Learning About and Struggling with Students over What and How They Are Thinking

by Sunsara Taylor | September 28, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Recently, I went out for a few hours to a couple of elite college campuses. This outing was focused on active social investigation, and I teamed up with a young revolutionary.

We spoke to eight students altogether. We also got out a couple hundred palm cards for an upcoming showing of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live just in the course of walking from place to place.

Overall, we encountered a lot of contradictoriness in people’s thinking. Some people seemed pretty consciously disengaged from the world or at least from trying to think about or change the world in any sort of macro sense. This existed together with a lot of deep concern about the world when we probed different subjects combined, but also a lot of fear of “totalizing” ideas (approaches that try to take on analyzing and changing the whole world), and a very strong and consistent aversion to acknowledging anything to be objectively true.

While our sample was too small to draw hard conclusions from this one outing, it was interesting that the younger students we spoke to were much more open, and the graduate students were much more consolidated in asserting that it is wrong and even dangerous to assert anything to be true or go at changing the whole world. The younger students were more open and searching even as they have a lot of conventional thinking about how to think (I will get into this more).

It was also striking how completely ignorant the students we spoke to were about the Black national question (the history and present-day reality of oppression of Black people from slavery down to today’s regime of mass incarceration, criminalization, and police terror) and the conditions of other oppressed national groupings; how little it seemed to have occurred to them to think about the relationship between different social patterns; how much they were either influenced by or wed to just figuring out the one small part they could think about and do something about (rather than looking at the larger world); and how many times students put forward major ideas or “agreed” with big ideas that were totally inconsistent with other major ideas they were also professing (such as agreeing with Bob Avakian's statement “American Lives Are Not More Important Than Other People’s Lives” and then saying, “Exactly, I mean an attack on Syria will endanger American soldiers”—the student who said this actually did hear and really like the former statement, but it was so quickly translated back into their pre-existing framework that it became the latter statement quite seamlessly to them).

Fear of "Totalizing" Ideas

In relationship to communism and communist revolution, this was quite interesting as well. It seemed that their fear and reticence to consider genuine communism flowed as much from their fear of “totalizing” ideas (this was not the word anyone we talked to used, but what I drew from what they were putting forward) and from their sense that communism goes “against human nature,” as it did from any particular sense of the “horrors" of the first wave of communist revolution. Not to say those misconceptions about communism didn’t exist (a couple people spoke about relatives from the former Soviet Union who had told them that it was awful), but these kinds of claims about the supposed “crimes” of the previous communist revolutions weren’t the first thing their aversion hinged on.

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At the same time, one young woman (a freshman) said, “Well, it depends on what level of communism you are talking about. Something like North Korea, which is the most extreme, is very bad. But something like universal healthcare—that would be good. And I don’t know that much about it, but I heard they have very good healthcare in Cuba.”

What was most notable here was the total ignorance as to what socialism and communism actually are! When I am talking about the history of genuine communist revolution, I am speaking about the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1956 and in China from 1949 to 1976. There are no genuine socialist countries today. And just providing a few social services (like healthcare) in the context of a capitalist-imperialist system does not make the system socialist! (Speaking of which, the question of healthcare came up from several students as one of the most pressing things they are confronting—not just themselves, but the thing they are thinking about as a major pressing issue.)

What we did was to approach people sitting outside, introduce ourselves, and say we work with Revolution newspaper/revcom.us and the movement for revolution and we are trying to learn some about what is on the minds of students in relationship to what is happening around the world and to their campus life and studies, and what they are getting into and personally grappling with that is important to them either socially, personally, or otherwise. With those who said they had a few minutes to talk, we would sit down and ask a lot of questions and listen and then probe further. Early on we would introduce Bob Avakian—BA—and the essence of his work, both to make clear where we are coming from and because some of our questions (and sometimes struggle) would then unfold in relationship to that.

Concerns About Climate Change, Syria, and Healthcare

The first young woman we spoke to was a freshman studying biology and dance. She said the biggest concerns she thinks about are climate change and the environment; what is developing internationally in Syria and how this reminds her of the Iraq war (she was too young when it was launched to really have been paying attention then, but this is the opinion she has formed of what she thinks it was like); and how outrageous it is that Americans don’t have decent healthcare.

