Letter from a comrade

Hastening While Awaiting With The New Call To Get Organized

February 14, 2019 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

To the editors:

I was inspired to read the Call for “The Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour.” Yesterday, I went back to Bob Avakian’s speech from last summer—WHY WE NEED AN ACTUAL REVOLUTION AND HOW WE CAN REALLY MAKE REVOLUTION—and this provoked more ideas on this Tour and how we can immediately begin making this what it needs to be.

Bob Avakian (BA) says in this speech that a crucial next step in making this revolution real is that, “Thousands need to get organized into the ranks of the revolution now, while millions are being influenced in favor of this revolution.” He goes on to call for organizing these thousands right now into “networks of people, working together to spread the word about and organize people into the revolution,” as part of a national movement. He talks about the importance of a “critical mass”—meaning a force which, “although it may be small at first, has sufficient numbers and determination to fight through obstacles to have a real impact on the ‘political terrain.’” I think all this bears very directly on the Tour.

BA then goes on to quote The New Communism, saying:

You are affecting the terrain by having organized forces united around a revolutionary line... it goes out to the world, especially in this age of the internet. It goes all over the place. And then people do want to know: Who are those forces that did that?.... It’s not that they all join up with you right away, or that you should bring them fully into the ranks of the revolution right away, before they even have a chance to get a basic understanding of what this revolution is all about. There’s work and struggle that has to go on. But you’re able to get this dynamic going where you’re growing, you’re wielding your organized forces for revolution in a way to significantly impact society and drawing people to you, and through struggle accumulating more organized forces... and then you are able to do more to affect the situation, once again through a lot of struggle. This is the dynamic we have to advance while, once again, not narrowing our sights to just that dynamic, but looking at the whole world and how we affect the whole world toward the goal of revolution....

This is the correct basis for ... understanding the point ... about the “thousands” and their relation to the “millions.” It’s not just some vague notion of “thousands of people” who sort of go “thumbs up” on the idea of revolution (or even are very enthusiastic about it). If you’re talking about leading millions, you need an organized force of thousands of people, a growing number of people, in the thousands, who are oriented, organized, trained and led to be an actual revolutionary force and pole of attraction…

I think these sections of the speech are crucial orientation for taking out this Call. Bringing forward these thousands, now, is an immediate objective in actually making revolution at the earliest possible time.

On that basis, there are tasks that cry out to be done, including right now. I know that some cities are organizing meetings soon to let people know about and enlist their support in this effort. Some ideas I had in this regard:

we need to rally everyone who has seen and been inspired by BA’s filmed speech, let them in on this, get their ideas on that basis, and give them ways to spread word of the Tour and build for these upcoming meetings;
when we take out the Black history flyer, or any other key materials, this Call should be right there with it, getting out in tandem with that material, not only letting people know about this but giving them an immediate way to get organized and be part of this (including participating on the spot in donating, flyering, taking materials, etc.);
we should work with people to get this Call up everywhere, especially where the revolution has had a presence, or where they go, whether to places like Vallejo, Calif., the site of a recent outrageous police murder, or conferences on the environment, or other places people who are questioning the outrages of the system gather.
very importantly, we need to make raising funds for this Tour an immediate and integral part of taking out this Call, involving people in many different ways to collect and make donations. This is going to be an essential part of accomplishing the mission of this Tour, and a key part of building up the organized networks and bringing forward a different culture of people very broadly who see themselves and are acting as part of this movement for an actual revolution.

All this should be done proceeding not from “building a tour,” or “building a program,” but from what BA in the speech calls the “strategic approach of hastening while awaiting the emergence of the conditions to go all-out to actually overthrow this system.”

I hope the above sparks both effort and creativity.

A comrade