Another world possible? How?

Another world IS possible. The question is how do we get it?

At the U.S. Social Forum meeting in Atlanta at the end of June, thousands are expected to participate in vibrant discussion and debate on the many social problems facing people in the richest and most bellicose country on the planet.

The contrast between what exists and what is possible is glaring and grows worse all the time.

So many young men and women caught in the net of the military, risking their lives in imperialist wars of conquest because they couldn’t get good jobs or an education as civilians.

So many people in prison or brutalized by police because they are poor and/or the target of racial profiling.

So many workers unable to find full-time, living-wage jobs that provide some security from illness or old age.

So much new wealth funneled into the coffers of the already super-rich while workers’ incomes stagnate and even decline.

So much waste and destruction of the environment when the technology for sustainable economic development already exists.

So many hurdles still preventing women and lesbian, gay, bi and trans people from achieving liberation from age-old oppressions, despite the many victories they have won.

The good news is that movements of resistance have been springing up all over. These grassroots groups will be in Atlanta and will contribute to a sharper definition of the problems.

We are sure that as the political questions become infused with the flesh-and-blood experiences of people in the struggle, the interconnectedness of all these issues will become even more apparent.

Out of all the talk should come a clearer view of the anatomy of capitalism in this most destructive, imperialist stage—when vast sums of capital can move instantly around the world searching out workers to exploit, resources to gobble up and governments to topple or control.

Just bringing so many people together to talk about the problems accomplishes a very important and necessary step. But the basis on which to judge the Social Forum will be whether it points towards a broader analysis of the problems and then becomes a platform to move from discussion to action.

While many thousands are expected to attend, there are tens of millions of people in the United States who need and want things to change. They must be engaged—and can be— in the struggle against the forces who want to maintain the status quo. And who is that?

It is the class that controls the productive machinery of this country, that sucks up profits from agribusiness and heavy industry to the retail chains and the banks. It also controls the bought-and-paid-for political system, including both major parties.

This class is now on the defensive around the world. Its “neocon” political grouping launched a disastrous and incredibly brutal war for control of the Middle East’s oil that has boomeranged and generated resistance everywhere. Oppressed nations are standing up to its dictates and making new alliances to strengthen their independence.

With all the jockeying going on between Democrats and Republicans before the 2008 presidential election, it should be clear to everyone now that neither of these capitalist parties is willing to break with the ruling class and oppose the imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even those who say they oppose the war are only searching for a more successful strategy for extending U.S. corporate domination.

This means the field is wide open for a militant, grassroots movement of opposition to capitalist exploitation and all its disastrous by-products: national oppression, sexism, LGBT oppression, militarism and a growing police state.

Whether it’s plant closings, high gas prices, assaults on women’s clinics, mass arrests of immigrant workers or the poisoning of whole communities by industrial waste, all can be traced to the way capital rides roughshod over our lives, letting no human value stand in the way of profit.

Many times in the past, large popular assemblies—like the communes in Paris, the soviets in czarist Russia, the speak-bitterness meetings in China—have galvanized the people into linking up their individual grievances and struggles into a class-wide assault on the powers-that-be. Eventually, that will come here, too.

If, out of the USSF gathering, a clearer view emerges on the need to fight capitalism and replace it with a socialist system, where the working masses control the productive wealth of society, much will have been accomplished.

And if this view then becomes the basis for coordinated, mass actions that are explicitly against imperialist wars and the assault on the working class here at home, then history indeed will have been made.