Archive for January, 2009
Posted by n3wday on January 21, 2009
This article was published on ElectronicIntifada.net (19 Jan. 2009). Posting articles on Kasama does not imply endorsement of their analyses. The original title of this piece was “Why Israel won’t survive”
By Ali Abunimah
The merciless Israeli bombardment of Gaza has stopped — for now — but the death toll keeps rising as more bodies are pulled from carpet- bombed neighborhoods.
What Israel perpetrated in Gaza, starting at 11:30am on 27 December 2008, will remain forever engraved in history and memory. Tel al-Hawa, Hayy al-Zeitoun, Khuzaa and other sites of Israeli massacres will join a long mournful list that includes Deir Yasin, Qibya, Kufr Qasim, Sabra and Shatila, Qana, and Jenin.
Once again, Israel demonstrated that it possesses the power and the lack of moral restraint necessary to commit atrocities against a population of destitute refugees it has caged and starved.
The dehumanization and demonization of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims has escalated to the point where Israel can with full self- righteousness bomb their homes, places of worship, schools, universities, factories, fishing boats, police stations — in short everything that sustains civilized and orderly life — and claim it is conducting a war against terrorism.
Yet paradoxically, it is Israel as a Zionist state, not Palestine or the Palestinian people, that cannot survive this attempted genocide.
Israel’s “war” was not about rockets — they served the same role in its narrative as the non-existent weapons of mass destruction did as the pretext for the American-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Gaza, Israel, Palestine | 69 Comments »
Posted by onehundredflowers on January 21, 2009
This issue of Immigration News Briefs is published here.
Vol. 12, No. 1 – January 17, 2009 1. Uprising Quelled in Arizona Prison
2. Fugitive Raids in Dallas, Miami; ICE Abuses Protested
3. Pallet Company IFCO Settles Criminal Case
4. Restaurant Owners Sentenced in Kentucky, DC
5. Attorney General Limits Appeals
*1. UPRISING QUELLED IN ARIZONA PRISON
On Dec. 31, immigration detainees jailed in the South Special Housing Unit at Eloy Detention Center in Eloy, Arizona, began throwing furniture at prison staff and causing property damage in the unit, according to a Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) press release cited in a local news report. At the time of the incident, there were approximately 34 detainees assigned to the Special Housing Unit. According to the news report, staff used chemical agents against the detainees to force them back into their cells. Jail officials placed the entire facility on lockdown status, meaning that detainees were restricted to their cells until further notice.
The Eloy Detention Center is a 1,500-bed facility owned and operated by CCA, the largest private for-profit prison company in the US. CCA contracts with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency to house immigration detainees. ICE officials were on site at the facility at the time of the incident. “We would commend CCA for their professionalism in getting a handle on the situation very quickly, and preventing something more serious from happening,” said ICE Public Affairs Officer Vincent Picard.
Surrounding CCA facilities were called to assist during the incident and the Eloy Police Department and Emergency Medical Service (EMS) personnel were notified. According to Eloy paramedics who arrived on the scene with two ambulances, only one officer was reportedly injured; he was treated at CCA’s Saguaro facility for a bump on the head, and sent to Casa Grande Regional Hospital as a precautionary measure. [Casa Grande Valley Newspapers 1/2/09, 1/7/09]
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, immigrants, immigration, prison, working class | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on January 20, 2009
.....and the American way
For literally millions of people, for many of a new generation, the awakening to politics starts in these moments. This is the world, the arguments, the summations, the claims, the promises that they hear… and that they will see unfold in the days ahead . We need to understand this moment, we need to also inhabit this world that they are seeing — in order to craft from among them a revolutionary force that can actually connect with and represent their highest hopes.
This essay is part of the remarks made by Mike Ely at a Kasama forum held in Chicago before the two August political conventions. It was originally Part 3 of a series called “Obama vs. the Revolution.”
Six months later, after his election and inauguration, the question is even more sharply posted what IS the change that this represents. What does it mean (to America, to its forms of white supremacy, to its norms and assumptions) that a Black man inhabits the White House. What does it mean to the people, to their view of this country and its system? (What about the rise of a new tone of Black patriotism and “pride in America”?)
