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Vol. 74/No. 6      February 15, 2010

 
Fight for a workers recovery
(editorial)
 
When President Barack Obama’s top economic adviser says the U.S. economy is in “a statistical recovery and a human recession,” he means the bosses are doing better. The “humans” on the other hand—tens of millions of workers and farmers worldwide—continue to be battered by wars, joblessness, and a declining standard of living.

When the capitalists talk about recovery, first and foremost they are talking about themselves. Their concern for working people is only in gauging how much more of massive unemployment and social cuts we will take—in this country and around the world—before rebelling against their system of exploitation. So long as the resistance to their assault on our rights and standard of living is minimal, the boss class will keep pushing to make working people bear the burdens of the economic crisis.

Obama claims jobs are the government’s number one priority, but none of his stated proposals (none are actual programs) will put millions of people back to work. In order to accomplish that the government would have to challenge the profits of those who are enjoying the “statistical recovery.”

Washington’s plans to pump more into the war budget, increase funding for its military intervention in Afghanistan, and expand its deployment of Special Forces are steps to defend the interests of the tiny minority who “have a very good future,” as a top German banker described his class during the economic summit in Davos, Switzerland. The U.S. rulers and their counterparts abroad are preparing to defend that future from the sharper conflicts that are coming with workers and farmers around the world.

Economic and social conditions brought on by the world depression are forcing millions of workers to consider the fight to overthrow the dictatorship of capital. Through resistance and absorbing the history of working-class struggles, a politically-conscious and organized vanguard can be forged to lead the working class to power, which will make possible the “human recovery” the capitalist system is not capable of producing.

Toward that end the Militant is encouraging our readers to buy, study, and help sell Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power, which draws the lessons of the history of struggle toward the revolutionary conquest of power by the working class.
 
 
Related articles:
Gov’t job proposals offer little for workers
U.S. in ‘statistical recovery and a human recession’  
 
 
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