What is this intended to mean? How is it actually read by others?
by Mike Ely
CWM wrote:
“I find it confusing to read ‘We declare fidelity to communist theory.’ Given that there are literally dozens of different (and often contradictory) variants of communist theory, what could it possibly mean to declare fidelity to communist theory as such?”
Equalize writes in another thread a kind of answer:
“I’M A MAOIST. I think that it is sharp, fresh and real to be a Maoist. I feel good saying I am a Maoist. I‘m proud to be a Maoist. I am proud to be a conscious revolutionary person, and, when speaking to people that respect that, I am proud to call myself a Maoist. I can defend Mao and Maoism and am eager to do so, especially with awakened and conscious people. Maoism is not just the highest expression of internationalism and communism, Maoism is the part of communism that is most sharp, most fresh, and most true.”
My response in reading this is first to agree with Equalize. I too am a Maoist.
But my second thought: Which of many existing Maoisms are you suggesting we defend and uphold?
My third response moves even further away: Is even “the best” of inherited or existent Maoism sufficient (either as banner or guide) for our tasks?
Can you explain our final goals in a contemporary way?
What would you say?
Write yours below — – in the length of a tweet.
Let’s compare and contrast.
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by Mike Ely
We can now often present communism to a generation relatively disentangled from the cold war — and even from direct, immediate reference to previous “real existing socialism.” We can reclaim communism’s global, visionary, communal and experimental-utopian qualities. We have that opportunity. And we have that necessity. Read the rest of this entry »
This piece is available as podcast. It is part of our larger Kasama offerings on peoples’ history.
The Puritan colonists of Massachusetts embraced a line from Psalms 2:8:
“Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.”
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by Mike Ely
Intro to that first occupation
We are talking widely among ourselves about “occupying” Wall Street — taking the center of an empire back for the people of the world. We are talking about “Occupy Everything” — sharing our dreams of taking all society away from banks, police, and the heartless authority of money. We hope this moment marks a beginning of the end for them.
And yet, just such a moment cannot be understood without remembering that other occupation — the one that marked the beginning of their beginning.
Arrogant invaders occupied a land using the most naked forms of genocide. They invented new forms of slavery, slave trade and profit making. They arrived with their high-tech arms and bibles. They declared all was theirs by divine right, while they took it all with raw force.
Put another way: That first occupation was a sweeping nightmare that starts with Columbus. It has continued for 500 years. For the Native peoples of today (and therefore for us too) it remains an ongoing story of domination and removal. The nation-state who today labels millions of indigenous descendants “illegal aliens” arrived in boats with only royal decrees and their holy book as documents of legitimacy.
Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England.
Here is the true story of that Thanksgiving — a story of murder and theft, of the first “corporations” invented on North American soil, of religious fundamentalism and relentless mania for money. It is a story of the birth of capitalism.
This piece is intended to be shared at this holiday time.
Pass it on. Serve a little truth with the usual stuffing.
“When words are spoken that (suddenly! finally!) invoke that idea of negating a whole system or structure (i.e. “Occupy Everywhere!” “All power to the General Assembly!” “Long live the Oakland Commune!”) — every nerve should go on alert. We should tune in intently to the reception.
“Who is speaking? Who is listening? Who is answering back?…
“We should take note as the stone hits the pond, and read the ripples. Because we are wanting to generate waves.”
Any complex human task, (any!) that you speak the words quite a bit in advance of the actual moment, in order to be able to act when the actual alignment of stars is “just right.” And you often have to speak them with poetry that won’t hold up to lawyerly textualism (“We want the world and we want it now!” or one of my favorite Pantherisms “Blood to the horse’s brow, and woe to those who cannot swim.”)
If you think about it: Any revolutionary cause needs contagious agitational slogans the preconfigure in the mind the visions and goals that will (eventually, hopefully) give rise to action slogans.
That is how ideas change matter: When revolutionary ideas become grasped (understood, taken up and creatively morphed) by large numbers of people, matter itself is changed (meaning that social relations are overthrown and their defenders are challenged and defeated).
Nous sommes à cinq minutes de l’aube
et le vent a un goût de liberté
par Mike Ely
du réseau Kasama
Nous ne sommes plus cinq minutes avant minuit. Après que le printemps arabe se soit transporté en Espagne puis en Grèce, et finalement à Wall Street, on a soudainement l’impression d’être à cinq minutes de l’aube.
