A Look At The Challenges Facing The Sanders Movement

Clinton supporters are shocked---shocked!---that some Sanders supporters in Nevada object to false promises and a closed process. This brings to mind an old Woody Guthrie song about a demonstration at the White House for jobs in the 1930s:

Twaddle, the President's voice did ring,
This is the strangest thing
That I have seen in my 53 years of life.
But the chances are
That before he's 54
He'll see many stranger things
Out on the lawn.

We should set the record straight right away and refer readers to two previous posts here and here where I talk about my position on Sanders and the Sanders movement.

We have said previously that the Sanders movement attracts mainly white working-class, "lower-middle-class" and young people to its ranks. The dominant points of attraction are fears of precariousness and a fight for democratic values. There is a movement behind Sanders and around these points of attraction and the two don't always match up in equal measure. The Sanders movement is therefore reminiscent of the Jackson campaigns, the McCarthy campaign and the Henry Wallace campaign of the 1940s. We have seen in these movements that the "lower-middle-class" people can be weak or indecisive and that young people lack context and experience, but they are also among the core forces necessary to win real and positive social change in the US.

For some time now I have been posing the following questions to Clinton supporters and have yet to receive answers from anyone in that camp:

1. What is Sanders saying about Clinton that Obama didn't when he was running against her?
2. What concessions has Clinton made in her program to Sanders supporters?
3. What concessions do you think that she should make?
4. What concessions will the Democratic party establishment make to the Sanders movement? What concessions do you think they should make?
5. Do you support the superdelegate system on principle, or because of the momentum that it gives your candidate?
6. If Sanders and his movement are really dead in the water, why the continuing attacks by the Clinton camp?

These questions seem easy enough to answer, but so far we have only seen attacks which lack substance. Last night, with the Sanders win here in Oregon and the near-win in Kentucky, the Clinton supporters who I know were already poised to go on the offensive, and they focused particularly on the video clips from Nevada circulating through Facebook and charges that Sanders supporters are at least potentially violent and given to making threats. It is not an exaggeration to say that they are intent on charging that the Sanders movement is a cross-state criminal conspiracy running on threats. This is the kind of discourse which keeps Facebook going, I suppose.

There are real questions here, of course. For instance: how do we know that those people in Nevada were really Bernie supporters, that they weren't deliberately provoked or don't have legitimate complaints? In light of the set-up on Sanders in Seattle, it is indeed possible that this was another set-up. And have you wondered why the footage shows certain people and actions up close but not the context of what happened, as if cameras were ready to go? Meanwhile, even NPR seemed to say yesterday that the Sanders folks had a legitimate beef.

Some folks in Clinton's camp aren't happy with the Sanders response. I turn to the point that we aren't happy with how Clinton responded to her husband after his "predator" comment or how she has responded to questions about her roles in the Mideast and Latin America or how she has trumpeted her once having been a Goldwater Girl or her being okay with Kissinger.

But let's say that these folks in Nevada were all Sanders supporters and let's say that this was an over-reaction to the smarmy "you know, those are the rules" comments by the chairperson. And let's say that the Democratic establishment bore no responsibility for deescalating and had every right to call in the cops on the largely youthful crowd. Let's get past all of those hurdles that a "progressive" person should stumble over for a minute. I'm still caught asking myself if these are the working-class supporters of Sanders or the lower-middle-class people and youth who lack political experience and who may well peel away as the convention and November gets closer. As I look at the video clips I think that those folks fall into the latter category.

Why does it matter? Because class matters. And because the kind of Democratic establishment provocation we saw in Nevada may be a feature of politics as the convention draws closer. The young people, the politically inexperienced and the petty-bourgeois folks may fall for such provocations. The heart of the Clinton campaign is with the petty-bourgeoisie, not the working class, so the "disease" of provocation and reaction may spread.

Long before there were the fabled "Bernie Bros" there were the folks in the HRC campaign who took every social movement and working people for granted, and they let you know it with their elitism and "pragmatism." The HRC campaign---as distinct from the Sanders movement---has been all about killing dreams since Day One.

Nothing explains away or forgives misogyny, and it doesn't help anyone to have a fight over who was wrong first. People on the left were the first to call out misogyny and racism in this campaign season, and did so at a time when the HRC campaign seemed okay with both. We're living with a dilemma: we can have campaigns from above, as with Clinton, and not risk engagement, or we can have movements from below, as with Sanders, and risk engagement and heat and passion. I've never seen the former work for the greater good, or even win real victories. The latter may not win, and makes error after error, but eventually contributes to the democratic spirit---think of the Civil Rights movement, for instance. And as a great Russian leader said, "There are no lost strikes"---and the same is true with movements for social change.

I'm also reminding myself that a wise Chinese guy once said that "A revolution is not a tea party." What do people expect?

The HRC pundits can spare themselves and us the pretended shock that they learned from Claude Rains in Casablanca. They know what politics is at its core, and had the shoe been on the other foot they would be taking a different position. Boxer, HRC & Co. are professional politicians and the heat should not be new to them---and if they can't take the heat, its time for them to move on. I'm more focused on the idea that Clinton supporters are deliberately naive right now about how consent is manufactured in America and that they have bought into the idea of a "post-racial" America which allows them to replace "race" with gender and justify the excesses of the system and then tell us that it is fair so long as their candidate is in the lead,

Again, the Nevada "incident" may well be contrived, but it is certainly true that people will react negatively when they think that their rights are being taken away. The chanting and the supposedly broken furniture are small prices to pay for that. If the people protesting were drunk or young or from the ranks of the impatient and offended petty-bourgeoisie, then lets name that as the problem and blame youthful inexperience, alcohol or class position and not Sanders. He objected to the events, made his objections known and others in his campaign have done the same. Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for Bill and Hillary to apologize for that "predator" remark and the associated racism---and I expect to be waiting for a long time.

I suspect that this talk of threats by Clinton supporters is being made in order to set a stage for provocations at the Democratic party convention. Perhaps it also distracts us from looking at real violence which has occurred. and two words come to mind in this regard---Berta Caceres. What role did Clinton have in her demise?

I return to a point which sometimes seems to be getting drowned out: life will go on after the convention and after November. If Trump wins, the left should be at the core of an anti-fascist resistance. If HRC wins, the need is for us to be in the streets pushing her. And if Sanders wins, we need to be defending the program, fighting the opposition and projecting forward and positive movement. This is a moment for building a united front, not for calling people names. Everyone on our side of the fence---and I include HRC supporters here---needs to think a few steps ahead.

