From the Standing Committee, League of Revolutionaries for a New America

The Presidential race is proving to be volatile and unpredictable with a growing number of Americans becoming increasingly dissatisfied with capitalist politics. Among some, there is an increasing awareness that people need to move to political independence from the capitalist class. There are those who do not see Democrats as the answer, but feel they have no other option in the electoral arena but to fight for whatever concessions they can get. They feel they have no choice but to support the “lesser of two evils” in order to make some difference or to eke out some small relief. But no matter where people fall in their discontent with politics today, most are not exactly sure what to do about it.

This presents revolutionaries with the opportunity to explain the growing polarization and its economic roots, and to present a resolution to the problems people face. As discontent begins to be expressed and people are pulled into political motion, the electoral process is creating the opportunity to break the ideological and political connections that tie the workers to the capitalists.

Revolutionaries understand that the capitalist system cannot deliver the things people need. Corporations use the global competition between workers, widespread financial speculation and the replacement of human labor through automation and robotics to maximize profits. Society as we have known it is being destroyed. The state apparatus is being restructured to further the interests of the corporations, to guarantee the police occupation of our communities, and to facilitate the domination of the U.S. military throughout the world. Further economic, and thus, political and social polarization, and the growing threat of fascism are the results.

The billion-dollar hype around the presidential campaigns energizes people, but the capitalists seek only to harness and control the building political motion and legitimize their rule. Differences between the candidates are tactical only. Their success or failure is a means of determining what the American people will accept. On one side, there is the carrot of “progressive” Democrats and populist platitudes, and on the other, is the stick of fear of a far-right victory. Both work together to tie the workers to the ruling class.

In this time of social destruction and unraveling, a new class is emerging. This new class consists of part-time and contingent workers struggling to make ends meet, as well as, the structurally unemployed and the absolutely destitute workers sleeping on the streets each night. Dispossessed, this new class is locked in a life and death struggle for survival.

The fights for homes for everyone, universal healthcare, quality education, living-wage jobs, disaster protection and relief, clean water and air, to name a few, are all needs the new class is demanding and fighting for everyday, not just during election season, but every season; not just on election day, but every day. The anger at the new reality and a tremendous distrust of corporations is building around the country, providing an opportunity to raise the agenda of the new class and to educate people about the possibility of building a communist society.

Our allegiance is to our class, not to any particular candidate or ruling class party. Revolutionaries fight for the needs and agenda of our class, and the elections provide us with an opportunity to bring the demands of the class to those fighting in the electoral arena. People will vote their consciences, but the real fight is larger and long term. Key to this fight is to develop among people a strategic perspective that operates before, during, and after the elections. The first step along this strategic path is to unite the scattered revolutionaries on the basis of the practical demands of the new class, and to educate them and win them over to a cooperative, communist solution to the problem.

 

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