“I don’t see this as nostalgia or resting on the laurels of the past, I see it as turning a living, vital, science into dogma.”
I have never viewed Marxism as “a science of revolution” — even after the RCP adopted thatformulation in the early 1980s.
i held an open mind on this question and didn’t consider it the most important issue around, but I just always thought this formulation misunderstands both what Marxism is and what “a science” is. And in some ways i thought it reduced Marxism to a body of observations and insights in a particular field (“of revolution”) — and diminished its contributions overall as a philosophy and world outlook.
I thought communist analysis of society is (at its best) scientific….but that doesn’t make the body of Marxism “a science.”
Is there really, for each each sphere of the natural and social worlds (or even for a social process like “revolution”), a distinct ‘science” — as if each science is like a spoon in a drawer, alongside the other spoons: Here is biology, this is physics, there is chemistry, there is the science of revolution, and so on. And as if human knowledge is a drawerful of these spoons — each with a distinct life and realm and process?
There is something very nineteenth century about this conception — a notion from before our understandings started to form more coherent wholes (as when genetics brought biology into the realm of chemisty, and subatomic physics became the underpinnings of chemistry.) Read the rest of this entry »
The agreement for the U.S. occupation of Iraq expires at the end of this year. Negotiations for new terms to replace it has been going on since February. These negotiations will define the strategic framework of the continuing occupation. The exact details of the draft agreement remain secret.
16 June 2008. A World to Win News Service. Why is George W. Bush, in his waning days in the White House, so eager to secure agreements with the Iraqi government regarding the future legal framework for the American occupation? And how can it be that the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki, which has so long sold itself to the occupier, is suddenly posing as the most ardent defender of Iraq’s sovereignty?
We need to start with a simple fact that not enough mainstream commentators care to remember: the U.S invasion was totally illegal. It’s not that the invasion would have been morally justifiable if the UN had blessed it, but the fact is that the UN refused to do so, despite American pressure on some of the countries sitting on the Security Council at that time, and all the lies Bush’s minions could muster about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” . It was only after the U.S. invaded, overthrew Saddam and seemed to be on track to successfully swallowing the country that the UN passed a resolution that is supposedly the legal basis for the crimes the U.S. is committing in Iraq today.
In 1941, the editor Edward Dowling wrote: “The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.” What has changed? The terror of the rich is greater than ever, and the poor have passed on their delusion to those who believe that when George W Bush finally steps down next January, his numerous threats to the rest of humanity will diminish.
The nomination of Barack Obama, which, according to one breathless commentator, “marks a truly exciting and historic moment in US history”, is a product of the new delusion. Actually, it just seems new. Truly exciting and historic moments have been fabricated around US presidential campaigns for as long as I can recall, generating what can only be described as bullsh*t on a grand scale. Race, gender, appearance, body language, rictal spouses and offspring, even bursts of tragic grandeur, are all subsumed by marketing and “image-making”, now magnified by “virtual” technology. Thanks to an undemocratic electoral college system (or, in Bush’s case, tampered voting machines) only those who both control and obey the system can win.
This essay by Alain Badiou is one of the places where he speak directly on political issues. We post this to encourage exploration and debate. Kasama includes earlier discussion of Badiou’s work.
Embedded within this essay are Badiou’s comments on Negri’s book empire — on questions of whether revolutionary change emerges from the evolution of longstanding structural conflicts or the eruption of conjunctural events.
In the process, Badiou suggests that revolutionaries must reconceive the question of how social forces serve as vehicles for change — touching on both the Marxist view of the proletariat and the Leninist view of the party.
Alain Badiou gave this interview when he attended the “Is a History of the Cultural Revolution Possible?” conference at University of Washington, in February, 2006.
Q: I’d like to ask you about your political and intellectual trajectory from the mid 60s until today. How have your views about revolutionary politics, Marxism, and Maoism changed since then?
