We must not forget either that some of the system's resilience is due to its ability to coopt people with money and prestige. It is easy to get sucked right in. Those who grasp the system are also likely to be talented and capable of doing well within the system. Who will turn down a lot of money? Who doesn't have an ego? A compromise here, another one there, and pretty soon, you are sucked right in.

I still believe that workers must be the basic force which must organize and eventually transform society (along with peasants in poor countries). This is because they are the source of the profits which make capitalism what it is. They can shut the system down, and at the same time they possess the unique knowledge needed to make it work in everyone's interests.

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.

Racism is the most divisive force in our society, so until it is dealt with we cannot hope for much.

Many activists don't want to hear about some grand narrative, one that could unify all of our struggles. So the major issue that needs to be addressed is how to get people to see that there is indeed a grand narrative which just happens to be true.

I am sure that the experience of growing up in the heart of the working class and learning from my parents, and especially from my grandmother (who also worked on a barge boat as a cook and a servant for rich folks in Manhattan, Newport, Grosse Point, and Sewickley, all havens of the very rich), that life was not especially fair and always full of bad possibilities, helped shape my future take on life. Then what really transformed my thinking was the war in Vietnam and trying to be a good teacher.

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.