These are revolutionary times. Our economy is undergoing radical change that is ripping apart our society. Millions of people face destruction and despair. Our country is beginning to polarize – morally, over right and wrong and, politically, over which direction to go. Both the best and the worst in the American people will come out. People on both sides will get involved with greater passion. This moment is pregnant with both danger and opportunity.

Revolutionary times demand and give birth to revolutionaries. Who are these revolutionaries? The person who cannot turn her or his back on the homeless lady at the street corner asking for a dollar to eat. The person who is not convinced that her undocumented immigrant neighbor is a terrorist or is taking jobs from American workers. It is all of us who have witnessed people on rooftops shouting for help or being pushed into buses and into the Super Dome after Hurricane Katrina – and have wondered, is this all our government can do?

These revolutionaries are taking to the streets to voice their demands, demands that the economic system cannot meet and the political system will not consider: stop foreclosures, legalization for all undocumented immigrants, health care for the sick, and homes for the homeless. They step up to the pulpit, march, and organize to politically shake up the masses and coalesce their discontent into a movement for a society that will put human needs first – ahead of the mighty dollar and the profits of the corporations.

These new revolutionaries form new organizations on specific issues and demands. Immigrant rights organizations sprout up almost in every major city. Domestic workers across the country organize into a coalition to attain at least minimum wages. In towns where the public infrastructures are under-funded, privatized, and destroyed by corporations, groups demand homes and health care – even basic necessities, like water. Those against the wall on the U.S.- Mexico border join forces. Those who survived Hurricane Katrina demand homes for those who need them.

The process of forming new organizations is a key element of a movement in formation. Old organizations often lack vision; they cease to reflect new interests and demands, or they do not integrate into their ranks those who are affected economically and morally by this stage of capitalism. Just as new situations call for new organizations to fight the battles of the day, so, too, this moment calls for new organizations of revolutionaries.

Some years back a small core of revolutionaries grouped themselves together as the League of Revolutionaries for a New America. We had a sense of politics and organization and a commitment to being scientific about the process of revolution. We need to continually broaden and deepen our own individual understanding to be ready for the fight at hand. We formed the League as a place for revolutionaries to learn and plan together how to carry out our responsibilities.

We are active revolutionaries – fighting every battle at every step of the way. But we also need a space where we can discuss the long-term direction of the revolution and the actual resolution of these crucial problems. We formed the League as a place where we revolutionaries can plan how to educate and politicize the millions.

The League's starting point is the demands of the most destitute and defenseless sector of society. As we engage in battles on all fronts, our motto has been "this time it's all of us or none of us." Every public hospital that closes, every employer who robs people of their wages and benefits, every home foreclosure swells the ranks of the destitute and defenseless – and draws more people into battle.

While we fight alongside others waging the battles of the day, our premise is that the needs of hungry children, homeless vets, and families without medical care stand above the profits of the corporations. As we engage in the battles of the day, we also prepare for the actual resolution of those battles – for the abolition of private property – that is, the abolition of the right of those who own the means to exploit and make profit, the abolition of the laws that protect and expand that property at the expense of the general welfare of society.

This abolition of private property has a name. Communism is the common, public ownership of the means of production – with everyone contributing to society what he or she is able to contribute and everyone taking from society what he or she needs. Today, when computers and robots increasingly replace human labor in supplying goods and services, communism is the way to reorganize society to get food to the hungry, homes to the homeless, health care to the sick. It is the way to save Mother Earth from the corporations and to unleash the full potential of humanity.

Overthrowing old property relations is not a new thing. Revolutions that overthrow old and outmoded property relations have happened over and over in history. Revolution is not an idea to win people over to. It is what is happening today, and it is a very natural process. Society reacts to the problems posed by a revolution in the economy. The process goes through stages, but ultimately, it resolves the disruption of society.

But there is no guarantee about the direction that resolution will take. Just saying "revolution" doesn't prepare people to fight for their actual interests. Whether that resolution to the problems tearing up society is in the interests of the corporations or of humanity is up to the revolutionaries.

As revolutionaries, we are immersed in the groundwork of ideas and aspirations, despair and awakening. We push the ideas and awakenings forward, along the line that connects them to a consciousness of the resolution to the problems that are tearing apart people's lives and crushing their aspirations. We set our sights on winning the war.

In the course of our work, we've met many of you who are doing this in your own way. You are passionate and committed revolutionaries struggling to right the wrongs of society. Our spirits brighten when we see you; we see the faces of comrades. As we've worked together and gotten to know you, we've found out that our starting point is your starting point and vice versa.

You feel the same urgency that we feel and have stepped up to the responsibility to fight against the capitalist dogs of wars and stop their carnage.

The League calls on the revolutionaries of today to weld our energies together into an organization of thinking, creative, committed people dedicated to hope, solutions, and strategy. We invite you to work with us, to join with us – so together we can all educate ourselves and strategize to keep the revolutionary movement going forward and on course.

 

August.2008.Vol18.Ed4
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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