Written by John Peterson Friday, 13 January 2012 12:54
“Marx was right!” For Marxists, this is not a particularly profound revelation. We have long known that the German revolutionary’s analysis of capitalism was as fundamentally sound as the capitalist system itself is fundamentally unsound. But let’s face it: for decades, we’ve been in a small minority, fighting against the stream and against the odds. After spending a long time in the “wilderness,” that is beginning to change. The fact that the more serious capitalist economists are forced to admit the correctness of ideas they once ridiculed is an important symptom of a transformation in public consciousness.
Editorial for Socialist Appeal Issue 65
Written by John Peterson Monday, 14 November 2011 11:53
For 30 years, American workers have been under assault. For decades, there were very few fight backs, and even fewer successes. Politically, things shifted ever further to the right...But the “mole of history” has been burrowing underground this entire time. A pay cut here, a home foreclosure there; rising health costs here, a factory shuttered and off-shored there. Little by little, the economic basis for the American Dream has been whittled away, and with it, the illusions that capitalism is the “best of all possible worlds.”
Editorial for Socialist Appeal 64
“Enough is enough! We are the 99%!” This is the sentiment being expressed by the brave youth now occupying Freedom Plaza in New York City, just a few feet away from Wall Street. This is the pent-up feeling of millions—no—billions of people around the world. Enough unemployment! Enough war! Enough poverty! Enough discrimination!
It seems hard to believe, but it has been ten full years since the September 11 attacks, and nearly ten years since the first issue of Socialist Appeal. A decade later, the country is in many ways a very different place. Long gone are the cars adorned with a dozen American flags and endless chants of “USA! USA!” An entire generation has grown up knowing nothing but George W. Bush, war, terrorism, financial crisis, home foreclosures and unemployment. And in real terms, things have actually gotten worse under Obama. Where is the “hope and change” Americans were promised? Conditions determine consciousness. The conditions we are forced to live in are having a profound effect on Americans’ consciousness, especially among the youth. And this transformation has revolutionary implications for the future.
The American Dream has been whittled away over the last few decades. A small health care premium increase here. A smaller wage increase there. A 401k instead of a traditional pension. Fewer days of paid sick leave.
For several decades after World War II, if you worked hard, you had a pretty good chance at “getting ahead.” The system could afford a few concessions, wage increases, retirement and health care benefits for a significant portion of society. But capitalism has hit a brick wall. The American Dream, which had a material, economic base, is over. We were told that a 1929-style crisis couldn’t happen again. We saw what happened in the last few years.
The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of revolution and mass mobilizations. After a period of relative lull in the class struggle, during which it seemed to many that nothing would ever change, millions of people can now see with their own eyes that revolutions can and do happen. They can see that fundamental change is only possible when ordinary men and women, who normally have nothing to do with politics, act collectively to bring about a political earthquake on the streets, in the factories, workplaces, schools, and halls of power.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett once said: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” As we have explained many times in the pages of Socialist Appeal, the foreign policy of the capitalists is only an extension of their domestic policy, and vice versa...that [class] war is coming forcefully home to roost, with the public sector and its heavily unionized workforce squarely on the chopping block.
Ever since we founded of the Workers International League and published the first issue of Socialist Appeal, the need for a mass party of labor has figured prominently in our program and work. The objective need for such a party has been explained in countless editorials and articles. The lack of independent political representation for the US working class is an urgent problem and contradiction, which can only be resolved if the labor movement breaks with the parties of big business and forms a party of, by, and for the working class majority.
