First Published: Frontline, Transition Issue #1, February 1990.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
If there was ever a time for the US left to pool energies and try to sort things out, this is it.
The invasion of Panama and the passing of another winter with our streets laden with homeless people provide imperative enough. But it’s the crisis in the socialist world that’s given us the biggest jolt.
All of us who look to socialism as the humane and historically progressive alternative to capitalism are squeezed between an ideological rock and a hard place. Shaken by popular upheavals and economic failures, the political and economic model followed by the existing socialist countries has reached the end of its road. What will replace it – differently organized and revitalized socialist societies, or restored capitalist systems – is not yet decided.
At the same time, US capitalism retains an economic resilience and political legitimacy among the masses unanticipated by Marxists. To make matters worse, the crisis gripping the socialist world has unleashed a wave of capitalist triumphalism.
This situation has immense implications for all of our political activities. Even as we hold the fort against capitalism’s smug propaganda barrage, we are compelled to look again at our own assumptions and to come to grips with the reasons for socialism’s impasse. Without this re-examination, we cannot develop effective strategies to fight injustice and exploitation on now-changed political terrain.
Especially for those of us with roots in the Marxist-Leninist tradition, this has been a difficult, often agonizing, time. But this is no reason to let new opportunities pass us by. Tremendous potential has opened up to organize for deep cuts in the military budget, against interventionism and for redirecting resources to meet human needs. The success of Soviet policy in disarming the cold warriors means the Red Menace can no longer be effectively invoked to justify reactionary domestic and foreign policies.
To take advantage of this juncture will require a burst of fresh strategic thinking as well as practical activism. To knock capitalism from its high-horse, we need to update our indictment and provide a more penetrating analysis of its contemporary dynamics and contradictions. We need programmatic initiatives that can mobilize a progressive chorus to inject itself into the bourgeoisie’s debate over what course to follow in the “post-Cold War” era, and how to spend its “peace dividend.”
Fortunately, there is recognition in almost every tendency on the left that we will not be able to emerge from the ideological assault of the current period, nor rally to the present opportunities, without a cross-fertilization of ideas, and an earnest effort to replace fragmentation with cooperation. The impulse to get our heads together (pun intended) hasn’t been as heart-felt or widespread in years.
Our effort to revamp Frontline has benefited greatly from this climate. Our decision to look outward and check-in with many organizations and individual activists has brought us a lot of encouragement. We have found almost everyone anxious to share ideas about how the changes in the world will affect building the left and progressive movements, and about how Frontline could make an effective contribution. We feel confident that we will be able to launch the “new” monthly Frontline with quality contributions from a far broader range of left perspectives than previously.
Besides our effort to broaden the range of contributors to Frontline at every level, we have also been working to put nuts-and-bolts in place. We are investigating format and design options, and re-thinking our promotion and distribution strategies. We have also begun to shore up our financial base by reorganizing the Frontline sustainer program. The first issue of the Frontline Sustainer Newsletter is out. We hope this will strengthen the connection between the newspaper and its most consistent supporters. (We encourage all readers to sign up as sustainers. The minimum pledge is $10/ month; you will receive a reminder every other month along with your copy of the Sustainer Newsletter.)
Finally, we are excited about the prospect of bringing a broader range of ideas and experience right into the center of this political project. An arrangement is being worked out whereby the North Star Review will merge efforts with the current Frontline staff. North Star Review was launched in 1987 as an independent magazine oriented toward bringing some cohesion to the non-sectarian Marxist left, and over the last two years members of our two groupings have found increasing common political ground. To move this process along, North Star managing editor Steve Hiatt has already joined the team orchestrating this transition period.
The next step overall is to gather all the threads of Frontline’s transition process into a comprehensive and detailed projection of format, budget, composition of editorial collective and staff, etc. Our progress will be reported to readers in our next “transition issue” a month from now. (Your ideas and suggestions are very welcomed to help shape this proposal.) And once final plans are approved, we will begin work on a pilot issue of the new publication, due out in the spring.