I haven’t posted about this yet, but I quit Communist Party USA in mid-November 2023. Since quitting, I’ve been focused on getting several major health issues treated, building the Flint chapter of the Michigan Mutual Aid Coalition (MIMAC), and in addition to our mutual aid work, trying to build the basis of an educational program...Read More “Why I Left The CPUSA” »
The CPUSA has a bunch of problems, no argument there. But that doesn’t mean it gets everything wrong, and the results of their efforts can still be useful to leftists who think the party is generally misguided.
Here, a local CPUSA chapter tested how effective mutual aid is as a movement-building tactic. They concluded it wasn’t that effective. We can get into how they conducted the test, how they measured the results, etc. (the linked essay is light on details), but testing different tactics then adjusting your efforts based on the results is the right approach. We shouldn’t dismiss those results because we theorize the test should have gone differently.
Again, this is the right line in theory, but the practice of how this is actually being done matters a lot. I have not seen this “test” and its recorded results and if it was linked to here, I missed it, so I cannot at this time comment on the specifics of whether it makes any sense. What I can say is that in science, a single experiment does not constitute sufficient evidence to generalize about an entire practice under varying conditions.
Furthermore, it is important in this kind of political practice to ask why something was or wasn’t effective, not just if it was. My nonexistent capability to hit a home run in baseball does not constitute evidence as to how capable all human beings are at doing so. Babe Ruth’s capability to hit a home run while blindfolded in a hurricane does not constitute generalized evidence as to how many home runs Babe Ruth can hit under average baseball conditions. The context and conditions matter. That’s why we say we can’t just take the model of one AES state and plop it onto another country with different conditions and expect it to work exactly the same way. Maybe I’m preaching to the choir on that point, I don’t know, but I emphasize it because generalizing about a whole practice based on one test is not only not scientific in the more general sense of science, it’s not in fitting with communist dialectical theory and practice. Yet from what I’ve read, as alleged, CPUSA extrapolated from one test that mutual aid is not effective and is pushing that as a line for the entire party. For all I know, the people conducting the “test” just suck at relationship building and teaching, and so they gained nothing other than performing charity from their “test”. Without a clue as to why it wasn’t effective in whatever metrics they used to measure its effectiveness, what is there to learn from it?
To adjust, you need to know why something didn’t work, not just the plain fact that it didn’t. If I attempt to walk forward and the handle of a bag I’m holding gets snagged on something, I would rightly be thought a fool to conclude that one should never carry a bag if they want to be able to walk. On the other hand, if I recognize that holding in such a way the handle can trail behind me and get caught on things out of view is causing problems, they I can adjust the way in which I hold it.
The essay talks about a local chapter’s stance on mutual aid. I didn’t get the impression it reflects a broader party line. Frankly, the author is too light on details for us to really know what happened. Look at how oddly vague this is:
What does “poo-pooed” mean? Does the chapter want to reduce time spent on mutual aid but still do some, or do they want to do none at all? What do they mean by “apparently” and “from all appearances”? Do they know about the chapter’s experiment(s) with mutual aid or not?
If nothing else, there’s a lesson here about being specific when levying criticisms.
I broadly agree with all your points about how ideas should be tested – you need at least a few tests to draw conclusions, and how you execute those tests can change a lot. Unfortunately, we’re stuck talking about this in the abstract because the details here just aren’t clear.