The speech is more optimistic than I am. I heard yesterday, that 92% of the
people who voted for Trump, are not disappointed in him at this point in time.
And yes, there are rallies and marches. But while these are happening, while
there is talk of resistance, Paul Ryan is dismantling the government. And so
much of what is being done now regarding immigrants and war, is just a
continuation and magnification of what was already happening. I don't feel like
this increasing disaster is going to necessarily lead to a change for the
better.
Miriam
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[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey ;
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Sent: Wednesday, April 26, 2017 11:11 AM
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Subject: [blind-democracy] Defeat right wing extremism and clear the path to
socialism
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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