Yesterday I slagged off anarchists & sectarian communists. But I share their radical impulses. I just differ on how to achieve them.

I don't want to break windows. But that doesn't mean I support the approved methods of politics - elections, lobbying, etc. I'm not a liberal who, as Rosa Luxemburg put it,

Instead of a stand for the establishment of a new society they take a stand for surface modifications of the old society.

Those namby-pamby, khaki-panted, Whole Foods-shopping beardies who sympathize with struggles against injustice but, basically, like things the way they are. Phil Ochs called them "ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally."



I don't think there's much difference between conservatives & liberals. Both have their representatives in the ruling class, both wage imperialist wars. Both accept the logic of capitalism: the former with gusto, the latter with regret.

So, when I say the left has to work together, I don't mean we should bury our differences, and put off revolutionary change to a mythical future. Communist Parties around the world learned the hard way that you can't make a revolution by not telling anybody about it.

The question is not whether the left should work together. The question is how.

Revolutionaries are never the majority in any society, except at key moments where the old order breaks down, and an organized mass movement forms to take its place. In the meantime, revolutionaries have to relate to the less-radical, because the pinker shades of people have the potential to become radical.

That takes long years of activism. Unlike liberals, socialists don't see those struggles as an end in themselves. We have an analysis of power: who has it, and how it gets wielded. Where liberals settle for small changes (or, more likely, smaller cutbacks), socialists argue that change comes from fighting, whether that's on a picket line or a community meeting. History shows the powerful only back down when they're frightened. So we have to scare them.

Electing to change

Small victories raise people's confidence to fight further. For example, here's why revolutionaries take part in elections, a decidedly non-revolutionary event:

We do not stand to get elected, but we do hope to get elected to win greater support for the left and gain a profile for our ideas that we could not otherwise achieve.

Elections are not an end in themselves. Those who believe so are liberals - people who think the capitalist system can be changed without revolution or, more likely, those who think it can't be changed at all. For liberals,

power is an end in itself, and protest is useful only where it enhances the vote. For socialists political power is only worth bothering with if it gives the movement more confidence, shifts the population to the left and strengthens our ability to fight. Socialists never say 'we will do this for you' what they must say is that 'no one but yourselves will protect your interests, rise up and fight.'

Socialists use the tools they're given - such as elections. These, and other reformist struggles, help prove to us that we can run society ourselves, in the face of liberals who would have us accept our lot.

Socialists work within the system to destroy it. But the 'work within' takes 90% of the effort.

It's bigger than hip-hop



I woke up early today. When I fell back asleep, I dreamt I was rapping. It sounded pretty good - beats, intonation and all - but I can't remember any of it. Later, I was lucid-dreaming, and I chose to look like Biggie Smalls, and drive a Ferrari with two pitbulls in the back.

As to why a skinny white guy who can't dance subconsciously desires bling, I leave open to your interpretation. Maybe I'm suffering from orientalism? But damn, it felt good to rap.