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Colombia: The Real FARC-EP Inside & Out

Posted by Mike E on July 29, 2010

We have not had enough discussion about the political forces and the ongoing war in Colombia. Nicholas submitted the following piece to Kasama — and we post it to stimulate that discussion. Presenting it here is not an endorsement of its views, but an acknowlegement of its substance and the importance of this whole experience.

By Nicholas DeFilippis

In the jungles of Colombia, hidden from the eyes of the first world, the class struggle rages on a scale unknown to many 21st Century political activists. It is a struggle of the disenfranchised and downtrodden against the ruling elites of their native land and the United States. I’m talking, of course, about the old, hardened, and ongoing guerrilla struggle of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army, or FARC-EP (sometimes they’re simply called FARC).

Formed on May 27, 1964, the FARC-EP succeeded the rural self-defense groups originally formed by the Colombian Communist Party (PCC) to protect peasant communities from attacks by liberal and conservative government forces. Since then, the USA has backed military operations against the communist forces and continues to do so today (Brittain, 8). The mainstream media attacks on the FARC-EP are well known. We have all heard the stories about how they are a “narco-terrorist” organization void of any political and ideological content. In recent years we have even heard that the guerrillas are on the verge of defeat. We must wonder, as any informed citizen should, if these claims are true. Starting with the accusations of being big, bad drug dealers, moving on to accusations of terrorism, popular support, supposed military weakening, and finally politics and culture I will examine whether or not what we have been told about the FARC-EP is true.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> analysis of news, Colombia | 3 Comments »

Wikileaks Comfort Warmongers?

Posted by Mike E on July 29, 2010

Thanks to Gary for suggesting this. (This is the version last revised on July 27. Posted from Empire Burlesque.

“The treachery of Iran is a constant theme in the leakage — both in the raw, unsifted, uncorroborated ‘humint’ and in the diplomatic cables of puzzled occupiers who cannot fathom why there should be any opposition to their enlightened rule. It must the fault of those perfidious Persians!

“One can only imagine the lipsmacking and handclapping now rampant among the Bomb Iran crowd as they pore over these unsubstantiated rumors and Potomac ass-coverings which are being doled out — by the “liberal” media, no less! — as the new, grim truth about Afghanistan.”

* * * * * * *

Leaky Vessels:
Wikileaks “Revelations” Will Comfort Warmongers, Confirm Conventional Wisdom

by Chris Floyd

“I am shocked — shocked! — to find gambling is going on in here” – Captain Renault at the gaming tables in Casablanca.

The much ballyhooed dump of intelligence and diplomatic files concerning the Afghan War has been trumpeted as some kind of shocking expose, “painting a different picture” than the official version of events — revelations that are sure to rock the Anglo-American political establishments to their foundations.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq | 2 Comments »

40 Helpful Tips For Anti-Communists

Posted by Mike E on July 28, 2010

Thanks to Dustin for this.

by J. Slavyanski

1. Constantly insist that Marxism is discredited, outdated, and totally dead and buried. Then proceed to build a lucrative career on beating that supposedly ‘dead’ horse for the rest of your working life.

2. Remember, any unnatural death that occurs under a ‘Communist’ regime is not only attributable to the leaders of the state, but also Marxism as an ideology. Ignore deaths that occur for the same reason in non-Communist states.

3. Communism or Marxism is whatever you want it to be. Feel free to label countries, movements, and regimes as ‘Communist’ regardless of things like actual goals, stated ideology, diplomatic relations, economic policy, or property relations.

4. If there was a conflict involving Communists, the conflict and all ensuing deaths can be laid at the feet of Communism. Be careful when applying this to WWII. Fascist movements who fought against the Soviets or Communist partisans are fine, but try not to openly praise Nazi Germany. Save that for private conversations if you must do so.

5. You decide what Marxism “really means”, and who the rightful representatives of Communism were. Feign interest that Trotsky was somehow robbed of power by Stalin, despite the fact that you hate him as well.

6. Constantly talk about George Orwell. Quote from Animal Farm or 1984. Do not worry about the fact that Orwell never set foot in the Soviet Union and both of those books are novels.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> analysis of news, communism | 24 Comments »

The Founding of American Indian Movement: Not Gone, Not Silent

Posted by Mike E on July 28, 2010

Remembering the founding of the militant and inspiring American Indian Movement July 28, 1968, and expressing our anger that brother Leonard Peltier is still in prison.

If you don’t know about this, go learn. If you do know about this, go share it.

