Kasama Project

[RED DAVE]

A comrade on this board introduced them as a Maoist group that was actually engaged in action. Is anyone here involved with them. Has anyone either been in action with them or seen them in action?

http://kasamaproject.org/

Frankly, they strike me as one of the most overtly petit-bourgeois groups I have ever seen claiming to be in the Marxist tradition. Their opening statement on their website does not even mention the working class.

http://kasamaproject.org/about/

RED DAVE

[Martin Blank]

Damn! Where is that popcorn when I need it? :D

[Emre]

Trotskyism repackaged.

[Wanted Man]

They have interesting articles, but they do not seem to be an active maoist organisation or anything of the sort.

[RED DAVE]

Trotskyism repackaged.What is your basis for saying this, or are you just in a bad mood?

RED DAVE

[The Vegan Marxist]

A comrade on this board introduced them as a Maoist group that was actually engaged in action. Is anyone here involved with them. Has anyone either been in action with them or seen them in action?

http://kasamaproject.org/

Frankly, they strike me as one of the most overtly petit-bourgeois groups I have ever seen claiming to be in the Marxist tradition. Their opening statement on their website does not even mention the working class.

http://kasamaproject.org/about/

RED DAVE

Isn't the Kasama project helped organized by well-known marxist, Jed Brandt? The same guy that Glenn Beck has been attacking on his own show lately?

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Isn't the Kasama project helped organized by well-known marxist, Jed Brandt? The same guy that Glenn Beck has been attacking on his own show lately?

Is he really well known, or is it just because of Glenn Beck? I haven't actually heard of the Kasama Project doing anything in real life; just on the internet, mostly from links from this website. They have had a few interesting articles on some of the actions going on in the world but are they actually organizing anything??

[Crux]

I thought he was in the Bald Communist League? :D

[which doctor]

Is he really well known, or is it just because of Glenn Beck? I haven't actually heard of the Kasama Project doing anything in real life; just on the internet, mostly from links from this website. They have had a few interesting articles on some of the actions going on in the world but are they actually organizing anything??
I don't think there are any 'well-known' marxists left.

[bricolage]

I don't think there are any 'well-known' marxists left.

The last thing the left needs is 'well-known' marxists.

[Cooler Reds Will Prevail]

How does not mentioning the working class by name make us petty bourgeois? :confused:

Kasama is largely an internet based project. We have three different sites: kasamaproject.org (http://www.kasamaproject.org), khukuritheory.net (http://www.khukuritheory.net), and southasiarev.wordpress.com (http://southasiarev.wordpress.com), all for different purposes.

Kasama is not a Maoist organization, and it is not "Trotskyism repackaged" as our dogmatic comrade Emre put it. Most people affiliated with us come from a Maoist background, though we don't have a particular party line or anything of the sort. It's a dedicated space for revolutionary communists to regroup and develop a strategy for revolution, rather than just join up with or create a group that already claims to have one figured out. We unite over questions, not answers.

As it stands, Kasama does not do much on-the-ground work as Kasama, though all of us are involved in varying projects and groups where we live. We had a panel at Rethinking Marxism in November, and we have a panel at Left Forum this month. A few people from Kasama started a group called FIRE Collective in Houston, and we remain in close contact and collaboration with them. Kasama is NOT a pre-party formation, and we don't have any plans to consolidate our ranks into any strict organizational form. My personal view is that now is not the time for a national party and that it is best to start off at a city or regional level.

And yes, Jed Brandt is with Kasama and he is well known in New York among activist circles, but that's not entirely relevant.

[Comrade B]

What is your basis for saying this, or are you just in a bad mood?
A lot of Stalinists just get a hard on accusing Trostkyism of being elitist, there really isn't a good explanation for it.

[RED DAVE]

How does not mentioning the working class by name make us petty bourgeois?The center of Marxist practice is the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the working class. For a so-called Marxist organization, like Kasama, not to even mention the working is virtually a guarantee that it is a radical organization, not a revolutionary group.


Kasama is largely an internet based project. We have three different sites: kasamaproject.org (http://www.kasamaproject.org), khukuritheory.net (http://www.khukuritheory.net), and southasiarev.wordpress.com (http://southasiarev.wordpress.com), all for different purposes.Okay. We have barely begun to uuse the Internet for left-wing purposes.


Kasama is not a Maoist organizationLet Comrade Alistair know this. He seems to believe that it is.


and it is not "Trotskyism repackaged" as our dogmatic comrade Emre put it.I think he's just having a bad day.


