Sometimes it is difficult to see our way through. Everything appears to be chaotic, chronically unexplainable, our lives thrown about like a
child’s toy. From the daily lived experience of individuals to the great strivings of the masses in motion, our class seeks an answer, a direction, a means of turning this world into the one that we have so longed to see.
The key is to grasp the constant thread that runs through all history: the transformation in the means by which human society produces the wherewithal of its existence inevitably calls forth the demand to reorganize that society to unleash the potential of that transformation. This is the foundation of all human history, every revolution, and every song, piece of literature and poem heralding its emergence, its struggle and its inevitable resolution.
We see this transformation taking place before our eyes. All the articles in our cur- rent issue speak to this restlessness of human history, this struggle to live, to be thrown into a fight often against our will, living as if with two minds, struggling to hold on to the old life, but inexorably forced to take up the fight for something new as the old crumbles beneath our feet.
“Instability in Time of Epochal Change” shows the particularities of how this process has unfolded in our country, the vast upheavals wrought by the changing economy and the apparent chaos as myriad political forces, ideologies and economic interests struggle and clash for resolution.
The article “Historical Shifts, Instability and the Danger of War” charts the shifting of world economic power over the centuries as new forms of wealth arose in different regions, and the process by which those regions rose to prominence, one stage of development leading to another, laying the foundation for the possibilities that mark our own time.
Yet, as Walt Whitman says in one of his poems, “The Open Road”, “These are the days that must happen to you”, days where our struggle in the present teaches us how to fight for the future.
Three of our articles grapple with the particularities of the manifestation of this
transformation we are looking at: “Arab Uprisings and Global Capitalism” examines the process in the Middle East. The articles “Debt as a Class Weapon” and “Public Banks and Class Politics” examine the specific economic and political manifestations of the process in the U.S.
Each article analyzes the problem under investigation, but also shows how these particular manifestations are simply expressions of the overall world-historical process underway. As such, the conclusions cannot help but be similar.
Society cannot go forward unless it takes over the economic power of the corporations. That cannot be done without our class holding the political power as a class that will allow it to reorganize the economy and society according to the interests of the majority of humanity rather than a handful of billionaires.
Our class cannot realize its historical mission unless revolutionaries play their unique role of unshackling the human mind. In every instance revolutionaries bring the class interests to the fore; they bring a vision of what’s possible and inspire the people with the possibility of that future. Ground- ed in the thousands of everyday battles the chaos of transformation engenders, the revolutionary disseminates not only the vision but the means to achieve it. This must be planned out, conscious, and organized to be effective.
The article “Dig Deep, Spread Vision of New Society” outlines the method of revolutionary work under the conditions of today, the decisive role of developing consciousness among our class, and discusses the need for an organization of revolutionaries to carry out this methodology.
Such an organization exists – The League of Revolutionaries for a New America. Join us. Contribute your energy and your understanding. Contribute to the process of changing the thinking of the American people and help make history.
*Quote from Walt Whitman’s “Song for Myself”
October/December 2011.Vol21.Ed5
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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