Salt is a collaborative journal between organizers in Salt Lake City. All contributors are involved in on-the-ground organizing work in various struggles. This journal seeks to give committed organizers a space to publish thoughts and summations on points of organizational, practical, and political theory. In doing so we hope to encourage readers, and contributors to solidify, deepen, and explore answers to the various political questions we are navigating as organizers. All editors and initiators of this project are long time Marxist organizers in the 801 area.
Our mission
In a sentence, the goal of this journal is to create a floor out of our previous ceilings as revolutionary organizers. In the course of building organizations and engaging in struggle, we make mistakes and discover answers to hard questions. The recording and disseminating of these lessons is vital for the longevity and growth of the movement as whole. This journal hopes to facilitate this process.
We hope to use this journal to build upon the energy, creativity, and experience that exists in this city. By solidifying, disseminating, and refining our collective understandings as organizers, we can also have influence on struggles outside the our immediate circles. We hope to create contributions to revolutionary practice and theory informed by the experience of organizers in our city.
Our politics
We believe that good theory is good theory, regardless of the political self-identification of the writer. However we also want to be transparent about some points regarding the political identity of this journal.
The editors of this journal are Revolutionary Communists. We are committed to the utilization of Dialectical Materialism, The Mass Line, and historical materialism. In our own work we draw on lessons of past revolutions in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Burkina Faso. We also look to ongoing revolutions such as the Philippines and India, and ongoing anti-imperialist struggles in Palestine, Lebanon, Colombia, and Venezuela. We seek to tie our work to a greater context of struggle against capitalism and imperialism.
The editors of this journal believe there has been a grave misrepresentation of Marxism, Dialectical Materialism, ‘Leninism,’ and other sharp historical tools by organizations more concerned with optics than struggle. This includes traditional ideological critics of these theories, as well as self-professed adherents of them. We hope to use this journal to disseminate a more proper articulation of these worldviews and theories.
This is not a left-unity project. There are correct ideas and incorrect ideas In terms of what will work for building capable revolutionary organizations. Rather than attempting to bury or ameliorate differences within ‘the left’ this journal seeks to draw them out, parse them, isolate bad ideas and practices, and shine a spotlight on what has actually worked historically, and recently. We believe meaningful unity relies on struggle, and we hope to use this journal as a demonstration of unity-struggle-unity.