In May of this year tens of thousands of revolutionaries from across the country gathered in Chicago during the convening of the “Group of 8” (G8) at Camp David, representing the world’s leading economic powers, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), representing the military power of 28 countries. A growing instability and polarization across the globe is the context for the rise of fascism and the drive toward war as the ruling class strives to resolve the crisis in its own interest. This has engendered a huge social response, expressed in the massive protests emphasizing that the material needs of the world’s peoples be met, and at the expense of the military.
The central issues that were taken up and expressed in the G8/NATO protests are reflected in the articles that appear in this issue. “Save Humanity, Save the Earth” says it best: saving humanity and saving the earth are one and the same struggle. Raging fires in the West, triple-digit temperatures on the East Coast, and unheard of flooding in Florida are all telling us something. Global warming and the fouling of our natural resources call into question the future of the planet, but the movement to save the earth cannot be separated from the struggle for jobs, health care, food, shelter and education.
As we go deeply into the fronts of struggle, including the environmental movement, we see the common basis (and solution) upon which they all rest. “Public Housing, Politics and the Need for New Strategies” shows how in an era of robotics and automated production, the ruling class has little interest in meeting the basic needs of the workers, including the need for housing. As the article emphatically states, in this epoch of laborless production, “the workers have no rights that the system is bound to respect.” In the face of such a reality, the only option is to build the political unity necessary to fight for a different and better future.
“Unity of Dispossessed Only Weapon as Fascist Culture Gains Ground” shows how for the ruling class it is necessary to build a fascist culture in order to impede and disrupt the political formation of the new class of workers thrown to the wayside by electronics. As we have already seen with Trayvon Martin, undocumented immigrants are targeted, and their lives devalued as they are blamed for all of the ills of society. A fascist culture reduces the value of life of all workers to practically zero, so the real target is the new class which the ruling class no longer needs but must control.
“Polarization Accelerates as Economic Power shifts” and “Rising Global Ruling Class Transforming World Economy and Society” both remind us that whatever the front of struggle or movement within which we are based, we have to view how things are unfolding on a world-historical stage, and the role we play within that overall perspective. Automated production is polarizing global society and exacerbating a world economic crisis, and a rising global ruling class is moving toward the formation of a world fascist imperialism in which the United States resorts to permanent war to assert and maintain its dominance. Even so, the U.S. is not always able to get what it wants when it wants it. Emerging economic and political forces arise to contend with one another for hegemony.
At the same time, the growing social response to the economic and social inequality fosters the necessity of a fascist solution for the ruling class. 1266 billionaires and 10 million millionaires head a capitalist class determined to defend private property at all costs.
The tens of thousands, even millions, globally, of revolutionaries produced in this moment of devastation and crisis are instinctively fighting for the very survival of humanity, but without any clear understanding of the cause of the problems they face, or any clear vision of the solution. “What is the League’s Goal, Strategy and Mission?” raised again the question of the necessity of building political unity, first uniting our embattled class around the practical issues that are held in common by all – the struggle for the distribution of the great wealth produced by the new technology according to need – and the necessity of building an organization of leaders, an “officer’s corps” prepared for the emerging revolution.
July/August 2012.Vol22.Ed4
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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