CNN comes out with an article saying that economy is doing great because a whole bunch of jobs were created.
https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/jobs-report-january-02-02-24/index.html
On the surface that sounds great, but then we can look at other factor, such as the fact that most people in US can’t afford an unexpected $1,000 expense.
https://fortune.com/2024/02/01/emergency-1000-expense-most-americans-broke-debt-bankrate/
This implies that people are being paid subsistence wages, and aren’t able to meet their needs. This is further supported by data from Monster showing that 37 percent of people have two full time jobs now in order to pay their bills.
Turns out that this precise dynamic was identified by Marx in the first volume of Das Kapital:
To me, this is a great example of theory being an invaluable tool for understanding what’s actually happening in the world.
The concept of generating employment holds little significance when businesses are not mandated to pay their workers an equitable and livable wage.
To sum up, read theory!
Capitalism x Socialism x Communism debate aside, the USA is setting itself up to conditions that facilitate strife and revolt/revolution, by maintaining a system where the mere debate on livable wages is discouraged and both the government and congress themselves won’t do anything about it as the public bought the idea that it is “unamerican” to do so
I can see the US going full-on fash before it lets any revolution get properly going
I genuinely don’t know what we’re supposed to do. We can’t all move to Denmark. So whats the solution? Fight and die in some sort of revolution that will never come?
What people should be doing is organizing the same way labour has organized at the start of the 20th century. Unionizing, building mutual support networks, educating other workers, and building political power from the ground up. The reason revolutions happen is precisely because people do nothing until it gets to the point where there are no other options left.
Well if you think like that it sure will never come.
While the worsening of living condition under capitalism do push toward revolution that doesn’t mean that it’s automatic, revolution is an active process, you have to make it happen. Your role, as someone who see the fundamental problems with capitalist society and want to change it, is to lay the ground work to make sure that revolution do happen when the time is right.
One of the most important things that you must do is education, of yourself and of others. Study economic and political theory to understand how and why capitalism necessarily causes all of the issues we are constantly seeing and inform others of what you learned. Refute liberal, social democrats and other radlibs’ narrative and show that the things they propose are nuttered band aid “solutions” that will result at best in temporary concessions that can and will be stripped away once popular turmoil calm down and the capitalists feel their power secure again. Promote socialism as an alternative to capitalism to limit the number of peoples who will tend toward fascism once they see the cracks in liberal rhetoric and start looking for an alternative.
An other important thing you can do is crating or joining an organization able to stand up to corporations and to the armed forces of the bourgeois state. Popular movements, whether they are a simple protest or an all out revolution need leadership otherwise the well organized, generally better equipped capitalist state’s armed forces will wake quick game of them; that’s what a vanguard communist party is for. Of course, the organization should help peoples on the ground, help those oppressed by the capitalist system however you can, monitor the police to document and disincentivize police brutality and discrimination, help the homeless by giving them food and homes if you are able to, help the workers unionize and support them when they strike, etc… There are a lot of thing you can do and lots of ways you can help with whatever skills you have, the important thing is that you do something, don’t be a liberal who enter political hibernation and wake up every 5 years to vote for lesser evils and maybe go to 2~3 protests in their lives.
