Our Declaration to Our Generation
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Where We're At
This is a point in history where the world is dominated by a system of brutal capitalist exploitation. Nothing in this world is safe from it or the U.S. empire - it's main enforcer. Things as fundamental as human dignity and the very planet that we live on are subservient to the interests of the capitalist class and the endless pursuit of profits. And after centuries of attempts at reforms, only changes in the form of oppression have come, while the system's fundamental workings remain intact and even more destructive.
Everywhere people look, there is the workings of this system.
Every day, more Black people are murdered in the streets or thrown into prisons by this racist system's enforcers, the police. Much like the violent oppression that Black people face from the system, the U.S. carries out imperialist war after war to more deeply subjugate the world's oppressed majority.
All over the planet, in places the U.S. declares "democracies," children from a very young age are working endless days making bricks for American companies. Globalized capital forces immigrants from their home countries to work in brutal conditions of exploitation.
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a child textile worker in India
In the U.S., women's rights over their own bodies are constantly under attack, while women in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan are facing legalized marital rape. In Colombia, workers face U.S.-funded death squads simply for demanding better conditions, while immigrant women in the U.S. are taken from their homes and deported while their children are taken from them. Those of us who stand up in the face of all of this, and resist this empire, come under attack ourselves.
All these things compose only a glimpse at the oppression that is U.S. imperialism. There is a great deal of work ahead to more deeply understand the particularity of the oppression people are up against.
A century of inspiring revolutionary struggle for another world, a century of daring and heroism, boldness and sacrifice has challenged this oppression.
In the 20th century, revolutionary struggle raged, including the heroic first attempts at a socialist transition to a new classless society. In this country, this period gave rise to many radical movements, as well as new revolutionary organizations. Sadly, for many reasons that need to be more deeply understood, none of the forces in this country that came out of that upsurge were ever able to lead a revolution, but instead most have plunged into many different dead-end roads. Many of our comrades have settled for less than revolution, whether in the form of accepting reforms or of isolation and orthodoxy. We can't keep doing the same old work we've been doing if we're serious about this.
Things don't have to be this way, and another world is possible. Revolutionary struggle is surging in India and Nepal. Let's learn from them! The world needs a revolution, a communist revolution where people in their millions - with a backbone force among the oppressed - rise up, overthrow their oppressors, and create the foundations for a new world free from all forms of exploitation. Working together, the people can resist the system's outrages, make a revolution, and bring about a whole new world!
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children in Nepal
The outrages and uprisings of the current period have given rise to many new radicals and revolutionaries from a new generation, and that is something that has to go much further.
Our generation finds itself dropped into an unfamiliar terrain plagued with paths and sects that can't possibly lead to liberation. However, while it is true the kind of revolutionary organization necessary does not currently exist, this is no reason to give up or settle for the choices currently presented. In fact, this means revolutionaries need to take up the sorely neglected task of actually finding the way forward to revolution in the heart of this empire, forging the kind of revolutionary organization needed to achieve that, and settling for nothing less! These challenges call for revolution, and nothing could be more worthwhile.
Our Collective
In the context of these great challenges, our collective is forming here in Houston to contribute to this overall task together with many others. Though we don't have all the answers, we're determined to contribute as best we can. We take our inspirations from three core ideas.
Fight Imperialism. We want to smash this set-up, and fight this imperialist system... and that is going to take a process. This process is going to require both the development of revolutionary theory that can really win, and the formation of a strong radical movement to challenge the master in his own house. And we believe these developments build toward the foundation of serious revolutionary organization to defeat the system and its enforcers. When we talk about a revolutionary organization, we mean an organization deeply rooted among the people, concentrating their most advanced sentiments and thinking, and bringing new radical thinking. Without being both deeply rooted and also deeply revolutionary, that organization would stop short of an overturn of this set up.
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Rethink. Forging the kind of organization we need to win will take a process of many revolutionaries and organizations engaging in theoretical conception and re-conception with our brothers and sisters in society. Both our collective and revolutionaries generally need to be developing an understanding of all of the forms of oppression that come from this society, why revolution is needed, and ultimately how revolutionaries can actually win. Essential to this process is engaging in resistance struggles to expose the truth about this system and the possibility for revolution to a new generation. At the same time, it is crucial to aid and defend revolutionary struggles against this system throughout the world as a part of the global revolution. Together we will have to sum up our generation's experience so far and the experience of the movements that came before us, figure out how we're going to get out of this awful oppressive framework, and fight like hell for what we do know at any given time.
Experiment. We're going to have to step outside the work we've done so far. We'll need new forms of ideas, struggle, and organization. We believe there needs to be serious revolutionary organization, but instead of shouting it at people from rooftops in a condescending way until they see it, we want to open up a conversation among our generation and all of society around the need for revolution and how we're going to make it, discovering our way forward together. Our collective doesn't claim to have all of the answers, or a pre-determined understanding that will get us to another world. We will have to be constantly discovering and re-discovering that together. Revolutions don't happen by revolutionaries handing down verdicts and everyone else just following in a straight line, but rather it is a back and forth dynamic process that is both collective and vigorous.
Braving the Storm
There is a great revolutionary process of revolutionary refoundation going on nationally and internationally for us all to join into, let's join into it and fight for a world free from oppression.
Those who want to take on the challenge of revolution need to deeply begin studying and summing up the struggles that came before us, to launch many new kinds of struggle, to form many new groups and collectives - with all of this aimed at contributing to our ultimate goal of a liberated future.
For so long, so many of us have not stepped out because we believed that nothing else was possible. Let's go up against all of that together, and show people these are not the choices, revolution is possible! Together, our generation can build an active, radical, and unapologetically revolutionary movement. It's possible to rebel against the system, and show everyone that things don't have to be this way! In theory and in practice, let's work toward the kind of serious revolutionary organization to bring the kind of world we're dreaming of into being. There is much to do.
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revolutionaries in Nepal
Theoretically and organizationally, we are still very young, and we shouldn't have illusions about that. In all of our work, our aim is to lay the basis for a new revolutionary movement in this part of the world. A movement to unleash a wave of communist revolution unlike anything seen in this part of the world. We want to ignite the sparks to start a second prairie fire, building from the experience of previous radical movements. It is true that "we are the ones we have been waiting for." Let's set out on this journey!
