What could this new revolutionary power do? And how in particular would it move in relation to the oppression of Black people?
This new power would from the very beginning introduce and back up a whole different set of economic relations—based on moving forward to eliminating class divisions and other oppressive relations, and the institutions and ideas that flow from and reinforce them. This revolutionary state would take over the major means of production (the factories, land and mines, machinery and other technology, etc.) that were produced by the masses but have been appropriated—owned and controlled—by the imperialists as their private source of wealth and power. It would convert these into socialist state property and use them to meet the needs of the people and to transform the social relations (the relations not only among individuals but among different groupings of people) in line with the goal of communism set out above. This new power would end the domination and parasitic plunder of other nations by the U.S., and would instead support revolution around the world.
The revolutionary power would lead and unleash the people to wipe out the age-old subjugation of women—moving immediately to prevent rape (with the fundamental aim of finally ending this inhuman outrage altogether), and to end the suppression and stigmatizing of abortion, to challenge and uproot the whole notion of women as the subordinates, or virtual slaves, of men and breeders of their children, and all the abuse and degradation of women, in forms traditional and “modern,” that the capitalist system, and all systems of exploitation, embody and that exploiting classes encourage or allow to run rampant. Breaking the chains of the insane profit-driven logic of capitalist “development,” this new power would promote an appreciation of and would act to preserve the wonderful diversity of nature—rather than destroying it. It would foster—in the media, in the educational system, and through encouraging all sorts of initiatives from the masses themselves in the arts, etc.—an understanding of the different histories of the oppressed peoples in this country and throughout the world and respect for the diverse cultures, while also continually exposing and shining a penetrating light on the common enemy that they have shared and pointing the way forward to a world community of peoples—a world community that encompasses and draws sustenance from great and dynamic cultural diversity.
This new state power would NOT deploy armies of sneering, brutalizing, murdering police in the neighborhoods—police who delight in humiliating people and breaking their spirit, constantly reminding them of their subjugated status. Those police forces would be broken up and the biggest criminals and abusers among them punished for their crimes against the people or otherwise dealt with by the new legal system reflecting and serving the new society. Instead, this new state power would be able to remove the main causes of crime and antagonism between the people, and it would create new security forces that would exist to safeguard the rights and interests of the masses of people and to help resolve contradictions among the people in a non-antagonistic way, without violent and destructive conflicts.
This new power would not be like a machine that you turn on and then passively sit back while “it does its stuff.” This new power would instead depend on, and increasingly draw forward, the active and conscious participation of the people themselves. It would work to break down the distinctions between mental and manual labor, drawing into intellectual life those who had in capitalist society been “locked out of” working with ideas, while also encouraging intellectuals and artists to pursue their work. While the new socialist power would suppress the former capitalist-imperialists and not allow them to organize for their return, and while there would be clear leadership with a clear program, this new power would at the same time unleash an unprecedented diversity of initiatives and views, of dissent and ferment, even of opposition to socialism itself. At times, the new power would risk going to the brink of being “drawn and quartered” by all the dissent and the many different kinds of initiative and activity. But, led correctly, this ferment will not only give people a sense that they have “air to breathe”—it would ultimately strengthen the revolutionary power—as a revolutionary power. This is because only with such vigorous social ferment and dissent can the masses, and their leadership, come to learn all that they will need to know about the underlying forces in society and in nature, and the most correct way to go forward. And only through this process can the revolutionary power itself undergo constant and necessary transformation. Only dissent and diversity of initiatives on this unprecedented scale, given leadership by the vanguard party, could give the necessary “richness” to the process of the masses themselves coming to understand and more and more consciously transform the whole world, in the direction of a whole different level and kind of human freedom.
Let’s imagine what this new power could do about some of the most agonizing problems that can NOT be solved by the present system. Let’s take the glaring contradiction of the inner-city streets where the crying need for decent housing, schools, health care, and cultural and recreation facilities exists side-by-side with young people who haunt those same street corners, and can find no other employment but the drug trade. Under capitalism nothing can be done unless it serves the further accumulation of capital and the political interests of the capitalist ruling class, and this requirement stands as a barrier between the work that society needs and the masses who could do it. So either these neighborhoods are left to rot, or they are transformed by capital into “high-end” housing which is more profitable—and which ends up driving the basic proletarian masses out.
