For as long as anyone can remember, the rulers of this country have paraded one political representative after another before the people promising a lifetime of “peace with prosperity,” while they have subjected millions here and hundreds of millions around the world to agony and waged wars of plunder from one end of the globe to another. But today they and their whole system of legalized robbery and murder are once again caught in a desperate and deepening economic and political crisis which is fast approaching the point of world-wide explosion. And now they demand of the American and the world’s people that we accept far greater hardship and misery, that we willingly and urgently ready ourselves to march–or be literally dissolved–into our graves in unprecedented numbers in order to perpetuate this imperialist system with the U.S. on top and provide future generations with this same “peace and prosperity”–and worse.
“There is no other way out, no way to return to the ’happy days’ of the past, except for America to ’rise to the challenge’, rally its allies, meet and defeat the danger, especially from Russia, and revive America’s position as ’number one in the world’–at whatever cost”–this is the message that is spewing forth in a sickening and rising chorus from every mouthpiece and propaganda organ of the U.S. ruling class. And meanwhile the masses of people within the equally imperialist Soviet Union and in those countries under its domination, as well as all those who are struggling against oppression by American imperialism, are told by the Russian rulers to swallow the same basic swill–but with a Russian flavor. The only way to secure peace in the world and bring progress for humanity, according to this version of imperialist gangster logic, is to depend on, and sacrifice millions of lives in the service of, the expansion of Russian “influence” and the replacement of the United States by the Soviet Union as the dominant world power.
No choice but to be enslaved by one imperialist overlord or another, no prospect but untold suffering and sacrifice and unparalleled destruction to maintain and strengthen this enslavement in one form or another–this is the future the imperialists and their hangers-on declare for the people. And they are right–this is the only future–so long, and only so long, as the slaves of each country remain unquestioningly loyal and blindly obedient to their masters and set their sights and their aspirations no higher than the miserable horizons imposed by the ruling classes and the imperialist system.
But the whole history of humanity, as well as the present reality, shows that there is another path–the path which the oppressed in every society sooner or later take, the path not backward but forward–the path of resistance against and ultimately the revolutionary overthrow of their oppressors. Today, even as the imperialists on both sides are feverishly accelerating their preparations for world war in the face of their deepening crisis, revolutionary movements are gathering momentum and gaining strength in many parts of the world, confronting and pounding at the imperialist system and both superpowers.
Revolution is the only means to prevent world war, and should world war be brought about by the imperialists before it can be prevented by revolution, then revolution remains the only way the masses of people can break free of the chains of exploitation and degradation of the imperialist system and its vicious cycle leading repeatedly to deeper crisis and more devastating war. While the imperialists and their reactionary retainers insist that there is no choice, no “freedom,” but to be enslaved by one or the other of them, and particularly that a war started by and fought between them can only end in the victory of one imperialist bloc or another, the truth is that the only real choice, the only road to real freedom and the only war worth fighting for the masses of people, is a revolutionary war against these reactionary classes–and in fact that a war started by the imperialists must be transformed into a revolutionary war of the people in all countries to overthrow and shatter the grip of imperialism and reaction.