An Open Letter to Professors, Historians, Scholars and the ’60s Generation
From: Penny Brown
Revolution #1, May 1, 2005, posted at revcom.us
"After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical. And then there came a day of fire."
George W. Bush, 2nd Inaugural Address, January 2005
Are we really going to let this guy—this liar, this fundamentalist lunatic—sum up the whole historical experience of communist revolution as a "shipwreck"?
Amidst a barrage of lies, let this be a message from a generation who’s grown up in a world without a real socialist society, to another who saw the possibility and felt the urging of revolutionary change.
I grew up in the ’80s—on the whole, hardly a time of great social or cultural upheaval.
As a young woman growing up in America, I was surrounded by idealized, unrealistic images of women’s bodies. I was told again and again, directly or indirectly, that I was ugly and stupid and made to feel worthless. This kind of stuff is deeply internalized and woven into the very fabric of our existence on an everyday basis. Not to mention the daily threat of physical or sexual abuse or rape that faces every woman in this society, or other horrific realities of our lives.
When I was a bit older, I began to really look at the world around me, and immediately it was easy to see all the pain and suffering that characterizes the everyday lives of the vast majority of humankind.
But the idea that something completely different is possible was something I would only let myself fantasize about on rare occasions. The whole tone of society was that we were living in the "end of history." Communism? "They tried that, it didn’t work and it was filled with horrors and unspeakable crimes—people turned into automatons, were hounded and killed off." As bad as society might be today, it is still the best of all possible worlds.
And I have distinct images in my brain, all gray, of old people, their noses red from the cold (and maybe some vodka) standing in long lines waiting for a loaf of bread, their towering fur hats their only protection from the surrounding snowstorm in the Soviet Union. These were my mental images of revolutionary societies. I just naturally accepted the verdicts that communism was a disaster.
And then a few years ago, a professor gave me a copy of Bob Avakian’s book Preaching from a Pulpit of Bones: We Need Morality, but Not Traditional Morality. And my whole conception of the world and what’s possible changed.
In this book, Avakian was bringing forth a radical communist morality. He was looking at the accusation that communists believe "the ends justify the means, (any means)" and saying that no, real communists believe that the means must flow from and serve the goal of the emancipation of humanity.
He is someone who has summed up the history of the international communist movement and has brought forward a very rich and profound analysis of the socialist experience, in the Soviet Union (1917-1956) and especially in China (1949-1976)—the overwhelmingly positive but also the negative—in light of where humanity can and needs to go. He has rescued the communist project and given it new vitality and relevance to the 21st century.
I was challenged to get deeper into the actual experience of the people in these revolutionary societies. I got involved in the project to "Set the Record Straight."
Recently I came across an account by a woman observing the difference between how children are socialized in the United States and her own childhood during the Cultural Revolution in China:
"While studying in America, I was surprised to find that youth as a gender-neutral idea was not as popular a concept here as it was in China. Instead, social perceptions of gender differences exist between girls and boys in early childhood. Even newborn babies are subjected to gender differentiation: pink and blue ribbons traditionally mark female and male infants. As a teenager in China in the 1970’s, however, I was able to positively identify myself as a non-gendered youth with strengths, strengths that were won through constant struggles with the contradictions of being a youth and a woman." (Lihua Wang, Some of Us: Chinese Women Growing Up in the Mao Era )
The fact that millions of women grew up on this planet, as recently as 30 years ago, in Maoist China, in a society consciously struggling against the "mark of gender," is not something to be lightly passed over. It is something to dig into and explore. Women who, prior to the 1949 revolution, would have been relegated to the role of wife or concubine, with no rights whatsoever, and subjected to other feudal practices, such as the horror of foot- binding, were growing up identifying themselves as "non-gendered youth with strengths."
Women were being empowered: taking up theory, participating in the running of society, and engaging in ongoing revolutionary struggle and transformation.
And the nearly unbelievable achievements towards the liberation of women was just a part of the broader changes going on economically, socially, and politically, as well as in people’s values.
And there is a whole generation of people today who just have no idea about all this. And, as Avakian is pointing to, it’s not just the accomplishments of previous socialist experiments that we need to explore, but also the real shortcomings and problems, looking back from the perspective of a deepened understanding of communist revolution.
So this is a message to professors and intellectuals, meant to span a generation. We cannot allow the same people who have brought us endless war and police-state measures, who have created and perpetuated the misconceptions about what actually went on in these revolutionary societies, to control our interpretation of history. And we cannot allow the guardians of the status quo to define and control our future.
To those of you who drew inspiration "back in the day" from the radical society-wide transformations taking place on the other side of the globe, to those who felt part of liberation much bigger than themselves, to those who have since fallen under the influence of the message that "there is no alternative" to capitalism but who once knew better—I offer this challenge. Take a fresh look with a critical and open mind at humanity’s first steps towards emancipation. Seek to sort out the lies and horror stories from the complex realities of bringing a new society into being. Help a new generation understand history and human possibility.
The project to "Set the Record Straight" is inspired by the writings of Bob Avakian.
The purpose is to take on the distortions, misrepresentations, and supporting scholarship that hold such sway in academia about the first wave of socialist revolutions, in the Soviet Union in 1917-1956 and China in 1949-1976.
Against the facile verdicts that socialism has been a nightmare, or at best a terribly failed experiment, we are bringing forth the real and historic accomplishments of these revolutions, especially the lessons of the Cultural Revolution, without papering over mistakes and shortcomings.
The idea is to stir debate and discussion as to why these stand as vital, if initial, experiences at building liberating societies. At the same time, we are bringing forth what Avakian has been pointing to, in terms of where we have to do better and what it means to take the communist project to a whole other level of understanding and practice if it is to be viable and desirable in the 21st century. In short, communism is alive.but also developing.
We are undertaking a wide range of activities: fact sheets, articles, mass leafleting, forums, etc.; and we are networking with progressive scholars and want to learn from the diverse insights of others.
We are seeking to influence both students and professors and scholars.
We want to contribute to creating an intellectual current that challenges the slanders and superficial summations, that insists on truthful examination of what these revolutions were actually striving to accomplish, the difficulties they faced, and what they were able to achieve, and that sees the relevance of all this to the deeply felt desire of so many for a radically different world.
You can contact "Set the Record Straight" at: SetTheRecordStraight@hotmail.com
See the articles online at revcom.us
"Social and Economic Achievements Under Mao," August 8, 2004.
"The Truth About the Cultural Revolution," August 29, 2004.