The other parts of this series are avilable online: Part 1: How to build a revolutionary movement in a time of Obama?; Part 2: The Empire Obama Serves. Part 4 of that series has not yet been posted online.
* * * * * *
[excerpt]
So here’s what I’m arguing: That it’s just not the same old shit, and first of all, Black people know this in some ways….
Yes: A President Obama would preside over the continued oppression of Black people. That part is profoundly true and that is something we have to explain to people without sounding fatalistic. Something will uproot this oppression, but it’s just not Obama.
At the same time there is a modification to the historic approach to Black people. That modification goes along the following lines:
- Capitalism in the U.S. needs an oppressed proletariat — more than ever because of the competitions within global manufacturing. And certainly the capitalists themselves see the health of their domestic industried requring the existance of significant sections of workers living and working at Third World levels. Over the last decades, they have brought in immigrants and they are keeping many millions of them illegal, which is a way of super-exploiting peoplekeeping them below prevailing wage levels. And this system has worked to “re-exploit” Black people. That was, for example, a capitalist calculation that animated the Clintonian approach to welfare: what’s the use, it was said, of having a proletariat if it’s not desperate for work, if it’s not willing to work for nothing? If Black youth are not interested in working for minimum wage, then pressure needs to be brought to bear.
- And at the same time, there has been a consideration of expanding the circle of those who are accepted into assimilation.The model of this kind of assimilation has been the supposedly “anti-racist” innovations of the post-Vietnam U.S. military. There are also places in the civil society where, as a result of the 60s, certain sections of Black people are allowed assimilation. Those civil norms are now being confirmed and reinforced as truly national norms.
- There’s a link between the conditional assimilation of some sections of the upper class of the Black nation, and the continuing criminalization and demonization of those at the bottom — in ways that will not reveal themselves.
For the full essay: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, African American, anti-racist action, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, election, immigrants, immigration, Mike Ely, politics, racism | 37 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 20, 2009
Marx and Engels at work together
I have been thinking for day about a conversation I had with L. about our Kasama site. L. was pointing out that some of the theoretical discussion on Kasama was challenging, even overwhelming. And that to some readers the point (of specific discussions and specific theoretical issues) are often not clear.
There are many things involved. Here are some of the challenges we are facing:
- How do we deepen the theoretical work of reconception, so that we reach beyond initial discussion to works of new creative summation? (Yes, I think our main problem is how to deepen as we push ahead….)
- How do we conduct theoretical discussion in ways that both truly at the level needed, yet are as accessible as possible?
- How do we incorporate into our theoretical work the insights, questions, experiences and study conducted by the many people involved in generating a new revolutionary movement?
- How do we raise an understanding among revolutionaries of the importance of theory — especially in a period where existing theory is showing its age and exhaustion, where there is no leading organization or center, and no clear basis worked out yet for forming one?
The task of reconceiving as we regroup is not something done “to the side,” or in a way that simply overlaps with our work of political “exposure” — it has its own demands, pace and language.
In thinking about this, I was drawn back to the following brief letter from Karl Marx which drives home one sharp point. (thanks again to Marx2Mao and Louis Althusser who starts his own work on Marxist methodology quoting this piece.)
* * * * * *
To the citizen Maurice La Châtre
Dear Citizen,
I applaud your idea of publishing the translation of Das Kapital as a serial. In this form the book will be more accessible to the working-class, a consideration which to me outweighs everything else.
This is the good side of your suggestion, but here is the reverse of the medal: the method of analysis which I have employed, and which had not previously been applied to economic subjects, makes the reading of the first chapters rather arduous, and it is to be feared that the French public, always impatient to come to a conclusion, eager to know the connexion between general principles and the immediate questions that have aroused their passions, may be disheartened because they will be unable to move on at once.
This is a disadvantage I am powerless to overcome, unless it be by forewarning and forearming those readers who zealously seek the truth. 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.
Believe me, dear citizen
Your devoted,
KARL MARX
London, 18 March 1872.