Nous n’avons plus l’impression qu’il n’y a aucun moyen de stopper le merdier mondial. Il y a maintenant une brêche et nous nous jetons dedans.
Nous sommes brusquement projetés à une époque débarrassée de la routine des manifestations fatiguées qui ne parlent plus pour personne, ni à personne.
Les oppresseurs (notre ennemi commun) ne sont plus en sécurité – ou encore moins qu’avant. Ils sont au contraire repoussés, confus, déconcertés, furieux. Le maire milliardaire de New York ne peut pas « nettoyer » un petit parc (ndt: le Zuccotti park, à Wall Street)- et soudain la question n’est plus de chasser les occupants, mais plutôt comment il sera lui même chassé du pouvoir si il continue sur ce chemin.
“I can appreciate the desire to limit the critique of the RCP to what Mike calls “questions of line” (i.e., their ideas).”
There is a debate here about “the high plane of two line struggle” — something I have argued strongly for. I want to take a second to clarify this term “questions of line.”
I understand why CWM equates line simply with “their ideas” — but that is not exactly how I would look at it.
What road are we on?
Sometimes, on the left, people say “what is your line on this? What is your line on that?”
This is not what I mean by line. To me (and to Maoists generally) line is a matter of examining “where does this lead?” It is like a surveyor’s tool that projects forward.
It is an approach to methods, policies, theoretical “packages” — that asks the questions: where does this lead? who does it serve? what will come from taking this road?
You have to consciously fight to get things considered and decided on that basis. And only by posing and deciding things on that basis can a communist program come forward, and gain support broadly among key sections of the people.
This Kasama site has recently been accused by the Revolutionary Communist Party of setting up their members and leadership for state repression.
The RCP’s recent statement is called “Outright Piggery from the Camp of Counter-Revolution” — so their charge is right in the title.
Extreme accusations demand a response.
Here it is: These claims are utterly false. The RCP does not give examples, evidence or proof of their accusation because they have none.
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Here is their central charge:
“Specifically, including very recently, there has been a whole practice of naming individuals who are identified on the Kasama site as being connected to the RCP, and then encouraging people to try to find out about individuals, their relationship to the Party, and speculation about the composition of different bodies and membership in the Party. And there has been an ongoing campaign of posting ad hominem (personal) attacks on Bob Avakian in particular. This alone puts it in the same camp as reactionary and vicious right-wing blogs and websites, doing the work for government agencies whose mission is to collect this kind of information which is then used to destroy individuals and organizations they deem to be a threat.”
In fact: Kasama has published politicalcriticisms of the RCP. If that has been damaging to the RCP it is because their politics are self-isolating and unattractive.However Kasama discussion has never breached the security of any organizations.
Date: Tuesday, November 15
Time: 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm (2h)
Location: University of Chicago, Harper Memorial Library, Room 150, 1116 E. 59th St.
Topic: Crisis of the Left
This event is sponsored by the Platypus Society.
The other panelists include Roberta Garner (contributing editor of Science and Society) and Alex Hanna.
More information and posters for the event will be posted here.
Speakers’ bios (will add other panelists as that becomes available)
Mike Ely is a veteran revolutionary who works with Kasama’s project for reconceiving the communist movement.
He started political life with the early SDS and the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, and spent time in France and Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia during the heady year 1968.
During the 1970s, Mike worked as a communist organizer within waves of coal miner wildcat strikes in Appalachia, and participated in the debates and organizational shakeouts of the New Communist Movement.
“I heard Ralph Nader praise “the brave founding fathers , who settled this land”. I thought I would throw up listening, but I have run into that kind of stuff in many cases in this movement.”
Many people have been trained to think of the settler/slaveowners of the early U.S. as “their” founding fathers. And Louise is deeply correct that this is mistaken, and has ongoing implications for politics. History is not just about the past, but about the present.
This country was founded in genocide and slavery. It was built and maintained by some of the most vicious exploitation imaginable — obviously of kidnapped Africans but also of impoverished immigrants from Asia and Europe who were herded into mines, and mills.
