Letter from a Prisoner:

"On the Revolutionary Tours and Struggling with Others"

July 15, 2019 | revcom.us

 

We greatly appreciate receiving these letters from prisoners and encourage prisoners to keep sending us correspondence. The views expressed by the writers of these letters are, of course, their own; and they are not responsible for the views published elsewhere in our paper.

It lights up my heart every time I read about the Revolutionary Tours and Clubs yall be doing. It gives me hope reading about our fellow comrades putting in work out there. And that yall take the time and patience to educate people on Communism and the Revolution. It is how the vanguard party is supposed to be, in the field and at the front lines of the movements that manifest itself cause of this bullshit system. I’m glad yall there educating people on why they out there and the reason they go through what they go through on a daily basis, leading the masses on the right direction. You already know, with out a vanguard party, people out there protesting would be running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and the protest would be made in vain, not accomplishing a thing!

I sure wish I were out there in the world, helping the movement and doing my Part. Sadly I’m in prison, but it don't stop me from trying to educate fellow inmates on the State of the world and why, and through what social conditions, led many of us to crime and ultimately to prison. Though, I will admit, here in Texas is really difficult due to the fact many lack any sort of political conscious, and could care less about the state of the world. You have a few like minded individuals, but the majority of everyone else have this type of slave mentality. Most just care about money and don't want to hear anything that ain't talking bout making money, trying to be "Gangster," in other words, a ruthless capitalist. But I keep trying, and I study more and more to be able to explain things better.

I noticed on yalls Revolution tours, yall bump into people and students and yall have to struggle with them cause they point of view is different. I be going through the same thing, lately I been struggling with another fellow inmate, and he brings up the arguments most people make against communism. There’s two main arguments that people use against communism. The (1st) one being, that "human nature" is the reason why communism will never work. (2nd), that supposedly communism has been tried before and that it didn't work. I was presented with these two arguments while me and a fellow prisoner (my homeboy) were having a political discussion. At some point I told him I was a communist and that its all I be reading and studying for quite some time now. He told me that he agrees with communism as a theory and that capitalism is fucked up. He then tells me that communism does not work, that it’s been tried. I explain to him that those countries failed due to the isolation and economic warfare as well as military intervention the surrounding imperialist nations impose on them. That in the Soviet Union, after V. Lenin died and in China after Mao Zedong died those countries came to be communist in name but state capitalism in essence. So that argument is easily dropped. So now he holds on to the argument that human nature would not allow communism to work, because "human nature" dictates that when a person or a group of people come to power, they become easily corrupt. That humans, including animals have a hierarchy, a pecking order, and that’s the reason why "supposedly" capitalism goes hand in hand with human nature.

So me and homeboy been in this struggle where he’s trying to convince me that communism is a hopeless goal to accomplish and me assuring him that the "human nature" argument is flawed and without any real solid base. I try to explain to him Dialectic Materialism, that it can't be that we are hard wired to act the way we do. Dialectics explains how life flows freely and is ever still advancing forward, changing every time it approaches contradictions. And Dialectics Materialism debunks the "human nature" approach because, if life didn't flow freely, subject to manipulation by adaptation, then why is it that we didn’t stayed at the Point of Hunter Gatherers? if we are so hard wired to those ancestors, why didn't we stay at that level of human thought? (I hope I explained it right, you be thinking you know all about Dialectics until you try to explain it (LOL). But as Friedrich Engels put it, "The whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process—(i.e.) as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all their movement and development."

And still, I continue struggling with homeboy because he is convinced that humans are naturally greedy, selfish, hostile to foreigners and competitive. All the characteristics that "coincidently" fit right in with capitalist/imperialism and bourgeois culture. And in struggling with homeboy, I patiently explain to him that the reason why humans of so long ago and way back to the Hunter Gatherers days were so competitive, hostile and what may be perceived as greedy…I don’t want to say dumb, but I can’t find another word to describe them not seeing what’s going on.

People don’t see how religion is but another arm of the oppressor, it enforces a lot of negative aspects of this bourgeois culture and system. We under it enforces the patriarch system of living, it teaches people to be submissive to the oppressors.

It is why I believe a real reform is impossible under this bourgeois capitalist system. What we need is a revolution, the revolution against this system and the culture it bred.