The new state power would change all that overnight. The new state power would channel resources into these neighborhoods. But this would not be a top-down favor, or political patronage. This would be a process in which the masses themselves had not just the resources but the power to debate and discuss and help determine the kinds of housing and other facilities that were needed and should be built. It would involve proletarians working with architects and builders and people with other skills—even as people from among the masses were also learning these skills. The youth would not only have jobs, but meaningful jobs that would make a difference in the lives of the community and the society overall, and that would draw on, and further develop, the ingenuity, daring and leadership that is now either suppressed or channeled into destructiveness of the “thug life.” And it would do all this in alliance with and involving people from other strata of society who also have a desire to do something meaningful and skills to share, in a process full of learning on all sides, as well as comradely struggle.
What difference would state power make? Think back again, to the example of Hurricane Katrina and how this system not only left people to die but then used the army and police to threaten, arrest, shoot and even kill those who risked their lives in toxic floodwaters to get children out of the situation, to help people in dire need, to help others get to safe ground, etc. When natural disasters like Katrina happen after the revolution, the new state power would not only immediately marshal the resources of government to deal with such natural disasters, it would call forward, build on, and give leadership to—and learn from—the initiative that ordinary people from all walks of life want to take when such things happen.
Or take another literally killing contradiction of this current system: the sharp conflict between Black and Latino masses. The driving compulsions of capitalist accumulation uprooted Africans and brought them in chains to America as slaves, and then put them through 350 years of hell. The same relations of capital drove the conquistadors from Europe to Mexico and South America to colonize and subjugate the native inhabitants (the ones that they did not wipe out altogether); and those same compulsions resulted in the later subjugation by the United States of Mexico and other parts of Latin America, the plunder of those countries, and the eventual driving of millions of people from those countries into the U.S., desperately seeking any work they could get.
| Why “The Dream” Is a Dead End
People say: “If we could actually realize what Martin Luther King put forward in his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, then Black people would finally see a new day, America would be a much better place and it could play a much different and better role in the world. So, our efforts should be focused on making that ‘Dream’ a reality.” Martin Luther King made many sacrifices—and indeed made the ultimate sacrifice—in seeking to bring about what he put forward in his “I Have a Dream” speech. But, as indicated by that very speech, the outlook of Martin Luther King was precisely one of seeking to make America “live up to its promise,” when that “promise” has always involved, as one of its most essential elements, first the outright enslavement, and then the continuing oppression of Black people in other horrific forms. King’s “dream” can never be realized, for the masses of Black people, under this system—a system which is founded on, and depends on, subjugating Black people and denying them even basic equality. And the fact is that, whatever King’s intent, the realization of this “dream” could, at most, apply only to a small percentage of Black people, and would in reality come at the expense of themasses of Black people—and millions, even billions, of other people, here and around the world, who will continue to be preyed upon and to suffer horribly as a result of the workings of this capitalist-imperialist system and its systematic exploitation and merciless oppression, all enforced by its organized machinery of mass murder and destruction. Consistent with his outlook, King’s program was straight-up one of reform, directly and explicitly in opposition to revolution, when in fact only revolution, aiming for a communist world as its ultimate goal—and not reform, which leaves this system in effect—can finally end the long nightmare of the oppression of Black people, and all other relations of oppression and exploitation, here and throughout the world. The fact, and the great irony, that, while he sought only to reform this system, King was nevertheless cut down, is itself yet another indictment of this system and its towering crimes and yet another indication of why it cannot in fact be reformed but must be swept aside and abolished through revolution. |
The spontaneous workings of these same capitalist relations, coupled with the conscious decisions of the capitalists themselves, have pitted these peoples against each other. Immigrants are put to work in terrible jobs and at the same time subjected to fascist-like repression just for living—and as this is done, they are told that Black people are too lazy to take those jobs and should be scorned, and are further told that if they work hard and keep their heads down and suck up to this country’s rulers, proving that they believe in the “American dream,” they will get ahead. Meanwhile, Black people in many parts of the country are largely thrown to the side by this same capitalist class that pumped out their labor for so many years, generation after generation, and are told that “the Mexicans are taking your jobs,” and that Black people should quit being so defiant and instead stand up for their status as “true Americans.” All the while the education system and media reinforce these divisions—on the one hand, hiding from the different peoples how they have, in many ways, shared a similar fate, brought about by oppression at the hands of a common enemy; and on the other, constantly framing things in such a way so as to aggravate the divisions caused by the capitalist system, and how it sets people against each other, including through competition for jobs and resources. While important strides can and must be made in changing this, in developing unity among exploited and oppressed people of all different nationalities in building the revolutionary movement, these divisions cannot be fully overcome without finally getting rid of capitalism and bringing a radically different world into being.
