![]() ![]() I have successfully absorbed the lessons of history while you haven’t. No burden of proof is necessary, because I am being scientific and you are not. ![]() This is an extremely loaded word that produces a hierarchy of power: my theory is more powerful than yours because it is scientific. Everyone stuck in the previous paradigm is at best naive and at worst, unscientific. This periodization is then used to make a dubious point, namely that through an event a lesson was learned that marks the death of a paradigm and the birth of a new one. The picture painted by Cam, which is inherited from JMP, suffers from the same problems Donald is replying to in his piece: a simple periodization is being imposed into a complex process of knowledge production. By doing this, we risk ossifying slogans, and allowing spontaneity to fill in the gaps, harming our organizing. However, the process through which knowledge has been accumulated and synthesized cannot be reduced to a single path of advancement of the “science of revolution”. We know much more about what to do, and especially what not to do, than we did in Marx’s time. Indeed, in 2020, the experiences of revolutionaries both in overthrowing the old state and in running a new revolutionary state can fill entire libraries. But I diverge from him in seeing the evolution of Marxism as something much more complicated than the picture drawn by JMP. I start by agreeing with Cam that we must emphasize the points of both continuity and rupture of our revolutionary process. I take issue with this last statement, and that is what I will try to elaborate on in this article. And that answer comes in the shape of the mass line, which is “a mechanism to transform the nature of the party into a revolutionary mass organization which can resist the neutralizing force of the party-form”. Cam’s main thesis is that Maoism, being the only ideology that has correctly absorbed the knowledge produced by the learning process of the Paris Commune and the Russian and Chinese revolutions is uniquely poised to provide an answer to the problem of the party. Cam’s intervention is heavily influenced by, and largely follows Joshua Moufawad-Paul’s (JMP) ideas on how Maoism has been historically defined, what problems it is responding to, and how it must be applied today. This piece is meant as a (short) reply to Cam’s intervention on the debates around the party form started by Taylor B’s piece “ Beginnings of Politics” and Donald Parkinson’s piece “ Without a party we have nothing”. Three contributions have been published, with responses, counter-responses and synthesis. In Cosmonaut, we wish to have an open forum for debate, where these ideas can be shared and discussed. What is clear is that we need a plan, and we need one fast, or the monster will devour us all. Everyone has ideas, some more or less thought out than others. But how do we do something, how do we slay the monster? How do we become free? It is not going to be easy. We know we cannot just stand by, and we have to do something. Millions are going hungry and do not know whether they can make the next rent payment. Renato Flores responds to Cam W’s argument for Maoism and the mass line. ![]()
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