“The new generation wants to be strong.”
– José Carlos Mariátegui
The United States finds itself in a profound state of crisis. Behind the growing tendency towards fascism is the global decline in the rate of profit, characterized by rising inflation, ballooning debt, and increased competition by imperialist rivals China and Russia. In the face of impending mass rebellion, US imperialism responds by further restructuring the economy and society, unleashing more brutal exploitation and an all-round reactionary ideological, political, and cultural offensive of divide and conquer, especially targeting the migrant and nationally oppressed workers. The threat of imperialist war looms over Latin America as the US desperately seeks to maintain its status as the top plunderer and enemy of the world’s people. The general crisis of imperialism, which began in the 1980s, is increasingly leading to a new series of inter-imperialist wars for the redivision of the world.
Donald Trump is unable to stop the developing and deepening economic crisis much like previous presidents. He speeds up the process of fascistization, even though this can only lead to more sharpening of contradictions on all sides. Meanwhile, suffering and want of the class has grown more acute, accompanying a massive deterioration of the working and living conditions not seen since the Great Recession. Uprisings of the nationally oppressed are now appearing across the country. These, while sporadic and weak, have the potential to develop further.
In short, the objective conditions are ripe for great social change.
Nonetheless, the subjective forces for such change in the current moment remain largely lacking. False divisions are sown among the masses by capitalists, through their demagogues and agents, to facilitate the development of corporativization in different ways. The working class, lacking its highest form of organization, is unable to articulate itself as a class-for-itself. The revolutionary movement continues to be largely dominated by the petit-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy who unite in their isolation outside the multinational working class. The opportunists continue to babble about the need for patience, drawing the masses away from militant class struggle and back into the fold of electoral politics; to the hands of the Democratic Party, another faction of the ruling class equally eager for fascism.
The sincere spirits of the revolution have not yet occupied their rightful place. In their stead, there are still sectarian egoisms and willful incomprehension, “dogmatic spirits that seek to petrify and immobilize life.”
A strong foundation for proletarian politics has been laid through shared struggle and determination, but it remains a foundation. There is much work to be done. The unity of revolutionary workers and oppressed nations, alongside their organization in the class-conscious and militant mass movement, is an urgent and pending task. Myopia, self-interest, and tiring choleric evocations cannot serve the cause of our class. As the ruling class has embarked on a decided and determined path towards fascism and world war – the natural consequence and only way to resolve this great crisis – the mass movement cannot give anything other than a direct response, that of establishing itself on the basis of struggling against reformism, opportunism, and revisionism. On the other side of the coin, this means to unite along common revolutionary principles, practice, and program, to discard all sectarian criteria and replacing them it with a genuine desire for unity.
In summary, the task of the mass organizations is to deepen the work in mobilizing, politicizing and organizing the masses. At the same time, the doctrinal and informational publications must equip the revolutionary worker with a thoroughly new world outlook through its comments and analysis. The unity and strength of the working class is built in collective and militant struggle; only through these struggles can it establish its own hegemony theoretically, ideologically, culturally, and politically, rallying its allies under its conscious leadership and sweeping away anything standing in its way.
There are many challenges before us, but we can overcome them – if we are honest and persistent in Marxist methods. Let us salute today the people of Peru, India, Turkey, and the Philippines, walking on the path of struggle, as role models and harbingers of change. Capitalism has produced the proletariat, the last class of history. “Every epoch not only dreams the next, but while dreaming impels it towards wakefulness.” In the war of position charted by the capitalist class, amid its own crisis of faith, science, and reason, the partisan of revolution plainly responds by transforming reality with their powerful hands.
