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This weekend and in the coming week, the revolution will be crackling on the airwaves. The Smiley & West radio show on PRI (Public Radio International) will be airing an interview that Cornel West recently conducted with Bob Avakian. And an online podcast is now available.
This interview is sharp and wide-ranging, challenging and inspiring. Cornel West, a prominent public intellectual, engages with Bob Avakian, the leader of the revolution in this country. The importance of this exchange getting out broadly into society should not be underestimated–and in fact, the reach and impact of this interview must be maximized in a thousand ways.
Right away:
*People should get the word out to contacts, friends, co-workers, and e-lists.
*People should be posting links to the interview on blogs, FaceBook pages, and use Twitter and other social media to extend the reach and impact of this interview.
*People can organize listening sessions of the on line podcast of the interview when it is aired in local areas. A version is also being aired on hundreds of stations across the country. (Get Station schedules here.) Get together in neighborhoods, in dorms, elsewhere.
THERE IS NO "PERMANENT NECESSITY" FOR THINGS TO BE THIS WAY A RADICALLY DIFFERENT AND BETTER WORLD CAN BE BROUGHT INTO BEING THROUGH REVOLUTION
*During this "election season," the title of this article keeps coming to mind.
by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
Reposted from Revolution #194, March 7, 2010
Editors' Note: The following are points made by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, in a recent exchange with other comrades. This has been edited for publication here.
One of the more important statements in the Manifesto from our Party (Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage) is the quote from Marx: "Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions breaks down before their collapse in practice." This is not just a matter of abstract theory—it has a broader effect. That belief weighs heavily on people who don't like the way things are—they are weighed down by a belief in the "permanent necessity of existing conditions." Over and over we are confronted by the fact that people can't see beyond the way things are now.
This has to do with the importance of constantly wrangling with what a revolutionary situation would look like and how a revolution could actually be made. There is a point in "Out Into the World—As A Vanguard of the Future" on grappling with what a revolutionary situation would look like.1 We need to give people a really living sense of what we mean by "hastening while awaiting" the emergence of a revolutionary situation. And this is linked to the point that what we're doing is building a movement for revolution and letting people know what we think that revolution would look like.
This question of belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions—and the inability to see beyond those conditions—came up with World Can't Wait when people would ask: "What good would it do to drive out the Bush Regime?" Well, think of the pyramid dynamic2 in that light: what would the Democrats have had to do if there were a million people demanding "Drive out the Bush Regime"? If there were millions even today insisting in the streets that the Democrats not "bow down" to what is represented by the Republicans, even that would change the dynamic; the Democrats would have to make tactical adjustments to deal with this, and the adjustments would create more necessity and more freedom for the revolutionaries to deal with. We have to break people out of the belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions.
This has to do with the idea of putting out a constitution for the future socialist state.3 It has to do with the Raymond Lotta speech.4 We are precisely taking on, in many different dimensions, this belief in the permanent necessity of the existing conditions. This also happens with initiatives among the proletariat and other basic people that project an alternate authority while challenging illegitimate and abusive actions of the current authority. And so is what we're doing with the woman question, and morality and culture—because what we're doing with popularizing and actually creating a movement where people live our morality is nothing less than projecting an alternate authority in the realm of ideology. All of these initiatives are saying that the world does not have to be this way; they are all different avenues of bringing people to grapple with the reality that the world really does NOT have to be this way.
We ARE Building a Movement for Revolution
A big part of transforming the people is, yes, a different consciousness and morality, but also people seeing the breakdown in their own understanding of the "permanent necessity of existing conditions" and the possibility of a whole different thing. This is related again to how we talk to people: we ARE BUILDING a movement for revolution—not asking them: "Would it be a good idea to have a revolution?"—after which they give all the reasons why it wouldn't, or why we can't, and that sets the tone and conditions for what follows. No, we don't ignore those questions—we talk with people about them, but by saying, "okay, those are points and we have thought about them and have answers we can get into—but we ARE BUILDING a movement for revolution and this is what that revolution will look like, and this is how everything we are doing is contributing to this revolution."
That Marx statement is very profound—and not just for the intellectuals. Just because "all theoretical belief" is used, we could make the mistake of thinking it only applies to people who grapple with high levels of theory. But in today's world, this belief (that the world cannot be fundamentally changed) has "filtered down" and is one of the main things that weighs on people. So this is a thread that has to come through much more in terms of this campaign that we're waging this year to really change the whole trajectory of things, now, very radically, focused on the message and call issued by our Party, "The Revolution We Need...The Leadership We Have."5 It is nowhere near the case that the basic spirit, substance and sense of what Marx is getting at there guides what we're doing now. And this is one of the biggest weights on people. There are ways in practice as well as theory that we have to begin to break down the belief in this "permanent necessity," as well as battling over whose morality is attracting people.
This has everything to do with the "hastening while awaiting" point. If you conceive of revolution as someday the world is somehow going to be radically different and at that point we will do something to radically change it...no, that won't happen—but that's not what we're doing. We have to elevate our sights and lead consistently with the understanding that the world does NOT have to be this way, and we ARE building a movement for revolution. This is not put forward, at least not in any consistent and compelling way, to the advanced around us at this point—whose number is still too small—this is not what's coming through to them. The whole thing about "revolution is real"—revolution made palpable—this is bound up with everything I'm talking about here. Actually building a movement for revolution and bringing that to the fore.
What follows that quote from Marx is that he brought to light not only the inner connections of capitalism itself, but its inner connection with other systems and showed on that basis that there was no necessity for capitalism or any other systems of exploitation. He showed that this is an historically evolved system. Marx made the point that bourgeois theorists will talk about all kinds of changes in capitalist relations, but always with the assumption that those relations are the highest and final end point of human development. But it's not the only way, especially in today's world, to do things—there's a much better way. This is the point that's made in the "Revolution" speech on the DVD, about how we can do all this complicated production without the imperialists, and do it better.6
But everything you say gets filtered through the existing production relations and superstructure that arises on this economic base. Look at the experience of the person who wrote the newspaper on the "Imagine" section of the talk on revolution: because they didn't first see it in the context of the whole speech, they understood it as just another "politician's promise." Then they saw the whole speech all the way through, and it clicked in a whole different way with them.7
All this has everything to do with whether we're building a movement for revolution and a radically different society, or whether we're just puttering around. We're not going to get there if this orientation doesn't infuse and inform everything we're doing. Then you get the phenomenon where people newly coming into this run into opposition and fall away, and while there are problems with our comrades taking an "all-or-nothing" approach with such people, this point I'm making here is even more essential.8 In fact the actual breakdown of the existing system is impossible in practice if it has not been done first in theory, that is to say, in the understanding of many people. This has to much more consistently come through, in everything we do—not just in speeches or articles, but in the whole ensemble of the work we do, this is what we should bring forward to people: There IS NO permanent necessity for the existing conditions.
