Contact Kasama for activities around this important event: kasamasite (at) yahoo.com This event is being hosted by The New School.
Archive for September, 2008
Come Hear Prachanda in NYC
Posted by Mike E on September 24, 2008
Posted in >> analysis of news | 4 Comments »
Gary Leupp: I know what you mean, Bill
Posted by Mike E on September 24, 2008
Outside the RCP: a beautiful blue planet
Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Religion. He has written analysis on topics including the revolution in Nepal and the U.S. attacks on countries like Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900.
By Gary Leupp
“I am also feeling the weight of the dissipation of a relationship that, though quite often difficult, problematic, troubled, and filled with turmoil, was also at key junctures enlivening and inspiring.”
I know what you mean, Bill. And there might be a weighty sense of regret when a relationship that complicated ends with those you’ve seen as friends and comrades shunning you—because you’ve gone too far in questioning articles of faith they themselves cannot explain or defend.
You start to see those visits to your office, those long conversations, those meals together in a different light.
My own friendly relationship with the RCP of over 30 years was largely based on a common opposition to imperialist war and feeling of solidarity with Maoist movements abroad.
I have to say that on this matter of solidarity with Maoists internationally — involving Peru, India, the Philippines and Nepal — my work was largely independent of the RCP. The lack of internationalism or even deep interest in foreign Maoist movements in the RCP sometimes puzzled me.
Anyway, my relationship with the party soured when I refused to sign the New York Review of Books advertisement for Bob Avakian in the summer of 2007.
Posted in Bob Avakian, communism, India, Maoism, Nepal, Peru, Philippines, RCPUSA, revolution, theory | Leave a Comment »
Video: Leftover Crack’s Super Tuesday
Posted by Mike E on September 24, 2008
Posted in video | Tagged: leftover crack | Leave a Comment »
Bill Martin: Going Forward From Here (Kasama Post #1)
Posted by Mike E on September 23, 2008
Traveling the road together
by Bill Martin
Hello, friends.
Although I have been talking with some of you more directly in the past year, I have remained aloof in some ways from things unfolding around Kasama and around the RCP. Unfortunately, as someone attempting to be a radical intellectual and to contribute to understanding and changing the world, I have learned this need to take distance from the RCP itself.
As most of you will know, I co-authored the book Marxism and the Call of the Future with Bob Avakian. At the time I worked on the book, I thought things were on a different course within the RCP, on the question of working with intellectuals and artists, and on many other questions as well. We can discuss further whether or not things were really on a different course or if instead something else was in fact going on. Certainly there were many things happening in the RCP in recent years about which I either didn’t know or, apparently, was quite naïve. Clearly people who were actually in the party have a very different perspective on these things than I do.
For me, this whole scene is extraordinarily difficult. Even as I feel some excitement about getting on with things, going forward from here and reconceiving and regrouping, I also feel that in some sense my legs have been kicked out from under me, and I am also feeling the weight of the dissipation of a relationship that, though quite often difficult, problematic, troubled, and filled with turmoil, was also at key junctures enlivening and inspiring. This relationship goes back roughly twenty-seven or twenty-eight years, to the early 1980s. It is a relationship that involved discreet individuals, with whom at times I developed a good deal of closeness, but where at times I felt I wasn’t really dealing with a particular person, but instead an institution or perhaps another person altogether. I realize this is even more true for some who are participating in this effort of reconception and regroupment, and in some ways I have only encountered and begun to grapple with some of the dimensions of this interaction in the past year, and even somewhat only in recent months. As I said, I find it very hard, and there may be some specificities to this difficulty that have to do with being an intellectual. But I also recognize that it is even harder for some others, and you have my sympathy.
Posted in Bill Martin, Bob Avakian, communism, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Marxist theory, methodology, Mike Ely, philosophy, RCPUSA, revolution, Slavoj Žižek, theory, vanguard party | Tagged: intellectuals | 29 Comments »
Sexuality Among Communists: Muffled Voices or a Liberating Radicalism?
Posted by Mike E on September 22, 2008
Revolution in Nepal is transforming the lives of young women -- undermining arranged marriage and targetting the sex trade in women
By Mike Ely
“Why does a movement that emerged from the 1960s have such a muffled voice when it comes to society’s raging controversies over sexuality? Where is this Party’s voice on the culture of “hooking up,” its passionate debates about sex in hip-hop, its defense of teenage experimentation, its experiences of how radical intimacies can be formed, its investigation of BDSM, its polemics around pornography and eroticism? This party is mute — other than brief pre-packaged summations with little nuance or engagement. This party abdicated the cutting edge of defying and rejecting the reactionary sexual practices of ITS society.