The system is indeed rigged, there are operatives and there are hacks. Clinton's supporters seem to be in sudden denial here. But this rigged system is less of a reason for discouragement and pessimism and more of an argument for talking about revolution, even if that talk only gets to the point of Sanders' limited program.

On the other hand, we have some loud voices on the left predicting that Sanders will fold, support Clinton and attempt to lead people into the Democratic party. My response is---so what? No left working-class party exists and the logical place for the most engaged and politically conscious Sanders supporters to go is to Democratic Socialists of America, Progressive Democrats of America, Freedom Road, the Kentucky Workers League or groups like ours. New political formations will come into existence regardless of what happens with Sanders precisely because the Sanders movement has changed the quality and quantity of forces at work for social change. Sanders' support for the Verizon strikers and the Burgerville workers is almost unprecedented, but the forces that got him to that point are even more important and are among the key groups in motion and they will outlast Sanders and Clinton. The sectarian voices on the left have an opportunity to either learn, engage and organize at the base or to remain on the margins.

There are more states in play for Sanders to win or lose, there is an on-going fight over the super delegates, there is a Democratic party convention and an election to get through---and there is an uptick in labor fighting back and in youth revolt. This means that there is no reason for Sanders to concede. There was a time when "democratic socialists" and social-democrats and left-populists took office during economic downturns and managed capitalist crises and enforced austerity, but this is not that moment. The question or matter of building a real workers' party independent of the Democrats, but not independent of the core forces supporting social change who are now in the Democratic party, is always on the agenda, but how we approach this question changes over time. For now that approach exists in relation to the Sanders movement. 

The immediate challenges for the Sanders movement seem to be winning more primaries, developing some internal discipline and overcoming spontaneity. These are all doable. The possibility that the Democratic convention will see some kind of provocation and implosion requires that spontaneity be shelved and that there be more focus on fighting the ultra-right and long-term organizing. Spontaneity is a particular weakness under these circumstances, and it is probably unavoidable for now, but it is still a weakness that will be exploited. This is the price we pay for not having a viable working-class left party in the US.

The Democratic convention is important for us because it is a forum or arena for winning a better program, pushing back against the superdelegate system and opening the door to better candidates and new political formations. We would be stupid to let this moment pass without supporting left and progressive participation at several levels. There is the opportunity to learn and to engage---and to win some serious battles---which will not return to us soon. It would also be stupid for us to fold now either because the Clinton supporters repeat Margaret Thatcher's line and tell us that there is no alternative or because of the logic of the ultra-left.

That said, it is hard for me to imagine Sanders winning the nomination, and even more difficult for me to imagine him winning the presidency. I say this not because of the superdelegate count or because I doubt that there is mass support for Sanders, but precisely because I believe that there is mass support for him. The structure and intentionality of the system naturally works against change. The Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers and so many others would have lived longer and done more were there not a serious investment in repression in the US. I'm not saying that I expect Sanders to be assassinated. A better comparison might be Marcus Garvey, who also led a mass movement for empowerment and who was brought down by surreptitious means, or the International Workers Order, which was forced out of business on a weak technicality of the law as it posed a challenge to the red scare. A political movement which threatens the system will face repression or, more simply, the sharp exploitation of its weaknesses. If anything good has come out of Nevada, it is the realization that a serious conflict or contradiction is unfolding.

I can imagine supporting a strategy and tactics which builds a united front against the ultra-right and voting for Clinton under those circumstances, and I can imagine a strategy and tactics which tells people to forgo voting for Clinton in the so-called "safe" states, and I can imagine a strategy and tactics which rejects voting for Clinton but for every other progressive candidate and building a political approach from that point which takes masses of people into the streets as part of an organizing strategy. I cannot imagine a valid left strategy which sends people to the Greens or to another marginal party. I also cannot imagine orienting totally around Sanders even as we acknowledge that the Sanders movement is our touchstone at this point. I can imagine how direct engagement with the Sanders movement can change almost everything and learning in 6 months what it might have taken us 6 years to learn without that movement.

Still, I approach this with certain biases and hopes:

1. Dare to struggle and dare to win---it is better to attempt change and realize dreams than not to.

2. No movement for better conditions ever really loses---something of the old appears in every new thing and the experience of fighting back creates new conditions and new forces.

3. Mao was correct in saying "If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself.... If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience."

4. Finally, to borrow from the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, the slogan "Be bad, be bad, be bad, be bad! Can't get nothin' if you ain't bad!" applies in some great measure to our present moment.

Marxism & Mental Health

ESTRANGEMENT: E.C. Presentation on Karl Marx's "Estranged Labour")---Marx set to music!

He spends his days working
On minimum wage
He's come to hate what he creates
But that's not for him to say

The work is drilled into his bones
Each action but a cruel joke
He's just a small part of the whole
Apathy is all he knows

Pushing buttons, serving men
That's the way his days are spent
He's just a cog in the machine
An animal of apathy

Society was meant to be
More than black and white
You think you can control us
Well, go ahead and try
We've been numb for far too long
It's time to resurrect
The fire that we used to be
We'll burn away this awful estrangement

He can't remember laughing
Or running wild and free
His bones are cold, he's all alone
The machine is all he sees

Fueled by your greed, your insatiable need
His days are burned away
You're the source of misery
The reason he's a slave

Pushing buttons, serving men
That's the way his days are spent
But now it's time to break this machine
We won't give in to apathy

CHORUS

Enough is enough
We can't take (this) much more
This alienation
These strangers at our door
This system was broken
Before it began
We can't take this horror
And without us, you'll collapse

CHORUS 2x

More on the basics of socialism

I am trying to continue on with our basic approach to defining socialism and socialist means and objectives. I thought that I might include something by Gus Hall or Henry Winston, Communist leaders in the US for many years, but I'm finding it difficult to locate their writings on the web. Hall and Winston were outstanding Communists in their time and wrote a great deal, but web searches for their works mainly locate obituaries, criticisms and items for sale.

Hall came to mind for two reasons. First, much of his writing is easily accessible (if you can find it) and topical. He wrote for workers. Second, he used a method of thinking and writing which still works today---name the problem, look at the push-and-pull taking place around that problem, point out the weaknesses in the other side's arguments and project a democratic and socialist solution. It's not that I agree with Hall on everything, but that I respect his method and his work and his ability to touch workers' lives. The same can be said of Henry Winston.

Hall moved workers in my parents' generation. I remember watching him on television with my mother, a socially liberal working woman who was essentially apolitical. She focused on what Hall was saying and understood him and he had her respect if not her full agreement. They connected on the basis of class and opposition to war and racism and for democratic rights. It's hard to find any left leader in the US today who can do that.