There will never be an attempt at revolution, a real attempt, if you are not constantly grappling with what that might look like when, with the necessary qualitative changes and leaps in the objective situation, what is talked about in "On the Possibility"9 would be real. You cannot transform things through this capitalist economic base in a progressive way; if you want to "get beyond General Motors" you will have to do away with the existing state power. I'm not saying we should give a speech to this effect all the time, but this should infuse and guide what we're doing, and what we bring to people.
Then, when you do have a significant core that no longer believes in the permanent necessity of these conditions, they can do much better in going back and forth with broader masses. They can make clear to people who do come forward that, yes, you will get a lot of opposition out there, but that's just because there's a superstructure (there is a whole apparatus for "molding public opinion" and shaping "popular culture") which influences people to think that there's no other way to live than this—and in actual fact that's just not the case.
This is what it means to build a movement FOR REVOLUTION. Yes, fight the power, but this is the "for revolution" part.10 We should be going to people like I said: "We are building this movement for revolution and you should be part of this, but we're not having a poll as to whether people think it's possible...we have plenty to say about that...but we are in the meantime building this."
Emancipators of Humanity
What is the actual new synthesis?11 The heart of it is solid core and elasticity. At a talk I gave, years ago now, someone asked: "How would you do better than the Soviet Union or China under Mao?" One of the things I said to him is: "I don't believe in tailing people because they're oppressed—we need emancipators of humanity." When you are in a qualitatively different situation than what we have now—when the present system has been swept aside and the new, socialist system has been brought into being—there would have to be an army, as the backbone of an actual state, that enforces the new system, and that army would be made up of very basic people in large part. But we have to train them to understand that, as part of that, they are going to have to be out there protecting the rights of people who oppose this new system, and they are going to have to defend the right of these people to raise this opposition, while at the same time they would also have to stop people who really are making attempts to smash the state power we have. I said that this will be a struggle with masses, but we have to bring forward on every level people who have this kind of understanding of what we're doing. The Constitution of the new, socialist system is going to enumerate the rights of people, and this state apparatus is going to protect people's rights who don't agree, so long as they don't actively and concretely organize to overthrow that state apparatus. That is where the Lenin point comes in: As long as there are classes, one class is going to dictate, and "better me than you"—that is, better the dictatorship of the proletariat than the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie (capitalist class).
But what is that dictatorship of the proletariat? BOTH aspects of this are important—solid core and elasticity. There would not be a General Motors in socialist society, and there would also not be an FBI or an LAPD. Those kinds of institutions would be abolished and—unless they agreed to abolish themselves voluntarily—they would have to be forcefully abolished under a future dictatorship of the proletariat. Maybe they would be given 24 hours to disband!...but disbanded they would have to be. There would be revolutionary institutions in place of those old, oppressive and reactionary institutions...and, yes, that is what we're building for—aiming for the time when there is a qualitative change in the objective situation, when a revolutionary situation and a revolutionary people in the millions and millions have been brought into being. And when that revolution is made, when a new, revolutionary state power is brought into being, there would not just be a new army, but that new army would be guided by very different principles. There would be a culture in that army, but it definitely would not be (as in the hymn of the imperialist Marine Corps): "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli"—that's just not going to be what guides the new state apparatus! No more General Motors and no more Marines. The principles we're talking about here, and the reason we're going out to win people to be emancipators of humanity, is that they're going to be the actual backbone of the new state.
This has everything to do with the "permanent necessity" point. It has to do with "human nature," and the fact that, just as there is no "permanent necessity" for the existing conditions, there is also no "unchanging and unchangeable human nature."
People say: "You mean to tell me that these youth running around selling drugs and killing each other, and caught up in all kinds of other stuff, can be a backbone of this revolutionary state power in the future?" Yes—but not as they are now, and not without struggle. They weren't always selling drugs and killing each other, and the rest of it—and they don't have to be into all that in the future. Ask yourself: how does it happen that you go from beautiful children to supposedly "irredeemable monsters" in a few years? It's because of the system, and what it does to people—not because of "unchanging and unchangeable human nature."
We're talking about a whole different and better way that we can bring into being...if we win.
Yes, we are talking about conditions that don't yet exist now, and our enemies can intentionally take things out of context and misconstrue it. So we had better learn how to talk about this well, because people do need to grapple with the possibility of these future conditions as part of having this vision out there. Let's inspire people—let's have a lot of expressions of a radically different culture, and let's write some new hymns for people—ones with a radically different message than that of a marauding, murderous, invading and occupying imperialist force—"From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli"...NO. How are people being led and inspired to live and to die? We have to say to those who want a new world but who don't want—or don't understand the need for—the whole thing of fostering and protecting and listening to dissent: "If you want a new world where children are not killed by police and where all these other outrages don't happen, then we have to be down for this whole thing. We should not want these outrages to happen to any group of people. Our aim should be a radically different world, where all that has been buried in the past."
1. This refers to the following passage from "Out Into the World—As a Vanguard of the Future," a talk by Bob Avakian in 2008:
"Next, I want to turn to what could be called: more on—more work to be done on—a revolutionary situation (with its various components), particularly in a country like this. What I'm getting at here is the importance of continually wrangling with the questions: What would such a revolutionary situation actually look like? What could it emerge out of? What factors could come together to establish the necessary basis for such a revolutionary situation?
"It is very important to be continually returning to and wrangling with such questions. At the same time, it is also important to emphasize that this must not be approached in an idealist fashion—conjuring up a scenario and then seeking to impose this, in an apriorist manner, on reality. Rather, it is a matter and a need of constantly probing, digging beneath the surface to identify trends and forces, within a particular country and in the overall world situation, that could become part of, or contribute to, the 'mix' of a revolutionary situation; and it is important to do that in advance not only of the actual emergence of a revolutionary situation, but well before the specific features of that situation become immediately and obviously apparent. Well before that, and repeatedly, it is necessary to be grappling, in the realm of strategic conception once again, with both the objective and subjective aspects of such a revolutionary situation: with how objective factors could conceivably come together to provide the objective elements of a revolutionary situation and what position would the vanguard of the revolution have to be in, in terms of its influence as well as its organized ties with different sections of the masses, in order to seize on such a situation—and what the vanguard would have to do in such a situation to bring about its full ripening and to then lead people, in their millions, to wage the actual struggle for the seizure of power. This is another expression of theory, or strategic conception, 'running ahead' of practice. But, at the same time, it would be necessary and important to keep in mind and maintain the recognition of a decisive principle that Lenin stressed—that, in the event itself, life is much richer than its anticipation in conception and, in this sense, as Lenin emphasized, theory is gray while the tree of life is green—and accordingly, as real-life contradictions continue to unfold—including through the role of accident and contingency, in dialectical relation with necessity and causality—it is necessary to be continually returning to and grappling anew with the conception of what a revolutionary situation would look like and what demands its development would place on the subjective factor (the vanguard party).
