We know form past experience that when you put women's issues or face issues on the back burner, they never get dealt with. So all struggles have to be dealt with simultaneously, but within an anti-capitalist framework. A monumental task, but nothing less will do.

If you do keep the faith and continue to be radical, very bad things can and do happen to you. At the very least you will be marginalized. Same if you are poor and strike out. Prison awaits you in the USA.

I think the two issues, racism and chauvinism, are linked. Look at how much weaker was support for U.S. actions in Iraq among black people.

You can't take the view of some of the sectarian parties that hard issues can't be confronted when dealing with workers. If you don't confront these issues, what will ever change?

With respect to teaching, I couldn't make sense of mainstream economics when I had to teach it to college students. At the same time, I could see at the school that there was a whole lot of hypocrisy. Not much real respect for the "higher learning."

Of course we can talk about the radical potential of youth. But in the U.S. it is still the case that most youth are conservative and not very sympathetic to the working class.

National chauvinism is a very tough nut to crack, since a vast propaganda network is in place to keep the workers whipped up into a patriotic frenzy. Maybe this will change, but I doubt it unless it is addressed.