Excerpt from the Interview with Ardea Skybreak
November 16, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
In the early part of this year (2015), over a number of days,
Revolution conducted
a wide-ranging interview with Ardea Skybreak. A scientist with
professional training in ecology and evolutionary biology, and an
advocate of the new synthesis of communism brought forward by Bob
Avakian, Skybreak is the author of, among other works,
The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: Knowing What’s Real and Why It Matters, and
Of
Primeval Steps and Future Leaps, An Essay on the Emergence of Human
Beings, the Source of Women’s Oppression, and the Road to Emancipation. An excerpt from this interview, “
On Attending the Dialogue Between Bob Avakian and Cornel West,” was first published in February 2015. In March 2015
two additional excerpts
were published ("An Explorer, a Critical Thinker, a Follower of BA:
Understanding the World, And Changing It For the Better, In the
Interests of Humanity" and "Some Thank Yous That Need To Be Said
Aloud"). This is another excerpt from this interview. The text of the
complete interview is available as a book from
Insight Press. A PDF of the complete interview (including a Table of Contents, with links to the different sections of the interview) is
also available.OK. So I thought we could kind of broaden
it out now from talking about the Dialogue. But just before we do, I
want to echo what you were saying about how people should really go to
the website revcom.us and check out the Dialogue and really take it
in, and check out the film of the Dialogue once it is available. I
think your phrase about how there was magic in the air is a really
appropriate phrase to describe it. So I want to echo your urging
people to do that. But just to kind of broaden it out, I was wondering
if you could speak in a more overall way about how you see the content
and significance of Bob Avakian’s work, method and leadership. What is
the significance of this in the world? And how this relates to the
points that we’ve been talking about in terms of a scientific approach
to understanding and changing the world through revolution.
AS: Well, I think we’re talking about the most
advanced revolutionary theoretician alive in the world today, the person
who has taken things furthest in terms of the development of the
science of revolution which started with Marx in the late 1800s and
which was further developed through different periods by Lenin and Mao
in particular. As time went on, and at every stage, there were some
very significant new things that were learned and applied. There were
some important new theoretical developments as well as practical
advances.
But I really think that Bob Avakian’s work in this period is actually ushering in a new stage of communism. And that’s both for
objective reasons and
subjective reasons
in my opinion. Let me try to explain what I mean by that. First of
all, there have been significant new material developments in the
world even since the time of Mao, and the theoretical work that BA
has done is capable of recognizing, encompassing and addressing those
objective changes.
The world doesn’t stand still and we don’t live in exactly the same
world that Marx lived in, or that Lenin lived in, or even that Mao
lived in, so the science of revolution has to remain dynamic and be
able to continually develop, including in relation to these ongoing
changes in the objective situation. But the reason I think that BA’s
work is ushering in a new stage of communism is not just because of
ongoing worldwide changes in the objective situation but because of
the pathbreaking breakthroughs BA has been making on what we might
call the
subjective side of the equation—in other words, his
whole development of a new synthesis of communism and the radically
different method and approach he is taking to the problems of
advancing the revolution, both in this country and worldwide, which I
feel represent a very significant advance in the development of the
science itself and which stand in sharp contrast to the various kinds
of wrong-headed methods and approaches which have plagued most of the
so-called international communist movement for quite some time now.
BA’s theoretical work has deeply analyzed, sifted through, and recast
the experience of the past in a way that is actually bringing forward
some new theoretical components that have never been seen before,
including in relation to the concrete process of building up
revolutionary movements—identifying some of the key and much more
consistently scientific methods and principles that must be applied in
order to do this correctly (not just here, but in other types of
countries as well), the key things that have to be kept in mind all
along the road to revolution, leading up to the seizure of power; and
bringing forward as well, again in some important new ways, some of
the methods and principles that should be applied in the approach to
actually seizing power, and to going on from there to build a new
socialist society in such a way that it would not only truly
constitute a society that most people would want to live in, but also
one that would have a better chance than past such societies of not
getting diverted and turned backwards, back towards capitalism instead
of forward towards communism.
by Bob Avakian, Chairman,
Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, Summer 2015
But here’s part of the dilemma, here’s what’s frustrating to me:
most people today don’t get any of this! They don’t get the
significance, literally on a world scale, of what BA’s new synthesis of
communism is opening up, in terms of new possibilities for humanity.
