Page:Michael Velli - Manual For Revolutionary Leaders - 2nd Ed.djvu/66

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If we are serious about power, we must recognize that organization is necessary not only to assist people, but to organize around and give political content to all the alternatives. —Style and methods of organizing must always flow out of ideology and political strategy. If we don't keep that clearly in mind, we'll tend toward reformism or mere populism. —New Left resistance federations in urban and regional areas across the country would solve many of our problems of isolation, communication, coordination and the need for collective forms of work. One could find the discipline of collective work concurrently with the autonomy of a federated form. If certain organizers or their constituents find irrelevant or disagree with a certain program or action agreed on by others within the structure, they simply do not associate themselves with it. Since the structure is transitional rather than permanent, the whole apparatus would at some time dissolve itself with many of its constituent parts forming the basis of a revolutionary party. —At this early stage, the organization exists primarily to exchange information between groups and individuals already engaged in organizing. Our eventual goal is to assist in creating a revolutionary mass organization with a working class perspective which will at the appropriate time join with similar organizations to forge a revolutionary party in this country. To move toward this goal, we must form collectives organized around a revolutionary program and series of demands. —What kind of relationships should exist between the collectives? At first the relationship will involve little more than exchange of information and experience, and perhaps some joint regional political activity when it seems useful. Eventually, however, the collectives should relate to each other on the basis of democratic centralism.

Ihave tended to regard national demonstrations as relatively insignificant in comparison to the task of creating permanent local organization. I see us moving from strong local projects to regional structures to some kind of functional equivalent to a radical national party. —A new kind of organizer and a new kind of project must be supported: an organizer who reinforces existing organizers; a project the purpose of which is to serve existing projects. There is a need for city, county, and regional institutions which create an atmosphere sensitive to the needs of organizers, help them to break down their mutual isolation, enlarge the range of

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