Posted in >> Science, communism, Karl Marx, Marxist theory, methodology, theory | 3 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 20, 2009
This is the post on which we have been discussing the Inauguration. Now that Obama is formally president, we can discuss here impressions of these events.
* * * * *
A week ago, Radical Eyes wrote:
“I for one would like to see a fresh blog stream started with your last post–or something like it– as a starting point. Perhaps under the title of “Inauguration Time: What is to be done?””
The comment RE wanted to revisit said :
“It is inauguration time, and (unfortunately) the main political effort “on the left” is an inhouse effort to make Obama “live up to” the left’s hopes for him…. What plans do people have for the inaugural? How should revolutionaries respond to the festival of celebration in Washington?
My sense is that we need to
a) Step up work around the war in Afghanistan, to build resistance to the escalations about to come.
b) Speak out against U.S. support to Gaza
c) Prepare to help radicalize the demands and politics that arise among the people for equality and justice — encouraged now that the U.S. has a Black president.
d) Step up our own work to regroup a militant, revolutionary movement that can far more effectively speak among the people and for the people in the midst of major events.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Barack Obama, Democratic Party, George W. Bush | 9 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 19, 2009
This article originally appeared in A World To Win News Service. It was originally titled “Gaza: The political goals of both sides and possible outcomes of this war”.
Gaza: The political goals of both sides and possible outcomes of this war
12 January 2009. A World to Win News Service. Gaza suffered terrible civilian casualties during “stage one” of Israel’s assault, the aerial bombardment of one of the world’s most densely populated areas. As Israeli ground troops moved in for “stage two”, the number of dead and injured grew enormously, as did the proportion of civilian casualties among the overall dead and wounded. Children under 16 and women accounted for 40 percent as of 11 January, according to Gaza medical personnel (Al Jazeera, BBC). Many families dare not move through the streets to take their dead to hospital.
Unbearable atrocities
As the Israeli army added tank, mortar and sniper fire to the weapons being used against Gaza, they began to commit atrocities even more horrendous than the initial bombings. Among them were:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news | 13 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 19, 2009
This article appeares in the latest issue of Red Star (Issue 21) under the title, “The Daily Routine in PLA Camp”. More articles from this issue of the Maoist newspaper, Red Star, are available on the South Asia Revolution site.
by Deependra Rawal
It’s four o’clock in the morning. The Sound of the beagle was the sign of the preparation of the morning physical training. We hear the same sound of whistling of beagle night at 9 o’clock to keep the camp silent for night rest. Then, all types of activities were closed except the duty and the silent activities for camp security. However, the morning beagle brought the cheer and jollity with the golden rays of the sun in the morning. All the PLA soldiers are in the work of daily-routine.
Fire is burning in all the stoves of the mess house. All the members of the PLA are busy including Brigade commander Kuber to the vice commander Darshan and the secretary of the office Bishwajit. This is the 5th stage of the brigade-level training held in brigade camp. There are 21 instructors and trainers. The trainer is from the same brigade and they are commanders. The responsibility is divided among them.
It’s five o’clock. It is time to run in the field. The PLA soldiers are in military dress. All the trainees are in the field now. They are in a prepared position in groups. The team commander is leading the team. The number of women soldiers is less than the male soldiers. The race started with the blowing of the whistle. The instructors and the trainers are in their own preparation for the next activities after running.
The race continued till 6.30 in the morning. The PLA soldiers came back to their camps. There was no less eagerness and smartness in them. They took rest and served their breakfast within 15 minutes. Their breakfast was simple although it was the period of training. The brigade secretary Bishwajit said, “We are unable to provide balanced diet to our trainees due to the lack of the budget. The government has not provided us the budget for our training.” At 8.30 AM, the trainees took pens and the note-books in their hands and sat for their theoretical class. The commanders gave class to them.
