From the “Second Grade Strategy Manual”
When lots of different people are involved in real struggles on the social level, but their paths aren’t connected, this is a problem. Their work isn’t strategic because it isn’t an organized struggle reaching beyond its immediate environment. At the level of society, we can’t exclude anyone, especially not within a revolutionary project that has to be popular and requires large-scale participation. Since a revolutionary project consists of more than one major event, building Popular Power means constant movement forward. This kind of movement within a broader project requires militants to be organized in a specific organization.
The path that a specific organization follows has to be related to the conditions of a more or less stable general situation, but when there is no way forward, another one must be fought for and produced through struggle.
Another way to say this is that a political organization has to project itself into the future if it wants to be effective. As long as things are mostly the same, this projection is useful and can be effective. If things change drastically, the way of projecting itself into the future has to change as well.
It can be difficult to determine what counts as a relevant factor in a situation. So, we have to regularly ask ourselves if we’re missing any important perspectives in our strategic planning. Through conjunctural analysis, a revolutionary organization can better understand the political climate, which is characterized by the degree of popular support and the strength of reactionary forces. It’s also important to remember that a situation looks different to one organization than it does to another, raising two more questions: what is a strategic point of view, and where would it ideally be positioned?
The specific path for working together with dangerous forces in society is complicated and uncertain. There won’t be a single way of dealing with these issues. This points back to the need for organizational unity and ideological commitment, to know what we’re fighting for and why we’re fighting.
Still, without consistent militant organizing, we sometimes have to start from zero, which can make this all seem very idealistic and not necessarily applicable. It’s hard to see past the most basic and immediate needs. This is why the strategic line needs to take these needs into account.
CES 