About Kasama
“Above all: Let’s consciously go for the whole thing. The change we want is about taking the accumulated wealth, technology, hard work, science, and connections of a complex global civilization — and finally (finally!) putting it into the service of us all, including the very least and previously powerless among us. It is about the voiceless suddenly speaking, and the wealthy suddenly becoming silent.”
From “It is five minutes to dawn and the wind smells like freedom”
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> Kasama Reading Clusters — essays, theory debate
> Essays translated (Spanish, French, Farsi, Greek)
> Key writings in pamphlet form
> Our discussions of Obama and Democratic party
Origin of our name: In Tagalog, a language of the Philippines, Kasama is the word for the companions who travel the road together — in this case, the revolutionary road.
Contact us: kasamasite (at) yahoo (dot) com
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nando said
Kasama defines itself as a communist project that fights (in theory and practice) for the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.
That is a statement of fundamental goals.
One of the reasons that you “don’t find any of this” on the website — meaning any of the particular phrases and formulas common in the previous communists movements — is that Kasama (overall) has chosen not to start by speaking in such formulas. It wants to take this moment to look back over the beliefs it has inherited, subject them to critical evaluation, speak about them in new ways among the people, and critically assimilate a new basis of unity and a body of theory and principles that the 9 letters calls a new “communist coherency.”
AGUS FAISAL said
Kamusta ka, salammat, Im agus from Indonesia, Viva for Maoist, yes !
In solidarity,
AGus Faisal
Carl Marks said
So does this mean that Kasama is open to communists who may not identify with some integral organizational tenets of Bolshevism? While I am a Marxist and want to see the rise of a new and powerful organization of the working class, I think democratic centralism and representative vanguardism is historically anachronistic when trying to organize in the senile capitalist world of the 21st century. I think it should be supported in the liberation of the underdeveloped world, so I totally am rooting for the Maoists in Nepal, the Philippines, and around the globe. But the conditions we’re facing in America today are so fundamentally different I think we need to be exploring new forms of revolutionary organization – that is, not repeating the same tired pitfalls of the past.
Jose M said
This is open to all communists and radicals tired of the current state the revolutionary movement (or lack of one) is in.
“Reconceive as we regroup.”
This isnt about discrediting or shunning a particular type of politics, but reconceiving the entire revolutionary project and digging deeply into the burning questions of our times.
And you are invited to become a part of this.
And I agree with this, as all that share in the spirit of Kasama do:
” But the conditions we’re facing in America today are so fundamentally different I think we need to be exploring new forms of revolutionary organization – that is, not repeating the same tired pitfalls of the past.”
Zack said
Well stated, Jose.
agus faisal said
Kamusta ka, salammat, Im agus from Indonesia, Viva for Maoist, yes !
From Indonesia =
In solidarity,
AGus Faisa
Bryan the Trot said
[moderator note: moved to its own post]
internasyonalista said
I’m an internationalist-communist in the Philippines. For me, INTERNATIONALISM is the basic principle of marxism. I agree that “we need a fearless, open-eyed debate, discussion and engagement”. For me, this means that we MUST review and criticize the old dogmas and “revolutionary beliefs”. For me, maoism, stalinism, trotskyism, marxism-leninism, etc, prevent us for a fearless and open-eyed debate.
internasyonalista said
Could the people in Kasama comment on this link: http://en.internationalism.org/the-communist-left
I think it is very important that in analysing today’s conditions based on the revolutionary theory of marxism, we should study the more than 200 years experience of the international marxist movent, especially the debates within the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Internationals and test them in the actual experinece of the class and the evolution of world capitalism
Zack said
Hey Luis, there’s some discussion of the very link you mention in Threads.
Gary Rumor said
I am familiar with the ICC and their concept of Internationalism, I have only recently become aware of KASAMA. As a former Maoist who has been an anarchist activist most of his adult life due to my problems with the dogmatic attitudes of most of the Maoist group-lets that I was familiar with back in the seventies when I was a radical youth and my experience with the RCP which seems to want to perpetuate the worst aspects of Democratic Centralism, ie the cult of personality of the exalted leader, it has led me to stay as far from dogmatic lines as I possibly could be.
I have now though found that Anarchist theory is weak and dependent on Marx and therefore is ultimately more an expression of youthful enthusiasm than of a serious revolutionary theory, Although in Spain the Anarchist took the initiative in opposing the Fascists and were suppressed by the machinations of the Stalinists who were more concerned with Stalin’s playing footsie with the Fascists than with fighting to defend the Spanish Revolution.
I find myself agreeing more with the Left wing Communist comrades in Europe but I am interested in developing a greater understanding of the Asian scene although I think it is unfortunate that Maoism still predominates, as I think Raya Dunayevskya’s critiques of Mao are still cogent and I wish I had been aware of them as a teenager when I was rather foolishly waving the Little Red book around like a typically not very well informed activist with regards to the true nature of the Red Guard and the manipulation of so many lives by Mao and his associates.
Tell No Lies said
The ICC link was broken, but I’m not sure thats a bad thing. What has the council communist current represented here by the ICC actually DONE to make revolution anywhere on earth since teh 1920s? It is the definition of a steril sect. I’ve read the ICC’s press and the dull scholasticism and petty bickering makes the puniest most self-involved Trotskyist group look like thriving parties with deep roots among the people.
On a basic level I agree that Leninism and its variants is saturated and that there is a crying need to really rethink things. And that may involve embracing an insight here or there coming out of the council communist current. But the proposition that it is in the cul de sac of a trend that has literally done nothing in almost a century that we will find the fresh thinking the present situation demands is laughable.
What excites me about Kasama is most certainly not its roots in the RCP, but in the genuine rupture that has been made, the real opening that has been created here for people from different revolutionary trends to discuss things and to search for new analyses. If the ICC has something to say, by all means post it here and lets argue it out.
Chuck Morse said
TNL, I’m not sure if an idea’s popularity is the best criterion for judging its validity. Certainly your views are pretty marginal, but I don’t think that makes them laughable.
And why exactly do you reject council communism? As I understand it, you oppose Leninism but embrace revolutionary socialism, which suggests to me that you and council communism are actually quite a good fit.
Right?
um said
popularity isn’t the same thing as validity, but it does have something to do with relevance. eg: the eucharist is bananas, but you still have to pretend like it’s not the tooth fairy for grown ups.
I wouldn’t reject council communism, it just seem utterly irrelevant by its nature. It’s like demanding a world without antagonism, then acting like you get “betrayed” by those who point out there is an actually existing enemy. Tell no lies is right: the point isn’t to shop for ideas like a strip-mall shaman, but to scientifically approach the world. All the utopianism is fine, it’s just not a program that matters.
If I got to choose, I’d be fine with liberalism working. But it doesn’t work for most people on earth… so it doesn’t matter what I think or what ideas “fit” me.
No?
Tell No Lies said
Chuck,
I think Um is basically on point. If council communism worked in the real world I’d be pleased as punch. If all there was to it was a recognition of the limits of Leninism and a belief in the value of workers councils it would all be good. The problem is that council communism is a reification of a certain historical experience and then an attempt to impose it dogmatically on the the whole variety of circumstances in which people have and are trying to make revolution. It is the fetishization of a particular organizational form over a much more complex and living process. It draws the wrong lessons from the experiences that are its primary point of reference and then seeks to impose them generally. Needless to say this has produced pretty paltry results.
I believe the Leninist party form is, in Badious words, “saturated,” that is to say that it is no longer possible to move forward within it. But it was a form that responded to real demands of its times, not all of which have disappeared by any means. The council form (and forms based in popular assemblies in general) is an important starting point in imagining how a socialist society would emerge and govern itself. But its very strengths as an organization of the whole class mean it can’t fulfill the neccesary function of political leadership that the Leninist party was able to. That function is no less neccesary just because the Leninist party form is no longer adequate and the council form remains just as unable to fulfill that critical function.
I was probably overly snarky in my response to the folks from ICC. They may have things to offer our discussions here that I don’t appreciate. My general appraisal is that they are a refuge for folks like Gary who rightly recognize the theoretical poverty of anarchism but who want a Marxism that will give them anarchist answers to their questions nonetheless. That is to say they don’t want to really face up to the deeper implications of anarchism’s theoretical poverty where it matters most — on the questions of leadership, organization and the state.
Chuck Morse said
OK, TNL, but what’s not clear to me is this: if you reject the Leninist approach to leadership AND the anarchist approach, what approach do you support?
Keith said
I think that the Leninist/vanguard approach was appropriate in 1901 at a certain level of historical and social development.
Benedict Anderson argues that “print capitalism” makes nationalism possible. I think it also makes the Leninist vanguard possible. What is worth noticing, I think, is that Lenin is using the most advance forms of communication technology, the newspaper, available. Newspapers have certain limitations in terms of openness and horizontal forms of leadership.
The most advance form of communication technology available today is the web and it makes many older forms of communications technology obsolete along with the organizational forms that correspond to them. I wrote an essay about this and it available here.”
That is why the vanguard is retrograde. The productive forces, technology and human beings, have moved beyond that type of organization and that type of leadership. In other words teh development of the productive forces have made new forms of organization/social relationships possible.
To make a value judgment on Lenin is academic, unless you consider the actual historical conditions. In 1902 I would have been down with “What is to be done?” In 2009 I find the idea antiquated, which is why I never tire of mocking the newspaper sellers… the only understand the letter of Lenin but they murder the spirit daily.
Tell No Lies said
The simple answer is I don’t know.
But its also not a simple matter of rejecting two equally bad approaches to a problem. The problem, as I see it, is the inherent contradiction between maximal democracy and the neccesity of leadership. Anarchism doesn’t really have an approach except to insist that leadership is bad and unneccesary. Leninism was a solution that was able to accomplish important things under particular conditions. Those things are no longer the main tasks confronting revolutionaries and the particular conditions no longer obtain nearly as widely as they once did, but the experience acquired provides and immeasurably richer ground from which to procede under new conditions.
I think Lenin’s comments on the relationship between spontaneity and leadership is a very good place to start. Anarchsists tend to frame these questions dualistically rather than dialectically. I think the two interpenetrate and condition each other and can not be treated simply as logical opposites. Disciplined centralized leadership can open up spaces in which more horizontal or decentralized or spontaneous forms of activity can be elaborated. How these two aspects of the larger process interact can not be reduced to a formula. It is constantly moving and shifting in response to both large-scale processes (like rising levels of literacy, increased connectivity and density of human relations) and the twists and turns of the moment. The Leninist party was a response to conditions that obtained mainly in the periphery and semi-periphery of world capitalism where it compensated for certain objective political and organizational weaknesses on the part of the rural producers who formed the main base of support for revolution.
Those conditions have been transfomed, in part as a consequence of the successes of Leninist led revolutions and in part as a consequence of capitalisms revolutionizing of production in the Global South. In general I think we need to develop forms of organization and methods of leadership that are more democratic, more horizontal, more decentralized than the Leninist model, but I think this is very much a practical question that can’t be resolved with the dogmatic certitudes of anarchist hostility to leadership, hierarchy, discipline, etc…
Gary Rumor said
Leninism has failed as a model. It has produced some of the worst dictatorships in history, Stalin and Mao were responsible for more deaths than anybody since Genghis khan and that includes Hitler whose version of socialism, the nationalist variety has proven to be simply a shill for nervous capitalists.
On the other hand history has shown that capitalism is much more resilient than anyone had expected. But the Russian experiment was in a barely industrialized country where the attempt to sustain a dictatorship of the proletariat was almost certainly doomed to failure because of their small numbers in such a predominantly society. Communism has to emerge out of a highly developed industrial or post industrial society, Otherwise you have the monstrosities that emerged in China and Russia where the state provided a bootstrap for capitalism, a super fast method of industrializing by exploiting the masses in a more extreme form than would be conceivable in a liberal democracy. Anyone who would want to live in the Soviet Union of the 30′s or China of the 60′s is either a masochist, bureaucrat or an unfortunate who has suffered more than many of us.
The problem I see with Council Communism, Anarchism, the ICC and Leninist parties in general is a mistaken interpretation of the conditions in which rebellion occurs. We are all waiting for the masses to rise up in the industrialized west and they might in Europe but not likely in the United States. There may be peasant risings in Peru and Nepal but these are peripheral and can do little to bring about communism, At best they will bring about a Chinese style Capitalism and at worst a Cambodian style blood bath.
Socialism and the eventual communism must emerge as the next logical stage of social and economic development or each attempt will be no more successful than the Anabaptists were in the Muenster Commune of the 16Th Century.
What is needed is the emergence of the correct material and spiritual conditions, both material and mental, and that means going back to Hegel, or even further, I am reading the 16Th century protestant thinkers for ideas among others.
The problem is that when the conditions are ripe rebellion will break out and no party will be able to correctly predict those conditions. The party will be of necessity more concerned with its own correct theory and will be sterile unless capable of riding on the back of the workers as the Leninists did in 1917, along with their anarchist and Left Social Revolutionary comrades. Or the will simply take advantage of their superior military structure and the aid of an ally as Mao did when the Russians handed over the Japanese arms after World War 2. History is tough, it makes fools of theorists, but it gives us an opportunity to learn something, Exactly what I am not sure, but I am glad to have an opportunity to participate with others in thinking through to what is required for change to come.
Gary Rumor said
That is predominantly peasant society.
Gary Rumor said
That is predominantly “peasant” society. But I am sure you filled in that blank.
Chuck Morse said
TNL writes: “In general I think we need to develop forms of organization and methods of leadership that are more democratic, more horizontal, more decentralized than the Leninist model”
I agree with you. And your observation is a premise of the contemporary anarchist movement.
Gary Rumor said
People need to feel empowered to make the moves they need to make to take control. Any party or workers vanguard or whatever needs to be something that helps empowers the people. How such groups are structured internally is up to the membership but the point is that it must be relevant to the life of the people, something that is respected and counted upon. Simply being more radical than thou or having the correct line is meaningless if the people ignore you. Witness the experience of the American Maoist left in the 70′s, their organizations are all gone except perhaps that rump of the theological left the RCP. ‘Revolution In The Air” by Max Elbaum is a pretty good history of that movement in American Politics. Their attempts to keep up with the theoretical zig zags of the Chinese Communist Party is pretty sad. That was about the time I became an anarchist. But after seeing anarchists spin round and round the same tired notions and never being able to overcome their antipathy to structure, I have decided to give Marxism another chance. I find a lot of what Raya Dunayevskaya says to be important for the Marxist movement as a whole back in the 1950′s and 1960′s in her “Marxism & Freedom”, as a critique. As a locus for leadership, I don’t see the group that has grown up around her thought the News & Letters group to be the answer, but they are like many honest activists who believe in social and political revolution, seeking out a better theoretical approach. Same for the ICC and Bordigists and Council Communists.
When I see groups in the Philippines, Peru, Nepal, or in India struggling in conditions that have no equivalent here in the industrial west, I have a lot more sympathy although some of their emulation of Maoist tactics I find to be misguided. I have been to Calcutta and seen the conditions that the Maoist party that rules in the Bengal has to deal with and I can understand the frustration with conditions there, but I think they need us to take up the lead and bring socialism to the world sooner than later.
Tell No Lies said
Chuck,
The critical difference lies in my use of the word “more” which is relative rather than absolute. The real premise of the contemporary anarchist movement is that it is neccesary to develop the MOST democratic, horizontal, decentralized forms imaginable, irrespective of their actual effectiveness, and that to even talk about leadership as necessary is a sign of a personal lust for power and therefore impermissibly authoritarian. A corrolary is that the experiences with the Leninist model have produced nothing good and there is nothing other than negative lessons to learn from those experiences. I wish this was a caricature, but I think it quite accurately captures the hegemonic view within explicitly anarchist circles. It is a dogmatic view derived from first principles and impervious to and generally uninformed by serious study and investigation of actual experiences.
Chuck Morse said
TNL, your view of the anarchist movement is a caricature. All the anarchists I know talk openly about leadership and care deeply about the effectiveness of the movement.
Gary Rumor said
Chuck and Tell No Lies,
At least we have a discourse. I can speak more specifically from anarchist experience, although I was a Maoist in high school. At the Last Bastard Conference I went to in Berkeley there were primitivists who seriously advocated that the population needed to be decreased by a factor of 10 so that we could return to a hunter gatherer society. They were not a small minority.
Now I am a personal friend of John Zerzan I helped finance one of his books critiquing western civilization. When I met John he was an anti union ultra leftist. He hung out with anarchists, situationists and Council Communists, as did I. Hell I even hung out with the Yippies with whom I did Rock Against Racism. A critique which was carried on in the debates in publications like 5Th Estate in Detroit during the 80′s and 90′s where a green anarchist theory emerged around radical anthropology research that opposed the short, violent and brutish view of pre-civilization, gave me a theoretical basis for environmentalism that was not simply romanticism.
I gained an increased respect for those thinkers but I did not support the primitivist line that developed among many anarchists that promoted a view similar to right wing survivalists, where they believed in the massive human die off as the solution to many of the worlds problems.
Urban anarchists, especialy here in Los Angeles where I live are more racially mixed and have a more collectivist mentality, and many in anarchist circles are really ultra leftists. Often I find that the opinions of former Black Panthers and people like Michal Novick editor of the anti racist “Turning The Tide”, have a civilizing effect on the anarchist community in Los Angeles.
Unfortunately when ever anarchists gather into larger formations like Anarchist Communist Federation, Love and Rage, and now North East Anarchist Federation, they seem to flounder over how to maintain a working structure.
Sometimes I have been impressed by my anarchist comrades in action, such as the January 2003 protests against the War when we finessed our way around the cops and managed to roam downtown San Francisco for hours at will. We tried to do the same thing in Los Angeles at the big anti war Protests in February of that year and we were crushed by the Tac squad. They had it together in San Francisco. But that is one event. Anarchists are great at getting the college age raging young males into direct action. The RCP tried to tap into that same energy and never were able to compete. But coming up with a plan that will work in overthrowing the government and insuring the victory of the working classes and a lot of anarchists would rather see the workers die from starvation or mass disease than succeed. That is my biggest problem with anarchists they have no working class rooted theory of revolution, just borrowings from Marx mixed with radical environmentalism and 19Th century romanticism.
The communists have had more success and thus we can see the obvious failures in their attempts at creating socialism in any country. Anarchists have not had as many opportunities to fail. Spain is the only obvious case and there they could blame it on the Stalinist backstabbing. But a close study of the situation in Spain makes clear to me that the Anarchists would have had the same issues of dealing with the state even if there were no Stalinists there to betray the social revolution. The differences between the elements that joined the republican government and those who called themselves the “Friends of Durutti” and opposed participation in the government showed that taking on a system as large as a state is tough for anarchist. Makhno in the Ukraine might have been a more successful example. But then we will get into the issue of War Communism the red army vis peoples militias, and the terror of the Cheka even while Lenin lived. Not to mention Kronstadt and the guilt that the workers opposition felt that would not let them oppose the party when they crushed the workers there and lied calling them Whites. I don’t want to go there now but that is where we need to decide how do we deal with those issues when theory meets the real world.
Gary Rumor said
Where are we going here? Are we heading for some convergence or simply agree to disagree?
Gary Rumor said
Misspelled “Durruti” he was an anarchist leader killed in the Battle for Madrid during the Spanish Revolution.
grumpy cat said
Hey all
The ICC are not council communists they are left communists and they believe in the need for a party.
rebel love
Dave
bklynjak said
Chuck,
Please provide a link to a serious anarchist article or discussion where the necessity of leadership is acknowledged and discussed. I know that many anarchists care about the effectiveness of the movement. The problem is that said concern doesn’t lead to a serious questioning of the dogmatic opposition to leadership.
Tell No Lies said
Oops. The post above, supposedly by Bklynjak, was from me.
Gary Rumor said
Although I sympathize with the ICC and its perspective, I can hardly call them the only authentic Communist tradition. Each stream of communists and anarchists and council communists has it claim of authenticity. Recently I read of Anarchists and old line Communists working together in demonstrations in Russia. Often we see Trotskyists and Anarchist and Maoists all together at anti war events, with the Anarchist and Maoist youth often the most radical in their actions.
But the facts on the ground are that Marxists have failed to bring about the great socialist world that they promised even when they dominated almost half the planet in one form or another.
They voluntarily relinquished control of the government in Russia, after decades of struggle, the apparatchiks at the top gave themselves comfortable positions in a new capitalist order, created by the sweat and labor of millions of people, all given away in a rush to a few opportunists and now they have the oligarchy under Putin.
I congratulate the Russian party for having the guts to relinquish state power, to be willing to take a chance on popular democracy, but now they have been frozen out of power by the oligarchs and the Russian masses will have to think through to a new method of insuring that is there is another revolution, it will not end up in the hands of the bureaucrats again.
In the west, where capitalism never had faced a serious threat other than the military threat from Russia and the incipient resentment of their own workers during periods of crisis like the depression, there is now a move on the part of capital to bring a more rational state control to limit the wild swings of capital unconstrained after the defeat of state capital in the so called communist states. Its exuberance led to a wave of deregulation in the 1990′s and the subsequent bubbles and current crash that has wiped out any wealth that might have been accumulated by the working classes that bought into the 401k schemes of the capitalists who were trying to suck every last bit of income into the stock market and its irrational drive for profit.
It would be nice to say the masses are ready for socialism and in the election of Obama we can see a desire for a more equitable distribution of wealth, but we can also see there are fascist currents that are surging around the world also, especialy in eastern Europe and here in the United States where the Republican party rump has become the home of an extreme capitalist reaction simply waiting for the Keynesian’s in power to stumble so they can try again what they succeeded so well in doing for 30 years, to blunt and roll back the progressive wave to socialism that has been made in the liberal democracies since the 19Th century.
The second international may have betrayed its base by supporting the great war in 1914, but there has been a continuous move for workers rights, women’s rights, minorities rights all over the world except for the twenties when the revolutionary wave was crushed and since the 1980′s when radical capitalism came to dominate in USA, China and Great Britain and crushed the Soviet Bloc by the end of the decade. The United States has just now emerged with a new progressive coalition in power and Latin America has become a stronger and stronger leftist bloc. We have reason to hope that now people all over the world are ready to step out of capitalism. I don’t think there will be one party that has the correct line but a coalition of parties and interests.
This is my comment to the ICC people with the link provided. Unfortunately there is something wrong with their spam detector and won’t allow me to post a comment with them so I post it here.
Chuck Morse said
TNL, today I realized that even though you constantly harangue us about the “need for leadership” (and anarchism’s supposed “dogmatism”) you’ve never actually defined what you mean by “leadership.”
So, what do you mean? Do you mean the right to give orders and coerce people? Is that what you have in mind? Are you a leader? Do you order people around? Do you take orders? If so, from whom?
Or, by leadership, do you refer to the ability to galvanize/mobilize people?
I’m interested in what you have to say.
For now, I’ll just note that the anarchist tradition is rich in discussions about balancing individual initiative with collective accountability. Confrontations with the issue run from the First International to the present and there is a lot of value there. As a whole, anarchist discussions of this question are much richer than Leninist discussions, because Leninists resolve the question simply saying “we’re scientific” or metaphysically “represent the proletariat.” The RCP experience, which looms large for this site, is an instructive case in point: the only people actually discussing Bob Avakian’s “leadership” (hehehehehe) had to leave the group, whereas the rest are evidently enjoying the “culture of appreciation.”
Anarchists have also created a rich practical/organizational legacy of attempts to balance individual and collective needs, from the Spanish anarchists to today’s spokes councils.
And, in general, if you want to look at what anarchists are saying these days, check out the books distributed and published by AK Press. This is one place to begin. You won’t find answers to all the universe’s big questions but you’re also not going to find any books called “we hate leaders” or, to use your words, “leadership as necessary is a sign of a personal lust for power and therefore impermissibly authoritarian.” It should only take you a few minutes to realize how off-base your caricatures are.
Tell No Lies said
Yes, Chuck, I am a leader. More important to this discussion though, so are you. The question isn’t whether we are leaders, the question is whether we are good ones, whether we are guided by a correct understanding of the situation and whether our methods develop the overall capacities of the people to fight for and win a better world.
Leadership is present to one degree or another in almost all collective human activity. It arises neccesarily from the varied and uneven development of peoples consciousness, commitment and capacities. It can not be reduced to the question of “individual initiative” although that is certainly a component element of leadership. Leadership is the capacity to give direction to a collective undertaking.
In general leadership, and in particular revolutionary leadership, depends on the consent and trust of the people who follow it. While there are moments in which effective leadership demands a measure of coercion if it is not fundamentally based on consent and trust it will ultimately fail. Thus in a military context it may be neccesary to give orders or to threaten or even use coercion to get people to do dangerous things in the moment, but if the people feel coerced into participating at all or are unable to understand why such methods are used it will tend in the long run to undercut the effectiveness of leadership.
Leadership is a fact. It is a fact in liberal organizations and Leninist ones. It is a fact in anarchist groups and projects even when they insist that, as they so often do, “we have no leaders.” This denial of the fact and neccesity of leadership makes leadership in the anarchist movement very ad hoc and unaccountable, which in my view just make for another kind of authoritarianism. More seriously it disarms and confuses a whole layer of revolutionary-minded young people.
So long as the fact and neccessity of leadership are denied or not engaged clearly and directly it will remain impossible to collectively and systematically develop good leadership. Leaders arise spontaneously in the course of all struggles, but in most cases their capacities are very uneven. There is therefore a need to collectively identify the capacities that people need to be good leaders and to train them in those capacities. It is only through continuous training of new leadership that the monopoly on these skills (which are often concentrated in the hands of the relatively privileged and educated) can be broken and they can begin to be generalized. Absent such a process of generalization all the anarchist talk of horizontalism and democracy becomes a cruel joke.
Finally, I’ve looked tha the AK catalog before. If there are any books, artcles or discussions in particular that you could link to that make your case that my presentation of teh anarchist movementis a caricature I await them. My views were formed by long and intensive involvement in the anarchist movement and were not arrived at lightly. Your position is not obvious or “there for the taking.” You will have to actually make your case.
zerohour said
Chuck -
Why don’t you give us your view on leadership rather than pointing to other discussions?
“And, in general, if you want to look at what anarchists are saying these days, check out the books distributed and published by AK Press. This is one place to begin. You won’t find answers to all the universe’s big questions but you’re also not going to find any books called “we hate leaders” or, to use your words, “leadership as necessary is a sign of a personal lust for power and therefore impermissibly authoritarian.” It should only take you a few minutes to realize how off-base your caricatures are.”
I’d go even further and encourage people to go to anarchist meetings and speak to anarchists. It will take only a few minutes to realize that the so-called caricature is more on-target than Chuck wants to let on.
TNL says: ” It is a fact in anarchist groups and projects even when they insist that, as they so often do, “we have no leaders.” This denial of the fact and neccesity of leadership makes leadership in the anarchist movement very ad hoc and unaccountable, which in my view just make for another kind of authoritarianism. More seriously it disarms and confuses a whole layer of revolutionary-minded young people.”
Exactly. There is always leadership and hierarchy present in any anarchist gathering. That leadership is not characterized by a simplistic notion of someone who shouts orders demanding obedience. Rather such leadership shapes the framework for discussion, influencing its parameters through the use of charisma, intelligence, persuasiveness, seniority, friendship networks, initiative, confidence, having more free time to take on tasks than others, maybe even physical attractiveness. This is often not done intentionally, but it is an important way authority generates consent. Denying its presence only blinds people to it, making it impossible to hold it accountable and enshrining an “invisible” leadership structure.
nando said
Chuck writes:
I think part of the issue is the harsh dicotomy assumed here. Clearly we will all say “we mean the ability to galvanize and mobilize people.” But even then, is there a role for “giving orders”? Take an example of revolutionary warfare (China, Russia, Spain, Vietnam, wherever)… Can you galvanize and mobilize people without decisions — including (at times) some that arrive in the form of “orders”? Isn’t there always in collective action an element of coercion — even if it is voluntary? Isn’t there forbidding of scabbing during strikes? Or the forbidding of desertion during battle? Or the adoption of common tactics (and timing, and yes, leadership) during a pivotal action (especially a complex one that will involve decisions mid-stream)?
