Home stretch

  • November 1, 2018

1. The unspeakable murders of 11 Jewish people have bubbled to the surface what has garnered too little attention up to now — the outsized role of anti-semitism in animating Trump’s supporters and Trump himself. And the left bears some responsibility here. We haven’t adequately explicated (or opposed) the toxic and, (as we now know too well) lethal mix of racism, nativism and anti-semitism deployed by Trump and the right wing media.

2. If anyone thought that anti-semitism was a relic of an earlier era, the horrible shooting in Pittsburgh proved otherwise. While its animating power and reach may have shrunk over recent decades, the bloody events in Pittsburgh this week reveal not only that it remains as potent as ever on the right and the stuff around which the right weaves its dark conspiracies, but also — and this is my main point — that it can, when given a green light by the president and the right wing media, reactivate and command a much larger audience — already marinating in a stew of real and invented resentments — than most of us thought possible.

Next Tuesday we can not only take control of Congress out of Republican hands, but also begin to put this pernicious and deadly ideology and practice of hate and division on its heels.

3. I am canvassing door to door this week. I hope you are too. For me, it is the place where the rubber of my politics and values meets the road of practical action. With less than a week to go, it is hard to think of anything we can do that remotely approaches the importance of canvassing or phone banking or similar things that turn out voters on election day.

4. Is there a danger of full blown right wing populist authoritarian rule? Of course! To believe otherwise is not only naive, but also disarming and dangerous.

Moreover, it will grow exponentially if the Republicans retain their control over both chambers of Congress next week. But even in that case — which I think is unlikely — the terrain for popular struggles and broad political engagement, even if narrowed, will still exist and will surely be utilized by a disparate coalition of constituencies, classes, organizations, and peoples who wlll not ready to yield up our country to hands of these executioners of democracy and democratic rule as we have known it.

This is no time for despair. The task now is to get out the vote, while the task on Wednesday of next week is to resume our righteous struggle on what will be new ground no matter what the outcome on election day.

5. This article in my opinion gives a better picture of what the country would look like if Trump and Trumpism isn’t successfully resisted than the frequently cited references to Hitler’s Germany or Mussiline’s Italy or Pinochet’s Chile.

This may seem like an abstract, idle debate with little or no significance attached to it. But that isn’t the case in my opinion. Its resolution, actually, has a major bearing on what we do as well as where and how we do it in the near and longer term.

6. At one time, universal suffrage — voting — was seen by communists as no more than a “gauge of the maturity of the working class,” no matter what the circumstances. That changed decades ago, even as communists still remained suspicious of the electoral terrain of struggle and its place in the transition to socialism.

Other sections of the revolutionary left held the same view. In fact, suspicious doesn’t quite capture their attitude. Disdain is closer to the truth.

But what makes this moment interesting is that significant numbers on the left, in an about face, are fully participating in the efforts to get out the vote for Democratic Party candidates.

That’s progress in my opinion, and if it holds, it bodes well for the future. Voting is much more than a measure of the maturity of the working class and the electoral terrain is more than just one other terrain of struggle. Both are key components of any strategy that hopes to reverse the growing right wing, populist authoritarian danger that we face at the present moment, while at the same time, expanding and deepening working class and people’s democracy and thus facilitating in the longer term the struggle for socialism.

The insurrectionary image of politics and the transition to socialism that has no or little place for electoral politics and the electoral path of struggle never served its proponents in the communist movement and left well.

7. Across the world in general and Europe and the U.S. in particular, we are seeing the rise and spread of right wing authoritarian populist movements. Some have captured control of state/governmental institutions in their respective countries by electoral-political means. Others are not yet wielding the levers of political power, but command a considerable mass following and in some cases are only an election away from such power.

While much could be said about the origins, features, and prospects of this exceedingly dangerous political phenomenon, I would only mention for the moment two things. First, this existential danger can be averted by aroused people, movements, and parties that, when equipped with expansive and flexible tactics, near inexhaustible energy, and a compelling vision, have the wherewithal to defend and expand democracy, democratic rights, and democratic governance as they turn the tide against this ascending retrograde and reactionary phenomenon.

Second, this phenomenon, even if it has some resemblances to past fascisms, isn’t yet fascist, which. by the way, has nearly as many meanings as interlocutors. Is it moving in that direction is quite another question. It may well be, but my own guess — and it is only that given what I consider the contingency of politics at this moment and thus the possibility of alternative paths — is that something like Putin’s Russia is a far more likely resting place for these movements than Hitler’s Germany or Mussolini’s Italy or Pinochet’s Chile.

In any event, the stakes are exceedingly high — never higher in my lifetime — for anyone who hopes to live in conditions of democracy, equality, peace, and planetary sustainability now and in the future.

8. Efforts from the left to minimize or, worse yet, explain away the fact that a significant section of white workers embrace Trump and Trumpism is very misguided. It likely rests on a cockeyed view of partisanship and an equally cockeyed (and old) understanding of class and class politics.

 

Just around the corner

  • October 17, 2018

1. What should the left — the social justice movement — be doing these days? The answer seems simple enough to me anyway: volunteering for House and Senate campaigns across the country. In so doing, we can talk to lots of people on their doorsteps, meet many like minded activists (especially women of all ages) who are energizing these campaigns, bring our insights, albeit in abbreviated form, into the mix, and, above all, get out the vote.

Is there anything else that can take some of the wind out of the utterly reactionary nationalist, misogynist, nativist. racist, and authoritarian sails of Trump and the Republican Party more than a good drubbing at the ballot box in less than three weeks? I don’t think so. To wit: If you aren’t practically involved, that can easily be changed.

2. The furor around the gruesome and state sponsored murder of a Saudi journalist who was living here and employed by Washington Post isn’t a story with a short shelf life.

Trump’s attempt to give the Crown Prince a free pass on the grounds of plausible deniability is already encountering strong headwinds, including from some of the same Republicans who fell in behind his nomination of Kavanaugh to the court. Much could be said about Trump’s motivation — family financial connections, Iran and geopolitics, embrace of autocrats, arms sales — and the many ramifications of this brutal murder, but for the moment I would mention only two things.

First, Trump’s defense of the extra judicial killing of a respected journalist and mild critic of the Crown Prince sends a signal to other autocrats that they can do the same without fearing any negative reaction from the Trump administration.

Second, Trump’s collapsing defense of the Crown prince is causing problems for Republican Party candidates in the final weeks of the campaign. They no longer control their campaign message and whatever momentum they had achieved in recent weeks could well dissipate as this story gains public attention. If this were not enough to make Republican candidates lose sleep at night, Trump’s misogynist comment earlier this week about Stormy Daniels, coming only two weeks ago when he mocked Christine Blasey Ford at a public rally and reports of an exploding federal deficit can only add to their problems.

3. If my experience is representative, it is newly energized activists, women in particular, and not so much the traditional left, that are on the ground floor and doing the heaviest lifting in Congressional campaigns across the country.

4. Just read an article that says “fascism is knocking at the door.” Do we live in a dangerous moment? For sure. Authoritarian politics menace our country, and things could get worse before they get better. And yet he space for democratic action is still considerable. In fact, in less than a month millions can go to the polls and deliver a major blow to Trump and authoritarian rule.

Moreover, in the next three weeks we can scour without hindrance neighborhoods to make the case for such an election outcome. And if we aren’t successful, well, the post election terrain will, no doubt. be more dangerous. But fascist, I don’t think so.

This may seem like an exercise in splitting hairs, but it isn’t. How one assesses a political moment has a considerable impact on what we do and how we do it. To say that fascism has arrived or nearly so, as some argue, can result in a politics of retreat, of ceding democratic space to the Trunpists when there is no need, of turning popular resistance into the exclusive property of the most militant.

5. Bravo to Taylor Swift. She demonstrated real courage in opposing the Republican woman running for the Senate in Tennessee.

6. In canvassing and other casual conversations, I have come to realize that many people don’t necessarily attach the same political importance to the coming elections as I do. In other words, not every voter sees them as an opportunity to erect a badly needed firewall against Trump and the growing danger of authoritarian rule. Their concerns are more immediate and a wise campaign strategy can’t ignore them. To their credit, Democrats aren’t.

