Re: "Change the World Without Taking Power...

[MARIPOWER716@xxxxxxx]

Comments

Strategy - military or political, good or bad - flows from an assessment of
the objective factors and capabilities latent in what ever you are dealing
with. In America the first thing we must look at is the objective factors in 
play
- motion, such as machinery, the wealth of human labor (however one defines
its dimensions), the level of intelligence of the country's population -
literacy and the context and shape things are understood and the training of 
people
in and out of production as a moving societal force. Then we must ask what kind
of society and world can be created from these factors? In this process we
can begin to come up with a collective vision that inspires us to fight and die
fighting for a new world. Then we have to try and analyze the objective
situation and ask what stands between us and that vision. What do we have to
overcome? What do we have to accomplish to achieve that vision?

What needs to be done - tasks, must be a part of the vision and the vision
has to be intimately wedded to existing factors and forces at play. In my
opinion revolutionaries in America need to look at strategy not so much for a 
party
but for the revolution itself. Such a revolutionary strategy begins by looking
at electronics and this specific state of development of production, the
concentration of people in the cities, the breath of the country, the control 
the
bourgeoisie has over the population, the density of what sectors of the
population that are more than less continuously - spontaneously, driven into
conflict with the state authorities or exist in an actual social state where 
they
cannot not be in conflict with the state over existence on countless levels of
"being."

Considering some of these factors, there is no way in the world to transfer
power in our country from one class to another except by a mass uprising. Any
motion by a specific grouping or in specific parts of the country can be easily
contained. If the ruling class can contain spontaneous and organized
assertion against state authority in other countries, they can certainly 
contain it
right here. :-)

The idea of a coup is not feasible. All of use the same words and mean
something different. Coup not feasible means a coup apart from the masses and a
seizure of power by a highly trained organization in the midst of revolutionary
turmoil. On the other hand, the seizure of power cannot be accomplished by the
masses. Seizure of power has to be accomplished by a specific organization, by
people who are trained to take and wield power. A coup generally means a blow
that is thrown apart from the mass movement, and coups and mass movements as
revolutionary process contain its own logic. Marx, Engels and Lenin describe
the revolutionary process in many writings and are extremely clear about this
matter. With patience anyone can abstract the process logic from what they
describe.

A process of social destruction is clearly underway in our country and very
advanced depending on the standpoint from which one observes the social
revolution as process. People mean different things by mass movement and mass
uprising. By a mass uprising I mean Birmingham Alabama in 1963, Watts in 1965 
and
Detroit in 1967. By mass movement I mean what Hunter bear describes 
commemorating
the 40-year anniversary of the social movement in Mississippi. To a limited
degree the anti-war movement generated in opposition to US involvement in
Vietnam is also meant as a mass movement.

The Watts Rebellion and Detroit were touched off by an act of police
brutality, as was the case with Los Angeles in 1992. Police brutality was the 
catalyst
not the cause of the rebellion. Mississippi 40 years ago was the culmination
of a more lengthy process.  What was partial movements expressing a broad
series of social demands was consolidated under the pressure from the fascist
state authorities in the South into a social movement that was leaping and
consolidated itself with a central slogan: Freedom. The point is that an 
incident of
police brutality touched off a mass uprising, while the historic struggle of
the black masses - and whites, clarified and constituted a mass social movement
that discovered its identity and goal expressed in the demand for "Freedom
Now."

Some things cannot be talked about as if we were children and novice.
Further, our living experience and knowledge must become historically 
retrievable
expressing the moment. One simply cannot take serious as doctrine the concept 
"To
Change the World Without Taking Power," at least in America. The real is that
there does not exist any basis in America to form alternative economic and
governmental structures that can compete with the state power and pose
alternative to the value system, unless one thinks homelessness and eating from 
a
garbage can is an alternative system. Even the cooperative movement, under our
conditions is not an alternative social formation within the societal
infrastructure.

