The U.S. is set on a path of empire building to maximize profits for the capitalist class at the expense of the masses' sweat and blood worldwide.  To achieve maximum exploitation, capital must increase and maximize its control of the the lives of the workers.  The struggle is becoming one of survival of one class or the other.

How do we stop the avalanche of attacks on our daily lives – on our standard of living or civil rights? How do we insure a future for humanity – free of wars, free of hunger and persecution, free of terror.  Answering these questions in the interests of our class requires strategy. Strategy is a carefully devised plan of action to achieve a goal within a particular stage of the revolutionary process.

The League of Revolutionaries for a New America’s understanding of strategy is derived from historical revolutionary experience. “Strategy,” Vladimir Lenin wrote in State and Revolution, “is defined as the determination of the direction of the main blow of the proletariat at a given stage of the revolution, the elaboration of the corresponding plan for the disposition of the revolutionary forces . . . and the fight to carry out this plan throughout the given stage of the revolution.”

Revolutionaries rely on this understanding to draft a plan of action. They begin with an assessment in order to define the direction of the main blow. An assessment measures the strength of the contending forces – those of the workers’ and those of capital – and the environment in which they operate. From this, revolutionaries can determine where to concentrate forces in order to achieve the end result.

Today, any assessment has to take into account the qualitative changes in the means of production. Production with electronics qualitatively replaces labor and creates a world market. In the creation of a world market, national corporations become multinational, multinationals become transnational, and transnational corporations become supranational. The national state transforms from an imperialist welfare state based on bribery, to a market state based on legal and extralegal violence to protect domestic and supranational capital. Supranational corporations blend into and become part of the national states. The emergence and merging of the economic and political struggles express the social and economic revolutions taking place in the objective arena. There is no resolution but the abolition of private property and its transformation into public property.

These world historic changes have not benefited worker and capitalist equally. The widening gap between rich and poor is laying bare the antagonisms of an economic system in which the bottom line is profit at any cost. This is causing the mass dislocation of workers everywhere. This year, Forbes reported that there are 793 billionaires worldwide whose collective value is $2.6 trillion. The U.S. is leading the pack with more than half of those billionaires whose collective value is almost half of the $2.6 trillion. Meanwhile, millions throughout the world live on less than $2 a day.

With electronics introduced in the production process, the basis of capitalism – the buying and selling of labor power – slowly erodes, creating a new class at least partly outside the capitalist system. These displaced workers must increasingly fight the capitalist system to survive.  It is this new class of dispossessed workers that is emerging as the social vanguard in the fight for the necessaries of life against the corporate state power. “You have nothing to lose but your chains” accurately reflects the content of today’s times.

Poverty never made a revolution. As long as the workers remain tied ideologically and politically to the capitalists, they will never be able to achieve their goals of a peaceful and stable life. Historically, the strength of capital has relied in the support given by the masses. This support is based on bribery. Bribery is based on national imperialism. As the foundation for this bribery crumbles, openings appear for politicizing the masses about their class interests.

The breaking of the connection between the workers and the capitalists – already a reality in the economic sphere – must be mirrored in the ideological, and ultimately, the political sphere. Nothing can move forward until a broad section of the masses understand this, and a section, at least, is prepared to break with the interests of the capitalists and organize themselves politically in accordance with their class interests.

As a result, the strategy of the League is to politicize the masses, and to supply the emerging revolutionaries who are fighting around the practical demands of the class with the political propaganda and education that will round out their fight. The League conveys an understanding of the roots of the problem, brings ever to the fore the class interests at stake, and disseminates a vision of what is possible and its strategy to achieve that vision.

But we still need to determine the main blow.  Transformation proceeds through polarization and destruction. As the connections that have held society together start to unravel, the opportunity for real change presents itself.  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.

What’s important here is the word direction. For example, do we spend time and resources on throwing the main blow at President Bush & Co. or at the Democrats?  It is becoming clear to a growing number of revolutionaries that they will not be able to free themselves from their political enemy by “fighting the right,” but instead have to throw their blow at the middle, the Democratic Party. It is this middle that ties the workers to their enemy and makes them politically impotent, and ties them by a thousand threads to the “right” making them incapable of fighting for their interests.

We throw the blow at the middle in such a way that we teach the class that they form a class with interests separate and independent from those of the capitalists. At every opportunity, the League hammers at this point. Without this independent class thinking, the workers will fall prey to the so-called leaders who claim to represent their interests, but whose leadership intends only to make the corporations wealthier and leave the capitalists’ political power untouched.

The League’s mission is designed to accomplish its strategy:  “Tens of thousands of socially conscious people declare themselves revolutionaries in opposition to the degenerating social and economic conditions. The League's mission is to unite these scattered revolutionaries on the basis of the demands of the new class, to educate and win them over to the cooperative, communist resolution of the problem.” (Program, League of Revolutionaries for a New America, 2007)

Every day, events confirm the correctness of this mission. Revolutionaries are surging forward from the rubble that Hurricane Katrina left behind, from the ghost towns where steel mills and auto plants once roared with fire, from the peace movement and from the fight to make our government respect everyone’s civil rights.

It is in these struggles and more that our members are building an organization of revolutionaries. It is here that the League has staked out its future – with these revolutionaries who hold dear the program of the new class – for peace and the eradication of poverty from the planet. It is here that we introduce into the struggle the class consciousness of who is the enemy, what is the solution to the problems we face, and how to achieve victory.

The organization has to make an all out effort to achieve victory in this stage of the revolution. If not, the conditions won’t be ripe to go to the next stage  – a real political party of the class. No forward motion is possible until our class rejects the politics and the ideology of its class enemy and becomes conscious of its interests as a class. No step forward is possible unless it speaks to the interests of the growing new class. Consciously breaking with the ideas, interests, and organizations of the class enemy, fighting for the solution to the problems of those who have the least – this is the route to victory.

What has the League done to insure our fighting capacity? We have built an organization that is aiming to liberate the comrades’ creativity and instill a sense of responsibility to build the League. We have developed an infrastructure of education, a political line, publications, organization and organizational principles that will arm the comrades with the tools they need. From this point on, we wait for no one to come and build the League. We view ourselves as pioneers, as organizers of the League to build the organization of revolutionaries that the moment demands.

 

January.2008.Vol18.Ed1
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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