Dear Friends,
A serious crisis visits us. I suggest only the Rouge Forum, small as we are, is positioned in North America to link reason with knowledge and answer the coming crash–with schools and children in the forefront of our minds.
Only the Rouge Forum predicted this smash-up of war and the economy and only the Rouge Forum fashioned answers. http://www.richgibson.com/roleofschools.pdf
That is because, in part, we understand that political economy is not about the “market,” “profit and loss,” or even “capital,” but it is the study of social relations people create in our struggle with nature in order to deal with the necessities of life: (1) work and production, (2) reproduction–love and aesthetics, (3) rational knowledge, (4) and freedom.
That’s a sum of what class struggle is about. Now, with the fickle system of capital leaving its personifications in the US (the bailouts have mostly been directed at salvaging foreign investors, especially China, to keep them holding dollars, which will not last), and with inter-imperialist rivalry intensifying (Georgia invades S. Ossetia and the US military is paralyzed), especially over regional control of oil; we can easily foresee an intensifying attack of the rich on the poor everywhere. That will play out in schools in North American, the central organizing point of most people’s lives.
Only Cassandra, with a crystal ball, can look into the specifics of the future but history helps with some quick terms: inflation which robs the poor, bank closures called “holidays” , massive unemployment, possible currency devaluations, payment in script, more evictions, government used as a weapon of the rich–and schools used as missions for capital, teachers its missionaries, urging upon kids the witless nationalism that gets the poor to fight and die for the rich in their birthplaces.
It is in this context that we need to analyze the election. This election should not only be studied as how to choose who will best oppress the majority of the people from the executive committee of the rich, which is the government. It should be studied, more importantly, as how a spectacle of capitalism, the election inside the capitalist “democracy”, has speeded the emergence of fascism, that is,
*the corporate state, the rule of the rich (bailouts, oil wars),
*the suspension of civil liberties,
*the attacks on whatever press there is,
*the rise of racism and segregation (in every way, but especially the immigration policies),
*the promotion of the fear of sexuality as a question of pleasure (key to creating the inner slave),
*the governmental/corporate attacks on working peoples’ wages and benefits (tax bailouts to merit pay),
*intensification of imperialist war (sharpening the war in Afghanistan sharpens war on Pakistan which sharpens war on Russia, etc, and the US is NOT going to leave Iraq’s oil),
*the promotion of nationalism (all class unity) by, especially, the union bosses),
*trivializing what is supposed to be the popular will to vile gossip, thus building cynicism—especially the idea that we cannot grasp and change the world,
*increased mysticism (is it better to vote for a real religious fanatic or people who fake being religious fanatics?) and,
*incessant attacks on radicals (Bill Ayers is not a radical; he is a liberal now, once he was a liberal with a bomb, but people see him as the epitome of a radical and he IS connected to Obama).
That is a litany of the acceleration of fascism. The unions, all of them, and all existing education reform groups–other than the Rouge Forum– believe in the all-class-unity, nationalism, that lies at the core of fascism and no union or education reform group other than the Rouge Forum has ever initiated and sustained a struggle that united people across lines of job, community, age, race, disability, and sex. We have connected our research, reason, to power.
What to do? Build direct action resistance in the military and the military feeding machines–schools.
But if this US population, which has shopped it through two decades of warfare (Clinton dropped more bombs on Iraq than Bush2 did); if these people can no longer shop, and there is no organized left, a real left that grasps the nature of class war, then we lambs among wolves had better watch out.
The Rouge Forum Steering Committee is meeting in Detroit on September 27. Your analysis, ideas for action, will be noted and appreciated, and you are welcome to come join us. The Vietnamese resistance started with a dozen people.
Congratulations to Greg Queen of the RF steering committe for winning the NCSS academic freedom award for defending his right to teach critically.
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