The following is an excerpt from the work by Bob Avakian, The New Communism. In addition to this and other excerpts posted on revcom.us, we will be running further excerpts from time to time on revcom.us. These excerpts should serve as encouragement and inspiration for people to get into the work as a whole, which is available as a book from Insight Press and as a PDF online at revcom.us.
This excerpt comes from the section titled "I. Method and Approach, Communism as a Science."
Here is another statement that concentrates a great deal: The basis for revolution resides in the defining contradictions of this system, which cannot be resolved under this system. We don’t, or we shouldn’t, proceed from “the way the world is,” in a static sense—lacking, once again, an understanding of contradiction and motion—for that will only lead to remaining trapped within “the world as it is.” We need to proceed on the basis of grasping the underlying and driving contradictions in any system or process, the change this gives rise to, and the potential this holds for profound radical change if, in fact, it does. This is something which has been repeatedly hammered at, from many different angles, in my talks and writings. This is also something that is spoken to, again in a very compelling way, in the Interview with Ardea Skybreak. But it is something which has—all too much, and all too often—been forgotten, lost sight of, or turned away from, including by many in the movement for revolution, even within the ranks of the Party, which has the responsibility to be the leading core of the revolution that is so desperately needed. This is something that needs to change—now—and it is something we need to grapple with seriously. For now, I’ll just leave that as something for people to reflect on—and we will definitely come back to this: why we have to be grounded in a scientific understanding of where the basis for revolution lies, and the fact that it doesn’t lie in what people are thinking or doing at any given time, or what your gender studies professor told you, or what you heard from somebody on the street corner last week, but resides in the actual contradictions that define this system and which cannot be resolved under this system.
Contents
Publisher's Note
Introduction and Orientation
Foolish Victims of Deceit, and Self-Deceit
Part I. Method and Approach, Communism as a Science
Materialism vs. Idealism
Dialectical Materialism
Through Which Mode of Production
The Basic Contradictions and Dynamics of Capitalism
The New Synthesis of Communism
The Basis for Revolution
Epistemology and Morality, Objective Truth and Relativist Nonsense
Self and a “Consumerist” Approach to Ideas
What Is Your Life Going to Be About?—Raising People’s SightsPart II. Socialism and the Advance to Communism:
A Radically Different Way the World Could Be, A Road to Real EmancipationThe “4 Alls”
Beyond the Narrow Horizon of Bourgeois Right
Socialism as an Economic System and a Political System—And a Transition to Communism
Internationalism
Abundance, Revolution, and the Advance to Communism—A Dialectical Materialist Understanding
The Importance of the “Parachute Point”—Even Now, and Even More With An Actual Revolution
The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America—
Solid Core with a Lot of Elasticity on the Basis of the Solid Core
Emancipators of HumanityPart III. The Strategic Approach to An Actual Revolution
One Overall Strategic Approach
Hastening While Awaiting
Forces For Revolution
Separation of the Communist Movement from the Labor Movement, Driving Forces for Revolution
National Liberation and Proletarian Revolution
The Strategic Importance of the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women
The United Front under the Leadership of the Proletariat
Youth, Students and the Intelligentsia
Struggling Against Petit Bourgeois Modes of Thinking, While Maintaining the Correct Strategic Orientation
The “Two Maximizings”
The “5 Stops”
The Two Mainstays
Returning to "On the Possibility of Revolution"
Internationalism—Revolutionary Defeatism
Internationalism and an International Dimension
Internationalism—Bringing Forward Another Way
Popularizing the Strategy
Fundamental OrientationPart IV. The Leadership We Need
The Decisive Role of Leadership
A Leading Core of Intellectuals—and the Contradictions Bound Up with This
Another Kind of “Pyramid”
The Cultural Revolution Within the RCP
The Need for Communists to Be Communists
A Fundamentally Antagonistic Relation—and the Crucial Implications of That
Strengthening the Party—Qualitatively as well as Quantitatively
Forms of Revolutionary Organization, and the “Ohio”
Statesmen, and Strategic Commanders
Methods of Leadership, the Science and the “Art” of Leadership
Working Back from “On the Possibility”—
Another Application of “Solid Core with a Lot of Elasticity on the Basis of the Solid Core”Appendix 1:
The New Synthesis of Communism:
Fundamental Orientation, Method and Approach,
and Core Elements—An Outline
by Bob AvakianAppendix 2:
Framework and Guidelines for Study and DiscussionNotes
Selected List of Works Cited
About the Author