U.S. middle class left in 1984 presidential elections: conciliation, cretinism, and collapse before bourgeois electoralism

How left responded to '84 elections

Socialist Workers Party called for break with capitalist politics

BY PETER THIERJUNG

A significant feature of the 1984 presidential elections was the fact that most organizations and publications that consider themselves socialist or communist backed capitalist candidate Walter Mondale. Some groups did so openly, while others did so under the slogan "defeat Reagan." 

The Socialist Workers Party ran the only campaign calling for independent working-class political action in the elections, putting forward the socialist perspective of struggle to replace the capitalist U.S. government with a workers and farmers government. A review of the positions put forward by some left groups on the elections is useful in highlighting a few key lessons of this campaign.

'Guardian'

The Guardian, a radical newsweekly published in New York, departed from past practice and for the first time in a presidential campaign openly urged a vote for the Democrats. In endorsing Mondale, the August 8 Guardian argued that, "A defeat for the reactionaries in November can offer" an important breathing space to the left and progressive forces in the U.S., and, perhaps more importantly, to the liberation movements and anti-imperialist countries around the world."

When Mondale came out just a few weeks later endorsing the U.S. invasion of Grenada and threatening to "quarantine" Nicaragua, the Guardian squirmed a bit, but didn't back down one inch from urging a big vote for Mondale .

Workers World Party

The Workers World Party campaigned vigorously for capitalist candidate Jesse Jackson. When Jackson lost the Democratic Party nomination to Mondale, Workers World decided to step up its own campaign of Larry Holmes for president and Gloria La Riva for vice-president, rather than endorse Mondale.

This represented no break from capitalist politics, however. The September 6 issue of the party's paper Workers World, reporting on Jackson's endorsement of Mondal,; insisted that it had been correct to support Jackson's Democratic Party campaign and that the task was now to "build an even stronger independent working class movement to carry on the legacy of the Rainbow Coalition." According to the paper, "The candidacy of Jesse Jackson, particularly during the Democratic primaries, was objectively an independent campaign that exposed and challenged the racist structure and rules of the anti-poor, anti-worker bourgeois Democratic Party."

Democratic Socialists

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has always supported Democratic candidates. This is in line with its outlook of accepting the framework of U.S. imperialism and seeking merely to reform it. Declaring that ''We are Americans and democratic socialists and Democrats," the DSA endorsed the Mondale-Ferraro ticket saying, "They . . . have the potential to create a liberal and humane administration infinitely superior to Ronald Reagan's one very count."

Advising the Democratic Party on how to win the election, Michael Harrington, a central leader of the DSA, pointed to the example of Harry Truman, who as Democratic president ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Writing in the May-June issue of Democratic Left, the DSA newsletter, Harrington said, "Think of Truman again. He is not my hero ... but we can sure learn from him. He talked tough facts in 1948. He talked to workers and blacks and farmers; he mobilized . . . . And he won. And we can win in 1984, but only if we are at least as much a bunch of hell raisers as he and his friends."

Communist Party

The Communist Party (CP) ran its own candidates, Gus Hall and Angela Davis, for president and vice-president. While not formally endorsing the Democratic ticket, the clear message of the Hall-Davis campaign was to defeat Reagan by electing Mondale. This is not a new position for the CP; it has backed liberal capitalist candidates for half a century.

"For the period of the 1984 elections," Gus Hall told a CP central committee meeting last June, "all our creative energies must be focused on defeating Reaganism."

"The reality," Hall was quoted as saying in the June 21 Daily World, the CP paper, "is that the electable candidate against Reagan is the lesser evil." He explained that the CP should only criticize Mondale if it would help strengthen the Democratic campaign. "Our party will express its differences and criticisms of the Democratic candidate when we think that will add to the struggle against Reaganism." As the polls began to more and more confirm that Reagan had a strong lead over Mondale, the CP campaign took on a shrill pitch. It argued that U.S. capitalism is rapidly moving toward fascism under Reagan and that unity of all "anti-Reagan" forces was desperately needed to prevent another Republican term in office.

An editorial titled "Fascist odor" in the October 6 issue of the People's World, the CP's West Coast weekly, conveyed this view: "We do not use the term 'fascism' lightly. It is not just the normal, oppressive, exploitative, and brutal rule of capital that has characterized this system since its advent 200 years ago. It is rule by a special sector of that capital, the very sector which put Ronald Reagan in the White House and in whose interests he presently serves. It can happen here. It is a clear and present danger, and good reason to make sure the Oval Office has a new resident after Nov.6."

The U.S. capitalist class will certainly prove capable of attempting to impose fascist rule, but that is not what is happening today.

The CP portrays Reagan as representing a "fascist" wing in order to cover up the fact that there is bipartisan support for the employers' policies of war, racism, and attacks on democratic rights. Mondale would have driven this anti-labor offensive forward had he been elected, just as Reagan has done. Both represent the same fundamental class interests -the opposite of the interests of workers and working farmers. The U.S. rulers will step up their assault on working people here and abroad. Big class battles are going to erupt. But the best way to prepare working people for these battles is to tell them the unvarnished truth about the Republican and Democratic parties. The CP candidates have done the opposite. Let's take a few examples.

Fight against imperialist war

Throughout the campaign, Hall and Davis argued that nuclear war could well be the result of another four years of Reagan, while the world would be safer with Mondale in office .

As part of prettifying the imperialist policies of the Democrats, the CP- endorsed their call for a bilateral freeze on nuclear weapons production in the United States and the Soviet Union. This stance blurs the real source of war- U.S. imperialism and its twin parties - and implies the Soviet Union shares some responsibility for the nuclear arms buildup, for which Washington alone is to blame. The CP's support for Mondale led it to downplay the current war against Nicaragua and El Salvador being carried out with the support of Democrats and Republicans alike . It is precisely in such shooting wars that the danger of Washington using its nuclear arsenal is posed. But rather than expose the bipartisan character of the war drive, the CP told working people that voting Reagan out of office was the best way to guarantee peace. As Davis put it in an interview in the July 12 Daily World, "the most immediate priority of all in the peace movement, of all who are threatened by nuclear conflagration, is the defeat of Reagan and. his pathologically anti-Communist Administration. "Adaptation to the Democrats on the war question has led the CP to bend also to the patriotic, chauvinist propaganda campaigns of both capitalist parties.

