redFlags

Someone said boo?

The Revolutionary Communist Party has decreed on a "matter of basic orientation." The unsigned author(s) don't mention the object of their scorn by name, but they call the Nine Letters to Our Comrades nothing but "completely dishonest and unprincipled attacks, including crude distortions of our views, aims, and methods." The distortions and purported lies are not discussed, noted in particular or corrected. Off limits and not up for consideration. Decided. Think about that. Read the Nine Letters, then the RCP's initial public response and hear the elastic snap.

Nor is any shadow of a doubt left up to wonder about the motives of Mike Ely or the other comrades involved, myself included:

...there are some people who have sunk to the point where they can do nothing more than act as “parasitic critics” in relation to our revolutionary role and work—having themselves nothing positive to offer in terms of achieving a radical alternative to the monstrous system we live under, having no defining or unifying mission other than seeking to sabotage our efforts to bring such a radical alternative into being.

Peculiar, considering the sharp use of weasel words, is the total refusal to even say what this is all about. As if saying the words gave them power, which is dialectically speaking, exactly what silence does. It imparts fear and wonder when you can regulate what can and can't be said. Which you can't, by the way, beyond those who will put up with it in demonstration of their fealty to the mantle of revolution, rhetorically claimed.

Anyway, Bob, I'll see your reality and raise you a check. Lyrics on the link.

Nine Letters to Our Comrades: Getting Beyond Avakian's New Synthesis

Mike Ely, a life-long communist and former editor of the RCP's press, has released a major polemic on Avakian's supposed "New Synthesis" and the failures of the RCP to become a leading party of revolution in the USA. I'll hold off on my own commentary by way of introduction... but discussion has already taken off on Ely's new Kasama website. For anyone working to build a revolutionary movement in the United States, this is among the most thoughtful, engaged analyses you will find on such efforts over the last few decades. It is no "so long to all that" – rather, it is a call to begin the "audacious task". 

Download – Nine Letters to Our Comrades: Getting Beyond Avakian's New Synthesis (PDF)

The Shock Doctrine

Imperialism, local reaction and the duty of communists

The following polemic was passed on to me recently by a sometimes contributor to this blog and veteran of the North American anti-imperialist and communist movements. Included are an abridged version of a recent report  from the Communist Party of Iran (MLM) and a critical response. They raise the important question of what are the tasks of Iranian communists in the event of a US invasion and occupation of Iran. The CPI(MLM) argues that the "primary contradiction" and focus of struggle must be with the reactionary Islamic Republic, the critical response argues that it should be with US imperialism.

The implications of the discussion are all around us.

Politics in an age of fantasy

Stephen Duncombe writes in the premier issue of Turbulence, a new theoretical journal-cum-newspaper that:

The problem, as I see it, comes down to reality. Progressives believe in it, Bush’s people believe in creating it. The left and right have switched roles – the right taking on the mantle of radicalism and progressives waving the flag of conservatism. The political progeny of the protestors who proclaimed, “Take your desires for reality” in May of 1968, were now counseling the reversal: take reality for your desires. Republicans were the ones proclaiming, “I have a dream.”

I have to say I know what he's talking about. From defending the evaporating, fetid gains of the welfare state or the ongoing acceptance by people who should know better of the Clintonian urge to do the Bushie thing right, large sectors of the "left" have become more conservative than those they ostensibly oppose. The fault of this, if where it lies is so simple, may reside less in a lack of the urge to dream than in the inculcated, now naturalized habits of American anti-communism – those who refuse to even say the world socialism shouldn't be shocked when the movements they lead and participate in settle for a refracted politics of fear and permanent, if glorious, resistance. After all, isn't "yelling from the mountaintop" just another word for vanguardism? Or, is it only a dread vanguard when there's the expectation that people will listen, be transformed and themselves take responsibility for others?

I only ask these questions because it seems like the stalemate in the movement of movements has settled into a discomforting middle age. One quick note: Turbulence makes it's entire issues immediately available as a PDF. In other words, they write so that people read! Here's to hoping more publications see the wisdom in this. Click on the cover to get the entire issue as a PDF formatted for letter-size paper.

