By Raymond Lotta
cross-posted from Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Hurricane Sandy
has left parts of the eastern seaboard devastated. More than 100 people have died
in the U.S. Two million people in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area are,
at this writing, without electricity. Parts of lower Manhattan remain flooded.
From public-housing projects, the reports mount of older residents and the very
poor going without food, needed medications, and means of travel. In suburbs, where
the violent rampages of wind and rain literally hollowed out neighborhoods, people
have been left to fend for themselves.
It is a time of immense suffering and need. But for the ruling authorities what
was the litmus test for getting the city back on its feet? That Wall Street reopen,
that the wheels of finance keep turning for the endless accumulation of capital.
Meanwhile, and just several city blocks away, emergency deliveries of water and
food to those in need were stalled for days. In New Jersey, the authorities moved
with the same kind of Wall Street zeal to reopen the gambling casinos.
Under dire circumstances, people try to cope and solve problems together. But there
are no institutional mechanisms to foster that cooperation. The overarching concern
of ruling authority is to keep people passive, to keep people in place, and to keep
people under control. People have been thrust into the darkness of power outages,
but they are kept in the dark about what is actually happening. In places like Coney
Island, people have gone without heat and lighting, while facing curfews and threats
from the police.
This is a system in which a small owning-class of capitalist-imperialists controls
the economic lifelines and resources of society. It is a system where profit rules.
It is a system where state power is used to preserve and extend global exploitation
and misery, and to suppress resistance.
But things do not have to be this way.
Let's first step back and examine three key dynamics of this natural and social
disaster.
1) Capitalism and Climate Change
As the article
"Superstorm Sandy
and Climate Change" explains, the ferocity of Hurricane Sandy has everything to do with climate change.
Massive emissions of carbon are leading to Arctic ice-melts and collapses, warmer
oceans, and more moisture in the air. And this is causing more frequent and more
severe hurricanes. Global climate change is also responsible for rising sea levels
that put coastal cities worldwide, with their densely packed populations, at greater
risk for flooding.
Capitalism-imperialism has everything to do with climate change. You see, oil, natural
gas, and coal--the fuels most responsible for rising carbon dioxide levels that are
contributing to global climate change--are essential and foundational to the profitable
functioning of this system. Consider the fact that in recent years 7 of the 10 largest
corporations in the world were oil and auto companies. Or that the U.S. military
is the single largest consumer of oil in the world.
And consider the trends. In 1997 the U.S. pledged to reduce greenhouse emissions
by 7 percent below 1990 levels. But by 2009, U.S. carbon emissions had risen
by almost 7 percent! This is the logic of profit and big power jockeying. There
is intense competition for market share and strategic advantage in the world economy.
There is no "incentive" to radically transform energy production and energy consumption.
It's expand-or-die. Drill in the Arctic, drill in West Africa--or some rival corporations
and rival powers will beat you.
And so the planet heats up.
2) The Nature of the Capitalist Metropolis
A city like
New York plays a certain role in the workings and management of the American empire.
It is a kind of financial-administrative command-and-control and communications
center for globalized imperialist capital. It is profoundly parasitic. Finance is
the engine of economic growth. Resources are siphoned towards real estate, speculative
construction, and development.
It is a city of extremes: high-paying jobs and the concentration of wealth, on the
one side, and, on the other, vast swaths of poverty, low-wage labor, chronically
high rates of unemployment, unequal schooling and stop-and-frisk in the oppressed
neighborhoods. The city depends on vast pools of super-exploitable immigrant labor.
It depends on carbon-intensive transport for food supplies. Its buildings
are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. And it has become more vulnerable
to extreme weather.
The New York Times ran an article recently about how, for over a decade,
scientists warned of the dangers to the city of rising sea levels, and how the city
could be flooded. They called for storm and surge barriers to restrain floodwaters.
Other task forces took a broader view, calling for measures to protect fragile shorelines
and to rethink the density and patterns of urban development.
But these warnings and proposals were ignored. These kinds of long-term and protective
measures run straight up against the short-term horizons of capitalism. It was more
urgent, more of a priority, to expand lucrative property development than to invest
in storm barriers and protect and expand wetlands that soak up floodwaters. It
made more "business sense" for the utility companies to keep investments on the
maintenance and upgrading of transmission lines and other infrastructure to a minimum.
And the warnings from the scientists about the city's susceptibility to storm surges
were borne out with Hurricane Sandy.
3) How the System Atomizes People
It is very stark.
The disruptions in transport and power generation, the dislocation of basic services,
and the fact that the city stopped working when people could no longer work--all
this revealed how densely interconnected are the activities of social and economic
life in a large city like New York. But the city and the larger society are not
organized in a way that corresponds to that interconnectedness. There is no conscious
social planning to meet human need, to mobilize for emergencies, to protect vital
ecosystems.
People are atomized by the very workings of the system. They are forced to compete
with each other for jobs, for housing, for higher education. Why? Because of private
ownership and control over the means of producing wealth and over the resources
of society. It is a system where people are compelled to sell their labor to survive. At the same time, the system promotes its ethos of each for him or herself,
and sets people against each other.
People have a great desire to join together to act in a crisis like Sandy. But that
potential is held in check and quashed by this system.
A Radically Different Society: A Viable and Liberatory Socialism
The Constitution
for the New Socialist Republic in North America (Draft Proposal) from the Revolutionary Communist
Party, USA, sets forth a vision and a plan for building a very different social,
political, and economic system. This Constitution is based on Bob Avakian's new
synthesis of communism, which opens the way to a world in which human beings can
truly flourish.
This Constitution is a blueprint for a new state power that protects the rights
of the people, that enables people to participate in the running and all-round transformation
of society, and to carry the revolution forward to a world without classes.