But let’s imagine a state power in which the economic system provides jobs for everyone able to work, enabling them to take part in providing the tremendous needs of society and supporting revolutionary transformation around the world. Let’s imagine a state power which fosters exchanges of experience and ideas among the masses. Let’s imagine a state power which upholds and gives increasingly flowering expression to cultural diversity in the media and arts and educational system, all in an atmosphere that brings out human community and commonality. Let’s imagine a state power that provides forms of self-government and autonomy for the formerly oppressed nationalities, and provides resources that enable those autonomous areas to flourish, with vibrant educational and cultural institutions and real self-government in other spheres…but which does not require people of those nationalities to live in such areas, and which promotes integration broadly throughout society. Let’s imagine a state power that gives initiative to and backs up the people combating the racist, white supremacist ideas and ways of relating that will have been handed down from the old system, a state power that fosters the breaking down of barriers and exposing the false and hurtful myths that people have been taught about each other, and a state power that—as opposed to today, when racist poison spews out on the airwaves—uses the media and schools to set a whole different atmosphere.
Let’s imagine this—and let’s do more than just imagine. Let’s understand that such things have been done where communist revolutions have taken place and the formerly exploited proletariat has wielded state power, or that we have learned more fully, through that experience, the need and importance of making these kinds of radical changes. And let’s begin working to prepare for that revolution, which will finally take state power out of the hands of the oppressors, and create a new state power, in the hands of the masses, led by their vanguard party.
| The False Path of Barack Obama People say: “What about all the progress represented by Obama becoming a viable candidate for president? And isn’t electing Black leaders a way to work at overcoming racial oppression?” First off, let’s talk about what Obama is seeking to lead. He wants to become the chief administrator—the “commander-in-chief”—of a vicious shark of a system that survives and can only survive by sending its armies around the world to enforce its global exploitation. Obama has said that he is down with this—repeatedly threatening Iran with nuclear weapons, threatening to carry out attacks inside Pakistan, insisting that more U.S. troops be sent into the unjust occupation of Afghanistan, and yammering his support for Israel and its oppression of the Palestinian people and its aggression throughout the Middle East (and around the world). And for all the talk of Obama being opposed to the war in Iraq, he also opposes the immediate withdrawal of troops from that war and has said that “he will listen to the generals” before he does anything. Further, as Obama himself has made very clear, he has opposed the U.S. war against Iraq—to the degree that he has opposed it—only because he did not believe it would “work”—and because it was “the wrong war.” Given how the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq has already taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (along with several thousand U.S. soldiers), and has devastated that country, making it unlivable for a large part of its population, this kind of “opposition” from Obama is like a man who sees another man robbing, raping and preparing to murder a woman, but is worried that the woman will fight back and beat off her attacker, and so he declares that this attack will not “work”—and it is better to find some other woman to assault! Second, Obama’s whole program is to “pull together as one America” and to prepare for sacrifice—NOT in the struggle against oppression, but to preserve the domination of the U.S. around the world! You may not want to believe this, but look at Obama’s speeches and listen to what he actually says—and think about what he would have to do as the chief executive of this bloody empire. This is WHY Obama specifically argues against taking on the specific ways in which Black people are oppressed—and argues for “understanding” the reactionary racist opposition of some white people to affirmative action. This is WHY Obama refuses to really take on the oppression of women in his campaign—he’ll make a few remarks about the “glass ceiling” that enforces discrimination against women, and he will utter a few words about upholding the right to abortion, but he then immediately adds that abortion should be rare, and that the number of abortions should be greatly reduced—when, in fact, the right and the ability to have an abortion is a crucial part of the fight for the emancipation of women and to enable women to play a full role in society, and in the struggle to radically transform society, and abortion is not at all something that women should be defensive about, or people should try to make them feel bad about—and Obama refuses to actively and aggressively take on the reactionary forces who want to outlaw not only abortion but even birth control and force women to have more and more babies as an expression of “god’s will” and the “right” of men to dominate women and treat them as mere breeders of children for men. This is WHY Obama promotes religion—with his hat-in-hand appearance at the right-wing evangelical Saddleback Church, his call to continue Bush’s program of giving government money to the churches, and his refusal to defend evolution, which is not only a scientific fact, but one of the most well-established facts in all of science.To a significant degree, all this gets concentrated in Obama’s tremendous professions of “respect for the service” of his Republican opponent McCain—who is nothing but a war criminal who was part of a murderous campaign of bombing which targeted hospitals, schools, farmlands, dams and other vital civilian structures and which resulted in the deaths of millions of people and the devastation of a good part of the