Hi folks,

My annual report is now online (along with a substantial essay):

Conscious Forces Will Bring Us Certain Victory

How, in the coming period of intensified class struggle, activists will
use open communities and information war to win ever-increasing
attention and support and create the conscious forces that will bring us
certain victory

http://struggle.net/ben/2009/conscious_forces.htm

Your comments and impressions are very appreciated!

Contents are below.

All the best,
Ben Seattle


  Contents:

  ---------------------------------------------------------
  My annual report
  ---------------------------------------------------------
  (1) What I have done in the past year
  (2) What I plan to accomplish in the coming year
  (3) Problems that came up and solutions that were developed

  ---------------------------------------------------------
  Overview: Conscious Forces Will Bring Us Certain Victory
  ---------------------------------------------------------
  A background of economic crisis and imperialist war
  The objective factor
  The subjective factor
  The CPUSA was a revolutionary mass party
  The degeneration of the CPUSA
  Groundhog Day
  The good news today -- conditions are maturing
  The emergence of conscious forces
  Ever-increasing amounts of oxygen
  The hangman and the priest
  .... (media control in modern society)
  The emerging power of open communities
  Conscious forces will focus on building
  .... a healthy revolutionary movement
  We are only as sick as our secrets
  .... (ie: the need to speak out)
  Conscious forces will be invincible
  How open communities of struggle
  .... will lead to the emergence of
  .... a revolutionary mass organization
  So how exactly will this happen?
  My experience in four communities of struggle
  -- 0 -- The RevLeft community
  -- 1 -- The Media Weapon community-in-embryo
  -- 2 -- The Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee (SAIC)
  -- 3 -- The local marxist study group
  -- 4 -- The Kasama blog
  Fiery collisions and eventual merger
  Conclusion: the Alkali Lake Band of Indians

<>

Posted to the SAIC blog at:
http://www.seattleaic.org/?p=137

Ben Seattle
Mar 11th, 2009 at 2:14 am

Let me see if I have this right. You oppose the use of coal
and nuclear energy in order to meet the growing need for
energy. However you do not have any clear concept of what
the practical alternatives would be-except that there are
"plenty". I consider such a position to be shallow. This is
a weak point in your agitation. When I point this out you
claim that it does not really matter and that my criticism
is not "comradely".

I should be clear: your leaflet, on the whole, is good. It
is important to oppose the popular social-democratic view
that we can put our hopes in change from Obama. And you guys
work hard and deserve support. And I consider myself a
supporter of your efforts (even if you do not).

But the most sincere support also requires considered
criticism.

Yes, it would be possible for me to post links on this page
concerning energy policy. But what would be the point of
doing so? Nothing can come from such an effort unless others
join it. And SAIC does not appear to have any real interest
in developing greater depth on this question (or many other
important questions of the kind with which readers of my
electronic forums are familiar-such as the nature of the
revolutionary mass organization we need or how we can give
readers and activists confidence that a society not based on
capitalism can be something more than a police state). If
SAIC did have an interest in developing greater depth on
important topics-you would make it easier for activists to
contribute (and you would encourage activists to do so).

To give two examples:

(1) How would an activist who might have something to
contribute on the topic of energy policy even know where on
your website to go to post comments or links? Is the
activist supposed to see the title of your Obama leaflet and
conclude that this would be a logical place to post info
about or discuss alternatives to coal and nuclear energy? A
wiki would be a practical way to harvest and organize
comments on a wealth of important questions. (And I have
offered to set one up for you. But you recoil from anything
that might make give greater scope for people like me to
post criticisms of your work or orientation.)

(2) Your leaflets no longer even bother to inform activists
that their comments and criticisms are welcome and needed
and can be posted to your blog. This is an indication that
you do not really believe that comments and criticisms are
important.

Of course, you folks have the right to organize your own
efforts in the way you see fit. And your organizational
model allows you to carry out a fair amount of useful work.

The "closed" nature of your project (as shown by your
retreat from your commitment to monthly public meeings and
your refusal to create blog entries for the occassional
public meetings you may still have-and your opposition to
creating any kind of forum other than comments on your
leaflets) may be convenient in the short term because it
gives critics (such as me) less of a "surface" to attach
comments and attempt to build discussion.

However I believe an organizational model that was more open
to the participation of others and the development of
self-organizing community would better serve the movement.

Yes, as you note, recognition by SAIC (as an organization)
of the need for greater openness and community "is never
going to happen". But SAIC includes individuals. Some of
these people may continue their efforts to carry out
revolutionary political work long after SAIC has passed
away. The more serious people learn from thier mistakes. And
I try not to underestimate the long-term power of developing
clear formulations of essential principles.

Ben Seattle
** Readers who would like to read more about
** these topics are encouraged to click:
** http://struggle.net/mass-democracy/

To other readers:

In his post, David is referring to my response in May of
last year to Eric (a supporter of the Communist Voice
Organization).  My response was titled: "Workers' Rule: Is
it Dead or Alive?" and it can be found (together with some
killer cartoons/sketches I made) here:

http://struggle.net/ben/2008/eric/moment_of_truth.htm


  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Hi David,

First, many thanks for your email on this topic.  I am short
time but I will respond since I believe this is a matter of
great importance.  (By the way, David, I would like to
confirm that I received your private email last month about
the Attention Refinery--I have not had time to reply
yet--nor to give a more complete reply to Wood giving my
thoughts on useful and practical steps forward re: that
project.)

> Ben, I read your response and I have some comments.

-- David --

1. You posit that workers should have "democratic rights to
speech and organization." While I do not necessarily
disagree, I have some problems with this formulation.

-- Ben replies --

It is natural that we may favor different formulations.  At
this stage we advance our theoretical understanding by
discussion of principles and, for this reason, I appreciate
your post.

-- David --

First, the concept of democracy is a bourgeois concept
through and through. I believe you would be better off to
drop the formulation "democratic" in favor of the
formulations such as "freedom of speech" and "right to
organize." Democracy, defined as some formal set of
procedures, is hardly the guarantee of freedom, and is an
entirely ambivalent term.

-- Ben replies --

The concept of democracy has great resonance with activists
and the masses--because it refers to the question of _who_
is running the show.

In our society, under bourgeois rule and under the
domination (and saturation) of bourgeois ideology the terms
"democracy" (like the terms "political" and "working class"
and "bourgeoisie" and "socialism", etc) are greatly
restricted, narrowed down and distorted.  In particular, the
bourgeoisie lays claim to the concept of "democracy".  Part
of the theoretical bankruptcy of the revolutionary movement
(which we must overcome) is that so many activists fail to
understand the central (and decisive) importance of
challenging the bourgeoisie on this question.  Until we do
so--we will (correctly) be seen as bankrupt in the eyes of
the masses.

You say: "Democracy, defined as some formal set of
procedures".  But this is a useless definition.

The term "democratic rights" refers to sets of concrete and
specific democratic rights.  For example, I do (or do not)
have the right to post to the Kasama blog.  In future
society (when it is run by the working class) anyone will
have the right to argue that society was better off under
capitalist rule and that we should return to capitalist
rule.

The term "democracy" is more abstract (less concrete) and
refers to the question of who rules (ie: which class
rules--bourgeois democracy or proletarian democracy).  The
term "democracy" refers to something (ie: a system) which
rests on a large number of more specific democratic rights
and traditions.

-- David --

Second, I think you sidestep the issue of worker's
consciousness. Formal rights, such as freedom of speech and
the right to organize, in NO WAY guarantee that the workers
will act in terms of their interests as a class. In
capitalist society, false consciousness pits worker against
worker in such a way that they typically act in terms of
individual, short term interests, and against their
interests as a class. We can expect that workers may still
act in such a way after the revolution, depending on how
advanced their class consciousness is.

-- Ben replies --

It is true, of course, that the right to speech and
organization do not guarantee that workers will understand
or act in their own interest.  Workers (and the working
class as a whole) will gain consciousness on the basis of
their experience in the many component mass struggles that
will eventually merge into the class struggle to overthrow
the system of capitalist rule.

However, the right to speech and organization will greatly
assist the development of workers' consciousness for many
reasons:

(A) Workers will have access to all the arguments from
     all classes
(B) Workers will gain experience in thinking for themselves
     and making their own arguments and learning how to
     influence others--which means the burden of combating
     the influence of bourgeois and counter-revolutionary
     ideology will not be placed on the backs of a few party
     ideologues (or censors) but will be a mass struggle
     in which many millions participate on a daily basis.
(C) It will be far more difficult for a corrupt central
     authority to suppress criticism of incompetence,
     hypocrisy and corruption (in particular) and (in
     general) suppress the independent political life
     of the working class
(D) (this list could go on and on)

-- David --

Granted the freedom of speech and organization are good
ideas--they might nevertheless lead to the demise of the
revolution if the consciousness of workers is not advanced
enough. The paradox of history is that one must nevertheless
create the revolution when the time for revolution is ripe
(1917), knowing full well that it may fail!

-- Ben replies --

I have argued (I will not repeat here--see ALDS below) that
if a revolutionary government found it necessary to suppress
the rights of speech and organization for a lengthy period
(ie: more than a year or so) in order to survive--that it
would probably be doomed--because these rights are necessary
for the smooth functioning of society and (in particular)
for a high (and growing) productivity of labor.  Basically:
there is a linkage between these political rights and
economic development.  In the long term this cannot be
ignored.

Whether or not it is better to launch a revolution that is
likely doomed to fail is an interesting (and complex)
question.  I do not intend to focus on that question because
there are far more important (and easier) questions which
require our attention today.  First things first.

-- David --

2. The idea of workers' rule seems to forget that as a
class, the proletariat's task is not only to achieve power,
but also and especially, to abolish itself as a class.
Freedom from wage labor means that we should not view
individuals after the revolution as mere workers. It is
capitalism that makes us all into workers! Therefore I
personally oppose the slogan "workers' rule" as being too
narrow a formulation, suggesting that the essence of
humanity is to be found in our existence as workers.

-- Ben replies --

There will be a considerable period (probably at least
decades) between the overthrow of bourgeois rule and the
development of a classless society.  This is fundamental.
Everyone needs to understand this in order to understand, in
a realistic way, our goal and how humanity will reach that
goal.  In order for everyone to understand this--we need
some _name_ for this historical period during which the
working class will run society.  I have concluded that
"socialism" and "communism" are not good names because
(after everything that took place in the last century) these
names now refer to a system in which a corrupt privileged
class exploited and oppressed the working class.  If you
think there is a better name than "workers' rule" you may be
right.  What name might you propose?

-- David --

3. Your thinking does have a certain anarchist bent in its
economic formulations, and I am skeptical of this. What you
fail to take into account is "economies of scale." Where
appropriate, the gift economy sounds appealing--but what if
its application on a large scale leads to, say, electrical
blackouts or mass food shortages? I suggest that we need
empirical evidence as to where centralized planning would be
most effective, and where the gift economy or limited
markets might be most effective; to posit either position in
advance, without detailed scientific study, would be to risk
repeating the types of concrete disasters that plagued past
'really existing' socialist societies.

-- Ben replies --

Skepticism is good :-)

Economies of scale will play more of a role in some sections
of the economy (such as manufacturing) than others (for
example some kinds of software--or entertainment).  The gift
economy (if you look at part 7 of the anarcho-leninist
debate on the state--including the appendices) will only
grow in competition with the other sectors (ie: the
capitalist and/or state-capitalist sectors) as it proves
itself competent.  If projects that are part of the gift
economy are failures in the areas of food or energy--then
these projects will not grow--and food and energy will
remain in the capitalist or state-capitalist sectors--until
such time as gift economy projects accumulate experience and
practical know-how and learn how to produce more effectively
than the other sectors in a reliable way.

> I welcome your comments in reply.

And I yours.  I may not have time to reply as much as I
would like.  Sometimes I must postpone things for months--or
more.  But I appreciate your thoughtful comments and hope
that my reply may be helful.

All the best,
Ben Seattle

http://struggle.net/Ben/  index of my work
http://struggle.net/mass-democracy/ index of my debates
with other activists organizations (for now: SAIC and CVO)
http://struggle.net/ALDS/ anarcho-leninist debate on the
state

Note to other readers:  Wood is referring to the
project described at: http://AttentionRefinery.com


hi there Wood,

First, many thanks for your thoughtful comments on the Attention
Refinery.  I think about the Attention Refinery just about every
day--but my life is, unfortunately, so chaotic that I have no
time except (on occasion) to scribble a few notes on a file card.

> Now all we need is a server and somebody who can write
> computer code.

I have the programming background to create a crude but functioning
version--but lack the time to do so.  There are very powerful
things that can be done when we make it easy for users to create
tables because these will, essentially, function as part of a data
base.  We will use data bases for all kinds of things: collecting
info about people, articles, publications, organizations, tasks,
competing projects, good posts and ratings of various kinds, etc.

My idea is to create (maybe next year?) a functioning version of
the Attention Refinery.  Once we have a few people who use it--I
believe that we will be able to find professional developers who
will donate their time to rewrite the project using solid and
professional design principles, methods and software.

I have not had time to fully read your comments yet (I have printed
out and will read/digest soon).  I hope to have some comments in
reply later this month after I have carefully read yours.  In the
meantime--I have one key question--how (if you remember) did you
find out about the Attention Refinery project?

Sincerely and revolutionary regards,
Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/ben/


-----Original Message-----
From: consa_04
Sent: Monday, February 16, 2009 6:27 PM
To: pof-200@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [pof-200] Hello from wood consa

Dear Ben,

The attention refinery is a great idea. It needs to get done. Before I
saw it, I'd been thinking of trying to set up a leftists' version of
Wikipedia. The main problem with Wikipedia in my opinion is that it's
flooded with bourgeois ideology. People read something in mainstream
publications or the media and dutifully put it into Wikipedia,
thinking they're doing everybody a favour. The capitalist
culture-ideology industry is so big and dominant that this kind of
transfer swamps out intelligent, independent-minded contributions to
the encyclopedia. So the great communal semi-anarchic
information-sharing wiki project is actually written by professional
bourgeois ideologists one step removed. I don't think Wikipedia's
founders intended to create a Trojan horse or a big conservative
bullshit-and-mystification machine but, to a considerable extent, that
is what has happened.

By the way, if you really want to get sick, look at the policies that
have been adopted at Wikipedia on references and the notability of
sources. In theory at least, everything in Wikipedia is supposed to be
referenced; and now you find out that the only thing that they
consider to be good references are publications from major capitalist
publishing houses or university presses. Anything else is treated as
iffy, a curiosity, a "point of view", rather than solid (capitalist
elite) "truth".

I think something better could be done. My idea was to start a wiki
encyclopedia with an expressly leftist editorship, a considerably more
open policy as to what is acceptable content, and some other
differences. Then I came across your attention refinery idea and it
incorporates much of what I was thinking of, plus a bit. So I am quite
enthusiastic about your proposal.

I think that "proprietary articles plus filtering" is a good core
recipe for the project. Aside from what I said above about Wikipedia,
I'm starting to feel that any given wiki article usually suffers from
the "if the whole world painted a picture it would be grey" syndrome.
They tend to be chaotic and suffer from the lack of one directing mind.

So I think a network of proprietary articles is the way to go. (By
proprietary, I mean editable by only one user, or only by people she
approves of.) What I envision is a universe of proprietary article
writers, all gleefully ripping each other off, each taking what she
considers to be the best pieces of her comrades' work and assembling
them into something stupendous in her own user-space.

The problem then becomes, how does someone confronting this
mountainous hive find the best article, or at least one of the best
articles, on a given subject? And the answer, which you have already
hit upon, is filtering.

The basis of a filtering system is to have people rate articles, say
on a scale of minus four to plus four. But a straightforward rating
system, where an article's rating is just the average of the ratings
everybody has given it, is almost ueless for a variety of reasons. For
one thing, people are going to cheat, and make multiple user accounts
so they can vote more than once on an article. Also, some people are
going to be hostile to the project, and attmpt sabotage by voting
intentionally stupidly. Also, from th point of view of any given
reader, you don't care what everybody thinks of an article, you care
what people you respect think of it.

One kind of filter that takes care of these problems is an "only show
ratings from people I trust" filter. Each person who wants to find
information within the refinery would select a set of users who, in
her opinion, have tended to vote sensibly and intelligently on
articles, or who she likes for some other reason. Then she could
specify, when she does a search or looks at an article, that only
ratings made by those people are displayed with the article, or
computed in the search ranking.

(I realise that I am probably repeating stuff you have already thought
of here. I hope you don't think this is stupid. I want to present a
somewhat clear picture of my own conception of this thing, even if
it's not very original.)

We could also allow users to form voluntary associations for the
purpose of rating articles. The ratings that an association comes up
with would have the same status as the ratings made by an individual
user, and a person could put the association's name on her "raters
that I trust" list just like the name of any other user.

A sophistication that we might try is allowing people to assign
weights to raters on her "raters that I trust" list, so that some
raters' opinions would, for her, count more than others.

A service that we could provide for users would be to allow a user to
punch in the name of any other user, and our software would tell her
how closely that user's voting has correllated with her own. For
instance, if, on aticles they have both rated, their ratings have
tended to be similar, that would be a high correlation. If dissimilar,
a low correlation. This service would help a person to locate people
to put on her "raters that I trust" list.

Possibly, we could make available, to each user, a list of all other
users ranked according to their correlation to her. This would require
a lot of computation; maybe we would only update the lists every six
months or something.

I think a person should probably be enabled to have more than one
"raters that I trust" list. She might want one for people she agrees
with, another for people whose intelligence she respects but doesn't
necessarily agree with, another for proponents of some point of view
that is antithetical to her own, just so she can see what they think,
. . . etc. She would choose whichlist she wants to employ at a given
time.

These are some filter ideas. Others are possible. I think you have
suggested that multiple types of filters could be made available to
each user. That is an enticing possibility.

Now all we need is a server and somebody who can write computer code.

By the way, I looked at Google Knol. It doesn't do what we want.

1. It has no filter.

2. It wants contributors to identify themselves. For people who are
going to contribute the kind of material we are hoping for, this is
too exposing and risky. We need to protect anonymity for those who
want it.

3. it is f' ing Google. If you give any credence to Marx's concept
that human systems' behaviour are largely determined by economics, you
have to look at it this way: Google is basically an advertising firm;
that's where they get their money. Their manager was appointed by the
venture capital firm that financed them. How much revolution is going
to come out of a place like that?

