New Member Education

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Class 1: Understanding the Process of Change
• Class 2: The Revolutionary Process
• Class 3: The Reality We Face
• Class 4: Our New Class, Our New Ideas
• Class 5: Race in America: A Changing, but Central Question
• Class 6: New Class and Communism
• Class 7: Fascism and the Role of the State
• Class 8: The League

Introduction:

The United States has seen moments of major social struggle and change. Today’s revolution is different. Social revolution destroys a system, its institutional foundations, its old social order. It transfers power from an old ruling class to new social forces. The movement the ruling class is confronting this time is qualitatively different than in the past.

“Transformation from electro-mechanical industry requiring human labor to operate gigantic means of industrial production to digitally controlled production requiring little or no human labor is the determining content of our time.” - Program of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America

New means of production are creating a new class. This class cannot survive without overthrowing the system and instituting a cooperative communist society. History is made by those who understand the vital role of actively struggling for what they believe in. Unorganized individuals can do nothing. Meaningful activity can only be carried out through organizations, and organizations mean nothing without serious members.

The League of Revolutionaries for a New America, your League, is a democratically based collective of revolutionaries. Its program and ideas come from the constant study of actual social and economic motion. They politically express the profound economic revolution that is reshaping the world. The ruling class will use every means at its disposal to protect private property and to maintain its power. They will corral, disorient and dissipate, or they will crush the movement of the new class.

As far as we know, the United States is the only country known to have prohibited the education of the enslaved. First, the Stono Rebellion in South Carolina in 1739 (the largest slave uprising in the British colonies) was the catalyst for legal measures to be taken against those who taught slaves to read or write. Later, the slave revolt led by Nat Turner in Virginia in 1831, resulted in virtually all the slave states passing laws against teaching slaves to read and write. There were many reasons for severe punishment. Teaching slaves to read and write was a means of communication, a means of planning. The impulse to learn and teach connected people, slaves, former slaves and whites. But we know the real reason this was dangerous to the slave system: teaching slaves to read and write would threaten the social order.

This is the reason we study, and read, and write.

This is a series of eight classes that go over some of the things the League has developed and is based on. Things we need to think about, develop further, strategize about and constantly update. We hope this series will be the first of many that you are a part of. We’d like to welcome you again. We need to your constant feedback and input to fight forward to a New America.