Bob Avakian THE NEW COMMUNISM The science, the strategy, the leadership for an actual revolution, and a radically new society on the road to real emancipation Copyright © 2016 by Bob Avakian. All rights reserved. This work is now available in book format published by Insight Press. For information on ordering the book go to insight-press.com or contact Insight Press, 4044 N. Lincoln Ave. #264, Chicago, IL 60618; email: [email protected] The description of this work from Insight Press: This book consists of the major opening day presentation given by Bob Avakian to a conference held in the summer of 2015 which was attended by members and supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party. This talk provided the basis for several days of lively and substantial discussion, informed by “Framework and Guidelines for Study and Discussion,” which is included as an appendix to this work. This book is a masterwork and a master class—it is a living laboratory of the new synthesis of communism developed by Bob Avakian. It is also striking in its ability to combine high level revolutionary communist theory and modeling of revolutionary leadership with a visceral, colloquial and passionate style that will resonate with and be accessible to a wide variety of readers. This thought-provoking book is sure to challenge stereotypes and conventional thinking. Contents i Contents Introduction and Orientation 1 Foolish Victims of Deceit, and Self-Deceit 6 Part I Method and Approach, Communism as a Science 19 Materialism vs. Idealism 22 Dialectical Materialism 25 Through Which Mode of Production 26 The Basic Contradictions and Dynamics of Capitalism 31 The New Synthesis of Communism 41 The Basis for Revolution 47 Epistemology and Morality, Objective Truth and Relativist Nonsense 48 Self and a “Consumerist” Approach to Ideas 50 What Is Your Life Going to Be About?—Raising People’s Sights 53 Part II Socialism and the Advance to Communism: A Radically Different Way the World Could Be, A Road to Real Emancipation 55 The “4 Alls” 57 Beyond the Narrow Horizon of Bourgeois Right 61 Socialism as an Economic System and a Political System— And a Transition to Communism 68 Internationalism 71 Abundance, Revolution, and the Advance to Communism— A Dialectical Materialist Understanding 77 ii Contents The Importance of the “Parachute Point”— Even Now, and Even More With An Actual Revolution 80 The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America— Solid Core with a Lot of Elasticity on the Basis of the Solid Core 82 Emancipators of Humanity 91 Part III The Strategic Approach to An Actual Revolution 95 One Overall Strategic Approach 97 Hastening While Awaiting 100 Forces For Revolution 106 Separation of the Communist Movement from the Labor Movement, Driving Forces for Revolution 109 National Liberation and Proletarian Revolution 113 The Strategic Importance of the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women 114 The United Front under the Leadership of the Proletariat 117 Youth, Students and the Intelligentsia 121 Struggling Against Petit Bourgeois Modes of Thinking, While Maintaining the Correct Strategic Orientation 125 The “Two Maximizings” 125 The “5 Stops” 127 The Two Mainstays 128 Returning to “On the Possibility of Revolution” 132 Internationalism—Revolutionary Defeatism 134 Internationalism and an International Dimension 138 Internationalism—Bringing Forward Another Way 138 Popularizing the Strategy 141 Fundamental Orientation 142 Contents iii Part IV The Leadership We Need 143 The Decisive Role of Leadership 145 A Leading Core of Intellectuals—and the Contradictions Bound Up with This 151 Another Kind of “Pyramid” 153 The Cultural Revolution Within the RCP 162 The Need for Communists to Be Communists 167 A Fundamentally Antagonistic Relation—and the Crucial Implications of That 168 Strengthening the Party—Qualitatively as well as Quantitatively 170 Forms of Revolutionary Organization, and the “Ohio” 173 Statesmen, and Strategic Commanders 175 Methods of Leadership, the Science and the “Art” of Leadership 177 Working Back from “On the Possibility”—Another Application of “Solid Core with a Lot of Elasticity on the Basis of the Solid Core” 191 Appendix 1: The New Synthesis of Communism: Fundamental Orientation, Method and Approach, and Core Elements—An Outline by Bob Avakian 193 Appendix 2: Framework and Guidelines for Study and Discussion 199 Notes 205 Selected List of Works Cited 213 About the Author 217 Introduction and Orientation This gathering is taking place at a very important time, when masses of the oppressed in this country, and in particular those most bitterly oppressed, have been rising up—refusing to take the brutality and murder to which they are continually subjected, particularly