Red, Black, and Green

This essay responds to the commentaries on the talks Stephen Healy and I delivered during the 2013 Rethinking Marxism International Conference, as well as to Healy's own talk. Rather than persisting in an understanding of left politics that is little more than a liberal emphasis on individual choice, participation, and pluralization, communists need to think and act in terms of building and exercising political power. Fortunately, we are seeing left political advances as ever more segments come together in a struggle for political power. Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, and other efforts indicate that the party remains a viable form for thinking and acting politically. It's time to take up the challenge of actively constructing a political collectivity with the will and mass to fight for an egalitarian world. The party doesn't prefigure this world but shows the gap between the world we have and the world we can desire.