Good afternoon everybody, and a special good afternoon to our international guests. Thank you so much for coming.
Convention Mission
Every National Convention has its own particular mission. So what is the mission of this one, our 30th?
In addition to catching up with old friends and meeting new ones, breaking bread together, and just generally having a good time, our mission is to take a fresh and sober look at today's realities and challenges.
This includes making adjustments of our strategic and tactical policies to new conditions. It entails taking better care of the future in the struggles of the present.
Over the next three days, we will turn our attention to those social movements, which are critical to recasting our country's politics, economics, and popular thinking.
While we will look ahead, but not so far ahead that we miss the immediate challenge of this fall's elections.
And, of course, our attention will turn to the many sided building of a 21st century Party. Such a party, which we are building, should be modern, mature, militant, and mass - or in my world, a 4M party. And it must utilize our collective and penetrating voice - Peoples World (peoplesworld.org) - far more effectively than it does now.
Such a party must have growing breadth and depth in its leadership pool. It has to be anchored in a network of clubs in cities, neighborhoods, and workplaces.
The politics of such a party should be informed by an understanding of the complexity of the process of social change as well as the necessity of mass unity and action in the most entrenched and powerful capitalism in the world.
And a revolutionary party for the 21st century has to employ a Marxist lens that is dialectical, historical, creative, and developing in line with new realities as well as draw insight and inspiration from our country's own radical and democratic traditions.
Now I'm going to turn my attention to the main challenges that the leadership of the Party would like to you to discuss, debate, and decide over the next three days. I will present them one by one for the purposes of clarity, but in real life each intermingles with the other in countless ways.
Challenge 1: People's surge
It seems like every day somebody new is raising hell, rattling the cages of the powers that be.
One day it's the Dreamers, the next day it's Walmart moms and fast food workers, and then the Moral Monday movement the day after that.
Then there are seemingly endless actions to increase the minimum wage.
Initiatives to stop deportations and the militarization of the border are also commonplace.
To this list, we have to add mobilizations against voter suppression along with ongoing campaigns to register new voters.
Nor can we forget the struggles to stop mass incarceration and overhaul a judicial system that is punitive and riven with racial and class bias.
Of great significance are the efforts to protect women's health and abortion clinics, which are under ferocious attack.
Then there are the inspiring student campaigns against global energy corporations, student debt and the Keystone pipeline.
And we shouldn't forget the flood of phone calls that nearly overwhelmed the Congressional switchboards to protest what looked like imminent U.S. military action in Syria.
Also of great significance was the transformative AFL-CIO convention in Los Angeles last fall.
Still another impressive example of this surge last fall was the landslide win of Bill de Blasio for mayor of New York City, who is a self-described progressive. The New York Times no less called it "a sharp leftward turn for the nation's largest metropolis."
Then a few weeks ago, across the mighty Hudson River, Ras Baraka in another impressive victory was elected Newark's mayor.
Finally, an aspect of this surge that is so inspiring it brings tears to my eyes has been the passage of marriage equality legislation in state after state. These victories have become so common that it is easy to lose sight of the enormous change this represents. And it has happened in a relatively short period of time, thanks to the courage and tenacity of the LGBT people.
Because of their insistence that such an essential part of their identity and humanity should not be denied or hidden, backward attitudes that had been planted deep in our collective culture and psyche were uprooted. It's simply amazing that so many people now believe that one sexual orientation shouldn't be privileged over another and a variety of family arrangements should be equally valued.
From this podium, let me in everyone's name tip our banner to the late Harry Hay, as well as to the pioneering Stonewall Generation that includes our own Gary Dotterman and Eric Gordon. The Stonewall generation came out when it was very difficult to do so; they battled and lost loved ones to the AIDS scourge; and they never gave an inch to ignorance and hate.
If I could sum this surge up in a few words, I might say that things are breaking good, not "breaking bad."
Now I will be the first to say that this surge of struggle doesn't have the capacity to resolve the crisis of capitalism in a consistently democratic and working class manner.
But does it have transformative potential? Yes - I believe it contains the seeds that could, if properly cared for, sprout and bring a "new burst of freedom, economic security, and peace."
Of course, a devil's advocate would quickly remind me of the barriers that make any kind of progress, let alone social transformation, unlikely.
And you know what? The obstacles are formidable; the task is daunting.
But we shouldn't lower our sights or lose those precious gifts called hope and desire or give up on the American people.
The present surge is real. And it can evolve into "a movement of the immense majority in the interests of the immense majority," as a young Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto.
Which means that its reach extends into small towns and suburbs as well as cities, into Lubbock as well as San Francisco, into the South as well as the North, into the heartland as well as the coasts, and into red states as well as blue states. It has to be a rainbow movement that includes much more than a sliver of white people.
Or to put it differently, only a movement, as one progressive analyst wrote, that includes the desperately poor and the insecure middle class has any chance of success. This is not exactly a Marxist formulation, but framing it like that encourages big universe thinking and expansive tactics, both of which are sometimes lacking on the left and in the Party.
Challenge 2: An economy that works for working people
The 99 percent aren't faring too well. Are you?
The economic recovery is anemic; and things don't look good going forward.
Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist, wrote a while back:
"But what if the world we've been living in for the past five years is the new normal? What if depression-like conditions are on track to persist, not for another year or two, but for decades?
You might imagine that speculations along these lines are the province of a radical fringe. And they are indeed radical; but fringe, not so much. A number of economists have been flirting with such thoughts for a while."
Wow!
In saying that stagnation is capitalism's new template - not dynamic growth lifting all boats - Krugman and others are opening up space for our movement to reach a much bigger audience and take their analysis a step further by making the case that stagnation, slow growth and income inequality are internal to the operation of capitalism, especially in its present phase.
