In the United States, the working class is undoubtedly in deep economic and social despair. Decades of neoliberalism, wage stagnation, growing inequality, and defunded social programs have plunged working and poor people into precarity. The rich are getting richer because the poor are getting poorer—all while the US government spends billions of dollars to plunge the world into imperialist war abroad.
Do these deep contradictions mean that revolutionary uprising is inevitable in the United States? How can US social movements push for such a radical transformation, or be prepared for when such an uprising comes? These are key questions in the process of the Dilemmas of Humanity in nations that have not yet undergone socialist revolutions.
In a keynote address at the Socialist Horizon conference in Atlanta, Brian Becker, a founding member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, draws on US history and the lessons learned from socialists and organizers in the country about the dynamic nature of revolution, and the importance of defining the revolutionary values of our movements.
Wonderful day today comrades. And for all the people who are watching [the] livestream, you can see that we are at a new stage in the progressive left, socialist, working class movement. And the tremendous display of unity that was expressed here by people who have different organizations, are part of different movements, different trends, but have so much in common, is also a great indication of what’s possible.
Forging unity is more complicated than simply saying we must all unite. Because of course, there are organizations and movements that are at different places, with different needs, representing different constituencies, perhaps different visions of how social change takes place. So, building unity isn’t simply a proclamation. Building unity is a very hard fought for endeavor, where people have to work together, spend time with each other, be in the trenches with each other, not simply at meetings, but in the street, in the communities.
Being able to listen to each other, hear each other, dialogue with each other, it’s an extremely complicated, important, and I would say, most urgent task for the movement. Especially when we think about how social media functions, where everyone is quick, not everyone, but a few loud voices that take up a lot of space, can dominate the way discussion and political dialogue is undertaken because they’re going at each other, having ridiculous and needless fights. Emphasizing the things that they differ about rather than emphasizing the points of unity. Trying to show who’s more revolutionary than the next.
And that toxic social media environment, which I think almost all of us are familiar with, we have to combat that consciously. With patience, with an open heart, not only able to listen to each other and hear each other, but to build and forge the kind of comradely relation that make real dialogue and real unity possible.
And this is happening by the way, not just here in the United States, it’s happening internationally. After I’m finished, [Manolo De Los Santos] will come back and talk about what’s next for the IPA, the International Peoples’ Assembly. But in six weeks there’s gonna be another meeting like this, but even larger, with delegations from all over the world, who are having meetings like the meeting we had today, coming together in Johannesburg, South Africa, to take the next step in the Dilemmas of Humanity.
When we started the Party [for Socialism and Liberation] in 2004, it wasn’t like everybody under the sun was starting new communist organizations. It was in many ways, for us, an article of faith, that there would be a revival of socialism, [and] that the unipolar era of capitalist domination by US imperialism would eventually start to unwind, it would come apart, there would be struggle, and as a consequence, socialism would revive because there is only one real genuine alternative to capitalism, and to the system on based on private ownership and exploitation, and that’s public ownership of the means of production and a socialist system.
And so our view was, socialism will revive, again, partly in an article of faith, because there was no empirical evidence to show that in 2004. But we’ve felt if socialism revives, you have to have an organization that is experienced, that has gone through the ups and downs of building a movement, that has united around a political program, whose political program is tested in life, to see whether it’s correct or incorrect. If it’s incorrect how it needs to be amended. In other words, there has to be a range of experiences.
Lots of people proclaim themselves the vanguard of this or that, but no one actually can proclaim the vanguard. The vanguard shows itself in the real struggle, and organizations can only lead the real struggle based on their own capacity, their own experience, their own knowledge. And that is again, a consequence of collective struggle.
But when we started and throughout, we said one of the reasons we felt we could succeed and one, or two, or three of the things that we must do to succeed was to become larger, to recruit, to popularize socialism and to find co-thinkers around the world who we could work in international coordination with. And we have found our home in the International Peoples’ Assembly. This is a great international formation. And this does not mean it’s the only international entity that’s worthy, but it’s one that we find is extremely important because it’s rooted the Global South for the most part, the struggling people and representatives are in Brazil and Argentina, in South Africa, in Zambia, in Ghana, in Nepal, of course Venezuela, Cuba, of course some of the European parties and ourselves, the PSL, here in North America, the People’s Forum, several other organizations.
I wanna talk about…what we think is most important about our movement at this moment. First of all, we have to identify, what kind of movement do we wanna be, or are? Secondly, what stage of the movement or movement building are we at? Where are we exactly? We have to kind of know who we are and sort of know where we are right now as we continue to launch and wage this larger struggle for socialism.
And I wanna start with identity. I wanna start with who we are. And this is an extremely important question for all countries, but especially for the movement inside the United States.