And beyond that, in a liberated society — is liberation really defined by an end to all coercion? Isn’t there coercion for reactionaries (who want “their” right to property, or patriarchy, or child beating, or hiring of labor)? And isn’t there even in a socialized production process inherently an element of coercion (in the sense that the production line has to start at some arbitrary time, and people generally have to be at their places when it starts)? Now those same people (obviously) have the power to stop production, interrupt it, for discussions (and even if necessary for protests). But in the actual production process in a socialized world, doesn’t the existance of collective and social action involve some element of coercion (even when decisions are popular, revolutionary, democratically reached, open to questions, tentative etc.)
Finally, i also don’t think we should just reduce leadership to a structural “function” or define it as either “authoritarian or consensual” — i.e. make the process the defining element.
I expect that revolutionary leadership will vary in its degree of authority depending on the moment (and should). There are times when major proposals should be subject to mass debate, and other times when it would be disastrous. There are times when a high level of trust and unity makes quick unity of action possible, and others when objective conditions require a much more painstaking process of explaining and “winning over.”
But I also think we need to put central the line of leadership — meaning by line: “going where?” What road is this leadership taking, and leading others along? Toward what? For what?
And with that, I think there comes a connection between end goals and methods — in other words, the forms of leadership, the methods of leadership are connected with what we are trying to accomplish, and how we see it happening.
To state this more clearly: There are forms of leadership that indicate road.
Bourgeois armies have methods of leadership that obscure the goals that war is being fought for and actively oppose the soldiers trying to understand the reasons (for the war, for specific campaigns, for specific forms of organization). “When we want you to have an opinion, we will issue you one.”
And by contrast, revolutionary movements can’t succeed unless the people involved understand the purpose they are fighting for (and unless there are methods of leadership that encourage that, and have methods of leadership based on that “mass line”).
In short: Methods of leadership reflect line. But there are other (larger) issues of line defining the nature leadership as well.
Tell No Lies said
Zerohour is, of course, correct. Its clear that Chuck WANTS the anarchist movement to have a more sophisticated understanding of leadership than it actually does, but anybody who has had any sort of extended contact with it knows that it is in fact characterized by a neurotic hostility to leadership of any kind that makes it impossible to even use the word in a positive sense in most contexts. (This is even echoed in Chuck’s own framing of his question about coercion and giving orders.) A consequence of this is that it usually only gets talked about in circuitous and euphemistic language about “the need for structure,” “the role of individual initiative,” and “the leadership of ideas.” Hidden behind these phrases is often a sincere desire to confront the question, but that desire is rendered effectively impotent by the refusal to confont the fundamental incoherence of the prevailing hostility to leadership as such.
To be fair to Chuck, many anarchists know that in actual fact they have leaders. The real problem is that they tend to view this as an unfortunate condition to be overcome. The statement “we have no leaders” is thus more an attempt to break down the reliance on leaders by declaration than it is a truth claim. Of course some anarchists actually think that the decree is all it takes and that they really do have no leaders. In either case the real situation is obscured with pernicious effects.
Gary Rumor said
The issue of leadership is an interesting one but it should be obvious that we need leaders for specific types of activities and others we don’t. My own experience has been that more aggressive people tend to take charge in situations and when you simply impose absolute democracy, ie making each person express their opinion it can slow things down incredibly. I recently read the book Horizontalism about events in Argentina after the government collapsed in the financial crisis and there were encouraging signs of people taking charge of their own lives. But because the book was impressionistic rather than analytic there was no way to determine how many people were involved in this Horizontalism.
Anarchists are rightly afraid of leadership becoming bureaucratic or establishing cults of personality. Using secret police or thugs to intimidate people as was done in Russia not very long after the revolution.
On the other hand not having accountable leaders and due process means that there will always be a certain level of amateurism and inefficiency in Anarchist process that will lead to fatigue and disillusionment on the part of those who simply have better things to do than to sit around listening to someone repeat what someone else said half an hour before. You either end up making ad hoc decisions among a small group usually called security culture by anarchists, or you get very little done and spend way to much time in meetings that should be accomplishing things, instead you end up repeating basic formulas and agreeing on one or two simple things.
I recommend re-callable leaders, general assemblies for basic issues, delegated committees for particular areas of interest and they reports to a secretariat on an interim basis and reports to the general assembly on a quarterly or annual basis depending on how large or complex the body is. Work place assemblies should be at least monthly, and committees meet weekly at a minimum. Some might meet daily if that is their normal work. A secretariat would have to be available at all times but the membership should rotate to avoid bureaucratism or nepotism. Whether you constitute as a party or a federal organisation is up to you.
There must be a balance between talent, responsibility, recall ability and opportunity.
Tell No Lies said
Gary Rumour’s suggestions reflect the anti-authoritarian (whether they call themselves anarchists, council communists or ultra-leftists) fixation with formal technical solutions to problems that, as Nando rightly reminds us, are really about political line or orientation. The dangers of bureaucratization and commandism in leadership are real, but they can not be resolved through simple reliance on formal solutions because they are really political problems. It is not at all difficult to imagine the structures Gary describes as becoming just as bureaucratized as any other. Mexico, for example, has a particularly rich history of “popular” assemblies where everybody gets to speak at length serving to legitimize de facto clientilism in popular movements.
Gary raises the recent Argentinian experience. This was exciting and inspiring for all of us at the time, but I think its fair to ask now what the ultimate outcome of the extreme horizontalism of that movement was. Where is the sequel to “The Take”? My understanding is that most of the gains made by the occupations movement have been subsequently rolled back. Whether there was a real opening to carry forward a thorough social revolution in Argentina at the beginning of the decade I don’t claim to know. But what seems clear to me is that in the crucible of such moments it matters a lot whether there is a revolutionary political organization able to LEAD, that is to say wit the confidence that people will trust in it, “we need to go this way and we need to do it NOW.” The widespread distrust of such organizations is a price we are paying for real errors committed by revolutionaries in the past, but it needs to be recognized as a real problem that needs to be overcome. Ultimately this will be achieved by the radical reconception of the revolutionary project more than by than abstract arguments over whether leadership is neccesary or not. That is to say our task is not simply to make the arguments but to demonstrate that neccesity in a practice informed by a real rethinking of our work in the light of the experiences of the 20th century.
Chuck Morse said
TNL, I’m glad that you finally offered a definition of the word “leadership.” This raises the level of discussion and marks a welcome departure from your usual line of argumentation (”leadership is good / anarchists are against leadership / therefore anarchists are cruel-incoherent-neurotic”)
You define leadership as “the capacity to give direction to a collective undertaking.” Okay, i think that’s a serviceable definition.
I will say two things in response. First, you remind us that an encounter with the idea of leadership obviously requires a confrontation with how it functions in the real world. Yes, I agree, and must point out that, to my knowledge, the only time that you actually “gave direction to a collective undertaking” was when you were active with Love and Rage, an anarchist organization. People still talk about Love and Rage and there’s an anthology circulating of writings from the paper (including many by you). Clearly it had an impact. However, as far as I, you have not “given direction to a collective undertaking” since you rejected anarchism and your “political” activity is now limited to posting on blogs. So, contrary to your assertions, it appears that the anarchist movement actually *developed* your leadership capacity and it is ONLY within the anarchist movement that you exercised it. Your very life history seems contradict your arguments.
Second, I am and I have never argued against the “capacity to give direction to a collective undertaking” and I am not aware of any anarchist that has. Of course you are free to attribute those views me and others, but your attributions have no bearing on reality and it would be more productive if you actually spoke with real,living anarchists–like me–rather than losing than yourself in labyrinths of invective and caricature.
You write: “So long as the fact and neccessity of leadership are denied or not engaged clearly and directly it will remain impossible to collectively and systematically develop good leadership. Leaders arise spontaneously in the course of all struggles, but in most cases their capacities are very uneven. There is therefore a need to collectively identify the capacities that people need to be good leaders and to train them in those capacities. It is only through continuous training of new leadership that the monopoly on these skills (which are often concentrated in the hands of the relatively privileged and educated) can be broken and they can begin to be generalized. ”
Although your argument is circular to an extent (i.e., “we can only have good leadership if we recognize that leadership is good)”), I essentially agree with what you said. What baffles me is that you think that anarchists are unaware of these things.
For instance, I am a member of a long-standing anarchist collective and bring many unique skills and privileges to the table. I am white, male, heterosexual, and nearly 40. I’ve also been involved in the anarchist movement since I was 13 years old and thus have been active for longer than some of my collective mates have been alive. I also have a college education (such as it is) and carry within me various forms of cultural capital related to my family upbringing. So, given these factors, you would presumably expect me to dominate the collective, but that’s simply not how it works. I’m accountable to the collective, I will be sanctioned if I don’t abide by collective decisions, and have no more or less decision-making power than anybody else. Are there some areas in which I am more knowledgeable than others and thus my views hold more sway? Sure. Are there are areas in which others know more than me and their views have greater sway? Yes, of course. There are all sorts of differentials, but we try to respond to them by sharing and distributing responsibilities, which allows to share work and also foster one another’s development (for instance, I am required to attend some meetings that don’t pertain directly to my work, but this allows me to learn about what my comrades are doing and hopefully develop some skills that I lack).
So, yes, we recognize that there are differentials in experiences and capacities, accountability is generalized, and we consciously attempt to foster one another’s development. This is the real, living, breathing anarchist collective that I belong to and, as far as I can see, it has no resemblance to the stereotypes that you’ve advanced.
Maybe denouncing anarchism makes your life easier somehow, I don’t know, but the truth is that anarchists don’t reject “the capacity to give direction to a collective undertaking.” We reject Leninism, which is a different issue (and apparently you agree with us here).
Mike E said
I’m not as interested in reaffirming the classic communist-anarchist divide (however important those distinctions are) as I am learning across that divide.
We are clearly needing to develop new forms of revolutionary organization — and I’m curious about the experiences of others in handling key contradictions:
How do we have leadership by the most far-seeing among us, without it being used to prevent others from seeing?
What are the forms of accountability that should be enforced? And how do we do it without having all the details and personalities of a revolutionary movement laid bare?
What are ways of improving process that don’t end up being a paralyzing focus on process?
How do you have a necessary division of labor and specialization (among revolutionaries) without reproducing the oppressive divisions of labor within society?
Gary Rumor said
Interesting comment. Leadership is not the issue though. Trust is. People simply don’t trust communist formations because they have failed to provide trustworthy leadership. Anarchists have not had a chance to fail, arguably they never will since they will run from power.
There was a Trotskyist group called RSL that I remember meeting at a Yippie led conference in Columbus, Ohio, they put out a publication called the Torch. They then reemerged as a component of the Love and Rage group and because of that I was suspicious of that formation and I would not affiliate with it although some of my friends did. It looked to me like an RCP attempt to recruit anarchists. But I have since been told that it was a sincere attempt at anarchist party building(?).
It would be interesting to know if the former RSL’ers turned Love and Rager’s are now back in the Communist fold, or have retired from politics or are still trying to get anarchists to form a platform…
Mike E said
Gary Rumor writes:
Well, i can understand that trust is an issue. And no one has more “trust issues” than those directly abused. In other words, those emerging from a closed formation have their own stories to tell. But still, for going forward, trust isn’t the issue. Summation, analysis and transformation are.
I certainly don’t think we can approach the tasks of the moment by reliving the experience of RSL inside Love-and-Rage, or the various suspicions it engendered. And if we examine history, I think we can discover that this history is not so simple and that communist leadership has also earned-and-deserved trust — in many complex moments and periods.
On organization: Communists need to lay aside a dogmatic inherited sense of “universal form.” We need to reject the false claims that materialist epistemology DEMANDS one particular form of organization — a claim that just doesn’t stand up to serious examination. Not all communist organization has to be (at all moments) built around democratic centralism, with cellular hierarchies. There are strengths to that form, and we need to find ways to identify its weaknesses. And we need to do some historical work to debunk the notion that the assumed “democratic centralist vanguard party” is “what lenin and the Bolsheviks did” (which it isn’t).
In other words we are in the world of “reconceive as we regroup.”
We need to look at our theory, and our situation, and the dynamics of our stage. We need to assert that form must follow function — not form follow formula. And take up a creative organizational process parallel to our other efforts at regroupment.
And (in my experience) that exploration quickly leads to the discovery that the revolutionary “functions” our forms must serve are not simple to lay out — they are dynamic, contradictory, emerge in stages, and some of them are shrouded in the mists of the future.
This much is clear: We need to serve our long range goals (i.e. communist goals require communist methods, but also revolutionary goals mean our structures have to be able to withstand repression, plus a “mass line” reliance on “the masses” demands methods that bring forward “the masses.”) And we need to be structured to serve our current goals (our current stage of revolutionary work with all of its particularity).
And those alone are some complex contradictions to navigate.
Tell No Lies said
Chuck,
Your knowledge of both my history and current activities is patchy and I’m not particularly interested in filling in all the details here online. I don’t call myself (or you for that matter) a “leader” to puff myself up, but rather because I think an honest description of our roles is a condition for a serious discussion of the responsibilities and proper methods of leadership. Suffice it to say that I’ve played leadership roles in a variety of projects before I was an anarchist, while I was one, and subsequently. Certainly Love and Rage was the biggest of these. While I think my capacities, such as they are, as a leader developed during my involvement in the anarchist movement that is not the same thing as saying that the movement developed them. And it certainly didn’t do it in a conscious or systematic way. Unfortunately for all concerned I was left largely to my own devices. I could describe several projects in which I have participated (including very recently) that had quite similar dynamics to that of your collective. None of which would really detract from my status as a leader anymore than your account detracts from yours. Leadership after all is not confined to the internal dynamics of groups, but is also a dynamic between groups and individuals and larger publics. To say that you are a leader is not to deny that you share that status with others, perhaps in your collective, and certainly in the larger movement of which you are a part. Indeed, I would argue that the ability to engage in the sort of collaborative dynamic you describe is generally neccesary for the exercise of leadership which I believe should be as collective in nature as possible.
