Kasama Project: Walk the Revolutionary Road With Us
Posted by Mike E on August 8, 2008
In April, we initiated the Kasama Project at our first national conference. We are now organized in beginning collectives in several cities, with a network of contacts in a dozen places nationally. The following was written quickly for this summer’s SDS convention, and refined since then. We expect it to evolve as we work on our common language and raise our level of unity — and as we hear your comments and questions.We urge you to circulate this statement in creative ways. And we invite you to join us: Many deeds cry out to be done.
[print-ready PDF version]
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In a world at war, the times cry out for a new direction. The existing left has been unable to speak to our times, let alone provide real-world solutions. Activists, organizers and dreamers have too often relied on old formulas from bygone days – and far too many have simply given up on radical change. A serious, creative break needs to be made to escape this impasse.
Kasama is a communist project for the forcible overthrow and transformation of all existing social conditions. We are open to learning, unafraid to admit our own uncertainties. At the same time, we will not shrink from what we do know: the solutions cannot be found within the current world order or the choices it provides. We are for revolution. We seek to find the forms of organization and action for the people most dispossessed by this system to free themselves and all humanity.
To take this road, we need a fearless, open-eyed debate, discussion and engagement. We need fresh analyses of the rapid changes shaping the world around us. We need to sum up a century of revolutionary strategies and attempts, victories and defeats – instead of the conventional wisdom and facile verdicts that paralyze our movements. We need to re-imagine a radical politics that can take life among people and move mountains. We need a movement that can listen, as well as speak.
REVOLUTION: rethinking the unthinkable
We intend to identify those fault lines where radical thought and action can emerge. We want to go deeply among the people to prepare minds and organize forces for revolution; for a global transformation of human life; for the urgent rescue of the biosphere from capitalist destruction; for the radical dismantling of the U. S. empire – its military, its nuclear weapons and torture camps; for the uprooting of intolerable racial inequalities and the archaic brutalities of male supremacy; for the final liberation of humanity from the restless, soulless rule of capitalist profit making!
Help launch our new organizing and theoretical projects. Let’s reconceive as we regroup for coming storms. The end of this world is the beginning of the new. Everything will change. How it changes is up to us.
Come walk the revolutionary road with us.
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Kasama: Analysis and Discussion
Internationalist information project
Kasama Threads: Discussion forums
email: kasamasite (at) yahoo.com
Joseph Winter said
These leaflets are great. I will leave some at the doors in my neighborhood. It would probably be more beneficial to distribute these mainly to the poor considering they know how much they have to struggle to obtain the little they have. Anyone know where I can find more flyers online?
Linda D. said
[moderator's note: Linda d's editorial comment on this flyer was moved to the Kasama Thread where such comments are being gathered.]
N3wday said
Joseph,
I believe the only two formal leaflets by Kasama are the ‘4 reasons’ article and this one.
Just as a note: If you are interested in the distributing the 4 reasons article I found it helpful to convert it into a fold over ‘zine’ version. The whole article can be fit that way on one page, front and back.
Jose M said
Hey Joseph,
I think it would not be a bad idea to distribute this to normal, poor folk, but I believe its focus is more intended towards already progressive and radical people that we need to engage.
Joseph Winter said
Hey Jose,
Yeah, you’re probably right. It already assumes the reader already knows a thing or two about communism. We should create leaflets targetting particular aspects normal people can relate with and tie it in with communism ultimately being the answer.
Mike E said
I think Jose and Joseph are touching on a central tension in our work:
On one hand we are “reconceiving as we regroup” (and in particular that means regrouping revolutionaries). And important part of our work (starting with the polemic of the 9 Letters) is to reach and engage conscious revolutionaries in re-establishing a revolutionary movement (in reality, not in words) and a communist current in the U.S.
On the other hand, the whole purpose of “reconceiving as we regroup” is to develop revolutionary political work among the oppressed (and the population broadly) to make radical, revolutionary change possible.
we need both, and we need to work out the relationship between the two. (Maoists say “walking on two legs.”)
My personal view is that given the newness of the Kasama Project (it is only seven months since the publication of the 9 letters and only four months since Kasama’s april conference) we will be focusing on contacting, engaging, regrouping and organizing revolutionaries as the “main leg we are walking on.”
