FROM: New Poll: Nearly Half of Americans Don’t Know What America’s 250th Is Celebrating | Cato at Liberty Blog

...

Capitalism and Socialism

Capitalism (52%) is viewed somewhat more favorably than socialism (37%) among Americans generally. But people are evenly divided on socialism, with equal shares who are favorable (37%) as unfavorable (37%). A fifth (21%) have a favorable view of communism.

Gen Z stands out for having more people who like socialism (53%) than capitalism (45%). More than a third of Americans under 30 (38%) say they have a favorable view of communism. This means that nearly as many Gen Z Americans have a favorable view of communism (38%) as capitalism (45%). Moreover, Gen Z is the only age group with a more favorable than unfavorable view of communism (38% favorable, 36% unfavorable).

Each successive generation becomes less supportive of socialism and communism and somewhat more supportive of capitalism. For instance, while 53% of 18–29-year-olds like socialism, only 37% of 45–64-year-olds and 23% of seniors have a favorable view of it. And while 38% of Gen Z like communism, this drops to 29% among 30–44-year-old millennials, to 19% among 45–54-year-olds, to 13% among 55–64-year-olds, and only 5% among the nation’s seniors. Support for capitalism increases with successive generations, but less so: about half of Americans under 65 have a favorable view of capitalism compared to 64% among seniors.

The survey also found the “Democratic Socialist” label can both help and harm a candidate. About 4 in 10 (39%) said they’d be more likely to vote for such a candidate, 40% said they’d be less likely, and 22% weren’t sure either way. Democrats (61%), Liberals (64%), and Gen Z (51%) reported they’d be more likely to vote for a candidate with the Democratic Socialist label. This helps illuminate recent wins by candidates using the Democratic Socialists of America label in Democratic primaries over the past few weeks. 

How the German Left Party is trying to curb the radicalisation of the youth - World Socialist Web Site

In the 1990s, the Left Party’s predecessor, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), had positioned itself at the forefront of the outrage over the industrial and social cutbacks in former Stalinist East Germany (GDR), only to then continue those cutbacks in East German state governments and in Berlin. In the 2000s, the PDS merged with a wing of the SPD to form Die Linke, in order to channel resistance against Agenda 2010—the social cuts of the SPD-Green federal government—which it then itself implemented at state level.

The result of this deceitful policy was the rise of the AfD. Many voters turned their backs in disgust on the Left Party, which was implementing right-wing policies under an umbrella of left-wing phraseology. The right-wing demagogues of the AfD were able to present themselves as an anti-establishment party. Now, in the face of a new wave of radicalisation, the Left Party is attempting to repeat this shabby manoeuvre once again.

The party executive presented a key motion to the party conference, which—with a few amendments—was adopted by a large majority. As we wrote on the WSWS, it combines criticism of social conditions with policies that are compatible with those of the Merz government—and, in some respects, the AfD. If one cuts through the mist of left-wing rhetoric, the key motion reveals itself to be a pro-capitalist, nationalist document that defends the interests of the ruling elites.

The AfD is set to win the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania due in September. The Left Party is responding by aligning itself even more closely with Chancellor Merz’s CDU, the SPD and other bourgeois parties, which have paved the way for the AfD through cuts to social services, anti-immigrant rhetoric and militarism. In Saxony and Thuringia, the Left Party is already supporting CDU-led minority governments. Now it wants to join such governments itself, describing this as a policy of “anti-fascist alliances.”

At the party conference, leading members performed a balancing act to reconcile the radical sentiments of younger delegates with this right-wing orientation. The media stood on the sidelines as watchdogs, shouting “foul” every time a red line was crossed.

...

The Left Party, as the Potsdam party congress has once again demonstrated, was, is and remains a bastion of the capitalist order. Fascism, war and social cuts can only be stopped by a movement of the international working class that is independent of all established parties and fights for a socialist perspective. This is the policy of the Socialist Equality Party and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality.

