Archive for the ‘Mao Zedong’ Category
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.
Read the rest of this entry »
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 Mike E on September 29, 2011
Selucha points out this coming event.
Mao’s Little Red Book: A Global History
DATE: October 21-22, 2011
PLACE: 2223 Fulton Street, 6th Floor Conference Room
SPONSORS: Center for Chinese Studies and Institute of East Asian Studies
Description
This conference takes up the global history of Quotations from Chairman Mao—perhaps the most visible, ubiquitous, and enduring symbol of twentieth-century radicalism. Conference participants will examine the production and adaptation of the “little red book” in China, as well as its circulation, appropriation, and impact around the globe. The pocket-sized Quotations from Chairman Mao was probably the most printed non-religious book of the twentieth century and by the late 1960s became the must-have accessory for red guards and revolutionaries from Berkeley to Bamako. The little red book’s worldwide circulation, in dozens of languages, is a testament to its historical importance, but until now there has been no serious scholarly effort to understand the Quotations as a global historical phenomenon.
Posted in China, Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Peru | 3 Comments »
Posted by kasama on August 29, 2011
This painting “Mao Returns” appeared on the radical Chinese site named Utopia “Wu You Zi Xiang.” We heard about this painting when it appeared on Revolutionary Frontlines.
Details on this painting have been provided by a reader:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, art, China, Mao Zedong, Maoism | 3 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on August 28, 2011
Mao Zedong's road of protracted peoples war emerged in opposition to the Comintern's strategy of basing revolution on urban workers and using rural base areas to seize urban areas.
In the last months the EROL archives has posted a rich new body of past communist writings. (EROL is the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-line)
We wish to extend special thanks to Paul Saba, whose work has been tireless and extremely important to both our common ongoing project of communist summation and coming project of communist regroupment.
In the next few days, we will point out some of the remarkable documents now available online.But for the moment we will start here:
Over and over, we have received requests (on Kasama) for reposting a particular document: the Revolutionary Communist Party’s sharp and extensive critique of Hoxhaism.
This 1979 piece on Mao and Hoxha was one of the more effective and powerful polemics made on a number of key questions dividing the international communist movement in the late 1970s — in the wake of the counter-revolutionary events engulfing China after Mao’s death.
We have gotten these requests because the dispute between Maoism and Hoxhaism is one of the sharp historic collision points between creative Marxism and dogmatic Marxism — and because Hoxhaism concentrated a number of arguments for Comintern-era thinking that have maintained power within parts of the international communist movement.
This document is extensive, and we will simply make it available here. It was first published in the RCP’s theoretical journal The Communist #5.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Beat back the dogmato-revisionist attack on Mao Tsetung Thought
Comments on Enver Hoxha’s Imperialism and the Revolution
by J. Werner
Introduction
Upon first examining Enver Hoxha’s new book, Imperialism and the Revolution, one is tempted to dismiss it as a petty and shallow hatchet job and refer the reader to the works of Mao Tsetung, which make clear that most of the charges hurled at Mao are simply the worst type of blatant misquotations, distortions and downright lies, and also refer the reader to the many Soviet criticisms of Mao which, while sharing the same method and most of the same arguments as Hoxha, at least have the virtue of a more systematic and well-rounded presentation of the revisionist line.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, China, comintern, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Marxist theory, New Com. Movement, RCPUSA | 38 Comments »
Posted by kasama on August 9, 2011
“A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery.
“It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous.
“A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”
This is a very basic question of world-view and class stand — including right now when the whole world is awash in propaganda and hand-wringing denouncing the rebels of London.
If we don’t speak out for them — what are WE about?!
Here is a crucial essay from communist history — a story of orientation when class struggle breaks out, in all its shocking and disruptive forms.
Peasants rose up in China’s rural Hunan province in 1927, — and many observers, virtually ALL of them, even among the communists, declared it was “terrible.”
After all, there were excesses in these disturbances. The urban educated ones found these rough out-of-control farmers terrifying. There was often no sign of tight control OVER the peasant associations. And there was a sense of “where will this go if not contained?”
