A recent BBC poll reported that “in only two countries, the United States and Pakistan, did more than one in five people feel that capitalism works well as it stands.” Worldwide, only 11 percent of those questioned expressed support for the existing “free market” system. Inside the U.S. more and more people are rejecting capitalism. Interestingly, the same poll revealed that most in the underdeveloped world view the demise of the Soviet Union as “mainly a bad thing.”
The disillusionment in capitalism did not come from book study. It comes from life itself.
At the same moment that that bailed-out banks report record profits and obscene “bonuses” for executives, millions more workers are losing jobs, homes, benefits or wages—and these phenomena are evident not only in the “developing world,” but in the richest country as well.
Polls mean very little on their own, and are often deeply flawed in how they are constructed and in their sample audience. But the widespread rejection of an economic system, which for decades has been preached as the highest and final achievement of human society, shows that masses of people are at this moment willing to listen to our counter-argument.
This is the time when every worker needs to understand that the only alternative to capitalism is socialism. It is no accident that the bankers have spent decades promoting anti-communism as an almost unofficial religion in the United States. Socialism is the ideology of workers’ power. It is the doctrine that states that society should be run to benefit the majority—the working people—rather than the billionaires.
No one will gravitate to a socialist alternative, unless we boldly and unabashedly project it at our workplaces, schools, and communities. Join the PSL in this effort to translate crisis into opportunity.
The coming period will see a resurgence of worker political activism. While there have been some stirrings of struggle against factory closures, cutbacks, and foreclosures recently, these have largely been isolated episodes. This country, for instance, has not yet produced any equivalent to the militant nationwide strikes that took place in Puerto Rico and Mexico in the last few months.
That the U.S. working class remains largely a sleeping giant is no source of pessimism for revolutionary socialists. We know from history that economic crises, rather than producing instant radicalization and struggle, can often usher in a period of demoralization, during which workers are politically and economically on the defensive. The anxiety over maintaining one’s job or home—the basics of survival—can for a period make workers less confident to struggle.
During such periods, it is essential that we popularize socialism as the only alternative and path forward for working and oppressed people. Workers’ struggles will eventually intensify, in fits and starts, as the economic crisis gets deeper, but it will not lead to a political rupture with the capitalist class without our active and enthusiastic intervention. That is the role the Party for Socialism and Liberation seeks to play.
For centuries the ruling class has used racism and white supremacist ideology as a means to divide the multinational working class. It has also been a principal source of super-exploitation and super-profits derived from the labor of Black, Latino and Asian workers and immigrants from everywhere.
The PSL is immersed in struggle on every front against the capitalists. It is only through real struggle that the message of division can be answered effectively. It is in struggle that a new socialist consciousness will be forged.
It is no accident that when we cover the latest economic struggles, we do so in a way that highlights the need for a new system that puts people’s needs over private profit. Whether we are discussing transit fare hikes or the struggle for LGBT rights, we frequently raise how these issues would be approached from an entirely different perspective under a socialist society.
This is neither an exercise in utopian dreaming, nor a formulaic response that we tack on because we have nothing better to say. Rather, we strive to make the case, at every reasonable moment, that we need to revive the movement for socialism in this country. Our message is that capitalism promises workers only more war, poverty, racism and environmental destruction.
Join the PSL. Help make a difference in building the type of movement that goes beyond protest and resistance so that working people can seize political and economic power. That is the road to creating a system that is genuinely of, by and for the people.
