The defeat of John McCain and Sarah Palin was a victory for the workers of America . But, this defeat is not the end. It has simply opened the door for the next step in the battle for real change in this country.

The political process does not stand independently. It is the faithful subjective expression of the objective process. Politics is the response of the various classes to the development of the economy. Struggle in politics  as in all things  takes place when there is polarization. Polarization in society is the result of polarization in the economy. As society polarizes, the factions turn against one another, a process of destruction takes place, and a new process emerges from this struggle and destruction. With the election of Barak Obama we are at the beginning of an emerging political polarization in this country.

Millions of every day Americans, disgusted with the corruption and immorality of the Bush Administration, overcame the century old legacies of slavery and voted for an African American president. This vote was not simply a matter of economics, but also expressed the broader social revolution underway.

At the same time whole sections of the country went overwhelmingly for McCain. Even states such as Ohio , Indiana , and North Carolina , which ended up in the "blue" column, were within a whisper of tipping in the direction of the Republican Party. For the most part, the McCain voters were from the small towns and out of the way places, increasingly unable to make ends meet, and dispossessed of any future under the current economic system.

Most significantly for revolutionaries, millions of these voters were in the strategic Rust Belt area  the geographical heart of the American working class and the political center of gravity of American working class politics for decades  workers whose connections to society, organization, and community make them a strategic force in the developing revolution in this country.

The capitalist class is already transforming the state and society in order to protect private property and their class interests. All the discontent that was chanelled into the election process was part of the growing social response to the vast changes underway that will not go away once the election is over. They will reach out to this section of society to support the developing fascist social movement. The first stage of this process will be the consolidation of the scattered fascist elements, and, as they coalesce, they will put forth a program to solve the immediate problems that people face.

Without polarization there can be no change. It is only within this motion that revolutionaries can do their work. The bonds that tied society together the institutions, the ideas, and the psychology of the people  are beginning unravel. That this makes people open to new ways of thinking only opens the way, it does not guarantee the outcome.

Revolutionaries celebrate the dismantling of historical barriers. At the same time, we must strive to see these historic points within the context of the line of march of the revolution. The most conservative sector of the working class  the once bribed worker  is now the most objectively revolutionary, and a black man is now leading the U.S. through the next step in the battle to protect the capitalist system and maintain U.S. hegemony in the world. We must rely on the understandings of the past, but not be tied to the ideological outlook of the past.

Conditions are forcing broad sections of America to move. Revolutionaries must begin to work within the motion of the growing dispossessed in this country to focus on the key sections that can pull the whole class forward.

Every program, policy, and proposal should be judged by one factor  does it address the needs of the millions in this country first, rather than the handful of billionaires and trillionaires for whom the government is solely concerned today.

We must begin to concentrate our forces on the next step  politicizing and propagandizing the political center of the unravelling working class, taking up the fight for nationalization in the interests of the workers, and disseminating the program of the new class and the communist resolution of the problem.

 

December.2008.Vol18.Ed6
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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