VARIANCE: “the fact, quality, or state of being DIFFERENT or having VARIATION”

The Communist Movement is in shambles internationally. Those that raise the red banner forwards are often those that most categorically deny the class struggle and bastardize the texts they claim to uphold. The past century has seen a stagnation in the Communist Movement. While there has been some innovations, it has been decades since there has been any meaningful evolution in the Marxist canon. Millions of so-called Communists cling on to century old dogma, hopelessly latching onto ancient texts hoping that they give out any form of enlightenment. The truth is that these texts do give out enlightenment, but only for those that read and understand them. Hopeful Communists will read through the library of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, they might even substitute it with Stalin and Mao, but they will never read it while understanding the historical context in which these texts were written. It is certainly important to read, digest, and understand the legacy works of our movement, as they provide the direct historical basis for our beliefs, but we cannot uncritically accept them as gospel. The prevailing attitude is to treat Marx as God and Lenin as Jesus, that their words are law and infallible. While their ideas are still relevant to our struggle, to directly emulate, or even imitate, the past is to deny the historical and dialectical materialist methods. What we can learn from the past is lessons and methods, not a guide for what to do now.

Perhaps the greatest sin of the Communist Movement is the centralization of ideology. The parties and its associations have devolved little into red churches, where the dogma of old remains unchallenged and no vestige of critical analysis remains. Communism is the real movement that ruthlessly critiques all that exists, even itself. However, anything less than outright worship is relentlessly attacked. This is where we find ourselves. The works of our forebears bastardized and ridiculed by denying them their place in the historical method. Every idea that once was must be subjected to the harshest and undying criticism, that is our mission.

Furthermore, these echo chambers not only reinforce the worst of our movement, but also actively alienate the wider proletariat. An honest look at any historically revolutionary moment shows the reality that classes as a whole are not politically unified. The Paris Commune, the October Revolution, and the German Revolution all had internal disagreements and certainly had their own debates internationally. However, all of these forces were anti-formist in nature, that being the “movements which demand and put into practice the attack on the old forms, and which even before knowing how to theorise about the character of the new regime, tend to break from the old, provoking the irresistible birth of new forms”. Instead of uniting around outdated and historically misplaced strands, such as Marxism-Leninism or Maoism, we should instead unite around an anti-formist platform. Previously, the historically anti-formist structures of the proletariat have been politically, and thus socially, isolated from each other and the working class at large. 

Working class organizations must center the principle of freedom of speech upon its banners and program. The working class has a multitude of anti-formist, revolutionary beliefs and practices. The halls of any supposed class-party must be lively with debate, not solemn with reverence for the words of those that misunderstand the epoch we live in. Immortality lies not with the library of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao etc., but with the revolutionary nature of the international proletariat. 

That is where this journal, Avant!, inherits its raison d’etre. Avant! hopes to exist as an organ for working class debate and the development of Marxist ideology. We hope that we are able to live up to that mission.