Capitalism breeds war, unemployment and fascism
A bit redundant, don't you think?
When is the last time you heard, "Capitalism breeds Peace, Love and
World Unity"?
If we are warned over and over of the Evils of Capitalism, why is it
that so many Working Class People, disenfranchised from full
participation in the Capitalistic System, rally in defense of
Capitalism's ruthless march across the planet. Why is it that we can
feed at the Empire's Propaganda trough, on the one hand, believing
that we are loved the world around, and we come bringing gifts of
Peace and Plenty, while on the other hand we snarl and paw the ground
when any other nation dare to claim that we are flawed?
Given a level playing field, would the working class choose Capitalism
as their form of government? If the answer is no, as most surely it
should be, then why has Capitalism enjoyed such a long run in the
driver's seat?
Can it be because the Elite of the land have stolen from the Masses
all of the sweat of their brow, along with their Land, their Freedom
and their Self Dignity? Can it be that they hold all the weapons of
mass destruction, the boots on the ground and even the Cop on the
Corner? Not to mention the Judicial System. While the working class,
like an old donkey, runs and sweats after the carrot on the
unreachable stick, the Empire stands astride a mountain of false
promises, petty rewards and outright lies, buying protection from the
very folks who should be running them out of town, tarred and
feathered, on a rail.
If you feed a Bull enough Bullshit, he will be forced to do one of two
things. He will shrivel up and die from Mal Nourishment, or he will
become enraged and turn on you.
At this point in time, our "Promised Land", these United States of
America, appears to be shriveling up from a long, continuous diet of
Bullshit. But there is a rumbling in the backwoods and in the valleys
and in the dark, stinking streets of the inner cities ghettos. But,
as is usual, the Lords are too busy raking in every last crumb from
the table of plenty, to notice that time is running out. It is a
matter of, "When", not of, "If". The only question still to be
answered is whether the American Bull will shrivel and die, or whether
it will roar and gore its Master.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/4/16, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2016/8025/802549.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 80/No. 25 July 11, 2016
(Books of the Month column)
‘Capitalism breeds war, unemployment and fascism’
Teamster Bureaucracy is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for
July. It is the last of a four-volume series, including Teamster
Rebellion , Teamster Power and Teamster Politics . The book describes
the fight in the labor movement led by Minneapolis Teamsters Local 544
to oppose Washington’s entry into World War II, and how the capitalist
rulers, backed by the top labor officialdom, attempted to silence
class-struggle-minded workers. Eighteen leaders of Local 544 and of the
Socialist Workers Party, including the book’s author Farrell Dobbs, were
charged with sedition in a 1941 trial, culminating in their
imprisonment. The excerpt below from the chapter “‘If that is treason…’”
summarizes SWP leader James P. Cannon’s testimony on the witness stand.
Copyright © 1977 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
BY FARRELL DOBBS
The government had turned reality upside down in charging the
Socialist Workers Party with a plot to undermine the existing system. A
social crisis was developing in the United States not because of any
revolutionary conspiracy, but through the operation of two internal laws
of capitalism, which make inevitable its decline and its replacement by
socialism.
One of those laws involves private ownership of the means of production,
he explained, and employment of wage labor at less than the value of the
products produced by wage laborers. … The remaining value created by
labor becomes surplus value, for which the capitalist appropriators must
find fields of exploitation at home and abroad. The resulting
contradictions of the capitalist system inexorably lead to periodic crises.
The post-1929 economic depression, which resulted from one such crisis
of what political science terms overproduction, was an unmistakable sign
of the unhealthiness of the social organism called capitalism. It
brought upon the working class a scourge of unemployment that operated
on a world scale. …
Social relations are further aggravated by competition between
capitalists, a trend that leads inevitably to the bigger ones freezing
out the smaller fry. More and more wealth becomes concentrated in the
hands of fewer and fewer monopolists. …
Fundamental structural factors of the foregoing nature, not socialist
propaganda, are the cause of the unending class struggle under
capitalism. …
Trade unions appeared in this country as the basic organizations through
which the workers struggle to defend their interests from day to day.
The Socialist Workers Party supports the trade union movement, so as to
help the workers resist oppression and strive for improved conditions of
life. In doing so we advocate democratic practices through which the
unions can be controlled by the rank and file. The party does not seek
dictatorial control over those mass organizations, as the government
wrongly charges. We strive for leading influence in the trade unions by
demonstrating ability to fight for the workers’ interests. …
In talking about perspectives for organized labor we place special
emphasis on the need for the working masses to take over the leadership
of the country. As the first step toward that end, we urge the workers
to make a clean break with the capitalist parties, develop an
independent party of their own, and adopt a political program that will
genuinely serve the interests of labor and its allies.
The second internal law of capitalism, Cannon continued, involves a
conflict between the further development of productive forces and the
confinement of those forces within national barriers. In their efforts
to solve crises of overproduction, the capitalists look for foreign
markets in which to sell their products and in which to invest their
excess capital. … They tend to become imperialist powers, which means
they seek to exploit other peoples.
But when capitalism enters some new territory, the world sphere open for
exploitation begins to narrow down, because the laws of capitalist
competition follow like a shadow. The rival imperialists have less and
less room for expansion of their spheres of influence, and as a result
they come into conflict over redivision of the territorial spoils.
Global clashes of that nature became so intensified early in the
twentieth century that they led to the war of 1914-18. The outbreak of
bloody struggle on such an immense scale was a signal that the
capitalist world system had run up against a profound crisis of
historical development. Since then the capitalist nations had continued
to be either in a state of war or in the process of preparing for war,
and it took only two decades for another world holocaust to begin. …
Roosevelt’s claim that he was leading the United States into a war of
democracy against fascism was a subterfuge, Cannon warned. The conflict
would be imperialist in character. Although fought at the expense of the
working class, its purpose would be to advance the world ambitions of
this country’s capitalists, who stood among the greatest enemies of
democracy. … War could be prevented, unemployment abolished, and dangers
of repressive rule overcome only by doing away with the capitalist
system which breeds war, unemployment, and fascism.
The Socialist Workers Party stands unalterably opposed to imperialist
war, he declared from the witness stand. We speak against it, write
against it, try to create mass sentiment against it. … What is more, we
shall remain opposed to involvement in an imperialist war even while
this country is engaged in such a conflict. We will express that
opposition on a political plane, seeking to exercise our constitutional
right to call for a different foreign policy. …
The imperialist war, for which workers were being conscripted, was in
itself an expression of a terrible social crisis, and that crisis would
not be solved by war. … Deep-seated unrest would result, as bitter
experiences caused the masses to yearn for a fundamental change in
social conditions.
By definition, that is what the term social revolution means, Cannon
stressed — a basic political and economic transformation of society. An
example from U.S. history is the Civil War of 1861-65. That was a social
revolution because it destroyed the system of slave labor and property
in slaves, replacing it by the complete domination of capitalist
enterprise and wage labor.
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