People don’t get this unless they actually start digging into these
questions a little more seriously and actually start to grapple more
scientifically with what’s going on in the world, and what’s actually
needed.
Q: Which questions?
AS: Well, once again, the significance of what
Bob Avakian has brought forward in relation to objective developments
in the world and vis-à-vis some of the very wrong views and problems of
method that prevail today among most so-called communists. Again,
there was what has been called “the first wave” of socialist
revolutions, which lasted up through the late 1970s, when capitalism
was restored in China and the world was once again devoid of any genuine
socialist societies. Marx really opened up that first stage of things
in the late 1800s with his insightful historical materialist
theoretical work on class contradictions throughout history and on the
particular features of capitalist societies and the need and basis
for revolutions to move beyond that towards socialism and communism,
ultimately on a global scale. There was, in 1871, the experience of
the Paris Commune, which was significant as a preliminary kind of
attempt in which proletarian forces seized and briefly held power in
Paris, but this really could not be consolidated for any length of
time—there was not yet the conception, there was not yet the strategy,
there was not yet really a vision, of what needed to happen to take it
further. Obviously, the Russian revolution of 1917 was able to not
only seize power, but to also consolidate power, and then go on to
establish socialism and build the Soviet Union as a socialist state
for a number of decades, before it got reversed and capitalism got
restored there in the 1950s. And then the Chinese revolution, after the
country-wide seizure of power there in 1949, and right up to the
late 1970s, was able to take the process even further, before it too
got reversed. So it’s important to learn from
all this, both from the advances and from the shortcomings.
Lenin, who led the revolution that brought the Soviet Union into
being, was a very important theoretician who, among many other
important theoretical breakthroughs, developed a real understanding
of how capitalism had evolved into imperialism, into a world-wide
system. Those were important
objective changes
in the world at the time, and some of Lenin’s developments of the
theory actually encompassed those changes and spoke to them in some very
important ways, which I won’t try to get into here. Then, by the time
of the Chinese revolution, Mao advanced things yet again, bringing
forward a lot of new understanding of things, like how to get started
on the revolutionary road in a Third World country dominated by
foreign imperialism, and what it meant to actually wage protracted
people’s war in that type of country over a period of time, leading up
to the country-wide seizure of power. Some of Mao’s greatest
contributions were made after the seizure of power, over a period of
years, in the course of analyzing the positive and negative
experiences of the Soviet Union, and in relation to the challenges
encountered while working to develop a socialist society in China.
Mao’s theoretical breakthroughs during those years included the
analysis—the very important analysis—of what were the social and
ideological remnants, the vestiges, of the old society which still
exerted significant influence in the new socialist society, and his
recognition therefore of the need to find appropriate ways to
“continue the revolution” even in a socialist society. This was
something new, that had not been previously understood or anticipated,
and it marked a critical advance in the developing science of
communism—a key lesson for communists to learn, and learn well, not
just in China back then but everywhere around the world, and one that
will be critical to have in mind in all future socialist societies. As
part of all this, Mao developed critically important theoretical
concepts about class relations under socialism, including the fact,
that he famously popularized, that, in socialist society, “you don’t
know where the bourgeoisie is—it’s right inside the communist party!”
This is something Mao analyzed at a certain point in the development of
socialist society, and he unleashed people to wage a Cultural
Revolution, even under socialism, to advance things further. That was
very important, and those important leaps and breakthroughs made by
Mao have been deeply appreciated and analyzed by BA and have been
incorporated into the new synthesis that BA has been developing ever
since then. Despite all the major theoretical and practical advances
and contributions of Mao and the striking accomplishments achieved in
the course of developing socialism in China in the course of just a few
decades, the fact that the revolution there did get reversed in the
late ‘70s and that capitalism has been restored there was certainly a
great impetus to recognizing the need to make rigorous scientific
analyses of what had happened there and to develop the scientific
theoretical framework of communism even further, in order to be able to
handle things even better the next time around. Which is precisely
what BA set out to do and the new synthesis of communism he has
brought forward is very much the fruit of the work he has done in order
to meet that need.
