Revolution #245, September 11, 2011
Part 2: BUILDING THE MOVEMENT FOR REVOLUTION
Editors' Note: The following is the thirteenth excerpt from Part 2 of a recent talk by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, which is being serialized in this paper. Previous excerpts appeared in Revolution #232 to #243. This has been edited, and footnotes have been added, for publication. The entire talk is available at revcom.us.
A Materialist, and Internationalist, Orientation and Approach
We have to be hastening with the whole world in mind, not just in the sense that the world situation overall and the dynamics of the contradictory objective conditions in the world as a whole are ultimately decisive in terms of making revolution in any particular country, and advancing this revolution overall, but at the same time with the sense, and a deepening understanding, that our objective is to actually make revolution as part of a larger worldwide process whose final aim is achieving communism. This has to be something that we consciously act in accordance with—and something that we bring to the masses of people and enable them to consciously understand and act on. The situation we are confronted with, the goal for which we are struggling, and the process involved in the struggle for that goal—all this is an important part of objective reality that the masses need to understand more and more deeply in order to be able to emancipate themselves and all of humanity. And they have to understand what that emancipation of humanity is all about and how it relates to sweeping away all of the things that people are aware of and abhor, or whisper about in angry tones, or revolt and rise up against, or even at any given time are ignorant of but need to, and can, learn about.
This is a theme I'm repeatedly hitting at here because it's so important: All these different phenomena are just objective reality—important aspects of that reality—which masses of people need to understand. And for that to happen, they need us to bring to them a living, scientific understanding of this reality. Where else are they going to get it? Yes, the masses have a lot of wisdom, but it is very scattered and unsystematic, and it is intermingled with and influenced by a lot of wrong understanding and thinking which is consciously shaped and influenced by the dominant institutions and forces in society and the world as a whole. They are not going to come to a fundamentally correct understanding of reality and how it can be radically transformed, and of their own role in that, as well as the larger context of the whole world that all this fits into, unless we bring that to them.
So we ourselves have to act on a correct understanding of the relation between revolution in a particular country and the advance of the revolution in the world overall—and the dialectics of that, in which ultimately and fundamentally the situation in the world as a whole is principal, but there is an important back and forth process in which initiative seized in particular areas or particular countries can in turn have a major impact on the development of the whole world situation and world struggle. We have to not only understand and act on that ourselves but, once again, we have to bring this to the masses of people and enable them to understand and act on it.
And there is a particular, and particularly acute, dimension of this—which we have spoken to in a special issue of our newspaper (#199) but which we need to continue to deepen our understanding of and speak to in a continually compelling way—and that is the truly urgent situation with the environment, and specifically the ways in which the capitalist-imperialist system is daily heightening this emergency, in which the future and fate of humanity really is at stake in a very direct and active sense. This gives a further dimension to and underscores even further the necessity of an internationalist orientation in everything we do, in order to advance the cause of revolution and communism. It is strikingly the case—and many people are aware of this fact, even if they don't understand it in its full dimensions or fully scientifically—that this environmental crisis and real emergency cannot be solved within the borders of any particular country. In fact, some people will even throw that back at us when we're talking about and putting forward our program for how to approach this environmental crisis—more than a few have said: even if you could make a revolution, you can't solve the problem within just one country, plus there would be a lot more environmental disaster as part of that revolution. This is a reality we have to recognize and discuss and struggle over honestly and, above all, scientifically with people. But it does underscore the importance, and adds another dimension to the importance, of internationalism as our fundamental orientation.
Bringing Alive the Link Between What We're Doing and the Possibility of Revolution
There is a need, in all the work of building this movement for revolution, to be linking all this, in a meaningful and living way—but not in a linear way—with what is spoken to in "On the Possibility of Revolution." In going out to masses of people, and talking about building a movement for revolution, it is crucial to give people a living sense—although not a reductionist, inaccurate and inappropriate sense—of how all the work that's being done today relates to what's discussed in "On the Possibility of Revolution." It is necessary to find the ways to correctly discuss, not only among the people already won to revolution but with growing numbers of people more broadly, what is in "On the Possibility of Revolution" and the ongoing development of that strategic conception. If the link is not drawn—in the correct way, and in a living and meaningful way—between what is being done today and what is spoken to in "On the Possibility of Revolution," then this means that work for revolution is not really being carried out and that, once again, the masses of people are not being enabled to understand the possibility of revolution, and the strategic conception of revolution.
This goes back to the point about "hastening while awaiting"—or not. The growing strength of the revolutionary movement has to become an increasingly powerful part of the objective situation, as a political-ideological force and a "mood creating factor"—being continually transformed more fully from a subjective factor (something that the conscious forces are doing) into an objective factor (something which is increasingly impacting and exerting influence on growing numbers of people, and on the objective terrain overall) and in that way strengthening the basis to in turn make further leaps in the process. We have to consciously approach things in this way—and we have to explain things to masses of people in this way. This has to come through, in the correct ways, in our newspaper and in our work overall.
Many people, including many people who might like to see a revolution, say baldly: "You can't make a revolution." It is necessary to put forward clearly to them why we think revolution is possible. Where there are gaps in our understanding about this, we have to go to work on them, and we have to draw masses into working on them, to figure them out and to make further breakthroughs—to discover more bone fragments and more artifacts to put more of the picture together as we go.
In this context, it is important to emphasize that popularizing the strategy for revolution is a key part of carrying out that strategy. If we are supposedly carrying out a strategy yet we ourselves don't understand very well what it is—and don't talk about it with the masses—what kind of strategy is that and what is it really a strategy for? On the positive side, let me emphasize it again: popularizing the strategy for revolution—in the correct way, in a meaningful and living way—is a key part of carrying out that strategy. When we do popularize this strategy, and growing numbers of people engage with that strategy, then that itself becomes part of the objective terrain too. It influences how people think, particularly about the possibility of revolution and the strategic conception for making revolution. The more that people understand that work has been done on the problems of really making revolution, the more they engage with the strategic conception that is being developed for how to make revolution and how the work that's being carried out actually proceeds—which it must—in accordance with, and as a way of implementing, that strategic conception, the more this is going to come alive for them. And the simple dismissal of the possibility of revolution—"you can't do that...the people we would have to go up against are too powerful...we're too fucked up, it's human nature for things to be this way..."—that is going to have something contending more and more powerfully up against it.
To be continued