As we go to press, the battle lines have been drawn. There is no going back. Both during, and after Charlottesville, we see a tremendous outpouring — a passionate, intense striving for social unity — that is making a clear break with the past and its old divisive ideas of white supremacy, bigotry, and racism. People by the tens of thousands are coming out all over the country, and the world, to take a stand: an injury to one is an injury to all. We stand in unity and solidarity with all of our sisters and brothers who suffer from exploitation and oppression.
The fascists are not simply the racist gangs, like those we saw in Charlottesville; they play their role. The real threat is the ruling class. It cannot bring back jobs or prosperity, with an increasingly laborless economy that is irrevocably broken. The ruling class understands that, in order to control a working class in rebellion against its conditions, they must transform the State into a direct, brutal dictatorship, a militarized police state. Trump plays his role by clearing the way for a section of the American people to accept fascist solutions.
The fascist offensive is an attack upon the lives of the workers. Millions of working people of all nationalities and colors are seeing their jobs eliminated, or reduced to contingent low-wage labor, leading to families being thrown out onto the streets. The response of the ruling class to the growing hunger is to cut food stamps. Millions more are being denied access to health care. For many more an education is becoming unattainable. The demands for a decent life are at the heart of the outrage around the country and the world, and this is the essence of the fight against fascism today.
The impulses toward unity and the deep morality of our class must be infused with the knowledge that the world they are already fighting for is possible today. They must come to see that achieving this vision will take transforming society in their own interests, and that class unity is a condition of them moving toward that end.
September/October 2017 Vol27.Ed5
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.
