RFK Jr. and the peaceful revolution

The road to sustained power to the people

May 12, 2023

In a May 2 interview by Freddie Sayers, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. declared that we need a “peaceful revolution.” Kennedy made the comment in response to a question near the end of the interview, and the declaration of a peaceful revolution is not central to his political discourse. Indeed, the content of the Kennedy campaign Website (www.kennedy24.com), the trajectory of his impressive career as an environmental lawyer and reformer, and the subject matter of his several books indicate that he has not given extensive thought to the question of what a revolution actually is.

The history of revolutions teaches us that they involve an underdog class taking political power from the hands of a political-economic elite. Successful revolutions, those that take political power and sustain themselves in political power, generally have included the emergence of a leader who possesses an exceptional understanding with respect to the structures of domination and exploitation, and regarding the necessary structural transformations that would empower and emancipate the underdog class. And the leader possesses a capacity to explains things to the people in a form that increases the consciousness of the people and that inspires them to self-sacrificing action. Moreover, the exceptional leader is a master of the art of politics.

RFK Jr. in his April 19 announcement of his presidential candidacy revealed a level of understanding that is exceptional in American politics. He understands that the capturing of governmental agencies by the industries that they are supposed to regulate is undermining the legitimacy of the government and destroying American democracy. He understands that continuous foreign wars weaken U.S. prestige and influence in the world, and they reduce the capacity of the nation to develop its national economy and to provide needed social programs. He recognizes the continuous wars as an attack by the corporate-state power elite on the middle class and the poor. He understands the need to move beyond the dysfunctional polarization with respect to racial and cultural issues, which only serves the interests of the power elite. He correctly discerns that the peaceful revolution of our time must be rooted in the American Revolution, carried out by patriotic Americans who share the love of their country above all else.

Kennedy, therefore, has arrived to necessary elements of understanding that come close to capacitating him to lead a peaceful people’s revolution in the USA against the corporate elite and the political establishment. However, his understanding has an important limitation, namely, it does not include anti-imperialist consciousness.

On the logic of imperialism and anti-imperialist resistance

In his April 19 presidential announcement speech, RFK Jr. made clear his opposition to the continuous wars in which the USA has become involved in recent decades. His opposition is based in a realistic understanding that the USA does not have the resources to police the world. The continuous wars have cost trillions of dollars, he declared, without attaining their declared goals, and leaving the country in greater debt and without resources to invest in the national economy or needed social programs. The continuous wars have been caused by the capturing of the CIA and the intelligence agencies by the military-industrial complex.

In the same vein, the Kennedy campaign Website expressed opposition to the militarist foreign policy of the USA. It notes that the nation spends as much on the military as the next nine nations combined, yet it has become weaker, because it has not attended to the development of its economy, industry, and infrastructure. A strong economy is the true source of national security.

And Kennedy24.com proposes the solution. “It is time to end the imperial project. . . . As President, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will start the process of unwinding empire. We will bring the troops home. We will stop racking up unpayable debt to fight one war after another. The military will return to its proper role of defending our country. We will end the proxy wars, bombing campaigns, covert operations, coups, [and] paramilitaries.”

However, the discourse of RFK Jr. and the text of Kennedy24.com do not reveal an understanding of the logic of imperialism. Imperialist policies were adopted by the USA and by the nations of Europe plus Czarist Russia and Japan not because the leaders of these nations were evil, mistaken, or racist. Imperialist projects were undertaken because they were the road to economic development at one time, from the sixteenth through the middle of the twentieth centuries.

Today, however, imperialism is irrational, because a world of competing imperialisms is no longer possible. The reason is that the world-system has reached the geographical limits of the earth. A strong nation can no longer economically expand by conquering new lands and peoples, as it did in the era of competing imperialisms.

