Why the Need of Revolution?

Why the Need of Revolution?

As we have crossed the twentieth century, many people have lost hope in the future. The reason for this loss of hope is that there seems to be no alternative to the capitalist system. Communism and socialism have failed. The idea of fundamental change, the idea of revolution, has been defeated by the reality of it. Without an alternative to the system, fundamental change seems out of the question. We seem doomed to live in the grip of a system which defines human life in terms of profit and loss, competition and inequality.

Without an alternative to capitalism, the deepest human values and most important human relationships will be forever under attack by the demands of the economy and the dictates of the elite.

Hope in the future and belief in the possibility of revolution are inextricably linked. Belief in the possibility of revolutionary change is the key to the belief that human beings have the capacity to create a human world.

What We Mean by Revolution

The real power lies in the hands of elites for whom working people are merely a source of profit or a dangerous problem. The elite manipulate the institutions of society to strengthen their power. They encourage unemployment to make people desperate. They set black and white and men and women against each other. They take from the poor to fatten the rich.
The present society is based on elite values of selfishness, inequality, and competition. Most ordinary people believe in the opposite values: sharing, solidarity and equality. Revolution means transforming all the institutions and relationships of society to reflect the best values of ordinary working people.
Most people already try to shape their little piece of the world with their values. Revolutions occur when ordinary people gain enough confidence in themselves as the source of the good in society to change the whole world. Revolution means sweeping away elite power and setting up none slave institutions in every workplace and neighborhood, where the voices and votes of working people can determine the direction of society. It means unleashing the creativity and power for good in people, to fulfill together our potential as human beings.

Why We Need A Revolution

Many people fear the future, and indeed the future which capitalism holds for most people is dark and frightening. People will increasingly be robbed of economic security, to make them more controllable. More power over our lives will be in the hands of the wealthy few. Technology will increasingly be used not to free but to enslave us to unfulfilling jobs or unemployment; millions of people, even billions worldwide, will be treated as surplus population.
But whatever the future holds the real reason for revolution lies in the present. Capitalism is not just an economic system; it is a system of human relations which maintains its power by attacking every day the things most essential to our humanity: our understanding of ourselves and our fellow human beings and our relations with them. Capitalism attacks every aspect of our lives by setting us against each other in a race for money and status. The need for revolution comes from the dehumanizing nature of capitalism in our everyday lives.
Real change requires that we abolish a system based on wealth and power for the few and create society based on real freedom and hope for the many.

Workers Are the Force for Change

At the heart of society there is a conflict between opposing views of human life. On one side is the owning class, who value competition, inequality, and control from above. On the other side are those who do the work of society and value equality, solidarity, and control from below. This is the class war.
When the battle breaks out into the open, it shakes society to its core. For three weeks in late 1995, two million French public sector workers struck against attacks on retirement and social welfare programs in France. Their strike brought massive outpourings of public support in France and beyond. Belgian railway workers went out on a national sympathy strike with French workers. The world elite feared that the strike might spread throughout Europe.
These strikes in France, like a recent one-day general strike in London, Ontario, and the months-long newspaper strike in Detroit and the three-year struggle of Staley workers in Illinois, did not fall from the sky. They sprang from the everyday values of working people.
Revolution is possible because most people in their everyday lives already struggle to shape the world with values that contradict the dog-eat-dog values of capitalism. Every supportive human relationship, every positive element in society, is a product of ordinary people's struggle against a brutal system to create a more human world. This struggle to humanize the world drives history and social change. Without it the world would be savage and unlivable.
Revolution means the overthrow of elite rule and the success of people's struggle to shape the world with their values. When millions of working people realize that they are fit to rule and that they can make a better world, they will be an unstoppable force.