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

The United States is a big country with a big population. Approaching 300,000 million people, it is third largest in the world. Only a large mass movement of the American people will be able to overthrow the rule of capital in the U.S. That mass movement can be driven only by the emerging new revolutionary class of the poor, forced to restructure society to survive. This new class requires a revolutionary organization that can guide it through the various stages of the revolutionary process. In this article, we analyze developments in the Rust Belt to enable revolutionaries to complete the current stage of that process.

Every day we read or hear of another large lay-off or plant closure, corporations eliminating pension plans, or attempts to privatize Social Security. Capitalism has reached the stage at which it can no longer bribe American workers and win their support with higher wages and superior conditions. Instead, the ruling class is changing the state form of bourgeois rule from a democratic republic that guaranteed the well-being of its population to a government that enthrones the corporations, renounces any responsibility to society, and is shifting to a form of fascism to advance its interests.

This break in the economic connection between the workers and capitalists is concentrated in the Rust Belt, the old industrial American heartland which swings from western New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia across the upper Midwest through Wisconsin and Michigan. This is where major concentrations of auto, steel, rubber, and other heavy industry once drove the American economy and tied the workers to the capitalists through high wages, unionized jobs, and other social benefits.

Today, as America’s heartland industries are closed, moved elsewhere, or robotized, the Rust Belt is everywhere being devastated. The outline of the resulting economic, social, and political crisis is clear to all. But the crisis has left the masses of people without political cohesion or ideological orientation, while the mass organizations which were once able to effectively respond to problems have no solutions for the new period.

As this stage in the revolutionary process unfolds, the plight of the Rust Belt worker shows what is in store for the rest of America.

Current Stage

Even though the economic connection between the workers and the capitalists is in the process of being broken, Rust Belt workers are still ideologically tied to the capitalist class, since they know of no alternative. These ideological ties are maintained through such things as right-wing religious fundamentalism, anti-communism, white supremacy, and individualism.

Without revolutionary direction, the established alternative to the economic and social destruction of the Rust Belt is for the workers’ mass leaders to pressure the politicians to attract new investment and new jobs from the corporations – an unlikely prospect. At the same time, the capitalists are limiting, rather than expanding, the role of government in housing, health care, and employment. For instance, the inadequate relief funds put into the hands of neighborhood organizations are controlled by local governments, foundations, and corporations. This reinforces workers’ ties through the politicians to the capitalists, thus keeping the struggle confined within the capitalist system. 

An increasing number of workers are living paycheck to paycheck and in fear of losing their jobs and homes and of being forced onto the street. But instead of turning these workers against the capitalist system, their desperation forces them to further increase their pressure on local government and the corporations to satisfy their immediate needs. Yet, in places such as Detroit, where local government is bankrupt and the corporations have been closing down and leaving, these tactics are severely limited, and the situation is ripe for a revolutionary alternative.

The revolutionary process develops in stages, and the situation we have just described tells us much about the current stage. All sections of society are feeling the social destruction spreading throughout the country, but the new class of displaced workers is not yet aware of its class interest. The masses are compelled to fight for reforms, but they can no longer achieve those reforms within the confines of the existing system.

During this stage of the revolutionary process, it is necessary for revolutionaries to develop the understanding of the advanced workers about the crisis of destruction. They must show them why it is happening, by developing class consciousness and ideology, and by explaining why a nationwide movement based on the program of the new class at the bottom of the ladder is necessary to restructure society. In turn, the advanced workers will carry the message to the rest of the mass movement. Without this subjective development of the mass movement, the current stage of the revolutionary process cannot be completed.

There is no question that the mass movement in the Rust Belt is ready for this. There already have been impulses to react outside of the normal channels. In the last four or five years, there have already been occasional outbreaks against the state Cincinnati and Toledo, Ohio and in Benton Harbor, Michigan.

The Rust Belt is where expressions of this stage of the line of march are manifested in in a concentrated way. The revolutionaries can learn how to reach the American people as a whole, as they begin to suffer these same problems.

Reaching the American People

There is a significant gap between the scientific abstractions that guide conscious revolutionaries and the actual perceptions that motivate the masses of people. Key to bridging that gap are the practical leaders emerging in the spontaneous movement. Those practical leaders can help break the masses out of their slumber and develop new ideas. To accomplish this, the first step is to make an analysis of the thinking and the ideological level of the mass movement and develop a line of compromise. That is necessary so revolutionaries can connect with the practical leaders ideologically and complete the current stage in the revolutionary process.

Such an analysis shows that there is an incipient anger and frustration among the workers which is directed particularly against the rapacity of the corporations and the tremendous corruption that exists within the current administration in Washington. By appealing to the morality of the workers on these issues, revolutionaries can begin to show that the enemy is not just the corporations or this or that politician, but the capitalist class as a whole – and that they are involved in a struggle against that class.

By fighting for the immediate needs of workers through the mass organizations – for example, around the demand for water in Detroit – revolutionaries can change the consciousness of the masses and their practical leaders in the concrete and practical struggle for reform. Through that struggle, revolutionaries can show that demands for reform cannot be met by capital, that capital will brutally resist such reforms using the force of the state if necessary, and that consequently a new system is needed.

This way the League, through the practical leaders, can develop class consciousness, a model organizational structure, and a working ideology based on the needs of the bottom of society, while learning how to reach the American people at the same time. We can learn how to expand the League locally and nationally, based on the fight for the new class of poor as the driving force of the mass movement.

One of the most important tools that revolutionaries need for penetrating a movement is a press that speaks for and to the movement. Such a press plays several roles simultaneously. It acts as a voice and builder of the movement, for instance, as well as developing the ideology of that movement. Prior to the Civil War, the Abolitionist press played a tremendous role in exposing the evils of slavery while at the same time developing moral outrage against slavery as a system.

Newspapers are multifaceted tools that are indispensable and distinct from other media available to revolutionaries. By developing a network of correspondents and distributors, they help organize a structure that gathers and unites the practical revolutionaries. The various forms of the press provide the leaders of the mass movement a continuous forum for talking to and learning from each other, a way to unite into one organization, and a person-to-person method for educating their constituencies. The press also brings the scattered and isolated mass struggles together into one coherent movement. And by doing so, a common ideology can be developed based on fulfilling the needs of the new class of poor.

Alternative Vision

Today, the scattered and isolated struggles of the spontaneous movement need to be guided by a practical and positive alternative vision to capitalism. But to disseminate such a vision, we must harness people’s anger and moral outrage against the corporations and in this process show that the capitalist system is outmoded and dying. Revolutionaries can show that another system is possible but that human beings can develop it only based on the needs of the revolutionary new class of poor, which no longer has a stake in the old system. The end of this stage of the revolutionary process will be the ideological and political independence of the mass movement from the capitalist class. Then the masses themselves will dream and conceptualize a society free of want, injustice, hunger, and misery, which allows the full development of every human being.

Yes,  another world is possible. We can create it, but we must complete the current stage we are in. If you are a revolutionary, join the League to make this happen. We cannot do so without you.

 

April.2006.Vol16.Ed3
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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