Michael Albert

Outside theology, the term “Antichrist” has a broader, more secular, and highly descriptive sense. It names a powerful, grossly malevolent person who persistently parades wealth and preens perverse tastes, who is bad to the bone, who is the polar opposite of “good.” A person like, say, Adolf Hitler as he fostered and rode the NAZI tide. Or nowadays, a person like Donald Trump, as he resurrects and rides a neo-NAZI tide.

Fascism does not triumph through fanatics alone. It also depends on the fear, silence and surrender of people who know better—but fail to act.

Having recently presented Classical Marxist theory, then Leninist strategy, and last time Bolshevik practice, this essay moves on to critically assess

So much going on. Existential crises. Fundamental needs. Short and long term agendas. Sounds heard all around the world. Much to think about. Much to do.

This article was conceived and written back in the early 1970s and excerpted from a book published in 1974, What Is To Be Undone. This article in the sequence of similarly excerpted articles indicates criticisms I had of Marxist theory as I encountered it among activists back then (and most often, as I encounter it among activists now too). I call it Classical Marxism. With the excerpt I occasionally interject clearly indicated comments from the present.

The chapter from What Is To Be Undone that this last article addressing Marxism Leninism offers, like other chapters I have excerpted for the

Forty years ago seven writer/activists collectively co-wrote a book titled, Liberating Theory. The seven authors were myself, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Robin Hahnel, Mel King, Lydia Sargent, and Holly Sklar. All seven were highly active in the New Left. All seven, after that experience, had a lot in common, including that we all felt that a successful left needed what some of us called a shared conceptual toolbox to conceive, judge, and implement strategy and vision suitable to winning fundamental change in our future. So our joint book tried to offer a liberated theory—liberated from the past, that is.

Bernie Sanders has recently taken up AI issues but I have a feeling most leftists are skeptical of AI’s critics, not particularly knowledgeable about its

Photo by Cash Macanaya Bernie Sanders has recently taken up AI issues but I have a feeling most leftists are skeptical of AI's critics, not

The following article continues a sequence taken from a book, Liberating Theory, which seven writer/activists collectively co-wrote. The seven authors were myself, Leslie Cagan, Noam Chomsky, Robin Hahnel, Mel King, Lydia Sargent, and Holly Sklar. After participating in the New Left we not only knew each other, we had a lot in common, including feeling that a successful left in the U.S. needed what some of us called a shared conceptual toolbox to use in conceiving, judging, and enacting strategy and vision suitable to winning fundamental change in our future. So we got together to try to offer a liberated theory—liberated from past problems, that is. This article in the sequence excerpts chapter two which addressed race and community more broadly. It began: