Good to see some folks who make good sense. I suspect that those who
ought to read this speech, and discuss it, will be busy watching
football/basketball/golf/baseball/soccer/ice hockey, or tossing back a
few beers on the patio, while waiting for the burgers to cook. Some
folks say to me, "I don't get involved in politics". I suggest that
what they just said is a political statement. Everything we do is
interwoven with our political beliefs. Avoiding "talking about
politics", is akin to the Ostrich putting its head in the sand.
Ignoring what is happening all around us will not keep us safe.
Avoidance is a very bad survival technique. If it worked, we'd all be
living a better life today than we were living ten years ago.
Carl Jarvis
On 4/26/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://www.peoplesworld.org/article/defeat-right-wing-extremism-and-clear-the-path-to-socialism/
Defeat right wing extremism and clear the path to socialism
April 24, 2017| 12:26 PM CDT| | By Rick Nagin
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Defeat right wing extremism and clear the path to socialism
Millions opposed to Trump’s agenda have been on the march since his
inauguration in January. Here, the Women’s March in Washington D.C.,
only one day after the Trump inauguration. AP
Following is the text of a speech by Rick Nagin, Ohio district organizer
of the Communist Party, USA. The speech was delivered at Ohio
University, April 6, 2017, at a forum on Communism and Social Justice:
The November election was a watershed moment. I think it is likely that
U.S. politics will never be the same. We have a new situation and a new
dynamic — an open struggle between the forces of fascism, right wing
extremism, and the forces of democracy.
We do not yet have fascism. We do not have a terroristic dictatorship.
We have a government supported by fascists that includes some fascists
and white supremacists. It is a government of right wing billionaires
and generals. It is a government with an extremist, racist, misogynist,
anti-working class and broadly anti-democratic ultra-nationalist agenda.
It is an agenda that encourages reckless destruction of the environment
and could threaten survival of the human race. It is an agenda that
would recklessly bypass diplomacy and embrace pre-emptive military
aggression.
This agenda did not appear overnight, but has been emerging over the
past 50 years. It’s an at-tempt to roll back the gains won by working
people and their progressive allies in the New Deal, and the Civil
Rights/Great Society period. It is a concerted attack on the living
standards and democratic rights and institutions that have been won
through very long and painful struggles by the American people. This
extremist program has been embraced and adopted by the Republican Party,
which has been able to implement parts of it in many states.
But the most important thing is that from the day Trump was elected,
millions of Americans have taken to the streets and demonstrated that
they do not accept the fascist direction. The mass upsurge of the people
is unlike anything we have ever seen. It is much broader, more united,
diverse and mature than what happened in the 1960’s. and maybe even the
1930’s.
With no sign of letting up, high points have been the Jan. 15 rallies
for health care called by Bernie Sanders involving tens of thousands;
the national women’s marches Jan. 21 involving an estimated 5 million
people; the mass demonstrations at airports following Trump’s Muslim Ban
order; the overflow town hall meetings protesting the Republican attempt
to repeal the Afford-able Care Act and the flooding of their offices
with phone calls, petitions, rallies and sit ins.
The movement has scored important victories including blocking some of
Trump’s cabinet nominees and preventing for now the repeal and
replacement of the ACA. The movement has fueled the continuing exposure
of Trump’s corrupt financial ties and nepotism it has forced the firing
of his national security advisor, the resignation of the chairman of the
House Intelligence Committee and exposed his illegal connections to
oligarchs and autocrats in Russia, Turkey and other countries. At this
point the administration is in turmoil and Trump’s approval ratings are
at a record low.
The mass upsurge of the people goes way beyond those who voted for
Hillary Clinton. It includes those who voted third party, those who did
not vote and growing numbers of those who realize they mistakenly voted
for Trump out of anger and frustration with the status quo. The movement
includes cities, states and campuses which have defied Trump and
declared them-selves sanctuaries for immigrants.
Reflects a growing radicalization
This resistance movement also reflects a growing radicalization of the
people, especially youth, African Americans and low income people, who
polls show now have a higher opinion of social-ism than capitalism. The
combination of spontaneous mass upsurge and growing radicalization gives
promise for very fundamental change and an unprecedented opportunity to
build socialist consciousness, and the revolutionary working class
movement. It is a moment of great danger, but also great opportunity.
