Franz J.T. Lee, April, 2009
What is the supreme question in this era of global depression and recession?
"To
be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the
mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or
to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?
... "
(William Shakespeare, Hamlet.)
To try to answer the major question of our age, we need not summarize all the thousand fold major expressions of the big crash over the last few months, neither the current 'swine flu' nor the coming 'Spanish Flu.' What is not clear is that the workers of the world have an emancipatory duty to humanity to topple capitalism here and now at its most dangerous but weakest historical moment, at its objective, material collapse, to prevent a coming age of terrorist barbarism, of world fascism beyond imagination. Where should we begin? For America, for Venezuela, could the young Marx, so often cited by President Chavez, give us some revolutionary advice how to achieve a working class consciousness?
Let us look at some events and figures which confirm this inexorable historic tendency.
A while ago, in a commentary "Coming Workers' Riots in the Metropolis," we described the deplorable situation of the autoworkers of Chrysler, General Motors and of other North American corporate giants. The workers are beginning to see that while they are being told to fasten their belts, to take more pay and job cuts, the billionaires are getting fat bailouts, taken mainly from their taxpayers' money. They learn to see the master-slave relation.
Consequently, they feel being cheated and betrayed by their opulent bosses, by their imposed trade unions which have consigned them to poverty wages. Also, now already they feel economically discriminated by the Obama administration itself. They also complain that fraternity is only valid for ruling class elites and privileged corporate members of the industrial military complex, and that the Democratic party has given them nothing. In this way the seeds of social discontent, mass upheavals, class consciousness and struggles are beginning to germinate, not only in the USA but across the globe. In this way proletarian internationalism and international proletarianism out of vital necessity appear on the horizon of workers' local, national and regional struggles. Due to common class interests and struggles, eventually the General Motors autoworkers of Detroit will meet their colleagues of Opel in Ruesselsheim, Germany.
Certainly, nowadays the divine mills of concentration, monopolization, competition, merging, centralization, outsourcing, corruption and bankruptcy are grinding at breath taking speed. The contemporary situation has become so perverse: financial titans like the Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of America Corp. or Citigroup Inc. are not fearing the specter of global communism or of proletarian class struggle, rather they shiver at just the idea of capitalist State nationalization. Now the capitalists not only favor 'fraternity' but also 'unity', as the Club of Rome suggest a while ago, that is, a unitary World State.
Hence,
workers of the world, also unite! Jobless and homeless, now you
really have nothing to lose anymore except your exploitative,
dominating and discriminating chains. Not only your real chains, but
also your mental, religious and ideological chains of illusion and
delusion.
For example, just take notice who all are
interested in constructing the very economic foundations of a global
fascist, authoritarian and totalitarian Leviathan: some members of
Congress, former U.S. Federal Reserve Board chief Alan Greenspan,
Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman; and also former
Fed vice-chairman Alan Blinder, a professor at Princeton University.
De facto, economically the U.S. government is already the sole owner
of many giant corporations.
All this will not help.
This
is the first truly globalized depression; the previous limited one of
1929 already cost Europe and other places tens of millions of lives,
decades of fascist horror and terror, including a brutal nuclear
world war. This one in its destructive magnitude will be worse.
In
how far this concerns the workers of the world? The world recession
has already ransacked our savings, is cutting our salaries, our
social benefits for which we fought ever since the dawn of
industrialization.
At this moment, all over 'tent cities' in
the USA are sprouting up; Global Research reports: "housing
prices accelerated on the downside indicating bigger adjustments
dead-ahead. Trend-lines are steeper now than ever before--nearly
perpendicular. Housing prices are not falling, they're crashing and
crashing hard. Now that the foreclosure moratorium has ended, Notices
of Default (NOD) have spiked to an all-time high."
(See:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context
=va&aid=13283)
As
mentioned, if this continues in the USA and elsewhere we will soon
not only have jobless but also homeless working classes. President
Obama can do nothing to stop this collapse of capitalism. This is not
a one man job, only the emancipatory, creative efforts of billions
can still save humanity in this dreadful era.
This Labor Day,
this May Day 2009 ... which will only be celebrated in September in
the USA ... is being ushered in under the following ominous 'writings
on the wall of woe':
"Market analysts predict there will
be 5 MILLION MORE FORECLOSURES BETWEEN NOW AND 2011. It's a disaster
bigger than Katrina. Soaring unemployment and rising foreclosures
ensure that hundreds of banks and financial institutions will be
forced into bankruptcy. 40 percent of delinquent homeowners have
already vacated their homes."
