future forward, a vision for revolution - notepad

7/28/2019 Future Forward, A Vision for Revolution - Notepad

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Future Forward, A Vision for RevolutionThe following is the text of a speech given by Fred Ho on April 9, 2008, at anevent organized by the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles. In it Hoputs forward his vision of revolutionary socialist transformation a visionwhich breaks from Marxist orthodoxy in many intriguing ways. Onkwehn:we Risingwould like to draw readers attention in particular to his rejection of thetechno-utopianism that marks most strands of nominally Marxist thought, both of

the eco-socialist and non-eco-socialist varieties. Fred Hos discussion of therelationship between what we calls First World Overconsumption, which we wouldidentify as First World Parasitism, is also key.

With this piece, and our previous posting several weeks ago of Derrick JensensTwenty Premises on Industrial Civilization, OR is hoping to begin a discussionaround a critique of industrialism, something which needs to be seriouslyundertaken with the looming general ecological crisis heading towards us at rapidpace (if indeed it has not already arrived).

Fred is a jazz baritone saxophonist, composer, bandleader, playwright, writer,and social activist.

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I would like to thank everyone who has so enthusiastically worked to make thisevent happen. Without your labor and dedication, nothing gets done. I especiallyunderstand this having been fighting a brutal and exhausting war against advancedcolo-rectal cancer for almost the past three years. My capability to even findtwo consecutive days where I have the strength and energy to get things done hasbeen few and far between. So I truly appreciate all that you have done.

In particular, Id like to thank three individuals. First, Tammy Luu, who I ampleased to have met just before she came to Los Angeles to become apart of theLabor/Community Strategy Centers team of organizers. When we met in Seattle, Iwas happy to hear that she was coming here and strongly encouraged her move. AndI am so glad to know that she has benefited greatly from being with the LCSC andadded to their energies.

Secondly, Professor Diane Fujino, who the second I met her in 1998 here in Los

Angeles, I knew would be a great friend and comrade. Im happy to take somecredit for encouraging her to do her scholarly work in researching and promotingJapanese American radicals, including her seminal and important book on the greatYuri Kochiyama, her forthcoming book on Richard Aoki, and her ongoingdissemination about Japanese American radicals and revolutionaries, as AsianPacific Americans continue to be made invisible by the white mainstream and thewhite left, be they activists or academics.

And thirdly, Eric Mann, whose greatness continues to be his understanding of massorganizing, his commitment to building mass movements, to train mass organizersnot in the Alinsky-ite mode of disruptions and disconnected reform fights, but ina Marxist-based mode of fighting to change the entire social system. Heepitomizes the warrior who will never give up.

Without these three individual comrades and friends, I could not be here to share

in this important conversation and exchange of ideas and experiences.

When Eric and I were first conversing about how this event would be constructed,I stressed to him my opinion that it should focus on the future. While I believeit is necessary to learn from the past (both mistakes and accomplishments)whatwe Marxists called summationIm enough of a materialist to have the beliefthat we cannot go back to the past and affect it in any way.

The past is done. The past does explain the present, particularly how variousclass struggles have played out, the choices that were made, the battles thatwere lost or won, to account for the present. However, the degree to which weremain affected by the past is the degree to which we are prevented fromadvancing to the future.

Even the present continually confronts the future. We make choices and fight

battles, hopefully, guided by a vision for a future, what we want to come intobeing, to transcend the past and present, meaning to go beyond this system of

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Future Forward, A Vision for Revolutionexploitation and oppression and create a new society, and eventually, a newsocial world for humanity that will no longer impact upon the biosphere, ourplanet. (Note: I will later explain my premise that all human impact since theadvent of class society has had both toxic effects both upon humans and upon thebiosphere.)

The future cannot be the total accumulation of what we have learned, that is whatwe dont want and presumably, what we want. But what we want, if the Earth is toremain habitable for humans, must far exceed all of the proposals made thus farin the entirety of socialist struggle and experiences.

