Archive for the ‘communism’ Category
Posted by kasama on May 18, 2012
The 1897 founding of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class.
How should communists be organized? What are appropriate formation for action, debate and consolidation — in the inevitably different stages of a revolution’s life?
For some people even asking that question is heresy — since a very particular form of vanguard party is considered universal and a “settled question.”
This universalization of organizational questions is rooted in a particular reading of Russian and German history: It says Lenin separated off his Bolsheviks in a tight democratic centralist independent party early in the 1900s, and this allowed his forces the initiative and compactness they needed to contend for power in 1917. By contrast, it is said that Rosa Luxemburg and her Spartacist communists failed to break with German social democracy early enough — and so they were unable to consolidate or contend successfully, as communists, in the crisis of 1918-19.
This universalization has led small communist groupings to from small hostile sect-like groups — that declare themselves pre-party formations, or even parties — and that declare other parallel currents to be hopelessly corrupt.
We have discussed this reading (or rewriting) of Russian history before here on Kasama — particularly in the following posts and threads:
Posting this new piece is intended to continue engaging this once “settled” question — with a sharp eye on our needs today. Posting it is not intended as an endorsement by Kasama of historical claims or political conclusions made by the author.
This piece first appeared in the Weekly Worker (Britain) on May 17.
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How Lenin’s party became (Bolshevik)
By Lars T. Lih
From 1898 on, there existed a political party called the Rossiiskaia sotsial-demokraticheskaia rabochaia partiia (RSDRP), or Russian Social Democratic Worker Party. Rossiiskaia means “Russian” in the sense of citizens of the Russian state, as opposed to russkaia, which refers to ethnic Russians. Of course, the party title made no reference to either of its two later factions, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, comintern, communism, Communist Party, Lars T. Lih, Lenin, Soviet history, theory, V.I. Lenin, vanguard party | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on May 8, 2012
The three-horse troika has become a symbol for the three forces most directly oppressing the people of Greece: the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Central Bank.
Eric is the national organizer of the Kasama Project, and reported from Greece last summer as part of the Winter Has Its End team.
by Eric Ribellarsi
I would like to share some of the thinking and questions that have been going through my head as of late:
1. I have noticed that a great deal of the response (among radical people in the U.S.) to the jolting political developments has been starting from whether enough seats can be attained to form a left government. Actually, it seems no government can be formed, which is probably a very good thing — from the point of view of revolutionary openings.
But more, merely counting parliamentary seats and seeking one or another left coalition is a wrong starting point:
The main thing to note here is that the long-standing establishment political parties of capitalism have been shattered, that the Greek parliament has become increasingly polarized between a hard left and a hard right. This is more what a society looks like before a revolution or a civil war than before some grand resurgence of social-democracy and rescue of capitalist stability.
A communist orientation in such moments and crises requires exploiting these cracks and fissures to unravel the previous system.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Eric Ribellarsi, Greece, Stalin and Stalinism, winter has its end blog | 18 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on April 24, 2012
“Recently, when I spoke in Atlanta, I mentioned the importance of a political economy of modern capitalism. And one brother said to me later ‘I really appreciated your point about the need to study political economy.’
“And I suddenly realized that I had not made my point clearly. I’m not arguing that we have to study more political economy — I’m arguing that we have to create one. We have no communist political economy (from the whole last century!) to just go study.”
“Some of the current theoretical fashions among communists today (of focusing on studying Capital) are both extremely positive (every communist should take theory seriously, and everyone should study Capital once or twice in their lives! And such study is a valuable place to begin preparations for political economic analysis. But it is also associated with some misguided assumptions — in those cases where the notion is that the analysis we need today simply requires somehow erasing what Marxists have done since Marx — as if the true answers are in the “basic texts” and have merely been obscured since.
“It would be nice if such fundamentalist logic were true, but unfortunately it is not.”
“The political economy of the twentieth century did (of necessity) require both negation and affirmation of Karl Marx’s analysis. His great work Capital is the analysis of capitalism (and its essential contradictions) that is (inevitably) rooted in a particular stage and manifestation of the capital relations. A number of things changed with the emergence of colonialism and monopoly, and then with the domination of the whole world by capital (and the subsequent shrinking of semi-feudal relations and the reversal of socialist relations).”
