I left "the left" and got back into actual communism. Shouldn't have to put the word revolutionary in front of communism but you do cuz of the old communist party and China's ruling state capitalist party being absurdly named communist.
The West condemned China for it's 1 child policy. What was the alternative? Chinese multiplying like Rabbits? In that case China would be compelled to become an Imperial Power needing to take over other People's Lands for resources and space.
The 1 child policy was China's attempt at being a Responsible Global Citizen.
I don’t believe I have read or talked to anyone practicing the “Enemy of my Enemy is My Friendism” in regards to the United Healthcare CEO assassination or Assad., but I haven’t engaged in many discussions of Assad or the United Healthcare CEO killing.
Maybe I’m too slow to pick up on it.
I have sensed glee over the CEO assassination from one person I would have least expected it from, someone who generally refrains from political discussion (at least with me).
What I have noticed in the few discussions I’ve had & when reading those I follow on social media is the disgust & outrage with US funding of slaughter.
Currently, only a Revcom member I talk to now and then speaks seriously of overthrowing capitalism.
Excellent discussion. There was a period fallowing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, where the Comments section of Common Dreams was inundated with support for it. Many posters continually referring others to Russia Today for the truth. I felt I had entered an alternate reality and got out of there. I know of the imperialist US actions that stoked the conflict, going back to Bill Clinton and the west’s undermining of Russia following the dissolution of the USSR. Because the US has messed up every which way, doesn’t mean other messes aren’t also messed up. You mentioned that in revolution, people will get hurt and you previously mentioned Luigi has screwed himself. But his actions made a statement against unchecked oppressive capitalist injustice. Just saying.
I also noted that last point though...The Luigi Love clearly reflects some very legitimate popular outrage against the wealthy Few. I wrote briefly for the RTAmerica Website. It was AWFUL. Yes. I got out of there. Similar experience with Trumpen-/Putin-left Consortium News.
Free Luigi! How the hell can you compare him to Patty Hearst, co-opted into a cult? He acted alone, despite his affluent background. We are in the 2nd American Civil War. It's not territorial, it's intramural. 4 Decades of the Oligarch / Plutocrat / Military-Industrial Complex (OPMIC) *Social Murder* has sparked a vision of Freedom Fighters against this endless exploitation. Your granular analysis does nothing to organize labor, because they don't understand what you are saying. There needs to be leaders. People need to be led. Even more so in a culture of Spectacle and Doubt. I'd rather compare Luigi to someone like John Brown. Oh, but am I being cultish? Yikes!
Paul, I'm living my 81st Year looking up, not down!
As Americans were celebrating their Revolution in 1976, I was highly visible at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City.
I sold all my possessions in Montreal at 31, after successful Business experience, and entered the US with a backpack on my back September 1, 1975 in Good Faith to discover the Spirit of '76?
Going where the Spirit led me, I hiked through some 45 States, all parts unknown, welcomed by Strangers unknown, over a 15 month period.
It was Awesome, and one of the very best periods of my Life until the Authorities arrested me as an Alien to be deported back to CanaDa.
The Secret Service have the records of that period of my Curriculum Vitae as a 1 man Social Activist.
After the Republicans left Kansas City, The Kansas City Times published 2 Newspaper records on this unknown CanaDian.
Questioning me at The Liberty Memorial Mall, I was surprised to see the 1st Historical Newspaper Record they chose to publish was on September 13, 1976 with the picture of me wearing my trademark #13 jersey. That was a wonder for me to see!
It was also a wonder for me to see the Newspaper chose to publish the followup on ALL SOULS DAY, November 2, 1976. What a Spirit of '76!
That wonder became even more wondrous when 7 Years to the month later, on November 20, 1983 the TV movie THE DAY AFTER Kansas City was incinerated in a NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST was shown to the World.
