Capitalist Crisis Shows Need—and Possibilities—for Communist Revolution
Not since the 1930s, the years leading up to World War II, has the capitalist system presented us with such a chaotic and precarious future as it does today.
On one hand: a steadily declining US super-power, armed to the teeth, with open or covert, but mostly losing, ongoing military operations everywhere on the globe. On the other: a rising China super-power, armed to the teeth, with trade initiatives and infrastructure projects everywhere on the globe.
This is the product of a crisis-ridden, climate-destroying, profit system that was on the path to crash before Covid-19. The virus has accelerated its weaknesses: its falling rate of profit and crisis of overproduction.
In the US, this is reflected in the deepening splits in the ruling class alongside a massively impoverished working class. Our working-class family is dying in record numbers from Covid-19, incarcerated in historic numbers, murdered by racist policing, swept by record deaths of despair, and horrified by migrant and refugee children yanked from their parents and thrown in cages.
US Situation: Volatile and Unpredictable
On October 9, the FBI arrested 13 white supremacists for plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan. These fascists heeded Trump’s tweets to “LIBERATE MICHIGAN.”
They are not alone. So-called “anti-government militias” have led large anti-mask and lockdown protests. These armed groups have been encouraged to plan a fascist coup in November by Trump’s refusal to commit to an orderly transfer of power if he loses the election.
Trump has openly egged on these violent white-supremacists repeatedly since the summer of 2017. Then, he commented after the fascist murder of anti-racist activist Heather Heyer that “there were good people on both sides.”
These so-called militias are fascist white supremacists. So are the loners who have perpetrated mass murder in schools, gay bars and the El Paso Walmart. But many US workers of all “races” own guns, and many more have military training. Eventually, the working-class masses will have to take on the fascists and defeat them in order to take power and build a communist society.
“Business as Usual”?
While Attorney General Barr, the FBI’s boss, is enthusiastically doing Trump’s bidding, the FBI— an agency officially under Barr’s control— is arresting those that Trump has encouraged. This illustrates a deep division within the US government and the capitalist ruling class it serves. While Trump is spinning out of control, the New York Times, dozens of retired generals, and the even the rank and file of the FBI are trying desperately to maintain the stability of US capitalism.
The US ruling-class media publicize their worries about a possible Trump post-election coup with the message “we need a landslide.” The volatility and instability of the US in the midst of global decline, economic depression and a global pandemic has got the main wing of the ruling class freaked out. They don’t want another four years of Trumpian chaos. They want a return to business as usual.
A “Return to Business as Usual” is a Reactionary Fantasy
No worker, student or soldier should think that secretly checking a name on a piece of paper (the ballot) will calm this chaos in any meaningful way. The world of the last fifty years is gone. Capitalism is in a deepening crisis and there’s no way back. There’s only a way forward.
Capitalist business as usual—the pre-Trumpian “good times” – has always been a nightmare for the working class. In 2014, racist cops got away with murdering Michael Brown in Ferguson and Ezell Ford in Los Angeles. Obama, then known as the “deporter-in-chief,” initiated the separation of migrant families at the border.
The wealth gap has grown since Covid-19. But, by 2015, twenty billionaires already owned as much wealth as 50% of the US population (https://ips-dc.org/billionaire-bonanza). In that same year, tens of thousands of working-class people died in wars around the world.
Communist Revolution: A Realistic Hope and Plan
We do not call on workers to defend democratic rights. The duty of communists is not to rescue capitalism in crisis. It’s to plan for world revolution.
Working people, faced with the chaos and instability of capitalism, can see more than ever all the weaknesses of capitalism. It becomes clearer that even in the USA, working people can and must put an end to capitalism and its atrocities.
We can and we must overthrow this capitalist system and build a new world from the bottom up. We can smash the state apparatus, end the wage system and build a world where we work together to meet the needs of society, not profits for a few.
We know it won’t be this year. Our job now is to mobilize the masses for communist revolution. In the streets, in the schools, factories and barracks. In the Zoom meetings that have taken the place of church, family and community gatherings.
Talk to the person who gave you this paper or email us at anonymousspeech.com. Join us to see how you can help hasten the day.
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