Peter Camejo : " How to Make a Revolution in the United States " ( 1969 )

Peter Camejo, 1969 How to make a revolution in the United States Source : Speech at an educational conference of the US Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialist Alliance, May 3, 1969, printed in abridged form in The Militant, May 30, 1969 Transcription and mark-up : by Steve Painter [Revolutionary socialists have been accused for many years of wanting to overthrow the US government by force and violence. When they accuse us of this, what they are really trying to do is to imply that we want to abolish capitalism with a minority, that we want to force the will of the minority on the majority. The opposite is the truth. We believe we can win a majority of the people in this country to support a change in the system. It will be necessary to make a revolution precisely because the ruling powers will not peacefully accept a majority rule which wants a basic change. How can a revolution involving a majority of the people actually take place in the United States? This is the question I want to discuss today. First of all, you have to have clear in your mind the meaning of the word “revolution”. Many people have a stereotyped picture of what a revolution is like. They say a revolution is when people come with guns, when they surround a fortress or take over a city. What they do is they confuse revolution with insurrection. Insurrection is just one stage of revolution. Revolution is a lot more. It’s a long process. In a certain way you can make a parallel between revolution and pregnancy. In the very early stages of pregnancy, if just on empirical evidence you ask whether or not someone is pregnant, the answer will be no. However, with the use of science you can determine whether the person is pregnant very early. Later on it becomes evident for everybody to see. The same thing is true of social revolution. In the early stages most people don’t see it. You always begin on the assumption that in every society that needs a revolution, the majority of the people don’t think it’s possible. This is most certainly true for the period in American history we are in right now. We’re in the early stages of the third American revolution. I say the third revolution because we’ve had two others — the revolution of 1776 and the civil war.]