7. An oped by Jefferson Cowie makes a persuasive case for a progressive-left nationalism. It is far more thoughtful than a similar column by John Judis that appeared in earlier this week in the NYT. Cowie is right in my opinion when he writes that the left can’t ignore the struggle over the nuts and bolts of national vision, feeling, and tradition. The right won’t. In fact, over the past half century, it has seized that terrain of national debate and infused it with a reactionary content. And, of course, it’s a fundamental cornerstone of Trump’s politics and demagogy.

As Cowie mentions, neither King nor Obama ceded this turf to their right wing opponents. Frederick Douglass didn’t either. The contemporary left should follow their example.

One issue I have with his column is his favorable reference to Richard Rorty, Years ago, Cowie tells us, Rorty wrote that he feared that indulging in cultural politics rather than emphasizing the material interests of American working people and articulating a national vision would lead to catastrophe.

This advice is wrongheaded, and to the degree that Cowie embraces it, it takes away from the kernel of truth in his oped. Any progressive national vision that ignores “cultural issues” will have neither a leg to stand on nor any hope of inspiring e movement of a diverse and democratic minded majority, capable of moving from the politics of protest to the politics of full blooded democracy, equality, national renewal, and power.

A defining moment and other observations

  • October 4, 2018

1. The challenge for activists in and supporters of the working class and labor movement is to contest the notion, purposefully peddled by Trump and his right wing acolytes, that white men are an aggrieved minority who increasingly encounter discriminatory treatment, undeserved abuse, and systematic victimization at the hands of an accusing and shrill chorus of women — not to mention people of color, gays, immigrants, Hollywood, and out of touch Democrats and urban elites.

This feeling of white male aggrievement to what many white men consider a baseless attack on what they believe to be their earned as well as culturally transmitted sense of entitlement in their relations with women has been heightened in the course of the pitched battle over the nomination of accused sexual predator Bret Kanvanaugh to the Supreme Court.

In his testimony, Kavanaugh aggressively expressed this sense of victimization and entitlement over what he considered a baseless and invented attack on his dignity, accomplishments, manhood, and family. Not only did he deny the claims of Christine Blasey Ford, Deborah Ramirez, and other accusers out of hand, but he angrily asserted without a shred of evidence that he was the target of a far larger conspiracy whose intent was to destroy his impeccable reputation and unfairly deny him what he is earned and is entitled to — a seat on the Supreme Court.

Eagerly assisting him in this exercise of dissembling and blame shifting is Trump, Republican leaders, and the right wing attack machine. Trump at a rally two nights ago in Mississippi turned his appearance into an opportunity to take off his rhetorical gloves and jump in the gutter. In front of an adoring crowd of white people of all ages and incomes, he unloaded on Christine Blasey Ford and mockingly attempted to tear to shreds her painfully and courageously wrought testimony of sexual victimization at Kavanaugh’s hands.

In doing so, Trump not only tried to destroy the honesty and claims of Blasey Ford, but also to turn the whole conversation over sexual violence against women on its head, that is into a platform to stoke and give legitimacy to white male resentment and grievance, while at the same time closing off any space for women to make public their experiences at the hands of predatory and violent men — not to mention mobilize his base for the coming elections.

In Trump’s rendering, the victim became the victimizer and the victimizer became the victim. This inversion is not just without grounds in fact and outrageous. It’s also especially dangerous to every woman in so far as it gives a green light to abuse them as men see fit. And, by implication, it’s a danger to anyone who encounters as well as struggles against the many forms of inequality, discrimination, and oppression in our society.

As Blasey Ford reminded us, white male entitlement and privilege isn’t something that simply inhabits the world of discourse. It sanctions all manner of discrimination, subordination, and violence against women. It’s deeply embedded in the material reality of our society and systematically reproduces itself.

It’s also isn’t peculiar to the white billionaire class even though this class reaps enormous wealth and privilege from this ideology and practice. White workers gain advantage and privilege too, even if goes against the grain of any democratic and egalitarian construction of their interests.

