Archive for March, 2008
Posted by Mike E on March 23, 2008
This thread contains reports on the RCP’s programs presenting Bob Avakian’s new synthesis of Marxism. It starts with the following in-depth report on the RCP’s March 9 presentation — and the March 22 remarks on the Chicago and Berkeley events are made in the comments below.
by DMC Ulises
About 200 of us gathered at New York City’s St. Paul’s Cathedral on March 9 to hear the RCP answer its own question: “What is Bob Avakian’s New Synthesis?” As I walked in, I immediately noticed the church banner above the lectern: “How Good It Is When Brothers and Sisters Dwell Together in Harmony.” The sentiment was, sadly, inappropriate for this event.
The RCP’s security team had just excluded a well-known revolutionary activist at the door because of his association with a detailed communist criticism of Avakian’s synthesis. There was a sense of tension and unease everywhere – averted eyes of the rank-and-file, smirking among the leadership, and a curious lack of excitement.
The question I felt hanging over the room, and mixing with the religious ambience, was Mao’s “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?” And there was much conservatism in this night as a result of this. There was a stifling defensiveness among Party supporters. The expansive interior of this cathedral was turned into a heavily controlled space — not, as promised, an opening for real debate.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Bob Avakian, communism, Communist Party, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Marxist theory, RCPUSA, revolution, Soviet history, theory, UCP Nepal (Maoist), UCP Nepal (Maoist), V.I. Lenin | 17 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 22, 2008
Toufic’s graphic novel has been published. I just got my own copy (thanks AK) and am planning to savor it page by page. Here is a review that appeared in The Guardian by Craig Taylor, March 22, 2008
Arab in America: A True Story of Growing Up in America by Toufic El Rassi
Those looking for lush artwork and nuance will do well to skip El Rassi’s autobiographical tour of his troubled American existence, but Arab in America is more complex and rewarding upon closer examination. The scrawled black and white drawings track a journey from El Rassi’s birth in Beirut to his struggles with and in America. He understands he’s different after a childhood production of The Wizard of Oz places his face among his classmates – a “dark splotch” beside the white. From there he examines his family and his role in this eternal war against terror that seems to have shuffled him into the opposing camp. Why do they have to be referred to as “our troops”, anyway, he asks. Not only does El Rassi feel the sting of racial slurs, but he often receives the wrong ones altogether: “Americans don’t even know who they’re supposed to hate.”
He explores the different degrees of Muslim activism through the reactions of the friends around him. Throughout El Rassi remains an inert figure, held in by the constraints of his personality and his culture. The struggle to find an identity is kick-started finally by Rage Against the Machine and a reading list of revolutionaries. Even then El Rassi questions the best intentions of the liberals around him. He decides to become a US citizen to save himself from a possible one-way ticket out. The work is most powerful when El Rassi is recounting his own failures, his missed opportunities and outrages, petty or otherwise. The post-9/11 context he’s gathered to illustrate his thesis seems to be snipped from newspapers. At its best, his personal history is enough to illustrate a life lived constantly on the defensive.
Posted in anti-racist action, Toufic El Rassi, war on terror | Tagged: Arab in Americ | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on March 22, 2008
Kasama received the following report from the March 19 national demonstration against the war in Washington DC. Click on thumbnails for pix.
By S.S.
This is the first war I’ve been through that has had any significance to me (I was too young for the others). When I look around I see no evidence of it. People don’t look distressed when they walk by. Due to the elections I rarely see anything besides “change” on the TV. It’s almost easy to forget about, and very easy to ignore. And yet the million Iraqi deaths are a great weight on my mind and when I stop to really think about them, I get sick to my stomach… I get sad… Then I get angry. Sometimes it’s almost too much. Although looking around in DC, I couldn’t see the raw anger (except in some cases when it would bubble to the surface) I knew that’s what others were feeling. The hopelessness of the elections, the betrayal, the lies. The feelings of frustration that so many had died, and still the situation was being treated almost as if it is unimportant. And worst yet, the fear of being powerless to stop it.
All those feelings are what drove March 19 in DC.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in antiwar | Tagged: Iraq war, March 19, Stop the War, Washington DC | 4 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 18, 2008
by Rosa Harris
Video and pictures by Duko
Friday March 14th a powerful G2 tornado ripped through downtown Atlanta. While there has been extensive media coverage, the most heart breaking stories remain untold. The media was fast to visit Cabbage Town and the Stacks – both of which are gentrified.
Not far from these areas though, down around what is known as the Grady curve – where I-75 passes by Grady Health System – lies what is the historic Black part of Atlanta. On any day of the week this is an area where homeless people live — staying under the overpass. That overpass was right in the direct path of the storm. I’ve stayed down here myself several nights when I was homeless — waiting to get in to be seen in Grady’s free clinics.
After the storm hit, we went to find out how the people there were doing and to hear their stories. There is debris and evidence of shattered lives everywhere you look – a shoe here – someone’s bag there with their belongings still in it. While the media reported no deaths in this particular area I am left to wonder: knowing how many must have been out in the elements, directly in the storms path. There is much the media has not bothered to tell us. And we were seeking people out. Some were just afraid to talk on video — which gives a sense of the outlaw lives many of us lead.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, duko, Rosa Harris, video | Tagged: Atlanta, tornado | 2 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 18, 2008
Rebellion has broken out in several places within Tibet, and in Tibetan ethnic areas bordering the officially designated Tibetan region. I have not had the time to study these events in detail, or sum up the changes of the last years that have triggered the uprisings.
I would however like to offer this series of writings as background — essays that sketch the modern history of Tibet before and after the Chinese revolution, including the complex changes of the Maoist period, and then through the restoration of capitalism.
The Maoist Revolution in Tibet
by Mike Ely
Tibet is one place where “common knowledge” clashes sharply with reality. Pre-revolutionary Tibetan society is wildly romanticized, so that many people have very little sense of the brutality and horrific backwardness enforced by a theocracy of monks. Based on such a myth, the arrival of revolutionary forces can be portrayed as a foreign invasion. And, thanks to the propaganda of exiled monks, the following decades of socialism are portrayed as a genocide. And yet here we are, in a moment when Tibet’s people have faced relentless oppression for decades, where their needs and environment have been brushed aside in the relentless pursuit of raw materials for the capitalist expansion in the Chinese heartland.
Posted in China, communism, Communist Party, Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Mike Ely, peoples war, revolution, Tibet | 11 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 18, 2008
Nil wrote: :
Coming from an anarchist millieu and deeply suspicious of communists, it was personally an intellectually shocking experience to run into _Settlers_ (published in 89 I believe) and _False Nationalism, False Internationaism_ (early 80s, I believe). The latter in particular focusing on a scientific examination of revolutionary organizations, but both of them blowing me away with the intensity, seriousness, intellectual honesty and commitment, and brilliance of their analyses. And by self-proclaimed _Maoists_, it was shocking to me at the time reading them (late 90s), associating Maoism with, well, honestly, RCP members and fellow travellers who I had known or worked with and did not have such a good opinion of. I don’t know enough about Avakian to say what he did or didn’t contribute. But I know it was reading those books, from Maoists as far as I know unconnected with the RCP, that I learned what scientific and materialist analysis of history (including criticism of comrades from a position of solidarity rather than competition) really WAS and that some communists had been doing it all along. A strength of intellectual engagement that anarchists have a lot to learn from. I still have to say, when recommending these books and others like them to comrades, “Yes, okay, they’re Maoists, but it’s not what you think, really. Give it a chance.”
