Archive for the ‘communism’ Category
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 | 41 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 | 13 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
[coming here soon: Kindle and Nook ebook versions.]
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.
* * * * * * * *
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 »
Posted by Mike E on November 9, 2011
Thinking together
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.
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Posted in communism, Kasama, Mike Ely | 8 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on November 8, 2011
by Mike Ely
Louise Thundercloud writes:
“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.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Kasama, Maoism, mass line, Mike Ely | 9 Comments »
Posted by John Steele on November 4, 2011
The eruption of occupations from Tunisia to Oakland put difficult and inspiring questions on the table. Kasama’s sister site, Khukuri, has been digging into these issues from the perspective of communist theory.
Who is “the 1 %” — who rules the world and how? What is current the structure of global capital? See essays concerning a transnational capitalist class (TNC) — truly the global 1% (or less) – by Leslie Sklair, by William Robinson, Jerry Harris, and by William K. Carroll, as well as in the recent piece on global corporate networks.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Alain Badiou, Bill Martin, capitalism, communism, Don Hamerquist, financial crisis, J. Ramsey, John Steele, Marxist theory, Occupy Wall Street, occupywallstreet, philosophy, revolution, theory | 1 Comment »
Posted by kasama on November 1, 2011
by Mike Ely
PN’s remark (in his application for Kasama membership) provoked a lot of discussion offline:
“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).
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Posted in >> analysis of news, >> Art and Culture, anarchism, art, Black Panthers, communism, Kasama posters, Marxist theory, Mike Ely, Occupy Wall Street, punk, subculture | 23 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on October 28, 2011
by Mike Ely
I spoke last night with someone in our Kasama project about a pro-Occupy meeting with many local union officials. One thing jumped out at me.
An emerging truth is now being spoken out loud:
That Occupy Wall Street is not some progressive “constituency” that unions and others need to “relate to.”
Things have gone far beyond that. This is now a historical moment, a true tear in previous politics, alignments, possibilities and silence. It is a rupture and an opening where everyone needs to act, based on their understandings and political concerns.
And the implication of this is profound: This is no longer just about “go down to the occupations and hook up with what they have created.” The opening is there for many kinds of people to speak — from where they sit in society, about what they see — and to be part of something new erupting within the power relations of society.
The occupations remain (symbolically, politically, visually) the core of this. Their growth, spread, survival, maturation and defense is an important part of this moment.But (again) this is not JUST an occupation event — it has become a large, open flapping tear in fabric of deadly normal/official politics, in its language, allignment and assumptions.
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Posted in communism, Kasama, Mike Ely, Occupy Wall Street | 10 Comments »
Posted by kasama on September 26, 2011
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| Karl Marx arrested in Brussels |
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This historical sketch was written fourteen years ago for the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto. It has since been published in many places and languages.
This is the story of how the revolutionary communist movement first emerged from the fusion of deep theoretical work and fearless revolutionary practice. And we are sharing it to inspire the work for a fresh fusion of revolutionary theory and practice that is so urgently demanded today.
* * * * * * * * *
by Mike Ely
In mid-February 1848, a new communist pamphlet rolled off the presses of a small print shop on London’s Bishopsgate. It was written in German and entitled Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei.
Copies were rushed off to the mainland of Europe. Uprisings and disturbances had broken out in most of the main population centers of the continent. Small cores of revolutionary activists were waiting for a high-powered declaration that could guide their work and rally people to a thoroughgoing revolutionary movement.
The bold opening lines of this pamphlet threw down a challenge:
“A spectre is haunting Europe–the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre…. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of communism with a manifesto of the party itself.”
This work was quickly translated into many languages of Europe and the Americas. In English it became known as the Communist Manifesto. In one early English version, published in 1850, the previously unknown authors were listed for the first time: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
While countless other documents and manifestos of those days lie forgotten and dust-covered in library archives, this Manifesto lives, studied intensely in slums, jungle base areas, and even classrooms all over the world — still inspiring and training one new revolutionary generation after another.
The Communist Manifesto is the visionary founding document of the modern communist movement. Here is the story of how the Manifesto came to be.
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Posted in communism, England, Germany, Karl Marx, Maoism, Marxist theory, Mike Ely, revolution, Socialism | Leave a Comment »
Posted by redflags on September 26, 2011
Pr
otests have sustained through the first week on New York City’s financial district. NYPD have increased their pressure, using mass arrests and pepper spray on non-violent protesters. State violence appears to have increased the resolve of the encampment.
Click here for live stream from occupied Wall Street
Click here for photo stream on Flickr
With mainstream media ignoring (or belittling) the protests, you can be the media. Click here for downloadable flyers to put up at your school, workplace, local train station or wherever.
Posted in >> communist politics, >> International, anarchism, art, civil liberties, communism, corporations, economics, financial crisis, mass line, occupy wall street, occupywallstreet, organizing, police, politics, poverty, Protest, social networking, Socialism, USA, working class, youth | 2 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 23, 2011
Issue #28
Theoretical work of Chile’s Revolutionary Communist Party is now available — as they summed up their experiences in the Allende years, the Pinochet coup, and the international communist movement.
This work is available here, on Kasama, in Spanish — as a series of pdfs. These essays are from the period of the late 1970s to 1981 — when the RCP of Chile was seeking to help regroup the international communist movement, and thinking through the implications of events in China after the rise to power of Deng Xiaoping and his pro-capitalist politics.
