Welcome to this issue of the REVOLUTION website—the place where you can learn about and get into the pathbreaking work of the revolutionary leader and author of the new communism Bob Avakian (BA)… where you can find out about key developments across the globe and how they fit into the revolution we need… and where you can learn from insights, experience and plans in building from comrades in the movement to get organized NOW for an actual revolution.
Our lead article this week is an important and substantial new piece from Bob Avakian, “‘WORKERS’ DEMOCRATIC CONTROL’—A DAMAGING DELUSION: IMPOSSIBLE UNDER CAPITALISM, DESTRUCTIVE UNDER SOCIALISM.” This article is another in a series of penetrating critiques of various schemes that all stop short of and lead away from what humanity actually needs: a revolution to break the violent stranglehold of the capitalist-imperialist class and their dictatorship over society and the eight billion humans on the planet and to bring in a whole new socialist state power representing the interests of all humanity, and moving toward the abolition of all class distinctions, all the exploitative production relations which give rise to those classes, all the social relations (patriarchy, the oppression of whole peoples, and the rest), and all the backward, putrid ideas and values that flow out of, correspond to, and reinforce a society based on exploitation. Read this article, get into it, and then go here for others in this current series. And when you’re done, check out these responses (here and here) from members of the National Get Organized For An ACTUAL Revolution Tour to one of the earlier articles in this series, “Why The World Is So Messed Up, and What Can Be Done to Radically Change This—A Basic Scientific Understanding.”
Articles like these are particularly important now—when the possibility of revolution is posed in a way that it is not in normal times. To find out why this is so, and what to do about it, go to A Declaration, A Call To Get Organized Now For A Real Revolution and to This Is A Rare Time When Revolution Becomes Possible—Why That Is So, And How To Seize On This Rare Opportunity, by Bob Avakian. And if you’ve read these before, take the time to reground yourself in the analysis and framework of these pieces before you take in the rest of the issue.
Nowhere is the violent imperialist stranglehold on the world referred to above as urgently and cryingly evident as the deteriorating situation around the environment and what that has called forward already in the scenes of refugees around the planet desperately fleeing increasingly unlivable countries to risk all for a chance at survival. In the six years since the Paris conference of 2015—the last major time before now in their annual gatherings that the world’s ruling authorities convened to “do something” about the environment—the destruction and suffering caused by global warming has actually gotten far worse. Now these rulers are meeting again, beginning Friday in Glasgow, Scotland. Go here in this issue to get what you need to learn about why the planet is burning, what to expect—and not expect—from this meeting, what the solution to this is, and how to act this week as the world’s eyes turn to this summit.
Last week, Colin Powell—the noted war criminal and “Black-face-in-high-place” for the powers that be—died. In almost all the commemorations from all corners, be they wholeheartedly celebratory or tepidly critical in some cases, one thing was missing: the unvarnished truth about this monster. Go here to get that truth.
Also in this issue is coverage by Sunsara Taylor of the latest in the struggle against the savage assaults on the right to abortion, as well as an article that brings together the different streams of attack that show the further hardening of the fascist movement—far from being cowed or divided by their violent but failed coup attempt on January 6, they have taken the offensive.
Finally, some special news: this week we are posting the extremely important—and powerful—piece by Raymond Lotta, “The ‘Industrialization’ of Sexual Exploitation, Imperialist Globalization, and the Descent into Hell,” as a pamphlet. We urge readers to print this off, study it, get it around, and discuss it.
Also in this issue is a tribute from Joe Veale to a former Black Panther comrade and supporter of the Revolution, exposure of deaths and horrific conditions at Rikers Island and other NYC jails, and a report on a walkout of students at a Catholic high school—against an anti-abortion assembly!
Stay tuned, and come back periodically for postings during the week. And make sure to watch—and get others to watch—The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show on YouTube, every Thursday at 5 pm Pacific time, 8 pm Eastern time.