The trainees often requested the trainers to repeat the class when they do not understand. I remembered my childhood when I had been at school. All the PLA soldiers and the commanders teach and learn each other like teacher and the student. After 10.30, they postponed theoretical training. All of them went to the mess. Then, they went to their rooms for rest. Right at 12.30, they again went to the field and again started their theoretical class. The class ran in a conventional way.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on January 19, 2009
Buchenwald Concentration Camp. TIME
This article originally appeared in A World To Win News Service. It was originally titled “The Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews and Israel’s massacres of Palestinians.”
The Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews and Israel’s massacres of Palestinians
12 January 2009. A World to Win News Service. The following is excerpted from a longer article in AWTWS 31 January 2005, with new beginning and final paragraphs.
It’s intolerable for the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews to be used as an argument to support the murders committed by Israel. Now, as in the past, these imperialist powers and their leaders have never had any special love for Jews, and still less have they ever really opposed any oppression.
The truth is that the U.S. and UK failed to lift a finger to stop that genocide, covered it up while it was happening, and after the war protected the men who did it.
When the Nazis came to power in the German elections of 1933, they aimed to drive the Jews out of Germany. But few countries let them in. In fact, only one welcomed them in unlimited numbers: the then socialist U.S.SR. In 1938, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt convened the Evian Conference, a meeting of 32 countries held in France, to decide what to do about Jewish refugees. Although the U.S. and UK were admitting tens of thousands of a year, ten times more were applying for visas.. The two main powers asked other countries to take them instead. France refused. The only country in attendance that agreed to increase its quotas was the Dominican Republic. The Nazi press saluted the conference as a sign that the world was coming around to its racial policies.
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Posted in >> analysis of news | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on January 18, 2009
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Thanks to Celticfire for conducting this interview and sharing it with Kasama. We are publishing this piece because it touches on important matters facing the revolutionary movement. As is always the case, our publication does not mean that we endorse or share the views expressed here.
“I wouldn’t spotlight any one revolutionary organization as male supremacist during the 1960s and into the early 1970s, because they all were.”
“The general society continues to affect the conditions inside organizations, and there has been a prolonged assault on feminism, redefining it as choice, shopping, style, rather than an analysis of patriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism. And there is no real feminist movement, an organizing movement, just as there is no real antiwar or anti-capitalist movement in the United States.”
“Revolutionary organizations are few in number and membership is low. That must change for feminism to continue its work in creating equality and true democracy.” Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in antiwar, capitalism, feminism, women, working class | 48 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 17, 2009
Thinking for himself?
By Mike Ely
Stan writes in another thread:
“I was sympathetic to Avakian’s line of thinking back during the Terri Schiavo incident (where the Democrats were refusing to take any stand at all) and where it did look as if the Christian right had significant power.”
This is a bit more complex than it might appear on the surface. AndI wonder if you really would unite with “Avakian’s line of thinking” if you had a clearer sense of the struggle (within the RCP) precisely over how to approach the Terri Schiavo incident.
Conflict Over How to Criticize the Right
I wrote the RCP’s main analysis of the Terri Schiavo crisis in the party’s Revolutionary Worker newspaper (within the usual collective party framework) . And that RW newspaper analysis was then, immediately, sharply criticized by Avakian (in a way that seemed unusual at the time). It was, it turns out in hindsight, the opening of the rectification of Revolution newspaper’s editorial team.
So, what was the subject of that criticism?
The Revolutionary Worker article on Terri Schiavo included, prominently, the following denunciation of the Christian Fascists. Read it, and see if you can predict what phrases were considered anathema to Avakian’s new synthesis:
“In a demonstration of raw hatred for simple science, the Christian fascists insisted that Terri Schiavo is as fully alive as any of us, and even that she might just “wake up” at any time. They claimed medical analysis rudely denies the possibility of divine miracle. And they insisted Terri Schiavo should remain artificially plugged in forever, without a thought or emotion or a hope of recovery—as a gruesome living monument to their religious mysticism and their earthly power.
“In a profoundly anti-democratic sense, they think it does not matter what a person thinks or chooses, or what the population wants. They think their standards and politics are literally divine , and those who oppose them are literally demonic. They have claimed for themselves exclusive rights to define and represent family and parental love—and they have argued that all their opponents want is a cold, atomized, amoral culture where humans would count for nothing and decisions would be governed by raw selfishness. And once again, they have smeared anyone who dares to stand against them—including especially Terri’s husband Michael Schiavo.”
