> On Jul 3, 2026, at 11:07, Charles via groups.io > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Opportunity for what?
The planters' and merchants' revolution in the US was an opportunity for the laboring classes of the colonies to press their claims for freedom of speech, assembly, religion, and suffrage for unpropertied "freemen." These were guaranteed in state constitutions and in the US Constitution. These civil freedoms are prerequisites for effective socialist organizing. They are not the bedrock of progressivism but of working-class organizations. We are never guaranteed these rights but have to fight for them: Just when we need our rights speech and assembly the most, powerful elites proclaim that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” and take them away along with as due process (https://monthlyreview.org/articles/judge-irving-kaufman-the-liberal-establishment-and-the-rosenberg-case/). But this has always been the case with socialist organizing in the USA: We almost always fight a rearguard battle to retain our rights to organize and to teach, or to get people out of prison who had been imprisoned for exercising their rights. Left-wing socialist and communists started the ACLU. Mark -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#42294): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/42294 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/120084877/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