In my estimate Marxist and revolutionaries in America are very good at
agitation and have excellent agitational skills. The problem at the level of 
theory
is that we mean different things by agitation. Agitation means organizing
things on the basis of specific demands as opposed to shouting out the window or
screaming "fire" in a crowded building - even if there is an actual fire taking
place. Agitation is how the activist organizes to get the people out of a
building on fire!

Our weakness is propaganda and this means a specific thing. Propaganda within
the working class means presenting a vision based on objective conditions
being experienced by people of what is possible; a vision of what kind of world
we are after. Propaganda does not mean propagating Marx ideas, although the
fight for Marx ideas and doctrine takes place. Perhaps in five years propaganda
and agitation will acquire a shifted meaning based on what exists in five
years. Just saying these terms do not mean anything.

The central theme in the entire body of work of Marx and Engels is taking
power on behalf of the proletariat - property-less society, to change the world
and this means power over or control over the things by which men and women are
dominated. This taking "control over" is not possible without the state power
in America. The idea that taking power means increased tyranny unless you
have some mythical democratic upsurge of the masses expresses a different
conception of democracy that originates from the bourgeoisie in the last 
instance.

I have no intention in pursuing the insanity of the anti-Soviet democrats,
whose idea of democracy is no more than the historical egotistical striving of
the intellectual parading their individualism and privileged status as
something to be guarded at all cost. It should be noted that the working class 
in our
country have a historic anti-intellectualism shell and their mass concept of
democracy they hold dear is the "space" in the "mediated social forms" that
allow them to raise their families and care for their loved ones.

We are not at the Soviet era of the social movement and paranoid delusions of
persecution of the intellectual in our country are absurd. Given the fact
that their is a real segment of our working class persecuted, terrorized and 
jail
on a level that puts to shame the harsh hand of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, I find such individualism - raised to the level of a "theory," as 
no
more than the pressure of the bourgeoisie on the proletariat, carried out by
the clueless and not so clueless. Equally absurd is the idea that the "party"
can rule over the class it represents. The "party should not rule but the
working class" is pure childishness and the line of march of the advance guard 
and
intellectual executioners who plotted the overthrow of Soviet power and ushered
in the gravest period in human history.

Tell the bourgeoisie "To Change the World Without Taking Power" or rather
relinquish power. The workers must be told the truth. Changing the world is
impossible without the seizure of political power and wielding the power of the
state. Our goal is not to destroy the state but to get the counterrevolutionary
bourgeoisie off our ass and force - compel, them to stand down. One cannot have
a goal that cannot be realized. The ultimate goal is to win and then one sets
new goals.

How the exact form of winning will take place cannot be known in advance. If
this process is carried out by a section of capital that has detached itself
from its class, the bloodletting could last decades. The good part is that
today we have more than less figured out where we are at in the historic 
process.


Melvin P


Eye ay -
I against I
Flesh of my flesh
And mona my my

Two of a kind
But one won't survive

My image is reflect in the enemies eye
And his image is reflect in mine the same time.

Eye - aye
I against I
Flesh of my flesh
And mona my my

Two of one kind
But one won't survive

Right here/hear and where the end gonna start at.

Conflict, contact, call back.
Fight a sin where the land is marked at.
Settle the despite about who the livest.

Free world answer is whoever survive this.

Only one of us can arrive forever
So you and I can't ride together
Can't live or can't die together
All we can do is collide together.
So I skillfully apply the pressure
Won't stop until I am forever.

One.

A doorstep where death never comes
Spread across time till my time never done
And I'm never done
Walk talk why and every run
And when they moveth I ever come.

Eye ay -
I against I
Flesh of my flesh
And mona my my

Two of a kind
But one won't survive

My image is reflect in the enemies eye
And his image reflect in mine the same time.


(Most Def from the Soundtrack Blade II. Title: "I Against I" or Massive
Attack)


Melvin P.