The controversy here goes straight to issues being fought out within the international Maoist movement — which is why this discussion is more than RCP trivia. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, Bob Avakian, fundamentalism, Human rights, Mike Ely, RCPUSA | 17 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 16, 2009
By Pavel Andreyev
click to download the new pdf pamphlet
Pavel Alexeyev is an historian and specialist on religion with a long acquaintance with the
Revolutionary Communist Party and other Maoist organizations.
It would be wrong to suppose that Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World (Chicago, Insight Press, 2008 ) is just a book. It’s in fact a campaign by some highly motivated people to promote atheism, and a certain critique of religion (including “Christian Fascism”) in American life. Authored by the chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, it has been advertised for months with great fanfare… Even the most significant and original contributions to religious studies are seldom publicized with this sort of (dare I say religious?) excitement. Party expectations are obviously high….
Committed to atheism and historical materialism, I myself am in principle totally sympathetic to the project. If I thought it was done well and effectively I would applaud it.
The web version of this pamphlet:
Kasama’s online Lit Table of Essays for Discussion
Coming soon in pamphlet form: Pavel Andreyev’s critique of Avakian on Thomas Jefferson
Posted in Bob Avakian, Marxist theory, Pavel Andreyev | 17 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 16, 2009
Oscar Grant murdered by police
The following article first appeared in the San Francisco Bay View, and was suggested by Doug. The original title is “Authorities and corporate media grossly exaggerate Oakland ‘riot’ reports.”
We have been discussing these events here on Kasama. The police murder of Oscar Grant is shown in video here.
“What many news reports focused on was the footage of people burning a police car and setting a nearby garbage bin on fire. It made for good television. It got people talking and more importantly it got key officials to finally start moving and addressing the situation.”
by Davey D
Former BART police officer Johannes Mehserle, the 6-foot, 5-inch police officer who shot Oscar Grant in the back in cold blood on New Year’s, was arrested in Nevada Jan. 14, when this photo was taken.
So last week after the demonstrations for Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old unarmed father executed in plain view of hundreds by a cowardly BART police officer, Johannes Mehserle, who was finally arrested last night after two weeks of us waiting and protesting. We had to endure endless news reports and commentary most likely fed from police accounts and echoed by newspaper reporters who were not even on the scene that suggested that the city was burning and people were out of control. These pundits got on their pedestals and made pompous pronouncements about how the 200 young people who broke away from a larger demonstration held Jan. 7 at the Fruitvale BART station in Oakland where Grant had been killed on New Year’s morning to march to downtown Oakland did irreparable damage.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in abuse, African American, anti-racist action, police, racism | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on January 16, 2009
Prachanda among Maoist soldiers
The following appeared in the Indian publication Maoist Information Bulletin #5
Continuing political crisis in Nepal now affects the ruling CPN(Maoist)
According to newspaper reports appearing in the last week of October the ruling CPN(M) is embroiled in a severe inner-Party strugge. A serious debate was said to have taken place at a CC meeting held in October on issues concerning the future direction of the Party and the State. Majority of the leading body were said to be opposing the line pursued by Prachanda and Bhattarai. The Party will hold a national conference from November 10 to decide the issues by majority vote.
According to reports, one of the senior most leaders of the Party, comrade Mohan Biadhya, popularly known by the name of Kiran, is leading the struggle against Prachand’s line. The struggle between the two factions in the CPN(M)–one described as that of moderates led by FinanceMinster Baburam Bhattarai and the other termed as hardliners led by Mohan Baidhya–was said to have erupted openly in last July itself when a group of cadres loyal to Bhattarai attacked Netra Bikram Chand alias Biplav, a prominent member of Baidhya faction. Baidhya faction alleged that the attack was organised by Prabhu Shah, a stanch suporter of Bhattari. After the incident the two factions drifted further apart. Two meetings were organised in Birgunj by the two factions separately to commemorate the death anniversary of the party leader Ram Brikshya Yadav.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> communist politics, communism, Communist Party, CPI(Maoist), India, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Marxist theory, Naxalite, Nepal, peoples war, Prachanda, UCP Nepal (Maoist), UCP Nepal (Maoist) | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on January 16, 2009
thanks to Eddie Lang for sharing this report.