For example, the October 24 Daily World gave favorable coverage to AFL-CIO Pres. Lane Kirkland's recent tour to garner votes for Mondale. The paper quoted uncritically Kirkland's anti-imports, patriotic line, reporting that the AFL-CIO bureaucrat attacked Reagan as "a man who appeals to patriotism for the benefit of those business and banking interests who would sell their own country out- people who don't care what flag flies over their plants or shops or ships."

- The CP has even gone so far as to print issues of the Daily World in red, white, and blue.

Abortion rights

Over the last few months, women's righto legal abortion has come under attack from right-wing groups, the Catholic Church hierarchy, and Democratic and Republican politicians; While claiming she will uphold legal abortion as long as it is the law of the land, Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro has emphasized her personal and religious view that abortion is murder. Explaining why she has voted for some Medicaid funding for abortions, Ferraro said, "The cost of putting an unwanted child through the system far outweighs the cost of funding an abortion on demand." This is the line of the racist, population-control forces.

What has been the CP's response to Ferraro's reactionary views on abortion rights? A September 21 column in the Daily World rushed to defend her! "Ms. Ferraro's position on abortions is a principled, democratic position," it said.

SWP campaign

The Socialist Workers Party and Young Socialist Alliance approached the 1984 elections from a completely different standpoint than the other groups on the U.S. left.

The SWP ran 56 candidates for local office in 26 states. Its candidate for president was Mel Mason; for vice-president, Andrea Gonzalez.

The fight against imperialist war was at the center of the Mason-Gonzalez campaign as they visited plant gates, union halls, picket lines, farming areas, and working-class, Black, and Latino neighborhoods across the country. They talked to working people about the gains workers and peasants have won in Nicaragua and Cuba, and stressed the important role the labor movement must play in opposing· U.S. intervention in Central· America and the Caribbean.

The socialists called for international working-class solidarity with others fighting for their rights, from the striking British coal miners, to Puerto Ricans demanding independence, to Blacks struggling against South Africa's apartheid, to the workers and farmers of Vietnam and Kampuchea.

Mason and Gonzalez opposed the reactionary anti-imports, protectionist schemes used to falsely label workers in other countries as the source of unemployment in the United States, rather than the U.S, employers. The SWP ticket was the only one that consistently defended abortion rights. Mason and Gonzalez demanded repeal of all laws restricting the right to safe, legal abortion. They called for restoring- and expanding - government funds for women who want abortions and cannot afford them.

The socialists explained that the problems of war, attacks on Black and women's rights, farm foreclosures, and union-busting cannot be solved at the ballot box. They explained the need for working people to reject the Democratic and Republican parties- the twin parties of war, exploitation, racism, and sexism. What is needed, they said, is independent working-class political action that can organize and mobilize the victims of class exploitation to overturn capitalist rule and establish workers and farmers government.

Mason and Gonzalez called for a labor party based on a fighting, democratic trade union movement that will champion the interests of workers, farmers, Blacks, Latinos, women, and other ' victims of capitalism. They also called for the formation of an independent Black political party, which would not only be an advance for Blacks, but also help inspire and hasten the development of a labor party.

The goal of the labor party, they explained, will be to lead the struggle for workers and farmers government in the United States that will use the vast resources and technology of this country to aid in eliminating hunger, poverty and disease all over the globe. This government will abolish capitalism in the United State sand join the worldwide struggle for .socialism.

Peter Thierjung is national secretary of the Young Socialist Alliance and was a youth coordinator of the Mason/Gonzalez campaign .

November 16, 1984 The Militant

https://themilitant.com/1984/4842/MIL4842.pdf

1991 USSR coup attempt rocked world of U.S. Stalinists

Was Soviet coup an attempt to halt 'slide toward capitalist restoration'?

The Militant September 27, 1991

BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS 

Tens of thousands of working people toppled the August 19 coup in the Soviet Union. But some organizations in the United States that call themselves socialist or communist gave outright support to the coup as it unfolded.

Leaders of the Workers World Party and the Communist Party (CPUSA) argue that the coup was an attempt to slow down steps by Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev that are leading to the restoration of capitalism, a fate now sharply posed with the coup's failure. Soviet workers in fact did not oppose the coup, the Workers World Party claimed. Despite mistakes by the coup leaders "the masses on the whole accepted the coup," stated Sam Marcy, Workers World Party chairperson, in the September 5 Workers World weekly. He claimed the coup was "completely bloodless," dismissing the killings of three people in Moscow as accidents. Bourgeois commentators have also dismissed the resistance put up by Soviet workers to the coup. Events as they unfolded in the Soviet Union "call into question the popular picture in the U.S. of an outpouring of Russians and other Soviet citizens resisting autocratic government and demanding democracy," wrote liberal commentator Tom Wicker, in the New York Times. "Only perhaps 1 percent of Moscow's population turned out for what appeared on U.S. television to be a massive demonstration," Wicker added. 

Each of these analyses has a common starting point: they all attempt to conceal the nature of the class struggle in the USSR and try and keep workers around the world from seeing fellow toilers there as the only social force capable of resolving the deepening economic and social crisis into which the bureaucratic regime has led the country. A careful examination of the facts easily refutes these arguments. 

Workers in Soviet Union resist coup 

Masses of working people recognized that the coup's main goal was to close down the political elbow-room and democratic rights won in recent years. Refusing to return to the decades of complete suppression of these rights, workers and others held mass protests in defiance of the coup leaders' attempts to impose curfews and ban demonstrations. In Moscow a crowd of 5,000 surrounded the Russian parliament August 19, erecting barricades and maintaining an around-the-clock vigil. By the next day the protest swelled to 50,000. Demonstrators fraternized with troops, some of whom turned their tanks around to help defend the parliament building. 

Two hundred thousand demonstrated in Leningrad, now called St. Petersburg, and 400,000 in Kishinev, capital of the Moldavian republic. "To see how people were awakening, beginning to respect themselves, almost made me cry," said Aleksander Kondrashov, a 46-year-old machinist who joined the march in Leningrad with thousands of his coworkers from the Kirov tractor factory. The Kirov plant became an important center of resistance to the coup. 

