[ "Socialist Equality Party (US) 9th Congress opening report by David North " ]

To be sure , the IDEA of socialism has not gone away in 200 years and never will as long as the exploitation and oppression of the working class by the capitalist ruling classes of the world is a FACT OF LIFE. But I can get no lucid explanations why self-appointed Marxist " vanguard " party organizations never show anything like exponential growth as a CLASS response to THE TIMES . As a longtime independent democratic socialist myself( and a pre-Vatican II type Catholic ) , I suspect the biggest mistake of the old Soviet Union was not SOCIALISM ( or the feeble attempt at it ) but making itself a dreary " officially atheist " tyranny. Do self identified Marxist ( revolutionary ? ) activists today see an ally in the petty bourgeois New Atheism Cult New Hate group obsessed with the God Hating Islamophobia of the late drunken ex-Trotskyist Christopher Hitchens ? They and their Islamophobic celebrity scientist militant atheists- like Richard Hawkins and Sam Harris and Neil deGrasse Tyson - never apply their sophomoric LOGIC & REASON to very irrational-and EVIL - capitalism , American imperialism , and Israeli Zionism . How does any Marxist " vanguard party " win the leadership of the working class of the world by daily calling religious people stupid and bludgeoning potential working class members ( who curiously walk through your doors ) with New Atheism Cult contempt for belief in God ? To be sure " dialectical materialism " can be a useful tool for socialist revolutionaries . But for more than a century it has stagnated into an ossified historical , philosophical, economic dogma - the stock in trade of CULTS and charlatan "Great Leader " nuts . In a way the pop philosopher Eric Hoffer got it right about " The True Believer " back in the Eisenhower era . So many Trotskyist , ex-Trotskyist , pseudo-Trotskyist political organization covert their membership into " Clears " in the manner of the Church of Scientology . And they have no more respect for the FREE SPEECH , FREE THOUGHT tradition of Western Civilization than the ZIONIST Jew controlled WOKE WARRIOR Democratic Party. I wonder how many neurotic middle class Jews still gravitate toward " Trotskyist " political organizations . Or in the case of the American based Socialist Workers Party led by crackpot old Jack Barnes : the SWP now defends Zionism and APARTHEID Israel ! When did Israeli " Intelligence " creeps get to them ?