The Worker, Vol. 34, Number 5
Strengthening Our Convictions
Using an unnaturally animated crisis atmosphere to push forward an offensive against the rights of the people, the capitalist politicians are placing their demand for an increase in police state powers as the first order of business across the country. The U.S. monopoly capitalist class and the two parties are making COVID-19 into a pretext for unleashing the repressive apparatus of the state, a pretext for demanding authority to impose arbitrary limits on the liberties of civilians and to justify increases in government expenditure on digital surveillance.
The monopoly owned media and politicians offer both fascist and liberal analysis in defense of these anti-social spending and policy "priorities." The "left-wing" of the Democratic Party openly spews out bile against the workers and broad masses of the people, slandering them for having an allegedly negative culture of selfish "entitlement" and resistance to the authority of the most decorated experts at the top of the social hierarchy. The slightly less overtly chauvinist elements in the two-parties are no less aristocratic and reactionary. They put forward a hue and cry against unhampered trammeling of the population but their "protests" go no further than to call for special privileges for a few rather than genuine defense of the civil liberties and democratic rights of all. As multiplying sections of the people are becoming conscious that the only way to defend and advance democratic rights and civil liberties is to build up the independent political strength and organization of the working class as a class-for-itself, this "official opposition" within the two parties is swooping in with an attempt to suppress discussion of anything but the narrowest possible calls such as "freedom of religion" in place of principled opposition to government and employer suppression of freedom of action and association.
The pluralist ideology that informs both of these types of analysis mystifies the real class interests of the state power by covering over the fundamental relationship between the economic base of society and its political superstructure. According to this ideology today, there are no economic classes or political parties organized to fight for the interests of those classes. As a result, the people have no independent claim to the sovereign decision making power and must seek instead to reconcile their demands and interests within the confines of the capitalist state and its two ruling political parties. Today what is coming to the fore is the morbid dream of the capitalist class to prevent not only freedom of collective action and association, but even the most elementary personal sovereignty. The two parties are working to authorize the state apparatus to dictate such universal matters as attitudes towards life, death, doctors and religion.
The fact that the government is gearing up its apparatus of repression and further attacking the democratic rights of the people reflects the profound polarization developing in our country. The capitalist class and the capitalist state know that they are standing in the way of progress and that they are not about to willingly accede to the growing demands of the people for economic and political change. By resorting more and more to openly repressive methods of rule, the government is admitting that it is an arbitrary, absolute power which is so afraid of the people that it must try to suppress the rights of the people to express and organize themselves.
Today, monopoly capitalism is deathly afraid of the role of the popular masses and the individual in history. In the first place, despite all of the claims that big capital plays the role of "job creator," the real fact is that the principal role in the creation of material wealth is played by the working people. They make instruments of labor, improve on them and pass on their experience from one generation to another. The working people feed and clothe the whole world and create all the good things of life.
The working people not only create the necessities of life but also history itself, as they are the main driving force of progress. Slavery and feudalism receded into the past not of their own accord but as a result of the strenuous revolutionary struggle of working men and women against their oppressors. Thus, the people create not only all the material wealth, but also all of the non-material, spiritual and intellectual values. So too, science, literature and the arts owe their development primarily to the popular masses.
Just as the state directly participates in the reproduction of capitalism's economic relations, in the current age the monopoly capitalist class would be unable to exercise power consistently if the state did not have special agencies at its disposal ideologically to manipulate the population. The monopoly-owned social media outlets, newspapers, radio, television and movie studios as well as the leading agencies of the state apparatus such as the universities all take an active part in ideological work.
In protecting the monopoly capitalist system, the U.S. monopoly capitalist class pursues this manipulation as well as militarization based both on aggressive plans directed against other countries and on the urge always to have at the ready a powerful means of suppression on the home front. If the state did not have such a formidable weapon at its disposal, controlling the discontent of millions of men and women would be no easy task.
At this time of unabating class struggle the monopoly capitalist class also finds itself forced to put forward efforts to regulate social relations in attempts to check the progress of organized struggles against capital. As a result of these struggles concessions have been won by the working people which provide some protection for the rights of the workers regarding such issues as working hours, wages and pensions. However the concessions made by the government and the capitalist class always remain fully in keeping with the class essence of the state power. The objective is set by the bourgeoisie — to preserve its class domination. The capitalist state is an organ that exists to protect the monopoly bourgeoisie; it guards the monopoly capitalist order while the working people must work to enrich the small group of capitalist exploiters.
However today what stands out most of all is that the working men and women are not satisfied with partial concessions. It is clear then that the crisis of the political system in the U.S. is determined by the correlation of class forces in the world and in the American society itself; it is a crisis imposed upon the state apparatus and carried out by it in order to perpetuate the economic basis of capitalism.
