First Published: Rally Comrades! (Electronic Edition), Vol. 14, No. 1, February 1995.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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During moments of great, epochal change, a social movement unites with and is illuminated and guided by a cause. That cause today is a vision of humanity crossing into a new world, a world free of exploitation, ignorance and strife.
Within the great revolutionary movement for U.S. independence, a cause arose. The cause, the vision, was not simply one of national independence, but of a new continent with human freedom, peace and brotherhood based on independence. It was this cause, not the movement, which made it possible for the revolutionaries of that era to bear the great sacrifices and endure the suffering that ended in victory and independence. George Washington led the movement; Thomas Paine spoke for the cause.
Eighty years later, another great movement engulfed our country – the struggle to preserve the Union. Within this revolutionary movement, the cause arose again. That cause – a vision of a new world of human freedom and brotherhood based on the Union – made the great sacrifices and suffering of the Civil War bearable. Abraham Lincoln led the movement; Walt Whitman spoke for the cause.
In all previous revolutionary movements, the foundation of the movement – the level of the means of production[1] – was never developed enough to make realizing the cause possible. But a cause never dies; it lies latent until a new round of social struggle brings it forth to illuminate and guide the movement again.
Today, a new, great movement against poverty and its consequences is growing across this country. No force on Earth can prevent the people who are struggling against intolerable conditions from coalescing. This movement cannot mature without a cause, a morality, a vision. That vision is a vision of a country free forever from want, from race and national hatred and from sexual oppression and human exploitation. That vision is a vision of a country where the ever-expanding material and cultural needs of the people are satisfied by an ever-expanding technology that has freed humanity from toil. The vision is one of peace and social harmony. Today, the level of the means of production makes realizing this cause possible. Thus, the cause is the soul of the movement and the source of its morale, illuminating it, guiding it and inseparable from it.
Only unyielding, intelligent, serious revolutionaries can combine this vital cause with the growing movement. We have formed our organization to accomplish this end. To guide our struggle, to help accomplish this great and historic task, we submit this Political Resolution and, on that basis, call for the convening of our comrades.
Scouring the world for profits, capitalism has expanded into virtually every corner of the Earth and created a truly global economy with an international division of labor. The most important and fundamental aspect of this development is the accelerating application of electronics to economic life. Production based on the labor-saving technologies of electro- mechanics has shifted to production based on the essentially labor-replacing technologies of electronics. This is an economic revolution of historic significance, leading to broad societal changes worldwide, on a scale not seen for over 200 years.
The last 50 years have seen the rise of a section of capital that is supranational. The economic interests of these supranational financiers transcend national boundaries. Thus, they have no loyalty to any particular country. Their only loyalty is to capitalism and to themselves. Some 80 percent of U.S. external trade (both exports and imports) is now undertaken by transnational corporations. In 1990, there were 35,000 supranational corporations with 150,000 foreign affiliates; the largest of these corporations account for about one-quarter of the value added in production in the world economy.
The international economic strategy of the supranational financiers has two broad aspects. First, they are moving to make the countries of the world “borderless” (economically speaking), so that there can be a relatively free flow of capital and goods across the world. (The restructuring of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade is part of this process.) Second, they are moving to invest capital in the “developing” world and in the formerly socialist countries, in an effort to turn those areas into new markets and sources of skilled but cheap labor. Their vision is a vision of the world as one giant investment colony where capital moves across national boundaries without restrictions. They see regional trading blocs such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the European Union as stepping stones toward their goal, not as ends in themselves.