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Posted in >> analysis of news, capitalism, communism, Karl Marx, Lenin, Marxist theory, Mike Ely, revolution, Socialism, theory | 118 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on April 24, 2012
The existence of mountain topping is tied to capitalist production and capitalist logic and capitalist decisions. Production (its form, its impact, even its physical engineering) is deeply marked by the class society it emerges within.
“The forms of modern production (and consumption) are themselves deeply marked by the class nature of the societies that produced them. It is not just that the surplus of production is alienated from the exploited (by the owners of capital). The whole process of production (its forms, its inputs, its purpose, its outputs, its environmental impacts, its physical engineering, its social contstructs of hierarchy and punishments) are all marked by the class society within which they emerged.
“And this is important for understanding how socialist sustainability will need to revolutionize (i.e. criticize, overthrow, and replace) those inherited patterns of production and consumption.”
“Communists have often written that we can’t just “lay our hands” on the existing state, and use it to our purposes.
“The same is true about production — we can’t simply “lay our hands” on this society’s productive apparatus and use it for our purposes. The production process itself needs to be radically changed — not just how it is owned, not merely where its surplus goes, but also what it produces, how it is produced, what it serves in the largest senses.
“It seems inevitable to me that a non-imperialist North America will have radically different consumption patterns.
“Rudolf Bahro once said (I’m paraphrasing) “Schiller only went to Rome once in his lifetime, but it was memorable. Why does every manager in Germany need to go to Sri Lankan or North African beaches every winter?”
“Similarly, the fact that American people can buy orchids (or cocaine) plane-delivered from Colombia in every neighborhood or that fruits are flown in (regardless of their local growing season) is all tied to the current structures and priorities of imperialism.
“There is nothing morally wrong with eating a banana every day — but there is a problem with a structure of world relations that delivers a banana to every grocery store in the U.S. every day and that makes such distant tropical produce non-exotic. And the problem is the inevitable by-products (social and environmental) of that structure.
“I don’t know the details of what a socialist North America would look like (what BTU levels would be possible without ripping off the world, what fruits and diet would look like once we shifted to bio-regionalism, what a reduced “carbon footprint” does to the price of beef and its level of comsumption). But I can’t imagine that revolution will not mean major changes — and not just because revolution is temporarily disruptive of highly complex circuits of trade.
“And it is related to the question “what do Guatemala and Puerto Rico look like if they are not dominated by the U.S. — and its cheap mechanized grain, and its decisions from the heights of finance and capital?”
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, ecology, fracking, Mike Ely, Nuclear power, revolution, Socialism | 12 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on April 23, 2012
Several years ago I wrote “The Origins of May First: Haymarket 1886 and the Troublesome Element.” That essay uncovers the origins of revolutionary May Day in the dreams and desperate acts of immigrant workers in Chicago.
This year I was asked by Occupy Wall Street Journal (OWSJ) to write a version that could fit into their much shorter format. (From 6200 words to 400 words! Grrrrr!) All kinds of detail and texture gets removed. Verdicts become hyper-terse.
I still recommend reading the full original piece.
But here is the sound-bite version I have shared with readers of OWSJ.
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The Birth of Revolutionary May Day:
That Troublesome Element in Haymarket Square
By Mike Ely
A circular passed hand-to-hand, calling for militant action in the U.S. on May 1, 1886:
“One day of revolt – not rest! A day not ordained by the bragging spokesmen of institutions holding the world of labor in bondage. A day on which labor makes its own laws and has the power to execute them!”
The workers who struck on May 1st faced police bullets. Their leaders were executed. Outraged, an international gathering of revolutionary workers declared that May First would become a worldwide day of resistance and revolution.
May First is our day and this is its story:
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Posted in >> analysis of news, anarchism, communism, labor history, May First, Mike Ely | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on April 20, 2012
John Coltrane
“We need to train ourselves (and promote among others) a “self-determinist spirit” — one that is militantly anti-racist, internationalist, and open to the concepts and decisions of African American people themselves.
