The following originally appeared on Monthly Review. Thanks to Jed Brandt for pointing it out.

Much like Mubarak, the former democratic reformer turned long-serving US dictator for the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, demonstrates what can happen to even stalwart defenders of capitalism when they are opposed by their citizens en masse.  Like Mubarak, Marcos previously provided a ray of hope for Western elites intent on quelling popular resistance within their own countries; after President Ronald Reagan launched his "worldwide campaign for democracy" before the British Parliament at Westminster in June 1982, he then decided to visit Marcos in the Philippines "where he announced in a public homage to the dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, that 'the Philippines has been moulded in the image of American democracy.'"  This commitment to 'democracy' in the Philippines was not new; the previous year vice president George Bush "raised a toast to Marcos during his visit to Manila, declaring 'We love your adherence to democratic principle and to the democratic process.'"¹

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The legacy of second-wave feminism in the US has a powerful, if sometimes underemphasized, influence in academia. But the movement’s implications for communist work and imagination need further summation. In contrast to many of the narrowly particular, bourgeois and often consumerist, feminisms prevalent in the mass media today, second-wave feminism often advanced system-wide critiques and visions of a world without capitalism and patriarchy. A few groups were able to integrate critiques of heterosexism and national oppression into their programs, though such comprehensive visions were rare. Much of the New Left and the New Communist Movement remained isolated from the explosion of women’s collectives, consciousness-raising groups and other organizations. The distance between these two important trends of the 1960s and 1970s still resonates with us today and could use further interrogation.

The following statement from Boston’s Bread and Roses women’s liberation organization contains a list of demands, many of which address the particular experiences of women *and* can be seen as having wider implications for post-capitalist societies on the road to communism. It also prompts a number of important questions: how does women’s liberation address universal issues? How can it influence the ways in which we construct a communist imagination? What implications do women’s liberation and its legacies have for reconceiving communism? For mass work?

(Posting does not imply agreement with the entirety of the statement’s contents.)

Declaration of Women's Independence

WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS, it becomes necessary for one sex to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of woman and mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all women and men are created equal and made unequal only by socialization:

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The following statement is posted for the information of our readers. It is not posted as an endorsement of any particular program wthin the Tunisian movement, which still deserves much more study.

As an affirmation to our involvement in the revolution of our people who are struggling for their right to dignity and freedom, whom their sacrifices resulted in dozens of martyrs and thousands of injured and detainees, and in order to complete the victory against the internal and external enemies, and in response to the ongoing attempts for plundering the people’s sacrifices, 14th January Front is formed as a political frame working on advancing our people’s revolution towards achieving its goals and to confront the anti-revolution forces. It includes the founding forces of political parties and progressive and democratic organizations.

The Front’s urgent tasks are:

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The following originally appeared on Kasama. It is a response to a recent polemic that appeared on the Club Jacobin blog.

by Eric Ribellarsi

New Beginnings Need New Methods

Kasama is a communist project – which means we have united around our end goal, a radically changed and liberated world without exploitation or oppression. Meanwhile, we are engaged in a creative struggle to define the means and strategies for getting there. For three years we have tried to make a contribution toward creating a new revolutionary movement in the U.S., and a new communist pole within it.

We think that means breaking with a lot of past thinking and activity. We have pointed to two things that are missing: At this moment in the U.S., communists don’t have a core organization to unite our work, and we don’t have a creative strategy for fusing revolutionary politics with the people who rise in struggle.

To deal with these absences, our Kasama project has consciously tried to avoid two common pulls: First we have resisted rushing to form a new small sect based on pre-existing and inherited politics. And second we have resisted losing ourselves in a flurry of generic activism.

Both of those things (sect-building and generic activism) would recreate those methods and routines that have, time and time again, led scattered radical forces to stop far short of a revolution.

In the document that follows, I would like to talk about what we have been doing – which has been, admittedly, primitive and tentative. Many people reading this will be familiar with our Kasama discussion site, but may not be aware of how this site fits into building a new revolutionary movement.

As part of that, I want to respond to a recent polemic written by GM of the Club Jacobin blog – which makes a negative summation of our Kasama Project. Despite our sharp differences, I suspect part of the issue here is that some observers, including the CJ author, may honestly misunderstand Kasama’s politics or activities. And so I’m excited for this chance to clarify.

While I was a bit disappointed in the way that CJ’s piece relied heavily on speculation regarding the non-public work of the Kasama organization, mainly I am excited and welcoming of this opportunity to clarify our politics in response to this comrade.

To be fair, I believe that the Club Jacobin piece points to a number of places where Kasama has real weaknesses – we are a very young and primitive project that is just starting our theoretical and practical work. To deny this would be a mistake.  Nonetheless, we are trying to develop a common language for revolutionaries who are, often, coming from very different places and experiences, and we have made some progress in this important work.

But, at the same time I also feel the CJ piece is based on a rather different view of what revolutionaries need to be doing.

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The following piece originally appeared on Kasama.

“While it is deeply important to fight the attacks on Wikileaks, perhaps the greatest possible potential in the leaks lies not in the US government’s suppression of speech (which it actually does on a pretty regular basis), but in the content of these leaks themselves.

“These leaks contain great amounts of information about the functioning of the US empire, its moves to suppress resistance, it’s preparations for military coups, it’s war crimes, and more. The potential to draw revolutionary lessons about the world imperialist system from these cables is huge.”

by Eric Ribellarsi

As more and more cables have been released, I have watched the actions and preparations of many different trends in how to struggle around these events. We’ve seen the Wikileaks domain snatched up, its leader arrested, and there continues to be a threat of greater repression. At the same time, we’ve watched as the New York Times and other bourgeois media institutions work closely with the United States government to learn how they should report [distort] the content of the leaks, what to ignore, and what to promote from the leaks to add further weight to the legitimacy of US imperialism.

I will try to survey some of those developments here, and put forward my own proposal of how we (communists around Kasama) could move forward around this, while opposing a “just do something” framework.

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