top of page

THE SHORT TERM GOAL

The short term goal of the egalitarian revolutionary movement is to win improvements in our lives quickly, and--as explained below--the WAY to achieve this short term goal is to increase the size of the egalitarian revolutionary movement itself.

 

The egalitarian revolutionary movement's short term goal is the same as the goal of countless people today who are fighting for all sorts of improvements: a $15/hr minimum wage, stopping evictions caused by gentrification, better pay and working conditions and benefits at work, affordable health care and college education that doesn't drive working class people into debt slavery, an end to unjust wars and an unjust foreign policy that attacks innocent people and supports their oppressors, and many similar reform demands large and small.

One way that the egalitarian revolutionary movement strengthens these reform struggles is by increasing public support for them, as discussed here.

Furthermore, the stronger the egalitarian revolutionary movement grows, the more fearful the ruling class becomes that the only way to prevent a revolution is either to grant people their reform demands or else rely on increasingly overt repression. Sometimes the rulers do choose repression but this poses a danger to them because it risks polarizing society even further and drawing yet more people to oppose the ruling class and favor the idea of revolution.

The most important reforms that have been won in U.S. history were won when the ruling class feared that a serious, explicitly revolutionary movement was developing and that in order to prevent an actual revolution it was necessary to give people what they were demanding.

 

This is why President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave us the New Deal's legal right to form a labor union, government-sponsored employment of the unemployed, unemployment compensation and Social Security (read the details about this here). This is why the U.S. Congress with all its racist members voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and abolished the racist Jim Crow Laws.  This is why the warmonger President Nixon pulled troops out of Vietnam in 1975 in an ignominious (for the ruling class!) defeat.

 

Had the ruling class not seen increasingly revolutionary movements "on the streets" at these times, there would have been no granting of these reforms.

This is why those who believe that the best way to win reforms is by avoiding any mention of egalitarian revolutionary aspirations are mistaken. The exact opposite is true. When the ruling class is comfortable in knowing it has no reason to fear revolution, then it is comfortable in refusing to grant any reform demands.

The larger the explicitly egalitarian revolutionary movement is, the more afraid the ruling class will be of NOT granting reform demands. What frightens the rulers most is when  large numbers of people declare that they aim for no less than to remove the rich from power to have real, not fake democracy, with no rich and no poor.

There is both a short term and a long term goal in building the egalitarian revolutionary movement. The short term goal (winning reform demands) may make life better, but the problem is that as long as the ruling class remains in power it will take back tomorrow what we win today. In this sense we remain on a treadmill of defeat until we achieve our long term goal of egalitarian revolution.

Even if one feels that the long term goal's attainment is too far in the future to justify devoting time and energy towards building the egalitarian revolutionary movement today, please keep in mind that the short term goals are also an important reason for working to build the egalitarian revolutionary movement.

bottom of page