From Mexico’s La Jornada as part of a longer interview:
Carmen Lira Saade: Hace cinco décadas, y a causa de la homofobia, se marginó a los homosexuales en Cuba y a muchos se les envió a campos de trabajo militar-agrícola, acusándolos de contrarrevolucionarios.
Fidel Castro: Sí –recuerda–, fueron momentos de una gran injusticia, ¡una gran injusticia! –repite enfático–, la haya hecho quien sea. Si la hicimos nosotros, nosotros… Estoy tratando de delimitar mi responsabilidad en todo eso porque, desde luego, personalmente, yo no tengo ese tipo de prejuicios.
[NOTE: The reporter writes in the first person and uses dashes for some citations and quotation marks for others, making the interview difficult to follow at parts. Nevertheless I have tried to retain the punctuation used in the original Spanish-language article from La Jornada].
Even though there is nothing that shows he feels any discomfort, I do not think Fidel is going to like what I am about to say.
– Comandante, despite the enchantments of the Cuban Revolution, the acknowledgment of and solidarity with a great part of the intellectual universe, the great achievements of the people against the blockade, in short, everything – everything – went down the pipes as a result of the persecution against homosexuals in Cuba.
Drowning Pakistan:
What it means for the people & who is responsible
30 August 2010. A World to Win News Service.
“When the water came, we moved our women and children to high ground. Three of my daughters stayed behind to help the men pack up whatever belongings we could carry with us… within minutes, the current got too strong and the waters rose head high.”
This is how a villager from Sardaryab, a village in northwest Pakistan, lost two of his daughters aged 16 and 17. He was only able to save his youngest daughter.
“Their bodies were found three days later, dumped on the bank by receding waters about 6 kilometres down the river.”
Omar, another villager, describes the events in his village this way: “We could see the water rising across the entire area between my village and the river. At first we thought it was rain water, but it continued to rise,” he says. Everybody rushed to the nearby railway track which is on high ground. But Omar was slightly late.
“Three of our women were swept off their feet. We saved two of them, but the third, my brother’s wife, was lost. We found her body two days later.” (BBC, 5 August 2010)
In a neighboring thread, Spencer raised an important set of issues when he writes:
“Also, it so happens that Banaji’s contribution to the so-called “Mode of Production” debate in the 1970s is a powerful rebuttal of any kind of qualified, vague, or otherwise half-hearted feudal or semi-feudal thesis. The key essay is “Capitalist Domination and the Small Peasantry: The Deccan Districts in the Late Nineteenth Century,” which is reprinted in his new book Theory as History. In the interview, you would do well to notice, Banaji ties the semi-feudal thesis to the Naxalites’ opportunism. Ultimately, the Stalinist line of socialism in one country lies behind the claim of semi-feudalism.”
In a followup comment, written with a bit of (uh) opaque language, Spencer elaborates on his views and indicates an article by Banajii we could explore.
I am not prepared (yet) to dig directly into the specific arguments Spenser makes. I have not, yet, read Banajii’s contribution to the Indian controversies of the 1970s.
Flagging a Major Controversy Among Communists Worldwide
But I would like to flag (for our readers generally) that this question of semi-feudalism (historically, theoretically, and in the politics of today) is a major matter — and is tied to many political and strategic controversies (that emerge on front lines of revolutionary struggle where Banajii’s particular, pessimistic Trotskyism is not particularly influential.)
To put it in a nutshell: Mao led a revolution in a country deeply marked by feudalism — where capitalism was concentrated in a few cities and mining areas, and where most people only were connected to the world capitalist market by the arrival of commodities in the knapsacks of a few ruined artisan/peddlers. And the communists of the 1930s connected the profound suffering and rebelliousness of Chinese peasants with the world socialist revolution through the strategy of New Democratic revolution and peoples war.
And there is a deep strategic debate now of how applicable that particular road is:,
how much semifeudalism still defines rural life in the post-colonial countries, and
how to adapt earlier strategies in countries that are now often majority urban with huge capitalist manufacturing.
