Archive for September, 2010
Posted by Mike E on September 30, 2010
This essay has been the center of great controversy and interest — both because of its sharp upholding of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in revolutionary China, but also because of its distinctive views on the communist Party-State, the continuing validity of a Leninist party (and of traditional views of revolution generally).
This previously hard-to-get essay is now available here for download.
This essay first appeared in the journal positions during Winter 2005.
The Communist Hypthesis Study Group in Chicago will be taking it up in depth this month.
Study along with us. Comment here.
Posted in Alain Badiou, China, Cultural Revolution, Marxist theory, philosophy | 4 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 30, 2010
Simple point. Fascinating comparison. (Thanks to Lars Ekstrom)
(click to enlarge)
Posted in >> analysis of news, >> International, imperialism | 12 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 29, 2010
The following was written on a comment in the thread following “Communist Electoral Tactics Part 2: Reinvented According to Conditions.”
“I think its important that we really understand the costs of confining ourselves to extra-electoral political activity. For most of us, that’s simply what politics is, working with social movements or trying to bring them into being, organizing demonstrations and the like. We imagine the road to revolution consisting essentially of the continuous expansion of this sort of activity.”
* * * * * * * *
by Tellnolies
Carl Davidson wrote:
“First, we are already ‘within the system.’ That’s what it means when conditions are non-revolutionary and dual power is not emerging in the streets in any major way. It’s not a matter of dragging people ‘bank into’ it; they’re already there, albeit with varying degrees of activity and passivity.
“Second, we are in no position to confer ‘legitimacy’ on Congress, the Constitution or any of the rest. They already have legitimacy, or at least a good deal of it, in the thinking of the majority, and even to a considerable degree, of the militant minority. Whether the left, at its current level of strengthen, decides to work in elections or not, won’t add or subtract ‘legitimacy’ very much one way or another.”
I don’t think the question Mike is raising here is whether revolutionaries are presently in a position to legitimize the system in the eyes of the broad masses, but rather whether by engaging in electoral work they reinforce its existing legitimacy among precisely the people they are trying to win over to revolutionary politics.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news | 35 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 29, 2010
Kasama received the following statement issued by the National Executive Committee of Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad.
We Must All Stand Together against FBI Repression of Anti-war and Solidarity Activists
The Freedom Road Socialist Organization/Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad (FRSO/OSCL) denounces in the strongest possible terms the recent FBI raids against activists in the anti-war and international solidarity movement some of whom are members of Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO [Fight Back]). That organization, a group which split from FRSO/OSCL just over a decade ago, is made up of dedicated people working for justice for the people of the world. The actions of the FBI have nothing to do with law enforcement or “anti-terrorism” and everything to do with the repression of legitimate dissent in this country and abroad.
Repression is on the rise.
This set of raids, along with other recent FBI investigations and proceedings against anti-war activists, anarchists, and other progressives, represents a distinct jump in the repressive activity of the state. The Obama administration, which had given us vague promises of “change” and “hope” after the horrors of Bush and Cheney, is racking up an appalling record on human rights. This whole investigation is not the result of the independent action of some rogue wing of the FBI, but is under the direction of the office of US Attorney General Eric Holder, who was directly nominated by Obama.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news | 5 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 29, 2010
Kasama received the following statement.
Hands off the Anti-War movement! Defend FRSO
Anarchist Solidarity against the Political Police
We stand firmly opposed to the raids carried out by the FBI, America’s political police, against a number of anti-war and labor activists across the country on Friday, September 24th, 2010. We give our solidarity to those threatened by these raids and to those subpoenaed to appear before a government Grand Jury next month. These attacks must be resisted.
The FBI claims the raids were done in order to combat terrorism. We reject
that lie. We know many of the activists attacked personally and have
shared the frontlines with them in struggles against war and poverty and
for freedom and justice. We have had, and will continue to have, serious
disagreements with them. But let no one doubt – WE HAVE THEIR BACKS.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, anarchism, antiwar, Barack Obama, police, repression, war on terror | 5 Comments »
Posted by John Steele on September 29, 2010
Kasama received the following statement.