AUDIOBOOK (Part one): My Life: An Attempt at an Autobiography by Leon Trotsky

TEXT: Leon Trotsky: My Life (1930) (MARXISTS.ORG)

YOUTUBE	MARXISTS.ORG
00:00	Foreword
16:53	Preface to the Norwegian Edition (1935)
26:15	I. Yanovka
01:24:28	II. Our Neighbors and My First School
01:57:42	III. Odessa: My Family and My School
02:39:10	IV. Books and Early Conflicts
03:23:54	V. Country and Town
03:56:24	VI. The Break
04:19:31	VII. My First Revolutionary Organization
04:43:33	VIII. My First Prisons
05:05:10	IX. My First Exile
05:26:26	X. My First Escape
05:43:26	XI. An Immigrant for the First Time
06:01:10	XII. The Party Congress and the Split
06:35:07	XIII. The Return to Russia
06:56:54	XIV. The Year 1905
07:24:39	XV. Trial, Exile, Escape
07:58:17	XVI. My Second Foreign Exile: German Socialism
08:39:08	XVII. Preparing for a New Revolution
09:07:47	XVIII. The Beginning of the War
09:28:31	XIX. Paris and Zimmerwald
09:49:03	XX. My Expulsion from France
10:01:39	XXI. Through Spain
10:29:08	XXII. New York
10:50:01	XXIII. In A Concentration Camp
11:05:20	XXIV. In Petrograd
11:32:56	XXV. Concerning Slanderers

Results and Prospects, 7. The Pre-Requisites of Socialism

Marxism converted socialism into a science, but this does not prevent some ‘Marxists’ from converting Marxism into a Utopia.

Rozhkov, arguing against the programme of socialization and co-operation, presents the ‘necessary pre-requisites of the future society, firmly laid down by Marx’, in the following way: ‘Are there already present,’ asks Rozhkov, ‘the material objective pre-requisites, consisting of such a development of technique as would reduce the motive of personal gain and concern for cash [?], personal effort, enterprise and risk, to a minimum, and which would thereby make social production a front-rank question? Such a level of technique is most closely connected with the almost complete [!] domination of large-scale production in all [!] branches of the economy. Has such a stage been reached? Even the subjective, psychological pre-requisites are lacking, such as the growth of class-consciousness among the proletariat, developed to such a level as to achieve the spiritual unity of the overwhelming mass of the people. We know,’ continues Rozhkov, ‘of producer associations such as the well-known French glassworks at Albi, and several agricultural associations, also in France, and yet the experience of France shows, as nothing else can, that even the conditions of so advanced a country are not sufficiently developed to permit the dominance of co-operation. These enterprises are of only the average size, their technical level is not higher than ordinary capitalist undertakings, they are not at the head of industrial development, do not lead it, but approach a modest average level.

>‘Only when the experience of individual productive associations points to their leading role in economic life can we say that we approaching a new system, only then can we be sure that the necessary conditions for its existence have been established.’ [1]

While respecting the good intentions of Comrade Rozhkov, we regretfully have to confess that rarely even in bourgeois literature have we met such confusion as he betrays with regard to what are known as the pre-requisites of socialism. It will be worthwhile dwelling to some extent on this confusion, if not for the sake of Rozhkov, at least for the sake of the question.

Rozhkov declares that we have not yet reached ‘such a stage of technical development as would reduce the motive of personal gain and concern for cash [?], personal effort, enterprise and risk, to a minimum, and which would make social production a front-rank question’.

It is rather difficult to find the meaning of this passage. Apparently Rozhkov wishes to say, in the first place, that modern technique has not yet sufficiently ousted human labour-power from industry and, secondly, that to secure this elimination would require the ‘almost’ complete domination of large state enterprises in all branches of the economy, and therefore the ‘almost’ complete proletarianization of the whole population of the country. These are the two prerequisites to socialism alleged to have been ‘firmly laid down by Marx’.

... MORE
https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/rp07.htm

>Leon Trotsky, who understood the danger of fascism and war more than anyone else and mobilised the working class in opposition to them, wrote one year prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, “The sole feature of fascism which is not counterfeit is its will to power, subjugation and plunder. Fascism is a chemically pure distillation of the culture of imperialism… This German epileptic with a calculating machine in his skull and unlimited power in his hands did not fall from the sky or come up out of hell: he is nothing but the personification of all the destructive forces of imperialism. Just as Genghis Khan and Tamerlane appeared to the weaker pastoral peoples as destroying scourges of God, whereas in reality they did nothing but express the need of all the pastoral tribes for more pasture land and the plunder of settled areas, so Hitler, rocking the old colonial powers to their foundations, does nothing but give a more finished expression to the imperialist will to power. Through Hitler, world capitalism, driven to desperation by its own impasse, has begun to press a razor sharp dagger into its own bowels.”

>Already during the First World War, German imperialism sought to subordinate Europe to its interests, and failed. It now attempted this for a second time.

