revcom.us, September 6, 2021 through September 12, 2021 (#716)

Voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

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Published September 8, 2021

Published September 9, 2021

 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/694/a-declaration-a-call-to-get-organized-now-for-a-real-revolution-full-en.html

FROM THE REVCOMS (REVCOM.US):

A DECLARATION,
A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW
FOR A REAL REVOLUTION

| revcom.us

 

Let’s get down to basics: We need a revolution—nothing less!

To everyone who can’t stand this world the way it is ... who is sick and tired of so many people being treated as less than human ... who knows that the claim of “liberty and justice for all” is a cruel lie ... who is righteously enraged that injustice and inequality go on, and on, and on, despite false promises and honeyed words from people in power (or those seeking power) ... everyone who agonizes about where things are headed and the fact that to be young now means being denied a decent future, or any future at all ... everyone who has ever dreamed about something much better, or even wondered whether that is possible ... everyone who hungers for a world without oppression, exploitation, poverty, and destruction of the environment ... everyone who has the heart to fight for something that is really worth fighting for: You need to be part of this revolution.

This revolution is not just “a good idea”—it is actually possible.

Is this for real? Are we serious about this, and can we back it up? YES. We are not here to repeat garbage that may be “popular” or to spread the lies we are constantly told by the people in power and their mouthpieces in the media and elsewhere. We are here to bring the truth. So here are some basic truths that we need to understand and live by.

1. The system we live under, the system of capitalism-imperialism destroys lives and crushes spirits. It is the source of endless horrors for the majority of people in this country and all around the world, and it is increasingly threatening the very existence of humanity. The military of this country is not carrying out an “honorable service”—and it is not some “bad ass” force that people should respect. It is doing the same thing around the world, on a massive scale, that the police are doing here: carrying out the cowardly killing and terrorizing of people in the service of the biggest oppressors in the world, the rulers of this country. And it is a major cause of the destruction of the environment.

It is a hard but basic truth: For the masses of people, and ultimately for humanity as a whole, there is no future, or no future worth living, under this system.

But there is a way to a world and a future that is worth living, and is worth fighting for right now: revolutiona real revolution, not playing around with a few changes that leave this system in place and in power, while benefitting only a small number. A revolution means a force of millions, drawn from many different parts of society and organized for an all-out fight to overthrow this system and replace it with a radically different and much better economic and political system, a socialist system, based on meeting the needs of the people and carrying forward the fight for a communist world where there will finally be an end, everywhere, to the exploitation, oppression, and destruction of the environment that is built into this system of capitalism-imperialism. Anything less than this revolution will completely fail to deal with the root of all the problems or lead to the actual solution.

2. Revolutions are not possible all the time, but are generally possible only in rare times and circumstances, especially in a powerful country like this. This is one of those rare times and circumstances. This system is in real trouble, caught up in crisis and conflicts for which it has no easy or lasting solutions. Throughout this country the workings of this system have given rise to deep divisions which cannot be resolved under this system. Society is being ripped apart. Those who rule are locked in a bitter fight among themselves, and they cannot hold things together in the way they have in the past. Although there are a lot of bad things connected with this and it could lead to something really terrible, it is also possible that we could wrench something really positive out of it—revolution, to put an end to this system and bring something much better into being.

We have seen the potential for revolution powerfully demonstrated just last summer when millions of people, of all races and genders, all over this country, and all around the world, rose up together against racist oppression and police murder. We have seen this potential in the mass outpourings of women, in countries all over the world, refusing to put up with being abused and degraded. This potential is also revealed in the deep distress being expressed, by scientists and millions of ordinary people, about the continually worsening climate crisis and the threat this poses to the future of humanity—a crisis this system cannot solve, but can only make worse. But, with all this, right now only a small number of us have recognized the need for this revolution and are acting to make it happen. So there is crucial work that must be done now to win people to understand the need for revolution and act to make it real—to turn the potential for revolution into a powerful movement and organized force for an actual revolution.

3. To make this revolution a reality, we need leadership with the scientific method, the strategy and program that can shine a light through the madness and chaos that this system is constantly creating and can lead in carving the path forward out of this madness to the radically new world we need. AND WE HAVE THAT LEADERSHIP—IN BOB AVAKIAN (BA). BA is the architect of a whole new framework for the liberation of all oppressed people and the emancipation of all humanity: the new communism. We are followers of BA. And you need to become followers of BA too. There never has been a leader like this in this country and there is no other leader like this in the world now. We cannot afford not to follow this leadership if we ever want to get free and put an end to this madness.

4. We need to urgently change the situation where not nearly enough people know about this revolution and are with it. We need to get this revolution, and its leadership, known everywhere. We need to challenge and seriously struggle with people right around us, and all over the country, to do something that, yes, requires real heart and will make a positive difference for real—become part of this revolution, and follow this revolutionary leadership. We need to organize more and more people into the ranks of the revolution.

Organizing people into this revolution means reaching out to all sorts of people—not just where there are protests and rebellions against oppression and injustice, but everywhere throughout society—spreading the word about revolution and getting people together (in real life and online) to grapple with why an actual revolution is necessary, what such a revolution involves, and what kind of society this is aiming for. This will enable people who are new to the revolution to themselves become organizers for this revolution and to recruit more and more people to do the same. On this basis, and through the growing ranks of the revolution acting together as an increasingly powerful force, it will be possible to attract and organize the necessary numbers, and build up the necessary strength, to be in the position to do what needs to be done.

We need to struggle hard with people to take up the orientation and strategy, the values and goals, for this revolution, and dedicate themselves to working for this revolution, while we unite growing numbers to fight the abuse, brutality and destruction perpetrated by this system, and through all this get thousands and then millions of people prepared and steeled to do away with this system that brings so much hell to people. We need to wield this growing revolutionary force to stand up to this system and its murderous enforcers and to change the whole “terrain” (the political, social and cultural situation and “atmosphere”) throughout society, in order to weaken the hold of this system over people, win people away from acting to strengthen and enforce this system, and create the best possible conditions for this revolution to succeed.

To come back to basics: We need revolution—a real revolution. We cannot afford to waste these rare times and circumstances that could be ripened into a real chance to make revolution. We cannot afford to squander the rare and precious leadership we have for this revolution. We have to get busy, build the movement and the organized forces for revolution all over the country, and work together tirelessly for this revolution, to actively prepare for the situation where this system can be brought down and something much better brought into being.

To get more of the tools and the knowledge you need to become part of this revolution, and to go to work building for this revolution, get with those representing for this revolution right now, become part of the Revolution Clubs around the country, go to our website revcom.us regularly, and watch The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less—Show every week.

If you want to know more about this, right now, keep reading: here is further knowledge about these basic truths.

One. This system of capitalism-imperialism rules and profits by exploiting and oppressing, using and abusing masses of people, including children, all over the world; by treating whole groups of people as less than human; by slaughtering people who get in its way; by threatening people with its arsenals of mass destruction; by destroying the environment. Regardless of who is in the positions of power, this is the only way this system can operate, and under this system things can only get worse. All this is why we need a revolution. Bob Avakian (BA) has put this very clearly: “We have two choices: either, live with all this—and condemn future generations to the same, or worse, if they have a future at all—or, make revolution!

To make it very clear once more: By revolution we mean nothing less than overthrowing this whole system—defeating, disarming and dismantling the murderous armed power and other institutions that enforce this system—completely abolishing this whole system and replacing it with something radically different and much better, a new society built on an entirely different foundation. And this new system we need is socialism—an economic and political system that is set up to meet the needs of the people, not the profit and power of exploiters and oppressors—a system that moves to do away with all exploitation and oppression, and supports people everywhere fighting against exploitation and oppression, in order to get to a communist world, where all this madness will finally be ended, for real, and people all over the world will be able to work together for the common good. Don’t be fooled by talk about how communism is no good and will make things worse. That is just talk that helps to keep this system of capitalism-imperialism going, with all its horrors for the masses of humanity and its growing threat to our very existence. In the works of BA, and other works you can find at revcom.us, you can learn the real truth about communism and the way BA has further developed communism into an even more powerful and liberating science of revolution: the new communism.

Two. This is one of those rare times and circumstances when revolution becomes possible, not just because this system is always a horror, but because the crisis and deep divisions in society now can only be resolved through radical means, of one kind or another—either radically reactionary, murderously oppressive and destructive means or radically emancipating revolutionary means. Those who have ruled over us, for so long, with their Republican and Democratic parties, are now caught up in bitterly fighting each other over how to hold this country together, keep this system going, enforce its rule over the people it exploits and oppresses, and maintain this country as the world’s top-dog oppressive power. The Republicans are moving to exercise this rule through fascism: discarding the pretense of “democracy for all,” relying on naked brutality and trampling on people’s rights, to enforce undisguised, aggressive male supremacy, white supremacy, xenophobia (hatred of foreigners and persecution of immigrants, especially from non-white countries) and crude “America first” chauvinism. The Democrats are trying to keep things together with more disguise and deception, with the claim that what exists in this country is a “great democracy” representing “the will of the people,” and for this reason it deserves to be, and needs to be, the most powerful force in the world. But, in reality, both of these ruling class parties are working to maintain the violent oppressive power, the dictatorship, of this capitalist-imperialist system, with all the horrors for humanity this involves.

These divisions and conflicts have ripped big holes in the camouflage of this system, further exposing its real nature and the lie that this is “the greatest country in the world,” the “shining light of freedom” and “leader of the free world.” All this is very likely to become more and more intense, tearing apart the bonds that have held things together under this system and further deepening the divisions throughout society, including within the institutions of power. This could lead to something very bad—or something very good, IF we act in the way we need to in these rare circumstances and fight to take things where they need to go.

As BA has emphasized, in a powerful New Year’s Statement (A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity), the fact that the fascist Trump was voted out of office is important but it only “buys some time” and time is not on the side of the fight for a better future for humanity. So the time there is must not be wasted by going along with this system. We will never get where we need to go by being a tail on the Democratic donkey (and, obviously, not by siding with the Republican fascists). No, we need to break out of acting on the terms, and within the confines, of this system, which has all this murderous oppression and destruction built into it. We need to be actively working to radically change the “alignment of forces” in society, to where things are more favorable for overthrowing this whole system.

These days there is a lot of talk about another civil war, especially from fascists, in government and the broader society, who think they could just carry out a one-sided slaughter of those they hate, including Black people and other people of color, “illegal immigrants,” “uppity women” and those who don’t conform to “traditional” sexual and gender relations and “norms.” This situation needs to be radically changed, to where there are masses of people prepared to defeat these fascists and to do so as part of getting rid of this whole system, which has bred these fascists, along with all the other horrors it continually perpetrates.

What we need is “repolarization for revolution—making real revolution an active and increasingly powerful force of first thousands, and then millions, of people organized to work for and win more and more people to this revolution—radically changing the “terrain” on which the revolution will be fought.

Today, there are not only many fascists in the murderous police forces, but more than a few in the military as well. But it is a fact that, at the high point of the 1960s, the strength of the radical liberation movements at that time reached into and strongly influenced every part and every institution of society—including the armed forces of this system, where more of the soldiers looked for leadership from the Black Panther Party and other revolutionary-minded forces than from the president of the United States (the so-called “commander-in-chief” of the armed forces). Even with the differences between then and now, creating this kind of situation—where a revolutionary movement based on the new communism and the leadership of BA is impacting every part of society and key institutions—this is achievable, and is a very important part of preparing the ground for the seizure of power, when the time is right. This will make it possible to have the best fighting chance to take revolution all the way, and not be beaten back down into yet more horror.

And the potential for this revolution is real. There is the ever intensifying climate crisis—and it is a scientific fact that this system of capitalism-imperialism cannot solve this crisis, but can only make it worse. At the same time, over the past few years, literally millions of women, all over the world, have demonstrated their outrage at the murder and rape, the attacks on their right to abortion and birth control, and the all-around brutality and abuse they are continually subjected to, as a result of the male supremacist relations that are built into this system of capitalism-imperialism, and all systems that are ruled by exploiters and oppressors. And last summer, when millions of us, of all races and genders, rose up all over this country in righteous rebellion in response to the vicious murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police, this powerfully demonstrated the potential for revolution.We were supported and joined by millions more in countries all over the world. And, at the height of this, the whole country, the whole world was compelled to recognize and to talk about the long and continuing chain of these racist murders and big questions about the whole history and nature of this country. Yes, this powerful rising was, in the short run, misled into dead-ends by people working for meaningless petty reforms and seeking funds for themselves and positions within the structures of this system. But that does not change the fact that what was demonstrated was the possibility and potential for something much greater and far better—an actual revolution.

Three: Bob Avakian (BA) came forward as a revolutionary and developed into a communist leader through the mass revolutionary upsurge of the 1960s. He is an old white guy—yes, deal with it! Unlike so many who considered themselves revolutionaries at that time, BA has never given up, never departed from the road of revolution. He has continued to advance on this road and to confront the problems and difficulties in making revolution. He has drawn crucial lessons from the historical experience (positive and negative) of revolution throughout the world, and from many other aspects of human society and human endeavor. He has deeply studied how this system of capitalism-imperialism actually works, and what are the defining contradictions of this system that constitute the basis for overthrowing it. It is through all this that he has brought forward a whole new framework for the liberation of all oppressed people and the emancipation of all humanity: the new communism.

BA is providing ongoing leadership for this revolution, and he has a whole body of work that contains the scientific method to analyze the problem and the solution, the strategy for the revolution to bring down this system, and the vision and concrete plan for that radically different and much better society, on the road to emancipate all of humanity from every form of oppression and exploitation, and to enable humanity to become fit caretakers of the earth. He’s even written a Constitution (the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America) that concretely maps out what to do starting right after the seizure of power, so we can actually work on building up that whole new emancipating society. It is simply true: There never has been a leader like this in this country and there is no other leader like this in the world now, and we cannot afford not to follow this leadership if we ever want to get free and put an end to this madness.

Four: Many of the people who can be won to this revolution are not “into this” now and are not acting in accordance with the methods, principles, and goals of this revolution. And there is still way too much trying to get over on each other and attacking each other, which only brings more heartbreak and misery. This revolution is in the interests of all people who catch hell under this system and all those who hunger for or dream about a world where an end to exploitation, poverty, inequality, injustice and oppression is not a bitter joke but a liberating reality. Instead of fighting each other, we need to be uniting everyone with a heart for justice and protecting and defending each other from the criminal, brutal and murderous actions of “official” forces and fascist forces with the power to do us the greatest harm. We need to be working together to build up the ranks of the revolution and prepare to defeat the forces, of any kind, that would keep this system going and make its madness even worse.

And, in working to change the world in this way, people can change themselves—they can be united with in refusing to put up with injustice that no one should accept, and struggled with to see that revolution is the way to put an end to all this—that revolution is what we should live for and fight for. The basis for making this real is concentrated in the guideline: Fight the Power, and Transform the People—for Revolution.

To do this, people need to break with this system’s ways and take up radically different and emancipating methods, principles and goals, and a radically different and far better culture, morality and way of relating to each other. With the revolution it’s not “everyone out for themselves and against everybody else”—it’s all of us together who can’t stand to live like this and hunger for something much better, something truly emancipating.

At the same time as leadership and guidance for this revolution is being provided, in an ongoing way, through our website, revcom.us and through The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less—Show, and while paying attention to the necessary health measures in light of the still continuing COVID pandemic, we are reaching out directly (in real life) to people around the country, to bring the liberating message of this revolution, to win growing numbers of people to this revolution and organize them into the ranks of this revolution.

All over the country, in every neighborhood, every school, every place and every institution where there are people sickened by the way things are, or questioning whether things have to be this way, revolutionary organization needs to be built, as part of the nationwide revolutionary movement. This revolution and its leadership need to increasingly become the authority that people look to and the leadership they follow, setting the standard and providing the direction for how people see things, and how they act.

Through all this, growing numbers of people can be working together to shape the political situation, winning masses of people to revolution and strengthening the organized revolutionary forces for the all-out fight for revolution when the conditions for revolution have been ripened.

To come back, once more, to basics: We need a revolution—a real revolution. And this revolution is possible. To everyone who hungers for an end to oppression and injustice, and everyone who has the heart to fight for something that is really worth fighting for: You need to get into this revolution, become part of the organized forces for this revolution, and work tirelessly for this revolution, so that we can have a real chance to win.

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/708/bob-avakian-this-is-a-rare-time-when-revolution-becomes-possible-en.html

From Bob Avakian—Revolutionary Leader, Author of the New Communism:

THIS IS A RARE TIME
WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE—
WHY THAT IS SO, AND HOW TO SEIZE ON THIS
RARE OPPORTUNITY

| revcom.us

 

Many people have seen the very important statement from the revcoms, A Declaration, A Call To Get Organized Now For A Real Revolution, which is available at revcom.us, and is being posted and passed out to people in neighborhoods and other places around the country, as a key part of spreading the word about this revolution and organizing people into this revolution. Many more people need to get, and get deeply into, this “Declaration and Call.” Here, I am going to speak to some big questions related to this.

FIRST, SOME BASIC TRUTHS

1. We live under a system—the system of capitalism-imperialism (capitalism is an economic and political system of exploitation and oppression, and imperialism refers to the worldwide nature of this system).

This system causes tremendous suffering for people, all over the world, and it poses a growing threat to the very existence of humanity.

This is a system dominated by capitalist corporations, banks and other financial institutions controlling vast sums of money, all of which is based on exploiting people—masses of people here, and billions of people throughout the world, including huge numbers of children.

These capitalists are locked in cutthroat competition with each other, and this drives them to penetrate every part of the world, especially the poorer countries, in order to exploit people even more viciously, while leaving many people without a way to work at all, within the regular (“formal”) economy.

This system has white supremacy and male supremacy built into it.

This system continually causes situations where life becomes extremely desperate and often very dangerous for growing numbers of people in their home countries—forcing them to uproot themselves and migrate across countries and continents—and then treats them as criminals when they seek asylum, or relief from unbearable conditions.

This system leads to wars—wars to conquer nations and people, wars for control of key parts of the world, and potentially even wars between nuclear-armed capitalist-imperialist countries, fighting to determine which will be the most powerful oppressor in the world (if anything is left of this world after such a war).

This system is rapidly destroying the global environment.

All this is reality, and no one can escape this reality. Either we radically change it, in a positive way, or everything will be changed in a very negative way.

2. This system cannot be reformed to be a “better” system—it must be overthrown.

The system of capitalism could not exist without exploiting masses of people, and making life miserable for the great majority of humanity, at the same time as it increasingly poses a threat to the future of humanity. (I have analyzed the basic reasons why this is so in the article Commodities & Capitalism—And The Terrible Consequences Of This System, which can be found at revcom.us.)

The system of political rule—the “democracy”—that has existed in this country is, and always has been, democracy on the terms of this system and those who rule it. This capitalist “democracy” is a cover, and a means, for what really rules in this country—the dictatorship of the capitalist class—its domination of political power and official (supposedly “legitimate”) force and violence, as when the police repeatedly murder especially Black, Brown, and Native American people.

The capitalists control the system of elections, and every other dominant institution, in this country. Voting under this system, for either Democrats or Republicans, is voting for ruling class partiesrepresentatives of this system of capitalism-imperialism—who are determined to keep this system going, despite the terrible cost to the masses of humanity, and even with the very real threat this poses to the existence of humanity.

No matter what promises these politicians make—and no matter what schemes people try to come up with to make things more “just” or “equal” under this system—none of this can change the basic nature of this system and the way it has to operate because of its very nature.

The relations of exploitation and oppression that are built into this system are enforced through its institutions of official power and violence—the Congress and the presidency, the courts, and especially the police and the military.

Only a revolution—a real revolution, to ultimately defeat and dismantle these institutions of official violence and power, and bring into being a radically different economic and political system, with the goal of eliminating exploitation and oppression—only this revolution can deal with all this in a way that is truly in the interests of the masses of people and all of humanity.

(In the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have authored, there is a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for this radically different and better society—an actual plan for what to do after the seizure of power and for how to reorganize society on a completely different, emancipating foundation.)

WHY THIS IS ONE OF THOSE RARE TIMES
WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE,
EVEN IN A POWERFUL COUNTRY LIKE THIS

1. A revolution becomes possible, even in a powerful country like this, when three main factors have been brought into being:

A crisis in society and government so deep and so disruptive of the “usual way of things,” that those who have ruled over us, for so long, can no longer do so in the “normal” way that people have been conditioned to accept.

A revolutionary people in the millions and millions, with their “allegiance” to this system broken, and their determination to fight for a more just society greater than their fear of the violent repression of this system.

An organized revolutionary force—made up of continually growing numbers of people, from among the most oppressed but also from many other parts of society—a force which is grounded in, and is working systematically to apply, the most scientific approach to building for and then carrying out revolution, and which is increasingly looked to by masses of people to lead them to bring about the radical change that is urgently needed.

2. These factors for revolution obviously do not exist right now, but this is one of the rare times when these factors for revolution could be brought into being.

A basic reason why this is true is that there are now very great divisions within the ruling class of the country, and in the country as a whole—and, more than that:

These divisions among the ruling powers, and in the larger society, cannot be resolved within the framework that has existed, and has held things together, for nearly 150 years, since shortly after the end of the Civil War which led to the abolition of slavery—they cannot be resolved on the basis of the capitalist “democracy” that has been the “normal” means of capitalist rule (dictatorship) for so long.

Something radically different is going to replace the framework that has existed for all this time—and as the “Declaration and Call” sharply points out:

the crisis and deep divisions in society now can only be resolved through radical means, of one kind or another—either radically reactionary, murderously oppressive and destructive means or radically emancipating revolutionary means.

3. Here are basic reasons why things have gotten to this point.

Even though “democracy, with liberty and justice for all” is a cruel lie, this lie has been crucial for the rulers of this country to keep things together under this system—and especially to keep people who are oppressed under this system believing in the possibility of making this system more just. This is why both ruling class parties generally agreed, for a long time, to work within the same framework for ruling this country—they agreed to accept the results of elections and bring about “the peaceful transfer of power” between the different representatives of this same system, whether Democrat or Republican.

With changing conditions in this country, and in the world as a whole, over the time since the end of World War 2 (75 years ago), it has been necessary for the ruling class, in order to maintain “order and stability” in this country, to make certain concessions to the struggle against white supremacy, male supremacy, and some other oppressive relations, while at the same time insisting that this is all part of “creating a more perfect union” and “further perfecting the great democracy that has always existed in this country.” This has also been necessary in order for the rulers of this country to continue promoting it as “the leader of the free world,” which they say must remain the dominant power in the world—but which, in reality, is the most oppressive and destructive power, plundering masses of people as well as the earth.

But a section of the ruling capitalist class, represented by the Republican Party, has all along resisted even these partial concessions to the fight against oppression, and has become convinced that these changes have now gone too far, that they threaten to destroy what has held this country together and enabled it to dominate the world.

The Republicans have become a fascist party—a party based on open and aggressive white supremacy, male supremacy, and other oppressive relations—a party convinced that only it deserves to rule, moving to manipulate elections and suppress votes in order to gain and hold onto power, refusing to accept the outcome of elections it does not win, determined to gut and pervert “the rule of law,” trample on people’s rights, and adopt what amounts to an undisguised capitalist dictatorship, ready to use violence not only against masses of people but also against its rivals in the ruling class.

These Republicans have mobilized a significant section of people who believe, with an intense, irrational passion, that white supremacy, male supremacy, and other oppressive relations (as well as unrestrained plunder of the environment) must be firmly upheld and enforced. They have been driven to a state of vicious insanity, embracing all kinds of lunatic conspiracy theories, along with a crazed Christian fundamentalism, as a response to the threat they see to their entitled (or “god-ordained”) position and their insistence that further concessions to the struggle against oppression will destroy what has “made America great.”

These divisions have already become deeply rooted in the major institutions of this country, including the military, and they will increasingly become sharper and burst out into the open, as things continue to sharpen up in society overall and within the ruling class.

These deep divisions, this intensifying conflict, cannot be overcome—all this cannot be “put back together”—on the terms, and in the way, that the country has, up to now, been held together under the rule of a more or less unified capitalist class.

4. The Republicans have certain significant advantages over the Democrats in this conflict.

The Democrats are committed to “playing by the rules” and “relying on the norms” of “democratic” capitalist dictatorship, while the Republicans are moving to tear up those norms and rule through an open, undisguised capitalist dictatorship.

The peculiar nature of this country—with its history of genocide, slavery, and continuing white supremacy, and repeated “compromises” that have given disproportionate power (power greater than what is represented by their populations) to southern states of the former Confederacy, and other states with significant rural populations of “conservative-leaning” people—this is another advantage that the fascist Republicans have.

If this battle remains on the terms of this system, not only will there be horrific consequences overall, but this could very likely lead to a triumph for the Republican fascists, which would accentuate and accelerate the looming disaster, for humanity as a whole.

But things do not have to—and must not—remain on the terms of this system.

WHAT MUST BE DONE TO SEIZE ON THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE REVOLUTION

1. As pointed out in A Declaration, A Call To Get Organized Now For A Real Revolution, we have seen the potential for this revolution in the massive uprisings of people, in this country and in countries around the world, against institutionalized racism and police terror, and in the outpouring in many countries against the oppression and degradation of women.

But this potential for revolution must be transformed into the reality of an actual revolution, by carrying out the necessary work and struggle to make masses of people aware of the urgent need for, and the real possibility for, revolution—and to organize them as a conscious and determined force for this revolution.

2. In order to seize on the rare opportunity to make revolution, the situation we face must be recognized for what it actually is: People need to raise their heads and broaden their sights, look beyond what is immediately around them, break with illusions and phony “solutions,” and take up the scientific method of the new communism to get a basic understanding, and keep on deepening the understanding, of what is actually going on, what are the very heavy stakes in all this, and what are not only the very negative but also the very positive possibilities for radical change that exist within all this.

In particular, this means getting together with the revcoms—and growing numbers of people who are drawn to what this revolution is all about—to seriously get into A Declaration, A Call To Get Organized Now For A Real Revolution and get with the revolution it is calling for.

3. This rare situation, with the deepening and sharpening conflicts among the ruling powers, and in the society overall, provides a stronger basis and greater openings to break the hold of this system over masses of people.

It is extremely important to deeply understand this:

As this situation develops, and the ruling class is more and more unable to rule in the old way, society and daily life for masses of people, from different parts of society, can become increasingly unsettled and chaotic, with frequent “disruptions” of the “normal” way things have been.

And as “the normal way” society has been ruled is failing to hold things together—and society is increasingly being ripped apart—this can shake people’s belief that “the way things have always been” is the only way things can be. It can make people more open to questioning—in a real sense it can force people to question—the way things have been, and whether they have to stay that way. And this is all the more likely to happen if the revolutionary forces are out among the people shining a light on the deeper reality of what is happening, and why, and bringing out that there IS an alternative to living this way.

The “Declaration and Call” makes the very important point that the divisions and conflicts among the ruling powers (and in society as a whole) have

ripped big holes in the camouflage of this system, further exposing its real nature and the lie that this is “the greatest country in the world,” the “shining light of freedom” and “leader of the free world.”

It is the responsibility of everyone who recognizes the profound need for revolution—and the rare possibility in a time like this to actually make revolution—to wage a tireless, and at times fierce, struggle to win more and more people to make a radical rupture with the confining and degrading terms of this system, and to take up, and act on, the revolutionary orientation and motivation that is put forward in the “Declaration and Call.”

Instead of “staying in your lane,” and “going for self,” while this system is moving to even more decisively crush any hope for a world worth living in, people need to be looking at the bigger picture, focusing on the greater interests of humanity and the possibility for a far better world—and acting to make this a reality.

Instead of finding excuses to go along with the way things have been, standing apart from (or even bad-mouthing) the revolution, people need to get with this revolution, and not throw away the rare opportunity to be part of bringing something much better into being.

Instead of lashing out with individual acts of frustration, or attempts to take on this system with small, isolated forces that have no chance of succeeding, people need to pour their anger, and their hatred for injustice, into building a movement of millions that could have a real chance to defeat this system and make a real revolution.

Instead of fighting and killing each other, what people need to be doing now is uniting to defend each other—opposing all unjust violence, not launching attacks on anyone but at the same time not allowing the police or “civilian” fascist thugs to wantonly brutalize and murder people. And people need to do this as part of building up the forces for revolution.

Instead of snarking and sniping at each other, and being divided by “identities,” people should be working to unite everyone, from every part of society, who can be united in the fight against oppression and injustice, with the goal of putting an end to this system that is the source of this oppression and injustice.

Instead of being a tail on the Democratic donkey—with its attempt to keep this monstrous system going, and to deal with the growing fascist danger, by relying on the “normal procedures” of this system and doomed efforts to “heal the divisions” that are deepening every day—people need to work for the revolution that is urgently needed, and deal with the fascist danger as part of doing that.

Here is another very important point from the “Declaration and Call”:

These days there is a lot of talk about another civil war, especially from fascists, in government and the broader society, who think they could just carry out a one-sided slaughter of those they hate, including Black people and other people of color, “illegal immigrants,” “uppity women” and those who don’t conform to “traditional” sexual and gender relations and “norms.” This situation needs to be radically changed, to where there are masses of people prepared to defeat these fascists and to do so as part of getting rid of this whole system, which has bred these fascists, along with all the other horrors it continually perpetrates.

What we need is “repolarization for revolution”—making real revolution an active and increasingly powerful force of first thousands, and then millions, of people organized to work for and win more and more people to this revolution—radically changing the “terrain” on which the revolution will be fought.

4. Acting on the scientific basis, and the scientifically-grounded strategic approach for revolution, which has been developed with the new communism, we need to work tirelessly to build up the organized forces for, create the best possible conditions for, and then carry out the revolution that is so urgently needed.

As emphasized in A Declaration, A Call To Get Organized Now For A Real Revolution:

Organizing people into this revolution means reaching out to all sorts of people—not just where there are protests and rebellions against oppression and injustice, but everywhere throughout society—spreading the word about revolution and getting people together (in real life and online) to grapple with why an actual revolution is necessary, what such a revolution involves, and what kind of society this is aiming for. This will enable people who are new to the revolution to themselves become organizers for this revolution and to recruit more and more people to do the same.

And:

On this basis, and through the growing ranks of the revolution acting together as an increasingly powerful force, it will be possible to attract and organize the necessary numbers, and build up the necessary strength, to be in the position to do what needs to be done.

As the revolutionary forces grow in numbers and organized strength, fighting the power, and transforming the people, for revolution, they will be able to attract even greater numbers to their ranks and increasingly influence the society as a whole, winning over more people from different parts of society and changing, in a more positive way, the terms on which things in society are understood and struggled over. This will provide even more favorable grounds for exposing the real nature of this system and what is really involved with the divisions within the ruling class, and making clear that the interests of the masses of oppressed and justice-loving people everywhere are in direct and fundamental opposition to this whole system.

The revolutionary forces, through the impact of their growing strength, can create a situation where it becomes increasingly difficult for the ruling powers, deeply divided as they are, to rely on their institutions of organized violence to act in a unified way to put down the righteous rising of the people, and where every move they make to crush this rising leads to further outrage among the people, with more joining the ranks of the revolution, and the ruling institutions themselves further torn by internal divisions. The strength of this revolution, especially as it grows from thousands to millions, can exert increasing influence so that, within key institutions of the organized power and violence of this system, more and more of their ranks—many of whom are drawn from among the most oppressed in society—are won to identify with, and refuse to be part of unjustly attacking and suppressing, the masses of people who are fighting to put an end to injustice and oppression.

5. All this will create the most favorable conditions to carry out the strategic approach that has been developed for fighting to win an actual revolution—the all-out struggle for power in society as a whole. (This strategic approach is put forward in the statement On The Possibility Of Revolution, and is further elaborated in my speech Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution, as well as the article A Real Revolution—A Real Chance To Win, Further Developing the Strategy for Revolution—all of which are available at revcom.us.)

CONCLUSION

There is the basis to seize on the rare possibility to make revolution, even in a powerful country like this—there can be a real chance to win—IF, among growing numbers of people who cannot stand to live any longer under this people-killing, spirit-suffocating system, there is the scientifically-grounded understanding, determination and daring to make this a reality.

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Also referred to in this article:

Commodities & Capitalism—And The Terrible Consequences Of This System
by Bob Avakian

On The Possibility Of Revolution

A Real Revolution—A Real Chance To Win
Further Developing the Strategy for Revolution

by Bob Avakian

 

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So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/712/questions-that-come-up-and-answers-en.html

Questions That Come Up... And Answers

On Revolution And The Need For The Scientific Leadership Of Bob Avakian

On Dictatorship, The Need For Revolution, And What Comes Next

| revcom.us

 

CONSTITUTION For The New Socialist Republic In North America

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/633/bob-avakian-a-radically-different-leader-en.html

BOB AVAKIAN: A RADICALLY DIFFERENT LEADER—A WHOLE NEW FRAMEWORK FOR HUMAN EMANCIPATION

Bob Avakian (BA) is the most important political thinker and leader in the world today.

| revcom.us

 

Bob Avakian is completely different than the endless stream of bourgeois politicians who are put forward as “leaders,” whose goal is to maintain one variation or another of this system of capitalism-imperialism that is founded on and perpetuates itself through cruel and literally life-stealing exploitation, murderous oppression, and massive destruction, in all parts of the world. BA is a revolutionary who bases himself on the scientific understanding that this system must finally be overthrown through an organized struggle involving millions of people, and replaced with a system that is oriented to and capable of meeting the most fundamental needs of humanity and enabling humanity to become fit caretakers of the earth.

Bob Avakian is the architect of a whole new framework of human emancipation, the new synthesis of communism, which is popularly referred to as the "new communism."

BA is the author of the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, an inspiring application of the new communism—a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for a new socialist society, whose fundamental goal is to bring about a world without classes and class distinctions, a world without exploitation and oppression, and without the destructive divisions and antagonisms among people: a communist world.

Ardea Skybreak, a scientist with professional training in ecology and evolutionary biology, and a follower of Bob Avakian, speaks to the importance of what he has brought forward:

Bob Avakian ... on the basis of decades of hard work [has been] developing a whole body of work—theory to advance the science of communism, to advance the science of revolution, to more deeply explain where the problems come from, what the strategy is for getting out of this mess, what the methods and approaches should be to stay on track and actually build a better world, to build a society that most human beings would want to live in. (From Science and Revolution, On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian, An Interview with Ardea Skybreak)

BA is a leader who is firmly convinced, on the basis of a consistently scientific method and approach, that the goal must be nothing less than all-out revolution, and who at the same time has emphasized:

the new communism thoroughly repudiates and is determined to root out of the communist movement the poisonous notion, and practice, that “the ends justifies the means.” It is a bedrock principle of the new communism that the “means” of this movement must flow from and be consistent with the fundamental “ends” of abolishing all exploitation and oppression through revolution led on a scientific basis. (From Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summary)

As a revolutionary leader, BA also embodies this rare combination: someone who has been able to develop scientific theory on a world-class level, while at the same time having a deep understanding of and visceral connection with the most oppressed, and a highly developed ability to “break down” complex theory and make it broadly accessible.

A leader like this has never before existed in the history of this country, and this leadership is of tremendous importance for the emancipation of all humanity.

What is urgently needed now is for continually growing numbers of people—in the thousands, and ultimately millions—to become conscious and active followers of BA, building the revolutionary movement, based on the new communism, for which BA provides this unprecedented leadership.

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/665/bob-avakian-for-the-liberation-of-black-people-en.html

BOB AVAKIAN FOR THE LIBERATION OF BLACK PEOPLE
AND THE EMANCIPATION OF ALL HUMANITY

| revcom.us

 

One of the things that comes through most powerfully in Bob Avakian’s memoir1 is that a profound hatred for the oppression of Black people has been a defining part of Bob Avakian’s life from the time, as a teenager, he learned about the lives of the Black people with whom he developed deep ties of friendship. Never feeling that, because he is white, “it is not his place” to be involved in the struggle against this oppression—but, on the contrary, determined to contribute whatever he could to this struggle—Bob Avakian (BA), from the time he worked closely with the Black Panther Party in its revolutionary days in the 1960s, has made the liberation of Black people a defining part of his life’s commitment and work. As he developed as a revolutionary communist, and emerged as the foremost revolutionary leader and thinker in the world, this commitment has become even deeper and has been strongly interwoven with a dedication to the emancipation of all humanity from every form of oppression and exploitation.

As BA has written about his life’s work:

Why was I doing the work I was doing? Once again, we’re back to for whom and for what. I wasn’t doing this work for myself. When I was young, in middle school and then even more so in high school, my life got changed in a very major way by coming into contact with people that I hadn’t really known that much before, in particular Black people. I started learning about their situation and how that relates to what goes on in this society as a whole. I was drawn to the culture—not just the music and the art overall, but the whole way of going through the world—of the Black people who became my friends, and the world they introduced me to. And I came to the point of recognizing: these are my people. Now, I knew they had a different life experience than I did. But these are my people—I don’t see a separation—it’s not like there are some other people “over there” who are going through all this and somehow that’s removed from me. These are my people. And then I began to recognize more deeply what people were being put through, the oppression they were constantly subjected to, the horrors of daily life as well as the bigger ways in which the system came down on them. And as I went further through life and began to approach the question of what needs to be done about this, and was introduced to taking up a scientific approach to this, I realized that my people were more than this. I realized that my people were Chicanos and other Latinos and other oppressed people in the U.S.; they were people in Vietnam and China; they were women...they were the oppressed and exploited of the world...and through some struggle, and having to cast off some wrong thinking, I have learned that they are LGBT people as well.

These are my people, the oppressed and exploited people of the world. They are suffering terribly, and something has to be done about this. So it is necessary to dig in and systematically take up the science that can show the way to put an end to all this, and bring something much better into being. You have to persevere and keep struggling to go forward in this way. And when you run into new problems or setbacks, you have to go more deeply into this, rather than putting it aside and giving up.

So this is why I’ve been doing the work that I’ve been doing.2

Bob Avakian grew up in Berkeley, California. Unable, because of a life-threatening illness, to be directly involved in struggles taking place against racial oppression for several years after graduating from high school in 1961, BA nevertheless closely followed and strongly supported the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, and at the same time was influenced by and supportive of the militant stand and role of Malcolm X. This was reflected in an article that BA wrote at the age of 19 in 1962 supporting the struggle of Black people. (This article was submitted to the liberal magazine Saturday Review. Although the article was not published, the editor-in-chief of the magazine, Norman Cousins, personally replied—indicating that, although the magazine had chosen not to publish this article, he recognized that the article spoke, in a strikingly compelling way, to very important questions.)

Having recovered from his illness, in 1964, BA became actively involved in the Free Speech Movement at the University of California in Berkeley, where he was a student. The central issue of this movement was the right of students to carry out activity on the campus in support of the civil rights movement. BA was among the 800 who were arrested during the occupation of the university administration building, which was the high point of the movement and led to winning its demands.

As the civil rights movement increasingly gave way to a more militant Black liberation movement in the second half of the 1960s, BA was strongly influenced by this. He left the university and dedicated his life to working for radical change. As a result of direct contact and discussions with Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, the founders of the Black Panther Party, and getting to know Eldridge Cleaver (who also became a leader of the BPP), BA worked closely with the Black Panther Party from its earliest days and at the height of its revolutionary role and influence.

In 1967, BA attended rallies, and spoke at one of the rallies, held by the BPP in North Richmond to protest the killing there of Denzil Dowell, part of the long and continuing chain of murders of Black people by police.

In 1968, when Huey Newton was facing murder charges as a result of a shoot-out with Oakland cops, BA spoke—along with a number of key figures in the Black liberation movement, including Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, James Forman, and leaders of the Black Panther Party— at a Free Huey rally held in the Oakland auditorium on the occasion of Huey Newton’s birthday.

BA worked tirelessly to build support, including among white people, for the demand to “Free Huey!” At a “Free Huey” rally at the courthouse in Oakland where Huey Newton’s trial was being held, BA was arrested for “desecrating” (burning) the American flag.

During this time, at the invitation of BPP leaders, BA wrote a number of articles for the Black Panther newspaper.

At a rally of thousands, led by the Black Panther Party, on May First, 1969, BA spoke of the need for revolution and called on white people in particular to more actively take part in movements for revolutionary change in the U.S., and to support such movements throughout the world.

By the beginning of the 1970s, millions of people in this country were in favor of some kind of revolutionary change, but they faced profound challenges. How could this revolution be made—or was it even possible to make a revolution here, up against such powerful forces of oppression and repression? Which were the key forces that had to be mobilized to have a real chance to carry out such a revolution? What kind of leadership was needed, and what methods and approaches should that leadership be based on? The difficulties in confronting and seeking the answers to these hard questions, combined with brutal and often murderous repression by the powers-that-be, led many revolutionary organizations, including the Black Panther Party, to split and end up departing from the road that could lead to real revolution.

By this time, partly because of the influence of the Black Panther Party, which had popularized the “Red Book” of quotations from the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong, BA had become convinced not only that revolution was necessary, and was possible, but that it had to be led by a vanguard force that based itself on the scientific method and approach of communism, as it had been developed initially by Karl Marx, then further developed by V.I. Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution in the early part of the 20th century, and then in turn further developed by Mao, who led the Chinese revolution and the new, socialist society in China, until his death in 1976. BA led in the formation of the Revolutionary Union at the end of the 1960s, with the aim of working toward the establishment of the vanguard party of revolution, based on the science of communism. During the first part of the 1970s, BA was both the practical leader and the leading theoretician of the Revolutionary Union, writing much of the essays and polemics for its theoretical journal Red Papers. This included major articles, particularly in Red Papers 5 and 6, that involved groundbreaking scientific materialist analysis of the situation of Black people, historically and down to the present—how and why their particular conditions of oppression had changed, from the time of slavery to the present era, and how this objectively put Black people in a potentially powerful position to be a driving force not only for their own liberation but for the communist revolution whose fundamental aim is the abolition of all oppression and exploitation. These articles included powerful polemics, arguing against positions and programs that would not lead to, but would actually work against, this liberation and the revolutionary transformation of the world as a whole.

In 1975, with BA’s leadership, the Revolutionary Communist Party was founded, with the aim of being the vanguard force for the revolution that was, and continues to be, profoundly necessary. Over the decades since then, BA has fought to keep that Party on the revolutionary road and to bring forward new revolutionary forces to revitalize and strengthen the vanguard forces for the revolution that is now, all the more urgently, required. While continuing to provide practical guidance to the revolutionary forces, BA, through summing up the experience (positive and negative) of the communist movement, and drawing from a broad range of human experience, has brought forward a new synthesis of communism (also referred to as the new communism) which, most decisively, has established communism on an even more consistently scientific basis. As BA’s Official Biography explains, the new communism “is a continuation of, but also represents a qualitative leap beyond, and in some important ways a break with, communist theory as it had been previously developed. It provides the basis—the science, the strategy, and the leadership—for an actual revolution and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation.”3

A defining part of this new communism is the emphasis it gives to the struggle for the liberation of Black people, and the relation of this to the ending of all oppression. And this has continued to stand out in BA’s leadership role and work over the decades, up to the present.  At revcom.us there is a special section, Bob Avakian on The Oppression of Black People & the Revolutionary Struggle to End All Oppressionwhich contains clips from films and selections from the writings of BA on this question. The following are just a few examples of important works and leadership by Bob Avakian, over the past few decades, that speak to this decisive question.

The book Reflections, Sketches & Provocations, written by Bob Avakian during the 1980s, contains a number of commentaries, speaking in a number of dimensions to the oppression of Black people and the struggle against this oppression, including support for rebellions following the murder of Black people by police. This book begins with the essay “Hill Street Bullshit, Richard Pryor Routines, and the Real Deal,” which powerfully exposes how terror against Black people, and other oppressed people, is “part of the job” of the police—and is “a reward” for carrying out the role of maintaining the “law and order” that keeps the oppressed in their desperate and miserable conditions. Going deeper, it speaks to how this is rooted in this system of capitalism-imperialism, which has had this oppression built into it from the very beginning.

In the 1990s, BA raised the idea that there should be a day, every year, when people mobilized to protest police brutality, mass incarceration and repression by the government. This proposal was taken up and a broad coalition, including family members of people killed by police, was formed to initiate, in 1996, the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation. At its height, over the next decade, this National Day of Protest, held every October 22nd, rallied thousands of people in dozens of cities across the country. And activities by people who have been part of this coalition have continued since then.

During the past two decades, BA has given a number of filmed speeches, and written articles, essays and books, in which the liberation of Black people and its crucial relation to the communist revolution, aiming for the emancipation of all humanity, has been a major question.

BA’s 2003 speech Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About, begins with a searing exposure and condemnation of lynching, and speaks to the horrific reality of slavery and the oppression of Black people down to today, including the continual murder of Black people by police.3

In 2006, BA gave a series of 7 Talks, in which once again the oppression of Black people, and the struggle for their liberation, is a major theme. One of these 7 Talks, Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy, begins by speaking to the experience of Black people in this country; and the question of slavery and the overall oppression of Black people is, of course, a major part of this talk. It is in Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy that the following is clearly stated:

There would be no United States as we now know it today without slavery. That is a simple and basic truth.

(This is also the very first statement in BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, the handbook for revolution.)3

At the beginning of BA Speaks: Revolution—Nothing Less!, in 2012, this point is stated emphatically:

Let’s start with just one great crime of this system: police murder—after murder—after murder—of Black people and Latinos, especially youth.3

This is part of the powerful exposure in this speech of the role that continuing murders by police play in enforcing this monstrous system of exploitation and oppression, the system of capitalism-imperialism.

At the beginning of his October 2017 speech The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America, A Better World IS Possible,  BA speaks powerfully to the horrors of slavery in this country—including the rape by slavemasters of huge numbers of enslaved women. This speech shows how the murderous oppression of Black people, continuing down to today, is one of the main roots of the fascism that has come to power in this country with the Trump/Pence regime; and, in this speech, BA repeatedly returns to the critical importance of the fight against this oppression.3

BA’s 2018 speech Why We Need An Actual Revolution And How We Can Really Make Revolution begins this way:

In 2012 in Revolution—Nothing Less! I talked about the outrageous murder of Ramarley Graham earlier that same year—shot down in his own house in the Bronx by the New York City police. He was only 18 years old. Do I have to tell you what “race” he was?! His mother kept saying: “This has to STOP!” And his father repeated over and over: "WHY did they kill my son?! WHY did they kill my son?!" New York cops then loudly rallied around their fellow pig who murdered Ramarley in cold blood, viciously taunting Ramarley's family and loved ones, demonstrating yet one more time the ugly truth that, in the way this country has been built, and for the powers-that-be in this country, the humanity of Black people has never counted for anything—they have never been valued as human beings, but only as things to be exploited, oppressed, and repressed. Six years later, and with cold-blooded murders by police continuing in an unbroken chain, I will say again what I said then: How many more times does this have to happen? How many more times do the tears and the cries of anguish and anger have to pour forth from the wounded hearts of people?! How many more times, when another of these outrageous murders is perpetrated by the police, do we have to hear those words that pour gasoline on the already burning wounds: “justifiable homicide, justified use of force” by police?! How many more?!3

In that 2018 speech, BA not only powerfully exposes once again the horrific oppression that this system of capitalism-imperialism inflicts on Black people, and on other oppressed people in this country and throughout the world, and the grave danger this system poses to the very future of humanity; he also lays out in this speech (and in a more recent article A Real Revolution—A Real Chance To Win, Further Developing the Strategy for Revolution3) the strategic approach that could make it possible for this system to be finally overthrown through a revolution in which millions and millions of people are led to fight to put an end to this system and bring a radically different and much better system into being.

In the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by BA, a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for that radically different and much better system is set forth. And the principles and means for finally putting an end, at long last, to the oppression of Black people is a major part of that Constitution.3

This year (2020), BA has written as many as 30 articles in which this decisive question—the oppression, and the struggle for the liberation, of Black people—is a recurring subject.3

In the speeches and writings of BA overall, there is not only powerful, penetrating exposure and uncompromising condemnation of brutal and murderous oppression but, even more importantly, there is scientific analysis of how all this is rooted in this system of capitalism-imperialism and of the need, the possibility, and the means for making revolution to overthrow this system and finally put an end to all the outrageous and unnecessary suffering that the masses of humanity are continually subjected to under this system.

***

It is a very precious thing for the oppressed of the earth when they have a leader whose life is dedicated to their emancipation, and who has the determination, and the scientific method, developed over decades, to point the way, and continue to carve out the path, to achieving that emancipation. BA is such a leader. As emphasized in the article Bob Avakian: A Radically Different Leader—A Whole New Framework For Human Emancipation:

As a revolutionary leader, BA also embodies this rare combination: someone who has been able to develop scientific theory on a world-class level, while at the same time having a deep understanding of and visceral connection with the most oppressed, and a highly developed ability to “break down” complex theory and make it broadly accessible.3

One of the things that most distinguishes BA’s role as a revolutionary leader is his willingness—indeed, his insistence—on telling people the truth, even when they may not want to hear it. This comes through in the way BA exposes and refutes unscientific ways of thinking—all kinds of “conspiracy” theories and superstitious ideas—that lead people, including the most bitterly oppressed people, away from understanding the world as it actually is, and keep them from seeing not just the need, but the possibility, of radically changing the world, in a way that will lead to ending oppression. A big problem that BA has taken on, straight-up, is the role of religion as a mental chain on the masses of Black people, and other oppressed people, and the need to break this chain in order to most powerfully wage the struggle to finally be free of all oppression. BA has repeatedly emphasized that, in order to end oppression, “you have to want revolution badly enough to be scientific about it.”

Science means judging whether something is true, or not, by whether there is evidence that it actually corresponds to reality—and not believing something because it makes you feel good to believe it, or not refusing to believe something because it makes you uncomfortable. In the article Conspiracy Theories, Fascist “Certitude,” Liberal Paralysis, Or A Scientific Approach To Changing The World, BA has spoken directly to this problem:

many of the basic masses, who are bitterly oppressed under this system, also are suspicious of and even are inclined to reject science and scientifically-grounded analysis. But this also leaves you vulnerable to all kinds of unfounded “conspiracy theories” and other wrong and harmful ideas, including the notion that nothing people do will make a difference because “it’s all in god’s hands.”3

In the 2014 Dialogue with Cornel West (REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion), which took place during the upsurge of protest and rebellion in response to the murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, while speaking to the importance of uniting people broadly in the struggle against oppression, including people who hold religious views, BA also emphasized that the revolution that is needed to finally put an end to oppression must be led with a scientific, not a religious, outlook and method.3

From the start of the article Bob Avakian On Emancipation From Mental Slavery And All Oppression, written this year (2020), BA does not hold back in speaking to these critical questions:

In 1863, mid-way in the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln finally issued the Emancipation Proclamation and, as a result of the Civil War, Black people were formally freed from literal, physical slavery. But today the question is: When, and how, will Black people finally be free from all forms of slavery and oppression? And this poses straight-up this big question:

When will Black people finally emancipate themselves from the mental slavery of religion?!....

Once more, the question is sharply posed: How can Black people be finally and fully emancipated from centuries of oppression, and how does this relate to ending all oppression, of all people, everywhere?

The answer is that the possibility of this is real, but it can happen only on the basis of a scientific approach to changing the world and the scientifically-grounded understanding that this oppression is rooted in and caused by the system of capitalism-imperialism—the same system that is viciously exploiting and murderously oppressing people not just in this country but all over the world and is plundering the natural environmentand that this system must and can be overthrown through an actual revolution and replaced by a radically different and far better system: socialism, whose final goal is a communist world, without any oppression or exploitation of anyone, anywhere.3

****

From his early years, forging close personal ties with Black people and increasingly learning about their lived experience, to his development as this rare leader who has brought forth the most advanced scientific revolutionary theory with the new communism—a defining part of the life and work of Bob Avakian has been the liberation of Black people from centuries of oppression, and the understanding of how this relates to, and is a crucial driving force in, the communist revolution to finally abolish every form of oppression and exploitation, everywhere.

BA himself has expressed this in the following poetically powerful statement:

There is the potential for something of unprecedented beauty to arise out of unspeakable ugliness: Black people playing a crucial role in putting an end, at long last, to this system which has, for so long, not just exploited but dehumanized, terrorized and tormented them in a thousand ways—putting an end to this in the only way it can be done—by fighting to emancipate humanity, to put an end to the long night in which human society has been divided into masters and slaves, and the masses of humanity have been lashed, beaten, raped, slaughtered, shackled and shrouded in ignorance and misery.