(One of the articles deals with Pinochet going on a state visit to China.)
RCP Chile: Open Letter to the Communist Party of China (English)
We would like to thank those who did the work of making this material available and Rosa Blanc.
The journal Causa M-L is in Spanish. We would welcome English translations of key articles.
Background:
The great radical upsurge of Chile’s people in the early 1970s, included a number of revolutionary currents that grew, even as the electoral-socialist Allende government came to power.
Among them was the Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile — which was formed as a Maoist party in 1966 and played an important role in the events that followed, including the resistance to the 1973 U.S.-backed fascist coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Chile, communism, Communist Party, Maoism, Marxist theory | 3 Comments »
Posted by onehundredflowers on September 22, 2011
This comes from the Verso Books site.
COMMUNISM, A NEW BEGINNING?
Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek with Verso Books at Cooper Union, New York
October 14th-16th 2011
By Rowan Wilson
A new conference with leading thinkers to discuss the continued relevance of the communist idea.
‘The long night of the left is coming to a close’ wrote Slavoj Žižek and Costas Douzinas in their introduction to The Idea of Communism. The continuing economic crisis, the shift away from a unipolar world defined by American hegemony, and the ecological crisis mean that growing numbers of people are keen to explore an alternative, and to re-discover the idea of communism. With the advent of the Arab Awakening millions have sought new ways to overcome corruption and dictatorship.
Responding to Alain Badiou’s proposition of the ‘communist hypothesis,’ the leading thinkers of the Left convened in London in 2009 to discuss the perpetual, persistent notion that, in a truly emancipated society, all things should be owned in common.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, Alain Badiou, communism, philosophy, Slavoj Žižek, theory | Tagged: Adrian Johnston, Bruno Bosteels, Emmanuel Terray, Etienne Balibar, Frank Ruda, Susan Buck-Morss | 1 Comment »
Posted by kasama on September 6, 2011
Intro by Mike Ely
Several people asked to have this 1969 Red Papers call for communist collectives posted from – so its ideas (and our own ideas!) can be discussed in their own thread.
This was a rather ground-breaking 1969 document — that shaped (in many ways) the formation of the previous communist movement.
It set important terms for an emerging communist movement — and strongly influenced even the radicals who went on to form other, opposing communist trends. And of course it became the basis on which the Bay Area Revolutionary Union grew into the national Revolutionary Union.
The document gives a sense of how that generation of communists’ “basis of unity” was being developed — and how communist collectives started formed.
We will excerpt the section on forming collectives, then follow that with the full document.
The power of a call
But first a few introductory comments….
I want to mention (again) the kind of impact a document like this can have. Lots of people were at that moment (1969) coming out of more liberal or at least less consolidated radical organizations — and were looking for a way to move forward. Red Papers 1 dropped at the same moment that SDS fell apart.
When I received (from afar) a copy of Red Papers 1, I was a seventeen-year-old college freshman. I read it over and over until the print started to fade — and until the many strange and difficult concepts were burned into my brain. It left me as a fierce partisan of its proposals. And I worked to circulate Red Papers 1 and 2 with everyone I met.
A year later (under the influence of this approach) I was in a revolutionary collective off campus (with people of quite diverse radical views), and working in a shoe factory. Our main work was organizing white working class youth to fight the system in ways inspired by the Black Panther Party, and to build a revolutionary anti-racist movement among them.
A year after that, I was in the Midwest, working with the Panthers there, and working in a steel forge.
And a year after that, I was (barely 20, but with a bit more experience) starting a protracted project with other communist organizers in the West Virginia coalfields.
These Red Papers and the line of march that they sketched took many of us in a common communist direction. It inspired us to understand the importance of a particular kind of urgent experimentation. It suggested a form of organization. It situated our work within the international communist movement of that time and within the history of previous revolutionary attempts.
We may not today write the same words. We have learned many things in the intervening year. And our conditions are quite different. But we want to aspire to the same impact, clarity and symbolic power.
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Posted in >> analysis of news, communism, Communist Party, Mike Ely, New Com. Movement, vanguard party | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on September 2, 2011
RCP contingent from G20 Summit in Toronto, June 2010
This first appeared on the site of Revolutionary Initiative (Canada) in July.
Note: the Revolutionary Communist Party discussed in this piece is the RCP of Canada (which has no connection with the RCP,USA, despite their similar names).
The Revolutionary initiative wrote as their introduction:
“The following is a statement from the RCP Information Bureau concerning the arrest of four activists in Montreal, including a supporter of the RCP Patrice Legendre. It goes without saying that R.I. condemns the arrests and unequivocally supports the comrades and supporters of RCP, an organization with which we have fraternal relations and are in a unity struggle with. Let’s build a revolutionary movement to defend against and repel these attacks at all levels!”
This article is available in several languages:
* * * * * * * *
RCP Arrests in Montreal: Communists Under Attack
by The Information Bureau of the RCP of Canada
Montréal, July 5th — On June 29th, 2011, the Anti-Gang unit of the Montréal Police Service’s Organized Crime Division arrested four political activists —including Patrice Legendre, a communist worker and supporter of the RCP. The police searched their homes and arrested them in connection with the most recent May First demonstration, organized by Montréal’s Anti-Capitalist Convergence (CLAC). Nearly 30 officers were involved in the operation, which occurred early in the day.
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Posted in Canada, capitalism, civil liberties, communism, police, political prisoners, repression | 4 Comments »