OUr plan is to organize a series of deep investigations in several parts of the country, into the conditions of the people, the intensity of particular social faultlines that affect the oppressed, and the history of revolutionary organizing there — as an active part of preparing to refine our conception of revolutionary work, and as preparation for initiating it.
Jose M said
thanks for the comment mike e, this is something that I’ve really been thinking about a lot, and asked about it a lot too, in relation to our Project.
I do agree that our “main leg” as of now is the regrouping of a revolutionary movement that can then seriously (not to imply that we cannot now in some ways) build ties and lead the masses in struggle.
Your last paragraph is very important, and I agree. We do need to investigate the conditions of the people, we need to know what they think and how they live! This was the basis of the Ten Point Platform of the BPP, and I know that the RCP also did some social investigation in the process of making their New Draft Programme, although I dont know to the extent they did it, or any details about it. While in a sense, we do hold the highest needs and aspirations of the oppressed, we need to know what the feel and think of everything. We need that. I think the RCP has a rather mechanical view of this. There isnt really any social investigation from the party or their cadre. They go out on the streets, tell people to leave religion, study avakian, etc. Not that these are bad in their own right, but it’s their wrong methodology that I refer to.
Linda D. said
It is 4 a.m. where I live…and I will probably kick myself later on for even attempting to write a comment for now…but I just feel compelled.
Please don’t take my comments as criticism–because I think both Mike and José are coming from the right place…and I agree about two legs, main leg, etc. and what our emphasis is FOR NOW, BUT:
I don’t think we should ever forget–I mean never forget:
“On the other hand, the whole purpose of “reconceiving as we regroup” is to develop revolutionary political work among the oppressed (and the population broadly) to make radical, revolutionary change possible.
we need both, and we need to work out the relationship between the two. (Maoists say “walking on two legs.”)”
José: “We do need to investigate the conditions of the people, we need to know what they think and how they live!”
See, I don’t think we just need to investigate, etc. we need to live it…We have to be one with the people. We have to be some of their staunchest fighters and allies. We have to be able to deal with very “difficult truths” that arise amongst the people. Et al. Akil’s article was about the RC4 fiasco, but within that rich article, he said so much more. What are those ties in the African American community that Akil referred to that were so sorely lacking on the part of the RCP? Why should people trust and/or listen to us (more than the RCP), if we aren’t immersed in their plights, struggles, their lives, etc.? And I’m not talking about economic struggles…although there may be certain junctures that those economic struggles might represent something more.
What is theory without practice? How can we further develop theory without going to, and being amongst the people?
Two legs? If we don’t learn to walk on two legs, then what are we talking about when we even speak of revolution?
Mike E said
It is hard to disagree with Linda’s comments, when you read them word for word. We had argued for “walking on two legs” — both regrouping revolutionaries and carryout out new revolutionary work among the people. And she raises a third concern — that a revolutionary movement has to come from within the people… that it can’t approach the people as something “out there” (to be observed, discussed and then hammered upon) by a political force that has stood apart.
But, i have to say there is a tone and emphasis here which makes me pause.
In Letter 9 we write:
What does it mean to confront that? It means that we can’t act as if we HAVE a vanguard organization, and just turn our faces to the people and “get to work.”
If we “go among the people” without a clear and common revolutionary theory… what would we do if we “immersed in their plights struggles, their lives, etc.”? The short story is: nothing.
If we fight to become “immersed in their plights struggles, their lives, etc.” but have not formed an organized and regrouped network of revolutionaries, what would we accomplish there? The short story is: nothing.
There are specific and crucial tasks facing revolutionaries, that are in some ways far more demanding that simply immersing ourselves among the people.
The question is raised:
You can be deep among the people, you can be immersed in their struggles (and even leading their struggles) and not have them become a base for revolutionary politics. That is the whole experience of the old Communist Party,USA during their more “revolutionary days” of radical trade unionism in the early 1930s.
Or, to put it another way, that actually WOULD BE the error of “economism” (using the word economism in the Leninist sense) — to think that the key problem for revolutionary politics is developing tighter and tighter ties to the people, to be perceived by the people as “of them,” and to become trusted and influential on the basis of concerns they already have. In the 1930s, it was said that you build support by becoming the best fighter for the people (launching, organizing and leading struggles around the felt needs of the people) and then (on that basis) have the opening, respect, context and contact to help the people see their own larger revolutionary needs. But, in fact, you can do all that, and still never get a glimmer of inroads for REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS. For that you actually have to operate as an organized revolutionary force along a clearly perceived strategic approach — including organizing those kinds of political struggles (along key faultlines of society) that actually connect to key crimes and dynamics of the system, and while doing communist work (analysis on the nature of the system and the need for revolution, study groups, theoretical work, cultural work etc.)
