By John Throne
I was going to write a piece today about the Stonewall Uprising. However there
are the explosive events in Hong Kong. But a short comment
on Stonewall. The capitalist media tries to refer to the Stonewall
events as “riots”. The idea being to try and diminish their
importance. Unfortunately many on the left also mistakenly use the term “riots”.
Stonewall was an uprising of people who were discriminated against because of
their sexual orientation. They reached their breaking point and they rose up.
The main lesson to be drawn from Stonewall is that changes for the better in US
society comes from uprisings from below.
It was mass strikes and workplace occupations and street fighting that built
the CIO and the trade unions in the 1930’s. It was mass movements on the
streets and the urban uprisings of the Black revolt of the 1950’s and 1960’s that
forced racist US society to make some concessions. It was the women’s movements
on the streets of the 1960’s that made the gains for women, it was the anti war
movements on the streets, in the schools and colleges and in the rank and file
of the US military in Vietnam that undermined US imperialism’s slaughter in
South East Asia.
Today there is a majority in US society for higher wages, better benefits,
better and affordable housing, free education, health care for all, gender
equality, women to have control over their own bodies, action on climate change
and against racism sexism and war. But neither of the two capitalist parties
can deliver on these issues. Instead, capitalism and the capitalist parties the
Republicans and the Democrats and their undemocratic political system with its
gerrymandering and its undemocratic electoral college, and its legal system
with its undemocratic so-called Supreme Court, the road to the wishes of the
majority being implemented is blocked. In fact, the capitalist class and its
parties are waging an offensive against the working class and the gains that
were made in the 1930’s and the 1960’s.
This will not continue
indefinitely. The wishes of the mass of the population will be
expressed. Whatever triggers it, an economic slump, an environmental
or climate change disaster, vicious police repression, gun violence, the taking
away of women’s rights, whatever, the wishes of the majority will explode onto
the streets and workplaces and schools and colleges of US society. The anger
that exists will express itself. US capitalism thinks it can stop the rage that
is building below the surface by laws and gerrymandering and its undemocratic
electoral college and its undemocratic and packed supreme court. They are wrong
the rage that is building in US society will explode to the surface. As the
organizers of this Blog continually say “This country is going to blow”.
This is the lesson of Stonewall. This is also
the lesson of today’s events, in Hong Kong.
Backed by the dictatorial regime in Beijing,
of which it is a pawn, the Hong Kong administration tried to pass a law that
would allow it to send people to mainland China to be tried in that regime’s
courts. Up to two million people out of a population of seven million have demonstrated
in the past weeks. They were met with the fist of the state apparatus, the
cops. But today a smaller number of demonstrators took over the legislative
buildings, trashed them, spray painted the walls and the symbols of the Hong
Kong regime and left. This was an explosive movement. The state apparatus was
unable to stop it. It demonstrated that whatever laws are passed, in
whatever country, that when regimes go against the will of the masses they will
face opposition, and if a regime insists on trying to impose its will, this
opposition will not confine itself to debates in parliament or elections.
This Blog has been observing the developments
in mainland China. We have pointed to the movement of 400 million
people from the countryside into the cities and into the workplaces and into
the working class. We have emphasized that this, part of which is the entry of
hundreds of millions of women into the paid workforce, has resulted in a
dramatic strengthening of the Chinese and the world’s working class. We have
explained that the Chinese working class will put its imprint on events in that
country and oppose the undemocratic regime and that when that happens it will
have an effect worldwide. The events in Hong Kong will be noticed in main land
China. They will show that the Beijing regime cannot impose its wishes at will.
They will encourage and bring closer the movement of the working class in that
country. Irrespective of the demands of the protesters in Hong Kong being
confined to the call for the withdrawal of the extradition law what will have
most effect on the consciousness of the Chinese working class will be the fact
that the Beijing regime can be challenged.
World wide we have seen struggles. Sudan.
Algeria. Turkey. The Czech Republic. Kazakhstan. Montenegro. Albania. Romania.
Stirrings in Russia against the Putin regime. In many of the former countries
of the Soviet Union people are seeing the limits of the capitalist regimes that
followed the former Stalinist regimes and new movements are developing. In
Latin America there are new signs of struggle. Likewise this can be seen in the
US and in Western Europe. Yes there are confusions. Yes there is the rise of
right wing forces. This is inevitable because the leaders of the workers
organizations the trade unions and where there exist, the left parties, are not
prepared to confront the source of the problems which is capitalism or in China
the combination of a dictatorial regime and its moves towards capitalism.
The international working class is larger and
stronger than ever before. It is the collective power and the collective brain
of the international working class that has the power to change the lives of
the world’s population, to stop and reverse the threatening catastrophe of
climate change, to end mass poverty and inequality and undemocratic regimes.
The building of a mass international movement based on this understanding is
what is necessary. Such a movement can be built out of explosive movements from
below which have changed things for the better in the past and which we can see
around us today.
If you have opinions about the subject matter of posts on this blog please share them. Do you have a story about how the system affects you at work school or home, or just in general? This is a place to share it.
Monday, July 1, 2019
Hong Kong. The Stonewall Uprising. How change comes about.
Labels:
asia,
China,
history,
worker's struggle
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment