by Sumona Routh — Oberlin, OH, Student

I can’t imagine how anyone could look at the current world and be satisfied with its fundamental characteristic: the capitalist system. The U.S. is brutally occupying Iraq, while a huge number of Americans clearly express that they don’t support it. Ordinary people, both Iraqi and American, are the ones who are suffering. Employers continuously compromise the living conditions of their workers, and massive strikes rise up all over the world. The majority of people have it way too hard.

And the fact is, we don’t have to. Poverty should be obsolete. Racism and sexism, two oppressive forms I have close experience with, are so rooted in the maintenance of capitalism and its ruling class. They are not natural elements of human existence. Under socialism, they would not have to be aspects of life or of the real world.

With these understandings, I have permanently identified with the class struggle, and have deeply committed myself to it. To build towards socialism, I chose to be in a party with an excellent political program and tactics towards building a mass workers’ movement. It is especially significant to build a socialist party in the most imperialist country of this time, a time when its history is exploding with racist wars and massive public spending cuts in every area imaginable and when people are really losing trust in their government and its representatives.