tellnolies wrote:
I had a similar experience with both “Settlers” and “False nationalism, False Internationalism.” While I have subsequently become more critical of their positions they made a powerful impression on me as concrete analyses of concrete situations that I never got from reading Avakian, even where I have agreed with him. Avakian’s appeal to his followers is really as a visionary more than as a rigorous analyst of social reality. He is good at laying out a vision of a communist society that somehow or other will avoid the pitfalls of previous experiences and he is also good at cooking up the apocalyptic consequences of failure to pursue his vision, whether its is WW3 or Christian Fascism. But these are more impressionistic speculations than rigorous analyses. It is when examined closely that the dilletantism really comes out.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in African American, anti-racist action, Barack Obama, Black History, civil rights, coal miners, communism, Communist Party, Karl Marx, labor history, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Marxist theory, Mike Ely, Native people, racism, RCPUSA, Soujourner Truth, working class | 45 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 17, 2008
Kasama received the following report from philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s March 11 talk at the CUNY Graduate Center, “Resist, Attack, Undermine… Where Are We 40 Years After ’68?” Feel free to add your own recollections, notes and links to reports of this event.
* * * * *
by Zerohour
I didn’t take notes but it was far livelier and more interesting than Wolff’s presentation. More importantly, it was grounded in the present. I’ll put down my fragmented memories, maybe someone else can fill in the gaps and/or correct my impressions:
- Critique of ideology is a central concern for him. Keep in mind he does not use “ideology” in the commonly accepted sense, to refer to a set of ideas. He uses ideology the way Marx does, as a central component of “false consciousness”. In Marx’s usage, ideology is counterposed to “science”.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Slavoj Žižek, Zerohour | Tagged: Left Forum, Slavoj Žižek | 47 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 17, 2008
This website has hosted some detailed reporting, discussion, and an outline of points covering the RCP’s March 9 event in NYC. Now, a week later, here comes the RCP’s own summation of the event. Their article (posted in full below) focuses on turnout. So ok, let’s focus on turnout for a moment.
They say 220 people attended. That seems accurate. To evaluate that turnout, let’s start with context: The RCP has done political work in New York City for over thirty years. Over the past year, the RCP has been moving many of its organizers and “heaviest hitters” into New York City. The focus of their special concentration is to breath some life into their “Engage Avakian” campaign — in the elite colleges (eg. Columbia), in a few select working class communities (eg. Harlem Revolution Club), and generally among the politically interested. March 9 was a nodal point and manifestation of that effort. And the RCP’s article says they went all out — contacting thousands of people for March 9 etc.
We have to ask: What does it mean, that after 30+ years of political presence in NYC, after a year of focus on promoting Avakian, after appearances by the RCP’s well-known figures, after focus on the academics and public intellectuals, after leafleting “dozens of high school and college classes,” and so on…. what does it mean that the RCP was only able (by their own count) to gather 220 people (including their own cadre) for this first public unveiling of Avakian’s synthesis?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in 9 Letters, Bob Avakian, communism, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Marxist theory, methodology, Mike Ely, RCPUSA, revolution, theory | 5 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 15, 2008
Tahawus sent me this picture.
The caption in the mainstream press accounts read:
An indigenous woman holds her child while trying to resist the advance of Amazonas state policemen who were expelling the woman and some 200 other members of the Landless Movement from a privately-owned tract of land on the outskirts of Manaus, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon March 11, 2008. The landless peasants tried in vain to resist the eviction with bows and arrows against police using tear gas and trained dogs. REUTERS/Luiz Vasconcelos-A Critica/AE (BRAZIL)
Posted in Amazon, Brazil | 4 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 15, 2008
Click here for KPFA’s Online Coverage
Posted in antiwar, gI resistance, internet radio, military, podcast | Tagged: kpfa, winter soldier | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on March 13, 2008
A crew of people in NYC went to the RCP’s March 9 event — and brought with them leaflets announcing the 9 Letters to Our Comrades and this Kasama site. That event was billed as a discussion of Avakian’s New Synthesis — and since the 9 Letters are the most substantive engagement with that synthesis so far — it was natural to hand such leaflets out there out before the event.