"It is not idle speculation—nor, again, idealist apriorism—that is being called for, but a continual wrangling with what, after all, we are trying to get to, in terms of the first great leap, getting over the first great hump, and how that informs and influences what we are doing now, even while our work in this period is qualitatively different than the work revolutionaries would be doing once a revolutionary situation actually emerged. This is another way of saying: what is the living link here?—in this case particularly on the level of strategic conception and its relation to practice at any given time.
"And it can also be emphasized, and must be emphasized, that not to grapple with this, in the way I've been speaking of this here, is another form of tailing spontaneity and will lead in the direction of 'gradualism'—or, to put it simply, revisionism—and of accommodation and capitulation to the world the way it is, as it's dominated and ruled by imperialism and reactionary classes." [back]
2. For a discussion of the pyramid dynamic, see Bob Avakian's most recent talk, "Unresolved Contradictions, Driving Forces for Revolution" at revcom.us/avakian/driving—in particular, the section "The Continuing Relevance and Importance of the 'Pyramid Analysis'" under "I. Once More on the Coming Civil War…and Repolarization for Revolution." [back]
3. Bob Avakian has recently raised the idea, among Party leadership, of having some comrades in the Party write a constitution of a future socialist state, as a way to give substance and life to how the new synthesis would apply to actually governing a society that would be both a radically new system itself and at the same time a society in transition to communism. [back]
4. This refers to Raymond Lotta's speech "Everything You've Been Told About Communism Is Wrong—Capitalism Is a Failure, Revolution Is the Solution!" given on college campuses in 2009-2010. [back]
5. See Revolution, #170, July 19, 2009, for this message and call. That issue also contains an editorial laying out the campaign's aims:
"First, we intend to really put revolution out there in this society, so that millions of people here and around the world come to know about THIS revolution.
"Second, we intend to make Bob Avakian, the Chairman of our Party and leader of the revolution, a 'household word'—someone known throughout society, with growing numbers checking out, getting into and supporting his work, his thinking and his leadership.
"And third, as laid out in Chairman Avakian's recent talk Ruminations and Wranglings, we aim to draw forward a core of 'people who see it as their mission, and are guided by the Party's vision and line, to go out and actually fight for this line, win people to it, organize them into the revolutionary movement and struggle for them to become communists and then to join the Party once they've made that leap to being communists.'" [back]
6. This refers to a passage in the speech Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About, where Bob Avakian states: "Capitalism, especially now that it has reached the stage of imperialism, controls, dominates, manipulates and mangles the lives of people all over the world. Many times you hear these imperialists and their mouthpieces say things like this, 'well you say we're exploiting people. But without us there'd be no jobs.' They come out with this especially when it comes to light that they are paying people something like a few cents an hour in countries all over the Third World. No. The truth is, without these imperialists, there would still be people capable of working, people capable of planning and running an economy. There would still be natural resources and potential wealth for the people in those countries, when they take control over their societies and remake them in a radical way through revolution. But then, what there would be, is no capital, no capitalism, no imperialism, exploiting and robbing the people and plundering their countries. And the masses of people everywhere in the world would be much better off. You cannot make this system into something else than what it is. So long as it rules, so long as it is in effect, everything that it does, all the ways it makes people suffer all over the world, will continue and will only get worse. Because that's the only way this system can operate." [back]
7. The reference here is to a letter from a reader published in Revolution #190, "The Revolution Talk: 'A Precious, Rare, and Enormous Tool.'" [back]
8. The "all-or-nothing" approach being criticized here is one that demands a high level of activity and commitment from anyone who shows interest in revolution, communism and the Party, rather than finding the ways for people to check things out and participate at a level corresponding to their actual understanding of the world and their sense of how to change this at any given time, "giving them air to breathe" and room to learn through their own experience, while at the same time struggling with them over these questions—struggle which is carried out in a living, non-dogmatic way, encompassing both learning and leading. [back]
9. The reference here is to "On the Possibility of Revolution," which originally appeared in Revolution #102 and is included in the Revolution pamphlet Revolution and Communism: A Foundation and Strategic Orientation (May 1, 2008), pp. 80-89. [back]
10. The formulation "Fight the Power, and Transform the People, for Revolution" embodies a basic part of the Party's strategic approach for building a revolutionary movement. For a discussion of this formulation, see Bob Avakian's talk "Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity," in particular "Part 2: Everything We're Doing Is About Revolution." [back]
11. Substantive discussions of the new synthesis can be found in "Re-envisioning Revolution and Communism: WHAT IS BOB AVAKIAN'S NEW SYNTHESIS?" (a talk given in spring 2008 and available online at revcom.us) and in a section from Bob Avakian's talk "Making Revolution and Emancipating Humanity," which can be found in PDF format at revcom.us/i/188/188new_synthesis-en.pdf. Go to revcom.us for more works by Bob Avakian. [back]
Click on the small arrow mid photo on the right edge or left edge for more.
When UH students hit the campus on the first day of classes in August it was hard to miss quotes from BAsics posted on bulletin boards, doors, and walls. Centerfolds and back pages from Revolution were posted everywhere. One student said: “Whenever I spotted one of those [the centerfold] I would go over to read it. We need more of that!” Some said they especially liked the BAsics 3:22 centerfold (Issue 277).
During August more than 800 students also came to Revolution Books to purchase their texts. When they stepped into the store the first thing they saw was a big display about the BAsics Bus Tour, BAsics 3:22, and books exposing the oppression of women. At times the talk by Sunsara Taylor at the Revolution Books New York store was on the TV screen; at other times scenes from the BusTour. One of the store walls featured BAsics 3:22 Revolution newspaper centerfolds, along with hand-written messages “from the war zone.” Students were invited to add more. Some dropped coins into the “penny jar” with the challenge from Harlem to donate to the tour.
Several university students, who had come to the store during the week, attended a “speak-out” at the bookstore where women shared their personal war stories and dug more deeply into BAsics 3:22. While there was deep anger about the many outrages women face every day, getting into how that oppression is “bound up with the division of society into masters and slaves” and whether all-the-way revolution is possible was a whole new discussion and much more challenging.