Coal miners went on strike in several regions. After returning to work following the coup's failure, miners at Siberia's Kuzbass field, the country's largest, refused to load coal for delivery until all the coup leaders were arrested. 

These mobilizations also gave an impulse to actions against government officials in Soviet republics identified with the authoritarian rule of the central regime. 

Georgians opposed to the autocratic government of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia organized daily mass rallies outside the Georgian Parliament. In the Chechen-Ingush ethnic region, demonstrators who had been blockading the Parliament for 15 days demanding the resignation of parliamentary leaders for their support to the coup finally stormed the building, forcing the chairman to resign. 

Through their actions on the barricades and in the streets working people have widened the political space open to them and gained greater confidence for the struggles to come. 

Was coup attempt to avert capitalism? 

"The fact of the matter is that the Emergency Committee was attempting to return to the course of socialist construction and to abolish, to the extent possible, the ruinous and chaotic consequences of Gorbachev's introduction of capitalist relations," wrote Sam Marcy in the September 5 Workers World. 

"These eight men," he added, referring to the members of the short-lived State Committee for the State of Emergency set up during the coup, "knowledgeable and fearful of the consequences of bourgeois restoration, decided it was the only course to take." Gus Hall, chairman of the CPUSA, said after Gorbachev was returned to power that the coup "was an attempt to deal with real problems, but in a wrong way." In the wake of the coup Russia's President Boris Yeltsin "becomes the biggest danger," Hall added. These statements fly in the face of the fact that the coup leaders pledged to continue Gorbachev and Yeltsin's economic and social course, based on the vain hope of integrating the Soviet Union into the world capitalist market through introducing progressively greater use of market mechanisms in the economy. [My emphasis- JR].

The coup leaders also promised to hold a "nationwide discussion" on the treaty Gorbachev had negotiated with top officials of most republics of the Soviet Union. They claimed they would solve problems of food and housing through an immediate return to "labor discipline and order," thinly disguised code words for the intensification of labor under the threat of the whip. 

Advertising one or another wing of the ruling layer in the Soviet Union as the "real" defenders of socialism is the stock-in-trade of Stalinism and its adherents around the world. The "eight men," Gorbachev, and Yeltsin represent different wings of a petty-bourgeois social layer - best described as a caste -that through force and violence usurped power from the working class allied with the peasantry. This counterrevolution as led by Joseph Stalin beginning in the early 1920s. By the mid-1930s the rising bureaucratic layer had consolidated its hold on power, reversed many of the social gains of the October 1917 Russian revolution, and driven working people out of political life. By presenting the accomplishments of the working people as its own and draping itself with the mantle of the first victorious socialist revolution, the bureaucratic regime convinced many fighters around the world that it was a progressive force. But, as the legacy of Stalinist rule comes to the light of day, the fact that it is 100 percent counterrevolutionary is clearer to millions. 

Arguing that a "socialist course" can be advanced by the methods of the coup leaders negates the fact that socialism can only be achieved by a politically conscious and mobilized working class progressively taking on more and more of the decision making and administration of all aspects of economic and social life. 

Because this would mark the death knell of the bureaucratic regime, the caste organizes to prevent any motion in that direction. 

Is capitalism on the agenda? 

A September 5 editorial in the Workers World says capitalism has already been reintroduced in Eastern Europe. "Look at the destruction left in Eastern Europe. The introduction of capitalism has been a tyranny as bad as any terror." 

The statement released by the CPUSA following the coup's failure said: "Developments have quickly moved to a new stage. Processes are now in motion that inflame anti-Semitism and nationalism, seriously threaten the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of socialism, and push the country in the direction of capitalism and wholesale plunder of the USSR." But nationalized property relations- the central conquest of the Russian revolution - remain in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. 

Top officials in the Eastern European and Soviet workers states, many with overtly procapitalist and proimperialist views, have repeatedly announced ambitious "market re-form programs" and their intentions to sell off basic industry to private capital. But each has backed off when faced with deep-going opposition from working people to each concrete step needed to reintroduce private ownership of industry and banking. 

Resistance by working people has proved to be the major stumbling block to any "peaceful" transition to capitalism. The Wall Street Journal reported that Gorbachev, in a September 11 meeting with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, "stressed that he hoped to press ahead with making the ruble a convertible currency in order to attract foreign investment." The exchange rate of the ruble today is 3.6 cents. Many workers earn about 300 rubles, or about $10.80, a month. Since the ruble is not a convertible currency this does not translate into comparable prices for goods purchased by workers. 

But it does give a picture of the implications of any attempt to make the ruble convertible for workers' standard of living. Clearly such a move would provoke colossal social explosions. 

A section of the leadership of the U.S. Communist Party that aligns itself with the Gorbachev wing of the bureaucracy took the position that the Soviet coup should have been clearly condemned. 

"Some in the leadership of our party reacted to this coup differently than the Soviet public," said an article in the September 7 issue of the People's Weekly World, the news-paper published by the Communist Party. The article was signed by James Jackson, Charlene Mitchell, and Danny Rubin. "Having identified Gorbachev as the source of all of the crisis developments in the Soviet Union, they tended to welcome his removal" the CP leaders wrote. This "led to the CPUSA National Board vote to 'neither condemn nor condone'" the coup. The authors said the coup "dealt a body blow to perestroika." 

Public rift in CPUSA 

A similar line marking the growing public rift in the CP, was carried in an article by Mark Solomon in the same issue of the People's Weekly World. Solomon argued that Gorbachev's policies have resulted in "giant strides for peace" and "began to put an end to the stifling identification of socialism with totalitarianism." 

That Gorbachev's course, rather than that of the coup leaders, represents some progressive thrust forward for working people is also the position of others on the "left". "The delicate, evolutionary process, painstakingly put together by President Mikhail Gorbachev, was beginning to bear fruit," wrote Fred Weir in the Guardian, a weekly newspaper. "The coup attempt blasted it all out of the arena," he added. But there is nothing progressive about Gorbachev or Yeltsin's pragmatic policy decisions. Both are today responsible for organizing the defense of the privileges and prerogatives of the caste, a task that places them as point men in the assault on the rights and standard of living of working people. Working people can and should oppose the coup and identify with those in the streets without having to extend one iota of political support to Yeltsin or Gorbachev. 

In hopes of ameliorating its deep-going economic and social crisis, the regime in Moscow has staked its fortunes in the last few years on earning expanding investments and massive loans, trading privileges, and entry into imperialist financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund. It has attempted to accomplish this through political concessions to Washington and other imperialist powers. 

In craven pursuit of this, Gorbachev's regime threw its support behind the U.S.-led onslaught against the Iraqi people. So much for "strides for peace." 

The same economic and political considerations lie behind other foreign policy moves by Moscow such as growing diplomatic relations with Israel and trade with the apartheid regime in South Africa; its open endorsement of the "two Koreas" policy long advocated by the capitalist regime in Seoul and its masters in Washington to block the aspirations of the Korean people for national reunification; and its steps towards rapidly implementing trade relations with Cuba at world market prices paid for in scarce hard currencies. 

These facts help to answer Gus Hall's argument that "the USSR has also been a strong force for the rights of third world countries and against racism." 

Class-collaborationism 

Stalinist regimes in the Soviet Union have followed a class-collaborationist course with imperialism for decades. This has led to the betrayal of many revolutionary opportunities the world over. 

Following the Stalin-Hitler pact in 1939 the Soviet regime cynically carved Poland in half in a deal with German imperialism and turned over thousands of revolutionaries to the Nazis. Following World War II the Kremlin and its supporters in Stalinist parties organized the betrayal of revolutionary opportunities in Greece, France, and Italy, and joined with French imperialism in bloodily suppressing anticolonial rebellions in Indo-china and Algeria. The Soviet bureaucracy has always been the agent of imperialism inside the workers state. 

This is the opposite of the internationalism of the Bolshevik party that sought to aid workers' struggles in other countries and extend the revolution. 

As a result of the weakening of the bureaucratic apparatus in the Soviet Union the Stalinist misleaders are less able than ever before to disorient and betray revolutionary workers who look to them under the illusion that their policies point the road out of oppression and exploitation and towards socialism. 

The CPUSA's claim that the Communist Party in the Soviet Union has been an instrument in the fight of socialism is also utterly false. 

The Bolshevik Party, renamed the Communist Party after the October 1917 Russian revolution, was destroyed by Stalin's counterrevolution and turned into an instrument of brutal repression. 

The party's internal democracy was abolished and tens of thousands of communist workers in the party were killed, jailed, or exiled. By the rnid-1930s all those who led the party in the early years of the revolution had become victims of or capitulated to Stalin's terror. 

Since then the CP, along with the secret police (the KGB), has for many decades been an integral part of maintaining the rule of the bureaucracy. 

Gorbachev and Yeltsin, who both back the recent measures banning the CP, are simply registering the fact it is no longer a useful tool for maintaining the caste's rule over working people. 

Gorbachev and Yeltsin, though, are acting against what they consider to be a political party. Any moves against current or former members of the CP by the central government in Moscow or the various regimes in the republics that restrict the right to form political parties should be protested by working people. 

Working people in the Soviet Union are now taking the initial steps back into political life. Out of their struggles, over time, they will develop class consciousness and an internationalist outlook. Out of these fighters and revolutionaries will come a communist party capable of leading the toilers in a political revolution that will sweep the bureaucratic caste from power.

Source: http://themilitant.com/1991/5534/MIL5534.pdf

U.S. Stalinism versus independent labor political action in 1978: Three articles by Steve Clark from the pages of The Militant newspaper

In the fall of 1978 The Militant ran a three-part series of articles by Steve Clark on the Socialist Workers Party's chief opponent in the struggle for political leadership of the U.S. working class: the Communist Party USA.

1978 was a year of revolution and militancy: the UMWA miners' strike; the July 9 demonstration for the Equal Rights Amendment; the solidarity displayed by rail workers, postal workers, and others in their own strike battles; and the growing opposition to U.S. backing of tyrannies in South Africa, Nicaragua, and Iran.

Political clarity on these profound events had to be used to combat the obfuscations, elisions, and misleadership of the nation's largest Stalinist organization.

The CPUSA was a different animal in 1978 than the one we see today. It boasted several thousand members, and claimed a good percentage were industrial workers. The CP was well represented in the leadership of a variety of mass movements, tirelessly striving to tie them to the Democrat party, whom it perceived as potentially more friendly to Moscow's diplomatic interests than the Republican party.

The articles below are an excellent compliment to a major report delivered by Mary-Alice Waters at an international educational conference in 1978. I posted some excerpts from that report here.

In that report Waters details the the Communist Party's role opposing the ERA, rank and file union militancy, and the struggle against deportations.

Jay
14 June 2018


_____

How the Communist Party hustles votes
for Democrats

By Steve Clark


This fall the Communist Party is running election campaigns in six states.

Unlike the Socialist Workers Party, however, which is campaigning in twenty-five states and the District of Columbia, the CP candidates are not using the election period to convince American
workers they need to break from the two parties of big business, the Democrats and Republicans.

To the contrary, the CP and its newspaper, the Daily World, have been drumming up votes for one or another Democrat this fall.

"Now hold on a minute," some readers may think. "I've heard CP candidates denounce the two-party system with my own ears."

Other readers may point to the editorial in the October 6 Daily World headlined, "A real alternative."

"The Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin," the editorial said. "They both represent the interests of big business.

To view one as a 'lesser evil' is disastrous.

"The long-term, fundamental interests of the working class and the people require that they establish their own political vehicle to advance their interests."

Independent from what?

But when the CP talks about political independence, it is not talking about a political break by the working class from the employing class. It is not even talking about a political break from the Democratic Party.

And you don't have to take the Militant's word for it.

For example, Simon Gerson, who headed the CP's

1976 national election campaign committee, wrote earlier this year:

"Independent political action ... will undoubtedly take place in many forms, some in the old party primaries in collision with the Democratic Party leadership; some completely outside the two-party framework, while still others will combine struggles inside and outside the Democratic Party."

Even this fudges the CP's real position.

Despite Gerson's lip-service to politics "outside the two-party framework," the CP actually condemns those who break with the Democrats.