In fact, present day capitalism, while being governed by the same underlying laws of motion and dynamics, bears little resemblance to U.S. capitalism in the years stretching from the end of World War II to the mid-1970s.
During that era between 1945-1975, sometimes called U.S. capitalism's "Golden Age," the economy grew steadily and dynamically. The capitalist class invested and reinvested its capital on an expanded scale in the sphere of material production and grew rich doing so. And the working class, not without struggle, secured jobs and enjoyed rising living standards
But all this changed in the mid-1970s when the conditions that sustained capitalism's dynamic and near continuous expansion over a 25-year period largely disappeared and gave way to stagflation, that is, high inflation, slow growth, and a sharp fall in profitability. Unhappy with this turn of events, and, especially the decline in profit levels, the moneybags in the corporate suites did two things:
First, they declared war on labor and this bitter clash, which we know only too well, goes on unabated.
At the same time, they loosened a good chunk of their money from its old moorings in the sphere of material production and said to it: "You are free. Go wherever you want. Multiply many times over. Make me rich."
Which is exactly what their footloose and profit- seeking money did. It "nestled everywhere, settled everywhere, established connections everywhere" (Communist Manifesto) on a global scale.
But the main place it flowed was into financial markets and channels.
In fact, the flow was so massive and sustained that it became the main determinant shaping the contours, structure, interrelations, and evolution of the national and world economy.
But, as we know now only too well, this enormous flow of overwhelmingly speculative, parasitic, and non-productive money (money begetting more money rather than the traditional capitalist formula of money begetting production and out of production begetting more money) into the financial sphere - some call it financialization - while pumping life into an underperforming economy was anything but an unmixed blessing.
Sure a few people on Wall Street or connected to Wall Street got rotten rich, lived in unconscionable luxury, and accumulated enormous power.
But most of us got spanked, and spanked hard. We lost jobs, income, and homes. Piled up debt to get by. And did nothing but worry about the future of our families and communities.
And, when the financial feeding frenzy finally unraveled and the whole economic edifice collapsed in 2008, damn it if we didn't get spanked again.
And to think that not one, not even one, of these captains of high finance spent a day in jail.
To make matters worse, five years later things are no better for us anyway. Nearly all of the income gains during this time have gone to the 1 percent.
And, the prognosis for the economy is slow growth, stagnation, privatization, and mounting contradictions.
Moreover, giving added force to the stagnation pressures are the vast changes that have occurred in the global economy since 1980.
On the one hand, at the apex of the economy are huge multinational corporations and banks that have massive amounts of money, control over global supply lines, and use of technologies that allow them to quickly move investment funds and goods over borders and oceans.
On the other hand, Marx's reserve army of the unemployed, underemployed and informally employed has doubled in size since the 1980s as China, Russia India, and other countries in the global South became integrated into the world capitalist system. This sudden expansion of the working class that has no parallel in human history has radically re-leveraged the relative positions of capital and labor in favor of the capitalist class.
What is more, this disparity in wealth and power at the level of the deep structures of the economy is a new and powerful source of downward pressure on the U.S. and world economy.
Now, this whole turn of events and reconstitution of U.S. and global capitalism could not have happened without a major assist from the government and the political class.
Of crucial importance were the election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 and the ascendancy of the right that followed. Like Margaret Thatcher across the pond in Britain, Reagan (and the right-wingers who followed him) had an outsized and decisive hand in this unrelenting attack against the working class and people.
But to be fair, the Democrats, and especially the Clinton administration, were not bystanders either. They also had a hand in transforming the economy to the advantage of the 1 percent.
So the question before the house is: How do we get out of this mess?
First of all, we should take off the table some non-starters. One is more austerity, that is, reductions in government spending for people's needs. That has been the policy and it hasn't reignited the economy; in fact, insofar as it reduced the consumer power of working people it has undermined a recovery.
Nor is a new round of financialization and its accompanying bubble-driven growth a viable recovery strategy either.
Nor should anyone hold out hope for a new technological frontier that would turn into a major wellspring for investment and job growth. While Apple, for example, employs tens of thousands, this is far less than the mass production industries of the 20th century and with far fewer multiplier effects.
Finally, an export-driven solution offers no hope either, especially in a weakly performing and increasingly integrated world economy. One country's exports are another country's imports, thus what one country gains in, say jobs, becomes another country's loss.
Ok!
So we know what won't work.
But what will, what's needed is nothing less than the restructuring of the economy in a consistently and deeply anti-corporate, and eventually socialist direction. And for that to happen, a struggle that is political, economic, and ideological, broad in scope, and grassroots in depth, is needed.
What will the economic restructuring look like?
First: Conversion of a fossil fuel driven and militarized economy into a peaceful, sustainable one, based on and developing renewable energy sources.
Second: Major infrastructure construction and renewal.
Third: A guaranteed income for all, and a reduction in the workweek with no cut in pay.
Fourth: A major expansion of every aspect of the public sector - education, housing, recreation, culture, child care, retirement security, health care, and so forth.
Fifth: Strengthening of worker's rights and people's rights generally.
Sixth: Turn "too big to fail" banks and the energy industry into public utilities.
Seventh: Measures to overcome longstanding inequalities and rebuild hard hit communities.
Finally: Controls on capital's ability to abandon communities and move around the world.
Of course such reforms will be met with what? The claim that there is no money!
But that is perhaps the biggest of the Big Lies.
In the past few decades, trillions of dollars of unearned wealth has been amassed by the 1 percent - this should be transferred into public hands.
Another huge source of funds is reordering governmental priorities, away from military spending.
Finally, taxing financial flows and transactions should get our radical economic program off and running.
And let me add this: The purpose of such a reform program isn't to "level the playing field" or to insure that everyone who "plays by the rules" and works hard "gets a shot at the American Dream."
