Revolution #014, September 18, 2005, posted at revcom.us
This article was written by comrades working in the movement to drive out the Bush Regime.
It was split-screen America last week.
Bush visiting Louisiana, laughing and joking with his cronies, on one side of the screen; and thousands of people, mostly Black and mainly poor, forced into the Superdome to starve and die on the other.
Bush’s mother, chortling in Houston that the terrible ordeal “is working out very well” for the people on the one side; and Black people who were trying to walk out of the New Orleans Superdome being forced back into that hell by cops with guns on the other.
The real estate, oil and construction capitalists circling like vultures, already salivating at the profits to be had and planning how—and for whom—New Orleans would be rebuilt on one side; and the Black masses who lived there for generations being scattered across the country, with no provisions for work or security or basic needs, and no promise of resettlement into their homes on the other.
Over and over, people organized to help each other, and were ordered by the authorities to stop and disband—even at gunpoint. People joining to forage for water, food and medicine were portrayed as “gangs of looters” and even “tribes”—when they were often helping to keep large numbers of people alive. When people organized to bring diesel fuel into the flooded city for the generators of a still-functioning hospital—that fuel shipment was simply seized by authorities, leaving surgury patients to die. One large group of evacuees helped each other reach city -limits—only to be turned away and dispersed by sheriffs of the white suburb shooting over their heads, forcing them back into the flooded areas.
The pious talk about “we’re all Americans” on one side; and the slander, the utterly racist slander, 24-7 against those trying to provide for themselves and others left stranded in this disaster on the other.
Millions watched. Millions got boiling mad. Millions more asked why. And it’s all still unfolding, this “tale of two cities,” two countries, two universes. Whether this becomes a “spring of hope or winter of despair” has everything to do with what we—what you—what all of us decide to do about it.
The horror of Katrina comes on top of the Bush regime’s relentless antagonism toward African-Americans, beginning with the theft of the 2000 elections and taking off from there. It comes on top of its drive to discredit environmental scientists and tear up what few environmental regulations exist. It comes on top of the ongoing horrors of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, justified by lies and conducted with extreme brutality. It comes on top of their efforts to fill the courts with fascist judges, to “legalize” torture and to jail people without trials or lawyers. It comes on top of their use of the state to support extreme fundamentalist Christianity, to deny women the right to abortion and birth control, to demonize gay people, and to promote ignorance and intolerance generally. And all these keep going, with no signs of stopping!
The world cannot tolerate three more years of this.
For millions of people the very legitimacy of this regime and even the system as a whole—their supposed “right to rule”—has been called into question. The forces and ideas Bush represents have been politically weakened by this. We are in a unique moment—one that even some bourgeois commentators say may burst the current political ways of doing things and thinking wide open. And, in regard to driving out the Bush regime, that means two very crucial things:
One, the opening for people to actually drive this hated regime from office and stop this madness has gotten wider. The chance is there—if we throw everything we have into it—to politically mobilize millions into a determined force that can pry this burden off the backs of the people, here and around the world, and change the course of history in a positive direction.
Two, it is just that—a moment —and if we do not seize it, things will not stay the same, nor will they even revert to normal. Things will, almost certainly, get worse. Bush and Cheney and the rest like to talk about “evil,” but these monsters stand out in the pack for their relentless drive to keep their grip on power—and to use it against the people. They will, if they are not driven out, figure out the ways—whether it be through allowing another 9/11, or something equally horrific—to recoup their position and to reinforce their agenda, and to suppress and take revenge on the opposition that does exist.
Future generations would not forgive us if we allowed that to happen.
This regime has a whole package, a whole many-fronted offensive, that cannot be adequately dealt with piecemeal. Aiming for anything short of, anything less than, its ouster won’t do.
But in itself that would only be a beginning. For one thing—indeed, the biggest thing—the capitalist imperialist system that produced this regime would still be in place, with all its daily excruciations.
The outrages so glaringly on display in Katrina—the way in which the criminal centuries-old system of American white supremacy trapped the overwhelmingly Black people still in New Orleans in a hell with no means to escape, and then repressed them when they tried to get out; the way in which the blind rush for profit had trumped the needs of people more generally and prevented the adequate care of the environment; the utter callousness toward human life and the “every man for himself” mentality that was pushed onto people—all these flow out of capitalism and the rule of the capitalists.
People organizing themselves, caring for and helping others, was seen as a threat to the authorities—as dangerous and even criminal activity. The protection of private property and the rules of the whole order based on private property was enforced by guns—even at the cost of people’s lives.
What is even more criminal is that all these terrible things were and are totally unnecessary —humanity has the ability to provide meaningful labor to everyone, to take care of the environment, to prepare for natural disasters, and to do all this in a cooperative way. Humanity has created the productive forces—that is, the resources, the technology and the knowledge in people—to deal with all that and more. But under capitalism, these productive forces are owned and dominated by a relative handful, and can only be used to serve the accumulation of even more wealth by that handful. That raw fact stamps its brand on all of society, and especially the form of state power, which under capitalism will always serve and reflect and reinforce (through its control of the institutions and its monopoly on violence) the interests of the capitalists.
Bush represents a section of the imperialists which believes that the huge changes in society—in international relations, the economy, the social relations between people and their thinking—puts such great strains on the social fabric of American life that it makes necessary a much more repressive—a fascist —form of rule. They aim to clamp down with unprecedented repression on society in a period of great upheaval, and these hard-core supporters include many who are pushing for a full-blown theocratic fascism. Should they succeed, it will have dire consequences for hundreds of millions of people here and around the world, and for the revolutionary movement as well. At the same time, the radical and in many ways unprecedented character of what he’s trying to do makes it full of risk for the ruling class as a whole; it causes uncertainty and conflict, and creates the possibility of a full-scale revolutionary opening emerging— if there is a movement developed that can recognize and seize that opening when it occurs.
