On “Occupy Wall Street”

(Letters)

New Orleans
October 2, 2011

Dear Mr. Bishop:

I am a subscriber to your publication Workers Vanguard. The front page article titled “We Need An All New Ruling Class—The Workers” [WV No. 985, 2 September] is perhaps more relevant now than ever before. This was an excellent article! Neither of the two primary political parties that dominate American politics adequately represents my interests, nor those of the ordinary working folks of this nation. I would like to propose a non-violent means to address the problem.

I have devoted much thought to how to get the attention of wall street and the 1% of the folks who have 90% of the wealth. There is a way it can be done without any violence whatsoever. The people have an enormous power in numbers. If a large majority of this nation’s wage earners were to simply choose not to go to work, until they get a bigger piece of the pie, the likes of wall street will be crippled. There will be no law clerks working to foreclose on our houses and evict us from our apartments. Doing so will mean a significant sacrifice on the part of working people. But, this sacrifice must occur to change the balance of power. The people have this capability, and this right, only if they exercise it! Until the people have the guts to make this very short-term sacrifice, nothing will change. The singular objective of the Occupy Wall Street movement should be to bring the big corporations that usurp our voting power to their knees by denying them a labor source.

I challenge you to make this your next issues lead article along with one on Occupy Wall Street.

Kindest regards,
Russell A.

WV Replies:

We thank Russell for his letter and direct him and other readers to our front-page article on the “Occupy Wall Street” protests in this issue. As we lay out there, the capitalist class has at its disposal a state apparatus of organized violence— the cops, courts and prisons—to repress struggle against its domination. The liberal doctrine of “nonviolence” obscures the fact that the capitalists will stop at nothing to protect their profits.

As we have argued while intervening in these protests, an equitable redistribution of wealth (so that the workers get a “bigger piece of the pie”) is not possible within the capitalist system. Bringing down Wall Street will not come about through atomized individuals making their own “sacrifice,” but through workers revolution. It is not a question of changing the balance of power between Wall Street and the “people,” but of changing the class in power from the capitalists—the parasitic owners of the banks and industrial enterprises—to the proletariat, the class whose labor is the source of the capitalists’ profits. A workers revolution would expropriate the banks and factories and lay the basis for abolishing the system of wage slavery altogether. To do this requires the building of a revolutionary party that imbues the working class with the consciousness of its historic mission to overthrow capitalist rule and reorganize society on a socialist basis.