REVOLUTION 63

Tactical Difficulty, Strategic Possibility for Revolution

BOB AVAKIAN—REVOLUTION

Number Sixty-Three. Tactical Difficulty, Strategic Possibility for Revolution.

In these social media messages, and a number of other works, I have examined the fact that the fascist Republican Party, headed by the MAGA maniac Trump, is on the offensive, while the Democrats are on the defensive, desperately seeking to maintain this monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism in the “normal way” it has been ruled, for more than 150 years (since shortly after the Civil War of the 1860s), with all the terrible atrocities this system continually commits.

Here is some crucial truth related to this: “Given the nature, objectives and actions of the fascists, there is the real possibility of actual civil war [a new civil war].” But there is also the possibility that the “mainstream” section of the ruling class, represented politically by the Democratic Party, will simply capitulate to this fascism—allowing the fascists to roll ahead, and roll over people, in carrying out their program of horrors. And:

In what would amount to a one-sided civil war, these fascists could carry out a slaughter of those they hate, including Black people and other people of color, “illegal immigrants,” “uppity women” and those who don’t conform to “traditional” sexual and gender relations and “norms.”

In any case, it is a deadly serious reality that these fascists are determined to crush—as violently as necessary—anyone and anything, anywhere in society, that stands in the way of implementing their horrific objectives. (This is from “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating,” which is available at revcom.us.)

The Heritage Foundation is a right-wing organization that has been a driving force in the development of the perverted “theory” and the practical program for this fascism. Here is a

quote from Kevin Roberts, the head of the Heritage Foundation: “we are in the process of the second American revolution, which will remain bloodless if the Left allows it to be.”

This is clearly a serious threat that, if the “left”—and by this he means the Democratic Party and those aligned with or following it—do not allow this so-called “revolution” to be carried out, then the fascists will use bloodthirsty means to carry out this “revolution.” As I also pointed out in “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating”:

Growing numbers of fascist-oriented people in this country are prepared to use violence in pursuit of their perverse notion of “making America great again”—and the Republican leadership is ready to resort to this, if they cannot come to power otherwise. Already Republican elected officials, including members of Congress, are whipping up sentiments in favor of such violence and supporting fascist mobs who have engaged in this violence.

The truth is this: What these fascists are really about is not any kind of revolution, but a kind of counter-revolution—aimed at restoring, with a vengeance, the whole set of openly oppressive relations which have been fought against by people seeking a more just society.

These observations by African-American theologian Hubert Locke also provide important insight into what is going on. Locke, too, emphasizes that the driving force in this fascism is right-wing fundamentalist Christian fascists. He refers to a “long overdue racial revolution”—the fight against racist oppression—that has taken place after the second world war, which “overturned centuries of culture and tradition, especially in the South.” He also notes how the massive opposition to the Vietnam war, in the second half of the 1960s and the first part of the 1970s, “shook the foundations of traditional/conventional patriotism in American life”; and how a “sexual revolution...upset deeply entrenched views among this portion of the American populace about the subordinate place of women in society and the non-place of gay and lesbian persons in American life.”

It is in opposition to all this, Locke emphasizes, that Christian fascism has arisen, with its main base in the rural parts of the country, especially (though not only) in the South—a fascism that has been increasingly willing to go to violent extremes in its attempt to restore the America that existed before all these positive changes. (This statement by Hubert Locke is also available at revcom.us.)

Although the changes that Locke refers to do not actually represent a real revolution—which requires the overthrow of this whole monstrous system of capitalism-imperialism—the fanatical attack on these changes is, as I have said, a kind of violent counter-revolution: the determined move, by truly demented fanatical fascists, to wipe out these changes and restore the America that existed before World War 2—with some even openly insisting that things were “better” in this country before slavery was ended through the Civil War in the 1860s.

(In addition to “Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating,” I go into all this in depth in my January, 2021 New Year’s Statement, A New Year, The Urgent Need For A Radically New World—For The Emancipation Of All Humanity—available in BA’s Collected Works at revcom.us.)

A big problem is that, among those who are opposed to this fascism, far too many are simply seeking to preserve (or perhaps slightly and gradually extend) the changes that have been brought about since World War 2—failing, or refusing, to recognize that, although these changes should be defended against the attacks on them, they do not, and cannot, bring about an end to the terrible injustices and atrocities that are built into, and repeatedly perpetrated by this system of capitalism-imperialism, here and all over the world.

The situation now is that the Democratic Party is determined to preserve and enforce this system in the basic ways it has functioned for generations—with its outer shell of democracy concealing its inner core of capitalist dictatorship, in the service of horrendous atrocity—while the fascists represented by the Republican Party are determined to shatter this shell of democracy in order to enforce full-out, unfettered exploitation, oppression and plunder of people and the environment. The fact that these fascists are moving to tear up the “norms” of how this system has operated and they are determined to enforce new dictates favorable to them—this gives them important dimensions of initiative and advantage over the Democrats, who have no interest in, and are incapable of, providing a truly emancipating alternative to what the Republican fascists are willing to go to extremes to bring about.

All this has to do with why, in terms of the only really emancipating, revolutionary alternative to all this, the situation we are facing is tactically difficult but strategically more favorable for revolution. This is what I will get into further in my next message.