The fact that one or a hundred anarchist collectives is able to operate as you describe in no way contradicts my description of the anarchist movement’s stance on the question of leadership. And that you think it does actually confirms my view in so far as it reveal the shortened horizons of the discussions of the question. Frankly I think you are being overly thin-skinned here and reading my comments as if they were a denial of the capacity of anarchists to engage in organized collective activity at all. My criticism really concerns how the anarchist hostility towards and/or evasion of the fact and neccessity of leadership is self-limiting. The ability of anarchists to form collectives is not in doubt, and like Mike I think we should learn what there is to learn from those experiences which are certainly relevant to many of the tasks before us. What is at issue is the ability to take up the responsibilities of leading large numbers of people in struggle to victory against powerful well-organized opponents. And this is where I think the anarchist take on leadership has quite clearly disarmed people.
I am still waiting for any links to writings that support your claims about the level of discussion of this question in the anarchist movement. I would truly be delighted to be wrong.
Tell No Lies said
Gary,
I agree with Mike that its not particularly useful to the discussion, but to satisfy your curiousity, the ex-RSLers became teh most orthodox anarchists in Love and Rage. While most retired from politics (indeed most retired when Love and Rage was formed) they did not return to any variety of Leninism at all. Despite my considerable subsequent differences with them, the charges that they were up to anything sinister in their turn towards anarchism were always sectarian bullshit.
Chuck Morse said
TNL, I do not object to your claims because I’m thin-skinned but because, um, I object to your claims. You tell us that anarchists reject leadership, which you defined as “the capacity to give direction to a collective undertaking.” Well, given your definition of the term, your claim is wrong: anarchists do not reject “the capacity to give direction to a collective undertaking.”
But you shift the discussion in your latest post. You say: “What is at issue is the ability to take up the responsibilities of leading large numbers of people in struggle to victory against powerful well-organized opponents.” This parallels something you said earlier (post #37). You wrote: “in a military context it may be necessary to give orders or to threaten or even use coercion to get people to do dangerous things in the moment”.
It is interesting that you raise these issues here, given that you left the anarchist movement after writing a piece in which you concluded that hierarchies are necessary for revolutionary warfare.
The problem is that these military, strategic issues are different issues. What anarchists might or might not do in a revolutionary war, or how they might navigate a large-scale social transformation, is not identical to its position on “the capacity to give direction to a collective undertaking.” Sure, those issues are linked, but they are still fundamentally different.
It appears that you have conflated the two. In fact, your argument seems to go as follows: “you need a war to make a revolution / you need hierarchies to make a war / anarchists are against hierarchy and thus are against revolution.”
But things are more complicated than that. While there is no doubt that anarchism and Marxism have serious problems, you mix and match issues of strategy and principle in such a way that obscures, rather than clarifies, the real challenges that revolutionaries face.
Gary Rumor said
This is one of the legacies of Maoism, that whole concept of surrounding the cities with a massive peasant army. It may work in a largely rural country after a major war when the major industrialist powers are temporarily unwilling to take on a major struggle as happened in China or in a country where the stakes frankly were peripheral as in Vietnam, but look how hard they fight in strategic areas, like the British did to defeat the Malaysian insurgency in the 50′s, the US defeated the communist insurgency in Greece right after World War 2 and they fought the Chinese to a standstill in Korea because they wanted to save Japan. And look at what eventually happened in Russia where constant applied pressure forced the state capitalist communists to totally surrender.
Armed struggle is a fools game. Only to be played in peripheral nations or in exceptional circumstances. Training your cadres in guerrilla warfare is not the answer in advanced industrial countries, because unless the troops refuse to fire on the people you will be massacred and that is a simple fact. What is needed is a massive unwillingness of the workers to continue to work for their masters and for the troops to be so demoralized that they refused to turn on their own people. Russia had such a perfect storm in 1917, Germany had one in late 1918 but it was betrayed by the social democratic parties.
It will not come from peasant armies no matter how paranoid the makers of Red October may have been the idea of Cuban or Nicaraguan or any army poorly armed peasants overtaking the USA or any of the major capitalist nations including China in its current form is highly unlikely, although if the Red Army in China got it in its head to help the peasants and workers, China might become the exception to that rule.
nando said
Gary’s remarks give me the chance to clear up a misconception. In some corners it is said that Maoism is a strategy of rural peasant warfare circling the cities, and therefore doesn’t apply in advanced capitalist countries.
In China, that is the strategy of the Maoists, but it is hardly the only strategic view of Maoism.
Mao in particular had two things to say on these matters:
First, he repeated (over and over for any who would listen) that revolutionary strategy had to be developed with a close and living sense of the particularities of each country and each situation. He was against cookie cutter approaches, and had to reject rigid models (of the Comintern) in order to make revolution in China. And in his many meetings with revolutionaries in the 60s and 70s, this is something he repeated over and over.
Second, he pointed out that there were major differences between semifeudal countries (with a large peasant agriculture) and developed capitalist countries (with largely urban populations) — and made specific observations about the impact that would have on strategy.
Mao wrote the following in his essay “Problems of War and Strategy“:
Now this essay (written in 1938) should itself not be taken as some kind of rigid formula. The conditions in all countries (and the dynamics of the world as a whole) have gone through some major changes. It is hard to continue arguing that there are basically only two kinds of countries — when in fact, a great deal of change and development has happened everywhere.
But the argument (often raised by trotskyists) for example, that Maoism only applies to third world countries is rooted in a misunderstanding of what Mao and Maoism actually says about revolutionary strategy.
There is another point raised here by Gary Rumor:
It is the assumption that the ability to seize power rests on the self-neutralization of the bourgeois armed forces. That is a rather defeatist assumption, and one that really ends up assuming that revolution is impossible. Clearly revolution is not possible most of the time in developed countries — certainly not when the system is relatively stable. And clearly, revolutionary situations do require a kind of “perfect storm.” But it would be wrong to assume that the crown has to lie in the gutter or that the forces of the state literally have to be neutralized by defeat and dissolution, before various approaches to power can be considered by communist forces.
It is both a misread of what happened in Russia , and an overestimation of the degree to which Russia’s experiences (over a century ago)define what is possible.
No, we need to go to Mao’s first point, and make a living analysis.
Finally, this is (imho) one of the valuable things about looking closely at the two revolutions in south Asia — india and nepal, not just at what they are doing, but at the living problems generated by their choices of path. The Nepali Maoists have consciously rejected rigid models (rejected taking as a model one or another of the two strategic descriptions Mao gives “Problems of War and Strategy”). They not only developed a form of revolutionary warfare deeply marked by the particular conditions of Nepal, but then made a leap in 2006 into uncharted waters.
They made their mental leap toward the seizure of power, they said, “by protecting revolution from the revolutionary phrases that we used to memorize in the early period.” And they say that then, later, they dared “to abandon the course once selected and have the courage to climb the unexplored mountain.”
And meanwhile, in India, the revolutionary forces face similar challenges in moving from remote rural base areas to contesting for power in the explosively urbanizing parts of the country — in moving from “your grandfather’s peoples war” to a strategic approach sharply honed to the particular conditions of India today.
Jonathan McCormack said
It’s a great site! But I’m not sure what you guys actually do – is this mainly a discussion group? Is Kasama a party? Does Kasama engage with politics/protests in any way – say by suporting a canadate? People are thirsty for action. Do you guys get together anywhere?
selucha said
Hey Jonathan, welcome to the site!
Kasama is not a party or an organization, which explains the high diversity of ideas on different issues that we express publicly. We have no official line other than that we are a revolutionary communist project that wants the overthrow of capitalism. We do not endorse candidates collectively, and I think you will find few people around Kasama that would do so individually either. We are revolutionaries; we see that the capitalist state cannot be reformed into being a force for good for the people, and it must be destroyed by revolutionary, not reformist, action so that a new, more just world can be brought into being.
There are some areas where I believe people around Kasama do get together and have discussions and work together on political issues, though it really depends on where you are. We’re still very new and so many of us are spread out. I, for example, am involved with certain online projects through Kasama and am working on some ideas to promote it and develop a base out where I am, but I am also active with other causes and groups, though this is my main focus. We have a project for promoting the revolutionary movements in South Asia, for example, that is a key part of what we do.
I definitely recommend sticking around and giving us your thoughts on articles and essays we post. What angle are you seeing Kasama from? Have you been active with any other groups/parties that have given you worthwhile or negative experiences?
zerohour said
Jonathan –
Welcome to the kasama blog.
To add to Selucha’s comments, we are gathered under the banner “reconceive as we regroup.”
We feel that the need to rethink many of the inherited assumptions handed down to us from past experience. While there is much to retain and uphold, there is much that needs to be rethought in the realms of strategy, organization and analysis if we are to produce a living communism that is appropriate for our time, and not dominated by the dividing lines of the past. As part of this process, we are working to regroup as revolutionaries to work through the complexities of our present situation that older categories like may not be adequate to comprehend, eg, “third world”, or demographic shifts that challenge the traditional notion of “proletariat.” At the same time, we need to also explore the different kinds of organizational strategies that are appropriate for different kinds of struggle, and more importantly, the kind of revolutionary organization needed for different historical periods.
We work around the notion of “problematics”, key questions that need to be investigated and struggled through, rather than a set of hard and fast positions. The main problematic of course is revolution.
You can read more in our recent pamphlet here.
Like Selucha, I welcome you to continue to read and participate.
Jonathan McCormack said
Thanks for the response. Sounds good. It reminds me of the recent New Left Review by Slavoj Zizek where he says “we definitely have to begin from the beginning—not to build further upon the foundations of the revolutionary epoch of the 20th century, which lasted from 1917 to 1989, or, more precisely, 1968—but to descend to the starting point and choose a different path” http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2779
He says the new communism must be grounded in actual urgent antagonisms and he identifies four: “the looming threat of ecological catastrophe; the inappropriateness of private property for so-called intellectual property; the socio-ethical implications of new techno-scientific developments, especially in biogenetics; and last, but not least, new forms of social apartheid—new walls and slums.”
I agree with Zizek. He suggests that now is the time to stand back and regroup, not a time for action; people ought to imitate Melville’s character Bartleby and make a conscious withdrawal from participating in the system itself with a “no, I would prefer not to.”
I’ve investigated a few other groups. The RCP is a bit too humorless and Stalinish for me. The Freedom road socialist’s are great, but they seem a bit ungrounded – standing for and making priorities of such obscure things like giving black people the option of their own country in the south for example. The Communist Party USA, for my taste, is too rigid, dry, and business like. The International Marxist Tendency is great, just a little too limited by dogmatic theory. The socialist democrats are fine – but they are reformist. What’s missing from them is the sense of love, joy, creativity, and excitement that one often finds in Anarchy groups. If we could combine that with a plastic non-dogmatic theory open to spontaneity it would be ideal. Also, those other organizations seem exclusively political, whereas a movement must also have a cultural basis (just look at the specific Soviet aesthetics born in Russia.) I’d like to see a group engage with rappers, artists, poets. That is the strength of Anarchist groups, even as they are impoverished theory-wise. This is the soul of a movement. And youtube channels and facebook pages don’t hurt either.
Anyway, thanks for the response!
-J
selucha said
Jonathan, great to hear back from you.
I’d definitely recommend listening to the podcast we just put up, I think you will find the conversation interesting since you mentioned a lot of groups missing a “sense of love, joy, creativity, and excitement” which is really what the most recent episode is about. I’m working on making connections with many revolutionaries in the cultural sphere, primarily rappers, so that we can do interviews and such with them and get make a more complete movement. We are working in a lot of these means of communication with people right now and I think you’re definitely on track with your suggestions. If you want to explore these ideas for engaging with culture, definitely get at me man. kasamaluis@me.com, it’s definitely an area of interest for me.
Comrade Alastair said
[...] by Mike E on August 29, [...]
tex said
new to this site… i have 1 starter question…
growing up, i was taught if i lived right {{didnt do drugs or anything like that}}, studied hard in school, and put in effort i could be anything i wanted to be. that was the beauty of america. assuming im not a degenerate drug addict, i can provide all my basic needs working for minimum wage even, and can work extra jobs if im so motivated….. in a communist society, what would be my motivation to work harder than the other guys?
Timo said
Welcome Tex!
Unfortunately you were taught wrong, most of us were taught many fallacies about america. But your question, well motivation would be very different. Peoples motivation will not spring out of competition, rather People will be working for the benefit of all of society. This may sound kinda crazy, but it has happened in different places and times. For example in China when it was socialist(socialism is the transition to communism) many people worked enthusiastically and selflessly, motivated to build a new china and a new world!
tex said
thanks timo –
im just a dumb ol Texan, not as learned as yall…but, i live in America. what is wrong about living right, working hard, and enjoying the success of ur hard work?
to me, marxism sounds like a welfare state, where the lazy are rewarded….is there any place for personal responsibility in marxism?
how wrong is this line of thinking:
a] if ya too lazy to work for ur own, dont expect my charity
b] if ya run around pumpin out kids with no way to support them, tuff luck…i dont have to support you cuz ur a slut
again, i appreciate your info. I am here to learn.
Timo said
It is important to find out where “wealth” come from? Unless your running the show, its kicked down to you. In capitalist society things are produced socially and are then privately appropriated. This means the large majority of people produce what is needed in society, however they do not control it. Some one else controls what many people have created. People create a surplus this is then out of the people who created its hands. That is not enough for the capitalist. They need to pay people as little as they can to maximize profits. The main problems with this is first people are being exploited, but also people do not truly see the fruit of their labor, because some one else is controlling it for personal gain. There many people in the U.S. who do see a small portion of the wealth that is privately appropriated but they get what kicked down to them from the spoils of imperialism, but thats another story.
I do not see marxism as something where the lazy get rewarded, on the contrary capitalism is where the lazy get rewarded. What does the big company owner do? travel the world drinking fine wine watching tennis matches, etc. How do they get that wealth? surly not by their own work, they get it from the position their in, their wealth is created by many other people.
Marx puts it like this in the Communist Manifesto
“It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us. According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.”
And for your line of thinking, I would say your wrong when you look closer to the real root of why people do or don’t do things.