For me, that vision of the future is communism. A humanity that has rid itselfof classes, of all artificial divisions (mental vs. manual labor; of gender; ofrace and nationality; of rural vs. urban); where any form of a state (aclass-controlled government with repressive mechanisms) no longer exists; wherethe premise of from each according to their work, to each according their needwould actually mean a humanity that would be matriarchal and luddite (Illexplain these two premises in further detail soon); and a humanity for whichsocial justice and ecological sustainability reign supreme. Communism is theprocess of human society fundamentally transforming the conception humanity andsociety in which the concept of work as activity that must be performed in order

to make a living is irrelevant and rejected; and that the concept of need isnot based upon either poverty (i.e., sustenance) or covetousness (i.e., materialaccumulation). Rather than making a living, one works to define ones life.Rather than need any THING, we give our labor freely to benefit humanity and theplanet, of which neither should be a contradiction. Our work for betterment isneither a right nor a responsibility, as politically constructed activity, butpart of the essence of a new humanity.

To bring about a communist humanity requires revolution because it means thatnothing that has transpired so far is permanent or unchangeable. In the past twohundred years, we have had people who are communists, movements, organizationsand parties that are communist (albeit of problematic character as I will explainsoon), but never a communist society, which is impossible as communism is not agovernment or social order, but a new humanity, indeed the end of human historyas a journey of struggle between humans who own and control versus humans who

labor and produce but who do not own and control; and the end to a journey ofstruggle between humans and the non-human planet for which humans, for the past8,000 years, have sought to own and control. That journey to a new humanityrequires revolutionaries, revolutionary movements and organizations. In my essayin my new book, Matriarchy: The First and Final Communism, I argue thatcommunism was the state of humanity prior to the overthrow of womyn and thebeginning of class division and the rise of the patriarchal state. The onlycommunist societies we have had in the modern era were probably the nomadic andtribal peoples of south-central Africa, but who themselves have been unable toavoid global capitalism, and the few societies in the Amazonian rainforest whohave chosen not to have contact with the rest of the human world, and whomilitantly guard their up to now secret existence.

Let me tell you what I think we need to keep and discard from the pastrevolutionary movements, and I am in particular referring to the New Left of

which I came of age from the late-1960s to whats left of that New Left today.

We need to keep the importance of struggling for revolutionary ideology andcreative revolutionary theory. We need to discard the Stalinian formulation ofdialectics which sees most struggle as antagonistic in nature (everything as atwo-line struggle between the correct position and the enemy). We need to deepenMaos concept of dialectics that sees contradictions in everything, but todistinguish between what is primary and secondary in the context of the actualconditions, meaning that what is primary can become secondary, what is secondarycan become primary, etc. Academics like to argue for complexity and nuance.We revolutionary Marxists are not intellectual competitors playing games ofrefinement and endless description, but rather, are committed activists who wantsolutions. However, as dialectical materialists, we hold self-criticism asprimary, meaning our constant struggle to understand our own mistakes andresponsibilities to make change in our ideas and actions. We do not accept

anything on faith, even our own beliefs.

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Future Forward, A Vision for RevolutionConcomitantly, when we say something is correct we should not mean it is adeclaration of truth, but rather, that it conforms to our present understandingof reality. There are no unchanging, permanent, fixed or absolute Truths; onlythe struggle to understand and affect the world. The basic materialistproposition is that humans cannot live without the natural world, therefore whatwe do and how we organize our existence as humans should not destroy that world.

By poisoning and exploiting the planet, we kill humanity. The degradation andexploitation of humanity (often promoted as progress and civilization)hastens the destruction of the planet. This is why dialectical materialism is atruly revolutionary philosophy and science. Historical materialism is thedialectical relationships of all existence historically, meaning as a process ofever-continuing struggles.

