There are a million ways that the nightmare of the fires currently surrounding Los Angeles cry out for system change—most of all the urgent need for humanity to sweep away the system that is driving climate change, through its insatiable unquenchable thirst for fossil fuels.

But in these smoke-filled days, something has emerged through the ash and rubble that shows both the need and potential to bring a whole different society and system into being. Throughout Los Angeles, there is a groundswell of people looking to help. And under capitalism, there is no rational, collective and socially coordinated way to give that real backing and to unleash the potential of the masses to work together to meet people's needs in this kind of crisis.

Early in the fires, the LA Fire Department requested assistance from off-duty firefighters. This was misunderstood as a request for anyone to volunteer and the phone lines were flooded with people who didn't have training, but who wanted to help. In this situation, it would actually be unsafe to have untrained people on the front lines fighting fires, but it does show the untapped potential of people who want to sacrifice for the greater good.

All over LA, individuals and groups of friends are taking creative initiative: to set up big donation centers, and shelters; to give advice on dealing with insurance companies; to pass out supplies like water and N95 masks. These are popping up at racetracks, high schools, bookstores, art galleries and more and donations are pouring in with word spreading largely through social media. 

There are almost 1,000 GoFundMes and counting with individuals who have lost everything asking for help. And people are responding with real generosity. But this is so anarchic that it ends up, despite people's intentions, intensifying the inequalities and unevenness in our society. Some individuals have more access to social media networks which reach more people. And others don't.

In its day-to-day operation, this system sets people against each other, and forces people to compete. And it fosters a dog-eat-dog, do-for-self ethos. You see in this kind of crisis how much people can rise above that. But they still run up against all the antagonistic social divisions that exist under this system: between rich and poor, between different nationalities and regions.

In a socialist society, on the basis of a whole different economic and political system, we would be able to put the social resources of society to meet human need. We will face huge problems, which will require tremendous struggle and debate. But—unlike this system—a socialist society will be able to fully unleash the potential heroism of the masses of people and the desire to help each other. We will not be beholden to the dictates of an anti-people system driven by profit-above-all-else.

In a beautiful article, written in 2020, Capitalism-Imperialism—The Suffocation of Seven Billion—And the Profound Need for a World on New Foundations, the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian talks about what is possible if we overthrow this nightmare of a system. He talks about how precious people are—and what it will look like to have a system that is based on the interests of the masses of people:

This will be a new society aiming for a whole new world, without the suffocation, suppression, and disfiguring of the potential for the masses of humanity to understand and change the world in accordance with what are in fact the fundamental interests of humanity—to live in a world where no part of humanity is subordinated to and dictated to by another part, and where all of humanity is no longer dictated to by the fundamental workings and dynamics of a system that requires antagonistic relations among people, enforced with the continual threat and use of massive violence, where the masses of humanity are no longer reduced to merely a means to make wealth for a small number who rule over them, or are cast off as “surplus” populations that can no longer be exploited in this way.

This new society and world will not be some kind of “utopia” where all problems and difficulties have “magically disappeared”—and it will not come as a “gift” from some non-existent god—but will be the result of the struggle of masses of people to cast off unbearable exploitation and oppression, and to transform themselves and their thinking in close inter-connection with this struggle to transform their conditions—struggle led by those who have taken up the scientific method and approach of the new communism and are winning growing numbers of people to themselves take up and apply this scientific method and approach to transforming the world in an increasingly conscious way on the basis of their voluntary initiative and cooperation.

All this will involve whole new dimensions of freedom, and unleashed initiative and creativity of the masses of humanity, on this whole new foundation, with radically different institutions and relations among people, and radically different ways of thinking that correspond to these emancipating relations among people.