A Collection of Some of the Articles and Documents Which Were
First Posted on the Single Spark Collective’s Website
The Single Spark Collective was officially formed on May 1, 2006, by a very small group of American Maoists who were unhappy with the existing U.S. organizations who called themselves “Maoists”, and who resolved to create a new political pole which emphasized both the need to put forward revolutionary ideas to the working class and also the need to use the mass line method to lead the people in struggle against the capitalist-imperialist ruling class. Unfortunately the members were too few, and were too dispersed around the country (and even outside the U.S.), to be able to form local collectives and engage in any effective mass work. Mostly for this reason, they disbanded the group in October 2008, with everyone resolving to work toward those same goals in various other ways.
Single Spark did, however, set up a website that was quite valuable for a time. It posted important documents by Maoists in Nepal and elsewhere, including issues of the theoretical journal of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), the Worker, which were not available anywhere else on the Internet. The site had two special focuses, on the revolution in Nepal, and on re-evaluating Stalin from the MLM perspective. In addition it posted numerous useful materials on struggles in India, Mexico, and other countries, and on many other revolutionary topics.
The Single Spark website still existed until December 2008, but is now no longer available. Consequently, many of the important articles and documents have been copied over to this site, except for most of the international items. (Many of the items related to Nepal and India are now available at the Revolution in South Asia website at http://southasiarev.wordpress.com/. The banned revolutionary magazines from India, and People’s March in particular, are now available at bannedthought.net.)
- “Early Steps Toward Revolutionary Organization: A Proposal” — A document used in the formation of SSC, and distributed to close friends.
- “What We Believe Statement” — The principles of unity.
- “Revision Statement” — About the revision of the “What We Believe Statement” in Sept. 2007.
- “A Commentary on the Revision of Single Spark’s ‘What We Believe’ Statement” — by Scott H. (Written after the SSC disbanded in Oct. 2008.)
- “A Discussion on the Mass Line”, between two former members of the SSC, on Oct. 3-4, 2008. This discussion shows that while there once appeared to be agreement on the principles of unity with regard to the mass line and other matters, in reality there was not. PDF version [83 KB]; MS Word version [46 KB]
- “Basic Political Statement on the Current Situation and Crisis at the Time of the Founding of the Single Spark Collective” — (May 1st 2006)
- “The Single Spark Collective Announces Dissolution” (October 2008)
- “Personality Cult: Is it Necessary for Revolution?”, by Ranganayakamma. This long essay was first written in 1983 in the Telugu language, and was later translated into English and published in Frontier magazine in India.
- A discussion of the above essay. This is part of a letter from one of the people associated with Single Spark to a friend who was critical of Ranganayakamma’s article above.
International
- Documents about China
- “Some Reflections on ‘China and Socialism Roundtable’”, by Hari Sharma. — An introduction to a book discussing the restoration of capitalism in China.
- Revolutionary Documents from Mexico
- [More to be added.]
- Documents about China
The Stalin Re-evaluation Project
- “Mao’s Evaluations of Stalin: A Collection and Summary” — About 40 pages long.