(Ibid.)
Yes, for the
world proletariat it is 'to be or not to be', is 'to take arms
against a sea of troubles'. 'It is the best of times, it is the worst
of times', it is the dawn of global class struggles, is to convert
capitalist collapse into socialist emancipation. Surely, the 'Age of
Aquarius' is also dawning on the galactic horizon.
The
historic essence of proletarian international class struggle is based
on the scientific recognition that currently we are experiencing a
"global economic crisis of a systemic and structural nature".
This was confirmed by the recent summit conference held in Cumana,
Venezuela.
In the Declaration of Cumana, Venezuela, of April
23rd 2009, signed by ALBA Member Countries, the Heads of State and
Government of Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua and
Venezuela, inter alia, propose to hold a thorough debate
on:
"Capitalism is leading humanity and the planet to
extinction. What we are experiencing is a global economic crisis of a
systemic and structural nature, not another cyclic crisis. Those who
think that with a taxpayer money injection and some regulatory
measures this crisis will end are wrong. The financial system is in
crisis because it trades bonds with six times the real value of the
assets and services produced and rendered in the world, this is not a
'system regulation failure', but a integrating part of the capitalist
system that speculates with all assets and values with a view to
obtain the maximum profit possible. Until now, the economic crisis
has generated over 100 million additional hungry persons and has
slashed over 50 million jobs, and these figures show an upward
trend."
( http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4390
)
Obviously, passing across the liberal competitive, the
classical imperialist and the modern corporate stages of production
and destruction, of hundreds of millions of human victims, now the
capitalist Moloch ... following its ìnexorable systemic and
structural dialectical tendential economic laws of development ...
has completely globalized itself as world depression. Why more than
ever workers' class struggle is imperative? What is its socialist
philosophic quintessence?
What can we learn from the student,
the young Marx? Dedicated to the workers of the world, who have
forgotten their past theoretical grandeur and heritage, allow us to
quote extensively from a short Marxist document, just as renowned as
the famous "Manifesto of the Communist Party".
The
young Marx, having just become a scientific socialist in 1843,
explained to us the revolutionary genesis in his "A Contribution
to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Introduction".
This is one of the most quoted writings of Marx, but also one most
cited out of context.
Together with the 'Eleventh Thesis on
Feuerbach' it concerns oscillating proletarian natural scientific
revolutionary praxis and
social philosophic emancipatory theory; in a nut shell, the
dialectical leap from utopian to scientific socialism, to the
negation of capitalism, by means of proletarian class struggle.
Marx explained the revolutionary essence of his early
writing, the starting point of all social critique and change, as
follows:
"
For
Germany, the criticism
of religion
has been essentially completed, and the criticism of religion is the
prerequisite of all criticism."
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/
critique-hpr/intro.htm)
The
whole text, which we quote below, concerns the problem of the mental
blockage of religion and ideology which impedes the acquisition of a
proletarian class consciousness. From this vantage point the
following famous Marx quotes become relevant for global class
education and struggle. In this spirit he explains the basics of how
to understanding the world out of itself:
"The
foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man
makes religion,
religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the
self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won
through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man
is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the
world of man
– state, society."
Only as such the following
quotations, not divorced from their socialist critique and context,
can now be understood. For example, here is a philosophic jewel, a
complete quote urgently to be studied and applied in its historical
context:
"
The
weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism of the
weapon, material force must be overthrown by material force; but
theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the
masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses as soon as it
demonstrates ad
hominem,
and it demonstrates ad
hominem
as soon as it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp the root of
the matter. But, for man, the root is man himself.".
We
suggest that our Bolivarian comrades study this creative Marxist
document very carefully, in order to apply scientifically our
Declaration of Cumana to American reality, and also to enrich our
current 'Misión Lectura", to interpret and change the
world into a better place to live in, for billions of human beings
and existences.
Finally, as a Labor Day message, what should
be the current proletarian task of world revolution in Venezuela,
America and elsewhere?
"It is, therefore, the task
of history,
once the other-world
of truth
has vanished, to establish the truth
of this world.
It is the immediate task
of philosophy,
which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in
its unholy
forms
once the holy
form
of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of
Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism
of religion
into the criticism
of law,
and the criticism
of theology
into the criticism
of politics."