 


1. From Ike to Mao and Beyond, My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary CommunistA Memoir by Bob AvakianInsight Press, 2005. [back]

2. Bob Avakian, THE NEW COMMUNISM: The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, Insight Press, first printing, 2016, pp. 321-22. In addition to THE NEW COMMUNISM, in other recent works by BA—in particular Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summaryand Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis, Breaking with Individualism, Parasitism and American Chauvinism—the oppression and the struggle for the liberation of Black people, and its relation to the emancipation of humanity as a whole, is a prominent subject. These works are available at revcom.us.  [back]

3. All of these works are available at revcom.us. (Information about how to acquire the print and e-book editions of BAsics can be found at revcom.us. Audio of the 7 Talks is available in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us; and Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy has been published in a print edition, the text of which can also be found in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us.)

The film of the Dialogue between Cornel West and Bob Avakian, REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion, is also available in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us.

The article Conspiracy Theories, Fascist “Certitude,” Liberal Paralysis, Or A Scientific Approach To Changing The World (longer and shorter versions) is available at revcom.us as well.

The importance of Bob Avakian as a revolutionary leader, who has further developed communism as a consistently scientific method and approach, is a central theme in SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION: On the Importance of Science and the Application of Science to Society, the New Synthesis of Communism and the Leadership of Bob Avakian, An Interview with Ardea Skybreak. Ardea Skybreak is a scientist with professional training in ecology and evolutionary biology, who is also the author of the important book THE SCIENCE OF EVOLUTION AND THE MYTH OF CREATIONISM, Knowing What’s Real And Why It Matters. Each of these books by Ardea Skybreak is published by Insight Press, and the Interview with Ardea Skybreak (SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION) is also available at revcom.us

The following articles, written by Bob Avakian this year (2020), which speak to the oppression of Black people and the struggle to end this oppression, are available as well at revcom.us:

Donald Trump—Genocidal Racist (Parts 1-10) 

Racial Oppression Can Be Ended—But Not Under This System

Police And Prisons: Reformist Illusions And The Revolutionary Solution

Anything But The Truth—Bob Avakian Exposes Lies, Distortions, Distractions and Evasions About the Murderous Oppression of Black People

Lynching, Murder By Police—Damn This Whole System! We Don’t Have To Live This Way!

Bob Avakian On Emancipation From Mental Slavery And All Oppression

Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James And The Whole Truth

Donald Trump Isn’t “Tough,” He’s A Bloated Bag Of Fascist Feces

Bloated Bag Of Fascist Feces Trump Isn’t “Tough”—Part 2: Who Really Has Heart?

Trump And Pigs: A Racist Love Affair

Fucker Carlson, Fascist “Fox News” And The Broadcast Of White Supremacy

Bob Avakian on Black Trump Supporters: What If Jews Had Supported Hitler?!

Bob Avakian On: A Beautiful Uprising: Right And Wrong, Methods And Principles

On Statues, Monuments, And Celebrating—Or Ending—Oppression

Fascists Today And The Confederacy: A Direct Line, A Direct Connection Between All The Oppression

Patriarchy And Male Supremacy, Or Revolution And Ending All Oppression

Sounding Like Southern Segregationists: It’s Not Just Trump—It’s Democrats Too

Bob Avakian Brings Out the Truth: Barack Obama Says Police Murdering Black People Should Not Be Normal—Unless He’s President

Bob Avakian On Ugly Words & Phrases

Bob Avakian On Tulsa Racist Mobs

A Real Revolution--A Real Chance To Win: Further Developing the Strategy for Revolution

[back]

Get to know BA

Bob Avakian (BA) is the most important political thinker and leader in the world today.

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/683/the-more-i-engaged-ba-i-could-not-wait-to-get-out-of-prison-en.html

"The More I Engaged BA, The More I Could Not Wait to Get Out of Prison"

by Joe Veale, revcom, former member of Black Panther Party

| revcom.us

 

Editors' Note: We received the following from Joe Veale.

I’ll start like this. I “knew” BA even before I met him. We grew up in the same city, in Berkeley, California. The Black Panther Party had started in Oakland which was right next to Berkeley. I knew a lot of the rank and file Panthers, once they got going. They were telling me what they were doing—they had developed this organization and they were trying to make revolution to overthrow the system and to put an end to the oppression of Black people. They were straight up about the fact that racism went with the capitalist system, working to overthrow the system and not working within the system. And they made it clear to me that they was trying to build the revolution not only among Black people, they was trying to build support for it among whites, you know, support for this among whites as well as other different races and nationalities. And in that context, BA’s name always came up. It was “Bob Avakian.”

I hadn’t met him yet, I wasn’t a Panther yet, but I knew about him. That’s what they were saying—this is the main person who supported them when they first began. Then when I started to go to Panther rallies, that’s what I would see on the stage with these Black revolutionaries, Black militants—BA would be right up there speaking with them about Black liberation and revolution, and supporting the Panthers.

Joining the Panthers

Then when I joined the Panthers—it was in Richmond, California, that’s the branch I went in. BA and the Revolutionary Union, which he led, were also there as well. I didn’t know this at the time, but they were in Richmond doing their political work. They were answering the call from the Panthers and others to take revolutionary politics out to poor whites. He talks about it in his Memoir (excerpts from the Memoir available here).

Richmond was a proletarian city of different races and nationalities. So out in Richmond, I would see him come by the office to talk with the Panther leadership. At times I’d have assignments at the National Office in Berkeley and I’d see him come through there talking to some of the national leaders and everything.

I remember on one occasion it was at this community college, Contra Costa College. BA talks about doing work there and the Panthers did work there also. This is when I first ran into BA face to face. And one of the things that really struck me, because up to this point, I had never met anyone who was white that was so passionate about Free Huey! Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were the two founders of the Black Panther Party. Huey was facing a murder charge for a shootout with Oakland police and they were trying to put him in the gas chamber. BA had Free Huey buttons all over his clothing—it was really striking to me. He also had Mao Tsetung buttons all over him.

You know, the Panthers were into popularizing Mao’s Red Book, but BA was just as passionate, if not more so, about Mao and revolution. I hadn’t met anybody—anybody white, to be frank—who was so passionate about Black liberation and communist revolution.

Then I found out that me and BA, we had some of the same friends. He talks about one of these friends—Billy Carr, who was also a friend of mine. Billy was a very good athlete, and a really nice person—he was a little older than me. Billy ended up being in “the life”—I had gotten into it too and I kinda idolized Billy.

But he was a friend of BA’s that he knew really well. BA was struggling with Billy trying to get him to do something else with his life. He wasn’t blaming Billy for being in the situation that he was in, he was blaming the system and trying to get Billy to see that. He really understood and he had a lot of real affection for people like Billy generally. When I realized that and I learned that BA had genuine friends like that, that they had potential to do something great with their life, this had a big impression on me—I just have to be straight up about it.

Studying Revolution in Prison, Going Up Against Identity Politics

In the early ’70s when I was sent to federal prison, these revolutionary prisoners (seven prisoners known as Leavenworth Brothers) struggled with me to read BA’s writings. Because I was really angry like [another person in this discussion] was talking about. I was cocky and angry, and nobody could tell me shit. I had a certain attitude towards other prisoners: “y’all trying to win a longevity contest but you need to be out here trying to make revolution.” Anyway, some people were struggling with me: “if you’re really serious you got to read BA.” The first thing they had me read was Red Papers issues #5 and #6, both issues were about the Black National Question or Black liberation. I knew BA had wrote these.

I had already read, studied, and listened to Malcolm X, all of his speeches/recordings over and over. I had read Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth. I had read all this stuff from the Panthers and the Panthers’ leaders about this contradiction—the oppression of Black people—and what’s the solution to it. But when I read Red Papers 5 and 6, I recognized that I had never seen this kind of approach, this kind of systematic and scientific approach that BA took to understanding and analyzing it: from the time of slavery, to sharecropping and Jim Crow, to moving into the urban cities, into the proletariat still facing discrimination, segregation, and police terror—the implications of all that for revolution. Black people was now potentially in a more powerful position to contribute to communist revolution to emancipate humanity. I had never read anything like that.

But at that time some people were saying (at least some people that I knew—it was one of the things that was in the movement at that time): “don’t read anything from somebody white that’s trying to tell you about the struggle of Black people or any other oppressed people because its social chauvinism.” It means they are trying to take over “your” struggle. They are trying to “own” it. No! If it is true and scientific it is getting to the root of the problem so that this oppression can be uprooted and overthrown.

You hear a lot of this today in identity politics lingo—it’s white privilege, white racism, therefore white people are automatically disqualified and they have no business in here trying to tell you about what is real or not real. That is bullshit! It’s a way of avoiding the central point which is whether what anybody says is true or not, does it correspond to reality or not? You can determine that by taking the evidence-based scientific approach.

It’s bullshit on another level. I knew BA, and I knew where his heart was.

And then when I got to reading his writings—I got to know his method of thinking, his thinking process, how he went about engaging reality. When I received that pamphlet while I was in prison, Revolutionary Work in a Non-Revolutionary Situation, I thought it was a masterful grasp of the dialectical materialist method—understanding how a thing of one quality can be transformed into a whole different kind of quality. How a non-revolutionary situation can be transformed into a revolutionary situation.

I was in prison and we had our Marxist study group. We were comparing all these people that were saying they were communists and communist leaders. You had different ones—October League, League of Revolutionary Struggle, Communist Workers Party, Black Workers Congress—all these different organizations. You had ’em all, they were all around. We were looking at all of them, what they were saying in relationship to what BA and the RU were saying, as well as comparing it to how Mao, Lenin, and Marx took up the scientific method, how they engaged reality, and who here came the closest to that. Even at that time BA stood out.

The method that he was applying, even though he has developed it and made different ruptures since that time—but you could see, if you was looking for it, that there was some real systematic and a scientific way of getting to the roots of things. He did not put forward or say something just ’cause it was something to make people feel good, he just told people the truth whether they liked it or not. It was something I really appreciated. He applied this to everything including the oppression of Black people and how it had changed over the years.

Getting Out of Prison and into the Movement

The more I engaged BA, I could not wait to get out of prison. Before that, I didn’t give a fuck whether I got out or not. Before that I was saying: if I only live five more minutes it’s going to be on my terms, whether I’m in here or whether I’m out there—fuck it! But once I started getting into... I wanted to get out. I wanted to get with the leadership of BA. I wanted to meet him, I wanted to get with the Revolutionary Communist Party because I thought: hey, we have the leader and the leadership to really make revolution that we was trying to do in the ’60s.

When I came out of prison in the late ’70s, what immediately happened was the Bob Avakian and Mao Tsetung Defendants court case. He was part of a demonstration in DC that was viciously attacked for defending Mao and revolution in China and was calling out the capitalist coup after Mao’s death. BA himself was facing hundreds of years in prison. Because I knew that we had something special here in terms of a leader, I volunteered immediately to go to DC to be one of the volunteers. I said: we can’t allow BA to be snatched away from us. I’ll go anywhere, do anything politically, to prevent that from happening. And 200 of us volunteers went to DC. We went there to politically “turn DC upside down”—again, this is in BA’s Memoir. We were passionate about that, even as we were just beginning to grasp what we have in the leadership of BA.

I was brand new. I had just got out of prison, my parole had just ended the day before and the very next day I was on the plane to DC as a volunteer. So, I’m there, and I think it was a speech BA had just given to the volunteers. I’m standing in the back talking to somebody, he comes up to me. He starts talking to me about some of things we were all studying at that time about the Collapse of the Second Communist International. We studied why during Lenin’s time, Lenin was the only one who led the masses to go for revolution. They had other parties that were bigger and had even greater influence but were capitulating and leading the people in different countries to take up guns to defend the fucking imperialist fatherland and shit like that, during World War 1.

BA just walked up to me and started talking to me about that and some of the lessons that we should draw from that. I was just kinda... I have to say I was kinda taken aback because he came up and was talking to me. But BA was so genuine, he had no airs, he was just so genuine. I was just talking to him... even though he’s this really advanced world-class leader, when you’re talking to him it’s like you’re talking to your best friend, it’s like talking to a friend—that’s just how he comes off to me, which again, just really struck me. This always has struck me about him.

Back to what I was saying about his friend Billy, even the thing with the Panthers, when I listen to BA talk about it, he understands it better than I do. I was in the Panthers, I went through it, but he understands it. When I went to prison that’s why I was so angry because of what had happened to the Panthers. But BA had a rational and a scientific understanding about why they split apart, and departed from the road of revolution. Again, not blaming them, appreciating the very brutal and murderous repression they faced—but more so, recognizing how they didn’t make the leap to become scientific about revolution.

Nobody in the ’60s came up with a real strategy that can lead millions and millions to defeat and overthrow this system, what to replace it with, what kind of leadership do we need, what kind of methods and approach does that leadership needs to be based upon.

So it’s the same thing like what I was saying about Billy or with those youth in Chicago when we showed them the video clips of BA Through the Years. BA resonates when people hear him, especially the basic masses, as well as others. When they hear him it resonates so profoundly because he understands their situation, what they are going through, and what is the way out—better than you do.

You may be going through and suffering in this way, but it is like going to a doctor, a good doctor. You’re the one suffering but they understand what the solution is to put an end to that suffering better than you do and better than you can. Because he has done the work. People need to engage this work and become followers of BA.

“There has never been a leader like this”

But these are some of the things that have really always struck me about BA. It always struck me on a real personal level. Anytime I was ever able to talk to him, and then read and study his works, it’s so striking that there has never been a leader like this. I think it’s really rare. Especially when I was in prison, and other times, I would just hope that we could get a leader that could really lead the masses to get out of this shit and really navigate through all the twists and turns. Because in any revolution there are always difficulties, there’s always unanticipated things that pop up, but you got to have a method and approach that allows you to be able to work through that and not be thrown by that. And that’s what I see with BA.

When I was in my prison cell, I used to think that either I was going to do something crazy when I got out or I was just going to go to China and live because Mao was still alive at that time. But I hated this system, I hated what it was doing to the masses, not just here but all around the world. But I didn’t think we could get that leadership on that level of a Mao, a Lenin, or a Marx. Then I started realizing that we had it, we have it. And now, it’s developed more beyond what it ever had been in the history of the communist revolution, because BA has made this science much more thoroughly and consistently scientific, to be in synch with reality and how it is changing, and how it CAN be changed to emancipate humanity.

I would read some of things from the first wave of the world revolution—Marx making the first great breakthrough in our understanding in the struggle for human emancipation—but there were definite limits and weaknesses in the first stage of communism. Sometimes I would read those things and get to a place where I’d say, “oh yeah, now we can relax because there’s a kingdom of peace and forever harmony”—that’s a vision would come to my mind. But I don’t ever get that from BA.

Through this revolution humanity can surpass being divided into antagonistic groups—but there’s always going to be matter in motion, there’s always going to be struggle, even if it’s not always antagonistic, that’s just reality. That’s what’s so fucking refreshing. Because when I was in prison people would talk... some of these people, they was eloquent, they’d been studying Marxism—but it was really dogmatic. And I’d listen to them talk and my jaw would just drop because they’d be talking about how the working out of history is pre-determined, that feudalism would be negated by capitalism, and capitalism is going to be negated by socialism—and it was all a kind of worked out in a one/two-step harmony. Real dogmatic and shit like that. Some of that was in that first phase of communism, and BA has gotten rid of all of that with his new synthesis of communism. You don’t find none of that religiosity, religious mantra and shit like that in it and stuff. To me, that’s why I think we can do this—with him, and with his leadership, because of that.

 

BA Through the Years 1969,1979, 2003

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Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/715/rnl-show-episode-68-en.html

| revcom.us

 

Episode 68 of The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show

Abortion Ban in Texas, U.S. Drone Strike in Afghanistan: THIS SYSTEM CAN & NEEDS TO BE OVERTHROWN!

 

Burning in Athens... flooding in Mississippi... abortion banned in Texas... Afghanistan in ruins... fascist COVID pandemic disproportionately killing Black and Brown People... We need a revolution NOT a dystopia and NOT a utopia either. Out of these escalating crises, we must – and can – wrench A REAL REVOLUTION!

* Texas has banned abortion for all women after approximately 6 weeks into pregnancy. Sunsara Taylor speaks to the devastating reality that FORCED MOTHERHOOD IS FEMALE ENSLAVEMENT and points to the urgent need – and basis – for a revolutionary resolution and for massive outpourings of outrage to stop this assault on women's lives. ABORTION ON DEMAND AND WITHOUT APOLOGY! BREAK THE CHAINS! UNLEASH THE FURY OF WOMEN AS A MIGHTY FORCE FOR REVOLUTION! Plus: Footage of Texas high school valedictorian Paxton Smith's brave speech defying this abortion ban. And: footage of Sunsara Taylor down in Texas in 2014 leading civil disobedience against abortion restrictions during the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride.

* People throw around the words "system" and "capitalism," but they mean different things. In his 2003 speech Revolution: Why It's Necessary; Why It's Possible; What It's All About, Bob Avakian brings clarity and science (and humor) to these terms that concentrate so much of the world we are trapped in... and the world we need.

* U.S. drone kills civilians as the U.S. exits Afghanistan after 20 years of terrorizing the people, and now the Taliban becomes the new oppressors. Andy Zee gets into a few key lessons to draw from this, including the fact that the U.S. is NOT the "good guys"... their SYSTEM is not ALL POWERFUL, and it can be defeated. Also, Andy Zee interviews Bo Cogin, Iraq War vet and member of the Revolution Club, Los Angeles.

** PLUS: Bob Avakian poses a challenge to comedian Bill Maher... does a shout out to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar... a remembrance to actor and activist Ed Asner... and calls attention to the extremely important articles from Bob Avakian on Covid and the importance of taking the vaccine

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/711/rnl-show-episode-64-en.html

| revcom.us

 

Episode 64 of The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show

This episode streams the presentation —

“Society is being ripped apart . . .”
We are “two countries sharing the same border...”

Why This Is
A RARE TIME WHEN
REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE

A Talk by Andy Zee

 

Reflections on Bob Avakian's

“This is a Rare Time When Revolution Becomes Possible—
Why That Is So, And How to Seize On This Rare Opportunity”

Presented by Revolution Books & The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show
at Revolution Books, New York City on August 4.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/714/bob-avakian-vaccines-are-a-decisive-means-for-dealing-with-covid-en.html

VACCINES ARE A DECISIVE MEANS FOR DEALING WITH COVID—THEY ARE NOT A “CONSPIRACY” OR A “PLOT” BY THE GOVERNMENT AND BIG CORPORATIONS

The Importance of a Scientific Understanding and Approach

by Bob Avakian

| revcom.us

 

As I have noted recently, there is a serious problem in this country that many people are refusing to get the vaccines against COVID, when in fact these vaccines have been clearly demonstrated to be safe and effective against serious illness and death from COVID. If the great majority of people in this country were vaccinated, this would mark a huge step toward getting the COVID pandemic under control—even as it is also necessary for people all around the world to be vaccinated as well, with special importance to getting people vaccinated in the poorer oppressed countries of the world, where vaccination rates, and access to the vaccines, are terribly limited now (for example, in Africa only something like 2 percent of the people have been vaccinated, mainly due to the extreme shortage of vaccines). So the refusal to get vaccinated, on the part of so many people in this country—where vaccines are widely available and are free—is enabling the pandemic to keep going, killing large numbers of people in this country, especially Black people, Latinos and Native Americans, and enabling the virus to continue to mutate, with the prospect of producing even more dangerous variants. And, as I have emphasized:

people are not just refusing to get the vaccines because of any legitimate concerns about the safety (or the effectiveness) of the vaccines. Far too many people—especially lunatic anti-scientific fascists but far too many others as well, including among those hardest hit by the COVID pandemic—are refusing to get the vaccines because of a combination of crazy conspiracy theories, other anti-scientific garbage, and rampant individualism.1

Among these “crazy conspiracy theories” and “other anti-scientific garbage” are the claims that COVID is not real—is a “hoax”—or that it is not really that serious (is not worse than a cold or the flu) and nobody, or not that many people, are actually dying from it... OR that it is real, and dangerous, but it has been deliberately manufactured by forces in the government of this country (and/or some other country) or by some other sinister (and seemingly secret) forces with the intent of killing off certain people (which people depends on which conspiracy theory is being put forward). And so on. For all, or any, of these conspiracy theories to be true would require the involvement of huge numbers of people conspiring in this—not just powerful people, but ultimately millions of ordinary people, including large numbers of scientists and even greater numbers of doctors and health care workers, not only in this country but in many other countries as well—all collaborating to promote such a conspiracy. NO. Come on—get real—this is all bullshit!

The work, and the overwhelming evidence-based understanding, of scientists, and the experience of huge numbers of people—including those who have in fact died from, or been made seriously ill by, COVID, as well as their family members, and the large numbers of doctors and health care workers who have made great personal sacrifices to treat people with COVID, and have in significant numbers been stricken with COVID themselves—all this has made very clear that COVID is very real, can in many cases be very deadly, and has been (and is being) spread not by some shadowy forces of sinister conspiracy, but by the means that science has demonstrated to be true: the COVID virus spreads mainly through the air, when people are in close proximity to each other, simply breathing, coughing, etc. (especially in indoor environments), and particularly when people are not wearing masks, when one or more person is infected with COVID, or when someone is just a “carrier” of the virus (even if they themselves are symptom-free, as can be the case with many vaccinated people).

And the scientific evidence—and widespread experience—is also very clear: the vaccines that have been developed to combat COVID are safe and very effective in preventing serious illness and death from this virus. And, if the great majority of people were vaccinated, in the U.S. and worldwide, this devastating pandemic could be brought under control. So, get the vaccine!—and also wear a mask and social distance wherever and whenever medical science indicates that this is necessary.

As I have emphasized previously:

there is no good reason NOT to get these vaccines—and refusing to do so not only puts those refusing at risk of serious illness and possibly death, but also exposes others to the same risks.2

Along with lunatic conspiracy theories about the vaccines, spread particularly (but not only) by fascist followers of Donald Trump, Fox “News,” etc., one of the common forms of opposition to the vaccines is the idea that the vaccines are not really (or not so much) a means to actually combat COVID but are essentially a conspiracy by the government and the big pharmaceutical companies to control people and to make big profits from the pandemic (whether the pandemic is seen as real, or a “hoax”). This is a kind of “populist” notion, which essentially reduces the problem in society to simply one of people being oppressed and harmed by powerful forces above them—big government and big corporations—a notion that, in somewhat different forms, is taken up by people on the right, but also on the so-called “left” (among some “woke” and “progressive” people). This is a basically unscientific understanding of things, both specifically in relation to COVID and the vaccines and fundamentally in terms of the essential nature of this system we live under, the system of capitalism-imperialism, and how this system actually functions.

It is of course true that corporations (and other big capitalist enterprises and financial institutions) dominate the economy under this system. As I have previously pointed to:

This is a system dominated by capitalist corporations, banks and other financial institutions controlling vast sums of money, all of which is based on exploiting people—masses of people here, and billions of people throughout the world, including huge numbers of children.

But also very importantly:

These capitalists are locked in cutthroat competition with each other, and this drives them to penetrate every part of the world, especially the poorer countries, in order to exploit people even more viciously, while leaving many people without a way to work at all, within the regular (“formal”) economy.3

For these reasons, in an overall sense, these capitalist corporations (including the major pharmaceutical companies—“Big Pharma”) will seek to turn everything—including the health needs of the people—into a means for making greater profit and out-competing rival capitalists, even as some governments (and other institutions) have made some efforts to encourage cooperation in order to promote the development and distribution of vaccines (and other measures to deal with COVID).

Another important part of the picture is that this rivalry among capitalists also takes place along “national” lines—with contention between different capitalist-imperialist countries. At the same time, with the domination of this system of capitalism-imperialism, the world is divided into a handful of capitalist-imperialist countries and a large number of poor oppressed countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia—the Third World.

All this is why, despite some governments’ efforts to curb the effects of this in dealing with COVID, capitalist competition and striving for greater and greater profit, and for a top-dog position in the world, gets in the way of and undermines the cooperation that is necessary—and that many scientists are actually striving to achieve—in dealing with the pandemic. It is why things like the vaccination rate (and access to the vaccines) is so low in the Third World.

But that is only part of the picture, and does not get to the heart of the situation with the vaccines and the fact that the government (or some in the government) of this country (and other countries) would actually want to get people vaccinated as a major means of “getting on top of” the COVID pandemic.

It is true that, because their system is based on exploiting and oppressing people, the governments of capitalist countries want and need to control the people. But, first of all, these governments do not need something like vaccines to do this—they already have many means of doing so, including the ways that people’s use of social media and the internet generally provide these governments with easy access to extensive, even intimate details about people’s lives, the ability to track where people are at any given time, their movements, and so on. At the same time, however, the role of capitalist governments is not simply to control people, but more fundamentally it is to ensure the firm foundation and stability of capitalist rule and the more or less orderly functioning of this system, particularly in the “home” countries (such as the U.S., Germany, Russia, Japan, China, etc.) where the major economic and political institutions of the different capitalist-imperialist powers are “anchored.

Therefore, when faced with a serious pandemic like the current COVID crisis, it is objectively in the interests of the ruling capitalists and their governments in countries like this actually to bring this pandemic under control, because it is highly disruptive of the overall functioning of the economy and of the society as a whole—and major disruptions like this can raise big questions among people about the ability of this system to maintain the orderly functioning of society and meet people’s basic needs. And getting this pandemic “under control” is also objectively in the interests of the ruling capitalist-imperialists in their efforts, in the “international arena,” to secure and strengthen their position.

For these reasons, normally the entire capitalist ruling class in this country, and its political representatives, in both the Republican and Democratic parties, would be united in their desire to take the necessary measures to “get on top of” this pandemic—especially to get the population vaccinated, and to enforce things like mask mandates where that were deemed necessary.

But these are not “normal times.”

This Rare Time—How the Profound Bitter Divisions Within the Ruling Class Are Deepening the Crisis, And What Is the Way Forward Out of This Madness

This is a time when a section of the ruling capitalist class in this country, represented by the Republican Party—which has all along resisted even partial concessions to the fight against racial and gender oppression, and other struggles against discrimination and injustice—has become convinced that these changes have now gone too far, that they threaten to destroy what has held this country together and enabled it to dominate the world. As a result,

The Republicans have become a fascist party—a party based on open and aggressive white supremacy, male supremacy, and other oppressive relations—a party convinced that only it deserves to rule, moving to manipulate elections and suppress votes in order to gain and hold onto power, refusing to accept the outcome of elections it does not win, determined to gut and pervert “the rule of law,” trample on people’s rights, and adopt what amounts to an undisguised capitalist dictatorship, ready to use violence not only against masses of people but also against its rivals in the ruling class.

These Republicans have mobilized a significant section of people who believe, with an intense, irrational passion, that white supremacy, male supremacy, and other oppressive relations (as well as unrestrained plunder of the environment) must be firmly upheld and enforced. They have been driven to a state of vicious insanity, embracing all kinds of lunatic conspiracy theories, along with a crazed Christian fundamentalism, as a response to the threat they see to their entitled (or “god-ordained”) position and their insistence that further concessions to the struggle against oppression will destroy what has “made America great.”4

It is for these reasons that the fascists in the Republican Party, and in the larger society, have eagerly and viciously promoted and rallied behind lunatic conspiracy theories about and rabid opposition to the COVID vaccines (and other measures such as mask wearing) and have spread this anti-scientific disinformation as widely as they can throughout society. Since it is Biden and the Democratic Party which now dominate in the federal government, the fascists are determined to sabotage and undermine the ability of Biden and the Democrats to govern effectively—this is more important to the fascists than dealing with the COVID pandemic and achieving some kind of relative “stability” and “normal functioning” of the economy and the society overall.

For the masses of people in this country—as opposed to the capitalist-imperialist ruling class, and all its representatives—our interests lie with the great majority of humanity, who continue to be devastated by this pandemic, with already more than 4 million deaths worldwide and an intensification of the suffering that the functioning of this system of capitalism-imperialism and its domination of the world forcefully imposes on people everywhere. From this perspective, it is definitely in our interests and of immediately great importance to promote scientific knowledge about vaccines (and COVID generally) and win as many people as possible to get vaccinated; to fight with real determination against the fascist obstruction and resistance to COVID vaccines, and to insist that vaccines be mandatory—and masks as well, in situations where science indicates that masks are necessary—and that the vaccine actually be made available, in the necessary quantities, to people throughout the world, without consideration of cost and profit, and in opposition to all reactionary political objectives, including rivalry among capitalist-imperialist powers.

In most fundamental terms, what this pandemic has further revealed about the utterly bankrupt and outmoded (“past its date of expiration”) nature of this system—and more particularly how the rare situation that now exists, with the “deepening and sharpening conflicts among the ruling powers,” which have been sharply expressed in relation to the COVID pandemic, and in countless other ways—all this “provides a stronger basis and greater openings to break the hold of this system over masses of people.”5

The way forward—the only way forward—out of this madness is revolution: a real revolution to overthrow this monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism, and bring something much better into being. It is this, ever more urgently needed, revolution that all those who hunger for a world without all the unnecessary suffering to which the masses of humanity are subjected under the domination of this system must work for tirelessly, on a consistently scientific basis—seizing on this rare situation where such a revolution becomes possible, even in a powerful country like this.

**********

As an important “background” for what I have written here, the following from V.I. Lenin—leader of the first successful socialist revolution, in Russia, who also made crucial contributions to the development of communist theory—is of very definite and immediate relevance and importance:

People always were and always will be the foolish victims of deceit and self-deceit in politics until they learn to discover the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises. The supporters of reforms and improvements will always be fooled by the defenders of the old order until they realize that every old institution, however barbarous and rotten it may appear to be, is maintained by the forces of some ruling classes.

This is from V. I. Lenin, “The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism” (March 1913, Collected Works, Vol. 19, pp. 23-28, Progress Publishers) as cited in my book The New Communism, Insight Press, 2016, p. 11. (Emphasis in the original.)

 

1. From Bob Avakian: “On COVID, The Importance of Getting People Vaccinated, And The Very Real Problem Regarding Rampant Individualism.” Available at revcom.us. [back]

2. “On COVID, The Importance of Getting People Vaccinated, And The Very Real Problem Regarding Rampant Individualism.” [back]

3. From Bob Avakian—Revolutionary Leader, Author of the New Communism: THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE—WHY THAT IS SO, AND HOW TO SEIZE ON THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY. Available at revcom.us. [back]

4. THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE. [back]

5. THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE. [back]

From Bob Avakian:

On COVID, The Importance Of Getting People Vaccinated, And The Very Real Problem Regarding Rampant Individualism
Read more

Important Points of Theory and Method Regarding Freedom and Restrictions on Freedom
Read more


Download / print pamphlet of all three articles (PDF):
8.5 x 11 single pages
8.5 x 5.5 printer spread

 

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So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/713/bob-avakian-on-covid-the-importance-of-getting-people-vaccinated-individualism-en.html

From Bob Avakian:
On COVID, The Importance Of Getting People Vaccinated, And The Very Real Problem Regarding Rampant Individualism

| revcom.us

 

Extreme individualism—the concept that “I have a right to do whatever I want, in line with my sense of my personal freedom”—is a tremendous problem in this society today, among all sections of the people. And one of the worst things about this is that this extreme individualism is actually a point of unity between some Black people, and other oppressed people, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the genocidal racist fascists. What a terrible situation where some Black people and other oppressed people can actually find themselves in the same place as those fascists who regard them as inferior sub-humans and want to deny them basic rights, lock them up permanently, or outright exterminate them!

This has come out sharply around the question of COVID vaccines—in opposition to getting the vaccines. While there is, particularly among Black people, some awful history with medical experiments, and some bad experience, historically and right to today, with medical authorities and medical treatment, it is a fact that the COVID pandemic has, in this country, hit Black people (as well as Latinos and Native Americans) the hardest, and with the heaviest death toll; and it is a fact that the vaccines against COVID have been clearly demonstrated to be safe and to be overwhelmingly successful in preventing serious illness and death from COVID. So, there is no good reason NOT to get these vaccines—and refusing to do so not only puts those refusing at risk of serious illness and possibly death, but also exposes others to the same risks.

And people are not just refusing to get the vaccines because of any legitimate concerns about the safety (or the effectiveness) of the vaccines. Far too many people—especially lunatic anti-scientific fascists but far too many others as well, including among those hardest hit by the COVID pandemic—are refusing to get the vaccines because of a combination of crazy conspiracy theories, other anti-scientific garbage, and rampant individualism. People insist that “it is a matter of personal choice” whether to get the vaccine—and those refusing to get the vaccine argue (often angrily and belligerently) that “it is a matter of my personal freedom.”

This is nonsense—very harmful nonsense! Individual freedom is not absolute—as almost everyone will agree when this is posed to them in terms that do not run up against their individualism. For example, few will argue that someone should have the freedom to drive 100 miles an hour through a school zone when children are crossing the street. And any reasonable person will agree that it is not okay for white supremacists to lynch Black people—or for the police to wantonly murder Black people—simply because they feel like it—because they see it as an expression of their “individual freedom” (and “personal choice”).

Along the same lines, it is worth noting that, in opposition to civil rights laws, people who owned businesses, such as stores and restaurants, and wanted to discriminate by refusing to serve Black people, would very frequently argue that it was a matter of their “freedom” to discriminate in this way (their right to do what they wanted with their business). And we have seen the same kinds of arguments from people who want to discriminate against other oppressed groups. Should that “individual freedom,” to discriminate in that way, be upheld?

It would be impossible to live in any society where “individual freedom” (or “personal choice”) were absolute. The question is: Are expressions of individual freedom, or restrictions on individual freedom, good or bad—do they make for a better, or worse, society?

This is why no woman should ever be forced to bear a child against her will, and it should therefore NOT be legal to deny women the right to abortion. And, on the other hand, it is why it SHOULD be legal to require (mandate) that people get vaccinated against COVID (except those for whom it would actually pose a demonstrable health problem) and mandatory to wear masks in situations where there is a real possibility of contracting, and spreading, COVID.

From Bob Avakian:

VACCINES ARE A DECISIVE MEANS FOR DEALING WITH COVID—THEY ARE NOT A "CONSPIRACY" OR A "PLOT" BY THE GOVERNMENT AND BIG CORPORATIONS
Read more

Important Points of Theory and Method Regarding Freedom and Restrictions on Freedom
Read more


Download / print pamphlet of all three articles (PDF):
8.5 x 11 single pages
8.5 x 5.5 printer spread

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/713/bob-avakian-important-points-of-theory-and-method-regarding-freedom-en.html

Also From Bob Avakian:
Important Points of Theory and Method Regarding Freedom and Restrictions on Freedom

| revcom.us

 

The following are helpful in getting a deeper sense of the basic content, and the method and principles, involved in the article On COVID, The Importance Of Getting People Vaccinated, And The Very Real Problem Regarding Rampant Individualism. All are available at revcom.us.

First, the following:

On the basis of a constitution, laws embody and involve both protection and coercion, in regard to members of society and their rights. As I spoke to earlier, in socialist society for example, you can’t go and decide that somebody has something that you want and it’s unfair for them to have it, so you’re just going to arbitrarily take it. There are laws which will prevent that....

So, we have to understand this once again as materialists: As long as you have laws, and as long as you have a constitution setting rules, this is going to involve both the protection of rights and the protection of people in society and, at the same time, coercion in regard to individuals and generally the members of society. This, once again, flows from a materialist understanding—it reflects where we are and where we have not yet gotten. Even when we have made the leap to socialism, it reflects where we are and where we have not yet gotten in terms of the social relations and in fundamental terms the production relations, but also the role of the superstructure in such a socialist society.

The above excerpt is from Constitution, Law, and Rights—in capitalist society and in the future socialist society, Selections from the writings of Bob Avakian including excerpts from the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal). It is originally from Birds Cannot Give Birth to Crocodiles, But Humanity Can Soar Beyond the Horizon, Part 1). Note also the following from the (same Part 1 of) “Birds and Crocodiles”:

Here we see once more the profound importance of the understanding that freedom does not lie in the absence of necessity and constraint—nor of coercion of one kind or another. Nature coerces us all the time, in case anybody hasn’t noticed. But even social coercion is not something that we’re going to move entirely beyond: the essential question is whether or not that takes place in the form of social antagonism rooted in fundamental relations of exploitation and oppression. But, to put it in general terms, necessity will always confront human beings; there will always be both constraint from nature in the larger sense and social constraint on individuals and on members of society collectively, and there will always be struggle over how to deal with those contradictions. Freedom will always lie not in the evasion or the absolute absence of these things, and of necessity as a general phenomenon but, once again, in the transformation of necessity into freedom through struggle.

And this, from the article Bob Avakian On The Law, Justice, And Ending Oppression And Exploitation, is also very relevant.

The criminal legal process is not—or should not be—a contest between individuals but a confrontation between the state and people whom the state seeks to deprive of freedom on the basis that they have violated societal norms that are embodied in criminal statutes. The whole point of a legal system is, or should be, to remove disputes or perceived wrongs from the sphere of individual grievance—and the corresponding attempts to settle such grievance through individual acts of revenge or reciprocal wrongdoing—by providing a framework in which society, through established institutions and statutes, which are to be applied and work equally in regard to all, can adjudicate such disputes or claims of wrongdoing. (Emphasis—italics—in the original)

For further reading: The Supplementary Excerpts from Bob Avakian, and Further Supplementary Excerpts, which accompany the articles Bob Avakian On 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—and in particular the excerpts from Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis on individualism—are very relevant and important.

From Bob Avakian:

VACCINES ARE A DECISIVE MEANS FOR DEALING WITH COVID—THEY ARE NOT A "CONSPIRACY" OR A "PLOT" BY THE GOVERNMENT AND BIG CORPORATIONS
Read more

On COVID, The Importance Of Getting People Vaccinated, And The Very Real Problem Regarding Rampant Individualism
Read more


Download / print pamphlet of all three articles (PDF):
8.5x11 single pages
5.5x8.5 printer spread

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/703/bob-avakian-weapons-of-oppression-en.html

WEAPONS OF OPPRESSION,
AND THE HEART TO FIGHT
TO END OPPRESSION

by Bob Avakian

| revcom.us

 

This system has two big weapons it uses to maintain masses of people in a situation where they are oppressed, brutalized, degraded, and demoralized. 

The first weapon is the murderous armed force of this system—which, along with all its other atrocities, continually hunts down and kills Black, Brown, and Native American people in the most depraved ways.

The second weapon is the way this system messes people up and gets them thinking and acting in messed up ways—and especially how this system denies the youth a decent future, forcibly confines so many in miserable conditions and gets them caught up in fighting and killing each other. This, too, is a monstrous crime of this system

What kind of system condemns so many youth to nothing better than this?! What kind of system does so many people this way, and then seizes on what it has got people caught up in—uses this as an excuse to treat masses of people as less than human, murder them in the thousands and lock them up in the millions, right in this country, while it slaughters people all around the world and destroys the earth? It is this monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism that we are now forced to live under—a system that could not survive without viciously exploiting billions of people worldwide, including more than 150 million children—a system that never will, and never can, stop doing all this.

But it doesn’t have to be this way!

We revcoms are out to change all thisthe only way it can be donethrough an actual revolution, to do away with this whole system. We have the science, the strategy and plan, and the leadership to do this, and we are actively working and waging the necessary struggle to bring forth and organize a revolutionary force of thousands, and then millions, from many different parts of society—and especially youth whose anger, frustration and desperation to make a mark in this world and be respected needs to be, and can be, transformed into determination to put an end to this system and to bring a radically different and much better world into being—to become emancipators of humanity.

In A DECLARATION, A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW FOR A REAL REVOLUTION* we have made it clear: this not only cries out to be done—it is possible. And everyone who has a heart to fight for something really worth fighting for needs to get with this revolution we are working for NOW.

 


* A DECLARATION, A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW FOR A REAL REVOLUTION is available at revcom.us—and it is being posted and passed out to people in neighborhoods and other places around the country, as a key part of spreading the word about this revolution and organizing people into this revolution.  [back]

Listen to Bob Avakian on:

"WEAPONS OF OPPRESSION, AND THE HEART TO FIGHT TO END OPPRESSION"

revcom.us · Weapons Of Oppression, And The Heart To Fight To END Oppression, by Bob Avakian

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/690/basic-points-of-orientation-en.html

BASIC POINTS OF ORIENTATION

| revcom.us

 

1. This system of capitalism-imperialism is the source of endless horrors for the majority of people in this country and all around the world, and it is increasingly threatening the very existence of humanity. We are actively working for an actual revolution—to bring down, to overthrow and completely abolish, this whole system as soon as possible and replace it with something radically different and much better, a new society built on an entirely different foundation. That, and nothing less, is what is needed. So that is what we are all about—and we have the necessary scientific method, the plan, the strategy, and the leadership to succeed in this. But there aren’t enough people committed to this yet. So... this is what you need to be about. Anything else will completely fail to deal with the root of all the problems or lead to the actual solution. Given the situation facing humanity, we don’t have time to waste, so we need to get busy working for this revolution, in an organized way, and winning more and more people to do the same.

2. We are followers of BA. And you need to become followers of BA too. He is an old white guy—yes, deal with it! He is providing ongoing leadership for this revolution, and he has a whole body of work that contains the scientific method to analyze the problem and the solution, the strategy for the revolution to bring down this system, and the vision and concrete plan for that radically different and much better society, on the road to emancipate all of humanity from every form of oppression and exploitation, and to enable humanity to become fit caretakers of the earth. He’s even written a Constitution that concretely maps out what to do starting right after the seizure of power, so we can actually work on building up that whole new emancipating society. There never has been a leader like this in this country and there is no other leader like this in the world now. We cannot afford not to follow this leadership if we ever want to get free and put an end to this madness.

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/691/there-is-the-powerful-positive-potential-en.html

There is the powerful positive potential...

| revcom.us

 

There is the powerful positive potential of what it is that Revcoms are—and need to be—fighting for, consistently, boldly, compellingly bringing forward and bringing alive. In this context, the following passage is worth reviewing and reflecting on, from Bob Avakian’s The Coming Civil War and Re-polarization for Revolution in the Present Era, Religion and the Right to Religion, DARK AGES MENTALITY AND THE LIBERATING OUTLOOK AND METHOD OF COMMUNISM”:

The religious fundamentalists, of various kinds, make a point of recruiting in the prisons, and they come with a heavy ideological message. There is something very important to be learned from the “Losing My Religion” article that appeared in our newspaper within the past year. The author of the article, who comes from a family steeped in religious fundamentalism, says that his own life experiences had provided plenty of reasons to reject religion, but it was only when there was another coherent ideology that he could take up that he completely broke with religion. And that coherent ideology wasn’t another religion—it was the scientific outlook and method of communism, which he was introduced to through writings of mine which he encountered in college. He also commented on that: he said that these writings, and the outlook and method they embody, taught him to do what religion never did—to think critically. It is not at all the case that people can only “lose their religion” by replacing it with another religion in some form. But there does have to be another explanation about the world and existence and why this is the way it is, and how it could be different. And how an individual relates to that. If you want to rupture people out of shit, not only stuff that lands them in prison, but the daily shit they are caught up in, in the society, you have to have a really strong hardcore ideological thing to bring to them. It doesn’t have to be dogmatic—it should not be dogmatic, and it should not be religious—but it has to be coherent and systematic. It has to explain the world—and in our case we can actually explain it in a scientific way [BA laughs]. That ’s an advantage of communism over religion, even though religion has certain short‑term advantages because it can appeal to things we can’t appeal to, things that go along with spontaneity. But we have the advantage of actually being able to make reality make sense for people. That’s a very powerful thing.

We should not underestimate the importance, not only with prisoners but in general, of doing a lot of ideological work to really enable people to see the world in a wholly different way— really the way it is. To take the pieces of this puzzle that are all out of whack and don’t fit together— it’s like looking through a weird kaleidoscope the way most people see reality. And then it’s misinterpreted for them by all these different bourgeois and reactionary ideologies and programs, and so on, including various religious views. But communist ideology and its application to the world is a way of taking reality and having it make sense for people. That’s what the CD1 of my speech on religion aims to do, that’s what we urgently need to do in general. [Emphasis (boldface, italics, and underlining) added here]

 


1. This refers to a talk on religion given in 2004 by BA which was later encompassed in Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World (Insight Press, 2008)  [back]

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/715/momentous-leadership-in-a-momentous-year-en.html

An Appreciation for “Writings from Bob Avakian in 2020”—Momentous Leadership in “A Momentous Year”

from a member of The National Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour

| revcom.us

 

Recently, revcom.us posted a full listing of writings from Bob Avakian (BA) in 2020—“A Momentous Year.”

This is an incredible compilation of work! I took some time to go through these and encourage everyone reading revcom.us to do the same—the titles of the articles, the range of questions, the different audiences BA is speaking to, the searing agitation and biting humor, the loftiness and historic sweep, the consistent and breathtaking depth of scientific analysis... this made me appreciate again the rare and precious leadership we have in BA and underscored what it really means when A Declaration, A Call to Get Organized Now For a Real Revolution says, “There never has been a leader like this in this country and there is no other leader like this in the world now. We cannot afford not to follow this leadership if we ever want to get free and put an end to this madness.”

There is no one else on the planet besides BA speaking on this level to these burning questions... and not just speaking to questions—but providing living guidance for how to understand the situation we’re in, how we got here, while continuing to develop the strategic approach for making revolution... and continuing to advance the theoretical framework of the new communism—the whole process, scientific method and understanding for humanity to get free from all the chains of oppression and exploitation, including the mental shackles among the oppressed themselves.

It is that last point that stands out: the political, ideological and epistemological struggle BA is waging with the millions and millions of people whose interests are bound up with this revolution but who are thinking and acting based on, as BA says in a more recent piece, the “confining and degrading terms of this system.”

In his New Year’s statement on January 1, 2021, A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity, BA wrote:

A profoundly different polarization must be brought about, in line with the potential for a radically different and better world, representing the actual interests of the masses of people and ultimately all of humanity. A radically different approach to understanding, and acting on, the relations and problems of society must be taken up—a thoroughly and consistently scientific method and approach.

BA’s work—concentrated in that compilation from 2020 and continuing to right this second—is fighting for and leading in this.

The compilation is titled, “A Momentous Year” and there are many reasons this was true, including a recognition, on BA’s part that as one of his essays from June is titled: “RADICAL CHANGE IS COMING: WILL IT BE EMANCIPATING, OR ENSLAVING—REVOLUTIONARY, OR REACTIONARY?” BA has—for decades up until now—recognized the particular role and danger of fascism in America—a product of this horrific system, and contributing to tearing apart the fabric of this system. How do we wage the struggle against this fascism—on the basis, and in the service of, the struggle for a revolution to overthrow this system that gave rise to this fascism? This is extremely complex and something that the communist movement historically has broken its back on. BA has forged a new path in understanding these questions—and did so all through 2020... and again, up until right now.

There is one more thing I want to comment on about this year’s worth of work: the breadth of the work itself, how BA leads and who he is as a person is a concentration of the new communism—the scientific method and the emancipating goal... a revolution that really could, to quote from the first stage of communist revolution, “free the spirit from its cell.” BA speaks to this in a piece that is provocative, profound, and I think underappreciated: “REVOLUTION, ROGER FEDERER’S TENNIS: WHAT DO THEY HAVE TO DO WITH EACH OTHER? A LOT, ACTUALLY.

...the revolution I am talking about—a revolution guided by communism, in its further development with the new communism that has resulted from decades of work that I have carried out—this revolution, and the radically different society and world that it aims to bring into being, could not do without, and has as one of its main goals and requirements, precisely an appreciation of and the flowering of beauty and artistry, in many different dimensions of human endeavor.

In this piece, BA expresses a depth of appreciation and knowledge of Federer’s game. He says, “One of the things that makes Federer so uniquely great and breathtaking to observe is that we see the artist at work, trying things that others would not dare to try, willing to fall down at times, in the immediate, in order to find the way to reach the greatest heights.” I didn’t grow up with sports and know nothing about tennis, but as a follower of Bob Avakian, I do know something about watching an artist at work—and that is also what comes through in this work from 2020. BA is a revolutionary leader, and the world’s most important political and strategic thinker in the world... but we are also watching an artist at work!

This is someone with an incredibly rare combination of science, creativity, heart and a fierce determination and recognition that humanity is capable of bringing into being a world where—through great struggle and sacrifice—a great diversity can flourish. Leaders on this level—and with this rare combination of strengths and ability—come along with extreme rarity.

 

BOB AVAKIAN: A RADICALLY DIFFERENT LEADER—A WHOLE NEW FRAMEWORK FOR HUMAN EMANCIPATION

Bob Avakian (BA) is the most important political thinker and leader in the world today.

 

 

 

 

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
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Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/715/revcom-recruiters-on-campus-in-stop-everything-moment-en.html

The Revcom Recruiters on a Campus in a Stop Everything Moment

| revcom.us

 

This week, abortion became effectively illegal in Texas.  This is a stop everything moment... and it's a reflection of the overall way that, as it says in A Declaration, A Call to Get Organized Now for a Real Revolution from the revcoms, “Society is being ripped apart.”  In moments like these, we need to make a big leap in organizing for revolution!  (For more on this law, and how to understand why this is happening and what's needed in the face of this, go here.)

As the Declaration analyzes, it is a rare moment when revolution has become possible.  On the National Revolution Tour, we've been grappling with how to reach blocs of people, organizing people in groups for revolution (vs. one on one).

On the day the Texas law went into effect, we decided to pull our whole crew together to have a big impact... and we did... with some important lessons for going forward!

Breaking the Silence

We made a multi-faceted plan to impact a populated state college—taking a couple hours in the morning to get signs up in bathroom stalls and bulletin boards with the basic message that the revcom recruiters are on your campus today, organizing for revolution—nothing less!  At about mid-morning, three volunteers put on bloody pants, t-shirts that say “abortion on demand and without apology” and stood silently in the middle of campus with a big sign on the ground about the Texas abortion law.  This stopped a lot of people in their tracks while others walked by uncomfortably.  Most people didn't know about the new law or had just heard about it and were furious and agonizing.  People took pictures and posted on social media, and we could overhear a number of discussions that got going among the students themselves.

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At the same time, a crew—all in the Revolution Club uniform—was going around to the different eating areas on campus, hopping on chairs or tables and blowing a whistle with a 60 second emergency announcement.  We announced that we're the revcoms—the revolutionary communists—on their campus to recruit them for revolution.  We brought alive what this law will mean for women and that forced motherhood is female enslavement!  And we read this quote from A Declaration, A Call,

This is one of those rare times and circumstances when revolution becomes possible, not just because this system is always a horror, but because the crisis and deep divisions in society now can only be resolved through radical means, of one kind or another—either radically reactionary, murderously oppressive and destructive means or radically emancipating  revolutionary means.

 We invited all those with a heart to fight for something really worth fighting for to gather in the main quad at 12:30 pm to to get organized for revolution!

A Growing Group Discussion to Get Organized for Revolution

At the appointed time, some students started to gather off of our announcement.  The discussion started with about six students... but at its height, grew to about 25–30 students.  We made sure everyone had a copy of A Declaration, A Call, and two members of the National Revolution Tour led a discussion of the Declaration—reading parts out loud, asking some of the students to read parts out loud and drawing people out to respond to it, and to respond to each other.

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I'm not going to capture the richness of the whole discussion... In response to the point on the military, one woman talked about her experience checking out the military where they teach you to hate people around the world.  Woven throughout the discussion, people were coming to grips with what this new law represents and how the fascists aren't backing down—a young woman said it's not just that they want to get rid of abortion, but they want to get rid of birth control.  Someone else said it feels like they want to bring The Handmaid's Tale to life.  In response to part two of the Declaration, a young woman talked about how we're trained to accept all these nightmares as normal, that we're supposed to go along with and accept things that aren't acceptable.  Someone else said we need a different morality, we need to stand with the people of the world.  And someone else talked about how long this struggle has been going on for women's rights, pointing back to the Tupac song from the ʼ90s, “Keep Ya Head Up,” where he talks about a woman's right to abortion. 

Someone asked a question about who the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian (BA) is, and why our t-shirts say, “BA Speaks: REVOLUTION – Nothing Less!”  A revcom took the opportunity to read Part 3 from the Declaration on BA, and then read a quote from BAsics on the importance of women's liberation to the struggle for human emancipation (BAsics 3:22).  We passed around the article, “Bob Avakian Answers Accusations of 'Cult': IGNORANCE, AND COWARDICE” and talked about why we follow BA, and why they need to follow BA too.  Another student who also was just finding out about this said they call things like this cults because they're small and don't have “official recognition,” but the real cult are the people who follow Trump with their fascist lunacy.