Regarding healthcare, this was both something that was on her mind because of the ongoing political debates over it, but also because one of her high school teachers has leukemia and is going seriously into debt since his insurance doesn’t cover the needed treatment. It is really horrible—both the fear and turmoil he is in medically but the extra burden from how the finances and insurance are fucking him even more and leaving him destitute. She had visited him the previous week, and this was very pressing and visceral to her.

Regarding Syria, she kept coming at it from how "we" have a lot of energy resources “at home” and can do without the Middle East’s oil if we were just smarter. She didn’t think the U.S. should be bombing because she thought “it's not right but also it would put U.S. soldiers in harm's way.” I shared the "American Lives…" quote (which is from BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian). She was very emphatic in responding affirmatively to the quote—but then merged this right back into talking about the safety of U.S. troops.

She expressed disappointment in Obama, saying she had thought he was going to bring in a lot of change but really hadn’t. But she actually came at this in two different ways which were in contradiction with each other, but without treating them as contradictory. She said he hadn’t brought very much change at all and was keeping a lot of the same stuff going as Bush had—but she also said that he had done what he could like pull the troops (or most of the troops) out of Iraq. She didn’t have many specifics on either side of this argument, but expressed both frustration and disappointment in him and a defense for what he has been doing.

She went to high school at a good public school in a major city, and this seemed to have influenced the fact that she seemed more engaged in the world than many others. She was definitely progressive but also pretty mainstream in how she approached issues. She was very happy to have spoken with us, and she got the Revolution newspaper and gave a way to stay in touch. It wasn’t like she wanted to get actively involved in the movement for revolution, but she had enjoyed talking with us and was interested.

Digging into and Struggling Over the Zimmerman Verdict

Next we approached two Black students sitting in the sun. They were grad students majoring in body movement/dance woven in with larger theories of psychology and sociology. They said they don’t talk about the whole world and what is happening in it all that much, but sometimes the two of them talk about things because they spend a lot of time together. Recently, they had talked about the verdict that freed Trayvon Martin's killer, George Zimmerman. I asked what they thought, and they said it was “complicated.” He said that the jury did the only thing they could given the evidence. She said, “No one can say for sure what happened there except Zimmerman and Trayvon. And unfortunately Trayvon is dead so we’ll never know.” She blamed the prosecution for not putting up a good case but didn’t take this thought any further.

I got a bit into what this case represented: that the verdict was not “complicated” but a green light given by the state for police and racist vigilantes to murder Black youth, which is what has been going on. If Zimmerman hadn't gotten out of his car in the first place, Trayvon would still be alive—it was very simple. The woman nodded to a few things I said, but the man argued that while what I was saying was right it is not the only thing that is right and other people feel just as strongly in the opposite way, and he just tries to understand all sides.

This led to a huge argument between us. Essentially, he said that Zimmerman’s fears were “real” and “very human” and we can’t judge him. He also said, “I don’t believe in prisons anyway,” so this contributed to him deciding to accept how things turned out. He said he always tries to accept things because this is how he tries to look at the world.

I united with his sentiment that prisons—especially the way they are part of a whole slow genocide of Black people in this country (which I did some exposure about)—are a huge problem, but argued that acquitting Zimmerman was giving a green light for open season on Black youth. I argued that these are different levels of contradiction, and that in this case the green light for targeting Black youth is what was principal and why this verdict was so clearly wrong. He strongly reacted against that, arguing again that Zimmerman’s "fears" were very real and that I couldn’t say they weren’t.

I responded that while I have no basis to know whether Zimmerman was really scared or not, I do know that he never should have gotten out of his car. Further, even if Zimmerman actually had felt fearful, those fears were not legitimate, whereas Trayon’s fears and the fear of Black youth everywhere in this country about what might happen to them at the hands of police and racists, and the fears of Black mothers for their sons, are very real and very legitimate. Just because someone may be sincere in their emotions and what they are “experiencing” doesn’t mean they are valid in seeing and feeling things in that way and are justified in acting on the impulses those feelings create.