Hall and Winston were two of the standard bearers of the Communist Party in their day. A brief article here gives us a taste of what they were about. The Socialist Party had Norman Thomas and, later, Michael Harrington stamped American "democratic socialism" with his mark. We have encouraged readers to study Hall, Winston and Harrington in the past and to decide which path they want to put themselves on and then join the appropriate organization.

I did finally find something by Gus Hall on the web. Here is a fundamental piece on the fight against racism and here is an audio letter from Gus Hall, James E. Jackson and Ben Davis to Shirley and W.E.B. DuBois. For some context on this audio letter, go here.

The introduction to the article below notes that the copyright is held by the Peoples' Weekly World, which no longer publishes a print edition. Readers can find Hall's Basics and Working Class USA for sale and should snap copies up. Go here to check out an Oregon connection.

Fighting Racism - The Communist view by Gus Hall

 
This article was reprinted from the February 17, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

The following is excerpted from Communist Party National Chair Gus Hall' books, Fighting Racism and Beacon for Our Times.

PART ONE

What gives the working class a sense of oneness, what moves it toward class unity, what gives it class consciousness and what propels it as a class to consider revolutionary action is class exploitation. It is understanding and recognition of this basic premise that must become the starting point and framework for consideration of all questions relating to the working class and the class struggle.

The struggle against inequality is a basic question simply because not all members or components of our class work and live under conditions of equality. The African American component of our U.S. working class is exploited, as are all workers. But they are additionally discriminated against and exploited based on racism. African American workers, men and women, are exploited on the basis of the class of which they are a part.

African Americans are further exploited on the basis of race. African Americans suffer many-sided discrimination because they are members of an oppressed nationality. The gap created by racist inequality (in jobs, in housing, education, etc.) is a major obstacle to working class unity.

A true measure of the class consciousness of all workers -- but, in a special way, of the level of class consciousness of white workers -- is the level of Black-white unity. Black-white working class unity is a fundamental precondition for working class unity in general.

The inequalities suffered by the other nationally oppressed components of our working class take different forms. But they are all based on the system of racism against the African American people, which goes back to the very beginnings of our country, some 400 years ago.

Thus, the racism against Black America feeds the national oppression, discrimination and chauvinism against Chicano, Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, Native American Indian, Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and other Asian Pacific peoples. There are Dominicans, Jamaicans, Haitians and others who, to one degree or another, are all victims of racial and national oppression.

Placing the question of racial and national oppression and the struggle for equality as a feature of the class struggle takes into consideration a number of factors:

1) The great majority of the racially and nationally oppressed are workers and, therefore, components of the working class.

2) This framework makes the connection between our emphasis on the working class, the concentration on workers in the basic mass production industries and the struggle for equality.

3) This emphasis lays the foundation for the unity of racially and nationally oppressed peoples with the working class.

4) It makes clearer the necessity for the working class to seek unity with oppressed minorities.

5) It places a correct emphasis on the economics of racism, its relationship to corporate profits and to class exploitation. It places the capitalist system as the root and ultimate source of all racism.

6) This approach more clearly focuses on the special and unique contributions that Communists must make in the struggle for equality.

7) This framework also provides a stronger foundation for and an added dimension to the general human, civil and moral aspects of the struggle for equality.

8) Because the cause is just and because it is in its class interest, the trade union movement must be convinced to accept as a major responsibility the struggle for equality for all components of the working class.

9) As its class consciousness deepens, the working class will see itself more clearly as a class.

10) However, as this consciousness deepens, the working class must learn that to be able to fight for the best interests of the whole class it must take on the special struggle against the inequalities faced by the racially and nationally oppressed components.

These factors provide a firm basis for the struggle against racism, national oppression and chauvinism in all areas of life -- in housing, in public education, in medical and child care, in social services and political representation.

The basis of of racism is super-exploitation at the workplace that results in extra surplus value -- super profits -- for the capitalists. Thus, understanding exploitation of all labor is a prerequisite to understanding the source of super-exploitation of African American and all racially and nationally oppressed workers.

The profits of the capitalists can come only from the labor of the workers they hire. The law of surplus value (profits) operates very simply. The corporation pays the workers just enough so that they can continue living and working.

But the workers produce much more than the value of the wages they get. This is the source of all profits.

Part Two

Let' say it requires four hours of labor for the worker to produce what he needs to live and work. However, in most cases the worker works an eight-hour day. Thus, the capitalist uses the worker' labor power (ability to work) for the full eight hours, which means he gets four hours clear profit from the labor of the worker.

We can see how important this law is when we translate hours into dollars to measure surplus value or profit. If a worker produces $24 worth of goods in an hour, the value of an hour of labor is $24. If the worker is paid only $8 per hour, the extra going to the boss is $16 and the rate of surplus value or profit is 200 percent.

Surplus value is, therefore, the gross profit of the capitalist class. It is profit before dividing it up among the stockholders, the banks, landlords and corporate executives.

U.S. capitalism has been racist from its very inception. Its origins coincided with the bloody genocidal campaign against the Native American Indian peoples.

The oldest of all big lies is that of "inferior races" and 'uperior races." It accompanied the forcible uprooting of people from Africa to work as slaves. When slavery was abolished, racism was integrated into the system of capitalist exploitation.

The U.S. is a nation with sharp class divisions and contradictions. It is multiracial and multinational, as is the working class. It is a nation of many cultures and religions, each retaining its own heritage and traditions, but also integrating into the common life of the nation.

But because of the practice of racism, the different racial and nationality groups of the U.S. are not living as equals. Racism distorts and slows down the objective, progressive process of intermingling of different peoples into a single national entity. Nevertheless, there is an overlapping of basic interests of all the people of our country, and therefore a tendency to unite in struggle.

Thus, super-exploitation simply means that based on the ideology and practice of racism, corporations pay minority workers less than white workers, achieving two things -- greater (super) profits and pitting workers against each other. In reality, by keeping wages of Black workers lower, the boss also keeps white workers" wages lower.

In uncovering the law of surplus value, Karl Marx also helped to reveal the law of class struggle between the capitalists and the workers, which gives the ultimate lie to all concepts of class collaboration, the lie that "the bosses and workers are one big happy family."

There is a clear relationship between the struggles against class exploitation and the struggles against exploitation and oppression based on and fed by racism, directed in the first place against the African American people.

