The Worker, Vol. 37, Number 11
Contents:
I. Carrying Forward the Banner of Democracy
II. Operation Sword of Iron Is a Lost Cause
I. Carrying Forward the Banner of Democracy
II. Operation Sword of Iron Is a Lost Cause
Note from the editor:
Three months ago we published a Special Edition of The Worker to coincide with the launch of our new campaign slogan. The campaign is growing! Members and supporters of the Workers Party are encouraged to participate in the campaign by reciting the slogan with others in any language of their choice while shaking hands and looking into each other's eyes. Here it is: "If you are illegal, then I am Illegal!" Do it with love in your heart. We are looking forward to even more write-ins and reports about how how many new friends you convert or simply to tell us anything you'd like to about your experience with it.WorkerspartyUSAChicagoBranch@gmail.com
Carrying Forward the Banner of Democracy
The current budget deficit rescue programs being proposed by the two-party representatives in Congress claim to promote economic prosperity and unleash the free market. However, these programs actually involve transferring wealth from the poor to the rich through interest payments and increasing federal debt. Additionally, they facilitate the private sector capitalists' takeover of the economic infrastructure.
The President and Congress have heaped up the growing deficit by generously allocating hundreds of billions of dollars to the rich corporations and Wall Street bankers. At the same time, they have reduced corporate taxes to the extent that capitalists now pay less than 7% of the total tax revenue.
The government's intensified plunder of the public treasury involves austerity budgeting for the poor and handouts for the rich at the state level as well.
As the permanent crisis of capitalism deepens, the government intervenes further to protect capitalist profits. Consequently, it accumulates more debt and sacrifices social programs and tax dollars that would benefit workers. Medicare and Social Security are already severely underfunded, leaving millions of retired individuals in poverty. The capitalists are already phasing in Social Security retirement age changes, slashing disability benefits, and increasing Medicare co-payments. The capitalists want to force workers to toil beyond exhaustion and abandon them without support once they are no longer in the condition to produce a profitable return on the capitalist's investment.
The unemployment compensation program has been gutted to the point where less than 1/3 of the unemployed receive any assistance whatsoever; food and nutrition programs for children and the elderly have been cut back, as have housing assistance programs, etc. Even government-funded studies admit that the lines at the soup kitchens are growing longer, that 17 million American households have members suffering from hunger, that millions are homeless, that 38 million Americans live below the official poverty line, that over 3/4 of the population are in debt, etc. The reality is that over the last few years, the standard of living of the people has been thrown back several generations, and the basic needs of the people are going unmet.
At the same time, the billionaire bankers and factory owners are enjoying unprecedented prosperity. According to the Federal Bank of St. Louis, in 2022, U.S. corporations reported $2.9 trillion in profits after taxes.
These gargantuan profits come on the heels of “rationalization“ drives in which industry has been cutting wages, speeding up the assembly lines, closing down factory after factory and reducing the size of the workforce in order to maximize profits beyond previous rates to enhance the so-called “competitive potency” of U.S. capital.
All of these attacks on economic rights and increases in the degree of exploitation of labor are happening in spite of the fact that we have more than enough resources to meet the needs of all.
The capitalist economy is built on the foundation of cooperative, socialized labor which is able to set in motion vast means of production. However the social product is appropriated privately by the capitalist owners. Thus the vast productive forces of capitalist society are fettered and suppressed by capitalism itself. While the productive capacity and potential of society are unlimited, the actual level of production is limited precisely by the fact that production is carried out solely in order to maximize profits for the capitalists.
The workers, whose wages always remain only a small portion of the total value they themselves have produced, can buy back, in the marketplace, only a small percentage of the total social product Under capitalism. The infinite possibilities for expansion of production are kept in check by the limitation of the market. Furthermore, this basic contradiction between the social character of production and the private capitalist means of appropriation makes itself felt through the “blind laws” – the anarchy – of the market. Each capitalist strives to bring as many goods onto the market as possible only to find that they cannot all be sold. The inevitable, recurring result is the stockpiling of unsold goods, the shutting down of production lines and whole factories, the lay-off of workers, the waste of productive forces.
What can be done about it?