Most people who are unemployed do so because they cant get a job(there are many different factors in this) they need a job to eke out an existence. They remain unemployed not because they are lazy. when people are given work such as in socialist society they take it, because they need it. Socialist society still has money, however the people benefit from what they create.
Where do you see many people with more kids then they can support? more impoverished areas of the country. Much of the information about safe sex practices may not be readably available. Also people are doing so much just to get by they may not even have the time to look for this information. My point is i don’t blame the people who are in these types of situations for there troubles. Its much more complicated then just personal choices. And also why should a woman be the one stuck with her offspring? It takes two to tango.
I hope this helped!
tex said
im fascinated by your argument timo, and i hope to learn more so i can understand better…you mention leaders of business that travel the world, drinking fine wine..I know you also see the over-whelming majority of small business owners literally working themselves sick too. I know doctors, store owners, dry cleaners, construction workers, etc who work 80 hrs a week, and have never left their own state. if a person invests all the needed capital to form a business, pays reasonable wages to employees, and makes a success — why should the workers be overly rewarded. They invested no capital, risked no credit, and were paid a fair salary.
the unemployed..humm. so if a job is mandated by a govt, a worker must do it and will be happy doing so??…right now in America, you are free to persue any type of employment in any field you want. no-one tells you what to do, and if ya dont mind starvin ya dont have to do anything. sounds fair to me. myself, i eat alot and im always spending money on women, i have to work smarter, harder, and longer to maintain that. under socialism, would it be possible to work smarter, harder, longer and recieve the same more compensation than the guy who loafs?
as for a lack of safe-sex education. that may have been the case 70 yrs ago and it may still be in some unfortunate places today, but not in america. it takes 2 to tango, and atleast 1 of them knows bad things happen from, err, ejaculating inside a woman. that bad thing might be disease, or it might be a kid ya arent prepared for. Im all for promiscous women, i support them wholeheartedly. But the Christian model, though Polly-annish, is probably the best for society. Kids having kids leads to bad times. ’cause momma’s out actin her age the child is neglected, which means he proly have issues and wont behave and will not only challenge my kids ability to get that education at the school my govt provided, but after he leaves school the neglected child will need further assistance, handouts. only, now he’s a victim of a social phenomenom so, well, lets analyze and change, and make more laws and blah blah blah….
….can ya agree with ANYTHING ive said so far?
Timo said
“if a person invests all the needed capital to form a business, pays reasonable wages to employees, and makes a success — why should the workers be overly rewarded. They invested no capital, risked no credit, and were paid a fair salary.”
People do take risks investing and so on, and if they get a little bit of a reward for there risk on top of a return on their investment that is not horrible. But what I am completely against is that the workers do not control what they create. People shouldn’t be overly rewarded. I agree with that. but who is really overly rewarded? once you get a return investment how much is enough? should one or a few people really control all that surplus value that was created by the work of others? I think we should use that surplus value for every ones benefit. Many people unfortunately are not paid a fair salary. It is true that the workers did not take the risks of investing capital, but they are in no position to do so. Something to note, showing the huge gap in social positions, in America the highest salary is about 75 times larger then the lowest paid, In china(when it was socialist) that difference was only 5 times more then the lowest paid. The choices we have in life and our ability to move up in society are all outside of our control. I am by no means saying that many people who do work hard to advance don’t move up in part by their hard work. What I am saying is that there is much more to it then just hard work. Even their ability to work hard is outside of their control, if your injured or crippled is it your fault?
“the unemployed..humm. so if a job is mandated by a govt, a worker must do it and will be happy doing so??…right now in America, you are free to persue any type of employment in any field you want. no-one tells you what to do, and if ya dont mind starvin ya dont have to do anything. sounds fair to me.”
you have to do your job now don’t you, or else you will get fired? Unfortunately many people even in America cant persue what ever field they want. This is primarily due to the cost of education, and also by the limited advancement opportunities many jobs have. This is related to what we discussed earlier. Many are unplowed not because they dont mind starving but because they cant find work, and those who are most exploited take horrible jobs because they need them to eat and they dont have any better options at that point(disregarding revolution for now). How is that fair? some can advance and choose while others cant. It is also important to note that capitalism will never have 100% employment rate. This is because capitalism needs a large group of unemployed workers, dyeing for the chance to work, a vast sea of people fresh to exploit. In society there is great need for food, shelter, all the things that are necessary to sustain life. Also look at all those unemployed people and those working for next to nothing. Why cant you address these things together by essentially killing 2 birds with 1 stone? Why cant you give people work to help solve the needs of people? Capitalism. There is no profit for any individual in doing so, and doing so would ruin capitalism. However socialism can do this and so much more! In China(when it was socialist) peasants were given a real education for the first time! We must also relies that the state is an institution, it is made up of people. It should not be separate from the people, people should have a role in politics.
Zack said
“i can provide all my basic needs working for minimum wage even, and can work extra jobs if im so motivated…”
I think of it this way in the context of your question; in a communist mode of production you could provide your basic needs with 6 hours as opposed to 60 hours under the current capitalist mode of production (way things are produced).
Timo said
“I think of it this way in the context of your question; in a communist mode of production you could provide your basic needs with 6 hours as opposed to 60 hours under the current capitalist mode of production (way things are produced).”
Correct me if Im wrong, but this all comes down to surplus value. So since people will be benefiting directly from the work they produce they will have to work less to meet their needs and everyone else’s because of the surplus. Also by having shorter work hours there are more work opportunities for others.
tex said
timo…i would be called a small business owner. in reality, i did not take advantage of the education the gov’t wanted me to get, i dropped out of high school. after floundering for years in dead-end jobs, i got my head right.. i started saving money, working two jobs and living frugal. i saved enough to buy a cheap tractor and a cutter, i placed ad’s in local papers and now {{14 months later}} i am enjoying a little success.. last month, i had to have help so i hired a neighbor, paying him more than his last job did..we mowed 900 acres, the farmer paid me $11/ac. working 10 hr days, i paid my helper $100/day. he worked 10 days..it cost me roughly the same amount for fuel/equip. maintenance as for my labor help.. i made a nice profit yes, the farmer was happy and my neighbor was so appreciative he gifted me some good hydro he grew….did i exploit him, or am i a good guy who hustled to help myself AND helped a neighbor?
{{incidentally, i tried getting a night job at a local warehouse before the summer…the supervisor told me plainly i didnt speak the right language to help his guys}}}
zack — i want more than just my basic needs met, so i try to be smart and full of effort. if that means workin 60/hrs a week, its worth it to me.
tex said
i totally agree on the outrageous costs of education…tuitions outrageous, and the books alone are crazy
but a bigger issue is those being taught. lets be honest, KIDS DONT LIKE SCHOOL.. if they did, there wouldnt be truancy or dropouts. kids would be in their seat, on time, ready to learn.. from the ‘hood to the ‘burbs, ya dont see that often.. plus, do half the parents nowadays even care about their kids? too many parents view school as a daycare
Timo said
It is still exploitation, from the dictionary:
1. use or utilization, esp. for profit: the exploitation of newly discovered oil fields.
2. selfish utilization: He got ahead through the exploitation of his friends.
3. the combined, often varied, use of public-relations and advertising techniques to promote a person, movie, product, etc.
However in your case it was not in a mean spirited attempted to make as much money as possible at the expense of others. I know things are much more complicated then just Workers and bosses. But in capitalist society who calls the shots? Big business, and Im sure you know of how big business effects small business.
Timo said
Oh and the school thing does it mean something is wrong with the kids or the schools?
Zack said
Tex: to quote Marx, “I am nothing and should be everything.”
I agree completely with you in that I want to enjoy more than just the bare necessities to live another day. I want to make art, I want to make love, I want to make music and such things.
I just think I could do more of all of that with a lot more freed up time… working 6 hours instead of 60 hours would surely fix that, right? Heh.
tex said
in my case, as in i believe the majority of american small business owners, im just trying to keep from flippin burgers ya know.. im not trained in anything, i dont have any great skill..i had an opportunity to not only feed my family, but allow a neighbor to do the same…
my political awakening is admittedly brand new.. i fear the current political tides in America are more about ‘gettin back at whitey’ than anything.. i’ve enjoyed our chat, and i hope u realize my mission is to learn, not fight.. myself, i guess this world is big enough for all kinds of people. i refuse to apologize for slavery. i mistrust anyone who takes govt money, whether politicain or welfare recipient. i believe we’re all born with about the same intelligence. i believe if we try hard, you can achieve whatever brand of success youre after. i agree, we have a responsibility for those truly unable to work.. i accept any immigrant who wants to come here and: speak our language, work hard, not steal from me, not live off welfare..
i just want a lil part of this earth for myself. where i can have my animals, or plant a garden, or just build sand-castles or whatever. i dont want anyone telling me what kind of work i have to do, i dont wanna have to support anyone who isnt willing to work for their own well-being. i dont wanna drive a lil pud-car. i believe cows were meant to be steak on my plate. i believe a man should be judged by his character, not his skin color or station in life…..where am i going wrong here?
tex said
somethings wrong with the families of the kids in the schools…too many kids have absentee parents who dont care whether their kids learn or not
Zack said
Tex, speaking personally, I can unite on some things you’re saying. Such things as: “i believe a man should be judged by his character, not his skin color or station in life”, “we have a responsibility for those truly unable to work”, “i dont want anyone telling me what kind of work i have to do”, I can generally unite with.
Other things you say, I disagree with.
“i refuse to apologize for slavery.” I’d like to understand better what you mean by this. You don’t deny that slavery did occur in this country, do you? Do you deny that it had foundational prospects for this country in its formative years and shaped the politics and landscape of freedom up even until today for a segment of people based solely on the pigment of skin? Further, I’d frame it not as a form of apology per se, but more as a form of what do we actually do about such crimes (if you would agree that the forced unpaid labor of a human being is a crime, that is) that were committed. Shouldn’t there be some forms of retribution for such crimes?
“i believe if we try hard, you can achieve whatever brand of success youre after.” I disagree because I think I’ve seen far more examples of poor people who were and always will be poor no matter how many jobs or how hard they’ve worked their whole lives. Case in point: my grandparents are well into their 70s and still have 35+ hour weeks. They’ve worked their whole lives and these are their golden years? I would never consider either of them to be lazy or just looking for “hand outs.” I think this is widespread and very common. I think it’s a mistake to just think idleness or laziness is the reason for poverty.
“i dont wanna have to support anyone who isnt willing to work for their own well-being.” I guess I just think we’re already doing that under capitalism (it’s just less obvious). When I go to work every day, I understand that I’m getting fucked for what labor produce to make the owner of the business I work for even richer. I’m making a fraction of the wealth I actually produce… if anything, every day I work I feel I’m supporting THEM more than me/my family.
“i believe cows were meant to be steak on my plate.” Ha, I’m a vegetarian, so I’ll agree to disagree there. ;)
***
“my mission is to learn, not fight.. myself, i guess this world is big enough for all kinds of people.”
I unite with the desire to learn. We should learn and listen. You’re by no means the enemy of me or the class I unite with (working class), you’re a part of it.
Mike E said
[moderator note: This is a site for the discussion among revolutionaries and communists. There is great value in debating (and demolishing) pro-capitalist views within the U.S. But doing so here in this forum, drags down its intended level of engagement.]
Timo said
Where would the appropriate place for such discussions be? The threads?
Zack said
sigh.
zerohour said
“i fear the current political tides in America are more about ‘gettin back at whitey’ than anything”
White supremacy is so entrenched in our society, that the disproportionate advantages they get in housing, job opportunities, treatment by law enforcement, etc., just seem “normal” so that any attempt to make things equal appears to be taking something away. Well, yes, it is. It’s taking away white people’s sense of entitlement, the false notion that the social conditions in which they exist are purely the results of hard work, therefore if anyone else faces discrimination or oppressive conditions, it must be their fault.
If you take a serious look through US history, you’ll see the ways in which race and class structures have been supported by the US government, and white people never seem too upset about government “handouts” in those cases. To take one example, after WWII many GIs went to college or bought houses with government money, provided by the GI Bill. At the same time, the Federal Housing Administration routinely denied low-interest loans to blacks. Many of these same white people and their descendants are the biggest proponents of that “work hard and you’ll get ahead” myth even while getting government assistance. But the biggest beneficiaries of government assistance are corporations, who don’t pay taxes due to incentives or simply because the tax codes written for them are so complex they are not always easy to enforce. The government support they get far outweighs any for undocumented immigrants, or welfare recipients.
” i accept any immigrant who wants to come here and: speak our language, work hard, not steal from me, not live off welfare.”
Whether an immigrant speaks English or not should have no bearing on their right to decent, humane treatment. This country was built on slavery, genocide and outright theft of land and part of that process was the forcible imposition of English. I don’t expect you to apologize for slavery [and that's a bogus argument, no one is seriously advocating that for white people anyway], but to understand that its effects continue in forms of institutional and social racism, and take responsibility for your role in either perpetuating it, or helping to end it. On top of that, why single out immigrants as people who may not work hard and want to steal from you? They come here to work and often work harder then US citizens at backbreaking labor, with no legal protections or benefits. They get paid subpar wages, and sometimes not at all. Why not look at your fellow white Americans citizens? Let’s take fellow Texan George W. Bush. He was a “C”-average student, failed at every business venture he was ever involved in, and yet became President of the US! Can any average “loser” do this? This racial myopia is typical. I’m sure for every non-white you see as lazy, you probably see just as many white people doing the same thing, yet it would never occur to you to consider white people lazy. In the same way that we can have the Oklahoma City bombing, high school shootings, serial killers, recent shootings at the Holocaust Museum, the killing of three cops in Pittsburgh – perpetrated by white people, yet there is no demand to racially profile, and round up, white people as terrorists and ship them off to Guantanamo or a “black site” for interrogation. By the way, most people on welfare are also white.
Also your views on women are, in a nutshell, wrong.
Women who enjoy sex with multiple partners are not “sluts.” They are entitled to have consensual sex with whomever they want, whenever and as often, something men have always considered a virtue from themselves. The fact that when they do this they have to be subject to a derogatory term is based on the notion that men have the right to define their behavior and regulate their bodies.