To the contrary, the purpose is to decisively change the rules and to tilt the playing field in favor of the underpaid, the underemployed and the unemployed; the discriminated against, the struggling family, the indebted student, the underwater homeowner, the bankrupt city, the underfunded school; every victim of capitalism's crisis and warped priorities.
But where do we begin? My answer is that we begin where we are, that is, with the existing movements and struggles.
And there are so many! Starting with the growing movements against economic inequality, the low wage economy, and right-wing extremism.
One day it is AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka passionately speaking against the growth of inequality.
The next day it is President Obama, making a speech on economic inequality.
The books of Thomas Piketty and Elizabeth Warren, both on the subject of glaring and unjustified inequality, are on the New York Times best sellers list.
A progressive bloc in Congress is growing and stands solidly behind economic justice and equality.
The minimum wage movement is really kicking up sand, the latest victory the vote by the Seattle City Council to lift the minimum wage to $15 per hour.
Meanwhile, around the world, powerful movements, and in some cases, even governments, are demanding economic justice.
And before we move on, as a former altar boy, I have got to bring the Pope into the conversation, who said, and I have to quote him:
"While the earnings of the minority are growing exponentially, so, too, is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. The imbalance is the result of ideologies, which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation ... A new tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which relentlessly imposes its own laws and rules ... The thirst for power and possessions knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything that stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market, which become the only rule."
Wow! Powerful stuff! Like Lebron James, the Pope's got game!
One of the most compelling struggles against economic inequality, maybe the most compelling, is the low wageworker organizing.
Who are these workers? Well they are us. They are young as well as old, black and brown as well as white, women as well as men, immigrant as well as native born, suburban and rural as well as urban, and, I'm sure, gay and straight. They also come from red states as well as blue states.
Furthermore, they labor in the new citadels of U.S. capitalism - and there is no bigger citadel than Walmart, which is the second largest corporation and biggest employer in the world.
If General Motors was the template of U.S. corporations in the 20th century then Walmart is one of the templates in the 21st.
Much like GM back then, Wamart because of its size, reach, and market power is able to bend nearly everything to its advantage, including class and labor relations, production organization and global supply lines, government at every level, and the futures of countless communities.
But Walmart and other low wage retailers, as they rake in money hand over fist, are meeting resistance to their practices. And the resistance is taking many forms.
It is direct and indirect; it accents action and mass mobilization; it is legislative and electoral as well as in the streets; and its watchwords are inclusion and unity.
In its corner are important sections of the U.S. labor movement, including the top leadership of the AFL-CIO.
We (and many, many others) are supporters of this struggle. But at this convention we should agree to up the ante.
I say, let's decide here, right now, at this 30th convention of the Communist Party, to make this struggle a strategic focus. Let's agree that we are going to leave Chicago determined to give this struggle our time, energy, and best thinking?
Can we agree to that?
Such a focus, in case anybody is worried, isn't a turning away from the traditional sections of the working class. It's not a back-benching of our industrial concentration policy - which by the way was never intended to create a pecking order within the working class; to the contrary, its purpose was to activate, empower, and unite the working class as a whole.
Thus, a focus on Walmart, fast food, and other low wage workers is an adaptation of our concept of industrial concentration to new realities and challenges. This doesn't meant that people in Michigan should forget the auto workers, or in California, the longshore workers. Or in ... you get the gist.
Now I'm also sure someone is thinking that big box, fast food, and other low wage workers don't have the same strategic power that, say the auto workers in Flint had in the winter of 1935 when they sat down in first one, then two GM plants. (And by the way, the two main organizers of the sit-down were communists - Bob Travis on the inside and Wyndham Mortimer on the outside, although if truth be known, both had some help from the Party leader in Michigan at that time, Will Weinstone.)
I would counter with two comments. First, strategic power doesn't turn only on location in the capitalist economy, which is, after all, a complex and connected system of social production. That strikes me as too economistic. It seems to me that strategic power is something that can be acquired or constructed by other means too. Location is important for sure, but in the end, strategic power is politically constructed.
In other words, strategic power is about outreach, alliances, unity, mass action, and, not least, deepening class and democratic consciousness. It's also about the fight against white and male supremacy. It's about embracing undocumented workers and their struggles. It's about a new level of independent political action. It's about new forms of cross-border solidarity. It's about growing the size, grassroots connections, and influence of the left and our Party.
And, let's not forget, it's about decisively defeating right-wing extremism, which is absolutely necessary if the broader movement hopes to realign politics, economics, culture, and mass thinking in a consistent anti-corporate, and in the longer term, socialist, direction.
What is more, I can't help but think that the struggle and victories of the low wageworkers will be a huge boost to the labor movement, much like the struggle and victory of Flint sit-downers were nearly eight decades ago. The entry of this huge section of the working class into the family of labor will bring new spirit, ideas, power, capacity and confidence to labor.
And it will hugely augment labor's ability to organize the millions of workers who are unemployed and underemployed.
Sometimes I think that we, and I begin with myself, think too narrowly and abstractly about our strategic focus and strategic possibilities.
Again, I'm not suggesting that we backbench the industrial core of the working class. But we must accept the fact that massive concentrations of workers in industrial complexes within our borders are a thing of the past. And, as important to understand is this: Class formation is an ongoing process that constantly enlarges and changes the size, proportions, strategic weight and possibilities of the various components of the working class.
Can labor ignore this reality? No.
Can we? Same answer!
Anyway, let me ask you again, can we make a full-blooded turn toward the struggles of low wageworkers?
Great! Sounds like everybody is on board.
Ok!
Challenge 3: Assisting labor's growth and revitalization is an overriding strategic task
Social change, and especially deep going social change in a progressive, left and socialist direction doesn't just happen. I wish it did.
It requires, first of all, material, active, and politically far-seeing social movements on the ground.