And then, the RCP had that revealing backward view of homosexuality, and a very muffled voice about how that was possible. “
* * * * *
Chuck asks:
“Has any communist party ever had a libertarian, permissive, tolerant, and open-minded orientation toward the sexual practices of its members?”
“Permissive, tolerant, and open minded” compared to what? Compared to your personal morality here in the U.S.? Compared to the society they are revolting against?
However, overall, I believe the answer has been yes in many places — especially in regard to the most oppressive and dominant forms of sexual practices and repression.
Posted in communism, Maoism, Mike Ely, revolution | 85 Comments »
From Inside the RCP: Party Life & Work with Intellectuals
Posted by Mike E on September 22, 2008
by John Steele
“The party lacks the complexity and depth, as it stands now, to be able to interface with society with sufficient richness to be able to digest and process the complexity of developments in the world. “
* * * * *
The Revolutionary Communist Party recently threw charges at the Kasama Project in their recent Manifesto. In particular, their footnote 17 claims:
“…the former Party members who resigned and started up this little cabal have provided a textbook example of the nature of political and ideological opportunism, including in the fact that they refused to carry out principled struggle over their differences while in the Party. “
In response to this charge, we are publishing criticisms of the RCP’s line that were written by Kasama supporters while still within the RCP.
The following document contains some reflections which I wrote and submitted through party channels of the RCP in March 2006 relating to how the party functioned. Although I repeatedly asked for a meeting to discuss what I brought up here, I was continually put off, and I broke with the party a couple of months later.
This may be of interest or importance now because it highlights contradictions and problems in the party which have greatly escalated over the intervening two and a half years – the difficulty or refusal of the party to engage in real discussion and “wrangling” both internally and externally.
Posted in >> analysis of news | 3 Comments »
Actress Rose McGowan on Armed Struggle in Ireland
Posted by Mike E on September 22, 2008
Rose McGowan, Toronto film festival
For once the machinery of entertainment gossip news mentioned something interesting.
Rose McGowan spoke out in support of the armed groups that fought British occupation of northern Ireland. In a new film “50 Dead Men Walking,” she plays a leader of the radical nationalist Irish Republican Army. The film itself focuses on a famous police informant within the IRA
Rose McGowan, who has an Irish father, said at a press conference in Toronto last week:
“I imagine, had I grown up in Belfast, I would 100% have been in the IRA. My heart just broke for the cause. Violence is not to be played out daily and provide an answer to problems, but I understand it.”
The usual, cynical marketing “controversy” through planned provocation? Or sincere political statement? Or a mix?
Posted in >> analysis of news | 17 Comments »
Overview of the Financial Crisis
Posted by John Steele on September 22, 2008
Following are articles and excerpts from some news stories and analysis on the financial crisis over the past week, including recent developments. This is a very serious crisis which is still developing, as is apparent in these articles, which are all from mainstream sources.
Dow Jones Index
Big Financiers Start Lobbying for Wider Aid
By JENNY ANDERSON, VIKAS BAJAJ and LESLIE WAYNE
New York Times – Sept. 22, 2008
Even as policy makers worked on details of a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, Wall Street began looking for ways to profit from it.
Financial firms were lobbying to have all manner of troubled investments covered, not just those related to mortgages.
At the same time, investment firms were jockeying to oversee all the assets that Treasury plans to take off the books of financial institutions, a role that could earn them hundreds of millions of dollars a year in fees.
Nobody wants to be left out of Treasury’s proposal to buy up bad assets of financial institutions.
Posted in >> analysis of news | 6 Comments »
Misuses of the Erotic: Debate Among Revolutionary Youth
Posted by Mike E on September 21, 2008
painting by hei fok
The following cues from topics opened on the thread “RCP’s Anti-Homosexual Line: Why Held So Long and Stubbornly?”
* * * *
“Training members to curtail their dreams, fantasies, and aspirations was part of the means by which the party leadership controlled the membership. It also has to be understood as pre-figurative in terms of how the RCP’s leadership viewed the relations between the masses of people and the party-state leadership of a future (ostensibly) proletarian state….Whatever we do, let’s not do that ever again. We should also not treat this simply as further proof of the RCP’s failure. These are not closed books – and the relationship between politics and the personal are hardly all figured out.”
