1970
 TOWARD A NEW MAN*

What is the purpose of revolution!
 To give man a new sense of history!
 To restore the sense of time!
 To compel man to make responsible
 choices?
 To create a new relationship between
 necessity and choice!
 Can we say any more that man's social
being determines his consciousness, his
sensibilities, his awareness? Can a worker
or a black be exonerated from responsibility
because of his class (or underclass)! Are the
ideas and contributions of whites and
aristocrats to be rejected out of hand
because of their class origins? Or are the
ideas and actions to be judged on their
merits in relation to advancing humanity,
regardless of class origins?

*In regards to the use of the word "man" see
the editors' preface, p. xx.

4       CONVERSATIONS IN MAINE

  In a revolutionary period, the only exit is the revolution. A
coup d'etat is not a revolution. A revolution is a specific form of
the evolution of man. The only justification for a revolution is that
it advances the evolution of man. It is a moment in the evolution-
ary process, both the result of long preparation and of something
profoundly original, new. Without a long period for maturing, no
profound change can take place; but every profound change is at
the same time a break with the past.
  Mankind today needs to redefine appropriate social
relations. This can't be done by plebiscite. It must be done by
particular kinds of people projecting another way to live and
testing it against certain layers, classes, races.
  We are at the threshold of a new relationship between
necessity and choice. But what does any American know about
necessity? Necessity and choice used to be clearly separate. Today
the borders between the two are no longer clear; one can't be
defined without the other; necessity can't be defined except in
relation to choice. Once you accept the idea that one is free of
necessity, then you choose out of possible choices.
  A great many people have said, although not all of them mean
the same thing by it, that technological man has greatly out-
stripped moral man. Materialist man had to discover how to keep
warm, make fire, grow wheat. Materialist man was compelled to
manifest himself; and he then discovered his incredible mental
power of invention that enabled him to extend every one of these
things. All this has put him in a position where his other
developments just don't correspond.
  Man has to discover how to give up a whole lot of things
before he can again become related to nature. You can't stop
pollution without giving up packaging, pesticides and the
population explosion. This is a very revolutionary idea which has
nothing to do with the revolution as it is customarily projected.
Revolution has been thought of as more of everything rather than
as making serious choices about what we will give up. Whereas
man a few hundred years ago was trying to discover how to do
things like tame the Euphrates River, now he has to learn to tame
his physical appetites (we will risk sounding like John Calvin) in
order to liberate all kinds of powers that he doesn't even know he
has or that anyone has.
  Most people have an incredibly limited notion of what man is
and therefore an incredibly limited notion of who they are.
How do you project advanced ideas to backward but

         Toward A New Man        5

rebellious masses in an advanced country? The average person
who feels oppressed in this country is responding as a victim who
has been deprived by the oppressor of certain material and
political things to which the victim feels entitled. Rebellious blacks
and women react to an advanced idea as the idea of someone in a
privileged position and don't even consider it. How does one deal
with this? How does one project that which is true in a way so that
people don't automatically reject it!
  Malcolm used to chide the masses. Because he began with the
idea of the transformation of people, he could combine attack on
the establishment with the chiding of the masses.
  The great problem today is to project to people a real notion of
the nature of man, something which they have never studied.
These notions are not "too advanced;" rather, people don't know
anything about them because they have never even thought about
them, never studied them. The revolution involves projecting
another notion of man, to shake up and displace present notions of
man, to project a notion of a new man. How to do this is not a
technical question nor is it a question to be dealt with only in terms
of property relations. Chardin posed it in its ultimate form: Ulti-
mately man is mind and ultimately the mind of man becomes
unified in this incredible thing which is the universe.

Time Dimensions
  A few years ago the Bell Telephone Company broadcast some
absolutely extraordinary and difficult hours. "What is Time!" Is it
a thing? A relationship! Anybody who saw it could never again
look at his watch in the same way. The same thing has to be done
with What is a revolution!, What is humanity! Revolution is riot
just a change in property relations.
  Before we can even think of What is man!, we have to be able
to think in terms of duration, the time dimension. From time
immemorial individuals, generations, even communities have
considered sacrificing themselves for the sake of the species, man.
It is not just a question of counting noses, seeking a majority, but
of looking at man as a species, a duration, with a history that goes
into the past as well as the future. We have thought of species-
Perpetuation mainly in biological terms up to now, but it should be
possible to think of species-perpetuation in psyche-social terms.
  What does man have to do to make sure that he doesn't wipe
himself out the same way that the dinosaur wiped itself out! The
dinosaur was unable to develop so as to continue to exist under