On a world scale, the capitalist class, refusing to recognize the social character of the productive forces and striving at all costs to maintain its exploiting system, is throwing humanity backwards. In the U.S., monopoly capital is imposing a thoroughly reactionary, anti-social agenda on the country — imposing new and more intense forms of exploitation on the workers, slashing social investments in education, in health care, in income support programs, in Social Security, etc., etc., privatizing the public infrastructure and stripping away any guarantees for the economic and human rights of the people.
In order to impose this agenda the people are completely excluded from the political power. The Democrats and Republicans play a key role as instruments for shaping public opinion in this struggle for power. Take the example of housing. At the moment, emergency temporary accommodations all across the country are receiving a rush of funds in the name of aiding some of the most vulnerable and destitute sections of the population such as seniors, veterans, prostitutes and youths who have been forced into homelessness as a result of the failure of the present system to provide homes for all. Alarmed at the combined inability and unwillingness of large numbers of the masses to respond amenably to intimate behavioral dictates from autocrats, the capitalist politicians have suddenly been forced to rediscover that material resources are a necessary to the survival of every individual and collective. They have remembered that homelessness is on the rise in U.S. society and they are oh, so concerned about it. However the aim of new spending is not to provide ironclad guarantees for housing as a right or to reverse disinvestment in the nation's remaining stock of publicly owned housing properties. On the contrary, the aim is to provide huge subsidies to private, for-profit business enterprises, including the finance capitalists and real estate moguls.
Rather than to use tax payer monies to build the infrastructure needed to guarantee the right to housing, the monies are being taken out of the public treasury in order to put them at the disposal of a handful of big capitalists and landlords. This not only underwrites the profits of the rich, it also wastes the resources as the capitalists and landlords can and do freely withdraw this capital out of the economy as they please and thereby drain our country of its vital economic resources. This latest grab for public housing provisions earmarked to meet the needs of the poor and most vulnerable is being carried out by the two parties in spite of popular organizations and movements which denounce local and federal spending decisions that line the pockets of landlords and feed the growing shortfall between rents demanded and Section 8 benefits received by tenants. It is being carried out in spite of the fact the workers have been demanding more social investments in HUD-owned housing in order to benefit the seniors, the unemployed and all who cannot afford a roof over their heads as a result of the high price of housing combined with the low wages and frequent layoffs of the workers.
Thus, the capitalist politicians start by misrepresenting the problem as one that is new and one that is disconnected from the long-standing struggle of the working class to make claims on the economy on the basis of right. Then they offer as a "solution" more of the same anti-social agenda which is responsible for intensifying the housing crisis they are once again compelled to acknowledge.
This is the case across every front of the anti-social offensive being carried out by the U.S. monopoly capitalist class and its two parties. According to the ideology of the capitalists, there can be no other aim or motive in society except the drive to "increase the international competitiveness of U.S. capitalism." The workers and people have no rights as collectives and individuals. Rather they have only one purpose in life — to sell labor-power to the capitalist exploiters. The right to a livelihood, the economic security, to health care, etc., etc. — none of these things are figured into the equation. The vast economic capacity of our country and the very labor of the people is used solely to maximize profits for the capitalists. The anti-social offensive the U.S. monopoly capitalist class offers no other prospect or future except putting our entire country at the disposal of the capitalist monopolies.
The alternative to this is found in the intensifying struggle of the foremost forces for democracy and social progress. From the very emergence of capitalism the workers and people have fought against the political economy of capitalist exploitation which looks on the worker only as a seller of labor-power and which is based on enshrining the "rights" of private property in the means of production. As a program for unifying and strengthening today's resistance by these forces to the capitalist offensive and as part of the work to carry through the struggle for the political economy of the working class under contemporary conditions the party of the working class needs to bring to the fore the experience and aspirations of the people themselves, both their criticism of the status quo as well as their vision and aim for society and life. Popularizing and summing up the struggles of people which are breaking out everywhere, giving theoretical substantiation to the thinking and experience of people brings these aspirations to the fore and creates a new atmosphere in which the workers and people are increasingly conscious of their own movement.
The people cannot wait for monopoly capitalism to further plunder our country of its national assets. It is only through mass struggle that we can change our current conditions by forcing the capitalists to make the social investments needed to guarantee the economic rights of the people. So too, when we refuse to give in to threats and blackmail, when we stand together and fight against the buildup of the repressive apparatus of the state, we can win. We must aim at merging the many economic and partial struggles of the people into a generalized political movement. In addition to demanding that the government set aside an ever-rising portion of our country's annual product as a social fund to guarantee the economic rights of the people, we must aim at breaking the monopoly of the capitalist class and its parties over political affairs and create a new political process and political system in which the people are the real sovereign power.