* * * *
by Jed Brandt
The RCP’s position was better understood as fear of the erotic, not banal homophobia. From the English Puritans of the early bourgeois era, to the 1936 Soviet illegalization of abortion and homosexuality, through to the Communist Party’s hostility to the 1960s revolution in culture, to the RCP’s position –- there is a long-standing problem among revolutionaries towards pleasure, intimacy and “non-productive” relations. It’s still a problem internationally, though the recent recognition of a “third gender” in Nepal strikes me (with little complete knowledge) as an advanced step in the right direction!
The problem with the RCP wasn’t simply missing the boat on the changes in regards to gay people in America over the last forty years – it’s deeper than that.
Posted in >> GLBT, abuse, feminism, gay, homosexuality, Jed Brandt, lesbian, marijuana, police, women | Tagged: >> GLBT, erotic, gay, lesbian | 23 Comments »
From Inside the RCP: Why This Party Can’t Lead a Revolution
Posted by John Steele on September 21, 2008
The Revolutionary Communist Party recently threw charges at the Kasama Project in the RCP’s recent Manifesto. In particular, that Manifesto’s footnote 17 claims (in the now-familiar snarky tone):
“…the former Party members who resigned and started up this little cabal have provided a textbook example of the nature of political and ideological opportunism, including in the fact that they refused to carry out principled struggle over their differences while in the Party. ”
We will be pointing out the the falseness this charge, including by publishing a number of criticisms of the RCP’s line that were written within the RCP.
This first essay is by John Steele, an early member of the RCP, co-author of the 9 Letters to Our Comrades and an active member of the Kasama Project. This document was presented to the RCP in 2006 while he was an active member of the party.
After this document was presented to the RCP’s leadership, John received no reply of any substance. Iinstead he was told two things (almost in passing): That he was wrong to imply that the Party was demanding unquestioning recognition of Avakian, and that his differences would lead him to turn his back on the revolution.
A similar self-serving assertion that runs through the RCP’s recent Manifesto — that any criticism or opposition to Avakian’s New Synthesis will inevitably and necessarily lead to capitulation to capitalism.
In publishing this document here, John removed any passages on internal party functioning and made some clarifying edits (mostly questions of party jargon). Kasama first published this document in February — and we have kept from of the commentary from then.
* * * * *
My Differences with the Party — in Short
by John Steele (May 2006)
I will state things as sharply and clearly as I can, despite the fact that there are many complexities and even ambiguities in my feelings, thinking, and positions. Overall, I am having an increasingly difficult time believing in this party as the “vanguard of the proletariat” or the leading organization of a revolution. And I don’t see much prospect of its becoming so. There’s a lot that goes into this and much of it I won’t be able to make clear here, but I will bring out here what I can say clearly and in relatively simple form.
In this light, the three main poles around which my differences revolve are: the party’s “Coming Civil War and Repolarization” analysis; the dynamics and functioning of the party as an organization; and the position that Avakian is on the level of Lenin and Mao. As will become clear, there are interrelations among these.
Posted in 9 Letters, Bob Avakian, communism, John Steele, Maoism, Marxist theory, RCPUSA, revolution, theory | 17 Comments »
Anarchist Review of “Battle in Seattle”
Posted by Mike E on September 21, 2008
This film review, originally from Anarkismo - gives a sense of the film and of the emerging controversies the film provokes.
By Jen Rogue with Andrew Hedden
I spent my nineteenth birthday in the cold and rain, breathing in tear gas and fleeing the police. It was 1999 and I was in Seattle, joining in the tens of thousands who descended on the city to protest the World Trade Organization’s first Ministerial Conference in the United States. I was sympathetic to the myriad of issues represented by the various sections of protestors, from the environment to workers struggles to access to medicine. I proudly marched with my banner reading, “Think the WTO is bad? Wait til you hear about capitalism!” The reasons to oppose the WTO were a thousand-fold, but central to me was the larger system at play: global capitalism.