Indeed!
Mao Zedong, then a young communist activist, went to Hunan for one month of investigation during this 1927 uprising. He declared that all these critics were fundamentally confusing right and wrong — and more, were unable to see what was arising and most promising within society.
“All talk directed against the peasant movement must be speedily set right.”
We are publishing a few excerpts from this essay — and the reason for this should be obvious: The great uprising in Britain has even well meaning people muttering — and too often people question whether it is OK to react to police murder in such extreme and shocking ways. If we don’t get this right, we won’t get anything right.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, China, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Marxist theory, revolution | 7 Comments »
Posted by kasama on August 6, 2011
Available online as pdf on marxistphilosophy.org. The original source is Long live Mao Tse-Tung Thought, a Red Guard Publication. “X’s” replace names and other information omitted original. Shoichi Sakata was a Japanese physicist sympathetic to by dialectical materialism. The article mentioned was a Chinese translation of one which appeared in a Soviet philosophy journal.
This talk is part of a ongoing communist discussion (including Engels’ Dialectics of Nature and Lenin’s EmpirioCriticism) in which developments in science are approached in terms of whether they confirm existing theses of materialist dialectics — i.e. focusing on the philosophical implications of science rather than its discoveries in their own right (including in cases where, like quantum physics, new scientific explorations challenge and potentially develop existing communist philosophy.)
This talk tool place in 1964 — almost half a century ago — so naturally reflects the scientific knowledge and assumptions of that time.
TALK ON SAKATA’S ARTICLE
By Mao Zedong August 24, 1964
Mao Zedong: I have asked you to come here today because I want to look into the article by Sakata [Shoichi]. Sakata says that basic particles are indivisible while electrons are divisible. In saying this, he is taking the stand of dialectical materialism.
The world is infinite. In both time and space, the world is boundless and inexhaustible. Beyond our solar system are numerous stars which together from the Milky Way. Beyond this galaxy are numerous other galaxies. Regarded broadly the universe is infinite: regarded narrowly, the universe is also infinite. Not only is the atom divisible, but so too is the atomic nucleus and it can be split ad infinitum.
Chuang Tzu said:
“One can take away half of a hammer measuring one foot long daily, but there will still be no end to it even after ten thousand generations.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in astrophysics, China, Mao Zedong, Nuclear power | 3 Comments »
Posted by kasama on August 2, 2011
May 4th Movement - revolutionary past, sanitized depiction
Celticfire pointed out the following review on The Fuckin’ Loudest Asians blog. Yesterday we published a film review of this same film by our correspondent in south China.
Film Review of “The Beginning of the Great Revival”
by Ah Ching
Synopsis: The Beginning of the Great Revival portrays the period in China’s history starting with the Revolution of 1911 that overthrew the Qing Dynasty and ending with the founding congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, attended by Mao Zedong and 11 other delegates. In contrast with The Founding of a Republic, which chronicled the years leading up to the 1949 declaration of the People’s Republic of China, this movie depicts a time when monarchists and warlords hold sway over the country and revolutionaries are only beginning to contend for power. The movie outlines Mao’s youth as a soldier, student, and burgeoning political leader. It shows the intellectual debates in the universities between contending schools of thought: Confucianism, philosophical pragmatism, and Marxism (the latter represented by Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao). The movie climaxes with the May 4th Movement, when patriotic Chinese students, women, and workers mobilize in mass demonstrations in Beijing against imperialism and feudalism.
* * * * * * * * *
“The Founding of the Party”, otherwise known as “The Beginning of the Great Revival” internationally, was produced to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party.
However, the international name glorifies pre-Maoist China and its present-day status as a supposed nation of wealth and power – not its socialist era.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, China, communism, Communist Party, film, film review, Internationale, Mao Zedong | Leave a Comment »
Posted by kasama on July 28, 2011
The new rich in China -- tied by a thousand threads to the ruling party
Our correspondent in South China starts the latest letter saying that the BBC is reporting a new outbreak of popular anger is in Guizhou province (site of the famous Tsunyi conference during the Long March). There was fighting with police after a street vendor was killed. We have published a number of previous reports from this correspondent (who half-jokingly adopts the title of Kasama South China Bureau) — those previous reports touched on prostitution and anti-government sentiments.
