I’ve been studying and discussing with others, and taking out to people, Bob Avakian’s piece “Why The World Is So Messed Up, And What Can Be Done to Radically Change This—A Basic Scientific Understanding.” I wanted to share a few thoughts.

In this piece, BA lays out that

the basis now exists to enable the billions of people on this planet to have the means for a decent life, worthy of human beings—a life that is continually being enriched, not just materially but socially, intellectually and culturally. But, at the same time, the way human society has developed under the domination of this system of capitalism-imperialism has led to a highly “lopsided” world, where billions of people in the world live in horrific conditions of oppression and misery, with millions of children in the Third World dying each year from starvation and preventable diseases.

What stands in the way of this is “the fundamental contradiction of capitalism—between socialized production and private appropriation.”

Why is it true that “it is the communist revolution which has the basis to resolve this fundamental contradiction, by socializing the ownership of the means of production…” and on this basis carry out economic development in a planned and sustainable way, making transformations in the relations of production, the corresponding social relations, and the superstructure of politics, culture and ideology? This “why” is what we’ve been wrangling with.

In order for people to live and provide for future generations, people must come together to produce the necessities of life and produce the next generation. We are all born into a system which has rules and certain basic relations that are independent of any particular individual or groups of people. No one can choose not to be born under any particular system. And the system we now live under is the system of capitalism-imperialism where the rules of this game is profit, driven through the exploitation and oppression of the majority of humanity and the planet. It is an expand-or-die system in a constant competitive drive to survive. If you’re a capitalist, you are forced to exploit to make more profit or you will be driven under by other capitalists. It is a system that compels people into these ruthless relations, it is not simply that people are born greedy!

The irony is that a handful of capitalists—caught in cutthroat competition, driven to ruthlessly exploit humanity and the planet or face going under—own everything that is produced by millions and billions of people working together all across the globe! Capitalists own the means of production—raw materials, land, machinery, technology and what people produce out of those raw materials, including people’s ability to work, their labor power. No one gets to say, “I made this pair of shoes so I will take them home with me.” NO! At every step of the production process, the capitalists will remind you of the rules of the game, of who owns shit! The materials, the technology, your ability to make a pair of shoes, and what is produced is owned by some capitalist.

Unlike slavery, capitalists don’t literally own you. As we are always told, people have a “choice” whether to work. But the reality is—those few capitalists who own and control the means of production (machinery, land, factories, technology, etc.) are in a position to FORCE you to work for them, to create wealth for them, otherwise you will not be able to survive. People are forced to seek employment or become homeless or starve if they are not able to work or are not able to find employment.

It seems ridiculous now to think how feudalism, or sharecropping in this country, worked. Black families in small plots of land, worked the land which was owned by the white land owner. To be able to feed your family and work that land, you bought everything from seeds to food from the store that was also owned by the plantation owner. So at the end of each season, thru fraud or not, most sharecroppers ended up owing the landowners money! And many sharecroppers became indebted and unable to relocate. Also during this time there was not the basis for people to freely move around, to pack their bags and say “enough of this shit, I want to work elsewhere.” Besides racism and white supremacists making sure you didn’t go anywhere, there was not yet the basis (technology, global socialized production) until after WWII, for Black people to leave the South in large numbers and be able to find work according to the way the system was set up.

Under capitalism, it is not a few plantation owners, but a few capitalists exploiting tens of millions of people in this country and around the world in sweatshops, mines and farms. If you step back for a minute, it does seem silly that there are millions and millions of people working together around the world producing everything in life (socialized production), BUT what is produced and the means to create wealth is privately owned by a few capitalists in the world (private appropriation)! The minerals for our cell phones, the wood to build homes, the steel to produce vehicles, and the land itself is owned by capitalists! And yet, humanity cannot survive if those raw materials are not worked by people!

WE NEED STATE POWER! WE NEED DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT!

We need a new economic system, which is the foundation of any human society, AND there needs to be a superstructure to reflect, and enforce and maintain, that new economic system. The superstructure consists of politics, culture and the ideology. Under capitalism, the superstructure reflects and serves to maintain an oppressive and exploitative economic system primarily through the monopoly of “legitimate” armed force and violence.

It is now completely unnecessary for millions of children to go hungry and die from starvation, or for there to be homelessness or the plunder of the planet. There now exists the material basis to produce the necessities to live and to reproduce on a scale where everyone on the planet can have enough to eat and have housing, and to get beyond exploitation and oppression! What is in the way is the private ownership of the means of production! The solution is to take the ownership of the means of production out of the hands of the capitalists and into the hands of the people of the world—to socialize ownership of the means of production.

This can only be achieved through an actual revolution. We must seize state power. This will provide the basis to transform the economic base and the corresponding social relations and the political and ideological superstructure.

What can be achieved after revolution, after seizing state power and establishing a new socialist system?

Under capitalism, the superstructure serves to enforce the oppressive and exploitative economic and social relations. If you do not have the means to purchase food or housing, you cannot survive. So under capitalism, there is no right to eat. Even though human beings require food to survive, one cannot walk into a supermarket and say “I am hungry” and take food and walk away. That would be breaking the rules of the game of capitalism. So this system has enforcers to not allow this to go down. We know what would happen if people went into stores and took food—“looters, shoot them down.” This is what happened after Hurricane Katrina when people, mostly Black, were left stranded and had to enter abandoned stores to obtain food in order to survive. This system gave orders to the National Guard to “shoot looters.”

