The Task Ahead of Us! | |
|---|---|
| Author | Carlos Garrido |
| First published | 2022-06-05 |
| Type | Speech |
| Source | YouTube |
Greetings friends and comrades!
Today we find ourselves amidst a world where a billion people go hungry every day, where half of the world (3.5 billion people) live in poverty, where nearly 200 million are homeless and where climate catastrophe is assured within a few decades.
All the while, there is more than enough food to feed the hungry, more than enough homes to house the homeless, more than enough wealth to abolish poverty and more than enough technological ingenuity to rationally plan for a sustainable equilibrium between human production and nature.
The sources of these problems as well as the obstacles preventing their fixing do not stem from a lack of resources or technology.
The source of all of these problems is the capitalist-imperialist system which dominates the world today.
The system has for its aim the controlling of markets, labor power and resources for the sake of endless accumulation of capital in the hands of a few western monopolies.
It is this world system which keeps the working masses of the world poor and a small minority unimaginably rich. It is this world system which guarantees constant wars, constant death and mutilations of working people to expand its global spheres of influence and access to resources and cheap labor to exploit.
As socialists and communists living within the heart of the imperial hegemon, it must be crystal clear that our main goal should be the overcoming of this imperialist world order this is a goal which can only be achieved when the class conscious and organized mass of working people grab a hold of state power and make the economy, the state and its social institutions function not for the sake of profit but for the sake of meeting human needs; creating conditions for human flourishing and establishing win-win relations between nations predicated on mutual people-oriented sustainable development.
There is a fable from an old greek sage named Aesop of a lion in three bulls:
The lion often crawled around a pasture where three bulls grazed together he had tried without success to lure one or the other into the edge of the pasture. He even attempted a direct attack only to find them form a ring so that wherever he attacked from he was met by the horns of at least one of them.
Then a plan began to form in the lion's mind: secretly he started spreading evil and slanderous reports of one bull to the other. The three bulls distrustingly began to avoid one another and each withdrew to a different part of the pasture to graze this was exactly what the lion wanted one by one they fell upon he fell upon the bulls and so made very easy prey of them all
Knowing very well the history of the u.s state department's involvement in socialist and communist organizations through programs like COINTELPRO today we act as if these ugly imperialist tactics are a thing of the past
like the bulls we allow capitalism to use twitter drama and secondary issues to divide us. we allow the two percent of difference we have with one another to dominate the 98 percent we have in common. we allow in essence ourselves to be the divided prey of imperialism
the imperialist world order creates by the very nature of its growth constant cycles of crisis. these crises perpetuate conditions of wretchedness and desperation for the mass of people both within and outside the imperial hegemon
the imperialist world order in essence constantly reproduces objective conditions for revolution but objectively revolutionary conditions are futile without the subjective conditions
without the masses' organizations along class conscious revolutionary lines
insofar as the imperialists keep those with socialist consciousness bickering amongst each other promoting inter and intra-party sectarianism, the subjective conditions for revolution will never arise
on the verge of a nuclear and climate crisis unlike what humanity has ever seen before today the slogan socialism or barbarism acquires an intense sense of immediacy
The test ahead of us is not who can recite Marx, Engels or Lenin best to prove a point on a secondary issue.
[Rather,] the test ahead of us asks: "who has the political and personal maturity to unite for the common cause of an anti-imperialist and socialist struggle?"
"Who can work together in a united front with all those who agree that the capitalist imperialist system must be overthrown and that the working masses are the agent which when organized in a revolutionary manner can bring the dagger down on this life-devouring world order?"
All egos must be placed aside as militants we are historical agents whose sole purpose is to bring the working masses to power and emancipate humanity from the evils of capitalist wars, exploitation, oppression and environmental degradation.
A better world is possible.
But it is we who must fight for it. Together.