Mass outpourings of protests and resistance have broken out in a number of countries. These are in response to multiple and heightening crises, including the worldwide ascendance of fascism, increased repression and attacks against sections of people, global warming, and growing gulfs of inequality. As righteous and mainly positive as these mass struggles against oppressive states and ruling strata are, the decisive question is whether there arises within these struggles a revolutionary trend and core of genuine communist leadership that can transform them into actual revolutions—the overthrow of the reactionary system as part of going for a radically different society and world—OR whether humanity will be consigned to even more grotesque forms of misery, oppression, alienation, and perhaps even extinction.

Those are the choices, and those, nothing less, are the stakes.

As Bob Avakian said on the occasion of the Arab Spring in Egypt, in “EGYPT 2011: MILLIONS HAVE HEROICALLY STOOD UP... THE FUTURE REMAINS TO BE WRITTEN”:

“When people in their masses, in their millions, finally break free of the constraints that have kept them from rising up against their oppressors and tormentors, then whether or not their heroic struggle and sacrifice will really lead to a fundamental change, moving toward the abolition of all exploitation and oppression, depends on whether or not there is a leadership, communist leadership, that has the necessary scientific understanding and method, and on that basis can develop the necessary strategic approach and the influence and organized ties among growing numbers of the people, in order to lead the uprising of the people, through all the twists and turns, to the goal of a real, revolutionary transformation of society, in accordance with the fundamental interests of the people. And, in turn, when people massively break with the “normal routine” and the tightly woven chains of oppressive relations in which they are usually entrapped and by which they are heavily weighed down—when they break through and rise up in their millions—that is a crucial time for communist organization to further develop its ties with those masses, strengthening its ranks and its ability to lead. Or, if such communist organization does not yet exist, or exists only in isolated fragments, this is a crucial time for communist organization to be forged and developed, to take up the challenge of studying and applying communist theory, in a living way, in the midst of this tumultuous situation, and to strive to continually develop ties with, to influence and to ultimately lead growing numbers of the masses in the direction of the revolution that represents their fundamental and highest interests, the communist revolution.”