles of the fully committed revolutionaries, the people spending every waking minute of every single day committed to achieving revolution with full commitment.
I see no problem with seeing it as unhinged because it frankly is. Lenin died for it. Che died for it. The Panthers died for it. I see no problem in that though. We can be under no delusion that there will be no sacrifice for revolution.
Anyway I don’t really have much more to argue with you about per se. We still disagree, but I understand why you feel the way you do and I think I’ve gotten across my position as well. Ultimately neither of us have any impact one what is going to happen, it’s spectator squabbling.
Oh it absolutely has unhinged parts. But pursuing revolution itself is slightly unhinged anyway.
It’s not just been an influence on me, we have it on good authority from Bonch-Bruyevich that Lenin liked Nechayev very much and insisted on making sure his complete works were published. Unless you think he was lying, which I see no reason to do so.
Che Guevara also referenced Nechayev and regularly read the Catechism.
Eldridge Cleaver, an early leader in the Black Panthers called it “his bible”.
Huey P. Newton’s Revolutionary Suicide explicitly references Revolutionary Catechism.
Bobby Seale and George Jackson also cited it.
I don’t think the above crowd is the wrong crowd to be in. I think many in the left today ignoring these works are ignoring what a significant influence they have been on previous movements and - importantly - just how much commitment and self sacrifice is necessary to win. Are all of these people also unhinged? Yes, they probably were to some extent, I think it’s probably a necessary trait.
A fair point. Unfortunately from where I am there is little I can do materially. Hence my efforts focus on things closer to home, like Elbit.
No. This is an error. The levers of power are real and exist. It doesn’t matter whether it is Delcy or some other traitor, she’s not exceptional, but she is the traitor currently in the position.
The only difference between the conditions under her and the conditions under Maduro is who is occupying that role. The difference does lie with her. Under Maduro this would not be happening, he was willing to fight and sacrifice himself whereas she is not. That is fundamental to my entire point. She is a lesser committed person than he was and a more committed person would not be taking her actions.
Nah, I disagree. Revolution is not unhinged and those who embrace it as unhinged are usually what we’d call “adventurist”. It’s more that what looks unhinged in one context looks sensible in another. That’s why I say that in the desperate times of Czarist Russia, the Revolutionary Catechism makes more sense as deriving from those material conditions. You can point to specific revolutionaries who embraced those works after the fact, but many of the ones you named died/failed to succeed in revolutionary goals. Might sound harsh, and I’m not saying they didn’t contribute to the struggle (hell, Blood in My Eye was one of the first reads for me when I was getting introduced to marxism and it’s a good book); the Panthers were up against a hell of a lot in the belly of the beast and did the best they could. I believe that. But we have to grapple with the realities of what has succeeded and what hasn’t.
I’m not saying this to throw any revolutionary under the bus. It’s very possible that your claim of Lenin liking Nechayev was precisely because he wanted to honor and uplift his dedication to the cause. And to be clear, I don’t mean it as judgment of those who “go too far” or something. It’s more that I don’t think it is a solid tactical ground on a broad organizational level and has not been proven as such; and I would not expect it to be considering the parts of it that will put a person in a position where they are essentially closing themself off to normal human traits.
Which is fundamentally part of what this Delcy Rodriguez stuff loops back to, along with the argument about Lenin and Brest-Litovsk. From what I remember reading, somebody literally tried to assassinate Lenin over Brest-Litovsk (and not a counter-revolutionary). That’s how controversial it was. Now imagine with all this hatred being stirred up toward Rodriguez. What if someone with good intentions assassinates her? Where does that leave the Bolivarian revolution? Unless there are hardliners ready to take over and be ready for US invasion and occupation, what are they gonna do with the power vacuum? The US could seize on it to insert a straightforward puppet.
This is part of why I criticize it as great man theory. It’s not that she has no power. It’s that focusing in on one individual and branding them traitor like that can be very dangerous to revolutionary thinking and organization if the judgment call is wrong. You can tell yourself that under Maduro, this would not be happening, but you don’t know that. The forces of liberation need to win. I for one am sick of how many times they’ve lost and lost good people to the fight. There are people who doubted China’s Reform and Opening Up as a betrayal of the cause for the longest time, some who probably still do, and yet China is now the primary bulwark of anti-imperialism in the world while also being run still by a communist vanguard.
So, it’s fair to doubt and question. But when it comes to branding people as traitor, well… look at what happened with the USSR and Stalin’s legacy. Dirt thrown on it, the USSR’s identity put into crisis, the USSR ultimately came apart. The empire loves to exploit and foment these kind of sincere concerns into frenzied rejection, until people can’t see straight on what is difference of tactics and what is an outright traitor.
Hey I’m back. What do you make of PSL’s new line?
https://liberationnews.org/venezuelas-reorientation-to-imperialism-imperils-the-gains-of-its-revolution/
I read through it yesterday. My impression was, this is the line that matters:
The rest, while not without value especially for those who are out of the loop on the situation, is largely re-litigating things people have debating for months and I don’t feel it is doing so with sufficient evidence to conclude something drastically different than previous reads of the situation. It’s not a bad analysis or anything, I just don’t think it’s elucidating anything all that meaningful that others haven’t already been saying. It’s another analysis in the ongoing debate of what the situation actually is and a fair counterweight to analyses arguing the “strategic retreat” angle, but not in my view, a debate ender.
For the time being, I hold to the line that if the PSUV “quietly gives up on” the communes (or loudly, for that matter), then I will have to admit the situation is far worse than I had hoped.
What about you? What do you make of the PSL article?
It more or less represents the view i’ve been expressing for a while now. Except wordier.
Fair enough.
I just think ultimately it’s the level of commitment necessary to win. And it is totally and completely self-sacrificing. Everyone that has won did so in some shape or manner, whether among the leadership or among the rest of the party. Many many thousands willingly self sacrificed. Revolutionary conditions are simply like that, whether it’s in Russia, Cuba, China or anywhere else that revolution succeeded, the Catechism comes up again and again among the inner-circles of the fully committed revolutionaries, the people spending every waking minute of every single day committed to achieving revolution with full commitment.
I see no problem with seeing it as unhinged because it frankly is. Lenin died for it. Che died for it. The Panthers died for it. I see no problem in that though. We can be under no delusion that there will be no sacrifice for revolution.
Anyway I don’t really have much more to argue with you about per se. We still disagree, but I understand why you feel the way you do and I think I’ve gotten across my position as well. Ultimately neither of us have any impact one what is going to happen, it’s spectator squabbling.