05/10/2021
Quote created by our comrades in our Political Education committee giving us !
Inspired by Spontaneity and Organization from the International Socialist Review
But in the last year (2011), a tidal wave of resistance, coming seemingly out of nowhere, has swept across the world. First, Egypt, a country suffering under dictatorship for thirty years, was rocked by massive protests when a million people flooded into Tahrir Square and refused to leave for eighteen days until the regime fell. Thirty years—gone in eighteen days.
And this really is the question. Whether people will resist, whether they will spontaneously struggle, whether they are capable of vast acts of heroism, sacrifice, and creative innovation are not at question. Even if a generation had lost sight of these possibilities, the events of the last year have brought them back to the forefront of our attention. The question is whether we can pose an effective reality—whether substantial working-class organization, rooted in these struggles and conscious of its own aims and an understanding of the forces arrayed against it, can successfully contend for power. The struggles we have witnessed have posed the question of such power, but it is one that remains to be answered. For those of us who want to go beyond challenging an unjust and barbaric system to replacing it with one based on the solidarity, creativity, and all the human potential we have been privileged to witness in the last year, this is the task. It is by no means easy or guaranteed, but it is the only way forward.
