In the waning days of 2020, Sarah Palin, a demagogue of the ruling class, came to Georgia to speak at a rally on behalf of the two Republican candidates campaigning for the January 5 runoff election for the U.S. Senate. “What we need,” she said, “is not transformation, but restoration.” On New Year’s Eve, we would all like to have heaved a big sigh of relief and finally put 2020 behind us. But as the article “New Year Calls for New Thinking” points out for us, January, named for the two-faced Roman god Janus, has one face always turned to the past, and the other toward the future. That best describes the choice we have to make as we enter into the new year of 2021: restoration or transformation?
Twenty-twenty saw a time of deep crisis, a pandemic that even now is killing us at the rate of a Pearl Harbor or 9/11 every day, and an economy in which masses of people are literally starving, and jobs continue to disappear.
Twenty-twenty was also a year of rebellion, as millions rose to protest the systemic police violence and killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and many more. Yet, in spite of the massive uprisings, the police state has not abated its stance to control by force a restive new class of workers, being cast aside as worthless and having no choice but to fight for their survival.
Now another name is added to the growing list: in December, 23-year-old Casey Goodson, Jr. was gunned down by a police officer in Columbus, Ohio. The officer said he thought he saw a gun and shot Goodson to death. There were no witnesses, no body cams, no videos. According to Goodson’s family, Casey was actually carrying a Subway sandwich and was shot as he entered his own home. “He was shot through the metal screen door, and he fell and died in his kitchen,” said the family.
The battle is joined. The powers of the State and its ruling class will stop at nothing to protect, maintain, and “restore” a dying capitalism, that is in the process of its own destruction. For a desperate new class of workers, who face only hunger, deepening poverty, eviction from their homes, and shrinking means to obtain even the most basic necessities of life, the only real option is to go forward to a society transformed, in which the abundance of life is distributed to all who are in need.
As the article “Police Terror, Rebellion and Revolution” says, “Today, our society is fighting out an economic revolution — the clash between the labor-replacing power of digital technology and a society organized around the buying and selling of labor power. Society needs to transform, and reorganize around its capacity to produce without exploitation, and to ensure a healthy and productive life for all.“
As we celebrate Black History Month this February, the article “American History and the Liberation of Us All” shows how, just as an abolitionist movement arose to abolish slavery, now today a new class arising in opposition to its existing conditions is also an abolitionist class. Organizer and educator Marianne Kaba stated: “For me, capitalism has to go. It has to be abolished. So we’re doing work every single day to set the conditions for that possible vision of a world without prisons, policing, and surveillance.”
“Sweet Home Chicago” unveils the insidious practice of “gentrification,” used both in Chicago and throughout America, which directly links this practice to the exponential growth of potentially millions of homeless people. Even the shooting death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, was part of a police operation to clear out a block that was to be part of a major gentrification makeover.
“The Road to a New America Runs Through the South” shows how the South has long been a key to ruling class political control of Southern workers and all workers throughout America. “The full weight of the knee of American capitalism has always been pressed on the neck of working and poor Southerners.” The recent elections in Georgia show how the American working class can win when it understands the strategic role of the South, which has the potential to unleash revolutionary transformation.
“From the Editors” affirms that history is on our side. “Once the human mind and spirit are set free of the constraints of an outdated system, we can then work together to achieve goals that reach for the limits of human imagination.” RC
January/February 2021. Vol31.Ed1
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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