|
Socialist Action 2004
Draft Political Resolution
(The general line of this resolution
was adopted by the Socialist Action National Committee Plenum January 30 -
February 1, 2004, San Francisco. By vote of the National Committee the
resolution was edited, updated and approved by the Political Committee,
April 21, 2004, for submission to the membership for the purpose of opening
the pre-convention discussion leading to the July 23-25 National
Convention.)
As he began a
talk in the mid-1920s to a conference of the Georgian Bolshevik Party on
the prospects for the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky explained, "The
world situation means for us the aggregate of conditions which hasten or
delay the process of proletarian revolution." It is our tradition as
well to begin any discussion on the U.S. political situation with an
analysis of the world political situation. As both scientific socialists,
that is, Marxists, and as internationalists, we understand the absolute
necessity of anchoring our analysis in the context of the larger
developments in world economy and politics.
Trotsky's
talk was given at a time when the flames of the international revolutionary
movement that emerged from the world's first imperialist war and the
associated victory of the working class in the world's largest nation,
Russia, had died down considerably. It was a difficult moment and a time
for sober analysis of future prospects. But it was also a time that history
records preceded the world's second world conflagration, World War II, by
only some 14 years, an event that again shook the foundations of the world
capitalist system.
The
international situation today remains extremely contradictory. On the
one hand, U.S. imperialism remains the top dog in world politics, a rabid
dog to be sure! In the last four years it has "successfully" [and
we use this word in quotation marks.] invaded and occupied four nations.
The first, in 1999, was Yugoslavia. U.S. troops remain in Kosovo today,
establishing military bases for future incursions in Central and Eastern
Europe. Afghanistan, where resistance persists, remains subject to an
unstable U.S.-backed regime, a composite of the handpicked Karzai-led
collaborators and regional warlords.
In Iraq, more
than a year after the declared end to the war, a courageous and
increasingly united people are challenging the now not so cock-sure
occupiers with a tenacity far beyond anyone's expectation. We cannot yet
tell whether the Iraqi masses are capable of maintaining the present level
of resistance, but the range of possibilities, from overt and increasingly
coordinated guerrilla opposition to a sustained “Intifada” of the
Palestinian variety, seem to mark the minimum parameters in regard to what
the U.S. occupiers will face in the years ahead. The formation of a mass
revolutionary party in Iraq, capable of uniting all the oppressed and in
alliance with similar formations across the Middle East, will prove
decisive in the years ahead.
Most recently, in Haiti, U.S. troops physically removed
the elected President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, and effectively established
the rule of the former death squad government. Even this poorest nation in
the western hemisphere, one of the poorest on earth, holds something of
interest to the U.S. corporate elite, who found it to their advantage to
more firmly insure the super exploitation of the Haitian masses.
On the surface, these four invasions represent victories
for U.S. imperialism and a strengthening of its position against its
imperialist competitors. But the U.S. invasions are driven by the growing
weakness of the U.S. economy in the face of what we will see is the growing
economic power of the combined forces of its European opponents. The
measures taken by all the major capitalist powers against their respective
working classes and against the poor people of the world more generally are
a reflection of the continuing decline of average corporate profit rates
worldwide. The intensified fight for new markets has exacerbated the
contradictions in the system as a whole. Tens of millions are fired as each
new wave of technological innovation replaces more workers with machines
and as ferocious competition reduces average profit rates to the breaking
point.
No major power has been able to stay in the race without
imposing massive cuts in social services of every type, without granting
unprecedented trillion of dollars in tax cuts to help stabilize failing
corporations and without resorting to unprecedented deficit spending. Once
the world’s leading creditor nation following WWII, the U.S. stands today
first in the world of debtor nations, with an historic and unpayable debt
of $7 trillion.
In summary, the world situation today finds major
corporations that have led the world for decades in danger of collapse
while smaller competitors are daily forced to merge or, in the alternative,
file for bankruptcy and leave the playing field all together.
Capitalism’s world decline drives it to new levels of
exploitation, to a worldwide rearmament threatening new and more frequent
wars, to increasing and a menacing destruction of the environment, massive
unemployment and the near ruin of whole peoples in the Third World whose
standard of living has been reduced
to below starvation levels.
The U.S. has
spent unprecedented trillions of dollars on war materials, the most
advanced instruments of mass destruction on the planet. It threatens future
neo-colonial-type invasions in North Korea, Iran and most recently, in
revolutionary Cuba. It has armed and financed Latin American dictators in
Colombia and sent troops to the Philippines to quell revolutionary
struggles. It backed a failed rightwing coup in Venezuela and threatens to
send troops there and to other Latin American countries, where the masses
have mobilized to drive out an assortment of discredited politicians who
have implemented U.S.-backed neo-liberal economic reforms with disastrous
consequences for the vast majority.
The U.S.
boasts a "recovering" economy and touts the modest rise in the
stock market as proof. On the surface, at least, measured by the
imperialist standards of conquest and profit, American capitalism seems to
have met with some success. Its domain has been expanded as the dollar
follows the gun in search of new markets and new levels of exploitation. Let's
take a closer look.
Iraq: The state of occupation and resistance
We are
compelled to modify our previous assessment of the most likely post-Iraq
war situation, where we were initially quite skeptical regarding the
capacity of the Iraqi people to mount anything resembling a sustained
resistance. What we expected to be relatively sporadic skirmishes from a
defeated and leaderless people has proven to be a significant and
deeply-rooted response, so much so that top U.S. officials are now calling
for the sending of an additional 40,000 U.S. troops to suppress the
rebellion.
The Iraqi struggle takes place under the most difficult
conditions. Each act of resistance is countered by massive destruction and
murder. Iraq mirrors the Palestinian horror, where brute force is the prime
weapon of the hated occupiers. But even the might of the greatest power on
earth has proven to be insufficient to prevent the Iraqis from driving U.S.
troops out of important areas of the country.
Significant
U.S. casualties, some 700 deaths to date, have brought home the reality of
the war to broad layers of the American population. This figure does not
include the losses suffered by the British and by the token forces from
other nations that the U.S. has pressured or paid to give its occupation an
international appearance. Excluded also are the losses suffered by Iraqi
police and other collaborators hired by the conqueror.
The losses on
the Iraqi side have been staggering. 11,000 have been slaughtered, many
Sharon style, that is, by collective punishment, as their villages are
bombarded and leveled with depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. forces and
by rockets and bombs that don’t distinguish between combatants and the
general population.
The intensity of the fighting in Iraq is reflected in
the fact that there have been few takers of the $10,000 re-enlistment bonus
offered by the Pentagon. No American or foreign national is safe in Iraq,
from soldiers encamped on their bases, to helicopter and other aircraft pilots,
to high level diplomats in hotels en route to the airport, to business
contractors of all nationalities in pursuit of stupendous profits or in the
hire of the CIA – as was the case of the captured security “contractors” in
April whose charred bodies were paraded through the streets of Fallujah in
front of cheering crowds in the thousands.
The U.S.
military is stretched thin across the globe. It has floated the idea of
re-instituting the draft to beef up its forces. A draft in the U.S. can be
expected to add qualitatively to the significant antiwar opposition in the
United States that has already absorbed some important lessons. The most
important of these, of course, is the now proven fact that the major
pretexts for the war, the possession by Iraq of weapons of mass destruction
and Iraq's involvement in the 911 terrorist attack on the U.S., were lies
plain and simple.
The contradiction between the wide exposure of these
lies and the important but still modest domestic reaction can only be
explained by the fact that no fighting oppositional working class force in
U.S. society yet exists to make the liars pay the price. But the exposé has
nonetheless penetrated into the broader consciousness, where it rests for
the time being, awaiting the opportunity for expression. That the
government lies, that good paying jobs are lost, never to be replaced, is
known by increasing millions. The solution resides in the future, with the
emergence of class-based movements capable of presenting more definitive
challenges to the status quo, perhaps not that far off.
But the failure
of the U.S. to find any weapons of mass destruction has been noted well by
the American antiwar movement and the population as a whole. The
well-publicized remarks of the now-resigned head of the American inspection
team, Dr. David Kay, to the effect that there never were "weapons of
mass destruction" in Iraq when the war began has further exposed the
lying U.S. pretext.
Inside Iraq the occupation faces resistance from all
quarters, including the Shiite majority collaborationist leadership –who
saw the U.S. dilemma as opening up possibilities for a better deal than the
initial U.S. "offer" of virtual total submission. From the
Shiites who resent the imposition of a U.S.-controlled government, to the
minority Sunnis, largely frozen out of the "democratic process,"
the fight to rid Iraq from the imperialist invaders deepens.
Even the historically oppressed and stateless Iraqi
Kurds, who today mistakenly collaborate with the U.S., have not forsaken
their fight for self-determination. Their allegiance to the struggle to
remove the invaders will depend on the emergence of a leadership among the
Shiites and Sunnis capable of championing their national rights.
In early April
this resentment boiled over to open confrontations as Sunni fighters stood
poised to drive U.S. forces out of Fallujah, a city of 300,000, and as the
Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, with an impressive militia force, initiated
coordinated attacks in Baghdad that bewildered U.S. commanders. In little
over a week more than 60 U.S. soldiers were killed and U.S. planes and
helicopters, once thought invincible, were shot out of the air.
The
American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council was compelled to report that
negotiations for a cease fire were underway, an open recognition that
American power is far from established.
The events in
Fallujah were triggered when American troops employed attack helicopters,
tanks and warplanes in a mass slaughter of 800 people designed to intimidate
a risen people who five days earlier had taken vengeance on a symbol of
their hatred, four “civilian contractors,” that is, security guards (as it
turns out, ex-military personnel hired by the CIA) who believed that
conquered Iraq was theirs for the taking.
What is
near miraculous about the underground and now above-ground resistance is
its capacity to inflict major casualties against a world power that has at
its command the most sophisticated and deadly technologies known in
history. The fact that the resistance has continued after Saddam Hussein's
capture only emphasizes the depth of the hatred against the invaders.
While U.S.
imperialism touted this capture of its former Iraqi ally as a symbol of the
completion of its fake anti-terrorism "war for democracy," it
finds itself increasingly isolated in a quagmire that has united the Iraqi
people more so than anytime since the 1958 revolution that removed the
imperialist- backed monarchy.
The guerrilla war is inseparable from the public opposition
manifested by massive Iraqi worker protests, in the tens of thousands, for
jobs, trade union rights, and the restoration of the destroyed nation's
infrastructure.
George W. Bush,
who originally announced to the world that no country that opposed the U.S.
war against Iraq would receive contracts to do business in that country,
has been compelled to whistle another tune, offering a piece of the
financial action in return for "allied" troop support to
reinforce the U.S. occupation. Still, the occupying forces are insufficient
to smash the Iraqi resistance as are the paltry "reconstruction"
programs initiated to lend an air of "humanity" to the imperial
project. To date, troops from Spain, Honduras and the Dominican
Republic are slated for withdrawal.
While the U.S.
rulers fall deeper into what may become Bush’s Vietnam, they will continue
to maneuver in an effort to install the compliant government they require,
alternating brute force and horrific slaughter with probing negotiations
designed to divide the opposition. The latest effort in this regard was the
April 15 announcement of Bush officials that it was willing to effectively
dissolve the present U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and replace it
with a U.N.-appointed interim council, established after “consultation”
with the U.S. and the present council.