This became a very sharp argument. The guy fought back very politely—even at times a little wishy-washy in his language—but very fiercely and stubbornly in his content and framework. He said that it is wrong to call Zimmerman’s fears illegitimate—that as soon as I "disconnect from the humanity of [Zimmerman]," that is how terrible things happen.  In other words, according to him, my thinking was laying the basis for terrible things in the world.  I pulled back the lens and gave the examples of Jim Crow and lynchings—the active death sentence on all Black men that may or may not be carried out but always could be. There was a LEGITIMATE fear flowing from that among Black men and Black people generally.

On the converse, while it was certainly the case that many white people feared the anger of Black people and feared them on the basis of prejudices and racist stereotypes that had been whipped up, and while some of that probably fed into some of the ways in which white people carried out horrendous crimes against Black people, that doesn’t make those feelings legitimate! Even if sentiments like that were very sincerely felt, they were ILLEGITIMATE in two senses: 1. There actually wasn’t a constant threat against the lives and safety and humanity of white people at the hands of Black people, and 2. In terms of Black people’s anger lashing out and rising up against the white racist power structure—that is something to welcome and support, not fear and suppress.

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This stopped the guy for a minute. I opened up Revolution newspaper (with the centerfold featuring BA's piece "A Question Sharply Posed") and said, “Nat Turner or Thomas Jefferson?” He said, “I don’t get the point. How is that relevant?” I asked him if he thought Nat Turner should have not risen up in rebellion and instead should have gone to the slave-masters and empathized with how they were feeling and connected with their humanity—would that have changed the condition of the slaves? He didn’t like this but also didn’t respond. He shifted back to telling me that it is wrong to say that the very human parts of all kinds of people should be disregarded, that to bring things together and overcome the problems of the world we all have to connect with the humanity in others and identify with them. And he tries to do this for Zimmerman and everyone else.

My friend, the young revolutionary, asked him if he thinks objective reality exists. He said, “That’s very complicated and I don’t want to talk about it.” We probed this a little, but he really wouldn’t open it up fully and kept saying that everyone’s experiences are valid.

He said he refuses to see people as social groupings, arguing that this actually reinforces the divisions we claim to be wanting to end. Instead, he sees everything as just individuals who needed to be understood and assisted. At one point we discussed how one in three women will be raped or beaten in her life—that is a social pattern, and it can’t be dealt with just by assisting and understanding each woman or even connecting with and working to understand each rapist and help them find their own humanity again, etc. We have to change the world and the society that is creating men who view and treat women this way. He objected and said he works with domestic abuse victims and perpetrators in the community through his dance program, and they help the men as much as the women and don’t just write either of them off. He again asserted that he opposes prisons and sees the men also as people who need empathy. Then he tried to close the conversation by saying, “We are working on the same thing, I am just doing it with these individuals through dance and understanding and you are doing it on a world level.”

I said, no, we are doing different things—not that they can’t relate to each other or what he is doing cannot contribute anything, but humanity needs revolution, and I got a little into that. I told him he wasn’t even responding to what I had said—I had specifically said when bringing up the epidemic of rape that my point is not to write off all these men as if none of them can change or be part of something liberating, but that is a process of struggle, not just empathy. And changing the world to get rid of a culture that produces rape on such a mass scale requires struggle (not at the level of every individual man but of the structures and culture of society that shape men) and ultimately revolution. He just refused to look at society as anything more than a collection of individuals.

After this discussion, my friend and I were both pretty angry at a lot of what was said. At one point, my friend complained, “He never even called the men rapists. He talked about them the same as the women and never used the word rapist.” This provoked a little discussion between us, because I didn’t actually have a problem with that part of what he had said. I posed that while I wouldn’t abandon using the word “rapist” to describe men who rape women, I also think there is something positive to not treating every man who rapes a woman as if that is their essence forever. A lot of these men can change, and that element of what this guy we had just spoken with was inclined towards I thought was true and positive.

What had frustrated me so much was the idea he was putting forward that that kind of change could or should happen absent massive struggle to change all of society—that was wrong and frankly ridiculous. This was a brief exchange between us, but I think it was important.