4. It expresses no revolutionary consciousness. (I guess this is
related to point 3, above.) I'm in favour of letting just about
anybody contribute but the site should let it be known that we're
trying to raise consciousness and promote social change. People are
going to realise that anyway, when they find out that you, good sir,
are behind the thing. Setting the tone may actually be quite important
in determining how people use the site, how things unfold.

We need to get about 30 to 50 percent of the population definitely
convinced that capitalism is messing the world up and needs to be done
away with. That requires "information war", or, more broadly,
convincing. That is the present task. It may seem like a pie in the
sky target at present, but it is simply the unavoidable objective that
must be achieved. Communism requires the goodwill of the people in it;
it can not be imposed. If somethig succeeds by coup d'etat but without
popular support, it may call itself communism but it can't possibly be
communism. So that 30 - 50 percent is a precondition to any kind of
power move. That's what we have to get -- that's the job.

Hi Paul,

My comment on the Seattle Indymedia thread included a link
to your encouraging comments.

-- Ben

from:
http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2009/02/271534.shtml

==================================================
the kind of organization we need
Posted by: Ben Seattle at Feb 09, 2009 05:28
==================================================

Carl Dix, Frank and the kind of organization we need

--------------------------------------------------
A quick summary of the action so far:
--------------------------------------------------

1) Carl Dix (a spokesman for the RCP--a group well known for
strong cult-like features and a recent alliance with a
section of the liberal-imperialist Democratic Party)
announced a mass action in Oakland to protest the police
murder of Oscar Grant and the arrests of more than 100
people who, by protesting, put pressure on the authorities
to arrest the cop who carried out the murder.

2) Frank (a well-known and respected local activist)
announced a mass action for the same day here in Seattle.
After the action, Frank also criticized Carl Dix (and the
RCP) for some of their attitudes and the way that they
promote a movement alliance with a section of "opinion
leaders" (ie: Al Sharpton and other prominent liberals) who
are in orbit around the Democratic Party.

--------------------------------------------------
Comment by Ben:
--------------------------------------------------

Both Carl Dix and Frank want to see the development of mass
movements of the oppressed against police murders and
against imperialist wars (such as Obama's escalation of the
war in Afghanistan) and for a revolutionary solution to all
the problems created by the rule of the bourgeoisie (ie: the
class of big-time capitalists who own the corporations and
the government). I respect both of these activists, but have
greater respect for Frank.

Carl Dix has allowed his energy to put at the service of a
group that is crippled (and will always be crippled) by its
strong cult-like features. As if this were not bad enough,
the RCP has allowed itself to be used (in its recent "World
Can't Wait" campaign) to promote illusions that the
imperialist-to-its-core Democratic Party can be transformed
into a party of peace controlled by ordinary people.

But Frank's orientation has problems also.

Frank discusses (above) the tasks we must confront in order
to build powerful and militant movements of the oppressed.
It is important to talk about these tasks and it is useful
that Frank is doing so. The problem is that Frank's
viewpoint involves working through an organization which (to
sum it up in a single word) is "uptight" (ie: based on a
type of "democratic centralism" which has often been used to
promote group-think, tunnel vision and various kinds of
manipulation). Activists tend to distrust organizations of
this type--with good reason. Activists can smell
manipulation from miles away.

There is a lot of useful work we need to do and this work
requires that we be organized in some way. I believe we need
a fairly loose and open type of organization that includes
activists with a range of views and is also the arena for
open (ie: public) confrontation and struggle between
political trends with competing agendas. (Who could be in
this organization? Any activist. But most of the reformist
"socialist" trends in town would likely keep their distance
from such an organization because the open struggle would
tend to expose their real agendas of alliance with a section
of the Democratic Party.)

The differences in viewpoints between Frank and myself are
difficult to summarize in a few sentences--but I make the
attempt to do so because basic principles are important.
Part of creating the organization we need--is being able to
formulate and understand the basic principles which will
allow us to create organization which avoids both
reformist/careerism and sectarian cult-building.

More on these topics can be seen in the appendix
below--where I report on a recent meeting of the Seattle
Anti-Imperialist Committee (SAIC). Frank works with SAIC
and, under his influence, SAIC is currently on the "uptight"
path.

Your thoughtful comments are welcome.

Ben Seattle
  http://struggle.net/mass-democracy/
  http://struggle.net/Ben/

===========================================================
Appendix:

SAIC's "uptight" model of organization vs. what we need:
A loose network with open struggle and political
transparency, guided and powered by mass democracy,
which extends a welcome to the necessary energy,
intelligence and intervention of activists

Ben's 3 laws of democratic mass organizations
in an era of increasing political transparency
===========================================================

(Below: excerpt from my post to pof-200 on Jan 22.
The entire post and the reaction to it can be seen here:
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pof-200/message/1406
  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pof-200/message/1407 )

The Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee (SAIC) had its first
"monthly" public meeting last night in six months. [...]

While I was there, Frank asked me why I was not doing more
to assist SAIC and was not a member "acting under the
discipline of an organization". I replied that I will not
act under the discipline of an organization which does not
practice mass democracy--and that this would require that
SAIC take measures to make it easier for readers of its
website to understand the struggles within SAIC concerning
its path forward. I said that if SAIC wants to win the
attention, respect, trust and support of wider circles of
activists--that it must give activists the ability to (so to
speak) "look in the kitchen" (ie: become aware of the
struggles within SAIC) and not simply to "eat the food" (ie:
read the leaflets that SAIC writes). Frank replied that he
believed that SAIC will win attention, respect and support
from activists by its work to build the movement--and that
my focus on giving activists a window into SAIC's internal
struggles/contradictions was basically sectarian/opportunist
bullshit. (These were not his exact words, of course--I am
summarizing lengthy and heated discussion.)

It is clear that SAIC members and I have different views
concerning the kind of organization which best fits the
needs of the movement. Frank is opposed to my view (among
other reasons) because he believes we need an organization
that is not "loose". What he has created (with the help of
those who are enamored with his views) is an organization
that is so "tight" that (in my view) it is uptight. I
believe we need an organization that is more of a loose
network that allows strong ties and common work to develop
between individuals in the context of an open community and
open struggle characterized (to the extent possible) by calm
discussion and mutual respect. A loose network would help us
overcome our isolation and make it more difficult for the
reformist political trends to keep activists away from us.
Within the network, groups might form that would carry out
disciplined work.

As part of my work to make clear my differences with Frank
and the SAIC comrades I put together (see below) my 3 "laws"
of mass democratic organizations.


--------------------------------------------------
Ben's 3 laws of democratic mass organizations
in an era of increasing political transparency
--------------------------------------------------


The progressive movement is full of dark crevices infested
with opportunist traditions and practices (ie: sectarianism
and reformism, careerism and cult-building). This is
considered "normal" and we are told (in effect) that we can
eat the food but are not allowed to look in the kitchen
where the food is prepared. It is time to turn on the lights
and build healthy, functional organizations guided by
political transparency and mass democracy.

And this is precicely what will happen as internet-derived
forms of communication play an increasing role in shaping
the terrain of the class struggle. The following three
"laws" (ie: common sense conclusions based on my experience)
are your guide to the action as this struggle unfolds.

--------------------------------------------------
1. Arenas of struggle
--------------------------------------------------

Activist organizations (whether antiwar or revolutionary
organizations) will be arenas of struggle between contending
agendas and political currents--and the content of the work
of the organizations will be determined by the outcome of
these struggles.

--------------------------------------------------
2. Visibility and voice
--------------------------------------------------

Healthy activist organizations will recognize that these
struggles (ie: internal contradictions) can only be
correctly resolved with the conscious participation of wide
circles of activists who must have practical means to:

(a) have visibility into those struggles and

(b) give voice to their experience and conclusions

--------------------------------------------------
3. Mass democracy
--------------------------------------------------

Activist organizations which are _serious_ about earning the
attention, respect, trust and support of wider circles of
activists will not attempt to hide the struggles which
determine the content of their work--but will structure
their websites or blogs in such a way as to make their
internal struggles visible to readers and encourage their
readers to _understand_ the principles which are in
contention and _participate_ in the struggle to sort out the
path forward.

Only in this way can activist organizations become healthy
mass organizations truely guided by mass democracy.

Hi folks,

The Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee (SAIC) had its first
"monthly" public meeting last night in six months.  I asked
for discussion concerning the recent resignation of "X-7"
from SAIC.  (Marik--this is the guy you spent a few hours
with here in Seattle last year).

X-7 is subscribed to these lists and I have asked him to
post here excerpts of his resignation letter to SAIC in
order to develop discussion of the principles involved.
Rather than leaving an organization, it is often better to
fight to make it better.  But this fight can only connect
with the experience and sentiments of wider circles of
activists when it is not hidden.  This means it must be
public.

The SAIC members present last night all claimed that X-7
left because he fails to understand the necessity of the
struggle against the influence of the reformist political
trends and their flunky organizations (ie: like the ISO and
FSP which are in defacto alliances with social democracy).

I replied that this is possible but is not consistent with
my own observations--which make it appear to me that X-7
left because he was fed up with many of SAIC's sectarian
practices.  In any event, I noted, these things will become
more clear with time.

While I was there, Frank asked me why I was not doing more
to assist SAIC and was not a member "acting under the
discipline of an organization".  I replied that I will not
act under the discipline of an organization which does not
practice mass democracy--and that this would require that
SAIC take measures to make it easier for readers of its
website to understand the struggles within SAIC concerning
its path forward.  I said that if SAIC wants to win the
attention, respect, trust and support of wider circles of
activists--that it must give activists the ability to (so to
speak) "look in the kitchen" (ie: become aware of the
struggles within SAIC) and not simply to "eat the food" (ie:
read the leaflets that SAIC writes).  Frank replied that he
believed that SAIC will win attention, respect and support
from activists by its work to build the movement--and that
my focus on giving activists a window into SAIC's internal
struggles/contradictions was basically sectarian/opportunist
bullshit.  (These were not his exact words, of course--I am
summarizing lengthy and heated discussion.)

It is clear that SAIC members and I have different views
concerning the kind of organization which best fits the
needs of the movement.  Frank is opposed to my view (among
other reasons) because he believes we need an organization
that is not "loose".  What he has created (with the help of
those who are enamored with his views) is an organization
that is so "tight" that (in my view) it is uptight.  I
believe we need an organization that is more of a loose
network that allows strong ties and common work to develop
between individuals in the context of an open community and
open struggle characterized (to the extent possible) by calm
discussion and mutual respect.  A loose network would help
us overcome our isolation and make it more difficult for the
reformist political trends to keep activists away from us.
Within the network, groups might form that would carry out
disciplined work.

As part of my work to make clear my differences with Frank
and the SAIC comrades I put together (see below) my 3 "laws"
of mass democratic organizations.

Your comments are welcome.

Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/mass-democracy/


==================================================
Ben's 3 laws of democratic mass organizations
in an era of increasing political transparency
==================================================


The progressive movement is full of dark crevices
infested with opportunist traditions and practices (ie:
sectarianism and reformism, careerism and cult-building).
This is considered "normal" and we are told (in effect)
that we can eat the food but are not allowed
to look in the kitchen where the food is prepared.
It is time to turn on the lights and build
healthy, functional organizations guided by
political transparency and mass democracy.

And this is precicely what will happen as internet-derived
forms of communication play an increasing role in shaping
the terrain of the class struggle.  The following three
"laws" (ie: common sense conclusions based on my experience)
are your guide to the action as this struggle unfolds.

--------------------------------------------------
1. Arenas of struggle
--------------------------------------------------

Activist organizations (whether antiwar or revolutionary
organizations) will be arenas of struggle between contending
agendas and political currents--and the content of the work
of the organizations will be determined by the outcome of
these struggles.

--------------------------------------------------
2. Visibility and voice
--------------------------------------------------

Healthy activist organizations will recognize that these
struggles (ie: internal contradictions) can only be
correctly resolved with the conscious participation of wide
circles of activists who must have practical means to:

(a) have visibility into those struggles and

(b) give voice to their experience and conclusions

--------------------------------------------------
3. Mass democracy
--------------------------------------------------

Activist organizations which are _serious_ about earning the
attention, respect, trust and support of wider circles of
activists will not attempt to hide the struggles which
determine the content of their work--but will structure
their websites or blogs in such a way as to make their
internal struggles visible to readers and encourage their
readers to _understand_ the principles which are in
contention and _participate_ in the struggle to sort out the
path forward.

Only in this way can activist organizations become healthy
mass organizations truely guided by mass democracy.


<>

Hi folks,

Here is the open letter I sent to Mike Ely of the Kasama
blog.  Following that (for reference) are the reports I made
of this to the Media Weapon community and my final (ie:
deleted) post to Kasama titled: "Community, engagement and
moderation on Kasama"

Ben Seattle
------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Mike,

You asked me to make it clear to you if I understand and
will post within the "rules" for Kasama that you explained
in various private emails.

I have reviewed our correspondence and it appears that what
most upset you was that I wrote a very short reply to Carl
that urged him to click a link to my article.

I am willing to agree not to do that in the future (ie: a
short post that links to an article I have written).

However, it seems clear that this is not sufficient as a
basis for Kasama allowing me to continue to post to either
its blog or its "threads" forums.

I understand your "rules" are that if ever make a single
post that does any of the following:

(1) bores someone or is tiresome
(2) patronizes someone or is considered excessively
confident
(3) strays off-topic
(4) is too lengthy
(5) fails to successfully entertain and engage the thread
participants
(6) references, quotes from or links to a political article
I have written

that you will, at your discretion, ban me permanently for
"disrespecting" the Kasama rules or culture.

The problem here is that while at least the first five
points above are worthwhile goals--they are not always
achievable.  And, while I consider you to be very skilled
(certainly more skilled than me) at building discussion, I
do not have a high degree of confidence in your discretion
concerning whether or not I am making a sufficient effort to
engage others (ie: as opposed to engaging in
"self-promotion").  Part of the issue here is that there can
be a fine line between "self-promotion" and championing
certain principles.  And the other part of the issue here is
that I do not have a lot of confidence in your judgement, as
least as concerns me.

On at least three occasions, in my view, you have
misrepresented (whether deliberately or inadvertently) the
principles on which you base your actions.

I will only mention the most recent of these.  You told me
that Kasama is committed to public discussion of its
moderation policy--with the caveat that you will not
endlessly haggle over every act of moderation (ie: a
reasonable caveat--if taken at face value).  But by deleting
my post on the thread supposedly dedicated to discussing
moderation you made clear that your real intent is to
_appear_ to be in favor of discussion while refusing to
allow _any_ discussion whatsoever of _anything_ concrete.
Of course no topic in the real world can be productively
discussed in the absence of concrete examples.

Here are my conclusions:

1. A number of your criticisms of my posts (and my failure
to successfully engage with others) have at least some
validity.  However this is only part of a larger picture.

2. It does not make sense for me to contribute my labor at
this time to helping to build the Kasama community.  You are
in charge of moderation and you have strong skills for
building discussion.  But your "rules" are unclear (and are
not publicly posted anywhere that a reader could easily find
them) and substantive discussion of them is not possible at
this time.  These rules work well enough for now in most
situations--but they are too subject to your judgement to
work well for me (ie: on some key topics, your most
effective political opponent) in circumstances where you
appear intent on preventing the Kasama community from
discussing them.

3. At some point in the future, the Kasama community may
have moderation rules or guidelines that are publicly posted
and publicly discussed by the community.  At that time I
believe it would make sense for me to contribute my labor to
helping to build the Kasama community.  And I look forward
to doing so.

4. In order to reduce the potential for public
misrepresentation of our current conflict that prevents me
from posting to the Kasama blog or "threads" forums, I have
decided to "revoke" your right to communicate with me in
private.  This means that, from this point forward and until
further notice, I will regard all email communication from
you as public domain (with the exception of your email
address--which would remain private).  The Kasama
organization can communicate with me in private if email is
sent by someone other than you.  I do not doubt that you are
working your heart out to do the right thing.  However it is
necessary that I take steps to protect the public record.
This email to you is now also part of the public record.

Sincerely and revolutionary regards,
Ben Seattle


-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Seattle
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2008 6:53 PM
Subject: [theorist] RE: [pof-300] RE: Community, engagement
and moderation on Kasama


Hi folks,

A quick update. Mike deleted my post (see below:
"Community, engagement and moderation on Kasama") from the
thread he created on moderation. It appears that this
thread is for discussion of moderation principles only in
the abstract. Discussion of any concrete issues will not be
allowed.

Mike wrote me privately that I must agree that I "understand
and will work within the rules" or I will be banned. The
rules, however, appear to require making posts in a way that
is not a very productive use of my time (ie: I not use a
tone that could be considered lecturing, that I not repeat
myself and that I not make reference to articles I have
written).

Of course Mike himself does all of these things, as do many
other people who post on Kasama.

Kasama remains a useful project in many ways. But I think
it is clear that it also has its limitations.

Ben

ps: again, most of my posts to Kasama are indexed here:
http://mediaweapon.wetpaint.com/page/Ben-Kasama-posts

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Seattle
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2008 8:46 AM
Subject: [pof-300] RE: Community, engagement and moderation
on Kasama

Hi folks,

I heard back from Mike that he created a thread for these
kinds of issues.

This is now posted at:
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtop
ic=427

Ben

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Seattle
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2008 10:25 PM
Subject: [pof-300] Community, engagement and moderation on
Kasama

Hi Folks,

Currently I am not allowed to post to the Kasama blog but am
permitted to post to the "threads" section of the site which
has a much smaller audience.

Mike Ely (who, along with a few others, runs Kasama) told me
that the Kasama project is committed to public discussion of
moderator policy. So I sent him a private email asking him
if it would be ok to post an essay in the "threads" section
under the title: "Community, engagement and moderation on
Kasama".

I have not yet heard back from Mike. If he tells me that
the post will be deleted or that he would ban from the
"threads" section also--then I will not post it.

Most of my posts to Kasama are indexed here:
http://mediaweapon.wetpaint.com/page/Ben-Kasama-posts

The only thread which is currently active is this one:
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtop
ic=426

I should note that I am in a period of political sabatical
and it is possible that I exercized poor judgement to allow
myself to get sucked into participating in the Kasama
discussion to the degree that I have.

Anyway--the post (if Mike allows me to make it) is below.
Comments and suggestions are welcome!

Ben

----------------------------------------------------------
Community, engagement and moderation on Kasama
----------------------------------------------------------

Mike and the group around him have done a tremendous job in
creating the Kasama blog. Revolutionary-minded activists
from around the world come here to check things out and
post. There has been very good discussion on some of the
most interesting news items of the day as well as some of
the most important questions facing the progressive and
revolutionary movements.

