“…no form of organization is immune from degenerating into something awful.”
And he gives the example of the collapse of the Socialist Party (which he has been part of) — which was constructed along different (more loose and anarchic) lines than the mini-parties we have otherwise been discussing.
I think Chegitz’s point is true, and its implications are worth exploring.
And this includes forms like the commune or soviet forms of governance by representative mass democracy — which solve some problems, but exist in the context of dynamics that inevitably create new and ongoing problems. And it is true for the vanguard party, both in the forms we are familiar with, but also in future forms of core organization that we might imagine or build.
Pointing out the organizational problems with previous mini-parties (and their peculiar versions of democratic centralism) also does not mean there is are necessarily organizational solutions to those problems.
If you have evidence of a form of organization producing troubling dynamics — the solution may involve some other form of organization, but let’s not assume that changes of form provide some simple, definitive corrective.
There may be better forms (political procedures, habits, structures) — better for our purposes, better for our particular moment or our current stage of development — but the solution (to becoming exhausted, uncreative, marginalized, ossified, cultish, even corrupt) isn’t necessarily (or simply) to imagine some pre-figured and presumably immune alternative form(s).
The ideas of the rank-and-file are more than just raw material for leadership decision-making. Democracy involves elements of real power and ongoing accountability.
by Mike Ely
How should communists and revolutionaries be organized? Even asking that ruffles some feathers — since some communist currents have considered this a “settled question.”
Well, we should un-settle it — problematize it — for the simple reason that the idea of a single “universalized” model of revolutionary organization has been a bad idea.
Its flaws and illusions have been revealed over the last decades — including in the grandiosity and self-delusion of various small self-declared “parties” within the U.S.
There are a number of issues involved — which we are only starting to touch on. But for now, we are exploring the communist organizational concept of “democratic centralism” (DC) — both what it means and whether it should be embraced as a common approach.
We have discussed how it got “settled” in the discussions of the new-born Third Communist International (between 1921 and 1924) and how the form of democratic centralism was further modified — especially in the “Bolshevization” campaigns of the late 1920s.
Now, Let’s go beyond the historical question of how specific organizational structures and processes got codified (“settled”) — let’s explore some of the concepts that pass as “settled,” their justifications and lessons.
Our project is starting to produce its collections as e-books — in formats suitable for both Amazon’s Kindle and B&N’s Nook. (Thanks to Enzo for this great work of design and conversion.)
Here are our first two Kasama e-books. More to come.
In addition, volunteer to help expand these offerings:
Help us test these files — where do they work? Where don’t they work?
Help us by writing clear instructions for downloading. (Send them in, we will post them for readers on a new e-reader page)
Help us get them posted on as many e-book resources as possible.
Help get our many other writings and pamphlets converted to e-reader formats.
Help us develop a list of online communist ebook resources (just post links in this thread).
Let us know if you volunteer for any of these tasks.
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Out of the Red Closet:
Gay and Lesbian Experiences in the Previous Communist Movement
While we are discussing e-books, why don’t we share here (with each other) other available revolutionary ebook sources — starting with contributions made available by our comrades at the Marxist Internet Archives.
“We need the political judgement that comes from a capacity for integrating a vast amalgam of constantly changing, multicolored, evanescent perpetually overlapping data.”
“We have to actually know this shimmering, dancing world in the course of actually fighting to end its many horrors. We are in many ways at a fresh start.”
by Mike Ely
Elections are when this ugly system chooses its leaders. Their candidates create a simplistic facade to engage relatively apolitical sections of the people — like Romney (a lifelong politician) mascarades as “a businessman who knows how to create jobs.”
Meanwhile, in a relatively separate but decisive process, the ruling apparatchiks of this system (its political establishments, moneybags and media) debate which of the various political figures they should actually entrust with an empire. From the beginning (clearly) they decided that Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Ron Paul were unsuitable for the actual presidency — such people were were allowed to play a popularizing role, but never give the credibility to contend for power.
I ran across an interesting passage in this ruling class discussion of suitability. An essay by the British Liberal theorist Isaiah Berlin defines political judgment as:
“a capacity for integrating a vast amalgam of constantly changing, multicolored, evanescent perpetually overlapping data.”
