How I Became a Socialist
One of the questions that people ask me a lot is, "how did you become a socialist?"
First of all, it's important to understand that no one becomes a socialist because he or she reads the Communist Manifesto and says, "ah! Marx is right! Capitalism is the anti-Christ!" If it was the case, then there'd a be a lot more socialists!
For the most part, people become socialists because of their experience of life under capitalism; they know friends who were laid off, a neighborhood hospital was shut down because it wasn't profitable, they don't have health care, or they see a monstrous contradiction between the prosperous few and the restless many.
I grew up living in Rochester during the boom of the 1990s; we got round after round of layoffs at Kodak, even though everyone was supposed to be doing great. My mom moved from NYC to escape my abusive father, and she tried to get a job. Eventually, she became a machinist, a job she had a lot of experience at, at a place called Peko Precision making $6.25 an hour. My mom worked so hard to provide for my brother and myself, and we were only barely keeping our heads above water - it made me skeptical of the notion that "if you work hard, you can move up and your kids will do better than you". Although I did not know it, these were the seeds and the soil for socialist ideas.
I don't remember the specific moment when I became "political" or when I realized how bad the world was. Why? Because there was no such moment; my ideas evolved (and are still evolving) trying to make sense of a changing reality. But there were a series of experiences that pushed me further and further towards politics, and towards a socialist understanding of the world.
A big factor in my political development was the fact that every night the entire family would watch the news, and my mom and her husband Jack would argue about stuff, from Israel to Bosnia, from layoffs at Kodak to the Presidential elections. So I grew up with politics and the news; it was as familiar to me as the dinner table at which I sat.
Another event helped politicize me was when a small video store owner in California put up a picture of Ho Chi Minh in his store. The community became extremely polarized between anti-communist die-hards and free speech types, and I began to write for a discussion board about the subject. The questions and debates that I got involved in propelled me to read more about the history of the Viet Nam war; I began to read books by Noam Chomsky, and began to understand the nature of the beast - that is, the U.S. government.
I learned about how the U.S. cancelled the elections which were supposed to unify Viet Nam under one government because the "wrong side" would win, and instead installed vicious military dictatorship in the South. I learned about how the C.I.A. set up interrogation centers for children. CHILDREN. I learned about how the U.S. developed and used weapons such as napalm and white phosphorous - weapons whose only purpose was to terrorize the population. I learned about how the U.S. murdered about 4 million Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians in its war to dominate Southeast asia, lest the "natives" control their own destiny. I also learned about how the media went along and sponsored the slaughter; how the politicians of both parties demanded more blood, more war, and higher body counts.
In 1999 NATO started its "humanitarian bombing" of Serbia; I thought to myself, "hmm humanitarian bombing? Bullshit! Kind of like the 'humanitarian' trench coat mafia." The Columbine shooting happened either right before or right after the beginning of the bombing and all the politicans were saying how "we have to teach our children to solve their problems with words and not weapons" while they bombed and killed thousands overseas. The media played its role, supporting any and everything that the government did; the "debate" between the two parties became a debate between bombing or bombing and ground troops.
I opposed the war from the outset because I knew that the U.S. government could not be trusted, and that it has always resorted to phrases about "democracy," "freedom," and has always pointed out the atrocities of its enemies when it was convenient. I read Z Magazine online and began to subscribe. But the only group that I ever actually met on the ground who opposed the war the International Socialist Organization.
I met the ISO while they were selling Socialist Worker, and I talked to them and started to coming to meetings.
And I began to realize, all these problems - the layoffs admist the boom, the war, poverty in the richest country - all of that boiled down to one thing: CAPITALISM. The system is organized around corporate greed instead of human needs, and the capitalists will do any and everything to maintain and increase their wealth and power no matter what the human cost, be they ruined families destroyed because of layoffs, or the shredded skin of children in Belgrade.
So I became a socialist because of the hypocrisy and contradictions built into the system, and the only way out is if the working class, the ones who do all the work and create their profits, take power and run society according to human need.