What distinguishes the strategic commanders and what they have in common with each other, despite different particularities, is the ability (and the inclination!) to wrangle with the biggest questions of the revolution (before and after the seizure of power), to understand what it means to apply evidence-based scientific methods to assess and evaluate ever changing reality, to be increasingly able to sort out a complex of contradictions and rank and prioritize them correctly, to consistently proceed from the loftiest strategic objectives and work back from that to figure out what needs to be done at any given time to move the process forward. In short, well-rounded, all-sided revolutionaries, rooted in and proceeding from the New Communism—the most advanced iteration to date of what is needed in the world and how to get there—and with a willingness to go out and FIGHT with masses to get with all this if they ever want to get free.
Properly understood, an illiterate peasant in a 3rd world country or an unschooled basic person from the inner cities can be trained to be a strategic commander of the revolution (not just a tactical commander, and certainly not a “movement activist”!). You don’t have to have been formally trained as an intellectual to be bright, engaged, curious about all sorts of things, able to think on lots of different levels, and to play with lots of different elements. And you don’t have to be a highly trained intellectual to learn the basics about what is wrong with the world, what needs to (and can) be done about it, what it is going to take, what it is that BA and the New Communism are about, and why you, and many, many others, need to become followers of this person and this scientific approach to emancipating humanity. You can learn to understand better why it is that so few people are currently with this, what obstacles you are going to encounter, why the key right now is to go wage ferocious struggle with and among the people to get on board, but all the while modeling and demonstrating the right methods.
So... not a movement activist. Also not an armchair “marxist.” But definitely steeped in the core methods, approach and objectives of the New Communism and eager to go fight for this out in society, with the requisite passion, substance, determination and conviction.
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Ardea Skybreak is a scientist with professional training in ecology and evolutionary biology, and an advocate of the new synthesis of communism—also known as the New Communism—brought forward by Bob Avakian. Important works by Skybreak include The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: Knowing What’s Real and Why It Matters; Of Primeval Steps and Future Leaps: An Essay on the Emergence of Human Beings, the Source of Women’s Oppression, and the Road to Emancipation; and an interview with Skybreak, Science and Revolution, On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian.
