Hi folks, The Kasama website has become a popular blog for activists who used to be around the RCP,USA and got "burned" and (to an extent) "burned out" by their experience. Many or most of the regular contributors to the site have left social-democratic politics combined with a revolutionary self-image (ie: similar, in that respect, to the RCP itself). However the site is an important one and has attracted a fairly wide readership.
My post (see below) is still awaiting approval from Mike Ely (the Kasama moderator). It is on a page where one of the ex-RCPers explains that he has little idea what will (or should) come next after the fiasco of the RCP style cultism. Ben from: http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/bill-martin-on-conce ption-collectivity-pt-5-new-forms-after-an-exhausted-project / Hi Bill and other readers, > I don't know what the next phase of organization > will look like, though I am willing to work with > others who believe in a communist future and a > revolutionary road toward it to figure this out. > In many ways I am at a loss on this point, I want > to state this quite clearly. [...] > > We don't know what Kasama "is" yet, and we are still > thinking through what it ought to be. I have done my level best, over many years, to address some of the more fundamental questions related to the current "crisis of theory" related to: (1) What kind of organization do we need ? (2) What kind of society must be our goal ? My theoretical work started with the second question above [1]. Earlier this year I wrote an article attempting to grapple with the first question [2]. The Kasama project devoted a page to the article above [3] but in spite of this, unfortunately, the article and the ideas within it have received relatively little attention from the community organized around the kasama blog. (There were a few dozen comments--but, unfortunately, most were somewhat superficial.) I would like to see the organizing principles that I have described discussed in greater depth by the more serious and experienced people here. I do not say this because I consider myself to be some kind of brilliant theoretician (I am not) -- but simply because I believe the principles which I describe are central to what it is that we need to do. The crisis of theory will not go away until we confront it squarely--and resolve it. I have concluded that this resolution may (approximately) be along the following lines: ------------------------------------------------------------ (1) What kind of society must be our goal ? ------------------------------------------------------------ Our goal must be a society where the working class not only rules by means of a representative organization (or, equivalently, some system of organizations) but also has a functioning "immune system" that will allow it to organize independent mass struggle against (and overthrow) any and all people, policies, principles or organizations within its own ruling state that prove to be hypocritical, incompetent or corrupt. In the context of a modern society (with a modern economy and communiciations infrastructure) this will mean that everyone (even "counter-revolutionaries") will have the democratic rights to make their views known and to organize on the basis of those views. Those who advocate for a return to bourgeois rule will be effectively opposed by: (a) the principle of the "separation of speech and property". This will mean that commercial resources (including wage labor) will not be allowed to amplify the voices of reactionaries. Political speech will be essentially unregulated by the state only when it is based on volunteer labor. (b) the spontaneous actions of the masses who will oppose backward or reactionary views in millions and billions of encounters in all kinds of forums and arenas of struggle. ------------------------------------------------------------ (2) What kind of organization do we need ? ------------------------------------------------------------ The organization we need, today, to organize the working class, in its millions, for the overthrow of bourgeois rule--may emerge from the development of a revolutionary pole within a broader mass organization that emerges around the common work of creating a revolutionary news service that will offer comprehensive news, analysis and discussion from the perspective of the material interest of the working class. This news service will be open to contributions from all progressive trends (and from ordinary people) and will also provide a platform for the struggle of trends. This news service will make use of both paper and digital forms of communication but it will be the digital backbone of this service that will eventually extend its reach to many millions of people on a daily basis who will rate, filter and discuss articles from a wide range of sources. Ben Seattle http://struggle.net/ben Notes: ------ [1] For a good introduction to my work on this topic read: "Workers' Rule: Is it Dead or Alive?" at http://struggle.net/ben/2008/eric/moment_of_truth.htm [2] See: "How to Build the Party of the Working Class" at: http://struggle.net/Ben/2008/222-HowTo.htm [3] See: http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/on-the-party/ ------------------------------------ (This is not a discussion list--the discussion list is pof-200) THEORIST LIST -------------- To unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Archive: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theorist/messages Info: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theorist/ POF-200 ------- home page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pof-200/ to subscribe:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theorist/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theorist/join (Yahoo! 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