”I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.”
- Harriet Tubman, abolitionist and a conductor on the underground railroad.

The historical truth of Harriet Tubman's words applies, not only to those held in human bondage, but also, to the indispensable role of the human mind in human liberation. She and the other abolitionists who fought to end slavery knew that as long as white Americans believed in, or complacently accepted, the existence of human slavery the country would never be able to free itself from the tyrannical and immoral sway of the slave power. They took every instance of injustice and cruelty and forced America to look not only at the barbarity of human bondage, but to look at itself, to judge itself against the ideals it espoused to the world. They forced whites to see that none could be free while millions remained in bondage. In so doing, they played the role of revolutionaries throughout history - freeing the mind to envision a different world, making possible the creation of something new.

Society today is undergoing a great and perilous transition, or leap, one far more profound and far reaching than the transition to industry which began the break up of the slave order. The article “Capitalism” examines the inner workings of capitalism and explores this shift and its meaning for revolutionaries. Electronic production has introduced a radically new means of production into the economy that is destroying capitalism – the current stage of private property. As the report of the LRNA Standing Committee “Private Property or Communism?” shows this revolutionary new technology wreaks havoc wherever it is introduced, tearing up the old order, and creating the possibility of a break in the continuity of private property itself. A new society will have to be built. But what will that society be and in whose interests will it be constructed?

The American people will not be able to resolve this question in their favor unless they hold a vision of where they want to go and what they want to be. Revolutionaries are like the abolitionists of old, called to unshackle the mind, disseminate a vision of what is possible, and a strategy for its realization.

As conditions grow worse, and they see their futures slipping away the American people are becoming more discontented, more restive. Yet, the American people still yearn to believe, are still tied by a million threads to the capitalists, are still vulnerable to their hope that their lives will be salvaged somehow and all will be as it was, or even how it was promised.

As long as the American people believe what the capitalists believe, still see their salvation in their proposals, still seek to be saved from their suffering by these so-called “betters”, it will be the capitalists' solutions that will prevail. These ideas, these expectations, are deep in the American psyche. “Election 2008: Break the Ideological Ties that Bind” explores these ideas and the ways they chain the workers to the capitalists. It poses the question to revolutionaries: Will the workers remain ideologically tied to the ruling class or can a new consciousness, the ideology of the proletariat, emerge?

But how is that done? What must be put forward? How do revolutionaries take every occurrence of injustice to teach the class its interests, and by so doing, help to forge a force capable of achieving the goal of a cooperative world? How do revolutionaries take advantage of the broad experience of the thousands fighting under the new conditions of today, while at the same time resting on the historical continuity of past revolutionary experience?

“Revolutionary Times Demand an Organization of Revolutionaries” explores these questions. There must be an understanding of the ultimate goal and a strategy to get there. We revolutionaries must have an understanding of the ultimate goal and a strategy to get there. We must have the means to sum up the strivings of the workers, to give those strivings back in the form of solutions that move the battle along the path to the ultimate goal. In this, revolutionaries teach the workers, struggle with them, and learn from them, together forging a message that gives voice to the real process underway, and the real possibilities of these times. Such specific tasks require a specific organization.

The League of Revolutionaries for a New America is such an organization. We call on all revolutionaries to join with us and together we can secure the future that, finally, fulfills its promise to the generations.

 

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