Sixty years ago, this year, JFK was assassinated, and LBJ was the new Democratic president, and he was running against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 election. And Goldwater was an extreme right winger. Extreme. He was like, let’s use nuclear weapons, why not? He was 100% against the Civil Rights Act being passed. Just a far right, wretched, semi-fascist political personality. And big parts of the left said, we have to support LBJ. Vote for LBJ, work for LBJ, because if we don’t get LBJ, there’s gonna be a war. Because Barry Goldwater is addicted to war. He is the voice of militarism. And big parts of the left swung behind LBJ, and LBJ won the election, and immediately upon winning the election, he sent a half a million troops to Vietnam. And those first months, the left, which had supported LBJ because he wasn’t Barry Goldwater, was basically very quiet. And as the death toll started climbing, with hundreds and then thousands a week, of young US soldiers, not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese people who died, the left did not lead or initiate the anti-war movement in the 1960s. Because they were still thinking, look, if we come out and protest against LBJ, it’s only gonna help the right wing.
And as a consequence, the anti-war movement that started in the 1960s was not started by the old left. It was started by students who didn’t give a damn about LBJ or the Democrats, they wanted to end the war in Vietnam. And this movement became very radical, they were chanting “Hey Hey, LBJ”—a democrat, and a liberal—“Hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today!”
It became abundantly clear, almost from the beginning, that this struggle against the war in Vietnam was not against a bad Republican, or a George W. Bush, or a Donald Trump-like Republican. It was against the Republicans and the Democrats and as such it quickly morphed into an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist movement. And of course you had the dynamic force of the already-existing Black Civil Rights movement, which was emerging as an avowed, explicit national liberation movement with an armed wing, and led by, in many cases by the Black Panther Party, Huey P Newton, and the other leaders of the Panthers, and they were the heroes of all of the youth movement of 1967, 68, 69. It became a radical, dynamic, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist movement because it was not against simply a bad Republican, it was against the Republicans and the Democrats and the system as a consequence.
And from that anti-war and Black liberation movement came the women’s rights movement. I mean, it had already existed, but it exploded. And that was also the explosion of what was then called the gay rights movement. And all of these social movements, first starting with Black liberation and the struggle in the South, with the struggle against segregation, after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, that became a detonator for these other movements, and then they merged into this anti-imperialist movement. And it was at that time that Roe v. Wade was passed, that was under Nixon, in 1973. And who started and supported affirmative action? Nixon! Racist, anti-communist, right winger who came into office in 1969, not because he was good, not because was for affirmative action, not because they cared about abortion rights, or gay rights, or anything. They were wicked, wretched, racist pigs. They did it because the movement was so strong. Because the movement knew who it was. It was a movement for radical change.
We weren’t fighting to get the lesser evil, we were fighting at that time, millions of young people, of all nationalities, merging together, debating, having dialogues, having fights, but also fighting together in the streets, because we were fighting for a better world.
The bourgeoisie, the ruling class, made concessions to that movement, principally because they feared that if they did not make those concessions, that revolution was actually on the agenda in the United States. It’s not a better Democrat, a better politician, it’s how strong we are and who we are, and we get to decide who we are. Are we going to be supporters of tepid reforms or a lesser evil, or are we gonna fight for radical, revolutionary transformation? And know that the working class of this country will actually heed that call, because our program speaks directly to the needs of the masses of people in this country, of all parts of the country?
We get to decide whether we want to be a radical, revolutionary movement. The question is, is that a movement that could resonate with the masses of people? Think about just a couple facts from the recent months. You know how many people have been kicked off of Medicaid, that is, unable now to go to a doctor since April? More than five million people in the United States. The same Congress where the Democrats control the Senate, the Republicans barely control the house, five million people, and more than 1.5 million of them are children, who can no longer go to a doctor because Congress has decided that Medicaid expansion, which took place during COVID has been rescinded. It’s not because they don’t have the money, they decided to do this. They decided to do this. I mean they just spent 880 billion dollars for the next military budget for one year. 880 billion dollars. And they’re saying we don’t have the money for low income families and their children to go to a doctor? Did you know about this? Was this big headlines in the media? The media’s about Ukraine, like whether Biden is gonna send another 60 billion or 100 billion dollars in weapons to help the Ukrainians, of course, just keep dying in the struggle against Russia, and in the meantime there’s no media coverage at all about the fact that 5 million people have just lost their ability to go to a doctor, including a million and a half kids.
If we take our program, which is to make sure, not only does everyone have healthcare, but that healthcare is completely free, that doctor bills are a thing of the past, that that’s the socialist program, will the working class, say, hey, that’s a good idea? Of course they will. Will that include people who voted for Trump? Yes! The point of the matter is, the socialist program is so compelling for the working class of all political stripes, that we can go to the working class and we can organize.