The need for revolutionary theory, that is dialectical and historicalmaterialism, should embrace studying all forms of philosophy and thought, to testeverything, to expand the creativity of how we struggle. Revolutionary theoryrelies upon the imagination and creative struggle. It cannot be taught bybook-worship, memorization of dogma or formulas, pithy slogans or phraseology,but like all forms of creativity, it must combine experience and study (which canbe more than reading); discipline and fun; organization and individuality; thefamiliar with the experimental; but ultimately theory must be avant-garde, ie.,

transcendent, seeking to go beyond the beyond, never complacent or smug. I speakof theory as a personality because it is ultimately dynamic, expressive, usefuland practical and must take us forward and make the new future. That doesntmean our methods, mode of thinking, etc. are simply linear or mostly concrete.Revolutionary leaps are the synthesis of wild and bold imagination with concreteday to day struggles.

We need to keep the primary importance of mass organizing, building massmovements with revolutionary leadership, as Mao put it, rely upon the masses orcarrying out the mass line. Reformists and non-revolutionary leftists believein great individuals as the makers of history. They romanticize the greatrevolutionary heroes such as Che (or name your own) and believe a small,fervently dedicated and capable group of individuals can bring down the system.While rarely can a small group bring down an entire social order, it isimpossible for a small group to build a new society, as it will require the

masses of people, proletarians, artists and artisans, skilled professionals, anda host of others working in coordination and collective rational planning toconstruct a new system, and for it to be better.

Revolutionary sacrifice, commitment and dedication is also something that mustcontinue and intensify. I often get frustrated and disappointed with the youngactivists today as I see many who want to be radicals often times getting jobs atnon-profits, unwilling to organize and lead their own revolutionary collectives,unwilling to manufacture their own propaganda and go out and sell it and not seekfunding and grants, but be guerilla entrepreneurs who are self-reliant. Theywant staff jobs. Few are willing to be assigned to work in proletarian jobs.They want to take classes in Marxism. Few are willing to actually build and runMarxist study groups, collectives and presses. They want a salary for that staffjob. Few are willing to sell a sheroes calendar, a Left journal or newspaper,and make that their source of financing.

But in recent years, Ive tempered my harsh opinion of younger activists. Evenif they were willing to make the sacrifices and give the dedication, we of theolder generation are now mostly unwilling to make those same sacrifices and givethat same dedication we did when we were youth, much less support those who arewilling to do that. In a myriad of subtle to blatant ways, we are the obstacles.Many of us are too liberal now, we dont struggle with the youth much less witheach other or ourselves, to make greater sacrifices or commitments. Or we aresimply nostalgic or romanticize our own pasts. We are too negligent or lazy todo the hard summations, to take responsibility for our errors, to boldly sharewith the youth those lessons. We act as patronizing parents or feeblegrandparents, unwilling to kick the young peoples asses, unwilling to kick ourown asses, and therefore have become impotent. When we glorify ourselves bytalking about the past without really revealing how we lived and struggled asrevolutionaries, and tell the truth about our dirty laundry, we are obstacles to

real political advancement. The past is done, as I asserted earlier. I havelearned that I cannot see myself or todays revolutionaries as measured by the

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Future Forward, A Vision for Revolutionpast.

Todays revolutionaries will face unprecedented contradictions and crises that wecouldnt even fathom 30 years ago, including a toxic planet, electronicdependency and surveillance and repression, global economic collapse, new plaguesand pandemics, more frequently devastating droughts, flooding, forest fires,

shortages of potable drinking watera key fundamental contradiction of capitalismis that it is the only system made by humans in which it creates more problemsthat it solves. New medical technologies, for example, cannot keep up with thenew cancers, the new diseases. Only 200 years ago, diabetes and heart diseaseand most cancers did not exist. Attention Deficit Disorder, obesity, stress werenot even diagnoses that existed half a century ago.

We must keep the revolution, i.e., our support for armed resistance and struggle.One thing the anarchists are mired in, as seen in the debates waged by themilitants such as Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen, is the problem of whatChurchill labels, the pathology of pacifism. The Marxist revolutionary Leftalways considered any peace or dtente with imperialism to be a watershed foropportunism or betrayal of revolution.

