Portside

This paper was presented at the International conference “150 years Karl Marx's - Reflections for the 21st century” held in Athens, Greece on January 14-15, 2017. Organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung - Athens Office. The conference discussed the actuality of Marx's theoretical system of the critique of political economy 150 years on from the publication of Capital Volume I.

Reading Lebowitz has also given me a greater fluency in talking to people about what is wrong with capitalism and how socialism could really work, how the flaws in its past could be avoided, and what is necessary for its success.

This paper was presented at "Color Revolution and Cultural Hegemony," the 6th World Socialism Forum in Beijing, China, October 16-7, 2015. "The best defense is an offence. We need to struggle against dictatorship ourselves -- the dictatorship of capital. To really fight against the color revolutions, we need a color revolution -- a color revolution of a different color. A red revolution. Remember that red is the primary color of the rainbow."

Despite my criticisms and questions, Socialist Imperative is a must-read for revolutionaries. Compared to others who look for imaginary revolutionary subjects, Lebowitz remains animated with the belief that the working class “makes itself a revolutionary subject through its struggles -- it transforms itself .... which is the simultaneous changing of circumstances and self-change. It makes itself fit to create the new world" (p. 243).

Two weeks ago Portside published an essay by Michael Brie, The Tragedy of Party Communism. Here Kurt Stand, David Cohen and Jack Radey reflect on their participation in the socialist movement, what lessons there may be to draw on, as well as which to forget. For today's and tomorrow's socialists, they see socialism as a system that could be reformed, capitalism a system that needs to be abolished.