Revolutionary Possibilities – Lessons from the League of Revolutionary Black Workers for transforming capitalism and fascist rule

• In Event: Marxist Sociology Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

Capitalist crises in this moment – economic, social, ecological, political, and personal – and the violent reign of state terror and fascist rule threaten the survival of our communities, humanity, and the planet. We are in an epochal class war informed by U.S. and global historical realities – but new in relation to the digital and AI technological revolution, the resulting antagonism and rupture between capital and labor, and ecocide of the earth. Our struggle requires uprooting the cause of these crises and epochal rupture, of death and destruction – uprooting the capitalist system and 4the system of private property itself.

We draw on critical lessons from the 50+ year political journey of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in the Detroit auto plants, communities, and schools in the 1960s and 70s to the League of Revolutionaries for a New America today. Lessons about 1. the necessity of collective study, applied Marxism, and working-class intellectuals, 2. deeply knowing the revolutionary process and the world as it really is, 3. gasping the centrality of the South, state terror, and white supremacy, 4. understanding the ongoing technological revolution and globalization of production, extraction, distribution, and communication, 5. recognizing forms of class superexploitaton, genocide, ecocide, and fascism historically and today.

Revolutionary possibilities in this moment embrace revolutionary class consciousness, vision of a new world arising, and transformative strategy. Know the class enemy and know ourselves as a multiracial and multigender, multinational and multigenerational working class. Engage collective praxis rooted in our understanding that working-class unity is essential to take the offensive in this moment to protect, defend, and meet the basis needs of our communities, to organize the multiple forces in motion, to study and evaluate our work, to develop tactics of the day-to-day struggle, strategy and clarity about the long and difficult path to power.

Authors

• Walda Katz-Fishman, LRNA/Howard University, Retd.

• Jerome Scott, League of Revolutionaries for a New America