Revolutions: Radical Ruptures in How We Live… And How We Think
Welcome to Revcom.us, the website devoted to organizing people to make an actual revolution—in a rare time when revolution—a real revolution, aimed at emancipating all of humanity—could actually be made.
Revolutions—communist revolutions—change everything. Revolutions overturn and rupture with the fundamental property relations of society: that is, they change from top to bottom who owns the means that society uses to produce the necessities of life, how that production is organized, and how the product is distributed.
Revolutions overturn the political systems that grow up to protect, defend, and extend those property relations. They institute new political systems that enable people to go to work on uprooting all the relations of oppression of the old society, political systems that support revolution all around the world.
And to do all that—and as the key to all that—revolutions overturn and rupture people out of the ways of thinking that have arisen with and kept the old oppressive system going. For without people being challenged to change the way they have been conditioned to think by the old society, there will be no revolution.
Right now we are in a rare and unique time: one in which the chance to make revolution could be brought into being in the next few years. This revolution will require a “revolutionary people in the millions—with an organized force of thousands at the core, leading these millions,” as Bob Avakian said in the important and essential talk 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.
But as a letter we published three weeks ago put it:
We have zero chance of bringing forward millions of people to make revolution without massively and radically transforming the thinking of the people.
And we have zero chance of massively and radically changing the thinking of the people without fierce, uncompromising ideological struggle to wrench people out of all of the bullshit—and there is a lot of it!—that they are caught up in and winning them to revolution. (From “To Those in and Around the Revolution Clubs and the Movement for Revolution, and All Who Hunger for Fundamental Change”)
This week, we highlight some of the key ways that anyone who wants a revolution, anyone who yearns for fundamental change, needs to be moving to make that happen, focused on the struggle over how people think.
The January 6 Hearings
A year and a half ago, Trump led a force of several thousand people to storm the Congress and try to overturn the election. This attempted coup vividly showed the depth of the conflict within the ruling class over how this system should be run and by whom. The congressional hearings called to investigate that attempt resume this week.
Important truths are coming to light in these hearings. But these are also being marshaled to promote a way of thinking that is based on lies about how this system actually rules, even in “normal times.” In “January 6 Hearings—And the Violence of This System,” Bob Avakian exposes the lies that are being promoted in these hearings. This article needs to be read and spread all over, and the ways found to go against these basic assumptions that are held by almost every person who opposes the moves by the fascist section of the ruling class to tighten their grip on power and institute an even more horrific form of rule.
Taking on the “Woke” Poison
For the past six months we have covered the efforts of Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights to bring forward a movement to prevent the Supreme Court from wiping out the constitutional right to abortion. Despite what have been truly heroic efforts, Rise Up did not achieve its goal and in the aftermath of the reactionary Supreme Court decision, access to legal abortion is on track to be wiped out in 26 states. Rise Up has continued this fight with protests all over, demanding a federal law to protect this right and overturn these bans in these states, and we cover that in this issue.
But Rise Up has also had to wage a fight against those who claimed to be leading the so-called movement for “reproductive rights.” These were organizations and people who not only did very, very little, if anything, to wage this battle (with some actively promoting capitulation in the form of conceding a “post-Roe future”), but also in many cases actually attacked and tried to obstruct Rise Up. This struggle often took the form of a fight over how to understand and approach the attack on this right—what was it all about, how did it relate to the oppression of women (and even whether it did relate to that oppression), should it even be fought at all and were revolutionaries even to be “allowed” to participate(!). And it has gotten much sharper in the past two and a half weeks since the ruling.
Bob Avakian, BA, has led the fight over how people need to be thinking about these crucial questions. This has meant actual guidance on key dividing lines essential for the clarity of the movement; and it has meant sharp struggle against the identity politics “woke” ideology that has been the cutting edge of the attacks on Rise Up and the revcoms who have played an initiating role within Rise Up. We are again highlighting key articles from BA that have waged this essential fight. And we are also calling readers’ attention to some of the bedrock articles on this “woke” phenomenon that dig up the roots of this madness (see “Fascist Lunacy and ‘Woke Folk’ Insanity: A New ‘Two Outmodeds’” and “I’m So Sick of This Whole ‘Identity Politics’ and ‘Woke’ Thing. REVOLUTION AND EMANCIPATION, NOT PETTY REFORM AND REVENGE: On Movements, Principles, Methods, Means and Ends”), for there will be no revolution without an all-round battle to break people out of this poisonous and truly harmful way of thinking.