The monopoly owned media and politicians offer both fascist and liberal analysis in defense of these anti-social spending and policy "priorities." The "left-wing" of the Democratic Party openly spews out bile against the workers and broad masses of the people, slandering them for having an allegedly negative culture of selfish "entitlement" and resistance to the authority of the most decorated experts at the top of the social hierarchy. The slightly less overtly chauvinist elements in the two-parties are no less aristocratic and reactionary. They put forward a hue and cry against unhampered trammeling of the population but their "protests" go no further than to call for special privileges for a few rather than genuine defense of the civil liberties and democratic rights of all. As multiplying sections of the people are becoming conscious that the only way to defend and advance democratic rights and civil liberties is to build up the independent political strength and organization of the working class as a class-for-itself, this "official opposition" within the two parties is swooping in with an attempt to suppress discussion of anything but the narrowest possible calls such as "freedom of religion" in place of principled opposition to government and employer suppression of freedom of action and association.
The pluralist ideology that informs both of these types of analysis mystifies the real class interests of the state power by covering over the fundamental relationship between the economic base of society and its political superstructure. According to this ideology today, there are no economic classes or political parties organized to fight for the interests of those classes. As a result, the people have no independent claim to the sovereign decision making power and must seek instead to reconcile their demands and interests within the confines of the capitalist state and its two ruling political parties. Today what is coming to the fore is the morbid dream of the capitalist class to prevent not only freedom of collective action and association, but even the most elementary personal sovereignty. The two parties are working to authorize the state apparatus to dictate such universal matters as attitudes towards life, death, doctors and religion.
The fact that the government is gearing up its apparatus of repression and further attacking the democratic rights of the people reflects the profound polarization developing in our country. The capitalist class and the capitalist state know that they are standing in the way of progress and that they are not about to willingly accede to the growing demands of the people for economic and political change. By resorting more and more to openly repressive methods of rule, the government is admitting that it is an arbitrary, absolute power which is so afraid of the people that it must try to suppress the rights of the people to express and organize themselves.
Today, monopoly capitalism is deathly afraid of the role of the popular masses and the individual in history. In the first place, despite all of the claims that big capital plays the role of "job creator," the real fact is that the principal role in the creation of material wealth is played by the working people. They make instruments of labor, improve on them and pass on their experience from one generation to another. The working people feed and clothe the whole world and create all the good things of life.
The working people not only create the necessities of life but also history itself, as they are the main driving force of progress. Slavery and feudalism receded into the past not of their own accord but as a result of the strenuous revolutionary struggle of working men and women against their oppressors. Thus, the people create not only all the material wealth, but also all of the non-material, spiritual and intellectual values. So too, science, literature and the arts owe their development primarily to the popular masses.
Just as the state directly participates in the reproduction of capitalism's economic relations, in the current age the monopoly capitalist class would be unable to exercise power consistently if the state did not have special agencies at its disposal ideologically to manipulate the population. The monopoly-owned social media outlets, newspapers, radio, television and movie studios as well as the leading agencies of the state apparatus such as the universities all take an active part in ideological work.
In protecting the monopoly capitalist system, the U.S. monopoly capitalist class pursues this manipulation as well as militarization based both on aggressive plans directed against other countries and on the urge always to have at the ready a powerful means of suppression on the home front. If the state did not have such a formidable weapon at its disposal, controlling the discontent of millions of men and women would be no easy task.
At this time of unabating class struggle the monopoly capitalist class also finds itself forced to put forward efforts to regulate social relations in attempts to check the progress of organized struggles against capital. As a result of these struggles concessions have been won by the working people which provide some protection for the rights of the workers regarding such issues as working hours, wages and pensions. However the concessions made by the government and the capitalist class always remain fully in keeping with the class essence of the state power. The objective is set by the bourgeoisie — to preserve its class domination. The capitalist state is an organ that exists to protect the monopoly bourgeoisie; it guards the monopoly capitalist order while the working people must work to enrich the small group of capitalist exploiters.
However today what stands out most of all is that the working men and women are not satisfied with partial concessions. It is clear then that the crisis of the political system in the U.S. is determined by the correlation of class forces in the world and in the American society itself; it is a crisis imposed upon the state apparatus and carried out by it in order to perpetuate the economic basis of capitalism.
