chapotraphouse

Big question. Again, very "briefly" ; )

There was a reduction of classes from earlier pre-capitalist points in history into two primary classes in an industrial capitalist society:

1. A class of laborers that do everything. Create everything. Build everything. Keep everything maintained. Who represent nearly the complete mass of society and all productive force. The proletariat.
2. A bourgeois owner class that exists to endlessly extract from the productive forces through economic coercion and violence. This class represents a very small minority of people, but an efficient parasite to the improvement of conditions which should be a natural result of the productive force.

This coersion is accomplished through the concept of "ownership", where ownership of the land and means of production give them the exclusive right to dictate to you how little you must sell your labor for, and how much the cost of goods will be (which are produced by the same labor). By controlling both wages and cost of goods, the owner class can manipulate economic conditions and markets to maximize their own profit growth, which is their primary class interest.

If we create / do / build everything, why do we allow ourselves to be exploited? We have the numbers. We have the tools. We have the knowledge. But we are conditioned to submit to the authority of the owner class, because they tell us they own our labor; own our time; own our land; own our workplaces; own our farms; own our factories -- that we do not own them. But that's an illusion and a lie. Do you really need someone to be a c-suite billionaire to perform your job duties? You're paid from a tiny fraction of the value your labor creates, not from the generosity of the parasite.

The productive capacity of humanity belongs to the good of humanity, not to a small cadre of people which enjoy unimaginable wealth, security and comfort at the expense of everyone else on earth. We first must recognize that this productive capacity belongs to those who perform it, not those who suck its blood.

Can it be done? It has been done!

There have been a number of successful revolutions against the rule of the bourgeoisie. The first was the USSR. Other liberation struggles followed, such as China, Korea, Viet Nam, Cuba, Guatamala, El Salvidor, Iran, Afghanistan, Chile, etc. Parenthetically, consider how the US, the capitalist military empire, responded to those struggles and how many million of people the US killed to prevent them from succeeding; how many times the US threatened to end the world if it could not rule over everything. These countries are saddled with illegal unilateral sanctions, blockades, bombed, invaded, couped, and robbed to keep them from succeeding against capitalist control. That success would be a dangerous example to others.

Overcoming the forces of capitalism is an international struggle. It requires us to awaken a global class consciousness and unite as a class interest which can begin displacing this unjust system by taking ownership of it. That requires the creation of a new state which has the power and will to oppress the interests of capital and direct productive forces toward the needs of the people.

Some good starting points:

Obligatory Yellow Parenti

Michael Parenti - Blackshirts and Reds

Marx & Engles - Communist Manifesto

Marx - Wage Labor and Capital

Vladimir Lenin - What is to be Done?