Are rural agricultural laborers to be seen as peasants, or landless peasants, or rural proletarians. Or more precisely how do we define these categories, and how many rural people fall into each one, and what are their class and political differences)? (This issue recently came up here on Kasama in a discussion of rural uprisings in Puerto Rico, and whether the canecutters there were peasants or rural workers, whether their struggle was potentially for agrarian revolution or something else.)
Platypus is a left journal and political trend based on a few campuses in the U.S. — known for its study circles and slogan “The Left is Dead.”
by Louis Proyect
Last April I wrote about Platypus, a group of young academics with Eustonite politics. I thought that I had said about all that was worth saying but felt inspired to have one more go at it after participating in a thread on the Kasama Project website. This is run by Mike Ely, whose Maoist politics I do not share, but who strikes me as a remarkably intelligent and principled person.
Mike was taking exception to an interview that Platypus had conducted with Jairus Banaji, an Indian professor who I have read in the past for ammunition in the transition to capitalism debate involving Maurice Dobb, Robert Brenner et al. The interview focused on the Naxalite movement in India and Arundhati Roy’s sympathetic “Walking with the Comrades” article, which Banaji and the Platypus interviewers care little for. Banaji’s main complaint is that the Naxalites appear to have no program for India’s urban working class.
Unlike Banaji, I have no problem with movements led by Maoists. In fact, I consider the Chinese Revolution one of the epochal achievements of humanity in the 20th century despite the fact that it departed from classical Marxist norms.
How can one not cheer a revolution that rids the country of a despotic landlord class in league with imperialism?
In Manhattan, the controversy over the placement of a mosque (or Islamic house of worship) just a few mere blocks from what is now known as ‘Ground Zero’ — the site of the New York plane strikes on 9/11, rages on.
Sides have been assembled, and arguments have been hurled like mental Molotov cocktails on both sides of the fray.
The argument, no matter how resolved, shows us how empty is the Constitution, which has an express provision protecting free religious practice.
What an argument for those who claim fealty to the Constitution!
For a right that can’t be practiced is no right at all.
One is reminded of how the Constitution ‘protected’ the rights of Blacks after the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution were passed from 1865 to 1870. It looked fine on paper, but over a hundred years later they had no reality in the lives of millions of Blacks, who couldn’t vote, couldn’t sit on juries, serve in public office, or who lived in segregated housing.
The ‘rights’ existed on paper, but such rights being practiced offended the sensibilities of southern whites.
“Even when the people have nothing, they do have themselves, i.e. the potential gravediggers of this society and the potential makers of history.”
By Mike Ely
In our discussion of confronting the rabid anti-mosque hysteria, SKS raised a number of important questions (that might get obscured by hype and hysteria of our own):
“Are we ready for shit? I don’t think so. We can declare all we want, but in this civil war, the other side has all the guns, all the training, all the discipline, and all the will. We have, some websites, dozens of sects, and a few individuals here and there with an odd shotgun or pistol.
“We will get our asses handed to us. This article is not ultra-left, actually in the abstract it is the correct line, but its suicidal in our current conditions. Without a people’s army, the people have nothing. And we have nothing.
I think your approach is a bit one-sided. And rather deeply pessimistic.
A materialist observation about our current weakness
First, let me start where we all agree with you: anyone with a brain who can count will agree with you that some mechanical, frontal assault on this system (or even on its core of fascist supporters) would not be tactically wise.
All we have to do is mention the Greensboro Massacre — here was a lesson that the communist movement in the U.S. paid for in real blood that should be studied. The communists in North Carolina threw out militant and understandable words about “Death to the Klan” and called for a rally, but were simply not tactically prepared when the Klan (with layers of secret government support) came to kill them.
So yes, you are right. Though it is a bit absolute the way you say: “the other side has all the guns, all the training, all the discipline, and all the will.”