And labor is an essential cornerstone of those material social movements.
Not everyone in the left and progressive community is of this mind. Some assign the labor movement no part in the process of change; some a bit part; still others include labor in long list of other political actors.
More than a few greet the new initiatives of (and new openings in) the labor movement with faint praise or, worse still, cynicism. Contrast the reception on the left to Occupy as compared to the recent convention of the AFL-CIO! It was gaga in one case and ho hum in the other.
This obviously isn't our attitude; when organized, united, and equipped with a class and democratic vision, the working class and its organized sector possess transformative power.
Of course, this isn't the case today; labor membership is at its lowest level since World War II; it's on the defensive and fractured; the left in labor, while growing, is still small in size; and the internal and external barriers to reconstitute a revitalized and growing labor movement are formidable.
Now if this were the entire story, it would be a "bummer." I would go on vacation, head to the pub before noon. But it isn't. The story is still unfolding and the ending is still to be written. And the story's main characters include a significant grouping of labor leaders and activists whose aim is to break out of this defensive shell, reshape labor's understanding of itself and its role in society, organize and welcome millions of new members into the family, and turn the tables on the corporate class and especially its right-wing supporters in government.
So what should we do?
We (and I would add the entire people's movement) should do what sections of labor are doing - acknowledging, embracing, and doing something about this crisis.
Actually, we - and anybody who hopes for a better future - would be fools to sit it out. For the people's train won't reach its destination if labor in its revitalized form isn't on board and doing its thing.
Our task, therefore, is to join those sections of the labor movement that are breaking new ground - which in turn lays the basis for increasing labor in size, capacity, and allied relationships, for turning labor into a powerful force multiplier for economic justice, equality, peace, and solidarity.
Now I am not Pollyannaish; even in the best of circumstances, the transformation of the labor movement won't be accomplished overnight.
But the first steps are being taken to organize workers in retail and service, reach out to new allies, draw people of color and women into leadership positions, welcome immigrants, experiment with new forms of struggle, lock arms with brothers and sisters in other countries, and leave an independent imprint on the political/electoral process.
While not yet the dominant template of the labor movement, this new culture of solidarity, struggle, and innovative modes of thinking and organizing is gaining momentum and strikingly contrasts with the old culture of class adaptation, deeply embedded inertia and habits, and modes of thinking that are conservative, protective, and narrowly job conscious.
Labor's allies and the left should wholeheartedly support labor's new rhythm and beat. Indeed, anyone who has any strategic sense, anyone who has any appreciation of what the requirements for a qualitative rupture from the nightmare of right-wing extremism, neoliberalism, and capitalist globalization will get into the thick of this process.
Our Party's history has always been closely tied to the labor movement. In the 1930s, we shook off old sectarian policies, modes of thinking, forms of organization, slogans, images, and habits and turned our attention to the organization of the industrial sections of the working class. And out of that process, thanks to the actions and unity of millions and a growing Communist Party and left, came labor's revitalization on a broad scale, which, in turn, became a vital power base for an emergent people's coalition. And it was this coalition that was at the heart of winning the New Deal in that tumultuous decade.
We should do much the same today. In other words, we should resolve at this convention to turn our collective attention to assisting these new dynamic trends in the labor movement.
Again, labor can't survive, let alone meet the challenges in this century, by remaining in its shell of the last century. If it is to survive and grow, it has no alternative but to open up that shell. Clamming shut, to continue the metaphor, is a death sentence.
Luckily, labor is soberly - without adornment, hyperbole, exaggeration, or wishful thinking - looking reality in the face and changing accordingly.
Thus, the question before the house is: Are we going to climb aboard the labor train or watch it depart?
Guess what? You didn't surprise me; I expected that answer.
Challenge 4: The elections and the struggle for political independence
An immediate challenge for anybody who cares about the future of our democracy is the elections this fall. Their outcome probably won't shift the political terrain in a deep-going way, but that doesn't take away from their importance.
Whichever side wins will have the wind in its sails over the final two years of the Obama presidency and a leg up going into the 2016 presidential race.
If the Republicans capture control of the Senate, while retaining control of the House, they will claim that the American people have unambiguously rejected the president and his policies of "redistributive economics," "government overreach," and a supersized "nanny state."
On this ground they will press their reactionary agenda to the max. They will block the president at every turn as well as ramp up their efforts to portray him as incompetent, a voice of "takers and freeloaders," and a weakling in the global theater. Nothing new here either, except that they will pursue this smear campaign with more vigor.
Meanwhile, they will flood the Congress with a whole series of reactionary initiatives and bills. At the top of their agenda, as it has been since it became the law of the land, will be the repeal of the Affordable Health Care Act.
And they won't stop there. Their appetite to undo the whole body of progressive legislation going back to the New Deal is nearly insatiable. And we could well hear the word "impeachment" again. But the fervor with which they pursue their agenda will depend on what they think will be its impact on their election chances in 2016. They are chomping at the bit to have a Republican in the White House and that overweening desire will likely shape their political tactics over the next two years.
This zealousness of the Republican opposition goes beyond the "normal" give and take of politics and heated partisanship, even beyond their zeal to beat the Democrats in the 2016 elections. What it reveals - and we should say it - is a barely concealed and deeply felt racist animus toward a Black president who in their eyes symbolizes the imminent demise of the old order that is white, male, and well-to-do.
As fixated as they are on Obama, they are by at least equal measure indifferent to the plight of tens of millions struggling to survive. In fact, many of them say and most of them think that economic pain is a good thing for working and poor people. If you have any doubts about that look at their legislative agenda: eliminate food stamps, health care, and so on.
With the stakes so tremendously high, it goes without saying that we should be in this battle, side by side with the broader people's movement, if we aren't already; no one should sit on the bench.