A Party of a Different Type
by Kasama reporter in South China
There is very little of what passes for traffic control in China until an official convoy of government/party officials rolls through. The one I witnessed featured a scramble of cops pushing, shoving, and beating on cars to rudely directing them onto side streets and in directions they did not want to travel.
After all that officialdom cruises by in air conditioned isolation from the masses, safe from the rippling hatred that passed through the crowd without a word being spoken or a gesture being made. It is a certain intense look, and feel, of disgust and anger all around you for just a flash, and then it is gone.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> Kasama Project, China, Kasama, Mao Zedong | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on June 21, 2011
“I think that is a basic method. And it starts with a global assessment of potential and necessity (who will we need? who might we win over?) — not with what is spontaneously true at any given moment (who is now with us? who is now against us?)
In other words, there are people we should treat as friends (as part of “the people”) even if they are (at this moment, and even for a long time into the future) rather hostile to our views and plans.
“This is a strategic evaluation — we are sketching out who we want to bring together, and start treating them as potential strategic allies long before they are conscious of having any relationship with a specific socialist revolution.”
by Mike Ely
In our discussion “Nailing Jello to the Wall? Creative Struggle Among the Peoplel” BB writes an important comment that digs into the questions of a revolution’s friends and enemies.
BB writes:
“I am trying to think through how Mao’s distinction of contradictions among the people vs. contradictions with the enemy works in our current context(s).”
Mao’s distinction involves specific concepts of “the people” and “the enemy” — so to follow BB’s point it is necessary to revisit and define these terms.
Mao wrote at the very beginning of his political work an analysis of Chinese society and classes. It starts with the now-famous words :
“Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.
“The basic reason why all previous revolutionary struggles in China achieved so little was their failure to unite with real friends in order to attack real enemies. A revolutionary party is the guide of the masses, and no revolution ever succeeds when the revolutionary party leads them astray.
“To ensure that we will definitely achieve success in our revolution and will not lead the masses astray, we must pay attention to uniting with our real friends in order to attack our real enemies. To distinguish real friends from real enemies, we must make a general analysis of the economic status of the various classes in Chinese society and of their respective attitudes towards the revolution.”
So we are discussing several long-standing questions:
- How does a revolution identify its potential supporters and allies? How does it identify its “real enemies.”
- And (beyond that) how does a movement “treat” these different categories of forces.
- What does this distinction mean to our practice?
- How does it change over time?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in communism, Mao Zedong, Maoism, mass line, methodology, Mike Ely | 25 Comments »
Posted by Tell No Lies on June 5, 2011
June 3: A group of Chinese troops taken hostage by the "pro-democracy" students as they read their demands.
The following is a critical response to Mike Ely’s Remembering the Rebels of Tiananmen
This engages the question of who was right in the 1989 events — the anti-government protesters or the government that dispersed them. Was this an oppressive government that had restored capitalism — or were the protesters (as BJ Murphy insists) counterrevolutionaries undermining the hopes of continuing socialism.
And this is more than a historical controversy over one generaton’s moment: This controversy naturally involves questions of whether China was socialist at that time (and now), what exactly socialism is, how to view the mass repression of people opposing their governments, and as BJ himself writes it is connected to his support for Libya’s government during the recent mass uprisings of North Africa.
Posting BJ’s essay here does not represent agreement by Kasama. It first appeared on BJ’s blog Red Ant Liberation Army News.