The organizational concept of democratic-centralism (d.c.), a hierarchal military

command structure, is still appropriate for military components of struggle thatare engaged in either security for the movement or direct combat with therepressive components of imperialism. However, all of these revolutionarymilitary components must be under political command, meaning at no time orcondition, even when under full direct assault by the military forces of thestate, can political leadership be subsumed or suspended for the military aspect.As little attention as it is given by would-be militant anarchists who oftenlaud the Black Panthers and other revolutionary forces (who were socialist andinfluenced by Mao Zedong Thought), the primary principle of guerilla warfare, asso brilliant developed, elaborated and implemented by Mao and the Red Army is ofputting politics in command.

A movement of any kind that does not value, respect and uphold its own securityis a movement rife for infiltration and easy destruction. Therefore, I am of thebelief that d.c. must still be implemented in the security and military

components of the struggle. But the overwhelming mass organizing and covertpolitical functioning of a revolutionary organization should not be primarilydemocratic-centralist. Democratic centralism, as a primary organizationalmethod, is the incubator for cult of personality and the lemming syndrome.

Here is what we need to discard. They are both endemic causes and effects, andhence I describe as syndromes.

1.The cult of personality syndrome. The el caudillo or el caudilla, the strongman or strong man-identifying woman, the high almighty theoretician-leader, to berevered and accepted as clearest on all matters. I remember in the decliningdays of the LRS (when ironically it was growing in membership but declining inMarxism), how local leadership tried to shut me up from questioning the greatleader Carmen by hammering away at me, Are you clearer than Carmen? Do youthink youre clearer than Carmen? If I publically stated, Yes, I think on

matters of cultural work that I am clearer than Carmen because she has never donethis work, Id be accused of arrogance. That is how internal democracyfunctioned. The great Gordons, Carmens and Maes, eventually as I got toexperience them, were simply arrogant, bossy egomaniacs, undeserved of leadershipposition (whose main qualification was that they so coveted those positions).They did no mass work, led no mass struggles, contributed very little tofundraising. What made them the best leaders? Not theoretical brilliance, thoone or two had perhaps read more classic Marxist texts than most. What I havebeen able to discern is that they were the best intimidators. Both intimidatingthe internal ranks and standing up to the same type of leaders in otherorganizations. The very top national leadership was at its core, made up ofarrogant egomaniacal bullies, though, to their credit, did surround themselveswith capable and great mass organizers and theoreticians. They met with on theground organizers and helped them get clear by figuring out political strategyand tactics, as mainstream bourgeois electoral politics would figure out deals,

alliances and maneuvering. Those who defied or opposed them were eitherbrowbeaten into submission or isolation, ostracized or expelled.

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2.You cant have cult of personality without its attendant Lemming Syndrome amongthe cadre. Lemming Syndrome begins when a membership is more and more summonedto rubberstamp its leadership and its line by exhortations to faith, like mostcults, than by reasoning and analysis. This fire the base ploy is used by allhierarchal organizations, from corporations to the military to bourgeois

electoral political campaigns. The cadre join or are recruited because theytruly want to devote their lives to the revolution. They truly want to be partof the vanguard, and are willing to do whatever is necessary for that vanguard,even suspend and jettison dialectical and historical materialism, or the supremecommitment to the truth. How does this happen, that once brilliant and committedfighters become lemmings? Through what I call substitutionism. The vanguard,the working class, the revolution all become equated with and reduced to theorganization or party, and that group is even furthered reduced to itsleadership.

