The articles in this issue concentrate on the need for revolutionaries to provide political clarity in this historical moment. Rapidly changing conditions are forcing larger numbers of the American people into motion. New ideas are emerging, while old ideas persist. The role of the conscious revolutionary is to propagate ideas that explain the truth of the moment to the combatants.
The American people are being thrown into a defensive struggle against the rule of private property. As society moves from one technological base to another, the ruling class is unleashing an offensive assault on the people as the rulers move to protect private property at all costs. This includes a drive toward world war, unprecedented hunger and homelessness, and a growing fascist assault to contain and crush the beginning motion of the new class. Just as in the beginning of the Civil War where workers were for slavery, but drawn into the battle anyway, the masses of people today are going to be drawn into the battle to abolish private property, regardless of what they think. This battleground is where we meet and recruit the revolutionaries.
“Make Private Property Public” explains why the call for abolition of private property is a rallying cry for basic survival. Cutting to the heart of the matter the article makes clear that as long as water remains the property of the capitalist class, our human survival will be based on our ability to buy it. In response the article cites the call for the nationalization of industry in the name of the people and not the corporations.
“Violence in Chicago” comes to us at a time when the working people of this country, and particularly the youth, are being made the scapegoats for the very social disintegration which victimizes them. This article comes at a critical moment when throughout the nation, people of all ages and colors are beginning to challenge police violence, with cries of “Hands up don’t shoot,” “I can’t breathe” and “Black lives matter.” The ruling class is responding with racial ideology, always blaming the victim. This article indicts the ruling class not only for its direct crimes, such as police brutality, the privatization of the public domain but any and all of the unlivable conditions that the capitalist system creates.
General Gordon Baker committed his life to revolutionary struggle. The historical role he played is immeasurable. “General Gordon Baker Jr. Evolution of A Revolutionary” focuses on the example Baker left for the rest of us still in struggle. It traces his participation in struggle through two historical periods, and speaks to the meaning of both moments and the leadership role he played. General Gordon Baker’s life and legacy shows us that when the conditions change, so must our thinking and approach to such change.
“The Fight Against Police Violence is a Fight for A New Society” shows that while we must fight police violence every step of the way, we can’t stop the police state without getting rid of the capitalist system. Under communism the police forces, whose job is to protect the billionaire’s private property, would not exist. The only role for government would be to plan the production and distribution of society’s abundance.
The November 2014 Political Report from the LRNA, “The Way Forward: Unite Our Class” speaks to the breath and scale of the American working class and the tasks at hand to unite them. Alongside its sober assessment of the racial divisions within our class, it also emphasizes the points of class unity that are being objectively created. However, such objective unity cannot be fully harnessed towards common interests and solutions, if the class remains divided. The racially divisive ideas of the ruling class are still in play. New divisive ideas are also springing up. We need to seize this moment to meet the emerging revolutionaries on the fields of battle to carry out our role as revolutionary propagandists to unite our class.
January/February. Vol25.Ed1
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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