Why BAsics 3:1 Has Been Changed

August 16, 2021 | revcom.us

 

Bob Avakian (BA) has changed the quote that opens the third chapter of BAsics (on making revolution). The quote reads the same but the last point has been boldfaced. BA has explained that:

Boldface has been added in the text of BAsics 3:1 to emphasize that you cannot really, fully put forward, and struggle for, the first part of 3:1 (We need a revolution) if you don’t also boldly put forward the second part (Anything else, in the final analysis, is bullshit) and struggle for this understanding—vigorously, at times fiercely, with substance and compellingly—in opposition to the many different ways that “bullshit” is put forward, among the basic masses as well as other sections of the people.

To invoke a formulation from Mao, applied here to ideology (how people think—and accordingly act): There can be no construction without destruction.

The point here, as alluded to above, is to emphasize a very important point of orientation and approach with which people—including new people drawn to us—need to be consistently led (and to which they need to be repeatedly returned), conveying the crucial understanding that, in order to win people to the revolution we are working for, it is not enough just to propagate, or even emphasize, the need for this revolution, by itself, but that this must be accompanied by compelling struggle with masses of people (basic masses and others); that we should be “itching for ideological struggle” with these masses, in order to (in a paraphrase of Lenin) divert them from the spontaneous tendency to remain under the influence of the bourgeoisie—or, in simple terms, to break them from the “bullshit” of various kinds that far too many are caught up in, which leads them away from seeing, and acting on, the necessity, as well as the possibility (and desirability), of the revolution that is urgently needed.