At the same time, imperialism has become politically impractical. The peoples and governments of the world who have been the targets of Western imperialism no longer accept their subjugation. During the first half of the twentieth century, a colonized elite of accommodationists to the West, with the backing of the imperialist powers, were able to impose on their people economic policies that favored Western interests. But since 1980, the global power elite has wreaked such havoc on the world that accommodationist politicians have lost credibility before their peoples. As a result, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, persistent anti-imperialist resistance, almost entirely non-violent, is making impractical the continued imposition of Western imperialist policies.

Kennedy24.com declares that “we have to stop seeing the world in terms of enemies and adversaries.” Indeed so. But the key to seeing the world differently is understanding the logic and pervasive reality of imperialism and its inevitable offspring, anti-imperialist resistance. Those nations that are identified by the USA as evil (China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Iran, and Syria; plus others in earlier historical moments) are precisely those nations whose leaders have been able to mobilize national political will in opposition to Western imperialism.

Moreover, observing the anti-imperialist governments carefully and objectively, we see that they are not trying to create a new world order in which they would dominate. Rather, they are seeking to defend the sovereignty of their nations and to construct a more just world. They have arrived to understand, through their own experiences at the hands of imperialism, that a world of competing imperialisms is no longer possible; and that an alternative world based on cooperation is necessary for the wellbeing of humanity. What the USA defines as a threat is often nothing other than a neocolonized nation protecting its sovereignty.

RFK Jr. believes that a reasonable settlement could be made with Russia with respect to Ukraine. All that is required is that we abandon our neocon agenda of regime change with respect to Russia, recognize the legitimacy of Russia’s concerns, and negotiate a settlement with Russia.

With respect to peace in Ukraine, RFK Jr. is entirely correct. But the same reasoning pertains to the entire world. The leaders of all the “evil” states have repeatedly declared their desire to enter a new era of cooperation with the USA and their willingness to enter negotiations to this end. But such negotiations are blocked by U.S. conditions, which require these nations to accept policies that promote U.S. economic interests, thereby surrendering their sovereign right to decide their own policies of economic development.

The possibility for a better world based on cooperation is in the hands of the USA more than any other nation. China, Russia, and the nations of the Third World are seeking to build an alternative world based on cooperation. The USA is blocking cooperation, with its myopic and outdated imperialism, which continues to wreak have on the world.

We as a nation have to develop understanding of the logic of imperialism and anti-imperialist resistance, and to recognize that the conflict between imperialism and the targets of imperialism is the central conflict of our time, which Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has called World War III, which he describes as a war that has already begun and has no end in sight. If the USA does not arrive to understand this fundamental fact of our times, it will never again be a leader in world affairs.

Real socialism in our times

To understand the logic of imperialism and anti-imperialism, we have to overcome our national ignorance of socialism and communism, because nations constructing socialism, especially China and Cuba, are playing leading roles in the worldwide anti-imperialist movement.

If Kennedy Democrats understand, as they do, that the government and the media lie to the people, surely they can understand that the government and the media have lied about the characteristics of socialism and communism, an unhealthy practice forged into a national habit during four decades of Cold War with the Soviet Union. The key to widely accepted lies is to take certain facts that are true but misleading when presented in isolation, and to continually repeat these true but misleading facts.

Our image of socialism and communism is shaped by the political trials of Stalin, the disaster of the Great Leap Forward in China, and the extremes of China’s Cultural Revolution. These were events that actually happened in the Soviet Union and China. However, they were exceptional events in the historical evolution of socialism and communism.

In the case of the Soviet Union, whose story is no longer central to the evolution of socialism, Lenin made two idealist errors. The first was his proclamation in 1917 of “all power to the soviets,” which were citizens councils or people’s assemblies formed by industrial workers, soldiers, and peasants. This was a good idea, which was important in bringing the Bolsheviks to power, but it was premature and idealistic, in that the peasants, who comprised the great majority of the population, did not have sufficient political consciousness to permit the placing of political power in the hands of peasant assemblies.

Lenin’s second idealist error was the conceptualization of the Soviet Union as a union of soviet socialist republics. Again, a good idea, but idealist. The various nations that formed the Soviet Union did not have at the time the necessary economic and political conditions to establish autonomous socialist republics.