What is clear is that the proposed June 30 date for the
“handing over of power” to whatever vehicle is established by the
imperialists and/or their U.N. agents will have no effect on the future of
Iraq. The occupiers’ troops will remain in place and the wealth of the
nation will be subject to U.S. dictates.
Yesterday the corporate media referred to the Iraqi
resistance as the work of isolated uncivilized religious fanatics,
foreigners, remnants of Saddam's elite and all the other terminology
employed since the dawn of colonial conquest to belittle the victims and
ennoble the conquerors. "U.S. troops were needed to prevent civil
war," so the occupiers prattled before the first great steps in the
direction of Iraqi unity had been taken. Today, the Iraqi people have
taught the imperialist beast a few lessons about vocabulary and more. They
have declared to the world that their freedom will not be deterred by
American might or negotiated at any bargaining table whose parameters are
set by conquerors. It remains to be seen whether a leadership capable of
deepening the unity can emerge in the period ahead.
The U.S. troubles are compounded by their inability to
rapidly repair, protect and exploit Iraq's vast oil resources. The fact
that the Iraqi actions include desperate suicide missions that have
resulted in civilian casualties has not negated the mass character of the
opposition to the imperialist occupation. A April poll indicated that 78
percent of Iraqis opposed the occupation. Other polls commissioned by U.S.
propagandists presented a rosier picture.
It is critical
that the antiwar movement stay clear of taking sides in the present ruling
class debate as to the form of future imperialist rule in Iraq. This
includes stating a preference for the nature of the government to be
established, whether it be a product of "free elections," as
demanded by the Shiite majority in the past, or some other formula. We base
ourselves on the well-established principle of self-determination of
oppressed nations. That is, we do not recognize the validity of the
imperialist invasion in the first place. We do not accept it as a “fact of
life.” We don’t advise the imperialists as to how best to establish
“democratic” institutions. Instead, in accord with the self-determination
principle, we demand, “Out Now!”
The same
applies to efforts by various imperialist bodies to bring to trial as a war
criminal, or for any other reason, Saddam Hussein. We take the same position
with regard to Hussein as we did in regard to Slobodan Milosevic,
regardless of his crimes against the Kosovars. In both cases we begin and
end with the premise that imperialism has no rights in these matters. The
right to judge either Hussein or Milosevic rests only with the peoples of
Iraq and Yugoslavia respectively.
The viability of the antiwar movement
The continued
struggle of the Iraqi people strengthens the capacity of the U.S. antiwar
movement to mount still important actions on the streets of U.S. cities.
The modest initial actions on October 25, 2003 can now be seen as a resting
point for the movement rather than an indication of the need to lower
expectations in regard to the movement’s capacity to mobilize significant
forces against the occupation. The March 20 protests in New York, San
Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, Minneapolis and hundreds of
other U.S. cities initiated by the United For Peace and Justice Coalition
and A.N.S.W.E.R., (Act Now To Stop War and End Racism) are a clear
indication that the antiwar movement is alive and well.
The size and scope of the March 20 national and
international mobilizations on the first anniversary of the U.S. war
exceeded even the most optimistic movement estimates. In the U.S. 100,000
mobilized in New York, nearly 50,000 in San Francisco and tens of thousands
more in hundreds of U.S. cities. While some reformist leaders attempted to
use the March 20 platforms to press for lesser evil politics, that is,
"Anyone But Bush," they were incapable of muting the basic
message, a resounding "No!" to the U.S. occupation and war. Three
million echoed the same idea as they mobilized worldwide. Bush's approval
ratings, fluctuating just above or below 50 percent, have dropped significantly
despite the corporate media hype designed to portray his murderous war as
an act of self-defense against imminent attack. Today, the same hype aimed
at justification of the occupation is based on the new invention that the
war served to remove a dictator and open the door to Iraqi democracy. Very
few believe it. Growing numbers understand that the Iraq war was a war for
oil, for power, and for advantage over imperialist competitors. In short it
was an expression of the growing antagonisms between the great powers
stemming from the deepening economic crisis facing world capitalism.
In spite of
its political and organizational limitations and the ongoing factionalism
that reflects the weaknesses of the political forces taking major
responsibility for these organizations, they have both proved capable of
bringing onto the political scene in a principled manner hundreds of
thousands of opponents of U.S. war. A.N.S.W.E.R has issued a call for mass
antiwar actions in Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles on June
5. We endorse these actions and will work to build them.
Haiti and the U.S. antiwar movement
We note, however, that the text of the call includes the
demand that Aristide, the deposed President of Haiti, be returned to power.
While we protest the U.S.-backed overthrow of Aristide as a fundamental
violation of the right of self-determination, we believe that it is
incorrect for the U.S. movement to call for the return of the
pro-capitalist Aristide, who subordinated the needs of Haiti’s workers and
peasants to the interests of U.S. capital when he was in office.
Moreover, in a historic betrayal of Haiti's mighty 1804
slave revolution against French colonialism, Aristide and his U.S.
supporters implored U.S. imperialism on two occasions to occupy Haiti, a
sovereign country. In the first instance, to overturn the 1991 CIA
supported military coup which led to the 1994 US-led UN occupation and for
a second time in 2004, after his regime came under attack from former
Haitian Army CIA assets and paramilitary thugs. Aristide has demonstrated
his inability to offer an alternative to U.S. militarism and is unworthy of
support. The anti-war movement should demand "Self Determination for
Haiti! U.S./U.N. Out Now!"
The criminal U.S.-led UN military intervention in Haiti
is a continuation of 200 years of neo-colonialism. On Feb. 29th the United
Nations Security Council handed George Bush a "mandate" to
invade, with France, Canada and Chile as accomplices. This is the
third U.S. occupation. The other two, no less criminal, were under
Democratic Party presidents. Despite Washington's support to every
dictatorship in Haiti's history the U.S. has intervened each time in the
name of "democracy."
The inclusion of demands for Palestinian
self-determination and freedom
The
antiwar movement’s addition of the demand for Palestinian freedom to the
Out Now! demand in regard to the March 20 actions did not, in our view,
detract from the demonstration's turnout or in any significant way limit
its breadth of support. The Palestine demand served to deepen the
understanding of the U.S.-backed Israeli regime as the colonial oppressor
of the Palestinian people and of the U.S. as the parallel oppressor of the
Iraqi people.
We do not
believe that the addition of the Palestinian issue limits the size of the
antiwar movement. As we have noted in the past the forces that previously
opposed the inclusion of this issue are in retreat and the knowledge of the
nature of the Palestinian oppression and U.S. complicity has taken a major
step forward. The antiwar movement’s identification with the Palestinian
struggle, intimately connected to the Iraqi occupation, has gone a long way
to increasing the participation of the broad Arab communities across the
U.S. At a time when these same communities are also under attack with
regard to their fundamental civil liberties and democratic rights, the
movement’s welcoming their participation represents an important advance.
It is a statement to the world that our movement defends Arab rights in the
U.S. and worldwide. To date, we have seen no significant evidence that the
inclusion of the Palestine issue reduces the size of mass actions. Indeed,
the opposite appears to be the case. Aside from a handful of “left”
Zionists and a few labor bureaucrats whose union’s ranks generally hold
them in low regard, the losses have been minimal. Even here, the liberal
Zionists and labor officials refrain from an open break, knowing that to do
so would further reduce their credibility.
The re-emergence of the demand for a democratic
secular Palestine
With the unceasing and naked moves of the Israeli
Zionist settler regime to forcefully expel Palestinians en masse, important
sections of both the U.S. antiwar movement and the Palestinian people more
generally are coming to realize the absolute futility of the demand for a
separate Palestinian state based on the recognition of the formation of
Israel and the legitimacy of the U.N. partition. Bush's "road map
for peace" and its reflection in the proposed Geneva Accords spell out
the Zionist and imperialist plans in detail. Palestine, at best, is to be
restricted to a Bantustan-like existence, that is, Palestinians are to be
restricted to tiny, economically non-viable, individually isolated and
militarily controlled zones that in no stretch of the imagination can be
considered a viable nation.
Recognition of this fact is now widespread, culminating
in a petition initiated by U.S.-based Arab American organizations and
signed originally by 1,000 leading activists and intellectuals. The
petition, although with some ambiguity, comes as close to a democratic
secular Palestine solution, our position, than we have seen for decades.
The petition's correct insistence on the right of return
of all Palestinians in the Diaspora to the lands and property of their
birth also marks a step forward for the Palestinian struggle. Tragically,
this new orientation appears to be the product of decades of defeat, as
reformist attempts at a negotiated two-state solution proved futile and as
Israel policy proceeds inexorably toward driving more and more Palestinians
out of what remains of Palestine as well as from the illegitimate Israel
state. The latter has today replaced some 400,000 Palestinian workers with
workers from other nations, bringing the unemployment rate of Palestinians
to well over 70 percent.
The
2004 elections
The extent to which the size of antiwar demonstrations
could be less than their potential will not be determined by objective
factors like the ongoing struggles of the Iraqi people or the growing
impact on workers of the profit-driven decisions to offshore U.S. jobs and
cut social benefits or to increase productivity by the substitution of
machines for workers. Rather, the conscious decisions of significant sectors
of the movement itself to subordinate mass antiwar mobilizations to the
election of lesser evil Democrats in 2004 will impact the antiwar movement's potential. There is no doubt
that the “Anyone But Bush” phenomenon will take its toll on the movement’s
ability to organize independent mass actions.
The
leadership of the UFPJ is a case in point. This outfit's national
coordinating committee has already declared that its major priority in 2004
is to replace George Bush with a "lesser evil" Democrat. We have
covered this phenomenon in our press. It is far from limited to the UFPJ.
With few exceptions the liberal/left activists and intellectuals, in full
retreat, have dedicated the coming year to turning every social protest
group they can toward electoral activity, from voter registration drives to
the organization of mass antiwar protests with a barely-disguised
agenda of electing Democrats. In regard to these latter type actions, the
UFPJ’s approach is to flood the speaker’s platform with local and other
Democrats who present the “Dump Bush” message. We have never opposed having
representatives of capitalist parties on stage at antiwar protests as long
as other voices were present. But today, the latter type of speakers will
be reduced to the minimum.
The lesser
evil stampede has been joined by forces around the Not In Our Name
Coalition, who are preparing a major demonstration aimed at the Republican
Party Convention scheduled for New York City.
To date
the A.N.SW.E.R coalition has refrained from open support to the Democrats
although the track record of the leading component of this formation, the
Workers World Party, indicates adeptness at organizing mass protests to
"Fight the Right" as election time approaches. For the moment it
appears that ANSWER will use the stage of its protests to showcase
so-called antiwar Democrats who will undoubtedly denounce President Bush,
rather than opt for a more direct or overt orientation toward ruling class
politics as in the case of UFPJ.
