Politics is the struggle for political power. The increasing economic and social destruction and polarization in capitalist society today is the result of productive labor being replaced by the robot and the computer. The economic relationship between the workers and the capitalist class has been broken and the early stages of political polarization are beginning to take shape.
The corporations and the State have merged to protect ruling class private property interests. To secure food, water, housing, healthcare, education, and other necessities of life, workers are being thrown into political struggle against the State and the capitalist system of private property it protects. This is the content of our times. The articles inside this issue of Rally, Comrades! reflect and express some of the different inter-connected forms of this content. No struggle of our class today stands in isolation from any other struggle. It’s not one thing; it’s everything.
”Abolish Private Property – Transform Society” explains the underlying, destructive economic process in capitalist society today, where qualitatively new means of production are labor-replacing. Millions of jobs have been, and continue to be, eliminated by computers, robotics, and other forms of automation, and they are not coming back. Capitalism is dying and something new is arising. Now begins the struggle over whose interest the new society will be built. How will former workers get the necessities of life without jobs?
The article, “Women at the Forefront Leading the Struggle” is a brief summary celebrating Women’s History Month. Women were at the forefront of every historically significant struggle of the twentieth century. As society once again finds itself immersed in economic, social and political turmoil, women as members of a new class of workers, those either thrown out of, or thrown to the margins of the economy, are rising up to the historical challenges of our day.
“Workers of All Generations are One Class”, shows how the ruling class seeks to divide the working class ideologically along generational lines. It defines the four basic generations in the American consciousness as the Greatest Generation, the Baby Boomer Generation, Generation X and the Millennial Generation. As the economy changes, so do the economic relationships available for workers of each generation. Today the Millennial Generation is faced with the effects and consequences caused by the rapid spread of electronic laborless production. They face higher rates of unemployment, underemployment, debt and permanent marginalization.
The article “The Fight for the Planet is a Fight for the People” explains why climate change cannot be reversed without system change. The current exploitation and destruction of the environment stems from the qualitatively new economic conditions, which has led to a scramble for resources, markets, and profits. It’s part of the general destruction of capitalist society. The focus of the struggle for basic necessities, such as food, housing, and healthcare, also includes the struggle for clean water, air, and land.
“Mass Migration in the Age of Electronics” shows how the rapid extension of automated production around the world is creating a new global class of proletarians with no possessions, having little or no means of making a living. Its formation is characterized by mass migrations on an unprecedented scale. As the capitalist system approaches its end, globalization requires a constant reduction of labor costs. In the search for the lowest wages, global capitalism eliminates all barriers to the free flow of capital to every corner of the globe, making immigration an unavoidable battlefield in the unfolding social revolution and the fight for unity, consciousness, and victory of the working class.
“A Communist Class Needs a Communist Party” is a report from the Central Body of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America. It explains why the overwhelming content of our times is the transition from industrial to electronic production — a form of production characterized by the elimination of human labor. The capitalist economy, based on the buying and selling of labor power is being irreversibly destroyed. This destruction is forcing a reorganization of economic relations at the base of society. Such epochal change requires political struggle and political struggle demands the formation of a political party to lead the struggle to abolish private property that is required by the new productive forces.
March/April 2015 Vol25.Ed2
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