The following was delivered by PSL member Ian Thompson during the Closing Plenary of the National Conference on Socialism 2010 held in Los Angeles on Nov. 13 – Nov. 14.
 Photo: Bill Hackwell |
Sisters and brothers,
I hope you all feel good. Engaging in the class struggle makes you feel a lot of things, but most of all you should feel good, confident. You are part of something real. Everyone who has participated in the National Conference on Socialism this weekend, has taken a significant—we think historic—step forward in the class struggle in the United States.
We don’t say this lightly. This weekend has been an amazing weekend. Talks, panels, discussion like you will never hear anywhere else, entertainment and so much more.
I am now going to try to sum up the conference—this conference that is not mine or Eugene’s or any one person’s in the PSL. This conference belongs to all of us, and the ideas—the revolutionary ideas that we all believe in and take so seriously—are our collective ideas. We own them. Let’s take our ideas and move forward together, even stronger than we were before. This is what the PSL is about. It is why we exist as a revolutionary Marxist party.
First, a few facts. This has been our second national public conference in the PSL’s young life. And over the course of the weekend, over 500 people attended. We always give 110 percent effort in everything we do, but this conference has exceeded our expectations in number of participants and quality of discussion. The size alone greatly surpassed our first national conference in 2008. This is a tribute to everyone in this room and who walked through the doors of this building this weekend. More than that, it’s a validation of the ideas of socialism.
It was great to meet new comrades already in the PSL and hundreds of people that none of us had ever met before—people new to the struggle, people who we want to call comrades today, tomorrow and as we move ahead.
So what do we take away from the conference? Where do we go from here?
What we have now, after such deep discussions about theory, strategy and tactics is a perspective for revolutionary action in the coming period. What a conference it has been!
One thing that we hope is absolutely clear to everyone is that our starting point is Marxism. We view the world from a working-class perspective. We seek to build a revolutionary party of workers, students poor people—anyone who wants to fight with us—to make a revolution in the United States.
Some may say this is pie in the sky. We’re here to tell you it is not.
“You can’t do it” is what the white, racist ruling class said just years before apartheid in South Africa fell. “Things will always be the same” is what the elite said months before students and workers overthrew the Shah of Iran. “You’ll never win” is what bourgeois liberals said just days before the Bolshevik-led workers’ insurrection that ushered in the world’s first socialist revolution. Sound familiar?
They tell us we can’t do it because they know we can—and they fear the revolutionary potential of our class, the working class. Remember, every revolution throughout history was “impossible”—until it happened.
Despite the great difficulties facing workers in the United States at this time, we see the potential to stand up, fight back and, ultimately, to win. That’s revolutionary optimism, but it is more than that. It’s what will happen because it must.
But sisters and brothers, to win, we’ve got to struggle. We’ve got to struggle hard. We’ve got to fight to raise class consciousness. We’ve got to fight and join others who want to fight and who have to fight in order to survive.
The capitalist system is now in severe crisis, unlike it has been in a very long time. For decades, the U.S. capitalist ruling class has been able to give the appearance that everything is under control. Through an economic contraction here, an imperialist war there, natural disasters, and so on—capitalism has maintained its façade of workability. But no more.
Now, there is mass suffering and chaos happening across the country and the world. People are losing jobs in record numbers. Over 30 million people are unemployed. And millions more stopped looking for work months ago. Millions have lost their homes. And 50 million people—5 million more than last year—now lack health care coverage. All this under a Democratic President in the White House and after two years of Democratic Party domination in the U.S. House and Senate.
Let’s say a little more about this, a theme discussed yesterday in our keynote plenary that we should touch on again.
The election of Barack Obama as the first Black president and the virtual domination of the Democratic Party has been an essential stage in recent U.S. politics. Not because of anything done for workers—nothing tangible has been done—but for clarity. Workers in the United States have gone through an important political experience in terms of consciousness about what the true problems really are.
Now, instead of blaming everything on Bush or the right wing, there is no choice but to search deeper. And, if you search deeper, you end up realizing that the system and its inherent defects are to blame. This hasn’t yet become a mass revolutionary consciousness, but people are now seeing that getting rid of Bush didn’t matter. Installing the Democrats wasn’t the answer. A light bulb has turned on.
The living conditions for the masses of workers have worsened under the Democrats. There is more unemployment, more budget cuts, more tuition hikes, fewer programs for poor children, less food aid—yet there is an escalation of imperialist war. It has become impossible to ignore the contradictions.
So, where do we go? First, we have to be clear, it is not about which pro-capitalist political party is steering the ship of state, it’s the system. It’s capitalism that throws people out of jobs, homes and school and onto the streets. The politicians defend, protect and promote this brutal system, but they can’t hide the truth that the system is a failure for everyone the vast majority of people.
But oh how they try to hide it.
They have scrambled many times in many different ways to find “solutions.” Let’s talk about them: $14 trillion in bank bailouts, interest rate cuts, increased Pentagon spending … yet nothing has worked. And the only reason solving this problem seems impossible is because it is not just about “the economy” in the abstract, but the capitalist economy in particular. It’s a problem of capital.