Finally, someone wanted to know how to turn our words into actions, and we read from Part 4 of the Declaration on getting organized for revolution.  Together, we made plans for a discussion, scheduled concretely for soon, collectively with the students on campus, and someone made a suggestion for where we could hold it and what time would be best.  People took stickers and some extra copies of the Declaration to spread the word, and everyone signed up to be part of a group chat on campus to make plans together.  One person responded to wanting to start a Revolution Club on campus and together, we went to find the administration building to find out how to do that.

While this discussion was happening, some people had to go and made sure to sign up to find out the plans... and throughout, new people kept joining.  People were attracted by the scene, or pulled into it by other revcoms who were telling people what was going on and inviting them to join.  The revcoms didn't have one on one discussions with people off to the side, but explicitly made the point: “we can't organize for revolution one-by-one, we need to come together... and the stakes are too high to stand on the sidelines...”  And with this, brought people over to the main group discussion.

Throughout, we were able to “catch people up” as to where we were in the discussion with a sign we made with the “4 Basic Truths” that are in A Declaration, A Call.  We pointed to what we'd already gotten into, and where we were in the discussion so people could “find their place” so to speak.

Our Learning Curve

There were a lot of rich lessons from the day—we reached blocs of people with an electric effect.  Our whole crew worked together as a team with “the whole greater than the sum of its parts.”  Throughout, we were improving our agitation—summing up along the way.  And once the discussion got going, it mattered that some people were leading the discussion and others were bringing people into it.

In the discussion itself, it was really good to stick to the discussion of the Declaration—making clear this was the beginning of a process of people coming together to learn more about this revolution, and be part of “urgently chang[ing] the situation where not nearly enough people know about this revolution and are with it.” 

A Declaration, A Call says,

Organizing people into this revolution means reaching out to all sorts of people—not just where there are protests and rebellions against oppression and injustice, but everywhere throughout society—spreading the word about revolution and getting people together (in real life and online) to grapple with why an actual revolution is necessary, what such a revolution involves, and what kind of society this is aiming for.  This will enable people who are new to the revolution to themselves become organizers for this revolution and to recruit more and more people to do the same.

We summed up that there was even more we could've done to draw people out.  People are often shy, and unsure of themselves in this kind of group discussion so it can take some conscious work to get people speaking to each other.  Nothing replaces the process of people grappling together, on the basis of getting into the scientific distillation in this Declaration.  Summing up, someone reflected on why the Declaration uses the word “grapple”—insightfully making the point that “people learn science by doing science in this kind of collective process.”

Also, where we needed to do even better was concretely organizing people now for revolution.  Most people joined this discussion because they want to act.  We could've had more concrete things for people to take up on the spot and in this kind of collective way—organizing packets, a collective goal of everyone there getting the Declaration to 10 others (exhibiting what exponential growth can look like), revolutionary change jars for people to leave from there to immediately be raising funds for the revolution, students could've more brainstormed together about how to do more with simple protests around this abortion ban... We did invite everyone to a collective online viewing of The RNL Show, and a zoom discussion Friday night... while we're all going to be building for an in-person discussion there again soon, collectively with the students.

There's more to learn... but wanted to share this experience reaching blocs of people with revolution.

See also:

Three Main Points on the Texas Abortion Law
Texas Effectively Bans Abortion—and the Silence Is Deafening:
WE CAN'T LET THIS GO DOWN! WE CAN'T LET THEM HAVE THE FUTURE!

Read more

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/715/chicago-can-tv-will-air-the-rnl-show-62-on-channel-21-en.html

Chicago CAN TV will air The RNL Show #62 on Channel 21

| revcom.us

 

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Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/avakian/new-years-statement-2021/bob-avakian-new-years-statement-2021-en.html

 

NEW YEAR'S STATEMENT BY BOB AVAKIAN

A New Year,
The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—
For The Emancipation Of All Humanity

 

1In my statement of August 1 of last year, I put forward the analysis that, in the particular circumstances of this presidential election and the truly profound stakes it posed, if the Trump/Pence regime remained in power at the time of this election, it would be necessary and important to vote for Biden to deliver a decisive electoral defeat to the fascism represented by this regime. At the same time, I emphasized that simply relying on voting would likely lead to disaster, and that it was vitally important for masses of people to take to the streets, in nonviolent but sustained, and growing, mass mobilization with the demand that this fascist regime must be OUT NOW!, as called for by RefuseFascism.org.

As it turned out, masses of people did vote in large numbers to oust this fascist regime—and, in doing so delivered a decisive enough electoral defeat to the Trump/Pence regime that its increasing, and then massively violent, attempt at a coup has been more difficult to pull off and has finally been defeated, with Trump forced to leave (while still refusing to acknowledge his loss in the election), even as Biden had to be inaugurated in a capital city that was a locked-down armed camp.

In immediate terms, the catastrophe has been narrowly averted that would have occurred if this fascist regime had been re-elected (or in some other way remained in power) and on that basis further consolidated its fascist rule and been more fully emboldened and unleashed to implement its horrific program. The fact that the Trump/Pence regime has had to leave office is of great importance and something in itself worth celebrating! Yet the reality is that, not only in relation to this election but throughout the four years of this regime’s rule and its mounting atrocities, there has not been the massive nonviolent mobilization called for by Refuse Fascism to drive out this regime—and, in the aftermath of the election, the streets were dominated by fascist mobilizations, and not by opposition to fascism. This has resulted in a situation where, despite the Trump/Pence regime’s loss in the election, the forces of fascism are still in many ways being strengthened, and the opposition to this has remained much too passive and reliant on the terms set by the Democratic Party.

The reality has to be confronted that, as expressed through the election, nearly half this country has passionately, aggressively and belligerently embraced what is represented by “Trumpism.” The unavoidable truth is that this country, the much-proclaimed “Shining City on a Hill,” is full of fascists!—in the government at all levels and in large parts of the society as a whole. And a defining characteristic of these fascists is their fanatical allegiance to demented distortions of reality, which is extremely difficult (and in many cases impossible) to penetrate with reason and fact, because these distortions serve to reinforce their sense of threatened entitlement and render long-standing prejudices and hatreds even more virulent. This fascism is deeply rooted, in the underlying dynamics of the capitalist-imperialist system that rules in this country and in the whole history of this country, from its founding in slavery and genocide. Related to this is another critical truth: Biden will fail miserably in his attempt to bring about “healing” and “unite the country.” As I have written previously:

Biden and the Democrats cannot “bring the country together,” as they falsely claim, because there can be no “reconciliation” with these fascists—whose “grievances” are based on fanatical resentment against any limitation on white supremacy, male supremacy, xenophobia (hatred of foreigners), rabid American chauvinism, and the unrestrained plundering of the environment, and are increasingly expressed in literally lunatic terms. There can be no “reconciliation” with this, other than on the terms of these fascists, with all the terrible implications and consequences of that!

There is no question that many of the policies of the Biden/Harris administration will be different than the blatant atrocities of the Trump/Pence regime, and things will definitely “feel different” with Biden and Harris, but the way they will try to “unite the country”—in line with the interests and requirements of this system of capitalism-imperialism—is something that no decent person should want, or be part of. In seeking to re-establish and reinforce “stability” at home, and to maintain the U.S. as the world’s number one oppressive power, Biden, Harris, and the Democrats (as well as other “mainstream” institutions, such as the New York Times and CNN), will make determined attempts to keep the masses of people who have righteously hated the fascism of the Trump/Pence regime, and who aspire to a more just world, firmly tied to this system—restricting their political vision, and activity, within the confines of this system, preventing them from acting in their own fundamental interests and those of humanity as a whole. And to the degree that things are maintained within the limits of this system, this will actually have the effect of furthering the horrors for humanity that are built into this system, while also reinforcing and giving further impetus to the underlying economic—and the social and political—forces that will strengthen the fascism that has already shown great strength in this country (and a number of others).

2Even as it is critically important that the voting in this election has resulted in a decisive defeat for the Trump/Pence regime and its attempts to more fully consolidate fascist rule, this must not be allowed to obscure this crucial truth: The polarization, between Democrats and Republicans, as expressed through the electoral process in this country, involves contention over how to uphold and pursue the interests of the capitalist-imperialist system and rule by the capitalist class. It does not represent the fundamental divisions in society and the world, nor the fundamental interests of the masses of people, in this country and in the world as a whole. Nor can the profound problems confronting humanity be solved—in fact, they can only get worse—within the confines of this murderously oppressive and exploitative system and the chaos and destruction it will continue to unleash on a massive scale, so long as it continues to dominate the world.

This is fact-based, scientifically-established truth. Ignoring, denying, or trying to pursue individual escape from this reality will only make things worse and hasten disaster.

The electoral defeat of the Trump/Pence regime only “buys some time”—both in relation to the imminent danger posed by the fascism this regime represents, and more fundamentally in terms of the potentially existential crisis humanity is increasingly facing as a consequence of being bound to the dynamics of this system of capitalism-imperialism. But, in essential terms, time is not on the side of the struggle for a better future for humanity. So the time there is must not be squandered—mired in oblivious individualism and political paralysis or misspent on misdirected activity that only reinforces this system which perpetuates endless horrors for the masses of humanity and has brought things to the brink of very real catastrophe.

A profoundly different polarization must be brought about, in line with the potential for a radically different and better world, representing the actual interests of the masses of people and ultimately all of humanity. A radically different approach to understanding, and acting on, the relations and problems of society must be taken up—a thoroughly and consistently scientific method and approach.

3Among many who have been outraged by the way Trump has consistently engaged in both pathological and purposeful lying, there has been a great deal of emphasis on the importance of science and truth, on facts and evidence-based reasoning. This has focused to a significant degree on the criminally anti-scientific approach that Trump and Pence have taken to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the encouragement of this anti-scientific madness among the fascist “base” in society at large—all of which has led to at least tens of thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of unnecessary deaths as well as unnecessary hardship and suffering for masses of people. This emphasis on science and the scientific method is vitally important, but it is also necessary to emphasize the real need and great importance of being consistent with this, and following scientifically-determined truth wherever it leads, in order to correctly understand reality, in every sphere of life and society.

This means fully breaking with and moving beyond an approach of merely embracing truths—or supposed truths—with which one is comfortable, while rejecting, dismissing, or evading actual truth which may make one uncomfortable. One important dimension of this is rising above and repudiating methodologically the philosophical relativism of “identity politics,” which does a great deal of harm through its own version of reducing “truth” to partial, unsystematized experience and subjective sentiment (“my truth”...“our truth”...) in opposition to real, objective truth, which is correctly, scientifically arrived at through an evidence-based process, to determine whether, or not, something (an idea, theory, assertion, etc.) corresponds to actual material reality. While politically this “identity politics” may be proceeding from a desire to oppose various forms of oppression—even if this is often characterized, and vitiated, by people of different “identities” seeking to claim “ownership” of opposition to oppression—in terms of epistemology (the approach to understanding reality and arriving at the truth of things) “identity politics” has a lot in common with the reliance on “alternative facts” (assertions that are in opposition to actual facts, often wildly so) that is the hallmark of the fascists. Even as it is important to recognize the political distinctions involved, the situation is far too serious, and the stakes far too high, to allow ourselves to fall into, or conciliate with, any form of opposing the scientific method and its pursuit of objective truth about actual reality.

To understand why we are confronted with the situation we are, it is necessary not merely to respond to—and in effect be whipped around by—what is happening on the surface at any given time, but to dig beneath the surface, to discover the underlying mainsprings and causes of things, and arrive at an understanding of the fundamental problem and the actual solution. This means coming to the scientific understanding that we are living under a system, and what that system actually is (the system of capitalism-imperialism); working to grasp the deeper relations and dynamics of this system and how this is setting the framework for how different sections of society spontaneously think and react to events in society and the world, and what is the possible way forward to transforming all of this in the interests of the masses of humanity and ultimately humanity as a whole. A crucial part of this is a scientific understanding of major changes, resulting from the very dynamics and functioning of this system, that have led to upheaval in society and have in significant ways fed this fascism: changes in the capitalist-imperialist economy and correspondingly in the social structure and “social composition” within this country, as well as internationally, which have undermined “traditional” forms of oppression without, however, leading to the ending of this oppression but establishing and enforcing it in new forms, while provoking what is truly a deranged, sadistic and often violent reaction on the part of the sectors of society who have identified their interests, and in effect their very being, with the traditional forms of oppression.

As an introduction, and overarching point, in regard to some of these important changes, it is important to emphasize that these changes, and especially those that have occurred in the last few decades, are bound up with the heightened parasitism of capitalism-imperialism in the contemporary world. As I explained in Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summary, parasitism refers to

the fact that an increasingly globalized capitalism relies to a very great degree for production and for maintaining the rate of profit on a vast network of sweatshops, particularly in the Third World of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, while capitalist activity in the capitalist‑imperialist “home countries” is increasingly in the realm of finance and financial speculation, and the “high end” of (not the production of the basic physical materials for) high tech, as well as the service sector and the commercial sphere (including the growing role of online marketing).

Since the end of World War 2 (75 years ago), the situation of Black people has dramatically changed. These changes were initially based in increased mechanization and other transformations in agricultural production, and the economy overall; they were driven by a powerful upsurge of struggle of Black people, wrenching concessions out of the ruling class in this country that was anxious to maintain its image as “the champion of democracy” and “leader of the free world,” especially in its confrontation with the Soviet Union for a number of decades after World War 2. As a result of these and other factors, Black people’s oppression is no longer centered around brutal exploitation in the rural south, in conditions of near slavery (and in some cases actual slavery) backed up by Ku Klux Klan terror, but instead involves a situation where masses of Black people are segregated and concentrated in urban areas throughout the country and subjected to systematic discrimination and continual brutality and murder by the police. Over the past several decades, due to heightened globalization and automation of production, interacting with continuing discrimination, there has been the elimination of a great deal of factory employment which provided Black men (and some women) with better-paying jobs in the urban areas. At the same time, as a result of the civil rights and Black liberation struggles of the 1960s/early ’70s, and other factors, there has been the growth of the Black middle class. But there has also been an increase of the so-called “underclass,” concentrated and contained in urban ghettos and more or less permanently locked out of regular employment in the “formal” economy.

Unable to provide a positive resolution to acute contradictions bound up with these changes—unable to end systemic racism which involves degrading discrimination against even economically better-off sections of Black people—unable to integrate large numbers of Black people into the “formal” economy—the ruling forces in society have responded to this situation with mass incarceration of millions of Black males (and growing numbers of females) with arrests, trials, convictions and sentences embodying yet more discrimination and injustice, and by unleashing and backing systematic police terror, which is especially directed against Black people in the inner cities but can target any Black person, anywhere, at any time. The attempt to brutally enforce “law and order,” given that a more just solution is impossible under this system, heightens the volatility of this whole situation, leading to further upheaval—including completely justified and righteous protest and rebellion—which, in turn, is seized on by fascist forces in promoting their grotesque white supremacist portrayal of the masses of Black people as “criminals” and “uncaged animals.”

The fact that, with all these changes, and regardless of who is occupying the seats of power, systematic discrimination and murderous oppression has persisted, has led some Black people to conclude that the Democratic Party is the problem, since it has consistently sought the support of Black people but has repeatedly acted against their interests. Even as the Republican Party has become the vehicle of overt and aggressive white supremacy, it is true that the Democrats, and not just the Republicans, have presided over the oppression of Black people. But what is the actual reason for that, and what is the real answer to it? The reality is that white supremacy is built into this system of capitalism-imperialism, and neither of these ruling class parties could put an end to this, even if they wanted to. The answer is not rallying to the fascist Republican Party, or trying to play these bourgeois parties against each other, or embracing “Black capitalism” and begging for a better “seat at the table”—all of which will only reinforce the existing system of oppression and perhaps benefit a few at the expense of the many. The answer is revolution, and establishing a radically different society that has the basis as well as the orientation to uproot and abolish white supremacy, and all oppressive relations.

There have been profound changes in the situation and social position of large numbers of women, both within this country and internationally. To cite one important dimension of this, much of the sweatshop labor in the Third World involves women, forced to work under horrific conditions. In this country, changes in the functioning and structure of the economy (as part of the increasingly globalized world economy) have led to extensive employment, and exploitation, of Black women (and other women of color), in the service and retail sectors in particular. At the same time, not only is there more opportunity for large numbers of women (especially white women, but some women of color as well) to find positions in the professions and in business, but this has also become a necessity in order for their families to maintain a “middle class way of life.” This situation where greater numbers of women are employed outside the home, including a significant increase in the number of women in better-paid middle class positions, has seriously strained and significantly undermined the “traditional” patriarchal (male-dominated) family and patriarchal relations in society overall.

All this has provided more favorable conditions for, and has been significantly influenced by, the struggle against the oppression of women, which was powerfully expressed as part of the overall radical upsurge of the 1960s and has continued in various forms since then. As I spoke to in Away With All Gods!:

Through the upsurge of the ’60s, many things were called into question—not just in the realm of ideas, although that was extremely important, but in practice, in the realm of political struggle—things that are foundational to this society. And many changes were brought about, partly as a result of mass political struggle and partly because of the changing features and needs of the economy. Once again, one of the most important dimensions of this was in relation to the role of women, particularly among professionals and other sections of the middle class, where it became both possible and necessary for women to work full time, in the effort to maintain a middle class standard of living. When you combine that with political and ideological expressions of feminism, and other movements that came forward out of the ’60s, this did pose a very direct challenge to traditionally institutionalized forms of oppression in this society.

Yet the elimination of male supremacy is impossible within the confines of this system. This is true because male supremacy has been deeply woven into the fabric of this society, and because this system is based on capitalist commodity relations and exploitation—things are produced to be exchanged (sold), through a process in which masses of people work, for a wage or salary, to create profit that is accumulated by capitalists who employ them and control their work—a system in which the patriarchal family unit remains an essential economic and social component and requirement, even as it is being put under increasing strains. And the fascist section of the ruling class has, over a number of decades now, waged a relentless attack on Constitutional rights, and mobilized their social base of religious fundamentalist fanatics, to forcefully and often violently assert “traditional” patriarchal oppression—with the assault on the right to abortion, and even birth control, a major focus of this attempt to essentially enslave women. What I wrote, 35 years ago, is today more true than ever:

Over the past several decades in the U.S. there have been profound changes in the situation of women and the relations within the family. In only one of ten families is there the “model” situation where the husband is the “sole breadwinner” and the wife a totally dependent “homemaker.” With these economic changes have come significant changes in attitudes and expectations—and very significant strains not only on the fabric of the family but of social relations more broadly.... The whole question of the position and role of women in society is more and more acutely posing itself in today’s extreme circumstances—this is a powderkeg in the U.S. today. It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms and through extremely violent means. The question yet to be determined is: will it be a radical reactionary or a radical revolutionary resolution, will it mean the reinforcing of the chains of enslavement or the shattering of the most decisive links in those chains and the opening up of the possibility of realizing the complete elimination of all forms of such enslavement.

What has gone along with all this has been an increased possibility and “space” for the assertion of gender “identity” and relations that run counter to the traditional oppressive gender relations—and, once again, there has been the often violent attempt to reassert and reinforce the traditional relations and to suppress anything that does not conform to this.

Religion, and especially religious fundamentalism, is a powerful factor promoting and reinforcing the patriarchal subordination of women, as well as other “traditional” forms of oppression. Here is an important insight by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, who grew up in a town in Iowa that was filled with white Christian fundamentalists (which she refers to as “white evangelicals”) who are the backbone of present-day American fascism. In her book Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, she writes:

White evangelicals have pieced together this patchwork of issues, and a nostalgic commitment to rugged, aggressive, militant white masculinity serves as the thread binding them together into a coherent whole. A father’s rule in the home is inextricably linked to heroic leadership on the national stage, and the fate of the nation hinges on both. [emphasis added here]

Given the tight connection between militant patriarchy and fascism, it is not surprising that some (though clearly a minority of) Black and Latino men have been drawn to support for Trump, despite his overt white supremacy. (This includes some who are or have been prominent in rap music. While there have been positive forces and elements in rap and Hip Hop overall, what has been increasingly promoted is a culture that is full of, not to say dominated by, misogynistic degradation of women, as well as admiration for the kind of hustler gangsterism that is one of Trump’s defining “qualities.”) It is also not surprising that even significant numbers of women (mainly white women but also some Latina and other women of color) have been drawn to this fascism, as the phenomenon of the oppressed clinging to “tradition’s chains” that oppress them is unfortunately all too common. (Think of the mothers in the fatherland, written about by Claudia Koonz in her book with that title—women who actively worked for the aggressively male supremacist Hitler and the NAZIs in Germany during the rise of fascism there in the 1930s. Or listen to the words today of Black female fascist Candace Owens, who has praised Hitler for his efforts to “make Germany great”: “There is no society that can survive without strong men.... In the west, the steady feminization of our men at the same time that Marxism is being taught to our children is not a coincidence. It is an outright attack. Bring back manly men.” Of course, for fascists like Owens “strong” and “manly” men are those who embody and enforce traditional gender relations, exercising domination over women who submit to this domination—and men who do not conform to traditional gender roles and relations, men who support equality between men and women are somehow “weak,” “effeminate,” “emasculated.”) And for white women who are part of this fascist phenomenon, in which virulent male supremacy is a defining and cohering element, there is also the fact that these women can join in with the white supremacy which, particularly in a country like the U.S., is also a defining and decisive element of this fascism and is closely intertwined with the virulent male supremacy—as reflected in Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s formulation: aggressive, militant white masculinity.

As a result of the intensifying climate crisis, war and repression—and, as a driving force in all this, major changes in the capitalist-imperialist dominated world economy, including the further growth and increased impact internationally of corporate agribusiness and labor-displacing technology, increasingly monopolized control of seeds and chemicals, greater monopolization of marketing, and vast land-grabbing investments—there is massive dislocation and upheaval, particularly affecting people in the global South (the countries of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia—the Third World). An important feature of all this is mass urbanization: more than half of the world’s population now lives in urban areas, with huge shantytown slums, involving more than a billion people, in the urban areas of the Third World, even as tens of millions of people from the Third World have been forced to migrate to the U.S. and countries in Europe. And the situation has developed where, in some of these countries—with the U.S. a prime example—the economy could not function without the exploitation of large numbers of immigrants, while many are subjected to the constant threat of deportation, which also makes them even more vulnerable to extreme exploitation.

The ruin of much of traditional small-scale farming in Third World countries and the dramatic increase of an urban population there (as well as in the U.S. and some other imperialist countries) which in large numbers is unable to find work within the “formal economy”—this has also fostered the growth of an illegal economy and of gangs (and, particularly in Third World countries, cartels) based on this illegal economy, in particular the drug trade, but also the trafficking of human beings, especially women and girls viciously victimized in prostitution, the “sex industry,” and literal sexual slavery.

This dramatically changed and often highly volatile situation has also been a major factor in the rise of religious fundamentalism, in the Third World and notably in the U.S., where Christian fundamentalism is a powerful negative social and political force. Interconnected and interacting with these economic and related social changes in a way that has contributed to the increased influence of religious fundamentalism, particularly in the Third World, has been the defeat, or abandonment, of movements in the Third World led by communists or revolutionary nationalists against old-line colonialists and neo-colonial oppressors, above all the U.S., in the period after World War 2—with the greatest setback being the reversal of socialism and the restoration of capitalism in China in the 1970s, which transformed China from a powerful socialist country and a beacon and bastion of support for revolutionary struggle throughout the world, into a rising imperialist power and itself an exploiter of masses of people in Africa and other parts of the Third World.

The rise of religious fundamentalism has occurred together with, and in opposition to, the increase of secularism (people who are not religious, or at least not part of traditional religions), especially among the more educated urban populations. This secularism is not in itself conceived or intended as an attack on people who continue to hold religious beliefs, but it does objectively undermine religion—and it is taken as an attack “on everything holy” by religious fundamentalists who refuse to even attempt to reconcile religious belief with the results of scientific inquiry, as strongly reflected in their irrational attack on the solidly established scientific fact of evolution.

What is essentially involved in this division is the acceptance, or the denial and rejection, of evidence-based rational thought, including the importance of critical thinking, that has, in a broad sense, been the extension of the Enlightenment, which arose in Europe (in particular France) several centuries ago. In that time, and since, the advance of science and important discoveries this has brought forward have given impetus to the questioning of religion in a way that was not really possible before, since many of these scientific discoveries clearly contradict long-entrenched religious scripture and dogma, and the scientific method rejects the recognition of things as “real” if concrete evidence for their existence cannot be shown, in the real material world. And, as emphasized by Ardea Skybreak, author of the very important book The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: Knowing What’s Real and Why It Matters, science provides plenty of evidence that human beings have invented every religion that exists anywhere in the world. (In a book consisting of an interview with Skybreak, Science and Revolution, she also emphasizes that, although at times “bad science” has been used for very negative purposes, including to promote racism, the actual scientific method itself provides the means for refuting this: “you can use rigorous scientific methods to prove that was all bad science.”)

It is true that science itself cannot put an end to religious belief, as shown by the fact that there are large numbers of religious people who consider themselves advocates of enlightenment and accept the discoveries and conclusions of science (up to a point at least) but insist that there is a realm of existence—involving a supernatural being, or beings—which is beyond the scope of science. And it is a fact that in general the representatives of the ruling class in this country, whether they are “liberal” or “conservative”—and whether they themselves personally believe in god or not—definitely regard religion as a crucial part of maintaining the “social cohesion” of the country on a capitalist basis, and work to promote religion, in particular Christianity, in one form or another. (They are all essentially practitioners of the statement attributed to Napoleon: society is impossible without inequality; inequality is impossible to maintain without a morality to justify it; and such a morality is impossible without religion.) Nevertheless (to paraphrase an important statement by the physicist Steven Weinberg), although science itself does not eliminate religious belief, it does provide a basis for people not to believe in god and to reject religion. This is in conflict with those who believe religion is necessary for an orderly and “moral” society, and all the more so with those who insist on a religious fundamentalism that is wildly out of keeping with reality and with a rational approach to reality.

Yet, while it is true that, in order to win their full emancipation, the masses of people in the world will ultimately need to cast off religious belief in general, it is important to emphasize that, in the world today, the polarization does not simply come down to those who have rejected religion in the name of enlightenment vs. those who cling to religious belief. An important polarization now is that between what can rightly be called decent people (including large numbers of religious people) who are opposed to injustice, and on the other hand those who are determined to revive and enforce traditional forms of oppression. In regard to all this, one of the important questions is whether people come to embrace, or reject, two distinguishing qualities: largeness of mind and generosity of spirit.

4All this provides an important foundation and “backdrop” for understanding what happened in the recent election, why, and what are the implications of this, now and in terms of the future. The following, from a November 9, 2020 article by Leonard Pitts Jr (“The election of 2020 has ended at last, but the celebration has caveats”) contains some important insights. The result of this election, he writes, “strips bare all the glossy claims about who we are as a country, underscoring the fact that in a meaningful sense, we are not one country at all anymore, but two sharing the same borders.” He continues:

The last time that happened [with the Civil War], it took four years and 750,000 lives to force us back into some semblance of oneness. Even then, the seams of the fracture were always visible.

Unlike that break, this one is not starkly geographic: South versus North. No, this one is city versus country, college educated versus high school educated and, most significantly, future versus past. Meaning that yesterday, this was a nation where white people were the majority, and tomorrow it will be one where they are not.

Although Pitts is correct that the division today is more rural vs. urban than strictly South vs. North, it is the case that the old (and new) Confederacy—and in particular rural white southerners—remain the anchor for an ill-founded and ill-intended attempt to restore the past (in the name of “Making America Great Again”). As I pointed out in the 2017 talk The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go!:

There is a direct line from the Confederacy to the fascists of today, and a direct connection between their white supremacy, their open disgust and hatred for LGBT people as well as women, their willful rejection of science and the scientific method, their raw “America First” jingoism and trumpeting of “the superiority of western civilization” and their bellicose wielding of military power, including their expressed willingness and blatant threats to use nuclear weapons, to destroy countries.

At the same time, the divide, and the clash, between the past and the future goes deeper than demographic changes and the prospect of a majority non-white U.S. population. The forces fighting for the past are aiming to reverse, with a vengeance, even the modest concessions that have been made to the fight against social injustice and institutionalized inequality and oppression, and to enforce a form of capitalist dictatorship that is overt and unrestrained by the Constitution and the rule of law (or which turns the Constitution and the rule of law into merely instruments of fascist tyranny and atrocity).

As I put it in my August 1 Statement, fascism is “open and aggressive dictatorship, trampling on and perverting the rule of law, relying on violence and terror, on behalf of the predatory capitalist system and as an extreme attempt to deal with profound social division and acute crises (both within the country and in the global arena).” While this might hold things together, in an extremely negative way, for a certain period, in the final analysis this cannot succeed—cannot indefinitely preserve this system of capitalism-imperialism, and cannot lead to any future but one of horrors for humanity, if indeed we have a future at all. And the supposed “alternative,” as represented for example by the Democratic Party in the U.S., involving a “more democratic” means of exercising the rule of this system, will also continue to embody and enforce terrible and completely unnecessary suffering for the masses of humanity and pose an existential threat to humanity as a whole, even if not always through the same brute and unmitigated juggernaut of horrors as the fascist form of capitalist dictatorship.

What was expressed through this recent election—what, in fact, is expressed through all elections under this system—is not “democracy” and “the will of the people” in some abstract sense but specifically a choice that is made between different representatives of this system of capitalism-imperialism, which is the only “realistic” choice that is, or can be, offered under this system. In this particular, extraordinary situation, that choice—between fascist and bourgeois democratic capitalist rule—actually made a real difference, to the point where it was right to support one side, the Democrats, in order to deliver a defeat to the attempt to more fully consolidate fascism. But that does not change the fact that this was a vote on the terms of the very system that has produced this fascism and will continue to provide fertile soil for this fascism at the same time as it continues to generate horror after horror for humanity—horrors that are hidden only from those who do not, or will not, look. The “liberal” (or “mainstream”) version of this system’s rule involves the enforcement of the exploitation and oppression of masses of people in this country and throughout the world (including the more than 150 million children in the Third World who are cruelly super-exploited in sweatshops and mines). Enforcing all this, and defeating attempts by rivals to gain a larger share of this plunder and to replace the USA as the world’s dominant power—that is what “liberal” (and other) representatives of this system mean when they speak of the “national interests” of this country. And this is the foundation for the “progressive” approach of allowing for some more “diversity” and “inclusiveness” for previously excluded sections of this society, and the promotion of certain aspects of science, on the basis of and especially for the purposes of this international plunder, of people as well as the environment.

5To emphasize this crucial point once again: It is necessary to confront the fundamental reality that there is no future worth living for the masses of people and ultimately for humanity as a whole under this system—which has given rise to a powerful fascism; which is the source of horrendous, and unnecessary suffering, not only for masses of people in this country but for billions of people throughout the world; and which poses a growing threat to the very existence of humanity, through its massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons as well as its accelerating destruction of the environment. It is true—an important truth—that the Trump/Pence regime (and others like it, for example the rule of Bolsonaro in Brazil) has made the environmental crisis far worse—has, so to speak, accelerated the acceleration of environmental destruction. But the dynamics and requirements of this system are driving the climate crisis toward the point of no return, regardless of which particular person or regime is acting as its dominant political representative. Capitalism is often extolled for being a “dynamic” system, constantly bringing about changes. But this is a “dynamism” based on exploitation for privately-accumulated profit, and driven by anarchy (and anarchic competition between capitalists), and that very anarchy is rapidly propelling things toward an existential threshold—past which humanity could well be irreversibly hurtled—if this system of capitalism, in its imperialist globalized expression, continues to dominate the world.

Given how much the fascist social base in this country has been conditioned to falsely and ridiculously identify the Democrats (even “centrist” Democrats like Biden) as “radical socialists” (or even “communists”) and to viscerally hate them on that basis—largely because of the Democrats’ limited concessions to the struggle against racial and gender oppression, to the need to address the climate crisis, and to a reckoning with the real history of this country—it is highly ironic that it is only a powerful movement aiming for actual socialism, as a radically new and emancipating society and the transition to the fundamental goal of communism on a global scale, that could create the basis for significant numbers of those, and in particular youth, who have been caught up in this fascism to break with that and become part of the struggle aiming for a positive resolution of the contradictions that this system of capitalism-imperialism continually intensifies. (As any rational person can readily determine, the relatively small number of “democratic socialists” who are part of the Democratic Party are in no way “radical socialists”—or really socialists at all—but are social-democrats who are aiming not for the abolition of the capitalist system and its replacement by a socialist system, but for reforms within the capitalist system which would not change, or significantly affect, its basic nature and functioning.)

The fact is that there is no bringing back (or newly bringing into being) an idealized way of life that supposedly existed in the late 19th century and the first part of the 20th century in this country, no return to an imagined idyllic America, characterized by “traditional values” which somehow fairly rewarded “virtues” such as hard work, and where people occupied the place in society they deserved (or were intended by god to occupy)—something which has really existed only in the minds of those who seek an illusory “restoration” of this, and who have been conditioned to irrationally hate everyone and everything that has supposedly destroyed it. And there is no bringing back the situation that existed for several decades after World War 2 where large numbers of people (especially, though not only, white men) without a college education could have jobs in major industries like auto and steel at a wage that made possible a “middle class standard of living.” That there is no basis for this is true not because of conspiracies by “satanic liberals who drink the blood of trafficked children” but, once again, because of the workings of this system of capitalism-imperialism, which have led this world to be shaped as it is, and to be heading for the environmental disaster it is rapidly bringing into being, if it does not first extinguish humanity through nuclear war unleashed by the powerful possessors of massive nuclear arsenals.

And no one should want to go back to the actual past: to a world marked by massive poverty and disease, even beyond the terrible toll this takes today, especially in the Third World; with the horrendous destruction and suffering brought about through two world wars in the 20th century, in which tens of millions of people were slaughtered, and atomic bomb attacks were unleashed by the U.S. on two Japanese cities at the end of the second world war, immediately incinerating hundreds of thousands of Japanese people and ushering in the “nuclear age”; with the USA marked by open, institutionalized segregation, discrimination and “second class” status for people of color and women, and a brutally suppressed existence for LGBT people, and Black people in particular subjected to continual terror, marked by repeated lynchings and other depraved acts accompanying them. The future lies not with the (real or imagined) past but in going forward, to an actual socialist society, and ultimately a communist world, where the fundamental orientation and practical policy are geared to meeting the material, intellectual and cultural needs of the people, while giving increasing scope to individual initiative, on the basis of and within the framework of the collective and cooperative foundation and ethos of society, where age-old economic and social relations of exploitation, inequality and oppression are surpassed, and no longer does the well-being of some rest on the misery of others.

It should be clear that the present polarization and the profound problems that must be faced cannot be solved by trying to “adjust” things within the confines of this system. The example of the “Occupy” movement of the last decade is another illustration of this. This attempt to in effect repolarize the 99 percent against the 1 percent of super-rich failed, in significant part because social relations (such as the oppressive relations between different “races” and genders), and not just economic relations, are powerful material forces, and a good part of that “99 percent” is determined to maintain those unequal and oppressive social relations from which they benefit (or strongly believe they benefit), especially in this capitalist society which sets people against each other in often ruthless competition.

It is only on the foundation of a radically different economic system—a socialist economic system (mode of production), where society’s productive resources are collectivized, marshaled and utilized, in a planned way, to meet the material, intellectual and cultural needs of the people, on a continually expanding basis—that there can be a favorable basis for uprooting and transforming social relations that embody oppression, and the ways of thinking that go along with and reinforce that oppression, moving beyond the situation where (as Lenin so aptly put it) people are not merely encouraged but are compelled to calculate, with the stinginess of a miser, what their position is in relation to others.

6All this strongly points, once again, to the need not simply to “face reality” but to consistently apply the principle that science matters and truth matters, and therefore to seriously engage the scientific analysis (which I have outlined here) of the problem facing humanity, and the solution: where the world is heading now, under the domination of this system, and the radically different direction it needs to, and can, take. It calls for a willingness to apply this same approach—that science and scientifically-determined truth matter—to communism and the historical experience of the communist movement, and in particular to the new communism which has resulted from decades of work I have carried out. This new communism is a continuation of, but also represents a qualitative leap beyond, and in some important ways a break with, communist theory as it had been previously developed. Unlike those who slander and condemn, or simply ignore, communism and the historical experience of the communist movement, I myself have done, and have led others in doing, extensive, serious scientific, study—investigation and analysis—of the history of the communist movement and the socialist societies it has brought into being (as well as countries that have called themselves “socialist” but in fact are not, such as Cuba since 1959, Venezuela in recent decades, and the Soviet Union and countries of Eastern Europe, where capitalism was restored and has reigned for more than 60 years, well before they became openly capitalist countries a few decades ago). This scientific approach has led to the conclusion that with the actual socialist societies that have been brought into being, with the leadership of communists, first in the Soviet Union and then in China (before capitalism was restored in the former in the 1950s and in the latter after the death of Mao in 1976), this experience of socialism has been mainly—and in the case of China overwhelmingly—positive, while secondarily there have also been significant, in some cases serious or even grievous, errors.

Drawing from this historical experience of the communist movement and a broad range of human endeavor, the new communism, as its defining method and approach, emphasizes the critical importance of science and applying the scientific method to everything—to society as well as nature. It firmly rejects any approaches that amount to applying and justifying the bankrupt and extremely harmful notion that “the ends justify the means,” and that “truth” is just an “instrument” of desired objectives, rather than what it actually is: a correct reflection of objective reality.

It is this same method and approach that has been applied to continually deepen the understanding of the nature and functioning of the system of capitalism-imperialism that continues at this point to dominate the world, with terrible consequences and implications for humanity and its future. And this work is continuing as an important part of developing the revolutionary movement that is needed in order to finally abolish this system and bring a radically different and much better world into being. While much remains to be done and many challenges remain to be met, a scientific analysis and synthesis of fundamental questions relating to the situation facing humanity and the possibility of human emancipation can be found—in both more concentrated and popular forms and in works of considerable depth—in talks and writings of mine and other materials that are available at revcom.us. And a sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for a radically different and emancipating society, on the road to the final goal of a communist world, is set forth in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have authored.

It is a fact that, nowhere else, in any actual or proposed founding or guiding document of any government, is there anything like not only the protection but the provision for dissent and intellectual and cultural ferment that is embodied in this Constitution, while this has, as its solid core, a grounding in the socialist transformation of the economy, with the goal of abolishing all exploitation, and the corresponding transformation of the social relations and political institutions, to uproot all oppression, and the promotion, through the educational system and in society as a whole, of an approach that will “enable people to pursue the truth wherever it leads, with a spirit of critical thinking and scientific curiosity, and in this way to continually learn about the world and be better able to contribute to changing it in accordance with the fundamental interests of humanity.” All this will unchain and unleash a tremendous productive and social force of human beings enabled and inspired to work and struggle together to meet the fundamental needs of the people—transforming society in a fundamental way and supporting and aiding revolutionary struggle throughout the world—aiming for the final goal of a communist world, free from all exploitation and oppression, while at the same time addressing the truly existential environmental and ecological crisis, in a meaningful and comprehensive way, which is impossible under the system of capitalism-imperialism.

Far too many have rejected this—or, more often, failed or refused to even seriously engage it—because of ignorance and prejudice which have their ultimate source in the distortion relentlessly propagated by guardians of the present order, and which serve to reinforce this highly oppressive order. Here, it has to be said (and can be readily demonstrated) that the “liberal” bourgeois attack on communism is, in its own way, as ludicrous and outrageous—crudely in violation of the scientific method and blatantly in opposition to the actual facts—as the fascist mangling of truth which the “liberals” are forever decrying. This does great harm to humanity: Refusing to apply, and acting in opposition to, an honest, scientific approach to communism, the actual history of the communist movement, and the development of the new communism contributes to closing off the only real alternative to this truly monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism—the only viable alternative that represents the fundamental interests and a future worth living for the masses of humanity and ultimately humanity as a whole.

The road to a better world is not, and will not be, an easy one—this cannot be accomplished without determined struggle and, yes, great sacrifice. But continuing on the current course, under the domination of this system of capitalism-imperialism, means a continuation of the horrors already being perpetrated in the world today, the far worse horrors that are immediately threatening, and the very real existential danger that is increasingly looming.

In the face of the fascist juggernaut that is still threatening and gaining strength, large numbers of us who are deeply sickened and outraged by this, and who aspire to something much better, have raised and rallied to the call that science and truth matter and must be our guide. Let us now be brave enough, and bold enough, to apply this in an unhindered way, determined to seek the truth and follow the truth wherever it leads, overcoming all obstacles to this, including any cherished illusions and ingrained prejudices that run counter to reality and scientifically-established truth. Let us dare to act to make a reality of what science reveals as possible: a radically different and far better world and future for humanity.

 

Download PDF of this statement (English):    Booklet    |    8.5x11 sheets


In Spanish:

Download PDF in Farsi:

(This translation reposted from the website cpimlm.org)

 

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/716/bob-avakian-on-anarchism-and-anarchists-en.html

BOB AVAKIAN ON ANARCHISM AND ANARCHISTS—

Some Good Intentions, but No Fundamental Solution, and Some Big Problems

| revcom.us

 

In these times, some anarchists have distinguished themselves in standing up against fascist thugs. Some are serious about seeking to change society in a positive direction. And some do act in a principled way in their relations with others seeking such change. But the truth is that anarchism cannot lead to bringing into being a radically new society that is on the road to eliminating exploitation and oppression and dealing with the increasingly existential environmental and ecological crisis. This is something that can be, and is, readily demonstrated in scientifically analyzing the nature of the beast we are up against—the system of capitalism-imperialism that now dominates the world—what is actually required to uproot and eliminate the relations of exploitation and oppression that are embodied in and enforced by this system, and how any anarchist program will utterly fail to achieve this.

It is worth repeating here these fundamental truths:

There is no possibility of putting an end to the continuing horrors caused by the system we are now forced to live under, the system of capitalism-imperialism, without a revolution—a real revolution to overthrow this system. Such a revolution is an extremely complicated and difficult process. There is no possibility of making this revolution without leadership. Not just any kind of leadership, but leadership that is based on the most consistently scientific method and approach....

You cannot bring a radically different and emancipating society into being, moving to abolish all oppression and exploitation, without breaking the capitalists’ violent hold over society (the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie) and establishing a radically different socialist form of rule (the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat). And only with this socialist system can you give the most powerful support to the revolutionary struggle throughout the world.*

Anarchists refuse to recognize, and actively oppose, these fundamental truths.

This relates to an additional problem with anarchists more broadly: the general and widespread tendency among anarchists to be opposed to authority of any kind, regardless of the nature, content, purpose and role of any particular authority. This is completely unscientific. Among other things, it is an expression of extreme individualism that often assumes irrational dimensions which, despite the passionate opposition to fascism among anarchists, actually shares much in common with fascists. It is not at all a stretch to say that, in the case of many anarchists, their basic orientation could be captured in the slogan, popular among fascists: “Don’t Tread On Me!”

It is right to unite with anarchists, where possible, in the fight against fascism, and more generally against outrages and injustices constantly perpetrated by this system of capitalism-imperialism; and, as a general point of orientation, it is important to engage in principled discussion and debate over what is the problem that we are up against, and what is the solution to this, including with anarchists who are willing to engage in such principled discussion and debate.

But it is necessary to firmly oppose the far too many instances where anarchists, rather than seeking to achieve unity where unity should be possible, and to engage in principled ideological struggle over the problem and the solution, instead act in an antagonistic manner toward those who are working to bring about the fundamental transformation of society that is so urgently needed—and specifically those of us who are working to build an organized revolutionary force, of thousands and ultimately millions, based on and led by the new communism as the scientific approach to the overthrow of this system of capitalism-imperialism and its replacement by a socialist society on the road to the final goal of a communist world.

 


* Questions That Come Up... And Answers: On Revolution And The Need For The Scientific Leadership Of Bob Avakian. On Dictatorship, The Need For Revolution, And What Comes Next. This article is available at revcom.us (emphasis in the original).  [back]

See:

Questions That Come Up... And Answers: On Revolution And The Need For The Scientific Leadership Of Bob Avakian. On Dictatorship, The Need For Revolution, And What Comes Next

Read more

 

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So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/705/bob-avakian-answers-accusations-of-cult-en.html

Bob Avakian Answers
Accusations of "Cult":

IGNORANCE, AND COWARDICE

| revcom.us

 

In my writings and talks, I have repeatedly emphasized the importance of seeking the truth by scientific means, and following the truth wherever it leads—applying the scientific method to continually learn about reality, from many different sources, including people who disagree with what we are all about—in order to transform reality in a positive way, in the interests of humanity.

We revcoms are always anxious to learn about any real problems or shortcomings in what we are doing, so that we can do even better in working for the revolution that is so urgently needed. We are strongly in favor of serious discussion, debate and principled struggle over ideas (ideological struggle), especially about the profound problems and critical situation that people here, and all over the world, are facing, and what is the answer to this. There is far too little of this, and we are actively working to overcome that—to promote serious discussion, debate and principled ideological struggle about these crucial questions.

But the accusation that we are a “cult” has nothing to do with reality, is not in any way an expression of principled disagreement, and does not make any kind of positive contribution to serious discussion and debate over crucial questions.

In some cases this accusation comes partly from ignorance—not knowing what we are actually about. But if you don’t know about this, you should find out about it, and not just listen to—and repeat—ignorant nonsense about it. And, on the part of far too many, there is deliberate ignore-anceconsciously avoiding knowledge of what we are actually saying and doing, while spreading rumors and lies about this. Anyone who really wants to know what we stand for, and are working for, can easily find out, by watching The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show and going to revcom.us, where works of mine and other materials make very clear what we are actually saying and doing: We are applying—and continually working and struggling to win growing numbers of people to take up and apply—a scientific (not a “cultish”) method and approach, in building for an actual revolution to sweep away this oppressive and destructive system of capitalism-imperialism, which causes so much horrendous and unnecessary suffering, not just for masses of people in this country but for the masses of humanity worldwide, and which poses a growing threat to the very existence of humanity.

But there is also cowardice on the part of some who make this ridiculous accusation of “cult”: It is a way of saying you don’t have the heart to fight for something really worth fighting for, a way of looking for (or inventing) “faults” in what we are about, so that you don’t have to put yourself on the line to do something that would really deal with the terrible situation that so many people are subjected to and the profound crisis that humanity is facing and needs to radically transform. It is a way of avoiding the work, the struggle—and, yes, the sacrifice—that is required to actually have a chance, at long last, to bring down this atrocious system and contribute in this way to the goal of ending all oppression, exploitation, degradation and the destruction of the environment—emancipating humanity from all this.

And it should be obvious who most benefits from this cheap talk of “cult.” It is the powers-that-be—those who rule in this system, who inflict so much suffering on the masses of people, everywhere, with such terrible cruelty and brutal savagery. They are determined to keep on doing this, and they are very happy to see slanders and lies spread about the people who are serious about putting an end to all this and are actively working to do that.

As I said at the beginning, we revcoms are determined to continue learning more, in order to do even better in meeting the tremendous challenge we are facing—building for, and organizing forces for, a real revolution. And we are working to promote serious discussion, debate and principled ideological struggle about the profound problems and critical situation that people here, and all over the world, are facing, and what is the answer to this.

Everyone who does not wish to remain mired in ignorance regarding such crucial questions, and who refuses to sink to the petty, gutter level of accusations of “cult,” should seriously engage what we are saying and doing and take part in the crucial process of grappling with what is really required to deal with the situation with which humanity is now urgently confronted.

 

 

 

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The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/705/bob-avakian-revolution-and-emancipation-not-petty-reform-and-revenge-en.html

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

by Bob Avakian

| revcom.us

 

The Ends Must Determine the Means, Not the Ends “Justify” the Means

Movements—in the social and political sense—involve people acting together for certain objectives. Positive social and political movements mobilize masses of people in struggle against oppressive and murderous policies and actions of their government and oppressive social relations (such as white supremacy and male supremacy) and the institutions and culture that embody, promote, and enforce them. For example, in recent years, there have been powerful movements against institutional racism and police terror, in this country and all around the world. And, in many countries, there have been mass outpourings against sexual abuse and other horrific oppression and degradation of women, including attacks on the right to abortion.

Several years ago, when the long-standing predatory sexual behavior of Harvey Weinstein was being forcefully exposed, and could not be denied, I wrote the following:

The phenomenon of sexual harassment and sexual assault—including (but not limited to) the sexual abuse of women by men who hold positions of power over them—is long‑standing and widespread throughout this male supremacist society and is reinforced by the putrid culture it has spawned. The outpouring of outrage against this sexual abuse and the all too commonplace institutional cover‑ups and complicity with it, and the demand for a radical change in the culture—which has made a major leap in relation to the accusations against Harvey Weinstein and has now spread far beyond that, involving millions of women, in sphere after sphere throughout this country and in other countries as well—is right, righteous, and long overdue, and should be supported, encouraged, spread, and defended against counter‑attack.1

At the same time:

This long‑suppressed and thoroughly just outpouring of outrage is not the same as any particular accusation. Such particular accusations do have to be approached on the basis of scientifically evaluating the evidence, and this is especially important where the accusations not only allege misconduct but actual criminal action, such as rape or other sexual assault. But this distinction, between particular accusations and the overall phenomenon, should not be allowed to obscure or diminish the righteousness and importance of the massive upsurge against this widespread and deeply‑rooted abuse and the tremendous injury it does to women and to humanity as a whole.2

Unfortunately, however, as things have developed, particularly in this country, the righteous rage that has been unleashed around this has not mainly taken the form of a movement mobilizing masses of people in struggle against the horrific oppression of women and the institutions and culture that embody, promote, and enforce this. (As one striking aspect of this, while there is an urgent need for mass mobilization taking to the streets in powerful resistance against the mounting attacks on the right to abortion, there has been a marked absence of such mass resistance.) Instead, with “me too,” what this has involved (or devolved into) is not so much a “movement,” but a continuing succession of accusations, directed mainly against individuals, where the goal often is (or becomes) “canceling” the person (or persons) accused, without any kind of scientific evaluation of the evidence.

The issues that have given rise to “me too” are clearly of great importance, and many of the accusations made in this connection are no doubt true. And, as an important article at revcom.us has emphasized:

It is a very real phenomenon, and an egregious outrage, that many women who are raped and sexually assaulted are then intimidated, or otherwise prevented, from coming forward or from pursuing this. And this needs to be resolutely opposed and fought against.3

But again,

as outrageous as this is, as much as it is an additional assault on these women and on women overall, that is not the same thing as saying, and should not lead to an approach that says, that every accusation of rape or sexual assault is automatically (or almost certainly) true—nor even that if there are many people making similar accusations, then those accusations are therefore true (there have been more than a few instances where multiple accusations against a person have proven to be false). What is true has to be determined by a scientific approach, relying on evidence and the correct analysis and synthesis of what the evidence as a whole indicates. Accusations are a kind of evidence—as are denials of those accusations—but in and of themselves they do not constitute a sufficient basis to draw definite conclusions.4

So what is the answer to this? The best and most just way to deal with this, particularly while we are still living under this system, is to build mass struggle to

create the kind of atmosphere in society overall and in different institutions and parts of society, that make it much more difficult for rape and sexual assault to be carried out, and that encourage and support women in resisting this and in coming forward to raise this and seek justice when it does happen, while at the same time insisting on a consistent approach of proceeding in relation to accusations of rape and sexual assault, and accusations of crimes and wrongdoing in general, through a process that relies on a scientific method and approach and where the kind of "trial by media" and "media tyranny" that is so commonplace these days, and the very poisonous atmosphere this creates and reinforces, will be firmly rejected and denounced.5

Continuing exposure of and mass opposition to such outrages as gender and racial oppression is very much needed and extremely important, but the “cancel culture” that often accompanies this is a decidedly negative counter-current, which is generally an expression of petty bourgeois narrowness and cynicism,

which is marked by (real, or artificial and fashionable) outrage at instances of social injustice but at the same time by a dismissal or outright rejection of any real attempt at bringing a truly just society into being, and which is often molded and manipulated by ruling bourgeois forces—and is carried to fanatical extremes, unmoored from and in opposition to a rational, scientific method and approach. And this is made all the worse by the powerful influence of the extreme individualism that is promoted throughout this society, with its poisonous component of constantly seeking to “tear down” others (which has become a perverse “national sport”).6

And here we see the basic problem that I pointed to, in speaking about “cancel culture” in Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds”:

among other things, “cancel culture,” in primarily targeting individuals, is an approach that tends to ignore, downplay and fail to really fight against the institutions and the whole system which constitute the deeper root and source of these outrages. Rarely, if ever, does this approach aim at “canceling” the whole system!7

Further, this “canceling” of people

is often amplified through “trial in the media and social media,” with neither any prospect nor even any pretense of due process or any real attempt to get at the truth, fueled by the dangerous notion that a mere allegation is enough to condemn someone and make them a permanent pariah, and marked by a refusal to apply any measure of proportionality, to make any distinctions between different kinds and degrees of wrongdoing.8

It is true that individuals raising incidents of sexual or other abuse can encourage others to do so, and this can lead to a situation where “the dam breaks” and the whole larger social phenomenon of such abuse forces its way into public consciousness, where before it had been effectively, or largely, suppressed. This could contribute to a real outpouring of mass struggle against such abuse. But, again, that does not mean that it is justified, or will lead to a positive result, to trample on basic principles and methods in the approach to particular accusations of abuse, even if this is done in the name of the larger social good. And focusing on individuals as an overall approach—especially with revenge all too often becoming the aim, and crucial principles and methods violatedcan only lead away from the actual solution.

