Why another world is possible: Comments at a socialist rally in Berlin

The following remarks by Paul Le Blanc were delivered at the May 31 evening session of the four-day Marx is' Muss Kongress 2025 that was held in Berlin and organized by marx21, a left-wing current in Die Linke (the Left Party), which drew 1200 activists. These remarks are now first appearing in digital form, with the author’s authorization, simultaneously on LINKS and Communis. Both sites previously published another contribution by Paul Le Blanc to the event.

Here is the question I have been asked to address: “What makes us socialists believe that another world is possible?”

Two things frame the answer to this question: (1) the problems and crises of capitalism, and (2) essential qualities inherent in humanity. After elaborating on these, I will conclude with a few remarks on the relevance of Lenin and how we must, as Lenin urged, organize ourselves.

For the first key element in the answer about the possibility of revolutionary change, I want to offer a summary report from my homeland — the United States of America, which throughout my lifetime has been the center of global capitalism, “the belly of the beast,” as some put it. That system is increasingly in trouble, which means that more and more of us are in trouble. We all should know what is happening, because it is all over the news, day after day, at least in the US. 

First there is something which is always in the background of daily life, but more and more it is coming to the foreground: the weather. We have been experiencing increasingly odd weather. In various places, it is warmer than usual, colder than usual, rainier than usual, dryer than usual. This increasingly visible climate change now seems to be unfolding fast, furiously, extensively, with an unusual proliferation of floods, droughts, wildfires, high winds and tornados where generally such things have not been expected. We are told that this is worse in other parts of the world, but it is impacting more and more on the US people.

In our own lives and experience, we know that there have always been both grotesque inequality and visible corruption. But I do not think we have ever seen the kind of soaring inequality that has been increasing in recent times, accelerating to unimagined proportions. And corruption is becoming blatant in the very highest circles of power. Those who benefit from such things, with all their immense power, have contempt for us. They tell us lies, they disregard us, they laugh at us, they set us against each other while pretending to be our best friend.

Impacting all of us, however, even on those at the top, has been a growing economic instability. Those of us among the bottom 80% of US people are especially slammed by rising prices, the erosion of living standards, the increasing shakiness of employment, growing problems of housing and health care, the erosion of all things public — education, libraries, parks, transportation and more. This is generating an expansive anxiety, which is sharpening as we face declining social services and the dramatic slashing of programs that many depend on.

Such developments are now intimately related to the recent extraordinary shifts in “politics-as-usual”. The dominant faction of the US ruling class — stretching from liberal Democrats to old-line conservatives among the Republicans — is largely discredited in the eyes of many. Both of these factions have made glowing promises for years but failed to provide genuine solutions to the growing plight of our people. Effectively trashing these losers and promising drastic action to improve the lives of people in the US (while also playing on widespread biases and illusions), an erratic, ego-centric, powerful huckster named Donald Trump has now taken charge.

Trump claims he won the US presidency by a landslide, but in truth it was a very narrow and unstable margin, less than a majority. Through the new regime we are now being treated to an expanding and deepening authoritarianism. The Trump faction of the ruling class is, quite obviously, inclined to give up on the pretense of democracy and constitutional government. It is overseeing the dismantling of long-standing institutions, policies, norms. Along with this, it is elevating and expanding new layers of governmental strata that seem to be afflicted by an ideological narrowness blended with a breathtaking shallowness, ineptness, and rigidity.

Not surprisingly, there is declining public confidence in the viability of the status quo, and in the ability of any faction of our rulers to deal with the increasingly overwhelming problems that we face. This has contributed to a rise in unofficial violence — including traditional “criminal” activity but especially involving new increases of bullying, vigilante activity, mass shootings, and sometimes targeted assassinations.

Yet the social and political crises are also accompanied by the ominous rise in official violence — ranging from political repression to outright killing — for those deemed to be “problematical”. But this inward-directed violence is consistent with the dynamics of US foreign policy, with its increasing impacts of imperialism and militarism, support for genocide perpetrated by certain allies, and the growing threat of war.

There is certainly much more to be said — especially in regard to the unfolding of such dynamics across the face of our planet. But the bottom line is what Bertolt Brecht once told us: “Because things are as they are, they cannot stay as they are.” 

We now come to a second key element in the answer to the question we are wrestling with. It is the title of Carl Sandburg’s great poem of the 1930s, The People, Yes. Speaking of the laboring majority of humanity that has been long oppressed by a succession of exploiters, Sandburg says: “This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.” He adds: “Time is a great teacher. / Who can live without hope?” 

Also from the experience of the 1930s is John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, which was made into a wonderful motion picture in 1940. In it, a key character, Ma Joad, reflects in comments to her husband: “Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good an' they die out. But we keep a'comin'. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out; they can't lick us. We'll go on forever … 'cause we're the people.”

Three decades earlier, in backward Russia, a novelist named Maxim Gorky, in his revolutionary novel Mother, put similar thoughts in what his characters had to say: 

The time will come when people will wonder at their own beauty, when each will be like a star to all the others… The earth will be peopled with those who are free, great in their freedom… 

Everything for all — all for everyone! That is how I see it. In very truth we are all comrades, all kindred spirits, all children of one mother, who is truth!

Of course, all of us have the many problems and limitations that people have, but in each human being we also find essential qualities for our survival. In the early 1840s, the young Karl Marx referred to these qualities as our “species-being,” involving an elemental striving for freedom, creative labor, and genuine community. Rosa Luxemburg — from her prison cell amid the catastrophe of the First World War — commented on this dynamic blend: “The psyche of the masses, like … the eternal sea, always bears within it every latent possibility: deathly stillness and raging storm, the basest cowardice and the wildest heroism. The masses … are always on the verge of becoming something totally different from what they seem to be.”

Within ourselves, among people we know, and among the vast number of people we do not know, we can find qualities of insightfulness, creativity, humor, collaborative inclinations, generosity, caring, heroism — a vibrant blend of individualism and collectivism. Out of this, there is hope for the future. This hope is grounded in thousands of years of human experience. It can be found in a variety of human traditions. We can find essential qualities in the best of our spiritual traditions — the best that is in Christianity, in Judaism, in Islam, in Buddhism, and more. I am, of course, speaking here not of the authoritarian and superstitious dogmas, but of the vibrant insight and energy animating these belief systems. 

It is very much present in the centuries of what have been called humanism and the scientific spirit. It permeates the many social movements and struggles engaged in the elemental quest for popular democracy and human rights. Such things have been absorbed into the heart of socialism and permeate the Marxist orientation that inspires some of us. Not the authoritarian and superstitious dogmas passing for Marxism in some circles, but that which is alive, creative, critical-minded, and free. Such qualities animate Lenin’s outlook. 

I have explored this in my recent book-length biographical account Lenin: Responding to Catastrophe, Forging Revolution. Lenin represents a way of understanding reality that is inseparable from an essential activist commitment, and inseparable from the kinds of sensibilities outlined here. His approach to the remarkable orientation developed by Marx is permeated by what he called revolutionary dialectics — which includes the interplay of complex and contradictory realities, and also (in Lenin’s words), “development by leaps, catastrophes, and revolutions.” This relates to the question of why and how we need to organize ourselves to bring about the changes we desire.

To put it simply, we need to organize ourselves because the terrible problems and people’s hopeful aspirations will not automatically result in positive outcomes. Mindful and activist elements of the population must, within that population, function as a leaven to enable the exploited, oppressed majority to rise and bring a revolutionary outcome. 

For this, we need coherent and outward-reaching democratic collectives — involving the key concept of cadre (the German word is Kader). Cadres are the activists who have learned how to size up a situation, how to write a leaflet that can be effective, how to organize a meeting in a way that effective decisions come out of it, how to help ensure that the decisions are carried out. They are the activists who know how to organize rallies, demonstrations, strikes and other actions. Not everyone can do this — but cadres can. Such cadres also help more and more people develop the same skills and abilities. 

This involves going beyond simple protests and self-expression around various discontents. It means the development and implementation of strategy and tactics — a program of step-by-step activity that can take us from the current situation to the goal we desire. We must help build and strengthen such a movement within the multi-faceted working class of our own time, pushing against all forms of oppression, and helping to bring a transition from capitalism to a society of the free and the equal.