Out of the 100 Million People watching the movie on TV that night there's a 99.99999% chance I was the only Human on Earth to NOTE, after the destruction of Kansas City, the MOVIE pauses at the exact same picture frame published by The Kansas City Times on September 13 & November 2, 1976 except I had nothing to do with the movie bearing Witness to the 1976 Historical Record. I can't boast of anything living my Personal Faith in the Christ Spirit while it's called TODAY, not Yesterday or Tomorrow.
The Kansas City Times September 13, 1976, “He came to town for the Republican National Convention and will stay until the election in November TO DO GOD'S BIDDING: To tell the World, from Kansas City, this country has been found wanting and its days are numbered [...] He gestured toward a gleaming church dome. “The gold dome is the symbol of BABYLON,” he said.” [...] He wanted to bring to the Public’s attention an “idea being put out subtly and deceptively” by the government that we have to get prepared for a War with Russia.”
That 1976 FUTURE is NOW with the Revelation of the details GENERALLY unfolding in the spirit of the letter.
The World is waking up to see Americans may hasten “its days are numbered” part of the 1976 Vision, and waits with bated breath.
When I taught the first half of the US History survey, I would commonly tangle with white students who just refused to understand the total moral legitimacy of Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner and other bloody slave rebels.
I just read a sentence or two on Wikipedia that Marx and Engels were aware of John Brown and thought a US slave rebellion and the rising of serfs in Russia were the two most important events of that time.
Question: Do you know if Brown had any awareness of Marx?
I was under the impression Brown was a Christian fundamentalist, but never looked into it (Brown’s potential familiarity with Marx).
Years ago I made a trip to Osawatomie, KS, but was only there for an afternoon. I didn’t look for a sense of the locals’ feelings about him.
(I also purchased a Kansas lottery ticket and won $10 or $20. Some revolutionary, huh? I had to mail it in for the winnings, and the state of Kansas complied.)
BTW: if Brown was aware of Marx, might he have practiced Enemy of My Enemy Friendism? Or Marx & Engels in regards to the Christian, John Brown?
No, not really aware of Marx...at least not that I have ever read. Marx you may know was militantly on the side of the North in the Civil War as were all the German Radicals in the USA at the time, 48ers and others. Marx said that all labor could never be free as long as Black labor was in chains. I hope you are not trying to make an analogy between the 19th Century early industrial US North and the Assad and Putin regimes or contemporary Iran or China as that would be way off base.
It's also easy for Israel to drop US bombs from US bombers decapitating and dismembering infants, children and women in Gaza with US complicity, including EVERY American by their SILENCE!
Lance Arrowood makes a very good point I think John Brown planned for a real slave insurrection. He was no lone wolf. It didn't work in the immediate sense but it was an effort towards a revolutionary face to face confrontation between abolitionists and armed slaves on one hand and the slave-owners and their defenders on the other hand. Quite different than a lone wolf assassin shooting a CEO in the back for god's sake.
Y’all are not getting my point. We exist today in a different form of slavery. All I was suggesting was that Luigi deployed violence against the injustice of a form of slavery and abuse just as John Brown did. In a movement or not is irrelevant to my central point. Just watch what happens. Plus I’m sick of people attacking an interlocutor personally like Lance “do you know a damn thing about John Brown” Arrowood does. Maybe I should have said Spartacus instead.
Well Paul you pretty much poo pood all leftie talking points other than Kavakian's communism ideology. You argue all other leftie ideas are pure BS. What! you named 4 or 5 false god leftie talking ppints. Ouch. You argue the communism is the only ideology we should be embracing. Mao and Stalin kinda had it right every one else didn't even come close. Right!
I'm no historian Paul. I know capitalism ain't working. But if Stalin and Moa kinda had it right. WTF happened to these 2 guys? Why did both leaders and their rule end up tragically...stuffed out. Their rule replaced with what authoritarian capitalism. WTF happened. Why did their people ultimately reject it.
I don't have the answers . You think Kavorkian does.
