Power

Violence, Morality and Change. Part 2.

Morning Comrades.

Thank you for your feedback on the Wednesday’s dispatch, that is always extremely well-received, especially when I feel like I go off to the deep end. Thank you. To continue with that train of thought straight of the bat, today is going to be less theoretical and more centred in today and the questions “power” brings along with it, what they mean to us and what to do about it all.

Again, we start off with the premise that our existence, as it is imposed on us, cannot continue the way it has. I am going to refrain from calling out those that cannot get behind that statement, but to be sure, this here, isn’t for you.

One of the fundamental truths we have to accept when speaking of power and change is that, our entirety of existence is based on coercion and violence. From the grand scale of universal existence to the overdraft charges from your bank, that, obviously, only apply to us working poor.

If we accept that the entirety of existence that we want to change is based on violent coercion we have to address the fact that nothing but violence will bring about change. As Assata Shakur so clearly said:

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them”

- and they were absolutely correct in the statement. It is a reality in on itself that even as I type this I had a knee jerk reaction, that I am sure that most of you can relate to, that is easily summarized by: but violence will never change anything or, if you chose violence than you are no better than those that you are fighting. I can’t deny that those thoughts immediately sprang to mind. We have to understand that this imposed moral standard comes from those using said violence to keep reality as it is and of course it is in their very real interest that we, us subjugated, “feel” obliged to maintain a sense of moral superiority. That reality itself is manufactured to obscure the fact that those in power have none of these feelings. The ruling classes are fully aware of what they are doing and what needs to be done, and it is nigh on time that we do the same.

As Mao so aptly said:

“Communists do not fight for personal military power (they must in no circumstances do that, and let no one ever again follow the example of Zhang Guotao), but they must fight for military power for the Party, for military power for the people. As a national war of resistance is going on, we must also fight for military power for the nation. Where there is naivete on the question of military power, nothing whatsoever can be achieved. It is very difficult for the labouring people, who have been deceived and intimidated by the reactionary ruling classes for thousands of years, to awaken to the importance of having guns in their own hands. Now that Japanese imperialist oppression and the nation-wide resistance to it have pushed our labouring people into the arena of war, Communists should prove themselves the most politically conscious leaders in this war. Every Communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."

So here it goes.