WHAT IT MEANS TO BE POLITICAL
We reprint below excerpts from a presentation by a member of the women's
initiative at a meeting utilizing VOR #119, "Taking Politics Into Our Own
Hands." Presentations are part of the effort to encourage all participants
to express their views. It has been edited for publication.
United States Marxist-Leninist Organization
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In the current political system we are led to believe that voting is
everything and that politics--and real decision making--is to be left to the
rich and their political parties. One of the biggest blocks in moving this
society forward is the fact that politics are considered a domain which does
not belong to the working class and ordinary people.
The working class never sleeps. Working people are so busy struggling to
get by, who's got time for politics? Yet, no one else is going to make
things better for us. It is the workers, students, and other ordinary people
who must become political, and create a new society in their own image. By
raising our level of social consciousness and becoming political we have
everything to gain.
One problem we face is that workers lack confidence in their ability to
win power, to rule and govern. This is not an accident. The capitalists and
their agents work day and night to make people feel powerless. When you go
to the bank you come out feeling powerless. When tuition fees go up you feel
powerless. When your workplace lays-off some and adds on more work for
others, you feel powerless. When the bills come and you struggle to pay them
you feel powerless. The capitalist class is making us feel powerless!
To put an end to this situation people have to ask themselves a
question, tonight ask yourself a question--do you feel oppressed?
If you feel oppressed then you must become political. Being political is
much richer than just voting. Being political means taking a definite stand
on issues. It means discussing, and raising the level of social
consciousness. It means looking at the concrete conditions right before our
eyes and drawing conclusions. Being political means being involved in the
fight for a new society.
I work days and my husband works nights, we have opposite days off, we
are raising two children. We make time for politics because the old society
is dying and things are becoming worse all the time. We don't believe the
monopoly controlled-media, the schools, and the politicians of the rich,
when they tell us that voting is enough. People want to exercise control
over their lives. In order to do this it is the people themselves who must
go for power.
All capitalist parties are the greatest defenders of the capitalist
system and their kind of democracy. While they defend the system, the
Republicans, the Democrats, the Perot's, etc. all pretend that they are
completely different from each other ideologically and split the polity on
that basis. People think they are voting for someone who is different, but
they end up being the same. They are the same because they defend the
capitalist system. They do not want you to become political because they are
afraid that the working class will change the social relations that exist
between the capitalist class and the working class.
Revolutionary politics to some seems like an impossible goal, but
revolution comes in ebb and flow. Revolution is in retreat now, but it will
once again be in flow. This is why the people must begin to claim politics
as their own, so they can be ready to move society forward.
Discussing and taking up our own politics, the politics of empowerment,
is a first step.
Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
