The Kasama Project: Walk the revolutionary road with us
Posted by kasama on October 12, 2011
“Above all: Let’s consciously go for the whole thing. The change we want is about taking the accumulated wealth, technology, hard work, science, and connections of a complex global civilization — and finally (finally!) putting it into the service of us all, including the very least and previously powerless among us. It is about the voiceless suddenly speaking, and the wealthy suddenly becoming silent.”
From “It is five minutes to dawn and the wind smells like freedom”
In a world of profound economic crisis and war without end, the times cry out for a revolutionary new politics and direction.
Millions are realizing that radical solutions are needed.
For too long the Tea Party crackpots and militia racists were virtually the only audible voices that spoke to radical sentiments and needs.
Large parts of the previous Left felt trapped — repelled by the ugly Right, pressured to chase “lesser evils,” unable to speak their deepest desires and dreams.
We need to forge an alternative to all of that.
This system is unfixable. It was founded in slavery and genocide. It is not possible for oppressed people to “take America back” — we never had it.
This system thrives day-to-day only through the exploitation in sweatshops, mines, agribusiness plantations and shantytowns all around the world. We don’t want a way back in.We don’t want a seat at that table.
The end of this world is the beginning of the new. Everything will change. How it changes is up to us.
We don’t support Obama, the president from Goldman Sachs. We don’t want to whisper in his ear. Or be trapped by the politics of petty reform and repulsive business-as-usual — defined by drones, wars, unemployment lines, the corrupt rule of money, and deepening serfdom to corporations.
We don’t want tactical advice from liberal pundits on “how to appeal to Middle Americans.” We intend reach the people ourselves (especially the youth of ghettos, barrios, campuses and high schools — including in “Middle America”) with a potent subversive message that won’t compute in the calculators of this system.
A serious, creative political break is needed. To throw our hearts into that, we have formed Kasama over the last three years.
Kasama is first of all a communist project.
By that we mean: The problems of humanity require communism – a global change that passes through the radical overthrow of a society of rich and poor, the development of a socialist sustainability to save the biosphere, the liberation of women from ancient subordination, the final overthrow of racist oppressions in the U.S., the vicious demonization of same-sex relationships, an abrupt end to this militarized empire (its global networks of mercenary forces, its torture camps and endless wars), the social takeover of monster banks and corporations — all of which requires radically new forms of democratic control by previously powerless people.
Humanity is now able to free itself from from the restless, soulless rule of capitalist profit making. If we succeed, we face the possibility of a new historical epoch of mutual flourishing.
We are seeking to contribute to this. Join us in this work.
For that reason, we are actively trying to put communism onto center stage — as a necessary goal, as a fresh idea, as something that defines what is done now and at each stage. And (needless to say) that is unacceptable (!) to those bankers and empire builders who insist they are “too big to fail” (or who insist that their own enrichment is the necessary prerequisite for any economic motion.) And it is also often startling for the millions of people awakening to political life — and whose discontent and anger still not yet found a name or a goal to be its focus. We want to speak the words that need to be spoken.
We think this is especially important because it is insisted (on many levels) that no alternative to capitalism is possible — that any attempt leads to chaos, despair, disillusionment or a worsening of human conditions. This is fundamentally wrong and a lie: Without a radical departure from capitalism — toward a radical egalitarianism on a world scale, toward a destruction of oppressive empires and parasitic corporations — the future of humanity will be dark and bitter.
We believe like the famous closing words of the Communist Manifesto: The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the overthrow of all existing oppressive social conditions.
We are building Kasama to serve as a catalyst. We seek to build a clear communist and internationalist pole within a larger revolutionary movement.
For that Kasama has to be refreshingly new and shockingly revolutionary — in how we organize ourselves, in how we speak among the people, in how we understand the goals and means of revolution, and in how we engage the ideas of others.
Organizationally we are organized in collectives in several cities, and a number of non-geographic work groups (our theoretical projects, common work on South Asia’s revolutions, investigative/reporting work teams, and our moderator teams).
Our network is young. The road stretches out before us all. Join in.
Learning, listening, creating revolutionary strategy
At this point, there are two painful absences facing oppressed and discontent people in the U.S.: the absence of a clear revolutionary strategy for this moment and this society, and the absence of a creative determined revolutionary organization that can learn and lead. The whole point of forming our Kasama Project is to make a contribution to filling those voids — by engaging in the deep waters of political action and revolutionary theory.
The project has expanded into a network of revolutionaries and collectives in many cities across the U.S.
Kasama intends to identify those fault lines where radical thought and action can emerge. We want to go deeply among the people to prepare minds and organize forces for revolution.
At the same time, much remains to be fleshed out.
Any real-life revolution is a many-to-many engagement among diverse currents and interests, not a one-to-many assertion of authority and conformity.. It requires a deep engagement with the people and problems of this moment and a profound creative process involving those just awakening to political life.
An emerging revolutionary movement in the U.S. can’t be envisioned out of thin air or dictated by old formulas. It has to arise from that generation of serious young revolutionaries now emerging — stamped by their experiences and invention.
