Hi folks,

Mike created a blog page for my short essay. It is here:

http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/online-war-over-ideas-a-communis
t-deus-ex-machina/

So far there are 8 comments. I commented once in reply to discussion
and, yes, my post took three days to show up.

Ben

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Seattle
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Subject: [pof-200] A mortar in the hands of Spartacus (Kasama and the
need for a self-moving community)

Hi folks,

Below is an exceprt from a letter I wrote to a Kasama supporter
concerning the need for a self-moving community

-- Ben

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Seattle
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Subject: the need for self-moving community

[...]

Below is a short essay I attempted to post a day and a half ago in
response to the essay on the emerging role of the internet in
organizing:
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/internet-in-france-piercing-medi
a-protection-of-the-ruling-class/

Mike may eventually approve the post, or he may decide that my post does
not conform to the "Kasama culture" and reject it. I will probably know
in a day or two if others in the Kasama community will be allowed to see
my essay. By that time (if Mike approves the post) the parent essay (on
which it is a comment) will be near the bottom of the Kasama home page
and my comment will not show up in the "recent comments" section in the
top of the left-hand column (because my comment will not be recent--it
will be 2 or 3 days old).

In other words, I can put a lot of time and thought into a post but:

(1) I do not know if anyone will be allowed to see it and

(2) the effective readership will be reduced by probably
90% precent or more because of the 2 or 3 days it may
take for Mike to decide whether or not my post
represents a challenge to his authority to run
the site as he likes.

Mike will, most likely, eventually approve my post. But this
unnecessary delay represents an effective barrier to my being able to
capture the attention of other community members and engage them in a
conversation on this topic.

And for what reason has Mike put me on moderation?

Mike has never given any reason or explanation that is more than a
half-truth. Mike cannot provide a single example of a post of mine
which is either disrespectful or insincere. Mike's claim is that my
posts have been "repetitive". The problem here is that it is not
possible to communicate effectively without a certain amount of
repetition. And, in an internet discussion forum, it may sometimes be
necessary to say something to person A that you have said before to
person B. Mike wrote me a year ago when he got angry that I was
repeating myself or providing links to articles I had written or was
quoting from articles I had written. He said this was an abuse of the
Kasama culture (ie: "spam"). I replied to Mike that these issues are
complex and that if I am to be restricted in this way--then it should be
under the open (ie: public) supervision of the Kasama community (for
example in a section of the "threads" forum). At this point Mike became
abusive and unproductive and I replied to him that I was reserving the
right to make public any future emails he might send me.

The irony is this:

Mike/Nando ask how revolutionaries can make effective use of the
revolution in communications. The answer is to build a self-moving
community where activists can take the initiative. This means that all
the energy of the community does not have to be filtered through a
"bottleneck of control" at the top. It is not a matter of some
technical solution. There needs to be a gathering of revolutionary
energy: people who want to do things and make things happen and have
opportunities to do so and ideas for projects from which to choose.
Mike (it appears to me) is not comfortable with the idea of a
self-moving community because it would be something over which he did
not have total control. This attitude is something I believe he
developed from his work with a "cargo-cult" organization (ie: the RCP).
It is, unfortunately, a common attitude in the left. It is a
dysfunctional attitude and it is something that our movement needs to
overcome. The revolutionary movement needs to build itself on healthy
attitudes.

And it will do so!

sincerely and revolutionary regards,
Ben Seattle

----------------------------------------------------------
Deus Ex Machina:
A mortar in the hands of Spartacus
(and the promise of information war)
----------------------------------------------------------

The comments by Mike and Nando are thoughtful and perceptive.

My favorite movie is Spartacus. Near the end, in the final battle
scene, the army of slaves is surrounded by three Roman armies. We all
know how it ends. No large-scale revolt of slaves in the ancient world
ended successfully. The movie had a strong influence on me when I first
saw it at a young age. It was my first exposure to class politics and
it helped prepare me for the time, later in life, when I decided I was a
revolutionary.

If you saw the movie, you will remember this scene. You wanted the
slaves to win. I used to fantasize, after watching it as a kid, how
things might have been different if the army of slaves, faced with the
endless ranks of Roman soldiers marching in precise formations, had
possession of a few modern weapons. Maybe a couple of mortars.

The endless rows of Roman soldiers would have fallen down en masse; and
what was left would have scattered like so many cockroaches when you
turn on the kitchen light in a cheap apartment.

Of course, that is fantasy. We are materialists. We deal with the
world as it is, not with dreams of sudden and near-infinite power handed
to us at the last minute by god [1]. And, we all know that, if
something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

All the same, it has occurred to me that activists in the 21st century
have been born at a good time. Modern technology, economics, cuture and
politics are now putting into their hands weapons that (it will probably
be clear fifty years from now) will be more powerful in human affairs
than the thousands of smart-bombs and nuclear missles in the hands of
the imperialists.