We get to decide who we are. Are we a radical, revolutionary, socialist program based on the working class, and with a program that can reach the working class, or do we want to be camp followers of the lesser evil? That’s the issue. It’s not whether we can succeed. It’s whether we’ve decided to succeed. And that’s what the message of the IPA is.
I want to say in the last couple minutes, also, very quickly, think about this: we were at the Obama inauguration in Washington in 2009, January 20. Millions of people were there. There was such a sense of euphoria. When George W. Bush left in the helicopter from the Capitol building, like three million people gave him the finger. I mean there was such jubilance and excitement and enthusiasm, and it wasn’t just that Bush that was leaving, but that change was coming. Yes we can. That change was coming. And then look what happened. Look what happened in 2011, in 2011 the Obama administration started bombing Libya, and destroyed the Libyan government, the government that was financing the African Union. The African country with the largest oil reserves. And where were the liberals who were so happy that Obama was elected? Did they join us in the streets? No! Obama bombed and destroyed Libya.
And then in September, the Occupy movement, where people, young people were saying we are the 99%, and within three months, Occupy was destroyed. Those hundreds and hundreds of encampments, wiped out. And we looked at the records, we got through public records requests, from the FBI, and the Fusion centers, the Obama administration was tracking each and every step of the Occupy movement and used the pretext of public health, or this or that, but by December, September, of 2011, every one of those encampments was destroyed, wiped out. Now that was Obama.
In 2014, Mike Brown slaughtered in the streets of Ferguson and the new movement rose. The movement for Black lives. And it swept the country. Did it matter that Obama was no George W. Bush? Did it matter that George W. Bush was not Carter or that Carter wasn’t Nixon? Or Nixon wasn’t LBJ? That’s not what mattered! The capitalist system and the repressive apparatus are functioning regardless of who the president is. Wall Street and the systems of exploitation go on day in and day out, and it doesn’t matter who’s president.
If Bernie had been elected, if he had stuck to guns he would have probably just been assassinated, but most likely, given Bernie’s record now, he would not have stuck to his guns, and the same systems of oppression and exploitation would have gone on under the Bernie Sanders administration. This is the thing that we have to think about. Every four years, the left gets sucked into the campaign to find the lesser evil.
And I don’t think it’s really about even the campaign. It’s not about the election. It’s not about whether you’re going to vote for Trump or Biden, if he’s still with us. [laughter] And I mean that in the most benign way. Just for clarity. It doesn’t matter about really who you vote for, because whoever is the president, the same system of oppression and exploitation and imperialism is going to go on.
And now we have Biden, and the Biden administration saying their big worry about Ukraine and the Ukraine counteroffensive that’s stalled out, is that Ukrainians have become casualty-averse, meaning they don’t wanna be killed in the record numbers that they’re dying. And the Pentagon is concerned that they’re gonna use our precious supplies and ammunition rather than send more infantry into the minefields. That’s the main complaint of the Biden administration, the Pentagon, is that Ukrainians are getting sick and tired of dying in a proxy war that the US has waged gratuitously against Russia.
That won’t change, no matter who’s president. Change will come about, brothers and sisters, comrades, friends, if we make the change.
And one final point that I wanna make, that we are hearing from us, from all of us who are revolutionaries: when the masses of people enter the fray, the revolutionaries will not be as revolutionary as the people. And this is always true. The revolutionaries will be catching up with the revolution once it starts. Because the masses of people, once they are engaged, are the most revolutionary force in society.
Whenever revolutions happen, beforehand, people say well revolution will never happen, you see how backward people are, you see how apathetic they are? They’re thinking about this, that, and the other? They’re not thinking about politics. And then the revolution happens and all the pundits say wait, that was inevitable. You could see that coming, when you put five million people and take their doctor away for no reason. When you crush them, when you make millions more homeless, while the billionaire class is growing. That was inevitable. It only seems inevitable after the fact.
Politics is dynamic. We don’t know exactly where we are in the historical continuum. I said the other day, Lenin wasn’t predicting the revolution a year before it happened. Five years before the Civil War erupted that ended, at least formally, the system of slavery, if you had asked people, was the system about to be ended, they would say, no look at the Fugitive Slave act of 1850, or the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Supreme Court and the whole country’s going South. Meaning literally, slavery was going to become the social system of the North and the South. And three years later, the Civil War started and five years after that, formal slavery was brought to an end.
You never know where you are in the historical continuum until afterwards. We can’t control that. But we can control us. Who are we? What are we fighting for? Are we confident? And can we bridge or forge tactics and strategies that can reach our class and mobilize the masses of people? And that question completely is up to us. Do we answer it yes, or do we say we’re unsure, or do we say we’re too busy? Or we answer no? But this assembly today is answering very profoundly, yes, yes, yes, we can do it!
This text is part of a series, Voices of Dilemmas, which seeks to bring the perspectives and key debates of the different organizations, intellectuals, and political leaders that are part of the Dilemmas of Humanity process.
