Cult of Personality and Other Reactionary Garbage

If you're a Marxist, you've almost certainly run into a host of arguments and criticisms about dogmatism, following a “prophet,” or just being a hero worshiper. Often, one will be attacked for “uncritically” accepting the views of some “great man” of the revolution. Approaching this problem can be incredibly difficult. How does one affirm the contributions of the leaders of socialism without seeming like a religious follower? It's pretty clear once you think about it.

First, people have no problem upholding a whole host of geniuses. Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, and Jimmy Hendrix are all upheld as pioneers and geniuses in their own field. Yet art and science are, in a certain sense, less difficult than the field of politics. A political leader must carefully weigh innumerable factors whereas a scientific or political genius only needs to be “good” in one field. In this case, leading a revolution, building socialism, and pointing to a new world remain at least equal to the tasks of finding a new conception of gravity, creating a new perception on painting, or revolutionizing the playing of music. In this case, the burden of proof is upon those who demand we don't celebrate the achievements of the leaders of socialism.

Next, it's important to note is that no leader appears in a vacuum. Every advance depends on the hard work and skill of other people. One can see the truth of this with the clear example of Michael Jordan. He was the most dominant basket ball player in history. However, even as a super-star he depended on the teamwork and cooperation of his team. Lenin and Mao didn't succeed without the support of the Russian and Chinese communist parties respectively. In this case, it's the masses who make history and it's both the masses and the leadership of those revolutionary movements we uphold.

In short, don't get blackmailed by liberals and reactionaries attempting to force you not to support the revolutionary struggle.

Regulated and Deregulated Capitalism.

Yesterday, I was watching a documentary called Plunder. A documentary created by Danny Schechter, A journalist who had written many good books, I have not read yet. But I hope I will get the chance to. In the Documentary he discuss the crimes committed by wall street criminals, which includes giving loans to people who could not afford to pay them back, tricking people and taking all of their hard saved money, away in their schemes.

At the end of the documentary, he suggests that we have economical reforms that would prevent this crisis from happening again. But here the problem, we have tryed that in the past and it never works. Reforms do not work because you cannot reform capitalism or regulate it. Capitalism is a system based on greed and you cannot put a human face on greed. Comrade BJ Murphy, say it best.

The point is we need a new system and fixing the old system that is tearing down would not help. Listen to how he compare regulating capitalism, to fixing a crumbling road that can not be fixed.

Scare Tactics

Nazi’s Are Not Socialist

First lets start with the biggest myth associated with socialism. The biggest scare tactic is associating the German Nazi party with communism or socialism. Firstly in socialism all the people equally benefit from working as a whole. Instead of producing goods for profit the goods are created for the society use as a whole. Workers rights are put before that of the rich and ruling classes. Socialism attempts to destroy the ruling class and replace capitalism with a workers democracy.

National Socialism is only socialism for the national majority or in the Nazi’s case, socialism only for white non-jewish Germans. But they benefited from the oppression and exploitation of the minorities. As anyone who cares to read up on history, the communist and social democrats were the first people thrown into the death camps or were just taken out into the country side and shot. The National Socialist party was actually more accurately described a fascist party. Fascism has been described by many people as corporatist jingoism (extreme and aggressive patriotism/right-wing-racist nationalism).

In Nazi Germany the unions were destroyed and profit for the ruling class and their factory owning friends was the number one priority. The only reason some Jewish men/woman lived through the Holocaust is they were a source of free labor.

All socialist/communist parties are staunchly anti-fascist and in most cases join forces with anarchist all the way to liberals to combat fascism. The two ideologies could not be more different.

Wrongful Name Association

One of the next biggest scare tactics against socialist is name association. As a socialist Ive been called many things in my life. It never fails for people to drop one name when trying to discredit socialism; Stalin. I have personally been called a Stalinist so many times I have lost count.

Let me start by saying this; the word Stalinism has no base. Mao, Marx and Lenin, all of these people contributed something to the ideology of their respective forms of communism. For example Mao created “people protracted war” (and many other ideas) and there for Maoism is distinct from other forms of specific socialism. Stalin (unlike Mao/Lenin/Marx) contributed no advancement of socialist ideology. Thus the word Stalinist/Stalinism is just a scare tactic used to scare people away from socialism and has no base or meaning what so ever.

Communism is “Un-democratic”

First lets explain that un-like the popular opinion in the US, there is more than one form of “democracy”. The US uses bourgeois democracy, meaning that the candidate with the highest funding mostly wins the election. In the US “democracy”, party candidates are nominated by the parties after paying a sum of money, then voters get to pick from them in the primaries.

