Homelessness – not having a place to lay your head – is the major aspect of poverty today. The fastest growing section of homelessness is single parents and their children. People are beginning to raise the question, “What is wrong with a society that cannot provide the fundamentals – food, clothing, and shelter?” And what is the meaning of these new sectors of society being hit that have not been hit before? What is going on?
Two things are underway in the economy today: One is that there is a cyclical crisis of overproduction. Under capitalism cyclical crises occur every 10 years or so. Warehouses pile up with unsold commodities; retailers start cutting orders. This compels manufacturers to cut back on production, which means laying off workers. This cycle continues until the surplus is eaten up or destroyed. Slowly the wheel begins to turn again. That is one aspect of what is going on today. But everybody knows that there is something more to today's crisis.
While the cyclical crisis is resolvable, the "something more," the other aspect of the crisis, is irreconcilable. It comes about as a result of fundamental changes in the way things are produced. Today, more and more is being produced with less and less labor power because of electronics. When commodities, including labor power, are sold and bought with money, the producer consumes and the consumer produces. But if you have a productive process that goes on without purchasing labor power, then distribution has to change to conform to the production process. Distribution must be carried on without money. That hasn't happened. An irreconcilable contradiction develops that necessarily results in a vast array of unsold commodities.
We have two crises operating – one inside of the other. One is a cyclical crisis and the other is a crisis between the way we make and the way we distribute things. Since the new producers do not consume there is a growing glut of food shelter and clothing, while more and more consumers who no longer produce are denied access to food, shelter and clothing. The worst expression of this crisis is the denial of housing. We have a society of 300 million people and officially there are 3 million homeless. Add the couch people, children moving back in with parents, parents moving in with children, people temporarily staying will relatives, and you're talking about 14 million people.
Since we can't make the new economy fit into the old society, we must visualize a new society that fits the new economy. We can't just demand revolution. Revolution comes about as a fight for reform and not the other way around. As this irresolvable crisis intensifies, it is imperative that the revolutionaries make this vision a part of the fight for the necessities of life.
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