Public Statement on FBI Raids
On September 24th, FBI agents raided the homes of at least six organizers and activists across the country. Their crime: working in solidarity with oppressed people across the globe.
This is nothing new. The US government has a long history of disrupting and destroying organizations and activists working for justice around the world. They have trained death squads at the School of the Americas (at Ft Benning in Georgia) and have supported terrorism against labor and social justice activists in Colombia, Palestine, El Salvador and elsewhere. If the FBI were truly concerned with terrorism, they would have begun by investigating the facilities at Ft Benning or the thousands of assassins currently employed by the CIA in Afghanistan. Clearly stopping terrorism is not their goal.
The FBI also has a long history of repressing people in the US who have stood up against racism and war. In the 1960s they raided and assassinated Black Power and anti-Vietnam war activists. Over the past decade they have harassed, intimidated, and disappeared Arab and Muslim folks across the U.S.
We publicly condemn what appear to be targeted attacks against members of Freedom Road Socialist Organization who were acting in solidarity with groupings from Palestine and Colombia.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in civil liberties, police, repression | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on September 29, 2010
This first appeared on the Fire on the Mountain blog.
To add our little piece of the picture:
On Kasama, we posted the announcement of the raids that appeared on Twin Cities Indymedia site. It went up about 10 am — within hours that posting had about 600 page views. All day we posted updates as they appeared and then started posting solidarity statements. Quickly we started receiving emails from people wanting to publicize their own solidarity statements.
Over the next few days we had 18 different posts on the raids — and about a 1,000 page views a day more than usual.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Facebook and the FBI Raids
by Jimmy Higgins
The outrageous FBI raids on international solidarity and anti-war activists in the Mid-West has triggered a heartening outpouring of solidarity on the left. It also demonstrated that we are in a new stage in the development of the ever-changing Internet. This was the first major attack by the FBI in the Facebook Era, when social networking reportedly comprises almost a quarter of every hour spent on the Internet, more than games or email or any other single use.
I’ll start with my own involvement. By a fluke I was not only online but on Facebook last Friday morning, September 24. I saw a status update posted five minutes before by Stef Yorek, a friend and a former comrade in FRSO/OSCL. It read:
The FBI is executing a search warrant on our house right now. The claim to be looking for evidence of material support for so-called Foreign Terrorist Organizations. The FARC and PFLP are mentioned by name. This is taking place in multiple cities across the country. I have been served with a warrant to appear before a Grand Jury. It’s an outrageous fishing expedition.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Blogging, Facebook, police, social networking, surveillance, war on terror | 8 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 29, 2010
Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Both communist abstentionists and figures like Nader argue that the two main parties are virtually identical "corporate parties." This has a great deal of truth, but also collides with the increasing ideological polarization of bourgeois politics.
“Those communists who believe electoral abstention is a simple principle have assumed that the mere participation of Nepal’s Maoists in national elections in the summer of 2006 was proof they had taken some terrible turn onto the “peaceful road.” It was (and remains) a line that can’t even start to calculate the options and openings created for revolution and legitimization by the Maoist victory in those elections.”
The following post was excerpted from yesterday’s essay Rough Notes: On Revolutionary Participation in Elections, to make the whole a little less rough.
by Mike Ely
Electoral abstentionism has never been a revolutionary communist principle. Or to put is more clearly, non-participation in elections is a strategic question, but not a simple strategic principle. That is not a surprise to many communists around the world — but it is often comes as a surprise to some communists in the U.S. (and also India) because of particular developments and traditions within the Maoist movements of those countries.
Revolutionary communists have historically held that electoral options need to be explored in their particularity (even if, in the U.S., the answer may come back repeatedly that revolutionaries should expose “both sides” from outside the electoral arena).