“A president with political judgment has a subtle feel for the texture of his circumstance. He has a feel for where opportunities lie, what will go together and what will never go together.”
Brooks argues such a “feel” emerges from a deep knowledge of people and processes (in the conventional terrain of power and policy).
He says it comes from “a rich repertoire of experiences” and from “voracious social contact.”
“It comes to leaders who have a compulsive desire to be around people and who can harvest from a million social encounters a sense of what people want and can deliver.”
Wandering to our own choices
As I read this, my mind went (as it often does) to the problems of rebuilding a revolutionary movement — and (as it often does) to the problems we have inherited from our own immediate past.
I have a sense that we have to fight to regain a grip on two things:
A great many of us attracted to revolutionary politics in the U.S. (and similar “developed” countries) often see radical change through the prism of our surrounding society — where feudalism has been largely absorbed into capitalist agriculture, and where only a small-and-declining proportion of the working classes are on the land.
So when revolutionaries in the third world (for example: India, Nepal, Peru, Turkey) talk of the political tasks facing both communists and the people because of major feudal elements — the discussion often seems a bit strange. Their discussion involves problems of genuine national independence, village-level land reform, basic industrial development, basic infrastructure (roads, sewage, electrification…), ending the patriarchy of peasant life… burning questions that aren’t concerns of any revolutionary movement in the U.S.
And meanwhile the face of the Third World is changing — rapidly — with profound implications for the politics, economics and revolutions of today’s world. Islands of imperialist-style production (and even social structures with broad bourgeoisified strata etc.) are emerging in former colonial areas and anchoring regional markets — within South Africa, Bangalore in India, Singapore in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Shanghai in China, even in their own way, Israel and Dubai within the still impoverished Middle East. And tremendous transformations are happening in third world agriculture — including capitalist development (dams, factories) and capitalist farming that are changing the face of village life and provoking powerful resistance.
S0, for many reasons, revolutionaries in the U.S. need to understand the conditions, theories and history of Third World revolution. I want to open the discussion here by simply sketching some ongoing controversies and peeling back to show some ways they affect our global political unities and theoretical challenges.
Capitalism or socialism: Two roads in the poorer countries
Jan Makandal gave us one place to start when he wrote in a nearby discussion:
“A theoretical error made by the proponents of the bourgeois revolution stage, they identify two antagonistic modes of productions capitalism, however deformed and dominated it is, and feudalism as two modes of productions existing equally thus the concept of semi. This identification is a mechanical approach of contradictions. In the reality contradictory phenomenon always exist in struggle, even on their relative correspondence, and the objective of these struggle are for dominance and annihilation of the opposite and as materialist we do need to understand all the prevailing tendencies to understand the direction and the path this annihilation is going and mostly qualitatively. For example, most of those feudal landlords are heavily indebted to capitalist. For me even in most of those social formation feudalism is strong but it is stagnant as well and capitalism is deformed, dominated but emerging.
“So inside these social formation I would not deduct that they are semi feudal and semi capitalism but recognize the existence of these two modes of productions and as well recognize capitalism as dominant and making it the dominant elements to deal with into those social formations. Concluding no to bourgeois revolutions, an opportunist and revisionist political line but yes to a revolution under the leaderships of the proletariat.”
Jan is (i believe) critiquing a concept Mao developed– “semifeudal semicolonial” — which Mao used to describe conditions in China in the 1920s and 1930s, and which have since been applied(by Maoists) to other countries in the Third World. Mao’s initial analysis was an important breakthrough — in ways that will become clear. And it is still a controversial one today — for reasons that Jan makes clear.
I welcome that Jan is broaching these questions… and i want to address some points he raises.
So lets start here: So what does this mean, “semifeudal, semicolonial,” and what kind of a strategic revolutionary road has that been connected with over the last century? And how does it relate to the changing forms of global oppression today?
One of the most remarkable events on the Kasama site during the summer of 2011 has been the outpouring of discussion over the treatment of gay people in the previous communist movement.
