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The version of the paper published here is heavily edited for length. The full version, along with citations, a bibliography and a syllabus for study groups, is available; for a copy and/or to be put in touch with the author and other activists in Wisconsin Citizen Action, write Organizing Upgrade at info@organizingupgrade.com.

You might as well imagine a large red flag fluttering from the summit of Mount Everest. That’s what the outcome of the parliamentary and provincial elections in Nepal suggests. The Communists have won both decisively.

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Many Portside readers follow developments in the international socialist movement, including recent developments in South Africa. Here is the declaration from the recently concluded Congress of the South African Communist Party. Some readers may find it a hopeful sign of the SACP's returning to its role as a critical partner in the governing coalition with COSATU in the governing coalition. Others may feel that the SACP is not being critical enough. What do you think?

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Americans have largely forgotten the anti-Communist sentiment from decades past. Anti-communism has been a powerful force for over 150 years. American communism has always been racialized. When Jim Crow laws banned interracial organization, the Communist Party was the only group that dared to flout the rule. Socialists and Communists in the South in the 1930s fought both economic and racial inequality - an important lessor for today's developing socialist movement.

Bernie Sanders is campaigning on behalf of the 99 percent against the 1 percent. And, he is getting lots of supports, drawing thousands to his campaign rallies. Sanders is not running an explicit socialist campaign for public or worker ownership of major firms. Sanders's socialist values underpin his argument that the economy should serve the needs of the people and be governed not by corporate oligarchs, but by democratic means.

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It would be very healthy for a democratic socialist to press the flesh, meet ordinary folks, let them see what a socialist looks like, what socialism stands for. Now we have a socialist doing that. Bernie Sanders is off and running, to huge and enthusiastic crowds. The campaign is sharpening the differences, functioning as a pole of attraction to bring together a mass popular alliance that is a key aspect of a strategy for taking power away from the corporate rulers...

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