#organizedixie

[strommccallum]

Ding dong, the warlock is dead.

Colin Powell was one of the great criminals of our time and one of Neoliberalism's leading "respectable face" ghouls. Good riddance.

[strommccallum]

For a Free and Socialist Dixieland and the World Revolution

Only a few years ago, there was nothing like a significant body of true democratic socialists in the South. There was indeed a sizable number of well-meaning self-misidentified “democratic socialists", of proponents of welfare capitalism who had been involved or aligned with the 2016 presidential campaign of the world’s most famous faux democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders, and had themselves come to identify as “democratic socialists", but there was little more than that. True democratic socialists were, outside of humanities department faculties and a few metropolitan areas, very few and far between.

And then, with the worldwide surge of interest in socialism and leftward broadening of the popular Overton Window at the end of the decade (something which lagged slightly behind the popular broadening of the popular Overton Window into overt bigotry in the middle of the decade), something happened. For the first time in generations, small, but significant numbers of young Southerners, including a sizeable minority of the aforementioned self-misidentified “democratic socialists”, began to read the socialist greats, develop materialist perspectives of history, and embrace actual democratic socialism. Thousands came to recognize that our home’s ancient problems could only be addressed by a serious international democratic socialist movement, locally led by its greater working class. Dozens of democratic socialist groups with immediate and maximalist programs sprung up across Dixie. Numerous democratic socialist podcasts and meme pages with explicitly Southern foci were launched.

But while most of these new organizers and activists have a vague conception of the South’s status as a backwater of the “Developed World" and understand the need for a democratic socialist movement of the Southern people capable of taking on the specific problems Capital presents here and hitting Capital’s vulnerabilities here, with few exceptions, neither these organizers and activists, nor democratic socialist organizers and activists outside the South, have yet developed a thorough understanding of the situation here and its significance to humanity at large- Most of them have yet to develop a thorough understanding of what we are faced with, the South’s position in the world, or what the Southern greater working class’s duty is, what its specific crucial mission in the socialist revolution and the realization of international democratic socialism would be. They all understand the need to win over the majority of the Southern people under Capital’s lash, but as of yet, few have developed agendas, historical understandings, and sets of arguments that could, even if spoken and disseminated by an organized and disciplined movement, win over the millions of the South’s social reactionaries and otherwise non-class conscious.

Most of them have yet to develop theses demonstrating international socialism as something that can help Dixielanders as Dixielanders. Most of them have yet to fully appreciate the importance of socialist patriotism and the importance of the opportunity for non-reactionary Southern identity and expression of such identity, or the importance of an explicitly stated notion that we Southerners deserve what all others do and can and must contribute to humanity just as all other peoples can.

And while, once again, a majority of them recognize the South as some sort of economic backwater, while a majority of them see the South’s conspicuous and often extreme economic stratification and poverty, while most of them acknowledge Capital’s runaway plagues of race to the bottom economy, gentrification, displacement, cultural genocide, ecological destruction and sprawl, and imperialist cannon fodder recruitment upon the South, few of them have pieced everything together and developed a coherent understanding of the South’s unique position (contemporary Hawaii, with its statehood status and impoverished indigenous community, in some sense occupies a similar position on a much smaller scale) as an economic colony of Western Capital and historical component of the Global South fully legally incorporated into the metropole of  the principal Western imperial power. Not many yet appreciate the South’s near unique position as a sort of “banana republic", complete with a native comprador bourgeoisie, directly under the insurance policy of Uncle Sam’s sovereign whip. Not many of them fully recognize that the Southern greater working class’s revolutionary duty is, in part, a national liberation struggle capable of challenging Western Capital’s most powerful tool. Not many yet  fully realize that we, the people of the South, are a natural component of the vanguard of the Socialist Revolution- that we, an Atlantic Creole people and people of a Global South heritage both incorporated into the metropole of and under the sovereign whip of the American Empire, have a unique ability to challenge Capital’s legitimacy and reign.

