This excerpt from a speech by Carl Dix was printed in Revolution #61 (1991). Carl Dix was the longtime national spokesperson for the RCP, USA.

Look, we know what we’re up against. It’s a cold revolutionary fact that these imperialists are armed to the teeth and vicious. They will stop at nothing to defend their rotten setup. Taking them on and defeating them requires a certain attitude. You gotta be ready to pay the cost. To risk a lot to gain a lot. It’s going to take a lot of sacrifice. But it’s necessary and people around the world are doing it. The revolution in Peru is setting an example for us and we gotta learn from it.

In Peru, there’s a for real revolution, a people’s war, being led by the Communist Party of Peru (PCP). In the U.S. they usually call them the Shining Path, and they always call them terrorists and shit like that. But that ain’t the deal. That’s our people down there in Peru making that revolution. They jumped off the armed struggle there in 1980 and have spread it through the country in the face of everything that the government down there with backing from both the U.S. and the Soviet Union could throw at them.

I know where the PCP is coming from. I’ve participated with their people in conferences and forums put on by the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement, a movement that groups together Maoist parties and organizations from many different parts of the world. Well before they jumped off the people’s war down there, the PCP made a strict calculation that because of the nature of the enemy, a war to really liberate Peru would cost them and the masses hundreds of thousands of lives. They knew what they were entering into. But they didn’t hold back because they knew that the reactionaries who run Peru and their backers in Washington, DC, and Moscow were already killing people. And they were determined to stop this through revolution. They know the price you gotta pay to win.

The powers in this country ain’t used to dealing with this kind of stuff. They know how to deal with Panama and Grenada, or bombing Libya. Operations that are basically over and done in a few days or weeks. But they can’t handle a real people’s war or determined revolutionaries like the PCP. They freak out. And that’s why their plan to slip troops into Peru under the cover of their phony “War On Drugs” to try to crush the revolution in Peru is going to give them more than they bargained for. They got an ass whipping coming in Peru. I’m glad of it. And I’m ready to do whatever’s needed to help see to it that they get that ass whipping that they so justly deserve brought down on ’em.

SERIOUS ABOUT WINNING AND WHY YOU NEED A REVOLUTIONARY MILITARY STRATEGY

Our military strategy is based on our political line. It’s based on who we represent-the propertyless proletarians, and what our goal is-classless, communist society. There are other approaches to taking the powers on politically and militarily that are based on other political lines and on other goals, on nonrevolutionary goals.

You got approaches like that of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. I’m going to say some negative stuff about him, not because he has no principles but because he has the wrong principles. When Mandela was here, all the powers’ mouthpieces in the media were asking him when he was gonna renounce their armed struggle. Well, that’s not our question to him. Our question around South Africa was when is somebody gonna develop and carry out a real revolutionary armed struggle, one that’s based on unleashing the people who have already showed clearly that they are ready to fight and die for liberation? When is somebody gonna put guns in their hands? And when is somebody gonna do that from the perspective of smashing the apartheid regime and wiping out everything left over from white domination and imperialist control?

‘Cause for Mandela and the ANC, armed struggle meant slipping a few guerrillas into the country to blow up something here or attack a police station there, until they had caused enough trouble to force the white rulers to sit down and talk with them. This was tied to their overall demand of “one man, one vote.” As if having elections and even Black governments has stopped the U.S. from dominating other countries in Africa. In other words, armed struggle was for them a bargaining chip to get cut in on the deal. It don’t matter that they have recently decided to suspend this kind of armed struggle in order for their talks with the apartheid rulers to go forward, because their armed struggle wasn’t about liberating anybody anyway.

This ain’t a revolutionary line in South Africa, and it ain’t a revolutionary line here. It won’t lead to liberation there, and it damn sure won’t lead to liberation here.

Now we’ve seen people here in the U.S. coming up with variations on this kind of non-revolutionary military strategy. Usually it’s along the lines of what’s called urban guerrilla warfare. And this had a lot of currency at different times since the 1960s. In fact, when you talk about armed struggle this is what a lot of people think it must mean. Urban guerrilla warfare is the strategy of having a revolutionary hard core jump off the armed struggle now and engage the enemy in military operations carried out by small groups. The idea is that this would go on for a protracted period of time and keep going on until the ruling class had no choice but to make some concessions. This approach is a substitute for the only correct military strategy in a highly developed country like this, and that is to launch a mass armed insurrection in the urban centers when the political conditions are ripe, and on that basis to establish a revolutionary power which can fight a civil war against the imperialists and defeat them militarily.

