A tiny but powerful class of capitalists is sucking the wealth out of society and is draining the life and spirit from of its people. They are destroying the Earth, drowning its people in poverty, and entangling the world in war and violence.

Epochal changes in how society produces the means of its existence are setting the objective basis to change not only the relations among classes, but also the relationship between humanity and nature. The world is in the midst of a sweeping transformation, and every aspect is being pulled into the vortex of change. Bits and pieces of the capitalist class, countries with national interests of their own, the peoples of the world, the just awakening American people – all are being thrown into motion.

When new methods of production began to destroy the old basis for society, they also ushered in the epoch of social revolution and the process that is unfolding in stages today. Revolutionaries play the critical role in determining the direction of the change that is now possible.

If the changes sweeping the world today were moving toward a return to something old, then revolutionaries could direct their energies in an old direction. But these changes are based on the destruction of an old foundation. This destruction begins the revolutionary process and calls for new thinking in new directions.

We assess the current situation in order to focus on the critical tasks of revolutionaries today.

ECONOMIC REVOLUTION AND GLOBAL POLITICS

The new labor-replacing methods of production lower the rate of profit and expel workers from the economy. As electronics replaces whole categories of work, it is shaping the world economy around mobile capital, cheap labor, debt, and speculation.

The capitalist class accumulates wealth on the basis of the labor of the world's people, speculates on and profits from debt, profits from manipulating the world's currencies, and privatizes every public asset and function possible.

Technology displaces workers, making labor cheap. The immense surplus value circulating globally is produced off the backs of a smaller and smaller percentage of workers who are unable to purchase the commodities they produce because they are paid wages that keep them and their families living in poverty. One half of the world’s children live in poverty; some three billion people – nearly half the world – live on less than $2 per day. In addition, electronic technology replaces workers in production. With fewer and fewer workers earning sufficient income to allow them to purchase commodities, the economic foundations of the capitalist system are cracking.

Debt is exploding. Credit makes up the difference between what is earned and what is needed. This goes for governments as well as for individual workers.

Financial speculation is expanding. The thirst for investment is unquenchable. Financial and speculative capitalists thrive on our debt more than on our ability to work. The growing predominance of speculative capital is beginning to shape social and political life.

Credit creation, consumer debt, and fictitious wealth temporarily prop up the economy. But this is a false and fragile foundation. As the value of labor power continues toward zero, every advance of speculative capital or debt increases the gap between wealth and poverty both at home and around the world.

Capital from everywhere has to force open markets anywhere. Although the world’s capital is increasingly mobile, the U.S. continues its drive for political domination. The drive for national domination over globally integrated capital and the geopolitical battle for control of strategic resources like oil accelerate political instability and the danger of war. Nuclear weapons raise the stakes of that danger.

While the capitalists of the world battle over who will dominate the world economy and how, they are united around the need to maintain their economic and political supremacy over the growing global class of poor.

The global economy stands on a fragile foundation. The political struggle for control and domination is intensifying and spreading instability. War, human displacement, and destruction are spreading and escalating with horrifying consequences for the peoples of the world.

Neither the American economy nor the American worker is immune. The social and political results could take some time to mature, or events could move very quickly. Revolutionaries need to prepare for the social response to the radical economic instability. This moment calls for revolutionaries who will articulate the partisan interests of our class and point the way forward to securing the political wherewithal to guarantee those interests.

While we cannot predict the timing, forms, or catalysts to such dramatic events, the League must prepare now.

THE STATE

With every problem today, people face the immediate question: either the consolidation of the power of the corporations over society or the power of society over these exploiters and speculators. Which way forward depends on which class has political power.

As electronics breaks the bonds between the capitalists and the workers, it is also destroying the basis for everything in society that rests on that social relation. Where at one time, capital needed the state to help guarantee a reliable domestic workforce and market, today capital demands that such barriers be removed. And so they are. In the process, the state is being transformed.

