The lawful workings of capitalism have produced the tens of millions of workers in the United States--and billions worldwide--who labor in the mines, factories, transportation systems, and fields owned by the superwealthy families that control society. They have tremendous potential economic and social power, and their concentration in large cities and industrial complexes lends their struggles a tendency toward mutual reinforcement, solidarity, and emulation.

The wealthy owners of finance and industrial capital in the United States, backed by their massive military might and the almighty dollar, sit on top of the pecking order of imperialist powers. They not only exploit and oppress working people at home, but keep the Third World in a permanent state of underdevelopment and social crisis. Conflicts between the ruling classes in Germany, France, Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy, and the United States, come more and more to the fore today, as each fights to slow down their relative decline, one against the other. But there is no one in line to replace the domination of U.S. imperialism's economic, military, and political power.

For the U.S. ruling class, the drive to reverse the fortunes of their declining system starts at home; their foreign policy is simply an extension of that assault to workers and farmers the world over. As they press to squeeze more profit out of workers and farmers in the United States, they must also restrict rights that give room for working people to organize, fight, and resist.

The fact that the logic of the last empire on the face of the earth is moving toward imposing military garrisons in country after country, a military government and fascism at home, and war against its imperialist rivals can be more easily discerned today by working people. This is the only road toward the "stability" and "peace" Washington needs as the basis for opening a new period of capitalist expansion. It gives a truthfulness to the trend in Washington to call the U.S. military regional commanders "proconsuls"--the name given to military commanders in Rome, which imposed its garrisons in a fruitless attempt to halt the decay of its empire.

Working people will be increasingly propelled onto a road of revolutionary struggle as the brutalities and assaults that more and more mark the declining and weakening system of the domination of finance capital become intolerable. As with the first socialist revolution in Russia, war, economic decline, and repression at home will, over time, combine to leave working people no choice but to use their enormous potential economic and social power in a battle to replace the government that represents the interests of a tiny minority of superwealthy families with one of workers and farmers.

The challenge before workers and students, as discussed by the young socialists, is to construct a proletarian leadership within the struggles, protests, strikes, and upsurges of working people. We encourage all our readers to consider becoming a part of this struggle for the future of humanity, both by reading and studying books such as Cuba and the Coming American Revolution, and by joining with the Young Socialists and the Socialist Workers Party in the campaigns and struggles described at the YS Weekend.
 
 
Related article:
Young Socialists: revolution is needed  
 
 
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