The Worker, Vol. 35, Number 14
New Attack on Democratic Rights
Last month President Biden used executive powers to order employers with 100 or more employees to either require their employees to get a COVID-19 vaccine shot, submit to weekly testing or be fired. This decision is an obvious violation of workers' rights to privacy and freedom of conscience. Whether carried out voluntarily by an employer or under penalty of fines from the government, such an attack on the civil liberties of the workers is unconscionable. Workers contract with their employers to sell their labor power for a fixed period of time; they do not contract to submit every thought and deed to the approval of the boss.
Today the government is creating hysteria about COVID-19 vaccination as yet another pretext for setting aside democratic liberties and strengthening its apparatus of repression. The government is honing this apparatus of repression in full knowledge that, as the crisis of capitalism deepens and the government continues to attack the economic and other rights of the people, the people will inevitably step up their struggles against capitalist wage-slavery and political oppression.
This latest offensive against the democratic rights and civil liberties of the workers arises from the profound crisis of the capitalist system. The capitalist class aims at imposing the most intense exploitation on the workers by stripping away even the minimal standards for working conditions and rights gained through class struggles which took place over the last 200 years. This class wants to remove any restraints on its exploitation of the workers and to erase any social or governmental recognition of the individual and collective rights and liberties of the workers. This class wants to reduce every worker to the level of a chattel slave who exists solely for the benefit of the class of exploiters of his or her labor power.
While the aims of monopoly capital and the government are anti-social, they are carrying out this usurpation of arbitrary political power in the name of the well-being of the people. They want us to forget our experience. They want us to forget that the results of the bipartisan anti-social offensive – the lack of guarantees for the right to food, clothing and shelter, for the right to health care, for the right to infant and child care, for the right to a job or livelihood, the lack of economic security, the slashing of social programs, the privatization of public services, etc. – are not the work of one or two mean-spirited individuals. They are the result of the ongoing program of the monopoly-capitalist class for grabbing maximum profit by shifting an ever-greater burden onto the people. It is a program for throwing our country backward by putting the entire country under the thumb of the capitalist monopolies.
As American workers know well from their experience, stripping the workers of their individual and collective rights is a principal lever in the hands of the monopoly capitalist class for reducing the standard of wages and imposing brutal productivity drives on the workers.
For more than 200 years, the American people have fought for their democratic rights as part of the struggle against the usurpation of arbitrary power by the ruling class and the state apparatus it has created. This struggle must be carried through to the end. It can be said that a truly democratic system is established only when the rights of the workers, the rights of nations, the rights of women, the rights of the youth, the rights of blacks and other oppressed minorities, and all the group rights of other collectives are – in theory and in practice – recognized as inviolable and when the powers of government are restricted to those expressly delegated to it by a sovereign people.
The revisionists and opportunists, the representatives of the labor aristocracy, who have sold their souls (if they ever had any) to the billionaire bloodsuckers, have no historical initiative and have joined with the American ruling class in demanding universal COVID-19 vaccination because they also have pitted themselves in opposition to the working masses. The experience of the Workers Party shows that the initiative rests with the Marxist-Leninists to organize the working class as the colossal force for leading the way out of the crisis of capitalism and transforming society in favor of the collective solutions required by the interests of the workers and broad masses of the people. We are proud to shoulder this task.
The leading edge of our program is the struggle to carry out the democratic renewal of the political system and the political process. Today, the American people, who emerged in the struggle against the absolute power of the feudal kings, again face an entrenched political power which has usurped the sovereignty of the people. Today, the Republican and Democratic parties, creatures created by the economic elite, wield the same arbitrary power as the Kings and Lords of the feudal period, deciding, without regard for the will of the people, all the vital questions. Facing this political situation, the American people must take up the struggle to renew the political system and political process so that the sovereign power – the decision-making power – returns to the people themselves and the people are able to directly participate in governing their affairs.
While we must respond and take actions against each and every attack on our rights, this response must necessarily be developed in the context of the people's own aims and agenda, in the context of solving the problems posed by history and the present situation.
The program for recognition of the economic and other inviolable rights of the people, the program of carrying out the democratic renewal of our country so as to empower the people themselves, the program of implementing a democratic foreign policy, carries forward the great banners of the American people and opens the road to progress and socialism.
