Two problems here:
Can we still claim workers are the agents of their own emancipation when they let themselves be ruled by Stalin, Mao, etc.? In no socialist revolution has there been a successful revolution within the revolution, of the sort that Trotsky, et al. hoped for, against the bureaucratic power elite that came to dominate it and eventually decided to restore capitalism. Do socialists today still really believe that workers in the West will one day desire socialism and establish it in their rich countries, despite the memory of socialist barbarism that weighs like a nightmare on their brains? If they do, do they have any ideas about how? Comment I am not a socialist and have identified myself as a communist for at least 35 years or since age 17. By communists, what is meant it that I believe, propagate and will fight for socially necessary means of life to be taken out of the value relations and support legislative means to make it impossible for anything other than means of consumption to pass into the hands of the individual. This latter proposition means that no individual could acquire property rights over things that dominate the working life of others. Communism do not mean Marxism, although Marxism is a current within communism. Today in America there is a growing awareness that a certain set of socially necessary means of life ought to be taken out of the value relations, but this awareness is very different across various layers - strata, of the working class. For instance, virtually everyone I have interacted with over the past twenty years believes children should have access to medical treatment without regard to the economic conditions of their parents or their parents ability to pay for such service. Here the movie "John Q" struck a deep mental and emotional cord amongst every segment of the working class. There is a growing awareness that retired workers and senior citizens should have access to need medical care without regard to their ability to pay for such services as individuals. Even amongst the better paid workers who are often white collar and salaried employees, like retired General Motors workers in management, there is an awareness and demand that the company and not the individual, should pay for medical insurance. In fact I reported to Pen-L of a protest of retired General Motors executive and management members who set up pickets signs at the Detroit Auto Show back in 2002. There demand was for someone else other than them to supply medical insurance. What they basically said was "I would have went into the fuckin' union if I knew the damn company was going to screw me like this." These higher paid workers were pissed. I call and understand this growing awareness and its vocalization as incipient communism. There is a growing awareness in America . . . pardon, rich America, that people as individuals have a right to a set of rights that correspond with the mass understanding of what our society is capable of providing. A segment of every layer of the working class and even the bourgeoisie itself believes that people - everyone, should have a right and access to housing, especially the working class at large. The manner in which this issue is argued is instructive. The better paid workers often ask, "but how will the upkeep of low cost housing for the poorest take place?" "Folks without a sense of value and worth allow their housing and community to deteriorate and nobody cuts the grass and take care of things." I always reply, to such questions, "You are right and this is going to take some working out after the housing is secured. The reason I live in an apartment where the grass is cut and maintenance is done by a company is because I'm tired of that shit." The point is that our working class is already ahead of many of us in its aspirations and are asking the real questions, which boils down to what is your communist vision and plan? The majority of the working class already expresses a belief and willingness to fight for high quality public education, where the parents do not have to provide paper and pencils and all the kids have standard music classes and not just gym, which is increasingly left without equipment and real programs of physical development. Our children are getting fatter - obese, and even if the parents find extra personal time in swinging by McDonald's - getting that new chicken wrap around things for $1.29 and hitting the $1 value meals with that double cheese burger, the kids need physical outlets for their energy and development. Public education up to and including entrance into college should be guaranteed by the government. I am not being funny but we need a new commitment to ourselves about the state of the libraries throughout America. Libraries are socially necessary to our society and are a sure means to educate and allow our children to at least have a shot at a decent and cultured life. I use to meet my first girlfriend in life, in the library and steal a kiss between rows of books written by some of the greatest thinkers in human history. God she felt good. I am not saying that library's throughout America is going to solve our social problems, but you can bet that without them, we get a little bit stupider. Why libraries and museums not taken out of the value relations and mandated as a permanent public service indispensable to the health and well being of society? Why does a library and museum have to have a rich sponsor or group of wealthy sponsors? Is this not some 15th century thinking where a Divinci or some other cat had to find a rich patron? Ain't this some 15th century rich sugar daddy crap? Communism is everywhere and like love is where you find it. The idea that America being rich exempts it from social revolution is not well thought out. With our apparent richness, and wealth goes a new way of looking at things based on a common sense awareness of what is possible. Revolution and political revolution in the United States, is absolutely inevitable because it is the inevitable consequence of a series of changes in society. Revolution is not the result of subversion of the existing order, nor does it come about through conspiracy. Revolution is the first and inevitable step in the creation of a new social order on the basis of the new economy. The new economy develops spontaneously, automatically, as the result of the advance of scientific understanding and changes in the productive forces. Advance thinkers who see these coming changes and feel the change wave deeper, must work hard and sacrifice much in order to guide the inevitable growing discontent of the people into the channels of revolution. "(T)he memory of socialist barbarism that weighs like a nightmare on their brains?" is a memory you possess and not that of a broad cross section of the working class of America and most certainly not that of the most poverty stricken workers in America, who would be hard press to locate the former Soviet Union on a map. Most folks in America cannot locate Iraq on a world map and do not remember what they ate yesterday. Our working class and most certainly the most poverty stricken workers in America do not think and conceive things in the terms in which the above author frames the issues. They know nothing of a Trotsky or Mao and what I tell them about Stalin is the truth of our class reality. Melvin P.
