Half of all humanity lives on less than ten dollars a day, while the richest one per cent own half of the world’s wealth. Colossal debt? No money to meet the needs of society? Five hundred of the world’s multi-national corporations had revenues of $212 trillion in 2007. As pointed out in “Transforming World Economy Lays Foundation for World Revolution,” in a world where we are seeing the devastation wrought by a system that is fundamentally broken, we see the objective process of the corporations merging with the State to realign society according to market principles, and democracy be damned in the process. Every move they make to secure the interests of private property further exacerbates the misery of a global propertyless class for whom the distribution of the social product according to need has become a matter of necessity.
Well, they have done it now. The battle is on. By moving in draconian fashion to control wageless production in a jobless economy and to make the workers pay for it, while at the same time waging an all-out assault on government “of, by and for the people,” the ruling class has forced the political battle to determine which class will hold the power to reorganize society – who will have the power to decide the future?
The very real destruction of society means that the vast majority of society, the “world-historical” class of propertyless workers, of which the American working class is an integral part, must fight forward for a new society organized in its interests. And, in a time in which we can and must change the world, according to “The Leap: New Ideas are Key,” class consciousness is the linchpin. In the final analysis, only human beings can make the changes that history demands. The work of revolutionaries in this process is critical, to assure the step-by-step process along the path-to-power, where the subjective aspect is key.
“Revolutionary Work Must Address the Political Nature of the Struggle” raises the question, where are we now in the process, and what is the next step forward? We are seeing a growing response to the budget cuts being carried out on the state level, as well as the federal debate to drastically cut Social Security, Medicare and all other social services. “Taxing the rich” is gaining traction with the people as a practical solution to the budget crisis. They are beginning to see that this is really a fight about whether the interests of private property will prevail, or whether the solution lies in making private property public property. Taxing the rich is one step along the path to fight for the redistribution of the wealth that society creates in the interests of the public. It is not everything, but it is a step forward in deciding this battle in the interests of the workers.
A case in point is the struggle being waged on the future of public education, as “Public Education: What are we up against?” spells out. The ultimate goal of the “reformers” is to destroy public education, a fundamental bulwark of democracy, by privatizing education for corporate profit, drastically cutting public funds for education, and reconfiguring education to meet market demand. In the process teachers and their unions are scapegoated and attacked in order to weaken any resistance to their aims. At the heart of this battle is the question of whether the government is going to provide the resources to enable the building of a quality education for all of our children, not just to serve the interests of the corporations. Again, in whose interests will the government serve, the corporations or the propertyless workers?
Humpty-Dumpty is broken and cannot be put together again. The American empire is in decline, but there is no going back. Fascism is objectively arising on a world scale to protect the interests of private property. At the same time, the class of propertyless workers is arising to fight forward to a new world in which the socially necessary means of production and the distribution of the social product according to need defines a new world order. Let the battle be joined.
August/September 2011.Vol21.Ed4
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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