Most of them do not yet understand the need for international democratic socialism to break out of the embryonic stage of movement building and begin to coalesce into serious and disciplined organizations, and most of them have yet to realize the general need for a coherent, independent, and unified Southern organization, within an international of revolutionary democratic socialist parties, capable of bringing the Southern greater working class to a class conscious revolutionary consensus and taking on Capital in the South. Most of them have yet to see that there must be formed a coherent movement organized into a party and attached labor union bloc for the emancipation of the Southern greater working class and the completion of the work of the World Revolution in the Southern context.

A party which recognizes the South’s position in the world, revolutionary potential, and World Revolutionary duty.

A party which recognizes that the South is a nation with a Global South heritage and, like the West Indian nations and the majority of “mainland" Latin American nations, and unlike America (a Greater/Neo-European nation with a foundational industrial “free labor" and peasant proprietor heritage), an Atlantic Creole nation. 

A party which recognizes the American state, Dixieland’s colonial sovereign, as Western Capital’s most powerful tool for the legitimization of its reign.

A party which recognizes the South’s struggle against Capital is a national liberation struggle. Which recognizes that the South is, at present, a colony of Western Capital at large. That recognizes our home provides a low wage, low tax, low and lax labor and ecological regulation, “right to work" environment for Western Capital- that understands our home, with its numerous sui generis attributes, is regarded and treated as perhaps the safest destination for the export of race to the bottom finance capital. That recognizes we must bring an end to this economic imperialism, this imperialism that economically ghettoizes us and uses our home as a weapon against the vestigial economic security, labor standards, and freedoms of the relatively empowered greater working classes of the world -which recognizes that the South, in its capacity as a race to the bottom destination, has been used as a weapon against the relatively empowered proletarians of the world, including those of Western Europe and America proper. A party which is not content with the South’s role as a sweatshop and the exploitation of the Southern greater working class as a tool for the depreciation of the value of the labor of other sections of the world’s greater working class, that seeks to break these toxic imperialist relations and build a post-imperialism world of global mutual aid and advancement towards economic parity.

A party which, along with opposing economic imperialism, rejects without ambiguity the alternative of national chauvinist autarkism.

A party which recognizes the need for especially close cooperation with other colonial peoples under the sovereignty of the American state- in the metropole, namely the American Indian nations under its sovereignty and the indigenous peoples of the states of Alaska and Hawaii (peoples, like us, with access to federal democratic levers), as well as the peoples of the island territories without access to such levers.

A party which recognizes the fact that the South and the other nations of Uncle Sam's empire aside from America proper are disproportionately represented in the military forces of the empire and serve as its backbone. A party which recognizes and unapologetically stands against the targeted recruitment of impoverished Southerners and impoverished members of the other colonial nations into the military of the American State and the disproportionate garrisoning of Southern, other colonial, and American proper troops in our home and the other colonial nations.

A party which appreciates the progressive roles the American state has played at different times in earlier epochs, including its emancipation of a third of the Southern people from chattel slavery, but recognizes its present role as a reactionary one.

A party which strongly and bluntly criticizes all of the historic Capitalist regimes over the South- the Antebellum Plantocracy, the brief era of Yankee bourgeois rule commonly referred to as “Reconstruction”, brought to a close by the Yankee bourgeoisie’s abandonment of partnership with heroic freedman’s radical liberal democracy in favor of alliance and joint rule with the old Antebellum Plantocracy, Young “Redeemers”, and Gradyites, the “New South" joint rule of the Neo-Plantocracy, Gradyite industrial compradors, and Gradyite-partnering Yankee capital, or the “Sunbelt" era of today, the general reign of Western Capital and its compradors beginning in the middle of the last century- from a Marxian historical materialist perspective.