What makes this growing community valuable to me is the
ability to directly access a relatively large number of
activists who have practical experience building
organization with revolutionary aspirations.

This site could not have become the success that it so far
is without its effective moderation policy. We can post
our thoughts, explore topics and learn from one another
without having our time wasted by word-twisting hotheads
and the aggressively clueless. People who come here "leave
their guns at the door" and treat one another with respect.

That's my introduction.

I wanted to make it clear that I understand the necessity
for moderation before explaining that I created this thread
because I have a disagreement with Mike that prevents me
from posting to the Kasama blog.

Basically, Mike has concluded that I do not respect the
culture of the site. Mike has said that I can post if I
engage others in a way where I do not lecture, repeat myself
or reference various political or theoretical articles I
have written. On the other hand, it appears that if I do
any of these things, even one more time, I will be
[b]permanently banned[/b] from the site.

In these conditions I see little point in posting to the
blog. Of course it is not good to lecture people, or be
endlessly repetitive or to constantly bombard people with
links rather than to engage them. Mike makes some good and
practical points. The problem is that, if I post, I will
eventually write something in such a way that someone feels
I am lecturing, or I will repeat myself, or I will feel it
appropriate to inform someone of something I have written.
And then I will be permanently banned. It is better for me
to quit before I complicate things and further upset Mike.

I suggested to Mike that, if he was concerned that I was
alienating readers--that I could agree to limit my posts to
some small number per month that he might be comfortable
with. He would not go for it. To Mike these issues are
very black and white.

I think the basic problem here (from my side) is that I have
not been successful in engaging people here. I have made
many efforts to engage others--but with little result. Part
of the issue is that I am not skilled socially and I do
tend to be very blunt with people. In my view a larger part
is that, so to speak, my machines may come from too far way.
That is a way of saying that the principles which are the
core part of my comments and articles are not connecting
with the experience and conclusions of most readers.

I hope that things eventually improve to the point where I
can post to the blog. The revolutionary movement has room
in it for people with a range of abilities and politics and
I hope that the Kasama blog will eventually have room for
me. In the meantime, I wanted to inform those few who have
found my posts useful why it is that I am no longer posting
to the blog.

I am still allowed to post to the "Kasama threads" section
of the site. This section has a far smaller audience and I
believe that Mike has a lower level of concern that I will
alienate readers there.

And I invite readers (both those who have gotten pissed off
at my posts as well as those who have found my posts to be
insightful) to share their thoughts and feelings. How can I
better engage with others in a useful way without watering
down the things I need to say?

My view is that, for many reasons, much of the left is in
denial about some very basic and serious problems. The
best analogy is someone you love and need who has a problem
with alcohol. At some point you need to confront the
problem. And, no matter how carefully you choose your
words--you are likely to make the person very angry.

It is for reasons like this that I believe that questions
related to moderation and culture are often not black and
white. Ultimately, we will need to tap the brainpower and
experience of the wider community in order to resolve the
kinds of contradictions that prevent me from posting to the
blog.

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

Hi folks,

A quick update.  Mike deleted my post (see below:
"Community, engagement and moderation on Kasama") from the
thread he created on moderation.  It appears that this
thread is for discussion of moderation principles only in
the abstract.  Discussion of any concrete issues will not be
allowed.

Mike wrote me privately that I must agree that I "understand
and will work within the rules" or I will be banned.  The
rules, however, appear to require making posts in a way that
is not a very productive use of my time (ie: I not use a
tone that could be considered lecturing, that I not repeat
myself and that I not make reference to articles I have
written).

Of course Mike himself does all of these things, as do many
other people who post on Kasama.

Kasama remains a useful project in many ways.  But I think
it is clear that it also has its limitations.

Ben

ps: again, most of my posts to Kasama are indexed here:
http://mediaweapon.wetpaint.com/page/Ben-Kasama-posts


-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Seattle
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2008 8:46 AM
To: 'pof-200'
Cc: 'theorist'; pof-300@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [pof-300] RE: Community, engagement and moderation
on Kasama


Hi folks,

I heard back from Mike that he created a thread for these
kinds of issues.

This is now posted at:
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtop
ic=427

Ben

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Seattle
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2008 10:25 PM
Subject: [pof-300] Community, engagement and moderation on
Kasama

Hi Folks,

Currently I am not allowed to post to the Kasama blog but am
permitted to post to the "threads" section of the site which
has a much smaller audience.

Mike Ely (who, along with a few others, runs Kasama) told me
that the Kasama project is committed to public discussion of
moderator policy. So I sent him a private email asking him
if it would be ok to post an essay in the "threads" section
under the title: "Community, engagement and moderation on
Kasama".

I have not yet heard back from Mike. If he tells me that
the post will be deleted or that he would ban from the
"threads" section also--then I will not post it.

Most of my posts to Kasama are indexed here:
http://mediaweapon.wetpaint.com/page/Ben-Kasama-posts

The only thread which is currently active is this one:
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtop
ic=426

I should note that I am in a period of political sabatical
and it is possible that I exercized poor judgement to allow
myself to get sucked into participating in the Kasama
discussion to the degree that I have.

Anyway--the post (if Mike allows me to make it) is below.
Comments and suggestions are welcome!

Ben

----------------------------------------------------------
Community, engagement and moderation on Kasama
----------------------------------------------------------

Mike and the group around him have done a tremendous job in
creating the Kasama blog. Revolutionary-minded activists
from around the world come here to check things out and
post. There has been very good discussion on some of the
most interesting news items of the day as well as some of
the most important questions facing the progressive and
revolutionary movements.

What makes this growing community valuable to me is the
ability to directly access a relatively large number of
activists who have practical experience building
organization with revolutionary aspirations.

This site could not have become the success that it so far
is without its effective moderation policy. We can post
our thoughts, explore topics and learn from one another
without having our time wasted by word-twisting hotheads
and the aggressively clueless. People who come here "leave
their guns at the door" and treat one another with respect.

That's my introduction.

I wanted to make it clear that I understand the necessity
for moderation before explaining that I created this thread
because I have a disagreement with Mike that prevents me
from posting to the Kasama blog.

Basically, Mike has concluded that I do not respect the
culture of the site. Mike has said that I can post if I
engage others in a way where I do not lecture, repeat myself
or reference various political or theoretical articles I
have written. On the other hand, it appears that if I do
any of these things, even one more time, I will be
[b]permanently banned[/b] from the site.

In these conditions I see little point in posting to the
blog. Of course it is not good to lecture people, or be
endlessly repetitive or to constantly bombard people with
links rather than to engage them. Mike makes some good and
practical points. The problem is that, if I post, I will
eventually write something in such a way that someone feels
I am lecturing, or I will repeat myself, or I will feel it
appropriate to inform someone of something I have written.
And then I will be permanently banned. It is better for me
to quit before I complicate things and further upset Mike.

I suggested to Mike that, if he was concerned that I was
alienating readers--that I could agree to limit my posts to
some small number per month that he might be comfortable
with. He would not go for it. To Mike these issues are
very black and white.

I think the basic problem here (from my side) is that I have
not been successful in engaging people here. I have made
many efforts to engage others--but with little result. Part
of the issue is that I am not skilled socially and I do
tend to be very blunt with people. In my view a larger part
is that, so to speak, my machines may come from too far way.
That is a way of saying that the principles which are the
core part of my comments and articles are not connecting
with the experience and conclusions of most readers.

I hope that things eventually improve to the point where I
can post to the blog. The revolutionary movement has room
in it for people with a range of abilities and politics and
I hope that the Kasama blog will eventually have room for
me. In the meantime, I wanted to inform those few who have
found my posts useful why it is that I am no longer posting
to the blog.

I am still allowed to post to the "Kasama threads" section
of the site. This section has a far smaller audience and I
believe that Mike has a lower level of concern that I will
alienate readers there.

And I invite readers (both those who have gotten pissed off
at my posts as well as those who have found my posts to be
insightful) to share their thoughts and feelings. How can I
better engage with others in a useful way without watering
down the things I need to say?

My view is that, for many reasons, much of the left is in
denial about some very basic and serious problems. The
best analogy is someone you love and need who has a problem
with alcohol. At some point you need to confront the
problem. And, no matter how carefully you choose your
words--you are likely to make the person very angry.

It is for reasons like this that I believe that questions
related to moderation and culture are often not black and
white. Ultimately, we will need to tap the brainpower and
experience of the wider community in order to resolve the
kinds of contradictions that prevent me from posting to the
blog.

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

Hi folks,

I heard back from Mike that he created a thread for these
kinds of issues.

This is now posted at:
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtop
ic=427

Ben

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Seattle
Sent: Saturday, December 13, 2008 10:25 PM
Subject: [pof-300] Community, engagement and moderation on
Kasama

Hi Folks,

Currently I am not allowed to post to the Kasama blog but am
permitted to post to the "threads" section of the site which
has a much smaller audience.

Mike Ely (who, along with a few others, runs Kasama) told me
that the Kasama project is committed to public discussion of
moderator policy. So I sent him a private email asking him
if it would be ok to post an essay in the "threads" section
under the title: "Community, engagement and moderation on
Kasama".

I have not yet heard back from Mike. If he tells me that
the post will be deleted or that he would ban from the
"threads" section also--then I will not post it.

Most of my posts to Kasama are indexed here:
http://mediaweapon.wetpaint.com/page/Ben-Kasama-posts

The only thread which is currently active is this one:
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtop
ic=426

I should note that I am in a period of political sabatical
and it is possible that I exercized poor judgement to allow
myself to get sucked into participating in the Kasama
discussion to the degree that I have.

Anyway--the post (if Mike allows me to make it) is below.
Comments and suggestions are welcome!

Ben

----------------------------------------------------------
Community, engagement and moderation on Kasama
----------------------------------------------------------

Mike and the group around him have done a tremendous job in
creating the Kasama blog. Revolutionary-minded activists
from around the world come here to check things out and
post. There has been very good discussion on some of the
most interesting news items of the day as well as some of
the most important questions facing the progressive and
revolutionary movements.

What makes this growing community valuable to me is the
ability to directly access a relatively large number of
activists who have practical experience building
organization with revolutionary aspirations.

This site could not have become the success that it so far
is without its effective moderation policy. We can post
our thoughts, explore topics and learn from one another
without having our time wasted by word-twisting hotheads
and the aggressively clueless. People who come here "leave
their guns at the door" and treat one another with respect.

That's my introduction.

I wanted to make it clear that I understand the necessity
for moderation before explaining that I created this thread
because I have a disagreement with Mike that prevents me
from posting to the Kasama blog.

Basically, Mike has concluded that I do not respect the
culture of the site. Mike has said that I can post if I
engage others in a way where I do not lecture, repeat myself
or reference various political or theoretical articles I
have written. On the other hand, it appears that if I do
any of these things, even one more time, I will be
[b]permanently banned[/b] from the site.

In these conditions I see little point in posting to the
blog. Of course it is not good to lecture people, or be
endlessly repetitive or to constantly bombard people with
links rather than to engage them. Mike makes some good and
practical points. The problem is that, if I post, I will
eventually write something in such a way that someone feels
I am lecturing, or I will repeat myself, or I will feel it
appropriate to inform someone of something I have written.
And then I will be permanently banned. It is better for me
to quit before I complicate things and further upset Mike.

I suggested to Mike that, if he was concerned that I was
alienating readers--that I could agree to limit my posts to
some small number per month that he might be comfortable
with. He would not go for it. To Mike these issues are
very black and white.

I think the basic problem here (from my side) is that I have
not been successful in engaging people here. I have made
many efforts to engage others--but with little result. Part
of the issue is that I am not skilled socially and I do
tend to be very blunt with people. In my view a larger part
is that, so to speak, my machines may come from too far way.
That is a way of saying that the principles which are the
core part of my comments and articles are not connecting
with the experience and conclusions of most readers.

I hope that things eventually improve to the point where I
can post to the blog. The revolutionary movement has room
in it for people with a range of abilities and politics and
I hope that the Kasama blog will eventually have room for
me. In the meantime, I wanted to inform those few who have
found my posts useful why it is that I am no longer posting
to the blog.

I am still allowed to post to the "Kasama threads" section
of the site. This section has a far smaller audience and I
believe that Mike has a lower level of concern that I will
alienate readers there.

And I invite readers (both those who have gotten pissed off
at my posts as well as those who have found my posts to be
insightful) to share their thoughts and feelings. How can I
better engage with others in a useful way without watering
down the things I need to say?

My view is that, for many reasons, much of the left is in
denial about some very basic and serious problems. The
best analogy is someone you love and need who has a problem
with alcohol. At some point you need to confront the
problem. And, no matter how carefully you choose your
words--you are likely to make the person very angry.

It is for reasons like this that I believe that questions
related to moderation and culture are often not black and
white. Ultimately, we will need to tap the brainpower and
experience of the wider community in order to resolve the
kinds of contradictions that prevent me from posting to the
blog.

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

Hi Folks,

Currently I am not allowed to post to the Kasama blog but am
permitted to post to the "threads" section of the site which
has a much smaller audience.

Mike Ely (who, along with a few others, runs Kasama) told me
that the Kasama project is committed to public discussion of
moderator policy.  So I sent him a private email asking him
if it would be ok to post an essay in the "threads" section
under the title: "Community, engagement and moderation on
Kasama".

I have not yet heard back from Mike.  If he tells me that
the post will be deleted or that he would ban from the
"threads" section also--then I will not post it.

Most of my posts to Kasama are indexed here:
http://mediaweapon.wetpaint.com/page/Ben-Kasama-posts

The only thread which is currently active is this one:
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtop
ic=426

I should note that I am in a period of political sabatical
and it is possible that I exercized poor judgement to allow
myself to get sucked into participating in the Kasama
discussion to the degree that I have.

Anyway--the post (if Mike allows me to make it) is below.
Comments and suggestions are welcome!

Ben


------------------------------------------------------------
Community, engagement and moderation on Kasama
------------------------------------------------------------

Mike and the group around him have done a tremendous job in
creating the Kasama blog.   Revolutionary-minded activists
from around the world come here to check things out and
post.   There has been very good discussion on some of the
most interesting news items of the day as well as some of
the most important questions facing the progressive and
revolutionary  movements.

What makes this growing community valuable to me is the
ability to directly access a  relatively large number of
activists who have practical experience building
organization with  revolutionary aspirations.

This site could not have become the success that it so far
is without its effective moderation  policy.  We can post
our thoughts, explore topics and learn from one another
without having  our time wasted by word-twisting hotheads
and the aggressively clueless.  People who come here  "leave
their guns at the door" and treat one another with respect.

That's my introduction.

I wanted to make it clear that I understand the necessity
for moderation before explaining  that I created this thread
because I have a disagreement with Mike that prevents me
from  posting to the Kasama blog.

Basically, Mike has concluded that I do not respect the
culture of the site.  Mike has said  that I can post if I
engage others in a way where I do not lecture, repeat myself
or reference  various political or theoretical articles I
have written.  On the other hand, it appears that  if I do
any of these things, even one more time, I will be
[b]permanently banned[/b] from the  site.

In these conditions I see little point in posting to the
blog.  Of course it is not good to  lecture people, or be
endlessly repetitive or to constantly bombard people with
links rather  than to engage them.  Mike makes some good and
practical points.  The problem is that, if I  post, I will
eventually write something in such a way that someone feels
I am lecturing, or I  will repeat myself, or I will feel it
appropriate to inform someone of something I have  written.
And then I will be permanently banned.  It is better for me
to quit before I  complicate things and further upset Mike.

I suggested to Mike that, if he was concerned that I was
alienating readers--that I could  agree to limit my posts to
some small number per month that he might be comfortable
with.  He  would not go for it.  To Mike these issues are
very black and white.

I think the basic problem here (from my side) is that I have
not been successful in engaging people here.  I have made
many efforts to engage others--but with little result.  Part
of the  issue is that I am not skilled socially and I do
tend to be very blunt with people.  In my view a larger part
is that, so to speak, my machines may come from too far way.
That is a way  of saying that the principles which are the
core part of my comments and articles are not  connecting
with the experience and conclusions of most readers.

I hope that things eventually improve to the point where I
can post to the blog.  The  revolutionary movement has room
in it for people with a range of abilities and politics and
I  hope that the Kasama blog will eventually have room for
me.  In the meantime, I wanted to  inform those few who have
found my posts useful why it is that I am no longer posting
to the  blog.

I am still allowed to post to the "Kasama threads" section
of the site.  This section has a  far smaller audience and I
believe that Mike has a lower level of concern that I will
alienate  readers there.

And I invite readers (both those who have gotten pissed off
at my posts as well as those who  have found my posts to be
insightful) to share their thoughts and feelings.  How can I
better  engage with others in a useful way without watering
down the things I need to say?

My view is that, for many reasons, much of the left is in
denial about some very basic and  serious problems.  The
best analogy is someone you love and need who has a problem
with  alcohol.  At some point you need to confront the
problem.  And, no matter how carefully you  choose your
words--you are likely to make the person very angry.

It is for reasons like this that I believe that questions
related to moderation and culture  are often not black and
white.  Ultimately, we will need to tap the brainpower and
experience  of the wider community in order to resolve the
kinds of contradictions that prevent me from  posting to the
blog.

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

Hi folks,

Some here may find this of interest.

Ben challenges Mike Ely (Kasama)
to a debate on Workers' Rule:

We need a living conception of workers' rule, not a stinking
corpse
http://z11.invisionfree.com/Kasama_Threads/index.php?showtop
ic=426

hi folks,

I posted the following to this Kasama thread:
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/11/09/linda-d-no-more-givi
ng-revolution-a-bad-name/

Last time I posted to Kasama--Mike Ely held my post for
three days--until the thread was dead.  Hopefully this one
will get through moderatation more quickly.

-- Ben

------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Linda,

I have little time for posting but I noticed your comment on
the originating thread (ie: "Mike gets personal with the
RCP") and felt compelled to comment.

The unprincipled manuevering of the RCP is of interest to
the extent that it casts light on similar manuevers that are
common to many small groups with revolutionary aspirations.

The working class needs its revolutionary party.  But the
problem of corrupt and unprincipled manuevers must be
confronted.

----------------------------------------
What is the nature of the problem?
----------------------------------------

The problem, of course, is not Avakian.  The ISO, for
example, also engages in similar unprincipled bureaucratic
manuevering and Avakian has no prestige or influence within
the ISO.

----------------------------------------
What is the solution?
----------------------------------------

I have concluded that political differences, as a general
rule, must be public.

----------------------------------------
Some background
----------------------------------------

The RCP's footnote 17 expresses the opposite view: that
political differences must be kept secret (ie: "through the
appropriate Party channels"):

<blockquote>
Party members have not only the right but the responsibility
to raise differences with the line and policies of the
Party, in an open and aboveboard way, through the
appropriate Party channels. [...]

Before quitting the Party, did [Mike] exhaust-or even seek
to utilize-the means that exist within the Party for raising
and struggling over differences in a principled way? Did he,
before quitting, write up a paper expressing his differences
and have it forwarded, through Party channels, to Party
leadership? Did he request a meeting with Party leadership
to voice and discuss these differences? No. Instead, he
acted in complete violation of the principles of communism,
and in fact in the opposite manner of anyone with any basic
sense of integrity.
</blockquote>

Many comments on the originating thread opposed footnote
17--but none that I saw directly challenged the conception
that the political differences within the revolutionary
party of the working class must be kept secret.

At one point you came close: asking if the problem was
related to "democratic centralism".

I will not get into a discussion, at this time, of the term
"democratic centralism" and how the meaning of this term has
been transformed completely from how it was used originally
a hundred years ago and has now has become a code phrase
used to justify unprincipled manuevers and stiffle
independent thought.  (I have written plenty about this
elsewhere.)

After a great deal of study I have concluded that the
revolutionary party of the working class will certaintly not
keep its political disagreements secret.  On the contrary it
will be characterized by political transparency.

In the future revolutionary party of the working class, if
someone like Mike has a disagreement with a cult of
personality--it will be considered _normal_ for Mike to make
his views public--whether or not his disagreement has first
been sent along "appropriate Party channels".

Secrecy concering disagreements will be relatively rare and
related to things like:

1. legitimate security concerns
2. personal privacy of individuals
3. time-sensitive tactical information
    (ie: "what tactics will we use to outmanuever
     the police in next week's march?")

I know that many Kasama readers have a different view: that
political disagreements within the party should be kept
secret--for reasons similar to the following:

1. An exaggeration of the significance of the security
factor
    (ie: "this will make it easier for the state to know who
to target", etc)
2. Concerns about the control and management of perceptions
of the party
    and the different currents and internal struggles within
it
3. Holdovers from the Stalinist principle of a monolithic
party
    with no "division of authority"
4. Related concerns that the class enemy, in general, can
more
    easily manipulate the party or its base of support when
    the contradictions within the party are easily known.

Building a real party will require confronting this issue.

----------------------------------------
engagement and our responsibilities
----------------------------------------

Mike criticized me privately (and held up my comment on the
Bill Martin thread for three days--until the discussion was
over) for supposedly failing to make an adequate effort to
engage people here.  From my perspective, I feel like there
has been relatively little effort by the more serious people
here to engage me.  I am not complaining about this.
Rather, I am pointing out, Linda, that I found the motion in
your comments interesting and, if you feel that the
principles which I describe may have some relevance to our
common goal of a mass revolutionary organization--then
please respond so that I can know that someone with
experience has read about and may be thinking about the
principles which I describe.  Since my time is quite limited
I must allocate it to those channels where it appears to
have some resonance.

all the best,
Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/ben/

http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2008/11/269878.shtml

The ISO's socialism conference vs. need for mass
revolutionary organization
author: Ben Seattle
Nov 09, 2008 10:53

Summary:
--------
The ISO's recent conference on building a revolutionary
alternative casts light on the gap between what we need and
what is often the standard practice of small left-wing
groups. Real organization cannot be built on a foundation of
sand.



I attended parts of two workshops from the ISO's recent
conference on building a revolutionary alternative [1].

I was at the first workshop ("War & Capitalism: The Marxist
theory of Imperialism") from 2:30 pm until about 3:15 and
the second workshop ("Leninism: Why We Need a Revolutionary
Party") from 3:15 until 4:15. Each workshop was attended by
thirty or more people I would describe as reasonably
intelligent, dedicated and focused.

There was a period after the main talk where people who
attended were able to ask questions or make short comments
relevant to the topic of the workshop.

I raised my hand repeatedly to speak in the session on the
need for a revolutionary party--but the ISO would not allow
me to speak. The ISO did allow some people from other trends
(ie: FSP/RW and an anarchist) to speak. Just not me.

After the meeting was over, I asked the chair why I was not
allowed the democratic right to speak at a public meeting
just like everyone else. He refused to reply to me. I
believe the reason is that comments I have posted in various
online forums have included criticisms of the ISO and the
organization was concerned that I might have made critical
comments that would have cast the organization in a poor
light and/or made it more difficult to recruit some of those
who attended.

A genuinely mass revolutionary organization would not act
like this in their public meetings. The purpose of public
meetings is to deal with issues in an open way--and to give
progressive activists of all trends (ie: not just selected
activists from selected trends) the right to participate.
This is essential in order to uncover mistakes that are
inevitable for any organization.

These are the questions I was going to ask:

(1) How will we create the party of the working class?
... What will be our common work that will unite
... all that is best in the progressive movement?
(2) Who will be in the party -- and who will not?
(3) How will our party defeat the terrible disease of
reformism ?
(4) How will our party defeat the terrible disease of
sectarianism?
(5) Which tasks are most decisive in creating this party?

I have created a web page with a collection of short,
readable articles and charts where I make an effort to give
my own answers to these questions at:
http://struggle.net/Ben/2008/222-HowTo.htm

Comments on my articles can be posted on the ginger group
blog here:
http://thegingergroup.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/how-to-build-
the-party-of-the-working-class

There have been a thousand attempts to build the party of
the working class ... and a thousand failures. Again and
again our class will undertake this task ... until we have
the theoretical weapons and the humility to understand and
learn from the errors of the past and to start again,
refreshed, on the basis of those principles which provide an
unshakeable foundation.

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


Notes:
------

[1] The conference organized by the International Socialist
Organization (ISO) is described here:

Building a Revolutionary Alternative
The 2008 Northwest Socialist Conference
  http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2008/10/269697.shtml

(excerpt from private email)

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Seattle
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2008

...

We are in a confusing period and the road forward is not
clear.  In these conditions it is understandable that many
activists recoil from confronting the enormity of our tasks.
My view is that activists such as ourselves have the
opportunity and ability, 24/7, while we are awake and while
we dream, to take powerful and effective action.

    "Fight, fail, fight again, fail again,
     fight again ... until their victory;
     that is the logic of the people"
     -- Mao, 1949

There have been a thousand attempts to build the party of
the working class ... and a thousand failures.  Again and
again our class will undertake this task ... until we have
the theoretical weapons and the humility to understand and
learn from the errors of the past and to start again,
refreshed, on the basis of those principles which provide an
unshakeable foundation.

...

from http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2008/10/269668.shtml

--------------------------------------------------
Unite to build more anti-war actions! SAWAC
Posted by: Frank at Oct 25, 2008 16:46
--------------------------------------------------

Actually, it remains to be seen how many groups are right
now in this coalition, but at least a couple more groups
have avowed that they're in it and want to organize more
demonstrations. Further, a representative from a group in
another county is excited about mobilizing people to come to
Seattle for a demonstration in January. And, we now have
three weeks to invite every group and interested activist in
the area to the Nov. 18, 7:00 p.m. meeting at SCCC...and we
should do so!

Ben Seattle says that he "expressed sympathy with those who
have been exasperated with the conduct of SAIC supporters,"
and goes on to lecture about how political struggle should
be conducted. But his own "conduct" in writing this is
pretty exasperating because he wasn't even at the meetings
referred to. He seems to think it principled to rely on the
claims of people who may not be unbiased. (And, BTW Ben, the
person who spent much of the meeting expressing distaste for
SAIC is a 20-year supporter of FSP. Nevertheless, he's
staying in the coalition.)

--------------------------------------------------
Ben replies to Frank
Posted by: Ben Seattle at Oct 25, 2008
--------------------------------------------------

Frank said:

> Ben Seattle says that he "expressed sympathy with those
> who have been exasperated with the conduct of SAIC
> supporters," and goes on to lecture about how political
> struggle should be conducted. But his own "conduct" in
> writing this is pretty exasperating because he wasn't
> even at the meetings referred to. He seems to think it
> principled to rely on the claims of people who may not
> be unbiased. (And, BTW Ben, the person who spent much
> of the meeting expressing distaste for SAIC is a 20-year
> supporter of FSP. Nevertheless, he's staying in the
> coalition.)

Actually, Frank, I was not relying on the claims of the
people you describe.  I was relying on three things:

(1) The behavior of Eric and X9 and Phil and yourself toward
me on many occasions, where you have called me a liar and a
demagogue and so forth when what you really meant to say was
that you disagreed with me [1].  This kind of thing
indicates you are out of touch with the sentiment of many
activists--who consider it extremely important that
activists such as you and me stay away from personal attacks
(ie: negative attacks on "character") and instead learn to
develop a clam and clear focus on _decisive principles_ in
our public disagreements.

(2) The behavior of X9 and yourself at the October 14
meeting itself.

Your "sins" at that meeting were very minor (mainly you
unnecessarily repeated yourself many times).  I have also
made the same error many times (it is an easy error to make
in circumstances like this).  Nonetheless, it revealed a
certain insensitivity to the circumstances.  And your
comments, taken as a whole were quite good: no one could
challenge your central argument: that experience had proven
that we can acomplish more together than separately.

X9 was far more clumsy.  It was his conduct at the meeting
that nailed it for me that the complaints against the
conduct of SAIC members were more than sectarian hot air.

I do not doubt that most (or all) of what X9 said was
accurate.  But being accurate is not the same thing as being
appropriate.  X9's use of "internal language" (ie: using
lots of words and phrases that are only understood to people
from our political tradition) and smug, moralistic tone was
alienating.  Far worse--was that he appeared to be unaware
that the issue that evening was not to defend SAIC's conduct
(ie: whether it was right or wrong) -- but to win those
present to the necessity of keeping the coalition together
for future action.

My reasoning is that if X9 could be that clumsy and
unconscious that evening (in circumstances where we were
discussing the damage caused by SAIC members being clumsy
and unconscious) that it was highly likely that he had
similarly been clumsy and unconscious in previous meetings
that I had not attended.

(3) Others at the meeting also had a similar view of the
potential damage that could be caused by clumsy and
imprecise conduct in the course of necessary struggle.
There were at least five people at the meeting (not counting
myself) who expressed concerns of this nature.  Yes, some of
these people undoubtedly have a sectarian ax to grind
against SAIC--but not _all_ of them.

The guy you describe may be a 20-year supporter of FSP--but
he also showed evidence of thinking for himself (ie: forming
his _own_ conclusions based on what he saw unfolding before
his eyes).  Just because he supports an opportunist trend
does not automatically make him a mindless robot.  If we
simply pigeon-hole people like this we will fail to see
instances where the needs of the movement act to help people
_break away_ from the opportunist trends that they support.
(This may be why I was able to assist X9 to break from the
RCP while you failed to give him greater attention until
later--after he criticized the RCP publicly.)

Yes, I think the FSP/RW supporters tend to be phobic about
the kind of open struggle over principle and practice (ie:
will we work for a march--or a music festival, etc) that
causes the liberals to boycott the group.  I think this is
because the FSP/RW ideology and politics is based on an
alliance with these liberals.  And I think that it is
necessary to stand up for the necessity of open struggle and
oppose the kind of phobia of principled struggle that
results from pandering to and being in orbit around the
liberals.  (And I am confident that you and I are in
agreement on these points.)

It seems clear to me that the main "path of attack" of the
liberals within the coalition (from the beginning) was to
raise the boggieman of "baggage" (ie: unprincipled sectarian
infighting) to frighten the newer activists and as part of
their ambition for the unchallenged domination of liberal
politics (ie: no mass action, petitions for liberal
pipe-dreams, etc) over the coalition.  This was clear from
Geov's comments [2] at the first meeting and from the FSP's
attacks on you a few weeks later.  In these
circumstances--it becomes particularly important to learn to
conduct principled struggle in a calm and focused way--with
precision and (where necessary) restraint.

I believe you have a lot to learn about this.

For example: in your comments (directly above) you place
"scare quotes" around the word "conduct".  Why should it be
necessary to place quotes around the word "conduct"?  It
looks like you mean to imply that my conduct wasn't really
"conduct" (ie: that my conduct was unprincipled, etc).

This is precisely the kind of conduct that _strengthens_ the
hand of people like Geov.  When newer activists see more
experienced activists (ie: like you and me) attacking one
another's character--this tends to make the liberal utopia
of a coalition without struggle more appealing.

Yes, we must struggle against one another.  Yes, this
struggle must be public.  But this also means that we must
learn methods of conducting this necessary struggle with
clarity and precision and with a clear focus on the
principles which are decisive for the liberation of our
class.

Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/ben

** ---- WE NEED MASS DEMOCRACY ----
** http://struggle.net/mass-democracy
**
** Real organization cannot be built on a foundation of
sand.
**
** If we can create a mass anti-imperialist organization
** where decisions and struggle are based on mass democracy
** then we will capture the imagination of serious activists

** everywhere--and be in a position to change the dynamics
of
** the entire antiwar movement. In other words: we will win.


----------
Notes:
----------

[1] See for example: "SAIC and the Struggle for Sobriety"
http://struggle.net/Ben/2008/SAIC-sobriety.htm

and the discussion it generated on Seattle Indymedia at:
http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2008/09/268695.shtml

[2] Geov Parish, editor of the anarchist "Eat the State"
newsletter and liberal commentator for the "Seattle Weekly"

from http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2008/10/269668.shtml


A concise account of the October 14 SAWAC Meeting
author: Ben Seattle
Oct 24, 2008 20:42

--------------------------------------------------
A brief summary of the October 14 meeting of
the Seattle Anti-War Action Coalition (SAWAC)
--------------------------------------------------

The main and most important item on the agenda was whether
(after the successful October 11 march of about 200 people)
the Seattle Anti-War Action Coalition (SAWAC) would dissolve
itself--or would go on to organize further actions in the
months following the elections.

Present were two supporters of the FSP (or maybe it was
Radical Women -- I can never remember which is which anymore
than whether a shop is located on Pine Street or Pike),
three members of SAIC and five independent activists
(including myself). No members or supporters of ISO attended
[1].

The two FSP supporters were in favor of liquidating the
coalition for reasons which (in my opinion--I have no facts,
but more than thirty years experience in the movement) were
probably similar to the reason the ISO also wanted to
liquidate it: the coalition is democratically run and they
cannot control it and it has potential to attract the
attention and devotion of the most serious of the
independent activists--and for this reason represents a
threat to their reformist and sectarian agenda and their
cozy relationships with their liberal friends.

One of the SAIC comrades gave a powerful (and essentially
irrefutable) argument for keeping the coalition together: We
can accomplish more by working together than by going our
separate ways. This was proven by the October 11 mass
action.

One of the independent activists was concerned about
maintaining the coalition in circumstances where (after the
departure of the ISO and FSP) SAIC would be the only
organized group remaining within it (ie: and might be able
to dominate the coalition). The problem (as perceived by
many who spoke) was that SAIC's actions within the coalition
had potential to alienate activists who were new to the
movement and might be "turned off" by what appeared to be
SAIC's sectarian bickering with groups like the ISO.

The struggle that led to this concern had unfolded over
several weeks and revolved around the question of who would
be able to speak at the October 11 mass action. SAIC
supporters asserted that the ISO supporters were attempting
to "stack" the speakers' list and prevent any SAIC
supporters from speaking.

At this time in the meeting, I spoke up.

I will note (full disclosure) that I was quite happy to hear
a SAIC supporter speak at the October 11 mass action. It was
the first time in a very long time that I have heard such a
militant speech at an action of that size. The SAIC speech
denounced the treachery of the Democratic Party and its
opportunist flunkies and allies within the movement. These
kinds of things are precisely what activists need to know
and need to hear.

So I believe it was necessary for SAIC to struggle against
the ISO in order to have a spot on the speakers' list.

However, at the October 14 meeting, I also expressed
sympathy with those who have been exasperated with the
conduct of SAIC supporters. Struggle is necessary, but this
struggle must also be "clean"--with a clear focus on
decisive principles--and conducted in such a way that it
avoids the appearance of personal attack--and is not
confusing--and does not bore people to death.

I told everyone at the meeting that I believed that the
coalition must continue. The SAIC comrades do a ton of
useful and necessary work and we must continue to work with
them. I also gave my opinion that the SAIC comrades do often
have their heads shoved into their rear ends: my personal
experience is that they have generally responded to my
principled criticisms of their work with attacks on my
character [2]. I said that the best way to deal with the
tendency of SAIC supporters to engage in confusing or
personal attacks--would be by means of the active role (ie:
adult supervision) of experienced and independent activists
who could give a clear and healthy perspective to newer
activists who might in the future come around the coalition.
If our coalition can become a pole of attraction for
independent activists--then every group in town (all of
which want, above all, to recruit the activists) will swarm
around us like flies on shit [3].

After some discussion everyone present (with the exception
of the two FSP supporters) voted to continue the work of
SAWAC. Our next meeting [4] will be on Tuesday, November 18.
Ours is a work in progress.

Ben Seattle
  http://struggle.net/ben (Ben's site)

** ---- WE NEED MASS DEMOCRACY ----
**  http://struggle.net/mass-democracy
**
** Real organization cannot be built
** on a foundation of sand.
**
** If we can create a mass anti-imperialist organization
** where decisions and struggle are based on mass democracy
** then we will capture the imagination of serious
** activists everywhere--and be in a position to change
** the dynamics of the entire antiwar movement. In other
** words: we will win.

----------
Notes:
----------

[1] FSP = Freedom Socialist Party,
SAIC = Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee,
ISO = International Socialist Organization

[2] See for example: "SAIC and the Struggle for Sobriety"
  http://struggle.net/Ben/2008/SAIC-sobriety.htm

I support the work of SAIC (and have helped them distribute
their leaflets on many occasions) but I also criticize their
weaknesses. In particular, I publicly criticized SAIC for
failing to take a sober attitude toward the need to make
greater use of the internet and build open community. Their
response so far has been, to a large extent, the usual
sectarian politics of personal attack (ie: accusations that
I am a liar, demagogue, parasite, "class enemy", supposedly
fail to appreciate women and have weak character, etc) that
small groups often use to shield themselves from criticism
(ie: "shooting the messenger") and avoid confronting their
own weaknesses.