If Lenin had lived, he likely would have recognized these idealist errors and taken steps to make necessary rectifications, exceptional leader that he was. But Lenin died in 1924, and these issues were never recognized or addressed. Instead, there emerged a pattern of centralized rule from Moscow, a distortion in the socialist project that ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the case of China, the idealist errors were made by Mao, who stood against the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which had a more realistic conception. The idealist errors of Mao with respect to the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were made evident quickly by the negative consequences that they immediately provoked, such that even Mao recognized that he had gone too far. The Communist Party of China was able to correct the errors and return to a more viable socialist road in accordance with actual conditions.

In the 1980s and 1990s, China, Vietnam, and Cuba were discovering that the great advances in economic production and just distribution that were attained through nationalization of large-scale and foreign private property and the state management of economic enterprises had reached a limit, and that continued advancement would require certain reforms. These reforms included: more autonomy in decision-making for the state-owned companies, including possibilities for earning profit; more space for foreign and domestic private enterprises; and greater economic incentives for agricultural producers. Accordingly, these socialist projects arrived to a model in which the state formulates a comprehensive and scientifically-based plan, and directs and regulates an economy that includes both state companies and private enterprises, depending on which is more economically productive in particular economic sectors. The economy is directed by the state with an orientation toward the fulfillment of socialist values, including the obligation of the state to provide for the fundamental human needs of all the people and to protect the socioeconomic rights of the people, such as health and education. Yet the state does so without ignoring the universal laws of the market.

The nations constructing socialism today, formerly colonized or semi-colonized nations, today are developing a third way with socialist values, a third way between centralized state ownership and neoliberal capitalism, which places profits above the wellbeing of the people. At the same time, China, Vietnam, and Cuba also have been able to develop the political system of people’s assemblies, as envisioned by Marx and Lenin. They were able to do so because the leaders and the communist parties gave high priority to the development of the political and historical consciousness of the people.

Everyone knows that China’s economy has grown rapidly during the last two decades, but little attention is paid to the model that has driven its rapid economic growth. It is a model that has forged important advances in productivity and technology. It has insights and lessons for all of humanity. The USA ought to appropriate these insights, without losing its own road, rooted in the principles of the American Revolution.

In contrast to China, the achievements of Cuban socialism are not as easy to see. Cuba is a small country subjected to centuries of colonialism and neocolonialism, and it has been encircled by the six-decade blockade imposed by its powerful neighbor. Under these conditions, Cuban socialism has not been able to forge a prosperous economy. However, Cuban socialism has to its credit considerable achievements under adverse economic conditions, including significant advances in health, scientific research, education, sport, and culture; along with political stability and a capacity to persist in its socialist road.

China and Cuba are playing a leading role today in the construction of an alternative, more just world order based on cooperation, mutually beneficial trade among nations, respect for the sovereignty of all nations, and mutual respect and solidarity among peoples. The great majority of Third World governments are participating in this project in one way or another. They are resisting imperialism, but not by shouting slogans in the street or acts of sabotage or vandalism. Their resistance takes the form of the step-by-step construction in practice of an alternative world order, combined with declarations of their political agenda and their hopes for humanity in numerous international summits and formats, now at a pace of several such declarations per year.

The peoples of the Third World plus China repeatedly call upon the United States and Europe to join in the construction of a more just world. It would not be difficult for the United States to enter this project of world cooperation if it were to leave behind its neoliberal agenda and its neocon project of regime change. It could enter negotiations with any of the “evil” governments. They would tell us what they need in the form of trade and investment, and we could decide which of their proposed projects would be beneficial for our national economy and our people. Thus, we could quickly arrive to agreement, and we would be on our way to mutually beneficial cooperation with the governments of the world, giving away nothing more than respect for their sovereignty. Given the size of our economy and our scientific and technological achievements, our turn to cooperation would be celebrated by the peoples of the world, and we would be on our way to restoring our leadership in the world, although we would have to share the honors with China and Cuba.

