I’m one of the few Marxists that says human nature has to be looked at. I also say it exists. The conservatives have so used human nature as a concept to justify the horrible social arrangements that we do have that we on the Left have had this silly reaction which is to say it doesn’t exist. What do you mean it doesn’t exist? If human beings don’t have a nature, we’re the only entity in the whole universe that doesn’t. All things have a nature – this lectern has a nature, this microphone has a nature (not a very good one), this plant has a nature.

We all have a nature. Or we’re more like clay – we’re very malleable. Well, even clay has a nature. You can spread it just so far, you got to keep it moist, it can crack. There are limits and we have to have expectations and understandings of these things and not be so naively enamored with our ideology as to not look at what people are actually doing and capable of.

I think human nature is horrible. I think it’s terrible. If you read history, it’s just horrible and disgusting and horrifying – the atrocities, the murder, the torture, the plunder, the madness of it. You can’t read history without coming away feeling a very odd feeling about your own species, especially the male gender in it. It’s really amazing – these horrible creatures. The women applauded the men silently.

But that’s all the more reason why we need strong political organization. That’s all the more reason why we need a liberating ideology. That’s all the more reason why we need democracy. And in democracy, we also have to keep power out of the hands of these avaricious ones.

Is Marxism irrelevant? Is it the bankruptcy of Marxism? No. Marxism is a system of analysis that critiques existing capitalism and imperialism. It has relatively little to say about socialism. In the communist countries, Marxism was doled out like a catechism – it didn’t even relate to their lives. It was like us studying feudalism; it had to do with a different set of social relations than the one they had, although they were desperately in need of a critical theory of their own about their system, as I tried to map out here today in a very sketchy way.

We need a strong alternative movement to move both against the Republic-rats and Demma-cuns, and not just locally but nationally and internationally. We need more militancy and resistance. What can we do about it? I’m not going to answer that right now, so don’t ask it. There are no easy answers. What are you willing to do? We can all do a little more, a lot more than we are now doing. Just look at the tables around the hall and sign up and get active.

And finally remember this: history, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters – history never ends. The last page is never written. History is always being rewritten, and its best passages are not written by the princes or the presidents or the Prime Ministers or the Popes. The best passages are written by the people. For all their faults, the people are all we have. In fact, we are they.