This historical moment is producing tens of thousands of revolutionaries. They are people from all walks of life who have a growing understanding that the economic system is responsible for the suffering of these times, and a recognition that their struggle is to end a system that has nothing more to offer humanity. The mission of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America is to unite these scattered revolutionaries on the basis of the demands of the new class, to educate and win them over to the cooperative, communist resolution of the problem.
Today’s revolutionaries are born not of the sectarian battles of the bygone epoch, but of the actual antagonisms now ripping society apart. They are among those hit by the factory and public-worker layoffs, foreclosures, and broad dispossession sweeping previously secure sections of the working class. They are the thinkers, those who awaken first and want to know the meaning of the battles they face and the path to their resolution.
New era, new possibilities
A serious organization of conscious revolutionaries can only connect with these revolutionaries who have developed out of the practical struggle if its cadre disperse to the narrow fronts where these revolutionaries are rooted in struggle.
This effort has to take into account the fact that what was possible in the long period of capitalist development – winning reforms that benefited both capitalists and workers – is no longer possible. The foundation for politics, the struggle for power, has changed. Capitalism, defined by the exploitation of labor, has reached its limit as electronic technology replaces jobs and workers across the board. Society based on the circulation of goods to workers paid to produce them is in the process of destruction. The economic crisis is one from which the capitalist system cannot recover. Therefore, no step forward in addressing the needs and demands of the practical movement is possible – except those that address its actual cause.
The problems of society today are rooted in this antagonism to the system. Conditions exist for restructuring society on a new basis with new means of production owned in common and everyone’s needs provided for. We are passing into a new era. It is now possible to infuse an objectively revolutionary movement with revolutionary consciousness.
Method of Revolutionary Work
In this endeavor, it is important to remember that there is a difference between the scientific abstractions that guide the conscious revolutionaries and the specific perceptions that draw people into motion and inquiry. Conscious revolutionaries tie the two together along a principled line that leads from the perception of a problem to an understanding of the cause and the solution. Conscious revolutionaries agitate and propagandize along this line to connect what people understand – and are beginning to fight for – with a vision of the solution to society’s problems.
We are not talking about a watered-down description of the objective problem and long-range solution, nor is it a “minimum demand.” It is a question of introducing a germ of consciousness of the ultimate political solution – a quantity of the new quality – into the programmatic contention over the immediate demands of the movement. This is not determined arbitrarily. It depends on identifying that step of the movement that is in line with the struggle for qualitative change.
The objective situation points to where that line lies. It is, today, shaped by the action of the government – the various forms and degrees of nationalization and other government intervention in the economy in the interests of the capitalist class. It is shaped by the massive budget cuts that not only assault public workers but, through the attacks on them, aim to destroy entire sections of the social superstructure and to align the political superstructure to the needs of capital.
This process is waking up people on diverse fronts and drawing them into struggle. The developing contention is over whose interest government should serve. It is a bridge between what people understand and are beginning to fight for today, and the larger understanding that the struggle is ultimately to build a communal economy, and that what’s needed is the political power to reorganize society along those lines.
Agitation and propaganda along this line allows revolutionaries to bring the vision of the new society and an understanding of the tasks ahead into the struggles against the capitalist system.
Collectives of revolutionaries on specific fronts of struggle identify the lines along which to connect with the thinking of people to develop their consciousness. Revolutionaries on narrow fronts of the actual struggle can connect with the practical movement to develop propaganda that articulates the next steps for the movement – and why. This programmatic agitation and propaganda expresses a seamless continuity.
Today there can be no separation between revolutionaries’ work in the practical movement and their responsibility for revolutionary propaganda. There is a dialectical relation between agitation and propaganda. Neither can be done without the other. Revolutionary work within the movement develops consciousness through the continuity, in content, of these two sides of the dialectic.
Agitation means nothing without the direction expressed in propaganda. Propaganda can speak to the cause and resolution on specific fronts by addressing the overall situation and the specific forms of the actual confrontation with private property and the State.
Disperse deep into the struggle
On specific fronts where there is actual struggle, conscious revolutionaries connect with revolutionaries emerging in the practical movement to develop committees and carry out revolutionary work. They work to build committees of revolutionaries on those fronts as nerve centers of collectivity and decision-making for revolutionary propaganda and agitation. Revolutionaries with deep roots and extensive connections on a front can master the specifics on that front and assess the consciousness there. They unite with emerging revolutionaries in the practical movement looking for clarity and strategic perspective.
As battles on specific fronts start to shape the national political discourse, collectives on specific fronts can equip the organization as a whole to propagandize effectively. In the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, this committee system is guided by a General Secretariat. This committee and Secretariat system allows for the experience and intelligence of those fighting at the front to be united with the political centralism of the League’s unifying vision, analysis, and doctrine.
The revolutionary cadre at the front proceed from this overall analysis, tasks, and mission; they are responsible to master the particularities on their specific front of struggle. As the situation intensifies, revolutionaries can identify ever-more specific and narrow fronts of struggle on which to propagandize and politicize. The deeper that the revolutionaries are immersed inside the practical struggle, the further that their revolutionary propaganda can reach – and the more concrete it can be.
The narrowness of the fronts where conscious revolutionaries connect with revolutionaries from the practical movement reflects the scattered nature of the social motion at this stage – but it is on these narrow fronts that revolutionaries can carry out the broadest propaganda.
Every day, the terrible gravity of the current situation produces new revolutionaries with a passion for social change. To all serious revolutionaries who recognize the extraordinary danger of the time we are living in and feels a moral obligation to contribute their maximum to the struggle, we make an urgent request and extend a sincere invitation.
Join the League of Revolutionaries for a New America. Contribute your energy – and your understanding. Help build this system of committees on narrow fronts of struggle. Become part of the effort to create a dynamic organization of revolutionaries. Contribute to the process of changing the thinking of the American people, and in that way, help make history.
October/December 2011.Vol21.Ed5
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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