Anarchists and ultra-‘leftists’ must be criticized, on this occasion, for their idolatry of the masses, for their perception of the infallibility of the masses, and for their dismissal of the proletarian party based on this approach to the masses and, instead, the promotion of individual terrorism and insurrection.

Mao Zedong famously said, “Have faith in the masses,” but what does this mean? This faith in the masses is not the blind faith of religion, but the faith in the established fact of the masses as the subject, the makers of history, of great change and thus new, revolutionary ideas. This is the masses’ strength; and this is where revolutionary socialists place their faith, their trust. But we cannot be blind in this faith, like anarchists and ultra-leftists, for the masses possess not only their strength, but can, and do, also possess their shortcomings, i.e., that opposite to their strength.

What, then, is opposite to the masses’ strength in creating new ideas and revolutionizing the world? It is routinely and unquestionably reciting old ideas and capitulating to the status quo of the world. This manifests in varying ways—apathy, despair, routinism, voting in our corrupt state, frustration, etc.—but all share the lack of power in the people.

From where, then, is the power, the strength of the masses sucked away, leaving them dormant? Today, in capitalist society, it is from those institutions, systems, and groups which shift power and control to the capitalist-class and their lackey bureaucrats. In short, the capitalist-class and the capitalist system. The dividing of the masses into factions (see Donald Trump and the White working-class against the Black and Chicano working-class in the US), the routine manufacture of students into workers by the educational system, the mass executions of Blacks by police, etc.

From birth to death, the varying individuals which constitute the masses face varying circumstances and, from there, draw varying ideas which appear, on the larger scale, as massive division among the masses. It is only through the mass-line between the masses and the proletarian party, equipped with the revolutionary science of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, that these divisions can be overcome, and the masses can achieve victory over the oppressing-classes.

The anarchists and ultra-leftists naively ignore the masses’ shortcomings and quickly fall into the individualist and ahistorical concept of the individual terrorism commencing revolutionary insurrection. Ironically, it is the anarchists and ultra-leftists’ idolatry of the masses which downplays the masses’ historical role and strength, for it is through organization and collective unity in revolution that the strength of the masses themselves are brought about. From the anarchists and ultra-leftists’ blind faith in the masses comes unorganized chaos which offends the masses on many levels, undermining their strength.

So let it be said in summary: “Blind faith in the masses is distrust in the masses.”

Recommended further reading: “The Mass Line and the American Revolutionary Movement,” Ch. 8 by Scott Harrison.