"Bringing down the final empire"

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(With the Bush administration busy preparing
supporters and the world for an invasion of
Iraq, opposition has been expressed through
a series of increasingly large mobilizations in
the United States as well as Western Europe.

(The Militant, weekly newspaper of the Socialist
Workers Party, often publishes informative
material about Cuba. Until recently, it was an
advocate of public protest demonstrations
against imperialist wars.

(No longer, apparently.

(The Militant does not report the October 26th
protests being held in Washington, DC and
San Francisco, California. It has not reported
the other recent demonstrations held in the
UK (400,000) or Italy (1 million).

(The Militant explains to its readership that:
"In distinction to many radical currents today,
communist workers [referring to its members
and supporters] are not "antiwar" advocates".

(The Militant means what it tells its readers.
It counterposes struggling against this war
which is now occurring, to an abstraction:
"Bringing down the final empire".

(It's as if there were no connection, link or bridge,
between today's struggles and the very final one.
Such thinking is more appropriate to groups like
the Socialist Labor Party or Spartacist League,
which make non-participation a political virtue.

(This is a change from the past when the SWP
did report such demonstrations. For example:
http://www.themilitant.com/1999/631/631_1.html
        or:
http://www.themilitant.com/1996/6033/6033_21.html
        or
when the SWP called for such protests to be built:
http://www.themilitant.com/1998/625/625_1.html
===================================

THE MILITANT
Vol.66/No.40           October 28, 2002

Bringing down the final empire
(editorial)

Cuba's victory at Playa Girón registered the first
great defeat of U.S. imperialism in the Americas.
It will not be the last. That will occur right here.
        --Jack Barnes, from Cuba and
           the Coming American Revolution

This statement, referring to how Cuban working people in
1961 defeated a U.S.-organized mercenary invasion of
revolutionary Cuba, is the heart of what socialist workers
and young socialists are campaigning for today.

As Washington moves toward a massive bombing assault and
ground invasion of Iraq, it's important to see the broader
picture. The aim of the U.S. rulers is not simply to crush
Iraq and impose a U.S.-dominated protectorate there, but to
redivide the oil and other resources of the Middle East and
around the world.

This is not because of the particular intentions of the
current occupants of the White House and Congressional
seats. The problem is the system itself--imperialism, a
system built on the exploitation of workers and farmers at
home and the subjugation of oppressed peoples throughout
the world. The billionaire families who rule the United
States and other imperialist nations are driven to conquer
more markets, wealth, and sources of cheap labor around
the world for the survival of their system. They confront
each other in increasingly violent competition for these
sources of wealth. This is why the war on Iraq is one
of a series of imperialist wars that will continue to unfold
for an extended period.

What fuels this drive to war is the long-term decline of the
capitalist system, which has now accelerated, as seen in the
bursting of the giant speculative bubble of the 1990s, the
onset of a depression in the United States and the world,
and the threat of a massive financial collapse.

The wars abroad are simply an extension of the U.S. rulers'
assaults on the wages, social gains, and rights of workers
and farmers at home. A graphic illustration of this is how
the White House has intervened in the West Coast dock-
workers struggle, using the argument of "national security"
to invoke the antilabor Taft-Hartley Act. But the U.S.
rulers are also preparing for the working-class resistance
their assault will generate. That is why the Clinton
administration set up--and the Bush administration just
activated--the North American Command, designed to carry
out military operations inside the United States for the
first time in more than a century. Its target is working
people right here at home.

Any defeat of the U.S. imperialist rulers strengthens
working people everywhere. In distinction to many radical
currents today, communist workers are not "antiwar"
advocates, or even simply "internationalists," but
proletarian internationalists who favor the defeat of
imperialism, including in its war on Iraq and the
peoples of the Mideast.

This drive toward war and the spiraling world depression
are signs of an imperialist system that is acting out of
weakness, not strength. Understanding this fact weighs in
the balance for workers who, by refusing to subordinate
their struggles to the bosses' demand for sacrifice in the
"national interest," are also the biggest obstacle to the
imperialists' war aims abroad.

A socialist revolution in the United States is not only
necessary but inevitable, because of the very functioning of
capitalism and the conditions and class conflicts it
generates. What is not inevitable is whether that revolution
will succeed--that will depend on whether workers and
farmers have forged a movement that can lead millions to
take power out of the hands of the capitalist rulers.
That is what the Socialist Workers campaigners are
about--building the revolutionary movement that can
bring down the world's final empire.




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