This SYSTEM Has NO Answers...
But THE REVOLUTION DOES

December 14, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

This world is intolerable! In huge regions of the world, the USA and its allies are terrorizing cities and towns with bombs and drones—and in the process driving people into the arms of reactionary Islamic Jihad. An environmental crisis endangers the ability of humans to live on this planet. Around the world, women are dehumanized, terrorized, raped, and forced to bear children against their will, and LGBT people are shamed and persecuted. Migrants and refugees are demonized and forced to live in the shadows, if they can live at all. And in every city in America, Black and Brown youths have targets on their backs, for a policeman’s bullet or a life behind bars.

A lot of people talk about a system, and even talk about a “revolution.” But what IS this system that rules over humanity? That system is capitalism-imperialism. This is a system that has as its foundation the relentless exploitation of billions of people. It is a system driven by dog-eat-dog, kill-or-be-killed competition among the exploiters. This system is the source of endless crises, wars, and misery. And this system is backed up and enforced by state power that serves and violently enforces—through the system’s police, jails, torture chambers, and drones—the interests and functioning of the system. The workings and institutions of this system push all kinds of poisonous relations between people, and ideas—like white supremacy, male supremacy, xenophobia (irrational hatred of people from “outside” the U.S.), and a “me first” outlook in a million forms. And these are not “problems”—these are horrors that go on generation after generation, horrors that are “baked into” how capitalism-imperialism in the U.S. functions.

And what is a revolution, a real revolution? As we say on this site, “An actual revolution is a lot more than a protest. An actual revolution requires that millions of people get involved, in an organized way, in a determined fight to dismantle this state apparatus and system and replace it with a completely different state apparatus and system, a whole different way of organizing society, with completely different objectives and ways of life for the people. Fighting the power today has to help build and develop and organize the fight for the whole thing, for an actual revolution. Otherwise we’ll be protesting the same abuses generations from now!”

In the New Year’s Message delivered at the beginning of 2014, but at least as timely today, Bob Avakian said:

Revolution is not an impossible dream. It is not “unrealistic.” Changing all of society, changing the whole world, is not a crazy or dangerous idea. What is crazy, and dangerous, is going along with the way things are, and where things are heading, under this system. Revolution—a radical change in how society works, how we relate as human beings, what our values are, how we understand the world and act to affect it—this is what we, what people all over the world, desperately need. And it is a lot more realistic than trying to “fix” this system. (See “This is Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, with a New Year’s message—A Call To REVOLUTION” at www.revcom.us.)

Because of Bob Avakian and the work he has done over several decades, there really is a viable vision and strategy for a radically new, and much better, society and world, and there is the crucial leadership that is needed to carry forward the struggle toward that goal. And based on that, there is a Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal). This is a blueprint for a new and totally different state power. It is as serious as it is liberating, and anyone serious about real change needs to get into it deeply and work to make it a point of societal debate (including in contrast to the constitution drafted by slave masters and Indian killers that defines what “rights” people in this country have today).

Day 1...

Revolution is the first step in a complex and long historic journey to uproot all oppression. And this is a lot of what the Constitution deals with. But there are basic and urgent things that CAN and WILL be done on day one.

Day 1 after the revolution comes to power... NO MORE U.S. wars of aggression for empire around the world. The New Socialist Republic in North America will dismantle all remaining bases of the former imperialist USA in other countries. It will renounce all treaties and agreements, military and otherwise, that were imposed by that imperialist state on other countries and peoples or served to enforce the domination of the imperialist USA. The revolutionary society will dismantle and refuse to use nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction and ways of fighting that served the goals and mentality of the old system. No more torture. The new revolutionary military will defend the new socialist society, and its role will be defined by the needs of humanity and the world revolution against all oppression, not the domination of empire.

Day 1 after the revolution comes to power... The old police forces that prey upon the people today will have been defeated, demolished, and dismantled. The new forces dedicated to public security and safety of the new society will not be an occupying army. They will cherish and value the lives of the people. For some time, as people transform how they relate to each other and think, there will still be some crime—but this will be addressed in a whole different way. As Bob Avakian has written, “...we would sooner have one of our own people’s police killed than go wantonly murder one of the masses. That’s what you’re supposed to do if you’re actually trying to be a servant of the people.” People’s rights will be protected and defended by the new revolutionary state, including the right to dissent and protest against the revolution. Murder by police, judicial cover-ups, and the “blue wall of silence”—all that will be history. And that’s Day 1 of the new society.

Day 1 after the revolution comes to power... Every woman everywhere in the new state will have the right to legal abortion—on demand and without apology or a need to explain her decision to anyone. Doctors and nurses will be mobilized to make safe abortion accessible, including in parts of the country or communities where access to abortion is difficult or impossible today. Woman-hating maniacs will not be allowed to terrorize or attack women getting abortions. Birth control options will be readily available to any woman wanting them.

Day 1 after the revolution comes to power... Persecution of immigrants will end. Everyone living in what was formerly the United States, with the exception of people found guilty of war crimes or other crimes against humanity, will be full citizens of the new socialist republic, regardless of where they were born. The experiences and insights of people driven from their homelands by the workings of capitalism-imperialism will be welcomed into the process of continuously transforming and revolutionizing society. And the new society will have humane and welcoming asylum policies—towards those persecuted for being part of just struggles against oppression or because scientific, artistic, or other pursuits have brought them into conflict with reactionary powers and institutions.

Confronting and beginning to address the climate and environmental emergency is something that can only be solved on a global scale, and will be a serious and protracted struggle. But it is important not to underestimate how much the revolutionary seizure of power in the U.S.—one of the countries most responsible for environmental devastation—would be a game change in the global battle to save the planet. This includes seriously beginning to break with the fossil fuel-based economy and struggling to transform consumerist ideology.

***

All these immediate steps—“Day 1”—will make a day-and-night difference in the society people live in. At the same time, these steps will be made in the context of a socialist state which, as the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America says, “would embody, institutionalize and promote radically different relations and values among people; a socialist state whose final and fundamental aim would be to achieve, together with the revolutionary struggle throughout the world, the emancipation of humanity as a whole and the opening of a whole new epoch in human history—communism—with the final abolition of all exploitative and oppressive relations among human beings and the destructive antagonistic conflicts to which these relations give rise.”

THIS is something worth living, dying, and fighting for. Get into this revolution—the materials you need to do that are here on this website, www.revcom.us, and in Revolution newspaper..

 

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