Supporters of and activists in the working class and labor movement can’t ignore nor should they minimize this reality. It has to be challenged, especially with the elections a month away.

2. When Trump and GOP go low, as they are doing now in their ruthless and misogynist assault on Christine Blasey Ford, we should come to her defense in whatever way we can and march (and encourage others to march) to the polls on November 6.

I don’t have a big megaphone, but I try to find ways to bring this shameless attack as well as Kavanaugh’s sense of white, male entitlement that allows him to think that he can sexually abuse women with complete impunity into every conversation that I engage in. Last night it became a subject of conversation in my spin class.

Meanwhile, I will be canvassing later today. I was happy to hear that we will be going to the homes of low turnout Democrats. Up to now we’ve been visiting the homes of registered Republicans.

3. I hear TV commentators in too many instances reduce the Kavanaugh nomination to a partisan fight in which Democrats are as to blame as Republicans for the heightened acrimony in Washington. It is partisan and acrimonious for sure. But to leave it here obscures the fundamental issue around which this contentious battle turns — whether someone who is a sexual predator, right wing political operative, and virulent opponent of all manner of democratic and human rights belongs on the court. And on this score Democrats are fighting the good fight and should not yield an inch their opposition.

4. What goes unmentioned in many accounts of the Obama Presidency is that his very presence in the White House and artfully articulated vision of the American family challenged a core tenet of right wing extremism — the racialized ordering of “America.” In contesting this ordering in which white people because of their supposed “natural” superiority and inordinate contributions to the making of “America” sit at the top of the social ladder, while people of color because of their supposed inferiority and minimal contributions to the making of the country are forcibly assigned to its lowest rung, Obama became the object of the unrestrained, racist wrath of the extreme right.

What is more in thinking about the gestation ground for the Tea Party, Birtherism, Republican congressional intransigence, the explosion of white male resentment, the rise of Trump, and much more, this racial-political dynamic has to figure prominently in any explanation.

To ignore or even to minimize this dynamic makes the dual task of understanding how we arrived at the current moment and finding a path out of this existential political crisis impossible. A narrow class against class, economic populist approach won’t fill the bill. Never has.

6. I was a bit taken aback reading an article on the transition to socialism that made no mention, let alone shined a bright light on, the necessity of strategic alliances between the working class and other powerful social constituencies. It is hard to find support for this notion in the writings of Marx and Engels. And certainly not Lenin. No one insisted on the necessity of an alliance policy with greater vigor than he did. He argued time and time again that the working class, and not only in Russia, could ONLY effect a socialist revolution if it had extensive and stable alliances with other sections of the population who feel the oppressive weight of capitalist policies and power. Now it’s a fact that the working class has massively grown and changed in composition since then, but neither its quantitative expansion nor its qualitative transformation mitigate against a policy of alliances with other social constituencies — people of color and women in the first place. In fact, the opposite is the case. And especially now.

 

Isn’t one sexual predator on the court enough?

  • September 24, 2018

1. A woman coming forward to claim sexual abuse at the hands of a man in power does so knowing that the imbalance of power between them will likely make her a target of unrelenting vitriol, shamming, and threats to her physical and emotional well being. Her life can be changed forever.

And while our society’s attitudes toward sexual violence against women have shifted in recent years, the shift is far from complete; not everybody is on board. I found confirmation of that fact yesterday at the Y when I got into a bit of a verbal fracas with two older white men who dismissed out of hand the accusation of Ford against Kavnaugh.

Most of us don’t have a big megaphone to express our opposition to the defamation of Christine Blasey Ford and the latest Kavanaugh accuser Deborah Ramirez as well as to the nomination of Bret Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. But our voice does matter. Every sound makes the cacophony louder.

2. As the allegations of sexual assault against Bret Kavanaugh mount, the response of the White House this morning is that it is “a vast left wing conspiracy.” They got one thing right: the opposition is vast and growing vaster as the public grows familiar with the real Kavanaugh and the sham nature of this whole confirmation process.