Put another way: One old socialist movement was famous for saying “the movement is everything the final goal is nothing.” Kasama says (by contrast) “the final goal is our start, the ways of moving there are still emerging for us.”
Help expand our new organizing and theoretical projects. Let’s reconceive as we regroup in the intensifying storm.
A politics that can learn and create
This is a moment that demands some non-messianic humility from revolutionaries. We need a movement that can listen, as well as speak. Kasama strains to make real contributions. And there may be contributions that only we can make. But we expect much from many other people. And we expect to do much together with others.
We urge those eager to walk the road of revolution, to join us in igniting a fearless, open-eyed debate, discussion and engagement — and seek to build that into a creative frisson of new politics. We offer a space for this — our Kasama website. — and are eager to participate in the spaces (online and in the streets) that emerge.
We are seeking to actively investigate and understand key revolutionary experiences around our world today. We have set aside time and effort to promote new theoretical explorations and thinking — within a left that is too often on autopilot. And we are trying to bring that with us as we dive into the deep waters of today’s emerging movements against mistreatment and capitalism in the U.S.
For more:
Click for >>>>>Come walk the revolutionary road with us. [pdf format, mp3 podcast]
Click for >>>>> Kasama Reading Clusters — essays, theory debate
Click for >>>>> Essays translated
Click for >>>>> Key writings in pamphlet form
Click for >>>>> Our discussions and criticisms of Obama and the Democratic party
Click for >>>>> Share Kasama: Bring the network with y0u
Redical said
Inspiring. I especially like the beginning part in bold. I am going to join a group of students on my campus to go Occupy some large cities in my state.
Kasama has been one of my major news sources over the past year or so and it has been immensely inspiring to me to continue to be a revolutionary with the coverage of revolutionary events in SouthAsia and now the events in America.
But now I can finally take part in something. The Occupy Together movement is young and ideologically all over the place.
I am going to go to the streets and bring the revolutionary communist ideology with me. I will argue against these imperialist wars the U.S. government is waging across the world. I will argue for holding the capitalist class responsible for the exploitation of this country and the rest of the world. I will argue that the reformist and liberal approaches to changing society are hopeless.
Thank you Kasama for being a motivating revolutionary group in a country full of political apathy. Time to do as Mao said and put theory into practice and to learn from the masses.
Equalize said
I like this.
I would like to sharpen the “fresh idea” part and raise “communism” in that context. We know that we are up against, if not the exhaustion, then the burden of the term “communism” stemming from the distortions and attacks of capital as well as the errors of the world communist movement as it has matured.
Maybe, we should raise the role of the cultural revolution in the 1968 world mass upheavals. That communists are for mobilizing and enabling the the broad masses to transform society. That Mao said “bombard the headquarters”. The course of the Cultural Revolution, the maoist concept of the mass line, and maoism itself speak to the sentiments of the people coming into motion now (particularly the more radical, but the liberal too). Maybe we could put this in the context of the fresh wave of maoist led upheavals and uprisings internationally. Maoism is the “fresh” part of communism and it is that which will resonate better with the target audience. I think that this perspective not only more truly represents us, but it will open us to better reception.
Much of the document brings out this idea pretty concretely in the context of our struggle today. But, the initial introduction of the term “communism” seems stale and wooden to me. And, this is a key point – it is what makes us different from the ossified sects and a sharper presentation of our fresh perspective will have much more impact.
I want, in our target reader’s mind, our presentation of communism to be fresh and to cut against the burdens of the term. If I had a better formulation that did this, I would put it out now. But, I don’t like any concrete words that I am able to put together much better than what you have done. I understand the concept of fetish of the word and I don’t think that this is that. I understand that it might appear that this comment stems from a fear to openly be communist and I don’t think it is that either. I want this statement to effectively present communism as a “fresh idea” on initial presentation. I don’t want our target to react to our presentation of communism as stale and have to read it more closely to get over that.
Here is a first shot at what I am talking about. Just before the subheading “Kasama is first of all a communist project”, put something like:
“In Indonesia, India, Nepal, Peru and around the world, people are rising against their oppression and are being inspired by the fresh conceptions of communism inspired by maoism. The experience of the Cultural Revolution and concepts like new democracy, mass line and, in general, maoist philosophy, strategy, tactics and world view are helping to change the world and give insight to revolutionaries here in the United States.”
Simon Bolivar Electronic Brigade said
If you’re a revolutionary whom can’t walk the revolutionary road towards the emancipation of the proletariat you’re bound to fall along the way, we need more comrades who are willing to walk this road and live on this road and push for alternatives for the proletariat. We need comrades who can ditch the dogmatism, reformism and simplicity of the past in the interests of building a revolutionary alternative. We need revolutionaries that focus on ideological base areas in order to build forth the proletarian revolution of our time. Because if we don’t have these revolutionaries on our side, we’re going to lose valuable time and losing valuable time for a revolutionary is a defeatist position and just not an option. I’m ready to walk the revolutionary road… Are you?