My fellow anarchists worked alongside union members, sea turtles, and activists of all kinds in an effort to shut down the WTO’s meeting. The diversity of the protesters brought with them a diversity of tactics, and the anarchists participated in many, from locking down in intersections and doorways, to squatting a building downtown, to breaking the windows of targeted multinational corporations. While the debate about the protests and aftermath has seen hundreds of opinions, perspectives and critiques, there is one thing most can agree on: the 1999 WTO protests brought American attention to global economic issues. In addition to successfully shutting down the meeting, activists in the U.S. illustrated an awareness of and resistance to the WTO’s repression and exploitation of peoples across the globe.
Almost ten years later, the protests have inspired a feature film. Directed by Stuart Townsend, Battle in Seattle is a clearly well-researched fictionalized drama taking place during the WTO protests. The pacing and general narrative is quite accurate to the events as they actually unfolded. This new, sympathetic attention to a pivotal moment of the anti-globalization movement brings up many old questions and debates, most of which still linger on today. The movie itself is engaging and likeable, with plenty of well-staged action to keep the viewer’s interest. Michelle Rodriguez, bad-ass as always, makes a fierce anarchist (in the interest of disclosure, I watched Blue Crush three times and Blood Rayne twice just for Rodriguez). The intentions of the film are clearly sympathetic to the protestors and seek to bring to light the motivations and ideas of the activists, which had not been well represented by the media.
Posted in >> analysis of news | 3 Comments »
Battle in Seattle: The Movie and The Re-Discussion
Posted by Mike E on September 21, 2008
“Battle in Seattle” — the movie — is about to hit. The actors include Charlize Theron, Ray Liotta, Michelle Rodriguez and the rather prickly radical Woody Harrleson (playing a cop). This could be a quite positive development — depending, of course, on both the content and reception of the film.
Democracy Now segment with filmaker writer and director, Stuart Townsend, and with David Solnit, an organizer of WTO protests and co-founder of the Seattle WTO People’s History Project.
Articles and Links from “The Real Battle in Seattle” — an anarchist site that seems to assume that filmmakers can’t possibly treat the events well or fairly.
Posted in >> analysis of news | 1 Comment »
RCP’s Anti-Homosexual Line: Why Held So Long and Stubbornly?
Posted by Mike E on September 20, 2008
“I was told what apparently others were told – they were busy. Huh? Busy? Denouncing whole communities as hopeless bourgeois because you were busy? Revolutionaries prevented from joining the party; youth told to cease and desist on gay curiosity; having to live in fear that I’d be found and ridiculed because I couldn’t control the bourgeois gay monster inside me. But they were busy.”
* * * * *
Kasama is receiving posts from former RCP members describing the issues that brought things to a breaking point.
The question of why the party’s backward view of sexuality and gay people was so stubbornly upheld for so long emerged as an explosive controversy within the RCP during its 2001 program discussions.
This piece by Xbox mentions for the first time the “closet” that some gay and bisexual people lived in within the RCP — and discusses the RCP leadership’s claim that their bigoted view of gay people survived thirty years because they had been so busy with other matters — involving the U.S.-Soviet comflict war and the development of an international movement. Too busy all through the 1980s AIDS crisis?
This argument (and others) are laid out by Bob Avakian in his conversation with Bill Martin (published as the book “Marxism and the Call of the Future: Conversations on Ethics, History and Politics“).
* * * *
by Xbox
Thanks for sharing, Sophie. I wish all this had been here when I left. I have never felt more alone and scared in my life. Having been in that cocoon for so long I was completely unsure of myself. I felt unworthy as a human being. How could they have treated me like that? Is this how we would treat the masses?
True I had discipline problems. It was hard to do things that didnt make sense. But I was totally open with my questions. I believed in the democracy part of DC. When the new homosexuality position came out I felt vindicated. I had stuck with them despite the lack of real debate on line questions. Struggle consisted not of the ardea skybreak style of open intellectual discourse but of going around and around until you said what they wanted to hear.
But the new Homosexuality position proved they could listen. Maybe there was hope for real discussion. I was so excited by the new position that I never considered what had taken so long. It took friends outside the party to point this out to me.
The weight of that question fell on me like a ton of bricks. Why did it take so long?
Posted in women | Tagged: AIDS, gay, homosexual, lesbian | 24 Comments »
Kasama Project: Walk the Revolutionary Road with Us
Posted by Mike E on September 20, 2008
In April, we initiated the Kasama Project at our first national conference. We are now organized in beginning collectives in several cities, with a network of contacts in a dozen places nationally. The following was written quickly for this summer’s SDS convention, and refined since then. We expect it to evolve as we work on our common language and raise our level of unity — and as we hear your comments and questions.We urge you to circulate this statement in creative ways. And we invite you to join us: Many deeds cry out to be done.
