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Annual Report
June 25, 2006
by Ben Seattle
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I believe it is useful for revolutionary activists to post,
once a year, a summary of their activity over the past year
and plans for the coming year.
Capitalist corporations give a public annual report to
stockholders every year. Our "stockholders" are the workers and
oppressed of the world who, by their own struggles, inspire us
and give us strength. An annual report can assist revolutionary
activists to better understand the work, activity and priorities
of other revolutionary activists. This can be a small step in
the direction of transparency and eventual greater coordination
of effort.
This is my 8th annual report. (I usually post my annual report
on May 1st. This year I am two months late.)
To set an example, and declare my work and priorities before
friend and foe alike, I submit the following:
1) What I accomplished in the last year
a) work to support the Media Weapon community
b) independent work in the antiwar movement (leaflets/cartoons)
c) work with SAIC (direct support and open struggle)
d) work related to Indymedia (technical and political)
e) work related to the Attention Refinery (a new kind of wiki)
2) What I plan to accomplish in the coming year
a) improve my "work-life balance"
b) develop spec (and maybe prototype) for Attention Refinery
c) support for work to build interactive syndication channel
d) assist Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee (SAIC)
e) (maybe) reply to a cargo-cultist on crisis of theory
3) Problems that emerged and solutions that were developed
I learned that we cannot build a community except around
a program of practical work that serves the movement
4) Appendix
An invitation to participate in our work
Following are more detailed comments.
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1) What I accomplished in the last year
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a) work to support the Media Weapon community
My political work is centered on helping to create an open
community of political activists who are focused on ending the
system of bourgeois rule. This community (which I call the Media
Weapon community) is, at this time, more of a community-in-embryo
than a real community.
This community-in-embryo exists mainly in the form of a few email
lists and a wiki. Although the email lists include more than a
hundred subscribers, at this point only a handful post on a
regular basis or appear to be involved in or paying attention to
the life of the lists.
Over the last year I made 46 posts to the main email list (ie:
pof-200) of the Media Weapon community, and a slightly larger
number of posts to the smaller, sister list (ie: pof-300). I
have retreated from my original goal of providing informed
comment on most of the posts to these lists, even though both of
these lists average less than one post per day.
Several talented and dedicated activists have been part of the
life of this community-in-embryo in the last year or two -- but
most no longer actively participate. The most likely reason for
this is that the community is not doing any practical work that
serves the movement.
The conclusion I draw is that this community cannot be built simply
by having activists talk to one another. If we want activists to
sustain their interest in the community -- then we must build the
life of the community around a program of practical work that
serves the movement.
The most promising candidate project for such practical work --
is work to build an interactive syndication channel that promotes
a revolutionary perspective on issues in the news and issues in
the movement (see section (2)(c) below for more about this).
Related links:
• website of the Media Weapon community-in-embryo:
http://MediaWeapon.com
• public archive of posts to pof-200 list
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pof-200/messages
• public archive of posts to pof-300 list
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pof-300/messages
• public archive of Ben Seattle's posts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/theorist/messages
b) independent work in the antiwar movement (leaflets/cartoons)
I wrote and distributed a total of more than 2000 copies of two
leaflets for the large September 24 antiwar march in Seattle.
These leaflets included a total of three articles, one joint
statement and a page and half of cartoons.
I posted one of these articles ("What kind of Organization does
the antiwar movement need?") to a dozen email lists and about 4
dozen Indymedia sites. I posted another article ("How the
Democratic Party and its flunkies plan to liquidate the antiwar
movement with hot air about an 'Exit Plan'") to the same number
of email lists about half as many indymedia sites.
The article about the phony "exit plan" turned out to be more
popular than the article on organization. Most popular of all
were the cartoons.
Related links:
• "Hit them where it Hurts!" and related articles written
for the Sept 24, 2005 antiwar march in Seattle
http://struggle.net/Ben/2005/924.htm
• Politics as Usual: The cartoon guide to the left in Seattle:
http://struggle.net/Ben/2005/cartoon.htm
c) work with SAIC (direct support and open struggle)
I supported the work of the Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee
(SAIC) in several ways. I helped to put into contact with one
another the activists who founded the committee. I assisted in
editing most of the leaflets. And I helped to distribute
leaflets at the large immigrants' rights march on May 1.
