By Caleb T. Maupin
Youth in the U.S. are totally justified in hating the 1%. This small
elite of ultra-wealthy people has left us with barely any future to look
forward to.
The 1% is the capitalist class. They own the big banks, factories,
industries, oil wells, big-box stores and “commanding heights” of the
economy. They own the world, and the rest of humanity can only live by
selling our labor to them. The wages we get in exchange are practically
nothing. The working class — the 99% — has created the wealth of the
entire world, yet the 1% gets to own it.
Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy movement are a glorious
development. It is the “generation without a future” pouring into the
streets and fighting back. “It’s like a neon sign has been put up in the
sky announcing ‘Rise up! Rise up!’ ” said Larry Holmes, Workers World
Party’s First Secretary.
As a generation, many of us are rising up.
We may not be able to find a decent paying job with benefits. We may
be in debt for decades trying to pay for our education. We may not be
able to look forward to any economic comfort or the so-called “American
Dream.” But we can certainly fight back against these conditions!
We can take over public space! We can seize bank lobbies! We can
construct barricades! We can defy police orders! We can create chaos and
unrest in response to the tyranny of the rich!
We are a new movement of militant young radicals, and as our movement
deepens and grows, what we need more than anything else is to make
allies. We cannot stand alone against the 1%.
The 1% has made enemies all over the globe. In Paraguay they just
carried out a coup and overthrew a popular government. The 1% bombed and
destroyed Libya, leaving it in ruins and killing thousands because
Libyans dared to keep the oil profits for themselves, and not hand them
over to Wall Street. With their guns pointed at Syria and Iran, they are
threatening a wider and bigger war in the Middle East. The 1% and its
Pentagon are locked and loaded, ready to spill the blood of anyone who
defies them.
The same New York Police Department thugs of the 1% that clubbed
heads in Zuccotti Park are stopping and frisking people of color every
day. They are also targeting lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer people.
There is a crisis of police terror around the country, as cops murder
innocent Black and Latino/a people with a free hand, often facing no
penalty. There are more than 2 million people in prison in this “free”
country, and more prisons are being built all the time. Children of six
or seven are being dragged out of school in handcuffs. A racist thug
killed Trayvon Martin, and almost got away with it.
When people of color resist police terror, they are fighting against
the 1%. When people in Libya resist NATO occupiers, they are fighting
the 1%. When immigrants resist vigilante terrorism and repressive laws
in Arizona and elsewhere, they are fighting the 1%.
Capitalist class versus working class
These are not simply struggles of wrong against right. They are struggles of class against class.
The rule of the 1% is a built-in feature of the economic system of
capitalism. Capitalism in its highest stage, where the wealthy bankers
in a few countries dominate and repress working people the world over,
is called imperialism. That’s where we’re at now.
Racism, anti-immigrant bigotry, police brutality, anti-LGBTQ
oppression, sexism and the oppression of women, the marginalization of
disabled people, the continued drive toward war and destruction,
unemployment, mass poverty — all these things flow from this system of
capitalism/imperialism.
This global system is in an economic meltdown,
and all over the globe people are feeling its desperation and
viciousness.
If OWS is going to grow stronger and more powerful, we have no choice
but to join with all the forces involved in this worldwide struggle.
Only with millions on our side, from every walk of life, can we truly
move toward bringing capitalism/imperialism to its knees.
Can you imagine how the world could look if we actually defeat the
1%? We would hold all the productive power and wealth in common so we
could plan the economy in order to eradicate poverty, homelessness,
unemployment and all other profit-borne horrors. We could clean up the
environment and make sure the earth’s resources are sustainable for
future generations. We could work toward liquidating all oppression and
discrimination and building true equality.
But we can’t do it alone! Sam Marcy, the founder of Workers World
Party, called this all-encompassing struggle the “Global Class War.” And
it is a war. The 1% has made a mess of the world, but they have no
intention of handing it over to the rest of us without a fierce fight.
Youth in Syria, Iran, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Venezuela are
fighting to keep the 1% out of their homelands. Palestinians are
resisting Zionist occupation. Prisoners are fighting back, demanding an
end to tortuous conditions. Workers are fighting to protect their
unions.
The battle lines are clearly drawn. Now, as this battle rages, the
OWS movement must clearly answer: “Which side are we on?” and “Are we
ready to fight until victory?”
The 1% - 99% semi-anarchist explanation of class relations does not reflect US social reality or the Marxist understanding of class relations. It is an unwarranted and unnecessary concession to the petty bourgeois forces in OWS and the liberal-left milieu around it. Class clarity is the hallmark of Marxism, and there is no reason to abandon it as we try to recruit OWSers to the movement that will really change the world.
ReplyDeleteJohn Studer expresses it better than me, so I will quote from him:
....the propertied rulers keep coming at us, determined and relentless, and their resources—political and financial—are large.
Capitalist rulers more than 1 percent
Many workers know they need a political perspective to take this on, but see no road outside of bourgeois politics, usually its liberal wing. Some look to Occupy groups and their railing against greedy banks and hedge funds—the 1 percent against all the rest of society.
The 1 percent/99 percent is an arbitrary division that serves to obfuscate real social classes, which are based on irreconcilable interests. It dovetails perfectly with the demagogy that permeates the 2012 Democratic election campaign, part of the bosses’ two-party sham.
The propertied rulers and their allies represent much more than 1 percent of the population. The capitalist class, in many gradations of size, includes the owners of all the factories, mines, mills, real estate, transportation and shipping, retail and commercial distribution, banking and finance, media, legal and illegal drug manufacture and distribution, etc, etc.
They include owners and co-owners of the 1.3 million firms that employ 10 or more workers, more than 2 million top corporate executives and the board members of some 6,500 banks.
Maintaining “order” on the shop floor for the capitalist owners are millions of supervisors, foremen and other management personnel.
The bosses are backed by the armed power of their state: over 800,000 federal, state and local cops; some 518,000 prison guards and jailers; and another 100,000 parole and probation officers; a military officer corps of 200,000; 58,000 agents and support personnel in the FBI, Secret Service and Defense Intelligence Agency; tens of thousands more in the CIA and National Security Agency, whose exact numbers the rulers keep “top secret”; 41,000 immigration and border patrol personnel; 10,000 in the Drug Enforcement Agency; 5,000 Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents; and more.
Add to this the millions who comprise a substantial section of middle-class “professional” layers not directly associated with production, but whose primary function is connected in one way or another to maintaining the social relations of capitalist production. These include lawyers, professors, think tank and non-governmental organization functionaries, etc—the self-styled “enlightened meritocracy.”
Rather than a “greedy” 1 percent, we confront the capitalist class and its allies representing far more than 10 times that—all of whom utterly depend on maintaining the exploitation of our labor, the source of all wealth. We are then confronted with the real class relations under capitalism, as well as the necessity and possibility of proletarian revolution to bring it to an end.
http://www.themilitant.com/2012/7609/760903.html