Application to join Kasama’s project: Creative engagement with the Communist hypothesis
Posted by kasama on October 27, 2011
“Kasama is an organization which seems as much open to influence and engagement as it is itself capable of influencing and engaging with movements such as our Occupation.”
“I feel that we must resist at all cost any efforts to make our vision overly concrete.
“This does not mean that you do not offer concrete solutions or easily communicated practical means of action. We should develop immediate strategy using all resources available.
“But overall, I like to point out how capitalism, in its own formation, never had any plan, any manifesto, or any vision of what it wanted to become.”
Many of you know Kasama as a space for broad discussion among revolutionary people. Over the last three years, there has also formed a national communist network that calls itself the Kasama project. It has a unity around the final goals of ending oppression and class society, but seeks to approach philosophical and strategic ideas afresh.
The Kasama project has grown as collectives have formed in various cities, and as individuals have found their various ways to participate in its national work.
Here is a recent letter applying for membership in the Kasama project.
We share it both because it gives a sense of what our project is about and because it adds its own distinctive flavor and contribution to our discussions.
by P.N.
If you split California into three parts I am from its northernmost portion, the least populated and poorest part of the state. You can start in Modoc and drive west for six hours to the ocean without ever confronting anything but the most abysmal, meth-stricken poverty. Aside from that there is simply forest, the shifting, mudsliding mountains and the violent rivers which swallow anything and spit it out into the Klamath, washing up boats and bodies in the large ebb near Weitchpec. I was raised in the mountains above the Scott River.
Here, there are hardly means of production to seize, since there is so little production aside from the marijuana crops and meth kitchens. The farmers receive all their profit from government subsidies. The mines are long abandoned and even the logging has mostly ceased.
In this scenario, we all begin with simple, panclastic rage.
Most who are raised there either leave immediately or get an insatiable taste for self-destruction. There is no logic of local injustice because there appears to be no injustice done, since it is so distant – since we are from the start so forsaken and there is from the beginning no fighting back. There is nothing near us to attack. Our enemies are invisible and distant, located in vague places with Spanish names along the coastline. But there is some benefit to this. If we can fight enough to recognize the struggle we are immediately predisposed to its international, universal character. There is no local fight to win and thus it can never become a simple campaign of reform towards socialism-just-for-us, because to have anything we must receive it from elsewhere.
The journey here
I started as an Anarchist and though I now accept other positions when it comes to types of centralization, use of political parties and immediate transitional models, I still feel that traditional social Anarchism is closer today to Communism than most of the concrete programs of Communisms of the 20th century. David Harvey has pointed out that today the left is most similar to what it was after the first split in the International (the split from mutualism/Proudhonism), but prior to the second split between the communists and Anarchists. This gives us the opportunity to again greet each other with open arms. To responsibly address our own failures and to this time finally fight together forever, as we should have done in the first place.
As a laborer, I’ve worked blue collar jobs, white collar jobs and black market jobs from California to Oregon, Wisconsin, Nevada and Thailand. Currently I work as a dishwasher and food prep assistant at a wholesale sandwich/salad company here in Seattle. It’s one of those petit-bourgeois start-ups that are nearly impossible to unionize, since the structural constraints and profit-obligations are almost entirely external to the management of the company. Though I’m a recent immigrant to the Seattle area, I’m learning its demographic character quickly. Our Occupation is in the heart of the whitest, wealthiest part of a city gentrified nearly to its official municipal borders.
Theory, fidelity, aesthetics and the Communist hypothesis
As a Communist, I believe nothing is more essential than good theory. I am utterly, fundamentally against the position held by some on the left that practice is all that matters and that it generates itself spontaneously through the will of the people or the workers. All practice has a theory, whether or not it is stated anywhere. All spontaneity is simply an emotive fantasy of capitalism unless tempered with the discipline of what Badiou calls fidelity and the thorough practice of an uncompromising kind that effective both in the realm of the symbolic and as an attack on ideology.
So the project right now is to first and foremost re-theorize our basic engagement with the Communist hypothesis.
Secondly, we must not be afraid to engage in the aesthetic renaissance which made the original communist experiments so appealing. It is too common to refuse irrationalist forms of evangelism by comparing them to the fascist propaganda machine (the aesthetics of which were, of course, co-opted from early communist movements) or to today’s capitalist marketing empire.
I believe that there are basic psychological dispositions produced by capitalism which make this form of propaganda effective. There is no reason why we cannot use it to bring people into the fold of critical reason.
