“Tens of thousands of socially conscious people are revolutionaries in opposition to the degenerating social and economic conditions. The League's mission is to unite these scattered revolutionaries on the basis of the demands of the new class, to educate and win them over to the cooperative, communist resolution of the problem.”

–Program of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, 2007

The mission of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America is at the heart of the new League Program approved at its 6th Convention in April, 2007. There are many missions in any battle. But, there is only one grand mission. It states the overall purpose of an organization. It describes what you do. Without a mission, there can be neither unity of action nor achievement of our ultimate goal. That goal is to change the American economy, from one based on a system of private property to one based on public property.

Determining the League’s Mission

How did the League decide on its mission? Our starting point was an assessment of the real world. Today changes in the way society produces the necessities of human life are destroying the old industrial economy and creating the material conditions for a new communist society. Such a society is finally possible because, for the first time in history, an objective, practical movement for communism is arising. The qualitatively new, electronic means of production are eliminating human labor and creating a new class of propertyless people who will not find work under the capitalist system. They are demanding food, housing and medical care without the money to pay for it. Their demands cannot be met under capitalism. Once this new class becomes conscious, it has the power to overturn the old order and create a new society in its own image.

Communists have always led militant movements for reform goals, but – until now – the communist movement has been only an ideological or subjective movement. As long as industrial production was still developing, reforms were possible. Today, however, industrial production is coming to an end because of production with robots and other electronic technology. Therefore the reforms that people are fighting for today – whether for health care and housing, for women's equality, or for an end to racism – will be the byproduct of revolution. Only through a revolution that has as its goal the ending of a system based on private property in favor of communal property can those further reforms be won.

Line of march and the League’s mission

Mission is not someone's good idea. Mission arises out of an analysis of the situation we face in combination with an understanding of where the revolutionary process is headed. The communist movement is the motion of the vast majority in the interests of that majority. The line of march of the revolution is from the scattered economic struggles to the political struggle of that class for power. The long-range goal is the establishment of a communist political party of the class as it reaches that stage of development. Such a party would lead the conscious and uncompromising fight of the class for the attainment of political power.

The objective conditions are ripening for revolution. Capitalism is coming to end, and a new social force is forming that has the potential to pull society toward a vision of a cooperative world. The danger, however, is that the masses are going into battle against the most powerful ruling class ever in history without any consciousness of their own class interests. The rulers are adjusting the form of the state. They are moving to crush any threat to private property. It is urgent that revolutionaries adjust their activities to this new reality. Our strategy is the development of the consciousness of the class. That class must come to understand that its goals can only be secured if it achieves political power as a class.

With this long range perspective in mind, we can see that the first step is to get the revolutionaries together who can play an instrumental role in that process. It is possible today to unite the practical movement for communism with the conscious movement for communism. United, they create a powerful and unstoppable force for a new society. To do this, the revolutionaries need a scientific understanding of the revolution. We are attempting to educate and assemble a broad core of revolutionaries who can play a role in guaranteeing that such a party, when it forms, becomes what it needs to be, and that it stays on course. Achieving our mission will represent the completion of an essential quantitative stage of the revolution.

Tactics to achieve our mission

We recognize that we are working within a contradictory situation to achieve our mission. What we have in our favor is that the changes in the economy are creating tens of thousands of revolutionaries who are butting up against private property and the state, and who are coming to recognize that the capitalist system has to change. On the other hand, the ruling class has, over a long period of time, made the American people think that communism is a political rather than an economic system and therefore is not a viable solution. The revolutionaries we are trying to reach do not have a scientific understanding of revolution. This compounds the problem. Our mission aims to bridge this gap.

The League is beginning to grow in places where the objective conditions are creating a certain social consciousness of who the enemy is, and where League members are struggling to implement our mission. As we do this, some tactical lessons are being learned.

The first lesson is that comrades must have a mission before entering the battlefront. Once we enter a struggle, we accept the movement as it is, uniting with the fight people are engaged in. We don't have to direct the motion. It is already heading toward a confrontation with private property. At the same time, we know that the practical struggle cannot create class consciousness. Therefore, we connect with the levels of consciousness in a particular struggle in order to, step by step, provide the missing link that the revolutionaries who are leading these fights need: mission, strategy, tactics, vision, and organization. Through this style of work, the League is unifying a growing core of revolutionaries on the basis of their practical demands and, at the same time, setting the conditions for the introduction of the subjective understanding of revolution. This is crucial because without a large core of conscious revolutionaries, the class cannot proceed to the next stage of creating its own political party.

The second lesson involves how we are initially connecting with revolutionaries. Our propaganda is the link between the objective side of our mission, which aims to unite revolutionaries who are fighting for practical demands, and the subjective side, which aims to educate them on class perspective and vision. Revolutionaries in a fight need to break the isolation of their struggle. They do this by taking our propaganda, which stands on the practical demands of the class, deep into the nooks and crannies of America, using it to connect up with new revolutionaries. Because our propaganda brings a class perspective and vision, revolutionaries get politicized in the process of reading, writing, speaking and distributing those materials. Rally, Comrades! provides political orientation to the revolutionaries and aids in their consolidation.

In summary, we are constructing an organization for this stage of the revolution while recognizing future stages. Now that the League has agreed on its mission, organization determines everything. Today, every League member must have an assignment to carry out the mission in a defined area of work and begin gathering experience on implementing the mission. Everything the League does today – from the creation of its propaganda and educational apparatuses, to its internal meetings and public gatherings – must be directed toward accomplishing the mission of the League and building the organization in the process.

 

July.2007.Vol17.Ed4
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