Today, at our 6th National Convention, we stand on the edge of new dangers as well as new opportunities.

The economic revolution is taking our country toward a critical juncture. New instruments of production are being introduced into the productive process. Often times we point the finger towards the manufacturing sector, but jobs in other sectors are being eliminated as well. No job is safe. Labor-replacing technology is destroying the world we have known, and throwing our class into misery and poverty.

Since our last convention in 2004, the collapse and bankruptcy of Delphi Corporation has become the leading edge of the crisis in auto, including auto parts suppliers as well as the tumbling Big 3.  We have witnessed the dying of the old industrial cities as workers flee the devastation produced by the economic downturn and we all join the contest of the race to the bottom. The entire Midwest, and particularly Michigan and Ohio, are being devastated.

With more and more being privatized, we are faced with even more corporate control over our lives. Corporations today do everything –  they fight wars, fly pilot-less air crafts, collect military intelligence, collect income taxes, oversee Medicare accounts, even work up government agency budgets and take the minutes at federal policy meetings.

Hurricane Katrina blew the cover off the façade of the “New South” and exposed the poverty and living conditions there to the world. The winds and floods even blew away the controls of the major media networks: individual news reporters were so moved that they finally told the truth. Since then there has been a blackout. There are the usual anniversary stories about the hurricane, but these stories never talk about the unabated corporate take over or its impact on the people of the South.

As the capitalist class spreads war and violence around the world, the polarization between wealth and poverty is reaching unprecedented proportions. At home, a whole new category of poverty has been created – those in severe poverty. It includes over 16 million people, of all colors and nationalities.

Resistance is growing in the wake of this developing crisis.  In the last year, for example, the country witnessed the birth of a new immigration movement of unprecedented proportions. Millions marched on last May Day as the ruling class sought to make criminals of all undocumented workers and those who aided them. The ruling class is fully aware of the power of the people when they have had enough and begin organizing for what is truly theirs. After all, this is a country of immigrants and revolutionaries.

Ruling class preparing to crush opposition

Beginning in the era of J. Edgar Hoover the ruling class began consolidating and legally preparing its power for an imminent clash with the workers of this country. They have created policies and passed legislation that together have created the legal wherewithal for them to crack down on any attempt to thwart the goals of the ruling class. The Internal Security Act of 1950, more commonly  known as the McCarran Act, was the centerpiece of these efforts. The McCarran Act gave the FBI and the federal government sweeping powers to investigate and confine US citizens in detention camps. Although it had been formally repealed in 1971, Senate hearings in 1975 disclosed the designs of the federal government to monitor, infiltrate, arrest and incarcerate a potentially large segment of the American society, including granting the US Attorney General sweeping powers to detain and confine those considered “dangerous to public peace and safety”.

In 1982, the Reagan Administration built upon these developments and empowered the head of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to take control of the internal infrastructure of the United States and suspend the constitution once the President had declared a state of emergency. The steady development of highly specialized surveillance capabilities, combined with the exploding computerized information technologies have enabled a massive data base of personal information to be developed on millions of unsuspecting American citizens. (For more information, see, David Burnham, Above the Law, 1996)

This is all in place awaiting only a presidential declaration to be enforced by both military and civilian police. The latest of these acts to control the population is the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act is really a rehash and strengthening of the McCarran Act of 1950.

So what is the difference? In 1950 the U.S. economy was expanding, the working class was becoming more patriotic and more anti-communist. 2007 finds the economy polarizing and the workers beginning to stir politically. In 1950 these bills were a precaution. Today these laws are an aggressive weapon for the establishment of American fascism.  

Reorganizing for opportunity and danger

At this, our 6th Convention, we made decisions that will determine what our organization will be under these conditions. We are going to consciously create an organization to defend our class interests during the worst of times—while hoping for the best.

As long as there was no practical movement for communism, the communist movement had to be composed of ideological and theoretical communist organizations. Such organizations necessarily became self-contained groups of leaders and followers. Leading bodies became popularity contests that were responsible only to themselves. Clearly, with such a change in the actual political situation, that type of organization has become obsolete.

In order to become an effective organization we cannot be a group of like-minded people. We must become a real organization that has a single purpose and every individual comrade must have a specific and concrete assignment that is an aspect of carrying out that purpose. This applies to every comrade and to every committee of the organization.  As with with any serious political or economic organization there must be evaluation and check up on these individual assignments.           

We must create an organization that is horizontal politically and vertical organizationally. The catch is that in order to be politically equal we have to be equal politically. Every comrade must master his or her craft. Organization means authority. The question boils down to authority to do what? That authority is limited to the will of the majority as expressed in our Convention.

Above everything else, at this moment, the collective need of the organization is to grow. Through our participation in the mass struggle we have and will meet literally thousands of revolutionaries whose practical work makes them candidates for the League. We must recruit on the basis of that practical work and have a consistent educational program to raise them to the level of communists.

We are in the turning point of world history. New conditions mean we will make errors. The fatal error is to become passive. It is in this sense that we must boldly move forward to strengthen our structure and prepare for the struggle.

 

May.2007.Vol17.Ed3
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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