The Worker, Vol. 38, Number 5
Note from the editor:
In August we published a Special Edition of The Worker to start off our new campaign slogan. Members, friends 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 the latest write-ins and reports. Tell us anything you'd like to about your experience with it. WorkerspartyUSAChicagoBranch@gmail.com
Salvation Can Only Be Found Through the Emancipation of the Working Class
Last month, President Biden signed a federal law empowering the executive branch to sever TikTok creators' ties to their audiences without violation of a criminal statute. The measure failed to observe even the early principles of the Magna Carta inherited by the United States which established that punishment cannot be exercised upon anyone by depriving him or her of "lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land."
TikTok is an online platform for creators to exhibit their ideas for audience patronage. Exhibiting one's ideas to an audience is both a source of personal development and a source of income for creators.
The tyrannical law is not just an instance of misguided enthusiasm and folly. Nor is it merely an expression of the tendency of a so-called "free market" economy to devolve into an economy controlled by the most powerful shareholders at the expense and detriment of the general public. It is a new strategy, born of American chauvinism, for making all exhibitions of ideas susceptible to such manipulation and repression by the authorities.
For the last several years, government branches at all levels have held the belief that enacting repressive laws could effectively alter human behavior and shape society according to their desires. They have focused on the implementation of numerous laws, with the notion that stricter and more severe regulations would be more influential in instilling societal standards seen as most favorable to the maximization of capitalist exploitation of labor. They assume that restrictive laws will inevitably yield success. They echo the sentiments expressed by Madison that in the Republic it is the representatives who "pronounce the public good" and the law, and who do so whether or not the provisions of those laws accord with the recognized rights of the majority.
Force is the only reply they offer to the reality of the growing conflict between the power of the representatives on the one pole, and the opposition of the "plebian" masses on the other. This form of representation resembles that of a warlord, where the individuals in charge have unrestricted control and can dictate the actions of everyone else. However, it should be noted that while this control is used to enforce the will of the rulers it most often differs profoundly from what they do. While espousing slogans of "freedom," "democracy," and "human rights," the motive and aim their real deeds reflect is the drive to preserve the "divine right" of the U.S. capitalist ruling class to exploit and dictate the affairs of both domestic and global populations.
The stated objective of the new strategy is to establish an unparalleled level of "national security." This may sound like a grand and groundbreaking police-state promise for American society. However, the ruling class representatives' motives, proposed methods, and requested laws are far from new. America has already undergone extensive and challenging experiences with similar puritanical experiments in the past. For example, temperance laws punished the production, trafficking, and sale of liquor. Eventually, through great struggle, these experiments were rejected by the American people as intolerant and impractical.
The provisions of the strategy are included in divisions GHI of the Public Law (118-50) which was passed on April 24, including the division entitled "Protecting American's Data From Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024." The tactic spelled out is to criminalize online content creators for "cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm or an agreement with respect to data sharing." In short, the Federal Trade Commission would be able to regulate the exhibition of anyone's ideas by arbitrarily labeling the exchange of ideas between audience and creator as "adversarial."
To bypass protections of personal ownership of data it was asserted as a foregone conclusion while the bill was still on the calendar that the government had the unlimited "emergency" authority to override those protections. The government must not be allowed the ability to disregard rights or dismiss civil liberties during times of "emergency". The people, as the motive force of history, won certain guarantees for their democratic rights and civil liberties. The democratic rights of the people are not only inherent and cannot be taken away, but they also have the express purpose of guarding the people against the arbitrary usurpation of "emergency" power by the government.
Realizing that to be forewarned is to be forearmed, every effort is being made to stop people from anticipating that this development will lead to a stronger impulse to exercise sweeping powers that criminalize the exchange of ideas and usurp control over the use of one's circulation of data.
The increasingly despotic attributes of the political system are a result of the deepening and all-encompassing crisis of capitalist-imperialism. On a global scale, the U.S. capitalist ruling class is preparing for and initiating wars to safeguard and expand its global empire. Domestically, it is strengthening its police state apparatus and violating the inalienable rights of the people in an attempt to suppress any form of dissent or opposition.
Part and parcel of this campaign involves the targeted defamation and cursing of the poor, the young, and the most vulnerable. Whenever these sections of society attempt to claim their rights or assert themselves, they are quickly branded as "trouble-makers" and condemned for having "attitude problems." The ruling class has no intention of voluntarily relinquishing control over the cultural expressions of hundreds of millions who envision an alternative to the pluralist ideology of capitalism – the ideology that propagates that the capitalist era of history is the pinnacle of human achievement and that those who are not content with its limitations are moral failures who have only themselves to blame.
For our country to progress politically and socially, it is crucial to reject these notions of absolute and supreme power. Instead, we must establish a new form of power that rests with the people themselves. The interests of the state mustn't ever be placed above those of the individual. Since the state is created by individuals, it is unacceptable for the capitalist state to claim that an individual's participation in public life is not in the state's best interest or should be subordinated to it. Neither is it acceptable to equate the general interests of the capitalist state with the interests of society and the collective. The role of the state must be limited to guaranteeing freedoms and rights without imposing any restrictions or interpretations.
To defend our rights and put our country on the high road of progress and civilization we must carry out an all-sided struggle to ensure that the workers' movement is guided by and organized on the basis of its own theory. Our rights and freedoms can be recognized and guaranteed easily, but it is not going to happen without a fight. The workers can only win their struggles to defend and claim their rights by organizing themselves and their movement for emancipation independent of and in opposition to the two parties of war, robbery, racism, and repression. Only such a movement as this can lead the way out of the crisis of capitalism and achieve complete eradication of the arbitrary political authority of the privileged minority by granting decision-making power to the people as the only sovereign authority.
