I've been returning to and digging into the recent interviews with Bob Avakian (BA): Part 1: On Fascism, Capitalism, & the Way Out of the Madness; Part 2: The New Communism: A Whole New Way To Live, a Fundamentally Different System. As I have, I have been repeatedly struck by a point that was made in a letter from a reader on revcom.us last December:

In the history of [communism] there is a clear “before” and an “after,” that is delineated by the emergence of the new synthesis of communism developed by BA—yes, building on the many lessons and accomplishments of the past, but, crucially, breaking with and discarding a tremendous amount of wrong thinking, wrong methods, and wrong practices, that, despite best intentions, seriously vitiated and contributed to derailing the first wave of socialist revolutions...

What BA has developed with the new communism really is a NEW path forward for humanity that is very DIFFERENT, and MUCH BETTER than anything that the first wave of socialism/communism was even able to conceive of, let alone put into practice.

There’s so much in these interviews that illustrate this. One thing that struck me deeply in these last couple weeks is the question of internationalism, which I want to speak to here. Internationalism is one very important element of the “before and after” spoken to above, though far from the only one.

Have you noticed how almost every time in these interviews that BA indicts the system, he goes to what this system does all over the world? He’s not just thinking about what it does to people in this country, even though he goes deeply into that too. He’s thinking about people all over the world. For example, listen to the question and answer that starts about seven minutes in on the first interview, when Sunsara Taylor asks Bob Avakian to break down the slogans raised by the revcoms to guide the fight against this fascism. Keep listening with this in mind.

It can seem so clear when he breaks it down, but this stuff is deep. This is seriously different from how the communist movement understood things before BA. And let’s understand: this is not the first time that communists have faced fascism. The people who came before us, in the 1930s and ’40s, fought with amazing courage, dedication and creativity… but through the course of that time, the communist movement as a whole went further and further off track in how they conceived of what had to be the goal of the struggle. By the time fascism was defeated, the great majority of the movement that went through the fire of the 1930s and ’40s was well on the way to losing sight of, and giving up on, the goal of revolution.¹

Dedication Has to Be Rooted in Science

How could people fight so hard and just give up on the goal of revolution? Again—it wasn’t that these people weren’t willing to sacrifice. It’s because they didn’t scientifically understand the system they were up against, what it would take to replace it, and what to replace it with. After the revolution in China led by Mao was betrayed and violently overturned after his death in 1976, Bob Avakian began a deep analysis of the history of the communist movement… its strengths, but also very significant ways in which it ran counter to science. 

Here it’s worth quoting from the manifesto Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage:

In the early 1980s, in the work Conquer the World?, Bob Avakian made an extensive critique of erroneous tendencies in the history of the communist movement, and in particular the tendency toward nationalism—toward separating off the revolutionary struggle in a particular country from, and even raising it above, the overall world revolutionary struggle for communism. He examined ways in which this tendency had manifested itself in both the Soviet Union and China, when they were socialist countries, and the influence this exerted on the communist movement more broadly, including in the sometimes pronounced moves to subordinate the revolutionary struggle in other countries to the needs of the existing socialist state (first the Soviet Union, and then later China). Along with this, Avakian made a further analysis of the material basis for internationalism—why, in an ultimate and overall sense, the world arena is most decisive, even in terms of revolution in any particular country, especially in this era of capitalist imperialism as a world system of exploitation, and how this understanding must be incorporated into the approach to revolution, in particular countries as well as on a world scale.

This manifesto goes on to say that:

While internationalism has always been a fundamental principle of communism since its very founding, Avakian both summed up ways in which this principle had been incorrectly compromised in the history of the communist movement, and he strengthened the theoretical foundation for waging the struggle to overcome such departures from internationalism and to carry forward the communist revolution in a more thoroughly internationalist way. [My emphasis]

Before BA, even at their best, most communists tended to understand internationalism as a sort of solidarity, or sympathy, between different individual struggles within different individual nations. They tended to approach things “from my country out.” They didn’t really scientifically or consistently get what is quoted above about “the material basis for internationalism" and what that meant for how you had to approach leading the struggle both on a world scale, and also in individual countries. 

The fact that the communists of that time didn’t get this—the scientific basis for internationalism—led to all kinds of really poisonous distortions. Seeing things from “my country out,” even if seemingly harmless at first, proved to be a short step to mobilizing masses on the basis of “my country first.” And if you begin mobilizing people on the basis of “my country first” in an imperialist power, you’re not going to school people in how “my country” gets its “high standard of living” from sucking the blood of people all over the world—from the blood, that is, of our fellow humans, our brothers and sisters! You’re not going to mobilize those masses on the right basis and in the right way if people in a nation that “your country” plunders and oppresses happen to rise up against “your country.” And you’re not going to deal with the overwhelming wave of national chauvinism that will be whipped up if “your country” goes to war with some other imperialist power. 

World War 2 was a particular case. Nazi Germany threw its main forces into an attack on the then-socialist Soviet Union, killing literally more than 25 million people in the process! The very survival of socialism there was at stake. In those circumstances, it may have been correct for communists in those capitalist countries whose bourgeoisies were fighting Germany to have participated in the war. However, the communists in those countries didn’t just participate in the war, they actively promoted patriotism and all kinds of illusions about “democracy” in the process. It’s not because they were somehow bad people; it’s because what you do is founded on what you understand, and the understanding of the movement of that time was unscientific.

What We Have in These Interviews

My purpose here is definitely not to send people off into “deep study” at a time when so much urgently begs to be done out in the world every day. My purpose is to refocus everyone on what we have here, on the gift and the essential tool that these interviews are in this crucial time. What can look so effortless and seem so “naturally right” when BA says it is founded on deep scientific work and breakthroughs, grappling over decades with revolution and all of human experience. I think that the more you get how much and how sharply this goes up against what was the “conventional wisdom” of this movement, how much deep scientific wrangling and work went into forging this, and how powerful the pull against it will be when the chips are down, you will appreciate better how hard these interviews have to be fought for, how widely they have to be spread, and how deeply they need to be wrangled with.

The challenges already here are going to get heavier. These interviews provide the method and approach to deal with what we face today and what we will face tomorrow.