Time for Another American Revolution?

The United States may be riding the crest of unprecedented economic growth, but Nelson Peery is preparing for catastrophe.

Neither a Y2K survivalist nor an adherent of millennial Armageddon, Peery is that rarest of specimens: a lifelong communist who remains unrepentant and undeterred. He believes that the current economic boom masks deep structural fissures that will eventually shake this country to its foundations. As the leader of a Chicago-based group called the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, the 75-year-old author and activist is hoping to lay the groundwork for a Marxist movement that will pick up the post-apocalypse pieces and create a more equitable society.

Peery, who is on a California speaking tour timed to coincide with Black History Month, came to national prominence in 1994 with the publication of his searing memoir, “Black Fire: The Making of an American Revolutionary” (New Press). The book recounts his experiences as an African American soldier during World War II, as well as his childhood in a lily-white Minnesota town.

Deeply affected by the racism he encountered in a then-segregated Army and the peasant revolt against the U.S.-backed Philippine government he witnessed while serving overseas, Peery joined the Communist Party in 1954 and later moved to Los Angeles, where he witnessed the Watts riots. While many blacks enlisted in the battle for civil rights, Peery remained a militant advocate of class struggle.

“I was never a supporter of the nonviolent movement,” he says. “But nonetheless I realized that the U.S. government would not tolerate anything but a nonviolent movement on the part of blacks.”

Unreformed radical though he is, Peery does not appear to be ruled by dogma. He describes himself a great admirer of the late Tom Bradley, whose liberal politics were light-years from his own.

“He integrated the black bourgeoisie,” Peery observes. But, he adds, under Bradley “the black poor were left without any leadership.”

Peery offers a surprisingly optimistic assessment of race relations in the U.S.

“Believe it or not, racism is not as widespread as people think. There’s a violent racist movement, and it’s going to grow, but the mass of the white population of this country is up for grabs.”

It is Peery’s hope that in a future America no longer riddled with racism, people of all ethnic groups will unite around common economic interests to replace a capitalist system he views as doomed. If such a vision raises the patriotic hackles of some, so be it.

“What I’ve done, or tried to do, is for my country. I want America to be everything it says it wants to be. I think it can’t be that as long as it has a morality that says everything is individualized and the dollar sign is the only moral principle that we have.”

Nelson Peery will speak Saturday at the Metropolitan Hotel and Plaza in Hollywood. (323) 299-7518.