Page:Michael Velli - Manual For Revolutionary Leaders - 2nd Ed.djvu/77

 able to see ourselves, or some of us, governing this nation and having the capacity and the skills to do it, then no one else will either. As a form of personified power, the Movement finds it necessary to reconstitute the personified power of community, the State, and to magnify this power by enriching it with productive power. ''—Many are becoming conscious of the need to transform the protest movement into a revolutionary movement—a movemant that would be more than a thorn in the side of the ruling class; a movemant capable of destroying that class and creating a new society; a movement that is not primitive, fragmented and directionless, but one guided by a revolutionary party based on Marxist-Leninist principles. —Marxist-Leninist principles are phrases laden with the historical experience of revolutionary parties based on Marxist-Leninist principles. These principles do not belong to the period when scientific communism was being evolved,'' the period when Marx wrote his works on alienation, division of labor, commodity production and ideology, the period when Marx wrote that "the conditions of life which different generations find in existence decide whether or not the periodically recurring revolutionary convulsion will be strong enough to overthrow the basis of the entire existing system. And if these material elements of a complete revolution are not present (namely, on the one hand, the existing productive forces, on the other the formation of a revolutionary mass which revolts not only against separate conditions of society up till then but against the very 'production of life' till then, the 'total activity' on which it was based), then, as far as practical development is concerned, it is absolutely immaterial whether the idea of this revolution has been expressed a hundred times already, as the history of communism proves." These early works only represent an important stage in the development of the philosophical and theoretical foundations of the Marxist party; they come before the fully mature works of Marx and Engels. The Marxist-Leninist principles are based exclusively on the fully mature works, which treat Imperialism as the Last Stage of Capitalism, which deal with Revolutionary Ideology, and which point out the necessity and historic inevitability of the party's seizure of state power. These fully mature works are the source of the phrases laden with historical experience that constitute Marxism-Leninism; they provide the foundation for the insight that ''—conditions are never premature for a revolutionary party, if it has the right political and organizational strategy. —These conditions for the development of a revolutionary party in this country are the main 'conditions' for winning. —A popular radical party should be organized in this country with a distinct anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist point of view.''