The word “political” has different meanings depending on circumstances. Most commonly, in a representative democracy, it refers to the political activity of elections and legislation. It has also come to mean manipulative or dishonest in both government and personal relations. And some people say, “everything is political,” which doesn’t tell us much.

When revolutionaries speak of the struggle for political power, they mean the struggle of one class against another for control of the economic and social life of a country. Ever since humans organized themselves into communities for agricultural production, human society has been divided into classes with a minority holding control over the land, resources and means of production, and exercising control over the rest of society. Today’s capitalism is the culmination of that process.

The struggle against the dominant class has many stages and doesn’t become a political struggle until the working class understands itself as a class and its interests as separate from the dominant class.

This class-consciousness doesn’t come automatically and spontaneously through the struggle itself but comes from the activity of revolutionaries. The process at this time in this country is in its earliest stage. To develop a strategy to bring the class to the stage where it can wage a successful struggle for political power, revolutionaries must understand the process of social and political change, and American history.

Classes are groups with common economic interests that can act politically to achieve changes beneficial to their interests.
During periods of stability, when the legal and political system – governments and the state – conforms to and supports economic progress, legislative and electoral politics allows for changes and adaptations in the system. These occur, often accompanied by social and political turmoil, but without threatening the system itself.

American history is full of examples: the Presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829-1837) and the establishment of the Democratic Party, the “trust-busting” of President Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909), women’s suffrage and the 19th Amendment (1920), the New Deal of the 1930s, the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935 and the legalization of unions, the victories of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and the “Reagan Revolution” of the 1970s. These changes were in line with capitalism’s need to adapt and expand.

Historical turning points

At certain junctures of history, fundamental changes in the economy occur. Old classes are destroyed, new classes form, and the old order is unable to accommodate new realities. These transformations occur throughout history, such as, the transition from agriculture to industrial production with its political expressions in the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and the establishment of parliament in England, the American and French revolutions in the late 18th century, and the American Civil War of the 1860s. We are in such a period of transition and transformation now, from industrial production to electronic production.

In such periods, a new way of organizing society, a new system of power relations is called for. The old system is unable to adjust to the changes brought about by economic progress. The new has yet to be constructed. As the conflict plays out in the legal and political system and in society, these junctures of history are periods of profound instability. All of society is drawn into political struggle, the struggle over which class is going to hold power and organize society in its interests.

The political struggle to determine which class will hold power to organize society is only possible in such times of transition. The struggle develops over how to solve the practical concrete problems of society. Taxation and representation were the focus in the period of the American Revolution. Slavery and all its economic and social consequences tore American society apart during the Civil War period. Today, the basic questions of survival – jobs, food, shelter, health care and education – are being debated across the country and drawing people into struggle.

Early stage of struggle

The deepening economic crisis is forcing the ruling class to demand that the government nationalize some aspects of the economy in order to protect its profits and the system of private property itself. The different economic interests of different classes and strata are becoming clearer as those in power act to protect their interests at the expense of the rest. Because capitalism will not provide for a working class it no longer needs, nationalization in the interest of the working class with the government taking over and providing for basic human needs – jobs, schools, housing, health care – is becoming a question of survival for ever larger sectors of society. It is on this battlefield that the class will be formed politically – with consciousness and capacity to fight in its own class interests.

Tens of thousands are beginning to grasp that the capitalist system itself is the problem. While the objectivity of where history is going sets the stage, most people don’t yet understand how the battle lines are being drawn or see their interests as class interests.

The ruling class attempts to turn one section of the working class against another by advancing the vain hope that the lot of the dispossessed may improve as the capitalists continue to plunder. The reality of falling wages, rising unemployment, state and local fiscal crises, and the end of stable jobs thwarts any strategy of trying to win concessions and gain some measure of justice, or a little less suffering, from a collapsing system.

The fight for what they need to survive will more and more force the workers to confront the question of who holds political power. They cannot recognize, act on, or develop strategy and tactics without the consciousness of their own class interests, and the need for a political solution to the problems they face. A strategy and an approach that politicizes and educates from within this broad awakening to develop consciousness of class is no longer a theoretical issue, but a practical necessity.

 

March.2010.Vol20.Ed2
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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