Libri Devrim opened the door with her piece “My life in a red closet” – a heartfelt remembrance written with deliberate restraint.
There was a heartening outpouring of interest, experience and discussion. Kasama published several different, unsolicited new posts.
“To put it crudely: I think some views of socialism are barely modified versions of capitalism — and are not very attractive, and will not solve the problems of humanity.
“I’m not against uniting with people who hold those other views. Far from it! But I do resist assuming (without much exploration) that we believe in the same thing.”
By Mike Ely
Sophielux made a simple and understandable request:
“Could you help bring me up to speed by defining several of the terms frequently used on this site?”
Part of our task is creating a common language and we are far away from that. Examining most of our terms doesn’t reveal settled verdicts but real differences and vexing problems.
I would like to take the familiar term “socialism”as one example:
One of my problem with adopting “socialism” or “anti-capitalism” as some unifying framework is that quite diverse forces mean quite different things by these terms.
And part of my argument for a consciously-descriptive consciously-jargon-free discussion of goals (visions) is precisely to circumvent that problem. I have tried in a number of places, including the recent seven or eight points, to give a sense of what that kind of public presentation could start from.
What is this intended to mean? How is it actually read by others?
by Mike Ely
CWM wrote:
“I find it confusing to read ‘We declare fidelity to communist theory.’ Given that there are literally dozens of different (and often contradictory) variants of communist theory, what could it possibly mean to declare fidelity to communist theory as such?”
Equalize writes in another thread a kind of answer:
“I’M A MAOIST. I think that it is sharp, fresh and real to be a Maoist. I feel good saying I am a Maoist. I‘m proud to be a Maoist. I am proud to be a conscious revolutionary person, and, when speaking to people that respect that, I am proud to call myself a Maoist. I can defend Mao and Maoism and am eager to do so, especially with awakened and conscious people. Maoism is not just the highest expression of internationalism and communism, Maoism is the part of communism that is most sharp, most fresh, and most true.”
My response in reading this is first to agree with Equalize. I too am a Maoist.
But my second thought: Which of many existing Maoisms are you suggesting we defend and uphold?
My third response moves even further away: Is even “the best” of inherited or existent Maoism sufficient (either as banner or guide) for our tasks?
Can you explain our final goals in a contemporary way?
What would you say?
Write yours below — – in the length of a tweet.
Let’s compare and contrast.
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by Mike Ely
We can now often present communism to a generation relatively disentangled from the cold war — and even from direct, immediate reference to previous “real existing socialism.” We can reclaim communism’s global, visionary, communal and experimental-utopian qualities. We have that opportunity. And we have that necessity. Read the rest of this entry »
This piece is available as podcast. It is part of our larger Kasama offerings on peoples’ history.
The Puritan colonists of Massachusetts embraced a line from Psalms 2:8:
“Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”
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by Mike Ely
Intro to that first occupation
We are talking widely among ourselves about “occupying” Wall Street — taking the center of an empire back for the people of the world. We are talking about “Occupy Everything” — sharing our dreams of taking all society away from banks, police, and the heartless authority of money. We hope this moment marks a beginning of the end for them.
And yet, just such a moment cannot be understood without remembering that other occupation — the one that marked the beginning of their beginning.
Arrogant invaders occupied a land using the most naked forms of genocide. They invented new forms of slavery, slave trade and profit making. They arrived with their high-tech arms and bibles. They declared all was theirs by divine right, while they took it all with raw force.
Put another way: That first occupation was a sweeping nightmare that starts with Columbus. It has continued for 500 years. For the Native peoples of today (and therefore for us too) it remains an ongoing story of domination and removal. The nation-state who today labels millions of indigenous descendants “illegal aliens” arrived in boats with only royal decrees and their holy book as documents of legitimacy.
Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England.
Here is the true story of that Thanksgiving — a story of murder and theft, of the first “corporations” invented on North American soil, of religious fundamentalism and relentless mania for money. It is a story of the birth of capitalism.
This piece is intended to be shared at this holiday time.
Pass it on. Serve a little truth with the usual stuffing.