6       CONVERSATIONS IN MAINE


new conditions.
  We need to develop concepts scientifically and systematically,
brick by brick, and to be very careful not to exaggerate or glorify
phenomena in the belief that we are thereby confusing the enemy
when we are confusing only ourselves.
  In 1967 there was a "commotion" in Detroit--to use a politic-
ally colorless term. It was a very large-scale commotion which the
power structure called a "riot" and which the movement called a
rebellion. Now, three years later, we have to ask ourselves how
much did we confuse our own forces by trying to aggrandize the
degree of political content in the event.
  How you name something is itself an action, especially in light
of today's mass media; and we can date what has been happening
with young people, and their exaltation of their own spontaneity,
with the 1967 "rebellion." We need to give young people
particularly a sound foundation conceptually.
  Is the youth generation revolutionary or just rebellious!
Rebellion springs from specific social conditions but does not go
beyond rejection; hence it can degenerate into cultism (sects,
separatists, flower people). Revolution must contain a powerful
element of political responsibility, a clear concept of what you will
do with power. Anyone who speaks of "revolution for the hell of
it" or "revolution for the sake of revolution" is not a revolutionary.

Reform and Revolution

  You are in a revolutionary period when the antagonisms are
such that they cannot be resolved by ordinary means. The first
step is to attempt reforms. It is only when the efforts to reform fail
that you have to change the whole apparatus. In the old days, we
made a sharp distinction between revolutionist and reformist to
the point that all reform measures were bad and only revolu-
tionary measures were good; so it has become very difficult to
think of reforms, not as tactics, but as social change.
  Can one use the word "revolution" in a way that nobody else
is using it! Wouldn't dropping the word altogether be an evasion!
  If we define social revolution as requiring profound change in
man, what revolutions have there been? In the 17th and 18th
centuries in Europe and the United States there were very
profound changes in man's conception of himself and his relations
with others. Presently, in China particularly, another profound
change of this nature is taking place.
  "Revolutionarv social change" is more descriptive than
"profound social change." It is better to begin with the concept of

         Toward A New Man        7


That One is trying to achieve, revolutionary social change, than
with "revolution" as an event for which there are so many
different and confusing scenarios. It is necessary to counteract the
tendency to act out the rebellion scenario as soon as one says "I am
a revolutionist." It is necessary to recognize also that the great
majority of people have never been for revolution. In this sense,
certainly, not all men are equal.

Contradictions
  What is the connection between the fact that the founding of
the United States involved a revolutionary social change over sev-
eral decades and the fact that the slaves were not freed and were
considered three-fifths of a man! Can the two be reconciled? There
can be revolutionary social change without perfection, without
resolving every social problem. Following revolutionary social
change, there may still be a lot of poor people who say "I'm still
poor" or a lot of people still not receiving an education. The
American Revolution aspired to so much, and it also exposed its
own contradictions not only in its actions but in its initial
documents. The contradiction in the American Revolution was
structured into the country.
  Dialectics requires a tremendous leap forward so that you can
see your own limitations, or the duality within the new unity. The
American Revolution was a profoundly revolutionary social
change; therefore it developed new contradictions. The Civil War
was the first serious contest over these contradictions.
  You must aim high before you can be revolutionary, but the
moment you aim high there are bound to be failures. This is the
process we have to look at--instead of expecting that one can
design a scenario that can be accomplished without failure. Many
people think that a revolution is going to solve everything
tomorrow. But the morning after the revolution, there will be
more problems.
  To bring about revolutionary social change in man, the first
transformation begins with those who propose to do the trans-
forming. Not lust extending the ideas of Marx or Dewey, but
developing a new concept of man.

