“Nothing can be accomplished until the American people hold a vision of where they want to go and what they want to be. Creating and imbuing them with such a vision is the overriding task of revolutionaries and the foundation of our organization.
– Program, League of Revolutionaries for a New America

The economic and social ground is crumbling under the feet of the American people, and they want somebody to do something about it. A 2007 report issued by The Progressive Majority found that polls from around the country showed that from health care, to immigration, to jobs, to taxes, and the economy, Americans overwhelmingly supported changes that would address income inequality, take care of the poor, restore the social infrastructure, incorporate immigrants into American society and generally improve the quality of life for everyone. They believed that it was the government’s responsibility to guarantee that these needs were met, even if the government had to curb the power of the corporations to do it.

None of the candidates have proposals that would solve any of these questions in the way the American people want them solved. But why do the American people go along with them? What is holding the American people back? At the core is the American people’s belief in the capitalist system, and their loyalty to the class that rules over it. They believe that this class will come to its senses and get back to work taking care of the needs of the American people.

And why wouldn’t they believe this? This compromise worked for a many years. Capitalists needed workers, workers needed to work to live. Relations between them broke down every so often, but they were adjusted, were “reformed,” and American workers were provided with the highest standard of living of any workers in the world. It always involved intense struggle, but it always ultimately strengthened and benefited the capitalist system.

The spread, consolidation, and entrenchment of electronic production is putting an end to that compromise. Capitalism is dissolving under the weight of qualitative economic and social changes. Society’s problems cannot be resolved within the context of a system that, in this sense, no longer exists. The impact of this reality is expressed in the wide social ills, expressed most in the growing violence of society. The article “The Violence of Capitalism” explores this.

Revolutionaries’ role – their historic responsibility – is to convey the real meaning of these momentous times. A new world is possible, and this country – this world – is embarked on a struggle to determine what that new world will be. Every indicator points to a cooperative, communist society as the only solution that will benefit all of humanity. To get there, takes understanding, strategy based on that understanding, and the development of tactics that take the movement, step by step, through the various stages to the ultimate goal.

Revolutionaries of all kinds are participating in the elections, but there is a broad debate about how to do so, what stands to take, and how to work within the narrow confines the ruling class allows while at the same time reaching out to and uniting with other revolutionaries put into motion by the electoral process. “Revolutionary Work in the Elections” explores and puts forward proposals on these questions, and serves as a general guideline for work during this time of discussion and debate over the future of our country.

The first step is to break with the belief that the old can be restored and instead to approach the work within the context of the new situation. This means that there must be an intellectual and political break from the capitalist class. The article “Revolutionary Political Tactics” discusses this necessity and explores how the new conditions require revolutionaries to put forward political tactics that will advance the interests, program, and consciousness of the class that will step by step, serve to move the struggle toward the only resolution to the problem.

“Housing: Opportunity for New Thinking,” submitted by the LRNA Committee on Housing and Homelessness, uses this understanding to frame its call to revolutionaries to join together to work out how “to unshackle minds from the boundaries set by the past” in order to deepen a vision in the movement of housing for all and move toward making that vision a reality.

 

May.2008.Vol18.Ed2
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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