RFK Jr. is right to praise JFK for standing up to the CIA and the Joint Chiefs and avoiding war. But the duty of the President of the United States today is not only to avoid war but to lead the nation to new era of cooperation with other nations in the construction of a more just, peaceful, and prosperous world.

A free people is a people with political and historical consciousness

The history of triumphant and sustained revolutions also teaches us that successful revolutions give high priority to the education of the people, not only formal education but also the elevating of political and historical consciousness. Revolutions do not cater to the weaknesses of the people, such as the tendency of the people to superficial thinking and the shouting of slogans, and the tendency of the people to fail to undertake the disciplined task of reading and learning, necessary for the deepening of understanding. A revolution makes demands of the people, calling them to self-discipline and self-sacrifice, as the necessary foundation to personal development and collective force. The revolution promises in return a spiritual reward, the personal satisfaction of participating in a noble project; and ultimately, the satisfaction of having participated in the construction of a dignified nation that has taken its destiny into its own hands.

In this regard, the Kennedy campaign Website is a great disappointment. It possesses the superficiality that is typical of American politics.

The official website of the Kennedy campaign describes six priorities: honest government for the people, healing the division of a polarized nation, addressing environmental problems, revitalizing the national economy and the nation’s health care system, ending continuous wars and investing in the nation’s infrastructure, and restoring freedom of speech and civil liberties.

With respect to honest government, kennedy24.com begins with what was the central theme of RFK Jr.’s presidential announcement speech: “Regulatory agencies have been captured by those they are supposed to regulate: Wall Street controls the SEC. Polluters and extractive industries dominate the EPA and BLM. Pharma controls the CDC, NIH, and FDA. Big Ag controls the USDA. Big Tech has captured the FTC.”

The campaign website, however, fails to identify the source of the problem, which RFK Jr. explained in his presidential announcement speech. Most people in the agencies are committed, idealist, and patriotic Americans, but those who can be seduced by corporate rewards rise to the top. RFK Jr. leaned of this in his years litigating the agencies. He knows the sources of the problem, and he knows how to fix it.

With respect to the polarization of the nation, the campaign website describes the problem and the solution well. “America is more polarized and divided now than at any time in living memory. Both sides seem to agree that the basic problem is the horrible people on the other side. Both sides are wrong. The basic problem is the division itself. A divided public lacks the strength to resist exploitation or to overcome the inertia of the status quo. The classic American can-do spirit exhausts itself in endless battles. So let’s heal the divide.” It notes that in issues like abortion, guns, and immigration, “both sides have legitimate concerns and legitimate moral positions. No one is deplorable.” It notes that RFK “will model careful listening, and create conditions where each group can hear the stories of the other.”

However, the campaign website’s discussion of the nation’s ideological division barely mentions a key component that was present in RFK Jr.’s speech, namely, that the polarization serves corporate interests, which implies that they disseminate messages designed to provoke and deepen the polarization.

With respect to race relations, kennedy24.com declares that “our operating principle is not guilt for the sins of one’s ancestors,” and that racial healing ought to occur through “a program of Targeted Community Repair.” There is in these comments an implicit critique of the approach of Critical Race Theory and the suggestion of a return to classic formulations of the African American movement, including the proclamations of Malcolm X and the call in the late 1960s for community control. What RKF Jr. and the Kennedy campaign have in mind here should be much more fully explained.

The campaign website explains the future Kennedy administration plan for the environment. Namely, to establish government incentives for regenerative agricultural practices, for zero-waste industrial production, and for clean energy. And to protect wild lands. However, with respect to the issue of economic versus ecological considerations, the website merely quotes the proposition of RFK Jr.: “Good environmental policy—100% of the time—is identical to good economic policy.” Taking into account that many people do not believe this, as a result of corporate propaganda on the question, the truth of the proposition should be explained.

