A world economic revolution has made world political revolution inevitable. The question is: What kind of revolution will it be? Organizations are created to answer that question. Building an organization to guarantee that the struggle will be in the interests of humanity is a huge and historic task.
In this struggle what do we do as revolutionaries? What kind of organization do we need?
Although the revolutionary movement has never faced a situation like today, we draw strength from the continuity of scientific understanding and principles of revolutionary politics and strategy. We rely on that history in order to step up to the tasks and responsibilities of this moment. Revolutionaries proceeding from the objectivity of the emerging struggle — not its features — can develop the consciousness of the movement in the process of keeping that movement on its objective track toward political struggle and resolution.
This moment pushes to the fore tens of thousands of people who are looking for a way to contribute to the forward progress of humanity, who want to politicize and educate people in their actual interests. The stage is set for the battle for the consciousness of class interests, for a program that addresses those interests, for the need for the political power to reorganize society, and for a vision of the new society.
This is the moment for an organization of revolutionaries to develop the strategic leadership, to inspire the people with a vision of the new society. Revolutionaries enter into every social struggle with a propaganda message that empowers people with the consciousness to strive for this new society and their responsibility to carry out their role in history.
This revolutionary movement is in the process of a leap into a new quality of struggle. It cannot help but do so since it is the subjective or political expression of the leap from industry to the electronic economy. The leap from labor-saving to labor-replacing devices in the capitalist productive process changes its quality.
The revolutionaries work in the subjective side of the process, the response of people to their changing conditions. This process will go through a number of quantitative stages. At each state, the revolutionaries will have to regroup on new foundations. The revolution in the economy is disrupting the entire world. Things cannot remain as they are and they cannot return to the past. There will have to be a political revolution to bring society in alignment with the new economy, and the outcome will depend on the consciousness of the combatants.
A revolutionary political organization is the subjective expression of the objective process. From this point of view a serious revolutionary organization must politically express the current spontaneous motion. Politics means relying on the spontaneous social motion in order to achieve necessary goals.
The electronic revolution in production combined with the cyclical crisis brings about an unprecedented crash of the capitalist system. Fascism is arising objectively as the only possible political superstructure for the economic takeover by corporate power. It arises within the struggle of the capitalist class — a class which is itself being transformed — to align the political superstructure with the changing productive relations.
The State today has to insert itself into the direction and management of the economy. Nationalization is a way for the ruling class to maintain, protect and promote the laws and sanctity of private property in the face of the destruction of the capitalist system.
The battle over whose interests nationalization serves is an arena in which the workers can move from their scattered economic struggles against the corporations to united political struggles against the State. It is in this struggle over nationalization that the workers will begin to recognize themselves as a class. They will come to realize that the struggle to build a communal economy is the ultimate solution.
The task of an organization of revolutionaries is to be part of the historic efforts to transform the scattered defense battles into into a conscious, united political force. Our tactic is to participate in their crossing over from the defensive to the offensive. Our goal is to utilize this spontaneous process to prepare the people to reclaim their country by assuming State power and transforming the property relations from private to public.
The spontaneous movement is the struggle for food, clothing and shelter. In the process of that fight there is the possibility of convincing the masses there is a way to secure these things forever. People can only do what is possible and what is possible is objective. It is possible and necessary for the movement to understand and conform to the line of march of the revolution. This line of march is the stages the revolution must pass through.
Revolutionaries do not simply express or reflect the stage of the objective process, they create and utilize organizational forms that create the subjective conditions that will allow the objective process to move forward. The subjective factors of consciousness, direction, ideology and goals can only be introduced by revolutionaries participating in the objective process. Revolutionaries need to to develop the vision, science, strategy, and direction for the working class. The first step is to identify the politically decisive sector at any given stage — that section of the class that can pull the process forward.
The program of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America comes from the constant study of actual social and economic motion. It politically expresses the profound economic revolution that is reshaping the world. Our strategy proceeds from our analysis that society is in the period of a leap from one economic and social relation to another. The League’s mission, strategy and tactics aim to achieve the first necessary stage in the line of march toward the final outcome —uniting the scattered revolutionaries on the basis of the demands of the new class of workers, to educate them and win them over to the cooperative, communist resolution of the problem.
Creating and imbuing the American people with a vision will take the collective effort, thinking and skill of all revolutionaries who seek to end the destruction around us and build a new world. The future of humanity depends upon it.
This Building Block article is written to help explain a basic concept of the revolutionary process, challenging readers to explore its meaning for political work in today’s environment.
May/June.2012.Vol22.Ed3
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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