The supranational financiers have devised a variety of means to implement their strategy. Health, education and welfare programs have been reduced or eliminated to free capital for investment. “Austerity measures” have been introduced to reduce inflation. State-owned companies have been privatized. Open dictatorships are replacing “democracies.” (These are constitutional police states with democratic faces and predictable legal systems friendly to foreign investment). In many cases, these changes have been forced on the countries involved through the “structural adjustment” programs of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
While the capitalists have been fairly successful in imposing their strategy, their very success is setting the stage for their ultimate failure. The reason? Labor-replacing technology is producing a global glut of labor, both skilled and unskilled. Human labor is becoming worthless. As a result, wage rates are falling. The small, highly skilled global work force that will ultimately result from the changes currently underway won’t be large enough to buy all the goods the system produces. As production is modernized to compete on the world market, a huge and permanent increase in unemployment results, with all the social, political and economic consequences.
For example, in largely agricultural China, the World Bank has estimated that 100-150 million rural workers have been displaced through this process. A similar situation exists in Russia, where there is massive, growing unemployment. The Russian government is having to choose between continuing to subsidize obsolete state industries (thus keeping people employed) or ending the subsidies, thus modernizing the industries by making even more workers jobless. In the countries which make up the European Union, the official unemployment rate is almost 11 percent. Africa has been virtually written off by the imperialists, consigning the people to absolute poverty, political anarchy and destruction.
These changes are dislocating hundreds of millions of people. They are creating a tremendous polarity between wealth and poverty. Massive worldwide migration – from rural to urban areas and from marginalized countries to industrialized ones – has been a hallmark of this process. Absolute poverty is growing worldwide at the rate of 70,000 people a day. Eight of every 10 people in the world live below the U.S. poverty level. At the other end of the spectrum, 344 billionaires wallow in untold wealth while most of humanity struggles just to survive.
With little hope of a decent future, the millions of proletarians, whether migrants or not, represent a political threat to the capitalists. The capitalists will use force and violence to control them. The construction of police states has been facilitated by the hysteria against “foreigners” being fanned worldwide. From the criminal violence carried out in cooperation with local police forces to the electoral legitimacy given to openly fascist forces, particularly throughout Europe, the fascist threat is real and growing.
In sum, the strategy the capitalists are pursuing can only increase permanent unemployment and intensify the drive toward fascism.
We have already seen how applying electronics to production is disrupting capitalism as an economic system. This is the key factor to keep in mind when examining the U.S. economy.
Reflecting this spread of electronics, the period from the late 1980s to the present reveals a qualitative shift in the economy. Between 1987 and 1992, the nation’s manufacturing industries registered a $530 billion increase in shipments. This was a 21 percent increase for the five-year period. New capital expenditures by these firms increased 32 percent during the same period. This expansion in production resulted in the elimination of 696,000 jobs, a drop of four percent for those five years. (U.S. Department of Commerce, 1992). Today, there are 3.2 million fewer manufacturing workers in the United States than there were in 1979.
The capitalists have reaped unprecedented profits from these changes. Yet the reality of millions of people unemployed, with the number growing daily, means that there are fewer people with the money to buy the goods being produced by this new technology.
The capitalists have tried to solve this problem by extending credit further. Loans now represent 78 percent of income. About 44 percent of all buying is done on credit. Of course, this cannot continue forever; there has to be a minimal chance of repayment. The source of the problem is a lack of good-paying jobs.
Because there is a lower return on productive investments, the capitalists increasingly turn to speculative investments where the returns (and the risks) are higher. A parallel banking structure is emerging in which most financing no longer goes through the regulated, established banking system. The value of “derivatives” is now twice the value of all stocks traded on U.S. equity exchanges. (Derivatives are complex investments that gamble on the movement of stock markets or interest rates.)
The General Electric Co. personifies this trend toward speculative, non-productive investment. GE’s stock market valuation exceeds that of any other U.S. corporation. It has branched out from manufacturing airplane engines and power turbines into owning brokerage houses and has developed perhaps the world’s most sophisticated financial and insurance empire. In 1993, GE’s operating profit from manufacturing increased by only seven percent over the previous four years, while its profits from financial activities jumped 132 percent. During those years, GE’s U.S. employment dropped from 244,000 workers to 163,000.