[3] Groups on the left are usually engaged in a cutthroat
competition with one another over the warm, living bodies of
activists--who represent a form of what is sometimes called
"social capital" (ie: a vast reservoir of free labor) that
sustains each group in its darwinian struggle against other
groups for growth and survival.

[4] See  http://seattle-awac.org (when site is hopefully
updated) for details of time and place

------------------------------------------------------------
=)
Posted by: (A) at Oct 24, 2008 21:24
------------------------------------------------------------

Don't know a damn thing, but I'm glad you all are doing what
you're doing.

ISO can got to hell. Fuck 'em.

Stay together and don't get high on your egos. You
know...those things that fight each other at meetings.

Hi folks,

The Kasama website has become a popular blog for activists
who used to be around the RCP,USA and got "burned" and (to
an extent) "burned out" by their experience.  Many or most
of the regular contributors to the site have left
social-democratic politics combined with a revolutionary
self-image (ie: similar, in that respect, to the RCP
itself).  However the site is an important one and has
attracted a fairly wide readership.

My post (see below) is still awaiting approval from Mike Ely
(the Kasama moderator).  It is on a page where one of the
ex-RCPers explains that he has little idea what will (or
should) come next after the fiasco of the RCP style cultism.

Ben


from:
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/10/22/bill-martin-on-conce
ption-collectivity-pt-5-new-forms-after-an-exhausted-project
/


Hi Bill and other readers,

> I don't know what the next phase of organization
> will look like, though I am willing to work with
> others who believe in a communist future and a
> revolutionary road toward it to figure this out.
> In many ways I am at a loss on this point, I want
> to state this quite clearly. [...]
>
> We don't know what Kasama "is" yet, and we are still
> thinking through what it ought to be.

I have done my level best, over many years, to address some
of the more fundamental questions related to the current
"crisis of theory" related to:

(1) What kind of organization do we need ?
(2) What kind of society must be our goal ?

My theoretical work started with the second question above
[1].

Earlier this year I wrote an article attempting to grapple
with the first question [2].

The Kasama project devoted a page to the article above [3]
but in spite of this, unfortunately, the article and the
ideas within it have received relatively little attention
from the community organized around the kasama blog.  (There
were a few dozen comments--but, unfortunately, most were
somewhat superficial.)

I would like to see the organizing principles that I have
described discussed in greater depth by the more serious and
experienced people here.  I do not say this because I
consider myself to be some kind of brilliant theoretician (I
am not) -- but simply because I believe the principles which
I describe are central to what it is that we need to do.

The crisis of theory will not go away until we confront it
squarely--and resolve it.  I have concluded that this
resolution may (approximately) be along the following lines:

------------------------------------------------------------
(1) What kind of society must be our goal ?
------------------------------------------------------------

Our goal must be a society where the working class not only
rules by means of a representative organization (or,
equivalently, some system of organizations) but also has a
functioning "immune system" that will allow it to organize
independent mass struggle against (and overthrow) any and
all people, policies, principles or organizations within its
own ruling state that prove to be hypocritical, incompetent
or corrupt.  In the context of a modern society (with a
modern economy and communiciations infrastructure) this will
mean that everyone (even "counter-revolutionaries") will
have the democratic rights to make their views known and to
organize on the basis of those views.  Those who advocate
for a return to bourgeois rule will be effectively opposed
by:

(a) the principle of the "separation of speech and
property".  This will mean that commercial resources
(including wage labor) will not be allowed to amplify the
voices of reactionaries.  Political speech will be
essentially unregulated by the state only when it is based
on volunteer labor.

(b) the spontaneous actions of the masses who will oppose
backward or reactionary views in millions and billions of
encounters in all kinds of forums and arenas of struggle.

------------------------------------------------------------
(2) What kind of organization do we need ?
------------------------------------------------------------

The organization we need, today, to organize the working
class, in its millions, for the overthrow of bourgeois
rule--may emerge from the development of a revolutionary
pole within a broader mass organization that emerges around
the common work of creating a revolutionary news service
that will offer comprehensive news, analysis and discussion
from the perspective of the material interest of the working
class. This news service will be open to contributions from
all progressive trends (and from ordinary people) and will
also provide a platform for the struggle of trends. This
news service will make use of both paper and digital forms
of communication but it will be the digital backbone of this
service that will eventually extend its reach to many
millions of people on a daily basis who will rate, filter
and discuss articles from a wide range of sources.

Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/ben

Notes:
------

[1] For a good introduction to my work on this topic read:
"Workers' Rule: Is it Dead or Alive?" at
http://struggle.net/ben/2008/eric/moment_of_truth.htm

[2] See: "How to Build the Party of the Working Class"
at: http://struggle.net/Ben/2008/222-HowTo.htm

[3] See:
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/on-the-party/

Hi Alex,

I have been giving thought to your essay: "The Great
Obstacle of Ideology" [1] for a while.  It was not until I
printed it out on paper and read the entire article at one
time that I realized what you were writing about and what
you were saying.

You are tackling an enormous (and important) topic, indeed.

-- 1 --

I read somewhere (maybe it was something you posted) that,
as a young man, Marx began his investigations by focusing on
questions related to human happiness.  This was also central
to my own early work.  Your article is related to this and
more.

I was influenced, when I was young, by a Twilight Zone
episode called "Eye of the Beholder" [2] and, later, by a
treatment of a similar theme in the pilot episode for the
original Star Trek [3].  But this theme (related to what is
considered attractive, sexy or cool) is also present in many
forms throughout our culture, including the popular film
"Napolean Dynamite".  And some of the ideas of the
philosophers you mention were, I think, popularized in the
"Matrix" movie.

Your article is focused on the realtionship between the
"inner world" of the individual and the external or "outer
world" of society as a whole.  There is also a problem in
tacking so vast a subject--inasmuch as there are a thousand
ways to approach this topic--and any attempt to do so will
involve artistic considerations and decisions that the
author must make to connect to his audience.  This also
means that it may be difficult for many readers to
understand your article or give you constructive advice on
how to develop it further.

I doubt that I can add much to assist you in developing this
article other than to note that the part about sexual
relations may be difficult for some readers to understand
because this topic can be highly personal and require great
artistic skill in dealing with in an approachable way that
an audience can relate to.  Wilhelm Reich, I think, wrote
somewhere that the essential characteristic of sexual
relations involves surrender (or mutual surrender) to one
another.  It has been many years since I read Reich but I
remember that part.

Aside from the question of how to make the article more
clear, there is another question related to how useful this
article might be in a practical way.  I will add something
here from my own experience when I was about your age.

I wrote a paper, in college, with the title: "The Next
Billion Years".  It was intended to be scientific
speculation on the future of human development.  My faculty
advisor (a person whose name would be recognizable to many
people in the scientific community) read it and told me
something about it that I always remembered.  He told me
that, because of the extremely ambitious nature of the
subject matter, it was unlikely that anything I wrote on it
would be useful to others at this time--but that it would be
useful to _me_ in further developing my ideas.

He was correct.  The paper today, if I could find it, would
be painful for me to read.  However, my work today, which to
the best of my ability involves an unflinching look at the
longer-term goals of the revolutionary movement--is a
product of the same driving idea that created that paper.
If some readers like my articles today--it is because I
pursued the basic idea.

I suspect something similar may be the case with your
article.  It will be difficult for many readers to
understand and/or relate to it at this time.  You have
grabbed by the tail a beast enourmous beyond imagination.
But hang on and do not let go!  Pursue this and, as your
revolutionary experience accumulates over the years and you
become more mature, this may give your writing a depth that
will help you to capture and hold the attention of many
readers.

-- 2 --

A few other notes may be useful.

The topic of ideology is useful to understand in dealing
with groups on the left.

Recently, I have interacted (on Seattle Indymedia [4]) with
some of the members of SAIC (mainly Frank, X9 and Eric).
They have called me a number of names and, to an extent,
have acted like children.  I don't hold this against them.
It has proven to be true countless times in the history of
the revolutionary movement that, under the influence of
sectarian ideology the most sincere, dedicated and
conscientious comrades will act like jerks.  You can
highlight and underline that last sentence :-)

It is really, absolutely true.  Sectarian myth-making is
part of what we must confront on a daily basis.  We confront
it in others and we (being human) are not immune to its
attractions ourselves.

So the issue of ideology as the essential connection between
the inner world (and passions) of the individual--and the
tasks of our revolutionary class in a world dominated by
imperialism--is indeed front and center among our tasks.

-- 3 --

The materialist worldview does help us understand the
essential issue here: there is an external world.  We can
understand this world (or not) as circumstances allow and
compel.  A mass revolutionary organization will assist the
self-organization of the masses by assisting the myriad
struggles in which they are engaged.  These struggles will
include not only the open, mass struggles (ie: such as the
traditional economic struggles and strikes, the antiwar
movement and many other kinds of mass struggles) but also
many forms of motion that are sometimes not seen as a
struggle (because they remain too weak and undeveloped to be
recognized as such) such as the struggle for authentic
community and culture.  I have seen the later at Burning
Man.  It is often not seen as struggle (I think it is seen
more as simply being part of life) but it is inspiring.

The essential bridge, or stepping stones, for the individual
(ie: the connection of the inner world of the individual to
the outer world of the larger society) will be _communities_
of various kinds.  I believe that, eventually, nearly all
significant work of any kind will be organized and
accomplished by various kinds of communities.

The mass revolutionary organization will connect all these
things together and will be surrounded by and inseparable
from systems of communities.  The mass revolutionary
organization will encourage and bring light to many forms of
struggle and it will also help organize artistic creations
that make this light possible.  The development of the mass
revolutionary organization and its associated communities is
therefore at the center of our work, our hearts and our
dreams.

All the best,
Ben Seattle

[1]
http://mediaweapon.wetpaint.com/page/Alex%2FThe+Great+Obstac
le+of+Ideology

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eye_of_the_Beholder
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz4_2lQemFk

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Menagerie_(Star_Trek)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0i1nxcIym0

[4] http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2008/09/268695.shtml

Hi folks,

After today I will be offline for a month or two again as
part of my political sabbatical.

I thought, before I sign off, I would make a comment on the
reply to me from Eric (SAIC and CVO supporter) from the
recent Seattle Indymedia thread at:
http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2008/09/268695.shtml

*** I advocated that SAIC make a commitment to building an
open community of supporters.

Eric replies that "SAIC does everything in its power to
create a community of supporters."

Eric then goes on to explain that this community is mainly
restricted to Seattle and does not make use of the internet.
Eric also fails to deal with the concept of the community
being "open".

I don't believe that Eric (or SAIC) understand the concept
of an open community.  It should be possible (for example)
for anyone who reads a SAIC leaflet to go to the SAIC
website and, from there, be able to learn about (and make
contact with) any supporters of SAIC who want information
about their views (or political work) to be public.  An
example of how this can be done is the wiki page listing
some of the members of the media weapon community-in-embryo
at: http://mediaweapon.wetpaint.com/

The central idea behind any genuine community is that the
members of that community have abundant opportunity to
interact with one another without permission or control by a
guiding center.  I don't think SAIC understands this.  For
example, SAIC maintains a MySpace page--but their website
does not link to it.  You can only find this page if you are
"in the know" or search google.

The concept of an open community is alien to cargo cultists
because they would not be able to _control_ it.  However a
genuinely mass anti-imperialist organization would
understand that an open community of supporters would be
essential to reaching activists and developing the influence
of the organization.

*** I advocated that SAIC take a long-term view of its
tasks, including those theoretical tasks which are decisive
for the revolutionary movement.  Central to these tasks is
encouraging discussion and debate concerning how society can
exist and function without the political and economic system
of imperialism.  This question is important because the
dominant view in our society is that the only alternative to
our current political system is a repressive police state
and the rule of single party.

Eric replies that, since SAIC's points of unity do not
require agreement with any particular view of the nature of
the post-revolutionary society, any and all discussion,
debate or mention of this topic must be avoided entirely.

A genuinely mass anti-imperialist organization would not, of
course, require its members to have agreement on this topic.
But it would recognize that this is an important question
and it would take practical steps to encourage discussion
aimed at developing our confidence that a better world,
without imperialism, is possible.

*** I won't deal with everything Eric says, but will add
that the guiding spirit of Eric's remarks is captured in his
introduction:

> In Ben's reply to Frank, he has shown that his
> program would not take 24 hours a day to
> implement. But that is not really the question,
> is it? The question is, how much of what we are
> already doing would we have to give up to
> implement his program? Well, looking at Ben as
> a consummate example of carrying out the Ben-ist
> program with "a disciplined approach", it
> appears that we would have to essentially resign
> from the concrete immigrant rights, health care,
> anti-war, and anti-police state struggles --
> given that Ben takes almost no part in these
> struggles. We would have to produce only one or
> two leaflets a year, rather than the 8 to 10 we
> do produce -- given that Ben produces very
> little agitation for distribution. We would
> have to drop the analysis of current events that
> we do to write these leaflets -- given that what
> Ben does write on the current struggles consists
> of spouting a few "catchy phrases" and
> generalities, and contains almost no analysis of
> current events. We would have to drastically cut
> back on distributing the tens of thousands of
> leaflets we distribute in demonstrations and in
> working class neighborhoods each year -- given
> that Ben engages in little or none of this work.

Eric's argument is a good example of the phenomenon often
called "groupthink", common in political cults of all kinds.
I call this kind of argument the "Ozymandias argument" (see
the poem below for why).  To see what is wrong with it,
consider how this argument might be applied by an RCP
supporter to defend the RCP from a critic who says that the
RCP does a lot of good and useful work--but that the cult of
Avakian stuff is a real problem.

The RCP supporter can point to all the articles (some of
which are quite good) in the RCP's newspaper and the
hundreds of thousands of copies that are distributed.  The
RCP supporter can then ask: "And what are you doing except
for sitting on your rear end?".  With a triumphal smile the
RCP supporter can then declare that if the RCP did what the
critic was doing--it would not be writing articles and
distributing its newspaper.

The problem with the Ozymandias argument is that it is
mainly a way for supporters of a cult to feel good about
what they are doing while failing to seriously confront
criticism.

Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/ben/ -- my web page
Exchanges on how to build revolutionary organization:
http://struggle.net/mass-democracy/

From "Ozymandias" (Shelley, 1817):

And on the pedestal, these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Hi folks,

Even the most uncompromising stand against imperialist
politics is not enough.

Our movement needs organization based on transparency and
mass democracy. Only in this way can large numbers of
activists have insight into and influence over the direction
of the militant organizations which best reflect the
political needs of powerful antiwar and revolutionary
movements.

The article below is part of a series of exchanges that have
developed over years concerning the need for a sober view of
our long-term tasks.

The organization I criticize below is local to Seattle. But
the issues described extend to the antiwar movement of the
entire country.

The exchanges since July are posted here:
http://struggle.net/ben/2008/saic-sobriety.htm

The exchanges going back several years are indexed here:
http://struggle.net/mass-democracy/

This is also posted at our community wiki at:
http://mediaweapon.wetpaint.com along with Frank's reply to
me from July 24.  Public comments can be posted in the
"threads" section at the bottom of page at:
http://mediaweapon.wetpaint.com/page/Ben%2FSAIC+and+the+stru
ggle+for+sobriety

I also posted this to Seattle and Portland Indymedia at
these locations:
http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2008/09/268695.shtml and
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/09/379339.shtml

If anyone is interested, I will be available via email for
about a week.  After that I will be offline again for
another month or two as part of the circumstances of my
political sabbatical.

Ben

--------------------------------------------
The Road to Sobriety
Ben replies to Frank
September 7, 2008
--------------------------------------------

My regular readers will know that I have immense respect and
admiration for Frank but believe his comments are mistaken.

Frank asserts that the Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee
(SAIC) would have to work more than 24 hours a day to
implement my recommendations. However, Frank fails to be
more specific.

1) Is it difficult to set up an email discussion list? No.
Would maintaining a discussion list require more than an
hour or two per week? Only if it was done without
discipline.

2) Would it take a lot of time to post a short summary of
SAIC's public meetings? It would take about 30 minutes a
month.

3) How about creating an annual report and posting it to
leftist email lists and discussion sites? This would take
more time--but would only need to be done once a year.

4) How about posting drafts of their leaflets? This could be
as simple as posting to a public email list (set up for this
purpose) the drafts and comments that they regularly email
to one another.

5) How much time would it take to give members and
supporters the right to have some form of representation on
the SAIC website? This could be done by giving them links on
SAIC's website and setting up a wiki (setup time is less
than an hour) and linking to it.

6) How about encouraging discussion of the decisive
theoretical issues? This could be done on the wiki. A
disciplined pace of activity might involve interested
individuals devoting one evening in each 90 day period (ie:
four evenings a year) to wiki pages or threads on these
topics.

Of course all of these tasks could easily take far more time
than this if a disciplined approach was not used. But this
is not an argument that these tasks are not necessary.
Rather--it is an argument for the necessity of discipline.
One example of discipline is that one of my discussion lists
restricts subscribers to one or two posts per week. This
encourages thoughtful comments and a higher signal-to-noise
ratio.

Frank notes (correctly) that so far little has come from my
efforts to create an open political community with a clean
focus on the decisive tasks and a practical program of
action. But this does not prove that efforts in this
direction are not necessary or are bound to be futile.

My lack of success, so far, only proves that such a project
is beyond the reach of a single individual with limited time
and ability.

Nor does my lack of success prove that SAIC would "reduce
itself to atomized individuals" were it to implement the six
specific recommendations I advocate that would help SAIC
overcome its isolation and build community:

1) maintain a public email discussion list
2) post summaries of its public meetings
3) create and distribute an annual report
4) post leaflet drafts and comments
5) give SAIC supporters the right to representation on its
website
6) encourage discussion of decisive issues

Frank appears to believe that collective work (ie: on SAIC's
leaflets) would not be possible if SAIC's work also included
the tasks above (some of which involve individual
initiative). Frank's assumptions are heartfelt and
sincere--but this does not make them correct.

I am in the position of a messenger who delivers bad news
that Frank (and others) do not want to hear. In one amusing
incident at SAIC's July public meeting (no one could make
this stuff up) a supporter of the Communist Voice
Organization bellowed so loudly that I was a "class enemy"
who made him feel the need to vomit--that the librarian had
to come upstairs and close the meeting room door in order to
avoid further disturbing everyone else in the building. And
Frank now writes that I am a "liar" because I had written
that the recent resignation of a SAIC member did not result
in "a single moment of sober reflection".

Frank replies that he and other members gave much thought to
this painful situation.

