Is Socialist Revolution in the Us Possible?: A Necessary Debate Among Working People - Softcover

Mary-Alice Waters

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1604880902 ISBN 13: 9781604880908

Publisher: Pathfinder Press, 2016

Synopsis

The answer to the question posed in the title of this book takes on added urgency with the contraction of capitalist production that is accelerating worldwide.

In two talks, presented as part of a wide-ranging debate at the annual Venezuela Book Fairs in 2007 and 2008, Mary-Alice Waters explains why a socialist revolution is not only possible. Even more importantly, she explains why revolutionary struggles by working people are inevitable, initiated not by the toilers, but forced upon us by the employing class’s crisis-driven assaults on our living standards and job conditions—on our very humanity.

As solidarity grows among a fighting vanguard of working people, the outlines of coming class battles can already be seen.

Also available in Spanish (ISBN: 9781604880922), French (ISBN: 9781604880977), and Farsi (ISBN: 9789645783417).

“To think that a socialist revolution in the US is not possible, you would have to believe not only that the ruling families of the imperialist countries and their economic wizards have found a way to ‘manage’ capitalism. You would also have to close your eyes to the spreading imperialist wars, civil wars, and economic, financial, and social crises we are in the midst of.” —Mary-Alice Waters, Caracas, Venezuela, November 2007

“Publication and study of this book and similar works, while there are such clashes of ideas, will not be unfruitful. Because it will enable us, as a witness, to have a closer look at the truth … and learn the unavoidable realities of the modern world in a principled manner.” —Iran Book News Agency. Translation from Farsi by publisher.

About this title

About the Author

Mary-Alice Waters (1942– ), a member of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee since 1967, is president of Pathfinder Press and editor of New International magazine. She joined the Young Socialist Alliance in 1962 and Socialist Workers Party in 1964. She has helped lead the SWP’s work nationally and internationally, especially in defense of the Cuban Revolution as well as the fight for women’s liberation.

Waters was YSA national secretary, then chairperson (1967–68). She covered the 1968 student-labor uprising in France for the Militant and edited that working-class newsweekly from 1969 through the early 1970s.

She has edited more than thirty-five books on the Cuban Revolution as well as more than a dozen other titles. Waters has spoken in the United States and around the world on the Cuban Revolution and its lessons for working people and youth everywhere.

Her works include:
The Turn to Industry: Forging a Proletarian Party (2019, coeditor)
In Defense of the US Working Class (2019)
Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? (2016)
“It’s the Poor who Face the Savagery of the US ‘Justice’ System”: The Cuban Five Talk about Their Lives within the US Working Class (2015)
Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women (2024, coauthor)
Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (1970, editor)

Edition details

• Publisher: Pathfinder Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1604880902
• ISBN 13: 9781604880908
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 87