Or take another example of how this system reacts to people standing up against the injustices this system perpetuates. When people stood up demanding the murder of Black people be stopped, protesters were met with violence by the police and other institutions—by the brutal law enforcement of this system. It is not to the interest of this country to allow people to rise up against injustice, against their own government in this country, because it gets people questioning the very legitimacy of their system. People need to be fed the belief that “this is the greatest country in the world” with its “democracy for all.”

On the other hand, why does this country sometimes support people going against their government in other countries, such as when the U.S. supported people protesting the Chinese government in the 1980s in Tiananmen Square? Well, one of the reasons the U.S. supported people in China is because it saw it as an opportunity to attack that country’s government and “communism,” even though China had been capitalist since the death of Mao in 1976!

Another example of the economic base and the superstructure is what has happened to Black people and unemployment. After shipping most of the manufacturing jobs from the U.S. to other countries, mostly Third World countries where they can exploit people even worse, a huge section of Black people who once occupied those jobs were now out of work. The capitalists didn’t say, “I’m sorry we are shipping your job but here is some money or another opportunity to feed your family.” No, they didn’t give a fuck about all the people and how they would now feed their families. This continues to happen to today where employees don’t even get enough notice that they are being laid off with companies downsizing or shipping their business out of the country.

The new generation of Black people have not seen that kind of job opportunities since the ’70s, even as then Black people obtained the worst positions, and only a tiny section of Black people were lifted to a middle class status. Since then, those jobs have never returned, and it is highly unlikely they will ever return. So then what do you do with so many unemployed people, especially under a system that has white supremacy woven into capitalism with a fascist section wanting no more than killing Black people off? Since you can’t provide employment, there is an increase in an underground economy and there has since been a huge increase in mass incarceration of Black people because this system is no longer able to exploit them—they have no use for them any longer.

Under a socialist system, with state power and as it’s laid out in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian, the right to employment and income is guaranteed. And there won’t be the situation where Black people and people of color get the shittiest positions. The Constitution says, “The socialist economy enables individuals of diverse capabilities and inclinations to contribute to the development of a liberating society, and to gain in knowledge and capability. Economic-social planning strives to forge the conditions for meaningful and fulfilling work that links people and their creativity to each other and to the goal of emancipating humanity.” To “forge meaningful and fulfilling work” unlike the many sweatshops and factories with their brain-numbing, repetitive motion positions of today. This will be all in effort to reduce, and eventually, get beyond class divisions with the mental-manual labor divisions left over from the old, capitalist system to the emancipation of all of humanity, worldwide.

It will promote values such as people working together for the common good of humanity through education, music, art, culture and at work. Under capitalism, this system is not able to promote values of collectivity, people working together, or things will fall apart. It must promote and reward selfishness and competition among each other. We’ve heard this bullshit mantra promoted even in education—that without competition, there wouldn’t be creativity and people won’t want to work. This, of course, is bullshit. All these youth hanging around on corners, would love to be put to work if they had the ability to build homes for people in their community. We have seen how people come together to figure out how to help each other during crisis. Well, this is what will be promoted, and will have the backing of the state. There will be a lot of work, a lot of repairing to be done after the revolution. There will need to be a lot of collectivity, people working together, a lot of figuring out/planning how to best address the needs of humanity.

And with a new economic system, the people will have the backing of the state to be part of overcoming oppressive social relations such as the role of women and how they are seen and treated under capitalism: PORN WILL BE ILLEGAL! PERIOD! Another example is, females will have the right to free and safe abortion at any stage of pregnancy. Again, all females will have the backing of the state and no individual or group can deny this human right to any female! How cool is that! This is WONDERFUL!

One more example is how the new society will deal with pandemics. For example, the state will make vaccinations, such as for COVID-19, mandatory and not allow any individual or group to kill people by refusing to get vaccinated. Unlike today, there will be mass effort to promote the importance of getting vaccinated and the importance of scientific understanding and approach. As a principle of internationalism, knowledge will be shared—working together with scientists, doctors and others around the world to make sure everyone, not just people in this country, is provided with vaccines.

Also as a general rule, under a socialist society, it will be based on principles of sustainable planning, taking the “long view” of what is best for humanity and the planet, not based on short-term gain that is the common principle in this profit-driven capitalist system. Having state ownership of the means of production, enables people in society as a whole to radically transform society. It will provide the means to collectively share technology and knowledge, to work together for the common good of humanity and the planet. For example, to address the environmental emergency, the new Republic will seek to work with scientists, and people from all walks of life in every part of the world to overcome and begin to repair or reverse the damage made and work together to usher in a world where all human beings can truly be caretakers of the planet.

All with the backing of the state! WOW!

The Constitution will be the solid core, the foundation of how society will run, and it is the people, masses of people of all nationalities, education levels, and strata who will be responsible for running society. Similar to the factories in China during the revolution, when the employees all worked together to figure out how to best run the factory with the intent to reduce and transform the mental-manual divisions that had been left over from the previous oppressive system. However, with the new communism and the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, we can do much better than past revolutions, learning from their strengths and where they fell short. We have the potential to actually get to communism worldwide. This is only possible through an actual revolution, and this is what we are working toward right now—to achieve state power and ferociously go to work to transform all of human society.