In this latest, post-decision phase, the wokesters have not only degenerated into outrageous, lying McCarthyite attacks on Rise Up and Sunsara Taylor, they have increasingly aimed their fire in unprincipled and increasingly piggish ways at Bob Avakian. It remains vitally important to continue to get out and fight for the revcoms’ answer to these attacks, as well as that of Rise Up, and to also bring to bear Andy Zee’s commentary in the most recent episode (109) of The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show on YouTube. We are running again our article from last week on COINTELPRO, and how the FBI has historically utilized character assassination and slander to go after revolutionary leaders. And we are also running a panel on BA and the emancipation of Black people—as this too has been the subject of outrageous lies by these opportunists. Finally, we are continuing to run a panel with our actual position on LGBTQ sexuality, as this has also been the object of blatant distortion and unprincipled attack.
This is a huge and necessary fight for and about the truth right now. This is also a huge fight for a method of thinking that can get you to the truth and a morality that will not sacrifice the truth for expedience—and it is, like everything else we are discussing on this page, an essential fight to prepare people to make revolution. To that end, we call on readers to especially take up, spread and struggle over the four articles that go sharply against the cornerstones of this kind of thinking—you can read these here and we are also posting a pdf that can be printed and distributed.
A Different Kind of Struggle for the Truth
Lastly, we call your attention to the second piece from BA that we are publishing in this issue, AN OPEN LETTER TO THEORETICAL PHYSICIST LEE SMOLIN. This is a different kind of struggle over ideas, waged in a different way, but one that is also essential to the kind of revolution that humanity so desperately needs. A revolution in which the search for and principled fight for the truth is a fundamental requirement.
Included in this issue:
* New from Bob Avakian
- January 6 Hearings—And the Violence of This System
- AN OPEN LETTER TO THEORETICAL PHYSICIST LEE SMOLIN
* The Fight for Abortion Rights
- We Refuse to Accept the Enslavement of Women — WHEN WOMEN ARE NOT FREE, NO ONE IS FREE
- Sights & Sounds July 3-July 9: We Won’t Go Back!!! Countrywide: Protests Continue Against the Supreme Court Overturning Roe v. Wade
- From the Revolution Club: The Supreme Court Ruling Overturning Roe v. Wade Is ILLEGITIMATE! We Need Resistance and Revolution!
* In Reply to the Reactionary Hit Piece in the Daily Beast: Why I DO Follow Bob Avakian... and Why YOU Should Too, by Sunsara Taylor (posted July 13)
* BA on Struggle Against Identity Politics and “Woke” Ideology
- A SERIOUS FIGHT AGAINST INJUSTICE—NOT A PETTY HUSTLE FOR “OWNERSHIP” Read / Watch
- PRONOUNS AND STARVING CHILDREN
- BIPOC LEADERSHIP: THERE IS NO SUCH THING. The Fight Against Oppression and the Leadership That Is Needed
- WORKING WITH BLACK PANTHERS, WORKING FOR REVOLUTION—NOT “WOKE IDENTITY” BULLSHIT
- Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds”
- I’m So Sick of This Whole “Identity Politics” and “Woke” Thing. REVOLUTION AND EMANCIPATION, NOT PETTY REFORM AND REVENGE: On Movements, Principles, Methods, Means and Ends
- Pamphlet: Important Articles By Bob Avakian Opposing “Woke” Distractions and Obstructions
* Andy Zee opening commentary from The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show, Episode 109
* Jayland Walker — Young, Black, and Murdered by Akron Pigs… for a “Traffic Violation”
* Worth Reading This Week: Pieces by Pamela Paul and Katherine Stewart
* Materials to download and spread: Reach Out to People to DONATE to the revcom.us Summer Fund Drive