Author: Revolutionary Initiative

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On Elections: RCP (Canada)

[From Call For A New Class Struggle in Canada:]

1. A Canada-wide boycott campaign during the next federal elections:

Boycott the Elections! is a slogan that is anything but passive. Driven by the forces of the militant proletariat, led by activists working for revolution and for the destruction of the exploitative capitalist system, this slogan is a call to fight
against apathy and indifference, and against what will be an inevitable defeat otherwise.

This slogan is a call for unity among the proletariat, whether they be young, old, unemployed, immigrant or refugee.

This slogan is a call to unite with the most militant layers among the Native nations who refuse to recognize the Canadian Parliament, except than to be the organizer of their own oppression. This slogan when carried forward by the most conscious forces among the proletariat, can offer the proletariat a real political perspective: the actions of the revolutionary proletariat to transform society. This action must be first and foremost the expression of the rejection of bourgeois politics in a conscious and unified way. By organizing actions, through meetings and protests, through the massive distribution and publication of leaflets and newspapers throughout the country, these revolutionary actions
represent a real threat to the apparatus of domination of the bourgeoisie. They reveal and expose to the eyes of many the deeply unfair nature of this system ruled by a tiny minority.

There will be those that will criticize us who boycott by saying that we are playing the game of the rightists. Some forces on the left often use this argument: “One can try to rebalance bourgeois parliamentarism by calling for proportional representation”. In either case, whether it be twoheaded or three-headed, it remains the party of the bourgeoisie. What really matters is that in all cases, the same interests prevail, both in government and in opposition. Regardless of parliamentary representation, the nature of Parliament itself remains the same.

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On Elections: CARC – Italy

[Party of the Committees to Support Resistance – for Communism (CARC) is  associated with the (new) Italian Communist Party.  While upholding what they call Revolutionary Protracted People’s War, their strategy is very different from the Protracted People’s War strategy articulated by the RCP Canada or other pro-PPW Parties in imperialist countries.]

Revolutionary Protracted People’s War and participation in the elections and in the bourgeois  political struggle in Italy

Recently we wrote a letter to Alastair Reith, a comrade from New Zealand, in which we talked about the participation of our Party in the bourgeois political struggle, and particularly in the elections, quoting a thesis of the Second Congress of CARC Party (October 2009). Our explanation, anyway, was defective. Here we complete it indicating which is the most important aspect that, here in Italy and in this phase makes the participation in the bourgeois political struggle and particularly in the elections a revolutionary mean.

As the matter regards an issue debated in the international communist movement, we spread this communication widely.

As regards our line to break into the bourgeois political struggle, our position is very different from any other M-L or M-L-M party that agrees in participating in the elections and generally in the bourgeois political struggle, but does not carry out the Revolutionary Protracted People’s War (RPPW) for establishing socialism

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The Four Categories of Contradictions
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The Four Categories of Contradictions

How should revolutionaries engage with the various contradictions operating in the world?

[From M-L-M Mayhem.]

Recently, a close comrade of mine was recounting a story where he told a younger activist that, although he supported Tamil self-determination he did not whole-heartedly support the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) because their cultural-nationalist project resulted in the liquidation of numerous leftist Tamil groups (such as supporters of the Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist)).  Unfortunately, the younger activist misunderstood the critique, taking it to mean that my comrade was somehow anti-Tamil self-determination and was incapable of understanding what he was trying to argue.  Conversely, when many of us leftists argue that we support, for example, Hezbollah’s resistance to Israeli imperialism we are often misunderstood as supporting Hezbollah’s political project itself when this is often not the case.

Oft-times many of us still have difficulties thinking through these problems: we understand that imperialism is wrong but we also understand that certain groups also veiled as anti-imperialist possess a political dimension that we, as people against oppression, cannot rightly support.  I want to suggest that the trick of understanding how to understand these problems, however, lies in understanding the four major categories of contradictions that determine the structure of global capitalism.  And so, in my typically blaise manner, I have attempted to simplify and describe these categories.

1.  Contradictions between imperialisms

Although the imperialists want you to believe that every “democratic” country is united in a war against barbarous “terrorism” there is not that much unity.  The favourite corporations of each national market are still competing, especially in this rush to export as much capital into the recently reconquered peripheries.  Blair might have shaken hands with Bush back during the War of Terror glory days, but behind those smiles were neo-colonial considerations that made the handshake more an “enemy-of-my-enemy” kind of thing.  While the other imperialist countries currently have to kiss the ass of the most powerful imperialist country––and the latter is happy that it controls the IMF and WTO––it is not like they’re all BFFs who have sleep overs and text each other every day.

Both World Wars also demonstrated this contradiction category, the realignment of imperialist power happening in both post-war periods: the first much more clearly than the second, but it was the second that assured America’s ascendance as the primary global imperialist power.

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Why Do These Stupid Books Sell?

[From the blog M-L-M Mayhem!]

I am always fascinated and frustrated by the North American mainstream public’s willingness to buy and accept as authoritative “historical” books of dubious scholarship that popularize ruling class ideology.  The reason these books are not treated with the suspicion they deserve, obviously, is because they are designed to reinforce what people are already taught to believe.  These books masquerade as academic, as well-researched and expert, and yet they rarely fit the standards of academic feasibility and honesty.  And yet they still become part of popular discourse, defended by laypersons who repeat, ad nauseaum, these books’ claims and pour scorn on the qualified critics who raise questions.

Alan Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel, for example, not only argued the ahistorical and racist-colonial position that Palestine was an empty desert, a terra nullius, before the European Zionists arrived to “make it bloom again” (and that the Palestinians are really all lying Arabs who snuck into the Zionist paradise from neighbouring states), but he plagiarized his argument from Joan Peters’ From Time Immemorial––a book already apprehended as a work of historical hucksterism decades earlier.  Despite the attempt of proper historians, The Case for Israel is still a best-seller and Harvard University Press is more than happy to re-issue further editions.

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Thousands join CPP celebrations despite AFP/PNP harassments

PRESS RELEASE
Information Bureau
Communist Party of the Philippines
Red fighters and participants arrive at the venue as soon as the sun rises.

Several thousand people joined celebrations yesterday of the 42nd founding anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in a what was described as “one of the biggest celebrations of the revolutionary victories of the Filipino people exhibiting the continuing growth of the revolutionary movement led by the CPP.”

Final touches are made on the backdrop as participants arrive.

At the same time, the CPP denounced the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Philippine National Police (PNP) “for setting-up checkpoints along the route to the site of the assembly to harass participants and dissuade them from proceeding to the site of the celebrations in violation of the spirit and intent of the 19-day ceasefire.”

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