Workers World Dec. 21, 2000: Excerpts from a talk by Larry Holmes

Email this article

------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Dec. 21, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------

Socialism wants to compete

From a talk by Larry Holmes at the Dec. 2-3 Workers World Party conference.

We're going to talk a lot about Seattle and the movement that was born there. But that movement is not the only one. It's not the movement that organized the Million Family March or the Redeem the Dream march. It's not the labor movement, in either its organized or unorganized form.
It's a movement that is trying to figure out what to do with itself after Nader. It hasn't figured out what to do about all the repression in Philadelphia at the Republican Convention, in Los Angeles at the Democratic Convention and so on.
I say this as a preface to this: It's a worldwide movement. It's a harbinger of something bigger that's coming, in this county and elsewhere. We've got to get ready.
We don't know if the election situation is going to help us. We do know this: the next leader of the imperialist world is not going to look very strong to the rest of the world.
Look what's happening with the economy. Look at this political election crisis. I think we'd better take a good look at these things.
It's the rumbling under the surface, a sign that something's going to crack. The question is, is it going to open up for us? Maybe it'll be a question of whether we're prepared to take advantage of it.
These developments should be a reminder to all those revolutionaries who live here in the belly of the beast that we have a special responsibility to revolutionary movements around the world because of our strategic location.
For many years--the better part of the last century, at least since the time of the Russian Revolution--the struggle against imperialism has mostly been centered in the East, where capitalism used to be weak, where the Soviet Union and China and the liberation movements were. I also mean Cuba and the Caribbean and Latin America and Africa.
In the post-Soviet epoch, it's a little more difficult to try to identify where the center of the struggle against imperialism is. No doubt it's still very much in the East. The very existence of the People's Republic of China, for all its problems and the contradictions of its leadership, objectively makes it a center against imperialism.
And you can say that revolutionary Cuba is a center against imperialism because the leadership there is clearer, brighter and more revolutionary. You can argue that the revolutionary forces in Colombia are a center of the struggle, or that the Palestinian people, who have started a new phase of their struggle, are the center that could enlighten and bring into struggle the whole Arab world.
But the main point that needs to be made is that the center is shifting, and it will shift here, back to where imperialism is strong. When, we can't predict, but when it does it will be a good thing.
Our comrades around the world have been waiting for it. They know that the blows we deliver to imperialism here in its gut may be more fatal than what they are able to do out there around the tentacles.
The first thing we need to do is revive the struggle for socialism. Socialism has been maligned. It's been mugged, beaten up and thrown into a dungeon, and the bourgeoisie has thrown away the key. We've got to find that key, or if we can't do that, we have to make another key.
We're not the only political force in the movement. There are other people leading demonstrations, good progressive movements for progressive causes, and that's okay. We support them, we march with them and we defend them when they come under attack.
But we also want to compete with their ideas. Socialism wants to compete and win the hearts and minds of as many as possible.
There are different kinds of socialists. Some say they are for socialism but they don't support Cuba, because it's easy to be for some ideal but hard to be for a revolution.
Some socialists don't want to go anywhere near anything that's young, revolutionary or militant. Some socialists think the very idea of revolution is ludicrous. We think it's the main point.
We're not castigating anyone; we're just telling it like it is.
There are some people who are just coming around to socialism, as most of us did at one point in our lives. They don't have all the questions worked out. We need to be there to help them find the answers.
We've got to talk the talk but we've also got to walk the walk. People have to know what we know: that socialists are the best fighters and the best organizers. That they're the most courageous and have the most experience. We always make the difference.
We're already doing it to a certain extent with the work our Party does in the International Action Center and other organizations. That work is not mindless activism. When we open up a struggle against the U.S./NATO war on Yugoslavia, or the sanctions against Iraq, or to free Mumia, this is putting our program into practice--being in solidarity with the struggles as they exist.
Because of this work we have a tremendous reputation here and around the world. But all the time I hear comrades saying, "I don't know if they know we're socialists, that it's Workers World Party doing all this good work." We have to rectify that. People who don't know us need to know.
We have to make socialism such a compelling gravitational force that it pulls the militants and anyone who's like-minded right toward us. We need them. We need each other. We want to say to them: we're a haven, come in with us, come in out of the cold.
We have to strengthen the Party and win new cadre, and then find ways of making bridges to others, to make this revolutionary socialist movement come alive and make it strong. When we have that vibrant revolutionary movement it's going to change all the struggles.
Look at the election stalemate. It shows how our class is trapped inside the Democratic Party. All the issues that are our issues, whether it's youth, women, lesbian, gay, bi and trans rights, health care, the fight against racism, it's all trapped in there. The more the Republicans lash out at Gore, the more many people feel they have to defend Gore. It's a no-win situation. But if we were stronger we could intervene.
We know the underlying issue down in Florida is the struggle against racism. We know that if you're Black or Haitian, it's 10 times more likely that you'll be turned away from a polling place, or some cop will harass you, or the voting machine will be broken.
If we were strong enough, we would have been at the U.S. Supreme Court with our own lawyer and filed a friend of the court brief. We'd say: we're not here for either Bush or Gore, we're here for the Black masses. Our rights have been violated. We want to show how we need community control of these polling places. We want to show how we should have the best computers and equipment, just like they have in the bourgeois neighborhoods. Prisoners and ex-prisoners should be allowed to vote.
We'd have a demonstration and take it to both the Democratic Party headquarters and the Republican Party headquarters, because Gore doesn't give a damn and neither does Bush. And that's the truth.

This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)

HOME :: U.S. NEWS :: WORLD NEWS :: EDITORIALS :: SUBSCRIBE :: DONATE