Epochal historical change demands that organizations with a vision of the reconstruction of society in the interests of humanity rise to the challenge of the times, and change with changing conditions.  The League of Revolutionaries for a New America is taking up that challenge by reorganizing itself to disperse among the masses, to connect up with the revolutionaries who are being created by this moment in history, and to unite them around the resolution to the problems they face. That resolution is an economic system of common ownership and the end of exploitation.

The Demand for Change

Everywhere we look we see the reality and danger that comes from the epochal economic revolution. Labor-replacing methods of production are lowering the rate of profit and expelling millions of workers from industrial production into permanent unemployment. Capital no longer needs the working class in the old ways, and is destroying the basis of everything in society that rests on the old social relations. With the fall in profits the capitalists have to find new ways to maximize profits, and to sell the massive amount of goods created through electronic production.

The capitalists are transforming the role of the state to serve as a means of expanding the market, especially through privatization of every aspect of life, and the expansion of war production.  The capitalists invest their idle money to buy a school system, for example. Then the people have to purchase education that was previously public and provided free, thereby expanding the market. The military industrial complex is at the heart of America’s economy. Capitalism and war go hand in hand. An economy built around expanding war production fuels the drive toward war. At home, the capitalists turn to fascism to contain the response of the people to their increasingly untenable situation.

There is another reality to this epochal economic revolution: the demand of the new impoverished class for food, housing, education, health care and an opportunity to contribute to society. This demand can be summed up as the demand for a cooperative communist society. The more efficient means of electronic production lowers the cost of production of all the necessaries of life and makes possible a world wide economic paradise. But as long as the means of production and distribution are held privately, the resolution of the economic, social and political problems will be anything but paradise for the peoples of the earth. The new impoverished class must have political power to achieve its goal of a cooperative society.  

This moment in history calls for a different kind of organization of revolutionaries than in the past. The League is organizing itself to meet the needs of this stage of the revolutionary process.

Uniting the Revolutionaries

The American people are becoming politicized and drawn into a fight over how to reorganize around the new means of production.  This is the League’s battleground.  Today there are tens of thousands of socially conscious people in opposition to the degenerating economic and social conditions who declare themselves revolutionaries. 

All change, including social change, takes place with the introduction of a new element into the process. The direction of the mass movement can only be influenced through the introduction of new ideas (i.e. propaganda). Without the introduction of new ideas, the mass movement cannot break out of the confines of the thinking and political strategies of the past.

The League’s mission is to unite these scattered revolutionaries on the basis of the demands of the new class, and to educate and win them over to the cooperative communist resolution of the problem. Such a society must be based on the public ownership of the socially necessary means of production, and the distribution of the social product according to need. 

Consciousness and Direction

Nothing can be done without class identification. This is the reason the League is an organization of propagandists. The challenge before us is to answer the questions of those tens of thousands of revolutionaries who can develop the intellectual capacity of the masses and influence the political direction of the movement.

Certainly the League has the opportunity to show how the government – which is completely entwined with the corporations – is opposed to the needs of the poor of this country. This is our opening to pose the solution to society’s problems.  The new economy and the polarization of wealth and poverty are shaking people’s belief in the idea of American “exceptionalism.”   Today monopolies are becoming the government, and fueling the drive for war in their struggle for global domination. The socially necessary corporations – those that control the production of the necessaries of life – have to be taken over and turned into public property. We can pose it as the class question it is:  will the corporations rule America or will the American people rule the corporations?

The League is organizing itself to reach the revolutionaries by dispersing among the masses and developing their understanding of the situation they are in and how they can win.

The Basis of Unity

As the movement of the new class becomes more self-conscious of its social struggle as an objective process, the League must develop with it to become the theoretical, ideological, and political expression of that class. The League, being composed of individuals from various backgrounds and outlooks, must consciously struggle for its unity. That unity is based on a common understanding of the quality and motion of the real world. Only then can we come to the necessary objective collective conclusions. This requires individual and collective study of the science of society and the individual and collective discipline needed to carry out our tasks. Only an organization that is theoretically, politically and ideologically cohesive can become a force to galvanize the revolutionaries.

Forms of organization need to change with every change in the objective situation. The League of Revolutionaries for a New America is taking steps to align itself with that changing situation. The purpose of reorganizing is to better carry out our mission of uniting the revolutionaries around the practical demands of the new class. We open the League to all revolutionaries who seek to do the same.

 

March.2007.Vol17.Ed2
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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