The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.59/No.40           October 30, 1995 
 
 
Socialism: A Future Worth Fighting For  

BY FARRELL DOBBS

The following is the concluding portion of a speech given in 1966 by Farrell Dobbs, a longtime leader of the communist movement in the United States. It is reprinted from the June 1975 issue of the Young Socialist.

Dobbs (1907-1983), joined the Communist League of America (predecessor of the Socialist Workers Party) in 1934 while working in a Minneapolis coal yard. A rank-and-file leader of the 1934 Teamsters strikes and organizing drive, he was subsequently elected secretary-treasurer of Local 574 (later 544). In the late 1930s he was a central leader of the 11-state over-the-road campaign that organized tens of thousands of workers in the trucking industry. In 1939 he was appointed general organizer for the Teamsters international; he resigned the post in 1940 to become SWP national labor secretary.

In 1941 Dobbs was indicted and convicted with 17 other leaders of Local 544 and of the SWP under the thought- control Smith Act for their opposition to the imperialist aims of the U.S. government in World War II. He spent 12 months in federal prison in 1944-45.

Dobbs served as editor of the Militant from 1943 to 1948. He was SWP national chairman from 1949 to 1953, and national secretary from 1953 to 1972. He was the party's candidate for president in 1948, 1952, 1956, and 1960, using these campaigns to actively oppose the Korean and Vietnam wars, the anticommunist witch-hunt, and to support the civil rights movement and the Cuban revolution.

In addition to his four-volume series on the Teamster battles of the 1930s (see ad below), he is author of Revolutionary Continuity: Marxist Leadership in the United States.

We must be constantly aware of the key role of the United States in the world. United States imperialism is today the powerhouse of world reaction, as the war in Vietnam is abundantly demonstrating.

It is an iron fact that until capitalism is overturned here in the United States of America, the gang of imperialist mad dogs that rule this country are going to remain a mortal threat to all humankind. We must never forget that.

The showdown battle
That means the showdown battle for world socialism is going to be fought right here in the United States of America. And when the revolutionary victory is won, outlived, decadent capitalism is going to disappear literally overnight from the face of our planet. Humanity is going to march forward to the building of an enlightened socialist society where people for the first time can really live together on this planet in peace and in security and with freedom. Humanity will finally realize the type of rewarding life that human intelligence is so abundantly capable of making, even at the present level of technological development. Once humanity learns how to conduct itself politically, organizationally, and socially, it can take advantage of these wonders.

That's what we dedicate our lives to. We of the party, we revolutionaries in the United States - acting as best we can in solidarity with the revolutionary fighters across the world - must always keep in mind that in the last analysis the fate of humanity rests on the socialist revolution in the United States. Our task is to build a party capable of leading that revolution, going up against the most heinous of the reactionary, monstrous ruling class regimes that exist on the face of this planet: the imperialist ruling class of the United States.

Now the road ahead in that struggle is going to be strewn with obstacles, and there are going to be many pitfalls. There's no roadmap, no way you can find some kind of a detailed handbook that's going to tell you what to do at each juncture. Our task is to chart a revolutionary course, based on a fundamental understanding of our program - a basic feel of our revolutionary strategy - and to hammer out the tactics in that direction as we go along.

There's no timetable. Nobody can say how long it's going to take or when it's going to happen. I personally feel that those of you sitting in this room today, who have got all your youth going for you, have got at least Damon Runyon's six-to-five(1) chance of seeing that explosion. I personally believe that.

But in saying so I want to add immediately: don't make that a criterion. Don't adopt the criterion that the revolutionary change must happen in your time. Don't take as a guide to your personal life that narrow, provincial, self- centered notion that if it doesn't happen during the time of your own subjective existence on this planet, it's not important.

Always remember that history is magnificently indifferent to the problems of the individual. History doesn't care whether you die at six or live to be seven hundred years old, if that were possible, or what happens during your particular life time. As Goethe(2) once said, "History marches like a drunken beggar on horseback."

A lot can happen during your limited life span, or you can live a dull life. Some people have had the good fortune to live more life in a year than others at a different historical juncture could live in their whole lifetime. Or, as Plekhanov(3) once put it, "If it hadn't been for the French Revolution, Napoleon would probably have ended up as a corporal in the French artillery."

Don't make it a condition that the socialist revolution must come in your lifetime. Be not only a citizen of the planet; be a citizen of time. Recognize that what is fundamental is to be in rapport with the human race from the dawn of history on to the heights that we can only vaguely begin to dream of.

And what's the alternative? The alternative is to make a compromise with this rotten capitalist system. Do you know what people who do that are like? You remember the play, The Devil and Daniel Webster?(4) Jabez Stone, you know, sold his soul to Scratch, the devil. He did so on the promise that his personal ambitions would thus be served. Later he regretted the action and asked to have his soul returned. Scratch, who was played by Walter Huston, that magnificent actor, finally said all right, he'd give it back.

So Scratch took a small matchbox from his pocket. He opened the box and began poking around in it with his stubby finger trying to find the mean little soul of Jabez Stone to give it back to him.

That's symbolic of what you do to your own soul if you make a compromise with this rotten system.

Stand in the front ranks
Our job is to build a movement of men and women who emulate the seasoned fighters of the Continental line in the first American Revolution. Learn to be professional revolutionary fighters. Don't be summer soldiers. Don't dawdle; don't vacillate. Put nothing above the considerations of the movement. Maintain your place in the front ranks of the revolutionary fighters, and stand in that place for the duration.

There is no other way in which you can find so rich, so rewarding, so fruitful, and so purposeful a life.

1 Damon Runyon (1884-1946) was a U.S. author, among whose most famous writings is the short story on which the musical Guys and Dolls was based.

2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was a prominent German poet, novelist, and playwright.

3 George Plekhanov (1856-1918) was the founder of Russian Marxism and the teacher of Lenin, Trotsky, and many other Russian revolutionary figures. Plekhanov later degenerated, supporting the czarist government in World War I and opposing the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.

4 The Devil and Daniel Webster is a screenplay based on the 1937 short story of the same name by Stephen Vincent Benét.

 
 
 
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