The enemy is capitalism, the system. It isn’t Trump, it isn’t Hillary. Capitalism has reached a desperate phase in its development: imminent collapse. Now I know people like me have been predicting the collapse of capitalism for 150 years. But one day, we’ll be right. The essential characteristic of this phase of collapse is perpetual warfare. One way to look at it is that the capitalist system collapsed in 1929. The only thing that resuscitated it was rise of the Nazis and World War II. Since then, in case you hadn’t noticed, the U. S. A. never demobilized, for the […]

I have spent the last several weeks arguing against Bernie or Bust and Demexit because my understanding of Bernie’s strategy from the beginning was to transform (take over) the Democratic Party, the largest organization of any kind in the country. But, after the convention, I’m softening my stance. It’s possible that this is a Green Party moment. I’m willing to admit that I don’t know what the best strategy to pursue is right now. I’d like to humbly suggest that maybe none of us know, and it’s okay and healthy to disagree on strategy going forward. I do know that […]

The next phase of our struggle is to defeat Trump ideologically, not just politically. A vote for Trump is a vote for racism. Racism is the foundational principle of the United States of America. The country was forged in genocide and vicious racial oppression. White supremacy has been the modus operandi of the U. S. since the Pilgrims’ Thanksgiving Massacre. In the early 1600s, black and white indentured servants worked side by side in relative equality. In 1676, a landowner named Nathaniel Bacon led a rebellion in Virginia that included both Black and white indentured servants and slaves, essentially (and […]

The United Front has been the primary mechanism of leftists to gain power for the last century. Where would China be today if it weren’t for Mao uniting with Chang-kai Shek to defeat the Japanese? Struggle with, struggle against, is the time honored principle. One of the main attractions of the united front for leftists is it puts us in contact with what we used to call “the center,” the people who haven’t heard much about our program and strategy. In this way, we build the left; beats all hell out of talking to ourselves. A united front is what […]

What did you expect? Are you really surprised? I won’t call him a hero, Micah, though I’m sure many will. What he did was adventurist and provocative, and has put other lives, especially black lives, in serious danger as the police get set to overreact. Trayvon Martin = No conviction Sandra Bland = No conviction Kathryn Johnson = No conviction Sean Bell = No conviction Eric Garner = No conviction Rekia Boyd = No conviction Amadou Diallo = No conviction Mike Brown = No conviction Junabu Gray = No conviction Kenneth Chamberlain = No conviction Travares McGill = No conviction […]

Happy Slave-owners revolt day, everyone. Remember, the British Empire abolished slavery in 1831, 34 years before the U. S. All other things being equal (a large caveat), had the American Revolution failed, slavery would have ended 34 years sooner. I’ve skipped a couple of weeks in my weekly blog because after Orlando and slogging through the acrimonious divisions in the Sanders movement, I didn’t know what to say. I was discouraged, I suppose also because I kept holding out the hope that Bernie could win the nomination. But discouragement is one of those weapons the ruling class uses to keep […]

Revolutions are about power, about working people taking control of the future. Bernie’s campaign has achieved more power for working people than any movement in years, involving millions of people fighting for Socialism! And, while not winning the election outright, he more importantly blazed a path that shows how to have a largely peaceful (that depends on the ruling class), democratic revolution. We can do this, comrades! It’s now clear to me that from the beginning, Bernie’s vision of a path to power was through the Democratic Party. Where would he/we be if he decided in May 2015 to run […]

I came this close to buying a ticket to Chicago today for the People’s Summit next week, but the I Ching said “It does not further one to go anywhere.” Only half kidding. Plus I’ve been facing health issues which stress won’t help. Why did I want go so much? Our movement is in a crucial phase, as it always is. Perhaps Democracy for America is a good model for how to turn Bernie’s campaign into an ongoing movement. DFA came out of Howard Dean’s campaign in 2004. It’s a testament to the democracy of that organization that Dean came […]

We may be closer to this revolution thing than we think. It’s pretty clear that if there was a nationwide one-person-one vote election, Bernie Sanders would win a majority. So, if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination, the will of the majority is not being served by the broken and undemocratic election system we have. Don’t we have a mandate to demand that the entire electoral system be revamped along the lines of the much more democratic European parliamentary model  — no electoral college, one day of nationwide voting, proportional representation, no outside money? Here’s a thought to take to Chicago, […]

One of the most important contributions of the Sanders campaign has been the exposure to millions of people, especially young people, of the highly undemocratic nature of U. S. society. Those activists who’ve been around for a while must each of us had our moments when we realized that our 5th grade American History wasn’t too accurate. For me, it was the mis-named Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in 1964, which wasn’t about free speech so much as it was about the right to raise money on campus to support the Civil Rights struggle in the south, particularly the voting […]