Fundamentally, this movement grows out of a deep contradiction in the
capitalist system. That contradiction is that, while there has been
unprecedented globalization and socialization of production, the
unprecedented wealth this has generated is concentrated in the tiniest
number of private hands. According to the recently released Wealth-X
billionaire census, published in the New York Times Feb. 26, at the end
of 2015 there were some 2,500 billionaires in the world holding a total
wealth close to $8 trillion. They account for 3 one hundred thousandth
of a per cent of the world’s population.
The U.S. has the largest number, about 560, with $2 trillion in wealth.
Such concentration of wealth cannot be rationally defended and shows
that capitalism has reached the stage where it is the main obstacle to
higher living standards, greater rights and freedom for the working
people, who produced this wealth and comprise the vast majority of the
population. In the political arena, such concentration of wealth
naturally causes anti-democratic tendencies in the ruling class.
So what must be done? First, we need a general vision.
We obviously need a massive reform to tax the obscene accumulation of
wealth by the billionaires and use that money to meet the urgent needs
of the people.
This includes a massive public works program to create millions of jobs
at union wages. All workers must have the right to organize and bargain
collectively when a majority sign union cards.
Workers must be guaranteed full wages when their places of work close
until they are retrained and re-employed.
There must be equal pay for equal work for women and racially oppressed
minorities.
Health care, education and a clean environment must be guaranteed as
human rights to all U.S. residents.
Higher education at state run schools should be tuition-free and all
student loan debt should be abolished.
We should call for unconditional amnesty for all undocumented workers
now living within our borders and provide an easy path to citizenship.
We must demand full reproductive rights for women without interference
from church or state.
All voter suppression laws must be repealed to guarantee that every
American upon turning 18 is encouraged to vote and has full access to
the ballot.
Cap must be eliminated
The cap on Social Security taxes must be eliminated without regard to
income and benefits must be expanded to guarantee retirement security
for all.
There is pressing and obvious need for a national overhaul of criminal
justice with guarantees that police forces fully reflect the diversity
of the communities they are sworn to protect, that police are made fully
accountable when they kill innocent civilians and that racial bias is
eliminated from the entire system.
All forms of discrimination based on sexual preference or orientation
must be ended. Our government must make an unconditional commitment to
end human-induced climate change.
We demand the closing of all foreign military bases, the return of
Guantanamo to the people of Cuba and an end to the embargo on trade.
with that country.
We call for slashing military spending to the level required by actual
defense needs and the destruction of all nuclear, chemical and
biological arsenals.
These are the basic immediate demands for reforms for social and
economic security for the people of our country within the existing
capitalist system.
These goals are achievable with the resources our country possesses, but
they require us to keep working to build and expand the mass resistance
to the Trump/right wing extremist agenda.
For the time being, unfortunately, we must play defense. Together with
organized labor we must build the grassroots movement to resist every
step they make in the direction of fascism.
We should begin right now by demanding that Congress reject any renewed
effort to repeal the ACA.
We must protect and expand Medicare and Medicaid.
The next key fight will probably be over the Republican plan to shovel
more of our nation’s wealth to the billionaires and increase taxes on
the people.
But, at the same time we should understand that the fascist danger will
always remain so long as the system that funnels the wealth created by
working people into the hands of a greedy few continues. We Communists
fight for the best possible life for workers within the capitalist
system, but we also realize that that system must be ended for full
security, full democracy and full freedom to be achieved. We are for
reforms, but we are not reformists. We believe that ultimately corporate
power must end and be replaced by working class power, which is the
essence of socialism.
Essential to defeat
It is essential to defeat the right wing extremist Trump agenda but that
is not the end of the struggle. In this we differ from Democrats and
liberal reformers.
The Democrats seek to gain leadership of the mass upsurge and use it to
get elected in 2018. They seek to stabilize capitalism and preserve it.
Our aim is to defeat the right wing section of corporate power so as to
weaken and destabilize capitalism in order to eventually establish
socialism.
The November election exposed the inability of liberalism, by itself, to
reach enough of the people and convince them it would solve their
problems. The same thing is happening in Western Europe, India, Japan
and other countries. The 2018 elections are important and we will seek,
as we do in every election, the best possible outcome for working
people. But, as we build the immediate struggles at both the grassroots
and in the electoral-legislative arena, our mission is also to build the
deeper and broader mass movement for socialism.