On a world scale, the capitalist class, refusing to recognize the social character of the productive forces and striving at all costs to maintain its exploiting system, is throwing humanity backwards. In the U.S., monopoly capital is imposing a thoroughly reactionary, anti-social agenda on the country — imposing new and more intense forms of exploitation on the workers, slashing social investments in education, in health care, in income support programs, in Social Security, etc., etc., privatizing the public infrastructure and stripping away any guarantees for the economic and human rights of the people.
In order to impose this agenda the people are completely excluded from the political power. The Democrats and Republicans play a key role as instruments for shaping public opinion in this struggle for power. Take the example of housing. At the moment, emergency temporary accommodations all across the country are receiving a rush of funds in the name of aiding some of the most vulnerable and destitute sections of the population such as seniors, veterans, prostitutes and youths who have been forced into homelessness as a result of the failure of the present system to provide homes for all. Alarmed at the combined inability and unwillingness of large numbers of the masses to respond amenably to intimate behavioral dictates from autocrats, the capitalist politicians have suddenly been forced to rediscover that material resources are a necessary to the survival of every individual and collective. They have remembered that homelessness is on the rise in U.S. society and they are oh, so concerned about it. However the aim of new spending is not to provide ironclad guarantees for housing as a right or to reverse disinvestment in the nation's remaining stock of publicly owned housing properties. On the contrary, the aim is to provide huge subsidies to private, for-profit business enterprises, including the finance capitalists and real estate moguls.
Rather than to use tax payer monies to build the infrastructure needed to guarantee the right to housing, the monies are being taken out of the public treasury in order to put them at the disposal of a handful of big capitalists and landlords. This not only underwrites the profits of the rich, it also wastes the resources as the capitalists and landlords can and do freely withdraw this capital out of the economy as they please and thereby drain our country of its vital economic resources. This latest grab for public housing provisions earmarked to meet the needs of the poor and most vulnerable is being carried out by the two parties in spite of popular organizations and movements which denounce local and federal spending decisions that line the pockets of landlords and feed the growing shortfall between rents demanded and Section 8 benefits received by tenants. It is being carried out in spite of the fact the workers have been demanding more social investments in HUD-owned housing in order to benefit the seniors, the unemployed and all who cannot afford a roof over their heads as a result of the high price of housing combined with the low wages and frequent layoffs of the workers.
Thus, the capitalist politicians start by misrepresenting the problem as one that is new and one that is disconnected from the long-standing struggle of the working class to make claims on the economy on the basis of right. Then they offer as a "solution" more of the same anti-social agenda which is responsible for intensifying the housing crisis they are once again compelled to acknowledge.
This is the case across every front of the anti-social offensive being carried out by the U.S. monopoly capitalist class and its two parties. According to the ideology of the capitalists, there can be no other aim or motive in society except the drive to "increase the international competitiveness of U.S. capitalism." The workers and people have no rights as collectives and individuals. Rather they have only one purpose in life — to sell labor-power to the capitalist exploiters. The right to a livelihood, the economic security, to health care, etc., etc. — none of these things are figured into the equation. The vast economic capacity of our country and the very labor of the people is used solely to maximize profits for the capitalists. The anti-social offensive the U.S. monopoly capitalist class offers no other prospect or future except putting our entire country at the disposal of the capitalist monopolies.
The alternative to this is found in the intensifying struggle of the foremost forces for democracy and social progress. From the very emergence of capitalism the workers and people have fought against the political economy of capitalist exploitation which looks on the worker only as a seller of labor-power and which is based on enshrining the "rights" of private property in the means of production. As a program for unifying and strengthening today's resistance by these forces to the capitalist offensive and as part of the work to carry through the struggle for the political economy of the working class under contemporary conditions the party of the working class needs to bring to the fore the experience and aspirations of the people themselves, both their criticism of the status quo as well as their vision and aim for society and life. Popularizing and summing up the struggles of people which are breaking out everywhere, giving theoretical substantiation to the thinking and experience of people brings these aspirations to the fore and creates a new atmosphere in which the workers and people are increasingly conscious of their own movement.
The people cannot wait for monopoly capitalism to further plunder our country of its national assets. It is only through mass struggle that we can change our current conditions by forcing the capitalists to make the social investments needed to guarantee the economic rights of the people. So too, when we refuse to give in to threats and blackmail, when we stand together and fight against the buildup of the repressive apparatus of the state, we can win. We must aim at merging the many economic and partial struggles of the people into a generalized political movement. In addition to demanding that the government set aside an ever-rising portion of our country's annual product as a social fund to guarantee the economic rights of the people, we must aim at breaking the monopoly of the capitalist class and its parties over political affairs and create a new political process and political system in which the people are the real sovereign power.