Jewish activists chain themselves to Israeli Consulate building
January 14, 2009 (Los Angeles Times)
Demanding an end to military action in Gaza, eight to 10 Jewish activists chained themselves this morning to the Israeli Consulate building on Wilshire Boulevard.
Other activists who were not chained to the building walked in a circle outside the consulate, chanting: “Let Gaza live! End the siege now.” One of the signs they carried read: “The Israeli consulate has been closed for war crimes.”
Hannah Howard, a spokeswoman for the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, which is conducting the protest, said demonstrators chained themselves to the front steps of the building at 8:30 a.m. and that two others blocked the walkway. Several more stood in front of the driveway on Wilshire Boulevard to prevent cars from entering and exiting. About 50 protesters participated in the demonstration, she said.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Israel, Palestine | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on January 14, 2009
Posted in >> analysis of news | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on January 14, 2009
Thanks to Indy Bay
Jose wrote:
“i don’t know if you heard, the BART cop that killed Oscar Grant was arrested last night. The powers that be are playing it as always: arresting one of their own to try and convince that its only about “bad apples” and that no more rebellions are needed because the “justice” systems works.”
Oakland on Fire
Anarchists, Solidarity, and New Possibilities in the Oakland Rebellion
By Kara N. Tina
“I’m sorry my car was burned but the issue is very upsetting.”
-Ken Epstein, assistant editor of the Oakland Post,
who was finishing an article about Grant’s death,
watched from the 12th story of his office at 14th and Franklin streets
as his 2002 Honda CR-V disintegrated
in a roar of flames (Oakland Tribune)
The murder of Oscar Grant by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer Johannes Mehserle early New Year’s morning sent a wave of grief throughout the Bay Area and reminded all that racism and police violence continue to be endemic components of US society. During the following days, that pain transformed into overflowing anger as multiple videos of the execution recorded by witnesses emerged on the internet and in the media. One week later on January 7, over a thousand people from diverse communities across Oakland and the Bay Area gathered to show their anger and be in the presence of others feeling similar grief. This hastily planned rally shut down the Fruitvale BART station where the shooting took place as speaker after speaker addressed the crowd. Without any plan or organization, the vast majority of those who patiently listened to speakers for over two hours took the demonstration into the streets with a spirited march that made its way towards downtown as the sun set.
As the march reached the Lake Merritt BART station and headquarters of BART police downtown, clashes immediately broke out leaving one police cruiser destroyed alongside a burning dumpster. Marchers dispersed down side streets to the sounds of police weapons discharging and the sting of tear gas in the air. The following hours witnessed waves of rioting and demonstrations throughout downtown Oakland that even forced Mayor Ron Dellums to come out into the streets and promise the opening of a homicide investigation in a failed attempt to subdue the angry crowds. Hundreds of businesses and cars were damaged or destroyed and dumpsters were left burning. The next day, a BART board of directors meeting was filled beyond capacity and overwhelmed with community members expressing indignant rage, clearly feeling validated and empowered to speak up by the previous night’s rebellion.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in African American, anti-racist action, police | 11 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 14, 2009
This continues a discussion started in “The RCP’s Debt to Louis Althusser: Why It Matters.” It is also intended as a beginning response to Bill Martin’s “recoil theory” regarding the RCP’s intensified self-encapsulation, which I believe, to put it crudely, misreads Avakian’s declared intentions to “engage” and under-estimates the long-standing contention within the RCP over methodological line.
This is about what is a synthesis and how do we get one. It is about reconception, and how communists do it. What can we learn from (say) queer theory, or cultural studies, in addition to the works and experiences of other communists? And how should concepts and insights of others be (critically) assimilated in our analyses (or in our most basic theory itself)?