Posted in AIM (Indian), Indian, Leonard Peltier, Native people | Leave a Comment »

Wikileaks Dares Expose Vast U.S. War Crimes

Posted by Mike E on July 27, 2010

If you find a link to share about these exposures, insert in this comment thread.



Posted in >> analysis of news | 7 Comments »

Basanta: The Volcano of Revolution in South Asia Today

Posted by Mike E on July 27, 2010

The Maoist revolution has made a major forward leap — after the initiation of people’s war in Nepal in 1996 and the merger of two major revolutionary streams to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist), in 2004.

The Nepalese people’s revolution has now reached to the threshold of seizing central political power.

In the present era, the proletarian revolution does not remain a phenomenon merely of a single country.

South Asia is becoming a front of collision between two fronts: one formed of the proletariat and their class allies national and international and other alliance formed of the imperialists and their lackeys from the individual countries. A new world in South Asia is now gestating in the womb of this contradiction.

The victory of revolution in South Asia will have a far-reaching implication and become a harbinger to spread the flames of revolution all across the world.

On the other, its defeat will result in a complete demoralisation of the people not only of this region but those all across the globe. In this situation, a strong solidarity to the revolution in South Asia is the need of the day.

The following talk was given on July 2, in Istanbul, during the European Social Forum’s seminar on South Asia’s revolutions.

By Basanta (Indra Mohan Sigdel)
Politburo of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

Dear comrades and delegates, revolutionary greetings!

I would like to take this opportunity to extend our revolutionary salutation on behalf of our party, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), to the organiser, the European Social Forum, who invited our party to attend this august programme in Istanbul, Turkey.

In addition, I would like to extend our revolutionary greetings to the entire delegates participating in this seminar. I feel honoured to be here with all the delegates from around the world.

But, more than that I would like to utilise this opportunity to share experiences that the working class all across the world has gathered through their valiant struggles against imperialism and its anti-people and neo-colonial policies like privatisation, liberalisation and globalisation, and as well the ruling classes subservient to it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> analysis of news, >> communist politics, Bangladesh, Basanta, Bhutan, India, Maoism, Nepal, Sri Lanka, UCP Nepal (Maoist), peoples war, revolution | 5 Comments »

Oil leaks = Wiki Leaks

Posted by Mike E on July 27, 2010

by Roxanne Amico

Remember Sesame Street? Remember the song, “One of these things is not like the other” ? On that theme, I’d call this post, “One of these things is just like the other!”

* * * * * * * * * *

Since the Wikileaks story about the US gov’t's failed criminal war on Afghanistan broke this past weekend, I’ve been following the trail of the “truth hemorrhage “… Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks said, in this der Speigel interview, “…There is a legitimate role for secrecy, and there is a legitimate role for openness. Unfortunately, those who commit abuses against humanity or against the law find abusing legitimate secrecy to conceal their abuse all too easy. People of good conscience have always revealed abuses by ignoring abusive strictures.

It is not WikiLeaks that decides to reveal something…” Sounds familiar to the eye trained on the unrelenting war on the planet, as exemplified by BP’s crimes and their work (and failure) to destroy the evidence, such as the results of the horrific use of dispersants, and the fact that The Q-4000 rig is burning off 6,000 barrels of oil a day, burning which creates sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in the air and when they merge with moisture, creating acid rain.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> analysis of news, Roxanne Amico, ecology, oil | 1 Comment »

Nas: My Country

Posted by tellnolies on July 27, 2010

Posted in >> Art and Culture, music, video | 1 Comment »

July 26 – 57th Anniversary of the beginning of the Cuban Revolution

Posted by tellnolies on July 26, 2010

Today is the 57th annoversary of the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks that marked the beginning of the Cuban Revolution and from which the July 26 Movement took its name.

Posted in Cuba, Fidel Castro | 2 Comments »

Olympia Food Co-op Votes Israel Boycott

Posted by tellnolies on July 24, 2010

Olympia Food Co-op removes Israeli goods from shelves; first US store to institute boycott

from Olympia BDS

The Olympia Food Co-op Board of Directors has decided to boycott Israeli goods at their two locations in Olympia, Washington. At a July 15th meeting packed with Co-op members, the Board reached this consensus. The Co-op becomes the first US grocery store to publicly join the international grassroots movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) on Israel for its human rights abuses.

Co-op board member Rob Richards explained, “My hope is that by being the first in the US to adopt the boycott we act as a catalyst for other co-ops to join in. Each additional organizational entity that joins may have a very small effect on the big picture, but drop by drop fills the tub.”

Noah Sochet, a Co-op member and OlympiaBDS organizer adds, “As a US citizen and as a Jew, I’m proud to say that my Co-op no longer underwrites the suffering in Palestine.”

