 mass party of labor are already being laid.
For decades, we have been brainwashed. We've been told that the free market reigns supreme, that socialism and Marxism don't work, that capitalism is the best possible system, that there is no alternative. And if a lie repeated often enough, people tend to believe it. But nonetheless, these ideas persist and continue to spark people's imagination.
So what is socialism, anyway? By socialism we mean the genuine nationalization - the expropriation of the top 500 banks and corporations - to be run under democratic workers' control, in the interest of the whole of society. It's really not that complicated. We believe the working class majority should have democratic control over the means of production, distribution and exchange, in harmony with the environment. In other words, we need a rational and democratic plan of production that is geared toward meeting human needs, not private profits.
But you cannot plan what you do not control, and you cannot control what you do not own. This is why the state should need to take over the key levers of the economy. Now, this is where many people, Americans in particular, get nervous. They don't trust the government we live under, and are therefore justifiably suspicious of anything having to do with increased state control. So the real question is: who controls the state? In our opinion, we need a workers' state, a state that represents the vast majority of society, the working class, as opposed to the state we live under today, which is a state designed to defend the interests of a tiny minority, the capitalist class.
Many people say that Americans are too conservative for a socialist revolution to take place here. But things can change very quickly. Just think of all the big events that have taken place in the last few years. The collapse of Enron. September 11. The 2000 and 2004 electoral frauds. Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. The collapse of the entire financial services sector in the richest country on earth. The election of a Black president.
In fact, it is precisely because people are conservative that there will be a revolutionary movement right here in the belly of the beast. People want stability: they want a steady job with decent benefits, they want quality health care and education, a safe place to live and time to spend with their families and loved ones. But capitalism can no longer provide even these basics to humanity.
We live in an epoch of sharp and sudden changes, a period of massive shifts in consciousness on the basis of earth shaking events. This is not normally the case. Normally, years and even decades can go by and it seems as though nothing changes. But these are not normal times. But the fact is, absolutely nothing is static - everything changes. Absolutely everything is in a constant state of movement and change. From volcanoes and earthquakes to relations between nations and human consciousness.
Many are euphoric about Obama's victory, and there will be a certain honeymoon. Some measure of hope has been restored to a beleaguered public - at least for now. Even the markets were happy with exit poll data giving the election to Obama. The Dow Jones jumped over 300 points on election day, typically a slow day on Wall Street. But sooner rather than later, the elation will wear off and the cold reality will set in: nothing fundamental has changed. We are still living under capitalism, with everything that entails: unemployment, home foreclosures, rising prices, racism, millions of second-class citizens and workers, low wages, deteriorating conditions, rotting infrastructure, and so on.
There are already symptoms of the simmering discontent exploding to the surface, for example, the mass mobilizations of immigrant workers, the growing mood of discontent among many rank and file trade unionists, or the spontaneous demonstrations against the bail out on Wall Street. This is just the beginning of the beginning of things to come.
We predicted long in advance that the real loser in these elections would be the workin