From China to Libya:
A Critique to Kasama’s “Remembering the Rebels of Tiananmen”
by BJ Murphy
“The elimination of counter-revolutionaries is a struggle of opposites as between ourselves and the enemy. Among the people, there are some who see this question in a somewhat different light. Two kinds of people hold views differing from ours. Those with a Right deviation in their thinking make no distinction between ourselves and the enemy and take the enemy for our own people. They regard as friends the very persons whom the masses regard as enemies. Those with a “Left” deviation in their thinking magnify contradictions between ourselves and the enemy to such an extent that they take certain contradictions among the people for contradictions with the enemy and regard as counter-revolutionary persons who are actually not. Both these views are wrong. Neither makes possible the correct handling of the problem of eliminating counter-revolutionaries or a correct assessment of this work.
“To form a correct evaluation of our work in eliminating counter-revolutionaries, let us see what repercussions the Hungarian incident has had in China. After its occurrence there was some unrest among a section of our intellectuals, but there were no squalls. Why? One reason, it must be said, was our success in eliminating counter-revolutionaries fairly thoroughly.”
-Mao Zedong (On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People)
Here on June 4th, around the world, people will be celebrating honor to the “pro-democracy” students of the so-called Tiananmen Square “massacre”. Just as the media did so 22 years ago, the media will again paint the very elaborate portrait of Communist “suppression” against what were labeled as Chinese students seeking “democracy” and “freedom”. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, China, Mao Zedong | 49 Comments »
Posted by onehundredflowers on June 3, 2011
“Without a true peoples army, the people had nothing — despite the justice of their demands, despite the passion of their voices and the power of their numbers.
“It is a bitter moment we will never forget.”
By Mike Ely
June 4, 1989 – the regime in China suppressed a powerful movement of rebellion, using the Peoples Liberation Army against the students and workers gathered in the heart of Beijing. It revealed, in shocking ways, how different this government of Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng were from the revolutionary days of Mao’s China. This army, born in revolution, had become an instrument against people. This party, born as a vanguard of liberation, had become a Confucian clique of new oppressors. This society, which had once been a beacon of revolution, was now a magnet for foreign capital.
Singing the Internationale as their own anthem of defiance, demanding the right to recall entrenched government leaders, speaking in passionate tones of rebellion, the rebels of Tiananmen faced a pitiless government unable to hear or respond. Many paid with their lives under the treads of the government’s tanks — as the occupation of the square was broken up by force in the depth of the night. Many were killed, the numbers are unknown. Many were imprisoned, the numbers are unknown. Many had careers ruined, the numbers are unknown. And millions felt their voices and hopes silenced — temporarily, for a mere blink of history’s eye, for a passage that will inevitably pass.
Without a true peoples army, the people had nothing — despite the justice of their demands, despite the passion of their voices and the power of their numbers. It is a bitter moment we will never forget.
One of the perverse features of modern politics is the attempt of western capitalists to present themselves as defenders of democracy and people’s rights, and their portrayal of revolutionary communists as dictators and oppressors. They have attempted to impose this narrative on the public view of the 1989 events — when, in fact, the very opposite is true…. when in fact the U.S. then supported the brutal government of Deng in every way that mattered. The U.S. claimed the rebellion, while they came waving dollars to exploit China’s people.
I first gathered these photographs online in 1999, and offer them again on this new anniversary.
Even today, the rulers of China try to suppress the memory of this great uprising and their own bloody crimes. They “harmonize” the Chinese internet to suppress mention of Four-Six-Eight-Nine. But in the world today silence cannot be imposed easily — humanity moves restlessly, and new generations step forward bravely.
Revolutionaries all over the world remember and honor the brave rebels of Tiananmen this day, and hold out great hope for the growing struggles of China’s brutally oppressed people.
It is right to rebel against reactionaries!
Photo gallery > Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, China, communism, Communist Party, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Mike Ely | Tagged: Deng Xiaoping, Tiananmen Square | 11 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on May 8, 2011
“There were two ‘parties’ in the family. One was my father, the Ruling Power. The Opposition was made up of myself, my mother, my brother, and sometimes even the laborer. In the ‘united front’ of the Opposition, however, there was a difference of opinion. My mother advocated a policy of indirect attack. She criticized any overt display of emotion and attempts at open rebellion against the Ruling Power. She said it was not the Chinese way.
