A communist view of "Washington gridlock"

"....A little gridlock in the capitalist government is perhaps the one positive development—the less the capitalist exploiters’ representatives can agree and act in their efforts to take their crisis out on the backs of working people, the better."

http://www.themilitant.com/2012/7642/764253.html

A comrade and fellow SWP supporter on Facebook had this to say:

"We are for the separation of powers in the three branches of government as long as the capitalist class hold state power.  We are in favor of gridlock.  We are for defending the constitution and the Bill of Rights.  We are opposed to judges writing law from the bench, be they liberal social engineers or right-wing reactionaries.  Given this choice, it is preferable for the Supreme Court to decide law on a strict interpretation of the Constitution.  This is ABC which I was taught as a 19 year-old YSA'er."

Donald Trump isn't a liberal, he's a Marcyite

Donald Trump is a liberal Democrat running, in this year of fascinating dialectical negations, as a Republican.

His Marcyist Stalinism, however, is only now being uncovered as GOP opponents begin to drain the ocean of press coverage this defender of Social Security and Planned Parenthood has received over decades.

From a 1990 Playboy interview with Trump:

What were your other impressions of the Soviet Union?

I was very unimpressed. Their system is a disaster. What you will see there soon is a revolution; the signs are all there with the demonstrations and picketing. Russia is out of control and the leadership knows it. That’s my problem with Gorbachev. Not a firm enough hand.

You mean firm hand as in China?

When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength....

http://www.ijreview.com/2016/01/513180-trumps-comment-about-chinese-government-at-tianenman-square-shows-hes-strongman-america-needs/

"The direction of motion today among capitalist parties and politicians is to the left in bourgeois terms, not to the right."

Excerpt from 2016 Havana Book Fair speech by US Socialist Workers Party leader Mary-Alice Waters:

....The US national security apparatus has undergone a massive expansion over the 15 years since 9/11, facilitated by technological advances embodied in the Internet and spread of what is called “social media.” Concerns about this among workers and others is one of the elements driving support for the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump, for many years a Democrat, now running as a Republican (and, yes, marked by “New York values” the entire time, as the Texas-Cuban has taunted him).

Some on the left in the US think Trump speaks for a deeply reactionary, even fascist, development among sections of the working class. That is a gross misreading. There is no growing ultrarightist, much less fascist, movement in the US today. The direction of motion among capitalist parties and politicians is to the left in bourgeois terms, not to the right. That motion, among other things, has been registered in the bipartisan shift toward opening diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba.

Most people here in Cuba are surprised when we explain that we have no more difficulty selling our press and talking working-class politics with those who attend large Trump election rallies than we do engaging in the same communist propaganda work at Bernie Sanders election events.

The ever-expanding surveillance of and intrusion into every aspect of our lives by Washington’s national security apparatus is hated by the working class. As are arbitrary “executive actions” and “regulation.” And there’s nothing reactionary about that. Smaller government has been a cornerstone of the communist program from 1848 to today.

Reaction to smoldering depression

It is not Trump’s crude anti-Mexican, anti-Muslim invective that accounts for his showing in initial primaries. It is his slashing attacks on the hypocrisy, lies, and manipulations of the political “establishment.” It is his success in casting himself as an “outsider.” Above all, it is his ability to play on the anxiety and fear generated by the smoldering depression conditions US workers have known for almost a decade, and the feeling of helplessness in face of an imperialist world order that is coming apart at an accelerating pace.

It is the heroin epidemic that is devastating working-class families across the US. It is the deliberately manipulated and camouflaged size of the scourge of unemployment. It is the scandalous lack of medical care and help for young workers who have been torn apart mentally and physically as cannon fodder for Washington’s military actions in the Mideast. It is the numbing and terrifying disregard for human life that marks the spreading class conflicts in the Mideast and beyond.

The ancient mandarin curse, “May you live in interesting times,” is for revolutionaries, for communists, a tremendous opportunity — and responsibility. And that is what we in the Socialist Workers Party will be oriented to, in the streets, factories, and on picket lines.

There are no large-scale labor battles today, no powerful social protest movements. There are many signs of growing resistance, however. There are strikes, fights against employer lockouts, and actions for a $15 minimum wage and a union. There are protests against cop killings that have pressed the rulers, for the first time in many years, to hand down indictments and firings in a number of prominent cases, putting a leash on police violence to some degree.

Above all, there is an unprecedented economic and social crisis unfolding across the capitalist system worldwide. When that crisis breaks, as it will sooner or later, the kind of class battles at the center of the books we are discussing here today will explode once more.

Fifty-five years ago, on the eve of the battle of Playa Girón, Fidel confidently assured the Cuban people, “There will be a victorious revolution in the United States before there is a victorious counterrevolution in Cuba.”

He was right then, and the line of struggle he laid out more than five decades ago remains our common guide to action. We can only add that the political capacities and revolutionary potential of workers and farmers in the US are today as utterly discounted by the ruling powers as were those of the Cuban toilers. And just as wrongly.

Speed the day!

http://themilitant.com/2016/8009/800960.html

World World Party's lesser-evil chauvinism

2 years ago, reading this Workers World Party pro-Putin offal:

http://www.workers.org/articles/2014/02/26/ukraine-venezuela-u-s-wages-dirty-wars/

I posted this on Facebook in response:

WWP lays it on the line: 300 years of Russian oppression of the Ukraine is a lesser evil than an imperialist trade deal with Washington that might thwart Putin.

WWP, again ignoring the historical context of national oppression by Russia against Ukraine.

Russian oppression of Ukraine has been a consistent and devastating fact of life for Ukrainian workers and farmers for centuries. Except for the period 1917 to 1924, it was continued in the Soviet period through today, not jus under the tsar.

In the period after 1924, such oppression was rationalized murderously as the dictatorship of the proletariat. Is it any wonder in such a historical context that Ukraine's workers and farmer have been repeatedly driven into the arms of the class enemy?

When today's Ukraine CP voted for Yanukovich's crackdown and laws restricting free speech and assembly, IN PARLIAMENT, the cause of communism and motion toward class consciousness was again dealt a blow.

This is the objective historical context for pulling down some Lenin statues and vandalizing Soviet-era public art.

Telling workers of the world that fascism has triumphed in Kiev is premature, dishonest, and demoralizing. It dehistoricizes the fruits of past struggles against, and analysis of, fascism. It is subjective emitionalisms run wild.

Telling workers of the world that political explosions and unexpected events are a conspiracy to thwart Russia's regional moves toward political suzerainty, and not part of the normal and understandable workings of the capitalist crisis, cuts against a materialist understanding of history and BREEDS DEMORALIZATION, wrecking any motion toward class consciousness and class CONFIDENCE.

Jay

Apple vs. Obama

A comrade posted this on Facebook:

I'm for Apple, of course, in its fight with Obama.

I just wish Apple's lawyers were a bit more sophisticated, and more conscious of history. They raise all kind of examples of why Apple should not be forced to take action, but they leave out the greatest example of all:

Dred Scott.

In 1857, the US Supreme Court ruled that every person in the US was obligated, on pain of imprisonment, to chase down runaway slaves. (The decision also ruled that no black person could ever be a citizen with rights.)

So if you farmed in Ohio, and some slaveowner claimed ownership of your neighbor -- no evidence needed -- you better help out in the capture, or go to jail. Fortunately, some people said no.  #OberlinRaid

Stakes for the Working Class in Defending the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments

Important discussion:

The Militant Labor Forum presents:

Stakes for the Working Class in Defending the Constitution,
the Bill of Rights, and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments

*Equal Protection Under the Law and Due Process
* Why the Working Class Should Defend Separation of Powers
*Debate over Antonin Scalia’s Vacancy on the Supreme Court

Speaker: Margaret Trowe, Socialist Workers Party

Friday, February 26
Dinner 6:45 p.m. – Program 7:30 p.m.
Suggested donation — $5 for program, $7 for dinner

227 W. 29th Street- 6th Floor- Manhattan
(On 29th St. between 7th and 8th Avenues)
(Subway stops on 34th St., 1, 2, 3, A, C, E, N, Q, R)

For more information, call (646) 964-4793

UK & EU

....As the debate unfolds, the Communist League is running Jonathan Silberman for mayor of London.

“There is no class-neutral ‘thing’ called Europe. The EU is a bosses club,” Silberman tells workers as he campaigns at their doorsteps, political events and actions to back workers’ struggles. “It was established to strengthen the propertied rulers against their capitalist rivals, against working people, and to bolster imperialist interests against the oppressed peoples of the semicolonial world. We urge workers to vote for an end to the U.K.’s membership.

“Both the government-led ‘yes’ campaign and the ‘no’ campaign are nationalist and anti-worker,” he says. “They start from what’s in the interests of ‘Britain.’ Class-conscious workers start from what’s in the interests of working people.

“The challenge facing workers is not to look to the capitalist rulers for protection — be they inside or outside the EU,” says the Communist League candidate, “but to fight for independent political action and international working-class solidarity, to forge a labor party that can mobilize working people in a revolutionary struggle for a workers and farmers government.”  
 

http://www.themilitant.com/2016/8005/800505.html