Page:Michael Velli - Manual For Revolutionary Leaders - 2nd Ed.djvu/85

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of the people. Repression, thus, can be turned around and used as an offense, as, for example, in the slogan: FREE THE 21, JAIL THE REAL CRIMINALS. —People understand the symbolism in the attack and identify with it because of their own desires, often latent, to strike back. This is in symbolic miniature form the dynamic of militant action by a vanguard and then mass identification. It is not a hallucination but a fact of modern life that individuals relate to each other and to the material environment through the mediation of personified powers. —It becomes dear that setbacks to the vanguard are tremendous setbacks to the people's movement as a whole.

There is a burning need for a revolutionary socialist party which has absorbed the key lessons. —The fundamental political question of the day is: which class is to hold state power, how is it to achieve it, and what ideology will guarantee victory. —There is a general consensus amongst us that what comes next is the creation of a functional equivalent to a revolutionary party, or to say the same thing differently, the creation of a long-term strategy for achieving a socialist America which disciplines and coordinates the work of individuals and local groups. —We must take seriously the job of helping to build the party which both represents the interests of the proletariat and has a mass base among the proletariat—a governmental party, that is to say, a party which, organized itself like a government on a small scale, hopes some day to assume the reins of government upon the large scale. The revolutionary political party is a state within the state, pursuing the avowed aim of destroying the existing state in order to substitute for it a social order of a fundamentally different character. —The primary reason for such an organization is our responsibility as radicals and as revolutionaries to organize for the overthrow of the capitalist system and to replace capitalism with a socialist system.

We recognize the need for organized armed struggle against the power of the state, and assume the responsibilities of revolutionaries in the preparation of that struggle. —The movement can play a role in the development of the party by fighting anti-communism, developing communist ideology, and taking communist ideology to the mass of the people. —The people must be armed, organized and under the direction of a revolutionary party serving the working class. —The Movement must lead to the effective organi-

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