Mark Young

NEW YORK CITY- A few blocks from Wall Street at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), around 1,000 people, including academics and students, gathered for the 2000 Socialist Scholars Conference to discuss "Rockin' the Boat: Building Coalitions for the New Century."

At the top of their agenda was the building of a movement that would scrap the United States Constitution, replacing it with a hodgepodge of Leftist social programs designed to reorganize American society.

"My God, there is no better way [to reach our goals] than to go through that Constitution and show its roots in racism, sexism, classism, genocide, and slavery," pronounced George Caffentzis of the University of Southern Maine. "One way in which to grasp another alternative is to begin to call a new Constitutional Convention. To begin to pose it forcefully, we have to change things from the bottom. What the bottom means in this country here is the Constitution."

Caffentzis, a member of the Radical Philosophy Association and of the Maine Support Network for Mumia Abu-Jamal, urged student attendees to drive a wedge along racial and class lines in order to move socialism along. "We are in a very deep crisis in this country," declared Caffentzis. "What we are now witnessing has been [sic] a return to slavery in the United States. We [must] bring forward in a very political, forceful way the sense of crisis in this country."

He went on to say that "Instead of creating new political parties, per se, I've been more and more interested in the idea that we will pose a different kind of politics. A constitution politics to transform the basis of politics in this country."

One of the high profile speakers who took the radical approach of complete social change was Maulana Karenga of California State University, Long Beach. In addition to being a professor, Karenga is also the creator of Kwaanza, a seven-day black "celebration" held each year from December 26 through January 1. Although not celebrated in Africa, Kwaanza decorations include the red, black, and green flag of the African Liberation Movement.

Karenga, a self-avowed "African socialist" and "African Nationalist," remarked, "One of the most urgent challenge[s]…of our time is the reconstruction of U.S. social policy. That's the question at hand, and its possibility for social infusion is a critical one for it has to do with shaping the vision and participating in the unfinished project of making the U.S. a just and good society in a multicultural and global context. What we have to do in this talking, this ethical vision, has first of all to be separated from the right-wing insistence on morality."

Socialist organizations have been able to grow widespread on college campuses through the use of the student activity fee. The fee, which students are forced to pay on top of their tuition at many schools, is used to fund groups on the campuses. With many in the academic community supportive of left-wing "causes," socialists have been able to gain hegemony on college campuses through the use of the fee.

Bill Capowski, from the Center for Campus Organizing, spoke of the fee, saying, "the student fees in the United States aren't as strong as they are in some countries—the ability of students to utilize the student activity fee to do political work. But recently, you should be aware, about two weeks ago the Supreme Court made the decision about student activity fees that was very positive." The ruling allowed for the continued collection of the fee even if some students objected to the use of the fee, as long as its allocation is viewpoint neutral.

"Because without the ability to reproduce your organization over time you don't have capacity," Capowski continued. "The only organizations that, say over the last five years, have had a budget over one hundred thousand dollars in the U.S. in the student movement have been [the] United States Student Association and the U.S. PIRGs [Public Interest Research Group]. That is because both these organizations get a portion of their money from the student activity fee."

Capowski also spoke of the need for students to organize and recruit better on campus: "Students in the United States don't spend enough of their time thinking about how to build organizations. They are good at getting out to Seattle. We're good at mobilizing. We're good at finding issues. But our ability to build strong movement organizations that have a capacity to mobilize, to put out press, to force labor and other progressive parts of society to take the student movement seriously, is very limited," he said.

Claiming to represent the working people of the world, older members of the Democratic Socialist movement looked down upon people who they felt were of a lower social economic status than themselves.

In one instance, Bogdan Denitch, Honorary Co-Chairman of the conference and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, argued with a doorman who would not allow him into the theater on the opening night of the conference. The argument became so heated that it led an unidentified audience member to say, "talk nice to the working [people]."

In a film shown by members of Critical Mass, a contingent of bike riders took to the streets of New York in an effort to block cars to promote their "cause." While they succeeded in doing that, they also blocked Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) buses carrying working-class people to their jobs.

Fueled by what they see as success in the protest against the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization in Seattle, today's student protestors are not asking "what's next" as they did in the past, but "when." Students who attended and sponsored the conference expressed glee whenever the Constitution, capitalism, and corporate America were bashed. A lack of focus on how to unite the various factions within the socialist student movement seems to be all that keeps most from becoming more actively involved.

The answer for all within the socialist movement, according to Mark Seddon of the United Kingdom Labor Party, "Is not to abdicate from politics, but to try and build new coalitions, new political coalitions that can take on the system."

An examination of the Democratic Socialists of America Constitution reveals their commitment to destroying the market system. "We are socialists because we reject an economic order based on private property. We share a vision of a humane social order based on popular control of resources and production, economic planning, equitable distribution, feminism, racial equality, and non-oppressive relationships." The DSA also has a "Youth Section" to "provide a forum of communication and to promote the interests and concerns of members of the organization who are less than 31 years of age or are full-time students."

Sponsoring organizations of the March 31-April 2 conference included the Democratic Socialists of America/City University of New York (DSA/CUNY), Brecht Forum/New York Marxist School, Institute for Transitions to Democracy, Labor Party, UK, New York Office, Ujamaa, African Socialism Commission, DSA.

While each of these groups have certain issues they support, all have common goals, which include the complete implementation of a multicultural socialist government, the redistribution of income, free health care and education, and the complete destruction of any form of capitalism, especially corporations. Panel leader Dakara Latimore gave an example of the socialists view of corporations: "The reason that corporations are bad is because they exist within a capitalist system." Latimore went on to say that socialists had "to find a way to work with, to challenge, and ultimately win over people that are to our Right."