Socialist Action /September 2000
'50 Years of Fun on the Road to Socialism'
By HAYDEN PERRY
The following is a talk by Hayden Perry at a
1986 celebration of 50 years of service to the socialist movement by Perry
and 12 other socialist workers.
As I round out 50 years of activity in the socialist
movement and find the goal of a socialist America still some way down the
road, I am reminded of the slogan the Cunard Steamship Company used to lure
passengers onto their ships. Their ads proclaimed, "Getting there is
half the fun."
Getting there is half the fun I found when I started
on the class- struggle road to socialism many years ago. It is a journey
I can recommend to young workers who want more than a life of drudgery,
boredom, and nagging fear.
Right at the start of that journey to socialism
the travelers will be relieved of a heavy burden: the burden to "succeed"
in the bourgeois sense. That is, to accumulate wealth and status by climbing
on the backs of their fellow workers. The chance of a worker gaining wealth
and status is about equal to his or her chances of winning big in the state
lottery. Yet workers are failures in the eyes of bourgeois society if they
do not climb out of the working class.
Not so for socialists. They do not want to rise
out of the working class-but to rise with it. For the working class is inevitably
going to rise and take power out of the hands of the capitalist class. This
will be success, not for just a few, but for the vast majority of humankind.
On the class-struggle road, young workers will
not have to keep up with the Joneses. They won't worry that they can't find
any prominent people in their family trees. They won't care if their car
is the oldest on the block. They won't have to push their neighbors aside
to reach that "place in the sun."
Instead they will be concerned that everyone can
emerge from the shadows. It is far more fun to pull people up than to push
them down. This is especially true when their neighbors are Black or brown.
Freed of the burden of race prejudice and other
forms of chauvinism, socialist workers travel farther and faster. And how
much pleasanter is the journey when women and men of every race share their
company.
As they travel the road to socialism, the workers
will find their horizons widening. They may be residents of the United States,
but they will truly become citizens of the world. They will gain a world
view that transcends the narrow boundaries of American nationalism. Workers'
victories in the most remote corners of the world will excite them as much
as events at home.
Like the rest of their class, socialist workers
have to trudge that weary road to work. Work, under capitalism, is usually
boring, tedious, and tiring. Only fear of starvation drives many workers
back to the factory day after day. For socialist workers, however, a day
on the job can be fun. Here is the primary arena of the class struggle,
where workers fight for higher pay, for better working conditions, for job
security.
As the best soldiers in this fight, the socialists
are in the front lines of the almost daily skirmishes to wrest concessions
from the boss and to defend their fellow workers. A little victory, or sometimes
a small defeat, enlivens the day and counters the monotony of the job.
From time to time the small skirmishes expand to
a full-fledged war as the entire plant walks out on strike. Then socialists
feel the exhilaration of pitting organized labor's strength against corporate
might-and winning. Even if they lose, socialist workers do not become demoralized.
They know it is only a single battle in a far broader war that is yet to
be fought.
Most workers have not gone to college, but in the
revolutionary socialist party they will find a university that will prepare
them for the most important job on earth-helping to lead the workers' movement
that will win the final battle. It is a school which does not offer prestige
degrees, but presents some of the profoundest concepts of the world's greatest
thinkers-and also how to design and print a leaflet. He or she will become
a modern Renaissance person.
Young workers will find the revolutionary party
the most indispensable vehicle on the road to socialism. It marks out the
route through all the twists and turns of the class struggle. In the party,
young workers find the warm relationships and sense of personal worth that
the cold capitalist world so often denies us. Traveling with the party,
they will never feel alone in a hostile world.
Finally the party will reinforce their conviction
that they are on the right road. There is little fun on the capitalist road,
and nuclear annihilation at the end. I have found 50 years of fun on the
road to socialism. I invite every worker to join me on the most vital journey
humanity can take.
Socialist Action /September 2000 |