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7. The Emergence and Eclipse of Maoist Organizations
- Temple University Press
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7 The Emergence and Eclipse of Maoist Organizations "What is the correct strategy for organizing Asian Americans?" It's ridiculous to think in terms of a onedimensional strategy. The sectarian says: "Your heads are in a wrong place. You should be into this, rather than that." There might be some truth in what he says, but to try to make the diverse reality of the Asian American experience fit into a single, narrow mold of analysis is foolish, and becomes destructive to achieving any kind of real unity. -"Asian Nation," Gidra Some members of the early phase of the Asian American Movement had received their political baptism in the New Left student movement. I They constituted some of the Movement's most politically progressive elements, bringing with them pertinent parts of the New Left's ideology, goals, and tactics; but they also brought with them its problems, notably sectarianism. In the late 1960s, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and similar groups were rent over whether the New Left should continue to be a coalition of locally based groups that adhered to the ideal of participatory democracy or should move toward a centrally controlled organization.2 Under the influence of European existentialists such as Albert Camus, author of The Rebel, and American intellectuals such as C. Wright Mills, author of The Power Elite, members of the New Left had originally embraced the humanistic socialism of the young Karl Marx as far better suited to the circumstances of postindustrial America than the later, Old Left emphasis on a vanguard party stressing working-class militancy . During the early 1960s, they deemed Marxism-Leninism "dated and Copyrighted Material 203 204 : Chapter 7 irrelevant," rejected the so-called scientific socialism of the Second and Third Communist Internationale as "dogmatism," and foc used on personal liberation . Indeed, they had a profound distrust of anything that was beyond their personal control, believing it would become corrupt. But by the late 1960s, because of their inability to stop the Vietnam War, many members of the New Left became disillusioned with idealism. Frustrated with the slow pace of change in American society, they sought speedier solutions to the social problems with which they were struggling. As a result of their experiences in the civil rights and antiwar movements, many of them focused increasingly on the nature of American state and society and began a reappraisal of Marxism-Leninism, which seemed to offer a comprehensive explanation for and a way to solve these problems. Concluding that the capitalist system of the United States was responsible for creating injustice at home and aggression abroad and that conventional means of change, such as the electoral system, was ineffectual, they advocated the elimination of capitalism, through violence if necessary. As SOS and the New Left in general disintegrated over how best to change America and degenerated into what Todd Gitlin aptly called " screaming factions ," 3 Marxism- Leninism- Mao Tse-tung Thought (henceforth referred to as MLMTT, a cumbersome acronym popular during the 1970s) became the ideology of choice. Rejecting the moralism and idealism of the early New Left as a " petty bourgeois" phenomenon, radicals followed what they believed to be the "science of revolution." In doing so, they unwittingly resurrected, more or less, the style of the Old Left. In the wake of the New Left's decline, a plethora of radical political organizations emerged. There were the infamous Weathermen , whose nihilism captured the popular imagination and whose terrorism captured the attention of the police . There were also groups that wanted a new New Left that was better organized and more disciplined than its predecessor, one that was able to acquire political power and effect serious social change. Generally discounting ethnic nationalism (and , by extension, America's ethnically pluralist ideals) , they foc used on capital- labor relations. Each group usually began as an informal collective that evolved into a national organization through the consolidation of smaller left groups. Each was committed to building a single, unified left movement in the United States, preferably under its own organization's leadership. Consequently, the various groups were in competition with one another to establish a new revolutionary party that would displace the moribund Communist party, U.S .A. The new party would, it was hoped , ful fi ll the original mission of overturning the nation's monopoly capitalCopyrighted Material [3.83.32.226] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:24 GMT) Maoist Organizations : 205 ist system, which had given rise to imperialism, and replace it...