Why We Need An Actual Revolution and
How We Can Really Make Revolution
About This Speech
| Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
This summer in several cities, Bob Avakian gave a two-part speech running 2.5 hours, on which we can build a movement to change everything.
In the first part, “Only an Actual Revolution Can Bring About the Fundamental Change That Is Needed,” Bob Avakian (BA) breaks down why this system of capitalism-imperialism cannot be reformed and that a real revolution means overthrowing this system.
With penetrating science and with real heart, BA walks through the most excruciating outrages and abuses we face, laying bare their roots in capitalism-imperialism, and why they can’t be reformed away but require revolution.
In part two, “How We Can Really Make Revolution,” BA begins with one of the biggest questions facing those who want a radically different, emancipating society: Could the repressive power of the current capitalist-imperialist system actually be defeated—even if times radically changed and millions were ready and organized to put everything on the line for revolution?
BA lays out the basics of a strategy and takes the audience with him to grapple with some of the complex and most difficult questions involved. For instance, how would a revolutionary force deal with the attempts of the imperialist state to encircle and suppress it in the major cities and hammer the revolution, and the people supporting it, with relentless blows? How would the challenges of the attempts by the established power to decapitate leadership be dealt with? In dealing with these and other questions, BA leads the audience to grapple with those problems, scientifically, continually showing and seeking pathways to deal with the challenges.
Then, finally, in the central focus of the speech: How do we work now, urgently, to win over and organize the millions who could make revolution? For that is the central challenge of the present: how we start, to quote the speech, “building up the ranks of the revolution—first, in the thousands and then, as things develop toward the decisive point, millions—as an organized force, and learning to become leaders of this revolution who can enable those millions to be in a position to fight, all-out, with a real chance to win, when the time comes.”
Bob Avakian goes into the obstacles, but much more than that, he charts a course that can enable us—all of us—to go to work to meet the “monumental challenges” and realize the objective of moving to a world based on the emancipation of humanity.
This was an unprecedented speech, focused on the U.S. but with a method, approach, and insights that apply universally. Now this speech is a film—one that can be seen by thousands, and then millions, and make a huge difference in how people view what is possible and what they will do.
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