"As we wrote in Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century, rebellions are important beause they represent the standiing up of the oppressed. Rebellions break the threads that have been holding the system together. They shake up old values so that relations between individuals and groups wtihin society are unlikely ever to be the same again. But rebels see themselves and call on others to see them mainly as victims. They do not see themselves as responsible for reorganizing society, which is what the revolutionary social forces must do in a revolutionary period. They are not prepared to create the foundation for a new society. Thus, while a rebellion usually begins with the belief on the part of the oppressed that they can change things from the way they are to the way they should be, they usually end by saying, 'They ought to do this and they ought to do that.' In other words, because rebellions do not go beyond protesting injustices, they increase the dependency rather than the self-determination of the oppressed.
We also recognized that those who purport to be revolutionaries but deny or evade this lesson of history and continue to celebrate or encourage rebellions do so mainly becuase they view themselves as the leaders of angry and oppressed but essentially faceless masses. If or when they gain power, they make may some reforms, but they are powerless to make fundamental changes because they have not empowered the oppressed prior to taking power...
Jimmy and I set out to understand in a deeper manner what was exceptional aboout US history and therefore what would distinguish the next American Revolution from the revolutions in other times and other countries. In struggling to understand the uniquesness of our history, our goal differed sharply from the nation's mythology that hails the United States and its citizenry as uniquely free and democratic and thus destined to remake the world in its own image. (This is the type of American exceptionalism that drove Bush and the neocons not only to invade Iraq but also to arrogantly and falsely believe that the Iraqi people and the rest of the world would hail them as liberators rather than occupiers.) But we knew that endless rebellion against america would lead nowhere. So even as we actively opposed US imperialism, we sought to build on the revolutionary beginnings of this country and the many struggls to build a 'more perfect union' that have taken place over the past two hundred years. At the same time, by recognizing the counterrevolutionary tendenices and forces stemming from the pursuit of rapid economic growth that had been built in its founding, we were also able to recognize our need and responsibility to transform our institutions...
As our conversations continued, we became increasingly convinced that our revolution in our country in the late twentieth century had to be radically different from the revolutions that had taken place in pre- or nonindustrialized countries such as Russia, Cuba, China, or Vietnam. Those revolutions had been made not only to correct injustices but also to achieve rapid economic growth. By contrast, as citizens of a nation that had achieved its rapid economic growth and prosperity at the expense of African Americans, Native Americans, other people of color, and people's all over the world, our priority had to be in correcting the injustices and backwardness of our relationships with one another, with other countries, and with the Earth.
In other words, our revolution had to be for the purpose of accelerating our evolution to a higher plateau of Humanity. That's why we called our philosophy 'dialetical humanism' as contrasted with the 'dialectical materialism'...nearly thirty years before 9/11, the practical implications of this somewhat abstract concept of an American Revolution were spelled out by Jimmy in the chapter titled 'Dialectics and Revolution' in Revolution and Evolution in the Twenthieth Century:
The revolution to be made in the United States will be the first revolution in history to require the masses to make material sacrifices rather than to acquire more material things. We must give up many of the things which this country has enjoyed at the expense of damning over one-third of the world into a state of underdevelopment, ignorance, disease, and early death...[Until then] this country will not be safe for the world and revolutionary warfare on an international scale against the United States will remain the wave of the present...It is obviously going to take a tremendous transofmration to prepare the people of the United States for these new social goals. But potential revolutionaries can only become true revolutionaries if they take the side of those who believe that humanity can be transformed. (Jimmy Boggs, 1974)
...This means that it is not enough to organize mobilizations that call on Congress and the president to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We must also challenge the American people to examine why 9/11 happened and why so many people around the world understand, even though they do not support the terrorists, that they were driven to these acts by frustration and anger at the US role in the world, such as supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine and dictatorships in the Middle East and treating whole countries, the peoples of the world, and Nature only as resources enabling us to maintian our middle-class way of life.
We have to help the American people find the moral strength to recognize that--although no amount of money can compensate for the countless deaths and indescribable suffering that our criminal invasion and occupation have caused the Iraqi people--we, the American people, have a responsibility to make the material sacrifices that will enable them to begin rebuilding their infrastructure. We have to help the American people grow their souls enough to recognize...we are the ones who must begin to live more simply so that others can simply live."
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