1. But see you are not engaging on the critiques. Very anti-intellectual. Just saying "you are poo-poing" is not a reasoned argument. There are actual developed critiques of the different "left" positions discussed here. (BTW, I've been in most of the places I critique; know them from inside) If you want to engage those critiques, that would be more respectable and serious. 2, You can't spell Avakian's name, which suggests something typical of Avakian's left critics and snarkers: they don't actually read him. That too is anti-intellectual. 3. You have me saying Stalin and Mao had "it right" when in fact I reference mistakes and crimes on their part and since you haven't read Avakian, as is strongly suggested by calling him Kavakian (and later Kavorkian), you don't know that Avakian has substantive critiques of Stalin, of Lenin, of Mao, and even of Marx and Engels. That's an intellectual problem. 4. "talking points" is way too mild for what I am critiquing. Bourgeois identity politics and Trumpenleftism and trade unionist economism and so on are a lot deeper than just "talking points." 5. You seem to have no idea that the Russian and Chinese socialist states were challenged by a helluva lot more than the limits of Stalin and Mao themselves --- try counterrevolution and imperial encirclement --- .and lack any sense of very real accomplishments (along with the mistakes and crimes that Avakian talks about) of the USSR and Maoist China. Is there really any mystery about the causes of their collapse? Is there nothing positive as well as negative to learn from the first socialist states? 6. Why do you say "capitalism ain't working"? It sure is: for those who own and it run, it's working quite well. Capitalism is about profits for the Few. 7. You actually called Avakian "Kavorkian," the death doctor. I hope that was a typo. 8. Mao died in 1976. The right wing Chinese "communist" leaders under Deng undertook a coup to restore capitalism, exactly as Mao said could happen. That restoration is a very underestimated and tragic historical development that gave ecocidal capitalism a lot of new deadly life -- critical backdrop for the "neoliberal" globalzation era. 9. I am recommending communism, an updated version....yes. Do I think other ideologies will continue and get debated under a socialist state? Of course I do. Avakian recommends full and open public debate with opposing ideologies,something you'll learn from reading him. Totally rejects repression of ideas. 10. No one thinks Avakian or anyone else has all the answers. Some answers that matter, sure. The guy dug in studied his ass off about capitalism/imperialism and revolution. His work on this stuff is deep AF. Reading Avakian on history, politics, capitalism, and revolution is worth doing. Try it. Don't like it come up with something better. Surely you'll want to go beyond campaigninfg for Jill Stein in 2028, 2032, etc.
Generally I agree and I agree with most of what Paul says except for the path to a transformed society. I am not going to faithfully risk my life to try to help usher in a dictatorship of the B.A. "organization" with his supposed unparalleled leadership and sacred writings. It doesn't matter how sensible most of what he says is. Please see my comment from a couple of posts back.
I find that ripping on Avakian and the Revcoms and making the cult and ":sacred" charges is generally or perhaps I should say often a way of rejecting any serious movement for actual socialist revolution. It's just really convenient that way. You agree with my critique of "the left"...well, it's very aligned with the Avakian and Revcom critique of 'the left." Why? Cuz I read Avakian and said "wow he's awesome"? No, because I've been in about every space I critique (seriously) here over decades driving around in "the left's" different and often overlapping cul de sacs and the critique to me is bulls-eye dead on in ways that matter and strongly suggest some deep and powerful thinking and experience. The challenge for folks who can't handle Avakian and the RCP but accept its critique of the system and the lame left is to come up with something better, which you are very invited to do. The efforts to do that I have seen have not gone well and end up stuck in some very ugly and stupid Ajithian places. Sorry to have to cut this short and not explain what Ajithian means. Maye have time to return later....
One other thing I did consider would be bringing about an awareness of this possibility to give the idea momentum and more likely to be taken up by people who can make things happen.
I'll give you most of that. I see you take it seriously, but I can't go all in on a B.A. led popular revolution. I agree it will be a struggle and that you can transform people to a certain extent, but you cannot win a struggle against biology. Corrupt reciprocity for one is a real part of human nature and no doubt a biological survival mechanism that cannot be conditioned away within a new system that keeps in place the same basic social structures.