Jed had done the same a week before at Revolution Books’ hurriedly organized discussion of the RCP’s 13-year-old Leadership Documents that represented an earlier attempt to ramp up the RCP’s cult of personality around Avakian. At this bookstore meeting Jed came in after leafletting, and listened to the presentation.
A week later, on March 9, the RCP leadership had decided to ban Jed, who has helped write the 9 Letters and is a well-known revolutionary activist who has been “around the RCP” off and on for decades. As several different people demanded to know why Jed was stopped at the door, they were given little explanation. In any case, Jed (as he explains here) got a chance to think as he stood outside the church chatting with people as they came and went. Here is his view from outside.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in 9 Letters, Bob Avakian, communism, Jed Brandt, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Marxist theory, methodology, RCPUSA, theory | 29 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 12, 2008
On March 9 the RCP held a four-hour public event in New York City on what Avakian’s New Synthesis is. The event consisted of a text read by Lenny Wolff over two-and-a-half hours, followed by few questions answered by the presidium. Over the next few days, we will be featuring reports and assessments of this presentation.
To start this off: Zerohour has sent Kasama his detailed notes. They gives a sense of what was covered — even if they are obviously not precise transcripts of the various formulations.
Help us refine these notes and fill in the gaps — “wiki-style”: post details and any necessary corrections from your own notes. In particular, send in any particular formulations that you wrote down word-for-word of concepts that are worth debating.
Also: what questions SHOULD have been posed to this presentation and its claims? Let’s list them.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Bob Avakian, communism, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Marxist theory, methodology, RCPUSA, revolution, theory, vanguard party | Tagged: Bob Avakian, kasama, Lenny Wolff, Maoism, RCP, RCPUSA, sunsara taylor | 20 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 12, 2008
 |
| Resistor arrested in front of the U.S. Capitol September 15, 2007. Photo Credit: JB Connors
[CLICK PICTURE FOR MORE PHOTOS OF GI RESISTORS] |
|
Kasama received the following piece from Vietnam Veterans Against the War Anti-Imperialist. We urge everyone to support the important new Winter Soldier testimony happening this weekend. More reports will follow on how to hear testimony online.
Support, Uphold and Defend IVAW & The Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan
Support GI Resistance!
Since the U.S. Global War on Terror was declared after September 11, 2001, a powerful generation of GIs and veterans has stepped out in opposition. Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) will be making history by holding Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan. This event is focused on testimony and documentation of the experiences of those involved on both sides of the wars and occupations in these countries. VVAWAI stands in solidarity with the brothers and sisters participating and call for people around the world to support and defend this courageous effort.
Breaking Through Censorship and Distortions
From the beginning, many different voices from around the world have been consistently and unceasingly trying to break through the censorship surrounding the U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan and expose their true nature.
Among them are the relatively neutral observers and witnesses. These include un-embedded journalists, researchers, medical personnel, and many from around the world who are trying to help and are not closely tied to the occupation. Such observers have documented that since 2003 at least one million Iraqis have been killed and four million have been forced from their homes, half leaving Iraq. Journalists and human rights organizations continue to document the violence against the people of Afghanistan.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in antiwar, gI resistance, Iraq, military, Vietnam War, war on terror | Tagged: antiwar, gI resistance, IVAW, VVAW. army | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on March 11, 2008
Several people have asked how to get an RSS feed of our Kasama posts.
Here it is: http://mikeely.wordpress.com/feed/
Embed that URL in your facebook page or RSS reader.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about….. start here.
Posted in >> technology, rss | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on March 11, 2008
The Chinese companies (many of them state-owned of course) are now rushing into Africa — in Sudan, Central Africa and more. In the earlier, socialist period of China (in the 1970s under Mao’s leadership) — Chinese workers and cadre came to Zambia to help build the TranZam railroad. This project played a role in the development of the region, and more importantly it was a strategic contribution to the “frontline states” that were then facing the South African apartheid regime. (This earlier policy has, itself, also been the source of considerable controversy among revolutionaries for reasons I hope we can discuss.)