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, the founders of scientific socialism, long ago showed that the way out of the contradictions of capitalism was through the recognition of the social character of the productive forces of society and the transformation of capitalist private property into socialist, collective property belonging to all the working masses. On this basis. the contradiction between production and consumption as well as the anarchy of the market can be eliminated through “socially planned regulation of production in accordance with the needs both of society as a whole and of each individual.”
To achieve this emancipation, the working class has no choice but to be political – to come out as a class-for-itself, organized in its own political party and independent political movement, with the aim of winning the battle for democracy by gaining the political power.
As a result of its concentration and centralization of capital, the stage of monopoly and imperialism is identified as the stage reached by American capitalism. As Lenin has shown, politics follows economics. Thus, the emergence and domination of monopoly capital in the economic life of the country has led to an ever-greater reliance on reaction and violence by the capitalist state. With their colossal economic power, with their complete monopoly over the means of production, the capitalists exercise a stranglehold over the politics in society.
The Democratic and Republican parties, the Congress and the courts, the mass media, the police, and the army have been used by the capitalists to smash the strikes and other economic movements of the workers, to enforce the systematic oppression of the immigrant workers and national minorities, to arrest political activists and repress working class, youth, anti-imperialist and popular movements.
So too, at the decisive moments when serious crimes of the government have been exposed or when the democratic movement of the masses comes to the forefront, the two party representatives hold hearings and appoint special prosecutors. These “investigations” are not designed to get to the root of the problems, to expose or repudiate the capitalist class and its reactionary program. Quite the contrary. The hearings and investigations are designed precisely in order to cover over the extent of government corruption, intrigue, and terrorism by promoting the idea that American "democracy” is overcoming the occasional “mistake.” The goal of the method is to continue the same program of war, robbery, racism, and repression.
While fighting against every manifestation of growing fascism and other diseases of capitalism, while defending every claim on the economy and democratic reform we have won, the working people must aim at bringing about a fundamental change in the political system. Today it is the working class and people who alone defend and carry forward the banner of democracy while the capitalist class, its political parties, its Supreme Court, its Congress, etc. stand for restricting and attacking the rights of the people all along the line. Only by challenging the political power of the capitalists, only by replacing the government of the capitalists with a government of the workers can we really and permanently guarantee democratic liberties and genuine equality. The path towards this goal is the path of mass struggle in defense of democratic rights, the path of building up the political party of the working class – the true representative of democracy.
The President and Congress have heaped up the growing deficit by generously allocating hundreds of billions of dollars to the rich corporations and Wall Street bankers. At the same time, they have reduced corporate taxes to the extent that capitalists now pay less than 7% of the total tax revenue.
The government's intensified plunder of the public treasury involves austerity budgeting for the poor and handouts for the rich at the state level as well.
As the permanent crisis of capitalism deepens, the government intervenes further to protect capitalist profits. Consequently, it accumulates more debt and sacrifices social programs and tax dollars that would benefit workers. Medicare and Social Security are already severely underfunded, leaving millions of retired individuals in poverty. The capitalists are already phasing in Social Security retirement age changes, slashing disability benefits, and increasing Medicare co-payments. The capitalists want to force workers to toil beyond exhaustion and abandon them without support once they are no longer in the condition to produce a profitable return on the capitalist's investment.
The unemployment compensation program has been gutted to the point where less than 1/3 of the unemployed receive any assistance whatsoever; food and nutrition programs for children and the elderly have been cut back, as have housing assistance programs, etc. Even government-funded studies admit that the lines at the soup kitchens are growing longer, that 17 million American households have members suffering from hunger, that millions are homeless, that 38 million Americans live below the official poverty line, that over 3/4 of the population are in debt, etc. The reality is that over the last few years, the standard of living of the people has been thrown back several generations, and the basic needs of the people are going unmet.
At the same time, the billionaire bankers and factory owners are enjoying unprecedented prosperity. According to the Federal Bank of St. Louis, in 2022, U.S. corporations reported $2.9 trillion in profits after taxes.
These gargantuan profits come on the heels of “rationalization“ drives in which industry has been cutting wages, speeding up the assembly lines, closing down factory after factory and reducing the size of the workforce in order to maximize profits beyond previous rates to enhance the so-called “competitive potency” of U.S. capital.