We must name the system

This dramatic reading of Paul Potter's rightly famous speech is part of a wonderful series of public performances called the Port Huron Project re-enacting the signal flares of the American New Left. It's striking how contemporary they sound, and why, really, 1968 neither failed nor won. It is in more ways than one would wish the terrain of the battle we are still fighting. It's easier than you think to engage in free speech. You just have to do it. Read an interview with project creator Mark Tribe.

Finkelstein case: Urgent need to right wrongs at DePaul University

The following is an open letter from Prof. Bill Martin, a tenured professor of philosophy at DePaul University, site of the recent fight over Norman Finkelstein's tenure  and the very ability of intellectuals to engage in work that runs counter to the dominant politic.

"Two things that are very simple to understand need to be said up front. First, you cannot deny tenure to a professor because she or he takes a political stand that you do not like, agree with, or that is going to incur the disapprobation and wrath of some group. Yes, frankly, I think a professor who is an outright racist or misogynist or anti-gay bigot ought to be removed from the university (though even here there have to be procedures, and judgments cannot be based on whims, innuendo, or the self-promoting agendas of powerful persons or groups), but that is not what is going on here. Second, you cannot deny tenure to a professor simply for a rhetorical style that you do not like. A person cannot be denied tenure simply because you find his or her rhetoric 'inflammatory.'”

Akil Bomani's Authoring a Culture

Okay, so I confess that as a New Yorker, the fact that "Burningman" was an over-priced participatory arts orgy in the Nevada desert didn't quite register with my hard head. Every year, around this time, I get a surge of traffic from folks looking for information or reports on the Burningman festival. Haha! Bet you didn't see this one coming! I was just a man on fire... Adopting the Burningman pen name was only a play on the translation of my family name. In any case, I thought I'd post a link for ya'll burners to a scientific essay about the art of revolution. What does that mean?

Read it!

Notes on XXIst Century Socialism

[Thus far my favorite critical piece on events in Venezuela. For a surprisingly robust, open and religious(!) exploration of the same theme, check out this speech by the outgoing Defense Minister... a long time friend of Hugo. — JB]

by Bromma
from threewayfight

Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, recently announced the arrival of XXIst Century Socialism. This declaration, although greeted with great enthusiasm, left a residue of confusion. Since Chavez didn't discuss XXIst Century Socialism during his recent Presidential campaign, and since there are virtually no public theoretical documents defining this new Socialist era, its precise features are not always clear.

Fortunately, Chavez has appointed a committee, well stocked with international supporters, to come up with appropriate explanatory documents. In the meantime, we can best understand the contours of XXIst Century Socialism by examining it as it actually functions in the real world. Practice is the true test of theory; after several years of Chavez's leadership, we can readily detect the broad outlines of this innovative Socialism.

There appear to be several critical new features of the new XXIst Century Socialist breakthrough. We will review some of the most important:

First of all, XXIst Century Socialism does not require a revolution. This comes as a great relief to Socialists around the world, and will surely encourage many new Socialists to step forward.

Declaration to Reaffirm the Significance and Relevance of the Anti-Revisionist Struggle and the GPCR

This international declaration, signed by several significant international communist parties including the Communist Party of India (Maoist), was originally issued on May 1, 2007. I am here including it to give communists in the USA a sense of how some of these discussions are playing out... Unfortunately, there is no organized national grouping in the USA that currently sees the need to keep these in circulation.

We, the undersigned Marxist-Leninist, Mao Zedong Thought and Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties and organizations, hereby issue this declaration to reaffirm the significance and relevance of the struggle against modern revisionism starting in 1956 in opposition to the revisionist content of the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in February 1956 leading to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 and continuing after the bourgeoisie seized power in China in 1976. We do so after one year of activities celebrating the 50th anniversary of the anti-revisionist struggle and renewing our commitment to pursue this struggle.