All of the youth ferment on campuses is a very good thing. Lots of people are being permanently transformed and will do good thing throughout their lives. However, young people must be careful not to be coopted, even by labor unions and the like. They must keep their eye on a radical transformation of society.

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.

The system has a way of convincing people that because they live in the USA they are better off than all other people in the world. This gets them focused on the wrong things, of course, but it has been a tried and true way of deflecting class struggle, something I don't think Marx didn't fully anticipated. The education system, and the whole culture really, has a lot to do with how these feelings are transmitted to each new generation. When parents say their kids were heroes when they died for nothing in Iraq, you can see the power of this.

Without an understanding of the issue of race and a willingness to confront it head on, the working class will not build its strength.

What needs to be grasped is that the system itself is the cause of all of the misery in the world. This is a simple but powerful idea.

Most people in this country, while they might not be happy about things, also are woefully ignorant about many things. Sometimes people can learn, but other times they have to be confronted.

Capitalism is, in Mao's language, the main contradiction in the world today and so our efforts have to be focused on ending this system and making a new one.