I doubt that anyone has ever viewed …and politics. Oh well. Leave a comment to prove me wrong.

All the following images are available as high quality images
which I can have mailed to you directly from a photo lab at cost.

Flash art gallery piece. 2016

According to wikipedia re Madame Binh Graphic Collective

this was their work with Republic of New Afrika at the bottom.

It was posted all over Harlem. I think there was a t-shirt also.

Madame Binh was the Cultural Minister of the North Vietnamese.

Collective was a project of May 19th [birthdays of Malcolm X & Ho Chi Minh] Communist Organization.

This came out recently as an announcement for an evening in Harlem celebrating
35 years of freedom for Assata.

Text lower right:

“S.F. offices 1380 Howard 861-6466”

Shredded matter refers to one of many end times theories that relates to the expansion of the universe. That is, theories that arise out of the scientific view. This expansion, after a period of slowing down a number of billion years ago, has been accelerating. “Everything” is moving further and further away from everything else: planets, galaxies, you and me,  at a faster speed, and that eventually, if there is no check on this, every atom will end up being an infinite distance from every other atom!

End times theories are referred to as eschatology. These have been with us for millennia, and continue today. Mainly religious in the past; return of a messiah, Armageddon, etc.  Hasidim, a Jewish sect in Brooklyn, expect their Rebbe to rise from his grave and return! Talk about zombies! One more sign of the zaniness of religion.

Marxism has also been referred to as an eschatology theory: with the end of class conflict, history will be over! What a relief that will be!

Anyway, I’m more interested in the physicists view of the end of the universe, as well as the beginning, and everything in between. It’s been called Big History which the image attached purports to show: inflation (the big bang), a period of pure plasmic energy, out of anomalies in this energetic ether matter arose, then Life (matter replicating itself), then self aware life and Culture. The latter some say is composed of Memes, the only other replicator after DNA. Many believe that self determination is an illusion, that the first cause has led to all effects since, each cause an effect, each effect a cause with no distinction and no room for the will of a self. Also an illusion.

Also I am interested in the eschatology of empire, the end times of the U.S. empire which is clearly in decline along with what many believe is the approaching and inevitable end of capitalism as well. I did not “serve” in Vietnam, but lucked out with a lottery number that meant I would not be drafted. I believe I have suffered from PTSD nonetheless due to the realization at the time that my country wanted me to go and kill civilians, children and other non combatants, to help napalm people, defoliate indiscriminately, in short to be what today we understand as a terrorist.

Last but not least, is the end times of the benevolent climate we have been gifted with on planet earth for millennia. As I write this, Earth Day is tomorrow and there will be a rally in Tompkins Square Park to call for a ban on fracking, a ban on a large natural gas pipeline on the west side, and a call for renewable energy resources. If we listen to scientists, it’s already too late to avoid calamitous climate change.

Indeed not just calamitous change, but the very extinction of the human race. The technical term is omnicide and the threat of nuclear holocaust is also real and still with us.

Thanks for reading and don’t despair, we’re all along for the ride right up until the end!

These images are of an SDS publication with a great article on Surrealism and Revolution. (google it for a lot of other great articles.) It is a 20th C espousal of the liberatory aspect of waging revolution, which ultimately is the goal for all Left Oppositionists. What the ferment of possibilities both in the workplace, the artists studios, and on the streets of early Soviet Consciousness was like. Emma Goldman wasn’t going to help wage revolution if there was not to be dancing. 

 

 

 

Communism/anarchism will come once socialism is built and has time to age, to fully realize a sharing and sustainable earth.

As a communist I have the task of building socialism however I can, which gives my life meaning.

To illustrate that I provide the quote below which to me is exemplar of a most high and most pure feeling ever felt.

“The Soviet Thermidor [a reaction of moderates following a revolution] occurred 10 years to the month after the seizure of power by the first workers state, November 1927. Lenin and Trotsky were the two most instrumental actors in this one of the most momentous times of human history. Lenin died 1/24, and Trotsky was one of the leaders of the Left Opposition that was removed from the Central Committee along with others, including Adolf Abromovich Yoffe, pictured here.

The Left Opposition was committed to resisting the rightward march of Stalin and others, away from the genuine progressive ferment that characterized much of the new Soviet society in the early years despite the heroic efforts needed to resist the invading armies of 22 nations, including the U.S., intent on crushing the establishment of a workers state.

Joffe was a close colleague of Trotsky, and part of the Left Opposition that was expelled from the Party along with Trotsky and others. He committed suicide leaving a note to Trotsky, seized by the Cheka but later released saying in part: “…Thirty years ago, I adopted the philosophy that human life has no meaning except insofar as it exists in the service of something infinite – which for us is humanity. Since anything else is limited, to work for the sake of anything else is devoid of meaning….” [from Memoirs of a Revolutionary by Victor Serge, an eloquent and active player of the Left Opposition. Wrote many books including the novel, The Case of Comrade Tulayev.]

Hope you enjoyed that and encouraged you to think differently about communism.

Jon