For example, the CP opposes the Raza Unida parties, the independent Chicano parties in several southwestern states. When a n~tional RUP convention in 1972 voted not to endorse Democrat George McGovern for president, the CP's West Coast weekly Peoples World wrote that these parties "insist on yelling from the sidelines like the religious fanatic who can't see past his damnation of a doomed world."

And the CP's 1975 main national convention resolution explained: "Those Black or other independent public officials who have utilized the Democratic column as the basis for their election are not apt to be misled by advocates of Leftist or premature breaks which separate them from their constituents."

Socialists, on the other hand, explain that the Democratic Party, as a political instrument of the capitalist rulers, is directly responsible for the escalating attacks on the rights and living standards of Blacks and other working people.

By running as Democrats; the Black candidate supported by the CP postpone the day when the Black masses will escape political bondage inside the party of their oppressor.

Party of racism

Moreover, Black Democratic Party mayors in a number of major cities are carrying out the dirty work of cutbacks and layoffs for the business interests that control the party.

This summer, for example, Detroit's Mayor Coleman Young threatened to fire more than 3,000 striking municipal workers.

It's no wonder that one of Young's biggest backers is auto magnate Henry Ford II.
But the CP runs a close second to Ford.
The Daily World never mentions, let alone criticizes, Young's antilabor policies. In fact, when Young was reelected last November, Michigan CP leader Thomas Dennis hailed it as a "clear victory for the people."

The CP also belied its fine-sounding phrases about political independence by pushing several candidacies during the fall Democratic Party primaries.

The Daily World, for example, gave positive coverage to New York Lt. Gov. Mary Anne Krupsak's ill-starred challenge to incumbent Gov. Hugh Carey. And the CP backed the unsuccessful bid by U.S. Rep. Donald Fraser to run for the Senate seat vacated hy Hubert Humphrey.

So even though the CP may admit that the Democratic Party is a big-business outfit, it still urges support to Democratic candidates.

In other words, it may be a company union, the CP tells workers, but go ahead and join anyway.

New Jersey race

One of the clearest cases of CP support to a Democrat whom even the CP doesn't think much of is in the New Jersey race for U.S. Senate.

In an article in the October 5 Daily World, the New Jersey CP singles out for attack Republican Jeffrey Bell's proposals on taxes. "Jeffrey Bell presents himself as a one-issue candidate-taxes.

He is following the new right tactic of riding the wings of California's Proposition 13. This would be reason enough for opposing Bell's candidacy .... "

After raising the bogey-man of the "new right" and the "tax revolt," the CP concludes, "Clearly the people of New Jersey have an immediate stake in defeating Jeff Bell."

This is true, the CP insists, even though
Democratic candidate Bill Bradley, "while not an outright reactionary like Bell," does "accommodate [his program] to the monopoly corporations' Glamor for tax breaks for themselves and austerity for the people."

The CP advises that "the people of New Jersey should not simply throw their vote away on the 'lesser evil.'"

The operative words here are "not simply."

In other words, do throw away your vote on a lesser evil.

But, the CP adds, you should do a little bit more.

A September 30 Daily World article reports, "The CP also called for maximum pressure on [Bell's] only opponent, Bill Bradley, the Democratic candidate, to move in a more progressive direction."

That shouldn't keep Bradley awake at night, so long as Daily World readers follow their instructions carefully: first, the lesser evil; then, a little nudge to the left.

Moreover, Bradley is not-as the New Jersey CP asserts-Bell's only opponent.

SWP candidate Alice Conner is running a campaign on a platform of "Tax the rich, not working people." She is opposing the antilabor policies of both Bell and Bradley, and of their parties.

But the CP ignores this working-class political alternative.

Not new, but worse

The CP's orientation toward the Democratic Party is nothing new. It dates back four decades to Franklin Roosevelt. And so does the CP's stock justification: "Defeat the reactionary at all costs."

But the escalating antilabor, anti-Black, and antiwoman offensive by big business and its two parties makes the CP's policy even more treacherous than before.

Take, for example, how the Daily, World sized up the recent Detroit conference sponsored by United Auto Workers President Douglas Fraser

In a front-page story on the conference, the October 18 Daily World reported, "One of the main themes that ran through the discussion was the growing aggressiveness of the so-called 'new right.'"

In an editorial on the conference in the next day's issue, the Daily World made a correct point: "Slick propaganda tries to make it appear that the country is moving to the Right. Congress and the President have been, but the people are not."

Yes, the Congress and the president-in other words, the Democratic and Republican parties-have launched a major attack on our rights and living standards.

But what conclusion does the CP draw?

That the opportunities are growing to convince working people to break from the big-business parties?

No. Just the opposite.

The Daily World chimes in behind Fraser's schemes to help the Democratic Party refurbish its image. "This gathering made an important contribution to forging the independent political stand the U.S. needs," the editorial says.

Yet the only proposals in Detroit were limited to tinkering with primary election procedures and other reforms of the Democratic Party.

The editorial drove the point home with this suggestion: "Only a few weeks remain before the election, but there is time for an extra effort for progressive labor-backed candidates."

Who are these so-called progressive candidates?

The same Democratic Party politicians that union bureaucrats urge workers to support each election.

So to the question, "What should working people do about the employers' escalating attacks?" the CP answers: Run for shelter in the Democratic Party.

To the question, "How can working people respond to New Jersey's Republican tax swindler?" the CP answers: Vote for the Democratic tax swindler.

Of course, the CP tries to justify its position by explaining that work inside the Democratic Party is one "tactic" in moving toward an "antimonopoly peoples' party" sometime in the future.

Next week's article will contrast that argument to the longstanding socialist position of opposing all capitalist parties and candidates and fighting for the political independence of the working class.

*


Are there anti-capitalist politicians?
CP answers yes, but SWP says no

By Steve Clark

How does the Communist Party at-
tempt to square its support for Demo- .
crats with its rhetoric about "the need
for a new political course-out of the
two-party, big business trap"?

The CP isn't stymied by this ques-
tion. It's been called on to answer it
before. And it has a ready answer:
"How can a third political party be
created without the workers and pro-
gressive forces now in existing par-
ties?"

The quotation is from a July 26
article by Daily World writer Paul
Klausen.