So again today, there are no socialist countries in the world. That
doesn’t mean there aren’t revolutionaries or people talking about
communism and socialism in different parts of the world, in different
countries, even waging people’s war in some places—or people who have
done so in more recent decades. But, frankly, the international
situation is a mess. The international communist movement is, by and
large, a mess. And it’s because of some very, very problematic lines
and line differences in the international movement—some very fundamental
errors that have been made in either one or another direction, and
which BA has spoken to. He’s helping to sort that out. But, to be blunt,
he’s basically not appreciated by the bulk of what has been the sort of
old-school international communist movement. He’s very controversial in
those circles. People disagree with him a lot, because there are these
very wrong tendencies and trends in different countries that get away
from the revolutionary road and from the path towards genuine socialism
and communism but that some individuals and organizations are very
invested in holding on to, it seems. And, I mean, some people
actually think he doesn’t even have the right to speak about these
issues because he’s not from a Third World country, he’s a white guy
from an imperialist country. That’s a pitifully narrow and pathetic way
of thinking. But it’s rooted not just in narrow nationalism (though that
is certainly a factor), but also in the kind of devaluing of science,
and of theory in general, that is so prevalent everywhere these days.
On the more positive side, I’d like to point people again to the
polemics that have been written by revolutionaries in Mexico,
the OCR, which can be accessed through the revcom.us site, and other things that have been written by others, polemicizing
against some of these wrong trends in the international communist movement today and
upholding BA’s new synthesis of communism in opposition to that. Again, people should go to the online theoretical journal
Demarcations,
which can also be accessed through revcom.us. These polemics point
correctly to the fact that, on the one hand, you have these dogmatic
tendencies...I’ll just very briefly say this: On the one hand you have
these trends in the international movement that represent
dogmatic tendencies,
that argue that you only have to rigidly “stick to the
fundamentals,” that act as if there’s basically nothing new to learn
(!), despite the clear evidence that the world keeps changing in many
important ways that need to be taken into account, and despite the
fact that there’s obviously a great need to sift through past
accumulated experience in order to better learn how to avoid critical
setbacks and have more successful revolutions and build more
successful socialist societies. Seems kinda obvious, right? But there
are more than a few mechanical dogmatic types around the world who
approach revolution and communism more as a religion than a science
and who therefore won’t even really examine and engage these types of
questions. And then there’s the other kind of trend that basically
says, “Well, there have been problems in the international communist
movement and mistakes made in the past, so we’ve gotta loosen things up
and just have a whole lot more elasticity and we’ll be fine”—but
basically they’re going in circles and sort of
rediscovering bourgeois democracy!
They might as well just sign up, sign on the dotted line, to just try
to obtain a few more bourgeois democratic freedoms and liberties,
while essentially leaving the world as it is! This trend has very
little to do with actually breaking away from the capitalist
framework in any kind of fundamental sense—it often seems to be trying
simply to promote the economic development of Third World countries
within that
global capitalist framework, and maybe just extract a few more
freedoms and liberties, especially for the middle strata in the
cities. But none of this is actually taking sufficiently into account
the real core contradictions in these countries, the objective changes
that have been taking place, and what it is that the broad masses of
these countries actually need, in order to really break out of the
overwhelmingly oppressive and exploitative framework under which they
live.
Look, I realize that in this interview we can’t really get into
all this in detail. I more just wanted to make the point that, today, in
terms of the international communist movement, well, there really is
no single international communist movement. There are revolutionaries
and communists in different parts of the world, and, since the loss
of socialism in China, to a very large degree they’ve been in disarray.