Therefore, for us in the U.S, the alliance between the working class, which is itself multiracial and multinational, and the over 65 million racially and nationally oppressed peoples, is a key ingredient in all fields of struggle -- economic, political, social and ideological.

How should we think?---Part 9---Joining In

We're going to wrap up this series on thinking by looking at next steps.

Ahjamu Umi hits a homerun when he talks about the need for people to join an organization and get active. Whether your politics exactly match the organization that you join and get active in or not is really a secondary question. What seems more important is committing to people at some basic level and loving people and serving the people enough to follow through. We need engagement with one another in order for the possibilities of forward movement to emerge. And since not all motion is forward motion or creates forward motion, we need to be deliberate, or fully conscious of ourselves and others, as we engage with the people around us.

Capitalism is very deliberate in finding the means to distract and demobilize people. The system rests on the fundamental alienation which comes into being with commodity production and wage labor, This is a fancy way of saying that the goods and services we create and purchase seem to exist as something beyond us when they are really just the products of human labor and design; we do not always understand that we sell our labor power, that our labor power is in fact a special kind of commodity, and that this system divides society along certain lines. All that we produce and consume acquires an identity beyond what they really are once they have been planned and produced for profit and given price tags. We come to look at one another much as we look at these commodities and services because production and distribution are carried out by a working class in ways which tie production, distribution and consumption to class, race, gender, age, ability, ethnicity and so on. Socialists and communists say that what has been done in the name of profit and capitalist order can be undone and that something better can be birthed by the people.

Ahjamu Umi also hits it when he emphasizes the need for study alongside of active engagement with others. He correctly urges people to read and study, which is a radical proposition. As with joining an organization, it is perhaps less important where you begin studying and more important that you simply begin with a serious book. The more systematic your study, the better, but commit to reading just 20 pages a day. It will be better if you can do this with a group then if you try on your own; like weight loss or working out, accountability and cooperation and support are necessary. You will quickly see positive changes in your self-awareness and consciousness, your actions and your thinking.

There are many organizations in the Salem-Keizer area to engage with which will get you out of your chair and away from your computer. Mano a Mano partners English speakers with people who do not speak English as their first language. Our neighborhood associations are forums where important decisions are being made about our community. Union members have the opportunity to participate in their unions or can invent ways. The Salem-Keizer NAACP is growing, the Pacific Islander community is organizing, the Muslim community needs help building a mosque and the Salem No-Ivy Coalition needs help with ivy removal. The Salem Social Justice Collective, CAUSA and the Racial Justice Organizing Committee are all engaged in community organizing and study and will welcome you in. Our group welcomes in people on the left and the merely curious. These are some important points of entry into a bigger world of meaningful social engagement.

Membership in an organization and engagement come with some strings attached. We have assumed that anyone willing to join an organization is committed to the values of community-building, work and participation, but this is not always the case. As Ahjamu Umi says, it would be great if the people who join something without the intention of sticking around stood up and announced that they're present to burn resources and waste every one's time and then moved on. If you approach joining and participating in something as transactional then you're wasting your time and everyone else's. If you show up with an I'll-take-my-toys-and-go-home-if attitude then you will certainly end up back at home. Joining and participating in any meaningful activity comes with a dialectic---there is a built-in contradiction for most of us between the individual and society, between laziness and action, between individualism and cooperation. It will work for you if you're prepared to give up time and deal with your ego, and it won't work for you if you're not. Social involvement teaches us the difficult and necessary lessons of cooperation.

Many years ago I participated in the Denominational Ministry Strategy (DMS) group in Pittsburgh. DMS was extremely confrontational and demanded a lot; it was not always a good place for a person new to social activism to start. Our focus was on the skyrocketing unemployment and the resulting social crises then underway in the Pittsburgh region and on directly confronting the people and institutions responsible for the crises. The high levels of confrontation which we engaged in and the lack of a mass base helped marginalize DMS, and people at the core of the group paid a heavy price for their work.

The best and hardest part of working with DMS was the on-going struggle to clarify our values and break down our fear barriers. We constantly challenged ourselves to reach higher, do more and put more on the line. I was mentored through this by two outstanding local union leaders, one being Ron Weisen, then president of the Steel Workers local union at Homestead. Ron was a conservative Irish-American Democrat who came almost unwillingly to DMS, but once in he fought with bare knuckles for his union and his community on the basis of shared values. We asked ourselves in those days what we really wanted out of life, if this was consistent with our faith or not and what we were willing to do in order to see things through. Good values, a willingness to act and then to critically examine ourselves were at the basis of everything we did.

As my own community and union organizing expanded I tried to be values-driven. Ron made the point many times that we live in a country where we can talk to a total stranger about the most intimate details of our lives at a bar but that we violate the rules when we talk to the people closest to us about things which really matter. I learned that there is an art and science to having these conversations and that this takes real work. In Oregon I have learned that these conversations need to be more about listening and feeling than talking. I would never have gotten to this point had it not been for DMS, Ron Weisen and scores of union members who challenged me, but the first step was just joining in.

I'm not a role model, and this talking and acting and examining paradigm may be a heavy lift for you, but you will never develop as a full human being without social engagement, without being challenged and joining the effort to change the world. We have often used Mao's words that "If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience." The hard fact is that if you're not "eating the pear" then someone else is. If you're not engaging in an effort to change things, then someone else is changing things. It will be a great coincidence if that person has your best interests at heart.

My primary self-criticism is that I have often made it difficult for people to find safe entry points into our movements. I have put up barriers and have demanded too much from the people around me, thus demonstrating an elitist, sectarian and ultimately petty-bourgeois mindset. The way forward from those mistakes is to locate safe places to start from.

One of the best starting points has been given to us by Zhou Enlai in his "Guidelines for Myself." In this piece he says:

1. Study diligently, grasp essentials, concentrate on one subject rather than seeking superficial knowledge of many.

2. Work hard and have a plan, a focus and a method.

3. Combine study with work and keep them in proper balance according to time, place and circumstances; take care to review and systematize; discover and create.

4. On the basis of principles, resolutely combat all incorrect ideology in others as well as in myself.

5. Insofar as possible, make the most of my strengths and take concrete steps to overcome my weaknesses.

6. Never become alienated from the masses; learn from them and help them. Lead a collective life, inquire into the concerns of the people around you, study their problems and abide by the rules of discipline.

7. Keep fit and lead a reasonable regular life. This is the material basis for self-improvement.         

How should we think?---Part 8---Slogans

Lenin provided this summary of Marx when he wrote about insurrection:

"(1) Never play with insurrection, but when beginning it realise firmly that you must go all the way.

