Bravo. Absolutely brilliant. Reading your quote of Lenin - "people learn in a week more than they do in a year of ordinary, somnolent [sleepy] life.’… - in one stroke, birthed an epiphany: I want to be in the streets. I want to join millions in a (desperate?) attempt to free ourselves from capitalism and all the EVIL that comprises it...but I always catch myself thinking....no, we'll never be able to gather that many Americans and Amerikkans in the street. You point out (thank you) the pivotal notion of unforeseen events...literally at any one moment of time. As a sociologist I find all of this fascinating. As a hoi polloi, run-of-the mill average lady....the future frightens me...but I also now see an avenue for our collective escape and rebirth as a people. I thank YOU for that. And for helping me stay sane....! perhaps an arguable claim!
Thanks but just to be clear the Lenin quote is in the concluding block quote from Avakian. I grew up around sociology as a kid in the 1960s, in the University of Chicago neighborhood. My father was in the UC sociology dept .We moved out east for a bit not long after some lunatic attacked the New Left sociologist Richard Flacks in his U Chicago library office in 1969. The chairman of the department was an unmitigated imperialist asshole named Morris Janowitz, who carried on a bizarre running war of abuse with schoolchildren (myself included) in the neighborhood. I remember that a number of the sociology grad students were SDS and participated in an occupation of the administration building.
Can you clarify exactly what are "things that fit the definition of the word insurrection: acts and instances of mass popular revolt against currently existing (capitalist-imperialist) civil authority and government."
Also, you clearly underestimate the degree to which Americans value personal freedom. Your imagined future can't possibly coexist with personal freedom. It necessarily must include Mao-like "reeducation" and cultural revolution that would certainly advocate violence for certain people who practice wrong-think.
I'll pass on insurrection, which is a dictionary search away. You are working with a false equivalence between personal freedom and the freedom of imperial capital to exploit workers, society, government, and nature now to the point of potentially cancelling all prospects for a decent future through the mutually reinforcing plagues of ecocide, war, and fascism. Personal freedom is largely an illusion for the majority of humanity stuck in the downward rat race of the profit system, constantly scrambling just to keep their heads above water in a society based on ruthless exploitation and competition and in which there is and can be no basic core right to eat, to decent shelter, and livable ecology. Capitalist workplaces, where folks spend most of their waking hours, are openly despotic oppression structures for most working people. There's no personal freedom on a dead planet and the political unfreedom that capitalism breeds like white on rice (since concentrated economic power always translates into concentrated political power) via dispensable bourgeois "democracy" and its openly authoritarian successor fascism adds to the eclipse of personal freedom. Curiously enough, the capitalist imperial state that claims to be the homeland and HQ of "freedom" is home to by far and away the leading mass incarceration state on earth. The "land of liberty" is the world's top prison state and has hatched a gigantic and ever more militarized police state. It is also now so saturated with guns and psychotics that people now risk victimization in a mass shooting when they leave their homes. In the writrings of the leading US and world revolutionary communist thinker Avakian, you see a passionate defense of personal and intellectual freedom under a new communism that has looked deeply into and learned from the mistakes and experience of the first socialist revolutions (Russia and China), mistakes and experience that cannot be properly understood without factoring in the powerful role of imperialist encirclement and aggression. Avakian and the RCP advocate full freedom for socialist and communist enemies to air their critiques. Indeed, the counsel is to have open debate with the most articulate advocates of counterrevolution. Creeps like Milton Friedman, David Brooks (I guess he's not very articulate - LOL), Thomas Friedman (ugh), and all the rest would not face violence; they'd get a hearing and a powerful intellectual response from the best revolutionary thinkers. The Proud Boys and Bannon and Trump and sons et al trying to overthrow the new socialist republic would of course be put down and I do mean put down. But in the world of ideas, full debate. And you'd be amazed how much people's sense of personal freedom will be enhanced by living in a world moving beyond class oppression and exploitation!
Actually, lets not pass on the question of what "things that fit the definition of the word insurrection: acts and instances of mass popular revolt against currently existing (capitalist-imperialist) civil authority and government."
You wrote this and you clearly have something in mind. Why not be clear and honest about the kind of "things" your insurrection would include? Don't hide the ball. Say what you mean. What exactly are the "things" your RCP would do that fit the definition of Insurrection?
Nearly every definition of "insurrection" includes some form of physical violence. Is this part of what you are thinking?
Are you opposed to anything that might involve and elicit violence? If so you must be passionately opposed to the capitalist,-imperialist system. Do you think that system can be replaced with no violence occurring and no use of coercive state power?
