People Rely on Themselves, Not the State, to Bring About Change That Favours Them
- Voice of Revolution -
Longshore workers organize massive rally and march in Oakland,
California to mark Juneteenth, and similar actions were organized by
workers at other ports around the U.S.
People in their millions across the country are
demanding that the broken liberal institutions of governance be
replaced with modern institutions which are in accord with the needs of
the times. To contend with this growing resistance, one aspect of the
rulers' disinformation campaign in the United States is that the only
role for "the people" is to appeal to the state, and its governments in
place at any particular time, to bring about the changes the polity
requires. People are to limit their battles to pressuring those in
power to do what is right and just. However, the culture of resistance
evident in the U.S., present and past, actually reveals the opposite:
it was the enslaved people themselves who were the heart of winning
their liberation at the time of the U.S. Civil War, fighting alongside
working people south and north to eliminate the slave power and for
their right to participate in the political life of the country.
The movement today, with African American workers
and youth and working people from all walks of life playing a main
role, is also not satisfied with reforming the old order. It is
demanding fundamental changes and beginning to define what they are.
Many actions are being taken in communities across the U.S. to inform
and mobilize people to give expression to the changes people want. The
people are relying on their own organized forces to bring about changes
that favour them.
 So too Indigenous
peoples continue to defend their lands and fight for the recognition of
their rights. Trump chose to speak at Mount Rushmore, which sits on
unceded Sioux land. Wounded Knee, site of a U.S. massacre of hundreds
of children, women and men in 1890, is only about 75 miles away. It is
also the site of repeated FBI-organized raids against Native Americans
demanding that their rights be upheld in the 1970s, including the
killing of dozens of people. Organizer Leonard Peltier was framed for
murder during a 1975 raid. He remains today one of the longest serving
political prisoners in U.S. jails. Peltier was deported from Canada
despite evidence that he was being framed under the hoax that the U.S.
demand for his extradition met the requirements of the Canada-U.S.
extradition treaty. The U.S. state refuses to release Peltier because
he will not renounce the struggle of Indigenous peoples and continues
to join in organizing efforts.[1]
The more recent struggle of the water protectors
at Standing Rock, joined by people from across the country and even the
world, is yet another example of the determined and undaunted quality
of the resistance of the Indigenous peoples in the United States and
the demand for the recognition of their rights, as defined by them, not
the genocidal U.S. state.
For New Relations and a Modern Democracy
The conceptions promoted by the rulers that the
state determines society and the constitution determines democracy and
the democratic institutions and that these are the best in the world
and eternal are promoted to hide the ensemble of social relations
between humans and humans and humans and nature. They hide what these
relations reveal which is the need for people's empowerment in order to
open society's path to progress.
 It is society,
with its ensemble of human relations between humans and humans and
humans and nature, that provides the basis for the state, not the other
way around. The claim is made that the state is separate from and
external to, what goes on in our lives. In fact, the rulers established
a state which comes out on top of everyone's life and enters every
aspect of life, as is abundantly clear today. Nonetheless, on the basis
of the self-serving conception of the neutral, external, perfectly
conceived state, the human relations existing in society are ignored.
People are instead supposed to look to the state, its governments and
institutions and the Constitution as the source of change.
What needs to be looked at is the direct relation
people have to producing their way of life, their relations with nature
and with all humans. These relations are revealing that the existing
relations of power that keep the people out of decision-making must
change.
The outcome of the current battles will depend on
how far the people see and grasp this necessity for change, the
necessity to bring about the deep-going transformations demanded by
history. Trump, the elections, the disinformation that the state
determines the citizen and the rights of citizenship, are designed to
block even looking at this necessity for political power and for
fighting for decision-making in the here and now. It is up to the
people to determine what is needed, in both content and form, to
provide equal membership in the body politic. Membership by virtue of
being in that body politic is sufficient to be a citizen, to be that
person who enjoys equal rights and duties in that body politic.
The necessity for change means that the people
must arm themselves with their own way of looking at the world and all
its human relations, their own outlook, politics and institutions. Only
in this way can they see and bring into being a bright future for
themselves as an integral part of humanity itself.
Voice of Revolution is a publication of the U.S. Marxist-Leninist
Organization.
Note
1.
Peltier has been part of current protests as have other political
prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose presence in the current movement
sweeping the United States is felt in myriad ways. Abu-Jamal is a
journalist and political activist framed in 1982 for the killing of a
police officer in Philadelphia. He was convicted for murder, sentenced
to death and after concerted struggle, condemned to life in prison.
Many people, especially women, in Trump's detention camps have also
expressed their support and demands through hunger strikes and other
means.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 26 - July 18, 2020
Article Link:
People Rely on Themselves, Not the State, to Bring About Change That Favours Them - Voice of Revolution
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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