Revolution Online, March 8, 2011


BIRDS CANNOT GIVE BIRTH TO CROCODILES, BUT HUMANITY CAN SOAR BEYOND THE HORIZON

Part 2: BUILDING THE MOVEMENT FOR REVOLUTION

Editors’ Note: The following is the seventh excerpt from Part 2 of a recent talk by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, which is being serialized in this paper. Previous excerpts appeared in Revolution #232 to #237. This has been edited, and footnotes have been added, for publication. The entire talk is available at revcom.us.

Basic Contradictions, Forces for Revolution, and the UFuLP Strategy

The question of legitimacy brings us back to the importance of recognizing the current polarization, and the need for effectively, on a scientific basis and by applying living scientific methods—working to repolarize for revolution.

Bedrock forces for revolution, breaking with dogma and stereotypes

In that light I want to briefly review the question of forces for revolution, and the strategy of United Front under the Leadership of the Proletariat (UFuLP). Once again, this is not the time of Marx. Reality does not correspond to the Trotskyite superimposed screen placed over reality—England in the 1840s or Western Europe in the 19th century in general. There is the reality that what we are about does have to be a proletarian revolution, in the sense of its grounding in the most fundamental and largest interests of the proletariat as a class: advancing human society to communism and emancipating all humanity. But this is not a revolution that is going to be made solely by even real proletarians—those in what Lenin referred to as the lower and deeper sections of the working class—and it is certainly not going to be made in some sort of stereotypical "classical" form by "THE WORKING CLASS." In fact, most of the forces who will most actively carry out the fight for the seizure of power—and even those actively involved to a large degree in revolutionary work before the conditions emerge to wage the struggle for the seizure of power—will very likely be mainly not proletarians in the strict sense. We are not setting down, and we shouldn't be setting down, some sort of principle and "rule" about this—inventing a stereotype and a convention and imposing that on reality in a different form—but it is quite likely that it will not be mainly proletarians in the strict sense who will be the most active fighters for this revolution, now and at the actual time when everything's on the line in terms of which class is going to hold power in society and what the basic character of society will be.

The most bedrock force for revolution will include "lower and deeper" sections of the proletariat, certainly, to again use Lenin's phrase. It will include many immigrants among them. And there is a particular role which we need to explore further in terms of the youth among the immigrants. But it will also be, and perhaps will largely be, basic masses, particularly those concentrated in the inner cities—many of whom are not strictly speaking part of the proletarian class—who will make up this most bedrock force. So this underscores again why we have to have a living scientific approach, and a living scientific method, in relation to transforming reality.

Youth, "what made things so good" in the 1960s, and the potential today

There is also a particular role, in terms of forces for revolution, for youth of different strata, including the middle strata. This relates back to what was discussed earlier regarding the importance of a truly mass revolt of youth—with a significant cultural dimension, along with active political resistance. And, in terms of the youth, it is worth further reflecting on the question: What, in the U.S. and internationally, "made the youth so good" in the 1960s, including the youth of the middle strata and specifically white middle class youth?

Well, we've used the formulation of lighting a metaphorical—or political and ideological—fire under the middle strata, and that's exactly what was happening in those times. Because of the "shifting tectonic plates" in the world and in U.S. society at that time, and the necessity of the ruling class as well as the thrust upward of people at the bottom of society, you had this whole upsurge coming particularly from Black people in the U.S., which had its particular characteristics and some limitations but also, and overwhelmingly, great strengths. You had a whole wave of anti-colonial struggles in the Third World which took its most concentrated form in the Vietnamese people's war of resistance against U.S. imperialism and the way in which—without looking at that narrowly but keeping in mind the broader international relations in which it was enmeshed—this administered, yes, a real defeat to U.S. imperialism. And you had China and in particular the Cultural Revolution in China: even though that, again, was reinterpreted by many through the prism of petit bourgeois, ultra-democratic or anarchist tendencies, there was still a very real, powerful impact of the actual content and thrust of that Cultural Revolution, very broadly throughout the world, among not only hundreds of thousands but millions of youth in the U.S., as well as in other countries.

I think of Stephen Jay Gould's book, Wonderful Life. I believe it is in that book that he talks about how students made up different acronyms as shorthand expressions in order to be able to remember the succession of the different periods in natural history. I can't remember all the details of this, but one of these acronyms involved reference to the dictatorship of the proletariat. This reflects what was going on, from the 1960s into the '70s, in the culture on a very broad scale: here are biology students using the dictatorship of the proletariat as part of a formula for remembering different periods, marked by the development of different species, and so on. This reflects something that was very broadly impacting the society, and in particular the youth. Many people who were not political activists—who went to demonstrations but were not core political activists—were broadly influenced by this; and had there been a revolutionary "go at power," these people would have been everything from supportive to actively involved. The significance of that should not be missed, misunderstood or underestimated.

Without the different elements influencing all this—which I have briefly and only partially touched on here—there would have been, as there always is among the youth, feelings of alienation, feelings of distrust and disgust with regard to the powers-that-be and authorities in various spheres; there would have been some revolt and rebellion and some political resistance; but it would not have developed to the dimension it did. Now, to be clear, I am making an assertion based on my sense of things—this is not something that I'm putting forward as a fully worked-out analysis—but it does seem likely to me that in the 1960s things would not have gone beyond the terms with which we're all too familiar right now, if it weren't for the whole "mix" and "confluence" (so to speak) of the kinds of factors that I've briefly made reference to.

That is what "made the youth so good"—within the U.S. in particular it was the Black people's struggle, which itself was influenced by international developments and struggles and which, in turn, gave rise to, or gave impetus to, struggles among different oppressed nationalities within the U.S., and was very influential in kicking off struggle among women, among gays and lesbians, and others—it was a powerful force helping to unleash a tremendous amount of positive social upheaval. Not that all these different movements were directly an extension of the Black people's struggle, but they took inspiration from it; they went in various directions, but they were, in a real sense, inspired and driven forward by that, as well as by what was going on in the world more broadly.

Well, we don't have that now. The contradictions and struggles are not going to repeat themselves in the same way, and we shouldn't look for that or think that we can somehow artificially bring about a repeat of that. Even if we could, it wouldn't be good enough, for all the reasons I've talked about. The struggles and movements of that time, as powerful and overwhelmingly positive as they were, also had definite limitations. There are reasons why all that didn't go far enough—including, very importantly, that there was not the vanguard necessary to lead it.

Send us your comments.