Crime and Chaos

  When it comes to what is most fundamental to people's
concerns at this point, it is crime and chaos.
  The chaos in the United States today is of a very particular
kind; the kind of chaos which people in an advanced country get


8       CONVERSATIONS IN MAINE

into. It requires the thinking of thoughts and the making of deci-
sions which nobody has ever had to make before, neither in any
other country nor in this country at any previous time. There are
probably more people in the establishment who recognize the
uniqueness of the chaos than there are in the movement. (See, for
example, the discussion in Needles, Burrs and Bibliographies on moral
development not keeping pace with economic development.)
  How does one bring an end to this chaos? By defining a new
way of living and of acting.
  The answer obviously is not Billy Graham saying "follow
Jesus." Yet the answer has to be a new morality. Revolution isn't
just property relations or production relations. We are faced with
redefining all sorts of fundamental notions: revolution, human
relations, human values. We need to talk less about revolution (an
abstraction) and mobilize our dedication and our courage toward
these redefinitions.
  Those in the establishment who recognize the uniqueness of
the chaos cannot lead the blacks, the youth. Nor can they lead the
ethnic middle classes and workers who simply want to continue
material expansion and repress all who threaten this expansion.
The question is how can one set up alternative centers of leader-
ship for blacks and youth who are every year multiplying in
numbers and going off in mind-damaging directions, as well as for
those who are reflecting on what is happening and those who are
threatened by what is happening. Who is going to tell people there
is an alternative until we develop and clarify the alternative!

Bandwagon Thinking of Radicals

  The Marxists believed that militancy was all that was
required because in the masses lay all the answers. This is the
theory of "debordement": all you have to do is whet the appetites
of the masses, get them into action, and the solution is contained
in their momentum and wants.
  if you ask kids what they want in schools today, they wouldn't
have any answers. You might be able to satisfy or pacify them for
a while if you had a swimming pool on the first floor, a McDonald
stand on the second, and a rock and roll band on the third.
  Those concerned over the chaos usually only think in terms of
concessions or repression but have not devoted any thought to
fundamental solutions. The idea that the masses implicitly know
what's best for themselves because their interests are involved is
just not true, and at a certain stage in the movement this myth has

        Toward A New Man        9


to be destroyed or it destroys the movement.
  There is a hit album in the black community with a song
"Niggers Are Scared of Revolution" which kids sing all day, most
of them interpreting it to mean that blacks are scared to fight. But
blacks are fighting all over the place. The question is what are they
fighting for? In a period of inaction, it is possible to have the
illusion that all you need to do is create action and action will
create solutions. But in a period of action, such as now, you have to
decide whether militancy is the answer. And at this stage, unless
you have goals and some conception of how you are going to intro-
duce these goals into the motion of the masses, then you are
nothing--a waste--no matter how much you're part of the
"action." Many black youth can't think in terms of long-range
goals because they are convinced that blacks aren't even going to
be allowed to survive in this country. Like the Indian braves of a
hundred years ago, all they can think of is that they will go down
fighting and take some whites with them (revolutionary suicide).
The only demands being put forward in the schools now are
"more" demands: "more" counselors, "more"equipment, etc.

New Philosophy

  Before you begin to engage yourself with people in motion
around schools, you have to get rid of a lot of ideas about
education--not only those that the system has implanted in you
but those you have picked up from the Summerhillians or Paul
Goodmans. You have to have a philosophy of education, which is
neither the "education for earning" philosophy of the system nor
the "kids know what's best for them" of the progressives. Educa-
tion must have a purpose, a goal; the educator must not just bring
forth but lead forth; he must not only transmit but transform.
This is not just a question of methods; it is a question of
philosophy. The educator has a responsibility to impart to the
young people a vision not only of man's present but of his past and
of his future, of his history or duration.

What Is Integrity?

 It is impossible to lead a revolution without a sense of
integrity, which involves the readiness to examine and project a
consciousness of appropriate relations between people. The
absence of integrity is the refusal to have and act on a concept of
the proper relations between men. Integrity doesn't mean
treating all men alike or not struggling against some men, but the

                         T
io      CONVERSATIONS IN MAINE
absence of integrity means just wanting to win.
  Integrity isn't something that "exists." It is something that is
constantly being evolved and created. It isn't something that
grandpa invented but something that every generation has to
invent for itself. It is the outward expression of self-identity; it is
personal and it is social. It is the expression in relation to others of
one's recognition of man's development and one's willingness to
take responsibility for this development.
  How should people spend their lives! Is it sufficient to say
that capitalism is responsible for the present state of affairs and
that we are all its victims! Or is it necessary to develop concepts of
appropriate human relations and concrete programs to realize
these various spheres of struggles? What is the relation between
wants and thoughts? Between masses and revolutionists? Masses
have wants; revolutionists must have thoughts, they cannot just
rely on the wants and spontaneity of the masses. A revolutionist
must absorb and internalize the lives, passions and aspirations of
great revolutionary leaders and not just those of the masses.
  Leadership has to come from persons in contact with people
in movement, but they cannot get their thoughts only from the
movement or from the masses. Who will provide this leadership!
Will it come out of those making the experiences in struggle! Can
we depend upon leadership coming from trial and error in
struggle? No.