My description, however, remains correct: the reflections of
Frank, and other SAIC members, were not sober if they failed
to consider the possibility that this woman's resignation
did not so much reflect on her lack of consciousness as it
did on SAIC's distorted priorities and excessively narrow
conception of its tasks.

Revolutionary activists must struggle to understand (in a
sober way) what work is necessary and possible. SAIC is
failing to take (or even consider) steps which are necessary
to overcome its isolation and the isolation of many serious
activists across the country.

The challenges of creating authentic antiwar and
revolutionary organization are complex. I believe that
solutions to these challenges will make use of the emerging
revolution in communications. Frank's skepticism on this
topic should be taken into consideration. But we also have a
responsibility to think these things through for ourselves.

Frank's skepticism, it appears to me, is based on fear.
Frank is part of a cargo cult which is unlikely to survive
in the coming era of information war and political
transparency.
The need to take a sober view of our long-term tasks will
not go away. If we are serious about overthrowing bourgeois
rule we must focus on what is decisive.

hi folks,

I will likely be offline until September.

I wish I could be more active right now--but you can't
always get what you want.

All the best,
Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/ben/
http://struggle.ent/mass-democracy/
http://mediaweapon.wetpaint.com/

-- fyi --

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Seattle
Sent: Saturday, July 12, 2008 6:22 PM
To: 'pof-200'
Cc: 'pof-300'
Subject: [pof-200] A brief report on Ben Seattle's political
sabatical

Hi everyone,

As many of you know, I am currently on a political
"sabatical". Basically there are a lot of issues in my
personal life that require all of my attention and, in order
to give them the attention they require--I must abstain from
nearly all political work for an extended period.

What this has amounted to, so far, is keeping my internet
connection turned off for at least a month at a time. This
afternoon I logged onto my internet connection for the first
time in nearly six weeks. I intend to be "online" for about
a week and then be "offline" again until sometime in
September. During the few days I will be online I will
attempt to catch up with a few things. My current guess is
that this pattern of activity will be necessary for about a
year.

If anyone has any questions for me or would like to
internact with me -- this is the time, so to speak, to speak
up.

And a reminder, again, that the pof-200 list has a sister
list: the pof-300 list. Subscribers to the pof-300 list can
post as often as they like, unlike pof-200 where subscribers
are limited to once a week (or twice a week for those who
participate in mass actions). The archives of the pof-300
list (like pof-200) are public -- so you can always check
them to see what you might (or might not) be missing. More
info is available at: http://MediaWeapon.com

All the best,
Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/ben/

(a comment on an exchange at SAIC's June 28 public meeting)
from: http://struggle.net/Ben/2008/saic-sobriety.htm
(which also has better formatting, boldface, italic,
pullquotes, etc)


.......... In honor of those who have fallen:
.......... SAIC and the struggle for sobriety
.......... (and a high productivity of labor)
.......... in the antiwar and
.......... revolutionary movements
..........
.......... Ben Seattle -- July 11, 2008


They were the best people. They were the most clear-sighted,
determined, dedicated and politically conscious people. Now
they are dead--all except Frank and me.

Ray, Joe, Mohammad, Anthony, Danny, Fred, Maggie, Molly, Pat
and many others were the people who inspired me when I was
new to struggle--who allowed me to believe that a small band
of determined comrades, armed with a scientific
understanding of society, could assemble a revolutionary
mass organization with the ability to mobilize the immense
energies of the working class for the overthrow of the
economic and political system of imperialism.

Now they are gone. Of course, they still live and breathe,
in a technical sense, if you want to be nitpicky. But they
are lost to the struggle. Politically, they are dead: rubbed
out, not by bullets, but by a sense of futility and
hopelessness; by a feeling that revolutionary work at the
present time is useless.

The few words above are the story of my youth (not a wasted
youth by any stretch--on the contrary a truly excellent
preparation for my work today).

Why did I remain active in struggle when so many comrades,
more dedicated and disciplined than me, have fallen?

Most likely, it is simply because I was in the right place
at the right time. I could see something the others could
not.

The war of ideas, organized on a mass scale, will be known
as "information war". And information war is bound to emerge
as the central organizing principle of the class struggle.
The 21st century, more than any period humanity has
witnessed, is destined to be a century of information war.

For whatever reason, I have seen this with a bit more
clarity than many others. I want to do everything possible
to prepare for the gathering storm which, I believe, will
sweep away the rule of society by the social class, the
bourgeoisie), which is dependent for its existence on the
circulation of capital.

But I must return to the theme of my story.

My determination to learn and apply the lessons from the
loss of my former comrades surfaced during a minor
confrontation at the most recent public meeting of the
Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee (SAIC) [1]. On the agenda
was a brief summation of the significance of the
resignations of two members of SAIC.

One of these people was a supporter of the PLP [2], a
sectarian group at odds with another sectarian group, the
CVO [3] which, for all practical purposes, charts the course
of SAIC. The guy from the PLP had been around SAIC for a few
weeks.

The other person to resign was a woman who quit,
essentially, because she felt that the sacrifice of her time
to SAIC's agenda and program of work was not producing the
kind of results which left her feeling enthusiastic and
encouraged.

For two years of her life, this woman had devoted a
substantial portion of her free time to SAIC. One might
think that her resignation might have resulted in at least a
single moment of sober reflection.

Not a chance.

All present at the meeting (with the exception of me)
concluded that this woman's resignation was a result of her
own inability to see and appreciate the value of SAIC's
current methods and current work (which are mostly centered
around creating and distributing leaflets).

I had a different view.

I have often criticized SAIC's obsessive focus on short-term
goals and what I call SAIC's "next leaflet--next 60
days--keep people excited--urgency addiction" orientation
[7]. This orientation allows SAIC to do much useful
work--but it fails to address many of the real needs of the
movement. This inevitably leads to demoralization because,
sooner or later, supporters realize that the organization
lacks the ability to have significant impact over the long
term.

I said that SAIC was wasting ninety percent of its potential
because its priorities were screwed up. I said it was
inevitable that this would create a crisis of confidence and
demoralization. When supporters of an organization are
wasting ninety percent of their precious life energy--they
may not fully understand all the details--but they will
sense, even if at a subconscious level, that their time is
being wasted.

I consider SAIC the best organization of its kind. And, for
this reason, I support it in various ways. But I do not
support it blindly and, over the years [4] I have publicly
criticized SAIC's failure to:

(1) make a commitment to building an open community of
supporters,
(2) make greater use of internet forums on a national level,

(3) be more politically transparent,
(4) take a long-term view of its tasks, including those
theoretical tasks which are decisive for the revolutionary
movement.

More concretely, I advocated that SAIC:

(5) distribute a political summary of its work to activists
and activist organizations at least once a year (making wide
use of electronic forums) and ask for and publish feedback
and advocate that other organizations create, publish and
discuss similar summaries of their own experience

(6) maintain a public email discussion list

(7) publish summaries of their public meetings in postings
on their blog, so that readers can more easily understand
(and publicly comment on) SAIC's priorities and the
confrontation of agendas which is inevitable in any
genuinely mass organization.

(8) Give all members and supporters of their organization
the right to some form of representation on its web site --
so that the politics of the people and political trends
within SAIC can be public and the SAIC web site can
represent and function as the union of its members' politics
rather than the intersection or "least common denominator"
everyone can agree with.

(9) Post drafts of their leaflets as these leaflets are
developed, along with summaries of the related discussion
(to the extent that time allows) so that other activists can
better understand how high-quality political agitation is
created and participate in this process.

(10) Encourage discussion and debate concerning how society
can exist and function without the political and economic
system of imperialism (and the capitalist system of
production for profit which makes imperialism inevitable) in
order to help overcome the universal belief that the only
alternative to the existing system of bourgeois rule is a
corrupt police-state), such as the former Soviet Union or
China, where a single party holds a monopoly of power and
can suppress the voice of its opponents.

There is no guarantee, of course, that the measures I
advocate would have prevented either of the recent
resignations. But I believe that such measures would expand
the scope of SAIC's work and provide a more effective
vehicle for the systematic engagement of a larger number of
activists on a wider range of levels This conforms to the
needs of the movement and would better position SAIC to gain
experience (and attention for its politics) in the coming
era of information war.

It goes without saying, of course, that my views were not
warmly received at the SAIC meeting. I was accused of being
"passive and demoralized". It was pointed out, correctly,
that my own efforts to help build an activist community with
its own practical program of work have, so far, come to very
little [5]. But such a response, and the general failure to
recognize that SAIC's priorities are distorted, are what one
would expect from a dysfunctional organization.

Nothing about SAIC is going to change in the short term.
This is an organization so obsessed with control that it
refuses), in a world of interconnection, to link to its own
MySpace page [6] from the website which it advertises on its
leaflets.

Even the best, most determined and most conscious groupings
of activists, in order to protect their sense of mission and
purpose, will often surround themselves with a protective
cocoon of myth, illusion and self-deception. We
underestimate the significance of this factor (in a period
in which the revolutionary movement is paralyzed by a crisis
of theory) at peril to everything we hold dear.

The only realistic and reliable way to overcome
self-deception and maintain a clean and sober perspective is
to strive to develop a depth of humility equal in magnitude
to our confidence in our principles and the boldness of our
vision. This means, above all, that we must ask for help
from one another for the purpose of keeping ourselves
honest. We need mass criticism. Mass criticism is a matter
of life and death. Mass criticism equals victory. The lack
of mass criticism equals defeat.

Our defeats and our victories, our strengths and our
weaknesses (large or small) must be publicly discussed), in
real time, in the light of day.

This is what will strike a chord with other activists (who
want to see a mass organization where the conflicts
concerning which principles and agendas will guide the
organization are not concealed with smoke and mirrors).
These activists will help us recognize and correct our
errors and maintain sobriety in a society (and in mass
movements) saturated with intoxication and illusion.

Only by correcting our errors will we be able to touch the
heart of god. Our god is the working class and the oppressed
of our country and the entire earth. This is the source of
infinite reserves of energy and consciousness which will
eliminate imperialism (and the system of bourgeois rule from
which imperialism is inseparable) from this planet and bring
forth a world of peace, abundance and authentic culture and
community for all.

Some of the good comrades of SAIC (or the CVO) may object to
my airing "dirty laundry" or making SAIC "look bad" and so
forth. My reply to them is to simply say, again, that we
need to take a sober view of our long-term tasks. And, in
the long term, the antiwar and revolutionary movements will
never be truly powerful until they confront the need to
build organization on the basis of genuine mass democracy.
And this will prove to be inseparable from the concepts of
political transparency and information war.

Ben Seattle

Public comments are welcome on the "Party of the Future"
(POF) open email lists
and the wiki maintained by the Media Weapon
community-in-embryo.

See also: How to Build the Party of the Working Class by the
same author.

Notes:

[1] SAIC, Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee
     http://seattleaic.org/
[2] PLP, Progressive Labor Party
     http://www.plp.org/
[3] CVO, Communist Voice Organization
     http://communistvoice.org/
[4] Real organization cannot be built on a foundation of
sand
     http://struggle.net/mass-democracy/
[5] The Media Weapon community-in-embryo
     http://MediaWeapon.com
[6] SAIC myspace page

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewpro
file&friendID=154672240
[7] See the illustration (below) of the Covey activity
matrix from my 2007 annual report
     http://struggle.net/Ben/2007/covey-saic.gif

Hi Alex,

As I noted, it would not be correct for me to begin my time
off before replying to you on your May 23 leaflet draft.

I do not have the time I would like to study this carefully
so I will simply comment on those items which most caught my
attention.

1) In general, it would be useful to carefully study the
SAIC agitation.  They are very good at this.  If I was
totally focused on agitation instead of information war,
theory and infrastructure -- I still might not be able to
create agitation that has the strengths of SAIC's agitation.

I have many times, by the way, proposed to SAIC comrades the
value of, to the extent practical, putting their
leaflet-making process online so that activists like
yourself can study how they gradually create quality
agitation--and the political principles and considerations
that go into this.  Part of the leaflet creation process is
not practical to put online (ie: because it is verbal
discussion).  But the exchange of drafts and written
comments could be more public.

2) There is an elements in your draft that might make it
look (in the eyes of many readers) like moralizing.

Your proposed title:

> SUPPORTING OBAMA WILL NOT BRING CHANGE; IT WILL PREVENT IT

could be seen as preaching to readers.

Yes, it is harmful (and undermines/liquidates the movement)
for the opportunist bigshots to work to turn the movement
into a plaything in the hands of the Democratic Party.

But the work of the opportunist misleaders is not the same
as the actions of the masses (who may vote for Obama because
they have illusions).

At a SAIC meeting which discussed their election leaflet
(ie: not their most recent leaflet--but the one before that
with the title: "The elections are no solution: Fight
imperialism with mass struggle!") we discussed the need to
avoid coming across to our young readers as if we were their
parents.  Here is a passage from that leaflet:

> whoever one plans to vote for, if anyone, our main
> emphasis must be on building the mass movements with
> anti-imperialist politics.

The SAIC leaflet explained to readers that the elections are
not a solution--but recognizes that many of our readers are
going to vote anyway and that our leaflets will not be able
to free most readers of their illusions.  Hence the
acceptance, in the passage quoted above, of what many of our
readers will do.

From your draft:

> Obama's charismatic promise of change has convinced
> a large portion of the left that in order to achieve
> their long term goals, they must rally behind Obama.
> But this will not help to advance the anti-war and
> revolutionary movements; it will lead those movements
> into complete stagnancy. Obama and the Democratic
> Party are representatives of the rich ruling class of
> big-time capitalists, people who have no desire
> whatsoever to end the imperialist wars,

so far so good ...

> because they profit from them.

True--but the above might be better explained
(see point 3 below)

> It is an illusion that the Democratic
> Party can be changed into a party of the people,

absolutely true--and necessary to repeat ...

> and thus, supporting candidates like Obama would
> be a step backward for the anti-war movement.

Yes, it is a step backward for the antiwar movement.

Yes, it is necessary to say this.

It is not that harmful if readers, as individuals, vote for
Obama.  But the larger picture--in terms of the antiwar
movement and its orientation--is a very different
matter--because the antiwar movement will need to give up
anti-imperialism (ie: anti-imperialist views and tactics) in
order to be avoid threatening bourgeois interests and
"embarassing" Obama.

3) Your analysis is a bit misleading:

> The Iraq war has put money in the pockets of much
> of big business, and thus, the ruling class, and
> their political representatives, have no interest
> in ending the warfare that has given them so much
> money.

The above is somewhat narrow.

It is true, of course, that the war has been extremely
profitable for corporations like Haliburton and Blackwater.
But U.S. imperialism is not waging this war so that it can
transfer taxpayer money to these companies--but rather is
doing so in order to have control over the entire oil-rich
Middle East (ie: military bases and the ability to threaten
and dictate policy and also drown in blood future popular
uprisings) for economic leverage against "friends" and foes
in the future.  So the war is not being waged for profit
today.  Rather--the war represents an strategic _investment_
today for profit (and world domination that assists profits)
in the future.

Your exposure of the DP as a party of imperialism and war is
very good.  You give detailed concrete examples of how the
DP talks against the war--and then votes money for it.  You
give detailed concreate examples of what Obama says and the
loopholes he will use in the future.

Similarly, your section on the special role of the
"progressive" Democrats is very good also.  You give
detailed concrete examples to illustrate the general
principle that they are on a leash and their real role is to
promote the DP as an antiwar party so as to suck the energy
of activists into this miserable swamp.

4) Who is your intended audience?

Is your proposed leaflet for distribution on paper or for
electronic distribution to blogs and email lists?

This can make a difference because the audience can be
different.  Also--distribution on the internet has an
advantage over paper (other than being easier to distribute)
in terms of getting feedback.

One way to improve and develop a political line is to put it
out in the world: learn its points of vulnerability based on
how opponents will attack it -- and learn it strengths and
weaknesses by observing what readers do (or do not)
understand about the line when they read it.

5) Reply to Paul's comments (May 24)

> I know the feeling of "something is missing"
> you speak of, seems we encounter it every time
> we do one of these "expose the reformist illusion"
> pieces. Part of the problem is the contraposition
> of a counterproductive, but concrete, action
> (let's vote for the lesser evil imperialist) with
> a correct, but abstract, alternative (let's
> realize that what we need is a workers' revolution).
> In the absence of a living revolutionary movement
> (not just a few thousand of us, if that, who realize
> the need for one), it is difficult to propose an
> alternative concrete action in our agitation. This
> is a dillemma I have not found any solution to
> myself. Anyone else have some ideas?

I guess this is the big question.  Our alternative would be
to create effective antiwar organization and effective
revolutionary organization.  But how do we do this?  We do
not necessarily have answers to these questions.  It is
easier to say what kinds of practices will not work.  If we
had an effective alternative we would be able to say much
more.

This relates, also, the central problem in the development
of our community-in-embryo.  We do not have a practical
program of work that can attract and holod the attention of
the serious activists who we need.  We have had a number of
serious activists in our community (ie: X9, DJ Dialectic and
Ulyanovist) who gave up on this community because "nothing
was happening here".

Marik and I worked (July - November 2006) to create a media
distribution channel that would distribute some articles to
Indymedia sites and reply to the more serious comments.
This effort fell apart when issues in my personal life made
it impractical for me to give this project the time and
attention it needed.  (And there were practical issues that
required my attention--for example we needed to use tables
in our website for the project--and these were difficult to
create--we did not have an easy-to-use wiki like we do now.)

I believe, however, that the basic concept, of systemically
distributing key articles (ie: antiwar agitation,
revolutionary theory and also interesting political articles
we find on the internet) and replying to the more serious
comments -- and gradually expanding the channel (ie: in both
the number of articles and the places the articles are
distributed) is sound and corresponds to our very limited
time and abilities.  Organized well, such a project would be
able to draw on the work of volunteers who might like our
work work and want to assist it.

The project history and principles are on the web at:
http://WeaponOfTransparency.com .  Some of the discussion
concerning how to create it will be on the archives (from
that period) on pof-300 and the theorist list.

There are a number of pitfalls in organizing such a project.
It would be easy to waste time replying to the many
know-it-alls and generals-without-armies on the internet.
It would also be easy to inadvertantly recruit such
know-it-alls and generals-without-armies into the project in
such a way that they would end up representing the
project--with the result that the many readers would
conclude that the project was mainly hot air and hype and
run by people who had little contact with or understanding
of the needs of the movement.

My view is that the pitfalls can be avoided--if we
understand the need to do so.  Necessity is the mother of
invention.

