Revolution #158, March 8, 2009
To Our Readers:
Let’s Shake Things Up With This Path-Breaking Declaration!
After you’ve checked out this special two-week issue of Revolution—“A Declaration: For Women’s Liberation and the Emancipation of All Humanity”—catch your breath and then get started making bold and creative plans—commensurate with this path-breaking Declaration. It exposes in a compelling way the oppression of women in class society and goes beyond that as it develops and deepens existing communist theory and theoretical analysis as to where this oppression comes from, why it exists and what we have to do to get rid of it and all oppression as we emancipate all humanity. It lays bare the paltry programs and moral and ideological bankruptcy of those who claim the mantle of women’s advance but only mean getting in on the world as it is. It presents a vision of what socialism and communism could be like, building on and going beyond the experience in socialist societies so far. There really has never been anything like this Declaration!
This needs to get into the hands of anyone who gives a damn about the oppression of women. To young women and men on high school and college campuses across the country, progressive professors, international student groups, projects in the inner cities, progressive suburbs, immigrants and immigrant organizations, masses from Harlem to Oakland, anti-war organizations, gay and lesbian groups, prominent cultural and intellectual figures—all these, and many, many more.
We need to have thought-provoking discussions and debates in classrooms, in living rooms, at conferences, on the street, at Revolution Books, at International Women’s Day events, at Starbucks and at McDonald’s in neighborhoods.
This Declaration can serve to shake people loose from their pre-conceived notions, challenge some deeply held ideas which are narrowing their visions, and liberate their thinking. This Declaration can inspire and bring forward a whole new generation who are looking for another way. But it can do all of this only if it gets into people’s hands—men as well as women.
People will agree, welcoming this, and disagree, perhaps rather vehemently. We want to wade into the much-needed debate. We want the hardest questions and the most probing inquiries.
And then when you do all of this, write in to the paper to let us know what you are learning, what people are saying, where and how it is getting out into society.
Let’s go out and shake things up!
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