The fact
that not a single one of the Democratic Party hopefuls stood for the
movement's central demand, "Bring the Troops Home Now!" makes it
more difficult for the various reformist groups and prominent individuals
to totally disorient the antiwar movement. Even the longshot Dennis
Kucinich, touted as "THE" antiwar candidate, prominently featured
the slogan "U.S. Out! UN In!" on his website. Kucinich favored
U.S. troops in Iraq but preferred some international cover for the
operation. Howard Dean, like Kucinich, took the middle road, posing as a
moderate Iraq policy critic but rejecting the movement's Out Now! position.
With Kerry all but selected, there’s not much chance that he or any other
Democrat will pose as an antiwar candidate, making it more difficult to derail
the movement.
Kerry has made all the right moves from the ruling class
standpoint and in regard to what he and his advisers deem necessary to win
the presidency. He has called for more U.S. troops in Iraq, announced his
“100 percent support for Israel,” backed the assassination of the new Hamas
leader, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, “regretted” the withdrawal of Spanish troops
from Iraq, and attempted to one-up Bush with regard to virulent attacks on
revolutionary Cuba. In short, Kerry is no “peace candidate.”
This contrasts
significantly with the Vietnam era when significant portions of the antiwar
movement, especially in the early stages, supported a negotiated settlement
as opposed to "Out Now!" and when the ruling rich found it
necessary to run some “doves” for president. While the UFPJ effort to
orient the movement toward the Democrats will continue, as will the Noam
Chomsky-endorsed petition to "Stop George Bush!" by voting for a
Democrat who "will not meet all your criteria," it is unlikely
that principled mass protests will be squelched to a significant degree.
We will continue our participation in the antiwar
movement as before, endorsing the actions, building support in our press,
mobilizing our periphery to attend and organizing the best propaganda intervention
we can on the day of the various events. We do this with the understanding
that our limited forces make it impossible to play a leading role in the
movement at this time.
The April 25 national march for women’s lives
Sponsored by
the National Organization for Women (NOW) and a half-dozen women’s
organizations, the April 25 Washington, D.C. mass action for abortion
rights and women’s lives promises attracted hundreds of thousands of women
and men who understod the severity of the government’s stepped-up attacks
on critical rights won in struggle over the past several decades. The
bi-partisan assault on women’s rights today threatens to further limit the
right to abortion and to add criminal penalties for women and the medical
facilities providing abortion services. Hopefully, the massive turnout on
April 25 will help to reinvigorate a women’s movement that had largely
turned away from mass action.
It is necessary to state that both NOW and NARAL
(National Abortion Rights Action League), another major march organizer,
have failed to organize a single mass action in recent years to challenge
the continuing assault on reproductive rights. NOW, as in the past, their
calls to mobilize are left to election time. Their aim is to use the
occasion to mobilize women and their allies to vote for the lesser evil.
The onstage scene in Washington on April 25 included a parade of Democrats,
local and national, who laid the blame for the plight of women on the
Republicans. While the Democratic Party remains fully complicit in the
assault on abortion rights, it is portrayed as the champion of the women's
movement!
In the
absence of a mass force capable of posing a clear independent alternative,
mass mobilizations like the April 25 action will continue to have a
contradictory character. The basic demands for abortion rights and
opposition to the mounting efforts to ban abortion entirely are on the
mark. The notion that they can be achieved through subordinating the
movement to the Democratic Party is fatally flawed.
NOW itself
has undergone a major transformation over the past decade or so. Its local
chapters are largely ossified, rarely meet, and function more as adjuncts
to the Democratic Party than as activist centers fighting for women's
rights. In San Francisco, which formally had a vibrant chapter, the group's
local leaders are today more often than not employees of the Democratic
Party, staff local offices and otherwise act to advance their personal
careers as Democratic Party functionaries.
Illusions
in the twin parties of capitalism remain high, especially in the absence of
a real alternative. The labor bureaucracy is incapable of providing even
the semblance of opposition. It has declared well in advance that its class
collaborationist orientation will be maintained at all costs, both in the
political arena – where several of the largest AFL-CIO unions that
initially declared for Howard Dean have now switched to Kerry – to trade
union struggles. Anything less than a complete break with this bureaucracy
and its strategic class collaborationist orientation will doom labor to
additional disastrous setbacks.
Same sex marriage and the struggle for gay and
lesbian rights
The unexpected decision of newly-elected San Francisco
mayor Gavin Newsom to instruct city officials to issue marriage
certificates to gay and lesbian couples who requested them set off a
firestorm of controversy across the U.S. Within days and weeks similar
actions were taken by city and county governments in several areas of the country.
Citing constitutional provisions mandating equal treatment under the law,
the Massachusetts Supreme Court issued a ruling that effectively legalized
same-sex marriage.
The courage of gay and lesbian couples to publicly and
spontaneously, in the thousands, line up at the San Francisco city hall to
be legally married inspired others to do the same across the country. The
event opened a national debate that exposed the hypocrisy of opponents of
same sex marriage and gay and lesbian rights more generally. It revealed
that virtually nothing other than base prejudice lay behind the rationale
offered by bigots of every sort from the major Democratic Party
presidential candidates to President Bush himself.
It is this prejudice that the capitalist class seeks to
exploit. They need to stigmatize gays and lesbians and other oppressed
groups as inferior, that is, undeserving of the benefits of the law and
beneath the “morals” of the majority, in order to maintain their
discriminatory policies more generally. A witchhunt atmosphere against gays
and lesbians (GLBT/gay/lesbian/bi-sexual and transgender people) serves to
intimidate and divide working people and thereby reduce their capacity for
a united struggle against the capitalist system as a whole.
The debate opened a schism in the Democratic Party as
local officials and party activists were embarrassed when their “leaders”
bent to bigotry and election-time opportunism rather than stand for
fundamental democratic rights.
The most intelligent responses in the debate were the
simple statements and opinions of millions that all people should have the
right to marry the person of their choice. The debate forced into the open
the fact that the denial of same-sex marriage rights carried with it the
exclusion from legal benefits granted to heterosexual married people. The
exclusions are incorporated by legal interpretation or backward tradition
into innumerable laws and regulations whose financial and social benefits
are denied to gay and lesbian couples.
In short order both major capitalist parties agreed to
try to bury the debate in a morass of court challenges designed to postpone
a resolution until at least after the 2004 national elections. In
Massachusetts, an effort is underway to reverse the State Supreme Court’s
decision through a public referendum.
The idea that one’s right to marry a person of one’s choice can be
restricted by majority vote is inimical to the basic principle of civil
liberties, that is, the protection of minorities from the “tyranny of the
majority.”
Socialist Action has always defended the democratic
right to same sex marriage, regardless of our view of the marriage
institution in capitalist society. We oppose all forms of discrimination
based on sexual preference as well as on race, creed and nationality. The
fact that this important struggle was sidelined to the courts with little
resistance indicates that the leadership of the gay and lesbian movement,
like the other struggles for basic democratic rights, has yet to develop an
independent mass mobilization perspective to fight for issues involving
fundamental equality.
Green
Party reformism
The reformist
Greens find themselves in a dilemma. Their 2000 presidential candidate,
Ralph Nader, has abandoned them while keeping the door open to an
endorsement by the party. Nader states that his decision to run for the
presidency as an "independent" was largely dictated by the
Green’s refusal to begin an early run for the nation’s top post that would
insure ballot status in the maximum possible number of states
The Green Party
itself, oriented to a "kinder, gentler" capitalism, is sharply
divided as to the alternatives of running its own presidential candidate,
supporting Nader once again, or staying out of the race. As in 2000, both
Nader and the Greens are exploring ways to avoid interfering with a
Democratic Party victory in 2004. Nader has stated without equivocation
that any decision he makes will be designed to strengthen the hand of the
Democrats. His current position is that he can best accomplish this goal by
running for the presidency and thereby bring into the electoral process, by
way of registration drives, voters who would not otherwise participate.
Once registered says Nader, the idea is to have these supporters who would
otherwise vote at all cast their votes for local Congressional Democratic
Party candidacies to which his followers will offer no opposition. As in
the past, at the national level, Nader would coach his supporters to limit
their votes for him by casting a Nader vote only in those states where it
is a foregone conclusion that the Republican cannot be defeated, the
"safe state" approach.
Nader has
added a new twist to this approach. Pressed hard by his reformist friends
to withdraw from the race or to decline to run, he insists that by staying
in he forces Kerry to the left and thereby provides a “mandate” for Kerry
to stand on more progressive positions. Without remaining in the race, he
argues, Kerry will move to the right and therefore will not be accountable
for any progressive positions. Our recent lengthy newspaper article on the
Nader campaign details his reformist orientation. Here it is sufficient to
say that his intention, naïve or crass as it may be, is to elect Kerry.
The
left and the 2004 elections
The range
of the liberal/"left" rush to the Democrats extends from The Nation magazine, the UFPJ, NOW
and the labor bureaucracy of every stripe, to the CoC, the Communist Party
and Noam Chomsky.
The centrist ISO is likely to repeat its 2000 support
to Nader and/or the Greens. The ISO supported Camejo's gubernatorial
candidacy in the California recall election. It is not new to class
collaborationist politics, lending support to Mexico's Cuautemoc Cardenas
and the pro-capitalist ANC's Nelson Mandela in years past.
The January
2004 plenum decided to leave open the question of our stance in the 2004
national elections. During the discussion comrades considered two major
possibilities, once again extending critical support to the SWP and “not
voting.” A final decision was deferred until we had clear information as to
whether the SWP would enter the race in the first place. Even so, NC
members were divided as to whether critical support to the SWP, given its
continuing degeneration, was merited even if it did obtain ballot status in
a reasonable number of states. We will revisit this question at the SA
National Convention.
The
Paul O'Neill affair
A noteworthy
controversy is unfolding nationally with the recent publication of a book
by former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. While the media focussed on
O'Neill's exposure of the fact that the Bush Administration had planned the
Iraq invasion long before the 911 Twin Tower terror bombing, his
differences with Bush over fundamental economic policy were largely
ignored. O'Neill was fired because of his objections to Bush's seeming
indifference to the Bush Administration’s massive deficit spending. O'Neill
claims that Bush stated at various internal meetings, "The deficit
doesn't mean anything."
The conservative
O'Neill defended the traditional Republican policy of “fiscal
responsibility,” that is, don't spend money you don't have. O'Neil’s has
been the traditional Republican Party response to the supposed Democratic
Party credo to resort to deficits in difficult times to fund threatened
social programs. In truth, neither party these days spends money to fund
social programs. Clinton both cut them beneath the bone and spent $1.3
trillion in tax cuts to help bail out the corporate rich.
Bush did
the same, but with a bit more controversy since his trillion-dollar
corporate welfare tax cut was implemented in the context of an admitted
budget deficit. Clinton had his congressional budget committee rig the
figures to show that his claimed surplus
was credible, thereby justifying his tax cut.
The
O'Neill affair reveals two fundamental truths about imperialist politics
and economics. First, pretexts are employed for war when the need is there,
that is, when there are few alternatives to maintaining profit rates and
the broader economic system. Second, Bush ignored so-called ideological
economic imperatives and did what was necessary when the boss class's
profit rates were flagging. In the name of his class he did what every
other imperialist power has done, cut wages and social benefits of every
kind while spending massive amounts on military and space programs in
Keynsian-type pump priming in order to help stressed corporations remain
competitive in the worldwide struggle for profits.