All of these attacks on economic rights and increases in the degree of exploitation of labor are happening in spite of the fact that we have more than enough resources to meet the needs of all.
The capitalist economy is built on the foundation of cooperative, socialized labor which is able to set in motion vast means of production. However the social product is appropriated privately by the capitalist owners. Thus the vast productive forces of capitalist society are fettered and suppressed by capitalism itself. While the productive capacity and potential of society are unlimited, the actual level of production is limited precisely by the fact that production is carried out solely in order to maximize profits for the capitalists.
The workers, whose wages always remain only a small portion of the total value they themselves have produced, can buy back, in the marketplace, only a small percentage of the total social product Under capitalism. The infinite possibilities for expansion of production are kept in check by the limitation of the market. Furthermore, this basic contradiction between the social character of production and the private capitalist means of appropriation makes itself felt through the “blind laws” – the anarchy – of the market. Each capitalist strives to bring as many goods onto the market as possible only to find that they cannot all be sold. The inevitable, recurring result is the stockpiling of unsold goods, the shutting down of production lines and whole factories, the lay-off of workers, the waste of productive forces.
What can be done about it?
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, the founders of scientific socialism, long ago showed that the way out of the contradictions of capitalism was through the recognition of the social character of the productive forces of society and the transformation of capitalist private property into socialist, collective property belonging to all the working masses. On this basis. the contradiction between production and consumption as well as the anarchy of the market can be eliminated through “socially planned regulation of production in accordance with the needs both of society as a whole and of each individual.”
To achieve this emancipation, the working class has no choice but to be political – to come out as a class-for-itself, organized in its own political party and independent political movement, with the aim of winning the battle for democracy by gaining the political power.
As a result of its concentration and centralization of capital, the stage of monopoly and imperialism is identified as the stage reached by American capitalism. As Lenin has shown, politics follows economics. Thus, the emergence and domination of monopoly capital in the economic life of the country has led to an ever-greater reliance on reaction and violence by the capitalist state. With their colossal economic power, with their complete monopoly over the means of production, the capitalists exercise a stranglehold over the politics in society.
The Democratic and Republican parties, the Congress and the courts, the mass media, the police, and the army have been used by the capitalists to smash the strikes and other economic movements of the workers, to enforce the systematic oppression of the immigrant workers and national minorities, to arrest political activists and repress working class, youth, anti-imperialist and popular movements.
So too, at the decisive moments when serious crimes of the government have been exposed or when the democratic movement of the masses comes to the forefront, the two party representatives hold hearings and appoint special prosecutors. These “investigations” are not designed to get to the root of the problems, to expose or repudiate the capitalist class and its reactionary program. Quite the contrary. The hearings and investigations are designed precisely in order to cover over the extent of government corruption, intrigue, and terrorism by promoting the idea that American "democracy” is overcoming the occasional “mistake.” The goal of the method is to continue the same program of war, robbery, racism, and repression.
While fighting against every manifestation of growing fascism and other diseases of capitalism, while defending every claim on the economy and democratic reform we have won, the working people must aim at bringing about a fundamental change in the political system. Today it is the working class and people who alone defend and carry forward the banner of democracy while the capitalist class, its political parties, its Supreme Court, its Congress, etc. stand for restricting and attacking the rights of the people all along the line. Only by challenging the political power of the capitalists, only by replacing the government of the capitalists with a government of the workers can we really and permanently guarantee democratic liberties and genuine equality. The path towards this goal is the path of mass struggle in defense of democratic rights, the path of building up the political party of the working class – the true representative of democracy.
Operation Sword of Iron Is a Lost Cause
Today, as the Palestinian people come forward to claim their right to self-determination, sovereignty, and independence – their right to their own state in their homeland – they are winning the support of peoples everywhere, including the American people.
This political struggle is at an important crossroads and we must remain sharp. If the U.S. government decides, for the time being, to accept the demand of the American people for a suspension of the militarist offensive against the Palestinian residents of the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza, it will do so only in order to escalate its political offensive – with the goal of imposing its undivided rule over the Palestinian nation.
