What is Revolution?

By a commentator for Tjen Folket Media.

Originally published August 3, 2020.

 This is an debate article. Analysis and viewpoints belongs to the author.

Communists are revolutionaries and often are presented with questions about what a revolution is and why we believe that it is necessary. This is an attempt to give a short and simple answer to this.

The revolution that we are for is the proletariat’s political seizure of power through war. Since Marx and Engels’ publication of the Communist Manifesto, communists have openly stated that the bourgeoisie must tremble before the communist revolution. The proletariat’s historical task is to abolish capitalism, abolish the capitalist relations of production, and this can only occur through revolution.

The revolution is on one side destruction, and on the other side construction. On one side, it is about destroying the old capitalist state. On the other side, it is about building the new socialist state. Chairman Gonzalo says that construction is the principal [main] side among the two. The revolution is, in other words, not primarily about destroying the enemy’s power, even though it is decisively important, but about constructing our own class’s power.

All states are class states. The bourgeois state was established by the bourgeoisie and is developed by them. The state, as Lenin says, is attached to the bourgeoisie by thousands of visible and invisible strings. Marx showed, after the Paris Commune of 1871, that the proletariat cannot take over the old state, but must construct their own.

Revolution is understood by Maoists today as people’s war. People’s war is the masses’ own war and is led by the communist party, which is the proletariat’s only party. The people’s war must initially destroy the enemy’s power with violence and create a vacuum of power in some areas, and eventually in more and more areas. In this vacuum of power, the proletariat must construct its own power in the form of peoples’ committees, which in the start must be clandestine (secret) and must exercise the proletariat’s state power under development. The new power resolves the problem of the masses by mobilizing the masses themselves and by basing itself on mass organizations that organize the masses, as well as on the armed power of the people’s army that is led directly by the communist party.

That revolution is inevitable is shown by all of history. No classes have voluntarily given up their power. The bourgeoisie in particular has shown that they are willing to do whatever it takes to hold onto their power. They wage wars of extermination, carry out genocides, torture people, persecute and murder, all to protect their power and their profits. This is no different in the imperialist countries, and rather the contrary. Those who wish to see examples of the brutality that the imperialists are willing to unleash on the masses can look at the US and how the Yankee state liquidated Black leaders in the 1960s and 70s. The Norwegian bourgeoisie dropped hundreds of bombs on Libya in 2011—they are willing to take things much further to hold onto their power.

Revolution, i.e. people’s war, is necessary on one side to destroy the enemy’s forces, and on the other side to build up the proletariat’s own power, to seize and defend the political power for the proletariat, and primarily the latter side. This is a universal law that applies for all countries in the world without exception.