As part of this, we spoke specifically about how some of the prisoners who write in to Revolution explain how they got caught up in petty bullshit for which they never should’ve been sent to prison, but others say straight up that they did some shit they are quite ashamed of, but they actually have transformed and are playing a role in making revolution. In discussing this, it brought me back to the very important piece that had been in Revolution about the Steubenville rape case (after the conviction of two high school football players for the rape of a 16-year-old woman). The piece talked about how there was some justice but no cause for celebration in the guilty verdict; about how while it would be a horrible injustice if the young men had been declared “not guilty” given the evidence, we also shouldn’t celebrate two guys being sent to prison, nor should we allow ourselves to think only on those terms. What is needed it to make revolution, to get rid of the culture and the system that shapes this culture that gives rise to widespread callous and abusive attitudes among men towards women and how this gets acted out through porn, rape, and other forms of violence and degradation against women.

Next we spoke to two young women who told us that they didn’t have very much time and were heading to class in three minutes. We asked them to tell us one thing that weighed on their minds about the state of the world or their academic life or just overall thinking about their lives and their futures. One said, “Well, I am pretty narcissistic so you probably don’t want to talk about me, I only really ever think about myself.” Then they both said that they are from Russian families and worry most about relations with Russia and whether it is safe to go home and visit. That was all we got into with them.

Choices, the System, and Revolution

Two young white women had been sitting discussing something with each other very intently for the past 45 minutes and we approached them. They lit up and said, “Wow, we were just talking about some of that.” We asked what they’d been talking about and one began, “I just started the school of social work and I have begun working with people with drug addiction up in [an oppressed neighborhood].” She went on to describe how while she is busy working with the individual and trying to help them, the “policies” are such that they seem to be working against what she and others in social work are doing. The problem seems bigger than what they are able to go at and solve. At the same time, they explained, some people go into policy and they too then get overwhelmed—sort of by politics or bureaucracy, they weren’t sure exactly what bogs them down but that is their sense.

At one point I said something like, “So, it's not the case that if people just make the right choices, take personal responsibility, and pull up their pants and all that, they will all stay out of trouble?” They dove into this and clearly had been struggling a lot over it. One said, “Yeah, I mean maybe people make bad choices, but then even if they did when they get to that point and they are addicted and down and out someone needs to reach out to them at that point and help them through.” The other was more straining for the fact that their circumstances make it so hard for those people, and other people don’t understand this. But she was seeing it very individually.

I posed that people do make choices but not in a vacuum—they do it in a social and political framework and circumstances that are not of their choosing. They don’t choose the choices they are confronted by, and we have to change THAT, not just help individuals. There was verbal assent to this, but the two women mainly continued and merged this together with their point about how despite people’s bad choices they still need help.

Then one of them got into it about how badly paid and treated social workers are—including often by their clients, but also by society that doesn’t value them enough. So you have to make this very hard choice of whether you are going to go into this field. Someone needs to do it, and the help is really needed—but then you will struggle financially and emotionally and not be treated well. “It says something about our society that the ‘helpers’ aren’t treated well. You would think they would be treated very well if our society’s values were right.”

I posed, “Doesn’t it say something deeper about society that there is a NEED for social work the way it is today—on such a massive scale of people locked out and exploited and oppressed? Shouldn’t we be working on THAT?” It's not that in a revolutionary society we won’t have to assist individuals in trying circumstances and have a role for that institutionally, we will almost certainly need that—but that wouldn’t be whole sections of society. They wouldn’t go with me on that in this conversation, however.

One of the women spoke about how Denmark was a better kind of society. She had spent the summer there. “But,” she explained, “that is because their values are so well taken up by the population and everyone supports them and pulls together. But now there are all these Turkish immigrants coming in.” She spoke about this from two sides. On one side, she was disturbed by the prejudices against the immigrants among the people of Denmark and seeing this as hypocritical on their part. On the other side, she was saying she could sort of understand it because the Turkish immigrants did have different values and the kind of society that Denmark has can only be so good when everyone is in more or less conformity of thinking and it is on a small scale.