In accordance with its mission statement, the Olympia Food Co-op has a longstanding boycott policy, which includes a boycott of China (for its occupation of Tibet) and a previous boycott of Colorado (for legalizing discrimination against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals in 1992). The Co-op also has policies for rejecting items whose packaging feature exploitive or oppressive imagery.

One Israeli product is exempt from the boycott: “Peace Oil,” a brand of olive oil fairly traded from Palestinian farmers in the West Bank and the Galilee, will continue to be carried by the Co-op. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Israel, Palestine, Zionism | 5 Comments »

A Critical History of New Communist Movement

Posted by Mike E on July 24, 2010

“This task is not an easy one: to fight for science, Marxist science, in the face of a tradition which embodies the very opposite. Yet its necessity can never be doubted.

“As Marx himself, wrote:

“’There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.’”

This piece first appeared in Theoretical Review No. 13, November-December 1979. It has recently been made available by the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism Online (EROL). Thanks to Paul Saba for all his valuable work.

A Critical History of the New Communist Movement, 1969-1979

By Paul Costello

The history of the new communist movement presents an extremely complicated and confusing picture of countless small groups developing, interacting, growing and splitting. In origins, the NCM appears to have burst on the scene at the end of the 1960s, virtually out of nowhere.

In reality it was a product of the 1960s and the mass struggles of those years. To understand the new communist movement an understanding of the 1960s is therefore imperative. At the same time we must recognize that the decade of the 1960s was itself unique inasmuch as it was the beginning of the end of a particular period in American history which started with World War II.

The end of the second world war and the anti-labor offensive typified by the Taft-Hartley Act, the Smith Act persecution of the Communist Party and McCarthyism helped to inaugurate a new “long wave” of capitalist expansion in the United States. Although it carried America through the 1950s this economic “miracle” began to falter in the following decade. The effects of a transition from a long wave of expansion to one of economic contraction and stagnation were only beginning to be felt in the 1960s, while their full impact would only become apparent in the following years.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> analysis of news, >> communist politics, Maoism, New Com. Movement, Paul Costello, RCPUSA, communism | 7 Comments »

In Response to Mike Ely: The Elephant in the Room

Posted by Mike E on July 23, 2010

The following article appeared on the Marxist-Leninist site — in response to the piece  “Marxism is Not a Layer Cake.” The FRSO discussed below is the group associated with the newspaper “Fight Back.”

by Professor Toad

First, I would like to clarify one point to avoid confusion. When the article Marxism is Not a Layer Cake was first posted, it was stated that it was a comment on the official Freedom Road Socialist Organization reading list. It has since been clarified that the reading list under discussion is not an official Freedom Road Socialist Organization list, but merely a study guide produced by a person who is a member of FRSO. Similarly, I am not writing this article on behalf of Freedom Road Socialist Organization. The editor of the Marxist-Leninist blog has, of course, had an opportunity to discuss it with me, and I have listened to his input, because he is a respected comrade. I have had some input from certain other comrades as well, in the US and abroad. But this article is solely my own responsibility.

Josh Sykes has asked me to say one thing on his behalf: He would like to extend a sincere thank you to Kasama for its solidarity in connection with the banning of Josh Sykes and several others from Facebook and the closing of the Free Ricardo Palmera Group.

To me, Kasama’s solidarity demonstrates that despite the important differences of principle between us, there is considerable common ground. The internet is not, of course, the real world. But within the confines of the limited importance of the internet, this struggle is important. The victories which have been won to date are meaningful, though, of course, the struggle continues.

Now, to business.

Revisionism and the Elephant

As I read this article, an image came into my mind. The image was of Mike Ely and a few others from Kasama sitting around a very sturdy table discussing the matter, perhaps over coffee or beer. On the table was a very large elephant. At one point Mike Ely referred in passing to “the so-called elephant in this room.” Otherwise the elephant was entirely ignored.

The elephant is, of course, revisionism.

By revisionism, I mean the promulgation of theories which claim to be Marxism but in fact have been stripped of their revolutionary character. Revisionism comes about because of the ideological pressure of the capitalists. Revisionism is a concept with which I am quite sure Mike Ely is very familiar. However, readers of his blog may not have a strong understanding of it.

People wishing to understand revisionism could do no better than to start with Lenin’s article, Marxism and Revisionism. You can find it in the anti-revisionist section of the Marxist-Leninist Blog study guide.