“I think Althusser’s concepts were included in the RCP’s 1984 book America In Decline because Ray Lotta (one of the co-authors) thought these concepts were valuable (even necessary). I think they went unacknowledged because full acknowledgment would have gone against the concept of Marxism and synthesis that Avakian was already then formulating. Avakian’s conception of Marxism’s development and leaps — first laid out in Mao’s Immortal Contributions, then elaborated explicitly in For a Harvest of Dragons has very little room, conceptually, for the engagement or indebtedness to radical thinkers outside the most narrowly defined ‘international communist movement.’”
By Mike Ely
Old Mole wrote in a separate thread:
“The ‘Spiral-Conjuncture’ theory was touted by Raymond Lotta as a major contribution to Marxism and gave rise to his famous bathroom anecdote as an attempt to humanize ‘The Chairman’.
It is astounding that anyone ever took it seriously. Sure pokes hole in ‘Lotta’s’ pretensions as a major Marxist intellectual. History is not a spiral – that’s a bad graphical representation. The whole idea that history could be plotted as a line on a 3 dimensional Cartesian grid and the properties of the line-on-the-grid then analyzed to tell how the history of the world was going to develop was ridiculous from the start.”
In a way I’m glad the Old Mole wrote this comment, because it prods me to get more deeply into this — starting with why I don’t agree with this Old Mole’s comment.
1) i think that Ray Lotta (and Frank Shannon who co-wrote America in Decline) made a serious and necessary effort at analysis of the U.S. social formation. They were trying to understand the connection between international crises and the possibility of revolution in the U.S. Without appreciating that seriousness, the whole following arguments are not worth discussing.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Bob Avakian, communism, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Mike Ely, Raymond Lotta, RCPUSA | 41 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 14, 2009
Iran Map
There has been considerable debate in an accompanying thread, over what stand Iranian communists should take if the U.S./Israeli military were to stage a major war. Progressive Iranians have forwarded us the following article, which helps discuss the stand on the Communist Party of Iran (MLM) much more clearly — i.e. based on a common opportunity to actually read their articulated views. As always, the posting of such a piece does not represent any specific endorsement of facts or analysis by Kasama itself.
The following article is slightly abridged from the November 2007 issue of Haghighat ( issue number 36), organ of the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist). (Note: This article is over a year old, and so doesn’t deal with more recent developments, including the contradictions surrounding the change in U.S. leadership or the speculations concerning possible Israeli attack during the now-ending U.S. presidential transition.)
PUBLIC OPINION FABRICATION AND MILITARY DEPLOYMENT FOR A HORRENDOUS WAR
By Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist)
The US has started a new round of propaganda inside as well as outside US in order to justify a military attack against Iran. The Iran issue and the U.S. threats against her constantly fill up the top of international headline news and the U.S. tags Iran as the “Greatest Security Threat against America.” Most importantly, the Naval, Air and Ground forces have completed their warfare logistical preparations, targets of their bombings and missiles are already set. Moreover, vicious paramilitary forces are being trained and organized by the “Special Forces” of Israel and the US inside the oppressed nationality areas of Iran. These paramilitary forces are prepared to carry out outrageous crimes when the war starts with the aim of confusing and frightening the masses, and paralyzing the revolutionary forces.
Many people are wondering if this time around the U.S. will carry out its threats in reality and begin its attack in Iranian soil. This question has a simple answer: The political, diplomatic and military activities of the US expose its will of military attack on Iran. It is rolling its internal and international policies on this very basis. Hence, there is no reason for us to, alike the Islamic Republic officials, put people into sleep saying that these military and diplomatic activities of the US is just a show off.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Iran, Israel, Maoism, peoples war, revolution, Sarbedaran | 4 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 13, 2009
The future stretches on for a long time
by Mike E
Gary’s discussion of U.S. Israeli policy raises the idea that we need to consider the relative autonomy of ideas, policies, and decisions operating within the frameworks of specific social formations and specific class societies. We may identify (or think we have identified) the interests of a specific ruling class (say, in regard to the middle east) — but the leap from that presumed interest to the enacted policies should not be seen or expected in a direct, reductionist, or linear way. Often political bodies make decisions that are at odds with what we might perceive their interests to be, sometimes they disagree internally over what their interests are, sometimes they are caught in political conundrums that force decisions that are (from their class interests) short-sighted or flawed. And sometimes political bodies make decisions that can be seen (with hindsight especially) to have been suicidal (such as Napoleon’s or Hitler’s decisions to invade Russia, or countless other fiascos large and small). George Bush himself is a living monument to the fact that leading political representatives high in the power structure don’t necessarily (or directly) reflect the best ”interests” of the class or system they serve. there is a lot of play for ideology, personality and accident in the way things actually work out.