country in Vietnam—and Obama’s refusal to say anything negative about Sarah Palin, a Nazi nut-case who upholds “young earth creationism” in opposition to the scientific fact of evolution and science in general and wants creationism taught in the schools. Third, in regard to Black people, Obama’s candidacy has already done a lot of damage, and his presidency would be worse. Look at his “Father’s Day” speech this year, rehashing that same poisonous Bill Cosby routine that blames Black people for their oppressed situation. Look at his talk about how his daughters won’t need affirmative action. And to those people who say, “yeah, but if this candidacy inspires one Black child to believe that they can do more and strive higher, it will have done good”: that is precisely one of the most killing things about this Obama phenomenon! Given the actual nature and dynamics of this system, and its effects on millions of youth, and others, in the inner cities in particular—this whole Obama thing will end up demoralizing Black youth, reinforcing notions that something is wrong withthem, if they cannot “make it” in a system that isdesigned to make them fail. It will contribute to the “blame the youth themselves” tendency among Black people more broadly. And it will give the powers-that-be (as well as backward—and even some “well meaning”—white people) more rationale for saying that if Black youth in the inner cities don’t “make it now,” and instead are still caught up in crime, etc., then not only is it their own fault—but it is necessary and justified to bring down the hammer of repression even harder on them—and “we don’t want to hear any more excuses.” Some inspiration! For all these reasons, this Obama phenomenon is extremely negative—and people who have been drawn into this, and let themselves be carried away by it, even against their better judgment, need to put their energies into something that CAN make a positive difference: resistance and revolution. |
In all this, the existence of a revolutionary-communist solid core that comes at everything as “emancipators of humanity” will be crucial. This solid core will need to anchor and guide the whole revolutionary process, firmly drawing the links between every stage of struggle and the goal of all-the-way communist emancipation. Of course, this solid core is not a once-and-for-all, never-changing thing; it would be constantly developing and going through changes at each stage of the revolutionary process. This core must begin to be forged today, through the process of hastening and preparing for a revolutionary situation, and then developed further—in a whole different context—in the situation where millions of people are rising up to seize power, and then further still and in a far greater way in the context of the new revolutionary society, in which it will be a guiding principle, and something actively encouraged, that everyone who yearns for emancipation should take up and concern themselves with the problems of the revolution and the radical transformation of society as a whole. A crucial part of carrying out this transformation is grasping clearly the centrality of abolishing all forms of national oppression as a cornerstone of achieving a communist world; and also crucial in all this is that all those motivated by wanting to see an end, at long last, to the brutal and seemingly unending forms of oppression of Black people and other oppressed peoples, must increasingly grasp how this can only be achieved in the context of emancipating all of humanity and moving human society to a whole new era.
How Could Such a Revolution Develop?
What Would It Look Like?
This is a huge question, one demanding a serious and scientific answer. Again, we can only touch on this here and urge people to get into Revolution and Communism: A Foundation and Strategic Orientation. But we can and will say a few essential things:
A revolution in a country like the U.S. would require a major qualitative change in the nature of the objective situation. Such a revolution could only take place once society as a whole were in the grip of a profound crisis, owing fundamentally to the nature and workings of the system itself. Such a revolution also requires the emergence of a revolutionary people, numbering in the millions and millions and conscious of the need for revolutionary change and determined to fight for it. As an important statement of the RCP has put it: “In this struggle for revolutionary change, the revolutionary people and those who lead them will be confronted by the violent repressive force of the machinery of the state which embodies and enforces the existing system of exploitation and oppression; and in order for the revolutionary struggle to succeed, it will need to meet and defeat that violent repressive force of the old exploitative, and oppressive order.”34
Trying to jump off a revolution before those conditions exist—trying to initiate, or advocate, isolated acts of violence by individuals or small groups, divorced from the masses of people and attempting to substitute for a revolutionary movement of masses of people—is very wrong and extremely harmful. As the Party also pointed out in the statement just cited, “It will aid the extremely repressive forces of the existing system in their moves to isolate, attack and crush those, both revolutionary forces and broader forces of political opposition, who are working to build mass political resistance and to achieve significant, and even profound, social change through the politically-conscious activity and initiative of the masses of people.”35
But that does NOT mean that the movement should just busy itself in fighting for reforms while it waits for a better situation to develop. This too has proven deadly to the hopes of the people. Instead, the movement must “hasten while awaiting” the development of the opportunity for revolution. This “hastening while awaiting” involves a whole range of activity that raises the ideological and political consciousness of people and builds massive political resistance to the most essential outrages of the system, keeping the people “tense” to seize on any opening; in short, preparing minds and organizing forces for revolution.
