historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process. —Ideology, then, should not be a mechanical thing—but flexible, able to change with conditions: and the product of study, analysis, and re-analysis of the actual situation. This is what needs to be done—the development of an analysis and theory to give us a basis for understanding what is happening in society, why it is happening, and what are the best methods to bring about change. We must begin to talk about short and long term strategy and the development of a political theory on which to base our actions.
Very few activists besides utter neophytes and a few sundry anarchists doubt the eventual need for a Radical Ideology. If none were evolved, what strategy could ever be worked out for social change? How could we tell people the 'why' of our activism? Most important, what real alternative could we offer to those, present and future, who are fed up with the emasculation and depravity of the present system? —Underlying all our work should be the intensification and growth of the consciousness of unfreedom and the desire for liberation among millions of ordinary Americans. Our job is to destroy the false consciousness of the U.S. middle-class ethos, to remedy the failure of most Americans to perceive their situations in terms of oppressive class relationships. —Radicals should seek to develop programs and activity that increase people's awareness and build a vision of a better society. —People up to now have always formed a concept of man, and then won freedom for themselves to the extent that was necessary to realize this concept; the measure of freedom that they achieved was determined each time by their idea of the ideal of man at the time. —People must find their way out of the restricted perspectives imposed by their condition and toward the light of overview, of understanding. —It is necessary to begin the theoretical work on which such a movement can be based.
We have to expose the American forms of alienation from the dominant values and ideas of corporate society, and translate these into class struggle terms so that —the idea, the conception of the people in question about their real practice, is transformed into the sole determining, active force which controls and determines their practice. —What we need to be doing at this stage of the game is building radical or revolutionary consciousness. —Hitherto men have constantly made up for themselves false conceptions about themselves,
56