My friend asked if they get into any of these questions in their classes. They said, no, not really. They are more focused on the individual topics and don’t ask these bigger questions or talk about current events.

I posed the need for real communist revolution and a bit about what BA has done and how we are building a movement for this now. They hesitated, and then one said, “Do you want my honest reaction to that?” She then went on to talk about a relative who had lived somewhere in Eastern Europe, and how even if that is different than exactly what we are talking about, it is what happens and part of the same thing. They were clearly put off by communism and actually a bit freaked out by the fact that I had brought it up. But, it seemed to me that they were equally freaked out by the implications of some of the questions they were beginning to pursue when they actually voiced their concerns and talked them through about the limitations of social work.

I am not sure if it is coming through clearly enough, but they were getting uncomfortable more and more both because of how radical we were but also because their own questions were taking them out of their comfort zone. At a certain point, one of them told a story of a hate crime that had taken place at her undergrad campus. Someone had written “All niggers should die” on a dorm, and the whole faculty and students had pulled together to discuss it. Then some students had organized a “walk” against it (not even a march, just a “walk”). She said she went on the walk. They chanted, “I have the right to live,” and she really agreed with that.

But, she explained, the whole thing upset her. “You see...” she paused and looked me dead in the eye with real fear being re-lived, “I had never been part of a mob before. It was frightening, the raw passion of the crowd, being part of something that felt out of control. Even though I agreed with what we were saying, I was very upset at being part of it.” She went on to compare this to the energy that takes hold at sports events when everyone is chanting. That scares her too.

And this linked back up with the idea of revolution. She had negative connotations with communism, but also with the idea of doing anything en masse or on a big scale or that would unleash people’s passions. She said, “I think it is too much for me to think about right now, and it scares me. And what I need to do is figure out what I think and start where I can start, and then maybe later when I am in a position to affect policy I will think about those things.”

I made the point that it is not like the world is neutral just waiting for her or anyone else to figure this out. I spoke to how, right now, the clothes we are wearing have blood and tears in them of the people who made those things. I spoke about the nets they put up at the Foxconn factories in China where iPhones are produced so that workers could no longer jump to their deaths—emphasizing that the company invested in nets but not in improving the conditions so that people no longer wanted to kill themselves. I spoke of the U.S. threats against Syria and the bloodbaths the U.S. caused in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan and more. I argued that all of us have to start from all of that, not from ourselves. And this is what BA has done and this revolution is acting on, and this is something they have an obligation to look at and be part of getting out of. That while you shrink your scope and refuse to engage these big questions, and the big answers being provided, terrible things are happening. It is not neutral or conscionable to turn away from the big questions they were beginning to open up.

They then said they had to get to class. We gave them cards for the upcoming showing of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! and said they really should come with their concerns but with a serious and open mind to engage how we can actually deal with all this. They took the cards but said they didn’t want to stay in touch.

Earlier, my friend had asked them if it is possible to say if something is objectively true. They both said no. The one who was afraid at “being part of a mob” said that anytime you assert something to be true objectively, it's not like everyone will agree with it. (Clearly, she thought that what makes something true is whether people agree with it or not—this is “populist epistemology,” which is not at all scientific.) Further, she argued, “People aren’t always rational. Like, if given a choice between saving a spouse or saving a child, the rational thing would be to save the spouse since together you can make a new child. But most people will save the child. So you can’t try to go by what is objective because people are not objective.”

They were conflating determining objective reality and truth with the idea that everyone will act 100 percent rationally (as they defined rational). I got into two examples—one about how for the first time it is possible to provide for the material well-being of everyone on the planet and have a rich cultural and intellectual and social life together, but that is not happening because of the system of capitalism-imperialism and the states defending that system. I said proving this is a longer conversation than we have time for, but this is provable or disprovable by testing this assertion against reality.

I further argued that there is the basis to make a revolution to get beyond this, and I showed then the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America. I posed, “This is either true or not true, and that is provable objectively through measuring this up against reality, not mainly what people are thinking but the dynamics that shape human life and social organization.” I went on to explain, “Then, after that, there is a partisan choice you make as to whether you want to fight for that and everything involved in that, whether that is right or wrong, etc. But the reality is what it is—it is possible for humanity to live one way or another and that is objective.”

