Revolutionary Worker #1115, August 19, 2001, posted at http://rwor.org
Speeches presented by the RCP on the occasion of the release of its new Draft Programme spoke of sending "squads of people out across cities and to different parts of the country--including places where the Party is not yet established organizationally or politically"--as part of engaging in a coast to coast, border to border revolutionary conversation. The Party has encouraged these squads to share their experiences in this exciting process. The following are excerpts from a letter the RW received from a member of one of these squads.
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XX is a small working class city of about 100,000, about an hour outside of the nearest metropolitan area where the Party is regularly active. Waves of immigrants, first from southern Europe, later from the Caribbean, Africa and Southeast Asia, have made it a very multinational area. While the big urban centers only hours away have experienced an economic boom in recent years, this boom bypassed XX. The area has been depressed for the last three decades with the collapse of traditional industries. Heroin addiction has had a devastating effect on the area. The city has been the principal entry point of heroin into the region. Almost every family has lost a loved one or friend to the effects of heroin.
AIDS and HIV are rampant. The city has one of the highest rates in the region, including the larger metropolitan areas. The main source of the spread is the exchange of dirty needles.
New Territory
A subscriber to the RW contacted the Party about meeting with some community activists grouped around a needle exchange program. The group, based in the poor, working class neighborhoods, invited members of a flying squad to come to a meeting to discuss the Draft Programme. Someone took the initiative to distribute several copies prior to our visit. The meeting involved about a dozen local activists, plus three members of the flying squad. We fashioned ourselves on the model of the revolutionary 3-in-1 combinations from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China. Our team was made up of a veteran comrade, a youth and a foreign-born supporter from a country oppressed by U.S. imperialism. The people who came to the discussion were mainly young Black and Hispanic activists with a couple of folks in their 40s and 50s. Some were ex-addicts, and one has been living with AIDS for the last couple of years. People were mainly from sections of the lower pettty bourgeoisie described on page 9 of the Draft Programme, who live and work in close proximity to the proletariat. There were also a few proletarians from the neighborhood.
The underlying reason they had invited the flying squad is that many of these activists are grappling with how to break through the limitations of trying to make a positive difference in the lives of the people they work with every day. One contradiction is the sheer size of the problem they are confronting. Even more frustrating is the government presenting bureaucratic roadblocks. The needle program is publicly funded. Only a month after opening its doors, it became a target of politicians who were able to whip up local hysteria about how free needle exchange would promote increased drug use. A local referendum was passed banning the actual distribution of needles. Meanwhile people are being infected daily from dirty needles and dying from AIDS and other diseases. Staff members are limited to giving education and are required to drive users over 60 miles to the nearest legal exchange clinic. Most staff members see the root of the problem in the poverty and dead-end future the clients and their families confront. There is a growing desire among many to be more of a political catalyst in the community and a force for social change--not simply dealing with the symptoms of poverty. They want community-based activities that will provide uplifting alternatives for the people in the projects and neighborhoods. Individually, they have had to confront how much they are willing to risk in order to bust through the government restrictions outlawing the distribution of free needles--a life-and-death question for many of the people they work with.
As we drove into town, all of us on the squad felt a profound sense of taking the Draft Programme into an area where the Party is not yet established, and excitement to be meeting with people who had had little or no contact with the Party only a couple of weeks before.
When the squad arrived, the first thing that jumped out was how genuinely appreciative people were that the Party thought meeting with them was important enough to have a team drive all the way out to XX. The squad expressed our own appreciation of being asked to represent and discuss the DP. We were immediately struck by the seriousness with which people took up this discussion. Small conversations were kicking off even before the presentation began. People who had read the DP were eager to find out how it was being received in larger metropolitan centers and especially by people living in conditions similar to the ones they work in--housing projects and depressed neighborhoods. Most of the people had already read the first section and a couple of people who had read the entire Draft Programme and appendices, had underlined relevant sections and came with their questions.