No really. I'm wondering. And you still haven't answered the question. What exactly are the things that you aim for "that fit the definition of the word insurrection." What kind of acts? Violent acts? What kind of violent acts? Firearm related acts? Just blades? physical intimidation? destruction of private property? You seem like a thoughtful guy, yet you can't seem deliver. Or won't. Please, be more specific.
This is stellar writing, Paul! I’ll be sure to share it. Hope everyone who agrees will do the same. After all, this urgent planet rescuing revolutionary movement is not just for those “other” folks somewhere.
The “bloodbath” bit has been clarified by Matt Taibbi as referring to the trump speech in which he promised to slap a 100% tariff on foreign cars. The violent rhetoric in this case was merely colorful. Taibbi compares the media suckers to the 3 stooges.
Taibbi is the Substack king of the fascism-enabling pink-brown Trumpenleft though, always on guard for his orange master and personal finances. I get the alienation from the imperialist Dems of course but I go with it to revolutionary communism and he goes with it to lucrative red-brown grifting. Cha ching! 😀🙂
Thank you for the colorful history. Not surprised re the chair of a sociology department being an "unmitigated imperialist asshole." I was an ultra nontraditional grad student....i.e. old. Older than half my profs. Yet still idealistic enough that I thought soc profs would be...forward thinking? Progressive? Warriors for justice? Nurturing? Not so much. The primary interest was obtaining grant money and enhancing personal brand (hate that phrase). They didn't know what to do with me. So I got lumped into "let's make the grad students' lives miserable" group. Payback, in one way or another, ensued. A 60s leftie....ever the warrior.
At the time my interests were mainly the Chicago Blackhawks, Bulls, White Sox and Bears and Marvel Comics but the politics of the time were somewhat compelling even to a bunch of us grade schoolers. I'll never forget the mass march down Woodlawn Avenue the day after MLK Jr was killed. It was stunning to behold from a window above. Janowitz used to sweep into my folks' apartment like some kind of grand duke and expect everyone to kiss his ass. I loathed him. 😂
Bravo. Absolutely brilliant. Reading your quote of Lenin - "people learn in a week more than they do in a year of ordinary, somnolent [sleepy] life.’… - in one stroke, birthed an epiphany: I want to be in the streets. I want to join millions in a (desperate?) attempt to free ourselves from capitalism and all the EVIL that comprises it...but I always catch myself thinking....no, we'll never be able to gather that many Americans and Amerikkans in the street. You point out (thank you) the pivotal notion of unforeseen events...literally at any one moment of time. As a sociologist I find all of this fascinating. As a hoi polloi, run-of-the mill average lady....the future frightens me...but I also now see an avenue for our collective escape and rebirth as a people. I thank YOU for that. And for helping me stay sane....! perhaps an arguable claim!
Thanks but just to be clear the Lenin quote is in the concluding block quote from Avakian. I grew up around sociology as a kid in the 1960s, in the University of Chicago neighborhood. My father was in the UC sociology dept .We moved out east for a bit not long after some lunatic attacked the New Left sociologist Richard Flacks in his U Chicago library office in 1969. The chairman of the department was an unmitigated imperialist asshole named Morris Janowitz, who carried on a bizarre running war of abuse with schoolchildren (myself included) in the neighborhood. I remember that a number of the sociology grad students were SDS and participated in an occupation of the administration building.
Flacks wasn't all that radical, to be sure, but the FBI didn't care and started a campaign to smear him in Chicago: https://www.nytimes.com/1975/12/19/archives/panel-told-of-fbi-plot-to-discredit-a-professor2.html
There was also I recall protest over the firing of a Marxist-feminist (I think) UC sociology prof named Marlene Dixon.
https://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/dixon-marlene/
Can you clarify exactly what are "things that fit the definition of the word insurrection: acts and instances of mass popular revolt against currently existing (capitalist-imperialist) civil authority and government."
Also, you clearly underestimate the degree to which Americans value personal freedom. Your imagined future can't possibly coexist with personal freedom. It necessarily must include Mao-like "reeducation" and cultural revolution that would certainly advocate violence for certain people who practice wrong-think.
