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“Like we’re fighting for our lives…”

An Interview by Kersplebedeb with Kenny Lake and Amil K. from the kites Editorial Committee

KERSPLEBEDEB: What is kites? Who produces it?

Kenny Lake: kites published its first issue in January 2020, aiming to fill the need for communist theory and strategy for revolution in North America, and to do so in a way that wasn’t full of the same old dogmatism. Two organizations, Revolutionary Initiative (RI) in Canada and the Organization of Communist Revolutionaries in the US, took the initiative to start it. An editorial committee, consisting of comrades in the US and Canada, was formed in 2019 to take responsibility for producing kites. We published our second issue in October 2020 and our third is being released now in February 2021.

Amil K.: I’d like to elaborate on what kites is by discussing dogmatism versus the practice of developing revolutionary theory.

To start us off, I think dogmatism is a trap. I see Left dogma serving much of the same function as the “opiate” of religious dogma: it can be a real salve to the conscience for any and all trying to cope with the daily assaults and alienation of bourgeois society. And that’s what makes it a trap. It’s a safe and predictable retreat. I think this is where the tendency towards “book worship” springs from. The problem, however, is that deep within that comfort zone of “theory” disconnected from practical activity the dogmatist is still wading in the nihilistic rot of bourgeois society, with no real faith that proletarian revolution is possible.

Drawing Blood: A Guide to Communist Agitation

Click on cover image for printable PDF of this manual from OCR.

During his struggle with the economists (those Marxists who restricted their political work to struggles over the immediate conditions of exploitation at the factory), Lenin, in his seminal work What Is to Be Done?, wrote:

A basic condition for the necessary expansion of political agitation is the organization of comprehensive political exposure. In no way except by means of such exposures can the masses be trained in political consciousness and revolutionary activity.

This manual will serve as a political and technical guide to communist agitation. Agitation is the process by which communists systematically lay bare the instances of oppression and exploitation that the masses face on a daily basis and point to their source in the system of capitalism-imperialism. Communists distinguish agitation from propaganda, the latter being a lengthier examination of an issue or question in an all-around way, paying attention to the history as well as the motion and development of a contradiction. (This communist definition of propaganda differs from the more general and usually negative usage of the term propaganda as any political text or art that aims to persuade or manipulate its audience.)

Looking Back to Face Forward

The Role of Summation in the Revolutionary Process

For a printable PDF of this article, click the cover image above.

The great helmsman of the Chinese Communist Revolution, Mao Zedong, elaborated a four-step method for guiding revolutionary practice:

1. Make a plan.
2. Carry out the plan.
3. Sum up the experience.
4. Make a new plan.

This didn’t just spring from the grand intellect of Mao, but was forged through the tremendous sacrifice of millions of Chinese peasants in revolutionary struggle. It’s what communists lived by when they were engaged in revolutionary warfare against feudal warlords, the Japanese imperialists, and the Guomindang comprador-bourgeoisie for two decades. It’s a crucial part of what made the Chinese revolution victorious.

A Revolutionary People Requires a Revolutionary Literature

kites is a theoretical and strategic collaboration among communist revolutionary organizations and individuals throughout North America. This journal unites us in the project of cultivating a revolutionary people across North America that sees the urgency of overthrowing capitalism-imperialism and in struggling for a communist future. To all those who share this fundamental aspiration with us, we say: let’s get serious about orchestrating the conditions of possibility to make this happen.

When We Ride On Our Enemies

by Kenny Lake (First published Sep 2017)

When we ride on our enemies is the third part in the four-part series The Specter that Still Haunts. Part four will appear in kites #4. Originally written in 2015 and published in Uprising (which was a theoretical organ of Revolutionary Initiative’s), the whole series can be found at revolutionary-initiative.com. Click here for a printable PDF of this article.

The (communist) movement is in its very essence an international movement. This means…that an incipient movement in a young country can be successful only if it makes use of the experiences of other countries. In order to make use of these experiences it is not enough merely to be acquainted with them, or simply to copy out the latest resolutions. What is required is the ability to treat those experiences critically and to test them independently. He who realises how enormously the modern (communist) movement has grown and branched out will understand what a reserve of theoretical forces and political (as well as revolutionary) experience is required to carry out this task.”
-Lenin, What is to be done?¹

Since the death of Mao Zedong and the subsequent capitalist restoration in China, communist people’s wars became, to one degree or another, contenders for power in the Philippines in the mid-1980s, in Peru in the early 1990s, and in Nepal at the beginning of the new millennium. The people’s war led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) was deemed by the Indian Prime Minister in 2005 to be the country’s greatest internal security threat, and the CPI(Maoist) has made great strides in its military capabilities and organized mass base over the last several decades. While none of these people’s wars reached the level of strength necessary to launch an all-out assault aimed at seizing power nationwide, in at least two instances the communist-led revolution became the phenomenon most impacting those particular countries—the subjective factor, more than anything else, began to determine the objective situation.

Malcolm X Didn’t Dish Out Free Bean Pies

Distinguishing Charity and Social Work from Revolutionary Strategy

by Kenny Lake (December 2020)

Click here for a printable PDF of this article.