This Constitution sets forth the principles and mechanisms for a liberating economy
that meets the basic needs of people, including overcoming the inequalities between
nationalities, between men and women, between those who work mainly with their hands
and those who work mainly in the realm of ideas. This is a society and economy that
will promote the world revolution to emancipate all of humanity from exploitation
and oppression. This is a society and economy that will be working to repair, to
protect, and to enhance the ecosystems of the planet.
In short, this society is the opposite of what we live under.
In socialist society, the means of production--factories, transport, telecommunications,
land, raw materials, and so forth--will no longer be the property of a small handful
of exploiters but will be under a system of public-state ownership. This will enable
society to utilize these resources for what is useful and important to the betterment
of humanity. People will be guaranteed work; and instead of being drudgery, work
will be contributing to the development of society and people's all-around capabilities.
The new socialist society will develop an economy that is no longer based on oil
and other fossil fuels and long-distance supply systems. This will require extraordinary
innovation and effort, but it will be a priority. The new society will aim to create
sustainable cities--more capable of producing to meet basic needs, including food.
These will be cities where the formerly oppressed, rather than being isolated and
penned up, will be able to interact with each other in meaningful ways, to organize
politically, to create and enjoy culture, and to forge vibrant community. These
will be cities in which barriers are being broken down between basic masses and
artists and intellectuals, in which people with different backgrounds, training,
and talents would be dynamically interacting with and learning from each other as
part of the long process of creating the social and material conditions in which
everyone will be able to work productively and in the realm of ideas.
The army and police will no longer enforce global empire and the occupation of the
inner cities. New security forces will serve the people, protect their rights, and
help the people to sort out and work through their differences.
Socialist Society Facing A Crisis Like Hurricane Sandy
The Constitution
for the New Socialist Republic in North America emphasizes that the conscious
activism of the masses of people is what must be relied upon to solve problems and
to carry the revolution forward. The Constitution also emphasizes that society will
combine centralized planning and allocation of resources with decentralized initiative
and creativity.
In a crisis like Hurricane Sandy, the socialist state would allocate needed resources,
like food, temporary shelter, building materials, and equipment, to where they would
be needed most. This will not have to go through the patchwork and competing channels
of private ownership and control that exist in capitalist society. The allocation
of resources would not be contingent on the preservation of private property and
the profit system.
The revolutionary state would be doing all it could to tap and unleash the desire
of people to step forward and to help on all kinds of fronts. Relying on the masses
would be at the heart of everything that would be done in the wake of such a disaster.
In a socialist society facing a natural disaster of the magnitude of Sandy, emergency
priorities would be established--for instance in identifying the most vulnerable
sectors of the population, helping the most devastated communities or areas of historic
oppression and environmental degradation, and restoring critical links of the economy.
Calls for volunteers would be issued and the means provided for them to become involved
in relief efforts. Medical personnel, teachers, engineers, youth, and so forth would
be dispatched to where they were needed.
Centralization means overall leadership and coordination. It also means paying attention
to key social priorities, like uprooting the legacy of racism and the subordination
of women.
In a situation like Sandy, efforts would be made to educate people about the scale
and challenges of the situation. Specialized knowledge of experts would be popularized--for
instance, environmental science, civil engineering--among broad sections of the people.
But these experts would also be learning from the knowledge and direct experience
and aspirations of basic people and of the youth. Architects and planners would
be conducting investigations among the people. Medical personnel would be gaining
a deeper sense of local conditions and needs--and training paraprofessionals.
Incredible local initiative and experimentation would be unleashed. Conditions are
not the same everywhere. How to make the most of older equipment? How to conserve
limited resources? What are the local priorities in rebuilding? Fact-finding missions.
Group discussions and debates in neighborhoods. Streamlining administration. Transmitting
ideas and criticisms to higher levels of leadership.
The government media and other institutions of state would be spreading advanced
experience of dealing with the crisis and the new understanding gained, spreading
lessons about how barriers between people and contradictions among the people are
being overcome.
In such an emergency, big questions and controversies will pose themselves. Yes,
there is acute short-term necessity to provide shelter, food, and health care, and
to rebuild. But these needs cannot be met by disregarding longer-term effects on
ecosystems. There will be disagreements over specific policies. And in times of
disaster, some will be intensely agonizing over the overall direction of society.
It will be necessary to mobilize the activism and understanding of people to confront
extraordinary circumstances such as a Hurricane Sandy, and to pull together. But
differences will emerge, debates will break out. This is a good thing. The Constitution
recognizes the importance of dissent and protest under socialism. In a crisis like
this there will be contention and struggle. This process, if handled correctly by
the leadership of the new society, will actually enhance both the knowledge and
understanding of reality of society as a whole, and serve to forge unity on a new
and stronger basis.
Bob Avakian teaches that dissent should not only be allowed but actively encouraged
and valued. This is part of the process of getting at the truth of society and the
world, of promoting critical thinking, and of enabling those who had formerly been
on the bottom of society to more deeply understand and more profoundly transform
the world.
Conclusion
This kind of
socialist society, for which this Constitution is the framework, makes it possible
for human beings to cope with a crisis like Sandy. It makes it possible for people
to fit themselves to become caretakers of the planet. It makes it possible to bring
a new world into being, to move towards communism, a community of world humanity.
Because of Bob Avakian and the work he has done in forging the new synthesis of
communism embodied in the Constitution, there is a way out of the madness and misery
of this system. There is a real solution. There is visionary communist leadership
for the revolution humanity needs. As people face the challenges of mobilizing to
fight for the basic needs of the people in confronting this disaster, they can and
must also raise their sights to what is truly possible.
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