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 defeat 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 these people 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 [the early Soviet Union]. That was the key issue at that time. People knew with intuitive understanding that this was an experiment that should succeed.
I think back to the shipyards during World War II. We were trying to get organized, and the people were very green [inexperienced]. They were mostly off the farms in the Midwest [USA] and had all kinds of ideologies and politics. However, we had terrible washrooms in the yard, where the sewage overflowed. One day dysentery hit, and two-thirds of the yard was home sick. That was the key issue. We achieved a tremendous amount of unity. There’s nothing as united as a bunch of dysentery sufferers. The immediate fierce struggle which they supported brought us the most beautiful washrooms of any shipyard in the world. That led to other successes—one thing after another. That was the key.
From pages 65 to 67 of Logical Thinking about a Future Society
(Present Time 209, October 2022)