Welcome to Revcom.us, where we get into the key events of the world, why they are happening, and how they relate to the revolution for emancipation that humanity needs. We do this rooted in the method and approach, and the political thinking, brought forward by Bob Avakian, the most important thinker and leader in the world today.
This issue focuses overwhelmingly on the intensifying struggle to defend the right to abortion, now concentrated in the looming decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion legal throughout the U.S. Sometime in the next few weeks—and it could be as soon as today—the Court will rule on whether to overturn this precedent altogether, to vitiate it, or to leave it intact. What stands in the balance is whether tens of millions of women will be immediately thrust back to the days of the enslavement of forced motherhood, and tens of millions more will be threatened with it.
Bob Avakian has written that “In most basic terms, what is involved in the right to abortion is the lives, the rights, and the basic status of women—as full human beings, and not something less. Denying women the fundamental right to control their own reproduction degrades all women, even those who may never get pregnant—it once again enshrines and enforces the subordination of women to the patriarchy.”
For those who want to prevent this—and there is still time—these next days must be a time to provoke, challenge and inspire those who are sincerely agonizing over this attack to finally come forward and ACT. This has to be done by bold actions that do draw the line in the right way and call on others to surge forward, into the streets, day after day… actions that put something on the line precisely in order to bring home the stakes of what we now face. Put it this way: every corner of America must be filled with righteous rage, aimed at preventing the Supreme Court from carrying through with this horror, and delivering a real blow against the ongoing fascist move to effectively enslave women.
This means heading for Washington, DC, if you possibly can, or getting together with others to plan and carry out powerful and challenging actions in your own city, or doing both. But it does mean acting, and acting now, to radically change the political trajectory that is now heading on track to overturn Roe v. Wade, meeting this with thousands and then millions in the streets all over, determined to shut down society to prevent this from happening. To give you a sense of this, we are posting the excerpt from the recent RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show that speaks to this struggle (as well as the show as a whole). And go here to see a roundup of some of the actions taken by people last week, and their impact.
We are also printing the call to come to DC in pdf form for people to not only read, but to print out and spread. We also include a “Check It Out” of the documentary film The Janes, which gives a sense of what life was like when abortion was outlawed, with the story of those who risked prison to help women at that time. Can we do less? Are not we now called to put something on the line to win this crucial fight?
So it is critically important to get out there and fight the power. At the same time—and in order to even do this in an effective way—there has to be sharp struggle against some of the wrong and harmful ideas that have mentally straitjacketed some people who should be actively taking part in this. There are those who say they oppose this attack but who also oppose fundamentally situating it in the oppression of women as women and instead cover that over; there are those who counsel people to put their energy and efforts into the elections; and there are some who combine all that with unprincipled attacks on individuals. Bob Avakian answers those arguments and sets forth (and models) how to wage principled struggle over real issues that have to be worked through. Read and ground yourself in “THE CRUCIAL FIGHT FOR ABORTION RIGHTS AND ENDING ALL OPPRESSION: Broad Unity and Necessary Struggle,” as well as “The Supreme Court Moves to End Abortion Rights: ‘Taking to the Streets,’ and Refusing to Let This Go Down. Bob Avakian Speaks to This Critical Juncture in the Fight for Abortion Rights, the Road Forward, and Avoiding Dead-Ends”; spread these to others, and engage them on it.
And this week we again run Bob Avakian’s Break ALL the Chains!, which includes a deep analysis of the ways in which patriarchy and capitalism are tightly bound together and the vision of how society can move beyond that, through all-the-way communist revolution.
It is crucial to the success of this current struggle AND to moving toward an emancipating future that the current domination of identity politics and woke insanity over the thinking of way too many people and spheres of society needs to be dug into, sharply called out and defeated—not as a distraction from the current struggle (and for revolution overall) but as an integral and necessary element of it. The words of Bob Avakian (BA), in his recent and extremely important talk SOMETHING TERRIBLE, OR SOMETHING TRULY EMANCIPATING: Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions, The Looming Possibility Of Civil War—And The Revolution That Is Urgently Needed. A Necessary Foundation, A Basic Roadmap For This Revolution, ring out with heightened relevance right now:
With regard to “woke folk”—and in particular the whole “cancel culture” thing—it needs be said: Masses of people are being brutalized and savaged, the world is burning (literally as well as figuratively) and you are preoccupied with changing the faces of those who preside over these horrors, and spitting on people if they don’t use nouns and pronouns that you approve of, or in some other way violate the constantly mutating standards of “wokeness.”
For this reason, we are highlighting again two very important essays by BA on this: Bob Avakian On Fascist Lunacy and “Woke Folk” Insanity: A New “Two Outmodeds”; and I’m So Sick of This Whole “Identity Politics” and “Woke” Thing: REVOLUTION AND EMANCIPATION—NOT PETTY REFORM AND REVENGE: On Movement, Principles, Methods, Means and Ends. And we urge you to read these, whether you have read them before or not, and to aggressively promote them.
In short, we need to positively get out there with the guideline BA set out in "This Is a Rare Time When Revolution Becomes Possible—Why That Is So, and How to Seize on This Rare Opportunity":
Instead of snarking and sniping at each other, and being divided by “identities,” people should be working to unite everyone, from every part of society, who can be united in the fight against oppression and injustice, with the goal of putting an end to this system that is the source of this oppression and injustice.
To stay up to the minute on, and learn about the whole sweep of, the struggle to make revolution and emancipate humanity… to get into Bob Avakian and the revolution he’s brought forward… to break with the upside down ways of looking at the world that this system surrounds us with… watch The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show on YouTube every week, on Thursday nights. But do more than watch it—promote it to others and create a movement around it through watching it together, and spreading it to brand-new people who hunger for change. This week, as every week, the whole episode is here—to watch and to spread to others.
Finally, we urge our readers to tune into the Congressional hearings on the January 6, 2021 attempted coup led by Trump. These hearings relate very much to the split at the top of society and the destruction of the norms through which people have been governed for decades that is deeply analyzed in A Declaration, a Call to Get Organized Now for a Real Revolution; This Is a Rare Time When Revolution Becomes Possible—Why That Is So, and How to Seize on This Rare Opportunity; and Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating. To get grounded in how to understand what you see, go to this substantial excerpt from Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating here.
Other articles:
* Chesa Boudin Tried to Make a Chicken Lay a Duck Egg. It Didn't Work… And It Can’t Work
* A Horrifying—and Utterly Unnecessary—Escalation in World Hunger: No “Right to Eat” Under This System—Humanity Needs Revolution, Nothing Less