“The discussion of oppressed nationalities (their present, their future, the modes of liberation, how socialism will contribute to ending their oppression) takes place in a way that embodies a respectful understanding of agency and self-emancipation. In some ways, it is African American people themselves who will decide if integration or separation best serves their needs and liberation — and (inevitably) many forms of solution will be presented on the terrain of actual politics (community control and autonomy, radical assertions of representation in political and economic centers of decision, consideration of proposals for independence and more).”
by Mike Ely
There has been a detailed and extensive discussion here of whether African American people form a nation within the U.S. I have very strong views on this matter that I would like to put forward.
I think it is clear (from history) that kidnapped African slaves were constituted as a distinctive community of people in a specific territory — both through the process of enslavement, but then through the betrayal of Reconstruction, their exclusion from integration within the U.S. and the century of Jim Crow.
This is not how most nations are constituted. But then, there is not some “typical” historical way that nations are constituted. Society does not (actually) have “classic” forms (though some people think it does). Many nations are forged through the process of emerging markets under capitalism (often through the increasing linkages of previous groupings emerging from feudalism). But if you look at the world: The forging of India or Kenya also involved artificial, enforced and compressed processes (and in each of their cases, there is very specific investigation to be made into how nationality and culture relate to official borders and governments inherited from colonialism.)
The process by which kidnapped Africans became a single nation was artificial, enforced, extremely brutal and compressed (in time). But it also involved the creative development of new bonds and the incredible inventiveness of a new culture born in suffering.I.e. saying that they were “constituted” does not mean, one-sidedly, that it is just something that someone else did externally to the people. The emergence of a Black nation is a process where the African-descended people had a powerful role of creating community, language and common culture under horrific conditions.
And then (in actual historical fact) the growth of industrial capitalism, the labor shortages of world wars, the mechanization of semifeudal agriculture in the South, and the courageous decisions of Black people themselves, then all conspired together to cause a Great Migration during the twentieth century (by which African American people became geographically dispersed, urbanized and overwhelmingly working class). This was a huge, historic change in their existence as a people — with profound implications both for how people are oppressed, and also how that oppression of Black people will finally be ended.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, African American, anti-racist action, Black History, communism, Mike Ely, racism, theory | 4 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on April 17, 2012
Excepts from KOE statement on Greek Elections:
“From early on, the KOE has pointed out that the overthrow of today’s regime, the only way out of this nightmare for the people and the country, will be carried out by the people themselves when they rise up.
“This belief is what guides the KOE in its actions.
“We should not deceive ourselves into thinking that any regime change can be brought about by going through regular parliamentary procedures….
“The arena of elections, under present conditions, is one in which a large portion of the immense dissatisfaction felt by the people will search for a positive means of expression…
“The elections could provide a means of expression for popular anger that may lead to the complete overthrow of the political status quo in favor of the political forces that have acted against the Troika policy over the last two years.”
“The KOE has acted according to the belief that a universal, unified, broad social and political front is needed. To achieve this goal we need to cast a broad, unified front in support of the left wing and all the political powers in support of democracy, independence, and popular and national sovereignty. …
“A broad, electoral alliance, infused with popular radicalism would in itself show the people that the different parties participating were more concerned with the dire need to find a different political path than with their own petty politics, and this will reinstate their lost credibility. “
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Communist Organization of Greece, election, Greece, KOE, revolution | 11 Comments »
Posted by kasama on April 2, 2012
We have received the following announcement.
Towards a New Communism: Bringing down the beast, overcoming the failure of imagination
Sponsored by Kasama
Saturday, April 7, 9 AM – 5 PM
Georgia State University
Classroom South 201
Atlanta, Georgia
Kasama participants are hosting on a series of workshops to stimulate the exploration of revolution and communism for our time.
The discussions include the Occupy movement and the people’s upsurge in Greece, Obama and Black liberation, and communist organization in the present moment.
For more information: southeastmeetup@yahoo.com / 404-926-6174
Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Kasama, Marxist theory, methodology, revolution | 3 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 24, 2012
Walk the revolutionary road. Ride the tiger in great crisis.