Most people affiliated with us come from a Maoist background, though we don't have a particular party line or anything of the sort. It's a dedicated space for revolutionary communists to regroup and develop a strategy for revolution, rather than just join up with or create a group that already claims to have one figured out. We unite over questions, not answers.This strikes me as a very strange approach, especially since the essence of Marxism is the unity of theory and practice.


As it stands, Kasama does not do much on-the-ground work as Kasama, though all of us are involved in varying projects and groups where we live. We had a panel at Rethinking Marxism in November, and we have a panel at Left Forum this month. A few people from Kasama started a group called FIRE Collective in Houston, and we remain in close contact and collaboration with them. Kasama is NOT a pre-party formation, and we don't have any plans to consolidate our ranks into any strict organizational form. My personal view is that now is not the time for a national party and that it is best to start off at a city or regional level.None of these projects seem to have anything to do with the working class.


And yes, Jed Brandt is with Kasama and he is well known in New York among activist circles, but that's not entirely relevant.Brandt requires a thread of his own.

RED DAVE

[Cooler Reds Will Prevail]

None of these projects seem to have anything to do with the working class.

And herein lies the irreconcilable difference between your politics and mine: you believe that revolution begins and ends with organizing the proletariat as a class, and I don't.

[Crux]

And herein lies the irreconcilable difference between your politics and mine: you believe that revolution begins and ends with organizing the proletariat as a class, and I don't.
And why not? That's quite a bold statement for someone claiming to come from a marxist tradition.

[Saorsa]

Let Comrade Alistair know this. He seems to believe that it is.

No, I'm fully aware it isn't. Most of the membership is from a Maoist background, and the group is influenced heavily by Maoism and the Maoist tradition, but it's not an explicitly Maoist group.

Let's be honest. In this period, there is not a single revolutionary organisation in the English speaking West with any base in the working class worth mentioning. There are only sects, some slightly bigger than others. None of them present any kind of threat to the ruling classes power.

So whether a group throws itself into forming a little 'party' with organisation forms that mimic what a large, revolutionary mass based party would look like or not is not some litmus test for whether it's a revolutionary group or not.

All we can really do is hold out, prepare and educate ourselves, and wait for the class struggle to heat up and for a new radical period to arrive. Once that happens, we will grow and hopefully win victories.

Kasama don't feel like forming yet another mini-sect. Good for them I say.

[Crux]

Even after one and a half century of social democratic failure, I cannot imagine how you can continue to believe that organizing into unions and asking the capitalists nicely to stop exploitation and imperialism will work.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch06.htm

[Crux]

Written in 1920. Very successful so far. Btw I'm not suggesting that the entire union organization and agitating for economic reform should be abandoned.

Also, note that Lenin was talking about actual revolutionaries, not social democrat imperialists.
Oh right sorry, then it won't work for you obviously.

Then what did you do? And what has the fact that it is written in 1920 to do with anything, unless you have any criticism against it saying it is not correct or for some reason no longer valid?

But who am I kidding, expecting a serious response from you is like expecting snow in June.

[chegitz guevara]

The center of Marxist practice is the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the working class. For a so-called Marxist organization, like Kasama, not to even mention the working is virtually a guarantee that it is a radical organization, not a revolutionary group.

The primary focus of Kasama, at this stage, is trying to figure out what the fuck happened and trying to figure out a way forward. None of the old strategies should automatically be assumed to be the correct ones, simply because a bunch of men said so over one hundred years ago. That's not scientific thinking, thats religion, and Marxism should not be a religion, though God knows, we've certainly tried to make it one.

We unite not around a set of answer that we came together to write and then proclaim to the world to follow us. We are united by shared questions, a realization that the socialist movement of the twentieth century was an epic fail, and that if we have any hopes of overthrowing capitalist imperialism, we need to reground ourselves, reexamine everything from scratch. That's the scientific way.

As for not mentioning the working class, among most of us, it was just understood, and for our target audience, other communists, didn't seem to be needed to be mentioned. Given how explosively our audience has grown in the last two years, it was a mistake on our part not to do so. For a small network of America communists, it has a large world wide following. Clearly we need to state certain political assumptions more explicitly.

[red cat]

But who am I kidding, expecting a serious response from you is like expecting snow in June.

Typical North Hemispherian chauvinist attitude. :D

[chegitz guevara]

racist

[The Vegan Marxist]

But who am I kidding, expecting a serious response from you is like expecting snow in June.

http://www.kxnet.com/getArticle.asp?ArticleId=386720 :thumbup1:

[Crux]

http://www.kxnet.com/getArticle.asp?ArticleId=386720 :thumbup1:
Well I didn't say it was impossible, just very, very unlikely.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Well I didn't say it was impossible, just very, very unlikely.

hahaha!