Akil points out (correctly) that he discovered during the RC4 tour that the RCP had had no real roots among the people. It was shocking for him. He had really been led to believe there was more there.
But the lack of roots is not the problem itself — as if the RCP just chose NOT to go among the people, and that we can solve this by just going there. The lack of roots (the lack of contact, links, cadre among the people) is a RESULT of the problem, a symptom of the problem.
And that is why it is valuable to uncover the actual accomplishments of the RCP. In fact, the RCP has no roots, but it is not for lack of trying. there have been repeated efforts to go deep among the people, to be “immersed in their plights, struggles, their lives, etc.”
I have written on this site about my own experiences, among the coal miners of West Virginia in the 1970s. But that is just one episode among a great many — there were communists who have gone deep among the people in Cabrini Green housing projects in Chicago, in Pico-Union and Nickerson Gardens in LA, there was long ongoing communist work in Hunters Point housing projects in San Francisco, and more that I don’t need to list here.
The lack of roots among the people is not mainly for lack of will. For lack of desire to “immerse” communists among the people. The lack of roots is a result of a mix of objective conditions and matters of line. It has to do with the CONCEPTION the RCP has had about how revolutionary politics and movement come to life.
And unraveling what those problems OF LINE have been, and how to recreate a revolutionary project that doesn’t just reproduce those problems, is a large part of what the process of “reconceive as we regroup” is all about. I am arguing that this regroupment is a real task, and one that will dominate our work for a while. And the reconceiving is important in order for any “immersion” among the people to be meaningful.
This is not a matter of rigid stages (i.e. first we regroup, then we reconceive, then we finally go among the people.) In fact, the theoretical work of reconception is protracted — and will go on through the whole revolutinary process, and many many questions of revolution can’t be solved (or even posed correctly!) except in the course of our coming practical work.
But I am arguing that we should respect and take care with the theoretical and investigative tasks we are discussing, and not be simply be in a single-minded rush to root and immerse our project in the people, their plights, struggles, their lives…. Because without a revolutionary theory, and without the beginnings of a solid revolutionary organization, you can go among the people, and not ever do them any good.
Linda D. said
And it is near impossible to disagree with what Mike lays out–nor am I even sure we have some big disagreements. I think not.
His example of the CPUSA is true. Other historical examples that have been discussed on K. also have lots of kernels of, if not outright, “truth.”
(On the historical lessons, was reading some comment about B.A.’s contributions and one stuck in my head, the possibility or need for the U.S. to become a base area for rev. worldwide as opposed to solely defending rev. in your own native country, etc. But I digress…)
Mike said–among a lot of things:
“And she raises a third concern — that a revolutionary movement has to come from within the people… that it can’t approach the people as something “out there” (to be observed, discussed and then hammered upon) by a political force that has stood apart.”
Well, basically that was the thrust of what I was sending a “red flag alert” around. We have the negative example of the CPUSA, but currently we have another negative example (but not for lack of trying)–seemingly from the opposite side, of the RCP. And while many of us speak volumes about the RCP, hey, they haven’t been nor are they still the only act in town.
One big criticism of the RCP throughout different posts and comments has been their lack of establishing a viable mass base, after years of trying. But then Mike says:
“But the lack of roots is not the problem itself — as if the RCP just chose NOT to go among the people, and that we can solve this by just going there. The lack of roots (the lack of contact, links, cadre among the people) is a RESULT of the problem, a symptom of the problem.
“And that is why it is valuable to uncover the actual accomplishments of the RCP. In fact, the RCP has no roots, but it is not for lack of trying. there have been repeated efforts to go deep among the people, to be “immersed in their plights, struggles, their lives, etc.”
So what are the real reasons (what are the real problems and not just the symptoms) for the RCP’s inability to establish roots among the masses? The obvious current problem is emphasis on the cult of the personality line, but is that only symptomatic, or is there something deeper going on if the RCP’s theory (and practice) has been tested over years?