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, Barack Obama, Bob Avakian, election, Maoism, Marxist theory, mass line, Mike Ely, New Com. Movement | 15 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 28, 2010
Yippies parading Pigasus, their candidate for American president, New York City 1968
“It is often a surprise to many communists, but electoral abstentionism has never been a communist principle… I have grave doubts about whether communists can successfully use that arena to make our views known, and to ‘build a socialist electorate’ — under currently foreseeable circumstances. I have doubts, but I really think we should creatively ‘walk it through’ to see what the possibilities are — not dismiss it in a mechanical way. And we should re-discuss it (over and over as needed) when conditions change.”
by Mike Ely
Please forgive the rough nature of these notes… My focus is somewhere else for the moment, but I did want to engage the important exchange happening in many places on our site (including most recently here).
People in their millions will be voting all through any future process of radicalization. People awakening to political life and suddenly determined to solve key problems will try many methods and tactics (even ones that seem contradictory to us) — and they will certainly alternate between militant forms of mass struggle and rather traditional electoral strategies, even while they are sporadically considering (and even initiating) revolutionary attempts.
In my opinion: The eventual discrediting, splintering and collapse of the Democratic Party is (like the collapse of the Jacksonian Whigs before the anti-slavery Civil War) a kind of precondition for the emergence of a revolutionary united front capable of seizing power.
But in any conceivable scenario, even a collapse of the Democrats (or a schism in ways that isolate the deeply imperialist establishment) will likely take both electoral and non-electoral forms. And many of the political formations that will play important roles in radical political life (and contribute toward revolutionary moods) will often have one foot (and sometimes two!) in electoral politics — of a left Democratic, or third party social democratic, or post-Democratic kind.
So i do have a sense of what TNL is talking about when he says we are trying to build a conscious self-identifying movement for socialism — and that part of that may be reflected in the emergence of a “socialist electorate.” I’m not sure that electoral work (and particularly electoral work internal to the Democratic party) is favorable to that (in the U.S., and in this moment). But I understand TNL’s strategic approach and desire.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, comintern, Democratic Party, election, Mike Ely, Tell No Lies | 11 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 28, 2010
The RCP has not issued a formal statement denouncing the FBI raids on antiwar activists nor have they publicized demonstrations protesting the raid.
But their newspaper Revolution has now posted a news account describings the raids as “sinister” — it ends by saying that “This dramatic escalation in U.S. government’s repression carried out by Obama’s Justice Department must be vigorously opposed and defeated.”
* * * * * * * * * *
FBI RAIDS ANTI-WAR ACTIVISTS HOMES IN MIDWEST
At 7 am on Friday, September 24, 2010, scores of FBI agents raided two homes in Chicago and the Anti-War Committee Office and five residences in Minneapolis. Altogether subpoenas to testify before a Federal Grand Jury in Chicago were issued to eleven activists in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan. According to on-line accounts, the FBI also attempted to intimidate activists in California and North Carolina.
The FBI spokesman in Minneapolis was quoted in the Chicago Tribune, “The warrants are seeking evidence in support of an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism.” This was a charge which activists immediately dismissed as illegitimate and unjustified. No arrests have been made and the FBI admitted that there was no “imminent danger” to the public. The warrants and subpoenas raise travel to a host of countries and unspecified relation to U.S .government’s designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO’s), specifically the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news | 5 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 28, 2010
Thanks to Radical Eyes for suggesting this post.
Sept. 27, 2010
We firmly denounce the recent raids by the FBI against the homes of activists in the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the Arab American Action Network, Students for a Democratic Society and other left and progressive activists. By serving ill-defined grand jury subpoenas, by seizing all computer hard drives, disks, cell phones, files and boxes of papers and seizing unrelated personal possessions stretching back for 30 years, the authorities have simply revealed they are on a ‘fishing expedition.’ In fact, they are illegally violating the privacy and constitutional rights of those they have unjustly targeted with the sham excuse of ‘anti-terrorism.’ Through these bogus claims and repressive actions, the FBI is threatening the democratic and constitutional rights of all Americans.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on September 27, 2010
The following is by the libertarian antiwar.com site.
