AS MANY of you have no doubt witnessed, the word “socialism” has returned to the forefront of the American political debate. Newsweek had a front cover declaring “We Are All Socialists,” the Nation magazine had a forum on what socialism is today, and even the New York Times had a discussion on the meaning of the word.
Socialism, depending on who you’re talking to, can mean anything from the bureaucratic dictatorship of the Soviet Union, to the social reforms of Western Europe, to even, in the case of people like those in Glenn Beck’s “9/12” movement, a guttural curse word to be spat at every policy deviating slightly from the reactionary cesspool from which they emerged.
What I, an actual living socialist, will advance tonight as socialism differs fundamentally from all of these, and is the definition of socialism which stands in the revolutionary, self-emancipatory tradition of Marxism–a tradition which takes as it’s foundation that it is those who work and produce and farm and create who are responsible for all the wealth in the world, and that it is they, not an elite of the super-rich or a bureaucratic clique, that have the right and power to take and manage the world’s resources in society’s interests.
However, this idea–that people should be able to come together to democratically decide their future as a community, as a county, city, nation and ultimately species–one which seems on the surface so self-evident, is one which is completely at odds with the capitalist system under which we live today. Full article.