A party which recognizes all members of the Southern greater working class, irrespective of race and gender, as victims of Capital and aggressively reveals to them their common class interest. A movement that shows how working class White Southerners and working class Black Southerners, the respective “Shudras" and “Dalits" of Southern society, alike have been economically oppressed and disadvantaged by the regime of White supremacy that has kept poor Black Southerners under the heel of the boot of the local appendage of Capital, of the local appendage of "the Man", and poor White Southerners under its toe, that has only privileged the White proletarian relative to his or her Black neighbor and has kept both from class consciousness, that has kept both from banding together for radical reforms and eventual revolutionary expropriation of their oppressors and concealed the identity of the grand oppressor and enemy of all greater working class Southerners.

A party which recognizes both the necessity of the unity of the global greater working class and the expression of non-reactionary Southern identity capable of inspiring the self-emancipation of the Southern greater working class and the contribution of the Southern greater working class to the World Revolution at large. A party that works to destroy the incorrect correlation of socialism with some sort of ethnic self-flagellation or surrender to “the other” and properly addresses the absence of a revolutionary Southern pride that serves as an impediment to the embracement of democratic socialism by, and continues the embrace of racially divisive reactionary Southern symbology and pride by, large sections of the Southern greater working class.

A party which stands for humanist environmentalalism, red environmentalism, as opposed to anti-human and green primitivist environmentalism. A movement which recognizes the South’s essential role in combatting the ecological crises facing humanity at large and a movement opposed to the imperialist ecological despoiling and destruction of the South and the imperialist decimation of the South’s natural spaces from a humanist, socialist patriotic, and internationalist position.

A party which unabashedly calls out the transformation of greater working class Southern communities and Southern natural landscapes into ritzy tourist traps and literal and figurative gated communities for the Carpetbagger bourgeoisie and the Southern comprador bourgeoisie for the travesty that it is. A party which recognizes this trend and the general plague of cultural genocide against greater working classes of Dixie and the commodification and ritzification of Dixielander folk culture as intricately related phenomena and components of the imperialist exploitation of our home.

A party which is not self-righteous or arrogant, which strives toward the building of thorough class consciousness and a concomitant destruction of reactionary ideology, but does not expect those who have spent their lifetimes under capitalist cultural hegemony to instantly become thoroughly class conscious. A party which seeks to win over the non-establishment forces of ultra-reaction, recognizing their search for a just alternative to neoliberal hegemony and neoliberal reductionist identity politics, while being fully opposed to the ideology and bigotry they have developed and has been inculcated in them.

A party which loudly acknowledges that greater working class rule can only be established and socialism can only be developed through supermajoritarian class conscious greater working class seizure of state power. A party which loudly denounces Blanquism, Tankieism, and so-called “anarchism”.

A party which recognizes that socialism can only be built with honesty and intellectual integrity, a party that is fully opposed to ideological dishonesty, positing of falsehoods, “sneaking, and Trotskyist entryism.

A party which admires large elements of the February and October Revolutions, but views Leninism and the Leninist experiments of the 20th Century as Blanquist projects that were doomed to develop into despotism and fail to build economic democracy and production for use economy.

A party which recognizes that while democratic socialism in the South is for the moment an almost exclusively Gen Y and Z phenomenon, it will need to win over members of older generations and not simply write them off.

A party which opposes both veneration of the reactionaries of history and general iconoclasm.

A party which supports the formation of party group learning and study institutions for the building of class consciousness and political, historical, and environmental literacy, such as socialist night schools and discussion circles.

A party which supports the formation of party institutions for recreational activity and the study and practice of greater working class Southern folk culture.

A party which recognizes the importance of the arts and the crucial role of the arts in the democratic socialist struggle.

A party which supports the formation of scholarly party institutions for the socialist and historical materialist study of Southern history, natural history, culture, contemporary environmental reality, and contemporary economy and politics.

A party which recognizes the need for establishing, printing, and distributing a popular party publication, as well as the printing and distributing of pamphlets and posters. That recognizes the power and place of physical media.

A party which recognizes it must be able to defend itself from violent harassment, but which also recognizes that socialist revolutionary action can only be carried out by supermajoritarian consensus of the masses, and opposes Blanquist and so-called “anarchist" violence, violent harassment of state and non-state opponents, and general pre-Revolutionary violent outburst.