Lenin explained the matter thus:

In the early days of Marxism, anti-Marxist socialists were very open about their opposition to Marx and applied arguments which rejected every aspect of Marx’s methodology. But as the acceptance of Marxism grew, a change took place: The enemies of Marxism increasingly expressed their opposition to Marxism in subtle and dishonest ways. Rather than rejecting Marxism, they claimed to be simply updating it, making a few minor corrections, or what have you.

One famous “updater” of Marxism was Edward Bernstein. Bernstein supposedly used the Marxist method to explain that capitalism would result eventually in the workers getting the rights they wanted without so much as the need for a trade union.

Another famous revisionist was Karl Kautsky. Kautsky was at one time one of the most highly regarded Marxist theorists. After the Russian Revolution he explained – supposedly from a Marxist perspective – why the Bolsheviks were wrong to seize power, wrong to expropriate the wealthy peasants, wrong to fight the civil war against the capitalists, and wrong to suppress capitalists.

Nikita Khrushchev was another famous revisionist. Khrushchev was the premier of the Soviet Union between 1958 and 1964. Under his leadership, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union taught that peaceful coexistence was the main task of the international communist movement. Obviously, peaceful coexistence and revolution are not compatible.

Harry Haywood, in his article the Degeneration of the CPUSA in the 1950s, talks about revisionists in the Communist Party of the United States. Those revisionists, among other things, edited out of Marxism the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat and the basically class nature of the state. They did so supposedly because they did not feel they could explain that concept to their neighbors.

What do all of these revisionists have in common? That they take out the particularly revolutionary aspects of Marxism, and turn Marxism into something tame and harmless which is less threateninig to the capitalists.

Revisionism is the Ideological Pushback of the Capitalists

Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, and those who followed them developed a theory by which the motion of the planets was shown to obey certain natural laws. In time it was even shown that the planets themselves had a history and developed according to articulable laws.

Charles Darwin and those who followed him showed that the different types of animal had developed over time as a result of certain identifiable, material causes.

If one were to boil Marxism down to its core principles, one of the four or five last ones remaining would be this: That human ideas and human institutions develop over time according to certain real world causes. That is the simplest statement of dialectical, historical materialism as it applies to the social sciences. In particular we know that the class struggle is an enormous factor in the development of human ideas and institutions.

Marxism is the world outlook of the revolutionary proletariat. Revisionism is Marxism modified to remove its revolutionary content under pressure from the capitalists. This is a historically well-documented phenomenon. But in any case its existence is hardly surprising: It is a natural development of the class struggle.

Lenin said,

“There is a well-known saying that if geometrical axioms affected human interests attempts would certainly be made to refute them.”

Revisionism is precisely that: An attempt to refute perfectly correct aspects of Marxism because they affect particular human interests, specifically the interests of the capitalists.

The phenomenon of revisionism has close parallels in other sciences. The most obvious ones are in biology. There is no doubt of the fact of the evolution of the various species of life. The mechanism by which it took place is now reasonably well-known, although there is still more work to do. But an enormous number of people — by some counts more than half the U.S. population — refuse to accept evolution. Attempts are constantly being made to have other notions, such as creation science and intelligent design, taught alongside evolution in U.S. schools.

The reason for the widespread disbelief in evolution has very little to do with the way in which evolution is taught. We all know that it is fundamentally an ideological problem. People do not accept evolution not because it has been explained to them in a scholastic or religious way but because it does not fit into their religious worldviews.

Mike Ely points out quite correctly that Marxism was not well-understood in the early Soviet Union. He goes on to suggest that the reason for this failure of understanding was the manner in which it was taught. It is actually rather obvious that the general degree to which Marxism is still rejected is a result of ideology. Marxism is not widely accepted because the entrenched interests of the capitalists fight its acceptance. Teaching styles have little or nothing to do with it.

Revisionism and Tankies

It would be very useful in continuing this discussion to know exactly what elements in the works of Marx and Lenin Mike Ely particularly thinks are dated. Unfortunately, he is not direct enough in his article to tell us. But from the history of his exchanges with FRSO comrades, it appears that one particular Marxist idea with which Mike Ely disagrees is the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The discussions about the dictatorship of the proletariat which Mike Ely has had with FRSO members often take the form of Mike Ely condemning what he calls “tankies.” A tankie, according to Mike Ely, favors using tanks to suppress counter-revolutions, as in the case of Tiananmen Square.

The question of whether or not to use force when necessary to suppress counterrevolutionaries is the question of whether or not there should be a dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat is precisely the Marxist doctrine which says that when the proletariat seizes power it must construct a working-class state which uses force to dismantle capitalist society, suppress counter-revolutionaries, and defend the gains of the revolution.

In Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx explained the dictatorship of the proletariat thus:

“Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.”

And what exactly is meant by state? Engels explains in the Anti-Duhring:

“Moving in class antagonisms, society up to now had need of the state, that is, an organization of the exploiting class at each period for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, that is, particularly for the forcible holding down of the exploited class in the conditions of oppression (slavery, villeinage or serfdom, wage-labour) given by the existing mode of production.”

Later in the same paragraph we have this description of the state after proletarian revolution (the emphasis is mine):

“As soon as there is no social class to be held in subjection any longer, as soon as class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the anarchy of production existing up to now are eliminated together with the collisions and excesses arising from them, there is nothing more to repress, nothing necessitating a special repressive force, a state. The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then dies away of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not “abolished”, it withers away.The dictatorship of the proletariat is the working class state which oversees the transformation of society from capitalism to communism. By state is meant a special repressive force. It withers away as repression becomes gradually unnecessary.”

Lenin wrote extensively on the need to replace the bourgeois state with a proletarian state. In his book State and Revolution Lenin explained that by state he meant “special bodies of armed men, prisons, etc.” There, and in other works, including the Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Lenin explained the need for a proletarian state to replace the bourgeois state. As the bourgeois state suppressed the proletariat, so the proletarian state suppresses the bourgeoise.

The use of forceful repression is not a pleasant prospect. Naturally methods of peaceful persuasion are a preferable way to handle contradictions when they are adequate. Naturally these methods should be used first before resorting to force. The mere fact that capitalist states constitute a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie which uses far more brutal force to suppress the working class does not make the use of force by the working class state appetizing.

But as a practical matter, more or less every revolution eventually has to use force to protect itself from counter-revolution. Lenin led the Bolsheviks in fighting a civil war, ordered saboteurs shot, and closed a Menshevik newspaper which was undermining morale. Mao sent in the troops on several occasions during the Cultural Revolution. The man who planted the bomb which killed a tourist in Cuba in 1997 was sentenced to be shot by a firing squad, and although his sentence was commuted he will probably die inside a Cuban prison. During the 2002 Venezuelan coup, military officers helped to force the abdication of self-declared president Pedro Carmona by threatening to send fighter jets to bomb him if he did not abdicate. Every single reader of this post can surely add a further half-dozen examples.

Indeed the numerous incidents in which capitalists and imperialists have used force to successfully overthrow governments which could not or would not defend themselves proves that this use of force is very necessary. The histories of the so-called Orange Revolution in the Ukraine and the so-called Rose Revolution in Georgia are good examples. These examples have suprisingly close parallels in the process that brought the Shah to power in Iran.

Pro-capitalist protesters in Belarus, backed by Poland and the United States, clearly attempted a similar movement in that country in 2006. The movement was prevented from achieving its aims when the protesters were forcibly dispersed by the police. The overwhelmingly popular Belarussian President, Alexander Lukashenko, appeared in a press conference with top military officials to make the declaration that there would be no Orange Revolution in Belarus. The symbolism of the military presence is perfectly clear. As a result, Belarus retained its state-dominated economic system and continued to provide for its ordinary citizens in a way that few former Soviet republics do.

Some of these examples do not refer to socialist countries. But so what? The capitalists and the imperialists use such tactics as these to overthrow governments they do not like. They will not hesitate to use them against a socialist country. Socialist countries will consequently have to resort to the use of force, however unpleasant it may be, or accept a return to capitalism.

In the case of the Tiananmen Square Incident, if we consider what happened and what the consequences were, we can clearly see that the use of force was necessary there as well.

In 1989, a large protest movement grew up against communist rule in China. This protest movement included perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, though its members were certainly a small minority of Chinese. This movement was heavily supported by the United States, Taiwan and other capitalist governments. Its goals included the defeat of the Communist Party of China, the dissolution of Chinese socialism, and the adoption of a political system based on one or another capitalist model. The Chinese communists tried to solve the matter by negotiation, and several leaders of the country spoke directly with the protesters. They tried to solve the matter by ordering the crowd to disperse. They tried to solve the problem through patience, and waited for months before acting. They tried to solve the matter through the use of the country’s minimal riot police apparatus. All these attempts failed, and the protesters resisted the police violently. Finally, the Communist Party of China took the decision to suppress this movement using the military. Some 217 people apparently died in the violence, of whom 35 were associated with the security forces.