“When words are spoken that (suddenly! finally!) invoke that idea of negating a whole system or structure (i.e. “Occupy Everywhere!” “All power to the General Assembly!” “Long live the Oakland Commune!”) — every nerve should go on alert. We should tune in intently to the reception.
“Who is speaking? Who is listening? Who is answering back?…
“We should take note as the stone hits the pond, and read the ripples. Because we are wanting to generate waves.”
Any complex human task, (any!) requires that you speak the words quite a bit in advance of the actual moment, in order to be able to act when the actual alignment of stars is “just right.” And you often have to speak them with poetry that won’t hold up to lawyerly textualism (“We want the world and we want it now!” or one of my favorite Pantherisms “Blood to the horse’s brow, and woe to those who cannot swim.”)
If you think about it: Any revolutionary cause needs contagious agitational slogans the preconfigure in the mind the visions and goals that will (eventually, hopefully) give rise to action slogans.
That is how ideas change matter: When revolutionary ideas become grasped (understood, taken up and creatively morphed) by large numbers of people, matter itself is changed (meaning that social relations are overthrown and their defenders are challenged and defeated).
Nous sommes à cinq minutes de l’aube
et le vent a un goût de liberté
par Mike Ely
du réseau Kasama
Nous ne sommes plus cinq minutes avant minuit. Après que le printemps arabe se soit transporté en Espagne puis en Grèce, et finalement à Wall Street, on a soudainement l’impression d’être à cinq minutes de l’aube.
Nous n’avons plus l’impression qu’il n’y a aucun moyen de stopper le merdier mondial. Il y a maintenant une brêche et nous nous jetons dedans.
Nous sommes brusquement projetés à une époque débarrassée de la routine des manifestations fatiguées qui ne parlent plus pour personne, ni à personne.
Les oppresseurs (notre ennemi commun) ne sont plus en sécurité – ou encore moins qu’avant. Ils sont au contraire repoussés, confus, déconcertés, furieux. Le maire milliardaire de New York ne peut pas « nettoyer » un petit parc (ndt: le Zuccotti park, à Wall Street)- et soudain la question n’est plus de chasser les occupants, mais plutôt comment il sera lui même chassé du pouvoir si il continue sur ce chemin.
“I can appreciate the desire to limit the critique of the RCP to what Mike calls “questions of line” (i.e., their ideas).”
There is a debate here about “the high plane of two line struggle” — something I have argued strongly for. I want to take a second to clarify this term “questions of line.”
I understand why CWM equates line simply with “their ideas” — but that is not exactly how I would look at it.
What road are we on?
Sometimes, on the left, people say “what is your line on this? What is your line on that?”
This is not what I mean by line. To me (and to Maoists generally) line is a matter of examining “where does this lead?” It is like a surveyor’s tool that projects forward.
It is an approach to methods, policies, theoretical “packages” — that asks the questions: where does this lead? who does it serve? what will come from taking this road?
You have to consciously fight to get things considered and decided on that basis. And only by posing and deciding things on that basis can a communist program come forward, and gain support broadly among key sections of the people.
This Kasama site has recently been accused by the Revolutionary Communist Party of setting up their members and leadership for state repression.
The RCP’s recent statement is called “Outright Piggery from the Camp of Counter-Revolution” — so their charge is right in the title.
Extreme accusations demand a response.
Here it is: These claims are utterly false. The RCP does not give examples, evidence or proof of their accusation because they have none.
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Here is their central charge:
“Specifically, including very recently, there has been a whole practice of naming individuals who are identified on the Kasama site as being connected to the RCP, and then encouraging people to try to find out about individuals, their relationship to the Party, and speculation about the composition of different bodies and membership in the Party. And there has been an ongoing campaign of posting ad hominem (personal) attacks on Bob Avakian in particular. This alone puts it in the same camp as reactionary and vicious right-wing blogs and websites, doing the work for government agencies whose mission is to collect this kind of information which is then used to destroy individuals and organizations they deem to be a threat.”
In fact: Kasama has published politicalcriticisms of the RCP. If that has been damaging to the RCP it is because their politics are self-isolating and unattractive.However Kasama discussion has never breached the security of any organizations.