This continues a discussion of symbolic language and rituals of transition that we have engaged in two threads:
by Mike Ely
Let me start here:
This whole primitive, initial discussion of symbols, rituals and belonging is not in opposition to having programmatic unity, written beliefs, a basis of unity etc. No one thinks that in these threads.
No one is arguing for a movement that is not articulate, verbal and rational.
I’m merely saying it can’t be on just a “head trip.” Our communist movement needs to be accessible and inclusive — and for that it also needs potent symbolism and visual language that is current and in some important ways universal (i.e. not confined to specific cultural/historical references or identity).
A movement for liberation can’t be one-sidedly intellectualized and seemingly “bloodless” (and culturally alien or somehow unrooted from its audiences and base).
Or (we can learn from many experiences) it will only attract those cadre inclined toward the world of position papers, while it excludes the many people who read politics at the level of symbols. (And here we are talking about symbols literally — as in movement logos — but also symbolic language of dress, culture, subculture, tone, rhetorical style, openness to debate, treatment of opponents, forms of solidarity within the movement, etc.)
Someone close to me once did a reading level study for me of our Revolutionary Worker newspaper in the 1980s. Most articles (she explained) were at a college level, and many were at a graduate school level.
Now, I believe that a communist movement must do serious analysis at a high level — just in order to understand the world and guide its work. (And in some ways our analyses then were rarely at a high enough level — there was a significant amount of dilettantism and superficial work).
But our future movement also needs a parallel popularization of that high level analysis (a popularization done in words, graphics, and other means — including genuinely artistic works).
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Kasama, Mike Ely | 14 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 23, 2012
Touched and moved by the murder of Trayvon Martin -- sorrow, anger, outrage, determination, solidarity. The demand for justice and an end (finally) to the killing of Black youth.
by Mike Ely
I appreciate Red Fly’s thoughtful comments on this question of anger among the oppressed. And have a few things to add.
I had written:
“Some people are willing to join movements that project a permanent state of anger, but few people would want to be governed by people defined by such anger. Militancy, yes. Relentless partisan opposition to oppression, yes. Indignant passion when people are mistreated, yes. But who wants a movement, a gang, a party, an army run by the Sonny Corleones of this world? Who thinks that this contains a sensibility that can encourage justice?”
Red Fly writes:
“We don’t have to be Sonny Corleones in order to represent and embody the righteous anger that oppressed people feel. The anger represented by the capitalist mafia in their relentless pursuit of profit is not at all the same as the anger of the oppressed rising to confront the criminals that run this world.”
Well, yes. In fact that is my point. Our movement should have an “indignant passion when people are mistreated.” But we should not some off like Sonny Corleone (in the Godfather) — someone driven by constant out-of-control desires for revenge.
I’m not arguing against anger. I’m arguing against being “defined” (as a movement) by the appearance of a “permanent state of anger” — in other words, that seems mainly motivated by revenge and payback, not a vision of a new world.
There is a difference between passionate and angry demands for justice — and a movement that seems to have revenge as its goal.
Our goal needs to be liberation and an end to oppression, not a historical period of “payback” against those complicit in the old order. We should not seem prepared to target the broad relatively-privileged strata of this society — we should mainly treat them as potential allies not as likely enemies.
We need to be, and appear, lofty. And we need to help train the oppressed to aim far higher than payback — and give encouragement to their higher aspirations. Which means winning people to a communist view: Not just end their direct oppression, but to carry through the fight against all oppression.
Obviously, we have in front of us the horrible example of Trayvon Martin — first his death, then the refusal of the authorities to arrest his murderer — and we experience (each in our hearts) real anguish, outrage, and yes anger over such injustice.
This is a discussion of how a movement presents itself. And the question is what (basically) defines us.
If it is the appearance of revenge – we will be misunderstood. If it is a lofty determination to end injustice through liberation — we will be succeeding in defining ourselves (publicly) in a way that conveys our goals and our view of solutions and our view toward people generally.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Kasama, Mike Ely, theory, white privilege theory | 11 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 18, 2012
"Temple to Perspective" by Tom Greenall and Jordan Hodgson. This is an artistic depiction of earth's history, and our place in it (in a pillar of layers) proposed as a visual monument. (Note the human at bottom for scale). A secular exploration of meaning, context and awe.