Let me make one thing crystal clear: the problem is not the concept or existenceof a vanguard or what the anarchists have criticized as vanguardism (or whenthe revolution seizes state power, statism), but what I want to attack moreprecisely as substitutionism. Substitutionism is declaring oneself to beacting in the name of the proletariat, the revolution, the cause of socialism

or communism. In essence, it is simply posturing or grandstanding. When it isdeclared that Carmen is the top leader because she is clearest, it is in essencesaying that Carmens clarity is her ability to posture or speak for all of us,the organization, and yes, even the working class. The arrogance and egomaniaare self-evident that anyone can individually or any one organization can speakfor the entire U.S. working class, unless the masses of people identify with,support and stand with that organization (and when that happens, it canaccurately claim itself to be the vanguard party).

I do not reject the concept of the vanguard or vanguard party. I believe,however, we must, like Marxism itself, creatively develop beyond the initial andfoundational experiences of the Russian and Chinese revolutions. One thing theLRS did get correct was that it never declared itself a party and did notrecognize any of the other declared parties to be the actual party for theprimary reason that the criteria expressed by such groups actually lowered the

requirements and conditions for the vanguard party.

There must be a vanguard just as in any creative activity there is an avantgarde, an experimental wing, undeniably small at first, that pushes and pushesfor transcendence, to surpass and exceed that which has come before it. Thatvanguard is the new leadership, small in size at first, and perhaps remainingrelatively small, as it includes the most capable, imaginative andself-sacrificing and humble fighters. The vanguard must reject all thepetty-bourgeois criteria of the past Left of privileging intellectuals (i.e.,people who primarily think about stuff and not those who primarily create orbring about the new), privileging those who are best at bullying, intimidatingand browbeating, those with the biggest egos. Indeed, the greatest singlestruggle in the journey towards communism, the creation of the new human, is thejourney to eliminate ego. But just as upholding the vanguard is not the same asupholding hierarchy and privilege, the ingeniousness of individuality must be

distinguished from the iniquity of individualism. The vanguard must have at itscore persons who are immensely humble, in addition to being confident, strong,convicted and with great integrity. They must be people, who my friend MagdalenaGomez describes, as those who are willing to forego power in order to generateit. A vanguard leadership, thus, in her words, is a helm with no helm becausethe power is circular, like a perfect current running through it. Or as myfriend Peggy Choy has termed, the gateless gate, a vanguard predicated uponexcellence and commitment without gate-keeping, a process by which the insidersprivilege themselves.1

The vanguard is not the most effective administrators, not the most popular orgreat agitators, but a circle of the most imaginative and effective people inrealizing a transcendent socialism, the ultimate purveyors of the negation ofthe negation. More on what I mean in a minute.

We cannot make what has been called international linethat is a position onwho we would support or not with regard to movements in other countries, or for

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Future Forward, A Vision for Revolutionthat matter, governments of other countries which espouse to besocialistdecisive. It is not possible for us, by reading reports of othercountries, or even from visiting them, to really know what is going on, much lessinterfere in the internal struggles of other countries. We cannot relinquish ourindependent viewpoint no matter how prestigious or heavy another country, party,movement or organization outside of our country may seem. We may study the

situation, try to understand what is going on, but we cannot take sides of anykind. We can support the peoples struggles but not choose any one particularforce over the others. Just as there can be no Gurus for our domestic movement,we cannot worship foreign Gurus either.

Finally, we must reject as unacceptable patriarchal socialism, which has beenwhat all socialist states and most socialist movements have been.

My comment on the present situation is very simple: while past socialistmovements and 20th century socialist states have made accomplishments in theliberation of humanity, including womyns liberation, they are primarilyembodiments of unacceptable patriarchal socialism.

The failure of national liberation and socialist movements after they have seizedstate power or gained state independence is marked by the fundamental problem and

mistake of what Vijay Prashad describes in his castigating but important book,The Darker Nations, as the demobilization of the masses, specifically, theirdisarming, the return of womyn to the kitchen, increasing authoritarianism,instead of the state withering away, the opposite with the state increasinglyrepressive, militaristic and anti-democratic and exclusionary towards popularforces, the failure to carry out broad and intensive education campaigns togenerate indigenous expertise and the consequent dependency upon foreigners orformer upper classes, increasing dependency that erodes and preventsself-reliance, etc.