In every step of the current conflict, as U.S Central Command and its Israeli agents operate legally and tyrannically outside of the 1967 borders of Israel, the pompous U.S.-Israeli military drive is designed to menace the Palestinian people and eventually liquidate their struggle. Pauses between massacres are advertised in order to prepare for renewed land grabs and slaughters, trying to shrink Palestinian territory to nothing and drown the resistance in an ocean of blood.
Returning to the well-polished tool of a renewed political offensive, Biden and Congress are equally prepared to once again declare themselves “unsatisfied” with “democratization” outside the 1967 borders. And, as in the past, to manipulate a breakdown of any talks on the basis that unvetted Palestinian organizations not be allowed a voice in creating the future of Palestine.
The lesson of current events outside the 1967 borders of Israel is that the two parties of war have again spit in the face of the anti-war movement in our country by increasing U.S. political and military pressure against the oppressed nation of Palestine. U.S. imperialism is desperate to achieve its genocidal aims there, and in so doing to regain the initiative in its war for domination over the entire Middle East region.
The tasks facing progressive and anti-imperialist Americans remain as clear as ever. We must persist in the struggle against U.S. intervention in the Middle East until imperialism is forced to drop its program for liquidating the Palestinian nation and the sacred right of the Palestinian nation to its own state in its national homeland is realized.
The conflicts and turmoil in the Middle East all stem from the permanent aims of the U.S. capitalist class, from the exploiting, aggressive imperialist social relations. The economic and strategic objectives of the U.S. multinational corporations make them the permanent enemies of the peoples of the Middle East and their aspirations for genuine freedom, independence, and social emancipation.
The current program of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East is direct military intervention, build-up of reactionary local regimes, maintenance and direction of the aggressive Israeli state. The declared aims are to "protect" the region's "vast natural resources [which] . . . lies across the most convenient route of land, air and water communication."
The path forward to victory is the path of unremitting mass struggles against U.S. imperialism and its interventions in the Middle East.
History shows that through struggle, and struggle alone, the imperialists can be defeated.
This political struggle is at an important crossroads and we must remain sharp. If the U.S. government decides, for the time being, to accept the demand of the American people for a suspension of the militarist offensive against the Palestinian residents of the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza, it will do so only in order to escalate its political offensive – with the goal of imposing its undivided rule over the Palestinian nation.
In every step of the current conflict, as U.S Central Command and its Israeli agents operate legally and tyrannically outside of the 1967 borders of Israel, the pompous U.S.-Israeli military drive is designed to menace the Palestinian people and eventually liquidate their struggle. Pauses between massacres are advertised in order to prepare for renewed land grabs and slaughters, trying to shrink Palestinian territory to nothing and drown the resistance in an ocean of blood.
Returning to the well-polished tool of a renewed political offensive, Biden and Congress are equally prepared to once again declare themselves “unsatisfied” with “democratization” outside the 1967 borders. And, as in the past, to manipulate a breakdown of any talks on the basis that unvetted Palestinian organizations not be allowed a voice in creating the future of Palestine.
The lesson of current events outside the 1967 borders of Israel is that the two parties of war have again spit in the face of the anti-war movement in our country by increasing U.S. political and military pressure against the oppressed nation of Palestine. U.S. imperialism is desperate to achieve its genocidal aims there, and in so doing to regain the initiative in its war for domination over the entire Middle East region.
The tasks facing progressive and anti-imperialist Americans remain as clear as ever. We must persist in the struggle against U.S. intervention in the Middle East until imperialism is forced to drop its program for liquidating the Palestinian nation and the sacred right of the Palestinian nation to its own state in its national homeland is realized.
The conflicts and turmoil in the Middle East all stem from the permanent aims of the U.S. capitalist class, from the exploiting, aggressive imperialist social relations. The economic and strategic objectives of the U.S. multinational corporations make them the permanent enemies of the peoples of the Middle East and their aspirations for genuine freedom, independence, and social emancipation.
The current program of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East is direct military intervention, build-up of reactionary local regimes, maintenance and direction of the aggressive Israeli state. The declared aims are to "protect" the region's "vast natural resources [which] . . . lies across the most convenient route of land, air and water communication."
The path forward to victory is the path of unremitting mass struggles against U.S. imperialism and its interventions in the Middle East.
History shows that through struggle, and struggle alone, the imperialists can be defeated.