The following pamphlet was originally written as a discussion document by the Kasama Project. We are reprinting it here for the value of its approach toward the "pull of the sect" and its insistence on reconception.  It is also available as a PDF.

Contributing to Revolution’s Long March

By Enzo Rhyner, J.B. Connors, John Steele, Kobayashi Maru, Mike Ely, Rita Stephan, and Rosa Harris

Overcoming Two Absences

Life on earth is wracked by contradiction. Each moment, especially in our era, throws up new and particular contradictions starkly.

In just the first year of Kasama, we’ve seen the rise of Obama — with all it has meant, including in the thinking of progressive people. And we are standing amid the early shockwaves of a wrenching, global economic crisis that has awakened and alarmed hundreds of millions of people, and re-injected the word “socialism” into public discourse.

And meanwhile, there really is not yet any sense of a revolutionary or communist alternatives on the political radar screen. The intermediate are alarmed and panicky, while many of the most consciously progressive are (in a way never seen in our lifetime) loosely gathered around the new U.S. government.

In future moments, millions of people will organize themselves into upsurges and seek new ways to think, to live and to die. And at such moments, there may be much demanded of communists. To make revolution, large forces need to be united around programs and common visions for an alternative future — and they need to be materialist plans that have an actual hope of achieving liberation.

This world calls out for fearless actions, and the disciplined sacrifice to carry them out. Urgently. Always urgently. Answers will be needed in the midst of major social conjunctures. Lines of demarcation will need to be drawn at each point along the way.

And yet, there it is: At this moment, it is not clear what revolution in the U.S. would look like, or how determined revolutionaries can help advance the conditions for revolution. And there is, at this moment, no existing revolutionary organization with prospects of developing significant roots among oppressed people and their potential allies.

These two absences — of revolutionary strategy and organization in the U.S. — have existed for a long time (despite deception and self-deception). The whole point of forming our Kasama Project is to make a common contribution to filling those voids.

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"Liberal communists are pragmatic; they hate a doctrinaire approach. There is no exploited working class today, only concrete problems to be solved: starvation in Africa, the plight of Muslim women, religious fundamentalist violence. When there is a humanitarian crisis in Africa (liberal communists love a humanitarian crisis; it brings out the best in them), instead of engaging in anti-imperialist rhetoric, we should get together and work out the best way of solving the problem, engage people, governments and business in a common enterprise, start moving things instead of relying on centralised state help, approach the crisis in a creative and unconventional way... liberal communists are the direct embodiment of what is wrong with the system."

Thanks to Fabian for submitting this!

Nobody has to be vile

by Slavoj Zizek

Since 2001, Davos and Porto Alegre have been the twin cities of globalisation: Davos, the exclusive Swiss resort where the global elite of managers, statesmen and media personalities meets for the World Economic Forum under heavy police protection, trying to convince us (and themselves) that globalisation is its own best remedy; Porto Alegre, the subtropical Brazilian city where the counter-elite of the anti-globalisation movement meets, trying to convince us (and themselves) that capitalist globalisation is not our inevitable fate – that, as the official slogan puts it, ‘another world is possible.’ It seems, however, that the Porto Alegre reunions have somehow lost their impetus – we have heard less and less about them over the past couple of years. Where did the bright stars of Porto Alegre go?

Some of them, at least, moved to Davos. The tone of the Davos meetings is now predominantly set by the group of entrepreneurs who ironically refer to themselves as ‘liberal communists’ and who no longer accept the opposition between Davos and Porto Alegre: their claim is that we can have the global capitalist cake (thrive as entrepreneurs) and eat it (endorse the anti-capitalist causes of social responsibility, ecological concern etc). There is no need for Porto Alegre: instead, Davos can become Porto Davos.

So who are these liberal communists? The usual suspects: Bill Gates and George Soros, the CEOs of Google, IBM, Intel, eBay, as well as court-philosophers like Thomas Friedman. The true conservatives today, they argue, are not only the old right, with its ridiculous belief in authority, order and parochial patriotism, but also the old left, with its war against capitalism: both fight their shadow-theatre battles in disregard of the new realities. The signifier of this new reality in the liberal communist Newspeak is ‘smart’. Being smart means being dynamic and nomadic, and against centralised bureaucracy; believing in dialogue and co-operation as against central authority; in flexibility as against routine; culture and knowledge as against industrial production; in spontaneous interaction and autopoiesis as against fixed hierarchy.

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FIRE Collective members are about to speak on Houston Media Source's GreenWatchTV about the revolutions in Nepal and India. Here are a few helpful links to help viewers explore these issues:

Nepal

• An introduction by the collective: A Revolution at the Brink: Stand With Nepal
• Comrade Rashmi: Mobilising Youth for New Democratic Revolution
• Nepal's Young Communist League Speaks on International Debate
• Comrade Gaurav speaks on Democracy and Cultural Revolution
• Interview with Comrade Basanta
• Nepal’s Maoists: Revolutions Can’t Be Copied, Only Developed

India

• Revolution in India: Lalgarh’s Hopeful Spark
• Arundhati Roy on the Poor, the Armed Struggle & the Failure of India’s System
• Al Jazeera report on Naxalite fight
• India: A Look Inside a Maoist Camp
• New Film: When the State Declares War on the People
• 'Green Hunt will result in genocide of Adivasis'

Many people think that radical change in society is not possible. But the events in Nepal and India are showing that revolutions can happen, and that they can liberate people. The FIRE Collective encourages more people to get involved.

We are reprinting this essay from the Kasama Project. We encourage people to spread it and shake things up during this period of genocidal celebration.

by Mike Ely

[Available as podcast read by decolonize.]

It is a deep thing that people still celebrate the survival of the early colonists at Plymouth — by giving thanks to the Christian God who supposedly protected and championed the European invasion. The real meaning of all that, then and now, needs to be continually excavated. The myths and lies that surround the past are constantly draped over the horrors and tortures of our present.

Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England. But the real history of Thanksgiving is a story of the murder of indigenous people and the theft of their land by European colonialists–and of the ruthless ways of capitalism.

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