By the Steering Committee of the League of
Revolutionaries for a New America

On Sunday, October 9, the Chicago Tribune ran a chilling story about a trail of unlawful labor recruiters and brokers that stretches from Nepal and other Asian countries to sub-contractors of KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary that services the US Army in Iraq.   The story featured a mother in Nepal grieving for her son – one of many teenagers and young men desperate to help feed their families – who paid a fee for the promise of a job in Jordan.   Once in Jordan, the young men were told they were going to Iraq; and once they got to the war zone in Iraq, the contractor confiscated their passports.

On that same Sunday, The New York Times ran a story about Hurricane Katrina survivors stranded in a church facility in Oklahoma, still not knowing where or when they might find a place to live.   That story also featured a mother – a New Orleans woman who had been evacuated and left in Sallisaw, Oklahoma – who didn’t know where her son was.

The Nepalese mother knows that her son died in Iraq.   The New Orleans mother still may not know about her son.   But we do know that the capitalist class cares nothing about these mothers and their children except whether they can exploit them to turn a profit. The government that gives contracts to KBR to service the troops in Iraq is the same US government that left the poor people of New Orleans to fend for themselves or die.

Katrina exposed millions of people in this country to the crimes of the capitalist class, their government, and their system. But whether that exposure leads to a consciousness of class and political interests – or to just more hopelessness and cynicism – depends on what revolutionaries do.

Moving a step ahead

What is the significance of this moment for revolutionaries?   How can we push the revolutionary movement forward at this time?

The capitalist system will not and can not take care of people in time of catastrophe – whether that catastrophe is a hurricane or the loss of a job or a family medical crisis. This moment calls for a simple but decisive step – for people to break their political and ideological dependence on the class that exploits them and then throws them away.  It’s time for revolutionaries to concentrate their energies to accomplish this step.

Why now?

The state is changing its form. In the face of Katrina – as in the face of the hurricane of layoffs, homelessness, hunger, and human and spiritual destruction – every level of the government left people to die.   TV viewers around the world watched in horror as people remained stranded on roofs, highways, and stadiums – while police, National Guardsmen, and private security mercenaries protected private property with attack dogs and machine guns.

The government has shown itself to function as the direct voice and arm of the corporations, moving quickly to protect the property and profits of the corporations – lining up contracts for Halliburton and other corporations; unveiling plans to rebuild New Orleans for those with the money to enjoy it and the capital to make investments; suspending health and safety protections during the rebuilding.

When the capitalists needed a large domestic labor supply, when industry was humming and the good times were rolling, the government of this country took the form of a republic that held society together and at least promised responsibility to the whole population. Today the government enthrones the corporations and advances their program of exploitation without limits. Economic changes have been leading in this political direction for some time now.   Katrina accelerated the process.

New situation calls for new forms of struggle

From a neighborhood fighting to hang on to a pre-school program that is losing its funding, to the thousands of unemployed, disabled and retired people in Tennessee who will no longer receive any help from the state to buy their medication, to the Rust Belt states that face one lay-off after another – the problem today is bigger than any particular employer or politician.   Organizations and forms of struggle that worked in the past can no longer deliver what people need to make it in the new world economy. Battles today are political.

A movement is in the making, and the way is open for new levels of thinking and acting. The Katrina debacle made clear to millions that the vast majority of the people of this country stand on one side, and the corporations and the government that enforces their program stands on the other. Movements arise when new means of production give rise to a new class and polarize society. In the aftermath of Katrina, Americans from all walks of life rushed to the side of those who had nothing. The outpouring of morality and generosity signal the beginnings of a movement, but these impulses cannot fully develop and coalesce into a movement until they are politicized to fight for something. A movement needs to coalesce around the program of a class.  Today that program is the program of those in society who have the least, those who are left at the mercy of whatever catastrophe strikes them – whether that be economic devastation or a hurricane.

The economic crisis facing the American people is bigger than Katrina.  Even as hurricane victims are scattered across the country, Midwesterners who have lost all hope of ever getting a job again in the crumbling auto industry are heading for New Orleans to work under unsafe conditions for sub-standard wages.

