More than a century after Karl Marx lived, it is clear the world still needs changing. The American Dream is dead, as wages have been sinking for the past thirty years. Our generation will be the first in memory to be poorer than our parents, and the first in U.S. history to be less educated. Every year, nearly six million children die of malnutrition, and half the people on this planet live on less than $2 a day.

The sick twist — as Marx pointed out — is that it is all unnecessary. Capitalism has created the forces to feed, house and clothe everyone on earth. For the first time in history, universal equality is materially feasible. Yet capitalism has also created forces powerful enough to destroy life on earth. Scientists warn us of an environmental catastrophe that could kill billions. The 20th century saw the dawn of the mushroom cloud and polio vaccine, the concentration camp and the microchip, the possibilities of annihilation and equality.

As Marx said, the choice is between socialism and barbarism. For those who would prefer socialism, I recommend the kickoff meeting of the International Socialist Organization, tonight at 7:30 p.m. in 1101 Humanities. If you want to change the world, we believe socialism is the way to start.

The question — how to reach toward a better society — is one Marx pondered as a university student. Like many students today, young Karl had fundamental questions about society, namely “What the hell is wrong with this country?” Marx’s Germany was politically comatose, stuck in a feudal economy controlled by a despotic government. It seemed like nothing ever changed. So what was an angry young man to do?

Like most people who set out to change the world, Marx thought if the system could be reformed, it would be preferable to revolution. For years, he was the editor of a left wing newspaper, the Rheinische Zeitung, where he crusaded against the unjust treatment of peasants and political censorship. Marx wanted to strip away the corrupting influence of moneyed interests from politics and rescue the ideal German state. But the more Marx wrote, the more the government suppressed his paper. He realized the influence of the wealthy was not a corruption of the state, it was the point of the state.

This is not the way we learn politics in school. How often have we heard platitudes like, “America was founded on the idea of democracy?” But ideas don’t found governments, people do, and those people always have specific economic interests. Our “founding fathers” knew this, and James Madison wrote in the “Federalist Papers,” “Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.” Madison is oft-praised as an advocate for the rights of the minority. But what minority? Certainly not blacks, women or the poor. As Madison himself put it, the government must “protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” America is not a democracy corrupted by the wealthy; it’s a government of the wealthy shrouded by formally democratic institutions.

If Marx identified the problem, he also found the solution. Just as our society was not created by the idea of democracy, neither would socialism come purely from the brilliance of Marx. Marx sought out “a class with radical chains,” a group of people in society whose interests necessarily involved overthrowing capitalism and establishing socialist democracy. He found it in the modern working class.

Although capitalism created wars and poverty — and made a sham of democracy — it also gave birth to its own undertakers. Marx observed how capitalism created a class of people who had no means of subsistence but expect to work for pay. Therefore, they could only improve their lot by fighting their employers for better wages. Because workers own nothing, they have “nothing to lose but their chains,” and everything to gain by expropriating the wealth of capitalists for their own needs and wants.

Many Americans are reasonably skeptical at the idea that workers could embrace radical politics. Since the 2004 election, many liberals have given up on the working class, writing them off as incorrigible bigots. Not only is this a gross caricature, it also ignores the economic crisis against which workers must struggle — and struggle can open people up to radical ideas. When 81 percent of Americans think this country is headed in the wrong direction, and 82 percent think there should be more government spending on jobs, it is time to forget the myth that America is Jesusland.

Marx established the basic task of socialist organizations: to unite working class struggle with socialist politics. Today, the International Socialist Organization is working to revitalize struggle in the U.S. and to lay the groundwork for a revolutionary socialist party that can lead a fight to end the madness of capitalism.

Paul Pryse ([email protected]) is a member of the International Socialist Organization.