Red Fly said
One small criticism.
If something is broken then at some point in the past it must have been unbroken. Given that this system was founded in slavery and genocide, that it was never “of the people, by the people, for the people,” given the fact that “we never had it,” it can hardly be said that it’s broken. (Yes, bourgeois democracy was and is an advance over colonial monarchy, but we must never forget that the bourgeois revolution in this country was carried through by settler usurpers who layed the groundwork for bourgeois revolution through genocidal primitive accumulation.)
A lot of white progressives argue that this system worked in the past and point to the four decades of New Deal governing consensus as proof of this, but what they too often fail to acknowledge in making this argument is that although it may have been better for them, for black and brown people it was much worse, as segregation both
held sway, and most of fruit harvested from that time through the struggle of the oppressed was delivered to the white man’s plate (except for perhaps a brief period from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s, when the major legal gains of the Civil Rights era were being consolidated and economic gains were accruing rapidly to people of color.)
We should always strive to be mindful of the dangers of legitimizing through the use of deceptively innocuous language a false image of the past, an image used by the rulers of this system to demarcate the “acceptable” boundaries for the voicing of dissent and demands and to advance the claim that “the system works” despite all evidence to the contrary. (I myself have at times fallen into this trap of unwittingly legitimizing this system in this way.)
We don’t want a “new New Deal.” We don’t want to fix this system. We want to smash it and replace it with something worthy of humanity.
We the oppressed want to build a new world out of the ashes of the old one. Instead of using back burns to contain the growing world conflagration (by limiting our demands to reforming the system and herding radicalized people into the Democrat Party veal pen) we need to vigorously fan the flames. We must make clear to our oppressors that we will never be placated under their system and that what is acceptable to us is their total ruin and our total triumph.
Richard Kahn said
Solidarity with this communist political and educational project…
Harsh Thakor said
Please confirm the postal adress to send materials to Kasama ,which was earlier online.
Angelo D'Angelo said
Here we go again— a new generation of sincere socialist minded youth , who once again try to” invent the wheel” (for the first time (sic) right?) simply because they were completely unaware of the writtings of past revolutionary leaders who DID build a revolution in Russia in 1917. These youth who really no nothing of the Soviet experience because of massive anti-sovietism and anti-communism thruout the school system are now goiong to build “Communism” anew. What a shame that they don’t give themselves a chance to study the masters of Marxism and Leninism , pick up the torch of those who gave their lives in the past generation for our 99% working class majority and along with the world Communist Movement (which is alive, well and growing) ARE seriously LEADING hundreds of millions to overthrow Capitalism and replace it with the building of Socialism–the system (according to Marx) which heralds the way to the next step for human kind –Communism.
The illusions of building Communism from scratch (without Leninism) is not only absurd and infantile, but dangerous and a waste of precious time. The resulting disillusionment of those who see complete failure after walking down dead end roads (like the Kasama Project) will lose another generation of working class fighters to eternal apathy in the class struggle for social emancipation.
C said
“communism- …the final overthrow of racist oppressions in the U.S., the vicious demonization of same-sex relationships, an abrupt end to this militarized empire…”
This wording suggests that communism includes the “vicious demonization of same-sex relationships”. Perhaps “an end to the vicious demonization of same-sex relationships” would better represent your aspirations?
Mike E said
Angelo writes:
In fact, the revolutionary wheel is reinvented every time. There is no universal “wheel” we can just deploy as previously invented. Politics and conjunctures, the moment and the opening, are all highly particular.
Every revolution involved major components of reinvention. there is (and will always be) things to learn from the past (and it is a rich past from the first attempts at socialist revolution). But there is not some pre-existing Leninism that we simply need to “apply.” Revolution requires rupture and creation (and not merely in regard to old oppressive structures). Lenin himself was an iconoclast in many ways (and was condemned by the larger European socialist movement of his day for departures from their self declared Marxist orthodoxies, habits, formulas and assumptions.)
To reconceive communism, it is (as you say, Angelo) helpful to have a deep knowledge of the previous conception. But that doesn’t relieve any of us of the burden of invention.
Liga Comunistilor din Romania said
SALUDOS REVOLUCIONARIAS!
VIVA LA REVOLUCION PROLETARIA PERMANENTE!
VIVA TROTSKY,MAO,CHE GUEVARA!
Marin Trusca,co-presidente LCR
Hans-Ivan said
The devil is in the detail. Sociialists have defined neither the future state nor the details of the future economic order – it would be premature to do so, though it is clear that both must be fundamentally altered. The actual complexity of both precludes abrupt total change – change will be more rapid in top-level structures such as the federal government and finance, slower – more like an organic process – in state and municipal government, agriculture, manufacturing, and retail. Likewise it would be premature to choose or profess belief in one of the various radicalisms (socialism, anarchism, communism). What must unite radicals at this early stage is uncompromising opposition to imperialism and corporate hegemony. Here those of us who are Americans have a particular responsibility.
Roberto said
[moderator note: we have moved this comment to its own self-standing post.]