“Politics is symbolic as well as analytical….
“The audiences we need are gathered by cultural and social means, not just won over by words.
“As Lenin once noted the oppressed and awakening were demanding to know how to live and how to die (and not just what to believe).
“People need living inter-human expressions of world view and morality that are more than tracts on worldview and morality. Successful radical politics need words that are evocative and penetrating — not just precise.”
by Mike Ely:
I have always been frustrated by the assumption that we can draw people toward revolutionary politics mainly by “explaining” everything — as if people become conscious, militant, and determined in the fight for a new society largely by being told a series of exposures backed by elaborate structures of analysis. I have called this problem “the fetish of the word.” Its more formal name (if we need another label) could be rationalism.
And meanwhile we can see both in society and politics all around us, suggestions that “explanations,” however detailed and correct, are not enough — and people are often attracted to politics that are quite anti-rational through powerful symbolic means.
We can trace the rise and fall of Louis Farrakhan’s bizarre and fantastical politics that combines completely delusional mysticism with a gut level appeal for self-respect, self-advancement, pride and biting political alienation.
Or we can see large sections of people breaking into political life in during this Arab spring, being freed for from decades of repression and yet far too often grasping first for deep resonance of “Allahu Akbar!” and naive hope in the justices of Shariah law.
Where does that power come from?
Secular rationalism often assumes (sometimes with a stark singlemindedness) that “incorrect ideas” come from a mix of ignorance and the outside indoctrination by “alien” classes — and so assumes that the antidote is simply hammer the right ideas into the uninformed– a method I call “fire your ideas, hire mine.” It has an element of truth — we do need to be evangelical about communism. But it is often very onesided. In other words, this rationalism has views of people, ideas, culture, and change that are somewhat flat — and its failures confirm this.
I believe in spreading revolutionary exposure and ideas. I think revolutionary theory will play a powerful role in regrouping a new revolutionary movement. I’ve often resented as unfair the familiar stereotype of the communist militant “just peddling newspapers at the sidelines.” After all, I have written, designed, edited, sold, promoted, and nurtured radical newspapers all my life. And I think we should (now!) be develop biting, attractive, irresistible centers of news, opinion, analysis, satire, humor, and theory.
But… but… despite all that, I do think, at the same time, we should create and use our new revolutionary media without naively reproducing the assumptions and practice of previous rationalism.
Here is something that has often been missing: Politics is symbolic as well as analytical. Political attraction is also visceral and cultural. It involves a verbal “winning over.” It requires us to be fearless about representing our beliefs.
But, looked at all sidedly, the audiences we need will gathered by a number of cultural and social attractions, not just “won over” by words.
As Lenin once brilliantly described the oppressed and awakening were coming, demanding to know “how to live and how to die,” and not just what to believe. To be able to carry through a real process of base-building, we have to learn from our audience (i.e. “from the people”) as well, not just the other way around. That is the process Mao called the mass line.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Black Panthers, communism, mass line, Mike Ely | 13 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 30, 2012
The road is tortuous, the future is bright
“One of the inflexible tasks of any communist organization (and any communist leadership) is to help train everyone (both the communists at all levels, but also the supporters of the movement) to evaluate choices by these criteria: Where does it lead? Who does it serve?
“And one of the difficult tasks in moments of struggle is to apply those criteria consciously, in the midst of great pulls, demagoguery and confusion.”
by Mike Ely
Pham Binh writes in the nearby discussion of Unsettled questions:
“It’s not true that ‘line is key.’ Lines can change. Control from below and the ability to adapt are key. Unfortunately there is no vaccine against political/organization degeneration.”
This discussion reminds me that we have to work to develop a common language. The word “line” is being referenced here in some very different ways. To even engage possible differences (over what is “key”), we have to start by explaining what we each mean by the word “line.”