You see, what’s wrong with this urban guerrilla warfare strategy is that at the best it could make some trouble for the enemy, deal them some blows here and there, but it can never overthrow them. And, at worst, like the ANC strategy, it could be part of a strategy that aims at using armed struggle and people’s sacrifice to get the enemy to come to the bargaining table and cut some of the oppressed in for a piece of the rotten set up.

Maybe people saw this movie from 1970 called The Spook Who Sat by the Door. It was about the first Black FBI agent who worked for them. And he got all this training and came back to the ghetto and organized some street gangs into a disciplined guerrilla army which started military actions against the U.S. government. As a movie this made for some exciting viewing. The sight of oppressed people taking out the man’s cops and military forces lights up my eyes. But it wasn’t a winning strategy. No matter how heroically the Spook and his forces fought-and they had a lot of commitment, that wasn’t the problem-the best that they could do with this strategy was to cause the enemy major disruptions. But they couldn’t defeat the powers. In fact, their leader came to that conclusion and limited their goals to getting the man to agree to some demands.

We can’t leave things at fucking things up for them to get them to agree to some demands. Because concessions aren’t enough, and even when we get the enemy to give in to any of our demands, as long as they’re still in power, they just take them back later.

As I said, like the PCP in Peru, we’re serious about winning. Which means we’re serious about winning the military struggle. And that’s why we reject this urban guerrilla warfare as our basic strategy and base ourselves on the strategy of people’s war adapted to the conditions of imperialist society.

LET’S NOT BE PLAYED FOR FOOLS

I know that a lot of people tell us that there other ways to solve our problems. And that some of these ways might seem better because they involve less sacrifice and hardship than going for revolution. But none of them can solve the problems we face, and many of the people who try to sell these approaches to us are like the snake oil men from the old west movies who would sell you a bottle of poison and tell you, “it’s good for what ails you.” And you got people saying that their dead end political paths are good for what ails you.

We gotta get clear on this or else we’ll never have a chance to get out from under all of this mess. This is something we learned from V.I. Lenin, the leader of the Russian revolution and one of the baddest leaders the proletariat has ever had. What he said was basically that people are going to keep on being suckered by the powers that be until they learn to figure out the class interests behind developments in society.

You see, different classes have their own nature. They have different interests around major questions and events and they put forward their own programs and ways to control or deal with things.

Look at how the capitalist rulers try to sucker us on their elections. They tell us that voting is a precious right and a great equalizer that allows even the poor to influence things. Then they tell you that the Democrats are the party that is most sensitive to the plight of poor and oppressed people. And when you stop falling for that, they trot out their Black faces and say that this is the way for Black people to change things.

Let me put it to you straight. How many more Democrats are you going to elect for this system? How many more Black faces are you going to put into high places hoping that they going to work for you when actually they work only as front men for the powers and their setup? How many more chances are you going to give this setup to prove what it has been proving to the oppressed for the last 400 years? That it is built on oppression, thrives on oppression and counts on the victims of oppression to swallow its lies and promises?

I could see you maybe falling for it the first time you voted for one of the powers’ Black front men. Maybe even the next time, too. But come on, in the last 25 years the number of Black elected officials has skyrocketed from almost none to over 7,000. But the conditions of the majority of Black people have remained stagnant or gotten worse, on virtually every front! By now can’t we see that nobody benefits from that road, except for the powers and the handful of Black people who get positions in the system by helping the powers hold the majority of the oppressed down? How many more Tom Bradleys, Coleman Youngs or David Dinkins do you need in order to realize this? Why do we still go for these puny politics and sorry slave vision? Why let them reduce us to this when we got a chance to get clear on what needs to be done and to start acting on it? Especially now, when this system, on account of its own troubles and crises, may give us the only chance we really need, the chance to rise up and do it in through revolution.

Back in the 60’s Malcolm X said, by any means necessary. Well, this is the 90’s, and I’m saying that the only means that can deal with all the problems we face is all-the-way, liberating revolution, people’s war.