“But when I was thirteen I discovered a powerful argument of my own for debating with my father on his own ground, by quoting the Classics. My father’s favorite accusations against me were of unfilial conduct and laziness. I quoted, in exchange, passages from the Classics saying that the elder must be kind and affectionate. Against his charge that I was lazy I used the rebuttal that older people should do more work than younger, that my father was over three times as old as myself, and therefore should do more work. And I declared that when I was his age I would be much more energetic.”
Some conservative schools of psychology accuse revolutionaries of “having father issues” — portraying determined opposition to oppression is the result of personal maladjustment.
In fact, early childhood experience with abusive or domineering fathers can inculcate a rebellious spirit and a determination to fight for justice. “It is right to rebel….” applies to the struggle of women and children against abusive father-right within traditional families. These early family conflicts can be training for the larger class struggle — and common to the early cadre formation of many revolutionaries.
Mao Zedong’s own discussion of this is striking. The following is an excerpt from Edgar Snow’s Red Star over China. In 1936, Snow made the perilous trip through war zones to reach Mao’s remote Yenan base area, and brought the first accounts of the Chinese revolution, its methods and leaders to the outside world.
The following is Snow‘s account of Mao’s life story, heavily based on interviews with Mao himself. The opening deals with family — and his life story proceeds from there.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in China, Mao Zedong, women | 9 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on March 2, 2011
Our chant that day: "Mao Zedong did not fail, Revolution will prevail"
“It was an advanced action — it was a communist action by communists in defense of communism. That was its basis of unity.
“It was a public declaration in defiance of the notion that communism had failed, and that Mao’s politics had been repudiated by the rise of Deng (and restoration) in China.
“We all (each of us) burned the American flag, and marched through the streets holding Red Books. The street-fighting broke out under a rain of coca-cola bottles that flew out of the crowd. One of the chants was “Mao Zedong did not fail. Revolution will prevail.”
“The action was built as part of a much larger campaign to make the restoration of capitalism in China a major issue among progressive people — and to seek to regroup a new communist movement internationally that would not follow the Deng forces on their road.
“But then I came back to the coal mine after having been in the thick of the fighting — and I had been badly beaten by police with stitches on my head and baton bruises that covered one side of my body. And as I stood there naked in the bathhouse, looking like a pink and black zebra, people suddenly really wanted to know why China was important to us revolutionaries (who they already identified closely with working class militancy).
“Why should their most die-hard militants want to fight over the events in China? And they wanted to know about the fighting.
“I told how they had brought both demonstrators and injured cops into the same emergency room, and how we had started to fight there in the hospital, and how the doctors had to create two emergency rooms to separate us, so that the demonstration would not spill further into the hospital itself. And how TV camera crews had come to the hospital to fill the carnage, and how the cops had attacked them, right there, in the waiting room, and smashed their cameras and driven them out.”
Miles Ahead recently raised our “No Cheap Shots” discussion, and rereading it I stumbled upon our August 2010 discussion of the 1979 Deng demo. Maoists in the U.S. engaged in street-fighting in Washington DC to protest the visit of Deng Xiaoping — to make a military alignment with U.S. imperialism. This was in the years shortly after the anti-Maoist coup in China, and at a time when revolutionary communists around the world were still scattered and often confused about the events in once-socialist China.
I would like to repost the comments on this Deng demo here… because (as you will see) it touches on many matters — and not just the history of the communist movement in the U.S. I am excerpting here from a series of comments made on this subject. (Respect to CWM, May 9, Hobgoblin, Alastair who engaged in the discussion below.)
If anyone wants to scan the incredible pictures from the following special issue of the Revolutionary Worker — we will gladly post them here as illustrations.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in China, communism, Cultural Revolution, Kasama, Mao Zedong, Maoism, Mike Ely, Miles Ahead, New Com. Movement, RCPUSA | 22 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on February 27, 2011
By Mike Ely
The job of revolutionaries is to make revolution. It is not something else. It is to overthrow governments, social orders, oppressors, and the smothering quiet of ordinary times.
