This is part one of a three-part series. Originally written for People’s World – check out the original article here.
The current crisis in Greece and the Eurozone is fluid and far from settled. The latest clash last month between Greece and its elite adversaries in Europe – Germany in the first place – is provoking a wide-ranging debate. I can’t claim to be an expert so what follows is offered in a provisional spirit.
“Reflections on Socialism” first appeared on CPUSA.org on June 4, 2005. Read it on CPUSA.org.
The main political task at this moment is to assemble the necessary social forces to defeat Bush and his counterparts in Congress and elsewhere.
“When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!” — Martin Luther King Jr.
“The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of the complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going for, body and soul. But … long, persistent work is required.
The Republican presidential debate last night makes hollow the endlessly repeated claim by too many people on the left that there are no differences between the two parties at the level of policy. Hopefully some of those same people are rethinking their position this morning. After all; self deception is never a good practice in politics (or in any other field of human endeavor). But what makes it worse in this case is that it becomes the main framing argument employed by these same people for the elaboration of their strategic and tactical approach to politics in general and electoral politics in particular. We can do better. We can – and must, I would argue – (dialectically) breathe political realism and soberness into our politics of substantive equality, democratic and ecological transformation, and a people driven and people centered socialism. And in doing we will set the stage for the left to become a major player in U.S. politics and bring a step closer the just, peaceful, democratic, and sustainable society that we and many millions desire – not to mention – and this is no small thing – be a part of the massive campaign to defeat the right wing’s plans to gain full spectrum dominance of the federal government in next year’s election.
It’s a hard life, it’s a hard life
It’s a very hard life
It’s a hard life wherever you go
If we poison our children with hatred
And there ain’t no place in Belfast for that kid to go
A cafeteria line in Chicago
The fat man in front of me
Is calling black people trash to his children
And he’s the only trash here I see
And I’m thinking this man wears a white hood
In the night when the children should sleep
But, they’ll slip to their window and they’ll see him
And they’ll think that white hood’s all they need
It’s a hard life, it’s a hard life
It’s a very hard life
It’s a hard life wherever you go
If we poison our children with hatred
Then, the hard life is all that they’ll know
And there ain’t no place in Chicago for those kids to go
– Nanci Griffith, “It’s A Hard Life Wherever You Go”
By now few people, perhaps with the exception of the talking heads on FOX, are claiming that there was anything random or mysterious about the brutal murder of nine innocent African American people on the hallowed ground of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. The facts are in and irrefutable. A 21-year-old white man poisoned by racist hatred decided that he was going to murder African American people in a sacred and historic place and he proceeded to cold-bloodedly do it.
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I'm a long-time socialist and activist, but new to the blogging world, to which I aim to bring a different perspective on politics, sports, culture, and Marxism. I also teach online classes, but leave plenty of time for swimming, hiking, ESPN, music, reading, drinking good beer, and, not least, my family and friends. I wish I could play basketball, but my knees ruled out that possibility long ago. I was the national chairperson of the Communist Party, USA from 2000 until 2014. While I grew up in Maine and currently live in New York City, my politically formative years were spent in Detroit during the 1970s and 1980s. I graduated from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia (where I played basketball) and received my MA in economics from the University of Connecticut.
