Journal

An Interview with Willie Baptist

by John Wessel-McCoy

Willie Baptist and John Wessel-McCoy are Co-Coordinators of Poverty Scholarship and Leadership Development at the Kairos Center. *  The following article is a revised version of an interview first produced in June 2009 entitled, It’s Not Enough to Be Angry, published in Organizing Upgrade.  

John Wessel-McCoy: In your experience of the poor organizing the poor, where do we begin?  

Willie Baptist: Like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed out, “”The prescription for the cure rests with the accurate diagnosis of the disease.”

Any approach to social change, organizing and leadership development has to be based on an accurate assessment of the situation, on an accurate analysis of the problem you aim to solve.  If you have one assessment or a certain diagnosis of the disease to be cured, you’re going to have a particular prescription and a particular approach to the solution. Read more “You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take!”

November 7, 2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. This revolution is significant because it was the first time in history that the property-less, the most oppressed and exploited people of a country, seized and held political power for an extended period of time. That political power was used to seize the wealth and property of the capitalists and landowners who had been driving the people of the Russian empire into semi-slavery. Those of us who possess nothing, and are forced to fight every day just to survive, look to the lessons of the Russian Revolution and other instances in history where the poor have risen up in revolution and won political power. The poor have made history in the past. We need to study that history and use what we learn to make history again.

We can see how the early Russian revolutionaries prepared themselves and participated in the revolutionary process in Russia. Read more “The 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution”

By Nacho Gonzalez

This is an executive summary of a forthcoming article.

Purpose

The influence of Anarchism and Syndicalism has a long history in the American Left. Anarchism as a doctrine has been in existence since the early 1800’s. As capitalism evolved into imperialism in the late 1800’s a new anarchist trend developed: Anarcho-Syndicalism, a fusion of anarchism and trade unionism, which relegated the working class to the economic arena and denied a role for political struggle.

Today syndicalism is once again very strong in the revolutionary movement, witness identity politics and single-issue organizing for example. This doctrine obscures the class struggle and confuses it. Thus hindering the working class from utilizing its best weapon against the system of capitalism – the class struggle.

Specific form in U.S.

In the 1960’s a new form of Anarcho-Syndicalism arose. Previously Anarcho-Syndicalism was trade unionism. Now Anarcho-Syndicalism would be applied to the social struggles of the African Americans, Chicanos, Women’s Movement and other oppressed peoples. Read more “Anarcho – Syndicalism or Class Struggle”

By Lenny Brody

As the crisis of international capitalism continues to develop, and a growing number of countries enter into political crisis, revolutionaries around the world turn to the body of knowledge known as Marxism for guidance in the fight of the working class. However, the confusion and merger of various aspects of Marxism has led to a disorientation of many revolutionaries. Some “Marxists” live in a world of abstractions, with little connection to the revolutionary process. Other “Marxists” run after every protest and expression of the “class struggle” without any strategic conception of the general motion and goals of the revolutionary process.

Historical Materialism and Doctrine

Marxist philosophy is dialectical materialism. When the dialectical materialist method is applied to the study of society the result is the science of society known as historical materialism. Marxist science, historical materialism is distinct from Marxist doctrine. Much of what was written by Marx, Engels, Lenin and others fall under the category of doctrine. Read more “The Revolutionary Process Today: Science and Doctrine”

Introduction

We are in a new phase of imperialism ushered in by the 2008 financial crisis. US power is in decline. The most stalwart voice for Western Imperialism, The British magazine The Economist, noted in its September 17, 2016 Leader, that today’s rise of tech oligopolies and their avoidance of taxes etc. has cast the shadow of “1917 and all that”! How fitting that this year marks the 100th anniversary of the Great October Revolution!

The workers and dispossessed of the world suffered a defeat and crisis that was symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The international agenda of 1990’s was dominated by US capitalist hegemony under the guise of neoliberal globalization. There were subsequent critical articulations against the US proposal to dominate the South: most notably the World Social Forum and subsequent People’s Movements Assemblies (fully supported, it should be noted, by Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution). Read more “U.S. Conjunctural Analysis”