Finding the Key Issue

How can we determine, at each stage of struggle, what is the key issue before us at that stage—the issue which, grasped and raised and acted upon, will mobilize people for it and will bring all other issues forward in its train if it is moved on?

This is crucial. In order not to demobilize and confuse your following, you must be able to grasp one issue, and focus the people’s attention on it, but it must be the issue that will bring all the other issues with it.

The key issue before the people in 1939 to ’41 was to mobilize all the support possible to the defeat of German fascism and its allies. Lots of mistakes were made by the progressive forces—taking wrong positions on other crucial issues, and so on—but it was correct that to defeat German fascism was in the interest of all peoples at that point. We had many strange alliances. We erred in allowing some of our allies to determine our program but not in focusing on that issue.

In 1919, people everywhere in the world intuitively rose to the defense of the infant Workers’ Republic.*  That was the key issue at that time. People knew with intuitive understanding that this was an experiment that should succeed.

Harvey Jackins

From pages 55 to 56 of Logical
Thinking About a Future Society


* The “Workers’ Republic” was the socialist Russian state formed after the 1917 Russian Revolution.


Last modified: 2022-12-25 10:17:04+00