What is needed are mass movements that mainly focus and direct the struggle against “the institutions and the whole system which constitute the deeper root and source” of the outrages. There is great importance to uniting all who can be united in these struggles, and overall in the struggle against injustice and oppression. Principled ideological struggle, over what are the deeper causes of the outrages being fought against, and what direction the struggle against this should take—this is necessary and important. But this is far different from, and directly in opposition to, petty narrowness and sectarianism—including “woke commodification” of the struggle, with notions of “ownership” of a movement, and the division of those who should be united in the struggle into “commodity” categories: those who have the supposed right to “own” a movement and decide its direction, and those who, on the other hand, are reduced to subordinate “allies” of these “owners.” (It is remarkable how much the terms of capitalist commodity relations and “business” have saturated the “popular culture,” with expressions about “owning” this or that strikingly commonplace; and this way of thinking also has significant influence in “woke” culture and movements claiming to be opposing oppression.) This narrow approach does not seek to break out of the oppressive and suffocating confines of this system of capitalism-imperialism, but strives instead for a “better place” within this system, which causes so much horrendous, and unnecessary, suffering for the masses of humanity.

It is also striking that so many “woke” people do not expose and condemn the fact that the country they are living in (the “good ole USA”) has, over nearly a century, been the most powerful imperialist oppressor in the world, and the greatest destroyer of the environment, doing the greatest harm to humanity. How much, in all the “woke” talk about “privilege,” is there a denouncing and renouncing of American privilege—of American supremacy and American chauvinism? How much a clear-cut stand that American imperialism should be firmly opposed in its attempt to maintain its position as number one oppressor, worldwide, and that the masses of people in this country have no interests and no stake in American imperialism’s rivalry with China, itself a rising capitalist-imperialist power? How much a reckoning with the fact that people in this country share—even though quite unequally—in the “spoils” that come from American imperialism’s plunder of the world’s people, including masses of children? How much an orientation and declaration that it would be far better to do without these “spoils”—by doing away with American imperialism and struggling together with people all over the world to be rid of all imperialism, and all relations of exploitation and oppression, all plunder of people as well as the environment?

Not very much.

In opposition to concepts of “ownership,” in regard to mass movements, while due weight needs to be given to the whole history and present reality of horrific oppression, and the experience of people directly subjected to such oppression, if the goal is actually to abolish and uproot oppression, the standard against which anyone’s (or any group’s) ideas and proposals need to be evaluated is: objective reality—and specifically what is the nature of the particular problem (or form of oppression) people are up against, what is the source and cause of this, how does this relate to the fundamental problem (the whole system), and how to correctly handle the relation between the more particular and the fundamental, in order to move toward achieving the actual solution. (And, no, objective reality is not a white supremacist or male supremacist “construct”—it is...objective reality.)

In this regard,

it is very relevant to refer to a statement by Lenin who said that all those who approach revolution with the orientation, “They had their chance, now it’s my turn to have a go at it”—all those who approach revolution in that way do so from the point of view of the petite bourgeoisie. And it hardly needs saying that the approach of the petite bourgeoisie is not going to lead to the achievement of the “4 Alls” and the emancipation of humanity.9

(The “4 Alls” refers to the statement by Marx that the communist revolution aims for the abolition of all class distinctions, all the production relations on which those class distinctions rest, all the social relations that correspond to those production relations, and the revolutionizing of all the ideas that correspond to those social relations. This is both a concentrated and a comprehensive expression of the fact that this revolution aims for the complete elimination and uprooting of all relations of exploitation and oppression and the institutions that enforce this, along with the radical transformation of the culture and ways of thinking that arise from and reinforce these antagonistic relations among human beings.)

And, of course, Lenin’s important insight definitely applies to people who are not even striving for a real revolution, to put an end to this whole system, but are “working for meaningless petty reforms and seeking funds for themselves and positions within the structures of this system.”10

A Scientific Approach, Not “Knee-Jerk” Reactions, Subjectivism and Sophistry

Here is another matter of fundamental principle:

It has to be said—and cannot be overstated—that, in the world today, there can be no just society without the rule of law; there can be no rule of law without due process of law; and there can be no due process of law without the presumption of innocence (and that presumption of innocence must be real—and not a farce, as it is in this society).That is why so much emphasis is given to these principles in the new communism, including specifically the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have authored.

It also has to be said that there can be no justice, and great harm will be done, where “trial in the media and social media” is treated as equivalent to, or a substitute for, due process—and this is especially so when what is involved are accusations not against representatives of state power, like the police, but against “ordinary people,” even wealthy and/or prominent ones.11

Yet substituting “trial in the media and social media” for due process, and violating the important principle that an allegation or accusation, by itself, is not in fact “proof”—this all too often characterizes “cancel culture.” This is graphically expressed in the fact that, with “me too,” the orientation has been widely propagated, and taken up, that it is necessary to “believe all women” making such accusations—not just take such women seriously, but automatically “believe” them. And this same approach (that accusations, unless obviously unfounded and blatantly ridiculous, should be accepted as “proof”) has been widely applied to allegations and accusations of many different kinds.

It is also necessary to make certain important distinctions—between different kinds and degrees of wrongful acts (even where “guilt” is validly established) and between situations where the accused acknowledges the wrongdoing and, on the other hand, those situations where they deny wrongdoing and insist on their innocence. But it is often the case that where the accused does deny the accusation, “trial in the media and social media,” with the “presumption of guilt” (particularly in the form of treating an accusation itself as “proof” of guilt) assumes even more insistent and virulent expression.

Some defend “the presumption of guilt” in these situations by applying sophistry (faulty, bogus reasoning) that argues along these lines: “Okay, due process of law, including the presumption of innocence, should apply in court proceedings relating to alleged violation of the law; but in the realm of public life and public opinion this does not apply.” And so the approach is taken—directly and explicitly, or implicitly and in practice—that, in this realm (of public life and public opinion), it is perfectly fine to rely on “trial in the media and social media” and the standard that a mere accusation is the same as actual proof.

This often finds expression in the statement that an accusation is “credible.” Here a trick (a “sleight of hand”) is being played. “Credible” essentially means “believable.” Many things can be “credible” but that does not mean that they are true. Yet, with this logic, “credible” is treated as equal to, or a legitimate substitute for, true. (And acceptance of the idea that accusations being “credible” means the same thing as such accusations actually being true—this leads to, and reinforces, a more general credulousness: a readiness to believe things, especially things that tend to “confirm” one’s inclinations and prejudices, without having a valid basis for determining whether they are true.) This orientation also frequently finds expression in the statement that “I believe so-and-so” (someone making an accusation), where such “belief” is closely akin to religious belief—is a substitute for actual evidence (or flies in the face of evidence that runs counter to such “belief”).

In reality, whether something is true—and specifically whether an allegation or accusation is true—cannot be determined on the basis of whether, by itself, it seems believable. Once again: The truth of such an allegation or accusation can only be determined by examining it scientifically, through accumulating and evaluating evidence, including what is said, and what may be brought forward as evidence, by way of refuting such an allegation or accusation.

In cases where there are serious allegations of wrongdoing but legal, courtroom proceedings do not apply, and what is at issue is something like the accused’s employment or position (as well as their reputation), the best chance of getting at the truth would often mean having a process that is carried out by a qualified “disinterested party” (a person, or group of people, with the appropriate training and experience, and with no “stake,” no “axe to grind,” in the matter) and where the approach that applies in legal matters would also be basically applied, including the requirement that an allegation be proved, with compelling evidence, and there is a real opportunity for the person (or persons) accused to confront and attempt to refute the allegation and any evidence offered as proof of it. (Of course, it will be difficult to effect such a process, in the current atmosphere especially, with the very negative “tear down” culture and far too many people, including many celebrities and influential people, quick to dissociate themselves from, and join the condemnation of, people on the basis of what are mere accusations, which have not been proved—or have, in some cases, been effectively disproved. Even more significantly, corporations and other prominent institutions which for so long ignored, covered up and suppressed exposure of actual wrongdoing, have in many cases “flipped” to an approach of ridding themselves of people accused, without the kind of process called for here. With both these approaches, the basic motivation has been the same: to protect their “brand” and “bottom line.”)

In some cases, and particularly in the absence of the kind of adversarial process that takes place in legal, courtroom proceedings, or something approximating that (both sides presenting evidence and questioning the evidence brought by the other side), it may be very difficult, if not actually impossible, to validly determine whether an accusation is true, or not. And, while it is very important that there be mass struggle against oppression and injustice, it is a fact that there is not a basis within the confines of this system of capitalism-imperialism to fully and finally uproot the oppressive and exploitative relations that are built into this system. But that does not mean that it is alright to substitute “cancel culture” in place of actual mass movements, and to substitute subjective impressions and opinions in place of a valid process for determining the truth.

What I am arguing for here is also in direct opposition to another very harmful aspect of “cancel culture”:

There is the phenomenon of not only targeting and seeking to tear down individuals, but along with that, or as part of it, going through the whole history of people’s lives, going back decades—even into someone’s very early years—and seeing if you can find something around which they can be condemned and which therefore disqualifies them from any positive role in anything. Now, as I have stressed many times, where people have committed real crimes and outrages they should be held accountable; but there is also the need to look at the arc of someone’s life and what is the principal and defining aspect of their life. Is it the mistakes they’ve made, or even a really terrible thing they’ve done at some point? Is that the essential aspect of their life and what defines it? Or has their life involved real transformation, where what has come to define what they are about are the positive things that they have done and the positive trajectory to their life overall?12

Of course, the basic approach argued for here is not “perfect” and will not always lead to the most correct and just outcome (as, in fact, is the case with actual court proceedings, especially under this system). The reality has to be confronted that it is not possible to achieve a fundamentally just resolution to all this within the confines of this system, with the oppressive and exploitative relations built into it, and the putrid culture that it is promoted by this system and serves to reinforce it. But, so long as we are living under this system, the approach I have outlined here is definitely better than “cancel culture,” with its reliance on “trial in the media and social media” and acceptance of an allegation in itself as “proof.”

This emphasizes the point—something which is also a critical matter of method and principle—that people should not “jump to conclusions” about an allegation or accusation, substituting their own inclinations or prejudices for a process which has more of a possibility of arriving at a valid conclusion. It emphasizes that there should be no “trial” in the media and social media—and that an orientation and culture needs to be fostered and fought for where people actively reject efforts in the media and social media to pre-judge and prejudice things in regard to allegations and accusations.

As pointed out in the article on fascist lunacy and “woke folk insanity,” trial in the media and social media, the acceptance of a mere allegation as “proof,” and the whole “cancel culture” that goes along with this, is

just another version of the extremely harmful notion that “the ends justify the means” (that any means are justified if the goal is, or is proclaimed to be, righteous), something that is firmly rejected by the new communism and should be rejected by anyone who aspires to a truly just society.13

Difficult as it may be, especially in the current social atmosphere—where many people are genuinely and righteously outraged by the endless abuses to which masses of people are continually subjected, but may also be influenced by the poisonous culture of “tear down” and revenge that is promoted throughout society—it has to be recognized that there will be situations where it is not possible to come to a well-founded conclusion about certain allegations and accusations. In these situations, it is correct and important not to draw, and especially not to broadcast and propagate, definitive conclusions (even in the guise of “opinions,” “guesses,” and “inclinations”). In short, sometimes it will be correct and necessary to just say “we can’t tell,” and act accordingly—yes, applying what amounts to “the presumption of innocence.”

This will undoubtedly lead to certain situations where someone who is in fact guilty of harmful actions (whether actually illegal or not) will “get away” with this, and escape what would be appropriate accountability. But, again, applying the principles and methods I have emphasized here will definitely lead to a better situation than one where subjective, unscientific judgments are substituted for a process through which allegations and accusations could be reasonably evaluated (or, worse yet, these subjective judgments are persisted in, when there is such a process but it leads to a conclusion that is contrary to these subjective judgments); where, without any semblance or pretense of due process, people are “tried and convicted” in the media and social media; where there is a marked lack of proportionality, so that regardless of the nature of the offense for which someone is “convicted,” they are generally subjected to “cancellation” and, if not literally deprived of their liberty, are often deprived of their livelihood or standing in society and turned into outcasts (treated as permanent pariahs).

With the approach of focusing on and “canceling” individuals, the larger social outrages—the oppression and injustice that does great harm to masses of people—will remain fundamentally in place and unchanged. On the other hand, even while there will be situations where it is not possible to validly determine the “guilt or innocence” of a particular person (or persons) who are accused of wrongdoing, it is definitely possible to come to firm conclusions about what is right and wrong in terms of oppression and injustice, and to build mass movements that focus the struggle against the institutions and culture—and ultimately the whole system—that is responsible for this oppression and injustice.

There are also situations where accusations of wrongdoing do not involve direct personal (or professional) interactions but things such as statements, writings, and actions of the alleged wrongdoer which have a broad social effect (involving, for example, race or gender relations). In this regard, as I have spoken to previously, “in some cases it is actually clear, right away, what is right and wrong—things that should be upheld, and things (such as Confederate monuments) that should be repudiated and removed.”14 In many cases, however, the situation is more complex. Particularly in situations where what is involved is in fact complex, it is especially important to seriously engage what is being said by people on the different sides of a dispute, rather than “rushing to judgment” and looking for cheap ways to attack someone whose position you are inclined to disagree with. Here, the following principles of epistemology (the means for arriving at the truth) are of critical importance:

The truth of something does not depend on who says it, or how it makes you feel. Because something comes from a source you like does not make it true; and because something comes from a source you do not like does not make it untrue. And truth is not a “popularity contest.Because a lot of people believe something does not make it true; and because only a few people believe something does not make it untrue.

Truth is objective—which means: Whether something is true or not depends on whether it corresponds to actual reality.15

But, in opposition to any kind of serious and scientific approach,

“woke folk cancel culture” rejects the distinction between what is more immediately clear and what is more complex—and rejects rational discourse and serious, scientific exploration of and grappling with questions that may in fact be complex, replacing this with knee-jerk reactions, in accordance with whatever have become the momentary imperatives of “identity politics wokeness.”16

“Ends and Means,” and the Fundamental—and Urgently Needed—Solution

The completely legitimate frustration and anger that results from the recognition (or the sense) that there is not, and there cannot be, any fully just resolution to all this under this system—this should be turned into a profound determination to abolish this system, and bring something much better into being. As emphasized in Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis: “The trauma that results from directly suffering horrific forms of oppression and degradation is very real, and no one should deny or underestimate that.” But this needs to become something greater than personal angst, or a desire for revenge—it needs to be “transformed into anger and determination to be part of a collective struggle to put an end to all the atrocities, everywhere, whose fundamental source and cause is this system of capitalism-imperialism.”17

This means and requires building movements that are actual movements of masses of people mobilizing to fight the oppression and injustice constantly perpetrated by this system—mass movements that in word and deed reject the poisonous notion that “the ends justify the means,” and instead employ means that are consistent with, and an expression of, the goal of ending the injustices and outrages to which masses of people are continually subjected under this system.

Fundamentally—and as a matter of urgent importance—it means actively, systematically working now to build up the organized forces for, to bring into being more favorable conditions for, and then to carry out a revolution with the aim of bringing about the elimination and uprooting of all injustice and oppression, all exploitation and degradation, through overthrowing this system of capitalism-imperialism, which is the ultimate source and root cause of all this, and bringing into being a radically different, emancipating society and world, on an entirely new foundation.

As I have emphasized in Breakthroughs:

The goal of this revolution is not revenge and the reversal of the positions of oppressed and oppressor (“the last shall be first, and the first shall be last”).... You see it over and over again—the goal becomes revenge, it becomes something short of transforming all of society. It becomes, “get mine if I can, or if I can’t at least I can tear somebody else down.” That’s very pronounced in this society, particularly at this time, and even struggles which are dealing with very real and profound contradictions and relations of oppression can be turned toward that kind of outlook and approach by the powerful pull of spontaneity and the prevailing relations in this society.

This goes back to the point that even movements which start out highlighting very important outrages and injustices, and carrying out struggle against them, can only continue to go in the direction they need to go in, ultimately—and all these different forces in society that are opposing various forms of oppression can only be united in a lasting and forward moving way—on the basis of a scientific communist approach and what it reveals to be the solution to the profound problems that the present society embodies and enforces. With the outlook of the petite bourgeoisie you’re never going to get there. What is needed is—in a non-reified sense, in the communist sense—the outlook of the proletariat, the outlook and approach that corresponds to the fundamental interests of the proletariat, which involves the recognition that only by emancipating all of humanity can any one section of the exploited and oppressed be emancipated.

In contrast to narrow and petty motivations and aspirations for things such as revenge and “my turn to have a go at it,” the goal of the communist revolution is, as emphasized in THE NEW COMMUNISM, “getting to a different world where all these horrors for the masses of people don’t go on any longer.” The goal is the emancipation of humanity—the abolition of all exploitation and oppression, and the corresponding antagonisms among human beings, and the uprooting of the soil out of which they arise, with the achievement of communism, throughout the world.18

 


1. A Question of Basic Stand and Orientation, SUPPORT AND SPREAD THE FURY AGAINST SEXUAL ABUSE, by Bob Avakian, is available at revcom.us/avakian/ba-important-works-en.html.  [back]

2. A Question of Basic Stand and Orientation, SUPPORT AND SPREAD THE FURY AGAINST SEXUAL ABUSE.  [back]

3. Some Points of Orientation, Principle, and Method Regarding the Accusations Against Bill Cosby. This article is also available at revcom.us.  [back]

4. Some Points of Orientation, Principle, and Method Regarding the Accusations Against Bill Cosby.  [back]

5. Some Points of Orientation, Principle, and Method Regarding the Accusations Against Bill Cosby.  [back]

6. Bob Avakian On Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds.” This article is also available at revcom.us.  [back]

7. Bob Avakian On Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds”.  [back]

8. Bob Avakian, Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis, Breaking with Individualism, Parasitism and American Chauvinism. This is available at revcom.us/avakian/ba-important-works-en.html. (This passage is also cited in Bob Avakian On Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds.”)  [back]

9. Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summary, by Bob Avakian, published as an ebook by Insight Press (insight‑press.com), is available online at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and other major retailers (EPUB, MOBI, PDF). It can also be accessed at revcom.us.  [back]

10. FROM THE REVCOMS: A DECLARATION, A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW FOR A REAL REVOLUTION. This is available at revcom.us—and it is being posted and passed out to people in neighborhoods and other places around the country, as a key part of spreading the word about this revolution and organizing people into this revolution.  [back]

11. Bob Avakian On Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds.”  [back]

12. Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis, Breaking with Individualism, Parasitism and American Chauvinism.  [back]

13. Bob Avakian On Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds.”  [back]

14. Bob Avakian On Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds.”  [back]

15. Conspiracy Theories, Fascist “Certitude,” Liberal Paralysis, Or A Scientific Approach to Changing the World. This article by Bob Avakian is also available (in both a short and longer version) at revcom.us. (Emphasis—boldface—added by the author here to the phrase “or how it makes you feel.”)  [back]

16. Bob Avakian On Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds.”  [back]

17. Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis, Breaking with Individualism, Parasitism and American Chauvinism.  [back]

18. Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summary. The quote in the last paragraph here is from the book by Bob Avakian, THE NEW COMMUNISM, The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, Insight Press, 2016.  [back]

Hope For Humanity
On A Scientific Basis

Breaking with Individualism,
Parasitism and
American Chauvinism

Bob Avakian
Author of The New Communism

Read more     |     Download the PDF

Read excerpts here.

Also by Bob Avakian and referred to in this essay:

Bob Avakian On Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds”

A Question of Basic Stand and Orientation, SUPPORT AND SPREAD THE FURY AGAINST SEXUAL ABUSE

Some Points of Orientation, Principle, and Method Regarding the Accusations Against Bill Cosby

Conspiracy Theories, Fascist “Certitude,” Liberal Paralysis, Or A Scientific Approach to Changing the World

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

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So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/699/bob-avakian-on-fascist-lunacy-and-woke-folk-insanity-a-new-two-outmodeds-en.html

Bob Avakian On
Fascist Lunacy and "Woke Folk" Insanity: A New "Two Outmodeds"

| revcom.us

 

A number of years ago, drawing from the title of a book by Benjamin Barber, I referred to one of the main confrontations taking place in the world as Jihad vs. McWorld/McCrusade. (“Jihad” here refers to Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, and “McWorld/McCrusade” to increasingly globalized western imperialism, infused with a poisonous sense of “the superiority of Western Christian Civilization.”) As I wrote then:

What we see in contention here with Jihad on the one hand and McWorld/McCrusade on the other hand, are historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system. These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these “outmodeds,” you end up strengthening both.

While this is a very important formulation and is crucial to understanding much of the dynamics driving things in the world in this period, at the same time we do have to be clear about which of these “historically outmodeds” has done the greater damage and poses the greater threat to humanity: It is the “historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system,” and in particular the U.S. imperialists.1

Today, these “two outmodeds” still have real importance, but it must be said that there is, in addition, a new kind of “two outmodeds,” which is particularly pronounced in the U.S.: fascist lunacy and “woke folk” insanity.

I have written and spoken extensively about the viciously deranged, anti-scientific mangling of reality and truth that characterizes fascism as a powerful force contending for power—aiming to institute a more blatant and overt capitalist dictatorship, which would gut and pervert the rule of law, brutally suppress the rights of masses of people and carry to even greater extremes the exploitative and oppressive relations of this system of capitalism-imperialism and the threat to human existence through destruction of the environment and the danger of nuclear war.

But there is another kind of insanity that is becoming a major destructive force in politics and society: the increasing move to tear down everything and everyone that does not, and cannot, meet the tortured, anti-historical and anti-scientific “test” of conforming to the often arbitrary standards of “wokeness.” There are numerous and multiplying instances of this—including, for example, situations where someone (say, an artist) who is white does something powerful to expose the oppression of Black people... and instead of this being appreciated for its contribution to the understanding of and struggle against this oppression, the person is attacked for alleged “cultural colonization” (supposedly “appropriating” the exposure of and struggle against this oppression). This is crazy, and worse than crazy. As others have pointed out, carried to its logical extreme, this kind of “identity politics” wokeness—with its insistence that only people who directly experience something can legitimately say anything about it—would, among other crimes, put an end to, or at the least would seriously restrict and vitiate, literature and art. And overall, this does great harm to the struggle against oppression and the kind of society we should want to live in. Yet, like an out-of-control virus, this madness is continually expanding in its scope and mutating in its particular forms, as it becomes more and more extreme, and more and more unhinged from a sane approach to reality.

The Actual Struggle Against Injustice and Oppression, and the Perversion of Poisonous “Cancel Culture”

In A Beautiful Uprising: Right And Wrong, Methods And Principles, in examining different trends that were evident in the mass outpouring against police terror and institutional racism last summer, I emphasized these basic points of method and principle:

It is crucially important to identify what, in any given phenomenon (a system, a movement, a person), is the main thing (the principal aspect), which defines the essence of that phenomenon at any given time, and overall. For example, both Nat Turner and John Brown, who led heroic (if ultimately defeated) rebellions against slavery, were highly religious—and it is not wrong to see each of them as a kind of religious fanatic. But their religious zealotry was in the service of fighting the main (the most egregious) form of exploitation and oppression of that time—slavery. We cannot condemn Nat Turner or John Brown because they did not recognize that, to lead the struggle to do away with all oppression, it is necessary to cast off the mental shackles of religion and take up a consistently scientific method and approach—just as we cannot condemn them for not fighting against what is today the main system of exploitation and oppression subjecting the masses of humanity to horrific suffering, the system of capitalism-imperialism, because in their time the most decisive immediate question was not (yet) the abolition of the capitalist-imperialist system and the ending of all relations of exploitation and oppression, but the abolition of the system of outright slavery. That was the main (principal) contradiction being confronted. And the main (principal) aspect of what they did, in rising up against slavery, was overwhelmingly positive, even with certain definite secondary shortcomings (including the fact that, in the rebellion led by Nat Turner, they killed not only the adults but the children of slave-owning families).2

The cancerous “cancel culture” carried out in the name of “wokeness” tramples on these crucial methods and principles. In “A Beautiful Uprising” I pointed to the fact that, in some cases it is actually clear, right away, what is right and wrong—things that should be upheld, and things (such as Confederate monuments) that should be repudiated and removed—while in many cases the situation is more complex. But “woke folk cancel culture” rejects the distinction between what is more immediately clear and what is more complex—and rejects rational discourse and serious, scientific exploration of and grappling with questions that may in fact be complex, replacing this with knee-jerk reactions, in accordance with whatever have become the momentary imperatives of “identity politics wokeness.” As I emphasized in Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis:

where people have committed real crimes and outrages they should be held accountable; but there is also the need to look at the arc of someone’s life and what is the principal and defining aspect of their life. Is it the mistakes they’ve made, or even a really terrible thing they’ve done at some point? Is that the essential aspect of their life and what defines it? Or has their life involved real transformation, where what has come to define what they are about are the positive things that they have done and the positive trajectory to their life overall?

What is involved here is a very wrong and harmful approach of “canceling” people—indicting them (in the realm of public opinion if not legally) and canceling them out—which is different than holding people accountable for serious acts of oppression or other outrages that they’ve committed but then also looking at the whole arc and main content of what their life has been about. (And this is made all the worse by the fact that it is often amplified through “trial in the media and social media,” with neither any prospect nor even any pretense of due process or any real attempt to get at the truth, fueled by the dangerous notion that a mere allegation is enough to condemn someone and make them a permanent pariah, and marked by a refusal to apply any measure of proportionality, to make any distinctions between different kinds and degrees of wrongdoing.)3

It has to be said—and cannot be overstated—that, in the world today, there can be no just society without the rule of law; there can be no rule of law without due process of law; and there can be no due process of law without the presumption of innocence (and that presumption of innocence must be real—and not a farce, as it is in this society). That is why so much emphasis is given to these principles in the new communism, including specifically the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, which I have authored.4

It also has to be said that there can be no justice, and great harm will be done, where “trial in the media and social media” is treated as equivalent to, or a substitute for, due process—and this is especially so when what is involved are accusations not against representatives of state power, like the police, but against “ordinary people,” even wealthy and/or prominent ones. Yet “trial in the media and social media”—where mere accusations are treated as proof of guilt and there is a marked lack of proportionality (and at times even a refusal to recognize or accept the outcome of serious investigation and genuine due process)—this is what is clamored for and practiced with the cancerous “woke folk cancel culture.” This is just another version of the extremely harmful notion that “the ends justify the means” (that any means are justified if the goal is, or is proclaimed to be, righteous), something that is firmly rejected by the new communism and should be rejected by anyone who aspires to a truly just society.

But this kind of madness is what happens when petty bourgeois narrowness and cynicism—which is marked by (real, or artificial and fashionable) outrage at instances of social injustice but at the same time by a dismissal or outright rejection of any real attempt at bringing a truly just society into being, and which is often molded and manipulated by ruling bourgeois forces—is carried to fanatical extremes, unmoored from and in opposition to a rational, scientific method and approach. And this is made all the worse by the powerful influence of the extreme individualism that is promoted throughout this society, with its poisonous component of constantly seeking to “tear down” others (which has become a perverse “national sport”).

And, among other things, “cancel culture,” in primarily targeting individuals, is an approach that tends to ignore, downplay and fail to really fight against the institutions and the whole system which constitute the deeper root and source of these outrages. Rarely, if ever, does this approach aim at “canceling” the whole system!

All this is also an expression of “woke entrepreneurialism”: It treats oppression and opposition to oppression as “capital”—and seeks to “own” and “leverage” it—instead of fighting to abolish the oppression.

Now, as with the original “two outmodeds,” it is important to have a definite understanding about which of these new “two outmodeds” represents the greater danger and does, by far, the greater harm. Clearly, it is the fascist lunacy, and not the “woke folk” insanity. But, at the same time, as with the original “two outmodeds,” these new “two outmodeds” also reinforce each other even while opposing each other, and this, too, is a dynamic that must be broken with, in rejecting and opposing both of these new “two outmodeds.” (And those who deny that “woke folk” insanity and “cancel culture” is a real and serious problem—insisting instead that what is involved is merely holding people accountable for wrong-doing—are refusing to look at, or are seriously distorting, reality. They are akin to those pseudo “leftists” who have tried to prettify Islamic fundamentalist terrorism by characterizing it as “political Islam” and even in some cases have tried to portray this as a positive force against western imperialism.)

These New “Two Outmodeds”—Death Throes of This Moribund System—and the Revolution That Is Urgently Needed to Overthrow This System

In my New Year’s Statement (A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity), I pointed to the fact that, while they invoke very different political objectives, the fascists and the advocates of “identity politics” wokeness have much in common in terms of their epistemology (their approach to knowledge and truth). Both treat “truth” as something that conforms to subjective inclinations and prejudices, rather than to objective reality.5 And it has to be said that, in its social effect, “woke folk” insanity actually serves to reinforce and strengthen the fascist forces, which are quite capable of seizing on especially the most egregious expressions of this “wokeness” not just to mock and ridicule “woke” people but to deny very real oppression and obstruct the struggle against it, while in an overall way this “woke folk” insanity constitutes a diversion and evasion from—and actually does great harm to—the struggle against the oppression and exploitation of masses of people, here and throughout the world, and the need for revolution to abolish and uproot the basis for this oppression and exploitation.

It is this revolution—an actual revolution, to overthrow and completely abolish this system of capitalism-imperialism and bring a radically different and much better society into being, on an entirely different foundation—which must be urgently built for now, through applying the scientific method and scientifically-grounded principles of the new communism, in opposition to everything that serves to enforce and reinforce this system of capitalism-imperialism, which embodies the most horrific oppression and which increasingly poses an existential threat to the very existence of humanity.

 

1. Discussion of these “two outmodeds” (Jihad and McWorld/McCrusade) can be found in a number of works by Bob Avakian, including Bringing Forward Another Way, which is available at revcom.us, BA’s Collected Works. [back]

2. The article Bob Avakian On A Beautiful Uprising: Right And Wrong, Methods And Principles is also available at revcom.us. [back]

3. Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis, Breaking with Individualism, Parasitism and American Chauvinism is available at revcom.us, BA’s Collected Works. [back]

4. The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America is available at revcom.us. [back]

5. New Year’s Statement By Bob Avakian, A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity, is available at revcom.us. [back]

Click to read.

CONSTITUTION For The New Socialist Republic In North America

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Supplementary Excerpts

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Editors’ Note: The following excerpts from works by Bob Avakian (which are available at or can be ordered through revcom.us) are relevant to the article Bob Avakian On Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds” and generally to the phenomena of “identity politics,” “wokeness,” individualism, parasitism and American chauvinism.

See Further Supplementary Excerpts here.

 

From Breakthroughs, The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summary (ebook edition, 2021).

And then there’s BAsics 4:10:

For humanity to advance beyond a state in which “might makes right”—and where things ultimately come down to raw power relations—will require, as a fundamental element in this advance, an approach to understanding things (an epistemology) which recognizes that reality and truth are objective and do not vary in accordance with, nor depend on, different “narratives” and how much “authority” an idea (or “narrative”) may have behind it, or how much power and force can be wielded on behalf of any particular idea or “narrative,” at any given point.1

This is extremely important as well—the relation between relativism and “might makes right.” Say, for example, that you are part of an oppressed group. You have a narrative about your oppression. But if the very righteous and just struggle against this oppression—against the police murder of Black and Brown and Native American people, for example—is reduced to a matter of narrative, to a matter of what amounts to a subjective view of the world (“We know what this means, we know where it comes from and what to do about it because we experience it, as part of our particular group identity”)—if that’s the epistemology that you’re putting forward, well, then, what happens when you run into a group with more power than you? Like the police—they’ve got their epistemology and their narrative too: “You are all a bunch of animals, you have to be confined; and if you in any way provoke us, we have the right to kill you.” That’s their narrative. This racism is written right into the law of this society and its bourgeois dictatorship. What do I mean by that? Well, what does the law say in most states? If the police have “a reasonable fear” of either harm to themselves or someone else, they have a right to use force, including deadly force. Well, then, you’ve got racism written right into this, because almost all police regard Black people, particularly young Black males (not only them, but particularly young Black males) as a threat, as a danger. So the rationale for police killing Black people is built in, they’ve written racism into the law. That’s their narrative—and their narrative has the backing of the state, which is why they almost never get indicted, let alone convicted, of these murders, time after time after time.

And then there’s the military of this system. They’ve got a narrative, too, about how they’re a force for good in the world, and they need to wield this force to impose order because that is for the greater good. And they’ve got their military power to back up that narrative. So, if it’s all a bunch of narratives, then whoever’s got the most power behind their narrative is going to ultimately prevail.

This gets to a point from Mao that is important in its own right and also has important application here. Mao said that striking a pose to intimidate is a very common tactic among certain people. In confronting the enemy, he pointed out, it’s absolutely useless, and among the people it does great harm. Think about this: If you’re in these narrow circles where the currency is identity politics, maybe you can get over by insisting on your narrative over somebody else’s. But in the broader world, and in particular up against the enemy, the ruling class, they don’t give a damn about your narrative, they don’t give a damn about your identity. They’ve got their interests and they’ve got a lot of force behind their interests, and your posturing with your identity is absolutely useless, it’s worthless, up against that. And this is all the more the case with the fascist regime that is now [in 2019] in power. Of course, it is not the case that fascism arose and came to power because of identity politics and the corresponding epistemology. The point is that these fascists want to reinforce and intensify the oppressive relations that identity politics is seeking to address in a distorted and ill-founded way, and these identity politics disorient and disarm people ideologically and render them less able to deal with this. Such identity politics, and in particular the posturing that all too often accompanies it, is only “useful” among people who will be intimidated by this, and in fact such intimidation does a great deal of harm. That’s what Mao meant when he said this kind of thing does great harm among the people. Intimidating people rather than winning them to a scientific understanding of reality, and what needs to be done about it, can only do harm among the people, and it’s absolutely useless against those who have real power.

So, once again, there is a great deal that is concentrated in BAsics 4:10 in terms of the relation between epistemology and advancing beyond a state in which might makes right. To further illustrate the important questions of principle and method that are involved, let me cite the following from my “Discussion with Comrades on Epistemology” drawing from the historical experience of the communist movement:

One of the big questions is “are we really people who are trying to get to the truth, or is it really just a matter of ‘truth as an organizing principle’?” Lenin criticized this philosophically—“truth as an organizing principle”—and you can criticize it to reject religion and opportunism which you don’t find particularly useful, but you can end up doing this yourself in another form....

I’m talking about a new synthesis—a more thoroughly materialist epistemology. Lenin wrote Materialism and Empirio-Criticism where he argued against these things [like "political truth," or "truth as an organizing principle"] but sometimes the practical Lenin got in the way of the philosophical Lenin. The political exigencies that were imposed contributed to a situation where some of the way Lenin dealt with contradictions had an aspect of Stalin.* There are many examples of this in The Furies [a book on the French and Russian revolutions by Arno Mayer]. In some instances, the Bolsheviks had a kind of "Mafia" approach in some areas, especially during the civil war that followed the October 1917 Revolution. In some cases, when people would be organized by reactionaries to fight against the Bolsheviks, the Bolsheviks would retaliate broadly and without mercy. Or they would kill people not only for deserting the Red Army but even for dragging their feet in fighting the civil war. While sometimes in the midst of war, extreme measures may be necessary, overall this is not the way to deal with these contradictions....I read Lenin on this and thought, "this is not right." There’s epistemological stuff bound up with all this as well. [Bob Avakian, “Bob Avakian in a Discussion with Comrades on Epistemology: On Knowing and Changing the World,” in Observations on Art and Culture, Science and Philosophy. p. 56, p. 55]

*Note added by the author: The reference here to “an aspect of Stalin” is a shorthand way of speaking to the negative side of Stalin—in particular his tendency, in dealing with what were very real and often acute contradictions, to rely on state repression, including capital punishment, instead of ideological struggle (combined with an insistence on adherence to discipline, and lesser punishment for violation of discipline, in situations where that was required).

And here we see the close interconnection between epistemology and morality. The orientation and principle that “Everything that is actually true is good for the proletariat, all truths can help us get to communism” is not only extremely important itself but is also closely related to the fact that the new communism thoroughly repudiates and is determined to root out of the communist movement the poisonous notion, and practice, that “the ends justifies the means.” It is a bedrock principle of the new communism that the “means” of this movement must flow from and be consistent with the fundamental “ends” of abolishing all exploitation and oppression through revolution led on a scientific basis.


1.   BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian, RCP Publications, 2011. An ebook version can be downloaded for free with a link at revcom.us/avakian/ba-important-works-en.html. [back]

 

 

From Breakthroughs.

The goal of this revolution is not revenge and the reversal of the positions of oppressed and oppressor (“the last shall be first, and the first shall be last”). Here it is very relevant to refer to a statement by Lenin who said that all those who approach revolution with the orientation, “They had their chance, now it’s my turn to have a go at it”—all those who approach revolution in that way do so from the point of view of the petite bourgeoisie. And it hardly needs saying that the approach of the petite bourgeoisie is not going to lead to the achievement of the “4 Alls”2 and the emancipation of humanity. Even though at times the practical/political Lenin got in the way of the philosophical Lenin, in the sense discussed earlier, this is a very important statement by Lenin, because what he refers to as the point of view of the petite bourgeoisie is a powerful spontaneous pull, even on people who are not in the petite bourgeoisie. You see it over and over again—the goal becomes revenge, it becomes something short of transforming all of society. It becomes, “get mine if I can, or if I can’t, at least I can tear somebody else down.” That’s very pronounced in this society, particularly at this time, and even struggles which are dealing with very real and profound contradictions and relations of oppression can be turned toward that kind of outlook and approach by the powerful pull of spontaneity and the prevailing relations in this society. [Emphasis— boldface—added here]

This goes back to the point that even movements which start out highlighting very important outrages and injustices, and carrying out struggle against them, can only continue to go in the direction they need to go in, ultimately—and all these different forces in society that are opposing various forms of oppression can only be united in a lasting and forward moving way—on the basis of a scientific communist approach and what it reveals to be the solution to the profound problems that the present society embodies and enforces. With the outlook of the petite bourgeoisie you’re never going to get there. What is needed is—in a non‑reified sense, in the communist sense—the outlook of the proletariat, the outlook and approach that corresponds to the fundamental interests of the proletariat, which involves the recognition that only by emancipating all of humanity can any one section of the exploited and oppressed be emancipated.

In contrast to narrow and petty motivations and aspirations for things such as revenge and “my turn to have a go at it,” the goal of the communist revolution is, as emphasized in THE NEW COMMUNISM,3 “getting to a different world where all these horrors for the masses of people don’t go on any longer.” The goal is the emancipation of humanity—the abolition of all exploitation and oppression, and the corresponding antagonisms among human beings, and the uprooting of the soil out of which they arise, with the achievement of communism, throughout the world.


2. The “4 Alls” refers to the statement by Marx that the communist revolution aims for the abolition of all class distinctions, all the production relations on which those class distinctions rest, all the social relations that correspond to those production relations, and the revolutionizing of all the ideas that correspond to those social relations. [back]

3. Bob Avakian, THE NEW COMMUNISM, The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, Insight Press, 2016 [back]

 

 

From Breakthroughs.

The ruling class repeatedly seeks to pit different sections of the people against each other and, contrary to the illusions of “intersectionality,” the ruling class has many powerful ways to do that if you’re not proceeding from the point of view of the emancipation of humanity as a whole.

There is a whole history of different sections of the people being pitted against each other. You have the egregious example of the Buffalo Soldiers after the Civil War—Black soldiers who fought to put down and kill off the Native Americans and steal their land—while in the Civil War, among the different Native American peoples, there were some who sided with the northern Union while others sided with the southern Confederacy, based on their narrow perception of their immediate interests. Only coming from the point of view of communism can you unify the masses of people to overcome every manifestation of oppression and achieve the “4 Alls.” [Emphasis—italics—added here.]

 

 

From Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis, Breaking with Individualism, Parasitism and American Chauvinism, 2019.

Virulent Individualism and Oblivious Individualism

These are two broad categories of individualism, which have some different particular characteristics but also have in common the basic focus on and preoccupation with the self. Virulent individualism is an extremely poisonous variation of this. It’s basically the view that “I’m out to get everything I can for myself and fuck everybody else. And if I have to trample on everybody else to get what I want, that’s just the way it is and I’m gonna do it the best I can, so I can get everything I want—I want it all and I want it now.”

Oblivious individualism is individualism that may not have those particular aggressive characteristics and may not even have a consciously hostile attitude toward other people in general, but involves going along pursuing one’s particular interests, aspirations, or “dreams,” without paying attention to the larger things that are going on in the world and the effect of this on masses of people throughout the world and indeed on the future of humanity.

So there are these different kinds, or two broad types, of individualism (with many gradations, obviously). But what is the unifying element in them? Self. The self. As I pointed out in the Dialogue with Cornel West in 2014,4 the “selfie” is a perfect iconic representation of this whole outlook and this whole culture. It’s not that every “selfie” is in and of itself bad, of course. But there is a whole culture around it, even to the point where people go to a beautiful place in nature and what are they preoccupied with? Taking a “selfie” of themself instead of taking in (and yes, taking photographs of) the vast beauty that’s stretched out before them. The important thing, with this outlook, is: “Here I am, look at me.” It’s the “look at me, look at me, look at me” ethos that is so predominant in both these forms of individualism, even in the one that’s not consciously virulent but is nevertheless strikingly oblivious.

Oblivious individualism may seem more benign (or, in simple terms, less “nasty”) but it is nonetheless marked by being inexcusably ignorant of, or consciously choosing to ignore, what is happening in the larger world, beyond the self (and the narrow circle around oneself), and the consequences of this for the masses of people in the world, and ultimately for all of humanity—or paying attention to this only as it affects oneself in immediate and narrow terms.

Now here let me be very clear: There are people in the world, masses of people in the world, whose lives are so chaotic and whose suffering is so terrible that it’s very difficult for them even to engage, let alone learn about, much of what’s going on in the world. I’m not talking about those people whom the operation of this system grinds down and subjects to so much horror that, on their own, they are really deprived of even the opportunity to learn about and to engage the larger world. I’m talking about people who have every opportunity to do so but, either with a malignant (or virulent) mentality, or in a more “benign” but nevertheless oblivious way, choose not to pay attention to these things. I’m not necessarily opposed to people watching some videos or YouTubes of cats playing the violin (and similar things on the internet), but if that kind of thing is your preoccupation—let alone if snark and tearing down other people on the internet is your preoccupation—then, obviously, this is something any decent person should be very concerned about and strongly oppose and struggle sharply against.


4. REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST & BOB AVAKIAN (2015). The film of this dialogue is available at revcom.us/avakian/ba-important-works-en.html. [back]

 

 

From Hope for Humanity on a Scientific Basis

Parasitism, American Chauvinism, and Individualism

Interestingly, in an article about privacy and the problems that the internet poses for people in terms of having any privacy (“Just a Face in the Crowd? Not Anymore”),5 the authors of the article, Woodrow Hartzog and Evan Selinger, refer to this as a “status‑obsessed culture,” and they particularly talk about how this is a problem in terms of people having any privacy because people want to use the internet to boost their status all the time: “Look at me doing this, look at me doing that,” and so on, and so forth. But this phrase, I think, is very apropos, is a very relevant and meaningful phrase: a “status‑obsessed culture.” This is what’s been continually encouraged through the major institutions of this society, and it is a particular variant, obviously, of the widespread individualism, both virulent and oblivious.

And this goes along with the coupling of individualism and commodification, a phenomenon whose essence is captured very well in the incessant promotion, the undisguised and unapologetic promotion, of the “brand.” Everywhere you turn you hear: “Oh, this is really gonna be good for developing her ‘brand’”; “Oh, they really have been very creative in how they’ve pumped up their ‘brand.’” You can’t turn around anywhere without hearing the word “brand” used in this kind of way. And this goes along, of course, with the glorification of entre‑manure‑ialism—which objectively amounts to the attempt to get in on the exploitation of people, becoming part of the overall process resting to a large degree on super‑exploitation of masses of people, including children, in the Third World.

All this is very much bound up with the parasitism of American society, which (as explained in Breakthroughs...) refers to the fact that an increasingly globalized capitalism:

...relies to a very great degree for production and for maintaining the rate of profit on a vast network of sweatshops, particularly in the Third World of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, while capitalist activity in the capitalist‑imperialist “home countries” is increasingly in the realm of finance and financial speculation, and the “high end” of (not the production of the basic physical materials for) high tech, as well as the service sector and the commercial sphere (including the growing role of online marketing). As Lenin phrased it, this puts “the seal of parasitism” on the whole of societies such as the U.S.


5. Woodrow Hartzog and Evan Selinger, “Just a Face in the Crowd? Not Anymore,” New York Times, April 18, 2019. [back]

 

 

From Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis.

Identity Politics and Individualism

As pointed out in “All Played Out,”6 there is the “politics of ‘identity’ that really comes back down to me.” We see all the time that, even while this identity is associated with a group, in fundamental terms it’s really about “me” and “mine”; it is posed, at least objectively and often consciously, against other people, even other bitterly oppressed people, in a way that smacks of disgusting individualism and petty rivalry based on that outlook. Along with this, there is the whole phenomenon of “woke” parasitism and seeking “safe” privileged enclaves within, and on the basis of, the depredations and exploitation by this imperialist system of the masses of people of the world as well as the environment.

“Identity politics” distorts, corrupts, misdirects and undermines the exposure of and the needed struggle against what are, in fact, horrific forms of oppression. In this connection, let’s contrast experience in the 1960s vs. today’s phenomena of “triggering” and trauma.

Back in the 1960s, drawing from my own experience, I remember that, in the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in 1964, the culmination and the high point of that struggle was when there was a massive sit‑in, in the administration building on the Berkeley campus. Hundreds of people sat in and refused to leave until their demands were met. Ultimately, 800 were forcibly ejected from the building and arrested when the governor (the Democratic Party governor) of the state called out not only the local police, but the county sheriffs and the state police to come in and roust us out of the administration building. We were confronted with these police who were roughly arresting people—grabbing people, particularly women, by the hair and throwing them down the stairs as a way of evicting them from the administration building. Well, it strikes me now, in looking back on this, that the one thing we forgot to do, in the face of this, was to say: “Wait, you’re triggering us. You can’t do this. You’re causing us trauma.” I’m sure that would have worked to prevent the police from acting in that brutal manner.

Or, when Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, together with others who made up the first members of the Black Panther Party, carried out their armed patrols against police brutality and murder, and they encountered police who threatened them and demanded that they put down their weapons (which the Panthers were legally carrying), well then, Huey and Bobby should have said to those pigs: “Stop—don’t you know you’re triggering and traumatizing us!” Yes, I’m sure that would have made the pigs back off.

Or, we can think about “Stop the Draft Week,” when thousands of people went to demonstrate at the Oakland induction center at the height of the struggle against the Vietnam war, in the effort to shut down the induction center (where people were conscripted—forced—into the U.S. military). People sat in, to block the doors. And the Oakland police, who are known for their racism and brutality going back generations, came in and brutally attacked people, and dragged them away in the most vicious manner. Well, it strikes me now that the real failing at that time was that, as those people were sitting in and the police were approaching, they should have said: “Stop! You’re triggering us.” I’m sure that would have stopped the police from brutally rousting people away from the doors.

And there are many other examples. Think about People’s Park in Berkeley, when, at its high point, there was a massive demonstration of tens of thousands in support of the seemingly modest demand to have a park in an area that the university wanted to turn into a parking lot. During the course of this struggle, people were shot by police and one of the demonstrators, James Rector, was killed as part of a police attack on a demonstration. And in addition to people being shot, the National Guard had been called out, and there were a number of us, hundreds, who went to the fence that the university and the authorities had put around the People’s Park area. The National Guard was stationed inside the fence, and many of us were at the fence, shaking it. Well, because the National Guard was armed and was being ordered to be prepared to shoot—that was very clear—the question for us was: Should we tear down this fence and face the fusillade of bullets coming at us for doing so? And people decided, in those circumstances, that this wasn’t the right thing to do. But obviously we were completely mis‑directed in those circumstances. We should have said to the commanders of the National Guard: “Not just pointing those guns at us, but just having those guns near us, is triggering us. You can’t do this. You have to stop this right now!”

Now, obviously, I’m being ironic here. But the point that comes through—and these examples are deliberately ludicrous to make the point—is that in any real struggle to deal with any real oppression, up against powerful enforcers of that oppression, you are going to have to face the prospect of real sacrifice, including the prospect of being physically attacked. And if you think that you can carve out little safe enclaves, and that this is somehow going to lead to any kind of significant change in society, you are full of illusions and delusions.

So, this is something important to understand. The trauma that results from directly suffering horrific forms of oppression and degradation is very real, and no one should deny or underestimate that—but, instead of an individual “turning inwards,” this needs to be transformed into anger and determination to be part of a collective struggle to put an end to all the atrocities, everywhere, whose fundamental source and cause is this system of capitalism‑imperialism. And, yes, this will require struggle and sacrifice. But it’s worth it, it’s what needs to happen.


6. “All Played Out,” a spoken word piece by Bob Avakian, with musical accompaniment by William Parker (Centeringmusic BMI, 2011) is available at revcom.us/avakian/ba-important-works-en.html and at soundcloud.com/allplayedout. [back]

 

 

From The Problem, the Solution, and the Challenges Before Us, 2017.

While it is right and necessary to unite with people broadly in opposing the injustices and outrages committed by those who rule this country, and while this has taken on heightened importance with the coming to power of the Trump/Pence fascist regime, it is a basic truth that without breaking with American chauvinism—without confronting the very real horror of what this country has been, and what it has done, here and all over the world, from its founding to the present—and without coming to deeply hate this, it is not possible, in the final analysis, to retain one’s own humanity and act in the highest interests of all humanity. [emphasis added here]

 

 

From The Truth About Right‑Wing Conspiracy...And Why Clinton and the Democrats Are No Answer, 1998.

[Bill] Clinton represents an attempt to deal with these acute and potentially explosive contradictions by giving a certain expression to "inclusiveness"—to "diversity" and "multi‑culturalism"—while retaining and fortifying the white supremacist and male supremacist relations that are an integral and indispensable part of the structure of U.S. capitalism‑imperialism. In line with this, Clinton has promoted a less absolutist version of the "traditional values" and the "Judeo‑Christian tradition" which has justified and reinforced the exploitative and oppressive relations on which this system is built.