I'll pass on insurrection, which is a dictionary search away. You are working with a false equivalence between personal freedom and the freedom of imperial capital to exploit workers, society, government, and nature now to the point of potentially cancelling all prospects for a decent future through the mutually reinforcing plagues of ecocide, war, and fascism. Personal freedom is largely an illusion for the majority of humanity stuck in the downward rat race of the profit system, constantly scrambling just to keep their heads above water in a society based on ruthless exploitation and competition and in which there is and can be no basic core right to eat, to decent shelter, and livable ecology. Capitalist workplaces, where folks spend most of their waking hours, are openly despotic oppression structures for most working people. There's no personal freedom on a dead planet and the political unfreedom that capitalism breeds like white on rice (since concentrated economic power always translates into concentrated political power) via dispensable bourgeois "democracy" and its openly authoritarian successor fascism adds to the eclipse of personal freedom. Curiously enough, the capitalist imperial state that claims to be the homeland and HQ of "freedom" is home to by far and away the leading mass incarceration state on earth. The "land of liberty" is the world's top prison state and has hatched a gigantic and ever more militarized police state. It is also now so saturated with guns and psychotics that people now risk victimization in a mass shooting when they leave their homes. In the writrings of the leading US and world revolutionary communist thinker Avakian, you see a passionate defense of personal and intellectual freedom under a new communism that has looked deeply into and learned from the mistakes and experience of the first socialist revolutions (Russia and China), mistakes and experience that cannot be properly understood without factoring in the powerful role of imperialist encirclement and aggression. Avakian and the RCP advocate full freedom for socialist and communist enemies to air their critiques. Indeed, the counsel is to have open debate with the most articulate advocates of counterrevolution. Creeps like Milton Friedman, David Brooks (I guess he's not very articulate - LOL), Thomas Friedman (ugh), and all the rest would not face violence; they'd get a hearing and a powerful intellectual response from the best revolutionary thinkers. The Proud Boys and Bannon and Trump and sons et al trying to overthrow the new socialist republic would of course be put down and I do mean put down. But in the world of ideas, full debate. And you'd be amazed how much people's sense of personal freedom will be enhanced by living in a world moving beyond class oppression and exploitation!
Actually, lets not pass on the question of what "things that fit the definition of the word insurrection: acts and instances of mass popular revolt against currently existing (capitalist-imperialist) civil authority and government."
You wrote this and you clearly have something in mind. Why not be clear and honest about the kind of "things" your insurrection would include? Don't hide the ball. Say what you mean. What exactly are the "things" your RCP would do that fit the definition of Insurrection?
Nearly every definition of "insurrection" includes some form of physical violence. Is this part of what you are thinking?
Are you opposed to anything that might involve and elicit violence? If so you must be passionately opposed to the capitalist,-imperialist system. Do you think that system can be replaced with no violence occurring and no use of coercive state power?
Pacifism can become pathological surrender to violence/oppression/exploitation...
Is turning the planet into a greenhouse gas chamber violence?
No really. I'm wondering. And you still haven't answered the question. What exactly are the things that you aim for "that fit the definition of the word insurrection." What kind of acts? Violent acts? What kind of violent acts? Firearm related acts? Just blades? physical intimidation? destruction of private property? You seem like a thoughtful guy, yet you can't seem deliver. Or won't. Please, be more specific.
This is stellar writing, Paul! I’ll be sure to share it. Hope everyone who agrees will do the same. After all, this urgent planet rescuing revolutionary movement is not just for those “other” folks somewhere.
The “bloodbath” bit has been clarified by Matt Taibbi as referring to the trump speech in which he promised to slap a 100% tariff on foreign cars. The violent rhetoric in this case was merely colorful. Taibbi compares the media suckers to the 3 stooges.
Taibbi is the Substack king of the fascism-enabling pink-brown Trumpenleft though, always on guard for his orange master and personal finances. I get the alienation from the imperialist Dems of course but I go with it to revolutionary communism and he goes with it to lucrative red-brown grifting. Cha ching! 😀🙂
Thank you for the colorful history. Not surprised re the chair of a sociology department being an "unmitigated imperialist asshole." I was an ultra nontraditional grad student....i.e. old. Older than half my profs. Yet still idealistic enough that I thought soc profs would be...forward thinking? Progressive? Warriors for justice? Nurturing? Not so much. The primary interest was obtaining grant money and enhancing personal brand (hate that phrase). They didn't know what to do with me. So I got lumped into "let's make the grad students' lives miserable" group. Payback, in one way or another, ensued. A 60s leftie....ever the warrior.
At the time my interests were mainly the Chicago Blackhawks, Bulls, White Sox and Bears and Marvel Comics but the politics of the time were somewhat compelling even to a bunch of us grade schoolers. I'll never forget the mass march down Woodlawn Avenue the day after MLK Jr was killed. It was stunning to behold from a window above. Janowitz used to sweep into my folks' apartment like some kind of grand duke and expect everyone to kiss his ass. I loathed him. 😂
I finished my history doctorate at Binghamton, where the sociology dept was like 99 percent some kind of Marxian. HQ of the world systems stuff.