THE REAL DEAL -ONLY ALL-THE-WAY REVOLUTION CAN SOLVE THE PROBLEM

Also, you got people who say economics is the key to freedom. They say that building up Black businesses, buying Black and boycotting businesses that don’t treat Black people right will change things.

First off, let’s get clear on the real deal. This is America in the 90’s and the economic setup we’re dealing with ain’t mom and pop stores on the comer but global imperialists who have monopolized whole industries and who have a stranglehold on everything in the US. and in much of the world. And you ain’t going to nickel and dime your way to the point where you can break that stranglehold.

But what is possible is that some Black capitalists and wannabe capitalists can get themselves in a better position to compete for a slice of the market for themselves and to get cut in as junior partners in the foul setup that is Amerika by appealing to racial loyalty to get themselves built up. What the Black masses get out of this is maybe a slight change in the color of who exploits you.

I know it might sound good to talk about Black people owning their own, especially after centuries of being squeezed and bled dry by brutal white profiteers. But what does it really come down to? Which Black people are going to own these Black businesses that we’re supposed to support? And how is sponsoring a few more Black capitalists going to liberate anybody?

I mean, you tell me. How is someone selling you some deodorant and shampoo going to move us closer to getting out from under all this mess, even if it’s Minister Farrakhan and he calls it Clean and Fresh? And for those people who want to focus our attention on pushing some Korean or Arab stores out of the Black community, that shit is way off the mark, too. That approach don’t deal blows to the real enemy. In fact, this approach has allowed the enemy to divert attention away from the vicious and brutal attacks the system was dealing out to Black people. And it sharpened up divisions among the people oppressed by this system.

This is another example of what Lenin said, of what I was talking about before, about how different classes, and right now I’m talking about different classes among Black people, have their own natures and interests and organize around these interests, and how we gotta see through this to our own interests.

Check it out. This past May, in New York City, while the trial of several of the murderers of Yusef Hawkins was going down, the powers and their media “discovered” a boycott of two Korean stores that had been initiated by Black activists several months earlier. The media made it front page news. That same month, speaking for the RCP, I issued a call for people of all nationalities to come down to the courthouse in Brooklyn to fight for Justice for Yusef.

Look at the outlooks behind these two battles. On the one side, you have the fight for Justice for Yusef guided by the spirit of, “Proletarians and oppressed peoples of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!” But with this boycott you have something else going on. You got some class forces in the Black community who are resentful of the fact that Koreans and other nationalities are running stores and shops that they think that THEY should be running. It’s like this is their turf and their market. And this boycott that’s being organized is guided by this kind of class outlook. You might say their slogan is “Shopkeepers of the world, cut each other’s throats, you have nothing to gain but each other’s markets.”

If this kind of line leads the struggle, we won’t get anywhere. When I say this, I don’t mean that the proletariat can’t unite with people who got this kind of class outlook and program in the struggle against the powers. We can, because the powers are coming down on them, too. But if we’re going to be able to unite everybody who can be united against the real enemy and deal them some powerful blows, our class, the proletariat, and its program have to lead the way.

If we give up leadership to other class forces, things get taken down dead end roads or stopped short of what’s needed. The best you can do with this kind of Black capitalist grabbing the Black market approach is to forge some kind of neo-colony under the thumb of this system. Countries in Africa and South America have that kind of setup today, and the people there desperately need revolution to get rid of it. You got that in the Bantustans in South Africa. Shit, we even had that here among Black people back in segregation days. This won’t even gain equality for Black capitalists under this setup. Even more, it won’t emancipate the masses of Black people or proletarians and oppressed people of all nationalities. Only the proletarian line and proletarian leadership can lead the way to real, sweet liberation. Check it out, and get down with it, sisters and brothers.

You also got some people telling you that whether you’re an immigrant, a Puerto Rican, a Chicano, or a Black youth-that without an education you might as well be dead. Our party is here to tell you that under this system, whether you have an education or not, if you’re a proletarian, it’s living death for you. We gotta bring on the death of this system so we can all live free!

Going for anything short of revolution is just playing around, promoting reformist pipe dreams and illusions. Only all-the-way revolution can deal with all this mess.