I would even consider rethinking workers and work. A work of art engages. Working on an assembly line destroys the human heart and soul.

Wealth is an issue under colonization whereby access to common wealth is privatized. The wealth sucked out of the marrow of the earth to produce material goods that do not satify human needs, but enriches only a few, is the crux of our economics. It is a powerful narrative which requires an alternative. Not because the alternative will be seen and seized today but because when what IS collapses there will be a need for alternative form of survival.

Tension between individualism and collectivism will co-exist but it can only be a balanced and healthy tension if it is on a human scale. The nation-state as we know it, or as exemplified by the USA empire, is incapable of providing the sanctuary for this tension.

At bottom we have to think this thing called human life is salvagable, if peace is something natural rather than simply a rest between war. The conflicts that plague the global are based on access to resources (land, water, etc.). Imperial wars stem from the same source but are based on a monopolistic struggle. Nature abors monopolies which is why all empires are doomed from the get go.

Here’s what I think: within the context of the expansionist US drive, was a great community center whereby problems and solutions and the provision of care was integral to the daily way of life. Over time, and through the industrialization of every aspect of our lives we lost that community. We reduced direct participatory democracy of community to represenational democracy which is literally handing over individual and community power to one person. That process continued until all power was evacuated from the community and given to Washington DC. We handed over the role of community to social services which have one-size fits all solutions and cannot provide care. Only community can do that.

There is an archeological community buried within us needing to be re-invigorated and made whole. It is not about “empowerment”; it is about shared community power; taking back the power that we, each, gave to representatives and senators who, once elected, assume the role of Authority. We become peons to be pandered to as needed to keep those in “power” in power.

Our problems are not solved by a set of processes or systems or schisms, but by core prinicples, and emergence through co-creation of our communities – on a living human scale.

The top bottom differentation is the key to successful organizing. Our news magazine has become very popular (over 40,000 readers a month) with people who consider themselves members of both parties. Effective change begins at home on the local scene. We expose government corruption, corporate misdeeds and generally raise hell with the powers that be. We have had considerable impact. We also have a long way to go.

One of the failures of past worker driven progressive attempts is that they have not included small business owners. Small business is beginning to see corporate power as the enemy as well. A society needs independent (capitalist) small business owners as much as it needs worker owned larger enterprises. When you say socialist to a small businessman he thinks of the little property and inventory he has being taken and runs into the arms of the right. Craftsman, merchants and traders will always be needed and need to have the ability to take a risk and get a return, just the same as factories owned by workers.

Events will drive change but only those who have a plan and some organizational capacity will be able to give some steerage. As much as I hate to say it, Milton Friedman was right, “when a crises happens, people pick up whatever ideas are handy.”

“The People’s democratic dictatorship needs the leadership of the working class. For it is only the working class that is most far-sighted, most selfless and most thoroughly revolutionary. The entire history of revolution proves that without the leadership of the working class revolution fails and that with the leadership of the working class revolution triumphs.” -Mao Zedong

“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the World Unite!” -Karl Marx

Hello all: What USA needs is a socialist united party, that would work as a vehicle in which the masses, the majority of americans who would like a real social, democratic system in USA for workers, by workers and in favor of workers and people, would have an organization in which to caste their votes every 4 years. However there is a catch-22 with this solution. The catch-22 problem is that the USA corporate fascist system thru the media and its other evil things it has, will not permit a United Socialist Democratic party. The media apparatus would denounce it as a cult or an evil organization, and would spread dirty propaganda against it, just like it did and it has done many times against Ron Paul, Howard Dean and now against Obama.

But We first need: An educational-propaganda campaign

In order to create a third united socialist party we would first of all need an educational campaign in order to spread knowledge to the masses about the evils of capitalism, fascism and imperialism and the only alternative to it is participative democratic socialism. The American masses are real confused and ignorant about how the world works. Trying to wake up the masses from their delirium would pose us as a threat. I read the biography of Hugo Chavez and that’s how he started his political program in order to change Venezuela. He first tried to wake up Venezuelan poors about the evils of neoliberalism, he talked about the importance of teaching the masses about capitalism vs. socialism. And then when Venezuelan’s poors learned about capitalism, Chavez started to do his thing (To overthrow the fascist capitalist venezuela system)
And here in USA we gotta do the same thing that Chavez did, teach the US poor for some months or years what is capitalism and what is socialism before trying to do form any political party. Almost nobody in USA have taught the masses the evils of neoliberalism, not even Kucinich, Ron Paul or any other candidate. Ron Paul was the only one who talked about the US constitution and nobody listened to him, because he didn’t teach the masses about the evils of capitalism, because of the fact that Ron Paul was a capitalist, not a real alternative for poor people. Only socialist and marxists parties do that in USA and they don’t get much coverage in TV. So before starting a third party, i suggest to spend some months or years trying to teach the poor people of America about the evils of capitalism and the wonders of a participative democratic socialist system, a people’s system