From Marx to Lenin to Mao to "I Will"
  The very great revolutionary leaders projected a revolution
that they chose; they did not depend on the masses for their
concept of what was necessary. Marx was more a prophet than a
revolutionary leader; the development of capitalist production,
itself, would lead the working class to fulfill its historic role, to
actualize both its moral and technico-economic tasks.
  Lenin began to put politics in command in order to organize
human consciousness to set the masses in motion and change the
society.
  Mao has taken this much further to mean organizing a body
of thought and organizations to lead masses of people to change
society and to change themselves; consciously speeding up the
process of physical and spiritual awareness; engaging a whole
society in self-change. As Han Suyin has written: "It presumes
that man is perfectible and can evolve into a higher form of
himself."

         Toward A New Man        11

  Nobody has yet created the ideas worth organizing around in
this country. Who will do it! I will. I am the one who has to think it
through for today, in relation to today, not limited by past notions,
not just improving past notions. It is not enough to say, "a new
ideology is needed," as if one is talking about a situation external
to oneself?
  Each year things have escalated, putting into motion new
forces, until what started out as one grievance has opened up a
pandora's box of multiple and complex issues. After World War II
there were plenty of problems, but what opened up the Pandora's
box was the struggle of blacks in the South. Now the whole country
is in a state of constant turmoil, and even though the majority is
not directly involved, it is indirectly involved and directly affected.
A state of chaos exists in every city of over fifty thousand people.
 The people in this country have to acquire a whole set of
different attitudes and customs. Workers, on whom Marxists
have relied, have reactionary views and values. You can't take
them as they are, with the values they have, into the new society.
You have to change them. If all they want to do is be boss or to be
in control instead of present bosses, they can't build the new
society. So it is a question of not just power but values. There are
people today who want to change masters but maintain capitalist
values.
  The various groups in the movement today fall far short of
grasping the magnitude of the changes required for the new
society. We need much deeper insights into what people have to
give up; we need to make choices based on thinking through the
results of the choices we make. James Boggs wrote the Manifesto for
a Black Revolutionary Party in order to show the black movement the
type of thoughts they must entertain. The movement had just
been thinking of racism; it had not yet begun to think in terms of
vision.
  Everyone, rich and poor, now lives in fear of personal safety.
Yet most people in the movement play as if this means the
country is moving towards revolution. Simply condemning or
repressing is not the answer. Positions have to lead towards
programs.
  The wants of people and the capacity of the productive
apparatus to satisfy these wants have pushed society to a new
Point where we can't just encourage wants; people must develop
the capacity and readiness and habit of making conscious choices.

12      CONVERSATIONS IN MAINE

Before reaching the stage of power, we need to change people's
consciousness of who they are, of what man is. Otherwise we
won't reach the stage of power. The average city is in a state of
plain barbarism. Shouting "jobs for all" has no content or mean-
ing; working class struggles and demands don't even touch on
fundamental social issues, let along tackle or resolve them.
  We are agreed that scientific and technological development
has outstripped political and moral development. But if we don't
deal with the economic system based on private profit, won't we
just be going back to childish ideas of what is good and what is bad!
Is the structural root "the system," or is it the psychological and
moral structure of people! Political and moral underdevelopment
permeates all sections of the society, not just the capitalists. What
good would it do to put the victims into power? What good would
it do if blacks or students or workers abolished the capitalist
system if they themselves hadn't been transformed! Doesn't it
depend on which students, which blacks, which workers, with
what ideology! The question of "who" therefore becomes crucial;
it can't just be left to chance or to a particular social strata. You
have to start with yourself, taking the responsibility to develop
and embrace an ideology, and to develop others around it.

