PHOTO/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
April marks the 150th anniversary of the ending of the Civil War. There is much we can and must learn from its beginning, its conduct and its ending. A month before the outbreak of fighting, relatively few Americans believed the deepening crisis would erupt into the longest, bloodiest, most expensive war in history.
History has its logic apart from what participants want or understand. Humanity constantly develops new means of producing its necessities, which in turn creates a new economy. The new economy cannot function within the existing social and economic relations. Then, revolution and social reconstruction become inevitable. How it happens depends on what the participants understand and do.
In the North, the majority supported, or at least did not want to interfere with, the South’s “peculiar institution.” Yet at the same time there was a seething, deepening hatred of the “Slave Power” that blocked the North’s industrial development and wealth accumulation. There was a total intellectual disconnect in the North between the political might of the “Slave Power” which was white and its economic foundation—which was Black slavery. Thus, the two wings of the capitalist class— industrial versus agricultural—free labor versus slave labor—moved into the irrepressible conflict.
The world, under different conditions, has again entered that revolutionary process. Electronic production is incompatible with wage labor society. Daily, thousands of people are drawn into this polarizing, revolutionary struggle, and like the Civil War period, without a clear understanding of what they are fighting for and against. Today the people hate corporate political power but not the capitalist system.
The purpose of the People’s Tribune is to educate and unite the democratic might of the American people. This is the only way to avoid repeating the horror of war as we face the inevitable revolution.