(2) Concentrate a great superiority of forces at the decisive point and at the decisive moment, otherwise the enemy, who has the advantage of better preparation and organisation, will destroy the insurgents.

(3) Once the insurrection has begun, you must act with the greatest determination, and by all means, without fail, take the of offensive. "The defensive is the death of every armed rising.'

(4) You must try to take the enemy by surprise and seize the moment when his forces are scattered.

(5) You must strive for daily successes, however small (one might say hourly, if it is the case of one town), and at all costs retain 'moral superiority'."

We continue here with our series on thinking and our turn from basic philosophical principles to how these principles can be put into practice and understood through practice. The quote given above will serve as a point of departure to the extent that it can be modified and understood as practical advice for political movements and activists today. In this post we are looking at slogans and what they represent. This post is aimed at the more politically engaged people who have experience in making social change.

We do not think of slogans as a substitute for thinking and practice. Every slogan has be to be critically examined in light of the lived experiences of the people and the paths forward from the present to the future. Having a good or correct slogan doesn't get you very far if you can't back it up by doing something. After developing a slogan and putting it into practice the slogan and the practice need to be reevaluated and changes need to be made, and we then need to think, test and make changes. An effective slogan positively affects the quantity and quality of the forces at work in a given situation. This is, in a crude way, an example of how dialectical materialism informs our work.

I want to repeat this point that slogans are not a substitute for thinking and practice and approach it from another side as well. There is a tendency in the labor movement to mobilize people and give them signs to hold with neatly compacted slogans on them. If you question the person holding the sign you often find that the union has not fully engaged the person holding the sign, that they don't understand the slogan's full meaning and implications. The slogan is substituting for dialogue and popular education. Questioning the content of the slogan is understood by the union "leadership" as a sign of disloyalty. This is all bad on many levels, but perhaps the worst aspects are labor's refusal to use popular education models and the assumption that "ordinary people" cannot be fully engaged on important issues. In line with this, I believe that anyone who tries to convince you that you cannot understand something is not your friend or ally.

Correct or good slogans capture what the people are thinking and give expression to our needs and hopes. Incorrect or bad slogans either take people backwards or are so far in advance of the peoples' legitimate aspirations at a particular moment that they work to discourage people from attempting to change things or leave them confused or subvert their efforts entirely. In any case, a movement's or party's slogans tell us if they are behind, with or in advance of the people and the workers---the core forces who are the very heart of society and, therefore, the forces necessary to make social change. Slogans and the political forces behind them have to express a desire, a need, a demand and have to show a way forward from the here-and-now to the future. Peoples' and workers' movements naturally develop slogans, and this marks an important difference between the Sanders movement and the Clinton campaign.

We have already seen where Spirkin approaches this problem and says, "The difference between the scientific understanding of the relationship between possibility and reality and the fatalistic notion, which identifies possibility and necessity, lies in the fact that a real possibility is regarded not as an inevitability but as a transformation that presupposes the influence of accidents, deviations, and the struggle of opposing forces. Not everything that is necessary is possible...Reasonable people usually avoid talking about unlikely possibilities and leave that to the so-called "pub politicians", who comfort themselves with all kinds of pipe dreams. Wisdom does not allow itself to be tempted by unlikely possibilities. It keeps its feet firmly in reality. Reason is, in fact, the ability to set attainable goals. In life there are plenty of sayings that express the common people's contempt for vague possibilities, such as "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"...A correct understanding of the categories of possibility and reality, the relation of the real and the unlikely possibility is important both in theory and practice. It is often vital for us to be able to perceive the beginnings of something within something else that possesses potential of further development...Knowledge of real possibilities, of opportunities, inspires hope. But when people hope for good weather or a win in the state lottery, such hopes have no effect on the outcome. There are different kinds of hope; there is a kind of hope that encourages and warms the heart and thus becomes an ideal motive force for certain actions that lead to its realisation."

Some examples of good and correct slogans are:

* "Be bad, be bad, be bad, be bad! Can't get nothin' if you ain't bad!"---This slogan or chant came from the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement of the late '60s and early '70s. The slogan takes us to the point of negation because it arose as part of a rebellion in the auto plants against the speed-up system and against a complacent union leadership, but it also takes us to a point of affirmation as a part of DRUM's socialist organizing.

* "Black Lives Matter!"---This affirms the humanity of Black people while negating the forces which deny Black humanity and humanism. Humanism experiences its own contradictions as well. The "I Can't Breathe" and "Black Power" slogans likewise express contradictions between Black humanity and humanism and the forces which attempt to negate them.

  

* "Sí, se puede!"---This expresses human ability and agency while negating the forces which hold humanity back. It captures revolutionary optimism correctly. The Italian Communist Gramsci said, "Pessimism of the spirit; optimism of the will."

* "Feel the Bern"---If this is limited to a campaign slogan then it is only that. But if it is used to encourage people to join a movement which puts people before profits then it is a unitary slogan which gives us a partial path forward. It has limitations and a shelf-life, but it now generally expresses a deep-felt democratic desire present among the people.

* "Tell me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!"---This chant at demonstrations almost always helps people realize their power and broaden their concepts of democracy. It is a here-and-now slogan.

* "The people united will never be defeated!"---This slogan connects us with a radical past, puts human will at the forefront and has cultural applications.

* "Money for jobs and education, not for wars and occupation!"---This slogan expresses an achievable demand and a path forward.

* "People and nature before profits!"---This expresses a complex demand in a few words and the contradiction between people and the environment, on the one hand, and capitalism. See here and here for contrasting views on this question.

* "$15 Now and a union!"---This slogan puts forward a demand, shows a path forward and challenges unions to organize workers.

* "Out of the closets and into the streets!"---This slogan comes from gay liberation. It demands action and bravery. It brings to mind the saying attributed to Mao that "Marxism comprises many principles, but in the final analysis they can all be brought back to a single sentence: it is right to rebel."

* "Mujer sea libre!"---This speaks to the contradiction between men and women and encourages the development of women as revolutionary subjects, as the force and reason of revolution. It connect us to the Kurdish slogan "Jin--Jiyan--Azadi," or "Women--Life--Freedom."

We also have basic radical slogans which express simple truths of working-class existence---"An injury to one is an injury to all" and "Labor creates all wealth, all wealth should go to labor"---and the hopeful slogan "Solidarity forever!". These are only realized if we take the slogan "Dare to struggle and dare to win" seriously. I take my cue from Marx and start from the revolutionary position that "workers and employers have nothing in common," a common slogan of the old revolutionary labor movement, because this expresses a dialectic of opposing class forces. But raising this as a slogan now and outside of an organizing strategy that gets us to a situation where we have mass revolutionary organizations and a workers' party is problematic.