But, in the view of Clinton's conservative and particularly his fundamentalist opponents, Clinton's program will not work and will only undermine the historically established girdings of the system, both in its economic base and in the superstructure of politics, culture and ideology—it will lead to the unraveling of the legitimating social "consensus" and social "cohesion" necessary to maintain this system. And the fact is that there are today in the U.S. broad numbers of people who, yes, participated in or were influenced by the movements of the '60s and have a corresponding commitment to social justice and equality, and who are unwilling to go along with the notion that America has some inherent moral right and obligation to bully its way around the world and impose a world order under its domination. At the same time, there is the phenomenon that, in some important aspects, the "recovery" of the U.S. economy that has taken place during the Clinton administration, and the more highly "globalized" and "flexible" production that has been a marked feature of this "recovery," has also contributed to "undermining the traditional family." And it has fostered the florescence of an outlook, particularly (though not exclusively) among more highly paid professionals, that involves no small amount of self‑indulgence and, related to that, a weakening of some "traditional values," including old‑style patriotism and the willingness to sacrifice for the officially defined and proclaimed "national interest." [Emphasis—italics—added here]

In some significant ways, what was written 150 years ago in the Communist Manifesto, concerning the consequences of unfettered bourgeois commodity relations, is assuming a pronounced expression among sections of the U.S. population in the context of today's "post‑Cold War" world capitalism. The following phrases from the Manifesto have a particular and powerful resonance: "the bourgeoisie, wherever it has gotten the upper hand...has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self‑interest, than callous `cash payment.' It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentalism in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value....In a word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." There is a great irony here: the very "triumph" and "triumphalism" of capitalism in today's circumstances has produced effects and sentiments which tend to undermine, among significant sections of the U.S. population, the willingness to make personal sacrifices for "god and country"—that is, for the interests and requirements of the imperial ruling class, within the U.S. itself and in the world arena. In reaction to this, the "conservatives," with the Christian Right playing a decisive role, are attempting to revive and impose precisely "the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentalism"—to resurrect a situation where worldwide exploitation that is unsurpassed in its brutality is at the same time "veiled by religious and political illusions."

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Further Supplementary Excerpts

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Editors’ Note: Previously, we have published excerpts from works by Bob Avakian (which are available or can be ordered through revcom.us) that are relevant to the article Bob Avakian On Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds” and generally to the phenomena of “identity politics,” “wokeness,” individualism, parasitism, and American chauvinism. The following are further relevant excerpts, from Hope For Humanity On A Scientific Basis, Breaking with Individualism, Parasitism and American Chauvinism (2019), which is available at revcom.us/BA’s Collected Works. (Boldface emphasis has been added here by the author.)

See Supplementary Excerpts here.

 

Lack of real hope for a better life in this world is a heavy chain weighing down, suffocating and deeply scarring the masses of humanity, including the youth who are concentrated in the ghettos and barrios of this country as well as its overflowing torture chamber prisons. And the extreme individualism promoted throughout this society, the obsessive focus on “the self,” has reinforced the heavy lid on the sights of people, obscuring their ability to recognize the possibility of a radically different and better world, beyond the narrow and confining limits of this system, with all its very real horrors....

As I have pointed out, in Ruminations and Wranglings1 (and in other works), the contradiction that people exist as individuals, but they also exist in a larger social context and are largely shaped by that social context, is a complicated contradiction that is important to handle correctly. And this contradiction is acutely expressed today in the fact that while people do exist as individuals, the terrible suffering of the masses of humanity and the urgent challenges facing humanity as a whole as a result of the escalating destruction of the environment by this system of capitalism-imperialism as well as the possibility of nuclear conflagration that continues to loom as an existential threat over humanity—all this cannot be seriously addressed, let alone actually solved, by each person pursuing their particular individual interests, and in fact people acting in this way constitutes a major obstacle to bringing about the necessary solution. Individualism is a significant factor and “unifying element” in much of the negative trends that play a major role in keeping people from recognizing the reality and depth of the horrors continually brought about by this system—and recognizing the urgent need to act, together with others, to abolish and uproot all this, at its very source. This highlights and heightens the fact that individualism, which is encouraged and expressed in extreme forms in this particular society at this time, is a profound problem that must be confronted and transformed.

* * * *

Here stands out again the great importance of the scientific method and approach of communism, as this has been further developed through the new communism, and the reality and possibility of radical, emancipating change, in this world. In relation to all this, and in particular the question of hope, there is great importance to the following statement by Marx which is cited in Part I of the RCP Manifesto, Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage:

Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions breaks down before their collapse in practice.2

This is extremely important because it gives emphasis to the importance of theory and of science—theory that’s grounded in and is an application of a consistently scientific method and approach—to reveal what are the actual relations and dynamics, what are the inner connections and “inner workings,” of the system that people are subjected to. First of all to reveal that there is a system that they are subjected to, and what are the inner workings and dynamics of that system and how it fits into the whole historical development of human society. (Or, in basic terms, that people are living within the confines of a system; that this system is not just something imposed by some powerful people, but is the result of certain historical development; that this system operates, and must operate, according to certain “rules” that flow from its basic relations, and that this embodies and gives rise to contradictions that cause all kinds of suffering for the masses of humanity, contradictions that are fundamental and essential to this system and cannot be eliminated without eliminating this system itself). And this scientific theory reveals that there is a way out of all this—and what that way out is.

* * * *

Particular Interests and General Interests—Differing Class Interests and the Highest Interests of Humanity

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,3 Marx makes the point that every class viewpoint identifies the particular interest of the class it represents with the general interests of society. Referring back to what is said about the “4 Alls” in Breakthroughs4 (and elsewhere)—that is, the abolition of all class distinctions, of all the production relations on which those class distinctions rest, of all the social relations that correspond to those production relations, and the revolutionizing of all the ideas that correspond to those social relations—referring back to those “4 Alls,” and in particular the relation and interconnection of production and social relations, it is important to recognize how, even spontaneously, different classes (that is, people who are part of different social groups in terms of the relations of production) differently experience and respond to social relations of oppression.

For example, among Black people—and this phenomenon is something you can see in the television program Black-ish, for example—Black people as a whole suffer horrific oppression in many forms, including one of the most egregious expressions of this, murder by police, as well as rampant discrimination and racism throughout the society; but different classes, strata and sections of the Black population experience this differently and respond to it differently. You can see it in people like Beyoncé and Jay-Z. The basic outlook they hold, and propagate, is essentially this: The way to deal with all this is to get big bank—get that paper, that’ll deal with all this. Well, this is obviously the outlook and the aspiration of bourgeois strata, what have become bourgeois strata among Black people. And then there are other manifestations of the same kind of outlook among the more bourgeois and petit bourgeois strata of Black people who see the solution as working within the system and getting a better place within this system. That is their spontaneous inclination, their spontaneous view of the problem and the solution. And, among other things, this explains why there has been such enthusiasm for having Obama as the first Black president.

Now, it’s been pointed out before, and it bears repeating, that among all strata in society the outlook that characterizes the petite bourgeoisie and ultimately the bourgeoisie has significant influence. So it’s not like the basic, more proletarian or semi-proletarian masses of oppressed people are somehow immune from this petit bourgeois and bourgeois thinking. Far from it. Nevertheless, in terms of what this represents, what social position and outlook it corresponds to, it is representative essentially of the petit bourgeois and bourgeois strata.

The same thing applies to the oppression of women. As with any oppressed group (in this case, half of humanity), with regard to women any injustice or oppression against any part of women does great harm to women as a whole. But, again, different strata among women—and women in different parts of the world, for that matter—experience this differently and spontaneously have different notions of what is the problem and the solution. Among the more bourgeois-aspiring and petit bourgeois professional women, and so on, a significant spontaneous inclination is: Let’s get more women into positions of authority and power, more women CEOs, more women in the professions, and in government, and so on. That is seen as the solution, or a big part of the solution, to the problem. Now (to use a grammatical double negative) it is not that discrimination against women in the spheres of business and the professions, etc., should not be opposed. It should definitely be opposed, fundamentally because this does harm all women. But this does not deal with what the essence of the problem is and what the solution is. And, in fact, in certain ways this can end up reinforcing this system and its oppressive relations. To be clear, it is not that the fight against discrimination in these spheres is itself harmful (as I have emphasized, the opposite is the case); but what is harmful is the notion that getting more women (or, for that matter, other oppressed people) into positions of influence, authority and power within this society, in the functioning of this system, is the answer, the solution, to inequality and oppression. That is a harmful illusion that can only mislead and misdirect people and actually serve to reinforce the very system that is the source of oppression and exploitation. So here is another complex contradiction that requires the application of the scientific method to achieve the necessary synthesis: waging the fight against discrimination and oppression of any section of women (or other oppressed groups) while combating the notion that fulfilling the aspirations of the petit bourgeois and bourgeois strata among the oppressed is the solution, that it can or will lead to the end of oppression and exploitation of the masses of people and ultimately to the emancipation of all humanity.

This goes back to Marx’s point in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, that every class—or the outlook corresponding to different classes—all consider that the particular interests of their class represent the general interests of society, of the people. The reality is that only for one class at this point is it true that its interests as a class—not in a narrow or reified sense, but in the most fundamental sense—correspond to the general interests of society, or of the masses of humanity and ultimately humanity as a whole. That class is the proletariat, the exploited class under this capitalist-imperialist system, because in the fundamental and ultimate sense only by ending all oppression and exploitation—only with the achievement of those “4 Alls” throughout the world—can the exploitation and oppression of the proletariat as a class be finally ended.

As for the ruling capitalist class of this country, and in general the capitalist-imperialists in the world, their interests lie in maintaining and reinforcing the system of capitalism-imperialism and in their striving to be in the “top-dog” position in a world dominated by this system, with all the terrible suffering and truly dire consequences this involves for the masses of humanity. The petite bourgeoisie (or middle class) is itself incapable of offering any alternative to this present horrendous system.

 


1. Ruminations and Wranglings: On the Importance of Marxist Materialism, Communism as a Science, Meaningful Revolutionary Work, and a Life with Meaning, by Bob Avakian (2009) is also available at revcom.us/BA’s collected works.  [back]

2. Marx to Kugelmann, 1868, cited in Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage, A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, September 2008 (RCP Publications, 2009). Available at revcom.us.  [back]

3. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Foreign Languages Press Peking, First Edition, 1878).  [back]

4. Breakthroughs: The Historic Breakthrough by Marx, and the Further Breakthrough with the New Communism, A Basic Summary (ebook edition, 2021).  [back]

 

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/711/raymond-lotta-the-industrialization-of-sexual-exploitation-en.html

The "Industrialization" of Sexual Exploitation, Imperialist Globalization, and the Descent Into Hell

by Raymond Lotta

| revcom.us

 

Now posted with endnotes and citations.

This research paper was spurred by analysis by Bob Avakian of major global socio-economic changes and social struggles over the last 50 years influencing shifts in class structure and political-ideological developments, especially the rise of fascism. My particular point of departure is from a section of that broader analysis:

The ruin of much of traditional small-scale farming in the Third World and the dramatic increase of an urban population there (as well as in the U.S. and some other imperialist countries) which in large numbers is unable to find work within the “formal economy”—this has also fostered the growth of an illegal economy and of gangs (and, particularly in Third World countries, cartels) based on this illegal economy, in particular the drug trade but also the trafficking of human beings, especially women and girls viciously victimized in prostitution, the “sex industry,” and literal sexual slavery. [emphasis added]1

This paper examines the dimensions of, and explores key dynamics and historical factors driving, the global growth of prostitution and trafficking of women into prostitution.

I. INTRODUCTION: A NOTE OF CLARIFICATION


Girls in a brothel in Bangladesh. Of the country's 140,000 women and girl prostitutes, the overwhelming majority are trafficked and enslaved. Photo: Allison Joyce

The commercial sexual exploitation of women (and of young girls and boys) has reached massive proportions. What is euphemistically referred to as the “global sex industry,” or the “global sex trade,” has evolved into a hugely profitable segment of individual national economies and the world imperialist economy taken as a whole. The “sex industry” encompasses brothel, street, and escort prostitution; strip clubs and massage parlors; pornography; military prostitution; and global “sex tourism” sites.

In this increasingly integrated and unequal imperialist world economy, women from impoverished Third World countries are lured and trafficked to rich imperialist countries; sold off or kidnapped into sexual exploitation by militaries and gangs; or, as a consequence of the oppressive and distorted workings of imperialist-dominated development, drawn into prostitution as survival strategy.

The scale and horror of this sexual exploitation is veiled by two major factors, one material and the other cultural-ideological.

In the first instance are the complex and overlapping licit and illicit vehicles of supply, marketing, and monetization of globalized sexual exploitation: Internet payment mechanisms; foreign currency flowing to governments of the global South from overseas “sex workers”; telecommunications companies that provide pornography “entertainment”; an international “hotel leisure” industry bound up with expanding “sex tourism” and the airline companies that transport these tourists; banks that lend capital to these sectors; smugglers whose “cargo” simultaneously serves global cheap-labor supply chains and commercial sexual exploitation.

At the same time, and this is the second factor veiling this exploitation, the sexual degradation and violent subordination of women has become increasingly normalized as a given of contemporary economic life and culture: as fashion, as lucrative pornography, as “sex education,” as employment. And in the realm of political-intellectual discourse, sexual subjugation has been poisonously rationalized as an expression of individual “choice” and “agency” on the part of women. Rape, sexual coercion, and sexual humiliation are folded into and masked by the occupational category of “sex work.”

This paper proceeds from the understanding that “sex work”—whether reported/self-reported as “consensual” or “non-consensual”—is, in its essence, the marketed degradation and organized sexual submission of women to male domination. The paper demonstrates why this is the reality, and in the course of the analysis briefly addresses why the concept of “sex work” is profoundly and obscenely misleading and harmful.

II. CRUCIAL FACTS ABOUT GLOBAL COMMERCIAL SEXUAL EXPLOITATION


Women at a brothel in Kolkata, India, 2013. Photo: AP

*By recent estimates, there are 40-42 million prostitutes worldwide, 75 percent of whom are 13 to 25 years old.2 Sex trafficking is essential in supplying women for national and international commercial sexual exploitation. International sex trafficking refers to the enslavement of persons by means of abduction, force, coercion, fraud, or deception—and the transport of individuals across the borders of one or more countries.

The “industrialization of prostitution” refers to the condition that this exploitation has become large scale, organized, and concentrated (both through legal and criminal enterprise), and subject to widespread global diffusion.3 Imperialist globalization with its pervasive “commodification of everything”—of people, things, nature, and ideas—has been a catalyst for global trafficking in human beings...who are priced, shipped, and sold.

One can speak, both in the language of scientific political economy and in scarifying metaphor, of a “supply chain” of women and children for sexual exploitation and enslavement.

*By the 1990s, commercial sexual exploitation was accounting for anywhere from 2 to 14 percent of the national income of the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia.4 In Thailand in the 1990s, it was estimated that 200,000 to 800,000 prostitutes were under 18.5 (Owing to the “officially” illegal status of prostitution in most of the world, and its many, often brutally disguised forms, data is by its nature limited.)

*By 2000, there were an estimated four to six million prostitutes in China, up from some 25,000 in 1985.6 The overthrow of socialism and restoration of capitalism in China in 1976 and the ensuing capitalist restructuring of China’s countryside led to economic and social polarization in China’s rural areas, with heavy burdens placed on women. This upheaval also contributed to history’s largest migration from countryside to city. Prostitution in China has been heavily concentrated in the rapidly growing coastal areas; and female migrants from the rural areas are a major supply source for sexual exploitation.

*Some 70 percent of sex-trafficking victims worldwide are in Asia. The leading countries are India, China, Pakistan, Thailand, and Bangladesh.7

*The 1990-91 collapse of the economies of the former Soviet (social-imperialist) bloc resulted in a major new source of desperate women seeking employment...and becoming prey to international traffickers. Between 1991 and 1998, some 500,000 Ukrainian women had been trafficked to Western countries for sexual exploitation.8

*In Western Europe, even before the more recent wave of mass migrations, an estimated 65 percent of prostitutes were migrants—many from Africa and Central and Eastern Europe.9 Nigeria and Ghana are two of the major African countries from which young women and teenagers are trafficked to Europe for sexual exploitation. Sold many times over, bid upon at auctions, “prepped” in training camps, physically and psychologically broken, they are reduced to the level of slaves: the property of a third party and controlled by a pimp.

*In 2016, the total number of detected victims of modern slavery/human trafficking was estimated to be over 40 million people, some 70 percent of whom are women and girls. Some 25 million are trafficked into forced labor and 15 million into forced marriage. Within the category of forced labor, some five million human beings, 99 percent of them women and children, are trafficked (forced) into sexual exploitation, over one million of whom are children.10 Human trafficking is recruitment, transfer, transport, and harboring or receipt of human beings—through force, fraud, or deception—for the aim and purpose of exploitation for profit.

NOTE: The particular conditions facing transgender and gender non-conforming people in the imperialist and Third World countries in relation to their vulnerability to sex trafficking and physical-sexual violence will be addressed in future analysis.

*Human trafficking, measured by revenue, is the world’s third largest criminal activity (after illegal drugs and counterfeiting).11

*Sex trafficking is immensely profitable. Forced sexual exploitation was generating $99 billion annually by the beginning of the 2010s.12 A scholar who is an advisor to the UN on modern slavery estimated, in a 2019 interview in the British Observer, that the “return on investment for sex trafficking” (an enraging investigate pursuit with enraging metrics) is around 1,000%, as compared with “lower returns on exploitation” for labor trafficked into construction, agriculture, or mining. Such profitability is bound up with “the fact that the victim can be sold up to 20 times a day, generating tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars in profit per victim.”13

*An estimated 9,000 illicit spas were operating in the U.S. in 2018.The $2.5 billion illicit massage parlor “industry” has been growing rapidly in the U.S.14 It is a major source of “demand” for trafficked women and girls, both from within the U.S. and globally. The total number of trafficked victims into the U.S. is not reliably known. Some estimates suggest that 50,000 women and children from Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe are brought to the U.S. each year and forced to work as servants or prostitutes.15 With regard to illegal massage parlors, the majority of trafficking victims who have been reported are from China and South Korea.16 Young girls from the U.S., often running away from abusive parents and relatives, get trapped into trafficking networks.

III. A FIRST LOOK INTO ECONOMIC-SOCIAL FACTORS DRIVING MARGINALIZATION AND DESPERATION OF WOMEN IN THE THIRD WORLD


Ugandan women who were stopped at Nairobi airport in Kenya because they lacked proper employment papers. They were victims of a human trafficking ring in East Africa. Photo: Institute for Security Studies

The sexual subjugation of women is an historical and structural feature of exploitative, class-divided, patriarchal society. The particular forms of this subordination of women and its concrete manifestations in a gendered division of labor are rooted in the dominant mode of production interacting with tradition, culture, law, and the patriarchal family.

The contemporary “global sex industry” cannot be comprehended simply or mainly as the continuation of the “ages-old practice” of prostitution within modern patriarchal society. More specifically, this form of sexual subjugation and degradation of women has been profoundly shaped, massively magnified, and globally integrated by the workings of late imperialism as a world system of exploitation in which the division between rich oppressor countries and poor oppressed countries is a defining feature of imperialist accumulation—with its plunder of resources in the Third World, penetration of markets, and super-exploitation of labor—and by social-cultural factors bound up with the world system of capitalism-imperialism.

A) Land Grabbing, Rural Poverty, and Women


A woman in Colombia at a farm growing roses intended for export to the U.S. Photo: AP

The undermining and destruction of traditional subsistence economies in the Third World—where people farm and work to meet family and local survival needs—have had an immense impact on women: as caregivers, as displaced indigenous land-dwellers, as migrants moving from countryside to town, from town to city, from city to city with limited employment opportunities, and entering global migrant streams...willingly under desperate circumstances, or as trafficked victim. The loss of peasant and farmer land has been a major factor.

In the decade 2000-10, more than 81 million acres of land in the global South—roughly equal to the size of Portugal—was sold off to foreign investors, both corporate and state entities.17 This is what has been called “land grabbing.”

Much of this land that has been grabbed (defined as large-scale acquisition) has been turned into industrial-scale plantations producing commercial crops, like palm oil, soy, and other profitable food crops—often for export. Some of these “grabs” are to grow bio-fuels (like sugarcane), or for the purpose of planting trees to serve as lucrative carbon “offsets” (this is a con game that enables imperialist corporations and countries to continue to produce and burn fossil fuels but supposedly “offset” the damage by planting trees in the global South that will absorb carbon). Some of this land grabbing is simply speculative investment to make acquisitions in the expectation of land-price rise.

NOTE: Two-thirds of these agricultural land deals of 2000-2010 occurred in countries experiencing serious food insecurity.18

For most of the second half of the 20th century, investment by governments in the Third World in dams and roads, expansion of industry, and mining-minerals extraction—with financial backing and prodding by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, which are imperialist-dominated financial institutions—played a leading role in pushing peasants off the land. The more recent juggernaut of land grabbing represents a second wave of mass displacement in the name of “development” in the global South.

Landlessness spreads as many subsistence farmers (growing food for family consumption or products for sale to maintain households) lack legally recognized ownership over (title to) land they have farmed; other peasants and farmers are forcibly evicted with backing from the state. Women have been pushed out of traditional fishing and gathering activities. At the same time, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank advance loans to oppressed countries that generally carry conditions like the redirection of agriculture away from cultivation geared to local subsistence-food needs towards specialty export crops, cut flowers, etc.

All of this has had the effect of further marginalizing rural women economically. And these disruptive economic forces, interacting with preexisting relations of female subordination and new forms of gender discrimination, have put new burdens and pressures on women.19

Rural poverty; agribusiness-led transformation and ruin of smallholder agriculture (about which more in section III); environmental stresses on land, water, and resources; and military conflict have profoundly altered traditional work and family patterns and fueled massive migrations of humanity out of the countryside of the global South.

B) Prostitution and the Informal Urban Economy


Red light district in Mumbai, India, 2013. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Prostitution, in its legal and illegal forms, as forced or “voluntary” labor, is an integral element of the global informal economy of unregulated and irregular labor that is the dominant form of employment and survival in the oppressed countries of the global South.

Prostitution is found in shantytowns and informal settlements, alongside factory compounds, agricultural plantations, and around expanding tourism sites (along with tourist guides, drug sellers, street vendors, and others). Foreign mining and logging companies have been known to set up areas of prostitution as a “service” to workers. Special economic (or export-processing) zones servicing foreign capital have been major hubs of prostitution. They are now in some 4,000 locations.20

In Mumbai, India’s second largest city, women migrants from the countryside sell sexual services in brothels and on the street. But another common mode of “exchange” occurs in the informal day-wage labor markets that offer other income-generating activities, like construction and domestic work. The struggle of prostitutes to feed themselves and their families in the cities, and to gain access to shelter and water, takes place in an atmosphere of police persecution and the relentless demolition of squatter settlements.21

C) Migration, Trafficking, and Prostitution


Paramilitary officers in Xiamen in southeastern China detain girls and young women who were among those caught when a smuggling operation into Taiwan was stopped, 2003. Photo: AP/Chinatopix

The uprooting of traditional subsistence economies in the Third World and the “pull” of gainful employment and steady income in particular regions of the world, especially Western Europe and North America, has drawn impoverished labor into migratory streams and human smuggling. Smuggling is not the same as trafficking, which involves entrapment and enslavement, although human smuggling overlaps with trafficking.

Migration across borders has become essential to the survival strategies of women displaced from traditional economies by agribusiness, the climate crisis, regional and local conflicts, and extreme poverty. And these streams of migration “drive up” the supply of “potential sex slaves” to be exploited at low cost.

(Smugglers currently facilitate about 90 percent of the “unofficial” migration to Western Europe and the desperate crossing of borders for safety and a life.)22

Overseas work by Third World migrant laborers also generates “remittances”—a portion of earnings—sent to families back home. These remittances help buoy up economies of the global South. The article Imperialist Parasitism and Changes in Class-Social Formation in the U.S. details the outsized role that migrant and immigrant laborer remittances play in today’s imperialist world economy—exceeding annual foreign direct investment in the oppressed economies.23

The intense demand and search for cheap labor in and from the oppressed countries of the Third World is a driving force to modern-day human trafficking. This demand for cheap labor has been a major impetus to the operations of criminal syndicates that carry out and “regulate” this trafficking. Indeed, there is no global, imperialist “supply chain” economy without inflows of trafficked labor: in construction, manufacturing, “hospitality,” agriculture, and fishing. “Legal” and “illegal” economic activities are increasingly intertwined in the imperialist world economy.

Think about this vicious cycle in this sphere of sexual exploitation: a woman is recruited in Thailand for overseas work as a domestic; she then gets trafficked to other countries and is coerced into “sex work”...she becomes a slave. Even though most of her prostitution "earnings" are apportioned to a pimp or trafficker, she is able to send some funds home to her family in a rural village. In short, money is cycled back into the Thai economy and helps prop up this economy with, yes, its large “brothel sector” (about which more in section IX).

Such is the matrix of dependent, imperialist-dominated development.

IV. PULLING THE LENS BACK FURTHER: DISPOSSESSION, EXPULSION, AND A “SURPLUS” POPULATION IN THE THIRD WORLD


A family takes shelter on a road in Assam, India, after heavy monsoon rains unleashed floods and landslides that displaced millions of people across India, Nepal and Bangladesh, August 15, 2017. Photo: AP

The growth and globalization of the “sex industry” has a pivotal “supply side.” A huge reservoir of displaced and desperate humanity, most especially in the Third World (but not only), is not being absorbed into the structures of the formal economies of the world imperialist system. Formal refers to set pay and hours and some degree of official regulation of working conditions. Rather, vast swaths of oppressed humanity are condemned to precarious modes of survival. Let’s dig deeper.

A) The Separation of Peasant Producers from the Means of Production

Over the last 50 years, a modern-day form of the (often violent) separation of laborers from the means of production has been taking place...devastating the lives of hundreds of millions of rural dwellers in the Third World.

This process of dispossession has been linked to an historically unprecedented process of breakneck and chaotic urbanization in the Third World and the emergence of “mega-cities,” with massive slums and surrounding corridors of squatter settlements inhabited by migrants from the countryside.

What is meant by the “separation of laborers from the means of production”?

*The laborers in question are largely smallholder peasants or farmers who own or rent small plots of land—or who use parcels of community, or what is called “customary,” property.

*The principal means of production that peasant-farmers are being separated from (stripped of) is land, along with associated tools, and access to water.

How are laborers separated from the means of production? The process of separation involves a complex combination of factors:

  • the introduction into the Third World, starting in the 1950s and 1960s, of large-scale, more highly mechanized, technologically advanced agriculture, including new hybrid seed varieties, tied into major national and international channels of marketing, which undermines small producers;
  • competition from global, imperialist agribusiness;
  • the vast takeover of peasant lands through imperialist and state-sponsored infrastructure development (like construction of dams, roads, and storage facilities for large-scale agricultural production, etc.);
  • the “land grabbing” by international private investor groups, foreign governments, and domestic elites that converts local agriculture to industrial-plantation production, like palm oil, and mining operations;
  • loss of water rights;
  • pressure from, and policies imposed by, international “development” and lending institutions, like the World Bank, that pry open markets to exports from the imperialist countries leading to a situation where, for example, U.S. corn undersells and ruins local Mexican maize production...and loans that require as a condition cutbacks in financial support to small growers from governments;
  • the privatization of seed and fertilizer through “intellectual property rights” that bind farmers to imperialist agribusiness.

The dispossession of smallholder peasants and farmers has involved “legal” and illegal methods of land seizure...economic pressure and brute force. Big landowners and local, regional, and national governments in the Third World deploy militaries and militias, gangs and thugs; they create formal titles to ownership that provide legal cover for the purchase or forcible takeover of land held and farmed by local peasant populations and for generations by tribal and indigenous peoples, but without formal private title. At the same time, competition among farmer-peasants results in some gaining advantage in productivity, size of landholdings, ability to hire laborers.  

Here is a revealing statistic: As late as 1983, the majority of the world’s workers were still in agriculture (overwhelmingly in the global South). But by the start of the 2010s, only 25 percent of the world’s workers were in agriculture.24

Here is the ongoing reality for the displaced of the global South: new jobs outside of agriculture are not being created anywhere on the scale to absorb those being separated from the land.

B) Not the Same as What Happened During the Industrial Revolution of the 1700s and 1800s

This process of separation of laborers from the means of production has not been a simple retracing of the experience of the driving of peasants from the land as occurred over several centuries in Europe, and the explosive unfolding of the Industrial Revolution, centered in England, in the late 18th and 19th centuries. At that time, a process of labor-intensive capitalist industrialization was taking place. Capitalist production was stimulating the growth of a new agricultural and industrial proletariat drawn from the countryside. And mass factory production, like the cotton mills of England, with all the horrific conditions, was absorbing new proletarians in great numbers.

But under conditions of imperialist domination today, economic development in the oppressed countries of the global South is both subordinated to and distorted by the needs of imperialism and highly vulnerable to (tied to) the ups and downs of the world imperialist economy. These countries are not “reenacting” the earlier Industrial Revolution, which itself was inseparable from the global slave trade and colonial conquest, whose consequences are still felt in the oppressed countries.

In today’s world-capitalist economy, the dispossessed and uprooted peasants of the Third World are not in their great numbers being incorporated into industrial mass systems of production. Those leaving agriculture—whether forced out or “choosing” to leave under oppressive conditions—are not in their great numbers finding standardized industrial and service jobs. They become a surplus population. A “surplus” not in the sense of “over-population” due to high birth rates or absolute shortage of resources—but a “surplus humanity” relative to capitalism’s demand for labor to serve profit-based production.

Significantly, over the last 40 years there has been a great expansion of manufacturing production in the Third World. This is very much linked to foreign investment and outsourcing of production from the capitalist-imperialist countries. This is a defining feature of the contemporary world-imperialist economy and essential to the profitability of imperialist capital. But new, mass manufacturing capacity in the Third World is largely concentrated in a cluster of countries. Imperialist investment and outsourcing, along with the expansion of local manufacturing-industrial capacity, have not generated employment for the great bulk of the newly urbanized populations of the Third World.25

Here is the historical trend: Throughout most of the global South, the large-scale movement of rural dwellers to cities has not been a large-scale movement into industry and services in the formal economy with set hours, wages, and operating within a certain legal framework.*

Almost 70 percent of employment in low- and middle-income regions of the world is in the informal economy of irregular and insecure (often temporary) jobs, much of which is self-employment or daily labor hire—with no set hours or wages, or safety and health protections or other official regulations. The occupations include street vendors, construction laborers, myriad service jobs (repairing cell phones), domestic workers, rag and waste pickers, and overlap with illegal activities like trade in counterfeit goods. In India, 80 percent of employment outside of agriculture is informal—and in Africa, 85 percent of non-agricultural employment is informal. Over 90 percent of the world’s informal labor force is in the global South.27

C) Displacement and Expulsion

In Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy, Saskia Sassen develops an analysis of a transition on a world scale from capitalist-imperialist development “incorporating” masses of the poor and uprooted into economic activity...to one, accelerating at the end of the 20th century and continuing into the 21st century, characterized by the massive “expelling” of people from land, employment, and home.

Sassen sees a global dynamic linking:

displaced persons [in the Third World] who will never go back home—home is now a war zone, a plantation, a mining operation, or dead land... [and] an equivalent shift in the global North, where what until recently was incarceration as response to a crime (whether the crime was actually committed or not) is now becoming the warehousing of people [mass incarceration]...with the United States in a vanguard all its own.

She goes on to observe, and this is particularly relevant to the focus of this paper, that:

expulsions from home, land, and job have also had the effect of giving expanding operational space to criminal networks and to the trafficking of people, as well as greater access to land and underground water resources to foreign buyers, whether firms or governments.28 (Sassen’s talk at Revolution Books on Expulsions is at: https://vimeo.com/108811541)

D) Planet of Slums

This is the title of a book by Mike Davis that provides vital analysis for understanding the phenomena under discussion. The closing chapter begins with an evocative passage from the novel Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau: “A proletariat without factories, workshops, and work, and without bosses, in the muddle of odd jobs, drowning in survival and leading an existence like a path through embers.” The “muddle of odd jobs” is the “informal economy.” Texaco is the name of the squatter settlement in the capital city of the Caribbean island of Martinique.29

The ferocity, speed, and pain of what is happening cannot be overstated. The proportion of the world’s population living in cities rose from 34 percent in 1960 to 47 percent in 2000 to 56 percent in 2018. Over 75 percent of the world’s urban population lives in the cities of the global South. By 2015, 40 percent of the world’s urban expansion was taking place in slums; in sub-Saharan Africa, over 60 percent of the population lives in slums. In 2019, over 1 billion people, or almost 1 in 7 on the planet, were living in urban slums and so-called “informal settlements” that ring urban areas—with poor sanitation, contaminated water, few health services—overwhelmingly in and surrounding mega-cities of the global South.30

This rural to urban migration of the displaced...this migration that often continues from one Third World country to another...and to the imperialist countries—this has everything to do with the globalization of prostitution.

E) And Global Warming

Economy, society, politics, and the revolution for a radically different and far better world are inextricably bound up with the planetary environmental crisis. Global warming is having disproportionate effects on agriculture in the Third World—drought and desertification. It intensifies environmental stresses in the cities, slums, and squatting settlements of the global South. It compounds the dynamics of expulsion, mass migrations, and the emergence of a “surplus humanity.”

V. WE CONTINUE BY LISTENING TO AYE’S AND MARY’S ACCOUNTS OF THEIR DESCENT INTO HELL...AND THE NIGHTMARE FACING ROHINGYA REFUGEES


This 17-year-old Rohingya woman escaped on a boat to Myanmar from one of Bangladesh's so-called "brothel villages." Photo: AP

▸ Aye was only 14 when a woman approached her family in Myanmar. She told them that Aye could work in Bangkok. Living in extreme poverty, Aye’s parents gave her and her sister permission to travel to Thailand to take advantage of the work opportunity. Upon arriving, they were immediately handed over to a group of men who sold them to a brothel owner.

Aye’s parents didn’t hear from her for three years...until she was found during a brothel raid. She had been held captive on the fifth floor of the brothel, along with 100 other women: required to work from noon to two in the morning, forced to service 12 to 20 men daily. Each girl was given a shirt with a number attached to it; they would watch TV while waiting for their number to be called. A glass wall separated the women and girls from men until he paid the $6.00 charge to spend 30 minutes with the girl of his choice. The women and girls received a dollar a day for their “work.”31

▸ Mary was a promising high school student from the Nigerian state of Edo. She dreamed of going to the university. She was 16 when a woman approached her mother and offered to take the teenager to Italy to find work. Mary’s family pushed her to accept the offer, hoping this would help lift them out of poverty. Mary ended up being trafficked into prostitution: three years in which she was forced into selling her body, endured beatings and threats at gunpoint, and forced to watch the brutal degradation (carrots violently inserted into the vaginas) of even younger girls as an object lesson for what would happen if she resisted.

Mary was finally repatriated to Nigeria after a raid. But Mary’s family shunned her. That was 20 years ago. Today, the situation is far worse. Gangs take advantage of the chaos of the migrant crisis—“selling” more women, and younger and younger girls, into sexual slavery. She reflected that these young girls now have more knowledge of what they are getting into than she did...but they don’t know the trauma they will suffer if they ever get out of it like she did.32

▸ A young Rohingya refugee fleeing Myanmar crosses over to neighboring Malaysia. She is among the hundreds of thousands who have been persecuted, demonized, and expelled from Myanmar. In a camp just inside Malaysia, she and other girls are initially sold into a forced marriage. But then after a certain period of time, their “husbands” sell the girls to other men. Some end up as domestic workers or bonded laborers. Traffickers promising them higher wages lure some of these teenagers and young women into forced prostitution. Other Rohingya women are press-ganged into Thailand’s seafood industry. The industry is highly dependent on cheap and slave labor, and is one in which women are exposed to life-threatening work conditions and sexually abusive treatment. The industry serves the U.S. retail food sector.

Other refugees wind up in Bangladesh, now the main destination for the Rohingya—with some one million living there, including hundreds of thousands who fled in previous decades. Their stateless status and inability to find work legally makes women and girls especially vulnerable to sex trafficking. Some will wind up in one of Bangladesh’s so-called “brothel villages”—where they join Bangladeshi women and teenagers, some as young as 13.

Prostitution is legal in Bangladesh. The steady stream of trafficked women and children into the prostitution industry makes girls disposable to those making money out of them. Some of the young women become so despondent that they cannot continue—they cut themselves, they commit suicide (one a month) in the country’s largest brothel village. The women are forbidden from burying the dead in public cemeteries, so these prostitutes have built private graveyards to cope with the situation...and conduct makeshift funerals. 33

As imperialist globalization deepens, new sex trafficking routes emerge: Mexican women to U.S.-Mexico border towns; Nepalese girls to India; Nigerian women to Italy; Asian women to Australian mining towns.


Unmarked graves of women involved in "sex work" in Mymensingh, Bangladesh—the women are forbidden from burying their dead in the public municipal graveyard. Photo: Allison Joyce

VI. A NOTE ON RATIONALIZATIONS OF “SEX WORK” AND THE DESCENT INTO HELL


Young woman from Bangladesh who was trafficked when she was 9 years old and sold to a brothel when she was 13.

It must be clearly understood and stated that “sex work,” as against its many rationalizations, including those emanating from certain currents of feminism and "woke" identity politics, is not simply “work” of a special kind. It is not just a more heinous form of “trade.” Trafficking for prostitution is not some variant of “migration for labor.” Not when what is actually done to the bodies of women, including being forced and initiated into prostitution through rape and gang rape by pimps and traffickers, with all the attendant physical and psychological effects, is taken into account. Being trafficked for prostitution is "the experience of being sexually used by many men daily, unable to refuse any practice or any male, while under the control of overseers and receiving no payment until a putative debt, made up by the trafficker and added to daily for personal items, is paid off."34 And there is, among the proponents of the "sex work" paradigm for global prostitution, an imperio-chauvinist blind spot: a refusal to reckon with the horrors of this in the Third World.

It is often argued in defense of “sex work” that, yes, it can be degrading...but so too are all manner of jobs under capitalism. In answering this, revcom.us published an article that points to the problem with this argument:

It is definitely true that there are many jobs in this world which are truly degrading and highly exploitative. This is a big part of why we need a revolution; it is utterly insane and unnecessary for so many people’s lives to be squandered in this way.... On the other hand, when a man purchases a woman or very young girl in prostitution or pornography... it is her sexual enslavement and degradation that is being purchased... He is paying for the experience of being able to disrespect, violate, beat, insult, and humiliate a woman. [emphasis added]35

Another line of argument by advocates of “sex work” is that the transaction through which a woman exchanges her body to men for purposes of sexual pleasure—whether as street prostitute, “high-end” escort, performer—is actually a form of female “agency”...of “choice” in a world of globalized commerce and self-promotion. In this view, the operative fact is that a conscious choice is being made. This is a species of delusion and self-delusion.

As this analysis has demonstrated, larger economic-social forces set and delimit the range of “choices” afforded women, especially impoverished and uprooted women on the planet. The workings of imperialist accumulation and the social fabric of patriarchy condition these choices. And as Bob Avakian powerfully explains in the article “On Choices...And Radical Changes,” people make choices, but that “doesn’t mean that they chose to have those choices.”36

An essay rebuking “choice-based” rationalizations of “sex work” makes the important point that prostitution is “created by a relation and not by individual willingness... [that is,] without male sex buyer and prostituted woman, there is no prostitution.”37

The recognition of the intrinsically oppressive nature of prostitution, and uniting with the just demand for the decriminalization of prostitutes, is not, however, the end of the matter...

The sexual exploitation and oppression of women must and can, and can only, be ended through the communist revolution to overthrow this system and uproot all exploitation and oppression. Put differently, the conscious and collective making and carrying forward of this revolution to radically rupture with all traditional property relations and all traditional ideas and values is “agency,” liberatory agency, writ large.

VII. SEX TRAFFICKING AS A CRITICAL COMPONENT OF THE GLOBAL ILLICIT ECONOMY THAT HAS BOOMED IN THE LAST 20 YEARS


A Nigerian woman trafficked to Burkina Faso and forced into prostitution in the gold mining town of Secaco walks through a tent encampment where she and others like her live and are forced to have sex with up to 30 men per night. (AP photo/Sam Mednick)

We turn to a critical point of analysis: imperialist globalization has facilitated a kind of “global architecture” that not only intertwines legal and illegal global labor supply networks but also blurs the distinctions between them. In any number of legal industries, illicit economies circulate around and into them: including fishing, cobalt, gold mining, and the timber trade. In the realm of finance, “legitimate” banking bleeds into “shadow” banking and money laundering.

The global illicit economy is valued at $2.2 trillion.38

As the study The Global Illicit Economy: Trajectories of Transnational Organized Crime puts it: “The opaque global banking system that developed at the start of the new millennium has allowed legal and illegal profits to come together to create billion-dollar reservoirs of untouchable assets, while reinforcing the power and influence of the actors who utilize them.”39 And the tools of digital technology and digital commerce have served at once to bolster and camouflage illicit micro-activities and illicit economies of scale—drugs, weapons, human trafficking. Payments to traffickers can be conducted without trace of transaction.

All of this has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic:

Decades of globalization and trade liberalization have created massive disparities in wealth and power. Before the coronavirus pandemic, opportunities for working in the legal economy were already diminishing. As a result of the pandemic, the situation has become even worse, especially for those working in the informal economy...These conditions create space for illicit economies to expand and offer services and employ (often coercively) an increasing number of people.40

As discussed earlier, the chaotic urbanizing trends of Third World economic development under imperialist domination interact with the inability of the formal economy to provide employment. In the slums and informal urban settlements, the state is not able to provide governance, services, and safety. Demand for water, and charcoal to heat homes and for use as cooking fuel, and other essential requirements, cannot be met in the unregulated economic atmosphere. Into this vacuum, criminal groups and local gangs often step—and increasingly co-opt unregulated markets. In some cases during the COVID-19 pandemic, gangs have been enforcing health quarantines.

The underground illicit economy grows and provides that “alternative space” for employment and income generation. Prostitution is a major component of this burgeoning “alternative” economy. The gangs and criminal groups, drawing in youth and the extremely marginalized, multiply and branch out to other activities—interweaving with traffickers and migrant smugglers, and with the global “sex industry.”

VIII. SEX, MAIDS, AND EXPORT PROCESSING...AND THE RISE OF “SEX TOURISM”


Women at a brothel in Macao, China—a big center for "sex tourism," promoted as the "Las Vegas of the East."

A) The Movement of Women in the Third World Into and Out of the Formal Economy

A 2001 research essay, Sex, Maids, and Export Processing: Risks and Reasons for Gendered Global Production Networks, explores how, over the preceding three decades, great numbers of women in the Third World have been drawn into the three named sectors of the study's title...and moved among them.41

Imperialist outsourcing of production has stimulated the growth of export-processing zones, which depend for profitability and competitiveness on women as superexploitable workers. Yet, the “race to the bottom”—imperialism’s ever-intensifying search for cheaper labor—results in the constant, competitive shifting and relocation of production. A first wave of outsourced garment and other consumer goods manufacturing in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, etc., gave way to a second wave focused in other areas, like Bangladesh and China—and led to the shuttering of many of these factories.

Outsourced/subcontracted factory employment is at once grueling and tenuous. This heightens the vulnerability of women workers and their families. At the same time, the imposition by imperialist financial institutions of austerity and structural adjustment, beginning in the 1980s and continuing in various forms to today—with resulting cutbacks in and privatization of basic services—exerts greater pressure on women to scrape together means to maintain households.

Some of these women in factories return to the household or informal sectors of work, including domestic service and prostitution—or migrate to join these sectors abroad. But once they become prostitutes, many women find themselves trapped...forced to stay in this work owing to stigma, debts accumulated to “sponsors” (often traffickers), and criminal organizations that prevent them from escaping this condition.

B) The Case of Dongguan in China


Women workers, exhausted at their work stations, at a factory in Dongguan, China, that makes webcams and other equipment for Microsoft. Photo: The National Labor Committee

The city of Dongguan is in the heart of the Pearl River Delta, the massive export-manufacturing zone on China’s southern coast adjacent Hong Kong. In the first decade of this century, Dongguan became known as the “Amsterdam of the East” with some 300,000 prostitutes in the city. Though officially illegal, by some estimates, prostitution accounted for 10 percent of the city’s revenues and employment.

The role of internal migrant labor was critical. Hundreds of thousands of women from the poor rural interior of China had flocked to the coast for better-paying jobs in the cheap-labor manufacturing sweatshops in rapidly growing cities like Dongguan. Some 90 percent of Dongguan’s prostitutes had originally sought work in these factories, but either could not get those jobs or found that these jobs were not what these women were told they would be.42

Prostitution became the job of opportunity and compulsion under such circumstances. These “sex workers” were in demand from male migrant workers who had also come from the interior, though in far greater numbers than women; and these prostitutes were in demand from businessmen who came to this coastal city to conduct commerce.

As China’s export boom slowed on account of the 2007-09 global recession and as China moved into more advanced manufacturing that was less labor-intensive—and with employment opportunities for women contracting—more women sought work as prostitutes. Brothel owners and traffickers had a growing reservoir of desperate women to lure and deceive. The government launched crackdowns, but the industry did not disappear; it simply changed its methods of operation...and Dongguan remains China’s “sin city” in the exultant language of online “sex tourist” guides.

C) Global “Sex Tourism” and the Formative Role of the Genocidal U.S. Military


A U.S. GI walking past a brothel in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. During 10 years of America's genocidal war in Vietnam (1965-75), between 400,000 and 500,000 Vietnamese women and girls became prostitutes.

From the aptly and provocatively titled book and extremely valuable analysis by Sheila Jeffreys, The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade:

Military prostitution was a most important vector in the globalization and industrialization of prostitution in the late 20th century. The massive industrialized militaries of the 20th century understood that prostitution was necessary for their military preparedness...Military prostitution on a scale similar to that employed by the Japanese [mass prostitution and sexual enslavement of women in the countries and territories occupied by Japanese imperialism in the 1930s and 1940s] was part of the U.S. military rest and recreation regimes after World War 2 throughout South East Asia. They formed the basis for the huge sex industries and trafficking of women that developed in Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines, and became such important sectors of their economies. In its sheer scale, military prostitution can be seen as kick-starting a crucial aspect of the globalization of prostitution, the sexual exploitation of a sexual proletariat of women and children from poor countries by members of rich westernized nations....After military prostitution caused the industrialization of prostitution in a country, local women and girls became the raw materials of the global sex industry, not only prostituted within local and sex tourism industries at home but trafficked into prostitution worldwide.43

The American Crime series at revcom.us has an installment, “America’s War in Vietnam and the Sexual Subjugation of Women,” which documents the forging of a “huge brothel economy” in South Vietnam. In the ten years (1965-75) of America’s genocidal war, some 400,000-500,000 Vietnamese women and girls became prostitutes.44

Sexual exploitation to service U.S. soldiers became more organized, “industrialized,” as it was spread to Thailand. This was enshrined in a pact between the U.S. and Thailand engineered by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in 1967. In exchange for economic aid, the Thai government agreed to provide sexual R&R (“rest and recreation”) for American soldiers on temporary leave—thus giving “sex tourism” in Thailand both official sanction and external boost.45 All in a decade’s work of murdering two million Vietnamese!

Sex trafficking during war has remained a “tradition” of the U.S. military: for instance, in the U.S. “green zone” in Baghdad following America's invasion of Iraq in 2003, women from Belarus, China, and Iran were trafficked by U.S. subcontractors to work as prostitutes.46

At the same time, military prostitution on a mass scale has had its own “multiplier effect.” There is a very definite connection between the “boom” in military prostitution during the Vietnam War, the U.S.’s military bases in East and Southeast Asia, and the subsequent development of “sex tourism” in that region. As Jeffreys writes:

The development of the sex tourism industry in Asia from the 1970s outwards was substantially aided by the groundwork put in place by U.S. military prostitution. It began in the same sites in which prostitution had been developed to service the U.S. military in rest and recreation, such as Thailand, the Philippines, and Korea, and developed to the point where it was providing a substantial proportion of GDP in those countries. Indeed, the governments of poor countries have deliberately developed sex tourism as a means to gain foreign exchange...

Prostitution tourism has not just developed in countries and sites in Asia that harbored military prostitution. It is a developing part of the prostitution industry in all those areas where men as individuals or in groups travel for fun, on business, for sports events or political assemblies. They may be tourists visiting specially for the purpose of prostituting women, or to use casinos since prostitution use is integrally connected with this activity, or visiting businessmen, or male sports enthusiasts who prostitute women as an ordinary part of the traveling experience. There are prostitution tourism destinations in the rich world, such as Amsterdam and the U.S. state of Nevada. There are poor countries too that have used prostitution tourism as a tool to develop their economies and place local women in the marketplace as a resource to be exploited, without having profound experiences of military prostitution, such as Jamaica.47

Indeed, in the late 1970s, Jamaica received loans from the International Monetary Fund, loans in exchange for “policy reforms.” Those “reforms” required that the Jamaican economy be redirected towards the needs of the imperialist world market. This came first with a push towards export-led manufacturing. That short-lived initiative collapsed in the face of competition from even cheaper zones of production. What followed was the promotion of tourism—the “commodification of paradise” in the Caribbean and Southeast Asia—with the “exotic” and “submissive” female body on offer.

Jamaican-born writer Nicole Dennis-Benn (who spoke at Revolution Books) captures some of the human consequences in her 2016 novel Here Comes the Sun. In commentary on the novel and the choices made by its characters, she has pointed out:

Upward mobility in Jamaica is extremely difficult, which is why a lot of working-class Jamaicans leave. But those who stay have to find ways to make ends meet. In my novel, Margot had to supplement her meager salary as a hotel clerk with prostitution. In a country like Jamaica where tourism is our number one revenue, our disenfranchised population capitalize off that. It’s not like the hotels are using their profits to make things better for us and our society.48

Let’s take this in at a higher level of abstraction. International tourism (with the implicit "attraction" of easy access to commercial sex) has come to be seen by increasing numbers of Third World governments, with the prodding of imperialist investors and international financial institutions, as a form of economic growth, as a “strategic development activity.”

Many young women, excluded from sectors requiring certain skills, along with children facing desperate conditions, seek employment in tourism’s informal sector. And in many oppressed countries, informal sector tourism is inseparable from the “sex trade” industry of women and children. Western capital—hotel chains, airlines, and shipping companies, the list goes on—derives enormous benefits from this major “global industry” that exists and thrives on the sexual subjugation and degradation of women.

“Sex tourism” is a feature of the imperialist countries as well. The “supply chain” (the global “raw material”) for legalized and semi-legal prostitution in these countries centrally involves foreign prostitutes. In the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal and “prostitution tourism” is a major “tourist attraction” in the capital city of Amsterdam, an estimated 60 to 75 percent of the country’s prostitutes are migrants.49

D) Business Prostitution

If prostitution is normalized in the Third World, in the ways analyzed, especially “sex tourism,” it takes on new, ever more normalized dimensions in the venues of deal making and business entertainment in the imperialist countries. From Tokyo to Shanghai, from London to cities in the U.S. like Atlanta (which relies heavily on commercial conventions), “business prostitution” has grown enormously and become more central to “business networking” internationally.

This segment of the “sex industry” comprises overt prostitution, strip clubs, and massage parlors, and global “sex tourism” centers. It functions as a special, exclusionary mode of male bonding in the pursuit of commerce. It embodies and reinforces male privilege at all levels of corporate hierarchy. Various “glass-ceiling" studies point to these disgusting rituals as a major impediment to professional women's ability to gain access to the “informal social networks” necessary for advancing careers.50

IX. PARASITIC CULTURE, THE VIOLENT REASSERTION OF MALE ENTITLEMENT, AND GLOBALIZED PROSTITUTION

The analysis in this research paper has mainly focused on the “supply (chain) side” of the global “sex industry.” But what of the “demand” side, the (rising) demand for women’s sexual subservience and degradation—and its enactment in myriad forms? What has been influencing and shaping this? It is a question that deserves fuller investigation and deeper synthesis in its own right. What follows are some preliminary reflections and markers for further investigation.

A provocative question is posed by an Australian scholar of globalization and prostitution. She writes:

Poverty, dislocation, and female desperation are routinely cited in explanation of prostitution, as well as the trafficking that organizes the trade...But parallel to these global developments, what has caused growing numbers of men to prostitute women at greater frequency over the past fifty years, if we see the global sex industry as having burgeoned during this period? In other words, what has accelerated demand for prostitution among men...what has caused the fashion to emerge among men that buying sex might be thought reasonable, even desirable?51

We are not, as this scholar correctly points out, dealing with some biological “essentialist” male sex drive, or some “latent prostitution demand” that lies dormant in men. And she is on to something when she observes that the “banal sexual trading of women and children within the context of men’s everyday lives as consumers is a twenty-first century reality that the gendered anti-slavery movements of neither the nineteenth nor twentieth centuries have been able to prevent.”52 Her use of the term “banal” is, of course, to highlight the routinization, that normalization, of sexual exploitation and violence directed at women.

Bob Avakian has provided the analytic tools with which to explore and understand this. He is the architect of the only kind of revolution, a revolution guided by the new communism, through which we can radically transform this. The new communism takes the liberation of women as a central and touchstone question for the revolution in the 21st century to emancipate humanity from all oppression and exploitation.


We live in a world in which “two outmodeds” are clashing with each other: the outmoded economy and culture and ruling strata of the imperialist system; and reactionary fundamentalisms, reflecting the outlook of historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity.53 Pornography meets the veil—women’s dehumanization in medieval and modern form.

We live in a world of extreme parasitism and privilege in the imperialist heartlands—of wasteful, toxic, and numbing consumerism, including garish “sex entertainment”; a world of “sex tourism” as “growth industry” in the Third World.

In so many ways, as Avakian has emphasized, underlying economic forces and deep social-cultural changes and struggles have put the patriarchal family, and patriarchal relations in general, under enormous strain.54 Traditional social ties and roles have fractured, both in the imperialist and the oppressed countries. Peasant women have become superexploited wage laborers in garment and electronic factories in Third World export-processing zones. In the U.S., women who in previous generations would have been full-time wives and homemakers now graduate from college in greater numbers than men. Households have changed: dual income, female-headed, alongside cultural challenges to gender traditions.

But these economic and social changes remain contained and constrained within the shell (and armor) of prevailing economic, social, and ideological relations, of the patriarchal organization of society. This applies in distinct but profoundly interrelated ways in both the imperialist and oppressed countries—not least because of the processes of imperialist globalization and its cultural expressions.

In this light, a few additional points of reflection for subsequent investigation:

*“Male revanchism” in response to the undermining and erosion of traditional and formerly stable forms of patriarchal control over women—and a felt “loss of male status” at home, work, and in society at large. Violence against women, including rape and gang rape, plays an integral role in the reassertion of male privilege, entitlement, and standing...and as “punishment” to those threatening it.

*The mass production, spread, and consumption of pornography on a global scale...the huge role of sex trafficking in this global industry...and of pornography in “educating,” socializing, and habituating young boys and men in general to what is acceptable, indeed valued—reinforcing the extreme commodification and objectification of women.

Bob Avakian has drawn a searing parallel between pornography and “postcards of a hanging”—the postcards, with graphic pictures of lynchings of Black men in the early 20th century, that were sold as “souvenirs” of sadistic punishment and mutilation.55 Like those postcards, pornography perpetrates, rationalizes, and delights in violence against real people.

There are multiple research studies showing that pornography is a primary source of information about sex for young people—and that young boys in particular who view internet pornography regard its depiction of sex as "realistic."56 Never mind consent, intimacy, and equality.

Another salient fact: America has been the leader in the global production, proliferation and global “mainstreaming” of pornography and its dominant tropes: misogyny, sexual violence, racism, and neocolonial sexual conquest. The global pornography industry generates some $97 billion, with the U.S. hosting some 60 percent of the world's pornography websites.57

*The role of the Internet in amplifying the global trade in women and children: for “sex tourism” and sex centers in the U.S. and Western Europe, for “business prostitution,” domestic escort-prostitution agencies, “compensated dating,” etc. Cyber-connectivity has “stimulated” the demand for and access to commercial sex venues. The Internet is in fact the principal means by which pornography is delivered to men, especially in the imperialist countries. And, not least, cyber-technology facilitates prostitution and sex trafficking...and their disguise.

~~~~~~~~~~

The horror, the horror...
Break the chains. Unleash the fury of women as a mighty force for revolution!

 


Endnotes and Citations

* Taiwan and South Korea are often cited as “miracles of development” and a first wave of “newly industrializing countries” that other Third World countries could emulate. But these are special cases. The economic-industrial development of Taiwan and South Korea after the end of World War 2 in 1945 is inseparable from their strategic role as “frontline” states in the U.S. Cold War confrontation in Asia, especially directed against revolutionary China led by Mao. Taiwan and South Korea were built up as privileged neocolonial “client states” with special access to foreign assistance, loans, investments, and to the U.S. market. They became favored sites of industrial investment-relocation by U.S. and Japanese transnational firms. And this high-speed economic-industrial development pivoted on savage repression carried out by these client states against their populations.26  [back]

1. “NEW YEAR'S STATEMENT BY BOB AVAKIAN: A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity, January 2021,” www.revcom.us, Emphasis added. [back]

2. This 40-42 million estimate appears in the comprehensive studies of global prostitution produced by the Paris-based Scelles Foundation; Catherine Goldmann, Current Assessment of the State of Prostitution, 2013 (Paris: Scelles Foundation), p. 5. [back]

3. An early theorization of global prostitution as subject to forces of “industrialization” is found in Kathleen Barry, The Prostitution of Sexuality (New York: NYU Press, 1996). [back]

4. International Labor Organization,“ Sex Industry Assuming Massive Proportions in Southeast Asia,” Press Release, August 19, 1998. [back]

5. Brian M. Willis, Barry S. Levy, "Child prostitution: global health burden, research needs, and interventions," The Lancet, Vol 359, April 20, 2002, p. 1417; Patricia D. Levan, “Curtailing Thailand's Child Prostitution Through an International Conscience,” American University International Law Review, Vol. 9, No. 3 (1994), pp. 869-70. In 2007, some 40 percent of Thailand's prostitutes were estimated to be under 18—see Ecpat,  Global Monitoring Status of Action against Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, Country report of Thailand, 2011, p, 13. [back]

6. HIV and AIDS Data Hub for Asia-Pacific, China: Sex Work and HIV/AIDS 2010, Table 1, p. 2. [back]

7. International Labor Organization, Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labor and Forced Marriage (Geneva: 2017). [back]

8. International Organization for Migration, Information Campaign Against Trafficking in Women from Ukraine-Research Report (Geneva: 1998). [back]

9. PICUM, Safeguarding the Human Rights and Dignity of Undocumented Migrant Sex Workers (Brussels: 2019), p. 9. [back]

10. Global Estimates of Modern Slavery, pp. 9-11; more data and analysis is found in UN Office on Drugs and Crime, “Executive Summary,” Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, 2020 (New York: 2020), [back]

11. Channing May, Transnational Crime and the Developing World (Washington, D.C.: Global Financial Integrity, 2017), Table X1. [back]

12. International Labor Organization, Profits and Poverty: The Economics of Forced Labor (Geneva: 2014), Table 2.1, p. 13. [back]

13.Cited in Corinne Redfern, “The Living Hell of Young Girls Enslaved in Bangladesh’s Brothels,” Guardian, July 6, 2019; see also, Siddharth Kara, Modern Slavery: A Global Perspective  (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). [back]

14. Polaris Project, “Hidden in Plain Sight: How Corporate Secrecy Facilitates Human Trafficking in Illegal Massage Parlors,” April 2018, p. 1. [back]

15. Cesar Chelala, “Child Trafficking: A Global Scourge,” The Globalist, July 16, 2019. [back]

16. Cara Kelly, “13 Sex traffficking statistics that explain the enormity of the global sex trade,” USA Today, July 30, 2019. [back]

17. Kate Geary, Our Land Our Lives: Time Out on the Global Land Rush, (Oxford, UK: Oxfam International, 2013). The small-farmer advocacy organization GRAIN.org maintains a data base of global landgrabbing. See also, Saskia Sassen, Expulsions: Complexity and Brutality in the World Economy (Cambridge: Belnap Press, 2014), chapter 2, “The New Global Market for Land.” Analysis of land dispossession, resistance, and conflict is found in The Journal of Peasant Studies, including the special issue “The New Enclosures: Critical Perspectives on Corporate Land Deals” (Vol. 39, Issue 3-4, 2012) with articles on landgrabbing in Africa; and the special issue "Rural Land Dispossession in China and India” (Vol. 47, No. 6, 2020). On Thailand, Cambodia, and Mynanmar, see  Local Act Thailand, “Land Grabbing and Impacts to Small-Scale Farmers in Southeast Asia Sub-Region,” (April 2015). [back]

18. Geary, Our Land Our Lives. [back]

19. See, for instance, Michael Levien, Gender and Land Dispossession: A Comparative Analysis, (New York: UN Women, 2017). [back]

20. UNCTAD, Enhancing the Contribution of Export-Processing Zones to the Sustainable Development Goals (New York: United Nations Publications, 2015), Preface. [back]

21. For a street-level, investigative study, see Svati P. Shah, Street Corner Secrets: Sex, Work and Migration in the City of Mumbai (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014). [back]

22. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Migrant Smuggling FAQs,” 2018. [back]

23. Raymond Lotta, “Imperialist Parasitism and Class-Social Recomposition in the U.S. From the 1970s to Today: An Exploration of Trends and Changes,” Revcom.us, March 22, 2021. [back]

24. Aaron Benanav, “Automation and the Future of Work-2,” New Left Review 120, Nov.-Dec. 2019, p. 119. [back]

25. Important analysis of the differences from the Industrial Revolution is found in: C. Scherrer, “Superfluous Workers: Why SDG 8 [Sustainable Development Goals] Will Remain Elusive,” in M. Kaltenborn, et al. (eds), Sustainable Development Goals and Human Rights, Volume 5, (Springer: 2020); and D. Rodrik, “Premature Industrialization,” Journal of Economic Growth, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2016). The early capitalist-industrializing countries led by England also had a historically significant "safety-valve": mass immigration (after 1815) to North America and elsewhere to absorb surplus workers and moderate economic and social tensions and conflicts.  [back]

26. See, George Aseniero, “South Korean and Taiwanese Development: The Transnational Context,” Review (Fernand Braudel Center), Vol. 17, No. 3 (Summer 1994); Martin Hart-Landsburg, Korea: Division, Reunification, and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998). [back]

27. International Labor Organization, “More than 60 percent of the world’s employed are in the informal economy," Press Release, April 30, 2018. [back]

28. Sassen, Expulsions, pp. 16, 89; see  also “Conclusion.” [back]

29. Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (New York: Verso, 2006). [back]

30. Data on cities: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2018 Revision of World Urbanization Prospect (New York, 2018); United Nations Statistics Division, “Sustainable Cities and Communities," (New York: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs); UN Population Division, “World Urbanization Prospects,” 2018 Revision; David Satterthwaite, “An Urbanizing World,” International Institute for Environment and  Development (London), April 9, 2020. [back]

31. Aye's story is told in Kathryn Farr, Sex Trafficking: The Global Market in Women and Children (New York: Worth Publishers, 2005). [back]

32. Mary's story from Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, Kieran Guilbert, “Migrant Crisis Fuels Sex Trafficking of Nigerian Girls To Europe,” Thomson Reuters Foundation, May 31, 2016. [back]

33. See Chris Buckley and Ellen Barry, “Rohingya Women Flee Violence Only To Be Sold Into Marriage,” The New York Times, August 2, 2015. The experiences of trafficked girls in Bangladesh's “brothel villages” is movingly told in Redfern, “The Living Hell of Young Girls Enslaved in Bangladesh’s Brothels”; see also, Tania Rashid, “Inside the Bangladeshi Brothels Where Rohingya Girls Are Suffering,” PBS NewsHour Report, April 26, 2018. [back]

34. Sheila Jeffreys, “Prostitution, Trafficking, and Feminism: An Update on the Debate,” Women’s Studies International Forum, 32 (2009), p. 319. [back]

35. Sunsara Taylor, “Questions About 'Feminist Porn,' the Nature of Truth, 'Sex Work,' and Socialism Encountered on a Liberal Arts College Campus,” Revcom.us, February 21, 2014. [back]

36. The original passage on “Choices..And Radical Changes,” is found in Bob Avakian, “More on Choices...And Radical Changes,” www.revcom.us, January 28, 2013. [back]

37. “Discourse Surrounding Prostitutional Propaganda Online: An Analysis,” in Sexual Exploitation: New Challenges, New Answers, 5th Global Report (Paris: Scelles Foundation, 2019), p. 5. The term sexual exploitation applies to the spectrum of activities ranging from the “self-employed” and remunerated “sex worker” to a kidnapped child trafficked across borders to become a sex slave in a brothel. [back]

38. Pamela Coke-Hamilton, “Illicit Trade Endangers the Environment, the Law, and the Sustainable Development Goals,” (Geneva: UNCTAD, July 18. 2019). [back]

39. Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime, The Global Illicit Economy: Trajectories of Transnational Organized Crime (Geneva: March 2021), p. 31. [back]

40. Global Illicit Economy, p. 36. [back]

41. Jean Pyle, “Sex, Maids, and Export Processing: Risks and Reasons For Gendered Global Production Networks,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2001). [back]

42. Palash Ghosh, “Prostitution Thriving in China: The Dark Underbelly of Economic Prosperity,” International Business Times, May 7, 2013. [back]

43. Sheila Jeffreys, The Industrial Vagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 107, 119. Jeffreys (pp. 118-19) discusses the prostitution system set up for the American military in the Philippines following World War 2 and the imposition of U.S. bases. The U.S. military institutionalized medical checks around the major U.S. naval and air force bases in order to facilitate prostitution (and “prostitution towns” that developed around the bases). [back]

44. “American Crime, #8: America's War in Vietnam and the Sexual Subjugation of Women,” www.revcom.us, March 4, 2021. [back]

45. On the 1967 U.S.-Thai agreement, see Emily Nyen Chang, "Engagement Abroad: Enlisted Men, U.S. Military Policy and the Sex Industry," Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2001), pp. 40-41. [back]

46. Debra McNutt, “Privatizing Women,” Counterpunch, July 11, 2007. [back]

47. Jeffreys, The Industrial Vagina, pp. 130-32, emphasis added. [back]

48. Island Outpostings, “Interview: Nicole Dennis-Benn's Debut Novel is a Love Letter to Jamaica.” [back]

49. Anna Tokar, et al., “‘I don’t want anyone to know’: Experiences of obtaining access to HIV testing by Eastern European, non-European Union sex workers in Amsterdam, the Netherlands,” PloS One, 15(7), July 7, 2020. [back]

50. See, for instance, Sheila Jeffreys, “The Sex Industry and Business Practice: An Obstacle to Women's Equality,” Women's Studies International Forum, Vol. 3, No. 3 (May 2010). Jeffreys cites studies showing that 40 percent of strip-club spending in major U.S. markets is for business purposes. [back]

51. Caroline Norma, “Globalization and Prostitution,” Entry in Global Encyclopedia of Public Administration, Public Policy, and Governance (Springer International Publishing, 2018); emphasis added. [back]

52. Norma, “Globalization and Prostitution.” [back]

53. See Bob Avakian, “From Bringing Forward Another Way: Bob Avakian on The Two “Historically Outmodeds,” revcom.us, December 4, 2015. [back]

54. See Bob Avakian, New Year's Statement 2021; and Raymond Lotta, Imperialist Parasistism and Class-Social Recomposition, Section 6. Available at www.revcom.us. [back]

55. “More Postcards of the Hanging—The Horrors Perpetrated Against Women Under This System,” From Sampler Edition: Break ALL the Chains! Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution, pp. 7-9. Available at www.revcom.us. [back]

56. Maggie Jones, “What Teenagers are Learning From Online Porn,” The New York Times, February 7, 2018; Peggy Orenstein, "If You Ignore Porn, You Aren't Teaching Sex Education," The New York Times, June 24, 2021; Sandra Laville, "Most boys think online pornography is realistic, finds study," The Guardian, June 14, 2016. [back]

57. NBC News, “Things are Looking Up in America's Porn Industry,” January 20, 2015; Felix Richter, “60 Percent of Porn Websites are Hosted in the U.S.,” Statista, August 21, 2013. [back]

 

 

 

 

 

 

India


The extensive quarantines from corona virus contributed to women prostitutes facing more dire financial debts.


Women prostitutes wait in line for handouts of groceries in the "red light" district of Kamathipura in Mumbai, India, 2020. Photo: PTI


Women, veiling their faces to hide their identity, at a protest against eviction from their rooms in the "red light" area of New Delhi, India, 2003. Banner in background reads: What is the future of these tens of thousands of women? Photo: AP/Gurinder Osan

Mexico


Prostitutes in Mexico City, originally from Honduras, split a small meal; one of the women said she began in prostitution at age 12. Photo: AP/Rebecca Blackwell

Peru


Transgender "sex workers" in a shack they share with others in the San Juan de Miraflores shantytown of Lima, Peru, 2020. Photo: AP/Martin Mejia

Nigeria


Two women who were trafficked from Nigeria and forced into prostitution in Burkina Faso—where they managed to free themselves from the captors but had to continue in prostitution in order to earn enough money to return home. Photo: AP/Sam Mednick


Above and below: Nigerian women who were trafficked and forced into prostitution, at Bois de Vincennes park on the outskirts of Paris, France. Tens of thousands of Nigerian women and children have been trafficked throughout Europe and other parts of the world.


South Africa


Two women friends who live together in a shared room and sell sexual services on the street in Cape Town, South Africa, 2009. Photo: AP

Zimbabwe


Prostitutes in the streets of Harare, Zimbabwe, 2020. Photo: AP/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi

Cambodia


Women prostitutes in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 2002. Photo: AP/David Longstreath

Thailand


Prostitutes working in the "sex industry" in Thailand. Photo: AP

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/711/summary-industrialization-of-sexual-exploitation-imperialist-globalization-and-descent-into-hell-en.html

Summary: The “Industrialization” of Sexual Exploitation, Imperialist Globalization, and the Descent Into Hell

| revcom.us

 

This research paper examines the dimensions of, and explores key dynamics and historical factors driving, the global growth of prostitution and trafficking of women into prostitution. “Sex work” is a profoundly and obscenely misleading term—what is involved is sexual exploitation: the marketed degradation and organized sexual submission of women to male domination. The “industrialization” of sexual exploitation refers to the fact that this sexual exploitation is globalized, large-scale, and organized. The “sex industry” encompasses brothel, street, and escort prostitution; strip clubs and massage parlors; pornography; military prostitution; and global “sex tourism” sites. This sexual exploitation has become increasingly normalized.

*By current estimates, there are 40 million prostitutes worldwide, 75 percent of whom are 13 to 25 years old. What is referred to as the “global sex industry,” or the “global sex trade,” has evolved into a hugely profitable segment of individual national economies and the world imperialist economy taken as a whole.

*The contemporary “global sex industry” cannot be comprehended simply or mainly as the continuation of the “ages-old practice” of prostitution within modern patriarchal society. The current-day forms and magnitude of sexual subjugation and degradation of women have been profoundly shaped, massively magnified, and globally integrated by the workings of late imperialism as a world system of exploitation in which the division between rich oppressor countries and poor oppressed countries is a defining feature of imperialist accumulation—with its plunder of resources in the Third World, penetration of markets, and super-exploitation of labor—and by social-cultural factors bound up with the world system of capitalism-imperialism.

*The paper discusses major dislocations in the Third World and how they have affected the lives of women. Rural poverty; agribusiness-led transformation and ruin of small-peasant and farmer agriculture; environmental stresses on land, water, and resources; and military conflict have profoundly altered traditional work and family patterns and fueled massive migrations of humanity out of the countryside of the global South. Migration across borders has become essential to the survival strategies of women displaced from traditional economies. And these streams of migration “drive up” the supply of “potential sex slaves” to be exploited at low cost.

*The research paper digs deeply into an historical and social-economic phenomenon of great importance of the last 50 years. There has been a modern-day form of the (often violent) separation of laborers (small-holding peasants and farmers) from the means of production (mainly land)...devastating the lives of hundreds of millions of rural dwellers in the Third World. As late as 1983, the majority of the world’s laborers were still in agriculture (overwhelmingly in the global South). By the start of the 2010s, only 25 percent of the world’s workers were in agriculture.

*But the ongoing reality for the displaced of the global South is that new jobs outside of agriculture—especially in industry—are not being created anywhere on the scale to absorb those being separated from the land.

*This process of dispossession has been linked to an historically unprecedented process of breakneck and chaotic urbanization in the Third World and the emergence of “mega-cities,” with massive slums and surrounding corridors of squatter settlements inhabited by migrants from the countryside.

*Prostitution in its legal and illegal forms, as forced or “voluntary” labor, is an integral element of the global informal economy of unregulated and irregular labor (without set pay, hours, or protections) that is the dominant form of employment and survival in the cities of the oppressed countries of the global South.

*“Sex tourism” is a major feature of the economies of Thailand and the Philippines, as well as other countries—and the governments of many poor countries have deliberately developed “sex tourism” as a strategy of development. Western capital is a prime beneficiary: hotel chains, airlines, banks and credit card companies, the Internet.

*The development of the “sex tourism industry” in Asia from the 1970s onward was substantially aided by the groundwork put in place by U.S. military prostitution. It began in the same sites where prostitution had been developed to service the U.S. military: 400,000-500,000 Vietnamese women and girls were prostitutes in South Vietnam during the 10 years of America’s genocidal war of 1965-75. Thailand became a major site of sex “rest and recreation” for U.S. soldiers on leave.

*Sex trafficking takes place on a huge scale on the planet. Some five million human beings, 99 percent of them women and children, are trafficked (forced) into sexual exploitation, over one million of whom are children. It is immensely profitable—generating $99 billion a year at the start of the 2010s. The research paper tells of the horrors of young women from Nigeria and Myanmar, including Rohingya refugees, who have lived this nightmare.

*There is a vicious cycle in the sphere of sexual exploitation: a woman is recruited in Thailand for overseas work as a domestic; she then gets trafficked to other countries and is coerced into prostitution…she becomes a slave. Even though most of her “earnings” is apportioned to a pimp or trafficker, she is able to send some funds home to her family in a rural village…in a country that thrives on “sex tourism.”

*Foreign and migrant prostitutes, many of whom are trafficked, play a major role in the “sex industries” (street prostitution, pornography, “sex tourism,” etc.) in Western Europe. The U.S. is the world leader of the pornography industry: its production, global proliferation, and mainstreaming.

*Globalized and “industrialized” sexual exploitation is a concentrated expression of the extreme and horrific commodification of the female body under imperialism.


A Nigerian woman trafficked to Burkina Faso and forced into prostitution in the gold mining town of Secaco walks through a tent encampment where she and others like her live and are forced to have sex with up to 30 men per night. (Photo: AP/Sam Mednick)

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/716/special-section-emergency-abortion-effectively-outlawed-in-texas-en.html

| revcom.us

 

EMERGENCY: ABORTION EFFECTIVELY OUTLAWED IN TEXAS

What Happened, Why Did It Happen,
Where Do Humanity's Interests Lie and What Must Be Done:
A Special Section

Last week the Supreme Court allowed a Texas law to effectively outlaw abortion. Sunsara Taylor’s article, published the night this went down and now updated, gets into the basics of this. The stakes of this and how people respond to this—how they are led to understand why this happened, where humanity’s interests lie, and what must be done about it—will have everything to do with what kind of future women, and all people, will have. As Bob Avakian has raised—“Radical Change Is Coming: Will It Be Emancipating, or Enslaving—Revolutionary, or Reactionary.”

For this reason, we are running a special section this week on the implications of this attack. We include:


Abortion rights protest, September 1, Austin, Texas. Photo: AP

  • Excerpts from the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by Bob Avakian, outlining the legal stance and orientation of the state power that the revolution aims to bring into being on this question, and the emancipation of women overall.
  • We are also providing a link to a column by Tony Norman that appeared in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette that draws the links between this vicious new law and the Fugitive Slave Act that led up to the Civil War that finally ended slavery in the U.S. We think that readers will find the insights of this writer to be of value.
  • From 1980s to the present, revolutionary leader Bob Avakian (BA) has been pointing to the deadly seriousness of the Christian fascist attacks on women’s right to abortion (as well as birth control)—and deepening scientific analysis of what is giving rise to this, its implications, and what is needed to fight in the interests of humanity. We have gathered several key quotes from BA over the years around this, and will be posting further quotes from BA in the coming days.
  • The revcoms have taken this question to masses of people and drawn links to the need to get organized NOW for a real revolution. We have a report from Revcoms going out to students at a southern California campus, and will have other reports and pictures soon.


The Revolution Club NYC in Times Square, September 4. Photo: Ernest Chirico @redscomics


The Revolution Club NYC in Times Square, September 4.


Chicago, September 4.


Los Angeles, September 1.


Harvard Square, Boston, September 4.


Berkeley, California, September 5.

In reading over this section, keep in mind the following from THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE—WHY THAT IS SO, AND HOW TO SEIZE ON THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY:

This rare situation, with the deepening and sharpening conflicts among the ruling powers, and in the society overall, provides a stronger basis and greater openings to break the hold of this system over masses of people.

It is extremely important to deeply understand this:

As this situation develops, and the ruling class is more and more unable to rule in the old way, society and daily life for masses of people, from different parts of society, can become increasingly unsettled and chaotic, with frequent “disruptions” of the “normal” way things have been.

And as “the normal way” society has been ruled is failing to hold things together—and society is increasingly being ripped apart—this can shake people’s belief that “the way things have always been” is the only way things can be. It can make people more open to questioning—in a real sense it can force people to question—the way things have been, and whether they have to stay that way. And this is all the more likely to happen if the revolutionary forces are out among the people shining a light on the deeper reality of what is happening, and why, and bringing out that there IS an alternative to living this way.


Austin, Texas, September 1. Photo: AP


Berkeley, California, September 5.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/715/forced-motherhood-and-fascist-vigilantism-become-law-in-texas-en.html

ALERT!
September 1st:
Forced Motherhood and Fascist Vigilantism Become Law in Texas

by Sunsara Taylor

| revcom.us

 

On September 1, a Texas law went into effect that has now made all abortions after approximately six weeks into pregnancy effectively illegal. There are approximately six million women of child-bearing age in Texas who are now deprived of the ability to safely, legally terminate a pregnancy. Thus far, the Supreme Court has refused to rule on an emergency appeal, so the law is in effect

Let’s call this for what it is: being forced to bear a child against your will is a form of slavery.

But that is not even the worst of it. The way this law is written empowers any fanatic or woman hater anywhere... any vengeful ex-boyfriend or stalker... any self-righteous American Taliban-style Christian fascist... or anyone else... to use the power of the state to sue anyone that even assists a woman in obtaining an abortion. Accusations and lawsuits will be hurled. Ugly media-frenzied shaming will pile injury and isolation onto the women and those who support them. Fascist mobs will gain momentum—strengthening their overall drive to lock in their white supremacist, male-supremacist, anti-immigrant, “Make America Great Again” nightmare.

This should be a stop-everything moment. The streets should be filled with furious outpourings refusing to see women slammed backwards and enslaved. Artists and public figures should be drawing a line. All of society should be mobilized to stop this fascist law and to look into the nature of the system that would allow women to be enslaved in this way. Growing numbers should be lifting their sights to and getting organized into the only real and tremendously liberating alternative to this system and its intensifying horrors: an actual revolution!

Instead, far too few know about this fascist law. And too many of those who do are not doing jack shit about it.

Why? In large part because the Democratic Party and the reproductive rights and women's rights groups tied to it have been and still are relying on the “normal channels” of lawsuits and legislation, even as the courts and legislatures are increasingly packed with fascists hell-bent on twisting the law into an instrument of fascist atrocity or discarding it altogether. Instead of mobilizing the outrage of millions, these groups are accepting in advance that abortion will be criminalized in large parts of the country and working to protect access in a few places and help (some) women from anti-abortion states to travel.

Where is this leading? Right now in Texas, there are women who don’t yet know they are pregnant—17-year-olds with dreams of college and more, 30-somethings struggling to support four or five other kids, women living in cars or trapped with abusive partners. By the time they learn they are pregnant, it will be too late to get an abortion. They will be forced to have children against their will. Others will risk their lives—or risk imprisonment—to induce their own abortions. One way or another, their lives will change in a flash. And every day behind them, there will be more women... a pile-up of thousands and thousands of lives foreclosed. Desperation deepened. Abusive relations bolted more firmly into place. A message to all women everywhere: no matter what else you achieve, what else you aspire to, you are little more than an incubator. Revenge and punishment will be mobilized against anyone who dares to defy. And sooner or later (very likely sooner), this fascist shut-down of all access to abortion will spread across the country and increasingly around the world.

But this is NOT the only future that is possible. The coming apart of the norms that have held for so long in this country—including the fundamental right to abortion with all this means for women’s lives—provides not only the potential for a radically reactionary, fascist resolution. It also opens up the possibility of something that has been long needed, but which is rarely possible in a powerful country like this: the chance to ripen and win an actual revolution that can move humanity beyond a world in which billions lead lives of grinding exploitation to enrich others, male supremacy and white supremacy are dominant, the environment is destroyed, ignorance is enforced and one country (the U.S.) terrorizes and tries to run the world while it contends and battles for supremacy with other powers and enforces a worldwide system of super-exploitation and oppression.

A key part of wrenching a positive future out of these extraordinarily dangerous times is to break loose of the constraints of the Democratic Party (and the “women’s groups” that are tied to them) and mobilize the righteous fury of women and others against this enslavement. As Bob Avakian, the architect of the new communism, put it in his piece, “THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE—WHY THAT IS SO, AND HOW TO SEIZE ON THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY”:

Instead of being a tail on the Democratic donkey—with its attempt to keep this monstrous system going, and to deal with the growing fascist danger, by relying on the “normal procedures” of this system and doomed efforts to “heal the divisions” that are deepening every day—people need to work for the revolution that is urgently needed, and deal with the fascist danger as part of doing that.

Now is the time to fill the streets with outrage! Now is the time to get organized for a real revolution!

FETUSES ARE NOT BABIES! ABORTION IS NOT MURDER! WOMEN ARE NOT INCUBATORS!

FORCED MOTHERHOOD IS FEMALE ENSLAVEMENT!

ABORTION ON DEMAND AND WITHOUT APOLOGY!

BREAK THE CHAINS! UNLEASH THE FURY OF WOMEN AS A MIGHTY FORCE FOR REVOLUTION!

From The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show, Episode 67:

Sunsara Taylor interviews Toni Redtree, a writer for revcom.us, on the abortion rights emergency

 

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The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

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Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/716/in-the-face-of-the-greatest-assault-on-abortion-in-nearly-50-years-en.html

In the Face of the Greatest Assault on Abortion in Nearly 50 Years: Focusing Mainly on “Self-Managed Abortion” Is a Recipe for Catastrophe

by Sunsara Taylor

| revcom.us

 

On September 1, as the country was waking up to the most draconian, punitive, fascist abortion ban in the nearly 50 years since abortion became legal, different people began putting forward their best understanding of what we are facing... and what must be done. In this extraordinarily dangerous and fraught time, it is crucially important that this discussion get opened up and sorted through.

In this sense, a writer out of Texas named Andrea Grimes did us all a favor with an article published that day titled “Stop It With the Fucking Coat Hangers.” By “favor” I don’t mean that she accurately assessed the danger we face or what must be done. Rather, her article concentrates a logic which is being taken up by far too many, but which—regardless of her intentions—can only accelerate the disaster we now confront. It is for this reason that it must be taken on.

Grimes’s main argument, as concentrated in her title, is that because of the existence of abortion pills that can be used safely outside a professional medical environment, things really won’t be as bad as they were before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion. She tells people: “[S]top the fear-mongering around coat hangers and instead share good information about medically safe self-managed abortion care with pills.”

As her argument is laced with legitimate disdain for the legal system of this country—one that is infused with white supremacy and patriarchy and is now promising bounties to sue anyone who assists a woman with an abortion—Grimes’s approach might strike some as “radical.” In reality, it is the farthest thing from it.

Is It “Fear-Mongering” to Warn of Coat Hangers and Worse?

It is true that we are not facing a return to the ugly days before Roe. What we face now is immeasurably worse.

First, there is no way that self-managed abortion care could possibly help more than a tiny fraction of women who need an abortion. Medication works well only relatively early in pregnancy and itself will carry increasing legal risk if this trajectory is not stopped. Further, a great many women don’t have mailing addresses (say they live in their car)—or ones that can be used safely (say they live with their abuser or fundamentalist parent). For a multitude of reasons, focusing only—or even mainly—on promoting medication abortion will condemn the great majority to forced motherhood, unsafe options, possible imprisonment, and lives of stunted suffocation.

The cold reality is that the Christian fascists behind this law, the fascist majority Supreme Court who gave it official sanction to go into effect in violation of their own “super-precedent,” and the armies of woman-hating, deranged fanatics harassing women at every clinic in this country who have already assassinated 11 people involved in abortion care and are right now taking down license plate numbers outside abortion clinics in hopes of collecting a $10,000 bounty, are just getting started. This Christian fascist movement is—like the Taliban in Afghanistan—driven by a fanatical belief in a Dark Ages religion that views women as property of men and breeders of children and will not stop until this is given the full force of the law and all opposition is violently and viciously crushed.

But even that is not the full picture. This war on women is but one cornerstone of an all-around fascist remaking of society that is rapidly advancing. Do you recall the January 6th violent insurrection with their noose for Mike Pence and likely Nancy Pelosi and others, their brazen white supremacist Confederate flags, and their theocratic crosses hoisted high? Since then, the Republican Party has purged itself. NOT of those who supported and fueled the insurrection, but of those who did not. They’ve packed the courts and legislatures with fascists and have a base of millions hardened around their determination to use violence if necessary to lock in their vengefully white supremacist, male supremacist, theocratic, anti-scientific fascist nightmare.

Here, it is worth quoting extensively from a recent piece from the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian titled THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE—WHY THAT IS SO, AND HOW TO SEIZE ON THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY:

The Republicans have become a fascist party—a party based on open and aggressive white supremacy, male supremacy, and other oppressive relations—a party convinced that only it deserves to rule, moving to manipulate elections and suppress votes in order to gain and hold onto power, refusing to accept the outcome of elections it does not win, determined to gut and pervert “the rule of law,” trample on people’s rights, and adopt what amounts to an undisguised capitalist dictatorship, ready to use violence not only against masses of people but also against its rivals in the ruling class.

These Republicans have mobilized a significant section of people who believe, with an intense, irrational passion, that white supremacy, male supremacy, and other oppressive relations (as well as unrestrained plunder of the environment) must be firmly upheld and enforced. They have been driven to a state of vicious insanity, embracing all kinds of lunatic conspiracy theories, along with a crazed Christian fundamentalism, as a response to the threat they see to their entitled (or “god-ordained”) position and their insistence that further concessions to the struggle against oppression will destroy what has “made America great.”

As it is put in A Declaration, A Call to Get Organized Now for a Real Revolution that was recently issued by the Revcoms:

[T]he crisis and deep divisions in society now can only be resolved through radical means, of one kind or another—either radically reactionary, murderously oppressive and destructive means or radically emancipating revolutionary means.

The Legality of Abortion Matters! (Do We Really Have to Make This Argument?)

Grimes goes to great length explaining that “safe” and “legal” are not the same thing:

Abortion care needn’t be “legal” to be safe. And abortion care that is “illegal” is not necessarily unsafe. When we conflate “safe” with “legal,”—by saying, for example, that “your donation to Planned Parenthood helps protect safe, legal abortion”—we perpetuate a white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal legal system that was built to serve the most privileged among us... We are saying that we will let the state determine what is good and safe for us, even when the state itself is the one saying: go collect a $10,000 bounty for reporting your neighbor’s abortion.

Not to get too semantical, but the reason both words—“safe” and “legal”—are used is precisely because they are not the same. (No one is going around saying “keep abortion safe and un-dangerous.”) But, the safety—and availability—of abortion is closely linked to its legality.

Do we really need to be making the argument that when abortion is illegal—when the full power of the state is put behind preventing and punishing those who participate in abortion—it becomes unsafe for the vast majority of women? Unsafe in that not all medication abortions work. Unsafe in that even when they do work, it is only up until about 10 or 11 weeks into pregnancy. Unsafe in that it could soon become illegal to receive abortion pills through the mail1. Unsafe in that criminal elements who give zero fucks about women will seek to dominate this market, as they did before Roe and do to most underground markets. Unsafe in that anyone who dares to help a woman could be financially and socially ruined for doing so. Unsafe in that as abortion is increasingly criminalized and even more shamed, the vast majority of women won’t know how to access the pill and will resort to even more desperate means—yes, hangers, but also drinking bleach and Purell, throwing themselves down stairs, and worse. Unsafe in that forcing women and girls to live in fear and silence and shame, to have their dreams foreclosed by forced motherhood, to risk isolation and imprisonment, is... fundamentally unsafe.

You End a “White Supremacist, Capitalist, Patriarchal Legal System” by Overthrowing It, Not by Ignoring It

The deeper absurdity and harm of Grimes’s argument is her implication that if we refuse to acknowledge the importance of what the state does, we can keep it from determining our lives. Tell it to the two-plus million people languishing in prison right now. Tell it to the families of those whose loved ones have been killed by police. Could all these people have been spared this state repression and violence had they simply remembered not to perpetuate the system by acknowledging that its laws mattered? Give me a break! The state has real teeth, whether you acknowledge it or not.

If you want to stop unjust laws from determining people’s lives... you have to fight and defeat them. You have to mobilize the outrage of those whose lives will be ruined by it and all those who can be won to stand with them. You have to sound the alarm, shake people up with the full shocking truth, call them into the streets, not calm them down with delusional fairytales about how it “won’t be that bad.”

Even more fundamentally, if you want to put an end to what Grimes accurately describes as a “white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal legal system,” you have to recognize that it was NOT “built to serve the most privileged among us” as she very wrongly claims. The “white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal legal system” we live under was built to reflect and serve the underlying system of capitalism-imperialism. Sure, this system gives rise to relative pockets of privilege (large pockets in an imperialist country like this), but the system serves the capitalist-imperialist class. Capitalism-imperialism functions—and can only function—through ruthlessly exploiting hundreds of millions in global networks of sweatshops and fields and mines and supply chains around the world. This system has patriarchy, white supremacy, environmental destruction, wars of empire, and terror against immigrants woven into its fabric.

If you want all that to end—and end it we must—there is only one way: The system must be overthrown through an actual revolution that brings into being a radically different system with a new economic foundation, a new culture, new social relations, and a radically different legal system set up to serve that. This is what the revolutionary leader and architect of the new communism, Bob Avakian, has developed a strategy to make real. He has also forged a scientific approach that everyone can take up to be part of and advance this process and a Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America for how we’d do different and far better. And he has identified how this question—breaking the chains that bind women and all oppression based on gender and sexual orientation—is a key part of driving this revolution forward. Everyone who wants to see this needs to get into his work and take up his leadership. It is notable—and not incidental—that Bob Avakian also stands out in having analyzed and warned for decades about the danger of Christian fascism that has always been bound up with the assault on women’s right to abortion.

WHAT IS URGENTLY NEEDED NOW

As the shock of the Texas Abortion Ban, with its green light from the Supreme Court and its fascist vigilante bounties, is crashing into people’s consciousness around the country, the alarm that is starting to spread needs to be deepened. Not with empty hysteria, but with a scientific understanding of the full depth and direction of what we are confronting and the negative stakes that will come by “playing it safe” or just operating within the ever-shrinking ground that is (for now) left to help a few women, and instead acting with a firm grasp of the positive stakes if we dare to fight it and for the future we want.

In the face of this, what people like Grimes advocate is capitulating to a future in which abortion is outlawed in large parts of the country and, at minimum, under assault everywhere else.

As part of deepening and fueling the necessary awakening—two things are urgently needed:

The outrage of millions must be called forth and mobilized to STOP this assault on abortion rights and everything it concentrates. A line must be drawn. Artists, academics, writers, doctors, and everyone with a public platform should be using it to not only decry this assault on the lives of half of humanity, but to call on people to get out in the streets to make “good trouble.” Everyone who remembers the dark days before Roe should be speaking and warning of what it meant. Students and young people need to be filling the streets, along with others of all ages, relentlessly (not just once, symbolically) refusing to let this go down.

At the same time, and even more importantly, people from every walk of life who are being jolted by this and the other shocks pulsing throughout society need to dig seriously into why a revolution is needed, what this revolution involves, and what kind of society it is aiming for. Thousands now, and millions soon, need to lift their sights to and get actively organized into the revolution that is needed, and imminently possible especially as society is being increasingly ripped apart, to move humanity to a far better epoch, to a world that truly is free of white supremacy, patriarchy, and exploitation of every kind.

 


1. A bill doing just this was passed by the Texas legislature recently and is awaiting signature by the governor for it to become law. [back]

 

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Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/716/constitution-for-the-new-socialist-republic-in-north-america-puts-right-to-abortion-in-constitution-en.html

The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America straight up puts the right to abortion and liberation of women in the Constitution

| revcom.us

 

From a reader:

With the September 1 Texas law outlawing all abortions after six weeks being given the green light by the U.S. Supreme Court, many are in a state of shock and anger. People who have not been paying attention—or who have been lulled into faith that this system would protect the right to abortion—are being jolted awake to the reality that the Christian fascists, at all levels of government, have now scored a horrible victory. Many are asking, “What the fuck is going on in this country?!” and “What kind of system are we living in where a fundamental aspect of women’s lives can be legally taken over by a bunch of right wing Christian fascists!!”

But what more people need to be asking is: what would it be like if we lived in a society that did not allow shit like this to happen, and instead was dedicated to ending the patriarchal domination and oppression of women?

Well, the work on this has been done. The society envisioned in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, authored by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian, puts this straight up as a matter of law and policy.

This is a Constitution for a whole different way society would be oriented and organized, a socialist state that would embody, institutionalize and promote... radically different relations and values among people with the final goal of emancipation of humanity as a whole, a communist society.

Look at what the Constitution says in the Preamble about the goals of this society, speaking specifically to the oppression of women:

The oppression of women arose together with the emergence of exploitative class divisions among human beings thousands of years ago, has been carried forward and become deeply entrenched in all societies ruled by exploiting classes, and was a marked feature of the imperialist United States of America and its domination and influence in the world. Abolishing and uprooting all this is one of the most important objectives of the New Socialist Republic in North America. This is expressed not only in full legal equality between women and men, but beyond that in the declared orientation and policy of this Republic to overcome all “tradition’s chains” embodied in traditional gender roles and divisions, and all the oppressive relations bound up with this, in every sphere of society, and to enable women, as fully as men, to take part in and contribute to every aspect of the struggle to transform society, and the world, in order to uproot and abolish all relations of oppression and exploitation and emancipate humanity as a whole.

Nowhere else will you find a constitution that has this as one of its most important objectives!!!

Right in the Constitution, as fundamental orientation and a matter of law, Article III, Section 3, Eradicating the Oppression of Women states:

[T]he struggle to finally and fully uproot the oppression of women is of profound importance and will be a decisive driving force in carrying forward the revolution toward the final goal of communism, and the eradication of all exploitation and oppression, throughout the world.

And as part of that, the Constitution says straight up:

[T]he New Socialist Republic in North America gives the highest priority not only to establishing and giving practical effect to full legal equality for women—and to basic rights and liberties that are essential for the emancipation of women, such as reproductive freedom, including the right to abortion as well as birth control—but also to the increasing, and increasingly unfettered, involvement of women, equally with men, in every sphere of society, and to propagating and popularizing the need for and importance of uprooting and overcoming all remaining expressions and manifestations of patriarchy and male supremacy, in the economic and social relations and in the realms of politics, ideology and culture, and to promote the objective of fully emancipating women and the pivotal role of the struggle for this emancipation in the overall transformation of this society and the world as a whole.

In simple language, it says right in the Constitution that all women will have the laws and backing of the state to be able to choose and decide matters of if and when to have a child, and not be enslaved to the biology, of having sexual relations turn them into an incubator for society.

All of this is clearly stated as part of increasing the involvement of women equally with men, in every sphere of society, and for uprooting all manifestations and expressions of patriarchy and male supremacy, all “tradition’s chains” embodied in traditional gender roles and divisions in society.

And:

This orientation, and policies and laws flowing from it, shall be applied, promoted, encouraged and supported with the full political, legal and moral force, authority and influence of the government, at all levels, in the New Socialist Republic in North America.

This is the kind of society we not only should want to live in, but is the one we need to be fighting to bring into being with revolution, nothing less.

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/716/bob-avakian-on-question-of-fight-around-abortion-en.html

Bob Avakian on the Question of the Fight Around Abortion

| revcom.us

 

For several decades, from the 1980s to the present, revolutionary leader Bob Avakian (BA) has been pointing to the deadly seriousness of the Christian fascist attacks on women’s right to abortion (as well as birth control)—and deepening scientific analysis of what is giving rise to this, its implications, and what is needed to fight in the interests of humanity.

Here are several key quotes from BA around this. Revcom.us will be posting further quotes from BA in the coming days.

 

Over the past several decades in the U.S. there have been profound changes in the situation of women and the relations within the family. In only one of ten families is there the “model” situation where the husband is the “sole breadwinner” and the wife a totally dependent “homemaker.” With these economic changes have come significant changes in attitudes and expectations—and very significant strains not only on the fabric of the family but of social relations more broadly.... The whole question of the position and role of women in society is more and more acutely posing itself in today’s extreme circumstances—this is a powderkeg in the U.S. today. It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms and through extremely violent means. The question yet to be determined is: will it be a radical reactionary or a radical revolutionary resolution, will it mean the reinforcing of the chains of enslavement or the shattering of the most decisive links in those chains and the opening up of the possibility of realizing the complete elimination of all forms of such enslavement.

(First published in 1985 and cited in a number of works by BA since then.)

~~~~~~~~~~

...around the crucial and pivotal issue of abortion, many liberals—and in this they are “led” by the likes of the Clintons—promote the idea of seeking “common ground” with the Christian Fascists, with arguments like: “We can all agree that it is desirable to limit the number of abortions and make abortion rare, so let us unite together to make sure that birth control is widely and easily available.” Yet experience has already shown that the Christian Fascists are determined to eliminate not only abortion but birth control as well, and that such pleas for “common ground” only make them more fanatical in seeking to do away with both....

And, as their determination to eliminate birth control, along with abortion, makes clear, what lies at the heart of the issue of abortion, and of the Christian Fascists’ unrelenting attempt to make it illegal, is not the killing of babies (which is scientifically wrong in the first place) but is the chaining of women in oppressive relations in which their essential role is reduced to that of being the property of men and the breeders of their children, according to “god’s plan” and the dictates of theocratic interpreters of “god’s will.”

The fact is that you are not going to defeat this Christian Fascist force—everything it represents and everything bound up with it—and you are not going to win significant numbers of people away from it, without taking it on in a very direct and forceful way—and, yes, offending people. In the fullest sense, it is necessary to challenge this movement, and those who are now a part of it, fundamentally and foundationally, in the context of building a movement that is not only opposed to this Christian Fascism but is increasingly being won to the objective of overturning and transforming society as a whole and uprooting all the outmoded, exploitative relations which this Christian Fascist movement is seeking to reinforce in extremely oppressive and repressive forms.

(From Away with All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World, 2008, pp. 181-183)

~~~~~~~~~~

It has been pointed out that, with the changing nature of the economy, along with large numbers of women working in lower tier, lower paid jobs, you have a lot more women professionals, a lot more women in the middle class generally who are themselves working, many more women college graduates, and so on. Things like this are vastly different than a few decades ago. And this, too, has its very contradictory effects—all this personal empowerment, and “let me start up my entrepreneurial thing, or let me get into a business executive position and learn how to be just as cutthroat as the men,” on the one side. But, on the other side, this is clashing up against the traditional relations, and in this country, too, it is calling forth, or is a major factor in calling forth, all this fundamentalist madness, in this case Christian Fascist fundamentalism. For example, the whole assault on the right to abortion. And speaking of this, there is something we really should emphasize: These dark ages fanatics are not just going after abortion, they are moving very directly now in opposition to birth control as well. As kind of an aside, but an important one, this really illustrates what’s actually involved here. This point has been made before, but I want to really drive it home, that this opposition to birth control, as well as abortion, sharply illustrates how much this is about the subjugation of women and treating them as breeding machines, as well as sex objects, and how it’s not at all about “the killing of babies.”

(From THE NEW COMMUNISM, The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation, 2016)

~~~~~~~~~~

It is the responsibility of everyone who recognizes the profound need for revolution—and the rare possibility in a time like this to actually make revolution—to wage a tireless, and at times fierce, struggle to win more and more people to make a radical rupture with the confining and degrading terms of this system, and to take up, and act on, the revolutionary orientation and motivation that is put forward in the “Declaration and Call.”

Instead of “staying in your lane,” and “going for self,” while this system is moving to even more decisively crush any hope for a world worth living in, people need to be looking at the bigger picture, focusing on the greater interests of humanity and the possibility for a far better world—and acting to make this a reality.

Instead of finding excuses to go along with the way things have been, standing apart from (or even bad-mouthing) the revolution, people need to get with this revolution, and not throw away the rare opportunity to be part of bringing something much better into being.

Instead of lashing out with individual acts of frustration, or attempts to take on this system with small, isolated forces that have no chance of succeeding, people need to pour their anger, and their hatred for injustice, into building a movement of millions that could have a real chance to defeat this system and make a real revolution.

Instead of fighting and killing each other, what people need to be doing now is uniting to defend each other—opposing all unjust violence, not launching attacks on anyone but at the same time not allowing the police or “civilian” fascist thugs to wantonly brutalize and murder people. And people need to do this as part of building up the forces for revolution.

Instead of snarking and sniping at each other, and being divided by “identities,” people should be working to unite everyone, from every part of society, who can be united in the fight against oppression and injustice, with the goal of putting an end to this system that is the source of this oppression and injustice.

Instead of being a tail on the Democratic donkey—with its attempt to keep this monstrous system going, and to deal with the growing fascist danger, by relying on the “normal procedures” of this system and doomed efforts to “heal the divisions” that are deepening every day—people need to work for the revolution that is urgently needed, and deal with the fascist danger as part of doing that.

