Sunday, January 29, 2023
From: "Charles Brown" (via marxism-thaxis Mailing List)
To: marxism-thaxis@lists.riseup.net
Subject: [marxism-thaxis] Aptheker founding C of C
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2020 19:04:01 -0400
Herbert Aptheker>
http://garnet.berkeley.edu:3333/.left/CoC/.conference/.plenaft/aptheker.html
We meet not to mourn but to organize by Herbert Aptheker We have experienced
devastating blows to the Left. The incessant attacks from the imperialist world were
damaging but not decisive. The anti-humanist qualities of that world made resistance...
We meet not to mourn
but to organize
by Herbert Aptheker
We have experienced devastating blows to the Left. The
incessant attacks from the imperialist world were damaging but not
decisive. The anti-humanist qualities of that world made
resistance inevitable. That resistance was embodied in the
socialist vision. Alas, it helped produce not a fulfillment of that
vision but finally the nightmare embodied in the term "Stalinism."
The nightmare was a distorted response to the horrors of
imperialism _ its wars, with mountains of dead, its colonialism, with
oceans of insults and tears, its intensified racism with its fearful
suffering.
The anti-human system remains, but it is senile. Here at the
capstone of that system, in 1990, the 20 percent of the population
of the world's richest countries had 80 times greater wealth than
the 20 percent of the poorest. If one compares the richest and
poorest 20 percent of the world's people, the income differential is
150 times greater.
This inequality is at the root of the turmoil characterizing the
globe.
That turmoil, resulting from exploitation, will end only when
the exploitation is terminated. Reactionary policies, from
Reaganism to fascism, do not resolve the contradiction; rather,
they intensify it. Liberal policies, while preferable in human terms,
at best palliate the crisis; at best they postpone grappling with the
roots of the crisis.
Only radical policies confront the root of the crisis; indeed,
radical means getting to the sources.
Awareness of the human suffering induces a radical
therapy. From Joe Hill to Debs to Gurley Flynn, to Robeson to Du
Bois, this has been the clarion call _ don't mourn, organize.
For this reason we meet. And we meet with experiences
behind us. These experiences have included matchless heroism
and accurate diagnoses and important _ if partial _ advances
They have included also, alas, dogmatism, sectarianism, rigidity,
even fanaticism. The goal, let us never forget, is a humane social
order; it cannot be reached by rigidity, not to speak of cruelty.
I believe that all with a common goal of a society
characterized by the absence of poverty, racism, divisiveness
and the presence of sufficiency, dignity and beauty must
comprehend that such a goal requires radical therapy.
Attempts to maintain exploitative and inhuman social orders
in the name of conservatism eventually end in fascism. Attempts to
alleviate the worst excesses of such a social order may reduce
them but will never remove them. Eventually, they, too, because
they do not succeed, may yield to a policy of blood and iron.
Only a commitment to transform such a social order can
really succeed in that goal. Such a commitment requires unity
among those committed to the goal. Such unity, in turn, requires a
repudiation of dogmatism, a welcoming of allies, a democratic
practice. Only a democratic practice can eventuate into a
democratic society.
That society will mean an absence of exploitation and
domination; equality not domination; equality of all, both sexes, all
nationalities, all religions and no religion. Such a society will
consider violence _ let alone war _ as anachronistic. Such a
society will witness the flowering of the arts, of science, of
humanistic behavior. Such a society will be civilized living
together of liberated women and men.
Such a society is worth a lifetime of commitment. Such a
society should be our goal. Our behavior in striving for such a
society must coincide with the quality of life we collectively seek
to create.
To participate in the effort to reach such a goal is the
ultimate purpose of life. Let us vigorously, joyously, incessantly,
defiantly, help create a truly human social order.
Address of Herbert Aptheker, historian, author and
organizer.
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