Hands Off Our Future!
End Police State Interference In Our Lives!
TikTok is an online platform for creators to exhibit their ideas for audience patronage. Exhibiting one's ideas to an audience is both a source of personal development and a source of income for creators.
The tyrannical law is not just an instance of misguided enthusiasm and folly. Nor is it merely an expression of the tendency of a so-called "free market" economy to devolve into an economy controlled by the most powerful shareholders at the expense and detriment of the general public. It is a new strategy, born of American chauvinism, for making all exhibitions of ideas susceptible to such manipulation and repression by the authorities.
For the last several years, government branches at all levels have held the belief that enacting repressive laws could effectively alter human behavior and shape society according to their desires. They have focused on the implementation of numerous laws, with the notion that stricter and more severe regulations would be more influential in instilling societal standards seen as most favorable to the maximization of capitalist exploitation of labor. They assume that restrictive laws will inevitably yield success. They echo the sentiments expressed by Madison that in the Republic it is the representatives who "pronounce the public good" and the law, and who do so whether or not the provisions of those laws accord with the recognized rights of the majority.
Force is the only reply they offer to the reality of the growing conflict between the power of the representatives on the one pole, and the opposition of the "plebian" masses on the other. This form of representation resembles that of a warlord, where the individuals in charge have unrestricted control and can dictate the actions of everyone else. However, it should be noted that while this control is used to enforce the will of the rulers it most often differs profoundly from what they do. While espousing slogans of "freedom," "democracy," and "human rights," the motive and aim their real deeds reflect is the drive to preserve the "divine right" of the U.S. capitalist ruling class to exploit and dictate the affairs of both domestic and global populations.
The stated objective of the new strategy is to establish an unparalleled level of "national security." This may sound like a grand and groundbreaking police-state promise for American society. However, the ruling class representatives' motives, proposed methods, and requested laws are far from new. America has already undergone extensive and challenging experiences with similar puritanical experiments in the past. For example, temperance laws punished the production, trafficking, and sale of liquor. Eventually, through great struggle, these experiments were rejected by the American people as intolerant and impractical.
The provisions of the strategy are included in divisions GHI of the Public Law (118-50) which was passed on April 24, including the division entitled "Protecting American's Data From Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024." The tactic spelled out is to criminalize online content creators for "cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm or an agreement with respect to data sharing." In short, the Federal Trade Commission would be able to regulate the exhibition of anyone's ideas by arbitrarily labeling the exchange of ideas between audience and creator as "adversarial."
To bypass protections of personal ownership of data it was asserted as a foregone conclusion while the bill was still on the calendar that the government had the unlimited "emergency" authority to override those protections. The government must not be allowed the ability to disregard rights or dismiss civil liberties during times of "emergency". The people, as the motive force of history, won certain guarantees for their democratic rights and civil liberties. The democratic rights of the people are not only inherent and cannot be taken away, but they also have the express purpose of guarding the people against the arbitrary usurpation of "emergency" power by the government.
Realizing that to be forewarned is to be forearmed, every effort is being made to stop people from anticipating that this development will lead to a stronger impulse to exercise sweeping powers that criminalize the exchange of ideas and usurp control over the use of one's circulation of data.
The increasingly despotic attributes of the political system are a result of the deepening and all-encompassing crisis of capitalist-imperialism. On a global scale, the U.S. capitalist ruling class is preparing for and initiating wars to safeguard and expand its global empire. Domestically, it is strengthening its police state apparatus and violating the inalienable rights of the people in an attempt to suppress any form of dissent or opposition.
Part and parcel of this campaign involves the targeted defamation and cursing of the poor, the young, and the most vulnerable. Whenever these sections of society attempt to claim their rights or assert themselves, they are quickly branded as "trouble-makers" and condemned for having "attitude problems." The ruling class has no intention of voluntarily relinquishing control over the cultural expressions of hundreds of millions who envision an alternative to the pluralist ideology of capitalism – the ideology that propagates that the capitalist era of history is the pinnacle of human achievement and that those who are not content with its limitations are moral failures who have only themselves to blame.
For our country to progress politically and socially, it is crucial to reject these notions of absolute and supreme power. Instead, we must establish a new form of power that rests with the people themselves. The interests of the state mustn't ever be placed above those of the individual. Since the state is created by individuals, it is unacceptable for the capitalist state to claim that an individual's participation in public life is not in the state's best interest or should be subordinated to it. Neither is it acceptable to equate the general interests of the capitalist state with the interests of society and the collective. The role of the state must be limited to guaranteeing freedoms and rights without imposing any restrictions or interpretations.
To defend our rights and put our country on the high road of progress and civilization we must carry out an all-sided struggle to ensure that the workers' movement is guided by and organized on the basis of its own theory. Our rights and freedoms can be recognized and guaranteed easily, but it is not going to happen without a fight. The workers can only win their struggles to defend and claim their rights by organizing themselves and their movement for emancipation independent of and in opposition to the two parties of war, robbery, racism, and repression. Only such a movement as this can lead the way out of the crisis of capitalism and achieve complete eradication of the arbitrary political authority of the privileged minority by granting decision-making power to the people as the only sovereign authority.
Hands Off Our Future!
End Police State Interference In Our Lives!