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You are a part of a savage but invisible conflict that began before you were born. Any apparently neutral act today will be a gambit within the total strategic situation.
The side that has the upper hand has worked tirelessly to prevent any awareness of the conflict appearing.
We are partisans of the other side. This magazine is part of a counter strategy. For this reason, while I write for clarity, do not expect the total approach to be clear immediately.
If it is not yet obvious, this magazine is about class struggle - but not the hackneyed version you see in left wing "worker's" rags. We're not here to glorify the poor but to talk about what's happening now. Most Americans aren't yet near the miserable conditions of 19th century mill workers, but the rulers of this society now are pushing us close enough to imagine them. Paraphrasing one Eastern Airlines striker, "I can see it will come down to a fight between us and them. I'm not ready for it yet but I can see that it has to happen." Certain groups will have to fight it out in the end; not when everyone is starving, but when enough people can see where this society leads.
So who are we? Not Joe Worker. The slap-happy steel workers in Miller commercials and the glorious mechanics from socialist realism are really the same: dull louts who still respect work and have a certain sexual relation to their tools. But how many people want to be workers? No one joins a union to get closer to the "common people" except a lefty politico. And most of us aren't in unions. Even though a few jobs, like nursing or construction, might still seem macho or caring, almost everyone works for money. Even if they hate working, people need their wages to survive.
Class is not just a condition of dirty elbows and collars. Those who must work; we exist today despite all the propaganda. There might be great differences between an educated secretary and a suburban auto worker. One might be a bohemian who is still proud to wordprocess in the financial district while the other probably only still assembles cars because they need money for their family. - Or vice versa. Despite these differences they are both dispossessed because they must sell their time simply to survive.