As Immanuel Wallerstein has so sharply pointed out, the revolutionary governmentquickly mimics the overthrown regime and other imperialist-dependent states.While socialist policies and programs may be instituted, overall, control andpower remains patriarchal; predicated upon male military authority. Marxsfundamental description of socialism as the dictatorship of the proletariat has

in all socialist projects become substitutionism, with the state, controlledperhaps by the victorious communist party, purporting to act on behalf of theproletariat. In reality, a class of professional party and governmentbureaucrats infest the revolution.

I will now propose my vision of socialism and the premises for a revolutionarysocialist movement in the U.S.

I proceed from the position that we dont have to have a complete and totalsummation of 20th century socialism. The accumulation of understanding andexperience of this effort doesnt necessary lead to a revolutionary, qualitativeleap and transformation in both theory and practice. An arithmetical approach ofsumming up (meaning finding the sum of the pluses and minuses) cannot solveproblems that are exponential in growth, meaning that the problems themselves areundergoing qualitative transformation.

Here are what I consider the fundamental and most important problems we and oneor two future generations ahead of us will confront:

Even the bourgeois National Academy of Science acknowledges that environmentaldevastation from climate change, species extinction, expanded and extensiveenvironmental toxicity and degradation may reach a tipping point in the nexteight to ten years. The tipping point is the point of irreversibility, when therate of destruction cannot be halted or reversed. Some examples: of the 10billion species of life forms that have inhabited the Earth, half, or 5 billion,are permanently gone, mostly from deforestation. The U.S. has 1023 cars per 1000people of driving age. If India, which has about 110 cars per 1000 people ofdriving age, or China, which has about 90 cars per 1000 people of driving age, ifthose two countries had the same per capita rate of cars to people of driving ageas the U.S., the earth would collapse. If everyone on this planet enjoyed the

same standard of living as the U.S. and produced as much garbage as Americans, wewould need four planet Earths to hold this waste.

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Revolutionary socialism, if it is to be effective and put the planet and people(who are dependent upon the health of the planet) as primary, cannot be anythingelse but matriarchal and luddite.

Let me explain without getting too lengthy and leave the details to our group

discussion.

Matriarchy, the supremacy and rule of women, is simply proletarian justice anddictatorship: the rightful return to the producer the fruits of their labor. Ifwomyn bear 100% of the worlds children, grow 70% of the worlds food, do 60% ofthe worlds work, but earn only 10% of the worlds income and own less than 1% ofthe worlds property, then the opposite of this condition, which is the result ofpatriarchy (and reproduced and perpetuated by the patriarchal state), ismatriarchy. Social power returned to the producers. The main function of amatriarchal state would be the prevention of the restoration of patriarchy. Withall the imaginative possibilities that would be unleashed in a world historicchange. In my new book, my essay on Matriarchy elaborates in much greater depthand detail why socialism must be matriarchy, and how it can achieve this.

Tomorrow is now! The new socialist movement must be matriarchal, and thus it

would be overwhelmingly proletarian. The mainstream feminist movement (which islimited to electoral politics and the inclusion of some women into patriarchy,not its overthrow) is overwhelmingly bourgeois and petty-bourgeois by the logicof it being composed of women acceptable to patriarchy. Those are the women whohave the 10% of worlds income and perhaps own less than 1% of the worldsproperty. 90 to 99% of women are not petty-bourgeois or bourgeois, they earnvery little money and own a fraction of property, and hence are proletarians.They do most of the work and grow most of the food, most of their productivityseverely underpaid or not paid at all, and often not even recognized aslegitimate work by patriarchal society. An armed matriarchal socialist movement,committed to preventing any restoration of patriarchy, would be a worldrevolutionary force unlike any that has been organized before in human history.Ridiculous notions of wont women carrying guns just become like their malecounterparts? should get humorous retorts like, Women dont have the balls tocommit genocide or global exploitation and oppression the way men have done.

Or, Try it, maybe youll like it!

