Our language has been redefined. Useful terms which could
better explain our circumstances have been purposefully perverted so that they are
now all but unintelligible. The working class make up about 90% of the population.
The 10% at the top, just under the –super-rich, were called the 'middle class'.
The 'middle class' are the professional classes and the small business owners.
They were never thought of as median income people– in fact, poor people saw
them as being rich. The original meaning of “middle class” described those
between the European royalty and the peasants. Later it was applied to the
capitalists, those with enough wealth to rival the nobility.
The mainstream press have dropped working class from their
vocabulary. The term is anathema to the propaganda system as it has developed.
It is too descriptive– makes it too obvious that this is the class which does
most of the work and produces most of the wealth. Today the working class are
called middle class in the mainstream media, and the original meaning is buried
deeper than Atlantis. For that matter, the poor are made to be nearly as
invisible. This propaganda maneuver has made it easier to hide what’s happening
in our economy, when combined with other terms and economic adjustments.
The word “progressive” meant leftist. ‘Communists’, ‘socialists’,
labour leaders and even many liberals often defined themselves as progressive.
Liberals, in those days, were thought of as centrist. To the right were conservatives
– those who control the economy. But the ruling class ensures the mainstream
press now call centrist liberals “leftist” and “progressive.” By doing so, and
completely ignoring the genuine left-wing which has no TV channel, the language
has been twisted into propaganda helpful toward making zombies of the masses,
who have no idea what a real leftist is. Bill and Hillary Clinton are called
“progressive” in the mainstream media. This is like calling the segregationist
George Wallace a civil rights leader. Richard Nixon, who I thought of as
extremely right wing when he was president, was far to the left of the
Clintons. It was Nixon who signed the bills that authorized the EPA, OSHA, the
ABM Treaty and a great many other progressive laws the Clintons would have
nothing to do with today. In the time of his presidency, Nixon wouldn’t have
dreamed that he could push the Clinton agenda of free trade to curse labor and
environmental movements. He wouldn’t have deregulated the banksters and Big
Media, or thrown poor children out into the streets with Clinton’s “welfare
reform.” During Nixon’s presidency the public were more aware, and the Congress
was far to the left of Nixon, tying his hands. Which is why Nixon couldn’t get
his medical care system (the precursor to Obamacare) through Congress. Much of
the Congress of that time wanted to pass Medicare for all, and opposed Nixon’s
plan, which never went anywhere. It took a conservative Democrat, Obama, to get
Nixon’s plan approved.
Socialists believe that to waken the conscience and change
the consciousness of a nation, one had to be prepared to build an organization,
start a publication, speak in a thousand halls to crowds of hundreds, or
scores, or tens, if necessary, recruiting comrades from those converted by the
sound of one’s voice and the strength of one’s arguments. The real Marxist is a
radical democrat, not a would-be dictator.
We’ve seen it before - people eager to run the government
for the capitalist class. Each one claims to have a unique approach and program
with which they wish to lead to a better tomorrow. But their better tomorrow,
not ours. Each candidate is attempting to offer a special brand of snake oil as
a cure, but each formula has side effects negating any medicinal properties it
might have. Everything they do to try to mitigate the crisis only ends up
making it worse. These candidates don’t represent us. Of course we know that,
and most people haven’t believed in that farce for some time. That’s why voter
turnout is so low. So why are all these clowns running? It’s not merely for
self-enrichment or self-aggrandizement, though surely that plays a part for
most.
The electoral arena is where the capitalist class as a whole
works out its internal differences, and chooses someone to act as their
collective representative, in order to preserve and promote their common
interests. But while each candidate attempts to fill that role, they must also
try to handle the conflicting imperatives of all the different concentrations
of capital within the class– financial, banking, industrial, commercial – as
they battle it out over which gets to dominate the future of the economy.
Banking capital would like the whole economy to just be handed over to the
banks. Industrial capital wants to suck the last drops of juice from labor
exploitation and the natural world first. Some want the cheapest possible
workforce, while others see the need to throw the masses the occasional bone so
we don’t upset their whole banquet table. Though these fractions of capital are
intertwined, tangled in a web of common ownership and interests, they are
simultaneously in conflict, and so finding someone who can represent them as a
whole is proving very difficult.
None of the candidates has an alternative to offer that can
encompass all of their interests and solve their common crisis. Whoever wins,
the future ushered in by the new President will be for capitalists; not for us.
We shouldn’t side with one monster over another. Those who try to reconcile
fundamentally opposing forces always try to convince us to take sides among the
different fractions of capital, to ally with one “lesser evil” over another.
But allying with one against another never does us any good. All of them are
our fundamental enemy. It’s smarter to let them fight it out, while we
strengthen our own forces. We can use the contradictions among them to advance
our own struggle.
