Stalinist Golden Center

The Stalinist Golden Center, otherwise known as the "Golden Center", "Golden Stalinist Center", "Golden Path" or "dialectical centrism", is the pragmatic political strategy employed by Joseph Stalin. Fundamentally, it is the rejection of both left- and right-deviationism.

Deviationism can be understood as revisionism, dogmatism, factionalism, economism, and other forms of inconsistent, distracting, malicious or self-serving thought within political movements. Stalin paved the path for an explicit, rational, dialectical appraisal of political tendencies/lines of thought, wherein the political object is taken by the subject in both its objective historical development and its interrelation (or lack thereof) with the proper leadership of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Stalin upheld Marxism-Leninism as the tangentially congruent (identical but fleshed-out) successor to Marxism and dialectical thought as a historical phenomenon. In rejecting both "ultra-left" and right deviations from (tendencies arisen from) Marx and Engels' works, as well as both ultra-left and right deviations from Lenin's line of thought, he successfully synthesized Marxism-Leninism and lead the Soviet Union through some of its most difficult years. Trotskyism, on the ultra-left hand, and Bukharinism and Menshevism on the right were both eschewed by Stalin, who eventually purged them and their followers from the CPSU in the 1930s. The ultra-lefts and the rights, in exile, settled in New York and began flooding authentic left-wing political organizations with their artificial subversive discourse as wreckers. Where they could not join organizations they founded their own, finding any old nook or cranny in which to stick their unpopular ideology/platform. This, along with the influence of the Frankfurt School, monopolist NGOs, and others in American left-wing politics, converged as the foundation of the New Left-- a big-tent of highly-developed (and therefore highly complex, or "far-flung") deviant tendencies which lead the American masses away from Marxism-Leninism and class struggle. The obfuscation of the rationality and pragmatism of the Golden Path was precisely the goal of such ideologically and financially motivated activities. Thus Stalin managed to protect the U.S.S.R. from such wrecking and infiltration in his expulsion of political extremists and his rejection of bourgeois socialism, in keeping with Lenin's pragmatic political approach.

When Khrushchev took power after the death of Stalin, Mao upheld Stalin's line and the Sino-Soviet Split occurred in light of the condemnation of Stalin and the rejection of Stalin's own rejection of deviationism. Thus, the People's Republic of China (PRC) became the determinative inheritor of Stalin's legacy in this sense, which Xi Jinping still upholds today. Of course, there has been development since the times of Stalin and Mao, but the grounding of oneself (or a Party) in a pragmatic politics imbued with dialectical materialist thought remains the bedrock of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao's "Golden Center" path of anti-deviationism and rational dialectical pragmatism. In fact, Chinese slogans such as "do not encourage, do not discourage" embody the essence of the Golden Center, and China's many parties working towards the same aims and for the same masses reflect the strengths of the path of governance Stalin greatly helped to forge.

Stalin also rejected centrism and made distinct the opportunist centrism of Trotsky and the Second International from his own position:

"But if we uphold the slogan of a fight on two fronts, does this mean that we are proclaiming the necessity of Centrism in our Party? What does a fight on two fronts mean? Is this not Centrism? You know that that is exactly how the Trotskyists depict matters: there are the "Lefts," that is, "we," the Trotskyists, the "real Leninists"; there are the "Rights," that is, all the rest; and, lastly, there are the "Centrists," who vacillate between the "Lefts" and the Rights. Can that be considered a correct view of our Party? Obviously not. Only people who have become confused in all their concepts and who have long ago broken with Marxism can say that. It can be said only by people who fail to see and to understand the difference in principle between the Social-Democratic party of the pre-war period, which was the party of a bloc of proletarian and petty-bourgeois interests, and the Communist Party, which is the monolithic party of the revolutionary proletariat.