Black Panthers: A National Experience
  Why do those in the movement alienate so many people at
this particular stage, rather than try to attract as many people as
possible to a new vision of man s future? (Compare what hap-
pened to Mao when he was able to appeal to all sections of Chinese
society against japanese imperialism.) Today the movement stop
people from thinking more than it stimulates thought. The radi-
cals who give leadership to the movement think entirely in terms
of social forces created by oppression. The concepts and scenario
which Marx developed in the 19th century (under the influence of
the French Revolution and the mechanical materialism of his
period) have been applied first to workers, then to blacks, then to
the lumpen, and now to women and children. So, from "all power
to the workers" we get finally to "all power to the children" or "all
power to the criminals." The Black Panther Party has confronted
the movement with every contradiction in the ritualistic thinking
of Marxism: capitalism creates victims; the only solution is to
destroy capitalism; the most victimized are the ones who will do
this and build the new society of socialism.
  Today we know that moral progress is not automatically a by-

         Toward A New Man        13

product of technological development; that in fact economic over-
development exists side by side, dangerously, with political and
moral underdevelopment. How can we achieve the political and
moral development required to cope with this technological
development? Not by more development of economic forces, not
by making what already exists available to more people more
equitably; not by depending upon the spontaneous development
of the oppressed. A conscious struggle, a struggle with conscious
values, goals, programs and persons, is required.
  The Marxists have relegated morality and consciousness to
the realm of the superstructure, so much that radicals are afraid
even to acknowledge them as the product of tens of thousands of
years of the cultural development and achievements of mankind--
developing humanity, advancing humanity.
  Are these achievements to be judged by the class from whom
their creators came? Were they determined by economic class!
And even if they were, are they to be discarded as tainted by virtue
of their class origins! Because George Washington held slaves, is
his warning of the dangers of a standing army to be disregarded!
We have to break out of the mental syndrome of economic deter-
minism whereby everything is judged by its class beginnings.
  Mao says, "Man's social being determines his consciousness,"
but he goes on immediately to add, "Once the correct ideas charac-
teristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these
ideas turn into a material force which changes society and the
world." He also warns against seeing only matter and not man.
  The tremendous historical significance of the Black Panther
Party is that they are the first American social force to act out the
Marxist scenario on a real historical stage and thus to expose its
non-revolutionary character. The Black Panther Party is
organized rebellion or rebellion made into system.
  Mankind has evolved through the actions and thought of
specific men, with a very few pioneering for the great majority. If
this particular period requires serious thinking to get at the basic
roots of the problem and the basic solutions, then individuals have
to take that responsibility. That thoughts have to be put into
Practice is nothing new; the thought, the idea, has to come first,
Whether it be a new way of producing things or a new way of
living between people. New sets of notions come out of reflection
upon experiences, but the reflection is as important if not more
important than the experiences.

14      CONVERSATIONS IN MAINE

A Cultural Revolution
  Who are the antagonists in the present struggle! We have to
recognize that today there exists far more antagonism on
questions of social relations than economic relations. This means
we should not start out with rigid social and economic classes but
rather with posing the issue between those who want to maintain
the existing social relations and those who are finished with
existing morality and social relations. In the first category there
will be mostly workers, middle classes, those who head up the
military-industrial complex; and in the second category there will
be mainly blacks and young people. But let us start afresh with the
conception that men are capable of being transformed. The
problem of revolution in this country is the transformation of
man, and this is impossible without a radical, revolutionary,
inspiring concept of man's essential spirituality, of his capacity to
pioneer in creating new social relations.
  In this struggle it is important not to be paralyzed by fear of
facism or repression. One must think realistically about the
dangers, but in thinking about the counter-revolution in relation
to the future, one must be convinced that it is a "paper tiger."
  Revolutionists have been able to think of a revolution in every
sphere except in man's concept of himself. Revolutionary struggle
consists of a series of illuminations--not simply plodding or
leaping from peak to peak. Revolution should be to discover and
create where we should be tomorrow, not merely to correct past
injustices or put to rights past grievances. Mankind is obviously at
a threshold, a border, a frontier. Precisely because of the growing
counter-revolutionary danger, it is necessary to utilize the wealth
of human resources in this country, including ethnic diversity
The conflicts are not just between rich and poor, or between
generations, but between two different concepts of what a human
being is.
  Man is his own worst enemy. The contradictions are within
man, internal, not without. They are in his biology as well as in his
psychology. Because he has crossed the threshold of reflection and
because each man is an individual, there are thousands of choices
each man can make, including how and where and when he would

like to live with his fellow man, and how he will think about
himself, about society, about mankind.

        Toward A New Man        15

  Year by year we are in the process of revolutionizing our
concepts of revolution, of man, of ourselves, so that we can
organize a "Nucleus and prepare the programs by which to mobilize
social forces.