Wooden Ships

Communism and socialism made enormous inroads among the American population in the early days of what used to be called the Great Depression, and the thousands-strong "Bonus Army" of veterans demanding government relief was swept from the streets of D.C. by armed and mounted U.S. troops under the command of Douglas MacArthur.

Then FD Roosevelt stepped in like Superman to defuse any moves toward open revolt. The New Deal co-opted the revolution.

Then came the war, the fifties, and the rise of the mega-corporations and the warfare state.

Forty years ago, a lot of us echoed David Crosby saying, "We are leaving; you don't need us," and attempted to drop out of an American society we had come to regard with horror and revulsion.

But not enough people took part in that movement, and those of us who did shortly became faint of heart and dropped back in. We should have stuck to our guns, or maybe I should say, our carrots.

At the time we might be heard to say that "The system has become a machine, and the machine is out of control." But it's difficult to be so right when you're young, because being inexperienced, you can never be sure of yourself.

But now I see how right we were, and that America has become a gigantic, out-of-control monster robot, fueled by war and endlessly reproducing the mindless capitalist cycle of recovery, boom, mania, panic, and collapse.

The revolution will come because it's inevitable. It's inevitable because we can't live this way. As Karl Marx observed, we can no longer live with the continued existence of this ruling class, because its continued existence is incompatible with society.

He meant it's incompatible with orderly, functioning social organization of any kind, and he was right.