Essay:Self-Criticism on the hasty formation of the "Organization for a Revolutionary Communist Party"

SELF-CRITICISM ON THE HASTY FORMATION OF THE “ORGANIZATION FOR A REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PARTY”

IVET J., edited by Saula W.

PREFACE

Going forward I would like to make clear, me (Ivet J.) and ‘Comrade Julio’ are the same person.

I did this because I thought I had made myself hard to take seriously as Ivet.

None of this is meant as an attack on the Maoist Students Collective or the old leader. The critiques of the old MSC are only to provide context for the unserious nature of the formation of the “Organization for a Revolutionary Communist Party”.

I do not blame anyone but myself, our good comrade, Saula W. did her best to work within and fix our organization. Sadly this was not possible.

PREFORMATION AND THE MSC

I had been a member of an online “organization” (glorified Discord server) called the “Maoist Students Collective” for a few months. Over this time the leader ran the “organization” as an absolute owner and constantly contradicted the organizational points of unity (deleted votes when they didn't go his way, banned the second in command after they questioned him, deleted criticism of him, as well as other mistakes). I had been one of the largest opponents of this along with two others. Eventually I started to ignore the core issue after GermanMaoist got slightly more lenient in his leadership (The core issue being how the MSC is run as a Discord server). For a while I ignored many of his mistakes due to him being friendly and me not wanting to offend him. This was a very liberalistic approach.

Chairman Mao was entirely correct in addressing such behavior as a type of liberalism:

“To let things slide for the sake of peace and friendship when a person has clearly gone wrong, and refrain from principled argument because he is an old acquaintance, a fellow townsman, a schoolmate, a close friend, a loved one, an old colleague or old subordinate. Or to touch on the matter lightly instead of going into it thoroughly, so as to keep on good terms. The result is that both the organization and the individual are harmed. This is one type of liberalism.”

- Mao Tse-tung, Combat Liberalism

This describes my past behavior. Going forward I will try to avoid such mistakes.

I eventually came to accept the status quo of the “organization”, I treated it like a real organization. I wrote mediocre articles and edited articles full of major errors.

My article on Nepal was surface level and lacked serious investigation. The article I wrote debunking Hoxhaism made poor arguments and once again, was surface level, had a lack of real investigation and had many other errors.

I was eventually tasked within the MSC to create an American chapter. Only meant as a local study group. This is one area where the MSC leadership was smarter than me. I instead got very far ahead of myself and I had been distracted by online illusions.

INITIAL FORMATION

I formed the “Organization for a Revolutionary Communist Party” and recruited a few American members of the MSC, with the claim of simply being the American chapter of the MSC. Many were misled, either by being under the idea that it was a real “pre-party formation” or that it was the American chapter of the MSC. This unintentional misleading was our worst mistake, I never meant to mislead anyone. I genuinely believed that it was a legitimate pre-party formation. I was high on a false sense of legitimacy. The “ORCP” only served to distract our members from actual organizing and activity.

In the formation process I wrote my worst work as a foundational basis.:

MY WORST WORK

I wrote “On the Committee to Reconstitute CPUSA”, a deeply awful work with little to none investigation. I wrote extremely factually despite the fact that I was simply spouting nonsense. I would not recommend anyone to read it or to use it as a source. It was used as a justification for the formation of the “ORCP”.

POST FORMATION ACTIVITY

Post formation I acted the same way with a false sense of legitimacy.

We primarily started our running on a secure platform called Element, eventually it began having problems so we decided to move to Discord (due to most of our members already having accounts on it). This was a horrible decision with OpSec, we eventually moved to signal but it was too little too late.

We adopted the ‘Manifesto of the American Communist Party (Maoist)’ as our guiding line after its writer joined the “organization”, likely not knowing of its true state. It is a great work but it only helped to further our false sense of legitimacy.

In our meetings we talked of offline activity but we never actually engaged in anything like that. We did produce some decent articles but it doesn’t make up for our mistakes.

LATER ACTIVITY AND DISBANDING

We made a twitter account, which opened us up to serious public criticism and helped me to realize just how unserious the “ORCP” was. After a while of having meetings and writing articles I fully realized, I told comrade Saula and we held an emergency meeting and eventually decided to disband and join local maoist support committees related to the Worker newspaper.

CLOSING STATEMENT

In conclusion the “ORCP” only served as a distraction from actual organizing. I apologise to all former members along with any of those who we unintentionally fooled. If you have any additional statements I would appreciate if you sent them to me, I will put them in the personal statements section below.

PERSONAL STATEMENTS

Saula W.: From the start, the ORCP had several glaring problems. It was born from the ultra-online “Maoist Students Collective”, an “organization” which lacked basic organizational principles like democratic centralism and generally had a culture to it which lacked any connection with the masses, being run solely by a 14 year old boy. While the “ORCP” was able to eventually overcome this leader and become a fully independent organ, the damage was already dealt to the succeeding organizational culture of “ORCP”.

The “ORCP” shared many of the errors of the “MSC”. It was exclusively online, had very poor operations security, and lacked any realistic hope of reaching the masses. We sought to — put in the best terms — reach existing leftists on the internet instead of reaching the masses themselves.

Concerning operations security, we had virtually no vetting process and instead took in practically anybody and everybody who claimed to be a Maoist who was from the United States. These recruits were not seldom veteran activists and revolutionaries, but teenagers indiscriminately brought in from Discord, Twitter, etc.

As the ex-Chair of the “ORCP”, I take partial responsibility for the mistakes of the “ORCP” insofar as I allowed it to continue for so long. The “ORCP” was, ultimately, a waste of time which could have been spent on true activism.