The immediate result was a very limited amount of bloodshed. The long-term result has been a lengthy period of relative social peace and the continuation of an economic system which is largely state controlled. In concrete terms, this has meant an enormous increase in the standard of living for most Chinese. It has meant plummeting poverty rates, increasing access to education, the movement of people from shacks and cave-houses into proper houses, electrification and modernization. The alternative would possibly have saved lives in the short run and possibly not since the protesters were themselves quite violent, and as I have noted, killed a number of policemen, sometimes in very brutal ways.

But in the long run, what would have been the cost of surrender by the Chinese government at Tiananmen Square? It would have meant the collapse of the system of guaranteed prices for farmers and with it the Chinese agricultural system. It would have meant, as it did in the Soviet Union and the other countries of Eastern Europe, a gigantic economic contraction accompanied by a falling life expectancy. But in the case of China, it might well have meant ethnic break up and civil war. A civil war in China could easily cost millions of lives: The number of dead from the little known 19th century Taiping Rebellion is estimated at 20 million.

We can see here then that the dictatorship of the proletariat is a Marxist principle which is still very important and clearly correct. Revolutionary governments should certainly pursue peaceful solutions to contradictions whenever possible. And it will not do to caricature this into a notion that there can be no free speech and no tolerance for dissent under socialism. But it is ultimately true that revolutionary governments which are not prepared to use force to defend themselves cannot survive. Yet the dictatorship of the proletariat appears to be one of the elements of Marxist theory which Mike Ely would like to see edited out of the reading list, and, more to the point, edited out of Marxism.

But this editing of Marxism is not an improvement, a clarification or a modernization. It is rather a taming. It removes from Marxism one of the elements which make it a genuinely useful and revolutionary political system. To tame Marxism for the capitalists is not brilliant, subtle, or inventive: It is merely to cave to the enormous pressure from the capitalist papers, capitalist pundits, and other parts of the capitalist superstructure.

Revisionism and Reading Lists

First of all, a revolutionary organization in the United States has to take on its own shoulders the task of teaching Marxism. Marxism is rarely taught in the schools and universities of the United States. When it is taught there, what is taught is nearly always a revisionist version. And, of course, it reaches only a handful of elite students, rather than the working class as a whole.

The difficulty of this project is very considerable. For one thing, the people who must learn Marxism can rarely dedicate themselves to studying Marxism the way a chemistry student can devote themself to chemistry. Work and family responsibilities, as well as practical revolutionary work, compete for a person’s time.

In light of this, the course of study has to be as economical as possible. The books on it should be clear and accessible and as short as they can be without sacrificing important material.

Also in light of this, there is little room to include books which are incorrect. Even in the setting of formal capitalist education in a university geared toward full-time students, little time is found for this kind of book. A book condemning the use of vaccines is unlikely to be a course material in a school of public health, unless maybe the course is about dealing with anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists.

There is something to be said for the notion that more up to date books would be better. They could incorporate more modern examples, and they could indeed leave out the minor errors which occur in the old books. Where it is possible, this should certainly be done. For instance, Leontiev’s Political Economy – A Beginner’s Course is a much more accessible introduction to political economy than Capital.

But on the other hand, there are books like Engels’s Anti-Duhring. This book was written as a response to the work of a German professor called Eugen Duhring, whom no one in the modern world reads. As a result it is full of references which are of basically no interest. But it also contains quite a lot of very important and valuable material, not all of which is really covered elsewhere. It took a brilliant author several years to write. As a practical matter, it is very difficult to replace.

What is clear at least is this:

That replacing the old Marxist books with new pseudo-Marxist books would be a major step backwards. Replacing books which honestly explain a theory for the abolition of capitalist society with books which bow before the capitalists and remove the most revolutionary parts of Marxism is not a solution. It is particularly not a solution to the handful of very minor errors that occur in the works of Marx.

But is this approach to Marxism dogmatic? This charge is one which is commonly applied to Marxists who refuse to repudiate certain perfectly correct Marxist points of view, such as the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is rarely more than that. Why should Marxists turn away from correct ideas? Is a biologist dogmatic for insisting on a belief in natural selection, and not accepting that intelligent design is a view of equal validity? If one is going to take revolutionary theory so lightly, to accept true theories and false theories equally, what is the point of studying theory at all?

Is Marxism indeed a layer cake?

The answer to this is not so simple. It is true that there are certain contradictions within the body of work of Marx himself. This notion has been examined very thoroughly by the excellent French philosopher Althusser, who explained how the works of the early Marx, still encumbered with idealism, are often used by revisionists to distort Marxism. There are other minor examples. But on the whole, there is very little in the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin which can now fairly be considered incorrect. And, most importantly, only a tiny percentage of the work of “correcting” Marxism is devoted to a truly materialist attempt to fix errors. The overwhelming majority of work in this area is very simply people trying to revise out the revolutionary aspects of Marxism.