In the 1990s, aside from militant protests and a willingness to go head-to-head with riot police perhaps best exemplified in the 1999 protests that shut down the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, anarchists also carried out their own forms of social programs intended to meet people’s needs. When the black bandanas came off, 1990s anarchists in the US were growing vegetables in “guerrilla gardens” and offering vegetarian meals to the homeless through local chapters of Food Not Bombs. The guerrilla gardens never seemed to bear fruit when it came to establishing connections with and providing food for the communities in which they were located (and nowadays city governments often fund official community garden programs). Food Not Bombs varied considerably from city to city, but some chapters did forge connections with homeless people, and its actions politicized the question of hunger and access to food.¹

Founded in 1980 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Food Not Bombs was guided by a simple but compelling political message concentrated in its name: military funding in service of imperialist wars was enormous while, even in the imperialist heartland, people went hungry. This political exposure of hunger and imperialism was delivered alongside an effective method of providing food for the homeless and anyone else who needed it. Food Not Bombs chapters collected food from friendly local supermarkets (often co-ops or other hippyish places) and bakeries that would have otherwise been thrown away due to its impending expiration date, cooked hot meals with it in a donated space (someone’s house, a church, etc.), and made this food available in a public location outside once a week or more. The food was all vegetarian, partially because collecting and cooking meat that was past its prime would have sooner or later resulted in gastric disaster, and partially because many participants in Food Not Bombs were vegetarian. Food Not Bombs made its food available without the typical “server” and “served” distinction and without securing permits, and turned its food distribution into political events.

Kick ’Em While They’re Down

Publishing this editorial announces the publication of kites issue 3, available early 2021. Check kites-journal.org for pre-order information coming soon. Click here for a printable PDF of this article.

By the kites Editorial Committee (December 2020)

In the future, hopefully 2020 will go down in history as the year of squandered possibilities for revolutionary advance in the US. We say hopefully because the other possibility—2020 as the year when all the signs of impending catastrophe were present, but those who claimed commitment to ending injustice failed to find a way to stop the catastrophe—is all too likely.

For 2020 was a year of deepening and multiplying crises in the US—wildfires, hurricanes, and other climate-change-driven disasters breaking all previous records; COVID-19 laying bare the inability of the capitalist-imperialist system to provide decent healthcare, employment, or basic necessities for many; police brutality and the oppression of Black people leading to waves of massive nationwide rebellions and protests; and deep divisions in society, including among the bourgeoisie, expressed in a bitterly contested election and the ability of Trump to trample on the normal functioning of bourgeois politics. All of these crises present the possibilities for communists to expose the workings of capitalism-imperialism to millions; to organize the proletariat, rebellious youth, oppressed people, and those in the petty-bourgeoisie willing to betray their class into a revolutionary people; to wrest leadership of the resistance movements away from opportunists and reformists and divert resistance towards revolutionary objectives; and to repolarize class alliances in society in a way favorable to the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie.

Catching Fire

Participant Reflections on the Summer of Protest and Rebellion

by a reader of kites

The interviews in this article were conducted in the summer of 2020. Click here for a printable PDF of this article.

Author’s note: As a reader of kites, I’ve been inspired by the guidance and leadership your journal provides to conduct social investigation into the wave of protest and rebellion that has swept across the country since the murder of George Floyd. While the findings are not necessarily representative of national (or even proletarian) sentiment, they offer some insight regarding the rebellion that I hope can be of use to the OCR, RI, and all other readers of kites who are committed to developing and implementing revolutionary theory through practice.

Theses on Capitalist Crisis and Class War

by José San Miguel

First written December 2019 / updated+published September 2020

Click here for a printable PDF of this article.

Preface

I began the work of writing out these positions over the course of 2018 and 2019. But these ideas, like all ideas, are social in their origin: they’re the outcome of significant effort among proletarian revolutionaries working together for many more years in study, discussion, and in the practical collaboration of proletarian class struggle.

These ideas were first presented by me in late 2019 to a large group of comrades with common or overlapping struggles who were brought together to discuss the deepening crises of capitalism-imperialism, the emergence and proliferation of existential threats, the nature of class struggle today, and the necessity of developing a program for socialist revolution. In the first half of 2020, a convergence of crises that an earlier version of this piece had began tracking have exploded onto the world, making all the more urgent the need to find our bearings and throw ourselves into the present and coming fights.

This piece’s declarative style – summary assertions and sharp lines of demarcation – is intended as a means of posing as clearly and bluntly as possible our analyses and positions on the subject matter: namely, the nature of capitalist crisis and the realities of class war today, particularly in North America. Admittedly, many of these positions require further research and elaboration. And it’s with that goal in mind that I submit them to the wider scrutiny and interrogation of the comrades and readers of kites.

The progression of bourgeois society is
simultaneously its further decay

Order kites #2 now for discount

Email us now at kites-journal@protonmail.com to reserve a print edition of kites #2 and you’ll receive a %15 discount code through our publisher Kersplebedeb at http://www.LeftWingBooks.net. You can also apply this discount code to the purchase of a kites#1-2 bundle or bulk purchase orders. Offer expires once kites goes up for sale at http://www.LeftWingBooks.net.