During the first part of this article Black comments on his reading of the latest United States National Security Strategy released by President Trump in December 2017.
There once was a time when working people were on the move, had confidence in themselves, created their own leaders, their own heroes and heroines, their own philosophy, their own ideas of democracy, of society, of their conditions and how to overturn the old brutality of the capitalist system and establish new conditions favourable to us. But failures and betrayals have sapped the energy, weakened the will, created confusions and illusions, turned sister against brother, wounded the solidarity of our class, and pitted people against people in war after war solely to advance the quest for profit. ....Then in the 2nd half he, as a lawyer, examines the UN founding principles to compare with the US Empire's actions and finds that "the USA has been in persistent violation of the principles of the Charter since 1945..." and could be expelled from the UN. Black doesn't understand that the legal structure has been erected under capitalist rule, and as such it, like all other institutions, has been constructed by, and support of, capitalist rule. When laws are ignored--and they often are--they are used simply as legitimizing propaganda, or "putting lipstick on a capitalist pig". (This is what the Bill of Rights section of the US Constitution was designed to do.) Therefore, as a lawyer he can complain all he wants, but as long as capitalism exists, which only serves a tiny minority, we will continue to have war crimes, violations of UN laws, and a frightening devolution into the likelihood of a nuclear war conflagration and a slow development of climate destabilization that either or both will lead to our extinction. The only real solution is revolution.
But all is not lost and rise we will again. The countries and peoples that resist are the proof before us that the omnipotence of the empire is illusory as all empires, based on power and fear, are. The resurgence of working class parties and movements is a fact. Things are happening. If we can find our way out of the maze they have created around us by dividing us into a thousand self interests, special interests, “identity” interests, gender interests, dividing us by religion, skin colour, accent, level of pay, nationality and ethnicity, and all the other things they use to get us opposed to each other, if we can make working people comprehend their own power once united, to see that anyone who works for a living is the brother and sister of all others who must do the same, then the resistance moves to a more concrete level.