They don’t have all the discipline or all the will — but certainly the lineup is incredibly uneven and lopsided.
Taking Initiative Under Adverse Balance of Forces
But it is quite possible, within a strategically adverse situation to creatively inflict major political setbacks on our enemies. And that is in fact (a) how we grow, and (b) in part, how we will move from the strategic defensive to a more favorable allignment of forces.
In 1966, millions of youth stormed the heavens during China’s Cultural Revolution
When Bill Clinton went to China he lectured the Chinese people about “human rights and democracy.” But the U.S. has propped up and sponsored death squads and brutal dictators all over the world and the CIA has been involved in fixed elections. Clinton criticized Chinese leaders for “rounding up dissidents.” But in the U.S., political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal are locked up for their beliefs and Black, Latino and other poor youth are being systematically criminalized, brutalized by the police and imprisoned.
Clinton wants the Chinese people to believe that the capitalist free market will bring them “freedom and democracy.” But this is a lie. For the masses of Chinese people, imperialist penetration and the free market has meant more inequality, a growing gap between the rich and poor, and deepening economic instability.
It is socialism–not capitalism–that brings the masses real liberation.
When the great revolutionary leader Mao Tsetung died in 1976, counter- revolutionaries seized power and brought capitalism back to China. But for over 25 years China was a socialist country.
Under the leadership of Mao, the masses of people participated in the revolutionary struggle to transform society–to do away with classes, all inequalities and oppression. And during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the 1960s, millions of students, workers, and peasants were mobilized to expose and kick out high-level authorities and party leaders who were trying to take China down the capitalist road.
Mao pointed out that even with new socialist relations there were leftovers from bourgeois society and the basis for inequalities. He pointed out that the basic divisions continue to exist in socialist society: between mental and manual labor, between town and country, and between workers and peasants. He said that a new bourgeoisie continually arises under socialism– concentrated at the highest levels of the party–and that class struggle continues under socialism, all the way to the elimination of all classes and the establishment of communism on a world scale.
“We must blame ourselves… for still being unable to organize sufficiently wide, striking, and rapid exposures of all the shameful outrages.
“When we do that…the most backward workers will understand, or will feel, that the students and religious sects, the peasants and the authors are being abused and outraged by those same dark forces that are oppressing and crushing them at every step of their lives.”
By Mike Ely
What does it mean for communists (who are secular and opposed to the many values of traditional religions) to defend the right to build a massive mosque in the middle of New York City?
Gary asks in a commentary (that is worth reading in its entirety):
“But how does all this fit into the project of promoting revolutionary consciousness in the U.S.?”
Here is a longer excerpt:
“In that Muslims are a religious community, as opposed to an “ethnic” community in the conventional sense (Muslims are as Malcolm realized at some point VERY multi-ethnic), one has to endorse their rights by endorsing religious rights (such as the right to build mosques, construct minarets, follow traditional teachings on wardrobe, follow a halal dietary regimen) etc.
“This is where, for me anyway, it becomes complicated. I’m a Marxist, an atheist. I’m not interested in encouraging my Muslim brothers and sisters to persist in the error that there is a Supreme Being present before the Big Bang. I’d like them to enjoy the pleasures of shrimp, lobster, pork and beer.
“I want to confine my solidarity to human rights defense, while maybe educating some ignorant people about the history of Islam and its relationship to the other “Abrahamic” religions.
“But how does all this fit into the project of promoting revolutionary consciousness in the U.S.?
“If I agitate on behalf of the Nepali revolution, I feel like I’m stirring imaginations towards an alternative future. If I expose the stupidity and viciousness of the Islamophobes, I feel like I’m doing something morally appropriate but not sure how it fits in with revolutionary politics.”
We need a place to dig into Gary’s important question (in its own right).
I want to ask “What is OUR universality?” The Muslims have theirs, the liberal bourgeois democrats have theirs. But what is OUR universality, and what does it have to say about this moment?
