I’ve been writing these May Day sermons for, it must be, fifteen years now. I haven’t the courage to look back at all of them to see how my politics have changed over those years; all I know is that it’s been a change for the better, and that I would surely be embarrassed at what my younger self must have thought possible, let alone desirable. But I am certain that the times have changed in a way that I could never have anticipated. I was quite young when I started turning left, and if there was ever a time that I thought of capitalism or its national embodiment in the country where I was born and raised was ever a force for good, it surely must have been when I was not much more than a child. Capitalism and nationalism, indeed, are childish notions, selfish and immature and based on an outlook of patriarchy and arbitrary order, of a simplistic conception of the world as a place where sharing is a sign of weakness and loss and cause for a tantrum.
But if I took a long time in catching up with the reality of what the world is, the world has begun catching up with me. When I was a teenager, I sat in my economics class and watched my teacher and my classmates alike laugh in open contempt as I tried to articulate why I thought it was wrong for the American air force to bomb Tripoli and kill dozens in an act of reckless vengeance; the old man who taught the class, who had been riled before at my pro-union sentiments, called me a communist, the words worming out of his yellowed teeth like rot. I was radicalized in the waning days of the left, during the decline of the labor movement, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in the last moments when the Democrats represented anything like a labor party that stood for ordinary Americans instead of the more benevolent segment of the ruling class. It was a difficult time to believe in socialism, and I spent a lot of years in the wilderness, running with black blocs here and there and organizing where I could, but never really finding a home and worrying that I never would.
Cut to today: a socialist is running for president of the United States, and he’s got a pretty good chance of winning. I have a leadership position in a socialist organization of nearly 60,000 members — the largest in a century — and it’s growing every day; one of our members, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was just elected to the United States Senate, and is one of the most popular politicians in America. The city I live in, once a hotbed of anarchist and communist activity, awakened from a long sleep and elected not one, but six socialists to its city council, including my own alderman, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa. Issues that were once thought unmentionable in American political discourse — universal health care, prison abolition, decarbonization, debt abolition, and public ownership of industry — have made their way into mainstream discourse. Even as the traditional unions decay, new industries are unionizing under more radical leadership, and strikes and direct actions have achieved stunning results. Leftist movements are springing up all over the country, and internationally as well.
Of course, the reason for this upsurge in leftist activity is because there has been a concomitant rise in rightist and fascist organizing. Our president, while too clownish and comfortable to be a true fascist, at the very least enables the worst elements of the right; right-wing violence and terrorism is becoming an almost weekly occurrence; racism and anti-Semitism are out in the open in a way not seen in decades; the police are militarized and the military abets the growth of the police state; and gangs of white supremacist hoodlums roam the streets, emboldened by a new political respectability. Nascent socialist movements are under attack everywhere: Bernie Sanders, despite being the frontrunner in the presidential race, is daily vilified by right-wingers and mainstream Democrats alike; Jeremy Corbyn, the leftist leader of the UK’s Labour Party and likely the country’s next prime minister, is routinely vilified and smeared; and America continues its tradition of overthrowing inconvenient governments by backing a coup attempt in socialist Venezuela against the will of its people. Our victories have come hard, and they will come even harder as climate change causes elites to panic and direct violence at the populations who will suffer the most from its effects.
But this acceleration will not just throw roadblocks in our path; it will provide us with unprecedented opportunities. As the contradictions become starker, socialists will find more and more allies among those who previously had everything to lose. Wages and job security are in precipitous decline and show no sign of slowing; debt grows like cancer; and the odds of the current generation being able to stop working (assuming there’s a planet left when they reach retirement age) before they die are increasingly slim. People who once thought themselves entitled to something resembling the mythical American Dream are finding that if it was ever anything but an illusion, it is now light-years beyond their reach. There will soon be nowhere to hide from climate change, and the diminishing middle ground between the very rich and the very poor will soon vanish entirely. Even those who currently enjoy some privilege and position in society are about to discover that they can be, and will be, replaced. People who don’t even know that we exist will soon be our allies as the learn that they will never be members of the elite and there are only so many jobs available for executioners. The working class will win, because the vast majority of us are among it, even those who are just beginning to realize it.
The work has already begun, comrades. The fight is already happening, whether you know it or not, and it will soon be at your doorstep; the sooner you join it, the sooner victory will come.