Going Forward on this New Road

Many comrades are currently talking about developing 'revolutionary work in our time.' But the question is still there to be answered: what kind of work do we need in this period, anyway? Should we really just embed ourselves into mass work right now without any sense of where we're going? Or is the other extreme of doing only theoretical work without any revolutionary practice correct? We could take the road that some groups are on, and engage in hollow sloganeering and artificial self-promotion, insisting that we have the answers and the problem is that other people aren't following us. But really, we don't think these roads represent the kind of work we should go with if we really want to contribute to the revolutionary process (For more on what we mean by "revolutionary process," see the Our Declaration to Our Generation) as best we can. We feel that our revolutionary work should involve a back and forth process of struggle and practice on the one hand, and conception and re-conception of our revolutionary theory on the other.

So instead, we'd like to propose some areas of praxis in this period:

• We need to contribute to the process of theoretical conception and re-conception, both as individuals and as a collective. This will involve participating in the debates and struggles that are going on in society (from campuses, to inside mass struggles, to leftist conferences, to the Internet, etc.), listening and learning from them. Let's form revolutionary study groups, develop new revolutionary theory, jump into the debates of the leftist forums and blogosphere. Let's learn from our brothers and sisters, and make trouble for the system alongside them. We need to contribute the new ideas we are developing to this overall process on everything from revolutionary strategy to thoughts on understanding the forms of oppression of this society. As we are learning, we should try to identify both new and existing openings for practice that would advance the revolutionary struggle.

• We would like begin our revolutionary practice around the concept of internationalism, and in particular, solidarity with the revolutionary struggles happening in Asia. From Nepal, to the Philippines, to India, we need to both popularize and defend these revolutionary struggles. This is an area that is a huge source of revolutionary inspiration for people who have never seen communist revolution in their lifetimes, an example of how another world is possible, and also an upsurge that has been sadly neglected by most of the existing 'Left.' We feel that these struggles of people in the "Third World" have a particular importance in a society like this, where so many millions of people are forced from their homes to live in the very country that made their homes unlivable. We want to raise awareness about these revolutions in many different spheres, and reach out to these oppressed immigrant communities who have been so ignored by the existing 'Left,' and actually learning from them. This work will be very different from the work movements before us have done, and we will have a lot to learn as we go.

• The other area of concentration that we'd like to propose is getting involved with the student movement. In the last year alone, we've seen multiple campus occupations (for example, the NYU and the New School occupations where students seized control of those campuses in opposition to the wars of U.S. imperialism among other things), and many new student activist groups are popping up all over the country. Houston hasn't had the same kind of student movement, but we believe through the work of many committed college and high school student activists across Houston, a new student movement is beginning to emerge, and that this is something we really should try as best we can to contribute to.