“[In stable times] the situation is generally unfavourable and the party’s work must take this into account. Though unable to intervene in the national political process, the party must still engage in practical political activity. The communist party may not be able to wield any mass influence, but it can prepare theoretically, ideologically and organisationally for the occasion when it could have such influence.”
“If the party is well prepared theoretically, i.e. has appropriated and developed marxist theory in relation to the analysis of the conjuncture, it will be able to detect antagonistic tendencies maturing in the socially stable period before they come to a head in an open crisis.”
We have discussed the matter of conjuncture — the eruption of special moments and crisis within the capitalist system. Here are some excerpts putting forward one view of what conjuncture is, and how it affects revolutionary possibilities.
This is taken from a little-known piece “The Distinguishing Features of Leninist Political Practice” published long-ago in the British journal Communist Formation (November 1977). It has recently been made available as part of the archives of Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism Online. (Much appreciation to those energetically creating this EROL.)
Posting this essay is not an endorsement of its arguments and verdicts — but an attempt to encourage investigation and debate over how communist prepare well (in non-revolutionary times) for the revolutionary opportunities provided by some special conjunctural moments.
There are reports of hate crimes against Muslims — including this major incident in NYC. The racist anti-Muslim slasher in this case went for the neck and came close to killing the cabbie.
Talk of “sacred ground” is the theory, this attempted murder is the practice.
Such a climate and such acts inevitably put fear into communities being targeted — and underscores again the importance of acting in open, forceful, unmistakable solidarity.
Immediately excuses and confusion were injected into the air: The slasher was depicted as a good guy in many accounts (after all he was a documentarian who had been embedded with “our troops”!), and as someone who may have been traumatized by his experiences in Afghanistan (after all, what should you do after participating in a colonial war but try to kill the colonialized?), he was drunk (in vino veritas?) and so on.
Diaspora, the much-hyped open source alternative to Facebook, will release its code to the world on September 15, but promises that its creators are just getting started.
During the height of the crisis, four NYU students decided to create an open source alternative to Facebook. Their goal was to raise $10,000 for their summer project, but dramatic interest helped them raise over $100,000 through donations. Even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated to the project.
Since then, the Diaspora team has been mostly silent, coding away on their project. However, in a blog post earlier today, they revealed that the project is on track for release on September 15.
“We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open sourced on September 15th,” the Diaspora team said in its announcement.
Stand for Unity and Solidarity on Saturday, September 11
On September 11 the Tea Party and its racist and right wing allies plan to again demonstrate at the World Trade Center site. For months these bigots have attempted to whip up hysteria against a proposed Islamic masjid (mosque) and community center several blocks from the WTC. On September 11 right wing, Christian fundamentalist plan a “Burn the Quran” day at a Florida Masjid. These same forces targeting masjids around the country are waging a national hate campaign against all people of color and immigrants.
These events need to be answered. Not with words or symbolism — but by people filling the streets, confronting and silencing these bellowing fascists.
Many people know about the days of lynching in the South, about anti-Asian riots in California, about the rounding up of the Japanese in World War 2, about police brutalization of gay bars in the 1950s. Many people talk about the importance of taking a stand, and seizing the high moral ground with courage.
Well, here we are. These pigs have now launched stage 2 of the hysteria unleashed in Arizona against Latino people. Government deportations have increased against the undocumented. And, meanwhile, everything despicable and hateful about America is being rallied around this anti-Mosque demand. They have jumped out. And this is what it looks like now.
Now broad waves of progressive people need to answer: We must expose them politically, and confront them directly. Solidarity with targeted Muslims and immigrants must be public, militant and uncompromising.
Those among the people who vacillate on this need to be taken aside, with an arm around the shoulder, and quietly talked to.
Let’s be clear: The Democratic establishment is actively de-mobilizing any response. That is one reason it hasn’t happened yet, and may not happen. They say this is “not our issue” and that responding plays into republican electoral strategies. No.