And it is not just that the “founding fathers” were slave traders, capitalists, and slave owners (and therefore not “ours”) — but (more controversial even) their very political system, constitution and even their concepts of property, authority, law, and morality were all deeply marked by this exploitative, expansionist and genocidal nature.
They are not “our” founding fathers — but the founders of the empire we now confront, and within which we seek to act as an increasingly conscious and determined force of negation.
double meaning: I got nothing but love for you baby.
I always loved that song — below its playfulness, is the pain of trying to create love and intimacy among the oppressed.
We often have nothing to offer each other — little money, little security, little to promise for the future. Charm, yes. Humor, yes. Smooth moves, too
“But I got nothing but love for you baby” — both a promise of love, and a confession of having nothing else.
And important as our love is, often it is not enough. People need more, we need to be able to provide for each other — in this heartless place where the abyss is just around the next corner.
“How about we go up to the Bronx and pick up some hard boiled eggs. Some salt, maybe some pepper.”
So often we got nuttin but love and each other. At least we have love and each other.
There will be a public panel discussion this weekend in New Orleans:
From #Occupy to Revolution:
How Could Our World Actually Change
Speakers: Eric Ribellarsi, Jim Weill, Mike Ely
Saturday, November 5, 11 am – 2 pm Avery Alexander Plaza (formerly Duncan Plaza) in front of City Hall.
Sponsored by the Voice Collective
Firsthand report backs about the revolutionary experiences in Nepal, Greece, and within the Occupy Together movement in the US. Discussion the possibilities for a new revolutionary movement in the U.S.
Jim Weill and Eric Ribellarsi have recently returned from deep investigations into the “movement of the squares” in Greece—and after learning from the ideas of active revolutionaries within that movement. They also bring insights from their explorations of the Maoist revolutionary movement of Nepal, which has mass support in the millions and is sharply confronting the unsolved problems of overthrowing the old order and making much needed radical changes.
Mike Ely is a veteran revolutionary with a history that starts from his work with the early Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, the intense strike wave among coal miners in the 1970s, and covers decades of experience attempting to build revolutionary organization.
“We must not be afraid to engage in the aesthetic renaissance which made the original communist experiments so appealing. It is too common to refuse irrationalist forms of evangelism by comparing them to the fascist propaganda machine (the aesthetics of which were, of course, co-opted from early communist movements) or to today’s capitalist marketing empire.”
I think this is important… and we don’t have a common language around this (and for that reason alone a lot of people first said “I’m intrigued, but I don’t yet know exactly what he is talking about.”)
These issues come up in many ways (including whenever posters, graphics, covers, design, symbolic logos, and banners are proposed).
JFSP, for example, opened with a question about the Oakland Strike poster Kasama prominently reprinted:
“Wasn’t the black cat an old Anarchist threat known as the sabo-cat, sabotage cat?”
Yes.
Or rather, to be more specific, the black cat is a contemporary radical symbol of struggle — that is lifted and continually reworked from the imagery of the early revolutionary movement Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
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.
This is a printable PDF leaflet based on an essay that appears here on Kasama. This is printable in black and white — on standard 8.5 x 14 paper, with a simple fold. Help distribute this over the next few days. (Updated October 20.)
It is no longer five minutes to midnight. After Arab Spring leaps to Spain, and Greece, and on to New York’s Wall Street, it suddenly feels like five minutes to dawn.
We no longer need assume that there is no time to stop the world going to shit. There is an opening and we are flooding into it.
We are suddenly in a moment that is not marked by exhausted routine protests that speak for no one and speak to no one.
Here is the deal: The smell of sulfur is upon the land. Satan himself is coming now…
Of course we don’t believe in Satan. It is a metaphor.
What I mean is this: The real and difficult struggle within this movement and for this movement is now starting.
The media is turning on the machinery. The unions officials will now come as “supporters” but broker for the liberal establishment. “Advisers” will show up. People (who are pliant and acceptable) will now be declared leaders and spokespeople in the media. Demands will be announced or promoted or demanded that correspond to the program of the Democratic Party…. and much more.
We see it on every side: The Democratic Party (through many instrumentalities) is coming to convert the Occupy XXX movement into a liberal version of the Tea Party (their personal reserve to whipping up their social base for the coming elections). It is, to put it bluntly, what death looks like for this new movement.