I have no time, unfortunately, to assist in such a project
this year.  Life is uncertain.  I do not know when I will be
able to more fully participate in such a project.  Such a
project would represent a concrete effort to learn about and
harness the potential of information war.  And, one way or
another, information war will represent our program of work
and the fundamental salvation of our movement.

Ben Seattle

__/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/

		        Annual Report
			  for June 2008
			  by Ben Seattle

    __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/ __/


I believe it is useful for revolutionary activists to post,
each year, a summary of their activity over the past year
and plans for the coming year.

Capitalist corporations give a public annual report to
stockholders every year. Our "stockholders" are the workers
and oppressed of the world who, by their own struggles,
inspire us and give us strength. An annual report can assist
revolutionary activists to better understand the work,
activity and priorities of other revolutionary activists.
This can be a small step in the direction of transparency
and eventual greater coordination of effort.

This year, for the first time, three subscribers from the
"party of the future" (pof) lists have joined me in the
effort to make annual reports by revolutionary activists and
organizations a tradition.

These annual reports are of great significance. Over time
the working class and its activists will create a new kind
of organization, far more open than has been possible before
the internet. Annual reports from members and supporters of
this organization will greatly facilitate its
self-organization.  For example, if you want to create or
organize a project of some kind--you will be able to find
other comrades with similar interests and with the
experience you need.

To set an example, and declare my work and priorities before
friend and foe alike, I submit the following:

===============================================
Contents:
===============================================

1) What I accomplished in the last year
2) What I plan to accomplish in the coming year
3) Problems that came up and solutions that were developed
4) Additional comments -- notes for the future

===============================================
1) What I accomplished in the last year
===============================================

a) I continued my work with the Media Weapon community
b) I wrote "How to Build the Party of the Working Class"
c) I wrote critical comments on the practice of SAIC and CVO
d) I engaged in a few threads on the Kasama (ex-RCP) blog
e) I created an experimental wiki for our community

(a) I averaged about one post per week to the larger email
list (pof-200) of the Media Weapon community and about three
posts per week to the smaller email list (pof-300).  Two new
people with political experience and maturity (Alex and
Paul) emerged to support the community and this was a very
positive development.  This is my tenth annual report and,
for the first time, other activists have joined me in
creating annual reports (to see their annual reports, check
out the wiki discussed below).  Step by step revolutionary
activists will overcome their isolation from one another and
from the working class!

(b) I wrote an essay, together with diagrams and a number of
sidebar articles, titled "How to Build the Party of the
Working Class".  This was a major essay.  I hope to
eventually circulate this article within leftist discussion
forums.

(c) I developed by criticism of the practice of the Seattle
Anti-Imperialist Committee (SAIC) and the Communist Voice
Organization (CVO) in several multi-part articles, beginning
with "Cargo-Cult Leninism vs. Political Transparency" (with
22 sidebar articles) and concluding with "Workers' Rule: Is
it Dead or Alive?" (with some killer diagrams and four
appendicies).

(d) I engaged in a number of threads of the Kasama blog (run
by and for activists who used to be around the RCP,USA).
Originally, the Kasama blog seemed to hold promise for the
creation of some kind of revolutionary regroupment that
might have some of the strengths of the RCP without the cult
worship of Avakian that has made the RCP something of a joke
in the left.  All that has resulted from this effort, so
far, is a discussion forum with views ranging from
social-democratic to radical, with an emphasis on the
revolution in Nepal.

(e) I also created a new wiki for the Media Weapon
community.  This wiki is experimental and its value is still
unclear.  However it is very easy to manage and edit and has
a number of advanced features.  My limited experience with
it so far suggests it will be valuable.  Readers can view it
by going to http://MediaWeapon.com and clicking on the
"wiki" link.

===============================================
2) What I plan to accomplish in the coming year
===============================================

a) disengage from all political work
    (to the maximum extent possible)
b) engage in political work
    (to the minimum extent necessary)

The circumstances of my personal life demand that I retreat
further from political work for at least the next year.  My
main "political" task at this time is to better manage the
challenges of my personal life.  This will allow me, in the
long term, to accomplish more politically.

I therefor intend, over the next year, to withdraw from
political work to the maximum extent possible.

I will, however, maintain a bare minimum level of political
activity in support of the existing motion in the Media
Weapon community.

I intend to refrain from posting to our community email
lists for at least the next month.

===============================================
3) Problems that came up in my work
and solutions that were developed
===============================================

I intended to be less active politically in the past year
than turned out to be the case.

Basically, some opportunities came up to develop a more
popular understanding of the principles necessary for the
development of the antiwar and revolutionary movements.  I
felt that these opportunities were too valuable to ignore.
My work on them resulted in my essay on "how to build the
party" and my polemical exchanges concerning workers' rule.

I intend to be far less politically active in the coming
year.

===============================================
4) Additional comments
===============================================

I believe that my work on "how to build the party" and the
nature of workers' rule may prove to be valuable, in the
long term, to the revolutionary movement.  Some of the
diagrams, by themselves, have potential to make it easier
for activists to understand the important principles
involved.  I believe that potential exists to popularize
some of these diagrams and principles in various places,
ranging from RevLeft to YouTube.  I will not be able to
organize this or participate much in the coming year.  But I
hope to work on this eventually.  There are a lot of
activists who are looking for the answers to the more
important and more difficult questions.  Our community has
some of these answers.  We should make an effort to connect
with these ativists and, so to speak, insert the plug into
the electrical socket.

Sincerely and revolutionary regards,
Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/ben my website
http://MediaWeapon.com our community website (and wiki)
information war wants to be free to serve the class struggle

Hi Alex and Marik and Paul and other readers,

Our community-in-embryo has tried out several wiki's in the past.
These projects have all collapsed under their own weight (ie:
were difficult to edit and maintain, were not very useful, etc).

On the basis of my past experience with these wikis as well as a
study of the experience of wikipedia in dealing with
controversial political topics--I created a proposal for a new
kind of wiki with a number of necessary features.

The most important feature was that individual authors must have
the right to create pages over which they have exclusive control.
There was also a need for a much easier method of editing pages.
For example, serious presentation of content requires the use of
tables.  But the markup language which we used made it difficult
and time-consuming to use tables (and was prone to mistakes).

My proposal for a new kind of wiki can be seen at:
http://AttentionRefinery.com

I hope to eventually work on this proposal and make it (or
something like it) a reality.

But, in the meantime, I have learned that the commercial world
has made it possible for communities like ours to have a free
wiki which is hosted and maintained for us.

I have setup a demo of a community wiki.  You can visit it by
going to http://MediaWeapon.com and clicking on the "wiki" link.

Here are some of the cool features of our current wiki:

** It is free and maintained for us

** We can control who can edit it (ie: commercial spambots were
able to post to our previous wiki).

** Individual pages can be locked so that only users with
"moderator" status can edit them.  This means that we will
eventually be able to give everyone in our community the ability
to create pages without risking unhelpful edits by well-meaning
people who attempt to "improve" certain key pages.

** The editing interface is relatively clean, intuitive and easy
to use.  For example, anyone can create and use tables so that
information can be displayed in a systematic way.

** Each page includes (underneath the main content section) its
own "forum" where anyone in our community will be able to post a
comment about the page (even if they are unable to modify the
content section of the page).

** Each page includes a left column that has a navigational guide
to our wiki.  (Note: this left column also includes the notorious
google ads -- but they are only text: no obnoxious or distracting
flashing animations.)

For now, my thinking is that the core members of our community
(ie: Alex and Marik and Paul and myself) will only create and
edit pages that begin with our names and a slash.  For example, I
will create and edit pages such as "Ben/xyz" while Alex will
create and edit pages that begin with "Alex/" and Paul will
create and edit pages that begin with "Paul/".  That way we will
all have "ownership" over our own pages and will not be editing
one anothers' pages unless we make specific arrangements or
agreements to do so on a case-by-case basis.

When Google comes out publicly with its "knol" project--that will
probably be better then the current demo site.  But in the
meantime we can use this and learn about the great usefulness of
a wiki for our work.

Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net  my website
http://MediaWeapon.com our community website

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Seattle
Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 9:34 PM
To: 'pof-200'
Cc: 'pof-300'
Subject: [pof-200] RevLeft and the Manhatten Project

Hi Elaine, Alex, Paul and other readers,

I had hoped to complete my annual report over the weekend. I
still intend to do this soon. I am taking a short break from
that in order to comment on Elaine's recent posts related to
RevLeft. I also hope to soon reply to Alex and Paul with some
suggestions regarding Alex's draft (on pof-300, our smaller list
that allows unlimited posting) of a proposed leaflet: "Supporting
Obama Will Not Bring Change; It Will Prevent It".

But for now: What is the relationship between RevLeft,
information war, signal-to-noise ratio and the Manhatten Project?

Elaine commented on May 24:

> subject line: revleft - puerile sexist students
> going through a rebel phase they'll grow out of

> Hi all, i'm posting this here as I was directed to revleft
> via Ben's site. I've wasted quite a bit of time on revleft
> and finally had my patience snap. I will not be mentioning
> this verdict to my comrades as I will not be spreading the
> name 'revleft' , the fewer people who are directed there
> the better in my humble (female - relevant in this instance)
> opinion. The revleft comrades who will serve the revolution
> in practice when they grow up are way way outnumbered by
> the messers (disruptive timewasters)

and on May 26:

> As a minority movement it is crucial that we be stringent
> to the point of ruthlessness as to who we will and will
> not associate our names with.

> Believe me when I tell you I lurked, waited, posted, read
> on revleft quite thoroughly and in a generous spirit before
> I wrote it off. We only have one lifetime, every committed
> comrade's minute is extremely valuable, when something ends
> up wasting a lot of my time

First, I sympathize with Elaine on the basis of her experience
with RevLeft. I apologize to her that she encountered
misinformation on the pof-200 list which suggested to her that
RevLeft was more useful than it really is at present (and that
this misinformation led her to make a poor investment of her time
in reading the threads there and making an attempt to contribute
to them).

At the same time I do not regard Elaine's comments as being
all-sided. Yes, it is true that RevLeft can easily be a big
waste of time. It can be something of a trap in that regard. I
should note two things, however:

(1) the same description could probably be given for many other
(if not most) leftist forums.

(2) more than this, it is important not to lose sight of the
significance of forums like RevLeft (ie: their trajectory and
their future). RevLeft today is a vast improvement over the
RevLeft of yesterday. And the Revleft of tomorrow will,
similarly, be a vast improvement over what it is today.

RevLeft (if memory serves me) reported that it had approximately
eight thousand users. Of course most of these users may be
people like me in the sense that they do not visit the site very
often. But that is still a lot of people. And we want to reach
many of these people.

How many?

Well, in a certain sense we want to reach nearly all of them: we
want to present to them principles and ideas that have the power
to awaken the revolutionary movement which is currently in a
state of paralysis.

In another sense, we want to reach a much smaller fraction of
them: we want to make contact with and engage the serious element
in this audience. How large is that serious element? I estimate
about one in a hundred. This estimate is a "logarithmic
extrapolation". One in ten is probably too optimistic an
estimate of the RevLeft participants who are serious and have
experience and are dedicated and are politically sober and
mature. On the other hand, one in a thousand is probably too
pessimistic an estimate. Hence we arrive at one in a hundred.
And if RevLeft inccludes eight thousand subscribers--that would
represent about 80 very serious, experienced and mature people.

So why are these 80 activists so important? And what does this
have to do with the Manhatten Project?

In the 1930's some physicists concluded that the fission of
certain kinds of atoms under the right conditions could produce a
chain reaction that would release fantastic amounts of energy.
U.S. imperialism embarked on an effort to harness this phenomenon
to create a weapon of previously unimaginable power. This was
the origin of the Manhatten Project.

I believe that, today, the emerging revolution in communications
hold potential to create a weapon of greater power, in world
affairs, than the nuclear weapons created and stockpiled by
imperialism. The magnitude of this potential may not fully
reveal itself for several decades. But this process is
beginning.

Activists who represent the interests of the working class and
oppressed must think about and experiment, today, with methods of
harnessing the fantastic power of online forums.

There are certain basic problems that must be overcome before the
working class and oppressed can make systematic and effective use
of the potential of online forums.

Elaine has directed our attention to one of the biggest problems:
the relatively low concentration, so to speak, of the active (ie:
serious, experienced and sober) element in the audience of
leftist activists.

An analogous problem was faced by those who created the first
nuclear weapons. The active, fissionable material they needed
for their superweapon (ie: the U-235 isotope of uraniam) was
mixed in with the inactive material (ie: U-238 isotope). The
most difficult part of the project involved developing a
practical method of refining the raw material to achieve a
sufficiently high concentration of the active element.

We are faced with a similar problem today. If we go to an online
forum--the word-twisting, time-wasting, hot-headed know-it-alls
prevent the formation of a critical mass of the active element.

Many solutions to this problem are being worked out. RevLeft is
actually a considerable improvement over what it was a few years
ago. But a vast improvement is still needed in order to reach a
critical mass.

Moderation of such forums can be difficult and time-consumming.

I believe the fundamental way out will be the development of
methods of "collaborative filtering". People like Elaine will be
able to click a button to filter out the idiots and time-wasters
from her computer screen. She will be able to leverage the
collective judgement of other serious activists concerning who is
worth engaging and who is not.

RevLeft has actually considered attempting to implement something
like this--but their current motion in this direction is
inadequate in comparison to what is needed. Development in this
direction will take place as it becomes increasingly obvious that
this is fundamental to progress and development. We must have
forums with _effective_ reputation systems. Activists _must_
know that each post they make will impact their reputation and
the size of their audience. This can happen and it will--not
only at RevLeft but at hundreds and thousands of leftist (and
non-leftist) forums.

Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/ben/
information war wants to be free to serve the class struggle

-- fyi --

-----Original Message-----
From: Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008 6:33 PM
Subject: [anti-imperialist] Organize against imperialist war!
[new leaflet]

Here is the latest leaflet from the Seattle Anti-Imperialist
Committee.
The hard copy/PDF version contains an advert for this Saturday's
Northwest
"Winter Soldier" speakers event and anti-war march (see
http://seattleactivism.org/events/event6404.htm for more
information).

*PDF version:
http://www.seattleaic.org/files/saic_organize_against_imperialist
_war.pdf
*Web version:  http://www.seattleaic.org/?p=128

---

McCain, Obama and Clinton say: more war.  We say:
ORGANIZE AGAINST IMPERIALIST WAR!

The working-class youth of this country are offered a future of
dead-end, low-paying jobs, and temp labor.  Adequate medical or
dental care, and being able to retire at age 62 or 65, are only
things that existed "way back then."  Working-class youth live in
a growing police state where national minority and immigrant
youth in particular are daily victims of police brutality and
murder.  Immigrant youth and their parents are dragged off in ICE
raids and deported.  A discriminatory and male-supremacist
culture oppresses women, and thereby weighs down on all.  This is
"America" for the vast majority, an America that
portfolio-carrying suits only notice when it rebels.

Nevertheless, the system does offer working class youths an
individual way out: "Be all that you can be," join the military
and get an education and job training!  For some, enlisting in
the military does result in their having an edge in the degrading
competition for some kind of a secure future.  But ultimately
there are no individual solutions to social problems.  Just as
many Vietnam-era veterans found themselves unemployed and
homeless, veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq face the same future:
being thrown away after being used.

Of course, the "rewards" offered by the military recruiters are
premised on the gamble that one won't end up like one of the
4,600 soldiers who will never come home from Afghanistan or Iraq
(so far), or the tens of thousands who have come home permanently
injured (so far), including many thousands with permanent brain
injuries or mental health problems.  The recruiters also don't
talk about how the million Iraqis and Afghans who have perished
as a result of the invasions were also once were living people
filled with dreams of a better future.  Rather, the military
machine, politicians and press preach imperialist arrogance:
"America" (meaning the U.S.) has the right to invade anywhere in
order to defend its "strategic interests"---which is supplemented
with racist and bigoted demagoguery against "ungrateful" Arabs,
Afghans, and Muslims; who are portrayed as being less than human.

A crisis of recruits as G.I.s resist

The war makers have a problem, however:  their wars are unjust,
widely unpopular, and people don't want to be killed in them.
Thus, there are recruitment shortfalls and declining
reenlistments---which the government tries to make up for by
constantly lowering aptitude, age and weight requirements, by
giving "moral waivers," and by a "stop loss" dictate which last
year left 50,000 people in the military longer than they
enlisted.    Meanwhile, there's rebelliousness and resistance
among the troops, where, according to official admissions, Army
desertions have gone up 80% since the Iraq war began---42%
between 2006 and 2007 alone---with nearly 5,000 desertions last
year.  And this does not include the much larger number of AWOL
soldiers, or deserters from other branches of the military.
Moreover, many soldiers are simply refusing orders to ship out
despite the threats and punishments meted out against them.
Others are refusing and circumventing orders in Iraq and
Afghanistan.  At home, there are a growing number of war veterans
speaking out against the wars, like the veterans who have this
year been testifying at the Iraq Veteran's Against the War
"Winter Soldier" events.  Returning veterans are also forming or
joining anti-war veterans' groups such as the IVAW and others,
and participating in other anti-war and anti-imperialist groups.

Imperialism is the problem

There is growing anger against the situation facing the
working-class youth and all working people, and growing
realization that the impoverishment and denial of rights to the
masses of people at home is bound up with the wars and military
occupations abroad.  In fact, the laws of modern capitalism drive
the U.S. ruling class to dominate as much of the world's market,
raw materials, and low-wage labor as it can in order to increase
profits; while these same laws drive its rivals, big and small,
toward the same ends.  Wars inevitably result.

Thus, the U.S. monopoly capitalists fight in Iraq to keep Iraqi
oil resources out of the hands of local and global rivals, and
reap the immense profits and political advantages for themselves.
And one of these advantages would be to have a permanent military
presence there with which to better dominate the entire oil-rich
Middle East.  Moreover, although Afghanistan has few natural
resources itself, nearby countries do.  They therefore fight to
dominate this strategically located country as part of a "great
game" being played against Russia, China and other rivals for
domination of the resources of these nearby countries.  These
then are imperialist wars which are fought to enrich the very
monopoly capitalists who are also driven to impoverish and deny
rights to the masses of people at home in order to enrich
themselves.

