The robots are not coming. They are already here. The world as we have known it is being transformed by a revolutionary electronic technology that is producing incredible abundance, even as it eliminates human labor by the millions. A process that has been underway for some time is now picking up speed, and it portends a future that requires that humanity take the path that leads to a new world of abundance shared by all.
While the ruling class has gone to great lengths to obscure this developing revolution, this reality is now intruding even into the sphere of politics. One candidate for president in 2020 is proposing to make the new technology and its impact the main focus of his campaign. He recognizes that the accelerated pace of developments in automation and in artificial intelligence will soon make many more millions of jobs obsolete, and proposes that “America needs to take radical steps to prevent Great Depression-level unemployment and total societal meltdown.”
“Rising Global New Class Demands a New World” shows that, as labor in production is being eliminated, a new class of workers is being created from those growing millions, who have been cast aside. Their fight is now necessarily a fight for food, water, shelter, health care, education. As “Class Unity – Indispensable to Defeat Fascism Today” points out, the ruling class is not about to give up the robots that enrich them, or take care of those they no longer exploit.
The ruling class, in the face of the destruction of a capitalist economy and society, is putting into place fascist solutions to the crisis. The bitter battles taking place among the ruling class over how they will carry out their program are part of the struggle to coalesce a fascist movement that reflects the new conditions.
Immigration is a flashpoint of the struggle today. “Rising Global New Class Demands a New World” points out that there are 244 million migrants in the world today, uprooted by famine and war, desperately seeking a means to the survival of themselves and their families. The struggle in the U.S. is an aspect of this global motion. The tactic of the ruling class is to pit the American worker against the immigrant worker, blaming them for the loss of jobs and livelihood.
The current battles in Congress over the fate of DACA youth is a case in point. “From the Editors: The Immorality of Deporting America’s Dreamers” shows how the debate is being framed by appealing to “American superiority,” as an all-class American unity in opposition to the Dreamers. Political leaders in Washington are intent upon adopting the most draconian immigration policy in a hundred years. Anti-immigration remains in the forefront of a fascist political program.
The battle for access to clean water is another front, where the confrontation between the private property class and the new class is breaking out. “Whose Water? Our Water!” describes the movement – which leapt forward with the poisoning of Flint – that is coming face to face with a corporate government that dismantles democracy as we know it. These water struggles are taking place all over the country, from Michigan to Louisiana, from California to Puerto Rico.
One glaring dimension of all of this is the appalling immorality of it all. How can we even be debating the “legality” of a human being? How can we even consider separating children from their families and deporting them to a country they have never known? How can we allow water to be cut off from families in Detroit because they can’t afford it? How can we tolerate the homeless freezing to death in the streets of Atlanta?
What is hitting us in the face now is the destruction we are experiencing; but look a little deeper and you will see: What is emerging from the destruction and the motion for fascist solutions is also the fashioning of a social revolution of its own. The battle by immigrants for their very lives goes beyond defending against the attacks upon them. The battle for clean water is more than a defensive move against the onslaught of a fascist program. The battle of the homeless for food and shelter is more than to merely survive.
“Battling Old Ideas With the New” expresses it concisely: U. S. workers have always fought for a vision of America that expressed the deepest strivings of the people: independence from the chains of exploitation to achieve freedom from want and an expectation of a better life. That is the very definition of a new, revolutionary patriotism that unites rather than divides us.
Today is a revolutionary time, says “Reform and Revolution.” Attempts to reform the system are actually struggles to transform our society, from one based on private property, to a new society based upon the distribution of abundance according to need.
March/April 2018 Vol28.Ed2
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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