I also assisted SAIC in another way: I have openly criticized
what I see as SAIC's weaknesses and presented by own 3-point
program (see related links below) that I believe would help to
overcome these weaknesses.
Any mass organization that is _real_ will take steps to give
attention to the open struggle over decisive tasks in the antiwar
and revolutionary movements. In pursuit of this objective, I
created a website to serve as an archive of the public exchanges
I have had with SAIC comrades concerning priorities. And I
recently summarized my views in an open letter to comrade Edward
(ie: "The Road to Information War: A longer-term view of the
tasks of building anti-imperialist and revolutionary
organization").
Related links:-
• The Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee (SAIC)
http://SeattleAIC.org
• Real organization cannot be built on a foundation of sand
*** Why do we need to build an open community?
*** The need for national distribution of SAIC agitation
*** The case for developing theoretical tools that
allow us to confront the more serious questions
http://struggle.net/mass-democracy
d) work related to Indymedia (technical and political)
I have followed Indymedia's development since it emerged in the
storm of the 1999 mass actions against the WTO and the main need
of the Indymedia volunteers was for protection against tear gas.
Many activists believe that, with more than 100 local and
independently-run websites focused mainly on activist-type news,
the Indymedia network has potential to emerge as a mass
alternative to mainstream corporate media.
But Indymedia's potential can never be realized without
confronting some of the obstacles (ie: technical obstacles that
have political roots) that are holding it back.
In the last year I created a detailed technical proposal for what
I call "democratic filters" for the Indymedia newswire. I
proposed that any reader should be able to create his or her own
filter -- and to share this filter with other readers who would
then have the choice of making use of filters that were created
by activists whose judgment they respected.
Also, in February and March of this year, I had a run-in with the
person who (after the exodus of the more militant activists who
originally ran Indymedia) has become the defacto "owner" of
Seattle Indymedia. I publicly criticized the liberal attitude
of allowing posts by neo-nazis to remain on the newswire and
called for the Indymedia editorial person to be accountable to
the progressive community on this issue.
It appears that the owner, in response to this:
** Accused me of being a "provocateur" (ie: a word most
often used to describe a police agent used against the
movement) and of having a history of "attacking" and
"disrupting" activist organizations.
** Impersonated me on the newswire using text cut and
pasted (and strategically altered) from posts of mine
that she had censored from the newswire
** Made a number of posts where she pretended to be an
ordinary reader who asked the editors to ban me.
** Censored a number of my posts and comments from the
newswire (and edited my comments to delete links to a
page where I described and documented all these things)
** Removed my ability to post to the email list that is
used for discussion of Indymedia editorial issues
I created a web page and web-based mini-forum (see link below)
which describes these events in greater detail and draws some
conclusions. The struggle for a mass alternative to mainstream
corporate news in still in its early period. The localism and
corrupt practices at Seattle Indymedia, I argue, represent a
relatively minor obstacle. As activists gain clarity on the need
for a mass-based, militant and independent alternative to
corporate/imperialist news -- they will sweep away all obstacles
major and minor.
Related links:
• Democratic filters (where readers can create, share, select and
combine filters) are the solution to newswire spam on Indymedia
http://NewsRefinery.com/indymedia/proposal.htm
http://NewsRefinery.com/indymedia/mockup.htm
• Proposal for a News Rating and Filtering Service together
with related essays on why we need such a service
http://NewsRefinery.com
• Seattle Indymedia must be run in an open and democratic way
http://NewsRefinery.com/indymedia/seattle
e) work related to the Attention Refinery (a new kind of wiki)
The Media Weapon community makes use of a wiki. Our direct
experience with this wiki, as well as the result of my study of
the experience of major wikis such as wikipedia, has made it
clear that a new kind of wiki is necessary.
We need a wiki where each activist has the right to have
exclusive control over an article that he or she creates. If
multiple articles are written on the same topic (ie: giving
different perspectives on topics like Palestine, democracy,
communism or Walmart) then the democratic solution is to have an
unlimited number of "sister pages" on the same topic. All wiki
pages will then automatically list (in a side column) all of
these sister pages. That way, if a reader goes to a page on a
topic and does not like what the page says -- he or she will have
the choice of clicking on a page by someone else on the same
topic -- or creating his or her own page on that topic.
