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The proletarians of the world
showed their strength on May 1st on the streets of cities
from Havana to Brussels to Istanbul to New Delhi to Manila to New
York. In Istanbul over 500 workers were arrested for trying to march
on Gazi Park, which the government locked down for fear of a repeat
of the mass protests that rattled President Erdogan’s despotic
neo-liberal regime several years back. But such repression, anywhere
in the world, is only delaying the inevitable. While it might be hard
to tell in a country like Canada with its bedroom communities and
wannabe celebrities, workers are everywhere, our masses numbering in
the billions, and if united we would soon crush all opposition. Which
is why the Epstein Class, the billionaires and their bourgeois
propagandists do everything in their power to divide and conquer us
along cultural lines, national lines, religious lines, racial lines,
you name it. They know our power, brothers and sisters, and it’s
time that we did too. There is a reason why Karl Marx called on
workers of the world to unite – not just the workers of certain
countries. The international working class movement aims not only to
end exploitation of workers at the hands of business owners and
landlords, but also seeks a total end to empire and the exploitation
of entire nations at the hands of global capitalist cartels and
militarists. No more Iraqs, no more Afghanistans, Vietnams, Libyas,
Syrias, Sudans, Gazas, Lebanons, no more war against Iran, no more
blockades and starvation sanctions on Cuba, no more imperialism!
Empire always serves the parasites, the looters, the big firms, the
military-industrial complex, everyone who gets fat by making others
work, starve and die on their behalf: the Donald Trumps of the world,
the Netanyahus of the world, Musk, Gates, Bezos, Epstein and all the
other bloodsucking trash. No more. As workers we must know our enemy
and it isn’t each other.
This brings me to a central
issue: working class consciousness. Proletarians knowing they are
proletarians, being proud of being proletarians and fighting for
their rights, their future, and the wealth of civilization that they
created. Workers being workers. Working class communities with their
own culture and sense of self that are capable of building bridges
with other working class communities around the world and
understanding what unites them with their brothers and sisters across
language barriers and national borders. This is the consciousness,
the way of thinking, rooted in concrete material conditions that
gives rise to worker’s power. That’s why the ruling class goes to
great lengths to get workers to see themselves, even the poorest
people, as honorary members of a bourgeois club that they can
supposedly gain access to via lottery, good luck or kissing ass. Hard
work doesn’t cut it, though they pretend it does. Remember that the
definition of success in capitalist society isn’t working hard but
getting others to work hard for you. Becoming a parasite in other
words and leeching off other people’s work like Trump and Bezos do.
They don’t want workers to wise up to the truth that the rich suck
their blood every day and that all the wonders of civilization were
made by proletarian hands.
They don’t want worker’s to
ask:
“Who built the seven gates of
Thebes?
The books are filled with names
of kings.
Was it kings who hauled the
craggy loads of stone?
And Babylon, so many times
destroyed,
Who raised that city up each
time?
In which of Lima’s houses,
glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
On the evening that the Wall of
China was finished
Where did the masons go?...
Philip of Spain wept when his
fleet went down.
Was there no one else who wept?
Frederick the Great won the Seven
Years War.
Who won it with him?...
A victory on every page
Who cooked the victory feast?
A great man every ten years.
Who paid the costs?”
That was Bertolt Brecht’s poem,
“Questions from a Worker Who Reads,”
Are you going to get that kind of
insight from AI?
The ruling class doesn’t want
working people to understand history because if they did, workers
would understand who they are and understand their power as the
makers of the world. Workers are god, to put it bluntly. When taken
together, they are the engine of civilization without which kings and
capitalists would be powerless. Parasites can only hold onto power by
lulling the true god of humanity into slumber and that slumber is
always fitful. When workers do wake up, as in 1917 in Russia, the
world quakes. Naturally the capitalists and their spokespeople
consider those risen workers and the leaders they empowered to be
monsters, that’s why they still talk trash about them over 100
years later. For the workers of Russia, and later China, Cuba,
Vietnam and other countries proved that god can live without fleas.
Workers don’t need bosses, they can run things for themselves. No
matter how hard they try, the capitalists can’t put that genie back
in the bottle.
“An eagle has conceived in the
rocks and shall bear a strong devouring lion: he shall loose the
knees of many. Take heed now of this, Corinthians who dwell round
fair Peirene and the cliffs of Corinth’s citadel.”
Historians too often obfuscate
our past, brothers and sisters. Kypselos of Corinth, whose coming
that Delphic prophecy foretold in 650 B.C. is a pivotal figure in
Ancient Greek history who doesn’t get nearly as much credit as he
should, despite the fact that it was his overthrow of an aristocratic
oligarchy in Corinth, then the chief city-state of Greece, that paved
the way for democracy and the flowering of arts, culture and
intellectual pursuits that we associate with Classical Greece. That
flourishing was only possible because ruling class power was
challenged by the common people, oligarchies were smashed, and
radical reforms enacted. Aristocrats, capitalists and many classical
historians today prefer a sanitized picture of Ancient Greece where
these things get left out and the flourishing of Classical Greek
culture, especially when compared with other ancient societies where
the aristocracy maintained an absolute grip on power, is treated as a
sort of “mystery”. Kypselos, literally “chest man” if you
look at the literal meaning of his name, was nearly murdered as an
infant by agents of the Corinthian aristocracy. He survived because
his mother hid him in a chest. He started out so small, so
vulnerable, like all of us do, but he grew into a titan, rousing his
people to shake off oppression and move mountains. The ripple effects
of what he and the Corinthian people did in 650 B.C. shook Greece and
ultimately the world. Revolution is not a new concept. Working people
have been waking up for a long time.
It will happen again.
Links:
The Grayzone - "In Defense of Yugoslavia: Max Blumenthal on Michael Parenti's bravest work"
