Vol. 72/No. 19      May 12, 2008

BY JAMES P. CANNON  
Our subject tonight, “The Coming Struggle for Power,” refers to the showdown struggle between the workers and the capitalists to decide who shall be master in the American house. Is it looking too far ahead to put this question up for discussion now? I don’t think so.

I know that many people can’t see this coming struggle for power in our land, because immediate indications are not observable to them. They see what’s happened in the rest of the world, but imagine that America has some special immunity. They are profoundly mistaken. The workers’ revolution is on the historical agenda in the United States, and not too far down on the agenda at that.

Everybody knows that the rest of the world is badly shaken up. Hardly a week goes by but a new country swims into the headlines with the announcement of a new crisis, or a revolution, or something of that sort. For the past couple of weeks the Allied world has been agonizing with France, over the crisis in the French cabinet. If my recollection is correct, that particular crisis was solved the other day, if it hasn’t broken loose again since the evening papers went to press.

We take it for granted that the whole world is in crisis and upheaval; the evidence is there for all to see. But here in the United States, in this land especially favored by superior virtues, by luck, or as some may say, by Providence, we are reminded that nothing of the kind is happening. That’s true. It is also said that it can’t happen here. That’s not so true.

On the surface everything looks good for the ruling monopolists. In contrast to all the rest of the world, social relations in the United States alone appear to be stable. There’s no crisis. No real upsurge in the class struggle. Not even serious strikes. The recent elections gave convincing proof of this social stability at the moment. There was no challenge to the rule of the bourgeoisie in the last election. In fact, big capital felt so sure of itself that it could dispense with the Democratic-labor coalition which had governed America—for the benefit of big capital—for the past twenty years. The monopolists felt such firm ground beneath their feet in this country—not in the rest of the world, but here—that they could dispense with the political regime of twenty years, the regime which in part had leaned on the support and cooperation of the organized labor movement. They stepped forward to rule directly in their own name. That was the meaning of the Eisenhower victory… .

It is utterly utopian, in my opinion, to expect that the present stability in one country alone can endure. The very narrow class base of the Eisenhower regime will make it more vulnerable, deprive it of cushions and shock supports, such as the Roosevelt and Truman administrations had in their alliance with the labor bureaucracy and its consequent support of the official policy.

A social crisis in this country is certain. As a matter of fact, a social crisis, as I view it, is already in the making. The unsolved crisis of the thirties, only artificially suppressed by the device of war and armaments expenditures of many hundreds of billions of dollars; the whole world situation—all things conspire together to generate a social crisis capable of exploding far sooner than the wise men dream.  
 
 
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