As the machinery of force and political power of one class over another, the state is being reconstructed to serve the needs of capital under today’s conditions. In the U.S., the state, the corporations, the banks and speculators are merging to play this role and enforce the political power of those who own the means of accumulating wealth based on a system of exploitation. Private corporations set public policy. Public assets and functions are privatized – transferring property from public to private ownership. Public debt owed to private investors opens the state to manipulation of policy. The sovereignty of private property is destroying society.

Capital simply doesn't need the U.S. working class in the same way it did through the stages of early capitalism, maturing capitalism, and even the stage of imperialism. This is the basis for the demolition of the social contract that guaranteed economic security for a large section of the population and a safety net for those who weren’t doing so well. This is the basis for the attacks on our constitutional rights.

The state does not transform all at once. We are witnessing the attempts and steps to adjust to the new situation. But the direction is clear. The U.S. state is undergoing a profound shift from a nation-state, in the sense of protecting the market and the social relations within one country, to that of expanding the market and protecting the sanctity of private property globally, while abandoning responsibility for society nationally. The economic imperatives of market and employment can no longer hold the economy and society together. The political imperatives of laws, force, intimidation, and violence increasingly come into operation – all to the detriment of society as a whole. The tendency is toward the open terrorist dictatorship of capital.

CLASS AND SOCIETY

While the owners of capital always got richer off the backs of the poor, at least people had jobs or the social safety net. While young people always wondered about their place in society, at least they could have the hope of making it better than their parents. Today, the combination of labor-replacing technology and the private ownership of the means of production threatens the lives and livelihood of every worker. Lives are shattered with the splinters flying apart in different directions – immigrant workers with no rights, auto workers with no jobs, cities with no libraries or fire departments, families with no water, service workers and college professors with no health benefits, education and the environment at the mercy of the corporations.

Today it is not only the inevitable unraveling of the economy, but also the deliberate actions of the state that are deforming our lives and ushering in a new political climate. As these changes in capital and the state enrich those with property and destroy the economic middle ground in American society, they are also bringing into being and shaping a new class that gets nothing from the capitalist system. This class is not a static category of people. The ultra-rich can afford privatized services; the poor are forced into desperate struggles for survival; those in the middle are becoming poor. As society polarizes between wealth and poverty, we see the destruction of a way of life enjoyed by a large section of the U.S. working class.

Expelled from the economy and abandoned by the government, this growing class is drawn from all walks of life. It cannot get what it needs unless it abolishes the right of one class to profit at the expense of another. Displaced, abandoned, and dispossessed, its actual program is the end of all exploitation, the public ownership of the means of producing the wherewithal of society, and distribution of the social product according to need.

This program is the only way to stop the assault on society as a whole by the exploiting and speculating class. Every major problem plaguing our society – the destruction of the environment, the decaying educational system, a dysfunctional health care system, the explosion of debt – calls for the abolition of exploitation and all property that rests on it.

Like the capitalist class at its rise, the class rising out of the destruction in society will be formed politically in the fight for what it needs and the struggle to resolve the problems posed by the devastation of society. This isn’t an automatic process, but a combination of actual needs, social struggle, ideological polarization, and political education. The solution to every individual problem plaguing society is the public ownership of the means of life.

There is no way to put the pieces back together again. Neither capitalism nor any system of the private ownership of society’s means of production can offer any hope or solutions – either for the growing new class of dispossessed or for the well being, culture, and spirit of society as a whole.

SOCIAL RESPONSE AND REVOLUTIONARIES

Changes in the state are shifting the leading edge of the social struggle. Today it is not simply the actions of the employers against the workers – but more critically the assault of the state against society. Every political step – from cutting social services, to putting the environment at the mercy of the corporations, to destroying civil liberties – strengthens the power of the possessing class over the class of displaced and dispossessed. Changes in the state are bringing the social struggle into confrontation with the state.

Shifts in capital and the state are breaking the ties that bind the working class economically to its class enemy. This process is well underway. These shifts are weakening the ideological bonds that limit the vision, activity, and sense of class interests. But, the direction is not so clear. It is up to revolutionaries to determine the political direction.