In fact, it was thanks to Bob Avakian that there was even a coherent
analysis put forward at the time of the coup in China and the
restoration of capitalism. He analyzed what actually had happened there
to set things back on the capitalist path. And he helped to forge a
deeper understanding of what is the correct way to unfold revolution
and socialism in the modern world. But it’s not like everybody decided
to stand up and clap and agree with it—it’s been either ignored, or
very contended, and it still is, right up to this day. So frankly, it
is a big problem in the world that there is not even much serious and
substantial engagement and wrangling with the theoretical developments
of the science of communism represented by BA’s new synthesis. And it
would be better if there were more unity forged on that developing
foundation and basis.
Q: So, a big part of what you are saying is
that the work that Avakian has done has actually carved out a new
theoretical framework for a new stage of communist revolution, has
actually advanced the science of revolution.
AS: That’s exactly what I’m saying. And I think
how much it’s needed, both in this country and internationally, is
pretty clear, given what is actually happening to the world and to
the people of the world, and how much revolutionary change is needed.
But there’s so much confusion and disarray. And there are
people...look, there have been attempts at developing revolutions in
recent decades in Peru and Nepal, to take two salient examples. In
both those cases there were some very dedicated people who made great
sacrifices and fought for years to try to have revolutions in those
countries, but they have gone completely off track. And the thing
is,
it didn’t have to end up that way...I’m not
saying that there could have been any guarantees that they would stay on
track, and revolutionaries did face some very difficult conditions in
both those countries. There were a lot of challenging problems that
needed to be solved for those revolutions to have a chance of being
successful. But the point is that there was a lot of unnecessary
resistance to digging into some of the critical theoretical struggles
that needed to be waged, to try to actually bring light into, shine a
light onto some of the problems that were being encountered by the
revolutionary struggles as the conditions in the world were
changing—the conditions of the cities in the Third World, the
conditions of the countryside in the Third World. For instance, the
whole question of the application of solid core, with lots of
elasticity based on the solid core, to those particular situations,
in those types of countries, would have been extremely relevant to
explore. But that kind of overarching principle is neither well
understood nor even much examined or reflected on by revolutionaries
in different parts of the world these days. Instead, as I was saying
earlier, what you find are either tendencies towards going in the
direction of brittle dogmatism and being static, stiff and controlling
in a bad way; or tendencies towards throwing everything out the
window by being too loose, including trying to pander to the middle
strata of some of those countries and their interests–essentially
advocating for what looks a whole lot like bourgeois democracy. Even
if you give it the name socialism or communism, that’s not what it is.
So there’s a need for a whole world-wide engagement with some of
these things. I really do believe, from my scientific perspective,
that what Avakian has done is...he has really developed...on a number
of key questions, he has really developed
some very new thinking: about the road to revolution, about the seizure of power, about the nature of the new society that should be built up. In
all of
these dimensions he has carved out some very new thinking,
identified some warning signs and problems to be avoided, and in
particular he’s done this by highlighting the typical philosophical and
methodological errors that people tend to fall into, and by drawing
out the implications of the fact that if you don’t approach things
with the right
methods, there’s no way you are going to be able
to bring about some truly positive advances. He’s shown this, and
he’s brought out lots of concrete evidence of this, and he’s drawn on
lots of historical examples to reveal patterns and show where these
errors of method can lead.
In any field of science, whenever you have people who are bringing
forward genuinely new thinking and really visionary analyses and
syntheses, and who are critiquing old ways of thinking, old methods,
old ways of approaching things, it’s unfortunately often the case that,
for a while at least, their work is not understood, is mocked, and
reviled, or simply ignored. The history of science–all science–is full
of examples of this. And it’s a shame really...it constitutes a loss for
humanity. In my view, every minute that goes by where Bob Avakian’s
new synthesis of communism is not being seriously engaged and grappled
with is another minute lost in the struggle to emancipate humanity from
the horrors of this capitalist-imperialist world.
zu berechnen. Deshalb befindet das ELO-Form es für ratsam, gegen die Bescheide ab dem 01.01.2016 Widerspruch einzulegen.
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