On the surface, Klausen makes a
telling point. Tens of millions of work-
ing people vote for the Democrats and
Republicans today. Any political break
from those two big-business parties
must strive to win the allegiance of
those workers.

But Klausen is begging the question.
The question is, how will a political
break with the big-business parties
ever be accomplished if those who call
themselves socialists help con workers
into staying in those parties?

Not for labor party

The CP has a ready answer to that
question too-but not for public con-
sumption.

The answer is that the CP is not
really interested in such a break. Not
wanting to put it so boldly, however,
the CP clouds the issue by talking
about an eventual third "antimonopoly
people's party."

Working inside the Democratic
Party, the CP argues, is a "tactic" to
bring about such a third party.
That, for example, is how Bill Whit-
ney explained the CP's support to
Black Democrat Ernest Morial in the
1977 race for mayor of New Orleans.
Writing in the January 1978 Political
Affairs, a CP monthly, Whitney saw in
Morial's victory the "sprouts" of a
"broad, independent anti-monopoly
coalition-a coalition based on the
unity of all of the working people of New Orleans."

Whitney chided "petty-bourgeois left-
ists, such as the Trotskyite Socialist
Workers Party" for running an inde-
pendent campaign against Democrat
Moria!.

A similar point was made by Daily
World writer Paul Klausen in the arti-
cle cited above. Klausen charged that
the SWP's refusal to support "progres-
sive" Democratic Party politicians is
''sectarian.''

"To fence oneself off from all those
who do not fully agree with you is
suicidal," Klausen said.

And, "To write off all members of
bourgeois political parties, as the SWP
does, is infantile."

All this is deliberate distortion. The
SWP does not "write off' all those who
vote for Democrats and Republicans.
Socialists run election campaigns, pub-
lish the Militant, and carry out other
activities to convince working people
that they, not big business and its
parties, should run the government.
Klausen pulls out this red herring to
cover up what is really involved. That
is the CP's refusal to break from the
politicians who keep their wallets full
by suckering workers into remaining
in the bosses' parties.

It is reliance on these parties that is
"suicidal" for working people. And it is
not "sectarian" for socialists to tell
workers that. It is simply honest polit-
ics.

Keep the puddle muddy

The CP's talk about a third "antimo-
nopoly" party-sometime in the
future-is designed to obscure all this
by holding workers inside the existing
capitalist political framework, while
paying lip-service to political indepen-
dence.

The CP's unflagging devotion to
Dennis Kucinich, Cleveland's Demo-
cratic Party mayor, is a good indica-
tion of what it has in mind when it
talks about "antimonopoly" politics.
The man the Daily World calls the
"antimonopoly mayor of Cleveland"
was almost recalled in an August 13
election. Kucinich squeaked by with a
few hundred votes.

The anti-Kucinich Recall Committee
to Save Cleveland was made up of both
Democrats and Republicans, and was
endorsed by the Cleveland AFL-CIO.
On the other side, lined up behind
Kucinich, were many Democratic
Party liberals, the United Auto
Workers ... and the CP.

Here is how the Daily World as-
sessed these events in an August 5
article headlined: "Reactionary forces
press drive for Kucinich recall":
"Disgust and disaffection with the
two major party machines is so wide-
spread that some observers believe the
recall drive could provide the spark to
ignite a surge towards a new indepen-
dent political formation to carry for-
ward the antimonopoly policies begun
by the Kucinich administration," the
CP daily asserted.

"They point out that the combined
forces around Kucinich, plus the UAW
which is the largest union in Cleve-
land, plus a number of independent-
minded councilmen, Democratic
committee-members and other indepen-
dent progressives could pull it off and
become the major political force in the
city in a relatively short time."

There you have it. An "independent,
antimonopoly coalition" made up of
whom? "Independent-'minded council-
men and Democratic committee-
members"-with some union bureau·
crats assigned to try to round up
workers' votes.

And organized around what? Back-
ing the incumbent capitalist politician.
Real alternative

The Cleveland Socialist Workers
Party, in contrast, backed the recall.
They saw it as a chance to educate
around the need for a working-class
political alternative to the Democratic
and Republican parties.

The SWP denied that Kucinich was a
"people's" candidate. Some 40 percent
of the people in Cleveland are Black,
for example. Yet the mayor opposes
what he calls "forced busing" to
achieve quality, desegregated educa-
tion.

And Kucinich never publicly repu-
diated the racist methods his support-
ers used to fight recall on Cleveland's
largely white West Side. A pro-
Kucinich scare campaign was con-
ducted there, warning that the Black
city council president would become
interim mayor if the recall were
passed.

Despite Kucinich's publicized vetoes
of tax abatement proposals for several
major corporations, he has done no-
thing about the big tax giveaways that
were instituted prior to his election.
And Cleveland banks continue to rake
in exorbitant interest payments on
municipal bonds.

Meanwhile, social service cutbacks
and layoffs of city workers continue.
Kucinich has assured bankers and
businessmen that the city will pay off
every penny of interest and principal
on the bonds.

Profits before people-that is the
program of Cleveland's "antimonop-
oly" mayor.

Shortly after his recall victory, the
"People's" mayor flunked another test.
He failed to say one word in support of
teachers during their more than
month-long strike. During that time,
teachers faced strike-breaking court
orders and threats of major layoffs.
Kucinich also stood idly by while the
city department that was supposed to
implement the court-ordered school-
desegregation plan was dismantled in
order to "_balance the budget."
Despite all this, the CP encouraged
the labor movement and Black com-
munity to fall in line behind Kucinich.
The Daily World was right on one
thing. The recall debate could have
provided "the spark to ignite a surge
towards a new independent political
formation."

But not by supporting a "people's"
Democrat.

Instead, discussions of Kucinich's
antilabor record could have been held
at union meetings and in Cleveland's
large Black community. These could
have culminated in a union-Black com-
munity conference called together by
the Cleveland labor movement to dis-
cuss fielding a political alternative to
Kucinich-and all the rest of the Dem-
ocratic and Republican politicians.
At such a conference, unionists,
Black activists, women's rights fight-
ers, and students could have ham-
mered out a political platform that
reflected the interests of working peo-
ple, not big business.