Forget the debates. While there are superficial differences
among them, they are not qualitatively different. It doesn’t matter if a candidate
is a “good person” or not. They’re ALL running for the job of capitalist
steward. If their intentions were good, they would struggle to overturn
capitalism—not to run it, not to fix it. Liberals and socialists running a
capitalist economy still have to run the capitalist economy, which has its own
non-negotiable imperatives. We can’t solve our social problems by being drawn
into this puppet show. Whoever gets elected won’t make things better. The only
way to get out of this social crisis is to cut the Gordian knot of capitalism, overthrow
it all and build a new economy on a new basis: one for the people, by the
people, led by the people, in the peoples’ interests.
Socialists have embarked upon with the ultimate political
act: the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system. We identify
socialism not with public (state) ownership of the means of production, but
with the cultivation of mass participation in and control over economic,
political, and social institutions and structures in which working people grasp
direct control over all aspects of their lives. When the revolutionary process
is unfolding, Utopia comes closer to reality, and impossible things appear
within reach of the possible. "I" begins to merge with
"We," and personal desires with collective strivings. Socialism has
been defined and interpreted in lots of different ways. The Socialist Party is
one of the few organisations who emphatically maintain that socialism should be
identified with abolition of wage-labour. It means the creation of economic
equality between people and the transformation of the means of production into
the common property of society. When the market is abolished so is the whole
economic basis of capitalism, i.e. labour power as a commodity, existence of a
value system as the basis for the exchange and distribution of products between
different individuals and different sections of society, the money economy etc.
A great many use socialist terminology as a wrapping for views and objectives
alien to socialism. The world swarms with such socialists. The victory of
socialism is not an inevitable and pre-determined outcome of history. Our
future depends entirely on the actual practice of our movement and its
activists; on what they do, and what visions they have and hold out to the
workers' movement. If we do it right, it will work out; if we don't, it won't.
There is no historical inevitability here. We regard the socialist vision just
as vital as we regard the struggle for wage rises. We are critical of those who
seek to keep workers away from the social revolution and the social revolution
away from the workers. We consider ourselves not a political party outside the
class, but a party with a definite social outlook, within the class itself. The
Socialist Party is committed to keeping its revolutionary politics vibrant and
relevant. Socialists have always called upon the workers of the world to unite.
Yet a slogan is one thing, and practice another.
The aim of the Socialist Party is to bring about the social
ownership and democratic control of all the necessary means of production — to
eliminate profit, rent, and interest, and to change our class society into a
society of equals, in which the interest of one will be the interest of all.
For a socialist world! To this inspiring task, we summon all who are oppressed
by capitalism. Only a a socialist world can give us peace and plenty. Look how
the capitalist world always totters on the brink of destruction. The capitalist
parties are as rotten and bankrupt as the system they uphold. They can maintain
themselves and that system today only by piling additional burdens upon the
people. For the future they offer only war, continued insecurity and increasing
reaction. The myriad evils of capitalism will disappear only with the destruction
of capitalism and the building of socialism. Democratically-elected councils of
workers in every industry and district will manage the factories and public
services. Freed from the fetters of production for profit, the
splendidly-equipped factories will pour out their products without
interruption: the productive forces will leap forward to provide almost
undreamed-of plenty. Far from being proponents of some all-engulfing statism,
socialists see the state, as class antagonisms dissipated, beginning to wither
away — being transformed as an instrument to protect class rule into an
administrative tool.
Too many of our fellow workers declare that they “aren’t for
that commie stuff myself. I’m a capitalist.” Although with no capital, nor much
hope. Many fellow workers grow angry at the fast food workers demand for a
$15/hr wage. They say their own jobs requires a broad set of skills:
interpersonal and technical skills, as well as the crucial skill of performing
under pressure often making decisions on their own, in seconds, under chaotic
circumstances, that impact on other people'smwelfare and they only make $15/hr.
If burger flippers think they deserve the same, good for them. Look, if any job
is going to take up someone's life, it deserves a living wage. If a job exists
and you have to hire someone to do it, they deserve a living wage. End of
story. There's a lot of talk going around workplaces and elsewhere such as
Facebook along the lines of, “These guys with no education and no skills think
they deserve as much as us? Screw those guys…I'm a qualified electrician, I make
$13/hr, fuck these burger flippers.”
And that's exactly what the bosses want! They want us
fighting over who has the bigger pile of crumbs so we don't realize they made
off with almost the whole damn cake. Why are you angry about fast food workers
making two bucks more an hour when your CEO makes four hundred TIMES what you
do? It's in the bosses' interests to keep your anger directed downward, at the
poor people who are just trying to get by, like you, rather than at the rich
assholes who consume almost everything we produce and give next to nothing for
it. Many companies executives are fond of issuing motivation statements. They
expect employees supporting families on 26-27k/year to applaud that. Can they pay us
more? Absolutely. But why would they? No one's making them. Some fast food
workers made them. They fought for and won a living wage. So how
incredibly petty and counterproductive is it to fuss that their pile of crumbs
is bigger than ours? Put that energy elsewhere.
So, Organize. Fight.
Win.
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