To People Coming to Hear Naomi Klein

“The World We Need” Requires the New Communism Developed by Bob Avakian

June 12, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

Naomi Klein, the influential social critic and activist closely identified with the environmental, indigenous peoples, and other progressive movements, is rolling out a new book, No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need. It purports to be a deep analysis of the Trump regime and a manifesto for meaningful action. It is neither.

The book will be released on June 13, but the Introduction has been made available. And what she puts forward is an analytically misleading and disarming take on Trump—and a feel-good politics of affirmation that leads away from confronting and acting on the dangerous reality we face.

The Nature of the System, the Danger Posed by the Trump/Pence Fascist Regime

Klein studiously avoids any real reckoning with the sea change embodied by Trump: that a fascist regime has come to power. Klein sees the 2016 election as the “naked corporate takeover” of the political system. This papers over the reality that we live under an economic and political system in which the state serves, and violently enforces, the rule and strategic interests of a capitalist-imperialist class—while different sections of the ruling class battle out what those interests are.

Donald Trump is many ugly, grasping, and despicable things. But what fundamentally defines him is that he is a fascist: the point man of a section of the ruling class that over the decades has gained a great deal of initiative—and that aims to totally restructure how society is governed, to pulverize traditional democratic rights, to fan and viciously mobilize racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and to reinstitute oppressive “traditional values.”

Klein sees the problem of society as that of a “neoliberal” and “deregulated” capitalism, not capitalism as such. In the new book she includes a document called “The Leap Manifesto.” It calls for all kinds of transitions and shifts in the workings of the economy and “bottom-up” activism that in no way challenge the fundamental economic and power relations of the system. She wants to find solutions within the framework of the system that is the cause of the excruciating problems we face.

There Is a Way Out and Forward

As for the heart of Klein’s argument: She declares that it is not enough to say NO... we need a positive YES. She calls for resistance; and NO, she says, will get you into the streets. But you need a YES to keep fighting. You need a “story,” she argues, that offers people whose basic needs are lacking something positive to work towards. And then she makes her crucial move: “we don’t know what that vision looks like.” BUT WE DO KNOW.

That YES exists TODAY! There is a vision of and a scientific approach to getting beyond a world of exploitation and oppression, of misery and hunger, and the squandering of human potential. This is the new communism developed over the last four decades by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian. It is a tremendously liberating and exciting breakthrough for humanity. It is the scientific way to understand, in their complexity, the monumental problems that the seven billion on this planet face. It provides the strategic orientation for building a movement for an actual revolution and for making a revolution that can actually win against the massive death machine of this system. How can we create a society that meets the basic material and social needs of people while opening up whole new vistas for cultural and intellectual ferment and creativity? How can we actually work to uproot racism and patriarchy, including in people’s thinking and values? And create an economy that interacts sustainably with nature—and a society that takes as its starting point not “my country” but the interests of humanity. The new communism answers this. It is the scientific method and approach for knowing and changing the world.

If you are concerned and outraged by the injustices and horrors that are the world of today—then you owe it to yourself to engage with Avakian’s work... with THE NEW COMMUNISM: The Science, the Strategy, the Leadership for an Actual Revolution, and a Radically New Society on the Road to Real Emancipation, with the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America, and other writings. As Avakian himself has said, the new communism needs to be taken up “everywhere people are rising up in rebellion but are hemmed in, let down and left to the mercy of murderous oppressors, or misled onto paths which only reinforce, often with barbaric brutality, the enslaving chains of tradition; everywhere people need a way out of their desperate conditions, but do not see the source of their suffering and the path forward out of the darkness.”

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Another world is possible. An actual revolution to truly “change everything” and achieve a world community of humanity is possible.

But we can’t get there if we do not RIGHT NOW act on the NO—and confront the Herculean, world-historic responsibility, and carry out the fight, to drive out this fascist regime. This president and this ruling cabal pose a dire, an existential, threat to humanity. They are seeking to consolidate their rule. Trump has his fingers on nukes. Humanity demands of us that we resist with a “NO to a fascist America” and work urgently towards bringing millions into the streets to get rid of this regime.

And if we succeed, we will be in a qualitatively better position to make the revolution to overturn this system and to create a society and world in which, YES, human beings can truly flourish.

 

 

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