Right now the Bush regime is an extreme concentration of the capitalist system. They are in the driver’s seat of that system, but they are not the whole of it, and we have to bring that understanding to the millions now awakening to political life. The point is that at one and the same time we have to go all-out to drive out this regime. . . while we cannot for a minute rest content with that, and must bring the understanding of why that is so to millions.
To be clear, when we talk about a “moment,” we mean that right now—this fall—we must, through our actions in mobilizing millions, create a new dynamic in society, where masses of people are setting new terms for society: uncompromisingly demanding the ouster of this regime and taking increasingly determined actions to bring that into being. We are talking about a whole wave of agitation and different kinds of actions this Fall, in which the huge outpourings on November 2 will play a pivotal role. One measure: the November 2 actions must dominate the headlines on November 3.
We spoke earlier about the consequences of failure. And we talked about how, even if we succeed, there is the larger battle to replace this whole system.
But what if we succeed, in both launching this dynamic and then carrying it through? Even here, we should be sober. First, as the Call to November 2 says, “people who steal elections and believe they’re on a ’mission from God’ will not go without a fight.” And if the people do drive Bush from office, it is almost certain that the forces in the government, the military, and society at large that share Bush’s agenda would be fighting like hell to reassert their position and their whole agenda. So, yes, in very important ways this would be only the beginning.
But what a beginning it would be! Three huge differences would stand out from today. First, an independent mass movement of the people would have inflicted a major political defeat against the vicious agenda now in command, with its major representative brought down and the whole ruling class in a scramble. Second, there would be a politically energized and unleashed people, ready and able to take the struggle further. Yes, the struggle would get sharper—but for the first time it would actually be two-sided. And third, the numbers of people actively debating a different future, and within that, checking out and coming over to a revolutionary communist understanding, program and organization—which even today must be fostered in the course of all this work—would take a leap to a whole other level.
There is right now a tremendous amount of work to do to realize the immediate goal of truly setting in motion this dynamic—to make every day count for the massive outpouring that must come on November 2, uniting all kinds of people to powerfully raise the slogan of “The World Can’t Wait! Drive Out the Bush Regime!” There is a huge gap between the level of public opinion and organization needed to accomplish this, and what right now exists. Even with beginning advances, the people are far from where they need to be on this and it will require extraordinary measures to get there.
To the people who quit their jobs or left school to work for Howard Dean—even though his program fell far short of what you wanted—now is the time to sacrifice for something that you actually believe in! People need to change their lives, now, to accomplish this. The fans have to get beyond cheering and booing, and come out of the stands and down onto the field to help the right team win.
To the people who hated the war and threw everything into getting Kerry elected—even though he supported the war—now is the time to work your hearts out for demands and values you actually support!
To the people who are heartsick watching the footage from Katrina or the pictures from Abu Ghraib but who console themselves with sugarplum visions of 2006 or 2008—there is not time for that! That has not worked and cannot work—change your lives in order to change history for real.
There are crucial things right now that everyone reading this can take up.
First, the demands raised by the August 31 Statement from the Revolutionary Communist Party must be met! (download the statement at revcom.us): At the government’s expense, people must get decent housing and care until they can safely return to their homes. Hotels, convention centers, and other buildings must be provided to people in need of shelter and there must be free communication for people to contact relatives. Immediately, there must be emergency medical care and measures to prevent massive epidemics and needless dying. Those charged with so-called looting must have their charges dropped. People must NOT be abandoned or allowed to die. All necessary resources, including mobilizing volunteers, must be brought to bear on this. And the government must not repress people who volunteer or prevent them from helping, but instead, must assist these efforts. And there must be no profiteering and speculation off people’s misery by the sharks of insurance companies, oil monopolies, real estate developers, and so on.
Second, work must be done in turn to link all that to the need to drive out this regime. The “wanted” poster advertised in this issue is extremely popular—it “draws blood” and it popularizes November 2, and it must go out and go up all over this country. The high schools and colleges and the streets and shops in proletarian areas must bristle with these posters. The “Wanted” T-shirts advertised in this issue of REVOLUTION should become hot items, worn by tens of thousands. This in its own right would make a hugely important political statement to the whole world, and would serve as well to build toward November 2.
Third, there is the battle to end the Iraq war. Those who are fighting for an immediate pullout must be supported and the September 24 demonstration in particular must be made into as powerful a demonstration as possible. At the same, the demand to drive out the regime as a whole should be stamped on those demonstrations, and people who go there must come out as organizing machines for this effort.
Fourth, November 2 committees must be built everywhere, right away, especially the campuses. There are thousands of things crying out to be done, and there are millions of untapped, unorganized, and very angry people who hunger to do something. People need to be quickly plugged in!
Finally, communism itself must be made a much bigger force in society. People are coming into political life, and they need more than anything a sense of the utter worthlessness of this whole system; of the possibility of a different kind of society, led by the proletariat; and of the leadership that exists to get them there. That can only come through getting out to people with the works of Bob Avakian, especially the DVD Revolution, and the memoir From Ike to Mao and Beyond, and this newspaper, as well as important projects like Setting the Record Straight and the RC4 tour.
We face a rare moment. In the words of Shakespeare:
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
Seize the tide, and seize the time!
“Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions breaks down before their collpse in practice.”
Karl Marx, 1868