The revolutionary matriarchal socialist movement must also be Luddite. Ludditismwas a militant and radical movement by 19th century industrial workers in westernEurope that has been mischaracterized as anti-technology. Rather, it is opposedto technology that is harmful to the commonality or to people and the planet.The 19th century movement opposed the machine as an inexorable degrading forceupon workers and the earth.

For a revolutionary luddite socialist position, we begin with the premise ofasking: For all the wealth generated by capitalism, how much is enough? What isthe median that the entire world should have to live with dignity and yet also beecologically sustainable? The world cannot have fossil fuel burning automobilesat the same per capita as Americans. The U,S. is 5 to 6% of the worldspopulation but consumes over 50% of the worlds resources and pollutes and waste

at even a greater rate. Reformist economic proposals to stimulate spending andconsumption are not a solution, but only increase the problem of First Worldoverconsumption, which is hastening the demise of our biosphere.

Technology, even in the hands of the matriarchal proletariat, is not a solutionof any kind. To quote Mitchell Cohen:

Leftists have long thought that we could just take over Science and Technology asthough they were neutral and run them communistically for the good of all. Butwe cannot, anymore than we can take over the State, which itself a form oftechnology, as though it were an empty shell, an impartial mechanism.Technology is an ensemble of social relations, and as such every product, andevery means for making it (whether it be an assembly line, State, or geneticallyengineered crop) is a crystallization of the history of the exploitation,organization of production, and destruction of the Commons that went into making

it. But, like the state, the factory form has become a model that officialMarxism seeks to emulate, take over and administer, not smash. Big mistake! So,

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Future Forward, A Vision for Revolutionstop treating science and technology as the answer to our problems. Lets try toimagine a different kind of future, one that is not based on factories, assemblylines, industrial farming, and factory-type health care.2

The Luddites call for BOTH Smashing the State and Smashing the Machine!

Consumption and waste at the rate of modern industrial society, be it the U.S.,western Europe, Japan, is unsustainable. If you think matriarchy as a concept ishard to wrap your mind around, try to imagine a society or world without factoryfarms, factory fisheries, most processed foods, industrialism, unlimited energyconsumption to fuel unlimited mass production and obesity-level consumption andobscene levels of waste. The exponential increase in environmental toxicity anddegradation, according to the capitalist approach of trying to manage theseproblems better (via so-called green technologies, the capitalist catechism andcatch-all cure) doesnt solve or cure anything without the ending of first worldoverconsumption. More temporary fix-its and band aids will be invented, sold andbought while humans and the entire biosphere get sicker.

The extinction of humanity as a species has very little consequence for thebiosphere, indeed, it may actually regenerate ecological processes. However, theextinction of insects would have immediate and dire consequences for our

biosphere. The only distinction between our species and all other life forms onthis planet is that we have the dual capacity to create and transform the world,and destroy it as easily. Whatever distinguishing attributes we have:intelligence, the opposable thumb, social organization, imagination, the abilityto create technology; must be politically directed to eliminate all social andenvironmental toxicity.

All previous constructions of socialism have failed and are ineffective andincapable of solving the fundamental social and ecological contradictions. Ipropose that we imagine and embody a revolutionary socialism that must bematriarchal and luddite. Anything that doesnt begin with these two essentialpremises will not be able to transcend the mistakes of the past, and worse,unable to hasten the actual demise of patriarchal civilization. As aconsequence, the human species, who regrettably couldnt construct the oppositeof patriarchal civilization, communism, will perish.

Thus, communism is the complete negation of the negation, it is the end of humansociety as we have known and constructed it, and the process of becoming a newhumanity. Just as in socialism, Marx and Engels asserted with the negation ofthe negation that after the socialist revolution, property becomes transformedand is simultaneously private and social, communism is the process of thenegation of the negation in which humanity both is and is not social, no longerin contradiction with the natural world. Its social efforts make for no humanimpact upon the Earth, and thus negating human society.

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