by the police, acting as the enforcers of this system of oppression—and these uprisings have been joined by people from other sections of society. Rebellion and resistance on this level around such a crucial contradiction and “fault line” of this system, the depth and determination of this rebellion and resistance, and the way in which it has continued, and continues to “flare up” with new outrages—this is something that has not been seen in a long time. And, with the aim of propelling this resistance to a qual- itatively higher level and concentrating it in a qualitatively more powerful way, impacting all of society, and the larger world—and, from our standpoint, working to make this serve the strategic goal of an actual revolution that will put an end to this, and other outrages that concentrate major social contradictions of this system, as embodied in the “5 Stops”1—a massive mobilization of peo- ple, demanding that the outrage of police brutality and murder, as well as mass incarceration, must be stopped, has been called for this fall, RiseUpOctober,2 focused in New York City on the days of October 22–24, putting forward the challenge to all of society around this: Which side are you on? All this poses great potential, great necessity, and great challenges for those working for an actual revolution that would put an end to this, and to all, oppression. At the same time, in the larger context in which this is taking place, the contradictions within this system are sharpening, inter- nationally as well as within particular countries, and in some places—many places, in fact—these contradictions are boiling over. And there is the fundamental reality that communist revolution, and nothing less, is necessary to deal with the egregious outrages and injustices, and the profound contradictions, that mark the current world and the system of capitalism-imperialism that still dominates the world, at the cost of so much suffering for the masses of humanity. In this context, in reading reports on work in various areas over the recent period, and looking at our website (revcom.us) in particular, I think of the comment by people in Baltimore, when 2 Bob Avakian people went out to them with revolution—and it’s a comment you hear quite frequently when you go out to masses of people, taking the revolution to them. They sharply posed the question: “Will you be here? We’ve seen people come here, we’ve seen groups come and go and talk a lot of talk. But is this serious? Will you be here?” This is a very important question and poses a very direct chal- lenge for us. We have to meet this with the answer “yes” in the immediate sense, but also in the most profound and all-around sense. We have to be here, now—and we have to be here for the whole thing. Whether any particular individual is there at a given time, that’s not the question that’s really at stake; it’s whether or not the movement for revolution and, above all, the Party, the leadership that people need to get out of this nightmare, is going to be there, in an overall and fundamental sense, because when you get down to it, ultimately the people really do have nothing if they don’t have a party based on the science that can lead them to emancipate themselves and emancipate all of humanity. This is true whether, at any given time, the people know it or not. And I was thinking about something even heavier when reading about the work being done in Baltimore: the comment of a woman, one of the basic masses in Baltimore, who said, “I am getting worried”—when people were bringing the revolution to her—“I’m getting worried.” Now, you might say, why was she getting worried? She explained: “Because I am beginning to hope.” Now, think about what that means for the masses of people, that they are afraid to hope. Afraid to hope that maybe the world doesn’t have to be this way, that maybe there is a way out of this. Afraid to hope, because their hopes have been dashed so many times. Now, we know there’s a ruling class out there. We know how, along with the vicious repression they carry out, they maneuver and manipulate whenever the people rise up. We have seen it already again in Baltimore, for example: Oh, all of a sudden there’s a crime wave, they say; and they insist that they have to come down even heavier with the police and that they need the federal authorities to come in and help out the police, because the masses are running wild, and the police can’t go out and kill them with impunity, right now. So, all this is why people say, “I’m getting worried.” They are afraid to hope. And if we don’t intend to meet the responsibilities that we have, if we don’t intend to follow through when we go to people and say there is a way out of this, we should get up and leave right now.