Now granted, it won't be a cakewalk. For one thing, too many people haven't see much improvement in their day to day lives and are understandably skeptical that elections will change this in any appreciable way.
The Republican attack machine is also relentless, incredibly well financed, and has a lot of material to work with - the bumpy rollout of Obamacare, the scandal at the Veterans Administration, the uproar over the prisoner exchange, and much more. And, clouding the prospects further is the fact that mid-term elections historically favor the party out of power and skew in the direction of older, higher-income white voters.
Sound daunting? But whoever said the road to freedom would be easy or smooth.
Whoever said, for example, it would be easy to elect our first African American president? None of us, I bet; and most other people shared our view. But life and struggle and a Yes We Can attitude combined to break new ground and make history.
Can we surprise the pundits again and give the Republicans a good thrashing in November? Se puede?
We've got the right spirit, but we (and the larger people's movement) have to combine this spirit with two other things, if we are to win in November.
First, good talking points that will convince people on our side, or who can be won to our side, that elections matter, that their votes count, and that the right wing can be defeated this fall.
The other thing is a massive voter registration, protect the vote, get out the vote campaign.
If this is done - and I think it can be - then lots of talking heads that predicted a Republican victory would have to eat their words.
Now some left and progressive people minimize the importance of this election - in part because they don't share our concern about the right wing danger and in part because they feel that the Democratic Party is no great shakes either.
Well, I'm mindful of the fact that the Democratic Party has a class anchorage, and it ain't working class. Despite the broad range of people and organizations that comprise it, not everyone has an equal seat at the table.
But I'm also mindful that any realistic strategy to defeat the right, thereby creating opportunities to move to higher ground necessarily includes the Democratic Party as part of a growing people's coalition.
So how do we square this circle? I'm not sure if I can do it completely, but here are some brief thoughts:
First of all, an independent labor-people's based party able to compete with the two main parties doesn't exist now, nor is it on the horizon. To say that the two-party system is ragged at the edges and that large numbers of people are feeling disaffected from it is uncontroversial.
But it is a leap to turn that into a legitimacy crisis if we understand that to mean that people en masse are flocking out or are ready to flock out of the Democratic Party on a scale, say, of the decade leading up to the Civil War when masses went into new parties, including the Republican Party, that were forming at the time.
That doesn't capture what is happening now in Democratic Party circles. No doubt disaffection grows among sections of Democrats, but their mantra isn't "See ya later," but rather to contest the party's leaders and its benefactors on Wall Street over policy and political direction.
And this rift is fueled by growing differences over the best way to address a stagnating economy, growing inequality, and spending priorities that favor the corporations, the military, and the 1 percent.
Not to see the new emerging in the old is a problem, but we need to see the new with as much precision and exactness as is possible. We don't want to either make a mountain out of a molehill or miss the mountain.
In too many instances we erred in the direction of exaggerating the scope and depth of one or another trend, which can easily lead to political positions that separate us from the broader coalition as well as result in missed opportunities.
So if a third party isn't on the agenda at this moment, what does left and progressive people do in the meantime? Bide our time until it is? Hope the Democratic Party will do right by us? Neither one makes sense!
Two interrelated tasks come to mind. One is to continue to build the broadest and deepest (grassroots) coalition, including the Democrats, against the right wing in this fall's elections and beyond.
And the other is give more attention and imagination to extending and deepening the stream of political independence - both inside and outside the orbit of the Democratic Party - and to press a progressive agenda.
Will there be tensions between the two? Of course! How could there not be? But we will learn in the course of doing. And actually we have a good body of experience to draw on, including our experience in independent state level political formations in New York and Vermont.
But again, the building of political independence at this moment has to be done without fracturing the multi-class coalition against right-wing extremism. In fact, we have to resist pressures from some voices in left and progressive circles - even in our own party - who are ready, if not to vacate, at least to dial down on, the electoral and legislative struggles to defeat the program and ambitions of right-wing extremism.
In their view, the strategy has come up empty, the two parties are two peas in a pod, the government is completely in the hands of wealthy families and corporations. The real action, many say, is at the state and city level. Still others claim the strategy is a retreat from the real class struggle.
In the first place, however, this strategy has stymied the right wing's most extreme plans to restructure political, economic, and cultural relations in a deep going, permanent, and thoroughly reactionary way. No small achievement.
Second, victories - some of great import, some garnering fewer headlines - have been won. And these victories have made a difference in the lives of tens of millions.
Third, the emerging movement against the right doesn't yet have transformative capacity, but it's closer to it today than a few years ago.
Fourth, there is no other way - and certainly no easy way - at this stage of struggle to get to a future that puts people and nature before profits other than to battle and defeat right-wing extremism. I wish this stage of struggle could be skipped in favor of something sexier, but it can't. Political possibilities at every level are and will be limited as long as the right wing casts a long shadow over the nation's politics. Islands of socialism are a figment of a fertile imagination.
Finally, the struggle against the right is the class struggle. In fact, it's the leading edge of the class (and democratic) struggle. Only someone with a dogmatic cast of mind would think otherwise. Struggle, class and otherwise, never come in pure form.
We shouldn't minimize the difficulties, nor conceal the class nature of the two-party system, nor give the Democrats a free pass, but at the same time we shouldn't suggest in the slightest way that the electoral/legislative struggle in present circumstances is a fool's errand. Such a position feels self-satisfying and has a radical ring, but in the end it's the real fool's errand. Frustration - and we all feel it now and then - can't be a substitute for informed and sober politics.
In the 20th century two transformative movements uprooted deeply structured modes of political and economic governance - an unregulated, crisis ridden capitalism in the 1930s in one case and a massive, many layered, and deeply racist system, sanctioned by law, custom, and violence in the 1960s, in the other case.
