The world is rife with polarization, conflict, and war. Efforts by a ruling class to maintain its hold on private property, both at home and globally, are accelerating. Around the globe, deepening economic and political polarization defines our time.
In America, a State merged with the corporations is waging war on the working class. A new class of workers created by the advance of automated production are found to be of little value to the new laborless production. Even as these new workers are forced to fight for their daily bread, the ruling class accelerates its attack, cutting access to the necessities of life, confronting the class instead with a militarized police force, and now the intervention of the military.
An ICE raid on a meat-processing plant in rural Tennessee resulted in the detention of 97 immigrants, now slated for deportation. The military is deployed on the southern border with Mexico. A portion of the huge $670 billion military budget, which accounts for two-thirds of the trillion dollar federal deficit, is now being proposed to build the border wall.
The growing attack against the workers as they struggle for the basic necessities of life is an integral part of the path that leads inexorably to global war and the danger of nuclear annihilation. The world order that the U.S has dominated both economically and militarily for the past seventy years is being challenged. We see the rise of powers, in particular China and Russia, contending with U.S. hegemony. In response, as the U.S. loses its economic dominance, it increases its war footing.
The U. S. is currently engaged in 7 wars and has special forces in 137 countries. It has 800 military bases around the world. The U.S. is ripping up trade and other international agreements, unilaterally provoking trade wars and exacerbating tensions. With the addition of war-hawks like Bolton and Pompeo to the inner circle of the Trump administration, we are seeing the formation of a war cabinet on a war footing. Any “deals” will be negotiated with the big stick of the threat of war. Whether it is against North Korea, China, Iran or Russia, only total capitulation is acceptable to a U.S. ruling class bent on maintaining its global dominance at all costs.
The American people have no interest in war. Just as food, water, housing, health care and education are necessary for life, and must be distributed according to need, peace is itself a necessity of life. The prospect of world war is a life and death question. Peace is a necessary condition for the workers of the world to unite to transform the global order into one in which the interests of the workers are foremost.
Impose peace on the war-makers.
May/June 2018 Vol28.Ed3
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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