It is time to make the world over!
The Occupy movement represents something radically new in the history of politics in the United States. For the first time a mass movement gives voice to the tens of millions of people who now question or outright reject the whole socio/political/economic system known as Capitalism. It makes no demands on a political system that can no longer respond even to demands for limited reforms, let alone the need for fundamental restructuring.
Extreme inequality, growing poverty and unemployment, massive financial fraud, theft and dislocation, environmental breakdown, militarism and spreading war, political extremism, racism etc, etc are symptoms of the capitalist system in crisis.
Capitalism is a system in which the production of the means of life is driven by the search for profit. When the owners of capital cannot generate profit from their capital, they will neither invest in new production nor allow existing facilities to produce. This is the situation that we face today. The scale of capital circulating in the world economy is so large that it overwhelms the limited the opportunities to 'earn' profits. In the past such crises were resolved temporarily by the introduction of new revolutionary technologies that rendered existing productive capacities obsolete or by war that destroyed capital (factories, plant and machinery, infrastructure, means of production and distribution) and populations on an enormous scale. Today technological innovations succeed each other too rapidly to provide even a short term profit fix and war today on a large enough scale to have an economic impact would likely also render the planet uninhabitable.
The Occupy movement and the millions who support it face urgent questions. First is how to wrest power from Capital and destroy the profit system that has immiserated and destroyed hundreds of millions of lives. Secondly, how will society be organized when the profit system is negated? Communists have been addressing these question on both a theoretical and practical level for more than a hundred and fifty years. Based on this experience we are convinced that it is possible to create a Communist system in which every inhabitant of the planet could enjoy a dignified and comfortable life – a system in which each person contributes what he or she can to the community and takes what he or she needs without monetary exchange. We do not have all the answers by any means. The millions who support and who are part of the Occupy movement will have to step up and conceive and create that system. It will be an exciting and challenging transition, but we know it can be done. There is no time to lose.
Worker of all countries, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chains!
We have a world to win… And our world can’t wait!
East Bay club of the Communist Party, USA
Contact: CPUSA2011-EBC@yahoo.com
We
invite you to participate in the discussion planned for Saturday,
Nov. 5. See the leaflet on the back.