In light of that, Marxists should be perfectly willing to consider that there are errors in one or another work by Marx or Lenin. But they should also resist as stubbornly as necessary “corrections” of Marxism which are in reality attempts to reduce Marxism to social-democracy.

Marxists indeed must apply Marxism creatively. If we do not, it will appear dusty and stale. But the true art is in applying Marxism creatively while not falling into revisionism.

Revisionism: The Fundamental Difference

I began this article by talking about the common ground that FRSO and Kasama have. I would like to end it by talking about exactly what, in clear terms, are the differences between them.

It seems to me that the most important difference between FRSO and Kasama in this discussion is this: FRSO accepts the existence of revisionism — that is an ideological pushback by capitalists which masquerades as Marxism — and the need to fight against revisionism. Kasama does not.

This understanding of the need to fight revisionism is not unique to Freedom Road Socialist Organization. It is a major part of the theory of three separate tendencies in the international communist movement: the Maoists, the Hoxhaists, and what I’ll call the anti-revisionists, such as FRSO. Other parties which share this analysis include the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Workers Party of Belgium, the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), and dozens of other important communist parties.

I sincerely hope that further discussions between Kasama and other leftists will be conducted in a friendly and principled fashion and in an atmosphere of solidarity. At a certain point, there is a risk of these sorts of discussions descending into rolling around in the mud. Once that point is reached, there is nothing left to be gained from continuing and it is best for all those involved to move on to other work.

Posted in >> Kasama Project, China, Maoism, Mike Ely, Stalin and Stalinism, communism | 33 Comments »

Alabama 3: Mao Zedong Says

Posted by Mike E on July 23, 2010

Edited by a brother representing from a housing project in the Deep South. thanks to D.

Posted in >> analysis of news, Mao Zedong, music, revolution, video | 12 Comments »

Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee

Posted by Mike E on July 23, 2010

The following essay was submitted to the US Social Forum, and appears on Organizing Upgrade. Kasama makes essays from many different points of view available, and posting here does not represent an endorsement of the analysis or proposals.  The style of this piece — its analogies and images — are interesting in themselves. Thanks to Jose for suggesting this.

by Ricardo Levins Morales

Don’t fight the riptide. It’ll wear you down.

A riptide occurs when water at high tide gets pooled behind reefs or sand bars so when the sea goes out again, the trapped water has to find a channel through which to escape the pool. It empties through that opening with such force that it can sweep a swimmer out to sea. Our instinct is to start swimming toward shore as hard as we can. The better strategy is to swim parallel to the coast until you are out of the riptide, then ride the regular waves to shore. Left activists know the feeling of being caught in a riptide without knowing the way out. When the political tide runs against us it takes all our effort just to stay in place. Our standards slide until a “victory” just means that we didn’t get screwed as badly as we could have been. Our gains are swept away the moment we turn away.

When conservative activists faced this problem, back in the mid-1960s, they tried something different. Instead of swimming faster they looked into what it would take to turn the tide around. They pulled it off. With the tide behind you, you can achieve all kinds of success even with less that brilliant leadership. It’s a lot easier to slash local school budgets when half the population already believes that government is incompetent, teachers are lazy, taxes are evil and the private sector can do it better. That’s the tide.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Media Burn by Ant Farm

Posted by tellnolies on July 23, 2010

Posted in art, video | Leave a Comment »

Immigrant Kids Answer Minutemen

Posted by Mike E on July 22, 2010

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Charles Barron and the Freedom Party

Posted by tellnolies on July 22, 2010

Charles Barron

From Workers World

Support the Freedom Party!

By Stephen Millies

The memory of Fannie Lou Hamer is inspiring Black and Latino/a activists throughout New York state to build the new Freedom Party.

The party is running New York City Councilperson Charles Barron for governor, Buffalo educator and historian Eva Doyle for lieutenant governor, and Bronx activist Ramon Jimenez for attorney general.

“We are asserting our right to self-determination, our right to continue the history of that great woman — Fannie Lou Hamer — who was beaten to a pulp trying to get some parity and inclusion for Black people in the Democratic Party,” declared Barron at a June 17 news conference held at Sistas’ Place in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant community. There, he announced the forming of the Freedom Party and kicked off its election campaign.

Fannie Lou Hamer formed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 to fight the state’s Ku Klux Klan-dominated Democratic Party. She received constant death threats and was nearly killed for demanding the right to vote.

