The Future We Want

Socialism could have a future in America, argue Bhaskar Sunkara and Sarah Leonard, if we just think about it differently. Sunkara and Leonard, co-editors of of the essay collection The Future We Want: Radical Ideas for the New Century say that people aren’t scared of socialism taking their money, they’re scared of Wall Street taking their money. In fact, in a socialist future, money might actually go where it’s supposed to: back to the people. Taking on intersections of class and race, class and gender, they explain the logistics of moving towards a socialist future.

Sarah Leonard is a senior editor at The Nation, contributor to famous left-wing publication Dissent, and lecturer at NYU Gallatin. Bhaskar Sunkara is the editor and publisher of Jacobin magazine, a left-wing quarterly magazine recognized for offering socialist perspectives on contemporary issues.

Avoid The Unimaginable

Tom Hayden

December 11th, 1939 - October 23rd, 2016

"Our work is guided by the sense that we may be the last generation in the experiment with living. But we are a minority -- the vast majority of our people regard the temporary equilibriums of our society and world as eternally-functional parts. In this is perhaps the outstanding paradox: we ourselves are imbued with urgency, yet the message of our society is that there is no viable alternative to the present. Beneath the reassuring tones of the politicians, beneath the common opinion that America will "muddle through", beneath the stagnation of those who have closed their minds to the future, is the pervading feeling that there simply are no alternatives, that our times have witnessed the exhaustion not only of Utopias, but of any new departures as well. Feeling the press of complexity upon the emptiness of life, people are fearful of the thought that at any moment things might thrust out of control. They fear change itself, since change might smash whatever invisible framework seems to hold back chaos for them now. For most Americans, all crusades are suspect, threatening. The fact that each individual sees apathy in his fellows perpetuates the common reluctance to organize for change. The dominant institutions are complex enough to blunt the minds of their potential critics, and entrenched enough to swiftly dissipate or entirely repel the energies of protest and reform, thus limiting human expectancies. Then, too, we are a materially improved society, and by our own improvements we seem to have weakened the case for further change... Some would have us believe that Americans feel contentment amidst prosperity -- but might it not better be called a glaze above deeplyfelt anxieties about their role in the new world? And if these anxieties produce a developed indifference to human affairs, do they not as well produce a yearning to believe there is an alternative to the present, that something can be done to change circumstances in the school, the workplaces, the bureaucracies, the government? It is to this latter yearning, at once the spark and engine of change, that we direct our present appeal. The search for truly democratic alternatives to the present, and a commitment to social experimentation with them, is a worthy and fulfilling human enterprise, one which moves us and, we hope, others today."

Quote excerpted from The Port Huron Statement, 1962

Always Fight With Love

"There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Call it what you may, call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country."

Quote excepted from a speech to the Negro American Labor Council, May 1965.

The Retreat From Class

Ellen Meiksins Wood

April 12th, 1942 – January 14th 2016

"The intention of Marxism is to provide a theoretical foundation for interpreting the world in order to change it. This is not an empty slogan. It has—or ought to have—a very precise meaning. It means that Marxism seeks a particular kind of knowledge, one which is uniquely capable of illuminating the principles of historical movement and, at least implicitly, the points at which political action can most effectively intervene. This is not to say that the object of Marxist theory is to discover a ‘scientific’ programme or technique of political action. Rather, the purpose is to provide a mode of analysis especially well equipped to explore the terrain on which political action must take place."

Text excerpted from The Separation Of the Economic And The Political in Capitalism (New Left Review, 1981).

It Can Be Done!

During the 20th century, all kinds of revolutionary processes took place. Some of these revolutions were triumphant while others were defeated. The most important of these revolutionary processes was the Russian Revolution on October 25 - November in the Gregorian calendar during the Tsarist Empire.  Among some of the main topics of discussion amongst fighters and revolutionaries around the world are the characteristics, lessons and further development of the Russian Revolution.

In 1917, Russia was ruled with an iron fist by the dictatorship of the Tsars. As a result of the feudal system under existence, millions of peasants lived in poverty, backwardness and ignorance. However, in some cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow, there was a young industrial working class. Meanwhile, the tsarist empire was fighting in the First World War on the side of England and France.

During the war years, an untenable hardship affected the whole population in Russia in particular the masses of peasants and workers in the army who suffered the brunt of food scarcity and misery. In St. Petersburg, a growing discontent led to a successful insurrection which overthrew the Tsar. Afterwards, a weak provisional government led by Kerensky in an alliance formed  by the party of the Russian bourgeoisie and the conciliatory parties that led the workers and peasants such as the Mensheviks (reformist social democrats) and the Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries. At the same time, democratic bodies of the masses, workers, soldiers and peasants in struggle (Soviets) which had first appeared in the 1905 Revolution, reemerged. By then, Bolshevik Party under the direction of Lenin and Trotsky was no longer in the minority and began to grow.