In socialism run on democratic centralism people are nominated by other people at the local level. Then after this they will run in a popular vote at the local/state or national elections depending on what they are nominated for. This is commonly called a workers democracy. In democratic centralism everyone votes as individuals but acts as one. This also keeps the citizens of said country involved in their government but this system also has problems but I will touch on that in a later post.. The idea that communism is un-democratic is a truthful as saying Iraq still has WMD.

Socialism is an idea of peace, love for your brothers and sisters, community, equal rights, anti-oppression, anti-imperialism, and is all about giving the power to the majority, power to the people!

By:Dustin Slagle

My march forward to Maoism

My path towards socialism started when I was 18. I had grown up in a poor family with my parents working multiple jobs but we were still living in poor housing and unable to ever get ahead. Growing up I had always heard that in the USA the hardest workers were rewarded with their hard work by moving up the "ladder" and thus achieving "the American dream".


Before I even became a teenager I knew the American dream was a lie. My dad never was home except to sleep then he was off to another job. By the standards of "the American dream" we would have been millionaires but we weren't. We never even made it to the "middle class". This helped me come to the realization that capitalism was only a system of exploitation at a very young age.


I became a socialist after a trip I took to the south west. While down there I saw things that I never would have believed existed in the US. I went to lunch lines where I ended up giving all the food I had with me in my back pack to a guy who was living out of his car with his 9 year old child. This touched me deep down in a place I didn't know exited inside myself.


I also saw thing such a shanty towns and people living in 3rd world like conditions. One thing I couldn't help but notice was that I was the only person that was white in that whole shanty town. People living in the worlds most gluttonous country should not be living in houses made out of gardening sheds and trash metal etc. After talking to some of the residents of this place One person told us he works for dollars a day sometimes only making 10 to 15 dollars a day. But because they were here "illegally" they couldn't report their conditions.


This kind of exploitation is what lead me to eventually through self education and research become a self proclaimed Marxist. As one could imagine it didn't take me long to tie together imperialism and capitalism as soul mates. I soon would come to call myself a Marxist Leninist.


From M-L to M-L-M



When I first stared on the road to socialism, Maoism was still a bad word to me. The way I understood Maoism was that one person took power and exploited the masses to their benefit. I thought it to be a "capitalist state" idea. I also had the influence of some Trotskyist in my ear telling me that Maoism was only Stalinism. Which now I realize that they only wanted to scare me away from Maoism and for me to join their org.



About 2-3 years ago I tried to learn whatever I could about Chairman Mao. It was very hard to find anything that wasn't severely anti-Mao in my library and or book stores. So I tried to do some self research and asked people not only about Mao but about Maoism as an idea. Then one of my brothers sent me a link to the little red book. I was captivated by the whole book and was appalled that anyone had ever told me that Mao never contributed to the furtherance of socialism.


I started reading more and more, then I was sent a link that would change my life forever. It was the most helpful thing I have ever applied to my actions and ideas. It explained the mass-line and how to apply it to everyday situations.

(this is the link I was sent) http://freedomroad.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=705%3Athe-mass-line-what-it-is-and-how-to-use-it&catid=182%3A21st-century-socialism&Itemid=235&lang=en


Ive since been growing my knowledge about my local population and interjecting revolutionary ideas and actions whenever possible. I now have the strongest faith in the working class poor people to be the ones to carry the masses to the proletarian revolution. I am now a Maoist!


By:Dustin Slagle

Left Elitism

There is a problem with elitism on the left. Elitism divides the working class and there is no need for elitism in the revolutionary movement, The working class needs action; sitting in a coffee house talking about theory and other stuff is not going to liberate the masses.

Too many leftists focus on the universities and unions, people need to know there is an alternative to the system and an alternative party. It would not hurt to go into the ghettos or the trailer parks to inform people about socialism and why we need it. I know some people are afraid to go to trailer parks because of the bigotry associated with the working class whites. However, If we do not go and educate them, then they will still live in the slavery of stupidity. They are slaves of propaganda and right wing scapegoating.

As revolutionaries it is our duty to educate the working class about racism and imperialism and how it does not solve their problems.

One of the many mistakes we make when talking to people who are uneducated about the issue at hand we tend to use academic language instead of proletarian language. I have made this mistake too many times and now my friends will not brother to listen to me, besides the fact, the biggest reason they do not listen is that they are extremely apolitical.

In addition, we focus too much on theory and argue about it too much. People do not care about theory; they care about action, so we should give it to them.

There is a nasty behavior of elitism towards rural working class people also, not all rednecks or southerners are reactionary. That needs to stop too if we are going to educated them and keep them away from the rotten diet of fox news.

So the point is stop being elitist. you are not revolutionary, if you are elitist.