[print-ready pdf version]
Posted in >> Kasama Project | 17 Comments »
A Comrade’s Letter: Inside the RCP’s Rectification
Posted by Mike E on September 19, 2008
Missing the Whirlwind
This letter first appeared as a series of comments. We have gathering them here in one piece.
By Sophie
* * * *
“I am not writing this to spill the beans, I’m writing because it opens up discussion on the relationship between centralism, discipline, unified line and the need for ease of mind, debate, expressing ideas that are not fully formed, changing one’s mind, and all that.”
* * * *
I have struggled with writing this letter for a long long time.
The landscape has been so unfamiliar that I might as well been on the moon.
Now that the RCP has issued their Manifesto and spoken publically about the cultural revolution inside the party at least i feel like i can speak about many things.
While a few people may have been privy to struggle on a leading level, the broader party leadership was in the dark right until the launching of the cultural revolution. I disagree in principle that such a deep rift over basic questions of line should have been kept so tightly hidden from the ranks. So when this struggle was opened up it came as a shock.
I’m almost sure that RCP leaders would say that it was just my own “revisionism” that blurred the extent of the decay and “rot” inside the party. i don’t think this was a case of a line struggled having already been decided. I think it was a battle inside the party led by Avakian to consolidate his line even at risk of losing the party.
Posted in Bob Avakian, communism, Maoism, RCPUSA, revolution | 12 Comments »
When RCP Comrades Call: “Pick Your Stop, Time to Get Off”
Posted by Mike E on September 19, 2008
Last one out, turn off the headlights
by Mike Ely
A friend recently told me about a phone call from a member of the RCP.
The RCP comrade was calling to ask for advice. She wanted to know:
“Is there life after the RCP?”
My friend fumbled for an answer, choosing not to actively URGE someone else to leave the RCP. Having left the RCP herself, she couldn’t bring herself to advocate leaving the RCP.
This confusion has roots in the ways that the struggle has developed within the RCP.
Avakian’s latest views and direction were resisted by the vast majority of the RCP’s cadre and leadership — but very ineffectively. No one within national leadership had the consciousness to articulate and fight inside the party for for a revolutionary counter-course.
As a result, the forces opposing Avakian’s New Synthesis and cult of personality did not succeed in carrying out an actual split along revolutionary lines — or take a group of communists through a clean and common break. The RCP’s national leadership, sadly and shamefully, capitulated to Avakian’s self-coup and did not carry out their responsibility to the party, to its membership and to the people of the world.
And so, the growing numbers of people gradually tumbling out of the RCP sometimes find themselves alone, blinking in the bright lights of an unfamiliar landscape. They often have highly conflicted feelings about leaving, about themselves and about their old project. The RCP’s recent manifesto almost brags about this demoralization — saying that as a “general pattern” people forced out have been “more or less openly giving up on revolution.” This is intolerable and unnecessary.
Here is what I would have said if i had gotten that phone call from an RCP comrade. It is taken from Letter 9 of the “9 Letters to Our Comrades.”
Posted in communism, Maoism, Mike Ely, revolution | 15 Comments »
Chile: Remember the Lessons of September 11
Posted by Mike E on September 19, 2008
Chilean troops carry out bloody suppression of the people
On September 11, 1973, the Pinochet military coup overthrew the popular and elected government of Salvador Allende — whose radical movement was backed by the broad support of millions of people, but which did not have an army (or armed people) of its own.
The lessons are stark:
1) It is not enough to lay hands on the existing state aparatus, it is necessary to break that old state (and army) up. Without a people’s army the people have nothing.
2) There is no crime that the U.S. imperialists are not capable of, and there is no way they (and the other reactionary powers of this world) will passively accept the emergence of revolutonary new societies — without plots of destabliziation and military white terror.
Posted in >> analysis of news | 4 Comments »
Lurkers, Step Up: This World Needs Us to Break Old Walls
Posted by Mike E on September 19, 2008
- Humanity awaits,
the moment unfolds
by RedFlags
Excerpted from comments posted on our thread discussing “Avakian’s Self-Coup Within the Party”
* * * *
“Do not let Avakian tell you that he’s all there is and if you can’t buy what he’s selling then it is supposed to be you who is “demoralized.” Reach out to friends and comrades and don’t let them be lost… Why does it matter? Because not only is revolution possible, here in this country and in our lifetime – but we are witnessing the break up of all the old certainties right now!… All you lurkers reading this and not speaking… step up.”
