Popular articles by Ben Seattle information theorist • infrastructure architect • building and using weapons of information warfare • political transparency will serve the consciousness and organization of the proletariat

This page is the streamlined, concise version of Ben's work. Here is a more comprehensive index to all of Ben's work, email lists, annual reports, etc. Want to post your considered thoughts? Go to the bottom of Ben's wiki page and post a thread.

(1) Ben's more popular articles confront the crisis of theory

• How to Build the Party of the Working Class The most important task for revolutionaries in the present period is the creation of a genuinely revolutionary mass organization (or system of organizations) capable of uniting everything healthy in the progressive and workers' movements and laying the foundations for a mass workers' party that can overcome both the reformist and sectarian diseases and unite the majority of the working class around a program centered on the overthrow of bourgeois rule • A scenario for the overthrow of bourgeois rule   in the U.S. in the middle of the 21st century   Have you ever wondered how it all might happen?   Events may unfold something like this. • Politics, Economics and the Mass Media   when the working class runs the show     • Will there be elections and competing parties?     • The three economic sectors         (private capitalist • state capitalist • gift economy)     • The evolution of the mass media         (commercial media • state media • free media) • Proletarism is anti-revisionist Marxism for the 21st century From the Russian workers' movement (with experience in underground organizing against the rule of Brezhnev's "communists" and militant strikes under the rule of Yeltsin's "democrats") has come a proposal to recognize, with a new name, a decisive break with the treachery of the "communist" leadership -- which enslaved the working class and betrayed the revolutionary movement in a way comparable to the great betrayal of 1914. (Includes timeline history chart)

(2) Community and Project Proposals

• The Media Weapon Community   Our community-in-embryo is small and quiet at this time. I hope to see it develop.   The discussion lists for our community are the pof-200 and pof-300 lists.   My more recent posts can be seen in the public archives of the theorist list.   The wiki for the Media Weapon community is here. • The Attention Refinery (the next step in wiki warfare)   A proposal for a system of integrated blogs, wikis and discussion forums that   will (1) use collaborative filtering, (2) make it easy for users to compete for attention   and (3) allow users to easily create tables that will pull information from readers   and sort, filter and display this information in a way that is useful. • The News Refinery A proposal for a progressive activists' news rating & filtering service News and views to serve the working class, the antiwar movement and the struggle to end bourgeois rule -- posted, summarized, rated and filtered by activists like you

(3) Market forces created our world. Conscious forces will create our future.

Equation for our victory in the 21st century: Heat, Fuel and Oxygen creates the Digital Fire Fuel = Conditions of exploitation/misery Oxygen = Ease of communication Heat = Conscious Forces • Conscious Forces Will Bring Us Certain Victory   How in the coming period of intensified class struggle,   activists will use open communities and   information war to win ever-increasing attention   and support and create the conscious forces   that will bring us certain victory • The Laws of Commodity Production for Dummies The world in which we live ( ie: a world of imperialist wars, racism, unemployment, poverty, repression, ecosystem destruction on a vast scale and a culture of escapism, ignorance and spam ) has been created and shaped by the laws of commodity production. Creating a "better world" of peace, abundance and justice for all will require hundreds of thousands of activists to understand these "laws" so that humanity can chart a path forward to a world that is not ruled by the bourgeoisie.

(4) Cartoons, culture and history

Politics as Usual: A Cartoon Guide to the Left in Seattle The Democratic and Republican Parties • The Imperialist Democratic Party • The Big Antiwar Coalitions • The Green Party • The Reformist Disease • The Sectarian Disease • The Crisis of Theory • The SA and ISO (ie: Socialist Alternative and International Socialist Organization) • The FSP (ie: Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women) • ANSWER and NION (ie: Not in Our Name) • The RCP (ie: Revolutionary Communist Party) • The CVO (ie: Communist Voice Organization) • The Anarchists • You, dear reader An essay on culture examines the significance of the phenomenon known as "Burning Man": Desert Goddesses Saturate Emergent Community with Eye-Candy A community of artists opens a window into a human future based on a gift economy and the emergence of a deeper form of beauty   • The History of the Universe, Humankind and Communism Never mind the crap they teach you in school, here are a few of the real events that mark the struggle and progress of humankind. The history of the universe is the history of the self-organization of matter. The struggle to overthrow the system of bourgeois rule and replace the capitalist mode of production with a self-organizing moneyless economy is the culminating and decisive chapter in a story billions of years old.