In thinking about this big question, it’s important to recall the points we made about the ’60s. These include:
- the ways in which millions of people, from many different parts of society, were drawn forward to mass militant resistance and to favoring revolution;
- the ways in which that struggle, reacting back and forth with things that were happening internationally, to a significant extent threw open the question of the “legitimacy” of the rulers of this system and put them on the defensive, revealing weaknesses that are not apparent in “normal times”;
- and the fact out of those times a party arose which, with the leadership of its Chairman, Bob Avakian, has gone on to confront the questions that stymied the movement back then and set a basic framework for answering those questions.
The social make-up today poses many different challenges than it did in the ‘60s. Let’s take one big difference—the far greater predominance of the illegal economy in the inner cities today, and the corresponding dominance of the “code of the streets” and the “gangsta” thing. The kinds of hopes of the movement that inspired people in the 1960s seem distant to many of the youth of today—again, both because hopes for revolution and a radically different and better world were temporarily dashed and because even those hopes that were realized (the removal of some legal barriers, etc.) proved unable to deal with the larger problems caused by the system.
On one level, that makes it harder to mobilize many youth today in struggle against the system. But this also points to the need to go much deeper than any struggles of the past, no matter how inspiring, and to go far beyond their horizons and demands. As shown earlier in regard to Katrina and the contradictions between African-Americans and Latinos, the proletarian revolution and the revolutionary state power this will bring into being can deal with these problems, relatively quickly; the reality of this fact has to be brought out for masses of people in powerful and vivid ways, repeatedly, boldly and from many different angles—with examples that point to the killing contradictions that people face every day and that show, in a living way, how these contradictions can and will be dealt with in a radically different way, in accordance with the common interests of the masses of people, once the revolution has established a new state power that embodies and furthers those interests.
On another level, this makes it all the more important to struggle sharply with youth, and others, to get into the revolution and draw out the aspirations for freedom which exist, but have been stomped on and nearly buried by this system. The challenge has to be made: get out of trying to make it in “the game” which the system has given you to play and in which you’ll never be more than a pawn, used against the very people you come from; get into something that can finally bring an end to the long dark night brought down on people by that system. Rupture with the kill or be killed mentality and the mind-set that comes with “the game”—and unleash what “the game” has suppressed: the aspirations for freedom and emancipation for all people that have been buried but not killed…and the deep desire to turn your anger and daring where, and against whom, it should and must be turned to realizethose aspirations. Get out of seeking to get over on and even killing people just like you—and get into fighting the power today, as part of getting ready for this revolution, and as part of transforming the people to make that revolution.
There were glimpses of this potential in Hurricane Katrina, when people in “the life” sometimes risked all to save someone from a different “set,” and in some of what happened in the 1992 L.A. Rebellion, when gang antagonisms were temporarily put to the side. There was more than a glimpse in the ’60s, when people like George Jackson broke out of the criminal life and into the revolutionary movement. And there must be much more of that in the revolutionary movement today—brought forward by the vanguard party of revolution, the Revolutionary Communist Party, and all who come to deeply understand that a radically different future is possible, with this becoming in turn a tremendous force of inspiration for millions more…not in some scheme to “stop the violence” that cannot work in this system, and not in a gang truce that can never be more than a truce…but in a revolutionary movement aiming to change everything.
Yes, there are difficult challenges in building a revolutionary movement today. But to think that one can emancipate humanity without confronting challenges this tough and far tougher is to turn away from reality. And that we cannot do, and do not need to do. We have the tools to scientifically understand the world and society, to figure out why things happen and how to change them, and to bring out of that a new world; we have to join together and use them.
To be very clear: none of this will come easy. It will entail tremendous struggle and sacrifice, and it will only come about amidst great upheaval and even destruction—brought about largely by the forces seeking to keep in effect the old order of oppression and exploitation—which will of necessity be part of finally overthrowing and doing away with this system. But this struggle and sacrifice can, at long last, serve to completely sweep away the chains of oppression that have bound so many for so long, and bring about a true emancipation. Such a revolution would be greeted with joy in every corner of the world and inspire hundreds of millions, throughout the globe, to take up this cause.
