The articles in this issue examine crises in housing, COVID-19, public education, science, democracy, and the basic survival of humanity and nature.
As the political system fails the people of this country, the fight for a government that serves the needs of all people — not the corporations and hedge funds — moves thinking forward toward the struggle for a new society, as stated in “New Impulses and the Work of Revolutionaries.”
As shown in “From the Editors,” in an era when labor-replacing technology has undercut the basis on which capitalist exchange rests, the ruling class must defend the system that gives it power — creating homelessness while catering to speculative capital. According to the most recent U.S. Census, the system allows 17 million empty homes to sit while over 500,000 Americans go homeless every night.
To win the fight for the direction of society, the new class created by labor-replacing technology and pushed out of the capitalist economy must recognize itself as a class with the power to change society. A working class without decently paid work cannot survive. It must reconstruct society with distribution according to need. Objectively, this makes it a revolutionary communist class.
The ruling class does not want us to understand our common interests and so tries to divide us.
“Demanding a Government that Meets Human Needs” shows that the leadership in both the Republican and Democratic parties is fully committed to protecting private property and corporate profits. They aim to block the unity of the working class, destroy its fighting capacity, and strip it of the ability to influence government policy.
United political struggle of the class will be necessary to reconstruct society.
The case of Hunter Brittain, an unarmed 17-year-old murdered in Arkansas by a Lonoke County deputy during a traffic stop, is a step in this direction. Hunter was white. Like most police victims, his family suffers from poverty. They are joining the movement against police terror. They are represented by the same attorney as the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Nightly protests of Hunter’s death were held for over two weeks. Al Sharpton and members of the NAACP spoke at Hunter’s memorial service. Jesse Brittain, Hunter’s uncle, said, “Your life had meaning. You’re loved, and your family will not stop advocating until we have justice for you, Hunter. And also justice for all of our other brothers and sisters dying at the hands of law enforcement hired to protect and serve us around this country.” Other speakers called for federal lawmakers to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
The article “We Abolish Educational Inequality, or They Abolish Public Education” points out that racism is used to attack and divide our class. It discusses the orchestrated right-wing attack on “Critical Race Theory.” What is characterized as a dispute about academics is a political tactic in the ongoing campaign to privatize public schools, on the one hand, and a justification of white supremacy. This dispute is a textbook case of using racism as a weapon to divide our class so corporations can make private profit.
The article “Alternative Facts, The Big Lie and Evolution” explains the importance of recognizing the “Big Lie” about evolution that falsely presents “survival of the fittest” as justifying economic, social, and gender-based exploitation as natural, evolutionary phenomena. It argues that the discussion should be about the misteaching of Darwin’s theory. Schools should teach that Darwinian evolution demonstrates humankind’s cooperative, collective nature, that change is inevitable, and that we can develop a society based upon cooperation, peace, and love.
Our poverty, unemployment, skin color, immigration status, or whether we live in rural or urban communities do not justify our being unhoused, undereducated, sick with COVID, or murdered by police.
As “End the Scourge of Homelessness, Abolish Evictions” clarifies, the system refuses to provide the housing that human beings need. Workers pushed out of the economy no longer have money to pay rent, and the government is no longer willing to subsidize housing for people not required by industry. The criminalization of unhoused people serves this transition by dividing and terrorizing some of those sectors most likely to resist.
Let us unite on our shared situation, with a common solution of distribution based on need. RC
September/October 2021 Vol31.Ed5
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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