The orientation of the squad was one of a real desire to engage in a revolutionary conversation and, in the main, this was not a "question-and-answer session" or "we’ve got an answer for everything you ask." This helped set a tone in the discussion that was characterized by a mutual exploration of some of the profound questions facing our class based on the vision in the Draft.
Grappling with the Draft Programme
Some of the initial response was one of heartfelt agreement with the DP’s indictment of the system and the final goal, but big questions about the process both before and after a successful revolution. One woman started out by saying she really united with DP and loved the "fantasy" of a new society but that she didn’t think there was enough about what kind of organizations would exist after the revolution to run society, and that without that you couldn’t really win people over to doing this. Another woman responded by saying that we have to be based in the neighborhoods and have organization in the communities of the people at the bottom. This was the entry point for the discussion.
We started off by talking about how the forms of organization for the people would, in the main, arise out of the struggles of the people. A young Black guy jumped in and said that he had begun reading the DP with the same kind of questions that the woman was raising about organizations. But after reading the DP, he thought that the kind of world we are talking about will be so radically different than the one we live in today that you simply can’t imagine all the forms of organization that will arise.
We also talked about the importance of gathering experience in today’s struggles and developing forms of organization that could act as models for how a future society could be organized. One squad member used the example of how the RCYB worked together with other residents in the Chicago housing projects to fix up apartments the city let deteriorate--giving people a sense of their ability to work together and develop organization that meets the needs of the people. The youth on the squad also brought out the experience and lessons of the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality as an example of the type of organization that gives people a sense of the amazing possibilities of the power of the people. But then the conversation came back again to the point that none of this could go beyond these first steps without revolution and without a people’s war to overthrow the imperialists and seize power.
Another question we discussed was whether we could even consider winning a revolutionary war in the belly of the beast with such a large and pretty well-off middle class. This got very sharp around the issue of health care professionals: nurses and most especially doctors. One person said, "Fine, we can unite the teachers and social workers but what about the rest?" While everyone generally agreed that many doctors might start out motivated by a desire to help people, there was also a lot of personal experience that most doctors really see themselves as above the people. One person put it bluntly that it wouldn’t matter how much we tried to raise people’s sights, so long as access to medical schools was based on family ties or money or even "brains," we would not be able to break down the "me first" mentality that is people’s reality when dealing with doctors.
We dove into the contradictory nature of these people and the aspects of their lives that we could unite with. Someone brought up Breaking with Old Ideas, the movie from revolutionary China about the struggle to transform education into an instrument to serve the interest of the proletariat. You could see people’s eyes light up as we talked about how, under socialism, the determining factor in getting a higher education will not be money, family ties or even how smart someone might be--but in whose interest one wanted to use their education and that people like those in the room and others in the projects across the street will have a deciding voice in that process.
We also talked about the revolutionary potential of the proletariat itself. One older Black man (a former Black Panther) said that while he had only read the first section of the Draft so far, he hadn’t seen too much in the DP on what he considers the "lumpen-proletariat," which he actually thought were the people who were going to lead the revolution.
A squad member turned to page 64 of the Draft and read the description of a section of the proletariat: "Sizeable numbers of proletarians are cast into conditions of homelessness and hunger. Many are forced into desperate survival measures--working odd jobs and exchanging goods and services in the ‘informal economy’ of the ghettos and barrios, or moving between jobs and ‘hustles’ and semilegal activities."
The squad member asked if this was what the guy was talking about. In fact, these were the people the brother was thinking about when he asked his question. These people are actually not part of what the DP defines as the lumpenproletariat. Along with others, they are part of the lower section of the working class which the DP points out "must be brought forward as backbone forces throughout the whole revolutionary process."
The DP, on page 69, talks about the lumpenproletariat as "the ‘broken’ and criminal class of society" and that it is in fact, drawn from different classes and has its upper and lower rungs. It then goes on to say: "At the lower rungs are full-time petty criminals. Desperation and poverty force many poor people into crime. But most of these people are not part of the lumpen segment of society. The lumpenproletariat is made up of those whose defining life activity, and world outlook, centers on criminal activity and ripping-off other people."
