“Imagine all the people
sharing all the world”
“Imagine” by John Lennon, 1971
Imagine a world where all of humankind is free from want. Imagine a world without wars. Imagine a world free of disease and environmental destruction. Imagine a world where unlimited education and cultural creativity is a natural way of life. This kind of world is possible today.
Imagine this new world. These are not the ideas of dreamers. Today, this is exactly what the real material world offers humankind. And because this is what the real world offers – these are the ideas of visionaries – those with the political will to take care of the future in the present – those willing to take the practical political steps today to build the political power necessary to construct such a new world tomorrow.
Roots of Transformation
Today exponential advancements in new electronic technology are producing an abundance of the necessities of life. The robot is the new technology that is unlike any other in human history. The robot produces without any human labor. All of previous human history required human labor to produce the necessities of life. Humanity is in the midst of a leap from all of its previous societies that were based on production with human labor, to a new society based on production requiring no human labor at all. The struggle today is about distribution of the abundance being produced.
We live in a global capitalist society where the means of production are privately owned by a capitalist class. The capitalists hire workers to produce things. The workers buy things from the capitalists with the wages they are paid for their labor. This is the way the system is supposed to work.
However, the entire global capitalist economy is disrupted and undermined as new laborless electronic technology is applied to production, permanently replacing hundreds of millions of workers. These workers are cast out of, or to the margins of the economy, with little or no ability to buy the necessities of life. These workers are a new class created by the new electronic means of production. The capitalist economic system – far from absorbing this new class, is creating it. This growing new class cannot solve its economic problems without the public ownership of the means of production and the distribution of everything that is produced according to need.
Humanity is undergoing an epochal transition, a leap out of the ages of all previous societies that were constructed and based on the production of scarcity, to a qualitatively new society constructed and based on the production of abundance. We stand on the cusp of such a new world being born. This new world is being born out of the destruction of the old.
In the United States, tens of millions of workers have been thrown out of, or to the margins of, the economy. Without a political understanding of the meaning of the times in which we live, and a vision of a new world made possible by the new electronic means of production, they dream about past better days.
Some dream that if we fight hard enough we can reform this economic system, a system based on the sanctity of corporate private property. Many dream about catching a break, like getting a good paying job, or quality health care, or a place to call home. Some may even dream about hitting the lottery. However, every day more are driven out of the economy, while others are pushed down further into the ranks of the most destitute. Without an understanding that corporate private ownership of the means of production is the real cause of their worsening conditions, they are left simply to dream of a better life.
Visionaries, unlike dreamers, proceed from the real world. Revolutionaries must consciously fight for the future. Rage against the ongoing destruction of life alone will not bring change. Revolutionaries must bring our political understanding of the meaning of the times into the day-to-day struggles of the new class.
Promise of the Future
The marvels that the new electronic means of production promise for the future of human society can only be unleashed by the abolition of corporate private property. Because of its social position at the margins of the capitalist economy and society, the new class is the only force capable of embracing the revolutionary political outlook and vision necessary to unleash these new automated technologies to build a new cooperative society, based on distribution according to need. The first stage of development along the revolutionary line of march is found in building the political unity of the new class that is economically equal in its poverty. Developing consciousness, while forging these class bonds of unity, is the task of conscious revolutionaries.
The new class is practically engaged in a day-to-day political struggle for its very survival, as it fights for the basic necessities of life. It has no alternative or options, except to engage in this struggle for basic human demands. Revolutionaries fight shoulder-to-shoulder with our class to win the immediate demands of the moment, while simultaneously explaining the class content of the fight. The ongoing development of political consciousness and a vision of a new society amongst the combatants, is what taking care of the future aims of the revolution is all about.
The political formation of the new class as the leading revolutionary force in society is a necessary prerequisite for it to carry out its overall historic mission. That mission is to gain political power for the complete abolition of private property and to provide the political vision to construct a new cooperative society that distributes the production of abundance to all of humanity. It is only such a new society that is compatible with, and capable of, unleashing the unlimited potential and unknown wonders of the new, revolutionary automated technology.
Humanity has endured a history of revolutionary struggle for freedom that was unattainable under the past material conditions of scarcity. Today, visionaries and revolutionaries carry on that struggle for freedom, with a political clarity made possible under the new material conditions of abundance. Humanity can finally step across that nodal line and break free to secure tomorrow’s promise of true human freedom. We have a new world to win.
January/February 2018. Vol28.Ed1
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
P.O. Box 477113 Chicago, IL 60647 rally@lrna.org
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