That program would have included
full support for busing to achieve
school desegregation; a plan to tax the
rich, not workers, to pay for schools,
child-care centers, hospitals, mass
transit, and other needed social servi-
ces; and cancellation of all bond pay-
ments to the banks.

On the basis of such a fighting
program, the conference could have
nominated a candidate that truly
spoke for Cleveland labor and all the
oppressed.

Classes & parties

The CP's support for Democrats such
as Kucinich represents a rejection of
the ABC's of revolutionary working-
class politics as practiced by socialists
from the time of Marx and Engels, to
Lenin and the Bolsheviks, and in the
United States by Eugene V. Debs, and
the SWP today.

Socialists start from the recognition
that capitalist society is fundamen-
tally divided between two social
classes. Their interests are antagonis-
tic.

• On the one hand there are the
capitalists. They are the bankers, fi-
nanciers, and industrialists who own
and control the mines, mills, and facto-
ries where America's wealth is pro-
duced. But they do not produce that
wealth. To the contrary, they reap
their profits from the ore, automobiles,
and myriad other commodities pro-
duced by the majority, the ...

• Working class. Workers' only
means of livelihood is to sell their
capacity to labor in return for wages.
They produce all of society's wealth,
but receive only a small portion in
return. Those at the very bottom-
Black, Chicano, and Puerto Rican
workers, and working women-receive
an even smaller share due to their·
double oppression.

To maintain their hold over the
wealth of society, the capitalists con-
trol the government, cops, and army at
every level-from the White House and
Pentagon, to city hall and the corner
precinct house. They implement this
governmental power through their two
parties-the Democrats and Republi-
cans.

Political parties are not a loose col-
lection of individuals from different
social backgrounds and interests who
compete for influence over policies and
programs.

Parties represent the interests of
classes.

Workers have no voice

Today there is no mass party in this
country that represents the interests of
labor and the oppressed. A quarter of
the working class is organized in trade
unions to protect them against their
bosses on the job.

But workers have no political organi-
zation to protect themselves from those
same bosses on the governmental
level.

The CP admits that the Democrats
and Republicans are big-business par-
ties. But they counterpose a vague
"antimonopoly" alternative to avoid
posing a clear working-class break
from the bosses. It is not at all just
another term for a labor party, or for
an independent Black or Chicano
party.

Contrary to the CP's claims, there
are no "antimonopoly" Democratic
Party mayors, legislators, or members
of Congress.

To be a political representative of the
Democratic Party is to be a mouthpiece
for U.S. capitalism. And U.S. capital-
ism in the twentieth century is monop-
oly capitalism; there is no other kind.
The entire American economy is
dominated by a handful of giant banks
and corporations. And these monopoly
interests are controlled by an even
tinier club of fantastically wealthy
families-the Rockefellers, Mellons,
DuPonts, and Pews, to name a few of
the more well-known.

The Democratic and Republican par-
ties are their parties. Working people
have no effective voice in these parties
now, and never will.

The CP does not rule out some future
realignment of liberal capitalist
politicians-along with misleaders of
the umon and other social
movements-into a more "progressive"
big-business party.

And if a labor party were formed in
this country, the CP would be there
pushing its policy of conciliation with,
rather than opposition to, the pro-
grams of capitalist politicians.
But even these eventualities are not
what the CP is talking about today. It
is still telling workers to stay in the
Democratic Party. And its talk about
political independence is simply de-
signed to make this more palatable in
times when there is growing working-
class disenchantment with the two-
party charade.

Lesser evil?

" . . . Our emphasis on political
independence and Communist candi-
dates ·never meant that we were not
interested in what happened in the two
old parties," CP General Secretary Gus
Hall told the party's National Council
in June.

"This never meant that we should
close our eyes to the significance of
who wins the elections in cases where
there are some important differences
between candidates."

But this "lesser evil" approach has
nothing whatsoever to do with
working-class political action.
In fact, the capitalists hang on so
tightly to the two-party system pre-
cisely because it helps create the illu-
sion that "there are some important
differences between candidates."
"You don't like the bum in office?"
they tell working people. "Vote for a
better Democrat, or a better Republi-
can next election."

Yet Gus Hall dresses up this tired
trick of the bosses as a step toward
political independence.

But why is the CP so hell-bent
against independent working-class pol-
itics? Is it just a well-intentioned mis-
take? One road among many toward a
common socialist goal?

That will be the topic of next week's
article.


*

Communist Party USA: The politics of detente

By Steve Clark


Behind the U.S. Communist Party's
support to "progressive" big-business
politicians is its complete political
subordination to Moscow.

The CP makes political decisions not
on the basis of what will advance the
interests of American workers, but
what will advance the foreign-policy
goals of the Kremlin bureaucrats.
That means supporting politicians-
usually, but not always, liberal
Democrats-whom the CP considers
most friendly to detente between Mos-
cow and Washington. (Or at least more
friendly than their opponent.)

Right now, for example, Moscow's
top priority is to nail down SALT li-
the second round of Strategic Arms
Limitation Talks between the U.S. and
Soviet governments.

Actually, SALT II will do nothing to
save humanity from the threat of
nuclear annihilation. Why? Because it
will do nothing about the real cause of
that threat-the war drive built into
U.S. capitalism's profit-lust for ex-
panded markets and investments.
SALT II, for example, will not only
allow the Pentagon to hold onto thou-
sands of missile systems and death-
dealing nuclear warheads, it will also
allow the development of new atomic
weapons ,and more refined delivery
systems.

Despite the fakery of this scheme,
SALT II was portrayed as this fall's
most important election issue in the
October 26 Daily World, the CP news-
paper.

Keeping a 'detente' Senate

Under the front-page banner head-
line, "The elections-what's at stake,"
the CP daily warned that the "new
right" is aiming for "even tighter
control of the U.S. Congress."
The article singled out a number of
conservative Republican Senate candi-
dates: Alabama's James Martin; South
Carolina's Strom Thurmond; North
Carolina's Jesse Helms; Colorado's
William Armstrong; and New Jersey's
Jeffrey Bell.

"Since ratification of SALT II re-
quires a two-thirds majority in the
Senate," the Daily World reported,
"each one of these races is crucial to
the battle to secure a SALT agreement
and open the way for further steps in
detente."