Two things really hit us while focusing on BAsics 3:22. One is the deep anger women (and some men) feel about women’s oppression, but how suppressed they feel about expressing this rage. The second was the absence of any envisioning of a world free of this oppression. The challenge of unleashing debate and discussion that envisions a liberating future, free of the oppression of women, is enormous. This was brought home to us at August’s Revolution Fiction Book Club discussion on Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time when one woman, unfamiliar with the women’s movement of the 70’s, was stunned that “there were women who thought like this.”
BA Everywhere Fund Raising Action Report From September 22, 2012
Around noon Saturday, as one of the BA everywhere actions in the northern west coast, a couple of revolutionaries stopped by an outlying neighborhood where we're known. We took our bucket, BAsics palm cards, copies of the book BAsics, and went knocking on doors in apartment complexes. After a friendly greeting, we just said straight out: "We're not religion. We're not here about the elections. We're here about revolution!" and then handed them the BAsics card with the Bob Avakian quote "No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over, whose fate has been sealed, who have been condemned to an early death or a life of misery and brutality, who the system has destined for oppression and oblivion even before they are born. I say no more of that."
We let them check it while one of us read the quote (1:13) from the book BAsics. We'd give people some space to share their thoughts on these words, and then did some interchange on this big campaign to get the work of this revolutionary communist leader out into the public discourse, so people know there is actually a way out of this mess that is the world today. Then we'd ask "Want to put a donation to this campaign in our bucket?", and also, depending on what directions the discussion was going, asked "Do you know other people we can bring this to?" and "Do you want to come with us?".
The first complex we went to was largely Hispanic. Every person who opened their door donated! We also got out Spanish editions of Revolution newspaper, and handed people Lo BAsico (the Spanish edition of BAsics) to read the quote directly. The words got reactions, heads nodding and people saying things like "Yes, that's what it's like!" The next two complexes were a mix of immigrants such as Burmese and Somali, and also white, native American and African American nationalities. The reception was similar. Not all, but most people donated! And we made some new connections. There were some language barriers with new immigrants, but once we told people up front what we were about, they were usually very open.
Tho donations were mostly not large, but numerous. In a couple hours, we found $47 in the bucket! And a good part of this time of course was spent talking with people and making connections. A young man who'd heard us talking to folks on the walkway, came out and said "Oh yeah, this is the book I need!" and bought a copy on the spot. When we asked him "Do you know other people we can take this out to?" he said many people he knew were talking about real changes being badly needed in this world, and the conversation concluded with us agreeing we meet up in the nearby park the next Saturday for a barbecue or pot luck, and get a session going where people can really get into the things being talked about. And so that's what's happening NEXT Saturday!
Arizona's "show me your papers" law goes into effect today. The Charlotteobserver.com writes that "There, according to a recent report by the National Immigration Law Center, an immigrant advocacy group, law enforcement officers have created an “environment of racial profiling” that has encouraged private citizens to discriminate and abuse people they regard as foreign."
Why do people come here from all over the world? - Check out this clip from "Revolution: Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About, a film of a talk by Bob Avakian" given in 2003 in the U.S. Bob Avakian is the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. This talk, followed by questions and answers, is a wide-ranging revolutionary journey, covering many topics. It breaks down the very nature of the society we live in and how humanity has come to a time where a radically different society is possible. It is full of heart and soul, humor and seriousness; it will challenge you and set your heart and mind to flight. Watch the entire film online at http://revolutiontalk.net
Sign the Call: A Call To Stand Together To Oppose The Obama Administration’s Dangerous Assault On Fundamental Rights
From a Revolution newspaper reader in Harlem about why he signed the NDAA statement and why BA should be defended:
"They poison us with the TV and the media. They lie about everything. Every time I watch Bob Avakian on that DVD [Revolution--Why It's Necessary, Why It's Possible, What It's All About] I learn something new… He is giving you a way to go… an alley, a doorway. Everybody else is working through this fucked up system. I got so much I want to say."
A Call To Stand Together To Oppose The Obama Administration’s Dangerous Assault On Fundamental Rights
The administration of Barack Obama, which had promised to put an end to torture and other outrages committed by the Bush Administration, is in fact putting into place a dangerous system of repression and control. This is a serious assault on fundamental rights, and it must be answered not with silence and complicity but with heightened awareness and more determined opposition.
The record of the Obama Administration is a chilling one. President Obama has preserved Bush’s rendition program, which relies upon torture, and has extended the Patriot Act. His Administration has adopted a quasi-official assassination policy, complete with secret “kill lists” reviewed by the President, which Attorney General Holder has brazenly asserted meets Constitutional standards of due process. In the 2010 case of Holder v HLP [Humanitarian Law Project], the Obama administration successfully argued before the courts that the “crime” of “material support” to “terrorists” be broadened to include merely speaking with and advising (even on some legal matters) any group designated by the government as terrorist. The ruling has already been applied to pro-Palestinian activists and endangers many others, including prominent public intellectuals, as well as groups upholding or advocating fundamental social change.
The most recent expansion of dangerous and illegitimate government authority is the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This law grants to any U.S. president the power to detain any person, including U.S. citizens, indefinitely and without charge or trial, for the alleged crime of associating with a broad and vague category of people, which could include people who have nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks or with terrorism in general.
Do you have BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian? Post your review of the book online and send a copy of your review to us at [email protected]. Tell us what you thought about it. What's your favorite quote and why. Buy the book here.
A contingent of revolutionaries went to the DNC in Charlotte, North Carolina to put revolution and Bob Avakian on the map in the midst of a very politicized atmosphere. March on Wall Street South, a coalition of activist groups, organized a rally and march through downtown Charlotte on Sunday, September 2nd, a few days before the official start of the convention. Charlotte is the finance capital of the south with the international headquarters of Bank of America and the East Coast headquarters of Wells Fargo, two of the four largest banks in the country. According to march organizers, these banks have some of the highest foreclosure rates as well. Duke Energy, also headquartered in Charlotte, was another focus of the protest. Duke Energy is the largest utility company in the country, and one of the most damaging to the environment, with dozens of coal-fired power plants, most of which burn coal from the devastating method called mountaintop removal mining. Duke also has many nuclear power plants.
The march through downtown was very vibrant with lots of signs and banners. Chants rang out from different parts of the march that stretched for several city blocks. Downtown Charlotte looked like a police state. Police barricades lined both sides of the entire march route. There were more police than protesters. Police were on foot and on bicycles. The bicycle cops had their bikes lined up end-to-end, forming a second continuous barricade on both sides of the march, inside the metal barricades. Convention delegates and on-lookers were lined up watching the march go by from behind the barricades. One of the largest and most colorful contingents in the march was the immigrant’s. They wore butterfly wings with the words “Migration is a Human Right” written across the wings. The “Undocubus,” a bus that had traveled across the country for six weeks starting from Arizona, brought dozens of undocumented people to the DNC with “No Papers, No Fear” painted on the side of the bus. They were joined by many other immigrants from around the region and country. World Can’t Wait brought a model of a Drone that really stood out and got a lot of attention, and the Stop Patriarchy contingent had quite an impact, particularly with their stickers which a number of the spectators along the route were wearing, “Abortion on Demand and Without Apology” and “If you can’t imagine sex without porn...You’re fucked.”
The BA Everywhere contingent was small but noticeable. We all wore the t-shirt “I AM PART OF THE THOUSANDS WORKING ON THE REVOLUTION,” and we carried oversized enlargements of the front page of Revolution Newspaper “Obama Has No Future For The People...The Revolution Does,” the front cover of BAsics, the image of BA, and September’s quote from BAsics 1:3, “The essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy but capitalism-imperialism and political structures to enforce that capitalism-imperialism. What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism.” We were able to get out a thousand palm cards of BAsics 1:3 and promoting the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) to the people watching the march, reaching out to them over the police barricades.
On Monday, September 3rd, a music and street festival called Carolina Fest was held on closed-off downtown streets. A free annual festival, this year it was billed as part of the DNC festivities, and it attracted thousands of people to downtown, including delegates, Democratic Party activists, and a cross section of Charlotte area residents. And the Revolution was part of the festival too. We set up on the street with the large images that we had carried in the march the previous day, and we put a plastic milk crate upside down on the ground in front. One person got on the milk crate and did some loud agitation, while we got out thousands of the palm cards and sold copies of Revolution Newspaper, BAsics and the Constitution. The agitation started with “The Republicans are no damn good, but the Democrats are no damn good either. Humanity and the planet need Revolution!” and then ran down what the Obama administration has “accomplished” while in office: accelerated mass incarceration, police murder of the people, disregard for the environment, attacks on fundamental rights as well as abortion and birth control, deporter-in-chief of immigrants, expansion of the wars/drones, foreclosures and unemployment, etc. It definitely stirred things up! A lot of people turned their heads or stopped in their tracks to listen. Some people didn’t believe what we were saying but were willing to check out the facts in Revolution Newspaper. Others agreed with our exposure of Obama but were caught up in the “lesser of two evils” trap and focused on how horrible Romney would be. Some hardcore Obama supporters only wanted to talk about healthcare, or actually spoke favorably about what the U.S. is doing around the world. There were right-wingers appalled that we were promoting revolution and communism. And there were some people who were very surprised but refreshed to come across a group that was out there in the middle of the DNC exposing the Democrats and posing a radical alternative, who engaged around BA’s vision of communism, checked out BAsics and the Constitution, made small donations and took palm cards to distribute themselves. At one point, there was an intense exchange between two friends, two young Black women who had stopped to listen. One woman wouldn’t have any of it – didn’t want to hear anything against Obama, and was pulling on her friend to keep walking. The other woman started arguing and said that she had spent a year in the military in Iraq as a medic, and everything we were saying about the wars and the drones was true. She told her friend to go on without her, and yelled “don’t call me on my cellphone either!” This was no everyday scene. People stopped to take pictures. Reporters asked for interviews. We engaged with all viewpoints, sold a lot of newspapers as well as some BAsics and Constitutions.
Over the two days, we got interviewed by over 10 media outlets including the Charlotte Observer, Charlotte TV news, NY Times, London Times, Al Jazeera, Havana Times, Australian Financial Times, National Post from Toronto, and a Florida A&M student media project. A French reporter who came up after he saw the BA image poster said he knew about Bob Avakian because he had attended UC Berkeley.
Throughout the rest of the week, there was an un-permitted anti-war march, an Occupy encampment in a local park, and a civil disobedience action where several of the undocumented immigrants bravely got arrested in front of the arena where the convention was being held. Revolutionaries were invited to go to several college campuses in the area during the week, which was a great opportunity to get out hundreds more of the palm cards as well as newspapers, and deeply engage with students on these campuses.
The most striking observation throughout our time in Charlotte was how thick and pervasive ugly American chauvinism was. Not only was it being unleashed from Obama and the top representatives of the Democratic Party at the podium inside the convention, but it was also taken up unquestioningly by the ordinary person in the street, and the “America first” mentality even defined the framework of many of the oppositional groups protesting outside the convention, with concerns narrowly focused on how the issues affect Americans. The one palm card that we wish we had brought in addition to the other materials was the one with BAsics 5:7 and 5:8 – “American Lives Are Not More Important Than Other People’s Lives,” and “Internationalism – The Whole World Comes First.”
BA: A Contended Question at the DNC Protests
The short orientation piece in Revolution #278, “BA – A Contended Question,” was very helpful in preparing to take the BA Everywhere campaign into the mix at the DNC protests in Charlotte. A very noticeable development was that BA was much more known among a variety of people we encountered from a number of different cities – an indication that the BA Everywhere campaign is having an impact. And the range of viewpoints on BA that we encountered covered the gamut of those mentioned in the “Contended Question” piece – the two extremes and everything in between! Here are some examples:
A student from a college in North Carolina who had heard about BA on his campus and had watched some BA clips at revolutiontalk.net came up and said he had two questions: Why do we make such a big deal about BA, and why do we say he has developed Marxism further? He said he had also been checking out Worker’s World and was interested in what the differences were. This led to pointing out the Three Alternative Worlds essay in BAsics, and posing the contradictions in socialism that BA has wrestled with – how to hold onto power while making sure that power was worth holding onto. The student said he had never thought about that, and was going to check out the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) online to further the discussion.
A community organizer from a city in the northeast who was into hip hop culture said he had read BAsics and really disagreed with the quote “Let’s imagine if we had a whole different culture. Come on, enough of this ‘bitches and ho’s’…” saying that BA doesn’t understand hip hop and needs to make a distinction between hip hop and rap, which are two different cultures.
A “doofus” made a snide remark while walking by, saying he wasn’t interested because he wasn’t religious (meaning that he didn’t worship BA), to which one of the revolutionaries responded, “We’re not religious either, we’re scientific and if you are, you should check out BA too.”
An anarchist who was fresh from the protests at the RNC in Tampa took the palm cards and said, “Yeah, I’ve heard of Bob Avakian before.”
A reporter from France came up when he saw the large BA image poster and said he knew about Bob Avakian because he had attended UC Berkeley.
An Australian reporter took a photo of the BA image and bought a BA button after a wide-ranging discussion that included him describing a family member who had been involved in the debates between “Stalinists” and “Maoists” in Australia in the 1970’s.
An independent activist wanted to understand the difference between all the socialist and communist groups at the protest, which led to a conversation about BA’s theoretical contributions in developing a strategy for revolution and envisioning what a socialist society would look like that was truly on the road to communism, and he walked away with a copy of the Constitution.
Several people came up after seeing the BA image poster and asked, “Who is that guy?” That question always presents a great opening to introduce people to BA and his new vision of communism.
BA EVERYWHERE... IMAGINE THE DIFFERENCE IT COULD MAKE!
Reposting from Revolution #249, November 6, 2011
Reposting the editorial announcing this campaign. Check out this blog for the difference this campaign has made and going forward... IMAGINE THE DIFFERENCE IT COULD MAKE SOCIETY WIDE!
Announcing: A Mass Campaign to Raise Big Money to Get BA’s Vision and Works Into Every Corner of Society
“I hope he gets number one Amazon.com. We need to get this kind of word, this kind of conversation out—it needs to be disseminated, it needs to be in the mainstream more. We got to stop thinking that this kind of stuff just belongs at the very, very fringe of society...”—journalist and writer
“I wish I had a copy of BAsics in high school so that I could counter the bullshit being taught to me. I didn’t have that opportunity, but there are millions of students today who need to hear the voice of Bob Avakian so they can join the fight. BAsics presents an essential challenge to all that is oppressive and intolerant. It paints not only a picture of a new world, but it leaves room for innovation and growth, as a communist future will have, as Bob Avakian says, ‘a solid core with a lot of elasticity.’”—student from the Midwest
“I want to urge everybody out there to get their hands on this book and to help get it into the hands of others, not just prisoners, but into the hands of youth who are in danger of becoming prisoners themselves. ... Help them unlock their potential and give them a sense of purpose that doesn’t involve killing each other. Give them an alternative to the criminal lifestyle that doesn’t involve conforming to this horrid system. That is what they need, that is what they ache for. They want to rebel, they just have to be introduced to the correct way to do so. Put them on the path to becoming communists...”—a prisoner from California
These are things people have written us after reading BAsics, a book of quotations and short essays from Bob Avakian. They feel the need for more people to know about Bob Avakian—his vision and works. And so do we.
To do just that, we are launching today a major, multi-faceted fundraising campaign to project BA, his voice and his work way out into society—far beyond what it is today. A fundraising campaign that will raise the necessary major money to make this possible. A fundraising campaign that unleashes and develops imagination, defiance, and community in everything it does.
Imagine what we could change... and imagine how we could change it.
BAsics has had a real impact, with virtually no advertising and a shoe-leather sales force weighed down by day jobs. Now imagine BAsics with a serious advertising budget that could project with broadness and consistency, and with people freed up full time to get it out. And that’s just a beginning.
Artists have done amazing and inspiring things off this book, and other works by Avakian—and there are more exciting projects in the works. Now imagine if there were the money to fund these projects, the money to advertise them, the money to document and record them and then to publicize and distribute them on a level that begins to come close to their quality and potential reach. Imagine the people inspired... and imagine the new kinds of culture and cultural scenes that begin to emerge...
Prisoners—when and where they can get it—have taken this book up as a lifeline. An important, a precious, connection is growing and taking hold. But there is still not enough money to fill nearly every order that comes in from prisoners! Imagine if there were the money to not only fill those orders, but to spread the word through the 2.3 million prisoner population, and to hire a publicist to make known to the general public that there are people in these dungeons who are transforming themselves into emancipators of humanity.
Imagine buses with eye-catching decorations touring the nation, spreading revolution and BA’s voice to those hungry for it in outlying areas. People on a mission rolling through community centers, high schools, Ivy League and community colleges, from mountains to valleys, suburbs to rural areas. Showing the film of Bob Avakian’s talk Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About in classrooms and community centers. Getting Avakian’s memoir, and other key works, out all over the country. Reaching the youth, visiting the Occupy encampments that have sprung up all over, going to where there is outrageous oppression going down, taking a week in an inner city...and then another inner city... “The BA bus is coming to your town.”
Imagine Raymond Lotta, Carl Dix, Sunsara Taylor, and others with the funds to really tour the campuses, and communities, speaking powerfully to the need for revolution and a whole new world, popularizing the re-envisioned communism that BA has brought forward—radically challenging and changing the discourse—and, as a key part of that, promoting this fundraising campaign.
And imagine all that getting documented by filmmakers and film students, becoming the raw material for films and other forms that could spread it all even further. Imagine films and other works of high quality getting into the festivals and theaters and onto cable TV—this could really happen, there are the people and there is the potential... but there is not the money.
Imagine the mix of people from different walks of life coming TOGETHER to think about these things and wrangle deeply over them and relate them to their own experiences, in all different kinds of places and all different kinds of scenes—from campuses to basic neighborhoods, from the prisons to the Occupy camps, in all kinds of cultural scenes and concerts, and out into the suburbs. And imagine all this taking place in the midst of—and providing a framework and context for—all the efforts being launched to fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution, whether against mass incarceration or against pornography and patriarchy or other outrages and other sites of resistance that the movement for revolution will relate to. A whole ensemble of things—a whole creative, compelling mix of the different elements of this campaign, and a whole package of fighting for a different and far better world—will come through to people.
Part of this mix gets created in the very ways you raise funds. Fundraising—if it’s done right—does two things. It raises the money that is badly needed to make a huge difference; and it brings people together—in this case to engage with BA, and what he represents and the whole process of changing the world. And the fact is that there are many, many people who may not agree with everything BA stands for, or who feel that they themselves need to learn more about this, but who also understand very deeply how important it would be, what a difference it would make, to have this voice and vision being projected, and engaged and debated, by people in every part of society. So let’s imagine again, from a little different angle—let’s imagine a week, or maybe even a weekend, where a goal is set to raise so much money to achieve a certain, concrete goal—to fund and distribute, say, a short film of actors reading letters from prisoners responding to BAsics. Imagine all kinds of people, all over the country, doing different things to meet that goal. There are big parties, with food donated from local restaurants, in the projects and on campuses. Car washes, bake sales, and yard sales are organized and publicized. In another part of town, there’s a big cultural benefit. A fundraising salon is held among wealthier sections of people. Maybe someone with more resources publicly pledges to match whatever is raised by a big group of people in a housing project. Everyone participating in something that is bigger than their individual efforts while at the same time, their individual efforts have a decisive effect as part of that. Imagine the lively discussion over BA and what he’s all about going on in the midst of this. A social movement and community can be forged through this, a sense of momentum and excitement at accomplishing big breakthroughs and then seeing how the funds translate into an immediate impact in society... laying the groundwork for more fundraising breakthroughs.