U.S.
hegemony and Professor Du Boff's economic statistics
An incisive
article by Bryn Mawr Professor Emeritus Richard B. Du Boff entitled
"U.S. Hegemony: Continuing Decline, Enduring Danger" details the
extent of the economic crisis facing U.S. capitalism as its imperialist
rivals combine to erode U.S. economic power. We have quoted a lengthy
portion to summarize our viewpoint that the trend of the U.S. economy in
particular is increasing bleak and that the fundamental decisions of the
U.S. ruling class, whether led by Clinton or Bush or anyone else, must be
toward increasing confrontations with workers at home and imperialist
competitors abroad.
Professor
Du Boff begins:
"Global hegemony" might be defined as a
situation in which one nation-state plays a predominant role in organizing,
regulating, and stabilizing the world political economy. The use of armed
force has always been an inseparable part of hegemony, but military power
depends upon the economic resources at the disposal of the state. It cannot
be deployed to answer every threat to geopolitical and economic interests,
and it raises the danger of imperial overreach, as was the case for Britain
in South Africa (1899-1902) and the United States in Vietnam (1962-1975).
"Britannia ruled the waves from 1815 to 1913, but
by the 1890s she was under economic challenge from the United States and
Germany, and between the two world wars was no longer able to function as
underwriter to the world system. U.S. hegemony began during the Second World
War and peaked some thirty years
later. The United States still has immense - unequalled - power in
international economics and politics, but even as the sole superpower it
finds itself less able than it once was to influence and control the course
of events abroad. Its military supremacy is no longer matched in the
economic and political spheres, and is of dubious value in preserving the
global economy. In 1971 the United States was unable to avoid military
defeat in Vietnam and a draw in Korea.
"Slow
Merge Ahead: Hegemony Since the 1970s
"An
idea of the decline of American economic power can be formed from the following:
"In
1950 the United States supplied half the world's gross product, against 21
percent at present. Sixty percent of the world‚s manufacturing production
in 1950 came from the United States, 25 percent in 1999. The U.S. share of
exports of commercial services, the fastest growing part of the world
economy, stood at 24 percent in 2001, while the European Union (EU) had 23
percent - 40 percent if intra-EU exports were counted.
"Non-U.S. companies dominated major industries in
2002, accounting for nine of the ten largest electronics and electrical
equipment manufacturers; eight of the ten largest motor vehicle makers and
electric and gas utilities; seven of the ten largest petroleum refiners;
six of ten telecommunications companies; five of ten pharmaceutical firms;
four of six chemical producers; four of seven airlines. Of the twenty-five
largest banks in the world, nineteen were non-U.S. banks, although the two
largest were Citigroup and Bank of America.
"Of the top one hundred corporations in the world
in 2000 ranked by foreign-held assets, twenty-three were American.
Together, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, with a
combined gross domestic product (GDP) seven-tenths that of the United
States, had forty; Japan had sixteen. During the 1990s, the share of U.S.
multinationals in the foreign sales of the world's one hundred largest multinationals
decreased from 30 to 25 percent; the share of EU-based companies increased
from 41 to 46 percent.
"Twenty-one percent of the world's stock of direct
investment in other countries was American in 2001, compared with 47
percent in 1960. During 1996-2001, 17 percent of all new direct
investment abroad came from the United States and 16 percent from Great
Britain; together, France and Belgium-Luxembourg supplied 21 percent.
Of the
twenty-five largest mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the United
States in 1998-2000, five involved takeovers by foreign multinationals
(three British, two German). Of the top twenty corporations involved in
cross-border M&As from 1987 through 2001, only two were U.S. (General
Electric and Citigroup); they accounted for 5 percent of the value of all
M&A deals during these years.
"In
global finance, the United States is not only less dominant, but
vulnerable. The weak link is the dollar, whose status as the world's key
currency has been eroding since the 1970s, irregularly and with periodic
revivals. Between 1981 and 1995, the share of private world savings held in
European currencies increased from 13 percent to 37 percent, while the
dollar's share
fell from 67 to 40 percent.
"Forty-four percent of new bonds have been issued
in euros since the new currency was introduced in 1999, closing in on the
48 percent issued in dollars. Half the foreign exchange reserves held by
the world's central banks were composed of dollars in 1990 compared to 76
percent in 1976; the proportion rose back to 68 percent in 2001 because of
the phasing out of ecus (reserves issued to European banks by the European
Monetary Institute) to make way for the euro. For the first time since the
Second World War there is another source of universally acceptable payment
and liquidity in the world economy - at a moment when the U.S. balance of
international payments is chalking up record deficits.
"Since 1971, when the United States had a deficit
in its trade in goods (merchandise) for the first time in seventy-eight
years, exports have exceeded imports only in 1973 and 1975. A nation can
run deficits in its trade in goods and still be in overall balance in its
dealings with foreign countries. Deficits in trade in goods can be offset
by having a positive balance in sales of services abroad (financial,
insurance, telecommunications, advertising and other business services)
and/or income from overseas investments (profits, dividends, interest,
royalties, and the like). But the U.S. merchandise deficit has become too
big to be paid for by services sold to foreigners plus remittances on
investments. The U.S. current account (the sum of the balances in trade in
goods and services plus net income from overseas investment), almost constantly
in surplus from 1895 to 1977, is now deteriorating sharply; the merchandise
deficit has become too big to be paid for by services sold to foreigners.
And since 1990, the positive balance on investment income has been
shriveling as foreign investment in
the United States has grown faster than U.S. investment abroad. In 2002,
the balance turned negative: for the first time the United States is paying
foreigners more investment income from their holdings here than it receives
from its own investments abroad.
"Like
most gaps between income and expenses, the current account deficit is
covered by borrowing. In 2002, the United States borrowed $503 billion from
abroad, a record 4.8 percent of GDP. When foreigners receive dollars from
transactions with U.S. residents (individuals, companies, governments),
they can use them to buy American assets (U.S. Treasury bonds, corporate
bonds and stocks, companies, and real estate). This is how the United
States turned into a debtor nation in 1986; foreign-owned assets in the
United States are now worth $2.5 trillion more than U.S.-owned assets
abroad. By mid-2003, foreigners owned 41 percent of U.S. Treasury
marketable debt, 24 percent of all U.S. corporate bonds, and 13 percent of
corporate stock. U.S. companies are continuing to invest abroad, but unlike
the British Empire in the decades before the First World War, the United
States is unable to finance those investments from its current account. By
contrast, Great Britain's current account was in surplus, averaging 3 to 4
percent of GDP every year from 1850 to 1913, when income from services and
foreign investment was larger than its merchandise trade deficits.
"So far the global investor class has seemed
willing to finance America's external deficits, but it may not be forever.
The deficits are exerting a downward drag on the dollar, arousing suspicion
that the United States favors a cheaper dollar to help pay off its
ballooning trade deficit. As the dollar declines in value, the return to
foreign investors on dollar-denominated assets falls. German investments in
choice office properties in New York, San Francisco, and elsewhere were cut
back sharply in 2003. While the buildings were becoming cheaper in euros,
rents were shrinking when converted from dollars back home. 'We can get the
same return in Britain and the
Nordic countries, so why go to the United States, where the currency risk
is greater' asked the chief investment officer of a Munich-based property
fund. Until recently all Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) sold their oil for dollars only; Iraq switched to the euro in 2000
(presumably terminated with extreme prejudice in March 2003), and Iran has
considered a conversion since 1999. In a speech in Spain in April 2002, the
head of OPEC's Market Analysis Department, Javad Yarjani, saw little chance
of change 'in
the near future...[but] in the long run the euro is not at such a
disadvantage versus the dollar. The Euro-zone has a bigger share of global
trade than the US and...a more balanced external accounts position'
Adoption of the euro by Europe's principal oil producers, Norway and
Britain, could create 'a momentum to shift the oil pricing system to
euros.' Thus, concluded Yarjani, 'OPEC will not discount entirely the
possibility of adopting euro pricing and payments in the future.'"
Professor
Du Boff's data confirms much of what we have written over the past two
decades and longer. The trend of U.S. political economy is readily
discernable. Du Boff's research highlights Marx's maxim in bold relief that
"politics is crystallized economics." The continuing decline in
U.S. economic power relative to its European competitors is the central
explanation for the increased belligerence of U.S. imperialism and its
drive to undermine the standard of living of U.S. workers.
There will be no significant recovery for American
workers. The "jobless recovery" is a permanent feature of
working-class life. Good paying jobs will increasingly be replaced by
second and third tier wage jobs, putting whole groups of industries back to
wage levels of three and four decades ago. Machines will continue to
replace human labor power at increasing rates. The result will be more
unemployment and longer, not shorter, hours for all workers.
In the past ten years average hours
worked in families where two members were employed increased from 34 per
person to 42 with no pay increase, a startling statistic but a figure
entirely consistent with the laws governing capitalist development.
The
jobless recovery and the limits to de-industrialization
Many have asked whether there is a
limit to the "de-industrialization" process underway. Can
American capital, for example, indefinitely offshore better paying
industrial jobs? We have always answered this question in the negative for
several reasons.
First and foremost, de-industrialization
is a political question associated directly with the workers' movement and
with U.S. capitalism's global competitors. A strong workers’ movement can thwart
corporate plans to move production abroad. It is a simple question of the
coordinated exercise of working class power. Absent this, as is the case
today, the
relatively free
movement of industrial plants, like capital in the money form, is largely
unimpeded.
But the ruling rich pays a price for
its decisions to relocate plants to low wage regions, a price measured at
first only at the molecular level, that is, at the level of minute changes
in consciousness stemming from the growing realization that the capitalist
system itself is deadly to workers. Eventually, the molecular changes ("invisible
changes") in consciousness
give way to
struggle, strikes and other class confrontations. The ruling class has
proceeded with a measured regard for the result of its decisions. They are
fully aware that moves that are too aggressive and abrupt can provoke a
giant response.
Second, the
U.S. ruling rich fear the lack of stability in other countries and are
reticent to place major sections of U.S. industry in locations where
production could be halted, thereby threatening the broader production
process. The location of a major parts factory abroad, for
example, that is
subject to workers power could have a major effect on an American
corporation's ability to bring its products onto the world market. Caution
is called for!
The political limitations of plant
relocations are the most critical from the capitalist viewpoint, although
the pressure to move to low wage regions of the planet to remain
competitive is inherent in the system as a whole.
And finally, as we have stated, in the
longer run, the process of proletarianization of the workforce associated
with plant relocations and the resulting rise in the class struggle
globally eventually reduces, incrementally, the benefits of the original
cheap labor. At the same time, the benefits of the competitive advantage
gained in the low wage marketplace by relocation, even in the short term,
are at least partially, if not totally, negated by the associated drive of
America's corporate nemeses in other countries to do the same thing.
If what we have written has a
contradictory content, it is because of the contradictory nature of
capitalism itself, or as Marx would explain, the dialectical nature of
capitalist development. Yes, there is an inherent tendency for the average
rate of profit to fall. But the capitalists are driven to fight this
tendency with every means at their disposal, from plant relocation or
modernization or attacks on wage levels to plant relocations,
super-exploitation of foreign labor and even to war.