Here, as in a number of different spots in the discussion, what the DP had to say spoke very specifically to the issue being raised and people connected with it. And the brother was very moved that the Programme very clearly put the people he was talking about in the ranks of those who would be the backbone of a proletarian revolution in the United States.
We got into another interesting discussion when one guy said, "I don’t consider myself religious. I don’t go to church. But I was wondering where spirituality fits in. I mean the Bible and Koran are suppose to be guides for how people should live right?" This provoked a discussion of morality and the standards one should live by and was linked up to the question of can you really win people to act in a selfless manner. The Draft Programme puts forth an uplifting and emancipating morality that’s not based on god or religion. A squad member pointed out that the people in the room were a living example that people can be motivated by concerns beyond getting ahead for themselves--and how much more liberating and forceful a vision this would be if the proletariat held state power and could actually use the resources of society to address the burning needs of the people.
One younger woman who had been quiet for most of the night then asked about living our lives in accordance with our philosophy (this was an inclusive "our"). She wondered whether or not people who felt the way most in the room seemed to feel, couldn’t all just throw in together, pool their resources and live as unfettered by capitalist relations as possible and maybe create a movement that would grow into something really powerful. Revolution wasn’t really on her agenda, but she was grappling with how to live her life. What followed was a rich discussion that touched on how we did need to set standards and promote revolutionary models today of how people could live and work together. The RCYB youth houses were raised as a model where standards of proletarian morality are promoted and observed: no dissing the sisters, no making chauvinist comments even in joking, no getting drunk, and also working together to take collective responsibility for the difficulties any one individual might face. But the conversation still came back to the need to seize state power, overthrow the imperialist class and dismantle their apparatus of suppression.
Another very strong point of the evening was the proletarian internationalist foundation of the Draft Programme. One member of the squad who is from a country oppressed by imperialism strongly made the point that this revolution is in the interest of the international proletariat and the oppressed people of the world and not just about making conditions better for people in this country. He spoke about what a successful revolution in the U.S. would mean in their home country and to others oppressed around the world by U.S. imperialism. Many in the room were visibly moved by the brother’s comments and this was also a challenge for people to look beyond even the needs of the people at the bottom of U.S. society and to begin to visualize this process on a world scale.
Looking for the Future
This was a meeting where even from the more skeptical people there was a deep felt desire to master the problems facing the people. As we were breaking up, an older white guy said that he was really glad to have us come and that after the discussion he was determined to finish reading the Draft Programme. He was from a working class background. In the ’60s he had gone to college for a while, joined SDS and really thought things were going to change. After the end of the Vietnam War, he drifted back into the community and got into drugs. He felt like the ’60s had failed because this revolutionary communist vision was never brought to the working class in a way that it could connect with. But he was very optimistic to see us going out to different places and encouraged us to return.
There were a number of ideas on how to continue this revolutionary conversation. Meetings being discussed, phone numbers exchanged. One woman got a small stack of literature and a trial subscription to the RW. The squad was invited back to do a table at an upcoming hip-hop festival and plans were made to show Breaking with Old Ideas in a community center next to one of the big housing projects in the city.
Later, as squad members reflected on the evening, we wondered about all the other people out there, in housing projects, community health clinics, on campuses, who might not yet have heard of the Party or the Draft Programme, but are thirsting for answers to the same deep questions we had been grappling with. We talked about how in the beginning of the process of writing the DP, the Party had asked two questions: Is it possible to make revolution in this country, in the belly of the beast, and is there a proletariat strategically located that is capable of making this revolution. Each of us felt that the Draft Programme had powerfully answered "yes" to both these questions and that now, taking out the Draft and engaging in this coast to coast, border to border conversation is absolutely the right thing to do to deepen and enrich the Draft and to connect with whole new sections of the people who can and will be taking it up as their own.
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
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