Page:Michael Velli - Manual For Revolutionary Leaders - 2nd Ed.djvu/68

 sually people who are brought political awareness initially through a confrontation with the System sink into political inactivity because there is no organization into which they can be integrated which has a total analysis of America. The further an individual's daily activity is removed from society's productive forces, the less the individual's response depends on the level of development of the productive forces, the more it depends on organization, leadership and ideology. ''—The left cannot effectively operate without a coherent ideology capable of explaining our own country. From this ideology should flow a program of action to build a constituency capable of forming an alliance with the most radical sections. —The degree of unified class consciousness among the oppressed necessary for engaging in organizing efforts based on a revolutionary class analysis does not yet exist —The anti-imperialist organization we envision would see as one of its major functions the development of radical political consciousness on a broad scale. This means that independent radical forces would have to deaf with socialist political theory and elevate theory to the respectable position to which it is entitled. Without a theory of social change events are perceived in a vacuum, unrelated to other events. —The socialist movement must struggle against those things that continue to divide the proletariat. —Who are our friends and who are our enemies? This is the question of fundamental importance to the revolution. —What is needed is a theory of imperialism. —It is part of the genius of a great leader to make adversaries of different fields appear as always belonging to one category only, because to weak and unstable characters the knowledge that there are various enemies will lead only too easily to incipient doubts as to their own cause. —Proceeding from this assumption, the logical starting point for any discussion of American foreign policy is the classical Marxist interpretation of imperialism, as formulated by Lenin in 1916. —The principal contradiction in the world today is that between U.S. imperialism and the nations it oppresses. —The name of the system we live within is imperialistic monopoly capitalism. We have labeled the official rhetoric of that system 'corporate liberalism.' —U.S. imperialistic ventures have served to radicalize the dissenters. —It is essential to translate 'anti-draft consciousness' into an understanding of the social and political manifestations of imperialism. —The function of a revolutionary in a pre-revolutionary period is to move people into action, to raise their revolutionary and class consciousness, to move them into new forms of action besed on a new consciousness. —For to lead means: to be able to move masses. —Here we need to be clear: dogmatism is not a matter of rigidly and aggressively fighting for a particular political analysis or position. —The efficiency of the truly national leader''