Now we see a starkly different picture — reflecting the changes caused by the restoration of capitalism in China and China’s subsequent economic explosion. As the world’s capital has rushed into to exploit the Chinese working people, the unprecedented expansion of this “low wage area” has created a giant sucking sound. China now it draws huge portions of the world’s raw materials into itself. Eager to fatten themselves in this process, and consciously modeling themselves a a new imperialist “superpower,” the Chinese state-capitalists are stepping (rather eagerly and rather shamelessly) into the shoes of the U.S. and European governments and corporations. They are writing a new chapter in Africa — adding to a bitter history that stretches from early slave trade through colonial empires to this present rush for plunder.
This news report came to our attention on Blackstone’s blog. (Thanks Blackstone! Please note for us where this report originally appeared.)
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Africa, capitalism, China | 10 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 11, 2008
Kasama received the following announcement from Revolution Books:
Re-envisioning Revolution and Communism: What is Bob Avakian’s New Synthesis?
Presentation followed by discussion Sunday, March 9th – 4:00 p.m. St. Paul & St. Andrew Church, New York City
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Bob Avakian, communism, Maoism, RCPUSA, revolution | Tagged: Bob Avakian, maoist, marxism-leninism-maoism, new synthesis, RCPUSA | 40 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 11, 2008
We received the following piece from Ivy, who is an active participant in our Kasama community. For people not familiar with RCP jargon, their formulation is that the dividing line among communists is “germanic appreciation” for Avakian’s “body of work, method and approach.” Here Ivy is discussing the implications of this, and the way his “body of work” is being treated as texts for learning “method and approach.”
Much work needs to be done needs to analyze and unravel the “New Synthesis.” Here, I would like to speak to one aspect of it: “method and approach.”
The “New Synthesis” and the Question of “Method and Approach”
At times, it has seemed as if the key element of the “New Synthesis” is the “method and approach,” of Bob Avakian, at least according to enthusiastic Party supporters. This was clear to me and others when I was told over and over and over that the main thing to study in Avakian’s writings was his “method and approach.”
One can quickly see the “cult of personality” implications for this. Suddenly, every writing—or at least every post-Conquer the World writing—takes on a new importance because there’s “method and approach” to be gleaned from all of it. So now A Horrible End—a book by Avakian not strongly promoted over the last few years because of the incorrect WW3 thesis—gets new life because of its section on the cult of personality. This is flawed logic since some conclusions that are drawn are clearly, demonstratably wrong. This outlook even applies to his memoir.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in 9 Letters, atheism, Bob Avakian, Communist Party, Marxist theory, methodology, theory | Tagged: Bob Avakian, RCPUSA | 5 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 10, 2008
Posted in African American, music, video | 4 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 8, 2008
by Mike Ely
There was a giddy and heroic turning point early in the Russian revolution. The events of February 1917 had toppled the Tzar (to everyone’s utter shock) and all the revolutionary forces scrambled to find their footing (on the suddenly wide-open political stage) and scrambled to find their voice (since they had to create a mass programmatic expression of their politics.) The Bolshevik leadership on the ground (and the Pravda editorial board) were treading water — operating in loose alliance with other socialist trends, and extending a tepid critical support for the new “revolutionary” post-monarchical government of Kerensky.
At that moment, Lenin arrived. It was April 1917. He pulled into the railroad station in Petrograd where travelers from the west (i.e. Finland, and beyond it Sweden) arrive — at the Finland Station. He (and a small circle of comrades, aides and fellow exiles) stepped in a huge and tumultuous welcoming scene — friends and foes, in-laws and outlaws, were there to see him. After years of bitter exile and impotence, the glaring spotlight of real political influence clicked on.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in 9 Letters, Bob Avakian, communism, Communist Party, Karl Marx, Maoism, Marxist theory, Mike Ely, RCPUSA, revolution, theory, V.I. Lenin | 3 Comments »