(5) More theory and analysis
How activists will organize today ...
and the world will be organized tomorrow

Public debate concerning how we organize and what tasks are decisive • We need mass democracy Index to polemics on how to organize the antiwar and revolutionary movements Real organization cannot be built on a foundation of sand If we can create a mass anti-imperialist organization where decisions and struggle are based on mass democracy -- then we will capture the imagination of serious activists everywhere -- and be in a position to change the dynamics of the entire antiwar movement. In other words: we will win. • SAIC and the struggle for sobriety • In honor of those who have fallen • (2008) The Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee and the struggle for sobriety (and a high productivity of labor) in the antiwar and revolutionary movements • How to Build the Party of the Future • (unfinished) • (May 97 - May 98) By continuing our political development and harnessing the power of the coming revolution in communications -- we can help to lay the foundation for a communist "trend of trends" with the ability to eradicate sectarianism from our ranks, puncture the influence of reformism over a vast audience, capture the imagination of workers in their millions and mobilize our class to ignite a fire that cannot be extinguished. Humanity's Future Gift Economy • The Self-Organizing Moneyless Economy • (1995) The first scientific speculation on how a communist economy and political system will function in the 21st century. Featuring brief sketches of the organization of political, cultural and economic life in a future where all authority flows from principles that have been distributed universally and are part of everyone's internal compass rather than institutions which are external to the individual and which use one or another form of carrot or stick. • The ascendency of the self-organizing moneyless economy • (2004) Ben speculates on some of the ways that the self-organzing moneyless economy may unfold as it overtakes and overwhelms the commodity economy in the period following the overthrow of bourgeois rule • (Appendix F of The World for which We Fight)

(6) Other software related project proposals

• Democratic filters for Indymedia   ( A detailed proposal and mockup ) ( from the Red Team website...) • We engineer to raise hell ... and storm heaven ... • Now building the digital nervous system of the working class Information becomes more powerful as it is refined. The working class will make itself conscious by creating information refineries on a large scale. The ultimate "killer app" to emerge from the internet will be the collective mind of the proletariat, which will organize itself for the overthrow of bourgeois rule and the liberation of the infinite potential of humanity

(7) Graphics

Theoretical Graphics Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words ... or at least a hundred (Click graphic to view full-size) Theoretical graphics from: Cargo-Cult Leninism vs. Information War Workers' Rule: Is it Dead or Alive? The question we cannot escape concerns the degeneration of the Soviet and Chinese revolutions of 1917 and 1949. If these revolutions appeared to be successful and then degenerated -- does this mean that future attempts at establishing workers' rule will inevitably suffer the same fate? Ben's "Information War" Program for SAIC 1) Reach out to a national audience 2) Work to build a community 3) Dare to talk about our goal

(8) "Ads" for some of Ben's articles and projects

Proletarian Democracy How will economics, politics and culture work when the working class runs modern society?     Working class rule has never existed in a modern, stable society. However it will emerge triumphant in the 21st century. How will a workers' state suppress the former ruling bourgeoisie without also suppressing the independent political life of workers? The Anarcho-Leninist Debate on the State   The debate question: In the period immediately following a successful mass uprising against the bourgeoisie, should the form (or forms) of organization adopted by the proletariat to secure its ultimate liberation be understood to be a state?   Do you have ideas Or do ideas have you? The History of the Universe     The self-organization of matter from the big bang to the future ... From the dawn of life to the self-organizing moneyless economy Proletarism is anti-revisionist Marxism for the 21st century From the Russian workers' movement (with experience in underground organizing under the rule of Brezhnev's "communists" and militant strikes under the rule of Yeltsin's "democrats") has come a proposal to recognize, with a new name, a decisive break with the treachery of the "communist" leadership -- which enslaved the working class and betrayed the revolutionary movement in a way comparable to the great betrayal of 1914. (with Timeline and Forum for questions or comments)