Notice that no one from the White House or Republican Party leaders are calling for an FBI investigation of the sexual assault charges. It is hard not to think that they are afraid of what it might reveal about their nominee who, they have assured us, is a “good man” of impeccable credentials. Right!

3. Too many people, including good people, allow arguments about process to take their attention away from what is primary in the deliberations over the Kavanugh nomination — that a woman, Christine Blasey Ford, claims — and it is hard to believe that she isn’t telling the truth — that she was a victim of attempted rape at the hands of someone who hopes to sit on the Supreme Court.

Which proves once again that even in the wake of the MeToo movement, it remains difficult for a woman who is the victim of violent sexual assault to get a fair, let along an empathetic, hearing.

4. The NYT reports that Evangelical leaders are pushing for a vote on the Kavanaugh nomination. Does anything reveal in such stark terns the moral degeneracy and corruption of these “men” of the cloth? Of course, we have known this for a long time. After all, they were in the foxholes supporting Nixon and then Reagan decades ago. But back then their mask of religiosity might have fooled some people, but not now. Their mask is in tatters and their right wing extremist, authoritarian politics or corrupt ministries stand exposed.

5. I hear commentators lamenting that Bret Kavanaugh’s life has been thrown into tatters as Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez have come forward to say that he sexually abused them. But when it comes to the trauma that these two women experienced at his hand and threw their lives into tatters decades ago and ever since, these women are invisible.

Here we have patriarchy at work. One male life, albeit a male who was groomed and lived in elite circles his whole life — counts in the minds of these commentators, while the lives of two women don’t even earn a passing word in their commentary. If anything, implied is that they are reckless in making such “old” accusations against this fine man.

6. The Republican Party through their words and actions have earned the title of the party of male supremacy and misogyny. Over the past two weeks they have outdone themselves.

 

Another wild week

  • September 15, 2018

1. The NY primaries are yet another example that show that the center of gravity in the Democratic Party nationally is moving in a progressive direction, and bringing nearly everybody in and around the Democratic Party with it. The results of the races for the State Senate in NYC where progressive and left candidates defeated incumbents, whose track record was less than dismal, was a smackdown!

2, The power of labor, communities of color, and women was on display earlier this week in the NY primaries. Vision matters, but it becomes a truly potent force when it is meaningfully and strategically tethered to these specific social constituencies. Did anybody do this tethering better than Martin Luther King a half century ago? Let’s hope we get it right now and in 2020.

3. This week I read a few retrospectives on the financial crisis a decade ago and it struck me that each of them makes the crisis the singular explanation of everything that followed — political polarization, the formation of the Tea Party, the intransigence of Congressional Republicans, the surfacing of the alt right, the explosion of unapologetic, unconcealed, and crude racism, nativism, and misogyny, and, above all, the election of Trump.

No doubt the near collapse of the economy was a powerful stimulant of anger and retrogressive politics. It did shake things up, but it shouldn’t hide the fact that the present moment with all its dangers (and possibilities) was a product of the confluence of many factors. The ascendancy of the right, the Iraq war, the war against labor, women and people of color, immigrant bashing, and wage stagnation not only predated the implosion of the economy in 2008, but were also left their unmistakable imprint on the political, economic, and cultural evolution of the country in the decade that followed.

Much the same could be said about the election of the first African American president in our country’s history that coincided with collapsing financial markets.

All of which tells me that to give exclusive weight to any one factor seldom yields an accurate analysis of what we’re trying to understand (and change.) Truth is, in most instances, more complex. And that is the case here.

4. I wondered in the dreary days after the 2016 elections if Trump’s presidency would impose some strategic coherence on the left by which I meant three things. First, a shared understanding that Trump and his Republican congressional enablers are the overarching and singular threat to the country’s future. Second, a belief that the unity of a politically and socially diverse coalition of millions was imperative. And, third, an appreciation that the electoral form of struggle — the midterm elections and the election of a Democratic majority to take control of Congress out of Republican hands to begin with — is of crucial importance to reshaping the larger political landscape in the near and longer term.

