Views in brief

The importance of running locally

IN RESPONSE to "Taking down the revolution?": Paul Fleckenstein's article is a well-written and thoughtful commentary on the "down-ballot" strategy. And I agree with him that if it's aimed at transforming the Democratic Party, it is a waste of time.

But on the basis of my own admittedly limited experiences, I strongly disagree with his apparent rejection of running for state and local office as a useful means of promoting political change.

In the 1990s, I ran as an independent for the office of selectman--the New England version of a municipal executive board--in Easthampton, Massachusetts. I beat a Democrat. I was re-elected in 1993, beating another Democrat. In 1996, I ran for school committee, and again I won. Both times I publicly identified as a democratic socialist in what was a relatively conservative community.

Fleckenstein says that "political revolution simply isn't on the agenda in a race for City Council or the state legislature. Indeed, the nature of these elections pushes candidates, no matter how progressive, to narrow their focus, not broaden it."

In 1991, to support Bush's war, there was a proposal to paint yellow ribbons on the local streets. The five-member select board had to approve it. I was alone in opposing it. As a result, the American Legion and VFW attended the next meeting to intimidate me. Long story short, I wasn't intimidated and stood my ground.

Attempts to recall me never got far. That certainly had the effect of broadening the focus of local politics. And as I stated earlier, I was re-elected two years later. I could cite similar, if less dramatic, examples throughout my tenure. The media gave me lots of coverage, and I was surprised to find a lot of support in town for my outspokenness and willingness to stand up for unconventional points of view. I got along well with my board colleagues on a personal level, even if I was usually out-voted by them.

Fleckenstein states that "a liberal city council member can propose to increase access to health care for the poor with a local initiative, but the only effective and lasting solution to the problem requires taking on the whole health care industry." In other words, local initiatives are pointless, and only major revolutionary transformations on a national scale have any meaning?

This is absurd on the face of it. As the cliche goes, "Think globally, act locally." A network of city officeholders pushing for increased access to health care could be the foundation of "taking on the whole health care industry." Or does he think a broad-based movement would just appear out of nowhere?

Socialists these days unfortunately have little to say about public education. But if we were to actually build a new world, it would have to start with the schools as a means of changing social consciousness, as John Dewey (a socialist) and the progressive educators of the 1930s advocated. Their ideas were dangerous enough so that McCarthy's thugs did whatever they could to crush them in the 1950s. So my tenure on the school committee was used to push in that direction. Changing the schools can only start on the state and local level.

It should be added that local electoral campaigns, which are often non-partisan, do not require large amounts of money. Social media can be quite effective and certainly cheaper than TV ads. And if one knows how to communicate in plain English (difficult for too many socialists), how to craft an effective message, how to use the mass media and how to listen to voters, local elections can be won.

I ran for Congress as an independent in 2010 against a liberal Democratic incumbent and a Tea Party Republican. That was probably ill-advised, based as it was on some false political assumptions, but I did have the chance to participate in all the debates, to promote democratic socialist perspectives in the media, and to publicly challenge the mainstream views of my opponents. Interestingly, I got the most positive responses from some of the Tea Party people!

I'm not a great example of perseverance. I resigned both of my offices just before my terms expired--I got tired, I felt isolated and I hadn't taken enough trouble to build supportive constituencies in the community. I did not accomplish what I might have with more patience, less ego and fewer personal battles. But someone who would not make the same mistakes could easily do better than I did.

Of course, my purely personal experience is hardly conclusive proof of my argument. It would be interesting to hear from other progressives and socialists who have held local office. But that said, what is really pointless is getting involved in presidential campaigns, such as the International Socialist Organization's support of Jill Stein and her truly bizarre running mate Ajamu Baraka.

So I reject Mr. Fleckenstein's disapproval of local electoral efforts, which I still believe are an excellent tool for building a foundation for revolutionary change in American politics.
Michael Engel, Ludlow, Massachusetts

What could have reigned in Assad?

IN RESPONSE to "Anti-imperialism and the Syrian revolution": This is a very good article with solid analysis, and very much a welcome response to the widespread pro-Assad dogmatism that infects a significant part of the U.S. left. Thank you for publishing it.

One point, I think, is a bit unfair. While Hillary Clinton at one point expressed a guarded hope that Bashar al-Assad would turn out to be a reformer, that hope was widely shared by Syrians, at the beginning of his taking the reins of power.

