The outrage burned through a thousand-strong crowd gathered on the lawn in front of the capitol building in Hartford on Wednesday, May 17th. Union flags and protest signs floated overhead. Clenched fists rose in the air. Grim determination showed on every face.
Speakers from teachers’ unions, faith organizations, and care-workers’ unions took the podium to air their frustrations with a government that refuses to hear the cries of a suffering public. This was the “Rally for a Moral Budget,” called by Recovery for All, a statewide coalition of liberal organizations pleading for the lives of working people in Connecticut.
Right now, even after the devastation of a global pandemic, Connecticut has an unprecedented 3 billion dollar surplus. Instead of investing this surplus into much needed social programs, Millionaire Governor Ned Lamont is absolutely giddy with his plan to start cutting taxes across the board. The state government claims that the tax cut will “provide tax relief to working men and women and families across the state.”
It won’t.
Any money going back into the pockets of working people will come right back out again as payments to the wealthy ruling classes. Tax cuts are fantastic propaganda. Yes, the government is going to take less of your money! But that’s all we heard from Lamont. What didn’t we hear?
There is no talk from the state house about the housing crisis. Not a word about the sudden and ignominious discharge of a huge number of the state educational workforce. Lamont has nothing to say about families who can’t afford food or the fact that Connecticut is the state with the highest income gap between the poor working class and the rich ruling class in the entire United States Empire.
As the rally began, each speaker rose to vent their suffering. They shouted the frustration of the working people at the uncaring marble edifices of Connecticut’s halls of government. It wrenched the heart to hear the cries of the working masses, thundering to their supposed representative that they were not only forgotten, but drowning. Even more heartbreaking, however, was the fact that not one of those speakers recognized why their cries fell only on deaf stone walls, on ears that will never hear them. The cause of their sorrows, the origin of their misery, is, of course: Capital.
As long as the working class is forced to sell its labor to the capitalist class in order to survive, we will be reduced to begging them on hands and knees for our survival while they grow rich from the fruits of our labor. They will continue to string us along by occasionally instituting reforms (that will be quietly rolled back) and convincing us that we have a say in this farce of a democracy.
In order to make real, lasting change, there needs to be an understanding that the liberal strategy of reform can only ever take us so far.
One of the primary flaws of liberal ideology is the inability to understand that the purpose of the state, i.e., the government, is to advance the interests of the capitalist ruling class. The plea to inject “morality” into a budget fundamentally misunderstands the nature and function of a system that can only ever work for the benefit of the wealthy and the powerful.
Capitalism is not an apolitical, amoral tool. It is a system driven by the need to maximize profit above all else: above justice, above freedom, above life itself. The capitalist is driven to expand profits, to accumulate and hoard more and more of the wealth of the earth. It reduces all things to commodities — products to be bought and sold at a profit. It transforms every relationship into a profit-generating opportunity. Policies for the safety of the working class, social safety nets, are temporarily won by the victories of an organized working class — or they are implemented as a stopgap to delay social revolution for another week, another month, another year.
These social safety nets cut into the profits of the big capitalists. They will never voluntarily reduce their own income without something in return, so instead they siphon off the wealth of the entire world to make sure the U.S., their “home base,” the central bastion and bulwark of the world-imperialist order, is safe. They send the military to bomb and destroy other countries and raid them of their wealth, to force them into economic subjugation so cheap goods can flow back to the U.S. working classes. But this devil’s bargain can only work for so long. Eventually, even those benefits will be sacrificed on the altar of profit. There is no way to satisfy the insatiable hunger of Capital.
Liberal idealism imagines a world in which the lofty goals of justice, equality, and freedom are the driving force behind legislation and enforcement. This is not how the world works.
Historical materialism, in contrast to liberal idealism, analyzes the world on the basis of what actually happens in material reality. By studying history, even the recent past, we can understand that the wealthy capitalists make and enforce laws that maintain their power over us and make them even wealthier.
For too long, the ruling class in the U.S. Empire has successfully suppressed the ideas of socialism and communism. They rightfully fear what will happen if these ideas proliferate. They rightfully fear what will happen if the masses look to the material reality of the world we live in, and understand the power of the people to take control of the means of production. They rightfully fear the truth that a Historical Materialist analysis reveals: we neither need nor want their chains.
The power of ideology is strong. The media, educational system, and legal system only speak the language of liberal idealism. It’s no wonder that the language of socialism and communism has been absent from popular discourse for so long.
This is starting to change. Polling shows that, especially among the youth, capitalism is losing people’s approval while socialism is being seen in an increasingly positive light.
As the horror show of neoliberal capitalism spirals into greater and greater contradiction, the drive towards freedom and equality must take a path of freedom and equality. This path can only be tread by a united working class that stands guided by the roadsigns of historical materialism, scientific socialism, and Communism. Even now, that path is being paved by the workers who refuse to be hoodwinked by liberal reformism — our class is uniting.
In Connecticut, the misery of the working people has a voice. Soon, it will have a name.