Hence, the growing inter-imperialist
rivalry for new markets, including new sources of cheap raw materials and
cheap labor. These factors underlie the neo-colonial moves on the part of
the great powers, including the need to station troops on the ground to not
only conquer new markets by force and maintain order but to limit the
penetration of foreign capital.
The stock market continues to be
manipulated by speculators. Its recent rise has little correspondence to
significant profit increases although it was inevitable that some profits
would be registered when measured against the massive losses recorded over
the past three years. The long waves of stagnation, as Ernest Mandel noted,
are always interspersed by minor upward fluctuations. The latter, in recent
months, are also a product of the attempt by Japan and some European nations to
stabilize the value of the dollar by investing in the U.S. stock market.
The declining value of the dollar, while dangerous in the longer term, has
provided a boost to U.S. exports by lowering their price on world markets
to the disadvantage of America's competitors.
The latest Enron indictments, wherein
Enron top executive Anthony Fastow confessed to massive manipulation
of the books to turn multi-billion dollar losses to major gains, continues,
despite toothless legislation to make corporate financial balance sheets
more honest. Cooking the books is far from unique to Enron, just as
election promises and media hype about the "recovery" are
employed to counter unpleasant realities.
Mission
to Mars, military spending and imperialist war
The ruling-class hype about sending
another astronaut-based mission to the moon, and then ten years later to
Mars, was pulled off with a finesse that was hardly thought possible.
President Bush's speechwriters crafted a poetic vision of the heavens that
had Bush sounding like a lyrical Captain Kirk. The masters of deceit had
Bush projecting space exploration even
"beyond" Mars while dreamy media eyes glazed over in
wonderment.
In truth, space exploration is
analogous to military spending, that is, it is an industry where profit
rates are astronomical because there is virtually no competition. But like
the war economy, it requires massive deficit spending. The ruling rich see
no alternative than Keynsian pump-priming at a level never recorded in
history. It is only a matter of time until the U.S. debt itself becomes a
critical factor in world economy, threatening to bring the whole system to
a spectacular halt.
In the
meantime the U.S. has boosted military expenditures to record highs, $400
billion this year alone. Of course, the inherent need to actually use these
weapons drives the industry forward. There is nothing like a good war to
justify the need to replace what was used, not to mention the expenditure
of additional funds for the next generation of weapons of mass destruction.
But make no mistake! The U.S. has
every intention of using the weapons it produces. It has restructured its
international operations from NATO in the West to advanced outposts already
established in the Balkans, Central Asia and the Middle East. The latter
are designed as relatively small, sleek and agile units armed with the
latest in modern weaponry and capable of delivering lethal power to
contested areas within days. The U.S. military as a whole is being similarly
redesigned based on the premise that relatively immobile forces grouped in
large concentrations and distant from the field of action are inefficient means
for today's ends. What was military policy yesterday, and still a dream,
has been declared obsolete today. Yesterday envisioned a U.S. military with
the capacity to conduct two major wars simultaneously. Today the idea is to
be able to intervene and conquer on multiple fronts.
The U.S. will not be the first great
power to extend its armies beyond its capacity to administer what it has
conquered. Iraq is but a small example of what happens when there is even a
semblance of resistance. But the U.S. example has not gone unnoticed. A process
of re-armament is underway worldwide, with all the major players understanding
clearly that it will take more than economic power, as per the combined
productive capacity of the 600 million people of Europe, to challenge U.S.
hegemony. But the direction of European economic unification is clear with the
major players understanding the European Union is a necessity if that
continent's capitalist classes are to remain competitive against the
American megapower.
This is not to say that war is imminent
between Europe and the U.S., that is, war directly waged among countries
like France, Germany and the U.S.
Today's wars are more indirect. The
political battle prior to the invasion of Iraq was a war of sorts between Germany/France on the one side and
the U.S./Britain on the other. It ended up as a real war with a U.S.
invasion of a nation that Germany and France preferred to exploit. Such
wars are likely to continue into the indefinite future as the major
imperialist powers move to buttress their military positions on every
continent.
In the long run, however, we cannot rule
out major wars between the competing imperialisms, including of the nuclear
variety. The maxim socialism or barbarism has not been ruled obsolete.
Ruling class political insanity, driven by economic necessity, has
prevailed in the past. The fundamental contradictions between the great
power blocs can eventually be expected to bring unknown horrors to the
earth's people. Socialist revolution is still the only alternative.
Meanwhile, the process of capitalist globalization continues,
creating a new generation of proletarians in nations whose development had
been restricted to near-feudal social relations not long ago. And these
workers in turn, whether in Asia, Latin America, or Africa, confined to
sweatshop-like
conditions reminiscent of the 19th century, are beginning to challenge
their new bosses as their predecessors in the West did before them.
It is only a matter of time until one,
and then another, and then several sections of the working class, anywhere
and everywhere, in the poor nations and in the advanced centers of
capitalist power, take the class struggle road and give the bosses an
experience in workers' power that will shake the system to its core and
reverberate around the globe.
Free
trade vs. protectionism
Marx responded clearly to the question as
to whether socialists should prefer free trade or protectionism. He noted
many times that each reflected the differing needs and stage of development
of sections of the capitalist class within national borders and worldwide.
Workers had no interest in siding with one or the other wing of capital,
said Marx.
Protectionists are most often associated with those sections of the
corporate elite whose level of industrial technology lags behind the more
advanced sectors. Simply put, they can't compete. They need the assistance
of their government to protect their industry against others with more
advanced technologies. Protectionists whose market is within the U.S., for
example, prefer
"regulation," that is, government intervention to regulate prices
and other aspects of the market that guarantee them profits regardless of
the poor quality of their factories, products or services.
At the level of worldwide competition,
protectionists prefer government intervention to protect their industries
against superior foreign products that undersell their own. They demand
tariff protection, the imposition of a tax on competing foreign products,
in order to raise their price and thereby render their own products, even
inferior products, more competitive,
Free traders reject all tariffs and government
actions to prevent the entrance of their products in any and all markets of
the world. These are the capitalists whose supermodern technology and/or
other competitive advantages makes their products both superior to and
cheaper than those of their competitors.
Marx observed that protectionism
temporarily served to slow the pace of
capitalist competition, insulating weaker nations from better
products abroad thereby prolonging their life, their ability to stay in
business. Free trade, on the other hand, speeds up the process of
capitalist development and intensifies its contradictions. It tends to drive
the system forward in a frenzy of innovation that more quickly brings out
the worst aspects of capitalist competition. Free trade, as is the general
norm among the advanced capitalist nations today, more rapidly results in
driving weaker competitors from the market place. It fosters mergers and
takeovers that eliminate the weak, mass layoffs, plant closures, lower
wages, speedup, and finally, war, as the remaining players' rate of profit
tends to decline to the point that their entire operation and related
national economy face ruin.
In the underdeveloped world free trade
ruins native industries that cannot possibly compete on world markets and
forces whole societies into wage slavery of the most cruel type while
destroying national cultures and sovereignty.
President Bush, the quintessential free
trade president, nevertheless moved to impose protectionist tariffs on
foreign steel manufacturers. The once dominant U.S. industry had proved
incapable of competing against foreign steel from Europe, Japan, Brazil and
elsewhere. But Bush's move to help U.S. steel threatened to set off a wave
of protectionist retaliation from U.S. competitors who first took their
case to the World Trade Organization and won. European nations threatened
to impose counter-tariffs on everything from Florida oranges to a range of
other U.S. products that undercut European products.
Trade
wars are a constant threat to world capitalist stability. Once underway
they engender a logic that threatens the lifeblood of the entire system,
the realization of profit through the sale of commodities.
The WTO
exists to try to mitigate or negotiate contested trade issues but its power
is limited. The inherent tendency of the average profit rate in most all
industries to fall carries with it an ever-sharpening competitive frenzy.
Overproduction gluts all markets, further exacerbating capitalism's
dilemma. The WTO aside, imperialism uses its power to secretly maintain
protectionist policies in industries where it cannot compete. The failure
of the recent Florida WTO sessions stemmed directly from a bloc of poor
Latin American nations who refused to bend to U.S. pressures. The emerging
Latin American bloc correctly pointed to the fact that the U.S. stands in
direct violation of the WTO because of its massive government subsidies to
U.S. agribusiness.
Unlike the
great powers, however, the poor nations of the planet lack the economic
leverage to force U.S. compliance, although the Florida meeting did
highlight the hypocrisy of U.S. policy and the destructive toll it takes on
Latin America's agriculture-based economies. President Bush was forced to
retreat on the steel tariff issue, claiming victory all the same based on
the fact that his tariffs had survived in place for some 10 months. The
U.S. protected steel industry, temporarily free from foreign competition
for ten months, used the opportunity to raise prices in its domestic
market. This in turn forced up prices in the auto industry and all other
U.S.-based industries that rely on steel. The result was a further loss in
competitiveness of the already beleaguered auto industry and several
others.
Bush's
steel tariff experiment ended in failure but it highlighted all the
fragility and fundamental sickness of the capitalist system as a whole.
There are no solutions within this framework. It can only prolong itself at
the expense of the world's workers and oppressed. The image of massive
plant closures in the U.S. ruining the lives of millions of workers,
increasing poverty, homelessness and all the rest is the U.S. side of the
horror wrought internationally by U.S. wars against defenseless people
where millions die for the sake of profits.
Civil
liberties: the attacks deepen
On
December 13, 2003 the day Saddam Hussein was captured, President Bush
signed into law a bill that granted the FBI the right to obtain from
financial institutions the power to probe financial records even if the
government doesn't suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism. The
Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, a legislative behemoth
that funds all the intelligence activities of the federal government,
included a simple, yet insidious, redefinition of the term "financial
institution." The term was
originally limited to banks. It now includes stockbrokers, car dealerships,
casinos, credit card companies, insurance agencies, jewelers, airlines, the
U.S. Post Office, and any other business "whose cash transactions have
a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory matters."
This was a
partial installment of Patriot Act II after the full bill had been held up
in a Congressional committee after portions were leaked to the press. The
Intelligence Authorization Act for 2004 was not widely reported in the
press but is indicative of the government's direction. Lynne's Stewart
re-indictment is another indication as is the decision of the presiding
judge in her case on April 18 to deny motions from Stewart’s legal team to
dismiss the re-instated terrorism charges prior to Stewart’s scheduled May
6 trial.
The main
terrorism charges against Stewart were originally dismissed as
unconstitutionally vague, only to be reinstated in terms even more vague.
This is certainly an indication that the government seeks to make an example
of Stewart, an example that will definitely have the effect of chilling the
exercise of fundamental democratic rights. Stewart agrees.
The more
strict enforcement of the laws that make travel to Cuba illegal has also
proceeded apace. Large fines are being imposed more frequently and
violators have been detained at airports while FBI visits to the homes of
Cuba travelers have escalated
At the
National Committee plenum in the summer of 2003 we were reluctant to draw
any hasty conclusions regarding the pace of the assault on democratic
rights. We noted that the relatively passive state of working class
opposition, among other factors we considered, did not require, from the
ruling class point of view, the imposition of a dramatic attack on civil
liberties. While we should maintain this position, it is also clear that
the general trend in passing repressive legislative
continues. There is still a gap, however, between the passage of
reactionary laws and their wholesale implementation.
The
defense of civil liberties and democratic remains an important part of our
work from the defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal to Lynne Stewart and more recently
to stepped up work in the case of innocent death row San Quentin inmate
Kevin Cooper. Cooper’s case came to national attention when the state of
California set February 10 as the day of his execution. Within a few weeks
his new legal team and his defense committee uncovered and widely
publicized massive evidence proving that he was likely framed by police and
prosecutors with planted evidence that was so substantial that Kevin won a
last-minute stay and perhaps the first major step toward his freedom.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: A critical
period ahead
The fight
for Mumia's freedom and perhaps his very life could see its final battles
fought in the next year or so. At present Mumia's case is in litigation in
three courts, the most important of which is the U.S. Court of Appeals,
Third Circuit. A promising recent Supreme Court decision in the
Miller-El case appears to amend the reactionary Anti-terrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act, thereby allowing consideration of critical
issues that the Federal District Court previously rejected. This could
allow Mumia's attorneys to successfully re-introduce some 20 critical points
in Mumia's new federal habeas brief. There is little doubt that Mumia's
case could be placed on the "fast track," meaning that all of the
outstanding issues could be decided in a short period of time. In the event
that the prosecution is successful in its appeal to reverse the 2001
decision that reversed Mumia’s death sentence and condemned him to life
imprisonment, the potential for a return to truly massive actions for
Mumia’s life and freedom will qualitatively increase. In the meantime all
forces involved in his defense understand that only modest demonstrations
and related events are possible today. This includes the coordinated
national and international protests set for April 24, Mumia’s 50th birthday
and twenty-second year of incarceration.
On the
political front Mumia's decision to hire death penalty specialist Robert
Bryan to replace the previous legal team, can be expected to resolve most
of the internal frictions Mumia's defense committee encountered over the
past period.
The state of Blacks and Latinos in the U.S.
Every
statistical study indicates that the decline in the standard of living
among whites, however severe, does not compare to the effects on America's
oppressed nationalities. Among Blacks unemployment rates are close to double
that of whites, a wider gap than in 1972. One in nine Blacks cannot find a
job, according to a study by United For a Fair Economy. The data for
Latinos is not far behind. The real figures are far worse. Affirmative
action program are being gutted, schools are re-segregated, bi-lingual
programs scrapped and job opportunities are in decline, all as poverty
rates rise. For every dollar of per capita income for whites in 2001,
Blacks earned 57 cents. The figure was 55 cents in 1968.
Bush's
proposed immigration reform threatens to establish a roster of
"illegal" Latino workers who are subject to easy identification
and future deportation. The plan envisions providing low wage jobs for
Latino immigrants "provided that U.S. workers," according to
Bush, "don't want them." Simply put, the idea is to amass a
temporary pool of cheap labor to supply the needs of U.S. agribusiness as
well as a reserve force to compete for minimum wage service sector jobs or
work as domestic servants.
Blacks and
Latinos are also increasingly subject to police brutality, racist
sentencing laws and discriminatory practices that have filled the nation's
growing and profitable prison-industrial complex with some 2.6 million
people, the majority oppressed nationalities. The increasingly privatized
prisons also serve as a source of cheap labor hired by some 100 U.S.
corporations, who offer wages at 25 cents per hour.
We have
written extensively about the crisis of leadership in the communities of
the oppressed, not to mention in the broad labor movement and in U.S.
society more generally. The crisis has deepened with the ruling rich still
relying on the Democratic Party in conjunction with Black churches to at
least in part contain the inevitable radicalization.
The
majority of the entire eligible U.S. population does not participate in
the electoral process today. The
figure for the Black community is considerably higher, indicating a basic
alienation from a political system where the dual parties of the oppressor
have nothing to offer. The Black turnout was down to five per cent in some
districts in San Francisco during the recent race for Mayor between Green
Party candidate Matt Gonzalez and the racist but still Willie Brown-backed
Democratic Party machine that ran Gavin Newsom for the city's top post. It
was Newsom who had previously led the ballot initiative fight to clear the
city's streets of the homeless.
The U.S. is far from resolving the racial divide that is
an inherent part of a capitalist system that requires systematic oppression
of minority groups. Theories of racial inferiority are coupled with and
used to justify the racist practices that permeate every institution in
society. The ability to pay one oppressed group less for the same work in
the end serves to exert a downward pressure on the wages of all workers,
including whites. Our resolution on the Black Liberation struggle entitled,
“Black Self-Determination and
Socialist Revolution in the United States,” contained in the
pamphlet “The Coming Black Rebellion and the Legacy of Malcolm X” retains
its validity today. The inseparable relationship between the struggle for
fundamental civil and democratic rights for oppressed nationalities and
socialist revolution stands at the center of our revolutionary program.
Capitalism and the environment
Today, 50,000
chemicals used in the normal course of world capitalist production are
carcinogens. This simple fact reveals that the system itself is toxic to
all human beings, not to mention to all species. Capitalism’s capacity and
need to manufacture ever more competitive products for an unforgiving
marketplace stands in direct opposition to the development of a society of
healthy individuals. Modern and deadly technology is employed to maximize
profits regardless of the human cost.
The cost
includes increasing cancer rates and death from diseases that were
previously unknown, as well as new and virulent mutant varieties of
previously harmless viruses and bacteria. Global warming, increasingly an
irrefutable reality, threatens to fundamentally disorganize and reduce the
quality of life on the entire planet if not worse. Nothing is safe, from
the food we eat to the air we breathe.
We must add to
this all too brief summary the environmental devastation and human destruction
caused by “conventional” capitalist wars of conquest and plunder. Hundreds
of thousands are killed in saturation bombings against virtually
defenseless people while countless others are left to suffer and die from
the effects of depleted uranium, land mines and other lethal weapons. And
we must add to the list of horrors the increasing danger of nuclear war,
still a touted weapon in the arsenal of world imperialism.
The struggle
for an environment that is truly fit for all life, beginning with human
beings, is inseparable from the struggle against capitalism itself. However
important, no single reform of this or that aspect of the system’s general
functioning can save it from the consequences of its general trend, the
increasing subordination of human needs and life itself to capitalist
profit.
Virtually every social movement has become increasingly
aware of the relationship between the fight for basic democratic rights and
the effects of capitalism’s daily delivery of pollutants of mass destruction.
The women’s movement is confronted with dramatically increasing breast
cancer rates; the communities of the poor have become dumping grounds for
toxic wastes, while the basic methods employed in modern agriculture poison
the food of everyone.
It is clear that the major environmental groups today,
the seven sisters as they have been called, including the Sierra Club and
similar groups, have been largely coopted, dependent on foundation grants
that determine the limits of their operations. None have a perspective that
goes beyond lobbying politicians for legislation that is minimal when
compared to the magnitude of the problem.
More important, the U.S. government itself has retreated
on one treaty after another, indicating once again that profits come first
and foremost in capitalist society.
Socialist Action supports every effort to mobilize
against the deadly effects on the environment of the capitalism system.
Increasingly its workings are convincing broad layers of the population
that it has no future and that a rational, planned, environmentally safe
and healthy world is impossible within the framework of production for
profit.
Youth
radicalization
Adam
Ritscher will discuss our youth perspectives and work in a separate report.
Here it is sufficient to say that the fact that Socialist Action has nearly
doubled our membership in the past nine months or so, with the overwhelming
portion of the new members in the youth category, indicates that an
important, albeit small layer of young people are beginning to question the
fundamental underpinnings of capitalist society.
70,000 Southern California grocery workers: Lessons of a
failed strike
The three
and a half month grocery strike of nearly 70,000 members of the United Food
and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union ended in a terrible defeat. It was a
strike that had all the potential to deal the employers a severe blow.
Union power was initially exerted when Teamster drivers, at least at some
distribution centers, respected UFCW picket lines, stopping cold the
distribution of food from these facilities. A real alliance between the
UFCW and IBT could have immediately shut down the entire industry, assuming
that is, that the striking union decided to picket and shut down all three
of the major supermarket chain’s distribution centers.
Of course,
the above scenario, simple and powerful in conception, never came to
be. The worthless bureaucracy decided to limit picketing to one of
the three chains, Safeway, supposedly to put decisive pressure on it for a
settlement. Safeway and the other chains, however, had no intention of losing
this strike by stupid mistakes or counterproductive rivalry. They agreed to
finance each other's loses. They signed a pact to share their take with
whomever the union decided to picket.
Additionally, the UFCW, in a "gesture of good will
to the employers," shortly removed its pickets from Teamster-organized
distribution centers, whereupon the bosses happily resumed deliveries to
the struck Safeway stores. Threats aside, the UFCW rejected spreading the
strike to other regions of California and even nationally. The sum total of
the union's actions, or inaction, was to prepare the ground for the
eventual sellout. This has been
the pattern in
this industry for decades. The combination of union incompetence,
corruption, a total absence of rank-and-file input, not to mention control,
and employer determination and clarity added up to a defeat of massive
proportions.
The bosses, as usual, were well-prepared. They
moved to significantly reduce for all new workers, via the imposition
of a two or three tier wage system, the basic hourly wage of $18. They did
the same with the union’s impressive fringe benefit package that had
provided substantial health care coverage. And they did the same with the union’s pension plan.
When the smoke cleared and the parasitic bureaucracy
believed that the ranks had been demoralized and bled enough, a miserable
contract proposal was recommended for approval that represented an average
yearly loss of $8,000 for all new hires. The $8,000 applies to fulltime
workers, who at this point represent only 25 percent of the workforce. For
the remainder of the union’s part time ranks, the losses, significant as
they were, came on top of the givebacks negotiated over the course of the
past three decades.
The bosses
gave as their reason for insisting on these massive concessions the
decision of the super-behemoth Wal-Mart to build some 100 Supercenters in
California in the coming years. Non-union Wal-Mart provides no health care
and pays an $8.00 hourly wage. It boasts the ability to undercut regular
grocery chain prices by 11 percent. Wal-Mart is the world's largest
corporation and currently accounts for 19 percent of the supermarket food
sold in the U.S. The figure is 30 percent in Mexico.
Giant U.S.
supermarket chains of the past like Safeway, are today challenged as never
before. The same phenomenon is repeated in every other major industry
on the planet. The next generation of Wal-Mart-like competitors always
stands in the wings dictating what lesser capitalists must do to survive,
if possible, in a profit-driven system that has no mercy. Workers are
always the victims, unless, that is, they launch a fight that brings to bear
their full class power in alliance with the broader labor movement. This
must begin as a fight to close down an entire industry and more, and in the
course of the struggle to unite working people as never before.
This kind
of fightback based on union power and unbreakable solidarity is not in the
cards today. At best we are witnessing the gross incompetence of the trade
union bureaucracy; at worst, and probably closer to the truth, today’s
union workers are the victims of a carefully orchestrated and corrupt
sellout led by a hardened bureaucratic layer that is closer to being the
bosses' agents than they are to the representatives of the class they
purport to serve.
