While industrial capitalism was expanding, the struggle for reforms in the industrial world met many demands of the working class and, at the same time, the needs of the growing system itself. The industrial era is ending and an economy based on technology and electronics rather than labor is eliminating jobs, reducing wages, and eroding the reforms and bribery that tied US workers to the capitalist class.

With labor no longer needed for production as it once was, the road to reforming the capitalist system is closing for those who must work in order to live. Increasing numbers of people are drawn into struggle, looking for answers, and a route to survival and the future. The road to the historic revolutionary cause of a cooperative society, where the well being of humanity is not sacrificed to the domination of private property, has become both necessary and possible.

Revolutionaries work within the movement of those who are increasingly superfluous to production in order to make this new class conscious of the need to attain the power to bring into being a cooperative society based on distribution according to need. Our strategy and our plan of action aims to move our class step-by-step, stage by stage, to that final goal. The tactics to achieve that strategy, to accomplish the next stage of revolutionary development, are political tactics – not "political" in the narrow electoral sense, but in that they deal with who holds power, how they get it, and for what ends they wield it. The tactics that will prepare our class to achieve the power necessary to build the society we need in order to survive must be worked out within the forms and escalating tempo of the movement to connect with people where they are fighting for what they need – and where their frustration raises the question of why they can't get what they need.

In the struggle over which class will control the future of society, effective leadership depends on revolutionary political strategy, and tactics that express what is needed at a particular stage of history. Developing effective political tactics involves understanding the strategy and tactics of the ruling class, which change when the economic and political situation changes, and assessing the possibilities for preparing the movement to accomplish politically what can no longer be accomplished in defensive economic and social battles.

Those whose lives are being destroyed confront the brutal face of capitalist private property. But this reality isn’t yet reflected in the way they see the world or in the way they conduct their political activity. Workers, even the destitute, still accept leaders who claim to represent their interests, but who, in reality, defend and expand capitalist corporate interests and power, the goal of which is to preserve capitalist corporate private property.

In this country, nothing can move forward for our class until a broad section of Americans see their interests as different from, and diametrically opposed to, those of their corporate capitalist rulers, and act on that basis. Revolutionaries within the struggles to solve immediate practical problems must sum up and help express concrete demands that begin to break the intellectual and political ties that bind the increasingly impoverished working class to their class enemy, and develop their understanding of their position and role in society.

What Worked in the Past

The century of capitalist expansion after the Civil War was a century of struggle for a share in the benefits produced by industrial development, and to improve an industrial social contract that was necessary for both capital and labor. One early trade union leader summed up what labor wanted as “More!” Because it was possible to get "more" without challenging basic relationships of class ownership and power, struggles of the past did not have to be guided by a class-conscious strategy. Tactics could be subordinated to the interests of the moment or guided by considerations of immediate effect.

Trade unions, organizations of minorities and women, etc., were built and functioned as conduits of the struggle. At the same time, they served as means of control, directly and through the two-party system. The capitalist class made concessions and reforms in order to achieve stable relations with the industrial workers, whom they needed to exploit. These changes, rather than weakening the system, strengthened it so that it could continue to expand.

Identity politics, based on group rather than class awareness, won status and wealth for the elites of each group during the decades of expansion after World War II. Groups fought to get as much as they could for their members. Advancement for many came without their having to consider the needs of those left out of the expanding economic opportunities, without, for example, addressing the horrors of Jim Crow and lynch mob rule that kept African-American manual labor confined to the land.

Stability was assured by providing economic and social benefits to those deemed acceptable as “leaders” and their being able to “deliver” enough for the general population so that the large sections of the working class saw their fate tied to the interests of the capitalist owners and were blind to the interest they had in common with those who still went without.

New Situation, New Opportunities

In the 1970’s, developments in technology and electronics set off an economic revolution that changed the rules of the game. The ongoing replacement of human labor by technology, the destruction of the old social contract, and the end of the economic and social bribery have destroyed the foundation for the old politics of compromise.

