by Nelson Peery
The most striking feature of the current period is the profound economic polarization taking place in our country. Hunger and poverty amongst Americans has risen 43 percent to 38 million. Not only is poverty growing dramatically, but the so called "middle class" is sinking further and further in debt in an attempt to maintain their standard of living. In 1974 consumer debt was $627 billion. By 2004 it was $9,709 billion and rising. Homelessness, the extreme expression of poverty, is growing throughout the country. Los Angeles alone has over 82,000 homeless roaming its streets and alleyways.
On the other hand, America now boasts of 374 billionaires who, like feudal lords, live in another world of mansions costing millions of dollars, travel in private airplanes and are waited on by regiments of servants.
The mass of the American people want to change this situation. They have been terribly misled in their struggle. This has happened so easily because they do not have the philosophical clarity concerning the process of change. There is an old saying in the streets that "you go for what you know." Consciously or subconsciously people make decisions that reflect their philosophical outlook.
While it is true that humanity creates its own history, we must never forget that they do so under definite conditions and are restricted by those conditions. The conditions for change have matured. It is essential that the revolutionaries grasp this and change their tactics accordingly.
Polarization and Change
The political process does not stand independently. It is the faithful, subjective expression of the economic process. Politics is the response of the various classes to the development of the economy. One cannot exist without the other, and each has a profound effect on the development of the other.
Development is the result of struggle. Struggle takes place when there is polarization. We are using the term polarization in the sense of a sharp division of the population into opposing factions. Polarization in society is the result of polarization in the economy. As the society polarizes, the factions turn against one another, a process of destruction of the old order takes place and a new process emerges from this struggle and destruction.
The fact is that destruction of the economic, social and political "middle" is a necessary and progressive thing. Without such destruction there is no polarization, without polarization there is no struggle, and without struggle there is no transformation. Once polarization begins, revolutionaries do not attempt to hold it back, but work in such a way as to throw their blow at the middle. In this way, they assist in breaking the process free of its confines, making transformation possible.
Politics of the Past
As the political superstructure consolidated in this country, the ruling class made sure that there would be no working-class parties or proportional representation. Their ability to impose such a class dictatorship in the name of democracy grew from key particularities of American history. One was the availability of farmland as the Native Americans were slaughtered and their lands expropriated. The other was slavery, which made color more important than class. These factors created a broad and stable "middle" that held the two poles of worker and capitalist together. The Republican Party and Democratic Party - the twin parties of capital - stabilized on this basis.
For objective reasons all past attempts to break away from the two- party system have been in the form of a third party. Such parties represented the interests of the economic "middle" and were essentially reactionary despite their radical pronouncements.
In the United States, this middle for historical reasons was very large, consisting of small farms, small businesses, home ownership and so forth. After World War II, an alliance was formed between the organized, bribed sector of the working class and monopoly capitalism. This alliance broadened and stabilized the middle. For forty-five years the American middle became bigger and stronger.
The philosophically correct political concept of "throwing the blow at the middle" did not make sense under these conditions. Political polarization can only take place if there is economic polarization. One is the subjective expression of the other. The serious revolutionaries had to bide their time, educate themselves and those close to them and participate in the reform struggle in such a way as to prepare for the inevitable change.
Old Tactics Hold Back Process
For change to occur, there first has to be a change in the objective - the economy. That change came in the form of the introduction of electronics into the work place and in the field of communications. Suddenly it was possible to move a factory into a low wage area and yet have as complete control as if it were across the street. Robotics, which are labor- replacing rather than labor- saving machinery, combined with globalization, rapidly drove down the wage and living standards of the formerly bribed workers. The global labor market appeared along side labor- replacing technology. There was more labor and less demand for it. These factors dramatically drove down the living standards of all workers. Economic polarization led to increasingly social polarization.
By the middle 1980's this economic polarization was in full swing. As conditions began to worsen and the polarization of wealth and poverty increased, the workers began a spontaneous motion toward political independence. Most of their leaders struggled to tie them even more tightly to the Democratic Party under some form of the slogan, "fight the right." Even the revolutionaries raised the battle cry of "Vote for the lesser of two evils" or shouted that we must carry on the fight inside the Democratic Party, since a vote for a workers' party would insure the election of the most reactionary candidates.
It is now becoming clear to the advanced workers that in order to free themselves from the political clutches of their enemy they will have to stop "fighting the right" and throw their blow at the middle, the Democratic Party. It should be clear to all, that it is this middle, the Democratic Party, that ties the workers to their enemy and makes them politically impotent. More importantly, the destruction of the political and ideological middle is indispensable to polarization and transformation. Without this destruction, they remained tied by a thousand threads to the "right" and are incapable of fighting them.
Those who believe we can change the course of history by getting more people to work inside the Democratic Party and force it to the "Left" are telling us that they believe that we can create our history without conforming to or recognizing any laws or conditions that govern the process of change and development. They are telling us that history is "just one damned thing after another" and there is no such thing as causality or logic of history.
The Democratic and Republican parties are two sides of the same coin, taking each other's place and protecting one another. By preventing a more democratic proportional representation, they have been able to effectively keep the people from participating in the political process. The American people are beginning to react to this truth. In a number of areas, local parties are springing up representing a spontaneous striving to break away from the domination of the two parties of corporate capital. The formation of the Labor Party was an expression of this reaction on a national basis.
As the economic middle disintegrates, the social middle follows. It is now necessary to begin the destruction of the political and ideological middle. In a word this means liquidating the influence the Democratic Party has over the masses. This cannot be done in one blow. Like everything else, it is a process. It has to go through stages of development that correspond to the people becoming aware of their economic and social position.
The first step is to unite their thinking with their actual conditions. They cannot become aware of their condition until they stop thinking like the ruling class. They have to be won over to think according to what they are. This has been a difficult job in America for historical reasons. As indicated above, this country has had many sharp social struggles. Except for the Civil War struggle between the ex-slaves and the Confederacy, there have been no wide spread class struggles in this country. Because of their feudal history, European countries had clearly defined social classes and a history of class uprisings. Lacking a history of class struggle in the United States, there are few roots for us to proceed from.
Furthermore, there is little in the forms of revolution in other countries that can be applied to the current American scene. Nevertheless, our duty now is to win the people over to supporting and fighting for a new America based on cooperation rather than the so- called competition that has placed the wealth of the country in such a few hands. Can the American people be won over to a non-ideological concept of communism? Yes, they can. It has to be done on the basis of a patriotic defense of the country as well as the class.
It is commonly accepted today that corporate economic and political power is undercutting what democracy remains in our country. The fight to transform these giant corporations into public property is a patriotic fight. The ruling class has linked capitalism to patriotism through the highly paid section of the working class. This organized, bribed section of the class, which is the mass base of the Democratic Party, has been the major bulwark against communism within the class. It was summed up in Walter Ruther's demand that "We must not kill the goose that lays the golden egg". We must challenge them on moral grounds. 82, 000 homeless in one city is cause enough to challenge the system. This challenge has to be made within the framework of the particular history, not only of the American people in general, but within the history of the area and region they work in.
The role of the revolutionary is not so much to invent or attempt to impose revolution, but to facilitate the actual historical process. That means to keep the subjective - the social and political process in line with and reflecting the economic process. For the past 20 years the polarization of the economy has been dramatic. There has been little attempt on the part of the revolutionaries to educate the people accordingly. Life always asserts itself and the time of mass response to these intolerable conditions is not far off. No matter how politically backward the American people may appear, revolutionaries must begin the difficult fight to win them away from capitalism and to a system of social cooperation. This struggle begins with rejecting the "fight the right" tactic, and to develop the natural tactic of throwing the blow at the middle. This starts with the struggle for ideological polarization which will be expressed as political polarization in the form of a militant workers party.
Nelson Peery has published several books, including Black Fire: The making of an American Revolutionary and The Future is Up to Us. He is available to speak through the Speakers for a New America. For more information, contact:
info@speakersforanewamerica.com
April.2006.Vol16.Ed3
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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