Have you noticed how words have a tendency to lose their original meaning and evolve to a point where once disrespectable terms fall into widespread use by more respectable sections of society? Many examples could be given but we will concentrate, for now, on the word “revolution.”
Are you old enough to remember the times when the very sound of revolution conjured up images of bushy-bearded, long-haired ogres with pockets filled with bombs? When one immediately pictured blood and gore coursing down the gutters? Well, it is true that there are as many bushy-bearded and long-haired people around today, if not more. And some of them possibly do fall into the category of violence advocates. But whatever the extent of bloodshed and cracked skulls in the violent demonstrations of today it has been established beyond doubt that the overwhelming bulk comes from those who are hired to protect “our” institutions, not destroy them — the police and military. Nevertheless, the terrible turmoil that is going on today around the world is widely termed “revolution” and the word has become respectable in the black communities, among the youth, and throughout the mass media.
Scientific socialists reject this meaning. It is completely out of tune with revolutionary socialist thought and has nothing whatever to do with the theories and tactics of the founders and heirs of Marxian socialism This could have a lot to do with the widespread recognition and even occasional toleration of the so-called revolutionaries by the ruling class, itself. One can view black “revolutionaries” and white “revolutionaries” just about any night in the week these days on TV. One can read thousands and thousands of words devoted to them and by them any day in the press. One can listen to and read the “revolutionary” words of preachers, rabbis, priests and even nuns. Everybody seems to be classified as some sort of revolutionary And yet, there is one acid test that can be applied that will give fast results in placing them in their true category. The test would run somewhat like this.
You say you are a revolutionary, that you are anti-establishment; that you want to overthrow the “system.” Let’s see what you mean?
By the “Establishment" do you mean the capitalist class as an economic category or are you referring to the particular representatives and members of this class who now hold and exercise power? Are you asking for the abolition of the “Establishment” as an economic category or are you merely asking for new and what you would call revolutionary substitutes for this establishment?
And just what do you mean by “system?" Are you talking about the organization of society on the basis of ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by a minority of the population, as it is today? Are you advocating that the earth and everything on it and in it shall become the common property of all mankind and that all of mankind shall have free access to its wants and needs? Are you advocating, in other words, the immediate abolition of the wages system — of buying and selling, production for sale on the market with view to profit? Of the end to all arbitrary divisions of the population on the basis of skin color and ethnic background? Do you mean that you favor an immediate end to all national boundaries and the establishment of a world based upon human brotherhood?
If you recoil either in horror or in amusement at words such as these you are no revolutionary. You are merely advocating more of the same that we now have with different people at the top—perhaps yourselves.
But it could be that some of you do mean just these things. If so. we urge you to disengage yourselves from those who would change nothing but the rules of what we now have and the personnel of those who own and control the world. Why not join with the World Socialist Movement to bring it about?
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