Automatically Disqualified
by Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
December 9, 2012 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Editors' note: Recently there has been a great deal of discussion and controversy over two recent books about Thomas Jefferson-
Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves, by Henry Wiencek, and
Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, by Jon Meacham. In addition to being a major figure in the American Revolution and the first decades of the U.S., Jefferson was also a major slave owner and defender of the slave system. As president, he oversaw the Louisiana Purchase-the buying from France of a huge territory that now comprises part or all of 15 states, primarily in the interests of the slave owners and with the aim of spreading the brutal and murderous version of the slave system in North America into these new areas. Some of those who have been featured in the current controversy have argued that Jefferson must be "judged in the context of his times," and that-taking into account his beliefs and actions concerning slavery-he was a "flawed giant." We think the following, which is taken from parts of a recent talk by Bob Avakian, needs to be injected into this discussion. For a more thorough treatment of Jefferson and his theories, see Avakian's
Communism and Jeffersonian Democracy, RCP Publications, 2008 (also available at revcom.us).
Now, in this context it might be useful to think about the contrast-in response to a system of oppression and the possibilities offered by the oppressors-the contrast between the response of a slave who seeks at most minor changes in the conditions of slavery, or the response of the serf in the Middle Ages who cannot imagine a world without his lord and master owning the land and dominating the work and the very lives of the serfs, who cannot imagine a different world than the one in which the place of everyone, from the ruling monarch to the lowly serfs themselves, is predetermined by a supposed god and reinforced by religious dogma. All that on the one hand, but in contrast to that, the response of the conscious, scientific freedom fighter and emancipator of humanity. What the latter, the conscious freedom fighter and emancipator of humanity, knows and which the slave needs to know is that only by getting rid of the system of slavery can there be really any meaningful change in the position of the slave. And the same applies to the serf-only by abolishing that whole system can the possibility of something radically different and better be opened up. And the same is true in relation to the current system of exploitation and oppression we live under, the capitalist-imperialist system.
But we have a problem. The problem is we have a lot of bourgeois-democratic intellectuals thinking like serfs. [laughter and applause] You go out and you try to talk to them about something radically different... "No, no, no, we gotta make sure the Democrats stay in office." You say: "But the world could be a completely different way." "I can't imagine there could be anything better than our system of democracy-we just have to make it work better." "Yeah, but look, there's a whole history here of communist..." "Oh, don't talk to me about communist revolution-that was a nightmare and a horror and it just proved what I'm saying that there's nothing better than this system." Bourgeois-democratic intellectuals thinking like serfs-unable to see beyond the confines-or refusing to see beyond the confines of this system.
Now, I want to introduce a phrase into political discourse. I got it from a movie and I'll talk about that in a second. The phrase is "Automatically Disqualified." If you come up to anybody and start saying: "I want to talk about freedom and democracy," and then you want to go on and talk about our great founding fathers, you are Automatically Disqualified. [laughter and applause] I mean somebody needs to tell these people: "You do know that you're talking about slave owners, right? You do know that out of the first five presidents of the United States, four of them were slave owners. You do know that, don't you? Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe-you do know that's what we're talking about-people who owned other human beings and viciously exploited them while they were denouncing the 'slavery' the British monarch imposed on them." Automatically Disqualified.
READ ON...
"
Concerning the Thomas Jefferson Controversy... Automatically Disqualified."
Revolution #287, December 9, 2012. Available at revcom.us