Badiou: During the first years of my political activity, there were two fundamental events. The first was the fight against the colonial war in Algeria at the end of the 50s and the beginning of the 60s. I learned during this fight that political conviction is not a question of numbers, of majority. Because at the beginning of the Algerian war, we were really very few against the war. It was a lesson for me; you have to do something when you think it’s a necessity, when it’s right, without caring about the numbers.
the following piece appeared in New Scientist June 9, 2008
By Bob Holmes
A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers’ eyes. It’s the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.
And because the species in question is a bacterium, scientists have been able to replay history to show how this evolutionary novelty grew from the accumulation of unpredictable, chance events.
Twenty years ago, evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, took a single Escherichia coli bacterium and used its descendants to found 12 laboratory populations.
The 12 have been growing ever since, gradually accumulating mutations and evolving for more than 44,000 generations, while Lenski watches what happens.
Political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal examines the Obama candidacy from a Black nationalist perspective. (the “ours” in his title refers to African American people. Posting a point of view does not imply Kasama’s endorsement of those views. (Thanks to Iris for suggesting this post.)
by Mumia Abu-Jamal
With the attainment of the required delegates to claim the Democratic Party’s nomination for U.S. president, Sen. Barack H. Obama (D. ILL.) has written a new page in American history. For by so doing he succeeds where Channing Phillips, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, Sr., and Al Sharpton could not – by gaining the necessary delegates to demand nomination. Of course, there have been numerous Black candidates for president, but these have been third party efforts designed more to raise issues, to organize or protest than to actually win elections. Some of the best known have been Eldridge Cleaver (former Black Panther Minister of Information), Dick Gregory, Dr. Lenora Fulani, and the former congresswoman, Cynthia McKinney.
But this is a different kettle of fish, for Obama’s candidacy is the closest to make it to the winner’s circle. What also distinguishes Obama from his predecessors is he doesn’t come from civil rights, Black liberation, socialist or anti war movements. (He often remarks at speeches, “I’m not against all wars, I’m just against dumb wars.”)
Bill Moyers Journal: The National Intelligence Agency is issuing a contract to spy on players of massive multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft and Second Life. (aired Friday, June 6)
Kasama plans to regularly report on government surveillance capabilities. This piece documents what government agents can do now using cell phone technologies — and the scale, secrecy and long distance capabilities they are able to deploy.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008 Researchers secretly tracked the locations of 100,000 people outside the United States through their cell phone use and concluded that most people rarely stray more than a few miles from home.
The first-of-its-kind study by Northeastern University raises privacy and ethical questions for its monitoring methods, which would be illegal in the United States.
It also yielded somewhat surprising results that reveal how little people move around in their daily lives. Nearly three-quarters of those studied mainly stayed within a 20-mile-wide circle for half a year.
The scientists would not disclose where the study was done, only describing the location as an industrialized nation.
Media, culture and news of this society have never been so tightly controlled and commodified (and effectively censored) . Ah but then, on another level, there emerges channels of information and exchange that are very hard to control.
whaddawegonnadoaboudit?
Some remain fixated on getting onto TV — on “that plane of the superstructure” — while ignoring the emergence of other less controlled “planes.” Since some folks among us don’t know much about the way lots of people people (especially students) increasingly get (and select, and aggregate) their news, info, friendships, debates …. let’s start with two of many: RSS, Blogging and Social Networking (thanks to commoncraft)
Help us circulate this essay widely. Please post it on websites and email it. Print it up using our pdf version.
Eyes on the Maobadi: 4 Reasons Nepal’s Revolution Matters
By Mike Ely
Something remarkable is happening. A whole generation of people has never seen a radical, secular, revolutionary movement rise with popular support. And yet here it is – in Nepal today.
This movement has overthrown Nepal’s hated King Gyanendra and abolished the medieval monarchy. It has created a revolutionary army that now squares off with the old King’s army. It has built parallel political power in remote rural areas over a decade of guerrilla war – undermining feudal traditions like the caste system. It has gathered broad popular support and emerged as the leading force of an unprecedented Constituent Assembly (CA). And it has done all this under the radical banner of Maoist communism — advocating a fresh attempt at socialism and a classless society around the world.
People in Nepal call these revolutionaries the Maobadi.
