Forum Post: We do need a revolution, but to fight for what?

I and millions of others are so excited just to see workers and students finally fighting back. After a 40 year lull, we have proven once again that you can't step all over people indefinitely without a reaction. Since the end of Vietnam and the civil rights movement, they have tried to fool us and quiet us by serving up minority and women politicians, and tying us to unions whose leaders are like the enforcers for the bosses' plans. Meantime, they keep us divided with anti-immigrant campaigns and the ever present racism. But now that we are in motion we must understand that it is capitalism that is the problem and that it cannot be reformed. You cannot invent a capitalist that is not trying to maximize profits by decreasing costs of workers -- competition insures they would be put out of business. You cannot invent a capitalist system that is not trying to maximize markets and raw material resources around the globe and will use whatever means necessary, even nuclear weapons, to keep those things. You cannot have a capitalist system that does not try divide workers by creating every kind of prejudice and hate and saves billions by paying the most oppressed less and giving inferior services. As competition in the world grows and resources deplete, the US system must become ever more violent and oppressive, at home and abroad. The only alternative is a society run by workers and students, where human needs are primary and equal opportunity is the rule. That system, like it or not is called communism. It has been fought for before by millions of workers, who overthrew their oppressors, and they did some wonderful things. They also made terrible mistakes, like maintaining wages and wage differentials, encouraging ethnic differences, putting material advances above egalitarianism and political ideas. And they ended right back up with capitalism, fascist capitalism at that. So if we want to run things, we have to learn from those terrible mistakes. The problem is not greedy and selfish human nature -- we know that is not true. It is errors that were made the first times such a great change was tried. This exciting occupation will end, and instead of getting discouraged we must recognize that a long struggle is ahead, where we must educate and organize millions of workers, students and soldiers. Only then can we seize power for ourselves. Ultimately that will not be a peaceful transition and it will not happen at the ballot box. So lets carry on with a long range perspective to organize our fellow workers, of all backgrounds, to prepare for that great struggle. It will be exhilarating. A member of Progressive Labor Party