It's terrific that our Bernie revolution has brought the concept
of socialism back into the national political dialogue. If we were to do nothing
further, this would still be huge, as they say. What we haven’t done yet is incorporate
the essential concepts of Marxism into our discussions. The vicious attack of
anti-communism that started in the 50s has everyone scared to say the word
Marx. A lot of people have even come to blame Marx for the failures and crimes
of the late Communist movement, which is sort of like blaming John Locke for
the extremism of the thermadorian terror after the French Revolution.
Now I’m not a big theory person. I once led a study group on
Capital, but the numbers made my head
swim. I’ve declared myself to be against ismism,
the ideological rigidities of the left in particular which makes decisions
based on theory rather than practical experience. But Marx initiated the
discussion of how to end exploitation of humans by humans, which is my goal,
certainly, and to some of extent, the goal of most sincere revolutionaries.
Let’s start with “All history is the history of class
struggle.” Marx’s dialectical materialism derives from the idea that movement
in nature is caused by the contradiction of opposites. Positive and negative
electricity. Male and female tendencies. Objective and subjective reality. 0-1
of the binary number system, on-off, on which our computer technology is based. Yin and yang. How you identify the polarities in a dialectical process determines how you act in that dialectic. It’s my understanding that
most, even capitalist, sociologists accept as fact the Marxist idea that at
some point in our history, the beginning of the written history, the
development of agriculture, gave rise to classes, Master and Slave. After the
fall of Rome, the main contradiction became that between Lord and Peasant. Then
came the revolutions against Feudalism which switched the main contradiction to
being between Capitalist and Worker. The twentieth century brought us the first
worldwide attempts to eliminate exploitation all together in the struggle for
socialism.
So the core struggle driving all our politics and war is the
battle for control of the world’s wealth between the working class and the
capitalist class. Between the 99% and the 1%. The most accurate definition of the
working class is that it includes everyone who has to work for a living, who
can’t just live off the fruits of their investments. This includes the middle
class. The middle class is just the better paid section of the working class.
There is an essential racial discussion inside this point, but we’ll save it for another
blog.
Clearly at this point there are as many definitions of
socialism as there are socialists. Rather than pick a model, let’s start with
we got and take it where we want it to go. We understand the basic thrust: we
want people to care about each other rather than things; we want to make sure
that everyone in our human family has enough to eat, a warm place to sleep, all
the medical care they need, freedom from police abuse, clean air and water, a stable planet, a good
job, education, and connection to the internet. Because our concept is democratic socialism, we get to decide
what direction our societies are going. You are as powerful as anyone else. I
say societies because our human family lives all over the world, and no member
is any better or should be any more privileged than anyone else. There will be plenty around to share once the capitalist class gives up it's outrageous hogging our resources. Socialism,
Marxism, are nothing without an internationalist approach. Thanks to that
internet, we now have the capacity to organize the working class worldwide.
The fastest way to get where we need to go may not be a
presidential campaign, although this one has given us the courage and
confidence to imagine the kind of future we want for each other. The fastest
way, or at least the more reliable way, is to start now to build the society we
want inside the old society.
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