I went on to explain that while humans are not coldly rational in the way she was describing, that too is part of objective reality. We can understand that and take that kind of diversity into account in how we conceive of changing the world and organizing a new society—again indicating some of what is in the Constitution. They counterposed that you have to see things not the way we were talking, but in terms of “lenses” and everyone has different lenses through which they see the world which are shaped by their identity and lived experience, and no one can be objective. They cited feminist theory and Foucault as major influences.

Objective Truth—and the Fight to Defend Abortion Rights

After flyering for a little while we went over to a second nearby campus briefly and ended up talking to one last student. She was a sophomore and a white American who grew up and lives in China. Her parents are businesspeople.

She said she is concerned about the environment and healthcare and also pro-choice and is very concerned about the conditions of women. She’d spent the last summer working with “sex workers” in another country. She said they talk about current events a lot in school and had recently talked about the Trayvon case in one of her classes. But it was not clear what they got into about it. She had a book about how race is perceived in America.

My friend asked about her concerns in the world and then academic and campus life and then she posed, “Do you think objective reality exists?”

The student said, “No. Like take pro-choice, I am very pro-choice. I took a lot of sex workers to get abortions last summer and there is so much judgment against them and I was there with them and supportive. I support this right and I really believe it. But then I know that there are people who disagree with abortion who feel as strongly as I do in the other direction.”

From here we diverted a bit into the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride which I had been part of for one month this past summer fighting for Abortion on Demand and Without Apology. She was very excited to hear about this and immediately said, “Oh, I would love to get involved with something like that.” This is when she said that usually people get tired of her talking so much about feminist issues. She went on to say, “You know, like today people find abortion very complicated and I figure it probably used to be that way with other things, like civil rights or slavery and eventually people got more clear. Maybe some day people will see abortion with that kind of clarity but that is not the way it is yet.” She said in the meantime she’ll try to help individual women as the way she will contribute.

I got into how on slavery and civil rights people had to fight to change people’s minds, they didn’t content themselves and say, “Who are we to say what is true?” or, “This is my truth and you are free to have your truth.” The fact is, reality does exist objectively and we can know it—even as we will never know everything about it and that is an important part of the scientific method as well. I got into how objectively slavery was an oppressive institution even if most white people denied that and even if many Black people couldn’t see ending it. That was objectively true. Then, there is the conscious decision as to what you want to do about it. But the idea, which many white people promoted, that this was a benevolent institution was WRONG (not just morally wrong, but also factually wrong!) regardless of what they believed. Further, we would not have the clarity looking back on it today that she describes if it weren’t for the fact that people fought to change people’s minds, and then a whole civil war to shatter the institution and still things didn’t go far enough because look at the hundred years of Jim Crow terror and now the New Jim Crow.

Similarly, today there is objective truth concentrated in “fetuses are not babies, abortion is not murder, women are not incubators” and “forced motherhood is female enslavement.” People are kept ignorant of these truths—that is not their fault, but that doesn’t mean these things aren’t true. And there is the cult of motherhood (which I got into), and that also affects people. But, we must go out and fight with people to change what they think, not accept or respect it just because they think it sincerely. If, in the course of this, some come out and say, “I think women should be enslaved,” we can’t make them choose something else. But, we can fight for people to confront reality and revoke the ability for so many to go along with great crimes without confronting the implications of it—and we can win over a great many people through fighting for what is actually true. We must root ourselves in what is objectively true, as in what corresponds to objective reality, including, if we think something and we find out it is not true, we have to be willing to confront that as well.

This was very intriguing to her and she stayed with it, but was clearly not totally won over. The discussion ranged a bunch more, including she had a bunch of questions about what we did on the Freedom Ride and what it was like. We spoke briefly about BA’s new synthesis of communism and the movement for revolution we are building. She wanted to know what kind of communism because of her experience in China. I explained the work that BA has done over the last several decades, really summing up the tremendous achievements as well as the shortcomings and errors of the first wave of genuine communism (in the Soviet Union and China before those revolutions were defeated) and bringing this together with what has been learned more broadly since then to forge a new synthesis of revolution and communism that is viable and desirable in the world today. She listened and didn’t have any discernible strong reaction, but was also needing to get back to her homework (though not in the same way the others had, where it was more of an excuse to disengage).