The Sanders movement is raising an ambiguous slogan when they talk about "political revolution" because its meaning, content and projection is so far unclear. When the Clinton campaign talks about "winning with Hilary" they use a slogan without real content. What does that really mean? Who wins and who loses and on what terms? Our opening quote from Lenin and Marx applies here.

Some incorrect or negative slogans are:

* "Anyone but Trump"

* "Workers' Power"

* "Kicking ass for the working class"

* "Make America great again"

* "Don't vote--it only encourages them"

* "Smash the state"

* "Bernie or bust"

* "No god, no masters"

* "Stand with children"

* "There is no way to peace; peace is the way."

We reject these slogans because they disempower people, disarm people, show no path from the present to the future or are simply reactionary. 

Lenin and Stalin took up these questions a long time ago. We find the following in Stalin's The Opposition:

This tactical principle involves the question of changes of slogans, and of the order and method of this change. It involves the question as to how slogans for the Party are to be transformed into slogans for the masses ; it involves the question as to how the masses are to be led into revolutionary positions, so that the masses may be convinced from their own political experience of the correctness of the Party slogans. For the masses cannot be convinced by propaganda and agitation alone. The political experience of the masses themselves is required for this. It is necessary that the broad masses should learn from their own personal sufferings that the overthrow of the given system, let us say, is inevitable and that the establishment of a new political and social system is inevitable. It was a good thing, for instance, that the advanced group, the Party, was already convinced of the inevitability, let us say, of the overthrow of the Milyukov- Kerensky Provisional Government in April 1917. But this was not enough to enable us to come out for the overthrow of that government, to advance the slogan of the overthrow of the Provisional Government and the establishment of the Soviet government as a slogan of the day . In order to convert the formula "All Power to the Soviets" from an immediate prospect into a slogan o f the day, a slogan of immediate action, another decisive factor was required, namely that the masses themselves should become convinced of the correctness of this slogan, and should in one way or another assist the Party in carrying this slogan into effect . A distinction must be drawn between a formula which is an immediate prospect and a formula which is a slogan of the day. It is precisely this that the group of Bolsheviks in Petrograd headed by Comrade Bogdatyev in April 1917, failed to understand when it prematurely put forward the slogan, "Down with the Provisional Government, All Power to the Soviets." Lenin at that time qualified this attempt on the part of Comrade Bogdatyev as a dangerous piece of adventurism and pilloried him publicly. Why? Because the wide mass of toilers in the rear and at the front were not yet receptive to this slogan. Because this group confused the formula "All Power to the Soviets" as a prospect with the slogan "All Power to the Soviets" as a slogan of the day. Because they ran ahead and incurred the danger of the Party's becoming completely isolated from the masses and from the Soviets, which at that time still believed that the Provisional Government was revolutionary. Should the Chinese Communists, for instance, six months ago, have put forward the slogan, "Down with the Kuomintang leadership in Wuchang?" No, they should not. They should not because this would be dangerously running ahead, it would have prevented contact between the Communists and the broad masses of toilers, who still believed in the leadership of the Kuomintang; it would have isolated the Communist Party from the peasant masses. They should not because the Wuchang Kuomintang leadership, the Wuchang Central Committee of the Kuomintang, had not yet run its course as a bourgeois revolutionary government: it had not yet disgraced and discredited itself in the eyes of the broad masses of toilers by its fight against the agrarian revolution, its fight against the working class and its swing-over to counter-revolution. We always said that it was impossible to adopt the policy of discrediting and replacing the Wuchang Kuomintang leadership before it had run its course as a bourgeois revolutionary government, and that it must first be allowed to run its course before practically raising the question of replacing it . Should the Chinese Communists put forward the slogan, "Down with the Kuomintang leadership in Wuchang" now? Yes, they should, unconditionally. Now that the Kuomintang leadership has already disgraced itself by its fight against the revolution, now that it has adopted a hostile attitude to the workers and peasant masses, this slogan will meet with a powerful response on the part of the mass of the people. Every worker and every peasant will now realize that the Communists were right in withdrawing from the Wuchang government and from the Wuchang Central Committee of the Kuomintang, and in putting forward the slogan, "Down with the Kuomintang leadership in Wuchang." For the peasant and worker masses are now faced with the alternative: either the present leadership of the Kuomintang, which means that there will be no hope of satisfying the urgent needs of these masses and that the agrarian revolution will be abandoned; or an agrarian revolution and a radical improvement of the condition of the working class, and then the removal of the Kuomintang leadership in Wuchang will become a slogan of the day for the masses. Such are the demands of the third tactical principle of Leninism in connection with the question of changes of slogans, of the ways and means of bringing the masses to new revolutionary positions and of how, by one's policy and actions, and by a timely change of slogans, to help the broad masses of toilers to realize from their own experience the correctness of the line of the Party.

We are not saying here that the situation in the US matches that of Russia or China several generations ago. We do not expect most readers to easily grasp the finer points of Russian and Chinese revolutionary history or to take Lenin and Stalin automatically at their word when it comes to discussing these histories.We are saying that the method of thinking modeled here can be appropriated and used by us today. A criteria is given here for what makes good and bad slogans and that criteria rests very much on the dialectical approach we have been arguing for in our 7 posts on thinking.     

    

How should we think? How do we understand the Sanders movement?---Part 7

We are winding this series down on thinking and thought processes, but we're not quite done. In the first post in this series we made an argument for critical thinking and critical thinking skills and then we tried to show why critical thinking, by itself, only takes us so far. We tried to make a case for thinking as an art and as a science; something we do and improve upon constantly because it enriches our lives and helps us change reality. We then shifted gears and focused on dialectical materialism and on the work of Alexander Spirkin and some other philosophers because Spirkin and the others are most accessible to modern readers in a hurry.