But still, being traditional & being a communist, to me, is being revisionist in itself. Yes, we must uphold policies set forth to us by Marx, but to be a communist, one must be emergent & not fixed on a single ideology or single time frame of beliefs. We've got to use history as our guide to understanding what did happen & what didn't happen. In which, organizing the proletarians within a different perspective, rather than what was pointed out by people like Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, etc., should not be left out of the table of discussion of what is needing to be done. We either rise up over the bosses, or stay by the picket fence screaming your first amendment right 'til the day you die.

[RED DAVE]

The center of Marxist practice is the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the working class. For a so-called Marxist organization, like Kasama, not to even mention the working is virtually a guarantee that it is a radical organization, not a revolutionary group.
The primary focus of Kasama, at this stage, is trying to figure out what the fuck happened and trying to figure out a way forward. None of the old strategies should automatically be assumed to be the correct ones, simply because a bunch of men said so over one hundred years ago. That's not scientific thinking, thats religion, and Marxism should not be a religion, though God knows, we've certainly tried to make it one.So, what you're saying is that it would be all right if Kasama jettisoned the world-historical role of the working class.


We unite not around a set of answer that we came together to write and then proclaim to the world to follow us. We are united by shared questions, a realization that the socialist movement of the twentieth century was an epic fail, and that if we have any hopes of overthrowing capitalist imperialism, we need to reground ourselves, reexamine everything from scratch. That's the scientific way.But it does not mean that you neglect the role of the working class.


As for not mentioning the working class, among most of us, it was just understood, and for our target audience, other communists, didn't seem to be needed to be mentioned.That is your answer. The rest of us might be justified in thinking that it doesn't play much of a role in your thinking.

By the way, doing a search for working class" and "proletariat" on Kasama's "9 Letters" document is worth doing and very revealing.

http://kasamaproject.org/pamphlets/9-letters/


Given how explosively our audience has grown in the last two years, it was a mistake on our part not to do so.That was some "mistake," Comrade.


For a small network of America communists, it has a large world wide following. Clearly we need to state certain political assumptions more explicitly.To say the least. Forgive me, Comrade, if i remain skeptical.

RED DAVE

[which doctor]

The last thing the left needs is 'well-known' marxists.
Well the problem is that there really exists no 'left' from which to produce well-known marxists.

[bricolage]

Well the problem is that there really exists no 'left' from which to produce well-known marxists.

Indeed. But the existence of 'well known Marxists' would neither help 'the left' (I know, it's shit terminology...) nor is it any measure of it's growth. We build the movement, we don't build the statues.

[which doctor]

Indeed. But the existence of 'well known Marxists' would neither help 'the left' (I know, it's shit terminology...) nor is it any measure of it's growth. We build the movement, we don't build the statues.
Well, if Marxism were to once again become a material force, then we would have well-known marxists. You can't have one without the other, the two go hand in hand. I'm not arguing that we build idols.

[bricolage]

Well, if Marxism were to once again become a material force, then we would have well-known marxists. You can't have one without the other, the two go hand in hand. I'm not arguing that we build idols.

I'd hope we would have well-known movements, well-known organisations, well-known struggles, not well-known individuals. Of course all of this is just speculation.

[which doctor]

I'd hope we would have well-known movements, well-known organisations, well-known struggles, not well-known individuals. Of course all of this is just speculation.
I'd like to have all 3 of those as well, but you can't have all of those without well-known individuals. The 'leaderless revolution' is a myth.

[Devrim]

Kasama is not a Maoist organization, and it is not "Trotskyism repackaged" as our dogmatic comrade Emre put it. Most people affiliated with us come from a Maoist background, though we don't have a particular party line or anything of the sort. It's a dedicated space for revolutionary communists to regroup and develop a strategy for revolution, rather than just join up with or create a group that already claims to have one figured out. We unite over questions, not answers.

I think that the people involved in Kasama genuinely believe that it is not a Maoist thing. The point is though that the participants do generally come from Maoism, and their view of what socialism is and what class struggle is is radically different from most people who describe themselves as revolutionary socialists.

Whatever the think, to most people they come across as Maoists.

Devrim

[el_chavista]

And herein lies the irreconcilable difference between your politics and mine: you believe that revolution begins and ends with organizing the proletariat as a class, and I don't.When will you elaborate more on this? It seems that it is some awesome politics.

[bricolage]

I'd like to have all 3 of those as well, but you can't have all of those without well-known individuals. The 'leaderless revolution' is a myth.

Just because something has never happened doesn't mean it can't.