First Published: Revolution, Vol. 4, No. 5, May 1979.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Not only is it the historic mission of our class–the proletariat, the propertyless class of wage-slaves–to make revolution. Not only must we carry out the armed uprising of the working class and its allies, uniting all who can be united against the hated capitalist enemy, to defeat and shatter it and begin the struggle to build a whole new kind of society and a whole new world, on the ashes of the old and over the stubborn, desperate resistance of those who would drag us back. Not only is it necessary to make revolution to eliminate the evils of this society and move society forward in a great leap for mankind. But more than that, it is possible to do so.
It is possible to increasingly raise the consciousness of the mass of workers and others ground down and degraded by this system, to develop and strengthen their revolutionary understanding and sense of organization as this system sinks deeper into its own slime and its parasitic, cannibalistic nature is more and more exposed. It is possible, when the time is ripe, to strike with the iron-like force of millions and deliver the decisive and crushing blows. It is possible even up against a force as powerful as our ruling class, for its power rests on the blood and bones of those it has devoured and on the backs and necks of those it has sunk its fangs into today, and it is therefore bloated and rotting with fatty degeneration. When those on whose blood this beast lives straighten their backs together, millions and hundreds of millions strong, here and throughout the world, when they resolve to devote their life-strength no longer to reproduce the conditions of their own enslavement, but to cast off and into the dust their enslavers, when they determine to shed the blood of these vampire-istic tormentors in order to be free, then our force will be overwhelming and will finally triumph. And that time will surely come!
But to bring this about, we have work to do and struggle to carry out. Not just in the future, but in an on-going way–and from today forward. Work and struggle to bring closer and to prepare the revolutionary ranks and the broadest numbers of the people for that day of reckoning.
And in the face of the situation right before us, with the stinking decay and jolting crisis of this system, with its dark shadow of world war cast ever larger and ever more menacing before us, and on the other hand with the sparks of revolution flaring now here now there into flames, we must intensify our efforts, strain against the limits and advance in giant strides. We must draw forward all those, throughout this land, who do dare to dream the dream of revolution–and make them activists for the great cause of revolution. We must rally their ranks and concentrate them into a powerful force, raising an uncompromising banner, the bright banner of revolution, awakening and influencing the millions who today hate the way this system forces them to live and how it corrupts every pore of society, and the millions more in whose minds the tremors and the death-rattle of this system are sounding ever more serious alarms and raising ever more profound questions. We must arouse, mobilize and marshal the great potential strength of all those who say they agree but that it will never happen–move them from mere agreement to concrete action to expend their energy and combined force to make it happen! And we must do so now, for great trials, great upheavals, and also great possibilities are looming before us.
Therefore,...
Here today, at this May Day demonstration, 1979, the Revolutionary Communist Party calls for a one-year campaign to build a mass, revolutionary May Day next year–on May Day, Thursday, May 1st, 1980–which will sound the first powerful salvo of revolutionary mass struggle in the ’80s. This is not a call for a general strike–as yet our movement has not reached that level–but it is a call nonetheless for all people who have their minds set on revolution not to go to work or to school, and not to remain passive, on that day, but instead to take history into their hands, to act in the revolutionary tradition of May Day and more than that to take a bold, far-reaching step toward the future.
On that day, one year from now, in major cities all over this country, class conscious workers, and together with them all others who burn with rage at oppression and with the desire to tear out oppression’s cause at its roots, will gather not only to proclaim this stand but to make it a living, driving force that will shake this country politically, on that day and afterward; that will echo and reverberate to the four corners of this country and beyond, and into every factory, neighborhood and home, in every region, city and town. On that day the enemy and the people alike will have no choice but to direct their attention to the awesome occurrence of revolutionary May Day, as thousands and thousands stride in unison through the streets, in step with the millions throughout the world fighting for the same goal, backs straight and eyes cast to the broadest and farthest horizons, holding high the standard of revolution, striking terror into the breast of the heartless rulers and quickening the pulse and arousing the imagination of millions more of the oppressed in this country, who that day will watch and listen but in the future will surge forward themselves to hold aloft this banner of revolution and finally carry it forward into battle and on to victory.
Forward with the Glorious Task of Preparing the Revolutionary Future!