http://www.archive.org/stream/YouDontNeedAWeathermanToKnowWhichWayTheWindBlows/weather_djvu.txt
You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows
Submitted by Karin Asbley, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, John
Jacobs, Jeff Jones, Gerry Long, Home Machtinger, Jim Mellen,
Terry Robbins, Mark Rudd and Steve Tappis.
From /New Left Notes/, June 18, 1969
I. International Revolution
The contradiction between the revolutionary peoples of Asia, Africa and
Latin America and the imperialists headed by the United States is the
principal contradiction in the contemporary world. The development of
this contradiction is promoting the struggle of the people of the whole
world against US imperialism and its lackeys.
Lin Piao, Long Live the Victory of People's War!
People ask, what is the nature of the revolution that we talk about-
Who will it be made by, and for, and what are its goals and strategy-
The overriding consideration in answering these guestions is that
the main struggle going on in the world today is between US
imperialism and the national liberation struggles against it. This
is essential in defining political matters in the whole world: because
it is by far the most powerful, every other empire and petty dictator
is in the long run dependent on US imperialism, which has unified,
allied with, and defended all of the reactionary forces of the whole
world. Thus, in considering every other force or phenomenon,
from Soviet imperialism or Israeli imperialism to "workers struggle"
in France or Czechoslovakia, we determine who are our friends and
who are our enemies according to whether they help US imperialism
or fight to defeat it.
So the very first question people in this country must ask in
considering the question of revolution is where they stand in relation
to the United States as an oppressor nation, and where they stand in
relation to the masses of people throughout the world whom US
imperialism is oppressing.
The primary task of revolutionary struggle is to solve this principal
contradiction on the side of the people of the world. It is the
oppressed peoples of the world who have created the wealth of this
empire and it is to them that it belongs; the goal of the revolutionary
struggle must be the control and use of this wealth in the interests of
the oppressed peoples of the world.
It is in this context that we must examine the revolutionary struggles
in the United States. We are within the heartland of a worldwide
monster, a country so rich from its worldwide plunder that even the
crumbs doled out to the enslaved masses within its borders provide for
material existence very much above the conditions of the masses of
people of the world. The US empire, as a worldwide system, channels
wealth, based upon the labor and resources of the rest of the world,
into the United States. The relative affluence existing in the United
States is directly dependent upon the labor and natural resources of
the Vietnamese, the Angolans, the Bolivians and the rest of the
peoples of the Third World. All of the United Airlines Astrojets,
all of the Holiday Inns, all of Hertz's automobiles, your television set,
car and wardrobe already belong, to a large degree to the people of
the rest of the world.
Therefore, any conception of "socialist revolution" simply in terms of
the working people of the United States, failing to recognize the full
scope of interests of the most oppressed peoples of the world, is a
conception of a fight for a particular privileged interest, and is a
very dangerous ideology. While the control and use of the wealth of the
Empire for the people of the whole world is also in the interests of
the vast majority of the people in this country, if the goal is not clear
from the start we will further the preservation of class society,
oppression, war, genocide, and the complete emiseration of everyone,
including the people of the US.
The goal is the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a
classless world: world communism. Winning state power in the US will
occur as a result of the military forces of the US overextending
themselves around the world and being defeated piecemeal; struggle
within the US will be a vital part of this process, but when the
revolution triumphs in the US it will have been made by the people of
the whole world. For socialism to be defined in national terms within
so extreme and historical an oppressor nation as this is only imperialist
national chauvinism on the part of the "movement."
...