Date: Tuesday, November 15
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm (2h)
Location: University of Chicago, Harper Memorial Library, Room 150, 1116 E. 59th St.
Topic: Crisis of the Left
This event is sponsored by the Platypus Society.
The other panelists include Roberta Garner (contributing editor of Science and Society) and Alex Hanna.
More information and posters for the event will be posted here.
Speakers’ bios (will add other panelists as that becomes available)
Mike Ely is a veteran revolutionary who works with Kasama’s project for reconceiving the communist movement.
He started political life with the early SDS and the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, and spent time in France and Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia during the heady year 1968.
During the 1970s, Mike worked as a communist organizer within waves of coal miner wildcat strikes in Appalachia, and participated in the debates and organizational shakeouts of the New Communist Movement.
“I heard Ralph Nader praise “the brave founding fathers , who settled this land”. I thought I would throw up listening, but I have run into that kind of stuff in many cases in this movement.”
Many people have been trained to think of the settler/slaveowners of the early U.S. as “their” founding fathers. And Louise is deeply correct that this is mistaken, and has ongoing implications for politics. History is not just about the past, but about the present.
This country was founded in genocide and slavery. It was built and maintained by some of the most vicious exploitation imaginable — obviously of kidnapped Africans but also of impoverished immigrants from Asia and Europe who were herded into mines, and mills.
And it is not just that the “founding fathers” were slave traders, capitalists, and slave owners (and therefore not “ours”) — but (more controversial even) their very political system, constitution and even their concepts of property, authority, law, and morality were all deeply marked by this exploitative, expansionist and genocidal nature.
They are not “our” founding fathers — but the founders of the empire we now confront, and within which we seek to act as an increasingly conscious and determined force of negation.
double meaning: I got nothing but love for you baby.
I always loved that song — below its playfulness, is the pain of trying to create love and intimacy among the oppressed.
We often have nothing to offer each other — little money, little security, little to promise for the future. Charm, yes. Humor, yes. Smooth moves, too
“But I got nothing but love for you baby” — both a promise of love, and a confession of having nothing else.
And important as our love is, often it is not enough. People need more, we need to be able to provide for each other — in this heartless place where the abyss is just around the next corner.
“How about we go up to the Bronx and pick up some hard boiled eggs. Some salt, maybe some pepper.”
So often we got nuttin but love and each other. At least we have love and each other.
There will be a public panel discussion this weekend in New Orleans:
From #Occupy to Revolution:
How Could Our World Actually Change
Speakers: Eric Ribellarsi, Jim Weill, Mike Ely
Saturday, November 5, 11 am – 2 pm Avery Alexander Plaza (formerly Duncan Plaza) in front of City Hall.
Sponsored by the Voice Collective
Firsthand report backs about the revolutionary experiences in Nepal, Greece, and within the Occupy Together movement in the US. Discussion the possibilities for a new revolutionary movement in the U.S.
Jim Weill and Eric Ribellarsi have recently returned from deep investigations into the “movement of the squares” in Greece—and after learning from the ideas of active revolutionaries within that movement. They also bring insights from their explorations of the Maoist revolutionary movement of Nepal, which has mass support in the millions and is sharply confronting the unsolved problems of overthrowing the old order and making much needed radical changes.
Mike Ely is a veteran revolutionary with a history that starts from his work with the early Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, the intense strike wave among coal miners in the 1970s, and covers decades of experience attempting to build revolutionary organization.
“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 think this is important… and we don’t have a common language around this (and for that reason alone a lot of people first said “I’m intrigued, but I don’t yet know exactly what he is talking about.”)
These issues come up in many ways (including whenever posters, graphics, covers, design, symbolic logos, and banners are proposed).
JFSP, for example, opened with a question about the Oakland Strike poster Kasama prominently reprinted:
“Wasn’t the black cat an old Anarchist threat known as the sabo-cat, sabotage cat?”
Yes.
Or rather, to be more specific, the black cat is a contemporary radical symbol of struggle — that is lifted and continually reworked from the imagery of the early revolutionary movement Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
by Mike Ely