The Insurrection

The Provisional Government led by Kerensky did not address any of the serious problems that affected workers and peasants. In fact, Russia continued its involvement in the war, land was not being distributed to the peasantry, there was no bread in the cities and the government did not fulfill its election promises. Within the Soviets, popular discontent with the conciliatory parties was on the rise. Thus, the Bolshevik Party was becoming increasingly influential. By late September, the Bolshevik Party had among its ranks almost all of the Soviet delegates in St. Petersburg and Moscow and directed the main army regiments. In early October, the Bolshevik Party leadership came to the conclusion that the political conditions were ripe for the Soviets to overthrow Kerensky and take power. A section of the Social Revolutionary Party joined the insurrectionary plan. Lenin, living in an underground refuge in Finland, followed the events step by step while Trotsky led the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet.

On October 25, the Soviets took power. For the first time in history, a revolutionary government of workers and peasants which proclaimed the struggle for international socialism emerged out of the mobilization of the masses and workers’ democracy.

Early Years and Bureaucratization

Among some of the first actions taken by the Soviet government was the distribution of land, implementation of workers control in the factories and the creation of a long-delayed Constituent Assembly as well as Russia’s withdrawal from the imperialist war.

The Revolution was consolidating itself among those oppressed and exploited under the Tsarist regime. To crush the young Soviet republic, both the landed aristocracy and Russian bourgeoisie in alliance with imperialist powers started a bloody civil war. But the bourgeois counter-revolution was crushed thanks to the undaunted heroism of workers and peasants and the guidance of the Bolshevik Party by a principled leadership.

No other country produced a victory similar to the Russian Revolution in spite of a revolutionary wave that swept the rest of Europe. According to Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks, a Soviet Russia could only be maintained if it was part of a triumph of European and world socialist revolution.

However, the civil war weakened and isolated Russia, leading to a new political development when Stalin led a bureaucracy who had abandoned socialism and world revolution and destroyed workers’ democracy.

Lessons Of October

After Lenin’s death on January 1924, Trotsky continued to lead the resistance against Stalin while defending the program and the party of the world socialist revolution. In 1935, in 18th anniversary of the Revolution, Trotsky wrote that even though that first victory of socialism was completely swept and the Soviet Union (USSR) under Stalin was "almost unrecognizable" compared to the early years, the Revolution left invaluable experiences. "Loyalty to the revolutionary program, relentless hostility to the bourgeoisie, decisive break with the social patriots [the reformists of all kinds], and deep trust in the revolutionary force of the masses, these are the main lessons of October."

Are these lessons still valid today? Experience shows that they are indeed. The bourgeoisie sink the masses further into misery while conciliatory and reformist leaders betray workers and workers, peasants and all the oppressed are fighting and struggling all over the world. To end capitalism, and even to prevent it from returning in the hands of bureaucrats, it is necessary to defend the program and build the revolutionary party that allows for the definite triumph of socialism in every country and around the world, an internationalist and democratic socialism like the one that began to take its first steps in October 1917.

Article by Mercedes Petit

It Isn't Working

"Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun."

Quote from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, 1965

The S Word

Oxi Means Oxi!

"Solidarity from others oppressed by austerity policies everywhere is Greece's greatest need now. Real solidarity will also help to mobilize the forces everywhere that are coming to realize the deepening costs and injustices of accepting capitalism's continuation." -Richard D. Wolff

From Greece Needs Our Solidarity in Its Struggle Against Austerity (TurthOut, July 2015)

This Is A Working System!

"There’s this misguided myth that unions and management don’t get along. It’s a business bottom-line issue. Right-to-work is going to compromise my quality, my competitiveness. The unions are my partner. They’re almost like a screening agency. This is a working system. I have never understood this right-to-work agenda." -Bill Kennedy, Rock Road Companies

From Fate Of The Union (NY Times, June 2015)

Independence is my happiness

“When it can be said by any country in the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them, my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars, the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive, the rational world is my friend because I am the friend of happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and government."

From Rights Of Man, 1791

Rocking The System

"At a time when 99 percent of all new income is going to the top one percent, and when the top one-tenth of the one percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, maybe its time for a political shakeup in this country and to go beyond establishment politics."

Quote from an interview with Bernie Sanders for ABC This Week, May 2015

Rise With Workers, Not Rise From Them

"Ten thousand times the labor movement has stumbled and bruised itself. We have been enjoined by the courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, traduced by the press, frowned upon in public opinion, and deceived by politicians. But not withstanding all this and all these, labor is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun."

Embrace The Alternative

"We must convince people that we need an alternative and we must convince them about what that alternative is. We need to stand up for the hundreds of millions of lives devastated by global capitalism. The abuses we saw in 2008 will happen over and over again as long as capitalism survives. And it is our job to break the cycle of capitalist exploitation of people and the ecosystem and save ourselves. This will only come about if we organize mass movements, if we build a radical political party and if we refuse to accept a system designed to subject the immense majority to misery so that a minority can pile up untold wealth." -Kshama Sawant

From The Most Dangerous Woman In America (TruthDig, March 2015)

This Makes Sense

"From the time I was kid, I saw the broader context of how we live here in the U.S. When I was twelve, I saw Edward R. Murrow’s Harvest Of Shame and that was it. It led me to uncover the image versus the reality of how people live. I then learned to pronounce "apartheid" and saw the treatment of blacks here in this country as they struggled for civil rights. It made me question deeply and ask myself: How can people like migrant workers who are helping us eat not have a pot to piss in? I started learning about countries that have a "share-the-wealth" system and I said to myself, There is nothing wrong with that. This makes sense.

