Revolutionary Worker #1178, December 8, 2002, posted at http://rwor.org
n the excerpt from "Putting Forward Our Line--in a Bold, Moving, Compelling Way" (which appeared in the RW last week--issue number 1177) the following sentence, and in particular the part underlined here, is formulated in a way that could be misleading: "We have to actually take that reality and make it come to life for people, show in a thousand different ways that all these different outrages and injustices and all the contradictions that we shine a spotlight on actually point to the inevitability , to the necessity, of the proletarian revolution." In referring to "inevitability" here, what I was intending to say was that these outrages and injustices and all the contradictions that we shine a spotlight on point to the inevitable conclusion that proletarian revolution is necessary --similarly to what is done earlier in this excerpt where it refers to the "inevitability of the conclusion that you're drawing," or in the excerpt from "Strategic Questions (which appeared in RW #1176), where it speaks of how, "through the process on which you've taken them [the audience] with the article, or speech, or whatever, they begin to recognize-- and, in a conscious sense, to feel--the inevitability of the conclusion."
The question of the "inevitability"--or non-inevitability--of the proletarian revolution and the advance to communism is obviously very important, and is something I have spoken to in a number of other writings. For example, in the final excerpt from the talk "Grasp Revolution, Promote Production," which will be published within the next few months in the RW , the point is made that: "we cannot say that communism is inevitable in some metaphysical and idealist or essentially religious sense--in the sense that there is some predetermined, predestined way in which all of reality and all of human historical development in particular has been leading up to, or even was somehow bound to lead up to, communism.... At the same time, all of human history, in all its diversity and complexity, has in fact led humanity to the threshold of communism--has established a powerful material and social basis for this, not just in this or that country, but throughout the world....This is a leap that humanity needs to make and in historical terms is now poised to make."
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