At a time when most radical and progressive forces in the U.S. have
abandoned “big” liberatory projects like movements for socialism and
communism—dismissing them as unrealistic or untenable—we affirm the need
for a new communist movement.
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| Manifestations of the Arab Spring, 2011 |
World capitalist society is reaching an impasse. Capitalism is an
economic system based on production for profit; it is a form of society
in which all values, and even life itself, are subordinated to the
profit motive—for the endless accumulation of capital. This system is
literally jeopardizing the continuation of life on the planet by
creating ecological crises, while continuing to lock the world’s
majority in Asia, Africa and Latin America in dire poverty and
oppression; for decades these people have been told that capitalist
development would bring prosperity, but this is impossible, because
capitalist development is always uneven development.
The capitalist system is not an abstract play of ideal markets, but
is a real, historical system; and it is absolutely true that this world
system—and therefore capital accumulation on a world scale—has proceeded
through colonial and imperialist projects which involved slavery (as
with Africans in the U.S. South and other parts of the Americas);
genocide (as with the indigenous population of the Americas); and
plunder of natural resources on truly continental scales (as was the
case in all the colonized parts of the world, and continues to be the
case with the imperialized zones of Africa, Asia and Latin America).
In short, the wealth concentrated in places like North America and
Western Europe is directly correlated with the impoverishment and
brutalization of the world’s majority. All the while the masses in the
“wealthy” imperialist countries like the U.S. get poorer and more
miserable, as the world imperialist system has less and less to offer
them. Breathing space is disappearing everywhere. The much-touted Golden
Age of Capitalism which followed WWII for the people in these countries
is long over. Instead of the rising living standards that many
Westerners experienced in the 50s, 60s and 70s, we have falling living
standards for most, and an increasing concentration of wealth at the
top; in the U.S. the disparity in wealth today now exceeds that of the
late 19th century. So much for the argument that capitalism, prosperity, freedom and democracy go hand in hand!
That argument does carry some weight, if we realize that capitalism
indeed provides those things for an elite few. Marxists recognize that
the political system in capitalist society is always a dictatorship of
the capitalist class over the rest of the population. This is because
whoever holds power socially and economically also has power (or
hegemony) politically. Those with power also tend to run society in
their interests. For this reason, we will never be able to solve the
massive problems that hold humanity back unless we have socialism, that
is, some type of system in which workers and oppressed people hold the
reins of political power and reorganize the economy and all social
institutions in their interests. That would be society run for the
interests of the majority. This can only come about through
revolution for two reasons: The existing rulers will not go peacefully
(our society perpetuates and defends itself through repression and
violence and because, as Marx and Engels explained in Part 1 of The German Ideology,
the class overthrowing the old order “can only in a revolution succeed
in ridding itself of all the muck of ages, and become fitted to found
society anew.”
In the Marxist vision, communism is the society that follows
socialism. It is the liberation of humanity as a whole, and that this
precisely the kind of bold goal that we in Voice Collective believe must
be revived. At this point in history, the truly utopian fantasy is the
belief that humanity can continue down its current path, that this
system with its crises, perpetual war, horrendous oppressions and
wholesale destruction of the natural environment is sustainable. Realistically, we need an entirely different system.
Communism is a kind of society in which classes and what we currently
know as the state has been abolished. Communism is a society in which
humans are free to associate and produce the means of their
lives—including cultural expression—in ways which are empowering.
Communism sweeps away all the ridged hierarchies of class, racial and
gender oppression; it tears down the political regime of patriarchal
heterosexuality and allows human beings to remake the world as we wish
to see it. Only with communism will we be able to realize collective
freedom and ecological sustainability, because we will have democratic
control over all social institutions, including the economy.
No modern society has reached communism yet, though some—highly
constrained by imperialism and internal political contradictions—have
taken tentative steps toward socialism. In the Voice Collective and Kasama Project
we are ready to help create a new communist movement that is willing to
truly merge with the people and be transformed by them. We are ready
for vigorous debate and a refusal to submit to old formulas and dogmas.
There is much for us to learn from the experiences of past communist and
other movements, but together we must struggle for a new road in a new
era. We know that revolution is necessary, but how to get there is an
open question. For that reason, we are very interested in the revival of
struggle that is occurring in the world today, during the worst crisis
of capitalism since WWII. Popular revolts have spread through the middle
East; at the same time, movements have been fomenting in Western Europe
and North America. Socialist and left-leaning movements have actually
come to power in many countries in Latin America, and Maoist communist
forces are making huge strides in southeast Asian countries like India
and Nepal. In the U.S., too, recent polls have shown that more and more
Americans (especially young people) question the desirability of
capitalism as a system. As Mao Tse Tung said, “There is disorder under
heaven; the situation is excellent.” But in order to take advantage of
our moment in history in which a real revolutionary rupture can occur,
we must learn from one another and get organized wherever we are. The
existing Left is not up to the task. There is much that we must build
from the ground up. The Voice Collective has been created precisely to
contribute to this endeavor.
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