(From THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE—WHY THAT IS SO, AND HOW TO SEIZE ON THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY, July 2021)

~~~~~~~~~~

Here is another very important point from the “Declaration and Call”:

These days there is a lot of talk about another civil war, especially from fascists, in government and the broader society, who think they could just carry out a one-sided slaughter of those they hate, including Black people and other people of color, “illegal immigrants,” “uppity women” and those who don’t conform to “traditional” sexual and gender relations and “norms.” This situation needs to be radically changed, to where there are masses of people prepared to defeat these fascists and to do so as part of getting rid of this whole system, which has bred these fascists, along with all the other horrors it continually perpetrates.

What we need is “repolarization for revolution”—making real revolution an active and increasingly powerful force of first thousands, and then millions, of people organized to work for and win more and more people to this revolution—radically changing the “terrain” on which the revolution will be fought.

(From FROM THE REVCOMS (REVCOM.US):
A DECLARATION, A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW FOR A REAL REVOLUTION
)

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/715/three-main-points-on-the-texas-abortion-law-en.html

Three Main Points on the Texas Abortion Law

Texas Effectively Bans Abortion—and the Silence Is Deafening:
WE CAN'T LET THIS GO DOWN! WE CAN'T LET THEM HAVE THE FUTURE!

| revcom.us

 

1. On September 1, abortion became effectively illegal in Texas. Women who had appointments for today or in coming days to terminate a pregnancy cannot do that now—because the law empowers any fanatic or woman hater anywhere to use the power of the state to sue anybody that assists women in getting an abortion. Imagine if you were one of those women with an appointment for today... you want to go to college and continue your education... you’re already struggling with making ends meet and can’t possibly raise a new baby... you’re a victim of rape and became impregnated... or you just don’t want to raise a child... for whatever reason, you want and need to terminate the pregnancy—and now find the door slammed in your face.

We need to call this fascist Texas law for what it is: Forced motherhood is enslavement of half of humanity!

2. As Bob Avakian said many years ago, and as is even more directly true today:

The whole question of the position and role of women in society is more and more acutely posing itself in today’s extreme circumstances—this is a powderkeg in the U.S. today. It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms and through extremely violent means. The question yet to be determined is: will it be a radical reactionary or a radical revolutionary resolution, will it mean the reinforcing of the chains of enslavement or the shattering of the most decisive links in those chains and the opening up of the possibility of realizing the complete elimination of all forms of such enslavement.

As we revcoms have said in our Declaration and Call To Get Organized Now For A Real Revolution, “There is a way to a world and a future that is worth living, and is worth fighting for right now: revolutiona real revolution, not playing around with a few changes that leave this system in place and in power, while benefitting only a small number.” To make that real you, and many people like you, need to find out about this revolution and its leadership, Bob Avakian and learn about “why an actual revolution is necessary, what such a revolution involves, and what kind of society this is aiming for.” Because as the Declaration and Call also states: “Society is being ripped apart. Those who rule are locked in a bitter fight among themselves, and they cannot hold things together in the way they have in the past. Although there are a lot of bad things connected with this and it could lead to something really terrible, it is also possible that we could wrench something really positive out of it—revolution, to put an end to this system and bring something much better into being.

3. We CANNOT allow this to go down. The streets across the country should be filled with furious and massive outpourings of women and everyone else who feels in their bones that to deny women the right and ability to control their own reproduction is condemning them to slavery... people who are determined to STOP this from happening and dare to act in ways commensurate with the urgent situation. All of society needs to be mobilized to stop this fascist law and all the other attacks on women—and to look deeply into the nature of the society that would allow women to be enslaved in this way. And growing numbers need to lift their sights to and get organized into the only real and tremendously liberating alternative to this system and its intensifying horrors: an actual revolution!

Cheers to Paxton Smith for Courageous High School Graduation Speech Denouncing Texas Anti-Abortion Law

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/715/statement-initiating-new-communist-movement-of-afghanistan-en.html

Statement of Initiating The Movement of the New Communism of Afghanistan

| revcom.us

 

Editors’ Note: We received the following statement from The Movement of the New Communism of Afghanistan (JKNA/NCMA) dated August 2021. This is an inspiring call for a much-needed emancipatory pole, which is a very positive development. We are posting to share with our readers and make the statement available to all those who want to see this known more broadly, including everyone horrified by the situation in Afghanistan now. This is an unofficial translation into English by revcoms.us translators, and we have tried to be as accurate as possible, maintaining the integrity of the original statement. We take responsibility for any lack of clarity or errors in translation. We have added some explanatory footnotes, and insertions in the text for accessibility to a wider audience. The original Farsi version of the statement is available online here and in PDF format here.

What is JKNA1
The JKNA (The Movement of the New Communism of Afghanistan) is an initiating core—a group of revolutionary communist men and women who cannot stand the ugliness and crime of the present world. We have gathered to raise our voices, to say first and foremost: “No! This world is not fit for any human being”:

This is the world of capitalism divided into exploiting and exploited classes, the world of imperialism and Islamism!*

What does the JKNA want?

The JKNA (The Movement of the New Communism of Afghanistan/NCMA) is our small but determined group. It is an organization of revolutionary communists standing shoulder to shoulder to raise our voices against all the sufferings and destruction; and shout that we cannot tolerate such a world! We dream of a completely different world: “a world where the flourishing of every individual is the condition for the flourishing of all”; a world in which every human being lends a hand to other human beings, and differences amongst the people’s ideas and desires are not excuses for discrimination, bloodshed and oppression but an expression of beauty, diversity and coexistence. The world that needs more than ever the “Communist Revolution and Nothing Less”!

Building such a society and world is not just our dream. It is more achievable, possible and real than ever before in human history. This is a scientific and provable fact. Communism is the scientific knowledge, method and approach that can understand the world and human society. It can show the functioning and metabolism of this [international proletarian] class that capitalist society has given humanity to create the possibility and potential for a different and a better society, from the ashes of this horrible and oppressive world-class capitalist society.

The science of communism (Marxism) shows us that all the wealth, knowledge, civilization and all the things that humans need for life, are produced and brought about by the eight and a half billion inhabitants of our planet collectively and socially. But within the framework of class society, society and the world are organized in such a way that less than one percent of human beings—the capitalists, big landowners and governments that support their interests—seize the wealth that has been produced to exploit, oppress, and impose their discrimination and repression on the rest of the peoples of the world.

This fundamental contradiction of the capitalist mode of production, the contradiction of “social production and private appropriation,” has consequently led to discrimination, exploitation, crises and wars in human society. And today, the earth itself is facing the danger of extinction. Where in the world have capitalist governments been able to reform these systems? They have not because they cannot. These are the inherent contradictions and internal dynamics of the capitalist system. This system is inherently inhumane and in crisis.

But Marx and Marxism showed that this capitalist system, at the same time as it creates poverty, war and misery for the majority of the world’s people, it also brings into being the basis and possibility of establishing a new social-production system: communist society and socialist society (which is society in transition to communism worldwide). Marxism has scientifically shown that this is not a spontaneous, 100% percent inevitable outcome, but a real possibility, a potential outcome in history and society. Yet it is necessary to activate the human element.

To bring about this possibility and pass from the old world to the new world requires a communist revolution: a political revolution that, with the rise of the proletariat led by its vanguard communist party, paves the way for macro and fundamental economic, social and cultural changes. This revolution requires the presence, activity and efforts of the conscious masses of the people. It is vital that through scientific means and the political and ideological line of communism, to identify obstacles, contradictions, and problems in order to find a way to solve them.

The masses of the people need the science of communism and the strategy of the communist revolution and the program of a new communist party in order to destroy the old world and move in the direction of building a new world. We have formed a core group of revolutionary communists around the JKNA/NCMA. We are in the process of building a party to carry out a revolution in Afghanistan with an understanding of the concrete political geography of the country. Let us move forward!

Phony Communism and the New Communist Movement

The word “communism” in Afghanistan needs to be rescued and revived. It has been 43 years since a group of bureaucratic capitalists affiliated with Russian imperialism first carried out the coup d’état of May 27, 1978. Then with the help of the Soviet occupying army in 1979, the remnants of the semi-colonial, semi-feudal government under the protection of Western imperialism-capitalism, the governments of Zahir Shah and Davood [Khan] were overthrown and a semi-feudal, semi-colonial government under the protection of the Soviet imperial capitalist system called the “People’s Democratic Party” of Afghanistan [PDPA] was brought in. The PDPA was in power for a decade and a half in Afghanistan.

That government was neither democratic nor representative of the interests of the people of Afghanistan, because it had the same class structure, this semi-feudal, semi-colonial capitalist system did not essentially address the problems of the class composition of Afghan society. The People’s Party initially tried to make some reforms to land ownership and the status of women, but eventually compromised with the same feudal and tribal class structure. They had four constraints that they could not eradicate from Afghan society: 1) the existence of feudalism in the agricultural economy; 2) the dependence on imperialism in the macroeconomic sphere; 3) the feudal and religious patriarchal relations, especially in the countryside [i.e. oppression of women]; and 4) the perpetuation of national [ethnic] oppression of minorities [e.g. the minority Hazara people].

From 1956-1991

The Soviet Union was the first socialist state in the world with the October Revolution of 1917 under the leadership of Lenin, which until the mid-1950s, despite all its shortcomings and mistakes, was a state of the proletariat’s dictatorship and a socialist society. But the capitalists and revisionists usurped control of the Soviet Communist Party from 1956 onwards, and turned their backs on socialism altogether, first transforming it into a state-capitalist country, and then into another imperialist power. That is why in the new communist movement of the 1960s, the Soviets were called “social-imperialist” (socialist in name and imperialist in reality).

From the mid-1960s, it was a socialist China led by comrade Mao Zedong who stood up to Russian revisionism and phony communism and raised the banner of revolution. Comrade Mao, while developing the science of Marxism-Leninism in various philosophical, economic and political spheres, broke with some of the mistakes of the Soviet socialist experience, especially the mistakes by Stalin. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that began in 1966 in China, led by Mao, was the highest pinnacle and most brilliant milestone that the international communist movement had reached.

The achievements of this revolution spread the voice of socialism and revolution to all parts of the world, including Afghanistan, and armed a new generation of revolutionaries against Russian revisionism. The Maoist movement in Afghanistan was founded by comrades such as Ustad Akram Yari. It stood up against phony Russian communism. But unfortunately with the developments of the late 1970s, the Thor coup and the internal wars in Afghanistan took place in one of the worst and most turbulent periods in the life of the new communist movement.

Socialism in China was defeated after Mao’s death in 1976 with a political coup, followed by intra-party neo-revisionism that came to power through repression against Mao’s true followers. Like the Soviet Union, China in a declining process, first became an authoritarian state-capitalist country, and then a reactionary imperialist power. This defeat and retreat shifted the balance of world powers to the detriment of the proletariat and to the benefit of the two imperialist blocs of the West and the East. It also caused ideological and political confusion in the new communist movement, and political and ideological retreat took place in many emerging Maoist parties and organizations all over the world. In Afghanistan, for example, the young and inexperienced Maoist movement, due to the repression and assassination of its leaders by the ruling powers led by “Parcham” and “Khalgh,” and to political and ideological flaws, took eclectic positions which are very much imbued with nationalism and populist and pragmatic views. Thus they failed to seize opportunities in the civil war against the Soviet occupation, and were unable to open up the third front against the Islamic fundamentalist reactionaries and Russian imperialism.

Long Live the New Communism

The first wave of communist revolutions and socialist governments, which began in 1871 with the Paris Commune, stabilized with the Russian Revolution of October 1917 and the founding of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics until 1956, culminated in socialist China, and then its subsequent defeat. With the revival of capitalism in China, there was ideological and intellectual confusion in the international communist movement. There was a horrible liquidationism, pacifism, backwardness or right-wing extremism that we witnessed. U.S.-led global imperialist capitalism has added to their garrison, propaganda industry and lies against communism and its historical and global achievements, particularly since the 1990s, after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and phony Russian socialism. We are now witnessing the results of four decades of continuous attacks by the global right-wing propaganda and ideological artilleries against communism, socialism and revolution.

But in the early 1980s, a very important historical and valuable event took place that impacted the international communist movement that had been weakened, wandering and falling apart. The flag of revolution and world communism was hoisted by comrade Bob Avakian (BA), Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP). Thus, while defending the achievements of Marxism, Leninism and Maoism in a time of liquidation, doubt, and lack of commitments, BA undertook a scientific and critical summation of the experience of communist revolutions and socialist states from the Paris Commune to socialist China. And finally, in a grand process of 40+ years of intellectual and political work, the science of communism (Marxism) entered a new era/stage with the “new synthesis of communism.”

We say that this is a new synthesis of communism, because comrade Avakian, in his critical study of Marxist theory and practice, realized that the scientific body of Marxism that was founded by Marx and Engels, and as it was developed by Lenin and Mao Zedong, is correct and scientific, at the same time, within this largely true scientific body of knowledge, there are wrong and unscientific elements that are at odds with this whole body of knowledge (i.e. the science of communism in the whole theory and practice of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao). These wrong and unscientific elements influenced the practice of communists and communist leaders, especially in Stalin, that resulted in mistakes that led to the loss of revolutionary opportunities.

Comrade Avakian discovered and broke with this historical contradiction in the body of the Marxist method and approach, and set about re-shaping the concepts and categories of the science of communism. He therefore was able to take a more scientific, correct, and comprehensive approach to formulate the strategy for the revolution in the USA (with universally applicable dimensions) and for building a new socialist society.

As BA wrote in his 2021 New Year’s Statement:

Unlike those who slander and condemn, or simply ignore, communism and the historical experience of the communist movement, I myself have done, and have led others in doing, extensive, serious scientific, study—investigation and analysis—of the history of the communist movement and the socialist societies it has brought into being.... This scientific approach has led to the conclusion that with the actual socialist societies that have been brought into being, with the leadership of communists, first in the Soviet Union and then in China ... this experience of socialism has been mainly—and in the case of China overwhelmingly—positive, while secondarily there have also been significant, in some cases serious or even grievous, errors... Drawing from this historical experience of the communist movement and a broad range of human endeavor, the new communism, as its defining method and approach, emphasizes the critical importance of science and applying the scientific method to everything—to society as well as nature.... Refusing to apply, and acting in opposition to, an honest, scientific approach to communism, the actual history of the communist movement, and the development of the new communism contributes to closing off the only real alternative to this truly monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism—the only viable alternative that represents the fundamental interests and a future worth living for the masses of humanity and ultimately humanity as a whole.4

Marxism was demarcated from revisionism with the formulation of Marxism as a science by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, as they distinguished “scientific socialism” from the utopian socialists of their time. The same was true for Leninism in the 1920s and for Maoism from the 1960s onwards. Today, the new synthesis of communism is objectively the indicator and embodiment of the most advanced level of Marxism. With the advent of the new synthesis of communism, the former Marxism-Leninism-Maoism was also divided into two parts: part of it became a residue of the past, and part of it progressed with the new communism and joined with the ranks of the vanguard of the future. By taking up the new communism, JKNA/NCMA is trying to form and establish a party with the orientation of the new communism in the Afghanistan movement.

JKNA has come to criticize its [past] line and ideological shortcomings with the scientific approach and method of the new communism. The former Maoist movements in Afghanistan, which we were part of, should pay attention and break away from all of that. JKNA is not afraid to reject and declare erroneous the nationalist, populist, pragmatic elements including that of “the end justifies the means,” and other errors and misconceptions we were afflicted with. There were political and intellectual errors in the Maoist movement in Afghanistan that in many places resulted in even the best of the forces of the Afghan movement taking very, very wrong positions.

JKNA knows that “No revolution is possible without revolutionary theory” and the theory and science of the new communism is the key to understanding and changing the world. No arrangement, no organization, no willpower or force can change the world without scientifically recognizing the real contradictions of society and the world. Because of this, reading, learning and teaching the science of Marxism is required to make a revolution, and holding to this is the constant duty of every communist.

Two Rotten Outmodeds—Imperialism and Islamism**

Up to this point in this article, we have referred to pages from the contemporary history of Afghanistan. The occupation of Afghanistan by the Russian military, and in the situation after the defeat of socialism in China, created room for the rise of Islamic fundamentalist parties in Afghanistan. The rise of the reactionary Islamic fundamentalist movement throughout the region was further strengthened when the Islamic Republic of Iran came to power after the defeat of the anti-Shah revolution of the Iranian people in 1979.

It was in this context that sections of the masses of people in Afghanistan turned to Islamic factions that rose from the earth like mushrooms. The U.S., British and French security agencies, the Internal Security Agency of Pakistan and the Khomeini regime in Iran trained and supplied Islamic fundamentalists as Afghan jihadist groups. Throughout the 1980s, thousands of other Islamic fundamentalists were transferred to Afghanistan by Western and Pakistani security agencies from North Africa and the Gulf and Arab countries. Afghanistan became a breeding ground for jihadist groups, and a battleground between the two outmodeds of the Soviet imperialists and what eventually became Islamic fundamentalists.

With the fall of the Russian puppet governments, the jihadist groups that had gotten fat at the table of the Western imperialists and the reactionary powers of the region fought for power, reached the presidential palace, and imposed another war on the people of the cities, provinces and districts. Islamic fundamentalist traitors and reactionaries of 15 fundamentalist jihadist parties, each of which stood at the head of a group of Islamic criminal groups, engaged in murder, looting and crime. It was in the midst of these crimes, killings and devastation that the ground was prepared for the growth and training of a new army of Islamic fundamentalists who gradually became the Taliban. With the help of Pakistan and the United States, they ruled all over Afghanistan.

Since the mid-1990s, however, U.S. and Western imperialism, which for a decade from 1978 to 1988 had been supporting and training Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan against the Soviets, faced the problem of Islamic fundamentalist aggression against their own interests and those of their affiliated regimes in the region.

They even faced them in the heart of New York City on 9/11/2001. From that moment on, it was the conflict between “the historically outmoded strata among colonized and oppressed humanity, up against historically outmoded ruling strata of the imperialist system” that became most prominent in the Afghan political scene. The catastrophe has been that for the last forty years, the two rotten imperialists (Soviet and American) and their mercenaries in Afghanistan (“Khalgh” and “Parcham” states, Karzai and Ghani) on the one hand, and on the other hand the Islamic fundamentalists (from Mujahideen to Taliban) have divided Afghanistan among themselves.

Sections of the people turned towards the Islamic fundamentalists out of anger and hatred for the crimes of the Eastern and Western imperialists and their affiliated governments. And on the other hand, many who came to hate the Mujahideen and Taliban came under the banner of the Soviet Union, the United States and their mercenaries. After the banner of the Soviet Union had fallen, the United States and its mercenaries went into Afghanistan.

It was after 9/11 that the U.S. military and NATO, and NATO bomber pilots invaded Afghanistan for “democracy” and the elimination of the Taliban. [Former] Jihadi commanders, leaders and other operatives now working in the Karzai and Ghani puppet governments [hypocritically] propagandized that Afghanistan should be "developed," women should be "liberated," "welfare, security and work" should be adjusted, and law and order should be imposed. Afghanistan and Iraq were to follow the example of U.S. imperialist “humanitarian intervention” for the “Greater Middle East.” But in the words of Marx, “everything that was solid became smoke and vanished into air.” Two decades after the failure of the Greater Middle East dream, U.S. imperialism reached an agreement with the same Taliban and left Afghanistan. U.S. imperialism has washed its hands of its ambitious project in the face of waves of contradictions of global competition with other imperialist powers like Russia and China, in the context of its awkward economic and international situation, just like Russian imperialism who was forced to leave the occupation of Afghanistan more than thirty years ago.

The reactionary contradiction between the two rotten oppressors—imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism—in the absence of progressive and revolutionary alternatives of the past forty years—has led to a situation where the energy and potential in the anger of the masses against oppression and exploitation has come under the reactionary banners of these two rotten outmodeds. As BA says, “...These two reactionary poles reinforce each other, even while opposing each other. If you side with either of these ‘outmodeds,’ you end up strengthening both.”

The contradiction of these two outmodeds is the expression of the heightened basic contradiction of the epoch of capitalism, the contradiction of social production and private appropriation. Today, the bankruptcy of both of these outmodeds is so obvious and in the open for the world to see, through the devastated, wounded and exhausted people of Afghanistan worse than anywhere else in the world.

Our revolution in Afghanistan needs to create a polarization against the two outmoded forces in society, prevent the people from siding with either of these two, and attract them to the pole of the communist revolution. We need to channel the potential of the Afghanistan people’s opposition against the Taliban into opposition against Islamic fundamentalism, drawing a correct line of demarcation between the people and the enemy in society. In today’s situation, this must be opposition to Islamic fundamentalism itself. It is necessary for the masses of people to understand that both of these outmodeds—imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism—are the source of all the oppressions, discrimination and injustices inflicted on the people. Without changing the minds of the people for the communist revolution, without uniting the people on the path of the communist revolution, we cannot do anything. And again Afghanistan society and the people will be doomed to live under the torture and bloodshed of the capitalist system no matter what the color of their flag—whether state-capitalism of the Russians or American imperialists, or Islamic fundamentalist-capitalist governments.

In addition to opposition to Islamic fundamentalism and the religious state in Afghanistan, one of the axes of changing people’s ideas for revolution is to confront the religious way of thinking and to promote the scientific way of thinking among the people, especially the workers and toilers. Without promoting a scientific method of thinking among the people, without fighting against religious ideology and religious ethics and the religious way of thinking, we cannot transform the people for liberation and revolution.

JKNA and the Current Situation in Afghanistan

With the withdrawal of U.S. air and ground forces from Bagram to Kabul, many provinces, cities and districts are being occupied one by one by the Taliban. The Taliban, which flies the same flags of “Allah Akbar” (“god is great”) had previously claimed the lives of many people by assassinations, terrorizing individuals, murdering civilians in schools, universities, hospitals, roadways and maternity wards of hospitals, has declared that they will not back down from their bloody nature of Islamic fundamentalist ideology. So the people of Afghanistan are once again face to face with the nightmare of the Taliban. As happened over the last forty years, some sections of the people have turned their hearts to the Islamic fundamentalists, and some are in grief over the departure of the imperialist forces. Again, the two rotten (outmoded) systems of Islamic fundamentalism and imperialism have divided the people. But again, the fact of the matter is that siding with either side of these two outmodeds will strengthen the other. The forty years of experience of contemporary Afghanistan is a witness to this very bitter reality.

Our response, the revolutionary communists in the core of JKNA/NCMA, to all the people of Afghanistan, the men and women who were left to suffer under the torture and fire of the Taliban, the Mujahideen, Ghani, Karzai, the United States and Russia is this: Let us put an end to:

There has been no escape from the capitalist mode of production or from the two outmoded imperialists and Islamic fundamentalists, who have created nothing but catastrophe and the escalation of catastrophe. The situation has gotten worse every day for the last forty years and it will get worse yet again. The capitalist system cannot be reformed, it must be overthrown.

What we see today is chaos and incoherence in Afghanistan, this decentralized and unstable situation, and at the same time the unification of global and regional rivalries, this intensification of the contradiction between imperialism and Islamic fundamentalism, these are all miniature replicas of the complex contradictions in the world. This fragmentation and divergence is one of the unique features of this era.

In his recent statements, comrade Avakian has described and analyzed this process well and considers it as the result of the workings of the capitalist system at the global level and the driving forces of this system and its dynamics, especially the contradiction of anarchy and organization. But comrade Avakian and his method of scientific and enlightening analysis shows how, in the context of this global crisis, in the midst of this confusion and incoherence that pervades the entire body of the world capitalist system, there is the opportunity to create a new path, a path leading to communist revolution. The bankruptcy of all tried and tested alternatives is more obvious than ever before.

Towards the Communist Revolution and Nothing Less

Our message to Afghan men and women, to Afghan workers, toilers, intellectuals and progressives, from a group of communist supporters of the new communism in Afghanistan is this: Strengthen the fight against and go beyond the forty-year-old ruins quantitatively and qualitatively. We need organization based on the correct line. In the ranks of this nucleus of the JKNA/NCMA, this spark of a determined organization; we need you, the masses, more than anything else:

Your place is within the ranks of this initial nucleus. The door is open for you to join in and build your party for the Communist Revolution and Nothing Less! For Afghanistan and move on to conquer the future!

Long live the communist revolution with the new communism!

JKNA/NCMA. Assad/August 2021

 

* ** End note: The term Islamism is the literal translation from the original statement. From what we understand, this refers to Islamic fundamentalist movements, or what some call "political Islam." From here on, we will be using the term "Islamic fundamentalism" for wider accessibility.  [back to *] [back to **]

 

1. JKNA: J = Jounbesh or Movement, K = Kmonisty or Communist, N = Nouvin or New, A = Afghanistan  [back]

2. Excommunication of non-believers or believers in other religions.  [back]

3. A “holy war”  [back]

4. This is excerpted from section 6 of the New Year's statement from Bob Avakian, which is available online at revcom.us.  [back]

 

 

 

BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian is a book of quotations and short essays that speaks powerfully to questions of revolution and human emancipation.

"You can't change the world if you don't know the BAsics."

Order the book HERE
Download the book in ePub format HERE

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/715/bob-avakian-issues-a-challenge-to-bill-maher-en.html

Bob Avakian Issues a Challenge to Bill Maher:

HEY, BILL MAHER—HERE'S A "POLITICALLY INCORRECT" TRUTH THAT CAN'T BE "CANCELLED": AMERICA IS NOT, AND NEVER HAS BEEN, GREAT—EXCEPT IN ONE WAY—IT IS THE WORLD'S GREATEST OPPRESSOR AND DESTROYER OF THE ENVIRONMENT

Do You Dare to Take Up the Challenge of Trying to Refute This?

| revcom.us

 

Lately, Bill Maher has been devoting a lot of attention to going after what he sees as the harm done by “cancel culture.” He has made a few good points, and some very bad ones, not getting to the heart of what is the actual problem with “cancel culture” and how this should be opposed. Worst of all, he has taken this as another occasion to once again repeat worn-out fairy tales, and vicious lies, about how great this country is!

Here, I am not going to repeat all that I have written recently in exposing what is terribly wrong with “cancel culture” and related very harmful tendencies, and the correct basis on which to oppose this.1 Instead, I am going to issue the following simple challenge to Maher.

Since you are someone who says he reads, go to the website revcom.us and read the following:

The American Crime series.

My New Year’s Statement this year (A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity).

These papers by Raymond Lotta: The “Industrialization” of Sexual Exploitation, Imperialist Globalization, and the Descent Into Hell; and Imperialist Parasitism and Class‑Social Recomposition in the U.S. From the 1970s to Today: An Exploration of Trends and Changes.

Then try to make the case that this is the great country and great system you repeatedly say it is.

And invite onto your show a representative of revcom to debate this with you.

Do you have the integrity, and the courage, to do this?

If so, make it happen!

If not, shut up with your bullshit about how great this country and this system is!

 

1. See Bob Avakian On 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. Both of these articles by Bob Avakian are available at revcom.us. (See also Supplementary Excerpts from Bob Avakian and Further Supplementary Excerpts, also available at revcom.us) [back]

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/715/when-it-comes-to-murdering-babies-and-creating-widows-and-orphans-en.html

While the Media Tries to Pull Your Heartstrings Over Dead American Soldiers...

WHEN IT COMES TO MURDERING BABIES AND CREATING WIDOWS AND ORPHANS...
America "Reigns Supreme" Without a Challenger!

| revcom.us

 

When ISIS set off its barbarous suicide bomb near the Afghan airport, the U.S. media didn’t make the main story about the scores of Afghans killed, but about the U.S. soldiers—and especially the one who left behind a pregnant widow.

They are trying to play you, to program you to think only or at least first and foremost about American lives. You wouldn’t know from the headlines and pictures of the U.S. soldiers who died that are splashed across the front pages that while 2,400 U.S. troops have died in the American invasion of and war against Afghanistan, at least 240,000 Afghans, and perhaps more, have been killed.1 In other words, in the past 20 years of war, at least 100 times as many Afghans have died as Americans. And underneath that, even more, is the larger message they are pushing: their fiction that “America is a force for good in the world,” with its “noble troops” willing to lay down their lives to “help others.”

What poisonous bullshit! U.S. troops are stationed in over 70 countries around the world2 to protect U.S. imperialist interests. And when they do fight, they do so in a way that treats the thousands and millions who die as a result as “collateral damage”—just so much road kill in maintaining world domination.

Go here, here, and here to learn how much America really cares about the small children and the families of the countries it invades. As A Declaration, A Call puts it:

The military of this country is not carrying out an “honorable service”—and it is not some “bad ass” force that people should respect. It is doing the same thing around the world, on a massive scale, that the police are doing here: carrying out the cowardly killing and terrorizing of people in the service of the biggest oppressors in the world, the rulers of this country. And it is a major cause of the destruction of the environment.

It is a hard but basic truth: For the masses of people, and ultimately for humanity as a whole, there is no future, or no future worth living, under this system.

 

1. The 240,000 figure cited in “All in or All Out? Biden Saw No Middle Ground in Afghanistan,” Peter Baker, New York Times, August 28, 2021. A 2015 report from the Cost of War project at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University estimated that indirect deaths from the U.S. war in Afghanistan—caused by destruction of health system infrastructure, effects of displacement, etc.—to be 360,000. [back]

2. “Where in the World Is the U.S. Military?” David Vine, Politico, July/August 2015. [back]

Bob Avakian has written that one of three things that has "to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better: People have to fully confront the actual history of this country and its role in the world up to today, and the terrible consequences of this." (See "3 Things that have to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better.")

In that light, and in that spirit, "American Crime" is a regular feature of revcom.us. Each installment focuses on one of the 100 worst crimes committed by the U.S. rulers—out of countless bloody crimes they have carried out against people around the world, from the founding of the U.S. to the present day.

Read the American Crime series

 

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Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/426/from-vietnam-war-vet-us-troops-are-not-heroes-but-murderers-and-baby-killers-en.html

From a Vietnam War Vet:

We Were Baby Killers for U.S. Imperialism

Originally posted February 15, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Over fifty years ago, in January 1967, the U.S. troops occupying Vietnam began a major military offensive against Vietnamese forces fighting to liberate their country. The heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people, combined with upsurge of opposition within the U.S., would lead to the defeat of the U.S. imperialists in Vietnam. The war in Vietnam is part of a whole bloody history of U.S. wars, invasions, and aggression against countries and people fighting for their liberation. There’s a responsibility for people in the U.S. to understand that “America was NEVER great” and oppose all the crimes carried out by the U.S. imperialists around the world.

We are reposting this piece from a Vietnam War vet, who was not yet in Vietnam in 1967 but has important things to say about the massacres and other horrors that the U.S. committed during the war against the Vietnamese people.

 

I am writing to revcom.us/Revolution because this is the one place that consistently stands with the people of the world against all forms of oppression and for a radically different and far better world. The reason for this letter is the current wave of patriotism, using America’s soldiers and veterans to justify every conceivable crime and atrocity being carried out by the “troops,” i.e., the U.S. military.

I speak from a whole lot of experience—from both sides of the political battles—supporting and defending U.S. wars and then serving in Vietnam, where I began to learn the truth about America’s bloody, genocidal history.

Right now there is a major campaign to raise millions of dollars in the Wounded Warrior Campaign, for medical care for the wounded veterans of America’s current wars around the globe. Now, let’s set something straight first—they are not heroes but murderers and baby killers. Nowhere in American mainstream media and culture do you find the people we are killing, torturing, droning, raping—the people of the world do not matter in the path of America’s march across the earth. There is no honor in being a soldier in the U.S. military that has invaded every corner of the world and nearly every country on the planet. There is no pride in torturing people across the globe, invading people’s homes and beating up the occupants in the name of the “War on Terror.” The U.S. is actually carrying out a “War OF Terror” against the people of the world. In fact, it can be said with historical certainty that the wholesale slaughter of tens of millions of people is “The American Way” and that, except for the Civil War, there has never been anything honorable about serving in the U.S. military. As I tell youth when I go into high schools as part of the We Are Not Your Soldiers Campaign, you are going to be part of a military that is about killing the people of the world for profit and empire!

You can be sure that whenever there is a stepped-up campaign of patriotism and flag waving, there are also stepped-up military actions that need to be supported by the unthinking and the privileged, while the rest of us are supposed to shrink back, and not speak the truth, as atrocities are carried out in our names. Right now all over Africa and the Middle East there are and have been hundreds of secret military operations, assassinations, kidnappings, and murders galore by special operations teams, while the myth is promoted that “there are no ground forces” in those places. These are American “death squads,” all with the story that this is what is needed to protect “us from the terrorists” when the truth is that the United States is the biggest terrorist on the planet.

Villagers massacred by U.S. Army troops at My Lai in Vietnam, March 16, 1968.Villagers massacred by U.S. Army troops at My Lai in Vietnam, March 16, 1968.

GIs refuse to go out on patrol, AK Valley, Vietnam, September 1969
GIs refuse to return to combat, AK Valley, Vietnam, September 1969.

What I am saying here is not my opinion, but history and, yes, science. Because this is not a case of human nature, or bad people, or even the nature of being in the military. No, I learned, through bitter lessons in Vietnam and back here in the American empire, that we live in a capitalist-imperialist system that will go to any length, commit every crime imaginable, to defend and spread this empire of profit and exploitation across the globe. From the banana fields in Guatemala, to the sweatshops in Bangladesh, to the oil of the Middle East, the U.S. has over 700 military bases ringing the globe to defend what the monsters who run this empire call “our interests.” To do that, the military and the powers that be need the bodies and minds of young people, mainly men and some women, to carry out the crimes. So, how do they do this?

They do this in many different ways, and especially through the racism, lies, manipulation, and fear that are a normal part of American culture and education. This is reinforced by a brutal and cruel brainwashing of the young soldiers called “basic training” to instill in them blind obedience to orders, concern only for American lives, and a “shoot first and kill all” mentality in these young brains. Then, when these soldiers return home, they are used again, and especially the wounded ones, these killers for empire, as sympathy and pity for them is drummed up to justify continued murder and torture. The message that is driven home is that the only lives that matter are American lives.

Now I know that some people will say that these soldiers are victims too of this imperialist system. My answer is that these soldiers and vets have a choice: they can cross over to the side of the people of the world and tell the truth about what they saw and did or forever face the world’s condemnation as the baby killers and murderers they are.

It is true that today’s generation born after 9/11 have no real memory of the turmoil of the 1960s and how tens of millions came to oppose the war in Vietnam and the American empire in many different ways, including massive opposition to the war right in the U.S. military. For this same generation, what happened in Vietnam 50 years ago is as ancient history to them as was my growing up listening to WW2 veterans tell their stories. After the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center (the murder of 3,000 innocent people by a group of terrorists in the name of Islamic fundamentalism), the United States used them to carry out and justify the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of drone killings in many countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and torture and murder by the military and the CIA at prisons and “black sites.” This is the reality of the world we live in today and lessons from the past must really serve helping to end all this madness. No more stupid and meaningless “war stories.”

The process of how I came to end up in Vietnam is instructive because today’s young soldiers and vets can see similarities to how they have been manipulated and lied to. Back then, in my schooling, the only ideas I learned about America’s wars were the necessity and the wonder and glory of fighting them. On television I learned to cheer for the cowboys as they killed multitudes of Native Americans, while the war movies portrayed Americans as right and justified in defending our way of life. Watch the movie Purple Heart and the racist portrayal of the Japanese. In the 8th grade I won an American Legion Americanism award for an essay I wrote about patriotism. In high school my history teachers, Mr. Gavigan and Mr. Murphy, had the maps that showed communism as evil and taking over all of Asia, especially Vietnam. I even worked for Barry Goldwater after high school when he ran for president in 1964. I was at the first antiwar demonstration in New York City in spring 1966—to stand on the side in support of the war. I joined Young Americans for Freedom, a right-wing campus group.

So while most of the youth in this country are trained in blind patriotism and kept ignorant of history and the nature of the system we live in, I was political at an early age, and I thought I knew American history and why the country was worth defending. I joined the U.S. Air Force and ended up guarding nuclear weapons in the U.S. at small bases on the East Coast. But, I told myself that I could not be alive at this time and not follow my generation’s calling and go to Vietnam. I arrived there just in time for the Tet Offensive of 1968—a military operation by the Vietnamese revolutionaries against all the major U.S. bases in Vietnam. After four of my fellow soldiers and friends died in that attack, my whole world view fell apart because I began to realize that nothing I had been taught or believed about the nature of U.S. reasons for being in Vietnam were true. I knew nothing about the Vietnamese people, culture, and history. We called the people all sorts of racist terms and nowhere did they count as human beings. I spent my next 11 months coming to oppose the war, to see the humanity of the Vietnamese people and beginning to oppose this lie that Americans are the best people in the world. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Davis and Johnson, two of the many Black guys in my unit who refused to salute the American flag (when a movie was shown on our base), and argued with me about the war, Black history, and that they were talking about coming back home to America to make revolution.

Protest against the Vietnam War, Washington, D.C., April 24, 1971. Photo: Leena Krohn via Wikimedia Commons
Vietnam veterans marching against the war, Washington, D.C., April 24, 1971. Photo: Leena Krohn via Wikimedia Commons

After Vietnam, I joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and became one of its national leaders. And it was here, along with other veterans and the growing soldiers’ movement in the U.S. military worldwide, that we all learned to not just oppose the war but actively resist it. This is where I learned the truth of U.S. history, and not just Vietnam but what America has always been about. I learned about the Sullivan Expedition in the summer of 1779—where Gen. George Washington (yes, that one—the slaveholder) orders a genocidal attack on more than 40 Iroquois villages—destroying the people, buildings, and crops. This became a standard practice of the U.S. military in the following 300 years of wars against the Native peoples of the western U.S., in the Spanish-American war in the Philippine Islands in 1898, to the use of insects and chemical and biological agents in the Korean war in 1950 to 1953, to the American invasion of Vietnam and all its horrors. Research many of these crimes on revcom.us, and you can also find on the Internet several lists that document the hundreds of military invasions, occupations, “small-unit actions,” aerial and offshore bombings, almost 300 years of U.S. military actions around the world.

The veterans and soldiers I was meeting and organizing were studying U.S. history, about the history of slavery, the lynchings and oppression of Black people, talking about how this was an imperialist way of life—killing people for profit and empire. And I met many who were openly talking about why revolution seemed to be necessary to stop all this horror that we were inflicting on the people of the world. We marched for 70 miles through small towns in New Jersey in a simulated search-and-destroy mission to graphically portray “to the heartland” that what we were doing in Vietnam was massacring and torturing the people. Then, we took 125 combat vets to Detroit in 1971 to the Winter Soldier Investigation where vets testified for three days about mass rape of Vietnamese women, mass murder, destruction of villages and crops, napalm, chemical poisoning of the land and people, and yes—the deliberate murder of kids by the soldiers. While there are many powerful and important examples of resistance and opposition by soldiers and veterans to imperialist wars, this was the first time in history that they were self-organized with two goals: to tell the truth about what they had seen and done, and then to call on the American people to stop the crimes.

Throwing medals back onto the Capitol steps, Dewey Canyon III, 1971.
"For a full week in the spring of 1971, we camped out on the National Mall in front of the U.S. Congress and we named it Dewey Canyon III—'an invasion into the country of Congress.'” Above, throwing medals back onto the Capitol steps as part of the Dewey Canyon III protests.

Before Winter Soldier, I thought I understood the scope of what we had done in Vietnam, but after three days of hearings I was devastated by how deep was the betrayal of our youth, our ambitions, and our minds, that we were really nothing more than killers and cannon fodder for empire. After Winter Soldier, we knew we had to do something that would put Vietnam Veterans on the front page of the newspapers, something dramatic that would send a message around the world, that while we were the baby killers, we were beginning to understand who and what was really responsible. For a full week in the spring of 1971, we camped out on the National Mall in front of the U.S. Congress and we named it Dewey Canyon III—“an invasion into the country of Congress.” After a whole week of demonstrating everywhere, doing guerrilla theater portrayals of how we treated and murdered the Vietnamese people, on the last day 800 to 1,000 vets lined up outside the Capitol to walk up the Capitol steps and throw their medals back at the U.S. Congress and the rulers of America. Some of the comments from the vets as they threw their medals over a fence marked “trash” were: a Black vet who said, “This is my opposition for the policies of this country against the non-white peoples of the world”; “My name is Peter, I got a purple heart here and I hope I get another one fighting these motherfuckers”; “We don’t want to fight again, but if we have to it’ll be to take these steps.”

Then, in the summer of 1971, I was selected by VVAW to represent the organization on a peace delegation to Hanoi—the capital of North Vietnam—“the enemy.” As the first Vietnam veteran to go to North Vietnam on a peace mission, with two other activists from Women Strike for Peace and the War Resisters League, I did not think twice about going. We spent eight days in Hanoi, traveling to Haiphong Harbor and witnessing the lives of a people whose whole history and culture is embedded with the ethos of resisting foreign invaders. This is when I completely went “over to the other side” and became an advocate for the victory of the Vietnamese against the U.S.

I say that today because while there is not an equivalent nation or group that can be supported right now against the crimes the U.S. is carrying out, everyone, and especially the soldiers and veterans of these wars, can and must speak out for the people of the world and against U.S. crimes. This means NOT supporting the troops, because the troops are murdering people. I really hate the slogan “Support the Troops, Not the War” because it makes what these wars are about is American lives, and the humanity of the people we are killing is secondary or nonexistent.

Finally, for those who can only see the power of the empire to manipulate and control the population into either being blind flag wavers or docile opposition, I want to say how important it is to tell the truth, to call on others to do so and to fight for the interest of all humanity. After all, I was witness to something that many people today cannot imagine: I saw a large segment of the former baby killers and murderers of my time turn against the empire on the side of humanity.

 

 

 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/440/american-crime-case-96-the-my-lai-massacre-en.html

American Crime

Case #96:
Vietnam, March 16, 1968—The My Lai Massacre

May 23, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

American Crime is a regular feature of revcom.us. Each installment will focus on one of the 100 worst crimes committed by the U.S. rulers—out of countless bloody crimes they have carried out against people around the world, from the founding of the U.S. to the present day.

American Crime

See all the articles in this series.

 

 

My Lai massacre
My Lai massacre. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

THE CRIME: On Saturday morning, March 16, 1968, 100 soldiers from Charlie Company, U.S. Army Americal Division, entered and took over My Lai, a small hamlet in Vietnam’s countryside. “We met no resistance and I only saw three captured weapons... It was just like any other Vietnamese village—old papa-sans, women and kids,” a soldier said.

“The order we were given was to kill and destroy everything that was in the village,” another soldier later testified. “It was clearly explained that there were to be no prisoners.” An order was given to push all the Vietnamese who had been forced into the area into a ditch. “I began shooting them all. I guess I shot maybe 25 or 20 people in the ditch,” one G.I. later recounted, “men, women, and children. And babies.” A baby crawling away from the ditch was grabbed and thrown back into the ditch and shot.

“Over four hours, members of Charlie Company methodically slaughtered more than five hundred unarmed victims, killing some in ones and twos, others in small groups, and collecting many more in a drainage ditch that would become an infamous killing ground,” Nick Turse, author of Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, writes. “They faced no opposition. They even took a quiet break to eat lunch in the midst of the carnage. Along the way, they also raped women and young girls, mutilated the dead, systematically burned homes, and fouled the area’s drinking water.”

THE CRIMINALS: U.S. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all authorized and escalated the war. Robert McNamara, Johnson’s Secretary of Defense, oversaw massive troop and bombing escalations. General William Westmoreland, the overall commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam. Colin Powell, then an Army major, carried out a cover-up of atrocities by the Americal Division (one of which was My Lai). And far too many more functionaries of the U.S. imperialist state to name here.

THE ALIBI: The U.S. claimed the 1961-1975 Vietnam War was being fought to defend free and democratic South Vietnam from an invasion by communist North Vietnam. In fact, Vietnam was one country that had been temporarily divided. Under the Geneva Accords, North and South Vietnam were supposed to be reunified in the 1950s, but this was blocked by then-President Dwight Eisenhower because he was convinced that most Vietnamese would vote for Ho Chi Minh, the communist leader of North Vietnam.

The military described My Lai as victory: “U.S. infantrymen had killed 128 Communists in a bloody day-long battle,” Stars and Stripes magazine reported. GIs who attempted to expose the truth were denounced as “traitors” in Congress.

Journalist Seymour Hersh exposed the My Lai massacre in November 1969. The ensuing furor forced the military to conduct an investigation, which treated My Lai as an isolated incident, and blamed the officers in charge of Charlie Company. Twenty six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. For killing 22 villagers, he spent two days in jail, and three and a half years under house arrest.

THE ACTUAL MOTIVE: My Lai was not an isolated incident—it was a concentration of the way the U.S. waged the Vietnam War.

During this period, national liberation struggles were raging in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, with many led by communists or with a strong communist presence. The U.S. was the world’s main imperialist superpower and was determined to crush these struggles to ensure its domination of these regions. The Vietnam War was also aimed at encircling revolutionary China, and contending with the then-imperialist Soviet Union.

Mass murder of Vietnamese people was the policy, the military doctrine, of the war the U.S. waged in Vietnam, as Turse documents in his book. My Lai was, as Turse quotes a soldier, “an operation, not an aberration.”

In 1995, the government of Vietnam released figures saying it estimated two million civilians and one million soldiers were killed during the war. Yet, in spite of this multi-dimensional horrific onslaught that lasted well over a decade, the U.S. lost the war.

REPEAT OFFENDER: U.S. patrols like Charlie Company regularly killed everyone and everything within farming villages. The U.S. dropped more than seven million tons of bombs—double the tonnage dropped during World War 2—on a country roughly the size of New Mexico. It dumped over 20 million gallons of a highly toxic chemical defoliant called “Agent Orange” on forests and farmlands to destroy the ability of Vietnamese peasants to sustain themselves and their families. It rained some 300 million anti-personnel cluster bombs—”slaughter, spring loaded into little cans”—on Vietnam and the neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia. It dropped 373,000 tons of napalm—jellied gasoline that burns at over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit—on the Vietnamese people, burning their flesh to the bone and causing agonizing pain and almost certain death.

 

 

 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/091/afghanistan-en.html

 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/716/texas-fascist-laws-bludgeoned-into-reality-en.html

Texas: Fascist Laws Bludgeoned into Reality

| revcom.us

 

From our correspondent in Texas:

The legislature of Texas—a body completely dominated by white supremacist Christian fascists—passed 666 new measures this year, most of which became law on September 1. The two most notorious are a vicious anti-abortion law (see Sunsara Taylor’s article “ALERT! September 1st: Forced Motherhood and Fascist Vigilantism Become Law in Texasˮ), and a law aimed at massive disenfranchisement of Black and Latino voters (see the revcom.us article, “Fascist Voter Suppression Law Looms in Texasˮ). Along with many others, they form a full-bore onslaught to re-write much of the law in service of furthering fascist domination.

Laws that went into effect in Texas on September 11 include measures that:

Each of these laws is horrible. As a whole, they mark a significant lurch towards the imposition of fascist law and rule in the state of 29 million people, and a significant move to advance a fascist agenda nationwide. As just one example—on September 4, the Washington Post reported that after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas’s abortion law, “GOP officials in at least seven states ... have suggested they may review or amend their states’ laws to mirror Texas’s legislation, ... more are expected to follow....”6

Mobilizing Fascist Vigilantes to Enforce Fascist Law

Encouraging and rewarding mob—vigilante—enforcement is central to several of these measures. The abortion law relies on vigilantes to enforce the law by filing lawsuits against people they suspect of “aiding and abetting” a woman who receives an abortion. An anti-abortion fanatic in Waco told a reporter from the Washington Post that this is what “puts teeth in the law.” He said it is possible that his organization will send spies and snitches into Waco’s Planned Parenthood clinic: “If you want to strike at the head of the snake, you go to the abortion facility.” Similarly, the law banning the teaching of “critical race theory” does not specify how teachers accused of violating it will be convicted or punished. The Texas Tribune reported that Angela Valenzuela, a professor in education policy at the University of Texas at Austin, told their reporter that “this lack of direction could make the bill even more dangerous to teachers than if it clearly stated how it would be enforced.” She said the law’s wording means that “... everybody’s an enforcer. You create a watchdog situation.”

As Bob Avakian wrote in his New Year’s Statement, the forces driving and now embedding into law these changes are among those “... aiming to reverse, with a vengeance, even the modest concessions that have been made to the fight against social injustice and institutionalized inequality and oppression and to enforce a form of capitalist dictatorship that is overt and unrestrained by the Constitution and the rule of law (or which turns the Constitution and the rule of law into merely instruments of fascist tyranny and atrocity).”

Time to Get Organized—For Revolution

Every one of these laws, and the fascist assault as a whole, needs to be met with mass outpourings and opposition, on a scale and scope similar to what happened during last year’s “beautiful uprising” against police murder and brutality against Black, Latina/o, and Native American people. As Sunsara Taylor wrote about the abortion law, “This should be a stop-everything moment.”

Instead, there have only been a few small (though spirited and angry) protests in Austin and Houston. Much of this is because the Democratic Party and various groups associated with it continue to rely on the political system’s normal channels of legislation, lawsuits, and lobbying. Meanwhile the Republi-fascists have been tearing up those normal channels, packing the courts with like-minded fascists, organizing violent mobs, taking over legislatures, and re-writing the law to serve their aims.

All this is an expression of the deep divisions and conflict tearing at this country, and tearing apart those who have ruled it. The fracturing of this country’s normal functioning does not have to stay on the terms of this system. It also indicates the potential for something radically different, and radically better, to emerge from this turmoil—IF growing numbers of people conscious of the need and basis for that change act on it. Now is the time to get organized for an actual Revolution!

As Bob Avakian wrote in THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE—WHY THAT IS SO, AND HOW TO SEIZE ON THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY,

It is extremely important to deeply understand this:

As this situation develops, and the ruling class is more and more unable to rule in the old way, society and daily life for masses of people, from different parts of society, can become increasingly unsettled and chaotic, with frequent “disruptions” of the “normal” way things have been.

And as “the normal way” society has been ruled is failing to hold things together—and society is increasingly being ripped apart—this can shake people’s belief that “the way things have always been” is the only way things can be. It can make people more open to questioning—in a real sense it can force people to question—the way things have been, and whether they have to stay that way. And this is all the more likely to happen if the revolutionary forces are out among the people shining a light on the deeper reality of what is happening, and why, and bringing out that there IS an alternative to living this way.

 

1. Information in this article from: “666 new Texas laws go into effect Sept. 1. Here are some that might affect you.” Texas Tribune, August 31, 2021; “16 New Laws That Take Effect on Sept. 1”, Houston Chronicle, September 1, 2021; and1836 Project promoting 'patriotic education' in Texas heightens concerns about whitewashing history, ”Houston Chronicle, June 9, 2021; 10 Interesting Laws that Just Went into Effect in Texas, Tyler Morning Telegraph, September 1, 2021. [back]

2. U.S. Census Bureau, Quick Facts, Texas [back]

3. People of color make up 95% of Texas’ population growth, and cities and suburbs are booming, 2020 census shows, Texas Tribune, August 12, 2021 [back]

4. The “Real Texas Values Quiz,” revcom.us, May 31, 2021 [back]

5. Texas House approves additional $2 billion for border security as state moves to build border wall, Texas Tribune, August 27, 2021 [back]

6. Texas created a blueprint for abortion restrictions. Republican-controlled states may follow suit. Washington Post, September 4, 2021 [back]


Austin abortion rights activists protest at Texas capitol. Photo: American-Statesman


New Texas law allows "open carry" of weapons in public spaces by non-registered, untrained, gun owners.

From The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show:

Episode 68: Abortion Ban in Texas... U.S. Drone Strike in Afghanistan: THIS SYSTEM CAN & NEEDS TO BE OVERTHROWN!

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

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During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

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Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/716/american-crime-7-1963-birmingham-church-bombing-and-cold-blooded-murder-of-4-black-girls-en.html

American Crime

Case #7: The 1963 Birmingham Church Bombing and the Cold-Blooded Murder of Four Black Girls

| revcom.us

 


Four young girls who were killed when a bomb—set by the KKK— exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, September 15, 1963. Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins, and Cynthia Wesley.

 

Bob Avakian has written that one of three things that has “to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better: People have to fully confront the actual history of this country and its role in the world up to today, and the terrible consequences of this.” (See “3 Things that have to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better.”)

In that light, and in that spirit, “American Crime” is a regular feature of revcom.us. Each installment focuses on one of the 100 worst crimes committed by the U.S. rulers—out of countless bloody crimes they have carried out against people around the world, from the founding of the U.S. to the present day.

American Crime

See all the articles in this series.

 

Editors’ note: We really welcome contributions from readers of revcom.us. This is an unsolicited contribution received recently that we thought important to incorporate into the American Crime series. Please write us (revolution.reports@yahoo.com) with questions, provocations, contributions, etc.

THE CRIME

On September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded before Sunday morning services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The bomb was set by local members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Four young girls were killed and 20 others injured.

In the moments just before the murders, the girls chatted happily and straightened their fancy white dresses. It was Youth Day and excitement filled the air; they were going to take part in the Sunday adult service. Addie Mae Collins, 14, and Denise McNair, 11, were preparing to sing in the church choir. Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley—both 14—were going to be ushers. Addie Mae was helping Denise tie the sash on her dress. But before she could finish, the bomb went off. Minutes before 11 o’clock, the congregation was knocked to the ground. As the bomb exploded under the steps of the church, the worshippers sought safety under the pews and shielded each other from falling debris. In the basement the four girls were killed. Sarah Collins, Addie’s sister, survived, but lost an eye in the bombing.

