And it is the task of the communist to remind everyone how a hose works. Confidently and with great moral clarity. Starting from as far away from the spigot as possible. Ideally starting in multiple places simultaneously, like paper in a hot oven. The struggle is to go knot by knot, up the hose, telling people that the only way we all get more water and even begin to untie our knots is to unscrew the hose and take the spigot.

        It is also the job of the communist to labor amongst those who are bringing water from wherever it can be gotten from the hose. For some this will mean toiling long hours getting water from the end of the hose and bringing it to whichever knot they deem needs it most for whatever reason. For others this will mean cutting into the hose maybe a little closer to the spigot and distributing that amongst those lower down.

        This "illegal" approach will of course breed retribution, but not necessarily counter-revolution. It is important for communists in either space to recognize that you are both engaged in important aspects of class struggle. You have no more reason to begrudge each other than one knot group has for another. Yes, there will be friction, do not abhor this or avoid it, this is good, because if you can get through that, you can build real solidarity. If you both have a shared understanding of where the water in the hose comes from, and more importantly what must really be done to untie the knots, then you must trust that the allies will be there when the time comes for confrontation. And allies are the reason why it is of critical importance for communists to engage in either form of redistribution. Those who are engaged in the grinding labor of performing necessary or radical redistribution of water to people are a contingency where you will find some of your best allies. People who can meaningfully move pluralities of knots to the communist cause.

        Possibly the most complicated part of all of this is that people are not wrong to think that specific knots make their specific lives worse. Some of our comrades will need to stay behind to make sure individual knots get untied. Maybe that's a role for some of our less able comrades, it takes a lot of people to untie a big knotted up hose with any timeliness. Especially if you can’t see your hands in front of your face.

        But the task of the communist is to make sure everyone understands that nothing we ever do with trying to figure out how to untie any of our individual knots will be enough if we forget that the goal is for everyone to get more of the water. Not just untying the knots. And more importantly, that to accomplish that goal, we must take democratic control of the spigot and unscrew the hose, upending the system that gave us so many goddamn knots in the first place.

        Some people around some knots will be more receptive than others. And most importantly, you will only ever convince a percentage of people trying to untie a knot that the path towards success is maybe to step away from their given knot and move as a group to claim the spigot for everyone. And those who remain unconvinced may very likely turn against you, saying your struggle is disrupting everyone’s peaceful and important work of untying knots.

        The sorting between these two factions is of the utmost importance. Because surrounding every knot there will be those who are convinced that this is the most important knot to be untied, that it is of the most critical importance to untie before we can quench everyones thirst. But there will also be those with doubts. People who suspect that the lives and struggles of people working on other knots aren’t so different that they can’t work together. They just aren’t sure how. People who suspect this knot isn’t really stopping much water, but think it’s worth untying anyway. People who suspect that they might get more if they go further up the hose, but are afraid to go into the dark alone. People who want to do good, want to see this, and all knots untied for all people. And even more importantly, see everyone’s thirst quenched. They just aren’t sure how yet. And this is the knot they have been shown and told is the one to work on, so dutifully, they work on it. It is the task of the communists to show those with doubts about the import of the knots that there is another path. A different strategy for untying all the knots and getting everyone a well-deserved drink.

        The reason that this sorting is so important is that by the time you have built a coalition and have begun a protracted struggle for control of the spigot, plenty of those who stayed behind will be on the other side defending the minority control of the spigot. They will be claiming that if we work from the spigot side it will unfairly benefit those who don’t even have the worst knot. Hopefully, even more have joined you from behind after seeing the movement grow. But there will be plenty who do not, and it is essential that any meaningful challenge to capital shed this dead weight. Because any desire to undo any individual knot that supersedes the desire for no one to die of thirst, fundamentally fails to understand that the knot closest to the spigot must be undone first for redistribution to even begin to be a possibility. It is easily as counter revolutionary as those who prostrate to capital to drink from its spigot.

        And among those that are near the spigot, for whatever reasons, there will be those who see the masses marching, and they will recognize the unfair structure they benefit from, and they will defect. While these actors should be treated with caution and perhaps kept at an arms length, they should not be met with outright contempt or rejection. They could have crucial connections to the apparatus of violence used by the capitalists to protect the capitalist order. Connections that could change the entire dynamic of conflict depending on how deep they run. Or they could have enough political knowledge about the structures around the spigot that they can offer strategic insight into which factions to try and work with and which factions that must be utterly defeated. All of this must be taken under consideration, not as direction.

        But is of the utmost importance not to overlook. Because it is in the political decisions made at the end of a revolution that the seeds are sown for the next one. And to build anything that improves anyone’s life, it’s nice to have at least a decade to work with. Political decisions made at the end of a revolution will always make the difference in how long the people have before the flow of the spigot moves back into minority control.

        And if you, as a communist, do an amazing job, and you are able to make comrades in your struggle all the way up the hose, and you band together and march on the spigot and its defenders, no matter what, at least now the battle is out in the open. No timing will ever seem entirely perfect. Although some will be better than others. No matter what though, the battle will be difficult, and more horrible than you could imagine. People will be killed. And should you succeed, seize the spigot, unscrew the hose to begin untying all the knots, and more importantly, begin frantically bucketing water to everyone who needs it. You will still need to remain vigilant for the forces of counter revolution. The hoarded water of those near the spigot must be expropriated and distributed to thirsty. They will not make this easy. But it is a task of the utmost importance, because at this point, you must be able to take a conservationist approach to the spigot.

        The minority who were materially better off when the capitalist were in control will continue to pine for the days of old before the revolution. Do not assume because the people are less thirsty on average means that these stories will not have purchase with them. Greed lives in all of us, and equality feels like oppression to those who had an abundance of privilege before.  And privilege notwithstanding, after you untie the knot of class and tape up where it’s broken as best you can, when the time comes to re-attach the hose, you will likely have missed many knots, or even created a couple new ones. People will be angry at this. Do not dismiss these grievances without a materialist strategy to untie these and all future knots. With the goal being to maximize the flow of water back to the people. And if significantly more water is coming out of the hose, hopefully those around the unresolved knots, are at least better off than they were before the hose was unscrewed.