Socialist Unity Party honors Sam Marcy

Sam Marcy meeting with Fidel Castro in October 1993.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the death of the noted revolutionary leader, Sam Marcy. He is well known for his penetrating Marxist analysis of world events.

Based in the revolutionary conceptions of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, and V.I. Lenin, Marcy began his many writings on the true nature of the global class war following the end of World War II.

Following the defeat of Hitler in the war, the U.S. and Western Europe turned their sights on the Soviet Union. Marcy clarified that with the buildup to the Korean War, the world had now fallen into two class camps. The Soviet Union and the recent Chinese communist revolution headed the socialist camp. The U.S., Western Europe, and Japan led the imperialist camp. His analysis spelled out how the two class camps were irreconcilable.

“It is not a war between the nations, but a war between the classes. In this war, the geographical boundaries are social boundaries, the battle formations are class formations, and the world line of demarcation is the line rigidly drawn by the socialist interests of the world proletariat,” Marcy wrote.

Marcy presented many writings and speeches that showed the many mechanisms of the class struggle outlining the role that capitalist exploitation of the working class plays in everyday life. He analyzed developments in the U.S. and in so many countries abroad throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America. 

Marcy stressed the need for complete international solidarity with other socialist countries that fell under the military and economic attacks of the imperialist apparatus. He was a strong supporter of the many revolutionary liberation struggles. 

In his book “High Tech, Low Pay,” Marcy showed how the scientific-technological changes in the structure of capitalist industry brought with it a change in the social character of the working class. There was a massive general shift of workers away from relatively high-skilled, high-paid jobs into lower-skilled, lower-paid service jobs. 

The working class in the U.S. was opened up to include more women in the workforce as well as people of color. There was a growing proportion of Black, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, women, and undocumented workers. Marcy saw the fight against racism and oppression as pivotal to the struggle for socialism. He boldly broke tradition by coming out in support of the early Gay Liberation movement in the U.S. He was the first socialist leader to do this in the early 1970s. 

One of his last major writings was the book “Perestroika: a Marxist Critique” in which he foresaw the pending disaster of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies as a complete capitulation to capitalism and imperialism. Gorbachev’s policies led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union and its allies in Eastern Europe.

Sam Marcy was a fearless fighter on behalf of the working class against capitalism. He firmly believed in the ability of the working class to act in unity to overcome our oppression and to abolish the capitalist class on the way to building worldwide socialism.


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