As we come marching, marching, we bring the greater days.
The rising of the women means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler—ten that toil where one reposes,
But a sharing of life’s glories: Bread and roses! Bread and roses!
-From “Bread and Roses”, James Oppenheim, 1911

The moving words of James Oppenheim’s poem have been closely associated with working class women’s struggles since the great Lawrence, Massachusetts’s textile strike of 1912. There, the call for “Bread and Roses too” expressed the aspirations of not only the striking women textile workers, but those of workers everywhere. It posed the question: Was a person put on this earth to waste away in endless toil simply to allow a privileged few to prosper at the expense of the many? Or was the beauty of the world meant for all equally? Today, we ask ourselves the same question, understanding that the fight to take up the cause of the most downtrodden and the dispossessed is the fight to raise up the whole of society.

Today, we face a very different situation than the industrial workers of the past. Where once the economy was expanding, and workers fought to get into the system, today labor-replacing technology is replacing human labor, shuttering the “thousand mill lofts gray” that Oppenheim described in his poem, and changing forever the relations between the worker and the capitalists.

The article “Revolution in the Means of Production” shows us the revolutionary potential of these changes and the choices that face us. In the hands of the capitalists, the wonders of this technology are used only to maximize profit, regardless of the destruction it wreaks on the peoples of the world, or on the earth, their common home. In the hands of humanity, this technology can lay the foundation for a stable and cultured existence for all. Society cannot long accommodate such opposing interests, and a clash of wills is inevitable.

The article “The Earth, the Corporations, and the Fate of Humanity” shows us both the magnitude of what is at stake, and the urgency of the class organizing itself to intervene on the side of humanity. The drive for maximum profit that lies at the center of capitalism is the root of the environmental crisis today. It is then, a strategic front of struggle against corporate power. Here, as with every front of struggle, the resolution is the same – a class-conscious movement on the basis of the demands of the new class that fights for the political power to end private property.

The ruling class understands the coming battle far better than its adversaries, and is moving to protect its position and power. The article “The War on the Poor and the Reorganization of the American State” discusses the extent to which the ruling class has transformed the means of coercion to strengthen its ability to suppress the inevitable discontent that will emerge as conditions deteriorate. The fundamental rights denied to the most vulnerable and dispossessed are now being used as the foundation upon which to attack the rights of all of society.

What can be done? Under the new conditions, the capitalists are no longer as vulnerable to the old tactics of the past. The workers are faced with the necessity to create new organizational forms that are based on new conceptions and new goals, and that proceed from an independent class position, rather than from the ideas and solutions of the capitalists.

The article “Only with the Women” addresses the indispensable role that women play in the revolutionary process. As the material foundation for the old ideas and prejudices is disrupted, the way is being opened for our class to form itself on the objective realities of history, forcing it to sweep away all that stands in its path. Washing away the muck of the ages is no simple thing – whether that is male supremacy, or any other form of useless ideology – but it must be done if the class is to forge itself into a force capable of meeting the demands of history.

The creation of a class that is conscious of itself as a class and unified on the basis of its class interests does not come about simply because someone wants it. It must be fought for. Revolutionaries play an indispensable role in helping to form the class intellectually and politically. This involves not only an accurate understanding of the problem and a vision of a real and practical solution as the final goal, but the presentation of the political tactics that will move the class intellectually and politically along the path to the resolution of the problem.

 

March.2008.Vol18.Ed2
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
P.O. Box 477113 Chicago, IL 60647 rally@lrna.org
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