I think what would most likely succeed would be a revolution that most of the population would be basically led into as usual and that is negotiated by a relative few. The question for me is are sociopaths who are hell bent on continuing this madness or people who genuinely want humans to succeed and have the intelligence to honesty confront this and help to bring about a framework for human emancipation through a radically horizontally restructured society going to prevail.
I have the same end vision as you I just don't see a popular movement, particularly one with a singular leader that is so revered, engaging in a battle to seize state power as something that is going to have a desirable outcome. The fastest and least painfully we can free ourselves from these social structures the better.
I see you are committed to the cause, so I am not going to try to engage in a back and forth here, but please keep in mind that there are non revolutionary communists like myself that may have some valuable insights worth considering. You can't dismiss me because you haven't read me(if I had any writings lol). If you even give a shit(lol). Or have time to(lol). If I had one wish it would be for a time machine most definitely. Forget all this revolution stuff we need to be working on a time machine.
"+ A sharp anti-economistic separation of the communist movement from the labor movement and a reorientation of our understanding of where the basic bedrock base of revolution will be found."
In defence of myself, the very first statement does not describe me or my motives in any way. I'm pointing out something I see that bothers me very much and is not a personal attack. Also I would not put myself in the box of the "left". Anti-authoritarian, non-conformist, fiercely independent I've been my whole life, absolutely.
P.S. This is a response to the first post I mistakenly posted here.
Christ Jesus the Jew was a Revolutionary against the prevailing Jewish Religious Establishment.
The last straw was when he overturned the tables on the Bankers and Merchants working the Shopping Mall on Temple property in a Kosher deal with the Priests of the Jewish Religious HQ enabling them to charge twice the street price.
He prayed to God he be spared crucifixion but that prayer was not granted. Jesus in his Flesh was the 1st to feel the hurt, pain and Death of the Revolution he started unlike the Powerful Leaders Today.
With the benefit of 2000 years hindsight when Israel did not exist, Christ had to be crucified in Jerusalem in solidarity with Palestinians because of the Israeli powers in Jerusalem TODAY!
'Not by military force and not by physical strength, but by My spirit,' says the Lord of Hosts.
There were genuinely radical and arguably revolutionary strands in the US labor movement from the Molly McGuires (sp) through the Radical led Eight Hour struggle in 1880s Chicago, the IWW and the antiwar Debs laborites. The dry run of fascism during and after WWI (captured in Adam Hochschild's brilliant book American Midnight) did a lethal number on that history. After that, very little actually revolutionary in the US labor movement despite some occasionally militant efforts by various syndicalists, Trots, and even folks in the CPUSA, itself very anti-revolutionaty.
You're going to piss a lot of people off with this one. Good work.
I left "the left" and got back into actual communism. Shouldn't have to put the word revolutionary in front of communism but you do cuz of the old communist party and China's ruling state capitalist party being absurdly named communist.
To sum up Paul, the problem is both ignorant Status Quo Leftists and Rightists!
Knew you a bit reading you but it is good to see you. Good Show!
The West condemned China for it's 1 child policy. What was the alternative? Chinese multiplying like Rabbits? In that case China would be compelled to become an Imperial Power needing to take over other People's Lands for resources and space.
The 1 child policy was China's attempt at being a Responsible Global Citizen.
Multi Polar-ism?
The bigger picture is all the People on Earth, all the NATIONS and Powers on earth, are facing 3 EXISTENTIAL THREATS, Alone or Collectively:
1. Nuclear Apocalypse
2. Environmental Apocalypse
3. Debt Apocalypse.
Looks to me the POWERS of this Earth are opting for #1!
#2 is to me the top threat. I would add pandemicide and fascism.
In other words, this World is fucked one way or another whichever comes 1st?