History moves in a continual struggle between old form and new content. Although the program of a class will determine the answer to the questions confronting society, class interests are not necessarily fought out directly in class terms and class forms. In the process of fighting over right and wrong, people can become conscious of the class political interests at stake.

The polarization of ideas about how to solve these problems is taking the form of a battle over morality. Every current of life and institution of society is polarizing over which way to go. Every immediate life-and-death question gives expression to the epochal transformation on a global scale and poses the question: Which way forward -- the interests of private property or the well being of the people of the Earth? The polarizing response presents clear dangers – but also the opportunity for our class to become conscious of its actual interests.

Many know their loss of good jobs and benefits is permanent. They are angry at the corporations that have taken over government, and they fear what lies ahead. From both the Democratic Party and some who claim “independence,” we hear agitation against the attack on the “middle class” and calls for its defense against illegal immigration and workers of other countries. From the “left,” we hear the echo of these appeals in agitation for a fairer distribution of the wealth, leaving political authority and the means of production in the hands of the capitalist class. The ruling class and their populist demagogues can leverage the fear and anger into a popular support for fascism.
Unless revolutionaries bring the actual cause and solution into the discussion and struggle, the anger and fear will feed these appeals that disable our class. The demagogues being promoted today by the media will rile people up about the corporations, corruption, scandals, and even the war and the growing gap between wealth and poverty. They will talk about what they’re against. But, they will not – cannot – talk about solutions.

What happens at this stage depends on the direction in which people start to think about the problems facing society and what will solve those problems. That direction depends on what revolutionaries do. Revolutionaries are not just people who understand or believe in something. We do something about what we think. Revolutionaries don’t point backwards, trying to recover what history has forever taken away. We envision the new world that is possible and articulate the steps that will get there.
Revolution is the process of society resolving the specific problems that are tearing it apart. Today, society can salvage the environment – if it frees it from the clutches of corporate profit. Society can stop children dying of malnutrition – if the social product is distributed to those who need it. Only a solution that addresses the interests of the rising class of dispossessed can solve the problems that afflict society as a whole. Revolutionaries need to bring a class partisanship and vision of the solution into the battle over every symptom of the social problem.

THE LEAGUE

The League of Revolutionaries for a New America focuses its energies to unite the revolutionaries committed to fighting for the solution to the social destruction. To build an organization of revolutionaries who are uncompromising on the program of the new class, we have to assess the level and forms of the social response, embed the solution into the discussion of the problems while battling to solve them, and connect with the revolutionaries produced by this stage of the struggle.

The League cannot do this if we are organized as a self-contained, compact group operating on our own behalf within the struggle and trying to win people to our way of thinking.
If we disperse to the specific fronts of the social response, we can assess the anger, fears, and level of consciousness. We can sum up the demands arising from the social response in a way that points forward toward their resolution.

There is a difference between the scientific abstractions that guide the conscious revolutionaries and the actual perceptions that draw people into motion and inquiry. Revolutionaries tie the two together along a principled line that leads from the perception of a problem to an understanding of the cause and solution. Revolutionaries politicize and struggle to eliminate the gap between problem and solution. When we connect with the swelling anger at the widening wealth gap and the corporate stranglehold on the government and our lives, we can show that the only way to rescue society from the corporate vandals and the poverty and social destruction they generate is to abolish the private ownership of the means of producing the wherewithal of life and to reorganize society with the public common ownership of the means of production.

The League, therefore, resolves to struggle and politicize on the specific fronts where people are debating and struggling over the critical questions disrupting their lives and throwing them against this system of exploitation and private property. The capitalist system turns the environment, health care, and education over to the corporations and makes young people choose between prison, debt, and joining the military. Shifts in capital and the state mean this system can offer nothing more. Revolutionaries can unite the problem with its solution, the movement with its cause.