QUOTED IN

85 years since the Nazi war of annihilation against the Soviet Union - World Socialist Web Site

ORIGINAL

Manifesto of the Fourth International on Imperialist War and the Imperialist War —1940

Imperialist War And The Proletarian World Revolution

Adopted by the Emergency Conference of the Fourth International

May 19-26, 1940

[emphasis added below]

“I was never a leftist,” Brazil’s Lula assures the IMF and imperialist powers at the G7 - World Socialist Web Site

... There, in a relaxed conversation with the heads of the IMF and German imperialism on the margins of the main proceedings, the Brazilian president—a former unionist and lifetime leader of the Workers Party (PT)—casually reassured them: “I was never a leftist.”

The exchange was unforced. “When you were president for the first time, everyone expected you to be a leftist, but you were not,” Kristalina Georgieva, the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, remarked to him. Lula answered without hesitation: “But I was never a leftist.” Beside them sat German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who is overseeing the largest rearmament of his country since the Second World War.

Lula also remarked:

>

Lula portrayed his identification with the “left” as though it were all a big misunderstanding. But the millions of workers and young people who historically supported the Workers Party did so because they saw the PT and its main leader—who emerged from the factory floor and rose to the leadership of mass strikes that confronted the big multinational automakers and the Brazilian military dictatorship—as being the left-wing. Were they the victims of collective delirium?

Exactly 40 years ago, in 1986, interviewed by the journal Socialismo e Democracia, Lula was asked about his conception of differences between socialism and the different forms of capitalism. His answer would have likely scandalized Mrs. Georgieva and Mr. Merz. Let us quote it at length:

>

Asked about European social democracy, he was categorical: “I do not see social democracy as an alternative, as some people try to say, that it will be the third way. I do not think the third way can exist. Social democracy can only exist on the basis of the exploitation of other peoples.”

Despite this “left-wing” and often ambiguous rhetoric, Lula was never genuinely socialist. Rejecting any clear definition of its theory and program, the PT gave new life to the old opportunist formula of Edward Bernstein: “the movement is everything; the final goal – nothing.”

[effacé]

Prepare for the next American Revolution by studying the last ones!!

MUST ATTEND MEETING!!

REGISTER: The American Revolution and its Place in History, 1776-2026: From the War Against Monarchy to ”No Kings“

June 25, 2026 2-4 PM (EDT)

Two hundred and fifty years after the Continental Congress proclaimed the Declaration of Independence, American democracy confronts its gravest crisis since the Civil War. The democratic principles proclaimed in Philadelphia in July 1776—that all men are created equal, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that the people retain the right to abolish any government that becomes destructive of these ends—are being trampled by a government controlled by a financial-corporate oligarchy. At the same time, political and social resistance to the assault on democracy is being undermined by the claim that there is nothing in the historical legacy of the American Revolution worth defending.
... MORE

Panelists
- James Oakes, leading historian of slavery, antislavery politics, and the Civil War era.
- Richard Carwardine, two-time Lincoln Prize-winning biographer of Abraham Lincoln.
- Sean Wilentz, a leading interpreter of pre-Civil War democracy, party politics, and social conflict.
- Adam Hochschild, work spans imperialism, war, slavery, and the long struggle for human rights.
- Thomas Mackaman, author of New Immigrants and the Radicalization of American Labor, 1914–1924 and co-editor with David North of The New York Times' 1619 Project and the Racialist Falsification of History.

Moderator
- David North, national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party and chairman of the World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board.

CHECK: please double check the times below (from AI). I did five spot checks and the look right.

North America

• New York — 2:00–4:00 PM
• Toronto — 2:00–4:00 PM
• Chicago — 1:00–3:00 PM
• Denver — 12:00–2:00 PM
• Los Angeles — 11:00 AM–1:00 PM
• Mexico City — 1:00–3:00 PM
• Vancouver — 11:00 AM–1:00 PM

South America

• Rio de Janeiro — 3:00–5:00 PM
• São Paulo — 3:00–5:00 PM
• Bogotá — 1:00–3:00 PM
• Lima — 1:00–3:00 PM
• Quito — 1:00–3:00 PM

Europe

• London — 6:00–8:00 PM
• Paris — 7:00–9:00 PM
• Berlin — 7:00–9:00 PM
• Rome — 7:00–9:00 PM
• Athens — 8:00–10:00 PM

