Page:Michael Velli - Manual For Revolutionary Leaders - 2nd Ed.djvu/75

 ''base among working people. —The most valuable lesson for us is that our real allies will always be in the rank-and-file, and among the unorganized workers. Committed to a Marxist position, we should give ourselves all the room possible to make our developing ideology responsive to the needs of the people. —We come on hard about our politics, telling guys that the organization is interested in workers taking power, the right of workers to control the production process and the state. —Power comes to the people when we have done our work to get the people ready to take it. —It is therefore the primary revolutionary duty of the people of the U.S. to build a militant united front against U.S. imperialism. The main force and leader of the united front must be the working class. —We will never be able to destroy U.S. imperialism unless the proletariat is brought solidly into the anti-imperialist movement. —We grant that their condition will have to deteriorate much farther before that will happen on a large scale, but we must be laying the political groundwork now for that possibility if it is ever to be actualized. LEARN FROM THE PEOPLE, SERVE THE PEOPLE, BECOME ONE WITH THE PEOPLE.''

''e will build a socialist U.S.A., with all power in the hands of the working people and their allies; build a revolutionary organization with the participation and support of millions of working men and women as well as those students, artists and intellectuals who will join with the working class to end the profit system. —Marx and Lenin both contended that working-class consciousness was measured by the degree of hegemony of revolutionary socialist parties over the majority of workers. —The working class is absolutely necessary in order seriously to challenge capitalist power. Recognizing just how far this class is from political consciousness, it would seem wise first to develop a base among constituents already in motion. —We think it necessary for individuals with a revolutionary perspective to form collectives which link up with working people and serve their class interests. —The opportunity is that we will see that the liberation movement has succeeded in infusing its energy into the labor movement, and has thus created a force in embryo which, if we understand how to relate to it, can serve as the real base for the transformation of the character of the whole Labor movement in our country, an indispensible prerequisite for making the Revolution. —Although our work is with the working class, we recognize the crucial importance of a revolutionary student movement and of linking this movement up with the working class. Our experience has shown that this can be done and that far from''