Mr. Kelley – A thoughtful piece, thank you. I’d just like to turn your attention to a portion of one of your early sentences:

“…and while denying rights to women, slaves and the landless, certainly recognized the necessity of both individual freedom and collective responsibility.”

Well, while some of the “Founders” may have been deeply troubled by slavery, they were collectively sanguine about forming a new nation in which a significant portion ( perhaps 1/7) of the population was legally considered to be nothing more than property.
They also excluded from the social and political process – women of all races and colors, all Indians, all people of color, and all white males without serious money and property. These folks, in a political and social sense, were “unpersons,” with virtually zero control over their own lives.

Who is left?
Rich, powerful white guys. The country was designed to be owned and controlled by rich, powerful white guys, almost exclusively concerned with their own liberty, their own rights, their own opportunities, their own, their own… And, obviously their design was a good one, for the country is STILL controlled by such folks – and their sycophants, such as Obama and Oprah, et al. Such folks DO have considerable rights and opportunities… ( lots of “individual freedom” ), while the rest of us are still… unpersons ( with lots of “collective responsibility.” )

One can search long and hard for a government – any government, anywhere, which actually cares about the needs and desires of its ordinary citizens. This is because, methinks, governments have never been designed with ordinary folks in mind. Governments seek to preserve, and whenever, however possible – to enhance the power and wealth of the already powerful and wealthy, while simultaneously attempting to convince the rest of us that the converse is true.

I’m inclined to agree with Max Shields: Screw the old schisms; screw capitalism and socialism, screw governments as we’ve always known and understood them… Everything must be re-examined, rethought, and most of what we know – discarded. You and Max and Evie and all of us are infinitely more than what these social and economic systems are able to recognize or accept.

Presently, we all live in a gulag, or like caged cattle to be preyed upon by our owners / eaters. We’re not who we think we are because we’ve never been free, never even seen freedom… We don’t need the old “founders,” and we don’t need new “founders.” We need each other. We need to respect and care for each other despite the fact that we’re all supremely fucked up… Somehow, we need to see “through” all this dreadful, anti-human programming and propaganda, to the good people that lie underneath. But, I admit, I don’t know how, except to begin where I am, in the midst of these people, these circumstances, this little corner of the planet…

That “wrapped” coalition/federation would of course be led by pretty much the same line of folks who run the show now.

We have EU, AU (Africam Union), recently the SAU (South American Union) and possibly NAU coming (Americanamex).

Onward one world plantation empire. Our union or regional “deciders” eventually so far removed we won’t know who to credit or blame for all that expansive democracy.

I would re-constitute the USA into non-existence. We’d address North America – Canada and Mexico and United States and divvy up into 9 or more regional areas with self-governance. these could be “wrapped” into a coalition or federation much like EU but reflecting an envigorated culture and sustainble economics (something we have by default and its pretty murderous).

The old schisms and top-down, left/right dichotomies need to be rethought – tossed out. This issue of individual rights and collective or community well-being can readily be synthesized. It only becomes an endless conversation when we stay within the nation-state paradigm that has become totally unworkable in terms of participatory democracy and self-governance that matches the needs of local indigenous peoples (I know we can argue indigenousness of the residents, but we are traveled at one time or another from some other place).

Screw socialism and capitalism. They’ve been killing us ever since we tried to make use of them. Re-invent an economics which may or may not use elements of so-called socialism and capitalism without dwelling on the horrid legacy (socialism as it was tainted by the Soviet Union and capitalism as it’s destructive preditoriness dominated the globe in endless war and destruction).

Is it possible? Not if we keep swashing around with McCain/Obama and the Repub/Dem parties and DC as villian/saint. That’s deadend thinking.

The Declaration of Independence is nothing if we just stay with this nation-state which is beyond anything the DoI addresses. Also, remember this was an expansionist empire for its inception. So while the DoI is a radical document it is there mostly for posterity rather than governance. It’s a great reference but so far inadequate.