to gain control and create community unless radicals describe the possibilities. —To create a new generation of radicals means to be the arena in which they, as individuals, can grow to become that new generation. —The socialist movement must be able to define and articulate the goals of the immediate post-revolutionary period because these goals cannot be developed through spontaneous activity.
The potentialities of the productive forces which are reflected by revolutionary consciousness are the potentialities that have been historically realized. The world revolutionary movement has produced a body of ideas drawn from objective reality and tested in political struggle. —Neither that experience nor its language should be rejected out of hand. Those phrases are laden with the historical experience of the revolutionary socialist movement —Every revolution is different, because every country has a different history and different sets of conditions. But some revolutionary principles are valid beyond the bounds of particular countries. —In short, the function of a revolutionary is to understand the direction and 'laws of motion' of society in order to change it —All great movements, whether they be of religious or of political character, have to ascribe their enormous successes only to the realization and to the application of these principles, but especially all durable successes are unthinkable without considering these laws.
The key issue is the development of consciousness, confidence and leadership. However, at a high level of development of productive forces, responses to the social order have not been conducive to the application of the modern revolutionary model, they have not given rise to leadership and the struggle for state power, or even to minimally defined revolutionary organizations. That is slow and difficult when you are working with people who are not radical intellectuals. —We need to come to grips with our historic function. —Our contribution to the general popular movement is that (1) we name the system; (2) we explain why the capitalist system needs wars of intervention to survive; (3) we point to the necessity of a revolutionary transfer of power in all capitalist institutions; (4) we discuss openly the road to power, including the shape of the alternative society we wish to build, (5) we build our independent forms of organization which can present our views. —To make a revolution in the U.S. you
54