There are many other features that are needed also -- such as the
ability for readers to make a comment on a page and have the
comment be part of a forum (indexed in a side column) instead of
the unstructured mess that current wiki "talk" pages represent.
We need software where activists can easily collaborate with one
another on common projects and well as openly compete with one
another. This is an opportunity to do everything right and
create a software platform that will be suited to the coming
period in which "information war" will be understood as the open
and systematic struggle for ideas on a mass scale.
Rather than attempting to patch one or two features onto the
currently existing "media wiki" code that powers most wikis today
-- I have concluded that a new type of wiki must be written from
the ground up.
I have created a mockup and concise description of features that
will be required for the software foundation of an ecosystem of
parallel and connected blogs and wikis. I call this project the
Attention Refinery. I have come to the conclusion that something
like it is very much needed. Work on this project will be my
main priority over the next year.
Related links:
• The next step in the evolution of wiki warfare: A concise
description, mockup and introduction to the Attention Refinery
http://AttentionRefinery.com
• Mockup (below) of Bart's article on "democracy":
http://AttentionRefinery.com/bart/democracy
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2) What I plan to accomplish in the coming year
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a) improve my "work-life balance"
My main priority for this year is to spend less time on political
work so that I can pay greater attention to neglected areas of my
personal life: my physical health (exercise and diet, etc), my
job skills/security and (most important of all) my
responsibilities to my friend and partner who needs me.
Neglect of one's personal life often leads to burnout, destroyed
relationships and total chaos of a kind that makes political work
unnecessarily difficult. Eventually, like ignoring the need to
visit the dentist or change the oil in your car -- this
kind of neglect will catch up with you.
A long-term perspective of steady and stable political work
requires that I take time to restore a greater sense of sanity to
my life and the life of my partner.
I believe that my political effectiveness will not be hurt too
much by this if I can be successful in focusing on those key
tasks which are most decisive. This will also require that I say
"no" to the temptation to become involved in political projects
which are less than decisive. I am determined to do this.
b) develop spec (and maybe prototype) for Attention Refinery
My main political priority for the coming year will be work on
the Attention Refinery. I intend to create a functional spec for
this project (ie: a document describing how the software will
work from the point of view of a user) as well as both a
high-level and detailed-level technical spec. Possibly I will
also write enough code to have a primitive version of the project
up and running. If I can do this -- that would be very cool.
c) support for work to build interactive syndication channel
In the recent period there have been indications that at least
one member of the Media Weapon community-in-embryo understands
the need to begin work to create an interactive syndication
channel that makes _systematic_ use of email lists, Indymedia
sites and other web-based forums.
Currently, many leftist political trends are creating syndication
channels. Most of these channels are mired in the reformist
swamp and for this reason do little to develop the revolutionary
consciousness of the movement. Other channels lack interactivity
(ie: the ability of readers to publicly challenge or criticize
the channel content in such a way that other readers, on a
national level, can easily link up with the public criticism).
A new kind of channel is necessary that promotes a revolutionary
(ie: non-reformist) perspective and is fully interactive.
The key part of the need to be interactive -- is to help
activists understand that the channel content is something other
than a form of political spam. Posting something to an email
list or Indymedia site without being able to respond to the
comments which result -- is "one way" communication. We cannot
build a revolutionary movement that is deserving of the respect
of the working class and oppressed with "one way" communication.
In a similar way, the revolutionary movement needs a channel
where the best criticism or challenges to the channel content are
aggregated in such a way as to be easily visible to a national
audience. In other words, if some activist criticizes us on an
obscure email list or Indymedia site -- and the criticism
represents something thoughtful (ie: something more than shallow
insult or sarcasm) -- then we must find a way to copy the
criticism to a central web page where all of our critics can find
it. This is what the movement needs. Anything less is
undeserving of being considered to be a genuinely revolutionary
channel.
The capitalists have created for us a splendid digital
communications infrastructure. History will not forgive us if we
fail to make the most determined and systematic use of this
weapon that is now waiting for us -- like the fabled sword in the
stone.
On the other hand, Rome, as the saying goes, was not built in a
day.
Building a genuinely revolutionary channel is long-term work.
There is a need for us to learn how to do this well and to
neither expect instant results nor exhaust ourselves in the
process. Rather we must focus on a long-term perspective in which
a relatively small amount of work on a monthly basis can be
applied in an intelligent and focused way.
