"Eppur si muove" is what Gallileo muttered under his breath when the Inquisition forced him to declare that the world was at the centre of the universe and immovable -- "It's moving, regardless".
And regardless of what today's Inquisitors -- governments, big media, schools -- want us to sign up to, history is still moving. The present social and economic system is as useless for humanity as the Catholic Church and its astronomy were back around 1600. Despite the collapse of the USSR and its handing over to the imperialist system by the bureaucrats who ran it, capitalism offers no better life for the people there or anywhere else in the world. If it did, Russia and the other ex-Soviet-bloc countries wouldn't be in the desperate mess they are today. History is moving -- the great changes emerging from the wars, crises and revolutions of the early 20th century are still working themselves out. In this blog, I want to look at some of these changes and how they are working out.
We are in the middle of a prolonged war to establish a better system of running society and using the creative, productive potential of humanity for the benefit of all people. It's a world war on a greater scale than either WW1 or WW2, but it's an invisible war for most people, because almost nobody fighting it calls it by its proper name. It's a struggle for power between the current holders of power, the imperialist bourgeoisie, representing big capital interests -- the banks, insurance giants, investment groups, the owners of manufacturing and technology -- and the international working class, representing the people who actually produce the things and ideas that keep the world turning.
The leaders of the imperialist bourgeoisie are easily recognized -- the political leaders run the great imperial states, with the United States at their head, and the actual decision-makers own the biggest concentrations of capital. They decide what the system needs, and the political leaders do all they can to satisfy their needs.
But they don't have it all their own way. The working class resists. But it rarely resists directly through its official leadership -- the big labour parties or the big unions. Not even through the Soviet bureaucracy when the USSR existed as a non-capitalist state! Indirectly, through unofficial and half-understood struggles, ordinary men and women refuse to be slaves. And they smoulder with resentment under the capitalist system of wage-slavery that they can't avoid and would dearly love to throw off their backs if they only knew how.
The nature of this class war was clearly stated by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto of the Communist Party in 1848. Its first chapter opens with the words: "The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles."
The secret of the indirect war and the national slant that warps our perception of everything is also clearly stated there: "Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie."
The proletariat -- which owns nothing but its labour power, its capacity to perform work for others, which is bought by the hour by the capitalists -- is confronted in reality by the police and military of whatever nation state it finds itself confined to. Or some other nation state that steps in if the local oppressors aren't successful enough at their slave-driving.
Mao Tse-Tung wrote that imperialism is a paper tiger. This is an over-simplification. It's more like a strange hybrid beast with borrowed sinews and bones. By itself, it's a lump of dead meat. When it is able to wrap itself on a skeleton and send signals to move its limbs, it becomes a voracious killer of juggernaut proportions. But the bones and sinews aren't its own. They are rented. They are the weapons and troops used to attack the enemies of imperialism. And they are made by, and provided by the proletariat.
So when the proletariat of any nation settles matters with its own bourgeoisie in a revolution, one of the most striking elements is always the taking back of the bones and sinews of power. The masses seize the weapons they have made, and the troops recruited from the more despairing ranks of the proletariat refuse to fight. Once this happens, the monster collapses in a heap. The body of a new society can rise from the mess with its bones, muscles and brain where they should be, take stock, and start working to satisfy its own real needs.
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The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