Another remarkable thing is the silence surrounding all this. There has been very little reporting about the intense moments now unfolding in Nepal, or about the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) that stand at their center. Meanwhile, the nearby Tibetan uprisings against abuses by China’s government got non-stop coverage.
The following piece by Stan Rogouski includes a number of sharp observations — all of which are (of course) open for discussion. Stan says some positive things about the “9 Letters to Our Comrades,” and agrees with core parts of our critique of the RCP.
But what I believe is of particular interest are his criticisms of Kasama: that our site is (in his opinion) confined to a self-imposed sectarian framework and he feels we don’t show evidence of even aspiring to emerge.
Here are excepts of those criticisms:
“What we’re left with is a classic Marxist Leninist pissing contest about revolutionary theory, a debate that’s not about revolutionary theory at all, but a series of coded arguments about specific points of party organization and about personal relationships that are essentially meaningless to anybody not privy to what they’re really talking about. As a result, the longer it goes on, the less we know. The more ink they spill, the less we care.
“Nevertheless, Ely gets the best of the dustup, if only because he’s willing to call attention to the elephant in the room, the Revolutionary Communist Party’s long term and only chairman, Bob Avakian…
“Mike Ely’s critique of the Revolutionary Communist Party, however, is not without its own faults. Attacking a Marxist Leninist Maoist organization in the United States in 2008 for not having more of a mass following is a bit like walking into a Taco Bell and badgering the counter people that the cheesy stuffed burritos have too much fat. The idea that anybody in the United States could keep a Maoist political party going on for over 35 years without compromising its radicalism while at the same time attracting the support of mainstream liberal intellectuals like Chris Hedges, Jim Wallis and Michael Lerner is a remarkable achievement, not exactly one that most Americans would admire, but still showing a rather formidable ability to organize on the part of the people who do it. Ely’s splinter group has no mass following, no support in the trade unions, and, unlike most Marxist Leninist parties, not even a newspaper. At this point, it’s simply a website put together by some disgruntled ex party members and not one that attracts or even tries to attract a broad readership….
“What’s more, the area where the Bob Avakian and the Revolutionary Party have had success in building a popular following is in precisely the area Ely wants them to water down their uncompromising line, religion. While the Revolutionary Communist Party has had no success in organizing inside the unionized working classes, watering down Avakian’s attacks on “Christian Fascism” is not going to snatch fundamentalist Christians away from Barack Obama or John McCain. Indeed, it will do just the opposite. To argue, as Ely does, that American Maoists should spend less time bashing religion and more time supporting the guerillas in Nepal is, quite ironically, to do exactly what he’s arguing against, pull the party’s organizers farther away from any potential mass base and more and more into isolation.”
We received the following two emails from a farmer-radiocommentor who is part of our Kasama network. It exposes the ways raw racist sentiment are beig both fanned and exploited in the current election. Training people in such politics, and organizing people around such politics is an important part of what elections in this country have always done. It is part of their function.
Email 1:
I receive these almost daily now from my “conservative” listeners and readers in Kansas. Many who send them do not write, just forward these type of emails over and over and over. I think some racist intelligence disinformation machine is at work spamming the country with this kind of emails….
Would the people who originate these emails be involved in some sort of covert propaganda electronic campaign to incite race hatred and violence? I know those who send them along think they are doing a “public service” but are they really? Do they know what they are doing, by circulating these?
