“...you're talking about the whole world...”

Struggle Over the REALITY of Society, and the Need for Revolution

May 20, 2019 | revcom.us

 

Editor's Note: Following is a lightly edited excerpt of a “field” report from the National Tour

We had an important struggle at a community college with someone we met last week. This was someone who first came to a debate about whether the American Dream is humanity's nightmare and wanted to defend the “American Dream.” But through that discussion, he changed some of his thinking, in part hearing people debate about what the U.S. has done to the world and then reading a couple BA quotes about this.

He had read the flyers we gave him last week and this time was trying to make an argument on how we actually could reform this system. He was arguing in particular about how to stop police brutality, basically how to make these horrors a little less horrific and he was making an argument about using the system against them.

In getting into this, I stepped back to the point that we're not just talking about the people in America or just the oppression of Black people, but actually all of humanity. I started from BAsics 3:2: “There is nothing more unrealistic than the idea of reforming this system into something that would come anywhere near being in the interests of the great majority of people and ultimately of humanity as a whole.” I walked through what we mean when we say system, talking about the mode of production and went a little deeper into the global system of capitalism/imperialism. Everything that is produced and sold for profit is basically on the backs of millions of people all over the world. I used the example of the basic needs of human beings to live being water, food, shelter, clothes, and culture. How can we actually get all those things without any exploitation of any kind? In order to get these basic needs, people have to sell their ability to work to get paid this commodity money that we use to go trade this for food, clothes, rent etc. I walked through briefly why fundamentally we cannot just reform this system in the interest of the vast majority of humanity.

His first response was “you're talking about the whole world.” He said from the first discussion he had he was thinking about what we were talking about just in terms of America. This gave him a different understanding of what we're actually talking about.

One of his questions was what would replace the old system. We talked about the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America. He had a lot of questions but was also very excited to hear that there was such a Constitution. One of his questions was will there be a government under that new society and how do we make sure that the leadership of the new society will not go in a different direction. I didn't go after every single question but I did point to the fact that these questions were very important and the need for him to actually do the work, to dig into the Constitution, to dig into Bob Avakian, in the fight to actually keep that leadership on the right road, and the argument that BA makes about everyone's responsibility in that.

Through the whole discussion, we were also putting the problems to him. We talked about the contradictions bound up with organizing thousands of people into the Revolution and what that all takes, including going up against the frameworks that are keeping people locked into the system, needing to break through on this and organize thousands by the end of this year.

We did put to him the need for him to join the Revolution Club and the impact we are fighting to have during this June 8th and 9th weekend. He was very excited and very seriously thinking about this after the discussion.

One interesting thing he said at the end of our discussion was that he wanted to join with the Revolution and accepted the challenge of being one of the first to step into this Revolution. He said he didn't want it to be next year or in the future where there are thousands of people that are with this Revolution and him just kind of standing off to the side, looking at those thousands and not being one of the first. He enthusiastically wanted that responsibility of being one of the first and going to work on bringing forward those thousands.