Leaflet distributed in Georgia, USA

The Reasons for the Cuts

The root of the cuts, not only in Georgia, but in Wisconsin, the UK, Greece, Italy and around the world, is planted in the soil of the present economic crisis. The decrease in tax revenue facing national and local governments are being paid for by assaults on our living standards.

Crisis is Inherent in Capitalism

From World War II to 1970, when American capitalism was booming, the working class was able to win some crumbs from the capitalist class. However, since the crisis of the 1970s (which we are still in), the capitalist class, through their weapon called the state, have been taking away these hard fought concessions in order to protect capitalist profits and the system of class oppression as a whole. What the ruling class giveth, they can taketh away.

What is Class? Why is it Important?

The struggle against the cuts are squared exactly on the class terrain. Class does not mean income level, but relations to the means of production. Every government the world over protects the wealth and property of the capitalist class through laws enforced by violence. Their existence depends on the exploitation of the wage-laborer. The worker is the real source of society's riches, who produces the world's wealth but has no claim on it.

Democrats and Unions: United Against the Working Class

The Democratic Party and the union apparatus are obstacles – not vehicles – to class resistance. The Democrats signed off on the cuts in the state legislature, and they will do it again. Similar attacks on the working class are underway in the liberal bastions of California and New York. The Democrats will try to redirect our rage into an election campaign in order to placate our anger and hope we forget (which they have always done). The Democratic Party stands lockstep with the Republicans in oppressing the workers. There can be no democracy if one strata of society exploits another for their own existence.

What about unions? Aren't they for the workers? Nothing could be further from the truth. The union serves as a mediator between the worker and the boss. The union apparatus stands with the bosses in order to protect the capitalist system, as is what happened in Wisconsin. In order to struggle as a class, we must go beyond the union form and organize our own class organs.

Unite as Students? Or as a Class?

We are not an “alliance” of students or a part of any “student movement.” Students form a mass composed of contradictory elements with opposing interests. Wealthy students or those who come from capitalist families don't suffer in the same way we do. They have a stake in protecting the capitalist system; they are on the side of the ruling order.

Only the united working class, the proletariat, can transform the world into something better. Not by stitching patches on the present system, but uprooting it entirely. Whether you are from a working class home or you work to pay for your studies, you are a member of the class that is historically destined to change the world.

We, the working class students, have to organize ourselves as workers and workers only in order to advance a political class line. We must defend the interests of workers wherever they may be, be it in the university or the factory, locally or internationally. Capital must be seized by the horns.