Yes but the poor masses of people do not remain placidly outside of those air conditioned compounds for very long when they are truly burning and starving. It doesn’t matter who or what is stationed with what lethal force to guard them against the writhing masses of angry and desperation-crazed humanity. This is what revolutions are made of.
No matter how likely lethal the jump from a burning building is, the flames lapping at the jumpers’ backs is considered a much more guaranteed and painful fate. Only in this case, the circumstances become reversed; and the masses realize (and it is the job of the communists to show them) that the jump isn’t any less lethal or painful — because what was perceived as an unstoppable force-of-nature-inferno dispassionately pushing them off the brink are actually a relative handful of… people. Soft people. Cowards and liars making conscious decisions for selfish reasons. The “fires” pushing them out the window have faces, and names, and bleed just the same as any commoner. This perspective shift, is class consciousness reaching its revolutionary apex.
The fundamental law of revolution, which has been confirmed by all revolutions and especially by all three Russian revolutions in the twentieth century, is as follows: for a revolution to take place it is not enough for the exploited and oppressed masses to realise the impossibility of living in the old way, and demand changes; for a revolution to take place it is essential that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. It is only when the “lower classes” do not want to live in the old way and the “upper classes” cannot carry on in the old way that the revolution can triumph. This truth can be expressed in other words: revolution is impossible without a nation-wide crisis (affecting both the exploited and the exploiters). It follows that, for a revolution to take place, it is essential, first, that a majority of the workers (or at least a majority of the class-conscious, thinking, and politically active workers) should fully realise that revolution is necessary, and that they should be prepared to die for it; second, that the ruling classes should be going through a governmental crisis, which draws even the most backward masses into politics (symptomatic of any genuine revolution is a rapid, tenfold and even hundredfold increase in the size of the working and oppressed masses—hitherto apathetic—who are capable of waging the political struggle), weakens the government, and makes it possible for the revolutionaries to rapidly overthrow it.
Yes but the poor masses of people do not remain placidly outside of those air conditioned compounds for very long when they are truly burning and starving. It doesn’t matter who or what is stationed with what lethal force to guard them against the writhing masses of angry and desperation-crazed humanity. This is what revolutions are made of.
No matter how likely lethal the jump from a burning building is, the flames lapping at the jumpers’ backs is considered a much more guaranteed and painful fate. Only in this case, the circumstances become reversed; and the masses realize (and it is the job of the communists to show them) that the jump isn’t any less lethal or painful — because what was perceived as an unstoppable force-of-nature-inferno dispassionately pushing them off the brink are actually a relative handful of… people. Soft people. Cowards and liars making conscious decisions for selfish reasons. The “fires” pushing them out the window have faces, and names, and bleed just the same as any commoner. This perspective shift, is class consciousness reaching its revolutionary apex.