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“[In Bulgaria] after 1989 there was [a] group of British experts who came to give advice on democracy. . . . There was a man in this delegation who warned me about the baby in the bath. He saw what was going to happen. There were a lot of good things that were achieved by socialism, but we threw the baby out in the water.” “Veneta”

Previously Portside published Michael Brie's, The Tragedy of Party Communism and responses from three socialist activists - what lessons there may be to draw on, and which to forget. Here are additional responses from Nina Udovicki, Gilberto de Leon, Dynamite Hallinan and Scott Tucker. Those responding see capitalism as a system that needs to be abolished and socialism as an alternative - A socialism that is different from the past, and democratic.

"The consciousness that violence is always something evil, that it always violates human dignity, and therefore needs to be controlled very strictly — requiring the strongest moral and institutional checks — could quickly be lost in Leninism. Rosa Luxemburg’s dictum, that the ‘true essence of socialism’ is the connection between ‘ruthless revolutionary energy and tender humanity’, was continuously reduced to the remorselessness of the communist ‘cause’."

Established in 1930 after a schism within the Jewish socialist Workmen's Circle, the IWO's founding members came from the ranks of prominent leaders of the American communist movement. Supporting the left wing of the New Deal, IWO leaders hoped that once workers came to see state-supported healthcare, unemployment insurance, and minimum wage as a right, they would work to put the Communist Party at the helm of a worker-led American revolution.

Did East Germany fall because it was totally foul? Was it given an outside push or two? And did that downfall represent simply the glorious revolution of a folk yearning for freedom - or is the matter more complicated? This is still very relevant, for many similar uprisings have since occurred - and are still occurring.

The year 2012 may have been the United Nation's International Year of Cooperatives, but 2013 may turn out to be the more historic year for worker-ownership if the Cubans have anything to say about it. ...Cuba's new worker cooperatives will operate pretty much along the same lines as their successful cousins in the capitalist world, including Spain's Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, however they will be free from the distorting effects of capitalist competition...