With respect to the revitalization of the economy, kennedy24.com correctly declares that “the time has come to reverse America’s economic decline, decades in the making. Our country faces a widening wealth gap (the most unequal since the 1920s), rampant debt, decaying infrastructure, and a hollowed-out industrial base.” It outlines the Kennedy administration policy: “We will rebuild the industrial infrastructure, ruined by forty years of off-shoring and misguided ‘free trade’ schemes. We will enact policies that favor small and medium businesses, which are the nation’s real job creators and the dynamos of American enterprise. We will support labor in reclaiming its fair share of American prosperity. We will break up ‘too-big-to-fail’ banks and monopolies, and when crisis strikes, bail out the homeowners, debtors, and small business owners instead.”

Again, more needs to be explained. So-called free trade policies are not merely misguided. They were adopted by the corporate elite and political establishment in defense of their own interests when the signs of the structural crisis of the world-system first became evident. Facing a crisis, they deliberately decided to abandon their nation and the people and to enrich themselves, thus deepening the world structural crisis in the long term. The historic crime of the power elite against the nation and the people must be exposed and documented, so that the people will understand the absolute necessity of taking power from their hands.

Kennedy Democrats and the possible peaceful revolution

As the newly elected president in 2024, RFK Jr. likely would be able to implement his foreign policy proposals. As Commander in Chief, he could order the closing of military bases and the bringing of the troops home. As President, he could conduct foreign policy in a form that avoids entanglements in conflicts in other lands. He could even go so far as to stress cooperation, especially with respect to Latin America and the Caribbean.

Kennedy would need congressional approval for his appointments to heads of many of the regulatory agencies. In the aftermath of his victory in the presidential elections, he likely could attain approval from the existing Congress, but it would depend on the political climate.

However, to create a sustained political reality in which the government of the United States is under the control of the people and promotes the political agenda of the peaceful people’s revolution, the president would need the support of more than sixty per cent of the Congress. He possibly could attain this level of support from existing House members and senators from both political parties. But the sustainability of the peaceful revolution likely would require the election of new members to the House and the Senate who win elections on the basis of their identification with the project of the peaceful people’s revolution.

It seems to me that the Kennedy campaign ought to stress the concept of the peaceful revolution, making clear that it involves the taking of control of the government by the people through electoral and constitutional means. And it ought to immediately recruit and support candidates for the House of Representatives and the Senate as “Kennedy Democrats” (or “Kennedy Republicans”) in the congressional elections of 2024 and 2026.

In addition, the Kennedy campaign ought to give high priority to the education of the people. It ought to commission the writing and publication of digital and paper pamphlets on relevant issues and themes, thus standing in the tradition of the American Revolution, which won many to the cause with well-written pamphlets that were effective in explaining and persuading. In addition, local people’s schools could be organized, where teachers would lead discussion of the pamphlets, and where certificates would be awarded to students.

Moreover, the Kennedy campaign ought to organize local people’s assemblies. Delegates could be elected in places of work and study and in neighborhoods and civil society organizations. All issues of concern to the people ought to be openly but respectfully debated in the assemblies. The people’s assemblies ought to help the people to learn how to listen to one another in a respectful manner, and to dialogue in a form that seeks consensus. Resolutions could be passed, if so desired. The people’s assemblies could evolve to be reliable measures of the popular will, as a complement to mass demonstrations and opinion surveys, although these would continue to have their functions.

Such steps would constitute an empirical test of the ideological conditions of the people, of their preparedness to support a peaceful people’s revolution. I suspect that the people are not yet prepared, but the Kennedy 2024 presidential campaign could constitute first steps, particularly if the campaign were to focus not only on the election of RFK Jr. but also on the development of long-term structures that would constitute the foundation of a peaceful people’s revolution. Structures that would include continuous support for the candidacies of Kennedy Democrats, the dissemination of digital and paper pamphlets that explain the reasons for the peaceful revolution, and permanent local people’s assemblies and people’s schools.

The Kennedy campaign must rise above the bureaucratic rules that dictate how to conduct election campaigns. It must creatively look for approaches that are demanded by the exceptional qualities of the candidate and by the exceptional times in which we live.

Knowledge, ideology, and real socialism in our times

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