Neither one of these transformative movements, however, boycotted or stood apart from the electoral and legislative process. They were engaged in a very practical way in "bourgeois politics," but that didn't weaken their cause, in fact it was part of the explanation for their historic victories. A mature Party and left won't forget either of these experiences and their contemporary meaning.
Challenge 5: Climate change and planetary sustainability
The piling filling up of carbon and other greenhouse gases in our atmosphere has reached a point that James Hansen, the foremost climate change scientist, in the U.S. calls it a "planetary emergency."
That's dramatic and sobering. But it doesn't come as a surprise. The first report of the International Panel of Climate was issued in 1990. It too warned, admittedly not with the same alarm for understandable reasons, of the destabilizing and destructive effects of a warming planet and urged actions to counter the carbon buildup in the atmosphere.
Twenty-five years later, we can say some things were done, but far less than what was warranted. It isn't too strong to say that too many people fiddled while the planet steadily heated up.
But don't count among them the fossil fuel industry and right wing extremists. No moss grew under their feet. They made the rounds, but not urging action to forestall climate change, but to deny it's a threat and resist the smallest measures that might cut down on carbon emissions.
As we age, we take some comfort in the fact that new generations will come after us, that life in its infinite variety and beauty will go on.
But the changing climate conditions make that a problematic assumption. Life may well not go on, or life as we know it. Humankind for the past 10.000 years has lived in climate conditions, which were stable and favorable to human development.
But that is now changing and unless drastic action is taken, we could well reach tipping points that turn up the average temperature of the planet and accelerate changes in climate conditions and impacts that we can't fully envision.
While this crisis is planetary in scope, the worst consequences will weigh most heavily on working class, the racially oppressed and the poor, and especially on countries and peoples of the developing world global South.
Despite the impending calamity, the response of left and broader democratic movement hasn't been commensurate with the danger. And if our Party in particular were going to be graded on our performance, my guess is that we would get a D. And the only reason we wouldn't receive an F is due to the regular coverage on climate change and the environment in the People's World.
We can and must do better. The clock is ticking. I'm reminded of a quote from Martin Luther King in another context,
"We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." ... We still have a choice today; ... We must move past indecision to action."
And if King's eloquent words and scientific data don't move you to be a better steward of this fragile place we call Earth, then make it personal; that's what I do; I think of my two daughters, step daughter and stepsons, and, I think a lot about Violet and Pearl, my little granddaughters, ages 2 and 4, who hopefully will live long into this century and in climate conditions that are friendly to humans and other life forms.
Whether that happens or not, however, depends on what I, you, and tens of millions of people do, now and in the next few years. We have to be much, much better stewards of this fragile and beautiful home even though we are going to live in it only for a very short time on most time scales.
But here's the good news if I have made you too gloomy! A movement is being born, and it includes young people; and the trade union movement and the leadership of the AFL-CIO is a part of it too, although they are understandably concerned that working people not bear the weight of a necessary transition to a fossil free economy.
We should join this movement heart and soul. We should bring our energy and whole tool kit to this struggle, including the perspective that while climate crisis is the result of human activity, it is activity in the context of a particular system - capitalism. And its logic is endless capital/profit accumulation, endless and compound growth, massive waste in a multitude of forms, rampant consumerism - all of which put stress on, unravel, and eventually undermine the natural systems that sustain life, as they are now doing.
In the fall, mass mobilizations are scheduled at the United Nations to demand action from the world's leaders and governments to mitigate climate change. Can we agree that we will mobilize friends and neighbors for this action?
A month of two ago I signed up, as did others in our leadership to commit civil disobedience, if necessary, to stop the Keystone pipeline. How many of you will pledge to do so today?
New beginnings require a first step. I think we have taken one today!
Challenge 6: confronting the New racist order
The right wing extremist attack against democracy and equality is sustained, coordinated, and exceedingly dangerous.
In the right wing's bulls-eye are the whole range of rights and social institutions - unions, churches, community organizations, families and kinship groups, etc. - that sustain everyday life and empower tens of millions.
But for sections of the ruling class and their right wing pied pipers in Congress, and the right wing media, a robust democracy and substantive equality are at "war" with their worldview and their zealous pursuit for full spectrum political dominance.
This gang of democracy and equality busters by temperament, outlook, and practice are authoritarian, racist, male supremacist, xenophobic, and misogynist. They despise labor.
I wish I could say that the enemies of democracy and equality are not yet at the gate, but they are. And in two years they hope to inside and in charge of the castle. No joke!
What are to do now?
The obvious answer is twofold: to concede no ground and to go on the offensive to expand democracy and equality. And the democratic forces will be successful to the degree that the struggle for racial, gender and other forms of equality and democracy are interconnected as well as at the core of working class struggles.
Of particular significance in this regard are racism and the struggle against it. Both have left in indelible mark on every aspect of the democratic and class struggle over the past 300 years. Today, and I dare say tomorrow, will be no different.
As much as racism and the struggle against racism are timeless, they express themselves differently over time, as conditions change.
In fact, I would argue, that vast political, economic, social, and demographic changes going back to the 1960s have given rise in the opening years of this century to a new racist order and to a new anti-racist movement resisting that order.
This dialectic makes the struggle against racism and for equality at the same time more difficult and more promising.
Here's why.
On the one hand, notable victories in the struggle for equality, led by people of color in the first place, have been registered over the past few decades, perhaps none more than the stunning election of President Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Furthermore, racial attitudes in sections of the white community have changed for the better. Of particular significance, sections of labor and other social movements engage in organized anti-racist struggles and take steps to make their leadership reflective of their membership, something that they didn't do decades ago,
Can anyone who grew up in the 1960s, imagine former AFL-CIO presidents, George Meany or later Lane Kirkland stumping the country making the case to white workers to vote for an African American presidential candidate. Don't think so!