This society conditions all of us, men and women, to have a very self-centered, short-term idea of the world, our societies, our place in them, and it leads to counter-productive and self-destructive behaviors. Add to that, the lack of accessible, good education and resources, and the results are never good. That’s not the whole story though. There are also people who do struggle do live lives with integrity, meaning and respect, who want to develop communities, and they often have to do it by challenging the self-image of America that many hold so dear. When people encounter other outlooks and alternatives, that’s when change is possible. One barrier to such change is the myth of the self-made individual. That person doesn’t exist. Individuals are social beings that are capable of becoming something other than what they’ve been acculturated to. We can build a new culture and society based on empathy and mutual respect through collective effort, but we can’t do that if we have a vested interest in believing that behavior is innate and unchangeable.
Ben Seattle said
From my discussion with Selucha in the Kasama threads forum at:
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=983
I looked at the only doc I could find giving an overview of how the Kasama group sees its role (ie: “Contributing to Revolution’s Long March” from February 2009) which gives what we can consider to be Kasama’s mission statement:
> Kasama is a communist project that, in theory
> and practice, fights for the forcible overthrow of
> all existing social conditions.
This statement, in my view, reflects a social-democratic worldview. The phrase “communist project” means absolutely nothing, just like “revolutionary” (we live in a society where a new kind of toothpaste is called “revolutionary”). And the phrase about the forcible overthrow of “all existing social conditions” is similarly meaningless. There are no class politics in this statement. Any fundamental change of existing social conditions will require a forcible overthrow of the system of rule by a specific social class–the bourgeoisie. Why not talk about the “overthrow of bourgeois rule” instead of something so meaningless?
Because, in my view, such talk would not be acceptable to many of the forces that the Kasama group apparently intends to gather together.
zerohour said
Ben -
When I have more time, I’d like to address the issues you bring up in your thread [and your post], but for now I’d like to deal with this point:
“This statement, in my view, reflects a social-democratic worldview. The phrase “communist project” means absolutely nothing, just like “revolutionary” (we live in a society where a new kind of toothpaste is called “revolutionary”). And the phrase about the forcible overthrow of “all existing social conditions” is similarly meaningless. There are no class politics in this statement. Any fundamental change of existing social conditions will require a forcible overthrow of the system of rule by a specific social class–the bourgeoisie. Why not talk about the “overthrow of bourgeois rule” instead of something so meaningless?”
I should make it clear here that I’m speaking for myself my remarks should not be taken as representing an “official line” or a collective position.
I find it difficult to understand why you think calling oneself “communist” is meaningless given the entrenched anti-communism in this country. Among most Marxists, this phrase is avoided because the US state has effectively associated it with Stalin, and they have simply conceded the term. Few even use the term “revolution” not because it’s hackneyed or commercialized but because it’s still a hot potato in left politics.
As far as not mentioning a specific social class – as I understand it, communism refers to the abolition of class society in general, not just the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, but more importantly, we must be committed to abolishing all oppressive social relations. We can infer that the abolition of classes [by definition] means the end of women’s oppression, racism, colonialism, etc., but I don’t think we can assume anything about how people understand communism.
A focus on class as an identity, smacks of economic determinism. Why do we need to specify class as a rallying point? Is it not the case that any struggle to transform society away from capitalism is going to be based on the working class by default? Why does this also have to be the singular point of political identification? This seems to be confusing politics with sociology, as if “working class” and “bourgeoisie” were political positions. In my view, class politics is primarily about class society in general, and secondarily about specific classes struggling with each other. Overthrowing the bourgeoisie does not automatically mean that a new, more egalitarian, cooperative society will arise. To assume this is to adopt a teleological view of history. There must be political struggle all the way through the process among the people. I use this term the way it is used by Mao and even the Paris Commune. “The people” are the exploited, the oppressed and anyone else who wants to work for a better society, and that includes sympathetic elements from the former petty and “high” bourgeoisie.
Also, you make statements about the community in and around Kasama but what are they based on? As far as I can tell, only two things: using the responses [or lack thereof] to your own posts as benchmarks for political seriousness and reading others’ posts. I don’t think you or anyone else is well-served by this method.
Ben Seattle said
Hi folks,
Since my moderation status (and the three day delay between when I post and when my post appears) make it somewhat impractical for me to carry on much of a discussion on this blog page–I have created a brand new thread in the Kasama “threads” forum, in case anyone would like to discuss it with me there. The new thread is here: http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=1011
The title and subtitle of the thread are as follows:
Criticism of Kasama ‘s social-democratic mission statement
The Kasama group appears to have eliminated
the class struggle and class politics from
its mission statement in a bid to be “respectable”
and acceptable to a strata of social-democratic activists
I intend to add additional comments to the thread soon and may even draw a political cartoon to illustrate why we, and the working class and oppressed, need class politics.
I hope that members of the Kasama community may find this topic to be of interest and join me there.
sincerely and revolutionary regards,
Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/ben/
doxus said
The Kasama project like me. I agree with “The existing [theorist] left has been unable to speak to our times…” Maybe just because they speak out too theoretical on Marxism, or perhaps, simply I think so because I cannot understand well them. I’m not telling that our times does not need theorists on Marxism, but our times need people to teach to working class what our times is. Our time’s working class looks so ignorant about the human cultural heritage, that I think workers are practically unable of comprehend the human society as a historical, living process that shapes human being. The capitalist social economical system, in our times, generates semi drugged, capitalist minded dreamers, slaves to feed the production of profits. “We want to go deeply among the people to prepare minds and organize forces for revolution” That’s a key step.
zerohour said
Doxus -
You modified our statement to read ““The existing [theorist] left…”
Why would you add the word “theorist”?
You say “I’m not telling that our times does not need theorists on Marxism, but our times need people to teach to working class what our times is” but I think the latter requires a good grasp of the former, so I’m not completely clear on your point.
doxus said
Thanks Zerohour,
Yes, you are right, the latter requires a good grasp of the former. But, in the same sense you cannot make a person understand some of the Quantum Mechanics, if that person don’t have a good enough understanding of Classical Mechanics (and other mathematical tools), teaching Marxism without a previous scientific (enough), or critical thinking, looks like some kind of religion. The working class in US (I’m talking on my short and superficial experience), is compelled to become believers from the day they birth. The educational system produces weak minds and guarantees – at least – the raise of money worshipers. It prevents them from a critical thinking which, eventually, may becomes a scientific thinking. I’m talking, of course, in average terms.
I understand Marxism as a scientific understanding of human society, and human being. A scientific reading of human society history. Marxism is, also, a guide, a lighthouse, an attitude for action and behavior – as opposed to a merely speculative doctrine. And it presuppose some degree of freedom… some degree of critical thinking. Teaching Marxism (well, I’m assuming that is what theorists do), on dry road, is like teaching a catechism on religion. So, I think if Kasama project “ wants to go deeply among the people to prepare minds and organize forces for revolution,” it must be take into account of a wide educational front. I’m aware about the complexity of this point and I’m not expecting make it fully clear with a few words.
Robert said
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Nicki said
why not free liberties and let people help themselves, bigger governments mean bigger corruption. did we not learn from the history of the world? you are praising efforts lead by killers!
Stanley W. Rogouski said
you are praising efforts lead by killers
Are you talking about the free market capitalists who created a man made famine in 1847 that killed over a million Irish people?
Are you taking about the British imperialists who declared war on China in 1839 so they cold continue to sell people drugs?
Are you taking about the American government that decided to drop the second atomic bomb right on top of the biggest Catholic church in Nagasaki?
Are you talking about the Clinton administration, which maintained a blockade of Iraq that killed (by Madaline Albright’s own admission) 500,000 Iraqi children?
Are you talking about the Trail of Tears, the Sand Crack Massacre, the Pequot Massacre, or Wounded Knee?
Are you talking about the European captialist heads of state who murdered tens of millions of working class Europeans from 1914 to 1918?
Are you talking about the American evangelical Christians who supported the Guatamalan dictarship in the 1970s and 1980s?
Are you talking about the Reagan administration, which was complicit in the murder of a Catholic archbishop and 5 Americans nuns in El Salvador?
FWIW, if you’re coming here because you saw Jed Brandt on the Glenn Beck show and Googled his name, welcome.
Glenn Beck is a multi millionaire (and he’s paid his millions by Rupert Murdorch, who’s not even an American) and a demogogue who manipulates working class white Americans into thinking they have a common interest with the rich. You have NO common interest with the rich. You have a common interest with those Mexican immigrants Beck is trying to get you to hate, those civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq Obama is bombing, and, ahem, me. The sooner you learn that the better off you’ll be.
Adabo said
Yeah. I got here because of the furor over Beck’s show, even tho’ I didn’t watch it.
Mr. Rogouski;
Name a society devoid of corruption? One! I didn’t see one item on your list of horrors that included the reaps of inhumanities by communist led governments. Are you ignoring those to claim your case? How about the Marxist designed leaderships that destroyed innocent families by the thousands and millions?
You will never, ever, live in a perfect world during this age. It won’t happen. As long as people are involved, there will always be pride, desire for power, manipulation, human discounting, murder (of the id if not of the body) and every other evil behavior that man conceals within his soul.
You’re a photographer right? You’ve photographed hundreds of rallies and events right? Disregarding any philosophical lip service, which one proves that their ideology will be devoid of man’s evil actions? And thus, the end conclusion will be no different than any other one you’ve stated in your algorithm or that I can argue in mine.
And don’t even try to conceal behind some false sense of righteousness. You’re a demagogue. (Defined: a person, esp. an orator or political leader, who gains power and popularity by arousing the emotions, passions, and prejudices of the people.)
Instead of inciting emotion by giving a brief listing of all of the fallibilities of capitalism or imperialism……why don’t you give us an exact historical point for each item? Why don’t you give us an accurate and complete history lesson?
Why don’t you tell us why the US would actually land a bomb on the biggest Catholic church in Nagasaki? Why don’t you tell us exactly how that happened? Include the decision by the bombadier to pull that trigger at that time? How about including why Japan was even bombed? How about what Japan’s role was in that event? Were they complicit because they knew about the bombing in advance?
You won’t because you’re mind is wrapped around an ideology that thinks that man can be better than he is. You’re so pissed off that I challenged you by calling you a demagogue…or that you don’t think I can comprehend your point in my small mind…….or that I will tell you that you’re wrong in your last two sentences above.
If man followed any popularly designed ideology in its purity, there would be no major problems within that society on its own. Buddhism, Krishna, Zionism, Marxism, Communism…whatever. But when you add the element of man and his inability to truly behave carefully and with respect for others….than the cause is lost.
And to add to the pain…..when you have a demagogue in any form…..on any soapbox….yourself or anyone else….the distortion, lies and fallacies will continue.
People don’t want to know the truth about things that they care about. They don’t want to know that capitalism, marxism or communism can fail. They just want to live their lives as they see fit. And the less that you really understand about human nature, the less you will really understand how this world gets fixed.
Stanley W. Rogouski said
Name a society devoid of corruption? One! I didn’t see one item on your list of horrors that included the reaps of inhumanities by communist led governments. Are you ignoring those to claim your case? How about the Marxist designed leaderships that destroyed innocent families by the thousands and millions?
Well. Let’s compare the millions of people Mao supposedly killed in China to the people Lord Russell killed in Ireland. In Mao’s case, there was a horrific famine (the last of which China has experienced, btw) as the result of an arguably misguided attempt to collectivize agriculture. There were also famines in 1920 and in the 1870s that killed as many people. But you’ll rarely hear anybody talk about them.
In 1847 in Ireland, however, there was a conscious, deliberate effort of a “free market” capitalist government (Lord Russell’s) to destroy the Catholic peasantry of Ireland in order to make agricutlure more “profitable”. This very deliberate act has an ideologue by the name of Robert Malthus. You should read his book “En Essay on the Principle of Population”. It’s a very eloquent case for genocide.
Why don’t you tell us why the US would actually land a bomb on the biggest Catholic church in Nagasaki? Why don’t you tell us exactly how that happened? Include the decision by the bombadier to pull that trigger at that time? How about including why Japan was even bombed? How about what Japan’s role was in that event? Were they complicit because they knew about the bombing in advance?
Easy. The United States of America wanted to fight World War II on the cheap. Unlike the Russians (and like the French), American didn’t want to lose millions of casualties. Instead of reinforcing Joe Stillwell in Burma or opening a second front in Europe before 1942, Roosevelt and Churchill let Stalin do the heavy liftig against Germany in the west and relied on “island hopping” in the east. The second atomic bomb was a message to Stalin. “We may not have the manpower you have but we look what we could do to your toops in Europe if you decide to go west of Prague”.
You won’t because you’re mind is wrapped around an ideology that thinks that man can be better than he is.
Isn’t that what the Second Amendment about? If you want to trust the entire population to own guns, then don’t you have to believe “man” (don’t know about “woman”) is better than “he” really is?
You’re so pissed off that I challenged you by calling you a demagogue
I’m not a demaogue. I’m just a little nobody on the internet.
onehundredflowers said
Moderator’s note: Adabo, we have very few rules on this site, and one of them is no flaming. We want a critical and respectful dialogue and debate and name-calling drags the discussion down. If you want to continue participating here, stick to matters of substance and don’t engage in personal attacks.
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Obrero Rebelde said
Interesting. For some reason, though, I get the sense I’m way over the hill for this age group.
You guys didn’t happen to be around for the arguments over the Angolan revolutionary question back in the 70s, did you? Or for the nationwide actions organized against the Bakke Decision, when the old “national questions” (Black, Chicano, etc.) were argued over with particular gusto as the split widened with Maoism and the formation of the Marxist-Leninist Trend (Line of March).
Curious.
It’s good to see you comrades having these conversations with so much enthusiasm.
Perpetual Revolution!
Obrero Rebelde
AnchorBabyBoomer said
Question: Does Kasama or any of its membership have origins in the Katipunan ng mga Demokratikong Pilipino/KDP?
Luis V. said
Hey AnchorBabyBoomer,
As far as I know, nobody in Kasama has any relation to that group. Although our name is of Filipino origin, we don’t have any origin in the Philippines.
