The youth of today have a mission. A revolutionary mission that must be taken up to ensure our future and the future of those that will follow us. What is this mission? It is Socialism.
Capitalism, which has ruled the earth for hundreds of years is dying and becoming a giant chain holding back humanity.
The time is coming when capitalism, with its wars, inequality, injustice, and waste must be overthrown by its victims – the working class.
The end of capitalism will signal the end of the rule of the few over the many – where society’s wealth will be shared equally and where war, inequality and human injustice will fade.
That new society is socialism.
The youth of the world have a new opportunity opening up before them, a time where decay will give way to new life. That new world must be our world – everyone’s world!
"The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." [From the Communist Manifesto]
Today, the United States has the widest gap between rich and poor of all the modern nations.
One-percent of the population owns thirty-percent of the material wealth of this country, and that only counts salary and the property values of their homes. The average property value of their homes is $5,600,000. The average salary of this tiny group is over $470,000.
Now let’s compare that to the American working class – ninety-percent of the population. Average wages are around $20,600. The median value for working class homes (those that live in homes, not apartments) is around $60,000.
But that’s not all! Since 1980, inflation has risen well over 185%, meaning that today workers are poorer than before World War II, but American capitalists, that 1% who are so rich, are by far more wealthy than they have ever been before.
Add to that the fact that both ruling parties in Congress are unified in defending capitalism at home and imperialism abroad.
The Republican Party and the fundamentalist Christian Coalition are campaigning to establish greater corporate rule and are crusading against women’s rights, immigration, minority protection, and democratic workers’ and union rights.
The Democratic party is more pro-capitalist than ever before, its prince President Clinton, is on a crusade of his own to establish the "New World Order" of U.S. and NATO imperialist domination worldwide with the backing of the IMF and World Bank.
Voter turnout is at an all time low. Maybe people have figured out that both parties are just opposite ends of the same political animal!
If that is true (which it is), that means that capitalists have two political parties, but American workers have none – ruling in congress at least.
It all adds up to this: The capitalists own or control virtually everything from the media to the government - from the places we work to the food we eat (even though we buy things ourselves, we buy them with the money paid to us by our bosses - the capitalists).
So, it is apparent that even though working people have basic democratic rights, we still don't have any real say in the running of our country. Since when did we give Clinton permission to bomb Yugoslavia, was one of his campaign promises a more aggressive U.S. imperialism? Were we asked whether we wanted to more of our taxes to go into the military when some of us voted? And what about when the government decided to slash welfare, did our under employed U.S. labor force say "Yes, could we have another" like some modem day Oliver Twist? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding NO.
But just because the working class isn't given a say in politics doesn't mean that we are powerless.
The working class in reality has more power than the capitalists, the problem is that the working class has not yet gotten to the stage where it uses its full might.
The working class is like a stick of dynamite; All you have to do is light the fuse...
The fuse has been lit before; the anti-war movement, the Civil Rights struggle, and thousands of strikes and protests.
But one strike or one protest doesn't make everything change. You have to carry civil disobedience to the next level Revolution.
Protests and strikes are just the sparks; it takes solidarity and commitment to make a flame.
Just like a bullet is useless without a gun, a new social order never comes out of the old society without revolution.
And the working class needs a revolution! Like it has been said before, workers are slowly sliding into poverty, and when capitalism enters into it's next crisis workers will fall headlong into desperation and want, even worse than experienced in the Great Depression.
Capitalism's next, and final, crisis looms on the horizon. The Asian and Russian economic crisis has ravaged the Far East and the former Soviet Union already. It is creeping into South America, the Middle East and Africa. The United States and Europe will be the next victims of this capitalist crisis.
When the crisis hits America, the capitalist economy will fall to pieces.
But capitalism will never die on its own, it is up to the working class to take the final steps to end capitalism, and build a socialist society in its place.
Socialism is the only way to move humanity forward after capitalism. Under socialism, democratic control of the economy would be introduced, and all the factories, farms, utilities (water, heating, electricity), and large corporations would become the property of the working class, not the capitalists.
The economy would be planned and under the democratic control of the workers, meaning that the depressions and unemployment of capitalism would no longer be possible.
The working class would be able not only to eradicate unemployment and all the other symptoms of capitalism, and the ending of pollution could also be accomplished due to direct monitoring of emissions by plant workers and the community, not bureaucratic government agencies.
The only way to save the human race from senile capitalism is socialism. And the only way to socialism is revolution.
That is the mission of youth of all races and all countries.
We have nothing to lose bout our chains. We have a world to win.
David May
Published June 9, 1999
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