From my limited perch, it seems like this has happened.

5. Remembering the heroic Salvatore Allende and Popular Unity on September 11, 1973. On that day 45 years ago a U.S. back military coup drowned the Allende government in a sea of blood and torture. I would sometimes say when I was a leader of the Communist Party that we have as much to learn from Allende’s Chile (and I wasn’t thinking about the necessity of revolutionary violence) as Lenin’s Russia. It usually raised a few eyebrows.

6. The new Bob Woodward book won’t cause an implosion of Trump’s base. But what it will likely erode Trump’s support on the margins as well as further consolidate the anti-trump majority. And the two taken together spell big trouble for GOP in November.

7. 9/11 — a tragic day that was hijacked and turned into a platform for unchallenged U.S. dominance of the global order. And more than a decade later we’re still feeling the negative consequences of that political decision.

8. Talk of socialism isn’t yet a dinner time staple in most homes, but it is moving from the margins of political discourse, and for a significant number of people it doesn’t have the same negative ring that it had during the Cold War.

Below is my presentation to a panel at the Left Forum in April 2005. The panel, entitled ‘Imaginings of Socialism,’ was moderated by the late Manning Marable and included Robin Kelley, Amiri Baraka, and Michael Albert. I have edited it slightly for clarity.

Thank you Manning. I appreciate the opportunity to participate on this panel with you, Robin, Amiri, and Michael. I have admired scholarship, poetry, and activism of each of you from afar.

For a movement to gain power and create a new society – and that’s what we are all about in the end – political imagination as well as historical memory are vital at every turn. For many progressives and left minded people, however, given our nation’s present political conjuncture, this may not seem like a propitious moment for dreaming and imagining.

After all, for the past twenty-five years, we have been on our heels with barely a moment to clear our heads before the next body blow by our powerful class foes.

In such circumstances, the natural reaction is to duck, to assume a defensive posture, to shutdown our imaginations. But this is a mistake and I will tell you why.

In the course of consolidating its economic and political positions, a hyper aggressive U.S. imperialism brings in its train new and powerful oppositional forces, many of which – and not only the young anti-globalists – are beginning to think on a system level of analysis.

Admittedly, they don’t yet embrace socialism, but they do imagine a society without the hardships, oppressions, worries, instabilities, and unseemly profiteering that are structured into present day capitalism. They envision a future that would bring material security and a sense of community. They yearn for a new birth of freedom. They hunger for a joyous life. They want a little heaven on this earth.

This structure of feeling doesn’t, all at once, translate into a mass constituency for socialism. But our response can’t be to declaim ‘the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will.’ Nor to endlessly bemoan the weaknesses of the left. We can’t squirrel ourselves away in left forms either that are detached from the main organizations of the working class and people and tone deaf to the actual dynamics of class and democratic struggles.

Instead, our task is to join with millions to defend and expand democracy, while at the same time sharing a vision of a different world that qualitatively enlarges the boundaries and transforms the meaning of freedom.

Socialism and Values

Our vision has to be informed by a set of normative values — some of the most important are social solidarity, equality, democracy, respect for difference, individual liberty, sustainability, and internationalism.

These values should be more than declarative and ornamental. Indeed, they should practically shape the essence and trajectory of socialist society. They should condition the means as much as the ends of socialist development.

There was a tendency in the communist movement, however, to see these values instrumentally. That is, in the name of fighting the class enemy and building socialism, socialist norms, morality, and legality became too easily expendable. And in doing so, socialism conceded its humanism and moral authority, which once lost, is difficult to regain.

I like to think we have learned some lessons in this regard.

Who are the Actors in the Transition to Socialism?

Essential to our political imagination is a vision of the class and social forces that have to be assembled to win political power and begin the process of socialist construction.

At the center of this assemblage is the multi-racial, multi-national, male-female, multi-generational working class. And to this I couple the communities of the nationally and racially oppressed, women, and youth. Together these social forces are – what I call – the ‘core constituencies’ of a broader people’s coalition insofar as their participation in this coalition is a strategic (power) requirement at every stage of struggle, including the socialist stage. Remove any one of them from the mix and the prospects for winning are not simply dimmed, but doomed.

