“There’s nobody fighting because nobody knows what to say.” Gil Scott Heron

If it’s winter in America like Gil Scott says, maybe we’re all suffering from SAD – seasonal affective disorder. There are many reasons to feel discouraged — from Kyle, to COVID, to climate — even as we know in our heart of hearts that our discouragement serves the capitalist class. 

But let’s look at what there is to be hopeful about. 

• Sixteen months ago, in the midst of the pandemic, we had 25 million people in the streets for Black Lives Matter, and police killings of unarmed Blacks seems to have abated, at least temporarily. 

• Head of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping recently announced a campaign to reduce wealth and income equality in his country.

• The US has finally pulled out of Afghanistan.

• They did convict the Ahmaud Arbery killers. 

• Real progressives are winning local elections throughout the country.

Can we defeat the impending rise of fascism all over the world? We do need to remember that it was primarily the Communist Movement that, for all it’s flaws, defeated fascists in the last century. It was the Communist Party in the US that led the fight for a safety net for the working class and played a leading role in the struggle for civil rights. The Communist Movement in Europe was largely responsible for the progressive democratic socialist societies in Europe, either directly or by the existence of the threat from the USSR. 

The collapse of the Soviet Union may go down in history as one of the greatest tragedies. That it collapsed with nary a shot fired is even more disturbing. I don’t pretend to understand what happened. Surely there were millions of uncorrupted Communists that could have engineered the transition to more of a social democratic regime. It would seem they became discouraged, a condition we can’t afford as a people to fall into. 

Lenin said that the capitalists would sell us the rope to hang them with. They have given us the technology to build a world-wide movement for social and economic justice – maybe we don’t use the discredited “C” word. Despite the best efforts of the capitalist class and its toadies, we, the working class, still have our hands on the levers of power. We have the power to shut this sucker down until the people of the world get what they need. This is the source of our greatest hope. 

The very reason the capitalists, despite what some of them say, are opting for authoritarianism is that they know damn well that their one percent owning 44% of the world’s resources is not a sustainable situation without the most draconian measures of oppression. But if they kill or imprison all of us, who will do the work that creates and sustains their wealth in the first place? Spring is coming, and the less discouragement we let ourselves sink into, the sooner it will come.