Outrage over the incident and the violent clash that followed between people protesting the bombing and police trying to suppress them drew national attention to the hard-fought, often dangerous struggle for justice for African-Americans, which not only continued over the next decades, but also has intensified in many ways. Two more young African-Americans died in the protests, and eventually the National Guard was called in to “restore order.”

The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963, was the third bombing in 11 days, after a federal court order had come down mandating the integration of Alabama’s school system.

Upon learning of the bombing at the church, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. sent a telegram to Alabama governor George Wallace, a staunch and vocal segregationist, stating bluntly: “The blood of our little children is on your hands.” The brutal attack and the deaths of the four girls shocked the nation and drew international attention to the violent struggle for civil rights in Birmingham. Many whites were as outraged by the incident as Black people were and offered services and condolences to the families. More than 8,000 people attended the girls’ funeral service at Reverend John Porter’s Sixth Avenue Baptist Church.

Racial Injustice in Birmingham and the Country in 1963

Throughout the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, Birmingham was a major site of protests, marches, and sit-ins that were often met with police brutality and violence from white citizens. Homemade bombs planted by white supremacists in homes and churches became so commonplace that the city was sometimes known as “Bombingham.”

In the months leading up to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Birmingham had become the focal point of the civil rights struggle. The city was all too familiar with racial violence. Both African-Americans and moderate whites had been long terrorized by the KKK.

Years earlier, Birmingham minister Fred L. Shuttlesworth founded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) to directly confront racism and segregation in the city. In the spring of 1963, Shuttlesworth’s group joined forces with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the largest and best known organization fighting for equal rights at the time. Together, the men formulated a plan that called for months-long protests to end segregation in Birmingham.

In May of that year, after weeks of marches, sit-ins, boycotts, bus strikes, and prayer vigils by the Black community, an agreement was reached between local government leaders, white business owners, African-American leaders, and civil rights groups. The city would now actively begin working toward integration. The agreement did not sit well with segregationists, among the most violent of which was the notorious KKK.

Riots erupted during the summer months, and nightly newscasts revealed to the rest of America the lengths to which Southern racists like Governor George Wallace and Birmingham’s Commissioner of Public Safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, would go in their fight to keep the South segregated.

Why This Church?

16th Street Baptist was a large and prominent church located downtown, just blocks from Birmingham’s commercial district and City Hall. Since its construction in 1911, the church had served as the centerpiece of the city’s African-American community, a social center and lecture hall that also served as a meeting place for civil rights leaders. Because of its size, location, and importance to the community, the church served as headquarters for civil rights mass meetings and rallies in the early 1960s.

KKK members had routinely called in bomb threats intended to disrupt civil rights meetings as well as services at the church. In April 1963, Birmingham was the most segregated city in the United States. Precisely because of its reputation as a stronghold for white supremacy, white supremacists responded with violence to Birmingham’s reckoning on racial injustice. The Klansmen who planted the bomb wanted to terrorize the Black community and maintain white supremacy at a moment when legal segregation was under assault in the country.

Justice Never Fulfilled

The FBI office in Birmingham launched an immediate investigation, but it took until 1965 for the head of the FBI in Birmingham to write a memo to J. Edgar Hoover naming four men—Thomas Blanton, Robert Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, and Herman Cash—as primary suspects in the bombing. The investigation ended in 1968 with no indictments. Although Chambliss was convicted on an explosives charge, no charges were filed in the 1960s for the bombing of the church.

In 1971, Alabama’s newly elected attorney general, Bill Baxley, reopened the case, requesting evidence from the FBI and building trust with witnesses who had been reluctant to testify. Investigators discovered that, while the FBI had accumulated evidence against the bombers, under orders from Hoover they had not disclosed the evidence to county prosecutors and no one was indicted. Robert Chambliss was convicted of murder on November 14, 1977; however, it would be decades before the other suspects were tried for their crimes. Herman Cash died in 1994 having never been prosecuted for the murders of the four girls.

THE CRIMINALS

The KKK: Thomas Blanton, Robert Chambliss, Bobby Frank Cherry, and Herman Cash. All four men were members of East Birmingham’s Cahaba River Bridge Boys, a splinter group of the Eastview Klavern #13 chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

George Wallace, then Alabama governor, an outspoken segregationist, declared at his January 1963 inauguration: “segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever,” and created the climate that led to the killings. Then one week before the bombing, Wallace granted an interview with the New York Times, in which he said he believed Alabama needed a “few first-class funerals” to stop racial integration. Wallace was a leading foe of desegregation, and Birmingham had one of the strongest and most violent chapters of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) with his support. Wallace built his entire political career on white supremacy and segregation and was elected four times as Alabama’s governor. After the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Governor Wallace sent the police and state troopers to break up the righteously angry protesters. In the clash that followed, protesters did not back down -- many were arrested and two young African-American men were killed. The National Guard was then sent to suppress the protests.

Eugene “Bull” Connor, the city’s police commissioner, a Southern Democrat, was a staunch proponent of racist social policies and was notorious for his willingness to use brutality in combating radical demonstrators, union members, and Black citizens. Connor, in charge of the police and firemen of the city, supported the Ku Klux Klan when they attacked Black freedom fighters.

In the spring of 1963, Connor’s all-white fire and police departments grew increasingly anxious over this Black presence in Birmingham’s streets and arrested King and other Black leaders. During the first week of May, Connor ordered the use of high-pressure fire hoses and police dogs against the demonstrators, and even deployed a police department armored tank. The familiar images of these encounters erased once and for all Birmingham’s image as the “Pittsburgh of the South.”

J. Edgar Hoover, the head of FBI. In spite of being informed of the four suspects of the bombing in 1965, Hoover formally blocked any impending federal prosecutions against the suspects, and refused to disclose any evidence his agents had obtained to state or federal prosecutors. In 1968, the FBI formally closed their investigation into the bombing without filing charges against any of their named suspects. The files were sealed by order of Hoover.

THE ALIBI

When Hoover faced people seeking justice in the murders, he justified the FBI’s inaction saying, “The chance of prosecution in state or federal court is remote.”

THE ACTUAL MOTIVE

Between 1525 and 1866, 12.5 million people were kidnapped from Africa and sent to the Americas through the transatlantic slave trade. Only 10.7 million survived the harrowing two-month journey.

African-Americans have endured centuries of enslavement, exploitation, and inequality. Whenever they stood against cruelty and demanded justice, they faced oppressive countermeasures of white supremacist and racist Americans in the most brutal and violent form.

The immense brutality carried out against enslaved individuals in their everyday lives is vividly reflected in the so-called proud history of this United States. The bombing of the Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church is a case in point of this cruelty, where little girls were knowingly bombed and then the crowd enraged by this heinous murder was silenced by the force of the National Guard. The murderers escaped justice for a long time. The FBI, Alabama’s governor, and its state attorney general turned a blind eye to the terroristic act, and the perpetrators and all the institutions in charge evaded responsibility.

Racial, economic, and educational disparities are deeply entrenched in U.S. institutions. Although the Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal,” American democracy has historically—and often violently—excluded certain groups. Systematic racism is deeply rooted in American society and the future of racism in this system looks bleak.

References

Birmingham Church Bombing, History.com editors, updated January 25, 2021

158 Resources to Understand Racism in America,” Meilan Solly, Smithsonian magazine, June 4, 2020

16th Street Baptist Church bombing,” Chelsey Parrott-Sheffer, Britannica.com, July 30, 2009

Four Girls Forever Lost: 57 years ago, 16th Street Baptist Church bombing awakened nation to deadly consequences of hate,” Tafeni English, Southern Poverty Law Center, September 15, 2020.

4 Little Girls Died In The 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing In 1963. A 5th Survived,” WBUR.org, April 30, 2019

America Sees the Truth, an account of the 16th Street Bombing, blog post at National Museum of African American History & Culture, Smithsonian

Eugene “Bull” Connor, Biography.com

In the months before the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Birmingham had become the focal point of the civil rights struggle. Above: Police lead a group of Black school children to jail after their arrest for protesting against racial discrimination near city hall in Birmingham, May 1963. Below: Firefighters turn their hoses full force on civil rights demonstrators July 15, 1963. Photos: AP


The scene outside the 16th Street Baptist Church a few days after the bombing. Alabama Gov. Wallace sent police and state troopers to break up protests that had broken out. Photo: AP

An armored riot car, used by Birmingham Police Department. The riot cars were used for intimidation, with Connor himself often riding along on patrols through Black neighborhoods. They were also dispatched to scenes of protest during the Civil Rights Movement. Photo: Ed Jones

 

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Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

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American Crime

Case #81: September 13, 1971—Massacre of Heroic Attica Prisoners

September 5, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On September 9, 1971, the most powerful and significant prison rebellion in U.S. history erupted at Attica state prison in New York. Attica was part of the Black Liberation struggle and the revolutionary upheaval of the 1960s.

On September 9, 1971, the most powerful and significant prison rebellion in U.S. history erupted at Attica state prison in New York. Attica was part of the Black liberation struggle and the revolutionary upheaval of the 1960s. (AP Photo)

Bob Avakian recently wrote that one of three things that has "to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better: People have to fully confront the actual history of this country and its role in the world up to today, and the terrible consequences of this." (See "3 Things that have to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better.")

In that light, and in that spirit, "American Crime" is a regular feature of revcom.us. Each installment will focus on one of the 100 worst crimes committed by the U.S. rulers—out of countless bloody crimes they have carried out against people around the world, from the founding of the U.S. to the present day.

American Crime

See all the articles in this series.

 

 

September 9, 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the prisoners' uprising at Attica..

The Crime: On September 13, 1971, police, sheriffs, park police, and the National Guard launched a murderous assault at Attica prison in upstate New York, killing 39 unarmed people

Four days earlier, on September 9, the most powerful and significant prison rebellion in U.S. history had erupted at Attica. Over half of Attica’s 2,200 inmates, mainly Black but also white and Puerto Rican prisoners, seized control of large parts of the prison, taking 38 guards hostage.

The uprising was fueled by the guards’ routine abuse, horrific living conditions, the state’s refusal to address their grievances, and the racism and national oppression permeating Attica and U.S. society. Many Attica prisoners had been radicalized by the upheavals of the 1960s, and the August 21 murder of the revolutionary prisoner and leader George Jackson, by guards at California’s San Quentin prison, hit them very hard, sparking a silent fast in protest.

The spirit of the Attica Brothers, as they came to be called, was captured by their 21-year-old spokesman L.D. Barkley: “We are men. We are not beasts, and we do not intend to be beaten and driven as such... What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed...”

The prisoners took control of D-yard and a number of cellblocks. They organized food, medical care, sanitation, workshops, command posts, and a security squad to ensure the safety of the hostages. They issued demands “that will bring closer to reality the demise of these prison institutions that serve no useful purpose to the People of America, but to those who would enslave and exploit the people of America.” Their key demands included complete amnesty for their takeover, transport to a “non-imperialistic country” for those who wanted it, and negotiation through a team of observers that they chose. They set forth 15 “practical proposals,” including freedom for political activity and ending the censorship of literature sent into the prison.

The Attica prisoners reached out to the world and to prominent voices in the U.S., including radical lawyer William Kunstler, Black Panther Party leader Bobby Seale, leaders of the Puerto Rican Young Lords Party, and New York Times writer Tom Wicker. “We are standing here for the oppressed people of the world, and we are not going to give up or knuckle under,” Herbert X Blyden declared, “We are going to show the way, for we know the way!”

The Attica rebellion took place as the U.S. was being rocked by powerful upheavals against the oppression of Black people and the Vietnam War. There was a mass revolt against mainstream American culture. The legitimacy of the existing order was under severe duress, millions dreamed of revolution, and the rulers feared things could slip from their control. They were shocked and shaken by the prison takeover. New York prison officials refused to accept the prisoners’ demands, especially for amnesty. Governor Nelson Rockefeller rejected calls from many quarters to visit the prison. Instead, he and New York’s police forces secretly planned a full-scale military assault.

September 13. The assault began shortly after 9:30 am. when National Guard helicopters showered the prison with a burning, choking fog of CN and CS tear gas. The Attica prisoners had no guns and hadn’t engaged in any violence after their takeover, but moments later over 550 state troopers and sharpshooters opened fire with shotguns, pistols, Thompson submachine guns and semi-automatics. They unleashed an indiscriminate barrage of over 2,000 (perhaps as many as 4,500) rounds. Around 10:00 am, state police ordered prisoners to stand up and put their hands on their heads, assuring them they wouldn’t be harmed. But the shooting continued and surrendering prisoners were hit.

Within 20-30 minutes, the state’s armed forces were rampaging through the prison. “They came in there with their guns and bayonets blasting everything that moved. They shot at everybody,” Attica Brother Akil Al-Jundi recalled. “They went from cell to cell with machine guns, spraying the cells, under the beds. They didn’t care whether there was anybody there. They were just shooting. Their objective was to kill, not to ask questions, but to kill...”

Political prisoners, leaders of the uprisings and others were singled out and executed. Black Panther Kenneth Malloy was shot at least 10 times, including four rounds from a .357 magnum into his eyes from a foot away. Sam Melville, a white revolutionary who reportedly had his hands folded on top of his head in a surrender gesture, was killed by a shotgun blast to his chest. L.D. Barkley was shot in the back with a .270 silver-nose bullet, likely from a sharpshooter’s hunting rifle.

Hundreds of prisoners were forced to strip naked, crawl through mud and broken glass and run a gauntlet of baton-wielding rows of cops. Several bled to death due to denial of medical care after being wounded, left to lie in their own blood, urinated upon by guards, or beaten until their bones broke.

Frank “Big Black” Smith was stripped naked and tortured for six hours. Smith was forced to lie on a table with a football under his chin and told he would be killed if the ball moved or fell, while he was being burned with cigarettes and hot bullet casings and beaten on his testicles. One inmate had his femurs shattered by a bullet but was ordered to walk. When he couldn’t, a trooper repeatedly jammed a screwdriver into his rectum and forced him to crawl.

Twenty-nine prisoners and 10 guards being held hostage were murdered. Another 89 prisoners were wounded by gunfire and 319 more were injured. A week later, a state court investigation found that 90 percent of the inmates still had visible signs of being brutalized.

Sixty-two prisoners were indicted for 1289 "crimes" stemming from the rebellion, but no guards were ever charged, tried, or convicted. Twenty years later, in a civil suit filed by the prisoners, only Deputy Warden Karl Pfeil was found liable for any wrongdoing.

       

The Alibi: New York authorities claimed they were simply trying to retake control of Attica and rescue the guards being held. After retaking the prison, they claimed prisoners had slit the throats of hostages, even castrated one, and murdered others with zip guns. (This was exposed as a lie the very next day when the medical examiner announced his findings: all the deaths at Attica, prisoners and guards, were caused by gunshots. There were no mutilated genitals, no slit throats, no zip gun wounds. And only the state’s forces had guns.)

Overall, New York authorities and the media portrayed the prisoners as “rioters” bent on carrying out vengeance, while the state had tried to resolve the crisis with a reasonable offer and then simply tried to regain control of the prison and protect the guards who were being held by the prisoners. Governor Rockefeller told President Nixon the official story line, that his police had killed prisoners during the takeover, “though, only when they were in the process of murdering the guards, or when they were attacking our people as they came in to get the guards.” In other words, the state had totally made up these slanders, which the media dutifully reported.

The Actual Motive: Attica was part of the Black Liberation struggle and revolutionary upheaval of the 1960s. It was a declaration of the humanity of those this system treats as “beasts,” and a profound exposure of the barbarity of America’s prisons and machinery of violent repression. It highlighted the ongoing enslavement of Black people. And Attica became a clarion call to rise against imperialism and oppression that reverberated worldwide.

The rulers felt they could not tolerate this challenge to their authority and legitimacy by society’s most oppressed. They feared the impact the Attica uprising was having on the millions from many strata who were following it on television, and witnessing the prisoners’ deep humanity. So Rockefeller, backed by the Nixon administration, felt compelled to not only violently crush the Attica rebellion, but make an example out of it with a savage “shock and awe” massacre to terrorize, vilify, and isolate the prisoners, and to send an unmistakable message to the oppressed everywhere “never dare to do this again.”

The Criminals:

On September 13, 1971, New York State launched a military assault on the Attica prisoners.
On September 13, 1971, New York State launched a military assault on the Attica prisoners. Helicopters sprayed tear gas, sharpshooters fired into the yard, and state troopers blasting shotguns swarmed against the rebels. Twenty-nine unarmed prisoners and 10 prison guard hostages were murdered, and hundreds more prisoners were wounded or injured. Above, prisoners were forced to strip naked, crawl through mud and broken glass and run a gauntlet of baton wielding rows of cops. (AP Photo)

New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and the State of New York. An important new book by Professor Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, which draws from previously secret state documents, reveals that Rockefeller had secret meetings with his state troopers to plot the massacre and fabricate the alibi. And the coverup began before the massacre took place: many of the police and prison officers removed their ID badges; the serial numbers of their weapons were not recorded, and normal reports of ammunition discharged were deemed unnecessary.

Rockefeller phoned Nixon the day of the assault. He said it was a “beautiful operation” and a “superb job.” He confided to Nixon he thought as many as 200-300 prisoners could be killed, but he ordered the operation anyway. The prisoners’ demand for amnesty was totally unacceptable, they both agreed; he and Nixon feared granting it would ignite other rebellions.

Blood in the Water also exposes Rockefeller’s and the state’s cover-up of the criminal massacre at Attica. Long-hidden documents showed that state investigators knew law enforcement had committed murder at Attica, but refused to indict a “long list” of police who had killed or wounded prisoners, including one who fired at Kenneth Malloy so many times at such close range that “his eye sockets were shredded by shards of his own bones.”

President Richard Nixon. The Nixon White House and the FBI closely tracked the Attica uprising, which Nixon saw as “a black thing.” After the state retook control of the prison, Nixon said of Rockefeller, “He’s got a hell of a lot of guts... We have got to be tough on this.” And Nixon told Rockefeller he had his full backing.

Scores of prison officials, police, sheriffs, state troopers, and park police who carried out the murder, brutality, and torture. One, Deputy Warden Pfeil, yelled, “Kill the Jew bastard,” as he watched jailhouse lawyer Jerry Rosenberg being beaten, and then hit Rosenberg across his head with a chain himself. State troopers and police outside Attica could be heard gleefully yelling “white power,” as they reloaded to continue the massacre.

In Their Own Words:

On the day of the massacre, Nixon talked to Rockefeller by telephone and told him:

I know you’ve had a hard day, but I want you to know that I just back you to the hilt...the courage you showed and the judgment in not granting amnesty, it was right, and I don’t care what the hell the papers or anybody else says. I don’t care what they say. I think that you had to do it that way, because if you would have granted amnesty in this case, it would have meant that you would have had prisons in an uproar all over this country...you did the right thing. It’s a tragedy that these poor fellows were shot, but I just want you to know that’s my view, and I’ve told the troops around here they’re to back that right to the hilt.

 

Sources

40th Anniversary of Attica Prison Rebellion: ‘We are not beasts and we do not intend to be beaten or driven as such’,” revcom.us, September 11, 2011

ATTICA!” revcom.us, November 15, 2009

Attica Brother Akil Al-Jundi,” revcom.us, August 21, 2011

William Kunstler, My Life as a Radical Lawyer, chapter 12 (Carol Publishing Group, 1994)

POV YouTube clip from Disturbing the Universe about the life of William Kunstler

Malcolm Bell, Turkey Shoot: Tracking the Attica Cover-Up (Grove/Atlantic, 1985)

Jennifer Schuessler, “Prying Lose the Long-Kept Secrets of Attica,” New York Times, August 3, 2016

Heather Ann Thompson, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy (Penguin Random House, 2016)

Sam Roberts, “Rockefeller on the Attica Raid, from Boastful to Subdued,” New York Times, September 12, 2011

“40 Years After Attica Rebellion, New Tapes Reveal Nixon, Rockefeller Praised Deadly Crackdown, Democracy Now! September 16, 2011

Bill Berkowitz, "Cover-Up of Slaughter at Attica Prison Continues Decades Later," BuzzFlash at Truthout.org, September 10, 2014

Bruce Jackson, “ATTICA: an anniversary of Death,” Artvoice, September 9, 1999

Top Government Official Admitted: The ‘War on Drugs’ IS a War on the People,” revcom.us, April 11, 2016

 

 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/716/check-it-out-betrayal-at-attica-en.html

Check It Out: Betrayal at Attica

From a reader

| revcom.us

 

HBO Max is now streaming a new documentary, Betrayal at Attica, which chronicles the vicious murders of the prisoners and hostages at the Attica Prison in New York on September 13, 1971. As we approach the 50th anniversary of this brutal attack on unarmed prisoners, this documentary as told by Liz Fink, the lead attorney in the federal civil rights case for the Attica Brothers, exposes the brutality of the massacre and the State of New York’s cover-up of the righteous Attica Rebellion. (See American Crime Case #81: September 13, 1971—Massacre of Heroic Attica Prisoners.) I don’t want to divulge the ending; however, it is worth noting that the documentary links this 1971 massacre and brutal treatment of the Black Attica prisoners with the recent police murders of Black people. The trailer of the documentary can be seen here.

 

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The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

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So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/716/iec-special-appeal-to-the-legal-community-en.html

From the International Emergency Campaign to Free Iran's Political Prisoners

SPECIAL APPEAL TO THE LEGAL COMMUNITY:
JOIN THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE TO FREE IRAN'S POLITICAL PRISONERS AND THEIR LAWYERS

| revcom.us

 

Editors' note: We received the following from the International Emergency Campaign to Free Iran's Political Prisoners.

Dear Signer of the Emergency Appeal:

You’re needed to help solve a problem and advance the struggle to Free Iran’s political prisoners.

Currently, out of over 2700+ total signers, there are just two practicing attorneys in the U.S., two in England, one in Hong Kong and one in Paris who have signed the Appeal as attorneys. This is not commensurate with the dire situation facing Iran’s political prisoners, including the recent and escalating attacks on defense lawyers, which directly affects them and their clients’ ability to get any semblance of justice.

So help broaden this fight by circulating this letter to any attorneys, legal associations or human rights groups you know. This would be a real help in getting scores of them worldwide to demand freedom for Iran’s arrested attorneys and all its political prisoners. Contact us with any questions or suggestions, and feel free to personalize this message if need be.

In struggle and solidarity,

The International Emergency Campaign to Free Iran’s Political Prisoners

* * *

Political prisoner Raheleh Ahmadi, in response the August 14 arrests of several defense attorneys and activists as they were preparing a legal brief, issued a letter from Evin Prison that asks the Islamic Republic regime, “What are you looking for by arresting and increasing pressure on lawyers?” She then answers with “...to crush their hopes and aspirations.”

NO! This is unacceptable! Join with the Emergency Campaign to Free Iran’s political prisoners by demanding freedom for these imprisoned lawyers and signing and circulating the Appeal that was published as a full back page ad in The New York Review of Books. You’ll be joining with some of the most prominent voices of conscience of our time, including Noam Chomsky, Ariel Dorfman, Jody Williams, Gloria Steinem, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Gayatri C. Spivak, Judith Butler, Naomi Wallace and many more. And donate to publish it even more broadly.

At this moment, the political prisoner and Kurdish activist Heidar Ghorbani is facing imminent execution in Iran after being tried and sentenced to death without a lawyer and after being tortured.

Meanwhile, Iran’s escalating criminalization of defense attorneys is extremely ominous for the entire society and directly impacts the fate of all political prisoners—and whether they will have any rights that the Islamic regime is bound to respect.

The alarm needs to be sounded urgently to stand with Iran’s legal community. Below are some of the most egregious, but far from atypical, attacks on defense lawyers in Iran that demand immediate attention.

*Nasrin Sotoudeh is serving a 38 year and 148 lashes sentence. “In the courts and on the streets, Nasrin has long fought for the rights of women, children, LGBT prisoners, religious minorities, journalists and artists, and those facing the death penalty.” She had earlier spent three years in prison on a similar political conviction in 2010.

*Mustafa Nili has only been allowed a 10 second phone call since his arrest with several other lawyers and activists on August 14. He was a student activist arrested during the 2009 Green movement in Iran and imprisoned for over 3 years. He became a defense lawyer after his release, and is now the lawyer for many of Iran’s most persecuted political prisoners, including those from the Baluchi minority. He is also the lawyer for Nahid Taghavi, Mehran Raouf, Bahareh Soleimani, Somayeh Kargar and Nazanin Mohammadnejad, who were recently accused of belonging to communist and other banned organizations and sentenced unjustly. At the time of his arrest, Nili was preparing to file an appeal on their behalf.

*Arash Keykhosravi was arrested in August with Mustafa Nili and others. Less than a month before, he was arrested and beaten by Iran’s police along with other rights activists during a rally in support of the uprising in Khuzestan over lack of water and oppression of the minority Arab people. He, along with Nili and journalist Mehdi Mahmoudian, are still being held by the regime and denied phone calls.

On August 25 the regime carried out warrantless and illegal raid on Keykhorsravi’s father’s home as well as the homes of Nili and Reza Faghihi, another lawyer who was arrested on that day but since released. They are all falsely charged with the sham catch-all, but threatening charge, of “running an illegal organization.”

In July 2021 three more human rights lawyers were sentenced. Javad Alikordi, a defense attorney and law professor, began serving his two-year sentence for allegedly running a Telegram messaging app social media channel. Amirsalar Davoudi, another defense attorney, was also imprisoned for running a Telegram channel. He was re-issued a punishment of 111 lashes and a 30-year prison sentence that had been initially revoked, and must now serve 15 years of this sentence. And defense attorney Mohammad Najafi, imprisoned in 2018 for speaking publicly about the death of a street protester in police custody, must now serve 10 years in prison, according to Iranian human rights lawyer Saeid Dehghan.

Escalating attacks: Iran’s Judiciary now mandates that defendants in security cases choose a defense lawyer from a list approved by the regime. The Center for Human Rights in Iran also reports the Islamic Republic has transferred authority for issuing law licenses from Iran’s Bar Association (IBA) to the regime’s judiciary, which can now deny or revoke licenses, powers previously vested in the IBA.

All these actions are completely illegal, illegitimate, and directly contrary to principles considered fundamental to any just society ever since the Magna Carta. This includes the right to habeas corpus, the principle of innocent until proven guilty, the right to a fair and impartial trial, and the right to adequate counsel of one’s choice, among others.

Renowned author, playwright and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman powerfully captures the Emergency Appeal’s importance and impact when he wrote the following to the campaign:

If I have signed on to the Emergency Campaign to Free Political Prisoners in Iran, it is because I know that this initiative will effectively call attention to the situation of men and women in that country who, if enough pressure is brought to bear on its leaders, could tomorrow be liberated from terrible conditions and extraordinary injustice. And even if those leaders do not listen, I am convinced—from personal experience—that the prisoners themselves are given strength to survive and persevere, they are listening. They know others, faraway, care what happens to them, and we should not let them down.

 


At this moment, the political prisoner and Kurdish activist Heidar Ghorbani is facing imminent execution in Iran after being tried and sentenced to death without a lawyer and after being tortured.


L-R: Lawyers Arash Keykhosravi, Mostafa Nili and Mehdi Mahmoudian

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/716/cpimlm-statement-of-communist-party-of-iran-on-political-prisoners-en.html

Statement of the Communist Party of Iran (MLM) on Political Prisoners Nahid Taghavi, Mehran Raouf and...

| revcom.us

 

Editors' Note: We received this important statement from the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) regarding the situation of several political prisoners in Iran. We want this to be made known to our readers, and all those who are concerned about the situation of the political prisoners in Iran today. This translation is from revcom.us, and any unclarities or errors are our responsibility.

On Wednesday, August 4, 2021, Mr. Mostafa Nili tweeted that Nahid Taghavi and Mehran Raouf had been sentenced to ten years in prison for "participating in the management of an illegal group" and to eight months in prison for "propaganda activities against the regime." Somayeh Kargar and Bahareh Soleimani were sentenced to six years in prison on charges of "participating in the management of an illegal group."

The first hearing of the charges against these individuals was held on Wednesday, April 28, 2021 in Branch 26, presided over by Judge Iman Afshari. The second hearing was held on June 13 in this same branch. Prior to the trial, these political prisoners, particularly Nahid Taghavi and Mehran Raouf, were tortured through long solitary confinement. Along with the four, two other political prisoners were tried in the same branch in absentia (see below).

According to reports published on various news channels, including the HRANA News Agency, the "FreeNahid"campaign, and the Instagram of "Burn the Cage..." movement, Nahid Taghavi and Mehran Raouf, were each sentenced to 10 years and 8 months in prison on charges of "participating in the administration of the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) in order to disrupt security."

According to the same reports, Somayeh Kargar and Bahareh Soleimani were sentenced to "six years in prison for participating in the management of the illegal group Osyan, and eight months in prison for "propaganda activities against the regime."

Two more defendants in the case, Nafiseh Malekijoo and Mohammad Hajinia, have stated that they are currently living abroad. They were charged in absentia with "membership in the Communist Party of Iran (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist))” and "propaganda against the regime." Nafiseh was sentenced to 6 years and 9 months; Mohammad to 8 years and 8 months in prison.

As far as our Party is concerned, we declare that the organizational accusations against all the defendants in this case have no basis and are purely fabricated and it is clear that they have been arrested, tried and imprisoned for their beliefs. Their sham trial was held in a situation where Mr. Nili and other defense attorneys were denied access to documents relevant to the case, and barred from meeting with Nahid Taghavi and Mehran Raouf until the day before the trial.

The Islamic Republic, by kidnapping these loved ones and torturing them through long solitary confinement and then holding sham trials, is proving that it is a regime that lacks any credibility to hold a just and fair trial. The survival of the regime depends entirely on its police apparatus crackdown on its opponents. This court case, the charges, the verdicts—how the whole process was carried out—sharply express the fascistic and theocratic penal and judicial system of the Islamic Republic. It has been based on repression and execution of its opponents since the first day of the regime’s establishment.

There is a direct line connecting the killings of political prisoners in the 1980s with the massacre in the summer of 1988, to the killings of January 2017 and November 2019, through the repression of political prisoners in the current situation. And today, Ebrahim Raisi, who was a member of the "Death Commissions” responsible for the massacre of the political prisoners in 1988, has become the President of Iran!

In a sense, the history of the Islamic Republic is a history of repression and the killing of communists even as they attempt to erase the names, and the memory of the heroic communists from the minds, the streets and the hearts of the people. But we will never forget. We will never forget how many of the communists and revolutionary prisoners, throughout the last forty years, have given their lives but not their secrets—that is, they would rather give their lives than give information. And we have never forgotten them, that they are not alone, and that they have sown the seeds of consciousness and revolution everywhere.

We salute all political prisoners and praise their courageous presence in society. We commend them: we are proud of your liberating thoughts and your courage to express those thoughts, especially in conditions of captivity and torture. We will not forget that, right in the face of these reactionaries, you speak of liberation and of a fundamentally different society. You know you are not alone! We stand with you, shoulder to shoulder with thousands upon thousands of rebels and fighters who also want a better world.

Our Party defends these fighters and all their associates with all our might. We consider defending them to be the duty of anyone who wants to stand with the women of Revolution Street; the people of January 2017 and November 2019; the lawyers for justice; the masses and the intellectuals of oppressed nations; the protesting intellectuals; the mothers of Khavaran; exploited and oppressed workers; scientists and environmental activists; protesters of July and August of 2021; families and justice seeking people in the downing of the Ukrainian plane (flight 752); and thousands upon thousands of other protesters.

The repression by the government of the Islamic Republic continues. And our struggle continues.

The people need our imprisoned fighters with them in their struggle against the Republic of executions and Islamic lashes. Our Party demands the release of all political and ideological prisoners, all prisoners of conscience in Iran.  We support the movements of the people with all our might—against the Islamic Republic’s regime of repression, censorship and torture. We support movements against the regime’s executioners and against their public squares for stoning, against their inquisitors and their courts.

We strongly hope that the peoples’ protest movements will surround the prisons like roaring sea waves, and that there will be a great and universal outcry for the immediate release of all political prisoners that breaks through the prison walls and prison doors. This is an urgent and liberating need for the entire society.

The struggle for the release of the political prisoners is a step towards the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. By suppressing and imprisoning the fighters, the Islamic Republic not only seeks to crush the current struggles, but also to sow fear and despair for future struggles.

Let us say it boldly to the hopeless and desperate ones and to those spreading despair: at this moment and on this earth, there is something worth living for.  To the freedom fighters, let us fight for liberation!

Communist Party of Iran (MLM) August 17, 2021

Reports of court rulings related to these two people in online sources include HRANA and Telegram on August 10, 2021; Radio Zamaneh website on August 12, 2021; Instagram page "burn_the_cage"; twitter account and Instagram "Free Nahid."

 


Credit: Radio Zamaneh

 

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Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

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Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/714/revolution-books-september-1-en.html

Postponed to Friday, September 10, 7 pm: Program at Revolution Books NYC

VACCINES ARE A DECISIVE MEANS FOR DEALING WITH COVID—THEY ARE NOT A 'CONSPIRACY' OR A 'PLOT' BY THE GOVERNMENT AND BIG CORPORATIONS

The Importance of a Scientific Understanding and Approach

| revcom.us

 

*Proof of vaccination will be required to attend inside*

*Outdoor seating will be available (program will be shown on large outside screen)*

A Panel Discussion inspired by 3 articles by Bob Avakian*
architect of the New Communism and leader of the revolution to emancipate humanity

(articles available on www.revcom.us and in print at Revolution Books)

Presentations by:

REGISTER here for event, seating is limited.

Covid-19 is a massive global public health crisis. Some 4.5 million people worldwide have died from the virus. In the U.S., 600,000 have died from it --and the new Delta variant is driving a new wave of hospitalizations and death. The toll of suffering has been disproportionately higher in communities of color. Because of hoarding of vaccines by the rich countries, only some 2 percent of people in Africa have been vaccinated.

Safe, well-tested, and effective vaccines are available. But almost half of the U.S. population has NOT been vaccinated. Too many people are buying into anti-scientific conspiracy theories.

Extreme individualism—the concept that 'I have the right to do whatever I want, in line with my sense of my personal freedom'—is a tremendous problem in this society today, among all sections of people.

— Bob Avakian

The June 10th program will challenge people to stop thinking only of themselves ("Well, I haven't gotten COVID," or "I had COVID and got over it" or "I have antibodies and don't need the vaccine") ...and start thinking about humanity.

 


The June 10th program will address scientifically:

...why the vaccine is not a government plot to control or surveil people or a modern-day genocidal Tuskegee experiment

...why it IS a public health necessity

...Why me-first" individualism ("it should be my choice whether to get or not get the vaccine") is so wrong and so rampant

...what underlies the intense conflict at all levels of society, with some in power advocating for vaccination and the fascists violently opposing it.

The 3 articles from Bob Avakian inspiring this program are:

[T]he fascists are determined to sabotage and undermine the ability of Biden and the Democrats to govern effectively—this is more important to the fascists than dealing with the COVID pandemic and achieving some kind of relative 'stability' and 'normal functioning' of the economy and the society overall.

— Bob Avakian


We will address: How the revolution and a new liberatory socialist society would be able to address such a crisis in a profoundly different way, putting humanity first?

The way forward—the only way forward—out of this madness is revolution: a real revolution to overthrow this monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism, and bring something much better into being. It is this, ever more urgently needed, revolution that all those who hunger for a world without all the unnecessary suffering to which the masses of humanity are subjected under the domination of this system must work for tirelessly, on a consistently scientific basis—seizing on this rare situation where such a revolution becomes possible, even in a powerful country like this. 

— Bob Avakian

Come and get into it. The health of humanity hangs in the balance.

 

Suggested donation for events at Revolution Books $5-10
This program is sponsored by the Revolution Books Educational Fund, a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization.


 

*Bob Avakian is the architect of a whole new framework for human emancipation. He is the leader of the revolution. Read more.  [back]

 

Revolution Books / Libros Revolución
437 Malcolm X Blvd @132nd Street, New York (Take #2/3 to 135)
HOURS: Tues | Thurs | Fri | Sat | Sun: 2:00pm to 7:00pm
revolutionbooksnyc.org | 212-691-3345

From Bob Avakian:

VACCINES ARE A DECISIVE MEANS FOR DEALING WITH COVID—THEY ARE NOT A "CONSPIRACY" OR A "PLOT" BY THE GOVERNMENT AND BIG CORPORATIONS
Read more

On COVID, The Importance Of Getting People Vaccinated, And The Very Real Problem Regarding Rampant Individualism
Read more

Important Points of Theory and Method Regarding Freedom and Restrictions on Freedom
Read more


Download / print pamphlet of all three articles (PDF):
8.5x11 single pages
5.5x8.5 printer spread

 

Follow: @TheRevcoms
Read: www.revcom.us
Watch: youtube.com/TheRevComs

 

Together, WE passed $40,000 in revcom's Winter fundraising campaign to “Transform Revcom.us’ Web Technology and Presence”!

Reaching this goal is a real achievement and a victory for the people of the world, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated efforts of many people working creatively and collectively to meet this pressing need: those who donated whether large or small contributions, who fundraised, who spread the campaign, who sent statements, who raised comments, questions, criticisms or suggestions – and of course those who worked so hard on modernizing and upgrading our web technology and presence. It all made a difference!

The Ongoing Need for Sustainers

During this four month fund drive, Revcom.us continued to incur thousands of dollars of costs each month for our office, maintaining our existing site and other expenses. But thanks to our existing monthly sustainers we were able to meet these expenses and use all the funds raised in the drive to transform the website.

So we encourage all our donors and those who’ve not yet donated to become monthly sustainers at whatever level you can afford.

Remember, humanity’s fate truly hinges on millions taking up the revolutionary science, strategy, and new communism brought forward by Bob Avakian which they can find at revcom.us.

You’ve read this article and now you need to be part of making sure revcom.us is able to make an urgently needed leap and transformation.

 

Get a free email subscription to revcom.us:



 


 

Permalink: https://revcom.us/a/716/digging-into-learning-from-applying-declaration-and-call-en.html

Digging Into, Learning From, Applying the
Declaration and Call to Get Organized Now for a Real Revolution

From a member of the National Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour

| revcom.us

 

On the National Revolution Tour, we've begun to see—in this whole last week—in still initial, but real ways, what is the process described in the Declaration and Call to Get Organized Now For a Real Revolution.

 This is key to getting organized now for a real revolution in a rare moment when that could be possible... and when we need to urgently come from behind to change the fact that, as the Declaration says, “...not nearly enough people know about this revolution and are with it.”

We're still at the beginning of this process, with a lot more experimentation and learning we need to do—especially on going from an initial collective discussion to making concrete plans—but we want to share a few excerpts of field reports and reflections based on applying this from the Declaration:

Organizing people into this revolution means reaching out to all sorts of people—not just where there are protests and rebellions against oppression and injustice, but everywhere throughout society—spreading the word about revolution and getting people together (in real life and online) to grapple with why an actual revolution is necessary, what such a revolution involves, and what kind of society this is aiming for. This will enable people who are new to the revolution to themselves become organizers for this revolution and to recruit more and more people to do the same. On this basis, and through the growing ranks of the revolution acting together as an increasingly powerful force, it will be possible to attract and organize the necessary numbers, and build up the necessary strength, to be in the position to do what needs to be done.

An important thing that comes through in the initial experience is what happens when people are grappling together over these questions—on the basis of the Declaration, debating things out, and wrestling with reality and the burning questions of “why an actual revolution is necessary, what such a revolution involves, and what kind of society this is aiming for.”  Digging into these things together with others—in a basic and initial way—is the basis on which they can go organize others.  We need to exponentially build up the forces for revolution and this is the process through which that can happen.

At the same time, we are also learning that we still need to make real advances in our organizing —making concrete plans with people on the spot to carry forward these discussions, bringing others into the process.

***********

Reflections from a Member of the National Revolution Tour on the Declaration and Call to Get Organized Now for a Real Revolution—A Scientific, Scalable Process

I learned a lot in the different discussions we've been leading with groups of students of the Declaration and Call.  I like the spirit of experimentation and trying to make this accessible where people can feel like they can take this out to others.

From all this I’ve been getting a deeper appreciation for WHY we need to be organizing people in this way—speaking to blocs of people, and gathering groups of people together to “grapple with why an actual revolution is necessary, what such a revolution involves, and what kind of society this is aiming for.”  If we really are going to scale up and go beyond the ones and twos, walking through these questions and the Declaration with people together and especially people wrangling together with these questions, is essential.  What’s in this Declaration is both very simple... but also, very deep.  

One thing I've really learned in this last week is the importance of not skipping over Part 1—the necessity for revolution nothing less!  This is so key in the kinds of discussions we need to be opening up now with people where they need to engage what we mean by real revolution, and WHY this is the ONLY way to deal with all the horrors.  Leading this process is also part of ourselves deepening our understanding in a living scientific way—it enables us to break down what’s in there.  There's a lot to learn from BA on how he is able to break these things down and make them accessible because he has such a deep understanding of complex reality that is hidden from people.  Through this process, I see a real basis to unleash masses of people... to break out of the ones and twos with something like this model.  I’m not saying we got it all figured out but I do think it’s in the right direction, and it definitely is also pushing us to get to a higher understanding of what is in the Declaration.

Someone made the point recently: people learn science by doing science, especially in this kind of collective process.

Second, I've learned how important it is to leave time to make plans together with people about how they're going to be part of “spreading the word about revolution and getting people together” to grapple with these questions—who can they go out to, can we set up a time and date for the discussion, do they want to lead it by wielding the Declaration or do they want a revcom to lead it and they can learn for the next time.  Putting that basic need to people opens up even more discussion—with a necessary process of people struggling with each other.  In all the discussions, people raised “I know a lot people, but they're not into this...” or “I know people who care but they're not thinking like this.”  So this made people walk through—in their own thinking—a central contradiction we face in making revolution, spoken to in the Declaration:

“Many of the people who can be won to this revolution are not 'into this' now and are not acting in accordance with the methods, principles, and goals of this revolution.”  The Declaration goes on though to speak to the fact that, “This revolution is in the interests of all people who catch hell under this system and all those who hunger for or dream about a world where an end to exploitation, poverty, inequality, injustice and oppression is not a bitter joke but a liberating reality.” 

So how do we deal with that contradiction?  “...in working to change the world in this way, people can change themselves—they can be united with in refusing to put up with injustice that no one should accept, and struggled with to see that revolution is the way to put an end to all this—that revolution is what we should live for and fight for.”  Through unity and struggle.  And people who want to see this revolution can become organizers for this revolution through struggling with others and grappling together with others. 

Opening up this question and making concrete plans on the spot, we can equip people with what the actual process needs to be and the necessary role for struggle.  We learned a lot about wielding the Declaration which enables them to go wage this struggle with many others.  There's also a simple accessible tool in BA's article, This Is A Rare Time When Revolution Becomes Possible—Why That Is So, And How To Seize On This Rare Opportunity, where he walks through how people need to break with thinking and acting on the terms of this system. 

***********

An Introductory Zoom with Students—Grappling Together with What Is Revolution?

We had an introductory zoom session with four students on the Declaration and Call.  We wanted to focus up the discussion on Part 1 of the Declaration and concretely make plans off of it —continuing to get together to get into the discussion, and brainstorming ideas for what to do in response to the Texas abortion ban. 

We read Part 1 out loud and then the students grappled with the content of it together.  One student asked if revolution would require violence, and another student responded that “a revolution doesn't necessarily mean violence, we can get rid of this system without violence, this system only survives if people buy into their system, we could boycott every company that is in Texas right now, we can refuse to pay taxes, if only 30 percent of Americans did this, their money would be gone.”  The first student who asked the question responded, “Interesting idea, but it's not just a few companies not paying their workers properly.  If that's the case how do we boycott every single company?  For example, I need to buy groceries, I need to buy things at Target, everything is attached to a capitalist society I can’t just stop buying things we need.  I’m also in need of medication?  So how do we deal with that?”

She got into this more deeply wrestling with how scary it is to talk about going up against the violent forces of this system, confronting how they violently enforce their rule all over the world... but then she was really walking it through, “look at the whole history of this country where people marched, have fought back... whatever happens, the rulers go after people.  We can’t even peacefully protest without them bringing down more violence on people.” 

A student who'd been listening up to that point said that “physical violence isn't the only form of violence perpetrated by this system.”  She talked about how what's happening right now in Texas with the abortion ban is a form of violence, and overall that “capitalism is formed to benefit just a small number of people and it won't be fixed by just adding tiny reforms to it.”  She argued that “we've seen how long it’s taken to just get these small reforms, and we have no time for all this, the planet is being destroyed.”

The other student who'd been listening went back to the first question of what we mean by revolution and asked, “do we mean different forms of protest?”

Here, we re-read what it says in the Declaration about what a revolution is.  We stepped back to talk again about what this system is, why you can’t reform it or just boycott to deal with the problems. 

We then talked more about the abortion ban in Texas, what is happening and why.  Here too there was struggle and discussion among the students themselves about these questions that changed how they were wrestling with what it would mean to act commensurate with this situation, and organize for revolution.  We didn't exhaust all this, and here too, needed to get more concrete—going from ideas and proposals to real plans—but there was rich discussion.

***********

A Group Watch of The RNLRevolution, Nothing Less!—Show: Who's Going to Have the Future?

Four students joined members of the National Revolution Tour to watch The RNL Show episode 68 together. They had all met the revolution the day before and joined a group discussion on the spot – 20+ students reading and discussing the Declaration and Call to Get Organized Now For a Real Revolution.

After watching the episode, three of the students stayed on to discuss the show. They talked about what struck them from the show and then there was discussion about what we face and what to do about it.

The first to speak said what struck her about the show is that all the opinions were backed with up with proof. And she said that what’s happening in Afghanistan is heart-breaking and she wants to see a more peaceful world. Another student said every segment was heavy and scary. She gave as an example what was said about a 17-year-old girl in Texas not being able to get an abortion. The third student commented on the visual picture that was painted of women rushing to clinics ahead of the Texas law going into effect.

Then they wrestled some with what we now confront and what to do about it. One woman talked about how frightening the forces are that are doing things like this Texas law. She said Trump gave a military command to a white nationalist group when he told the Proud Boys to stand by, they have the police, they are in the military, they have networks of churches. She said: “I’m a 19-year-old college student and it doesn’t feel like there’s much I can do.”

In response, one of the other students said that she was feeling small, that voting is all you can do, but now that she’s met the Revolution Club, she can put her thoughts into actions. The third student agreed, saying people adapt to things that are no good, but felt with the Revolution Club our voices can be heard.

One of the revcoms leading the call put things back to the students in a very lofty but also sharp and down-on-the-ground way. She said the potential exists to transform the people for revolution. She went on to say that revolution will require sacrifice, and yes, the fascists are scary. But what’s scarier than these people getting the future? She argued that struggle with people is needed to break from thinking about themselves and thinking as Americans, but instead thinking of the people of the world—humanity and the planet is our responsibility. And she said there can be a positive resolution of this, quoting from Bob Avakian about “what if the world doesn’t have to be this way,” and posed that things are going to change whether we’re comfortable with it or not, which way it goes has to do with what we do now to get organized for revolution.

Before the call ended, plans were made for getting back together and bringing people together on campus to get further into the Declaration and Call.

***********

Revolution Club Meeting—Why Revolution Is Necessary... and the Need to Struggle with Others

We had our monthly Revolution Club mass meeting where we gave an overview of the Declaration, but really honed in on Part 1—the necessity for this revolution, leaving time to talk about getting organized.  We're coming to appreciate ourselves how fundamental that question is especially in this situation.  Spontaneously, a lot of people – including too often us – want to step over that question because “yeah, we all know you need a revolution.”  But then you'd be surprised to find out how differently people do and don't understand the basics of why, as the Declaration starts, “Let’s get down to basics: We need a revolution—nothing less!

We laid out briefly what's in the Declaration and then explained that we were going to focus on the first part, and read that part of the Declaration out loud.  The first question that came up was, “ok what's the plan?”  We mainly said we'd come back to this, but that you do first have to answer, “A plan for what?”  What is it we're trying to do and why?

We went back to the first paragraph, and walked through again what it says in the Declaration and asked people to speak to this.  One person spoke up about being a vet and said they agreed with what the Declaration says about the military.  They said, “there were untold atrocities carried out in the name of 'democracy,' if people see the images, they wouldn’t be so proud.” A young person who was there said he agreed with this and talked about how a friend of his was in Afghanistan and talked about how he sometimes had to stop other soldiers from raping and killing civilians.  This was important to get out on the table.  We brought it back to what is this system of capitalism, why we say these military are carrying all this out in the service of the biggest oppressors in the world, the rulers of this country. 

We then moved the discussion to speak more directly to “what's the plan,” and read Part 4 of the Declaration.  We opened the question of who are groups of people we can take this to—to bring people together to themselves grapple with these questions.  Doing this actually opened up an important discussion about how to deal with the problem that, as it says in the Declaration, “Many of the people who can be won to this revolution are not 'into this' now and are not acting in accordance with the methods, principles, and goals of this revolution.”

One guy talked about how there are very few people he can talk about these things with, and sometimes people will walk out of a room if he starts to raise things that make people question.  The anti-American vet said that people are more concerned with themselves and things they are dealing with.  They also raised the problem of fear, that people get worried if they step into this now, how might that impact their ability to get a job or the state might come after you.  Another woman said she has been agonizing about all of what is happening in the world, but how do we take this to others who want to care but have allowed themselves to become dead inside.

This was important for people to put on the table—and grapple with together. 

We talked about the importance of struggling with people about all this... there are a lot of people who are described by that opening to the Declaration, but who are going along with things in the way people were describing.  I read from BA's article, Rare Time, where he wages deep struggle with people:

Instead of “staying in your lane,” and “going for self,” while this system is moving to even more decisively crush any hope for a world worth living in, people need to be looking at the bigger picture, focusing on the greater interests of humanity and the possibility for a far better world—and acting to make this a reality.

Instead of finding excuses to go along with the way things have been, standing apart from (or even bad-mouthing) the revolution, people need to get with this revolution, and not throw away the rare opportunity to be part of bringing something much better into being.

I talked about the need for them to use these points when people raise these things—they need to challenge others with the need for revolution and the fact that this is a rare time when revolution becomes possible.  As BA says: “All this is reality, and no one can escape this reality, either we radically change it, in a positive way, or everything will be changed in a very negative way.” 

Someone else with the Revolution Tour also spoke about the process we're in right now, the need to build up thousands right now, organized for revolution, how that can put us in a different situation in this rare time to bring forward the millions needed to make that revolution.  This Declaration, and the process it lays out, is the essential tool we have to understand and act in this situation, to “get organized now for a real revolution.”  One person there wants to run with the revcom recruiters on a campus, and has some ideas about people they might be able to pull together and a few others there want to get into this more deeply, with an upcoming zoom scheduled to walk through the Declaration together with others systematically.

***********

Discussing Why We Need Revolution, and Why We Need Leadership at a State College

We had a small team out at a state college where they were having a “welcome week” with different student organizations.  We were at first wrestling with how to create more of a scene but before we could do that, students started coming up to gather around our table and get into discussion. 

There was a small group of students at the table ranging from three to four people at any given time, some would cycle out while others stayed and then others joined in.  There was a good dynamic of people who were more radical and serious, those who care about the world but who'd never thought about revolution, and those more ready to poke holes in revolution all debating with each other—based on the Declaration.

The person leading the discussion used the board we have that lays out the “four basic truths” laid out in the Declaration and Call to Get Organized Now For a Real Revolution and repeatedly brought things back to what's in the Declaration.  One student also played a good role throughout, struggling with others on a range of questions including why we need leadership (she said her dad was part of Occupy* and his big criticism was that there was no centralized leadership) and why we need to go straight up with revolution (here she argued that people need to know we're recruiting for revolution because we want those who are ready now). Through discussion there was someone who was more anti-communist who was arguing that maybe revolution is too extreme, which other students had to respond to.  One student was torn about this, raising concerns about what's involved in a real revolution and whether that's really necessary.  The first student answered back on the violent nature of this system and the need to figure out how to get rid of that

There was also controversy about leadership and about BA in particular, one student was a more cynical movement type, others had never heard of BA and were kind of hesitant because of that... we got into Part 3 of the Declaration on who BA is and why, if you're serious about real revolution, you need to be serious about the kind of leadership needed for this.  The student whose dad had been part of occupy made the argument about why fundamental, radical change requires leadership.  It was also important to speak straight-up to the controversy that surrounds BA and why we're unapologetic about him being “an old white guy” because of the revolutionary leadership he's providing... because as the Declaration says, “Unlike so many who considered themselves revolutionaries at that time, BA has never given up, never departed from the road of revolution.” This also divided out people who were more serious about revolution and those who wanted to more “check it out.”  We made sure to distribute the print out, Bob Avakian Answers Accusations of “Cult”: IGNORANCE, AND COWARDICE, to everyone there and made concrete plans with people about starting a Revolution Club on campus and getting others together in a zoom discussion of the Declaration.


* Editors’ Footnote: "Occupy" was a movement in 2011 against injustice and inequality perpetrated by this system. It involved people occupying public spaces for days or weeks, starting with Wall Street in New York City and spreading to many other places. Ultimately it was violently crushed by the police. You can read Bob Avakian's analysis of this movement when it was still going on here. [back]


Chicago

 

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Episode 69 of The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show

Sept 11 & US's 20 year War OF Terror; Plus: Texas Abortion Ban—Women Are NOT Baby-Making Machines!

 

Andy Zee cuts thru the patriotic lies and bullshit: the U.S. imperialists has waged a war OF terror against the people of Afghanistan and the world, leaving millions dead and an entire region devastated. An excerpt from Bob Avakian drives home the monstrosity of the U.S.'s wars and crimes against humanity. Then, Sunsara Taylor takes aim at the Texas Abortion Ban and calls for the outrage of millions to be mobilized to STOP this assault on abortion rights and challenges everyone jolted by this to dig seriously into why a revolution is needed, what this revolution involves and what kind of society it is aiming for. Through a powerful segment from Bob Avakian exposing what drives the Christian fascist assault on women and excerpts from the Constitution For The New Socialist Republic In North America, we bring alive that: We DO NOT Have To Live This Way! Get organized with us for REVOLUTION, NOTHING LESS!

 

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