I don’t believe I have read or talked to anyone practicing the “Enemy of my Enemy is My Friendism” in regards to the United Healthcare CEO assassination or Assad., but I haven’t engaged in many discussions of Assad or the United Healthcare CEO killing.
Maybe I’m too slow to pick up on it.
I have sensed glee over the CEO assassination from one person I would have least expected it from, someone who generally refrains from political discussion (at least with me).
What I have noticed in the few discussions I’ve had & when reading those I follow on social media is the disgust & outrage with US funding of slaughter.
Currently, only a Revcom member I talk to now and then speaks seriously of overthrowing capitalism.
Excellent discussion. There was a period fallowing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, where the Comments section of Common Dreams was inundated with support for it. Many posters continually referring others to Russia Today for the truth. I felt I had entered an alternate reality and got out of there. I know of the imperialist US actions that stoked the conflict, going back to Bill Clinton and the west’s undermining of Russia following the dissolution of the USSR. Because the US has messed up every which way, doesn’t mean other messes aren’t also messed up. You mentioned that in revolution, people will get hurt and you previously mentioned Luigi has screwed himself. But his actions made a statement against unchecked oppressive capitalist injustice. Just saying.
I also noted that last point though...The Luigi Love clearly reflects some very legitimate popular outrage against the wealthy Few. I wrote briefly for the RTAmerica Website. It was AWFUL. Yes. I got out of there. Similar experience with Trumpen-/Putin-left Consortium News.
Free Luigi! How the hell can you compare him to Patty Hearst, co-opted into a cult? He acted alone, despite his affluent background. We are in the 2nd American Civil War. It's not territorial, it's intramural. 4 Decades of the Oligarch / Plutocrat / Military-Industrial Complex (OPMIC) *Social Murder* has sparked a vision of Freedom Fighters against this endless exploitation. Your granular analysis does nothing to organize labor, because they don't understand what you are saying. There needs to be leaders. People need to be led. Even more so in a culture of Spectacle and Doubt. I'd rather compare Luigi to someone like John Brown. Oh, but am I being cultish? Yikes!
The new civil war hasn't broken out yet. What is it you like about lone wolf vengeance? John Brown was part of an abolitionist movement..
Paul, I'm living my 81st Year looking up, not down!
As Americans were celebrating their Revolution in 1976, I was highly visible at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City.
I sold all my possessions in Montreal at 31, after successful Business experience, and entered the US with a backpack on my back September 1, 1975 in Good Faith to discover the Spirit of '76?
Going where the Spirit led me, I hiked through some 45 States, all parts unknown, welcomed by Strangers unknown, over a 15 month period.
It was Awesome, and one of the very best periods of my Life until the Authorities arrested me as an Alien to be deported back to CanaDa.
The Secret Service have the records of that period of my Curriculum Vitae as a 1 man Social Activist.
After the Republicans left Kansas City, The Kansas City Times published 2 Newspaper records on this unknown CanaDian.
Questioning me at The Liberty Memorial Mall, I was surprised to see the 1st Historical Newspaper Record they chose to publish was on September 13, 1976 with the picture of me wearing my trademark #13 jersey. That was a wonder for me to see!
It was also a wonder for me to see the Newspaper chose to publish the followup on ALL SOULS DAY, November 2, 1976. What a Spirit of '76!
That wonder became even more wondrous when 7 Years to the month later, on November 20, 1983 the TV movie THE DAY AFTER Kansas City was incinerated in a NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST was shown to the World.
Out of the 100 Million People watching the movie on TV that night there's a 99.99999% chance I was the only Human on Earth to NOTE, after the destruction of Kansas City, the MOVIE pauses at the exact same picture frame published by The Kansas City Times on September 13 & November 2, 1976 except I had nothing to do with the movie bearing Witness to the 1976 Historical Record. I can't boast of anything living my Personal Faith in the Christ Spirit while it's called TODAY, not Yesterday or Tomorrow.
