Lenin the often insightful analyst and leader of the Russian revolution said that politics begins where there are millions. Over the past month we saw the materialization of that observation as the politics of racism and anti-racism commanded the attention of the world, energized millions and turned politics as we had know it upside down.
In such moments, Lenin also would say that the challenge for activists is to turn a spontaneous uprising (any uprising that reaches the scale of millions has a spontaneous element to it) into a durable social movement able to combine and move from one to another form of struggle, as conditions change and new opportunities arise.
The guy wasn’t perfect, far from it. But, to use an old expression of my parent’s generation, he was no slouch.
Written by
Sam Webb
I'm a long-time socialist and activist, but new to the blogging world. I hope to bring a different perspective on politics, sports, culture, and Marxism. Besides blogging, I also leave plenty of time for swimming, hiking, ESPN, music, reading, drinking good beer, and, not least, my family and friends. I wish I could play basketball, but my knees ruled out that possibility long ago.
While I currently reside in New York, my politically formative years were spent in Portland, Me. and Detroit during the 1970s and 1980s. I graduated from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia (where I played basketball) and received a MA in economics from the University of Connecticut.
I was the national chairperson of the Communist Party, USA from 2000 until 2014 when I stepped down at the convention. In 2016 I resigned from the Communist Party two years later. We were no longer on the same page.
