By Peter Boyle
New red-green electoral alliances, a turn to ecosocialism and a deepening of the US International Socialist Organization’s rethink on feminism were key features of the ISO’s well-attended Socialism 2014 conference in Chicago.
The gap between rich and poor in the US is large and growing. It has sparked a popular campaign for a minimum wage of US$15 an hour for low-paid workers, and in defence of jobs of teachers and other social service providers.
A growing number of trade union leaders are running as part of left and independent election tickets, just as they endorsed the successful Seattle’s council campaign of socialist Kshama Sawant.
…
There was a rich and educational program of talks, films and performances. The structure of the conference was four-to-five sessions a day, each packed with between eight-10 well-attended simultaneous workshops. These were well-prepared, well-facilitated and included lively and open discussion.
Apart from members of some other socialist groups, there were members and leaders of the Green Party and some anarchists. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and Green Party New York state candidate for governor Howie Hawkins attended the conference. There were also international guests from Canada, Britain, France, Portugal, Greece, Egypt and Australia.
Read the full article here.
Sadly, decades from now we could see museums in the United States similar to the Stasi museums in East Germany documenting the abuses of the present national security state.
In defense of the Marxist tradition (speaking as a non-Marxist), the Marxist theory from Marx through Kautsky seems (mostly) friendly to democracy. They hope for regime change through democratic means in nations like England and the USA. Many Marxists believed that nations needed to go through a liberal phase before they could become socialist.
And no, Stalinsm was radical, but not left-wing. Not to say the Eastern European communist states after Stalin’s death were necessarily Stalinist, but they did retain a number of Stalinist features. The comparatively right-wing, conservative nature of communism in Eastern Europe was influenced by the pre-existing character of the people in the region, in addition to Lenin and his party. As you may know, the original Marxist theorists believed the revolution would take place in Germany, France, England, USA etc when capitalism created the conditions for its dissolution.–they considered Russia unusual…and they considered the Russian regime the enemy of liberty. Many aspects of the czarist regime transferred over to the Leninist regime.
Anyways, I’d be surprised if the people behind Green Left Weekly are not fully committed to democracy, so tracing their intellectual lineage to parties in the 80s who affiliated with Castro is probably not the most useful line of criticism, although it isn’t completely irrelevant.
When discussing left-wing totalitarian states with socialists, I have encountered two types of responses:
1. Claiming they are not really left-wing.
2. Getting angry and claiming Lenin and Castro are great people and victims of capitalist propaganda smear campaigns.
Exactly. It was all a show. Opposition parties stood about as much chance as the teams that played against the Globetrotters.
True as well.
From what he said they weren’t even opposition parties. There were multiple candidates on the ballot (usually), but they were all Party-approved Communists. Technically there were opposition parties, but they never got candidates on the ballot because the legislature never approved them. When you went to the polls, there were soldiers stationed out front, and whoever was in charge at the polling station would tell you who to vote for. You didn’t actually have to, you could vote for another Party-approved commie without fear of retribution, but there wasn’t much reason to.
He did say they weren’t treated as the jokes they so obviously were, that they were treated as a very serious thing and to not vote was seen as a protest, and borderline treasonous.
IIRC (I was too young to vote, of course) it was open ballot, and the token opposition parties were government-approved and had no substantive differences with the regime.
I remember talking to an ex-coworker who at one time lived int the Soviet Union and took part in “democratic” elections there. He said there was no campaigning, you just went to the polls and voted for whoever they told you to vote for.
Authoritarian state-socialist regimes always claim to be “democratic.” It’s a crock, of course.
Green Left Weekly is published in Australia by the Democratic Socialist Perspective, formerly the Democratic Socialist Party. The DSP was formerly the Australian Socialist Workers Party, affiliated with The United Secretariat of the Fourth International.
The Australian SWP quit the Fourth International and merged with the Socialist Party of Australia, a pro-Soviet communist group, to form the Democratic Socialist Party, aligned with the pro-Soviet Communist Parties in Asia and Latin America. Despite its name, the DSP supports an authoritarian socialist regime modeled on the socialist state in Cuba.
Cuba relies on sugar and tobacco as its main export crops, so not much to inspire a Green Party activist there.