Single-spark collective

www.single-spark.net

September 22 2008

This is yet another outfit taking up the Wang Ming method and de facto leading back to the "RCP." As such it follows the well-worn path of others such as the Peruvian "New Flag" operation that flamed up a few years and then capitulated to the "RCP."

We know the people in Single Spark have been around politics a long time, because we spoke with them years back. Perhaps we failed to lead them. Nonetheless, they continue to present a website with the image of a beginner.

Mainly, single-spark.net is serving as a cheerleading section for various organizations calling themselves Maoist in Asia. This is also exactly what Wang Ming did to destroy the revolution in China. He was very up-to-date on the Comintern, the external revolution in the Soviet Union, but he did not apply himself on his own conditions in China.

All that Single Spark has to say is that revolution is possible in the united $tates. That's in their "About" document. The site has been up a long time and the organization has been around even longer, but as of September 22 2008 there is still only one thing that Single Spark has to say about its own conditions, and that is one document on the persynality cult and opposing it. And even that document is inferior to what MIM wrote on the topic 25+ years ago. (Part of the document is copied from MIM.) That's it for their whole "theory and analysis section" plus a promise to deliver in the future documents on "many revolutionary centers," "democratic centralism" and "scientific approach to MLM."

That's it--one document on persynality cults. There's no analysis of super-profits, how much they are, why Single Spark feels justified in taking the "RCP" line on class structure while having a separate organization. Apparently talking about one's conditions just means talking about one Amerikan--Bob Avakian. There is literally not a single document of class analysis of the imperialist countries on the website.

So 99% of the Single Spark is just reprinting and re-organizing the work of various organizations in Asia. That's what makes Single Spark Collective an extremist group, so extreme that it would be a caricature of Wang Ming line. Even Wang Ming had more real stuff than that.

The Single Spark received praise for circulating Worker #11 (a publication from Nepal) from the Kasama Project. That's another of a typical type of sectarian Wang Ming-style reward that indicates the immaturity of the international communist movement. Single Spark has one lousy document up, just a sectarian jibe at Avakian, as if the persynality cult were a cardinal question. Yet the international communist movement so lacks in any sense in opposing Wang Ming's method that it rushes to support Single Spark Collective instead of taking it to task for a lack of concrete analysis of U.$. conditions.

The justification Single Spark presents is that "RCP" is the larger organization. Yet what good is size if all the "RCP" can do is repeat theoretical definitions out of context and cannot name the total super-profits for instance? Or the exploitation rate? Though MIM is smaller, it has done this work on its own conditions. "RCP" never did. It says there's a labor aristocracy and tells people that in theory there is a difference between being paid above one's labor-power value and one's labor. That is all theory with no specific application naming the percentages in society where people are and how the "RCP" arrived at that. What percentage of people gets paid above the value of its labor?

The "RCP" runs more liberal and eclectic organizations than MIM and has more members, but it does not have more readers of communist material. The eclectic "Monthly Review" has no more readers than MIM. So Single Spark is another example of obsessive people-sizeism and a lack of principle. When will the international communist movement cut off contact with this style of Wang Ming opportunist? Why does the ICM always reward the "new" Wang Ming organization willing to put up a shingle? International sectarianism is the root cause backing Wang Mingism.

In addition to the "RCP," Single Spark links to the ILPS-US, an extension of the Filipinos. The Single Spark does not even go so far as to discuss differences between these two organizations on U.$. conditions.

The real Maoists of the world already know that they should not be rewarding shallow Wang Ming line. It also makes it easy to spy on communists if all someone has to do is put together a website praising other people's works, outside one's own country.

We would suggest that the People's Wars not even work with an organization until AFTER it has shown that it applies itself on conditions in its own society. I would not even invite Single Spark to an international conference till after it did some work. Not only is it bad security, but the Wang Ming dogmatists are going to repel the Amerikans who can truly apply Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. In this case, we cannot even call it "dogmatism," because there is so little substance to the Single Spark website we would have to call it Wang Ming airiness.