Finally, I feel that we must resist at all cost any efforts to make our vision overly concrete. This does not mean that you do not offer concrete solutions or easily communicated practical means of action. We should develop immediate strategy using all resources available. But overall, I like to point out how capitalism, in its own formation, never had any plan, any manifesto, or any vision of what it wanted to become. The early capitalists simply began from a basic hypothesis, with a basic list of grievances against feudalism and Christianity and an even more rudimentary collection of legal and political changes designed to be viral and self-reproductive. What began in single cities such as Venice, Naples and Brussels, exploded across Europe into a unified, detailed critique of the existing power structure and the proposition of several seemingly moderate reforms in opposition to it.
Private property was the legal category posited as the negation of church and feudal dominionship, universal, right-based law as that opposed to clerical hierarchy and lex talionis. But each of these seemingly moderate reforms established the conditions under which both the theorization of capitalism could take place (under writers such as Smith and the early political economists) and the bourgeoisie revolutions could occur. In our re-thinking of Communism, then, I believe it is essential to search for these centers of gravity which can be tipped in our favor, rather than trying to illustrate an image of the city on the hill we are promising the people of the world.
I believe that Kasama gives a perfect outlet for this kind of work. It is an organization which seems as much open to influence and engagement as it is itself capable of influencing and engaging with movements such as our Occupation.
CWM said
When you say that this letter is “applying for membership in the Kasama project,” it suggests to me that some people are accepted and others are rejected as members. Is that true? I had always thought of Kasama as more informal—am I wrong about that? Is there a clear demarcation between members and non-members?
Mike E said
Kasama functions as an organized communist network you can join — if you feel an overall agreement with its work and core ideas.
I think PN captured something about the creative tension we are seeking when he wrote:
Membership started relatively informally. Now, people increasingly apply for membership when they want to join the collectives. This document is an application for membership in Kasama’s Red Spark collective in Seattle. I have not heard of anyone being rejected for membership — but that possibility is inherent in the idea of an application process.
Kasama has a long-standing common opposition to the previous model of mini-party “sect building” — and we are organizing ourselves around problems and reconception — not some quick rush to common program and ideology (which would represent a miscarriage of our goal of “reconceive as we regroup.”)
As part of the different organizational path we are attempting, we are working to help develop both broad open discussion among revolutionaries and evolving common theoretical and practical work among communists.
This Kasama space/site has developed an initial discussion space among revolutionaries — it is broad and open (and no “inside/outside” demarcation in that).
At the same time the organized Kasama network of communists had its founding meeting in April 2008 — which decided to organize as a network and decided to be founded on communist end goals. From then on there has been a beginning membrane between inside and outside. The process of becoming a member has been relatively informal, but the development of collectives has brought a process of joining that is more than simply self-declaration.
Kasama’s project now organizes events, publishes/distributes some common literature, maintains several websites, conducts internal discussions, is organizing journalistic investigative projects and has other beginnings of common practical work etc — all as part of making our common contribution toward “creating a communist pole within a larger, new revolutionary movement”).
All that requires some initial structure as a network. And it is involving some ongoing internal discussion of what we now mean by communist, and how we pursue our common goals. And not surprisingly that has developed as Kasama supporters have plunged into the occupations around the U.S. — and as we are sharing discussions of how to do communist work within broad radical openings.
Our emerging discussion of “where to go” (organizationally, theoretically, programaticaly) as communists also requires some sense of who will be in the deciding process that will emerge … we are trying to work toward a national Kasama conference and our internal discussion requires some emerging inside/outside distinction.
bezdomni said
CWM,
As I understand it, what she/he has written is a statement of unity with the Kasama project than it is an “application” in the proper sense.
By simply writing this thoughtful piece for Kasama, she/he has joined us on the revolutionary path.
This is just my (possibly mistaken) understanding though.
Alex said
Any way to contact the author?
Mike E said
Sure: write an email to our Kasama addy, and we will forward it.
Alex said
Done, thanks.
Len said
Maybe I’m missing something here. I have wanted to “apply” to the Kasama Project for some time, but I live in an area with no collective close to me and have been unable to find anything resembling any kind of membership information on the site. I have written an e-mail previously but never received a reply. Am I to assume that just being in overall agreement with the organizations’ work and core ideas a kind of membership or is there a more formal application process. I am still very interested in being a part of this group, could someone please clarify this for me?????
Mike E said
Write us. Persevere. We will discuss it with you.
Otto said
I agree with Len. My situation is similar. I’m about the only Maoist in this town even though there are a few, maybe 25, serious Marxist-Leninists.
So it is hard for any of us for form a functioning revolutionary group here. I do like Kasama however and would love to leave pamplhets about group at some of our Occupy Wichita events.
CWM said
Where are there Kasama collectives and what are they up to?
Harry Sims said
Mine is Occupying shit. You?
Otto said
OK…bottom line…I want to join this group and get some pamphlets I can distribute. I also want to join this group. I like what it is doing. Send me an application and I will send it back.