The last couple of GA’s I have been to there has been an increase in RCP visibility. I find this disturbing for a couple of reasons. Yes I will give you a bulleted list because bullets are “revolutionary”.
- R.C.P.-Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. I am not sure why they insist on having the word “revolutionary” in their acronym. I suppose there must have been a non-revolutionary Communist Party at one point that was only concerned with having bake sales and organizing a bowling league.
- Maoist-The RCP is stated to be a Maoist organization. If you want me to explain what Maoism is I would refer to the wikipedia entry on maoism. I am simply not a very good communist so I wouldn’t presume to explain communism and it’s myriad factions. The Cliff notes is that they are a nationalist flavor of communism. Which in my humble opinion is a contradiction on a grand scale. They have the same flaws as other communist ideologies I am familiar with in that they hold that the bourgeoise are “bad” and the peasants are “good”. Their idea of a perfect world involves making the “bad” people more like the “good” ones. Pol Pot and teh Khmer Rouge are a great example of how well that doesn’t work out in practice.
- Vanguardist-It is the tactic of most all Communist movements to co-opt other movements. This is part of this crazy idea they have that they are in on “the truth” and the ordinary people haven’t heard the “good news” yet. So their movements must be infiltrated and brought around to a proper revolutionary direction. This is an explicitly stated tactic of RCP and I have personally seen the RCP attempt to co-opt many other movements.
- Anti-Authoritarian-For some odd reason they often attempt to infiltrate police brutality, anti-repression and other anti-authoritarian causes and groups. They have even founded a few such as the Oct.22nd Coalition. Of course this is the height of hypocrisy as China, Cuba and the former Soviet Union were/are all atrocious practitioners of state repression. This is like the butcher showing up at the PETA meeting. For real tho.
- Cult of Personality-RCP and pretty much all communist parties everywhere (that I am familiar with) are strongly hierarchical. So much so that they almost always evolve into what Leon Trotsky called, “Messianic Revolutionary Nationalism” where you have one guy, at the top, calling the shots, for decades. Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro etc. The RCP has been run by Bob Avakian for decades.
- Hella not Gay– The RCP was anti-gay pretty much from it’s inception. Their theory held that homosexuality was some kind of bourgeoisie indulgence, working class peasants aren’t gay! They backed away from this stance more recently, but it can not be ignored as something they did and said for decades.
- Anti-Anarchist-From the second international to the Spanish Civil War to protests/marches in the 90’s. Communist organizations have a boner for backstabbing Anarchists. Look it up.
Now some folks have pointed out that there have been RCP folks around since the days of the camp. That is great. I hope that communists and any other kind of collectivists remain involved and put at least as much effort into the positive works that we are all doing. However (a whole lot of fucking however!) they really got to back the fuck off on that shitty propaganda rag and the mealy mouthed RCP rhetoric. Occupy is not explicitly anarchist. It is organized around anarchist principles and practices such as being leaderless and requiring consensus on decisions. These are not things that the RCP will let stand if they had control over Occupy.
I am not saying we got to eject them from Occupy, but I will certainly urinate on their little card table of shitty magazines.
Power to the People.
Calaverasgrandes
@ asmallvoice — I’m sorry but these guys (and yes, they are all guys, as in MEN) they always like clutch a “REVOLUTION” magazine in their hands while they talk about any given topic…. they obey the same leader from 30+ years who has so far failed to bring about a revolution. Now, I am friends with some people at #OO who are part of ISO or other socialist/communist organizations, but they don’t spend every minute trying to co-opt things like these RCP dudes. They actually do the marches and they stay for the whole discussion at the GA. So I’m sorry, but the RCP just puts a bad taste in my mouth, I am not trying to condemn those people but yeah their behavior is absurd already.
And again, if these guys from SF want to join a co-ordinated group, why are they coming to Oakland before they even come to their own GA?
it makes no sense to me at all about folks being suspicious about the RCP when we don’t even know the politics/motivations of those who are already “involved” deeply in occupy. if there is to be suspicion laid at the feet of these people for participating, then it would serve everyone well to reexamine EVERYONE’s politics, intentions, and backgrounds. or perhaps, people need to be more forthcoming about their political mindsets.
Rigid dogma of any kind is dangerous whether it be religious or political. I think I’d edit Marx’s famous quote, “Dogma is the opiate of the masses.”
au contraire mon frere.
I do not think RCP is cool in and of itself. I think they are a nasty underhanded organization that attempts to subvert other organizations to their agenda. This is not something that they hold the patent on. There are all kinds of other organizations that will try and co-opt other orgs. But RCP is very twofaced and sneaky about it, and it is a stated RCP tactic. Not to mention a Maoist-Leninist one.
I have no problem with individual communists or any other kind of collectivists or socialists. I think we have some common ground. However one of the main issues I see repeated over and over in OO is that people try to inflict their ideology on everyone around them in OO. That is not cool. We all need to check our membership cards at the door. We also should all be doing a lot more listening and less talking.
My personal experience with RCP members (and a few of my friends are current or former RCP) is that they are very doctrinaire when it comes to the party. They can talk about sports one minute, but as soon as you get into RCP terrirtory, it is the RCP line. Which is inflexibility as the day is long.
I couldn’t find those guys, and the other people I was directed to seemed super-busy, but it was a pretty nice GA anyway. It sounds like these guys are part of Occupy SF for sure, and lately they have been working also with RCP. Which, like you said, is cool in and of itself but I’m not in favor of collaborating with them on anything other than an individual level.
If the RCP wants to propose some kind of specific action, help provide funding and people on the streets and all of that, we could decide as a group whether to go along with that, on a case by case basis just like we have done with unions. But I’m not in favor of establishing any kind of group that would basically disseminate RCP action plans from their centralized national leadership on an ongoing basis.
Right on, I am with you on this. They will find it a lot harder to slip this proposal through on Sunday than they imagine. Leo and Baruka already spoke to the concerns of hierarchy in their organization. I think the 2 guys who came over severely under-estimated our collective awareness. I plan to go to Occupy San Francisco tonight and find out, if I can, to what extent these individuals are truly representing #OSF and whether or not #OSFGA has consensed to their “co-ordinated response to repression.”