By enunciating their own aims and agenda, the workers bring out everything that is healthy and alive in the society and arouse themselves to go forward to achieve their aspirations for equality and emancipation. By uniting ourselves under the banner of our common aims, we unify the manifold activities of the people, giving the proletarian movement for emancipation consciousness and direction.
Today the government is creating hysteria about COVID-19 vaccination as yet another pretext for setting aside democratic liberties and strengthening its apparatus of repression. The government is honing this apparatus of repression in full knowledge that, as the crisis of capitalism deepens and the government continues to attack the economic and other rights of the people, the people will inevitably step up their struggles against capitalist wage-slavery and political oppression.
This latest offensive against the democratic rights and civil liberties of the workers arises from the profound crisis of the capitalist system. The capitalist class aims at imposing the most intense exploitation on the workers by stripping away even the minimal standards for working conditions and rights gained through class struggles which took place over the last 200 years. This class wants to remove any restraints on its exploitation of the workers and to erase any social or governmental recognition of the individual and collective rights and liberties of the workers. This class wants to reduce every worker to the level of a chattel slave who exists solely for the benefit of the class of exploiters of his or her labor power.
While the aims of monopoly capital and the government are anti-social, they are carrying out this usurpation of arbitrary political power in the name of the well-being of the people. They want us to forget our experience. They want us to forget that the results of the bipartisan anti-social offensive – the lack of guarantees for the right to food, clothing and shelter, for the right to health care, for the right to infant and child care, for the right to a job or livelihood, the lack of economic security, the slashing of social programs, the privatization of public services, etc. – are not the work of one or two mean-spirited individuals. They are the result of the ongoing program of the monopoly-capitalist class for grabbing maximum profit by shifting an ever-greater burden onto the people. It is a program for throwing our country backward by putting the entire country under the thumb of the capitalist monopolies.
As American workers know well from their experience, stripping the workers of their individual and collective rights is a principal lever in the hands of the monopoly capitalist class for reducing the standard of wages and imposing brutal productivity drives on the workers.
For more than 200 years, the American people have fought for their democratic rights as part of the struggle against the usurpation of arbitrary power by the ruling class and the state apparatus it has created. This struggle must be carried through to the end. It can be said that a truly democratic system is established only when the rights of the workers, the rights of nations, the rights of women, the rights of the youth, the rights of blacks and other oppressed minorities, and all the group rights of other collectives are – in theory and in practice – recognized as inviolable and when the powers of government are restricted to those expressly delegated to it by a sovereign people.
The revisionists and opportunists, the representatives of the labor aristocracy, who have sold their souls (if they ever had any) to the billionaire bloodsuckers, have no historical initiative and have joined with the American ruling class in demanding universal COVID-19 vaccination because they also have pitted themselves in opposition to the working masses. The experience of the Workers Party shows that the initiative rests with the Marxist-Leninists to organize the working class as the colossal force for leading the way out of the crisis of capitalism and transforming society in favor of the collective solutions required by the interests of the workers and broad masses of the people. We are proud to shoulder this task.
The leading edge of our program is the struggle to carry out the democratic renewal of the political system and the political process. Today, the American people, who emerged in the struggle against the absolute power of the feudal kings, again face an entrenched political power which has usurped the sovereignty of the people. Today, the Republican and Democratic parties, creatures created by the economic elite, wield the same arbitrary power as the Kings and Lords of the feudal period, deciding, without regard for the will of the people, all the vital questions. Facing this political situation, the American people must take up the struggle to renew the political system and political process so that the sovereign power – the decision-making power – returns to the people themselves and the people are able to directly participate in governing their affairs.
While we must respond and take actions against each and every attack on our rights, this response must necessarily be developed in the context of the people's own aims and agenda, in the context of solving the problems posed by history and the present situation.
The program for recognition of the economic and other inviolable rights of the people, the program of carrying out the democratic renewal of our country so as to empower the people themselves, the program of implementing a democratic foreign policy, carries forward the great banners of the American people and opens the road to progress and socialism.
By enunciating their own aims and agenda, the workers bring out everything that is healthy and alive in the society and arouse themselves to go forward to achieve their aspirations for equality and emancipation. By uniting ourselves under the banner of our common aims, we unify the manifold activities of the people, giving the proletarian movement for emancipation consciousness and direction.