Inevitably, speculation and credit manipulation will lead to financial collapse. The bankruptcies caused by investments in derivatives, as occurred in Orange County, California, represent just the tip of the iceberg. “With a growing number of banks and brokerage houses staggering from losses on derivatives, the potential exists for a financial meltdown that would make last spring’s bond plunge look like a hiccup.” (Chicago Tribune, December 4, 1994).
The United States is experiencing broad societal changes on a scale not seen since the Industrial Revolution. At that time, new production techniques gave birth to a new class, the industrial working class. This class was created by the need to harness human labor to machine power in mass production. Today, with electronics, production takes place with a minimum of human labor or no human labor at all. Again we see a new class being born from the ongoing destruction of the old methods of production and the society built upon them. This developing class increasingly finds itself outside the capitalist system, unable to find work and finding it harder and harder to survive or even coexist with the capitalist system.
The creation of this new class is not the only transformation taking place. Every aspect of society is undergoing upheaval. Everything that seemed “normal” yesterday is coming apart at the seams today. The revolution in the economy is bringing forth a revolution throughout society.
Increasingly, the ruling class is making its intentions clear. It is unable to solve the problem of growing poverty. Therefore, it is moving to tightly control the tens of millions of Americans who will not starve in silence.
For the past 50 years, the ruling class has controlled the American people by offering limited political rights and a modicum of economic security to large sections of the population in exchange for their political and social support. The unprecedented economic expansion of those years allowed it to do this. Those struggles for reform which were waged during this period were fought largely to gain access to the capitalist system, not to challenge it.
Today, all bets are off. Computers are replacing labor. Feeding us, housing us, taking care of our children, conceding our demands for a better life – no longer are these things necessary elements of making a profit for the capitalists.
This fact is revolutionizing the political landscape. Capitalism has been forced to strike at its own foundation. It is beginning to impoverish and brutalize the very people who once supported it. This new relationship of forces – the undermining of the rulers’ base of support and the loss of their “reserves” – is creating the basis for a new stage of the social revolution.
The ruling class is well aware of the threat posed by this changed situation. Our rulers are absolutely united on what they must do as a class to protect themselves from this challenge to the system of private property and to their privilege and power. As the crisis deepens and the polarization in our society intensifies, the ruling class must have the means to control and contain the millions being forced outside the system. Step by step, the ruling class is implementing a legal and political structure which openly sanctions unrestrained state power, particularly police power. This process is taking place legally, through the existing mechanisms of power. It is directed at guaranteeing the rights of the capitalists to do whatever is necessary to secure their profits.
This is the meaning behind the Supreme Court rulings and the new laws which undermine the Constitution and expand the state’s power to control personal behavior and family life, to censor information and ideas, and to restrict dissent.
This is what’s behind the broadening of the police’s power to beat and murder at will. The police are the street-level enforcers of the interests of the ruling class. For what they can deliver, they have established themselves as an integral part of American political life, tied in myriad ways to governmental and social institutions, the military and the various federal law enforcement institutions such as the FBI. The police are building a political and economic base of their own, both in individual cities and nationally. They are heavily armed, highly organized and increasingly centralized. Behind them stands the entire apparatus of the courts, the Congress and the military.
An aggressive campaign of lies and scare tactics is being waged to convince the American people that a police state is in their interests. Crime, poverty and all other social ills are identified as problems of the minorities, brought on by their own behavior. The ruling class has used this campaign as a platform from which to call for increasingly repressive and barbaric measures: the breaking-up of families and the warehousing of children; the abdicating of responsibility for the elderly; the stripping away of the safety net for the poor; and the extermination of the homeless.
This manipulation of the American people’s thinking has relied upon the worst aspects of American history. It is the old tactic of “divide and conquer,” with the intent being to isolate one section of society in order to control the rest. The ruling class uses every question to assert alliances along color lines, particularly among whites.
