The handful of billionaires at the top, Mexico’s Carlos Slim and the U.S.’s Bill Gates among them, can have no loyalty to the working classes of their various countries.
Immigrant Mexicans—and serious people of every sort in the United States of America—are watching what is happening in Mexico with concern.
The stolen election (see accompanying article), the collusion of the PRI and PAN parties in insuring that the capitalist ruling class maintains and increases its control over civil society, the growing need to educate the Mexican people about these things, and the pivotal role of young people in securing the future are matters which resonate with all North Americans, who likewise face a bleak future.
In fact, lessons from Mexico’s recent presidential election can easily be applied to the United States—since whether a Republican or a Democrat wins in November, the ruling class tightens its grip on civil society here as well.
As nations which share a common border, our future is irrevocably entwined by a thousand threads. Foremost among these today are profound changes in the economy, wherein human labor is increasingly replaced by new technology.
For this reason in particular, young people are pivotal. As capitalism decays, they have no future unless they join in leading the fight for it and in creating a society of, by, and for the great majority, now and to come.
As the accompanying article points out, when it is under pressure the ruling class sets aside its internal differences in order to defend its hegemony over us all.
Today, it is doing that because, as capitalists scour the earth for lower labor costs, there is no more room for a middle class. The handful of billionaires at the top, Mexico’s Carlos Slim and the U.S.’s Bill Gates among them, can have no loyalty to the working classes of their various countries.
Yet, otherwise, the new work-free means of production offer humanity a world of plenty. And as the accompanying article suggests, we face a fork in the road.
We can let the capitalist ruling class push us down a path of increasing poverty and spoiled dreams into a world of violence and repression. Or we can take control of our future and insure that the bounty and production of our society (and the preservation of our ecology) are firmly in our hands.
All this will require is a lot of hard work changing the consciousness of the people and taking action independent of the ruling class and its repressive means of control.
For most of us, this is new territory. But humankind sets itself no projects it cannot achieve.
The future is up to us.