An election that only offers more of the same

On the one side, militarist McCain offers tough-talk about Iraq,
escalation of the war in Afghanistan, and "bomb, bomb, bomb
Iran!"  In one breath he now says that the U.S. will allegedly
have achieved "victory" in Iraq by 2013, with most of the troops
withdrawn.  In the next breath he admits that "this is what I
want to achieve."  On the other side, Clinton and Obama also
promise to escalate the war in Afghanistan, and they threaten
Iran with war.  But, unlike McCain, Obama now says that he would
remove all combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months and Clinton
says that she would begin a phased withdrawal immediately.  But
when the Democrats talk of removing combat troops they mean that
other troops would remain, and they don't count troops fighting
in "anti-terrorist" operations as being combat troops!  In fact,
Obama and Clinton's plans are attempts to deal with the reality
that the U.S. military is being "broken" in Iraq, while at the
same time salvaging what "victory" they can.  And, in order to
deal with the problem that the ruling class has too few soldiers
to carry out its imperialist projects, they both promise to
expand the war machine with 80-100,000 more troops.

On the domestic front, the Democrats' program is to squeeze the
masses in order to ensure the profits of the capitalists.  This
will at some point result in big class struggles which they have
an answer for, i.e., Clinton voted for the repressive "Patriot
Act," and Obama voted for its extension.

Of course, many people have voted for Obama in the primaries
because he would be the first black president, or for Clinton
because she would be the first woman president.  Nevertheless,
their election would really only represent putting a black or
woman's face on the same imperialist-ruling class offensive that
Bush has led.  And, as a matter of fact, the reason why one of
them is very likely to be elected in November is precisely
because the very biggest monopoly capitalists support them.
Hence, while to some extent also supporting McCain, the Wall
Street financiers and multinational corporations have poured the
most money into the Clinton and Obama campaigns, with Obama
garnering the most money of all.  Why?  The rich want to disarm
the masses they're attacking by putting an African American in
the White House.

The alternative?  Mass struggle against imperialism!

The youth want change, the working class and poor want change,
hunted immigrants and discriminated-against national minorities
want change, and the brutalized yet resisting people of Iraq and
Afghanistan want change, but the only change the election will
bring is a new face presiding over a program of war and reaction.
But this does not mean that anti-war and other progressive
activists should ignore it.  The very opposite.  Through mass
leafleting, and through demonstrations and confrontations
wherever McCain, Obama or Clinton appear, this election should be
used to puncture their demagogy and expose their deceptions.
This will greatly assist the building of the mass alternative:
militant movements with politics opposed to the rich ruling
class.  And it's only this alternative that can bring real
change.

In the anti-war movement this means explaining ever more widely
that the imperialist system is the cause of the atrocities in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and threats of new wars.  It means directly
appealing to the workers and youth of all nationalities,
including those in the military, and basing the movement among
them.  It means and supporting G.I. resistance and the movement
to stop military shipments through mass blockades.  It means
regularly building demonstrations that go among the masses.  And
all of this requires more organization---including organization
of small groups of activists, and organization of coalitions that
are truly democratic.

Where will the people come from?  There are already thousands of
selfless and hard-working anti-war activists who have gained lots
of experience in organizing over the past few years, and they're
surrounded by millions of people who want change, and want to be
part of a movement to attain it.  We think that if anti-war
activists persist along the lines outlined above that they will
draw more people into motion.  Such work is an expression of real
solidarity with the struggling workers and poor of Iraq and
Afghanistan, and a step toward our own liberation.

Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee
May 25, 2008

http://www.seattleaic.org
mail [at] seattleaic [dot] org

###

hi everyone,

This year, for the first time, three subscribers from the "party
of the future" (pof) lists have joined me in the effort to make
annual reports by revolutionary activists and organizations a
tradition.

These annual reports are of great significance. Over time the
working class and its activists will create a new kind of
organization, far more open than has been possible before the
internet. Annual reports from members and supporters of this
organization will greatly facilitate its self-organization. For
example, if you want to create or organize a project of some
kind--you will be able to find other comrades with similar
interests and with the experience you need.

I will post my own annual report soon (hopefully later today).

However I thought that I should first aggregate and briefly
comment on these reports.

Please see below.

--Ben


------------------------------------------------------------
Annual Report by Alex
------------------------------------------------------------


-----Original Message-----
From: Alex G.
Sent: Sunday, May 11, 2008 5:34 PM
To: pof-300@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [pof-300] Annual Report

It's been a while since I've posted, and I've never done one of
these before, so I thought I would do an annual report. I think
it's important for everyone if people like us lay out what we've
done in the past year and what we plan to do in the next year for
a couple of reasons: a) it's actually a pretty good tool for the
author to get all of their plans down on paper so as to be a
little more organized, and b) it keeps everyone "in the know."

So here goes nothing...

The year in retrospect
-----------------------------

My ability to carry out practical political work has been
extremely limited due to the political climate (or lack thereof)
in my town and the fact that there aren't that many people living
here. In other words, I'm pretty isolated. And the work I have
been able to do has yielded very disappointing results. Nearly
all people I have come in contact with here have had a great want
to remain non-committed to real progress. Their attitude toward
me is that, "Yes, we recognize that you are 100% correct, and the
movement really needs more people like you, but we are not
setting out to dismantle the system, and [insert bullshit reason
to sit around and do nothing here]." Yes, committing to
principles that come in direct conflict with how the society we
live in works can be frightening, but it needs to be done.  No
one here realizes that, and because there are so few people here,
there's not a whole lot I can do. I have done and will continue
to do the best that I can, and I will hope for a turn of events.
But I am not expecting huge things yet.

All things considered, I've been basically limited in my success
to work on the internet. I set up The Ginger Group blog
(http://thegingergroup.wordpress.com) with a friend of mine, and
I think it has a lot of potential. I haven't had a lot of time to
work on it and I think there are some serious improvements that
can be made. Traffic has also been next to zero, but there are
ways to fix that. The biggest hindrance in maintaining and
expanding the blog has been time-related.

That said, I think there has been some very useful discussion
there. The objective now is to find a way for it to reach the
eyes of more people.

Perhaps the biggest achievement this year was the discussion that
we had with Frank and Joseph (which can be found here:
http://struggle.net/struggle/mass-democracy). Indirectly, many of
the topics discussed led to tons of discussion on various lists,
and serious discussion on this list has increased.

But back on the practical side of things, my experience has not
been all bad. I have been some serious people, though they are a
minority.

One thing I have found (not surprisingly) is that Ben's views are
popular with people not already committed to an organization.
This is, in my view, and exceedingly good thing. New activists
who are not committed to a specific organization are often
inexperienced, but they also don't suffer from the sectarian
disease that many more experienced activists do. Without
sectarianism distorting their thinking, non-committed activists
are able to see why many of the things Ben has proposed are
really kind of "no-brainer" statements. Reformism is a problem
among these newer activists. But I think this is fairly easily
corrected, as the serious people I've met are open minded.

Looking to the Future
----------------------------

My immediate plans for the next year are to greatly expand The
Ginger Group blog and its audience, as well as explore some other
mediums, like Myspace, Facebook, etc. Once again, I do not expect
to accomplish a ton on the practical front for a while, though I
will do the best that I can. My time, however, will be somewhat
limited.

2008 will probably not be a great year.

BUT.

In 2009, I will be moving to East Lansing, Michigan (i.e.
Michigan State University). I have my own reasons for this, but
from a political standpoint, it is not a hugely populated area,
but the political climate is certainly a lot less dead than where
I am currently living. While it is nothing like Detroit, I should
be able to operate a lot more effectively than I am able to now.
I will have less time, but the time I am able to spend will be
more valuable.

So I think this is a good thing. Obviously, I will know more when
that time actually comes.

Something to think about: If Obama is President
----------------------------------------------------------

Obama looks like he will gain the Democratic Party nomination and
he has a very good chance of beating John McCain in the general
election. Why should we care? Well, I think that if Obama wins
the general election, a lot of "anti-war" groups will just give
up.  They will have gotten their "anti-war" candidate into
office; end of story. Basically, I think it is possible for the
movement to fall into even worse stagnancy if Obama wins the
election, as many activists won't see any reason to continue the
mass actions. To many, electing Obama will be "good enough."

So I think one of our main goals on that front will be to prepare
for that. We need to hit the issue of reformism HARD, and
preferably before the general election. We need to show that
electing Obama into office will solve nothing because a) the
Democratic Party is not an "anti-war" party and they simply use
their "progressive" candidates to make themselves look good while
continuing to pass pro-war legislation, b) Obama cannot do a
whole lot without the support of Congress, which is certainly not
for troop withdrawal, c) all plans for "withdrawal" leave
thousands of U.S. troops in the region or UN troops, which is a
U.S.-dominated power.

I think this is something we should all focus on in our local
communities and in our agitation in the immediate future.

-- Alex


------------------------------------------------------------
comments by Ben
------------------------------------------------------------


> Without sectarianism distorting their thinking,
> non-committed  activists are able to see why many
> of the things Ben has proposed are really kind of
> "no-brainer" statements.

This hits the nail on the head.

I am confident that the principles which I feel I have stumbled
into are powerful principles which will be decisive in releasing
the revolutionary movement from the crisis of theory which has
left it paralyzed and dominated by squabbling sects.

However I also believe that, sometime in the future, if activists
look back at my work--they will not feel that I was particularly
brilliant--because, in retrospect, the principles for which I
fight will be considered obvious and non-controversial.
"No-brainer" is a completely accurate and concise description.

My role, in my own view, is very much that of the little boy who
cried out that the emperor has no clothes.  I am in a position to
summarize and concentrate a number of issues mainly because I
have been in the right place at the right time.  I was part of a
hard-core maoist formation in the U.S. and, for that reason,
understand the logic and appeal of the maoist and stalinist
principles and ideologies--as well as their complete inability to
give us a coherent picture of how workers' rule would look and
function in the context of a modern society with a modern,
developed economy.  And I was also a keen observer of the
development of the internet and the web and the birth of the
revolution in communications which, today, is still in its early
stages.

In the coming period, our task, as revolutionary activists, will
be to spread news of these principles far and wide and, in this
way, encourage the development of a revolutionary movement which
rests on a solid foundation.

As this happens, I do not think that my name will (or should be)
overly prominent in this effort.  My contribution to this effort
will represent a small fraction of one percent of the work.  The
overwhelming majority of the work in this effort will be in
speading news of these principles and applying them.  So, as this
effort gets off the ground (hopefully in the next few years)
these principles will not be known as my principles--but rather
as the principle that "information war wants to be free to serve
the class struggle" and the principle that "workers' rule must
have an immune system in order to be viable" (or some kind of
similar formulations that might be shorter and more powerful).

> Reformism is a problem among these newer activists.
> But I think this is fairly easily corrected, as
> the serious people I've met are open minded.

The main factor in the exposure of reformism will be unfolding of
events.  For example, Obama, in office, will likely have no
choice but to continue the war in Iraq (he is and will always be
nothing but a tool of the imperialists--and US imperialism has no
intention of abandoning its dream of total domination of the vast
oil reserves of the Middle East) and it appears likely that this
will severely erode the appeal and logic of the reformist
ideology and may lead a large section of activists to
revolutionary conclusions (ie: analogous to the year 1968, which
marked a decisive shift in politics in the U.S. and Europe).

Of course this does not means that we should simply sit on our
hands and wait for this to happen.  We need to do everything
possible to speed up the recognition, by activists, of the nature
of Obama and the entire imperialsit system.  We will gain
experience today, so to speak, in planting seeds in soil that is
not very fertile--knowing that this experience will be extremely
valuable tomorrow--when the soil is far more fertile.

> I think it is possible for the movement to fall
> into even worse stagnancy if Obama wins the election,
> as many activists won't see any reason to continue
> the mass actions. To many, electing Obama will be
> "good enough."

The mainstream leaders (it is more accurate to call them
misleaders) of the antiwar movement are already going all out to
help the imperialist Democratic Party hijack the antiwar movement
(note the comments by Carl Davidson and other reformists on one
of the Kasama pages devoted to this topic:
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/now-the-debate-over-obama
/ ).

But the problem, for imperialism--will be the necessity of
continuing the war in Iraq.  This will tend to polarize the
movement as the majority of activists (often younger and less
experienced) become increasing fed up with the reformist
know-it-alls and eventually break from them.

> We need to hit the issue of reformism HARD, and
> preferably before the general election.

Certainly.  This will also help us link up with those activists
who are more experienced and conscious who oppose the reformist
treachery which undermines the movement.

The agitation of SAIC may be the best, in this regard and it
would be great if we could find a way to distribute this on the
internet in a way that it reaches activists.  In the past, SAIC
has acted to pour cold water on this and discourage this.  The
reason for this (in my view) has been the concern by the CVO core
of SAIC that this would tend to lend weight to some of my
criticisms of the CVO.  It would be very good if this were to
change.  I would also like to see SAIC become more open about the
process by which they write leaflets so that subscribers to the
pof-300 lists could see various drafts and study the development
of the drafts and better understand the process by which initial,
one-sided and incomplete drafts become more all-sided and
powerful agitation.

> I'm pretty isolated. [...]
> All things considered, I've been basically limited
> in my success to work on the internet.

The relationship of internet-based work to work "on the ground"
(ie: leaflets on paper handed out in mass actions, communities,
schools and workplaces) will be profound.  It may be analogous
the the relationship between cavalry and infranty in ancient
warfare (or the relationship between airpower and infantry in
more modern warfare).  For example, if SAIC were to open up its
leaflet-editing process to the point where early drafts were
posted on the pof-300 list -- then activists such as you could
contribute to leaflets that were distributed locally here in
Seattle.  And better (and more systematic) internet distribution
might also eventually connect with activists in communities which
provide better opportunities for "on the ground" distribution
than the small town where you live.

I should also point out that your participation on this list has
been a major factor in pushing things forward as far as the
ideological struggle with the cargo-cultists who support the CVO.
For example Eric would not have bothered to reply to me were it
not for the growing and increasingly conscious audience which is
beginning to pay attention to and study the polemical exchanges.
And you are the most active and energetic activist in this
audience and its spearhead.  Your participation is making it more
difficult for the CVO to dismiss these topics as inconsequential
and simply ignore them altogether.  You may think of your
contribution as modest (which is fine since so far all of our
contributions have been quite modest in terms of real impact on
the class struggle) but a lot of eyes are on you at this time.
(Some of these eyes probably see your activity to support the
principles of information war and a realistic view of workers'
rule as a problem--and you may, in the future, eventually
encounter both hard and soft tactics, such as name-calling or
flattery, in public or in private.)


------------------------------------------------------------
Annual Report by Paul L
------------------------------------------------------------


-----Original Message-----
From: hekmatista
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 7:27 PM
To: pof-300@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [pof-300] Re: Annual Report


OK, here's my version of an annual report:
I've only recently returned to political life after a lapse of a
decade or more. Positive steps this year include: Participating
in local antiwar group, hooking up with the one IWW railroad
worker in the area, enlisting his help in identifying the left
within this nest of pacifists, liberals, and worse. Joined IWW
based on its "least common denominator" class struggle line.
Joined World Can't Wait to strengthen the "left" (such as it is)
within Reno antiwar. Organized a local demo of a dozen in support
of ILWU's job action which got some press and more visibility.
Engaging my apolitical friends as socratically as I can. Gently
bringing along my fiance with patient discussion of the
difference between the working class movement and "official" M-L;
like most US workers, she really doesn't have much background in
our class' history. Reconciling with my son, who belongs to a
cargo cult, but is a reasonable man, and a brave one, in whom I
am well pleased. Posting on RevLeft, trying to encourage the
young people, correct some misconceptions when I can, remaining
humble and helpful, not preachy or arrogant. Minor contribution
to this website.  A lot of introspection as well as discussion
with others on how best to use the time left.


------------------------------------------------------------
comments by Ben
------------------------------------------------------------


Paul--that was short and sweet.  Your annual report shows readers
that annual reports do not need to be lengthy or elaborate
affairs.

Some people might look down their nose at the a of a dozen
people--but I consider it impressive in the current atmosphere.
You picked a good issue (solidarity with a labor action that
gives people a hint of the immense power of the working class)
and did highly admirable work.

Your attitude toward posting (ie: that humility is more powerful
and creates a stronger bond with readers than being preachy or
arrogant) provides a good example for some of the younger
activists who see their fair share of arrogance and need to know
that a more powerful road exists.

And I also appreciate the comments you made concerning the need
for the democratic rights of speech and organization that workers
will need to maintain their rule after bourgeois rule is
overthrown.  All of this pushes things forward.

You are also demonstrating, by your actions, that practical work
in the antiwar movement and theoretical work that helps to put
the revolutionary movement on a solid foundation--go together.
We do not need to choose to do one or the other.


------------------------------------------------------------
Annual Report by Jacob
------------------------------------------------------------


-----Original Message-----
From: j_richter_scale
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2008 10:32 PM
To: pof-300@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [pof-300] My annual report

Comrades and other folks,

Much has changed in my attitudes over the past year. Although
therehasn't been any opportunity for ideal organization until the
past month or so, my theoretical development has accelerated
quite rapidly over the time frame.

Most of the spare time I've had was used on RevLeft. Things
really got going with the establishment of the specific user
groups there, when I was able to put many if not most of the
pieces of the puzzle together on the theoretical front.

It all started when I read key sections of Lars Lih's Lenin
Rediscovered. I was curious about the mentions of what happened
in Erfurt, Germany in terms of "merging Marxism with the workers'
movement." I then read Chapter 5 of Kautsky's The Class Struggle
and the Table of Contents, and then... presto! I found out how to
organize my thoughts into one cohesive whole (scattered around
challenges to revolutionary Marxism, class relations,
circumstantial discussive unity, etc.).

Ben, I still don't know if you're interested in my WIP.


------------------------------------------------------------
comments by Ben
------------------------------------------------------------


Jacob--I am glad to see you post an annual report.  This is a
practical step and it is helpful.  I am not interested in your
work-in-progress at this time but I may have more of an interest
in the months or years to come as you gain experience and your
ideas develop and also as you become increasingly conscious of
the need to meet your readers halfway and make your ideas easier
to read and understand.  However other subscribers to the POF
lists (who may not be as pressed for time as I am) may find the
development of your views to be of interest and I hope that you
continue, over the long run, to post reports on your work as it
develops.  You have been successful in developing some useful
discussion on our lists (in some cases more successful than I
have) and I hope that you will take a long-term view of your
participation here.

Hi folks,

I have completed my response to Eric (CVO).  I am not including
the text in this email because the diagrams which I created are
part of my response--and these can only be seen on the web.

It is here:

http://struggle.net/ben/2008/eric/moment_of_truth.htm

Your thoughtful comments are very much appreciated.

Ben