I want to avoid anything here that sounds transactional---the idea that thinking and correct ideas are only there to accomplish pragmatic ends and that if one can only "think right" then only good will follow. Two lines from Mao come to mind here. In A Letter To The Red Guards Of Tsinghua University Middle School (1966) Mao said, "Marx said: the proletariat must emancipate not only itself but all mankind. If it cannot emancipate all mankind, then the proletariat itself will not be able to achieve final emancipation." and Mao is said to have said in this period that "Marxism comprises many principles, but in the final analysis they can all be brought back to a single sentence: it is right to rebel." Gil Scott-Heron took it further and said, "You see, revolution sounds like something that happens, like turning on the light switch, but actually it's moving a large obstacle, and a lot of folks' efforts to push it in one direction or the other have to combine." Our point here is that the projects of change, revolution and liberation are imperfect and that correct thinking or correct actions, taken by themselves, don't guarantee outcomes since human beings are involved at every step of the way. We can't somehow design and redesign reality in order to satisfy our desires. Instead, we take Marx at his word when he wrote "Man must prove the truth — i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice...The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself...The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice...All social life is essentially practical...The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity."

So today I'm going to focus on why the processes and logic that I have tried to spell out in the last 6 posts on this topic take us to a point of supporting the Sanders movement. The point here is to apply our method and logic, however imperfectly, and get us to a point where we can see how dialectical materialism is used in taking up a current political question. This is not an easy matter to take up on the left these days and I want to reach back to a post going into some detail about these matters which frames some of what we're talking about here.

I'm going to take Mao's On Practice as a point of departure. Mao says, "Above all, Marxists regard man's activity in production as the most fundamental practical activity, the determinant of all his other activities. Man's knowledge depends mainly on his activity in material production, through which he comes gradually to understand the phenomena, the properties and the laws of nature, and the relations between himself and nature; and through his activity in production he also gradually comes to understand, in varying degrees, certain relations that exist between man and man. None of this knowledge can be acquired apart from activity in production...Man's social practice is not confined to activity in production, but takes many other forms--class struggle, political life, scientific and artistic pursuits; in short, as a social being, man participates in all spheres of the practical life of society. Thus man, in varying degrees, comes to know the different relations between man and man, not only through his material life but also through his political and cultural life (both of which are intimately bound up with material life). Of these other types of social practice, class struggle in particular, in all its various forms, exerts a profound influence on the development of man's knowledge. In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class." This obligates us to look at the class make-up of the Sanders movement and the other political campaigns underway.

Evidence seems to indicate that the Sanders movement draws primarily from the working-class and what is referred to as "the lower middle-class" and the youth. We know that the dominant concerns among these classes and groups are precariousness, education and debt and the fabric of democracy. We also know that precariousness is less a matter of being in a particular social class, a "precariat," and more a matter of working class life. And we know that the working class, the "lower middle-class" and the youth are some of the core social forces in the US, the people best situated to make change and reconstruct society.

The Clinton campaign draws on a different class base. The appeal here is to the so-called "middle-classes," certain industries and economic institutions and the bureaucracies which manage social crises---the non-governmental organizations, the Democratic party establishment, the union leaderships, the public-private partnerships and sections of academia. These are wavering social forces; they can fall in any direction, but they do not represent or actualize the most reactionary social forces. Clinton's political base in the Democratic party necessarily forces her to respond to the core social forces who remain in the Democratic party---women, people of color, union leaderships---and to be a mediating force between those core forces and the capitalist forces also present in her party. When someone says that Clinton "can get things done" they are describing this mediating role. One peculiarity of US politics is that people at the grassroots are often forced to ally with people at the top in order to win reforms through coalitions, almost guaranteeing a conservative movement at the base for periods of time. On the other hand, we are talking about discreet periods of time which hold in them all of the contradictions present in capitalist society.  

We need to be careful to distinguish here between the forces at work and do this in a way which is consistent with the logic we laid out in our previous 6 posts. The tensions we are describing here reflect shifting forces and balances of power, attempts to find equilibrium while some part of the core forces are also trying to make a spontaneous break or leap, relations between existing forces. The Sanders movement represents working-class and "lower-middle-class" interests based on real fears and a democratic hope, while the Clinton campaign represents a particular wing of capitalism and has within it a contradictory relationship between core social forces and these capitalist institutions. The two forces, the Sanders movement and the Clinton campaign, exist is relationship to one another because the economic forces underlying them exist in relationship to one another. These relationships have deep and contradictory aspects to them. For instance, another peculiarity of our politics is that the shift in economic and political relations in the US has meant a shift in the role of the military-industrial complex so that Clinton can correctly position herself as a hawk and a leading figure in the military can speak openly about the military opposing Trump. The quantitative and qualitative features of bourgeois (capitalist) rule are also shifting in relation to one another and in relation to peoples' struggles.

Beyond the matter of the economic forces at work stand matters of race, class and gender which increasingly appear as antagonistic contradictions among the peoples' forces. Our take-away point here is that Clinton's capitalist backers do not represent the most reactionary segments of capital, they do not come from the monopolies and trusts which are now threatened by crisis and by imperialist crises. This will certainly change, but for now Clinton represents other interests. 

Not so for Trump. We can say that Trump draws from a "middle-class" who feel that they are in sharp decline and that he represents the most reactionary segments of capitalism---the trusts, the monopolies, the forces negatively affected by imperialist crises, finance capital. We can also say and demonstrate that these are the forces which most benefit from racism and sexism and most easily glom onto the reactionary religious values as an ideology. These forces are "reactionary" in the full sense of the word: they are reacting to the historic values of the Enlightenment and science, but they are also reacting to the peoples' struggles as expressed in Occupy, the trade unions and the fight for higher minimum wages, anti-racism and Black Lives Matter, the fight for immigrant rights, the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights and so on. It is not only that the Trump forces oppose us on these specific political questions, but also that they represent economic forces which are directly threatened by these forces. In the context of the elections, the Trump campaign is the opposite of the Sanders movement in theory, practice and structure because they each represent contending forces. The Clinton campaign represents a middling force because it represents economic and political forces in crisis who are both scared of social change and who are presently excluded from the ranks of the most reactionary capitalist forces.

If the forces represented by Trump are truly ascendant that our job is to change the balance of forces and the relationship between these forces. We do this by changing the quantitative aspects of the forces at work---bringing more people from the working-class and "lower-middle-class" into the struggle, for instance----and then by changing the qualitative nature of the struggle by agitating, educating and taking the dare to struggle and win. I think of this as a kind of planetary map, but one in which we get to move the planets around and affect the pull of gravity in each one. If Sanders loses the nomination or loses the election we will need a different order of "planets" in place and different pulls of gravity---a united front, if you will, against the black hole that is Trump's incipient fascism or the "dark flow" of a Clinton administration vacillating and then sucking the life out of the momentum we are building on the left with the Sanders movement. And if he is somehow elected, we need to consolidate forces immediately and be able to push for a people-before-profits social and political agenda. In any case, we are forced to confront and try to change reality. "If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the structure and properties of the atom, you must make physical and chemical experiments to change the state of the atom. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience," says Mao.

