Chaos In the House

Day 2 of the struggle, in the House of Representatives, to elect a Speaker of the House. Until the House elects a Speaker, the House, and almost all of the federal government, is completely paralyzed!

On day one, the Members of the House managed to take three votes, in order to elect a new Speaker. All three votes failed, almost identically. So of course on day 2, they took another three votes, also with an identical result. We cannot help but wonder what they expected!

The journalists are doing a fine job of reporting the fact that the House is ‘’completely paralyzed’’, that it is ‘’dysfunctional’’, that this display of incompetence ‘’erodes confidence’’ in the government, that there is ‘’chaos among the House GOP’’. All of this is very true!

As a result of this, those same journalists are agreed that the House is facing a ‘’messy two years ahead’’. 

I mention this as an example of the strengths, and weaknesses, of bourgeois journalism. On the one hand, they do a fine job of stating the facts. On the other hand, their analysis, including their ‘’predictions’’, are frequently in direct contradiction of the facts!

The journalists even go so far as to say that this is ‘’democracy in action’’. That is true, as far as it goes! They neglect to add that it is bourgeois democracy! It is democracy for the capitalists! Democracy for the billionaires! For the working people, it is a dictatorship! 

The point must be driven home, to the working class, that democracy is a method of class rule! It most certainly is not majority rule! As we live under the rule of the monopoly capitalists, the billionaires, technically referred to as the bourgeoisie, it is the rule of the bourgeoisie. 

The  monopoly capitalists, the billionaires, must be overthrown. That can happen only through Revolution! At that point, the existing state apparatus must be smashed, and a new working class state apparatus must be established. That is referred to as the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Without doubt, we live in a time of Revolution. The suffering of the working people has reached horrendous proportions. Hunger is wide spread. Homelessness is common place, and increasing. Gang violence and multiple homicides are now daily events. Drug overdoses and suicides are routine. Now galloping inflation is merely intensifying the suffering. People can no longer continue to live this way!

Yet that is not enough! For a Revolution to ‘’triumph’’, it is also ‘’essential that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way’’, as explained by Lenin.

In our case, the ‘’exploiters’’ are represented by the politicians in the House. That same House is in a state of ‘’gridlock’’. The Republican Party is now at war with itself. The finest of the  bourgeois minds, see ‘’no way forward’’. In short, the capitalists are now unable to ‘’live and rule in the old way’’, which is one of the conditions for a successful Revolution.

Lenin goes on to say that such a governmental crisis ‘’draws even the most backward masses into politics…weakens the government, and makes it possible for the Revolutionaries to rapidly overthrow it’’.

The significance of the paralysis, within the government, lies in the fact that countless working people have been ‘’drawn into action’’. The government is now ‘’weakened’’. Now it is possible to ‘’rapidly overthrow it’’!

The working people are listening closely, as the journalists explain that the important decisions are being made ‘’behind closed doors’’. The cameras show the politicians huddled in groups, plotting and scheming. The working class is receiving an education!

Now it is up to Marxists, true Communists, to raise their level of awareness even higher. The working class must be made aware of itself as a class, with its own class interests. These interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the capitalists, the billionaires. We must use the events in the House, the ‘’government gridlock’’, to drive home the correctness of the Revolutionary theories of Marx and Lenin.

Incidentally, the fact is that Trump is asking all Republican Members of the House to vote for McCarthy, as Speaker. This means that Trump must consider McCarthy to be ‘’in his pocket’’. Yet no less that twenty Republican Members of the House are defying Trump! So Trump must be losing his control over the Republican Party!

It is also a fact that, as Lenin stated, a ‘’Great Revolution’’, and especially a ‘’Socialist Revolution’’, gives rise to ‘’chaos …among all the elements of disintegration of the old society’’. 

This explains the ‘’chaos’’, which is currently taking place in the House! It is merely one of the ‘’elements of disintegration of the old society’’! As the capitalist society is ‘’disintegrating’’, it is giving rise to ‘’chaos’’!

Strangely enough, even though the bourgeois journalists bear witness to this, they either can not, or perhaps will not, face the fact that the ‘’old society’’ is in a state of ‘’disintegration’’. A world without capitalism, a world of socialism, is ‘’on the horizon’’. 

That in no way changes the fact that we can use the facts which the journalists present, to drive home to the working class the necessity for Revolution. At the same time, we must stress the necessity of smashing the existing state apparatus, and replacing it with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. That is the ‘’way forward’’!