As we go to press, the housing crisis is spreading. Millions of homeowners face loss of their homes and their savings, and the sub-prime mortgage meltdown is threatening to become an all-out crisis of the global financial system.
The article “Housing Crisis Undermines American Dream” shows how this is a reflection of the profound crisis within capitalism itself. As the capitalists have been unable to maximize profit in the old ways due to qualitatively new technologies, speculative capital has emerged as the dominant form of capital. Dependent upon more and more money to satisfy its demands, it is highly volatile and inherently unstable. Given the reach and influence of speculative capital in the world economy, it is little wonder that what the Financial Times recently called “an arcane part of the U.S. mortgage market” could threaten the increasingly interdependent and interconnected global economy.
Political instability cannot help but result from these profound changes. Widespread home ownership has always marked American society, and this ownership, as well as the dream of it, has tied millions of Americans to the capitalist system. The housing crisis has cut another swathe into those connections, separating broader and broader sections from their stake in the system. It is only adding to Americans’ growing disillusionment with the refusal of the major political parties to address the multiplying problems of American society. Revolutionaries must assess the ways to reach those who are looking for answers.
The national interests of the U.S. are intertwined with the interests of global capital, which explains why the politicians will not come to the aid of homeowners in distress or any other problem Americans face. The article “Empire and the Military-Industrial Complex” describes how the U.S. state is being transformed to facilitate the development of global capital – with its cutting edge, speculative capital – and to try to insulate capital from the instability that results from the irresolvable contradictions of capitalism in the age of electronics. It also shows that the growing repression at home is not simply the preference of a few zealots, but is a necessary corollary to militarization and empire abroad.
The rise of a response to these worsening conditions is inevitable and in fact is underway. How will this be focused? What force within this response carries the social energy to overturn society and reorganize it on a new basis? Revolutionaries must carefully assess the possibilities, determine the steps required to equip these forces with an understanding of what they face, and thereby equip them to carry out their historic mission.
The article “The Immigration Movement Today” is an excellent example of this kind of assessment. It examines the roots of the immigration question, and dissects the movement and the different tendencies within it. It shows among these different forces that there is one that is capable of overturning the system and reorganizing society – the new class that cannot accept compromise and reform – and survive. The undocumented immigrants today, driven from their homes by the destruction wrought by globalization, are the cutting edge of this developing new global class of dispossessed.
Such times of great transformation bring forth a struggle for clarity, direction, and resolution. The article “Propaganda” shows that this battle is one between classes over the ultimate outcome of the revolutionary process set in motion by the qualitatively new means of production, the destruction of society, and the rise of new classes. Our class cannot realize its historic mission without consciousness – consciousness of, not only its own class interests, but also its historic mission to usher in a world free from want and violence. This is the meaning and purpose of communist propaganda.
September.2007.Vol17.Ed5
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
P.O. Box 477113 Chicago, IL 60647 rally@lrna.org
Free to reproduce unless otherwise marked.
Please include this message with any reproduction.