Around this core are gathered other diverse social movements whose interests and issues of struggle ally them with these core constituencies.

While I resist the idea that the working class on its own can bring its class opponents to its knees, I don’t minimize its strategic social power nor its leadership capacity.

No Direct Path

There is no direct or smooth path to socialism or a ‘Great Revolutionary Day’ on which the economy breaks down, the workers revolt and seize power, the state, economy and civil society are smashed and remade from top to bottom in one fell swoop, and socialism springs up full grown, like Minerva from the head of Zeus.

You may be thinking that this is a caricature, but such ideas have always had some currency in the communist and left movement.

The other vision of the revolutionary process, which makes more sense, is that the struggle for socialism goes through different phases during which the configuration of contending class and social forces changes, requiring, in turn, new strategic policies and demands to match the new alignment of forces and new level of mass political consciousness.

Periods of advance will yield to periods of retreat and vice versa. Shifting alliances will form and reform with each side struggling to turn provisional allies into stable ones and gain the initiative. Electoral and legislative forms of struggles will figure prominently, while cmbining with various forms of extra-parliamentary mass action. And control over the branches of government and state apparatus will occupy the attention of competing forces and blocs. Much depends on a meltdown in the structures of coercion and paralysis, if not divisions, within ruling circles.

Even when political ruptures occur, they will be neither complete nor irreversible. In fact, on the day after the transfer of power, socio-economic life will probably look much the like it did the day before.

Revolutions then are not single events or a single act, but rather a series of events and processes stretching out over time, anchored in the mass participation of tens of millions and the skillful leadership of a party or coalition of parties that enjoy the confidence of those millions.

Revolutions aren’t imitative either. They offer some regularities, but only in the most general sense. Yes, political power has to migrate from the hands of one class into the hands of another, economic transformations have to occur, and a revolution in values is absolutely necessary too. But all of this and more can happen in variety of ways.

At one time I held the view that the movement would narrow as socialism came into view. But I am of the opposite opinion now. Its constituency has to grow in breadth and depth. It has to be a mass social upheaval of all the discontented. Some will bring with them backward notions. Many will be newcomers to politics.

In other words, the struggle for socialism is not just a project of the left; it has to be a project of millions, a project whose mass character deepens, deepens again and deepens still again at every stage in the process. Without such a character, socialism will remain in our imagination.

Nationally specific path

In seeking forms of transition to socialism, we should be unabashed proponents of our own nationally specific path. We should study the experiences of other countries for sure, but the search for a universal path to socialism is a fool’s errand.

Each country has find its own particular way. For example, our path to socialism must include an unyielding commitment to expanding democracy as well as finishing the unfinished democratic tasks that we will inherit, beginning with the eradication of racism in all of its forms. Any, even the slightest, devaluing of democracy and equality in their many forms will keep the socialist movement on the political periphery.

We also have to expect that multiple parties and movements will lead the millions who are no longer ‘willing to live in the old way.’ In such a coalition, parties and movements will cooperate as well as compete over a range of issues and for mass influence, but the accent should be on cooperation and unity.

Obviously, a movement for socialism should seek a peaceful path, especially in this era. The American people should be allowed the be the final arbiter of the socio-economic character of their country. Of course, our ruling class has its own agenda. Thus, the best guarantee of a peaceful transition is an aroused, mobilized, united, and determined people.

The left has to heed the wishes of the electorate too, including the possibility of being removed from office by a majority of voters.

Conventional view

The conventional view of the communist movement was that after the revolutionary forces won political power, the period of consolidation would be relatively brief and new forms of popular power would emerge to replace hopelessly corrupted political institutions.

We also assumed that the state would extend its reach into new areas of social, cultural, and civic life, including control over the mass media. Another assumption was that centralized planning would replace the market as the mechanism to regulate economic activity.

Finally, we were of the opinion that socialist state property would be dominant and eventually become the singular form of economic ownership.

Revisit and revise

These assumptions have to be revisited and revised in view of experience and new theoretical insights. I would like to briefly turn to these questions.