There exists a possibility that in my next annual report I will
be able to say that some work along these lines has begun.
d) assist Seattle Anti-Imperialist Committee (SAIC)
The most advanced political organization that I am aware of is
SAIC. SAIC creates fairly consistent anti-imperialist agitation
on a variety of topics. SAIC is firmly opposed to the reformist
spirit that, unfortunately, saturates the antiwar movement and
other progressive movements. SAIC also maintains an interactive
website where activists can publicly post comments or criticism
of SAIC's agitation.
More than this, even though I criticize SAIC publicly, the
members of SAIC treat me like a comrade. In this respect, SAIC
serves as a good example that goes against one of the most rotten
and corrupt practices that keeps our movement weak: the idea that
if you publicly criticize an organization's mistakes -- you must
be considered a "black hat" to be isolated, shunned and
ostracized.
I am fortunate that an organization like SAIC (ie: one which is
not infected with either the reformist nor sectarian diseases)
exists in the city where I live. I believe that all serious and
militant activists in the Seattle area should support SAIC (even
those activists who support groups that SAIC criticizes). And I
would like to see similar organizations develop elsewhere.
I will continue to support SAIC both directly and (by means of
criticism) indirectly.
e) (maybe) reply to a cargo-cultist on crisis of theory
At this time my most important theoretical work is complete. I
am able to focus on work to build a community of activists (and
work to create the software infrastructure of this community --
such as the Attention Refinery) because my work on the nature of
workers' rule in the context of modern, stable conditions is
essentially complete.
The last major installments of my theoretical work were "The
World for which We Fight" and "Proletarism is anti-revisionist
Marxism for the 21st century" (both written in 2004). My
experience, however, is that replying to my political opponents
on questions of theory has nearly always been worth the effort.
I would never have been able to develop the precision of the
formulations which I now use without the experience of polemical
combat. This experience of combat has been particularly useful
in the case of Joseph Green -- whose challenges and focused
questions made possible "the self-organizing moneyless economy"
which became the theoretical foundation of all of my work on
post-bourgeois society.
For this reason, I take great interest in Joseph's latest
challenge to me (see the reply from Joseph Green indexed under my
"Road to Information War" letter to Edward on the page at:
http://struggle.net/mass-democracy ) in which Joseph attempts to
justify the refusal of his current organization (ie: the
Communist Voice Organization, or CVO) to touch the decisive
question of the nature of democratic rights under workers' rule
in the context of modern conditions.
From a theoretical point of view -- the CVO does not understand
the difference, in theory, between the dictatorship of an
organization and the dictatorship of a class (ie: the CVO equates
the "dictatorship of the proletariat" with the rule of a single
organization with a monopoly of power and the ability to suppress
the independent political voice and independent political life of
the working class).
This is a key theoretical question which all militant activists
may eventually find to be of great interest as it becomes more
clear that we cannot build a mass movement around the goal of
ending bourgeois rule without developing a minimal amount of
clarity concerning what comes afterward.
The CVO may be one of the better (and theoretically sharper) of
the many cargo-cult Leninist organizations and for this reason,
and also to do justice to the events and people that have made
possible my work on the commanding heights of theory, I may, in
the coming year, reply to Joseph in an article with the title:
"Cargo-Cult Leninism vs. proletarism".
Stay tuned.
3) Problems that emerged and
solutions that were developed
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I have discussed this in the sections above. Our community had
some talented and dedicated activists around it for a while.
Most of them split. My conclusion is that they left because they
concluded (more or less correctly) that our community was not
doing anything other than to engage in useless talk with people
who were not motivated to do anything that counted.
My conclusion is that we cannot build a community except around a
program of practical work that serves the movement.
4) --- Appendix ---
An invitation to participate in our work
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Our community-in-embryo needs talented and dedicated activists.
If you are such an activist, you may be reluctant to spend any
significant amount of time on a project such as ours which, so
far, has done little to organize significant actions or to build
the movement.
However, even in this case, I hope that I have caught your
attention. We cannot build either a mass movement or a mass
organization that is deserving of the respect of the working
class without also creating an open community of activists to
help guide us and to help us correct our errors. This needs to
start somewhere. That "somewhere" will likely be an organization
that organizes actions in the street. But even in this case,
there will be a need for an open community that takes full
advantage of the potential of the revolution in communications.