The Obama Boomerang:
Pro-Obama lefties get slapped down by the FBI
by Justin Raimondo
September 27, 2010 — FBI raids on six houses in Minneapolis and Chicago, including the office of the Minneapolis Antiwar Committee, have the antiwar movement – and the left in general – in an uproar. Agents came barging into homes guns drawn, kicking down doors and smashing furniture, armed with search warrants. The warrants described, in suitably vague terms, allegations of “material support for terrorism.” No arrests were made, although a number of individual activists were served with subpoenas demanding their appearance before a grand jury. Computers, documents, phones, and other materials were carted away by burly FBI agents, who appeared at 7 a.m. sharp, locked and loaded.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Barack Obama, police, repression, war on terror | 44 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 27, 2010
In 1967, a small group of young revolutionaries decided to move from the Berkeley to the nearby industrial city of Richmond California.
They were determined to start bringing communist politics and organization to working people outside radical student enclaves.
This early Maoist collective was one of dozens of radical organizing projects happening around the country.
The Richmond collective (and the following summation article) became particularly influential among young activists attracted to Maoist communism and the Black Panther Party . Quite a few of us drove across country to Richmond and the Bay Area to meet the people of that project, and to learn how to initiate something similar. Many went on to help create a country-wide Revolutionary Union based on the politics and methods used in the Bay Area.
The following article summed up then early Richmond experience. It appeared in the important revolutionary newspaper The Movement (December 1969). The piece was published (and actively circulated to new audiences) in the Revolutionary Union’s opening manifesto Red Papers 1 — which served as one Iskra-like pole for forming a new multinational communist organization.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Maoism, New Com. Movement, RCPUSA, working class | 2 Comments »
Posted by Tell No Lies on September 27, 2010
Selma James is best known as a founder of Wages for Housework. In this article from 1975 she advances an analysis of the interesection race, sex and class that challenged the prevailing understanding of class struggle among Marxists.
“One reason is because some of us wore the blinkers of the white male Left, whether we knew it or not. According to them, if the struggle’s not in the factory, it’s not the class struggle. The real bind was that this Left assured us they spoke in the name of Marxism. They threatened that if we broke from them, organizationally or politically, we were breaking with Marx and scientific socialism. What gave us the boldness to break, fearless of the consequences, was the power of the Black movement. We found that redefining class went hand-in-hand with rediscovering a Marx the Left would never understand.”
Sex, Race and Class: How capitalism and the Left have mystified the real relationships between these categories.
By Selma James
There has been enough confusion generated when sex, race and class have confronted each other as separate and even conflicting entities. That they are separate entities is self-evident. That they have proven themselves to be not separate, inseparable, is harder to discern. Yet if sex and race are pulled away from class, virtually all that remains is the truncated, provincial, sectarian politics of the white male metropolitan Left. I hope to show in barest outline, first, that the working class movement is something other than that Left have ever envisioned it to be. Second, locked within the contradiction between the discrete entity of sex or race and the totality of class is the greatest deterrent to working class power and at the same time the creative energy to achieve that power. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> communist politics, racism, theory, women, working class | 11 Comments »
Posted by eric ribellarsi on September 27, 2010
Posted in >> analysis of news | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on September 26, 2010
Compiled by Sherry Wolf
Here’s the list found online of solidarity actions in several cities:
Minneapolis MN, Monday: 4:30, FBI Office Monday, 111 Washington Ave. S.
Chicago, IL, Monday: 4:30 FBI Building, 2111 W. Roosevelt Rd.