After the rise and fall of socialist revolution in the 20th century, we now live (unfortunately) in a world where the capitalist system is (for the moment at least) hegemonic — and rarely challenged.
In other words, all the governments that people face are oppressive, outdated, corrupt, encrusted obstructions to people’s aspirations.
There are contradictions between the various ruling classes that play a role in opening revolutionary possibilities — and we should take advantage of those contradictions (meaning those openings), whenever appropriate and helpful.
But our task and orientation is to overthrow these oppressive governments and the imperialist system that they all, to one degree or another, serve and reflect. And we should support the oppressed who rise up against such governments.
This should be a simple and obvious point, I suppose. But it is a controversial one — and that fact that it is controversial says a lot about how much dreams have dimmed among walled-off silos of exhausted left politics.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Libya, Mao Zedong, Mike Ely | 36 Comments »
Posted by Rosa Harris on February 21, 2011
Thanks to Rosa Harris for gathering together some of Kasama’s posts for February, Black History Month. We have a page of Reading Clusters.
Kasama essays on Black history:
Oppression, resistance & visions
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, anti-racist action, Attica, Black History, Black History Month, Black Panthers, comintern, Kasama, Mao Zedong, study guides | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on February 17, 2011
The future stretches on for a long time
Props to Oleg Torbasow for this Russian translation of Mike Ely’s essay “The Dialectics of Marx, Althusser & Mao: That Lonely Hour of Last Instance.”
* * * * * * *
Под катом мой перевод статьи Майка Или «Диалектика Маркса, Альтюссера и Мао: Это время „конечного счёта“».
Диалектика Маркса, Альтюссера и Мао: Это время «конечного счёта»
Обсуждение Гэри израильской политики США поднимает идею, что мы должны рассматривать относительную автономию идей, политики и решений, работающих в рамках определённых общественных форм и определённых классовых обществ. Мы можем определить (или думать, что определили) интересы определённого господствующего класса (скажем, в отношении Ближнего Востока) — но скачок от этого предполагаемого интереса к установленной политике не должен видеться или ожидаться как осуществляющийся прямым, редукционистским и линейным образом. Часто политические органы принимают решения, расходящиеся с тем, что мы можем воспринимать как их интересы, когда-то внутри них нет согласия о том, каковы их интересы, когда-то они запутываются в политических хитросплетениях, что понуждает их к решениям недальновидным или порочным (с точки зрения их классовых интересов).
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Karl Marx, Kasama translations, Louis Althusser, Mao Zedong, Mike Ely, philosophy | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on January 27, 2011
“There is great disorder under heaven. The situation is excellent.”
By Gary
“A single spark,” Mao Zedong wrote in 1930, “can start a prairie fire.” He was referring to the potential of a peasant uprising somewhere in China to ignite a nationwide revolutionary conflagration.
A spark has been ignited in the Arab world, home to some 360 million people suffering under some of the worst dictatorships that exist today. A 26 year old college student and street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set a match to himself in front of a government building in a town in Tunisia, protesting the government’s policy on licensing street sales. His death immediately made him a hero and martyr and brought down a hated regime.
When I think of self-immolation as political protest, I think of Buddhist monks in Vietnam who could draw upon such scriptures as the Lotus Sutra to validate this form of protest. (In that text a boddhisattva anoints his body with fragrant oil and sets fire to his body, illuminating countless worlds, and the Buddha praises him.) But Tunisia is a Muslim country. Who could have expected this act of protest, and what it’s led to?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Egypt, Gary Leupp, Mao Zedong, Tunisia | 31 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 18, 2011
When Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968, Black people took to the streets of America lighting the skies with flames of rebellion and sorrow. There was at that time a revolutionary country that worked as a beacon for the oppressed: Revolutionary China, then in the high tides of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. One leader in the world spoke out clearly and boldly on the significance and bitterness of Kings murder… the communist leader Mao Zedong. Here is the text of that statement which circled the world.
