Abolitionist Class Fights for Democracy,
Threatens Private Property
Only a few months ago it appeared that the big mouths of private property were going to sweep the November 2022 midterm elections. As the elections approach, those big mouths have gotten smaller and quieter. The Kansas primary result in August was democracy’s answer to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. The court’s ruling failed to demoralize the people’s movement against fascism. Instead, the movement is re-energized. As the article “We Demand a New Birth of Freedom” declares: “The fight for democracy and for our basic needs calls for both electoral campaigns and any and every form of mass disobedience imaginable to stop the dictatorship.” We still hear Dr. King telling us: “How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever. How long? Not long, because you shall reap what you sow. How long? Not long.” Democracy is the abolition of fascism.
Private property is the legal and political framework of capitalist society and the seedbed of fascism. Historically, abolitionism has its revolutionary roots in ending U.S. slavery that built global capitalism. Today, our class requires the abolition of the police State and the private property of a corporate class that the State is organized to protect. It cannot satisfy its needs within capitalism. It must abolish all forms of social oppression. It must abolish private property. The growing unity of an abolitionist working class frightens the ruling class. The rulers respond by trying to pit workers against each other and relying more on police terror to control society. But the powers who represent private property cannot solve the endless new problems threatening the future of capitalism. Revolutionaries use this understanding as their guide to action. Revolutionaries understand that the displaced workers emerging from capitalism’s own digital economy are the very ones able to lead the fight to transform society for everyone. The League of Revolutionaries for a New America’s strategic focus is on the political unity of the new class. To abolish fascism is to break the chains of capitalism.
“Whose kids? Our kids!” The sound of that chant continues to be heard across the land as public education comes under fascist attack. Our article shows that there has never been a more momentous time to redefine public education than now. Yet there has never been a more important historical moment for young people to fight for a society that includes their leadership. Children have a right to learn the truth about U.S. history and to learn critical thinking skills. They have a right to multi-cultural literature and art, to play, to explore, to use their imaginations and expand their horizons. Further, today’s generation of young leaders envision a future when “strong, healthy, clear-thinking people rise in common to address the merging crises that today threaten humanity and the planet.” Fascism is about abolishing public education. Young revolutionaries are about abolishing fascism.
“Repression Against the Homeless Is an Attack on All” states that a full-time worker would have to make more than $20 an hour to afford a one-bedroom apartment while the federal minimum wage has been stuck at a ridiculous $7.25 an hour since July 2009. Many homeless people work one or two jobs, with little prospect of ever escaping homelessness. Meanwhile, governments redirect funding for housing and social services to – who else? – the police. That is because in the United States today, the billionaire rulers comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. It is no wonder that in times like these come abolitionists like the Moms 4 Housing movement in Oakland, California. With support from the community, that group took over and housed a family in a foreclosed property owned by one of the country’s largest real-estate speculators. And then one of those moms ran for a seat on the City Council and won. She has placed a ballot measure authorizing Oakland to build 13,000 units of housing for low-income people. More broadly, whether we are housed or unhoused, employed or unemployed, housing for all regardless of ability to pay is what will abolish fascism.
The article “From the Editors” reports the United Nations International Immigration Program has called Latin American migration the world’s deadliest and that 3,745 deaths have been recorded since 2014 along the southern U.S. border. That is the highest death rate along any single border in the world. What is more, in 2021 the United States government set an all-time high of 122,000 children taken into custody without their parents, according to the human rights organization Vera. As our country observes Hispanic Heritage Month we also mourn the 53 migrant workers who died last June in the back of a semitrailer truck. The bloody southern border is the tragedy of our class, in which workers are displaced by a rapidly changing economy maintained by increasingly fascist control. Capitalism’s international borders do not protect people; they protect private capitalist property. Abolition of that property is the vision of one world and one humanity sharing peace, unity and abundance.
September/October 2022 vol.32. Ed5
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