NYC, Tues. 4:30 to 6pm Federal Building, 26 Federal Plaza,
Newark, NJ Tues 5 to 6pm Federal Building Broad Street
Washington DC, Tues 4:30 – 5:30 FBI Building 935 Pennsylvania Ave NW.
Detroit MI Tuesday 4:30 McNamara Federal Building
Buffalo, NY 4:30 at FBI Building – Corner of So. Elmwood Ave. & Niagara St.
Durham NC on Monday, 12 noon Federal Building, 323 E Chapel Hill St
Raleigh NC. Tuesday 9 am. Federal Building, 310 New Bern Ave
Asheville, NC Tuesday
Atlanta, GA, Tues Noon, FBI Building
Gainesville, FL on Monday, 4:30 PM at FBI Building
Salt Lake City, Utah, 9 AM on Monday at Federal Building
[Moderator update: Additional cities include:]
Houston, TX. Monday, 5PM at Mick Leland Federal Building, 1919 Smith St.
Posted in >> analysis of news | 13 Comments »
Posted by Mike E on September 26, 2010
The following appeared on SDS site.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) stand in solidarity with their brothers and sisters across the country in the face of FBI repression of progressive causes. SDSers, along with members of the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Twin-Cities Anti-War Committee, the Colombia Action Network, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and the National Committee to Free Ricardo Palmera had their homes searched and documents and electronic devices seized.
“The government hopes to use a grand jury to frame up activists. The goal of these raids is to harass and try to intimidate the movement against U.S. wars and occupations, and those who oppose U.S. support for repressive regimes,” said Colombia solidarity activist Tom Burke, one of those handed a subpoena by the FBI. “They are designed to suppress dissent and free speech, to divide the peace movement, and to pave the way for more U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and Latin America.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on September 26, 2010
The Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line (EROL) is now starting to post previously rare materials from the New Communist Movement (NCM) — the currents of Maoist revolutionaries that emerged in the U.S. from the 1960s.
Kasama will be posting key documents from this EROL project as they are available.
The following incudes some of EROL’s initial materials on the Maoist organization the Revolutionary Union (1968-1974).
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in >> analysis of news, Maoism, New Com. Movement | 1 Comment »
Posted by Mike E on September 26, 2010
Posted in >> analysis of news | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Mike E on September 26, 2010
A team associated with the Marxist Internet Archive (MIA) is creating the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line (EROL). This important project is now starting to post precious materials from the New Communist Movement (NCM) — the currents of Maoist revolutionaries that emerged in the U.S. from the 1960s.
Kasama will be posting key documents from this EROL project as they are available.
The following is the opening essay for the NCM archive, and some of its initial links. We will post their beginning archive of materials from the Revolutionary Union (1968-1974).
A call for volunteers: We are looking for a volunteers (or two) to help the EROL expand its offerings. In particular, they need someone to scan or xerox the 1980 pamphlet on the history of line struggles in the RCP, and other works that some readers may have on their bookshelves. If you are interested in helping scan such materials, please contact Kasama by email [kasamasite (at) yahoo.com]
More: If you know of essays and pamphlets that should be included in this archive, please pass on suggestions.
* * * * * * * * *
U.S. Anti-Revisionism:
The New Communist Movement: The Early Groups, 1969-1974
The New Communist Movement emerged in the late 1960’s, as the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements became increasingly radicalized. Students and youth began to reject ’working within the system’ and lost faith in electoral politics and nonviolent tactics. These activists gravitated toward organizing in working class settings: workplaces, particularly factories; neighborhoods; community colleges, and military bases. Though many things helped trigger the emergence of a new movement of communists, four especially significant influences stand out:
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Black History Month, Cultural Revolution, Maoism, New Com. Movement | 3 Comments »
This essay has been the center of great controversy and interest — both because of its sharp upholding of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) in revolutionary China, but also because of its distinctive views on the communist Party-State, the continuing validity of a Leninist party (and of traditional views of revolution generally).