What we
have said about the Southern California grocery strike applies to the broader
labor movement, The sleeping giant of the American working class has yet to
rise to meet the enormous challenge it is confronted with. The boss class,
on the other hand, is preparing even greater blows in the period ahead.
Before
closing this section on a too somber note, we should call attention to the
article in the January Socialist Action that reports on the response of
some UFCW militants to the orders of a union boss to close down the picket
line at one particular distribution center. The image of the labor fakers
running for their lives with the angry and defiant workers in hot
pursuit fits the
bill for the fight to come. To reverse the present full gallop retreat, a
new rank-and-file labor leadership must be forged in the course of the
coming battles. We have always referred to this leadership as a “class
struggle left wing,” that is, a conscious core of union fighters intent on
educating and mobilizing the ranks to use their class power to win decisive
victories.
The nature of the times makes a fightback inevitable.
Workers are increasingly alienated from their unions, having been a witness
to one sellout after another. They increasingly understand that the union
bureaucracy and the bosses have more in common with each other than they do
with the ranks. They are aware that the bosses will require another pound
of flesh in the months and years ahead but as yet, and for understandable
reasons, don’t see the path to victory. And even if they did, they know all
too well that the stakes in an all out struggle have been raised
considerably. The boss class can “win” by a variety of devices, from
closing down plants outright or offshoring its operations to a lower wage
region or country or by using scab herding cops to break union picket lines
and conduct “business as usual.”
In all cases what is required is a fight whose magnitude
has not been matched in decades and longer. It is a fight that must take
place in alliance with workers outside their immediate union’s jurisdiction
and a fight that must take on political as well as economic overtones.
Rise
of the class struggle in Latin America
The Latin
American working class has been first out of the box. We have visited some
of the main battlegrounds and covered the most important developments in
our press, We have noted the strengths, including the power to drive from
office in an instant established political leaders and governments
associated with neo-liberal attacks on their hard won gains. We have also
noted the weaknesses.
These
ongoing and massive Latin American
mobilizations have not gone unnoticed by American imperialism, which
recently pledged that it would not allow its cronies in Bolivia, for
example, to be removed and replaced by the popular masses.
In
Venezuela, the situation is similar. The U.S rulers are not prepared to
allow this nation, second in the world in regard to exporting oil to the
U.S., to impede the smooth flow of this critical commodity. If the present
weighty but still measured efforts to remove the Chavez regime prove
unsuccessful, the kept media may turn to making Chavez another Saddam
Hussein to justify an invasion. Preposterous as this may sound, it falls
within the realm of the possible or even likely when the recent Bush
administration’s threatened attacks on Cuba and the Castro government are
factored into the equation.
Socialist
Action fully supports Venezuela in the face of the U.S. threats to invade.
But this does not extend to political confidence in the bourgeois
nationalist Chavez government and regime. Chavez, despite the impressive
mobilization he has initiated in the face of U.S.-backed support to the
leading elements in Venezuela’s capitalist society to overthrow him, has
nothing resembling a revolutionary program. Indeed, his maintenance of the
fundamental social relations of Venezuelan capitalism makes it impossible
to build counter-institutions of worker’s power that are required for a
real challenge to the present social order.
Chavez’s
reliance on the lower ranks of the officer corps is no bulwark against the
power of the U.S.-backed Venezuelan capitalist class, who are currently
biding their time as they prepare to undermine the economy and confidence
in the Chavez regime in order to make a future coup feasible.
The construction
of mass independent institutions of the workers and oppressed peasants and
the associated building of a mass revolutionary party deeply integrated
into the ongoing social struggles for jobs and social improvements, as well
as self defense, is of critical importance today. Those who rely on Chavez
to lead in this process only pave the way to disaster.
White
House Special Envoy Otto Reich, the Bush point man for preparing the ground
for a U.S. invasion of Cuba, has recently turned his attention to this
subject. Reich charged that "many people from Venezuela have received
reports that there are hundreds, if not housands, of military-like
personnel from Cuba in Venezuela."
Cuban
President Fidel Castro responded that Cuban personnel in Venezuela, 10,169
young volunteer doctors, were "serving areas where Venezuela's poorest
live: attending to them and offering them medicines free of charge."
Castro
added; "I hope they don't err with the Venezuelans. Right now any
foreign intervention in Venezuela would face strong resistance in South
America." Such an intervention, Castro continued without mentioning
the U.S., "would ignite a powder keg in all of South America, right
down to Patagonia. You can't govern this hemisphere of hundreds of millions
of people with a rifle and bayonet on every block, in every factory, in
every school and on each street."
In recent
months Bush Administration threats against Cuba have escalated. Top U.S.
officials liken revolutionary Cuba to a nation of prisons filled to the
brim with dissenters crying out for "democracy." A military
attack on Cuba cannot be excluded, prepared well in advance by any number
of provocations. Our defense of Cuba's move to imprison CIA-funded
"dissidents" and to impose the death penalty on three hijackers
was an important contribution to the discussion taking place among all
groups who see the Cuban revolution as a symbol of revolutionary defiance.
Those who
took the occasion to attack Cuba, while assuming the stance of progressive
antiwar activists, were compelled to retreat when Cuba responded firmly to
its accusers and circulated its own petitions to challenge its attackers to
take sides. The social democrats and liberal red-baiters largely declined,
their true colors exposed, while those who did support the right of the
Cubans to self-determination and opposed the U.S. threats to invade signed
on to associate their names with defense of Cuba.
The recent
visit of Noam Chomsky to Cuba, for example, had unexpected results. Chomsky
had been a harsh critic of Cuba and had signed one of the petitions
initiated by the red-baiters. He had previously declined invitations from
the Castro leadership to experience the country first hand. But Chomsky, to
his credit, backed off and accepted a renewed invitation. His visit was
noteworthy in that he refrained from repeating his previous criticisms and
instead wrote glowingly about Cuba's social achievements while stating
clearly that Cuba remained the world's number one victim of U.S.
terrorism. To be accurate, we should add that self-proclaimed anarchist or
libertarian Chomsky remains an opponent of the Fidel Castro government. The
anti-authoritarian Chomsky nevertheless finds it within the parameters of
his politics to urge a vote for John Kerry, whose recent attacks on Cuba
rival those of George Bush.
The case of the Cuban Five
While our defense of revolutionary Cuba centers on
opposition to the deepening threats U.S. intervention the case of the Cuban
Five also offers important opportunities for education and modest activity.
The Cuban Five were sent to the U.S. by the Cuban government to infiltrate
U.S.-based and in some cases U.S.-backed Cuban terrorist organizations that
have been responsible for bombings in Cuba and a broad range of other
illegal activities, from assassination plots, plane and ship hijackings,
exploding bombs on Cuban airliners, illegal Cuban overflights, and more.
The Five justifiably gathered information about these activities in order
to defend Cuba and to expose the illegal terrorist actions taking place on
U.S. soil, often with U.S. complicity.
The Five were captured, tried and convicted of espionage
and other crimes in a frame-up trial in the Miami area where the facts
presented in their defense were ignored. Sentenced to long prison terms
including triple life sentences, they are considered heroes of the Cuban
Revolution. As part of their defense they proposed that the judge and jury
visit Cuba to learn about the effects of Miami-based terrorist actions on
Cuba and its people. The cost in Cuban lives, in the thousands, and damage
to Cuban property and agriculture, in the billions of dollars, was of no
concern to U.S. judges. The case is currently on appeal.
Much of the information the Five gathered was sent to
U.S. authorities who subsequently did nothing to prevent or stop the
illegal actions against Cuba.
Today we have some new opportunities to present the case
of the Cuban Five to solidarity activists and others interested in
fundamental civil liberties and democratic rights. We have covered the case
in our press and invited representatives of the Cuban Five to various
meetings where civil rights were under discussion. The main attorney for the Cuban Five, Leonard
Weinglass, will be speaking at an SA forum in San Francisco in May, during
which time we will further explore what we can effectively accomplish to
publicize the case and win broad support for the appeal.
Brazil:
The limits of reformism and the popular front
Lula's
reformist Workers Party (PT) and popular front government have come under
increasing pressure. A two-thirds vote in the Brazilian House and Senate
was needed to pass his hated pension "reform." He achieved it,
but only as hundreds of thousands of angry workers demonstrated in disgust
outside. After massive pressure on his own party deputies, including
threats of expulsion that were carried out, he achieved what the
imperialists wanted, thereby further linking Brazil to imperialism's
austerity measures and maintaining its commitment to pay off its
"obligations" to the IMF and World Bank.
Brazil has
proved in the negative the validity of Trotsky's theory of permanent
revolution. In the epoch of imperialist decline, reformist unions and
workers' parties have no future other than as enforcers of the capitalist
status quo. Either they meet their obligations to their class and challenge
the bosses' class offensive in a revolutionary manner or they will be
crushed – compelled to function as little less than an instrument of the
capitalists for the disciplining of the workers.
Lula came
to "power" through an unprincipled electoral alliance with the
openly capitalist Liberal Party. The resulting popular front or coalition
capitalist government signified the PT's subservience to the corporate
elite, its submission, in advance, to the dictates of the IMF and its U.S.
potentates. There was no principled basis for supporting this PT/Liberal
Party popular front election campaign.
The
results were predictable. The PT, including our compliant Fourth
International (Socialist Democracy tendency) comrades, minus one in the
Senate vote, Heloisa Helena, bowed under the pressure. Helena had
reluctantly and incorrectly supported the national PT/Liberal Party
electoral coalition but refused to be a party to the coalition capitalist
slate in her own locality. Following her defiance of the PT parliamentary
fraction in regard to the pension vote, she was expelled from the PT
and has recently joined a new regroupment of revolutionary groups and
individuals.
At a time
when concessions to the workers' movement are not within the framework of
capital's options, Lula's PT was handed the reins of power in order to
accomplish what ruling class parties in Brazil and elsewhere had not been
able to do without massive opposition. Lula took on the assignment, fully
prepared to discipline his own party, including purging
it of dissidents
who harbored illusions in regard to what could be done to fight back within
the PT's reformist framework. The purge from the PT ranks of all those who
voted against the party's reactionary legislation was a move that cannot be
ignored. It was a warning to those comfortable radicals who had become
accustomed to PT patronage that the spigot of reward for political
subservience would be shut tight if anyone dissented, if anyone refused to
play by the rules of the system of oppression.
And there is patronage for those who accept
the rules, including for our own comrades, who have been promised the
mayor's office in at least two important cities. The PT is no longer a
fighting party of the workers’ movement and all the oppressed, as it once,
at least in rhetoric and in part reality, aspired to be. It is a party
experienced in governing major cities and states and now the Brazilian
nation. By partaking in this process without a revolutionary perspective,
the PT at the local and regional levels, was compelled long ago to do the
impossible – to implement massive social cutbacks in order to satisfy the
needs of Brazilian capital to pay the imperialist debt and to satisfy the
needs of the people at the same time. Each region/state in the country and
all its constituent parts had previously been assigned a portion of the
debt, the payment of which was to be achieved by implementing cuts in
social programs.