To begin with, I don’t think that the people of our country will agree to dismantle the political structures that currently exist. Nor do I think that they will jettison the Bill of Rights or the Constitution or a system of checks and balances on concentrated political power.

More likely, they will extend, deepen and modify them based on the unfulfilled promises of our democracy, new democratic desires, and the needs of socialist construction. At the same time, I suspect – and historical experience would strongly suggest – that new popular institutions will emerge in this process.

Today millions of people feel alienated from our government. Nearly one-half of the people don’t vote. Many people see government as disconnected from their day-to-day life, even an obstacle to their aspirations. Overcoming this sense of alienation constitute a major challenge to socialism’s development and future. Part of the solution to this conundrum lies in a robust civil society. Part rests on the devolution of power and resources to the local level. And it also turns on the shortening of the work week, thereby allowing working people to become activists and leaders in and beyond the workplace.

Federal power would have a role to be sure, but I also think that we have to keep in mind that such power is distant and beyond the reach of the very masses of people who are supposed to be authors and architects of this new society.

As for the economy, the main issue is not whether we would employ market mechanisms, but rather the issue is to what extent and for how long? In the past, there was a tendency to think market relations would disappear almost overnight. I’m unconvinced that that’s an accurate reading of the classical literature or a lesson that we should draw from the experience of socialist construction in the 20th century.

Mixed economy

I would expect that the economy would be a mixed one, combining different forms of socialist and cooperative property as well as space, within clear limits, for private enterprise. And while market mechanisms would operate, they wouldn’t take the place of democratic regulation and planning.

I would also envision a universal guaranteed income and the decommodification of some sectors of the economy like health care, food and nutrition, education, child and elder care, and so forth. In other words, the costs of the reproduction of labor power would be socialized as much as possible.

The federal budget would be overhauled and its priorities radically changed. The economy would be de-militarized and restructured. A social fund would be established to compensate for racial oppression, gender discrimination and other injustices. The narrowing of economic equalities would be a paramount goal of a socialist society.

One of the most complex tasks of a socialist society will be achieving a sustainable economy. It will, according to Marxist economists and ecologists, require major changes in our production methods and consumption patterns.

It is hard to imagine how this challenge, not to mention challenges like overcoming racial and gender inequality, demilitarization, urban and rural revitalization, and so forth, can be successfully tackled without planning. Market mechanisms can play a useful role in economic coordination as I said, but the redirection of the economy along fundamentally new lines requires a planning process at every level.

A final challenge on the morrow of the revolution is to re-imagine our nation’s role on a global level. Without going into detail, we will immediately remove our uniform of global cop and exploiter and take our place along side other members of the world community and demand no special privileges. There is much to love about our country, but the image of a city on a shining hill and arrogantly wielding its sword does the American people as well as the world’s people enormous harm.

In fact, if the city shines at all, it is in no small measure because our imperialism, often with the use of military force, has structured international relations between the capitalist core and its periphery so that astronomical wealth at one pole is combined with unspeakable deprivation and immiseration at the other. Eight million people die each year because of poverty and ten million from AIDS. Hundreds of millions of human beings are living in slums on nearly every continent. This has to change for all of humanity’s sake, but it won’t until we rethink and restructure our relationships with the global community.

Day after the revolution

I have confined myself to the day after the revolution, but extending the time frame a bit further into the future brings additional images and possibilities. Homelessness and joblessness would be eradicated. Toxic dumps would be cleaned up and replaced with gardens and playgrounds.

Our skies would be blue and pollution free. Our neighborhoods would become places of rest, leisure, culture, and green space. The whole panoply of oppressions that scare our people and nation would be on the wane. Human sexuality and sexual orientation would be enjoyed and celebrated. The audiences at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall would look as diverse as the people of this city.

The prisons systems would be emptied and the borders demilitarized and opened. Women would be regularly receiving Nobel prizes in the sciences. The Pentagon would be padlocked and the swords of war would be turned into plowshares and we would study war no more. Rinally, the full development of each would be the condition for the full development of all.