A New Understanding of the Process of Organizing for Revolution

Thoughts from a member of the National Revolution Tour

August 9, 2021 | revcom.us

 

Going more deeply into the Declaration from the revcoms, A Call to Get Organized Now For a Real Revolution, has sparked a lot of thinking. I’m very excited, as I always get when I get clarity on key questions.

First, I’m really appreciating the work we did a few months ago to dig deeply into the New Year’s Statement By Bob Avakian: A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity. The more we are grappling with a scientific understanding of reality, the more I feel equipped to take this out to others, not just repeating phrases, but breaking things down for people in simple terms.

I also appreciate our discussion of the fact that what’s in the Declaration, and now further developed in this new BA piece, This Is A Rare Time When Revolution Becomes Possible—Why That Is So, And How To Seize On This Rare Opportunity, is “a higher synthesis of what it means to apply the new communism to actually organizing people for revolution.”

The Declaration says:

Organizing people into this revolution means reaching out to all sorts of people—not just where there are protests and rebellions against oppression and injustice, but everywhere throughout society—spreading the word about revolution and getting people together (in real life and online) to grapple with why an actual revolution is necessary, what such a revolution involves, and what kind of society this is aiming for. This will enable people who are new to the revolution to themselves become organizers for this revolution and to recruit more and more people to do the same. On this basis, and through the growing ranks of the revolution acting together as an increasingly powerful force, it will be possible to attract and organize the necessary numbers, and build up the necessary strength, to be in the position to do what needs to be done.

People grappling with these questions is what enables them to become organizers for this revolution—people are brought into a process, they’re being trained to wield the Declaration, to themselves grapple with what is in it, with the new BA piece as an important supplement. They can learn how to use the Declaration as an organizing tool. This is very different from people feeling like they need to “know all the right answers,” or know “the right way to take on everything that comes at us while taking this out.”

Bringing people the understanding of the situation we’re in, the potential for revolution, and organizing them as a conscious and determined force for revolution is very different than either recruiting a bunch of foot soldiers or people feeling like they have to go through a whole school course to understand everything. I used to think that spreading the revolution and grappling with these questions were opposed to each other, that one gets in the way of the other because it takes time but instead, I’ve come to understand them as an intertwined process.

This is an important contrast to really get what’s being said in the Declaration—not just “giving people things to do” but also not letting people off the hook in their responsibility to spread this revolution because they have to grapple with these questions. Again, these things happen together and in a process.

I also think for ourselves, it’s important to continue to fight to proceed as strategic commanders, especially in such a volatile situation where things are changing every day—not narrowing our heads down to whatever particular organizing we are doing, but continuing to seize on openings when we identify them. I was struck by Andy Zee’s example in the last episode of The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show about how after Martin Luther King was assassinated, the Black Panther Party grew in large numbers—not just because of what they were doing in a vacuum but there was a leap in the objective situation combined with the work they were doing... that drew people to them in larger numbers.