As capitalism self-destructs
Conference to discuss struggle for socialism
By Deirdre
Griswold
In times of capitalist boom, those who hate all the
injustice and cruelty of the system agonize over how to reach
others with their message of struggle. That is hard to do when
everyone seems to be watching "Do You Want to Be a
Millionaire?" and money seems to grow on trees.
But then come times like now, with hundreds of thousands
getting pink slips, utility bills skyrocketing, and the life
savings and pensions of many workers and middle-class people
going up in smoke as stocks collapse.
These are times when all the questions about this chaotic
system--questions that supposedly had been put to rest long
ago--come pounding on the door.
Why is food being destroyed when people are hungry? Why do
millions face economic insecurity when the
industrial-technological infrastructure has never been more
advanced?
Why are companies laying off thousands of workers and
simultaneously raising top executives' salaries and perks by
millions of dollars?
Why, just when people really need protection, has Congress
rushed to tighten bankruptcy laws and cut public
assistance?
Why, when the threat is right here at home, do the
politicians look for enemies abroad and throw money at the
military?
In short, what is capitalist crisis, and what can we do
about it?
Conference June 2
Every crisis comes as a big surprise to most people, and
needs careful analysis. But even though each new development
has its own unique features, Marxism has for a very long time
provided the tools to analyze this crisis-prone system and
develop a program of struggle against the capitalist class.
That will be the framework for a conference in New York on
June 2, when Workers World Party will present a discussion on
the socialist answer to the growing capitalist crisis.
There are several varieties of socialist parties in the
world today.
Some think socialism can come into existence gradually,
through elections. They're generally known as social democrats.
Some have been elected to office, and have entered governments
in countries like Germany and France. But instead of
dismantling corporate rule and instituting socialist ownership
of the means of production, these social-democratic parties
help to manage capitalist society and even participate in
imperialist wars of aggression--like the NATO assault on Yugo
slavia, or France's continued military presence in Africa.
Where elected socialists have tried to do what the people
wanted from them, where they have tried to truly change society
in the interests of the poor and oppressed, they found the
rules had changed.
In Chile, for example, even though the people voted in a
socialist coalition headed by Salvador Allende, and even though
the Chilean establishment boasted of a long democratic history,
in 1973 the ruling class gave the military the go-ahead to
overthrow and murder Allende and thousands of his followers. It
turned out that those who held the real power tolerated
democracy only as long as it didn't challenge their privileged
social position.
This included big U.S. corporations allied to the Chilean
ruling class. Working with Gen. Augusto Pinochet through the
Central Intelligence Agency, they directed the coup and the
extreme repression that followed.
U.S. 'democracy' and class struggle
As we enter a new period of class struggle in the United
States driven by economic hardships, it is important that the
growing movement understand the nature of U.S. capitalist
democracy.
George Bush's election "victory" shocked many here, as did
the revelations of how many votes were stolen. People in Chile,
however, or Indonesia, where the CIA worked with the military
and used fascist-type repression to demolish large popular
movements, have long seen U.S. democracy in a different
light.
Revolutionary socialists and communists like Workers World
Party say it is worse than naïve to teach the workers and
oppressed that they can rely on bourgeois democracy in their
struggle for social justice. Whether it is the racist, sexist,
anti-gay violence of the police or the intervention of the
courts and the government against a strike, the capitalist
state ultimately serves the bosses against the workers and
oppressed.
It doesn't matter that the majority of the voters are
working people. There are a thousand ways their will is
frustrated in the halls of government, where the corporate
lobbyists have the last word.
Why should these questions be of interest right now, when
the very idea of a struggle for power and a different social
system seems so remote? Shouldn't all our attention be focused
on how to save jobs, how to build the unions, how to stop
evictions and utility shutoffs, how to force the government to
spend the trillions of dollars in its coffers on the social
good instead of on war, prisons and corporate welfare?
Here's a bit of historical truth: the best fighters for all
these things have always come from the ranks of the socialists
and communists. In the 1930s, not only were industrial unions
formed, but the government was forced to institute programs
like social security, welfare, unemployment insurance,
disability and so on, as well as large public-works projects.
There were few militants who did not consider themselves
socialists or communists.
And it was the Marxists in the workers' movement who best
understood that racism is a tool of the bosses that must be
fought with working-class unity and respect for the
self-determination of the oppressed.
By the middle of the Depression, the bosses in the United
States saw that they could lose everything they had stolen from
the workers. So most of them finally agreed, after much kicking
and screaming, to go along with President Franklin Roosevelt's
"New Deal" and appease what was becoming a revolutionary
movement of the workers, rather than have an army of millions
of starving unemployed camped on their doorsteps.
In the decades that followed, the Cold War and the expansion
of U.S. imperialism took a heavy toll on revolutionary
movements everywhere and on the bloc of socialist countries in
Europe led by the Soviet Union, finally leading to their
collapse.
But a new period has now begun--a period of capitalist
instability.
If it runs its course, it will lead to terrible crises all
over the capitalist world, including in the imperialist
countries themselves, which have seemed invulnerable. Hundreds
of millions of people will be clamoring for a way out of the
hell on earth created by the profit system.
It's time for a full and serious discussion on how to build
a revolutionary socialist movement in the United States. Save
the date--June 2--to be in New York at the Workers World Party
Conference on Socialism. Check out future issues of this
newspaper for details.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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