Morris William said
Greetings from Britain
The first task in walking the revolutionary road must surely be the development of a principled, international outlook which can become a unifying ideology for the huge variety of revolutionary struggles in the nation states of capitalism.
Such an outlook should be developed, in the first instance, under three fundamental headings – Revolutionary Socialism, Revolutionary Democracy and Environment.
Socialism was a well used term by the time Marx referred to the transitional, working class state as being the lower phase of communism, so it was to be expected that socialism would also be used as a term of convenience for communists.
However it has also been used to this day by evolutionary socialists, with those on the right of this ideology upholding a socialism within capitalism and with those on the left of it imagining that capitalism can somehow evolute into socialism.
At the present time, the fundamental antagonism between evolutionary socialism, with its adherence to the corporate, neo-liberal phase of imperialism, needs to be clearly demarcated from the ideology of revolutionary socialism.
That need is not helped by reference to communism. After all, communism is associated in workers minds with the parties and the nation states of the Third International, which disintegrated along with the disappearance of millions of its members.
That, of course, followed the disintegration of the parties of the Fourth International, although their membership could be counted in thousands rather than millions.
However, there is no question that we should continue to explain the ideology of communism as a whole but, firstly, let us disentangle it from the ideology of evolutionary socialism in the minds of workers.
To paraphrase Marx:
Revolutionary socialists disdain to conceal their views and aims, they have no interests separate and apart from those of the working class as a whole.
We could take a look at Revolutionary Democracy later.
B Clinch said
What is at stake is the formation of revolutionary communist parties. Without the Party in the lead of the class, there is no possibility of socialist revolution, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the forward march of the revolution globally.
We have to grasp that the Party are the organised representatives of the most ideologically advanced strata in the working people. Above, someone mentioned “What is to be done?” – a book much misread, IMHO. Lenin argues that the communist organisation must first of all aim at capturing the hearts and minds of the (ideologically) advanced workers. As another Bolshevik put it, the essence of economism is staring up the backside of the working class – in other words, a culture of low expectations in which effort is directed at the least ideologically advanced sections of the class. These workers are already moving towards a consciousness of themselves as a class for themselves – this emergence of partisan class consciousness is fully liberated in the activity of cadres within revolutionary organisations made up – as Lenin put it – of “professional revolutionaries”. Indeed, without the Party, the degree to which the spontaneous class struggle can deliver workers to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought is extremely limited, if not utterly barred.
We must also inject into this model the recognition that imperialism not only splits the world into oppressors and oppressed; but also splits the working class into a (relatively) bought-off labour aristocracy and a (potentially) revolutionary proletariat. The economism of much of the revisionist Communist Parties (in my country’s case, the Communist Party of Britain – as a case in point), the watering down of revolutionary principles to accommodate the Party to the liberal sensibilities of social democracy, the national chauvinism towards liberation movements operating in conditions of oppressed nations, the rejection of violence as a core feature of communist struggle against imperialism and capitalism… all of these factors, and more are symptomatic of the ideology of the labour aristocracy and are therefore alien to the revolutionary proletarian class interest.
The first task, then, is the formation of communist organisations armed with the most advanced revolutionary theory. This is no easy task. The next task is as herculean and as vital – a profound and complete rupture with revisionism and an unremitting and ruthless struggle against opportunism, even of the most refined kind. These revolutionary acts, heralds of a coming storm, must be pitched at the advanced workers. We must draw them into the Party, as they will draw the lower strata behind them. When the Party is acknowledged by the workers themselves as their vanguard, their uncompromising fighter, then we have the right to call ourselves a Communist Party.
For Communism
B Clinch
B Clinch said
“Revolutionary socialists disdain to conceal their views and aims, they have no interests separate and apart from those of the working class as a whole.”
No. Communists fight to win power for the working people, as the most advanced and partisan detachment of the working class. The Party of workers everywhere expects that the particular interests of the proletariat are placed above the general interests of democracy. This is the essence of proletarian internationalism. And without that, we are nothing.
Morris William said
I am afraid that old thinking still persists, as with the contribution of B Clinch who states, “ … without the Party, the degree to which the spontaneous class struggle can deliver workers to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought is extremely limited … ”.
Perhaps it’s time to stop the celebrity leader name dropping and for us to begin to put their thoughts into our own words, along with their relevance for us today.
So let us start by simply agreeing on the ideology of scientific socialism with its philosophic foundation of dialectical and historical materialism and the revolutionary concept of socialism beyond capitalism, that is, the socialism of the lower phase of communism.
B Clinch goes on to state that, “ The first task, then, is the formation of communist organisations armed with the most advanced revolutionary theory.”
No, as with other nation states, it is the last thing that we need in Britain, we have more than enough of these factions when what the working class needs is the principled unity of revolutionary socialists.
The first task, then, and this applies to every capitalist and imperialist nation state, is to work to bring about that unity through what I describe in the title of my online convention as ‘Revolutionary Democracy for ecoSocialism – Britain’.
If any advance is to be made, then it has to be recognised that the collapse into sectarian factions of the revolutionary socialist movement evolved around the failure to fully address the question of revolutionary democracy.
Morris William said
It is anybody’s guess as to what B Clinch means by “ the general interests of democracy ”.
The political organisation of democracy takes on a variety of forms that are designed to serve particular interests including, of course, the particular interests of the working class in the revolutionary struggle for it to win power.
If communists are to be recognised as the leadership of the working class, they must focus on the those structures of democracy within their own organisation which allowed, and still allows, particular factions to gain the vantage point of the central committee and, from that position, control it, the party and the state.
The more we advance revolutionary democracy for today, not only will we achieve unity in the revolutionary struggle, we will also begin to create the conditions for the future advancement of socialism.
B Clinch said
Or rather what Lenin meant about the “general interests of democracy” , Morris – given that I was paraphrasing him… but the distance between your position and that of Marxism-Leninism is already crystal clear.
Morris William said
Oops – sorry Clinch. I didn’t realise that to walk the revolutionary road, one has to conform to your thoughts on Marxism-Leninism.
Reminds me a little of Marx’s remark – “ Save me from the Marxists. ”
Never mind. The thoughts of Clinch on democracy are currently to be found on Polemic.
Harsh Thakor said
Without doubt a great website.Perhaps one of the greatest ever Marxist-Leninist efforts to create a forum for debate,which has been lacking in the history of the Communist Movement .Kasama has made a historic contribution covering such a wide spectrum of Issues.An outstanding debate has been launched on the topics of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,Maoism,Stalinism and Mass Line.The topic of the vanguard role of the party and multi-party system is of vital importance today.The site has great reference material on the victories and Achievements of Socialist Rule,particularly in China during the Cultural Revolution.Infact Indian readers need such a forum where major issues can be analytically debated and that any criticism of Socialist rule is slandered as revisionist.Com.Mike Ely makes some most relevant points as a critique of various eras.
However I strongly feel,that there are strong ideological weaknesses amongst comrades like Mike Ely,on the question of multi-party System in Nepal or critique of Stalinism or Leninism.Infact I think Joseph Ball,is theoretically more sound in his point defending proletraian dictatorship.The theoretical foundations of Leninism have been diverted to a considerable extent.One topic that needs to be focussed on is the question of revolutionary dissent under the dictatorship of the Proletariat and in a Socialist Society.
Good coverage is given to International Movements ,but there is lack of constructive revolutionary criticism of the Mass Line in South Asia or Latin America.Coverage could be given to the viewpoints outside the C.P.I.(Maoist) section of the Revolutionary camp and the historic struggle for the mass line.Left Adventurism is still predominant in the Indian armed Struggle .
Anyhow keep up the Good work of such a valuable historical site which has made such a major contribution.
Jerry Spring said
The contribution of Harsh Thakor prompted me to to take a further look at Kasama’s statement of purpose, which has the great virtue of not demanding that we should adopt the particular ideological outlook of this, that or the other great, historical leader.
However, it does raise questions that need to be addressed.
The Kasama project states that, “ We seek to find the forms of organization and action for the people most dispossessed by this system to free themselves and all humanity.”
Firstly, it is not the people most dispossessed, but the working class a a whole that in freeing themselves will free all humanity.
Secondly, it is premature to seek forms of organisation and action unless those forms are directed, first and foremost, at overcoming the impasse created by the present disunity of the revolutionary socialist movement.
The revolutionary leadership that the working class needs, to enable it to realise its potentional, is hopelessly divided into a profusion of international factions and this is reflected in the disintegration of the revolutionary socialist movement into a confusion of revolutionary socialist factions in every nation state.
There is no longer any ‘International’ – there is only a collective confusion, the counter-revolutionary outcome of the historical adherence to the practice of leader centralism in the revolutionary socialist organisations.
The unity of revolutionary socialists therefore cannot be directly achieved internationally, that unity must firstly be brought about in as many nations states as possible and its achievement cannot be the task of any one of the competing, revolutionary socialist factions, for every such faction is already undertaking that task as part of what it sees as its revolutionary leadership responsibilities.
And the factions must be superseded nationally in order for us to proceed to the international.
In place of the welter of elaborated ideologies produced by the factions, we must begin simply, on unity around the fundamental ideological recognition of revolutionary socialism as the lower phase of communism, along with a reappraisal of the political organisation of centralist democracy.
Estella said
I don’t mean to undermine any of you in any way, but I read these comments with interest and have myself a few questions to pose.
1. Where is the motivation to work hard? If we are paid the same amount for working in a bar as being a doctor, how do people find the motivation to train to become doctors?
2. Why should I be made to give up my own hard earned money for someone who doesn’t work? I work hard at school in the hope that I will do well and be able to lead the lifestyle I want. I don’t care how much I have to work as long as I will, in the end, have enough to afford to buy a big house, all the clothes I want, I can eat out whenever I like, and I can go to the theatre. While others may be content with having a small job and having basic necissities like shelter, food and clothing, that is not enough for me. Why should those who are willing to work hard for an enjoyable lifestyle be refrained from doing so to aid those who are not willing to do the same? I appreciate that some people have rotten luck, and no matter how hard they work they never have enough. I am not talking about these people. I am talking about the layabouts who would take advantage of a communist system and see it as a reason not to work. This, surely, is the downfall of a communist system.
3. Others have talked about the need to ‘overthrow’ the bourgeoisie. They talk as if the bourgeoisie were an evil group of people intent on taking the money of the working classes. The middle classes are the ones who have the highest number of doctors, teachers and lawyers. I’m sure none of you would complain about them if you were in desperate need of surgery, so why complain about them here? The truth is that we NEED the middle classes, and could sooner do without the working classes than without the middle classes.
All in all, it seems to me that the whole communism movement is just an endless struggle against wealth. I find this quite hypocritical. Remember that Karl Marx himself was reasonably wealthy, living off contributions from his CAPITALIST businessman friend, Friedrich Engels. Surely if he had been sincere he would have stopped living off middle class money and started making his living among the working classes?
Don’t hate for all this please :) I’m just trying to get a few answers!
Nick R said
Hi Estella, I want to try to answer your questions.
1) I don’t really believe that greed is the only form of human motivation. It’s kind of a really negative view of human nature which could think we are solely motivated by helping ourselves! Just think how much most parents care for their children and what they would give up for them. Or lovers sacrificing to help each other would be another example. I think these sorts of everyday examples show people can be motivated by things other than greed. I think it can apply to things which could have some economic benefit. Look how many people spend huge amounts of time on all sorts of hobbies which bring them no economic benefit, but many of these skills could easily be put to productive work. And I hope most doctors are motivated as much by a desire to help people as they are to make more money.
2) I don’t see any correlation between how hard someone works and how much they earn in our society or the world economy at large. The people who probably work the hardest in fact get the least amount of rewards. The sweat shops so many of the products we use are made in work people for very long hours in unsafe conditions and pay them next to nothing. Or look at the US. One of the hardest group of workers are farm workers, but they also make very little. So if you do earn more money there is no reason to connect it to harder work than others. I also want to point out that capitalism is dependent on large scale unemployment. A healthy economy is believed to have around 6-7% unemployment by capitalist economists. So even in good times a enormous amount of people just aren’t able to find work. This is even more true now with the economic downturn. I think these facts demonstrate the inherit inhumanity of the system.
3) I think you are confusing terms the way Marxists use them and how apologists for capitalism use them. By the bourgeoisie we mean the upper class who live off of the money they make from exploiting people working in the businesses they own. There isn’t really a direct equivalent to the ‘middle class’ the way it is used by mainstream commentators in Marxism. Most of what is called the ‘middle class’ is just a privileged less exploited sector of the working class. Some of them may be so well off they will never be able to see the need to overthrow the upper class. The ‘middle class’ is also made up of elements of the petit-bourgeoisie who are mostly small business owners. The people you talk about aren’t really the bourgeoisie. Some are working class and some are petit-bourgeoisie.
Lastly, we aren’t struggling against wealth, wealth is good and in fact a necessary precursor to the development of socialism. We are against the concentration of wealth in a few hands. I am not an expert on Marx’s life, but I believe he actually lived most of his adult life in poverty, which was only really ameliorated by the money Engels sent. Marx had been largely locked out of the intellectual and journalist professions he was best qualified for for political reasons. He had to flee from three countries and moat of his children died of illness. Why is it hypocritical for Marx and Engels to spend time developing their theories instead of working in the difficult sweat shops of the day? Our struggle would be much less advanced were it not for their input. I don’t think it matters what class they came from, but whose side they are on. I wouldn’t attack the white civil rights workers of the 60s because they weren’t members of the groups affected. Really there weren’t enough whites working in the civil rights movement!
I hope these answers help you.
sarda said
This is just one’s Filipino’s point of view, I do not speak for all.
Translations:
Bihira is a Pilipino word meaning “rare”.
Karaniwan is a Pilipino word meaning “ordinary”, “common”, or “plain”.
“tao ka lang!” is a Pilipino phrase meaning “you’re only human!”.
Although this posting may seem insignificant to some I still hope that others may learn from it.
Bihira and Karaniwan
I am not a leftist, nor a rightist, nor a centrist, and neither
am I neutral. I only see the world on two sides. One side is the
Karaniwan, and the other side the Bihira. The logic is, if you are
not bihira, then you are karaniwan, and if you are not karaniwan,
then you are bihira.
