Marxism and Ghostbusters

Gary North - March 28, 2013

"A spectre is haunting Europe -- the spectre of communism." -- Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), opening sentence

I bring good news. Marxism is really, truly dead.

I figured that out in late 1991. The drunken stupor of the would-be counter-coup, anti-Yeltsin Communists in mid-August was the sign of the impotence of the movement. Then the suicide of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on December 31 confirmed it. The murderous experiment was over. Kaput. The party members looted the party's funds, sent them to their Swiss bank accounts, and departed from the historical scene.

The cash nexus had won. Long live the cash nexus!

A subscriber sent me a link to a Web page. It is an article posted on the website of the Young Democratic Socialists. That such an organization even exists is a testimony to the power of hope over experience.

The article was a reprint from another website.

The author describes a meeting he attended: a high-level meeting. There was a video of this high-level meeting. The video offers proof: it's over for Communism, socialism, and the hope-filled youths who still carry the invisible red flag.

The video is of some poor 30-something in a tiny hotel room. There is no lighting for the video. You cannot see his face. The reflected light from the whiteboard forced the smart phone's aperture too small.

You can tell from the sound of the audience response that the room was not full. But the room is visibly small.

He starts off with a quotation from a letter that Marx wrote in 1843. When someone starts off with a letter from Marx written in 1843, when he was not yet a Marxist, the movement is dead. In 1843, Marx had not yet met Engels. Only in the late summer of 1844 did he and Engels first collaborate. That was when Marx became a Marxist.

You don't jump-start a dead movement. You bury it.

In 2013, the corpse stinketh.

These people remind me of the scene in Frankenstein when Frankenstein and Igor are in the lab, waiting for lightning to strike.

It's a sunny day. No clouds in the sky. "It's not alive! It's not alive!"

The author had it right.

Around 6 p.m., as the first arrivals filter through the registration line, shaking off the cold and collecting their workshop schedules and socialist swag, they seem to exude a certain relief in each other's presence, reminding me somewhat of a group of trauma survivors reunited.

It gets better.

Heidi Chua and Claudia Horn, two Brooklynites attending the conference in support of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation--a German organization dedicated to Leftist political education in Germany and abroad--were arranging the informational materials on their table, near the main registration area.

There is still a Rosa Luxemburg Foundation! Incredible! The hope will never die, as Teddy Kennedy once said, but it is surely in the intensive care unit, with tubes down its nose.

One of them had a banner. Yes, a banner. For display in a tiny New York City hotel room. Why, it's still 1848 in the hearts of these people.

I brought up the reelection of President Obama, expecting accusations of war crimes and corporate acquiescence, along with some kind of argument that Democrats are really no different from Republicans. Instead, I was surprised to find both women readily agree that Obama's victory was something to celebrate, even as they remain highly critical of certain aspects of his policies.

"With Obama, we at least have a chance," remarks Horn.

This is the moment I get the first inkling that I've stumbled onto something different. These women weren't just fighting some noble symbolic struggle, or carping about the evils of the system from the sidelines. They were trying to make the world a better place--in reality, not in theory--and a world with President Obama is a better place than one with President Romney, despite the former's shortcomings.

Their hope is in Obama. And maybe Michelle. Mrs. Obama's garden. Mrs. Obama's shopping sprees in foreign capitals. Yes, there is hope. Hope springs eternal.

In the end, they both make it clear that they don't necessarily see electoral politics as the engine to make effective change.

"We are the solution. We change the world," states Chua.

He added: "This wasn't just idealism talking." No, it was the illusion. Deep illusion. Illusion on a scale that deserves respect for its magnificence, its persistence in the face of over two decades of cold, hard reality.

We learn this: Bédard-Wien says he's "very encouraged. Things are shitty right now, but from that springs struggle."

Struggle! Banner held high! In a New York City hotel room!

Do they listen to The International in their iPods?

What was their plan? To hold more strikes. Protesting what burning issue? Tuition hikes in tax-funded universities.

That will get the faithful to the barricades!

Power to the People!