The impact of the the revolution in communications (ie: the internet and
an expanding array of cheap and easy-to-use hardware devices) on
politics, from the time that the web emerged into mass use 15 years ago,
has so far been relatively minor. It has influenced the news cycle and
decided elections in a few countries. It has been useful in the
organization of a few large mass actions. And it has had a certain
impact on the nature of activist organization. My conclusion, however,
is that what we have seen so far represents only a tease; only a small
hint of a power immense beyond human imagination. In the long run, as
decade rolls after decade, the revolution in communications will, so to
speak, release ever-increasing amounts of oxygen onto the fires of the
class struggle and set the stage for an eventual explosion of stellar
magnitude.

That's my introduction. Reader who know my work are familar with my
views on this topic.

Nando raises three issues (paraphrased below) related to practical use
of the internet by revolutionary activists today:

(1) How do we develop a mass audience for truly revolutionary politics?
Is there a modern-day project that would be analogous to the newspaper
(ie: "Iskra") that Lenin proposed as a means to unite and train
activists in Russia?

(2) How do we use social networks to organize activists around common
projects?

(3) Can we develop a security culture to deal with the fact that the
"political transparency" that is emerging as a fact of modern life also
means that the bourgeois state will find it easy to keep track of us for
that day in the future when it decides to suppress the progressive
movements by the methods (ie: mass arrests, torture, execution and
secret death squads) that have long been used in developing countries?

Mike and Nando ask good questions. As a student of these issues, I
don't have all the answers, but may be able to shed a little light.
Hopefully what follows is not all nonsense.

The key idea central to all three of these questions concerns <b>how</b>
we will make effective and skilled use of the emerging revolution in
communications. I can give my view in a single sentence: <b>We need to
create an open, self-moving community united around a program of
information war.</b>

Since this may sound vague or strange to many readers I should attempt
to clarify:

(1) I use the phrase "information war" to describe a struggle of ideas
organized on a mass scale.

(2) I believe that this struggle of ideas should be <b>centered
around</b> the <b>specific goal</b> of mobilizing the working class to
bring an end to the existing system of bourgeois class rule. This does
not mean that this goal will be the only idea worth struggling over
because there are thousands of worthwhile issues in which there will be
a struggle of ideas. Rather, this means that the specific goal of
ending bourgeois class rule is the central idea that <b>will tie
everything else together</b> .

(3) An "open, self-moving community" means a community that is open to
activists and not tightly controlled, from the top-down, in a
paternalistic way by a small circle of activists.

If our central task is the creation of <b>a community based on
information war</b> -- then how does this relate to the three questions
posed by Nando?

The first two questions relate to the kinds of projects that will unite
an emerging community of revolutionary activists. I believe the central
project will eventually be a revolutionary news service. This would
eventually have a large mass audience. But there are many kinds of
smaller projects that would be easier to do to gain practical
experience.

Nando specifically asks how we can attract/develop a mass audience for
genuinely revolutionary politics. This raises the question of the
nature of genuinely revolutionary politics. To me this means <b>class
politics</b> , but I do not believe that is the prevailing view here.
Readers who are interested in my views on this can look at my reply to
Selucha in the Kasama threads forum at:
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtopic=983

I will also add my observation that the community here is, to a large
degree, organized along paternalistic lines. Readers who are interested
in this observation of mine and the reasons for it may want to read the
criticism of Kasama that is part of the "conscious forces" essay in my
annual report. The bottom line is that activists will work as part of a
community when they believe they have a stake in it; when they believe
that they can participate in the community without arbitrary and
unnecessary interference with their efforts.

The third question raised by Nando concerns the need for a security
culture.

This is actually the easiest question to understand.

There are two distinct reasons to have a security culture:

(1) To minimize harassment

To minimize harassment of activists by local police, employers,
landlords and racist or neo-nazi gangs.

(2) Concerns for severe repression in the future

The second reason concerns likely future efforts by the state to
decapitate the revolutionary movement.

These are two different issues.

The first issue is relatively easy to deal with. Standard internet
security measures (ie: such as using pseudonymns and seperate email
accounts for political and personal work) are usually sufficient to
minimize harassment.

The possibility of severe repression in the future is different because
homeland security can easily trace our ip addresses and get our
identities from our internet service providers.

My conclusion on this topic is that we should "make hay while the sun
shines". In other words, while conditions exist which allow us to
legally organize a revolution mass movement without getting arrested,
tortured or executed--we should certainly do so. It is the creation and
development of a such a revolutionary movement that will best be able to
protect us in the future or possibly even be strong enough to
<b>prevent</b> arrests, torture and executions in the future.

Of course we can make it more difficult for the state to hunt us down
and kill us in the future by <b>not</b> using the internet today to
organize communities of struggle. But in such a case we are undermining
our effectiveness today in order to attempt to protect ourselves
tomorrow. That is not a formula for victory.

There is also a kind of foolish fetish for organizational secrecy that
undermines organizing today. The idea is to keep secret the
disagreements between members of an activist or revolutionary
organization. The problem with this--is that it hurts our movement more
than it helps. In the long run, all the most important contradictions
will only be correctly resolved with help and assistance from many
independent activists who will intervene with the weight of their
experience and voice to help resolve the contradictions.

I have made this post too long already. Readers who are interested can
check out my website which lists articles where I go into many of these
topics at greater length.

-- Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/ben/

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Note:
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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_ex_machina