Before ending she made the point that she definitely wanted to know more about the Abortion Rights Freedom Ride and StopPatriarchy and maybe get involved. I told her she should definitely get involved in all this, and get into the BA work as well including the upcoming film, but that she should also know that StopPatriarchy is against porn and the sex industry. I wanted to raise this because she’d spent the summer organizing “sex workers” (a catchphrase for those who want to unionize and empower those in the sex industry rather than abolish it).

Here she said, “You see, this gets me back to why you can’t say things are objectively true,” and she told a very interesting story. “Two summers ago I worked in another country supporting a sex workers organization. It was led by sex workers and I was only doing support because I wasn’t a sex worker. I worked with sexual violence victims. But the people leading it were fighting for sex work to be legalized so it could be regulated and supported and they could have healthcare. This really influenced me and I ended up seeing things this way.

"But then, this past summer I was in a different country working with sex workers and they were trying to make it illegal. It is sort of legal there and so all these gangs in North Africa kidnap these women and bring them there and they get away with it because it’s legal to sell women there and a lot of them have no rights and healthcare and are forced into it and so the sex workers are trying to make it illegal. So this really confused me. But I want to help them both and help them do what they want to do and what will make things better for both of them in their circumstances.”

I told her this was a very good example and very helpful to me understanding how she is seeing things—and a very pressing problem in the world she has been trying to address. I told her if you pull back the lens, you can see something in common, a unity between both of those experiences, a deeper part of objective reality shaping them both.

I spoke about capitalism-imperialism and how patriarchy is woven into it—and with it the commodification of women’s bodies and sex as well as the subjugation of whole peoples and countries. I explained that the state—the military, courts, police forces, etc.—serve to back up this system and these overall relations, even if in different particular forms in different places or at different times. The unity between these two different examples is that in each of these different circumstances the state came down on the women, not on the pimps or traffickers or even the johns. She nodded. Because the underlying patriarchy and capitalist-imperialist relations are functioning in both those situations she described, the state is serving that even if in different ways (in one case criminalizing the women for doing illegal “sex work,” and in the other case allowing men to traffic and pimp women because it is legal to sell women into prostitution).

Communist revolution is dealing with the whole of the objective reality that undergirds both those situations. The only way to get beyond that is to make a real revolution. And I spoke some about what it will mean to have a society based on meeting people’s needs, protecting the environment, being a base area for world revolution, and overcoming all the scars and oppression among and between people from the past. It is only in this new context, in a revolutionary society with a new revolutionary state power and after this old system has been overthrown and dismantled, that you can go at fully uprooting and overcoming all the dynamics which played into both those situations—including the way that men are socialized to see women that creates a “market” for women’s bodies and humiliation as well as protections and support for women who have been used and abused in this way and so on.

To get into all this I had to speak for a little while but she stayed with it. The student responded by saying, “You are saying that rather than just dealing with the way all this appears on the surface or even what people think about it and can immediately do about it, you are talking about digging down to where they come from the same root and dealing with that.” She wasn’t “won over” but she had clearly taken in what I had posed and was considering it. She said she definitely wanted to stay in touch and gave a phone number and email and got the paper and had revcom.us up on her computer to look more when we left.

* * * * *

Through all this, we learned an incredible amount not only about what students are thinking about (and not thinking about) but also, and in some ways even more importantly, about how they are thinking. If we don’t understand this, there is no way we can go to work on transforming it. And, as it became more clear to us as we went, if we don’t work on—and actually do epistemological battle—over how people think, even when there are politically advanced sentiments or unity with some of what we are putting forward, it gets undermined by the pervasive and paralyzing relativism that is so widespread. All this is something we intend to do much more work on struggling to transform. I’ll write more as we work on this—and look forward to, and expect to be, reading the experience of others who are working on this same problem around the country.

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