And what is still operating in this country as a very important contradiction is something that was pointed out two centuries ago by a French visitor to the U.S. who studied what was going on in this country, Alexis de Tocqueville. He was actually a conservative in the context of France, but he had some interesting observations and insights about the U.S. While he praised the American political system, he also talked about what we might call the “money grubbiness” of Americans (although he didn’t use that particular phrase). In America, he said, everybody wants to know what any idea has to do with making money right away. So he had some insights about America and Americans. But his most important and strategically significant insight was his observation that in America, as he saw it, they have a really good system going there, but there’s just one thing that could cause it all to come undone, and that’s the question of slavery. He actually pinpointed what remains a very crucial contradiction in this country, this contradiction that’s existed from the time of slavery down to today—this contradiction which cannot be resolved under this system, in a way that would put an end to oppression of Black people, and can only be resolved through a revolution which puts an end to this system and replaces it with a radically different system, on the road to abolishing all exploitation and oppression. This has everything to do with the following statement of mine that continually appears now on revcom.us:

There is the potential for something of unprecedented beauty to arise out of unspeakable ugliness: Black people playing a crucial role in putting an end, at long last, to this system which has, for so long, not just exploited but dehumanized, terrorized and tormented them in a thousand ways—putting an end to this in the only way it can be done—by fighting to emancipate humanity, to put an end to the long night in which human society has been divided into masters and slaves, and the masses of humanity have been lashed, beaten, raped, slaughtered, shackled and shrouded in ignorance and misery.

And, along with the role of Black people, as a pivotal and potentially very powerful force for the revolution that is needed, there is the oppression of large numbers of people of other nationalities, including millions of immigrants, who have a potentially very important role in this revolution as well. At the same time, there are a number of contradictions among and between these different sections of oppressed people—some of which are acutely posed now—and once again it is our responsibility to lead people to struggle through these contradictions, to forge unity on the basis of their common, and fundamental, interests, and to fully realize and give life to their potential as makers of revolution and emancipators of humanity.

Contents

Publisher's Note

Introduction and Orientation

Foolish Victims of Deceit, and Self-Deceit

Part I. Method and Approach, Communism as a Science

Materialism vs. Idealism
Dialectical Materialism
Through Which Mode of Production
The Basic Contradictions and Dynamics of Capitalism
The New Synthesis of Communism
The Basis for Revolution
Epistemology and Morality, Objective Truth and Relativist Nonsense
Self and a “Consumerist” Approach to Ideas
What Is Your Life Going to Be About?—Raising People’s Sights

Part II. Socialism and the Advance to Communism:
A Radically Different Way the World Could Be, A Road to Real Emancipation

The “4 Alls”
Beyond the Narrow Horizon of Bourgeois Right
Socialism as an Economic System and a Political System—And a Transition to Communism
Internationalism
Abundance, Revolution, and the Advance to Communism—A Dialectical Materialist Understanding
The Importance of the “Parachute Point”—Even Now, and Even More With An Actual Revolution
The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America—
Solid Core with a Lot of Elasticity on the Basis of the Solid Core
Emancipators of Humanity

Part III. The Strategic Approach to An Actual Revolution

One Overall Strategic Approach
Hastening While Awaiting
Forces For Revolution
Separation of the Communist Movement from the Labor Movement, Driving Forces for Revolution
National Liberation and Proletarian Revolution
The Strategic Importance of the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women
The United Front under the Leadership of the Proletariat
Youth, Students and the Intelligentsia
Struggling Against Petit Bourgeois Modes of Thinking, While Maintaining the Correct Strategic Orientation
The “Two Maximizings”
The “5 Stops”
The Two Mainstays
Returning to "On the Possibility of Revolution"
Internationalism—Revolutionary Defeatism
Internationalism and an International Dimension
Internationalism—Bringing Forward Another Way
Popularizing the Strategy
Fundamental Orientation

Part IV. The Leadership We Need

The Decisive Role of Leadership
A Leading Core of Intellectuals—and the Contradictions Bound Up with This
Another Kind of “Pyramid”
The Cultural Revolution Within the RCP
The Need for Communists to Be Communists
A Fundamentally Antagonistic Relation—and the Crucial Implications of That
Strengthening the Party—Qualitatively as well as Quantitatively
Forms of Revolutionary Organization, and the “Ohio”
Statesmen, and Strategic Commanders
Methods of Leadership, the Science and the “Art” of Leadership
Working Back from “On the Possibility”—
Another Application of “Solid Core with a Lot of Elasticity on the Basis of the Solid Core”

Appendix 1:
The New Synthesis of Communism:
Fundamental Orientation, Method and Approach,
and Core Elements—An Outline
by Bob Avakian

Appendix 2:
Framework and Guidelines for Study and Discussion

Notes

Selected List of Works Cited

About the Author