This is Bob Avakian—REVOLUTION—number Ninety-Three.

In previous messages, I spoke to this important reality:

The revolutionary potential of Black people was powerfully demonstrated in the 1960s. But there have been big changes since the 1960s—in the situation of Black people within this country, and in the country and the world overall.

The revolutionary forces and revolutionary sentiments, among masses of youth especially, in the 1960s, were suppressed by the ruling class of this country through a combination of vicious repression and making concessions to sections of people, in the context of what was happening in the larger world—including, very importantly, the end of the Vietnam war and the overthrow of socialism and establishment of capitalism in China in the 1970s. (In my previous message, I talked about the very positive role of the Vietnamese people’s victorious war of liberation against U.S. imperialism, and of China as a revolutionary socialist country, in the 1960s and early 1970s.)

Among Black people, relentless persecution—including murder, trumped-up charges and jailing of leaders and members of the Black Panther Party in particular—was combined with appeals to reform, in place of revolution—and (as I also spoke to in my last message) the promotion of measures that led to the growth of the Black middle class and the Black bourgeoisie, at the same time as large numbers of Black people were driven further into poverty and desperation. (The vicious repression against Black people has never let up, but has continued over generations since the 1960s, with mass incarceration and continuing murder of Black people by police. Once more, there is this terrible reality: Since 1960, the number of Black people killed by police is greater than the thousands who were lynched during the whole time of open segregation and Ku Klux Klan terror after the Civil War.)

Along with all this, there has been a continuing all-out assault on the very idea of revolution—especially communist revolution—and the constant promotion and glorification of the oppressive relations and the perverted culture and “values” of the capitalist-imperialist system, a system based on literally life-stealing exploitation of masses of people, in every part of the world, including more than 150 million children.

All this is the background for a marked change in the culture that, for some time, has dominated, or has had initiative, among Black people.

This is not the culture of the 1960s among Black people, with its very significant and overwhelmingly positive influence in the larger society, and in the world as a whole: a culture which, as part of its overall very positive character, involved a definite optimism about changing things in a big way, including in opposition to racist oppression, and had a definite element of generosity of spirit; a culture in which religion had a diminished role—with many, especially youth, turning away from it and turning instead to radically transforming the actual conditions and relations of oppression.

The “spontaneous” (and actively promoted) culture that today has powerful sway among the masses of Black people is, to a large degree, one that reflects disbelief in, and despair about, the possibility of a better world, in this real world—with the “conclusion” that all you can do is “go for self” and strive to get a better thing for yourself (and those close around you), even at the expense of others, including others just like you—and with the heavy influence of religious notions that ultimately everything is “in god’s hands” and all the desperation and degradation is somehow part of “god’s plan.”

In the article State Of Emergency: Chains On People Who Desperately Need To Be Free (available at revcom.us), I spoke bluntly to this situation:

Today so many are caught up in the “3M & P.”

What is the “3M &P”? ME, me, me... MONEY, money, money... MISOGYNY and PATRIARCHY [hatred of women, treating them as inferior to men and objects to be dominated by men].

All ways of thinking and acting that reflect and reinforce this system of capitalism-imperialism that so viciously oppresses people, here and all over the world. All constantly promoted and pumped out in the “popular culture,” including in Hip Hop. (How this came to dominate Hip Hop—and how it has actually perverted this creative art form, which could be and should be a powerful voice for liberation—that is another story, which has everything to do with how things are ultimately controlled by the ruling powers that dominate overall in this sick system of capitalism-imperialism.)

These are real chains on people—especially those most terribly, murderously oppressed under this system.

The result of all this is that

Masses of people are demoralized and disoriented: robbed of real hope... chasing after deadly illusions... desperately clinging to things that are not real... indulging in trivial pursuits while stubbornly refusing to face the biggest reality... striving to turn degradation into capital... bitterly divided and beefing over bullshit... trying to make a mark by mocking and even murdering each other.

“Striving to turn degradation into capital” (in the form of self-degradation), with some Black people even willing to play to and profit off the marketing of crude, racist stereotypes of Black people—of Black men as dangerous predators and Black women as easy, even willing objects of sexual plunder. Everything crudely reduced to commodities to be exchanged, every relationship nakedly “transactional”: that is an expression of the overall degrading relations and perverse culture of this putrid system of capitalism-imperialism. (This is part of the attraction of Donald Trump for some Black people, despite his open and aggressive racism, because he poses as the master of “the deal,” and at the same time somehow a “victim” of the system, when in fact he has led a pampered existence from the very beginning, and his “opposition” to certain structures of power is only for the purpose of advancing his personal interests—and, in a larger sense, it is in the service of an even more extreme, fascist, version of the murderously oppressive and cruelly exploiting system of which he is a grotesque expression.)

All this is what this system is doing to Black people!

And all this is not something that should, in any way, be upheld, tailed after and catered to (let alone glorified). It is something that needs to be vigorously struggled against, and radically transformed, as one key part of transforming the larger world—and in particular bringing alive once again, and giving the most powerful expression to, the potential of Black people as a force for a truly emancipating revolution.

I will end with this, for now: Among some Black youth in particular today, in the conditions this system has forcibly imposed on them, robbing them of a decent life and treating them as dangerous “animals,” denying their basic humanity—there is a certain defiant pride in being “monsters.” The really great challenge, the most meaningful way to go up against all this, and the means to finally put an end to all this madness, is to become emancipators—part of The Revcom Corps for the Emancipation of Humanity, the serious, organized force actively working to bring about, and preparing to lead, a revolution to do away with this whole dehumanizing system, to make a profound leap forward for the emancipation not only of Black people, but of all the oppressed, brutalized and exploited people everywhere—of humanity as a whole.

Next: Revolution, and the new communism—not degrading allegiance to this system—is the means to end the long nightmare for Black people and humanity as a whole.