Certainly we can’t be all over the map. We are trying to figure out what is primary AT THIS JUNCTURE (as well as what is primary throughout the protracted struggle and complex process of revolution). Obviously theoretical development (and unity over line)–as we “regroup and reconceive” is our top priority. Even if we were totally “immersed” amongst the people, without substantial theoretical development and struggle, we wouldn’t get anywhere. But I think there is a tendency — and this not based on the sincere efforts and developments within K. so far but more from an historical perspective– that there are dangers if a group/party/org. doesn’t walk on two legs, and negates practice (and I might add,–and not as some afterthought–mass line) in its “theoretical development.” What are we basing our theory on? even if many people haven’t yet fully embraced our theoretical discoveries, etc.? As we strive for “breaking with old ideas”, having a critical and materialist view in the realm of theory, am still not willing to let go of the “adage”–or what I perceive as methodology, of “from the masses to the masses.” While one puts primary weight on one “leg” at a given moment, there is a definite relationship between theory and practice–not an antagonistic one, but a relationship out of necessity in making revolution, building a new society, etc.
I am not at all doubting the sincerity of the majority of people contributing to and participating in the K. Project. What I think is a plus for this project is that there are a lot of contending views and differences in actual experience. Seems to me that as we regroup, etc. we are trying to learn from each other–but my main point is, that is not enough. We have to learn from the people, especially if we think we are speaking for the people, concentrating their highest aspirations, et al.
Linda D. said
Nando speaks to some of my questions (or views) in his recent comments:
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/08/09/morse-ely-opening-a-larger-discussion-of-maoism/#comment-5723
land said
I have been distributing this little flyer and there are two things people seem to mention.
1. There is agreement that we need some fresh analysis.
2. What do you mean by a communist project?
My own question is in line with the conversation Linda and Mike were having about how you reach the people in relation to the 9 letters and the Akil tour initiated by the RCP and which fell apart but was so needed.
What does it mean to RECONCEIVE AS WE REGROUP in relation to gathering people for revolutionary work.
I tend to go with the faultline questions Mike Ely recently wrote an article I’ll Fly Away. It was abou slavery, the underground railroad and the abolitionists. At the beginning of the article he asks the question which is basically (READ it in full) how does resistance give rise to revolution.
I think one of the faultline questions today is around immigrants.
Kasama is doing some investigation around theoretical questions for what we need. It would also be good to have a project on the faultline questions..
I will volunteer. anyone else?
Also as many people have suggested for whatever project people choose there needs to be a big emphasis on summation. Collective summation. Not a piece of paper flying upward
land said
Reconceive as we regroup:
In my last post here I was focusing on this but more needs to be added.
Otherwise I think it will go the way of “just turn your faces to the people or “get to work.”
There is much to go over in why there are not the necessary roots. The 9 letters is the beginning.
We need to unravel problems of line that have become a habit. And there is a pull to accept the comfortable analysis of what poses as an analysis of objective conditions.
In the last several weeks Mike Ely wrote an article entitled On New Tech and Blaming the People. He criticized Avakian for his comment where he says Refusal to Resist Crimes Against Humanity is Itself a Crime.
First this is not a communist outlook for BA to accuse people of a crime of complicity when for whatever reason they want something enough to wait in line for it and it is not political. And to me it shows that Avakian is very critical of the people.
And I myself got caught up in this “complicity” question. People on this blog were saying that it is blaming the people. Mike made a serious analogy of what was complicity in Nazi Germany I think pointing to the complexity of the situation for the people.
I kept thinking damn I have been working in mass organizations for years saying “we will not be good Germans” and here people are saying that is blaming the people.
But all this was working off an analysis that there is fascism in this country or something close to facsism. And my examples were from Nazi Germany and that was facism.
Whether or not there is complicity needs to be analyzed and there are many ways to break through this. Actually we are quite good at this. But I see now what people were getting at.
And it was all influenced by this analysis of Christian Facism of the RCP.
A huge emphasis n eeds to be on analyzing the questions for revolution in the world today.
Historical lessons need to be part of things.
A revolutionary movement does need to come from the people. Where else?
But without the theoretical work of reconception you will not have a revolutionary movement and without the practice you may not even know what the revolutionary questions are. And the people will not know you.
On a related subject wish I was going to Denver. Whoever goes bring back info.
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