The “crisis of the cities”, since it is just part of the crisis of capitalism, will have already been dealt a mortal blow by the proletariat’s overthrow of this system. The symptoms of the problem–the decay, the unemployment, the degradation enforced by the welfare system, the lousy housing, hospitals and schools–all this will be met head on by the proletarian state and overcome–some of them very quickly. Here, as referred to before, the basic policy of beginning all this by “lifting the bottom up” will be applied across the board. The areas of the heaviest decay in most cities, which are most often the areas into which the oppressed peoples have been forced, will be tackled first. Once the grip of capital–and its grotesque parisitism–is broken on these cities, all sorts of miracles will be accomplished. The debts–and debts on top of debts–owed to the banks will all be cancelled. Since the funds supposedly allotted to such social services as schools, hospitals, roads, etc. go in large part to these parasites, this, in itself, will make possible freeing large resources to deal with the real problems of the masses. As most cities have decayed, their major financial and big business sections have been lavishly built up and, in fact, with the capitalist tax structure and the policies of the banks, the deterioration of the masses’ conditions in the cities is the necessary and inevitable accompaniment of this capitalist expansion.
This grotesque distortion, a fitting product of capitalism especially in its imperialist stage, will be put to an end. The massive land speculation will be ended. Red-lining, which stops construction dead in many oppressed people’s neighborhoods, will be abolished. The arsonists, and particularly those who hire them to destroy buildings for speculative profit, will be stopped by force. These huge structures will immediately be put to the use of the masses–quickly converted to basic housing where that is required–and the focus will be put on reconstructing the neighborhoods which have been forced into decay. Those workers skilled in construction for example–who, as it is now, work on these glass palaces when they are allowed to work at all–will immediately be shifted into reconstruction and further construction of housing for the masses. The absurd contradiction represented by the ever-visible sight of masses of unemployed people hanging out on the street of their broken down neighborhoods–this too will be overcome at the stroke of the fist that knocks over capitalism. Instead of being held apart by the law of profits, these unemployed people will be put together with the materials needed and set to work on these neighborhoods. Not only will segregation be outlawed but the financial policies previously employed by the banks and insurance companies which feed and profit off it will have been ended along with their control of financial resources.
The source of massive crime is clear–even the bourgeois liberals wring their hands over it–it is nothing but capitalism, with both the material and ideological conditions it generates. The big time criminals, particularly the gangsters and others who make fortunes off crime, will be smashed and in most cases executed. “White-collar crime” will be dealt a severe blow when the capitalist system which provides its whole nourishment is gone, although continuing struggle against graft and corruption will have to be waged. The “hardened criminals”–those for whom crime has become a way of life–will be stopped by force from this pursuit. All those who can be re-educated, once the dog-eat-dog ways of capitalism no longer dominate society generally, will be remolded and not only become productive members of society but will be actively involved in the class struggle to thoroughly transform it. The youth, many of whom turn to crime not only for economic reasons, but because capitalism has offered them nothing, no purpose at all in life, will be given such a purpose–their full participation in the continuing revolution in society. With unemployment ended, large ranks of people who turn to petty crime as a last resort, and often do years–even die–in prison as a result, will be freed from all this to become productive members of society. As for the prisons themselves, those among the former big capitalists and their top flunkeys who have not been otherwise punished will be occupying them. But even there, as opposed to the capitalist practice of brutality and degradation, they will be allowed–and required–to carry out productive labor and kt least, for the first time, actually produce something useful, while also being used as negative examples to politically educate the masses.
Many of today’s prisoners have either committed no real crime, or are becoming genuinely “rehabilitated” by studying and grasping the nature of capitalist society and resolving to join the fight to bring it down. At the time of the insurrection, the class-conscious proletariat will not only unleash them and their burning desire to bring down capitalism but will rely on them as a key force in leading other prisoners to do the same. While the bourgeoisie accuses the prisoners and others of being “animals,” it is in fact the capitalist system’s inborn dog-eat-dog animalism that is responsible for the obvious “social decay” in society, and this will be abolished, through socialist revolution, as society’s guiding law and value.
The twisted outgrowths of this society, such as pornography and prostitution, will be forcibly abolished right off the bat and their re-emergence not tolerated. As for the prostitutes and others victimized by this capitalist degeneracy, they will be given productive work, politically educated and freed from the immediate source of their oppression, while education will also be carried out broadly in society to expose capitalism as the source of this degradation and to remove the tendency to blame or look down on the victims.
As for homosexuality, this too, is a product of the decay of capitalism, especially of the increasing ripping apart of the family, which is inevitably taking place under capitalist conditions, especially as it sinks into deeper crisis. In particular it stems from the distorted, oppressive man-woman relations capitalism promotes. Once the proletariat is in power, no one will be discriminated against in jobs, housing and the like merely on the basis of being a homosexual. But at the same time education will be conducted throughout society on the ideology behind homosexuality and its material roots in capitalist society, and struggle will be waged to eliminate it and reform homosexuals.
The urban crisis is an ugly indictment indeed of capitalism. Here in this highly advertised “best of all possible societies” its highest form of development, the cities, are increasingly becoming obscenely parasitic palaces surrounded by spreading decay and rubble. A true monument to the fetter that capitalism has become on society. Proletarian power will not only replace the rubble, and end the parasitism, it will reverse the whole tendency under capitalism to crazily swell these few urban centers even as they rot, and instead will begin a process of spreading out the productive forces of society–building up smaller cities and the rural areas and developing industry there along with more advanced means of communication and transportation and other facilities, and thus moving to bridge the historic gaps between the cities and countryside that arose with the first cities of ancient times.