If we struggle alongside the revolutionaries who are engaged on those fronts of struggle and engaged in the battle for ideas, then we can unite the revolutionaries into an organization that can make a difference.

This stage of the revolutionary process is producing revolutionaries. These revolutionaries are the people stepping up to the challenge of resolving the urgent problems confronting society today. Though battling on dispersed fronts, these revolutionaries are beginning to realize that the problem is much larger than any one single issue. They are coming to understand that the system of capitalism is the root and cause of the destruction and misery heaped upon them everyday. Above all they are doing something about it.

Therefore, as we disperse our activity to the varied fronts of the social response, we resolve to connect with the revolutionaries and together build an organization that brings the solution to the social destruction into every battle and debate.

As shifts in capital and the state are separating the emerging new class from the capitalists, it’s up to the revolutionaries to accomplish the political and ideological development of our class. We need organization and common direction to engage the struggles and minds of today so as to prepare for the battles of the future.

The revolutionaries of this stage of the process come from diverse directions. Some are revolutionaries because they are morally outraged at the destitution and violence brought down upon society by a small class of capitalists. Some are revolutionaries because this system gives them no options but to struggle to survive. Some have experience from the past but understand that things have changed. Others are new to the revolutionary movement but have crucial skills and knowledge. Some learned their revolutionary perspectives in prison and are now woven into the fabric of our impoverished cities. Others are religious revolutionaries who came to their revolutionary spirit through liberation theology or as practitioners of the social gospel. For some, their passion is to save the environment, and their inquiry into causes and solutions has shown them that the capitalist system is responsible for the almost irreversible destruction of the environment. Most of them use different terminology or have their own sets of philosophical principles that lead them to their passion to make the world a better place. Our organization respects each outlook. We can connect with these revolutionaries on the fronts where they are struggling for what they need and waging the battle for the hearts and minds of the people around them.

There is an objective basis on which these revolutionaries can unite – the program of the growing class that is expelled by the economy and abandoned by the government. Their actual program is the end of exploitation, the public ownership of the means of production, and the distribution of the products of society according to need. This program is the dictionary definition of communism. There is no other way to feed and educate the children, stop the rush toward war, and rescue the Earth and human life itself from the corporations.

Some people call this a cooperative society or distribution without money or reorganizing society in the Biblical spirit that [all be] “distributed to each as any had need.” But what is important is that the revolutionaries who are fighting against the destructiveness of capitalism begin to unite around the solution to that destruction. This program for the reorganization of society is the only way to end the ecological, cultural, and spiritual devastation spreading throughout society. It reorganizes society so that the abundance made possible by science and technology benefits all of society. This program offers the opportunity to unite the revolutionaries on the basis of the actual resolution to the destruction of society.

As we disperse to root the organization among the revolutionaries woven into every fiber of the social response, the League also needs a system that holds it together and on course.

We, therefore, further resolve to develop and strengthen an infrastructure of education, political line, publications, organization, and organizational principles that will keep the organization growing and on track for the tasks ahead, and continually sharpening the political direction of its work. We resolve to build an organization structured and oriented to gather and unite those revolutionaries around a program that solves the problems society is reacting to.

The world is undergoing an epochal transformation that sets in motion the revolutionary process and underlies each of the problems facing people. Given the current situation and stage of the revolutionary process, we are bound to see greater polarization in the social response, as well as some sort of crisis – economic, political, or both. Polarization and crisis will push forward another round of revolutionaries, this time dispersed even more widely through society.

To prepare for the future, we further resolve to assemble and strengthen a core of revolutionaries who are partisan to the new class rising today out of the social destruction and uncompromising on its program -- a core of revolutionaries who can reach the next round of revolutionaries and unite them around the solution. This is the immediate challenge before the League.

Let’s rally to the challenges and opportunities of this moment. Let’s summon the revolutionary spirit and culture that will build the League into the organization of revolutionaries this moment calls for and makes possible.

 

January.2007.Vol17.Ed1
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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