We say that a person is bihira when he/she has the character of being
way past above the ordinary. Heroes, saints, and martyrs are the best
examples of being one. The virtues that we see in them are the kind
we always look for in a perfect leader. Whomever they may be, they
must be Bihira.
While the karaniwan, as we always hear from them “we’re just ordinary
people”. Let me put this another way, “It is not our job to be
heroes, martyrs, and saints, those jobs are reserve for the Bihiras”.
So to call on the karaniwan to go out there and march, sacrifice
their lives and limbs, will only be an exercise in futility, but to
call on the Bihiras is a sure guarantee that they will be there, if
only they are easily found. They are rare aren’t they?
The Bihiras and the Karaniwans have a differrent point of view. The
Bihiras have always have in their mind that they have the rights and
ability to change the world they live in and so took it upon
themselves that it is their task to put the world or society in the
proper order, in whatever means necessary. Their world is ideal, and
to make their ideal world a reality is that they should rule over
and impose it on the people. And so they did.
In so doing, the Order that the Bihiras laid upon the people have now
become a big problem, a burden, to the Karaniwans which already have
established an Order of their own. The Order of the Bihiras and that
of the Karaniwans now exist side by side with each other, putting the
people in a more confused state. The Bihiras want to lead and rule
over the country but expect the Karaniwans to follow them, sacrifice
their lives if necessary, just to achieve their goal.
But the Karaniwans have exactly the same thing in mind, they expect
the Bihiras to sacrifice their lives just like the heroes and
martyrs they are supposed to be, a true leader.
As I have said, the Karaniwans have already their own established
Order and is based on a very simple principle, that is, of being “Tao
lamang”. The Karaniwans are natural materialist, because it is really
what just being only human is all about. Being “tao lamang”, and
being karaniwan, responsibility to the family and to oneself comes
first, that is, go earn a living! And so we come to the Karaniwans’
established Order, and that they are, what else, the principles of
daily, ordinary life, the workers’ principles, which are,
1) Don’t be a burden!
2) Be independent!
3) Strive for equality!
4) Be practical!
5) Learn and improve!
This is the way to exist in a real material world.
The workers are the new karaniwans who are the true advocates of
those five principles. If you don’t have those principles in you,
if you don’t like them, if you don’t agree with them, then you are
not a worker, you are not karaniwan.
This the the way the workers treats everyone, in a materialistic
way, as being only human. Theirs is the materialist concept of being
human, “Tao ka lang!”, so you hear them say.The Bihiras may think of
themselves as being humane, but the Karaniwans think of themselves
as being only human.
The Leftist, the Rightist, and the Centrist are the Bihiras I’m
talking about, they advocates the principles of being Bihira. You
don’t have to take my words for it, just go and try it. I’m not
preventing anyone from trying to become one, nor am I asking to
choose sides. Just to let you know what side you are with.
As for me, I said, I’m not neutral, so I will tell you where I’m
siding. I am on the Karaniwan side, the majority side. You can call
my kind Karaniwan, don’t call my kind by any other name. What I
would like to see is a Karaniwan revolution.
“We cannot make any changes unless we accept it” Carl Jung
“Unity is knowing what is common among us”
—–sarda– -
Cultural Animal said
I was wondering when someone from the language “Kasama” comes from would speak up!
jp said
see louis proyect’s blog today for a review of an hbo film sympathetic to the nepali struggle : louisproyect (at) wordpress (dot) com.
sarda said
Translation:
Karaniwan in Pilipino means common, ordinary, plain, average, mediocre.
Bihira in Pilipino means “rare”.
Trapo is short for Traditonal Politician, a trapo is rug use for wiping out dirt.
I Am Karaniwan!
Maybe to some they might have seen the similarity between karaniwan and communist, those who have more profound knowledge of its historical background, maybe during the days of the Paris commune where it all started, when the era of the Industrial revolution is at its growth spurt.
But alas! That was all in the past, those days were gone. Now we are talking about the present meaning of the name communist or the concept of communism, the way it was introduced to us by the Americans at the same time they introduce to us their system, that is, Capitalism, or “democracy” as it is now called. Communism is an
evil, anti-democracy government, and the communist are the perpetrator, they are people who are always up to no good. It is like a rumour that had already been spread by the Americans, so when the commie came and introduce themselve, they already have a bad image, the idea of the name had already been changed and many gullible Filipinos accepted this. Anti-communist group are formed to make sure the name will remain as bad as it can be, and a few influential communist paranoid politician and military make sure that nobody sympathizes
with the name.
Communist is a very alien name to most Pilipinos. If it has any other meaning, other than that of what the anti-communist are always saying, then it is already lost and it will only be a waste of time trying to revive it, as far as I am concern, the name is dead( at least in this country). For now, I will take the meaning the way those anti-communist sees it, that is, evil, satanic, devil, demon, godless terrorist, criminals, monsters, uncompassionate, ruthless, anti-democratic people, subversives, secessionist, rebel, insurgent, seditionist, hooligans, goons, bandits, thiefs, robbers, extortionist, anti-religion, killers, murderers, destabilizers, destroyers of properties and establishment, dictator, despot, extremist, etc…, if they want to add more, they can, because you know what? It’s only a name! They can say, they can do whatever they want with it and I won’t have a care in the world. It’s not really worth trying to defend the name and then getting hurt, or worst, getting killed just for the sake of the name. It just isn’t
practical!
So if those anti-communist think that those above are the real meaning of being a communist, then so be it. I’m not going to waste my time in an argument that is already over with in the first place. It just doesn’t make sense anymore, isn’t it? So why bother? Forget it.
Now being Karaniwan, is something more familiar, not just to me but to every Pilipino. In fact, everybody knows about it, it doesn’t really need much explaining to do, it is self-explanatory. My only difference( funny isn’t it? what a contradiction!)from the present karaniwang tao is that, I have come to accept that that is just what
I am. That I cannot be, and I’m not gonna be any being higher than what I am now. I formally accepted that I am Karaniwan and the five basic principles are my basic principles. I would like to say that I am the official, genuine karaniwan, well, because, I have my basic principles to prove it, and as a worker, I will stand by those principles.
What I only did is that, instead of trying to look for something in me that will make me different from all others, which I think many of us are presently doing, maybe because of the way we have been brought up by societ, instead, I did the reverse, I look for something in me that will make me in common(karaniwan) with all others. For I believe that, that of which, which are common (karaniwan) among us will make us all equal, united, and free.
But if you think you are not karaniwan, if you think you are Bihira, then I would expect you to be doing sort of something like being heroic, maybe? Or maybe, you are a martyr? Or maybe you are a saint? Because those are the kinds I believe that makes one a Bihira, or else, then it will only be just a show, a fake, a very typical
character of a trapo, just plain hypocrisy.
So I am not a communist, I am Karaniwan! and I say that with attitude and pride, very different from the old pathetic attitude “karaniwang tao lang po kami” that seems always begging and looking for pity. You see, if we the karaniwan will not change our old attitude, the Bihiras( those hypocrites up there ), especially those in the government, will always look down on us, like they are the superior ones. We must throw away that old attitude and adopt the new one. We must show our preponderance, that the mighty Karaniwan rules.
The Five Basic principles:
1) Don’t be a burden!
2) Be independent!
3) Strive for equality!
4) Be practical!
5) Learn and improve!
These are principles I must respect and abide for they come from the dictates the working class.
So, anybody has something to say about the Five Principles?
—–sarda—–
Cultural Animal said
I was puzzled by the concept “don’t be a burden”, because while I can understand it in the larger sense of things, like when I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up I was very clear that I didn’t wan’t to be a burden on Mother Earth by taking the so-called respectable business path we learned in school, to exploit and pillage so somebody could say you acheived something, the more pressing sense of being a burden I feel is the idea, that many from the US feel, that there is no room to get sick, or disabled, or dependent in any way, because this then means you are a “burden”.
Cultural Animal said
This is the problem with capitalist thinking, they make it seem like someone is a bad person for getting sick because they can’t make money off of them. At a company they will say things like, “getting sick isn’t a choice, taking sick leave is” in order to shame the workers. The real fact of the matter is your body AND your time is yours to do with as you see fit, and always was. And the style of healing you go for is yours as well, even whether or not you choose to heal.
Stakh said
Hi comrades,
Here in the south of France, maoists groups are rising again, in solidarity with our comrades from Nepal and India. The idea is to impulse a political change in the youth base on a conscience of class.
Bring the war home!
Greetings
PJ said
Hello Friends,
I am not able to formulate a vision for tomorrow other than the obvious demand for peace, fraternity and economic and social justice. I am, however, able to understand that all exisiting socio-economic structures past and present are not the modes to transport us to that future. So I greet the quest for a new future with fraternal felicitations and a vow of my intellectual and physical assistance!
BALAKRISHNAN THIRUMOORTHY said
BEST WISHES FOR THE GREAT PEOPLE IN THE FIGHT AGAINST INJUSTICE.MAY GOD BLESS YOU ALL.
I AM AN ORDINARY INDIAN CITIZEN CAMPAIGNING FOR AN END TO FEMALE FOETICIDE IN INDIA. THE GENDER RATIO HAS BEEN HIGHLY DISTURBED WITH 900 GIRLS FOR 1000 BOYS. THE GIRL CHILD DOES NOT HAVE THE FREEDOM TO BE BORN IN INDIA.
THE GIRL CHILD SUFFERS VIOLENCE EVEN IN THE SAFEST PLACE ON EARTH – THE MOTHER’S WOMB.
PLEASE PRAY FOR THE GIRL CHILD
THANKS AND REGARDS,
B.THIRUMOORTHY
Adolfo V. said
It’s great to see that there are comrades out there trying to “reconceive” and “regroup” in order to genuinely make REVOLUTION a reality here in the U.S.A. It’s about time this is being done. Unfortunately most “leftist” groups in this country have been dogmatic in their approach or opportunistic in their actions. I will be posting more often on the Kasama website. Hope to meet new people.
Best Regards,
Adolfo V.
crows eye said
The debates here are actually fairly disapointing. Same old debate between “Class War” communists and “Class War” anarchists. I actually found this site through a post directing me to an article on this site called White women and the privilege of solidarity. And while the ariticle was critical of “white/Western feminism” from an anti-colonialist perspective, it in no way denied the centrality of patriarchy and white supremacy in understanding opression and power.
My question is, why is it that in all the posts discussing the direction of this “project” is their no discussion of how a “working class” revolution, apparently led by men (since I saw no women involved in this discussion), is going to liberate women or queer folks or indigenous peoples in the north and south? And please, don’t give me the tired line that these are just “life style” issues or offer some quote from Marx or Lenin (I actually had a Troskyist try to tell me that Marx had the whole queer liberation thing figured out over 100 years ago).
I have been involved in anti-authoritarian/anarchist struggles, on and off, for 20 years and have worked in frustration with anarchist white men who are no better than their Marxist conterparts in acknowledging the reality that oppression is simply not just about and never was just about class.
Its like you want to start something new but you just can let go of the past. Its still all fucking Lenin this and Trosky that and no, no you should read Kropotkin or Bakhunin and on and on.
Its sad,really sad.
You really need to open up this debate and open up the theory. You are all so afraid to try grasping this world by understanding it yourselves. The funny thing is, my reading of Marx was exactly that. He didn’t seem to be in to reified theories or ideology. He was into looking at the world around him, as it was, and trying to analyse and act in it and then analyse it again. But both Marxism and anarchism have become these dead theoretical places where you have reified your respective god/theorists and theories to the point where they don’t explain anything in the world you live in today ie. in 2011, not 1911.
Its as if Angela Davis, Gramsci, Foucalt, Ward Churchill, bell hooks, Malcom X, the Black Panthers, AIM, Stonewall, the LA riots, the Detroit riots of 67, anti-psychology, ALF, ELF (which, by the way, is synomomous with primitivism), Earth First!, OKA, Wounded Knee, 500++ years of colonialist geneocide, the holocaust, the occupation of Palestine,
….and on and on. Everything that has happened over the last 100 years has never happened. Isn’t worth theorizing or discussing or even fucking acknowledging because Marx and Engles and Lenin and Bakhunin and Kropotkin and all those old boy already had it figured out. And hey, it can all just be reduced to class no matter how much all those black and indian and queer women and men say it aint. Well it just is.
And thats how you start to build something new? Give me a break.
crows eye said
Edit:
In my rant I said “ELF (which, by the way, is synomomous with primitivism)”
This should have read “ELF (which, by the way, is NOT’T synomomous with primitivism)”
ie. ELF is against technologies which harm the environment, animals, human life but that is not synonymous with primitivism.
Jesse Knutson said
I am very inspired reading about the collectives getting started in Louisiana and Seattle. Wondering if there is anything going on in the Bay Area. I am in Berkeley.
DienBienPhu said
Very glad to see that exist peoples who want to build a MLM organization in the US after fail of RCP-USA.
What do you think about groups like PLP, ROL or FRSO ?
Encouragements from France,
DBF.
Tomantua said
i have no clue what political theory I follow. I don’t know what it means to be Marxist or Communist… all I know is this thread still does not help me or any other regular folks to stand up against current injustices. Once again, the folks that hope to make a change are still talking way over my head, and
If you truly speak of revolution, stop looking at how to overthrow the current system and start looking at YOUR daily habits that support the current capitalist society.
The path to revolution is a journey inwards.
Milestones: Kasama passes 3.5 million « Kasama said
[...] About Kasama [...]
Kathleen Clementi said
At last!
The people who organized the “Occupied Wall Street Journal” paper said
[...] the Kasama Project web site’s “About” page, under the headline “REVOLUTION: rethinking the unthinkable” it [...]
jmjennings59 said
as a veteran of some of the cold war’s hotter episodes, i gotta say there’s nothing more fun or easier than opposing what passes for communism these days. y’all go ahead and debate what passes for ‘theory’ in your world. we will be bore-sighting, doing dry practice, land nav and welding caltrops. your ‘revolution’? bring it … oh please bring it. what a great opportunity to pour some chlorine into the gene pool.