* * * *
The RCP has a well-tried-and-untrue method of starting from the a priori position that the RCP is the vanguard party and Bob Avakian is a world-historic leader (blah blah blah). Everything flows back from this conception.
Members of the RCP have believed this even where they weren’t willing to go to the extreme of a cult of personality. When it became fully cartoonish and desperate – no doubt some have moved on or claimed they gave up.
Posted in >> Kasama Project, Bob Avakian, communism, Maoism, RCPUSA, revolution, theory | 15 Comments »
Financial Crisis: The Point of No Return
Posted by Mike E on September 19, 2008
A CALL TO OUR READERS: Please send us articles you think help expose and explain the current financial collapse — or at least stimulate a debate here that can get into causes and implications of the current crisis.
by Mike Whitney
This article appeared on Counterpunch, Sept. 19, 2008
Following another erratic day of trading on the stock market, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke convened an emergency meeting of the Senate Banking Committee and other congressional leaders to request fast-track authority for a sweeping plan to buy back illiquid assets and other complex securities from distressed and under-capitalized banks. The turbulence in the financial markets has intensified and there is every indication that the situation will get worse before it gets better.
There are a number of signs that the financial system is at the brink of collapse and that Wall Street is headed for a 1929-type crash. Depositors have begun to withdrawal their savings from money market funds alarmed by the gyrations in the market and the daily deluge of bad economic news. According to the Washington Post, funds dropped “by at least $79 billion, or about 2.6 per cent” on Wednesday alone. The withdrawals are the equivalent of a slow bank run just at the time when stressed commercial banks need access to cheap capital to finance daily operations and provide loans for a steadily weakening economy. There’s also been a surge of panic-buying of US Treasurys which is considered the safest of investments. According to the Wall Street Journal, during Wednesday’s market-rout, “investors were willing to pay more for one-month Treasurys than they could expect to get back when the bonds matured. Some investors, in essence, had decided that a small but known loss was better than the uncertainty connected to any other type of investment. That’s never happened before.” (Wall Street Journal) Also, the VIX, or “fear gauge”, has soared to levels not seen since the crisis began in August just over a year ago.
Posted in >> analysis of news | 10 Comments »
Nepal Maoist Newspaper: Critique of Sectarianism in ICM
Posted by Mike E on September 19, 2008
The Nepali Maoist newspaper Red Star ( Issue 13, August 18) has reprinted (as an “opinion” piece) the following article from a European communist newspaper. This article originally appeared in La Voce (29 July 2008), the review of the (new) Italian Communist Party. The piece was originally entitled, ‘Nepal – The First Great Victory of International Communist Movement in the XXI Century’, CARC Party – International Relations Department.
Several things are significant about this re-printing: The article includes some pointed appraisal of the various “coordinations or aggregation” that have organized communist movements into international networks. The Nepali Maoists CPN-M have been part of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM), an international Maoist network that describes itself as “the embryonic center of the world’s Maoist forces.”
For that reason it is striking that the following article says that sectarianism marks “the attitude of the great coordinations of the International Communist Movement towards Nepali revolution.” The article pointedly says that “the existing coordinations and aggregations of the International Communist Movement do not yet express themselves on the meaning of Nepali revolution.” And it adds: “According to us, it shows their limit.”
As is well known to readers of this site, the RCP,USA and the closely-alligned Committee of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement have maintained a stunning (even shocking) silence as Maoist comrades have dared to reach for power in Nepal.
And it is hard not to see the following passage as a criticism of the RIM and then of the RCP (with its escalating cult of personality around Bob Avakian:
“None of the various aggregations of Communist parties and organizations can set itself even as an embryo of a new International if it does not overcome this difficulty, if it just restricts itself to denounce revisionism and imperialism, if it does not propose a course that could lead Communists to victory, in the imperialist and the semi colonial and oppressed countries, according to the specific conditions of the ones and the others. Such proposals do not rise from some individual genius, nor from the particular qualities of a single party or organization.”
The full article follows here.
Posted in >> analysis of news | 17 Comments »