The objective situation is exposing the capitalists’ weak flank. The reality of poverty in this country is getting harder to cover up. The Electronic Revolution is giving birth to a new class made up of millions of people who have no future in this economic system and so must fight the system to survive. At the heart of this new class are the unskilled and the semi-skilled. But its ranks are increased daily by the skilled industrial workers and the white-collar workers who are being displaced by electronics. The subjective, political polarization along color lines does not explain this development. The actual polarization is objective; this polarization is taking place not between the minorities and the whites, but between the rich and the poor.
The tasks of revolutionaries reflect the stages of the development of the revolutionary process. What stage are we in today? The American people are becoming aware of the consequences of the economic revolution. A movement is taking shape. The movement consists of the social activity of millions of people to reorganize society in harmony with the new tools – electronics.
But the American people are confused. They don’t know where to throw a blow or who to blame for their poverty and misery. The ruling class understands that as long as the mass of poor people lack a vision and remain confused about who is their friend and who is their foe, it can maintain its supremacy. The ruling class is waging a vicious, relentless campaign for the hearts and minds of the American people. It emphasizes “me, me, me, and to hell with everyone else.” In everything objective, the American people are moving away from capitalism and its institutions. Yet in everything ideological, the people are caught up in proposals for a fascist resolution to the crisis in our country.
Revolutionaries must win the war for the hearts and minds of the American people. The ruling class’ tactics aim to disarm and divide the new class of poor people. When the poor unite as a class, no force on Earth can stop them from taking what rightfully belongs to them. Our agitation and propaganda have to unite this new class of poor people and arm it with the understanding that the only thing standing between them and the wealth being generated by the Electronic Revolution is a tiny, vampire-like class of billionaires.
The development of electronics and robotics is replenishing the ranks of the social movement for a new America. However, the movement has to be merged consciously with its cause, its vision, its morality. This will not happen spontaneously. This task falls on the shoulders of the revolutionaries. No movement can succeed without a cause. A cause arises as a vision of what’s possible, based on the objective economic and social forces that are in motion.
The task of the revolutionaries is always agitation and propaganda. Today, the test of real revolutionaries is to produce agitation and propaganda that reflect the history-making transformation that society is going through.
Our foremost task is to agitate and propagandize around the cause of the movement. It is this cause that will drive the movement toward the new world now possible. What is the cause of this movement? It is the vision of a country free forever from want, from race and national hatred, from sexual oppression and from human exploitation. The vision is one of peace and social harmony.
Our agitation and propaganda need to express the changes being brought about and the possibilities being created by the Electronic Revolution. We no longer have to work long hours or wait for the meager welfare check just to eke out a miserable existence for our families. The new technology makes a world of material abundance and cultural development for all possible.
Our agitation and propaganda need to sound the alarm about the danger of a police state. The tiny ruling class will do whatever is necessary to protect its profits and privilege. That means the overwhelming majority of Americans will face a reign of terror. Only when control of this country is in the hands of the masses of the American people can we transform our vision of the future into reality.
We are an organization of revolutionaries dedicated to uniting the cause, the vision of what is now possible, with the movement spreading across the country. Our newspapers – Rally, Comrades!, the Tribuno del Pueblo and the People’s Tribune – are our main weapons of agitation and propaganda.
To teach the new ideas of revolution, our classroom has to become the streets, the shelters, the unemployed lines, the factories, the schools – wherever there’s injustice, oppression and tyranny.
Comrades, we are marching with history. We are continuing all that is noble in the legacy of the revolutionaries of 1776 and of the Civil War era. On our shoulders lies the responsibility for bringing the cause of human freedom, of peace and brotherhood based on independence, the vision that gave birth to our country, to its conclusion. We will not fail. They are few; we are many. Victory will be ours!
[1] The term “means of production” refers to the tools, techniques and materials used in production. The means of production have developed over time as humankind has learned more about the way the world works.