From Revolution / revcom.us:What's in This Issue—A Guide to REVOLUTION, October 18, 2021October 18, 2021
Welcome to this week’s issue of REVOLUTION, the newspaper of Revcom.us. This is where you come to catch up on significant events of the last week and how they tie into the larger dynamics in the world, where you can read and dig into new work from Bob Avakian along with earlier work that bears very directly on the events we describe, and where you can find out news from the movement for revolution. This week we are publishing a new article by Bob Avakian, BA, revolutionary leader and author of the new communism: “Living Marxism vs. Vulgarized Marxism, Liberating Revolution, Not Lifeless Reformism.” BA takes on the widespread distortion of Marxism which claims Marx spoke only to “class,” and not oppressive social relations like white supremacy and male supremacy. He shows how this is wrong and concisely and clearly goes through the keystones of the science founded by Marx and Engels, and as it was further developed by Lenin and Mao, to refute it. And BA goes into the further work that he has done in bringing forward the new communism—including, but not limited to, the ways in which this new communism analyzes and gives emphasis to how the struggles against different kinds of oppression form “indispensable components and powerful driving forces in the communist revolution.” This should be distributed widely and gotten into with all kinds of people, especially people now getting interested in the revolution. In “Blitzkrieg of Hateful New Laws and Measures in Texas: Marching Toward a Fascist AmeriKKKa” (here) along with articles on the basketball player Kyrie Irving’s controversial—and reactionary—refusal to be vaccinated for COVID-19 (here and here), we get into some of the ways that fascists are moving to increase their power and influence in society. (While Irving himself is not a fascist, his reactionary, selfish stance on COVID is being welcomed and used by the fascists.) These events form part of a larger and very important picture. As A DECLARATION, A CALL TO GET ORGANIZED NOW FOR A REAL REVOLUTION put it: Revolutions are not possible all the time, but are generally possible only in rare times and circumstances, especially in a powerful country like this. This is one of those rare times and circumstances. This system is in real trouble, caught up in crisis and conflicts for which it has no easy or lasting solutions. Throughout this country the workings of this system have given rise to deep divisions which cannot be resolved under this system. Society is being ripped apart. Those who rule are locked in a bitter fight among themselves, and they cannot hold things together in the way they have in the past. Although there are a lot of bad things connected with this and it could lead to something really terrible, it is also possible that we could wrench something really positive out of it— revolution, to put an end to this system and bring something much better into being.
Why this is so is gone into greater depth in THIS IS A RARE TIME WHEN REVOLUTION BECOMES POSSIBLE—WHY THAT IS SO, AND HOW TO SEIZE ON THIS RARE OPPORTUNITY, by Bob Avakian, and we again urge everyone to get into both this and the Declaration and Call in an ongoing way. Doing that will enable you to put what we cover about current events in the world each week into perspective. This summer has driven home the reality of climate change and people have begun—and really just begun—to get a sense of the horror this will actually mean. In two weeks, on October 31, the great powers of the world will assemble in Glasgow, Scotland, to bicker and bargain over what to do about this, while the earth and its precious web of life continues to burn. But what will—what must—WE do? Read "As the World Burns and Its Rulers Fiddle in Glasgow… A CALL TO THOSE WHO WANT A RADICALLY DIFFERENT FUTURE FOR HUMANITY"—and then spread this everywhere where people are getting together to protest Glasgow and talk about what must be done. In the mid-1990s, Bob Avakian initiated the idea of a national day of protest against police brutality, repression, and the criminalization of a generation. This got taken up and during the late '90s and into the next century thousands of people in scores of cities would come into the streets in protest each year on this day. Today this horror continues as a running sore of this system—with new videos of atrocities committed by the pigs surfacing every week, new exposures of their widespread murders, brutalities and cover-ups coming to light all the time, and over two million people—disproportionately "minority"—still in prison, with many millions more either stigmatized for having been in prison, or under parole, probation or some other form of state control, or both. To mark this day this year, we are publishing a new version of the Stolen Lives Poster (go here) and featuring a number of important articles and clips on this from Bob Avakian over the past year. Shortly before publication, REVOLUTION received a powerful letter from Mariam Claren, the daughter of Iranian political prisoner Nahid Taghavi (here). If you have not heard of Nahid before—or if you have, and you have been following her case—you are going to want to read this latest letter from her daughter on the one-year anniversary of her imprisonment by the Iranian government for political reasons. Find out about the campaign to burn the cages and free all the political prisoners held by the reactionary Iranian regime. That gives you some sense of what is new in this issue of REVOLUTION and where you can go to find out more. Other articles cover how the Supreme Court’s current refusal to act against the new Texas law which effectively outlaws abortion echoes a decision from 150 years ago that gave a green light to lynch mob terror ("Texas's Abortion Ban and Lessons from the 1873 Supreme Court Decision that Green Lighted Lynch Mob Terror") and the latest in the Biden Administration’s more hidden but just-as-heartless-in-the-end policy toward immigrants ("Forced Back to Mexico: U.S. Drives Haitian Refugees Even Deeper Into Hell"). Finally, we’re posting today a call to a mass meeting next Sunday called by the Revolution Club LA; check your local Revolution Club for listings. To find out more about the Revolution Club, go here. | 