Hamer protested the seating of an all-white Mississippi delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City. The delegates included sheriffs who had tortured civil rights activists. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> analysis of news, African American, Democratic Party, election | 3 Comments »

How I Benefit From White Privilege

Posted by Mike E on July 21, 2010

Simple Question: Is this an accurate representation of Black-white relations?

This is reprinted from the Non-Domesticated Thinker. Props to Selucha for suggesting this post.

Publishing essays here on Kasama offers them for discussion, it does not imply agreement with the views or underlying methodology. Thoughts?

By Laura Douglas

As a white woman who’s been thinking about how I benefit from white privilege, I see that so much of it consists not only of what I do get to feel and experience but of what I am privileged not to have to think about or experience.

For example, it looks to me as though a cornerstone of white privilege is simply not having to think about race, not having to think about my color and how people are going to respond to me because of it. Given my living circumstances, I could easily go through an entire day and have absolutely nothing to remind me that the subject of racism exists–even though I may walk past several Latinos on my way to work, buy a paper from an Asian man, and talk to the Black teller as I make a deposit at the bank. To come in contact with persons of color is not the same as being aware that racism is still a raging problem in this country. The ball is in my court about whether I’m going to think about it or not, how much I’m going to think about it, etc.

A person of color does not have this choice. To live and to function in this society is to be forced to think about race and racism whether one wants to or not.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> analysis of news | 15 Comments »

Review: Žižek’s Living in the End Times

Posted by tellnolies on July 21, 2010

From MRZine. This review was first published in Irish Left Review on 7 July 2010 under a Creative Commons license.

End Times with Slavoj Žižek

by Seán Sheehan

Review of   Living in the End Times by Slavoj Žižek. Verso, 2010.

Reading Žižek has always been as challenging as it is enjoyable, an experience of pleasure and pain that seems at times an intellectual correlate to the operation of objet petit a (little object a).  The concept of objet petit a has been a constant in Žižek’s work, appearing in his trailblazing The Sublime Object of Ideology in 1989, and turning up again in the final chapter of his latest book.  In its role as a mask and a compensation for the ontological void, the profound sense of incompleteness that lies at the core of our subjectivity, objet petit a is inseparable from the sense of loss and metaphysical pain that gives rise to it but it is equally inseparable from the pleasure that accompanies its presence in our life.  The result is enjoyment plus pain and, as Žižek puts it in The Plague of Fantasies, ‘like the castrato’s voice, the objet petit a — the surplus enjoyment — arises at the very place of castration’.  Without wishing to suggest that reading Žižek is as discomforting an experience as this quotation might imply, there is a compelling pleasure to reading his next book despite, or maybe because of, the difficulties it is inevitably likely to produce.

Living in the End Times is no exception in this regard but Žižek’s latest offering does confirm a shift of emphasis on his part, one that first became apparent with the publication of Violence in 2008.  With his earlier work, before Violence, the reader has always faced the difficulty of grappling with the Lacanian concepts that Žižek is seeking to unpack and apply. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Slavoj Žižek | 17 Comments »

Orthodoxies of Comintern Years: An Old Time Religion

Posted by Mike E on July 20, 2010

The depiction of the African American nation in 1930 -- from James Allen's work. Should we approach Black Liberation as if this is still the situation, using theory developed in re-World War 1 Eastern Europe?

We have been debating whether to embrace and promote a communist orthodoxy lifted mainly from the 1930s Comintern period. and digging into many related questions. Our discussion started by examining a study plan promoted by “The Marxist Leninist.” It continued in the post “Marxism is not a Layer Cake” and Marxism is more like a Bush.

This post is a response to remarks by May9 within the “Layer Cake” discussion.

by Mike Ely
First, i want to say to May 9 that I respect and appreciate this engagement. Our views are sharply different — and far too often, such views are not able to engage in public. And I believe it is helpful (not just to me, but to many people watching) to see the exchange in some depth.

What does religious thinking look like?

Mike Ely wrote

“If you teach Marxism as a religion of universal classics, you have taught religion not revolution… Orthodoxy is anathema to revolution. It is very conservative (in training and implications).”

May 9 responds:

“Nobody is teaching Marxism as “religion”. There is your bogus construction.”

Nah. Everyone knows there is a religous quality to major strains of communist doctrine.

And a big part of the change that happened with the codification of Marxism (after the first great socialist revolution in Russia) was that it got confined in a doctrinal way — and had the qualities of a state religion.

Now perhaps these terms are confusing…. so let me be clearer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in >> analysis of news, African American, Black History, China, Kasama, Maoism, Marxist theory, Mike Ely, New Com. Movement, Stalin and Stalinism, anti-racist action, comintern, methodology | 39 Comments »