As discontent grows and people are pulled into political motion, the electoral process is creating the opportunity to take another step toward breaking the ideological and political connections that tie the workers to the capitalists.
The elections presage a coming “perfect” political storm: a fiscal economic cliff, the Washington quagmire, and a rising new class of dispossessed whose needs cannot be met within the confines of the capitalist economic and political order. As the article “Jobs and the Elections” points out, “The introduction of robotics has changed the whole game. Production without labor means job categories disappear forever — like the bowman or mule-skinner. Jobs that exist are paying lower and lower wages as robotics expands. The economic order is disintegrating.”
People are seeking answers. This is the moment to get out the new ideas that make history. From this perspective, the Green Party presidential campaign with its focus on program and the actual demands of the movement provides a real opportunity. Revolutionaries can connect with this motion and get out the program of the new class to the leaders of the emerging struggle. In so doing, we help develop the consciousness that shapes and propels the movement along its historical path.
Given the developing polarization, a third party can be a tool in the interests of the bourgeoisie or of the working class. Revolutionaries make the fight for an antifascist, anti-corporate third party. They work to help shape the process along the line of march — they break the workers away from the Democratic Party, helping to separate the thinking of the masses from their rulers.
The disintegration is reverberating throughout society. The article “Class Interest Drives the Politics of Healthcare for All,” shows how a restructuring of government is taking place based on a politics of austerity. The recent Supreme Court decision on the individual mandate, as well as their rendering of the Arizona “alien registration” law illustrate how the fight is shaping up to a “legality of exclusion” in America.
The article on “Abolish Student Debt, Hold Government Accountable” shows that “today a new stage is emerging: higher education has become financialized … configured as a mechanism to benefit Wall Street, not students.” Likewise, as the article “The Jobs of Tomorrow?” points out, community colleges are being devastated as they too are being reconfigured to conform to for profit only institutions.
The article “Unfinished America: A History of Culture Wars” recognizes that American history has always been a history of culture wars, but the war today is taking the form not only of the corporate control of culture for profit, but is also a sustained effort by the ruling class to discredit, isolate and control the new class regardless of color.
The capitalist class has good reason to fear the workers, particularly the newly dispossessed.
As corporate America forces the rising class of permanently unemployed, part-time, low-wage and contingent workers into a corner, they find themselves hemmed in on every side by a dying system that can no longer address their needs. As the article “Solving the Riddle of History” shows, the only solution this class has is to abolish private property and “lead society forward to a new world.”
The storm clouds are forming. Society is polarizing. The line of march of the new class of dispossessed is to fight forward to a solution that is attained on behalf of all of humanity.
September/October.Vol22.Ed5
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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