That’s for them. For us, no matter what measures the capitalists take, workers’ problems won’t change for the better. Not even if there is a major capitalist recovery. We’re in a new period. A new stage.
No recovery will be an era of economic boom that will benefit working people. If there is a major recovery, it will be based on austerity; on more layoffs, more budget cuts, continued wage stagnation, more prisons—more bitter misery. That’s no recovery at all—at least not for us.
People have talked for decades about the “race to the bottom”—where capitalists compete with each other to see who can pay workers the least and give the fewest benefits.
That is happening now. The same workers who were told they were the middle class and formerly enjoyed greater privilege than other, lower-paid workers—that process has completely vanished. Going to college is becoming out of reach for working-class students, especially students of color.
Everything in this rich country is becoming out of reach for the vast majority of people. This is all part of the race to the bottom.
From our point of view, the solution is easy. The only way to solve the economic crisis is the socialist reorganization of society—a socialist revolution—so that profit becomes a thing of the past. So that the top priority is meeting people’s needs.
Does this sound like something the Democrats can do? Will they undo the system? They have proven they are no solution at all. People are seeing this.
But seeing and understanding alone aren’t enough. Capitalism isn’t going to just die on its own. If we let that happen, it is our class that suffers, our class that starves, our class that languishes in prison, our class that kills and dies in colonial wars targeting workers abroad.
What we are doing as a revolutionary party is working hard every day to create the one and only alternative to the failed capitalist parties. This alternative is a multinational, people’s party of workers, students and the poor who know that capitalism is the problem and that we must kill capitalism before it kills us.
The alternative is exactly what the PSL is striving to be. And we are well on our way. We organize, agitate, write, speak, make videos, and all the while we struggle in cities and towns across the country.
We are also a deeply internationalist party. We stand with any group that is under attack by the capitalists. Every day we are in the streets defending immigrants, defending those attacked and killed by cops, fighting for women’s liberation and LGBT equality, fighting against imperialist wars abroad.
This is what our party does. It exists to fight. It exists to provide leadership in the working-class struggle and prepare for the revolution that will come. That’s what we are doing today and in everything we do.
If there was an era of long prosperity for workers coming, our party wouldn’t stand a chance. But because it is not, because we live under capitalism—we not only stand a chance—we believe we have the opportunity to win.
And the material conditions are changing, so we have got to be ready. The past six decades have seen countries ripe for revolution in Latin America, Asia, Africa and other economically underdeveloped countries. People viewed the U.S. as a strong and stalwart force for continuing capitalism. Socialist revolution here seemed impossible to many, even in the left.
But sisters and brothers, our prognosis is optimistic. We are optimistic from a Marxist point of view, not because we enjoy seeing workers’ suffering. We don’t. We fight against all expressions of exploitation and oppression. But we know that the illusions that millions of workers hold about the political and economic system under which we live are being stripped away.
And we know, just as there is only one alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties—there is only one alternative to the system. There is no third way. There is only multinational workers’ power. There is only socialism.
Under socialism, the state owns the means of production and uses the surpluses created by our labor, not for the enrichment of the rich, but rather it guarantees every worker the legal right to a job, a home, health care, and childcare. It guarantees every worker the right to dignity—to realizing your potential as a human being.
By expropriating the banks and corporations, socialism puts workers’ lives as the highest priority.
This makes sense. No more crises, no more ups and downs and no more exploitation. We don’t want them.
Unlike capitalism, socialism isn’t a race to the bottom—it’s the beginning of the struggle to reach the height of what humanity can do.
Now, here we are at the end of the conference, and we should feel good.
We can say without exaggerating that this weekend has been a step forward, not only for the PSL, but the struggle for socialism in the United States. It isn’t the end, to be sure, but it is amazing to think about what we have accomplished this weekend. Just take a look around at your comrades and new friends and remember all the people who have come throughout the weekend.
The crowd is multinational and multigenerational, but the number of young people stands out. We should be proud about this. It shows there is a growing interest in the ideas of liberation and the will to continue the class struggle. It shows there is a new interest in socialism, and that we, PSL, are leading the way.
When our party was formed 6-and-a-half years ago, we based ourselves on the massive divide that exists in the world today. We said then and we believe it now—there is tremendous potential for our class to organize, to struggle and to win.
And yet there has not yet been an organization that has been capable of harnessing that potential into a revolutionary force capable of challenging the ruling class.
Our party is dedicated to building that organization. We are building a party of working class leaders.
The PSL has done many things, even in the past 12 months. We’ve led mass demonstrations against the imperialist wars, for immigrant rights, for LGBT equality, to stop police brutality, to stop racism and to stop environmental degradation and exploitation. We’ve organized on campuses, in oppressed communities and so many other places. We have recruited many new members, and our current members have continued to develop into skilled cadres.
We have big tasks in front of us, comrades and friends, but with our shared experience and the will to keep up the fight—we can and we will win.