Capitalism’s problem is that it has nothing to say about how to combat greed. For all the moralizing this country does, people don’t get it: They’re greedy. And it's gotten worse in my lifetime. You don’t even have to have socialism. I am talking about minimal things. Put money aside to fund playgrounds and high school football teams. Are you kidding me? The Grammy Awards has to make a plea to keep music in schools? I mean, what planet are we on? I guess I am asking another question in my work as well: What happened?"

From Lewis Black's interview in The Progressive, April 2007

Revolution Is Inevitable!

"The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers, the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labour... Private capital tends to become concentrated in few hands, partly because of competition among the capitalists, and partly because technological development and the increasing division of labor encourage the formation of larger units of production at the expense of smaller ones. The result of these developments is an oligarchy of private capital the enormous power of which cannot be effectively checked even by a democratically organized political society. This is true since the members of legislative bodies are selected by political parties, largely financed or otherwise influenced by private capitalists who, for all practical purposes, separate the electorate from the legislature. The consequence is that the representatives of the people do not in fact sufficiently protect the interests of the underprivileged sections of the population. Moreover, under existing conditions, private capitalists inevitably control, directly or indirectly, the main sources of information (press, radio, education). It is thus extremely difficult, and indeed in most cases quite impossible, for the individual citizen to come to objective conclusions and to make intelligent use of his political rights... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals."

Excerpted from Albert Einstein's Why Socialism (Monthly Review, May 1949)

Photograph of Washington Square Park by Nancy Cricco (NYU Archives, 1980)

I Hate The Capitalist System

"I hate the capitalist system,

And I'll tell you the reason why:

It has caused me so much suffering,

And my dearest friends to die."

An Emancipating Sun

"The working class must get rid of the whole brood of masters and exploiters, and put themselves in possession and control of the means of production, that they may have steady employment without consulting a capitalist employer, large or small, and that they may get the wealth their labor produces, all of it, and enjoy with their families the fruits of their industry in comfortable and happy homes, abundant and wholesome food, proper clothing and all other things necessary to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." It is therefore a question not of "reform," the mask of fraud, but of revolution. The capitalist system must be overthrown, class-rule abolished and wage-slavery supplanted by the cooperative industry."

From Outlook for Socialism In The United States, 1900

There's Just Us

"The current criminal justice system is shaped by economic bias — crimes unique to the wealthy are either ignored or treated lightly, while the so-called common crimes of the poor lead to arrest, charges, conviction, and imprisonment. The three propositions that support this statement are that (1) society fails to protect people from crimes they fear (homicide, burglary, assault) by refusing to alleviate the poverty that breeds them; (2) the criminal justice system fails to protect people from the most serious dangers by failing to define as crimes the dangerous acts of those who are well off (white collar crime, pollution, occupational hazards) and to prosecute accordingly; and (3) by virtue of these and other failures, the criminal justice system succeeds in creating the image that crime is almost exclusively the work of the poor, an image that serves the interests of the powerful. By focusing on individual criminals who are poor, the system diverts attention from the injustices of social and economic institutions. The failure to reduce crime reinforces this situation by concentrating fear and hostility on the poor. At the base of unequal justice is the unequal distribution of wealth and income. A criminal justice system cannot hold individuals guilty of the injustice of breaking the law if the law itself supports and defends an unjust social order. To counteract this failure, steps must be taken toward domestic disarmament; criminalization of white-collar crimes; creation of a correctional system that promotes human dignity and gives ex-offenders a real opportunity to go straight; a more reasonable exercise of power by police officers, prosecutors, and judges; and equal access to high-quality legal expertise for all individuals accused of crime."

From The Rich Get Richer And The Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class And Criminal Justice, 1979

Every Worker Deserves A Living Wage

Social and economic inequality in the US has reached historic proportions. The top 1% increased their income following capitalism’s Great Recession while the overwhelming majority of working people are still struggling or are even worse off than before. The movement for a minimum wage of $15/hour is an expression this enormous problem of inequality. The support for the fast food workers actions for $15 showed that the aspirations of Occupy to fight against poverty and inequality are alive and growing among millions.

15 Now was launched in January of 2014 by Seattle City Council Member, Kshama Sawant and Socialist Alternative to fight for a $15 minimum wage in Seattle. 15 Now chapters quickly spread across the country. It is a campaign that anyone can join and help build.

An Obvious Choice?

"The increasing anxiety of American life comes from the covert guilt that abundance and equality remain utterly separated, and we have reached the point where socialism is not only morally demanding but unconsciously obvious — obvious enough to flood with anxiety the psyches of those millions who know and yet do nothing." -Norman Mailer

From Advertisements For Myself, 1959