ing the development of revolutionary struggle and ideology among workers, it can help to push that development forward. —Just as on campus we must do the hard work of base-building, so radicals in factories will develop an anti-imperialist base through day-to-day struggles. The point is to develop a student movement rooted in struggles against the ways Imperialism oppresses students, increasingly pro-working class, more and more consciously allied with workers in a struggle. —The student movement is in a position to begin carrying anti-imperialist ideology to the working class. —On-the-job organizing begins in a variety of ways. Some organizers simply take jobs in strategically chosen factories. Once on the job, among the blue-collar industrial working class, they work to engage themselves in and eventually lead struggles. —Yet going into the shops requires discipline, a strong sense of goals, and adjustment to boring, repetitive and often dangerous work. —It would be foolish to expect that workers will be open to the same actions which attracted middle class college hippies, but their interests can be made into political issues. —Working-class youth do not have the options of dropping out of work or of remaining permanent students. But if they can be socialized into a new ideology, the makings of a radical industrial working class is both theoretically and practically possible. —If nothing else is gained, many workers learn to respect the students. Out of wildcats emerges a cadre of revolutionary workers who see their role as organizers laying the ground work for a mass-based working class movement. —Bringing young working people into the new left would change the 'middle class' character of the movement. This expanded and more class-conscious movement could then be a critical political force, not only on the campus but in the community and trade union struggles as well. —A few categories change. Very few activists talk about organizing 'the poor.' The discussion shifts to 'the working class' (or 'the underclass,' the unemployed or underemployed sector of the working class). The term 'middle class' likewise becomes taboo and is replaced by a variety of conceptual categories such as 'new working class,' 'university trained workers' and 'radicals in the professions.'
As with all institutions in class society, the class that holds state power determines the nature of that institution. We want to lead workers and their allies in overthrowing the bourgeois state that controls, exploits, and takes our people's lives, and we say so openly. We want socialist revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to destroy and bury imperialism. —True revolution in America is concerned with running this country and having programs to turn over the wealth and resources of the U.S. to the creative energies of the masses of the people. And until we are
75
