Changing Attitudes Towards Socialism: A New Years Editorial from Return to the Source

Although the concept of generations is often abused by idealist historians in lieu of a materialist analysis of great changes in society, there is an element of truth in the idea that a common set of world experiences influence the beliefs and actions of young people. In the Western world, the ruling class goes to great lengths to ‘disprove’ socialism – and more specifically Marxism-Leninism – with all manner of distortions, lies, and falsehoods. With a near monopoly on news media and academia, they have successfully waged an ideological battle against socialism to accompany physical state repression of revolutionaries in the United States and Western Europe.

However, their efforts are not always successful, and at many times in history, young people from the working class and the universities have seen through the propaganda and recognize the achievements of the world socialist revolutions. They use these revolutions and experiences as inspiration for their own struggle against the imperialist ruling class in their own country, and they draw strength through international solidarity with oppressed people in other countries who win their freedom through revolution.

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The Wheat from the Chaff: Ultra-Left Hysterics and the 2012 US Elections

“Hope is in the people’s struggles, Change is in the streets” starts here.

**For the entirety of this piece, “we” should be taken to mean the authors of Return to the Source, and not the FRSO. In other words, this is not an official statement of the FRSO.**

A little under a week ago, Return to the Source reposted an editorial by the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) about the 2012 US Presidential elections. We felt that the editorial, entitled “The 2012 presidential election: In the midst of economic hard times, hope is in the people’s struggles, change is in the streets,” was an outstanding analysis of the current conditions facing people’s movements in the United States and the need to build revolutionary power outside of the ballot box. In other words, we read the whole editorial.

FRSO’s position is “that no matter how hopeful we are for change to come through electoral politics, this is not the venue for real change.” (1) Both the Democrats and Republicans are imperialist parties of the 1%, and elections are generally political events bought and paid for by corporations and banks, in which the candidate with the most money wins. FRSO’s editorial ends by saying:

During this particular election cycle progressives should emphasize and talk about the problems inherent in the system, while placing demands on politicians from both parties. Our faith and our future are in the people’s struggle, not the ballot box.

Suffice to say, many other left groups and blogs – ranging from the left-refoundationists at the Kasama Project to the Trotskyites at Marxist update – did not share our view. Rather than engaging with the entirety of FRSO’s editorial, these critics and detractors zeroed in on a single sentence near the end of the second-to-last paragraph, which is underlined below: