As the new year approaches, you look back… and you look forward. On this site, you will look back to the truth of what has happened, and why, and what it means for humanity—including why and how this has shaped up to be a rare time when revolution becomes possible in the U.S.
Looking forward, you will find the way out of the madness and horror, the necessary foundation—and the basic roadmap—to wrench something radically different for humanity through revolution … As Bob Avakian (BA), the revolutionary leader and author of the new communism, has posed sharply at this juncture: Something Terrible OR Something Truly Emancipating.
On this site you will find hope: based not on religious nonsense or self-deluding political games, but a scientific drilling down to the foundation of the madness that besets and suffocates humanity … and a just-as-scientific strategy to take this on, defeat it and wrench a liberating future out of it—brought forward by Bob Avakian. And you will find a challenge: break with whatever fatalism, whatever paralyzing fear of the future, whatever help-me-make-it-through-the-night variety of religion or pseudo-religion you cling to… and dare to struggle to save this planet and the 7 billion-plus people now needlessly suffering on it.
On this site, you will be able to read how BA has shown why anything short of revolution leaves us trapped in a hellish present and even worse future… and why this is also one of those rare times where people could, if they act consciously and decisively, actually make revolution. You can dig into the strategy that BA has developed to bring forward millions and a way to begin now, with the few forces around the revcoms, to grow. And he shows the basis to fight to win when the showdown comes, yes, even up against “all that.”
Part of that strategy—basic to that strategy—is telling the TRUTH about where things are now, including what people are caught up in and what they are and are NOT doing. So let’s start there, and look back at this year with where we need to be next year firmly in mind.
2021: Where We’ve Been
On this site today we review the past year’s events and trends—from the attempted fascist coup on January 6 and the fascist onslaught since then, to the Glasgow conference on global warming…from the ugly course of the international COVID epidemic, to the full-scale assault on women’s rights concentrated in the attacks on abortion… from the ongoing plague of police murder of Black people and other people of color, to the end of the brutal imperialist U.S. war in Afghanistan, to the horrors visited upon immigrants on the border. Some things stand out:
First, this is a system in the grip of a deep crisis on every one of these fronts, a crisis for which no imperialist party, neither Democrats nor Republi-fascists, has any answers other than either more of the same or far worse. In every single one of these arenas, humanity has been up against a nonstop assault. Meanwhile, the divisions at the top between those two forces have become even sharper. As BA has written,
These deep divisions, this intensifying conflict, cannot be overcome—all this cannot be “put back together”—on the terms, and in the way, that the country has, up to now, been held together under the rule of a more or less unified capitalist class. (from THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE—WHY THAT IS SO, AND HOW TO SEIZE ON THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY)
Second, this is a time when the fascists dominate the courts and run roughshod over the streets and the public spaces, while the great bulk of those who claim to lead the masses against oppression in actuality do nothing to fight the outrages. Instead, whole sections of the so-called “movement” take up the destructive stance of “wokeness”—attacking each other instead of the enemy—or of one or another form of retreat (self-help, safe space, etc.). You can see these false pathways thoroughly dug into and refuted in these essays published by Bob Avakian during the past year (go here, here, and here).
Third, partly as a result of all of the above and partly due to everything that goes with the parasitical style of life that this country has relative to the rest of the world, masses of people who should be standing up have instead fallen into fatalism and passivity—and largely, as BA says in his new talk, not even “searching” for the real roots of the problem and what the solution should be.
But that kind of despair is an unconscionable cop-out. Because even more important on this site is someone—again, Bob Avakian—who looks straight at the same ugly madness gaining momentum—the divisions, the looming civil war and everything else—and sees not only the possibility of “something terrible,” but the possibility for something truly emancipating: Revolution.
2022: Where We Must Go
And that leads to the most important thing you will read about 2021 and the year ahead on this site: the work produced this past year by the revolutionary leader and author of the new communism Bob Avakian that showed not only why this is happening but—again—how this madness poses both a horrible danger but also a rare chance to make revolution for a truly emancipated world. You can look at a year in which his followers—the Revcoms—put out a Declaration and Call that showed, in a few thousand words, why and how you can become part of the fight for that world…starting now … and took this everywhere they could, while tirelessly and bravely fighting the power, and transforming the people, FOR the revolution humanity so badly needs. A year in which, toward its very end, BA produced a powerful and pivotal work:
SOMETHING TERRIBLE, OR SOMETHING TRULY EMANCIPATING:
Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions, The Looming Possibility Of Civil War—And The Revolution That Is Urgently Needed
A Necessary Foundation, A Basic Roadmap For This Revolution
by Bob Avakian, Revolutionary Leader, Author of the New Communism
These works are revolutionary, scientific theory—theory rooted in reality that needs to be applied to radically change that reality—through revolution. These works need to be applied now, beginning this next year and in the next few years to come, to make the needed leaps forward in bringing forward a revolutionary people in their millions, with a force of thousands at its core.
As BA concludes his talk:
To return to this crucial and urgent truth:
This is one of those rare times and circumstances when revolution becomes possible, not just because this system is always a horror, but because the crisis and deep divisions in society now can only be resolved through radical means, of one kind or another—either radically reactionary, murderously oppressive and destructive means or radically emancipating revolutionary means.
There is a great challenge that must be met, and a tremendous amount of work and struggle that must be carried out, with scientifically grounded determination and boldness, in order to make possible the emancipating revolutionary resolution.
There is no guarantee of achieving all this, but there is a real possibility. And what we do—what all those who want to see a world and a future worth living in, where human beings everywhere can truly flourish in the fullness of their humanity—what we all do can make a tremendous difference in what the outcome of all this will be.
There is the possibility, there is the challenge.
Dare to become part of the forces for this historic revolution. Dare to work resolutely to make this a reality. Dare to struggle, dare to win.