The PT in
local or regional power, including our comrades who are not new to high
posts, sought to lend a revolutionary twist to this "necessity."
They invented the idea of a "participatory budget." They
mobilized their constituencies in democratic (as far as we know) mass
assemblies where the budget components were presented and the people were
permitted a participatory, if not a decisive, role in deciding what was to
be cut. The PT won the
"right" to meet Brazil's obligations to the imperialist banks
that the national government had parceled out to each locality. Lacking a
revolutionary perspective and the will to implement it in a transitional
manner, the PT had no other choice but to “democratically” rubber stamp and
implement the attacks on the workers.
Today both
the PT and our FI section are in crisis – the PT because it is without a
perspective other than reformism and the DS because it continues in the
idiocy that the reformist PT is really its
party. Indeed, the DS has virtually abandoned the perspective of building
itself as a mass revolutionary party aimed at leading the Brazilian masses
to power. It limits itself to functioning as a "tendency" inside
the PT that presumably wields some influence and therefore receives a
number of government posts and other positions when the PT wins an
election. Hence, some time ago the DS/PT candidate won the election for the
position of mayor of Porto Allegre, the city that hosted a World Social
Forum conference of 50,000.
The DS has
virtually no independent functioning outside the PT. While it claims a
membership of some 2,000 militants, it lacks a functioning national
headquarters, not to mention offices outside the capital. Its newspaper, En
Tempo, is a quarterly. A party of 2,000 is capable of a weekly newspaper at
the minimum. The ranks and leadership of the DS see the PT newspaper as
their own despite the fact that the official PT paper carries articles
attacking dissident DS members.
The
negative impact of the Brazilian experience has been largely kept from the
ranks of the FI. Worse, the experience has been cast as a model for other
sections. We have attended IEC meetings where we were told that the PT was
a revolutionary party, that it was the FI's model, a multi-tendency,
democratic, mass party of the working class and its allies. It was the
highest expression of the FI's "regroupment" orientation. It was
"our" party. The FI's ranks have been badly misinformed.
It was only
after we sent a leading comrade to Brazil where he attended the DS national
conference, that we began to learn the truth. When the PT went into crisis,
so did our section, whose very life consisted of maneuvering in the PT
framework. We witnessed a similar project in Mexico, where the 5,000 member
FI section disintegrated not long after the decision of both wings of the
PRT to back the capitalist candidacy of Cuautemoc Cardenas. In truth, the
disintegration process began long before, when the Mexican PRT
"won" legal" status and began receiving government funds and
other amenities to run its operations. We will not take the time here to
review that tragedy.
Initial
contacts with the Latin American revolutionary left
It would
be the height of sectarianism to limit our analysis of the Latin American
situation to the fact that a revolutionary leadership, that is, a revolutionary
party deeply rooted in the struggles of the workers and oppressed, is absent. Such a leadership
can only be constructed in the course of such struggles. What is new today
is the fact that past counterrevolutionary leaderships that subordinated
mass struggles to alliances with so-called progressive capitalists are
largely, but not entirely, absent from the scene. Here we refer to the mass
Stalinist parties oriented to the Soviet or Chinese bureaucracies. These
Stalinists served as a bulwark against socialist revolution for a half
century and longer.
The coming struggles will not face such
formidable obstacles. The fact that a number of important revolutionary
organizations on the Latin American scene, however modest in size, are
associated with Trotskyism in one form or another represents a gain for the
revolutionary movement. As the radicalization deepens and these currents
prove capable of sinking deep
roots in the
emerging organizations that rise up to give direction, such as mass
assemblies and other soviet-type forms, we are likely to witness a decline
in past sectarian positions. We have always understood that such positions
were largely a product of isolation from such struggles either because of
the power of the mass Stalinist parties to exclude the revolutionary left
or their capacity to divert promising struggles into reformist channels.
Our initial contact with some of these Trotskyists has been promising.
After many decades we find ourselves able to engage in direct exchanges
with comrades who are struggling to find a way to the masses and build mass
revolutionary parties based on a class struggle program.
At least
in the decisive countries, Latin America has proved to be a critical center
of the world Trotskyist movement. The sectarianism and rigidity of the
previously dominant Morenoist current appears to have given way to a wide-ranging
differentiation wherein several groups, today open to consideration of
critical ideas they had previously rejected, have emerged.
[Nahuel Moreno
was the main leader of Latin American Trotskyism for several decades. His
“International” split from the Fourth International in 1979. He advocated
and practiced a form of rigid “international democratic centralism” wherein
majority decisions bound affiliates to carry out the adopted “majority”
line. In practice, this resulted in Moreno’s large Argentine party controlling
the politics and organizational forms of all of its much smaller affiliated
parties. The Fourth International, the world party with which Socialist
Action maintains fraternal relations, long ago rejected this form of rigid
democratic centralism.]
The ideas of
a number of important former Moreno-associated groups today include the
formation of an international Trotskyist movement based on the FI's
historic program minus the rigid organizational forms previously imposed
from without. Moreno’s command functioning invariably resulted in a
"caudillo," or unchallenged top leader, becoming a substitute for
democratic exchanges between comrades and sections whose political life and
functioning reflected different national experiences in the struggle to
build Leninist parties.
We intend to
learn more about the Latin American Trotskyists, with the long-term goal of
helping to facilitate discussion and eventual unification of all those who
understand the necessity of rebuilding a world party of revolutionary
socialism. Undoubtedly, components of the FI will be a part of this
process. We intend to maintain our fraternal participation in the FI
despite its many weaknesses, looking for new opportunities to rebuild it in
the framework of its historic program. The form that a principled and
regrouped FI will take is far from clear at this time.
The Fourth International today
The FI
today remains in crisis. We had hoped that the decisions of the last World
Congress, influenced by the resurgent French section, the Revolutionary
Communist League (LCR), would have served to help reverse the long-term
political retreat we had noted and fought against for the past two decades.
We expressed this optimism at our last plenum.
The growth of
the LCR, doubled in size to 3,000 members in the past few years and able to
play an important role in major aspects of the French class struggle, has
been impressive. The LCR's new project, however – building a new, broader
and as yet undefined "anti-capitalist" party – is still unclear,
as are many other aspects of its program and functioning. We are not close
enough to the LCR to answer the many questions that have arisen. Is the
contemplated new party, for example, to be like the reformist Brazilian PT?
Will the LCR retain its own party as a revolutionary component of the FI or
subsume itself in this projected new party?
We may have
some tentative answers to these questions. It appears that the LCR’s new
electoral project was designed to capture a significant portion of those
whom the polls indicated were prepared to consider a vote for the far left
in the recently concluded French regional elections, that is, a vote for
the LCR/LO as opposed to the CP/SP/Green coalition. Some polls put this
figure in the 22 percent range.
[Note: LO or Lutte Ouvrier (Workers Struggle) joined the
LCR for a joint 2004 election campaign. CP/SP/Green coalition was the
French electoral coalition of the reformist Communist Party, Socialist
Party and Green Party.]
The recent
French election results likely ended this experiment. The combined vote for
the LCR/LO was in most regions of France less than five percent. This
figure represents roughly half of the LCR/LO totals in the first round of
the last presidential elections a few years ago, a significant decline.
Additionally, the vote for the reformist CP/SP/Green slate dramatically
increased, with this pro-capitalist combination virtually sweeping the
French right from regional offices across the country.
In the face of
the hard right project of the Chirac Administration, French voters cast a
“practical vote,” that is, a vote to throw out the right. A vote for the
revolutionary left was not high on their agendas, although almost five
percent is still a significant vote for Trotskyist parties anywhere. Thus,
the broader formation that the LCR pressed forward appears to have had few
takers. The entire project may well be dropped, at least for now. But our
questions remain. They center on the most critical issue of all. Will our
FI comrades in France maintain the perspective of building a mass
revolutionary party based on the FI’s historic program and Leninist norms
or do they prefer a loose association of radicals more akin to what the
Brazilian PT has become? The latter road can only lead to disasters like
those in Spain, Germany and other countries where the “regroupment” project
ended in major losses. We place the term “regroupment” in quotation marks
to signify a reference to the FI’s specific definition. These regroupments
consisted in the fusion of very diverse political parties and groups
without clear programmatic agreement. Most often they were based on fusions
with ex-Stalinist or Maoist groups who maintained unprincipled positions on
critical questions. The resulting loose association of parties almost
invariably fell apart as soon as important questions were presented for a
decision.
Socialist Action has no objections to principled
regroupments with other socialist organizations, that is fusions or
unifications based on principled politics and major agreement on common
areas of work. The FI’s regroupments, however, were based on the notion
that Trotskyism had become more or less irrelevant, even an obstacle to the
future development of the FI. At one point the majority leadership of the
FI attempted to excise from the FI’s founding statutes all references to
our Trotskyist heritage, from the founding documents of the FI to the fight
against Stalinism and the struggle of Trotsky’s Left Opposition. It was the
intervention of the French LCR just a few years ago that prevented this
effort to fundamentally alter the FI’s political foundation. It appears
however, that the LCR and the eclectic FI majority leadership has yet to
come to grips with its relationship to the FI’s historic program.
In the
longer term, we see a regroupment of Trotskyist forces that have proven
their capacity to intervene in the class struggle and build viable
organizations as the best option for the strengthening and rebuilding of
our world movement. We expect that this perspective will emerge as a
reality with the general rise of the class struggle. In the meantime our
patience is required, combined with consistent work to build our
revolutionary nucleus in the U.S.
Build the Fourth International! Build the world
revolutionary party!
Trotsky's
account of his horse-driven carriage ride to Zimmerwald, Switzerland in
1915, 50 years after the founding of the First International, is
instructive. The entire caravan, headed for a conference of diverse forces,
revolutionaries, pacifists, centrists, etc, consisted of a just a few
vehicles filled with a tiny group that stood in opposition to the first
imperialist war, World War I. The participants, according to Trotsky,
confident in the socialist future, laughed when they contemplated their
isolated minority status in the world movement!
The
International they had built had crumbled under the pressure of war and the
long years of relative stability that preceded it. They stood witness to
once proud parties, like the German section, falling prey to parliamentary
cretinism, opportunism and finally chauvinism and war. Yet barely two years
later, several in the small caravan went on to lead a revolution in Russia
that "shook the world."
Lenin was
a minority at the conference. Trotsky, still absent from the ranks of the
Bolsheviks, wrote the famous antiwar Zimmerwald Manifesto which, however
limited, represented the basis for the rebuilding of the world
revolutionary movement. Trotsky was later to observe that the most
important mistake in his political career was his 1903 decision to break
with Lenin and reject participation I the Bolshevik section of the Russian
Social Democratic Labor Party. Trotsky's conclusion to this effect was only
drawn later in his life when the absolute need for the revolutionary combat
party was demonstrated by events themselves "There was no better
Bolshevik," said Lenin, "than Trotsky after he joined our party
in 1917."
The
struggle to build the revolutionary party in Latin America, in the United
States and worldwide has no less importance today. The historic program of
the Fourth International and the assembling of its initial fighting cadre
was Trotsky's most important legacy to the future vanguard that would carry
the FI's banner. We are proud to be among them.
|