The Kansas City Times September 13, 1976, “He came to town for the Republican National Convention and will stay until the election in November TO DO GOD'S BIDDING: To tell the World, from Kansas City, this country has been found wanting and its days are numbered [...] He gestured toward a gleaming church dome. “The gold dome is the symbol of BABYLON,” he said.” [...] He wanted to bring to the Public’s attention an “idea being put out subtly and deceptively” by the government that we have to get prepared for a War with Russia.”
That 1976 FUTURE is NOW with the Revelation of the details GENERALLY unfolding in the spirit of the letter.
The World is waking up to see Americans may hasten “its days are numbered” part of the 1976 Vision, and waits with bated breath.
Anyone interested can see a lot more here:
https://rayjc.com/2013/09/01/signs-of-the-times/
Well slavery is slavery isn’t?
When I taught the first half of the US History survey, I would commonly tangle with white students who just refused to understand the total moral legitimacy of Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner and other bloody slave rebels.
I just read a sentence or two on Wikipedia that Marx and Engels were aware of John Brown and thought a US slave rebellion and the rising of serfs in Russia were the two most important events of that time.
Question: Do you know if Brown had any awareness of Marx?
I was under the impression Brown was a Christian fundamentalist, but never looked into it (Brown’s potential familiarity with Marx).
Years ago I made a trip to Osawatomie, KS, but was only there for an afternoon. I didn’t look for a sense of the locals’ feelings about him.
(I also purchased a Kansas lottery ticket and won $10 or $20. Some revolutionary, huh? I had to mail it in for the winnings, and the state of Kansas complied.)
BTW: if Brown was aware of Marx, might he have practiced Enemy of My Enemy Friendism? Or Marx & Engels in regards to the Christian, John Brown?
No, not really aware of Marx...at least not that I have ever read. Marx you may know was militantly on the side of the North in the Civil War as were all the German Radicals in the USA at the time, 48ers and others. Marx said that all labor could never be free as long as Black labor was in chains. I hope you are not trying to make an analogy between the 19th Century early industrial US North and the Assad and Putin regimes or contemporary Iran or China as that would be way off base.
Shooting someone in the back is easy. Do you know a damn thing about John Brown?
It's also easy for Israel to drop US bombs from US bombers decapitating and dismembering infants, children and women in Gaza with US complicity, including EVERY American by their SILENCE!
But everyone who spends time in this tavern already loathes US-backed Judeofascist Israel. Yes indeed.
How does this pertain to my comment?
I'm responding to me friend Ray Joseph Cormier...just to be clear.
Relax. It was an assassination. Back, front. No matter. You want a duel at 20 paces, perhaps?
Lance Arrowood makes a very good point I think John Brown planned for a real slave insurrection. He was no lone wolf. It didn't work in the immediate sense but it was an effort towards a revolutionary face to face confrontation between abolitionists and armed slaves on one hand and the slave-owners and their defenders on the other hand. Quite different than a lone wolf assassin shooting a CEO in the back for god's sake.
Exactly!
Y’all are not getting my point. We exist today in a different form of slavery. All I was suggesting was that Luigi deployed violence against the injustice of a form of slavery and abuse just as John Brown did. In a movement or not is irrelevant to my central point. Just watch what happens. Plus I’m sick of people attacking an interlocutor personally like Lance “do you know a damn thing about John Brown” Arrowood does. Maybe I should have said Spartacus instead.
Just four decades? Wrong vanguard. Wrong Lenin brother (I forgot the original surname... Illyich?)
Well Paul you pretty much poo pood all leftie talking points other than Kavakian's communism ideology. You argue all other leftie ideas are pure BS. What! you named 4 or 5 false god leftie talking ppints. Ouch. You argue the communism is the only ideology we should be embracing. Mao and Stalin kinda had it right every one else didn't even come close. Right!
