For the first time ever, for over two weeks the U.S. government was shut down. As the political crisis played out, federal employees were furloughed, threats were made to cut off the food stamp program, and speculators went wild reaping billions of dollars. The fallout of the shutdown revealed the common allegiance of both parties to serving the interests of the ruling class, while also revealing fissures within the parties and increased public support for and impetus toward a third party. As Wall Street rejoiced in a resurgent stock market, the government once again proved to the millions of people who suffer from rising joblessness, and live in poverty without health care, adequate food or housing, that it is unfit to rule because it is unable to care for its people.
Our cover article “2014 Elections Expected to Reveal Polarization of Class Interests” examines the political consequences of the deteriorating economic situation and the failure of the government to redress the people’s grievances. Impulses toward a third party are developing, and this is key to the political development of our class. Revolutionaries must help prepare this movement by uniting and politically educating its leaders at every step in the process and develop a solid working class trend within it.
Youth are particularly hard hit by the transformation of the economy. “Revolutionary Youth: Harbinger of the Future” shows how the socialization of youth has been shaped by the interrelated demands of the economy and society at any given stage of history. Unlike previous generations, youth of today find themselves lost at the margins of society, with little to hold on to. Yet in many cases, neither are they tethered by the expectations of the past. Open to revolution, they need only to be given the framework and intellectual tools to understand the processes of the only world they have really known.
An epochal transformation is underway, rooted in the qualitatively new means of production, electronics. It is not only destroying the old economy, but polarizing society and politics, sweeping away all the old relations, breaking up all the old connections, and opening the way for the new. Charles Mann’s book 1493, which we discuss in “1493: A Review,” is a revealing portrait of causality. It shows that history recognizes no coincidences, no effect without cause, that human history reveals itself as a chain of causality, a web in which everything is connected. The book examines the development of the world economy at that time, showing that Cristobal Colon’s (Columbus) journey inaugurated a whole new era in the history of life. Such studies hold useful lessons for the revolutionaries who today are experiencing a similar but a far more profound transformation.
“The Changing Situation and the Tasks of Revolutionaries” shows that all the elements of social upheaval are moving into place. The realities of fascism in America today are fueling and shaping a new stage of the social movement, and these processes are beginning to clash, deepening the political polarization as conditions worsen.
Revolutionaries, the article points out, cannot understand the changing conditions and simply go on as before. Victory or defeat will be determined by the intellectual and political development of our class, to what extent they have a vision of what is possible, and a clear strategy to win. The government shutdown offered another national platform for fascist ideas. Will we revolutionaries sit back and let these forces take the field? Or will we act with the real urgency of bringing our class the truth – that qualitatively new conditions demand that we fight for a transition to a communist society that can guarantee distribution based on need.
“Why the League?” shows why an organization like the League of Revolutionaries for a New America is indispensable to achieving the changes that millions are striving for. World economic revolution has made world political revolution inevitable. It is up to conscious people to guarantee that the revolution is settled in the interests of the common, ordinary people. The people are beginning to awaken to their situation and to act in defense of their lives. The League unites with this awakening and has dedicated itself to disseminating the ideas that give the class the understanding and goals that conform to the new possibilities and a strategy to realize them.
November/December 2013. Vol23.Ed6
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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