They are coming in disguise, with honeyed words, with promises and seductions. As they have come for previous generations.
“The eruption of radical forces among middle classes (especially radical youth and students) has three potentials:
It is an important force in its own right — often taking on the government and oppression, lighting the sky, contending in the realm of ideas and in the streets.
It is often important as an initiating force — i.e. encouraging others to come onto the political stage. (Including particularly the poor who often can’t friggin’ breathe without triggering police repression, and who can respond with great excitement when an opening seems to appear.)
It is often a source of new communist and revolutionary cadre… who develop a largeness of mind and deep revolutionary consciousness and can learn to play a role beyond their initial campus scope of activities.
“Now all of that is only a potential for contributi0ns, not inevitable. We have to actually help make those three things happen. And help mobilize the more oppressed to seize this opening, come onto the stage and into the spotlight. And help train communists from those who are breaking into struggle with great energy and excitement.”
“Think about it: It seems very odd to look at Occupy Wall Street and evaluate it in terms of whether its initiators could lead an actual revolution and lead the creation of a new society. Obviously they can’t. But why is that the issue (or our basis for evaluating their initiative and actions so far).
“No one is expecting Ad-busters (!) to lead a seizure of power.
“And criticizing them for not being able to is kind of silly – a false issue, a red herring. Many positive outcomes are possible from this occupation movement (shaking up the political air, putting radicalism back on the stage, awakening a new generation to political life, rippling and influencing people far from the occupations including in ghetto highschools and immigrant factories.”
“And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack And you may find yourself in another part of the world And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile And you may find yourself in a beautiful house,
with a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself,
Well…How did I get here?!”
There is a method swirling around: Where people look at this new moment, this new development… and they scan it like a static structure, and they compare it to their own previous beliefs and practices. Eureka! I know what’s wrong! Suddenly they express alarm, or dismay, or deep worry, that things are not being done right, by the rules (which have accumulated in the old leftist closet for decades).
By a simple process of subtraction, they come up with a subset of “what is missing” from this new movement. And they quickly assign themselves to be the critics or patronizing instructors of “what is missing.”
In short: it has been a very short leap (in conservative leftist thinking) from “This movement is bullshit and will go nowhere” to “This movement is ok, but I know what it needs.” In fact, you knew it all along, right?
I see that in the encampment of Occupy Chicago, i read it in a dozen discussion. And you see it too.
No demands for the Greek government -- just climb in a helicopter and flee.
by Mike Ely
I was asked about the debate over demands within the many General Assemblies. Here is my current view (which may change):
i have very mixed thoughts on this. And i suspect the moment such demands are formulated, they will feel less radical or unnecessarily exclusionary.
Badiou’s point of “politics at distance from the state” comes into play. (For Badiou the word “state” is not the state apparatus of previous marxism, but more the larger “state of affairs” — i.e. what we call “the system” in our revolutionary movement.)
The moment you make certain “concrete demands” of the state you are suddenly run the risk of becoming just a piece of that process, on that grid. And often a legitimizing piece.
Is that appropriate now? In this occupy movement?
In some ways, the whole feeling of “fuck them all we have no laundry list of demands for you. Go away!” is much better. Much more France 68. And that helicopter symbol from Greece was/is of course a blunt demand all its own!
There is a line in Dylan’s great song of revolution: “the hour the ship comes in” — as the mutiny on the ship takes hold….
“And they’ll raise their hands
Sayin’ ‘We’ll meet all your demands,’
And we’ll shout from the bow
‘Your days are numbered.’
We don’t desire momentary cooptation or symbolic concessions. We don’t want their patronizing pretense of “listening.”
We want this system of money and oppression gone, razed, and its symbols moved to this museums that now display slave chains and thumbscrews. And we want to raise that prospect of change to the level of the political stage.
The assumption that this moment NEEDs concrete demands is worth questioning. There may be demands we should raise. But better NO demands than conservatizing demands or bad demands, or demands that turn us into a pressure group for timid reforms. (Perhaps we should (to clarify things for ourselves) make our own list of “bad demands” (diversionary, legitimizing, slavishly tame, rightwing kooky, etc.) that we really don’t want to see raised as the face of this movement.)