Africa and Middle East

• Cairo — 8:00–10:00 PM
• Johannesburg — 8:00–10:00 PM
• Dubai — 10:00 PM–12:00 AM
• Riyadh — 9:00–11:00 PM

Asia-Pacific

• Mumbai — 11:30 PM–1:30 AM
• Singapore — 2:00–4:00 AM
• Beijing — 2:00–4:00 AM
• Hong Kong — 2:00–4:00 AM
• Tokyo — 3:00–5:00 AM
• Seoul — 3:00–5:00 AM
• Sydney — 4:00–6:00 AM
• Melbourne — 4:00–6:00 AM
• Auckland — 6:00–8:00 AM

Leon Trotsky: Results and Prospects (1906)

• Preface to the Re-Issue of This Work Published in Moscow in 1919  
• [Introduction]  
• 1. The Peculiarities of Russian Historical Development  
• 2. The Towns and Capital  
• 3. 1789 – 1848 – 1905  
• 4. Revolution and the Proletariat  
• 5. The Proletariat in Power and the Peasantry  
• 6. The Proletarian Regime  
• 7. The Prerequisites of Socialism  
• 8. A Workers’ Government in Russia and Socialism  
• 9. Europe and Revolution  
• 10. The Struggle for Power

Links above from Maxists.org

Also available: The permanent revolution, and, Results and prospects : Trotsky, Leon, 1879-1940 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

A History of Soviet Russia: Socialism in One Country, 1924-1926. Vol. 2 (Carr, 1959)

[FREE BORROW on OPEN LIBRARY]

pp. 44-45

Chapter 12 SOCIALISM IN ONE COUNTRY

The doctrine of socialism in one country was, in its origin, a blow struck in the struggle against Trotsky. Stalin first propounded it in his article of December 1924 as a counterblast to Trotsky's permanent revolution' , and in a conscious attempt to provide a positive alternative. Trotsky himself accepted the antithesis:

>The theory of socialism in one country... is the only theory that consistently, and to the end, is opposed to the theory of permanent revolution.

Like every doctrinal argument advanced in the campaign against Trotsky, socialism in one country conformed to the tactical pattern, later described by Zinoviev , ' of assimilating 'old disagreements" to 'new issues". It revolved round a distinction - or rather a confusion - between the process of making a socialist revolution and the process of building a socialist economy once the revolution had been achieved. As regards the first question, Russian Marxists before 1905 had in general been content to accept the view that a socialist revolution could not be made in an economically backward country like Russia, i.e. in a country where the proletariat was in a small minority and where the bourgeois revolution had not yet occurred. The coming revolution in Russia could therefore only be a bourgeois revolution; and the role of Russian Social-Democrats could only be to support the bourgeoisie, not to attempt to make a revolution on their own. After 1905, only the Mensheviks stuck to this view. Both Lenin and Trotsky assigned a positive revolutionary role to the Russian Social-Democrats, though they defined it differently. Lenin held that the party, acting on behalf of the proletariat, should place itself at the head of a worker-peasant revolutionary coalition under proletarian leadership. The revolution achieved by this coalition would, owing to peasant predominance, still necessarily be a bourgeois revolution. It would result in the setting up of a bourgeois-democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants; and this dictatorship would prepare the condition in which the socialist revolution would become possible. Trotsky argued, like Lenin, that the Russian proletariat, supported by the peasantry, should take the lead in bringing the bourgeois revolution to fruition. But he believed that it would not be possible, even if it was desirable, to stop at this point. The proletariat, in completing the bourgeois revolution, would inevitably be impelled in the course of the same process to begin the socialist revolution. One revolution would lead into the other. This was the doctrine to which Trotsky gave the name, borrowed from Marx, of ‘permanent revolution’. Lenin expressed disbelief in the doctrine. But when in April 1917 he declared that the revolution which had broken out in Russia could not remain a bourgeois revolution, and incited his Bolshevik followers to a direct seizure of power in the name of the proletariat, he adopted a position distinguished on by the finest of differences from that of Trotsky.

....

(emphasis added)
https://archive.org/details/socialisminoneco0002ehca/page/44/mode/2up

VIDEO (WSWS/SEP):

Trotsky, Stalin and the 1926 British General Strike: lessons for today

4 Jun 2026

(55 mins)

There are few more bitterly contested and less clearly understood historical experiences than the general strike of 1926, despite it being a decisive moment in the history of the British and international working class.