After hundreds of thousands of years of classless communal food
gathering societies, classes first arose out of early farming
communities approximately 10,000 years ago and one of the four main
centers was in what is now Latin America and gave rise to the great
class-based civilizations of the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas.
Ever since classes first arose, the great majority of the people have
been exploited and oppressed by the owners of land and property in
various forms of class society —feudal, slave-owning or capitalist.
Capitalism is the last of these exploitative class systems and there is
ample reason to believe it is nearing the end of its rope.
In the last century the first socialist societies arose. This year marks
the hundredth anniversary of the formation of the first of these in
Russia. These first societies without economic exploitation, arose under
extremely difficult conditions. No experience existed to guide the
building of such societies and socialism arose in countries with great
deficits in education, health care and economic development. It arose in
countries with few democratic traditions and institutions and faced an
extremely hostile capitalist world that was determined to use every
means possible, including unleashing genocidal wars, to stifle and crush
their development.
Despite this and in a very short period of time they made great
achievements and showed that the possibility for building a society free
of economic exploitation, was real and not a pipe dream. We have a lot
to learn from that experience, but socialism in the United States will
certainly be far different, since we would not face the same challenges.
We would face other obstacles, including ridding ourselves of the
ideological debris left by capitalism and its predecessors. This
includes racism, male supremacy and individualism.
Racism is a special feature and form of oppression that is central and
almost unique to American capitalism. It is a method of divide and rule
that was welded into the fabric of our country before the actual
founding of the United States, after the rebellion of small farmers and
slaves, both Black and white, led by Nathaniel Bacon in 1676.
Overcame the uprising
When the British overcame that uprising, the Virginia House of Burgesses
enacted its infamous slave codes requiring that slaves be Black and
overseers, craftsmen and others be white. These laws gave a legal basis
for the ideology of white supremacy and white superiority, which then,
and, up to the present day, has been spread into every aspect of
American society and extended to the oppression of all people of color.
The fight against racism is a fight for democracy. It is a fight to
unite Black, white and brown Americans against their common exploiters
and oppressors and to demonstrate to white Americans that they cannot
advance in any arena without their brothers and sisters of color. The
fight against racism strikes at the heart of U.S. capitalism, which is
why racism is so hard to root out and why the fight for equality is so
fiercely resisted by the U.S. ruling class and its supporters.
Like male supremacy, homophobia and other forms of oppression, it is a
special issue that must be explicitly addressed and will not
automatically disappear with the achievement of socialism. This is why
racism and male supremacy are at the heart of the right-wing
extremist/Trump pro-gram. The drive to suppress access to voting, public
education, decent housing, health and human services all have a sharp
racist and male supremacist edge aimed at dividing working people and
enforcing the second class status of people of color and women
In fact, neither socialism, nor any other step in that direction can be
won without building the greatest possible unity of working people,
beginning with building racial unity and gender solidarity.
We Communists are often accused of being optimists and having faith in
the people. To these charges, we plead guilty. We reject the cynical
values and defeatist attitudes spread by the ruling class, who would
like us to believe that capitalism is eternal and is rooted in human
nature. We know from experience, especially the experience of organizing
unions, that working people can overcome the divisive influences of the
exploiters and act in their real interests and the interests of their
class. We are in fact, confident that socialism is inevitable. The
socialist genie is out of the bottle and cannot be put back.
Our party seeks to make this transition come about as peacefully,
painlessly and rapidly as possible. We seek a society of, by and for the
working people of all races and backgrounds, one that is modern, just,
democratic, peaceful and green.
We invite all of you to join us in achieving this goal.
Tags:
communism
CPUSA
social justice
CONTRIBUTOR
Rick Nagin
Rick Nagin
Rick Nagin has written for the People's World and its predecessors since
1970. He has been active for many years in Cleveland politics and the
labor movement.
Rick is the Ohio District Organizer of the Communist Party USA, member
of The Newspaper Guild Local 34071 CWA, and delegate to the North Shore
AFL-CIO Federation of Labor, serving on its Political Coordinators and
Racial Justice Committees. He is co-convenor of the Tamir Rice Justice
Committee and is currently a Neighborhood Team Leader in the Ward 14
Hillary Clinton campaign.
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