First Published: THE FREE YOU, a Palo Alto, Calif., newspaper, December 16, 1970. Reprinted in Red papers 4
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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We know that the program of a revolutionary organization at any time is less important than conscientious application to serving the people; to practicing criticism and self-criticism in summing up its work; and to developing a thorough struggle against bourgeois self-interest in membership and leadership, and against opportunism in organizational affairs. (RED PAPERS 1)
Many members of the Revolutionary Union, including the entire membership in the area between San Francisco and San Jose, want to carry out these ideas in our work. We want to advance the line we took in RED PAPERS 1, 2, and 3. We will not retreat from that line; we will only advance from it.
We support the Black Panther Party and recognize it as the vanguard of the American revolution. We want to unite with the Black Panther Party in every way possible. We recognize that Blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Native Americans form nations just as much as the Vietnamese do, and we support their national liberation struggles. We consider attacks on them to be attacks on us, and intend to respond to them with guns and our lives. We intend to join with our comrades in Vietnam in response to any escalation of the genocidal war against their people. We realize that the U.S. is in a state of developing fascism, and that the only way to keep fascism from being consolidated is to fight it and destroy it.
We believe that armed struggle is an actuality now, not an eventuality.
We believe that the only way to unite the proletariat, the poor and working people, is around the struggles of the most oppressed people, that is, around national liberation struggles.
We base ourselves on the needs of the most oppressed people.
We believe that anybody who’s not a pig can be a revolutionary. We will work with anybody and respect them equally.
We believe the militant struggle of women for liberation is one of the main spearheads of the United Front Against Imperialism. We want to participate fully in it. We believe, that women’s leadership is necessary in a revolutionary organization not just for the sake of mechanical equality, but because women have a quick and material understanding of oppression through their own experience of oppression.
We believe in democratic centralism, not bureaucratic centralism. A revolutionary organization must serve the people; whenever there is any retreat from serving the people, it becomes bureaucratic.
We are Marxist-feminists because that is the tool through which all oppressed people will win their freedom.
But the RU leadership in some areas has consolidated a revisionist line in the organization. They do not support the Black Panther Party. They base themselves not on the needs of the most oppressed, but on the fully employed factory workers. They believe the U.S. is a “bourgeois democracy,” not a developing fascist state. They deny the national liberation struggles of Black and Chicano people, and back off from supporting them concretely. They believe white revolutionaries can wait for armed struggle. They put down the women’s movement, and don’t develop women’s leadership. They don’t see Marxism-Leninism as a living tool to serve the people, but as an abstract dogma.
We want to be free to spend our time dealing with the enemy instead of arguing with revisionists and defending ourselves within the RU. Therefore, we have left the RU so we can hold onto the principles of RED PAPERS 1, 2, and 3, and serve the people, learn from the people, become one with the people.
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
DEATH TO THE FASCIST PIGS!