Katrina delivered a warning: No one in the path of the economic destruction can count on help from the capitalists or the government.  Katrina also delivered a call to the revolutionaries: We have to concentrate our scattered activity and do everything we can to prepare people to fight in their own interests under the new conditions.

Hurricane Katrina summoned the morality of the American people, ripped off another layer of their innocence, and opened the way to a new level of thinking.   A capitalist class that uses every tragedy to advance its program cannot forever hold the trust and allegiance of the people it exploits.   With the corporations and the government so closely and so obviously linked, it becomes possible for people to make this break.

The challenge before revolutionaries

But just because it’s possible, that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen automatically.   The challenge of this moment is to develop the consciousness that will allow the people who have been quietly suffering to separate themselves politically and ideologically from their exploiters and to think and move in their own interests.     We can make this rupture a permanent break by uniting people with the solution that is in their interest and by empowering them with the ideology to fight for it.

This moment calls on revolutionaries to combine and systematize their scattered and separate efforts to accomplish that very step. The League of Revolutionaries for a New America is reorganizing into a structure that brings revolutionaries together as equals for this purpose.

Revolutionaries are active and engaged on all fronts of struggle – the fight for public education, the battles of youth and students, the struggles of the unemployed to survive, the traumas of the one-industry town that just lost its industry, the work of the cultural revolutionaries to bring meaning, spirit, and political consciousness to people’s devastated lives, and so on. In the League, revolutionaries on a front of struggle meet together as equals and make plans for politicizing the people there, proving that the capitalist system is the underlying cause of their problems, inspiring them with a vision of what the world could be, and educating them so they can fight in their own interests.     Only if these revolutionaries are united around the solution can we collectivize our efforts to accomplish this step in developing the consciousness of the people.   This is the mission of the League.

League life educates every member of the League to play an active role in accomplishing this step and also to prepare for future steps. The League values every one of its members, and education is a constant process for all of us.   The more we know, the more creatively and scientifically we can go about this very simple and direct step.   To stay on course, revolutionaries proceed from an assessment of the real world. Therefore, the League continually analyzes the objective situation – how the effects of globalization and the new electronic technology are rippling through the economy and society in stages, what the ruling class is doing and why, and what that all means for the tasks of revolutionaries.

Katrina showed that the immediate and critical needs of the people cannot be met without the destruction of capitalism and the organization of a society without any room for private property. As we engage in the fight for immediate needs, we don’t beg to get back a little bit of yesterday. We set our sights on a vision of what the wonders of today’s science and technology make possible – a society where the abundance possible today is distributed according to need, a society in which everyone can grow to his or her full cultural and spiritual capacity.

In order to fight forward toward a vision of what the world could be, we need a sense not only of where we’re going, but also a strategic sense of how to get there.   The League’s compass is the interests of the most exploited and oppressed in society. The League fights for the solution to the problems of those who didn’t have the gas money or cars to get out of New Orleans before Katrina hit, those throughout America who are dying of curable diseases because they can’t afford medical care, those who have to choose between paying rent or putting food on the table, those whose jobs or pensions have vanished.   If we fight for those who have the least, we are fighting for the solution for all of society – except for those whose wealth and property depends on the exploitation, poverty, and oppression of others.

And because we are fighting for the program of a class in society, we also fight for its ideology. This critical moment in our country is creating the conditions where a new way of looking at the world will be possible on a broad scale. Ideas of respecting the private property of the exploiters and begging for some crumbs and concessions can give way to the ideas of fighting for what everyone needs – without regard for corporations and their profits. People can begin to grasp their role in fighting for their needs in a new way.

The League is committed to developing the thinking of the American people so that they realize their full potential in getting rid of this system and reconstructing society.   This is a huge task, and none of us can do it on our own. To the revolutionaries scattered across this vast country, we invite you to join with us.   We are reorganizing the League so as to combine all of our creativity and passion to concentrate on one purpose. Accomplishing this will take organization and strategy. In this spirit, we offer the perspective in the pages of Rally, Comrades!   Join us – help us build an organization for these times. The League now more than ever!

 

January.2006.Vol16.Ed1
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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