Craig C.
Berkeley, CA

Hi Max,

I just finished your book. It brought back so many memories! Also, it made me realize how much was going on during that period that I didn't even know about, even though I was deeply involved and paying pretty close attention. I was aware of the basic political views of about 90% of the organizations you covered in the New Communist Movement, but the only groups I paid considerable attention to were in the Maoist faction of that movement--CP(ML), LRS, BACU, PUL, BWC, RWH/RCP, etc. I placed myself on the anti-dogmatist wing of that faction. I was always very skeptical of the entire party-building process whereby one or two small groups would merge, suddenly declare themselves a party, and denounce everyone else who refused to recognize their "vanguard" role.

You hit the nail on the head when you said that there was considerable psychological trauma caused by the in-fighting and eventual demise of the NCM. It felt like the break-up of a very deep, important relationship. It was a very poignant realization that this process I'd committed my life to was at an end, and perhaps was a dead-end long before I realized it. On the positive side, my experiences in this movement definitely honed my thinking, speaking, writing, and organizational/group skills; but it left a lot of scars as well.

Beneath the failure of the NCM lie some basic unanswered questions and issues. One of my disappointments about REVOLUTION IN THE AIR was that I didn't think it went deeply enough into these important questions of theory. It balked at raising basic theoretical questions that this experience raised about building a viable, durable left in the US and a revolutionary movement in the world. I definitely didn't expect you to answer these questions in your book--just raise them more clearly as serious issues requiring study.

For example:

• What was the material basis for the demise of the NCM? How was this failure linked to the general reactionary trend in global and US politics that began in the late 1970s and continued for several decades? Were the material forces that undermined progressive & revolutionary movements during this period the same forces that energized the reactionary revival of neo-liberalism and religious fundamentalism in the US and around the world; caused the USSR to collapse; moved China to reintegrate itself into the capitalist world; and induced revolutionary nationalism in the Third World to go catatonic (or corrupt)?
• How do you combat the tendency toward increased sectarianism & factionalism in a period of stagnation and reaction, when the movement has lost its growth and momentum? How do activists recognize when the tide is turning and avoid blaming themselves when there are "no big waves" to ride?
• What material forces have made capitalism so resilient and hard to replace? Why have there been no socialist revolutions in the developed core of this system? What does this mean for Marxist theory? The Leninist theory of imperialism?
• Why has socialism been so hard to achieve, even in countries with successful revolutions led by people who endeavored to create it? What historical/material conditions worked against this effort from within and "without"? Why did all of these efforts become reintegrated into the world capitalist system?

REVOLUTION IN THE AIR calls for a "top-to-bottom overhaul, not just in the US but worldwide" of theory & practice. It calls for a "willingness to explore new theoretical terrain" (Marxist and non-Marxist). But when summing up the actual lessons of the NCM party-building period it seems to fall back on Third World Marxism as its ideological/theoretical mainstay and center of gravity.

You say that, "the most damage was done by Maoism." You do a great job of chronicling Maoism's many ideological, theoretical, and organizational faults and weaknesses, especially its voluntarist, anarchist idealism--the idiocy of the "correct line is everything" mantra. You even indicate that, for China, the cultural revolution failed because there was no material basis for creating real socialism in a country with the limited level of development found in post feudal China.

All of this is certainly true. But I believe the main problem runs MUCH DEEPER than Maoism. I think it is high time Marxists recognize the strong idealist, anti-materialist tendency in Marxism. Maoism is but one aspect of this idealist tendency. Every faction of the Marxist left exhibits this aversion to real materialist analysis, the hard questions it poses, and the limitations it places on the prospects of "making revolution."

Aren't Maoism's fatal flaws part-and-parcel of a deeper tendency toward idealism within Marxism in general? Why haven't any Marxists been willing to look deeply into why capitalism has been so resilient? Or why socialism has failed to materialize anywhere? Didn't Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, & Ché all under-estimate the strengths of capitalism and over-estimate the transformative potential of the working class and revolutionary nationalist movements all over the world? Singling out Maoism will not help us address the profound idealism at work here.

I believe these historical misjudgments are rooted in some fundamentally idealist assumptions. Let me mention one of them: Marxists assume that class conflict and the relations of production are not subordinate to a more fundamental contradiction between the entire industrial mode of production and its environmental energy base. But is this true? Or does historical experience seem to indicate that class insurrections & nationalist revolutions cannot produce qualitatively new modes of production as long as the dominant industrial capitalist mode of production is still expanding and has yet to deplete its ecological/energy base?

Marx concluded that: "No social order ever disappears before ALL the productive forces, for which there is room in it, have been developed; and new higher relations of production NEVER appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society." I think this conclusion is extremely penetrating and must be carefully pondered given the history of the last 200 years. Throughout the entire growth epoch of industrial society, class struggle (between capitalists and all subordinate classes and subject nations), has had the overall impact of expanding the industrial forces of production. This has been true even when revolutions succeeded in toppling the capitalist state. Of course, once in power, revolutionaries embarked on an industrialization/modernization process that ended up expanding & reproducing hierarchical industrial relations of production. Marxists have yet to confront the possibility that perhaps industrial forces of production are not conducive to democratic, working class control. And that their revolutionary socialist aspirations were not achievable because the industrial mode of production was still expanding and industrial forces of production cannot accommodate democratic control by the direct producers.

Because these revolutionary nationalist experiments (that often called themselves Marxist/Leninist) refused to export capital, or make means of production or labor a commodity, their isolated industrializing systems did not experience the rapid growth and flexibility of unfettered world capitalism. So eventually they were over-powered, out-maneuvered, and re-absorbed by this world system. There are several related idealist assumptions connected to this one, but you get my drift & this comment is getting way too long.

Anyway, I really appreciated your book. I liked the attention to detail and the fairness with which you presented your analysis. I was nice to see such a strong effort to directly confront your own potential biases in this process and to rise above them to formulate an honest non-judgmental analysis. REVOLUTION IN THE AIR has become a very valuable part of my library! Thank you for writing it.

-Craig C.