The line between a functioning democracy and its death by strangulation grows thinner day by day.
The people’s movement for basic needs and input into the direction of the country is growing, and the political system is failing the people.
In this context, revolutionaries elevate and deepen the understanding of the “political power” nature of the cause and the solution. Power in the hands of the capitalist class (the class that currently holds power) will not sufficiently protect the people from pandemic. It will not and cannot stop burning the planet. At the same time, we must fight to hold the political “leaders” of both political parties responsible to the people, teaching as we fight that the solution is political power in the hands of a new class.
As we fight the specific battles (e.g., voting rights, housing, police terror, healthcare, etc.), we also fight to politically coalesce the broader movement, keeping the ultimate cause and solution of these current battles in our sights.
What follows is an abridged excerpt from the February 2021 Political Report of the Secretariat of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America
Throughout the pandemic, our rulers abdicated their responsibility for the health of the American people. All existing inequalities in American society intensified and were apparent in stark numbers for all to see. Televised police terror shone a spotlight on the political nature of systemic white supremacy. The election of November 2020 capped months of economic devastation and a struggle for basic needs and rights, followed by the violent insurrection on January 6 that attempted to overturn the election results.
As the pandemic raged across the U.S., some 50 million workers lost their jobs, and as many as 42 percent of them are not coming back. By the end of January, U.S. billionaires had reaped $1.1 trillion since the pandemic’s start, a 40 percent rise in wealth for the wealthiest 660 individuals. The polarization of wealth and poverty is killing people — testing the limits of endurance and fueling social struggle.
With all sections of society promoting demands and programs that address their needs, a vast social struggle is gathering steam, fueled by the pandemic and climate disaster. Assaults on democracy widen it. Police terror politicizes it. Contamination, commodification, and privatization of water (and nature in general) threaten life everywhere. Modern-day fascism enables the ruling class and its corporations to maintain control of our government in opposition to the masses fighting for transformation to a new, just, and equal America.
The broad struggle for basic needs draws people into action, political discussion, and inquiry. It brings energy and demands to the electoral arena. Extensive networks and organizations mobilized to defeat Trump. While millions were relieved to get Trump out, they know that the election of Biden is not enough.
To make the most out of revolutionary work to develop consciousness, we look at the motion in society, the objective context in which stages of political consciousness can be accomplished. In the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement drew various sections of society into motion and contention and stirred up their thinking. People throughout society joined the battle for equality and justice. Millions marched as rebellions erupted. Some people progressed quickly from moral outrage to class consciousness and commitment to revolution. Others moved from passivity to social consciousness. Involvement and ideology were churning and polarizing, progressing everywhere.
Things are moving even faster now. In May and June 2020, an estimated 26 million people took to the streets in moral and political outrage over the murder of George Floyd and countless other victims of police terror. The rebellion changed the public conversation. It moved demands and programs from journal articles and study circles to the streets and into every struggle for basic needs. It politicized demands and gave them a programmatic edge: “More funds for public schools” quickly grew to “more funds for public schools — defund the police.”
This political impulse is broad and powerful. It can and must be deepened and sustained. At the same time, opposed to this motion, fascist ideology has achieved a new level of organizational cohesion.
The rise of violent, terroristic gangs like those that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6 to stop the certification of the 2020 election draws strength from deeply embedded white supremacy. In a country founded on slavery and genocide, every broad change is shaped and fought out in these terms. The approximately 800 people who broke into the Capitol were essentially an insurrectionary force within a broader pro-fascist motion. Some operate as private militias. Some have infiltrated law enforcement agencies, and law enforcement agencies have infiltrated them. Calls to “abolish the police” are, in part, a recognition of this reality.
Elected fascists inside the halls of government are threatening democracy and the right of people to fight for their needs. In January alone, over 100 new voter suppression bills were introduced, including one in Arizona to allow the legislature to set aside the Secretary of State’s certification of election results.
Together these forces cultivate a mass base to oppose people’s struggles for what they need, and to protect the political supremacy of the capitalist class.
Behind this fascist front stands a ruling class whose need for labor is declining. The pandemic showed how low our rulers’ regard for human life could go and in whose interests they work. The 2020 CARES Act ensured a further merger of the financial industry with the State, by awarding corporations virtually unlimited access to Federal Reserve funding.
The events around the election, the coup attempt, and the second impeachment trial indicate tactical differences between the more openly fascist and white supremacist groupings and those who want to at least keep up the appearances of bourgeois democracy. These tactical differences are partially expressed in differences between the two major parties and within each party, as especially the polarization in the Republican Party is revealing. These are differences about how best to control the social movement — by maintaining a facade of democracy and concern for human life or by moving as soon as possible to drown it in blood.
The whole process depicts how fragile our democracy is — and how close Trump came to taking the election — how the election, post-election, and January 6 attempted coup could have had a different ending.
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.
This report has been edited for length. The full Political Report is available at https://lrna.org and at https://rallycomrades.org/political-reports/. Other sections of this political report cover the George Floyd Rebellion, fighting forward, revolutionary ideas, and political steps ahead. RC
September/October 2021 Vol31.Ed5
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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