Acknowledging the challenge of breaking through the traditional media filter, Cozzolino says, "I'm generally a bit of a pessimist on the feasibility of the Left getting the coverage it needs from mainstream media outlets… Alternative methods of media coverage provide a greater hope for covering what's really happening in social movements."

This, from a woman who is working on a Ph.D. in sociology.

A spectre is haunting tax-funded education: the spectre of Communism.

And then there was Occupy. Over. Gone. Sayonara. R.I.P.

Nearly every attendee I talked to had been involved with Occupy to some extent, but despite their deep affection for the movement, it quickly became clear that the they were not particularly interested in looking backward. Indeed, the first panel discussion of the conference--featuring socialist luminary Frances Fox Piven--was titled "What Happened To Occupy?: The Future Of The Left And Democratic Socialism."

The only other time Occupy appeared on the conference schedule was as the subject of a workshop seeking to determine whether the movement had actually made a difference (it had). The rest of the weekend was packed with workshops offering practical organizing technique and Democratic Socialist theory, caucus meetings among the various identity groups within YDS (people of color, LGBTQ, etc), and more panel discussions focused on issues such as workers' rights and the corruption of the education "reform" movement, which involves private corporations using the legalization of charter schools to loot the American public school system.

The earth is shaking.

Perhaps it's the focus on providing tangible help to people in need, or maybe it's the sword and shield imagery, but Resnick's comments begin to form an image in my mind of the young activists as analogous to evangelical Christians seeking to spread their beliefs through missionary work.

As if to support that idea, Resnick continues, "It really is transformative. It really is about changing consciousness."

The old songs are still being sung. Literally.

It was the lunch session between workshop blocks, and Bryan Harris, attending the conference from Bard College, had pulled out a well-worn acoustic guitar. As he strummed and started singing "Solidarity Forever," a traditional labor union folk song, the other attendees chimed in, some enthusiastically, some less so, but even they sung the words while sheepishly grinning and slightly rolling their eyes.

Replace "Solidarity Forever" with a spiritual hymn and the scene could have replayed itself at any number of Christian youth rallies across the nation. In fact, growing up in North Carolina--a place I like to call the buckle of the Bible Belt--I had personally witnessed such scenes on numerous occasions.

And then there was a guest appearance from Cornell West -- the man who blasted Obama's use of Martin Luther King's Bible as his second inaugural. He is "the closest thing the Democratic Socialist Movement has to a rock star." This is good news for the rest of us.

He marched in the civil rights movement, and got himself arrested protesting South African apartheid while a professor at Yale Divinity School in the '80s. He witnessed the fall of Jim Crow and the Berlin Wall, as well as the election--and subsequent reelection--of the nation's first black president (for whom he cuts no slack).

The old songs were sung.

West--who describes himself as "a bluesman in the life of the mind"--speaks to the attendees of love and justice, of the importance of organization to social change, and of perseverance in the face of seemingly overwhelming opposition.

As West speaks--his vocal tone displaying the improvisational rhythm of a saxophone player--I get the sense that he is very consciously passing the torch to a new generation. References to death, mortality, and the long bending arc of the human struggle appear frequently during his talk. I imagine the apparitions of those who had already gone ahead--Eugene Debs, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks--waiting in the back of the room like dead Jedi.

He answered a question from the lone attendee from the South.

Turner, who attends the University Of Alabama At Tuscaloosa, asks West for advice on being a progressive in a state where there are "a few Klan outposts but no DSA chapters." Referencing the "strong but thin" progressive tradition in the South, West advises Turner to seek out a few like-minded people to form a support structure against the imposing cultural inertia.

West exhorts the assembled young activists to "be marathon runners, not sprinters," taking a long view of the struggle, and accepting that an ideal society is unlikely to be achieved in the near term. This nearly fatalistic commitment to working towards a more just society no matter the circumstances starts to form the core of my final analogy for the Democratic Socialist Movement.

He ends with this: "Tomorrow remains forever uncertain, but their efforts may well be the thing that turns the tide in our society's ongoing war against oppression and corruption."

It's over, folks. The spectre of Communism briefly was haunting a downtown hotel, but there is no need to call in Ghostbusters.

We won.