We need to speak firmly to all those “What’s Wrong with Kansas” Democrats who believe that no radical and anti-racist politics is viable. No.
We don’t just appeal to narrow self interest of backward white people. No. We need to speak with a very clear voice about the need for human solidarity, for a view that embraces those under attack. That’s our blood down there under those distant American bombs. Those people are us.
The sneer and throaty roar of the American lynch mob is now unmistakable through lower Manhattan and Fox News. It should bring us out of our seats ready…
If the Democratic Party pulls back, if they refuse (and they will)… then shame on them again! Let those with vision and clarity step forward to lead this and seek to speak to millions.
This is about what kind of a country this will be, and who will ultimately be running things. It is about what we will tolerate, and what we will enable — and what no one must ever tolerate or enable.
If not us, who? If not now, when? If not New York City, where?
This following article attacks one of the world’s most important revolutionary movements — the Maoist insurgency in India.
It starts with an aggressive dismissal of Arundhati Roy and her passionate reporting from a Maoist liberated zone. This article moves on to dismiss the revolutionary movement’s accomplishments, its connection with the people, its goals of New democracy and its historical antecedents in the Naxalite uprising. The whole discussion radiates a gut-level dislike of revolutionary violence.
For all those reasons, Kasama was reluctant to make the article available here. After all, we don’t agree with the overall verdict, tone or method (to put it mildly).
However a growing revolutionary movement will have such detractors. There is value in knowing (and vetting) their arguments. This piece originally appeared as part of Platypus Review 26 (August 2010) on the website of the Platypus Affiliated Society.
The Gulf of Mexico has been destroyed. Immeasurable, irreparable damage has been done to wildlife, the health of the ocean, and people’s livelihoods. We have been cursed for years to come. It can not, as BP promises, be “made right.” In fact, even after this utter catastrophe, crimes against the planet and its inhabitants continue without pause.
We are told that the government is supposed to guarantee the rights of the people. But when a big corporation decides our rights are not in their interests, then POOF! They vanish into thin air. In a clear violation of our rights to free speech and a free press, government agencies have assisted BP’s lies and cover-up by restricting media access, threatening journalists with felony charges and $40,000 fines. Uniformed police officers in Louisiana have harassed photographers at public beaches. BP has threatened workers with firing if they talk to anyone about anything.
This is an interview of Nickglais, editor of Democracy and Class struggle, conducted by the Norwegian group “To the Struggle.”
1. Can you tell us briefly about Communism in India?
The Communist Party of India was founded originally in 1919 in Kolkata then re-founded in Soviet Tashkent in 1925 under the impact of the Russian Revolution.
The Communist Party of Great Britain was closely involved in the formation and British Indian comrades like Saklatvala and Rajani Palme Dutt were early influences on the Communist Party of India. N M Roy an Indian Communist also distinguished himself with contributions to the Comintern.
The Communist Party of India concentrated on the urban areas in the 1920’s and 1930’s and faced repression by the British authorities who banned the party. Of the repression the most famous case in the 1930’s was the Meerut trial.
In the long chain of musical creativity that characterizes Black American music (and increasingly, American music), jazz played a pivotal role.
Although it is now the stuff of college radio, and concerts for the well heeled, middle class intelligentsia, there was a time when it was a radical, and indeed, a revolutionary music, carrying within it the seeds of rebellion and protest.
Among the artists who personified these attributes were the drummer and composer, Max Roach (1924 -2007) and his beautiful, talented wife, jazz singer, Abbey Lincoln.
The power of their performance can be seen in the radicalization of Black revolutionary nationalist, Muhammad Ahmed (fka) Max Stanford, Jr.) who, in his work, We will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations: 1960-1975),explains the potential political impacts of the works of Roach, Lincoln and other jazz artists in the late ’50’s:
From Mexico’s La Jornada as part of a longer interview:
Kasama 