If our community-in-embryo is not deserving of your full
attention today -- we hope it will be so tomorrow.
Sooner or later there will be a critical mass.
In line with this, I will repeat below my comments from previous
annual reports:
(below) from Ben Seattle's previous annual reports
The dominant intellectual pole of attraction for science-minded
students of my generation ... was the Manhattan Project. This
was the project that gathered scientists from many places into a
location in New Mexico where the atomic bomb was developed.
Later, as I grew up and was influenced by the movement against
the war in Vietnam -- I learned how US imperialism used nuclear
weapons in war crimes against the Japanese people and also to
threaten and terrorize peoples around the globe. Nonetheless,
the image of a relatively small group of dedicated people working
to develop a "super weapon" remains compelling.
The imagery of the Manhattan Project is very much in my mind
today -- as I work to create a community of activists -- that
will be focused on making use of "information war" -- to bring to
millions the news that a world without bourgeois rule is both
possible and necessary.
It may appear that the development of a community of activists
centered around an email list -- is small potatoes in comparison
with the awesome might of US imperialism's nuclear weapons --
which are capable of incinerating tens of millions of people in
the time it takes to read this email.
If we look at this from another direction, however, we will see
that the efforts of a few activists like me to create a community
-- are part of something much larger -- are a small part of the
efforts of many activists to make use of the emerging revolution
in communications to awaken and mobilize the entire working
class.
Today this idea may still seem strange -- but I believe that,
fifty years from now, it will be obvious to nearly everyone that
"information war" (defined as the struggle for ideas organized on
a mass scale) is more influential, more "powerful" than nuclear
weapons.
I view the work I am doing now to build a community -- as being
analogous to the first phase of the Manhattan Project. In this
phase, which began in 1939, the objective was to prove that it
was possible to create a "chain reaction" of splitting atoms that
would release vast amounts of energy. Once this was accomplished
(in a squash court in Detroit in 1942) it was clear that a bomb
could be more than a theory. That was when scientists were
gathered into the New Mexico desert.
The work to build the media weapon community is still (to
continue the analogy) in that first phase. I have poured, and am
continuing to pour, vast amounts of time and energy into my
weekly posts. To date I have not achieved a chain reaction. At
this time the success of the project remains unproven.
However I do note indications that activists on the list are
carefully following the discussion. For example, more than one
subscriber has developed a deeper understanding of the nature of
the reformist ideology and taken action to oppose the influence
of this ideology. And I have seen posts which indicate that
other activists are developing a deeper understanding of the
nature of sectarianism and the need to fight it. And there are
also indications that some recognize that the general outlook of
"information war" will become increasingly important.
These indications, while important, have not, to date, translated
into any efforts to systematically send out bulletins from our
community to other activists (ie: via email lists, Indymedia
sites, bulletin boards, etc). But it is logical to assume that
this may be the next step of development -- and maybe we will see
this step taken sometime within the next year.
* * * * * *
The antiwar movement has invigorated the general atmosphere of
opposition to some of the worst abuses of the system of bourgeois
rule. An increasing number of young people, in particular, are
thinking about ways to oppose the current imperialist national
mood. The necessity of a mass movement aimed at eliminating the
system of bourgeois rule will eventually make itself felt.
For those who may have found my work of interest--I invite you to
participate in this work. Check out my home page at
http://struggle.net/ben . Join the pof-200 email list (by sending
a blank email to pof-200-subscribe@yahoogroups.com ) and join
with a growing community of media, tech and revolutionary
activists who are gradually developing a focus on the use of
"information war" (as a struggle for ideas organized on a mass
scale) as a powerful weapon to (i) raise the consciousness of
millions, (ii) create a mass organization deserving of the
respect of the working class--and (iii) coordinate the efforts of
millions to bring about an end to the system of bourgeois rule.
And, if you are too busy for all that, send email to
pof-100-subscribe@yahoogroups.com which will bring into your
email box two emails a year describing my progress (or lack of
progress) in discovering and applying the principles which will
lead to the rebirth of a genuinely revolutionary movement that is
deserving of the respect of the masses.
Sincerely and with revolutionary regards,
Ben Seattle
http://struggle.net/ben
* Antiwar agitation and cartoons
* The open struggle over the decisive tasks in antiwar movement
* Email lists and the Media Weapon community
* For a democratic and accountable Indymedia: proposals/criticism
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