A party which fights for radical reforms that can raise consciousness and sense of class agency, and values the radical reforms it wins, but never shifts its primary focus away from the maximalist program of ultimate realization of production for use economy and economic democracy.

A party which considers its affiliated labor union struggle to be, and carries its affiliated labor union struggle out as, a radical reform struggle.

A party which recognizes that, with the rapid growth of capacity for automation of labor, as well as the ramping up of ultra-authoritarian state activity and the growth in automation and artificial intelligence-driven ultra-authoritarian state capabilities, we are in a race against time. A party which recognizes that Capital is proceeding towards its end game- towards a consolidation of all power and wealth into its hands and towards a devaluation of the labor of the workers and reduction of their power to challenge those who have lorded over them to nothing. A party which recognizes the need to build a class conscious consensus by the end of the decade.

A party which recognizes that to save and keep our home free in the long run, the whole of humanity must be saved and kept free by the cooperation of the whole of humanity.

A party and attached labor union bloc for the emancipation of the Southern greater working class and the completion of the work of the World Revolution within the Southern context.

In all likelihood, the South will wind up as one of two things- the world’s greatest bulwark of reaction, or one of the principal components of the vanguard of the Socialist Revolution.

Our home, with its old demons, racial divisions, and poverty, could be used by Western Capital to contain and roll back the forces of socialism across the Western World. Social tensions could be inflamed to create scenes of racial and “cultural” warfare and undermine unity of the greater working class against Capital across the world. Anti-socialist anxiety could be employed and the Southern people, White and Black alike, used as anti-revolutionary auxillaries. The South could be used as a safe redoubt of popular support for American Empire and Capital. The South could be used as a showcase for the supposed irreconcilability of racial, ethnic, and other social antagonism.

But the Southern people have an opportunity to stand at the vanguard of the World Revolution. We have an opportunity to make our civilization one of the shining revolutionary lights leading humanity and eviscerating the miseries of the past and the present.

The tragedies of our history- tragedies of Capital’s making- do not doom us. We, as Southerners, can proudly set an example. We can play a role in emancipating and saving humankind and live one of the greatest stories in human history.

Destiny is calling upon us. We have something we must realize and something we must contribute. It is time we establish a program, movement, and party for a free and socialist Dixieland capable of carrying out its world revolutionary duty.

-Strom McCallum

(Republished from my blog)

[strommccallum]

Brilliant.

[strommccallum]

As the case of Goose Creek shows, White Southerners of the greater working class and Black Southerners of the greater working class alike are victimized by gentrification, malignant urban sprawl, and cultural genocide driven by Capital's usage of the South as a race to the bottom destination.

We must build class consciousness and a movement for the realization of a socialist South capable of carrying out its historical duty in the struggle for the realization of a socialist humanity.

[strommccallum]

Democratic Socialism and Iconoclasm

The cause of democratic socialism, the cause we have inherited from our forefathers Marx and Engels, is hindered by the widespread popular conception of it as one of indiscriminate iconoclasm and transgression. We democratic socialists must take care to accurately represent democratic socialism as a constructive ideology, as a constructive revolutionary ideology that recognizes, respects, and admires the very much imperfect but progressive and emancipatory elements of human history that serve as our foundation. As one that, acknowledging this foundation we stand upon, strives to realize a new mode of production and stage in human history, to realize a post-production for exchange world of mutual aid and the reign of a meaningful and thorough democracy (and through doing so emancipate the billions presently under the lash of Capital and safeguard the planet for their progeny), not one of, among other things, simply screaming, raving and tearing things down, one of simple destruction, denigration, and defacement for destruction, denigration, and defacement’s sake.