This is a battle for funds with a very specific goal—to project this person’s voice and work into every corner of society. Because of BA and the work he has done over several decades, summing up the positive and negative experience of the communist revolution so far, and drawing from a broad range of human experience, there is a new synthesis of communism that has been brought forward—there really is a viable vision and strategy for a radically new, and much better, society and world, and there is the crucial leadership that is needed to carry forward the struggle toward that goal.
Projecting this voice... making this person a point of reference for all of society will make a HUGE difference! So let’s imagine one last time—at least for now. Imagine the difference it could make to the whole social atmosphere and culture of this whole country if thousands, hundreds of thousands, and eventually millions more were actively being made aware of the works and vision for a whole new society and world brought forward by BA. Some people would passionately agree, some people would passionately disagree, some people would for now simply feel the need to get better informed in order to understand it better. But people throughout society would be debating and wrangling over truly “big” questions about the nature of the present system (capitalism-imperialism), a concrete and worked out vision of an alternative way of organizing society which really would benefit the vast majority of people (as put forward in the recently published Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal), a document that embodies the new synthesis of revolution and communism that BA has brought forward).
Imagine if these were the kinds of things that served as the framework that people could debate and bounce off of as they developed their thinking and worked out points of agreement and disagreement. Wouldn’t that be so much better than what too often characterizes things today—with many people still in denial of reality and either avoiding altogether the “big questions” about whether and how to better organize society, or still clinging to the hope that this horrendous system could somehow be fixed if we could just find some better person to elect to high office. And for those who are lifting their heads and questioning and critiquing the direction of things more often these days, and are newly engaging in much-needed active resistance: What, here again, could be better than being offered a fully developed, coherent framework for what to do to remake society, a framework which includes many new and provocative insights and a very different method and approach and which has been developed and further fleshed out and sharpened up over the past few decades by BA. Imagine what a difference it could make if hundreds of thousands and then millions were actively discussing and debating the pros and cons of what he is proposing.
THIS—effecting a radical and fundamental change in the social and political “atmosphere” of this whole country by projecting the whole BA vision and framework into all corners of society where it does not yet exist, or is still too little known, and getting all sorts of people to engage and wrestle with it—is what this massive fundraising campaign is all about. You can love and agree with most of what BA has to say, or you can disagree with a lot of it, or you can just feel like you don’t know enough yet to be sure one way or another, even as you find yourself drawn in and attracted by different elements... but if you are a decent, thinking person, a person with a conscience, someone who just can’t go along with the notion that it’s acceptable for great social injustices to repeatedly be tolerated or swept under the rug, then this campaign is for you.
Because if we succeed with this—if we collectively raise enough money to make it concretely possible to project the whole BA vision and project into all corners of society and to introduce him and what he is bringing forward to millions who are not yet familiar with his works and vision; if the framework he is bringing forward and advocating for becomes increasingly debated and wrangled over by thousands and by millions of people from all walks of life; if, together, we manage to accomplish this, this will actually make a very big difference. The whole social and political culture will “breathe” more freely, people will wrangle passionately over “big questions” concerning the direction of society (like knowing that much of the future of humanity hangs in the balance) and the times will once again resonate with big dreams for fundamental change and the emancipation of humanity.
All this and more will be further developed and unfolded, beginning with conferences this month for people who want to take part in getting this started. So... let’s do it!
Three Things You Need to Know About the Background for Events in the Middle East and North Africa
Mass protests and attacks on U.S. embassies took place in more than 20 countries across the Middle East and North Africa last week, including in Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, and Palestine. In Libya, the U.S. ambassador and three other State Department employees were killed. These outbreaks coincided with the distribution of a clip of a film that, as described in media reports, appeared designed to grotesquely and gratuitously offend Muslims.
The actual relationship between the distribution of this video and the range of protests and other incidents is not clear at this point, and circumstances surrounding who or what is behind this video and their motives are murky. But to analyze and understand these rapidly unfolding events, it’s crucial to start not with whatever specific incident triggered these events, but at the beginning of this story with some basic facts and history.
“The essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy but capitalism-imperialism and political structures to enforce that capitalism-imperialism. What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism.”
—BAsics 1:3 by Bob Avakian
This is as true in the Middle East as anywhere in the world. For thirty years, the U.S.-backed Hosni Mubarak regime oversaw the interests of U.S. imperialism in Egypt, with torture and “disappearance” directed at any form of protest. The religious fundamentalist, absolutist Saudi monarchy—a model of the vaunted “freedom and democracy” the U.S. brings to the world—prohibits women from public activity, including driving, and recently sent troops into neighboring Bahrain to shore up another torture-based, oppressive pro-U.S. regime. And the U.S. backs Israel, on the land of the dispossessed Palestinian people, as regional (and global) “enforcer.”
All this barely scratches the surface. Newspapers and books could be filled with exposure of the crimes of the United States as well as other imperialist powers like Britain, Germany, France, Russia, etc. Do some online research, and challenge your friends, fellow students, and colleagues to do so as well: Pick any country in the region and check into its history. You’ll find the bloody tracks of “imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism” all over the histories—and present lives—of billions of people in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. (Suggested readings are at the end of this editorial.)
2. The clash of two reactionary forces.
The people of the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia have a long history of courageous resistance to imperialism. But serious setbacks of genuine revolutionary forces over the past several decades—especially the defeat of socialism in China and the coup there that re-imposed capitalism, in 1976—have had a terrible impact on the global political terrain. This remains true even as a new stage of communist revolution is fighting to emerge in the world.
In the Middle East and North Africa, the acceleration of capitalist globalization has displaced tens of millions of peasants and eroded traditional social structures and relations. These traditional structures were rooted in the countryside and in a way of life where peasants were subjected to the exploitation of landowners, ignorance was widespread and enforced, and women were the most downpressed of all—including by the males of the oppressed. In these conditions, both as a somewhat “spontaneous” development along with—in many cases—direct U.S. sponsorship, reactionary Islamic fundamentalist forces have achieved significant influence in these oppressed nations.
These forces appeal to those uprooted and displaced by imperialism, and those who acutely feel the oppression of the nations of the Middle East, South Asia, and elsewhere, with a program of going back to an idealized version of the past, in the form of Islamic rule. They posture against imperialism, but only in order to establish a place for themselves in the imperial order; they have neither the program nor the desire to rupture with the entire unjust and destructive order imposed by the great powers.
These Islamic fundamentalist forces do not represent the interests of the masses; those interests lie in the emancipation of all humanity and can only be achieved through revolution against imperialism. Instead, they represent the interests of those classes that aspire to power within the relations of imperialism, and use the masses as battering rams to achieve that aim. This is what is meant when we say that they represent “outmoded strata”—they represent classes and groups whose time has fundamentally passed and who can only look backward. Representing outmoded strata within these countries, their program centers on imposing religious rule and social strictures—all within the imperialist shaped and dominated setup. Where these forces come to power, as in Iran today, they impose their own form of hell-on-earth, including brutal oppression of women, severe repression of critical thinking and expression, and of people overall. And their tactics, as do those of the U.S. imperialists, reflect their fundamental disdain for the masses of people.
For all their anti-U.S. rhetoric, the Islamic fundamentalist forces that rule Iran were initially backed by the U.S. as a lesser evil (from their perspective) compared with more radical and revolutionary forces involved in toppling the murderous U.S.-backed Shah of Iran (as well as those representing other imperial powers of the time). The Islamic Republic of Iran was consolidated in part through the murder of thousands of revolutionaries and the imposition of severe and heartless restrictions on women. The Taliban in Afghanistan and other such forces have their origins in funding from the U.S. when they were fighting the former Soviet Union. It was only as changes came in the imperialist world order, and in how these imperialists saw their interests, that the Islamic fundamentalists came into opposition to the U.S.
Now we are in a dynamic where each U.S. invasion, every drone assassination by the U.S. that wipes out a family, each incident of degrading violence, drives more people into the arms of the Islamic fundamentalists. And each reactionary fundamentalist attack, obscurantist proclamation or oppressive act builds support for imperialism and reinforces its fundamental grip on the planet.
In BAsics 1:28, Bob Avakian puts it this way:
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.
The Urgency of Bringing Forward Another Way.
The heroic uprisings against U.S.-backed regimes last year in Tunisia, Egypt, and other countries exposed that the current oppressive world order is not set in stone. They inspired freedom-loving people around the world. But they haven’t yet led to thoroughgoing revolutions that uprooted this entire imperialist-dominated structure. That requires revolutionary leadership—communist leadership. And in the wake of these upsurges, U.S. imperialism and other imperialist powers are maneuvering feverishly to maintain and expand their interests, as with their bombing and forced regime change in Libya.
An unjust and unsustainable status quo is breaking apart. But the question is whether something positive for the people can be wrenched out of it. The only way this is possible is by breaking out of the horrific choices of the current situation, and bringing forward another, liberating way aiming to overthrow and transform the root causes of the horrors facing the people—imperialist domination and feudal, patriarchal, and other oppressive traditional relations and the political structures that enforce all this.
In that context, two final points: first, the more that a visible force emerges in the U.S. that rejects the crimes and “justifications” of “our own” rulers, the better the conditions will be for a genuine, liberatory force to emerge in the world. Second, it is crucial to get word of genuinely emancipatory communism—as concentrated in the Manifesto from the RCP, USA: Communism: The Beginning of a New Stage—out into the world.
Suggested readings
Bringing Forward Another Way, Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, RCP Publications, 2007.
Communism: the Beginning of a New Stage: A Manifesto from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, RCP Publications, 2008. (Available in Spanish, Farsi, Turkish, German, and other languages at revcom.us/Manifesto/)
Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda, Larry Everest, Common Courage Press, 2003.
A Call To Stand Together To Oppose The Obama Administration’s Dangerous Assault On Fundamental Rights
The administration of Barack Obama, which had promised to put an end to torture and other outrages committed by the Bush Administration, is in fact putting into place a dangerous system of repression and control. This is a serious assault on fundamental rights, and it must be answered not with silence and complicity but with heightened awareness and more determined opposition.
The record of the Obama Administration is a chilling one. President Obama has preserved Bush's rendition program, which relies upon torture, and has extended the Patriot Act. His Administration has adopted a quasi-official assassination policy, complete with secret "kill lists" reviewed by the President, which Attorney General Holder has brazenly asserted meets Constitutional standards of due process. In the 2010 case of Holder v HLP [Humanitarian Law Project], the Obama administration successfully argued before the courts that the "crime" of "material support" to "terrorists" be broadened to include merely speaking with and advising (even on some legal matters) any group designated by the government as terrorist. The ruling has already been applied to pro-Palestinian activists and endangers many others, including prominent public intellectuals, as well as groups upholding or advocating fundamental social change.
The most recent expansion of dangerous and illegitimate government authority is the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This law grants to any U.S. president the power to detain any person, including U.S. citizens, indefinitely and without charge or trial, for the alleged crime of associating with a broad and vague category of people, which could include people who have nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks or with terrorism in general.
The pattern is disturbingly clear: not just a continuation but a further leap in the draconian measures taken by the Bush administration--under the pretext of the open-ended, so-called War on Terror--to detain, torture, and assassinate. . . not just a continuation but a further leap in measures to restrict and criminalize dissent and opposition to the status quo.
This must not go unanswered--nor be allowed to continue to grow increasingly worse. In opposing these repressive moves, it is imperative that people not allow anyone, or any one group, to be singled out or targeted for repression. In this regard, the lawsuit Hedges et al. v Obama et al. that is challenging ominous provisions of the NDAA is quite salient. On May 16, a federal district court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and issued a temporary injunction blocking the government from implementing Section 1021 of this law. But insinuated into this mainly positive ruling is a reference to the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and its Chairman Bob Avakian which is an erroneous and potentially harmful characterization that could be used as a pretext to criminalize what is constitutionally protected freedom of speech and association and potentially sweep the RCP and its Chairman into a category of organizations identified by the government as terrorist.
Those of us signing this statement cannot speak for the RCP and indeed have various levels of familiarity with and a variety of views on its philosophical and political principles and objectives. But we do not countenance--and recognize as very dangerous--the designation by the powers-that-be of groups as politically "acceptable" and "unacceptable." History teaches, by negative and positive example, that we must stand against attempts to divide progressive, radical, and revolutionary forces along any such lines.
In this there are very important lessons to be drawn from the self-critical summation by Pastor Martin Niemoeller of his experience when confronted with the heightening repression carried out by the Nazi regime in Germany during the 1930s:
"First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak out because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak out for me."
The signatories of this statement call on people to step forward and stand together to oppose the assault on dissent and the moves to restrict and criminalize oppositional speech, association, and political activity, which are being carried out by the Obama Administration and which continue and expand dangerous precedents and mechanisms which can also be utilized by any future Administration.
Go to the statement's web site to sign the call: http://opposerepressionndaa.net/OpposeRepressionNDAA/OpposeRepressionNDAA.html
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