The Problem and the Solution
October 13, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
What IS the reality we face? This system of capitalism-imperialism and white supremacy—which perpetuates and enforces every kind of oppression including the oppression of women, here and around the world—has never had any use for Black and Latino people, except to exploit them. There was the slave master’s whip, enforcing the merciless exploitation of the labor of Black slaves on which much of the wealth and power of the USA was built. After the end of formal slavery, there was the Klansman’s noose, enforcing slave-like exploitation of Black people on Southern plantations. When African-American people were drawn into the cities to work in the factories, white racist mobs and cops became the instruments of violence to keep people “in their place.” Today, in “post-industrial America,” when masses of Black or Latino youth can no longer be profitably exploited, the massive expansion of prisons and of police power has become a whole new system of white supremacy.
The powers-that-be put a Black man in the White House. But the real situation for the great majority of Blacks and Latinos is more and more desperate. No jobs. No hope. People driven to desperate acts to survive, lashing out at one another, ending up dead or in prison. In the last three decades, more Black people have been murdered by police than were lynched in three of the worst decades of Jim Crow terror.
Who created this situation? Not the victims of this system. In the mad, dog-eat-dog rush of capitalists for profit, the dirtiest, most dangerous, lowest-paid work where Black and Latino people were employed has been moved to Bangladesh, Mexico, Vietnam, or Honduras... or some other place where those who rule the world can exploit people even more viciously.
Today the modern-day slave masters look down from their skyscrapers and see—in the millions struggling to survive—nothing but a largely unemployable, dangerous threat to their whole setup. That’s why their police murder with impunity. That’s why their prisons are packed like the holds of the slave ships that brought kidnapped Africans to this country.
This is slow genocide, and there are danger signs that it could become fast genocide. Anyone who can think straight can figure out that this whole setup is INSANE. Anyone with a heart can see this is WRONG. But what most people don’t get, YET, is that all this is UNNECESSARY. Humanity does not need to live this way. This madness is a product of a SYSTEM—capitalism—where the vast abundance that is created by human beings all around the world is VIOLENTLY RIPPED from them, and twisted into profit. And white supremacy, beginning with slavery, is the offspring of that system; it had a beginning, and it can have an end—through revolution.
Why can’t the incredible resources of this planet—most of all the people—be mobilized to solve the problems this world faces? Health care, education, and dealing with the environmental crisis? Overcoming obscene inequalities? Fully liberating women? Providing a life with meaning, where people can relate to each other as humans and not things to buy and sell?
All this CAN change. But again—only after this system is overthrown. So long as capitalism-imperialism stays in effect, it MUST exploit in order to profit and survive, and it must oppress in order to exploit.
There is a strategy to actually win millions to this goal and lead millions to do this. There is a doctrine which can actually guide the revolution to defeat the violent repression of the power structure, as the system goes into deeper crisis and those millions come forward. There is a plan—a Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America—for a whole new society, with a different political power and different economic system, one being led to overcome exploitation and oppression—NOT to feed off it and reinforce it, as this one does. There is a leadership—the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA and its Chairman, Bob Avakian—for all this. And you can find out about it at revcom.us.
What do we need to do right now? Prepare the ground, prepare the people, and prepare the vanguard—get ready for the time when millions can be led to go for revolution, all-out, with a real chance to win.
Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution
If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.