Refuse to be Penned in By U.S. Imperialism
From Voice of Revoltuion - US Marxist leninist Organisation - October 17th 2011
On October 1, police led demonstrators onto the traffic lane of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. Then when the hundreds of protesters were only part way across, the police blocked both ends of the bridge and penned them in. Protesters were forced to stay on the bridge and then were shipped out to police stations across the city. More than 700 people were arrested by this police entrapment.
Since that time, the on-going demonstrations, known as Occupy Wall Street, have received almost daily coverage in the monopoly media. President Barack Obama, in response to a press question about the protests said he thinks “It expresses the frustrations the American people feel” that “the same folks who acted irresponsibly [are] trying to fight efforts to crack down on abusive practices that got us into this problem in the first place. So yes, I think people are frustrated and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.”
It can be said that the entrapment by police of protesters and efforts to entangle them in the legal system are symbolic of efforts by the U.S. rulers, and Obama as their current champion, to do the same to the working class. To pen it up in public spaces and limit its struggles to those imposed by the rulers and reacting to their brutal anti-social, anti-worker cuts and police attacks. It is to block the working class from striking out on its own independent path, with its own thinking and genuine alternative to the current system – with its economic crises, imperialist wars and threats of fascism and world war. The fight by the working class for a new direction for the economy is to be blocked and silenced. The fight for a human-centered society where the rights of all at home and abroad are put at the center is to be blocked and silenced.
One form this silencing takes is the broad promotion that the “solution” to the current crisis is restoring “balance” or “fairness” to the existing set up, using taxes or similar instruments of the government. As Obama put it, “We’ve got to make sure that everyone in this country gets a fair shake, and a fair shot, and a chance to get ahead.” This is the limit, the corral, the rulers want to impose, of “restoring fairness” in a situation ripe for a new direction, a new content — not for a “chance to get ahead” but for a human centered society where the constitution enshrines the rights of all and they are guaranteed in law. Today, all past arrangements that provided the bourgeoisie’s definition of civil rights with a guarantee and based labor relations on bourgeois notions of fairness are finished. The more unequal the system divided between rich and poor is revealed to be, the more the promotion of fairness as the guiding principle to sort out relations between competing interests rings hollow.
Bringing human-centered social consciousness and politics into the center of the political and economic life of the country is necessary and is the task of the working class. This requires refusing to be penned in by U.S. imperialism and its “solutions” and consciously rejecting the imposition of agendas whose aim is said to be to “pressure” those in power. This negates the historical need to set one’s own agenda by analyzing how to defend rights and organize to be the decision makers.
It is also the case that the concentration of economic wealth in fewer hands, which is indeed broadly opposed by people across the country, is being accompanied by the concentration of political power in the hands of the executive, the Office of the President. We are witnessing the disarray and disintegration of the two parties of the rich, their inability to function within the old arrangements. Discrediting and limiting of the power of Congress and promotion of the president as the force able to “get things done” is taking place. The “debt deal appointed a Super Committee for budget matters, which likely will remove these matters from Congress. Elections, and funding of them, are directed much more to the backing of individual candidates, not parties.
Within this, Obama is developing machinery for people to support him as president, against Congress. This includes the newly established “We the People” site at the White House website, where anyone can “petition” the president and call for action on issues of concern, like the environment, economy, education and so forth. It is a “direct line” to the president. In attempting to get his jobs bill passed, Obama has gone not to Congress, but across the country appealing to people to “agree with me” and tell Congress to “pass this bill right away.” These actions reflect institutionalizing arrangements for far greater concentration of power in the executive while directing the working class into the corral of supporting the president against a Congress that “refuses to act.”
It is within this context that Obama expresses his sympathy for the protesters and says they “are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works.” For Obama, the opposition to corporate greed and influence being expressed by protesters can be utilized as a mandate for his program for jobs, taxes, and so forth. As he says, it is an expression of “broad-based frustration” with Congress and “folks [on Wall Street] who acted irresponsibly” and their “abusive practices.” He supports protests “giving voice” to frustration, indeed he hears the “voice” and will be the one to act on it.
In this manner, the necessity for new political arrangements that favor the working class, that empower the people themselves to govern and decide is removed from the thinking and discourse. The voice of the working class for a new direction for the economy and for new political arrangements where the people themselves have power is silenced. Consistent with this, since the demonstration October 1, there has been almost daily media coverage of “Occupy Wal Street.” Organizations known to be main backers of Obama, like MoveOn.org, Rebuild the American Dream, and others are joining nationwide efforts, including a “virtual march” that coincided with the NYC march on Wednesday, October 5, where unions also joined in support. It is notable that the media, forces like MoveOn and various union presidents that participate in the Obama administration and campaigns, are all promoting the protest when normally protests face a wall of silence. Indeed, there is just such a wall against the courageous hunger strike by prisoners now occurring in California, involving more than 12,000 prisoners defending their rights and opposing solitary confinement and torture. There is little being said and certainly not similar support for the struggle of longshore workers in Longview, Washington, defending their rights against brutal police repression. The promotion of the New York protest is not accidental, any more than police leading protesters onto the bridge was an accident. There should not be illusions as to the ability of Obama and the monopoly media to manipulate the situation in their favor.
The task facing the working class together with the youth is to refuse to be penned in by the rulers and their false solutions. It is to elaborate and organize for a new direction by taking up the defense of rights in a manner that organizes the working class to be effective and to exercise control over its affairs.
The working class of the United States must deal with the elimination of rule of law and institutionalizing of the lawless violence and “might makes right” dictate of U.S. Empire all over the world, over which President Obama is presiding. He has now authorized the targeted assassinations of U.S. citizens abroad, as took place in Yemen. This reverses a long-held expectation that the president alone cannot and would not authorize assassinations of U.S. citizens. It reflects the increase in state violence, extending FBI assassinations, like those against African American and Puerto Rican leaders, to anyone the president brands as a “threat,” and orders executed. It is being accompanied by the greatly increased use of torture and solitary confinement against prisoners inside the country and criminalizing of resistance by the youth and workers.
Drone assassinations and massacres, open use of CIA and Special Forces wherever the U.S. decides, military intervention in the name of regime change, torture and indefinite detention, are all examples of how this lawless violence is escalating to keep the rivals to the U.S. striving for world domination in check. The brutal U.S.-led invasion of Libya and Obama’s demand now that the U.S. “must insist on unrestricted humanitarian access,” anywhere in the world, is further indication of the reactionary and fascist direction of U.S. imperialism with which the U.S. working class must settle scores if it is to make headway in its own struggle for rights and empowerment within the United States.