And, of course young people are far less likely to embrace some of the old racist and other stereotypes of older generations.
This is one side of the dialectic around which can form even broader and deeper multi-racial unity and anti-racist understanding.
But on the other side of the dialectic, new political and economic realities, which have taken shape over the past 30 years, have given rise to a new racist order making racist exploitation, oppression, and discrimination much more durable and difficult to dislodge.
Let me make my point this way: Take Detroit, for example, compare the barriers to equality today with the barriers say, when two of our delegates, Cassie Lopez and April Smith, grew up there.
A half century ago, Detroit was anything but a model of democracy and equality. Racism was deeply etched into the city's way of life.
At times it got downright ugly, but the path to equality was easier to visualize in some ways, hope was in the air, people were on the move, and economic and political conditions were different.
Today, a different picture of Detroit can be painted, which in my view complicates the struggle against racism and for equality
The auto industry and the other industries and jobs dependent on it have vacated the city; a huge swath of stable neighborhoods have physically disappeared; the city is bankrupt; the transportation system is in shambles; the public sector which provided services and jobs to the Black community is threadbare; the flight of not only white people, but middle income African Americans to nearby suburbs has created new zones of racial hyper-segregation and poverty, the re-segregation, defunding, and privatization of Detroit's schools is well underway; state government is in the hands of the right wing who are hostile to Detroit; the federal government - Democrats and Republicans alike - show no inclination to address the crisis either in Detroit or our nation's urban centers; the Robert's Supreme Court sits in Washington; the judicial system is turning vast numbers of young African American Detroiters into felons and criminals; and crises fracture as well as unite people.
Detroit is a special case to be sure, but it is, I would argue, on the same spectrum as many other cities. The similarities far outweigh what is distinctive from one city to another.
Cassie, who now lives in Oakland, I bet would agree with me. In fact, she has told me on more than one occasion, that communities of color in general and the African American community in particular are up against it in Oakland, not quite in the exact same way as Detroit, but up against it nonetheless.
So what do we do? Seems to me that we ramp up what we (along with others) have been doing, that is, side by side with others struggling for jobs, housing, adequate funding of schools and education, for an end to racial profiling, stop and frisk, and the "war on drugs," for an overhaul of the criminal justice and mass incarceration system, for political representation, and, not least, for the defeat of the right in the coming elections.
But I would add we - you and me - have to make the case more persuasively and vigorously that anyone who hopes that this country will move in a democratic direction, let alone a future in which people and nature trump corporate profits, cannot afford to sit out this struggle.
If left unchallenged, this new racist order could throw the country back to days long thought gone by or into a future that we long thought could "never happen here."
We have to argue that racism hurts; it crushes hopes, dreams, families; it destroys lives; it denies jobs, it shortchanges education and housing, it creates joblessness and homelessness; it incarcerates; it profiles; it sanctions violence and lawlessness; and it kills, especially the young, sometimes in the streets, sometimes in distant lands, sometimes in prisons. And the victims are people of color.
But racism also tempers, disciplines, brings wisdom, begets courage, inspires liberating and poetic visions, and provokes resistance, thus making people of color into front rankers in the struggle for equality and democracy, not to mention progressive and radical change generally.
But I would also add this, and this is crucial point. At the end of the day, racism also morally and materially scares and diminishes white people in one way or another. While racist ideology and practice denies equality and dignity to people of color in the first place, it also heightens exploitation of all and corrodes real democracy for all, and makes a society free of class, racial, gender divisions a pipe dream.
It remains, as we have said for decades, the most formidable barrier to progress. It has to be contested daily wherever people gather and is inextricably linked to other dimensions of the democratic struggle, especially the struggle for gender equality.
And while communists support any measures that ameliorate the impacts of racism and inequality, we also have to make plain to millions that reforms of a radical nature and socialism are needed if the scope, depth, and intractability of racism are to be fundamentally addressed.
The securing of such radical reforms requires many things, but it pivots on the building of a multi-racial movement with transformative capacity and power as well as a conviction that significant sections of white people can be won and are necessary to seeing this struggle through to victory. The goal can't be only the most radical and progressive white people, but the majority to anti-racism and the fight for full racial equality; it is to win the majority.
Nothing less, including the positive effects of long-term demographic trends, will even approach, never mind secure substantive equality for people of color and open up new possibilities of freedom. There is no other road to a society that measures up to the poetry, vision, and ideals that the great revolutionary democrat Martin Luther King articulated so beautifully and gave his life for at such a young age.
In saying this I am not suggesting the we establish a pecking order that ranks the moral and political importance of one democratic struggle over another; instead a wise left, progressive, and working class movement will understand the historical, dialectical, and strategic interconnection and interpenetration of these struggles and the necessity of unity.
Challenge 7: end to violence & a world of peace
We can barely turn in any direction without encountering violence of one kind or another. Violence is pervasive presence in our lives and the lives of people who live across this world. It kills innocent people, tears up the social fabric of our communities and societies,
It can even numb our sense of outrage to the point where we become accepting of its presence.
But violence isn't natural and eternal. Hate isn't in humankind's DNA; war is a social and political construct; there are alternatives.
King was right when he appealed for a trans valuation of values. His message to humankind was non-violence and love. But for him neither were passive appeals to people's good will, but categories of struggle.
They rested on the struggle against the structures of exploitation and oppression that are the material ground for violence. He appealed to anyone who would listen that the elimination of triplets - poverty, racism and militarism - were the gateway to a beloved and non-violent community.
" ... we are called to play the Good Samaritan" he said, "on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice, which produces beggars, needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth."
Were he alive today I can't help but think that he would despair, but only for a moment at the violence that is so pervasive here and elsewhere.
And then my guess is he would tell us that our mission can be nothing less than to join with millions of others here and across our planet to insist on peace and an end violence, to study war no more.
More concretely:
1. We should insist that our government make a U-turn in its foreign policy - from one that rests on militarism, power projection, and unrivaled dominance to one of cooperation, peaceful resolution of conflicts, and equality and mutual respect among nations.
2. We should insist on the dismantlement of alliance and multi-national institutions that are nothing but staging grounds to project violence - beginning with NATO.
3. We should insist on a "pivot not to Asia and the Pacific," but towards a common effort to solve the pressing issues of nuclear proliferation, poverty, and climate change.
4. We should insist on a just settlement of the conflict of the Palestinian Israel conflict that that includes at its core a independent, viable and robust Palestinian state existing in peace and equality with Israel.
5. We should insist on hands off Venezuela, no war with Iraq, and a normalization of relations with Cuba and freedom for the Cuban 5.
6. We should insist that big powers - existing and rising - respect the rights of small states.
7. We should insist on a peace budget not a war budget, and a peace economy not a militarized one.
8. We should insist that the judicial system be overhauled, the system of mass incarceration be abolished, and justice be not punitive and retributive, but redemptive and restorative.
9. We should insist on an end to capital punishment and strict gun laws that prohibit the proliferation of violence in our neighborhoods and schools and civilian review boards in every city.
10. We should insist on the expansion of health care clinics and school staff to provide humane and nurturing treatment to people - young and old - who have mental health problems - no shame there, right?
11. We should insist on reconstruction plan of massive scale for the purpose of restoring and sustaining hard hit communities.
12. We should insist on a just and humane immigration system.
If we want to fight a war, we should once again declare a war on poverty, joblessness, decaying underfunded schools and inadequate housing, malnutrition, and all the social ills that make life difficult for millions
Nor should we show any tolerance toward racism, male supremacy, xenophobia, and homophobia - all of which can easily turn into acts of violence.
Lenin once wrote, "An end to wars, peace among the nations, the cessation of pillaging and violence - such is our ideal."
I would modify that in this way: the cessation of violence is our ideal, but it must become our passion. It should not only be a goal, but should be encoded into our emotional and political DNA.
In the big universe in which we live and do our politics, our brand should have inscribed on it: "An end to violence, a peaceful path to socialism."
In other words, everybody these days has a brand, something - an image, a song, a style, a look - that defines as well as identifies him or her, makes him or her feel cool and attractive.
Our brand, or at least on of our main 2 or 3 brands, should be a dove, a commitment to mass non-violent action, and a deep passion for a peaceful road to socialism.
When somebody thinks about communists, they should immediately think of our tireless efforts to end violence, to build a peaceful and just world from the neighborhood to the global theater.
If we want to be rebels, let's rebel against the violence and hate, let's rebel against war and the loss of too many young lives in Chicago, Oakand, and Sandy Hook.
Let's become drum majors for peace and against racism, poverty, and militarism. Let's take inspiration from the lives of Martin Luther King and Cesar Chavez.
Challenge 8: Building the Party
I'm sure everyone would agree that taking care of the future in the struggles of the present includes the building of the party in size, capacity, and influence.
So what is to be done? What will it take to address all sides of this question?
• It will take confidence that the audience for our ideas and our Party is growing under the impact of the changing objective and subjection conditions. And there is no reason to think that isn't the case. Both in size, capacity, mass relationships, and influence, we're in a better place today than we were 4 years ago. We are growing, not by leaps and bounds, but incrementally, and incrementally can add up. Our mass connections too are very developing nicely. And our ideas get a good reception nearly everywhere we go.
• It will also take a conviction that the Party's growth, influence, and ideas are of enormous consequence to the trajectory and success of the working class and people's movement at this and subsequent stages of struggle.
• It will take systematic attention at every level of the party to building the party. It can't be the work of one or two comrades.
• It will take not only building the party in size, but also greatly enlarging the pool of a new generation of leaders. Currently the breadth and depth of leadership is too thin in the face of the challenges that we face.
• It will take a more active and vibrant clubs, which are the ground floor of a transformative party. It is hard, if not impossible, to qualitatively increase our political and organizational capacity without a much larger organizational presence in the form of clubs at the local level. Just as union power depends on local unions, party power is grounded in a dense network of clubs across the country.
It should go without saying that clubs will come in many different shapes and sizes. One size doesn't fit all. Clubs have to adapt to the comrades who are members of them and to the places where they are located. Some will be statewide, others citywide, and still others, and we increasingly hope, will be located in a neighborhood or workplace.
• It will take a party of action and penetrating ideas that give people a way to understand the present and move into the future with some confidence of success.
• It will take far more public presence.
• It will take a sound strategic policy and tactics resting on a close and accurate assessment of the balance of class and social forces.
• It will take a party that fights for equality in all its forms and vigorously opposes racism, male supremacy, nativism, homophobia, and reactionary nationalism.
• It will take a party that fights for peace and practices internationalism.
• It will take a more robust utilization of social media, and especially the People's World. We've made headway in this area, but not enough, and I have to admit I am simply amazed that some comrades still consider the utilization of new technologies and social media as a lower-order tool for organizing, reaching, and influencing people.
• It will take new forms that provide new members and leaders in the broader movements a way to comfortably participate in the party.
• It will take a special approach to people of color, women, youth, and immigrants.
• It will take a systematic effort to build the party among trade union activists and leaders who bring with them their experience, connections, and stability to our collectives.
• It will take a range of forms, including the Young Communist League, to attract youth to our circles.
• It will take more systematic fieldwork in places where the party is in its infancy and in general.
• It will take a more full-blooded and modern educational program that is equipped to reach new and old members alike. This is an overarching challenge.
• It will take a fresh look at how we are structured and our priorities at the national, district and club level.
• It will take a party that dares to renovate, that is thoroughly modern and mature, that is, sunk in the 21st century with