On May 15, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 18 workers on immigration violations in a raid on the French Gourmet, a popular bistro, bakery and catering company in San Diego’s oceanfront Pacific Beach neighborhood. Agents executed a criminal search warrant at the restaurant and remained there for about six hours collecting company documents, said ICE spokesperson Lauren Mack. Agents took files and computers from the site.. No one from company management was arrested. ICE said the search warrant is under seal because the investigation is ongoing. [AP 5/15/08; XETV FOX6 News (San Diego) 5/16/08]
“They closed the streets. There were cops and guns and badges and everything all over the place,” said Rod Coon, vice president of the French Gourmet. According to French Gourmet officials, the agents turned around security cameras, presumably so their actions wouldn’t be filmed. [XETV FOX6 News 5/16/08]
ICE agents searched workers in a delivery area behind the restaurant before taking them to a different location for questioning. ICE released three women on “humanitarian grounds” to care for their children, and detained 15 men at an immigration detention facility in San Diego. ICE said all 18 arrested workers are Mexican nationals suspected of being in the US without legal status. The raid was the first at the 29-year-old company, according to French Gourmet marketing manager Jodi Breslow. She said she believed the company may have come under scrutiny because it caters events on military bases in San Diego. Breslow said the company had collected federal employment eligibility verification forms and photo identification with each worker’s job application. Those documents were provided to immigration officials, she said. [AP 5/15/08]
I first discovered the article i’m posting below when it was suggested to a reading group I’m in. Although disagreeing on some points it has acquired a special place in my mind and heart because in many ways it has mirrored my experience in discovering, and now seeking to uproot, deeply ingrained prejudices that for many years I have possessed and acted on without even realizing.
A number of years ago I was hanging with a friend of mine. We had been hanging like any other average night back in those days. One thing led to another and I wound up hooking up this guy. This was my first (and so far only) same sex experience (outside of childhood experimentation). The next day something I would have never expected happened. I felt anger! At him and myself, I felt fear that others would find out, and even shame… For a couple of days I stayed like that until I finally managed to push the feelings down. I stayed friends with the guy and we never really talked about it again (unfortunately later he died, and by the time I felt ready to talk he was gone).
I kept that experience buried within me for a few years and only recently have been examining it through a revolutionary Communist, feminist, pro-LGBTQ perspective. I’ve come to finally realize and embrace the fact that the emotions I experienced were in fact large prejudices surfacing within me. I had never felt like that after drunken “flings” with women. It was only that experience, when the conception of my sexuality was challenged. It was something I didn’t want to, maybe even couldn’t admit to at the time. Read the rest of this entry »
Bo Diddley worked his guitar like a drummer plays the drums. He pounded new licks out of those strings, and let loose rhythms no one had ever heard before. His innovation and eccentricity didn’t stopped there. In fact they didn’t stop. He was one of the first to make room on stage for a woman with a guitar.
He was a musical advance guard for a subversive, disrespected Black music setting out fearlessly to conquer the world.
“”I don’t like to copy anybody,” he said.
As this giant of rock-and-roll passes away — we look and wait, impatiently, for the next wave of musical revolutionaries for our time, listening for the sounds will singe the status quo and inflame rebellion’s ragged edge.
There has been an ongoing (and hopefully deepening) debate among communists over how to understand religious faith, how to understand its political role, how to discuss faith with religious believers, and how to promote a secular materialist understanding of the universe. This is (by its nature) a debate among people who assert that there are no gods and that religious belief is a human invention that does not (by its nature) correctly describe how the material universe works. But, starting from that common understanding, there emerges a divergence.
We will post here two different views on religion.
The first is taken from our the communist polemical work “9 Letters to Our Comrades” — and lays out a specific layered communist view of the origins, role and impact of religious faith.
The second contains two responses from followers of Bob Avakian (the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA).
One of the points of controversy discussed here is the slogan (raised by Avakian) that “The Bible Belt is the Lynching Belt.” On one level, this is simply true, of course — the plantation areas of the Deep South coincide (for iimportant historical reasons) with some of the most conservative areas of Christian Fundamentalism. The areas once dominated by Lynch Law remain today centers for some of the most rightwing and ignorant political forces in the U.S. But the controversy here is over how to interpret that: Was “the Bible” simply a weapons justifying that lynching, or did opposing forces wield religion in opposing ways? Was Christian religion in the Deep South simply an ideological prop for the most gruesome crimes — or were there ways in which some Christian churches (and even emergent forms of Christian belief) involved in the resistance and survival of Black people?
This question of evaluating the complex, historic and present role of the Black church has emerged again as a current question — in the recent controversies surrounding the “Black Liberation Theology” expressed by Jeremiah Wright.
This post includes an initial critical engagement with the religious approach of Bob Avakian.