As conditions worsen, the first and natural impulse in defensive struggles against attacks on rights and living standards is to turn to the understanding, the forms of struggle, and the tactics of the past period. The possibility of economic expansion (and rising post-World War II living standards) that provided maneuvering room for New Deal policies is over. Those past compromises with capital – which may have provided a modicum of stability for some, but even then meant misery for most of the world – are no longer relevant to today's conditions.

Political goals have always advanced economic needs. Today those who rule are attempting to stop any movement to challenge their control before it gets started, confusing and ideologically disarming it and even inciting it to violence and vigilantism against those at the bottom, all the while preparing to crush that movement if necessary. To maintain that control, the most diverse ruling class in global and U.S. history has to suppress and isolate those most excluded from the system. Doing this depends on social and economic problems being perceived as simply problems of the inner cities or the fault of the poor themselves – generally equated in the U.S. public mind with African-Americans, Latinos and immigrants, especially those without documents.

In a revolutionary period, when the old society polarizes and breaks down, times beg for a new vision of the future and require new ways of getting there. A movement of those increasingly superfluous to production who need food, housing, education, health care, and an opportunity to contribute to society, cannot achieve its goals without the power to shape society and the economy in its interests. The necessity – and the possibility – of challenging the power of the corporations and private property means that what was once the stuff of dreams has become the stuff of practical politics.

The ‘Art’ of Political Tactics

Old ideas and ways of thinking are what connect people to the capitalist system. At this point of development, revolutionaries’ strategy and tactics aim at accomplishing changes in people’s understanding. The vision of where the struggle is headed and the appreciation of the possibility of building a cooperative society has to be brought to the movement by those who understand history. Today’s new situation makes it possible to bring that understanding to people where they are in battle – and for that understanding to begin to shape their struggle.

People are, and will be drawn, into activity to fight for what they need. Revolutionaries, are and will be, created by the increasing social turmoil. They may not yet recognize that the only way to achieve their concrete demands is the reorganization of society in the interests of humanity, but they are looking for a way forward. The question is: will they fight in their own class interest or be manipulated and betrayed? The answer depends on the leaders' understanding of what the struggle is ultimately about and their embrace of a strategy and tactics for revolutionary change. On that basis the specific next steps to achieve class interests on various fronts of struggle will be defined.

Political tactics is the work of forming up the struggle so it responds to and expresses objective reality (the class nature of the conflict with private property) and takes the next steps along the most direct path toward its ultimate goal. The art of this process is to make the connection within the movement between what people are thinking and the objectively developing revolution.

People encounter the world in different ways. Is homelessness, for example, a personal problem, the result of an individual’s bad choices? Or are the homeless victims of the apathy or greed of others? As the system of private economic interests that destroys homes and robs people of a roof over their heads is exposed, the struggle can confront and target the real cause of the lack of decent housing. As homelessness is understood as a result of the economic system itself, the problem can be dealt with as a political and class question.

Building a Political Movement

Revolutionaries in the practical struggle will shape the ways and means – the forms and methods – of fighting that are most appropriate to the developing revolutionary situation. But they can only do this if they share the understanding that preparing our class to fight for and win the power to create a cooperative society is the task before us.

Putting forth political tactics is how class-conscious revolutionaries interact with the class’ leading fighters, uniting propaganda and participation with the movement in all its different forms. The aim isn't to get agreement on an abstract understanding or list of demands or to be the most valiant fighter. The aim is, through the emerging revolutionary leaders themselves and through a revolutionary press, to connect consciousness of class interest with the movement itself, so that it can take the concrete steps that will advance the struggle toward its ultimate goal.

In this process, revolutionaries fighting around the practical demands of the class are going to find it necessary to come together in an organization that has a strategy to politicize the masses and can provide the political propaganda and education to round out their fight. The League has such a strategy and is building an organization to do just that. We invite revolutionaries to join us so that, guided by revolutionary political tactics and class-conscious leaders, the movement of the vast majority of the American people for survival and dignity can become a force to make history.

 

May.2008.Vol18.Ed3
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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