The first conclusion is not necessarily obvious on the surface of events. Washington has brought enormous military power to bear on a country halfway around the world, overthrown the government, and cobbled together a new regime. It has extended its military foothold in Central Asia, demonstrating its dominance in relation to its rival imperialist powers. At home, the U.S. rulers are pushing through the biggest militarization of the country in decades, not only building on the "accomplishments" of the Clinton administration, but taking new steps such as the authorization of use of military tribunals against noncitizens. While the Bush-Ashcroft-Rumsfeld trio reached too far in some of their domestic measures, their unrelenting drive is a clear indication of the lines along which the government will continue to probe the further militarization of civil and political life.

The need to build, maintain, and more and more use the U.S. military forces against people in country after country is the sign of the decline of the dominant imperialist power and the system of exploitation and domination of finance capital as a whole. From Argentina to Algeria, from Indonesia to Turkey, capitalism is unable to offer any path to economic and social development. Instead, a crushing debt burden, rising unemployment, erosion of basic infrastructure, and growing hunger and disease is what working people confront on a daily basis.

And Washington needs to rely on its military might not only against the semicolonial countries, but as a major weapon to keep its advantage against the German, French, and Japanese imperialist powers as well.

The imperialist assault on Afghanistan is a good example of what workers and farmers will face again and again in the years to come, as Washington tries by military force to hold together what they can no longer keep in place with a rising world capitalist economy.

In their assault at home, the U.S. rulers seek to chip away at democratic rights, such as freedom of speech and assembly, prohibitions on unreasonable search and seizure, and other liberties. But in a militarization drive and in wartime, workers' rights are the special target of the employers and their government. Patriotic pressures do not come down equally on all classes.

Bosses aren't asked to call off a strike against concession demands because a war is under way. Instead, they find ways to profit off the patriotic war fever through government handouts and price-gouging. Wealthy Democrats and Republicans don't have to worry about being fired from their job for stating their views: they have rarely worked a day in their lives for a boss at all. Middle and upper class people don't get their homes invaded or have cops find problems with their legal papers and visas, subjecting them to indefinite detention and deportation. Capitalists charter their own jets and fancy cars, bypassing harassment and searches at airports and street searches by cops.

In Israel, the events of this past week demonstrate that the Israeli rulers have no answer to the fury of the Palestinian people who continue to be denied self-determination and a homeland. Neither Jerusalem nor Washington have a plan or any idea about how to resolve the situation in their favor. The bombings by Israeli military forces--while devastating to the Palestinians time and again--get weaker results and accomplish less. The unending war is not popular among wide sections of the Israeli population who would like to see a solution to the continued conflict. The Israeli rulers know they were unable to control the dispossessed Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and that Palestinian Authority president Yasir Arafat is even less able to do so. The Palestinian people are not under anyone's control and continue their historic fight.

Time is running out on the Israel project, which has been based upon the idea that somehow the Palestinians could be expelled and a stable, garrison state aimed at the Arab masses could exist, grow, and prosper. The Zionist dream is becoming a nightmare, and the deathtrap of the Israeli state is opening up for the Jewish people who live there.

The Palestinian people are showing that fighting is a necessity. Otherwise the capitalist and imperialist exploiters will slaughter them. Millions of workers, farmers, and peasants around the world are drawing similar conclusions and entering a road of struggle, one that doesn't result in an immediate revolutionary victory, but opens up possibilities for other fights, broadening solidarity, and gaining political experience. It is out of these struggles, collaboration, and experience, which bring greater self-confidence and a desire to reach out to others who also stand up and fight, that a leadership of working people can be forged and tested.

"The important thing is that without taking on the working class and our organizations in gigantic battles that we will have the opportunity to win," Jack Barnes writes in Capitalism's World Disorder, "the exploiters cannot use their enormous military might to unleash a third imperialist world slaughter. A point is always reached where working people can be conned no longer and struggles begin to mount. And with revolutionary leadership, forged and tested in coming struggles, the international working class has the numbers, social power, the culture, the values, and the program to defeat the reactionary forces loosed by finance capital. We can organize victorious revolutions and open the construction of socialism on a world scale."  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home