The 2020 election season is already upon us. A crowded field of candidates is vying for the support of our class and its allegiance. Our class is engaged in struggles taking place around the world, where people are protesting for their basic needs, for the political rights to guarantee those needs, and to put in place leaders who are accountable to their demands.
There is a common thread that runs through and connects all of these struggles. That common thread is a vision of new society that fulfills all the needs we are fighting for – food, clothing, shelter, clean water, full access to healthcare, but also something more than that. We also demand a society that unleashes all its knowledge and resources to guarantee its people an increasingly secure and cultured life. This vision is not only realizable today, it is the only practical solution to the problems we face.
“Change in Thinking Key to Our Future” shows that whoever who wants to change a given situation operates under given conditions. If there is not a scientific understanding of those conditions, it is difficult to achieve their goals. The political and ideological preparation of the people for revolution can only come through the struggle for reform. There is no revolution without a struggle for reform. At the same time, no reform can be won without the political power to get that reform. How do revolutionaries develop the consciousness of those fighting for their food, shelter, and clothing, while at the same time showing them a vision of communism and the necessity of gaining the political power to achieve it?
What are the favorable conditions for achieving this vision today? “The Coming Crash” shows that robotic, computerized, digital electronics replaces human labor. That means the end of wage-labor, which means the end of capitalism. As electronic, laborless production expels more members of today’s new class of workers from the economy, they are drawn into a fight for their very survival. They constitute a powerful force, capable of putting humanity on course towards constructing a new society that is compatible with the new tools of production, a society organized to create an abundance that is distributed to all those in need. None of this is automatic. It requires human agency. A class conscious of itself, which understands how we got here and where we have to go, can begin to think strategically about how to move the whole process forward, from a world dominated by private property, to a cooperative communist society that can provide for all.
These new conditions also bring our class new strengths it did not have before. As explained in “Juneteenth: ‘Bottom Rail on Top this Time!’” our country’s history and the policies of the ruling class caused African American workers to suffer disproportionately from the electronic revolution. Yet, this same economic revolution is also moving towards an equality of poverty among the new class of workers, regardless of color or national origins, creating a material foundation for breaking the formula of control that has divided and exploited workers since the inception of the country. Because the African American question always has been at the center of American history, the historical aspirations of the African Americans for full equality, have driven the struggle for democracy for the entire working class. Today that struggle is finally realizable.
“The Wall Will Fall: American People Don’t Separate Families” shows what the struggle at the border teaches us about the potential for unity, which lies in the growing equality of poverty. The attacks on families from both sides of the border may seem unrelated, but they are not. Every ruling class attack is designed to divide and isolate us as a class, both nationally and internationally. Understanding that our conditions are related to our new position in society – as
“unnecessary” workers – is a first step towards being able to improve our conditions. The first step is always the hardest, but by taking this one we become clear that it is the corporations and the ruling class that are the “unnecessary” ones.
“Citizens United and the Future of Democracy” shows that the fight for political democracy today can no longer be separated from the battle for the basic economic demands of the workers: food, water, housing, health care, and education. By providing an in-depth historical look at the political current of “Progressivism” in American politics, the article allows revolutionaries to discern the difference between the progressives of the past, who sought to corral workers to support capitalism, and those calling themselves progressives today whose campaigns can unleash real working class politics, based on the demands for human necessities.
May/June 2019. vol.29. Ed3
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
P.O. Box 477113 Chicago, IL 60647 rally@lrna.org
Free to reproduce unless otherwise marked.
Please include this message with any reproduction.
