The New Year is always a time for reflection and for new resolutions. It is a time for assessing where we are now and where and who we want to be. We face cascading crises in our country — nearly half a million dead, tens of millions sick, our economy thrown into chaos, and the future and survival of our families and loved ones in jeopardy. We mobilized millions in the hopes of clearing the way for at least some relief and redress of our problems.
The politicians, capitalists, and commentators all call out for patience, for unity, for compromise. They know that this word unity is much loved and that unity has been much fought for by the working classes of the world. We understand that without unity, we cannot form up our forces to complete the fight for the world that our forefathers and foremothers gave their lives to achieve. Unity, then, yes. But we have to ask ourselves — on what terms, and with who, and for what?
The ruling class, through their political parties, wants us to unify around their needs and interests to protect their wealth and power. They hide behind the help they say they are going to give us. They hope that we do not root out the class interests behind all their moral, religious, political, and social phrases, declarations, and promises. Aside from any tactical decisions we must make, is this the unity we want? How do we make those tactical decisions along a line that advances our interests as a class?
We all make assessments in our work. It’s a practical reality that we cannot go forward without understanding what we are facing and what we need to do to move in the best interests of our class. How we see the battlefield, the different forces at play, and the strengths and weakness of our own side as well as our class adversary, determines our conclusions and our actions. Created by the ruling class, the developing struggle and the growing divisions among our class show where these conclusions and actions take us is a matter of life and death today.
We can all see the vast changes taking place in society today. These changes are forcing everyone to consider new ways of seeing, new ways of organizing, and broadening our reach beyond the limits of simply fighting to get back what we have lost to an envisioning of what is actually possible today. Alicia Garza is one of many voices recognizing this necessity if our forces are going to win. “We can’t be afraid to establish a base that is larger than the people we feel comfortable with,” she writes in her new book. “We have to take seriously the task of organizing the unorganized…the people who have everything at stake and who want to win changes in their lives and the lives of the people they love.”
What’s happening in the economy is the most important of these changes as, in the final analysis, it frames the world in which we strive to live. It is widely known and discussed throughout our society that these advanced technologies are eliminating human labor from all forms of production and a means of making a living. Robots are replacing human workers at various forms and levels of sophistication, but the direction is toward a “workless society” or perhaps better to say a “jobless society” in the near future. The pace of the process varies across industries, workplaces, regions, and nations, but the direction is clear.
What is not so often discussed are the consequences of these radical changes beyond the ones we see every day under capitalist rule: starvation, homelessness, poverty, violence, death. This new technology is destroying the capitalist system itself. It is not simply like the Great Depression of the 1930s or the usual ups and downs of the capitalist economy where most of us eventually go back to work. Under capitalism, if workers can’t work or can’t work at a living wage, they can’t eat, they can’t survive, and they must fight.
In the hands of the capitalists, these technologies are wreaking destruction. In our hands, this new technology offers the foundation for a society that can provide not only the basic necessities of life but the wherewithal to finally live as full human beings.
If we can agree that this is the situation, then we can ask ourselves: What is the force within our very society that surrounds us, the forces which can — and owing to their social position must — constitute the power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new? This force is developing right before our eyes—a new class of workers being created by the advance of laborless production itself. With every stage of development in this new economy, this new class — our class — grows larger and more diverse in color, background, experience and, as we all know, varied in what they think is wrong with this country and how it needs to be fixed.
But after all the different protests are over no matter the cause, after the placards and banners are left behind on the streets and parks of our nation, and after the American flag’s use, whether as a banner or a weapon, our class returns to the everyday reality of our lives regardless of values, beliefs or ideologies or color. Our class needs housing, health care, education, jobs, food. They need a country that puts their practical needs first. We return to the reality that brought us to the streets in the first place and the thing that, in the end, makes possible the real political unity that can build a society in the interests of all.
The ruling class fights to disarm our class of these true interests. Yet, throughout our country, even if not always heralded or their message understood, grassroots fighters understand the need for simple, practical unity around common conditions. One example of this is a speaker at a small rally of what some might seem the unlikely combination of Black Lives Matter supporters and those protesting the election outside of Mitch McConnell’s house in Louisville, Kentucky. ( See this link: in footage broadcast on social media.)“We all know that Trump supporters and what everyone wants to call Black Lives Matter have their differences,” a young African American woman stated to the crowd, “But collectively we are here because Mitch is a bitch and he owes the American people money.. we are here together to protest because the government, the system, has been ripping us all off in many different ways.”
The question before all revolutionaries is the same: How do we win? How do we take this restless mass of workers across all colors and turn them into the social force that can overturn this system? They are divided in thinking — the ruling class had made sure of that — and are possibly more divided than ever. But they are increasingly equal in condition. Not all the way, and still disproportionately affected by history and culture. But the direction of this “race to the bottom” for all of our class is clear. We cannot allow our forces to be divided by the ruling class lies that affect all our people. We must reassert the time-honored slogan of “all for each and each for all” no matter where the attacks against our class brothers and sisters take place. Class unity across all divisions of color, nationality, or gender. Nothing can be done without this unity and consciousness.
We all know that fighting alone is not enough. But the fight combined with the practical possibility that we finally have the wherewithal to realize our goal of a happy, cultured and fulfilling life can free our class to chart its fight along the lines of that possibility, that vision. This is no simple task. The divisions within our class are very deep and can only be overcome through the intellectual struggle linked to daily practical experience. Yet this is the hand we have been dealt. Every struggle of the class must be used to explain the meaning of their activity, to show them a vision of the cooperative society that is possible, and a strategy to get there. We call that cooperative society communism — the public ownership of the wherewithal of life and distribution according to need. Understanding the practical realities of what is possible, resting on the common fight for the basic necessities of life, and using a vision of the world we want to illuminate our path every step of the way is a start. The rest will depend on the hearts, wills, and the determination of our class and the revolutionary leaders from among our ranks who help to chart our path.
Published: February 03, 2021
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