We must point out that democratic socialism, while a non-conservative, and indeed, revolutionary and futurist ideology, only seeks to denounce and remove from places of veneration that not of the progressive and emancipatory sort, and destroy those things which stand directly in the way of the realization of socialism. That it is, again, an ideology focused on building through majoritarian means a new, majoritarian, production for use economic regime, a new democratic mode of production, on, through majoritarian means, emancipating humanity, not simply one that seeks to denigrate and destroy all which is simply “old” or “normal”. That it is, again, an ideology that respects and admires the progressive forces that brought us to the point where we now stand, that calls for a world unlike any yet realized, but appreciates the fact that we stand on the shoulders of giants, those that have brought us to a place further than square one, that recognizes their lives and efforts were necessary to bring us to this point.

As part of this effort, we must explicitly contrast democratic socialism with contemporary radical liberalsm and anarchism that generally fetishizes iconoclasm, that advocates destruction of all that exists for its own sake. We must contrast the Marxian materialist approach to history with, and loudly oppose, reactionary, right and "left" “relativist”, and left idealist views of the past, as well as the general program and end goals of the various strains of radical liberalism and anarchism. We must make known our admiration for men and women of history who can be deemed progressive forces of history, who helped nudge the world closer to the realization of socialism, from bourgeois radical liberals of the Eighteenth Century to the Hinton Helpers, Harriet Tubmans, and Abraham Lincolns and the Robert Owens, Ferdinand Lassalles, and Vera Zasuliches of the Nineteenth, and so on.

And, as part of this effort, we must not accomodate simple raw destructive impulse, lest we scare off those rightfully opposed to indiscriminate destruction and simple chaos, and lest we cultivate attitudes of opposition to whatever the prevailing order of the day is- attitudes that may be employed by Reaction against the forces of socialism one day. We must not accomodate the sort of attitudes helped fuel both the meteoric rise of the alt-right (with its playfully outlandish Neo-Fascist and Neo-Nazi affronts to many of the “sacred cows” of post-war Western society, typically fueled by desire to simply hurt and transgress as much as by genuine bigotry) several years ago and the raw, hysteric iconoclasm of 2020- the “transgression and spewing of bile for its own sake” attitude of so many disaffected members of Generations Y and Z. It is not as if we should not strive to the uttermost to win over the disaffected and left behind that turn to iconoclasm and raw transgression for emotional release- we definitely should- but these attitudes of rage must be transformed into constructive, class conscious ones towards the tearing down of the Dictatorship of Capital AND building a better world, not simply opposing that which reigns or prevails or has reigned or prevailed simply because it reigns or prevails or has reigned or prevailed, or all which comes to reign or prevail simply because it comes to reign or prevail. We must not simply accomodate such pathology or consider those still under its spell democratic socialists, consider them members of our movement’s ranks, just as we must not simply accomodate reactionary and bigoted social pathology or consider those still under its spell democratic socialists, consider them members of our movement’s ranks.We must educate people and help simple rage develop into Marxian historical materialist understanding and class consciousness.

I am not suggesting we not be vociferous in our opposition to Capital or "love our enemies", be timorous, reticent, or diffident. I am not suggesting we refrain from aggressively campaigning for the removal of reactionary idols from places of veneration or exposing the rogues of history for who they are. But I am saying that in developing opposition to Capital, we must honestly represent democratic socialism and vocally stand against simple opposition to and hatred of all which prevails or has prevailed simply because it has prevailed. We must develop and apply historical materialist analysis and strive to establish a better world, not simply tear down what stands or reigns today simply because it stands or reigns, or, indeed, tear down what stands or reigns tomorrow simply because it reigns then. We must show that democratic socialism is neither an ideology that makes apologies for or calls for the veneration of the reactionaries of history, nor a gerontophobic ideology that hates all that has been simply because it has been. We do not want to establish chaos,we do not wish to bring about simple tumult and disorder.

Democratic socialism must be popularly understood for what it is- an ideology for the emancipation of all under Capital’s whip and a rational, scientific ideology adamantly but cool-headedly seeking to build something better for humanity, rather than one that is simply destructive, rather than one that simply wishes to immolate all which has preceded today. It must show it is meant for all victims of Capital for the whole of the greater working class. It must show it is an ideology of emancipation and redemption for all, not self-righteousness, sanctimony, and non-constructive rage.

