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Why We Need A Revolution By Grace Carter If there’s one thing that 2020 has shown so far, it’s that capitalism isn’t working. When COVID-19 hit in force across the world, it didn’t take long to find out that we are not, in fact, all in this together. Disproportionately, worldwide, this health crisis has been worse and more fatal for minority and poorer communities – to say nothing of the economic impact. At a time when 45.5 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits in under 3 months, billionaires in the US have collectively gained more than $584 billion dollars. But in this same year, we’ve also seen the amazing power of struggle. The murder of George Floyd in May, amidst the worst of the health and economic crises in America, has started the largest ever civil rights movement the US has ever seen. Echoes of it have found a home in over 60 countries across the world, including our own. It’s no wonder: we all live under the same system, and we all see the same inherent racial injustice of capitalism, the same police brutality, and the same economic violence. Capitalism is a system where the tiny minority rule over every aspect of the lives of the vast majority. In order to maintain its power, there must always be repression – which means there will always be resistance. Protesters in America are resisting spectacularly, and have seen that justice is not found in the ballot box but in the streets. Joe Biden doesn’t represent them any more than Donald Trump does: their power is their own, just as ours is in Australia. More militant and inspiring calls than ever have come from the Black Lives Matter movement, for police abolition and structural change in communities at the minimum. For some, the logical conclusion is that we need a revolution. Why a revolution? If you’re an activist, or have ever wanted to change any aspect about this barbaric system, you’ll have
heard that you should take your thoughts to the voting booth. Periodically, leaders like Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn, or even the most progressive versions of the Australian Labor Party, have promised “political revolutions” – that is, changing the system from the inside, reforming it into something less fundamentally anti-human. The most genuine shades of this slogan are hopelessly misguided, and the most cynical are trying to buy off progressive votes. Either version, if they actually get into office, have had the absolute best case of being completely ineffective. So why can’t change be achieved from inside the state? The reality is that nobody seriously contesting the state intends to destroy capitalism with it, because they know what it is. The state is fundamentally a system for managing capitalism, and serves only a secondary role as an illusion of democracy to placate the masses. Running the state is making sure capitalism in your country runs smoothly – as demonstrated with our current government’s privileging of the economy. Even for less rancid parties than the Liberals, this clearly ties their interests directly to those of big business, even before lobbying and donating groups come into play. In Australia, this bipartisan commitment to the running of capitalism can be demonstrated in any number of ways. A recent example is that of the Adani coal mine: 61% of Australians in 2019 did not want the mine to go ahead, but the Liberals are still strongly for iit, and the Labor party government in Queensland actually directly greenlit it in 2019. If your goal is parliamentary, you fundamentally see the state as an acceptable tool for change. This means that, despite some nice reforms sometimes coming along, your overall change is always hostile to the working class – the majority of people.