I'm no historian Paul. I know capitalism ain't working. But if Stalin and Moa kinda had it right. WTF happened to these 2 guys? Why did both leaders and their rule end up tragically...stuffed out. Their rule replaced with what authoritarian capitalism. WTF happened. Why did their people ultimately reject it.
I don't have the answers . You think Kavorkian does.
1. But see you are not engaging on the critiques. Very anti-intellectual. Just saying "you are poo-poing" is not a reasoned argument. There are actual developed critiques of the different "left" positions discussed here. (BTW, I've been in most of the places I critique; know them from inside) If you want to engage those critiques, that would be more respectable and serious. 2, You can't spell Avakian's name, which suggests something typical of Avakian's left critics and snarkers: they don't actually read him. That too is anti-intellectual. 3. You have me saying Stalin and Mao had "it right" when in fact I reference mistakes and crimes on their part and since you haven't read Avakian, as is strongly suggested by calling him Kavakian (and later Kavorkian), you don't know that Avakian has substantive critiques of Stalin, of Lenin, of Mao, and even of Marx and Engels. That's an intellectual problem. 4. "talking points" is way too mild for what I am critiquing. Bourgeois identity politics and Trumpenleftism and trade unionist economism and so on are a lot deeper than just "talking points." 5. You seem to have no idea that the Russian and Chinese socialist states were challenged by a helluva lot more than the limits of Stalin and Mao themselves --- try counterrevolution and imperial encirclement --- .and lack any sense of very real accomplishments (along with the mistakes and crimes that Avakian talks about) of the USSR and Maoist China. Is there really any mystery about the causes of their collapse? Is there nothing positive as well as negative to learn from the first socialist states? 6. Why do you say "capitalism ain't working"? It sure is: for those who own and it run, it's working quite well. Capitalism is about profits for the Few. 7. You actually called Avakian "Kavorkian," the death doctor. I hope that was a typo. 8. Mao died in 1976. The right wing Chinese "communist" leaders under Deng undertook a coup to restore capitalism, exactly as Mao said could happen. That restoration is a very underestimated and tragic historical development that gave ecocidal capitalism a lot of new deadly life -- critical backdrop for the "neoliberal" globalzation era. 9. I am recommending communism, an updated version....yes. Do I think other ideologies will continue and get debated under a socialist state? Of course I do. Avakian recommends full and open public debate with opposing ideologies,something you'll learn from reading him. Totally rejects repression of ideas. 10. No one thinks Avakian or anyone else has all the answers. Some answers that matter, sure. The guy dug in studied his ass off about capitalism/imperialism and revolution. His work on this stuff is deep AF. Reading Avakian on history, politics, capitalism, and revolution is worth doing. Try it. Don't like it come up with something better. Surely you'll want to go beyond campaigninfg for Jill Stein in 2028, 2032, etc.
Generally I agree and I agree with most of what Paul says except for the path to a transformed society. I am not going to faithfully risk my life to try to help usher in a dictatorship of the B.A. "organization" with his supposed unparalleled leadership and sacred writings. It doesn't matter how sensible most of what he says is. Please see my comment from a couple of posts back.
I find that ripping on Avakian and the Revcoms and making the cult and ":sacred" charges is generally or perhaps I should say often a way of rejecting any serious movement for actual socialist revolution. It's just really convenient that way. You agree with my critique of "the left"...well, it's very aligned with the Avakian and Revcom critique of 'the left." Why? Cuz I read Avakian and said "wow he's awesome"? No, because I've been in about every space I critique (seriously) here over decades driving around in "the left's" different and often overlapping cul de sacs and the critique to me is bulls-eye dead on in ways that matter and strongly suggest some deep and powerful thinking and experience. The challenge for folks who can't handle Avakian and the RCP but accept its critique of the system and the lame left is to come up with something better, which you are very invited to do. The efforts to do that I have seen have not gone well and end up stuck in some very ugly and stupid Ajithian places. Sorry to have to cut this short and not explain what Ajithian means. Maye have time to return later....
No scary words like communist revolution needed.
One other thing I did consider would be bringing about an awareness of this possibility to give the idea momentum and more likely to be taken up by people who can make things happen.
I'll give you most of that. I see you take it seriously, but I can't go all in on a B.A. led popular revolution. I agree it will be a struggle and that you can transform people to a certain extent, but you cannot win a struggle against biology. Corrupt reciprocity for one is a real part of human nature and no doubt a biological survival mechanism that cannot be conditioned away within a new system that keeps in place the same basic social structures.
I think what would most likely succeed would be a revolution that most of the population would be basically led into as usual and that is negotiated by a relative few. The question for me is are sociopaths who are hell bent on continuing this madness or people who genuinely want humans to succeed and have the intelligence to honesty confront this and help to bring about a framework for human emancipation through a radically horizontally restructured society going to prevail.
I have the same end vision as you I just don't see a popular movement, particularly one with a singular leader that is so revered, engaging in a battle to seize state power as something that is going to have a desirable outcome. The fastest and least painfully we can free ourselves from these social structures the better.
Please don't leave us hanging. I tried to look up the meaning of Ajithian; all I could find was the Indian name Ajit or Ajith.
Tomorrow. Exhausted 😴 😂
My defenses of Avakian follow: Pt 1: https://revcom.us/en/defense-bob-avakian-and-revcoms-part1
https://revcom.us/en/defense-bob-avakian-and-revcoms-part2
I see you are committed to the cause, so I am not going to try to engage in a back and forth here, but please keep in mind that there are non revolutionary communists like myself that may have some valuable insights worth considering. You can't dismiss me because you haven't read me(if I had any writings lol). If you even give a shit(lol). Or have time to(lol). If I had one wish it would be for a time machine most definitely. Forget all this revolution stuff we need to be working on a time machine.
"+ A sharp anti-economistic separation of the communist movement from the labor movement and a reorientation of our understanding of where the basic bedrock base of revolution will be found."
Where is that?
In defence of myself, the very first statement does not describe me or my motives in any way. I'm pointing out something I see that bothers me very much and is not a personal attack. Also I would not put myself in the box of the "left". Anti-authoritarian, non-conformist, fiercely independent I've been my whole life, absolutely.
P.S. This is a response to the first post I mistakenly posted here.
KG: this is a brilliant revolutionary communist critique of India's messed up inevitabilist/class truthist/subjectivist/democacy-fetishist Comrade Ajith: https://demarcations-journal.org/issue04/ajith_a_portrait_of_the_residue_of_the_past.pdf
It is worth printing off and reading twice. Brilliant.
Thanks!
Christ Jesus the Jew was a Revolutionary against the prevailing Jewish Religious Establishment.
The last straw was when he overturned the tables on the Bankers and Merchants working the Shopping Mall on Temple property in a Kosher deal with the Priests of the Jewish Religious HQ enabling them to charge twice the street price.
He prayed to God he be spared crucifixion but that prayer was not granted. Jesus in his Flesh was the 1st to feel the hurt, pain and Death of the Revolution he started unlike the Powerful Leaders Today.
With the benefit of 2000 years hindsight when Israel did not exist, Christ had to be crucified in Jerusalem in solidarity with Palestinians because of the Israeli powers in Jerusalem TODAY!
'Not by military force and not by physical strength, but by My spirit,' says the Lord of Hosts.
The Exodus story is the record of the 1st Labour movement!
There were genuinely radical and arguably revolutionary strands in the US labor movement from the Molly McGuires (sp) through the Radical led Eight Hour struggle in 1880s Chicago, the IWW and the antiwar Debs laborites. The dry run of fascism during and after WWI (captured in Adam Hochschild's brilliant book American Midnight) did a lethal number on that history. After that, very little actually revolutionary in the US labor movement despite some occasionally militant efforts by various syndicalists, Trots, and even folks in the CPUSA, itself very anti-revolutionaty.