-Strom McCallum

(Republished from my blog)

[strommccallum]

Have we been living through the opening year of Capitalism’s Final Great Crisis?

Have we been living through the opening year of the Final Great Crisis of Capitalism? Yes.

Are we on the eve of the Socialist Revolution? We could be. Whether we are is wholly contingent upon whether we democratic socialist activists- we, democratic socialism’s spearhead- begin to meaningfully and intelligently organize and aggressively and astutely disseminate the simple truth over the course of the next couple of years. What emerges from this will be either a world of workers’ republics or an indestructible totalitarian capitalism with everywhere a totalitarian face, a capitalism invulnerable to the sentiments of the masses, and a capitalism under which the presently-existing limited civil liberties, labor rights, and social welfare programs working classes have won from their masters have been vanquished. We cannot be as optimistic as our great forefather Marx was here- with continued rapid growth of capacity for automation of labor, as well as continued ramping up of ultra-authoritarian state activity and growth in automation and artificial intelligence-driven ultra-authoritarian state capabilities, what could emerge from the Final Great Crisis could be a final victory of Capital. We are certainly at the end of the age of Capital’s reign by liberal capitalism and so-called “social democratic” capitalism over much of the world, of the post-WW II era and of Fukuyama’s “end of history”, but that doesn’t mean that Capital itself will not survive these years of crisis and proceed at breakneck speed towards its end game- towards a consolidation of all power and wealth into its hands and towards a devaluation of the labor of the people and reduction of their power to challenge those who have lorded over them to nothing.

Yes, the events of this year are indeed spurring on and accelerating the development of embryonic and early stage class consciousness in all corners of the world as has nothing else before- Yes, including the first few years of the Trump spectacle. There is something to be said for this remarkable, spontaneous, almost overnight growth.

But the growth in these unorganized and often vague sentiments among large sections of the working classes is not enough. Tremendous educational and organizational effort is needed to help these notions and ideas quickly blossom into comprehensive understandings of the structures and systems of power that we live under across all sections of the working classes, into full class consciousness of the working classes, into intellectual autonomy of the working classes, into world working class unity, into the development of a democratic global working class agenda towards the realization of maximum economic democracy and abolition of the market economy and into effective political organization.

We cannot afford any more laziness or procrastination. We must stop simply talking to comrades in the spearhead, in the “frat”, as Comrade Adolph Reed would say, and reach out to those who are not yet close to where we are- in the short term, whether through articles, YouTube videos, social media discussion, debate with major political personalities, or the formation of socialist study circles, environmental conservation groups, tenant organizations, and small, embryonic labor unions and political parties that would coalesce into the future political parties of a mass global movement of the working classes. We cannot keep putting off things until tomorrow. We must work tirelessly for the development of class consciousness every day and we must challenge elements that will attempt to mislead the working classes with pro-establishment dreck and reactionary and economic authoritarian anti-establishment chicanery.

People are beginning to understand that they have been under the whip of some system of capitalist brainwashing. A good many are not too terribly far from meaningfully understanding the systems of power that oppress them. A good many are not too terribly far from realizing in their minds a picture of socialist society and discovering the path to it. But we are very short on time and aggressive and intelligent organizational and educational effort from we, democratic socialism’s spearhead, is the spark needed to light a fire in the minds of the masses and facilitate rapid and exponential growth of the informed ranks of democratic socialism. It is up to us to get the ball rolling quickly soon.

So let us do what must be done. The end of this still young decade will be the fork in the road. This is our last chance. If the masses do not develop full class consciousness and act to seize the reins of society within the coming several years, socialism will never be established and Capital will win a final victory. These years, opened by the arrival of the SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 pandemic, will be the pivotal years in the history of humankind.

-Strom McCallum

(Republished from my blog)