What the World Needs Now

February 24, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

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As we write, there are four weeks until the premiere of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!

Let’s start with the basics: what is this film? And why is it important?

Many, many people walk through their lives hurting, or numb, or both. Emergencies cry out all over the place—the massive imprisonment of Black and Latino youth, running like an assembly line... the degradation and horrors visited upon women, from the bedroom to the streets to the state-backed sex trafficking... the drones of war and long-distance murder... the relentless destruction of the environment... and all over the planet, the steady, unending drumbeat of children being ground up by disease, ignorance, exploitation—millions and millions a year dying—as if being fed to a mythological monster.

What is needed is Revolution—Nothing Less!

Yet people don’t see a way out. They don’t see a way forward.

This film challenges that, and powerfully. This film can change that.

For decades, masses of people worldwide fought and sacrificed in their hundreds of millions to build a whole new world. Their achievements were great, but these first heroic attempts were defeated, and for nearly 40 years there has been no country that people could look to as a liberated society. During that time, the movement for revolution largely became disoriented and ebbed.

But fortunately, Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, did NOT. BA set about figuring out how to go forward—because the world still cried out, more desperately than ever, for revolution. He deepened the science of revolution, and applied that to understanding the triumphs, and the shortcomings, of the past. He revived and deepened Marx’s insight that humanity’s suffering was not due to a somehow unchanging and unchangeable human nature, but to real, material causes—fundamentally, to a system, of capitalism-imperialism. And more than that, he broke through on the strategy to actually make a revolution, and to a vision of a whole new world on a higher level than had ever been seen before.

That is huge. Huge. And the heart of it is contained in this film of a speech BA gave last fall. But this is more than just a film, more than even a very good film. As one of the filmmakers said, “This is a daring, substantive, scientific summoning to revolution. 6+ hours that can change how you see the world and what you do with the rest of your life.”

The line in this film—the analysis that BA lays out but just as important, the way he opens up your vision and shows you how to go at things, how to understand and change the world, how we actually could make revolution, and how to deal with everything that stands in the way and the kind of world that we could bring into being if we follow through on all that—is powerful. This line can change people.

Revolution—Nothing Less!

Right now, the premieres of this film are crucially important; but we have to conceive of them as, and make them be part of, something larger. The process of building for and then showing this film has to put revolution on the map in society in a big way and go a lot further in making BA a household word. But important as this is—and it is important—there is a particular mission to develop a growing core of people who are down with this, and broader circles and rungs of other people who are getting into this, engaging it, learning about it, and participating in some way, big or small, in the movement for revolution. The premiere of this film, and the whole process leading up to it, has to do this, and it has to develop the organized strength of this trend, and most of all the party at the core of it. Because you can’t make revolution without a revolutionary party.

To put it another way, through the course of the next four weeks, and then taking a leap at the premieres themselves, this line has to find increasing material expression.

Again... Revolution—Nothing Less!

***

For two weeks now, people have been taking this out into the world. We’ve been changing things and learning things. But at every step of the way, we need to apply science to figure out what we are changing, where we are falling short, and how to do better. We need to make the most of the opportunity posed by this premiere... and we need a massive effort that is guided by, and enriching, the science to do that. It’s not about telling cool stories—it has to be about changing the world, and drawing the lessons to help others change it.

Last week, we pointed to the need, as called for in the RCP’s “On the Strategy for Revolution,” “to be working consistently to accumulate forces—to prepare minds and organize people in growing numbers—for revolution,” as a key part of the struggle to build these premieres. It’s worth reprinting and reflecting again on the paragraph we cited:

All along the way, both in more “normal times” and especially in times of sharp breaks with the “normal routine,” it is necessary to be working consistently to accumulate forces—to prepare minds and organize people in growing numbers—for revolution, among all those who can be rallied to the revolutionary cause. Among the millions and millions who catch hell in the hardest ways every day under this system. But also among many others who may not, on a daily basis, feel the hardest edge of this system’s oppression but are demeaned and degraded, are alienated and often outraged, by what this system does, the relations among people it promotes and enforces, the brutality this embodies.

One thing: progress has been made, things have been learned, when revolutionaries put out the solid core of this line—Revolution—Nothing Less!... letting people get to know BA through BAsics, or an interview tape, or the Revolution talk... then allowing and enabling people to get into that on many different levels, bringing their aspirations and questions into a whole process... and then challenging them and providing them an immediate way to get with the movement for revolution.

Revolutionaries have to be way out into the world as a solid core around this line: Revolution—Nothing Less! We need to be putting BA in people’s hands, in different ways, letting them know that we have the actual way forward out of this madness and how incredibly important that is! We should call bullshit bullshit when people run their stuff against this line, and we should welcome the controversy. But that’s not enough. You’ve got to give people the ways to engage and actively get into that line, and spread it themselves. If you’re on the campus—“let’s get some coffee... when can we hang out and listen to this interview, or watch this DVD—how about now, for 15 minutes...” If someone’s in a rush to pick up their kids or go to the market, walk with them, give them a hand, but whatever you do, get into this with them. Learn what they think of BAsics, or that quote card, or the radio interview or part of the Revolution Talk they saw. If there’s someone there who’s got a better grasp of the line or knows how to break it down... take the person over to them.

One important thing: we need to reach out more to take people along on these forays that take word of the premieres out broadly. People who are new to things, or who may not be new but aren’t that clear on a lot of stuff, get a whole lot just by going out with the revolutionaries and seeing how they put out revolution and take on the bullshit. And the fact is that they contribute a lot as well, even by just standing with the revolution and being part of the whole scene. Again, it gets back to being serious: giving people a time and a place to be part of this, and then being there, manifesting and representing fully as who we are: revolutionary communists, people who get that what we are supposed to do is LEAD... with the WHOLE thing... the need, the basis, the possibility... the challenge to others to be part of this in some way big or small...the total refusal to accept or allow reactionary views to set the tone or the terms for things. THIS is the solid core we should be projecting... with the confidence of all of material history behind us and the great needs of humanity in mind... and settle for nothing less than what is true and what is necessary to do.

When people begin to relate to that, it is urgent that that goes further; we have to find ways to give that relationship real shape, connected to real organization.

We need it all: deeper engagement with BA, right there on the spot... forms of activity to be part of this and spread it, on all kinds of levels... and then deeper engagement off of that, and so on, scientifically summing up all along the way.

This is the spiral we have to unleash in order to make these premieres be what they have to be.

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