"Centrism must not be regarded as a spatial concept: the Rights, say, sitting on one side, the "Lefts" on the other, and the Centrists in between. Centrism is a political concept. Its ideology is one of adaptation, of subordination of the interests of the proletariat to the interests of the petty bourgeoisie within one common party. This ideology is alien and abhorrent to Leninism.

"Centrism was a phenomenon that was natural in the Second International of the period before the war. There were Rights (the majority), Lefts (without quotation marks), and Centrists, whose whole policy consisted in embellishing the opportunism of the Rights with Left phrases and subordinating the Lefts to the Rights." - J.V. Stalin, Industrialisation of the country and the Right Deviation in the C.P.S.U.(B.), November 19th, 1928

In America we understand deviationism well, but not in so many words. George Washington warned against factionalism and one-sided (dogmatic) partisanism in his farewell address. Washington, whose family left England precisely because of the civil wars of the 17th century, never represented a party himself and watched the development and rise of the Democratic-Republican Party, which was in constant conflict with the Federalists. John Adams warned that "a division of the republic into two great parties … is to be dreaded as the great political evil." Whereas Alexander Hamilton called political factions "the most fatal disease", James Madison is quoted as saying one of the great strengths of a “well-constructed Union” is “its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.” We also teach the concept to children in the classic story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears".

One example of the Golden Center is Marx's position on religion, and specifically Christianity. When he wrote that religion was the "opium of the masses", he was embroiled in the German radical critique of religion in the early to mid-19th century. Marx, however, was not criticizing Christianity from the same place as atheist idealists such as Max Stirner or the Young Hegelians. He was not anti-religion. Marx was born Jewish, but practiced Lutheranism from a young age. His fundamental argument was that religion can be good or bad depending on how it's practiced. The churches of his time were extremely corrupt, leading Marx to criticize Christianity as a tool of the ruling class used to break popular spirit and keep utopianism in the afterlife. As Engels wrote, he and Marx understood that the early Christians were Communists who were surpressed by Rome, and thus their religious practice was revolutionary (before Christianity became the official religion of Rome). Marx took the Golden Center path by not immediately rejecting or supporting religion as a concept, but understanding the immanent positive and negative aspects of religion in practical life, advocating private practice in spite of the corrupt organized religious institutions. This is why, when the openly anti-religious Leon Trotsky sent forces to desecrate churches, Lenin rejected such acts. Lenin liquidated the massively corrupt Eastern Orthodox church, and Stalin later reinstated it, attending mass, confessing sins, and even having a Catholic funeral. This is why Mao, who was praised by the Vatican for representing Christian values, brought Catholics to visit China in the 1970s. Furthermore, this why Fidel Castro, who was extremely spiritual, spoke often with Cuban nuns to hear their concerns. Finally, the Golden Center path of religion, the contextualization of religion in history without immediate acception or rejection, is why Infrared sees religion as revolutionary in 21st-century America, where the knowledge of corruption in organized religion is commonplace and religion is subject to the general corrosion of Constitutional rights. The key is to take the middle road between outright rejection (anti-religious extremism) and outright acception (religious extremism), in favor of a reasonable position based in the reasonable objectivity of popular sovereignty (freedom and protection of private practice, eradication of corruption in organized religion, and reasonable public criticism of religion).

In a word, the Golden Center is the mutual rejection of both extremes in favor of an objective, dialectical approach to the false subjective elements of politics or problem-solving. It addresses the issues raised by each pair of extremes without giving in to their deviant strategies, by dialectically abolishing the conflict between them.

Infrared upholds the Marxist-Leninist line following through from Marx and Engels, through Lenin and Stalin, through Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and most recently Xi Jinping. However, in addition to defending the line of "Stalinism", Infrared has an official line of its own which has been the object of various claims, the rejection of which and ultimate clarification of our positions, aims, and overall thought has not only left our haters/competitors/deviationists on intravenous copium drips for the rest of their lives, but they have also caused splits within Infrared and between Infrared and former allies.

For a deeper understanding of Infrared's Golden Center, see our Lore page.