Steer clear of these errors, and you'll be ensured against contributing to the many ills that cadres can fall victim to. Part of Marxism's central principles is the relentless criticism of all things, and to apply this, we must be willing to make sacrifices. Sacrifices of the short-term comforts that come from letting a companion's harmful actions go unaddressed for the sake of staying on good terms with them, or from going about one's day passively despite encountering something that hurts the interests of the masses. Our emotions so often risk leading us astray, urging us to take the easy path under the rationale that even if we know we're doing wrong, it can't possibly be damaging to the revolution's interests. But everything is connected, and every action or inaction we take has consequences. This is the thesis of Ho Chi Minh's On Revolutionary Morality, which warns about the counterproductive mental habits that we must overcome:
Born and brought up in the old society, we all carry within ourselves, to varying extent, traces of that society in our thinking and habits. The worst and most dangerous vestige of the old society is individualism. Individualism runs counter to revolutionary morality. The least remaining trace of it will develop at the first opportunity, smother revolutionary virtues and prevent us from wholeheartedly struggling for the revolutionary cause. Individualism is something very deceitful and perfidious, it skillfully induces one to backslide. And everybody knows that it is easier to backslide than to progress. That is why it is very dangerous ... those Party members who commit errors will lead the masses into error; therefore, they stand ready to correct any mistake they may make, and this in a timely way, and do not allow small errors to accumulate into big ones. They sincerely practise criticism and self criticism, which makes it possible for them to progress together.
What happens when we fail to live up to these criteria? We undermine our own cause. The inverse to this impulse towards being apathetic and complacent is the one towards being reckless. Towards acting out of step with what one's cadre has agreed is the right course of action, or with what the interests of the masses demand. And it's the latter type of error that we so often have the responsibility to counter when we see someone else committing it. To avoid both of these kinds of errors--complacency and recklessness--we must identify exactly what types of actions constitute recklessness. Which starts with identifying the ahistorical and undialectical ideas that produce them.
Case study in ahistorical ideas: gang fetishism & its resulting ultraviolence
My cadre once let in an individual who proudly declared that he was a Sure????o, a member of California's Chicano gang. His gangster upbringing had made him highly eager for the ideas of militancy, and of forming a dynamic of close brotherhood. But soon the downside of this became apparent: because his concept of organization was entirely focused on "having each other's backs," and being willing to engage in violence on a whim, he responded to an ideological dispute we had with African communists by recklessly threatening violence against them. He refused to self-criticize for this mistake, because in his mind the situation undoubtedly called for such an escalation, and that the rest of us disagreed with his course of action was a betrayal. Democratic centralism, which mandates that one consult the party before taking a risky action and learn from one's mistake should they fail to do this, was interpreted by him as disloyal. There was no room for good-faith criticism, only a binary between uncritical agreement with him and irreconcilable conflict.
It was this narrative about the supposed evils of party discipline that correlated with the viewpoint he then pushed about gangs being instrumental for the revolution. In time, I learned that this gang-fetishist perspective didn't come out of nowhere; it's an ultra-leftist position that goes back decades. In the Marxist-Leninist October League's 1970s list of demands for the liberation of the Chicano people, the dangers of this position were addressed by the 12th point:
12. Jobs and job training programs for Chicano youth. The lack of jobs and job training has led to the extremely high unemployment rate (40-50 percent) for young Chicanos and to the flourishing of lumpen-type gang organizations. This situation has given rise to organizations like "La Colectiva," a barrio youth organization in Los Angeles aimed at getting the gang members to fight against imperialism instead of each other. Special youth organizations and youth-oriented programs and propaganda must be developed.
With this analysis, the League didn't pretend that the proliferation of gangs is a positive development; it diagnosed the gangs as being active obstacles in the effort to unite the lumpen behind liberation movements, requiring the introduction of alternative social outlets into these communities. It said the individuals within these gangs have revolutionary potential, but it made clear that this was in spite of their being part of gangs. Then with the 13th point, it became apparent why the League objected to trying to use gangs as a revolutionary tool. It described a need to eliminate the drug pushers, who are given institutional power by the gangs:
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