Here, if I am guessing correctly, Pham Binh is using the word “line,” as it is often used in many corners of the left: Line is a word used to describe political positions. As in: “What’s your line on the war?” or “What is their line on Puerto Rican independence?” And in that usage, it is reasonable to say that specific policies can come and go, and are therefore not decisive in preventing betrayal or defeat.
By contrast the Maoist concept of line, answer the questions “where are we heading, what do we serve?” And the phrase “line is key” is an assertion that in complex struggle, the key question is to evaluate things in terms of where it leads, and what goals it will advance. And in that sense, I would suggest that vigilant attention to overall line (i.e. direction and goals) is key to preventing defeat, reversal, betrayal and getting lost.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Maoism, Marxist theory, mass line, Mike Ely | 125 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 25, 2012
by Mike Ely
Chegitz writes:
“…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).
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Maoism, mass line, Mike Ely, vanguard party | 14 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 24, 2012
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.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, comintern, communism, Communist Party, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Mike Ely, Soviet history, Stalin and Stalinism, vanguard party | 106 Comments »
Posted by kasama on January 8, 2012
From the pamphlet introduction:
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.
Three of them detailed experiences with the red closet in the Revolutionary Communist Party (a relatively small communist organization in the U.S.) : “Working with the RCP, Opposing the homophobia,” “Rejected by comrades: My love was just love,”and“Suzie’s story: Queer, isolated, invisible.”
Other posts dealt with experiences and summations from outside the RCP, including “Closet Rules: My Story of Survival” and “The Cahokian: Homophobia & the value of thoughtful excavation.”
There were (all together) about 200 comments and over 6,000 page views of these threads.
In this pamphlet, we gather and reprint these posts and some of the comments that followed.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Bob Avakian, communism, gay, homophobia, lesbian, Mike Ely, RCPUSA | 6 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 6, 2012
Similar labels are not enough.
“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.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Kasama, Mike Ely, Socialism, theory | 48 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on December 7, 2011
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?
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Kasama, Mike Ely | 42 Comments »
Posted by kasama on December 6, 2011
We have excerpted the following from a longer piece received by Kasama.
“The inherited practice of communism can not adequately speak to the present moment. The strategies and organizational forms of the past need to be reassessed. In some ways, our work is still beginning. How can we contribute to building a movement that can speak to the hope of millions?”
Loyal Heirs and Audacious Visionaries
by Tobias Reed
Communists must be more than loyal heirs. We must be audacious visionaries.
We have inherited a frame of reference for understanding the development of class society and social relations of all kinds. This frame of reference naturally has been reassessed and expanded over the years by countless writers, both inside and out of the communist “canon”, and it requires further elaboration still.
On the basis of what we know, we reaffirm the communist hypothesis: the idea that all oppressive social relations can and must be uprooted and transformed. We declare fidelity to communist theory and to the project of global emancipation. But this loyalty is not enough.
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Posted in communism, Kasama, theory | 25 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on December 2, 2011
the road to dawn
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 »
Posted in communism, Kasama, Marxist theory, mass line, Mike Ely, Socialism | 75 Comments »
Posted by kasama on November 18, 2011
Unite the many, oppose the few: Attack in Seattle
This proposal was passed by the Seattle General Assembly GA:“Occupy Seattle has many different politics and visions within it. This is our strength.
We will not allow any in our movement to be singled out and attacked for their politics whether they be anarchist, progressive, communist, liberal, socialist, radical, etc.
We welcome healthy debate among and between each of these groups, but debate is very different from irrational attacks and fear-mongering. We will defend each other and our movement.
If people are partaking in actions which are damaging to the movement or risk the safety of its members unnecessarily, this should be dealt with as a separate matter, outside the purview of this statement of principle.
But no one will be allowed to be ostracize or demonize our fellow occupiers for their world views or goals. Unless that be a world view or goal which is decisively against the general unity and aspirations of the movement, such as: fascists, the openly racist, sexist, or homophobic, white-nationalist populists, ageist, ableist, etc. No action, except those passed by the General Assembly, represent Occupy Seattle as a whole.
Posted in >> analysis of news, anarchism, communism, Occupy Wall Street | 1 Comment »