Burning Country authors Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila al-Shami discuss this phenomenon, a widespread hope that was later dashed, in their recent interview in Guernica magazine.

In truth, rightly or wrongly, the progressive Syrian-American community is largely supportive of Hillary Clinton in the upcoming U.S. presidential election. She has explicitly endorsed a no-fly zone for Syria. I think that skepticism about her intentions and willingness to deal firmly with Assad and Russia on Syria is fully warranted. But it is also understandable why the hope that she will do so is strong among Syrian-Americans and their allies.

Please keep up your great work in solidarity with the Syrian people.
Andy Berman, Minneapolis

A clarification on Gramsci's thought

THANK YOU for Todd Chretien's article "Would Gramsci be #WithHer?" In one sense, it is ridiculous that this is even a question, much less one that should be answered seriously. But I am all too familiar with U.S. Marxist proponents of the inside-outside strategy hauling out Gramsci, that leading militant of the Italian Communist Party, every four years to explain why workers and the oppressed organizing separately from capitalist interests is inappropriate.

Todd's history of Gramsci's career and explanation of The Modern Prince is excellent, but I wanted to raise my disagreement with one small point. He writes, "In order to get past the prison censors that read everything he sent from his cell, Gramsci substituted the word 'prince' for 'party.'"

Todd is not to blame for this misconception; it has been around probably since Gramsci's prison writings were made widely available. I am however with Gramsci scholar Peter Thomas on the question: Gramsci's fascist jailers knew that he was the secretary of the Communist Party. What exactly did they think he was writing? Pasta recipes?

Rather, it makes more sense to see the Prison Notebooks as, well, notebooks. Gramsci wanted to do something enduring for the party and movement he had led, but in prison he lacked most of the things he needed to make this contribution as sharp and thorough as his other writings. In particular, he didn't have access to a library, which explains many of the factual errors and vagueness of the essays. He also did not have a steady supply of paper, forcing him to write for the most part in an elliptical shorthand.

Gramsci therefore did not merely substitute "Prince" where he meant "revolutionary party." There is every reason to believe that he was deeply interested in Machiavelli's notions of political action, consensus and violence, and that he sought to draw a parallel between the Prince as the medieval subject of Italian unification and the ways that revolutionary socialists could cohere, engage the enemy and become the leaders of the Italian nation in the twentieth century. Whether he was right to do so is a separate discussion.

There is little reason to think that the Prison Notebooks we have were intended as Gramsci's final word on the wide range of subjects they address, from the construction of the revolutionary party to the history of the Catholic Church to medieval Italian literary culture. He did not, unfortunately, get the time and space he needed to provide this final word.

This makes it necessary for a Marxist learning from Gramsci to exercise extreme care and arm themselves with knowledge of modern Italian history, the course of factional fights in the Italian Communist Party, and the debates in the Comintern that Gramsci's thought emerged from, especially on the united front.

Of course, on the other hand, many in the classical Marxist tradition who had the ability to write more plainly than Gramsci have been made to say things they would find quite strange. George Orwell was wrong to write in Politics of the English Language that clear, precise writing is a sufficient defense against misinterpretation.

Regardless, I'm glad to see more discussion in Socialist Worker of Gramsci, who is much more cited (and misquoted) by activists than he is read. In solidarity,
Bill Crane, Greenville, South Carolina

Private property and Russia 1917

IN RESPONSE to "Reaching out for freedom with their own hands": I appreciate the general message of this article and the information given regarding the theories and writings of Draper, Marx, and Engels is very pertinent and effective.

I am concerned however that the following passage may mislead readers: "Some countries, such as the USSR and China, which were otherwise repressive and undemocratic in the extreme, claimed to be socialist by virtue of having abolished private ownership of property." It is understood that the proceeding statement merely repeats the claims of the states in question, but in doing so without challenge, there is an implication that private property was actually abolished in the cases mentioned.

Leaving the question of China aside for the time being, I think it's important that readers know that private property was never abolished in the Soviet Union. Peasant farmers kept their property and as a result, there grew a system of ever more concentrated wealth and property within that class. I believe this is one factor in the ultimate failure of the revolution.

I'm not an expert on these matters but it seems to me that the notion that private property was abolished in the Soviet Union is a pernicious falsehood and although I don't believe this article intended to propagate it, I think it does so. I'm only writing this because I have great respect for the International Socialist Organization and SocialistWorker.org, and I know they would want to get this right.
Gabriel Zacuto, California