Statement by Mao Zedong
Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
In Support of the Afro-American Struggle Against Violent Repression
April 16, 1968
Some days ago, Martin Luther King, the Afro-American clergyman, was suddenly assassinated by the U.S. imperialists. Martin Luther King was an exponent of nonviolence. Nevertheless, the U.S. imperialists did not on that account show any tolerance toward him, but used counter-revolutionary violence and killed him in cold blood. This has taught the broad masses of the Black people in the United States a profound lesson. It has touched off a new storm in their struggle against violent repression sweeping well over a hundred cities in the United States, a storm such as has never taken place before in the history of that country. It shows that an extremely powerful revolutionary force is latent in the more than twenty million Black Americans.
Read the rest of this entry >
Posted in African American, anti-racist action, Black History, civil rights, cointelpro, Mao Zedong | 2 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on January 17, 2011
Patrice Lumumba:
“This was our fate for 80 years of a colonial regime; our wounds are too fresh and too painful still for us to drive them from our memory.
“We have known harassing work, exacted in exchange for salaries which did not permit us to eat enough to drive away hunger, or to clothe ourselves, or to house ourselves decently, or to raise our children as creatures dear to us. We have known ironies, insults, blows that we endured morning, noon, and evening, because we are Negroes….”
Allen Dulles, Director of CIA, 1960 memo:
“In high quarters here, it is the clear-cut conclusion that if [Lumumba] continues to hold high office, the inevitable result will [have] disastrous consequences . . . for the interests of the free world generally. Consequently, we conclude that his removal must be an urgent and prime objective.”
50 years ago today, on January 17, 1961, Patrice Lumumba was beaten, tortured and shot in the Congolese province of Katanga. He had been targeted for death by powerful enemies including the CIA, the Belgian government, mineral corporations plundering his country, and the gangs of hired mercenaries that sought to control Congo’s working people.
The feelings of sorrow, loss and anger over this assassination and the loss of hope are still deeply felt in Africa — and among the many who remember.
This piece first appeared ten years ago, and has been re-edited for Kasama.
Patrice Lumumba: Rebellion and Murder in the Congo
by Mike Ely
July 30, 1960 was a hope-filled moment for many millions of people, in the worldwide struggle against colonialism. The Belgian colonialists, who had tormented and exploited the people of the “Belgian Congo” so intensely, had been forced to hand over the government of this vast and mineral-rich land. The Republic of the Congo was born, and one of its leaders was a fiery, young anti-colonial politician named Patrice Lumumba.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Africa, African liberation, CIA, Congo, imperialism, Mao Zedong, Mike Ely | Tagged: Patrice Lumumba | 19 Comments »
Posted by eric ribellarsi on January 3, 2011
The following is a response to a critique of Kasama written for the Club Jacobin blog.
by Eric Ribellarsi
New Beginnings Need New Methods
Kasama is a communist project – which means we have united around our end goal, a radically changed and liberated world without exploitation or oppression. Meanwhile, we are engaged in a creative struggle to define the means and strategies for getting there. For three years we have tried to make a contribution toward creating a new revolutionary movement in the U.S., and a new communist pole within it.
We think that means breaking with a lot of past thinking and activity. We have pointed to two things that are missing: At this moment in the U.S., communists don’t have a core organization to unite our work, and we don’t have a creative strategy for fusing revolutionary politics with the people who rise in struggle.
To deal with these absences, our Kasama project has consciously tried to avoid two common pulls: First we have resisted rushing to form a new small sect based on pre-existing and inherited politics. And second we have resisted losing ourselves in a flurry of generic activism.
Both of those things (sect-building and generic activism) would recreate those methods and routines that have, time and time again, led scattered radical forces to stop far short of a revolution.
In the document that follows, I would like to talk about what we have been doing – which has been, admittedly, primitive and tentative. Many people reading this will be familiar with our Kasama discussion site, but may not be aware of how this site fits into building a new revolutionary movement.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> Kasama Project, 9 Letters, Eric Ribellarsi, Kasama, Mao Zedong, Marxist theory, methodology, study guides, theory | 59 Comments »