Bob H then comments:
“This question to my mind suggests some validity to the ‘four networks’ model of power proposed by sociologist Michael Mann. As outlined here, this states that power structures are composed of overlapping networks in the ideological, economic, military and political realm. There seems to be some relevance to the critique of historical materialism as too narrow, at least in this instance, where ideology seems to trump economic and political factors. Anyone know of any Marxist critiques of this approach?”
Surely Ideas Often Trump Economics (in Many Specific Moments)
I would like to urge readers to look at three rather famous discussions of how and when ideology “trumps” economic and political factors.
A point in passing: Marxism is often portrayed as identical to the most turgid economic determinism — as if marxism say “money and economic interests explain why people do anything — and explains politics, wars, revolutions etc.” And then, it is quite common to see a “criticism of marxism” based on propping up that straw man.
Just to be clear (and to restate what is obvious to many): Marxism (and historical materialism) does NOT hold that the economic always “trumps” the ideological.
It says that the relations of production and the forces of production form an influencial “base” of human societies, upon which develps the framework which human politics and ideas find their context and constraints.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, >> Kasama Project, communism, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Mike Ely, Raymond Lotta, RCPUSA | 11 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 13, 2009
Louis Althusser
by Mike Ely
The revolutionary philosopher Louis Althusser‘s early body of work had an impact on my generation of Maoists in the U.S. and Europe — at least among the more theoretically inclined. Many of Althusser’s concepts (like overdetermination of contradiction, conjuncture, social formation, epistemological break, problematic) found their way into our thoughts and work over the decades that followed.
However it was considered inappropriate in my organization, the Revolutionary Communist Party,USA. to acknowledge any debt to Althusser as a theoretician.
This comes out sharply in regard to the book American In Decline: An Analysis of the Developments Toward War and Revolution, in the U.S. and Worldwide, in the 1980s (AID, published 1984).
AID was the RCP’s flagship attempt at a world theory and a political economy — and in creating its structure and conception, the authors (or at least Raymond Lotta, if not Frank Shannon) borrowed heavily and consciously from Althusser’s Reading Capital. Althusser penetrating “read” of Marx’s method appears in the way AID goes from abstract to concrete — and it is there in key terminology of AID, including the use of “conjuncture” and “social formation” which were so closely associated with Althusser’s project. These concepts had worked their way deep into many communist discussions of the 70s and 80s.
Other theorists were influential in AID as well — certainly Lenin, and Mao, but also the world system theorists, like Immanuel Wallerstein.
Althusser appeared in other contexts to: When the RCP wrote polemical works opposing humanist Marxism, our arguments were simply lifted whole cloth from Althusser’s analysis of Marx’s “epistemological break.” And then, more recently, the RCP lifted Althusser’s famous term “epistemological break” again — this time to bestow it as an olive wreath on Avakian’s new synthesis.
And all that is as it should be of course — how could our communist theorizing not stand on the shoulders of others? Why should we not be deeply engaged with the other radical theorists of our times? Why shouldn’t communists borrow and adapt new concepts from other fields and from other intellectual trends? (Althusser, by the way, adopted “epistemlogical break” from Gaston Bachelard’s work on leaps in science and borrowed “overdetermination” from Freud.)
What stands out is that such intellectual debts are largely unknown around the RCP, and deliberately so.
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Posted in Bob Avakian, communism, Louis Althusser, Mao Zedong, Mike Ely, Prachanda, theory, UCP Nepal (Maoist) | 12 Comments »