This united front, this change in the order of "planets" and "gravity,"cannot logically be based on a "Sanders-only" approach to the elections. Neither can it be based on a surrender to conservative forces or, for that matter, to spontaneity. We are talking here about a principled or scientific change in relations between contradictory class forces in order to "negate a negation." In this case it may be a matter of us (workers) joining forces with others to "negate" or oppose Trump's incipient fascism and the most "negative" or reactionary sections of the capitalist ruling class and the means of production, distribution and administration which they own and control. Or it may mean a temporary class alliance driven by necessity and the need to elect and then push a President Clinton on every key issue. In either case, we are talking about negation and continuity, not progress. Spirkin says, "Development is not a straight line and not motion in a circle, but a spiral with an infinite series of turns. Forward motion is thus intricately combined with circular motion. If all processes in the world developed only successively, without repeating themselves, such things as life, animal and human behaviour, and the life of society could never have arisen; mental activity, consciousness, material and spiritual culture could never have come into being. The process of development also involves a kind of return to previous stages, when certain features of obsolete and replaced forms are repeated in new forms. The process of cognition on a new basis often repeats cycles that have already taken place."

We take this position with our main concern being with moving from negation to progress, and with some anger at those forces on the left who blocked the left from consolidating and protesting under the Obama administration and those who want to dissolve socialist organizations. This failure to consolidate, organize and fight under Obama is not something to repeat.

In the past, and in other countries, the kind of social-democratic forces represented by Sanders were given some ability to manage social crises when there was an economic downturn. They could ally with the trade union leaderships and enforce austerity in limited ways and as junior partners. Prior to that the social democrats derived much of their power from functioning as a bulwark against the USSR and the committed left. Now there is no USSR, the US organized left is especially weak, the trade union leaderships in the US do not represent more than 12 per cent of the workers and the economy is temporarily in relatively good shape. So it is that we now have a different set of circumstances than we have had in the past and, as a result, new possibilities emerge.  

In line with this thought we will wrap up this post with a summarizing quote from Mao. He said, "It often happens, however, that thinking lags behind reality; this is because man's cognition is limited by numerous social conditions. We are opposed to die-herds in the revolutionary ranks whose thinking fails to advance with changing objective circumstances and has manifested itself historically as Right opportunism. These people fail to see that the struggle of opposites has already pushed the objective process forward while their knowledge has stopped at the old stage. This is characteristic of the thinking of all die-herds. Their thinking is divorced from social practice, and they cannot march ahead to guide the chariot of society; they simply trail behind, grumbling that it goes too fast and trying to drag it back or turn it in the opposite direction...We are also opposed to 'Left' phrase-mongering. The thinking of 'Leftists' outstrips a given stage of development of the objective process; some regard their fantasies as truth, while others strain to realize in the present an ideal which can only be realized in the future. They alienate themselves from the current practice of the majority of the people and from the realities of the day, and show themselves adventurist in their actions."

      

What is socialism? What does a "people-before-profits fight-back program" mean?

Members of our group were among the thousands of people who went to hear Bernie Sanders speak in Salem tonight. We were the only visible left group there and the only group with a leaflet. In other words, we were the only group willing to engage with people tonight about issues that matter.

Some of the people who took our leaflet will be checking out this blog and asking what socialism is and why we're all about building a "people-before-profits fight-back program." What does that really mean?

Here are a few easy-to-grasp definitions of socialism. Each has its strong and weak points. Our group includes many people with differing ideas and we're interested in studying these questions, so if one definition offered here makes more sense than another one and you want to follow up---great!

Pat Fry addresses the question of what socialism is here. Pat briefly defines socialism by saying, "Socialism is a democratic political system wherein the interests and organizations of the working class and its allies have attained and hold the preponderance of political power and play the leading role in society."

Rick Nagin gives a different definition here. Rick says, "The essence of socialism is the replacement of the capitalist class and private corporate power by the working class and allied forces (family farmers, small businesspeople, self-employed professionals, etc.) as the dominant influence in society. When this coalition is the new ruling class, it can then begin to reorganize the economy. Such a reorganization would include social ownership of key industries such as finance, energy, and armaments. It would mean developing policies that put people before profits and guarantee full democratic rights and economic security for all."

Bill Fletcher provides context and meaning for what socialism means here. Fletcher emphasizes the "verb" of socialism when he says, "Socialism, then, is a process of social transformation which includes the democratizing of society as well as the transformation of the agents of change. Not only is it the case that a new, revolutionary society does not appear whole, complete and perfect out of nothing, but is, in fact, marked at birth by elements from the old society. Those who are directly engaged in the social transformation process are products of that old society and, as a result, very much affected by the various social forces that emerged from within the old regime." Many of us in Salem feel close to Fletcher's views.

A short pamphlet explaining socialism from a standpoint close to Bernie Sanders may be found here. This pamphlet seems rather weak or limp to me, but the changes that it talks about would mark a major shift in US politics. In line with this, the Democratic Socialists of America provide definitions and context here. These definitions were built in part by the earlier thinking and work of American socialist Eugene Debs. Perhaps the place to start with Debs is his simple Socialism is the Only Remedy (1895).

I think that the best historic definitions of socialism come from The Communist Manifesto. Some basic and brief historic quotes explaining things can be found here. Lenin's quick definition of Soviet power helps move forward from there. I think that Stalin explained socialism very well, but in a particular context, in many of his works; I recommend The Foundations of Leninism as a place to start. Marx for Beginners and Marx's Value, Price and Profit fit together pretty well for people new to these questions. Moissaye J. Olgin's essays may seem dated to some readers, but he provided a good starting place with his Why Communism?.

The works of Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Kwame Nkrumah and Amilcar Cabral also have special meaning to us because they wrote for people at the grassroots and their writings give us a real flavor of change and revolution.

Don't worry about where to start at first---jump in if you're curious! Use our links to explore ideas and organizations which will be new to you. The best guide to getting started is Mao's saying that "If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the structure and properties of the atom, you must make physical and chemical experiments to change the state of the atom. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution."

So our work to build a "people-before-profits fight-back program" builds on all of this. We simply believe that people should come before corporate profits, that winning this requires a political and social struggle, that the Sanders movement right now puts this in the foreground, that we need strong peoples' organizations and workers' organization to carry this struggle forward and that believing in this means that we have to fight war, fascism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism and all of the other "-isms" which oppress people. It's not that we're negative people; we think that these struggles are, at their heart, for socialism.