The point is clear. Nothing should
stand in the way of voting for the
Democrat in these races. Just to make
sure, the Daily World explicitly noted
in two cases that the Democratic senator
torial candidate "reportedly would vote
for SALT II."

The CP is also helping to perpetuate
the SALT II myth in the six state
election campaigns it is running this
fall. In the brochure for its New York
slate, for example, the CP writes:
"Our people want peace, detente, and
an end to the arms race. They want to
see a SALT II agreement with the
Soviet Union."

But does the CP demand that Wash-
ington abolish its $126 billion war
budget, as Socialist Workers Party
candidates are urging this fall in some
twenty-five states and the District of
Columbia'?

No. The CP calls only for "a sharp
reduction in the federal government's
military budget."

Which nuclear weapons does the CP
believe the Pentagon should keep?

Stalinist bureaucrats

These positions flow from the CP's
slavish obedience to the dictates of the
Stalinist bureaucrats in Moscow. The
CP defends the suppression of basic
civil liberties and trade-union rights in
the Soviet Union. It falsely .paints up
this totalitarian regime as a socialist
paradise. Meanwhile, the Soviet work-
ing class remains crushed under the
heel of a privileged bureaucratic minor-
ity that wields all political power there.
The Kremlin bureaucrats do not
identify their interests with those of
the working class in the United States,
or anywhere else.

In fact, these high-living functionar-
ies fear the independent political power
of American working people almost as
much as they fear any independent
stirrings by workers in the USSR.
The entire political outlook of the
Soviet rulers is shaped by their desire
to protect their abundant material
privileges. To do this, they must pre-
serve their political death-grip over
Soviet society.

These narrow bureaucratic interests
dictate an almost religious dedication
to the status quo worldwide. This de-
sire not to shake things up is at the
heart of Moscow's theory of "peaceful
coexistence" with capitalist govern-
ments around the world.

Opposite of Leninism

This theory was first expounded by
Joseph Stalin. It is the opposite of the
revolutionary internationalist outlook
of Lenin, Trotsky, and other leaders of
the Bolshevik revolution.

The Bolsheviks understood that the
expansionist, aggressive character of
imperialist powers such as the United
States made "peaceful coexistence"
dangerously utopian doctrine. Wash-
ington's mad escalation of the arms
race is a testament to the correctness
of that assessment.

Big business will resort to the most
ruthless methods to preserve its power
and profits, as it has shown in Viet-
nam, Chile, and South Africa-and
Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Concessions to imperialism, or paper
agreements such as SALT II, do not
increase the chances for peace. They
simply whet imperialism's appetite,
encouraging it to try further military
adventures and make further de-
mands.

What's more, by peddling the false
notion that permanent peace can be
achieved while the capitalists still hold
power, the Stalinists do absolutely
nothing to defend the Soviet Union. To
the contrary, as the Bolsheviks of
Lenin's time explained time and again,
the only way to defend the Soviet
workers state is to help extend the
socialist revolution worldwide.

Nonetheless, as Stalin tightened the
bureaucracy's hold over Soviet society
following Lenin's death, he threw
Marxist principles onto the scrap heap.
He argued that socialism could be built
in one country-the Soviet Union.

This theory then became an excuse
to demand that Communist parties in
capitalist countries subordinate every-
thing to Moscow's diplomatic aims.
This allegedly aided both the Soviet
workers and the cause of world peace.
In reality, it did neither.

The Stalinist bureaucrats do their
best to sabotage and block revolution-
ary developments in order to convince
imperialist governments that they are
sincere in their desire for "peaceful
coexistence."

Moreover, revolutionary upsurges in
other couptries inspire the Soviet
workers to press their own struggles.
The birth of a democratic workers
government anywhere in the world
threatens to fuel aspirations for hu-
man rights and working-class political
power in the USSR.

Attitude toward Carter

The CP's attitude toward the Carter
administration reflects its subser-
vience to the Kremlin's counterrevolu-
tionary dealings with world capital-
ism. Gus Hall's main report to the
June 1978 meeting of the CP's Na-
tional Council stressed the need to
build a pro-detente counterforce
against the pressure on Carter from
the so-called new right.

"It would be wrong to believe that it
is now no longer possible to influence
Carter's course," Hall said.

"His very opportunism means that
he will respond to pressure from
another direction. But the pressure
must be considerable enough to indi-
cate where the people really stand."
Hinting that the CP may not be
unfriendly to Carter's reelection bid,
Hall continued, "the Achilles Heel of
Carter's opportunism is that if he
moves to the right, and continues to
make even greater concessions to the
Right, he will lose his own mass base
and guarantee his defeat in. 1980."

Later in the speech Hall explained,
"Generally we must work for more
flexibility in tactical matters. Even in
dealing with the Carter Administra-
tion we must do so in the context of the
role of the ultra-Right forces, the div-
isions within the Cabinet, and the
contradictory pressures by different
sectors of monopoly capital."

Hall continued, "We must build the
pressures on Carter, but tactically it
would be wrong to make Carter the
single, and always the main target. On
some questions, whenever he takes a
fairly good position, it is necessary to
support him on it."

Revolutionary alternative

The CP's collaboration with capital-
ist parties and politicians, then, is
rooted in the drive by the Kremlin
bureaucracy to collaborate with capi-
talist governments around the world,
especially Washington.

Using the need to fend off the "new
right" as its latest excuse, the CP will
continue to encourage American
workers to stay inside the Democratic
Party.

This does not mean that the CP will
drop its rhetoric about political inde-
pendence. Such talk, in fact, is de-
signed to package the Democratic
Party in wrapping paper more suited
to today's growing working-class dis-
gust with both big-business parties.
Nor will the CP stop running in
elections. It uses these campaigns to
publicize its Stalinist views. Moreover,
these election efforts help strengthen
the CP organizationally-all the better
to carry out its services for Moscow.
The Socialist Workers Party, in con-
trast, serves no interests other than the
liberation of working people and the
oppressed in this country and around
the world.

That is why-while the CP was out
hustling votes for Democrats this
fall-SWP candidates were explaining
the need for independent labor political
action and a clean break from the two-
party con game of big business.